I've now moved on to the Dragonlance phase of my research, and one of the more interesting things about Dragonlance is that it was originally conceived as a D&D adventure and only later turned into a series of novels. It's not something I ever would have picked up on without knowing it ahead of time (kind of like the bible stories in C.S. Lewis), but knowing that you can definitely see the influence.
So that got me thinking about the D&D character creation process, and how it actually works fairly well as a template for creating fictive characters in general. I've never actually played D&D, but I have played a lot of videogames based on its system, and I once read part of a rulebook. So my description of the D&D process may not be completely accurate, but that doesn't make it any less useful for creating characters in fiction.
That disclaimer aside, here we go:
In D&D, you begin the character creation process by choosing a number of different attributes about your character. What race they are, what age they are, where they come from, what their job is, how strong they are, how smart they are, how fast they are, etc.
That gives you a basic sketch of your character. You know a few of the external things about them, which can help you figure out some of the internal things as well.
You then go on to pick some cool skills and talents for them---what makes this character special, what makes them different from the others around them, what makes your big dumb warrior different than your friend's---is he really good with two-handed swords? Does he fight with two weapons at once? Is he a sword and shield type? Does have a good eye for traps? Can he pick locks? Can he use a bow? Does he swim well? The list goes on and on...and on and on, but you get the idea.
So now you know what your character can do. In terms of the game, he's pretty much done at this point, at least until he starts leveling up (I think ;-p). But in terms of being a character, you're just starting. Now that you know all the cool stuff he can do, you get to go back and figure out why he can do it, which eventually leads you into who he is as a person. Why did he choose to fight with two-handed swords instead of a sword and shield? Why can't he swim---is he afraid of water? Did he have a traumatic childhood experience in a river? Why did he choose to be a warrior---or did someone else choose for him?
You get the idea. I don't imagine that that many people struggle with creating characters---it's a big part of what makes writing fun, but taking this approach can help you flesh out characters you've already created, and it doesn't just work for fantasy. Let's take the crime genre (which I've been working with a lot this summer). You can do the same thing. What kind of cop is this person? Why? What are their specialties? Are they big? Small? Smart? Dumb? Addicted to donuts? Coffee? Can they swim? Why? etc. etc. etc.
Just an interesting thing that occurred to me as I was seeing some of the D&D emerge in Dragonlance today. I may try to play a game or two when I get back to college in the fall---just so I can really go through the process of creating the characters, the storylines, etc. I'm a big proponent of the theory that learning different ways of creating and telling stories can only help you as a writer...even if those ways are a little outside the normal writing curriculum. ;-p
Monday 30 June 2008
Thursday 26 June 2008
Fonts
Not much to say tonight, it's late and I'm pretty tired---I've had a lot to do at work this week, which is great, but leaves me pretty wiped out at night.
But I did notice something today as I was wading through hordes of contest entries, and I thought it was worth sharing.
I have an uncontrollable negative reaction to certain fonts. I think they're Courier and Arial, but I can't be completely sure. They're just harder to read for me, and I think they look somewhat unprofessional, probably because they're a far cry from the fonts used in bound and printed books.
The point here isn't that they're bad fonts, but that font choice can actually matter. As much as I can make an effort to recognize and ignore my gut reaction, it's still there---it's a distraction from the writing, and it's harder work for me to read and evaluate. And as I've said before, that's never a good thing when with every submission I'm looking for a reason to reject it (it may sound harsh, but there are enough submissions in which I can't find a reason that it makes a good M.O.).
So if an agent or publisher has guidelines up about which font to submit in, follow them, even if you personally hate their chosen font. You can always switch back to the one you love again after you've signed a contract. ;-p
But I did notice something today as I was wading through hordes of contest entries, and I thought it was worth sharing.
I have an uncontrollable negative reaction to certain fonts. I think they're Courier and Arial, but I can't be completely sure. They're just harder to read for me, and I think they look somewhat unprofessional, probably because they're a far cry from the fonts used in bound and printed books.
The point here isn't that they're bad fonts, but that font choice can actually matter. As much as I can make an effort to recognize and ignore my gut reaction, it's still there---it's a distraction from the writing, and it's harder work for me to read and evaluate. And as I've said before, that's never a good thing when with every submission I'm looking for a reason to reject it (it may sound harsh, but there are enough submissions in which I can't find a reason that it makes a good M.O.).
So if an agent or publisher has guidelines up about which font to submit in, follow them, even if you personally hate their chosen font. You can always switch back to the one you love again after you've signed a contract. ;-p
Tuesday 24 June 2008
Query Letter, Redux:
Some of you may remember a previous post of mine in which I discussed how work on my query letter was going swimmingly.
You'll be pleased to know that I've pretty much scrapped that query letter entirely, based on one solid principle imparted to me from one of my bosses at work, and my ever-growing experience reading the query letters of others (have I mentioned yet how working in publishing is the best thing an author could ever do for himself?).
Said principle is a sales principle, and it goes a little something like this: "Once they say yes, stop talking."
The corollary to this principle is as follows, "The only other thing they can say is no, and that's not what you want."
Now, this applies to query letters in the following ways:
1.) Keep it short. They will be sold on your writing, not your pitch. The only purpose it serves is to get them to turn the page, and hopefully make them a little excited about what they'll find.
