Otherworldly and unique

On February 9, 2014, Michelle Dyck wrote, I’ve been working on a fantasy series for several years now. (And book one has undergone massive changes and rewrites, which means that the following books will need the same once I get back to them!) The majority of the series takes place in another world. Anyway, I’ve been wondering about whether my main “good guy” nation is unique enough… vivid enough… real enough. This would be an easier problem to fix if I was in the beginning stages of writing about it — but I’m not. Does anyone have any tips for making an otherworldly culture and geography really pop? And how to make those alterations after the entire book has been written (and edited repeatedly, I might add)?

At the urging of Bibliophile, Michelle Dyck told us more: Here’s a little description of the otherworldly nation I mentioned. It’s called Demetria (and I’m trusting that all my fellow writers out there won’t steal the name!). It has a medieval society ruled by a lord. The population consists of humans, speaking animals, and mighty dragons. Mountain ranges, sweeping valleys, great rivers, and lush forests make up most of the landscape. In general, the Demetrians are a noble and peace-loving people, but they will not hesitate to fight when their homes and freedom are in danger.

Besides Demetria, there are myriad other countries in this world, but only two others get introduced in book one. Both border Demetria, and one in particular has instigated a war — one that Demetria has little hope of winning. The second of the two neighboring nations is something of a mystery, and for the sake of not spoiling my plot, I won’t say anymore about it. 🙂


Okay, here’s the plot of book one, THE PROPHET’S QUEST, or its beginnings, anyway. Visions of indescribable suffering… an ancient prophecy… a mysterious white orb called the Prophet — these are the things that propel teenagers Aileen and Josiah into an adventure they never saw coming. When they start probing for answers, they discover that a terrible evil is threatening the people of another world, and possibly Earth as well. Aileen and Josiah have been chosen to turn the tide, but before they can decide to accept their calling, they are kidnapped. The only way of escape lies in the initiation of a terrifying transformation… into dragons. With a nation poised on the brink of destruction and the fate of thousands in their hands, Aileen and Josiah embark on the Prophet’s quest. Neither of them could’ve imagined the peril that awaits.

writeforfun recommended the chapter in Writing Magic called “Where Am I” and added, Before you try to totally change your world, you might want to reevaluate it to make sure that it needs changing. I’ve read lots of fairy tales that are basically medieval Europe with the addition of magic. There really isn’t a whole lot that’s super unique, and readers apparently don’t mind (at least I don’t). If you are certain that you do need to change it, it may help if you made a list of qualities that you want to add to your world, then write a short summary of each of your books and look for places in that short summary where those changes would fit. That way you don’t have to read through your entire book to figure out where to add those changes.

I’m with writeforfun. My most recent novel, A Tale of Two Castles, is vaguely medieval with the addition of a dragon and an ogre and hints that other magical creatures live beyond the borders of the story. Michelle Dyck’s world sounds interesting, and the mere mention of mighty dragons makes me want to find out more. And the possibility of transforming into a dragon is thrilling.

However, just saying that what she has sounds fine doesn’t open up new options for her, so here are a few thoughts.

A while back, for the blog, I searched online for rules for writing fantasy, and the one that rang most true for me was: Create a sense of wonder. More recently, my editor said in an early edit that there wasn’t enough wonder in Stolen Magic. What to do? I had already invented creatures called brunkas, so I gave them the power to project rainbows from their hands. Then, and I love when this happens, the rainbows worked their way into my plot and became integral to the story.

I also made glow worms, which light the tunnels and rooms of the Oase, the brunka museum that’s built into a mountain. Alas, the glow worms didn’t move the plot along but I kept them for the wonder factor.

A good place to start to make our world unique is the mundane. In Fairest, Aza’s hair has tones of the color htun, which is visible only to dwarves. I invented htun because I used to paint and sometimes wished for another color to expand my palette beyond the ordinary color wheel. As I was writing I thought of that wish. Htun is a small change, but it sets the world apart, possibly in an even more surprising and interesting way than major pyrotechnics like force fields or invisible shields or people zooming around the sky.

So we can ask ourselves, What element of ordinary life can we tweak to astonish the reader? Food? Cooking? Buying and selling? Seeing? Hearing? For instance, we can take color away rather than add a new hue. Maybe people in this world see only in black-and-white after dark, indoors and out, or maybe the color actually drains out of the world when the sun goes down.

Michelle Dyck specifically asked about culture and geography. On September 4, 2013, I wrote a post on the former, which you can look up, so let’s consider the latter, and, again, let’s think small. I remember a detail in a science fiction book that I read decades ago, that the grass in this world enjoyed being walked on. I also recall that the chairs were part dog, and they loved being sat on. Tiny stuff like this really stands out. I still remember those details.

What can we do that will be memorable, too? I’m brainstorming: Stones that get cushiony after a rainfall? Trees that lose their leaves and get new growth monthly? Some bird species that camouflage themselves as bushes when danger looms; as soon as the danger passes the leaves and branches are lowered and return to being feathers and wings? Water that passes through a pudding-like state before freezing? Something about sunsets?

We may come up with ten ideas to jazz up our geography, but we probably should stick with one. One will dazzle the reader. Ten may tire him.

As for revising a big project, the only shortcut I can think of is word search. If, for example, you decide to make a certain kind of bird able to look like a bush, you can do a search on the places where this might come up: forest, meadow, mountainside. Then, when you get there, you can work in the bird.

Usually as I write a novel I also write a chronology of events, which helps me remember what I’ve done and helps me find my place if I need to go back to a particular spot. If you’ve done something similar, that will be useful in the revision.

But if the element you’re adding becomes integral to your plot, you may have to go through the whole book or all the books. That’s my favorite part, though. The plot is set but I’ve thought of something that’s going to improve it, and as I get into the process I feel the story firming up, becoming more exciting, more moving. Wow! I love that.

Here are three prompts:

• The birds that camouflage themselves as bushes are giant raptors. They use their disguise to surprise prey rather than to evade predators. Your MC is carrying a message for the king that absolutely has to get through, and her route takes her through the birds’ habitat. Write this part of her journey. If you like, use it in a story.

• Take the world we live in and change a single thing. Write an argument between your MC and her brother about whatever it is. Have the thing and the argument set the plot in motion.

• In Michelle Dyck’s story Aileen and Josiah are kidnapped. Imagine that your two MCs are kidnapped and left in a sentient room. The room itself is holding them and knows what it’s doing. Have them try to figure out how to escape. You decide whether or not they succeed.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Poetry Puzzle

Before I start, I want you to know that I’m going to be part of a read-aloud this Saturday, May 17th, sometime between 11:00 am and noon at Byrd’s Books at 126 Greenwood Ave in Bethel, Connecticut. I’ll be there for a nationwide event for independent bookstores, not to promote my books, so I’ll be reading from someone else’s book, although I’m not sure whose yet. If the audience is toddlers it will be a picture book–otherwise, something for older readers. If you can make it, if you’re anywhere nearby, I’d love to see you. I believe there will be time to chat.

