Rachel Aaron's Blog, page 23
September 30, 2013
Almost there!
Just a note to say I haven't died or forgotten about this blog. My blogging time has been taken up by off site promo for my new SciFi book FORTUNE'S PAWN which, by the way, releases Nov. 5!
I'm also putting the finishing touches on a secret project I think you guys are going to loooove. I know I'm super excited about it! So bear with me and I'll make it worth the wait, honest! Won't be too much longer.
love and baby sloths,
Rachel
I'm also putting the finishing touches on a secret project I think you guys are going to loooove. I know I'm super excited about it! So bear with me and I'll make it worth the wait, honest! Won't be too much longer.
love and baby sloths,
Rachel
September 12, 2013
How to Write the Hard Stuff
First up, I wanted to share with you a preview snippet from some promotional writing I'm doing for Fortune's Pawn. It's a bit out of context, but I'm so proud of this paragraph I think I might burst.
Okay, now that I'm done tooting my own horn (for now, at least), I want to talk about something much more serious. It's no secret that I'm a huge fan of SFF book review blog The Book Smugglers. I don't always agree with their reviews (because who always agrees with anyone?), but I absolutely love the way they approach genre fiction, a class of literature that often skates past critical scrutiny on the grounds that it's "escapism" and therefore below reproach, with the sort of serious analysis good writing deserves and bad writing needs. I especially love the way they call bullshit on sexism, racism, and privilege whenever they see it, and their take downs are some of my favorite reading on the internet.
But while Reader Rachel eats this stuff up, Writer Rachel gets a little nervous. This sort of criticism (which is by no means limited to The Book Smugglers. There's a whole host of fantastic review blogs out there putting genre books through the wringer and being entertaining and informative while they do it) sets a very high bar for thinking about my own choices in a novel--how I represent gender, is my cast all white, am I falling into any blind zones of stereotype, etc.
Now make no mistake, this sort of thinking is a Very Good Thing. Choices in novels should be carefully considered, that's what makes you a good writer instead of a thoughtless hack churning out unexamined drek. But at the same time, it's easy to overthink yourself into a panic, especially if your book is about tough topics like racism, sexual violence, addiction, or any of the other darker parts of the current human condition. You want to tell your story in an impactful, hard hitting way, but you (or, at least, I) don't want to get called out for being an insensitive jerk when that's not what you meant at all.
So how do you do it? How do you safely write about the hard stuff without softening it up? Well, the easiest path is just to stay away from controversial topics. No one can call you out for handling rape badly if you don't write it, right? And if you never write a character of a race, gender, sexual orientation, or socioeconomic background other than your own, you're safe on that score, too. We're also missing the point.
The truth is, it's pretty much impossible to write anything that matters safely. Art, even the stuff produced purely entertainment purposes, is meant to push boundaries. If it doesn't, it's only reinforcing the same old status quo, which is a problem in and of itself. But just because it's pretty much impossible not to step on toes when you're herding sacred cows doesn't mean we should just let them be. These are powerful stories, and they need to be told. The key, though, is to always be sure to allow these topics the room and depth they deserve within your narrative, and, most important of all, to be sure you actually know what you're trying to say and feel proud standing behind it.
That fact that you're even considering how to write hard things the right way already puts you miles above the really problematic authors (you know the sort), but it can still be a complicated minefield, and one I was especially afraid of entering. It took me years to gain the courage as a writer to start tackling the harder topics, but caution can be rewarding, and I think I've worked some good rules of engagement over the years to make sure I don't accidentally come off looking like a jerk. And since this wouldn't be a Rachel Aaron writing post without a list, here they are!
1. Don't be a jerk.
This is kind of obvious, but considering some of the author reactions I've seen, it clearly needs to be said. If you are an actual jerk with jerky opinions who writes jerky jerk work, then all the writing tips in the universe won't stop readers and reviewers from calling you out for it. That's the price of jerkdom; not being liked or taken seriously. This isn't to say that you can't be a mega-bestselling jerk, but if you insist on putting offensive material in your books, then you can't get mad when people get offended. You will get mad, of course, because you're a jerk, but you have no ground to stand on. Not that you'll see that.
Fortunately, you, my lovely reader, are not actually a jerk, and so this point is not for you. Unless, of course, you are a jerk, in which case I'm very glad to have made you aware of your jerkitude. Acknowledging you have a problem is the first step toward recovery.
Caveat: this isn't to say you can't include characters who are jerks. Villains are the obvious example, but side characters and even protagonists can be homophobic, sexist, entitled, racist assholes and still be good characters. The key here, though, is to make sure the narrative calls these people out on their awful opinions and behavior. Have another character say something, or have appropriately bad things happen to them as a result of their biases (Woman Meteorologist, "Don't go out there! It's acid monsoon season!" Jerk, "Pah, what do women know about weather?" *Jerk goes out door, is melted by acid monsoon* and SCENE.)
That example's a little extreme, but you get the idea. The key here is that you're using the narrative to separate a jerk character from the story as a whole. You may not be a racist, but if you put a racist character who says racist things in your book and then allow those ideas to go unchallenged, readers have no reason not to think that's what you actually believe. I'm not saying that every character who's not a well-adjusted saint has to get melted under an acid monsoon, but there's got to be something that lets your reader know that this character's bigoted opinions are not reflective of your own. Unless, of course, they are. In which case, see point one.
2. If you're going to tackle a big idea, make sure you give yourself the room to do it properly.
Say you have a character in your book who is raped. That's heavy stuff. Maybe it happened a long time ago, or maybe it happens during the course of the plot. Wherever or whenever the rape occurs, though, it changed that character enormously, and it's not the sort of thing you can gloss over or hand wave away. Rape is not character development, it's a real and horrible tragedy that 17% of your white female readers, 18% of your black or latina female readers, and 34% of your Native American/Alaskan female readers have personally suffered.
Think about that for a second. That is some heavy heavy ordinance, and it needs to be handled as such. I'm not at all saying that a raped woman's character needs to be defined by rape (god, PLEASE don't do that), but at the same time, it's not something you can ignore, especially since there are readers (myself among them) who often just won't read books with rape in them because it is so upsetting and it's often handled so so badly.
Does this mean rape is a verboten topic? Absolutely not. But it's also not the sort of thing you can just throw in because you want something bad to happen. You can't have a character get raped and then be fine in the next scene. You can't have a character rape another character and then patch everything back together with an apology and a thirty second "You know what I learned today" life lesson. You can't have a character condone or ignore a rape and then expect us to like them without a serious "oh God, how could I have been so wrong!" character redemption arc. Rape is the nuclear weapon of things that can happen to characters, and if you're going to put it in your story, you have to be ready to handle the fallout with the respect and care that it deserves.
Rape is just one example. There are plenty of horrible, horrible things that people do to other people, and if your book is going to be widely read, chances are that parts of your audience have suffered those humiliations and pains first hand. So if you're going to tackle a hard topic, don't insult your readers, the people who make your dream of writing possible, by reducing their tragedies to a plot point. Instead, give yourself the narrative space to explore the implications and consequences of serious issues properly. You don't have to pull your punches, in fact, I hope you don't, but you do have to think long and hard about where they land, and, more importantly, whom you're knocking out.
3. Don't make the victim the butt of the joke.
Man, this is getting heavy! Let's lighten it up. Let's say for a second that you're like me, and you like to write fun, action packed books, but you still want to include issues like racism and sexism because they're important and make for cracking good stories. How do you reconcile serious heavy matter with a lighthearted story? Is it even possible to joke about this sort of stuff?
This is a pretty loaded topic, but I'm a firm believer than joking about the hard stuff is actually the best way to start breaking it down into something we can actually deal with. The key (as always) is that you have to be aware of what your joke is doing. Even a joke about sexual assault can be funny, provided you never ever ever make the victim the butt of the joke.
For example, comedian Louis CK has a very famous clip about how there's no greater threat to women than men.
In this bit, he talks about how a woman agreeing to go on a date with an unknown man is an incredibly courageous act, and also insane, because men are the greatest cause of injury and suffering for women. “If you’re a guy, imagine you could only date a half-bear-half-lion," he says. "‘Oh, I hope this one’s nice! I hope he doesn't do what he’s going to do.’”
At its heart, this is a joke about rape. Yet unlike other, awful, white-hot rage inducing rape jokes, this one actually works, because the victim is not the one being made fun of. We are not laughing at the person who was raped, or rape itself, or even the rapist. We're laughing at how screwed up our society is where this sort of thing is still allowed to happen.
By pointing the joke in that direction, Louis CK gently leads his audience to consider "hey, that is screwed up." And then maybe they'll start thinking about it, and maybe the next time they see something questionable happening, they'll say something, or do something they wouldn't have done if they hadn't heard that joke.
That's the power of making fun of awful things, it tricks people into thinking in ways they're not used to, or don't want to. That's the power of fiction, too, but as Uncle Ben says, with great power comes great responsibility. This sort of humor takes a lot of careful thought and consideration, and even then, humor is subjective. What I find funny, other people may find in horrible taste, that's just how it goes. But if you think about what you do before you do it and always take the time to consider "whom am I really making fun of here?" you can find some really new and creative ways to tackle difficult issues in a non-depressing fashion, and that's always a good thing.
So that's my post. I hope my box of tricks helps you tackle your own stories. I'm always interested to hear how you've tackled this sort of thing in your own writing, so leave a comment below if you care to. Also feel free to leave comments telling me how you disagree. I'm not quite as happy to get those, but they are important none the less.
As always, thanks for reading, and happy writing!
- Rachel
"I'd actually say that the most pernicious aspect of sexism in Science Fiction isn't that there aren't enough of us [women], but how often the women who are here and have made huge contributions to the genre get ignored and passed over in favor of their male contemporaries. This vacuum of recognition isn't just unfair and dumb (seriously, why would you want to ignore Ursula LeGuin? That's like ignoring cake), it leaves every new generation of women writers feeling like lonely pioneers when we're really just the latest addition to a long, wondrous, and tragically undervalued cannon of female authored Science Fiction."Ahhhhhhhhh.
Okay, now that I'm done tooting my own horn (for now, at least), I want to talk about something much more serious. It's no secret that I'm a huge fan of SFF book review blog The Book Smugglers. I don't always agree with their reviews (because who always agrees with anyone?), but I absolutely love the way they approach genre fiction, a class of literature that often skates past critical scrutiny on the grounds that it's "escapism" and therefore below reproach, with the sort of serious analysis good writing deserves and bad writing needs. I especially love the way they call bullshit on sexism, racism, and privilege whenever they see it, and their take downs are some of my favorite reading on the internet.
But while Reader Rachel eats this stuff up, Writer Rachel gets a little nervous. This sort of criticism (which is by no means limited to The Book Smugglers. There's a whole host of fantastic review blogs out there putting genre books through the wringer and being entertaining and informative while they do it) sets a very high bar for thinking about my own choices in a novel--how I represent gender, is my cast all white, am I falling into any blind zones of stereotype, etc.
Now make no mistake, this sort of thinking is a Very Good Thing. Choices in novels should be carefully considered, that's what makes you a good writer instead of a thoughtless hack churning out unexamined drek. But at the same time, it's easy to overthink yourself into a panic, especially if your book is about tough topics like racism, sexual violence, addiction, or any of the other darker parts of the current human condition. You want to tell your story in an impactful, hard hitting way, but you (or, at least, I) don't want to get called out for being an insensitive jerk when that's not what you meant at all.
So how do you do it? How do you safely write about the hard stuff without softening it up? Well, the easiest path is just to stay away from controversial topics. No one can call you out for handling rape badly if you don't write it, right? And if you never write a character of a race, gender, sexual orientation, or socioeconomic background other than your own, you're safe on that score, too. We're also missing the point.
The truth is, it's pretty much impossible to write anything that matters safely. Art, even the stuff produced purely entertainment purposes, is meant to push boundaries. If it doesn't, it's only reinforcing the same old status quo, which is a problem in and of itself. But just because it's pretty much impossible not to step on toes when you're herding sacred cows doesn't mean we should just let them be. These are powerful stories, and they need to be told. The key, though, is to always be sure to allow these topics the room and depth they deserve within your narrative, and, most important of all, to be sure you actually know what you're trying to say and feel proud standing behind it.
That fact that you're even considering how to write hard things the right way already puts you miles above the really problematic authors (you know the sort), but it can still be a complicated minefield, and one I was especially afraid of entering. It took me years to gain the courage as a writer to start tackling the harder topics, but caution can be rewarding, and I think I've worked some good rules of engagement over the years to make sure I don't accidentally come off looking like a jerk. And since this wouldn't be a Rachel Aaron writing post without a list, here they are!
1. Don't be a jerk.
This is kind of obvious, but considering some of the author reactions I've seen, it clearly needs to be said. If you are an actual jerk with jerky opinions who writes jerky jerk work, then all the writing tips in the universe won't stop readers and reviewers from calling you out for it. That's the price of jerkdom; not being liked or taken seriously. This isn't to say that you can't be a mega-bestselling jerk, but if you insist on putting offensive material in your books, then you can't get mad when people get offended. You will get mad, of course, because you're a jerk, but you have no ground to stand on. Not that you'll see that.
Fortunately, you, my lovely reader, are not actually a jerk, and so this point is not for you. Unless, of course, you are a jerk, in which case I'm very glad to have made you aware of your jerkitude. Acknowledging you have a problem is the first step toward recovery.
Caveat: this isn't to say you can't include characters who are jerks. Villains are the obvious example, but side characters and even protagonists can be homophobic, sexist, entitled, racist assholes and still be good characters. The key here, though, is to make sure the narrative calls these people out on their awful opinions and behavior. Have another character say something, or have appropriately bad things happen to them as a result of their biases (Woman Meteorologist, "Don't go out there! It's acid monsoon season!" Jerk, "Pah, what do women know about weather?" *Jerk goes out door, is melted by acid monsoon* and SCENE.)
That example's a little extreme, but you get the idea. The key here is that you're using the narrative to separate a jerk character from the story as a whole. You may not be a racist, but if you put a racist character who says racist things in your book and then allow those ideas to go unchallenged, readers have no reason not to think that's what you actually believe. I'm not saying that every character who's not a well-adjusted saint has to get melted under an acid monsoon, but there's got to be something that lets your reader know that this character's bigoted opinions are not reflective of your own. Unless, of course, they are. In which case, see point one.
2. If you're going to tackle a big idea, make sure you give yourself the room to do it properly.
Say you have a character in your book who is raped. That's heavy stuff. Maybe it happened a long time ago, or maybe it happens during the course of the plot. Wherever or whenever the rape occurs, though, it changed that character enormously, and it's not the sort of thing you can gloss over or hand wave away. Rape is not character development, it's a real and horrible tragedy that 17% of your white female readers, 18% of your black or latina female readers, and 34% of your Native American/Alaskan female readers have personally suffered.
Think about that for a second. That is some heavy heavy ordinance, and it needs to be handled as such. I'm not at all saying that a raped woman's character needs to be defined by rape (god, PLEASE don't do that), but at the same time, it's not something you can ignore, especially since there are readers (myself among them) who often just won't read books with rape in them because it is so upsetting and it's often handled so so badly.
Does this mean rape is a verboten topic? Absolutely not. But it's also not the sort of thing you can just throw in because you want something bad to happen. You can't have a character get raped and then be fine in the next scene. You can't have a character rape another character and then patch everything back together with an apology and a thirty second "You know what I learned today" life lesson. You can't have a character condone or ignore a rape and then expect us to like them without a serious "oh God, how could I have been so wrong!" character redemption arc. Rape is the nuclear weapon of things that can happen to characters, and if you're going to put it in your story, you have to be ready to handle the fallout with the respect and care that it deserves.
Rape is just one example. There are plenty of horrible, horrible things that people do to other people, and if your book is going to be widely read, chances are that parts of your audience have suffered those humiliations and pains first hand. So if you're going to tackle a hard topic, don't insult your readers, the people who make your dream of writing possible, by reducing their tragedies to a plot point. Instead, give yourself the narrative space to explore the implications and consequences of serious issues properly. You don't have to pull your punches, in fact, I hope you don't, but you do have to think long and hard about where they land, and, more importantly, whom you're knocking out.