2.) Don't try to summarize your whole novel, or even the main plot arc, in your letter. All it really needs is the hook. That'll be enough to pique their interest, and from there on it's all about what you've written.
3.) You're at a distinct advantage if their guidelines ask for sample chapters with the query letter, because they can just turn the page and start reading, rather than having to respond to you and ask for more. You can use this to your advantage, especially if you're new or bad at writing query letters, by targeting places that ask for sample chapters.
That's all I can think of for now, but I'll leave you with this other piece of interesting information: books are published in increments of 16 pages (including back-ads, etc.) because of how they're printed. Crazy, huh?
You'll be pleased to know that I've pretty much scrapped that query letter entirely, based on one solid principle imparted to me from one of my bosses at work, and my ever-growing experience reading the query letters of others (have I mentioned yet how working in publishing is the best thing an author could ever do for himself?).
Said principle is a sales principle, and it goes a little something like this: "Once they say yes, stop talking."
The corollary to this principle is as follows, "The only other thing they can say is no, and that's not what you want."
Now, this applies to query letters in the following ways:
1.) Keep it short. They will be sold on your writing, not your pitch. The only purpose it serves is to get them to turn the page, and hopefully make them a little excited about what they'll find.
2.) Don't try to summarize your whole novel, or even the main plot arc, in your letter. All it really needs is the hook. That'll be enough to pique their interest, and from there on it's all about what you've written.
3.) You're at a distinct advantage if their guidelines ask for sample chapters with the query letter, because they can just turn the page and start reading, rather than having to respond to you and ask for more. You can use this to your advantage, especially if you're new or bad at writing query letters, by targeting places that ask for sample chapters.
That's all I can think of for now, but I'll leave you with this other piece of interesting information: books are published in increments of 16 pages (including back-ads, etc.) because of how they're printed. Crazy, huh?
Monday 23 June 2008
Writing Fantasy
So Moonrat over at Editorial Ass is having a month of guest blogs where people write about their favorite books and why they impacted them so much. I was allegedly on the slate for June 19th, but seeing as my post still isn't up yet, I may drop her an e-mail this week and see what happened. ;-p
Regardless, today's guest blog really struck a chord with me, and I'd suggest you all go check it out. It's from a woman who writes "speculative fiction"--a fancy word for sci-fi and fantasy, and in it she discusses briefly what she thinks makes the genre so great.
Suffice to say, I feel the same way. In the face of intense criticism, some overt and some more insidious, of my chosen genre from most of my professors and classmates, I have maintained that fantasy is important because it can change people's lives.
My evidence for this, had, until today, been based entirely on my own life, and the way I created my identity by cobbling together bits of pieces of the heroes I most admired and identified with as a kid. The writer on Moonrat's blog today hinted that she did something similar.
So hooray! I'm right, and everyone else is wrong, and maybe, just maybe, my writing will help a struggling kid someday. That's something worth working for.
Regardless, today's guest blog really struck a chord with me, and I'd suggest you all go check it out. It's from a woman who writes "speculative fiction"--a fancy word for sci-fi and fantasy, and in it she discusses briefly what she thinks makes the genre so great.
Suffice to say, I feel the same way. In the face of intense criticism, some overt and some more insidious, of my chosen genre from most of my professors and classmates, I have maintained that fantasy is important because it can change people's lives.
My evidence for this, had, until today, been based entirely on my own life, and the way I created my identity by cobbling together bits of pieces of the heroes I most admired and identified with as a kid. The writer on Moonrat's blog today hinted that she did something similar.
So hooray! I'm right, and everyone else is wrong, and maybe, just maybe, my writing will help a struggling kid someday. That's something worth working for.
Friday 20 June 2008
Things Learned From Videogames: Balance Pt. 2
Yesterday we established that books need to be balanced, much like videogames. A book that is too hard risks losing readers, as does a book that is too easy. You want to hit a sweet spot right in the middle---complex enough to get people thinking, but not so dense that they can't get at what you're saying.
How to do that, of course, is one of the keys to writing well, and there are many different approaches. One that I've learned from videogames is to introduce concepts one at a time, give people time to get used to them, and then move on to introduce a new one.
In videogames this tends to work with skills or moves--different tricks you use to beat the computer (and later, in some games, other players). As you level up you unlock new abilities that each have their own learning curve. In a perfectly balanced game, you get a new ability just as you start to get tired of the last one, so you're always adjusting your strategy, always thinking on your feet, and always excited about the cool new thing you've just discovered.
You can do this in books with themes, characters, ideas, plot threads---you name it. The trick is to neither let the book stagnate nor flood it with too many different concepts too quickly. A smooth movement from idea to idea, character to character, subplot to subplot, is, in my opinion, ideal.
But I'd love to hear from others on this one. Tell me about your favorite books, and how they dealt with this. Did the central themes, characters, and plots of the book unroll one at a time, or were they tossed out all at once?
How to do that, of course, is one of the keys to writing well, and there are many different approaches. One that I've learned from videogames is to introduce concepts one at a time, give people time to get used to them, and then move on to introduce a new one.
In videogames this tends to work with skills or moves--different tricks you use to beat the computer (and later, in some games, other players). As you level up you unlock new abilities that each have their own learning curve. In a perfectly balanced game, you get a new ability just as you start to get tired of the last one, so you're always adjusting your strategy, always thinking on your feet, and always excited about the cool new thing you've just discovered.
