R.M. Archer's Blog, page 47

Snippet Sunday: The Elementals

This excerpt is a continuation of the last one I posted from this story, so if you haven’t read it yet you’ll want to do that first and come back.

Done? Awesome. Enjoy!

It was several more minutes before a bell rang out, nearly deafening, and students began to pour in. Soon I was squished amidst all the people.

Caelum rose once the movement had ceased and all muttering quieted as he raised his hand. “Dear students, old and new, welcome. We’re gathered here for the initiation of another wave of elementals.” Students cheered throughout the auditorium. “New students, I will call your name one by one. When I call on you, please come up and stand in front of my desk. Aira Lannister.”

A girl with pale skin and hair stepped up and Caelum placed his hand gently on top of her head. “Air,” he announced. As Aira went back to her seat, Caelum called up the next student. “Alabaster Graves.”

The brunett elf stepped up and Caelum placed his hand on his head as with Aira. After a moment he shook his head and sent Alabaster down the row to Arianthe, who placed her hand on Alabaster’s head the same way.

“Earth,” Arianthe said.

Alabaster returned to his seat and I zoned out, busy paying attention to all the people around me and still fiddling with the rock in my pocket. Thus when they called my name I missed it.

“Skandain Eyre,” they repeated.

My head shot up. “Yes? Oh, right.” I rose and walked over to Caelum, hearing snickers as I did so.

Caelum set his hand on my head and after a moment sent me to Arianthe. She did the same and sent me down to Baara. All four of them shook their heads.

Caelum frowned. “Come back over here, Skandain?”

I did as instructed and again they all shook their heads. Had I been wrongly selected as an elemental? The four of them stepped into a circle and discussed me a moment, then returned to their places.

“You’re an earth elemental,” Arianthe said.

I nodded, but I wasn’t sure what on earth had happened… No pun intended. I returned to my seat and Brant clapped me on the back, but there was something strange in his eyes. “I guess you’ll be relocated, then,” he said.

Camp NaNo Prep: The Outline

Camp NaNoWriMo Prep Series:

Part 1: The Idea

Part 2: The Characters

Part 3: The World

 

Before we start, here’s a disclaimer: I’m not an outliner. Well, not a hardcore outliner, at least. I do find that I do better when I have some sort of a framework to go off of, though, so in this post I’m going to just share with you a couple of methods I’ve used that have worked for me.

The Chapter-By-Chapter Outline

This is the method I used with The Heart of the Baenor, and it’s pretty simple. For each chapter I’d just make a heading and then under that I’d write brief summaries of what needed to happen in that scene. So the original first chapter, for instance, looked like this:

Chapter 1 – Cordain

Cordain returns from fishing with his father and brother.

Cordain and his family go to the bakery.

Cordain and his family return home.

Cordain’s older brother Torstyn takes him to the tavern for his seventeenth birthday.

A traveler enters the tavern and asks for volunteers on a quest.

The traveler refuses all of the volunteers and looks around for the person he needs. He chooses Cordain.

Cordain refuses to go and returns home. Torstyn stays to spend time with his secret fiancé Adilee?

Cordain ends up staying up late thinking about the quest and falls asleep secretly decided.

Now that I’m editing none of that chapter exists anymore and he ends up on the quest a totally different way, but that’s what my outline looks like. Some of the summaries are more detailed and I made notes on some of them that remind me of names or smaller details I need to be aware of or whatever, and obviously you can adapt it to look however you need it to if you decide to go with this method.

This is the most detailed outline I’ve ever made, and you can see it’s not especially detailed. For the most part the details were either securely inside my head or worked themselves out as I wrote. The benefit of this method for me was that I had a framework that told me everything that needed to happen but it wasn’t so detailed as to be constraining and I had some wiggle-room within the scenes, which I’ve found is a pretty good balance for me.

