Confession of an Introvert
Hello!
Spring is finally coming to the Pacific Northwest. We’ve had two sunny days in a week! Woohoo! I hope wherever you are is getting even more sun than we are. I’ve been outside mixing up dirt and planting seeds when the rain and free time allows. Eventually, there will be flowers. And zucchini.
I’ve moved to a new writing schedule, which starts much earlier in the morning than I’d rather get up. But I discovered that if I have a fixed writing goal (like ‘finish this scene’) and I start right after I wake up, I work until I finish it– even if it takes me five hours or so. I do have to deal with interruptions and resist distractions, but I’m definitely making progress. Go me!
Today, I suppose I’ll be all meta, and blog about blogging.
I have another blog, a personal one. Long ago, I used it as a catch-all but eventually I decided that it wasn’t working very well as such, because there were a lot of things I didn’t post about because my audience was a mixture of everybody I knew and I thought some people would be bored no matter what topic I chose. So, for example, I didn’t write much about writing. Then Facebook and Twitter came along, and I started just using my other blog as a repository for status updates. I occasionally post something longer there, but so much of what I want to say to a general audience of friends and family fits so well within a tweet or two!
I’m kind of an introvert. I can be vocal and opinionated if I have something to say, but I’m really not very good at finding other people to talk to. But it’s the internet! Surely there must be people out there.
So, I started this blog. And I promised myself I’d write a post at least once a week. And I beat my fears that nobody would read it by not telling anybody about it! A stellar plan!
Actually, it worked pretty well. If I was confident nobody was reading it, I couldn’t waste time worrying about whether what I was writing would be interesting to anybody but me! Sometimes the posts are pretty short but at least they’re there.
In the spirit of a true confession, I’ll say more! One reason I wanted to develop a blog rather than, say, simply frequenting other blogs (although I try to do that too) is because I wanted to Build A Platform*. (I hear ominous music everytime I read that phrase.)
Dear reader, I want you in my life. I write, ultimately, to be read. But it turns out finding readers when you spend all your time sitting quietly at home reading by yourself is kind of hard! Who knew?
But let’s be honest. Bland blog posts, once a week, aren’t going to draw in the readers like bees to nectar. In order to lure in new readers, you need to have a spectacular blogging voice, be intrinsically interesting, or provide useful content.
Oh, or have giveaways.**
I don’t feel as if I have a spectacular blogging voice. And I think the only way I’m intrinsically interesting is the stories in my head. So that leaves me with ‘provide useful content’. (Or giveaways.)
I don’t know so much about useful content. If I weren’t spending so much time on the writing, I’m sure I could find some useful service to provide. I have a few skills. I like collecting and analyzing data, which is handy in so many arenas, This could, for example, be a kickass blog about playing clerics in a variety of MMOs!
But– I don’t think I can do that AND write stories. My personal life is not that open. Possibly I spend too much time analyzing data.
So I can’t provide useful content. But I can provide entertainment, I hope. I can provide the stories in my head. That’s why, eventually, I’m going to start posting my serial novel. Hopefully, it will find readers. In a way, these weekly posts, and the Follow Friday, are the soil I’m mixing up so that I can plant some seeds. And maybe eventually those seeds will sprout. There will be flowers! Tasty nectar! Great stories, and people to read them!
See, you thought that was just a tangent above, but it all tied together. Awww. I’m surprised, too.
* I don’t think I’m really building a platform. I think you need more for a platform than a couple of blog posts a week. ‘Making friends’ sounds much nicer, don’t you think? Although I don’t think you do that by blogging alone… Giveaways!
** I am, in fact, planning on a giveaway later in the summer. I just, er, need to figure out what to give away and what kind of theme to attach. Part of my introversion is a dislike of self-promotion, so I don’t think I can theme it as ‘Bribing People To Look At My Blog’ without dying of shame.
What is the point of realism in fantasy?
The posts at The Book Lantern, especially this one have inspired me to start thinking about realism in fantasy. The question I asked myself: What’s the point of bothering to put realistic characters and relationships into a story? Especially if the story is already full of vampires, werewolves and fairies?