You can do this in books with themes, characters, ideas, plot threads---you name it. The trick is to neither let the book stagnate nor flood it with too many different concepts too quickly. A smooth movement from idea to idea, character to character, subplot to subplot, is, in my opinion, ideal.
But I'd love to hear from others on this one. Tell me about your favorite books, and how they dealt with this. Did the central themes, characters, and plots of the book unroll one at a time, or were they tossed out all at once?
Thursday 19 June 2008
Things Learned from Videogames: Balancing Difficulty
So I talked a little bit on Tuesday about how Final Fantasy 7 is an extremely well-balanced game, and how that's a big part of what makes it enjoyable. Balance is an interesting topic, and when it comes to videogames, it's sort of the holy grail. Games that are well-balanced become classics, while those that aren't tend to get relegated to the bargain bin. As evidence I cite Starcraft, so well balanced that it's still played competitively more than ten years after its release.
As for how this applies to writing books, well, let's give it a shot, shall we?
First, I think we need to establish that getting frustrated while reading is a negative thing. I think there are about as many readers who enjoy getting frustrated as there are gamers--which is to say a very small, very masochistic minority who like slogging their way through impossible material because after doing so they can brag about it.
There are many things that can frustrate a reader, but one of them is difficulty. If it's too damn hard to figure out what an author is saying, most people will get frustrated. Witness the legions of books abandoned partway through by high school and college students, let alone the general public.
So step one, people don't like to get frustrated. Step two, things that are too difficult can be frustrating.
Okay, but most people don't like books that are too easy either. The kind of learn-to-read chapter books that fascinated you in early elementary school don't still rivet you with their quality, do they? No?
Okay, so then we've established that people don't like books that are too easy or too hard. The goal, therefore, must be to land somewhere in-between. To achieve balance when it comes to difficulty.
Voila! We have learned something about how to write from the issue of balance in videogames! But there's more. They can even teach us a few things about how to do it. Tune in tomorrow for that bit.
As for how this applies to writing books, well, let's give it a shot, shall we?
First, I think we need to establish that getting frustrated while reading is a negative thing. I think there are about as many readers who enjoy getting frustrated as there are gamers--which is to say a very small, very masochistic minority who like slogging their way through impossible material because after doing so they can brag about it.
There are many things that can frustrate a reader, but one of them is difficulty. If it's too damn hard to figure out what an author is saying, most people will get frustrated. Witness the legions of books abandoned partway through by high school and college students, let alone the general public.
So step one, people don't like to get frustrated. Step two, things that are too difficult can be frustrating.
Okay, but most people don't like books that are too easy either. The kind of learn-to-read chapter books that fascinated you in early elementary school don't still rivet you with their quality, do they? No?
Okay, so then we've established that people don't like books that are too easy or too hard. The goal, therefore, must be to land somewhere in-between. To achieve balance when it comes to difficulty.
Voila! We have learned something about how to write from the issue of balance in videogames! But there's more. They can even teach us a few things about how to do it. Tune in tomorrow for that bit.
Wednesday 18 June 2008
Contracts!
I got to work with contracts today! Muahahaha!
Seriously, the company I work for is putting all of their contract info into an electronic database, and that means that I got to spend today poring over contracts and putting all the important information in them into a spreadsheet.
My co-intern seemed to find the situation mind-numbingly boring, but I was thrilled.
It was very, very, enlightening to get to look at the contracts, at how they're set up, at what the different terms mean, and most importantly---at who gets what terms, what they mean, and why they're important.
For instance, I saw today that advances tend to be pretty meh, and that having a good agent can increase your royalty rate by like 25-50%. I also learned that some people make decisions on subrights I find very interesting---take, for interest, translation rights. A lot of people seem to negotiate these so that the author gets a bigger cut than the publishing house.
This makes sense on the surface, I suppose, but if you dig a little deeper it's pretty illogical. The only reason I can see to cut the publishing house in on the money at all is if they're doing the work of shopping the title in other countries. If you plan to do that yourself (or have your agent do it), then they really don't deserve any of the money, in which case you should reserve all the rights. If you can't reserve those rights, then you'd want to give the publishing company an incentive to do the work by cutting them a higher stake of the profits from the translation. If you plan to have them do the work, giving them a smaller slice of the pie will discourage them from shopping your novel around at all, and that doesn't help anyone.
I also had the fun experience of running into some agency names I'm familiar with and seeing what they got for their authors. Unfortunately, book contracts are confidential, so I can't share (and neither, it seems, can they, or some of them certainly would), but in a perfect world I think I'd want to see example contracts up on every agency's website, as those contracts are a big part of what they do for authors and seeing exactly what each place can offer would be a great help in ranking them.
Seriously, the company I work for is putting all of their contract info into an electronic database, and that means that I got to spend today poring over contracts and putting all the important information in them into a spreadsheet.
My co-intern seemed to find the situation mind-numbingly boring, but I was thrilled.
It was very, very, enlightening to get to look at the contracts, at how they're set up, at what the different terms mean, and most importantly---at who gets what terms, what they mean, and why they're important.
For instance, I saw today that advances tend to be pretty meh, and that having a good agent can increase your royalty rate by like 25-50%. I also learned that some people make decisions on subrights I find very interesting---take, for interest, translation rights. A lot of people seem to negotiate these so that the author gets a bigger cut than the publishing house.