Writeforfun has asked if I’m still taking poetry classes and I promised poetry prompts this week. My classes thus far haven’t yielded prompts or I would have shared. These two came along because I had an opportunity to submit a poem to an anthology in honor of the late poet Gwendolyn Brooks (high school level and above). At first I misunderstood what I was supposed to do and did it wrong. Then I did it right. Both ways, wrong and right, yield interesting prompts. Wrong way first:

To show how it’s done, let’s take this sonnet by Shakespeare, which I picked because it’s in the public domain, so I can copy it here:

Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
by William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
   So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
   So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Since it comes from Elizabethan England, some of the language is outdated, so, although Shakespeare may be spinning in his grave, I’m adding a step and doing an update, a step you won’t need if you use a modern poem:

Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
by William Shakespeare

Shall I compare you to a summer’s day?
You are more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease has all too short a date;
Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed;
But your eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair you owe;
Nor shall death brag you wander in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time you grow:
   So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
   So long lives this, and this gives life to you.

Alas, my revision ruins the final rhyme. If you decide to use this sonnet for your own poem and you want to change eyes can see to eyes can view, the rhyme returns but the wording isn’t as strong. You decide, or find another word to rhyme with you. Or you can stick with the old-time wording throughout the poem.

Since this is a sonnet, it has fourteen lines, so this example poem will too, and each line will end with the last word in each of the sonnet’s lines. I’ll just write three lines:

What, I wonder, will be the flavor of this day
that just began? Monday stormy, Tuesday temperate?
I want to improve on yesterday, but, come what may,
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah date
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah shines
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah dimmed
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah declines
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah untrimmed
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah fade
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah owe
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah shade
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah grow
   blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah see
   blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah you

Got it?

Notice that I turned the month of May into the word may, and you’re free to do the same with this sonnet or the equivalent in the poem you pick to honor. In this example, if I were to change see to sea when I got there, that would be fine too, in my opinion. Notice also that I dropped Shakespeare’s punctuation. You don’t have to stick with the punctuation in the original. And I didn’t capitalize the first letter in each line. You decide if you want to or not. Shakespeare’s sonnet is metrical: iambic pentameter. There’s no need to duplicate the meter, if there is meter, in the poem you pick.

So that was the prompt based on the wrong way. Here’s the right way:

Take a line or two or three in the poem you pick and make each word end the lines, consecutively, creating a poem that’s from six to twenty-six lines long.

Let’s take Shakespeare again, and suppose I pick the line Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May. Nine words in Shakespeare’s line; nine lines in the new poem. If I do the next line as well, which also happens to have nine words, I’ll have an eighteen-line poem. Here could be the beginning:

The strangest wedding I ever attended was a rough
affair–outdoors, on a beach, where the winds
of March howled. I never heard the bride’s “I do.”
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah shake
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah the
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah darling
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah buds
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah of
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah may/May

If you read down the last word of each line, you’ll discover Shakespeare’s line. See?

Notice that we lose Shakespeare’s rhymes entirely. I think this prompt is harder, because we have to end lines with words like the and of, which aren’t often end words, although some poets use them.

Your lines can be any length, but the instructions I got were to make them more or less consistent, all long or all short.

These two prompts force us to use words that aren’t the ones we usually pick, and when we leave familiar territory, in prose as well as in poetry, interesting things happen.

What I love about a challenge like this and about form poetry (sonnets, haiku, acrostics, etc.) is that they’re puzzles. We try them this way, then that way, then a tenth way, and finally they fit together–thrilling!

One more thing: If you choose a modern poem as the basis of your poems, be sure to write under the title of your poem, After Such-and-Such Poem by Such-and-Such poet. My example would read, After Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare. Then no one will think you’re stealing. Instead, it will be obvious that you’re honoring the poet and his or her creation.

If you try these prompts, please let us all know how they went for you. Post your poems if you like.

Back to fiction on the next post.

The Shining

On January 24, 2014, Eliza asked this important question: Anyone have tips on editing? Whenever I read over my stories, all I can pick out are the things I did wrong. Paragraphs that I can delete, plot holes that need to be stitched up, scenes that just don’t make sense. But once you remove the awful parts, how do you shine it up and make it pretty?

E.S. Ivy wrote this in response: Maybe the following suggestions would help:
– check the dialogue, is it entertaining? Do the characters’ personalities show? Can you add humor in them?
– check a scene with your mind’s eye. Can you really “see” it? Can you add touches of description here and there?
– the important parts, the ending and climax etc.: are there places where you could foreshadow them?

I agree, except that I’m not always on board with foreshadowing. You can read my posts on the subject.

Negativity is built into revision by definition. We’re hunting for problems so we can fix them. Still, revision is my favorite part of writing, the most positive as far as I’m concerned. Once my plot is set, then all I have to do is make it better, make it shine.

For this post I’ll be writing about the polish, which involves the little adjustments we make after the major flaws have been cleaned up. If you’re interested in other aspects, check my earlier posts on the subject.

What I do the most is cut. The process is like sculpting in marble: We chop away at the stone blocking our image, and, as the chips fall, the beauty is revealed.

Here’s a sneak preview of the first paragraph of Stolen Magic. I don’t know how to indent, so I’m italicizing, but it isn’t italicized in the manuscript. First is the paragraph I sent my editor after her intial round of edits:

As if she were narrating a mansioner’s play, Elodie spoke across the strait, “And so our heroine–” she blushed at calling herself heroine “–young mistress Elodie, returned to Lahnt, the island of her birth. Five weeks earlier, she’d departed, a humble farmer’s daughter, but now, unexpected by all, least expected by herself, she’d become–“ As the deck of the cog groaned behind her and the sour odor of rotten eggs reached her nose, she continued in her thoughts: Our heroine had become traveling companion to a noble ogre and assistant to a detecting dragon.

Below is the paragraph I sent her after the second round. My editor didn’t ask for these cuts. Read it and then I’ll say why I made them.

As if she were narrating a mansioner’s play, Elodie spoke across the strait, “And so our heroine–” she blushed at calling herself heroine “–young mistress Elodie, returned to Lahnt, the island of her birth. Five weeks earlier, she’d departed, a humble farmer’s daughter, but now, unexpected by all, least expected by herself, she’d become–“ She broke off as the deck of the cog groaned behind her and the sour odor of rotten eggs reached her nose.

In the first version I reassured the reader so that when the ogre and dragon appear, she isn’t worried. But I want her to worry! Why is the deck groaning? What’s causing the stink? These aren’t big anxieties, and they’re quickly put to rest, but still I’m eager to offer that tiny thrill.

Also, as I cut, the pace picks up. As long as I’m not deleting anything crucial to the story or to the development of my characters, a faster pace is an improvement.

Yesterday I received the copy editor’s response to the manuscript, and without prompting I made another slight change. See if you catch it. Here’s the paragraph again:

As if she were narrating a mansioner’s play, Elodie spoke across the strait, “And so our heroine–” she blushed at calling herself heroine “–young mistress Elodie, returns to Lahnt, the island of her birth. Five weeks earlier, she departed, a humble farmer’s daughter, but now, unexpected by all, least expected by herself, she has become–“ She broke off as the deck of the cog groaned behind her and the sour odor of rotten eggs reached her nose.

Do you see? I changed to present tense in the narration, which seems more natural, more like the narrator of a play. If the copy editor or my editor disagree, I’ll be informed, and then I’ll decide.

