Blog Memory and World Building

Every now and then, I look back into my blog archives and scan through older posts. It's a very interesting thing. It's sort of like having a link to my past thoughts and all the weird/stupid/crazy things I thought once upon a time.

Once upon a time, when I was working on something I think I called the Epic Thing -- it's possible I never got around to titling that project -- I put a post on the blog about world building. (I'm not linking back to it, because in hindsight it wasn't my cleverest moment.) Back in my younger days, I didn't know how to balance the story in my head with the story on paper. I thought somehow that because I'd figured out a universe and a back story in my head, it all needed to appear on the page. And, you know, that's just not true.

No matter how big something is in my head, readers only needs to be told as much of it as I intend to use later -- they only need to know what's going to help them understand. Everything else is just wasting the reader's time. It might be cool and clever and interesting, but it's still a waste of time, since I'd just be throwing it out there just to throw it out there.

A few years ago, I hadn't realized how annoying that would be. Nowadays, it's one of my pet peeves as a reader. "Dear Author, just because you thought up a long back story doesn't mean anyone cares." That sort of thing. And in my revisions, I try to boil off the excess, the stuff I included but never ended up using.

This isn't to say I've given up on the idea of world-building. I still do that a lot. I'm working on my edits for Cordamant's Heir right now with both my notes and an alpha reader's, and one of the things I'm trying to make clear this time through are the rules of the political system. This is world-building, but it's world-building I need to do to make the plot clear. Because that's what really matters.

How's your writing going? How do you feel about elaborate back story? How do you build your worlds?

Rule of Ka'a (Thumb)?

A friend of mine recently reminded me of the Fiction Rule of Thumb as explained my the Gods of Wisdom (a.k.a xkcd).


As sarcastic as the cartoon seems I can't deny it has something of a point. Though, I must admit, in my mind, there's a steeper curve. Because, it seems to me, there must come a point when you've made up so many words, what you're doing is no longer recognizable as writing in English.

This leads me to my quandary. A friend of mine (as yet un-Named, to this blog at any rate -- working on that) pointed out while looking at my MS for Cordamant's Heir that many names I use, while actual names from the planet Earth and probably familiar to some people, are not common in the Hemisphere in which I live and will be trying to publish. What this means, it turns out, is that they generate the same functional confusion on the part of the reader that a made up word would. I can't deny, that puts me dangerously far along the Number of Words Made Up scale.

This puts my in a difficult spot. I've done what I can to keep characters from having names that I think sound too alike, but I also don't want to sacrifice this aspect of the book and end up giving them all names like Rebbecca, Gil, and Peter. It would feel like I was deleting some of the color from the story. Then again, I don't want to confuse the heck out of or utterly lose the reader.

How do you feel about using non-Standard names for characters? Are they different from made up names in your mind? How do you feel about these as readers? Are they hard to keep track of.

Refile to the Recycle Bin

On Monday, I mentioned the idea of scraping off the paint -- undoing what one has done -- in the effort to create art. I think this is fitting. Sometimes, it seems to me, that the biggest part of editing is not finding the right word to put on the page -- though that is important -- but actually finding all the words that do not belong on the page, and getting rid of them.

In a letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1934, Hemingway wrote, “I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.” Yes, even Hemingway produced some bad writing. No one is immune.

He's not alone in cutting the rubbish. John Green claims the best part of his books come out in the revisions and that he's lucky to use 10% of the original draft.

Sometimes, the key to good writing is just cutting the junk.

While I hope my ratio is slightly better than 1:91, that's sometimes how I feel about my writing. For The Thief Book, a good 70% of the original draft probably made it into the rubbish bin. In my revision of my first draft of Cordamant's Heir, I sliced a good 10k off. And, you know, I really feel both projects were the better for it. The Thief Book just ended wrong, and it all had to go. Cordamant's Heir came in really heavy and contained either plot threads that weren't going anywhere because I didn't want to develop them or had parts that were just redundant.

The first time we write things, they are generally not brilliant. Sometimes, they just need a spit shine. Other times, they need a fair amount of nipping and tucking. Other times, they just need a hacksaw and a trip to the recycle bin.

The trick is telling the junk from the masterpiece.

