Tag Archives: writing

March 28, 2025 · 6:00 am

#FineArtFriday: Seal Rock by Albert Bierstadt

Artist: Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902)

Title: Seal Rock

Genre: marine art

Date: 1880s

Medium: oil on canvas

Dimensions:   height: 105 cm (41.3 in)

What I love about this painting:

It is a blustery day on the cold, wild sea. The sun briefly shines through, illuminating the rocks, glowing through a cresting wave. This is a masterful depiction of the scene, painted later in his life. It is dynamic and dramatic, conveying the power of the waves and the emotion of the scene.

Despite the efforts of the sea to wash them away, the rocks stand strong, offering a safe place for the seals.

As an avid watcher of nature shows, I love this painting.  Bierstadt captures these seals doing all the things seals do. They are fishing, lounging, and several pairs are apparently arguing.

Not unlike my family when we go out to lounge on a rock beside the sea.

 

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: Seal Rock by Albert Bierstadt, Wikimedia Commons contributors, “File:Seal Rock by Albert Bierstadt, c. 1872-1887, oil on canvas – New Britain Museum of American Art – DSC09221.JPG,” Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Seal_Rock_by_Albert_Bierstadt,_c._1872-1887,_oil_on_canvas_-_New_Britain_Museum_of_American_Art_-_DSC09221.JPG&oldid=975772252 (accessed March 27, 2025).

[1] Wikipedia contributors, “Albert Bierstadt,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Albert_Bierstadt&oldid=1277160716 (accessed March 27, 2025).

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March 24, 2025 · 6:00 am

Idea to story part 8 – world-building and society #writing

We have been plotting a novel for the last seven weeks in our series, Idea to Story. The previous installments are listed below, but at this point, we have our two main characters, Val (Valentine), a lady knight, and the enemy, Kai Voss, a court sorcerer. Both are regents for the sickly, underage king.

We also have our ultimate enemy, Donovan Dove, Kai’s half-brother and most trusted advisor. We have plotted our basic story arc (an enemies-to-lovers romance) and have a working title that speaks to the genre of romantasy (fantasy romance), Valentine’s Gambit.

We have allowed the characters to tell us the story, and we have begun building their world, placing the set dressing in each scene.

But we have more world-building to do. This is background info that will be hinted at in the narrative, shown in small ways rather than dumped. But this is crucial information for us, the author, as it tells us why our characters see things in a certain way and what their gut reactions will be.

A character’s place in their society affects the way they interact with each other and how they interact with people they meet. Whether they hold a position of privilege or grub the soil on an absentee lord’s estate, they will have assumptions to overcome. Social class is the window through which they view the world, the root of their gut reactions and judgments.

Val (Valentine) comes from a lower middle-class background, having worked her way up through the ranks of the Royal Guard. She was raised by her grandmother, a respected herb-woman and healer for their village. Gran gave Val the best education she could, teaching her to read and write and count coins, insisting she speak properly. “People don’t respect you when you use gutter-talk.”

The fact that she was educated in the basics and taught early in life to speak properly is why she was able to rise through the ranks to become Captain of the Royal Guard.

Val’s regional accent gives away the area she grew up in, and she speaks more like a member of the merchant class than a peasant. A soldier at heart, she dislikes court dinners but attends them because she is one of Edward’s guardians.

Let’s just say that Val has a lot to learn about her assumptions.

Kai is the sheltered heir to an earldom. He is highly educated but completely ignorant of many things that the majority of people in their society are familiar with. Our sorcerer is fully at home at court, the epitome of what a nobleman of his society should be. He will lose everything he has ever known, and like Val, his most cherished assumptions will be challenged entirely by the time we reach the midpoint of the story.

In most communities, a family’s social class determines their level of education and the neighborhood in which they grow up. Local dialect forms their casual speech habits and regional accents.

No one “has no accent,” although some will claim that. We all have an accent that reflects our roots.

We sound like the people in our hometown unless we make a conscious effort to erase our roots. If dialect is holding us back, we might retrain ourselves to sound more like what we perceive as the upper echelons of society, to make ourselves sound “posh.”

World-building requires us to ask questions of the story we are writing. I go somewhere quiet and consider the world my characters will inhabit. I have a list of points to consider when deciding where my characters fit in in their society. Here are a few of them:

First, who has the wealth?

  • Is there a noble class?
  • Is there a servant class?
  • Are those who enter religious orders a separate 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?

  • What is taboo? What is “simply not done” among that group?

In any village or town, someone is always in charge. There will be a government of some sort, an overall system of restraint and control. Think of it as a pyramid, a few at the top ruling over a broad base of citizens.

Something to consider if you are writing historical fiction or fantasy: In a medieval-type society, the accepted age for when a child becomes legally an adult will be much younger than we consider it today. When the majority of people die before the age of forty, adulthood comes at the same time as puberty. This includes kings and queens.

  • Regardless of their age, the ruling class might be unaware of how their decisions affect the lower classes.

Val is determined to raise young King Edward to understand even the lowest of his subjects and have compassion for them. At first, Kai doesn’t think sheltering him from the realities of peasant life is a problem, but by the end of the story, he will be Val’s strongest ally.

This is because Kai will see firsthand that war breaks up families. It takes the laborers out of the fields and puts them on the front lines, limiting food production.

He will understand that while this hurts everyone in one way or another, it destroys trade, harming the merchant class. The toils of war fall heaviest upon the peasant class, but the middle class pays society’s bills.

A common trope in fantasy is magic, which brings up the need to train magic-gifted people like Kai and Donovan. Will our sorcerers/mages rely on dumb luck and experimentation? Will they apprentice themselves to other sorcerers?

  • Or, as in the case of Harry Potter, are they graduates of a school of some sort?

Magic does come into Val and Kai’s story, so we will discuss how magic can make or break a fantasy before the end of this series.

The Church/Temple is the governing power in many real-world historical societies. Some religions shape how their followers view and interact with the world.

Religion does not come into Val and Kai’s story other than in a peripheral way, but it might in yours.

