I've noticed a trend in YA of the "never good at anything" protagonist. And when I say trend, I mean it's in like every book I've ever read in YA. Well, maybe not EVERY book, but it's pretty damn prevalent. To the point that I roll my eyes when I read book descriptions that say something like "Swiggy Figglebottom wasn't very good at math/sports/ladies/basketweaving, but when a mysterious blue haired stranger showed up on his door and informed him he was the lost prince of Swiggy's Swag Palace, he found an awesome power that made him superly awesome and awesomely super."
And look, I get it. Kids want to be empowered, and most kids think of themselves as ordinary or no good at sports or whatever, and this is their escapism to be something great and amazing. It's inspirational and uplifting, and for some kids (like little JEM back in the day) it is a way to cope with the less than satisfying world around them. I'm definitely guilty of the same tropes in my own writing, and have crafted more than one story where some weird little forlorn girl in a seaside town is discovered as princess of the universe. So I realize the hypocrisy.
But what annoys me about this trend and the concept behind it is that it reinforces that someone really can be "worthless." That because you're not the star basketball player or head cheerleader or editor of the newspaper, you're nobody. That what you do, or what you're good at, is what defines your worth. Not who you are or how interesting you can be or how awesome your knowledge of trains is, but what you can demonstrate. And that's just not true. In fact, the most fascinating people in my life are not the ones who can jump the highest or fly planes (fine, ONE GIRL flies planes), but the ones who can keep me engaged in an interesting conversation. And it was the same in high school. I didn't collect my friends based on what they could do, I collected them based on how interesting I found them to be. Sometimes that translates into awesome skill sets, but sometimes it translates into perfectly ordinary skill sets. Luck of the draw.
My point here is that I'd like to see the genre move away from the Swiggy Figglebottoms into more complex characters. It's an easy out to write the characters who were terrible at everything until they drank the magic potion. I want characters who come from all walks of life, and who are interesting even if they can't shoot hoops or don't live in the rich neighborhoods. And sure, they can have a chip on their shoulder about it, but I don't want their lack to be what defines them.
I read a great piece of advice once (maybe Maggie Stiefvater?) about your characters: they shouldn't necessarily be who we are, they should be who we want to be. A kid who doesn't live on the right side of the tracks but can still hold his own with the rich kids without being a douche about it? I like him way more than Swiggy Figglebottom, and that's a character I would want to watch over 400 pages.
How do you feel about the "no good at anything" protag? Do you like this concept or are you fed up with it like me? What kinds of characters do you like to follow in the books you read?
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Monday, May 21, 2012
How do you capture ideas?
I think any creative type knows the drill: you're walking out to your car and inspiration hits. Or you're just about to hop in the shower when that scene you've been agonizing over finally crystallizes. Or worse yet, you're deep in revisions (dreaded, dreaded revisions) and a shiny new idea smacks you upside the head.
What do you do? Follow the rabbit down the hole and potentially write the next Hunger Games? Push the thought aside and focus on the task at hand and maybe lose your brilliant idea? Sit on the idea until it becomes something worth pursuing as it foments in the back of your mind? Or scribble it down and shove it in a file somewhere to come back to later?
Inspiration is a funny thing for me. When I first started writing, I would chase down every idea by writing it out until I couldn't think anything up anymore. What this translated to as a young writer (like, 10) was that I never finished anything. ANYTHING. In fact, the very first time I finished an entire manuscript, I was shocked that I'd actually finished something. Chasing down every idea left me scatterbrained and half finished, and that wasn't going to drive anything forward. I also never had time to practice craft because I was spending all of my time in that first feverish state of writing when you're willing to stay up until four in the morning just to capture a whisper in your mind.
So then for a while, I made myself focus. If an interesting scene or premise popped into my head while I was working on something, I set it aside and didn't follow up on it. My thought was if it was interesting enough to pursue in the future, it would stick around long enough to be told. I had the same approach to songwriting (back when I wrote songs); if a melody was good enough to be remembered, I would remember it without recording it. So of course, this meant I lost tons of ideas. Sometimes I'd have the perfect dialog exchange with myself in the car on the way home, and by the time I got around to writing it I couldn't remember half of what I'd said. So what I ended up with on the page was wooden and boring, a shadow of it's car self.