Do you feel like you end up binning most of your original MS, or are you often able to keep most of what you put down? How do you feel about major cuts?

Twisted

(Warning: I may have already told this story before. However, I'm not sure, and I couldn't find any evidence that I might have. So I'm running with it again. And you can't stop me. Muahahaha.)

Once upon a time, a teacher told my class, "You have to be a sick, twisted person to be a writer. You can't help it. Because writers have to torture their characters." He wasn't kidding. Basically, to be a writer, you need to create characters. Give birth to them. Learn them. Love them. Then you need to kick them in the stomach on a regular basis.

I can't help but agree. We're twisted.

I have a special feeling for each of my characters, especially my MCs. I know their histories, their wishes, what makes them tick. We're close. And then I do awful, awful things to them. For Amira, I know her history, what she wants most, what she hates and fears the most. What else have I done to her? Well, her grandfather gets murdered, she's almost executed, she's exiled, she goes to war, she's almost murdered too. And I'm not done yet. I'm planning on amping this up in the next round of revisions.

You're the same way. Admit it. You know your MCs, probably back to front and inside-out, and you put them in dangerous situations, untenable situations, risky situations. You find out what they want and put as many roadblocks between them as you possibly can.

That's perfectly okay. It's what writers do.

Practice this sentence with me: "I am a genius of tremendous and remarkable power and evil. I am out to control my universe. Muahahahaha." (Yes, the evil laugh is obligatory.)

I know you love your characters. I'm sure you do. But, that doesn't mean you don't have to make them suffer. Think of it this way, it'll just make it all the sweeter for them when everything comes 'round right.

How goes your malicious wickedness, fellow genius of remarkable evil and power? Have you ever experienced difficulty working acts of evil against your characters? Is that hard for you?

Victory Dance

Okay, this is going to sound highly preliminary, because that's the sort of thing one might say after NaNiWriMo is over, and it hasn't even started yet, but I'm doing on anyway.

I just finished my first draft of Cordamant's Heir.

**Victory Dance**

It's awesome. It feels so great you can even join in if you want to. In fact, I highly encourage it.

This was challenging. This was, by far, the longest draft I've ever done. Heck, I'll go so far as to say this is the longest thing I've ever written in my entire life. It weighs in at an shocking 103.5k. As far as I'm concerned, that's hecca long. Not Lord of the Rings 1 long, but definitely longer than Harry Potter 1. Somewhere between the two, really.

It's definitely long for me. (1.5x the length of Thief Book Draft 1. 2x the length of the Massive Revisions of Thief Book. 2x the length of Miss Snitch. 2.5x the length of my first book.) Yeah, for me, it's mad long.

Now do we understand the victory dancing?

I'm feeling mad awesome. How about you?

Character Movement

I feel like I've been on a character kick lately, but at least this time I'm taking it in a different direction.

(Note: Captain Film Major would like it noted that he believes one should like the MC from Fargo because she's nice. I feel like he believes that, but it wasn't part of the conversation I referenced. Still, Captain Film Major remains adamant a clarification of his stance was required. I cede on the clarification front, but not on rewatching that movie.)

To proceed to my point...

This weekend, I attended a mini-lecture on movement, mostly how movement and how people carry themselves relate to the characters. It was a very though-provoking idea. I enjoyed the lecture. (Note: We will not be discussing my physical experiences during the lecture, because that probably wasn't pretty. Anyone who's seen me attempt yoga knows that.)

This made me think about how my characters carry themselves. Mostly, about how Amira, from Cordamant's Heir, moves. The first time I conceptualized her character, I imagined her a lot more graceful than she really is. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because ideas are so light and fluffy in my head. But, like a lot of the assumptions we make about our characters, we're not always right. (If you want to hear some more brilliant thoughts on this, click here to be redirected to Natalie Whipple's blog.)

I now realize that she's a little more awkward on her feet sometimes. She's not as good a dancer as her mother would like her to be, or really as good as she'd like to be, since she's not a fan of being bad at things. She does better with a weapon in her hand, but dancing while holding a sword is often considered bad form, even where she lives. It gets better, but she's not the best. And if I think about it more, I can think why she moves the way she does, why she's better with swords than dance steps.

