Tag Archives: writing tips

August 14, 2015 · 8:00 pm

Thoughts on Writing – Creating Tension

In my previous post about what a serial episode needs, one of the key elements I mentioned was having tension and/or conflict. Each episode needs to have some kind of tension, or else the story will be boring.

Often times we add conflict to a story by adding action. But that’s not always what creates tension (and action scenes can be boring if the stakes aren’t right for the character involved). At times, I’ve struggled in my edits of The Multiverse Chronicles to see what is missing. In some cases, it’s the lack of scenery details. In other cases, the characters aren’t interacting properly. In yet others, there’s a lack of tension, as I discovered in one of the recent episodes I edited.

In the first part of that episode, Trish, a cadet in the Queen’s Royal Army, is riding a cart towards the camp where she will be stationed for the next six months. She has a chat with the driver, but everything is peaceful.

Too peaceful.

So I delved deeper into the scene. There needed to be some tension involved, or the scene would fall flat. Upon looking closer, I realized there was plenty of tension to be had. The tension starts with Trish. She’s not just a cadet, she’s a second-chance cadet. An earlier mishap got her dishonorably discharged. She still feels guilty for the incident, but she’s determined to prove that she will make a great rider. But, compounding the problem, she wasn’t the best student to begin with (she didn’t think pterosaurs would be that difficult to ride), and she’s prideful. By examining the scene through Trish’s eyes (What is she worrying about? What does she think of the driver?), the tension starts to develop.

So I built up the relationship between her and the driver (who unintentionally makes a major jab at her pride), showed her in a world where the details lend to uncertainty, and watched the tension rise.

(Note, this scene may change in the final version of this story.)

Example:

The cart ahead of them swayed, sending its recruits wincing against the frame, and Trish braced herself for another jolt. The cart lurched and the young driver next to her yelped under his breath.

(Already we know that Trish isn’t in the most comfortable situation. The stage is being set.)

Mr. Ó Riagán was lanky and pale—made more pale by his flame-orange hair and prominent freckles—and he sported a bright pink sunburn anywhere that wasn’t covered. Trish guessed he wasn’t more than eighteen years old, given his baby face, but he still donned the crimson uniform of Her Royal Army.

(The driver seems young. This will come back later.)

He drew back the reins and slowed the horses. “Easy there, Norwich,” he crooned in a soft Irish accent. “You’re going to break your leg if you hit one of those holes directly.”

(Another problem… a horse breaking its leg isn’t good. Not a major hindrance, but it’s now something the main character could worry about.)

The mare nearest to him shook her head as if to protest. In fact, Trish got the distinct impression that she was more likely to break his leg if he didn’t give her a little more lead. He frowned uncertainly and loosened the reins a bit.

(Now we see Ó Riagán being a bit unsure of himself, at least in Trish’s mind, due to his earlier mentioned age.)

“So…” The guy glanced at Trish, licked his lips nervously, then went back to watching the roads. “You’re the one who can control the rogue?”

(He’s trying to make conversation…)

Trish blinked, surprised that he’d said anything. He hadn’t spoken more than a mumbled “hi” to her until now. (Apparently he hasn’t been very talkative.) She turned to their cargo behind her, the rogue pterosaur. The creature slept peacefully, drugged so that the trip wouldn’t be too stressful. The other drakes flew overhead, but since Trish wasn’t a trained pterosaur rider, this one had to be brought in by cart. (A reference back to how she was able to re-enlist, and a stab at the fact that Trish isn’t trained to ride yet).

With that in mind, Trish wasn’t sure how Colonel Pearson planned to handle her training. Her deployment had been sudden.

(This is all happening a bit fast for her.)

Still, she nodded to the young man and smiled fondly at the sleeping pterosaur. “You could say I can control her, but I think that’s because she likes me.”

The young man’s green eyes lit up in awe. “You have a familiar bond?”

“A what?” Trish frowned. She wasn’t sure what he was talking about.

(More uncertainty on her part.)

He blinked. “You don’t know about familiar bonds?”

Trish shook her head.

“Oh, I’m sure the colonel will explain when he has the chance.” The young man grinned. “I would try, but I’m afraid I’d butcher the explanation.”

“Butcher the explanation?”

(She’s trying to get information, but he’s not giving it.)

“Yeah… I graduated from the beastmasters’ academy in Oxford, but—”

“Wait. You went to Oxford?”

(Guy who looks younger than her went to prestigious academy)

“Yeah, well…” He scratched the back of his neck, sheepish. Trish hadn’t thought his sun burnt cheeks could get any redder, but they did. “The instructors said I was gifted. I started using beast mastery when I was eight.”

Trish stared at him. “You were eight?” Here she thought she’d been special, given the strength of her beast mastery. But she’d started showing her powers when she was thirteen, along with most the other people who had powers.

Not nearly so young.

(And now she’s feeling a bit dejected because this guy is obviously more gifted than her. Earlier episodes revealed her prideful tendencies.)

Mr. Ó Riagán nodded enthusiastically. “I liked to scare my older sister when she was reading. I’d have Jesse—that was our terrier—sneak up behind her and bark real loud.” He chuckled. “I was such a twerp.”

Trish forced a smile. “So what do you do now? Are you a rider, a pack master…?”

(She’s trying to change the conversation…)

“General Buford and Ruger are the pack masters for the wolves. I’m the head assistant for Lady Akeyo Kaburu. She’s the beasts’ caretaker.” He puffed out his chest with pride. “Just call her Lady Akeyo, though. She doesn’t like formalities. Not unless she doesn’t like you. By the way, I’m Sean. Do you mind if I call you Trish?”

“Um… sure.” She wasn’t sure what to think of him quite yet, and he was… chatty.

(She’s not so sure she likes this guy… but she’s trying to withhold judgement.)

“Hey!” he called out to the horses. “Stop trying to aim us for the potholes!”

The second mare nickered, as if she were blaming Norwich, but they maneuvered cleanly around the rugged hole that the cart ahead of them hit square on.

Trish eyed him, amused. “Do you talk aloud to all your beasts?”

(A sort-of jab at him.)

Sean shrugged. “Well, sometimes. Most the soldiers don’t talk to me. Granted, these fellows don’t talk back either, but I can get their general feelings.”

Trish nodded sympathetically. She hadn’t gotten much chat from the other soldiers, either, though that might have had something to do with the short notice in which she’d joined and been deployed to this particular station.

(And now they’ve found common ground. The tension has shifted from her dealing with Ó Riagán to her dealing with the other soldiers.)

By adding the details of the jolting wagon and the uncertain road, we’ve added scenery details to the world that enhances the tension. Those scenery details also lead to the characterization of Ó Riagán, who thereby gets into an in-depth conversation with Trish, which leads to more uncertainty on her part.

There’s not a lot of action, but there’s still tension between characters.

I hope you found this post helpful. Have you read any books where the story felt flat and lacked in tension? Have you worked on any stories where you realized that conflict was missing?

Thoughts on Publishing – Author Photos

As I get closer to releasing Magic’s Stealing, I’ve been thinking about the little details that still need to be decided before publishing. What do I want to put on the copyright page? Where should I put the acknowledgements? Do I want the blurb after the title page inside the ebook edition? Should I have an author photo?

Let’s focus on the author photo, because that’s the one that’s been puzzling me.

Really Old Artsy Author Photo

My first author photo (artist photo, really, since I started by using it on DeviantArt) is quirky. I’m in costume and I’m holding a shiny, reflective ball that I bought at a renaissance faire. This particular photo is really small, I’m not sure where the original picture is, and it was probably taken during my early college years or during my late high school years.

