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Character Motivation

It occurs to me that had I been a classically trained teacher, I would have structured my tips to build on one another. But I’m not, so they’re not. Last time I rambled on about how your main character should have agency in the story: their actions should have some bearing on the narrative especially at the climax. We’re not looking for passive observers here.

But how do you determine their actions? What should they be?

And that is an excellent question. I like to think of my characters as individuals. Sure, some stories will emphasize their themes or action more. These characters will often times act irrationally or contradictory in order to drive home these other aspects of the narrative the author wishes to stress. Personally, I think the stronger your character and their behaviour, the better your story will be.

Which isn’t to say no character should be irrational. There are irrational, contradictory people out in the world. You may even know some in your own life. You may even read some of their blogs!

So how do we square this issue?

For me, there is a single primary thing to know about your main character. No, it’s not their name. It’s not where they’re from or how much they make. The single most important thing for writing your main character is drilling down into the core of their being and finding out what they want. All of us are driven by wants. A lot of them are superficial. You may want the new iPhone or whatever doodad Apple is releasing today but that’s not a character want. That’s the behaviour which communicates that deeper want.

What you really should be asking is why do you want that new Apple product? Is it because you’re an Apple loyalist and buy all their products. Unlikely. Maybe you just like its sleek design and need to upgrade every time its design gets sleeker (you don’t really). No, you want this new iPhone for what it means when you have it.

That’s your want.

Maybe you feel like having the new iPhone keeps you up-to-date on the latest technological changes and developments because you’re worried of falling behind in an ever changing world and left at a disadvantage compared to those around you. Maybe the new iPhone is an item which you feel others will look at with wonder and awe thus demonstrating that you’ve achieved the success you’ve always been told you would never obtain. Or maybe everyone else is getting the new iPhone and you’re worried if you don’t they’ll discover you for the phony that you feel you truly are.

These are character wants. They’re driving motivators which will determine our hero’s actions whenever they come across a challenge. Whether it’s a drive of competition to prove yourself, a need to earn the respect and admiration of your peers or the crippling worries of self-doubt and inability bringing harm to those you love, these are core motivators that keep your character going. They’re what make them react to situations differently than others. They’re what shade their dialogue and interactions and give them that spice of life.

So it’s important to ask yourself when you’re creating your story what is it that your character truly wants? And then, constantly reask yourself that question as you progress through your narrative? How does your hero agreeing to through the match challenge in the gladiator’s arena achieve their inner motivation? How does the princess betraying her father assuage her own concerns? How does the thief deciding to tag along with the captain of the guard on their rescue mission bring them closer to their dream?

Finally, it’s important to note that not everyone is going to be aware of what drives them. Most people probably don’t possess the introspection to be aware of their underlying motivations. This is where the incongruity between what they say they want and what they do comes in. Maybe your noble knight views their vows and role seriously but is constantly undermined by their inner worries and doubts. The important thing as a writer is that you’re consistent in knowing why your character is acting the way they do, even if that character doesn’t. Obviously, the knight betrayed her Queen because she was sent on a quest that was antithetical to her desire even if the knight thought she could put her own feelings on the matter aside.

If you’re consistent and clear in your portrayal of your character, the readers will understand.

You’re basically your hero’s therapist. And how well they listen to you determines the success of their therapy.

So, when creating your main character and while writing your story ask yourself:

What is it that truly drives my character? What do they desperately need or fear?

Is my character continually seeking their desire or running from their fear especially when it is directly challenged?

Is there some situation or interaction I can include which will really highlight to the reader what my character truly wants or fears?

Character Agency

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Welcome back to my little corner of the internet where I share my secrets, tips and hints to improve your writing. Hopefully you’ve read the first tip as it still remains the best that I can give. Here, I’ll share it once more:

Get writing!

Ahem, alright. With that out of the way, let’s actually talk about said writing. This tip is a little fundamental one. You see, there are lots of aspects to writing and to speculative fiction. You have fantastical worlds, daring adventures, gripping mysteries and thought-provoking themes. However, I believe there is really one aspect that rises more important above all others.

Character.

We read stories to get invested in the struggles and trials of people (though, obviously, not necessarily human people). It’s the vessel through which the reader is going to travel down your adventure. Now, there’s lots to say on how to create compelling characters and all that which, hopefully, I’ll be able to explore in later tips. Today, however, I’m going to start with something a little more fundamental.

You see, one pitfall I’ve seen beginner writers fall into is that they have this really great “big idea” that they got so focused on—be it their twist, theme or event—that they simply forgot the person that’s going through it. You see, main characters are determined by who the writer decides to focus their attention on. The main character should play a “main role” in the narrative. Specifically, they should be an active vehicle navigating the turbulent waters, not thrown around haphazardly by rough currents and sort of washing up on the shores of your conclusion by mere happenstance.