3. Don't make the victim the butt of the joke.
Man, this is getting heavy! Let's lighten it up. Let's say for a second that you're like me, and you like to write fun, action packed books, but you still want to include issues like racism and sexism because they're important and make for cracking good stories. How do you reconcile serious heavy matter with a lighthearted story? Is it even possible to joke about this sort of stuff?
This is a pretty loaded topic, but I'm a firm believer than joking about the hard stuff is actually the best way to start breaking it down into something we can actually deal with. The key (as always) is that you have to be aware of what your joke is doing. Even a joke about sexual assault can be funny, provided you never ever ever make the victim the butt of the joke.
For example, comedian Louis CK has a very famous clip about how there's no greater threat to women than men.
In this bit, he talks about how a woman agreeing to go on a date with an unknown man is an incredibly courageous act, and also insane, because men are the greatest cause of injury and suffering for women. “If you’re a guy, imagine you could only date a half-bear-half-lion," he says. "‘Oh, I hope this one’s nice! I hope he doesn't do what he’s going to do.’”
At its heart, this is a joke about rape. Yet unlike other, awful, white-hot rage inducing rape jokes, this one actually works, because the victim is not the one being made fun of. We are not laughing at the person who was raped, or rape itself, or even the rapist. We're laughing at how screwed up our society is where this sort of thing is still allowed to happen.
By pointing the joke in that direction, Louis CK gently leads his audience to consider "hey, that is screwed up." And then maybe they'll start thinking about it, and maybe the next time they see something questionable happening, they'll say something, or do something they wouldn't have done if they hadn't heard that joke.
That's the power of making fun of awful things, it tricks people into thinking in ways they're not used to, or don't want to. That's the power of fiction, too, but as Uncle Ben says, with great power comes great responsibility. This sort of humor takes a lot of careful thought and consideration, and even then, humor is subjective. What I find funny, other people may find in horrible taste, that's just how it goes. But if you think about what you do before you do it and always take the time to consider "whom am I really making fun of here?" you can find some really new and creative ways to tackle difficult issues in a non-depressing fashion, and that's always a good thing.
So that's my post. I hope my box of tricks helps you tackle your own stories. I'm always interested to hear how you've tackled this sort of thing in your own writing, so leave a comment below if you care to. Also feel free to leave comments telling me how you disagree. I'm not quite as happy to get those, but they are important none the less.
As always, thanks for reading, and happy writing!
- Rachel
August 30, 2013
DragonCon and 2k to 10k gets an update!
Hello everyone! So, as you might know, DragonCon is happening this weekend in Atlanta. (Some of you might actually even be there already, in fact.)
Let's hope these guys show up again!
Because I'm tired of getting rejected by DragonCon's guest committee (seriously, guys. Two published series, a popular self-pub writing book, tens of thousands of books sold all over the world, WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT FROM ME? *looks at accepted guest list* Oh.)
Ahem. Long story short, I will not be attending DragonCon in my official capacity this year. HOWEVER! I will be at the con in Saturday just as myself (can't stop the signal, Mal!). So if you are at the con on Saturday and you want to come hang out with me and talk writing or Eli or whatever (or get anything signed), keep an eye on my Twitter feed. I'll be posting updates on my location all day. Hopefully we can get together and have some good times!
In other good news, I am very happy to announce that a new version of my fast writing book, 2k to 10k, is now available! To be honest, I never expected the book to do as well as it has, and I did not invest the time to do due diligence in my editing. Well, 177 reviews later, I've learned my lesson. This newly updated version has been professionally edited and reformatted. I won't say it's completely typo free because that's just tempting fate, but I will say it is much, much better than it was.
There is no substantially new content, but I did also reword several sections on publishing to reflect the growing importance and viability of self pub, so there's that. If you already bought the book, simply update your Kindle and the new version should download automatically. If you were thinking of buying the book and didn't because you didn't want to waste your dollar on typos, I hope you'll give this new, polished version a try.
Thank you all for waiting so long, and I'm sorry I didn't do this before I published in the first place. I won't be making this mistake again.
That's about it! Enjoy the pretty new version of 2k to 10k and I hope to see some of you at DragonCon! Everyone else, have an awesome weekend!
- R
Let's hope these guys show up again!
Because I'm tired of getting rejected by DragonCon's guest committee (seriously, guys. Two published series, a popular self-pub writing book, tens of thousands of books sold all over the world, WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT FROM ME? *looks at accepted guest list* Oh.)
Ahem. Long story short, I will not be attending DragonCon in my official capacity this year. HOWEVER! I will be at the con in Saturday just as myself (can't stop the signal, Mal!). So if you are at the con on Saturday and you want to come hang out with me and talk writing or Eli or whatever (or get anything signed), keep an eye on my Twitter feed. I'll be posting updates on my location all day. Hopefully we can get together and have some good times!
In other good news, I am very happy to announce that a new version of my fast writing book, 2k to 10k, is now available! To be honest, I never expected the book to do as well as it has, and I did not invest the time to do due diligence in my editing. Well, 177 reviews later, I've learned my lesson. This newly updated version has been professionally edited and reformatted. I won't say it's completely typo free because that's just tempting fate, but I will say it is much, much better than it was.
There is no substantially new content, but I did also reword several sections on publishing to reflect the growing importance and viability of self pub, so there's that. If you already bought the book, simply update your Kindle and the new version should download automatically. If you were thinking of buying the book and didn't because you didn't want to waste your dollar on typos, I hope you'll give this new, polished version a try.
Thank you all for waiting so long, and I'm sorry I didn't do this before I published in the first place. I won't be making this mistake again.
That's about it! Enjoy the pretty new version of 2k to 10k and I hope to see some of you at DragonCon! Everyone else, have an awesome weekend!
- R
August 22, 2013
Don't Stomp on My Cake!
Okay, so this is a true story about me and my writing. Namely, it's about me screwing up, hurting myself and my work, and then figuring out what steps to take so I don't do it again. As with every post in this blog, I'm posting it here in the hopes that you will spot the warning signs faster than I did and act more wisely. SPOILER: There are no actual cakes in this post. The cake is a metaphor.
THE CAKE IS A METAPHOR!
So you might recall back in the day I wrote a blog post about dramatically increasing my daily word output through planning and observation (side note: this is probably what will be inscribed on my tombstone. "Here lies Rachel Aaron, That 2k to 10k Lady."). What I failed to mention in that original post, however, was all the time I spend not writing. I'm not talking about writer's block or other creative lapses. I mean legit "I have real life crap to deal with and can't physically sit down to type" not writing.
Now, for the most part, this sort of interruption is natural and unavoidable, even healthy (can't write all the time). My problem came with how I reacted to said interruption.
As you probably noticed from the multiple time tracking spread sheets I've posted over the years, I tend to approach my work from a "best case scenario" angle. I'm the sort of person who will suffer a minor interruption in my work flow, and then, if I don't think I can return to an optimal environment, I will rapidly flip in to screw-it mode. This tendency can range from minor ("I finished a chapter at 4:30 and I have to stop writing at 5... screw it, let's just quit here and play Minecraft!") to enormous ("I spent the morning at the doctor and now I'm tired, I've lost half my day, and I have to start a new chapter. Screw it, let's take the afternoon off and play Minecraft!"), and it's lost me more time than I care to think about.
This sort of behavior drives me crazy. I can't seem to make myself be good, even when I know full well what I'm doing and what it's costing me. It's not that I'm lazy (no one who actually gets through a book can ever be considered lazy), but every now and then I'll just hit this wall, especially if my non-writing life gets unusually stressful. And once I'm off a little bit--a few days behind where I want to be, then a week, then a month--it gets harder and harder to push ahead and easier and easier to say screw it, until finally there's no "it" left.
I'm much better about this now than I used to be earlier in my career, but this summer, I had a serious lapse. A combination of family trips, vacations, and various other unavoidable interruptions poked my schedule so full of holes there was barely any time left. Combine this with the fact that I was between books with no solid story line to pull me along and I haven't gotten crap done since June.
Naturally, of course, I feel awful about this. Nothing makes me feel more like a failure than looking at a total word count that's off from it's goal by a power of ten. And I'm a full time writer! The whole point of quitting my job was so that shit like this wouldn't happen. It's like I worked so hard making this beautiful cake of a life, and then the real world came in and stomped all over it.
Now, normally, this is the part of the blog post where I'd present my genius solution to the problem. "You must protect your writing time!" I'd say, or "Plot out your lost time on bell curve and science will show you the solution!" Or I could go with the tried and true writer axiom, "Word harder, slacker! Stop letting life kick you around like wuss and just write!"
The truth is, though, I don't have a solution. Life is messy. No matter how many walls I build or steps I take or plans I enact, shit still gets through to stomp on my cake. For someone as obsessed with optimal numbers as myself, that's a bitter pill to swallow. Looking back, there are definitely places where I could have worked harder or used my time more efficiently, but I can also see why I didn't...and I'm slowing starting to understand that that's okay.
I talk a lot about writing skills on this blog--plotting, tension, character building, etc.--but perhaps the most difficult writing skill of all to master (at least for me) is the ability to accept failure without turning it back on myself. This is amazingly important, because writing is absolutely full of failure. It comes in all sizes, shapes, and flavors of humiliation, and since writing is a solo endeavor, it's all too easy to pin the blame squarely on myself, even if the failure is something I had absolutely no control over. Add in the fact that writing pays the bills at my house, and we're talking lethal levels of guilt.
For the longest time, I thought this guilt was just part and parcel of the writing gig, a side effect of responsibility. Recently, though, I've started to realize there's nothing responsible (or noble, or laudable) about tearing myself down.
As much as I might like to pretend otherwise, writers are not super beings. We're not robots either, tuning ourselves to operate at maximum output efficiency at all times. We're just human, and humans fall down. We mess things up and get tired and make stupid mistakes and say screw it. When you're handling such potent materials as Great Dreams of Being a Writer, it's all too easy to get caught up in the goal, and (for me at least) to hate and guilt yourself over every fumbled step and missed opportunity. It is very easy, in short, to become a guilt fueled writer. But while guilt works in the short term, it's a treacherous fuel source, and enough of it can poison the stream of creativity and shut down your writing forever.
The sad fact is there's no way to completely protect your cake from getting stomped on. You can't will or guilt or threaten yourself into being an infallible super writer anymore than you can will or guilt or threaten everyone into loving your books. That said, just because your writing life cake has a big boot mark in it doesn't mean it's destined for the trash.
Authorship, storytelling, and creativity are life long endeavors; journeys of thousands of miles and multiple peaks and valleys. While we're on the trail, it can be very hard to take our eyes off the immediate mud holes and backtracking. But if we take a breath and look up, we'll see that these problems, however huge, are dwarfed by the enormous, endless, breathtakingly beautiful expanse that is the writing life. And while a change in perspective won't do anything to fix the hole you're in, it can and will make that hole look smaller, and it's amazing how much that helps you find your way out.
I'm still working on that solution for not letting life's unavoidable mishaps take such huge chunks out my writing schedule (current plan: if I decide not to write during work hours, I must do some kind of planning or writing related activity instead. So far, it's going more or less okay.), but I am slowly learning to accept my own mess ups with patience and understanding rather than guilt. That said, I've got a long way to go. I wasted years, years, guilting myself over every little thing and making myself feel terrible for missing what, I eventually realized, was an impossible goal. I can't be a perfectly optimized writer. It's just not going to happen. I can, however, be a reasonably good writer most of the time, and that is perfectly acceptable.
So here is the "learn from my fail" moment of this post: please, please, whatever you do, don't waste your time making yourself unhappy for years like I did. Polish that vital writing career skill of accepting failure and disappointment with compassion and understanding, and don't beat yourself up because you're not the kind of writer you think you should be, or someone else told you to be. Always remember that we're in this for the long game, not the short sprint--the career, not the novel. Anything else is just a form of self sabotage.
I'm going to wrap up here because I'm getting insufferably cheesy, but I really can not stress how much unnecessary pain and teeth gnashing I've put myself through over all this, and the idea of someone else going through all that pointless suffering for no good reason turns my stomach. So if you're mad at yourself and your writing, if you're frustrated with your lack of progress or characters or whatever has you blocked, know that you are not alone. You are, in fact, the opposite of alone. We have all been there, and while we all deal with it differently, I am going to go out on the limb and say that I feel you, and it's okay.
A few missed days or weeks or months of writing might feel like an epic failure, but in the long scheme of things it's just a blip. A long list of rejections definitely feels like the end of the world, but one story chalked up to a learning experience is just a tick on the long list of books you have yet to write. The only thing that really matters is that you get back in the saddle and keep writing, because the only thing on this Earth that can make you stop writing is you.
Life already stomps on your cake enough. Don't help it along by stomping down yourself. Focus on your Stories instead. Life's much more fun that way.
Happy writing!
- Rachel
THE CAKE IS A METAPHOR!So you might recall back in the day I wrote a blog post about dramatically increasing my daily word output through planning and observation (side note: this is probably what will be inscribed on my tombstone. "Here lies Rachel Aaron, That 2k to 10k Lady."). What I failed to mention in that original post, however, was all the time I spend not writing. I'm not talking about writer's block or other creative lapses. I mean legit "I have real life crap to deal with and can't physically sit down to type" not writing.
Now, for the most part, this sort of interruption is natural and unavoidable, even healthy (can't write all the time). My problem came with how I reacted to said interruption.
As you probably noticed from the multiple time tracking spread sheets I've posted over the years, I tend to approach my work from a "best case scenario" angle. I'm the sort of person who will suffer a minor interruption in my work flow, and then, if I don't think I can return to an optimal environment, I will rapidly flip in to screw-it mode. This tendency can range from minor ("I finished a chapter at 4:30 and I have to stop writing at 5... screw it, let's just quit here and play Minecraft!") to enormous ("I spent the morning at the doctor and now I'm tired, I've lost half my day, and I have to start a new chapter. Screw it, let's take the afternoon off and play Minecraft!"), and it's lost me more time than I care to think about.
This sort of behavior drives me crazy. I can't seem to make myself be good, even when I know full well what I'm doing and what it's costing me. It's not that I'm lazy (no one who actually gets through a book can ever be considered lazy), but every now and then I'll just hit this wall, especially if my non-writing life gets unusually stressful. And once I'm off a little bit--a few days behind where I want to be, then a week, then a month--it gets harder and harder to push ahead and easier and easier to say screw it, until finally there's no "it" left.
I'm much better about this now than I used to be earlier in my career, but this summer, I had a serious lapse. A combination of family trips, vacations, and various other unavoidable interruptions poked my schedule so full of holes there was barely any time left. Combine this with the fact that I was between books with no solid story line to pull me along and I haven't gotten crap done since June.
Naturally, of course, I feel awful about this. Nothing makes me feel more like a failure than looking at a total word count that's off from it's goal by a power of ten. And I'm a full time writer! The whole point of quitting my job was so that shit like this wouldn't happen. It's like I worked so hard making this beautiful cake of a life, and then the real world came in and stomped all over it.
Now, normally, this is the part of the blog post where I'd present my genius solution to the problem. "You must protect your writing time!" I'd say, or "Plot out your lost time on bell curve and science will show you the solution!" Or I could go with the tried and true writer axiom, "Word harder, slacker! Stop letting life kick you around like wuss and just write!"
The truth is, though, I don't have a solution. Life is messy. No matter how many walls I build or steps I take or plans I enact, shit still gets through to stomp on my cake. For someone as obsessed with optimal numbers as myself, that's a bitter pill to swallow. Looking back, there are definitely places where I could have worked harder or used my time more efficiently, but I can also see why I didn't...and I'm slowing starting to understand that that's okay.
I talk a lot about writing skills on this blog--plotting, tension, character building, etc.--but perhaps the most difficult writing skill of all to master (at least for me) is the ability to accept failure without turning it back on myself. This is amazingly important, because writing is absolutely full of failure. It comes in all sizes, shapes, and flavors of humiliation, and since writing is a solo endeavor, it's all too easy to pin the blame squarely on myself, even if the failure is something I had absolutely no control over. Add in the fact that writing pays the bills at my house, and we're talking lethal levels of guilt.