Which brings me to my current approach to capturing ideas. It's a flawed system, I'll admit that up front, and the hyper-efficient organization freak inside me wants a real system, but so far it's been a good blending of my two prior approaches. When inspirations strikes, whether I'm at the grocery store or sitting in front of my computer at work, I sit on it. I spin out the web of the story and look for ways that I could craft it into a full-fledged story (and not just a vague idea). If I hit a wall immediately, I know the idea was just that - a passing fancy in the wind. And I don't record it, because if I'm not even interested in following it down the rabbit hole for five minutes, I sure as hell won't be able to write and edit an entire manuscript about it. But if I can follow it for more than five or ten minutes, I'll open a new Word Doc (or Google Doc, depending), and write down everything I can think of.
This file is usually a mess of bullet pointed ideas, short snippets of scenes, character and location listings and their descriptions, and links to initial research if I need it (I'm into period pieces). I don't restrict myself on what I write, so long as I capture everything I thought of in conjunction with the idea. This helps me later on if I do eventually return to the story idea, because it's usually the cute/clever little details that I forget when I sit down later. Or, I solve my problem from the beginning and forget what I decided I would do.
And if I'm in the middle of something else, that's where the brainstorm ends. I don't let myself get sidetracked, I don't start writing from the beginning (I'm a very linear thinker and writer), I just capture the storm of ideas and then save them later for safe keeping. And if they're interesting enough to write about, I can't stop thinking about them until I have to go back. If they're not, I haven't wasted 50,000 words talking about them.
So how do you capture ideas? Where does inspiration strike you? Do you have a methodology that's more organized than mine (PLEASE share if you do)?
What do you do? Follow the rabbit down the hole and potentially write the next Hunger Games? Push the thought aside and focus on the task at hand and maybe lose your brilliant idea? Sit on the idea until it becomes something worth pursuing as it foments in the back of your mind? Or scribble it down and shove it in a file somewhere to come back to later?
Inspiration is a funny thing for me. When I first started writing, I would chase down every idea by writing it out until I couldn't think anything up anymore. What this translated to as a young writer (like, 10) was that I never finished anything. ANYTHING. In fact, the very first time I finished an entire manuscript, I was shocked that I'd actually finished something. Chasing down every idea left me scatterbrained and half finished, and that wasn't going to drive anything forward. I also never had time to practice craft because I was spending all of my time in that first feverish state of writing when you're willing to stay up until four in the morning just to capture a whisper in your mind.
So then for a while, I made myself focus. If an interesting scene or premise popped into my head while I was working on something, I set it aside and didn't follow up on it. My thought was if it was interesting enough to pursue in the future, it would stick around long enough to be told. I had the same approach to songwriting (back when I wrote songs); if a melody was good enough to be remembered, I would remember it without recording it. So of course, this meant I lost tons of ideas. Sometimes I'd have the perfect dialog exchange with myself in the car on the way home, and by the time I got around to writing it I couldn't remember half of what I'd said. So what I ended up with on the page was wooden and boring, a shadow of it's car self.
Which brings me to my current approach to capturing ideas. It's a flawed system, I'll admit that up front, and the hyper-efficient organization freak inside me wants a real system, but so far it's been a good blending of my two prior approaches. When inspirations strikes, whether I'm at the grocery store or sitting in front of my computer at work, I sit on it. I spin out the web of the story and look for ways that I could craft it into a full-fledged story (and not just a vague idea). If I hit a wall immediately, I know the idea was just that - a passing fancy in the wind. And I don't record it, because if I'm not even interested in following it down the rabbit hole for five minutes, I sure as hell won't be able to write and edit an entire manuscript about it. But if I can follow it for more than five or ten minutes, I'll open a new Word Doc (or Google Doc, depending), and write down everything I can think of.
This file is usually a mess of bullet pointed ideas, short snippets of scenes, character and location listings and their descriptions, and links to initial research if I need it (I'm into period pieces). I don't restrict myself on what I write, so long as I capture everything I thought of in conjunction with the idea. This helps me later on if I do eventually return to the story idea, because it's usually the cute/clever little details that I forget when I sit down later. Or, I solve my problem from the beginning and forget what I decided I would do.
And if I'm in the middle of something else, that's where the brainstorm ends. I don't let myself get sidetracked, I don't start writing from the beginning (I'm a very linear thinker and writer), I just capture the storm of ideas and then save them later for safe keeping. And if they're interesting enough to write about, I can't stop thinking about them until I have to go back. If they're not, I haven't wasted 50,000 words talking about them.
