Book Review of Plot and Structure

I have recently completed the book Plot and Structure by James Scott Bell, and I would like to share my thoughts on it with you. The book is part of a series titled Write Great Fiction.
When I decided to purchase some how-to books on novel-writing, I briefly perused my local Books-A-Million for a few books that grabbed my attention. This book is orange. When I hoisted a stack of books over to a chair and began leafing through them with, I admit, a little skepticism, this book immediately held my interest.
Mostly because it was orange. But also because Bell's tone was so witty and colloquial. It was as if he was sitting next to me, giving me some much needed advice on plot (and structure) as I started out on my adventure to write my novel.
I was actually unaware of how much of his advice I would end up needing, but I bought his book along with a few others, took them home, and began reading. Turns out I really needed his advice. He outlines tons of tricks to outfox my writer's block, and a whole slew of tips to bulk up my plot.
It was from him that I learned of the invaluable importance of cohesive subplots.
If you are an aspiring writer, buy this book. Buy other books too, and read often, but buy this one. He's funny and engaging and informative.
Do yourself a favor and trust me on this one. If you've never written a full-length novel before, then you don't even know how little you know. You need all the help you can get.

In other news, I am not feeling well. My cat, Tink (not the gross one) seems to know I'm sick. She won't leave me alone.

One Liners

Bailey-girl as a penguin.

So, as I'm writing this book, I am conscious that my characters are supposed to be funny. They're not comedians, per say, but there is a certain level of comedy that goes along with so many personalities coexisting and interacting.
And there are many types of humor represented by my characters. Rom has very dark, deprecating humor. Ede is laughably frustrated. Aylin is mischievous. Bramar has a gift for observational humor. You get the idea.
What's the problem? I'm glad you asked.
I'm having trouble coming up with humorous events/lines. The story seems bogged down by important plot and heavy character development.
How do you find the funny?

Cleaning House

Mom and I before the Opera.

Michael (the fiance) and I are cleaning the house. Not the whole house, just the living room and dining room and kitchen. Which is plenty.
Our reasons for doing this are three-fold.

1. We are tired of looking at the crap we leave lying around because we're too busy (read: lazy) to put it away.
2. Cluttered and dirty rooms are stressful. Clean rooms feel more productive. 
3. My favorite. We are installing a writing area just for me in the dining room.

That being said, we're getting a lot of talking done as we work about the overarching plot of my series. With book one well underway and chapters of other books written, I think it's helpful for me to discuss my plans for themes and subplots. Besides the fact that I'm spoiling Michael for pretty much every plot twist, I think it's working out beautifully.

Also, last night, I went to an opera for the first time. My mom and I went to see The Magic Flute by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Emanuel Schikaneder. There are a lot of things about opera that present themselves as an easy target for ridicule. For instance, many of the characters sing their declarations of love and hatred at the audience instead of at each other. That takes some getting used to.
The other thing that really jarred me was the treatment of the evil plot in the story. Yes, The Magic Flute is a comedy. You can't really take evil all that seriously in a comedy. But in this story, especially, evil gets the boot so swiftly and dismissively that I didn't even get a chance to properly root for the good guy!
Having never actually seen an opera, these were unexpected elements which, I suppose, are perfectly normal for regular opera-goers, but that for me, a lifetime lover of musicals, were utterly alien. Still, the music swept any real need for a solid plot under the rug. Mozart blows my mind.
If you have never seen an opera, I highly recommend it. There is nothing like it in all other forms of theatre. Opera is easy to dismiss as melodramatic, but if you let yourself be carried away by it, the music and the sheer enormity of it all is breathtakingly impressive. 
One last thing. There was this one guy, Graham Anduri, who played Papageno, who really stole my heart for the show. He was fantastic. That is all.

Rewriting Law

This song is by Sigur Rós, one of my all-time favorite bands. It is so beautiful it breaks my heart. If this is your first time hearing it, I suggest you put in your earphones, jack the volume up all the way, and let it just flow over you.

Moving on. I wrote a character death today. And as I was writing about this character's unhappy demise, a thought occurred to me about the nature of law in my books. Even though the civilization I have created is unique, it must still have law and order, right? I've even written about the laws, but I never really sparred a thought for them. I've always just assumed they were there and that people would just get it.

It is interesting that Valdevia, the empire in which my story takes place, is around two thousand years old. It has built on the civilizations that existed before it, and those built on others, and on and on, back until the Great Decline (a catastrophic event in my story). And all of these civilizations had laws. Or at least some ground rules.

Some laws tend to be basic to civilizations across our current world and reaching back into humanity's rich history:

• Don't kill people.
• Don't take what doesn't belong to you.
• Don't cheat. 
• Don't run around beating people up. 
• Don't thumb your nose at the Establishment.

Did I forget some? Yeah. I think you get the idea.

I believe I have taken these pretty basic laws for granted in my story. I've added some others, but those are pretty much the core.

So what happens when someone supported by the Establishment, also known as the people who make the laws, kills someone who the Establishment doesn't like? Is that cool? Are there any repercussions to that someone going around murdering other someones? It doesn't seem like that's a huge deal historically, as long as the stakes are high enough.

I'm sort of rambling now, but I have striven to learn a little (a very little) about the laws of ancient and modern civilizations across the world in order to write a more convincing set of laws for my own civilization. The major thing I've learned? People seem to need a lot of negative reinforcement to prevent them from doing bad things. I think that says something interesting about humanity. What do you think?

Also, check out my writer friend Dot Hutchison's blog. She does book reviews and has nifty insights on writing techniques. She even drops hints about her upcoming projects on her blog, which is super cool because she's a talented lady.

Character Archery

I'm going places. On a train.

So, yes, that's me.

I know it's been a few days since I posted. Sorry about that. I've been writing.