For the longest time, I thought this guilt was just part and parcel of the writing gig, a side effect of responsibility. Recently, though, I've started to realize there's nothing responsible (or noble, or laudable) about tearing myself down.
As much as I might like to pretend otherwise, writers are not super beings. We're not robots either, tuning ourselves to operate at maximum output efficiency at all times. We're just human, and humans fall down. We mess things up and get tired and make stupid mistakes and say screw it. When you're handling such potent materials as Great Dreams of Being a Writer, it's all too easy to get caught up in the goal, and (for me at least) to hate and guilt yourself over every fumbled step and missed opportunity. It is very easy, in short, to become a guilt fueled writer. But while guilt works in the short term, it's a treacherous fuel source, and enough of it can poison the stream of creativity and shut down your writing forever.
The sad fact is there's no way to completely protect your cake from getting stomped on. You can't will or guilt or threaten yourself into being an infallible super writer anymore than you can will or guilt or threaten everyone into loving your books. That said, just because your writing life cake has a big boot mark in it doesn't mean it's destined for the trash.
Authorship, storytelling, and creativity are life long endeavors; journeys of thousands of miles and multiple peaks and valleys. While we're on the trail, it can be very hard to take our eyes off the immediate mud holes and backtracking. But if we take a breath and look up, we'll see that these problems, however huge, are dwarfed by the enormous, endless, breathtakingly beautiful expanse that is the writing life. And while a change in perspective won't do anything to fix the hole you're in, it can and will make that hole look smaller, and it's amazing how much that helps you find your way out.
I'm still working on that solution for not letting life's unavoidable mishaps take such huge chunks out my writing schedule (current plan: if I decide not to write during work hours, I must do some kind of planning or writing related activity instead. So far, it's going more or less okay.), but I am slowly learning to accept my own mess ups with patience and understanding rather than guilt. That said, I've got a long way to go. I wasted years, years, guilting myself over every little thing and making myself feel terrible for missing what, I eventually realized, was an impossible goal. I can't be a perfectly optimized writer. It's just not going to happen. I can, however, be a reasonably good writer most of the time, and that is perfectly acceptable.
So here is the "learn from my fail" moment of this post: please, please, whatever you do, don't waste your time making yourself unhappy for years like I did. Polish that vital writing career skill of accepting failure and disappointment with compassion and understanding, and don't beat yourself up because you're not the kind of writer you think you should be, or someone else told you to be. Always remember that we're in this for the long game, not the short sprint--the career, not the novel. Anything else is just a form of self sabotage.
I'm going to wrap up here because I'm getting insufferably cheesy, but I really can not stress how much unnecessary pain and teeth gnashing I've put myself through over all this, and the idea of someone else going through all that pointless suffering for no good reason turns my stomach. So if you're mad at yourself and your writing, if you're frustrated with your lack of progress or characters or whatever has you blocked, know that you are not alone. You are, in fact, the opposite of alone. We have all been there, and while we all deal with it differently, I am going to go out on the limb and say that I feel you, and it's okay.
A few missed days or weeks or months of writing might feel like an epic failure, but in the long scheme of things it's just a blip. A long list of rejections definitely feels like the end of the world, but one story chalked up to a learning experience is just a tick on the long list of books you have yet to write. The only thing that really matters is that you get back in the saddle and keep writing, because the only thing on this Earth that can make you stop writing is you.
Life already stomps on your cake enough. Don't help it along by stomping down yourself. Focus on your Stories instead. Life's much more fun that way.
Happy writing!
- Rachel
August 13, 2013
GUEST POST by author Rebecca Harwell
2 posts in a row?! Well, sort of! A few weeks ago, Rebecca Harwell, author of the pretty boss sounding THE THUNDERBIRD PROJECT (which releases TODAY!), got in touch with me to let me know how much she enjoyed my writing book, 2k to 10k, and asked if I would be interested in a guest post. Since I am always interested in hearing about how other people are using my tools, I thought it sounded like a great idea, so here we are!
And now, without further ado, here's Rebecca!
2K to 10K , Rachel’s amazing book on writing efficiently, wasn't yet published when I wrote THE THUNDERBIRD PROJECT, but I wish it had been. There’s one simple trick Rachel talks about briefly (amid tons of other helpful advice) that would have saved me a painful revision.
Know your ending before you come up with your beginning.
It sounds contrary to the linear nature of storytelling, but it’s a gem. Here’s why. While the beginning hooks your readers, the ending is arguably the most important part of the story where all the threads come together in some sort of satisfying conclusion. In many ways, an ending is in the entire book in miniature as all the important characters, plotlines, and symbols are present. It also captures the tone of the entire story.
Tone is where knowing your ending first comes in handy. With THE THUNDERBIRD PROJECT, I did a rough, linear outline before I sat down to write the book. I started with a strong image of the beginning and a fuzzy ‘the good guys win somehow’ ending. The opening scene of my first draft had a lighthearted, almost humorous tone to it. It was told through the point-of-view of a rookie cop who didn't quite know how to handle the situation of an injured metahuman interrupting his morning patrol. I loved the scene; I still do. But it wasn't the right place to start the story, and I only realized that when I came to my ending.
The story began getting darker and darker as the stakes got real and the bad guys didn't pull any punches. While the good guys did end up winning somehow in the end, it was at an enormous cost. The second half of the story had a grim tone that didn't match the beginning.
Rachel note: OMG I can't say how many times this has happened to me!
I ended up having to go back and revise the beginning for tone. This was hard. Mainly, because tone isn't something simple that can be deleted or added. It permeates the plot, characters, and prose, and takes many drafts (in my case) to change. Eventually, I got the consistent tone I wanted. I added a new opening scene and revised the old one so while it still had some humor, it wasn't as lighthearted as the original version. No one who reads the opening chapters now will expect the rest of the story to be a feel-good romp.
If I had known how my story was going to end before I thought of a beginning, I would have been able to tell what kind of story I was writing (another piece of Rachel’s advice) and avoid a long and hard revision. By coming up with your ending beforehand, you know what to set the reader up to expect in the beginning so they don’t feel they signed onto a different adventure than the one you delivered.
About the Book:
Not all superheroes live a glamorous life.
The Thunderbird project was an FBI-run group of superhumans until they were unceremoniously disbanded and sent out into the world to live normal lives. But unfortunately for the red-headed, mean-tempered Jupiter being 18-foot tall makes blending into society pretty much impossible. She resigns herself to living in warehouses and searching for a place where she can just be left alone.Some just want the world to forget them.
Four years later, after being followed for days by unmarked vehicles, Jupiter is attacked and left for dead on a bridge, narrowly rescued amidst screams and camera flashes by an old teammate. She discovers that members of The Thunderbird Project are being targeted and one is already dead. Jupiter reluctantly joins the newly reinstated group.
But some people won’t forget and just want them dead.
With a whole lot of pain and past between them, the team struggles to find the identity of the assassins so they can all go back home. Since any chance of getting away from the world disappeared the day she crawled onto that bridge, Jupiter just wants to make the guys who came after her pay. And if that means sticking it to a world that hates her…so much the better.
You don’t get a ‘happily ever after’ when everyone considers you a freak.
About the Author
Rebecca Harwell grew up in small-town Minnesota and spent most of her time reading fantasy novels and comic books, obsessing over people who don’t actually exist, and writing novels for fun. Despite becoming an official adult last year, nothing much has changed. She is currently studying creative writing and Japanese at Knox College with an eye on getting her master’s degree in library science. Her debut novel THETHUNDERBIRD PROJECT, a dark superhero tale, is available from Bedlam Press, an imprint of Necro Publications. Visit her website at www.rebeccaharwell.com.
Thank you very much for stopping by, Rebecca, and congratulations on your release! Thanks everyone for reading, and I hope you enjoyed the guest post. Hooray for new authors doing new and cool things!
- R
And now, without further ado, here's Rebecca!
2K to 10K , Rachel’s amazing book on writing efficiently, wasn't yet published when I wrote THE THUNDERBIRD PROJECT, but I wish it had been. There’s one simple trick Rachel talks about briefly (amid tons of other helpful advice) that would have saved me a painful revision.
Know your ending before you come up with your beginning.
It sounds contrary to the linear nature of storytelling, but it’s a gem. Here’s why. While the beginning hooks your readers, the ending is arguably the most important part of the story where all the threads come together in some sort of satisfying conclusion. In many ways, an ending is in the entire book in miniature as all the important characters, plotlines, and symbols are present. It also captures the tone of the entire story.
Tone is where knowing your ending first comes in handy. With THE THUNDERBIRD PROJECT, I did a rough, linear outline before I sat down to write the book. I started with a strong image of the beginning and a fuzzy ‘the good guys win somehow’ ending. The opening scene of my first draft had a lighthearted, almost humorous tone to it. It was told through the point-of-view of a rookie cop who didn't quite know how to handle the situation of an injured metahuman interrupting his morning patrol. I loved the scene; I still do. But it wasn't the right place to start the story, and I only realized that when I came to my ending.
The story began getting darker and darker as the stakes got real and the bad guys didn't pull any punches. While the good guys did end up winning somehow in the end, it was at an enormous cost. The second half of the story had a grim tone that didn't match the beginning.
Rachel note: OMG I can't say how many times this has happened to me!
I ended up having to go back and revise the beginning for tone. This was hard. Mainly, because tone isn't something simple that can be deleted or added. It permeates the plot, characters, and prose, and takes many drafts (in my case) to change. Eventually, I got the consistent tone I wanted. I added a new opening scene and revised the old one so while it still had some humor, it wasn't as lighthearted as the original version. No one who reads the opening chapters now will expect the rest of the story to be a feel-good romp.
If I had known how my story was going to end before I thought of a beginning, I would have been able to tell what kind of story I was writing (another piece of Rachel’s advice) and avoid a long and hard revision. By coming up with your ending beforehand, you know what to set the reader up to expect in the beginning so they don’t feel they signed onto a different adventure than the one you delivered.
About the Book:
Not all superheroes live a glamorous life.
The Thunderbird project was an FBI-run group of superhumans until they were unceremoniously disbanded and sent out into the world to live normal lives. But unfortunately for the red-headed, mean-tempered Jupiter being 18-foot tall makes blending into society pretty much impossible. She resigns herself to living in warehouses and searching for a place where she can just be left alone.Some just want the world to forget them.
Four years later, after being followed for days by unmarked vehicles, Jupiter is attacked and left for dead on a bridge, narrowly rescued amidst screams and camera flashes by an old teammate. She discovers that members of The Thunderbird Project are being targeted and one is already dead. Jupiter reluctantly joins the newly reinstated group.
But some people won’t forget and just want them dead.
With a whole lot of pain and past between them, the team struggles to find the identity of the assassins so they can all go back home. Since any chance of getting away from the world disappeared the day she crawled onto that bridge, Jupiter just wants to make the guys who came after her pay. And if that means sticking it to a world that hates her…so much the better.
You don’t get a ‘happily ever after’ when everyone considers you a freak.
About the Author
Rebecca Harwell grew up in small-town Minnesota and spent most of her time reading fantasy novels and comic books, obsessing over people who don’t actually exist, and writing novels for fun. Despite becoming an official adult last year, nothing much has changed. She is currently studying creative writing and Japanese at Knox College with an eye on getting her master’s degree in library science. Her debut novel THETHUNDERBIRD PROJECT, a dark superhero tale, is available from Bedlam Press, an imprint of Necro Publications. Visit her website at www.rebeccaharwell.com.
Thank you very much for stopping by, Rebecca, and congratulations on your release! Thanks everyone for reading, and I hope you enjoyed the guest post. Hooray for new authors doing new and cool things!
- R
August 12, 2013
Sex and Sword Fights
First off, I want to thank everyone who helped spread the word and make The Legend of Eli Monpress's turn as the Kindle daily deal a HUGE success! I made it to #9 in the overall paid Kindle store. NINE. For a few glorious hours there, I was #1 in Fantasy. The Eli in me is most pleased! (Now I just have to make it to #1 in all of Amazon, BWA HA HA HA!)
Seriously, thank you all so much! And if you're one of the lovely, lovely people who bough my book over this last week, I'm so glad to have you!
Now, let's talk about sex and fighting, cause that's how we roll here.
Sex and Sword Fights
Way back in the day, when I was but a wee little newly published author at her very first convention, I was put on a panel called "Writing Sex and Combat Scenes." Now, at that time, I hadn't actually written any sex scenes for publication, but I had written a lot of sword fights, and I guess half-qualified was good enough.
I don't remember much about the actual panel (I think we went off topic a lot, though saying "authors went off topic at a convention panel" is like saying "dogs went off topic when they saw a squirrel"), but that implied connection between sex and combat has stuck around in the back of my head ever since. It's only now, though, with 9 additional books, multiple sex scenes, and uncountable sword fights (as well as gun fights, fist fights, ship fights, and myriad other forms of conflict) under my belt that I've really begun to understand just how true the premise of that panel was. And so, to prevent you, lovely reader, from having to slog through all of the above as well, I'd like to take fifteen hundred words or so to talk about how writing sex scenes and writing fight scenes both work pretty much the exact same way.
Since this post is about to go R-Rated and slightly NSFW (assuming your boss is reading over your shoulder, I promise/apologize that there are no pictures), here is a cut to protect those who'd rather not be assaulted with this sort of How To on a Monday morning. ;)
0) A Quick Clarification
First up, I think I should clarify that when I say "sex scenes," I'm not actually talking about writing the physical act of bumping organs together (though I will get into that, so get all your best "sword fight" sex puns ready). I mean the combined romantic scenes between two characters, of which sex is only a part. Likewise, when I say "sword fight," I mean any sort of combat scene where conflict and tension are running high, which may or may not include actual swords. That stated, "Structural Similarities Between Romantic and Combat Scenes" didn't have quite the same ring to it as "Sex and Sword Fights," so here we are. Sorry for any confusion.
1) Why Are Sex and Sword Fights the Same?
On the surface, romance and war might seem like opposites. I mean literal opposites, as in love and hate, tenderness and brutality, etc. That said, you don't need Pat Benatar singing Love is a Battlefield on repeat to have picked up that loving and fighting have a lot of parallels, especially regarding the way they both fit into a narrative structure, such as a novel. The reason for this is tension.
I've said many many times that all of writing is really just tension management, but nowhere is this truer than with love scenes and fight scenes. Think about your favorite romantic scene. Chances are, there was a LOT of build up before hand. Maybe you'd been waiting years (or at least an entire book) for those characters to get together. You knew it was going to happen, but things just kept getting in the way, and by the time they actually did kiss/screw, you were as ready for them to get on with it as they were.
Now, think of your favorite fight. There was probably a lot of build up there, too. Maybe this fight had been a long time coming, or maybe the villain had defeated the heroes before and it was time for some well deserved pay back.
In both of these situations, the author used tension to get you hyped up about the conflict in question. They played you like a fiddle, piling on twist after twist and scene after scene until you were desperate to reach the conclusion. Once you got there, all they had to do was make good on the promise of the build up, and you were in reader heaven.
This is what tension does: it excites, it entices, it makes you turn the page. Of course, this is not to say that skillful prose doesn't also play a big role. Good writing is always important, but tension is the motor that makes it go. It doesn't matter if you've written the most gripping, beautiful sword fight ever committed to paper if you can't instill that need to find out what happens next. Fortunately, the mechanics of tension are fairly predictable if you know what you are doing.
To use a sexual metaphor (because if there was ever a post for a sexual metaphor, this is it), creating gripping tension is all about anticipation. A skilled lover doesn't go right for the goal, pedal to the metal the whole way. They tease and entice, building you up to the edge before backing off and coming in from another angle. Only at the end when you're out of your mind do they finally go all the way, and the climax is all the better for it. (For a less lusty, more technical analysis of narrative tension, see my tension mechanics post over at Magical Words or the chapter on tension in 2k to 10k).
