Shocked! Villains from the Reader’s Perspective

These questions about villains came in at the end of July and the beginning of August:

First from JesseGee: I have a character in my book named Garrett. At the end of my story, he will betray his family and friends by trying to kill my main character for the queen, an evil woman who wants to annihilate his kind (which he knows) but needs his help to do it. I have put bits into my story that will help his betrayal in the end make more sense, but, purposely, I haven’t yet made it clear if he is working for the queen out of his own free will (which he is), and they’re small enough bits that my readers might not know exactly what he is doing, which I’d like to keep that way until the end. He has problems with drinking and other addictions, and can be very violent when he is drunk or angry.

At the same time though, my main character thinks that Garrett is his friend. Garrett happens to be very attractive, and can be quite charming when he wants or needs to be, and seems, to my main character, like a pretty good guy, but I’m not sure if my readers will think that way. How do I make him a likable character, likable enough that my readers will be upset when he turns traitor, even though he is truly, completely evil through and through?

Then Elisa commented along the same lines: I’m doing that too (Well, something similar anyways) so these comments will be helpful to me too! However, I do have my own methods. My story is divided into two parts, the first is told by the “good guy” And the second by the “Villain”, who is actually the good guy. So, the first bit is told in first person POV by the “good guy” who is really the bad guy, and I want the reader to think him a good person at first, and I want a slightly-more-than-mild surprise at the end of his narrative, but I don’t want them to be shocked nearly to the heart-attack stage. So I make him do subtly horrible things, like take pleasure in making people do things for him, or make them make mistakes. Or he likes punishing people and getting them into trouble, things that are more or less normal. He is rather arrogant, intensely sarcastic, very revengeful and he has a horrible temper; but seldom lets it get away with him. When I write him, I give him little evil thoughts, like how very much he would like to slap that crying child, and then his thoughts go from slap to knock over and then he’s on the verge of wanting to strangle her and then he is interrupted. Or he goes out of his way to kick a dog, or says something quite awful to a maid who tripped over her skirt and spilled a tray of ashes. Once the readers get to part two, they get a sort-of surprise, but they understand what’s going on.

And Emma wrote, So, in the book I’m writing, the MC’s boyfriend turns out to be an evil murderer. About halfway through the book the MC (and the readers, since it’s in first person) learn what he’s really like and during the second half of the book the MC is fighting him to stop him from killing a bunch of people. Up until he’s revealed as a murderer the MC is madly in love with him, and it’s a total shock when she finds out about him (he actually kills a girl who’s like a little sister to the MC, so she goes from loving him to hating him while still caring about him some). I want the readers to like him at first, obviously, but then they have to hate him because he takes over as the main villain. I’ve given him a sort of darker personality, but I’m not sure if it’s enough to hint at what happens later. Do you have any ideas?

These questions seem as much about what the reader knows as they are about villains. When JesseGee’s question came in, I wrote this: I’m not sure why the reader shouldn’t know Garrett is evil. If they know and your main character blissfully believes he’s good, the reader will be in a tizzy of worry for your MC, which is a good thing.

I still think that’s a fine way to go, but if we want Garrett to be likable, he needs to be good company or interesting or sympathetic and certainly not annoying, in my opinion. If at first the people he harms are ones the reader doesn’t care much about, he’ll probably be forgiven. Let’s imagine the queen gives a reception attended by Garrett and our MC, Ralph, who gets stuck talking to a third character, Petra, who is dishing nasty gossip about everybody at the reception. Kind Ralph longs to escape but can’t think of a polite way to do so. Garrett sweeps in to the rescue. He puts his arm around Petra’s shoulder and, while chatting with her and promising her some juicy secret, walks her outside the double entrance doors, says he’ll be right back, then closes and bars the doors, even though a blizzard is raging outside. He heads back to Ralph, on his way passing a message from the queen to one of her lackeys. When he returns to Ralph, they talk, and he encourages Ralph, who is shy, and makes him feel especially interesting. Then he introduces him to people he’s wanted to meet and generally makes sure that Ralph’s evening is a success. The next morning, Petra is found frozen to death, and the person Garrett has passed a message to has arrested the prime minister, whom the reader understands to be good but knows only distantly. The reader will be wary around Garrett after that, but probably won’t hate him. Hatred will come when Garrett turns on Ralph, if Ralph is beloved by the reader.

Elisa seems to have taken on something really hard: to write from the POV of a character who behaves badly and thinks terrible thoughts while persuading the reader that he’s the hero and even a little likable. If I were going to attempt it, I would probably give him some mitigating qualities. For example, maybe he’s an amazing artist and his work brings pleasure to many people, even though he gets really unpleasant when he’s interrupted. And maybe there’s someone he cares about, possibly not enough to give up his evil plans, but the caring is genuine.

Emma’s villain reminds me of someone I once knew and admired, a professor who turned out to be much less than admirable. He would say that he used to be friends with this person and that person but they had stopped liking him for some reason that bewildered him. When I realized his true nature, the reason became understandable, but at the beginning I sympathized with him and pitied him for being misunderstood. Emma can use something like this as a clue. Her MC’s boyfriend can have no friends of long standing, which may ring an alarm bell in the reader’s mind. A mutual acquaintance can hint to the MC that her boyfriend has behaved badly in the past. Jane Austen does something like this concerning Wickham in Pride and Prejudice. Emma’s MC can ask the villain about the hint and he can say something that subtly contradicts the past he’s already revealed to her. More alarm bells for the reader. He can be secretive. Their first argument can come about when he accuses her of prying. These intimations of future trouble are subtle, as they should be. Emma’s MC can shrug them off, but the reader will notice and remember.

I’ve mentioned this before: The best examples I’ve ever read of surprises about the true nature of certain characters are in The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov, which I would say is appropriate for middle school and up. A marvelous, exciting read that is full of astonishing revelations. We can all learn a lot from these books. Science fiction at its best.

Here are four prompts:

• Write a scene from the POV of a famous fictional villain, could be the queen in “Snow White,” an evil stepsister in “Cinderella,” Bluebeard, or Captain Hook. Make the villain, if not likable, a fleshed-out character, more than the collection of evil qualities.

• Write the backstory of one of these villains. Show the descent into villainy.

• Let’s zero in on one of the stepsisters in “Cinderella.” Write a sequel to Cinderella in which the stepsister starts out villainous and gradually becomes good. Show her progression.

• The evil magician in “Aladdin,” who poses as Aladdin’s uncle, initially seems good. Slow the fairy tale down and show his first meeting with Aladdin, his entry into Aladdin’s home, his interaction with Aladdin’s mother. Present him as good, with hints of something else under the surface. Make the reader uneasy.

Have fun, and save what you write!

You, the Narrator, the Character

Before I start the post, just want to let you know that I’m going to be at a library in Irving, Texas, on Saturday, October 12th. You can find details on the website. I’ll be there to talk about my historical novel, Dave at Night, but I’m sure I’ll take questions about anything. I hope some of you can make it, and please let me know that you read about the event here.

