Reaching for Details in Fiction

When I think, I think in broad, sweeping strokes, always attempting to see the whole essence of a thing at a glance.  To me, details are small, brightly-colored specks of dust that will float in one side of my brain and out the other unless I can fit them into a larger framework.  In my mind, details have their proper place, but its not first place.

However, the problem with this method when it comes to writing fiction is that I can have the overarching plot and purpose of a story in mind, but because those larger concepts have nothing tied to them, the story feels like it lacks substance.  Good stories and good prose are rich in detail.  Without them, whatever the author is trying to say floats above our heads like a lofty cloud which we can see but cannot touch.  So then, when big-picture people like me write, we have to reach through the fog of what we’re trying to say in order to grasp the details hidden within it. 

So, the question becomes, how do we reach for details? 

Here are a few tricks that can apply to almost everything:

1. What Things?

While we are still alive, we experience everything big and intangible through things that are small and tangible.  We experience love through warm hugs, uplifting words, and unexpected gifts.  We experience rejection through unanswered phone calls, condescending laughs, and refusal to make eye contact.  Other people can tell you are angry by your raised voice, frowning brow, and harsh words.  Other people can tell you love to read by the frequent stops at the library and the paperback that’s always in your purse. 

We see the big things in life by looking at the small things.  So what things?  Find the specifics that tell a larger story. 

2. Color

Everything that can be experienced with the eyes has some kind of color.  Even if the color of something isn’t that important, you still want to give people an impression of whether something was light-colored or dark-colored.  The story may not be about what things look like, but humans are primarily visually-oriented, so we must give our readers’ human brains something to work with.  And color is huge. 

For example, I believe it is very important to state a character’s hair color right away – especially if the character is female, since female characters tend to have more hair.  This is because hair color has a dramatic effect on the way the character looks, even if they’re portrayed in a black-and-white movie.  I’ve discovered the hard way that it’s very difficult for me to reimagine a character as being blonde if I’ve already imagined them as being brunette.  It’s not really about the color as much as its about whether the hair is light or dark.

The light/dark dynamic holds true for what kind of day it is (sunny or cloudy), what kind of clothes a character is wearing, what the inside of a building is like, how a landscape looks, and many other things.  If you’re in a hurry, you don’t have to include much more detail than that – but at least give your reader somewhere to start in imagining the scene. 

3. Shape / Size

Short or tall?  Large or small?  Wide or narrow?  Curved or straight?  Flat or three-dimensional?  Cubic or spherical?  Yes, these are basic things that sound like they came straight out of the grade-school lesson where you first learned about adjectives, but basics remain basic because they are foundational, and give a lot of information in a little space. 

4. What tells the most?

Find the extra things that say the most about an object, place, or person.  Is the baseball smudged with dirt?  Is the coat of paint fresh and flawless?  Is the pine forest scraggly?  Does the mansion have a large picture window that looks out over the valley?  Is the man’s hair ruffled the wrong way because he’s been running his hands through it in frustration? 

Reaching for a poignant detail takes practice – and it helps to practice by starting with other details.

Putting it Together

I believe you can start practicing hunting for details before you actually try to write something.  The act of pushing through the vague ideas to something definite will help strengthen the part of your brain that gives you the words to write. 

So, let’s do an exercise, putting these four detail-finders into action. 

I’ll start with an assertion – I am a writer. 

Really?  How would someone know that?  What things say this is so?

I always have a notebook and some pens in my bag that I take everywhere. 

OK, notebook, pens.  Two good details, but that’s only the surface.  What kind of notebook?  What kind of pens?  Do they have colors? 

A green notebook, a blue pen, a purple pen, a black pen, and a pencil. 

That’s a little better, but we still don’t know what kind of things these are.

A bright-green 5-subject notebook, blue and purple ballpoint pens, a black liquid-ink pen, and a mechanical pencil.

Now we’re getting somewhere.  A few more clarifying details will demonstrate what exactly are my relationships with these items. 

A large, worn 5-subject notebook with a swirling vine doodled on the cover in faded sharpie, accompanied by two smooth-writing, click-top ballpoint pens in blue and purple, a fine-tipped, black liquid-ink pen, and a deluxe mechanical pencil with a twistable eraser on top.

Now we know just about everything about what writing materials I use when I’m on the go.  We’ve described my notebook and my pens exactly as one would first experience them.  However, we’ve spent more time talking about the pens, and less time talking about the most interesting part, the notebook.  Since the notebook is more likely to say more about who I am, we can trim down the description of the pens, and then we’ll have space to say what the inside of the notebook is like.

A large, worn 5-subject notebook with a swirling vine doodled on the cover in faded sharpie – filled with pages of writing interspersed with the same swirl designs.  One section is mostly made up of freeverse poetry, and in the back a page covered in anime faces can be right next to a page with a much more realistic sketch of an actor from a geeky TV show. 

Now we’ve taken a step beyond knowing what materials I use to write, to knowing a lot more about ME and what I’m like.  (Being the private person I am, I’ll stop feeding you details at this point, if you don’t mind.)

As you’re practicing the art of coming up with details, start with details from your own life.  Dig into the objects you care about the most and find out what about them says the most about you.  When you see how detailed your own life is, you can begin to give your characters and their lives a similar amount of detail.

Here is an exercise to help stretch the detail-muscle, whenever you feel it begin to atrophy:

List of Things

Make a list of things (including places and people).  They don’t have to be related to each other – in fact, it’s better if they are not.  They just have to be definite, concrete things that you can experience with at least one of your five senses – and it’s much more fun if you pick things you like.

