Taven Moore's Blog, page 45

Your Story May Not Be Ready

Worldbuilding

Before you start writing (and I don’t care if you’re a pantser or a plotter here), you’re going to need to do some worldbuilding. Lay down the groundwork of who, what, where, and most importantly, why your world works the way it does.

Everyone stops worldbuilding and begins writing at different times. It’s a personal decision, based on what works for you.

I have a bad habit of folding under the pressure of wanting to start writing. I start too soon, and things fall apart somewhere in the saggy middle of my stories.

I’ve done it before because of a looming NaNoWriMo commitment and sorely regretted it. Stained had solid potential, but I rushed it and felt like I was floundering on several key points.

It took me about 45k words before I felt I captured the villain’s voice. That’s a lot of rewriting and a lot of revision work for something that I KNEW I should have nailed ahead of time.

Questions

The trick is to make sure you answer all the really important questions before you get started.

Not ALL the questions. Leave yourself and your creative side some wiggle room for surprises.

But all the important ones.

Which ones are important?

Well, that’s another personal thing. I can’t tell you which questions make up your foundation any more than you could tell me which ones are important to me.

For me, motivations and character voice are important. If I can’t “hear” a character speak, then the words I write feel wooden. Forced. There’s a music to it, and learning how to find that music is a puzzle with a new solution for each character I write.

Motivations are huge. If you don’t understand why your villain is doing the Big Bad Thing, you’re likely to fall into the “because they’re evil” swamp, and that’s just not pretty.

Even worse when you don’t know your character’s motivation.

Magic rules are super important to me as a writer. I need to know what people are capable of, how they invoke it, and what the limitations are. I want to know what’s easy, what’s normal, what’s hard, and what can I push against in just the right ways to allow for characters to go above and beyond.

Societies are important, but on a very soft level. I want to know technology levels and how people treat each other. What are gender roles? What are jobs? Where does the food come from? Paper? Clothing? What is the role of government, both on a large-scale and in the day-to-day lives of the people living in the cities? Is there tension between the different societies, and how does it manifest? Has there been war in the past? How did it end? What were the repercussions?

Open Space

I try to leave breathing room in some of them, after really cementing the bottom stuff. Take societies, for example. I can answer all of those questions and still decide to add in a special way to shake hands, or a tension between a particular tax-collector in a city.

I may not know that my characters are afraid of the dark until I put them in a tunnel. I may not think of a particular way to invoke magic until it occurs to the character.

These are all fine. I leave things loose intentionally so that I can tighten them with my story and so that I can play with them while I write.

It’s the difference between having a concrete foundation and a blueprint and just going at a stack of wood with a hammer and nails, though. Sure, I can trial-and-error my way through figuring out the plumbing on a bathroom, but I’ve played that game too many times to think that it’s very effective for me. I want to start being proud of my output, and I can’t do that if the kitchen floods every time someone flushes the toilet.

Be Patient

Listen to your heart AND your brain.

If you’ve got things that don’t feel right, that you’re worried will cause a problem or that you haven’t fleshed them out …

… well, you probably have a problem that isn’t fleshed out.

Take the time NOW to plan it. Time spent planning saves three times as much time spent revising after the fact.

And revision really isn’t fun. (Right Bill?)

Related posts:

Revamping a Very Old Story
NaNo2010 > Worldbuilding 2
Abandoning a Project, or How To Tell If A Story Is Broken

[Perry] The Cultural Influence of MMORPG's

So recently, I experienced two stories that triggered a line of thought regarding the slow prevalence of the MMORPG genre (massively multiplayer online role playing games) in our culture as well as the interesting things both stories did to push the idea past anything I’d experienced before.

Diving right in, I recently watched an anime called Sword Art Online. In terms of the story and the character development, the series was pretty mediocre at best. What interested me about the series was the concept itself as well as the way the show explored some of the ramifications of such an event.

