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Posts Tagged ‘characters’

Re-Imagining a Story

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , on February 9, 2011| 2 Comments »

This topic arises as I finally begin to make headway on the new version of SEVEN STARS.  I wouldn’t say I’m on a first-draft-in-six-weeks pace (which can be quite a wild ride anyway), but I am definitely making strong and consistent progress.

I’ve been somewhat resistant to writing this story. Not because I don’t like it, but because the first version of it fought me to a standstill at 50,000 words and refused to go any farther.

I set it aside and began tinkering with the plot to try to get my interest back up. But even though I liked the new plot line much better, I couldn’t flog myself into getting back into the story. Until I completely reimagined it.

In this case, I played with the gender of the main characters. Actually, I flipped them. The formerly male character is now female and the formerly female character is now male, which basically forced me to look at the entire story with completely new eyes. It’s too soon (chapter four) to tell whether this is going to work all the way through to the end, but either way it’s going to have been an interesting exercise and a useful way of getting back into a story I had some resistance to.

You can’t just change the genders of the characters and then go ahead and write the same story. Some other things will have to change. Even if your characters still have the same personalities and the same goals as before. The way other characters respond to them and their expectations of them will probably change. Even if they have the same goals, the way they go about trying to achieve them, at least for the first try/fail cycle, will probably change. The way they respond to challenges may change–and the skill set they bring to the problem.

Of course, since I write fantasy, I have the advantage of being able to adjust the world I set these characters in, too. But, in some ways, it’s more interesting to play with them in the original world, created for a character of the opposite gender, and see how it changes their responses.

Look at s couple of examples in the genre:

In THE LORD OF THE RINGS, Eowyn had essentially the same desires as her brother Eomer, and every bit as much courage, but she was constrained by her gender role.

In GRACELING, Katsa is faced with contradictory expectations. On the one hand, her uncle the king tries to treat her like any other lady of the court and marry her off to his advantage. All the while, he’s using her Graced talents to make her his strong arm and assassin.

Both characters who at some point have to break out of their assigned roles. I think that makes them more interesting. And I think it will make SEVEN STARS much more fun to play with, now.

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No Antagonist

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , on January 23, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Since I last posted about antagonists and villains, I’ll continue on with the theme.  What about stories that have no antagonist?

Yes, it’s possible. It’s even possible to do well. Look at Maggie Stiefvater’s SHIVER. Of course, in a way, there is an antagonist. It’s just not a person.

This comes up as I prepare to start working on SEVEN STARS again because I think it’s one of the problems (not the only one) I had with the earlier version.  This story doesn’t have a personified antagonist.  There will be characters who variously help or impede the main character for their own ends. There will be characters or groups she vilifies as evil and fights against. But there really isn’t a single antagonist.

Instead, her battle is much more against a part her own nature. Very similar, in a way to SHIVER, although SEVEN STARS is not a werewolf story. 

I think there are additional challenges to writing a story without an identifiable antagonist. Keeping the tension up, for one. There’s nobody to point to and say, “Hurry, he’s going to catch you.” SHIVER still had that, to a degree, because the weather was a huge part of the problem–and you know things are only going to get colder as winter comes in. SEVEN STARS won’t have anything that clear to point to.

I’ve written one other book (THE IGNORED PROPHECY) without an antagonist on the main story line. The central story on that one was very internal. But I had a really unlikable antagonist for a strong sub plot. I’m not sure I’ll even have that for SEVEN STARS. 

It’s going to be a challenge, I think.  Well, it’s one of two stories (DREAMER’S ROSE is the other) that have made me work harder to get the story out and get it right.

The current challenge on DREAMER’S ROSE is going to be to cut about a quarter of it. The pacing stinks in places.  That’s going to require more than one pass, I’m afraid.

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Antagonists vs. Villains

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , on January 19, 2011| 12 Comments »

I mentioned in my last post that I have trouble writing villains. I wanted to expand on that a little.

First, my early drafts are all about the protagonist, so the antagonist doesn’t make it onto the page as an individual with goals and feelings of his own until the second or even third draft. That’s just the way I work.

Then, I find that the advice that your antagonist should think of himself or herself as the hero of his or her own story is sound. It helps a lot–for most antagonists. Not so much for villains.  There’s a difference, at least for me.

Most of my stories have antagonists:

1)      In THE SHAMAN’S CURSE, Maktaz was a grieving father who really believed that he was avenging the murder of his son.

2)      In THE IGNORED PROPHECY, Gerusa was narcissistic and her political maneuverings were designed for her own benefit. But she did really believe that the changes proposed by her hated ex-husband were going to destroy their people.