There are a couple catches, though:

1. They cannot be objects/people that are in the same room you are in (and it certainly can’t be the same place).

2. If you do list an object/person/place that you are familiar with, change it in some significant way.

3. You must use more than one word to describe each object/person/place.  Say exactly what kind of something it is. 

With #1, say you are sitting in your kitchen writing, and you have with you a small mug of green tea with blue flowers on it.  You can still list ‘mug of tea,’ on your list, but it cannot be the same mug of tea.  It must be a big, brown mug of tea with a white polka-dot design on it, and the tea must be Earl Grey.  You see what I mean?  You must use your imagination.  Make something up.  Once you’ve made it up, take a moment to visualize what it would be like, sitting here writing with a completely different mug full of completely different tea. 

Try to make the items on your list very different from one another.  Now that you’ve written down a mug of tea, try thinking of a place.  How about a garden?  Yes, but what kind of garden?  Not the little vegetable garden with tomatoes and cucumbers you plant in your back yard every year.  Perhaps a flower garden – a rose garden, specifically, filled with roses of the most delicate shade of pink.  And this garden isn’t a small garden – it’s a big garden, with fountains and little stone benches to sit on.  A royal garden. 

Now let’s try a person – a pastor, perhaps.  My pastor is short, white-haired, and clean-shaven, so let’s instead imagine a young pastor, tall and lanky, with close-cut blond curls and some feeble attempts at a goatee.  (This would probably be a youth pastor, not a senior pastor – but what if he was the senior pastor?  What kind of church would he be pastor of?) 

Keep making the list.  Don’t stop until the page is full.  Some of the things you come up with may bore you, but keep going.  Don’t be afraid to make things wild and extravagant, if you have to.  But be specific.  Mention things that will raise questions.  Why does the plumber read so many books on World War I?  Who on earth decided the mansion should be painted that shade of purple?  Is there a reason the trees on the ridge are sickly? 

Reach.  Reach a little farther than you ‘have to.’  You can always take out details later, and it’s a beautiful thing to have a wealth of specifics to choose from.

2013: Resolution Showcase

I'm having trouble cutting my list of resolutions down to 13.  (You know, 13 for 2013?  Well, yes, maybe a little cheesy...)

So, instead of fighting with it, I'm just going to showcase the resolutions that I'm most excited about!

1. Write 50 blog posts.  Blogging more is forever on my list of things I would love to do if I had more time and motivation.  No surprise there, right?  However, this year I decided to add a number to it.  50 posts a year averages out to about one post a week, which is very doable...and it's a small enough goal that if I get to the end of October and find I haven't posted all year, I can probably still make it.

2. Keep a reading journal.  In 2011, I read 53 books.  In 2012, I read 25 books.  Now, the reason for the drastic difference in the number of books read between the two years, besides the fact that 2012 ended up being one of the most eventful years of my life, was that I was dismayed at how much I failed to retain from the books I read in 2011.  As I look through the list of those 53 books, I found an alarming number that I feel I need to reread, simply because I remember that they were good and not much else.  Yesterday, though, one of my dear friends suggested I start a reading journal.  She said that if you respond to what you're reading, either in the margins of the book or in another notebook, you retain so much more.  I need this -- not so much for the fiction I read, but definitely for the nonfiction.

And along those same lines...

3. Form a reading habit.  I've noticed there seem to be two types of readers: those like me who read randomly, whenever they feel like it, and those who read consistently at a certain time of day (typically every night before bed).  I've noticed over the years that readers like me don't seem to read as much as they transition into adulthood, while the consistent readers continue to consume books regularly and don't seem to be hindered as much by an adult schedule.  I want reading to be a life-long habit, so I'll see if I can adopt the every-night-before-bed method.

4. Draw a little something every day.  This Christmas, most of my gifts to relatives were handmade bookmarks.  I had originally intended to do mini collages out of magazine clippings, but in the end I drew all the pictures I used.  And I discovered, much to my surprise, that I can draw much better than I think I can -- all I need to do is try.  Before Christmas, I would never have thought I could draw an elephant or a cocker spaniel.  But now I know better, and I believe I need to spend some serious time growing this skill.  Even if it's nothing more than a random doodle, I need to put pen to paper every day and keep the artist awake.

5. Journal consistently.  Much like #1 and #2, only more private and more me and much more random.

6. Write 10,000 words every month (for a total of roughly 120,000 words at the end of the year).  Not quite sure about this one yet.  It sounds pretty ambitious.  But at the same time, I NEED to write more, and 350 words per day really isn't bad.  These words don't have to all be fiction, either.  I want to write more about art, cultural and moral issues, personal reflections, and other things.

I am really excited for the chance to pursue all these things this year.  And the best news is, I can start now!  So, I'm off to read and journal and write and draw (maybe all at once).

Happy 12/12/12 Day!

When the hour struck 12:12 this afternoon, my mom and sister and I celebrated with peanut butter truffles.  :)    We also took pictures of the clock for posterity, which unfortunately I do not have on hand.

I have been spending this evening (at least pieces of it) trying to piece together a decent plot for my NaNoWriMo novel, which I have given the working title of The Lady in Gray.  (One discovers the value of titles when one has had to live without one for more than a month.)  The story needs a LOT of work before I  can even start writing prose again.  I am very out-of-practice when it comes to crafting a story, and it feels pretty overwhelming.  Oh well.  I've spent a lot of time in the past couple months learning more about the outlining process, and at some point there's nothing to be done but muddle through as best as I can.

I quit.

So, I decided to quit NaNoWriMo today.

This is my third year seriously attempting it (after winning in 2008 and 2009 and making false starts in 2010 and 2011).  I planned for most of October to do it, but after trying to plan one idea I had and rereading everything I could find about outlining and plot structure and the like, I still started November with nothing but a vague handful of ideas about where I was going.

Due to the fact that I was starting off with a horrible disadvantage, I gave myself permission to include my plotting-words in the word count.  Which helped a lot.