This makes sense on the surface, I suppose, but if you dig a little deeper it's pretty illogical. The only reason I can see to cut the publishing house in on the money at all is if they're doing the work of shopping the title in other countries. If you plan to do that yourself (or have your agent do it), then they really don't deserve any of the money, in which case you should reserve all the rights. If you can't reserve those rights, then you'd want to give the publishing company an incentive to do the work by cutting them a higher stake of the profits from the translation. If you plan to have them do the work, giving them a smaller slice of the pie will discourage them from shopping your novel around at all, and that doesn't help anyone.
I also had the fun experience of running into some agency names I'm familiar with and seeing what they got for their authors. Unfortunately, book contracts are confidential, so I can't share (and neither, it seems, can they, or some of them certainly would), but in a perfect world I think I'd want to see example contracts up on every agency's website, as those contracts are a big part of what they do for authors and seeing exactly what each place can offer would be a great help in ranking them.
Tuesday 17 June 2008
Pacing
So I've really been knuckling down on my research these past couple days, as I've realized I'm quite far behind where I need to be, and if I don't start working a bit harder I'm gonna have some crazy days waiting for me at the end of the summer---which is NOT where I want to be.
In consequence, today I've spent about 7 hours playing through Final Fantasy VII. Right now I'm taking a brief break, and then it's back to the grind.
What has surprised me through the experience is that the only thing forcing me to take breaks is quite literally my body (sitting for too long makes my legs stiff and my eyes get tired from staring at the screen for so long...oh for the days of my youth when I could spend 12 hours at once playing videogames and not even realize they'd passed!). I haven't gotten sick of the game, at all---even when one particular part (Anybody remember the Wutai side-quest, when Yuffie steals all your materia?...yeah.) frustrated the hell out of me. As I sit and ruminate over why this is, I think it's a consequence of two things.
The first is unique to videogames, and that is simply that the game is pretty much perfectly balanced. Your characters progress at a very gratifying rate, and enemies get harder at the same rate you get stronger so that you never feel frustrated or annoyed, but are constantly impressed with what your characters can do and the new, badder enemies they're killing. So kudos to the designers on that one---I'll post more about what I think you can learn as an author from videogame balancing in the future, because despite the obvious differences in medium, I think there's definitely a helpful lesson there.
But the second is what I want to focus on today, and that's that the story is expertly paced. Despite the many, disparate plot threads (Cloud's romantic interests, his past, his status as a Sephiroth clone, his identity, Tifa's past, her memories, Aeris's past and connection with Zach, Zach's identity, Aeris as an Ancient, the Ancients in general, Shinra, the Turks and their role both past and present, Rufus and his machinations...I could literally go on just about forever here), the game deals with each in its turn, never letting any one drop for long enough that you forget about it, never staying on one so long that you tire of it, and weaving them together in just enough ways you do and don't expect to always keep you guessing.
Once my research is done I may be able to post something about exactly how it does that---that's one of the things I'm hoping to glean from the work, but in the meantime I'll just suggest the game to anyone looking to learn a thing or two about pacing, as it's really a masterwork in the subject.
In consequence, today I've spent about 7 hours playing through Final Fantasy VII. Right now I'm taking a brief break, and then it's back to the grind.
What has surprised me through the experience is that the only thing forcing me to take breaks is quite literally my body (sitting for too long makes my legs stiff and my eyes get tired from staring at the screen for so long...oh for the days of my youth when I could spend 12 hours at once playing videogames and not even realize they'd passed!). I haven't gotten sick of the game, at all---even when one particular part (Anybody remember the Wutai side-quest, when Yuffie steals all your materia?...yeah.) frustrated the hell out of me. As I sit and ruminate over why this is, I think it's a consequence of two things.
The first is unique to videogames, and that is simply that the game is pretty much perfectly balanced. Your characters progress at a very gratifying rate, and enemies get harder at the same rate you get stronger so that you never feel frustrated or annoyed, but are constantly impressed with what your characters can do and the new, badder enemies they're killing. So kudos to the designers on that one---I'll post more about what I think you can learn as an author from videogame balancing in the future, because despite the obvious differences in medium, I think there's definitely a helpful lesson there.
But the second is what I want to focus on today, and that's that the story is expertly paced. Despite the many, disparate plot threads (Cloud's romantic interests, his past, his status as a Sephiroth clone, his identity, Tifa's past, her memories, Aeris's past and connection with Zach, Zach's identity, Aeris as an Ancient, the Ancients in general, Shinra, the Turks and their role both past and present, Rufus and his machinations...I could literally go on just about forever here), the game deals with each in its turn, never letting any one drop for long enough that you forget about it, never staying on one so long that you tire of it, and weaving them together in just enough ways you do and don't expect to always keep you guessing.
Once my research is done I may be able to post something about exactly how it does that---that's one of the things I'm hoping to glean from the work, but in the meantime I'll just suggest the game to anyone looking to learn a thing or two about pacing, as it's really a masterwork in the subject.
Monday 16 June 2008
Apologies
I want to apologize for not posting much last week. The long and short of the reason why is that I was just exhausted from work. They've got me reading novels and writing press releases for them, which is great in some ways and pretty rough in others.
