March 1, 2023 · 6:00 am

Worldbuilding part 1 – checklist for creating societies #amwriting

Worlds are comprised of plants, animals, and geology. But if intelligent life forms live in that world, societies will also exist.

WritingCraftWorldbuildingWe humans are tribal. We prefer an overarching power structure leading us because someone has to be the leader. We call that power structure a government.

As a society, the habits we develop, the gods we worship, the things we create and find beautiful, and the foods we eat are evidence of our culture.

If your society is set in modern suburbia, that culture and those values will affect your characters’ view of their world. You will still have to build that world on paper. But the information and maps are all readily available, perhaps in your own backyard.

But what if you are writing a sci-fi or fantasy novel? You must create the background material to show your world logically and without contradictions.

  • Authors must know how society works in their created cities and towns.
  • They must know the technology whether it is set in a medieval world or on a space station.

Merchants, scientists, priests, soldiers, teachers, healers, thieves – no matter the setting, each occupation has specific technology. They may also have a place in the social hierarchy, people they can and cannot associate with.

Society is always composed of many layers and classes. Below is a list of what I think of as “porch questions.”

This is the stage where I sit on the back porch and consider the world my characters will inhabit. Going somewhere quiet and pondering these questions brings clarity to my vague ideas.

The following is a list of points to consider when creating a society. Feel free to copy and paste it to a page you can print out. Jot the answers next to the questions and refer back to it if the plot raises one of these questions.

How is your society divided? Who has the wealth?

  • Is there a noble class?
  • Is there a servant class?
  • Is there a merchant class
  • Is there a large middle class?
  • Who makes up the most impoverished class?
  • Who has the power, men or women—or is it a society based on mutual respect?

Ethics and Values: What constitutes morality, and how do we treat each other?

  • Is marriage required?
  • How are women treated?
  • How are men treated?
  • How are the different races viewed?
  • Is there a cisgenderbias, or an acceptance of different gender identities?
  • How are same-sex relationships viewed?
  • How are unmarried sexual relationships seen in the eyes of society?
  • How important is human life?
  • How is murder punished?
  • How are betrayal, hypocrisy, envy, and avarice looked upon?
  • What about drunkenness?
  • How important is the truth?
  • What constitutes immorality?
  • How important is it to be seen as honest and trustworthy?
  • What is taboo? What is “simply not done” among that group?

WilliamBlakeImaginationLIRF05072022Power structures are the hierarchies encompassing the leaders and the people with the power. Government is an overall system of restraint and control among selected members of a group. Think of it as a pyramid, a few at the top governing a wide base of citizens.

Religion is rarely a sci-fi trope but often figures prominently in fantasy work. In sci-fi, science and technology often take the place of religion or are at odds with it. They both have similar hierarchies and fanatics, but with different job titles.

Archbishop might be replaced with Head of Research and Development.

Cardinal or Pope might be replaced with General, Admiral, or CEO (Chief Executive Officer).

Level of Technology: What tools and amenities are available to them? What about transport?

  1. Hunter/Gatherers?
  2. Agricultural/farming?
  3. Greco-Roman metallurgy and technology?
  4. Medieval metallurgy and technology?
  5. Pre-industrial revolution or late Victorian?
  6. Modern-day?
  7. Or do they have a magic-based technology?
  8. How do we get around, and how do we transport goods? On foot, by horse & wagon, train, or space shuttle?

Government: There will be a government somewhere, even if it is just the local warlord. Someone is always in charge because it’s easier for the rest of us that way:

  1. Is it a monarchy, theocracy, or a democratic form of government?
  2. How does the government fund itself?
  3. How are taxes levied?
  4. Is it a feudal society?
  5. Is it a clan-based society?
  6. How does the government use and share the available wealth?
  7. How do the citizens view the government?

Crime and the Legal System: What constitutes criminal behavior, and how are criminals treated?

Foreign Relations: Does your country coexist well with its neighbors?

  • If not, why? What causes the tension?
Excalibur London_Film_Museum_ via Wikipedia

Excalibur, London Film Museum via Wikipedia

Waging War: This is another area where we have to ask what their level of technology is. It is critical for you, as the author, to understand what weapons your characters will bring to the front. You must also know what the enemy will be packing. Do the research and choose weaponry that fits your established level of technology.

  • What kind of weaponry will they use?
  • How are they trained?
  • Who goes to battle? Men, women, or both?
  • How does social status affect your ability to gain rank in the military?

A common trope in fantasy is magic, which brings up the need to train magic-gifted people. Do your sorcerers/mages rely on

  • dumb luck and experimentation?
  • apprenticing to sorcerers?
  • training by religious orders?
  • or as in the case of Harry Potter, a school of some sort? What are the rules of your magic?

The Church/Temple is the governing power in many real-world historical societies. The head of the religion is the ruler, and the higher one rises within the religious organization, the more power one has. The same is true of both universities and research facilities.

Power in the hands of only a few people offers many opportunities for mayhem. Zealous followers may inadvertently create a situation where the leader believes they are anointed by the Supreme Deity. Even better, they may become the God-Emperor/Empress.

lute-clip-artThe same sort of God complex occurs among academicians and scientists. Some people are prone to excess when presented with the opportunity to become all-powerful.

If you were unsure what your plot was before you got to this stage, now you might have a real villain, one presented to you by your society.

What sort of society do you envision in your world? How does that culture shape your characters?

Being the leader means bearing responsibility when things go wrong. Scrambling to keep things afloat occurs far more often than basking in the glory.

When things are going well, it’s good to be the queen.

However, the Tiara of Shame weighs heavily when things go awry—and that is when we have a story.

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February 27, 2023 · 6:00 am

Characterization – The Art of Naming Characters #amwriting

When laying down the first draft of a work in progress, I always give every walk-on a name, right down to the dog. I generally write with an outline, but during NaNoWriMo, my stream of consciousness takes over, and the story veers away from the outline.

namesOnce NaNoWriMo is over, I try to shave my cast of thousands down to a reasonable level.

