Character Relationships

R. L. LaFevers gave some interesting advice in her June 23, 2009 post of Things Left Unspoken:

...It is the things left unspoken that define the relationship...

...it is the things we are too afraid or too angry to say that often define the shape and quality of our personal relationships. That betrayal you felt from your sister that you never dared to tell her about will shape all your future dealings with her. The fury you felt at your father, or the heartbreak your husband unknowingly dealt you; all of those emotions will bend and distort your interactions for years to come.

And it occurred to me what a powerful tool that would be to use in our writing, what an effective layer of subtext. So consider asking yourself, what is left unspoken between your characters? And how does it distort and drive their relationship to each other?

Settings are Important

From this article about SF/F:

O'Neill: Probably the best piece of advice I can give an aspiring writer is to pay as much attention to your setting as to your plot, characters, and prose.

When I'm reading an unsolicited manuscript, I'm reading to reject....So you've got a few precious minutes to grab my attention, and you better use them.

It's hard do with plot. If your plot is simple enough to communicate in the first two pages, I've probably seen it a hundred times. It's hard to do with character, for similar reasons.

It's easy to do with setting. Two pages is more than enough space to paint a picture of your world that grabs my attention, if it's fresh and intriguing. You can't compete with [other things demanding my attention] when all you have to offer is yet another version of the tale of King Arthur, or a generic medieval setting, or a tavern filled with rangers, dwarves, and a half-orc with a dungeon map.

Non-Typical Settings

Jessica Faust wrote:

To make an international setting work in genre fiction I think the locale itself almost needs to become a character. The reader needs to be transported into another world and not feel like the book could have just as easily taken place in Houston, Omaha, Reno or Scranton.

Backstory

Carolyn Jewel wrote:

...we are not writing a story about the backstory of our novel. We’re writing about what happens BECAUSE of the backstory.

And that's how you know what backstory information to include and when. Work in the information about why the character is acting the way she is when she acts in a way that doesn't make sense or seems odd or off-putting to the reader if he doesn't have that information.

How I Revise

I tend to get very little writing done in the spring because I'm spending so much time planting and weeding my garden along with other outdoor spring activities. However, those activities are now slowing down for me, so it's time I start thinking about getting back to revising my second novel.

The problem is that I've hit a mental block: My first readers are impatiently waiting for me to get this novel revised and to them so they can read it, so I want to revise as many aspects as possible in each pass I make over the manuscript. However, there's so much I need to look for that I mentally can't even get started because it's not possible to effectively cram these steps together.

So I'm making a nice, neat list of what things I'm going to look at for revising on each pass. Feel free to point out in the comments anything I missed or tell me how you revise your manuscript.

First Pass - First Fifteen Pages
1) Is it clear who the protagonist is and what her problem is? Is the problem vital/big enough (even if just to the protagonist) that it will raise the reader's interest?

2) Is it clear where and when the action is occurring, what's happening, and why the protagonist is involved? Is the pacing too slow because so much information is dumped at the beginning instead of worked in later?

3) Are too many characters or too many technological, magical, or cultural concepts being introduced at once? Is it clear who is talking and what their relationship to each other is? Am I telling the reader about the characters or letting the character's actions reveal their personalities and engage the reader's interest?

4) Is the tone of the whole story revealed in these pages (i.e. dark and gritty, lighthearted, serious but optimistic, etc. as well as level of bad language, sexual content, and violence levels)? Does it foreshadow or reveal the novel's primary conflict and the obstacles to come?


Second Pass -- Whole Story
Read the manuscript out loud. Look for misspellings (especially ones like "peek" instead of "peak"), dialogue that sounds unnatural, awkward sentences, and characters that aren't acting "in-character." Also look for story elements "coming out of no-where" (i.e. that weren't appropriately foreshadowed), often-repeated words, overuse of adverbs or adjectives, and for the other basic "writing rules."


Third Pass -- Whole Story, In Each Scene
1) Is there a balance between dialogue, action, description, back story, and motivation (internal dialogue)? (i.e. How is the pacing?)

2) Are the details given in the physical descriptions (or people, places, or actions) necessary and revealing? Do they quickly invoke a vivid mental image? Or are they so packed with detail or metaphor that the reader can't process it all without pausing?

3) Are the descriptions occurring in large chunks or worked throughout the story as it's needed? Only give the reader the information that's absolutely necessary for them to understand that scene.

4) Are the senses engaged? Imagine yourself in the scene: what sights would catch the main character's attention, what sounds would be heard, if any strong or unusual smells are present, and (if applicable) any taste and touch. What's the air inside the room or weather like and how is it affecting everyones actions and moods? What are the "background" people (and animals and setting) doing and how does that affect our main characters?

5) Look for dull or listy description. Either cut it up and distribute it throughout the action or discard it. Or, if the information is necessary and important and has to be in a chunk, make it clear what the Point-of-View character thinks or feels about the person/thing being described or make it clear why the POV character is spending so much time looking at the person/thing. Or add motion to the description (from wind, animals, other people, etc.) or somehow have the POV character interacting with it.