So, good news: I now have 27,000 words, a fair portion of which is story, and most of the rest of which is plot plans for that same story.

For me, this is actually huge.  For a couple of years now my writing life has been stalling as I've tried to recover from burnout, and as I've held off committing to 'lesser' projects as I waited for the 'perfect' idea.  Hey, I'd even settle for the almost-perfect idea.  I considered myself pretty lax.  I didn't need to be Lord of the Rings Tolkien yet, I just needed to be The Hobbit Tolkien.  Deal, subconscious?

NaNoWriMo got me writing again.  It gave me the beginning of a story that I feel like I can commit to.  By forcing my writer-brain to come up with something, anything, my writer-brain discovered it could actually come up with something good.  Under pressure, no less.

But now, hopelessly behind as I am and with many, many questions about my story still unanswered (What does my main villain even want, anyway?), I think I've discovered the best way to invest in this story.

And getting to 50,000 words before midnight on November 30th seems like a pretty poor investment in comparison.

I'm definitely a planner when it comes to stories.  Sure, there are some things about my story that I like to discover as I write, but in the majority of cases I like to know where I'm headed.  I'm not good at making a story up on the fly.  Especially a novel-length story.  I've heard all the Wrimo rhetoric for years about how you can always fix it later, but sometimes, you just can't.  And sometimes the bad version of the story inadvertently gets stuck in your head, so that even if the problems can be fixed, you no longer care to try.  Call me a mystic if you will, worrying about losing the 'magic' of the story.  I don't think it's mysticism.  I think it's an honest assessment of the way my overly-impressionable mind frequently creates roadblocks for me.  Don't get me wrong, I don't expect my first drafts to be perfect.  But I expect them to have the soul of what I'm trying to say.  I'm not sure you can edit soul into a novel that never had it in the first place.

I want to breathe life into the story.  I don't want to settle for making as many mud pies as I can in the mud wallow of ideas.

Now, putting words on paper is useful, and reaching for a goal even when it's difficult is an admirable thing.  There is a significant part of me that wants to reach that magic number of 50,000, to say I won.  But I've burned myself out before.  Repeatedly, in fact -- refusing to listen to the warning signs until I'd drained myself of every last drop of motivation to write.   That ultimate burnout lasted for three years.  I'm just now coming out of that.  I'm a fool if I jeopardize this rediscovered creativity for a number.

Because if I stop here, I've won what's most important.

...

(And that, friends, is the slightly-melodramatic version of why I'm quitting NaNo.)

(Instead of feeling sorry for me, think how happy I am finally getting to read all these books I got from the library!)

I Believe in an Objective Reality

My favorite book on writing is Ayn Rand's The Art of Fiction, which I posted a book review of back in 2011.   I'm not a writer that's into writing fiction for fiction's sake.  While I love writing stories, I can't write a good one unless I feel that there's some point to what I'm doing, other than my own amusement.  I want people to get something out my stories besides just entertainment.  That's just who I am.  And because of that, Ayn's book spoke to me more than any other writing book I've read.  She tells you how to focus everything in your story on making the point you want to make.

So, naturally, I was curious when I saw an article titled "Why Even Ayn Rand Can Teach You Something About Writing." 

Even Ayn Rand.  Well, that's generous of you.

Mostly, the article is about Why Ayn Rand Can't Teach You Anything About Writing At All.  Oh, and she hates humanity.  And is boring.  Actually, the only benefit the writer of the article believes can be derived from reading her book is the opportunity to practice working past a state of rage so that you can then prove why she's wrong.

He complains about Ayn's writing all the way down to her prose style, but it's obvious that what he really objects to is her philosophy, Objectivism, which she's not at all shy about espousing.  I don't agree with Objectivism because it's a godless school of thought, but it's important to realize that Objectivism and Christianity are on the same side in one very crucial battle.

You see, both believe in an objective reality.

This means that both Christians (if they're worth their salt) and Objectivists believe that reality exists apart from our perceptions of it.  We either perceive reality correctly or we don't.  Two directly-conflicting views of the world can't both be right.  Not all views are equally valid.  They are valid in so far as they line up with the reality that exists outside of all perceptions.  Truth is solid and cannot be changed.  It exists.  If it contradicts itself, it is not truth.

Most intellectuals do not believe in an objective reality anymore.  They demonstrate this in the art they create and value: books with made-up words, art that destroys boundaries between things, films that tear down the notion of reality.  Rarely will they come out and voice this core belief, but it's here, plain to see, in their hatred of a writer who believed that words should have concrete meanings.

No, I don't think books should be 'preachy.'  But I'm willing to use my fiction to say that some things are of greater value than other things, that the universe has meaning that we can understand, that there is right and wrong, truth and falsehood, lines that should not be crossed, ways we should live.

Can you believe it's come to this?  That we're considered old-fashioned for believing in reality?  

A Lonely Library Stack and Intelligibility

I know I'm a little crazy, trying to write a whole blog post in the brief time I have before school.  But I've been thinking about my poor, neglected blog all week, and I figure the only way to get something done is to take what small chance you have to do it. 

So, gentle reader, I give you a basic update on life:

Reading:  I haven't been doing very much of it all.  I think this is due, in part, to the fact that my stack of library books looks rather empty at the moment.  There are plenty of books that I would like to have read and that I think I should read at some point, but I haven't had the inspiration to get very far into any of them.  The one book I picked up in the past week that I thought was going to be interesting -- Split Infinity, by Piers Anthony -- I had to put down after the first dozen pages due to sexual content.  Blegh.  And he had such an interesting concept, too...

Anyway, what I really need right now is a quick, engaging read that I can blaze through in a couple of days.  Probably something YA -- but you know my standards.  I won't go for anything with adult content or swearing.  If you have a book in mind that fits this description, please send it my way. 

