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.

Do You Need A Calendar?

Sorry about no post on Friday. I promise I didn't forget you, my lovelies, but I was out of town Thursday and Friday in a place where I had no Internet access, and I hadn't scheduled my post to come out.

In other news, I'm working on something new (so new it doesn't even have an official title), and I've hit a snag.

My times are off.

This is a new one for me, but for some reason, things are not unfolding in chronological order. My Male Lead and Female Lead are in different places and thus are following their own threads for quite a while. Somehow, and I'm not quite sure how or when this occurred, my Male Lead Thread got three days ahead of my Female Lead Thread, so every time I move back to my Female Lead, I'm always backing up a bit.

How big a sin is this?

I know I'm not alone in non-linear or nonchronistic stories. Lord of the Rings gets straightened our and put in chronological order for the movies, but most of the books follows one set for a considerable ways and then jumps back to the same point to follow the other set for a while.

But they follow the same set for an extended period, and they pick of at the same point. I'm not quite doing that.

My only thoughts right now are that I'll figure out how off it can be for others when I pass this one out to betas. Until then, I'll go with my gut and keep the nonchronisitic order.

How about you? Do you always follow a chronological order? How do you manage multiple threads?

Me, Myself, and I

When I started working on Miss Snitch, I got about 100 words in before I decided that what I was doing wasn't going to work. What I usually do is 3rd person POV. It just felt too distant, too out of my MC's head. I needed to shift into 1st person.

I don't usually work in 1st person. Actually, this is the farthest I've ever gotten in something that wasn't 3rd person. I don't really know why I favor the 3rd person, since a lot of books I love have been 1st person stories. Maybe it's because I tend to see the stories I'm writing from the perspective of a observer, watching it play out instead of acting in it myself.

I think this has been a growing experience for me. It's certainly forcing me to rethink the way I narrate stories. I feel as though I use the word 'I' too much. If I were writing 'Jenny' instead, I know it wouldn't feel half so awkward.

I'm not sure I've got the handle on it yet, but I'm working on it.

What POV do you favor?

Any tips for working in 1st person?

Good News

:D

Today, I received a request for a full on a query I sent out at the end of February. I'd written the letter off as a no-response. I'm not counting any chickens, but it did take a minute or two for my heart rate to return to normal.

Only one, obvious, tiny, little baby little hiccup: I don't have an author bio. There's nothing to say about me. I've been leaving it off the query letters. What does one say when one has no credentials? I have a feeling that, at this point, they might actually be expecting a paragraph.

Mythos

In my version of the universe, I can put all of the weird aspects of my made up world into the book and no reader will ever be bored by it. In the universe as it actually exists, I know that is not so. That is why at least 50% of the mythology and such that I created for my fictional world in Supposedly Epic Book will never make it onto the page, not even in draft one. Why? Because, in my heart of hearts, even I know that most readers won't care.

However, I could not resist including at least some of it into the book. And I'm trying to convince myself it is important. After all, since I am devoting around 500 words to a mythological story, it should probably be entertaining as well as informative.

My MC is traveling to reclaim a stolen item, and when asked why it was stolen, she replied, "Well, they don't like us very much." When asked to explain that, she tells the story she was told as a child -- a myth. I want her to question the real cause of the wars, which none of them know. If she doesn't question the war, then no one's motivations are going to have many levels.

Does including the myths slow the story down too much? Gosh, I hope not. Otherwise, I'm going to have to find a way to make it go faster and more interesting while keeping it in the story. It's basically back back story. Bad form, maybe, but I want to keep it in. I loved mythology as a kid, so I have no problem reading it in a book. Others, I know, are not the same.

Does brief storytelling make things too slow? Is it too obvious as back story?

How much myth do you use in your writing? Do you ever make up the mythology for your characters?

Names, Names, Names

It's in my nature to geek out over names. I love names and knowing what they mean, and when I give the names to characters, I really like it when the names mean things for the character.

I recently started outlining a story that I've been kicking around for a while, and I noticed a slight flaw with the names. A pattern had formed with the naming that I liked: the upper class had English names, the middle class (largely absent from the text but occasionally present) have French names, and the lower class (mainly the thief's underworld) have Italian names. There are just two spots that are niggling me.

~Leo: The prince (a major player in the book) and also the chief of police. The appropriate English name would be Leonard. Now, I've probably got some sort of implicit bias in my mind, but I don't really like that name. I don't like the sound and much prefer the Italian Leonardo. My concern would be is it worth compromising the structure that I had previously developed with the other names. My rationalization function tells me that he will go by Leo for most of the book, so I can skim over that detail. Also, since he'd be spending a lot of time with the members of the underworld, he could get away with an Italian name. My persnickety side does not really like my rationalizations but isn't sure how to change the name well, because I want to keep the nickname Leo.

~Maggie: She's a comparatively minor character (medium sized role) but a thief. In theory, she should have an Italian name. The closest I could swing a name like Maggie is that it might be short for Marguerite, which is French, but the nickname Maggie is shamelessly English. A similar problem faces me with this name, since I'm not sure how much I want to move outside the system I'd already established and how much I can expect a reader to overlook. On the other hand, I'm much more flexible with this name.

Any advice (or commiseration) at all would be much appreciated.