6) Is dialogue, body language, etc., being used to reveal the reactions and motivations of non-POV characters? Do secondary characters have varied characteristics, quirks, and motivations?


Fourth Pass -- Whole Story, In Each Scene
1) Is it clear what the POV character's motivation is for acting the way she is (via introspection, dialogue, or actions)? If there are several ways she might deal with a problem, why does she chose the one she does? What does she feel about the situation? Always make it clear what's driving your main characters because that is what makes the characters understandable and engaging.

2) Does each scene serve a purpose? If the scene was cut from the story, would the story flow still be understandable? If so, then the scene needs to be cut or fixed.

What changes between the start of the scene and the end? What's the conflict and/or what's at stake? If a question is answered in the scene, is another question asked or a promise of future conflict foreshadowed before the end of the scene so that the reader will continue reading?


Fifth Pass -- Whole Story, In Each Scene
1) Is there tension?

1a) Are the main characters likable? Do they have faults, ideals, regrets, or even strengths that cause them to land themselves (and maybe their friends) in trouble when faced with the current situation? Are the characters too good (either morally or in succeeding against opposition) to be interesting or someone the reader can relate to? Or do they have such a disgusting or off-putting characteristic that no reader would want to spend time with them?

(Writers who deliberately create unlikable protagonists need to make them interesting and/or show early on that they have a redeeming characteristic that foreshadows future change for the better.)

1b) Are the characters aware of the danger and acting like it is danger even if the author knows nothing will come of it? Does the character stay tense and ever-mindful of the danger until it is diffused? What's at stake? Is there foreshadowing of danger even if the character isn't totally aware of it's presence? (The reader at least needs to know of the danger, though you also need to be careful to explain why the character doesn't see it or dismisses it.)


Overview Look:
1) Have the characters changed any by the end of the story?

2) What was the point of the story? What was the theme or what did the reader get out of it that will bring them back for more? Is the story emotionally satisfying?

3) Is the story promised at the beginning of the novel the one delivered by the end of the story? Are all the major loose ends tied up satisfactorily without the story dragging on too long after the climax?

On Beginnings...

Kathleen Dalton Woodbury gave this advice on where, exactly, one should start their story:

...the story should start when something starts to happen, and that's usually when the main character gets involved.

So, if you wanted to start with a fight scene, for example, you wouldn't start with the first punch. You'd start with the main character minding his own business, when some idiot comes up and tries to pick a fight with him. Of course, the main character, being smarter than to want to get into a fight with some stranger, tries to defuse the situation (and provides the author with a chance to do some characterization and get the reader to care about the main character), but when the idiot goes ahead and throws the first punch, the fight can start and the reader is more likely to be hooked.

Probably one of the main reasons for flashbacks is to try to show the reader why the main character is in the opening situation in the first place. If that "why" is at all interesting, the author should consider starting the story with it instead of starting it later.

One of the biggest problems with flashbacks is that they tend to stop the current story action (which, if the author has hooked the readers into caring, the readers are not going to want to have stopped) while the story goes back in time.

You don't EVER want to stop your readers as they are reading, because they may decide not to start up again.

Encouraging Quotes

Mark Twain said,

...the really great [people] make you feel that you, too, can become great.

John Wooden said,

Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.

Lord Chesterfield said,

I am convinced that a light supper, a good night's sleep, and a fine morning, have sometimes made a hero of the same man who, by an indigestion, a restless night, and a rainy morning, would have proved a coward.

From Theodore Roosevelt, "Citizenship in a Republic," Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910:

It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.

Metaphors and Similes

Writing advice tends to vary on the use of metaphors and similes in novel writing, so I'll tell you my ideas on what works.

In my opinion, metaphors and similes should be used to help clarify a description rather than to impress your readers. If you're doing it just to impress your readers, it'll be noticeable and I'm betting most of your readers won't be impressed or will find the language distracting since they have to stop to figure out what you mean.

However, metaphors and similes can be useful if you're writing something that:

1) transcends what plain language can convey (like in a romance...as a poor example, "At his hurtful words, she felt like the rose she so cherished had wilted.")

2) can more quickly convey an image than plain language can (perhaps like in a mystery; "The body lay like a puppet tossed aside into the corner.")

3) does not exist in reality (like in speculative fiction; "The pixie looked like a flame of light until it got closer.").

If you're going to use figurative language, make sure it adds something to the reader's understanding. "The fan wobbled like a drunken sailor" just stops me cold as I try to figure out how a fan can wobble in a way resembling a drunken sailor and why this exact type of wobbling is important to my understanding of the story. "The fan wobbled" conveys the same image more quickly.

Good luck.

The Ice Storm

The Storm
At noon on Jan. 26, the rain and sleet began. They continued until the evening of the 27th. We accumulated 1.6 inches of precipitation which means the ice built up over everything.



By Jan. 27th, as frequently as every five to ten minutes we heard the crack of large branches breaking from their trees followed by the tinkling of the ice shattering as the branch landed.



