As a writer, most of the time you will have to toil and slave over your first draft and your characters, outlining the hell out of everything in order to make sure things are Just Right before you start writing. I know I've filled out my share of character outlines in order to ensure I have fully-rounded people to populate my story, and I admit it can get tedious at times. Sometimes, though, I luck out.
Every so often, I get a character that springs fully-developed from the squirrel's nest that is my brain, and I suddenly know everything I need to know about this character. I call these Athena characters from the Greek goddess of war, who emerged fully-grown and fully-armored from Zeus' skull (long story) after giving him a godawful headache. A lot of times I get these character ideas without having a story to put them in, and that's where the headache starts.
Why?
Because with very few exceptions, a story doesn't hang properly on just one character. You have one no-work character? Great! Now you have to come up with the rest of the cast to complement her and make an interesting story.
But my character is awesome! I hear you cry.
Well, that's fine, but you can't hang all your awesome on one character and let everyone else be cardboard cutouts. Furthermore, you need a good story to demonstrate that your character is Really Awesome, with more of a plot than Athena Awesomechick Is The Best At Everything She Does And Everyone Worships Her.
Handling Athenas can be a pain because writing the support characters to balance them and a satisfying plot to challenge them must be handled carefully. You can't even cop out by making your Athena a secondary character because having a cardboard cutout for your main character is just boring.
When I started writing Heart of Steel, I had the character concept of Alistair Mechanus fully developed--a mad scientist who happens to be the male lead in a romance novel. That made developing his love interest Julia really freaking hard because she had to be equally rounded, and enough of his intellectual equal(ish) to ultimately be a valid, believeable match for him. It's also made developing my novel kind of interesting because the plot needed to challenge a guy who was almost literally the master of his domain. Making a fluffy romance around those two where they frolic through his many laboratories looking at the cool stuff he's built simply wouldn't work. And I have to make the plot weighty enough to carry them through 80k-100k words.
So, you have an Athena character? Great. Outline the heck out of her--and then put at least as much work into the other characters and the story she's going to be in. Can't do that? Used up all your creative mojo on her? Don't waste a great character. Set her aside in a brainstorming pile. Later on, you might come up with the perfect story for your Athena. She (or he) might even develop further during the brainstorming. Anything can happen.
Thursday, June 27, 2013
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
It's Genre Research, I Swear!
Sorry I missed last week's post--life just got crazy and I forgot. So, on that note, on to this weeks blog post.
I am a huge bookworm.
This is a trait that goes perfectly with being a writer, along with being a librarian. As a bookworm, I devour new books like a woodchipper goes through tree branches, and I get a lot of ideas by seeing what other people have done with the genre. I got back into fantasy by reading Discworld. I got into mysteries by reading Sherlock Holmes. I got into horror by reading Stephen King. And so forth. So naturally the best way I know of to research a new genre I'd like to try out is to read a bunch of books in that genre.
However, this can lead to some strange results, depending on the genre you're researching.
For a while I was into Bizarro fiction and aspired to write my own as soon as I had a handle on what made it work. As a result, I was reading books with titles like Warrior Wolf Women of the Wasteland, Apeshit, and The Ass Goblins of Auschwitz. In hindsight, I was quite glad that all of these came through interlibrary loan and had the big transit sleeves over the front covers, because a lot of the covers were really damn weird and I didn't feel like trying to explain what they were about to passersby, especially since some of the titles were almost obscenely literal once you got into the story. I soon concluded that Bizarro deliberately defied any attempts to fit it into a set framework, and set the genre aside as far as writing projects went, until such time as I recalled a particularly vivid fever-dream that I could render into a semi-coherent plot. (Good luck with that, me.)
Before that, I was plowing through a list of obscure books that were eventually made into less-obscure movies, like The Stepford Wives, Rosemary's Baby, and The Midwich Cuckoos. These titles were quite a bit more innocuous than the Bizarro titles, but you can imagine the looks I got while reading Rosemary's Baby in the waiting room at the OB/GYN. (Incidentally, my roommate has me beat on that front, sitting on the front steps of a church to read Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses. Hee hee.)
Even mainstream genres aren't immune to this reflexive guilt reaction. I read Twilight to see if it was all it was cracked up to be either good or bad. I know that both camps have particularly rabid supporters, and I did my best to stay out of the fray, but it's hard to do that when you have the first book of the series in your hands. Even straight romance is really damn hard to research, as a lot of the covers skirt the edge of modesty, and I'm starting to have difficulty taking a lot of the titles seriously when half of them follow the template of The Greek Billionaire's Forbidden Mistress or The Italian Tycoon's Secret Wife.