What is the optimal number of characters for a book? Some say only four, others fifteen. I say introduce however many characters it takes to tell the story but use common sense.

I now have 3 hard and fast rules for deciding who should be named and who should not. Sometimes I am good at following them. Other times—not.

  1. Is this character someone the reader should remember?Even if they offer information the protagonist and reader must know, it doesn’t necessarily mean they must be named. Throw-away characters provide clues to help our protagonist complete their quest. Also, they can show us something about the protagonist and give hints about their personality or past.
  2. Does the person return later in the story, or are they just set dressing? Are they part of the scenery of, say, a coffee shop or a store? They don’t need a name if they are only a component of world-building.
  3. Only give names to characters who advance the plot.

In my experience as a reader, the pacing an author is trying to establish comes to a halt when a character who is only included for the ambiance has too much time devoted to them. If they are set dressing, they should be nameless.

When we are writing a scene, ask yourself these questions:

  • Do these people advance the plot?
  • Do they help or hinder the protagonist in some crucial way?
  • Do they provide essential background information we won’t get any other way?
  • Is their presence a necessary part of world-building?

storybyrobertmckeeTake a second look at the characters in each scene and remove those with no real purpose. (Save everything you cut in a separate file—you might want to reuse these characters someday.)

This is true of a novel, a screenplay, or a short story. Names alert us, telling us a character will have an important role in the story.

  • Ask yourself if the character is an example of “Chekhov’s Gun.”
  • Does this character serve a purpose the reader must know? If not, don’t give them a name.

Novelists can learn a lot about writing a good, concise scene from screenwriters.

  • An excellent book on craft, and one I highly recommend, is Story by Robert McKee.

We want the reader to stay focused on the protagonist(s) and their story. In the second draft, we hunt for the distractions we may have inadvertently introduced in our first draft. Having too many named characters in a scene is easy to fix.

  • We remove side characters from the scene if they have nothing to contribute.
  • Walk-on characters can be identified in general terms. The reader will move on and forget about them.

When Joley entered the café, all the seats were taken but one at the counter between a man in paint-stained coveralls and a woman with a briefcase at her feet. She caught Nathan’s eye, and he brought her a coffee. “We need to talk,” she whispered.

“I get off at four,” he replied. He refilled several coffees at the counter, then carried the pot to the tables.

The tendency to make every character a memorable person is one we can’t indulge. The reader will become confused if too many characters are named.

When I first began writing full-time, I learned a lesson the hard way about naming characters. I have a main character named Marya in one of my early novels, and she’s central to the series. Also, in the first book, a side character was important enough to have a name, but my mind must have been in a rut when I thought that one up. For some stupid reason, I named her Marta.

You can probably see where this is going—the two names are nearly identical.

name quote, richard II shakespeareWhat is even worse, halfway through the first draft of the second book in the series, Marta suddenly was a protagonist with a significant storyline. She actually becomes Marya’s mother-in-law in the third book. Fortunately, I was in the final stage of editing book one for publication. I immediately realized I had to make a major correction: Marta was renamed Halee.

But how do names play out in real life? In my family, “Robert” is a recurring name.

My father was named Robert, and my two brothers are both named Robert (with different middle names). My mother’s younger brother is also a Robert. My younger brother’s son is named Robert, as is his son. We have a Bob, a Little Bob, a Rob, a Bobby, a Robby, and a Quatro. Two Bobs are no longer with us, but the confusion continues with each new generation of Roberts in our family.

I took this absurdity to an extreme in Billy Ninefingers. In Waldeyn, the most common boy’s name is William, which is why Billy MacNess embraces the name his mercenaries give him after the injury – Billy Ninefingers. In that novel, anyone named William generally goes by their last name or their trade. Think Mason, Sawyer, etc., etc.

Other than Billy Ninefingers, where the overuse of one name was intentional and integral to the story, my personal rule is to NEVER name two characters so that the first and last letters of their names are the same.

I try never to have two names that begin with the same letter, but that becomes difficult.

But in a scene, who should go and who should stay? And what is the optimal number of characters for a book? Some say only four, others fifteen.

I feel an author should introduce however many characters it takes to tell the story but should also use common sense.

One last thing to consider: how will that name be pronounced when read aloud? You may not want to get too fancy with the spelling, so a reader can easily read that name aloud. You may not think that matters, but it does.

I read Tad Williams’ Memory Sorrow and Thorn series aloud to my youngest daughter when she was old enough to appreciate and understand it. (I was too cheap to pay for cable television, and it kept my teenager from being bored.) I will just say that while his narrative is brilliant and engrossing, many of those names took some practice to say without stumbling.

Epic Fails meme2Names are also a component of world-building. While recording Tales from the Dreamtime, a novella consisting of three fairy tales, my narrator had trouble pronouncing the names of two characters. This happened because I had written the names so they would feel foreign and look good on paper.

Despite my experience of reading fantasy books aloud to my children, it didn’t occur to me that the names were unpronounceable as they were written. We ironed that out, but that hiccup taught me to spell names the way they’re pronounced whenever possible.

In conclusion, don’t confuse your readers by giving unimportant walk-on characters names.

Never give two characters names that are nearly identical.

Do consider making your spellings of names and places pronounceable just in case you decide to have your novel made into an audiobook.

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February 24, 2023 · 6:00 am

#FineArtFriday: The Milkmaid by Johannes Vermeer (revisited)

What I love about this painting:

It seems like a good time to revisit Vermeer’s famous painting, known as “the Milkmaid.” This is lovely look into the past, a window into daily life of 1657 – 1658. I love the realism, the way the maid carefully pours the milk into the bread.

All of Vermeer’s known works illustrate how the quiet moments in life can be the most profound.