The Really Bare-Bones Outline

With the Dark War Trilogy I had an even less detailed outline than with The Heart of the Baenor, and I’m not sure that was the best choice. With the Dark War Trilogy I had several plot points that I knew I wanted and then I left the rest to adapt as it would. That worked okay with The Last Assassin and the characters did a good job of directing the plot in the spots I hadn’t plotted. With The Shadow Raven it’s been more difficult as I’m finding I don’t know what the characters do for the majority of the time. This is mostly a worldbuilding issue (not knowing the culture of the palace), but if I’d outlined it more in-depth I probably would have identified the mistake sooner.

I left the trilogy’s outline as loose as I did because they overlap so heavily and I wanted to make sure that if something in one veered away from the outline it wouldn’t screw stuff up in the other two. If I’d outlined deeper I would have felt tied to the outline so as to not mess things up and it would likely have inhibited my writing. So there were obviously pros and cons to both choices for me.

How do I keep track of things with overlapping plot lines like this? My Excel spreadsheet (spoilers redacted):

This is a picture from fairly early on in my planning, so you can see how empty the outline was even at this point. I did have more near the beginning than anywhere else, since I knew how I wanted it so start, but if you look at the timeline on the side you’ll see that there’s a significant gap between the first two dates and the third.

I’ve kept track of every scene I write on this spreadsheet so that I can make sure there aren’t any contradictions or people in two places at once or something like that, and I love that in Excel I can just insert a new row to include a new time. I really like this method for multiple points-of-view and I’ll likely use it a lot in the future with other multi-POV stories.

Want me to make a template of my timeline spreadsheet for the resource library? Leave me a comment and let me know!
Other Methods

I’ve also used the Hero’s Journey to outline stories in the past, but I was inexperienced enough in my writing back then that those stories were terrible, so I don’t feel like I’ll be able to speak accurately about the outlining method at this point.

Hopefully this post has been helpful, and if you’re a pantser wanting to take up plotting (or just experiment with it) these methods might work well for you. If you’re a more hardcore planner and need something more structured, you can adapt these to be more specific or you can find some more structured outlining methods. (You can check out my Pinterest board of outlining tips for starters.)

 

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Snippet Sunday: Apple of My Eye and Underground

Apple of My Eye is the fourth story in The Mirror-Hunter Chronicles, which began with Bag of Beans. It’s kind of tricky to pull an excerpt from a short story when pretty much anything could be spoilers, but here’s a bit of description that I’m really happy with, and it reminded me of a bit of description from another short story that I wanted to share as well. Enjoy. :)

I’d been searching for the mirror for a week between its being stolen and our present story, tracking clues as far from Ambrel as Grell. As I stepped into the city, much different from any I’d seen before, I wondered briefly if I would encounter my cousin Anson. However, this thought was quickly overcome by my fascination with the architecture and citizens around me. The buildings were all made of metal and glass, unlike the wood and sod hovels I was accustomed to, or even the plaster and brick that some larger estates were built of, and some towered into the sky like beanstalks.

The castle visible at the center of the city was the most impressive, with steel steeples and parapets, and windows surrounding every floor. I imagined it would be quite terrifying to be inside the thing and be able to see the hundreds of feet just outside a flimsy wall of glass. As I approached, I could see that the portcullis was made of something that was thinner and yet seemed stronger than steel, crisscrossed and woven with itself into a formidable barrier despite all its gaps.

********

“We don’t need any Underlings up here.”

“We’re the two most skilled hunters in the Underground,” Ronan said. “At least let us see your captain.”

“General,” the guard corrected.

“May we see him?”

The guard exchanged a look with his fellow before sighing. “Fine. This way.” The guard led them into the bustling crowd, his companion bringing up the rear, and Sorcha gave attention to her surroundings again. The ladies around her wore flowing silk gowns that brushed across the steel ground, bumping into her on all sides with a softness that was unlike anything she’d felt. The gentlemen wore darker blue suits of something like suede or velvet, still soft but more matte than the silk.

Towers rose up into the sky, stopping in sharp points just before they would have hit the layer above them, made of gold and bronze and steel. They reflected the sunlight, and Sorcha was incredibly glad for her sunglasses. Blue sky painted a brilliant backdrop for the city, even with the orange tint of Sorcha’s lenses, and she thought it must be even more beautiful to those whose eyes could handle the bright sunlight.