And you can just forget about researching the particulars of erotica. I've looked up titles for genre research, and they covers practically trumpet from the rooftops, "Hey everybody, I'm reading porn!" I know it's not the same thing, and I'm sure the readers know it's not the same thing, but I don't feel like wrapping my legitimate genre research (no really, I swear) in a brown paper bag like a dirty magazine to preserve my dignity and avoid people thinking I am, in fact, reading porn. The better-known titles have more innocuous covers, but pretty much everyone knows what Fifty Shades of Gray is about by now.
At this point I've just about decided that e-books will be my best best for discreet genre research. I should feel weird or guilty about the stuff, I read, but honestly, there's a legitimate reason!
I am a huge bookworm.
This is a trait that goes perfectly with being a writer, along with being a librarian. As a bookworm, I devour new books like a woodchipper goes through tree branches, and I get a lot of ideas by seeing what other people have done with the genre. I got back into fantasy by reading Discworld. I got into mysteries by reading Sherlock Holmes. I got into horror by reading Stephen King. And so forth. So naturally the best way I know of to research a new genre I'd like to try out is to read a bunch of books in that genre.
However, this can lead to some strange results, depending on the genre you're researching.
For a while I was into Bizarro fiction and aspired to write my own as soon as I had a handle on what made it work. As a result, I was reading books with titles like Warrior Wolf Women of the Wasteland, Apeshit, and The Ass Goblins of Auschwitz. In hindsight, I was quite glad that all of these came through interlibrary loan and had the big transit sleeves over the front covers, because a lot of the covers were really damn weird and I didn't feel like trying to explain what they were about to passersby, especially since some of the titles were almost obscenely literal once you got into the story. I soon concluded that Bizarro deliberately defied any attempts to fit it into a set framework, and set the genre aside as far as writing projects went, until such time as I recalled a particularly vivid fever-dream that I could render into a semi-coherent plot. (Good luck with that, me.)
Before that, I was plowing through a list of obscure books that were eventually made into less-obscure movies, like The Stepford Wives, Rosemary's Baby, and The Midwich Cuckoos. These titles were quite a bit more innocuous than the Bizarro titles, but you can imagine the looks I got while reading Rosemary's Baby in the waiting room at the OB/GYN. (Incidentally, my roommate has me beat on that front, sitting on the front steps of a church to read Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses. Hee hee.)
Even mainstream genres aren't immune to this reflexive guilt reaction. I read Twilight to see if it was all it was cracked up to be either good or bad. I know that both camps have particularly rabid supporters, and I did my best to stay out of the fray, but it's hard to do that when you have the first book of the series in your hands. Even straight romance is really damn hard to research, as a lot of the covers skirt the edge of modesty, and I'm starting to have difficulty taking a lot of the titles seriously when half of them follow the template of The Greek Billionaire's Forbidden Mistress or The Italian Tycoon's Secret Wife.
And you can just forget about researching the particulars of erotica. I've looked up titles for genre research, and they covers practically trumpet from the rooftops, "Hey everybody, I'm reading porn!" I know it's not the same thing, and I'm sure the readers know it's not the same thing, but I don't feel like wrapping my legitimate genre research (no really, I swear) in a brown paper bag like a dirty magazine to preserve my dignity and avoid people thinking I am, in fact, reading porn. The better-known titles have more innocuous covers, but pretty much everyone knows what Fifty Shades of Gray is about by now.
At this point I've just about decided that e-books will be my best best for discreet genre research. I should feel weird or guilty about the stuff, I read, but honestly, there's a legitimate reason!
Friday, May 17, 2013
Author Appeal
After you've been writing for a while, eventually you may start to notice things that your stories have in common: character archetypes, physical traits, pastimes, belief systems, that sort of thing. You might not mean anything by it, or you might just be writing what you know, or you might be purposefully casting these details in a positive light within the context of the story to show that, hey, XYZ isn't that bad, even if you might think it's a little weird or unusual.
TV Tropes calls this Author Appeal, and depending on how it's handled, it doesn't have to be a bad thing. Think of it this way: You write what you know, creating settings that appeal to you, the author. The main character might be someone you'd like to know, or even You But Better, and the place and time where he lives might have some element to it that you find interesting or appealing enough to want to explore in detail via your fictional medium.
Improperly handled, a story where (for example) most everyone is a bisexual nudist who practices BDSM and eats pepperjack cheese on everything and anyone who doesn't is a horrible person who dies horribly could be a turnoff for most readers (except for a small portion of potential readers), and make your story ripe snark bait because OMG LOOK HOW WEIRD THIS AUTHOR IS. I've seen this level of ham-handedness in a number of works--mostly fanfiction that is a step or less removed from a self-insertion fic, but some original fiction as well. Basically, if the main character has exactly the same tastes and ideas the author holds most dear, and everyone loves them for it or is inevitably coerced over to their way of thinking (or dies during the course of the story)... yeah.
