Recently, during the course of an apparent drought in inspiration with my existing works in progress, I turned to outlining to help me sort out the eleventy billion other ideas that were jockeying for my attention. I figured that it would be a good way to sort out my thoughts and free myself of the logjam that was keeping me from getting on with things, so that I could concentrate on current projects.
Outlining, I discovered, was a wonderfully efficient way to get down an idea in a state more fully formed than an elevator pitch or a logline, so that I could be sure of what plot points I wanted to hit when I eventually got around to writing it properly. I've used this technique in the middle of some of my WIPs, reminding myself of the path from Point A to Point B and all the stops along the way. As a result, I now have three complete story outlines waiting in my new outline folder, and another one on the way.
Good, right?
Well...
I discovered I have a new problem.
Once I finished the outlines, suddenly the idea was no longer in my head. It was like putting someone's phone number in your smartphone's directory and thereafter being completely unable to remember it.
It's frustrating.
It's illogical.
It's maddening.
It's... actually pretty dang useful. Once I had time to think about it, having the idea no longer in my head made room for the ideas I actually wanted to work on. Yes, I panicked at first, but I soon came to realize that this was a form of sorting out my thoughts. as long as I had something written down, I could come back to the outline to draft it properly. In the meantime, it wasn't in my way.
In other words, what seemed to be a brain fart turned out to be a handy effect.
I fully intend to go back and revisit these outlines, of course, incorporating them into my writing process. Whereas previously I started with an outline/rough draft hybrid, I think there is room for complete outline first, then rough draft based on this. This is hard for a historical pantser like myself to really grasp, but as long as it works, who am I to complain?
How many of you outline before the rough draft? How many prefer to just start typing and see where the story takes you?
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 9, 2015
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
You Do Too Have Time to Write!
"I wish I had time to write!"
Ever find yourself thinking that? Ever been on the receiving end of people saying that to you?
Lots of people think you need to sit down in front of the writing implement of your choice for hours on end to crank out the Next Awesome Bestseller, and while it helps, it isn't always necessary, and thinking that it is will just leave you spinning your wheels waiting for Enough Time.
When I started writing Heart of Steel, I had a guaranteed hour a day to work with. I work full-time, and I wrote like an absolute fiend during my fifteen-minute morning break and my 45-minute lunch break. It took a while, but I eventually ended up with a 54k-word novel. Neat, huh?
Now, this situation was not ideal, of course, because Heart of Steel was practically running out my ears at that point and I just wanted to get that sucker down, but it worked out okay in the end.
So how can you squeeze in the time to write? Here are some tips:
You just need to sit down and make it happen.
Ever find yourself thinking that? Ever been on the receiving end of people saying that to you?
Lots of people think you need to sit down in front of the writing implement of your choice for hours on end to crank out the Next Awesome Bestseller, and while it helps, it isn't always necessary, and thinking that it is will just leave you spinning your wheels waiting for Enough Time.
When I started writing Heart of Steel, I had a guaranteed hour a day to work with. I work full-time, and I wrote like an absolute fiend during my fifteen-minute morning break and my 45-minute lunch break. It took a while, but I eventually ended up with a 54k-word novel. Neat, huh?
Now, this situation was not ideal, of course, because Heart of Steel was practically running out my ears at that point and I just wanted to get that sucker down, but it worked out okay in the end.
So how can you squeeze in the time to write? Here are some tips:
- Carve out a block for writing. This can be an hour that you specifically set aside for writing. During this time, you don't answer the phone, you don't check your email, and you don't browse on Facebook. You just write on whatever project offers itself up to your brain.
- Guard your writing time like it's the Holy Grail. Seriously. If you have housemates or family members you need to let them know that You Are Not To Be Bothered. Lock the door if you have to.
- Trash your excuses. The Procrastination Monster is an insidious beat. If you find yourself thinking, "I'll sit down to write after I finish the dishes", or "let me just read this next article on Facebook", or ""Let me check my email first", STOP. Close that off. put everything else aside and writing. The other stuff will be there when you finish. (Exceptions: if the house is on fire, someone dear to you is bleeding, or a Roland Emmerich movie is happening in real life.)
- Get in the habit. This one will be hard. Your brain might not always be cooperative during your writing time. Don't worry about it. If you're drawing a blank, just free-write. Get those words out. Set up a routine. Get in the habit. I had to do this during NaNoWriMo to make sure I got my word-count total down.
- Use writing tools. I found a bunch of sites that offer reinforcement programs to encourage you to write, both positive reinforcement (Written? Kitten!) and negative reinforcement (Write or Die). You may need to play around with some of these to see what works for you.
- Write whenever and wherever you can. If all else fails, bring your writing tools with you. My smartphone can access Google Docs, where all my works in progress are, so I can peck away at a story wherever I can find wi-fi. Failing that, bring a small notebook with you to capture ideas as they happen. Get creative!
You just need to sit down and make it happen.
Tuesday, April 7, 2015
Wild West Zombies
I love zombie movies. I think my love for the genre started with a Behind the Scenes look at the making of the music video for Michael Jackson's "Thriller", but it only continued with the Romero Whatever of the Dead movies. Zombies are fun and gory and insatiable (and technically ghouls, as portrayed by Hollywood) and pretty much universally recognized. However, zombies in their modern form have been around since the 1960s, and they've been deconstructed, reconstructed, parodied, and even turned into romance heroes in the meantime. So what could I do with the silly things to set them apart, aside from dropping them in the American frontier?
I do what I did with Wolf Cowrie's background and draw from Native American mythology, of course! As I indicated in my first article for the Kickstarter campaign, Wolf being raised Sioux was a happy bit of fortune, considering the setting was in a territory that would eventually be South Dakota and all the racial drama that happened between the local people and white settlers. The Sioux were historically the mortal enemies of the Ojibwe, who hailed from the region of southern Canada... and the Ojibwe's folklore told of a charming little critter called a Wendigo.
Depending on who you asked (the stories vary), a wendigo is either a human who resorted to cannibalism and turned into a monster, or an evil spirit that drove men to acts of violence and cannibalism. I decided to split the difference here, while taking a page out of the account of the Donner Party story: The wendigo was there, but trapped in a vessel and unable to get up to monkeyshines until a bunch of gold miners uncovered it and subsequently had the Worst Winter Ever.
The result: intelligent, berserk undead, animated by a supernatural force that drove them to consume human flesh. To add another layer of horrifying to the whole thing, these screamers (so named because of a horrifying shriek they emit when they spot food) are completely aware that the hunger is not their own, but those geographically closest to the wendigo's influence can't do anything about it. They don't feel revulsion, or fear, or anger, or remorse, and they absolutely will not stop until they have eaten you.
The result combines elements of Return of the Living Dead, Evil Dead, and 28 days Later, and I think on the whole they work out well as a literary monster. Who says you can't do anything new with zombies?
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
Writing Prompt #1: Sharks Swim in the Forest
Here is the first of my Writing Prompt articles, with thanks to "The 180 Prompts I Actually Use" on Tumblr. The prompt in question is "Sharks Swim on the Forest".
The first sign of trouble came about an hour into Jack's hike. He'd always loved hiking in the woods, particularly along this stretch of trail that wound through a particularly dense portion of the park. Even though it was coming up on noon, the shade offered by the trees kept him cool, allowing him to notice the exact moment when silence descended like a curtain.
The birds stopped singing. The insects stopped buzzing. Nothing moved around him. It felt like the entire forest was suddenly holding its breath, waiting for... something. Jack froze where he was, unnerved by the sudden silence. What was going on? He glanced around slowly, looking for any sort of danger.
Then he saw it--a gentle swelling of the loose turf like something was headed past just under the surface. The mass undulated past, and then sank into the soil.
Cold sweat broke out on Jack's brow, and he took a few cautious steps away from the spot. Then under his rear foot, the turf swelled again, and he jumped away. This time he saw something that at first his mind refused to believe. A triangular, back-swept fin pierced the soil, showing Jack a silhouette that nearly everyone could recognize, no matter where they were.
It was the fin of a shark. There were sharks in the forest.
Jack froze. The swell passed him. The fin vanished beneath the soil.
Run, he told himself.
But where?
Get off the ground. Get up a tree. Just don't let them--
Another swell lifted the soil, but this time it changed course and headed directly for Jack. There was no time to debate the possibilities of land sharks. Jack broke into a run, headed for the nearest tree with low branches. He wasn't exactly an expert tree-climber, but blind adrenaline would have to serve where experience failed him. He glanced back once, and saw the gray triangle of a fin slice its way through the soil, bearing down on him.
Jack hit the tree trunk at a sprint, trying to turn his forward momentum into upward momentum. He clawed his way up the trunk, scrambling from branch to branch like a terrified monkey--which, all things considered, wasn't all that far off.
He risked a glance down and saw the dirt and underbrush below him explode with the force of the emerging shark. It was definitely a shark, too--there was no mistaking the leathery gray skin fading to white on its underbelly, the gaping slit of a mouth lined with chainsaw teeth, and the soulless black button eyes that foretold death to anything that happened to be edible. The shark lurched upwards, jaws open to bite.
Jack pulled his foot up and out of its reach just in the nick of time, and its jagged teeth closed on empty air instead. He hooked his foot around a nearby tree branch and looked down at the thing as it belly-flopped onto the turf with a meaty sound of impact. A few moments later, the shark wiggled, writhed, and then dove back under the dirt, kicking up a few final clots of turf with the flukes of its tail.
Jack didn't dare relax, though, as the shark and its two apparent pack-mates started circling the tree where he'd lodged himself. How patient were hungry sharks? Jack didn't know, and even if he did there was no way to compare that to these things. He settled himself in for a long wait, hoping his snacks and water held out until these monsters got bored and wandered off.
He had a feeling it would be a long wait.
The first sign of trouble came about an hour into Jack's hike. He'd always loved hiking in the woods, particularly along this stretch of trail that wound through a particularly dense portion of the park. Even though it was coming up on noon, the shade offered by the trees kept him cool, allowing him to notice the exact moment when silence descended like a curtain.
The birds stopped singing. The insects stopped buzzing. Nothing moved around him. It felt like the entire forest was suddenly holding its breath, waiting for... something. Jack froze where he was, unnerved by the sudden silence. What was going on? He glanced around slowly, looking for any sort of danger.