Their footsteps hummed and echoed on the metallic floor, ringing in Sorcha’s ears as they were led to a small iron building at the edge of the level, right in front of a glass wall that ended just below Sorcha’s shoulders to give a clear view of blue sky and clearance for a cool breeze that ruffled her platinum shoulder-length hair.

The 7777 Writing Tag

So today’s post is weird because I ended up spazzing and scheduling Alleyn Everlind’s interview today, except… I’ve already interviewed him. And since it’s already Wednesday and I didn’t feel like coming up with a different character to interview, I’m stealing the 7777 tag (with permission!) from Alexa over at Summer Snowflakes.

Ze Rules:

Open WIP to the seventh page
Scroll past the seventh line
Copy the next seven paragraphs…. and paste them on your blog for THE WORLD to read
Tag seven people!

Well this excerpt from The Shadow Raven is kind of odd isolated, particularly since it cuts off the beginning and end of this conversation…

“I’m sure you do.”

Detren guessed several more times as they ate, and Nissa was nearly bursting from holding in her laughter by the time she’d cleared her plate.

“Fine, I’ll give you the first letter. N.”

“Neana?”

“No.”

“Nalya?”

“Uh uh.”

 

I’m assuming you can tell he’s guessing her name, but the “I’m sure you do” is just really awkwardly out-of-place by itself. XD So I’m going to scroll to page 70 (the 0 is nothing. It doesn’t count. This is totally legal for the tag.) and follow the same procedure and see what I get.

Ooh, this one’s interesting.

 

“We’ll see how it works this time, then, won’t we?” Thorian smiled and Nissa met his eyes for a moment. Something in them seemed dark, like he meant more than he said. She looked back down at the board, shivering inside at the shadow in his eyes. It reminded her somehow of Alastair, and she didn’t like it at all.

“I guess we will.” She watched as he moved a bishop into easy reach of her knight. As soon as she’d captured the bishop, he moved a rook into position to capture her king.

“Checkmate.”

Nissa nodded, knocking her king onto his side, and rose from the table. “Thanks for the game.”

“Of course. You’re a worthy opponent. How about one more round, though? Try protecting your king this time.”

“I’d rather you not comment on my tactics.”

“Humor me? Just one game.”

Nissa sighed and sat back down. “One game.”

 

Yes, I like this one a lot. I’m glad I continued to page 70. *chuckles evilly because she knows things* So there you go. My 7 (14) paragraphs of The Shadow Raven. :)

Nominees:

Victoria at Wanderer’s Pen
Remi at Our Mind Palace
Gray at Gray Marie
Leila at Wildflowers and Cosmic Tea
Hallie Jenkins at Hallie Jenkins
Jess at The Artful Author
Rebekah at Hunting for Truth

Guys! My knowledge of the blogsphere has grown so much since I started! I can now tag seven people and still have ideas to spare! :D (I’m also getting a little more out of my comfort zone with some of these bloggers that I look up to, lol.)

Camp NaNo Prep: The World

Second to characters, the world is what generally catches a reader’s interest in a story, assuming it’s done well. The world affects the characters and outline (at least to some extent), so it shouldn’t be neglected.

Now, I speak as a speculative fiction writer, so all of my stories take place in worlds that are at least somewhat fictionalized (even my contemporary stories don’t adhere to specific real-life places most of the time), but this is at least somewhat applicable to all settings.

Find out what’s important to the story

When you’re writing a novel over a longer amount of time you can develop all the details of your world, but when you have a limited amount of time to prepare before a draft you’ll want to start by asking what you need to know about your world for this story. Does your story take place in the palace of your main country? Find out what nobility is like in your world. Are you writing about pirates roaming the open seas in 18th century England? Look up the fashion and how pirates were treated in that time period. Start with what you know you’ll need and then expand from there.

Find out what makes the setting stand out

Find out what makes your setting unique and find a way to spotlight that. If your country is known for its jewelry and fashion, make sure that comes through in the story. If you’re writing a story set in ’50s America, keep in mind the fashion, the cars, and the racial issues. Graceling by Kristin Cashore does a good job of this with the Lienid rings and jewelry, as an example. I want to read the rest of the trilogy if only to learn more about the world it takes place in.