Then there is my current author photo, which I use on Twitter and in various places. This was taken by my husband during college (edited by me), and still went for artsy . Black and white, a little mysterious. I’m fond of this photo. Problem is that I’ve heard from several people that it doesn’t look like me. (Striped lighting and no glasses… I guess I’m not too surprised).

Current Black and White Author Photo

But I’ve been using this fairly consistently, so I wasn’t sure if I should change it. On the other hand, if the photo doesn’t look like me, and I ever do a local book signing… I can see a benefit to having a picture that looks more familiar.

For example, when I went to ConQuest this year, I could very easily recognize Brandon Sanderson and George R.R. Martin because their photos look like them, or at least how they present themselves publicly. I pulled out a few books on my bookshelf, and about half of them have author photos. It was interesting to find one of Brandon Sanderson’s earlier books that I bought, which has an early photo of him, and to compare it to later books, which have a more recent photo. So obviously, authors change which photo they use over a period of time.

Another thing to consider, author pictures often represent the author’s primary genre. For non-fiction, a more business-oriented photo lends credibility. For hard science fiction (I’m thinking of a few older authors here), the author might be sitting in a library setting, usually black and white. (Though the lack of color may have been due to printing limitations). For fantasy, authors might get dressed up in relevant costume. Middle grade authors often use more colorful photos, or illustrated pictures of themselves.

Steampunk Cosplay Snapshot

The question is, how do we want to be perceived? Should our author photos be a straightforward, contemporary photo? Or should we go for the fun costume pictures (as long as they still look like us)?

Do we really want to be recognizable? Should we even have a photo? A person with a pen name might not. Perhaps they have a hat that hides their face, yet makes them distinguishable (like Authoress, from a blog I follow).

We might not necessarily need an author photo, but there are cases where having one could prove useful. For one, an author can unite their Twitter, Goodreads, and Facebook accounts with a single photo as their avatar. (Though they might use a relevant symbol, instead). Or an author might include a photo when guest blogging, or at conventions.

There are benefits to having a photo on hand, which brings me back to deciding on an author photo.

I did a little bit of reading on the subject, and one thing that stood out in the reading was a distinction between a professional head-shot versus a snapshot. Both of which can be a good photo, but a professional photograph will give the feeling that your book is professionally written. And having a picture that represents the genre (a more somber image for mystery and crime, versus a friendlier image for romance) can affect how a reader perceives a book.

Anyway, Isaac and I went out on Thursday evening, found a nature-y spot that still had some sunlight, and took a few pictures. I dressed up for them (semi-modern, semi steampunk), and Isaac had the camera. I have a degree in photography and he’s had a few classes, so I felt comfortable that we could get a reasonably professional photo on our own. Then we sorted through the pictures in Adobe Bridge and selected the best five. I did a few retouches to improve lighting, and we posted them to Facebook to see which ones our friends liked best.

These are the resulting favorites (in no particular order):

Author Photo Option 1

Author Photo Option 2

Author Photo Option 3

Author Photo Option 4

One of these has a few more friend votes than the others, but I’m curious to see which one you guys like best before I make my final decision. Once I decide on one of these photos, I’ll need to decide on how much editing to do to them, and whether or not to keep them in color, desaturate them, or go with black and white. Granted, the print edition will be in black and white, but I could use color on the web or in ebooks.

I hope you enjoyed this post. Which photo do you feel is the strongest, and have you chosen an author photo?

Further Reading About Choosing An Author Photo:

http://maryrobinettekowal.com/journal/debut-author-lessons-the-author-photo/

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/12/10/a-picture-says-it-all-or-does-it-judging-an-author-by-their-photo.html

https://www.standoutbooks.com/author-photo-tips/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/heather-hummel/the-relevance-of-a-profes_b_4498575.html

https://www.graywolfpress.org/blogs/and-against-author-photos-part-one

22 Comments

Filed under Business Ventures, Writing

Tagged as author photo, author picture, author portrait, author portraits, choosing an author photo, professional author, publishing, self-publishing, steampunk photoshoot, Stephanie Flint, taking your own author portrait, writing tips

August 7, 2015 · 8:20 pm

Thoughts on Writing – What does a Serial Episode need?

While waiting for the final round of beta comments on Magic’s Stealing (there are a lot of waiting phases… which is why it is really helpful to have another project on hand), I’ve been working on editing The Multiverse Chronicles.

As I’ve said before, The Multiverse Chronicles is a set of short stories written by my husband, which I then revise and edit. Our current goal is to have twenty-four episodes in the first season, which will be released weekly over a period of six months.

There are a few specific challenges associated with this project. While all the episodes must fit together as a whole (and I’m not sure I’d recommend reading them out of order), they each need to stand alone on some level.

The reason is this: Not everyone who might stumble upon the Multiverse blog will read them from the very beginning, and readers who do start from the beginning may miss a week. While each episode stands alone, Isaac and I must decide how much information to remind a reader of in each episode (since we don’t want to remind them that Alia is the bodyguard of Prince Alfons every episode–that would get monotonous very quickly if they’re reading the full season all at once).

So what do I want us to achieve in our upcoming serial blog series?

Each episode needs to be compelling. There needs to be:

A strong sense of character, and relationships between characters.
Both humor and serious notes… usually involving some bit of quirkiness.
A strong sense of world-building.
Conflict and/or tension.
A reasonable beginning, middle, and end.
Something that propels this episode into the next.

With these core elements, I believe each episode has the potential to draw a reader back the next week, or, if they aren’t interested in serial fiction, maybe get them intrigued by the complete volume of season one (which needs to be complete in itself while opening up questions of interest for season two).

Isaac and I intend to have the entire first season written (at least a rough draft), as well as the first four episodes polished, before releasing the first episode. This way we have a month’s worth of episodes ready to release without worrying about what happens if we run into a snag while polishing a later episode. Of course, I’m hoping we will have the majority of the season polished beforehand, but we’ll see. I’ve also got to continue writing the rough draft of the second book in The Wishing Blade series.

Will this work? Can we successfully imbue each episode with these elements? Will readers enjoy The Multiverse Chronicles?

Hard to say until we start releasing episodes, but if I think that if we keep the above ideas in mind, I’ll have a decent guide to work from as I edit each episode.

I hope you enjoyed this post. Do you have any serial stories that you’ve enjoyed? Are there certain traits of serial fiction that you like or dislike?

Further Reading About Writing Serial Fiction:

http://tuesdayserial.com/?p=2032

http://riptidepublishing.com/faq/all-about-serial-fiction

http://thewritepractice.com/serial-novels/

http://blog.karenwoodward.org/2013/04/how-to-write-episodic-serialized-fiction.html

http://ezinearticles.com/?How-To-Write-Serial-Fiction—The-Four-Keys&id=6243275

http://www.justinmclachlan.com/1948/5-tips-writing-serial-fiction/

http://writerunboxed.com/2014/02/24/serial-fiction/

http://blog.janicehardy.com/2013/04/what-downton-abbey-can-teach-us-about.html

5 Comments

Filed under Business Ventures, Writing

Tagged as compelling short stories, fantasy, Isaac Flint, key to writing serial fiction, publishing, self-publishing, serial blog, serial fiction, serialized fiction, Stephanie Flint, The Multiverse Chronicles, what should a serial episode contain, writing tips

August 3, 2015 · 8:00 pm

Thoughts on Writing – The Little Details Count

My husband, Isaac, enjoys creating houses on the XBOX 360 Sims 3 game, and since my parents are coming up to visit, he decided to create a model of my parent’s house. He created the general layout, placed the furniture, and after fussing with the game to find the proper sized lot so he could include the backyard, he handed the controller over to me so I could add in the little details. Funny thing… I hadn’t realized how many “decorations” this game has. I added a boom box on an end table in the corner of the dining room. I added the chair that sits beside the hallway. I added a shelf-organizer-thing over where the piano should be (no piano, though), and a little phone on the table beside my grandma’s chair. Then I added a couple paintings (posters) for my room, appropriate colored walls, and a clock above the bay window… and a lot of other little things to make the Sims house look more real.

