Category Archives: Writings about Writing

Thoughts and tips about the craft

World Building, part 1

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Setting is important, to one degree or another, in just about any work of fiction. But the genres of fantasy and sci-fi need something a bit heftier than a mere setting of the scene. In this post and the next one, I’m going to cover a few basics of the specific sort of scene-setting known as world-building.

In the genres of fantasy and science fiction, basically anything goes. But even in these and related genres (dystopian, paranormal, etc), there are guidelines that should be followed for the story to hold together and be convincing.

A fantasy world does not have to be “realistic” in the sense that it resembles our own world, but it should have its own set of rules, and things that happen in that world need to happen in accordance with these rules.

Inaccuracy or inconsistency of details are things that savvy readers will notice. Sci-fi and fantasy readers especially can be a nit-picking, detail-oriented bunch (or, at least, I am. And I’m sure I’m not the only one).

1. Natural Laws

Gravity, weather, the day-night cycle, the behavior of animals in their native environments—nature follows a set of laws in our world, and in a fantasy world it should do the same.

Let’s say your sci-fi story is about human colonists on a planet that orbits very close to its sun, so the surface temperature is hot enough to liquefy steel in minutes. If their space ships can barely survive long enough to land and take off again, then a lone human parading around in a space suit isn’t going to fare any better.

Are the humans’ colonies deep underground? Do they live in mobile cities that travel at the same rate as the planet’s rotation, so they always stay on the cooler night side of the planet? Even though the story is not “realistic” in the sense that it’s our world here and now, it needs to be realistic in that setting.

2. Cultural Laws

This one gives the writer more leeway than natural laws, in my opinion. You can set up your culture of fairies or aliens or gothic kingdoms any way you want. Religion, clothing, dinner table customs—go nuts and be creative! The most important thing about cultural laws is making these traditions laws within the story, and sticking to it.

In The Silver Chair (of The Chronicles of Narnia), when the main characters are eating dinner at the giants’ mansion, it’s revealed that the venison served had been a Talking Stag. Killing (and especially eating) a Talking animal amounts to murder of the highest degree in Narnian culture. The giants’ complete disregard for this cultural law makes them an abomination to the Narnians.

In several of the Narnia books, the subject of killing a Talking animal—even in self defense—is mentioned. The consistency of this cultural law throughout the series adds depth and believability to the world.

3. Avoid Deus ex machina

This is the “move of God,” or a surprise ending where an unexpected superpower sweeps in and miraculously fixes everything. Deus ex machina can occur in any genre, but fantasy and sci-fi can be particularly susceptible.

If your urban fantasy story is about clan warfare between different vampire clans in the city, and you’ve written yourself into a corner where the only way to stop the war is to sacrifice the main character, you have one of three options.

You can kill off the main character, and pull at your readers’ heartstrings (or possibly incur their wrath). You can go back and do some major rewriting, so that the tension and drama and resolving of the conflict challenges the main character but doesn’t kill him. Or, you can have some aliens abduct the rival clan and take them to another planet, thus halting the war.

That third option would be a Deus ex machina, and should be avoided at all costs. If aliens are already part of the story, or have been hinted at and foreshadowed effectively, then maybe you could get away with that sort of ending. But if the story is about vampires, humans, and more vampires, then suddenly bringing in aliens to solve the problem cheapens the story and confuses the readers.

I’ll continue this list next week. Any thoughts about these world building tips? Any dos or don’ts you’d like to add?

NaNoWriMo

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NaNoWriMo is two weeks away. What is NaNoWriMo, you ask? If you’ve been around the writing scene for any length of time, you probably know that it’s National Novel Writing Month.

Every November, writers from all walks of life sit down to write 50,000 words (basically a short novel). The idea is not to have a polished masterpiece ready for publication, but to just simply write.

As much as I’ve written over the course of my life, I’ve never participated in NaNoWriMo before. I’ve seen it all over Twitter and Facebook every fall, and my writer friends talk about how fantastic it is.

So this year, I’ve decided to do it. I’ve signed up on the NaNoWriMo site. I’m reading all the blogs and Twitter tips about how to get organized before I start, how to prepare my mind and my desk for this month-long writing blast.

Will this help me to manage my time and my writing throughout November? I don’t know. Can I come even close to pounding out 50,000 words in 30 days? No idea. Will it be challenging? I’m sure. Fun? I hope so.

If you’d like to join me in this endeavor, you can go to the NaNoWriMo website to check it out. If you’d rather just watch my progress (while either cheering me or shaking your head in disgust), stayed tuned to my Twitter feed during November. If you’d rather just ignore the whole big mess, feel free to do that too!