Then he saw it--a gentle swelling of the loose turf like something was headed past just under the surface. The mass undulated past, and then sank into the soil.
Cold sweat broke out on Jack's brow, and he took a few cautious steps away from the spot. Then under his rear foot, the turf swelled again, and he jumped away. This time he saw something that at first his mind refused to believe. A triangular, back-swept fin pierced the soil, showing Jack a silhouette that nearly everyone could recognize, no matter where they were.
It was the fin of a shark. There were sharks in the forest.
Jack froze. The swell passed him. The fin vanished beneath the soil.
Run, he told himself.
But where?
Get off the ground. Get up a tree. Just don't let them--
Another swell lifted the soil, but this time it changed course and headed directly for Jack. There was no time to debate the possibilities of land sharks. Jack broke into a run, headed for the nearest tree with low branches. He wasn't exactly an expert tree-climber, but blind adrenaline would have to serve where experience failed him. He glanced back once, and saw the gray triangle of a fin slice its way through the soil, bearing down on him.
Jack hit the tree trunk at a sprint, trying to turn his forward momentum into upward momentum. He clawed his way up the trunk, scrambling from branch to branch like a terrified monkey--which, all things considered, wasn't all that far off.
He risked a glance down and saw the dirt and underbrush below him explode with the force of the emerging shark. It was definitely a shark, too--there was no mistaking the leathery gray skin fading to white on its underbelly, the gaping slit of a mouth lined with chainsaw teeth, and the soulless black button eyes that foretold death to anything that happened to be edible. The shark lurched upwards, jaws open to bite.
Jack pulled his foot up and out of its reach just in the nick of time, and its jagged teeth closed on empty air instead. He hooked his foot around a nearby tree branch and looked down at the thing as it belly-flopped onto the turf with a meaty sound of impact. A few moments later, the shark wiggled, writhed, and then dove back under the dirt, kicking up a few final clots of turf with the flukes of its tail.
Jack didn't dare relax, though, as the shark and its two apparent pack-mates started circling the tree where he'd lodged himself. How patient were hungry sharks? Jack didn't know, and even if he did there was no way to compare that to these things. He settled himself in for a long wait, hoping his snacks and water held out until these monsters got bored and wandered off.
He had a feeling it would be a long wait.
Tuesday, January 13, 2015
Writing Progress Report: Jan 12, 2015
This week's blog post is going to be a Situation Report regarding all the writing projects I have in various stages of pending, both to give myself a chance to get all the information organized and to give you guys a free peek at what's coming up for me.
Title: Heart of Steel
Genre: Science Fiction Romance
Length: Novel
Status: To be released February 17, 2015
Summary: When reclusive cyborg Alistair Mechanus meets ER doctor Julia Parker, it is love at first sight--for him. While he eagerly drops his plans for World Conquest to woo her, ten years of solitude have left his social skills badly rusted. When his misguided act of kindness spirals out of control, however, Julia is forced to trust the mad genius with her life, and discovers a more vulnerable side under his armored plating. She has the skills he needs to unlock his forgotten past, but will learning who he used to be come at the cost of his remaining sanity?
Notes: I'm really really excited about this one. Whereas with Sheep's Clothing I was sort of acting on impulse, this time I planned everything out (...sort of) and actually got some pre-marketing stuff done in the last half of 2014. Now I just need to finish formatting it for publication, which shouldn't take too long. I also plan on having a Goodreads giveaway to further build the buzz starting next week and leading up to the actual release date.
Title: "The Fetch"
Genre: Dark Fantasy
Length: Short Story
Status: Under Consideration
Summary: A young man finds himself pursued by a terrifying monster who believed he has taken something form it. He might not be so happy to give it back once he discovers what it was...
Notes: I'm really hoping to get this one published in a magazine or something. Call me weird, but even as a self-pubbed author I feel like getting something I wrote chosen by a publisher will validate me.
Title: "Siren Song"
Genre: Diesel Punk
Length: Novelette
Status: Under Consideration.
Summary: Raymond Crowe, a Mage living in Manhattan in 1937, investigates reports that a Mundane nightclub owner might be using a dangerous potion to beef up his singing talent, at the risk of driving the singers insane. Crowe must not only get the potion out of the hands of a Mundane who doesn't understand the risks, but also rescue the sister of one of his Mage contacts and find out who was distributing the stuff in the first place.
Notes: This was my first diesel punk story, and I'm sending it off to magazines for the same reason I'm sending off "The Fetch". This one's quite a bit longer and more involved though, and I can easily see using its setting for further works. We'll see how it goes.
Title: Hungry as a Wolf
Genre: Weird Western
Length: Novel
Status: Beta Reading
Summary: In this sequel to last year's Sheep's Clothing, Wolf Cowrie is back, with a dangerous mission that will test him to the limits: the mayor of a mining town in the Dakota Territory has hired him to investigate the disappearance of the gold mine that the town relies upon for its income. First problem: The gold mine in question is in the Black Hills, right in the middle of Sioux country. Second problem: A lone survivor managed to escape whatever befell the mine, only to transform into something undead and craving human flesh. Third problem: The mayor's daughter seems to have taken a shine to Wolf, and Wolf is still recovering from the tragic end of his previous adventure. What's a gunslinger to do in a situation like this?
Notes: Once I finish getting beta reading feedback on this one and subsequently polish it a bit more, I'll be kicking it over to my editor for a thorough second eyeball check. I plan to start a crowdfunding campaign to finance the nuts and bolts, but I'm still vetting the different platforms.
Title: "One Spooky Case"
Genre: Fantasy Mystery
Length: Novella (for now)
Status: Rewriting
Summary: A by-the-books Watchman gets paired up with a Watch necromancer to investigate a girl's murder in the city of Port Vandalar.
Notes: I have a lot of rewriting to do with this, which might very well double its previous length in order to give the story the tension it deserves and a more satisfying climax. After that, it may well be novel-length. Who knows?
Title: Necromancy Will Kill Your Dating Life
Genre: Supernatural YA
Length: Novel
Status: Rewriting
Summary: Tiffany Blackheart is a perky, outgoing high school student who wants what every seventeen-year-old girl wants: good grades, friends, and a boyfriend. Especially a boyfriend. There's just one problem--she's a necromancer. Being able to talk to the dead hasn't done kind things for her social life, and neither will the buildup of spectral activity that's due to peak on Halloween. Finding herself on the eve of finally landing a boyfriend, Tiffany has only a week and a half to figure out what's going on before everything blows up in her face.
Notes: This was my NaNoWriMo novel, and I'm taking a heavy editorial chainsaw to the thing before I let anyone else see it, even my usual beta readers. This is my first YA novel, so I'll need to find some actual teenagers to help me get the details right. High school was a really long time ago...
Title: Heart of Ice
Genre: Fantasy Romance
Length: Novel
Status: Active WIP
Summary: Irina Zimaburya has spent the last six years as the Winter Princess, with her powers over ice and snow making her the ideal living weapon in a war that started when she was twelve. Now, on the eve of peace, Irina must try to remember what it is not to be a weapon, but a woman, and relearn what it is to not be feared during the course of peace negotiations. Prince Heinrich is determined to thaw the newly-crowned Winter Queen's frozen heart, but his true mission is not all that it seems...
Notes: I will freely admit that this was loosely inspired by Frozen, though my heroine has a more messed-up backstory and little to no emotional support. I'm making good progress with the rough draft, though, so I'm overall happy.
So this is the rundown of my current projects. It looks like a lot, but jotting them down like this helps me keep all this stuff straight in my head and make it look like I'm a lot better organized than I usually am. I hope to get them done this year, and I'm confident that I will.
How many projects do you typically have going on at a time? Which one mine are you most looking forward to seeing published? Let me know in the comments!
Title: Heart of Steel
Genre: Science Fiction Romance
Length: Novel
Status: To be released February 17, 2015
Summary: When reclusive cyborg Alistair Mechanus meets ER doctor Julia Parker, it is love at first sight--for him. While he eagerly drops his plans for World Conquest to woo her, ten years of solitude have left his social skills badly rusted. When his misguided act of kindness spirals out of control, however, Julia is forced to trust the mad genius with her life, and discovers a more vulnerable side under his armored plating. She has the skills he needs to unlock his forgotten past, but will learning who he used to be come at the cost of his remaining sanity?
Notes: I'm really really excited about this one. Whereas with Sheep's Clothing I was sort of acting on impulse, this time I planned everything out (...sort of) and actually got some pre-marketing stuff done in the last half of 2014. Now I just need to finish formatting it for publication, which shouldn't take too long. I also plan on having a Goodreads giveaway to further build the buzz starting next week and leading up to the actual release date.
Title: "The Fetch"
Genre: Dark Fantasy
Length: Short Story
Status: Under Consideration
Summary: A young man finds himself pursued by a terrifying monster who believed he has taken something form it. He might not be so happy to give it back once he discovers what it was...
Notes: I'm really hoping to get this one published in a magazine or something. Call me weird, but even as a self-pubbed author I feel like getting something I wrote chosen by a publisher will validate me.
Title: "Siren Song"
Genre: Diesel Punk
Length: Novelette
Status: Under Consideration.
Summary: Raymond Crowe, a Mage living in Manhattan in 1937, investigates reports that a Mundane nightclub owner might be using a dangerous potion to beef up his singing talent, at the risk of driving the singers insane. Crowe must not only get the potion out of the hands of a Mundane who doesn't understand the risks, but also rescue the sister of one of his Mage contacts and find out who was distributing the stuff in the first place.
Notes: This was my first diesel punk story, and I'm sending it off to magazines for the same reason I'm sending off "The Fetch". This one's quite a bit longer and more involved though, and I can easily see using its setting for further works. We'll see how it goes.
Title: Hungry as a Wolf
Genre: Weird Western
Length: Novel
Status: Beta Reading
Summary: In this sequel to last year's Sheep's Clothing, Wolf Cowrie is back, with a dangerous mission that will test him to the limits: the mayor of a mining town in the Dakota Territory has hired him to investigate the disappearance of the gold mine that the town relies upon for its income. First problem: The gold mine in question is in the Black Hills, right in the middle of Sioux country. Second problem: A lone survivor managed to escape whatever befell the mine, only to transform into something undead and craving human flesh. Third problem: The mayor's daughter seems to have taken a shine to Wolf, and Wolf is still recovering from the tragic end of his previous adventure. What's a gunslinger to do in a situation like this?
