On Fantasy, Writing & the Journey to Publication
Hi friends,
I sincerely apologize for not being very active on the blog over the past two months. I’ve been a busy boy – working full-time at a job that gives me tons in tips, rehearsing full-time for a show that’s in the Edmonton and Vancouver Fringe Festival, and launching my own theatre company – Third Street Theatre (www.thirdstreet.ca).
So I have been quite busy, with so many projects on the go. Last count had me at 95 hours/week of work, and I don’t think I’ve had a day off in six weeks. It’s a pretty rigorous and exhausting schedule.
That being said, I have had continued interest from the literary agent in my book, and he is working with me on fixing some of the issues regarding pacing. My only challenge is to grab some time to dedicate to revisiting the manuscript.
I have had a seven month break from the book, which I am sure has given me loads of perspective. I am hoping that in the next couple of months I’ll be able to find a couple of days to really dedicate myself to editing again, so that we might be able to continue on this path.. and hopefully lead to official representation.
There are so many exciting things going on in my life, and the Universe seems to keep sending more projects my way. It’s hard to complain about it (although, I find myself complaining that I am tired, have no time, and no social life.. which isn’t a fun story to be telling all the time).
I can make no guarantees that I will be blogging every day, but I will do my best to write a post now and then – especially as I move forward with editing the manuscript.
All the best, and cheers.
Paul
I have taken a 3-month break from working on my manuscript. It wasn’t that my life got too busy, as I certainly had a fair amount of “free time” that I could have invested into my manuscript, and it wasn’t because I lost interest in the work. My love of the story hadn’t changed, nor had my passion to become a published writer.
I had burned out.
The expression “burning the candle at both ends” exists for a reason. Sometimes we get carried away and try to do too much. That’s what happened to me.
I was cast in a wonderful piece of children’s theatre that took me to Edmonton for almost six weeks. It was a wonderful two-person play that was high energy and fast-moving and it demanded a lot of commitment and focus. I made a lot of physical and vocal choices, and I did my best to give it my all.
In the professional theatre, you typically work 6 days a week rehearsing to put a show up. Add to that my decision to walk 10 km a day to and from the theatre and we’re talking about a 55 hour/week time commitment. Seems like more than enough, doesn’t it?
But what did I do?
I decided to also continue to aggressively work on my book and learn about the publishing industry. I learned about platform, and the importance and impact it apparently has in the modern publishing world (and I promise I’ll write a blog post on platform at some point.) I learned about writing and editing. I tried to stay abreast of the changing world of publishing – and boy, is it ever changing fast. I read e-books on the craft and the business, and bought a number of fantasy novels to understand what others were doing and how.
It was too much.
Some nights, I didn’t even sleep. I tried to, but my brain kept going and it kept me awake. I’d lie in bed and feel like I was wasting time, so the lights would go back on and I’d get back to work.
I probably spent another 35 hours / week working on the book. On top of my 55 hours / week, the candle faded fast.
So I needed time to recover, and I did my best not to feel guilty about that.
Fast-forward three months to today.
I have just come back from a week-long Artist in Residency contract in Lethbridge where I worked with Pre-Kindergarten, Kindergarten, and Grade 1 students on the topic of diversity. Together, we created a play that was 100% developed from their imaginations. And boy, do they ever have wonderful imaginations!
I feel rested and recharged (even though the week was exhausting) and last night I sent an e-mail out to the literary agent who has been reading the partial of IN THE SHADOWS OF THE DAWN inquiring about the status of my book.
All this to say: I finally feel ready to get back to work on taking the manuscript to the next level.
It needs some more editing and I have some ideas of scenes that I think should be cut. There are a couple of thematic moments that I think need to be highlighted a little bit more. And I’m certainly curious to see what 3 months of rest does to my reading of the story. I am certain I am going to see it with fresh eyes and find a number of things that I missed in my previous edits.
So stay tuned! I think I’ve found a new candle to burn.. but this time I’m going to be careful not to burn it on both ends.
