Post by Catsi Eceer, co-founder
We've all heard the phrase "Write what you know." It's a bit of a controversial topic in writing circles. I agree with it to an extent--writing something you know about is definitely easier than writing something you've never experienced.
But what if it's something you want to experience?
That's a tricky phrase. I deleted it a few times before I decided that it's what I really mean. Because, really, who wants to experience Nazi Germany? Or losing both of your parents? Or being governed by a cruel, dystopian government?
(If you're like me, you might almost be able to risk it, just for the adventure of the story.)
As always, I'm focusing a little more on the characters-and-emotions side of the coin with this post. Because, really, isn't the difference between a good book and an okay book how it made you feel?
Even on this side of the phrase, it's a little tricky. We don't want to feel heartbreak, or grief, or betrayal, or go through all of the problems you put your poor main character through. (Or do we? There's a reason we read, after all...)
What we do want to feel, though, is the joy, the strength, the unnameable-feeling when the hero wins. When she survives despite the odds. When the theme is proved true after all.
We want the hope of knowing that, even though life is dark and times are hard, we can still win.
Sometimes, we forget about that. I know I do. I get lost inside my cynical, pessimistic mind, and I lose sight of hope, lose sight of joy. I'm so caught up in my own problems that I don't see the way through them.
This is where my writing comes in for me. When my main character (who, oddly enough, tends to reflect myself at the time of writing) makes it to the end of the story and finally figures out who he is and why he's been chosen, and then decides that it's been worth it all along, I decide that it's worth it for me, too.
Life is hard. But I'll get through it.
I write a combination of what I know--the problems--and what I need to learn--the hope at the end. And somewhere between "once upon a time" and "the end," I end up a little stronger than I was before.
Do you write what you know, or what you want to learn?
Showing posts with label relatability. Show all posts
Showing posts with label relatability. Show all posts
Sunday, June 14, 2015
Sunday, February 15, 2015
Some of the Most Annoying Mistakes in Romantic Subplots
Post by Elisabeth TenBrink Kelley, co-founder
In honor of Valentine's Day, I decided to compile a list of things that people find most annoying in a romantic subplot. I've gathered these responses from the One Year Adventure Novel forum, so that would be why there are such odd names attached to them.
Chaellabird:
The girl who doesn't think she's pretty, but in reality she's smoking hot.
The guy who says, "You're not like the other girls."
Love triangles. But a love octagon would be interesting.
One person always needs to be rescued by the other.
King_Elessar
When they don't belong.
I hate it when a romantic sub-plot is not relevant to the characters outside of the actual sub-plot...like...it's existing for itself. Plenty of character dev. results from it...but only in relation to romance. In other words...it does nothing to actually do anything to the story...so there's no reason for it. Why should I care?
Or, when it's the flip. When it becomes all you're supposed to care about. Like...I don't care about if you get the girl or not dude, go stop the Dark Lord...seriously.
Théoden:
A disregard for what people would actually have time for in the story. Romance will probably not work when you're on a massive all-consuming mission to save humanity and the whole galaxy from a near-unstoppable force. If you have the time and energy to engage in romance, why on earth are you not focusing more on the mission instead?
Musicalfruitninja:
Love triangles are demons kill it with fire please.
I hate when a guy/girl chases someone who doesn't feel the same way for a long time and then suddenly they're like madly in love. That annoys me so much i can't even express it properly.
Also it annoys me when people fall in love basically at first sight. a week, maybe even a month goes by and suddenly they will do anything for each other and can't keep their eyes off each other.
Cnemi:
Physical expression always being portrayed as the epitome of a romantic relationship, no matter the situation. This is perhaps more of a moral issue with me, but is that REALLY the only way you can show the recently-widowed Ally's relationship to Ally II (for a random example)?
The guy and girl who hate each other and can't stand each other, only to come to love each other desperately by the end of the story. This annoys me so much, and I've developed a pretty good ability to call it, occasionally even at the INTRODUCTION of Character II. It can be a good plotline, I suppose, but I've seen far too much of it.
Turning the Ally into the Love in the second book because the opposite-gender friends are older now, so, of course, that's just how it must work.
Romantic relationships = best possible kind between any two characters. Even when they've been firmly established otherwise/ it's forced/ etc.
Characters in a relationship who nonetheless communicate as well as if they spoke totally different languages, leading to all the conflict.
Parsleymusic:
Characters that claim they 'need' the other person, and when they would literally let the entire world end just to save that person, and then they do it and it becomes an actual thing that happens in the plot.
