Creative Control

Early on, when I decided to make the journey towards publishing, I asked myself a question that I still ask every so often: how much creative control do I want?

As a fan of books, movies, comic books, I'd once assumed that the creators themselves had the last word... At least until, I, as a charmed fan, drew pictures of what they looked like to me, wrote new situations for them to be in, changed what was canon for my own entertainment.

I guess it's for that reason that, when I started writing novels, I didn't feel like I wanted to obsess on every aspect that I did as a fan. Of course, I wanted to be thorough and get a good idea of each character for myself, but I found myself hesitant to draw my characters, to insist they look a certain way outside of the words. Possibly because I do picture them, as a fan would, in many different ways, experimenting with their look and unwilling to force the canon. I never wanted to be so possessive of my worlds that others felt restricted to that.

Of course, I did start my first two books by illustrating, but I found I didn't want my novels to be a replacement for drawing comics. I knew that the novels would take years to finish (since I almost always end up turning them into series), but I needed to create a hunger for making comics that I wouldn't build up by nibbling at it along the way.

The past couple days of just doodling in a sketchbook also reminded me I can't just neglect drawing. My damn hand was cramping, not used to the muscles being used like that. That will be a source of frustration if I try to start comics at full speed ahead. So, like most of my hobbies involving muscle memory, my sketchbook will need to get a workout here and there.

Working on this one today:

This is me playing with UnHeard's Princess Endramena, her guardian Maxim still has yet to join her on the page. Again, I'm not married to readers having to see my characters in any certain way, but sometimes I want to see how I can translate the mental visuals onto a page for myself. Plus, I enjoyed the little details I put into her jewelry. I'm debating on whether I'll greyscale color this or not. I still have to add texture to the lines. I guess it'll be down to the mood of the moment. I'll scan it before I do any coloring. That way, my friends that like to color can play with that.

Either way, I enjoy the change of pace I've been at this week. I'll be excited when UnSung drops on February 21st too. It's actually much more difficult setting a preorder than just publishing something when it's ready. For all of my patience with so many things, waiting to share something is never easy.

Smart Women Need (Dumb) Love Too

Why not talk romantic and sexual love today rather than wax on the semantics of different kinds of love?

I can't say for certain why women so often want to write about love and romance. Historically, it's what we've been superficially told we care most about but never for the actual reasons. more often than not, it's because what we want out of it is still a kind of social taboo. We're talking about it more now, but our bodies and needs are still dismissed as crass. It's still weirdly acceptable for sex to be one-sided and shallow, but really icks people out if it's emotional and intense. We're allowed to get raunchy in all-girl spaces or with our partner, but we're still shamed if we dare to step outside of those places.

Sex and love are topics we should be able to discuss in classrooms, break rooms, not giggling awkwardly behind hand-covered mouths. Why is it treated so solemnly or so primitively? Is the mystery and intrigue in romance, courting and sex ever truly dulled when we know how to talk dirty, what hole does what, and why consent is pretty straightforward when the chemistry is actually there? 

Why are so many women championing the inclusion of sex in literature without it being reduced to rags? Certainly because men have been allowed to write it any way they please and not have it thrown into the romance pile. Because men can write sex clean, dirty, shallow, deep and end up being called classic, profound, insightful.

Why do women object to being thrown in the romance pile? Because our suspense, nerd fantasy, genre specific work is not light and fluffy. As a smart women who likes light and fluffy, I know that while it's a genre that does inspire me, my shit doesn't fit there. Just because I'm a woman that isn't afraid to write sex doesn't mean every plot is cemented around it.

All love and sex is dumb. It doesn't operate on logic, but it's part of the human experience. It doesn't 'cheapen plots' or 'destroy intent' and, when you're already neck deep in the psychology and plotting, it's not an invasion of privacy to 'go there'. What is awkward, clumsy, confident, aggressive, passive about sex is part of what people sometimes wonder about and making all aspects of it taboo are precisely why cultures try to dance over consent, rape, fetishism and the stigma that surrounds it. Why give these offenders any room to claim they 'didn't know any better'?

So we are allowed to enjoy and implement what is dumb, but don't look down your nose at what is only a persistent and willful ignorance of its place in entertainment. There's a place for all sexy plots in all mediums. Intelligent subjects and dumb ones alike are put in place to offset the other--like light and dark, oil and water, fire and ice. Even if required education starts teaching us about each other's bodies and drives and responses, there are degrees of that understanding that don't fit into textbooks or the dusty, shameful sections of a smut pile. To balance that dialogue, we can't just encourage men and women to join the discussion, but we also have to consider the fluidity of sexuality that exists in all identities and genders.

Encourage writers to incorporate these subjects in more meaningful ways as well. If your knee-jerk reaction is to belittle all sex in literature, especially when the writer is a woman, you are certainly part of the problem.

I love dumb love and I love an intelligent plot. If you're in the same boat, you might enjoy my work.

NaNoWriMo Doesn't Have a Difficulty Level

I'd like to sincerely apologize if, at any time, I made what I do seem easy. In the spirit of sharing Kryptonite, here's the reality. Other than being a queen of symptoms and few working treatments (the physical and mental concerns will always be playing a role), there are a lot of factors that come in between me and superhuman awesomeness. So many factors can make one story harder than another, no matter where you are as a writer. Maybe you changed genres or you're aiming for a novel when you usually write short stories. Maybe you're finally ready to work on something you hope to publish.