Writing:  I have been participating in an informal Poem-A-Day (since this is National Poetry Month), but I started a couple days late and missed the last three days.  Oh well.  I figure that any poetry I write because of PAD is more poetry than I would have written otherwise.  Writing is good. 

Also, I've been a little concerned because it feels that with every time I sit down to write, I make less and less sense.  Of course, it doesn't help that I don't have a specific project I'm working on.  But it's like I've spent so much time away from writing that as soon as my pen touches the paper, all this esoteric goop spills out.  And that's not what I want.  I don't write with long words because I want to sound sophisticated.  I use those words because they best express what I want to say.  There's nothing nearly as wonderful as knowing you used exactly the right word for what you meant.  But still, I'm not sure what to do with myself.  I would like to be at least a little intelligible.

Final Note: My life doesn't consist solely of reading and writing, I hope you know.  But I have run out of time to talk about anything else. 

Frustrations

I have so many things that I love, but I cannot seem to make a story out of them. I have words that swirl about my head like a cloud, but they are miniscule droplets that refuse to come together and form rain – rain that would fill a mountain vale with a purple-grey quiet and make the summer greenery wet and feel like spring again. Like my life, with the trees that sometimes group together to suggest a forest, images gather in my mind with such realism that I believe the story to be there, somewhere; a landscape lurking behind fog, so grand that even the glimpses make you gasp in delight. I do not need an imaginary world to live in. I need a work of art, something to unveil, an expression, something that can be given away. But neither can I labor on with only the barest of purposes, hoping to gain momentum. I am an artist, not an artisan. I must reach for something beautiful, or else I will touch nothing.

And yet to wait for inspiration is to begin to die slowly.

Summerliness

We went to the mall with my aunt today.  I haven't been in a mall in a while, and it seems that each visit is worse than the last.  Our culture is not a passive culture -- it's a jump-on-you-and-beat-you-up-with-a-club culture.  All the stores sell all the same clothes, all the clothes cover less than they show, and all the songs are about sex and are played way too loud.  And all the pictures?  They all say the same thing: you have to look like this.  You're a failure if you don't look like this.  If you can't fit into these clothes, there's something wrong with you.  If you do have a nice body, you should show it off.  It's abominable.  The culture appears set on making the 95% of us who don't look like models feel absolutely miserable (and disgusted).

On the plus side, though...cute new shoes!  (It's been a while since I had any of those.)

I'm going to start reading Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art by Madeleine L'Engle.  I'm very interested to see what it's like, since I've been a fan of her books for years and happen to be a writer (and a Christian) myself.

Peeking into The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron again has given me a revelation.  The reason this break from writing has lasted forever is because I don't need just a break: a need a full-scale recovery operation.  I need to go back to basics, ditching all my lofty goals and plans in order to simply rehabilitate my creative side.  In other words, I need to play.   So that's what I've been doing this week, and I've discovered something interesting: my creative self is still there.  It just afraid of things like "Oh, that doesn't count.  You didn't even finish it," or, "Goodness, you will look like a complete numbskull if you write the story that way."

So right now, me and my creative self are mostly hanging out in coffee shops that don't exist and giving cute imaginary cats names like Lord Ivywood.

Oh, and apparently I made several people very happy by inventing the word snickergiggles. 

Anyone attempting to claim that my brain is in any way ordinary shall be tossed out on their ear for obstinately ignoring the obvious. 

Review of The Art of Fiction, by Ayn Rand

The Art of Fiction: A Guide for Writers and Readers by Ayn Rand

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I believe this may be the most insightful book about writing that I have ever read. Ayn Rand is not about to accept any of the common cop-out explanations for writing: "Well, it just turned out that way." "I felt like doing it like that." "It seemed right." She declares that everything you write is because of some premise you hold in your head, whether you realize it or not, and that the key to good writing is to learn how to identify and shape those premises as you wish.

Her understanding of plot is more distinct and complete than that of any other writer I've heard explain the issue. For Rand, plot is all about definite purpose. This extends even to her descriptions, where every sentence is evaluated for how well it advances the (sometimes many) purposes of its paragraph. Rand draws a distinction between Romantic writing and Naturalistic writing. Romantic writing, she says, examines the underlying motives of human decisions, while Naturalistic writing claims to set down things 'as they are' but makes no value judgments. I found this insight helpful, as it explains why some books called classics are engaging and memorable, while others seem to wander without a point.

Some may find Rand's philosophy hard to get past. She certainly isn't shy about communicating it to you. Some may also find Rand's self-aggrandizing to be a distraction. (As she openly says early in the book, she believed herself to be the best writer of her time.) However, in my opinion, the clear advice she offers is too valuable to pass by. The fundamentals of good fiction are all here in this slender volume.

Note: Because of my own self-censoring, I skipped most of Chapter Eight, which dealt with love scenes. Readers who wish to guard their hearts from such things (and those under 15) will probably want to do the same.



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Review of Worlds of Wonder, by David Gerrold

Worlds of Wonder: How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy by David Gerrold

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I found this book to be quite helpful. The advice it included went beyond the details and got to the heart of things. Gerrold doesn't just talk about the general advice that everyone eventually finds out and repeats. He includes interesting techniques that other writers have used that have been successful, and he sometimes poses questions that he leaves open to thought. Probably the most wonderful thing about this book is that it's obvious that Gerrold loves his craft. His passion is infectious, and you can tell that the central reason of why he does what he does is never far from his mind. I definitely recommend this book for anyone who wants to write science fiction or fantasy.



(If you don't have an interest in regulating what goes into your mind, you can stop reading this review here. I am a Christian teenager and I care about these things, so no review of mine is complete without warnings.)



