writing tips
Finding the Trust
Dame Jackie
Even when a story is more action-oriented than character-driven, I think most would agree that it’s important for readers to connect with the characters. If readers don’t care whether the protagonist lives or dies, well, that’s a problem. It’s rare for readers to stick with a story when they’re not invested in the main character. If you think about it, no matter how engrossing the plot of a story, it pretty much always comes down to rooting for the protagonist to succeed. That means authors have to take pains to make their characters sympathetic. Maybe they’re also entertaining to read about. Maybe they’re incredibly cool. Maybe they’re literary awesomeness and should be walking around in capes because fabulousness is their super power. But first and foremost, there’s got to be something about the protagonist that readers care about. It’s the protagonist who carries the burden of making the reader want to keep reading. That means authors have to create multifaceted, interesting main characters.
Now, I don’t know about you, but for me, characters usually don’t pull an Athena and spring fully formed out of my head. Yeah, I joke that Death did exactly that when I was writing HUNGER, but it took me a while to really get him. Even someone like Death has motivations (besides, you know, being there when living things die), and I had to take a lot of time to figure those motivations out. Along with those motivations, I had to come up with his history. I had to create an overall goal for him — which isn’t always the same thing as having a motivation. And, of course, I had to create obstacles, because otherwise there’s no tension. (Debra Dixon wrote all about Goal, Motivation & Conflict, which I’ve heard is a terrific resource for writers.)
To do all of this, I had to give myself room to discover the character. I had to give myself permission to take my time, and to make lots (and lots) of mistakes. This is part of the reason why there can be — and maybe even should be — multiple drafts before we’re ready to revise into something that’s ready for prime time.
Character development is a lot like cultivating new friendships. It’s not as simple as telling the characters what to do and making sure they do those things. There’s got to be some give and take. It’s like walking a dog: you can’t keep that leash taut all the time. And there are times when the dog runs ahead and you have to jog to keep up. (Of course, I’m writing that as someone who’s lived most of her life with cats and has never had a dog.) Writing characters is sort of like that: you’re connected to them, and you’re in charge of them, but there comes a point when they really come to life and you suddenly find yourself running to keep up with them. (This is me, hoping I don’t sound too crazy.) There’s a balance between being in charge and giving the characters not exactly free rein but enough slack to run with so that they’re not tripping over your feet or strangling. How much slack is all about finding the trust.
What I mean by that is there comes a point when our characters don’t give a damn what we’ve written in our synopses or outlines — they have their own agenda, which may or may not have anything to do with the plot of the book. We, as authors, have to trust our characters enough to let them develop in their own way…while still keeping control of the story. That’s not always easy. Here are some steps I’ve taken that you may find helpful when you’re thinking about how to develop your characters:
1. Have an overall story plot in mind. In fiction, something’s got to happen. A girl saves the world. A boy falls in love. A teen learns a paralyzing truth. There’s something there, and the characters have to see to in that the plot actually comes to pass. Having a terrific character doesn’t help if you don’t have a story in which that character can appear. You don’t have to have a fully developed plot; it could be as simple as a one-sentence summary. (“A bullied teenage boy is tricked into becoming the White Rider of the Apocalypse.”) Let’s say we’re writing a story about a girl who saves the world.
2. Pick the right character name. This sounds trite, but I find it to be extremely useful. Names don’t always have to have capital-m Meaning to them; sometimes, they just feel right. Sometimes, names are titles. (“The Doctor.”) Sometimes, names are a play on words or other names. (“Daunuan” = Don Juan.) But a character isn’t a character without a name. If you haven’t found a name for your character yet, take some time to explore. Check out baby name websites for ideas. For our story about a girl who saves the world, let’s call her Theodora (Theo) Broma. (The seeds of the theobroma cacao plant is where chocolate comes from. Named after chocolate!)
3. Find the character’s goal. While some of us may go through life without a purpose (or at least feel like we’re going through life without a purpose), our main characters need to have a reason to be in the story. It could be to win their true love’s heart. (And if you’re writing a supernatural story, that could be literal.) It could be to save the world. It could be to discover the truth about their parents and, in the process, about themselves. It could be to find the Last Chocolate Bar. (Ooh. Yeah!) Give your main character a purpose — even if the character doesn’t know what that purpose is at first. So our gal Theo, who has to save the world, must find the Last Chocolate Bar.