(If I were changing the tense in the whole manuscript, that would be an important change, but here the story continues to be told in the past tense.)

These are the kinds of itty-bitty adjustments I’m thinking about at this point. Another one is word repetition, which my editor and copy editor are good at noticing. I’m getting better at it, too, and studying poetry has helped. The reader may not notice the repeated words, but she will probably glide along more smoothly without them. Going the other way, however, sometimes we want to repeat, for emphasis or rhythm. We may even create a repetition as we revise, for those reasons.

Obviously, the repetition of some building-block words–like the, he, she, it, and, and or–can’t be avoided and don’t need to be. But I do check to make sure I haven’t started sentence after sentence or paragraph after paragraph with the same one of any of them.

Name repetition is another kind of repetition that I look out for. For example, have I repeated my MC’s name three times in four paragraphs and it’s irritating? Can I replace one or two of those times with he or she without confusion?

A mistake I often make is taking actions or ideas out of order–in a small way. I just corrected an example of this in Stolen Magic. In the narration I’m revealing that Elodie and her friends are traveling by oxcart, and I explain who’s in which cart, and then, boom!, there’s a sentence that jumps ahead to camping for the night. It looked okay; they do camp. But it’s bumpy, so I moved the camping to the end of the mode of transportation.

We also need to look at word choice. Is this the right term to nail a feeling, a description, an action?

Am I weakening my prose with hedging adjectives. For example, the dragon emits an unpleasant sulfurous odor, which Elodie gets used to and even comes to like. But I had her almost like it, which doesn’t take a stand, so I got rid of the almost.

And of course, we have to clean up any niggling grammar errors, anything that might confuse a reader.

Here are three prompts:

• When my editor at the time wanted me to write The Princess Tales, she sent me several chapter books to read to familiarize myself with writing for that age group, which is younger than the full-length novel crowd. To really get inside the writing, I retyped one of the books in its entirety, absorbing vocabulary, style, sentence length. This exercise was more useful than simply reading the book, or even rereading it several times. So pick a book you love, one you think is well-written, and copy out, say, two pages by hand or on a computer. If you have time, do it twice. If you’re having trouble picking a book, may I suggest Charlotte’s Web, because the writing, in my opinion, is splendid? As you go along in whatever book you choose, ask yourself questions about why the author made the choices he did. You may find you disagree about some of them. That’s fine. You’re entering into a conversation with a book. Cool!

• Using my suggestions and E. S. Ivy’s, re-revise a page or two of a story of yours that you’ve already gone over. Is it “shinier” when you’re done than it was before?

• Your MC is in her room, suffering from the results of a very bad day caused by her own actions. She’s antagonized her friends and her family; someone is in the hospital because of her; and whatever else you come up with to increase her misery. A being (elf, fairy, alien, mad scientist, whatever) enters her room and offers her a do-over. She accepts, of course. Write the day as it played out originally and the do-over, and make it come out worse the second time, but not entirely because of her this time.

Have fun, and save what you write!

On-again, off-again character traits

In the last post, we looked at part of Alyssa’s question. Here’s more: I gave my MC the ability to know if people are lying just by looking into their eyes, and if they are lying, then she can learn the truth. Also, she can understand the cries of infants. I realized that the eye-reading ability I gave her isn’t in use much. I might use it three times in one page, then not mention it again for about 20+ pages. The infant-cry-ability isn’t used at all.


I’ve also been thinking about expanding this eye ability. She goes through a lot of complicated stuff, so she ends up hating a lot of people, so I’ve been thinking about making her able to kill people just by staring at them hard enough/long enough. Does that sound too violent? 


Also, she can write really well (mainly because it is my first real attempt to write and publish a complete novel and that is what I know best), so I have her writing a diary. I noticed the same thing with the diary entries. I put them into the story, but they have started becoming less and less frequent. 


I have started trying to add these abilities into the stories more and more, but I’ve almost got 100 pages and I don’t see many spots where I can work it in. Do you think I could just revise my story a bunch and make the writing and the eye-reading more common? Or would it be better to just write them out altogether? 


I like the diaries. They give more of an insight to my MC’s character and thoughts and the effect all of this stuff is having on her, and I have an excuse I can use for her not having written much, but the eye-reading seems like it would be a lot more difficult to fix. I might have an excuse to get rid of that, but I really like her having it.

In Alyssa’s story the ability to recognize a lie is a super power, but in other tales catching a lie by an ordinary MC can come up, as it has for me more than once. Here’s a link to a recent story in The New York Times that sheds light on the subject and reveals how difficult lie-spotting can be: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/25/science/in-airport-screening-body-language-is-faulted-as-behavior-sleuth.html. The information may be helpful if you write about a sleuth or a liar.

Starting with the fatal-staring ability: I can’t say if that power is too violent, which depends on the story and the writer’s (and reader’s) preferences. But if we want our MC to be likable, we make that harder if she’s staring people to death right and left. Probably can be done; it’s just harder. But if she has a stare that feels lethal to her victims even if they go on breathing, the likability hurdle is lower.

When I introduce a character trait I worry that the reader will forget it and be surprised when it crops up again. I don’t want that moment of surprise, because it takes the reader out of the story for a moment. The solution is to introduce the trait solidly at the start and have it crop up a few times soon after, which generally should be early in our story. Let’s take Alyssa’s MC’s journaling, and let’s call this MC Ophelia. We can describe Ophelia’s diary from her first-person POV, possibly like this: Thick, but no larger than my hand; bound with blue thread, an ancient practice, which connects me to centuries of diarists; covered in plain, anonymous manila upon which I would never write, not even a single mark to identify the diary as mine. The whole book fits neatly into a brick-red cordovan case secured with a silver locking zipper. That zipper, which has never been breached, gives me a measure of security, though I realize the leather wouldn’t withstand a razor.

There. I hope I’ve made this diary distinctive enough to be memorable.

A digression: I googled bookbinding to get ideas for describing the diary and came across the creepy practice of anthropodermic bibliopegy, that is binding with human skin, which continued into the nineteenth century. You can look it up. Ew!

After that description, we know the diary is important to Ophelia. Next we show her writing in it. Let’s say we write a scene in which she speaks to the manservant who attends the crown prince. As soon as the manservant goes off to perform some duty, Ophelia pulls out her diary to record their conversation as well as her thoughts about what was said. She keeps writing when a servant with a broom sweeps by, but as soon as the Countess enters the corridor, Ophelia tucks the diary in her pocket. The Countess says something or does something and passes on. Out comes the diary again, and this time the reader is shown what Ophelia wrote, which includes the conversation with the manservant and whatever happened with the Countess. The reader understands by this that Ophelia is devoted to keeping a record of events and that she probably has an important reason for doing so. After that, we don’t need to show the diary whenever something happens. The reader will assume that diary writing is going on. We do have to reintroduce it occasionally so the reader remembers, but not that often. If the diary comes into the plot directly–for instance, if it’s discovered by a possible enemy–so much the better. But it doesn’t have to actually be discovered. The reader will worry if he’s led to fear discovery. If we can make him scream internally, Put that diary away, Ophelia! Now! Hurry! then we’ve done a good job.