Have you ever burned yourself out? How did it happen, and what steps did you take to recover? What lessons have you learned? Please share your stories in the comments below. I’m sure we could all benefit from hearing each other’s experiences!
For today’s post, I wanted to share three articles from blogs that I think are pretty darned interesting. I’ve given you the headlines and a sample of the article, and I strongly hope you click through and give the rest of the article a read. I don’t think you’ll regret it!
I hope you enjoy them!
Paul
The Faceless Villain: What to do When Your Bad Guy Isn’t a Person
In a lot of stories (especially genre novels) the antagonist is a physical being that can be fought against. But what do you do when your antag is something to overcome, like depression, or a self-destructive streak? Technically, there’s nothing plotting against your protagonist for them to fight. It’s a personal situation or flaw holding them back. These stories are a little tougher to write.
Read the rest of the article HERE on The Other Side of the Story.
Today, I want to introduce you to a woman named Rebecca Berto. She is a young writer and editor living in Australia, and she hosts a blog called Novel Girl where she offers up clear advice on writing, a smattering of comprehensive book reviews and author interviews.
And what’s more, she’s done a ton of work on amassing valuable tools that I have certainly found useful in developing my craft.
In particular, she highlights the skills she learned from Larry Brooks, author of Story Engineering. Larry’s book is definitely on my wishlist, as it sounds like it’s loaded with incredible tools and resources.
As I approach my own craft of writing, Larry’s site Storyfix and Rebecca’s blog have been very educational, and I recommend them both.
Story structure is one of those elusive things that a lot of novice writers don’t think about – and judging from a couple of disappointing published short stories and a 500-page YA novel I’ve read recently, it might be something a few published authors don’t think about, either. Most, however, do – and it becomes quickly apparent as to why.
We’re given a very brief overview of it in high school, and then it quickly drops to the back-burner, never to be thought of again. I will admit that when I wrote my first novel, structure was the last thing to pop into my mind. But I guarantee you that through the editing process, it resurfaced and I paid special attention to the various elements that make for good structure in a story. The fixes were sometimes a challenge, but definitely worth-while.
The following three links are from Rebecca’s site, highlighting her understanding of Larry’s technique.
The Best Advice I’ve Learned on Story Structure: Part 1 – Setup
The Best Advice I’ve Learned on Story Structure: Part 2 – Plot Point 1
The Best Advice I’ve Learned on Story Structure: Part 3 – Midpoint & Second / Third Plot Points
What are your favorite sites for writing technique? Are there any books on the craft of writing that you view as your proverbial “bible”? Please share them in the comments below – I’d love to take a peek at them.
Malcolm Gladwell writes some fantastic books. My favorites include Blink, Outliers, and The Tipping Point.
In Outliers, Gladwell introduces a concept:
It takes 10,000 hours to become a master at something.
10,000 hours of investment in your drawing skills will lead to a level of mastery. 10,000 hours of the study of the history of Venice will likely make you an honest-to-goodness expert in the field. This makes sense to me, even though life can’t always follow the rules of a formula. But it’s a good general guideline.
So let’s do the math:
Interesting to think about, isn’t it?
How many hours a day do you spend honing your craft?
To be a good writer involves an investment of time. This is where formal education does come in hand. It forces us to invest the time required to improve our skills. Additionally, we get feedback, critique, and hopefully some encouragement along the way. We gain a formal understanding, and pick up numerous tips and tricks. We’re more likely to develop faster than we would on our own.
But not all of us have pursued this sort of formal training.
I didn’t. I have 7 years of university under my belt, but it was divided between a 4-year BA degree in Psychology and Philosophy and a 3-year BFA degree in Acting. Sure, I did a lot of writing in both programs, but nowhere near the 10,000 hours needed to become a master.
However, there’s another component aside from education: practical experience. We can’t discount that. Any work – be it reading, writing, critiquing, or editing – definitely counts.