Notes: Once I finish getting beta reading feedback on this one and subsequently polish it a bit more, I'll be kicking it over to my editor for a thorough second eyeball check. I plan to start a crowdfunding campaign to finance the nuts and bolts, but I'm still vetting the different platforms.
Title: "One Spooky Case"
Genre: Fantasy Mystery
Length: Novella (for now)
Status: Rewriting
Summary: A by-the-books Watchman gets paired up with a Watch necromancer to investigate a girl's murder in the city of Port Vandalar.
Notes: I have a lot of rewriting to do with this, which might very well double its previous length in order to give the story the tension it deserves and a more satisfying climax. After that, it may well be novel-length. Who knows?
Title: Necromancy Will Kill Your Dating Life
Genre: Supernatural YA
Length: Novel
Status: Rewriting
Summary: Tiffany Blackheart is a perky, outgoing high school student who wants what every seventeen-year-old girl wants: good grades, friends, and a boyfriend. Especially a boyfriend. There's just one problem--she's a necromancer. Being able to talk to the dead hasn't done kind things for her social life, and neither will the buildup of spectral activity that's due to peak on Halloween. Finding herself on the eve of finally landing a boyfriend, Tiffany has only a week and a half to figure out what's going on before everything blows up in her face.
Notes: This was my NaNoWriMo novel, and I'm taking a heavy editorial chainsaw to the thing before I let anyone else see it, even my usual beta readers. This is my first YA novel, so I'll need to find some actual teenagers to help me get the details right. High school was a really long time ago...
Title: Heart of Ice
Genre: Fantasy Romance
Length: Novel
Status: Active WIP
Summary: Irina Zimaburya has spent the last six years as the Winter Princess, with her powers over ice and snow making her the ideal living weapon in a war that started when she was twelve. Now, on the eve of peace, Irina must try to remember what it is not to be a weapon, but a woman, and relearn what it is to not be feared during the course of peace negotiations. Prince Heinrich is determined to thaw the newly-crowned Winter Queen's frozen heart, but his true mission is not all that it seems...
Notes: I will freely admit that this was loosely inspired by Frozen, though my heroine has a more messed-up backstory and little to no emotional support. I'm making good progress with the rough draft, though, so I'm overall happy.
So this is the rundown of my current projects. It looks like a lot, but jotting them down like this helps me keep all this stuff straight in my head and make it look like I'm a lot better organized than I usually am. I hope to get them done this year, and I'm confident that I will.
How many projects do you typically have going on at a time? Which one mine are you most looking forward to seeing published? Let me know in the comments!
Tuesday, January 6, 2015
A Writer's Vengeance: How to Get Away With Murder
I have a T-shirt that reads, "You're dangerously close to getting killed off in my novel". Killing real-life people off in effigy by way of a character you've written is the best therapy for an annoyed writer, as it typically leave no mess, no clean-up, and if done properly results in no lawsuits against the author.
Admit it, writers--you've done this. Heck, I did it when I first started writing fiction in grade school. Was it childish? Yes. I was twelve. Was it amateurish? Yes. I was twelve, and had not yet gotten the hang of things like changing names to protect the innocent. I wrote thinly veiled vengeance fantasies that today would be termed hate-fics, and not one of them has ever seen the light of day. It was my therapy, and it was my way of coping with the difficulties of life.
Doing it this way as a professional writer can be dangerous, though. M. Night Shyamalan is reported to have done something like this with one of his critics, writing a thinly-veiled version of him into his Lady in the Water as The Guy Who Is Wrong About Everything. Michael Crichton, too, wrote a critical reviewer into his novel NeXt, as a politician with the same name and from the same college, only with a small manhood and an accusation of having raped a four-year-old. Both Shyamalan and Crichton came off as childish and petty with these character assassinations, even (especially) if the characters bore only the vaguest passing resemblance to the originals.
The trick to doing this properly is not to just drop your target into your book without even a name change, even (especially) if you write him as The Worst Human Being In The History Of Civilization. If you write speculative fiction, this is a bit easier, but still, step carefully. Get creative with the name changes, not just changing a couple consonants at the beginning of the surname. Make your target realistically obnoxious, so the sympathy is all on your protagonist (you do have a relatively sympathetic protagonist, don't you?) Then, when the pot is well-stirred so that your chosen victim is recognizable only to you, have fun.
That jerk that cut you off in traffic? His car gets stepped on by the monster of the week. The co-worker that nobody likes who's decided you and he are best buds? A stampede of a chase spills his coffee, wrecks his laptop, and covers him in grime. Your ex? Riddled by arrows while trying to attack the hero's army. Your current squeeze's psycho ex who is determined to ruin your happiness together? Eaten by something horrible. A narcissistic acquaintance for whom ruining your entire life is considered an average Tuesday? Eaten by something even more horrible, or taken for study by something from beyond sanity and vivisected alive if you're not feeling merciful.
Doing this is the writer's equivalent of coming home from a rotten day, plugging in a first person shooter, and mowing down wave after wave of virtual enemies. If done well, it can be seamlessly therapeutic, relevant to your novel, and equally satisfying to your reader to see That Jerk get their comeuppance, even if they don't know That Jerk from Adam beyond the story. Done badly, though, it comes off as a tantrum in text, and could get you in serious trouble. So get your therapeutic deaths out of your system, writers, but step carefully. Bad writing is still bad writing.
Admit it, writers--you've done this. Heck, I did it when I first started writing fiction in grade school. Was it childish? Yes. I was twelve. Was it amateurish? Yes. I was twelve, and had not yet gotten the hang of things like changing names to protect the innocent. I wrote thinly veiled vengeance fantasies that today would be termed hate-fics, and not one of them has ever seen the light of day. It was my therapy, and it was my way of coping with the difficulties of life.
Doing it this way as a professional writer can be dangerous, though. M. Night Shyamalan is reported to have done something like this with one of his critics, writing a thinly-veiled version of him into his Lady in the Water as The Guy Who Is Wrong About Everything. Michael Crichton, too, wrote a critical reviewer into his novel NeXt, as a politician with the same name and from the same college, only with a small manhood and an accusation of having raped a four-year-old. Both Shyamalan and Crichton came off as childish and petty with these character assassinations, even (especially) if the characters bore only the vaguest passing resemblance to the originals.
The trick to doing this properly is not to just drop your target into your book without even a name change, even (especially) if you write him as The Worst Human Being In The History Of Civilization. If you write speculative fiction, this is a bit easier, but still, step carefully. Get creative with the name changes, not just changing a couple consonants at the beginning of the surname. Make your target realistically obnoxious, so the sympathy is all on your protagonist (you do have a relatively sympathetic protagonist, don't you?) Then, when the pot is well-stirred so that your chosen victim is recognizable only to you, have fun.
That jerk that cut you off in traffic? His car gets stepped on by the monster of the week. The co-worker that nobody likes who's decided you and he are best buds? A stampede of a chase spills his coffee, wrecks his laptop, and covers him in grime. Your ex? Riddled by arrows while trying to attack the hero's army. Your current squeeze's psycho ex who is determined to ruin your happiness together? Eaten by something horrible. A narcissistic acquaintance for whom ruining your entire life is considered an average Tuesday? Eaten by something even more horrible, or taken for study by something from beyond sanity and vivisected alive if you're not feeling merciful.
Doing this is the writer's equivalent of coming home from a rotten day, plugging in a first person shooter, and mowing down wave after wave of virtual enemies. If done well, it can be seamlessly therapeutic, relevant to your novel, and equally satisfying to your reader to see That Jerk get their comeuppance, even if they don't know That Jerk from Adam beyond the story. Done badly, though, it comes off as a tantrum in text, and could get you in serious trouble. So get your therapeutic deaths out of your system, writers, but step carefully. Bad writing is still bad writing.
Tuesday, December 30, 2014
To-Do List for 2015
Hello everyone! I've decided that this is going to be a thing for my end-of-year blog post--my list of writing resolutions for next year!
Before I get to that, I just want to let everyone know that I will still be accepting beta readers for Hungry as a Wolf until January 1, 2015. After that, I'll be attending to the feedback I already have and waiting to see what other advice I'm going to get. I do read all the notes and try to resolve all the points of confusion, so trust me--your beta reading really does help!
Now, on to my list of resolutions:
What are your writing resolutions for 2015? Share them in the comments!
Before I get to that, I just want to let everyone know that I will still be accepting beta readers for Hungry as a Wolf until January 1, 2015. After that, I'll be attending to the feedback I already have and waiting to see what other advice I'm going to get. I do read all the notes and try to resolve all the points of confusion, so trust me--your beta reading really does help!
Now, on to my list of resolutions:
- Stay on top of my blog a bit better. I know I've missed a couple of blog posts here and there with really no good explanation other than laziness. This year I resolve to stay regular on this, because not only does it keep my readers informed of what's going on in my writing, but it keeps me disciplined. So, every Tuesday, I will post on my blog, whether it's an original article like this one or a response to a writing prompt.
- Keep my website updated. I've been bad about this. I don't see why this should be so hard--I have full editing capabilities over the silly thing, and if I stay on top of the blog spam on my website I won't get buried in it. So, once a week, I will look over my website, clean out the spam folder, and make sure everything is up to date.
- Send out regular newsletters. I really have no excuse. I should be sending out a monthly newsletter with updates and stuff to the people on my mailing list, and just like with my blog I've been missing issues. Yeah. I know. So, the first Thursday of every month, I will make up and send out a newsletter to my mailing list.
- Edit and polish my NaNo novel, Necromancy Will Kill Your Dating Life. YA is a new writing genre(ish) for me, and I suspect this will take a lot of work. Tally ho!
- Finish rewrites on One Spooky Case. The fact that I need to extend the story to almost double its current length to keep the suspense up should be no matter. I have a beta reader all lined up to reread it and make sure everything jibes.
- Finish the rough draft of The Cinderella Gambit. This one is going to be a semi-priority, because it's been sitting half-finished in my WIP folder for a few years (!) now and it's time I got it done.
- For that matter, finish all my WIPs. Seriously, I have like 20 of them sitting there staring at me. I want to start finishing those rough drafts and moving them out of that folder so they stop piling up already. Once I start clearing them out, I can start writing rough drafts of all the story ideas I have floating around in my head.