In August, Abby wrote in to the website with this: …I am aiming to write a book on myself. I have a very interesting background, being a traveling homeschooler, being a regular school-going kid, living in two different countries at different times. I feel like I have so much to share, but I honestly don’t know where to start. I love writing poems, though I don’t read much of poems. I TOTALLY love reading books. How do you think I should start my journey of writing a book?


And just so you know, I already write a lot. My creative juices are flowing. I’m becoming a writer, regular blogger and I write journals and poems.

In my answer I wrote, I haven’t done much memoir writing, although there are snippets in WRITING MAGIC, or much autobiographical fiction, but I’ve written two related posts. To find them, click on “writing from life” on the right. Also, I think you should read memoirs and autobiographical fiction, which a librarian or a bookstore salesperson will help you find.

I’d also suggest you look at some travel writing books, not guidebooks, but travel writing as literature. Again, a librarian or bookstore salesperson should be able to help.

I’m glad you called writing a book a journey. I’d say it’s a trip on a slow boat or on foot. Books aren’t written at rocket-ship speed, except during NaNoWriMo (coming up soon), and even then there’s revision afterward. So you seem to have the first element down. Patience is the most important virtue a writer needs.

I just googled the difference between autobiography and memoir and found this link, which you may find helpful:  http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/knowing-the-difference-between-an-autobiography-an.html. And here’s a link to a Wikipedia article about memoir: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memoir. I looked at a few more links and gleaned that memoir uses more of the strategies of fiction than autobiography does. I’m guessing here, but I suspect that retelling a conversation in autobiography, for example, would have to be exact. In memoir who said what can be filtered through the memoirist’s memory.

When you start, don’t worry about beginning in the right place. The most important thing is to put something down. You can figure out what goes where later. Of course, in a memoir the beginning may wind up being the earliest chronological point. Or not, depending on what you eventually decide gets the narrative going.

In my earlier posts I mentioned the short story I wrote for a collection of stories and memoirs about grandmothers, called In My Grandmother’s House, which seems to be out of print and hard to find. I also contributed a memoir piece to a collection that is still be available, called Thanks and Giving. My grandmother story was fictionalized, but the family in the story was mine, minus my sister; the unpleasant grandmother and aunts were definitely mine. The main character was a slightly more outspoken version of me. The memory in the Thanks and Giving story was true to the facts as I remember them, although I was very young at the time.

In both I regarded myself as a character and not a perfect being – I was flawed. I criticized my grandmother in one; in the other, I destroyed an expensive doll. Whether you’re writing autobiography or memoir, you need to become character-like. The reader has to engage, must find herself in you, and you have to be sympathetic. That I was flawed was fine. Nobody identifies with a Mary Sue.

How to achieve that empathy?

We need tension, maybe not as much as in fiction, but some. For example, you might include your worries, if you had any, when you moved to foreign countries. If things didn’t always go well, readers will want the details. And details in any kind of writing bring experience to life.

If something funny happens, please share. Details are essential here, too, to set up the situation and ensure that the reader gets the joke.

Your thoughts and feelings, negative as well as positive, are also essential. The reader walks in our MC’s shoes when he enters her mind and heart. Same for the narrator of a memoir.

Naturally, there will be other real people in a memoir. If any of them are also flawed, you may need to consider hurt feelings. I go into this in more detail in my other posts, but you may want to start by talking to those involved and telling them what you’re doing.

I once heard a children’s book author say in a speech that she learns by being surprised, which struck me as true. An unexpected fact lingers in my memory. For example, when I wrote my historical fantasy, Ever, I read up on ancient Mesopotamia. When I looked into medical practices way back then, I discovered that a physician, on the way to a patient, would look for omens that would help him make a diagnosis – before he even saw the sick person! I’ll never forget that. If something astonished you, it will likely surprise your reader, too. Don’t leave it out.

Likewise, what interests you will probably interest your reader. Another example: Disney sent me to Japan to promote Fairy Dust and the Quest for the Egg. Before I went I asked for help bridging the culture gap, and Disney set me up with a consultant. Here in the U. S., when I promote a book I’m expected to say good things about it – that’s the purpose of promotion, right? But the consultant told me to be careful about that in Japan where anything that smacks of boasting is frowned upon. I had to find ways of talking about the book with humility. It was fascinating! (And I learned that it’s perfectly acceptable to eat sushi with your fingers.)

Prompts:

• When I researched my historical novel Dave at Night, I read about early automobiles and learned that carriage companies commonly made the auto bodies. Think Cinderella’s pumpkin coach with an engine. The driver’s seat in an early chauffeured limousine was lower than the passenger seats, and short chauffeurs were preferred so that the gentry who rode in these cars would appear bigger and more important. Write a story about a character who is desperate to break into high society in a fantasy world that makes these kinds of obvious, even physical, class distinctions.

• Pick a character from one of your stories and make him or her the MC in an anecdote from your own life. After the incident gets going, let the MC take the story in a fictional direction.

• I don’t know if this is still true, but when I was in school teachers loved to assign “My Summer Vacation” as a September essay topic. So let’s revive the practice if it’s fallen out of use. Write a memoir piece about your summer. Look for the tense times, the disappointments, the crazy jokes, the near-drownings. Make yourself into a character readers will identify with. If you had the dullest summer in world history, fictionalize! Invent the near-drownings!

Have fun, and save what you write!

What about politics?

On July 20, 2013, Elisa wrote, What about politics? I’m a Republican and conservative, and I feel pretty strongly about my beliefs. It’s not like I’ll get all over someone for being Democrat or a socialist (I know and like plenty of them), it’s just that I really believe in what I am. Anyhow, the libraries are SO full of socialist writers, and socialism is getting pretty popular and one of my characters is very conservative. And very opinionated. Even more so than me! And I’m worried that she’ll step on people’s toes and make them mad. It’s not like some writers don’t do that to me, but some people are a lot more sensitive to people who don’t agree with them than I am. I don’t want to change Mahala, because she’s just herself and changing her would make her someone entirely different. She just wouldn’t be my beloved character being different; but I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. At the same time, changing Mahala would mean changing my story, and also it would mean that I’m watering down my beliefs. I hate it when other people do that. I don’t want to be a hypocrite by doing it myself. What am I supposed to do?

I don’t usually write about politics here – or anywhere, except in occasional emails to my Representative or Senators. But something political came up in the new book, Stolen Magic, which is set on the mountainous island of Lahnt, no place on our earth. I’m not giving much away to tell you this (and it does tie in to Elisa’s question):

In this world there are brunkas, short, helpful creatures whose senses are sharper than humans’. High Brunka Marya is in charge of the Oase, where the brunka treasures are kept. One of these is the Replica, a sculpture of the island, which always sits on a pedestal. If it’s taken off the pedestal for a length of time, a volcano starts to bubble. If the Replica is off for long enough, the volcano erupts, and the mountain and everyone on it are destroyed. Marya’s main responsibility is to keep the Replica safe, but she’s very polite and doesn’t use her powerful sense of hearing to eavesdrop on people’s conversations, although some may be plotting to do evil. Masteress Meenore, the dragon detective, thinks she’s foolhardy, to put it mildly.

