On October 31, 2011, writeforfun wrote, ...how do you know where to put those important backstories, the ones that are pivotal to a character? Is there any way to know, or do you just put it where it seems “right”?
There are lots of ways and places and times to work in a backstory, and I think where it seems right is a good guide.
You can do it in dialogue. For example, Elizabeth and Pamela are sleeping over at Marianne’s house. They’re in their pajamas in Marianne’s room. They’ve been friends since they were in kindergarten. Pamela starts a conversation about the first time she was in this bedroom. Others chime in with their early memories. These reveal their backstories.
Or Elizabeth, Pamela and Marianne are marching against the umbertis, enormous intelligent crabs that have invaded their homeland. The soldiers have a long way to go, and they pass the time talking about memories of home, their backstories.
Or you can do the same in thought. Pamela is the POV character. At the sleepover she thinks about her friendship with the two girls. She’s felt close to Marianne since the beginning, but her relationship with Elizabeth has had ups and downs. She can obsess over details of their run-ins. Or she can think about her own home, where she’s never invited the others to sleep over. Or, on the march against the umbertis she can think about her fellow soldiers or she can think about her mother’s teachings on warfare.
Or in narration. An omniscient narrator can chronicle the sleepover or the foot soldiers’ advance. The narrator can directly provide background for each girl.
The danger with backstory, which I suspect writeforfun is worrying about, is interrupting the flow of the story. For backstory to work, in most cases anyway, the front story needs to be underway. The reader has to care about the character with the backstory and the ongoing action of the story. Again in most cases, backstory will fit best in, say, the first third of the novel. Much later than that the reader is likely to have come to his own conclusions and backstory may just annoy. And at the end of a book backstory may feel too convenient, like a deus ex machina arrived to save the day or at least to explain it.
Let’s take the case of the umbertis. The reader has watched with Marianne as a crab’s purple pincer cruelly pinches her little brother Patrick and pulls him away. Another crab’s beady metallic eyes scan Marianne’s family’s living room, where she is crouched in horror behind a couch. Patrick’s screams are heard from the hallway. This is not the time for backstory about how much Marianne loves her brother or how much he annoys her. Unless--
Unless this interrupted action is going to be a motif in the story. Whenever things get exciting, the narrator switches to something else, which could be backstory. The reader groans while smiling, knowing that the main storyline will continue later. This is a way of creating distance and making the reader aware that he’s reading, reading the work of a very clever author. I’ve enjoyed books like this. I think the crime novelists Lawrence Block and Donald Westlake (high school and above) have written this kind of thing, although I can’t think of a particular title.
However, in this sort of story, even if it’s really well done, sometimes I will gnash my teeth and thumb ahead to where the action resumes. Then, after I’ve read the continuing crab drama, I may be reluctant to go back to the intervening pages. If I don’t, I may lose the thread of the story and I may abandon the book entirely. So there’s a risk. In general, quiet moments are best for backstory.
When I wrote the early drafts of Fairest, writing in omniscient third-person POV (I switched to first person later), I put in backstory for Queen Ivi. I included several scenes between her and Skulni, the creature in the mirror, and one between her, her mother, and her brother (who didn’t make the final cut). The scenes and backstory explained Ivi’s behavior. But third person didn’t work and most of the backstory had to go. I miss these scenes. They deepened Ivi’s character for me. But they weren’t necessary, and they gunked up the story. The reader accepts Ivi without the explanations.
What I’m saying is, consider if you need the backstory at all. You may need it for yourself, to understand why your character behaves as she does and to figure out what she’ll do in future situations, but the reader may not. Take the sleepover example. Let’s say Elizabeth makes fun of Marianne’s pajamas, which are cotton with a print of climbing vines that Elizabeth calls poison ivy. And Elizabeth keeps complaining that she isn’t going to be able to sleep because of Pamela’s snoring. I don’t think the reader needs to know that Elizabeth’s mother is hypercritical and her father is uninvolved in family life. The reader takes Elizabeth as he finds her. He’ll also be watching Elizabeth’s and Pamela’s response to her. If they treat her with understanding he’s going to suspect they understand her or that she has virtues he hasn’t experienced yet.
I’ve been watching the HBO series Girls, which is definitely without a doubt for adults. One of the girls, I don’t have the names down yet, the one with the British accent, is so far unfailingly unkind to her friends. I can’t figure out why they like her, and no amount of backstory would condone her bad behavior for me.
And lets go back to Elizabeth and her judgmental mother and disengaged father. Well, plenty of people have terrible parents and they rise above them. The moral is: Be judicious with your backstories. You can put them in (you may need to) in early drafts but try your story without them as you revise.
