know your enemy (antagonists)

There comes a time when a writer has to stop their story, turn and look at their villain, and admit that they’re phoning it in on the antagonists’ performances. I simply have not given any of my (multiple) villains the treatment that I’ve given my two main heroes. I don’t know what they’re doing while I’m focusing on my heroes. I don’t know their subplots. I don’t know what problems they’ve been going through behind the scenes.

So far I have four villains to counter my two heroes: A king, a lord, a winged bully, and a high-ranking slave. I’ve managed so far, but I just invented the last on the list (Sorche du Remerdii, the man who gave that cheeky line I mentioned here), and in a high-tension scene he feels flat.

Lesson learned: know your villains. I’ve decided that June is going to be ‘Villain Month’. Each week will be dedicated to developing and writing side-stories about one of my villains. That way I’ll be ready for my second rewrite, and I’ll be posting up character exercises, collages, and notes on development. I’ll also be exploring the extent of their power, what they can and can not do to the heroes, and why.

No flat enemies allowed.

weekly goal, and a short hiatus

I both did and did not make my word count goal last week. I wrote enough to satisfy the 3,000 words. I also had to erase most of them. So my word count didn’t change much by last Friday.

I’m going to call it good and keep my word-count goal the same. 41k, by this Friday. It’s not as far as I thought I’d be at, but since my role-play internet-writing friend is going to be gone for two weeks after this week I expect I’ll be getting a lot more done. (Incidentally, I’ve also planted lots of strawberries and am studying Spanish every day again. I lose one distraction, I gain five more. Alas…)

I’m also going to be busy with my real-life job all week; a bunch of project-stuff all came up at once. I’ll still be able to respond to comments, email, but I’m not going to be posting much or browsing the sites on my blog list so faithfully.

Cheers, and see you guys next week!

my (new and improved) query letter

Dear Mr. Example,

In a sunless ice-world where cities are built underground, Vastii is a corrupt, dirty metropolis ripe with gangs, mercenaries, rebellion, cannibalism, and scheming politicians. To suppress an uprising in the west, the king takes his own niece, Lady Wyrren Jadis, as a political hostage. Officially, her presence will ensure her father’s loyalty to a king that he never cared for. The king never mentioned that he intends to use Wyrren’s unwilling confession to convict her father for the murder of his late wife Arielii, the king’s beloved sister.

Amid evidence of loose assassins and the judging eyes of a hostile court, forced into a strange city with only a few companions, the king’s niece is seen as an opportunity for riches and power, an easy way to the king’s ear or a weapon against the monarchy. When the king’s secret police begins to track and kill men found in connection to an illegal press that Wyrren contributes to, her companions are left to scramble across the plague-ridden city to keep the police at bay while the lady seeks someone, anyone, in the courts who can protect her from her increasingly demanding uncle. Amid deal making and breaking, she finds the unassuming, charming, and ambitious Remerdii, a newly appointed lord and favorite of the king. Remerdii provides a much-needed crutch, but only in exchange for a price that increases the more she comes to need him. When an opportunity for power presents itself, Remerdii betrays the king and Wyrren both just as Wyrren finds the perfect time and place to kill her uncle: her real reason for coming to the city.

Blue Crystal is a completed 95,000 word novel written for an adult audience who enjoy action, intrigue, and low-fantasy. I’ve included the first three pages of my manuscript. Thank you!

Sincerely,

pondering pov

So! Now that the cover art is mostly out of the way (and I’m bouncing in anticipation of the coming sketches) I’ve turned my attention back to the book, the chapter, and the partial rewrite that I want to finish.

And I’ve run into another problem, and another answer that’s going to force me to rework much more than I’d anticipated: Rylan is not that effective of a POV character for what I want to do next. My heroine would be much better. She’s the one making the decisions, and later she’s the one who’s going to be in danger, and there are things she will say without Rylan being present.