So how do you capture ideas? Where does inspiration strike you? Do you have a methodology that's more organized than mine (PLEASE share if you do)?
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Confession time
1) I have so many great blog post ideas rattling around my brain, but I don't have the time/brain space to dedicate to them. And so they sit in half-drafted form in my unpublished folder.
2) I don't understand fruit on the bottom yogurt. Why am I paying to mix my own yogurt? You mix it for me, I give you money, this is the transaction. I feel the same way about salads in restaurants, which is why I almost always order ceasar salad.
3) I've been avoiding editing my latest WIP. I've gone through a (great) critique session with my fellow critters and I have some wizzbang ideas for improving it, but I've been balking at actually making those changes. I don't know if it feels too overwhelming, or I don't feel like diving back into the story, or if I feel like I need to constantly be producing new material (or all of the above), but it's really starting to tick me off. With myself.
4) I've been trying to cut back on my coffee consumption. My second bowl of coffee this morning tells me it's not going well.
5) I've read a lot of mediocre YA novels recently. I'm obvs not going to name names, but I was surprised in each instance at how underwhelmed I was with the writing and storytelling. I still consider the YA genre to be groundbreaking, and a lot of my current favorite authors are writing in YA, but some of the ARCs I've read recently are suggesting to me we're hitting a saturation point with the genre. In a way it's good, because it means YA has come into its own as a genre, but it also makes me think production is prized over quality for some publishers.
Do you have anything to confess today?
2) I don't understand fruit on the bottom yogurt. Why am I paying to mix my own yogurt? You mix it for me, I give you money, this is the transaction. I feel the same way about salads in restaurants, which is why I almost always order ceasar salad.
3) I've been avoiding editing my latest WIP. I've gone through a (great) critique session with my fellow critters and I have some wizzbang ideas for improving it, but I've been balking at actually making those changes. I don't know if it feels too overwhelming, or I don't feel like diving back into the story, or if I feel like I need to constantly be producing new material (or all of the above), but it's really starting to tick me off. With myself.
4) I've been trying to cut back on my coffee consumption. My second bowl of coffee this morning tells me it's not going well.
5) I've read a lot of mediocre YA novels recently. I'm obvs not going to name names, but I was surprised in each instance at how underwhelmed I was with the writing and storytelling. I still consider the YA genre to be groundbreaking, and a lot of my current favorite authors are writing in YA, but some of the ARCs I've read recently are suggesting to me we're hitting a saturation point with the genre. In a way it's good, because it means YA has come into its own as a genre, but it also makes me think production is prized over quality for some publishers.
Do you have anything to confess today?
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Writing action scenes
I'm a big fan of action scenes in my writing. I write (mostly) adventure stories, and adventures involve all kinds of sword fights, ninja throw downs, tunnel chases, and booby traps. Writing action scenes is a whole different barrel of monkeys that often confuse people when they're first starting out.
I don't claim to be an expert on writing action scenes, but I've learned a lot about how to craft them through my writing classes and other helpful blogs, and in the spirit of charity I'd like to pass on those learnings to all you, my lovely readers.
Tips for writing whiz-bang action scenes (technical term)
I don't claim to be an expert on writing action scenes, but I've learned a lot about how to craft them through my writing classes and other helpful blogs, and in the spirit of charity I'd like to pass on those learnings to all you, my lovely readers.
Tips for writing whiz-bang action scenes (technical term)
- Keep voice out of the scene. That sounds counter-intuitive to every piece of advice you've ever read, but for action scenes it's true. Writing in action scenes should act like a window through which to view the physical, and a lot of times voice can break the tension or pacing of what's going on in the scene by reminding the reader that someone else (not them) is watching.
- Keep your word choice concise and your sentences short. Action is fast-paced and clipped, and your writing should be as well. This ties into the previous bullet point, but deserves to be called out as it's own point. If you think about a comma like a breath, when people are fighting for their lives they don't have a chance to take a breath, and neither should you as the writer.
- Stay focused. This isn't the place to wax poetic on the brutal nature of man, or focus on the vibrant foliage in the background. Set your scene up before the action starts so the reader is clear about where they are, what they're wearing, what weapons they have, and why they're fighting. Don't get distracted in details in the middle of someone swinging a sword.