And making the reader worry leads me to plot. The character traits Alyssa mentions (or any character traits) will remain present for the reader and will recur naturally in the narration if they figure into our MC’s struggle. They’ll also crop up for us most readily if we see a role for them in our story. We can see this role ahead of time if we’re the kind of writer who plans her story. If we don’t plan and we plunk in a trait because we think it’s cool, because we think it will make our character more layered, then we have to keep it mind as we keep writing. We have to look for ways to work it into our story line. For example, I made Ella clumsy at the beginning of Ella Enchanted without any forethought, but the trait becomes one of her obstacles in finishing school.

If a trait turns out not to do much for the plot, we can certainly cut it in revision. I’ve done that.

Back to Ophelia’s lie-detecting ability. It may be fine–unless this skill makes things too easy for her. If she can see through the deception that threatens her safety or her happiness, then her problem collapses. So we have to watch out when we give our characters super powers.

Here are three prompts:

• Let’s use Ophelia’s lie-detection. She attends the coronation of the new king. One courtier after the other steps up to swear loyalty to the new ruler, but Ophelia realizes that three of them are lying. Write the scene and what comes next.

• Ophelia writes the names of the false courtiers in her diary, along with her suspicions about them. Write the scene in which the diary falls into the wrong hands.

• Or, closer to home, she hears her parents tell her older brother about the day he took his first steps and understands that the entire story is a lie. Write what happens next.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Character flip-flop

First off, I hope to see some of you at the book festival in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, this weekend. Check the website for details.

This is part of an appeal for help that came into the website late in January from Alyssa: I might say something about a character, and then say something completely opposite that on the next page. For example, I might say that someone does charity work all the time, and that she is an awesome person to be around, but then later say that she would never do a thing for anybody else and nobody likes her. I can just revise that away, right? Or is that one of those things that is harder to fix?


One of my friends was reading what I had written, and she said that at the beginning she had loved one of my major characters, Eric, and only liked him more as I went on, but then around page eighty he started changing completely and she told me something along the lines of, “Well, sheesh. If I knew Eric was like this, I would never have fallen in love with him!” Is it normal for a character to change that much in such a short span of time? Because this is happening with a lot of my characters.

Michelle Dyck responded, As far as character inconsistency goes, I’ve found that something called ‘Character Bibles’ help a whole lot! You can keep them in a document or by hand in a notebook, whichever works for you. It’s quite simple. You just list each character’s name and jot down their personality, physical description, and any other miscellaneous bits of info you have. Then as you’re writing or editing, you can go back to make sure you’re keeping your characters consistent. For MCs, I give them each a separate file a couple pages long each. (And some of the info I make up for them never goes into a book — it just helps them become real in my mind.) All the other characters have to share a file, and most of them only need a couple of lines. Anyway, if you’re an outliner/planner, you’ll probably want to put together these Character Bibles before you start writing. But if you’re a seat-of-the-pants writer, then you can just add to them as your characters enter your story. It takes a bit of effort, but it’s so helpful in the long run. Because who wants to wade through pages and pages to verify what so-and-so’s eye color was or where she worked?

I’m with Michelle Dyck about the usefulness of a character “bible.” There’s a questionnaire in Writing Magic that may help you write one for each of your major characters.

In the first instance Alyssa asks about, I agree that the fix is easy and we can just revise for character consistency, but sometimes characters undergo a troubling transformation because of a plot problem. For example, let’s imagine that Mina, who’s the best friend of our MC Ron, has been loyal and supportive. Then, suddenly, she rats him  out to, say, the chief of police. The reader shouts, “Mina wouldn’t do that!” and throws the book across the room. (Let’s further imagine that Ron’s crime is very minor, not deserving of harsh treatment.) We’ve made Mina act against all expectation and against her true nature because our plot demanded that the police chief become aware of Ron.

My only unpublished novel, which I won’t allow to see the light of day, has this kind of problem. It’s called My Future Biography, and in it my MC Marita is an aspiring teenage actor who gets a job as an extra in a summer stock theater. (An extra is like an unpaid intern; a summer stock theater is usually in a rural or suburban place and puts on plays only in the summer.) Marita, who’s obsessed with acting, has an exaggerated idea of her ability, although she is talented. She’s convinced that the leading lady in the first play of the season is botching her role. So–and this is where the story goes off the rails–she writes a negative review of the production for the local newspaper and says mean things about a lot of people. This terrible betrayal changes the reader’s opinion of Marita and makes her totally unlikable. The trouble is that the whole plot turns on it; it was necessary to set up the lesson Marita needs to learn. When I tried to reread the book not too long ago to see if there was anything I could save, I was so annoyed that I couldn’t finish it. I threw my own manuscript across the room!

Sadly, I adore the male lead and one of the other supporting characters.

My Future Biography is one of my early novels. I don’t think I would make this mistake again, and so far I haven’t I haven’t figured out a way to fix the plot. The reason it’s so hard to salvage is because the problem involves my MC. Luckily for Alyssa, her surprising character reversals involve secondary characters.

So, what to do?

One solution is to suggest early on that a particular character, in this case Eric, isn’t all he seems. Alyssa can include a scene in which he disappoints her MC, whom we’ll call Corinne. Eric apologizes and Corinne forgives him, but a seed has been planted in the reader’s mind. We don’t have to do even that much. If Corinne’s sweet dog growls at Eric, the reader will doubt him.

Another approach is to show the reader the moment of transformation. An extreme example would be if Eric’s brain were taken over by an alien or if he were brainwashed. The reader would then totally get his alteration. But we don’t have to go that wild. Suppose Eric comes across something online that shows Corinne in an unfavorable light. The information is false, but Eric doesn’t know. Now he’s the one feeling betrayed, and his behavior to her changes. Or suppose he becomes friends with someone who dislikes Corinne and this person wins him over to her point of view. Again, we understand the change.

Here’s a prompt: Write down three more possible reasons for a change in Eric.

Another tactic is to keep Eric as he always was and give the bad behavior to another character, one who has been iffy all along. This doesn’t mean Eric has to disappear. I like it when my MC has someone she can count on for emotional support–Mandy for Ella, for example. Eric can’t save Corinne, but she can touch in with him occasionally when she and the reader need a break from the misery.

Here’s one more strategy: When we cast characters for a story, it’s helpful to think about the roles they’re likely to play. For example, in the book I started recently, Peregrine, my MC, is adopted by Lady Klausine, a childless noblewoman. Although Klausine is going to love Peri, she’s going to be hard on her, and her manner isn’t going to be loving. I don’t outline, but I do know that feeling unloved will be important in moving Peri through my plot. I’m defining Klausine as cold and demanding so that I won’t have to change her as the story progresses.

Here are three prompts:

• Write a scene that introduces Mina into Ron’s story. Make Ron like her a lot and the reader distrust her.

• Write the scene in which Ron commits the act that Mina later uses against him. Keep going with a story that involves the local authority (a police chief, a queen, a sorceress, or whatever you choose), Ron, Mina, and whatever other characters you need.