I take a lot of care with POV. So far, it’s all been a third-person fixed and limited perspective, meaning the camera is on Rylan, and always on Rylan and has been for the last nearly 40k words. I prefer it that way; I like to keep things as simple as possible to avoid shifting needlessly. Except now? It’s not so needless.

Changing over to another character this late in the book, even using chapter breaks, is a jarring practice. I hate rules, but I’ll agree with this one: don’t switch cameras to a secondary character for one chapter halfway through the book, then never again.

With that in mind I’m changing chapter two (which I was never satisfied with) to Wyrren’s position. I’m probably also going to add another chapter somewhere between four and seven with her as the point of view character. And there’s a very important scene I’ll do the same. That puts her as the narrator for about 25% of the book.

It also changes the feel of the book, the lighting and mood, if you will. POV is important. It colors the pages with your character. In this case it’s steel and stone, oil lamps in the cold, blood and sweat, then to golden light, marble arches, velvet gowns and implication, implication everywhere, murmuring and gossiping, kind words one minute than slander the next; a fairy-tale ball of junior high girls who will never grow up.

It’s also going to be harder, longer, and double my work, especially handling the exposition and the secondary characters. I’ll do it, of course. I’ll do anything to make my book better. Even so, it’s hard, and I don’t want to. Consider the dilemma ranted and struggled with.

thin skin

So… the day before yesterday, I learned that someone whose art that I admire really didn’t care for my work. She phrased it nicely, and made it clear that she didn’t think it was badly written, but even so… I’ve been a little depressed and haven’t really written since Monday, especially since I’ll be backtracking when I do.

I don’t expect everyone to like Blue Crystal. I set out to write something desperate, realistic, gritty, and violent, and (I admit) I’ve drawn some of my inspiration from George R.R. Martin’s ‘Song of Ice and Fire’ series. I’m expecting some to be repulsed by what I’ve done. I’ve even already gotten that reaction from one reviewer, whom I surmise was shaken by the cannibalism; murder is commonplace in books, while eating the leftover meat because you’re a starving man is taboo.

Even so. Getting a negative reaction from someone you admire… I think perhaps I had hoped that since I admired her for her talents that perhaps she’d reciprocate. Things don’t seem to work that way.

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Update: A few hours after posting this, I browsed the internet for fantasy covers that I liked, came up with a decent idea that would look beautiful painted in a classical style, and emailed the artist with my new ideas for a book cover. I feel better now, and I think it’s going to be beautiful.

plot, the contortionist

My changes to plot has fixed a hundred problems that I didn’t account for when I wrote the 0-draft in NaNoWriMo. Subplots have popped up, interweave with the main storyline, the characters, even unintentionally, are changing as the story progresses. Rylan finally believes he knows what to do and is starting to act like the pseudo-noble that he is.

The problem is that in my first write (and this was one of the problems with that draft that I hadn’t specifically identified) my characters’ strength and connections had remained fairly static throughout the story. Now that I’m paying more attention to the villains, I’ve realized that if they’re going to survive, they need allies and connections.

Allies and connections means that the catalyst that brings them down is no longer going to work. Not even remotely. My characters would have to be blitheringly stupid to even get close. Which means that one of my key events is completely wrong.

Now, I could find ways to explain it off. Ick, no. I can’t even salvage part of the original plan and make it consistent and believable. I am not going to bend and twist my plot to give it a preordained mediocre pre-climax. Plot can be a contortionist in some cases, but the moment it had a foot sticking out of its stomach, something’s wrong.

My villain’s going to have to do something pretty amazing to bring them down now. I’m going to keep on writing, and see how it happens, because I’m off my outline.

on rewriting

David Gerrold wrote a book called ‘Worlds of Wonder’, focused on fantasy and science fiction writing. I enjoyed reading it– he had a very friendly style, and it was easy to empathize with him… especially once he started out by telling a story about how a terrible writing professor told him he wouldn’t amount to anything in the field, and his first published works were inspired out of rage. This isn’t of course to say that I agreed with everything in his book, but two of the points he made stuck with me, which is fairly good considering I’m an overly critical skeptic.