- Think about your action like a movie. Action scenes are probably the closest a book gets to a movie, and the details need to be crisp and obvious enough that readers can visualize the action in their head. If you can't visualize it as the writer, the reader definitely can't visualize it when they're reading, which breaks tension.
- I have a special advantage in that I take martial arts classes, but they've taught me how to describe the physical in words that make sense. It's critical to know what descriptions make sense to most people.
- Consider your audience when making vocabulary choices. If they don't know what a mace or a stiletto or a rapier is, then make sure you make it clear what they are before they start fighting. You don't want someone thinking your character is throwing shoes in the middle of a castle dungeon.
What action scene tips can you share from your own writing?
Monday, April 9, 2012
Zombie dreams
I apparently have very vivid dreams. Having never experienced anyone else's dreams, I figured the way that I dream is par for the course for most people. But when I discuss my dreams with people, especially the more lucid ones (the ones where my house is a school that's not a house are a bit hard to explain), the person I'm talking to usually gets a weird, surprised gleam in his/her eye.
The partner-in-crime, delicate communicator that he is, had out with it Sunday night after I described my dream from the night before to him.
"Your dreams are so weird," he said to me.
"All dreams are weird," I replied.
"Yeah, but yours are really weird."
"Why?"
"Because they're so real."
Yes, he speaks in italics, and yes my dreams are very real. I often think of my dreams as mini movies, with complete story arcs and multiple characters and scenes. That really is how I dream most of the time. I've woken up from more than one dream with a story idea pre-prepared, and I keep a log of all of those story ideas for later exploration.
The funny thing to me, however, is that I usually dream in suspense movies. I am not a suspense/horror writer by day, but apparently all my creepy crawlies come out at night. The dream in question above, for instance, was about a zombie invasion. I'd been on the streets running from the zombies, but I actually lived in a high rise in New York. So I returned to my apartment building to get back to my apartment, thinking zombies wouldn't have made it to the 37th floor where I lived. In typical zombie fashion, it was hard to tell who was a normal person and who was a zombie in the making, and in fact the only way to really know was to hear them speak and make them recite something like a song or the Pledge of Allegiance (because zombies don't have memories, obvs).
The majority of the dream was me in an elevator. When I first entered the building, dodging zombies as I went, I plunged into the first open elevator in my haste. Only I didn't think to check which elevator bank it was, and I'd chosen an elevator that didn't actually go to my floor. The closest I could get to the 37th floor from my elevator was the 46th or 28th floor. And there began the suspense. People kept getting off and on, and every time someone joined the elevator group, I wondered. Zombie? Not zombie? Almost zombie? It was impossible to tell, because no one speaks on elevators, and we all watched each other in guarded silence. We would also pass floors where we could hear screaming for help through the doors, and you never knew if you would end up on one of those floors.
I finally got off the elevator on the 28th floor and resolved to take the stairs to my floor, but once I stepped off I realized how foolish it was to trap myself in the stairwell. It was probably crawling with zombies. I had just started to decide how to get back to an elevator that would take me to my floor when the p-i-c woke me up.
See? Movie dreams. Scary movie dreams. But the greatest thing about my movie dreams is that they give me insight into what scares me. Not what scares other people that also scares me, but what really, really scares me. Like zombies and body snatchers and dark roads at night. And when I need that scare effect for something I'm writing, I have an endless well of half-remembered dreams to tap into.
How do you dream? Do you use those dreams in your writing?
The partner-in-crime, delicate communicator that he is, had out with it Sunday night after I described my dream from the night before to him.
"Your dreams are so weird," he said to me.
"All dreams are weird," I replied.
"Yeah, but yours are really weird."
"Why?"
"Because they're so real."
Yes, he speaks in italics, and yes my dreams are very real. I often think of my dreams as mini movies, with complete story arcs and multiple characters and scenes. That really is how I dream most of the time. I've woken up from more than one dream with a story idea pre-prepared, and I keep a log of all of those story ideas for later exploration.