However, properly handled, elements of author appeal can form a subtext that remains exactly that--subtext-- without beating the reader over the head with whatever notion of ideal beauty or perfect society the author holds. Such elements can become topics for which the author is well-known without ramming them down the reader's throat. The author likes curvy women and writes books featuring them? Great--those books will attract readers who also like curvy women. The author likes baseball and writes books with baseball storylines? Great--other baseball fans will want to read them.
As I look back at some of my current and past works-in-progress, I've noticed that I do this, too. For example, I have a thing for tall, intellectual male characters with long, slender fingers. (This may be connected with my love of Sherlock Holmes stories and later love of the character of Severus Snape in the Harry Potter novels.) As a result, The respective male leads of a handful of my stories are super-smart, often described as tall, and I give them slender fingers. This is neither a good thing not a bad thing, exactly, just a Thing. My heroes also tend to use their brains rather than punch their way through a problem. (I blame MacGyver for this.) Again, neither a good thing nor a bad thing. If I write about characters that appeal to me, I will enjoy writing them, and with any luck I'll find readers who also like tall, intellectual heroes with slender fingers. If I write a character that I think a certain demographic will like, and I end up hating that character, the story probably won't ever get done--or if it does, it will feel half-assed because I was just writing it to get it done rather than because I enjoyed it.
I admit that I don't get the Twilight books. Vampire romance stories don't appeal to me. Stephenie Meyer has piles of fans who read her books and would like to take Edward Cullen home with them, dietary concerns aside. That's fine. She's found an audience for her author appeal. I think that chances are good that most authors will find an audience for what appeals to them as well, if they present it properly and look hard enough.
TV Tropes calls this Author Appeal, and depending on how it's handled, it doesn't have to be a bad thing. Think of it this way: You write what you know, creating settings that appeal to you, the author. The main character might be someone you'd like to know, or even You But Better, and the place and time where he lives might have some element to it that you find interesting or appealing enough to want to explore in detail via your fictional medium.
Improperly handled, a story where (for example) most everyone is a bisexual nudist who practices BDSM and eats pepperjack cheese on everything and anyone who doesn't is a horrible person who dies horribly could be a turnoff for most readers (except for a small portion of potential readers), and make your story ripe snark bait because OMG LOOK HOW WEIRD THIS AUTHOR IS. I've seen this level of ham-handedness in a number of works--mostly fanfiction that is a step or less removed from a self-insertion fic, but some original fiction as well. Basically, if the main character has exactly the same tastes and ideas the author holds most dear, and everyone loves them for it or is inevitably coerced over to their way of thinking (or dies during the course of the story)... yeah.
However, properly handled, elements of author appeal can form a subtext that remains exactly that--subtext-- without beating the reader over the head with whatever notion of ideal beauty or perfect society the author holds. Such elements can become topics for which the author is well-known without ramming them down the reader's throat. The author likes curvy women and writes books featuring them? Great--those books will attract readers who also like curvy women. The author likes baseball and writes books with baseball storylines? Great--other baseball fans will want to read them.
As I look back at some of my current and past works-in-progress, I've noticed that I do this, too. For example, I have a thing for tall, intellectual male characters with long, slender fingers. (This may be connected with my love of Sherlock Holmes stories and later love of the character of Severus Snape in the Harry Potter novels.) As a result, The respective male leads of a handful of my stories are super-smart, often described as tall, and I give them slender fingers. This is neither a good thing not a bad thing, exactly, just a Thing. My heroes also tend to use their brains rather than punch their way through a problem. (I blame MacGyver for this.) Again, neither a good thing nor a bad thing. If I write about characters that appeal to me, I will enjoy writing them, and with any luck I'll find readers who also like tall, intellectual heroes with slender fingers. If I write a character that I think a certain demographic will like, and I end up hating that character, the story probably won't ever get done--or if it does, it will feel half-assed because I was just writing it to get it done rather than because I enjoyed it.
I admit that I don't get the Twilight books. Vampire romance stories don't appeal to me. Stephenie Meyer has piles of fans who read her books and would like to take Edward Cullen home with them, dietary concerns aside. That's fine. She's found an audience for her author appeal. I think that chances are good that most authors will find an audience for what appeals to them as well, if they present it properly and look hard enough.
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
Give Geeks a Chance: Unconventional Romance Heroes
I've never much been a fan of romance novels, honestly. I tried reading a few Harlequin titles, for the sake of genre research when I started getting a few story ideas, but I soon gave it up in the face of that sea of burly naked male torsos that seemed to adorn every. Single. Cover. Every romance hero was built like a warrior, even if he was the CEO of a Fiction 500 company, and he was aggressive and dominant and he always knew the right things to say and knew how to tame the heroine's fiery personality and otherwise had all the original personality of a Wheat Thin. The mass produced romance hero just annoyed me, for reason that had nothing to do with the fact that the (talented, smart, spunky) heroine, no mater how much she hated him, and no matter how much of an asshole he was, the heroine would always fall for him and cling to his every word.