People will perceive that you're more experienced or successful based on preconceived notions of what you've done so far, but writing is one place where we're all not that much different. We want to shout it from the rooftops when we're doing well, but any momentum is something we may exaggerate because we know we could hit a block of some sort or life will just make it impossible to get to those ideas we're itching to nail down.

Like most people, I battle with tons of ideas with no sure-fire way of communicating them and struggle to find my strengths and weaknesses. I also believe in setting clear boundaries, which means I don't trust total strangers with my unpublished work, always building cautious friendships and talking about personal issues with a measure of earnesty and reservation. For every milestone, there's another unknown looming and at no point did what it behind us make it that much easier to take the next step or repeat something we've done before.

As much as my blog is about introspection at times, I'm terrible at keeping in the first person tense when writing because my mental headspace keeps panning outside of the character and ends up in third. No one wins baseball going from first to third. I have some odd preferences in writing as well. I try not to start paragraphs using the same first word of the one before it. I have a tendency to use the British 'grey' and 'glamour' while every other word follows American English. It's not something I do to stand out, but one of those things I've done as long as I could remember. My English teachers always wanted the double space after every sentence. That took a lot of work to kill that habit (and I still use Find to locate any, just to be sure). Given, these are small things and nothing that would shatter the story. However, you may have noticed, I'm an impulsive thinker. I do often have to put my story back on track when I start chasing shiny objects that don't need to be there. I spend a lot of time editing because there can be a lot to clean up.

Showing a few of my obstacles shouldn't give you grounds to compare. Oh fuck, if it's hard for her and she's done this much, then what hope do the rest of us have? (I've heard this a few times directly and it's mortifying to be regarded too loftily.) If you want to know the truth...

Exactly as much as everyone else. Call it being unable to take a compliment but you can call me amazing and I'll find some way to make myself seem ordinary. Even though I might know I'm amazing, it's a hollow victory if I give the impression it's au-naturale and you either have it or you don't. I had a lot of things working for me, but just as much working against me. Just like you. There are insecurities and egos-- the perceived good and bad can flip around, but you know what? Taking note of the way things slip away from you are nothing to be paralyzed about. Those are the key to your unique insight, where people will start to find you relatable.

I struggled a lot the first time I did NaNo but not because of the word count. I tried to write a book that an agent might look at. I looked at it the wrong way and even though I was satisfied enough to release it, I wish I had stretched it out more, let those characters shine more. Its sequel UnSung was where I resolved to ditch word count concerns and just write the story as broad as I needed the characters to be. It took eight months to draft because I needed to plot, plan and unify the details. Since I originally planned UnNamed as a standalone, I didn't bother styling it to continue. UnSung was born of what I wanted UnNamed to be. UnHeard will continue on the same way. If I thought for  one moment that the next book in a series would be worse than the one before because of forcing it, I wouldn't write it until I felt it could be better. Yet UnSung will wait to be completed because I wanted to see if leaving it open might benefit it as I continue. My first series was one I wouldn't release until they were done. It gave me so much room to go back and change things. While I didn't want to do the UnQuadrilogy the same way, I think that between UnSung and UnHeard, mutual contemplation might benefit them both. So I set UnSung aside to throw in a new approach for NaNo.

The first time I neglected the free-writing part. Don't edit as you go, don't stop to plan, just wing it and learn to clean up the mess later. I was curious if I could not only wing it on a complex fantasy but do it on a third book when the second was still in edit. Not only is it freeing, I don't feel tethered to notes or plans that I can always work in later if I like the original plan better.

I'm going to cut into the fat here-- I used attitude and mentality to create the hurdles of difficulty. If headbutting the challenge was working against me, I could change tact. It's not the same as quitting or admitting defeat. Writing isn't factory work. It requires very volatile things that demand only flexibility. The only failure is killing your drive by slaughtering your talent. You do not enjoy your favorite things because you think you should. It doesn't matter if writing falls under work or play, you are ultimately in control. Even if your characters run amuck, you get to grab the reins of the story and the edit and the vision. It's not censoring them or watering them down; it's bringing them to harmony with the elements.

(This is especially true when I've written something too quickly because of a great mood and momentum. You think it's untouchable but it's actually where you really want to dig in.)

Every character doesn't need to be wise or quirky or fucked-up or deep. Loving them too much will squeeze them flat. It's probably hard to face your own mortality, especially when you superimpose yourself on to a character. But...

Read the 3 Faces of Eve. Do yourself a favor and read an account of a woman who had to kill aspects of herself to assimilate them. Killing your poster child can be a sign of metamorphosis, not self-loathing. If your writing suffers from overloved characters, understand that killing them, either literally or figuratively, is about growth. I didn't die when my mom did. When I die, I won't be around to care that I did. Even the Death card in a tarot deck is about change, the end of something and the birth of another. It doesn't matter if you tend to be hypersensitive and empathetic (guilty of both, believe it or not), if your characters are really independent entities meant to show off their humanity, making them superhuman does both you and them a disservice. No one expects you to extol the virtue of your beliefs through every character.

