getting to know your characters

I've always been in awe of how one of my favorite authors Dostoevsky orchestrates such large casts of characters whose voices are distinct and constant (except when he intends to have them break their character mold, which they often do for various motives) and whose personalities can become as real and close to you as your own familys' and friends'.  Give him just one, two or three characters to work with, and he manages to go deeper than you ever wanted into their every crevice.  Your characters were not built in a day.  Remember that they have years of experiences, aspirations, traumas, etc. behind them.  Even if they're brand new, there's history in the world they live and the generations of shoulders they're standing on.

I've heard a number of ways to get to know who it is you are writing through, and about, in your story.  Of course, there is a plethora of inspiration in the real-life characters all around us.  We can draw from our own individual characteristics in different phases of our life.  Often our characters will be a similitude or mish-mash or an extreme version of people we know in real life, or wished we knew, or wished we didn't know...

Last night, our fearless leader Paul mentioned going through a hypothetical interview with each character, asking them questions and thinking of what they would answer, to get a sense for the voice of the characters.  I wondered why I had never taken this idea to paper, as I'm always thinking more about characterization and character development than of plot. (An important side note: remember that setting can also be treated as a character in itself that changes depending on whose point of view we are seeing through.  Setting has been described as simply the opinion of a character of where he/she is.)

Admittedly, some weak points of mine (somewhat uncharted territory for me), are dialogue and showing rather than telling.  Telling is easier.  There are times when telling is appropriate and necessary.  It's also usually a lot more boring, when it comes to knowing a person.  In this, I have to challenge myself to write longer, write more, to illustrate who this person is through examples of how they respond to life, rather than omnisciently splurging their hopes/dreams/fears and attitudes right away.

Putting it to paper.

      There are many ways a person can write a story.  There is no proper way or way that it has to be done.  Writing just more or less happens.
      I've found that the style I use best is the form in which you map it out first, find out where I'm going with the story before writing too much.  I started out with the 'write by the seat of your pants' style.  I couldn't figure out how I wanted to start my book so I started somewhere in the middle and just kept writing.
It wasn't until I took History of Theater in college that I figured out that I could start my book in the middle of the story.  The professor shared that when you watch a play you are witnessing a snippet of the character's whole story.  What he meant was that you weren't watching the character's entire life ie: birth, childhood, adolescence, and so forth.  So what you are seeing is the portion of the character's life pertinent to story of the play.
      Once I learned that, I decided that I would use what I've written as the beginning of my book.  From there I realized that I wasn't sure where I wanted the story to go.  Some writers are okay with that and it's fine.  My writer's blocks tend to deal with me not writing because I don't know what is going to happen in my story.
So my method is the story boarding style.  I have several white boards that I map the whole plot line of my book out on.  These plot points are not set in stone and I have changed them as I've gotten feedback and found out some plot points are weak or irrelevant to the story or characters.  You just can't set it in stone.  That will limit you too much, especially if your story takes a turn you hadn't anticipated earlier (which happens quite often).
      When I actual go to write, I pick a plot point that I feel like I can tease out into a scene.  It might be a large scene that is several pages in length or it could end up being only half a page just so I get the plot element into the story.  Once I'm done writing it down and typing it up, I go back to my white board and update the point with a little more elaboration so that when I go back to look at the board later I can remember easier how I expanded it.
      I am very visual with my planning.  I've drawn maps of the areas my characters have gone so that I can describe them better in the book.  When creating a new world it helps to remember where all your landmarks are in relation to each other.  Or while writing the second book of my series, I realized that I had a hard time remembering where certain characters were in their own story lines, relative to each other.  So I took one of my white boards and drew out a timeline for each character.  One time line above the other so that when I plotted the points of the timeline for each character, the points then showed, in more readily available format, where each character was.
     I'm not saying this is the best way to write a story, and I'm sure it doesn't work for everyone.  This is the way I set it up though and it keeps me on track.  That being said, I'm always curious about other writer's methods and ways I can try differently to keep the creativity flowing.

The Ending of Mass Effect

(If you haven't finished the game I apologize there are some SPOILERS in this discussion)

There has been this huge discussion about the recently released game Mass Effect 3.  It was a huge hit with game critics and an absolute turn down for players.  The biggest reason being the ending of the game.

I have played it through once and seen the possible endings of the game afterward from people recording their choices on YouTube.  While there are a lot of holes in the endings, particularly pertaining to the scene with the Normandy flying between Mass Relays, there is something that a lot of the people who played the Mass Effect line have left out.  The fact that not every story has a completely happy ending.