When I wrote this, I wasn’t thinking about domestic spying in the news in this world. But when I reread it, the connection jumped out. In real life I’m confused about the subject. I certainly don’t want another terrorist attack, but I feel strongly about a person’s right to privacy. Masteress Meenore, however, isn’t confused. IT is sure that preventing a mountain from exploding trumps politeness (privacy). Marya takes the other position, but her voice in my story doesn’t carry the same weight as Meenore’s. He wins the argument.

I’m certainly not going to change ITs opinion because people may see the politics and disagree. I’d have to change ITs character to do that, and, in the second book, it’s too late for that. Plus, I don’t want to. Like Elisa’s Mahala, Masteress Meenore is beloved by me. And I don’t think I have to make the dispute fair. I don’t have to even my story out so that Marya’s position is equally valid. This is a novel, not a playground, for example, where fairness truly is important.

Like Elisa I’ve read and enjoyed books that put forth a political ideology. Ayn Rand’s novels (high school and up) and the science fiction of Robert Heinlein (some are for children, others definitely not) spring to mind. And sometimes, especially with Ayn Rand, I’ve been fascinated by her arguments, although she stacks the deck in their favor as she works out her plots–which I think is a flaw. As for Heinlein’s books, I just get into the plots and don’t care.

But even though I’ve liked tendentious (a great word!) books, what I generally like about them is the plot, the characters, and the voice. Story and strong characters are what count with me. Just as I’m not fond of an obvious moral, I don’t relish having a point of view repeatedly thrust in front of my nose, whether I agree with it or not.

Uh oh. I think I just worried Elisa all over again. Let me be specific. Suppose Mahala is intensely political and sees everything that happens through a current events lens, I’m okay with that if she’s interesting. Let’s imagine that she’s babysitting her little brother Camo when he spills his milk at breakfast, and she says something about dairy subsidies (a subject I know nothing about, if there is a dairy subsidy). Camo asks what a subsicky is. Mahala takes a quarter out of her backpack and puts it in his chubby hand. “Let’s say Mommy and Daddy give you a toy subsidy.” She looks at the ceiling, figuring out how to explain. “That means they would pay you–“ She looks down again and sees his fist in his mouth. Where is the quarter? His fist, when she extracts it from his mouth, is empty. So is his mouth when she persuades him to open it. What does she do next? It will be her fault if anything happens to Camo. Now we’re off into the story. If she thinks about one of her political heroes and how she would act in a crisis and it works out perfectly and the reader has a moral to swallow that’s much bigger than a quarter, I’m not happy. But if her interpretation leads her to do something truly goofy and the story gets complicated, then I’m delighted, especially if Camo survives–since I’m a wimp!

I’ve written other posts about giving offense in stories, so anyone who struggles with this might like to look at the giving offense label on the right. The post of November 11, 2011, is especially on target.

I’ll end with Elisa’s worry about becoming a hypocrite. Art is where we have to be true to ourselves. When we’re tiptoeing around a subject, when we’re being oh-so careful, we are stamping on our creativity, and our ideas are likely to shrivel. Instead, let them rip and roar with power.              

Here are three prompts:

• You were probably expecting this: Tell the story of Camo and his sister and the swallowed quarter. Bring politics into it.

• Your MC is a volunteer for a candidate who supports an issue that is more important to her than any other. She witnesses the candidate acting despicably, corruptly, unethically – but in a way that has nothing to do with your MC’s cause. What does she do? Write a scene or the whole story. Mix it up with complex characters and plot twists and no easy morals.

• In one of my poetry courses we’re starting off with the poems of Emily Dickinson. When we read this one in class, I thought, Wow! This is fantasy! And I thought of the blog. So here’s the poem (numbered, because she didn’t give her poems titles), which is in the public domain for anyone to fool around with, and the challenge is to turn it into a story:

280

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading – treading – till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through –

And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum –
Kept beating – beating – till I thought
My Mind was going numb –

And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space – began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race
Wrecked, solitary, here –

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down –
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing – then –

In case you’re confused, then – is the end of the poem. Dickinson ended a lot of poems ambiguously and with a dash.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Distinguishing cultures

Classes have started for me! So the blog is going on its every-other-week schedule. The next post will be on September 17th. From time to time, I’ll let you know how my poetry studies are going, and I may inflict another poetry post or two on you.

A few days ago an online grammar-correction company approached me by email, complimenting my blog and offering me an Amazon gift card. I’m pretty sure the company rep was hoping I would recommend the program here. I ignored the email but checked the program with some writing samples. First I copied in a paragraph from the manuscript I’m working on. Then I typed in a few sentences from a friend’s published book. The program picked up mistakes that weren’t there, and it went beyond grammar into the complicated region of style. Next, I tried out a paragraph from Peter Pan. To its credit, the program recognized that the Peter Pan paragraph wasn’t original (which it didn’t for my friend’s book), but it still found plenty wrong with the writing!

The point is, I’d stay away from automated grammar and writing assistance. We need to master these areas ourselves. Besides, I can’t believe that a program, at least at this point in technological development, would recognize interesting writing that takes a few chances.

Take that, you bribe-offering person!

Now for this week’s post. On July 14, 2013, Elisa wrote, I am having problems with making up my cultures. Don’t get me wrong, I love it, very much, but I’m having a really hard time. I feel they are not clearly defined enough, and try as I might, I can’t come up with truly interesting, DIFFERENT cultures. They seem too close to other ones, or real ones, and I don’t want that. It’s not as though I’m really bad at it or anything, but they seem to lack definition.

I looked up “culture” in Wikipedia, and found a lot of help, so I’m copying in part of the article, which I confess I didn’t read all of:

Aspects of human expression include both material culture and ephemeral elements. These include:
• Language and dialect
• Science
• Technology
• Cuisine
• Aesthetics – art, music, literature, fashion, and architecture
• Values, ideology
• Social conventions, including norms, taboos, and etiquette
• Gender roles
• Recreational activities such as festivals and holidays
• Commercial practices
• Social structure
• Religion

Since this is fantasy, I’d add Magic and Powers as two additional categories. And there are probably more. Child-rearing practices come to mind. Here’s an early prompt: Jot down other aspects of culture that occur to you.

Wow! We have a lot to fool around with.

And here’s another prompt: For those aspects that may come into in your story, list the possibilities. I’ll try it with dance:
fast
slow
prim
exhibitionistic
alone
in pairs
in lines
in squares
with stamping and clapping
silent
partners traded
bumping into other dancers
standing on one’s hands
bouncing on one’s head

I got a little strange at the end, which is fine when we’re trolling for ideas.

Since Elisa is dealing with warlike countries, we may decide that one civilization has advanced offensive weapons balanced by the magic of another land. The third may be a buffer between the two.

We don’t always have to contrast the three, either. We can reveal the dance of one, the cuisine of another, and the attitudes of the third toward education (which might fit into the child-rearing category). But whatever we show needs to have a place in our plot, in my opinion. I don’t care for an information dump. If dance isn’t important to our story, there’s no reason to delve into it.