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.

Donovan is our ultimate villain. He is highly educated and privileged but has been shaped by the way his society views his illegitimacy. Beneath the urbane exterior he presents to the world is a man who profoundly resents his father’s casual assumption that he is satisfied to be subordinate to Kai—just because his younger brother was born from the right mother.

We DO NOT want to turn him into a cartoon villain, but he needs to be very dark and complicated.

Next week, we will look at how to ensure that the available technology we write into the narrative fits the era in which we set the story as well as the genre we choose to write in.

PREVIOUS IN THIS SERIES:

Idea to story, part 1: novel, poetry, memoir, or short story? #writing | Life in the Realm of Fantasy

Idea to story part 2: thinking out loud #writing | Life in the Realm of Fantasy

Idea to story part 3: plotting out loud #writing | Life in the Realm of Fantasy

Idea to story part 4 – the roles of side characters #writing | Life in the Realm of Fantasy

Idea to story part 5 – plotting treason #writing | Life in the Realm of Fantasy

Idea to story part 6 – Plotting the End #writing | Life in the Realm of Fantasy

Idea to story part 7 – Building the world #writing | Life in the Realm of Fantasy

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March 17, 2025 · 6:00 am

Idea to story part 7 – Building the world #writing

We have just finished the first six parts in our story creation series. We talked about developing characters and allowing them to help us plot our story, and the links to those posts are down below. Now, we’re going to let our characters show us the environment and landscape of their world.

First, even though the sample plot we’ve been working with is for a pseudo-medieval fantasy, you don’t have to write in that genre to benefit from listening to your characters. Our characters will tell us what their world looks like, no matter what genre we set it in.

The plot of our sample story as it evolved over the last six weeks tells us it will be set in several places: a castle fortress, a manor house, a cottage in an as-yet-nameless village, and a hut in a forest.

One problem I have noticed as an avid reader is the tendency to build contradictions into the geography of our world. It happens as we lay the story down on paper, expanding scenes and interactions. One of my favorite authors is consistently guilty of this despite having published more than eighty novels.

We don’t want to build flaws into our narrative, but we all want to speed up the process of finishing the first draft.

I find a small, hand-scribbled map is the best way to do this. I begin with the opening location, and each time the group goes somewhere, I add it to my map. That way, I have them going in the right direction consistently, and it takes the same length of time to get there each time they must make the journey.

All we need is some idea of directions and distances, an idea of how long it takes to travel using the standard mode of transportation.

In my own writing, I keep the visuals simple, basing the plants and topography on the Pacific Northwest, where I live. It’s a lot less work to write what we are familiar with when it comes to flora and fauna, as well as mountains and seas.

When Val looks out the window, she sees a hilly country covered in a forest of firs and cedar trees interspersed with clearings. Wherever a giant tree has fallen, sunlight creates places where ash, maples, and cottonwoods find fertile soil. In turn, those trees offer shelter to the young seedlings of the fir and cedars, ensuring that the forest continues its cycle of life.

When Val and Kai move their troops for the final battle, they must travel over hills and valleys and cross rivers. They must know where the villages that are sympathetic to them are and avoid those controlled by the enemy.

  • As the rough draft evolves, sometimes towns must be renamed or may have to be moved to more logical places.
  • Whole mountain ranges may have to be moved or reshaped so our characters encounter forests and savannas where they are supposed to be in the story.

The topography isn’t the only thing Guard Captain Val must contend with from day one. It’s a fantasy so there may be rare beasts to deal with.

Also, when we decided she was captain of the royal guard and co-regent for young King Edward, we implied a Renaissance level of technology. This means they are pre-industrial, relying on horses, mules, and oxen for personal transportation and transporting goods. Thus, wagons, carts, and carriages will provide transportation when one doesn’t want to ride horseback or must transport large quantities of goods.

We will go into how available technology affects what our characters can do later in this series.

Any story set in prehistorical times is a fantasy, as the author must imagine social interactions and environments based on the information available in the archeological record.

  • Historical eras are those where written records have been archived and passed down to us.
  • Any story set in a society without written records is a fantasy–no matter what genre you label it with. Although mythology, conjecture, and theorizing abound, few scientific facts exist until an archeological expedition can investigate any artifacts and ruins they left behind. And even then, there will be a certain literary license to the archaeologist’s conclusions.

If you are setting your novel in a real-world city as it currently exists, make good use of Google Earth. Bookmark it now, even if you live in that town, as the maps you will generate will help you stay on track.

Our characters will reveal the sights, sounds, and scents of their world to us. They will tell us if they feel at home in the forest, as Val does. Or they will indicate unease and fear, as Kai does when he is thrown into an environment he has never experienced.

The metallic aftertaste of terror overrode the musty scents of damp earth and rotting leaves. The rank odor of startled skunk lingered, but the occasional calls of small forest creatures went on around him as if everything were normal. It wasn’t, but hell would freeze before he admitted it. As cold as it was, it probably had.

When it comes to geography, the “three S’s” of world-building are critical: sights, sounds, and smells. Those sensory elements create what we know of the world. What does your character see, hear, and smell? Taste rarely comes into it except when showing an odor or emotion.

Scene framing is an aspect of world-building. It is the order in which we stage our characters and the visual objects they interact with. It shapes the overall mood and atmosphere of a scene.

The atmosphere of a narrative is a long-term feature of the story, winding through and evolving over the length of the piece. Atmosphere is conveyed by the setting as well as the general emotional state of the characters.

The mood of a story is also long-term, but it is a feeling residing in the background, going almost unnoticed—subliminal. Mood shapes (and is shaped by) the emotions evoked within the story.

Once we have our characters in place, they will show us the furnishings, sounds, and odors that are the visual necessities for that scene. All we have to do is let them do their jobs.

In the first draft, our primary task is to get the bare bones of the settings down. We must write the story as it falls from our imaginations first. For example, I won’t worry about the details of that gorgeous tapestry hanging in King Edward’s bedroom. I’ll just write the scene where Donovan kidnaps him. If the tapestry becomes important later, we’ll have a closer look at it.