4. Motivate the character. Okay, so you know what the character is supposed to do in the book — Theo, in order to save the world, must find the Last Chocolate Bar. Dandy. Why is Theo going to do this? It’s got to be for a better reason than “Because I’m the author and I said so.” (Yeah, that argument doesn’t really work with my kids, either.) Maybe Theo is doing this (to borrow from Suzanne Collins) so that her beloved little sister wouldn’t have to risk her life to find the Last Chocolate Bar. Maybe she’s doing it because her true love (who also needs a name) is going on the great quest for the Last Chocolate Bar. Maybe Theo is a criminal and this is her punishment. Maybe it’s her salvation. Maybe she’s incredibly bored and this Chocolate Quest promises to be the adventure of a lifetime. Let’s go ahead and say that Theo was imprisoned for stealing, and she chooses to go on the dangerous quest to find the Last Chocolate Bar to shorten her sentence.
5. Don’t make it easy for the character. If the protagonist does everything easily, there’s really no point in reading, is there? This is why someone like Superman has kryptonite and a vulnerability to magic: even the Big Blue Boy Scout needs to run into the risk of getting seriously hurt and maybe even dying. Give the protagonist obstacles. So in our Chocolate story, let’s say that Theo isn’t the only one on the quest for the Last Chocolate Bar — maybe her true love is also looking for the Chocolate for reasons that are mysterious at first, but over the course of the story, it’s clear that her love is going to betray her. Da da DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! And let’s throw in some explosions and booby traps and deadly flying penguins for fun. And…she’s deathly afraid of penguins because of the Gruesome Penguin Attack that had left her and her sister orphans! Suddenly, Theo has a real fight on her hands — both external and internal. (Those penguin scars run deep!)
6. Let your inner critic speak. Grab some post-in note paper and write down every single thing that comes to mind as you think about your character. Do you have nagging questions? Get ‘em down. Are there plot holes that need to be resolved? Write them down, one page per question/idea. Soon you will have a stack of paper. Next step is to answer the questions. This may spark ideas that will become better world-building, better character history, better emotional development, better everything. Why did penguins savagely kill Theo’s parents? Why is there no other chocolate in the world? What’s the big deal about the Last Chocolate Bar? Will eating it clear up Theo’s Embarrassing Acne? Does chocolate have Magical Healing Powers? Why was she stealing in the first place? And does she even like her little sister? These are burning questions that we have to answer — because once we know the answers, they will flesh out the overall story.
7. Give your characters room to grow. So Theo is off to find the Last Chocolate Bar and save the world in the process…and learning what it means to be betrayed by someone she had loved. I’m sure she’ll pull through — she is the protagonist, after all. But by the end of the book, she’ll be a different character than she had been at the beginning. This is crucial: characters have to learn along the way. They need to grow — which isn’t the same thing as becoming more mature, but these may go hand-in-hand.
I hope these tips help you learn more about your protagonists. Let them out to play. Have fun getting to know them. Yell at them, and be prepared to have them yell right back. Soon, you’ll find the right balance between leading and being led. Once you trust your characters, the story will snap into place.
And if it doesn’t, well, you can always eat chocolate. 
After the End, Begin
I finally came up with the perfect first line for the book I am writing. Why is this news? Because I have already written the entire book.
First lines, to me, are vital. Coming from a short-fiction background, I think first lines and first paragraphs are invaluable tools. They are the writer’s promise to the reader. They set the tone, hint at the kind of story that is about to follow, and hopefully start off the writer-reader dance without stepping on anyone’s toes.
I love it when the perfect first line falls off my fingertips. But when the deadline’s tight and the most important thing for me to do is Get Words On The Page, I don’t worry if I’ve nailed the first line or not. I try out maybe three or four first lines and just go with the one that is close to what I want. I know I will change it or replace it later, after the book is finished.
Of all the skills I learned from writing short fiction, I find myself relying on three things heavily when I write novels:
1. Being unafraid to edit, brutally.
2. Being unafraid to mess with an idea until I find a little-used take on it.
3. Being unafraid to revise, rework, or re-genre a story, and still keep the core idea, characters, and emotions intact.
Basically, short fiction taught me to be cool with edits, love revisions, and be open to messing with my ideas. It taught me to risk and gamble and not fear loss.
When someone told me that I needed to learn how to write short fiction because it would teach me how to write a novel, I thought they meant it would give me the world-building, outlining, plotting, pacing and composition skills that would be vital to novel writing. Nope. What it gave me was a sense of confidence in the face of change.
Very few writers publish the raw first draft of their novels. I actually don’t know any writers who do that, but hey, maybe someone does. Most writers go over their work at least once to catch inconsistencies, echoed phrases, or just to spiff it up a bit. Some writers do this line-by-line during the first draft process, others do it as a second-pass revision process. Some writers have beta readers, critique groups, editors, and copy editors who point out the confusing bits or sections that could use a little more attention.
We all go over our work at least once. We all change it. We all know it takes a certain amount of effort to make changes (some changes take more effort or time than others). Why not go toward those changes (and that effort) confidently? After all, if we don’t like the revision, we can go back to the previous version of the work. There is no loss here, there is only change. And through change we often gain improvement.