I felt fine with my choice and the end of the game.  With a series so immense as the Mass Effect series is, to accommodate for all the choices a player could have chosen while playing would have been astronomical.  But the true fact of the matter is, it is the writers of the story that have planned out what ending it will ultimately be.  The fact that the writers left an Easter egg at the end of one of the choices just means that that ending was the one they had planned the whole time.    Not to mention the possibility for future games and spin offs.  

Yes, I know that the game was made to shape the galaxy into how the player wanted to, like deciding which species gets to live and which doesn't or who you want to befriend or not.  But its similar to the saying, "you can't bring money with you".  Meaning that you can't take money with you through the grave.  So whatever you do in the game will ultimately not matter at the end because the threat you have to face at the end will either destroy you or leave you limping and bleeding afterwards.  Yes, limping and bleeding is better than being dead but what I'm saying is even if you've won you still had the crap beat out of you.

As many of the players who really looked into the game, aside from playing it through to romance some alien chick or shoot up space meanies, should know from the Star Trek franchise that there is sometimes a no win situation.  So when Shepard dies at the end and strands the massive fleet he brought with him to Earth that is a no win situation.  Yeah, the threat to the galaxy is gone but sacrifices had to be made to do so.  That's what Admiral Hackett had been saying for the entire game.

You may say you hate the ending of the series but what you're not seeing is that the writers did exactly what writers are supposed to do.  Draw out your emotions and feelings so that they can be felt by you and, if they can pull it off, those around you as well.  What the players are kicking and screaming about is that they didn't get a 'Hollywood Ending'.  Not every story has a 'Hollywood Ending' and that's great. Not having happy endings is something that people remember.

All of this is not to say that writers shouldn't take into consideration what their audience feels.  If they didn't, they would get lazy.  As we've all seen with absurd amount of remakes and reboots of older movies coming out of Hollywood.  If writers didn't take their audiences' views into consideration the literary world would dissolve into too few actually creative books.  Much like what is coming out of Hollywood.  This point may not be pointed at the writers as much as producers not willing to put out movies that are original either way there has to be new ideas to promote growth.  But back to my main point.  What I'm saying is that even though a story is the work of a writer, the writer still writes the story so that other people will read it.  There has to be a trust for the writers to write something that will move the audience, whether to make them happy or sad or even angry, and an understanding that if something is written with an upsetting ending that it will still be well written and not just a cop out.

The true worth of silly stuff

This blog is the joint product of a writers group. Which probably leads you, the reader, to ask: What does a writers group do? Good question.

If you ask members of 50 different writers groups what their group does for them, you’ll probably get more than 50 answers. I base this prediction in part on the knowledge that people differ in what they want from such a group, and in part on my own inability to give the same answer as to what our group does twice in a row.

I enjoy the somewhat free-form aspects of our writers group meetings and our twin focus on encouraging each other and doing 3-5 minute writing exercises. I’d never done these before I joined this group. If you haven’t, all I can say is, it’s kinda the writer’s version of speed-dating, but way more fun. 

For instance, one week one of the prompts had us incorporating the following list of random words into a story: acolyte, tiddlywinks, pickles, galaxy, is, razor. Here’s what I came up with:

Here we sit on the razor edge of the galaxy, where time is slowed by the speed of our rotation, playing tiddlywinks with data chips for the treat of winning one of the few remaining pickles from ships' stores.

Who knew how delightful a pickle could be after months of vitamin drinks, yeast-protein and various processed starches? We, the acolytes of the religion of galactic exploration, had outrun our supply lines in our enthusiasm for discovery. Which might not have mattered except that the Frangle drive broke down.

Or the week we played around with writing prompts about endings. The first was to write the end of a dialog. So I did this to the closing lines of Hamlet…

"We need to get a script together NOW for our next project, you know," said Tim. 

"Yeah, " said Harry, "but the three kings theme has been done to death, and so has the play within a play format." 

"True," said Tim. "Even Star Trek did that one, with Shakespearean actors putting on their play on the Enterprise as subtext for the plot." 

"OK," said Rafe, "so, how about a classic murder mystery?" 

"BO-ring," said Tim. 

"Maybe an overthrow of government with romantic overtones," said Harry. 

"Oh, yeah, set in space," said Tim. 

"Umm, isn't that Star Wars?" 

"Don't be a killjoy, Rafe," said Harry. 

Tim chimed in. "We could have the protagonist die at the end." 

"Hmm," said Rafe, “I guess I could work with that. But no little talking teddy bears." 

