June 29, 2010
by Jen
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Because I am nothing if not lazy when it comes to writing blog posts AND shameless when it comes to promotion (especially the kind with my name attached), I want to remind all of you that registration for Write On Con starts in…..about THIRTY minutes. What are you waiting for? Get your butt on over to the forums section and sign up!
If something doesn’t seem to be working correctly or you have any questions, feel free to leave me a comment!
June 23, 2010
by Jen
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It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does. - William Faulkner
If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn’t matter a damn how you write.
- Somerset Maugham
For me, believable, real, deep, emotional, true, sensational characters are the most important part of a story. (I think I left out some adjectives in that sentence.) If your characters are true to themselves and the world in which they live, everything else falls into place. Does this mean I think you should ignore planning on plot or setting? Goodness no. They are important too. But given the option of having solid characters and a less than perfect plot or a rock solid plot and unreal characters, please please please always choose the former.
Why?
Readers aren’t dumb. Your writing can be an impeccable display of prose with a cutting edge plot but if they doubt the validity of your characters, you’ve lost all their interest. Readers will always find flaws in plot, compared to this story and that story that came before your own. Your originality lies in your characters and how they deal with such an unoriginal storyline.
“Why?”
It’s what you need to ask yourself when writing about your characters. Why do they act the way they do? Maybe your characters don’t need to recognize a reason for all of their actions, but YOU do. This is especially true for antagonists. Sinful acts are much more different to relate to and understand as a reader. Am I asking you to give me the life story of every character in your book so that we might infer a reason for their actions? For the love of any god you may believe in, please don’t.
I’ve already said that your protagonist must have a goal, but that is true for all of your characters, whether the antagonist, the supporting characters, or even the character who only holds the spotlight for a few pages. These goals drive the story forward; they give your character dimension.
But goals are only one facet of your characters. Appearance is another. I swear if I read one more story about the girl with blonde hair, blue eyes, who is incredibly intelligent, drop dead gorgeous, and athletic, but just can’t seem to “fit in,” even though she catches the eye of the popular male lead (sometimes two or three) who looks like a Greek god with chiseled abs at the age of 16, I’m going to make the author EAT their book and then stab them with a fried chicken leg. These are not real. Did authors forget what high school was like? Did you forget you had pimples once?
My last point about characters: the relationships between your characters. I’m the kind of reader that questions everything I read. Everything. Do I expect answers to all my questions? No, that book would challenge Ayn Rand in length, and it would be DULL. I like not knowing the answer to everything. Don’t let me hanging from a cliff with only jagged rocks beneath me unless you plan on writing a sequel. However, I don’t like questioning relationships. For me, the most frustrating thing to read is a relationship that isn’t believable.
I recently finished The Forest of Hands and Teeth. While I liked the overall story, I thought it had some serious character issues. The main character, Mary, tells the reader she loves Travis and not his brother Harry. (And Harry is in love with Mary. Mary’s best friend is engaged to Travis but loves Harry. It’s a rectangle of love and hate and jealousy and loads of teenage angst.) Not only did I feel the characters lacked diversity (my favorite was Sister Tabitha and she was only in the beginning), but I didn’t believe their feelings toward one another. If you as a writer are going to make a proclamation of love, LOVE, what may be considered the greatest emotion, then you need to show it. If you are constantly reiterating “I love him. I love him. Ilovehim.”, I feel like you’re lying to me. Saying something so often as a writer instead of SHOWING doesn’t prove love. In the Forest of Hands and Teeth, I didn’t see a single act that signified love.
I love characters. Big and small. Good and evil. Fat and funny. Flawed and neurotic. I love them all as long as they are real. It sells a story for me. What about you? What are some of your all-time favorite characters? They don’t have to even be from books. They can be from your stories, video games, movies, manga, tv, anything.
This blog post was an exercise with Sue London. We decided to choose a quote (or in my case two – I’m greedy), and then write about it and what it meant for us. You can find Sue’s blog post about writing quickly here: Time to write a little faster.
June 13, 2010
by Jen
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So there’s this teeny tiny little thing going around on the internet for YA writers and I thought I should share the secret with you (I’ve been hanging out with the giraffes). It’s this online writer’s conference for Young Adult writers. It’s free and ANYONE can attend. Did you hear that? FREE and open to EVERYONE. What’s it called you ask? Well hold your horses and I’ll tell you!