By November 30th, I might join with those who have been shaking their heads in disgust! Or, I might have the rough draft of book two of my fantasy trilogy finished. Time will tell!

Any veteran NaNos out there? Any newbies? Are you excited about the idea of writing a novel in 30 days, or scared stiff by it? Please share!

The Awesome Idea

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Everything that’s ever been created or ever will be created starts with a thought.

Sometimes this idea starts like a tiny seed—just one small unassuming thought that grows and develops into a full-blown Awesome Idea.

Other times, the Awesome Idea hits full grown and the one doing the thinking is bowled over by the intensity of the beginning, middle, end, and solution all wrapped up in one package all at once.

I’ve had story ideas come to me both ways. Sometimes I’m inspired to write because I get the whole plot—or at least the rough outline—all at once. Even this full-grown Awesome Idea gets built upon, of course, as I write it down. (I have yet to think up a whole story—complete with every word in place, dialogue tags done, no mistakes—without actually writing it down first. Now that would be an Awesome Idea indeed).

But usually, the Awesome Idea for a story comes to me in bits and pieces, and I have a lot of work to do before I have something that’s concrete enough to even begin writing it down. A character, a loose concept, one word or one line, an image or a musical phrase that captures my mind—these little disconnected flitting thoughts are usually what I begin with. Then comes brainstorming, building, experimenting with combining two or more of these disconnected ideas to see if they could gel together to begin growing into the Awesome Idea.

For my current project, I can actually trace the Awesome Idea that is the trilogy I’m writing (hopefully it’s awesome!) to one exact moment, one specific kernel of an idea. It’s grown and changed, of course, and went from a stand-alone book to a trilogy. The setting moved from Russia to Finland, and my one main character was joined by a sizable supporting cast.

But it all began when I was watching a movie called Kautokeino-Opprøret (a Norwegian film; the title translates as The Kautokeino Rebellion). The movie is based on the true story of a revolt by indigenous Sami people against the encroaching government, in a remote village in Norway in the 19th century. There’s one scene where the Sami are combining their separate herds of reindeer into one giant herd, to prevent one particular woman’s reindeer from being taken by the government in payment for a fine.

A line popped into my head: what if an entire herd of reindeer just vanished? And thus was born The Vanished Reindeer, the first novel of my trilogy. I then enhanced that core of an idea with a small dose of Finnish mythology and a large dose of fantasy.

Just a reminder: I’m talking about the birth of an Awesome Idea. The final product—my novel—has absolutely nothing to do with the Norwegian movie, is not based on a true story, and is not intended to be a commentary about indigenous peoples or governments. But that’s where it started.

I’d love to hear your thoughts! Writers, artists, musicians, and creators out there—how do your Awesome Ideas develop?

Music video/trailer for Kautokeino-Opprøret, music by Sami singer Mari Boine:

Characters are real people, too – part 2

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A while ago, I did a post with tips on writing well-rounded characters. I decided to follow that up with another post, featuring three more tips on how to flesh out your characters and make them just like real people. We are all more than the sum of our parts, and your characters should be, too.

1. What’s the motivation?

There’s always a why behind the what. Nobody does anything for just “no reason,” even if it seems like it at the time. Even something as innocuous as stopping for ice cream on the way home from work just on a whim has a motivation—you wanted ice cream more than you wanted to get home in a hurry.

Where the plot of a story is concerned, character motivation is a very important feature. Actually, I could devote an entire blog post to this (and many talented writers have already done so). But in short, your characters, major and minor, have a reason for doing what they do. The decisions that characters make is the main thing that drives the plot.

For an example, I’ll use Dumbledore and Snape from the Harry Potter series. (I must insert a quick confession: I’ve actually read only the first three books. But assuming that the movies were at least slightly accurate to the books, I feel comfortable in using these characters for this particular point).

Both Dumbledore and Snape spend the series protecting Harry. They go about in radically different ways, and that stems primarily from their motivation. The end goal for both men is the same: protect Harry. The reason? So that he can defeat Voldemort. But each man has a very different personal motivation for devoting the rest of his life to protect the boy who lived. Just in case you haven’t read the books or seen the movies, I won’t give away all the details; but it’s apparent right from the beginning that Dumbledore and Snape have very different motivations for everything that they do.

2. Challenges and struggles hit everyone

This can be related to motivation, because the way that character responds to challenges and struggles is what makes a plot. A story with characters who never go through troubles, never get stretched or challenged, and make no decisions because they have no motivation, is not a story at all.

There are basically two types of challenges (in stories and in real life): self-imposed struggles, and externally-imposed struggles. A story about a man who loses his wife could be told in many ways: did he lose his wife because of his stupid financial decisions and his refusal to curb his temper (self-imposed struggle), or because his wife was killed in a plane crash (externally-imposed struggle)?