So when I finished the very raw, very rough draft of my book, I found myself back at the beginning, staring at the even rougher first sentence. However, now that I had the whole book on paper, I knew exactly what kind of promise I wanted to make to the reader. I knew the tone the book needed to hint at, the rhythm of the dance the reader and I would be taking together. Once I had finished the book, I knew where to begin.
And so I did.
Crazy Monkeybrain Crack Dust, AKA, Writer’s Ideas
Well, hello. It’s Wednesday again. First, two announcements!
Yes, this is espresso and Bailey’s in a mug that says “I am going to hex your face off.” After I Tweeted that picture, I was snowed-under with queries about where to buy said mug. I got mine in 2006 from a CafePress shop (the shop’s owner was “lalejandra2″) that has now gone under. At least, I can’t find it. Which led to me putting a version of the mug up in my own shop, with no markup. (Because I feel incredibly uncomfortable with the idea of a profit, however tiny, from it.) It goes without saying that if I find the original seller, I’ll change the links and direct everyone there. But I’ve dug and dug, and can’t find her.
Announcement #2 is kind of vague. Remember that zombie-hunting cowboy trunk novel I was working on? The one I was just delighted with, and was sure would never sell? Well…paint me lilac and call me Conrad, it sold. I can’t give any details, but I can say that I’m sort of…bowled over.
Now that’s taken care of, let’s talk about ideas. (WARNING: I am foulmouthed today. Read at your own risk.)
Music and the Muse
Dame Jackie
Before talking music, a brief update: ROD results will be posted next week. Sorry for the delay! There may be an extra prize to make up for the extra wait. Stay tuned!
For me, there are three actions that tend to spark ideas — and not the playful “Oh, that would be neat” ideas that I then prod and poke and mull over and let percolate while I go on to do other things. I’m talking about Visions From Above, ideas that are so strong that they’re almost blinding. The first action is taking a shower — there’s something about the running water stirring creativity. Or maybe the Muse loves to hit us when we can’t write anything down, not without waterproof markers. The second action is driving. See the above, re getting hit with inspiration when you can’t write anything down.
The third action is listening to music. This is a big one for me — music can set the scene, put me in a particular mood, evoke a specific feeling, even highlight a theme. Sometimes, music can launch entire subplots.
Music played a big part in the Hell on Earth series. Yes, Jesse had a soundtrack that she danced to on stage, but the bigger part of the music for me was when I was writing. In THE ROAD TO HELL, there’s a scene when Jesse is summoning the demon Duanuan. During those paragraphs, I had Depeche Mode’s “Pimpf” playing again and again. When I was writing HOTTER THAN HELL, I heard the acoustic version of Breaking Benjamin’s “The Diary Of Jane” when I was driving (of course), and I had to pull over so I could truly listen to the song — it hit me so hard that I almost changed one character’s name from Virginia to Jane. Another song from Breaking Benjamin that was crucial: “Breath.” This is the song that captures the moment when Daun realizes he had fallen in love and what that really means.
The Riders of the Apocalypse books have a lot of music in them. Nirvana, mostly. And while that started because Death just happened to look, sound and sing like Kurt Cobain — because that’s how the character sprang to life in my head — soon specific songs took on greater importance to me. “Come As You Are” ties into the character of Lisa in HUNGER. “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?” — specifically, the acoustic version — spoke to me about Missy, the protagonist of RAGE. In LOSS, while Nirvana plays a role, for me it was much more Linkin Park — specifically, “New Divide,” which in many ways was the theme of the book. There’s one scene in particular — a pivotal scene in part 2 — where the song really hits the mood.
And right now, as I work on BREATH, there are a number of songs that are resonating. At the moment, it’s Nirvana’s cover of Meat Puppets’ “Oh Me,” but the two songs that really kicked off the book for me are Breaking Benjamin’s “I Will Not Bow” and Slipknot’s “Snuff”; in both of these songs, there’s one line that just nails it, that hit me like the Muse was screaming at me to take notes.
So here’s a question — or, really questions:
Writers: Does music play a role for you, either in the writing process or as part of the story?
Readers: Does reading ever evoke specific songs?
Everyone: What are the most evocative songs, the ones that make you feel something to such a degree that you have to stop what you’re doing and listen?
From Kickass Un-PreRequisite to Rippling Tweakage
Dame Lili
Plus, the Little Prince became, once more, Sir Pewksalot last night. All of which is a roundabout way of saying my temper and nerves are equally frayed, and I decided on a Three Things post because if I start on a rant or two now there will be nothing but a smoking crater left where my computer used to be. (Expensive.) Not to mention with all the biting and snarling going on all over the Internet about Authors Daring To Speak, so to speak, and a rant doesn’t seem like a good idea. For lo, if I strap on my armor now and go all Don Quixote after Idiot Entitled Jerks On The Internet, I may never stop. And I’ve writing to do, so…yeah. Three things. Let’s see.
