Posts Tagged ‘ideas’

Throwing in the Towel on Blood Berries

Posted: February 28, 2013 in advice, creating, discovery, doubt, writing
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The very first book I tried to write (barring the awesomesauce vampire collaboration I did with a friend in high school) was fantasy. Secondary world. Set in a vaguely Renaissance era time period. You know, standard fantasy world.

I hated it.

Didn’t finish.

There were things I loved about the book. There always are, otherwise there’s no reason to write it. I liked the dark fairy queen, I liked writing about changelings and a cat with a very special link to his human. I liked the gruff, reluctant hero and the way his wife communicated to him through her ghostly visage (though she was well and truly alive).

What I hated was the time period, which threw me for a loop. See, I love books written in with semi-historical settings. Kristin Cashore’s Graceling comes to mind. Brilliant book. The Song of Ice & Fire books, too, though I never kidded myself I could write anything approximating those vast and complicated tomes. Plenty others I can’t think of off the top of my head. It’s a setting trope I’m familiar with, and happy in, usually.

But I couldn’t write it. So, I set the book aside, this weird, rambling book languishing in the very first of my Scrivener files.

Cut to five years later.

I have this idea bouncing around in my skull that’s been bugging me for the last 2.5 years. Vampires that have discovered a spell to enchant a species of trees, producing berries that can fulfill their needs. I envisioned a kind of Romeo & Juliet story arc. More star-crossed lovers than pre-teen angst, though. But I put it off, thinking I couldn’t do the story justice. I didn’t quite know what to add to the seed to make it a fully engaging story.

I kept seeing these bits of advice: Don’t save your ideas. Don’t wait ’til you think you’re ‘good enough’ to explore those thoughts. Finally, I decided I would write it. And in my head, the story clung to a secondary world, vaguely Renaissance era setting. Horses, nobility, villages and dirt trails. I was cautious, because of my previous experience, but hopeful I could push through this time.

Then the weirdest thing happened. I failed. In exactly the same way. The story has ended up feeling weird and rambling, too long already for what I’m doing with it but at the same time I know it’s not because I;m overwriting. Well, pretty sure I’m not overwriting. And I’m bored. And frustrated.

I wrote not long ago about reaching that scary point, where you start to think your book is a pile of crap and questioning the whole concept of being a writer. I stand by that post: most of the time those feelings are just a matter of temporary insanity. This…feels different. It feels wrong. I’ve been pushing up against that feeling since shortly after I wrote the Scary Point post, and I’m done. So long, Blood Berries. At least, in your current incarnation. So long secondary world semi-historical fantasy. At least, for another five years.

Sometimes projects don’t work. It’s something that I’m learning to be okay with. More importantly, it’s something that I’m learning to identify, earlier, so I don’t waste as much time.

I may return to the seeds of this project and mutate them into something edgier, something more urban and current. I’m not sure yet.

Tell me your thoughts on half-finished projects and abandoned stories. How do you make the decision to quit?

Photo used under creative commons license from Hiking Artist.

Buying Beautiful Rugs: When Advice Starts Making Sense

Posted: February 19, 2013 in advice, creating, discovery, writing
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Not my cat

Five months ago Mr. Eliza and I moved into a new house. We found a really cute 1918 Craftsman style home, 2 bedrooms, 2 stories, and an addition jutting out from the side of the house. French doors, a weird levered window, a built-in liquor cabinet and a great view of our backyard conspired to make this our favorite room in the place.

We don’t know when the addition was constructed, but what’s pretty obvious is that whoever built it didn’t do the best of jobs. The insulation is sparse, and time has done it’s job on what is there. That levered window I mentioned? Coupled with single pane glass it lets in a fair amount of chilly winter air. The main problem, though, has been the floor. Because of the lack of insulation, cold emanates from the hardwood, bringing down the temperature and making the one heater vent in the room work extra hard.

As a result, the main house got overheated just to bring this room up to comfort levels. When we got the ensuing gas bill for the busy heater, we decided the best thing to do would be close up the room and hope for the best. Having just bought a new house, and a car, we didn’t have the resources available to get all the rugs that would be needed to help insulate the floor from the top down. Putting the room, and it’s cold, under quarantine was the best solution we could come up with at the time. Which sucked, because it was also the best place in the house to put our TV, couch and–as I mentioned–the all important liquor.