I came up with two answers, one simple, and one complex. And I came up with more questions. Of course.
The simple answer: realistic details helps maintain suspension of disbelief about the unreal elements. This is an old stand-by and used to be considered absolutely true: readers only have room for so many crazy ideas in their experiences. Put in one too many unrealistic elements and the reader disengages from the story. They switch from living the story to consciously reading and evaluating it. This is called breaking the willing suspension of disbelief, and tiny details can do it.
However:
I think format and structure can modify that suspension of disbelief. Readers can be trained to no longer consciously process structural elements they see constantly: for example, “He said,” is almost invisible as a speech tag these days. I think that can also happen with content. If you’re used to reading books about vampires, you no longer need to allocate suspension of disbelief for them.
An author who relies on this firmly places a novel right in the center of its assigned genre, with little ability to reach readers who have not bought into genre conventions. That author sacrifices broad appeal for the ability to cheerfully throw common sense to the wind. That does sound like fun some days…
So, that’s the simple answer. A bit of realism prevents readers from going, “Pfft, yeah, right,” at the less realistic stuff in your book. It can pay off to do a bit of research about what you’re writing about, especially if it it’s set in the real world.
The complex answer requires a bit more of a break down of what fantasy is.
For some people, fantasy is escapism, pure and simple. The more it differs from their own lives, the better. Magic and fairytales provide the sparkle they wish they found in their own lives. Vampires and werewolves provide a thrill of excitement. But that taste of excitement and magic is often just that– a taste, something intangible that melts away as soon as the cover is closed.
However, the promise of escapism is the make-up fantasy puts on in order to achieve its real purpose. We make up fantasies to help us understand things we can’t talk about clearly, starting with monsters under the bed when we’re very young. And as we get older, the underlying purpose of fantasy continues as a way to talk about the human condition and human experience in ways that bypass the brain to go straight to the heart.
With fantasy, an author can talk about the issues, big and small, that have always haunted humanity. They can talk about ideas that are new and old at the same time. They can magnify the feelings everybody experiences and project them onto the world, then explore the consequences of those feelings, all while avoiding language that makes some people close off. They can do all this while incorporating the whole shebang into an action scene, to boot! Fantasy is like the third person point of view on many issues, necessarily a step removed and more gripping because of that distance to some readers.
Not all fantasy strives to do this. But the best does. Terry Pratchett regularly talks about racism, gender identity and what it means to be a person in his Discworld series. Melissa Marr elegantly broke down the true nature of addiction in Ink Exchange. And the metaphors in Harry Potter have been discussed extensively all over the literaverse. All of these books rely on traditional elements of the supernatural to shape and flavor the plots. But the true stories are contained within the characters themselves. The realism of the characters and their relationships adds to the broad appeal of the stories.
Basically, keeping what realism you can sharpens the arrow that sends that story directly to the heart. Fantasy is, ultimately, about real life. It’s about the reader, just as much as any literary or non-genre novel is.
I imagine a lot of people would disagree with me. I’m pretty sure there are a lot of readers who don’t want anything overtly Serious Business in their entertainment. Heck, I’m one of them. A story about actual sexual assault and realistically coping with it does not appeal to me. But a story about exploring the consequences behind the ability to rifle through somebody’s memories and thoughts at will? I’m there! They’ve got to have reactions I find realistic, though.
Then again, I do prefer the third person point of view in books I read…
I’d be interested in hearing other thoughts on the subject, especially given the recent popularity of books with shallow plots and shallow characters. Are they just perfect mid-genre escapism?
Interpersonal Tension
Let’s talk about interpersonal tension! Tension drives a plot, but it’s also a huge part of what makes relationships between characters zing, and that’s what I’m thinking about today.
At its most basic level, tension happens when characters want something they’re not getting. In a lot of fiction, they want something from somebody else: often a romantic relationship and/or sex. Relationships between characters have great chemistry when there’s not just a constant pull between the characters, but a push apart as well, and an extra spark based on personality.