If the backstory is important and you’re sure you don’t want to cut it, consider telling it in forward time. Start the tale at an earlier moment. In Fairest again, I could have begun the book with Aza’s arrival at Ontio castle and slipped her earlier life in through flashbacks and thoughts and dialogue, but that would have been tricky and it might have given the book a jumpy quality I didn’t want. Same thing has happened to me with other books. I start somewhere and then I move the beginning back and back and back. You can too.
Here are four prompts:
∙ Write from the POV of the umberti crab who kidnapped Marianne’s brother and work in the backstory of these intelligent creatures. Do they come from outer space or are they mutations of ordinary crabs? Why do they hate humans?
∙ Invent a backstory for each of the sleepover girls. Telling the sleepover in the voice of an omniscient narrator, insert each backstory through thoughts, narration, and dialogue. Cause an argument among the three and have the backstory come into play.
∙ In the crab story, invent a backstory for Pamela and include it in the marching scene. After the army reaches the crabs, Pamela and a crab face off in hand-to-claw combat. Have Pamela’s backstory influence her fighting.
∙ Ina is a writer. Whenever she meets people she makes up their backstories. Her boyfriend brings her to dinner at his parents’ house. She’s meeting his family for the first time, and she engages in her pastime. Write the scene and make the imagined backstories get her into trouble.
Have fun, and save what you write!
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Tensing
First off, welliewalks’ comment last week about setting a goal to get something published before the next school year gave me an idea: how nice if you would post your publishing triumphs here so we can all bask in the reflected glory. Please do!
Now for the post. On October 20, 2011, Charlotte wrote, I've been thinking lately about tense, as in past or present. I've read some fantastic stuff in the present tense (read: THE HUNGER GAMES and other less fantastic things) and I've been wondering what everyone thinks about which tense a story should be written in, and how to decide.
I reckon it depends on the needs of your tale, like POV does, but I'm interested to hear other people's thoughts, especially on choosing which to use....
Going quickly through my bookshelf I notice that young adult novels in a contemporary setting are more often written in present tense than books for younger children, which seem generally to be in the past tense. This isn’t a scientific survey, just my impression. Not sure why this may be. Maybe present tense seems more immediate and real, less storybook-like. I haven’t done any sort of survey of novels for adults, so I don’t know.
Historical novels on my bookshelf are written in the past tense, except for my historical fantasy, Ever. I chose present because the survival of Kezi, one of my POV characters, is in doubt, and I felt that past tense would suggest to readers that she’s okay at the end. I used present tense for a short story, too, in that case because my main character has a decision to make, and I felt that past tense would suggest one choice or another. I wanted the reader right there with her as she chooses. Aside from those two instances, however, I’ve stuck with past tense. I don’t think Ella Enchanted or most of my fantasies would have succeeded in present tense.
Susan Cooper’s novel Victory alternates between a modern narrator and a nineteenth century one. The current-day chapters are written in the present tense, the historical ones in the past tense. I suppose they both could have been in one or the other, but this way works beautifully - and it’s a terrific book.
So, yes, the decision depends on the needs of your story. You can ask yourself if you want to create a storybook atmosphere or if you want the grittier reality of present tense. You can also see if you gravitate one way or the other and then decide whether you want to go with your own flow or if you want to write against it.
I suppose I have a bias, which you may or may not agree with. Sometimes you won’t have a strong reason to choose one tense over another. In those cases I’m prejudiced in favor of past tense, which I think is more flexible. You can achieve a noir reality using the past tense, as in, Mickey spat cigar juice into the gutter and muttered, “You do that again, I’ll knot your legs into a pretzel.” But it’s harder to get that timeless aura in, say a medieval fantasy, as in, Sir Grathnath turns to his liege lord and says, “I pledge my allegiance until the firmaments ripple and the seas grow trees.” Then he dons his armor and buckles on his trusty sword. Doesn’t sound right.
When I say I have a bias I mean as a writer, not as a reader. As a reader I’m fine with either tense. If I like the story, I’m just happy. As a writer, though, present tense seems like more of a DECISION. Past tense seems more like, for good or ill, choosing the common path.
Flashbacks are a little different in the different tenses. If you’re writing in present tense, you just have to switch to simple past. If you’re already in past tense you need past perfect, with the auxiliary verb had, as in, Nancy had seen this blue-headed boy before. It had been during school break in the fall when she and her father had gone to the shore for one of their long rambles. They picked up knobby skipping tortoise shells and smooth driftwood. Notice that after the first two hads I revert to simple past tense. That’s what all the writing books I’ve read tell me to do. Then, at the end of the flashback, you bring in the hads again once or twice to bracket the anecdote. The reason not to use them constantly is that all those hads draw attention to themselves and are an obstacle to the reader’s complete entry into the flashback. This little bit of complexity isn’t enough of a reason, in my opinion, to write in the present tense.
I’ve never read anything in the future tense. Has anyone out there?
Future tense, now that I’m thinking about it, lends an air of inevitability, as in, Cinderella will step into her pumpkin coach and set out for the first ball. She will smooth her satin skirts and stare at the grand houses scrolling by. Hmm.