Find out what your characters think of the setting

Has your character lived here all their life? What do they take for granted? How do they respond when they realize there’s something there than they didn’t know about before? (For instance, the other day my aunt and I were talking about the things around town that we hadn’t seen before despite having lived here for ten years.) Or maybe your character is visiting for the first time, or even moving there, and has no idea what to think of the different customs or a different climate. Your character’s perception of the world will affect how the reader perceives the world. It can also be interesting if the character perceives the world much differently than it really is.

Details mean a lot

Similar to the “what makes the setting stand out” point, details can really make a world come to life. Examples that immediately come to mind are the Lienid jewelry in Graceling and the memory scars in Colors of Fear by Hannah Heath. Little details that make the world seem different from our own like that immediately make the reader thirst for more. We want to know more about the world and how these little things came to be and how they tie in with the larger picture. We want to know. So go to what makes the setting stand out and see if you can come up with a couple of details like that that you can sprinkle throughout the story that tie in with the bigger picture.

Want more on how to develop a world? Check out my resource round-up here!

 

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Snippet Sunday: Mournseeker

Some of y’all might remember the excerpt from this that I posted back in April for M of the Alphabet Challenge. Well, here’s the beginning of that story, in which you’re officially introduced to the main characters and the setting and what’s going on. Enjoy. :)

Genevieve was startled by a sudden knock on her door. She closed her book and set it on a side table before rising and opening the front door to see a familiar face.

“Gen, I need your help.”

She rolled her eyes. “You always need my help.” She let in her visitor nonetheless, giving him shelter from the rain and whatever other trouble he’d gotten into. She closed the door behind him and took a seat in the chair by the window where she’d been sitting before he arrived. “What is it this time?”

“Do you have any food?”

“Ever the polite one, aren’t you, Reyce?” She paused a moment, looking at her bedraggled friend, before nodding towards the kitchen, exasperation written all over her expression.

He hurried into the kitchen and she picked her book back up. She’d only gotten past a couple of sentences before he returned and sat down with a heaping plate of food. He didn’t bother waiting until his mouth was empty to speak. “I’m running away.”

“No surprise there.” Gen didn’t look up from her book.

“I need to talk to Charlotte.”

Gen’s eyes darted up to find his. She slowly set her book aside. “You’d take a risk, alerting her of your presence.”

“You know it’s not a risk I would take unnecessarily.”

“Yeah, maybe,” she muttered. Louder she added, “Why do you need to talk to her?”

“I need her… services.”

“And why is that?”

“The thing chasing me isn’t anything I’ve ever seen before. Not anything you’ve seen before either.” Gen raised an eyebrow, but he continued as if he didn’t notice. “Charlotte might know what they are.”

“And why would she know better than I would? I’ve seen everything this side of the Rush.”

“But she has more experience with the… paranormal.”

“Paranormal?” Gen almost laughed. “Yeah, you could say that. What the heck could be following you that would be considered ‘paranormal’?”

Reyce’s expression was entirely serious. “You’d understand if you saw it, but I hope you never do.”

Gen hesitated. If he would be willing to say that even she didn’t want to encounter one of these things, and with a completely straight face, that gave her pause.

“So can you get me to see Charlotte?”

Gen nodded slowly. “Yeah, I think I can.”

“Good. You should come with me. Your expertise might be helpful, too.”

Great, I’m an afterthought. She didn’t give voice to her thoughts, just nodded. “Sounds good. I’ll go see her and then I’ll come back if she says she’ll see you.”

Reyce nodded. “That’s how it always works.”

“Just making sure you remember. It’s been a surprisingly long time since you came running to me.”

Reyce shrugged. “I’ve been making my own trouble. Didn’t need any help.”

Gen laughed. “I’ll believe that. It’s a bit harder to believe you didn’t need bailing out in that whole six months.”

“Maybe I found someone else to bail me out.”

“No one else would be willing to help you out. You’re a chronic troublemaker. You’re lucky I’ve put up with you for so long.”

“Aw, you know you love me.”

Gen rolled her eyes.