The story is based on a new game that features the “full-dive” technology, where you wear a helmet and exist within a virtual world. The problem arises when the first ten thousand people who log on realize that there’s no way to log off from the game. They’re then visited by the creator of the game, who informs them that death in the game will kill their body in the real world. The only way to escape the game and return to their lives is to conquer all one hundred levels of the dungeon.

The concept itself wasn’t that amazing or unique. I can recall at least a few other novels, television shows or games that have explored this same idea.

No, what kept me intrigued was the way the series explored how the people trapped within the system would react to it.

Told over a two year period, SAO shows a somewhat realistic portrayal of how people would act in that same situation. It explores the idea that not everyone will want to risk real death in the game world, and instead, will be content to sit in the safe beginner village until someone comes to ‘rescue’ them. It explores the idea that the player-base caught within would segregate. People would split off into a faction of ‘hardcore’ gamers who prefer to go out and push through the dungeon to try and beat it while others would stay back in the towns and villages, spending their time levelling up crafting professions and such instead to try and support the front-liners through upgrades to their armor and weapons.

It explores some darker themes as well, and does it well. It deals with the fact that people who were beta testers in the game, armed with foreknowledge would likely keep their information to themselves to give themselves an edge when it came to obtaining equipment, thereby giving themselves a better chance to survive. It deals with players who would be willing to kill others to steal their items, regardless of the fact that it would lead to a permanent death.

The most important issue it tackles is regarding the separation between life in the game and life in the real world. It talks about how the distinction is sometimes hard to see and that at times, so long as you’re enjoying whatever life has handed you, it doesn’t really matter where you’re living your life so long as you’re consciously making the decision to live it.

The other story was Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline.

Cline’s novel explores a relatively near future scenario where a single game, Oasis, has grown to encompass just about every facet of life. A virtual universe with some planets featuring a strong sci-fi motif where magic is disabled while other planets feature fantasy landscapes where technology doesn’t work.

What I thought Cline’s novel explored well was the idea of how prevalent such a technology would become. A virtual universe where people have jobs within Oasis and are paid for it in the real world. A virtual universe where governments ‘buy’ planets and set up school boards on them, allowing students the option of attending classes in real life or attending classes online.

It’s a very interesting take on a virtual world that’s sort of layered over our own like a second skin.

I found it to be a very well realized look at what our world would be like if we had access to that sort of technology. In that respect, if science fiction is generally meant to extrapolate what technology can do for us as a species in the years to come, Ready Player One did a great job of painting a fully realized world where a product like Oasis makes its mark on every aspect of our lives.

What I found more interesting though were some of the more existential issues the novel tackled.

Issues like whether or not our online and offline identities can be separated. Issues like whether or not we become the masks that we wear to hide ourselves. Issues like whether or not an obsession with life in a virtual space has the potential to ruin the real life that we leave behind to live it.

These were issues that I found all the more interesting because though they were based off of the fictional Oasis system of the novel, they were also issues that spoke to us as a people now, in this day and age where the internet is becoming a frightfully prevalent part of our daily lives.

I think that stories tell us just as much about the time they were written and created as they do about the story on the surface. When writing in a near future setting, it’s important to keep a finger on the pulse of the current level of technology, as well as to explore what people have done with similar themes in other mediums in order to make our own creations feel as authentic as possible.

PS: I don’t recommend Sword Art Online or Ready Player One to an indiscriminate audience. While I enjoyed the heck out of them, they’ll probably be more of interest to people who share an interest in gaming and MMO culture. With that said though, if you ARE into that sort of thing, both of these stories are definitely interesting rides =)

Related posts:

[Perry] Be Careful What You Leave Out
[Perry] Magic Systems: The Hook

Book Series Review : The Underland Chronicles

Summary

Recently finished the Underland Chronicles, by Suzanne Collins (yes, the same Suzanne Collins of Hunger Games fame).

When 11-year-old Gregor follows his little sister through a grate in the laundry room of his New York City apartment building, he hurtles into a dark Underland beneath the city. There, humans live uneasily beside giant spiders, bats, cockroaches, and rats, but the fragile peace is about to fall apart.