Whether life or change or NaNoWriMo is difficult is up to how you learn to adjust it. Even in the throes of a panic attack, I once stopped it by thinking "you gonna cry, Barbie?". Hyperventilation turned to laughter and I like to believe I forced a chemical I lacked to release and counter it. No, depression doesn't disappear with happy thoughts. While I know how to trick a lot of moods now, some are still dangerous and stubborn. I have a mental medicine cabinet that must be tried every time, but until I do try everything I can think of, I can't give up. Don't say you can't until you've tried all of the things you can.

You don't get to always decide when to be happy, when to write, how much to work. Americans have been groomed to think we should do things anyway, even if that path is a long walk off a short pier. No. Just no. There are choices and consequences. Don't let people shame you into being who aren't you. You know you'll be the one to deal with it so weigh it as only you can. Tell the Captain Obviouses to fuck off.

I'm gonna be a tireless cheerleader this month. As much as possible. I know what it's like to be low. Doesn't matter if anyone reciprocates it on my low days. I always find a way to crawl out and fight. What matters to me is people finding the joy of writing. People often get lost in that when demanding something from it that isn't guaranteed no matter how much you suffer. It's never a more important time in history for people to learn to reconnect with purpose and one another.

It's easy. It's hard. It's up to you. Whatever you do, do it with an open mind.

Time Travel: Doesn't Have to be a Paradox

I have one blog tag under the subject 'time travel' so I may be rehashing some things I brought up before, but I'm fairly certain that one mostly covered its introduction in the UnQuadrilogy. Although I want to assume this is going to be going in a different direction.

Let's start off by my admittance that I wouldn't claim to be deep in the logic holes of time travel as a possibility or not. I rather like the concept of a multiverse, a sort of tragic twist to the Quantum Leap idea where you might be able to return to a version of your world CLOSE to the one you leapt from, but it's very likely that the pioneers of 'time travel' will never truly get to dial into their EXACT point of departure ever again. Not enough to create a gaping butterfly effect in what you knew, but it would be a thorn in the paw sort of difference-- if everything seems right, but your brown-eyed sister is blue-eyed instead. It would either be something you could reconcile with or you'd always wonder if the people you'd really left behind were mourning somewhere.

There are so many emotional aspects to the logical that there's hardly a reason to feel constrained by any logic string you build from. It might be interesting to dive into conspiracy or sci-fi forums dedicated to mulling it over or it might be a little too deep-web for some people. If you wanted to wing it a bit, I could see it very well developing somewhere in between the branches of a character tree and the stacking of a timeline format. If that sounds confusing, let's just use the conceptual vocabulary here. Time travel, as a character, is essentially a choose-your-own-adventure build. From each possibility that exists, they would be a set of consequences. Some people find the sheer amount of choices staggering, so to make it simpler to you, I might suggest maybe drawing up 3-4 scenarios to outline. Keep in mind, each of these would branch to represent a direction you want the affected characters to develop in. This would keep it from feeling too rigid, but if you accept that it would be pretty tough for anyone to follow your exact creative logic, then you might have a single path already carved out with a distant second to represent another choice they didn't take (the presence of a doubt for a path they might have chosen).

Coders are probably following me well enough but I'll give you a choice tree picture to better illustrate the verbiage here.

Yes, you've probably seen funny memes just like this on social media, actually...

So, don't be confused by this, which resembles an asset map for a rigged 3D model in animation. You really don't need to read it to understand the concept of an organized planning tree.

The first example is the simplest- a sort of yes/no binary whereas the second contains branches that connect many assets, more along the lines of a choose your own adventure book. I say this because if you were trying for 'all of the endings', you sometimes noticed how you'd arrive at the same path when you diverged at some point before. It might have been mildly frustrating to reread it, but you could at least note that you were finishing the two possible choices in that scenario at least and if you ran into a third time? Time to start over or backtrack, right?

Assume your time travel does not have the luxury of flipping back like turning a page (although the movie Butterfly Effect did illustrate how you might think you were doing so just to make it increasingly worse and alien). Are there certain conditions to be met to proceed? Blue key for the blue door? Okay, that was patronizing since I know everyone can do better plotting than that (although let's never rule that out in a comedic satire). 

In Quantum Leap, Sam had to fulfill the purpose of the body he leapt into until Al could figure out where he was going next. It was largely comedic but there was an emotional element in that each connection with these human beings seemed to disconnect him further from who he actually was and returning to himself whole seemed slimmer. Some of the people he became were pure and even weak in a way he'd never had to deal with as himself (and yes, I do mean women because historically and even now, we're not exactly in a place to overpower men physically) and some were morally bankrupt, which gave him the troubled conscience of whether he should or could help them at all at what cost to himself.

I loved that that show could dive into deep emotional aspects, in a way that female writers might tackle it as well-- a mix of action, comedy and emotion that was neither too masculine or feminine, simply the human struggle. However, rather than fangirl all over it, we'll move on.

Once you use a sort of tree to map the developmental aspect, you can move into a more linear assortment to choose the path, rather than strictly a chronology as you would with a normal timeline. This is more to map the path of your story, but if you want to mark specific departures, then stacking time lines to mark those as 'scenes' would work too. You get the benefit of the linear path with the flexibility of multiple branches.