This is what I call “agency” and basically boils down to a single tenant: at the climax of your story, the main character should make a conscious decision to reach their conclusion.

The nature of this decision, naturally, will vary depending on the type of story that you’re telling. But it is important, no matter what type of character your protagonist is, that they make this final choice. Even if you’re writing a story about a coward or timid individual. Let’s be honest, Frodo wasn’t the bravest hobbit to leave the Shire but he still had his moment of choice in the belly of Mount Doom.

And Frodo’s agency is an interesting one because ultimately, he chose poorly. He wanted to keep the One Ring and let darkness descend upon the world. If it wasn’t for Gollum’s own greed then things wouldn’t have turned out well for the heroes. But that’s kind of the point Tolkien was going for. Despite Frodo’s choice not impacting the final outcome of the epic, however, he still had agency until the end. Imagine, instead, an alternative Lord of the Rings, where Frodo sort of just passed out from malnutrition and exhaustion before entering the volcano and simply awoke later to be informed that it was Sam who heroically fought off Gollum upon the craggy precipice in order to throw the ring to its final demise. As a reader, you’d probably want to read about that rather than have Gandalf dictate it to Frodo in an unending epilogue that could really use some editing down.

So keep a clear reminder of who it is that your story is about. How do they personally intersect, react or impact the final moment of your narrative? Ask yourself if this person is really making a critical choice at the peak of tension and, if not, perhaps they aren’t the main character you wish to use but rather there’s someone else that will work better. If we’re, as readers, going to be sitting through your entire story about this individual, we want some reason to be invested in their success or failure.

After all, even cowards make choices that can have tremendous ramifications. Sometimes, it’s the most impactful.

Writing Tips – The First One Is Free

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Hey everyone, I’ve got a little something new I’m going to be trying here. After speaking with my publisher (hi Kait!), she suggested that I stop neglecting my blog so much like it’s some unwanted pet that likes to chew the curtains. One of the issues, outside of having trouble managing my time, has been coming up with wonderful content to throw up on this here site. It’s surprisingly hard to ramble and rant about things without falling into repetitive topics as the mundanity of life grinds away your inspiration and spark.

And then, of course, once you start neglecting something, it’s sort of hard to get back to it. I mean, it’s already been a large chunk of months, what’s a few more? Plus, I’ve actually been busy, having published a book in a new genre (check out the Nancy Sharpe mystery!) and finishing up yet another Red Sabre story. So I’ve been working just not on this.

Anyway, Kait’s suggestion was to turn my blog into writing tips and lessons. I’ve accumulated some amount of knowledge and experience about the art of writing, surely there’s some little nuggets and pearls of wisdom I can dispense to the curious. So, we’re going to try and focus this place on giving those interested in writing some tips and suggestions to improve their skill.

Now, I’m by far a master at the craft. These are just things I’ve learned over the many numerous years I’ve been plugging away at this art with hardly any guidance or scaffolding. Will all these tips, tricks and suggestions work for everyone? Of course not. Creativity and art is a deeply personal process that has to speak to the creator rather than follow blindly in the footsteps of others. So take my suggestions as that – suggestions. These aren’t must do practices but more like ideas to help you find your own way in expressing yourself.

And, as the title suggests, my first tip is going to go a little against the grain. This writing suggestion is pretty universal and very easy to remember. Here goes:

The number one way to improve your writing is to write more.

That’s it. It sounds simply but it’s the truth. Scientifically proven, too! Writing is a skill and it takes approximately 10,000 hours to master any skill. When you start, things aren’t going to be easy. You’re going to envision grand plots, complex characters, gripping mysteries and exhilarating reveals. And when you sit down and try to conjure them onto your pages and word documents, you’re going to fail. Things are going to come out awkward, confusing or even a little bland. You may even sit down and not think of anything or write a bunch of scenes, dialogue and interactions and find that it’s not going where you want or how you thought it would.

All of this is ok, though. We didn’t master the bicycle when we first got on it. We had to fall many times before we could ride.

But we keep at it. You will never improve your writing if you don’t keep writing. For me, when I was first taking my writing seriously, I set word goals. They can be daily or weekly. But no matter what happened – rain, shine, sickness, unforseen tornados or even surprise parties – I had to get my words in. If I failed one day to meet my goal, those missing words got moved to the next. If I had a busy work day or a vacation coming up, I write extra before I got bogged down with other things. There are no good excuses for not writing because it is the single most important way to improve.

Write.

Write some more.

And keep on writing. No matter what. No matter how bad what you’re doing. No matter how frustrating or discouraging it gets. Even if you have to abandon projects to start new ones, it ultimately doesn’t matter. You just have to keep writing, writing, writing.