On a book level, this rise and fall cycle is often achieved by having a series of escalating fights/romantic embraces that finally culminate in a climax (in many ways, wink/nudge). If you've ever read any sort of traditional Romance novel or paranormal romance, you've already seen this winning formula in action. The main couple will come together multiple times, each one going a little further into physical and emotional intimacy, until they finally get their big finale/confession, quickly followed by their happily ever after. Likewise, in a combat story, there will be a series of bigger and bigger fights (some of which might actually be defeats that the characters will recover from and vow vengeance for) leading up to a climactic final battle with the big baddie. Fighting anime/manga where the hero has to fight a series of ranked escalating battles to reach the final fight is the most stark/simplistic example of this.
On a scene level, sex and fight scenes also follow similar tension arcs. Both generally start off with tension between two parties (unresolved sexual tension or threat acknowledgement, such as walking into a bar they've already been warned is a hotbed for murderous thugs) and then there is an escalation to a tipping point. For example, the hero saves the heroine from a run away carriage only to find she is now trapped beneath him, her curves pressing delightfully into his body, or, in the combat case, the loud angry man at the bar has finally said something unforgivable, forcing the heroine to draw her sword and teach him some manners even though he is much bigger than her. It is after this point that the actual fighting/loving finally occurs (and usually either ends in an unsatisfactory way or is cut off prematurely to keep the tension rolling for the next scene).
The details are always different, but as you see, the general shape of these scenes is the same. But then again, the devil's in the details, isn't he? It's easy to talk about building tension in the abstract, but how can this arc structure actually be achieved inside a narrative? How do you actually write a good fight/love scene?
Well, writing's not paint by numbers, so I can't tell you for sure. I can, however, tell you two guidelines I've discovered that can at least help keep you from writing bad ones.
2) It's the Who and the Why, not so much the What
Penny Arcade illustrates the conundrum nicely, I think.
One of the biggest to avoid when digging down into the actual writing of a fight or a romantic scene is getting caught up in the What. What does the sword look like? What is he doing with his feet? What is she wearing?What kind of fighting style are we using? What are they doing with their tongues?
These details might seem vitally important (and they are important, make no mistake), but the thing to always keep in mind is that the What of a scene is never as important as the Who and the Why. It doesn't matter how technically perfect your sword fight is if we don't understand and care about who is doing the fighting and why we should care. Likewise, a sex scene can be erotic and titillating as hell, but it will never be really moving and important unless we as authors give readers the information they need to understand who these people are and why their loving making matters.
Because of this, a fight scene or a love scene must also be a character scene that moves the plot forward. I've heard several people, even other authors describe action scenes and sex scenes like expected treats for the reader. "Oh, this part of the book is getting boring, let's throw in a sword fight/shower scene to spice things up!"
This sort of thinking boggles my mind, mostly because it's such a horrid waste. The reason sex and fighting are so magnetic is precisely because of their enormous potential to change people and situations. It doesn't matter how awesome that spaceship battle is, if nothing changes, if there's no momentum, then the scene is pointless, and nothing drags a story down like a pointless scene even if it is full of orgasms and/or explosions.
Like every scene in a novel, fight scenes and love scenes have to earn their keep by moving the plot forward and revealing information. That said, the combination of our natural interest in sex and violence combined with character development and plot reveals can make for some amazing moments. By keeping our eyes on the prize and our scenes focused on the Who (characters) and the Why (plot/character development), we can take the What (humping/stabbing) from "interesting by default" to "absolutely amazing." A well done fight/sex scene that combines inventive and exciting details with character growth and plot twists can easily become someone's favorite part of a novel, and understanding why that is, and how to pull it off in your own work, is a invaluable skill.
3) Conflict is King
This overlaps a bit with point 2, but I really wanted to end this post on the most important aspect of any love/fight scene: character conflict.
If you've ever watched any sort of fighting anime (Dragonball Z, Naruto, Bleach, One Piece, etc.), you might have noticed that the characters spend a lot of time talking, usually in the middle of fighting. Sometimes there's even a character watching a fight on the sidelines for the sole purpose of providing commentary.
On the surface, this seems unspeakably silly. Are we really supposed to believe that two enormously overpowered super beings locked in mortal combat are pausing between blows to monologue at each other? But this seemingly out of place, over-explaining dialogue is actually serving a vital narrative purpose. By having the characters talk while they fight, often about each other and their respective reasons for fighting, the author is injecting character conflict into what would otherwise be an endless series of blows (and breaking the tension up into more manageable chunks in the process).
Now, some authors do this better than others, but the general idea is always the same. Characters talk while fighting because 1) it's probably their only opportunity for dialgoue in the narrative, and 2) talking while fighting gives the fight meaning beyond its basic stated purpose (defeat bad guy, save world yet again). And if you think about it, it's actually a pretty exciting venue. I mean, these characters are literally in conflict of the life and death variety, which means they are both in a crucible for enormous personal change. That's interesting stuff!
Cheesy fight dialog aside, it's this explosive conflict on multiple levels, and the changes such conflict inevitably leaves in its wake, that makes for the absolute best fight scenes. After all, without personal conflict, all you've got is too warriors taking shots at each other, and while that might be interesting on a technical level, it's not the gripping stuff of novels. Why else do you think fight promoters go through such enormous lengths to create rivalries between boxers? It's that element of personal conflict that takes what would otherwise be a technical match between sportsmen fighters and imbues it with the narrative punch that drives fans into a frenzy. Hell, the entire multi-million dollar sport of Wrestling is based around creating and exploiting character conflict in fights.
I'm not saying you should stoop to Wrestling level melodrama or having your combatants take a five minute break after each super move to narrate at each other and/or have meaningful flashbacks, but the machine works for a reason. By learning to channel that same energy and interest, we can turn a simple sword fight into the pivotal emotional scene of a novel. And of course, this works for love scenes, too.
It's actually easier to pull off character conflict in love scenes since it's more natural for people to talk about their feelings in intimate situations than in the middle of a battle. The Romance genre is built on character conflict and growth through sex, and even if your book isn't a Romance capital R, there's absolutely no reason you can't steal the well honed tricks of the trade and use them to make your own love story better. All you have to do is remember that the true thrill of a sex scene isn't the mechanics of lustful bodies, but the give and take between the people those bodies belong to.
Just like a fight, both characters should leave a sexual situation different from when they entered it. Even a kiss should change everything, at least for the people involved. This is what Romance is all about, resolving the conflict between two characters, and like all good conflict in novels, it should get worse before it gets better.
So, to sum up: a good sex scene and a good fight scene have the same requirements. They are conflict scenes between characters that rely on tension to keep them going (and make them awesome). They can be highly and excitingly detailed, but in the end, the most important aspect are always the characters involved and the stakes at risk. Once you've got a good handle on this, it becomes almost impossible to write a bad fight or love scene and imminently easier to write a really, really good one.
And that's the current summation of what I've learned over thirteen novels so far. I hope you'll find this information helpful in your own writing. As always, please feel free to leave your comments below. I'd love to hear what you've discovered helps make an excellent love or fight scene.
As ever, thank you for reading!
- Rachel
Seriously, thank you all so much! And if you're one of the lovely, lovely people who bough my book over this last week, I'm so glad to have you!
Now, let's talk about sex and fighting, cause that's how we roll here.
Sex and Sword Fights
Way back in the day, when I was but a wee little newly published author at her very first convention, I was put on a panel called "Writing Sex and Combat Scenes." Now, at that time, I hadn't actually written any sex scenes for publication, but I had written a lot of sword fights, and I guess half-qualified was good enough.
I don't remember much about the actual panel (I think we went off topic a lot, though saying "authors went off topic at a convention panel" is like saying "dogs went off topic when they saw a squirrel"), but that implied connection between sex and combat has stuck around in the back of my head ever since. It's only now, though, with 9 additional books, multiple sex scenes, and uncountable sword fights (as well as gun fights, fist fights, ship fights, and myriad other forms of conflict) under my belt that I've really begun to understand just how true the premise of that panel was. And so, to prevent you, lovely reader, from having to slog through all of the above as well, I'd like to take fifteen hundred words or so to talk about how writing sex scenes and writing fight scenes both work pretty much the exact same way.
Since this post is about to go R-Rated and slightly NSFW (assuming your boss is reading over your shoulder, I promise/apologize that there are no pictures), here is a cut to protect those who'd rather not be assaulted with this sort of How To on a Monday morning. ;)
0) A Quick Clarification
First up, I think I should clarify that when I say "sex scenes," I'm not actually talking about writing the physical act of bumping organs together (though I will get into that, so get all your best "sword fight" sex puns ready). I mean the combined romantic scenes between two characters, of which sex is only a part. Likewise, when I say "sword fight," I mean any sort of combat scene where conflict and tension are running high, which may or may not include actual swords. That stated, "Structural Similarities Between Romantic and Combat Scenes" didn't have quite the same ring to it as "Sex and Sword Fights," so here we are. Sorry for any confusion.
1) Why Are Sex and Sword Fights the Same?
On the surface, romance and war might seem like opposites. I mean literal opposites, as in love and hate, tenderness and brutality, etc. That said, you don't need Pat Benatar singing Love is a Battlefield on repeat to have picked up that loving and fighting have a lot of parallels, especially regarding the way they both fit into a narrative structure, such as a novel. The reason for this is tension.
I've said many many times that all of writing is really just tension management, but nowhere is this truer than with love scenes and fight scenes. Think about your favorite romantic scene. Chances are, there was a LOT of build up before hand. Maybe you'd been waiting years (or at least an entire book) for those characters to get together. You knew it was going to happen, but things just kept getting in the way, and by the time they actually did kiss/screw, you were as ready for them to get on with it as they were.
Now, think of your favorite fight. There was probably a lot of build up there, too. Maybe this fight had been a long time coming, or maybe the villain had defeated the heroes before and it was time for some well deserved pay back.
In both of these situations, the author used tension to get you hyped up about the conflict in question. They played you like a fiddle, piling on twist after twist and scene after scene until you were desperate to reach the conclusion. Once you got there, all they had to do was make good on the promise of the build up, and you were in reader heaven.
This is what tension does: it excites, it entices, it makes you turn the page. Of course, this is not to say that skillful prose doesn't also play a big role. Good writing is always important, but tension is the motor that makes it go. It doesn't matter if you've written the most gripping, beautiful sword fight ever committed to paper if you can't instill that need to find out what happens next. Fortunately, the mechanics of tension are fairly predictable if you know what you are doing.
To use a sexual metaphor (because if there was ever a post for a sexual metaphor, this is it), creating gripping tension is all about anticipation. A skilled lover doesn't go right for the goal, pedal to the metal the whole way. They tease and entice, building you up to the edge before backing off and coming in from another angle. Only at the end when you're out of your mind do they finally go all the way, and the climax is all the better for it. (For a less lusty, more technical analysis of narrative tension, see my tension mechanics post over at Magical Words or the chapter on tension in 2k to 10k).
On a book level, this rise and fall cycle is often achieved by having a series of escalating fights/romantic embraces that finally culminate in a climax (in many ways, wink/nudge). If you've ever read any sort of traditional Romance novel or paranormal romance, you've already seen this winning formula in action. The main couple will come together multiple times, each one going a little further into physical and emotional intimacy, until they finally get their big finale/confession, quickly followed by their happily ever after. Likewise, in a combat story, there will be a series of bigger and bigger fights (some of which might actually be defeats that the characters will recover from and vow vengeance for) leading up to a climactic final battle with the big baddie. Fighting anime/manga where the hero has to fight a series of ranked escalating battles to reach the final fight is the most stark/simplistic example of this.
On a scene level, sex and fight scenes also follow similar tension arcs. Both generally start off with tension between two parties (unresolved sexual tension or threat acknowledgement, such as walking into a bar they've already been warned is a hotbed for murderous thugs) and then there is an escalation to a tipping point. For example, the hero saves the heroine from a run away carriage only to find she is now trapped beneath him, her curves pressing delightfully into his body, or, in the combat case, the loud angry man at the bar has finally said something unforgivable, forcing the heroine to draw her sword and teach him some manners even though he is much bigger than her. It is after this point that the actual fighting/loving finally occurs (and usually either ends in an unsatisfactory way or is cut off prematurely to keep the tension rolling for the next scene).
The details are always different, but as you see, the general shape of these scenes is the same. But then again, the devil's in the details, isn't he? It's easy to talk about building tension in the abstract, but how can this arc structure actually be achieved inside a narrative? How do you actually write a good fight/love scene?
Well, writing's not paint by numbers, so I can't tell you for sure. I can, however, tell you two guidelines I've discovered that can at least help keep you from writing bad ones.
2) It's the Who and the Why, not so much the What
Penny Arcade illustrates the conundrum nicely, I think.
One of the biggest to avoid when digging down into the actual writing of a fight or a romantic scene is getting caught up in the What. What does the sword look like? What is he doing with his feet? What is she wearing?What kind of fighting style are we using? What are they doing with their tongues?
These details might seem vitally important (and they are important, make no mistake), but the thing to always keep in mind is that the What of a scene is never as important as the Who and the Why. It doesn't matter how technically perfect your sword fight is if we don't understand and care about who is doing the fighting and why we should care. Likewise, a sex scene can be erotic and titillating as hell, but it will never be really moving and important unless we as authors give readers the information they need to understand who these people are and why their loving making matters.
Because of this, a fight scene or a love scene must also be a character scene that moves the plot forward. I've heard several people, even other authors describe action scenes and sex scenes like expected treats for the reader. "Oh, this part of the book is getting boring, let's throw in a sword fight/shower scene to spice things up!"
This sort of thinking boggles my mind, mostly because it's such a horrid waste. The reason sex and fighting are so magnetic is precisely because of their enormous potential to change people and situations. It doesn't matter how awesome that spaceship battle is, if nothing changes, if there's no momentum, then the scene is pointless, and nothing drags a story down like a pointless scene even if it is full of orgasms and/or explosions.
Like every scene in a novel, fight scenes and love scenes have to earn their keep by moving the plot forward and revealing information. That said, the combination of our natural interest in sex and violence combined with character development and plot reveals can make for some amazing moments. By keeping our eyes on the prize and our scenes focused on the Who (characters) and the Why (plot/character development), we can take the What (humping/stabbing) from "interesting by default" to "absolutely amazing." A well done fight/sex scene that combines inventive and exciting details with character growth and plot twists can easily become someone's favorite part of a novel, and understanding why that is, and how to pull it off in your own work, is a invaluable skill.
3) Conflict is King
This overlaps a bit with point 2, but I really wanted to end this post on the most important aspect of any love/fight scene: character conflict.
If you've ever watched any sort of fighting anime (Dragonball Z, Naruto, Bleach, One Piece, etc.), you might have noticed that the characters spend a lot of time talking, usually in the middle of fighting. Sometimes there's even a character watching a fight on the sidelines for the sole purpose of providing commentary.
On the surface, this seems unspeakably silly. Are we really supposed to believe that two enormously overpowered super beings locked in mortal combat are pausing between blows to monologue at each other? But this seemingly out of place, over-explaining dialogue is actually serving a vital narrative purpose. By having the characters talk while they fight, often about each other and their respective reasons for fighting, the author is injecting character conflict into what would otherwise be an endless series of blows (and breaking the tension up into more manageable chunks in the process).
Now, some authors do this better than others, but the general idea is always the same. Characters talk while fighting because 1) it's probably their only opportunity for dialgoue in the narrative, and 2) talking while fighting gives the fight meaning beyond its basic stated purpose (defeat bad guy, save world yet again). And if you think about it, it's actually a pretty exciting venue. I mean, these characters are literally in conflict of the life and death variety, which means they are both in a crucible for enormous personal change. That's interesting stuff!
Cheesy fight dialog aside, it's this explosive conflict on multiple levels, and the changes such conflict inevitably leaves in its wake, that makes for the absolute best fight scenes. After all, without personal conflict, all you've got is too warriors taking shots at each other, and while that might be interesting on a technical level, it's not the gripping stuff of novels. Why else do you think fight promoters go through such enormous lengths to create rivalries between boxers? It's that element of personal conflict that takes what would otherwise be a technical match between sportsmen fighters and imbues it with the narrative punch that drives fans into a frenzy. Hell, the entire multi-million dollar sport of Wrestling is based around creating and exploiting character conflict in fights.