My Rating

4.5 out of 5 stars.

The Chatter

I was not actually a huge fan of the Hunger Games books, so if I hadn’t been handed this entire box set by a friend (which is, by the way, a great way to ensure I actually read a book) I probably wouldn’t have picked it up or finished it.

I’m SO glad I did.

The first book is the weakest of them, and that’s only because it feels the most like a YA/MG series, with some predictable stuff and a reasonably simple plot. By the end of the series, the plot is so complex and the stakes so high that I honestly consider the last two books to be a SINGLE book. They read wonderfully together, and the fourth book doesn’t have a tidy wrap-up at the end the way the first three do.

They’re quick to read, full of adventure and excitement, and I really, REALLY enjoyed them.

The very very ending was not … 100% up to my personal standards, so I mentally tacked a fanfic chapter to the end in order to satisfy myself. The author left it very open for the reader to do this. I’m not going to explain that for fear of spoilers, which I’m going to ask folks to keep out of the comments as well.

The Writing

Writing quality is very high, with pretty great pacing and story structure throughout (excepting the last two books, which I consider 100% forgivable  Sometimes you need more space to really let a story unfold).

The Characters

I love love love these characters. Gregor is of course very likeable, but everyone (including the big villain at the end) are understandable and relateable.

Collins is not shy about killing off characters, but almost never did I feel like it was done just to jerk our chains. It was done to make the story feel like it mattered and that there were consequences for decisions. I cried during every book, for various reasons, but often because someone I cared about died or was in danger.

It was a good cry, though. Cathartic.

The World

There were some shaky bits of worldbuilding, but overall I’d say it holds up better than I expected it to. The various giant animals in the Underland all have unique names for themselves, but they call THEMSELVES those names, which makes it better for me than if the humans arbitrarily renamed them. Gnawers, Crawlers, Nibblers, etc. I LOVED the scene where the human’s alternate name is revealed.

I wanted to SEE this world, even with all its dangers. That’s my real yardstick. Collins made me care.

The Trope

The biggest issue I really had through the first three books was actually turned into a plot point for the last two, which is fantastic.

Prophecies. The kind that people follow and believe in and always turn out to be true, even if the full understanding isn’t reached until after the events have passed.

Sometimes, that alone is enough to kill a book. If you’re “the chosen one” who will “lift the land from darkness” or something, then it becomes difficult to really get a sense of urgency for your plot.

This series, as a whole, dealt with that matter VERY neatly, in my opinion.

Recommended for…

Children-at-heart of all ages. There’s some pretty heavy stuff towards the end of the series, so parents of very young children might want to pre-read before offering them.

Fans of  fantasy worlds (even if there is almost no “magic” involved), people who love stories with animal characters, and those who like high adventure, adrenaline, and danger in their stories.

Related posts:

Book Review: Beka Cooper Series by Tamora Pierce
Book Review : Shotgun Gravy
Audio Book Magic

The Myth of Strong Female Characters

Props to Perry for sparking the conversation that itched enough at the back of my brain to make me blog on this.

I am seeing a lot of discussion on the interwebs about “strong female characters”. Particularly with regards to various writers who either do or do not live up to the rising expectations when it comes to females in gaming/writing/movies/tv/comics.

This is good. This is very, very good.

We SHOULD have discussions about this. It’s important that it matters to us that women are portrayed in a manner that empowers both boys/men and girls/women to treat their fellow humans as people.

The Disclaimer

For the purposes of this discussion, I am talking about the way that women are portrayed. The way that men are portrayed is its own barrel of problems but is out of scope.

One problem at a time, please.

The External Reading

(summaries provided to save time, but I still do recommend the source links)

Disney Princesses have come under harsh scrutiny of late, with rather a lot of snarky pokes at the way those heroines are portrayed, particularly with regards to needing men to rescue them or using their sexuality to succeed. Like this image, for example.