Harry grinned. "How about rainbow pastel ponies?" 

"Now cracks a noble heart," said Rafe 

"Good night sweet prince," caroled Tim. 

Harry joined in. "... and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest." 

Rafe raised his notebook and cracked Harry over the head. 

Harry ducked and yelped, "Why does the drum come hither?"

  

But the followup prompt that week was to write about the end of everything, which really ups the ante.

Everything the priests told us was wrong. The poets came much closer with their talk of destruction by fire and ice, but that's only because anything this ... universal ... fits poetry better than plain prose. And fiction seems more plausible than the entropic death of the universe. 

Well, the universe may have millenia or even eons left before that time but our corner of it will come to an end soon enough. The larger star of this binary system, about which this planet orbits, shows daily greater instabilities, surface and subsurface. 

So tonight, the interstellar research institute sends this message out, both broadcast and engraved on the inner skin of a rocket. I'm not sure why, but someone might find it.
 

These things crack me up, but more than that, I look back on them amazed that they came out of my brain. Turns out, having to write something on a totally random subject can produce unprecedented subjects & styles. The other amazing thing is how completely different each writer's speed-writing efforts can be. As we read them aloud around the table, we run the gamut from mystery and suspense through scifi/fantasy, humor and romance to bad puns. Maybe some week we'll gather a sampling of just how different the writing-prompt products of different writers can be and post them here.

The Multiple Perspective Approach

There are various ways to write a book, and they all have their advantages and disadvantages.

For instance, a first-person perspective book is great for character development but the problem, as I see it, is that that is the only way a writer can show things happening in the story.  It seems to me that characters end up hearing things or being present to events almost haphazardly.  I know there are writers who do this well and can pull it off amazingly, but that's the case with all writing.  Some authors can pull off writing styles amazingly.

The omniscient third person where the narrator can tell the reader everything they need to know about the character the first time the character is introduced.  This makes it easier to describe things that happen that are pertinent to the story without forcing, in some manner, the main character to be there.  The drawback to this style is that it tends to give too much away to the reader.  Some readers like this, of course, because some people like to know what's going to happen or they enjoy the feeling of what I like to refer to as 'Game Show Syndrome'.  What I mean by that is, when someone watches a game show and they know the answer but the person on the screen doesn't, they sit there yelling the answer at the person even though they can't hear them.  This same thing happens with books and movies.  The classic of course being, "Don't open that door!"

There are many other ways to write than the two I listed above but those are two common ones.

The perspective I use and personally love is the multiple perspectives.  This approach still is kind of a meshing to some of the others.  It allows the writer to still be able to draw the reader in and influence their opinion of the character while allowing the freedom to show things happening in other parts of the story that may still be important to the overall story.  If done well, the story will come together and mesh well while still providing some good intrigue.  If done poorly, like when I first started writing my story, all the characters just end up seeming like the same person or different character attributes of the same person.   To me it seems that using more than one main character allows the writer to toy with the reader's emotions and get them to second guess who the 'bad guy' is in the different character relationships.

About my first book.

   I realize in my last post I spoke of my book, He Came Around the Corner, and that was the first mention of it anywhere.
   So who cares?
   Well the hope for all writers is that people will care when they write a book and I, like most writers, write to influence those around me.  The purpose of writing is not always to make someone think about something profound and philosophical, although that is sometimes the case, particularly with some classic novels.  Sometimes writers will write just to make the reader feel enjoyment from what they read.  This is why I write.
   The funny thing about writing fiction is even though books are put into archetypes, they will often fit other archetypes as well.  For instance, a mystery novel could have a strong romance element in it.  My book is a Young Adult (YA) Fantasy but it still has other elements in it.  The next secondary element, after being Fantasy, in it is the romance.  The romance of the book actually causes one of the profound questions to appear in the story: What exactly are we capable of?

   My book is about two teenagers, Drake and Athena, at the end of their senior year of high school.  On the night of a school dance, what they know as the world they live in changes.  They find themselves alone in their town, everyone they knew and who lived in the town vanish.  The power is gone and only things on batteries and generators will work.  On top of all that, the two of them have to fight for their lives because where ever they go in town, there are orcs who want to kill them.  The only thing keeping them alive are Drake's new magical ability to summon a sword and their knowledge of the town they grew up in.

Movies have them, why can't books?

I've been writing my book for several years now and when I write I listen to music. There are several scenes in my series so far that have been greatly influenced by particular songs. Songs like Jenny Was a Friend of Mine by The Killers and Adele's Set Fire to the Rain. Adele's song actually inspired a scene for the second book in the series. I also listen to soundtracks to movies as well and a group that, much to my laughter, itunes categorized as soundtrack music, Two Steps from Hell.