I’ll paraphrase his sentiment.

The first million words are for practice. Don’t worry. It doesn’t count. Practice writing your book. Practice editing it. Practice sending it out. Don’t worry. You’re just practicing. Practice receiving rejection letters. And if someone is foolish enough to publish one of your practice novels, that doesn’t mean anything either. Practice cashing that check. After those first million words, then you can start taking yourself seriously.

Perhaps this is something personal, perhaps not. I found this passage extraordinarily liberating, probably because I get anxious before I start writing or drawing. Am I starting in the right place? Is this really the way I want to present this? I have such a hard time shutting my inner editor up. NaNoWriMo was one of the best things I’ve done– it let me finish the 0-draft of my book, with the knowledge that I would be going back and rewriting everything. Like doing small thumbnail sketches in art, the terrible, rushed version still told me where I was going, what elements I would be using. I got out a blank sheet of paper for the second version and rewrote it more concisely, longer, emphasizing some of the right details. And I’m planning on starting almost entirely from scratch a second time before I get into editing the prose itself. I need to get all the elements correct first before I start polishing my piece. And I might be overly optimistic, but I think my writing is getting stronger with each pass.

Don’t worry. It doesn’t count. It’s just for practice.

I’m going to make this book shine.

ramifications of plot and temper

Chapter Six: Bloody Hands

I’ve managed to dig my protagonist into a great deal of trouble. I might, might be able to pull him out again if I can keep the king from rigging his trial. Which would be out of character. King Kanichende leaves nothing to chance, and Rylan has just handed me a very good reason to kill him at at my 30% mark.

Here’s the problem.

Rylan has a temper. Announce that you’re going to hurt or soil his lady in any way, and if he believes what you’re saying he will almost certainly try to kill you. The response isn’t that out of place in his environment; it’s ruthless, brutal, and courtiers really are going out of their way to manipulate his mistress, or stop their rivals from doing the same.

Partway through the chapter, Rylan visited a mercenary leader who hated nobility and just completed a job for them. The mercenary found out that he served nobility. Rylan was let go, only because the last job worked against the secret police. The mercenaries now know the lady’s family crest and have threatened/promised to find her identity. On the way back, one of the king’s favorites provokes Rylan’s temper. There’s a fight, and the king’s lackey escapes. When Rylan gets back into his mistress’ apartments, he finds a common guard has broken into his lady’s bedroom, rummaging through her desk. The lackey tells the king that his hostage’s slave attacked him, and king, lackey, and troupe walk in on Rylan just after he’s killed the intruding guardsman. Who also served the king. Rylan is lead to a prison cell to await a trial.

Sometimes I feel as if my villains aren’t harsh enough, that my heroes are getting away with too much. How far can an important hostage get away with? How much is the king willing to bend the rules to get what he wants?

Does it ever feel as if the villains and their agendas are only present when it’s convenient, and how do you avoid that?

the artist

A full week after I promised myself that I would finish the chapter, write a synopsis, and send them to the artist, I’ve finally done it. She’s still interested, but a little busy right now and should send her thoughts and some rough sketch ideas to me in the next month.

*does the happy artist-dance*

research

I try to make my books as accurate as possible. There’s nothing more annoying than trying to take a movie or a tv show seriously that keeps violating physics, or hacking incorrectly, or having dance ‘experts’ that don’t know that the leads right hand does not belong at the girl’s waist. It makes me twitch.

I’m writing at my computer, and I get to a place where one of the characters gets stabbed. … Morbid, perhaps, but… I write dark fantasy and kill characters. It happens. The guy on the receiving end of this deal has thick clothing, but no armor.

So what does that sound like? Before the other guy starts screaming? Does it make a cracking sound? Crunching? Does it slide in silently? I have swords, but it would be such a bother to hunt down the neighbor’s dogs…

(Just a joke. Really.)

And do I want to get too close to the person that can tell me?