Wikipedia has many things to say about this painting.

About Johannes Vermeer, the Master of Light (from Wikipedia)

Johannes Vermeer (October 1632 – December 1675) was a Dutch painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle-class life. He was a moderately successful provincial genre painter in his lifetime but evidently was not wealthy, leaving his wife and children in debt at his death, perhaps because he produced relatively few paintings.

Vermeer worked slowly and with great care, and frequently used very expensive pigments. He is particularly renowned for his masterly treatment and use of light in his work.

Vermeer painted mostly domestic interior scenes. “Almost all his paintings are apparently set in two smallish rooms in his house in Delft; they show the same furniture and decorations in various arrangements and they often portray the same people, mostly women.”

He was recognized during his lifetime in Delft and The Hague, but his modest celebrity gave way to obscurity after his death. He was barely mentioned in Arnold Houbraken‘s major source book on 17th-century Dutch painting (Grand Theatre of Dutch Painters and Women Artists), and was thus omitted from subsequent surveys of Dutch art for nearly two centuries. In the 19th century, Vermeer was rediscovered by Gustav Friedrich Waagen and Théophile Thoré-Bürger, who published an essay attributing 66 pictures to him, although only 34 paintings are universally attributed to him today. Since that time, Vermeer’s reputation has grown, and he is now acknowledged as one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age. [2]

About the featured painting, The Milkmaid, also from Wikipedia:

Despite its traditional title, the picture clearly shows a kitchen or housemaid, a low-ranking indoor servant, rather than a milkmaid who actually milks the cow, in a plain room carefully pouring milk into a squat earthenware container (now commonly known as a “Dutch oven”) on a table. Also on the table are various types of bread. She is a young, sturdily built woman wearing a crisp linen cap, a blue apron and work sleeves pushed up from thick forearms. A foot warmer is on the floor behind her, near Delft wall tiles depicting Cupid (to the viewer’s left) and a figure with a pole (to the right). Intense light streams from the window on the left side of the canvas.

The painting is strikingly illusionistic, conveying not just details but a sense of the weight of the woman and the table. “The light, though bright, doesn’t wash out the rough texture of the bread crusts or flatten the volumes of the maid’s thick waist and rounded shoulders”, wrote Karen Rosenberg, an art critic for The New York Times. Yet with half of the woman’s face in shadow, it is “impossible to tell whether her downcast eyes and pursed lips express wistfulness or concentration,” she wrote.

“It’s a little bit of a Mona Lisa effect” in modern viewers’ reactions to the painting, according to Walter Liedtke, curator of the department of European paintings at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and organizer of two Vermeer exhibits. “There’s a bit of mystery about her for modern audiences. She is going about her daily task, faintly smiling. And our reaction is ‘What is she thinking?'” [1]

Credits and Attributions:

The Milkmaid, by Johannes (Jan) Vermeer ca. 1658 [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

[1] Wikipedia contributors, “The Milkmaid (Vermeer),” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Milkmaid_(Vermeer)&oldid=853243011 (accessed August 31, 2018).

[2] Wikipedia contributors, “Johannes Vermeer,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Johannes_Vermeer&oldid=854172655 (accessed August 31, 2018).

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February 22, 2023 · 6:00 am

Writing through the Block #amwriting

We all have moments where our creativity has failed us. Maybe we had an idea, but the words wouldn’t come. Or when they did, they felt stilted, awful. We feel alone and isolated in this because we are writers. The words are supposed to flow from our fingers like water down the Columbia River.

MyWritingLife2021BSome people call this writers’ block. I think of it as a temporary lull in my creativity.

I have learned to write my way through these dry spells. Usually, the work I produce at that moment is awful, and I wouldn’t share it with anyone. But I am a professional writer and the act of writing every day keeps me fit and in the habit of working.

Writing is like participating in sports or playing a musical instrument. We must practice if we want to be good at it. Doing well at writing requires some discipline on our part. I lose my momentum and purpose when I stop writing for any reason.

I lose my passion for my work.

At times, we come to a place where we can’t think of what to write. It happens to everyone, and we each handle it differently. I will share how I deal with lulls in creativity—and I know it’s not a one-size-fits-all solution.

Before we begin, I suggest you save the file you are working on, the one you can’t seem to make headway on. Close it, and delete nothing. You will be able to use this work later, so file it properly.

mindwanderingLIRF02212023Sometimes, the problem is that your mind has seen a shiny thing, a different project that wants to be written, and you can’t focus on the job at hand. If that is the case, work on the project that is on your mind. Let that creative energy flow, and you can reconnect with the first project once the new project is out of the way.

For me, writer’s block manifests not as a block per se. It will appear as an inability to visualize a scene I must write to advance a story. If I can’t picture it, I can’t describe it.

That can be quite frustrating.

Unfortunately, some people have a different experience, one where they have no words whatsoever. They try, they struggle, and nothing comes to them.

This creates a kind of trauma. Once a person has experienced that moment of complete inability, fear of being unable to write can magnify the problem until it paralyzes them.

So what do I do when the words don’t come?

First, I open a new document. At the top of this document, I type: Where I Am Today.

  • I look around myself and see the room I am in, trying to see it with a stranger’s eyes.
  • I briefly describe what the stranger might see on entering that room.
  • Then I describe how I feel sitting in that place at that moment in time.

I write two or three paragraphs just to prove I can do it.

Next, I go somewhere else and take my notebook. I am a stranger there, so I write three more paragraphs detailing how I fit into that new space and how it makes me feel.

You could do this at the mall, a coffee shop, or the parking lot at the supermarket.

Me working in a starbucks, through the fishbowl, copyright Dan Riffero 2013

Me writing in a Seattle Starbucks, taken through a fish tank. I was the big fish in that tank! Photo by Dan Riffero.

The last exercise is more abstract: Where do I want to be? I visualize it and describe my imaginary scene as if I am looking at it.