The funny thing to me, however, is that I usually dream in suspense movies. I am not a suspense/horror writer by day, but apparently all my creepy crawlies come out at night. The dream in question above, for instance, was about a zombie invasion. I'd been on the streets running from the zombies, but I actually lived in a high rise in New York. So I returned to my apartment building to get back to my apartment, thinking zombies wouldn't have made it to the 37th floor where I lived. In typical zombie fashion, it was hard to tell who was a normal person and who was a zombie in the making, and in fact the only way to really know was to hear them speak and make them recite something like a song or the Pledge of Allegiance (because zombies don't have memories, obvs).
The majority of the dream was me in an elevator. When I first entered the building, dodging zombies as I went, I plunged into the first open elevator in my haste. Only I didn't think to check which elevator bank it was, and I'd chosen an elevator that didn't actually go to my floor. The closest I could get to the 37th floor from my elevator was the 46th or 28th floor. And there began the suspense. People kept getting off and on, and every time someone joined the elevator group, I wondered. Zombie? Not zombie? Almost zombie? It was impossible to tell, because no one speaks on elevators, and we all watched each other in guarded silence. We would also pass floors where we could hear screaming for help through the doors, and you never knew if you would end up on one of those floors.
I finally got off the elevator on the 28th floor and resolved to take the stairs to my floor, but once I stepped off I realized how foolish it was to trap myself in the stairwell. It was probably crawling with zombies. I had just started to decide how to get back to an elevator that would take me to my floor when the p-i-c woke me up.
See? Movie dreams. Scary movie dreams. But the greatest thing about my movie dreams is that they give me insight into what scares me. Not what scares other people that also scares me, but what really, really scares me. Like zombies and body snatchers and dark roads at night. And when I need that scare effect for something I'm writing, I have an endless well of half-remembered dreams to tap into.
How do you dream? Do you use those dreams in your writing?
Friday, April 6, 2012
What I'm working on
I've been MIA from the hinterwebs lately, but not because I don't harbor a deep obsessive love for all of you. I've just been busy. Work stuff, family stuff, life stuff, writing stuff, it tends to get in the way of my internet time.
But that doesn't mean I'm not working hard. I've been focusing the last couple of weeks on building out my writing communities. I am between/in the beginning of several projects and not knee deep in revisions, so I've had some time to evaluate the last several years of writing and when I seemed to be the most productive. And what I've determined is that even though writing is a very solitary activity, being a writer doesn't have to be.
So I've started looking for writing organizations, groups, secret writers among friends, etc. And I'm building a physical presence of writers around me. Not that blogging isn't great (because it is), but having someone to sit down and chat with over a steaming mug of coffee before playing dueling computers is much more satisfying. And since I (eventually) want to make writing my career, I want to build out those communities now so I don't get lonely and depressed and eventually drink myself into a Hemingway.
What do you do to keep in contact with other writers? What organizations (national or local) would you recommend?
But that doesn't mean I'm not working hard. I've been focusing the last couple of weeks on building out my writing communities. I am between/in the beginning of several projects and not knee deep in revisions, so I've had some time to evaluate the last several years of writing and when I seemed to be the most productive. And what I've determined is that even though writing is a very solitary activity, being a writer doesn't have to be.
So I've started looking for writing organizations, groups, secret writers among friends, etc. And I'm building a physical presence of writers around me. Not that blogging isn't great (because it is), but having someone to sit down and chat with over a steaming mug of coffee before playing dueling computers is much more satisfying. And since I (eventually) want to make writing my career, I want to build out those communities now so I don't get lonely and depressed and eventually drink myself into a Hemingway.
What do you do to keep in contact with other writers? What organizations (national or local) would you recommend?
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Some things I've learned from reading historical romance
1) Women love men who lean against things, especially indolently.
2) I now have a healthy suspicion of heaving busoms, broad expanses of chests, and features chiseled from stone.
3) Women in the old days used to get almost raped A LOT. We probably should have come up with pepper spray a hell of a lot sooner.
4) A good 80% of my French vocabulary comes from dress descriptions in period novels.
5) Fiesty women with freckles were very much not the norm.
6) The ultimate way to prove your love to a man is to get knocked up before you're married.
7) For every brooding, handsome, rich devil out there, there is a witty but smaller brother.
8) Women who go out with their hair uncovered are risque, but women who let their breasts hang out in evening gowns are not.
9) Everyone in the past had awesome colored eyes.
10) Aunts and uncles of girls with trust funds were greedy bastards.
What have YOU learned from your genre of choice?