3)      Zobran, in BLOOD WILL TELL, was unscrupulous, ruthless, and very dangerous, but he really believed that he was saving the world.

4)      In MAGE STORM, Trav is seen only through Rell’s eyes. Still, despite his huge ego, he does believe that he has a solution to a problem that almost tore their world apart, once–and, of course, he thinks he deserves to be heavily rewarded for it 

They’re antagonists, not villains.  I didn’t have so much trouble writing them into the second or third draft.

Kaleran, in DREAMER’S ROSE, is a villain, true evil. His only goals are personal gratification. No one else really counts as even human in his mind. That’s the kind of antagonist this story needs. Nothing less than seeing the face of evil in his own son would set Lerian so off-kilter.

That’s why Kaleran is so much harder for me to write, I think

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Progress at Last

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , on January 16, 2011| 4 Comments »

This week, I finally got through the chapter of DREAMER’S ROSE that’s had me stopped for nearly a month.  This is a story that has fought me tooth and nail from almost the beginning.  Well, that’s not quite fair.  It’s only this first part that fights me. The rest has gone fairly smoothly. I’ve been tempted just to chop off this beginning and start where the story starts flowing more easily, but that just ends up feeling unbalanced to me.

Part of the problem with this first section is the old, old one from the very first of trying to create enough conflict for a character that’s basically invulnerable.  That’s not easy.  I think I’ve finally hit on the right balance–or close to it–for the male main character.  I may do some cutting in the next pass, but I’m feeling a lot better about it.

Then I got stopped on the two chapters in this section that are written from the antagonist’s point of view. Have I mentioned that writing real villains is harder for me?  And this one is a particularly slimy little sociopath. Well, I finally got through the chapters that show his development and I’m making good progress on the next chapter (back in the male main character’s point of view).

The next chapter after this shouldn’t need too much revision and then it’s on to the chapters where the female main character makes her appearance.  Those are actually some of the first chapters I wrote and they’ve always just flowed better for me. 

Since this first section is basically a rewrite, I’ve given myself first-draft permission not to get everything perfect right now.  The later sections will be more of a revision and, hopefully, will go faster.

It feels good to be past that block, finally.

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Villains

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , on December 26, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I’ve reached a couple of chapters in my rewrite/revision of DREAMER’S ROSE in which the villain, or more appropriately, the antagonist, is developed.

In this story, because of the way the chronology works out, I actually get to show what make the bad guy so bad. What were his original goals, what obstacles blocked him, and how did he turn out so evil?  Most of the time that’s backstory.  Not in this one.

It’s fun.

In my first attempt, I was warned that his motivations might make him a little too relatable for my target audience. I think I’ve fixed that.

He’s a chip off the old block. He wants to accomplish the same thing Daddy did, if for somewhat different reasons. But unlike Dad, he’s not quite brave enough to go back for a second attempt after finding out just how much this is going to hurt. And so he finds another way, a less honest way, a manipulative way.  That’s going to be the cause of the rift between him and his father which drives the rest of the story. 

I think I’ll positively take care of any chance the reader will like him when he kills his sister to steal her power. 

Hm. Come to think of it. Drat. I may need to go back and make the sister a little more important, and sympathetic, character in the early chapters so it’s shocking when she gets killed.

There’s always another complication with this story. Maybe that’s why I like it so much.

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Inspiration

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , on November 3, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I’ve posted before about how inspiration can come from literally anything.  The other thing about inspiration, especially that first spark of an idea that you build on to make a story, is that it can’t be forced.  At least, I can’t force it.

There are things you can work on, of course.  I have a set of questions that I ask myself about a culture or a place when I’m doing world building.  The thing there is that they all have to integrate, to feel like a cohesive and rational whole.

But the idea itself, that comes from deeper in my brain, from my subconscious.  And it has to bubble up from the depths in its own good time.

This happened recently with SEVEN STARS.  I have the world building pretty well done.  I wrote the first chapter, plus a little.  And then I stopped.  The main character felt too confident, competent, and especially too old for what I wanted this story to be.  He sounded like an old campaigner when he’s supposed to be a kid forced into the role of leader in a stressful situation he’s not really quite ready for.  I wasn’t sure what to do with it.  So, I put it aside for a while, worked on revisions on other projects, and let my subconscious work behind the scenes. 

It paid off a couple of days ago.  I know exactly how to change that first chapter or so to fix my main character and the story.

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Chapter One

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , on October 6, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Since I’d made good progress on my world building, I let myself take a little dive into Chapter One of SEVEN STARS (I really have to think of a new title).

The first chapter of anything is always challenging.  It’s not so much the blank page.  There’s just a certain amount of settling into the new character’s head and getting comfortable there.  Kind of a period of getting acquainted.