Even now, after years of practice, I still keep to this tenet. I no longer have the daily word goals I did when I started – I’ve shifted to daily goals for certain projects and otherwise to deadlines for editing and whatnot. But it’s hard for me to go for long stretches without writing something. If I’m on vacation, I’m writing long emails to friends and families about my adventures. Even if I get burnt out with work and life, after a couple of days, the itch comes back and I start pounding away at some short story ideas, character sketches, descriptions or one off novels. If I hit some “writer’s block” for a project, I simply shift gears and work on something else.

It doesn’t have to be good.

It doesn’t even have to be shared with anyone.

All that it takes to be a writer is to write, write, write.

So stop procrastinating on the internet by reading people’s blogs and get cracking on something. Anything!

Dawn of a New War

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It’s here!

How apropos that I only recently did a rant about Summoner Wars 2.0 and its art. Because Plaid Hat Games has now announced the forth coming release of the game’s reboot. I’m pumped. Possibly more pumped than I should be. However, it’s been a rainy few days here and my head’s been sore. So really, I’ll latch on to whatever ray of sunshine I can grab. Thank you very much.

Art clumsily obtained from Plaid Hat Games. Obviously it all belongs to them.

There’s not a whole lot to discuss from the announcement. They’ve posted some pricing tiers which don’t make a lot of sense. However, it’s early morning for me as of this writing so maybe once I’ve shuffled off the fog of drowsiness, I’ll be able to parse it better. However, along with the announcement they have given some sneak previews of a faction launching with the master set. It appears there will be six different groups in the main big box which makes me even more stoked! This was exactly what I wished for the original Summoner Wars. That was apparently released twelve years ago. Can you imagine? Time flies.

So with Summoner Wars 1.0, the game first launched with two duo faction boxes. You could choose to have the goblins versus the dwarves or the orcs versus the elves. I actually came to the game late, after it’s first “master box” set was released with six factions and I’m glad I did. First, six gives a good variety of gameplay that the single box can deliver it’s value of fun immediately. Second, each of these boxes comes with a board, set of dice, wound markers and the like which gets way too redundant if you want to purchase everything. I kept to the two large boxes and army expansion packs. So I never got to play those first four starting armies.

Anyway, I’ll spare my keen eye observations for this first round of news for later as there are a bunch of cards for me to clumsily review as well as speculation over what some of the new iconography means.

More important, however, there is a demo for their digital release and I’ve played a quick few rounds of it to get a sense of the core gameplay changes.

I must say, I’m liking what I see.

The demo is a curious conflict of Cave Goblins versus Benders and right of the bat, I really like the art direction for the new Benders. I personally lamented the lack of more Asian inspired flair on the original release despite the heavy insinuation in the game’s sparse lore that they were meant to be Asian inspired. So this new art is giving some much needed variation in its design. Anyway, art critiques later.

Let’s discuss gameplay!

First thing I noticed: Summoner health values are off the charts. 11 and 13 are crazy and I’m going to assume these are on the low end of the scale. Second thing I noticed, walls have been renamed gates. No! We’re not discussing fluff changes. Hm, your starting gate is 10 health but your “event” gates are only 5. Interesting. Wait, and there’s no more event phase. But, it looks like events are locked to different phases now. That’ll probably help with balance and hopefully open up some new design. It’s still the standard move three and attack with three units a turn. That’s fine.

Abilities are a little clunky in their wording but I’m going to assume that’s due to a standardization of game text. For example, Relentless on the Slingers could definitely be worded more efficiently but we’re working around game terms of “may” “extra attacking unit” and whatnot. Hm, those Slingers have insanely good cost value. A two ranged attack, one health for zero mana? Oh woof, Blarg’s text. I suppose we have generic tokens now to represent game effects? That’ll be cleaner too.

Ohhhh! Players start with magic now. I think this means that there’s a separate magic token counter divorced from the cards. It was cute and efficient to use cards as your magic “pool” in the base game but certainly led to peculiarities in game design. I like this change, especially giving a starting pool to the players means the first turn isn’t so hobbled. This will make starting setups more important, however, as your initial draw can suddenly have a far greater impact if you are able to reliably summon and attack with units.

Deck size is 25. That’s… curious. Smaller than it used to be. I’m assuming its still 3 champions per deck. Oh, and there’s four commons instead of three standard too. The summoning cost on these first two decks is much lower for commons. Champions are, on average, a little higher. Perhaps this will emphasize common play more. There appears to be inevitability. Not attacking during the Attack Phase causes your summoner one damage. That’s… less than ideal. Some mechanic is required to prevent players from stalemating themselves. This is the easiest implementation but I would have liked to see something more elegant with a core game mechanic change.