In some places, whole trees feel and over a thousand power poles broke or otherwise needed to be replaced. Our pole simply bent under the weight.



The power lines on one side bowed until they touched the ground. Further down in the other direction, they touched the ground and one line broke.



The whole northern half of Arkansas lost electricity, as well as areas in OK, southern MO, KY, TN and other states. Since such a massive area was involved, recovery has been a slow, steady process. Power-company crews and tree-trimming crews have come in from all over the nation to help out, for which we are very thankful.


How We Did
We lost electricity at 10:20 AM on Jan. 27th and finally regained it a week later at 4:50 PM on Feb. 3. Now, nearly two weeks later, the majority of outages in our area have been restored though there are several hundred people locally still without power.

Many people around here bought generators to run their furnace, refrigerators, and freezers for a few hours--and to sometimes run their computers and a few lights.



Our house is super-insulated and has both passive and active solar heating, so we decided not to buy a generator. (Generators cost about $900 and supplies quickly disappeared even though new shipments arrived each day.)

So, we had no source of electricity for 7 days and 5.5 hours. Because of the house's good insulation and due to the heat stored in the thermal mass of the floors, we never dropped below 60 degrees during this time. Once it hit 60F at night, it just stayed there.



If the sun shone during the day, the sunlight heated the house. Since our house is also super-tight, we had to open the windows a crack on the sunny days to help get some fresh air inside. (The ERV, which normally brings in fresh air, needs electricity to operate.) This meant the house didn't heat as much as it could have. On the cloudy days, we kept most of the windows covered with the blinds and thermal drapes to help hold in the warmth.

The interior temp. at the moment the power went off was 73.

Jan. 27, cloudy
Indoor High: 73F Low: 60F
Outdoor High: 31F Low: 21F


Jan. 28, sunny
Indoor High: 72F Low: 60F
Outdoor High: 29F Low: 14F


Jan. 29, partly cloudy
Indoor High: 70F Low: 62F
Outdoor High: 35F Low: 24F


Jan. 30, mostly cloudy
Indoor High: 64F Low: 60F
Outdoor High: 42F Low: 24F


Jan. 31, sunny
Indoor High: 67F Low: 63F
Outdoor High: 54F Low: 26F


Feb. 1, sunny
Indoor High: 68F Low: 64F
Outdoor High: 52F Low: 36F


Feb. 2, partly cloudy
Indoor High: 68F Low: 62F
Outdoor High: 44F Low: 20F


Feb. 3, partly cloudy
Indoor High (before power came on): 66F
Outdoor High: 34F

Of course, we use electricity for other things than heating. After 24 hours, the refrigerator no longer kept the food cold. We took ice from the plenteous outdoor supply and placed it in a container in the refrigerator to help keep the food cold. The freezer began to thaw after 48 hours. A neighbor who had a generator and a half-empty freezer offered to let us use his extra freezer room, and we took him up on it. We also ate a lot of previously-frozen food those first few days.

We moved the food that only needed refrigeration into our newly-completed garage where the temperture was maintaining at just above 32F. We put ice in our two ice boxes, and the food kept plenty cold.



My old house, which we still own, is the next house down the road, and it has propane heating for the water, stove, and fireplace (as well as the furnace, which didn't work without electricity). We cooked one hot meal a day on the propane stove. We were able to keep that house warm enough that the water pipes didn't freeze--though we also left two faucets dripping at night.

On Thursday, Jan. 29, we were losing our water. Water was starting to dribble from the faucet instead of gush. We filled a number of gallon jugs of water just in case we were going to lose water all together. Much to our relief, on Friday morning, the pressure was back and stayed strong from then on. We think someone got a generator connected to the pump on the nearby water tower until power could be restored.



Since we have an active solar water heater, we had enough hot water for one shower a day on the sunny days. That was very nice. We also heard that some people lost their phone connections during the storm, but our lines are underground and were not affected.



While our house was designed to maximize the use of natural lighting, we still had to use flashlights to move about and read after the sun went down. By 8:30 PM on most nights, we were having trouble staying awake and gratefully crawled into our warm beds. We didn't get up out of bed until daybreak at about 6:45 AM.

So we didn't suffer (thank God!), but I sure do like electricity. How could I blog without it? ;)

Taking Risks

I like to say, "Failure is just another chance to try again."

If you aren't willing to risk failure, you'll never try anything new. Everyone starts out at the bottom when doing something new; mistakes are expected and nothing to be ashamed of. If it's worth trying, then it's worth failing at. Go ahead and try it! It doesn't matter if you don't progress as rapidly as others. Take your time to learn the basics. Ask questions. Enjoy yourself. Focus on your own progress rather than comparing yourself to others. Often, you will be your own worst critic, so listen and believe when others praise your work even when it looks like crude compared to what you imagined.

And, even once you reach mastery of a skill, realize that flubs will happen and bad days occur. Such is life. But don't worry: failure is just another chance to try again.