SyllverGuardian:
Number one problem: They're all about The Kiss. Okay, I'm a hopeless romantic and a sucker for cuteness, but love is about more than your first kiss. It's commitment and sacrifice, something that a lot of romance plots and subplots completely disregard. Tangled vs Cinderella, anyone? If you can convince me (by showing me) that these people will stick together through whatever is thrown at them, support and protect each other no matter what, than yes, sure, I'll believe that they're meant to be together. If all you can show me is them making googly eyes and mooning over each other, you can forget it.
So, there you have it. What a variety of readers/authors think about common mistakes in romantic subplots. Hopefully your readers will be shipping your fictional Valentine's like crazy.
Stormy:
When either person in the romance has no definition outside the other. I.e., they're only there for the other one. They have no thoughts, ambitions, hopes, behaviors, dreams, etc. Ex: Girl is there so the guy has someone to save, but has no purpose. (Not that having to have the guy save her is bad, but it's a negative thing when that's literally all the girl is there for.) Basically the love interest doesn't even have a character outside "the love interest".
Elisabeth TenBrink Kelley is an aspiring author and poet. To learn more about her, see our About Us page. You can follow her on Twitter here: @ElisabethGTK.
We have an art contest open for submissions, see the guidelines here. We also have a poetry contest open, which you can find here.
In honor of Valentine's Day, I decided to compile a list of things that people find most annoying in a romantic subplot. I've gathered these responses from the One Year Adventure Novel forum, so that would be why there are such odd names attached to them.
Chaellabird:
The girl who doesn't think she's pretty, but in reality she's smoking hot.
The guy who says, "You're not like the other girls."
Love triangles. But a love octagon would be interesting.
One person always needs to be rescued by the other.
King_Elessar
When they don't belong.
I hate it when a romantic sub-plot is not relevant to the characters outside of the actual sub-plot...like...it's existing for itself. Plenty of character dev. results from it...but only in relation to romance. In other words...it does nothing to actually do anything to the story...so there's no reason for it. Why should I care?
Or, when it's the flip. When it becomes all you're supposed to care about. Like...I don't care about if you get the girl or not dude, go stop the Dark Lord...seriously.
Théoden:
A disregard for what people would actually have time for in the story. Romance will probably not work when you're on a massive all-consuming mission to save humanity and the whole galaxy from a near-unstoppable force. If you have the time and energy to engage in romance, why on earth are you not focusing more on the mission instead?
Musicalfruitninja:
Love triangles are demons kill it with fire please.
I hate when a guy/girl chases someone who doesn't feel the same way for a long time and then suddenly they're like madly in love. That annoys me so much i can't even express it properly.
Also it annoys me when people fall in love basically at first sight. a week, maybe even a month goes by and suddenly they will do anything for each other and can't keep their eyes off each other.
Cnemi:
Physical expression always being portrayed as the epitome of a romantic relationship, no matter the situation. This is perhaps more of a moral issue with me, but is that REALLY the only way you can show the recently-widowed Ally's relationship to Ally II (for a random example)?
The guy and girl who hate each other and can't stand each other, only to come to love each other desperately by the end of the story. This annoys me so much, and I've developed a pretty good ability to call it, occasionally even at the INTRODUCTION of Character II. It can be a good plotline, I suppose, but I've seen far too much of it.
Turning the Ally into the Love in the second book because the opposite-gender friends are older now, so, of course, that's just how it must work.
Romantic relationships = best possible kind between any two characters. Even when they've been firmly established otherwise/ it's forced/ etc.
Characters in a relationship who nonetheless communicate as well as if they spoke totally different languages, leading to all the conflict.
Parsleymusic:
Characters that claim they 'need' the other person, and when they would literally let the entire world end just to save that person, and then they do it and it becomes an actual thing that happens in the plot.
SyllverGuardian:
Number one problem: They're all about The Kiss. Okay, I'm a hopeless romantic and a sucker for cuteness, but love is about more than your first kiss. It's commitment and sacrifice, something that a lot of romance plots and subplots completely disregard. Tangled vs Cinderella, anyone? If you can convince me (by showing me) that these people will stick together through whatever is thrown at them, support and protect each other no matter what, than yes, sure, I'll believe that they're meant to be together. If all you can show me is them making googly eyes and mooning over each other, you can forget it.
So, there you have it. What a variety of readers/authors think about common mistakes in romantic subplots. Hopefully your readers will be shipping your fictional Valentine's like crazy.
Stormy:
When either person in the romance has no definition outside the other. I.e., they're only there for the other one. They have no thoughts, ambitions, hopes, behaviors, dreams, etc. Ex: Girl is there so the guy has someone to save, but has no purpose. (Not that having to have the guy save her is bad, but it's a negative thing when that's literally all the girl is there for.) Basically the love interest doesn't even have a character outside "the love interest".