And while I was writing and reading my books about how to write, I kept coming back to this question of character arcs. The books I read on novel-writing have a lot to say about the character arc. Generally, it begins in the first paragraph of the first chapter and ends in the last paragraph of the last chapter.

I don't agree with that line of thinking. It is my belief that if your character is 20 years old at the beginning of the book and 23 by the end of it, then their character arc begins 20 years before the first paragraph and about 70 years after the last paragraph (assuming they survive your ending). The rather startling idea that a writer should just think of a character in terms of what they personally write about them is rather naive, in my opinion. I pose that such thinking is akin to believing that when a friend leaves your house they cease to exist until the next time you see them. Your friends do not, as I'm sure you know, merely pop in and out of being as you will it. Neither do the characters of your novel.

Instead, they go on living, independent of your pen. My ole paw (grandfather) used to say that you can never truly know another person. I believe that extends to the characters of my story as well. They surprise me all the time. The things they say and do can be outright staggering. They constantly impress me with their fortitude, their sense of humor, their evil and their good. And it is a constant lesson in patience to try and understand why they go about in the world behaving as they do.

This is my struggle: to know the secrets of my characters, to know the regrets of their past and the hopes for their futures, to understand them and love them for who they are. They are people, like us. They wish and laugh and grieve and hate like us, in all the myriad and wonderful ways that we mortals do. I would not have it any other way.

In conclusion, the character arc, or the change in a character over the course of a story, is not the change in them over the novel we write. Rather it is the character's growth in their own story, the human story. Keep this in mind as you write: you do not write a character, you write about them. A subtle truth, but a truth nonetheless.

Costume vs. Clothing

My costume rendering for Bramar of the Wild.

Warning: Bramar doesn't actually look anything like that guy in the drawing up there, but he does wear those clothes! My lovely illustrator, Moira, will cook me up a better likeness to Bramar (who is fantastic, by the way) very soon!

What is the difference between costume and clothing? There seems to be one, but I'm not quite sure what it is. Costume, I would venture, is meant to be visual more than functional. Clothing, on the other hand, necessitates some sort of livability. Costume is not for everyday wear, but most people wear clothing every day.

I hope that the characters in my book wear clothes over costumes. I have striven, in my musings, to give them functional, simple clothes that are a help and not a hindrance, ceremonial garb excluded. It is, I must tell you, a difficult thing to describe the complexities of clothing. There is style over function in many cases, but there is still a sense of usability, of completeness, in even an outfit as simple as jeans and a t-shirt.

There is a trap that I often fall into in endeavoring to describe everything about a character's appearance all at once. This can get pretty lengthy when you're describing clothing which such rich detail to begin with, especially when all layers of it cannot even be captured by a drawing, let alone with words.

How does one:

1. Ensure that one's character is wearing something practical that suits his needs?
2. Describe the clothing in a digestible way?

Thoughts?

The Trusty Sidekick

This is my best friend, Bailey-girl.

I was down in Tampa, Florida this weekend for a quick vacation to see my very dear friend Bailey-girl and another old friend Scott. Since I'd been feeling a little "blah" lately, I decided to get a hotel room and just head down there with no plan except to take my own advice. Advice taken.

Anyway, while I was there, some very interesting ideas for my book came about. Backstories of some characters emerged from discussions with my friends about their own pasts. It's amazing how fiction mirrors reality. It's even more amazing how a little time spent in a different place can completely revitalize your writing juices.

One of the backstories I ruminated on during my stay in Tampa is that of Rom, who becomes a friend of my lead character, Aylin. He's had such a rough life, and the more I work on him, the more downtrodden and bitter he becomes. It is astounding how real to me he is. Of any of my characters, his is the first voice I have been able to hear speaking his dialogue. From him, magically, other characters sprang to life with new completeness.

And isn't that what a good friend does? Good friends make you realize things about yourself that you didn't know were there. Bailey-girl does that for me, and Rom does that for Aylin. At least insofar as while I write Rom, truths about Aylin conveniently present themselves to me.

I want to stress that Rom is not a sidekick. I don't write sidekicks. I don't believe there's any such thing as a sidekick in the complex myriad of human relationships, and I don't think they belong in fiction. People are people. Everyone is the main character in their own story, and while this story happens to be about Aylin, I could easily write a book about Rom. He is human, and his choices are his own. If he chooses to help Aylin, he does so as the hero of his own story, not as a sidekick in Aylin's.

Speaking of sidekicks, whenever there's one in a story, I always mistrust them. Don't you?
Why are they there, being a sidekick for the hero, instead of off doing their own thing? It's very suspicious.
 Robin, why don't you go get your own glory instead of mooching off of Batman, eh?!

Exercise Your Ears

This is a Grooveshark playlist.
According to Grooveshark's wikipedia entry, Grooveshark is "an internationally available online music search engine, music streaming service and music recommendation web software application, allowing users to search for, stream, and upload music free of charge that can be played immediately or added to a playlist."

Grooveshark headquarters are located in my native Gainesville, Florida, which makes them even more awesome. I tend to make lengthy playlists on Grooveshark that coincide with whatever the tone of a scene I'm working on is. It can be really helpful, I think. Try it out!

So, I put this playlist up here not to impress you with my awesome music, but to allow you to experience something new (hopefully) that will enhance your writing. If you're having writer's block, pick a song from the playlist, listen to it, and write down whatever you're feeling while you listen. It could be a scene, a list of adjectives, tone, a character, etc. Anything you want. This tactic has rescued me many times, and I think it could help you, too.

I will be posting new playlists or single songs intermittently. If this has been of use to you, or if you'd like to share the ideas you've had from these songs, or you have suggestions for other songs that inspire, hit me up in the comments section.