I just called my editor to ask if she has a bias (I didn’t tell her mine). She doesn’t. She said the tense just needs to serve the story. I asked what kind of story is best served by which tense, and she thought that mystery and suspense stories sometimes benefit from present tense, allowing the reader to get inside the action. She also opined that present tense can be harder to pull off. She felt that flashbacks can be harder in present tense, the shift from present to past more jarring. She added that some authors try one, find it isn’t working, and shift to the other.
I called my agent, who had no preference either at first, then, after thinking a minute, said she might like present tense better. Then she became unsure again. Then we segued into great first lines, like, “Call me Ishmael,” the beginning of Moby Dick (which, I confess, I’ve never read), a present-tense, powerful start to a book written mostly in the past tense. So you can change it up even if you’re writing in the past tense.
When I read student work I sometimes see tense drift. The story is steaming along in past tense when it suddenly shifts to present and then veers back. This isn’t a big deal, just another thing to mop up in revision. When the story is finished, of course we want it to be consistent.
Here are three prompts:
∙ Rewrite the beginning few pages of one of your stories in the other tense, past if you’re using present, present if you’re using past. How do you feel about it? Which do you like better?
∙ Use my sentences above as a story starter. Change tenses if you like. Here they are again: Nancy had seen this blue-headed boy before. It had been during school break in the fall when she and her father had gone to the shore for one of their long rambles. They picked up knobby skipping tortoise shells and smooth driftwood.
∙ Try writing a story in future tense. I suspect you need either a very tragic ending or a very happy one for this, no bitter-sweet or you may get a let down. A sad Greek myth might work well, like the story of Oedipus.
Have fun, and save what you write!
Now for the post. On October 20, 2011, Charlotte wrote, I've been thinking lately about tense, as in past or present. I've read some fantastic stuff in the present tense (read: THE HUNGER GAMES and other less fantastic things) and I've been wondering what everyone thinks about which tense a story should be written in, and how to decide.
I reckon it depends on the needs of your tale, like POV does, but I'm interested to hear other people's thoughts, especially on choosing which to use....
Going quickly through my bookshelf I notice that young adult novels in a contemporary setting are more often written in present tense than books for younger children, which seem generally to be in the past tense. This isn’t a scientific survey, just my impression. Not sure why this may be. Maybe present tense seems more immediate and real, less storybook-like. I haven’t done any sort of survey of novels for adults, so I don’t know.
Historical novels on my bookshelf are written in the past tense, except for my historical fantasy, Ever. I chose present because the survival of Kezi, one of my POV characters, is in doubt, and I felt that past tense would suggest to readers that she’s okay at the end. I used present tense for a short story, too, in that case because my main character has a decision to make, and I felt that past tense would suggest one choice or another. I wanted the reader right there with her as she chooses. Aside from those two instances, however, I’ve stuck with past tense. I don’t think Ella Enchanted or most of my fantasies would have succeeded in present tense.
Susan Cooper’s novel Victory alternates between a modern narrator and a nineteenth century one. The current-day chapters are written in the present tense, the historical ones in the past tense. I suppose they both could have been in one or the other, but this way works beautifully - and it’s a terrific book.
So, yes, the decision depends on the needs of your story. You can ask yourself if you want to create a storybook atmosphere or if you want the grittier reality of present tense. You can also see if you gravitate one way or the other and then decide whether you want to go with your own flow or if you want to write against it.
I suppose I have a bias, which you may or may not agree with. Sometimes you won’t have a strong reason to choose one tense over another. In those cases I’m prejudiced in favor of past tense, which I think is more flexible. You can achieve a noir reality using the past tense, as in, Mickey spat cigar juice into the gutter and muttered, “You do that again, I’ll knot your legs into a pretzel.” But it’s harder to get that timeless aura in, say a medieval fantasy, as in, Sir Grathnath turns to his liege lord and says, “I pledge my allegiance until the firmaments ripple and the seas grow trees.” Then he dons his armor and buckles on his trusty sword. Doesn’t sound right.
When I say I have a bias I mean as a writer, not as a reader. As a reader I’m fine with either tense. If I like the story, I’m just happy. As a writer, though, present tense seems like more of a DECISION. Past tense seems more like, for good or ill, choosing the common path.
Flashbacks are a little different in the different tenses. If you’re writing in present tense, you just have to switch to simple past. If you’re already in past tense you need past perfect, with the auxiliary verb had, as in, Nancy had seen this blue-headed boy before. It had been during school break in the fall when she and her father had gone to the shore for one of their long rambles. They picked up knobby skipping tortoise shells and smooth driftwood. Notice that after the first two hads I revert to simple past tense. That’s what all the writing books I’ve read tell me to do. Then, at the end of the flashback, you bring in the hads again once or twice to bracket the anecdote. The reason not to use them constantly is that all those hads draw attention to themselves and are an obstacle to the reader’s complete entry into the flashback. This little bit of complexity isn’t enough of a reason, in my opinion, to write in the present tense.