Elisabeth TenBrink Kelley is an aspiring author and poet. To learn more about her, see our About Us page. You can follow her on Twitter here: @ElisabethGTK.
We have an art contest open for submissions, see the guidelines here. We also have a poetry contest open, which you can find here.
Saturday, January 31, 2015
Practice Writing
Authors don't like the idea of doing a work specifically for practice, especially a long one. I mean, if you're like me, and a rough draft takes you about a year, do you really want that to just be practice? Well, whether I wanted it to or not, that "novel", really a novella, was practice. After looking at it a year later, I no longer hate it, but I know that it was still practice. Everything we write is practice, really.
This process is particularly important for beginning writers, because, let's face it, how do we know that anything we write is publishable? I'm sure mine isn't. And so, I plan to write several books for practice, focusing mostly on my weak points, and once I am writing at a publishable skill level, I will then turn my practice novels into "real" novels. So don't feel like you're doing an injustice to your brilliant idea by making it a practice novel. All that means is that you're going into it with a mindset to learn, and without the intention of publishing it immediately.
Just because it was written for practice doesn't mean that you can't publish it later. For example, I'm currently trying to find a good idea for a practice novel meant to improve my plotting abilities because that is my weakest trait. But trust me, a few books from now, I'll come back to it and make it publishable.
Why Practice?
My three favorite authors are Tolkien, Christopher Paolini, and J. K. Rowling. Yeah, I know, going with the mainstream. Anyway, Tolkien is the only one of those three whose books don't have obvious jumps in quality. Eldest is a better book than Eragon. Brisingr is a far better book than Eldest. And Inheritance manages to be a better book yet. Similarly, Rowling made many rookie mistakes in her first books that made problems for the later ones. On the other hand, The Lord of the Rings as a series is fantastic. There's no real change in quality between the three, though some might argue that The Two Towers has the traditional mid-series slump.
Why is this? Well, look at the way they published them. Rowling finished Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's/Philosopher's Stone and published it. She finished Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, published that. And so on. Paolini did the same thing, but Tolkien worked on his series for years, writing and re-writing them as a series. He didn't publish The Fellowship of the Ring until the rest of the series was pretty much, or possibly completely, finished. In fact, Return of the King was published less than a year and a half after The Fellowship of the Ring, which may have been to give people a chance to read the earlier books.
How did this help him? Well, putting aside the fact that he spent twelve years on the series, he also had the practice of writing all three, when he was re-writing the first one. He was able to learn from each book, and apply it, because the books were still in his hands, and changeable. For the same reason, I recommend that writers not publish a single book until they have completed at least three, and by completed, I don't mean the rough draft. That way, you can do the learning, become a good writer, and then fix up your early books so that they don't hurt your name and/or series.
How to Practice?
When writing a practice novel, what do you do? How can you maximize your learning? Well, first, remember that every book you write is a learning experience, but, when you are writing a novel specifically to learn, you should change things a little.
- Decide what you are trying to learn. It is very important to know what, specifically, you are trying to improve. For example, I am trying to improve my plotting skills, so I should choose something plot-heavy. This could mean a mystery or thriller, which are naturally plot-based, or simply doing my usual genre, but outlining and thinking of plot more. It could even mean writing a serial story with both episode-sized plots and overarching plots. If you're trying to improve character interaction and emotion, try a romance, or a book focusing on the main character learning a lesson.
- Choose something you care about. You may be here to learn, but you aren't going to learn much if you lose all motivation because you didn't like the story in the first place. It can be hard to find the balance between something that will help you and something you will enjoy writing, but it is usually better to err on the side of liking it. If in doubt, ask a fellow writer and see if they think it will challenge you enough.
- Research. "What?" you say, "Why do I have to research? What if I'm doing something completely speculative?" Well, you should still research. Not for your book, necessarily, but on what you are trying to improve. Find some tips about plot/characterization/description/whatever, and put them into action.
- Be willing to compromise. This is probably the hardest for me. Even if it might feel like you are breaking or crushing your idea a little, you need to focus on learning. This may mean lots of different things, such as following a very strict outline, or perhaps putting in things that feel like they don't belong. This is okay. It's a practice novel, and you will change it later. It may not feel right, but this is not your finished product anyway. Go through the process, learn what you came to learn, and fix it when you decide you are ready to write publishable material, and then you will give it its true form.