* Kickass is not a prerequisite. It’s not even a requisite. I swear to God, someday I am going to write about Milquetoast von Constipated, a potbellied, balding vampire with bowel issues who lives in Minnesota and, whenever there is an incident of violence, he *gasp* alerts the authorities! Together with his werecow buddy, Milton Morton (who is not only vegan but gets tipped every full moon), they do not fight crime willingly. Rather, they sort of bumble through and the police take care of things on their own. (As to why he has bowel issues when he’s on a liquid diet, I’ll just say, have you ever tried to live on protein shakes? HAVE YOU?)
Sounds amusing, doesn’t it? But it’s sparked by a frustration of mine: where is it written that I can’t write anything other than kickass leather-clad wiseacres? I mean, I’m very glad people connect with my kickass heroes and heroines, but that isn’t all I write, it isn’t all I am. It isn’t all the world consists of. I dislike it intensely when I write a character whose strength is internal and am immediately subjected to a “but your fans won’t recognize…” Screw that. They will recognize, and those who send me venomous screeds about how I should just stick to writing kickass chicks even though I don’t do so very well (seriously, it’s like the writers of these things all got together in a room somewhere) can just go…fly kites. Yes. Fly kites.
The point of this is: If you’re used to writing one thing, and you want to write another thing, go ahead and do it. You may have to attempt a couple times before you get a salable piece, but it will teach you things about writing that staying in your comfort zone will not. I’m fairly okay at writing angst and violence, but you know what I would really love? I would love to be talented at writing comedy. Comedy is hard effing work, it doesn’t come naturally to me. (Unless it’s bleak black macabre humor. Heh.) It doesn’t stop me from wanting and trying, and from seeking other types of characters and stories to play with. What you’re good at writing and what you want to write may be two different things, but you should try them both.
* The Levenger catalog is pure crack. I mean, their 3X5 cards are incredibly useful while revising or making grocery lists, both things I do at my computer. My bag lust is inflamed every time I see their briefcases. And, oh my God, the desk sets. The desk sets. It’s nice to reward myself with some lovely tools after slogging through a zero draft. I nerd all over their paper, and one day, one day, I will have a Levenger desk. I’ll save my pennies, by God, and I will have it.
Other things I keep within easy reaching distance while I’m writing: a statue of Ganesh writing, some Climb On creme, cell phone, tarot cards (Rider-Waites, for those curious), Moleskine notebook, a couple pads of paper both legal and Levenger, scissors, pens and sharpened pencils, rubber bands, a Keep Calm and Carry On paperweight, two pink plastic flamingos, six dictionaries, two thesauri, two visual dictionaries, assorted other reference works from encyclopedias of military arms to herbals and Jack the Ripper books. Also, two copies of Jane Eyre, plus six or seven DVDs of different treatments of Jane Eyre, and a few Wuthering Heights. (Don’t ask.) Also, tissues, ibuprofen, and Carmex. Because you never can tell.
The flamingos are for practicing dialogue with. (But that’s another blog post.)
* Beware of great ideas. “A million cat clocks! That’s a GREAT idea!” Then some of them started looking a little odd because their tails weren’t moving. And I had to find more batteries. This just goes to show you, great ideas are only great until one gets to the care, feeding, and administrivia involved. (Note: I have six cat clocks, all on my living-room wall. And I want more.)
What does this have to do with writing? Simple. Beware of great ideas. Sometimes they happen halfway through a zero draft, and you either have to go back and alter what you’ve already written to account for the Great Idea, or you just go ahead and write as if the Great Idea has been there all the time, which means the first half of revising the zero draft is likely to send you to the booze cabinet sooner rather than later. Sometimes the Great Ideas happen during revision, and one should be careful because they are like pebbles thrown into a quiet pond. (BOOT TO THE HEAD!) The ripples spread throughout the entire book, which may mean you have to go back and deal with tweaking everything before and after in subtle and overt ways. Rippling tweakage is another thing that will send you to the booze cabinet during revisions. Or to banging your head against a brick wall, whichever is handier. (Also, Rippling Tweakage is my new indie band name.)
Great ideas are great, but there is no Great Idea that fixes everything without a lot of work. If the Idea is Great Enough, the work, while frustrating, is also a process of simplification. If it’s a Mediocre Idea masquerading as Great, or even just a Garden-Variety Idea Of Some Magnitude But Hardly Greatness, well, booze cabinets and brick walls, or whatever coping mechanism works for you, STAT. It doesn’t make the Rippling Tweakage any easier, but it can dull the gnawing pain between your temples somewhat.
…I just looked at that last sentence and cannot believe I typed that. Some days, I really love my job.
Over and out!