Lately, I’ve been reading tons of articles, books, and blogs about the craft of writing. I’ve learned a great deal and it’s really changed the way I approach my craft. I know there’s still so much for me to learn, and I am actively pursuing my own practical experience and training. Some days I’m discouraged, feeling like I’m so far behind. But then, when I look at what I’ve accomplished over the past 15 years, I realize I’m exactly on target.
As mentioned in my last post, I started playing online text-based roleplaying games when I was 13. In the gaming world, they’re called Multi-User Dungeons, or MUDs. They had no graphics, no fancy special effects or sounds. They relied wholly on imagination, and that made them both powerful and engaging.
I am afraid to calculate how many hours I logged on MUDs over the course of the 10 years I spent playing, administering, and running them.
I started out as a player and eventually became a staff member. I helped police the game, assisted with problems, resolve bugs, and even add content. I would also help encourage role-play by planning quests and special events for some or all of the players to participate in, and these events involved storytelling in its purest form.
Now, I know for a fact I logged well over 10,000 hours. It might be close to 30,000 (or more) – but let’s not concern ourselves too much with that. And not all of my hours were spent writing, but a good portion of them were. I cannot deny that my involvement in running and administering MUDs helped develop my craft.
My journey might not be conventional, but it definitely had worth.
How about for yourself? What unconventional methods helped develop your craft? Do you have a unique journey that led you to writing? During a typical day, do you find opportunities to focus and develop your skill? I’d love to hear your stories, so please feel free to share them in the comments below.
When reading or writing fantasy, we’re often faced with the challenge of character names. Some names roll off the tongue, while others trip us up and become recurring problems throughout the duration of the text.
There’s an expectation in the fantasy genre for names to sound a little heightened – a little more exotic – and if a name is too common, it’s scoffed at and frowned upon. If it’s too complex and missing vowels, it’s equally dismissed as distancing. So we must find the right balance.
Some family friends recently read the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and Stieg Larson’s subsequent books, and most of them commented on the challenge of keeping track of all the similar-sounding names. Far too many character names began with the same letter, or had nearly identical construction with l’s and j’s and b’s. I know I’ve seen similar problems in some fantasy novels (particularly those involving a non-humanoid race), so I understand the complaint.
The names just don’t work. Or rather, they create obstacles for the enjoyment of the story – and that’s never a good thing.
During the beta reads of my novel, I, too, received some feedback that two character names sounded too alike, and it became a challenge keeping track of who’s who.
Both were secondary – or perhaps tertiary – characters, and they appeared in the same locale. In a couple of instances, I even made the mistake of typing the wrong character name – which definitely added to the confusion. In case you were curious, the names were Corella and Corinna. I’ve since changed Corella to something else.
Part of the problem stems from how our brains read English text. Our brains don’t read every single letter. They’re highly efficient (or perhaps lazy) so they try to make sense of the word based on an image-capture of the word. The order of the letters within the word doesn’t seem to matter – the brain gets a “hit,” makes sense of it, and moves on. If you’d like to see for yourself, check out this example at Help.com.
On the flip side of the coin, readers would also comment on a name sounding “too common” – that it would take them out of the mythic realm and send them crashing back to the real world.
We’ve likely all encountered some characters with unpronounceable names, or names that simply roll poorly off the tongue. There has to be a balance. But what is it, and what’s a writer to do?
Fantasy Faction posted an article back in September, 2011, called What’s In A Fantasy Name?, and they brought up some valid observations.
“The temptation is to develop names that are imaginative and unique to the created landscape. That’s a great idea but remember to keep the names pronounceable. Imagine someone reading your work aloud. Will the names detract from the flow of the story? A short common name can often allow for a character’s formal title to be a little more imaginative.”
So how do we go about choosing a name?