The end result was uncanny. Depending on the camera angle and the placement in the room, the model house actually looked like my parent’s house.

Those little details made it feel real.

A little detail, carefully slipped into a story, can make a world of difference.

Details enhance the world, make readers feel like they are actually there, and reveal the tone of the novel. A lot of my favorites books and movies pay careful attention to detail across various senses. The background detail in the Babylon 5 TV series, particularly whenever they went into seedy areas on the station, always captured my attention. The last time I watched Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back on a large screen TV, I was captivated by the snakes and vines in the swamps of Dagobah. Rebekkah Ford’s Beyond the Eyes series always made me feel like I was in a forest, or at a loud dance club, wherever the character happened to be.

Often, you only need a few carefully placed details to inspire a full scene in the reader’s mind.

Take a look at this paragraph from The Multiverse Chronicles draft:

Ten minutes later, the cart topped a hill and revealed a large military camp in the close distance. Trish eyed the rows upon rows of canvas tents, men marching in formation, and packs of wolves running attack drills on wooden manikins.

Of course the reader will see what is directly mentioned within the text.

But what else do they imagine? What else do they see? What do they feel? Do they feel like they’ve been traveling a ways? Do they hear the muffled din of people and wolves interacting, despite not being told how they sound?

Coupled with the rest of the story, a reader’s mind might add other details which were never explicitly mentioned, based on previous experiences with the words involved and the various connotations those words carry.

That’s why choosing to slip in a detail here and there, relevant to the action but never fully stopping the story, can offer a strong boost to your world building. Some stories will use more details than others, but you can choose when you want the reader to “stop and smell the roses” by letting the character say more about the world around them.

Take a look at this section from the intro of Magic’s Stealing:

Toranih kicked off the covers, knife in hand, and hopped out of bed. She waited, just in case the shadow returned, then walked to her dresser, picked up the crystal, and carefully raised the light again.

The dresser was pristine, with only an oil lamp sitting in the dustless corner. A small oak chest at the foot of her bed remained locked with steel. Heavy brocade curtains obscured the window.

No sign of intruders.

So why couldn’t she shake the feeling that someone had been watching her?

We linger on the details of the room as she surveys her surroundings, tension mounting because she thinks someone is there. But how different might it be if she paid only a little attention to these things?

Toranih kicked off the covers, knife in hand, and hopped out of bed. She waited, just in case the shadow returned, then walked to her dresser, picked up the crystal, and carefully raised the light again.

No sign of intruders.

So why couldn’t she shake the feeling that someone had been watching her?

Without the line detailing what she sees (thus “showing” that there are no intruders), we feel like she’s not really putting any effort into her search. She turns on the light, sees no one is there, thinks something’s odd, but moves along. Having extra details, as in the first example, show that she’s not just shrugging her shoulders at the notion. She really is concerned.

However, if you want to do a slow build-up, you might have a character notice something is odd but not pay much attention to why. Then, as they become more and more concerned, they notice more details, which may or may not truly be ominous.

Going back to that Sims house that Isaac created, the downside of that house was that the model wasn’t quite right. There weren’t stairs where there should be. The swings overlooked a creepy ocean instead of another house. The back room looked similar, but not the same. The windows didn’t fit memory, and he used a white bookshelf instead of a bunch of clear storage tubs in the corner for old toys.

As cool as the Sims house was, I didn’t want to look at it from certain angles too long because the house was unsettling.

You can use this mechanic in stories.

For example, a hero coming home after a long time away may find that things have subtly changed. In a horror story, a picture frame that always sits by a lamp may seem a smidgen too far back. In a desolate future, a character may look out over a ruined landscape, able to see a familiar sight here or there, while the rest is in shambles. What remains in place and what does not can affect the tone of the story. Consider the Statue of Liberty in the Planet of the Apes movie.

A little detail in the right spot can make a world of difference.

This can also be used in game creation.

While I haven’t played the game myself, MatPat’s theories on Five Nights at Freddy’s (a popular jump scare game) often references the little details that make the game creepy, such as the fan on the desk. The detail used in these games gives clues into the world’s backstory, all while adding to the nightmarish atmosphere.

When I first played Portal (a puzzle game), I was alone in my dorm room. The empty quietness of walking through the testing chambers had me super jumpy as I expected a turret to shoot me at every turn. And that game isn’t horror.

If you happen on the one detail that gets under a player’s skin, that one detail will have them on the edge of their seat.

I hope you enjoyed this post. Do you have any favorite details that you’ve read in a book or seen in a movie? 🙂

8 Comments

Filed under Gaming, Writing

Tagged as attention to detail, fantasy novella, horror, how much detail do you need, how much detail is important, setting, Sims 3, sims 3 and writing, Stephanie Flint, stories, tension, writing a novel, writing tips

July 31, 2015 · 8:00 pm

Thoughts on Writing – The Omniscient POV

For most of the stories I’ve written, I prefer a deep point of view. I like being right next to the character, getting their thoughts and feelings as they see it. Most of the time I choose either first person (Distant Horizon and Glitch), or close third (Magic’s Stealing and The Little One). While I might swap point of view characters between scenes, those scenes stay distinctly in one person’s head.

And then I started working on The Multiverse Chronicles.

The Multiverse Chronicles is pseudo-steampunk fantasy that consists of a series of short episodes (each around 1,000 to 2,000 words long) that will posted weekly on a blog dedicated to the series. My husband, Isaac, writes the rough draft, which I edit.

At first, editing an omniscient point of view drove me nuts. I wanted one person to follow, and I wanted to stay with that person. (This despite toying with the omniscient POV in The Little One, where one of the characters is a fourthwalling telepath). All of those rules about not head-hopping? They kept poking me while I tried to edit. But once I finished editing the first episode, I tentatively took it to the writing group we attend. To my surprise, they didn’t have a problem with the point of view.

Okay, cool. So I just need to keep up whatever we did with the first episode, right?

I started work on the next episode. I initially wrote with the expectation that I was writing from the bodyguard’s point of view, but then I realized she wouldn’t see the scene in the way we’d written it. In this particular episode, the bodyguard is grudgingly attending a ball in which the man she loves is about to be formally engaged to a snobby princess who looks down at her.

But what I’d embellished focused on the splendor of the ball… not the dark side of the festivities.

Let’s take a look at the current (rough) intro for this episode:

The grand hall of Britannia’s castle was adorned with ornate, stained-glass lanterns. Their yellow arc lights depicted the glorious reign of the Dragon Dynasty across the cream-colored wallpaper. Flickering images of gold and crimson dragons danced among pink-tinted clouds at sunrise. Further down the grand hall, these lanterns revealed the proud history of Britannia. The first Dragon Queen sent her dragons to battle an unkempt hoard of miscreants, and later, she stood with her proud chin high as she morphed into the form of a glistening dragon, uniting her subjects into an unshakable empire for the past two-and-a-half centuries.