Maybe I was just reading the wrong romance novels. I freely admit this.
Of course, when I got my idea for Heart of Steel I tried research along the lines of "How to Write a Romance Novel" (seriously, those were the search terms), and I learned that this was the standard template suggested for the male lead. I knew my novel would have a mad scientist lead, though, and after turning him over in my head for the space of the first chapter, I realized something very important:
He already wasn't a typical romance hero. He was a scientist, sequestered alone on his island, surrounded by his robots and minions and with very little in the way of social interaction otherwise.
In other words, he was a geek.
It has been a long time since the word geek has been an insult in wider contexts, but not a lot of the romance heroes I encountered seemed to have the capacity for adorable awkwardness that would mark a geeky hero. They were smart, and suave, and knew what to do.
I have since heard that romantic science fiction is chock-full of heroes with geeky professions, which will be great as soon as I find a series to start nibbling on, but I have to wonder if these programmers, robot builders, and various shades of scientist will have truly geeky personalities, or if they will be standard romance heroes with a different paint job.
So why do I like the idea of a geek as a romance hero? Simple: they try harder.
Historically, the geeks and the nerds and the smart guys have not typically gotten the girl, and they know this. They are socially awkward, focused on obscure topics ranging from quantum physics to Dungeons and Dragons, and most of them have seen the hot babe ignore them in favor of the varsity quarterback. They are also smart and observant and can pick up on little details about the heroine that the Fiction 500 CEO with rippling muscles might miss while he's flexing at himself in front of the mirror. Mr. Fiction 500 might see the heroine as Look At This Beautiful Prize I Have Won. Mr. Geeky Guy might see her as Holy Shit I Can't Believe She's Paying Attention to Me. This isn't to say that Mr Geeky Guy can't still be good-looking, or heroic, or innovative--he just solves problems with his brains rather than his fists. (Seriously, haven't you noticed all the girls that MacGyver landed?)
And of course, if the heroine is smart as well, and willing to give Mr. Geeky Guy a chance, the two might discover they have more in common than either of them thought.
I found a great list of traits to keep in mind for geeky romance here. It mainly focused on real-life dating scenarios, but it could easily be applied to a fictional romance story as well.
Maybe I was just reading the wrong romance novels. I freely admit this.
Of course, when I got my idea for Heart of Steel I tried research along the lines of "How to Write a Romance Novel" (seriously, those were the search terms), and I learned that this was the standard template suggested for the male lead. I knew my novel would have a mad scientist lead, though, and after turning him over in my head for the space of the first chapter, I realized something very important:
He already wasn't a typical romance hero. He was a scientist, sequestered alone on his island, surrounded by his robots and minions and with very little in the way of social interaction otherwise.
In other words, he was a geek.
It has been a long time since the word geek has been an insult in wider contexts, but not a lot of the romance heroes I encountered seemed to have the capacity for adorable awkwardness that would mark a geeky hero. They were smart, and suave, and knew what to do.
I have since heard that romantic science fiction is chock-full of heroes with geeky professions, which will be great as soon as I find a series to start nibbling on, but I have to wonder if these programmers, robot builders, and various shades of scientist will have truly geeky personalities, or if they will be standard romance heroes with a different paint job.
So why do I like the idea of a geek as a romance hero? Simple: they try harder.
Historically, the geeks and the nerds and the smart guys have not typically gotten the girl, and they know this. They are socially awkward, focused on obscure topics ranging from quantum physics to Dungeons and Dragons, and most of them have seen the hot babe ignore them in favor of the varsity quarterback. They are also smart and observant and can pick up on little details about the heroine that the Fiction 500 CEO with rippling muscles might miss while he's flexing at himself in front of the mirror. Mr. Fiction 500 might see the heroine as Look At This Beautiful Prize I Have Won. Mr. Geeky Guy might see her as Holy Shit I Can't Believe She's Paying Attention to Me. This isn't to say that Mr Geeky Guy can't still be good-looking, or heroic, or innovative--he just solves problems with his brains rather than his fists. (Seriously, haven't you noticed all the girls that MacGyver landed?)
And of course, if the heroine is smart as well, and willing to give Mr. Geeky Guy a chance, the two might discover they have more in common than either of them thought.
I found a great list of traits to keep in mind for geeky romance here. It mainly focused on real-life dating scenarios, but it could easily be applied to a fictional romance story as well.
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
Writing Scenes that Tear Out Your Characters' Souls
So you're writing a story, and you've come up with a great protagonist. He's well-rounded, with strengths and weaknesses, and overall as realistic as you came make him. You like the hell out of this character. Now for the hard part.
You have to take this great protagonist, his nice comfortable (or at least familiar) world, and everything he knows to be true, and pitch the whole thing down the stairs. Why? Why would you do all these horrible things to a character that you like so much? Because if you don't, there's no damn story.