I’ve never read anything in the future tense. Has anyone out there?
Future tense, now that I’m thinking about it, lends an air of inevitability, as in, Cinderella will step into her pumpkin coach and set out for the first ball. She will smooth her satin skirts and stare at the grand houses scrolling by. Hmm.
I just called my editor to ask if she has a bias (I didn’t tell her mine). She doesn’t. She said the tense just needs to serve the story. I asked what kind of story is best served by which tense, and she thought that mystery and suspense stories sometimes benefit from present tense, allowing the reader to get inside the action. She also opined that present tense can be harder to pull off. She felt that flashbacks can be harder in present tense, the shift from present to past more jarring. She added that some authors try one, find it isn’t working, and shift to the other.
I called my agent, who had no preference either at first, then, after thinking a minute, said she might like present tense better. Then she became unsure again. Then we segued into great first lines, like, “Call me Ishmael,” the beginning of Moby Dick (which, I confess, I’ve never read), a present-tense, powerful start to a book written mostly in the past tense. So you can change it up even if you’re writing in the past tense.
When I read student work I sometimes see tense drift. The story is steaming along in past tense when it suddenly shifts to present and then veers back. This isn’t a big deal, just another thing to mop up in revision. When the story is finished, of course we want it to be consistent.
Here are three prompts:
∙ Rewrite the beginning few pages of one of your stories in the other tense, past if you’re using present, present if you’re using past. How do you feel about it? Which do you like better?
∙ Use my sentences above as a story starter. Change tenses if you like. Here they are again: Nancy had seen this blue-headed boy before. It had been during school break in the fall when she and her father had gone to the shore for one of their long rambles. They picked up knobby skipping tortoise shells and smooth driftwood.
∙ Try writing a story in future tense. I suspect you need either a very tragic ending or a very happy one for this, no bitter-sweet or you may get a let down. A sad Greek myth might work well, like the story of Oedipus.
Have fun, and save what you write!
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
In a word
On October 14, 2011, maybeawriter wrote, I have a problem with my stories. I like the ideas but the words never seem right. Please help!
I asked for clarification, and maybeawriter added, Well, it seems like they don't flow right or seems like there is another word that might fit in better, but I can't really think of any, like there could be a better word for just walking, or the feel of the water.
Word choice influences everything, but it especially affects voice, tone, and mood. I recently read M. T. Anderson’s young adult novel The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, which astonished me in the best possible way. Here’s a sentence early in the book: And so the answer to my perplexities, which must appear in all its clarity to those who look from above, was finally clear to me: that I too was the subject of a zoological experiment. Even earlier Mr. Anderson describes the house where Octavian lives as "gaunt," such an imaginative and evocative adjective. The word choices perfectly represent my idea of 18th century expression. And, despite the elaborate sentences, Mr. Anderson tells a riveting story. When things get tough, Octavian becomes Observant. The term exactly expresses the character’s experience, and it breaks the reader’s heart, my heart anyway.
As I read I kept wishing I’d written the book. I couldn’t. I can write only what I can write although I can try to expand my style and my sentences. Reading a lot helps with that. While I was reading Octavian Nothing, I had to hold back from letting his sorts of sentences infiltrate my writing where they didn’t belong. The voices of other writers get inside us. When it’s no longer so fresh, in this case probably a few months from now, Mr. Anderson’s work will influence me subtly, appropriately.
Writing and reading poetry help me, too. I’m much more aware of consonant and vowel sounds than I used to be. In the sentence before this one, for example, I find the m’s in I’m much more and the ow’s in vowel sounds pleasing. I notice them as I write, and sometimes I shorten the distance between words to bring like sounds closer together. Other times I deliberately go against the harmony. You can do this without writing or reading poetry (although I’m a big fan of doing both). Here’s a prompt: Pick a paragraph (notice the alliteration; I could have written choose a paragraph) in a story you’re working on. Underline any alliteration and any repeat vowel sounds. I suspect you’ll find at least a few, because English is full of similar sounds. Look for substitutions you can make to increase the effect. Try them out. Does the paragraph read better?
Now go the other way. Substitute to move away from the similarities. Read the paragraph out loud and decide which you prefer and which goes more with the feeling of your story. There’s no right answer. The purpose is just to become more alert to sound and its subtle effects.
Maybeawriter, words are a pale reflection of experience. We can never precisely convey the feeling of water; not even Shakespeare could have. If we were writing for the man on the moon who has never felt rain, we couldn’t represent clearly enough the sensation of wetness. If he flew his spaceship into an ocean and swam out, then he might say, I get it now. Before I was just guessing. This suggests another prompt: Describe water for the man in the moon. You won’t succeed, but create a longing in him with your description, so that the distance between him and the nearest cloud becomes unbearable.
