Last month, as a final for gym, I had to take a skill test. I had my choice of hacky-sack, juggling, or cup-stacking. Since I have no idea how the hell you keep a hacky-sack suspended in the air and I don't always have control over my limbs, I of course chose cup-stacking.
It took me a while to figure out how best to approach the challenge--to get full credit, I had to stack and unstack a three-six-three pyramid formation in under eight seconds. It was harder than it looked. I listened to music to help mellow me out a little, and I discovered a marvelous thing; when I let the music carry me, when I followed the cups with my body, I timed a lot better. It became--dare I say it?--easy. Simple. Fun.
I let my body flow--with the music, with the cups, with my hands--and the fluidity with which it was done brought on improved results. In writing, the experience isn't much different.
If you try to force yourself to write without bowing to the word--if you stand stock still and refuse to let your work breathe, you won't succeed. You need to be willing to experiment with your work, to let things happen as they will, to open your mind to what occurs beyond what you've planned. Whether you plot your novels or not, you'll find that when you open yourself, when the prose flows through you, the cups will seem to stack themselves, and seconds, minutes, hours, years--they will simultaneously stand still beneath your pen, and fly past you in a sudden rush of inspiration.
A tree bends in the wind to keep from snapping; to keep your words alive, you'd do well to do the same.
Sunday, June 29, 2014
Thursday, June 26, 2014
Discussion: Are Your Characters Your Children?
You'll hear a lot of writers say that they hate it when people refer to/think of their characters as their "children." This is because they feel that the authors who act this way favor some of their characters above others and make things too easy for them--which makes for a boring (or, sometimes, masturbatory) story. They're not wrong--your protagonist should not have it easy, people--but I think it's unfair to push all thought of the parenthood of our characters into one umbrella group and call it "bad." See, it's not seeing the characters as your offspring that's bad--it's seeing them as babies.
Here's the main distinction; children can grow up and take care of themselves but babies, confined to your care, cannot.
Our characters are, for all intents and purposes, our children. We create them by thought and pen them by hand--sometimes we adopt them, and I'll be the first to admit that I've done it more than once, but we care for them in a way that only we can do, raising them up from a carbon copy of their birth parent(s) into something all their own, something we can call ours. And there's no shame in favoring our own characters over the characters of others--that's one of the finest rights of the parent, you know. Otherwise who would you root for come time for school competitions?
The problem comes in two forms: not allowing your children to grow up, and favoring some of your young over the others.
A parent might keep favorites--they aren't supposed to, but they're only human. However, a good parent will not let on. They will treat all of their children fairly, with equal degrees of love, and react to them as individuals. Even with twins, good parents will differentiate between the two and encourage the separate interests they may cultivate, and while some children, usually the frailer ones, will need more attention, it doesn't mean that their parents love them any more or less, and it doesn't mean that their parents stop trying to challenge them and help them grow. Other children, self-reliant and resilient, may need less and give more, but a parent will still try to spend time with them, comfort them, help them through in difficult times. How does this translate from offspring to character? Like so:
You need to love and encourage all of your characters equally. Some will not need equal time--minor characters, cameos, walk-ons, one-liners, and the various background characters which people your world can be considered mostly grown, independent younglings. They are off to college, so to speak, and while yes, every once in a while you may need to call them up to get in touch, make sure they're okay, see that they're happy and haven't burned down their apartment yet, for the most part you can leave them be; they can take care of themselves.
Then there are the supporting characters, who may be somewhere between the ages of ten and seventeen (metaphorically speaking), old enough to stay home alone, feed themselves, maybe walk around town and hang out with friends, but they'll need a much closer eye kept on them to keep them out of trouble. You need to watch and make sure they face the consequence of action, but that they retain their individuality. You're cultivating a future adult here, remember! They need to be able to function in the real world.
And then there's the protagonist(s) and antagonist(s). For the sake of our extended metaphor, these are the children that give you the toughest time. Somewhere between the ages of twelve and fifteen, these characters are probably born of the same stuff, or similar stuff--possibly twins themselves, they could be extremely similar or as different as night and day. They're probably both likely to be misunderstood, bullied, or generally dissatisfied with life, and somehow their interests are extremely conflicted. As a parent, you are not technically allowed to take sides. You have to let these two sort it out on their own terms, or the end result will be unsatisfactory.
But as a parent, it is your job to make sure your characters--especially the protagonist--reap what they've sown. You may love them, you may care, you may want what's best for them, you may even give them trinkets along the way (though it's wise to deal these out to other characters as well--antagonists can always use something convenient to help them out), but if your protagonist burns down the house he better get the shit beat out of him for it, because shit like that can't fly. And if the antagonist manages to destroy the protagonist's favorite toy while he's bent over your knee.... Well, you didn't see it happen, did you? It was probably just destroyed in the fire anyway.