Again, a purely visual example of the explanation.

Some people can get away with mostly verbal trees but if you know your way around design programs or spreadsheets, you can generate the given examples with little hassle. Table it or even go the style-sheet route-- these aids for complex ideas are for YOU to navigate optimally so they don't really have to make much sense to anyone else if they work for you.

And yes-- NaNoWriMo is around the corner, so I'm doing a bit of this planning myself while working on UnSung. I'd probably be further on it, but I like to use these blog breaks to ruminate on the creative processes I'm using. About 6K shy of 200K! I'm hoping to pop the 200K mark by the end of the week or blast well past it.

For my fellow stat geeks though...

Ha, I'm clearly not very 'professional', jumping around like this, but who can resist sticking it to every fuckstick manager that ever accused me of that?

You'll run into contradictions here and there. You might need a helpful nerd or two to dig through your blind spots. Some might be rigid pains-in-the-ass and hate your logic, but it's still good practice to be thankful for being critical or passionate enough to irritate you and go with your gut if you are ever more certain that's what you want for your story. If you're rejecting EVERY suggestion, you are very likely wasting the point of having anyone look at it at all. Be honest with yourself beforehand-- were you just hoping they'd worship your ideas or were you really open to having it picked apart and tested?

That's a decent chunk to let you mull over. If you feel confident I might be able to help you, feel free to request some of my time. I can't promise I can be immediately available but I am sincere about helping when I can.

To finish, as promised, I'm digging out Dinsch's hair/eye color for today's color-porn fun. This one might be a little challenging because of it's deceptive simplicity. The white I chose is actually a very light shade of green, making it a tad cooler than a cream with its yellow-orange base. Why did I want a green-tinted white? The natural complement of a red is a green! Although true red and green are nauseating (I like forest green/burgundy for the Christmas season), you can definitely get the right complements for them with saturation and hue adjustments. As for the red, rather than roll this one around, I took to the HTML preset of firebrick, a bright red reminiscent of fleshly oxidized blood, which is essentially what unpigmented red eyes get their color from. Ocular fluid being clear would only reflect light to give it a brighter base color.

Like most albinos, they aren't naturally adapted to blend and even in community-minded animals, they are generally regarded in the same vein as the old or sick-- the ones that must sometimes be sacrificed to preserve the stronger ones. Rabbits may choose to join burrows to create a warren but don't exactly prefer to be communal. They're just the hippies of the animal world and are just okay with it. When threatened, it's every rabbit for itself.

However, Bryfolk are neither human nor rabbit and their identity is not solely one of their animal ancestors' instincts anymore than humans are bound to a general mindset. Bryfolk tend to embrace communal living and are very social, libertines with relaxed social interactions though tensed for flight at signs of danger.

Next post: Ashe. He's a human character, one of the last remaining survivors of his tattooed tribe. His history is one of the grittiest and tragic, but I'll go into that a bit more then.

Do you use any animal hybrid themes in your writing? It can be a very niche one. I actually find it laughable that people could watch Shape of Water and think 'bestiality' to be honest. Like anything different from our little niche of hairless monkey is somehow less-than or wildly different. While I'm personally not into the furrier side of the spectrum (I still prefer to hybridize the face and body as more human in order to justify the human lifespan and stabilize the addition of animal characteristics), I wouldn't see something that structurally human and assume that they weren't more like us than animals. The entire point of the movie, communicated through Elisa herself, was that she could relate to 'the asset', being treated as stupid or lesser simply for being mute. It was also clear that, not socialized, he had wild aspects as well, but again, not different from an isolated human.

This was actually reaffirming towards my own logic of humans that might have grown from something other than monkeys. I specifically use rabbits, birds, big cats, and foxes in my series. Since they evolved very specifically into separate humanoid races/identities, going crazy with dog/wolf, reptile, etc. might have needed many, many more books to integrate.

In any case, if you'd like to share your own human-animal combinations (and yes, dragonkin count), feel free to comment below! Totally understand the hesitation to divulge on a current work, but you can nod your head and name your combo at least. Thanks for reading!

Coming Up With Fantasy Names

The easy answer? Name generators, the many many baby name dictionaries...

However, that's always the patronizing one, isn't it? It doesn't show much consideration for the deeper aspects of why a name resonates, why an original name can make all the difference, in fantasy especially.

So what are you looking for? Here are some of the basics I consider while hunting for a name:

• Meaning: even if you want a wholly original name, you might want to consider combining names with cardinal meanings. I use names meaning flame and rain in UnSung (Aiden and Talia). If they had a child, I might name it Aylia or Talen, some variation of combination. It doesn't have to be so cutesy an arrival, but combining can give you the aesthetic base of a name that is still uncommon without being nauseating.
• Regional consideration: this can also combine with racial/cultural difference but if you have vastly different people, you may consider distinctions in preferred sound and language. Commas might become a cultural trend. Warlike tribes might favor harsher consonant sounds while scholarly cultures might embrace the cadence of vowel sounds.
• Unconventional: in certain cases, names are not loving or considerate. A street urchin may have a common name or one akin to an object, even a nickname. Goblins might get names with odd compound word combos (Nobcorn or Henpeg-- just play with it). The more you can distance it from Earth culture, the less you have to suspend disbelief.
• Accent marks: I'll throw out a name like Kvothe. Most people won't say this 'right' but then most authors are fine with that. (It's something along the lines of lines of keh-vohth, but a quick transition between the kv and just a hard 'o'. The e is ignored). If there's some insistence on a pronunciation, accent marks can be a good guide, but you'll have to remember to type it every time. Accent marks may present formatting problems since not all fonts support or display them properly. You can also use conversation, someone teasing how it's said deliberately or something along those lines. PRO TIP: if you already have a uniquely spelled name, you can control/command-F to find it, then Find and Replace the unaccented name with the accented version. Unless you're a natural at the keyboard shortcut for accents, this will keep you from breaking the flow in drafting and save time in editing.
• Test: even once you find one you think you like, test it out loud. Names are rarely actually said in natural speech. Names are more for introducing or getting their attention, scolding or teasing.  You'll use descriptions more often to direct who is speaking and to whom. I've gotten sick of a name I thought I liked or something just didn't sit right once used a lot. Remember though, that in real life, people often have unsuited names so you can poke fun at that too. He might not 'feel' like a Bob, but he just is.
• Common: nothing wrong with Bob, John, Karen, Ann or Sue. Except the presence of a great deal of common names tends to disinterest readers. If your main character is lamentably just regular earthling Joe, then his trip to a fantasy world with Celestyne, Van'Hanara and Jekoura stands out. Even his attempt to nickname them Tina, Hannah and Joe to simplify would be interesting (and rejected as absurd to them).

Look at the many colorful examples of languages already available. English is one language where 'consonant clashing' happens. Languages like Japanese are heavy on the flowing vowel sounds. Kleb sounds abrupt, yet Kaleb softens it tremendously. Women's names are often light chains of vowels. Men's names tend to end in rough or final consonants. Many names that don't follow this area gender-neutral where they originate-- or it's a masculine choice in one region but heavily feminine in another.

Remember, when you set the norms for your world and regions, you can also set the name outside of convention to use as part of the conflict or development of character. I know it's not chronologically organic (worlds exist before the people shaped by it) but a writer often benefits most from creating out of order. I personally tweak worlds and characters alike to ultimately fit the story. Yes, it can be a massive edit to tweak worlds and characters for that purpose but I also feel it's up to me to struggle for what I think is best for my work.

It is worth it to follow your own rabbit hole here but I hope this brings up some helpful points to consider. Sound has a mood, a meaning, an intent, so I get why people struggle to convey what they mean when they ask how to pick a name. They don't need the lazy pseudo-intellectual assholes with their Google-send solution. They're looking for the visceral connection a name bears on the character itself. 

Aw, hell, why not end on some color porn combo fun? From Encycolorpedia, I give you Rienna's hair and eyes color combo: Chestnut brown and a 'polo' grey with a green undertone. I like to cool or warm greys and browns to saturate them a bit and because her hair is warm, I wanted to polarize her eyes to visually reveal aspects of her character. Since writing and drawing are not always about imitation but optimizing the possibilities of fantasy, I like to cement characterizations with color quirks like this. She is a simmering and restless woman that tries to emulate her father's steely authority. She wars with earning respect on her own merits while maintaining her identity as a woman.i didn't write her to be a 'strong woman' in the sense that she truly thinks she can meet men on their own level, but she does believe she has the unique ability to best them with her own advantages. She has a streak of recklessness and sometimes takes on more than she can actually handle but the follies of youth don't prevent her from adapting to new lessons.

Next post, I'll throw in Dinsch's hair/eyes combo. He's an interesting one, my Bryfolk-- a rabbit-human hybrid whose albinism only affected his rabbit genes.

What significance, if any, do color choices have on your characters?

Confession

While it's probably not a writerly thing to do, I want to make a confession. I say it's not very writerly because it's supposedly bad form to give people a potential bias against your work. However, I think examination is more valuable than preserving a reputation so I'm going for it.

I mean, it's not THAT bad...

Characters are not my favorite part of reading and it's my weakest part of writing.

No! I don't listen to gate-keepers!

Before you think I'm saying my characters suck and I should crawl off to a nice boring non-fiction, hear me out. I wouldn't say I'm bad at it. I love observing people and talking to people, but making characters is to my love of storytelling as social media is to actual human interaction. It can be thrilling, it can be emotional, but it just doesn't quite hit the same high feels of a real social interaction. It's the equivalent of a 'you had to be there' or trying to recall nostalgia in a photograph. It can be a great high, reading or writing something great but it's also not a substitute or better. Different, more like.

Story telling and world building is where I get my fix. I'm not going to pretend it's a unique concept. In fact, writers like Tolkien put most of us to shame. I'm not quite dedicated to the point of creating my own language or thousands of years of elfy, dwarfy history but I love the connections and I love the trees. I'm not obsessed with maps but I have a few crude sketches and know my elbow from my asshole.

Prove it? You don't see me trying to lick my asshole, do you?

The trees though... I love how things seemingly unrelated connect. I love seeing old branches spring forth with new buds. I even love when spiders tangle the hopeful new leaves with gossamer and choke them.