Clean-o-meter:

I can't believe how hard it is to find a book of good writing advice that is appropriate for a 14-year-old to read. Following the trend, the book started out good but about a third of the way through sexual references appeared and steadily increased. There was a whole chapter on writing sex scenes that I skipped. (Mostly it was, "Here, let me show you what I did.") Gerrold did get some good points on my scale, though, because while there was some cussing, it wasn't bad cussing.



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The Memory of the Sun

        Hello all!  I know I haven't been writing (or posting) much, but I thought it might be nice to post one of the few things I have written in this time.  

This piece was written for a challenge at CleanPlace, one of the writing forums I participate in.  The challenge was to write a piece between 700 and 1,000 words long that began on a dark and stormy night, but that did not use the words "dark," "stormy," or "night."  Furthermore, the story had to start with one of the three phrases provided.  I chose "All I wanted was the feel of sunlight." 

Enjoy!

~/~/~

The Memory of the Sun

    All I wanted was the feel of sunlight on my face, drenching my skin in warmth, lending me its life-force.  Out of all the desires warring in my heart, I had narrowed it down to that one.  The sun.  Give me the sun, give me the light it brought, give me even the weakest beam trailing through a dusty room, and I would be happy. 

            But the sun and all that came with it were still hours and another hemisphere away.  And even when it came, I would be forbidden to touch it. 

            The rain drummed against the window like the fingers of a bored, impatient hand.  The only thing I could see were the streaks they made as they ran down the window, backlit ever-so-faintly by the tumultuous clouds in the sky. 

            I toyed with the flashlight in my hands, running my fingers over the rubber bubble it had for an on-button.  Was it worth it to turn it on, just so I could look at the pictures once again?  Just so I could wade through memories of the laughing, golden-haired girl that had been me only a few short months ago?  Just so I could remember with even greater clarity what sunlight felt like, and long for it all the more?  No.  I thought not.

            A vicious pounding shook the door.  I started and stared at it, feeling all sorts of horrid suggestions of who it could be creeping into my brain.  I didn’t think I dared to open it. 

            The pounding came again, then ceased.  Just when I had dared to breathe again, the door flew open.  Rain and wind blasted into the room around the cloaked silhouette.

            “Locked yourself in the toolshed again?” a familiar tenor voice said.  “Really, Jillian, you are being immature.  What are you doing indoors on such a glorious evening as this?” 

            “You call this glorious?” I yelled over the noise of the wind as I rushed to push the door closed again. 

            “But of course!  What else could it be?”  Heavy boots trod over to the window.  I could just see the outline of well-chiseled his face as he spoke.  “You’re making a mistake, staying in like this.  You should come with me.  I’ll teach you more about what it means to be a shadow nymph.” 

            “Randolph…”  Honestly, I wanted to like the man.  But he seemed to have an uncanny knack for appearing whenever I least wanted him.  And how could he treat what had just happened to me so flippantly, like it happened every day? 

            “Well, why not?” he asked.

            “It’s wet out there.  Look at me.  You just opened the door, and I’m practically half soaked.” 

            He laughed.  “I suppose you would call that hyperbole?  Well then, if it is so very wet, I should stay here, shouldn’t I?  Oh, but we couldn’t have that.  You obviously want me to leave.  Very well, I won’t stay long.  But you might as well come with me.  You know you’d love it.” 

            Impossible, impossible man.  “Oh, sure!” I lashed out.  “Because being a shadow nymph is the best thing since sliced bread, and any other life you might have had doesn’t matter at all.  I don’t know why you can’t see it, but this hasn’t been the easiest thing for me, and I don’t want to go running off and getting all wet for something I don’t care about at all!” 

            Randolph didn’t reply immediately.  Even his silhouette put aside the energy that normally hung about him.  The indistinct void of the tool shed became still, and the noise of the tempest outside seemed far away, removed from the silence surrounding us.  The raindrops continued sliding down the windowpane behind the cutout image of his curly head.  I knew that he was looking hard at me.  I wondered what he could see with eyes that for so long had gone without sunlight. 

            “Jillian,” he said at last, “you are one of us now.  No shadow nymph raised with humans ever came to terms with it right off the bat – but please, at least try to accept it.  It really is a beautiful thing to be.  Once you stop mourning for your old life, you’ll see that too.” 

            “But I was a child of the sun!” I cried.  My fists swung out, looking for a wall to pound on, to push against.  Some glass object fell to the floor and shattered.  “Picnics! Water-balloon fights!  Lying on the beach, watching the leaves change color, running through fields of daisies, laughing with friends, sunbathing, warm summer afternoons, rainbows, wearing sparkly earrings, fresh spring mornings, volleyball…” 

            I felt hands close about my wrists. 

            “I know,” he said.

            I stopped.  I tried to get a hold of my breath before it let out the sob in my throat that would betray me. 

            “We never forget, you know,” he continued.  “None of us do.  All those things… yeah.  All still here, in our heads.  Sometimes you’re so sure it’s not fair.  And a lot of the time, it isn’t.” 

            He let go of my hands.  We both knew I wasn’t going to struggle any more.

            “What do you do?” I asked. 

            For a second I thought that I saw his face, and that he was smiling in a slow, strangely knowing way.  But it couldn’t have been.  Everything on the inside of the tool shed was still as black as ebony. 

            “You remember all the things you can do that other people only dream about.”  He laughed – a delighted, almost bewildered sound.  “You should see, Jillian!  If they knew the things we saw and did… you’d be surprised at the number of people who would trade places with us, just to experience all we experience.  Let me take you out and show you.  Forget, just for a little while, how sad you are.  Come with me.”

            He brushed past me and opened the door. 

            And I went with him. 