If you are going to favor any of the characters, it should actually be the antagonist--all interesting things will come from your protagonist's pain, frustration, and fight against opposition, and it can be easy for loud, whiney, or manipulative children to sway their parents in their favor; your antagonist is likely to be at least one of these things.
And then there's the age-old problem of coddling--this ties into the favoring of some characters over others, but some writers can actually be afraid to let their characters so much as breathe without their permission. Here's a little secret; as a writer, the best thing you can do is to let your characters live. Sure, at the start you have to help them along, tell them to do things, move them hither and thither and yon, but they grow a lot quicker than actual babies, and pretty soon you'll find them doing things you didn't tell them to, maybe things that might conflict with what's in your head. And that's what you want.
When characters start to live, to breathe, to wonder and run and travel on their own, you have successfully raised your child to sentience--and instead of clamping down on their attempts at independence, you need to nurture it. Follow where they lead! They may be on to something--and if worse should come to worst, you can always trace back your path to find where things went wrong.
If you keep your characters too far under your thumb, they'll forget there's a sky, and eventually, stop breathing--at which point you may have to decide whether to keep them on life support or pull the plug. So don't be afraid to let go, and don't be afraid to hurt them--it's for their own good, and it will benefit everyone.
So yes, I believe that my characters are something like children to me--but I maintain a healthy distance, and let them be themselves. This mindset only works if you make sure not to coddle your characters or treat them as saints. Sometimes they will do good things, and you might reward them--sometimes they will do awful things, and even if they meant well, they need to learn that meaning well and doing well are not the same thing.
Now what do you think? Should people consider their characters offspring, or detach themselves completely? How do you feel about your own characters? Are they friends, siblings, cousins, neighbors, those loud assholes who live down the street with the aggressive dog that's always going after your kids? Let me know! I'm eager to hear your responses. :)
Here's the main distinction; children can grow up and take care of themselves but babies, confined to your care, cannot.
Our characters are, for all intents and purposes, our children. We create them by thought and pen them by hand--sometimes we adopt them, and I'll be the first to admit that I've done it more than once, but we care for them in a way that only we can do, raising them up from a carbon copy of their birth parent(s) into something all their own, something we can call ours. And there's no shame in favoring our own characters over the characters of others--that's one of the finest rights of the parent, you know. Otherwise who would you root for come time for school competitions?
The problem comes in two forms: not allowing your children to grow up, and favoring some of your young over the others.
A parent might keep favorites--they aren't supposed to, but they're only human. However, a good parent will not let on. They will treat all of their children fairly, with equal degrees of love, and react to them as individuals. Even with twins, good parents will differentiate between the two and encourage the separate interests they may cultivate, and while some children, usually the frailer ones, will need more attention, it doesn't mean that their parents love them any more or less, and it doesn't mean that their parents stop trying to challenge them and help them grow. Other children, self-reliant and resilient, may need less and give more, but a parent will still try to spend time with them, comfort them, help them through in difficult times. How does this translate from offspring to character? Like so:
You need to love and encourage all of your characters equally. Some will not need equal time--minor characters, cameos, walk-ons, one-liners, and the various background characters which people your world can be considered mostly grown, independent younglings. They are off to college, so to speak, and while yes, every once in a while you may need to call them up to get in touch, make sure they're okay, see that they're happy and haven't burned down their apartment yet, for the most part you can leave them be; they can take care of themselves.
Then there are the supporting characters, who may be somewhere between the ages of ten and seventeen (metaphorically speaking), old enough to stay home alone, feed themselves, maybe walk around town and hang out with friends, but they'll need a much closer eye kept on them to keep them out of trouble. You need to watch and make sure they face the consequence of action, but that they retain their individuality. You're cultivating a future adult here, remember! They need to be able to function in the real world.
And then there's the protagonist(s) and antagonist(s). For the sake of our extended metaphor, these are the children that give you the toughest time. Somewhere between the ages of twelve and fifteen, these characters are probably born of the same stuff, or similar stuff--possibly twins themselves, they could be extremely similar or as different as night and day. They're probably both likely to be misunderstood, bullied, or generally dissatisfied with life, and somehow their interests are extremely conflicted. As a parent, you are not technically allowed to take sides. You have to let these two sort it out on their own terms, or the end result will be unsatisfactory.