I like that about her, but it's not the sort of thing I'd recognized about her when I first started writing, because I didn't think about it. Now, though, I'm starting to think that I should think about movement more. Movement comes from who the character is, and by thinking about it, we can get a gateway into who they are and how they live. I might have to add movement to my Character Charts.

How do your characters move? Why? What does it say about them?

Building Character

Hi y'all. If my notice serves, we have some new friends in the audience. Thanks for stopping by, lovelies. It's a pleasure to have you. Take off your coats and stay a while.

I just want to say, my copy of Paranormalcy by Kiersten White arrived yesterday afternoon, so my capacity to get anything done instead of holing up with the book is, in my opinion, laudable. (No spoilers, or I'll be forced to do something really nasty.) Hope you're all facing similar book-related temptation and enjoying what you're reading. On to my post...

Based on the comments to my most recent post, it seems to me that most people experience their characters, at least at the start, in flashes of knowledge and not in one fell swoop. This indicates to me that somewhere along the way, we build our characters. Some of us, possibly, more literally than others.

Even as I work on Cordamant's Heir, I'm building a character for my next project. Her name's McKinley Gallagher, she took up residence in my skull late this January, and I've a feeling that if I don't start working her out, she's going to start picking fights with my other "guests." She's not violent by nature, but for a quiet girl, she seems to be growing increasingly vocal about the stance that she's up next.

Anyway, for McKinley's story, I'm employing a character analysis technique I picked up in a screenwriting course. I'm writing a character biography. Actually, it's one I wrote myself, and it's sort of a blend between a character profile and a bio. Just the sort of thins I think one should know about a character and their chronological history.

In the past, I didn't write character bios. Well, I sometimes wrote 200 words or so about the MCs and maybe 100 about the minor characters, but I didn't put a ton of effort into creating a record about them. I just knew what I knew and assumed I knew everything. Sure, I'd find out surprising things about them along the way, but I never knew how much I didn't know. I didn't know a lot.

Even though I've never done a character bio for a novel before, I'm already finding it a tremendously useful exercise. Because, after I write down everything I already think I know about that character in that aspect I start free-writing about them, I'm learning all sorts of things I normally wouldn't figure out until free-writing my novel. (Yes, I do that sometimes. My fingers move and words appear and I don't even know if there was a thought process for that. Hint: sometimes, I do it on this blog too.) I've learned that McKinley always has a runaway backpack in her closet, not because she actually intends to run away but because her mother used to move them at the drop of a hat. I learned (while thinking about her bio in a movie theater) that she can't stand sci-fi that takes itself seriously but doesn't mind sci-fi that knows it's ridiculous.

Because of this experience, I'm definitely considering making these character bios a regular part of my writing routine. They're dead useful.

Now, what I'm saying above should not be construed as a belief that a character bio, once written, is set in stone. No, these things can and will change over time, just like your novel will. No matter how long or detailed your character bio is, you'll learn new things about your characters as you write about them and think about them more. Heck, you might even learn that you were wrong. (Shocking, I know.) Still, the fact that they can change is not a reason to write them off, as it were. After all, first drafts change, but we still make them. (In fact, we need to make first drafts. Otherwise, there'd be no book. Just saying...)

A good post on this issue can be found on Natalie Whipple's blog. Just click here.

Do you write character bios? Why or why not? If you do, are they very detailed? What sort of stuff do you include?

Character At First Sight?

(Disclaimer: While I fully intended to return in September to a schedule of posting five times a week, it has come to be my opinion that my summer schedule of posting three times a week is much better; therefore, I'll be sticking with it for the foreseeable future. And yes, I just used a semi-colon, because they -- and people who use them -- are just that awesome.)

First of all, a welcome to any newcomers to the blog. Glad to have you with us. I'd put out cookies, but I'm told that Internet cookies are generally unwelcome. And happy Labor Day to everyone. :)

On the regularly scheduled programming...

Once upon a time, I watched an episode of Bones in which Booth talks to Bones about old married couples who claim that they just saw each other and knew that they belonged together. Then, once upon a slightly later date, I read a column by Dan Savage who claimed that such a phenomenon is (and I'm paraphrasing) mostly caused by couples who've been together a while misremembering how they met and imagining that they always knew what they've now long for so long but didn't know at first.