 (c) Copyright 2011 Cherise

Writers and Wannabes

            How do you know when you’ve crossed the line from ‘writer wannabe’ to official writer?  When someone outside your family says it’s good?  When you get something published? 

            Everyone has a slightly different definition in their own mind.  And for good reason – I don’t think we can point to an official line and say, “Left of this line, you’re a writer.  Right of this line, you’re just a wannabe.”  I’ve read published writers who I would throw in the ‘wannabe’ category.  And I’ve read things posted on humble blogs that screamed to be in print. 

            The key, I think, is to keep in mind the fact that you always have something yet to learn about writing.  Always.  Writing is thinking, and until we’re perfect (which won’t happen in this lifetime), we will always have rough edges.  Hey, there’s a reason that we don’t read first drafts in bookstores.  Professional writers are just people who are good at fixing their mistakes.  (Eventually they get good enough that they fix their mistakes beforehand – when the story is still in their head.  Even still, who ever has prose that turns out sparkly the first time?) 

            You haven’t ‘arrived’ until you realize just how far you are from arriving.  That’s the first step toward being a great writer.  Delusions of grandeur plague all of us, but the mature among us are those who don’t believe the daydreams. 

Why I'm Not Doing NaNoWriMo This Year

Sometimes I get jealous when I surf other people's blogs.  "Wow," I think.  "They have their very own place on the internet where they can post what they like!" 

Of course, the moment that I actually form the feeling into so many words is usually the same moment that I remember I have my own blog. 

I am a silly goose, no?

At the moment, my laptop is back in semi-working condition.  I don't know how long it will last -- I've learned not to take anything for granted -- but I am determined to not be disappointed, no matter what happens with it.  Disappointment, when you really look at it, can be such a waste of energy.  Treat everything like a gift, and with time everything feels like a delightful surprise.  It's a beautiful way to live.

I am thinking that I might not do NaNoWriMo after all.  This morning, I found myself thinking of November, and wishing that I didn't have to curtail all the writing-related things I want to do, simply because I think I should do NaNoWriMo.  It is true that at this stage in my life, I desperately need some time devoted solely to creativity.  But the more I reflect on the matter, the more I think that NaNoWriMo is not the creative activity that I need.  

The reason that the passion and creativity have left my writing is this: since I discovered I could write, I have tried my best to accomplish something with my writing because I wanted to prove that I could accomplish something, not because I loved writing itself.  Sure, I still loved it, but I took that passion for granted as a tool, a means to an end.  The continual pressure I put on myself to perform has driven so much of the joy from my writing.  I find myself longing for the days when I could start random stories in order to play with an idea, without feeling like I absolutely had to finish them.  I want to be able to "doodle" with my writing again.   

So, here is what I propose to do with my writing life: instead of devoting the month of November to writing 50,000 words of a novel, I will devote that time to creativity.  I will play with ideas, construct plots I may never use, scribble character sketches, start stories that I will never finish, draw characters, and care not if I make a mess.  I will do the things that the performance pressure has kept me from doing.  And hopefully, I will heal. 

A Failed Goal

September twenty-eighth, two-thousand and ten. 

I convert the date into letters because it seems so much more harmless when spelled out like that.  I can hear a young lady with a British accent speaking it aloud in my mind, and it sounds nice that way.  If I just blurt it out in numbers then the end of the month seems so much closer, and somewhere inside me a little writer cowers in terror. 

I told myself that I would have the rough draft of Evanescent Moonlight done by the end of September at the latest. 

And...

...it sits at 65,283 words, nowhere near done. 

So I am forced to re-evaluate my situation.  Very well, I don't have it done.  And I do know several reasons why it isn't done:

1. Procrastination.  (Might as well get that one out of the way first, no?)
2. My laptop still doesn't work, so I am sharing this desktop with two other people.
3. I have been reading a lot more.  (Yay!)
4. School.

But enough of making excuses to myself.  I have to face up to the fact that, little by little, I have become one of those 'writers' who talk and read and think about writing but never actually do it.  I know so much, but what have I done? 

I believe that if you truly love something, you will make time for it.  And I have made plenty of time for reading writing blogs, listening to writing podcasts, talking about writing, and writing blog posts about writing.  I have also spent much time thinking about writing, thinking about interesting character traits or story twists, stealing ideas straight from history, imagining how I could use fiction to convey the things I feel most passionate about. 

So I'm not sure I understand this stranglehold that apathy has on me. 

Is it just another form of my recurring struggle to get things out of my head and into the real world?  That I could very well believe.  The darn beasty came back.  It latches onto my human nature, trying to drown out the voice of reason that says that anything worth doing is bound to be hard. 

I have learned so much in the past six months.  So much!  I look back on the things I knew about writing a year ago, and the difference seems hard to comprehend.  But the gulf between what I know and what I can do has grown so vast that now I am afraid of trying. 

But I know that I can't stop here. 

So I extend my imaginary sword (you know, the one all writers carry, whether they know it or not), and cry that I will do hard things!  I will not stop!  I will remain fully aware of the difficulties facing me at all times, and I will not avoid them! 

And above all, I will not allow how little I have accomplished at this point to keep me from trying.  I am competing against my past self, and no one else.  Productiveness is not always measured by word count, and one cannot judge the success of a multifaceted life based on one single area. 

To be compelled by a being of ink and paper...

So, thanks to Lyla at Read By Flashlight, I discovered The Great Blogging Experiment with enough time to participate in it! 

The prescribed topic is Writing Compelling Characters, which, I think, is a beautiful topic. 

Much has been said on various blogs and in all sorts of books concerning what makes a character compelling.  There are some things that certainly help make a compelling character, and while I agree with many aspects, there is a part of me that rebels at formula. 

I think that in many cases, a better question to ask is why we dislike certain characters, often without a solid reason for doing so. 