Most of what the reader learns about culture will probably be best discovered through our characters. Our narrator, whether third-person or first, may need to give us some background. In Ella Enchanted, for example, Ella devotes a paragraph to describing ogres before the reader meets them. But just a single paragraph. The action moves forward most smoothly when we keep the explanations to a minimum. We show the reader how a culture handles dance, for example again, by having our MC gyrate and shimmy or step sedately with a beloved or despised partner.

Culture permeates everything, whether in fantasy or realistic fiction or real life, and there are variations even within a larger culture, even in contemporary stories, and certainly in life. Families, as you may have noticed, have their own cultures. My mother’s idea of a good life involved art appreciation, Culture with a capital C, so when we were children my sister and I were taken to museums, theater, ballet, concerts. How lucky we were! My friends’ parents had different interests, which benefited my pals in other ways.

Here are three prompts:

• Your MC is orphaned and has to live in new circumstances. Pick one of these and write the scene that follows his arrival in his new home, or write the whole story: a foster home; an orphanage; with his grandparents; with his seven first cousins; on the streets.

• From her earliest childhood on, your MC feels that she was born into the wrong family. Write a story that covers a crucial week in her life.

• The culture in your story may be shaped by the conditions under which the people live. Write a story that takes place in one of the following settings or situations (or you can combine): underground; in a severe climate; among a tribe of people who do extremely dangerous work; in a country that’s been at war for fifty years. Be sure to reveal the culture of the society you pick.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Mood lightening

On July 12, 2013, Aspire to inspire wrote, I have a problem with seriousness in my stories. I think the reason I get bored with them is because they are so serious and slightly depressing. 
In Ella Enchanted you manage to make it serious but funny, not making it weigh on the readers’ minds. The story is sad at some points and although we feel that, as the story does not weigh on us, our feelings soon disappear at the next scene, so we can be more involved with the story instead of with our feelings. (In a good way.) How do you manage this?

An MC’s perspective can lighten up the most dire circumstance. Let’s imagine that Amanda is dreading her final exam in Chemistry, and let’s make our beginning really depressing. She wakes up that morning, puts on her lucky charm bracelet, and goes down to breakfast, where her weeping mother hugs her and says that school is closed because Amanda’s best friend Pavel was hit by a car and is in the hospital, dying. Amanda feels the breath go out of her. She manages to sit at the kitchen table. While she’s trying to take in the awful news, this tiny thought pops up: No Chemistry test. She’s appalled at herself, but she thought it. It’s not funny. The reader doesn’t laugh, but the mood was lightened slightly for just a moment. The reader was also signaled by this that life will go on. So that’s one tip: When you dive to the depths with your character, don’t simply linger there. Bob up and down. Up for a funny or ironic thought, down for a sad one. After thinking about the Chemistry test, Amanda puts her head down on the kitchen table, remembering that she and Pavel were supposed to meet at the mall this afternoon.

Amanda goes to her room, sits on her bed, and discovers that she can’t believe the news. She decides she has to go to the hospital, because what if it’s all a hoax? So she sneaks out of the house and gets on her bike. While biking another subversive thought surfaces. She thinks, What would have happened if I didn’t wear my lucky charm bracelet? Would the earth have exploded? Here she’s bringing irony in. Again, the reader isn’t laughing, but the mood moves from sadness to anger, which is livelier, and Amanda can start thinking how unfair it is that this happened – if it really happened, because she hasn’t accepted it yet.

Fast forward. Amanda goes shopping for something to wear to the funeral. Her mother lets her get a black blouse and a black skirt. Amanda, whose thoughts refuse to stay entirely morose, thinks, Pavel had to die for me to be allowed to wear black. Irony to the rescue again.

At the funeral. Amanda’s with her friends. She’s very sad, but she’s also noticing how uncomfortable everyone is, how unaccustomed they are to this situation. They keep whispering, although there’s no reason for it. They fall silent, then smile uncomfortably at each other. Amanda thinks that Pavel would be laughing his head off if he could see them, which makes her even sadder, but it leads her to bring up a memory of him and say it out loud, about the time he had to give a speech and he forgot every word, so he started talking about his favorite subject, dinosaurs, which he loved way beyond the age when most lose interest. Amanda says, “Remember what Mr. Norbiss said?”

The friends then start remembering more incidents involving Pavel that are funny, and soon they’re laughing and feeling more at ease, and someone – not Amanda – says, “He got us out of the Chemistry test.” Everyone feels uncomfortable again, but the ice was broken and they get past it. The reader is sad with them, but not depressed, I don’t think.

Amanda’s life continues after the funeral, although it will never be entirely the same.

We probably don’t want to pile on another death right away or at all. This one may be the crisis of our story and it wraps up afterward, or it may go in another direction. Maybe Pavel protected Amanda from something, and his absence forces her to take new risks. We’re finished with death but we may be on to other miseries. In Ella Enchanted, I varied the trouble. The curse of obedience underlies everything, but it manifests itself in myriad ways.

The key in both Ella Enchanted and in Amanda’s story is that she has a wider perspective on her troubles than just the troubles themselves. Amanda can think of her Chemistry test. She’s angry at herself for thinking about it, but she’s like that, open to the world. In one scene in Ella Enchanted, Ella spends hours trying to kiss a bird. It’s awful, but Ella knows that it’s also funny.

I’ve been making two points. The first is that although your MC needs to suffer, she doesn’t have to wallow in it. A sense of irony and of the ridiculous can help her out. If she isn’t wallowing, the reader probably won’t be either.

The second point is not to pile on the same kind of disaster. In Ella Enchanted again (*SPOILER ALERT*), we have the death of her mother, the character flaws of her father, her step family, finishing school, ogres, the threat to Char’s safety, and I may have left out a few.

Another way to stave off character and reader depression is to make sure your MC is loved. The loving one doesn’t have to be present. Amanda can be torn away from home. She can be kidnaped by aliens, but her lunch box with the note inside from her dad can sustain her. Or the memory of her friendship with Pavel can. In Fairest, the love and approval Aza got from her adoptive parents supports her through everything that happens.

Here’s one more way: Your secondary characters can lighten up your story. In A Tale of Two Castles and Stolen Magic, the dragon Meenore has a very light heart. IT is brilliant and full of ITself, and ITs presence assures the reader that, although matters can get very bad, we’re still in a world in which such a creature can exist.

I’ve also written two posts on writing humor, which you may want to check out.

Here are three prompts:

• Write the scene in which Amanda rides her bike to the hospital to see if it’s really true that Pavel is dying. Record Amanda’s thoughts, which will primarily be sad and anxious, but include a few that go against the misery. Make something happen along the way that temporarily interrupts the mood.

• Amanda is alone in the hospital waiting area because Pavel’s family are in with him. Introduce a secondary character who comes in and starts talking to her. Somehow he helps Amanda. Write the scene.

• Amanda is kidnaped by pirates, who have been misinformed about her parents’ wealth. They intend to kill her unless her parents hand over more money than they have. Make it funny and scary. The kidnapers may not be entirely competent but they are desperate. And Amanda’s parents in their terror make mistakes.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Fresh plots for sale

On July 5, 2013, Athira Abraham wrote, How can I come up with original plots? I’ve searched up on the Internet, and I know that you should write the story you want to read, but I’m sick and tired of reading books on quests, rescuing, riddles, forbidden love, escaping, or revenge, though it seems like all books and stories and plots fall under these categories and more. But I want my plot to be more enticing to the readers that read it and to myself. I want it to be new, original, and unique. 