Beneath the lanterns, diplomats from across the continent mingled, tipping crystal goblets at each other with brilliant smiles as they eagerly awaited the announcement from the current Dragon Queen, Queen Catherine V.

Not exactly the reaction I’d expect from a scorned bodyguard.

However, it did match the mood of the queen, who is pleased with the arrangement of her daughter to the prince.

Suddenly, it made sense. I needed to write part of this scene from the perspective of the queen. Because we’re writing this in omniscient, I could bring in her point of view, even in the same scene, allowing us to see the contrast between the two characters and sense the rising tension.

For example, compare the queen’s thoughts about the bodyguard with the bodyguard’s thoughts about the royalty:

The queen had to admit that the prince was bit relaxed, slacking on the formalities she’d worked so hard to instill into her daughter. But he would come around, just as her Ramón had.

Her telepaths had assured her that the prince was faithful, even if his doting bodyguard was something of a slob. She rapped her fingers on the armrest’s dragon head, exhaled in time with the methodical orchestra, and returned her attention to the guests.

Now, for the bodyguard:

“Indeed, this has been a marvelous party, fit for the First Queen, and now, for my daughter.” The queen cast a loving gaze to Princess Cassandra, who beamed with pride.

As if she was ever anything but prideful.

Alia kept her face blank, but her cheeks burned at the thought of that snooty, high-horsed princess being anywhere near Alfons.

Not that there was anything she could do about it.

“Over these past months,” the queen continued, “I have been thrilled with the courtliness of Prince Alfons, crown prince of the house of Egilhard, who has treated my daughter with the utmost respect that can be expected from a man of his station.”

Because anyone who isn’t raised like some prude isn’t expected to be respectful, right? Alia clenched and unclenched her fists, but Alfons was too busy fawning over his princess to notice the queen’s slight.

Neither queen nor bodyguard like each other. Since we’re in an omniscient point of view, we get to see inside the heads of both characters.

The question I pondered, then, was how to make sure the transition was smooth. The danger of omniscience is head-hopping, a disorienting feeling of being thrown from one person’s point of view to another.

In order to avoid that problem, I decided to make sure that whenever a transition occurs, that transition must be clear. Our focus subtly shifts to the new character with a few cues, such as naming the character and quickly getting into their thoughts with a thought that is clearly not the thought of the former character.

As I considered the topic, I realized we could model this concept after movies and TV shows. Different camera shots let us see what different characters are up to, even in the same scene. (Off the top of my head, I’m thinking of Agents of SHIELD and Once Upon A Time). Without leaving the scene, the camera subtly pans to a character with an ulterior motive. We see their reaction, whether it be a malicious smile or a sad lowering of the eyes. We don’t hop heads, but we do switch point of view.

Let’s take a look at the current draft of The Multiverse Chronicles, in which the point of view switches from the queen to the bodyguard.

The queen’s telepaths had assured her that the prince was faithful, even if his doting bodyguard was something of a slob. She rapped her fingers on the armrest’s dragon head, exhaled in time with the methodical orchestra, and returned her attention to the guests.

Amongst the rigid guards and the pristine diplomats, amongst the proper dukes and the swirling, bejeweled duchesses who danced at their side, stood a lone, blue-uniformed soldier.

Alia Behringer, the prince’s favorite bodyguard. She was tall, especially among this crowd, with wheat blond hair and a lean, muscled body.

Alia cast a furtive glance toward the Dragon Queen, caught her glower, and looked away. She remained stoic as the redcoats, but unlike her counterparts, her blue-eyed gaze returned to the prince.

He was her charge, and she would defend him with her life.

She avoided the queen’s heavy gaze and gave her attention to the prince. Months ago he would have been joking at her side, not perched on miss high-and-mighty’s ‘graceful, endearing, and oh-so-lovely’ arm.

This scene could still use some tightening in terms of point of view, but we can see the switch from the queen to the bodyguard. The queen focuses on the bodyguard, we get a bit of information about her, and then we start seeing her thoughts, things she would know but the queen wouldn’t. Calling the guards redcoats, for example, or noting that she would defend the prince with her life, or how she calls the princess ‘high-and-mighty.’

The queen would not think in these terms.

The Multiverse Chronicles is still very much a work in progress. But the beginnings of the omniscient point of view is there, slowly unraveling itself and making itself useful.

I’ve tried taking cues from other books that feature an omniscient point of view (Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes, for example) but I’ll admit, I haven’t read many stories with an omniscient POV that I remember, though I know I’ve read them.

I hope you enjoyed this post. Have you had much experience in reading or writing omniscient points of view? 🙂

Thoughts on Writing – Character Motivation

Today I’m talking about how a character’s backstory influences their actions.

In the first draft of Magic’s Stealing, I never really explained why the main character, Toranih, didn’t like magic. She simply didn’t. But stories generally read better if the author knows why a character behaves a certain way, even if they never explain this directly to the reader. So, in order to add credibility to Toranih’s character, I began to explore her motives.

From Dictionary.com (a really useful resource when double-checking that a word means what you think it means), motives are “something that causes a person to act in a certain way, do a certain thing, etc.”

To see why Toranih acts so paranoid/distrustful of magic, while being so interested in learning how to effectively wield a sword, let’s take a look at her world. Toranih is the youngest daughter of the Lord of the Armory, so she has plenty of access to swords and the people who can teach her. In regards to magic, the kingdom has a high number of ribbon mages, so magic is common. However, the ability to see magic is not. Neither Toranih, nor her older sister, Siklana, can see ribbon magic, though her best friend can.

In the original draft of Magic’s Stealing, Toranih did not like magic because she felt like it was all tricks and illusions. (A side note: the trouble with using the term ‘illusion’ with magic is that if you actually have magic doing something, the illusion of something happening is no longer an illusion. I’ve been slowly weeding this word from the story). So my first idea for why Toranih didn’t like magic was that maybe a bad event scared her in the past. She gets her first glimpse of magic at a parade when she was little, and it overwhelms her. Thus, she’s been wary ever since.

However, my husband pointed out that a parade with a lot of colorful, fluttering ribbons is likely to be awe-inspiring to a four-year-old, not terrifying. While I still feel that everyone has different reactions, so what some kids like, others are terrified of (for example… clowns), I started looking elsewhere for answers. Toranih doesn’t like magic, and to the extent that she is paranoid in earlier drafts, there seems like there might be a bit more to her paranoia. So I cut the bit about the parade (keeping the event, but not having it terrify her), and considered Toranih’s distrust of their mythology. There are already several references in the current draft which lends itself to this theory.

For example, after an event involving Toranih being magically called to do a task she wouldn’t otherwise do:

Old fables flitted to the edge of her mind, haunting melodies of immortals and creatures whose very power was that of magic’s lure, the power to call and demand, to whisper in a person’s ear and convince them, without fail, to do their bidding.

In something of a flashback, Toranih’s sister tells her about life and death magic:

Once, long ago, when Siklana showed Toranih how to use her crystal, she’d convinced a couple of the servants to come stand in front of them. One had magic, the other did not. And she’d pointed to the one with magic and all the ribbons, and explained what ribbon magic was and how it worked.

Then Siklana pointed to the other servant, and said that even though he wasn’t a mage, he still had magic. Everyone had magic, but it was difficult to see because it was closer related to string magic, but couldn’t Toranih see it? There were two thin strings running through his body, each entwined and almost impossible to spot.