My belief: we hate these characters because we suspect that underneath all the description, the character isn't a real person. 

I'm not talking about the author.  The author is certainly real, but is the character that the author has written real to the author?  Does the writer believe that this character could very well exist, and is a valuable and interesting person?  And most importantly, does the author not take that fact for granted? 

We love characters either because we believe they could exist, or because we wish that they did. 

Yes, characters can be unbelievable, but they have the unbelievability that real people have.  Have you looked at real people recently?  Have you noticed the people in your own life who, when it boils down to it, are unbelievable?  We admire great and compelling characters for much the same reason we admire great and compelling people: because they have the audacity to exist as themselves. 

But there's another step between real characters and compelling characters.  There are some characters that are perfectly believable, but we still hate them because we feel these characters latching onto us with greedy fingers and pulling at us, sucking up our attention and our enthusiasm like a sponge, with no recompense.  Yes, we hate them because they give us nothing.  We read to gain.  We are willing to sacrifice our time and attention with the understanding that we will get something in return.   A compelling character is one that accepts the reader's sacrifice, and gives back even more than what was expected.  More heart, more interest, more honesty, more of that audaciously thrilling reality -- so that even when the book is done, we remember the character as if they had been in the same room with us. 

This isn't an exhaustive guide, of course.  But I believe this is the starting point. 

Writing Meme: Character Ages [5/30]

5.  By age, who is your youngest character? Oldest? How about “youngest” and “oldest” in terms of when you created them?


A lot of my youngest characters appeared in stories that I wrote before I started writing my ‘official’ novels – and since there are more than seventy of these stories that are only a couple of pages long each, I am not counting them.  


My youngest character is Sarie, the six- or seven-year-old girl who was an important character in Tears for the Silent Lands.  However, she is blessed with the gift of insight and is much more advanced mentally than a lot of girls her age, so writing her character was not exactly like writing a typical young child. 


Everlyse from Enchantress is next at fifteen.  She is the age I was when I wrote the story, and I based much of her character and circumstances in life off of my own.


As for my oldest characters, all of the Keeper characters in Evanescent Moonlight are multiple thousands of years old.  Aside from them, Mirriae from Tears for the Silent Lands is 500 years old by the end of the story.


Considering ‘youngest’ and ‘oldest’ by the time of creation, Byeron and Faeryn from The Prophet of Aenerowaye come first (they were both born about the same time).  Byeron is tall, broad-shouldered, and blonde, while Faeryn is a short, slender teenager with wavy hair down to her knees.  Yes, they both are about as Mary-Sue and Gary-Stu as they sound. 


And the most recent character… from an ‘established’ novel, Leiss from Evanescent Moonlight was the last character to have significant details finalized, and I’m still not sure about his name.  Now, there is the secret and rather embarrassing detail that I took a little break from EM and randomly started a different story about an evil sorceress named Estella and her crazy pregnant sister, but I’m sure it’s not going to last very long and for goodness’ sake don’t tell anyone about it! 

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The Remarkable Profanity

I know the title sounds a little scary, but believe me, I won't subject you to anything profane.  Everything questionable in this post is represented by asterisks. 

I was scrolling through the Word document that is the compilation of everything I wrote for NaNoWriMo 2009 (since in my quest for 50k I didn't exactly stick with one novel).  I found this little tidbit that I had forgotten about, and upon rereading it I rather enjoyed it, so I thought I'd share. 

The Remarkable Profanity
by Cherise

“Corianna, where the ******************** is the next inn located?”

“I didn’t know you knew a cussword that long,” Corianna pointed out. “Twenty asterisks just to bleep it out.”

“I asked you a question,” Pippers said. “Now tell me, or by ******************* I’ll knock your head off!”

“I think you missed a letter,” Corianna mused, swirling the peppermint tea in her mug. “Or perhaps three.”

“What the ******************* does it matter???” Pippers demanded. “Just answer the question!”

“But I have to hand it to you, that still is talent. Where did you pick it up?”

“Corianna, you ********************!!!!”

“Although perhaps if that’s the only colorful word you know….”

“I know more than that! Why, I bet you haven’t heard ***********************************************!!!”

Corianna sat, stunned into silence. “How on earth do you keep track of that many syllables?” she murmured, after the minute of reverent silence had passed.

“Easy,” Pippers said, leaning back in his chair. “You live with a people that use it at least three times in every sentence.”

“And who would that people be?”

“A particular race of dwarf.” Pippers grinned, beginning to take delight in his tale. “They speak an old dialect in which every word is five times as long as it ought to be. *********************************************** is the equivalent of a four-letter word in our language.”

“Like ‘scram.’”

Pippers frowned. “But don’t ‘scram’ have five letters?”

Corianna shook her head. “S – C – R – M. Scram.”

“Ah.” Pippers continued to look at her with a puzzled expression. “You sure?”

“Didn’t I just spell it for you?”

For a moment, Pippers’ face betrayed his cluelessness. But then his pride took over, and he nodded knowingly. “Right you did! Forgive my mistake!”

Corianna nodded, and then hid her face behind her mug of tea to hide her grin. Unfortunately, when the grin slid out it brought with it a laugh, and the laugh happened to immerge at the same moment that she was taking a gulp of tea, the result being that a moment later, Pippers was violently slamming his broad hand into her back to try to dislodge three ounces of tea from her windpipe. At last she had coughed it up, (spewing it, unfortunately, all over the wooden table), and looked up to find Pippers scowling at her.

“***********************************************! Don’t do that to me, Cory! This journey is plenty enough *********************************************** fun without you choking on everything you put in your mouth!”

“I do agree that it is becoming much more a frequent occurrence than I should like,” Corianna said, wiping her mouth and pulling a handkerchief – the only one she owned, which was red with a swirly design embroidered on it in black thread – to mop up the mess she had made.