World-building gets expanded on or trimmed back during the revision process. It is an aspect of writing that continues through every draft of the manuscript. Beta readers will mention aspects of the world that need attention, and even in the editing process some adjustments will be made.

Next week, we’ll look at the different levels of society that shaped our two main characters. We will see how their most cherished biases were formed, and with that understanding, we will understand how and why the whole debacle that is our story began.

PREVIOUS IN THIS SERIES:

Idea to story, part 1: novel, poetry, memoir, or short story? #writing | Life in the Realm of Fantasy

Idea to story part 2: thinking out loud #writing | Life in the Realm of Fantasy

Idea to story part 3: plotting out loud #writing | Life in the Realm of Fantasy

Idea to story part 4 – the roles of side characters #writing | Life in the Realm of Fantasy

Idea to story part 5 – plotting treason #writing | Life in the Realm of Fantasy

Idea to story part 6 – Plotting the End #writing | Life in the Realm of Fantasy

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March 3, 2025 · 6:00 am

Idea to story part 5 – plotting treason #writing

We have been working on plotting a novel for the last month in our series, Idea to Story. The previous installments are listed below, but at this point we have our two main characters, Val (Valentine), a lady knight, and the enemy, Kai Voss, court sorcerer. Both are regents for the sickly, underage king.

I write fantasy, but every story is the same, no matter the set dressing: Protagonist A needs something desperately, and Antagonist B stands in their way. In this story, Valentine begins as our protagonist, and we are setting Kai up as the visible antagonist.

The plot as it stood last week: Twelve-year-old Edward has been steadily declining in health since the deaths of his parents. His bodyguards, led by Val, believe the court sorcerer has cursed him with a wasting illness. Edward’s other guardian, Kai, and his advisors believe Val is poisoning him.

Kai’s most trusted advisor is his older half-brother, Donovan Dove. Donovan is highly educated and an accomplished mage. However, his mother was a commoner and therefore not allowed to marry his father, so he has been relegated to supporting roles, such as tutoring his younger brother in all aspects of magic and the other gentlemanly arts as befits the heir to their father’s earldom. Their father appointed him as steward of their lands, so he is in charge of running the family estate while Kai is away from home doing his job of tending to the young king’s education.

Donovan is thirty-eight, exceptionally handsome and charming. He gambles well and rarely loses.

  • His nouns are passion, desire, and deceit. His modifiers (adjectives) are suave, worldly, courtly, enigmatic, and devious.
  • Donovan’s verbs are shape, create, mold, conceal, charm.

Donovan’s void is obsession and jealousy.

Our characters have told us what the plot is while we were creating them, by virtue of their personalities: their nouns, verbs, and voids. So, we’re going to allow them to continue telling us what the conflict is, and we will observe and create a framework, a series of guideposts to write to.

We will drop Val and Kai into the soup as soon as the main side characters are in place. We present them with a quest that appears to be the real one but is only a smoke screen concealing the true villain’s motives and allowing him to neatly get rid of them. This first quest gets the story moving and keeps the reader reading.

  • Regardless of genre or plot, this is the place where the characters are set on the path to their destiny.

For this story, we will use a four-act plot arc, dividing the story into quarters. The first act ends with the inciting incident.

The inciting incident is where the protagonists first realize they’re blocked from achieving the desired goal.  In this case, information has come to Val’s attention that someone highly trusted has cursed the young king with a wasting illness. She immediately suspects Kai and moves Edward to a safe place.

Kai has also received information from his most trusted source that Edward is being poisoned. His suspicions immediately fall on Val, whom he believes wishes to take the throne and rule as a warrior queen. When he discovers the king has been taken from the castle (kidnapped, as he believes), he rallies the soldiers loyal to him and mounts a search.

A roadblock arises, as both characters believe the other intends to kill Edward. Val and her soldiers are very good at what they do. Kai attempts to find a way around them, leading to another crisis scene and a stalemate.

The second act ensues with more action leading to more trouble, rising to a pitch when the hidden adversary springs his trap.

  • This is where personal weaknesses are exposed in our two main characters, offering the opportunity for growth.

The way I see this plot now, at the midpoint, both Valentine and Kai Voss are waking up in the dungeon and realizing they have been played by Donovan Dove.

Or, if they aren’t, they should be. After all, the struggle is the story.

Val immediately comprehends what just happened and finds a way to escape. Against her better judgement, she makes a spur of the moment decision to free Kai, who is still in shock. Only now is the mage discovering the magnitude of his brother’s betrayal.

This dungeon scene tells us what the plot needs to be from here onward, and what our true quest is: rescuing Edward before he dies from Donovan’s curse.

We must open each act with a strong scene, an arc of action that illuminates the characters, their wants and emotions. This allows the reader to learn things as the protagonist does. We have the chance to insert subtle clues regarding things the characters are not aware of, knowledge that will affect the plot.

The hints we offer at the beginning and through the first half of the book are important. Foreshadowing piques the reader’s interest and makes them want to know how the book will end. However, we want to keep the real villain and the depth of his villainy secret until the moment Kai and Val stumble into his trap.

Only then will the small clues that all is not as it appears make sense.

I work best when I create a broad outline of the story arc as the characters reveal it to me.  I also like to know how it will end so that I can write to that ending.

  • What moral (or immoral) choice will our protagonists have to make in their attempt to achieve their objective?
  • What happens at the first pinch point? How does the false information come to them?
  • How does Donovan keep his true motives secret until he has Val and Kai where he wants them?
  • How does Donovan dispose of the side characters who deliver the false information he has given them?
  • At the midpoint how is the health and emotional condition of Val and Kai?
  • How will Val and Kai set aside their animosity and learn to trust each other?
  • What is Donovan’s plan now that he has custody of the king?

At the ¾ point, Val and Kai should have gathered some resources and rallied their companions. They should be preparing to rescue Edward and planning how to face Donovan for the final battle.