As a rebuttal, this tumblr posts argues that the situations and actions of the Disney princesses is not so simple as the quippy images like the one I linked above might have you believe.

And this poem that Perry sent me, which combined with the above two links in my mind to create the need for a blog post. The poem is from the point of view of a “strong female character” who lists out the things she must be (beautiful, but not too beautiful, strong but not without flaws, disabled, but not in a way that makes her look weak, good at all weapons, but still kindhearted and gentle…) and then cries that she wishes she weren’t alone, so she didn’t have to bear the burden of so many expectations.

You can also toss in some discussions on the My Little Pony “respectable show for girls” and the Lara Croft victimization if you so wish. Then there’s always Hermione and Rose Tyler versus Twilight. I don’t think we even need to talk about the Catwoman or … pretty much all of the other female comic book characters. And there’s the discussion about Sister’s Red and the subtle “she was asking for it” rape message that can be inferred.

Why It Matters

First, I think we should figure out why it matters.

It’s under discussion because women have been portrayed poorly for so long that they’ve become tropes. You’ve got the vamp, the tramp, the mother, the stepmother. You’ve got characters who have no sense of self outside of their need for a man and a family — women who are so weak they cannot protect themselves and need a man to do it for them. You’ve got the women who use their sexuality to mislead and lie, and the women who jealously and spitefully take down any who stand in their path.

It matters because our children are watching these shows and reading these books, and if they only ever see characters who love pink and frills and care about how beautiful they are, then that is what they believe women should be. This is limiting to the girls who might branch out and hurtful to the girls who have zero affinity for pink and frills and makeup.

It matters because our teenagers are trying to figure out who they are and what love is, and what their relationships with men should be. If all they see are men saving women and women subdued or bitchy, that is what they think life should be like.

In MY mind (as it’s my blog and thus my opinion gets to be on the front page) we need strong female characters to show girls and women their options. That being a woman is a multi-faceted and unique experience.

To build a sense of self-worth that has nothing to do with other people.

I’d love to know why YOU think it matters. Why it matters to you and what makes this issue something you care about.

Why We Still Have a Problem

To me, the poem most accurately details why we still have a problem. We’ve swung the pendulum the other way, and gone from weepy, useless heroines to badasses trying to be too many things at once.

I have as much in common with Teary McVictim as I do with Leather McSpikesAndStuff.

We need to split the load. It’s okay to dream of being a mommy and a princess and want a pink EasyBake Oven. It’s EQUALLY okay to want nerf guns and puppies and legos. It is ALSO equally okay to dream of being a mommy and want a puppy and to send your barbies off to war.

When you’ve only got one main female role, however, you’ve got to do a lot of scrambling to try and make as many people happy as possible.

Lord of the Rings

Incidentally, the ORIGINAL fantasy novels somehow seemed to avoid this.

Granted, they had the “women and children must be protected” stuff, but that’s societal. There weren’t a LOT of female characters, but the behavior of those women and the way that the men treated them rarely suffered from the issues we see today.

The first chapter of The Hobbit talks about Bilbo’s mother, a Took who provided the wealth used to build Bag End. Very few fans of the movies can forget the strength of Eowyn, who abhored a cage and killed the Witch King.

No End Date

There’s no end date on this problem, because you can never make everyone happy. The solution I find totally acceptable sticks in the craw of many other people, and vice versa.

We should never stop trying to improve, trying to do better.

The important part has already begun. People are critically looking at the entertainment they are being given and asking themselves if they think it’s doing a good job at anything other than mindless entertainment.

Writers

Writers, as producers of this content, I hope you’re paying attention and asking yourselves the same questions. What is acceptable to YOU?

No matter what you do, someone will accuse you of being sexist or upholding stereotypes. There’s no escape from it.

You need only write in a way that satisfies your own morality, and you can only do that by paying attention, not just to yourself, but to the way that other people are perceiving things.

You see, we grew up with these same tropes, these same images taught to us as being normal. As being not only okay, but celebrated.

We need to break free of what has always been done, and forge our own paths.