It’s not too big (IT’S HUGE), and only involves the awesome writers Jamie Harrington, Elana Johnson, Casey McCormick, Shannon Messenger, and Lisa and Laura Roecker. Oh, and it has this whole list of fantastic panelists that’s just too long for me to list, but you’re going to have to check it out here!
But you wouldn’t be interested in that would you?
YOU WOULD?
Fantastic! Because this is going to be brilliant. How brilliant? Well, it involves writing, super heroes, homecoming queens, and bacon, so what more do you really need? Proof? MORE BACON? Fine. Check out the video. It explains everything in a much more humorous manner.
Make sure you check the WriteOnCon website for updates concerning the conference and while you’re surfing the internet (because clearly you aren’t busy – I’m not judging), why don’t you pop on over to the authors’ websites I mentioned earlier? They’re all holding contests and who knows? Maybe you’ll win something awesome!
Have any questions? Feel free to write me a comment or check out the WriteOnCon website and leave your thoughts there.
Countdown to the start of the conference:
June 4, 2010
by Jen
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Sometimes I like to compare myself to Monica Gellar from Friends. Friends is my favorite show (and Monica my favorite character up until Season 7 when she becomes incredibly over the top and shrill) and there are some very real similarities between myself and the character. Do I wake up each morning and scrub my kitchen floors with a cleaning product I’ve created myself? Heavens no. My bedroom has gradually morphed into a storage area for unwanted pieces of furniture and I’m just fine with that (provided I keep the door shut).
But if I’m to get ANY work done in my apartment, it MUST be clean. It’s impossible for me to sit and concentrate on a character’s journey through the world I have crafted if there are dishes in the sink, or dirty clothes on the floor. I can’t do it. Trust me, I’ve tried. My husband has said that he always knows when I have something important due because the apartment magically becomes immaculate.
It isn’t just cleaning. Oh no, that would be much too simple. It’s organization as well. I have a sixth sense that tells me when something in the apartment is out of place. It drives me insane when the back of the couch doesn’t line up with the hardwood floor and the coffee table isn’t exactly perpendicular to the rug. I don’t like wires or random pieces of paper. And the worst is when something isn’t in alphabetical order.
The best thing I ever did for my sanity was put my DVDs in clear plastic sleeves in a container under the coffee table. They used to be housed in their cases on shelves next the TV. Somehow, mysteriously, one of them would inevitably be moved out of place. Joe didn’t mind the first few years together when I’d get up to put the DVD back in its CORRECT spot. Maybe he thought it was endearing when I’d casually slide in front of the TV, straighten the rows of movies, clean them with a Clorox wipe, and tell them I only love them when they’re neat.
Here’s just an example of the anxiety:
WHY is Shrek 2 in front of Shrek 1? CLEARLY Shrek 1 should come first. It’s the first movie. It should be first, not Shrek 2. Even though I like Shrek 2 more, Shrek 1 should still be first. It’s the first. One. One comes before two. I should move it. No, Joe is sitting next to me. He’ll think I’m weird. Maybe he’ll go to the bathroom soon so I can move it. He has a small bladder. Come on Pepsi, do your job! Ugh, he’s not moving. Oh! I know…
“Hey hon, can you get me a drink? I’m parched.” I stick out my tongue to prove my dehydration.
“Okay, what do you want?”
“Whatever.” I smile and bat my eyelashes. He looks confused but gets up anyway.
Wait for it….wait for it. MOVE! With my quick ninja like skills I leap from the couch and remove that violator of organization from its wrongly placed position, tap all the movies in the row to make sure each is exactly in line with the next and sit down before he even notices. Success!
However, these instances became alarmingly more regular. I suspect foul play on the part of said “husband.” He’s crafty and he’ll do anything to get a good chuckle. Eventually, for sanity’s sake, I moved the DVDs to the plastic sleeves and all has been right in my apartment until a few days ago, when I rearranged.
My OCD forces me to constantly rearrange my furniture. Oftentimes I get incredibly bored with the layout so I concoct new arrangements. I even go so far as to create cutouts of possible designs.