Siklana had adjusted the crystal to make them more visible. “That’s the only string magic visible to a ribbon mages,” she’d said. “One strand is life, and the other is death. Everyone has them. If you don’t, then you’re dead. That’s how the gods made us,” Siklana had continued, much to Toranih’s dismay. “But only the really powerful gods can manipulate those strings, so there’s nothing to be scared of.”

That memory had stuck with Toranih ever since.

In a conversation with Aifa, the Matchmaker goddess:

Aifa rolled her eyes. “Such a harsh tongue, tut-tut. Dear, I’m the goddess of relationships, not all-powerful. But if you don’t mind your manners, you’ll find yourself mute.”

Toranih swallowed hard. She had heard tales of citizens who’d crossed the gods in older times. Citizens who found their love lives broken or their ability to communicate… impossible.

Toranih has plenty of reason to be uneasy about magic and the gods’ use of magic. However, we can take this a step further. We know that Toranih is very interested in swordsmanship, and wants to be a guardsman except that her father doesn’t think that position befits her station. This is especially problematic when her sister, Siklana, reveals intentions to marry into a different estate, thus leaving Toranih as the sole heir.

Her father handed one of the servants his empty plate and rested back in his chair. “Understanding self-defense is important, but you’re taking these studies a bit far. There are more important subjects for a young lady to—”

“Siklana is much more adept at those studies,” Toranih interrupted. Her scone crumbled and she swept the crumbs into a napkin before he could get onto her about that, too. “Let’s be honest. When inheritance time comes around, she’ll inherit the estate. She’ll master magic at the academy, and she’ll be the one to win the hearts of the city and lead them in her wise, older age.”

Siklana ducked her head behind her bangs. Her dark brown eyes shown through. She was smaller in stature than her younger sister, especially since she lacked the muscle that came from Toranih’s years of swordplay. “What if I marry into a different house?”

Toranih turned sharply. Her sister… marry? Of course she would, she had always been interested in the attention of suitors, but Toranih hadn’t thought she would try to climb the social ladder through marriage.

If she married into a higher class, she would leave behind the Covonilayno estate. “I’d be the heir,” Toranih whispered, stunned.

Her father nodded. “The rights would fall to you. As is custom.”

Toranih glared at her sister. “How long have you been planning this?”

“I’ve been thinking about it for a year,” she admitted coyly. “I’ve already passed the academy’s first year exams, and I’m well into my second year. Our inheritance is decent, but there are a few worthy suitors who could help me further my education once I finish in Cirena City. With a decent suitor’s allowance, I could travel to the Islands. I’ll make sure that’s part of the contract. I might even learn word magic.”

Toranih swallowed hard. While having at least some degree of ribbon magic was common, word magic was practiced by very few. Anyone could learn it, so long as they knew how to pronounce the spell.

But say just one syllable wrong, and any number of horrors awaited the practitioner. Setting ones’ self on fire, opening a portal in the middle of a crowded city and killing anyone in its path, trying to heal someone and killing them instead… and a particularly powerful spell could bind a target to do the mage’s will.

Toranih shivered. Unlike ribbon magic, word magic was invisible. No crystal could reveal words the way it could reveal ribbons.

My husband pointed out that maybe Toranih doesn’t like magic because, unlike her sister (and most every other mage in the kingdom), she never really became adept with magic.

As a young child, Toranih saw her sister and Daernan surpass her with flying colors while she struggled to control ribbons for even basic tasks. At the same time, young noblewomen were taught basic self-defense, which is where she excelled. She threw herself into the study of swords and knives, hoping to become a weapons master. In the meantime, she became more and more resentful of magic. She eventually understood the basics (which we see her using in Magic’s Stealing), but she never quite comes to terms with the fact that she’s been left behind by the mages.

The result?

She can’t easily control magic, so she doesn’t trust it, and (as the current blurb says) she would rather have a sword in her hand than use her powers to heal and throw fireballs.

And now we have the reason that Toranih doesn’t like magic. We can see why she might, at times, lash out or vehemently deny anything to do with being a mage.

But she lives in a world so saturated with magic that she can’t ignore it, and so she still uses the magical light crystal her sister gave her. She still changes into an owl when Daernan convinces her to go to the parade. She still tries to save people who are dying when their magic is stolen. But she has a flaw, and because of that flaw she doesn’t always use her powers when she should, and her unwillingness to try could cost her the people she loves.

Now I’ve just got to make sure that is apparent within the story, even if I never come outright and say this is why she acts the way she does.

I hope you enjoyed this post. 🙂

Have you found any books where character motivations were well-done, or where they were lacking?

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Tagged as backstory, character motivations, character motives, creating a strong character, novellas, novels, Stephanie Flint, story writing, writing a character, writing tips, young adult

July 24, 2015 · 8:00 pm

Thoughts on Writing – Developing a Magic System

I’m in the process of polishing Magic’s Stealing, and a beta reader pointed out a plot hole regarding one of my magic systems. Since my mind is now stuck on working through that problem, today I’m going to go into the process of developing magic systems.

In Magic’s Stealing there are three types of magic: ribbon magic, string magic, and word magic. The problem system is ribbon magic, which is the most common. It’s the magic that gets stolen, leaving the two main characters as the only mages.

As it stands in the current version of the story, ribbon mages either have all-magic—which allows a user to do most any common type of ribbon magic that they train for—and there is specific magic—in which the user is only good with one specific power.

Depending on their specialty, the colors of their ribbons vary. For example, a fire mage has yellow ribbons, while a light mage has turquoise ribbons. The problem is that once we get into all-magic, where there is no official specialty, the color system breaks down.

For example:

Toranih: Green ribbons. All-magic. She’s not particularly good with magic, though her specialty is telekinesis. She is also seen shape-changing and using her powers to heal wounds.

Daernan: Blue ribbons. All-magic. Specialty of shape-changing. Also seen casting fireballs and healing wounds.

Siklana: Turquoise ribbons. Specific magic. Specialty of light manipulation. Enchants light crystals for others to be able to see magic.

Shevanlagiy: Green ribbons. All-magic. She is seen creating portals, using telekinesis, and there is a mention of her enchanting a light crystal.

Cafrash: Yellow ribbons. Specific magic. Specialty of fire manipulation. (He’s a blacksmith).

We don’t see many different ribbon colors in the first book because the main character, Toranih, can’t see magic without a light crystal, and magic is stolen shortly thereafter. However, a beta reader pointed out that from the way I describe the ribbons in the book, the color of the ribbons seem to be based on the magic user, rather than on the type of magic. (Note that Toranih and Daernan can do the same things, but Daernan’s magic is blue, while Toranih’s magic is green.)

So I took a second look at how I explained ribbon magic. The only truly consistent piece of information was in regards to the strength of magic, and even that is not directly stated. (Ribbons are influenced by how often magic is used. Thin ribbons reveal magic that has been neglected. Thick ribbons show well-practiced magic. Like a muscle, the more practice a mage has, the stronger their ribbons will be). The other consistent deal with ribbon magic is the use of a certain color pertaining to a certain mage.

Since I want consistency in the system, especially as the series continues to evolve, I brainstormed a few ideas that might make the system stronger.

It didn’t immediately come together. The brainstorming process is messy, and you can see that from the ideas I have here:

Importance in the shade of magic: Inherent at birth. The more vibrant the color of magic, the more likely a mage has all-magic, or can do more with his ribbons. The paler the magic, the more specific their magic is, limiting them to what can be done.

Importance in the color of magic: Inherent at birth. Technically, similar colors should be similar powers. We also run into the problem that if the shade of magic says that the paler the magic, the more limited the mage, then we shouldn’t be able to tell what kind of magic a limited mage has. Their magic would be white.

