The Distress of the Privileged

Long time, no post but I've found this really good article that's given me a great perspective on those less than sympathetic characters that rates a slight inconvenience to them as terrible compared to the misery inflicted on others to avoid that inconvenience.  I can't explain it in a paragraph so just take my word on it and go take a look at this fantastic article.

1811 Slang Book

Well, I got interested in this book since it was mentioned in the Julian Stockwin newsletter (he's a great naval warfare author) and found it on Gutenberg. It looks to be a lively collection of slang terms for any who's interested. Some of these could doubtless be dropped into your world building efforts for a vintagey feel.

Gendered Characterisation

This is a fantastic article from TV Tropes on the different media expectations, tropes, and reasoning behind certain gender norms on television and in other forms of media. There's no real way for me to summarise all the brilliant details here but I do encourage you to take a look. It'll help you understand why your characters don't seem feminine or masculine enough for your readership and what the perspectives behind the issues are.

WORTHY LINKS: Good World Building Web-Sites

Well, it's that time again when I dive into researching geology and ecosystems and how they might relate to my fantasy land. If anyone has any good research links, please let me know. For now, though, here is my own awesome world building link:

http://www.windows2universe.org/earth/ecosystems.html

Enjoy!

Apologies and a Link

Well, I'm sorry I've been gone for so long but I've been pretty sick recently with a flu AND snowed under at work. I'll be back to my regular posting soon enough. Until then, tide yourself over with this one. Yes, it's a gamer's blog (and a D&D one no less) but it actually has a lot of interesting things to say about Fantasy World Building: http://tatwd.wordpress.com/

WORTHY LINKS: Editing Tricks

Here is a really neat article from Terry Odell on how to edit your work with a fresh set of eyes. Who would've thought a change of formatting and some post-it notes could be so useful? I'm certainly going to try this.

WORTHY LINKS: Lust, attachment, & committment

Lianna Brooks does an excellent and funny article on lust, its effects, its hormones and what influences us in mate selection. Read it here. She also does an article on the attachment phase of a relationship here. For a look at how commitment develops in a relationship look here.

Writing Exercise: Character Identifiers

A good article in Mystery Writers is Murder suggests figuring some identifiers to make it easier to recognise your secondary characters. It might be an eccentric piece of clothing, a remarkable feature, or some strange habit but it should be memorable enough to implant the character in the reader's mind and later help them remember that character

So, as my belated writing exercise, I will do just that. I'll do it with some characters from my novel for the brainxercise.

Lirrian is a fairly major secondary character so she more has a style of identifiers rather than a single one. She's bratty. She's the girl who might say hello by putting her hands over your eyes or giving you a pinch (at least while younger). She's surprisingly cocky with her friends and will say what she thinks (though isn't dumb enough to do that to authority figures). So the sort of identifiers I use with her are things that are high energy, sometimes abrupt speech, and teasing. Yeah, with her it's not as straight-forward but she's on so many pages in that book that I'd be really shocked if a reader didn't remember her.

Ongar is a bit of an enigma, even to me. He's a manly man so he attempts to be macho as much as he can but he also comes from a culture that's more effusive and romantic so he comes up with these terrible poems and likes to think he's a really dry wit. He's also a nay-sayer and doesn't like taking risks. So anything showing superficial machismo, lame attempts at being romantic or at least sexual (cor, look at her), and nay-saying anything risky would be identifiers for him.

Kyliam is a bit more straightforward. He doesn't say much as he can't speak their language but he can be quite expressive in smiles so it often ends up being adjective-smile or more specific synonym of smile like 'grin' or even the the opposite of a smile - wince. He's also the calm and forgiving one.

Gerran is high energy as well but that's because he's an anxious person. Funnily enough, as he starts coming out of his shell he becomes less risk averse. He speaks poshly, formally, and somewhat pompously and reads like a character from an Enyd Blyton novel. Really, its his speech mannerisms and his cocky-cowardice that are my identifiers for him.

Hmm, these aren't great examples because they're all the more important characters who get so much air-time that the quirks vanish. Let's try the three possible fathers.

Gelebourne is a large man and I emphasize his muscles, his size, and his predatory nature. I sort of see him as a big, dangerous animal and I emphasize the boom in his voice and the way his weight creaks the stage floor and things like that.

Carrius is showier. He's all languid movements and deceptive smiles / frowns / winces. Everything is for show. The whole world is a stage. I often have to spend more time describing his gestures and I think that's his main identifier. Writing them out also makes the gestures seem longer and slower ... which they are. So if I write about Carrius bursting into a room through the double doors, keeping his hands on the handles, and lowering his head so that his hair falls artfully across his face ... you know which brother it is.