Subplots should be introduced after the inciting incident has taken place. If you introduce them too soon, they can distract the reader, making for a haphazard story arc. In my opinion, side quests work best if they are presented once the tone of the book and the main crisis has been established, and only if they are necessary to the completion of the final, overarching quest.

How long do you plan the book to be? Take that word count and divide it by 4. Place the culmination of your first major event at the ¼ mark. The following two quarters are the middle. If you have set your first half action up right and have an idea of how the story should end, the middle and the ending should fall into place like dominoes.

PREVIOUS IN THIS SERIES:

Idea to story, part 1: novel, poetry, memoir, or short story? #writing | Life in the Realm of Fantasy

Idea to story part 2: thinking out loud #writing | Life in the Realm of Fantasy

Idea to story part 3: plotting out loud #writing | Life in the Realm of Fantasy

Idea to story part 4 – the roles of side characters #writing | Life in the Realm of Fantasy

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February 24, 2025 · 6:00 am

Idea to story part 4 – the roles of side characters #writing

We are designing a fantasy story, and we are going to write it for us, writing as freely as we want. We’re writing like no one will ever read it but us, so it will be our story, flowing from our vision.

So far, we have created our protagonist and the initial antagonist and have an idea of what their quest is.

We have discovered that our novel might be a Romantasy, as the enemies-to-lovers trope seems to be developing. Now, let’s look at the allies that help our characters as they each strive to fulfill their quest. These are the friends and supporters who enable them to achieve their goals.

The Writer’s Journey, Mythic Structure for Writers, by Christopher Vogler, details the various traditional archetypes that form the basis of most characters in our modern mythology, or literary canon.

The following is the list of character archetypes as described by Vogler:

  1. Hero: someone who is willing to sacrifice his own needs on behalf of others.
  2. Mentor: all the characters who teach and protect heroes and give them necessary gifts.
  3. Threshold Guardian: a menacing face to the hero, but if understood, they can be overcome.
  4. Herald: a force that brings a new challenge to the hero.
  5. Shapeshifters: characters who constantly change from the hero’s point of view.
  6. Shadow: a character who represents the energy of the dark side.
  7. Ally: someone who travels with the hero through the journey, serving a variety of functions, including that of sacrificial lamb.
  8. Trickster: embodies the energies of mischief and desire for change.

Side characters are essential, especially characters with secrets because they are a mystery. Readers love to work out puzzles. However, the job of the supporting cast is to keep the attention focused on the protagonist and the antagonist and their quest.

For that reason, I recommend keeping the number of allies limited. Too many named characters can lead to confusion in the reader. For the sake of simplicity, I am limiting the number of characters in each party to 3 trusted cohorts.

The quest is simple: Our protagonist and antagonist are co-regents of twelve-year-old King Edward. Both seek to keep him alive, but they have radically different ideas about his upbringing. Both believe the other is the cause of Edward’s wasting illness.’

At this point in the planning process, Edward is a MacGuffin, and if he has a personality, it will emerge as time goes on. So, how does Val’s party line up?

  1. First is the ally who is also the trickster. This character is as yet unnamed, but they are the core of Val’s spy network and will be fun to write. This ally will also serve as the sacrificial lamb, bringing pathos into the story.
  2. Val’s second in command fills the role of paladin, a common fantasy character trope. He is a trusted officer in the royal guards. He does not trust the spy, bringing friction and mutual distrust into play and offering opportunities for our spy to vent his humor at the paladin’s expense.
  3. Val’s third ally is a healer, a woman who was young King Edward’s nurse when he was a baby. She also has the role of mentor when wisdom is required.

Our sidekicks are as yet unnamed, BUT we might have our novel made into an audiobook. Thus, we must consider ease of pronunciation when a name is read aloud.

Every core character that the protagonists are surrounded by should project an unmistakable surface persona, characteristics that a reader will recognize as unique from the outset.

Kai Voss will also have three trusted allies.

  1. Kai’s much older (illegitimate) half-brother is also a sorcerer and has long served as Kai’s mentor. He is also the Shadow, the suave, worldly character who subtly brings the energy of the dark side.
  2. Two soldiers have sided with Kai, both firmly believing they are the salvation of the young king. One is the paladin, a man who believes in honor and loyalty to the king and the traditions that he believes in.
  3. One soldier has the role of herald and will be the sacrificial lamb when he uncovers an uncomfortable truth.

From the moment they enter the story, we should see glimpses of weaknesses and fears. We should see hints of the sorrows and guilts that lie beneath their exterior personas. These characters are not the protagonist, so their backstory must emerge as a side note, a justification for their inclusion in the core group.

Old friends have long histories, and the protagonist knows most of their secrets at the outset—but perhaps not all. Unspoken secrets will emerge only at critical points if and when they affect the protagonist or antagonist, and only if they  provide the reader with information they must know.

If these friends are new to the protagonist, their stories should emerge in the form of information needed to complete the quest.

In real life, everyone has emotions and thoughts they conceal from others. Perhaps they are angry and afraid, or jealous, or any number of emotions we are embarrassed to acknowledge. Maybe they hope to gain something on a personal level. If so, what? Small hints revealing those unspoken motives are crucial to raising the tension in the narrative.

As writers, our task is to ensure that each character’s individual story intersects smoothly and doesn’t jar the reader.

To do that, the motivations of the side characters must be clearly defined. You must know how the person thinks and reacts as an individual.

Ask yourself what deep desires push this character onward? Just as you have done with the hero of your story, ask yourself what the side characters’ moral boundaries are and what actions would be out of character for them?

  • Write nothing that seems out of character unless there is a good, justified reason for that behavior or comment.

We want to create empathy in the reader for the group as a whole, but we want to keep the pace of the plot arc moving forward.

Certain plot tricks function well across all genres, from sci-fi to romance, no matter the setting. In most novels, one or more characters are “fish out of water” in that they are immediately thrust into an unfamiliar and possibly dangerous environment.

In our current manuscript, it is our antagonist, Kai Voss, who will be thrust into the unknown by a traitor acting on their secret agenda, and we will talk about that in our next installment.