I do like quests and escaping an evil enchanter etc., but its so common. How can I accomplish this?

This reassuring response came from Michelle: I think that perhaps the reason that these topics are used so much is because they’re popular. For many people, these adventures are so exciting and suspenseful that they never get boring. Of course, the success of a book depends on its author. If you feel bored with these topics, don’t use them. There’s a good chance that readers won’t be interested if you’re not.


Write about what you think is interesting. As for the uniqueness, I don’t think there is any advice to give. It’s a hard question. But, I do think that every plot, even original plots, have piggybacked off others at one point or another. If you like quests and an escaping evil enchanter, ponder those topics. And eventually, ideas will come. Good or bad, they always do. By the way, if you’ve done research on the internet, this means you’re a serious writer. You have an imagination. And if you have an imagination, there’s nothing to worry about.

On my bookshelves are two books about plot, bought a long time ago, probably out of desperation. Interestingly, I just looked on Amazon and discovered that neither author seems to ever have published any fiction!

The point of one of the books, which is similar to Michelle’s comment, is that there are only a few possible plots. I agree with Michelle and the book on this: a limited number of plot types. But character possibilities, situations, settings, are limitless. Complete originality may be impossible, but uniqueness is inevitable. Except for plagiarizing, no one writes exactly the same story, comes up with the same dialogue or identical characters or identical anything.

We all, I think, have dreams for our stories; we hope that we’ll create a marvel, which we may actually achieve. But not by concentrating on wished-for greatness. Once I sit down to write and start spinning my tale, I need to put those hopes aside to concentrate on my words and my story. If I think about how stupendous I want my book to be, I freeze. Guaranteed.

Having said that, as an example of pretty significant originality, I’ll put forward The Wheel on the School by Meindert DeJong, which I just read, and which won the Newbery in the 1950’s and is, in my opinion, a tour de force in plotting. It’s too young, I’m pretty sure, for almost all of you who read the blog, and it may seem old-fashioned. But I recommend it highly, because it has a lot to teach us about plotting, and I’m sure I’m going to learn from it. There’s little at stake, only persuading two storks to nest in the Dutch village of Shora (so it’s a quest plot), but the tension stays high, and DeJong varies carrying out the quest with astonishing ingenuity. Repeatedly, when I thought the problem was solved, he came up with something new to keep me reading. Besides, it’s a charming book, and, here and there, throughout are marvelous brush-and-ink drawings by Maurice Sendak. If you do read it, or if you already have, I’d love to know what you think.

Athira Abraham, sounds like you may be tired of the kinds of books you usually read. Maybe your writing would be re-energized by reading outside your usual preferences. I don’t know how old you are, but when I was in high school I went through a phase when I read mostly nineteenth century Russian novels, and then I moved on to other kinds of novels. I also read a lot of plays, and several were by George Bernard Shaw. Mark Twain is another favorite, and he’s so unsentimental that he’s cleansing. I adore A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Or, in the world of young adult literature, I admire the work of Virginia Euwer Wolfe boundlessly, and my favorite is The Mozart Season. Short story collections may be useful too, because you come across a lot of plots in a single book. A librarian or a knowledgeable bookseller may have more suggestions.

You may already know all these books and authors; you may read short stories regularly, but the point still is that stepping outside your usual preferences may give you new ideas and may suggest approaches to plot you haven’t tried before.

Another source of unpredictable plots is life, where the unpredictable meets the random meets the intentions of people. They combine and recombine, and we find meaning. We shape what happens to us into story. We can use family stories as the basis of our fiction. I’ve mentioned before that my book Dave at Night is an invented version of my father’s childhood in an orphanage. Tucked into the story are fragments of truth and the real-life personality of my dad. Soon I’m going to start reading another book about the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, my ancestors among them. I’m hoping to find a true story I can fictionalize, because something that really happened often has a surprising shape. You may find something in history that you’d like to turn into a story. Or a piece in the news. Or something that’s going on in your community.

When I think about turning fairy tales into novels, I look for leaps of logic, anything that doesn’t make complete sense, which usually leads me to exploring my characters’ motivations. Why does the prince fall in love with the maiden in “Toads and Diamonds”? What’s up with the cat in “Puss ‘N’ Boots”? Why is he so willing to help a master who was about to eat him? The answers usually take my plots in surprising directions.

In The Wheel on the School, author DeJong uses not only his characters, but also the weather, the dike (since this is Holland), and a bell tower to twist his story.  Oh, I hope you read it! As we write, we can think, What else can I bring in? What’s handy in my story that I haven’t exploited yet?

Here are two prompts:

• Begin your story with the achievement of a quest. The magic statue has been found at great cost. The heroes and heroines are celebrating, and it all falls apart. The statue doesn’t do what it was supposed to, or someone drops it, and it shatters.

• Here’s a little germ of an incident from my girlhood, which you can use as a story seed. A friend and I read a book in which the heroine’s name was a variant of the name of another one of our friends. We announced to her that she had to go by that nickname from then on. I won’t say what followed. That’s your story. Think conflict. You can go small and keep the tale to the confines of the friendship. Or you can widen it. You can imagine that the three are members of powerful families (as we definitely were not!), and more people get involved. Whichever route you take, the point is that, since it derives from reality, the story is unlikely to follow a predictable path.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Legendary backstory

Before I start the post, I want to mention that last week I recorded Writing Magic, which is going to be an audio book with me reading. I’ll let you know when it’s out. I just wanted to share my joy about having done it. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to. My voice cracks when I’m nervous, and I thought the people doing the recording would give up in disgust, but we all soldiered on. I repeated many sentences and had to read the whole beginning over at the end, but we did it! If you get it, you won’t hear a young voice or even a smooth voice, I don’t think, but the inflections will be the way I hear the book in my head, the way I wrote it.

Now for the post: On June 28, 2013, Michelle wrote, Mrs. Levine, in Writing Magic, you said that in a story, you can’t begin using subjects before you have introduced them. The example you gave was of a boy delivering a message on a foreign planet. He gets attacked by wulffs, and that’s interesting, but the author hasn’t mentioned wulffs until then. This is the problem I have. I have a complicated story, and it contains a lot of legends. There are three different trials that my character has to pass through, and each one requires a legend to explain it since it is so complex. How do I slip all of that information in before the trials come up while still being subtle?

Advice from anyone else is also more than welcome.

Athira Abraham weighed in with, I remember that example!!!


Mrs. Levine had also mentioned to try to slip something about that earlier in the story. So for the wulffs, maybe his best friend had a scar from them.


For your story, maybe you can have the legends being mentioned in a book your character might have been reading, or if he/she was in a library, maybe the librarian was caught reading something about it.


Or if this is top secret information (the legends) you can have your character eavesdrop or overhear two people that are important to these trials talking about it. Then you can have your character recall them speaking, and racking his/her brain trying to remember what the two people were saying and eventually remember.