- Hold more author events. This will be a good way for me to really get my name out there as a new author so people actually know who the heck I am and what books I offer. At this point I've held a grand total of three author events--one reading and two signings--plus setting up a dealer table at a convention. I need to get over my introversion and get out there more. With my upcoming SFR novel Heart of Steel due out in February, I will have the perfect opportunity to hold a book release event. I won't be able to surf the dealer rooms of as many conventions as I would like due to financial concerns, but I will give it my best try.
- Market the heck out of myself. I'm an indie author. It's all on me. I need to do all the pavement pounding to get my name and books in the hands of my potential readers. It'll be hard, but there it is. With the upcoming changes to Facebook, it's going to be even harder, but I figure that will just force me to get more creative.
What are your writing resolutions for 2015? Share them in the comments!
Tuesday, December 2, 2014
Designing an Alien Species for Fun and Profit
For decades, science fiction writers and scientists alike have speculated about life on other planets. The possibilities they've come up with range from funny-looking humans (Thanks, Star Trek!) to completely incomprehensible horrors from beyond the limits of sanity (Thanks, H. P. Lovecraft!). This offers modern authors a wide range of possibilities to choose from, which can be liberating and terrifying all at the same time. On the one hand, the possibilities are endless. On the other hand... okay, where do I start?
That's not to say that individual aliens within your species can't be idiots. You get those all over.
Non-humanlike aliens can even resemble familiar Earth species, like cat people (a favorite, for some reason), lizard people, or even insects. In general, the less mammalian they look, the harder it is for we humans to relate to them. Give them weird senses and a corresponding lack of familiar anatomy, and the average first contact team is going to be cautious, if not initially afraid of them. Once you start getting into the more mind-bending aliens like sapient colors (I have seen this played for laughs and for horror), it gets harder and harder to comprehend them, until you get the sort of things that should not logically follow the same laws pf physics, let alone biology, that we do.
Intelligence
If an alien species is going to be a meaningful part of diplomatic negotiations (successful or otherwise), it's going to have to be at least as smart as humans. If it's going to be the one who seeks us out, then unless we already have FTL technology by the time of whenever the story is set, they're going to default to smarter than us. Why? Because the nearest galaxy is maybe a dozen light years away, and your alien species will need to have determined that there's something worth checking out on our insignificant little planet, or else they wouldn't have bothered.That's not to say that individual aliens within your species can't be idiots. You get those all over.
Appearance
As indicated above, this can range from really really human to really really not. Many early aliens in visual media looked human simply because there was no such thing as ILM. In the Star Trek universe, most of the sympathetic aliens resemble humans with accessories because the Progenitor seeded a butt-ton of world with genetic material, and let evolution do the rest. Star Wars, being set in a space opera universe with a bigger budget, has a wide variety of aliens, made even more diverse with the addition of motion-capture and fully CGI sharacters. In written media, of course, you have a lot more freedom to make your aliens look like whatever the heck you want, but be cautious with aliens that are obviously not humans with weird makeup.Non-humanlike aliens can even resemble familiar Earth species, like cat people (a favorite, for some reason), lizard people, or even insects. In general, the less mammalian they look, the harder it is for we humans to relate to them. Give them weird senses and a corresponding lack of familiar anatomy, and the average first contact team is going to be cautious, if not initially afraid of them. Once you start getting into the more mind-bending aliens like sapient colors (I have seen this played for laughs and for horror), it gets harder and harder to comprehend them, until you get the sort of things that should not logically follow the same laws pf physics, let alone biology, that we do.
Culture
Admit it. Coming up with a completely alien culture is hard as hell. Most fictional cultures will have some aspect of a familiar human culture, even if it isn't practiced openly, locally, or currently. This can be a good thing, if you want to use this fictionalized culture to make a social statement, but you will need to tread carefully and change things up. Transplanting an earth culture into your story wholesale can smack of lazy writing (no matter how awesome lion-folk Spartans would be). In general, your fictional species' culture needs to be an organic extension of the sort of environment they developed in, what they find important, and what they're naturally skilled at. That means you will need to build the heck out of their home-world and come up with a history for them, even if your human characters never find out much about it.Mentality
Aliens are weird. They're supposed to be. Even familiar-looking behaviors and rituals can be performed for reasons that come completely out of left field, and understanding why can be a major part of the story (see Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card for one example). Then you have the critters whose sense of morality is so completely divorced from ours that we have a hard time predicting what they will do any why, and they might have no concept of why what they did was wrong. Trying to weed out malicious behavior from attempts to help can be fun and horrifying by turns, depending on how you swing it. Try taking a quality and turning its importance3 up until the knob breaks, and see what that does to your creation's mindset.In Conclusion
Creating a completely new alien species can be either piles of fun or an exercise in hair-tearing frustration. There's a lot of thought and world-building that can go into it if you want to have a meaningful first-contact scenario, but if you really get into it you can have almost as much fun working out the details of your species as you do writing a story featuring it. If you have fun writing about it, chances are your audience will have fun reading about it.Tuesday, November 25, 2014
NaNoWriMo 2014 Day 25: The Light at the End of the Tunnel
Hello everybody! Many of you have been powering your way through NaNoWriMo like I have, and at this point you're close to the end (one way or another). The NaNoWriMo site started accepting word count validations last Thursday, and while I wasn't there yet I think I'll be able to finish my draft in plenty of time.
Some of you might not be so lucky. Some of you might see the craziness of Thanksgiving and Black Friday coming up and wonder when the heck you'll have time to finish. Some of you might see how far you have to go yet and want to give up.
Don't!
Even if the task seems daunting, do whatever it takes to give yourself the will to push through this last week. Bang out as many words as you possibly can! Remember, NaNo isn't about writing a perfect novel in a month, but just as 50,000 word rough draft in a month. Even if you think that what you have is a giant flaming mess, console yourself with a plan to revise and edit later.
Heck, this month I seem to have entirely lost my ability to spell for the sake of sheer word count. I plan to pass my draft through a spell-check program before I try to validate it so that I know that the NaNo software won't just skip over the horribly mangled words that it doesn't recognize. I'll still give it an actual eyeball check as well, though, so that words that are misspelled so that they become other words don't slip in. But that will come later.
For night now, I plan to focus on the goal that as of this writing is just over 5k words away. I'm sprinting towards the climax like a crazy person, and I know that I'll be done before I know it.
You might be, too. Just keep at it. In the end, the actual word count isn't the important part, but rather you writing that rough draft and getting it out of your head.
Happy End of NaNo!
Some of you might not be so lucky. Some of you might see the craziness of Thanksgiving and Black Friday coming up and wonder when the heck you'll have time to finish. Some of you might see how far you have to go yet and want to give up.
Don't!
Even if the task seems daunting, do whatever it takes to give yourself the will to push through this last week. Bang out as many words as you possibly can! Remember, NaNo isn't about writing a perfect novel in a month, but just as 50,000 word rough draft in a month. Even if you think that what you have is a giant flaming mess, console yourself with a plan to revise and edit later.
Heck, this month I seem to have entirely lost my ability to spell for the sake of sheer word count. I plan to pass my draft through a spell-check program before I try to validate it so that I know that the NaNo software won't just skip over the horribly mangled words that it doesn't recognize. I'll still give it an actual eyeball check as well, though, so that words that are misspelled so that they become other words don't slip in. But that will come later.
For night now, I plan to focus on the goal that as of this writing is just over 5k words away. I'm sprinting towards the climax like a crazy person, and I know that I'll be done before I know it.
You might be, too. Just keep at it. In the end, the actual word count isn't the important part, but rather you writing that rough draft and getting it out of your head.
Happy End of NaNo!
Tuesday, November 18, 2014
NaNoWriMo 2014 Day 18: The End is in Sight
I'm on Week Three of NaNoWriMo, and I think it will be all downhill from here. Not as far as the quality of my writing goes (though with a rough draft it's hard to tell) but as far as how hard the slog will be. I'm past the midway point (yay!) and at last check I was at 30k words (yay!) so it looks like I'm going to finish this thing for NaNo (yay!).
It will be easy at this point for me to get lost in the plot threats I've started weaving together, like a kitten with a ball of yarn, but I don't think that will be a problem for me. For one, I haven't even started to bury myself in subplots, and for another, I've got a great support group that I can use to bounce ideas off of and comb out any problem spots.
Of course tying everything together in the climax is going to be interesting, considering the foundation I've laid out, but as long as I keep getting those words out I should be fine, and any plot holes can be filled in with my rewrite (and yes, I'm already planning on rewriting this thing because it's deep in the Hemingway Zone.
For now, though, I'm just going to keep pushing forward. 20k more words doesn't seem like that many considering what I've done so far, and the path ahead is wide open. Banzai!
It will be easy at this point for me to get lost in the plot threats I've started weaving together, like a kitten with a ball of yarn, but I don't think that will be a problem for me. For one, I haven't even started to bury myself in subplots, and for another, I've got a great support group that I can use to bounce ideas off of and comb out any problem spots.
Of course tying everything together in the climax is going to be interesting, considering the foundation I've laid out, but as long as I keep getting those words out I should be fine, and any plot holes can be filled in with my rewrite (and yes, I'm already planning on rewriting this thing because it's deep in the Hemingway Zone.
For now, though, I'm just going to keep pushing forward. 20k more words doesn't seem like that many considering what I've done so far, and the path ahead is wide open. Banzai!
Tuesday, November 11, 2014
NaNoWriMo 2014: Day 11
Today marks Day 11 of NaNoWriMo 2014, and as we plow (or slog, as the case may be) through Week Two, many of us writers may be starting to lose momentum. Some of you might be having doubts about how good your story really is. You might be getting buried in subplots or research opportunities. You might be ready to set this beast aside for another day.
Don't.
The Week Two Wall might be looming large in front of you, mocking you for your foolish plans to write a rough draft in a month. This is not the place to give up. Rather, this is where you give your main character a swift kick in the butt. Throw a plot point at him that throws all his preconceived notions down the stairs. Shock him into doing something that furthers the plot, and watch him rocket back out of the gate. Even if it seems as stupid and random as him finding an assassin hiding in his coat closet, that's an action point (you can figure out why the assassin was hiding in the coat closet later) and you can build on that.
In my case, I felt my momentum flagging, so I took a backstory point from one of my side characters and twisted into a plot element in the current narrative. Now my heroine is shocked and shaken and out of her element and a major part of her emotional support system (which is sparse enough to start with) is going to be sidelined for a while.