“A *********************************************** frequent occurrence!” Pippers cried. “If you keep it up, I’ll have to ban you from commestabibles for at least a day, just to teach ya’ to behave!”

“I believe the correct word is comestibles,” Corianna remarked.

“Who cares??” Pippers stomped back to the other side of the table and resumed his seat. “You won’t get any of them, that’s what matters!”

Best Progress Bar Ever

This is the cutest progress meter ever.

I am so using it during NaNoWriMo.

Visit this page on Writertopia to find out how it works (and to snag it for yourself). 

*loves* 

(It's obvious which mood is my favorite, right?  The top one all the way.  *has Trekkie moment*) 

Writing Meme: Firsts [4/30]

4.  Tell us about one of your first stories/characters!

Since in my mind I had two first novels... can I talk about them both? 

My first attempt at a novel (when I was about nine or ten years old) was called Return to Romelia.  It centered around a girl named Leslie who was transported by a unicorn though a magical portal in a diamond to the fantasy kingdom of Romelia, where she discovered that she was the long-lost eldest daughter of the king and queen, and that she must save the kingdom.  The main reason I quit was because I couldn't figure out how on earth she would do that (and because my young mind finally realized how cliche it was).  I decided at that point that while I had some talent for writing, I didn't have enough talent yet, and until I had a good idea, I should give up trying to write fiction.

So I did, for the most part (even though the whole time I was sneakily scribbling the first pages of novel wannabes). I didn’t entertain any serious novelist thoughts, though, until I joined Homeschoolblogger and found a whole host of teens my age who were writing their own novels – and who were doing a pretty good job! I congratulated them on their success in comments I left, but secretly I burned with jealousy and found myself wishing that I had a novel I was working on. So I waited impatiently for a good idea to come around.

Even so, the beginning of my second ‘first novel’ came unexpectedly. It was right after I’d finished my schoolwork for the day, and I was messing around on my parents’ old laptop and decided to start writing a random story. But that random story became more interesting as I typed it – a man lying hidden watching a road and thinking he must warn the king of something, and a princess who longed for adventure and was vaguely troubled by things she saw in her own life? I had to find out more.

The man became Byeron, a prophet who condemned the savage religion that enslaved the kingdom, and the princess became Faeryn, a girl who risked her father’s anger to free Byeron, on the condition that he would take her to meet this God he spoke of. I put in the story everything I wanted – mountains, forests, dragons, elves, nymphs, and even a great battle at the end. Faeryn embodied all the things about myself that I liked, but she was also everything that I was not. Mary-sue? Yes. Cliché in many ways? Yes. But I loved that story, and even though I often wince when I think about the faults, I still look back on it fondly. The colors and contours of that world felt so vibrant, and I could see everything clearly in my mind’s eye – more so than most of the novels I’ve written since then.

I never finished The Prophet of Aenerowaye (generally abbreviated POE, from the days when the last word started with an E.  The spelling kept changing). That’s fine with me. The novel would have been a misshapen behemoth, and in any case, I learned all that I could from it. It did make it to 68,000 words, which is not a bad number at all (and more than my current WIP has at the moment). Sometimes I entertain thoughts of using the world that I created, or maybe taking one or two aspects of the story for use in some later work. Old stories are wonderful places to hunt for ideas to steal and reuse.

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Forums, Memes, and Writing Revelation

Yes, I confess that I am madly in love with numbered lists. 

1. Thank you so much to everyone who commented with advice about Inkpop.  I decided that instead of joining it, I would join Nathan Bransford's forums.  The experience has already been wonderful.  I have been able to talk with other teen writers who are completely serious (and who don't use chatspeak or internet slang!), and visit their awesome blogs.  So many of the discussions are helpful, and when I do end up participating, I feel like I'm practing for being a professional adult writer instead of languishing in the teen world. 

2. I've complained in recent posts about how poorly my writing was going.  Well, last night changed a lot of things.  I made my first attempt at drawing Joremn (the main character from Evanescent Moonlight), and it didn't turn out too bad, for a first attempt.  (I've decided that unless you're a genius, it's impossible to draw a picture of your characters that looks just like you imagined them to be.)  And then later that evening when I sat down to write, I wrote 700 words and enjoyed writing them!  

This is huge for me.  I had confessed to my journal that it felt like it had been months since I had actually enjoyed my writing.  For so long it has been a drudgery, merely cranking out words whenever I could work myself up to it because without a climbing word count, I could never finish the novel, and thus never be free.  But last night, I rediscovered the joy in it.  I walked away from the computer to get ready for bed, and found myself thinking about the next bit of dialogue and how to describe my character's eyes.  I had to dash back to the computer to get it down. 

I think three things contributed to this: one, I downloaded Q10 on sunday. 

(We interrupt this blog post for an impromptu promo:  Q10 is one of the most helpful writing programs I have found.  It takes up the entire screen so that you can focus on your writing alone, and it keeps constant track of your word count at the bottom of the screen.  The best part is that it is completely free!  Now, back to the post.)

Two, as soon as I sat down to write, my mom told me that she needed to use the computer, so I had ten minutes to write (as it turns out she got a phone call so I got to write for longer).  This gave me a time limit and motivated me to get my fingers moving whereas I might have just sat staring at the screen if I had all the time in the world.  And the third and most important thing was that I had been reflecting on the characters and how much I loved them.  It just goes to show that good fiction is all about characters: the more you try to write a story independant of characters you love, the harder it is. 

3. In other news, both Hannah and Mariella have both stolen the writing meme off of me (which I think is totally awesome -- if you want to read their answers, scroll down to the bottom of the writing meme page and you'll find the links to their posts).