In the His Dark Materials series by Phillip Pullman, the characters all become involved in the plot in different ways. Lee Scoresby finds himself involved in a multi-world war (the struggle) simply by doing a quick helpful deed for a strange little girl (his motivation—kindness and a desire to help out someone in a rough spot).

The character of Will Parry becomes involved in the war (the struggle) because he is on a quest to find his father and will stop at nothing to get answers (his motivation). Because the motivations of these characters is different, they respond to the various challenges and struggles in different ways. They also are faced with their own set of individual struggles (some self-imposed, especially on the part of Will), apart from the war that is the overall plot of the series.

3. Whose head are we in, anyway?

This is sort of a point of view tip (which I blogged about here). But as it relates to characters, the point of view or perspective can be used as a tool for the development of characters. If a story is being told in first person (narrated by I) or limited third person (he or she) then the reader can learn about the character’s quirks, faults, motivations, and decisions through interior monologue as well as external actions.

Characters who are not narrators of the story can only be developed through their actions and dialogue, as presented by the narrating characters. This doesn’t mean that non-point of view characters are flat or lacking some way—it just means that the author must chose a different way to develop the character.

I could use most any story for this example, but I’m going to use Ruse, a short-lived comic book series that probably few people have heard of or read. It was a Sherlock Holmes-esque sleuthing story, set in a steampunk Victorian world. The two main characters are Simon—the detective, and Emma—his assistant and the narrator of the story.

Even though the story is told from Emma’s point of view, complete with her inner musings about Simon, the two characters develop equally well throughout the series. Simon is a well-rounded character because of all of the points that I’ve covered in both of these posts—his quirks, his strengths and weaknesses, his motivations, his response to struggles. Emma’s thoughts about Simon contribute to this, because she is constantly second-guessing him and wondering about his actions.

As a narrator, Emma shares her thoughts with the reader—but not every thought. She has secrets of her own, which Simon often figures out just as fast as the reader does. Simon has secrets too, and towards the end of the series, the reader feels that they know Simon perhaps better than Emma does—specifically because of her inaccurate interpretations of his actions and motivations.

Emma’s quirks, weaknesses, and motivations are revealed as she reluctantly divulges bits and parts of her secrets to Simon (and the reader). Simon’s quirks, weakness, and motivations are revealed as Emma interprets them through her own personal filter. The writer(s) of this series used this limited point of view narration to develop two very strong characters in two very different ways.

Please share your thoughts! Any other tips or ideas about developing three-dimensional characters?

Season of Change

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This past weekend was the autumnal equinox. Fall is here—my favorite season.

Even though I’m a fan of winter, where I live, we don’t really have winter. Some winters it gets below freezing, some winters we have several inches of snow and loads of ice, some winters we can keep the windows open all the time because it never gets cold. I’d be a bigger fan of winter if I actually lived somewhere that had winter beauty and winter sports.

But anyway, fall is here now, and it’s my favorite season for many reasons. First and foremost, the weather starts getting cooler. Days when the air is dry and so it’s warm in the sun and cool in the shade, and nights when you need a jacket–I love it.

Apple cider and bonfires on chilly nights. Crunching on acorn caps on the sidewalk. Standing under a tree waiting for a breeze to blow a shower of colored leaves down.

Like spring, fall is a season of change. Summer disappears suddenly and everything about the world becomes different. Some might see fall as a season of death or of going to sleep, as trees become bare and the hours of sunlight grow shorter.

But I see it as a bringer of joy. The fall brings the harvest–apples, pumpkins, squash, and many other things that we have waited patiently all summer to receive. Longer dark nights means more time for looking at the stars. And after autumn comes winter, with its many celebrations, like Christmas.

To me, this season of change often is a turning point in my mind for making changes in my personal life. Of course I make resolutions at the new year. And any time is a fine time to set a new goal or start a new habit. But with change literally in the air all around, in the fall I feel prompted to reevaluate myself.

What did I accomplish in the past nine months? What can I do with the 1/4 of a year that’s left to me to achieve some of the resolutions I’d set back in January? Has the quality of my writing improved? Have I been meeting my daily or weekly writing goals and being disciplined with my writing time? Did I find a critique partner like I said I would? I wanted to read a certain number of books this year–am I on track for that?

If you’re a writer, these questions may resonate with you. If you’re not a writer, I think they still apply. There are about three months left in this year. How close are you to accomplishing your 2012 New Year’s resolutions? Have you hit your goals already? Then celebrate! Are you so far behind that you’re thinking why bother to get started now? Get started anyway! You might surprise yourself.

Share your thoughts! Do you have any changes you’re making in your life? This year isn’t over yet!