Oriental Writer Cutting His Pen by Benjamin Gerritsz Cuyp (1640).

Happy New Year fellow webizens. We have returned to a blisteringly cold 2018, at least up in my neck of the woods. Hopefully all your vacations and family time was well spent. With any luck you even have some new year resolutions that you might actually keep this time. Or not. That’s okay too.

We’re just going to jump back into those writing lessons because we’ve had such a long time away from them. And I know you’re just dying to get a bit more insight into that creative process. Maybe you can pick up a few tips too. I’d love to know if my How to series helped anyone with their fiction.

We’ve kind of been discussing so far a lot of preparation work for writing but there hasn’t been a whole lot of time spent on technique. Well, that’s about to change this day. Because that’s what the new year is for: changes!

Prior I talked about important components of different storytelling. But, barring some truly weird and experimental fiction, there is one constant regardless of your stripes or interests as an author. There is but one element of every story that is universal and, if my psychology background is going to bias, perhaps the whole reason we tell stories in the first place. While we love fantastic locations and daring adventures, the thing that really grips us and keeps the pages turning are the people in our stories. For, without people, you mostly have a travel documentary. And even those focus a lot on local travel or the experiences of the traveller nowadays and not just on the old buildings or swamps they’re stepping into.

Truly, characters are the vessel in which we transport our readers through our narratives. I’m sure all of us can think of those stories that simply didn’t resonate with us. Sure, they might have been creative. They may have even contained really flowery prose. But can you think of many stories which had really bad characters that you could finish?

I certainly know when I’m listening to people’s criticisms, the principle issue almost always revolves around the characters. Whether that be they’re too shallow. Or maybe they’re too perfect. Perhaps they’re too unbelievable. There’s a seemingly fine line for characters that plays directly into an important concept called the Suspension of Disbelief.

See, no one is confused or surprised that a work of fiction they’re reading is… well… fake. This is a self-evident statement but it actually carries a lot of important consequences with it. Think back to those stories that you love. You know how you can just hear the characters? You can often see the locations or feel the action? You despair when they despair. You cheer when they triumph. You are devastated when they kill off your favourite doctor. Maybe when you finish and put it down, the story simply occupies your mind and you’re left in an aimless fugue wishing you could go back and experience that wonder and excitement.

When a story is successful, we the readers are happy to suspend our disbelief and belief in the actions, characters and emotions as though they are real and worthy of our time. There’s an unspoken contract between reader and author. The reader is willing to ignore the fact that they’re reading ink on a page or pixels on the screen and you, the writer, is going to transport them on a fantastic journey.

But you can’t let them see the scaffolding of your rides or the pneumatic machinery of your displays. You can’t draw attention to the fact that you are merely composing words on a page to them. It’s your duty to not betray their sense of acceptance. You want your reader to feel the action is real whether that action involves fire breathing dragons, ghosts from the pale or cybernetic clones on murderous rampages. Literature is not real life and even the most mundane story is going to be far more ordered and directed than our daily lives.

Our readers are, bless their hearts, willing to let a lot pass. But the one thing that simply won’t fly are awful characters. We can accept alternate dimensions, dream powered magic and talking animals. We won’t accept that ditsy character who flunked out of high school to become a wandering bohemian somehow knowing advanced astrophysics and is capable of diffusing a ticking nuclear warhead.

We need to write consistent, believable characters. This also means we need well-rounded and interesting characters to write about.

Creating characters is a pretty big topic and obviously not something that can be covered in a lesson. But we’ll lay the groundwork for creating compelling protagonists that your readers want to know more about.

There are, of course, a few basic rules that should be followed. Your character should be consistent. If you introduce your protagonist, Wilhelmina, and say she’s a bit of a klutz, then don’t turn around and have her earn a standing ovation when she steps in to cover for the lead ballerina. There are enough examples in media where characters we know suddenly behave opposite to how we’ve come to expect them. This isn’t to say your characters can’t sometimes act out-of-character but those should be rare occurrences that can, ultimately, be explained by their prior beliefs or actions. A well mannered, law abiding citizen doesn’t just turn around and start mugging old ladies for no reason.

Consistency, while being obvious, is much harder than it seems. This is a truth that isn’t apparent until you start writing. It’s easy as a reader to notice when characters start acting irrationally. But as a writer, these mistakes can sneak in for many reasons. One, you might not have conceived your character quite as completely when you started and so you don’t know how they would react in different circumstances. Two, as a writer, you’re balancing more than just character consistency when you’re writing. You’re also trying to maintain tone, express theme, pace the narration and formulate a plot. You also will have a whole medley of characters entering your story and, of course, they all have to come across as believable entities in their own right!

It’s a hard thing to get right but an easy to spot error.

There are, of course, techniques you can develop to strengthen your characters. When writing my first few novels, I actually spent a lot of prep time “learning” my main actors. I wrote brief snippets and scenes, little vignettes that would never be incorporated into the story, that would examine and test the characters in different ways. In this way I could find the “voice” of these characters so they could express themselves differently than their fellows. I remember in one of my writing classes doing an exercise where you wrote a brief description of the contents of your character’s pockets to get a sense of what they felt was important enough to them to keep close by at all times. This is very much in the same vein but isn’t just devoted to description but also their speech patterns and problem solving.