He took a bite of the food on his plate – mostly junk food like a couple of two-day-old refrigerated slices of pizza and potato chips – and started talking with his mouth full again. “Shouldn’t you be heading over to Charlotte’s place now?”

“Shouldn’t you be learning how to take care of yourself by now?” Despite her retort, she stood and headed into her bedroom, grabbing her twin pistol holster – with both slots filled, of course – from between her mattress and the bedframe and fastening it around her hips before taking her rifle from its place behind the headboard and placing it across her back, tightening the strap just a hair so that it was loose enough to grab easily but not so loose as to cause problems.

Her dark hair was already tied up in its usual ponytail, and her black combat boots were already on, concealing a handful of knives that lightly stabbed her feet as she walked. It was a feeling she was long used to, and she’d feel bare without it.

She headed back out into living room, where Reyce was already finishing up his food.

“Looking just as fierce as always,” he commented, his mouth full of pizza.

Gen rolled her eyes and grabbed her long coat on the way out and slipped it on, hiding the rifle and her holsters, though everyone who knew her knew she was well armed. As she passed through the dusty streets everyone she passed gave her a polite nod, which she returned each time. Passing skyscraper after skyscraper, the upper levels long since abandoned, she finally reached one whose cracked sign read: “Mercy’s Textiles.” She turned here and headed around the building to the large shed behind it. It had once stored materials, but now it housed the city’s strangest citizen.

Gen knocked on the door and was greeted with a quiet, almost inaudible through the door, “come in.” She entered and saw Charlotte, as usual, sitting at her table with several books spread out in front of her. She never seemed to read them, just studied their covers as if the covers alone would tell her the story they held tucked in their pages. The girl herself was small and oddly young, seventeen at most. Gen remembered when the girl was born. She had fair hair, curled and silky, and her eyes…

“Welcome, Genevieve,” she said, in an impossibly old voice for the body it escaped.

“Thank you, Charlotte.”

“Is it Reyce again?”

Gen nodded, though Charlotte’s attention was still absorbed in her covers. “He says there’s something hunting him. He wanted to come see you.”

“Of course he did. He always does. There’s always something.” Though her words may have seemed almost bitter coming from any other mouth, Charlotte’s tone was entirely indifferent, as if nothing anyone did made any difference in anything.

“May I bring him?”

“Do I ever turn him away?”

“You haven’t yet.”

“Then you have your answer. I’ll be available at midnight tonight.”

Gen nodded. “I’ll bring him, then.” She turned to leave, but Charlotte stopped her with a simple “Wait” in that same indifferent tone. Gen turned to see the girl’s pale lavender eyes focused right on her. She held herself stiff so as not to shiver. Those eyes…

“Tell him to bring the cat.” The words were almost casual, but the tone in which they were spoken was entirely serious, even urgent.

“I will.” Gen had no idea what Charlotte meant, but she had no intention of dismissing the girl’s request and silliness. Everything she said had meaning.

Book Review: Azalei’s Riders

Azalei’s Riders is a book I’ve read before perhaps one and a half times when I had it on Kindle (I have a terrible memory when it comes to remembering to read Kindle books, hence the half), but it recently came out on paperback and since I ordered her book box I got all three books in the Fire Rain Chronicles on paperback, along with various other goodies (including a candle that smells amazing). So of course I had to read it again, both because it’s amazing and because I’d totally forgotten what happened and needed to read it again before reading Azalei’s Strategy and Azalei’s Fall. *dun dun dunnnnnnn*

I think the different aspects in this book didn’t stand out to me as much since this was a reread, so this review might be kind of short, but I’ll preface by saying that this is an awesome book.

My absolute favorite thing about this book is the characters. (Do I ever not say that when I’m talking about a book I love?) More specifically, I love the dynamics between them. This is something I did remember from my prior reads of this book. I’m particularly partial to the relationship between Nathan and Jessica; they’re so much fun to read. We don’t get to see a whole lot of some of the characters in this book, since there are several of them and they can’t all have the screen time they perhaps deserve (this is something I’m struggling with in the book I’m writing, as well), but since this is the first of a series I trust that we’ll get to know them more and more as the series progresses (and I remember we do, with at least a few of them). All of the characters are really distinct, each one having one or two features or traits that particularly set them apart. Thatcher with his accent and blue eyes (unfortunately he kept ending up English in my head rather than Scottish because my brain has a harder time formulating a Scottish accent), Autumn with her red hair, Azalei with her almost-silent authority, etc. The characters in this book were just really well-done.