Remember that kicking the legs out from under your protagonist isn't going to kill them. If anything, they will come out on the other side stronger than ever before and even more ready to face the challenge of the day/week/month/whatever, especially if said plot point involves said threat going after your hero's loved ones. One laser-guided hero missile, coming right up.
So if you find yourself losing steam, have something blindside your protagonist and worry about making it less random during rewrites. It will give both you and your hero something new to do, and it will keep your novel from stagnating.
Happy writing!
Don't.
The Week Two Wall might be looming large in front of you, mocking you for your foolish plans to write a rough draft in a month. This is not the place to give up. Rather, this is where you give your main character a swift kick in the butt. Throw a plot point at him that throws all his preconceived notions down the stairs. Shock him into doing something that furthers the plot, and watch him rocket back out of the gate. Even if it seems as stupid and random as him finding an assassin hiding in his coat closet, that's an action point (you can figure out why the assassin was hiding in the coat closet later) and you can build on that.
In my case, I felt my momentum flagging, so I took a backstory point from one of my side characters and twisted into a plot element in the current narrative. Now my heroine is shocked and shaken and out of her element and a major part of her emotional support system (which is sparse enough to start with) is going to be sidelined for a while.
Remember that kicking the legs out from under your protagonist isn't going to kill them. If anything, they will come out on the other side stronger than ever before and even more ready to face the challenge of the day/week/month/whatever, especially if said plot point involves said threat going after your hero's loved ones. One laser-guided hero missile, coming right up.
So if you find yourself losing steam, have something blindside your protagonist and worry about making it less random during rewrites. It will give both you and your hero something new to do, and it will keep your novel from stagnating.
Happy writing!
Tuesday, November 4, 2014
NaNoWriMo 2014: Day 4
Today is Day 4 of my first serious attempt at NaNoWriMo, and so far things are going fantastic. My word count is well above par for this far in, even though I had a minor slowdown yesterday due to my persistent need to buy food and pay my bills, but I'm still plugging away at it and I need no reason to give up just yet.
I mean, it's only Day 4 out of 30. Giving up now would just be bailing.
I'm still pretty excited about this whole thing. I've joined the NaNo community, collected a bunch of writing buddies, and I've been bouncing ideas off the forums and getting help with things like research, as well as sharing a good laugh about our speed0induced typoes.
The goal of NaNoWriMo, of course, is not to write a perfect novel in 30 days. That would be so close to impossible that it's barely worth considering. When you're going for speed, certain sacrifices will need to be made, like your ability to spell, airtight plotting, and frustrated ramblings at your apparent inability to make things up on the fly.
And that's okay.
Not only is this my first NaNo, but it's my first real foray into YA literature, so that's an interesting switch from my usual target age group. I find myself having to remember what it was like to be a teenager, and to accept and embrace the fact that as a seventeen-year-old girl, my main character and many of her peers are going to be gigantic drama queens.
And that's also okay.
At this point, while I'm not quite writing by the seat of my pants (as is my usual strategy) I still have a handful of major plot points to map out, but I still have most of the month to get that done. This is not the time for panic just yet.
For the rest of you also doing the NaNo thing, keep it up! I'm right here with you!
How far am I towards my goal? Check it out!
I mean, it's only Day 4 out of 30. Giving up now would just be bailing.
I'm still pretty excited about this whole thing. I've joined the NaNo community, collected a bunch of writing buddies, and I've been bouncing ideas off the forums and getting help with things like research, as well as sharing a good laugh about our speed0induced typoes.
The goal of NaNoWriMo, of course, is not to write a perfect novel in 30 days. That would be so close to impossible that it's barely worth considering. When you're going for speed, certain sacrifices will need to be made, like your ability to spell, airtight plotting, and frustrated ramblings at your apparent inability to make things up on the fly.
And that's okay.
Not only is this my first NaNo, but it's my first real foray into YA literature, so that's an interesting switch from my usual target age group. I find myself having to remember what it was like to be a teenager, and to accept and embrace the fact that as a seventeen-year-old girl, my main character and many of her peers are going to be gigantic drama queens.
And that's also okay.
At this point, while I'm not quite writing by the seat of my pants (as is my usual strategy) I still have a handful of major plot points to map out, but I still have most of the month to get that done. This is not the time for panic just yet.
For the rest of you also doing the NaNo thing, keep it up! I'm right here with you!
How far am I towards my goal? Check it out!
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
NaNoWriMo 2014: DON'T PANIC
Here we are in the last few days before the National Novel Writing Month begins, and if those of you who are participating are anything like me, you're in a flat panic. Questions and doubts may be flooding your mind:
What if my idea sucks?
There are very few ideas that cannot be salvaged or improved on editing. If you enjoy your idea enough to use it for NaNo, then it can't suck that much. Just remember that this is a rough draft. Nobody has to see it but you. (You do plan to edit it, right?)
What if I don't finish?
This is actually two questions.
What if I don't manage to write 50,000 words in November?
When you will still be further along in your novel project than you were on November 1. There's no penalty for not hitting that benchmark, and not everyone will get there. Relax.
What if I write 50,000 words, but my story's still not done?
Then you can continue writing it through December or however long it takes for your story to be done.
How will I manage writing so many words a day between work/school/social life/errands/sleep?
You'd be surprised how much writing you can get done if you dedicate yourself. You might have to make a few sacrifices, though--like no spending hours at a time on your social media and/or games. Any requirements for prime functioning, absolutely stick with those, but other than that, block out as much time as you can and get that draft written.
What if I get writer's block halfway through?
This is why NaNo support groups are awesome. The official website itself allows you to find writing buddies (local or not) to help you power through the tough times. Try free writing and turning over ideas in your draft. Add padding if you like (you can always take it out later). Just keep those words flowing.
What if there's a crisis and I just can't devote the time?
Well, honestly, stuff happens. If you have a major Crisis with a capital C that completely torpedoes your entire month, that's okay. Take care of yourself and your loved ones. Write when you can but remember that there's nothing wrong with not making your word count.
As near as I can tell, the best (but by no means only) way to get through a successful NaNoWriMo is to just sit your butt down and write. Write until your vision blurs and your fingers ache and your brain goes numb. Then do it again the next day, and the next, until it's done. Don't worry about plot holes or spell checking or editing--just get that draft down as quickly as humanly possible. Don't second-guess yourself. Don't go back and fix anything, even that typo that's just screaming at you from the page. Editing comes later. Just find your zone and write that sucker.
As for myself, I'm going to keep blogging throughout NaNoWriMo and share with you my experience as a first-time participant, including (drum roll) a word count graphic.
Here it is:
My username on the NaNoWriMo website is GeekGirlWriter (same as my Twitter handle) so if you're participating and want to be writing buddies, go ahead and look me up!
Happy NaNo!
- What if my idea sucks?
- What if I don't finish?
- How will I manage writing so many words a day between work/school/social life/errands/sleep?
- What if I get writer's block halfway through?
- What if there's a crisis and I just can't devote the time?
What if my idea sucks?
There are very few ideas that cannot be salvaged or improved on editing. If you enjoy your idea enough to use it for NaNo, then it can't suck that much. Just remember that this is a rough draft. Nobody has to see it but you. (You do plan to edit it, right?)
What if I don't finish?
This is actually two questions.
What if I don't manage to write 50,000 words in November?
When you will still be further along in your novel project than you were on November 1. There's no penalty for not hitting that benchmark, and not everyone will get there. Relax.
What if I write 50,000 words, but my story's still not done?
Then you can continue writing it through December or however long it takes for your story to be done.
How will I manage writing so many words a day between work/school/social life/errands/sleep?
You'd be surprised how much writing you can get done if you dedicate yourself. You might have to make a few sacrifices, though--like no spending hours at a time on your social media and/or games. Any requirements for prime functioning, absolutely stick with those, but other than that, block out as much time as you can and get that draft written.
What if I get writer's block halfway through?
This is why NaNo support groups are awesome. The official website itself allows you to find writing buddies (local or not) to help you power through the tough times. Try free writing and turning over ideas in your draft. Add padding if you like (you can always take it out later). Just keep those words flowing.
What if there's a crisis and I just can't devote the time?
Well, honestly, stuff happens. If you have a major Crisis with a capital C that completely torpedoes your entire month, that's okay. Take care of yourself and your loved ones. Write when you can but remember that there's nothing wrong with not making your word count.
As near as I can tell, the best (but by no means only) way to get through a successful NaNoWriMo is to just sit your butt down and write. Write until your vision blurs and your fingers ache and your brain goes numb. Then do it again the next day, and the next, until it's done. Don't worry about plot holes or spell checking or editing--just get that draft down as quickly as humanly possible. Don't second-guess yourself. Don't go back and fix anything, even that typo that's just screaming at you from the page. Editing comes later. Just find your zone and write that sucker.
As for myself, I'm going to keep blogging throughout NaNoWriMo and share with you my experience as a first-time participant, including (drum roll) a word count graphic.
Here it is:
My username on the NaNoWriMo website is GeekGirlWriter (same as my Twitter handle) so if you're participating and want to be writing buddies, go ahead and look me up!
Happy NaNo!
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
What the Heck Was I Doing?: The Torment of Rewriting
I've developed a couple of quirks since deciding that writing was really my thing:
Yes.
I sent out rough drafts.
Take all the time you need.
A couple *coughdozencough* rejections later, I learned about a wonderful thing called editing, and a further, even more wonderful thing called self-editing.
You mean I can refine my work without showing it to someone else?
Yes, which was awesome because I'd realized, after taking a week or two for the endorphin rush to wear off, that nearly every rough draft I'd written in the mania of I have a story and I must write it down and show the world was utter dreck. Redeemable dreck, but dreck nonetheless. I became ashamed that I would in all honesty consider showing this to something else, which was both disheartening and a step in the right direction because with the degree in English I'd earned in the meantime I could pick out the problems.
Most word processing programs have a feature by which you can highlight areas and leave notations, and I use that in spades when I go through my rough drafts. In one of my current manuscripts I actually left the note, "This doesn't make sense. What the hell were you thinking?" I have become my own harshest critic, which is both good and bad.
It's good because a critical eye (simmered gently over the course of two weeks to a month) allows me to pick out the problems both big and small so I can fix them before anyone else sees what an embarrassment my rough draft is. I've found an affordable editor, but I don't even have to send her my rough draft this way. That's a real load off my mind.