At some point, I realized I just don't bear the same confidence with characters. Not for lack of knowledge or authenticity or interest, but more because I kind of just winged it the first time I was able to write anything longer than a college thesis.

Yeah, I remember what my college thesis was about! It was about--

But I wondered if this was really that authentic. I'd over-written characters in the past and lost my way. Namely, I'd written them in so much detail that they just wouldn't fit the story anymore and I wasn't quite patient enough to set them aside and start a new one or edit them as I went. You're probably cringing at that. Edit the character to fit the story? Sacrilege! But yes, I believe that all elements are flexible, most especially the evolution of characters. In that sense, it shouldn't seem so horrible now. It's not unusual that writers claim their character 'misbehaves' or 'refuses to cooperate'. This is just the 'not a hipster' version of that.

Wait, hipster writers, I don't hate you! I'm just not into making disassociative identity disorders look cute and normal!

Removing the crutch of 'overplanning' seemed to be a breakthrough in gaining ground, but I began to wonder-- was it a crutch at all or if I just evolved as a writer without that being the factor? So, out of the blue, I've started a journey of back story, turning each character into their own little trees. Not like a profile or some formal neat arrangement; I just picked up a pen and started scribbling in a notebook. 

I know it's not a new discovery and it's not even new to me. With 'ambition for completion', I just temporarily lost a piece of the joy of just writing something for my stories that wouldn't be seen but still gives me a piece of confidence in my characters I wasn't so sure of with my winging-it approach. Okay, I still kind of wing it, but after I've written a bit about who they are, what they value, their past and their personality, I find it's a lot easier than going back on an edit AFTER I get to know them and constantly dealing with the aggravation of something that they wouldn't really say or do.

Another confession-- even though I did wing it with my first series a lot, I still enjoy the very robust characters throughout. They did go through some refinement in the many edits I did. They still hit all the right notes of being aggravating, beloved, frustrating, disgusting and/or flawed. I still see them as self-aware yet willful, people with demons and angels, some who get more chances than they deserve and some who die the first time they take a risk. I still see how they are trapped in their nature or struggling for discipline in a mind too free to choose who they are.

Starting this blog, I've always wanted it to be grounds for honest discussion. It's because I perceive making characters as my weakness that they might actually benefit from that criticism.  Given a chance, even with my love of the story, I'd still be inclined to talk about my characters in terms of how I would my friends. I'd see their ideals and aspirations at war with their actions and reactions, where their confidence falters and where they beam with their strengths. Sometimes a nicely formatted profile just makes them a nearly faceless job applicant to me. There's something oddly familiar about scribbling about them on paper with the frenzy of a diary entry. This feels like the right place to build that confidence.

In a way that a discovered diary is anything but.

He means the diaries. At least all the ones with hearts and your crushes' names in them.

An Open Letter to my Characters

Dear My Characters,

I wish I could say I had all the answers when I made you, but instead, knowing you always meant more questions than I could answer. Are you real? I wanted to make you as real as I felt you to be, but to be 'real' means my view isn't, or can't be, as omniscient as I claimed. There had to be things I didn't know, mysteries shared so that I could keep you spontaneous and not confuse you with the narration. You were meant to do stupid things, not always act even in your best interests, struggle with morality and generally make an ass out of yourselves to entertain others.

Basically, in some way, I could relate to all of you-- all aspects of things I loathed and loved about myself and the world around me. To say you are precious isn't accurate either. My own ego tends to waver between sewage bacteria and supreme ruler so I've found every aspect of humanity both meaningless and important. I afforded you no privacy and left every sordid detail to the judgement of all who found you left so exposed to my cruel observations.

Did I do you justice? It's hard to say since I found no harbor in making perfect tropes for you. I took my cheerful ones and wrecked their past and my somber ones were sometimes just dull and not at all mysterious. When I wrote you, I played hand of god, neither loving you nor loathing you until I courted you through painful edits and rewrites. No matter how much I criticized the way I wrote you, somehow those ever-shifting moods did not damage the wonder of visiting you again.

Perhaps you expected me to be confident that you were whole, but at some point, I realized I had to relinquish control and let you stumble, broken pieces and all. I also realized that my words were secondary to the view. I had a window into your world and I wanted to share you, but some part of me didn't want total control. If so, I might have insisted on visually designing you (or at least drawing you the same every time). I might have pored through lists of actors to find your likeness, your voice, or the soundtrack that played whenever your scene came up. I gave you to my words, put you into my novels, because whatever people ended up seeing or hearing or smelling or sensing, my words were not the be-all-end-all, simply a guide to persuade the reader.

It takes tremendous ego to be a creator, but its like in humility to let it go. To go out into my world after I leave yours, to be a tolerable person, that ego is something I have to tuck away. Yet when I talk about you, it's like pulling out a wallet with pictures of my children, born of my sweat, blood and tears. It doesn't matter that I am not a bestseller of your story because the fickle affairs of my world are not something that matters there.

That's why you and your world couldn't just exist in my mind. Concepts like deserving, validating, failing-- though influenced by my experiences, exist purely as an escapist haven. A fantasy. People will tell me how I should have made you different or that they don't like you and the wounds, if any, are my burden alone. But 'alone' is a stretch since I can revisit you any time I like and remember why I write.