I'm not saying you should stoop to Wrestling level melodrama or having your combatants take a five minute break after each super move to narrate at each other and/or have meaningful flashbacks, but the machine works for a reason. By learning to channel that same energy and interest, we can turn a simple sword fight into the pivotal emotional scene of a novel. And of course, this works for love scenes, too.
It's actually easier to pull off character conflict in love scenes since it's more natural for people to talk about their feelings in intimate situations than in the middle of a battle. The Romance genre is built on character conflict and growth through sex, and even if your book isn't a Romance capital R, there's absolutely no reason you can't steal the well honed tricks of the trade and use them to make your own love story better. All you have to do is remember that the true thrill of a sex scene isn't the mechanics of lustful bodies, but the give and take between the people those bodies belong to.
Just like a fight, both characters should leave a sexual situation different from when they entered it. Even a kiss should change everything, at least for the people involved. This is what Romance is all about, resolving the conflict between two characters, and like all good conflict in novels, it should get worse before it gets better.
So, to sum up: a good sex scene and a good fight scene have the same requirements. They are conflict scenes between characters that rely on tension to keep them going (and make them awesome). They can be highly and excitingly detailed, but in the end, the most important aspect are always the characters involved and the stakes at risk. Once you've got a good handle on this, it becomes almost impossible to write a bad fight or love scene and imminently easier to write a really, really good one.
And that's the current summation of what I've learned over thirteen novels so far. I hope you'll find this information helpful in your own writing. As always, please feel free to leave your comments below. I'd love to hear what you've discovered helps make an excellent love or fight scene.
As ever, thank you for reading!
- Rachel
July 12, 2013
Sexism and the Female SciFi Author
So there's been noise around the internet about this article by Tor UK editor Julie Crisp. The basic gist of the post is that the low number of SciFi books by women on the shelves isn't because publishers are locking the door on women, it's because they just don't get a lot of SciFi submissions by women, and they can't publish what they don't receive.
Now, there have been some thoughtful posts decrying this as buck passing: "Oh, it's not our fault the vast majority of genre books coming out are written by dudes. Lady authors just aren't writing the stuff. Step it up and solve sexism, women!" And while I don't entirely agree that's what's going on here, (okay, that's exactly what's going on here, but I don't think it's being done mean spiritedly), the truth is that sexism everywhere, but specifically sexism in genre fiction, is far far FAR more insidious and deeply rooted than this sort of "the numbers don't lie, boss" reductionism would imply, especially when it comes to Science Fiction...
...Annnnnnd since, (SHAMELESS PLUG) I have a SciFi novel coming out in November that is not only written by a woman, but has a female main character (DOUBLE RAINBOW!), I thought I'd take a moment to explore why many women aren't drawn to space in books.
The lack of women in SciFi fiction is really strange and striking when you consider the overwhelming female fanbase for SciFi in other media franchises. Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Babylon 5, and (everyone's favorite) Firefly all boast impressive female viewership and fandom (and fanfic writing). Clearly, women are capable of understanding and enjoying the hell out of space stories, so why aren't more women writing/publishing Science Fiction novels?
Well, first off, women ARE writing Science Fiction. I actually grew up reading SciFi written by Anne McCaffrey and Ursula Le Guin. I also read Dune and a metric ton of David Brin, and of course all the Hitchhiker's books. Today, I read Anne Aguire and Elizabeth Moon and Elizabeth Bear. But while there are lots of women telling successful Science Fiction stories, the undeniable truth is that they are the vast minority of the Science Fiction out there.
I think a big part of the blame for this discrepancy can be placed squarely on the shoulders of Science Fiction's rep as a "man's game." For example, all those female authored SciFi books in the last paragraph that I grew up with? They were from my mom's shelf. I read them in the classic tradition of teenage reading: because they were what I had. And I loved them, don't get me wrong, but when I grew up and started buying my own books, I went almost exclusively into Fantasy (UF and Epic) and all but ignored Science Fiction. Looking back, I did this because subconsciously I knew that SciFi was "for guys," and even though a specific book might look interesting, it would probably just be a bunch of dudes doing manly, dude stuff with no female characters of note. So I didn't buy.
Was this dismissive of me? Sure. Did I miss a bunch of awesome books because of my own preconceptions? Almost certainly. But I got those preconceptions--that space stories aren't for me, that I wouldn't understand, that I'm not welcome in this genre--from Science Fiction itself. From the way it is marketed and discussed, from the covers, from the truly sexist SciFi dudes who make it their mission in life to keep girls and their girl cooties away from their hallowed spaceship tomes. True, no one ever stood in front of a bookshelf and told me I couldn't buy Science Fiction, but there was definitely push back, and as a woman in a book market where I had so many choices about how to spend my reading time, I simply didn't see the point of putting in the effort to read a genre where they didn't want me around in the first place.
This is the cycle that has ultimately created such an enormous gender disparity in Science Fiction readership and authorship. Stories are written by men and then marketed to men, who read them and become inspired and write their own male-centric stories that get published and then marked again to men, and the whole thing starts over. In general, it's not a mean or vicious "No Girls Allowed" sort of thing (though that does happen). It's just the rut, and ruts are very easy. Sexism, in general, is easy. It's a lazy way of thinking that replaces complicated actual experience (ie: women are people and thus come in every personality imaginable and are often self contradictory) with a label (Women, yeesh! Amirite, guys?!) which is why it's so so so hard to combat.
The trouble is, this sexist rut is hurting everyone. Even as popular culture at large becomes nerdier and nerdier with big SciFi movies like Star Trek and Pacific Rim coming out as the huge summer blockbusters, Science Fiction as a written genre continues to be small and stagnate. It's not for lack of quality, amazing books are coming out, but so long as SciFi continues to allow itself to be perceived as old, sexist, white guy reading, that will be its audience.
It's almost laughable that a genre built on big new ideas and pushing boundaries has let itself be pigeonholed into such a small box. But if it wants to break out, then everyone involved in the genre--marketing, publishers, writers, and fans--needs to work together to break down the harmful stereotype that Science Fiction is a boys club. How you ask? Any number of ways! How about covers that feature female characters doing badass things? How about marketing Science Fiction book that also feature strong romantic plots to Romance readers? How about writing more interesting and rounded female characters into your stories? How about making sure Science Fiction conventions are places where women can feel safe rather than excluded and/or preyed upon? How about having a main cast that is something other than overwhelmingly white and male?
There are any number of ways to open up the Science Fiction genre to a wider audience, and we should be scrambling to do them. These stories deserve a wider readership, and, in turn, a wider authorship. Because writers tend to write what they read, and until the SciFi readership is balanced between men and women (and people of color) we're never going to see a true parity of male/female authorship in the genre or a wider range of non-white authors, and that's just sad for everyone, especially people who want to keep reading new and amazing SciFi stories.
To be clear, I'm not hating on or attacking Science Fiction itself. Hell, I wrote three freaking books about a powered armor user who shoots aliens and flies through known space on a trade freighter. I love me some Science Fiction, and I want to write a lot more of it, which is why I'm writing this post. Because Science Fiction as a whole is never going to escape the low sales numbers corner it's painted itself into by catering only to white men until it starts reaching out and welcoming a wider readership.
So let's stop digging in our heels and passing the buck on sexism and start working to change things. Because this genre deserves more than this. We deserve more, and we can have it if only we have the will to reach.
Now, there have been some thoughtful posts decrying this as buck passing: "Oh, it's not our fault the vast majority of genre books coming out are written by dudes. Lady authors just aren't writing the stuff. Step it up and solve sexism, women!" And while I don't entirely agree that's what's going on here, (okay, that's exactly what's going on here, but I don't think it's being done mean spiritedly), the truth is that sexism everywhere, but specifically sexism in genre fiction, is far far FAR more insidious and deeply rooted than this sort of "the numbers don't lie, boss" reductionism would imply, especially when it comes to Science Fiction...
...Annnnnnd since, (SHAMELESS PLUG) I have a SciFi novel coming out in November that is not only written by a woman, but has a female main character (DOUBLE RAINBOW!), I thought I'd take a moment to explore why many women aren't drawn to space in books.
The lack of women in SciFi fiction is really strange and striking when you consider the overwhelming female fanbase for SciFi in other media franchises. Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Babylon 5, and (everyone's favorite) Firefly all boast impressive female viewership and fandom (and fanfic writing). Clearly, women are capable of understanding and enjoying the hell out of space stories, so why aren't more women writing/publishing Science Fiction novels?
Well, first off, women ARE writing Science Fiction. I actually grew up reading SciFi written by Anne McCaffrey and Ursula Le Guin. I also read Dune and a metric ton of David Brin, and of course all the Hitchhiker's books. Today, I read Anne Aguire and Elizabeth Moon and Elizabeth Bear. But while there are lots of women telling successful Science Fiction stories, the undeniable truth is that they are the vast minority of the Science Fiction out there.
I think a big part of the blame for this discrepancy can be placed squarely on the shoulders of Science Fiction's rep as a "man's game." For example, all those female authored SciFi books in the last paragraph that I grew up with? They were from my mom's shelf. I read them in the classic tradition of teenage reading: because they were what I had. And I loved them, don't get me wrong, but when I grew up and started buying my own books, I went almost exclusively into Fantasy (UF and Epic) and all but ignored Science Fiction. Looking back, I did this because subconsciously I knew that SciFi was "for guys," and even though a specific book might look interesting, it would probably just be a bunch of dudes doing manly, dude stuff with no female characters of note. So I didn't buy.
Was this dismissive of me? Sure. Did I miss a bunch of awesome books because of my own preconceptions? Almost certainly. But I got those preconceptions--that space stories aren't for me, that I wouldn't understand, that I'm not welcome in this genre--from Science Fiction itself. From the way it is marketed and discussed, from the covers, from the truly sexist SciFi dudes who make it their mission in life to keep girls and their girl cooties away from their hallowed spaceship tomes. True, no one ever stood in front of a bookshelf and told me I couldn't buy Science Fiction, but there was definitely push back, and as a woman in a book market where I had so many choices about how to spend my reading time, I simply didn't see the point of putting in the effort to read a genre where they didn't want me around in the first place.
This is the cycle that has ultimately created such an enormous gender disparity in Science Fiction readership and authorship. Stories are written by men and then marketed to men, who read them and become inspired and write their own male-centric stories that get published and then marked again to men, and the whole thing starts over. In general, it's not a mean or vicious "No Girls Allowed" sort of thing (though that does happen). It's just the rut, and ruts are very easy. Sexism, in general, is easy. It's a lazy way of thinking that replaces complicated actual experience (ie: women are people and thus come in every personality imaginable and are often self contradictory) with a label (Women, yeesh! Amirite, guys?!) which is why it's so so so hard to combat.
The trouble is, this sexist rut is hurting everyone. Even as popular culture at large becomes nerdier and nerdier with big SciFi movies like Star Trek and Pacific Rim coming out as the huge summer blockbusters, Science Fiction as a written genre continues to be small and stagnate. It's not for lack of quality, amazing books are coming out, but so long as SciFi continues to allow itself to be perceived as old, sexist, white guy reading, that will be its audience.
It's almost laughable that a genre built on big new ideas and pushing boundaries has let itself be pigeonholed into such a small box. But if it wants to break out, then everyone involved in the genre--marketing, publishers, writers, and fans--needs to work together to break down the harmful stereotype that Science Fiction is a boys club. How you ask? Any number of ways! How about covers that feature female characters doing badass things? How about marketing Science Fiction book that also feature strong romantic plots to Romance readers? How about writing more interesting and rounded female characters into your stories? How about making sure Science Fiction conventions are places where women can feel safe rather than excluded and/or preyed upon? How about having a main cast that is something other than overwhelmingly white and male?
There are any number of ways to open up the Science Fiction genre to a wider audience, and we should be scrambling to do them. These stories deserve a wider readership, and, in turn, a wider authorship. Because writers tend to write what they read, and until the SciFi readership is balanced between men and women (and people of color) we're never going to see a true parity of male/female authorship in the genre or a wider range of non-white authors, and that's just sad for everyone, especially people who want to keep reading new and amazing SciFi stories.
To be clear, I'm not hating on or attacking Science Fiction itself. Hell, I wrote three freaking books about a powered armor user who shoots aliens and flies through known space on a trade freighter. I love me some Science Fiction, and I want to write a lot more of it, which is why I'm writing this post. Because Science Fiction as a whole is never going to escape the low sales numbers corner it's painted itself into by catering only to white men until it starts reaching out and welcoming a wider readership.
So let's stop digging in our heels and passing the buck on sexism and start working to change things. Because this genre deserves more than this. We deserve more, and we can have it if only we have the will to reach.
July 10, 2013
At last! My new cover!
After many setbacks, I can finally reveal the cover of Fortune's Pawn to you in all its spacey, helmeted glory!
Devi Morris isn't your average mercenary. She has plans. Big ones. And a ton of ambition. It's a combination that's going to get her killed one day - but not just yet.
That is, until she just gets a job on a tiny trade ship with a nasty reputation for surprises. The Glorious Fool isn't misnamed: it likes to get into trouble, so much so that one year of security work under its captain is equal to five years everywhere else. With odds like that, Devi knows she's found the perfect way to get the jump on the next part of her Plan. But the Fool doesn't give up its secrets without a fight, and one year on this ship might be more than even Devi can handle.
Coming November 5, 2013! | Amazon | B&N | IndieBound
So as you see, my name is Rachel Bach for this one. This is because the Paradox Series is 1) science fiction rather than fantasy, and 2) much more R-rated than my Eli books (cursing and KISSING O_O). The main character is Devi Morris, a powered armor mercenary with more ambition than is probably healthy and a critically underdeveloped fear of danger. The book is fun and fast and a bit scary, full of shoot em' ups and big mysteries. There's also a romance that is probably my favorite thing ever in the world!
There are 3 Devi books total--Fortune's Pawn, Honor's Knight, Heaven's Queen--that work together to complete a single arc both meta plot-wise and romantically. All three are already in my publisher's hands, and I can not WAIT for ya'll to read them!
So, if you liked my Eli books, love powerful, flawed, take-charge female main characters, and think that your own suit of powered armor sounds pretty damn nifty, I invite you to check out Fortune's Pawn when it hits shelves later this year! I'll be doing all sorts of give aways and so on closer to the release date, and I'll be putting up sample chapters soon as well. In the meanwhile, thanks for reading and I promise I'll get some more real blog content up soon.
Rachel
Devi Morris isn't your average mercenary. She has plans. Big ones. And a ton of ambition. It's a combination that's going to get her killed one day - but not just yet.
That is, until she just gets a job on a tiny trade ship with a nasty reputation for surprises. The Glorious Fool isn't misnamed: it likes to get into trouble, so much so that one year of security work under its captain is equal to five years everywhere else. With odds like that, Devi knows she's found the perfect way to get the jump on the next part of her Plan. But the Fool doesn't give up its secrets without a fight, and one year on this ship might be more than even Devi can handle.
Coming November 5, 2013! | Amazon | B&N | IndieBound
So as you see, my name is Rachel Bach for this one. This is because the Paradox Series is 1) science fiction rather than fantasy, and 2) much more R-rated than my Eli books (cursing and KISSING O_O). The main character is Devi Morris, a powered armor mercenary with more ambition than is probably healthy and a critically underdeveloped fear of danger. The book is fun and fast and a bit scary, full of shoot em' ups and big mysteries. There's also a romance that is probably my favorite thing ever in the world!
There are 3 Devi books total--Fortune's Pawn, Honor's Knight, Heaven's Queen--that work together to complete a single arc both meta plot-wise and romantically. All three are already in my publisher's hands, and I can not WAIT for ya'll to read them!