You can then go ahead and write a story about his visit to earth.
Some friends and I were just discussing the impossibility of describing the color red to someone blind from birth. We can talk about warm colors and cool colors and heat and power, blood, and even anger. We can describe the color wheel. A blind person will understand heat and blood and emotions and the idea of a color wheel, but he won’t experience red, I don’t think. In Fairest, I invented the color htun, and I describe it, but I’ve never seen it - wish I could. But I can come closer to picturing it than a blind person could because I already see colors.
What tools do we have to show our readers what they and the writer haven’t experienced? Writers of fantasy and sci fi and historical fiction voyage to places we’ve never been and never will go, and the glory in the writing is in creating something utterly new. We do it by moving from what we have experienced to what we haven’t. Suppose we’re describing charged mimo particles, which have the power to suck seeds out of the ground. In nature, the nature of this world, they appear only in huge colonies; you won’t encounter a single mimo on its own except in the laboratory. A colony will slide slowly down a slope, like fudge sauce over ice cream, all the while sparkling like a billion brown fireflies. If they’re important to your story, you can go further and tell the reader that Sal had a brush with them once. She was snoozing in a meadow on the west side of Chotig Mountain when a colony oozed out of an abandoned mine shaft and slithered down. She woke up when her pinky finger started tingling. Luckily she jumped to the right, out of its path. Her pinky was gone completely, leaving only a tiny blue scar, and that meadow will never bloom again. If you want more you can introduce a science teacher at Sal’s high school delivering a lecture about mimos.
None of us has encountered mimos, but we have seen dirt fields, scars, fireflies, and hot fudge descending on ice cream, and we know how tingling feels. Even if you’re home schooled, you’ve probably been lectured to, if only on television. We work toward the unknown from the familiar.
But when it comes to the familiar, like water, a perfectly acceptable choice is to zip by it quickly. Everybody knows the sensation of water, so it’s fine to say, the water was icy. But suppose this is a moment of heightened experience. Sal has been lost in the desert. She’s just reached an oasis and is drinking her first water in thirty-six hours. Or she’s covered in worm slime and is finally taking a shower. You want to describe either of these. Well, you might go for metaphor and call the water a surprise party, rebirth, birdsong. I’m choosing images that are somehow water-like. Water, even though it’s familiar, is often pleasantly shocking, like a surprise party. Rebirth is a common idea when it comes to water, which is essential for life. And birdsong is a fluid sound. I wouldn’t use a metaphor like The water was a shoe because it’s hard to imagine anything less like water than a shoe.
Going in a more practical direction, the best boon for word choice is a thesaurus. I often use www.thesaurus.com to take me beyond the words I usually use. Sometimes the synonyms I see persuade me to rephrase my whole sentence more pleasingly.
Now, on the blog I may make everything sound easy, and then, when we start writing, we struggle. So I’ll end with a sort-of quote, sort of because I don’t know where it comes from, but not from me, because I’m rarely so delightfully loose. The not-quite-a-quote goes something like, When my writing isn’t up to my standards, I lower my standards. Excellent advice if we’re going to slog all the way to the end.
Prompts are scattered through the post, but here’s one more: Invent a substance and incorporate it into a scene, using a new main character or a character in a story you’re working on.
Have fun, and save what you write!
I asked for clarification, and maybeawriter added, Well, it seems like they don't flow right or seems like there is another word that might fit in better, but I can't really think of any, like there could be a better word for just walking, or the feel of the water.
Word choice influences everything, but it especially affects voice, tone, and mood. I recently read M. T. Anderson’s young adult novel The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, which astonished me in the best possible way. Here’s a sentence early in the book: And so the answer to my perplexities, which must appear in all its clarity to those who look from above, was finally clear to me: that I too was the subject of a zoological experiment. Even earlier Mr. Anderson describes the house where Octavian lives as "gaunt," such an imaginative and evocative adjective. The word choices perfectly represent my idea of 18th century expression. And, despite the elaborate sentences, Mr. Anderson tells a riveting story. When things get tough, Octavian becomes Observant. The term exactly expresses the character’s experience, and it breaks the reader’s heart, my heart anyway.
As I read I kept wishing I’d written the book. I couldn’t. I can write only what I can write although I can try to expand my style and my sentences. Reading a lot helps with that. While I was reading Octavian Nothing, I had to hold back from letting his sorts of sentences infiltrate my writing where they didn’t belong. The voices of other writers get inside us. When it’s no longer so fresh, in this case probably a few months from now, Mr. Anderson’s work will influence me subtly, appropriately.