It's bad because, while putting on the Simon Cowell level of snarkiness with my own work can be fun, it can get schizophrenic very easily, and if I'm not careful there's a chance I might give up on the manuscript altogether and never look at it again. Instead, I try to put suggestions in my notes rather than only criticisms, even if I have to chainsaw out an entire scene and rewrite it from scratch. Even if the note says simply "wat", I know that something that seemed so clear in the drafting phase has fallen out of focus. I've been known to switch plot points midstream while drafting, so this helps keep me on course.
Fortunately, after doing this a few times with several different manuscripts, I've happily fallen into the habit of self-editing. My rough draft need never see the light of day, let alone the desk of a prospective publisher. I can send a version I'm moderately happy with to my beta readers without worrying that it's a horrible mess. I still let my inner critic dance all over my rough drafts, but with a firm leash so she doesn't discourage me from writing altogether. In the end, this has made me a more confident writer, rather than one living in a state of "oh god all my stuff is crap I'll never get published what am I thinking".
I'm still not showing anyone else my crappy first drafts, though. Someday I may make a bonfire out of them.
- I don't let anyone see the rough draft.
- I yell at myself while I'm marking the rough draft for revision.
Yes.
I sent out rough drafts.
Take all the time you need.
A couple *coughdozencough* rejections later, I learned about a wonderful thing called editing, and a further, even more wonderful thing called self-editing.
You mean I can refine my work without showing it to someone else?
Yes, which was awesome because I'd realized, after taking a week or two for the endorphin rush to wear off, that nearly every rough draft I'd written in the mania of I have a story and I must write it down and show the world was utter dreck. Redeemable dreck, but dreck nonetheless. I became ashamed that I would in all honesty consider showing this to something else, which was both disheartening and a step in the right direction because with the degree in English I'd earned in the meantime I could pick out the problems.
Most word processing programs have a feature by which you can highlight areas and leave notations, and I use that in spades when I go through my rough drafts. In one of my current manuscripts I actually left the note, "This doesn't make sense. What the hell were you thinking?" I have become my own harshest critic, which is both good and bad.
It's good because a critical eye (simmered gently over the course of two weeks to a month) allows me to pick out the problems both big and small so I can fix them before anyone else sees what an embarrassment my rough draft is. I've found an affordable editor, but I don't even have to send her my rough draft this way. That's a real load off my mind.
It's bad because, while putting on the Simon Cowell level of snarkiness with my own work can be fun, it can get schizophrenic very easily, and if I'm not careful there's a chance I might give up on the manuscript altogether and never look at it again. Instead, I try to put suggestions in my notes rather than only criticisms, even if I have to chainsaw out an entire scene and rewrite it from scratch. Even if the note says simply "wat", I know that something that seemed so clear in the drafting phase has fallen out of focus. I've been known to switch plot points midstream while drafting, so this helps keep me on course.
Fortunately, after doing this a few times with several different manuscripts, I've happily fallen into the habit of self-editing. My rough draft need never see the light of day, let alone the desk of a prospective publisher. I can send a version I'm moderately happy with to my beta readers without worrying that it's a horrible mess. I still let my inner critic dance all over my rough drafts, but with a firm leash so she doesn't discourage me from writing altogether. In the end, this has made me a more confident writer, rather than one living in a state of "oh god all my stuff is crap I'll never get published what am I thinking".
I'm still not showing anyone else my crappy first drafts, though. Someday I may make a bonfire out of them.
Tuesday, September 16, 2014
The Fine Art of Steampunk
My latest project is a steampunk novel entitled The Demon of Butcher's Row, and in light of this it seems like a dandy time to go over exactly what the heck steampunk is. It's one of those weird little subgenres of science fiction and fantasy that seems to be making a minor resurgence these days, but it has a couple of cousins with which is is occasionally confused.
So, to start: what makes a work steampunk? Steampunk is any work that takes place between 1850-ish and 1910-ish that combines historical details with science fiction elements. A lot of early science fiction would be considered steampunk today, simply because it was contemporary to that time. Of course, modern steampunk tends to use the Disney version of Victorian England, polishing away the grittiness of the era to something that Phil and Kaja Foglio have called Gaslamp Fantasy. True steampunk embraces rather than ignores the dirty underbelly of Victorian society, much like cyberpunk does with its near-future societies. Of course, the full spectrum of gritty-to-shiny encompassed in steampunk ranges from A League of Extraordinary Gentlemen to Girl Genius, so the reader is free to choose how they like it.
So why is it called steampunk? A lot of the tech used in steampunk fiction is based on steam technology, the main source of power under development and thus takes place right on the leading edge of the Industrial Revolution. Unfortunately, in real-world terms, steam and coal turned out to be a technological dead-end, so many steampunk works handwave this with an element of magic or occult assistance. Since we sci-fi nerds love our cool gadgets, a lot of modern steampunk works will be heavy on the awesome dingbats and light on explanations of how sustainable they are.
Magic in a steampunk setting may come in many forms, if it is used. The main interest of the society of the day was occultism and spiritualism, in particular communicating with the spirits of the dead or generally contacting other worlds. As such, a steampunk spellcaster may find himself called upon to summon or communicate with beings from the afterlife of distant planes, or else to identify and clean up after a supernatural menace that some nimrod called up and couldn't control. There may also be some overlap with alchemy, using quasi-scientific processes to transmute Substance A into Substance B, or to bind elemental forces in ways that augment the technology of the setting (see above). Magic can also cover the ways that certain scientifically-minded individuals can do inadvisable or flat-out impossible things with Science, in much the same way that Dr. Frankenstein was able to create a human being out of spare parts and a nebulously-describe process, Dr. Jekyll was able to unleash his own dark side, or the average Igor in the Discworld universe is able to generally tell the laws of physics to sit down and shut up.
Gender roles in real-world Victorian society were strictly regimented. Women were often the property of the nearest male relation or husband, and typically were not allowed out and about without an escort, to prevent the potential sullying of their honor. By contrast, women in steampunk works are often in active roles in the story beyond damsels in distress. They may work as spies for the government, assassins, spellcasters or other subtle roles which wouldn't be considered ladylike. This can set them up in a contrast against male characters, such as male intellectuals vs. female intuitives, male bruisers vs. female persuaders, or obvious male menace vs. subtle female menace. Of course, their active role has a darker side, as it may be caused by or result in a female protagonist being put into greater danger--and if she can't defend herself ably from the start she better learn in a hurry.
Steampunk can be a fun genre to read and write if you're interested in that general time period and really dig the idea of beating history over the head with the spec fiction stick. When done well, it is a fun look at what might have been, if technological advancement had taken a left rather than a right. You might even have read some steampunk without knowing it, as much of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne fits tidily into this category, as do some of the later Discworld novels, as mentioned above. Done badly, though, it can easily turn into an anachronistic, incomprehensible mess (though I won't name any names). Like with most of the smaller genres, my best advice for a hopeful steampunk author is to start with the classics and find your way from there.
So, to start: what makes a work steampunk? Steampunk is any work that takes place between 1850-ish and 1910-ish that combines historical details with science fiction elements. A lot of early science fiction would be considered steampunk today, simply because it was contemporary to that time. Of course, modern steampunk tends to use the Disney version of Victorian England, polishing away the grittiness of the era to something that Phil and Kaja Foglio have called Gaslamp Fantasy. True steampunk embraces rather than ignores the dirty underbelly of Victorian society, much like cyberpunk does with its near-future societies. Of course, the full spectrum of gritty-to-shiny encompassed in steampunk ranges from A League of Extraordinary Gentlemen to Girl Genius, so the reader is free to choose how they like it.
So why is it called steampunk? A lot of the tech used in steampunk fiction is based on steam technology, the main source of power under development and thus takes place right on the leading edge of the Industrial Revolution. Unfortunately, in real-world terms, steam and coal turned out to be a technological dead-end, so many steampunk works handwave this with an element of magic or occult assistance. Since we sci-fi nerds love our cool gadgets, a lot of modern steampunk works will be heavy on the awesome dingbats and light on explanations of how sustainable they are.
Magic in a steampunk setting may come in many forms, if it is used. The main interest of the society of the day was occultism and spiritualism, in particular communicating with the spirits of the dead or generally contacting other worlds. As such, a steampunk spellcaster may find himself called upon to summon or communicate with beings from the afterlife of distant planes, or else to identify and clean up after a supernatural menace that some nimrod called up and couldn't control. There may also be some overlap with alchemy, using quasi-scientific processes to transmute Substance A into Substance B, or to bind elemental forces in ways that augment the technology of the setting (see above). Magic can also cover the ways that certain scientifically-minded individuals can do inadvisable or flat-out impossible things with Science, in much the same way that Dr. Frankenstein was able to create a human being out of spare parts and a nebulously-describe process, Dr. Jekyll was able to unleash his own dark side, or the average Igor in the Discworld universe is able to generally tell the laws of physics to sit down and shut up.
Gender roles in real-world Victorian society were strictly regimented. Women were often the property of the nearest male relation or husband, and typically were not allowed out and about without an escort, to prevent the potential sullying of their honor. By contrast, women in steampunk works are often in active roles in the story beyond damsels in distress. They may work as spies for the government, assassins, spellcasters or other subtle roles which wouldn't be considered ladylike. This can set them up in a contrast against male characters, such as male intellectuals vs. female intuitives, male bruisers vs. female persuaders, or obvious male menace vs. subtle female menace. Of course, their active role has a darker side, as it may be caused by or result in a female protagonist being put into greater danger--and if she can't defend herself ably from the start she better learn in a hurry.
Steampunk can be a fun genre to read and write if you're interested in that general time period and really dig the idea of beating history over the head with the spec fiction stick. When done well, it is a fun look at what might have been, if technological advancement had taken a left rather than a right. You might even have read some steampunk without knowing it, as much of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne fits tidily into this category, as do some of the later Discworld novels, as mentioned above. Done badly, though, it can easily turn into an anachronistic, incomprehensible mess (though I won't name any names). Like with most of the smaller genres, my best advice for a hopeful steampunk author is to start with the classics and find your way from there.
Tuesday, August 19, 2014
Future Projects Survey
Well, I've finished taking the Red Pen of Doom to the rough draft of Hungry as a Wolf, and now I have three possible projects I can work on next. I'm eager to work on each of them for different reasons, but I've resolved to pare down the number of Works in Progress I have floating around one at a time.