So, if you liked my Eli books, love powerful, flawed, take-charge female main characters, and think that your own suit of powered armor sounds pretty damn nifty, I invite you to check out Fortune's Pawn when it hits shelves later this year! I'll be doing all sorts of give aways and so on closer to the release date, and I'll be putting up sample chapters soon as well. In the meanwhile, thanks for reading and I promise I'll get some more real blog content up soon.
Rachel
June 21, 2013
Why Fantasy Armies Can and Should Include Women
A few weeks ago, the always on the ball Stefan Raets linked to an article in Amazing Stories magazine called Girl, You're In The Army Now, written by Felicity Savage. The general gist of the post is that while the author firmly believes in a woman's right to serve in the armed forces in the real world, she finds the idea women serving in fantasy armies stretches her disbelief to the breaking point because 1) it's a medical fact that the average man is stronger with a higher lung capacity than the average woman, and 2) (which she lists as her primary complaint) the economic reality of a pre-industrial economy just couldn't handle losing both genders. Won't someone think of the wheat?! *PEARL CLUTCHING*
I'm paraphrasing of course, but you get the idea. You might also have picked up on the subtle vibe that I do not agree. Well, you guessed right! I don't agree. I, in fact, call BS on the whole idea for a cornucopia of reasons that I have provided in list form below for your convenience.
1. Men are stronger than women! It's SCIENCE! You can't argue with SCIENCE!
Well, actually, most of science seems to be arguing from what I can tell, but for most part I accept this as true. The average man is indeed be capable of greater physical strength and stamina than the average woman. But here's the thing about averages like this, they're only correct an average amount of the time, and they do not reflect mitigating factors like outliers or training. Take me, for example
I've always been a strong woman. I don't mean that in the mental fortitude way, I mean I can lift heavy shit. I'm not a she-hulk or anything, but I've always been noticeably stronger than the people around me. Other than the occasional moving day, though, I never thought much of it. And then, about six months ago, I decided to give weight lifting a try.
Turns out I've been drastically underestimating my body all these years. My very first attempt at a deadlift, I maxed 250 pounds. I'm now up to a 275 deadlift, 260 squat, and 155 bench, and that's only going to the gym two or three times a week. For those of you not into weightlifting, that's a LOT of weight for a woman, and this isn't even my ceiling.
Now, please don't think I'm telling you this to be all "here's one exception, therefore your average is bupkiss!" The reason I bring up my own maxes (besides getting to brag about them on the internet, BOOYAH!) is to point out that numbers for what an "average" person can do mean almost nothing in the real world, because almost no individual you meet will be precisely on that average. Some will be weaker, some will be stronger, and this applies to both men and women. Could I lift more if I was a man? Absolutely. But that doesn't change the truth that I can lift the average man or woman and toss them across the room as I am right now, and I'm not even in army training.
"But, Rachel," you might say. "We're not talking about individual freaks of nature like yourself. We're talking about an army of thousands. Surely strength averages matter on that scale!"
And I'd have to say you're right, but the REAL faulty part of this argument isn't the numbers, it's the assumption that the most important aspect of a successful soldier is physical strength.
Any physically fit human being, male or female, who under goes the proper training can swing a sword hard enough to kill another human being. Any solider who can make it through whatever boot camp style training program an army has in place can probably handle the physical requirements of combat. That's kind of the whole point of having a boot camp: to prepare and train soldiers for the reality of army life. Therefore, it follows that anyone who makes it through, male or female or whatever, should be able to march, fight, and die just as well as any other solider in the ranks. But here's the real kicker, once you've reached this base level of physical aptitude, the importance of physical strength in a solider is overshadowed by other soldierly qualities like cleverness, the ability to keep a cool head in dangerous situations, and willingness to follow orders, and these are things women can do (or mess up) in equal measure to men.
War is not a weight lifting competition. You don't win a battle because your soldiers can swing the hardest. You win because your generals are clever, your troops are brave and disciplined, and sometimes because of the individual heroics of that one ambitious lieutenant who didn't follow orders and ended up saving the day.
Sure men may have a greater capacity for the physical aspects of combat, but capacity does not equal follow through. The average woman with drive and training will beat the average man without any day of the week, and I do not believe it is at all unrealistic to depict this in a fantasy novel. Hell, I see this all the time from the ROTC ladies who complement my deadlift. If I took those women, put them in chain mail, and gave them swords, I could defend a pass against the orcish hordes for, like, EVER.
If you want an absolutely fabulous fantasy novel about a woman soldier going through a very realistic experience as a female recruit in a fantasy army, I highly (HIGHLY) recommend Elizabeth Moon's The Deed of Paksenarrion. I grew up reading this book, and Paks is one of my favorite fantasy heroines of all time, but what really impressed me were the incredibly interesting details of what life in a mercenary company in a pre-industrial fantasy world would be like. Moon herself was a US Marine, and you can see her experience all through the book. It's not always pretty for Paks, but army life isn't known for its softness or ease.
Over all, an incredibly awesome and realistic military fantasy about what it would actually be like to be a woman soldier in a mercenary platoon that sacks cities and hires wizards and takes on dark magic. Can not praise it enough!
So that's why I think the whole "men make better soldiers than women because they're physically stronger" argument is a load of bull. But what about Ms. Savage's (who has an amazing name, by the way. Felicity Savage, that's a UF heroine name if I ever heard one!) main point? To quote: "The real reason I don’t buy women soldiers in fantasy is the economics."
Well, let's see.
2) Mixed gender fantasy armies are unrealistic because someone has to bring in the harvest
I'll let Ms. Savage explain this one herself:
Draft armies are for times of extreme peril. You know, "The orcs are coming! Every able bodied man is required to take arms and fight for his kingdom!" that sort of thing. This sort of "oh shit oh shit scramble everything we've got!" military is an emergency measure, a reaction to enormous threat. It's not the sort of thing you do all day every day for years. And let me tell you, when the orcs are massing at the pass, no one's thinking about the harvest or the economy or future birth rates. They're thinking about not letting their lands be scorched and pillaged by orcs.
In the real world, these sort of panicked draft armies actually featured a lot more woman than you'd normally find in a fighting force because of the whole "desperate times, desperate measures" thing. Scotland, for instance, had several famous female warriors and leaders who joined the battle because they were there, they were needed, and they rose to the occasion to fight for their homeland.
The point I'm trying to make here is that full kingdom draft armies are a frantic, scrambled sort of thing that goes on for a few years at most. The idea of sustaining such a system for longer is, indeed, outside the stretch of disbelief, but not because of women. It's just impossible to maintain that sort of "all in" military force and keep your country ticking over no matter how capable the people left back home are.
Standing armies are another animal entirely. Generally speaking, these are the armies we're really thinking about when we think "fantasy military" - well trained, well supplied, professional soldiers led by career generals. Unlike a draft army, this sort of force is designed to be sustainable, supported by taxes, and employing a portion of the nation's working force who joins voluntarily... and for that reason there's no cause at all not to have women join as well other than blatant sexism.
This sort of army is a career choice. Being a solider is a job, and if you are qualified to do that job, there's no reason you shouldn't be able to take it regardless of sex. Now, it's perfectly reasonable that a woman joining the army might encounter more hardships than a male solider because of sexism, perceived weakness, etc., but that's the sort of beautiful conflict stories are made of! A bad author can make anything unbelievable of course, but there's no reason the situation itself has to stretch the bounds of disbelief.
A professional army is just that, a professional, sustainable entity. The rest of the country keeps ticking on perfectly fine outside it (having babies, growing wheat, etc.) whether women are allowed in or not. Therefore, this argument that women can't be a part of a pre-industrial fighting force because all the babies would dry up is absurd and incorrect, and if you use it as an excuse to exclude women from your fantasy army, I will laugh at you right before I close your book, because that shit is REALLY unbelievable.
So those are her two main arguments and why I think they're both wrong. I think my reply may actually be longer than the original article now, but before I finish up, I'd like to address what I consider the most problematic sentence in this entire post.
3) "Ideology has no place in fiction."
I am in the business of finding words, and yet I have a hard time expressing just how much this sentence insults me as an author. But before I go into why, let me allow Ms. Savage to explain her thinking in context:
And if that's what we're talking about, I agree. Stapling a moral message into your novel for no other reason than because you think it should be there is a damn shame, not to mention bad writing. Having an ideology in your fiction, however, is the heart and soul of story telling.
If authors had no ideology, if we simply parroted the racist, sexist status quo of our modern lives without examination or comment, then what is the point of fiction? A good tale well told is a wonderful thing, but a good tale well told that makes you think, that makes you look at something in a new way, that asks uncomfortable questions, these are the novels that matter. And the sneaky ways we authors slip these ideologies into what you thought was just a fun bit of escapism reading about dragons or spaceships is where the art of this whole process comes in.
Fantasy and science fiction books in particular present an enormous playground for this sort of thing. I can literally create an entire universe replete with dozens of brand new civilizations all for the purpose of asking "what happens when there is no gender?" or "what is the real cost of being racially intolerant?" Now, of course I don't ask these questions directly, that would be the most way to tell a story ever. Instead, I weave these questions into the fabric of the world itself, and as my characters encounter them, they (and by extension, the reader) are forced to think about these things in a new environment that separates them from their real world prejudices, allowing them to encounter old ideas with an open mind, maybe for the first time in their lives.
When I read the aforementioned Deed of Paksenarrion as a twelve year old girl, I loved it because it was a fun story about an awesome and brave and surprisingly gentle female warrior who never gave up no matter what. But what I took from that story was a love and appreciation for brave, strong women who stand up for what is right that has stuck with me all my life. Elizabeth Moon didn't sit me down and beat this into me, she didn't staple it on to her world because "I must teach young women to be feminists!" She told me a story, and like all good story tellers, she hid a message in there for me to discover on my own.
If Elizabeth Moon had removed her ideology from her novel, if she'd kicked her women out of her army, it would have been a much, much sorrier tale. But she didn't, and I am a different person for it. I am a better person because of the science fiction and fantasy books I have read, because of the women I have read, the heroines and the villainesses whose creators, male and female, held strong to their ideologies. An absolutely enormous percentage of my moral code comes from books, good ones and bad ones, authors I agreed with and authors I don't. But if these people left their ideologies out, if they removed the moral core of their fiction, then all we'd have left are empty, hollow, meaningless stories that change nothing.
Like any part of a novel, ideology can be handled badly. This is just bad writing, and it happens. In the hands of a capable artist, however, ideology in fiction is what gives us the stories that change our lives. It is the lyrical expression of the things that truly matter, the things that are too big or too painful or too tangled to handle in the real world. But in stories, in books, we can change the world to be however we want, and that is a power that should never be dismissed.
Ideology has every place in fiction. Never let anyone tell you otherwise.
And with that, I'm off to plan a realistic fantasy war novel featuring an all female mercenary force. Peace out, internet!
- Rachel
I'm paraphrasing of course, but you get the idea. You might also have picked up on the subtle vibe that I do not agree. Well, you guessed right! I don't agree. I, in fact, call BS on the whole idea for a cornucopia of reasons that I have provided in list form below for your convenience.
1. Men are stronger than women! It's SCIENCE! You can't argue with SCIENCE!
Well, actually, most of science seems to be arguing from what I can tell, but for most part I accept this as true. The average man is indeed be capable of greater physical strength and stamina than the average woman. But here's the thing about averages like this, they're only correct an average amount of the time, and they do not reflect mitigating factors like outliers or training. Take me, for example
I've always been a strong woman. I don't mean that in the mental fortitude way, I mean I can lift heavy shit. I'm not a she-hulk or anything, but I've always been noticeably stronger than the people around me. Other than the occasional moving day, though, I never thought much of it. And then, about six months ago, I decided to give weight lifting a try.
Turns out I've been drastically underestimating my body all these years. My very first attempt at a deadlift, I maxed 250 pounds. I'm now up to a 275 deadlift, 260 squat, and 155 bench, and that's only going to the gym two or three times a week. For those of you not into weightlifting, that's a LOT of weight for a woman, and this isn't even my ceiling.
Now, please don't think I'm telling you this to be all "here's one exception, therefore your average is bupkiss!" The reason I bring up my own maxes (besides getting to brag about them on the internet, BOOYAH!) is to point out that numbers for what an "average" person can do mean almost nothing in the real world, because almost no individual you meet will be precisely on that average. Some will be weaker, some will be stronger, and this applies to both men and women. Could I lift more if I was a man? Absolutely. But that doesn't change the truth that I can lift the average man or woman and toss them across the room as I am right now, and I'm not even in army training.
"But, Rachel," you might say. "We're not talking about individual freaks of nature like yourself. We're talking about an army of thousands. Surely strength averages matter on that scale!"
And I'd have to say you're right, but the REAL faulty part of this argument isn't the numbers, it's the assumption that the most important aspect of a successful soldier is physical strength.
Any physically fit human being, male or female, who under goes the proper training can swing a sword hard enough to kill another human being. Any solider who can make it through whatever boot camp style training program an army has in place can probably handle the physical requirements of combat. That's kind of the whole point of having a boot camp: to prepare and train soldiers for the reality of army life. Therefore, it follows that anyone who makes it through, male or female or whatever, should be able to march, fight, and die just as well as any other solider in the ranks. But here's the real kicker, once you've reached this base level of physical aptitude, the importance of physical strength in a solider is overshadowed by other soldierly qualities like cleverness, the ability to keep a cool head in dangerous situations, and willingness to follow orders, and these are things women can do (or mess up) in equal measure to men.
War is not a weight lifting competition. You don't win a battle because your soldiers can swing the hardest. You win because your generals are clever, your troops are brave and disciplined, and sometimes because of the individual heroics of that one ambitious lieutenant who didn't follow orders and ended up saving the day.
Sure men may have a greater capacity for the physical aspects of combat, but capacity does not equal follow through. The average woman with drive and training will beat the average man without any day of the week, and I do not believe it is at all unrealistic to depict this in a fantasy novel. Hell, I see this all the time from the ROTC ladies who complement my deadlift. If I took those women, put them in chain mail, and gave them swords, I could defend a pass against the orcish hordes for, like, EVER.
If you want an absolutely fabulous fantasy novel about a woman soldier going through a very realistic experience as a female recruit in a fantasy army, I highly (HIGHLY) recommend Elizabeth Moon's The Deed of Paksenarrion. I grew up reading this book, and Paks is one of my favorite fantasy heroines of all time, but what really impressed me were the incredibly interesting details of what life in a mercenary company in a pre-industrial fantasy world would be like. Moon herself was a US Marine, and you can see her experience all through the book. It's not always pretty for Paks, but army life isn't known for its softness or ease.
Over all, an incredibly awesome and realistic military fantasy about what it would actually be like to be a woman soldier in a mercenary platoon that sacks cities and hires wizards and takes on dark magic. Can not praise it enough!
So that's why I think the whole "men make better soldiers than women because they're physically stronger" argument is a load of bull. But what about Ms. Savage's (who has an amazing name, by the way. Felicity Savage, that's a UF heroine name if I ever heard one!) main point? To quote: "The real reason I don’t buy women soldiers in fantasy is the economics."
Well, let's see.
2) Mixed gender fantasy armies are unrealistic because someone has to bring in the harvest
I'll let Ms. Savage explain this one herself:
"Fantasy worlds do not tend to have washing machines, combine harvesters, supermarkets, or refrigerators. Keeping people fed and clothed under pre-industrial conditions is labor-intensive. Our own not-so-distant history suggests it requires the labor of all the women and most of the men, except for a tiny elite of both sexes, all the time. And then there’s the little matter of the next generation. In a society without modern medicine, the birth rate needs to be sky-high just to keep the population steady. It’s hard to imagine how any significant number of women could be spared from these vital tasks, except for ideological reasons in a society that is violently breaking itself to remake itself, such as Maoist China (pre-industrial in the remoter regions then)."Now, she has a decent point. It does take a LOT of manual labor to support a pre-industrial farm based economy and a lot of babies to make up for a high infant mortality rate, but I think she's confusing a full draft military force and a standing army. Because they're not the same thing.