But as a parent, it is your job to make sure your characters--especially the protagonist--reap what they've sown. You may love them, you may care, you may want what's best for them, you may even give them trinkets along the way (though it's wise to deal these out to other characters as well--antagonists can always use something convenient to help them out), but if your protagonist burns down the house he better get the shit beat out of him for it, because shit like that can't fly. And if the antagonist manages to destroy the protagonist's favorite toy while he's bent over your knee.... Well, you didn't see it happen, did you? It was probably just destroyed in the fire anyway.
If you are going to favor any of the characters, it should actually be the antagonist--all interesting things will come from your protagonist's pain, frustration, and fight against opposition, and it can be easy for loud, whiney, or manipulative children to sway their parents in their favor; your antagonist is likely to be at least one of these things.
And then there's the age-old problem of coddling--this ties into the favoring of some characters over others, but some writers can actually be afraid to let their characters so much as breathe without their permission. Here's a little secret; as a writer, the best thing you can do is to let your characters live. Sure, at the start you have to help them along, tell them to do things, move them hither and thither and yon, but they grow a lot quicker than actual babies, and pretty soon you'll find them doing things you didn't tell them to, maybe things that might conflict with what's in your head. And that's what you want.
When characters start to live, to breathe, to wonder and run and travel on their own, you have successfully raised your child to sentience--and instead of clamping down on their attempts at independence, you need to nurture it. Follow where they lead! They may be on to something--and if worse should come to worst, you can always trace back your path to find where things went wrong.
If you keep your characters too far under your thumb, they'll forget there's a sky, and eventually, stop breathing--at which point you may have to decide whether to keep them on life support or pull the plug. So don't be afraid to let go, and don't be afraid to hurt them--it's for their own good, and it will benefit everyone.
So yes, I believe that my characters are something like children to me--but I maintain a healthy distance, and let them be themselves. This mindset only works if you make sure not to coddle your characters or treat them as saints. Sometimes they will do good things, and you might reward them--sometimes they will do awful things, and even if they meant well, they need to learn that meaning well and doing well are not the same thing.
Now what do you think? Should people consider their characters offspring, or detach themselves completely? How do you feel about your own characters? Are they friends, siblings, cousins, neighbors, those loud assholes who live down the street with the aggressive dog that's always going after your kids? Let me know! I'm eager to hear your responses. :)
Wednesday, June 25, 2014
What Work Can Do For Your Writing
Now, if you have the money or guts to decide to write full time, I'm in awe of your prowess/courage. But you can definitely gain something from working, whether it's a paid job or career, or just physical labor done around the yard.
One very important thing that a job can do is expose you to people--school does the same thing, students!--and if you listen with a writer's ear, it can teach you a lot about dialogue and help jump-start creativity. I clean shop for a local computer store on weekdays, and I've learned a lot about what a dirty floor can indicate, how to read the mood of the room, not to mention the tidbits I've picked up listening to my supervisors chat and bs. Anything can become a story, any skill or quirk could help flesh out a character, any small observation can lead your protagonist to the cracking of a code, and the observations you make in life are the difference between the Anyman's writing and your writing. The flavor is in the seasonings, as they say.
Work--particularly physical labor--can also give you a lot of time to think, to move stories around in your head, find new paths for characters to travel, etc. etc. It's good to make time to just let the information flow, and if you work daily, or even just weekly, it gives you a set time for just that. Even if your work is too heavy in conscious thought to allow you that time, something as simple as doing the dishes or pulling weeds can have the same effect. Take a walk! Walks are wonderful things, I recommend them to everyone.
And of course, at some point I'm sure at least one of your characters will set to some kind of work, and the more personal experience you have with whatever they set to, the better. Maybe they need to farm the land, and you have no idea what it feels like to farm the land--but you've spent hours in the heat of the day mid-summer raking leaves and planting flowers, and while it's not the same, some of the experiences--the sweat, the heat, the aches of labor--are a good place to start. The places you've worked, the streets you've walked, the smell of your office, the sound of your coworkers' chitter-chatter in the background, the thrill of appreciation and the blow of insults placed upon your work--your experiences are invaluable, so take mental (or physical!) note of each and every one.
The devil's in the details, but so are the angels.
One very important thing that a job can do is expose you to people--school does the same thing, students!--and if you listen with a writer's ear, it can teach you a lot about dialogue and help jump-start creativity. I clean shop for a local computer store on weekdays, and I've learned a lot about what a dirty floor can indicate, how to read the mood of the room, not to mention the tidbits I've picked up listening to my supervisors chat and bs. Anything can become a story, any skill or quirk could help flesh out a character, any small observation can lead your protagonist to the cracking of a code, and the observations you make in life are the difference between the Anyman's writing and your writing. The flavor is in the seasonings, as they say.