Writing and reading poetry help me, too. I’m much more aware of consonant and vowel sounds than I used to be. In the sentence before this one, for example, I find the m’s in I’m much more and the ow’s in vowel sounds pleasing. I notice them as I write, and sometimes I shorten the distance between words to bring like sounds closer together. Other times I deliberately go against the harmony. You can do this without writing or reading poetry (although I’m a big fan of doing both). Here’s a prompt: Pick a paragraph (notice the alliteration; I could have written choose a paragraph) in a story you’re working on. Underline any alliteration and any repeat vowel sounds. I suspect you’ll find at least a few, because English is full of similar sounds. Look for substitutions you can make to increase the effect. Try them out. Does the paragraph read better?
Now go the other way. Substitute to move away from the similarities. Read the paragraph out loud and decide which you prefer and which goes more with the feeling of your story. There’s no right answer. The purpose is just to become more alert to sound and its subtle effects.
Maybeawriter, words are a pale reflection of experience. We can never precisely convey the feeling of water; not even Shakespeare could have. If we were writing for the man on the moon who has never felt rain, we couldn’t represent clearly enough the sensation of wetness. If he flew his spaceship into an ocean and swam out, then he might say, I get it now. Before I was just guessing. This suggests another prompt: Describe water for the man in the moon. You won’t succeed, but create a longing in him with your description, so that the distance between him and the nearest cloud becomes unbearable.
You can then go ahead and write a story about his visit to earth.
Some friends and I were just discussing the impossibility of describing the color red to someone blind from birth. We can talk about warm colors and cool colors and heat and power, blood, and even anger. We can describe the color wheel. A blind person will understand heat and blood and emotions and the idea of a color wheel, but he won’t experience red, I don’t think. In Fairest, I invented the color htun, and I describe it, but I’ve never seen it - wish I could. But I can come closer to picturing it than a blind person could because I already see colors.
What tools do we have to show our readers what they and the writer haven’t experienced? Writers of fantasy and sci fi and historical fiction voyage to places we’ve never been and never will go, and the glory in the writing is in creating something utterly new. We do it by moving from what we have experienced to what we haven’t. Suppose we’re describing charged mimo particles, which have the power to suck seeds out of the ground. In nature, the nature of this world, they appear only in huge colonies; you won’t encounter a single mimo on its own except in the laboratory. A colony will slide slowly down a slope, like fudge sauce over ice cream, all the while sparkling like a billion brown fireflies. If they’re important to your story, you can go further and tell the reader that Sal had a brush with them once. She was snoozing in a meadow on the west side of Chotig Mountain when a colony oozed out of an abandoned mine shaft and slithered down. She woke up when her pinky finger started tingling. Luckily she jumped to the right, out of its path. Her pinky was gone completely, leaving only a tiny blue scar, and that meadow will never bloom again. If you want more you can introduce a science teacher at Sal’s high school delivering a lecture about mimos.
None of us has encountered mimos, but we have seen dirt fields, scars, fireflies, and hot fudge descending on ice cream, and we know how tingling feels. Even if you’re home schooled, you’ve probably been lectured to, if only on television. We work toward the unknown from the familiar.
But when it comes to the familiar, like water, a perfectly acceptable choice is to zip by it quickly. Everybody knows the sensation of water, so it’s fine to say, the water was icy. But suppose this is a moment of heightened experience. Sal has been lost in the desert. She’s just reached an oasis and is drinking her first water in thirty-six hours. Or she’s covered in worm slime and is finally taking a shower. You want to describe either of these. Well, you might go for metaphor and call the water a surprise party, rebirth, birdsong. I’m choosing images that are somehow water-like. Water, even though it’s familiar, is often pleasantly shocking, like a surprise party. Rebirth is a common idea when it comes to water, which is essential for life. And birdsong is a fluid sound. I wouldn’t use a metaphor like The water was a shoe because it’s hard to imagine anything less like water than a shoe.
Going in a more practical direction, the best boon for word choice is a thesaurus. I often use www.thesaurus.com to take me beyond the words I usually use. Sometimes the synonyms I see persuade me to rephrase my whole sentence more pleasingly.
Now, on the blog I may make everything sound easy, and then, when we start writing, we struggle. So I’ll end with a sort-of quote, sort of because I don’t know where it comes from, but not from me, because I’m rarely so delightfully loose. The not-quite-a-quote goes something like, When my writing isn’t up to my standards, I lower my standards. Excellent advice if we’re going to slog all the way to the end.
Prompts are scattered through the post, but here’s one more: Invent a substance and incorporate it into a scene, using a new main character or a character in a story you’re working on.
Have fun, and save what you write!
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Dragons and fairies and more, oh my!
On the evening of Friday, April 13th, I'll be speaking in Longmont, Colorado. If you can make it, check out the details on the Appearances page of my website (click on the right). Hope to see you there!
On October 12, 2011, Elizabeth wrote, I'm working on a novella right now about dragons, Gail, and I was curious about your take on dealing with magical creatures, as my novella will have lots of them. Do you have any advice on how to deal with them? I'd be happy to hear what other people have to say, too! :-D
So please add your contributions to mine.