So…

I wondered if I could flop these around.

The deeper the shade of magic, the more specific the power. This would be consistent with immortal magic, a type of ribbon magic which is described in the book as being “silver with black edges.” Their magic tends to be a little more all-encompassing (even though they each have their specialties). When Toranih and Daernan are granted a tiny bit of an immortal’s power, their ribbons take on an iridescent sheen. Which would make sense if the more all-encompassing their power, the more silvery-white it became.

Granted, that still doesn’t help me look at magic in terms of a visible light spectrum based on their current ribbon colors. But, if you take all the colors of the rainbow and put them together in the form of light, the light is white… which fits the idea of all-magic being paler in color (though brighter in luminescence).

That in mind, mortal mages would probably still have a visible color of magic because they don’t have nearly the kind of power that an immortal has.

Let’s look at the specialties in terms of a rainbow spectrum… with the addition of turquoise.

Red – (Not mentioned in this story)

Orange – (Not mentioned in this story)

Yellow – Fire

Green – Telekinesis

Turquoise – Light manipulation

Blue – Shapeshifting

Indigo – (Not mentioned in this story)

Violet – Portals?

Now, if specialties that are related are close together on the spectrum, then light manipulation should be more of a lime green or yellow-green than turquoise, and thus be closer to fire. If I go with the idea that each type of ribbon magic has a different color, unrelated, then those could remain the same.

But I still wasn’t really happy with this. I liked the idea of light manipulation being turquoise and fire being yellow, sticking straight to a rainbow spectrum is limiting, and besides that, this system still doesn’t help me with all-magic users.

I talked about this conundrum with my husband, Isaac, and the resulting discussion gave me the idea that maybe mages shouldn’t have one single color of magic. Instead, their ribbons could vary with multiple colors, depending on what kind of magic they have the potential to use. In this case, Daernan’s primary ribbon color would be blue, because he’s a gifted shapeshifter, but he would also have several thick yellow ribbons for fire, along with a few green ribbons for telekinesis and whatever other color I assign to the magic he practices. As he’s not particularly skilled with something like portals, but he’s capable, he might have a couple thin violet ribbons that no one really notices because they get lost among his blue ribbons.

Let’s take a quick look at a before-and-after of scene involving magic. This is how the section reads before I make changes:

The owl shrugged and puffed out its plumage like a feather duster. Not my fault you’re so jumpy.

Toranih crossed her arms. Though faint in the moonlight, the crystal’s twilight revealed blue ribbons swirling thick through Daernan’s owlish body.

Coming? The blue ribbons carried Daernan’s thoughts to Toranih’s mind, and she fought the urge to swipe them away.

However, if I make the changes I’m considering, the scene might read something like this:

The owl shrugged and puffed out its plumage like a feather duster. Not my fault you’re so jumpy.

Toranih crossed her arms. Though faint in the moonlight, the crystal’s twilight revealed various blue and yellow and pink ribbons swirling thick through Daernan’s owlish body.

Coming? The pink ribbons carried Daernan’s thoughts to Toranih’s mind, and she fought the urge to swipe them away.

Granted, I haven’t decided that pink is telepathy, but it’s an idea. This early in the story, readers should be able to immediately understand that different ribbons do different things. Before this segment we see Siklana’s turquoise ribbons of light magic, and after this segment we see Toranih using her own scrawny blue ribbons to transform into an owl.

If I go this route, I’ll need to make a chart of which colors represent which specialty, and I’ll have to be careful in editing to make sure the use of ribbon magic remains clear and consistent. But this last change might enhance the world, as well as fix a plot hole.

The system is still in development, but I hope this post gives you a bit of insight into how such a system can be developed. 🙂

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Tagged as developing a magic system, developing the world, fantasy, fixing plot holes, magic systems, Stephanie Flint, world-building, writing a fantasy novel, writing a fantasy novella, writing tips

July 20, 2015 · 8:00 pm

Thoughts on Writing – The Magic of Writing

When I was in high school, my language class read a short story about a man who spent his life on the river. When he first started sailing as a boy, the river was magical. The eddies and sand banks… he didn’t understand them, but they called his attention and made him want to know more. As he grew older, he learned to understand the river. To know what caused the eddies and where the dangerous currents hid, and as he learned, the river lost its magic.

I can’t remember if the story ended with him seeing the magic of the river again in his old age or not, but the story stuck with me (even if the name of that story and the author did not). (Edit from comments: The story is “Two Ways of Seeing A River” by Mark Twain).

Writing (like any profession), has the same problem.

When I was younger, reading was magical. It still is, but when I was younger I could pick up most any book on a topic I liked and there was a good chance I would enjoy it, going through book upon book without a problem. However, as I became more fascinated with the art of actually writing these stories, I began to dissect them. I wanted to know how they worked. Why they worked.

Piece by piece, I figured them out. I read books on writing, blogs on writing. I joined internet forums dedicated to writing. Slowly, I puzzled out what worked and what didn’t, and why.

At first, those pieces were difficult to see. I knew a certain story worked for me, but others didn’t. It was difficult to see why. The first time I remember truly understanding an aspect of why a story worked was when I read Darth Bane: Path of Destruction by Drew Karpyshyn, and then Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson. I suddenly understood how to get in close to a character in third person and write from their point of view. I even wrote an alternate ending Star Wars fanfic based on this principle, and I’m still a teensy bit proud of it for that… even if it’s not my best work.

Later, when I read The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater, a single line about the halo of mist around a streetlamp stood out to me, and when I read Rebekkah Ford’s Beyond the Eyes series and could actually smell the wet, autumn leaves in the forest, I began to see how zooming in on specific details could bring a story to life. I sought out more stories like these, stories which really brought out some aspect of writing to help me finally understand.

While working on Glitch (a Distant Horizon story with elements of horror), if I read a scene in a book that made me shiver, I reread that scene until I understood why. The example here is The Devouring by Simon Holt, in which one of the Devours has a deliciously creepy one-on-one conversation with the main character. Christine, by Steven King, helped me see the use of repetition of key, creepy phrases or scenes (the dream sequences). Pure by Julianna Baggott revealed the use of discordant imagery, beautifully described but terrifying in their own right.

Then there were books that taught me the value of relationships in stories. The Host, by Stephenie Meyer had me crying during a certain scene with the grandfather figure. It’s a rambunctiously wordy novel, but it’s good. The Girl with the Iron Touch has one of my favorite romances in a book, and I’m not really a romance reader. It revealed how to draw tension between the characters, and did a wonderful job distinguishing between sexual and romantic attraction, and utilizing both.

There are so many books that have been an influence on my writing, and they have all helped me to understand how a story works.

But recently, I’ve had a much harder time picking up a book and simply enjoying it. I used to spend hours in a book store poring over books and trying to decide which one to buy with my limited gift cards. Now? I go into a book store, hoping to find something, and often come out empty-handed and disappointed.

There’s a few possible reasons. One: I don’t have nearly as much free time for reading. I don’t feel as inclined to spend time reading a book unless it has something to do with what I’m currently writing. Two: (Something my husband pointed out) The topics I’m interested in might not be what the publishers are putting out right now.

For example, there was a period of time before The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins came out where I couldn’t find anything I wanted to read. This was the first time that happened and it was really, really discouraging. Then I found The Hunger Games in hardcover, and the concept intrigued me. I wanted to read it, but since I was limited on Barnes and Noble gift cards, and paperbacks were more sensible in terms of getting the most for my money, I didn’t pick it up.