And that's where some writers (like me) tend to hesitate. Why come up with this awesome, likeable, interesting character if I'm just going to kick him up one side of the street and down the other? Because if he's sufficiently awesome, likeable, and interesting, people are going to want to read about his journey, no matter how heart-wrenching it might be. In fact, if you play your cards right, the journey will be hair-raising and heart-wrenching because your character is so likeable.
And the soul-tearing scenes are often the most vivid--both for the writer and the reader. I actually had to write two chapters in Heart of Steel out of order because I had an idea for the Big Reveal running around my brain and screaming to be written. I knew that even though my male lead was finally going to achieve one of his mini-goals, it was going to hurt him. A lot. Like soul-rending, gut-ripping, sanity-straining trauma. And I went ahead and wrote them because even though it was going to be agonizing for him, it was the only way he would be able to heal, and he'd be stronger for it. Similarly, I've read that J. K. Rowling frequently felt bad about a lot of the things she'd put the characters of her Harry Potter series through, but she wrote them anyway, because these events were just part of their story. (Letting the characters write their own story will be a topic for another blog post, though.)
What I'm getting at is simple enough: don't be afraid to test your characters, to tear them down and build them back up again. If you do it right, your readers will be on the edge of their seats, rooting for your protagonist to get through this, to reach his goal to retrieve the treasure or get the girl or save the world or whatever the aim of his story arc might be. And it will be awesome.
Of course, the real trick of doing all these horrible things to your character is to make sure that your battered, bruised, and traumatized protagonist never finds you, like in this short film, "Run Rincewind Run!" from Nullus Anxietus 2007:
You have to take this great protagonist, his nice comfortable (or at least familiar) world, and everything he knows to be true, and pitch the whole thing down the stairs. Why? Why would you do all these horrible things to a character that you like so much? Because if you don't, there's no damn story.
And that's where some writers (like me) tend to hesitate. Why come up with this awesome, likeable, interesting character if I'm just going to kick him up one side of the street and down the other? Because if he's sufficiently awesome, likeable, and interesting, people are going to want to read about his journey, no matter how heart-wrenching it might be. In fact, if you play your cards right, the journey will be hair-raising and heart-wrenching because your character is so likeable.
And the soul-tearing scenes are often the most vivid--both for the writer and the reader. I actually had to write two chapters in Heart of Steel out of order because I had an idea for the Big Reveal running around my brain and screaming to be written. I knew that even though my male lead was finally going to achieve one of his mini-goals, it was going to hurt him. A lot. Like soul-rending, gut-ripping, sanity-straining trauma. And I went ahead and wrote them because even though it was going to be agonizing for him, it was the only way he would be able to heal, and he'd be stronger for it. Similarly, I've read that J. K. Rowling frequently felt bad about a lot of the things she'd put the characters of her Harry Potter series through, but she wrote them anyway, because these events were just part of their story. (Letting the characters write their own story will be a topic for another blog post, though.)
What I'm getting at is simple enough: don't be afraid to test your characters, to tear them down and build them back up again. If you do it right, your readers will be on the edge of their seats, rooting for your protagonist to get through this, to reach his goal to retrieve the treasure or get the girl or save the world or whatever the aim of his story arc might be. And it will be awesome.
Of course, the real trick of doing all these horrible things to your character is to make sure that your battered, bruised, and traumatized protagonist never finds you, like in this short film, "Run Rincewind Run!" from Nullus Anxietus 2007:
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Attention Deficit Creative Disorder and How to Make it Work for You
What is Attention Deficit Creative Disorder?
This is what happens when a writer or writer-analogue has lots and lots of great ideas brewing in their head at once, and their brain wants to develop all of them into Great Stories. This can result in either a lot of Great Stories, given enough time, but more often it results in a lot of Awesome Notes and Awesome Beginnings that never quite pan out into completed stories and just sit on your hard drive, mocking you. It can also mean that when you sit down to work on your current Great Story, your brain is off in the universe of another Great Story, hacking away at that and gumming up the works. This can be maddening, even if you're not on any kind of a deadline.
However, that little over-caffeinated gerbil of inspiration can be made to work for you, given proper planning. For example, I'm currently working on my sci-fi romance novel Heart of Steel, and while the main, chronological storyline might be at Scene 6, my mind has often been at Scene 12, screaming, "I wanna work on this!" Sometimes you can't force your brain to go where you want it to, and trying to do so will only result in frustration and no progress. So what if I have two chapters written that I won't get to for a while? At least I got the ideas down while they were still fresh in my head, and I can always tweak them during my rewrite.