Often, there’s a certain amount of info-dumping, setting up the world.  Stuff I’ll have to go back and delete later, but have to get out of my head before I can really get started.  Plus, I always try to turn my infernal, I mean internal, editor off when writing a first draft. 

I’m having more than the usual trouble getting into this character.  He keeps wanting to sound too experienced and generally too old, at least if this is going to be a young adult story.  I’ve got to make him a little–no, a lot–more uncertain about a couple of things.  That means getting deeper POV, which is always hard for me for the first chapter or so, but I’m making progress.

I still have world building to do, but getting a better feel for  the main character is important, too.

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New Character Page

Posted in writing, tagged , , on September 6, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Since I didn’t talk about writing at all yesterday, I added a new character to the Characters page.  Meet Mastan from MAGE STORM.

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Back to New Writing

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , on August 25, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Yesterday, I finally got back to MAGE STORM.  I know, I know, I said back to new writitng.  But there’s so much material that needs to be added in the second draft, it’s really more new writing than revisions. 

So far, in fact, I’m pretty happy with everything that I wrote in the first draft.  The first couple of pages have gotten good responses on the new David Farland’s Writers’ Groups, so I think I’m on the right track.  There are just a number of places that need to be expanded, which is almost the same as writing the first draft, except this time I have a much more detailed structure to work in.  That’s what I’m focusing on in this draft.

  1. I need to expand the main character’s journey a little at the beginning.  He needs a few more adventures before he arrives at what he thinks is his destination.  This will give him a reason to be glad to get there and not notice that there’s something fishy for a couple of days.  It will also give me a chance to foreshadow the existence of certain creatures in this world so they don’t just pop out of nowhere in the last third of the book.
  2. I need to spend more time developing the friendships between the main character and his sidekicks. 
  3. I really need to spend more time developing the antagonist, his menace, and his motives.  I know what they are.  I need to put it in the story.  This is typical for me between the first and second drafts.  I almost always concentrate on the main character in the first draft and neglect his opposition.  The antagonist gets better treatment in the second draft.
  4. I think I need to spend a little more time with the mentor character, too.  I just have to do it in a way that doesn’t slow down the plot too much.
  5. I need to bring out the inherent conflict that remains in the falling action after the climax.  It’s there.  It gets resolved.  I just haven’t fully developed it in the first draft.

So, that’s mostly new writing, even if it is a second draft.

Meanwhile, I’m continuing revisions on DREAMER’S ROSE (which may end up getting recast into a YA novel, too) and THE IGNORED PROPHECY, as well as one of my short stories.

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Endings

Posted in writing, tagged , , on August 22, 2010| Leave a Comment »

The stereotype is of the writer sitting in front of a typewriter–or computer, now–with Chapter One at the top of the page and no idea what to put next.   I usually have a pretty good idea of where the story starts before I sit down.  Of course, sometimes that beginning changes in the later drafts, but it doesn’t usually move very far on the timeline. 

Actually, for me at least, endings seem to be harder than beginnings.  Of course, I also know how the story ends before I start.  Not as precisely, though.  There’s that bit of denoument in a novel, after the main conflict is resolved.  A chapter or so that shows the characters settling into their new equilibrium.  I’m often surprised by what they decide to do with their freedom once the battle is over.

One problem I know I have is that sometimes at the end I’m just not quite hard enough on my characters.  I’ve been (hopefully) torturing them physically and/or emotionally for 100,000 words or so and I start to feel like they deserve a break.  Right at the time when it should be at its worst.  See, by the time I’ve spent a novel or two with my characters, I tend to like them and I want them to be happy.   I’ve done that in early drafts of a couple of novels and then had to fix it in the second or third draft.  Of course, as long as it gets fixed, it just becomes one of those things that I need to know I’m going to have to look for in those drafts and no harm done.

The problem has come up, differently and for different reasons, in a couple of short stories, too.  The complaint I’ve gotten there is that the protagonist isn’t doing enough to resolve the problem of the story on his or her own.  In one of those short stories, “Mage Storm” (the short story that sparked my latest novel), I think the criticism is fair.  After all, it turned out that there was a lot more to the story.   I did change the ending of the short story to make the main character more responsible for what happens to him, though.  It’s more of a choice, now.   

In my latest short story, well, that one’s more a journey than centered around an event.  The central conflict is self-discovery.  Yes, another character holds some key information that unlocks that knowledge, but it’s still the protagonist who has to learn and accept it.  I’ll have to go back and try to make that more clear.

Thing is, if you don’t have a satisfying ending, you don’t really have a story.

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