First, the good: It's great for understanding how the marketing side of publishing works, which is key to figuring out how to pitch my work. I'm going to get better and better and isolating what a book is really about and how it works as the summer goes on, and that experience will translate directly into being able to pitch my book in a way that catches an editor's attention. It's also not bad resume fodder.
Second, the bad: They've been handing me thrillers and horror. Now, I love a good book as much as the next guy, but my imagination has a tendency to get a bit overactive. I didn't get a solid night's sleep once last week, which is why I just couldn't find the energy to post when I got home from work...all I wanted to do was crash on the couch and hope I could sleep later that night.
But I've finished the horror novel they gave me, and maybe I'll get a romance next. Never thought I'd be hoping for that. ;-p
First, the good: It's great for understanding how the marketing side of publishing works, which is key to figuring out how to pitch my work. I'm going to get better and better and isolating what a book is really about and how it works as the summer goes on, and that experience will translate directly into being able to pitch my book in a way that catches an editor's attention. It's also not bad resume fodder.
Second, the bad: They've been handing me thrillers and horror. Now, I love a good book as much as the next guy, but my imagination has a tendency to get a bit overactive. I didn't get a solid night's sleep once last week, which is why I just couldn't find the energy to post when I got home from work...all I wanted to do was crash on the couch and hope I could sleep later that night.
But I've finished the horror novel they gave me, and maybe I'll get a romance next. Never thought I'd be hoping for that. ;-p
Tuesday 10 June 2008
My Research
Just thought I'd take a minute to let people know what I'm up to with my research this summer.
I'm comparing narrative techniques and character development in Final Fantasy VII, Gundam Wing, and the three original Dragonlance Chronicles books. Aside from the fact that by doing this project I can basically get paid to do things I love, there are a few other reasons why I'm embarking on it.
The first is that I hope through buckling down and really looking at some of my favorite stories with a critical eye I will pick up some tricks to use in my own writing. Like I posted yesterday, I've already discovered one, and I expect to come across a few more as I continue the research.
The second is that it will provide me with something interesting to put in the "about me" section of my query letters and my resume. "I've been a fan of fantasy all my life" doesn't make for a good attention-getter. "I wrote a thesis-length paper comparing storytelling techniques in Anime, fantasy literature, and RPG videogames and have put the things I learned there to use in my own writing" is a bit more interesting. And if I can get it published somewhere (have yet to broach this topic with my advisor, but we'll see...) then so much the better.
The distant third is that I hope, in some small way, to begin to justify fantasy in the eyes of academia. It's not that I hold the opinion of academia in the greatest esteem--but credit should be given where it's due, and one thing I've learned in studying "English Literature" is that only those books which are sanctioned by the highbrow, academic elite will be widely taught in high schools and middle schools (and I'm not talking book reports or independent projects here, but those books actively taught by teachers). As I'm sure everyone remembers, the current fare on offer in those venues isn't always mouth-watering, and the nation as a whole can only benefit by the opening up of more interesting texts.
I'm comparing narrative techniques and character development in Final Fantasy VII, Gundam Wing, and the three original Dragonlance Chronicles books. Aside from the fact that by doing this project I can basically get paid to do things I love, there are a few other reasons why I'm embarking on it.
The first is that I hope through buckling down and really looking at some of my favorite stories with a critical eye I will pick up some tricks to use in my own writing. Like I posted yesterday, I've already discovered one, and I expect to come across a few more as I continue the research.
The second is that it will provide me with something interesting to put in the "about me" section of my query letters and my resume. "I've been a fan of fantasy all my life" doesn't make for a good attention-getter. "I wrote a thesis-length paper comparing storytelling techniques in Anime, fantasy literature, and RPG videogames and have put the things I learned there to use in my own writing" is a bit more interesting. And if I can get it published somewhere (have yet to broach this topic with my advisor, but we'll see...) then so much the better.
The distant third is that I hope, in some small way, to begin to justify fantasy in the eyes of academia. It's not that I hold the opinion of academia in the greatest esteem--but credit should be given where it's due, and one thing I've learned in studying "English Literature" is that only those books which are sanctioned by the highbrow, academic elite will be widely taught in high schools and middle schools (and I'm not talking book reports or independent projects here, but those books actively taught by teachers). As I'm sure everyone remembers, the current fare on offer in those venues isn't always mouth-watering, and the nation as a whole can only benefit by the opening up of more interesting texts.
Monday 9 June 2008
Lessons Learned from Research
Alright, nothing earth-shattering to share today---just the first of (hopefully) many bits of storytelling advice gleaned from my research.
I don't think I've gone into too much detail about my research (I'll do so tomorrow), but right now for it I'm playing through Final Fantasy VII again, focusing on character development. One thing I realized very quickly is that the game goes out of its way to remind you that Cloud is "special" in a way that might be sinister.
It really helps to keep your interest, and made me realize that I had failed to do that in my own novel. For all my blather about how it's a novel about Litnig and him dealing with the revelation of his identity, I don't start hinting at that identity in an open way for a long, long time.
Luckily, I've figured out how to use this to kill two birds with one stone (the other being that I've never really described how it feels, physically, to Soulweave). Stay tuned for my next draft to find out how. ;-p
Anyway, I know I'm only regurgitating the advice that every aspiring author gets about going back and picking apart your favorite stories to see how they work, but it really is worth doing, and I think it's taken me far too long to get around to it.