I want to walk along the high-tide mark on a foggy beach. I want to hear the gulls and the waves. I want to feel at peace again.

It’s weird but writing about nothing in particular is like doodling. It is a form of mind wandering. It can jar your creative mind loose. With perseverance, you will be writing your other work again.

Everyone has family, jobs, and external demands that limit their writing time. Sometimes the world gets in the way of writing. We might feel unwell or have too many things to accomplish and not enough time to get it all done.

WilliamBlakeInfinityAndEternityLIRF05072022In my real life, getting our house ready to put on the market saps my creativity, but I am muddling along. Boxes here and there, getting rid of this and that—it’s exhausting. Sometimes I don’t have the energy to write.

But I sit down and get at least 100 words on paper just to prove I can. That usually leads to a more productive writing session.

The most important thing is to care for my family first. Sometimes just doing laundry can jar an idea loose, and I feel incredibly productive at the same time.

However, when I am stuck for words to write, the most important thing I do is to sit somewhere quiet and let my mind wander.

Daydreaming is good for you. It boosts the brain, making our thought process more effective. Apparently, letting the mind wander allows a kind of ‘default neural network’ to engage when our brain is at wakeful rest, like in meditation, unlike when it’s actively focused on the outside world.

Book- onstruction-sign copyWhen we daydream, our brain is free to process tasks more effectively.

This is good to know because I spend an astounding amount of time daydreaming, and I would hate to be simply wasting time.

This is how my mind works. I hope that what works for me will work for you. Remember, if you are suffering from a temporary dry spell, you are not alone. We all go through those times.

When you want to talk about it, you will find friends here.

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February 20, 2023 · 6:00 am

Characterization: Layers of a Scene #amwriting

Our characters feel real to us, their creators, but the trick is making them seem natural to our readers.

WritingCraftSeries_character-arcWhen I begin writing a first draft, I try to approach writing each scene as if I were shooting a movie. We know that each conversation is an event that must advance the story, but it must also give us glimpses of who each person is.

To that end, dialogue must do at least one (if not all) of these things:

  • Offer information the characters are only now learning.
  • Show the state of mind the characters are experiencing.
  • Show the relationship of the characters to each other.
  • Show the relationship of the characters to their world.

However, dialogue is only one layer of the scene. We try to establish the world environment in the opening pages but world-building is an ongoing task and is a foundational layer of each scene.

  • We continue world-building by showing our characters as they interact with the immediate environment.

In the first stage of the rough draft, I sit down and picture the characters and their relationships, with those goals in mind.

  • Then, I write just the dialogue for several back-and-forth exchanges. I use minimal speech tags for this because I want to get the discussion written down the way I hear it.

I do this in short bursts, getting the basic words down. It’s a two-stage process—the scenery and background get filled in after the dialogue has been written. Here is an example of four lines of dialogue:

Ann: “What are you doing?”

Jon: “Oh, just drawing.”

Ann: “Drawing what?”

Jon: “You’ll laugh or find a reason to mock me for it.”

good_conversations_LIRFmemeHaving the fundamentals of the conversation to work with sharpens the scene in my mind, enabling me to frame it properly. Once I know what they are talking about and have the rudimentary dialogue straight, I add the scenery. Then, I insert the props and add the speech tags. The interaction grows, shedding more light on their relationship.

So let’s take those four lines of dialogue and set them in a kitchen. We have two characters who are wary of each other and have radically different views of their relationship.

The following day, when Ann came down for coffee, she found her stepson was once again working on something in his sketchbook. He stood when she entered, gathering his pens. “The coffee should be ready.”

“What are you doing?” Ann’s clipped tones cut the silence.

“Oh, just drawing.”

“Drawing what?”

Jon’s expression was closed, indecipherable. “You’ll laugh or find a reason to mock me for it.” He shut his sketchbook and stood, intending to leave her to her breakfast.

“Show me. Please.” When Ann repeated her demand, he reluctantly opened the book. Page after page was covered in stylized dragons, leafy vines, and runes. “Why do you waste your time with this crap? You could be brilliant, but no. People want real art, not fairies and dragons.”

“Art is not reserved just for some elite aficionado. Everyone has a different idea of it, and what appeals to you doesn’t appeal to everyone. This is how I earn my living, even though it’s not up to your standards.”

Ann poured herself a cup of coffee. “You could do so much better. I’ve tried to steer you toward success, but—”

“Stop it. I’m happy with my life.” Jon reclaimed the sketchbook. “Tim was right. Coming back was a mistake. We did it because Dad asked us to and because it’s Christmas.” He opened the door to the dining room. “Enjoy your breakfast, and don’t start in on Tim when he gets up.” The door closed behind him.

Ann gripped her cup. Where had she gone wrong? Why couldn’t the boys see how much she cared? All she had ever wanted was for them to be successful and happy.

Plot-exists-to-reveal-characterMy above sample is not perfect, as it is from the first draft of a short story I never actually finished, but you get the idea. We learn more about the characters’ relationship with each other and see their place in this environment. The layers that form this scene are:

Action: Jon, one of our protagonists, has risen first and made coffee. He sits in the kitchen drawing in his sketchbook. An adversarial conversation ensues. Later he gathers his pens, stands, and leaves the room.

Dialogue: The conversation illuminates long-simmering differences between the two players and gives us a time reference—it’s Christmas. It also hints that the father wants the family to be reunited.

Internal Dialogue: Ann’s thoughts offer us the first glimpse of her reasoning. Tim and Jon are stepbrothers, but they were raised together and consider themselves brothers. Ann loves them fiercely, Jon as much as Tim, and we see the first indication of her inner battle in the story. We learn more about the family dynamics that must be overcome if their Christmas is to be saved.

Environment: a kitchen, closed off from the rest of the house. In this story, the woman’s closed-off kitchen symbolizes her closed-off personality. The place that is the heart of a home is closed off.