Oh well, at least something is there.

Oh my the dice are different. That’s… interesting. I’m not certain what to make of these symbols. But it appears that melee attacks have a higher chance of hitting than ranged. That’s a curious method of balancing the two. I kind of like it. I’m not sure what to make of this squiggle symbol. Does it represent like a power trigger? Hard to read into it with these two base decks, considering only the Benders interact with it in a tangential way that’ll I’ll cover in the Bender review.

Wow, gates can be built adjacent to your summoner! That’s an interesting way to pump aggressive play. It seems you can’t build a gate on the center lines without a summoner nearby either? I like that.

This is certainly an interesting tease for the game. Without the rulebook, this is a fair bit of guesswork for how the rules have changed, which is why you’re getting this stream of consciousness review. However, it looks more intuitive than the first game. And if you’ve played Summoner Wars 1.0 then this definitely feels very familiar. It looks like it’ll play how the original Summoner Wars was envisioned from my first examination. Wait, let me try killing my own units. Hm, it appears that the option to attack your own units at all has been removed. Bummer.

Also, this AI is pretty dumb. I’ll probably win even with all this testing. And there he goes suiciding into my forces.

Well, I can’t complain about the goblins, elves and dwarves being hyper generic now.

Alright, well I think a summary of my initial observations might be good:

Core game mechanics remain. You build gates. You summon units and move across the board. Attacks are dice based and your goal is to reduce your opponent’s Summoner to 0 health.
Gates are both more constrained in their placement and more strategic. Can’t place in the centre of the board but you can place adjacent to your Summoner. Forward control of the board allows aggressive factions to push their momentum by giving forward summoning locations. However, non-starting gates are much easier to destroy.
Events are no longer their separate phase. Instead, specific events are played during specific phases. They appear to be weaker than the original game but it’s hard to judge off two decks. Also, they can have a mana cost. So there are numerous levers for controlling an event’s power. They also do not have the Summoner’s portrait on them. Are they no longer tied to their faction’s summoner? Possible to deck build with different events? Could explain their weakening.
Movement and Attack Phase are largely unchanged. However, units have undergone a complete rebalancing. Almost better statistics across the board. Commons are cheaper with greater health and attack. Health values are much improved while attack values have seen less increase. This will possibly make matches last longer though investment in commons will probably be better as there is a greater chance they survive more than one turn. Champions, conversely, appear to have their abilities drastically reduced while their stats have remained very similar. This is a huge push for common gameplay to be the core gameplay.
You can still discard your cards for magic after combat. No apparent change here.
Thank god the Draw Phase is at the end of your round! This was a houserule I’d implemented and it does wonders for speeding up the damn game. Perhaps the best change overall! And that’s not entirely a joke.

While this isn’t as large an overhaul as I was expecting, this is certainly good changes that should help revitalize this wonderful game that I love. And the fact that it’s going to have a digital release that will *fingers crossed* be much better supported can maybe mean I’ll be able to play it more often than around the Christmas holidays!

I’m not saying I’m preordering the game this very second. But I will say that I’m very tempted. Congrats, Plaid Hat, you’ve exceeded my expectations.

Smashwords Sale!

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It’s the end of the year! And I doubt anyone will be sad to see this year end. A quick update on my life. Things are going to be hectic and stressful going forward for the next while. I’m not sure when I’ll be able to update the blog. Hopefully sooner rather than later. It always seems that something comes up. I suppose that’s life.

At any rate, some quick news! Smashwords is having a sale and everything must go! Or something! I’ve put all my books on Smashwords at a great discount. That is to say, for most my stuff, it’s free! So if you’re interested in it, go check it out. Or, if you’ve already purchased a hardcopy through Amazon, go check it out anyway. Smashwords is specifically for digital copies of my books. And each purchase (even free) raises the books profile on their promotional pages. So you can nab some free stuff and more people can see about these terrific little novels!

I’ve included the links below:

Clockwork Caterpillar

Synthetic Landscapes Volume 1

Cinderborn

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone!

NaNoWriMo Prep #3

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Well, here we are at the final NaNoWriMo prep before the actual NaNoWriMo! So anything else I do after this is all going to be my own personal secrets! Ahahaha.

But let’s recap where we left off. I had decided on an urban fantasy genre, though whether that’s from a horror or mystery angle is yet to be determined. My last entry I settled on basing a character on a friend of mine who I haven’t used as a model yet. Today, I will be hammering out some more details.