These character sketches are valuable resources at the start of your novel, especially if you have an ensemble cast. It gives you some time to test different elements of your writing style and gives you a brief window into your characters’ psyches. Even better, you can use these vignettes to reference so you can remember how your characters act and think. Many times they’re great for refocusing your attention and reminding you of the important details of their personality while your story progresses.

They don’t have to be long. Think around three pages. I find focusing on an event or conflict either important to the character or that encapsulates their personality is great subject matter for these snippets. For Thyre, my character snippet on Jarret, the soldier, focused on the mission which left him with a limp. It focused on his experiences fighting in the jungle and his thoughts and motivations for joining the army in the first place. It covered both a personally pivotal moment in his life that would directly impact his personality with the story as well as detail the foreign struggles and conflict which shaped the Empire abroad.

And the best part of these snippets? They aren’t meant for public consumption. You don’t need to worry whether they make sense. You don’t even need to fret about making a coherent story with a defined beginning, middle and end. They do, however, give you more time with the characters that your readers won’t have and consequently make you the expert on them because of that experience.

They also make for a great proof of concept and sometimes you may even catch some issues early that could trip up your story later if not changed.

So take some time and get a little personal and intimate with the people of your book. They’re your confidantes. They’re your closest friends. They are your family and you should know as much about them as you possible can.

Oriental Writer Cutting His Pen by Benjamin Gerritsz Cuyp (1640).

Well, we’ve covered a number of writing tips that don’t really have a lot to do with the craft of writing. It’s important to get in the right mindset and to prepare to create your work but time has come to actually how we go about doing the actual writing. While throwing words on pages is the essence of the art, there are obviously techniques and considerations that can assist with that end. Since, just any old words won’t work. We’ve read stories that weren’t good and others that simply blew us away. How do we make ours more the latter than the former.

So today we’re going to talk about the three main components of a story. They’re part ingredients and part spices. They inform and direct each other even if you only use a dash of one and a healthy helping of the third. But any story can be considered through these three elements and it’s best to think about them at the start than try and address them later when you’re neck deep in the minutia of your work.

These three cornerstones of writing are, of course, Character, Plot and Theme.

I’m sure that’s elicited a series of groans from just about anyone that had to take a high school English course. But it’s important to recognize that our teachers didn’t pull these aspects out for analysis with no justifications. Its these elements that get your readers hooked and it’s what will separate your writing from the rest.

But it’s also important to know that you don’t need all three. In fact, many of the best literary books will put their primary focus on one of these (though they’ll still have the others in a lesser degree). They are so ubiquitous that an explanation for them is pretty unnecessary but their importance may not be immediately evident.

Every story, for example, has characters. And those with primary attention to character are easy to highlight. They’re often the ones selected for book studies in school and include such famous works like Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mocking Bird or Memoirs of a Geisha. The draw for the reader is the personal journey and change they undergo. Oftentimes, if you really break down the moment to moment action, there isn’t really a lot happening in that person’s life. But the personal struggle, the internal turmoil brought on by the challenges the protagonist faces, are what draw the reader in. If writing a character driven story, it’s vitally important that you have a rich and fully developed character. Their hopes and weaknesses will be essentially what leads your plot and inform the themes.

On the flip-side, plot driven novels put far more focus on the action. The characters are important but you’re there for their exploits and whatever business they’re on, not necessarily the gritty peeling of their personality. These kinds of stories are often broadly popular. Star Wars, for example, has rather generic characters. They’re more archetypes than individuals. It’s the struggle between the Rebels and Empire that interests the fans. Spending too much time on the interpersonal conflict can actually detract from the narrative itself. But, of course, you can’t have empty names filling the sides of your gripping battles either. Characters are more defined by their relation to the driving conflict and the people that oppose them.

Of the three, thematic stories are perhaps the rarest. At least stories that put the theme at the forefront and drive most of the narration. Your Star Wars and Memoirs of a Geisha certainly have prominent themes but the theme isn’t at the fore. Lord of the Flies is really driven by its theme to the point of dictating character action and plot development. One reason for thematic driven pieces to be so rare is the modern perception of these stories coming across as too preachy. A Pilgrim’s Progress is hardly going to have the splash now as it did in 1678. As such, modern writing generally regulates theme to a secondary or tertiary consideration but it’s still an important one, nevertheless.

Thus, when preparing and writing your novel, it’s important to keep in mind where you want to set your focus. You can, of course, prepare these in broad strokes if that is your style. But it will save yourself a lot of headache and frustration in the editing phase if you’ve already got a focus from the start. When writing my first story, I had a kernel of an idea and set about trying to realize it into something more than a two line pitch. It took several drafts before I realized that the personal character elements were dragging away from the action I wanted to be the primary focus. My natural inclination for character dramas was detracting from the mystery that was meant to pull the reader along and really muddied the narrative.

