Marco...Polo...

When I was a kid, I read a book on how to take care of home aquarium. I know: gripping stuff, right? Probably 'cause the dictionary was already taken or something. But the one thing I do remember from the book was this:

When you're bringing home a fish from the store and introducing it to your tank, the best thing to do is let the new bag o' fish sit in the existing aquarium for a while, THEN dump the new fish in. That way they don't flip over and die of new water shock right then and there.

(Or something like that.)

The last few days in Japan, we've had the opportunity to acclimate via bag, i.e. spending time on a Navy base (little America, pretty much) and venturing out into the city as needed/desired. I'm a new fish in an old tank, but I'm doing really well. No stress, no freak outs, no nothing. And coming from me, the queen of random stressy freak-outs? That's saying a LOT.

So, let's direct this back to writing. A lot of times, our plot may tend towards a classic "fish-out-of-water" story, or at least a "fish-in-a-new-tank" story. How do you ease your character into his new tank? Do you let him sit and acclimate slowly? Or do you dump him in without warning? Does he die of new water shock? (I think I made that up) Or does he adapt and survive?

If you ARE letting him acclimate slowly to the new world (maybe having a helpful guide tell him what everything is, things neatly labeled, I don't know) what other sources of conflict are out there threatening him? Push those stakes a little higher. Does this kid REALLY need an all-knowing guide?

There's a reason Obi Wan Kenobi and Yoda die (oops...spoiler alert?). There's a reason Marty can't find Doc Brown during those REALLY important moments. And there's a reason you shouldn't let your main characters sit in a pet store bag for fifteen minutes before dumping him in new water. It may be relaxing and stress free for someone moving overseas, but since when did anyone want to read a book where the main character leads a delightful and stress free life?

Sigh. After writing this, I realize I've got fifteen metaphorical minutes to cut out of my latest WIP. If you'll excuse me...

 
 How's your little fish out of water doing?

P.S. You have 24 more hours to enter MY CONTEST and your odds are VERY GOOD! Stop by and comment and win  a prize pack from Japan! (THE PEN, DEAR MOTHER, THE PEN!)

Making up people

Once upon a long time ago, I went to college. All was fine and dandy until my friend and roommate discovered that I liked to write. Once that tidbit of info was out, she began to demand that I write her "really awesome stories" every day. I guess that she knew--before even I knew--that my calling in life was to be a writer. Not, as I proclaimed my freshman year, a lawyer or a diplomat or a psychologist. (Heck, writing encompasses all of that anyways, am I right?) 

It had always been a passion, but I really started getting serious about writing in college largely due to the stories I opted to keep writing to please my roommate. (Best writing prompt ever? "Write me a story where I'm a beautiful princess and DON'T MAKE ME A DITZ.")

However, sometimes my dear friend saw herself in places where she was never meant to be. She has red hair, so when I wrote about a really mean person with red hair, she'd immediately ask, "Wait...is that me?!" She was also a biology major, so all mad scientists also got a "Hey! Is that me?!" Even if she was very obviously written as a beautiful princess, the antagonistic dragon I had in the background was pointed out with a "WHY'D YOU MAKE ME A LIZARD?"

Sigh.

The point is that despite any authorial intent, we may see ourselves in various characters from time to time whether it's flattering or not. And once our written work has passed into someone else's hands, whether it be a crit partner, beta reader, agent, editor or a someone who got your book for their birthday, people will start seeing themselves in YOUR characters. Exciting, right?

Of course there are thousands of ways to get inspiration for characters (I'm gonna leave this link right here so don't blame me if you click on it and wake up four hours later from your trope-coma: CHARACTERS) But how you come up with your characters--whether it be from personal inspiration or, like Athena, they pop out of your godlike-head fully formed--is a completely personal process.

Any cool character stories? How did you come up with your hero or your villain? Are they an amalgamation of every awful gym teacher you've ever had or a thinly veiled college roommate or someone completely new? Let's hear it!

True story*: The Rise of the Planet of the Apes was based off of Romeo and Juliet. James Franco and Shakespeare were roommates in college.

*this is not a true story

Writing: the one profession/ hobby where it's totally okay to still have imaginary friends

I can't explain it, honestly. I don't really go through any particular processes to get to know my characters, like writing down their hobbies, or what they would wear. I just... know all that stuff. I pull it out when I need it for my story, and put it away when I don't. They come to me as fully-formed people, and just as deep as they need to be.

I know every writer is different. I know some who have this same sort of instant character birth, and others who have to stop and really get to know their characters before they can write them. And just like any other aspect of writing, I can't really say that one way works better than the other.

I know that regardless, our characters won't leave us alone. It makes us sound crazy, the way we talk about them sometimes. "I had to tell her story, she wouldn't shut up about it!" My second novel was this way. James, the protagonist, sprung into my head one day and just started narrating. I couldn't stop writing until I'd gotten down everything he had to say. The novels that followed haven't been quite as compulsory, but close enough. I think the only reason they haven't been that way is that I've learned to temper that obsession, so I can have a life, still.

And I wonder-- is the obsession writing, or the story? Do I go on relentlessly because I love my hobby, or because I can't wait to find out what happens to these people? People I've just met, but feel like I've known for years?

Let's be honest-- the answer is always the latter, even when I know the ending first (and I always know the ending first). I wouldn't want to write my characters if they weren't interesting people. And when I'm done with a manuscript and ready to send it off, I feel like a proud parent watching their child graduate college. Time to send them into the world, and see how they do. Sink or swim.