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February 17, 2025 · 6:00 am

Idea to story part 3: plotting out loud #writing

Last week’s post, Idea to story, part 2: thinking out loud #writing, discussed how plots evolve as I design the main characters for a story. Our two main characters are Val (Valentine), a lady knight, and the enemy, Kai Voss, court sorcerer. Both are regents for the sickly, underage king.

The plot as it stood last week: Kai Voss has tired of being merely a co-regent. Twelve-year-old Edward has been steadily declining in health since the deaths of his parents. His bodyguards, led by Val, believe the sorcerer is the cause. This idea of the plot will evolve as we get to know our bad boy better.

At this point in our ruminations, we think we’re writing a novel, but we won’t know the final length until we’re much further along in this process.

Today, we’re going to design the plot for Val and Kai Voss’s story.

You’ll note that I say it is also the antagonist’s story. I say this because his story is why Val has a quest. So, today, we’re going to do a little more thinking out loud. Let’s take the notebook and the pencil out to the balcony and let Val’s story ferment a bit.

We had a good look at Val last week, so now we’ll meet and get to know Kai Voss. I know it seems backwards, but this is how I work. Good villains are the fertile soil from which a great plot can grow. Once we know who he is and how he thinks, we can help him make plans to stop Val and her soldiers.

First, I assign nouns that tell us how he sees himself at the story’s outset. I also look at sub-nouns and synonyms, which means I must put my thesaurus to work. The sorcerer’s nouns are bravado (boldness, brashness), daring, and courtliness. 

Our lad is definitely a charmer.

Kai also has verbs that show us his gut reactions: defend, fight, desire, preserve.

You will note the word defend is the lead verb in Kai’s description. What must he defend, and how does Valentine threaten him? At the age of sixteen, Val ran away from an arranged marriage, abandoning a woman’s traditional role. As such, Kai believes she is a bad influence on all the women she comes into contact with.

As we flesh out his character, we realize that he fears what Val’s very existence represents—a woman who escaped being forced into marriage and who successfully makes her own way in the world. Now thirty-five, she is captain of the royal guard and is a co-regent of the young, sickly king. Most importantly, her advice has a substantial impact on the young king, who sees her as a mother figure.

Kai is also thirty-five and while he has never found the right time for marriage, he feels compelled to defend the traditional roles of male supremacy. He must preserve what he believes is best for the young king and, through him, the country.

As you can see, the plot idea has already changed, veering away from a simple good vs. evil hero’s journey. I am finally realizing what kind of story is really trying to emerge.

  • By golly, I think we have fodder for an enemies-to-lovers romance here.

A character’s preconceptions color their experience of events. We see the story through their eyes, which colors how we see the incidents.

  • Val is a commoner who came up through the ranks of the royal guard and found favor with the young king’s parents. She has a great deal of disdain for the feckless nobility that inhabits the court and Kai can sense it. Her goal is to keep young King Edward alive and raise him to have compassion even for the least of his subjects.
  • Kai is a privileged noble with no idea of how the ordinary people really live. He also has one more noun, one that overrides all the others and informs his subsequent actions: fear. Kai’s goal is the same as Val’s, which is to keep young Edward alive, and failing that, to make sure the traditional ways continue.

However, Kai sees a dark future and must teach Edward the values of his ancestors, to ensure that the nobility retains their rights of absolute power.

He believes that the peasantry must be guided by their betters and will be cared for by the nobility. After all, his family treats their serfs well, so he is under the impression that the other lords also act fairly. Fear of what the future holds for the country means he must also position himself to step into the role of king if Edward dies of his wasting illness.

Our characters are unreliable witnesses. The way they tell us the story will always gloss over their own failings. The story moves ahead each time they are forced to rise above their weaknesses and face what they fear.

What are their voids? What words describe the primary weaknesses of your characters, the thing that could be their ultimate ruin?

Val – Arrogance, pigheadedness, and fear of being tied to a brute.

Kai Voss – Arrogance, obsession, and a misplaced sense of honor.

Now that we know our two characters share some of the same flaws, we can set them both up for some hard lessons in reality. What those lessons are will emerge as we progress.

But now I know that, in the end, they will find common ground, as the true enemy has been hiding in plain sight all along, pulling their strings.

In the next installment of this series, we’ll look at plotting the side characters. We’ll discuss the ways they can be used, not only to deliver needed information and provide moments of humor, but in other, more nefarious ways as well.

I know we haven’t delved into designing how Kai’s sorcerous skills work or explored Val’s ability in the martial arts. Trust me, we will get there before we wind up this series.

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February 10, 2025 · 6:00 am

Idea to story part 2: thinking out loud #writing

Over the years, I have learned many tricks to help people get their ideas out of their heads and onto paper.

Nearly everyone says they have an idea for a good story. What separates writers out from the crowd is this: as time passes and they think about it, they write those ideas down. Ninety five percent never get beyond this stage but for a few, thinking about it on paper ends and they dive straight into writing it.

Most will begin without an outline. They are flying blind, or in author speak, “pantsing it.” I am a planner, but I’m also a pantser. I begin with a document that details what I think the story is, a loose outline. I sit somewhere noisy, like a coffee shop or my apartment balcony, and let my mind wander, taking notes as the story comes to me.

When I first began writing, I didn’t know how to construct a story. As time went on and I attended writing classes and seminars, I learned how arcs shape every story, plot arcs, and character arcs. My loose outlines became more detailed. Eventually I began making an Excel workbook as a permanent storyboard/stylesheet for each series.

ANY document or spreadsheet program will work. I think of outlining as pantsing it in advance—a visual aid for when the writing gets real. If I have an idea of how the story should go, I won’t run out of words before the first draft is done.

Once I have the bare bones of the story down on paper, I begin fleshing out each scene. The outline becomes my first draft, and I save it with a new name.

Once that first draft is finished and in revisions, some scenes will make more sense when placed in a different order than originally planned. So, I update the outline with each change. This allows me to view the arc of the story from a distance, so I can see where it might be flatlining.