- WRITE! This is the most important part. Go and WRITE it! Don't stop part way through, don't put it off, write it. This is a practice novel, and you will learn from what you do, even if only subconsciously. That means that if you don't finish it, or never even start, you are building a habit, and that habit is extremely hard to break, trust me, I know from experience. So go and write your novel.
Elisabeth TenBrink Kelley is an aspiring author and poet. To learn more about her, see our About Us page. You can follow her on Twitter here: @ElisabethGTK.
We have an art contest open for submissions, see the guidelines here.
Sunday, January 11, 2015
A Character Development Tip I Learned from Divergent
Post by Catsi Eceer, co-founder
Hello all, sorry I'm a day late. *winces* I spent the weekend at a friend's house to celebrate her birthday, and, of course, forgot to write a post beforehand.
I read Divergent by Veronica Roth last week, and watched the movie with my friend yesterday. While I must admit that I'm not unduly impressed by either, it did get me thinking. There were several very interesting aspects of the movie, and-- at least in the book--a good deal of character development. I felt that I actually knew the characters, though really, there wasn't a lot of "developing" that I could see. (Tris, to be honest, seemed rather flat for the majority of the story.)
I sat for a while and thought about it. What is it about these characters that make them feel more real than so many others in different stories?
Answer: We see their fears.
It's such a simple thing, really. What is your character afraid of? Four is afraid of four things: heights, small spaces, killing an innocent, and his father. Tris's list is a little more extensive, but to the same effect--we see what she's afraid of, and we see her.
After I'd finished ranting to my friend about how terribly the movie had ruined several of the characters, I pulled out a piece of paper and started making a few lists. (Because I love lists. I really do.) I grabbed a few of my nearest characters, and wrote down all of their fears.
(And I'm proud to say that one of them only has three fears. Take that, Four.)
Here's an exercise for all of you: Open up a Word document, or find a notebook and a pencil. Write your character's name at the top of the page, and then list everything they're afraid of. Every last thing. If you feel like going deeper, try to figure out why they're afraid of those things.
Was that hard? For an undeveloped character, it probably was. Even for a character you thought was developed before, it might have been a very difficult exercise. Fears are harder for us to give our characters. We might give them one or two random fears, like fear of spiders or claustrophobia, or maybe a deeper fear for those particularly messed up ones--fear of their abusive parent, or of being forced to hurt someone they love.
But you know what? Everyone's afraid of something.
Most everyone is afraid of several somethings, actually. I, for one, am afraid of scorpions, swimming in places I can't see the bottom of, heights, small spaces, being trapped, calling adults on the phone (yes, go ahead and laugh; I'm used to it), and losing one of my family members.
Does your character seem more real now that you know their fears? They should. Humans are fearful creatures; seeing someone with weaknesses similar to our own helps us bond with characters far faster than with a character who seems perfect.
So take your list, and figure out how to show those fears in your writing. Make your character fear, and make them human.
What are some of your character's fears? How do you show those fears in your writing?
Hello all, sorry I'm a day late. *winces* I spent the weekend at a friend's house to celebrate her birthday, and, of course, forgot to write a post beforehand.
I read Divergent by Veronica Roth last week, and watched the movie with my friend yesterday. While I must admit that I'm not unduly impressed by either, it did get me thinking. There were several very interesting aspects of the movie, and-- at least in the book--a good deal of character development. I felt that I actually knew the characters, though really, there wasn't a lot of "developing" that I could see. (Tris, to be honest, seemed rather flat for the majority of the story.)
I sat for a while and thought about it. What is it about these characters that make them feel more real than so many others in different stories?
Answer: We see their fears.
It's such a simple thing, really. What is your character afraid of? Four is afraid of four things: heights, small spaces, killing an innocent, and his father. Tris's list is a little more extensive, but to the same effect--we see what she's afraid of, and we see her.
After I'd finished ranting to my friend about how terribly the movie had ruined several of the characters, I pulled out a piece of paper and started making a few lists. (Because I love lists. I really do.) I grabbed a few of my nearest characters, and wrote down all of their fears.
(And I'm proud to say that one of them only has three fears. Take that, Four.)
Here's an exercise for all of you: Open up a Word document, or find a notebook and a pencil. Write your character's name at the top of the page, and then list everything they're afraid of. Every last thing. If you feel like going deeper, try to figure out why they're afraid of those things.
Was that hard? For an undeveloped character, it probably was. Even for a character you thought was developed before, it might have been a very difficult exercise. Fears are harder for us to give our characters. We might give them one or two random fears, like fear of spiders or claustrophobia, or maybe a deeper fear for those particularly messed up ones--fear of their abusive parent, or of being forced to hurt someone they love.