I did think that some of the flashbacks were a bit forced. Several of them seemed kind of tossed in there for the sake of plot convenience, to either give us a piece of backstory or tell us more about the plot or to tie the present to the past and I think they could have been executed a little better. I think I would have preferred the memories to be part of the characters’ thoughts rather than their own flashback in most instances.

The world is really cool, because while this is a dystopian world and it’s clearly a dystopian world, it’s incredibly unique and it doesn’t really seem all that awful. You know it is, under the surface, but on the surface you have highly advanced tech, people living above the ground so the ground can be lush and green again, vehicles built to look like dragons (how many of you would not love to have a car that looks like a dragon?), and ground-level streets that almost no one uses. (I don’t know why, but for some reason that’s really fascinating to me. It’s super cool to imagine old abandoned roads with greenery growing through cracks in the asphalt and vines wrapping around old shells of cars…)

One thing to note: If you don’t like a lot of points-of-view, this book isn’t for you. The point-of-view breaks are clear and it’s established very early in a scene whose head we’re in, but there are a lot of points-of-view in this book. I can think of ten off the top of my head. In most cases it was helpful for giving a deeper sense of the characters and the plot, but in a couple of places it didn’t seem incredibly beneficial. It still wasn’t particularly off-putting for me, but if multiple points-of-view aren’t your thing then this probably isn’t the book for you.

Overall this is definitely a five-star book and I highly recommend it. :)

 

Character Interview: Griffyn Yarrow

Griffyn is a character from The Shadow Raven, a member of the royal council due to his position as captain of the army’s archers. That’s pretty much all I know about him at this point (unfortunately), but here goes his interview.

Griffyn: *shakes the interviewer’s hand before taking a seat across from him* Hello.

Interviewer: Hello. How are you today?

Griffyn: I’m doing okay. How are you?

Interviewer: Just fine. Shall we get started?

Griffyn: *nods*

Interviewer: What is your name?

Griffyn: Griffyn Warner Yarrow.

Interviewer: How old are you?

Griffyn: Nineteen.

Interviewer: And I understand you’re captain of the Roenoran archers? How did you get the position so young?

Griffyn: I was in the middle of my class at the military academy, and I mean exactly in the middle, and I was really just coasting by. I knew I wasn’t doing my best, but I was content to be good enough. My family was familiar with the royal family, and Alleyn would often watch the military training personally. To enjoy a bit of nostalgia, I guess, since he’d been a soldier before he became king. He saw me practicing and realized I wasn’t doing as well as I could and encouraged me to do better. I rose through the ranks fairly quickly – not to the top or anything, just out of the middle and much nearer the top – and apparently Alleyn admired my ability to grow when pushed, so he made me captain over the archers and had Emric Caden train me personally from then on.

Interviewer: Who’s Emric Caden?

Griffyn: The best archer Roenor has ever known. He’s retired from the military, now, but he’s still an excellent archer and an excellent teacher.

Interviewer: What’s your favorite part about training with him?

Griffyn: Besides having the opportunity to train with the best? *chuckles* I don’t know. Probably the way he pushes me to always do better.

Interviewer: He does sound like a good teacher. *glances briefly at question list* Are you an introvert or an extrovert?

Griffyn: It depends on who I’m with, but I think extrovert.

Interviewer: Do you have a favorite food?

Griffyn: Potatoes in gravy.

Interviewer: A favorite color?

Griffyn: Ash brown.

Interviewer: Do you have a favorite book?

Griffyn: Skandain’s Pride by Morena Eren, I think. It’s interesting seeing the stories that have sprung up about faeries since they disappeared.

Interviewer: Do you have a favorite animal?

Griffyn: Dogs. Closely followed by falcons.