Thus, for my second novel, I knew that I wanted my characters to take central stage. So the plot took a backseat and the locations and events that did explode onto the page were issues that sprang from personal histories or would allow the expression of my cast better than necessarily what would be the most exciting event. Furthermore, the specifics that I detailed in the world creation were meant to provide further insight into the characters and their motivations.

My latest novel, however, is far more thematic. The genesis for it was based on conceptions of humanity and its malleability due to technology. Considering how best to communicate my thoughts on the intersection of these two elements dictated the structure of the novel and who would ultimately be the principal characters. It determined their ages and occupations as well as the need to split the novel in two for both points of view.

Because, ultimately, determining on which element is going to be your focus will inform the techniques that you utilize. Certain tropes work better in plot heavy stories than they do in character pieces. And you’re not apt to use a stream of consciousness in order to narrate the big confrontation of your alternative history epic when your hero finally confronts the villain that has plunged the world into war.

So, when writing your story decide how much of your centre stage is going to be taken up by your characters, themes or plot and make sure that when pacing and developing the narrative you portion off the appropriate amount of time to each. With any luck, you can pinpoint when you’re spending too much time rushing from point to point and not listening to the inner struggle of your character or when theme starts dragging out the enjoyment of your plot. It should let you correct course before veering too far off-track and reduce the workload of your editing.

Oriental Writer Cutting His Pen by Benjamin Gerritsz Cuyp (1640).

There is a personal element to writing. No two writers are exactly the same, otherwise we wouldn’t have such variation in our works. Truly, a homogeneous talent pool is the most dystopian ideal to create for creative fields. Sometimes good advice needs to be amorphous and vague so that each listener can take the important elements and adapt them to their own needs and situations.

So, I’d talked prior about the important of turning off your own internal filter and how to keep yourself on track through the use of (or lack thereof) plans. I’m going to do a last little lesson on writing “prep” and it’s a little insight into how I approach a work.

Personally, I don’t just do one project until completion. I’m a bit of a perfectionist and loathe finding errors in my own works. This doesn’t combine well with being an imperfect being and so I can get lost in a novel if it’s the only thing occupying my time. Setbacks can lead to hang ups and, invariably, I’ll grow tired of working on my project and long for greener pastures elsewhere. Thus, I tend to have several projects on the go at any given time. That way, should motivation be lacking in one department, I can refresh my mind by looking at something else. On average, I have somewhere between three and five things on the go.

It works for me but hopping around from wildly different stories can make for other challenges. How do I keep tone and language consistent within a Victorian steampunk murder mystery after I’ve just spent some time working through a multitude of speech patterns in a wild west adventure? There’s a real danger of losing sight of stylistic choices or forgetting important characteristics of my characters that are necessary for conveying the theme and atmosphere.

Thus, I’ve found being able to recreate the “head space” I was in while writing the first draft or conceiving the initial idea aids in refocusing my attention. It’s especially important since, while I do keep extensive notes on my projects, I also have a bad habit of carrying a lot of my work in my head and weighing ideas and options before committing them to the page.

But I have a shortcut to remind myself of how I wanted my stories to feel.

I use music.

It’s a little cheat. When doing a lot of my mental preparation for a story, I’ll seek out songs and create playlists that inspire me for the project. Often these revolve around hitting the right atmosphere in my head for what I want the piece to convey. Thus, style over substance takes precedence for me. For the Clockwork Caterpillar, I had a rather eclectic mix of folksongs, foreign metal and American rock. Derick Steals a Baby is largely jazz and orchestral. Part of what determines the shape of the playlist is determined by how the concept for the story germinated. If I imagined and refined the story idea while listening to music then I have an easy start to my list.

But if the inspiration struck elsewhere then it can sometimes be harder to think of a good list. Sometimes, I’ll think of a piece of creative work that is somewhat similar and search for music from or associated with it. Other times it can simply be what’s playing in the background while I’m musing about the ideas and trying to make a coherent story from them.

And having something work well in the background is key. I don’t make lists of my favourite songs or what’s popular currently. This isn’t a method of distraction and a discordant or “flavour of the month” song that’s apt to get overplayed and annoying quickly simply isn’t helpful. I don’t think any of my work lists have any of the bands I listen to for pleasure in them. Not to say the songs I pick aren’t pleasurable. But I need something with as few mental associations as possible so I can latch my story ideas to the melodies. Thus, hearing that song reminds me of my story and not anything else in my life.

And when I have a really great list together, it’s truly something special. But I’ve had some poor lists before that just simply didn’t do the work. This is hardly a necessary step to writing but similar elements to my playlist can be incorporated into other writing styles. Finding what motivates you is just as important as coming up with the greatest ideas. The best story isn’t one that exists solely in your imagination. Thus, it’s necessary that you take whatever shortcuts, cheats or tactics you can to make sure that you get your writing done. Whether this is specific food or drink, a cosy little corner or a collection of motivational pictures doesn’t matter. Perhaps even a simple ritual of sharpening a pen and cracking open a fresh, blank tome is all that’s necessary to start feeding those imaginative juices and getting the words to flow free.