(It also helps keep the place clean!) Go ahead, judge all you like, but it’s incredibly effective and sometimes, just plain fun. I’ll use any excuse to whip out markers and scissors since I’m not in 3rd grade anymore.
The problem with rearranging started when said “husband” broke one of my bookshelves. So what if it was a cheap bookshelf and filled with twice as many books as it was supposed to hold? I was now left with many displaced books.
I have a lot of books. A lot. And each book is meticulously sorted into “Jen” categories. I have over 100 art history books alone, each sorted by type, era, and then organized within those categories alphabetically. (I warned you.) What was a book lover to do with a broken book shelf? I cleaned the mess and decided to house the homeless books in a shelves that already exceeded their housing capacity and was forced not only lay them sideways but also stack them on shelves two, sometimes three, rows back.
Unfortunately, after completely rearranging the living space, cleaning both it, the kitchen, and the bathroom, I was too exhausted to worry about the books. Or at least, any normal person would have been. Instead, that night I laid awake thinking of the books only feet from me and my sleeping husband, trying to decide the best way to organize them first thing in the morning. When I eventually fell asleep, after convincing myself that organizing books at 2am was not the best course of action, I dreamed about organizing them. Yes, I dream cleaned.
Thankfully, I somewhat came to my senses. Or rather, sense forced me to hide my neurosis for the time being because with one book shelf missing, I found the furniture in the living area fit much more nicely together. Therefore, I was willing to make a sacrifice and pack up SOME of the unused books in crates and store them in the increasingly cluttered bedroom. I may also be forced to go on a “book diet.” Or, yuck, buy a Kindle.
What about you? Do you have any OCD habits? Wash your hands constantly? Always wear socks to bed? Is that just me?
I’ve heard from a few people that they have to have a clean area to write well, is this true for you?
Share your stories in the comments!
May 17, 2010
by Jen
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Despite what everyone may think, I’m horrible at socializing. I’m slightly awkward when I’m around people I know, but around complete strangers, I act as if I were raised by wolves and this is my first time interacting with creatures outside of my pack. I’m the kind of person who is completely content with sitting in the corner of a party or social gathering with a book and a glass of coke. Do I look out of place? Like a polka dotted bear at a vegetarian fundraiser. Do I secretly judge every person in the room who stares in my direction? Well, let’s just say my moral compass almost always points south.
But the alternative for me is even more frightening. I clam up in social settings. I giggle at words like “duty,” ”gesticulate,” and “responsibilities.” My face turns bright red, making any make-up or food on my face non-existent. I make inappropriate jokes and never remember anyone’s names. I once held a ten minute conversation with a lawyer about asparagus. It ended with him handing me a business card to get me to shut up. Needless to say, he avoided me for the rest of the evening. I suspect the card may have been a fake that lawyers and executives keep in the “other” back pocket reserved for people like me.
My husband, on the other hand, is just brilliant. He shines when he’s in a room full of strangers and usually ends up leaving only after he’s made friends with everyone in the room. (He may own a mind control device.) He knows how to judge a person within a few moments of discussion and then change his demeanor to fit their own; the end result makes him come across as incredibly charming. And then of course he ruins it by introducing me while I drool through the side of my mouth babbling about sock drawers, Final Fantasy, and how sometimes I write that them thar books. Har har har.
The kind of interaction, like most things in my life, made me think of writing. Everything I write comes from real life. Well, that and the creepy inner workings of my brain, but really, I can’t control that. (Nor do I try to.) Even if I can never be the world’s best public speaker or most charming party guest, I can use the same tactics employed by dear old Hubs in my writing. You see, no one enjoys a writer who shies away from the realities of characters. (And by no one I am of course generalizing, using my own preferences. It’s my blog. I make my own statistics.) Why watch the action from a distant corner when you could jump into it like a rodeo clown and get to know everyone in the crowd? (Or really, just the bull. Okay, it was a bad analogy. You know what I mean….right?) When it comes to my characters, I like to be in their faces, learning about who they are, what they do, what makes them tick.
What’s your approach to meeting characters? Do you watch them from a distance? Jump on top of them like a crazy person? Have any weird or embarrassing stories from social gatherings? I want to hear them all.