Then there's the benefit to keeping Awesome Notes and Awesome Beginnings around. Right now I have three incomplete stories on my thumb drive, another dozen or so on my hard drive, and three on my Google Drive (yes, yes, I know...). Why? Because when Writer's Block hits me, it typically stays around until it's damn good and ready to go away, and there's no way to hammer my way through. So, instead of beating my head against the imaginary brick wall until I just shut down out of frustration, I just let the Writer's Block sit there and think about what it did, and move to another one of my Awesome Beginnings and hack away at that for a while. Eventually, the block on my original project will slink away in shame and go sulk in a corner somewhere, leaving me free to work on it.
Of course, this strategy won't work out quite the same if you have a project with a deadline, but that's where Awesome Notes come in. Jot down all the ideas you have swirling around in your mind until your head clears, and if you're lucky you might wind up with more potential Awesome Beginnings. The trick to this, of course, is not to mind that not all of them will become Great Stories. Just let go. If any of them want to be developed, they will let you know.
That's how I make ADCD work for me, anyway. What are your strategies?
This is what happens when a writer or writer-analogue has lots and lots of great ideas brewing in their head at once, and their brain wants to develop all of them into Great Stories. This can result in either a lot of Great Stories, given enough time, but more often it results in a lot of Awesome Notes and Awesome Beginnings that never quite pan out into completed stories and just sit on your hard drive, mocking you. It can also mean that when you sit down to work on your current Great Story, your brain is off in the universe of another Great Story, hacking away at that and gumming up the works. This can be maddening, even if you're not on any kind of a deadline.
However, that little over-caffeinated gerbil of inspiration can be made to work for you, given proper planning. For example, I'm currently working on my sci-fi romance novel Heart of Steel, and while the main, chronological storyline might be at Scene 6, my mind has often been at Scene 12, screaming, "I wanna work on this!" Sometimes you can't force your brain to go where you want it to, and trying to do so will only result in frustration and no progress. So what if I have two chapters written that I won't get to for a while? At least I got the ideas down while they were still fresh in my head, and I can always tweak them during my rewrite.
Then there's the benefit to keeping Awesome Notes and Awesome Beginnings around. Right now I have three incomplete stories on my thumb drive, another dozen or so on my hard drive, and three on my Google Drive (yes, yes, I know...). Why? Because when Writer's Block hits me, it typically stays around until it's damn good and ready to go away, and there's no way to hammer my way through. So, instead of beating my head against the imaginary brick wall until I just shut down out of frustration, I just let the Writer's Block sit there and think about what it did, and move to another one of my Awesome Beginnings and hack away at that for a while. Eventually, the block on my original project will slink away in shame and go sulk in a corner somewhere, leaving me free to work on it.
Of course, this strategy won't work out quite the same if you have a project with a deadline, but that's where Awesome Notes come in. Jot down all the ideas you have swirling around in your mind until your head clears, and if you're lucky you might wind up with more potential Awesome Beginnings. The trick to this, of course, is not to mind that not all of them will become Great Stories. Just let go. If any of them want to be developed, they will let you know.
That's how I make ADCD work for me, anyway. What are your strategies?
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Why Fanfiction Is not a Lesser Art
I have a confession to make.
I'm 34 years old, and I write fanfiction. And I like it.
Since I also write original fiction, generally when I tell people I write fanfiction, they look at me sort of sideways and say something to the effect of, "You know you won't get paid for that, right?" Well, that's not why I write fanfiction, and I don't think doing so demeans me as a writer.
You know you've read fanfiction that utterly rapes the Canon on which it is presumably based, twisting established characters in ways that would make their creators cry and using spelling and grammar that would give Zalgo a headache. Heck, I've read stories that made me honestly wonder if English was the author's primary language, or if they'd even read the books, seen the movies, or understood the Canon.
I've also read some amazingly good fanfiction that takes the story in a new direction without violating the internal laws of the original material. I've read fanfiction that explored the implications of concepts that the author felt were left inadequately explored in the original material, that deconstructed and reconstructed everything from a single character to the entire franchise, and it was awesome.
To be fair, I've read original fiction that made my eyes bleed and my brain throw up as well, alongside the perfectly enjoyable novels and short stories that populate my library--meaning that getting published is not necessarily the mark of a good writer.
A good writer--regardless of the medium--can make the reader care what happens to the characters. A good writer can make the reader laugh, or cry, or hide under the bed (for all the right reasons), and make you want to follow the story to the end to see what happens. A good writer can immerse a reader in the story's world, and make it feel like a real place. This is true whether their work can be found on the shelf of a library or in the pages of Fanfiction.net. Writing fanfiction does not automatically make you a bad writer--it makes you a fan of the source material.
And as with any sort of writing, fanfiction can allow a writer to practice their craft and improve themselves if they allow it. So write on, fans!
I have another confession to make.
Blue Sky made me cry.
I'm 34 years old, and I write fanfiction. And I like it.
Since I also write original fiction, generally when I tell people I write fanfiction, they look at me sort of sideways and say something to the effect of, "You know you won't get paid for that, right?" Well, that's not why I write fanfiction, and I don't think doing so demeans me as a writer.