I don't think I've gone into too much detail about my research (I'll do so tomorrow), but right now for it I'm playing through Final Fantasy VII again, focusing on character development. One thing I realized very quickly is that the game goes out of its way to remind you that Cloud is "special" in a way that might be sinister.
It really helps to keep your interest, and made me realize that I had failed to do that in my own novel. For all my blather about how it's a novel about Litnig and him dealing with the revelation of his identity, I don't start hinting at that identity in an open way for a long, long time.
Luckily, I've figured out how to use this to kill two birds with one stone (the other being that I've never really described how it feels, physically, to Soulweave). Stay tuned for my next draft to find out how. ;-p
Anyway, I know I'm only regurgitating the advice that every aspiring author gets about going back and picking apart your favorite stories to see how they work, but it really is worth doing, and I think it's taken me far too long to get around to it.
Friday 6 June 2008
Proofreading: Why You Should Do a Good Job Yourself
Today I spent most of my morning taking a proofreading test so that I'll (hopefully) be qualified to proofread for the company I'm working at. First of all, I think it's worth noting that proofreading is written more or less in Greek---or at least that's what it looks like. Learning the marks is a bit like learning a foreign language, or a secret code. I've had some experience with it before, and had been studying for a couple of days, but I still had to stop frequently while taking said test and look things up in the Chicago Manual of Style they were so kind as to give me for reference.
But the reason I'm blogging about proofreading is because of one sentence I ran into on the test. It was a piece of dialogue, and ran something like:
"Slender yes. but with curves in the all right places."
Zomg! Grammatical error that's easy to spot!
But how to fix it? The most obvious fixes are to either replace the period with a comma or capitalize the 'b' in but. Unfortunately, that's a fairly major stylistic decision. "Slender yes, but with curves in all the right places." reads quite differently than "Slender, yes. But with curves in all the right places." One is just a statement of fact, but the other implies a wink and a grin--at least to me anyway. And it's difficult to tell whether the author hit the wrong key when going for a comma or forgot to capitalize a 'b'.
While I'm sure it gets easier with time and practice to make those guesses right, I think it definitely behooves the author to just make sure they get it right the first time...and it saves the proofreaders work, which is always a good thing. :-)
But the reason I'm blogging about proofreading is because of one sentence I ran into on the test. It was a piece of dialogue, and ran something like:
"Slender yes. but with curves in the all right places."
Zomg! Grammatical error that's easy to spot!
But how to fix it? The most obvious fixes are to either replace the period with a comma or capitalize the 'b' in but. Unfortunately, that's a fairly major stylistic decision. "Slender yes, but with curves in all the right places." reads quite differently than "Slender, yes. But with curves in all the right places." One is just a statement of fact, but the other implies a wink and a grin--at least to me anyway. And it's difficult to tell whether the author hit the wrong key when going for a comma or forgot to capitalize a 'b'.
While I'm sure it gets easier with time and practice to make those guesses right, I think it definitely behooves the author to just make sure they get it right the first time...and it saves the proofreaders work, which is always a good thing. :-)
Thursday 5 June 2008
Why Every Aspiring Writer Should Work in Publishing
Well there's the obvious--the contacts, the industry knowledge, the possibility of a career working with books that comes complete with a salary and benefits...but today I want to talk about how it can help your writing.
Whilst doing one of my favorite things today (and it really is...maybe I haven't been doing it long enough or maybe I'm just crazy), reading through the slush pile, I came across a pretty well written manuscript. Before you ask, yes I did send it up, because it was that good, and I'm fairly confident that it's worth at least asking for a full, though I can't really evaluate whether it will ever get published.
While that was exciting in and of itself, more important for me was the way this woman really grabbed me from the first page. I'm hard to do that with, and she did it by describing the psychic visions of her main character. I've gotten a lot of feedback (I sometimes call it flak...) about people not understanding the magic in my own writing, particularly in the initial pages. I've struggled with what to do about that, because I'm using those initial pages to do other things and I didn't want to give them up to description.
I have now been converted, because I had a moment, as an editor reading a slush manuscript, where I said "Okay, well done. Let's see what else you've got" and that is exactly what you want when your first page is read by anybody, but especially when it's read by an editor. So I'm now convinced it can work, which makes it worth experimenting with, and perhaps expanding my prologue and assigning it a fixed point of view to get the description done. We'll see. Either way, the point is that I now have a concrete moment where my work in publishing is paying direct dividends to my writing, and that's a very good thing.
Whilst doing one of my favorite things today (and it really is...maybe I haven't been doing it long enough or maybe I'm just crazy), reading through the slush pile, I came across a pretty well written manuscript. Before you ask, yes I did send it up, because it was that good, and I'm fairly confident that it's worth at least asking for a full, though I can't really evaluate whether it will ever get published.
While that was exciting in and of itself, more important for me was the way this woman really grabbed me from the first page. I'm hard to do that with, and she did it by describing the psychic visions of her main character. I've gotten a lot of feedback (I sometimes call it flak...) about people not understanding the magic in my own writing, particularly in the initial pages. I've struggled with what to do about that, because I'm using those initial pages to do other things and I didn't want to give them up to description.