• Write a version of the story I’ve started. Your MC Margot has been adopted by a reserved, not very loving noblewoman, Lady Waverly. The loveless home affects your story. In the course of it Margot changes, but Lady Waverly never does.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Vexing complexity

First off, I want to tell you that I’ll be talking and signing at the book festival in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, from April 4th through April 6th. Details are posted here on my website: http://www.gailcarsonlevine.com/appears.html. However, the schedule when you click on it needs to be updated, because I’ll be leaving by about 2:30 on Sunday. Anyway, I’d love to meet some of you there. Please come if you can!

On January 16, 2014, Melissa wrote, Does anyone have ideas on how to keep things from getting over-complicated? I feel like I get so far into my story that I get stuck and can never get back out of it to figure out an ending without everything seeming abrupt.

Eliza responded with this: Pace the ending like the plot. If you have a slow, thoughtful kind of book don’t wrap everything up in two pages. But if it’s fast paced don’t drag it out forever. You don’t need to tie up all the loose ends, it’s ok to leave stuff ambiguous, but answer the big questions. Decide what your story’s core conflict is. Make a list of all the subplots and characters and how they relate to it. Is there someone who really doesn’t need to be there? Do your characters wander into Subplot Land for several scenes without discussing the core conflict? If it doesn’t directly tie into your story’s core and you can’t tweak it, it doesn’t need to be there.

Thanks, Eliza! Sounds like good advice for me, too. My tendency is to over-complicate as well. I’ve started a new book, although I haven’t been working on it much lately because of poetry school. Only twelve pages in and I’m already spinning a web that would make a spider blush, because it’s too loose to catch anything.

Here’s an example of how I get into trouble: Suppose I want to expand on “The Princess and the Pea” (never mind that I already did in The Princess Test). In this new story, Perlina, the true princess, is my MC, and I need to know what her backstory is before she shows up soaking wet at the castle doors, so I imagine that her throne was usurped the day after she ascended to it. She was escorted to the border and left there. Her core problem is getting her kingdom back. She wanders, cold, impoverished, often hungry, for a month until she hears in a village about the competition for a true princess, which she figures she can win, and then she’ll have a kingdom and its army to help her fight her way home.

Maybe this would work, but probably I’ve already over-complicated my story, which now has to detour through proving that Perlina is a true princess and dealing with the prince and the future in-laws. It’s possible that I would write two hundred pages before realizing that my real story has nothing to do with “The Princess and the Pea” and I have to remove that part (and save it).

When I wrote Ella Enchanted, I had Ella travel to Gnome Caverns with her father before starting her other adventures. I wrote 180 pages involving gnomes, Sir Peter, and the evil men who worked for him. My critique buddies were lost, and so was I. Eventually I cut the whole thing.

What sets me off is curiosity, imagination, and the fun of following an idea. This is important: If we tangle ourselves up, but we’re enjoying the writing, getting lost isn’t a tragedy. We snip and think and get going again. In this case, I would think about a more direct approach for Perlina. Where can she find allies without having first to marry one of them? Who would rally to her cause? How can she find out what’s been going on in her kingdom in her absence? Is a rebellion brewing?

Or, I might decide“that The Princess and the Pea” part is the most interesting and give Perlina a simpler back story.

My capacity for getting into plot trouble is at its worst if I’m writing in third-person omniscient or from more than one POV. Let’s take the story of Perlina’s ouster. If Perlina weren’t my first-person narrator throughout, I might decide to slip inside the usurper’s character and get involved with his goals. Maybe he forced his way to power just so he could offer a throne to the damsel he loves (not Perlina). She’s just a weaver, but she’s crazy for gold thread. Then I may get interested in this weaver, too, to find out if she’s in love with the young man who’s just hijacked a country for her. And there’s the prince who’s waiting for a true princess. He’s fascinating, too. What does he expect from this royal young lady? Are his ideas unrealistic? So I write a few scenes from his point of view. And my story is just a tad disorganized. But if I’m writing only what Perlina experiences I can’t be led astray into these side alleys, no matter how fascinating they are.

So that’s one strategy for story simplification: Limit your point of view to one. I don’t mean you should never write from more than one or from the POV of an omniscient narrator. This strategy applies only if your story is getting away from you. If you know how all your POVs fit into your story, go for it.

Another strategy is to come up for air occasionally, say every thirty pages. Look around. Ask yourself what’s going on. If your story is throwing out tentacles in every direction, follow them back to the center of the octopus and decide what you need. Clip off the extras before you’ve written 180 pages that don’t tell your story.

Regarding endings: Let’s imagine we have two subplots that have been moving along with the main event and we need to draw them to a satisfying conclusion. They’re fine subplots; we don’t feel they should be cut. One of them, say, involves Perlina’s younger brother who’s been imprisoned to prevent a rebellion from forming around him, but he’s eager to escape and help his sister. We’re going to resolve his problem and the problem of the other subplot, whatever that is, before moving on to the final one. If we decide to go that way, we’ll orchestrate his escape and get him to the border to meet Perlina’s force. His presence will give her the boost to surge on to the capital. Or we can decide to have him (gasp!) executed, and news of his death will galvanize Perlina and remove any remaining doubts in her allies. The point is, if we settle the side plots, our conclusion can ring through with clarity.

Naturally, the prompts come from the post.

• Write the scene in which Perlina loses her kingdom. If you discover that you need backstory, write it. Meanwhile, observe yourself in case you’re letting the story spin wildly. If you’re enjoying the ride, keep going. Otherwise, think about how the backstory might set up Perlina’s quest to get her kingdom back, and shape it along those lines.

• Write Perlina’s wanderings in the kingdom of “The Princess and the Pea” after she’s been expelled from her own land. Focus here on what she might learn that will help or hinder her later on.

• Suppose Perlina was overthrown because the nobility didn’t find her a likely leader. Write the scene in which she meets her future in-laws and the prince and show her struggle to present herself with the dignity she had already been judged to lack.

• Write the usurper’s first day on the throne, including his proposal to his weaver love.

• From the prince’s POV, write the scene in which Perlina shows up at the castle door and comes in.

• Put together whatever elements interest you and write the whole story.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Expressions in your world

On January 14, 2014, J. Garf wrote, What’s a good way to come up with figures of speech? There are things we all say every day, and I feel like a few of these add color to a story, but some expressions just don’t make sense. For example, you can’t exactly say “what on earth is that?” if your story doesn’t take place on earth. Another good one that doesn’t work is “holy cow!” I use this one all the time in daily speech but can’t in my book because it originated because of Hindus’ beliefs that cows are sacred, and since my book is fantasy this religion doesn’t exist on my fantasy world. There are dozens of other things that we say all the time because of where we live or how we’ve grown up, and I feel like fictional characters should have these too. Any ideas?

Kenzi Anne replied, I know exactly what you mean!! I like to make up figures of speech for fantasy characters; a lot of times it depends on the character using them. If, say, I have a humorous, innocent, and/or lighthearted character, I might have them say “Snarks and snizzles!” because it sounds silly and is absolute nonsense. Also, alliteration tends to make the phrases a little more catchy, which a lot of the phrases we use are. My personal forte is fairytale retelling, and oftentimes I like go back to the language that the original is told in (usually German, though it may be easier for me to use this because I’m minoring in it), and use words from the language so that they sound “real” and can have meaning. If you’re not using fairytales, I’d suggest thinking of the kinds of things that make up the phrases we use. For example, people often would swear “by the king” or, as in Harry Potter, “by Merlin’s beard!” (That one has always stuck with me for some reason). But it makes sense for wizards to mention a wizard that everyone would know, and who is often depicted with a long white beard.