You know you've read fanfiction that utterly rapes the Canon on which it is presumably based, twisting established characters in ways that would make their creators cry and using spelling and grammar that would give Zalgo a headache. Heck, I've read stories that made me honestly wonder if English was the author's primary language, or if they'd even read the books, seen the movies, or understood the Canon.
I've also read some amazingly good fanfiction that takes the story in a new direction without violating the internal laws of the original material. I've read fanfiction that explored the implications of concepts that the author felt were left inadequately explored in the original material, that deconstructed and reconstructed everything from a single character to the entire franchise, and it was awesome.
To be fair, I've read original fiction that made my eyes bleed and my brain throw up as well, alongside the perfectly enjoyable novels and short stories that populate my library--meaning that getting published is not necessarily the mark of a good writer.
A good writer--regardless of the medium--can make the reader care what happens to the characters. A good writer can make the reader laugh, or cry, or hide under the bed (for all the right reasons), and make you want to follow the story to the end to see what happens. A good writer can immerse a reader in the story's world, and make it feel like a real place. This is true whether their work can be found on the shelf of a library or in the pages of Fanfiction.net. Writing fanfiction does not automatically make you a bad writer--it makes you a fan of the source material.
And as with any sort of writing, fanfiction can allow a writer to practice their craft and improve themselves if they allow it. So write on, fans!
I have another confession to make.
Blue Sky made me cry.
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Why Vampires Make Lousy Boyfriends
Now, let me start off by saying that I'm not knocking paranormal romance in general. I've got a couple ideas for paranormal romances percolating in my brain as I write this, so don't get the idea that I think the genre is stupid.
That said...
Vampires? Really?
Vampires as a monster have had a long and well-established mythology, dating back to medieval times, although tales of vampire-like creatures may even date back to prehistoric times. Tales of creatures that consumed the flesh and blood of the living were attributed to demons, spirits, or even the Devil himself. Later on, with the rise of Christianity, their status as minions of Satan was cemented, leaving them unable to abide the presence of a cross.
Around medieval times, vampires were associated with the Black Plague and, as blood-bloated undead corpses, more closely resembled the Cryptkeeper than David Boreanaz.
It was not until Bram Stoker wrote Dracula that we got the modern vampire--the handsome, aristocratic, blood-sucking fiend who can charm the petticoats off otherwise respectable ladies. This would make him the ideal male lead in a trashy bodice-ripper novel were it not for the association with tuberculosis, syphilis, and the evils of sex in general. Aaaaaand he and his brides drank blood, directly from the tap, for preference.
Anne Rice brought about the first of the pretty vampires, and her novel Interview with the Vampire delved into the emotional and psychological issues that came along with being an immortal, blood-drinking predator, with the result that the protagonist vampire became a angsty antihero with an eating disorder, who just needs a hug and the love of a mortal woman to redeem his soul.
And here's where I start to have a problem with vampire romance stories.
First off, vampires are dead. You can't really get around that. This means that their body heat will be around room temperature (unless they've just fed, and then only maybe) and if it's sexual relations you're after, lack of blood flow will make him getting an erection practically impossible.
Secondly, there's the dietary concerns. Vampires, as a rule, tend to feed off something that is generally necessary for the continued functioning of their victims--usually blood. Sometimes they might resist the hunger, or divert it to other targets like animals or serial killers, but when you get right down to it vampires prefer to feed on humans. What kind of a relationship are you going to have with someone who, despite their best intentions, instinctively sees you as a source of food? Is he nuzzling your neck or checking out that tasty-looking carotid artery?
Which brings me to my third point: feeding on the blood of the living, and knowing that you absolutely must do so in order to survive, is not going to do kind things to a vampire's psyche. Even if you don't follow the mythology that states that a vampire is a corpse animated by a bloodthirsty spirit, and even if said vampire looks like a sex god rather than a hungry corpse, he is a predator. (I give pretty vampires a pass because being attractive to your potential food source is an effective hunting tactic. Luring them to where you are costs a lot less energy than chasing them down, and who knows how many blood-calories a burst of super-speed would burn?) So, best case scenario, your friendly neighborhood vampire will be constantly resisting his blood hunger, constantly worrying about slipping, and basically making himself a ball of neuroses because he sees his mortal girlfriend as something like a drink pouch waiting for him to stick in a straw and suck everything out. Worst case scenario, your vampire boyfriend is a soulless sociopath who has befriended you specifically to have free hemoglobin on tap for a good long while. And if you die? Well, he's immortal. People around him die from natural causes all the time--why should you be any different? Functional immortality tends to make vampires very pragmatic about the whole thing. Or suicidal, which isn't much healthier.