We moved the entertainment to our front room, positioned before the huge plate glass window. Now, the entire neighborhood could share in our Star Trek:TNG marathons.

Yeah, not ideal.

One night we went over to our friend’s new place. They’d gotten into a similar situation, with hardwood floors and a need for warmth. As we were talking about their big, new rugs, They mentioned CraigsList as a source.

Mind. Blown.

I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. I’ve purchased televisions, couches, tables and chairs and all manner of housey things off CraigsList. But this one thing took hearing my tried and true solution from an outside source before it clicked.

I think this happens a lot in life, and can happen in our writing, too. Sometimes it takes the voice of a teacher to bring something into light. More often than not, for me at least, the moments of clarity when it comes to writing advice happen more often like my rug moment of clarity happened: by seeming coincidence.

I remember, for example, when I finally started to understand the real meaning behind ‘write what you know’. That single piece of advice is probably the most touted platitude in the writing world. For so long I, like many others I’m sure, took those words to mean write what you’ve done. What you’ve seen. What you’ve directly experienced. And in a way, I think that’s true, but not in the manner I originally thought. When I realized, instead, that this piece of advice should be applied more to the core of things, rather than the surface of things, it made more sense.

Have I ever been in charge of a magic book, or possessed by an angry spirit, like in Toulouse? No. But I have been caught between doing the right thing and doing the easy thing. I have pined after someone I couldn’t have. I’ve definitely done things I’m not proud of, and worked hard to make up for them. Just like the characters in my book.

My point here is to keep your eyes and ears and, most importantly, mind open to new advice, and new perspectives on old advice. By reading, a lot, we can absorb information. Writing books, good fiction, and bad fiction alike all give us pieces of advice. They swim around our brains for a while, and, if we’re lucky, one day they make sense. That feeling of ‘damn, why didn’t I think of that?’ will combine with ‘yes, I can finally use this.’

And you might end up with a bitchin’ new rug.

photo used under creative commons license from Spamily

Using Deadlines for Good and Not Evil

Posted: August 29, 2012 in advice, writing
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This is because today is my birthday.

A friend of mine recently confessed to being a procrastinator. Shocking, I know, but try not to faint, dear readers. They are among us.

In truth, I think almost all of us fall into the procrastination camp at one point or another. Whether its the story you’ve been meaning to write, or the load of laundry you’ve been meaning to fold, there is always something you can put off in favor of prettier, more interesting things. Like StumbleUpon. Or Reddit. Or FaceBook. Or GoodReads. Or heck! An old-fashioned book!

But what about when you actually want to get those things done? Writing, in particular. Yeah, it’s crazy easy to poke at a few hundred words, adding a sentence here, removing an adverb there (good job!), never quite finishing. But finishing is where its at. I have a few favorite quotes about writing, but my favorite is “You can’t edit a blank page.” This quote has been attributed to a few people, but I first ran into it when I participated in NaNoWriMo. I think Chris Baty put it in one of those pseudo-inspirational emails they send out during November.

Regardless of where it came from, it’s true. You can throw trash all over the page, and clean it up later. Or you can agonize over creating perfection (I’m looking at you, Jenni) and have little or nothing to show for it.

I prefer fixable trash, personally.

This friend of mine mentioned that he can work on deadlines. Not self-imposed deadlines, though. Those are too easy to hedge on, to rationalize around. So I offered him a few tips on creating deadlines with pressure, which I’d like to share with you here.

1. Get your friends in on it. When you have other people expecting something from you, its harder to let them down. Curious, how the easiest person to disappoint is yourself… Anyway, make a deal with one of your buddies, or your romantical partner, or you mom, and set up a deadline. They know they’ll be getting a precious chunk of wordage, and you know you need to deliver.

And if you fail, they have free reign to tease, pester and torment you to their heart’s content. And really, who wants that?

2. Join a writing/critique group. This is kind of a hybrid of self-set deadlines and outside deadlines. Most groups won’t call you out if you don’t submit something. A few members might frown at the practice, but you likely won’t be ostracized.