I love to introduce new magical creatures or dream up a fresh take on the ones we all know about: fairies, elves, dragons, gnomes, and so on.
The first consideration, before I let my imagination run wild, is the role this kind of creature is going to play in my story. It’s not very different from the approach I take when I dream up a human character. I ask myself what this character is going to have do and be. I suggest you ask yourself the same questions.
In The Two Princess of Bamarre, for example, the dragons are one of the species of monsters that plague Bamarre, so they can’t be good, and I wanted them to present yet another obstacle to the success of Addie’s quest. After I knew that, I considered what form their evil might take. And that’s the second question you can ask yourself. Evil, yes. But evil how?
Suppose I want my dragons to be allies of the tree-dwelling clan, Opkos, against the cave-dwelling termite people, the Ditnits. Lots of follow-up questions flow from this decision: How do the dragons help? Are these flying dragons? How smart are they? How do they communicate with their human friends? Through speech, ordinary speech, or in some other way? So here’s an early prompt: List ten more questions you can ask about the dragons in this scenario. Answer them. Write a scene involving first contact between a main character of the Opkos clan and a dragon who is going to be important in your story.
Once I start writing I may discover that I’ve imagined features for the creatures that don’t fit my plot as it develops, so I have to go back and revise, which is fine and necessary. This happened with the tiffens in Fairies and the Quest for Never Land. I got too elaborate, and some of the characteristics didn’t work, so I dropped them. In Beloved Elodie the same happened with the brunkas, which I hope you’ll read about some day.
At some point in the questions you’ve asked yourself you probably moved from plot demands to pure invention, another fun part. For this, I generally think about the usual portrayal of these creatures and ask myself how I can diverge while still keeping enough of the idea of a dragon so that my creature is recognizable. There’s a lot of leeway here. I think I could get away even with a dragon mouse, a scaly mouse with a long snout, and a flame no bigger than a match flame. In Ella Enchanted, where the dragon provides only a little richness, it’s a baby, tiny with a tiny flame.
Your dragons don’t have to be evil. Masteress Meenore in A Tale of Two Castles and Beloved Elodie isn’t exactly kindly, but IT is essentially good, very good. If yours aren’t evil either, the questions are pretty much the same: How do the dragons fit in my story? What are their attributes? How can I distinguish them from the run of dragons in other stories?
Unless you’re writing fan fiction, you should stay away from dragon representations you’ve encountered in contemporary books. Anne McCaffrey’s series springs to mind, also Ursula Le Guin Earthsea Cycle, and I'm sure there are more. If there are dragons in novels you’ve read, think about how you can make yours different. Let’s take my Masteress Meenore for example. IT is a detective dragon. You can write a detective dragon too, I think without stepping on my authorial toes, but then don’t also make IT stink of sulfur and refuse to reveal ITs gender and have gorgeous translucent wings.
I like a sense of wonder in fantasy. I achieve this in Meenore with ITs lovely wings, ITs smoke that changes color according to ITs emotional state, ITs facility at the game of knucklebones. So there’s another question: What is likely to astonish the reader in a good way?
Another consideration is the amount of power you give your creatures. This often comes up for me with fairies, who in traditional fairy tales have limitless power, which won’t work in most stories, because we don’t want the fairies swooping in and solving everything. Which leads to the question, How much power do your fairies or dragons have? How does their power work? For example, for fairies does the power reside in the magic wand? Or in spells? Or somehow inherent in the fairy? In my Disney Fairies books, the fairies’ power is limited to their talents. The water talent fairies, for example, control only water. The magic of all of them is enhanced by fairy dust; without the dust they’d hardly be magical at all.
Power for evil has to be limited too. If your dragon is evil and can destroy everything and is unstoppable, there is no story either. Your evil creature needs an Achilles heel.
You needn’t limit yourself to the standard roster of imaginary creations. You can go to mythology for other kinds of critters. And you can create your own. Again, think of your story and the kind of creature you may need.
Do you want to make it up entirely or combine creatures? A coyote and an eagle? A boa constrictor and a sphinx? If made up entirely, how big is it? How does it communicate? Does it communicate at all? Another prompt: Think of ten more questions you can ask about your new creation. Answer them.
Of course you don’t need to think of your story first. You can start with your creature and think of a story to go with him. If you’re taking this route, consider what his problems may be. The next step is likely to figure out how he might approach his problems. Then, as in any story about anybody, your job is to make trouble for him and keep him from achieving his goals easily. So that’s another prompt: Decide what your creature’s problem is or what he wants. List several possibilities. Pick one and start your story. Keep going.
One last prompt: Write a story about the winged steed Pegasus.
Have fun, and save what you write!