As the story progresses, we find Ann is at odds with her own son as well as her stepson and is gradually losing her husband to dementia. She’s afraid and needs emotional support from Tim and Jon but is her own worst enemy.

No matter the plot or setting, each scene we write should be formed of layers:

  • environment
  • props
  • characters

chekhovs gun layers of a sceneSet dressing (the props you place in the scene) shows the immediate environment. Having characters interact with props provides opportunities to insert hints that a deeper backstory exists. However, only have them interact with props that are organic or crucial to the story. This eliminates the problem of Chekhov’s Gun.

Because they are layered into the work, the scenery and props become unobtrusive. This allows the conversation to show the reader everything they need to know about our characters at a singular moment in time. It also gives us logical places for introspection and foreshadowing, integral aspects of pacing.

I can get the words down before I forget them by starting with the dialogue that will form the basis for each scene. Then I can concentrate on visualizing the conversation’s setting and decide what props to insert. The items I place in that scene must show something about the characters who interact with them.

As the story progresses along the plot arc, readers are gradually shown the world these characters live in. They will see that world without our having to dump a floor plan or itinerary on the reader. Remember our basic conversation?

“What are you doing?”

“Oh, just drawing.”

“Drawing what?”

“You’ll laugh or find a reason to mock me for it.”

We could put that exact dialogue and the notebook into a fantasy setting, sci-fi, or any other genre. The book’s plot would change what the conversation reveals about the two characters.

Each scene has a purpose, which is to reveal information and move the plot forward. All it takes is a few lines of dialogue and a moment of introspection on the part of the point-of-view character.

Characterization definitionBy beginning with the conversation and envisioning each scene as if I were filming a movie, I can flesh it out and show everything the reader needs to hang their imagination on. The reader’s mind will supply the details of the immediate setting depending on the clues I give.

We try to layer conversations and world-building to bring depth to our characters. When we do it right, the possibilities are endless.

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February 17, 2023 · 6:00 am

#FineArtFriday: Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (Luncheon on the Grass) by Claude Monet ca. 1865

Monet_dejeunersurlherbeArtist: Claude Monet (1840–1926)

Title: French: Déjeuner sur l’herbe (English: Luncheon on the Grass) Central panel

Depicted people:

Date: between 1865 and 1866

Medium: oil on canvas

Dimensions: height: 248 cm (97.6 in) width: 217 cm (85.4 in)

Collection: Musée d’Orsay

Place of creation: Chailly-en-Bière

What I love about this painting:

This painting may be unfinished, but in this section, the central panel, Monet gives us a beautiful day, sunny and warm. It’s a perfect day for a picnic with friends, to forget the stresses of life and just enjoy the beauty of the world around you. It’s the perfect counterfoil to my often-gloomy Pacific Northwestern winter, the kind of day that gives me hope that a pleasant spring waits just a few weeks away.

Thank you, Monsieur Monet. I needed this glimpse of summer.

About this painting via Wikipedia:

Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (English: Luncheon on the Grass) is an 1865–1866 oil on canvas painting by Claude Monet, produced in response to the 1863 work of the same title by Édouard Manet. It remains unfinished, but two large fragments (central and left panels) are now in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, whilst a smaller 1866 version is now in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.

Monet included the artist Gustave Courbet in the painting.

The painting in its whole form shows twelve people. They are clothed in Parisian clothing which was fashionable at that time. They are having a picnic in near a forest glade. All the people are gathered around a white picnic blanket, where food as fruits, cake or wine is located. The mood in this natural space is primarily created by the play of light and shadow, which is created by deciduous tree above them. [1]

About the Artist, via Wikipedia:

Oscar-Claude Monet 14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a French painter and founder of impressionist painting who is seen as a key precursor to modernism, especially in his attempts to paint nature as he perceived it. During his long career, he was the most consistent and prolific practitioner of impressionism’s philosophy of expressing one’s perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein air (outdoor) landscape painting. The term “Impressionism” is derived from the title of his painting Impression, soleil levant, exhibited in 1874 (the “exhibition of rejects”) initiated by Monet and his associates as an alternative to the Salon.

His last time exhibiting with the Impressionists was in 1882—four years before the final Impressionist exhibition.

Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Morisot, Cézanne and Sisley proceeded to experiment with new methods of depicting reality. They rejected the dark, contrasting lighting of romantic and realist paintings, in favour of the pale tones of their peers’ paintings such as those by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot and Boudin. After developing methods for painting transient effects, Monet would go on to seek more demanding subjects, new patrons and collectors; his paintings produced in the early 1870s left a lasting impact on the movement and his peers—many of whom moved to Argenteuil as a result of admiring his depiction. [2]

Credits and Attributions:

IMAGE: Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (Luncheon on the Grass) by Claude Monet ca. 1865 Wikimedia Commons contributors, “File:Monet dejeunersurlherbe.jpg,” Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Monet_dejeunersurlherbe.jpg&oldid=711036251 (accessed February 16, 2023).

[1] Wikipedia contributors, “Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (Monet, Paris),” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Le_D%C3%A9jeuner_sur_l%27herbe_(Monet,_Paris)&oldid=1134534732 (accessed February 16, 2023).

[2] Wikipedia contributors, “Claude Monet,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Claude_Monet&oldid=1137970938 (accessed February 16, 2023).

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February 15, 2023 · 6:00 am

Characterization part 4 – Doling out the Backstory #amwriting

Every story has a past, a present, and hopefully, a future. The past shapes what we know as the here and now. The past also gives history to our characters, so when they first step onto the page, they are formed in the author’s mind and ready to begin their journey.

MyWritingLife2021Every writer knows the backstory is what tells us who the characters are as people and why they’re the way they are. At the beginning of our career, it seems logical to inform the reader of that history upfront. “Before you can understand that, you need to know this.”