Having focused on a model for my character, I now need to establish what that character is. Now, I’m not going to say what is or is not based on the real world model. It’ll just start doing a rough character sketch. I’ve talked before about character sketches for my stories. These let me get a good grasp of their personality. They usually form as a short story about a pivotal moment in their life. Here, it will mostly be a stream of consciousness of my thoughts.

But before I begin that, I need to lay out a few more of my thoughts.

Accessed from http://www.wga.hu/index1.html — Oriental Writer Cutting His Pen by Benjamin Gerritsz Cuyp (1640).

I’m thinking this story is going to have at least two major characters. In my early musings I wanted to have some non-authority associated individuals looking into a mystery. I had an early vision of a mystery lovers club that meets to discuss unsolved cases and try to apply their love of mystery novels in solving those cases. I then thought this would be a cute way to start a mystery by having a person appeal to them for help in doing something (leaning towards a missing persons case). I’m leaning towards a young character who has joined this club because they’re smitten with a girl that attends and wants to get in their good graces. This will tie in to some of my other character’s design.

First, I’m leaning towards a young father. I mentioned before that I like taking the mundane and making things extraordinary from there and what could be more mundane than parenting? There’s feeding, napping, diaper changes and bathing. Sure, it’s a rewarding and exciting experience. But let’s be honest with ourselves, we really don’t care to hear about stranger’s struggles about waking up at 2 am to give their child a bottle. I think I’m also going to make him a single father. With the aforementioned missing person’s case, I’m leaning towards the mother having “left” one night, possibly without warning. The story could then pick up this personal tragedy if the mother was roped into the events of the novel in some level. It will also force the character to continue down whatever road unwinds before them.

Alright, we have a single father. What else really defines a person? Well, their occupation. This ties back to the earlier paragraph as I decided this person will be a teacher. However, I don’t see a teacher attending a mystery appreciation club even if he is looking to get back into the dating pool. And I would like to write some scenes of him trying to go on dates while dodging the fact that he’s a father and worried someone else’s kid will turn off dating prospects. So I will need some tie with this character and the young paramour. The easiest solution, to me, would to make him the teacher of the other. I can worry about the details of how that plays out for later.

Lastly, I want some personality quirks for my character. While I have a rather sombre backstory, I’d actually like to contrast that with a sun disposition and childlike wonder for the world. I recall how amused I was when in Japan and seeing all the adults obsessed with Pokemon Go. And while I’m not going to lean into some other intellectual property, even if there’s no chance of infringement, I do like the idea of him preoccupying himself with chasing down digital “pokemon” or whatnot while weird things are happening. I’m also tempted to wrap this phone game into the greater story and it got me thinking.

Way back in university I came up with… well… I don’t even know what to call it. I was working on a project with Derek to make something and ended up making all this complicated lore for supernatural entities, different realms of reality and a whole slew of other stuff. It never really materialized into anything, however. But while thinking about this character and musing of a Pokemon alternative, I recalled this concept. Loosely titled Plemora, it would make an excellent game and if the game itself ties into the urban fantasy, would cover a whole lot of groundwork that I won’t have to do later.

A brief rundown of the Plemora was that our world was simply one layer of a multilayered existence. Entities from a higher layer had a tendency for coming down into ours to avoid conflicts there. Oftentimes this led to them being hunted and, given the physics of the world, they might be chased into lower layers of ours. It was a weird blend of things like Planescape and White Wolf roleplaying and I certainly have no interest in trying to make this story an introduction to that mess. However, it certainly works perfectly for a stupid mobile game my teacher can obsess over and since it dealt with demons… well… let’s just say that I have some ideas to consider in regards to my paranormal portion. Whether I will have sympathetic, intelligent demons that pass for human like… alright I don’t watch or read a lot of urban fantasy but that’s what I imagine Supernatural or that tv show about Satan were like. Alternatively, I can make them more mindless and beastlike in the vein of Stranger Things or Lovecraft Country.

And I likely won’t make a decision until I’m halfway through November anyway!

NaNoWriMo Prep #2

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With NaNoWriMo fast approaching, it seems I should get a few more words out about what I’m doing to prepare for it.

Last time I discussed my NaNoWriMo prep, it was to hone in on a genre that I wanted to explore. As I mentioned, the November novel is my chance to try new tones, genres, voices and styles. Since I don’t do a lot of present day fiction, the urban fantasy genre seemed like a good little niche to poke and prod. It’s adjacent to my regular writing enough that it could be relevant to my stories while being different enough to exercise those creative muscles.

Now, the nice thing about prep is that nothing is set in stone. Things can and, generally do, change. I’m still planning on doing an urban fantasy but my original idea for characters is slowly changing while I consider my option. And speaking of characters, that brings me to my next step of prep.