These are wonderful ideas. I especially love the library idea.

I’m not sure why subtlety is necessary in this case. If legends are a big part of this world, you can be bold about them. In the case of the wulffs, I was imagining that they weren’t very important, just one more danger for an MC who is already in a perilous situation. If I were writing a story in which wulffs were one of the main plot strands I’d introduce them more powerfully.

I’m guessing, so I may have what you’re doing all wrong, but if the legends are part of the culture of this society, then everyone knows them. There are lots of possibilities for introducing them to the reader. For example, the story can start with your MC being told them by her grandfather when she’s a child. The reader feels both the terror of the tales and the comfort of the grandfather’s rumbling voice, maybe the feel of his dry hand stroking her forehead, and the taste of the hot ginger tea he’s prepared for her. Then we flash forward to the present where the body of the story will take place.

The only trouble with this approach is that if the trials are a hundred pages in the future, by the time the reader gets there, he may have forgotten the details of the legends and may need to be reminded in the narrative or in the MC’s thoughts.

Or, the story starts in the present. The legends are mentioned once or twice in the narrative or hinted at in dialogue. When we come to the trials, there can be some kind of ceremony during which the first legend can be recited by someone who has that role in the community. Action stops for the recitation.

For me, as a reader, I don’t mind the cessation of action for a legend. Just the word, legend, puts me in a receptive state. Mmm, delicious, I think. The recitation runs its course, and then the trial takes place. Trial over, we’re ready for the next legend.

The only problem I can see is that we don’t want the reader to be lulled by the format into a sense of security. We don’t want him to think that the MC is going to succeed because there are two more legends coming up, so we have to work in tension, maybe with dialogue about promising candidates of the past who’ve failed the tests. Maybe with suggestions that new candidates step up regularly. If our MC fails, someone else will come forward. Or in our MC’s worried thoughts. Or in the legends themselves, which incorporate a dismal record of failure. Maybe no one has ever succeeded.

Another way to go would be to start the story with a legend in third person from a voice that’s outside the ordinary narration. What’s told could be one of the trial legends or a creation myth for the entire culture. Starting this way would prepare the reader for the story to be stopped occasionally for legends.

Here’s a caution about dialogue, which also appears in Writing Magic. If everyone in this world knows the legends, we have to be cautious about how we put them in our dialogue. It sounds unnatural when characters talk to one another about matters they already know. Brandon is unlikely to say to Jenna, “Remember how in the Legend of the Fish seven carp will swim in a circle?”

And Jenna answers, “Yeah. They swim so fast a funnel is created for the contestant to dive into. That’s the beginning of the trial.”

This is just information for the reader, not real dialogue, unless they’re explaining to a foreigner. But if not, we have to find another way.

However, if the legend is complicated, there could reasonably be disagreement about the details. Brandon might say, “Remember how in the Legend of the Fish seven carp will–“

Jenna can interrupt with, “Six carp.”

They can argue over the number until Sura breaks in. “Stop counting carp. I’m hungry.” The action moves on, but when we get to the trial the difference in the fish count is important, and the reader remembers the number, because we’ve highlighted it with the dispute.

There may be many other ways to introduce the legends. If you think of some, you can post them.

Here are three prompts:

• Let’s say that a week after the number-of-carp debate, Sura is chosen as the candidate to undergo the trials. Her lack of interest in the details of the legend becomes a factor in her performance. She has to enter the funnel to get to an underwater (dry) prehistoric world where she has to find the only talking dinosaur, who can answer a question vital to the survival of her people. Write the trial, keeping in mind her flaw.

• Or, Sura, the chosen one again, enters the funnel when only six carp have created it, without waiting for the arrival of the seventh. The funnel isn’t strong enough to hold. Write what happens. What other strengths might she have to offset her heedlessness?

• Write the legend of the carp and the underwater kingdom as the introduction to your story. Move into the narrative with characters and the upcoming trials. Get us worried, then interrupt the story with the next legend. Keep going.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Pursuing chase variety

I have a blog-related dilemma coming up. In September I’m going back to school, to poetry school, to be exact for a masters degree in poetry. (Very exciting!) I’m also going to continue writing my books, and I’m worrying about time, particularly having time for the blog, which I don’t want to give up. What I love most is reading your comments; I’d feel deprived without them. So I’ve thought of three possibilities, and I’d like feedback. One would be to post every other week. Another would be to write a post and break it in two, half posted every week. A third would be short posts every week with only one prompt, or two at the most. I’d welcome other ideas. What do you think?

Onto today’s post. On June 27, 2013, Tiki Armsford wrote, One of the scenarios that I have the hardest time writing is chase scenes, particularly the ones where there’s a lot of running. There are only so many times I can write, ‘her heart was pounding’ before it gets repetitive (usually once). Do you have any advice to help keep people from getting into this rut? Any words on writing scenes that could easily get repetitious?

Michelle Dyck weighed in with: Some of that repetition you may not need at all. Only a few mentions of a pounding heart, burning lungs, or aching calves may be all you need to immerse the reader in the chase scene. Of course, you want to put in enough of that kind of detail so that the reader doesn’t forget what the character is feeling… Stuff like ‘her heart was pounding’ is, unfortunately, used a lot. (I’ll admit I use it too!) But if you can, at key moments, find a new way to say it — delightful! Maybe liken that pounding heart to a thrashing animal trying to get out. Or instead of saying that her lungs are burning, write that they’re straining, expanding, hungry for air. Just so you know, you’re not alone in this! Repetitious scenes are tricky, and I’m sure most of us have had trouble with them before. 🙂 Hope this helps!

And I pointed out that I’d written a related post, which anyof you can find by clicking on the “showing feelings” label.

I like Michelle Dyck’s idea of using metaphor to get to the feeling in an interesting way. As our MC runs she can become in her mind a hunted creature, and she can describe herself as one, a mouse, a rabbit, even a cockroach.

So how can we achieve variety in a scene with repetitive action, particularly a chase? What do we have to work with?

• Feelings. This is where the pounding heart comes in and the other physical manifestations Michelle Dyck mentions. My old post may come in handy here for more ideas. If our MC happens to be nonhuman or more than human there may be other feelings we can mention. For example, if she happens to be super empathic, we can use that. Does it make her legs tremble as she runs? Is her mind clouded? Or maybe she’s not human and her skin color changes when she’s scared.

• Senses. Her can be heightened. She’s more than usually aware of shadows. Her hearing is unusually sharp; her panting sounds explosive, but she still hears pebbles rattling behind her. She smells the slightest odors on the wind.

• Thoughts. What might our MC be thinking? Maybe about where to go next, what to do next, why her pursuer is after her, how to stop him, what she can use to fight him. We can reflect the desperation of a chase in rushed thoughts or thought fragments, because this isn’t the time for her to think in complete paragraphs. If she’s telepathic, her thoughts may be muddled with the thoughts of her pursuer.