As we progress, we learn not to drop the history of the intended conflict in the first five pages of a novel or to waste the first three paragraphs of a short story on it.

We understand that those are the pages and paragraphs editors look at first. From those pages, acquisitions editors will decide whether or not to continue reading the submission.

For those of us planning to go the indie route, those first five pages are what the prospective buyer sees in the “look inside” option when buying an eBook. For us, the prospective reader is the acquisition editor. They will buy the book if they like what they see on those pages.

Walls of fictional history muck up the transitions and negate our hooks. We know that infodumps block the doors from one scene to the next.

strange thoughts 2But knowing this and putting it into action are two different things.

So, how do our favorite authors deliver the backstory and still sell books?

First, they consider what must be accomplished in each scene and allow the backstory to inform the reader only when (and if) it’s needed to advance the plot.

Look at the first scene of your manuscript. Ask yourself three questions.

  1. Who needs to know what?
  2. Why must they know it?
  3. How many words do you intend to devote to it?

Dialogue, both spoken and internal, is the easiest way to dole out information but can be the gateway to an infodump.

  • Don’t give your characters long paragraphs with lines and lines and lines of uninterrupted dialogue. (Trust the voice of experience, please.)

Doling out the information is a double-edged sword, one all authors must learn to wield with skill. Beginnings must be active, yet those precious first lines must step onto the stage in such a way that they are original, informative, and engaging.

After we open with our best work, the passages and chapters that follow must reflect and build upon the tone and cadence of the opening pages. If not, the reader may be disappointed and choose to not buy any more books by us.

We’re all familiar with the term ‘flatlined,’ a medical expression indicating the patient has died. When the story arc is imbalanced, it can flatline in two ways:

  • Not enough backstory: The action becomes random, an onslaught of meaningless events that make no sense.
  • Too much backstory: The pauses become halts, long passages of random info dumps that have little to do with the action.

A good way to avoid this is to have your characters briefly discuss what is on their minds. Then they will bravely muck on to the next event, keeping the story moving at a good pace.

  • Don’t allow conversations to deteriorate into bloated exposition.
  • Do set forth the necessary information.

This can be accomplished in several ways. For my novels and short stories, I tend to write in either a close third-person or first-person point of view, so my comments in this post are geared toward that style of writing.

Short moments of introspection (thinking, reminiscing, etc.) offer opportunities for doling out new information essential to the story. Their thoughts shed light on how they really feel, illuminating their secret fears or voicing knowledge, giving it to the reader at the moment it is needed.

F Scott Fitzgerald on Good Writing LIRF07252022Be aware: if you are writing from an omniscient POV, this can be tricky and lead to “head-hopping,” which can lead to confusion on the reader’s part. When I change point-of-view characters, I do a hard scene or chapter break.

Letters and messages received or written can give needed information.

Conversations between witnesses and adversarial dialogues (quarrels) can shine a light on a festering past. But remember, if you go on for too long, your reader will either skip forward and miss what was really important or close the book and walk away.

Those are only a few ways to briefly open a window for the reader to see who the characters think they are and how the other characters see them. They offer a hint of how the characters became the way they are portrayed.

In the most gripping narratives I have read, character introspection is brief but delivers crucial information. Their internal monologues illuminate a character’s motives at a particular moment in the story arc, cluing the reader in on what is happening and why.

As the plot progresses, conversation and introspection are good opportunities to deliver information not previously discussed.

Consider the most popular genre: Romance novels. These things fly off the shelves. Why?

  • Because the path to love is never straightforward, and a reward awaits the reader who sticks with it.
  • Some characters will have an air of mystery about their past that isn’t fully revealed until the end.

The pacing in a Romance novel is crucial and is something all writers can learn from:

  • It speeds up (a small reward), and
  • Then it is slowed (dangling the carrot),
  • Then, it goes a little ahead (slightly larger reward),
  • But is slowed (enticement),
  • Finally, the two overcome the circumstances and things that have barred the way to their true happiness. (Gratification and endorphins abound.)

Flaubert on writing LORF07252022Romance novels average 50,000 to 70,000 words. In shorter novels, there is no room for sweeping, epic backstories. Instead, information and backstory are meted out only as needed through conversations and internal dialogue/introspection.

All obstacles to the budding romance are followed by small rewards that keep the reader involved and make them more determined to see the happy ending.

As a reader, I can say that a long-winded rant is not a reward.

This holds true in every book and story, regardless of genre: enticement, reward, enticement, reward. In all stories, complications create tension, and information is a reward.

The combination of those elements keeps the reader reading.

It’s difficult to see bloated exposition in my own work, but one trick I have found is this: word count.

I look at each conversation and assess how many words are devoted to each character’s statement and response. Then, when I come to a passage that is inching toward a monologue, I ask myself, “What can be cut that won’t affect the flow or gut the logic of this exchange? Can some of this be moved to a later conversation?”

to err is human to edit divineEven with all the effort I apply to it, my editor will find things that don’t matter. She will gently take a metaphorical axe to it, highlighting that which doesn’t advance the story or add to the intrigue.

Sometimes we write brilliantly; other times, not so much. Sorting the diamonds from the gravel is hard when it comes to doling out the backstory, but your readers will be glad you made an effort.

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February 13, 2023 · 6:00 am

Characterization part 3 – When the Antagonist is a Nebulous Behemoth

Today we’re continuing our discussion of characterization by examining the nebulous antagonist.

WritingCraft_Dark_EnergyIn many thrillers and cyberpunk novels, the faceless behemoth of corporate greed is the overarching antagonist. It can be represented by characters who are portrayed as utterly committed to doing their job and loyal to their employer. In many cyberpunk novels, the antagonists tend to be goons-in-suits, enforcers who work for the corporation.

In fantasy, the nebulous antagonist might be a powerful queen/king or sorcerer whose forces/minions the protagonist must defeat.