Sometimes, an event no longer makes sense and no matter how much I love it, I have to cut it. (I always save my outtakes in a separate file for later use.)

In last week’s post, I went over the questions I ask of each writing project before the words hit the paper. Two important questions are what genre do I think I’m writing in, and what is the underlying theme?

I love reading character-driven fantasy so that is what I write. A world emerges from my imagination along with the characters, and I make notes as bits and pieces of that environment occur to me.

Humor is crucial when you write fantasy that has some dark moments. I have a deep streak of gallows humor that often emerges inappropriately to my family’s regret. Humor in the face of disaster will be a theme. This theme comes out in most of my work.

Next, I create a brief personnel description, less than 100 words for each prominent character. I note the verbs, adjectives, and nouns that describe the character, as those give me all the necessary information. This is just a paragraph, but it contains the essential information.

Sometimes it takes a while to know what a character’s void is (a deep emotional wound), but it will emerge by the time the first draft is done.

The protagonist in the following example doesn’t have a story as she is just an illustration of what I do. But it would be easy to write one for her if I had a few other people figured out.

How I get a story out of my head and onto paper:

What is the core conflict? Is it the Quest for the Magic MacGuffin? Is it a coup followed by a struggle for power? It’s a fantasy, so a wide range of options are open to us.

Who are the players?

Excalibur London_Film_Museum_ via Wikipedia

Valentine (Protagonist) Hates her name and goes by Val. (Arms master, 36. Black hair, brown eyes, suntanned.) VOID: Deep sense of failure. A convergence of bad choices led to a stint in a dungeon. VERBS: Act, fight, build, protect. ADJECTIVES: wary, sarcastic, hopeful, dedicated, considerate. NOUNS: sorrow, guilt, purpose, compassion, wit.

Does Val have close friends? If not, will she gather companions? This question is important. If she doesn’t have friends at first, I will leave space on that page to add them when they emerge from my imagination. As I contemplate Val’s story, perhaps a love interest will show up later, or maybe not.

What happens to take Val out of her comfort zone? Sometimes I don’t have the answer to this for quite a while. Other times, it’s the spark that starts the story.

The entire arc of the story rests on how I answer the following question. What is Val’s goal, her deepest desire? Currently, it looks like she’s hoping to regain her self-respect. That will become a secondary quest when a more immediate problem presents itself.

What stands in her way? Who or what is the Enemy?

Let’s name the enemy Kai Voss. What is his deepest desire? How does Kai Voss control the situation at the outset? Once I know who the protagonist is and what they want, I give them the same personnel file I give all the other characters—I identify a void, verbs, adjectives, and nouns for him.

Once I have Kai Voss described in a paragraph, I can determine the quest. Kai Voss is the key to what Val must achieve. A believable villain is why Val’s story will be fun to write.

Later, after I have the characters figured out, I will work on the plot outline and try to shape the story’s arc. This is where roadblocks and obstacles do the heavy lifting, and my outline will contain ideas I can riff on. Val will have to work hard to achieve her goal, but so will Kai Voss.

Information and the lack of it drive the plot. Val can’t have all the information. Kai Voss must have more answers than Val and be ruthless in using that knowledge to achieve his goal. My outline will tell me when it’s time to dole out information. What complications arise from Val’s lack of information?

With each chapter, Val and her companions acquire the necessary information, but each answer leads to more questions. Conflicts occur when Kai Voss sets traps, and by surviving those encounters, Val gains more information about Kai Voss’s capabilities. She must persevere and use that knowledge to win the final battle.

Having my characters in place and an outline helps keep me on track when I am pantsing it through the first draft of a manuscript. New flashes of brilliance will occur as I am writing and will make the struggle real. But two fundamental things will remain constant:

Val’s determination to block Kai Voss and wreck the enemy’s plans is the plot.

Val’s growth as a character as she works her way through the plot is the story.

Next week in part three of this series, we will take a closer look at Val and Kai Voss and see how their strengths and weaknesses drive and help create the overall arc of the plot.

Credits and Attributions:

Excalibur, London Film Museum via Wikipedia

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February 3, 2025 · 6:00 am

Idea to story, part 1: novel, poetry, memoir, or short story? #writing

Stories are universes that begin with the spark of an idea and burst into existence.  When an author has this fledgling thought, it grows, expands, and won’t stop nagging at her. New authors often don’t know how to make that idea into the kind of story they have always wanted to write.

The basic premise of any story in any genre can be answered in eight questions. I have listed them before, but here they are again:

  1. Who are the players?
  2. Who is the POV character?
  3. Where does the story open?
  4. What does the protagonist have to say about their story?
  5. How did they arrive at the point of no return?
  6. What do they want, and what will they do to get it?
  7. What hinders them?
  8. How does the story end? Is there more than one way this could go?

Question number two is where, once the first rush of creativity passes, many would-be writers give up. They experience a momentary lull in creativity and don’t have the tools to visualize what to write next.

When we have a lull in creativity, we wonder how to free the words and get the story back on track.

It helps to consider what kind of story those ideas want to be.

Sometimes stories want to be novels.

Has the story decided what genre it is? Mine always come into existence with a setting, and that determines the genre. If your story wants to be a novel, ask yourself what the central theme is.

  • Theme is a core thread, such as love lost and regained, or coming of age, etc.

If you have a theme to write to, the plot will emerge more easily.

Will you “pants it” through the plot or create a plot outline? Outlines are just me thinking out loud on paper.

There are times when my stories want to be poems, because poetry is emotional and emotion powers my words. My poetry details the fantasy that is the memory of my childhood home.

It describes the way I felt about lake where I grew up, the forest surrounding our property and the swamp that bordered our driveway. A river emerged from the south end of my lake, and I write about the memories of fishing with my father.  To the west of the lake, the high hills rise above, dominating the western sky from every view in the county. When I see those hills, I know I am home.

When poetic words have a grip on your imagination, write them down. If you want to learn more about the different genres of poems and how to write them, here is a short list:

Free verse  is a modern construct that may not rhyme but the cadence and pacing of the syllables have rhythm.