In order for tension to exist, characters must want something, and there must be a barrier to them acquiring it. This is why forbidden love is so popular. It’s also pretty popular to make the barrier apparently insurmountable, as a shortcut to making the love more dramatic:
I want to love you but
- I also want to eat you
- Our families want to kill each other
- We can never touch
- Loving you is damnation
- Being with you would destroy you
- Loving you would cost me everything else
- It is a punishable crime
That can make for a fun story, but the larger the barrier, the more work the author has to do in order to produce a satisfying conclusion. That can end up being really challenging! Sometimes authors opt for a tragic ending, where barriers are actually insurmountable. Or sometimes they sidestep the barriers, and if everybody enjoys the journey, who cares?
It’s also possible to produce great interpersonal tension without relying on mountainous barriers:
I want to love you but
- We have different social ranks
- I’m afraid of myself
- You want somebody else
- I don’t understand you
- I don’t deserve you
- I love somebody else (possibly platonically) who can’t share me
- I’m not who you think I am
These are barriers that are easier to resolve when resolution time comes, since they usually (but not always) arise from internal rather than external sources. However, without solid characterization and a plot, they may not be enough to catch and tickle the fancy of readers. They also require more work in maintaining the tension: the forces acting on the characters must be carefully balanced so that one set of forces doesn’t overwhelm the other and destroy the tension too soon.
With insurmountable external barriers, the very power of the barrier acts as an amplifier to the yearning. This is another awesome shortcut! It allows a relationship to intensify as they choose whether to try surmounting the barrier– and a love worth climbing an impossible wall for? That’s some serious romance! The author can dedicate the characters fully toward their yearning to be together (or even only one of the characters, if the other one is wrangling different obstacles). This simplifies character development, to say the least.
With internal barriers, the tension is usually amplified via uncharacteristic behaviors. This, of course, requires an established personality for the character to deviate from. A character may be quiet when they are normally loud, or violent when they are normally peaceful. They may be tender instead of brusque, kind instead of cruel, or vulnerable instead of dominating, and so on.* Done gracefully, these displays can be electrifying for the reader, especially when both parties notice the deviation: Will this be the moment when the barrier is overcome? No? And so the tension is carried on, partially by the reader’s own yearnings toward resolution.
Most romantic stories longer than a short story have multiple sources of tension. Maybe some are external, and some are internal. Maybe some are the dramatic results of worldbuilding and some the subtle twists of character building. But maintaining strong tension of any sort requires something else: a demonstration of the barrier made manifest. The barrier must actually have some effect on the story. If somebody believes they are not worthy of their desired partner, that should actually stop them from being with their partner. There should be damnation and devouring and singed fingers and sacrifices. There should be snobbery and self-hatred and deception and discovery. There should be interruptions and interpretations. There should be setbacks, on each side. And they should want each other despite them.
And that’s how you get tension, I think. I’m interested in other ideas, too! I know I haven’t yet really touched on ways to raise tension in actual sex scenes, for example. Perhaps in another post…
*I have to point out that ‘tension’ does not alone equal ‘strong love story’ but that’s really for another post.
I beg to dream and differ…
Slowly but steadily I’m accumulating a pile of rejections. It isn’t the ideal situation but it’s better than not trying. I think earlier today I was planning on whining about this. Since then I’ve convinced myself to dive back into my new project and found something much more interesting to talk about.
I usually tend to worry a lot about how things work in my scenes and settings. Are characters behaving realistically? Are they using technology logically? My magic is always extremely well-defined, with rules and limits and origins and consequences figured out ahead of time. I like the kinds of settings that result from thinking about those details. And I sometimes get totally hung up on such details, unable to write more until I’ve answered some question and fully considered its ramifications.
Today I finished reviewing the zeroth draft for the New Project. I managed to write it without worrying too much about many of the technical details. And I didn’t get hung up on figuring out those details because the scenes they mattered in seemed pretty solid.
This felt really strange! But I’ve read plenty of books where the details were left unexplained, the ramifications unconsidered. So maybe this could work? Is anybody else this crazed about technical details?