Alberic has a military background and it shows. Everything he says is measured, though gentle, and he has a very straight back. Everything has to be just-so. There's certainly a degree of precision about his movements. He also dodges all talk with an emotional content. Funnily enough, his precise nature (and his glasses) make him come off as a bit geeky. I simplify matters to identify him. He sits with his knees tucked together. He stands straight with his hands clasped behind his back.

Hmm, writing this out has certainly assisted me in figuring out what makes each character so unique. Why don't you write up one of yours and share it with us in the comments section?

WORTHY LINK: Blending world building

TalkToYoUniverse has a really good piece of advice in this article on how you should put your world descriptions and exposition into the background by really emphasizing the viewpoint character's perspective. Filter it all through the lens of the viewpoint character, in other words. In a fantasy novel, I could look over at a clock and let people know that there are clocks. The world description would be in the foreground and readers might notice how obvious it is and how it stands out. Or I could look at the clock and feel rushed, feel bored, note how its hanging from the wall crookedly, running out of batteries, winding down, or even remember my now dead parents. All of that would put the viewpoint character in the foreground where they belong and slip the same piece of exposition into the background.

Very cool article! Not to mention the fact that she is analysing the first scene from reader-submitted novels and revealing the information that a reader might latch onto about the world. Take a read. It's a really excellent idea for a blog and one I'm tempted to poach simply because it'd help me figure out how to slip in the myriad of details that distinguish my fantasy setting from the generic one.

TIPS: Show the Unexpected

Well, there I was lurking on other people's posts when I found this little gem described by Liana Brooks. Come up with five things that your reader wouldn't expect about your darling little characters and find a way to drop one or two of them into the story. These can certainly add a lot of depth to what might otherwise be a derivative character.

I'm wondering if that's what my personal favoritest Writer of Fiction, Ed McBain, did. All of his characters, including his minor characters - no, especially his minor characters - were rivetingly interesting because he'd take your expectations and play with them in some way. People had their eccentricities, their foibles, their strange ways of perceiving the world, and even when all those details weren't brought onto the page, you could just sense the hints behind the words of a deeper, crazier world of people who could have stepped onto the stage from Real Life.

So, go on everyone ... come up with 5 unknown facts about your characters, major or minor, and see if that can have an impact, even if it just means that the minor character you see for a page is a little gentler and better-educated than the stereotypical truck driver.

Of course, there are limits: no need to do this for characters that have a three-line entry and exit. They're just setting details!

PSYCHOLOGY: Grief and Bereavement

Two excellent finds in Jeannie Campbell's excellent blog are a series of articles on Types of Grief and Facets of Grief. These are very good reads and perfectly slip into my current research into reactions to trauma. It's always wonderful to find someone else succinctly giving you the information you need....

Funnily enough, a lot of novels include triggers for grief but I think the fantasy genre include the most but often deal with it the least. In some cases, this is because it wouldn't be appropriate to send a swashbuckling tale of magic and monsters crashing back to Earth. In other cases, it would be appropriate but it's hard not to be swept up in the action and exploration that comes naturally to most fantasy authors. It's hard to sit down and realize that right now the character would be thinking, 'Screw the shining whirl pool, the pretty fairies, and the gorgeous underground tunnels, this picturesque place doesn't make me feel uplifted ... it just makes me angry because the world somehow remains pretty while my life is destroyed'.

While I'm sure many of you can think of multiple incidents of protagonists getting upset over death, what about the more subtle triggers of grief. Think of the average fantasy novel. It often involves a character living in a small village or town for all their life, rarely visiting other towns, and then leaving forever and flying / running / hiking through six different types of terrain. They have a bout of grief, wail and gnash their teeth, but generally this is only if their home town is actually destroyed or if they were exiled. I've been stressed by moving house into a bigger house a few suburbs away ... yet these people who up and leave small towns for the big beyond don't bat an eye unless some great trauma happened.

The characters often visit places that are similar to their old rundown villages and strikingly different like a city in the clouds, yet they're barely touched by homesickness or nostalgia. They barely even think of their own towns or villages, unless its a memory of some traumatic incident or another, and even in the case of trauma - it rarely flavors the mood. Have you ever been stressed out of your mind? Or scared? Or even nostalgic? It changes how you see things. Thinking on it, even a young adult or more light-hearted fantasy could use at least a few touches of these responses. It just adds a touch of depth that is rarely seen but which could really help me identify with a character.

How many of us have been excited yet sad when leaving home for the first time? Or had a pang of nostalgia over some small thing? How much easier would it be to identify with a character who had similar responses to leaving home? I'd assume it'd be all the more stressful for someone who has never left their village before, as well. It'd be the equivalent of moving to a radically different country. Divorces have happened over less.

What do you think?