Interviewer: What are your hobbies?

Griffyn: When I’m not practicing archery I’m generally hanging out with Arden Alameda – one of the two cavalry captains – or reading, or hawking. Emric got into falconry after retiring and I’ve picked up quite a bit from him.

Interviewer: We’re nearing the end. Which of these is most important to you: Kindness, intelligence, or bravery?

Griffyn: Bravery, but they’re all close.

Interviewer: And honesty or selflessness?

Griffyn: Selflessness, but that’s another tough one.

Interviewer: What’s something you can’t leave home without?

Griffyn: The compass locket my sister gave me. She’s seven years younger than me, and for my eleventh birthday she very carefully picked it out. I guess she’d seen my dad put a lock of my mom’s hair in his watch, because she cut her own hair to put it into the locket. *laughs* I’ve kept the locket with me ever since.

Interviewer: What’s her name?

Griffyn: Edlyn. *smiles*

Interviewer: That’s beautiful. *smiles and glances at the question sheet* Well, that’s everything. *looks back up at Griffyn* Thank you for your time.

Griffyn: My pleasure. *shakes the interviewer’s hand before leaving*

Camp NaNo Prep: The Characters

“Characters are the lifeblood of any good book.” – Craig Hart

I whole-heartedly agree with this quote (no pun intended), as both a reader and a writer. As a reader, if the characters don’t engage me I’m not likely to enjoy the book. As a writer, if the characters aren’t working then the story doesn’t work. This means that characters are perhaps the most important aspect of a book, and as writers we need to put a lot of attention into them. As I mentioned in my previous prep post, I’m a firm believer in the value of developing almost every character in a book as deeply as possible, and the advice I share below is applicable to any character in your story, be they the protagonist, the antagonist, or a side character.

Give your character a goal

Every character in your story who has any significance should have a driving goal. Knowing your characters’ goals can help you figure out conflict between them as their goals conflict or as their goals align but the characters themselves don’t like each other or as they do something they’d rather not because it’s the best way to achieve their goal. Their goal should be big enough for them to consider doing just about anything to achieve it. (Which is not to say that they should compromise on their values, but the goal should be powerful enough for them to struggle with the temptation of compromising to achieve it.) On the flip side, it can also be a motivation for them to be better. Nissa from The Shadow Raven wants to prove to her guardian that she can do just fine without him (or anyone else) and she wants to prove that she’s better than anyone else, which leads to her making a lot of poor choices throughout the book (some of which undermine her beliefs without her realizing). Detren wants to be as good a king as his father was, which both leads to him hiding from his responsibility when he feels incapable and also urges him to be better later on and do what his father would have done.

Give your character a motivation

Generally a character’s motivation for their goal is something that comes from their past (as I’ve written about before), and it should be a powerful driving memory or fear or desire that makes their goal as strong as it is. Nissa wants to prove that she’s fine on her own because she’s been rejected by far too many people and wants to prove to herself as much as anyone else that that doesn’t bother her. Detren wants to be as good a king as his father because he wants to make his father proud and also fears letting down the people of Roenor. Characters could want to redeem themselves from mistakes they’ve made in the past (like Catessa from The Last Assassin) or fear letting people down (like Detren, or Coraline from The King’s Paladin) or want to prove they’re better than someone (perhaps a historical figure, or perhaps a rival as in the case of Jerod from The King’s Paladin). Make sure the motivation has an anchor.

Give your character flaws

No one wants to read about a perfect character. Near-perfect, maybe, but not perfect. Everyone has flaws, some bigger than others, and readers can’t relate to perfectly flawless characters. Nissa’s main flaw is her pride, followed by her vanity. Detren’s is his fear of being inadequate, which drives him to hide from his responsibilities when they become too overwhelming.

Your character’s flaw should tie in with their goal. For instance, Nissa’s pride keeps her plugging away at her goal and causes her to succumb to it, and Detren’s causes him to buckle when confronted with his goal to begin with. Your character’s flaw should be something that inclines them to compromise to reach their goal, or which keeps them from completing their goal, which they’ll have to overcome at some point in order to reach their goal or which may teach them over time that they don’t really want what they thought they wanted. Nissa’s goal is to prove that she doesn’t need anyone in order to hide the fact – even from herself – that she deeply craves connection, and the steps she takes to achieve her original goal eventually lead her down a road that shows her she’s been running this whole time from what she really wants.