I’m working on a small piece of fiction based around the ramifications of a certain bit of magical technology, by the way. It might be done in time for Friday Flash.
Gotta Keep Moving
All right. I’ve sent off a batch of queries and my goal is to keep a fixed number of queries in the air. I’m not sending them all out at once because– what if inspiration strikes or I get feedback that I use to make the project better? It seems reasonable to me.
Also, researching each agent is time-consuming and I have a kid I neglect too much as it is.
Anyhow, now that there are queries and a synopsis and a partial and a completed novel, it’s time to head into other projects.
My ‘vacation writing’ really didn’t happen. Too bad for me. I had a chance and I wasted it meebling about queries. Now it’s time to start on Serial 13 again.
I have a 0th draft. I have two tasks next: to develop the locations where I want the scenes to take place, and to develop the voice of the narrator.
These are both tasks I’m not great at, and have wanted to work on for a while. Because I’m not a very visual writer, my scenes tend to lack much in the way of eye candy or even a strong sense of place. But I think I can fix that if I work on developing the locations before I write the scene– the few times I’ve written solid visual scenes, I’ve imagined it strongly before ever starting to type. So I want to go through each scene outline and figure out where they take place, then separately write strong descriptions that I can reference when writing the scenes themselves.
I’ve also spent a long time wishing that I had a stronger voice as a writer. I think I must have a voice; I just can’t see the forest for the trees. But I really admire books with a strong narrator voice– specifically third person stories where the narrator still manages to feel like a recognizable individual. Based on my experience writing for games, I think this is something I can achieve. I just need to have a point of view that isn’t firmly entrenched deep inside the protagonist’s head. So I want to experiment writing some material from various perspectives and figure out the voice I want to use with Serial 13. I have a tiny fragment of prose that I wrote as part of my initial scribble which I’ll use as a starting place.
Oh, and one more task: I need to go through the 0th draft and revise it, just like one would any other draft. I’m sure it’s full of just as much crazy stuff and bullshit as all of my other initial drafts. I’m a bit nervous about that and I think I need to really get myself into the paranormal anime-esque YA mindset again. Hmm.
Zeroth Draft
I’ve written a zeroth draft.
I conceived the idea as a very long outline– 50,000 words written in November, intended to convey a story estimated to be 150,000 words. It wasn’t something I’d done before. I do outline, but more broadly, and often the outline becomes very vague at the end.
I write sequentially, you see. Each scene, in the order that I expect they’ll appear in the book. I find that the emotion and details of each scene influences how the next scene works out, and I’m uncomfortable writing a scene without fully understanding what has come before. Too often I’ve had tiny details, especially those of Place or Character change what I expected to occur next. And by the time I’ve reached the end, the lack of the details discovered in the writing practically forces me to be vague.
This time, though, I was going to be explicit. I divided the story up into a number of parts and chapters and scenes. Each part got a single line describing the expected contents, and then as I approached the part, I would fill in single lines for the chapters and scenes, and then write around 300 words per scene. Mostly, I wrote dialog and emotional movement. I am not very good at description, so I gave myself leave to insert that in another draft. The other 2/3rd of the words have to come from somewhere, after all.
I also gave myself leave to suck. Some of the scenes I do not expect to keep. Some secondary character arcs are trash. It was very hard, sometimes, to write on knowing that. Normally, I think about my words and narrative a lot before committing words to paper, in a bad form of perfectionism. But I think it helped a lot to have a set number of words for a scene’s outline. I could, I told myself, fix it later. I had to come back and rewrite it anyhow. It was just an outline.
And the ending was still a challenge, although not for the reason I usually find it hard in outlines. This time, I had the emotional and character details, mostly. What I didn’t have was personal sense of climax that helps me propel my characters through the heights and depths of the final act of the story. I admit it; I especially skimped on the wrap-up scenes after it was over. I think I got what was important down, though.
I think my next step is going to be creating sets and describing them thoroughly. I’m as wretched at infusing my narratives with clear imagery as I am at not obsessing over every sentence before I write it, so this will also be a challenge.