Computer fail

So I’m sitting on the hubby’s computer right now, because my hard drive crashed yesterday. And of course, hard drives only fail when you haven’t backed up in a while.

Wednesday’s Wisdom: Back up your stuff. Often.

Luckily, I had just sent a copy of the second draft out to my critique group, so if worse comes to worse, I’ve only lost a chapter (and some pictures). I’m not looking forward to the prospect of rewriting an entire chapter, especially since I was almost freaking done with the story. The hubby thinks the drive may just have a bad head, which means the data is probably okay. Replace the head, and we can get my stuff back. However, we don’t know how expensive this endeavor would be. It has to be done by a professional, so it could be prohibitively so.

In happier news, I finished the bird decal I’d been working on for the lid of my computer. I’d post pictures, as it’s Thursday, except for the whole not being on my own computer problem.

I’m a bit irritated because I’m really not going to be able to write until we get my drive fixed, or call it a loss and put in the other drive. Seriously, yesterday I was ready to swear off digital storage and just start printing hard copies of my chapters as I finish them. I mean, we’ve only had that drive 5 months, and I haven’t been that hard on it. But apparently hard drives, even the best ones, can literally fail at any moment for no reason at all. No matter how long (or not long) you’ve had them. That kind of makes you nervous, you know? At least paper is relatively permanent, unless your house floods or burns down (a much less likely occurrence).

So we’ll see how things go.

Tags: advice, business of writing

Personal fiction writing rules

Eh, why not? I actually do have certain things I keep in mind while writing.

1.) Symbolic details. You can’t describe everything in every room a character walks into, nor do you need to. Nobody notices everything all at once. They notice the things that call to what they are feeling. Someone who is down is more likely to notice the drowned weed in the asphalt, while a cheerful person might notice the freshness in the air. Every detail = chaos. Certain details = mood. I usually try to pick a single color, or smell, or temperature of the air for a scene, and all my details call back to that. The scene I’m currently working on in Shades is near the climax, where Saeli is in the middle of trying to get this portal built. My color is indigo. The whole mood and feeling of that scene is in shades of shadow and indigo, and height. Open space. (They are in a tower that’s had a wall blasted away.) This particular scene takes place over the course of a sunrise, so my ambiance will follow the sun. The sunrise is even symbolic. Nobody up to this point except Saeli, Raphel, Mora, and Kaladan know about the portal, but by the end of the scene when the sun rises, everyone will know the secret.

2) Be a pair of eyes. Or a camera. Instead of describing the room to a reader, I try to describe the room as the character sees it. I can’t always do this, and I don’t think you have to for every description, but it can provide a focus for the longer, milieu descriptions that are a pain to write and boring to read. Otherwise, I pretend I am filming a certain space. How would I light the set? How would I arrange the props? Where would I start the shot? End it? What would I zoom in on? At what point does the character enter the set? Etc. A picture is worth a thousand words. Those words had better be coherent.

3) Pave the clouds. In other words, replace abstract details with concrete ones. Don’t just spit out general details about the world and its history. (My first draft is full of this ) Weave that history into snapshots in your characters’ lives, and let the character relate them to each other (with their own spin, of course). Example:

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Raphel is giving Saeli the same information both times, but the second time around, he’s also giving specific details about his own life. Telling the reader that the legend exists is not enough: tying it to a character the reader cares about is what makes that information relevant and interesting. A random legend from Verre, though relevant to the story and necessary information for the reader, is just not as interesting as Raphel relating a tiny slice of his past.

4) Walk, talk, and chew gum. My characters talk. A lot. A good half, if not more, of the major conflict in my story is played out through verbal sparring. In my first draft, my characters did a lot of sitting around and talking, which is kind of boring. This time around, I’m making them get up and do things. Move the talk around. Make it relate to what’s going on around them. Quite honestly, there’s still a lot of characters sitting around talking in Shades…but I try to break it up. Saeli might hang onto every word Raphel says for a few beats, but then she’ll pull back for a moment. Or something happens. Even if the characters are sitting in one place talking, I try to make it so that other characters are moving around them, and other things are happening in the same space.

5) Sharpen those stakes. Add characters with conflicting agendas. Add an audience. Add crappy circumstances. Make it so that the only possible solution to one problem is going to cause five other problems. Give characters choices, and make them all bad choices. Make everyone in the story an antagonist to at least one person. The whole Geris subplot evolved because I needed to give Raphel a major problem to deal with. I’m bringing in the whole Mantle remnant to watch Saeli finish the portal in the Temple. That means her caving into Raphel when he kisses her has witnesses…the very people she’d rather die than have them see that.

Just don’t make the problem impossible to solve, and write yourself in a deus ex mechina ending. Or one where you have to kill everyone.