I have now been converted, because I had a moment, as an editor reading a slush manuscript, where I said "Okay, well done. Let's see what else you've got" and that is exactly what you want when your first page is read by anybody, but especially when it's read by an editor. So I'm now convinced it can work, which makes it worth experimenting with, and perhaps expanding my prologue and assigning it a fixed point of view to get the description done. We'll see. Either way, the point is that I now have a concrete moment where my work in publishing is paying direct dividends to my writing, and that's a very good thing.
Tuesday 3 June 2008
Harry Potter
In honor of my discovery yesterday that Harry Potter is now almost as old as he is in his first book, I'd like to take today and post my thoughts on the Harry Potter phenomenon and what made it work.
First off, and most importantly, there's Rowling's talent. She hit gold with her subject matter, but she also had what it took to capitalize upon it, and there are few people that could have done it so well. She plotted out a seven-book series about kids long after she was no longer a kid herself, and kept it believable and interesting at least through book five (which is, I must admit, as far I've read so far). That's an incredible accomplishment any way you slice it.
Okay, now that acknowledging her talent is over, let's look at why the story was so popular. It seems pretty simple to me, but I haven't seen many people discuss it. Sure, there's the orphaned hero with magic powers, the evil step-parents, the heroic destiny--all the most common tropes of fantasy and (more importantly, I think) fairy tale, but there are plenty of other books that have those and didn't achieve such success, and I'm not willing to pin it all on Rowling's talent. So what do we have that's different?
Boarding school.
I really think it's that simple. Kids love boarding school stories. They've been around forever but they're still huge in YA, which was Potter's target audience, and Rowling managed to put a new spin on hers by combining it with magic powers and doing it very, very, well. So if that's why it was initially successful, why did it remain so?
She matured her books at (or close to) the same rate her audience was maturing.
She did a great job of making her books more adult book by book. Let's look at the scariest things in each book, through book five where my knowledge ends.
Book One: Confrontation with a creepy teacher. Boarding-school mystery story.
Book Two: A giant snake. We've moved on to fairy tale.
Book Three: The Dementors. We're now on the dark end of the fairy tale spectrum.
Book Four: Failure to stop Evil with a capital 'E' (Voldemort) and the death of a child. We're now at the border between darkest fairy tale and modern fantasy.
Book Five: Not any real terrifying moments (death of Potter's godfather, perhaps?) but nervous tension the whole way through. Constant question of whether or not Potter can do what 'his destiny' is and stop Voldemort. We're now solidly away from fairy tale and into modern fantasy, and have moved on to a theme ('Can I do everything people think I can?') more resonant with teenagers than pre-teens.
The books get more and more mature as both Potter and his audience get older and older. I think that's a pretty good primer for how to write YA, because there will come a point when the kids grow out of YA, and if you want to keep them, you've got to grow with them. New readers, the next generation of kids, can always start with book one.
First off, and most importantly, there's Rowling's talent. She hit gold with her subject matter, but she also had what it took to capitalize upon it, and there are few people that could have done it so well. She plotted out a seven-book series about kids long after she was no longer a kid herself, and kept it believable and interesting at least through book five (which is, I must admit, as far I've read so far). That's an incredible accomplishment any way you slice it.
Okay, now that acknowledging her talent is over, let's look at why the story was so popular. It seems pretty simple to me, but I haven't seen many people discuss it. Sure, there's the orphaned hero with magic powers, the evil step-parents, the heroic destiny--all the most common tropes of fantasy and (more importantly, I think) fairy tale, but there are plenty of other books that have those and didn't achieve such success, and I'm not willing to pin it all on Rowling's talent. So what do we have that's different?
Boarding school.
I really think it's that simple. Kids love boarding school stories. They've been around forever but they're still huge in YA, which was Potter's target audience, and Rowling managed to put a new spin on hers by combining it with magic powers and doing it very, very, well. So if that's why it was initially successful, why did it remain so?
She matured her books at (or close to) the same rate her audience was maturing.
She did a great job of making her books more adult book by book. Let's look at the scariest things in each book, through book five where my knowledge ends.
Book One: Confrontation with a creepy teacher. Boarding-school mystery story.
Book Two: A giant snake. We've moved on to fairy tale.
Book Three: The Dementors. We're now on the dark end of the fairy tale spectrum.
Book Four: Failure to stop Evil with a capital 'E' (Voldemort) and the death of a child. We're now at the border between darkest fairy tale and modern fantasy.
Book Five: Not any real terrifying moments (death of Potter's godfather, perhaps?) but nervous tension the whole way through. Constant question of whether or not Potter can do what 'his destiny' is and stop Voldemort. We're now solidly away from fairy tale and into modern fantasy, and have moved on to a theme ('Can I do everything people think I can?') more resonant with teenagers than pre-teens.
The books get more and more mature as both Potter and his audience get older and older. I think that's a pretty good primer for how to write YA, because there will come a point when the kids grow out of YA, and if you want to keep them, you've got to grow with them. New readers, the next generation of kids, can always start with book one.
Monday 2 June 2008
10 Years?!
I was doing my daily blog-post reading today, and I came across this picture at the Guide to Literary Agents:
Looks like just another post from BEA (Book Expo America, I believe), which is all anyone is posting about lately because it's a huge tradeshow and just about everyone who's involved in the publishing industry seems to be there. But can you spot what's wrong with this picture? With the help of MS paint, let me help...