Traditionally structured poetry includes Odes, Haikus, Elegies, Sonnets, Dramatic Poetry, or Narrative Poetry.

In my misspent youth, I was a musician and wrote lyrics for a heavy metal band, so I tend to write lyric poetry. I have a friend who writes sci-fi poetry.

Much of my work is in the form of short stories. In the beginning of your writing life, you work might be short forms too. Will you “pants it” or write little outlines? I work both ways when it comes to short stories.

I’ve written more than a hundred short stories in the past few years, enough that I can put together several collections. I am working on editing one as we speak.

If I have learned anything over the last decade or so, it’s that a collection of stories can’t be a bunch of random tales shoved into a book. To make a coherent collection of stories in one volume, I must consider several things.

What genre? Or will it be a mix of genres? This is a risky choice but could succeed if a specific theme binds the stories together.

Another thing to consider is whether or not I have enough stories featuring a recurring character or location to bind the collection together. I do for one series but will have to rely on a theme for the other collection.

You’ve noticed that I’m repeating myself—but trust me, a fiction project is easier to create if you know what genre you are writing for and can see the central theme that will bind it together.

Sometimes new authors say their project is a memoir. If a new writer tells me this, I always wonder if they have read any. If they haven’t read any memoirs, there may be a problem. Reading the memoirs written by successful authors is the best way to learn how the plots of outstanding memoirs are constructed.

Memoirists should ask two questions of their work. Will you detail actual memories or write a fictionalized account? Do you dare to name names or not?

  • Naming names could be opening a can of worms, so think long and hard before you do that.

Some new authors have no intention of publishing a memoir. They just want to write a family history, a fun project. Here are some considerations if you fall into that category.

Are you just curious, or are you searching for an identity, trying to discover who you are and where your family comes from? Research from a site such as ancestry.com or gleaned from family bibles, letters, and other collected papers will greatly help you.

Will you include photographs or interviews with older family members who may remember something about your family’s history?

This is a project I’ve thought about embarking on, but I know I would never finish it. I don’t need another unfinished project laying around.

When we have the spark of a story, an idea that won’t let us go, we can spend years trying to get that vision out of our heads and ready for publication. It takes an incredible amount of work and a continuing habit of self-education to grow as a writer.

Getting your book to the publishing stage can be expensive. When we think we have our novel, memoir, or short story collection finished, we must consider hiring a freelance editor—even if we plan to find an agent and go the traditional route. We never submit anything that isn’t our best work.

But if you are in the “just starting out” phase, please know that you are not alone. When you hold the finished product in your hand, you will know the struggle was worth it.

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January 27, 2025 · 6:00 am

Action and consequences #writing

The word of the day is consequence.

It’s a large word with many meanings and usages, but the one we’re concerned with today is its synonym, repercussion. Frankly, a story of actions without consequences is not much of a story.

Every choice our characters make should have repercussions, changing their lives for good or bad.

Once again, we will go to J.R.R. Tolkien and look at Bilbo’s choices and his path to becoming the eccentric eleventy-one-year-old hobbit who vanishes, literally, leaving everything he owned to his cousin, Frodo.

At the outset, Gandalf does the unforgivable. He scratches symbols into Bilbo’s pristine front door. To ruin a beautiful door like that? The fiend!

Worse, those symbols invite himself and twelve rough-looking strangers to be overnight guests in Bilbo’s home—and Bilbo is unaware of all this until the first guests appear at his door, expecting to be fed.

I don’t know about you, but I would be hard-pressed to scrape together the food to feed thirteen guests without a little advance notice.

In the morning, after the unexpected (and unwanted) guests leave him to his empty larder, he has two choices, to stay in the safety of Bag End, or hare off on a journey into the unknown. Bilbo chooses to run after the dwarves, and this is where the real story begins.

The Hobbit or There and Back Again is the story of how an honest and respectable middle-aged hobbit became a burglar. In the process, he became a hero who was forever changed by his experiences.

The consequences of his decision will alter his view of life forever afterward. Where he was once a staid country squire, having inherited a comfortable income and existence, Bilbo is now expected to steal an important treasure from a dragon.

At the outset, the role of burglar doesn’t seem real. He is beset by problems, one of which is his general unfitness for the task. He’s always been well-fed, never had to exert himself much, and no one cares about his opinions. For someone who is used to being an important voice in the community, that disregard is painful.

Bilbo’s hidden sense of adventure emerges early when the company encounters a group of trolls. He is posing as a thief, so he is ordered to investigate a strange fire in the forest. Reluctantly, he agrees. Upon reaching the blaze, he observes that it is a cookfire for a group of trolls.

Bilbo has reached a fork in the path of life and must make a choice. He’s not stupid, and the smart thing would be to turn around at that point and warn the dwarves.

However, his ego feels the need to do something to prove his worth. “He was very much alarmed as well as disgusted; he wished himself a hundred miles away—yet somehow he could not go straight back to Thorin and Company empty-handed.” [1] Bilbo feels the need to impress the Dwarves, which drives him to make decisions he comes to regret.

In the process of nearly getting everyone eaten and having to be rescued by Gandalf, he discovers several historically important weapons. One of them is Sting, a blade that fits Bilbo perfectly as a sword. Gandalf and the dwarf Thorin also find their respective swords, Glamdring and Orcrist.

Bilbo’s blade does not acquire its name until later in the adventure, when Bilbo becomes lost in the forest of Mirkwood. He uses it to kill a giant spider, rescuing the Dwarves. These actions gain him some esteem from a few of the dwarves, the ones who aren’t as arrogant as Thorin.

Although Bilbo’s weapon is only a dagger for a human or dwarf, it is the perfect sword for a warrior the size of our hobbit. It turns out that, like the swords of Gandalf and Thorin, this dagger was forged by the elves of Gondolin in the First Age and possesses a magical property—it shines with a blue glow when orcs are close.

As the journey progresses, Bilbo develops a clearer perspective of his companions, caring about them despite their flaws. With each event, he becomes more introspective and aware, and his courageous side begins to emerge.