2) I now have a healthy suspicion of heaving busoms, broad expanses of chests, and features chiseled from stone.
3) Women in the old days used to get almost raped A LOT. We probably should have come up with pepper spray a hell of a lot sooner.
4) A good 80% of my French vocabulary comes from dress descriptions in period novels.
5) Fiesty women with freckles were very much not the norm.
6) The ultimate way to prove your love to a man is to get knocked up before you're married.
7) For every brooding, handsome, rich devil out there, there is a witty but smaller brother.
8) Women who go out with their hair uncovered are risque, but women who let their breasts hang out in evening gowns are not.
9) Everyone in the past had awesome colored eyes.
10) Aunts and uncles of girls with trust funds were greedy bastards.
What have YOU learned from your genre of choice?
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
My thought for the day
There is nothing quite so satisfying as determining the perfect word to express your intentions.
Back to the cave with me.
Back to the cave with me.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Giving your characters intimate moments
I have a tendency as a storyteller to focus on the story and not the characters. Sometimes this works out fine, because the characters are so clear to me that I don't really have to think about their backstory. It just kind of exists, and influences their behaviors without me analyzing it too much.
Oh to be so easy, right?
Well, that's not the case with my current WIP. The story is there, the action and twists and turns are all coming together quite nicely. And the characterization is there, but it's not always solid. My MC is the victim of the story, carried along by what she needs to do instead of what she would do. As my crit partner put it, "I can clearly see her now, but I can't see her how she was before this story started."
Part of this comes from having too much action without enough quiet moments. Quiet moments allow a reader to get familiar with a character outside of the story. Readers aren't distracted from learning new info or following action, they're just hanging out in a private moment with your character. And as we all know from our shower conversations with ourselves, private moments bring about unguarded actions that reveal us more than anything else.
Sometimes this comes in the form of quirks. Maybe your character talks to himself when he's alone, or sings show tunes, or cries when there's no one around to see him in a moment of weakness. Sometimes it's an action or behavior so ingrained they're not conscious of it, but it speaks volumes to the reader.
For example, the MC in my current WIP is an archer. In one scene, she's stuck between a rock and a hard place (literally) and needs a moment to plan. As she debates her decision, she strokes the fletching on her arrow. This services the scene on two levels: on the most immediate level, we see her nervousness in the habit. And the action speaks more about her nerves and internal prep than me as the author just saying "she was nervous and preparing for the next step."
But on the higher level, the reader sees it as a habit. It's a reminder: she's done this before. She knows to check the fletching for breaks, it's an action ingrained in her since she first learned how to shoot. She's probably done it hundreds of times before, in moments just like these, and suddenly we have an insight into her past. If she's been around arrows enough to pick this up as a nervous habit, then archery must be important to her life. It must have served a large role in her childhood, which naturally leads to more questions. Why? For how long? What else did it influence? And so on.
The moral of the story here is to give your character intimate moments with the reader. When you find those quiet scenes between actions, use them to build up the rapport between your character and your reader. These moments are insight into the MC's true personality, and allow you to share back story through their actions without info dumping on your reader.
How do you like to use your character's personal moments?
Oh to be so easy, right?
Well, that's not the case with my current WIP. The story is there, the action and twists and turns are all coming together quite nicely. And the characterization is there, but it's not always solid. My MC is the victim of the story, carried along by what she needs to do instead of what she would do. As my crit partner put it, "I can clearly see her now, but I can't see her how she was before this story started."
Part of this comes from having too much action without enough quiet moments. Quiet moments allow a reader to get familiar with a character outside of the story. Readers aren't distracted from learning new info or following action, they're just hanging out in a private moment with your character. And as we all know from our shower conversations with ourselves, private moments bring about unguarded actions that reveal us more than anything else.
Sometimes this comes in the form of quirks. Maybe your character talks to himself when he's alone, or sings show tunes, or cries when there's no one around to see him in a moment of weakness. Sometimes it's an action or behavior so ingrained they're not conscious of it, but it speaks volumes to the reader.
For example, the MC in my current WIP is an archer. In one scene, she's stuck between a rock and a hard place (literally) and needs a moment to plan. As she debates her decision, she strokes the fletching on her arrow. This services the scene on two levels: on the most immediate level, we see her nervousness in the habit. And the action speaks more about her nerves and internal prep than me as the author just saying "she was nervous and preparing for the next step."