It’s up to us. We want to be writers, sure, but we also need to be aware of the responsibility that comes with creation. If I have a problem with the way female characters are portrayed, I can TALK about it all I want. In my heart, I know that it is what I DO about it that matters most.

I’m going to write female characters that I would want to know and spend time with and befriend. I’m going to write daughters and sisters and mothers and warriors and bookworms and bakers and horsewomen.

I’m going to write the role models that I think should be seen more in our entertainment.

Related posts:

NaNo2010 > Characters 1
World of Womancraft
Writing Characters Who Are Not Very Much Like Yourself

[Perry] Enjoyable Reads from 2012

Time is precious and life is short.

As a kid, I never believed that. When I was younger, life stretched out before me and it looked like I would have all the time in the world to do all of the things I would want to do. I would be an astronaut and an archaeologist and a writer and any other thing that came to mind.

That changes pretty quick, doesn’t it? Age sneaks up on you while you’re not watching and next thing you know, you’re sitting on your bed with your laptop. The dog is sleeping by your knees. It’s the eve of your twenty-ninth birthday and all you can do is think about the immutable fact that life is short and time is precious.

With the acknowledgement that this is true for everyone and not just me (any immortal readers out there?), I’ve put together a short list of some of the best stories I’ve experienced this past year. These stories may not have been fantastic, triple A, #1 slot on the New York Times bestseller list…but they moved me in a way that fills me with the desire to share them.

Let’s Pretend This Never Happened is a very strange, semi-autobiographical story by Jenny Lawson. It was recommended to me by Tami and reads like a rambling string of anecdotes from the mind of someone that’s…if not crazy, at least unhinged. I don’t recommend reading it while eating, or in public, or while doing a lot of things, I think. It’s a funny and strange kind of book and I think many people would benefit from taking a look at just how off-kilter their lives aren’t.

The Rook by Daniel O’Malley is a great piece of urban fantasy for anyone that’s wanted to believe there’s a world hidden around the corners of our own (think Neverwhere or Dresden files). The big standout for me in this story was the use of amnesia in the story that didn’t make me immediately cringe and hold up a cross. A woman wakes up in a park in the rain, surrounded by dead people wearing latex gloves and no memory. In her pocket is a letter addressed to her from herself telling her not to panic and that everything will be okay. The soft relationship that O’Malley develops between the old Myfanwy (read like ‘Tiffany) and the new was handled in a very clever manner and was definitely worth experiencing.

Speaking of which, Cold Days, the latest Dresden files novel was also a great read. I know that by now, the people who want to read about Harry Dresden are probably already doing so. To anyone still on the fence, though, I just have to say that in both the Dresden novels as well as his Codex Alera series, Jim Butcher can do escalation better than anyone else I’ve read to date. No matter how crazy the climax of the previous book was, you can be sure that the finale of the next novel will top it and Cold Days is definitely no exception.

If these feel like a bit too much fantasy for you, there’s also The Expanse trilogy starting with Leviathan Wakes by James S. A Corey. This was a nice and hard piece of science fiction, eschewing the more esoteric light speed and warp drives for ships that are propelled by the principles of physics that we understand today. Where crew members deal with a lot of thrust related increased gravity during fights and deal with hibernating on long voyages between sections of our solar system. There’s a parasite of unknown origin that poses a threat for mystery, a lot of tension between the residents of the Belt (asteroid belt) and Earth for politicking, and an intriguing relationship between the open and honest Jim Holden and the cynical honesty of detective Miller which was delicately handled.

For sci-fi with a bit less of a heavy bent is John Scalzi’s wonderful Red Shirts. A tongue in cheek piece of metafiction, the proud crew of the flagship of the United Union of Planets discover something very odd about the ship they’re serving on. Little problems like how every away mission involving the senior members of the crew tend to result in the horrific death of one of the red-shirt wearing ensigns that tag along for the ride. Soon it becomes a mad struggle to escape certain death at the hands of the mysterious Narrator as they struggle to understand what’s going on and what they really are. The description probably makes this sound a LOT more hokey than it is but it’s clear that Scalzi had a lot of fun writing this and his deft handling of the story is something that has to be read to be believed.