Here are the candidates:
Here are the candidates:
- Necromancy Will Kill Your Dating Life: Paranormal/Chick-Lit. A perky blonde seeks love, but her inherited talent with necromancy keeps getting in the way.
- Silk and Steel: Heroic fantasy/Romantic Comedy. A hot-tempered swordswoman discovers she is the heir to the royal throne. She must enter into an arranged marriage to stop a war that could tear the kingdom apart.
- The Demon of Butcher's Row: Steampunk. A monstrous bat-demon is hunting down and killing people in 1890s London. A Mage and his Chymist friend investigate, due to repeated (non-fatal) attacks on the Chymist that keep leaving him in strange places.
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
Black and White and Shades of Gray
Stories about good vs. evil are a perennial favorite. It's just a thing people have hard-wired into their brains that turn every conflict into Good Guys vs. Bad Guys, Us. vs. Them, Good vs. Evil. Stories of clear-cut morality in the central conflict are easy to understand, and easy to write.
The trouble is that they're hard as hell to write well, mainly because baseline humans don't come in Completely Good or Completely Evil. Trying to make every member of a group completely good or completely evil might work well if a certain tribe or nationality exists for the Good Guys to fight against, but doing this too often can get boring in a big hurry.
Evil goblins. Yawn.
Beautiful, pure-hearted elves. Ho hum.
As my tastes in fiction (and high fantasy in particular) have evolved, I've started finding the appeal in ambiguously gray characters. There's the hero who might do morally dodgy things in the pursuit of a noble goal. There's the villain who started out with the best of intentions, but couldn't stop his slide down the slippery slope of morality. Even Spider-Man realizes the temptations of having superpowers, and Darth Vader started as a good man.
Honestly, pure villains or heroes can get boring in a hurry. So you've got a white knight boy scout who always knows the right thing to do and goes around defending the innocent because that's what he does. So you've got an evil lord of evil who wants to use black magic to conquer the world because that's what he does. That might be great for simpler stories, but in complex, overarching epics, that lack of moral ambiguity gets old really quickly.
One of the grayest high fantasy series I've read recently is a Song of Ice and Fire, where you have a lot of factions working at cross purposes to get their own people on the Iron Throne, and very few of them are completely good or evil. You have innocents corrupted in the course of trying to escape horrifying events later. You have people set up as villains in early books, only to be revealed as morally conflicted and redeemable later. The only characters I can name off the top of my head who would fall squarely in the evil category are Cersei Lannister and her son Joffrey. Even then, Cersei is just ambitious and crazy and not as smart as she thinks she is, and Joffrey... well, has Cersei for a mother. And he's, like, twelve.
The best way I've noticed to avoid black-and-white morality in fiction is to get into the heads of both your heroes and your villains. Give the villain a reason for what he does besides LOL I'M EVIL. Maybe he does what he does to prevent something worse than him later on. Give the hero moral quandaries so he's not just LOL I'M THE HERO. Heck, Batman has done more than the Gotham police force to clean up crime, and even his allies (and Batman himself) sometimes question the measures he takes. Superman is the closest to a white knight that the DC universe has, but he has to worry that his superheroing might come back to harm his less-indestructible Earthling loved ones. Being completely good or completely evil should be hard.
Writing nuanced heroes and villains is a good way to add spice to your fiction and make your readers think. Your fans might side with one character or another for various reasons, but at least those reasons won't be exclusively because "he's the hero" or whatever. Writing in shades of gray rather than black and white also makes your story more interesting and enjoyable, and has a high likelihood of enticing your readers back for more.
And my sales progress:
I'll be back next week with more ramblings and news! Follow my blog for regular updates!
The trouble is that they're hard as hell to write well, mainly because baseline humans don't come in Completely Good or Completely Evil. Trying to make every member of a group completely good or completely evil might work well if a certain tribe or nationality exists for the Good Guys to fight against, but doing this too often can get boring in a big hurry.
Evil goblins. Yawn.
Beautiful, pure-hearted elves. Ho hum.
As my tastes in fiction (and high fantasy in particular) have evolved, I've started finding the appeal in ambiguously gray characters. There's the hero who might do morally dodgy things in the pursuit of a noble goal. There's the villain who started out with the best of intentions, but couldn't stop his slide down the slippery slope of morality. Even Spider-Man realizes the temptations of having superpowers, and Darth Vader started as a good man.
Honestly, pure villains or heroes can get boring in a hurry. So you've got a white knight boy scout who always knows the right thing to do and goes around defending the innocent because that's what he does. So you've got an evil lord of evil who wants to use black magic to conquer the world because that's what he does. That might be great for simpler stories, but in complex, overarching epics, that lack of moral ambiguity gets old really quickly.
One of the grayest high fantasy series I've read recently is a Song of Ice and Fire, where you have a lot of factions working at cross purposes to get their own people on the Iron Throne, and very few of them are completely good or evil. You have innocents corrupted in the course of trying to escape horrifying events later. You have people set up as villains in early books, only to be revealed as morally conflicted and redeemable later. The only characters I can name off the top of my head who would fall squarely in the evil category are Cersei Lannister and her son Joffrey. Even then, Cersei is just ambitious and crazy and not as smart as she thinks she is, and Joffrey... well, has Cersei for a mother. And he's, like, twelve.
The best way I've noticed to avoid black-and-white morality in fiction is to get into the heads of both your heroes and your villains. Give the villain a reason for what he does besides LOL I'M EVIL. Maybe he does what he does to prevent something worse than him later on. Give the hero moral quandaries so he's not just LOL I'M THE HERO. Heck, Batman has done more than the Gotham police force to clean up crime, and even his allies (and Batman himself) sometimes question the measures he takes. Superman is the closest to a white knight that the DC universe has, but he has to worry that his superheroing might come back to harm his less-indestructible Earthling loved ones. Being completely good or completely evil should be hard.
Writing nuanced heroes and villains is a good way to add spice to your fiction and make your readers think. Your fans might side with one character or another for various reasons, but at least those reasons won't be exclusively because "he's the hero" or whatever. Writing in shades of gray rather than black and white also makes your story more interesting and enjoyable, and has a high likelihood of enticing your readers back for more.
And now, for something completely different...
Still making progress in my book sales (woohoo!), but I really hope they pick up soon. I'll be at Bookseller's Row at Archon 38 this year, my first time selling stuff at a convention, so feel free to come by if you're in Collinsville, IL the weekend of October 3-5 and pick up a copy!And my sales progress:
1.3%
I'll be back next week with more ramblings and news! Follow my blog for regular updates!
Tuesday, July 15, 2014
Plotters vs. Pantsers
This week's article will be on the two major types of fiction writers I keep hearing about: plotters and pantsers. The difference in approach between the two seems to define how the first draft of anything is done, and there have been heated arguments over the merits of their respective style. Which one is right for you? Have a look.
Simply put, plotters are writers who plan the heck out of anything before they begin writing. They have complete character profiles on absolutely everyone in their book, they have a detailed outline of every chapter, scene, interaction, and implication, and can weave the whole thing together into a complex whole when they start writing. Pantsers write by the seat of their pants. They get an idea and start writing to see where it leads them, discovering new characters as they go and generally letting the characters and plot do what feels natural.
Plotters take a while to actually get to the writing. They invest a lot into the front-end stuff, from outlining to researching, and generally collect a healthy file on their book before they actually start writing. Pantsers don't do a lot of front-end stuff, but launch into the story right away. Any research or notes they need to address happens either during the writing, or during the back-end stuff like revisions.
One a plotter gets to the writing, their preparation level tends to allow them to blast straight through the rough draft, with only minimal pausing due to unrelated writing issues like writer's block or even a bad case of Can't-Be-Arsed. A pantser may start quickly, only to have to stop and go back to fix a research error or look something up or work out how this that or the other detail would work within their setting. Occasionally their characters will simply stop cooperating, forcing the hapless pantser to figure out what's going wrong with the story or where it needs to go next.
Plotters may plan out a lot of books at once (see: James Patterson) or even had the entire course of a series mapped out (see: J.K. Rowling), but it seems logical that with the amount of prep they have, they would actually write one book at a time. When you know exactly where your book is going to do, there is nothing to stop you from focusing on that project until it's done (at least the rough draft) before moving on to the next thing in line. Pantsers... frequently have to improvise. They might have a whole pile of works in progress lying around because of some combination of writer's block, attention deficit creator disorder, or because they just got stuck in a plot hole and couldn't figure out how to dig their way out. This is not to say that they don't finish anything, of course--they just are more likely to have multiple irons in the fire.
This is, of course, not intended to be an indictment on the quality of writing produced by either pantsers or plotters, as both are equally capable of producing quite wonderful works of fiction. Pansters are not universally disorganized, and plotters are not universally anal-retentive neat freaks. With sufficient editing, both can produce perfectly enjoyable stories. They just go about it in different ways.
What style suits you? Let me know in the comments!
Simply put, plotters are writers who plan the heck out of anything before they begin writing. They have complete character profiles on absolutely everyone in their book, they have a detailed outline of every chapter, scene, interaction, and implication, and can weave the whole thing together into a complex whole when they start writing. Pantsers write by the seat of their pants. They get an idea and start writing to see where it leads them, discovering new characters as they go and generally letting the characters and plot do what feels natural.
Plotters take a while to actually get to the writing. They invest a lot into the front-end stuff, from outlining to researching, and generally collect a healthy file on their book before they actually start writing. Pantsers don't do a lot of front-end stuff, but launch into the story right away. Any research or notes they need to address happens either during the writing, or during the back-end stuff like revisions.
One a plotter gets to the writing, their preparation level tends to allow them to blast straight through the rough draft, with only minimal pausing due to unrelated writing issues like writer's block or even a bad case of Can't-Be-Arsed. A pantser may start quickly, only to have to stop and go back to fix a research error or look something up or work out how this that or the other detail would work within their setting. Occasionally their characters will simply stop cooperating, forcing the hapless pantser to figure out what's going wrong with the story or where it needs to go next.