• Speech. When I’m scared I talk to myself out loud. She can do this too. She can have a running internal conversation going that she may not even be conscious of. She can give herself directions, like, “Faster. Faster. Don’t give up. You can do it. Do it.” And so on. It doesn’t occur to her that she’s wasting energy by talking.

• Appearance. She can give us hints of this in her thoughts: that her lip is bleeding, her scarf is streaming out behind her and what if it catches on something, her jacket is torn, people are staring.

We can also mix things up by having her think she’s gotten away. She’s run into an alley and is crouching behind a dumpster, wondering how long she has to stay there before it’s safe to leave. Her thoughts and her breathing slow down. She thinks about telling the story of her great escape to her friends when she hears the pebbles again, and she’s off, running.

She can appeal for aid from a stranger or from someone she knows. Another character will introduce new interest. Can the new character be trusted? Is she well-meaning but useless? Does she just happen to be on the scene, or for good or ill, is she there for some reason that’s connected to the chase?

It’s also nice if we can vary the transportation she uses in her attempt to get away. She can commandeer a bike, get on a bus, jump into the back of a truck, launch herself in a rowboat or even swim. All these will mix it up, and they can introduce new problems. Whose bike is it? If the pursuer gets on the bus, too, she’s in an enclosed space with him. A rowboat isn’t exactly a fast getaway vehicle. And so on.

The setting of a chase can lend interest, too. If our MC is running across a vast prairie, we’re going to have to work to break things up, maybe with a haystack, a grain silo, an irrigation ditch – not a lot. But put her in a mall, for example, and the opportunities multiply. Of course, we may not want to give her a lot of options. We may want her to run until she collapses.

Here are four prompts:

• Your MC, Holly Run-Lightly, is being pursued by your villain’s private security squad. Include three modes of transportation in your chase, one of which can be running. Write the scene. If you like, write the circumstances that led to the chase and the story that follows.

• Holly is being chased at a roller skating rink. She doesn’t have time to unlace her skates. Write the scene.

• Mary is trying to get away from the lamb who follows her everywhere. Write the chase.

• Tell Alice’s pursuit of the White Rabbit from his POV.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Crystal ball gazing

On June 21, 2013, Kenzi Anne wrote, So I have a question about riddles…I don’t know about you guys, but I like to throw in a riddle sort of mystery into some of my books, like a prophecy or enigmatic saying, but… I’m not very good at making them! I feel like it’s either too easy to decipher so that the story’s ending is too predictable, or otherwise the clues are too much of a stretch and won’t make much sense. Any advice? 🙂

I love enigmatic auguries, too! And I’ve used them in many of my books. In Ella Enchanted and Fairest gnomes can see into the future, but dimly, so they just give hints. In Ella, a gnome gives this warning: “Danger, a quest, three figures. They are close to you, but they are not your friends. Beware of them!” The quest, of course, is to end the curse of obedience; the three figures are Dame Olga, Hattie, and Olive; and danger abounds – from ogres, from Ella’s stepfamily, and from the curse itself.

The trick here is that the warning doesn’t foretell the solution to the story, so it doesn’t give anything away. It just heightens the mystery, enhances the atmosphere, and makes the gnomes more exotic.

So that’s one way to go. If your prophecies don’t give the ending away you don’t have to worry about being too specific.

In Ever, Puru, the god of fate, drops an occasional hint. But then he contradicts everything he’s said with: “Fate may be thwarted.” And he confesses, “I long for a happy outcome.”

That’s another approach: Make your omens contradictory.

In The Two Princesses of Bamarre, the kingdom is afflicted with a fatal disease called the gray death, but a specter has foretold that the cure will be found when “cowards find courage and rain falls over all Bamarre.” MC Addie obsesses about the prediction and wonders how many cowards have to find courage and how long  the rain has to fall, and whether it has to fall all at once.

So make your portent open to interpretation.

Here are two more rolled up in one. In Stolen Magic a wooden puppet issues a warning: “Expectation misleads.” In this case, the words are so vague and the source so questionable that nothing is given away. You can make your prediction hazy, or make the character who gives it unreliable.

I’m sure there are more that I haven’t used. For example, we can introduce so many signs that the reader doesn’t know which to believe. Or the prophecy can be received in a dream or a hallucination, and its credibility can be in doubt. The character who delivers the prediction can have questionable motives. Or the person who receives it can be too receptive. For example, if Portia believes fortune-cookie fortunes and spends ridiculous sums of money on handwriting analyses, tea-leaf readings, tarot-card fortune tellers, and she consults her Ouija board nightly, the reader will be skeptical when she tells her best friend to avoid anyone with a harpoon tattooed on his or her wrist. Even so, the reader will sit up when that harpoon tattoo shows up.

We need to pay attention, too, to the timing of a prediction. If it’s delivered late in a story, it may feel contrived to the reader, like a set-up.

I’ve talked about Chekhov’s gun on the blog before, but in case you haven’t seen that post and don’t know about this rule, the Russian novelist and playwright Anton Chekhov wrote that one mustn’t show a reader a rifle hanging on a wall and not have it be shot at some point in the story. I don’t always agree with this. Sometimes the rifle can just reveal the character of its owner or provide atmosphere. But I do believe that it has to contribute in some way, and, in the case of predictions, I agree completely. That harpoon tattoo has to come into the story. It can’t just be left hanging. Same with any portent. You need to use it, although not predictably, and it doesn’t have to come true.

Naturally there isn’t a single way to use your foreshadowing. In Ella, I use it subtly, I think. The gnome delivers the warning and, if I remember correctly, Ella doesn’t think much about it after that. The reader may identify the three figures, may see danger on all sides, and may wonder until the end of the book and possibly after that what the quest was. Still, it plays out enough to be satisfying.

It plays out more overtly in Two Princesses. When MC Addie is huddling in her castle, she looks to the prophecy for deliverance; she keeps searching for signs that it’s coming to pass, but once she takes action, she becomes less fixed on it.

In Ever, the prediction that Kezi hangs onto, that sustains her, is that fate isn’t immutable.

A prophecy has power. It will linger in the reader’s mind, so we don’t have to refer to it often. We can let it spin its magic in the background. The reader will compare story events as they move along with the augury and will wonder if it’s playing out yet or when it will rear its head.

One more thing. This is a reply to Kenzi Anne from Elsabet, suggesting how to handle prophecies: I LOVE riddles!!! Read a book of poems maybe, read books of riddles. That helps me. I like to see how other people do things, and then I do it myself, but MY way. I’m not sure about other people, but I love poems that rhyme. Other poems, they’re okay (No, I’m not insulting anyone, it’s just my preference.), but they don’t seem to have the same type of dazzle, the same type of power. My dad says it this way: Anyone can write a non-rhyming poem, but it takes someone special to make a really great rhyming poem. It’s harder, and funner. My dad’s a poet (unofficially, of course, but he writes good stuff). So just keep that in mind. The riddle probably shouldn’t be too short, and if it rhymes, I suggest you use a different scheme (or whatever poets call that) than aabb or abab. Too common. If it’s an old prophecy or riddle it should probably rhyme. Make it special, and don’t worry. Use longer words and serious sounding synonyms if you can. Run it past a few people, and if they think it’s too cheesy, try again. If you like it the way it is, keep it. Mrs. Levine is good at writing poems, she probably has some good advice. I don’t know too much about writing all kinds of poems, but I write songs, which can be challenging, so I totally understand how hard it can be. Just do your best! I hope it comes out great.