Your character’s flaws, motivations, and goals should all be interconnected for them to be the most impactful.

This is just the bare bones of your character, and there’s a lot more that should be developed, but beginning with these three will send you well on your way to having a deeply developed character.

What’s your favorite thing about creating characters? What area is the hardest for you to develop?

Want more character development resources? Check out my round-up here!

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The Language of Worlds Link-Up #1

My snippet for today wasn’t going to work (turns out I know the random story even worse than I realized. That’s going to need to be fixed), but I saw this link-up yesterday from a couple of bloggers I follow and decided it would be fun to join in. (Snippet Sunday will be back next week, I promise.) The image above links to the original post, where you can also join in if you’d like. :)

Without further ado, here are the questions.

1. Introduce your character and her story!

Nissa is a thief from Roenor who’s really unfamiliar with any sort of affection or real love, so when she meets Prince Detren and he actually cares about her she’s totally lost and ends up pushing him away rather than letting him love her like a friend is supposed to. Her whole arc is her trying to prove that she doesn’t need anyone and then realizing she actually does and finally coming to her senses.

2. What does she look for in a friend? Consciously or subconsciously?

This is actually a tricky one to answer for her. Because she doesn’t want to look for friends, and she kind of hates friends who are actually good friends because she hates not knowing how love works, so I guess… she kind of looks for friends who will do what she expects and leave her after a while, and friends who distract her from her lack of relationship knowledge by just doing thrill-seeking-type stuff with her rather than just hanging out. Like… climbing clock towers and nearly falling off.

3. If she could study any foreign language, what would it be?

And here we come to a massive flaw in my worldbuilding for this world… there are no language barriers. Well… technically the elves have their own language and the Morressir have a variation on elvish, but they don’t really show up much and overall everyone speaks “common.” And Nissa’s pretty content with that. XP

4. Which person from the Bible would she be besties with? Why?

Um… I don’t know. No one coming to mind is really anyone I can see her becoming friends with. Maybe Jonah? Since he’s running from things the same way she is?

5. If she were to visit you for a week, what would you do together?

This would be a very, very bad idea. A very bad idea. I don’t have the stress tolerance at this point to deal with her being stubborn and rebellious and if I met her I’d try to talk sense into her and things would just end very badly. (Also she’d try to convince me to do something really dangerous and I might actually say yes depending on the exact danger level. Like, if she wanted me to climb onto the roof with her I probably would because I’ve always been curious what the view is like from up there, and our roof is fairly flat. But she’d also probably try to convince me to do much dumber stuff and overall this would just not go well at all.)

6. What is her ideal future?

Consciously or subconsciously? Consciously she’d like to get pretty high up the chain of command with The Dragons (a criminal organization in Roenor) so she’s important and doesn’t need anyone ever again, but subconsciously she’d really like to be friends with Detren again and repair that relationship and have things go back to the way they were before {SPOILERS}.

7. If she were to spend a weekend alone, what sort of pastimes would she pursue?

Dangerous stunts. She’d actually get really lonely on a weekend alone, because she’s actually really extroverted, so she’d kind of go crazy after a while and do more and more dangerous stuff. I don’t think she’d get herself killed, but there’s no guarantee she wouldn’t come back severely injured. (And then annoyed that she can’t do anything with her injury.)

8. If you could send your character a care package, what would be in it?

I’m hopping on the bandwagon and starting with a Bible, because she really needs one of those. Also coffee, shiny jewelry, and a letter trying to convince her to start hanging out with Detren again.

9. Is there a song that describes your character’s journey?

*shoves five-hour-long story playlist into a corner and looks it over* Just hers? I feel like New Romantics by Taylor Swift describes her well, but I don’t know if it really describes her journey. Maybe Get It Right by Diplo.

10. What is your character’s place in the story (hero, antihero, villain, sidekick, etc.)?

Antihero, I believe.