On October 12, 2011, Elizabeth wrote, I'm working on a novella right now about dragons, Gail, and I was curious about your take on dealing with magical creatures, as my novella will have lots of them. Do you have any advice on how to deal with them? I'd be happy to hear what other people have to say, too! :-D
So please add your contributions to mine.
I love to introduce new magical creatures or dream up a fresh take on the ones we all know about: fairies, elves, dragons, gnomes, and so on.
The first consideration, before I let my imagination run wild, is the role this kind of creature is going to play in my story. It’s not very different from the approach I take when I dream up a human character. I ask myself what this character is going to have do and be. I suggest you ask yourself the same questions.
In The Two Princess of Bamarre, for example, the dragons are one of the species of monsters that plague Bamarre, so they can’t be good, and I wanted them to present yet another obstacle to the success of Addie’s quest. After I knew that, I considered what form their evil might take. And that’s the second question you can ask yourself. Evil, yes. But evil how?
Suppose I want my dragons to be allies of the tree-dwelling clan, Opkos, against the cave-dwelling termite people, the Ditnits. Lots of follow-up questions flow from this decision: How do the dragons help? Are these flying dragons? How smart are they? How do they communicate with their human friends? Through speech, ordinary speech, or in some other way? So here’s an early prompt: List ten more questions you can ask about the dragons in this scenario. Answer them. Write a scene involving first contact between a main character of the Opkos clan and a dragon who is going to be important in your story.
Once I start writing I may discover that I’ve imagined features for the creatures that don’t fit my plot as it develops, so I have to go back and revise, which is fine and necessary. This happened with the tiffens in Fairies and the Quest for Never Land. I got too elaborate, and some of the characteristics didn’t work, so I dropped them. In Beloved Elodie the same happened with the brunkas, which I hope you’ll read about some day.
At some point in the questions you’ve asked yourself you probably moved from plot demands to pure invention, another fun part. For this, I generally think about the usual portrayal of these creatures and ask myself how I can diverge while still keeping enough of the idea of a dragon so that my creature is recognizable. There’s a lot of leeway here. I think I could get away even with a dragon mouse, a scaly mouse with a long snout, and a flame no bigger than a match flame. In Ella Enchanted, where the dragon provides only a little richness, it’s a baby, tiny with a tiny flame.
Your dragons don’t have to be evil. Masteress Meenore in A Tale of Two Castles and Beloved Elodie isn’t exactly kindly, but IT is essentially good, very good. If yours aren’t evil either, the questions are pretty much the same: How do the dragons fit in my story? What are their attributes? How can I distinguish them from the run of dragons in other stories?
Unless you’re writing fan fiction, you should stay away from dragon representations you’ve encountered in contemporary books. Anne McCaffrey’s series springs to mind, also Ursula Le Guin Earthsea Cycle, and I'm sure there are more. If there are dragons in novels you’ve read, think about how you can make yours different. Let’s take my Masteress Meenore for example. IT is a detective dragon. You can write a detective dragon too, I think without stepping on my authorial toes, but then don’t also make IT stink of sulfur and refuse to reveal ITs gender and have gorgeous translucent wings.
I like a sense of wonder in fantasy. I achieve this in Meenore with ITs lovely wings, ITs smoke that changes color according to ITs emotional state, ITs facility at the game of knucklebones. So there’s another question: What is likely to astonish the reader in a good way?
Another consideration is the amount of power you give your creatures. This often comes up for me with fairies, who in traditional fairy tales have limitless power, which won’t work in most stories, because we don’t want the fairies swooping in and solving everything. Which leads to the question, How much power do your fairies or dragons have? How does their power work? For example, for fairies does the power reside in the magic wand? Or in spells? Or somehow inherent in the fairy? In my Disney Fairies books, the fairies’ power is limited to their talents. The water talent fairies, for example, control only water. The magic of all of them is enhanced by fairy dust; without the dust they’d hardly be magical at all.
Power for evil has to be limited too. If your dragon is evil and can destroy everything and is unstoppable, there is no story either. Your evil creature needs an Achilles heel.
You needn’t limit yourself to the standard roster of imaginary creations. You can go to mythology for other kinds of critters. And you can create your own. Again, think of your story and the kind of creature you may need.
Do you want to make it up entirely or combine creatures? A coyote and an eagle? A boa constrictor and a sphinx? If made up entirely, how big is it? How does it communicate? Does it communicate at all? Another prompt: Think of ten more questions you can ask about your new creation. Answer them.
Of course you don’t need to think of your story first. You can start with your creature and think of a story to go with him. If you’re taking this route, consider what his problems may be. The next step is likely to figure out how he might approach his problems. Then, as in any story about anybody, your job is to make trouble for him and keep him from achieving his goals easily. So that’s another prompt: Decide what your creature’s problem is or what he wants. List several possibilities. Pick one and start your story. Keep going.
One last prompt: Write a story about the winged steed Pegasus.
Have fun, and save what you write!
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