Around a year later, I bought the paperback and loved it. I happily picked up the next two from the library. Later, I found a copy of Delirium by Lauren Oliver at Barnes and Noble, and while it didn’t seem like my thing (heavy romance), the premise intrigued me and the writing intrigued me, and I was hooked. I took a chance on the hardback and was glad I did.

Those kinds of finds are my favorites. The ones where you pick up a book at a bookstore and don’t want to put it down. But ever since I’ve put an emphasis on learning the writing craft, it’s been harder to find those books. I glance at a back cover blurb, and in what feels like just a couple seconds, without fully knowing what it’s about, I’ll put it back on the shelf. Books don’t catch my attention like they used to. Or maybe the book gets my attention and I slow down. I try reading the inside, but the writing style jars me and I just can’t convince myself that I’ll have enough patience to read through the whole book. The feeling is disappointing, especially given that the premise for that particular book sounded interesting and the characters were having a good conversation. The writing style just didn’t work for me. And the problem seemed to have been specifically within that book, because when I went and looked at Dust Lands: Raging Star by Moira Young, that book caught my attention. And the Dust Lands trilogy has a really interesting writing style. But the style of that series is so different that it didn’t push me away.

Problem Three: When I’m at a book store, I’m looking for something that I wouldn’t normally find. Something I don’t think the library currently has or could easily get. Which means that books that are popular and that I would love to read tend to get set aside. Now, if I really like them and I got a copy from the library, I might purchase my own copy later.

I admire the voracious readers who go through book after book and love them. Sometimes I feel like the man from the story who loved the river so much that he did everything he could to understand it, only to lose the magic because he understands it.

But at the same time, I don’t. Because some books still hook me from the start, drag me in unsuspecting, and take me for the whole wild ride.

I’m hoping the books I recently bought will do that… especially since I kept going back and forth in the YA section debating, “Do I risk buying that in hardback?”

“You know what? Yes, I think I do.”

I hope you enjoyed this post. 🙂 Do you ever have a hard time finding a book you want to read?

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Tagged as book stores, good books, great reads, hard time finding a good book, influential books, my favorite books, publishing, self-publishing, the magic of writing, writing tips, YA books

July 17, 2015 · 8:00 pm

Thoughts On Writing – The Revision Process

I recently finished the major revisions on Magic’s Stealing, and though I’m still in the process of making a few tweaks (trying to give the end just a bit more ‘oomph’ and trying to make sure that the antagonist has a clear motive while maintaining her mysterious persona) I thought I’d spend today’s blog post talking about my revision process.

First off, the difference between editing and revising. Honestly, I confuse the two and tend to use the terms interchangeably. But for the purpose of this post, I wanted to make sure I was talking about the right thing. So I did a quick web search, and this is what I found:

Editing is when you focus on a manuscript’s grammatical conventions. You’re looking for typos, words that like to get flip-flopped (my offenders were rein/reign and lose/loose), and grammatical issues. The story looks better when you edit.

Revising is when you focus on the big picture. You’re checking that the reader understands what you mean, that the story is clear, and the plot makes sense. The story sounds better when you revise.

Sometimes the two might clash, depending on whether you’re going for how something sounds, or how something looks. I’m fairly certain I drove one of my beta readers up the wall for my tendency to have ‘ , then ‘ in the middle of a sentence. For example: The owl sighed, best an owl could, then tapped the window with his beak. To be grammatically correct, the sentence should read: The owl sighed, best an owl could, and then tapped the window with his beak.

To be fair, I was doing this quite a bit, and I did go through and fix a number of those issues. However, as I was revising, I chose to keep certain instances because I liked how the sentence sounded, especially when compared to other sentences in the paragraph.

Here’s a breakdown of my revision process:

Step 1: Write rough draft. I don’t usually do much editing/revising at this stage. I just want to see the story completed.

Step 2: Examine rough draft. Tighten the writing, cut/add scenes as needed, now that I know how the story flows, and look for loose ends. Mostly revision.

Step 3: Polish the draft. Repeat Step 2 as necessary until I can’t find anything left to polish. I both edit and revise at this point. In some cases, this only takes one or two passes. In others… many, many more. (I really don’t want to think about how many times I’ve read through Distant Horizon. I feel like it’s fairly polished now, but it took several years to figure out this whole writing thing).

Step 4: Send polished draft to beta readers. Step away from manuscript and work on something else while waiting for a response.

Step 5: Ask beta readers questions. Once I have responses from my beta readers, I look through their comments and ask them questions to clarify anything I don’t understand. If one beta reader brings up a question that I think I should ask others, I send them those questions. For Magic’s Stealing, I did this in regards to what age they saw the characters as, as well as the readers’ theories regarding the antagonist. By doing this, I got a broader understanding of problems in the manuscript.

Step 6: Examine beta comments as a whole. Since it has been a while since I last looked at the manuscript, I read through all the comments to jog my memory.

Step 7: Apply critique to one chunk of the manuscript at a time. I examine what all the beta readers said about a particular section (in case there were conflicting opinions), and then applied the appropriate changes as necessary.

Step 8: Read the manuscript aloud. Once a couple sections were completed, I read the revised sections aloud, looking for any areas where I tripped over myself. Since I’m hoping to eventually do an audio edition of Magic’s Stealing, this is especially important. But even if you don’t plan to do an audiobook, reading aloud can help you catch errors or plot holes you wouldn’t catch if you are simply scanning the page. Plus, it’s kind of fun. (My Speech and Debate background likes to kick in here).

Step 9: Make any final adjustments that you know need to be made. For example, I know that the ending of Magic’s Stealing needs a little bit more ‘oomph,’ possibly in the form of one final confrontation with the antagonist. So I’ve been re-examining the rest of the manuscript to see if there are any loose strings there that I can use in that confrontation.

Step 10: Divide story into chapters. If you haven’t done this already, now’s the time to do it. Unfortunately, this is the part I don’t really like. Do I stick with a specific word count? Do I end at a really dramatic scene and have some really long or really short chapters? Should I cut before or after the antagonist view point? Eh… I much prefer revising.

Step 11: Read the full manuscript. If the story is truly polished, you’re only going to be making small changes or adjusting a word here or there. Nit-picking. If you see a major plot hole or flaw, you may want to go back and do further revisions. Each story is different. Like I said earlier, Distant Horizon went through a lot of revisions, and now when I look at it, I mostly nit-pick.

Step 12: Set the manuscript aside. Hand it over to any remaining proof-readers/beta readers. Read through it again after it’s been out of your thoughts for a little while. If readers say you’re good to go, proceed to the next step.

Step 13: Proceed with querying for trade publication or with self-publishing, depending on your goals. For Magic’s Stealing, I’ll be self-publishing, and I intend to print out the manuscript so I can look through it for typos. For Distant Horizon, I’ll intend to hire an editor before self-publishing, since it has been through so many changes that I’m bound to be missing something. The story is also considerably longer than Magic’s Stealing, and has a lot more room for plot holes (Distant Horizon is almost 100,000 words vs Magic’s Stealing’s 31,000 words).

There you have it: my revision process.

I hope you found this post useful. Have you had any revision techniques you found to be particularly helpful? 🙂

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Thoughts on Writing – Humor in Dark Places

After recently watching the full series of Avatar: The Last Airbender, and getting started watching season two of Agents of SHIELD, my husband and I noticed the stark contrast in the style of storytelling. The Last Airbender has a lot of lighthearted humor, with a few dark moments interspersed throughout the series. The first episode in season two of SHIELD is mostly dark with very, very little humor. As such, my husband and I began thinking about the roll that humor can play in the dark moments of a story.