Natural Disasters - Favorites and a link

Since it's the week over Christmas, I'm not going to fulfill my Review / Research cycle. I'll start that again in the New Year. In the meantime, a cool research site is Australian Geoscience. If anyone is curious about Australian natural disasters, their commonality, and historical examples, well, take a look. If not, no biggie. Just comment with what your favorite natural disaster is. Whether by favourite you mean 'most frightening', 'most awe-inspiring', or any other 'most' you care to apply.

My favorite are tornadoes and cyclones. I keep dreaming of those. It's one of the few natural disasters that you can follow and watch.

Links of Value

Here's a few more blog links that I think are very useful. One of them describes how Culture Isn't Uniform and this is a very important issue to bear in mind when creating fantasy worlds. There are sub-cultures and there are sub-sub-cultures and then there are the smaller groups within. An elf shouldn't be any more of an Elf than I am a Human. I'm a Human, a Female Human, a Human raised in a single parent family, a Gamer Human, a LARPer Human, a Writer Human, a Blogger, an office worker, a local government worker, a White Person, an Australian, etc. Thus you couldn't just label me Australian or even White Australian, though I'll have something in common with them. Heck, my friends and I might even have more in common with a group of Japanese Australian gamers than we do with generic White Australians.

So bear that in mind when writing up your elves. Rich or poor, noble or beggar, rural or urban, or anywhere in between, remember that one's dominant culture or sub-cultural groups are only a part of the equation.

On the other hand, there is a blog post about Raising the Stakes which is a really good one to take a look at while editing. She even grades the stakes which is really helpful to me as I should really go and check out my book to make sure the stakes are getting harder as the novel goes on.

How to use Irony and Yay! I got a present!

Well, I was going to save this link to a really awesome article called How To Push The Envelope on a really neat blog called Hypothetically Speaking but then she gave me an Award so I'll push this link up on the queue. This article was really handy for me because in my novel, still not sure whether to try to get it published as The Butterfly Lady or Curse of the Rose, I need to embed a lot of comparisons and contrasts into a whole House-load of characters.

A quote from Erica in her article:

"Weeds" and "Dexter" are both smash hits from Showtime. Both shows have developed enormous cult followings because they have mastered the art of IRONY. The beauty is that the irony lies in the main characters themselves.

Nicely written and very evocative. Take a look to see if this very clever character technique that Erica has unearthed can work for you as well. This article is so good that if I ever find another one of Erica's unearthed character techniques again, I am so doing a full post on it. (Oh, and by the way, how absolutely beautiful is her Blog? I mean, really! She puts me to shame.)

Now onto the bribery that caused me to do this blog post now, rather than try to lure more people to the page with a review on Joe Abercrombie. Erica gave me a Blog Award! My very first. *bows* Feel free to throw flowers up on the stage. *bows*


There it is! Not sure what to do with it other than bask in its radiance and smirk with new found arrogance. Oh well, radiance and smirking works for me any day of the week.

Linktacular!

Adverbs could be signalling much more. They could be little red flags that here's a chance for you to develop your characters / scenes more so instead of just pressing the delete key, look at them as a reminder to deepen the scene. TheOtherSideOfTheStory explains!

A quote from a fun blog: Sometimes you just got to tell the reader something to get it across. But when you are forced to, do it with humor :"Rev. Smug was never a man to let his religion get in the way of his love life." So true. Go to Writing In the Crosshairs to find out more.

Methods of developing unpredictable storylines, surprising your reader, and a bunch of questions to help you do so can be found at TheOtherSideOfTheStory while another article at that same place will tell you about how to find the action and up the stakes in your novel.

Flights of Fantasy have a post on Swords in Fantasy. Many different types of swords are described, from sentient ones, to ones with different powers, and how the post author just loves all these different uses for swords in fantasy. It's an interesting and fun read.

TalkToYoUniverse have a post on details in fiction. This blog post contains one of those lines that really sums up what I've been trying to say with my posts on descriptions: ''confound the easy expectations and your world will start to pop." It's not only good because contrasts and contradictions catch the eye (try saying that one three times fast) but also because it makes the viewpoint character feel more real. I would notice the CEO's nose ring or chunky gemstone bracelet before I notice his Armani suit, after all. In a public library, I would notice the Warhammer 40k terrain set up in the Youth section (complete with a number of Warhammer 40k books in center stage) before I would notice the other book shelves. Therefore it makes more sense when the character does, too.

A few more useful links from TheOtherSideOfTheStory (a blog which I heart more and more and which is increasingly convincing me to hunt down the Shifters trilogy that she has written) involve how to strengthen POV through description (an area critters always bug me about), describing movement through sound alone (very cool way of looking at it), describing emotion within the POV (to help the readers feel inside the character's head - another issue of mine), and a post on describing what the reader's don't assume.