Some authors choose historic names or names from mythology, and tweak them – changing the vowel sounds, adding in additional letters here and there, etc. Some will scour foreign-language dictionaries or documents, looking for names that have a specific meaning in another language. Others will seek out names with sounds that evoke the character personality – or the base stereotype or archetype they’re trying to conjure. These are all valid tools, and can lead to some wonderful names.
For me, I look for names that suit the style of my writing. Some cultures in my world have very specific name constructions (and name lineage), while others are vowel-heavy. And as a voice, speech, and text specialist in the theatre, I understand the impact of vowel and consonant sounds, so I tend to make use of them to help underscore or produce meaning. Sometimes it’s effective and sometimes it falls flat. But for the most part, I’m always game to tweak the names until they’re just right.
Have you ever encountered names which turn you off? What are some examples of overly complex names? If you’re a writer, how do you choose your name – and how much does that name define the character for you? Would you be heart-broken if a publisher asked you to change the character name? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
As writers, we focus on developing a platform – the friends, fans, and colleagues who have a vested interest in our work. It’s what drives sales, playing an important role in dictating our successes or failures. And if we achieve any sort of success, our platform can grow exponentially. Our reach – and influence – explodes.
Public figures have huge platforms. Indeed, their platforms can extend beyond the scope of those who actively participate in the “work” they produce. Not everyone watches Jersey Shore, but most of us have an idea of who Snooki is – perhaps through newspaper articles, interviews, commercials, or water-cooler gossip. (She even has a New York Times best-selling book, but let’s be very clear: her ghost writer is a NYT best-selling author, not her.)
Sometimes celebrities say or do things that irk us. For instance, Mark Whalberg recently made an insensitive blunder by claiming he’s a real-life superhero and shoulda-coulda-woulda changed the events of 9/11. He’s since gone on to apologize.
It makes me consider the moral and ethical responsibilities and implications of platform.
Some very successful writers have allowed their politics to creep into their platform, becoming very vocal about their beliefs – be it religion, sexual orientation, political parties, etc. In fact, it may even be another aspect of their platform. But very personal opinions and beliefs suddenly become highly public and political.
Now, we all have beliefs, including some that we’re willing to get aggressive about – be it emotionally, physically, politically, or financially. We are right in our belief, and others are wrong. Absolutely, 100%, irrefutably wrong, and we’ll use everything at our disposal to ensure our belief is maintained, that other beliefs are squished. This doesn’t make it right, but it’s an aspect of the human condition.
So what happens when a high-profile writer uses their platform to further their “controversial” belief? What happens when our support and readership – as expressed through the purchasing of the product they release – allows them to fund their aggressive actions towards the furthering their beliefs?
What are our moral and ethical responsibilities as readers?
We want to stay current, and we want to read the books that are extremely popular. But if those authors use the cash generated from the sale of their books to further their own agenda, we are funding a belief that we don’t wholly support.
To be clear:
See what I’m getting at here?
It’s a challenging topic, and it can generate a lot of controversy. We pay attention to it when it comes to the food we eat, the places we support or boycott, the products we purchase – from organizations and even countries – but do we consider it with the books and films we purchase and view?
What are your thoughts? Should readers support popular literature produced by authors who finance diametrically opposed beliefs? Should we educate ourselves about the personal beliefs of the authors we read and make our purchases based on how well their belief lines up with our own?
Please comment below and share your thoughts – but let’s keep it a constructive debate.
I am a bit of a geek. I’m not ashamed to admit it, and one of the things I like to “geek out” on is random (some would argue useless) information. There I’ll be, having a perfectly normal conversation…
Friend: “How goes today?”
Me: “Not bad, and you?”
Friend: “Ahh, I’m feeling a tad bit groggy.”
…and my brain suddenly gets hijacked. Where does the expression “groggy” come from? What’s it all about? What does “groggy” really mean?
And I’ll spend the next twenty minutes futzing around online in order to satisfy my curiosity.
Today, I wanted to share a brief history of GROG. Why? Because it’s neat, and neat stuff rocks.