In my writing, I love to focus on characters. Motivations. Histories. Relationships. Philosophies and ideals. These heady psychological concepts let me put my education to some us but generally help to shape the different people that drive the story. Of course, there is no telling what characters will pop up in the plot, especially since I hardly plan any of my first drafts. But what I will focus on is the main character. And I have several tricks for creating them.

My go-to development method is simply take someone I know and use them as a template for my writing. My friends and family are sprinkled throughout my writing in various forms. Granted, we’re all multi-faceted individuals. Our personalities are not a weekend shopping list of traits but an ever changing kaleidoscope of ofttimes contradictory and inconsistent behaviours and beliefs. That is to say, while I base my characters on people I know they are hardly ever recognizable as the people I know. Generally, I’ll focus on one portion of their personality and design around there.

Take my sister for example.

There are numerous moments where I have based a character on my sister. The most obvious is… well… her D&D character in my short stories. Those stories, written in a somewhat generic fantasy setting, took moments of our lives and recast them as though they were Dungeons and Dragons inspired adventures. As such, Kait’s character (inconspicuously called Kait) was a small town teacher who had a fondness for hikes and rocks. So this fantasy Kait was classed as a ranger and, taking inspiration from the source, was a ranger who had a knack for getting lost and possessed little sense of direction. Furthermore, she loved collecting things and carrying around a large backpack filled to the brim with the random junk she’d find on their adventures.

I like to contrast this lighthearted, clumsy ranger with Therese from my Thyre story. Both had the same inspiration and yet I feel the characters are more different than they are similar. Therese of Thyre’s fame may have shared a love of reading and books but she was a standoffish woman with a cold, controlling attitude especially towards those she felt were foolish or below her own intellectual capabilities. Her prickly exterior naturally led her to having few friends and associates but despite that she had a complicated relationship with her cousin. Her domineering attitude provided an anchor of sorts to his free spirit even if her acerbic wit often manifested in barbed banter between these two seemingly close relatives.

Now, is my sister this cold cousin? Of course not. Nor would she hopelessly be lost in a forest or feel unnecessary compulsion to squirrel away every little bit of coloured string or shiny rock she tripped over. That’s the fun of using real people as templates. Especially those that you are close to. You know how they would react in a multitude of situations so you have a start for your fictional individual that is both real and grounded. But more than that, you can practice the ever enjoyable “what if” scenarios. What if Kait could speak to animals and follow the spirits of wanderlust? And how would that change her? What would stay the same?

Of course, these were early stories where I was a novice at character creation. I will admit that as time goes on I’ve relied less and less on real world templates and have developed my characters wholesale from my imagination. However, now and then, I’ll still pluck the technique if I’m in need of a quick side character that I don’t want to spend a lot of time developing. Or, as is the case here, if I need inspiration where I have no initial spark of creativity.

It was over the weekend when I was attending the first birthday of a friend’s child that I realized I have never written a character based on him. I’m not sure how that happened but as I was struck by that revelation, it did get me thinking. Now, I certainly don’t have any full ideas yet. However, I have a template for a character and oftentimes that’s all I need. What part of his personality will fuel my story? I don’t know. But that’s the fun of writing for me. It’s a practice of exploration and knowing who leads the adventure, even if I don’t know how they’ll lead, is often enough for the first outing.

There is one other element of my writing that I’ll be porting over to this November novel. I quite enjoy playing with expectation. In particular, I have fun turning the mundane into the exciting and the exciting into the mundane. For example, my Red Sabre novels follow a band of rail pirates. Yet though it sounds like a colourful life (and it is!) I also like to think how the day-to-day activities of their lives would exhibit. I don’t place the events of a Red Sabre novel around the height of their explosive adventures. Instead, their adventures grow out from typical problems whether that be finding food, employment, repairs or simply a place to relax after long days of travel. I like buttressing the grand vistas of a new world and the excitement of a gunfight with a glimpse into the actual work it takes to get there.

Likewise, I enjoy playing with things in the inverse. Several of my stories follow rather boring people doing boring things with their lives. That is until everything is upended up the extraordinary. My Middle School Can’t Be This Haunted and Never Ever After are probably the best examples of these janitors turned main attractions. Sophie Caroll in Never Ever After is a girl who works at a laundromat. Her favourite thing in the world is a trashy B-tier television show. She has no skills. She has no great friends. She mostly is spinning her wheels until her life ends. That is, of course, until a school of fish burst from one of her washing machines and a talking red panda convinces her to tumble through a modern wardrobe into a world of crazy creatures and landscapes.

So a young, new father puttering away with his job is definitely something I will play with. And I think this pairs well with the urban fantasy genre. Course, now I have to consider what actually makes my urban fantastical and decide whether I want to take this story more into a mystery or a horror direction. Considering that really I have a likely audience of one for this project, however, I’m more apt to make this a mystery. Plus, it will give me more mystery writing practice.