Yes, rhyme scheme is the proper term, and that’s a great idea, to pay attention to the language of your prophecy. If the prophecy comes from a character who is given to elevated language, or if she’s in a trance, pull out your $600 words. Make it into a poem, if you’re feeling poetic. Make it rhyme, if you’re feeling rhyme-y.

Here are three prompts:

• Cassandra is a tragic figure in Greek mythology. The god Apollo gave her the gift of future sight, but after she angered him, he turned it around so that no one believes her when she accurately forecasts the future. And yet she keeps trying. Bring her into the modern world and put her into a situation, a party, on a train, a family gathering, whatever pleases you. She meets people and instantly knows their fate. Write her as your MC, trying to get out of her own fate while also attempting to help the people around her.

• Your MC’s father has disappeared, and she’s trying to find him. In desperation she consults several people who say they can look into the future, an astrologist, a fortune teller, a specialist in tea leaves, and someone with a crystal ball. Write a scene with each. Keep going if you like.

• The MC whose father has gone missing becomes convinced that a particular character really has powers of divination. She goes to him, but he won’t help her unless she answers a riddle. Write the riddle. Keep going, if you like. Let this seer stay in the story.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Lost in Story Land

First off, a message from the sponsor (me): Amazon is promoting The Two Princesses of Bamarre e-book with the low low price of $1.99. The promotion runs until August 5th.

Now for the post. On June 19, 2013 Athira Abraham wrote, I have a problem. With the story I’m writing, I haven’t created a plot but I want to because I don’t want to be lost in my story. But at the same time, I don’t want to create a plot because then I’ll have no fun writing it and will get bored. But without no plot, I’ll end up nowhere. Please help!

This generated a big response.

unsocialized homeschooler wrote, Athira, I have this problem a lot. Some of what would be my best stories disappear forever because each time I plan it out, it gets really boring.


First, are you sure that if you don’t create a plot you’ll end up nowhere? Sometimes the best plots and stories come together when you just wander around in the wilderness of your story for a bit. Maybe you should try writing it freestyle with no idea where the story is going, and see where it takes you. Because, if plotting out a novel makes it boring to write, why do it? (Okay, I realize that logic isn’t very sound, and there are hundreds of authors who will tell you that you have to be bored with your writing for a while to finish it–But that seems a little pointless and ridiculous. Write because writing is enjoyable, fun, creative, and all that good stuff!)

And Caitlyn Hair wrote, I plot my story in segments. Maybe that would work? The one time I tried plotting out the whole thing I ended up so far off my outline that I had to redo it anyway. 
I usually do three big chunks: beginning, middle, and end. I usually go off my outline by the time I get through those too, but not as badly. By outlining a little at a time I can incorporate the ideas I come up with while I write and not stress about it not fitting in to my plan.

Elisa chimed in with, Athira, do you have a favorite scene? In one of my stories-to-be I created a random scene where my heroine completely neglects the guy who traveled across two countries and 892 hundred miles to beg for her hand and leaves him living in a tent outside of her moat. I built a story from that. What I picked up is that she was independent and headstrong, also a little mean. Figure out your characters, then make more scenes. Do this, and then figure out how to link the scenes together. That’s how I set up plots for my stories. If you’re basing it on a fairy tale or something, it’s easier, because the plot’s already laid out.

Finally, Jenalyn Barton contributed this: I have two suggestions. My first is to just go with it, see where it takes you. Then, when you’ve finished it and know where it ends, go back and rework it so that your plot better fits where you’ve ended up. This way of writing is fun, because something that starts out as random may become a major plot point.


My other suggestion is to take a look at your story idea and ask yourself, “Where do I want to go with this? Where do I want my hero(ine) to end up?” Once you’ve answered that, write your story, keeping your end in mind. This way you can have a game plan in mind without having to give up the fun of discovery writing, as Brandon Sanderson calls it. You’d be surprised at how flexible you can be even with some major points plotted out beforehand. But, when it comes down to it, it’s really up to you and what you’re comfortable with.

Wow! These are great! I agree with unsocialized homeschooler and Elisa that in art accidents often lead to great discoveries. I’d even say that without the looseness that allows accidents writing can turn out stiff.

And I like Caitlin Hair’s practice of plotting in big chunks, which I think may make the task manageable. We don’t have to deal with the whole thing, just this beginning segment. And we can start to ask ourselves questions. What will get the story started? Who am I dealing with? Where? I do something like this, but in smaller bits, when I plan my scenes out before I write them.

I’m also in synch with Jenalyn Barton’s suggestion that you imagine an ending and write toward it, as I usually do. In fact, the ending often comes to me as a package along with the idea that gets me started. For example, as soon as I thought of Ella’s curse of obedience, I knew that the book would have to end with the lifting of the spell, although I had no idea how that would be accomplished.

However, these comments come from writers who don’t do close, detailed outlining. I’m in that camp, too. Is there anyone out there who can weigh in about creating complicated plot outlines and staying excited when the time comes to expand into a narrative? What are your strategies?

Some of you know that it took me a very long time and a lot of wrong turns before I finally figured out Stolen Magic. So I resolved to plan out the next book before I started writing. And I failed almost immediately. After five or six pages of notes I itched to begin the story, which I did. I’ve written only two pages, and now I’m revising a manuscript for my editor, and it will be a while before I get back to it, but I’ve been laughing at myself. We may gravitate to a certain process, in my case winging it, and be stuck with it unless something forceful intervenes, like an amazing teacher or a how-to book that we follow to the letter. Or a magic spell.

Getting lost in a story doesn’t necessarily mean disaster. When I get lost I often backtrack to the point where I still had my bearings and strike off again. Sometimes that point is 200 pages ago. I may repeat the confusion a few more times; still I’m learning about my characters and the final story shape. It’s possible I couldn’t have found my final book without meandering.

Both Athira Abraham and unsocialized homeschooler mention boredom. When I was writing the languages in Ella Enchanted, coming up with each one and figuring out how they sounded and looked on the page was fascinating, but once I had the scheme, inventing each new word was dull, necessary but dull. Other than that, when boredom sets in, it means I’ve gotten lost, and then I have to do what I talked about in the last paragraph. I don’t think boredom is required for finishing a story, although it may be a necessary sign that what we have isn’t working.

Here are three prompts about being lost. Of course, there’s a third possible ending to each beyond finding the way or being lost forever. A character can wind up in a better spot and not care about reaching the original destination.

• Take a true experience from your life of getting lost. Write about what really happened and how you felt and, if you weren’t alone, who said what.

• Now put someone you know in your place and fictionalize the memory. You may have to try out several people in your imagination before you find the right player. How would this other person handle what happened? How does the story change?

• Now make getting unlost much harder. Introduce obstacles, weather events, a villain. If you like, put it all in a fantasy world. Change your MC so that she becomes entirely fictional.

Have fun, and save what you write!