But you know what? Everyone's afraid of something.
Most everyone is afraid of several somethings, actually. I, for one, am afraid of scorpions, swimming in places I can't see the bottom of, heights, small spaces, being trapped, calling adults on the phone (yes, go ahead and laugh; I'm used to it), and losing one of my family members.
Does your character seem more real now that you know their fears? They should. Humans are fearful creatures; seeing someone with weaknesses similar to our own helps us bond with characters far faster than with a character who seems perfect.
So take your list, and figure out how to show those fears in your writing. Make your character fear, and make them human.
What are some of your character's fears? How do you show those fears in your writing?
Saturday, December 20, 2014
A Lesson on Relatablity from POKéMON
Post by Elisabeth TenBrink Kelley, co-founder
I'm a POKéMON nerd. You can tell this from the fact that I capitalize the o, k, m, o, and n, plus that I use "é" instead of "e". But another way you can tell is that I started watching the original Pokémon episodes, and the fact that I know that Jesse was extremely poor, hated Princess Day because she never had dolls, and loves "snowgasborde", that James was rich, collected bottle caps, and owned his own swimming pool, and that Meowth learned to talk and stand like a human in order to impress a female Meowth named Meowthy.
What does Team Rocket have to do with writing? Well, despite Pikachu being one of the most adorable POKéMON, I always liked Jesse, James, and Meowth more. Why?
They fight like cats and dogs, but they love each other. James throws away his favorite bottle cap to help Meowth, despite nearly breaking to tears when they took it from him earlier in the episode. James, Meowth, and the other POKéMON dress up as human dolls when Jesse fails the contest that would give her the dolls that she never had on Princess Day. Jesse panics when James and Meowth fall asleep in the snow, because she knows they could freeze. They all try to comfort Arbok and Weezing when they don't make the cut to star in a movie.
In contrast, the only hero with an even vaguely sad backstory is Brock, who's dad left, but then comes back. (It never says what happened to Ash's dad.) And Ash rarely fails. Granted, of course, he is loyal, and we do like him, but Team Rocket still manages to evoke a surprising amount of sympathy for being the people trying to steal Pikachu.
So, if kidnappers can be that likable, using these techniques, what do you think you can do with good guys? Probably one of the hardest things for writers to do, is make their heroes fail. They're the hero! They should be capable! But if they never fail, we won't care. Of course they'll win, when do they not? Don't be afraid of making your hero fail. There is nothing we identify with better than failure. That, if nothing else, is something every human is familiar with.
Elisabeth TenBrink Kelley is an aspiring author and poet. To learn more about her, see our About Us page. You can follow her on Twitter here: @ElisabethGTK.
I'm a POKéMON nerd. You can tell this from the fact that I capitalize the o, k, m, o, and n, plus that I use "é" instead of "e". But another way you can tell is that I started watching the original Pokémon episodes, and the fact that I know that Jesse was extremely poor, hated Princess Day because she never had dolls, and loves "snowgasborde", that James was rich, collected bottle caps, and owned his own swimming pool, and that Meowth learned to talk and stand like a human in order to impress a female Meowth named Meowthy.
What does Team Rocket have to do with writing? Well, despite Pikachu being one of the most adorable POKéMON, I always liked Jesse, James, and Meowth more. Why?
- They fail
- They have sad back stories
- Though they are the bad guys, they are loyal
They fight like cats and dogs, but they love each other. James throws away his favorite bottle cap to help Meowth, despite nearly breaking to tears when they took it from him earlier in the episode. James, Meowth, and the other POKéMON dress up as human dolls when Jesse fails the contest that would give her the dolls that she never had on Princess Day. Jesse panics when James and Meowth fall asleep in the snow, because she knows they could freeze. They all try to comfort Arbok and Weezing when they don't make the cut to star in a movie.
In contrast, the only hero with an even vaguely sad backstory is Brock, who's dad left, but then comes back. (It never says what happened to Ash's dad.) And Ash rarely fails. Granted, of course, he is loyal, and we do like him, but Team Rocket still manages to evoke a surprising amount of sympathy for being the people trying to steal Pikachu.
So, if kidnappers can be that likable, using these techniques, what do you think you can do with good guys? Probably one of the hardest things for writers to do, is make their heroes fail. They're the hero! They should be capable! But if they never fail, we won't care. Of course they'll win, when do they not? Don't be afraid of making your hero fail. There is nothing we identify with better than failure. That, if nothing else, is something every human is familiar with.
Elisabeth TenBrink Kelley is an aspiring author and poet. To learn more about her, see our About Us page. You can follow her on Twitter here: @ElisabethGTK.
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