The ultimate mind behind the conflict is a person they might not meet face to face. How the protagonist reacts internally to the threat posed by the machinations of those distant antagonists is the story.

While the true enemy might be a faceless power supporting the intrigues of their servants, their laws and rules are the ultimate evil that must be defeated.

Alternatively, the enemy might be a technological breakdown in hard sci-fi and sometimes in contemporary military novels. The novel Level 7 by Mordecai Roshwald was a groundbreaking example of this:

From Wikipedia:

Level7Roshwald (1)Level 7 is a 1959 science fiction novel by the Ukrainian-born Israeli writer Mordecai Roshwald. It is told from the first-person perspective (a diary) of a modern soldier, X-127, living in the underground military complex Level 7, where he and several hundred others are expected to reside permanently. X-127 fulfills the role of ‘push-button’ offensive initiator of his nation’s nuclear weapons capacity against an unspecified enemy. X-127 narrates life within a deep shelter before, during, and after a nuclear war that wipes out the human species. [1]

Just so you know, the book doesn’t end well—I read it in high school.

The enemy could be a military coup or a mega-corporation whose “guards” are really an elite military. A few soldiers could represent the antagonist and enforce their wishes. Getting to know those characters and their motives adds depth to the story.

We’ve all seen disaster movies like Titanic and Twister. We know the enemy can be the environment. Andy Weir in The Martian made the planet of Mars the antagonist.

I love the notion of the faceless behemoth that threatens all we love. When a novel has an immense, nebulous antagonist, the possibilities for creating the hazards that impede the heroes are endless. Giant waves, hurricanes, weapons of mass destruction–these are worthy obstacles our protagonists must surmount.

Fear makes the risk feel genuine to the reader. To show great evil in genre fiction, we take that which is damaging and destructive to an extreme and show the emotion of living through that experience.

When we are writing a story where the root of evil is represented by its minions, the perception of corruption and the evil humans are capable of sometimes horrifies us. As a character, the mega-villain can be shown in the actions of certain employees who don’t consider the human cost of their loyalty.

Tenth_of_DecemberThis type of psychopathic antagonist is explored exceedingly well in George Saunders’ brilliant sci-fi short story, Spiderhead, a short story in the award-winning compilation, Tenth of December.

For a reader, perception and imagination are everything. As children, what we infer from the visible evidence in a dark room after the lights have been turned out can be terrifying.

We’re still subconsciously hunter-gatherers, always watching for lions and tigers (oh my). As children, the formless monster lurking in the darkness of our room terrifies us until we discover the truth: several toys were piled there and never put away.

As adults, what we infer from the visible evidence in a dark story can be equally terrifying. Thus, you can write dark, frightening scenes but don’t have to be utterly graphic.

No matter how right the cause, war is an evil that is too large to personify and is challenging to make sympathetic. But sometimes, war, a faceless blob of evil, is the proper villain for the narrative. We represent that evil in the actions taken by the characters.

I try to choose a single word (and its synonyms) to characterize my antagonist, even when it is something as significant as a pandemic. That one word becomes the theme, the underpinning of how evil is portrayed.

In one of my practice short stories, I used the word escape as the theme. The first paragraph opens with that word, and every synonym for escape is used to underscore that thread woven throughout the story.

Another example is the word corruption. We tend to think of it as referring only to illegal activities, but it has many meanings and uses. Its synonyms are bribery, debasement, debauchery, decadence, degeneracy, distortion, exploitations, fraud, and immorality.

We view the antagonist through the protagonist’s eyes, so a strong theme that colors the enemy with a perception of corruption drives home the evil they represent.

Someone—and I wish I could remember who—said a few years ago in a seminar that the author is the character’s attorney, not their judge.

This is an important distinction and applies to villains as much as it does the heroes.

theRealStoryLIRF01102021When evil is a behemoth on the order of a mega-corporation or a military coup, the villains who represent it all have reasons for their loyalty. They’re like the hero; they care intensely, obsessively about something or someone. They have logical motives for supporting what we are portraying as the enemy. Our job as authors is to make those deeply held justifications the driving force behind their story.

True villains are motivated, logical in their reasoning, and utterly convinced of their moral high ground. They are creatures of emotion and have a backstory. As the author and their lawyer, you must know what their narrative is if you want to increase the risk for the protagonist.

As always, the reader doesn’t need to wade through an info dump, but you, the author, need to know those details. Having this backstory to draw on will make your characters easier to flesh out. Hints of their thought processes and motivations will emerge gradually.

But more importantly, once we know what drives them all, we know what is at stake for those who represent your antagonist. You will understand how much they are willing to sacrifice for it.

Credits and Attributions:

Wikipedia contributors, “Level 7 (novel),” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Level_7_(novel)&oldid=1132228006 (accessed February 12, 2023). [1]

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February 10, 2023 · 6:00 am

#FineArtFriday: California Spring by Albert Bierstadt 1875

Albert_Bierstadt_California_SpringArtist: Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902)

Title: California Spring

Genre: landscape art

Date: 1875

Medium: oil on canvas

Dimensions: height: 187.3 cm (73.7 in); width: 264.2 cm (104 in)

Current location: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

What I love about this painting:

I love this composition, the way everything is deliberately placed. Cattle graze on a hilltop beneath a grove of trees, uncaring of the rainstorm sweeping across the valley below, far off in the distance. The immensity of the sky is the focus of this scene, with the sun emerging from the clouds, a brief promise of warmer days. Spring has arrived on this hilltop.

Here at Casa del Jasperson, we’re tired of winter, done with rain and dark days. Albert Bierstadt paints us an idyllic scene of seasonal weather and the harmony of nature. The grass is green, the cattle are happy, and while rain may come, summer is around the corner.

About the artist, via Wikipedia:

Albert Bierstadt (January 7, 1830 – February 18, 1902) was a German American painter best known for his lavish, sweeping landscapes of the American West. He joined several journeys of the Westward Expansion to paint the scenes. He was not the first artist to record the sites, but he was the foremost painter of them for the remainder of the 19th century.