6) Destroy the set. Any scene where a character is physically damaged, the environment had better reflect that. Make messes. Knock tapestries off the wall. Bring the roof down. Blow things up. Start fires. Peril, peril, peril. Peril is fun. It imposes time constraints on characters already under pressure. This is mostly a function of raising stakes, and partially a function of using symbolic details. I had Yuril blow a hole in the city Temple and knock down half the western tower, where Saeli is busy trying to build a portal. (Why? Because she hates anything connected to Scisaxar, and she’s pissed at Raphel, but mostly, because she’s a goddess and she can.) It raises the stakes on Saeli because 1) now the tower is a treacherous space; 2) Yuril and Raphel are now fighting on the Temple roof, which is far more treacherous ground than the balcony would have been; and 3) everyone in the whole freaking city can see what she’s doing. And…the Temple is the most sacred space in the city, and the city is Saeli’s home. Yuril’s action on the Temple mirrors what Raphel is doing to her heart.

7) Kill somebody. Okay, not really. Not every story needs a body count, but every story needs an element of sacrifice. Stories where characters are killed off in pointless and arbitrary ways drive me crazy. That’s not sacrifice; that’s slaughter. The point is that the main character needs to lose something precious to them in order to accomplish the story goal, and it needs to be something that they cannot fully recover. It can be something as ephemeral as innocence, or as concrete as their best friend. Any person “lost” by the protagonist does not always have to die, either…distance and circumstance can separate people as surely as death can. Saeli will lose both of her best friends by the end of the story. Brendan is killed. Cara lives to the end, but the friendship that she and Saeli shared just cannot fully recover from the events of the story. Both are too changed.

(If you write childrens and middle grade fiction, for the most part, disregard this. I think kids up to a certain age like it better if the ending is nice and neat, the good guys all win, and the bad guys all get what they deserve.)

8 ) Give the hardworking hero a treat. This becomes vitally necessary when the protagonist must make a giant sacrifice to win. Give the poor guy/girl something nice for making it through hell alive. Saeli sacrifices the life she knows, her best friends, her innocence, and very nearly her own life to save Verre (first from the war, and then from Raphel). Not to mention that she brings down Raphel by her own hands, and stupid or not, she did love him. Seeing the war end is just not going to be enough for her at this point, which is why I had to bring Naeth back from the dead. He is her unexpected reward. Another example would be in Star Wars. Luke accomplishes the story goal of bringing down the Emperor. He loses his aunt, his uncle, his mentor, his hand, a good chunk of the rebel fleet, and finally his father in the process. His unexpected reward is that his father repented before the end, and is at peace.

That’s all I have for now. If I come up with any others, I’ll post them.

Tags: advice

Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 rules for fiction

I figured this would be a good place to start Writer Wisdom Wednesdays.

Eight rules for writing fiction:

- Vonnegut, Kurt Vonnegut, Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons 1999), 9-10.

The only one I truly disagree with is 8. I’m not really worried about nuclear apocalypse or cockroaches eating my books. If the reader gets to a certain point where they feel they could finish the story themselves, they’re going to put the book down. That’s what I do. It’s not an adventure when someone gives away the ending. There’s a difference between a reader having a complete grasp of what’s going on, and the reader knowing exactly how things are going to end…and that difference is nothing less than the difference between good storytelling and bad storytelling.

Tags: wisdom

This is great, so I must quote it

“To All My Democratic Friends:

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all. I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2010, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great. Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere . Also, this wish is made without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wish.

To My Conservative Friends:
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.”

Tags: humor

NaNoWriMo

Which I am NOT doing this year, by the way. I will probably have to wait until Eli starts kindergarten before I can commit to something like that. (Eli in kindergarten…only 2 years away…where does the time go??)

However, I thought I’d provide links, for those who are interested, to a series of NaNoWriMo tips that a couple of YA authors have been posting on their own blogs, and will continue to do so throughout the month.

Scott Westerfeld’s blog : Just keep clicking the top right link to read them all so far. He is tag-teaming with Justine Larbalestier. Their tips alternate days. They are very good. Scott Westerfeld is one of my favorite YA authors (just finished his Midnighters series).

And for Buffy fans, here’s an interesting essay Westerfeld wrote about the Buffy universe: http://www.smartpopbooks.com/essay/full/51

Tags: advice, authors, tips

Quote of the day

From Randy Ingerman’s Advanced Fiction Writing e-zine:

“Fiction is about telling lies. Big,fat, hairy, prevaricating lies. If you want to write about the truth, or approximately the truth, or even something remotely approaching the truth, then the career you’re looking for is called “Journalism.” It’s a fine career choice, but it isn’t fiction.”

To amend that, however, I wouldn’t say that fiction is entirely untrue. It’s just more about emotional and thematic truth than factual, this-really-happened-in-real-life truth. There has to be something real there, or nobody will read it. People don’t read complete BS; if they do, it’s either because they don’t realize it’s BS, or because they want to laugh about it with their friends.

Tags: humor

I like this woman

This is good advice.

Hope Clark: 10 Things They Don’t Teach in Writing Classes

Tags: advice