But on the higher level, the reader sees it as a habit. It's a reminder: she's done this before. She knows to check the fletching for breaks, it's an action ingrained in her since she first learned how to shoot. She's probably done it hundreds of times before, in moments just like these, and suddenly we have an insight into her past. If she's been around arrows enough to pick this up as a nervous habit, then archery must be important to her life. It must have served a large role in her childhood, which naturally leads to more questions. Why? For how long? What else did it influence? And so on.
The moral of the story here is to give your character intimate moments with the reader. When you find those quiet scenes between actions, use them to build up the rapport between your character and your reader. These moments are insight into the MC's true personality, and allow you to share back story through their actions without info dumping on your reader.
How do you like to use your character's personal moments?
Monday, February 6, 2012
The benefits of spilling your secrets
I like to tell people I would do great in a zombie apocalypse because I have the hoarding mentality of the Great Depression. Maybe it's the fact I grew up poor, maybe it's the fact that I'm only slightly less selfish than a 2 year old with a My Little Pony collection, or maybe it's just part and parcel of my personality. I save new clothes for months before wearing them, I hide sugar packets in my desk in case we run out at work, and I hide my favorite foods in the cupboard so the partner-in-crime doesn't get to them before I do.
As a writer, this has translated to hoarding secrets. At first I thought I was saving the conflict for the climax. You know, Pedro can't find out Martha is really his daughter until 250 pages in. That big of a secret, you need to hoard it, right? Because if you give up all your good secrets at the beginning, you'll have no story left to end the damn thing.
What I really found out was that I was being lazy and protecting myself from actually having to work for something. Keeping that secret for 17 chapters meant nothing happened. People ate dinner, walked from one room to the other, but nothing really momentous occurred because I was waiting. As a result, my middles dragged and my climaxes were obvious from a dozen chapters off.
So this go round, I issued myself a challenge. When you have a secret, share it. Anytime something occurred to me - Martha is Pedro's DAUGHTER - I had to reveal it. Maybe not to the characters themselves, but to the reader. Because tension lies in the divide between the reader's knowledge and the character's knowledge. If the reader knows Martha is Pedro's daughter, but Pedro doesn't know it, we have tension.
And in the end, books are just secrets we're waiting to reveal. All stories are a string of revealed secrets, and we as the reader keep reading to find out what they are. What will happen when Pedro finds out? What does Martha want? Why didn't Pedro know Martha was his daughter in the first place? Secrets.
So my challenge to you: when you have a secret, spill it. You might be scared that you'll run out of secrets like I was, but what you'll find instead is that more secrets rise up through the cracks to answer the questions behind the secret you revealed before. And the climax you end up with is so much greater than what you started with, because you had to think harder to top yourself. And that's entertainment, my friends.
As a writer, this has translated to hoarding secrets. At first I thought I was saving the conflict for the climax. You know, Pedro can't find out Martha is really his daughter until 250 pages in. That big of a secret, you need to hoard it, right? Because if you give up all your good secrets at the beginning, you'll have no story left to end the damn thing.
What I really found out was that I was being lazy and protecting myself from actually having to work for something. Keeping that secret for 17 chapters meant nothing happened. People ate dinner, walked from one room to the other, but nothing really momentous occurred because I was waiting. As a result, my middles dragged and my climaxes were obvious from a dozen chapters off.
So this go round, I issued myself a challenge. When you have a secret, share it. Anytime something occurred to me - Martha is Pedro's DAUGHTER - I had to reveal it. Maybe not to the characters themselves, but to the reader. Because tension lies in the divide between the reader's knowledge and the character's knowledge. If the reader knows Martha is Pedro's daughter, but Pedro doesn't know it, we have tension.
And in the end, books are just secrets we're waiting to reveal. All stories are a string of revealed secrets, and we as the reader keep reading to find out what they are. What will happen when Pedro finds out? What does Martha want? Why didn't Pedro know Martha was his daughter in the first place? Secrets.
So my challenge to you: when you have a secret, spill it. You might be scared that you'll run out of secrets like I was, but what you'll find instead is that more secrets rise up through the cracks to answer the questions behind the secret you revealed before. And the climax you end up with is so much greater than what you started with, because you had to think harder to top yourself. And that's entertainment, my friends.
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