The Three Good Posts

So, to make up for my week-long absence, here's another post. This one is a lazy one. I'm just going to direct you to other blogs that were pretty good this week. Then I may point out a few more good points from The Good Book for Speculative Fiction writers. Also know as The Writer's Digest Guide to Science Fiction & Fantasy (the one by Orson Scott Card and the editors of the Writer's Digest). Maybe. Or I'll save that for another post if this one gets too long.

If I seem a little excitable, that's because I finally got a contract signed that I've been waiting on for awhile and it feels so good to be underway at work! Woo hoo! I've been working on it for a fortnight.

So, without further ado or distractions (oh look, a cubicle!), here's some decent blog posts:

Flights of Fantasy have a post on Swords in Fantasy. Many different types of swords are described, from sentient ones, to ones with different powers, and how the post author just loves all these different uses for swords in fantasy. It's an interesting and fun read.

TalkToYoUniverse have a post on details in fiction. This blog post contains one of those lines that really sums up what I've been trying to say with my posts on descriptions: ''confound the easy expectations and your world will start to pop." It's not only good because contrasts and contradictions catch the eye (try saying that one three times fast) but also because it makes the viewpoint character feel more real. I would notice the CEO's nose ring or chunky gemstone bracelet before I notice his Armani suit, after all. In a public library, I would notice the Warhammer 40k terrain set up in the Youth section (complete with a number of Warhammer 40k books in center stage) before I would notice the other book shelves. Therefore it makes more sense when the character does, too.
The Other Side of the Story have a post about why your novel died. It's also pretty handy for interpreting what your critters actually meant and what you should be asking yourself. Take a look at the long list of questions and thought-provoking statement designed to help you figure out why you stopped wanting to write that story.

Hmm, think this post is long enough. I'll save up the bits of advice from that wonderful Good Book for the next thrilling installment of: ON WRITING!

Architecture: Blends Through The Years

Here's something about world building that I've never really consciously considered until reading this lovely TalkToYoUniverse blog: The architecture of a city changes over time, yes? But it doesn't just change whole-sale. No one takes out an eraser and says: 'Well, we're a bit over Gothic architecture, let's just pull it all down and start again'.

No, they just build new houses in the newer styles. Thus you can get a crumbling old Roman-era fort surrounded by, I dunno, wattle-and-daub houses with a Gothic-era church sat in the middle of the whole town*.

Sometimes they renovate older buildings, perhaps leaving the gargoyles, but replacing the Gothic windows with ultramodern tilted, computerised windows that adjust the darkness gradient depending on how much light should be let in (an extreme example, but I'm hyped up on sugar so there you go). More often they'll renovate the interior, or part of the building (especially if it's been damaged by fire or the elements) than the whole thing. Buildings in the midst of renovations would be interesting to see in Fantasy as would buildings that are very old and aren't up to code and might dump the inhabitants through three floors into the basement if they're not careful.

Sometimes they'll just build on top of / over the older construction. The blog post mentions a Roman construction underneath a small, ancient church, that can be found inside a bigger, more modern church! Sometimes it won't be that obvious. Sometimes it's only when the owners decide to open up that painted shut door, delve into the basement, renovate the property, that they locate old rooms and basements and sub-basements from where the building had been build on other buildings or rooms pasted over.

So yes, have a think about the next time you're designing a place, whether in Science Fiction, Fantasy, or Contemporary fiction, and think about just how likely it is that all the buildings in that village, town, or city look the same!

*This is based on examples to make you think. I haven't researched the architecture here and cannot vouch for the authenticity of these buildings sitting side by side! These are really, really, really not examples of my researcher credibility...

How To Develop One's Voice

Well, there's a really cool quote in this blog by Katie Ganshurt. Basically, she was given advice by her agent to strengthen her Voice in Chapter 1 so that it sparkled as well as it did in the Prologue. She queried how she was supposed to do that.... Her agent suggested that she read the Prologue out loud, feel the mood, the pacing, the cadence, and then try to write Chapter 1 in a similar style. Very good advice. Now I just need to figure out which one of my chapters is a good enough example of my Voice.

Two Awesome Links on Plot Building

Well, I just went and found yet another awesome couple of blog posts. This one is from Aleksandra Sokoloff and it goes into an in-depth diagnosis of what Act I should hold and takes a very good look at the characters. The whole blog seems really cool, in-depth and interesting and well worth a look and a Favorite.

Helene Boudreau's plotting OCD style is also a fun and very in-depth look at just how far you can go when plotting out your novel and ironing out the kinks. Again, well worth a look.

Cool Post on QueryTracker's blog

Learn From The Masters. We all try to do so but so often it's difficult to figure out just how we're supposed to learn their tricks and tactics. I mean, we could just read widely but we might not be able to learn by osmosis everything we need to know. This blog post on QueryTracker covers a writing / reading exercise we can do to improve our skills.