You keep my secrets. Through one of you, my pain will cripple; through another, it will prevail. Through all of you, I explore what confuses and comforts. I can remember in small pieces or work through a problem so I can peacefully discard it and forget. You're a mask for all that is learned and unlearned. A study in psychology, anthropology, some other fancy -ology or a compilation of the things no science can explain.

There was a time when I clung to this, afraid of bearing the brunt of whatever I failed to make of you. I didn't share my stories, never mentioned I was a writer at all. I fell for the bunk that only the 'successful' have a worthwhile voice. Even the other day, an article I mostly agreed with offered an ugly slap in the face: that the bulk of writing advice and experience comes from the little cretins like me.

But you know me-- I never really asked for permission to dream big. Before my heroes rose to legend, they were cretins like me, those rebel assholes that gave fuck-all to what cretins had to say about other cretins. It's easy to dismiss the little guys (and the big guys too, actually). Heroes sometimes fade back into couch potatoes that yell at their own shadows.

We are what we are, and even though you are what I made you, you're out there and out of my hands, to be loved or loathed for what you are. The words are static and canon. Or are they? I still have my windows and the words to expand. I could very well raise a scandal and alternate you into fanfiction fodder!

So I guess all that's left is to thank you. Being a creator is truly courting insanity, but it's been a pleasure both assuming I have full control over you and being proved completely wrong. 

Don't ever change. (Or do. Really, that was the stupidest high school sentiment that I was happy to break.)

Your Truly,

Krista

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Heyyyyy, it's a fun exercise, writing to... well, all of my characters at once. It's probably more helpful to write to just one of them though. Although, that would probably end up being Tweets to my Fictional Peeps.

Nah. Not y'all. The only place you're going is in the garbage.

@Rienna Heard you hit that Swoonfruit... and a little something-something else. #Regerts

@Korus You're still my favorite. Don't tell the others... #DMgoofs

Except I've never developed a fondness for Twitter (hate it), so my skin crawls just faking it.

One of these days, I will share my favorite LOL quote from my books to date. I kind of have this thing where I hesitate to blog about certain things this early in the game. Things that might spoil or ruin the experience or just give the impression that I think I'm bigger than my britches.

Look, I hand-sew holes in my socks rather than throw them out. Illusions of grandeur, I have not.

Yoda's speech patterns, I do have.

Done here, we are.

You and Me on the Ceiling

Choosing a topic can be difficult at times; not because there's nothing to talk about but because of the sheer number of possibilities. Rambling is fun too, but on occasion, I've thought it might be even more fun to grab-bag some topics, tackle them with my own perspective.

Pulling from a list of possible 'writerly' topics, I came across: how do you come up with characters for your stories?

The simplest answer is in the heading: one-on-one conversations with a best friend, staring at my ceiling. I have sloped ceilings in my bedroom. I'm not fond of bright light or too much blank space. I don't really do much eye contact when talking, so I usually end up talking while staring off in the direction of my ceiling. When I'm doing some of that rambling, I'm not exactly talking about my characters or my story at all, but often, it's the act of doing nothing related to thinking about my story that makes them as real as the life I want them to have.

Sure, I guess sometimes, we tend to borrow snippets of people we know, observe, idealize, loathe. Maybe even pets or a favorite character in our consumerism becomes the inspiration. 

Brainstorming can be a ripe pain in the ass for me. If it wasn't such a spoiler, I'd take a snapshot of the word vomit I just made of a couple pages in a notebook. There are some things clearly labeled, things like ADD TO SCENE or CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT or PLOT, (all caps because my inner muse screams at me in a German accent) but most are squeezed in scribbles of an 'oh, yeah, put this somewhere too.'

And my Scrivener notes on characters? Never to see the light of day. I end up really yanking a character from their ideal to a more organic development once they breathe the air of the world I put them in.

Sometimes I draw them, sure, but I'm really not a big fan of always defining what the reader sees. Granted, I did do that with my first series, but magical humans and hybrid creatures are not something I wanted to throw away with 'whoa, dude, there was like this big venus flytrap only it's blue and eats people! RAWR!' I see a lot with the young ones, this insecurity about providing fan art, maps, visual references that are supposed to enhance the reader experience. While I certainly use such things for expression and the writing process, let's not forget that book readers are there for the words. When you see popular series with their artbooks, maps, etc. these were often done later, so it's also entirely possible to just focus on the writing and worry about dressing it up for fans later.

When it comes to aids for character design, I often end up with folders with images of fashion types, hairstyles, bits and pieces rather than just the picture of an actor or model. I use these specifically for when their clothing becomes part of the plot-- a raincoat, a half cape, a corset with loose laces, etc. While head to toe, I'm usually mentally dressing them for their appearances, this is only a practice for me because my focus is still on keeping it interesting to read. If I mention them wearing a hat, there's always that place in mind that makes sure that, unless it's pinned firmly, it might be falling off or getting wet or burnt or otherwise assaulted by its environment, so do I really want it there?

More often than not, even though I do play with planning and deliberation, the dynamics of conversation and development are more likely built in cracking jokes, heart-to-hearts, emotional or light talks with someone who doesn't mind my brain dumping.

