Mothers

My office space at home

First off, happy Mother's Day to all you moms. Especially to my mom. I love you! Thank you!

You have to wonder about mothers. Do they even make a difference in the way a person turns out? I mean, there are some animals whose mothers simply leave alone before they've even hatched! They seem to turn out ok.
But what about humans? What about my characters?
Mothers and fathers play a huge role in my books. Whether they've died during childbirth, left their baby with strangers, spoiled their child rotten, or loved them so unconditionally that they've died for them, parents tend to be a big deal, at least for me.
My own parents have been excellent examples of self-sacrifice and patience for characters like Adelmo and Sayen (who is not technically a mother, but acts as one to her younger brother Guara). I know, I know. You probably have no idea who these characters are. But when you do, then you will also know that they are modeled on the never-take-no-for-an-answer, quirky, protective, unfailing love that my own parents have for me.
But specifically moms, then, since it's Mother's Day and that seems to be the overall theme of this particular day. I may have digressed a bit from my topic.
I think that mothers, whether present or absent from their children's lives, have enormous impact. Because we are not sea turtles, whose mothers leave them to fend for themselves against seagulls and the great big ocean (I know I couldn't have learned to swim all by myself!), our mothers are a huge part of who we become. They show us what compassion is, how to hide annoyance and when to show it, how to live with a thousand tiny heartbreaks and for those moments when all can be mended with a single whispered "I love you". How can a character, how can we as people, ever be stronger not having had such love?
Those who don't have a mother's love can only imagine ways to fill that hole, because they cannot imagine how vast that hole is. I very much pity the characters I have made motherless. Mostly because I think if all of us has amazing mothers that there would be very little reason for war or hate in this world. But then, without war and hate, I wouldn't have a story, so I guess I can't be too much of an idealist, can I?

In other news, I am the bee's knees as cleaning.

A Wedding and a Funeral (Read: Lawful Assassination)

The lovely Moira McGann has completed the character concept for Bramar!

Ok, so I feel it is only right that I weigh in on these two important current events: The Royal Wedding and the death of Osama bin Laden.
Here's the thing, I don't want to give my personal opinion on these goings-on. While I do have strong opinions on both subjects, I feel I would be straying from the core principles of this blog to give you my take on either topic. Instead, I will discuss them as I think they pertain to writing. And yes, I think that both of them are valuable teaching tools.

1. The Wedding
   So, whenever the royals have a wedding, there's always a big to-do and the whole world gets to celebrate/hate on it. How great is that? We all get to stop obsessing about the natural disasters and wars and famines and death and destruction and decline of the world as we know it and tune in to a lovely morning of fairytale matrimonial bliss.
   I think of this as the perfect reminder that not every major event in my story has to be awful. I mean, I put my characters through a respectable regimen of hellish happenings. So much so that I often forget to have a wedding. Or a baby. Or a victory. Or a kit kat. Anything positive, really. It's good to be reminded that a little romance never hurt anyone, and while everyone has an opinion on it, we all have to admit that it was kind of a nice break.


2. The Funeral
   Killing off a bad guy is one of the most powerful events in a story. To America, at least in this century, Osama bin Laden was like the Boss in a Nintendo game. His death is considered a victory. Now, I've been saying this for a couple of days, and I'll say it now because I think it applies to the big baddie in my story:
Most people do not relish the idea of murder. The loss of human life, whether it is an infant or an old man or a mass murderer is as awful thing. We are all human, and we must treat human life as precious. However, when a person commits unspeakable acts, it is not an inhuman thing to want him or her dead. I think it is the evil most of us revel in vanquishing, not the human being.
   This applies to evil characters in my story. In my opinion, a good writer acquaints you with the villain, allows you to get to know them a little, to understand, perhaps, some of the reasons for their abhorrent actions. This may not be to garner sympathy for the evil-doer. I allow you to know a bit about my villains so that you can know that the evil within them is a true poison, that they can never be separated from it, that they feed on it, and that there is truly no other course of action than to permanently prevent them from ever causing harm again. You kill the evil, not the man. Otherwise you are no better than he.


I have another spin on this. Yes, my plot comes from major tides of good an evil sweeping over the world of my characters and the parts they play in standing against or moving with these tides. That does not mean that important events do not happen outside of my characters' reach. Sometimes, a major event, like a (spoiler!) rebellion occurs far away from my characters, leaving them virtually unaffected (except, perhaps, for having an opinion on them), until sometime in the future. Or not. Sometimes hugely important events happen without our being affected by them in any clearly discernible way. It's a small indication that the world is vast, and I think it enriches the story to include some carefully-thought out non-effectual events.

In other news, Thesaurus.com is the best thing ever.

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?!