Now, I've read a fair number of vampire novels: Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, Twilight, and I'm currently working on Dead Until Dark. I'm not ragging on people who enjoy them, and I'm not saying that people who like the vampiric sex god archetype are stupid or horrible. I've just read enough vampire folklore to notice the problems that might come up with such a relationship, and I thought I'd share them.
Thanks for reading!
That said...
Vampires? Really?
Vampires as a monster have had a long and well-established mythology, dating back to medieval times, although tales of vampire-like creatures may even date back to prehistoric times. Tales of creatures that consumed the flesh and blood of the living were attributed to demons, spirits, or even the Devil himself. Later on, with the rise of Christianity, their status as minions of Satan was cemented, leaving them unable to abide the presence of a cross.
Around medieval times, vampires were associated with the Black Plague and, as blood-bloated undead corpses, more closely resembled the Cryptkeeper than David Boreanaz.
It was not until Bram Stoker wrote Dracula that we got the modern vampire--the handsome, aristocratic, blood-sucking fiend who can charm the petticoats off otherwise respectable ladies. This would make him the ideal male lead in a trashy bodice-ripper novel were it not for the association with tuberculosis, syphilis, and the evils of sex in general. Aaaaaand he and his brides drank blood, directly from the tap, for preference.
Anne Rice brought about the first of the pretty vampires, and her novel Interview with the Vampire delved into the emotional and psychological issues that came along with being an immortal, blood-drinking predator, with the result that the protagonist vampire became a angsty antihero with an eating disorder, who just needs a hug and the love of a mortal woman to redeem his soul.
And here's where I start to have a problem with vampire romance stories.
First off, vampires are dead. You can't really get around that. This means that their body heat will be around room temperature (unless they've just fed, and then only maybe) and if it's sexual relations you're after, lack of blood flow will make him getting an erection practically impossible.
Secondly, there's the dietary concerns. Vampires, as a rule, tend to feed off something that is generally necessary for the continued functioning of their victims--usually blood. Sometimes they might resist the hunger, or divert it to other targets like animals or serial killers, but when you get right down to it vampires prefer to feed on humans. What kind of a relationship are you going to have with someone who, despite their best intentions, instinctively sees you as a source of food? Is he nuzzling your neck or checking out that tasty-looking carotid artery?
Which brings me to my third point: feeding on the blood of the living, and knowing that you absolutely must do so in order to survive, is not going to do kind things to a vampire's psyche. Even if you don't follow the mythology that states that a vampire is a corpse animated by a bloodthirsty spirit, and even if said vampire looks like a sex god rather than a hungry corpse, he is a predator. (I give pretty vampires a pass because being attractive to your potential food source is an effective hunting tactic. Luring them to where you are costs a lot less energy than chasing them down, and who knows how many blood-calories a burst of super-speed would burn?) So, best case scenario, your friendly neighborhood vampire will be constantly resisting his blood hunger, constantly worrying about slipping, and basically making himself a ball of neuroses because he sees his mortal girlfriend as something like a drink pouch waiting for him to stick in a straw and suck everything out. Worst case scenario, your vampire boyfriend is a soulless sociopath who has befriended you specifically to have free hemoglobin on tap for a good long while. And if you die? Well, he's immortal. People around him die from natural causes all the time--why should you be any different? Functional immortality tends to make vampires very pragmatic about the whole thing. Or suicidal, which isn't much healthier.
Now, I've read a fair number of vampire novels: Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, Twilight, and I'm currently working on Dead Until Dark. I'm not ragging on people who enjoy them, and I'm not saying that people who like the vampiric sex god archetype are stupid or horrible. I've just read enough vampire folklore to notice the problems that might come up with such a relationship, and I thought I'd share them.
Thanks for reading!
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Welcome to Calliope's Kiss!
Welcome to my blog!
I created this blog to work alongside my author website, as a means to explore the art of writing and track my progress with my writing projects. My plan is to post at least once a week to keep my readers updated, but I will let you know if extenuating circumstances prevent this.
What does Calliope's Kiss mean?
Calliope was the ancient Greek Muse of epic poetry, which translates in the modern world to the Muse of literature. Thus, Calliope's Kiss refers to a moment of literary inspiration, which I hope this blog will fuel as I jot down my thoughts, discoveries, and all-around brainstorms to keep my thoughts moving to parallel purposes.
I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy writing it!
I created this blog to work alongside my author website, as a means to explore the art of writing and track my progress with my writing projects. My plan is to post at least once a week to keep my readers updated, but I will let you know if extenuating circumstances prevent this.
What does Calliope's Kiss mean?
Calliope was the ancient Greek Muse of epic poetry, which translates in the modern world to the Muse of literature. Thus, Calliope's Kiss refers to a moment of literary inspiration, which I hope this blog will fuel as I jot down my thoughts, discoveries, and all-around brainstorms to keep my thoughts moving to parallel purposes.
I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy writing it!
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