With my feet on my sloped ceiling, looking at and talking about nothing in particular.

The Editing Paradox

So. I sits down to do me some editing and the game changes. I knew UnNamed would be opening a can of worms, but I had no idea that revisiting it to clarify a character's development would be a traffic jam. It's not a huge spoiler to say that I introduced a time travel concept that I only worked out on a skeletal level for the first book. Tonight I had to revisit all of the concepts more fully to continue its promise.

Unfortunately, describing it in any detail would probably just confuse it. It's a much simpler idea rolled out in small doses as the story grows, but it's because of the other storylines and events that it  just doesn't sound as complex as any attempt to summarize it would. I know this means that I will have to reference the first book as well as recomb the 1st part of this book to make sure all facts line up. Of course, book one has the final say; it's published.

Now, I did need to work out the details before moving ahead, to make sure any more mentions in Part II line up; why make more work for later. However, it does mean I have to resist the urge to move backwards. The point of this edit is still lining up part 1 and 2 in its current sequence. I'm making sure that, while it's fresh, I'm aware of what I already have and only adjusting what contradicts as well as any grammar, punctuation and wording immediately obvious. I'm also allowed to add anything that can help with pacing or storytelling. At this stage though, my only rule is not going back. If I do, I might create a paradox in my thinking that forgets the chronology and screws up what the characters know or not.

I still have to draft Part III. Part I and II being cohesive will actually make Part III almost lightning fast. After that, I'm adding a reread of the first book before editing all three parts. Once all three parts are edited? I step away for a few days or a week then do a last edit. Nope, still not done, because I do the epilogue leading into the third book at the end of the first.

Although, I may have to check on whether I can technically call this one an epilogue... In the first book it was, but this one is more like a prologue but at the end of this book. I like to set the stage for the story at the technical end of each one, something that isn't just repeated so it's not a preview and certainly not a preface or foreword, which are author's notes at the beginning and end, nothing to do with the continuing story.

(I looked it up for anyone who wondered. Technically, an epilogue is only defined as a section at the end after the main plots have been tied up; doesn't specify that it HAS to be the same characters to count. The thing is that many old characters have the potential to show up again, so there isn't really a formal ending for anything until the last book is written.)

In any case, the struggle will be worth it. My notes grow but they also tend to get more organized as they come together.  Yes, often the idea of stopping mid-edit is horrifying for some people, but as I've said, I keep one rule at this stage and it's that I can't move backwards. Filling out a concept more fully so I can resume the edit only chopped into my time a couple of hours and it didn't reorganize my understanding and screw up the primary mission. 

One reason for this-- I keep notes of things I might have forgotten I wrote later now that I started over. As I run into them, I cross them out. If I jump around and change things, then I alter facts that I haven't processed yet, making my notes useless. If I get a good idea for later, THAT can go into my notes-- it fits into the forward-thinking rule. Because I still have many edits that will put me back to check on the newer notes, it CAN wait. 

Why create a time travel paradox in my own thinking? Now, in a simpler story, it's fine, but a complex idea becomes complex to read if I start playing Jenga with it. To edit a story like this, I have to start from the beginning and walk through it as the reader would. Every. Time. Anything that halts ME is going to halt the reader. Each time I make the journey, I am aiming to keep it moving. When the edit comes that I am not stopping, publish.

Really, I will love to see what this series becomes. As much as I love my first series for all it taught me about writing, I really feel the lessons are paying off in creating a very different story. I love when a new character stands in the horizon, holding a torch to pass for the sake of storytelling. I didn't want a story where the main character carries it so much that it can't continue without them. I wanted this to be a world where everyone else isn't just an NPC (non-playable character; sorry, gamer term on a writing blog) in 'their' world. It's never been more important to realize their lives even when it's not important to the story so that when they reappear, you don't think they were just lying on the floor with their eyes glazed over.

My hope is that your takeaway from this is in understanding why some processes are important to the type of story. Don't be afraid to write complex stories. If you find something is irritatingly flat, you can take notes on what to come back to or attempt to flesh it out right then. When you have this new understanding, you take it to future edits. No, you decided her personality would change so she wouldn't say it like that anymore. No, I decided his upbringing means he wouldn't know something like that now. Your first draft is your first impression of your world. That's it. Each draft reflects what you add to it when you get to know it better. It's not as complex as you initially think because you're making the connections to understand the transitions as you go. 

And yes, you can do a lot of backpedaling in a first draft. I know a lot of writers swear by the forward movement only rule here, to keep it creative, but there are three types of people: ones who dip their toes in the water and get in a little at a time, those who jump/dive in, and... those who don't swim at all. In terms of writing, either one of the first two are okay. You don't have to have perfect confidence to get things going. If you have to poke and edit and hedge a bit, at least you're moving. It isn't a mark of quality to be less confident. In fact, reasonably cautious writers are the ones that give themselves less work in the long run. Tortoise and the hare, if you will. Okay, hares can succeed too. I'd never hate on a fast writer because it's not less work just because the pace is different.

With that being said, a break is in order. I pulled away from the draft to take a 'break' and here I am. Not. Breaking. But now I am. If this is your break, thanks for sharing it with me!