Plotters may plan out a lot of books at once (see: James Patterson) or even had the entire course of a series mapped out (see: J.K. Rowling), but it seems logical that with the amount of prep they have, they would actually write one book at a time. When you know exactly where your book is going to do, there is nothing to stop you from focusing on that project until it's done (at least the rough draft) before moving on to the next thing in line. Pantsers... frequently have to improvise. They might have a whole pile of works in progress lying around because of some combination of writer's block, attention deficit creator disorder, or because they just got stuck in a plot hole and couldn't figure out how to dig their way out. This is not to say that they don't finish anything, of course--they just are more likely to have multiple irons in the fire.
This is, of course, not intended to be an indictment on the quality of writing produced by either pantsers or plotters, as both are equally capable of producing quite wonderful works of fiction. Pansters are not universally disorganized, and plotters are not universally anal-retentive neat freaks. With sufficient editing, both can produce perfectly enjoyable stories. They just go about it in different ways.
What style suits you? Let me know in the comments!
Progress Update:
8 / 1000 (0.80%)
Tuesday, July 8, 2014
The Fine Art of the Weird Western
I never really expected to write a weird western, right up until I decided to write a vampire story. I didn't want my vampires to be the beautiful elite sexpots that half of everyone was writing these days, and I didn't want them to be anything approaching love interests, like 90% of everyone was writing.
The obvious solution, of course, was to take them out of modern times and write a historical(ish) vampire story.
Then came the hard part: figuring out how to write a weird western.
Writing a weird western doesn't have to be hard. It can be complicated, mind you, because you have historical stuff blended with decidedly non-historical stuff, but if you keep a few elements in mind, you should be on the right track.
Of course, if you want to do this properly, you need to do your research. There are lots of nonfiction books floating around that will give you a fair idea of what sorts of things were going on at that time and place, and reading any mainstream western novel will give you a pretty good snapshot of what life was like back then--wild, dangerous, thrilling, and everyone able to kill you. Not everyone was a gunslinger, but pretty much everyone able to walk knew how to use a gun.
Then again, your standard iron won't do much against a vampire, but that's there the horror bits come in.
Basically, the magic goes hand-in-hand with your critters, because most wild west heroes are going to have to use something unusual to kill your beasties. Emptying a revolver into a vampire is just going to tickle him, but if you have a priest or holy man bless your gun, that's likely to get his attention a lot faster (making the guy with the blessed gun his next target, but that's how it goes). In Sheep's Clothing, my half-skinwalker protagonist Wolf was laid low and nearly killed with a silver dagger, because he's basically a werewolf from a different culture, and that's how werewolves roll.
Lots of evil critters in folklore are repelled or harmed by good old-fashioned religious items, but that might largely depend on which banes you use on which critters. A Native American beastie might laugh at a brandished crucifix, for example, while a European monster might cheerfully set a Native American totem on fire. A significant chunk of your story might be a Muggle protagonist learning how these things work from a more experienced teacher, just in time for him to unleash hell on the supernatural threat in spades at the climax.
The obvious solution, of course, was to take them out of modern times and write a historical(ish) vampire story.
Then came the hard part: figuring out how to write a weird western.
Writing a weird western doesn't have to be hard. It can be complicated, mind you, because you have historical stuff blended with decidedly non-historical stuff, but if you keep a few elements in mind, you should be on the right track.
The Setting
This is one of two major things that makes a weird western what it is. The area of North America west of the Mississippi was one hell of a place. Nobody setting out to settle there had the least idea what to expect, and they often encountered lots of scary stuff, ranging from the wildlife to the natives to fellow settlers to outlaws who just wanted to kill you and take you stuff because they could. Because it was a great big expanse of unknowns, it lent itself well to ghost stories and legends and tall tales and all sorts of cool stuff.Of course, if you want to do this properly, you need to do your research. There are lots of nonfiction books floating around that will give you a fair idea of what sorts of things were going on at that time and place, and reading any mainstream western novel will give you a pretty good snapshot of what life was like back then--wild, dangerous, thrilling, and everyone able to kill you. Not everyone was a gunslinger, but pretty much everyone able to walk knew how to use a gun.
Then again, your standard iron won't do much against a vampire, but that's there the horror bits come in.
The Critters
Take a look at the folklore of the day, and you'll find some pretty crazy stories in fairly short order. Shapeshifters, ghosts, boogeymen, vengeful undead of all shades, and that's just what the settlers cooked up. Native American folklore has even crazier stuff, with nature spirits and shapeshifting animals and things that we might call demons that will just eat your face if you don't handle them correctly or just stay the hell out of their territory. Vampires can be found in Native American lore (called Children of Jumlin, not apotamkin, which is a completely different critter), as can serviceable werewolves (not all of which are considered malevolent) and any number of things that roam around in the spirit world.The Magic
The weird west genre always has some form of magical or supernatural element to it. This distinguishes it from its spiritual cousin, cattle punk, which tends to have science fiction elements like anachronistic tech levels. How you handle the magic and supernatural stuff depends largely on what rules you want to have apply to it. Is this something that anyone can learn (in which case your tale will swiftly become a monster-killing romp), or can only a few people use it, like shamans or whatever other Wild West wizards you want to have roaming around? Does it work well with technology, or not?Basically, the magic goes hand-in-hand with your critters, because most wild west heroes are going to have to use something unusual to kill your beasties. Emptying a revolver into a vampire is just going to tickle him, but if you have a priest or holy man bless your gun, that's likely to get his attention a lot faster (making the guy with the blessed gun his next target, but that's how it goes). In Sheep's Clothing, my half-skinwalker protagonist Wolf was laid low and nearly killed with a silver dagger, because he's basically a werewolf from a different culture, and that's how werewolves roll.
Lots of evil critters in folklore are repelled or harmed by good old-fashioned religious items, but that might largely depend on which banes you use on which critters. A Native American beastie might laugh at a brandished crucifix, for example, while a European monster might cheerfully set a Native American totem on fire. A significant chunk of your story might be a Muggle protagonist learning how these things work from a more experienced teacher, just in time for him to unleash hell on the supernatural threat in spades at the climax.
In Conclusion
A weird western, by its very nature, requires the writer to combine a lot of different elements that don't always go together. How much work you put into it and how you combine the different bits will determine what kind of weird western you have when you finish. The only real requirement is that you have a great time writing it, so that your enthusiasm shows in the final product.And one more thing...
Here's a tiny progress update on my goal of selling 1000 copies of Sheep's Clothing:7 / 1000 (0.70%)
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
Secondary Characters are People, Too!
In this week's post I'm going to talk about the secondary characters you might have wandering around in your work. If handled improperly, secondary and background characters will seem like part of the scenery rather than add to the flavor of your world. Why? Because it's so easy to have your secondaries just exist for the scene (or two, or whatever) they're in and then get stuffed back in the creative closet.
This is a mistake, but an understandable one. Your main characters--your protagonist(s) and your villain(s)--carry the bulk of the story, so naturally you want to focus on them. Your heroes have motivations. Hopefully your villains have motivations, too, that sound reasonable to them, rather than just having them wander around aimlessly being evil at people. But the people milling around in the background? Who cares about them?
Well, you should. You created them for a reason, and even if they're literally only there for a single scene to contribute a single piece of needed info to your hero, they need lives outside the story. This might seem like a lot of hard work that nobody's going to see, and you might be right. BUT, that guy milling around in the background might turn out to be helpful to your hero at a crucial moment.
Remember that crowd of train passengers in Spider-Man 2 that Our Intrepid Hero nearly kills himself saving from Doctor Octopus? They came to his defense when Ock tried to finish him off because they saw that Spidey was "only a kid", like any of their own offspring. They didn't have much in the way of character development, but they helped the hero. They might have been listed in the credits as Bystander on Train #1 through #9 or whatever, but they had a reason to jump to his defense.
Now, unless you're writing a sweeping high fantasy epic or whatever, it's unlikely that you're going to break out in mass quantities of background characters. However, you do need to know who your named characters are, at least, in case you need an unexpected ally (or obstacle) for your hero at a key moment in your story.
Does this mean you need to provide a complete backstory for every single character who has even a walk-on part in your novel or short story? No, obviously not. That would be a lot of record-keeping, and a project you should only undertake if you're planning on lots and lots of ground-level world-building. Even then, just focus on a small handful of people in your fictional city of ten million, or you'll be so busy making characters that you'll never get to your story.
In conclusion, while the focus of your story should be on your main cast, don't neglect that background characters. Making sure that at least you know who they are beyond the context of the story will help you make them more rounded for the reader. Mapping out what secondary characters are doing while off-screen will also help you get them in the right place at the right time for some additional support for your main characters, and who knows? Heroic Bystander #2 might become a fan favorite as a result.
This is a mistake, but an understandable one. Your main characters--your protagonist(s) and your villain(s)--carry the bulk of the story, so naturally you want to focus on them. Your heroes have motivations. Hopefully your villains have motivations, too, that sound reasonable to them, rather than just having them wander around aimlessly being evil at people. But the people milling around in the background? Who cares about them?
Well, you should. You created them for a reason, and even if they're literally only there for a single scene to contribute a single piece of needed info to your hero, they need lives outside the story. This might seem like a lot of hard work that nobody's going to see, and you might be right. BUT, that guy milling around in the background might turn out to be helpful to your hero at a crucial moment.
Remember that crowd of train passengers in Spider-Man 2 that Our Intrepid Hero nearly kills himself saving from Doctor Octopus? They came to his defense when Ock tried to finish him off because they saw that Spidey was "only a kid", like any of their own offspring. They didn't have much in the way of character development, but they helped the hero. They might have been listed in the credits as Bystander on Train #1 through #9 or whatever, but they had a reason to jump to his defense.
Now, unless you're writing a sweeping high fantasy epic or whatever, it's unlikely that you're going to break out in mass quantities of background characters. However, you do need to know who your named characters are, at least, in case you need an unexpected ally (or obstacle) for your hero at a key moment in your story.
Does this mean you need to provide a complete backstory for every single character who has even a walk-on part in your novel or short story? No, obviously not. That would be a lot of record-keeping, and a project you should only undertake if you're planning on lots and lots of ground-level world-building. Even then, just focus on a small handful of people in your fictional city of ten million, or you'll be so busy making characters that you'll never get to your story.
In conclusion, while the focus of your story should be on your main cast, don't neglect that background characters. Making sure that at least you know who they are beyond the context of the story will help you make them more rounded for the reader. Mapping out what secondary characters are doing while off-screen will also help you get them in the right place at the right time for some additional support for your main characters, and who knows? Heroic Bystander #2 might become a fan favorite as a result.
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