Storytelling

I've been beating myself up for the last couple weeks. After I finished my revisions on Running from Ruby Ridge, I spent the normal amount of time enjoying the fact that I finished a freaking novel (how long is normal again?) and then I ... stagnated.

I'd had the idea for my next book in my head for a while, but I'm the kind of writer who can only focus on one thing at a time. I know some people who work on more than one project at once, but to me, that's nuts. So anyway, while I was drafting Ruby Ridge, I could not really think about Book the Next. I mean, I did think about it, of course, but I didn't really think about it, you know what I mean?

So now I spent the last two or three weeks diddling around. I wrote some character sheets (I've never messed with that before). I wrote an outline (a really bad, really thin one). I researched the bit of real life that inspired the story. But ... it wasn't until last night that I finally realized it was okay what I was going through.

Sometimes a story needs time to solidify in your mind. I wasn't to that point yet. I think I might be now.

How do you know when you're at the point? I'm not sure, and I'm not sure it's the same for everyone, but for me, it's when scenes are coming to you while you're driving. When the story is invading your dreams. When lines of dialog spring into your mind while you're in the shower. When you have to have a notebook, or at least your phone, with you at all times because you never know when you'll be struck with inspiration.

Yeah, I'm there.

When do you know you're ready?

Character Names

Sorry to shamelessly self promote here guys, but yesterday was the Fourth of July, so some of you may have missed my post over at Project Mayhem. If you did, please go read The Character Should Make the Name.

The post itself wasn't that great, kind of rambling as I am wont to do, but the comments were awesome. And there's a link to a fun game in my first comment, one that is heavily related to the post.

Anyway, please go read that, let me know what you think, and then I'll have something real for you here, tomorrow. Thanks!

Be Cruel to Be Kind

Hamlet:

I do repent; but heaven hath pleas'd it so

To punish me with this, and this with me,

That I must be their scourge and minister.

I will bestow him, and will answer well

The death I gave him. So again good night.

I must be cruel only to be kind.

Thus bad begins and worse remains behind.

Hamlet Act 3, scene 4, 173–179

I wasn't actually talking about this play, but any chance we have to quote the bard really ought to be taken, methinks. I'm not talking about the song lyrics either. Not the Nick Lowe song or the Letters to Cleo song.

No, alas, I'm talking about characters. Or rather, more specifically my main character in my current WIP. What I mean here is that in order to be kind to your characters in the long run (in the sense of making them believable, and therefore being successful in getting people to actually read about them) you have to be cruel to them in the short term. Or at least, if you don't have to, you ought to.

As writers it can be difficult to torture what are essentially our loved ones, our little darlings, but if we go to easy on them no reader will give a damn about their tale, and no agent or editor will take a chance on making them known. Think about your most favorite stories. Did the characters not suffer through adversity? Would you have rooted for Katniss as hard if Panem and President Snow had not been so unbelievably cruel and unfair to her? Would you have cried as hard as I did for Frodo when Samwise put him on his back to tackle the final slope of Mount Doom if you had not carried the addictive power of the One Ring all the way across Middle Earth with him?

In the first several drafts I drafts of WARRIOR-MONKS I did a pretty good job, I hope, of making my MC's story a tough one, at least his backstory. There were far too many flahsbacks, and most had to be cut, but the ones that I've kept are good and cruel. The problem is that his life at school, his current situation, is far too kind. Oh he gets in trouble and whatnot, but when he does they go too easy on him.

So I'm working on a scene today in which I need to ramp up the cruelty. I'm going to be working on it hard today so I won't be visiting many blogs, but in the meantime I would love to hear from all of you on how well you're doing at being cruel to your characters. Specific examples from your own work, or even from known literature would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

Finding Balance

Today is my post for The Great Blogging Experiment. As usual I'm a little late, but I had a guest on Friday, so I have an excuse (sort of). The topic for the experiment is how to write compelling characters.

For me it's all about balance. Think of Yin and Yang. Characters are people, they just happen to be people in a story. Sometimes they are sparkly vampires, fallen dark angels, impetuous little girls, or even dirt eating dwarves, but they are always people underneath it all. People are flawed.

Characters, or at least protagonists, must also almost always overcome some kind of conflict. Whether they use cunning, strength, dexterity or good old dumb luck the character must have some kind of skill or talent with which to overcome the conflict and make the choice that allows them to do so. These abilities are like the Yang side of a character or person. People in real life do have talents. It's what makes them an asset at their workplace, the best hitter on their softball team, or the better parent in their family at diffusing toddler meltdowns. Characters in books or film can have their talents magnified or blurred, depending on where in the spectrum between superhero action story and depressing melodrama the story in which they exist lies.

Characters must also be flawed. Flawed and sometimes vulnerable. They must grow jealous of others who have more than them. They must covet things that they want but cannot have. They must be selfish when it comes to resources that allow for survival. These weaknesses are like the Yin side of a character or person. There are many more examples but the point is that for characters to be believable, even lovable, they must be human. Vulnerability is the other side of the coin. Whether emotionally vulnerable or in actual physical danger vulnerability is a sense of weakness that is not the character's fault. Flaws are a part of who they are; vulnerability is a part of a situation they are in. Picture Harry, Ron and Hermione in that tent in the woods in The Deathly Hallows. Can you imagine a position of greater vulnerability?

Keep in mind that in Taoist philosophy (which the concept of Yin and Yang comes from), there is no good and evil, only balance.

I could go on about all of this but I won't. For it simply all comes down to balance. Characters must have talents, to get them through obstacles, but they must also be flawed and occasionally vulnerable in order to make them believable.

I can't add the linky list below because it is closed, but please visit Elana's post, here, to see the original list of entries for this awesome blogfest!