Work--particularly physical labor--can also give you a lot of time to think, to move stories around in your head, find new paths for characters to travel, etc. etc. It's good to make time to just let the information flow, and if you work daily, or even just weekly, it gives you a set time for just that. Even if your work is too heavy in conscious thought to allow you that time, something as simple as doing the dishes or pulling weeds can have the same effect. Take a walk! Walks are wonderful things, I recommend them to everyone.
And of course, at some point I'm sure at least one of your characters will set to some kind of work, and the more personal experience you have with whatever they set to, the better. Maybe they need to farm the land, and you have no idea what it feels like to farm the land--but you've spent hours in the heat of the day mid-summer raking leaves and planting flowers, and while it's not the same, some of the experiences--the sweat, the heat, the aches of labor--are a good place to start. The places you've worked, the streets you've walked, the smell of your office, the sound of your coworkers' chitter-chatter in the background, the thrill of appreciation and the blow of insults placed upon your work--your experiences are invaluable, so take mental (or physical!) note of each and every one.
The devil's in the details, but so are the angels.
Thursday, June 19, 2014
Salutations!
Greetings, internet! Let me inaugurate my first writing blog with a fond hello to all the writers, artists, hopefuls, and to-bes out there! It’s hard to collect my thoughts for this post, but I think it’s appropriate to ring in the blog with an entry about beginnings—specifically, a writer’s beginnings.
I know that there are a lot of aspiring writers out there--people who desire to set pen to paper and pour their souls out to the world--and that many of them are afraid to do so.
I was not afraid when I was nine, not of anything. I was top of my class, I loved books, and damn it, I was going to be a famous author if it killed me. For Christmas I received a little green notebook with a few pretty flowers on the cover and said, "The time is now." I wrote my first novel over the course of maybe six months, and I thought it was amazing.
I typed it up on the computer, single-spaced, unformatted, with space-bar indents and a crude understanding of all things grammar--they don't teach that in school like they used to, I'm told. It totaled out at ten or twelve chapters, coming to forty-two pages in all; the main character was literally myself, only a superhero, and all her supports were direct copies of my best friends and our pets, also superheroes. The villains were bullies from school who had no motive except to fuck up my life who somehow woke up a dragon sleeping under the school, which the protagonist befriended by pulling a thorn out of its foot, and in the end all of the bullies were frozen in blocks of ice and carted off by the police while the heroes basked in the glow of the commoners' praise.
Oh, and in the middle, there was a three-page digression where the protagonist discovered a new species of rainbow-colored weasel and set them to breed for the sake of science. Beautiful writing right there, just wonderful.
Okay, so I'm sure you're asking why I'm telling you this right now. Do I just want to ramble about a scrapped story? No. No, that's not it. So what's the point? The point is, it. Sucked. Ass. And I didn't die!
As I started to realize how far from ready it was for the public eye, I was frustrated, yes, and I wanted to make it perfect, only I didn't yet possess the skill set. Young, undisciplined, and a little put off, I didn't dwell too long. Recognizing my limits, I dutifully filed it away on a flash drive and promised to be back for it later, then moved on to the next thing, absolutely certain that it would be a thousand times better. I've tried to come back several times but, ultimately, if it will ever be worth reviving, it hasn't been yet. That's okay. I failed, and that's okay. Better than okay, it was what I needed! I can learn from that, I can look at everything I did wrong and I can say, "I won't do that again," because I know, first-hand, that it doesn't work, and there's no authority to spite in trying. There's only me.
My point here is; start. Whatever it is, no matter how old you are, how much you've read, what you want to accomplish, how complicated your story is--start. Once you begin, you'll find it's hard to stop. As a stone rolls down a hill, it gathers momentum, and the more momentum available, the more force it takes to halt the object in motion. Our brains are wired to be more likely to finish something if we start it, and we're more likely to learn from our own fuck-ups than from someone else's. Skill, finesse, experience, they're all important, but you will never have them if you don't put pen to paper and write. Write, finish, and learn.
Seven and a half years later, and the very worst thing that first, awful, despicable manuscript gave me is something to laugh at when there's nothing else to think about. Three pages of rainbow-colored weasels? What was nine-year-old me on?
You don't need to be perfect the first time. No, let me rephrase that; you will not be perfect the first time, but that's what the revising and editing steps are for! That's what practice is about! It's why you read these kinds of articles in the first place! So go pick up a notebook or open a word processor, and start honing your skill. You don't have to be afraid--more importantly, you don't have to let your fears consume you. The only way to finish is to start, and the only way to start is to start. So start! There's no one to impede you but yourself.
To beginnings!
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