I spent five years working in the liquor industry, so I’ve got a little bit of knowledge when it comes to spirits. I tend to include spirits in my writing, and I find the inclusion of “adult beverages “can inject a lot into a story.
Three characters walk into a bar.
When we read this, our brains conjure up an idea of what these characters are like and what sort of personality they might have. We also get a sense of age, socio-economical status, and perhaps even temperament. Immediately, conclusions are drawn. We’re left with an impression.
It’s a great, simple tool to help flesh out a characterization without overloading the reader with “telling” descriptors. And if you want to add comedy to the mix, you simply go against stereotype. You have the big, battle-hardened warrior order something that’s counter-intuitive, like strawberry wine. It’s instant comedy gold. (Well, maybe not gold… but you get the point.)
Now back to my groggy friend.
Grog is a type of spirit, and it tends to appear in fantasy novels – especially pirate fantasy, or any fantasy tale where the characters find themselves a-sailin’ on the seas..
Back in the days of yore, when sailors went to sea, they needed to bring fresh water as it wasn’t practical to distill fresh water from the salty seas. Water was stored in wooden barrels, which would develop both algae and bacteria. Over months at sea, that water would get pretty vile, and so beer or wine was added in an attempt to make it more palatable. But that involves transporting even more barrels of liquid, and after many months aboard a ship, the risk of spoilage would increase. And since sailors were issued a daily ration of beer, the amount of storage space required to transport the casks – water, beer, wine, brandy, etc. – caused a serious cargo problem.
Rum eventually replace beer and wine/brandy as the drink of choice upon the sea, but it was given to the sailor straight – and as a spirit with a high alcohol content, it caused some undesirable behaviors. Some sailors would hoard their rations and then go on a bender, resulting in illness – “I’m feeling groggy” – and a severe lack of discipline. And likely a song or two sung off key. But that’s beside the point.
The decision was made to dilute the rum with water, as the final mixture had a shorter shelf-life than the rum alone. This solved the undesirable behavior, and thus became the standard practice. And if you’re curious, the ratio of water to rum was generally 4:1.
Seeing as the stored water wasn’t very tasty, a little bit of citrus – lemon or lime juice, typically – was added. So now we’ve got a tasty blend of foul water, rum, with a dash of citrus… and a ship full of satisfied – and lightly buzzed – sailors. As an added bonus: no more scurvy! And so, grog was officially invented and became common practice until the 1970’s.
And for those who care about etymology, “grog” is said to have taken its name from the nickname of “Old Grog” given to British Admiral Vernon because of his sense of style. It seems Old Vernon enjoyed the stylings of a kind of heavy coat of grogram – a coarse, weather-proof fabric. Vernon was stingy and had mandated the dilution of rum rations with water in 1740, and the term “grog” was used in a derisive way.
Personally, I’m not a fan of grog. I’ve tried it, and I find it tastes too much like Pinesol™. Or at least, it tastes what I imagine Pinesol™ to taste like, as I’ve never tried it. Honestly. Stop judging me. (No, seriously: don’t drink Pinesol™.)
Have you ever used spirits in your writing as a characterization aid? Do you notice it in the books you read? What sort of impression does it give? Share your thoughts in the comments below – I’d love to hear your ideas!
Welcome, friends.
I have decided to step up to the plate and join the blogosphere!
The plan? To share articles, information, tips, and tricks about the crafts of writing and editing. Along the way, you might find some observations about the publishing industry during my journey toward publication. I hope you enjoy the ride!
My passion is FANTASY, although I quite enjoy historical fiction, crime thrillers, and literary fiction. At the end of the day, though, I love a good story, no matter the form or medium. As an actor and playwright, storytelling is what I do for a living. I am incredibly ambitious, curious, and motivated to become the best storyteller I can possibly be, and this exploration is just another step down that road.
This is an exciting opportunity to connect with fellow authors, readers, and enthusiasts, and I invite you to participate in the discussion.
Cheers,
Paul
Paul Welch 