And yet, when everyone else is contributing, and you know you have to see these people week after week, month after month, always a little shamefaced to have nothing to show…well, that could act as a very good prod to Finish. Your. Shit. And then offer it up for public ridicule.

3. Anthologies. There is an option on Duotrope to search for all currently open anthologies, regardless of genre. You’ll get back a list of varying length, but usually at least a few dozen options. (As of writing, there are 121 anthologies listed.) These are real, hint deadlines. Not your deadlines, necessarily, but they could be. Real publishers, looking for real stories, before a real point in time.

One potential drawback–or opportunity, as I see it–is that anthologies are generally looking for something somewhat specific. Thanksgiving murders. Stories about beer. Sexy Lovecraft. They may make you reach outside your comfort zone and write about something that’s never, not once, crossed your mind before. And isn’t that awesome? As writers, we need to continually grow and stretch and try new things, or risk stagnating in a pool of our own stale words.

There are lot of options out there for busting through the procrastination wall. Write or Die, NaNoWriMo. Word wars. Prompts. Eegad, the list goes on. But, like I told my friend, the most important element of beating procrastination is you. Is writing really a priority? More important still–should it be?

If the answer to the latter is yes, then the answer to the first should be yes, too. We all have busy lives, but there is always a way to make time for the things you love. The things you are passionate about. They’re a big part of what makes life awesome, after all.

You tell me–any tricks you have for pushing yourself to finish something? Or maybe you have a deadline creator I overlooked. I’d love to hear it.

Photo used under creative commons license from Vic.

From Idea to Story: Thoughts and Exercises

Posted: January 12, 2012 in creating, planning, writing
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This post was inspired by my new Tumblr, where I’ll be throwing things that inspire me. If you want a peek inside my brain hole, feel free to click on over.

Creative people are often asked where they get their ideas from. I think anyone who has been writing for a while will know what a strange question this is, though I admit to having asked the same thing myself a few times. The question usually isn’t–where do the ideas come from? It’s more, how do I use these ideas, and make them more than snippets? How do I flesh this scrap out, build it into something that will move people, delight people, intrigue and excite people?

JK Rowling said she had the first bits of her ideas about Harry Potter when she was on a long train ride. She didn’t have any pen or paper with her, and so she was forced to mull these ideas over in her head, stringing things together for hours on end without the benefit of being able to put anything down in black and white. Her method, whether by intention or because of circumstance, was essentially daydreaming. Prolonged periods of daydreaming. And I think that is the root of the creative process. We have to give ourselves room to dream. And then we have to anchor those dreams to some kind of reality.

So how did this wildly successful author come up with her ideas? It doesn’t matter. What matters is that she took them and created a world out of them. And there are at least as many ways to do this as there are authors. I’m still finding my method, that tried-and-true process that works every time.

I think I’m on a wild goose chase. I’m sure as I grow both as a writer and as a person, what works fr me will change. But that’s good! It forces me to try new things, and occasionally stumble upon something new. And the whole point of being alive is to learn, to live, to grow.

Here are a few things that work for me right now. Who knows? Maybe they’ll spur something in you, too.

Creating Characters From People

It’s cheating. I know. But it’s the best and worst kind of cheating there is. We all know people with idiosyncrasies that drive us up the wall, or make us want to study them like animals in a lab. Or something like that. And when it comes to creating believable, interesting characters you could do a whole lot worse than picking them from the ripe field that is your life.

Now, I’m not recommending trying to put Dad into your story whole cloth. That won’t work. It can’t. Human beings are so intricate and complicated that any facsimile we try to create will inevitably come out forced. Instead, try inserting Dad’s laconic nature into the best friend of your main character. Or his love of puzzles into the villain. In doing this, you inject something familiar into this character. You’ll know, from experience, how this aspect of a personality works, and it will be easier to conjecture. And by using just one piece of the person, you avoid the “OMG you put me in your book and I’m a jerk! What do you think of me?” problem.

Who is This Going to Hurt Most?

So you’ve got this awesome idea for a world where people literally share one heart, and if they don’t find their mate before a certain age they start to die. Great. Now, you go to choose a main character and–you find the middle-aged woman comfortably married with three children who have been linked with their mates since birth. Hmm…I could think of a couple of ways you could use this woman, but I don’t think she’s MC material for this story.