We tend to use very important things in culture that most people living in said culture would recognize, like how the Hindus believed cows were sacred, so saying “holy cow” in the Hindu culture made sense. Taking elements/motifs/taboos/etc. from the culture you’ve created can help you to make phrases that coincide with your world. 🙂

I’m with Kenzi Anne, except in one regard. I don’t think that people whose religion is Hinduism say “holy cow!,” because we’re unlikely to make fun of our own religion in our expressions. I suspect that someone outside the religion, amused by the reverence for cows, coined this one. There’s interesting information about the subject on this Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_cow_(expression).

But I do agree that the source of our figures of speech is likely to be our characters and the world of our story.

Elodie in A Tale of Two Castles, a farm girl who is just beginning to see the wide world, says “Lambs and calves!” when she’s surprised. In Stolen Magic I expanded this kind of expression to other characters. Robbie, who used to live in a harbor village, says “Whales and porpoises!” The barber says “Hair and teeth!” because barbers also pulled teeth in the middle ages. And the dragon Meenore says “Fire and smoke!” Wrapped up in these examples are three approaches to expression development: a character’s background (a farm or a fishing village), a character’s occupation, the character’s nature (a dragon). Count Jonty Um thinks, but never says, Fee fi! or Fo fum! for the obvious reason that he’s an ogre.

Elodie’s world is an approximation of medieval, when conditions were grimmer than we have to face in our daily life, so a local adage is: Love your lice. Only skeletons have none. Ick, but having lice is preferable to being dead, so there’s that consolation. Few are rich on Elodie’s home island of Lahnt, and poverty gives rise to other sayings, like, Share well, fare well.  Share ill, fare ill, which leads to another strategy: Think of the realities in your stories. Here’s a prompt: Invent three proverbs that could apply to a warrior culture, three that might arise in a farming community, three for a university science department, three that might be used by fairies.

I love Kenzi Anne’s idea that an expression might reflect a passing emotion or a character’s usual state of mind. “Snarks and snizzles!” is delightful. And I agree about bringing in sound to explain why an expression catches on. For example, we have the rhyming “doom and gloom” to indicate a different feeling.

Although “doom and gloom” isn’t specific to a particular culture and would probably work in a fantasy, I’d stay away from it as too close to cliche. I’d prefer to come up with something fresh. Same with any other common expression. But if I couldn’t think of anything new, then I’d just skip the figure of speech entirely and reveal my character’s feelings in another way–through action or thought or dialogue (minus expressions). A gloomy POV character might get bad news and feel her limbs grow heavy, for example. A secondary character might appear uncharacteristically draggy to our MC.

Having said that about cliches, in a non-fantasy story, one of our characters, say Joe, might use ordinary expressions often. He might be a fountain of them and may not be an original thinker. We don’t want to be cliched writers, but we can certainly develop cliched characters. In fact, we can even think of a character arc in which Joe finally comes up with something surprising and new. And in a fantasy we can have a character like Joe, one who spouts the sayings that are common in her culture. She can set off spasms of yawns in her listeners whenever she opens her mouth.

Here are two prompts:

• Invent three expressions for each of these emotions: pain, anger, love. Make two of the three use sound, like alliteration or assonance or rhyme, to boost their memorability.

• Two of your characters, friends, swear to speak only in expressions for a day, and the expression has to fit what’s going on. Cliches are fine for this. No matter what happens, they will voice an expression or say nothing. As soon as they agree to this, something unexpected happens, one or more of these or an event you make up: a tornado tears through town, someone they both thought dead shows up, aliens land, a magic wand appears on the bed of one friend. The friends don’t abandon their vow in the face of the unforeseen. Write the day.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Plot dilemmas and a villain

On December 13, 2013, this came into the website from Alyssa: I reached a point in my book where I needed an explanation for something, but I couldn’t think of one, so I just put something down so I could keep going. I don’t really like the explanation, but it was the best thing I could come up with. Do you have any advice for moments like that?


Also, I feel like there are large parts of my book where I am just making things up as I go along. Is this normal for you, or do you have a general idea of how your story is going to end when you finish your book?


My third question was, when you create a villain, how much cruelty do you consider enough to convince your reader that the character is no good? Because in my story, the main character’s mother is the main villain in my main character Lara’s life, so I want to convince the reader that the mom is awful and cruel, but Lara still loves her mom, I just don’t know how to show that. I want her to seem evil, but Lara sticks around for about 18 years, so I can’t make her that bad. Do you have any advice for this kind of problem?

Eliza responded with these ideas: I’ve heard lots of writers describe themselves as pantsers, meaning they go off the seat of their pants and just make stuff up. Almost as if they’re reading it instead of writing. For me, I need to have at least a general idea of how it will end. “Villain gets killed. Heroine is reunited with her boyfriend. Character breaks out of prison.” But I don’t know who will kill the villain or how the character escapes. It helps if I know the next five events. By the time I’ve written those I’ve come up with something else. If you feel lost you may need an outline. But if you’re comfortable making stuff up? Go ahead.


On villainy: It’s remarkable-and more than a little sad-how people stay loyal to real life villains. Lara’s grown up with her mother. She’s seen her good side too. But show her doing something awful and cruel and readers will recognize her as a villain. I wrote a story where my character’s parents were mean, though not the main villains. It helped to have her brother call out the parents for being cruel when she’s too afraid to stand up to them.

And Elisa weighed in with, On the out-of-the-blue-temporarily-staying-like-this-fix-later thing: Write something that makes sense, sort of, then leave it like that, then come back and elaborate on it. Change some things earlier on and later on to fit with this scene, (Such as Q: How does the MC escape prison? A: He has a file and a parachute. Now you figure out WHY he has a file and a parachute. Add them into the parts of the story you’ve already written.)

A lot of my writing comes from my subconscious. I toss things into my stories without any idea of where they emerged from. In The Two Princesses of Bamarre, for example, I made Addie skillful at embroidery, probably because I wanted her to be good at something, and embroidery seemed like a hobby that a shy person might take up. Basically, I was just rounding out her character. I didn’t know what I’d do with this accomplishment, but I kept it in mind, and it came in mighty handy when she was captured by the dragon Vollys.

So that would be my suggestion. We come up with an explanation, the best we can think of, and soldier on, remembering the explanation as we go and looking for spots where it will support our plot. Maybe it will create tension, make our MC unhappy, or get her out of a jam.

I also like Elisa’s idea and her example. When we throw in that parachute and file, we create interest and stimulate our ingenuity. We can also make the reader worry. She knows about the parachute and the file. What if a guard finds them? What if another prisoner steals them for his escape?

In Two Princesses, the embroidery might not have turned out to be useful. Addie may have needed something else. As my plot revealed itself, I could have gone back and exchanged embroidery for pottery, or I could have revised her into a supremely strong swimmer. I may have wasted pages and time with the embroidery, but lost time and words for me are just the price of being a writer. And, often, I have fun writing the parts I wind up not needing.