Draft armies are for times of extreme peril. You know, "The orcs are coming! Every able bodied man is required to take arms and fight for his kingdom!" that sort of thing. This sort of "oh shit oh shit scramble everything we've got!" military is an emergency measure, a reaction to enormous threat. It's not the sort of thing you do all day every day for years. And let me tell you, when the orcs are massing at the pass, no one's thinking about the harvest or the economy or future birth rates. They're thinking about not letting their lands be scorched and pillaged by orcs.
In the real world, these sort of panicked draft armies actually featured a lot more woman than you'd normally find in a fighting force because of the whole "desperate times, desperate measures" thing. Scotland, for instance, had several famous female warriors and leaders who joined the battle because they were there, they were needed, and they rose to the occasion to fight for their homeland.
The point I'm trying to make here is that full kingdom draft armies are a frantic, scrambled sort of thing that goes on for a few years at most. The idea of sustaining such a system for longer is, indeed, outside the stretch of disbelief, but not because of women. It's just impossible to maintain that sort of "all in" military force and keep your country ticking over no matter how capable the people left back home are.
Standing armies are another animal entirely. Generally speaking, these are the armies we're really thinking about when we think "fantasy military" - well trained, well supplied, professional soldiers led by career generals. Unlike a draft army, this sort of force is designed to be sustainable, supported by taxes, and employing a portion of the nation's working force who joins voluntarily... and for that reason there's no cause at all not to have women join as well other than blatant sexism.
This sort of army is a career choice. Being a solider is a job, and if you are qualified to do that job, there's no reason you shouldn't be able to take it regardless of sex. Now, it's perfectly reasonable that a woman joining the army might encounter more hardships than a male solider because of sexism, perceived weakness, etc., but that's the sort of beautiful conflict stories are made of! A bad author can make anything unbelievable of course, but there's no reason the situation itself has to stretch the bounds of disbelief.
A professional army is just that, a professional, sustainable entity. The rest of the country keeps ticking on perfectly fine outside it (having babies, growing wheat, etc.) whether women are allowed in or not. Therefore, this argument that women can't be a part of a pre-industrial fighting force because all the babies would dry up is absurd and incorrect, and if you use it as an excuse to exclude women from your fantasy army, I will laugh at you right before I close your book, because that shit is REALLY unbelievable.
So those are her two main arguments and why I think they're both wrong. I think my reply may actually be longer than the original article now, but before I finish up, I'd like to address what I consider the most problematic sentence in this entire post.
3) "Ideology has no place in fiction."
I am in the business of finding words, and yet I have a hard time expressing just how much this sentence insults me as an author. But before I go into why, let me allow Ms. Savage to explain her thinking in context:
"Ideology, I conclude, is what drives authors to retrofit equal opportunities into their fantasy worlds. They’re welding their own ideas about how things ought to be onto otherwise well-thought out worlds. And that’s a damn shame.Once again, I believe Ms. Savage has confused two different concepts. What she is talking about here is moralizing, the sort of Saturday morning kid's show message mongering that we didn't even buy as kids. You know, when they stick a kid in a wheelchair into the cast just to get diversity points while never actually presenting a real, rounded handicapped character because, hey, that would take WORK. Ugh.
"Ideology has no place in fiction. The created world is its own thing: it must make organic sense, obeying the laws of narrative plausibility, just as a house must conform to the laws of stress and strain or else fall down."
And if that's what we're talking about, I agree. Stapling a moral message into your novel for no other reason than because you think it should be there is a damn shame, not to mention bad writing. Having an ideology in your fiction, however, is the heart and soul of story telling.
If authors had no ideology, if we simply parroted the racist, sexist status quo of our modern lives without examination or comment, then what is the point of fiction? A good tale well told is a wonderful thing, but a good tale well told that makes you think, that makes you look at something in a new way, that asks uncomfortable questions, these are the novels that matter. And the sneaky ways we authors slip these ideologies into what you thought was just a fun bit of escapism reading about dragons or spaceships is where the art of this whole process comes in.
Fantasy and science fiction books in particular present an enormous playground for this sort of thing. I can literally create an entire universe replete with dozens of brand new civilizations all for the purpose of asking "what happens when there is no gender?" or "what is the real cost of being racially intolerant?" Now, of course I don't ask these questions directly, that would be the most way to tell a story ever. Instead, I weave these questions into the fabric of the world itself, and as my characters encounter them, they (and by extension, the reader) are forced to think about these things in a new environment that separates them from their real world prejudices, allowing them to encounter old ideas with an open mind, maybe for the first time in their lives.
When I read the aforementioned Deed of Paksenarrion as a twelve year old girl, I loved it because it was a fun story about an awesome and brave and surprisingly gentle female warrior who never gave up no matter what. But what I took from that story was a love and appreciation for brave, strong women who stand up for what is right that has stuck with me all my life. Elizabeth Moon didn't sit me down and beat this into me, she didn't staple it on to her world because "I must teach young women to be feminists!" She told me a story, and like all good story tellers, she hid a message in there for me to discover on my own.
If Elizabeth Moon had removed her ideology from her novel, if she'd kicked her women out of her army, it would have been a much, much sorrier tale. But she didn't, and I am a different person for it. I am a better person because of the science fiction and fantasy books I have read, because of the women I have read, the heroines and the villainesses whose creators, male and female, held strong to their ideologies. An absolutely enormous percentage of my moral code comes from books, good ones and bad ones, authors I agreed with and authors I don't. But if these people left their ideologies out, if they removed the moral core of their fiction, then all we'd have left are empty, hollow, meaningless stories that change nothing.
Like any part of a novel, ideology can be handled badly. This is just bad writing, and it happens. In the hands of a capable artist, however, ideology in fiction is what gives us the stories that change our lives. It is the lyrical expression of the things that truly matter, the things that are too big or too painful or too tangled to handle in the real world. But in stories, in books, we can change the world to be however we want, and that is a power that should never be dismissed.
Ideology has every place in fiction. Never let anyone tell you otherwise.
And with that, I'm off to plan a realistic fantasy war novel featuring an all female mercenary force. Peace out, internet!
- Rachel
May 29, 2013
How I Manage Large Casts of Characters
One of the most consistent pieces of praise I've received for the Eli books over their run is for my adept handling of a very large cast of characters. This might seem like an odd detail to single out, but hearing people say it still makes me happier than anything, because I worked SO FREAKING HARD on it.
To give you an example of what I'm talking about, my 4th Eli Monpress book, The Spirit War had 33 named characters (and spirits) the reader had to remember for the plot to make sense. Thirty freaking three! That's a stupid amount of people! And keep in mind, all these characters also had their own little plots spinning and intrigues and motivations that the reader was also expected to keep straight. That's a lot of brainpower for something that's supposed to be escape reading (especially since this book was coming out over a year after the third one).
When I sat down to write Spirit War, it didn't take long for me to realize I was looking down the barrel of a shotgun of my own making. This book could so easily have been a disaster, and no one knew that better than I did. So, since I couldn't cut characters or plot points I'd played up in previous books, my only way out was to figure out a way to keep my reader on top of this army I called a cast without ever letting them feel lost or overwhelmed by the crowd. To achieve this, I pulled out every trick I could think of (and invented ones I couldn't) to make sure my reader always knew who was who and what was up in any scene without resorting to telling. It wasn't easy, but in the end I pulled it off with flying colors. I also learned an enormous amount about the art of handling characters in a large world setting, and sense we're all about sharing the knowledge here at Casa de Aaron, I decided it was high time I made a blog post about what I learned.
Below, you'll find a list of the tricks and methods I worked out to make sure my readers remember who's important in my novel without making them feel like they're having to memorize a list. The key here is subtly and respect for both your book and your reader. I use all of these methods in every one of my own novels post Spirit War, and I hope you find them as helpful as I have.
Ready? Here we go!
0) Write Interesting CharactersI wanted to get this out of the way right off the bat. This is a post about making sure your reader remembers your characters, including all the minor ones, all the way through the novel, but the hands down easiest way to achieve this is to have a cast worth remembering. I am a huge fan of tricks of the trade, but if your people are boring, flat, tensionless, uninteresting, unmotivated, empty dolls, no amount of fancy handling is going to make them memorable.
Readers want cool, flawed, interesting people of all kinds--people to hate, people to hang out with, people to fall in love with, people to admire, people who make them laugh. Novelists who can routinely meet these demands are invariably successful. So, before you do anything else, make sure your people are the sort of characters who deserve to be in novels. Otherwise, none of the following is really going to help.
That settled? Okay, let's move on to the real post.
1) It's Not About NamesAre you bad at remembering names? I am. In my experience, most people in the world are bad with names to some extent, yet we can remember other, seemingly far less important details just fine--what someone was wearing, how a stranger's hair looks, if a store clerk was funny, etc.
Our brains passively remember an enormous range of bits and tidbits about the world around us, and a good writer can harness this to their advantage. When I introduce a character I want my reader to remember, especially a non-major character who will only appear in a few scenes that I don't want to waste time developing, I always make sure to introduce them with a telling detail along with their name. Maybe they have a scar or a weird hairstyle, or maybe their voice is oddly high. Anything memorable will do.
Now, I don't harp on the detail, but I always mention it at least twice, because this detail has now become a label. Later, when I need the character to come back and do their job in the plot, I use this label in addition to their name to help jog the reader's memory. They might not remember Hans the Lumberjack, but they probably do remember that dude with the huge beard from back at the start of the book. This one recollection triggers others as the scene progresses, allowing you to deftly weave secondary, or even tertiary characters in and out of your narrative without having to resort to clunky "oh, remember Hans? He helped us back in..." type dialogue. Or, even worse, a character list! This might be personal bias, but nothing says "this is going to be a lame ass book" to me like finding a Dramatis Personae list at the front. It's like the author knew you wouldn't care about their characters enough to remember everyone, so they just caved and gave you a cheat sheet at the start.
Ahem, anyway, the point I'm trying to make here is that names are not how we remember people. Names are, in fact, your least helpful tool to make readers remember whom you're talking about. Readers are busy and impatient, which means if you want them to do work, like remembering someone, you need to make it easy. Give them something to grab on to, a label their brain can slap on and forget about until it needs that person again, and they'll generally play along.
For example, my character Slorn from the Eli Monpress series had a bear's head. Like, he was human from the neck down, but his head was that of a black bear. I reinforced this detail by calling him "the bear headed man" in my references to him within the text. His bear head ended up being very important for the larger meta plot, but let me tell you, NO ONE forgot who Slorn was (even though he made only brief appearances in the first few novels), and that was not by accident.
2) Give Them a (Social) Reason to CareI'll put the obligatory "make sure your character actually needs to be in the story" line here, but come on. We all know that if a character doesn't serve the story, they need to go. Don't fill your book with meaningless garbage is, like, lesson 1 of writing. So we're just going to assume that all the people in your book need to be there for reasons you can easily explain (and if you can't explain exactly why a character needs to be in your book, see the previous sentence) and move on to ways to make sure your reader understands this as well.
So, as with every part of a novel, characters, even little ones, need to have purpose if they're going to earn their page time. But while it may serve you as the writer to have random Character A return at the climax to help the seemingly doomed heroes at a dramatically appropriate time, if you don't play up Character A's importance and give the reader a reason to think "hey, Character A is probably going to be important, I should keep them in mind" early on, then your ending is going to look slapdash at best.
But how do you play up a minor but plot vital character without putting the novel equivalent of a giant, blinking "THIS GUY IS IMPORTANT LATER" arrow over his head and giving the whole game away? Simple, you just have to make them important in other ways that red herring the reader away from the character's real purpose as plot device. My favorite way to do this is to harness the universal human need to gossip.
Humans are social creatures. We always want to know about relationships, especially juicy, scandalous ones. Using this nosy fascination is a very easy way to tempt readers into latching on to a character you're either not willing to, or don't have time to, develop at the moment.
For example, in my Eli novels, I have a scene were two vital but (at the time) relatively minor characters hint through a bit of side dialogue that they are actually secretly the parents of my main character. GASP! This detail, less than 15 words all together, made a huge impact on my readership and elevated an otherwise minor sub-villain to major character status. The sudden elevation meant I was able to use her as the key character in a scene in the next book, turning an otherwise dull plot conversation between minor characters into a tense interchange between power players, which was a definite improvement. (More on key characters in a moment).
Harnessing our natural human need to be all up in other people's business is one of the most powerful ways to get your readers interested and invested in your characters, major or minor. The range of what you can use to hook people in is enormous: romantic entanglements, potential romantic entanglements, old scandals, secrets, feuds, all that reality TV stuff. There's a reason people watch those shows religiously, it's because they push our social buttons, and we as authors can use that same addictive power to make even our minor characters instantly rank as important in a reader's mind without being obvious about it, killing tension with explanation, or wasting words better spent on plot.
J. K. Rowling did an amazing job of this with Harry Potter. Think about how many HP characters you can name. I'll bet you dollars to donuts it's more than the main cast, probably a lot more. This is because J. K. Rowling is a freaking master of making us care about her secondary characters by showing us their places in the enormous social web she wove around her wizarding world. Because of this, when it came time to march out the armies of good and evil for the final battle, an enormous multi-character undertaking that could very well have been a train wreck of names and hex flinging, it all worked out, because Rowling made us care about all those minor characters well in advance, and so we as readers remembered every single one when the time came for them to do their job in (or die for) the plot.
And this is why making your reader care about the characters is so important. If they care enough to remember who's who, then all you have to do is be clear about who and where everyone is at any given point and the reader will take care of the rest on their own, leaving you free to focus on plot.
3) Single File Introduction and Key CharactersLast year, I wrote a blog post about the art of revealing information in novels called "Teaching Your Reader Magic." The central idea was that a large and unsung part of writing, especially genre writing, is actually teaching. When you reveal your world to a reader who has never experienced it before, you are, in a sense, teaching them the rules you will be playing by for the duration of the novel. Like all teaching, whether you do this well or poorly determines your student/reader's experience with the subject matter. Just as a bad teacher can ruin your interest in a subject for life, bad/clumsy/poorly thought out writing can destroy the coolest of concepts. It doesn't matter how awesome your magic system or world is, if you can't explain it, ain't no one gonna care.
This also applies to characters. Think about when you go to a party and your host introduces you to a large circle of people, rattling off names as they go. Chances are, you will not remember a single one of those people by the time the introductions are done and you're left alone standing awkwardly in front of a bunch of staring strangers. Not good times.
Now, imagine if you go to that same party and instead of throwing you instantly into the crowd, your host introduces you to only one person, but that person has an amazingly interesting job or is doing something incredibly cool. They're also witty and charming, and they want to get to know you, too. You're gonna remember that person. Hell, you might even develop an instant crush on that person.
This is the interaction I want between my readers and my characters. When I introduce a character, I try to show them being as interesting as possible, and I always give the spotlight to only one person at a time. I don't throw in distractions or other names or even other people (though I will use unnamed throwaway characters/archetypes to provide dialogue or tension, like a faceless guard or, in Eli's case, a door). Basically, I'm angling to recreate that one on one introduction and instant sense of connection/fascination of meeting an amazing person at a party, because once I've got my reader thinking of this fictional character as someone they want to know more about and spend more time with, I've got them hooked and I can safely move on to other characters or plot elements.
This very focused, single file method of introduction works best with main characters, but it can easily be used in a speed up version on minor characters as well by using the main, already introduced character as a bridge, or, as I like to call them, the key character. If we got back to our party analogy, your key character is like the host, they're the person the reader already knows who introduces them to the people they don't. A very good key character can introduce a reader to several minor characters all at once, but of course you have to keep numbers reasonable, stagger the introductions, and make sure everyone has a telling detail to aid in memory if you want to avoid the "oh my god who are these people? NOT GOOD TIMES!" reaction I mentioned above.
A good example of the key character in action is when Gandalf brings Thorin and his dwarves into Bilbo's house in The Hobbit. In this scene, Gandalf and Bilbo, both established characters the reader already cares about, act as key characters to provide context and relevance to what would otherwise be a crazy mess of 13 singing dwarves we don't care about. However, since Tolkein has been kind enough to provide us with hosts for his dwarf party, people we like who can rapidly establish why all this mountain song is important, disaster is averted and the book can move on with relatively little fuss even though I still couldn't name all the dwarves by the end.