How about the CEO of a company in charge of finding people’s mates? If he fails, well, there goes his commission! Again, not a strong candidate.

Or how about the girl who’s fallen in love with her best friend, who gets murdered. And then she finds out her mate is the guy responsible for the murder. Now this has potential.

Who does your idea hurt? How can you make it hurt worse? I’ve mentioned this here before, and it applies as much today as it did a hundred years ago and will a hundred years in the future–put your character in a tree and throw rocks at them. But before you get them up there, find the character who has trouble climbing trees, find the character with thin skin, the character scared of heights and projectiles. The connections will start coming, growing like sinews between pieces of your ideas until you have something vaguely story shaped.

Randomize

Then, if you get really stuck, do something crazy. This is an exercise borrowed and tweaked from Holly Lisle (who has a whole, comprehensive course about how to take an idea and make it into a book).

Take a magazine. Rip out a bunch of pictures. Scatter them over your floor. Start throwing things at your impromptu collage. A penny will do. Wherever that penny lands, let that inform your next scene.

For example, let’s say you’re writing a far-future hard SF. I have no experience in this genre, so excuse any unintentional foot-in-mouthing I may commit. You’ve just massacred an issue of Vogue, so you have a spread of watch ads, fashion shoots, and the like. Your penny lands on this*: (Insert picture of Kristen Stewart here)

Congratulations! Your characters have just discovered a new alien race! Or perhaps that trunk she’s sitting on contains the WMD your hero will have to wrest from the grips of evil. Or this is the villain disguised as your hero’s long-lost sister, dropping in for a none too friendly visit. There are a dozen ways you can take this particular picture, easy, and this picture is pretty…well, boring.

The ideas are everywhere. It’s the connective fibers that are harder to come by.

*photo ripped shamelessly from the internets.

Also, I’m not affiliated with anyone. Any links are free from outside influence.

The Good Stuff

Posted: February 7, 2010 in writing
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This weekend, on Saturday to be precise, I participated in Write Your @ss Off Day, a day dedicated to working on the story. This couldn’t have come at a better time, since I decided, on Friday, to start over.

From the beginning. Pretty much.

You see, I have a problem with creating boring main characters with an interesting supporting cast. Instead of plugging through with my lackluster MC (sorry Amber) I put on the breaks and threw the kids out of the damn car. No warnings, no threats.

Not only did I replace my main character, though, I replaced her best friend, and the concept of my…erm…third person, whose details I will not divulge here. And all this required some major thought processing.

And, as it turns out, a set of Moleskines. Red ones. Yum.

Thusly, I spent Saturday morning brainstorming in my pretty new book, and Saturday afternoon/evening writing my pretty new book. I’m so happy I’ve made the change. It was a difficult decision to make, though. I didn’t want to give up on Book A, just to chase some shiny rabbit down it’s hole, for no other reason than it being shiny. That kind of thing might fly for a short story, but for a novel? I can’t afford to waste the time.

So I had to ask myself a few questions. Why would I change so many key elements? What would this accomplish? Would this really make it better, or is this just another form of procrastination? Most importantly, though, I asked myself: Will this make me happy? Will NOT doing this make me unhappy? The answer to both of those was a resounding YES. I was already bored with poor, defunct Amber, and enthralled with Hester, she of new MC fame. I wanted to hang out with her. I was making excuses for her to be in scenes where she didn’t really belong. I thought about her all the time. I sent her a note: Will you go to prom with me, mark yes/no…and she sent me back a wicked paper airplane that said Let’s Do This!

So here we are.

And having the permission/expectancy of WY@O Day helped kick me in the…well, you know where, to get this writing moving!

Now, as the weekend draws to a close, I find myself nearing 7,000 words of actual novel content, not counting notes at all. And I keep going back, because I know where I’m going with this story, and I want to see it get there because Efran is going to be so cool!

Oh, shoot. Did I say that out loud?

VIPs and writer’s block

Posted: February 1, 2010 in writing
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I got some VIP work done this weekend.

You know, schmoozing with the bigwigs, rubbing elbows with women in dark sunglasses and men with stylish facial hair. Drinking cosmos. Punching paparazzi.

Heh…

So, maybe that was just a nightmare I had Saturday night after watching Aliens and eating too much bacon.