Generally, before I introduce anything into a story, I make a list of possibilities, and the element I bring in isn’t the first one I thought of. So there’s another suggestion. We can make a list of explanations, five at least, and then choose the one we like best. If that one doesn’t work out in the end, we can go back to our list and add to it or see if one of the rejects really fits the bill.

Like Eliza, I, too, usually know in a general way where my story is going. If a plot seems to be meandering or lurching from crisis to crisis, it’s time to stop to consider what the main problem is. To figure that out, we can ask ourselves some questions: What’s most important to our MC? What problem resonates with her personality? Which challenges those aspects of her character that most need to grow?

When we know the main problem, we can list ways to resolve it. We don’t have to work out the resolution in detail, and our decision can be tentative; we’ll know better if the ending is right as we approach it. Once we have an inkling of the ending, we can craft our crises to jibe with it. We can make achievement of our MC’s goal harder even while giving her the tools that will eventually enable her to get there.

Now for the villainous mother. I have just one suggestion: Be subtle. Mrs. McMeanie doesn’t have to beat her daughter. The havoc she wreaks can be psychological, and the reader will still recognize the misery she’s inflicting. She can make her daughter feel inferior with constant put-downs. She can persuade her child to fear the world outside her family. Going the other way she can even cripple her daughter by giving her the idea that she’s better than everyone else. Or she can burden her daughter with impossible expectations. I’ve mentioned on the blog before that I once knew a man whose mother persuaded him that he was unlucky, and he played that belief out in his adult life. That mother, probably unintentionally, became the villain in her son’s story.

Here are four prompts:

• Your MC sets off on a new endeavor, which could be a new school, a battle, camp, a job as unicorn trainer in a zoo. Before she leaves, her mother gives her a few words of advice, which make everything harder. Write the advice and the scene that follows. If you like, continue and write the story.

• A good friend of mine believes that moms have gotten a bad rap in literature for children. In this scene, your MC is spending the day alone with her father. She’s thrilled because he rarely has time to dedicate to her. Make it all go wrong and reveal the dad as less than a great guy.

• Along the same lines, retell “Hansel and Gretel,” and make the father the major baddie instead of the mother–or the witch!

• Our MC, who’s been captured by the enemy, is held in a stone fortress. She has a candle and a lady’s fan. Have her escape using one or both of these.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Different peas in a pod

Great news! My forthcoming writing book, Writer to Writer, has a subtitle, and it comes from you wonderful blog writers, who galloped in with your excellent ideas when I appealed for help. The powers that be at HarperCollins loved (and I love it too) one of Eliza’s suggestions. The subtitle will be–imagine a drum roll–From Think to Ink. Thank you, everyone, and special thanks to Eliza!

Eliza, if you’d like the acknowledgment in the book to include your last name, please write to the guestbook on my website with that information. Your email address would also be helpful. I won’t display anything you send. Unlike the blog, I see comments on the website and approve them before they’re posted.

On December 4, 2013, Bug wrote, I am worried that all my characters are too similar, and I have tried adding quirks, but I still feel like they are still really really close to each other. Does anyone have any way to help? Maybe my quirks aren’t quirky enough…

An assessment of the traits we usually give our characters may help. We can make a list. For example, suppose our characters’ virtues tend to be friendliness, an easy-going nature, and a sense of humor. We put these on our list. Their flaws seem always to include difficulty trusting, sarcasm, and laziness. We list these too. As soon as we look at our list we see possibilities for variation.

We can make add other personality traits, like this: shyness, too much energy, seriousness, a trusting nature, quick anger, hesitancy, impulsiveness, nervousness, sweetness, optimism, pessimism. That’s eleven. Go for eleven more. Return to this list and add to it when you think of additions, and keep the list handy as you develop your characters.

Of course it’s not enough to have a list. We have to show the traits in action, dialogue, thoughts, and feelings. Suppose our MC Jenna is waiting at a bus stop along with three strangers. It’s winter; snow is falling lightly; the bus is late. One stranger is so wrapped up against the weather that Jenna can see only his or her amber-colored eyes. Let’s call him or her WU, for wrapped up. The other stranger, whose name will turn out to be Ivan, is approximately Jenna’s age (fifteen), and, like Jenna, he’s wearing just a light jacket over a hoodie sweatshirt, no gloves, and sneakers rather than boots. Ignoring the swathed person, he starts a conversation with her. What does he say?

We cast an eye over our list of characteristics. Since Ivan started the conversation, let’s imagine that he’s not shy. And let’s pick impulsive and too trusting from our list. What might such a person say to Jenna? We write three possible lines for him. If all of them look like the sort of dialogue we always write, we write three more. When we get something that feels unfamiliar, we give it to him. Once he speaks, we know him a little.

Now we have to decide what Jenna does or says. Again we go to our list, then write down possible responses. Since she’s our POV character, we can tell the reader what she’s thinking and feeling, too, so our possible response list may be longer.

It will help if we have an idea of the kind of story we’re writing, so we can stop now to decide. If this is going to be a romance, we’ll go in one direction, probably, and WU may even turn out to be one of Ivan’s parents. If we’re writing an adventure story, we may have the dialogue go another way, and the missing bus and WU may take on more significance. If we’re writing horror, we may start to suspect Ivan as well as WU. Science fiction or fantasy may lead us in another direction.

The roles our characters are going to play in our story will help us make each unique. Let’s take one of my favorite novels when I was little, the classic Bambi by Felix Salten as an example. We’ll probably be writing a more complex story than this one, but its simplicity helps to show what I mean, because the characters aren’t much more than their roles. If you read the book when you were much younger, or never read it at all, you can go to Wikipedia for a plot summary, as I just did to refresh my memory. If you go to Wikipedia, make sure the page you’re on is for the book and not the movie.

Let’s look at just a few of the characters:

Bambi is our MC, brave, intelligent, inexperienced but promising at the beginning, thoughtful.

His mother is motherly, solicitous, expert in the ways of raising a fawn.

Faline, the love interest, is alluring and charming.

The old Prince is solemn, wise.

Gobo is weak and gullible.

The tale spans the life of a deer in a forest where hunters hunt. Man is the main villain, but carnivores in general don’t come off very well. Gobo, for example, is the way he is so that a point can be made about the danger of trusting humans. There are other turns in the story, but his undoing affects everything that follows. When Salten wrote Gobo, he must have known the role he would play in his plot.

Of course, we want major characters with more depth than a couple of salient characteristics. If our character is weak and gullible, we need to ask ourselves, Weak how? Physically? Is he ill or out of shape or exhausted? Emotionally weak? Is he unable to resist the slightest temptation? Gullible how? What else can we give him? Maybe he’s physically weak and also embarrassed to ask for help. As a result he often gets along without. Maybe he’s gullible because he always believes the best of people.

So we differentiate our characters by first thinking about their parts in our story and then by dreaming up ways to complicate their personalities without derailing our plot.

We can also see if we can eliminate characters we don’t need. For instance, if I had been around when “Cinderella” was first concocted, I would have argued against two stepsisters. We don’t need two! In the fairy tale they’re indistinguishable. And why seven dwarfs? They clump together into a formless mass of short characters. At least Disney had the good sense to name each one after a distinguishing characteristic. I couldn’t remember all the names, so I looked them up in Wikipedia, where the dwarfs’ monikers in various “Snow White” productions are listed. Here’s the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_names_of_the_Seven_Dwarfs. The strange names they’re given from production to production are funny.