By introducing important characters one at a time and then using these characters as anchors for the introduction of other characters, you ensure that your reader never overwhelmed by an onslaught of new information. Just like you teach your reader magic by introducing them to your world step by logical step, so do you have them learn your cast by introducing people either one at a time, or in very specific context to a character they already know.
Pulling this off in your text can be tricky and requires a deft hand with the story's tension and pacing to make sure things don't get boring, but it's so worth it. By introducing people single file and using established characters to introduce new ones, just as you yourself would introduce your friends to someone new in the real world, you can ease your reader into an enormous cast with almost no strain, or forgotten names, on their part. Trust me, this is a very useful tool.
4) Be Smart With Your NamesI know I said waaaaay back up in #1 that names aren't how people remember characters initially, but that doesn't mean they aren't important. Once you've gotten your characters established, name becomes enormously important, because in a medium largely without pictures, that name is how your reader sees the character.
Now, I am as guilty as any author of spending far too much time on First (and this is vital in genre fiction), the name has to be pronounceable. Most people hear the words they read in their heads as they're reading. This sounding out is vital to memory, and if they can't figure out what a character's name sounds like name, they're going to skip it. This is bad. You don't ever want your reader skipping anything, especially not a name you need them to remember for the story to work. Also, unpronounceable/unspellable names make it really difficult to talk up a book to your friends, and that's never a good thing. So no matter how much I may personally like a name, if my husband can't pronounce it off a sheet of paper, I pick something else. It's just not worth the risk.
Another thing to consider is how your cast's names work together. A big part of this is making sure people from the same culture have believably related names (none of this: "I'm Aiden and this is my brother, Wazakiki!") and just making sure your names fit into your world building in general. This is not to say you can't have someone with a radically different name, or even that you have to provide an explanation for it, but you do need other characters to at least comment on this oddity in the reader's stead to acknowledge the oddity. I didn't do this as much as I should have in the Eli Books and man, did I get flack for it.
In addition to making sure your cast's names fit within the context of the story, it's also good to think about making sure everyone's first letters don't overlap too much. Again, there's no law that says you have to do this, but a book where the main characters were Elton, Eliza, and Ella would get kind of confusing (unless, of course, it's a middle grade novel featuring three plucky siblings where the E names are a joke, in which case it's charming).
Really, though, repeating first letters isn't a big deal so long as you don't have two characters sharing a first and last letter. For the reason why, see the example below.
Ain't the brain neat? Anyway, because of this phenomenon, character names that share a first and last letter, such as Eliza and Estella, are extremely easy to confuse. These days, my rule is that if I'm transposing the names myself while I'm writing the book, then someone's name needs to change. Because if I'm messing it up, the reader definitely will, and no name is worth that hassle to me.
Wow, this got a lot longer than I expected. I hope you enjoyed this Seven Years In Tibet of a blog post about making sure your reader keeps up with the cast of your book. As always, feel free to leave me a comment with your thoughts on the subject, and if you like my writing posts, I hope you'll follow me here on the blog or on Twitter! Thank you for reading and I hope you find this helpful!
Yours etc.,Rachel
To give you an example of what I'm talking about, my 4th Eli Monpress book, The Spirit War had 33 named characters (and spirits) the reader had to remember for the plot to make sense. Thirty freaking three! That's a stupid amount of people! And keep in mind, all these characters also had their own little plots spinning and intrigues and motivations that the reader was also expected to keep straight. That's a lot of brainpower for something that's supposed to be escape reading (especially since this book was coming out over a year after the third one).
When I sat down to write Spirit War, it didn't take long for me to realize I was looking down the barrel of a shotgun of my own making. This book could so easily have been a disaster, and no one knew that better than I did. So, since I couldn't cut characters or plot points I'd played up in previous books, my only way out was to figure out a way to keep my reader on top of this army I called a cast without ever letting them feel lost or overwhelmed by the crowd. To achieve this, I pulled out every trick I could think of (and invented ones I couldn't) to make sure my reader always knew who was who and what was up in any scene without resorting to telling. It wasn't easy, but in the end I pulled it off with flying colors. I also learned an enormous amount about the art of handling characters in a large world setting, and sense we're all about sharing the knowledge here at Casa de Aaron, I decided it was high time I made a blog post about what I learned.
Below, you'll find a list of the tricks and methods I worked out to make sure my readers remember who's important in my novel without making them feel like they're having to memorize a list. The key here is subtly and respect for both your book and your reader. I use all of these methods in every one of my own novels post Spirit War, and I hope you find them as helpful as I have.
Ready? Here we go!
0) Write Interesting CharactersI wanted to get this out of the way right off the bat. This is a post about making sure your reader remembers your characters, including all the minor ones, all the way through the novel, but the hands down easiest way to achieve this is to have a cast worth remembering. I am a huge fan of tricks of the trade, but if your people are boring, flat, tensionless, uninteresting, unmotivated, empty dolls, no amount of fancy handling is going to make them memorable.
Readers want cool, flawed, interesting people of all kinds--people to hate, people to hang out with, people to fall in love with, people to admire, people who make them laugh. Novelists who can routinely meet these demands are invariably successful. So, before you do anything else, make sure your people are the sort of characters who deserve to be in novels. Otherwise, none of the following is really going to help.
That settled? Okay, let's move on to the real post.
1) It's Not About NamesAre you bad at remembering names? I am. In my experience, most people in the world are bad with names to some extent, yet we can remember other, seemingly far less important details just fine--what someone was wearing, how a stranger's hair looks, if a store clerk was funny, etc.
Our brains passively remember an enormous range of bits and tidbits about the world around us, and a good writer can harness this to their advantage. When I introduce a character I want my reader to remember, especially a non-major character who will only appear in a few scenes that I don't want to waste time developing, I always make sure to introduce them with a telling detail along with their name. Maybe they have a scar or a weird hairstyle, or maybe their voice is oddly high. Anything memorable will do.
Now, I don't harp on the detail, but I always mention it at least twice, because this detail has now become a label. Later, when I need the character to come back and do their job in the plot, I use this label in addition to their name to help jog the reader's memory. They might not remember Hans the Lumberjack, but they probably do remember that dude with the huge beard from back at the start of the book. This one recollection triggers others as the scene progresses, allowing you to deftly weave secondary, or even tertiary characters in and out of your narrative without having to resort to clunky "oh, remember Hans? He helped us back in..." type dialogue. Or, even worse, a character list! This might be personal bias, but nothing says "this is going to be a lame ass book" to me like finding a Dramatis Personae list at the front. It's like the author knew you wouldn't care about their characters enough to remember everyone, so they just caved and gave you a cheat sheet at the start.
Ahem, anyway, the point I'm trying to make here is that names are not how we remember people. Names are, in fact, your least helpful tool to make readers remember whom you're talking about. Readers are busy and impatient, which means if you want them to do work, like remembering someone, you need to make it easy. Give them something to grab on to, a label their brain can slap on and forget about until it needs that person again, and they'll generally play along.
For example, my character Slorn from the Eli Monpress series had a bear's head. Like, he was human from the neck down, but his head was that of a black bear. I reinforced this detail by calling him "the bear headed man" in my references to him within the text. His bear head ended up being very important for the larger meta plot, but let me tell you, NO ONE forgot who Slorn was (even though he made only brief appearances in the first few novels), and that was not by accident.
2) Give Them a (Social) Reason to CareI'll put the obligatory "make sure your character actually needs to be in the story" line here, but come on. We all know that if a character doesn't serve the story, they need to go. Don't fill your book with meaningless garbage is, like, lesson 1 of writing. So we're just going to assume that all the people in your book need to be there for reasons you can easily explain (and if you can't explain exactly why a character needs to be in your book, see the previous sentence) and move on to ways to make sure your reader understands this as well.
So, as with every part of a novel, characters, even little ones, need to have purpose if they're going to earn their page time. But while it may serve you as the writer to have random Character A return at the climax to help the seemingly doomed heroes at a dramatically appropriate time, if you don't play up Character A's importance and give the reader a reason to think "hey, Character A is probably going to be important, I should keep them in mind" early on, then your ending is going to look slapdash at best.
But how do you play up a minor but plot vital character without putting the novel equivalent of a giant, blinking "THIS GUY IS IMPORTANT LATER" arrow over his head and giving the whole game away? Simple, you just have to make them important in other ways that red herring the reader away from the character's real purpose as plot device. My favorite way to do this is to harness the universal human need to gossip.
Humans are social creatures. We always want to know about relationships, especially juicy, scandalous ones. Using this nosy fascination is a very easy way to tempt readers into latching on to a character you're either not willing to, or don't have time to, develop at the moment.
For example, in my Eli novels, I have a scene were two vital but (at the time) relatively minor characters hint through a bit of side dialogue that they are actually secretly the parents of my main character. GASP! This detail, less than 15 words all together, made a huge impact on my readership and elevated an otherwise minor sub-villain to major character status. The sudden elevation meant I was able to use her as the key character in a scene in the next book, turning an otherwise dull plot conversation between minor characters into a tense interchange between power players, which was a definite improvement. (More on key characters in a moment).
Harnessing our natural human need to be all up in other people's business is one of the most powerful ways to get your readers interested and invested in your characters, major or minor. The range of what you can use to hook people in is enormous: romantic entanglements, potential romantic entanglements, old scandals, secrets, feuds, all that reality TV stuff. There's a reason people watch those shows religiously, it's because they push our social buttons, and we as authors can use that same addictive power to make even our minor characters instantly rank as important in a reader's mind without being obvious about it, killing tension with explanation, or wasting words better spent on plot.
J. K. Rowling did an amazing job of this with Harry Potter. Think about how many HP characters you can name. I'll bet you dollars to donuts it's more than the main cast, probably a lot more. This is because J. K. Rowling is a freaking master of making us care about her secondary characters by showing us their places in the enormous social web she wove around her wizarding world. Because of this, when it came time to march out the armies of good and evil for the final battle, an enormous multi-character undertaking that could very well have been a train wreck of names and hex flinging, it all worked out, because Rowling made us care about all those minor characters well in advance, and so we as readers remembered every single one when the time came for them to do their job in (or die for) the plot.
And this is why making your reader care about the characters is so important. If they care enough to remember who's who, then all you have to do is be clear about who and where everyone is at any given point and the reader will take care of the rest on their own, leaving you free to focus on plot.
3) Single File Introduction and Key CharactersLast year, I wrote a blog post about the art of revealing information in novels called "Teaching Your Reader Magic." The central idea was that a large and unsung part of writing, especially genre writing, is actually teaching. When you reveal your world to a reader who has never experienced it before, you are, in a sense, teaching them the rules you will be playing by for the duration of the novel. Like all teaching, whether you do this well or poorly determines your student/reader's experience with the subject matter. Just as a bad teacher can ruin your interest in a subject for life, bad/clumsy/poorly thought out writing can destroy the coolest of concepts. It doesn't matter how awesome your magic system or world is, if you can't explain it, ain't no one gonna care.
This also applies to characters. Think about when you go to a party and your host introduces you to a large circle of people, rattling off names as they go. Chances are, you will not remember a single one of those people by the time the introductions are done and you're left alone standing awkwardly in front of a bunch of staring strangers. Not good times.
Now, imagine if you go to that same party and instead of throwing you instantly into the crowd, your host introduces you to only one person, but that person has an amazingly interesting job or is doing something incredibly cool. They're also witty and charming, and they want to get to know you, too. You're gonna remember that person. Hell, you might even develop an instant crush on that person.
This is the interaction I want between my readers and my characters. When I introduce a character, I try to show them being as interesting as possible, and I always give the spotlight to only one person at a time. I don't throw in distractions or other names or even other people (though I will use unnamed throwaway characters/archetypes to provide dialogue or tension, like a faceless guard or, in Eli's case, a door). Basically, I'm angling to recreate that one on one introduction and instant sense of connection/fascination of meeting an amazing person at a party, because once I've got my reader thinking of this fictional character as someone they want to know more about and spend more time with, I've got them hooked and I can safely move on to other characters or plot elements.
This very focused, single file method of introduction works best with main characters, but it can easily be used in a speed up version on minor characters as well by using the main, already introduced character as a bridge, or, as I like to call them, the key character. If we got back to our party analogy, your key character is like the host, they're the person the reader already knows who introduces them to the people they don't. A very good key character can introduce a reader to several minor characters all at once, but of course you have to keep numbers reasonable, stagger the introductions, and make sure everyone has a telling detail to aid in memory if you want to avoid the "oh my god who are these people? NOT GOOD TIMES!" reaction I mentioned above.
A good example of the key character in action is when Gandalf brings Thorin and his dwarves into Bilbo's house in The Hobbit. In this scene, Gandalf and Bilbo, both established characters the reader already cares about, act as key characters to provide context and relevance to what would otherwise be a crazy mess of 13 singing dwarves we don't care about. However, since Tolkein has been kind enough to provide us with hosts for his dwarf party, people we like who can rapidly establish why all this mountain song is important, disaster is averted and the book can move on with relatively little fuss even though I still couldn't name all the dwarves by the end.
By introducing important characters one at a time and then using these characters as anchors for the introduction of other characters, you ensure that your reader never overwhelmed by an onslaught of new information. Just like you teach your reader magic by introducing them to your world step by logical step, so do you have them learn your cast by introducing people either one at a time, or in very specific context to a character they already know.
Pulling this off in your text can be tricky and requires a deft hand with the story's tension and pacing to make sure things don't get boring, but it's so worth it. By introducing people single file and using established characters to introduce new ones, just as you yourself would introduce your friends to someone new in the real world, you can ease your reader into an enormous cast with almost no strain, or forgotten names, on their part. Trust me, this is a very useful tool.
4) Be Smart With Your NamesI know I said waaaaay back up in #1 that names aren't how people remember characters initially, but that doesn't mean they aren't important. Once you've gotten your characters established, name becomes enormously important, because in a medium largely without pictures, that name is how your reader sees the character.
Now, I am as guilty as any author of spending far too much time on First (and this is vital in genre fiction), the name has to be pronounceable. Most people hear the words they read in their heads as they're reading. This sounding out is vital to memory, and if they can't figure out what a character's name sounds like name, they're going to skip it. This is bad. You don't ever want your reader skipping anything, especially not a name you need them to remember for the story to work. Also, unpronounceable/unspellable names make it really difficult to talk up a book to your friends, and that's never a good thing. So no matter how much I may personally like a name, if my husband can't pronounce it off a sheet of paper, I pick something else. It's just not worth the risk.
Another thing to consider is how your cast's names work together. A big part of this is making sure people from the same culture have believably related names (none of this: "I'm Aiden and this is my brother, Wazakiki!") and just making sure your names fit into your world building in general. This is not to say you can't have someone with a radically different name, or even that you have to provide an explanation for it, but you do need other characters to at least comment on this oddity in the reader's stead to acknowledge the oddity. I didn't do this as much as I should have in the Eli Books and man, did I get flack for it.
In addition to making sure your cast's names fit within the context of the story, it's also good to think about making sure everyone's first letters don't overlap too much. Again, there's no law that says you have to do this, but a book where the main characters were Elton, Eliza, and Ella would get kind of confusing (unless, of course, it's a middle grade novel featuring three plucky siblings where the E names are a joke, in which case it's charming).
Really, though, repeating first letters isn't a big deal so long as you don't have two characters sharing a first and last letter. For the reason why, see the example below.
Ain't the brain neat? Anyway, because of this phenomenon, character names that share a first and last letter, such as Eliza and Estella, are extremely easy to confuse. These days, my rule is that if I'm transposing the names myself while I'm writing the book, then someone's name needs to change. Because if I'm messing it up, the reader definitely will, and no name is worth that hassle to me.
Wow, this got a lot longer than I expected. I hope you enjoyed this Seven Years In Tibet of a blog post about making sure your reader keeps up with the cast of your book. As always, feel free to leave me a comment with your thoughts on the subject, and if you like my writing posts, I hope you'll follow me here on the blog or on Twitter! Thank you for reading and I hope you find this helpful!
Yours etc.,Rachel