Let’s examine the two shows closer.

Agents of SHIELD: While the first episode didn’t have quite so many cheesy dramatic pauses that the first season did (one of our qualms with the show), it seemed very gritty and dark. There’s a lot of bad things going on for the characters, so the dark events make sense. Character with brain trauma? Okay. Taking away the one happy point about his character and the entire episode in a big reveal at the end of the episode? Not so okay. The plot twist was actually pretty nice– I didn’t see it coming and it was foreshadowed without being obvious. Good.

But here’s the kicker. During the entire episode, there were a few lines of witty banter, but not much in the way of humor. And without that humor, we didn’t really feel like we had any breathing room. My husband pointed that part out, which reminded me of a blog post by Chuck Wendig about Game of Thrones. Anyway, there was all sorts of awesome stuff happening on screen, all sorts of juicy tidbits that I want to see play out in SHIELD, but if the rest of the season lacks points for breathing, I’m not sure if I’ll really be interested in returning to watch further episodes.

When we watched the next episode, that episode played out much better for us. Despite the heavy matter linked to that previous episode, we had breathing room. Moments of humor, things going right for the good guys, if not completely right, and the character with brain trauma found someone who may be able to help them. The problems are still there, but there were little moments of humor that kept the episode floating, even with the dark moments.

By episode three, I was hooked again. Though I don’t remember many particularly humorous moments (there was one involving a twist on what the viewer expects, due to the information withheld), there were a few, and the action and information was paced well enough to allow for breathing room while still thoroughly holding my attention.

Avatar: The Last Airbender: My husband suggested that part of the problem with the first episode of SHIELD seeming so dark is that we could have used a transition series. We just finished watching Avatar: The Last Airbender. It’s an absolutely amazing series, in which I could easily gush about the characters… (Uncle Iroh is my favorite character, and Toph is so cool…). *Ahem.* (WARNING: There are a few spoilers for The Last Airbender in the rest of this paragraph.) The Last Airbender an anime that, while it has it’s dark, sucker-punch moments (the crazy sister, Azula and when she has her breakdown; Uncle Iroh when he’s in the prison cell and pretending to be a desperate old man (this guy is anything but desperate, so when you first see him groveling, it hurts), also uses a lot of light-hearted humor to break the tension and offer breathing room. Sokka is pretty good at this. He’s the humor guy with some really bad humor, but he helps ground the other characters.

Which brings me to my next point. Stories which are dark can (and probably should) have moments of humor. The main character might not be laughing, but as the reader, we can. There’s many ways to do this. There might be witty banter, a miscommunication, a character reaction that is just too classic that we have to laugh. Or an unexpected reaction. These scenes shouldn’t take a reader out of the story, but they should allow a reader time to breathe.

Continuing with The Last Airbender theme, whenever there was a goofy, over-the-top humorous episode, I automatically assumed that the next episode would probably be dark. There was a case where they had a set of short episodes in one, in which I was trying not to get teary-eyed on the one about Uncle Iroh because he was going about his day all happy and perky, and then it reveals what the day means to him and it was so sad… But in the previous short ‘episode,’ we saw Sokka having a Haiku rhyme competition in which he was trying to impress a bunch of girls. The mix of light and dark moments made for a stronger show, and those moments tied into all of a viewer’s emotions, allowing us to ride a wave without pounding us needlessly against a bunch of really blunt rocks.

Part of this is pacing, knowing when a reader might need time to sit back and take everything in. A story doesn’t have to be entirely pulse-pounding action. Carefully placed moments of humor, or moments of sadness in a comedy (it works both ways, a comedy can have some really heart-rending moments), don’t have to distract from the story. These alternate emotions enhance the story by giving meaning to the other emotion. You can’t have the high without the low, and you can’t have the low without the high. I can’t remember what book series it was (Maybe Pendragon, by D.J. MacHale?), but one of the characters (the villain, I think) said that the most terrible defeat comes after what you think is your greatest victory.

Having both light and dark moments makes the moment when a character succeeds or fails against all odds that much more meaningful.

There was a one-on-one role-play campaign my husband ran in which the team my character was on had suffered some major losses, and one of the characters I cared about had just been captured. Of course we were going to try and rescue the guy. I went into that campaign thinking that at least one of the main team members was going to die, especially since it was the last episode of the story. We’d already had some near misses, and we had recently lost another character who wasn’t the main character, but still very likable. Yet, against all odds, we took the rescue mission by storm, and not only achieved our goal, but far exceeded it… we won. Were we still in hiding? Yeah. But none of the main characters died, and we dealt a major blow to the baddies (at least for the guy who had been a pain-in-the-rear the entire time). It felt like we had saved the world. I actually went and played The World is Saved song afterward.) The feeling was amazing.

But that feeling wouldn’t have been quite so amazing without all the dark moments and the near misses that came before. There were serious moments, but there were also some very humorous moments as well. I look forward to writing those episodes once my current projects are complete. It’s going to be a while, but I have notes! *If I can read the notes. My handwriting while trying to play a character in a campaign is atrocious. There’s scribbles and arrows and half-written sentences everywhere.*

While working on The Little One, a prequel novel to the Distant Horizon series, I had a lot of fun playing with the dark and light moments. The story revolves around a very powerful but childlike spirit who possessed the body of girl who recently died. It’s in a world with powers, but Little One’s powers are beyond normal, and no one is quite sure what to make of her. The scene below is an excerpt from when Knight first encounters Little One, right after she takes the host body for her own and still isn’t quite all there.

The scream had come from the hole, but it didn’t belong to the girl. It was the man’s… a primitive, terrified scream that sent a flock of birds fleeing into the clouded sky. Then everything was silent. Deathly silent, save for the distant cries of the police force who was trying to catch up.

Knight swallowed hard, preparing himself for anything, then raced through the portal.

He was immediately blind. The cave was darker than the night above, and his flashlight and the portal’s glow did little to illuminate the place. He scuttled behind the portal and dropped to a crouch, willing his eyes to adjust quickly.

To his surprise, the sliver of light coming from the hole above him was brighter than he expected. It cast a soft line across the body of a man stretched across the ground. Just beyond him was a little girl, no more than five. She sat on a mound of rocks, swinging her legs.

She looked at Knight.

He looked back.

She didn’t blink.

He did.

He jumped, half expecting her to reappear right next to him, then chided himself when he realized she hadn’t moved from her perch. Late night television getting on his nerves, no doubt. He was wide-awake, on the last vestige of a caffeine high, and he’d been overextending his powers beyond any reasonable hope of a decent morning.

He had every excuse to be jumpy.

But still… shouldn’t a child blink? They couldn’t all be expert stare artists.

Knight shook his head of the notion, determined to keep his wits until he could crash in a hotel room, then slowly stood. “I’m here to help. What happened?”

If this sequence reads the way I intended, there should be a lot of tension. Knight, who’s been running on very minimal sleep and just had a run in with ‘ghosts’ in a previous sequence isn’t sure what’s going on, and there’s a dead body of the man who murdered the girl’s family nearby. Then there’s this little girl sitting on a pile of rocks who isn’t acting quite… normal. But there’s also humor, based on his interaction with the girl and based on his expectations.

I hope you enjoyed this post and found it useful. 🙂

Another good post I found on humor: 7 Tips for Adding Humor by Rhoda Baxter

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