In our story, if we have a group of friends who all seem to be running together, we can practice character economy and drop a few.

But we may need them all. My novel The Wish is about popularity, and I had to have a bunch of teenagers. It was hard work to make each one stand out! In a mystery we need enough suspects to confuse the poor reader, and we must differentiate between them so the reader can follow the plot.

Here are four prompts:

• Write the romantic version of the Jenna and Ivan story.

• Write a version of the story in which WU is the villain. Ivan knows him or her and is terrified.

• Have the bus come. Inside are five passengers and the driver. Jenna, Ivan, and WU get on. Turns out WU has been waiting for this particular driver to come along. You make up the reason. Write the bus ride and make the driver, each of the passengers, WU, Jenna, and Ivan distinct. Give each a role to play in the plot.

• Rewrite “Cinderella,” changing the plot so that the second stepsister has a real part to play for good or for ill. You can bring the story to its usual conclusion or change it entirely.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Beautiful wickedness

On November 19, 2013, J. Garf wrote, I was wondering if anyone knows how to make evil beautiful. I don’t mean making the villains physically beautiful, that’s relatively easy. I mean the act of evil itself. For example, in the Phantom of the Opera, the phantom calls light “cold, unfeeling” and “garish”, while he calls darkness and evil “sweet intoxication.” Is this simply his mad opinion, or could you write something like that? I plan to read the book soon which will hopefully give me some ideas, but does anyone have any advice? Also, how difficult is it to write a protagonist as a villain?

Bibliophile commented, I would say, pretty difficult. I mean, we all want to root for the protag, but can we if they’re evil?


I think that good examples of this on TV are Breaking Bad and definitely Dexter. Don’t watch those shows if you’re squeamish. But in general, if the evil is backed by some good, then we might be able to relate. Like when we had to read Mein Kampf by Hitler, he kept stating his mission over and over again. It’s a good read, there were some things in there that you wouldn’t have expected of him. 


If you were to write a story like that, it would definitely need to be in first person. Otherwise, the character wouldn’t come across as well as he could have.

In the nick of time, Bibliophile clarified: Reading that over, it sounds like I agreed with Hitler, I DO NOT!!!!! It just was interesting to see how his mind worked.

And Michelle Dyck weighed in with, I’m not sure if you can make evil TRULY beautiful. I think you can make it understandable, or beautiful from the perspective of the evil character. But at some point in the story, the readers will begin to see the evil for what it really is.

First off, I want to mention that Dexter and Breaking Bad are both TV series for adults, and for adults with stronger stomachs than mine!

Villains are fascinating! But I’ve never tried to create beautiful evil or an evil protagonist, so what follows is just speculation.

Say we have a species of intelligent cockroaches locked in a war with humans for dominion over the earth. The roaches hope to wipe humanity out, except for a handful who will be kept in zoos. Our MC, Hunneeha, is a young roach lieutenant, who has risen in the roach ranks by dint of her enthusiasm, skill, and team spirit. She and her squad have been assigned to infiltrate an elementary school and kill all the adults and children. In the first scene Hunneeha and her squad are getting ready for their mission. Let’s say the story is written in the first person, and it begins like this:

We gathered in the basement sink. Eleven of them looked at me, waiting for my orders, but Jujo, youngster that he was, sucked on the end of a feeler. I waited for him to come to attention, grateful for the time to think of what to say, how to prepare them. Pretty Panay’s carapace sparkled. She must have spent half of yesterday polishing herself, thinking, perhaps, that cleanliness might contribute to victory. Gross feet thundered overhead. What chance did a shiny carapace have against the filthy soles of a human shoe?

Can we make these cockroaches beautiful? I bet we can, although we may have to get past our own revulsion first. We may write about shine, delicacy, big eyes–and not highlight the icky aspects. We’ll have to individualize the bugs. Some are probably better looking than others. Hunneeha may obsess over her skinny legs.

Are they evil? Suppose we alternate chapters from Hunneeha’s POV with chapters from the POV of Marcy, a high school student who has a part-time job in the school cafeteria, which is the roaches’ target; they’re intending to poison the food. Marcy and the children suspect nothing. We make the reader admire Marcy, too, and his brain somersaults whenever the chapters shift.

The point is, everything depends on perspective. We have to get inside our evil MC’s world, understand his goals, discover what he treasures. As an example, let’s make a hero of a tyrant, one who practices genocide, who by any reasonable standard is evil. His most important characteristic is that he’s an extreme nationalist. At the beginning of our story his people are poor and divided into factions. He realizes that the economy needs a war and that people won’t come together without a common enemy, so he, quite deliberately, picks out a tribe of his own people to demonize. Let’s call them the Bup tribe. Suppose he shines a spotlight on the wealthiest Bups. He publicizes their wealth and contrasts it with the plight of the poorest in the other tribes. As the writer, we don’t show members of this tribe who are poor or charitable or struggling or sympathetic in any way. Instead, we highlight the slow steady improvement in the economy. Maybe we zoom in on a delightful family that’s benefiting from the tyrant’s policies. We show violent acts by Bups but not the treatment that led to the fighting back. For the beauty part, we show a ceremony that unifies the other tribes. There are marches with candles and children singing in enormous rooms with vaulted ceilings and stained glass windows and banners. There is an air of solemnity and purpose and occasional joyous laughter.

I think we can make this evil beautiful. In addition to perspective, we’ve been selective. We’ve chosen not to show the whole picture of the Bups. By selection, we can make the tyrant sympathetic and heroic. We can make him handsome and even lovable. I bet we can even confuse ourselves.

If we write something like this, are we evil? Maybe not. Are we doing something wrong? I think so.

And I’m not sure we can produce great stories this way, because we may have to try too hard to make the point. We probably have to make our tale less complex in order to force the readers’ feelings. We shift closer to propaganda than to true story-telling. It’s not very different from writing a moralistic story. In both cases, the subtle grays that make fiction thrilling are sacrificed. It’s why I prefer MCs who are a little flawed and villains who are somewhat sympathetic.

Having said all this, we always stack the deck to some degree in our stories. We definitely want the reader to like certain characters more than others. But we also let our stories find their own way and surprise us sometimes.

Here are five prompts:

• Write the scene in which pretty Panay is killed by a first grader. Make the reader feel terrible. Make him hate the child who killed her. For extra credit (ha!), make the child seem as disgusting to the reader as roaches usually feel to us.

• Decide who wins the school battle. Write the final scene. For more extra credit, make the reader have mixed emotions about the outcome.

• Write “Little Red Riding Hood” from the POV of the wolf. Make him more than likable. Make it a tragedy when the hunter kills him.

• If you’re in the mood for historical research, read up on the American Revolution. Pick an MC on the side of the British, and make the reader root for the cause of the monarchy.

• Write “Sleeping Beauty” from the POV of the angry fairy who wants the baby to die. Make her sympathetic. Make her even correct.

This turned out to be a pretty serious post. But have fun and save what you wrote!