All along the way, every decision forces an action, which has consequences that force his character arc to grow. His experiences reshape him physically and emotionally. Bilbo no longer thinks like the naïve, slightly prejudiced member of the sedentary gentry that he was at the outset.

As the Dwarves continue to get into trouble, Bilbo makes plans for their rescue, and does so successfully, receiving only grudging gratitude from Thorin.

Bilbo is now a warrior, strong and capable of defending his friends from whatever they have dropped themselves into. However, if you asked him, he would say he was just an ordinary person.

Action and its consequences force our characters to grow emotionally. It changes their worldview. Sometimes the decisions our characters make as we are writing them surprise us. But if those decisions make the story too easy, they should be discarded.

We, as their creator, must take over, cut or rewrite those scenes, and force the story back on track.

After all, consequences make the story interesting.

Credits and Attributions:

[1] Quote from The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, by J.R.R. Tolkien, published 1937 by George Allen & Unwin, Ltd.

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January 20, 2025 · 6:00 am

Making Effective Revisions part 2: crutch words, style, and voice #writing

Our stories are an unconscious reflection of what we wish our favorite authors would write. But what is it that attracts us to their writing?

We love their style, their voice.

Some authors are forceful in their style and throw you into the action. They have an in-your-face, hard-hitting approach that comes on strong and doesn’t let up until the end.

Others are more leisurely, casually inserting small hooks that keep you reading.

What are voice and style?

  1. The habitual choice of words shapes the tone of our writing.
  2. The chronic use and misuse of grammar and punctuation shapes the pacing of our sentences.
  3. Our deeply held beliefs and attitudes emerge and shape character arcs and plot arcs.

We develop our own voice and style when we write every day or at least as often as possible. We subconsciously incorporate our speech patterns, values, and fears into our work, and those elements of our personality form the voice that is ours and no one else’s.

The words we habitually choose are a part of our fingerprint. First drafts are rife with crutch words. This is because, in the rush of laying down the story, we tend to fall back on certain words and ignore their synonyms. A good online thesaurus is a necessary resource.

I prefer to keep my research in hardcopy form, rather than digital. I have mentioned this before, but The Oxford Dictionary of Synonyms and Antonyms is a handy tool when I am stuck for alternate ways to say something.

And it makes the perfect place to rest my teacup.

We all have words that we choose above others because they say precisely what we mean. I think of my fallback words as a code. At this point in my career, I know what those words are and when I am making revisions, I make a global search for them and insert alternatives that show my idea more vividly.

Looking at each example of a code word and their synonyms gives me a different understanding of what I am trying to say. It gives me the opportunity to change them to a more powerful form, which conveys a stronger image and improves the narrative. (I hope.)

Saying more with fewer words forces us to think on an abstract level. In poetry we have to choose our words based on the emotions they evoke, and the way they portray the environment around us. This is why I gravitate to narratives written by authors who are also poets—the creative use of words elevates what could be mundane to a higher level of expression, and when it’s done well, the reader doesn’t consciously notice the prose, but they are moved by it.

What are some words that convey powerful imagery, some that heighten tension when included in the prose?

  • Lunatic
  • Lurking
  • Massacre
  • Meltdown
  • Menacing
  • Mired
  • Mistake
  • Murder
  • Nightmare
  • Painful
  • Pale
  • Panic
  • Peril
  • Slaughter
  • Slave
  • Strangle
  • Stupid
  • Suicide
  • Tailspin
  • Tank
  • Targeted
  • Teetering

And those are just the beginning.

Our word choices are a good indication of how advanced we are in the craft of writing. For instance, in online writing forums, we are told to limit the number of modifiers (adjectives and adverbs) we might habitually use.

We are like everyone else. Our work is as dear to us as a child, and we can be just as touchy as a proud parent when it is criticized. We should respect the opinions of others, but we have the choice to ignore those suggestions if they don’t work for us.

Our voice comes across when we write from the heart. We gain knowledge and skill when we study self-help books, but we must write what we are passionate about. So, the rule should be to use modifiers, descriptors, or quantifiers when they’re needed.

How we use them is part of our style. Modifiers change, clarify, qualify, or sometimes limit a particular word in a sentence to add emphasis, explanation, or detail. We also use them as conjunctions to connect thoughts: “otherwise,” “then,” and “besides.”

Descriptors are adverbs and adjectives that often end in “ly.” They are helper nouns or verbs, words that help describe other words. Some descriptors are necessary but they are easy to overuse.

Do a global search for the letters “ly.” A list will pop up in the left margin and the manuscript will become a mass of yellow highlighted words.

I admit it takes time and patience to look at each instance to see how they fit into that context. If, after looking at the thesaurus, I discover that the problem descriptor is the only word that works, I will have to make a choice: rewrite the passage, delete it, or leave it.

Quantifiers are abstract nouns or noun phrases that can weaken prose. They convey a vague impression or a nebulous quantity, such as: very, a great deal of, a good deal of, a lot, many, much, and rather. Quantifiers have a bad reputation because they can quickly become habitual, such as the word very.

We don’t want our narrative to feel vague, nebulous, or abstract.

  • In some instances, we might want to move the reader’s view of a scene or situation out, a “zoom out” so to speak. The brief use of passive phrasing will do that. I saw the gazelles leaping and running ahead of the grassfire, hoping to outrun it. They failed.

I saw is a telling phrase, slightly removing the speaker from the trauma.

Limiting descriptors and quantifiers to conversations makes a stronger narrative. We use these phrases and words in real life, so our characters’ conversations will sound natural. The fact we use them in our conversation is why they fall into our first drafts.

Our narrative voice comes across in our choice of hard or soft words and where we habitually position verbs in a sentence. It is a recognizable fingerprint.

Many times, I read something, and despite how well it is constructed and written, it doesn’t ring my bells. This is because I’m not attracted to the author’s style or voice.

That doesn’t mean the work is awful. It only means I wasn’t the reader it was written for.

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