And, at the end of the day, this is largely practice.

NaNoWriMo Prep #1

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So, with today being the first day of October, Kait actually suggested that I do a little series of blog posts detailing my preparation I do for NaNoWriMo.

For those who don’t know what Nano is, it stands for National Novel Writing Month. I was made aware of this auspicious occasion many years back when Derek introduced me to the concept. He actually wanted to participate one year and, having failed in prior attempts, thought bringing in a friend would be the motivation to take him across the finish line.

It wasn’t.

Feature Image — The Clockwork Caterpillar started off as a National Novel Writing Month project. How far we’ve come!

However, it got me into the process. So, the gist behind National Novel Writing Month is to get people writing. You have a full month to get 50,000 words to paper, word document, reed scrolls, human skin or whatever other material you like to use. And if there is one thing I learned from Felicia, in order to hone your craft you must constantly be practicing. So, I have found a lot of success and use for the NaNo competition. First, I have beaten it for… well… a number of years running now. And I certainly can feel the difference in my writing if, for nothing else, the 1,666 words a day limit is no longer daunting. I can still recall struggling until the late hours of the morning trying to hit my word count. Now, NaNo is more of a little vacation. If… vacationing was still work but just less stressful.

See, I like to use my November writing month to take on a project that’s less serious. These are my experimental stories. Ideas that are a little outside of my comfort zone. They’re genres I haven’t attempted. They’re concepts that may not be really great. Since you never truly know if something is going to work until you give it a go. And, just sometimes, it yields value.

See, the first Red Sabre story was a NaNo project. And you can see how well that turned out by checking out my second Red Sabre novel, out today! Get it on Amazon, Kobo, Kindle and whatnot!

But I’ve also written other things that will never see the light of day. Like my zombie/Japanese/anime story which shall remain unnamed and never fully explained. I’ve also written silly super hero tales, murder mysteries, subversive classic fantasy and much more. It doesn’t really matter. It’s practice and mashing up genres is a great way to fertilize the creative grounds of one’s imagination.

And that gets to my first step of preparation: figuring out what on earth I’m going to write.

This sounds a little grander than it actually is. I’m a “panster” type writer so I really don’t have much of a plan when I start. But I do have an idea. My first step is to find that one kernel from which everything is going to grow. Sometimes, it is after a conversation with Kait about story starters or ideas. Sometimes it’s a strange dream. Sometimes it’s because I’ve read something grossly disappointing and I’d like to take my own stab at it.

But what if you don’t have an initial starting idea? Whenever I get a flash of inspiration, I try to write that idea down and let it germinate in the back of my mind. Well, this year (like some prior years), I don’t really have anything germinating. I’ve got a couple of projects on the go but none of them are really NaNo material.

Besides, this can give me something to blog about. So, how do you create a story idea?

Focus on something that interests you. You are your first audience. If you, as the writer, have no motivation for the story then it’s going to be nigh impossible to finish. So, my first starting place would be asking myself one important question:

What kind of story do I want to tell?

There’s a plethora of genres out there. And just because you specialize in one doesn’t mean that you can’t explore others. Even if nothing else interests you, there’s a lot of subgenres that you can plumb. So, do I want to write a Sci-Fi story? Do I want to try something a little different? Honestly, the language of Red Sabre can get a bit ponderous and I do enjoy being able to throw myself fully into modern diction. So I would like to do something either modern or futuristic. I don’t want to do a horror story so I can cross that option right out.

Now I know Kait is on a bit of an urban fantasy kick, so that could be fun. I’ve never read an urban fantasy to completion. I’m not really interested in doing an emotionally heavy, character driven story. This is NaNo after all. So the other big modern genre is mystery. I have taken a stab at a mystery story. The result was… mediocre. So there’s certainly room to grow there. However, there’s also futuristic mystery. And considering the only thing I’ve enjoyed about the few super hero movies I’ve seen recently is the detective element, it is a consideration.

Alternatively, speculative fiction is all about commenting on modern issues by recontextualizing problems to examine them in a different light. It would be remiss to ignore the recent conversation about the glorification of police officers and the lack of scrutiny on their procedures to simply write yet another stock standard crime drama. On the other hand, writing a mystery that does not have the main character as a police officer could be interesting. It’s a fairly large trope in mystery and best highlighted by the Maltese Falcon.

Also, by setting the principle investigator as a non-civil servant can broaden the type of mystery I could explore. I’ve gone on some rants about how Lovecraftian fiction does not fit well outside of its time period. But what sort of otherworldly mystery could be done in a modern setting?