I'm not going to say how I feel about actual life couples in this instance, but the difference between these views certainly reminds me of different perspectives on character-writer relationships. (Bet you didn't see that coming.)

I once heard a story that J.K. Rowling said that Harry Potter walked into her head fully formed. That would be, in my opinion, an example of the Bones case.

There is another way. I know that personally, characters usually do not march into my head fully formed. Instead, I tend to see snatches of their lives flashing before my eyes, not their whole self. For example, with Cordamant's Heir, I think the first thing I ever saw of Amira's life was her execution. There's a lot I'm still learning about her in the writing process. Or, with the Thief Book, the first thing I knew was the Code, then DiSpirito. The MC didn't arrive until later. I think of this as the Dan Savage style.

This got me wondering if characters do appear to some people in a magical vision or something. Maybe some characters really do appear before an author fully formed and demand to have their story told, a la Six Characters in Search of an Author. That hasn't been my experience, but I'm not the world's leading authority on the subject. Maybe people find a character slowly, but misremember is as happening in a flash. I don't know. I still remember where all of my MCs have come from, and so I doubt I"m likely to misremember them in the future.

I don't know if either method is better or worse than another. All I know is what works for me, and what works for me has been working pretty well so far.

How does it work for you? Do your characters come to you all at once or in bits and pieces? Do you get a mix of both? Do you have a preference? Fan of Bones?

I'm Back, With A New Blogging Schedule

Hi all, I'm back from Chicago (which I will never call Chi-town, because quite frankly, I don't understand that). I had a good time. I got to see The Other One and even Captain Film Major. (He, by the way, introduced me to a restaurant called Epic Burger. While I'm not much for burgers, that's not a bad burger, and they serve some mean fries. So, yes, my whole eating healthy thing got pretty well shot to hell.)

While in Chicago, I also got some good reading in -- I highly recommend I'd Tell You I Love You But Then I'd Have To Kill You by Ally Carter -- and some serious progress on Cordamant's Heir. I'm still in the first act, but things are coming along nicely. (So far, analeptic kisses: 1, analeptic tales of battle: about 3, murders:0 -- for now.)

Sadly, I didn't bring y'all souvenir's from Chicago. Not because I don't love you, I promise.

But, I have realized, since I went away, that it is probably time to adjust my blogging schedule. It's sunny out now, and I'm writing a first draft again, both of which are things that make me disinclined to blog. So, I'll be stick around the blogosphere and reading all your lovely posts, but I'll be posting fewer of my own ramblings. Probably 3, maybe 4, a week, on whichever days I see fit. (Yes, I still refused to be tied to specific days on that, since I'm a rebel like that.)

I hope y'all had a great weekend. How are you all doing this fine day?

Location, Location, Location

When I'm writing, I try not to scamper off aimlessly. I try to have some sort of advance plan for a scene before diving into it so that I don't send my characters footling around through space. But, well, sometimes they go where my fingers take them without my quite knowing.

Yesterday, as my character footled around, because I was a tad short on plans for that scene, she passed through the garden -- because Amira loves gardens, apparently -- and found herself in the library where she finally got around to running into that character I wanted her to run into. Then, as they were about to leave the library, something occurred to me, "I've just introduced the library. I can use that later!" That made me very happy.

I think on some level I would prefer to limit the number of settings I use in my book. Maybe it's because I don't want to confuse the reader by tossing in a lot of rooms and places that aren't important for them to remember. Maybe I don't want to keep track. Maybe it's the theater.

I tend to create stories similar to the way plays are created. In a play, there cannot be too many settings, because there is not room for many sets. The wings would fill up with the periaktoi or flats or whatever else you're using for your sets, and then there wouldn't be room for actors and actresses, and then you've got a problem with your play as there's no one to perform it. So, maybe the manner in which I tell a story has been impacted by the time I've spent working in theater.

But, regardless of the cause, I think it's true that I tend to limit the number of settings I use.

Anyway, since I've introduced the library as a setting, it now means that I can go back to it in other scenes. I can say, "Hey, remember that time Amira was in that place with that one person. Well, now these other people are there doing this thing. So you don't need to get distracted by the walls, just go look at the thing. No, seriously, go look at the thing. It's interesting, I promise." It will save me the trouble of introducing a new place to the reader, and it will save the reader the trouble of having to remember another location.