Which leads me to my topic. There aren't a lot of soundtracks to books out there. I'm not talking about soundtracks to movies that were adapted from books and I have heard that some books do it but it's still a small amount. So I plan on making a list of the songs I listened to while writing my book, He Came Around the Corner. I also figured I could put on the list when the song came into play in the book or even when to listen to the song when someone is reading it.

I feel that if the music made that much of an impact while writing it then it would enhance the scene while reading it. When I had my friends read excerpts to give me feedback, I suggested they listen to the soundtrack to the Lord of Rings movies while they did. They said that some of the scenes were really more pronounced when the music was playing.

I'm sure there's some science behind this, I'm pretty sure it has something to do with stimulating different parts of the brain at the same time. I've also heard a lot of discussions on how music affects people which of course is fascinating. What I'm getting at though is, if the opportunity is there, why not enjoy the music?

Abandon all fear, ye who write for youth

http://www.unshelved.com/2009-7-18

I have always had qualms with censorship and as a future librarian, I stand rather firmly on the first amendment and individuals' rights to privacy regarding their reading preferences. I bring this up because my Library Materials for Children class is talking about challenged (or what once would have been banned or avoided) books this week.

Some of the controversial picture books we looked at were:
Gloria Anzaldua's Friends from the Other Side
Sarah Brannen's Uncle Bobby's Wedding
Eve Bunting and David Diaz's Smoky Night
Carolivia Herron's Nappy Hair
Toshi Maruki's Hiroshima, No Pika
Walter D. Myers' Patrol: An American Soldier in Vietnam
Parnell and Richardson's And Tango Makes Three
Maurice Sendak's In the Night Kitchen

Children's books have become much more wide-ranging in topics, characters, and increasingly mature in themes. Simultaneously, more parents have complaints about the content which their children are exposed to.

I can see, easily enough, the controversy behind making certain books with mature themes available to children and young adults while with others, I did not see what the fuss was about at all. For example, Smoky Night is set during riots that actually happened, where children were actually present. Moreover, the story is much more about the forging of a relationship between a family and their neighbor during a stressful time. We tend to throw the baby out with the bath water when avoiding materials that are challenging because of their content. We are also making tons of possibly dangerous assumptions and low expectations of our youth if we decide to wipe out books rather than to monitor our own children's reading habits. It's good for us to remember that books are a safe way for kids and teens to explore realities of their world, and ones which provide openings for discussion rather than leaving them to find out on their own, or "on the street."

Christine A. Jenkins, associate professor at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign says, "The goal of children's librarianship has been stated thus for over a century: 'to put the right book into the hands of the right child at the right time.' And it is ultimately the child - the reader - who determines what that right book might be."

Great short story contest from Dave Farland

Dave Farland's epublishing house The East India Press is sponsoring a short story contest based on his recent Nightingale novel. There is no cost to enter. The deadline is March 1, so get writing! From the contest information page:

Win $1,000 cash prize

PLUS your story will be published as an opener to the Nightingale enhanced novel, as well as a stand-alone e-book

PLUS East India Press will consider your novel submission for publication

FREE to enter (no fees of any kind)

Open to all – any nationality, any age – with teens especially encouraged to enter

Finally, your chance to test your writing talent and win a shot at fame!

So how about it? GOt your 2500 word draft ready? For the curious playing from home, the cash prize amounts to $2.50/word of your story, which completely blows away the 5c/word rate listed as "pro rates" everywhere in the industry, so get writing! Nothing to lose, and I know from reputation and experience that Dave Farland runs a fantastic program. Good luck!

Welcome Aboard

Our Dwarven Phaser may be missing or it may simply be that weird looking flip phone in the back of my desk drawer (I have no idea how it got in there which is what makes me suspicious that it may just be the missing alien light shooter), but we have discovered blogging. We're the Write Time Writer's Group from Geneva, Illinois. Our meet up is about 35 miles west of downtown Chicago.

If all goes according to plan, you'll be reading posts from our members. They'll introduce themselves as they come aboard. I'm Paul R. Lloyd, leader of our little tribe of scribes. I write suspense novels. My reading habits include other people's suspense stories as well as a healthy dose of horror, sci-fi and mystery.

The Missing Dwarven Phaser is about writing and editing. Here you'll find our best thoughts on the craft along with bits of braggadocio, writer's humor and the sharing of tidbits of our work, depending on how each of us chooses to participate.