10 years!! It's been 10 years since Harry Potter was published! Forget how old that makes me, let's think about what that means...we've had a full decade of Potter mania, and of one series single-handedly causing massive ups and downs in publishing sales figures. What the heck are we going to do now that it's over? My personal thoughts about Harry Potter and its dastardly success aside (well, at least until tomorrow, probably...;-p), when will I next have to drive my little sister to the grocery store at midnight so that she can have a book the minute it goes on sale?
I can't believe it lasted that long....10 years is a crazy amount of time for anything to hold the attention of the whole world, let alone a book.
Looks like just another post from BEA (Book Expo America, I believe), which is all anyone is posting about lately because it's a huge tradeshow and just about everyone who's involved in the publishing industry seems to be there. But can you spot what's wrong with this picture? With the help of MS paint, let me help...
10 years!! It's been 10 years since Harry Potter was published! Forget how old that makes me, let's think about what that means...we've had a full decade of Potter mania, and of one series single-handedly causing massive ups and downs in publishing sales figures. What the heck are we going to do now that it's over? My personal thoughts about Harry Potter and its dastardly success aside (well, at least until tomorrow, probably...;-p), when will I next have to drive my little sister to the grocery store at midnight so that she can have a book the minute it goes on sale?
I can't believe it lasted that long....10 years is a crazy amount of time for anything to hold the attention of the whole world, let alone a book.
Sunday 1 June 2008
Serendipity
In case anyone was wondering about whether some things are fated, consider this:
I have been thinking a lot about my dialogue lately, as is obvious from my most recent blog posts. I'm also preparing to move out to New York City to start my summer publishing internship (I catch the red eye tonight, as a matter of fact), and part of that process was to find myself a messenger bag to take to work, as a backpack just looks goofy when you're wearing business clothes (one thing I learned in London).
The one messenger bag I own was a freebie I received when I attended the Pikes Peak Writers' Conference last year.
I thought I had emptied it out long ago, just after the conference, but when I lifted it to stuff it into my suitcase, I noticed it was actually quite heavy. I opened it up, and out poured a pile of papers and envelopes. Apparently my mother used it as a repository for junk with my name on it at some point while I wasn't home.
So I set about sifting the garbage (letters from the University of Colorado at Denver, to which I was considering transferring in Spring 2007) from the gold (notes from the conference itself) and I came across a magazine called "Writer" that must have been another freebie given at the conference.
Intrigued, I flipped to a random page...and what greeted my eyes but an article entitled "Shtick it to them: The art of dialogue includes deft stage business that adds action and detail."
Convinced that such a coincidence could only be the work of fate, I read through it and found it quite helpful. It was packed with examples of different kind of speech tags (I think the author who wrote it split them up into "dialogue", meaning "he said", "action", meaning "he scratched his head" and "thought", meaning "he wondered how long it had been since John had showered"), how they had worked for different authors, and suggestions on how to improve upon each type.
Reading the article was great for me, as it reinforced my conviction that the way I write dialogue isn't bad in and of itself (it was good to see that other, published, respected authors write the same way) but I'm not executing it as well as I could be. I use the same action tags too often and too freely, without giving much thought to them. I need to go back and take a much closer look at what each of my characters would actually do while talking--what their particular tics are, so to speak, and then implement that into the writing, so that all of my speech tags, not just some of them, accomplish something more than simply filling space and breaking up long bits of dialogue.
I have been thinking a lot about my dialogue lately, as is obvious from my most recent blog posts. I'm also preparing to move out to New York City to start my summer publishing internship (I catch the red eye tonight, as a matter of fact), and part of that process was to find myself a messenger bag to take to work, as a backpack just looks goofy when you're wearing business clothes (one thing I learned in London).
The one messenger bag I own was a freebie I received when I attended the Pikes Peak Writers' Conference last year.
I thought I had emptied it out long ago, just after the conference, but when I lifted it to stuff it into my suitcase, I noticed it was actually quite heavy. I opened it up, and out poured a pile of papers and envelopes. Apparently my mother used it as a repository for junk with my name on it at some point while I wasn't home.
So I set about sifting the garbage (letters from the University of Colorado at Denver, to which I was considering transferring in Spring 2007) from the gold (notes from the conference itself) and I came across a magazine called "Writer" that must have been another freebie given at the conference.
Intrigued, I flipped to a random page...and what greeted my eyes but an article entitled "Shtick it to them: The art of dialogue includes deft stage business that adds action and detail."
Convinced that such a coincidence could only be the work of fate, I read through it and found it quite helpful. It was packed with examples of different kind of speech tags (I think the author who wrote it split them up into "dialogue", meaning "he said", "action", meaning "he scratched his head" and "thought", meaning "he wondered how long it had been since John had showered"), how they had worked for different authors, and suggestions on how to improve upon each type.
Reading the article was great for me, as it reinforced my conviction that the way I write dialogue isn't bad in and of itself (it was good to see that other, published, respected authors write the same way) but I'm not executing it as well as I could be. I use the same action tags too often and too freely, without giving much thought to them. I need to go back and take a much closer look at what each of my characters would actually do while talking--what their particular tics are, so to speak, and then implement that into the writing, so that all of my speech tags, not just some of them, accomplish something more than simply filling space and breaking up long bits of dialogue.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