Yes, I think I may look at doing an urban fantasy mystery novel. Now that I’ve prepared my genre, it’s time to start considering general ideas and characters!

Life Updates!

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Cinderborn Cover — Just a reminder that Cinderborn is out and ready to order! Check it out on Amazon, Kobo or Smashwords!

Hi everyone!

So it’s been awhile and unfortunately I have nothing exciting to share. However, I have been successfully shamed by my sister to at least put some sort of communication on the blog about what is going on. So here I am.

I don’t think I need to remind everyone how crazy a year this has been. It’s not everyday that you go through a pandemic, though being in one now it certainly feels like it. And while there’s never a really good time for a pandemic, this one struck at a particularly turbulent point in my life. At the start of the year, I was going through some rather large life events. First, I got married (yay!) but then I was getting ready to move to another country for my partner’s work. We were going through the process of renting our place, packing our things, selling off what we could and then the border closed. Oops.

So I’ve moved back in with my sister thinking the border closure would last a few weeks or perhaps a month. The closest reference point we had for this kind of event was SARS and that ended up being fairly well contained and low impact. During this time, however, my brother was stuck working from home (like the rest of us) and arranged with my family to take over his child rearing duties since daycares were no longer operating. So for the next six months, I became a full time nanny.

It was nice spending the time really getting to know and help grow my nephews. I also got that first early taste of parenting and… phew, it’s a lot of work. As all parents know, some things must be sacrificed upon the altar of time in order to give children the attention and care they need. However, I was still plugging away at my writing which brings me to the next point.

I’m pleased to say that I’m working away on my second draft for the third Red Sabre novel. The working project name is Drops of the Moon but don’t get excited since that name can easily change. Certainly Cinderborn went through five or so different names before its launch. Drops of the Moon will be a daring adventure through the mountains as Felicity and her crew try to navigate the complicated politics of the Ruan Yu Ren while fending off the vicious attacks of the Ashfoot Confederacy. I’m excited to be exploring more of the western seaboard of Felicity’s world where philosophy, spiritualism and magick and blend together in an intoxicating mix. Hopefully that goes well.

I’ve also been receiving lots of… we’ll call it encouragement, to finish a little project that I wrote last year. Some of you may not know my writing schedule but I have two big project months: April and November. These are set aside specifically to create new narratives outside of the regular editing and revision process. November in particular tends to be when I try things a little more experimental and, as such, those projects generally don’t see the light of day. However, some early readers have been very excited over a mystery that I penned and would like to see it cleaned up. So that’s been added to my plate.

I have also been considering the future of this blog and how I want to continue contributing to it. I haven’t really settled on anything yet, hence my long silence. So if you have anything you’d like to see, please sound off in the comments! I appreciate all the feedback I get from you lovely people.

I also have a couple of other writing projects kicking around in various stages. These may or may not make their way into the public sphere so I’m hesitant to comment on them further. At any rate, I’m still alive and chugging along.

Stay safe! Stay healthy!

Make A Difference

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Well, the International 2019 has come to an end. I was quite excited with the outcome and overjoyed to see the performance of my favourite team. They’ve really come into their own.

Wait, why am I worried about spoilers here. People who read this blog likely don’t follow the game anyway.

OG took a second championship! Back to back! It was incredible. Not sure it was worth staying up all-night to watch, however. I’m relieved to hear that next year’s tournament will be in Stockholm.

Anywho, onto business.

I’ve been pretty quiet around the blog recently since I’ve been hard at work penning (or typing) the sequel to The Clockwork Caterpillar. Well, the good news is that I may finally have something approaching readability. But I need your help.

Yes, your help. Picture Uncle Sam pointing directly to you through your screen – preferably a big one for extra effect. For this release we’re doing something a little different.

We are testing what Kait is tentatively calling “Beta Readers.” I suppose it’s much like beta testers for software or games. How it’ll work is that you can fill out this survey. You will get your choice of digital format and we will send you an early draft of the novel along with a questionnaire. For your gracious participation, you may be featured in the acknowledgement section – with your permission of course – upon release of the novel in 2020. You can also proudly boast of your creative genius in bringing a story to fruition!

We’re looking to start this process around mid-October. More information will follow to those who send us their contact information. We shall not keep your information for any advertising purposes and you’re welcome to not append your name if you so wish.

I’m sure there will be some legal notifications attached when this rolls out but that falls a little out of my wheelhouse. I’d like to hear your thoughts and this is kind of the best way to engage a bit more directly with readers themselves to hear what they think. We’ll see how this process goes and, if it is successful, I know Kait has it in her mind to try this on future releases as well.

So grab a friend and get your name down! We’ve a goal of around twelve or fourteen but the more the merrier! Here’s the link for one last easy click.

Hope to hear from you soon.