No, this Sunday was dedicated to Very Important Planning. I am about ten percent through my book, without a detailed outline (I’ve come to the realization that I work better without one [more on that another day]), without character bios or really strong plot points set up. So I sat down with my character sheets from Holly Lisle, starting with my FMC (Female Main Character). Didn’t learn too much I didn’t already know, so I moved on to her best friend, MSC (Male Secondary Character). I got a few tidbits, and solidified his voice and motives, which is great. Then I moved on to my MMC/Antagonist.

Wow. I had no idea.

So I initially intended this guy to be evil, summoned up by a pathetic, lovelorn tertiary character. Through revealing more about his past, and his inner workings, I discovered that my approach with him was way off. He’s not evil; he’s lonely and desperately misguided. And my tertiary idiot character? Gone. Not necessary. Which brings me to my second breakthrough- my true antagonist. Someone I had shunted to the back like so many rotten potatoes, making the house stink but ultimately unimportant.

My characters grew and stretched and surprised me, and my plot did the same. It was great!

When I start in on a story I plunge in with a few basic ideas on characters and concepts, and I feel around for a while. I think this helps me get to know my characters and world a bit, to get a sense for this place I’m building. But it doesn’t last. Pretty soon I have to be more analytical about things, and explore them in a more logical manner. That’s when I start to find the really good stuff. My subconscious has been working on it the entire time, just waiting for me to come along and unlock the doors.

This pausing and analyzing process is something I will do multiple times throughout the writing of the story, and I always come away feeling fresh, focused, and more organized, clearing away potential roadblocks for the next few days or weeks.

Which is not to say that I don’t get curveballs from my subconscious while I’m busy taking a shower. But it is immensely gratifying knowing that I can kick start that discovery process, pretty much at will.

Basically, it’s my inoculation against writer’s block.

Character Inspiration

Posted: January 25, 2010 in writing
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*Moving from LiveJournal to Blogger. Older posts can be found at PortraysDeath*

One problem that a lot of beginning writers (and probably a fair amount of experienced writers) run in to is creating characters that aren’t just cleverly tweaked copies of themselves. Or not so cleverly tweaked, depending on the circumstances.Imagine a world peopled entirely by yourself, only one has an eyepatch, one chews bubblegum all the time, and one speaks in a Southern accent. Scary, huh? Well, that’s the world too many people end up in.

The key is to create unique, believable characters that are as different from yourself as your crazy brother is. And how do we do that? Character worksheets, character interviews, character templates…all of these are great tools for discovering motivations, back story, etc. But let’s face it, without material, these things are worthless.

I think the best thing a writer can do for their characters is to go out and meet some. Observe people. Set up post in the mall or a park or on a bench downtown and just watch. Yeah, it may seem a little creepy at first, but get over it. Being a fiction writer is a little creepy. We create entire worlds in our heads and spend hundred of hours transcribing them onto paper. We meet people, fall in love, fall in hate, commit murders, have sex, pet dragons, get pregnant, dye our hair, and on and on…all in our imagination. And then we expect people to give a damn about any of it.

I, personally, revel in the slightly creepy. And the slightly more than slightly creepy, too, if we’re being honest, here.

Anyway, have a seat, pull out your notebook, and start writing things down.

I think of these things as ‘bright spots’. I’ll give you a couple examples, straight from my own tiny notebook.

–A wall made of boulders- half as tall as a man, and twice as wide. What’s hiding in there? Great big gaps, big enough for a newborn.

--Japanese assassin- sent to the shrine to off a man thought to have buried stolen treasure at the abandoned shrine. Finds something else instead.

–Angry girl behind the wheel of a yellow sports car, driving nowhere, fast.

And on and on it goes. I’ve got half a dozen of these little books filled up with things I will likely never look at again. The point of them was to internalize that moment, that idea, that character trait. By internalizing it, making it a part of me, I will have that at the ready when it is time to create a new character or story or setting or scene.

Experience is vitally important to a writer. Not necessarily experiencing all sorts of craziness like bungee jumping or riding in a spaceship. Just getting out there and soaking yourself in the bright, amazingness that is mankind, getting to know how people work and think, is crucial. Without that context, everything else is moot.