Bierstadt was born in Prussia, but his family moved to the United States when he was one year old. He returned to study painting for several years in Düsseldorf. He became part of the second generation of the Hudson River School in New York, an informal group of like-minded painters who started painting along the Hudson River. Their style was based on carefully detailed paintings with romantic, almost glowing lighting, sometimes called luminism. Bierstadt was an important interpreter of the western landscape, and he is also grouped with the Rocky Mountain School. [1]

Credits and Attributions:

Image: Wikimedia Commons contributors, “File:Albert Bierstadt California Spring.jpg,” Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Albert_Bierstadt_California_Spring.jpg&oldid=701053175 (accessed February 9, 2023).

[1] Wikipedia contributors, “Albert Bierstadt,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Albert_Bierstadt&oldid=1137881139 (accessed February 9, 2023).

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February 8, 2023 · 6:00 am

Characterization part two – writing subtle emotions and reactions

Most writers find it easy to connect with flamboyant emotions, such as hate, anger, desire, and adoration. However, emotions have “volume,” ranging from soft to loud. Today we are looking at emotions we need to show with less noise.

mood-emotions-1-LIRF09152020Volume control is a crucial part of the overall pacing of your story. “Loud” deafens us and loses its power when it’s the only sound. However, like the opening movement of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, the entire range of volume can be effectively used to create a masterpiece.

Subtle reactions have power when contrasted against more forceful displays of emotion.

Low-key thoughts and feelings can go almost unnoticed. Under the surface, positive or negative vibes give us a rounded view of a character, making them less two-dimensional, a more natural person.

We’re all aware of one positive emotion that can go bad – love. When love is reciprocated, it’s a positive feeling. We all enjoy a good love story.

However, when love starts out with promise and then goes terribly wrong, you have the makings of a deep, dark story filled with possibilities. Anger, despair, revenge—these can be loud and also be subtle, brooding.

Maas_Emotional_Craft_of_FictionDark emotions, such as depression, can be shown through a character’s reactions to things that once pleased them. Perhaps they no longer find beauty in the things they once enjoyed.

What about lighter emotions? The way we feel joy ranges from mild to overwhelming, from a slight smile to an experience so profound it brings tears to one’s eyes.

Subtle emotions don’t stand out and grab the reader. But when they’re swimming just under the surface, they have impact. Subtleties color and shape the reader’s opinions about the story and the characters.

One negative aspect of our human character is our tendency to experience an uncharitable emotion known as schadenfreude. We all go through it on a personal level every now and then. Some people take great joy in it, gaining a sense of superiority. But most of us are embarrassed to admit to it.

Small, quiet emotions linger and leave an impression but are hard to articulate. It helps to include small indicators of mood such as:

  1. Anguish
  2. Anxiety
  3. Competence
  4. Confidence in their friends
  5. Cooperation
  6. Courage
  7. Decisiveness
  8. Defeat
  9. Defensiveness
  10. Depression
  11. Discovery
  12. Ethical Quandaries
  13. Group ethics
  14. Happiness
  15. Inadequacy
  16. Indecision
  17. Individual moral courage
  18. Jealousy
  19. Paranoia
  20. Powerlessness
  21. Purposefulness
  22. Regret
  23. Resistance
  24. Revelation
  25. Satisfaction
  26. Self-confidence
  27. Serenity
  28. Strength
  29. Success
  30. Sufficiency
  31. Temptation
  32. Trust
  33. Unease
  34. Weakness

These attributes are rarely spelled out, but they color how the characters interact with each other.

Some positive emotions can be more intense, yet not overpowering. Those moments can be shown by an immediate physical reaction combined with internal dialogue or conversations.

Severe emotional shock strikes us with a one-two-three punch: the disbelief/OMG moment, followed by knocking knees, shaking hands, or a shout of “No!” which is sometimes followed by disassociation.

emotion-thesaurus-et-alVisceral reactions are involuntary—we can’t stop our face from flushing or our heart from pounding. We can pretend it didn’t happen or hide it, but we can’t stop it. An internal physical gut reaction is difficult to convey without offering the reader some information, a framework to hang the image on.

We use the same one-two-three trick when describing a mild experience as we do with louder emotions.

Start with the visceral response. There will be an instant reaction. How does a “gut reaction” feel? Nausea, gut-punch, butterflies … how do you respond to internal surprises?

Emotions are felt in the chest in varying degrees, from a slight warmth or chill to a stronger heart-pounding sensation. But we’re keeping it subdued here.

Follow the visceral up with a thought-response. Whatever your style and word choices are, showing the characters’ joy or dismay makes them human. If it is a mild reaction, give it a moderate thought response. Showing small moments of relatable happiness or displeasure makes our protagonist more sympathetic.

Third, finish up with body language. That is how emotions hit us. We feel the shock and then experience the mental reaction as we process the event. Our body language reflects these things.

What if you are writing a story where one of the antagonists eventually becomes part of the protagonist’s inner circle? Including small positive thoughts early on in their narrative can foreshadow that this character may become the ally that turns the tide.

Conversely, when the antagonist begins as part of the protagonist’s inner circle, minor negatives like envy and schadenfreude in their narrative can foreshadow that this character is not what they seem.

ICountMyself-FriendsConflict keeps the protagonist from achieving their goals. Significant conflicts and emotions are easy to write about. But in real life, our smaller, more internal conflicts frequently create more significant roadblocks to success than any antagonist might present.

Large emotions are easy to visualize. But frequently, in real life, our smaller joys have a longer-lasting impact, and the memory of these can be the impetus that keeps the soldier fighting during the darkest hours.

If we contrast the loud emotions against the soft ones, the reader will experience those emotions as if they are theirs. The story detailed in that book will be more meaningful to them.

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