Of course I hope they swim. They're my newest oldest friends, and the children of my mind.

Does anyone else ever wonder if being a writer is just a socially-acceptable label for crazy?

The voices, the voices!

As writers, it's pretty much a given that we'd have voices in our heads. Some of them are louder than others, and some remain with you for longer, but you always have at least one person talking in your head that's not you. Especially considering that fictional characters tend to be some of the pushiest little BEEPs on the planet.

I mean, how much ruder can you get? There you are plugging away on Manuscript A that you've been writing for 6 years off and on and off again, and then some new voice pops into your head for an entirely different story. How dare that new character not wait for their turn until you're ready for them to start talking? Amirite?

There currently exist seven character voices in my head -- upwards of two dozen if you count subsidiary characters -- with three groups of two existing in the same story but telling it from different perspectives. The interesting part comes when I decide which voice's story to start working on. Two of them have been with me for about 10 years now in various incarnations, through roughly a dozen name and personality and story changes, and are currently patiently awaiting me to finish writing their three-book saga.

Two more are the MC and villain of CALLARION AT NIGHT (yes, I write from the villain's perspective in that book). CaN also has the distinction of being the world that I draw a number of short stories from. I picked that world over the three-book saga fantasy one simply because it's the newer of the two and thus more readily in my head.

Another two are the heroes of the round robin story I'm writing with Theresa Meyers, Ren Cummins, Kent Gooch, and Anabel Portillo. One of those is a sky pirate and the other is the airship captain charged with capturing her. Yes, it's a steampunk romance novel.

And the seventh and final voice in my head is the heroine from PURITY DISTILLED. Her story is the one I want to finish first because she's a) the strongest voice right now and b) that story ends up being the shortest out of the four.

But that's not the point. Nay, my point rather is that there's a simple way to deal with the plethora of voices we writers have in our heads. And that method is called The Notebook!

No, not the Nicholas Sparks story (I swear he writes the same book every time, but that's beside the point). I'm talking about having a handy notebook nearby that you can jot down notes in whenever a new voice starts talking to. My "notebook" is a file I save on my Google Docs account. There's 6 different story ideas in there already, all of them Steampunk, along with main characters and skeletal plot points for each piece. Whenever a new voice starts speaking, I open that file and write it down so I can go on my merry way and attempt to finish the current piece I'm working on.

How do you deal with the voices?

Taking someone else's brain into a closet

So yesterday I was having an insanely difficult time wrapping my head around a certain scene. The two main characters find themselves together in a very small room, discussing something serious while trying not to admit that all they want to do is make out. I wrote the scene, but there was just SOMETHING missing.

I sent it off to my amazing crit partner with a plea: "Help!" Her response?

"I think you should crawl into your closet and hang out there for half and hour. Drag your husband in with you. Move around a bit. Turn off the light, touch shoulders. Try not to make out with him."

Later that day, talking with my sister the modern dancer, she talked about how even in dance, she has to "get into the head" of characters she's portraying. Of course we see this in actors with their fancy (yet admittedly creepy) method acting: they don't break character even after filming is wrapped for the day. But dancers do it too! The music does so much to inform the dance, but the dancer must also physically become the character. She drags someone else's brain into the dance, hoping to portray that to the viewers.

When whining about my scene to her, she added,"Yeah, go act out the scene in a closet. But drag Hannah's brain into the closet, not yours."

So my question to you, writey friends: What have you done to get into your character's head lately? Have you physically acted out a scene? Listen and responded to music as if you were your main character? Introduced yourself to someone as a character? Gone shopping as they would or affected an accent as they might?

Come on. We all already know we're a little weird. Share!

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go find a closet.

Bringing your characters to the table (for pie)

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone who's celebrating it today! Even if it's not part of your cultural, spiritual or personal repertoire, it's a good day to give thanks anyway: it's a Thursday and all good things happen on Thursdays. (And it never hurts to eat more pie than humanly possible. I should know; I do it every year.)

So, I'm a huge fan of my characters. I like to spend an absurdly long time getting to know them before I have to subject them to all sorts of dastardly things MUA HA HA (we writers are a macabre people.) The more time I spend digging into their psyche and WHY they are who they are, the easier writing them becomes, no?

Getting to know a character goes way beyond hair color, eye color and favorite type of pie (pecan, always pecan). We could all fill in a dossier of information about the hero down to their blood type, I'm sure (which, incidentally, means a lot more than I realized in Japanese culture) but can we detail our characters minute quirks? Their conversational tics? Sometimes we ourselves don't know how WE'LL react to a particular situation until it presents itself. But that's not really a liberty we can leave up to our characters alone--we, as the almighty writers, have to know before they do.

As it is with time spent with a family around the dinner table, there's sometimes no greater way to understand someone than to eat corn next to them for extended periods of time. Therefore, I present a Thanksgiving Day Challenge (challenge challenge)! Take a few characters out of your WIPs and set them around the dinner table. Put the Chinese immortal goddess next to the AV club geek. Put the apologetic dragon next to resentful ex-Nam soldier of fortune. Let the mad scientist carve the turkey. What do they talk about? What do they doodle on their napkins? Who spits in the gravy boat? And who retaliates with a bottle of salad dressing to the face? (but enough about my family) Though the scene will never make it into a book, it'll be priceless for what you might learn about your characters.

Now if you'll excuse me, the pecan pie is ever so insistently calling.

P.S. I took the challenge myself and drew a picture of it. This was, of course, before the cupcake stuffing started flying. Happy Thanksgiving, all!