So, now I can add the library to my list. This makes me very happy indeed.

Do you like to use a lot of settings? Are you very specific about where your scenes take place?

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

Do your characters ever change on you, especially in ways you didn't expect? Do they ever just throw your plans for them out the window? Well, mine certainly like to.

Okay, in all honesty, they rarely take the plot places I didn't expect it to go or am not okay with it going. They can usually take direction. But, then again, there are times when I call that actor in from the wings, and they're definitely not who I thought they were.

I'm about 7 pages into Cordamant's Heir, and both my Female Lead and Male Lead have already surprised me. I just looked at my original character sheets and discovered they'd change a great deal.

My MC, Amira, was supposed to bed pale, thin, with green eyes. Now, she has dusky skin, thick black hair, light brown eyes, and, the way I see her, she's got some jam in her jelly. I like her better that way. It feel real to the character. I'm just surprised at how she changed.

The Male Lead, Azra, took a big internal change. He's still the same at his soul, but, according to my original notes, he was going to be an orphan who an uncle who tries to control his life. About three days ago, his parents came back into existence.So, internal changes. That fact also changes his position politically, which also adds some new flavor to his position in the book.

During my first draft of the Thief Book, a character named Anna-Maria appeared. She was originally described as having 'the personality of a porcupine.' Then, well, it turned out she had a good reason to be a porcupine, and she became involved in a subplot in the story, one that grew increasingly important in the revisions. I didn't see that coming when I introduced her into the story.

I'm looking forward to even more surprises as I work on Cordamant's Heir. I'm sure it'll keep things interesting.

Do you ever get surprised by your characters? Do they ever turn out not to be who you thought they were?

First Draft Happy

Okay, I have a confession to make. About a week or so ago, I was tired. Not body tired. Brain tired. Heart tired. All the spark had gone out of the writing for me, and I didn't know if I wanted to keep doing it anymore. I felt like the rewriting process was sapping my will to write. (Forgive the emo-sounding-ness there. I'm sleepy as I type this. That makes me sound emo sometimes.)

But, on Friday, I decided to shove all the other stuff that had been on the front burner onto a back burner. It could wait. I was going to bend to temptation and start writing something new. And I feel better. I feel great.

The creative juices are flowing again. I'm thinking again, feeling again, discovering new characters again, finding a new world again. It feels good to sit down with a story-problem again and figure it out instead of rooting through my notes to remember what the official answer is in accordance with the rest of the plot.

Yesterday, I sat down and sketched a rough family tree for four characters. Yesterday, I figured out that my MC didn't look anything like I'd originally thought she did. Yesterday, I got to call my villain a "total pretender to the throne" and know why that was an accurate description of him. I'm learning about my story again. I'm having fun with my story again.

To blatantly steal a line from Jack in the Shutterbox, something is right with my world and I'm loving it.

In the comments of my previous post, D.L. Hammons referred to my rough drafting right now as my happy place. I think that's the accurate. Because first drafts, I've found, always make me really happy.

Now, to blatantly steal a line from a Disney World ride that scared the living daylights out of me when the talking vulture automaton said it: Everyone has a happy place. Maybe this is yours.

Yep, this might be mine. What's yours?

At the Beginning Again

That's right, ladies and gentlemen, I am once again starting fresh. Not at the beginning of The Thief Book, thank the powers that be of the universe. No, I'm writing again. Something new.

As I finished the rewrites on The Thief Book, I also finished a quick edit I'd been doing on Miss Snitch. And, when I thought about jumping right in and putting them into the book, my heart sort of sank, because it just made me think that all the writing I've been doing lately was rewriting and editing, rehashing and reshaping old ideas and characters instead of creating new ones. This made me sad.

So, I opened up a word document, pulled the idea that's been stewing for a month or so up to the front burner, and started typing. And you know what, I'm enjoying it. I'm enjoying it a lot. I'd forgotten how much fun writing a first draft could be.

I'm back at the beginning, and I couldn't be happier.

How are your writing endeavors going?