Maybe you want something a little darker though, a fitting read for a cold and windy winter night? Look no further than Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King. It was released back in 2010 but I only read it this past year after taking a pretty significant break from the works of Mr. King and I have to say that it was like going back to the very first time I picked up The Shining. It’s a short story collection comprised of four tightly paced stories with barely a breath of the supernatural about them that center around the idea that horror can live right next door to you. A stand out for me though was the story Big Driver which featured one of the most…visceral, punch to the gut rape stories I’ve ever experienced. Even more impressive is that it was done with little to no graphic language as it had almost as much to do with the emotional aftermath of such an act as the act itself.

Maybe you want something short and sweet to cleanse the palate? Legion by Brandon Sanderson fits the bill. A short novella about a man with useful hallucinations teaches me that you don’t need something novel length to touch your reader as long as you have a shining gem of an idea. The Emperor’s Soul by Sanderson as well is another one of his short novellas, this one featuring one of the most…inspired magic systems I’ve ever read. It’s akin to the idea behind alchemy in the anime Fullmetal Alchemist but implemented in a way that makes it something new and wonderful to witness.

I know that I started reading it almost three years ago now but Choose! The last little snippet that Tami left us with was regarding the mysterious origins of one of the central characters, a ticker by the name of Bones. Complicated, powerful, and utterly heart-wrenching. Stuff like this is the reason why I even started writing in the first place. I wanted to see if it was possible for me to make other people feel the way Choose made me feel.

Finally, in pride of place, we have my last entry to this list as the story that cut right down to the bone. The Orphan’s Tale by Catherynne M. Valente is something that I can barely describe. It’s about a boy, a prince of sorts who runs into an orphan girl in the palace gardens, a girl that everyone shuns due to the ink-like markings over her eyes. But as the boy soon discovers, the markings are dense letterings, stories written over her eyes, placed there to mark her for a purpose. The novel utilizes the tales within tales format found in the Arabian Nights but pulls them down into a wonderfully wrought spiral of complexity that I could barely encompass just reading, let alone to even think about pulling off. At times, light and cheerful. At times, soul-crushingly dark and depressing. And always, always, always chiming at just the right pitch to ring my heart like a bell.

Reading the final ending to that story has left its mark upon me as one of the most complicated feelings I’ve experienced in 2012 and I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything.

That’s enough from me, though. What I want is to hear from you guys, telling me of some of the most memorable things you’ve read this past year. There has to be something you’ve read that you were just bursting to share with someone and it’s those experiences that I want to hear about.

Time is precious and fleeting.

Let’s make the most of it.

Related posts:

Writing Status, July 2012
2012 Reading List (as of August)
Best of the Blog - 2012 Edition

On Missing Youtube Videos

I’ve had a few times lately where wordpress is “helping” me by removing things from my blog posts. Mostly some styling (like trying to shrink down images) but also notably embedded youtube videos.

I DO fix them when I notice after the post goes live, but if you read in your feed reader or came to the site and something doesn’t seem to make sense, check back later.

*lovemuffins*

~Tami

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Music I'm Loving - Walk Off The Earth

The band Walk Off the Earth became known for their 5-people-one-guitar cover of a gotye song, but I recently found them again thanks to Epbot and they’ve got songs that blow that one out of the water.

I Knew You Were Trouble

This is a cover of a Taylor Swift song, but you’d almost never know if I didn’t tell you. I liked the original, but I LOVE WotE’s take on it, which includes the skills of incredible beatboxer KRNFX.

Gang of Rhythm

I believe this is their original song and it is SO much fun. Rollicking good music that makes you want to get up and dance. It also makes me want to learn how to play the ukelele.

Somebody That I Used to Know

This is the Gotye cover I mentioned above. I’m linking it because it IS good, and it’s amazing to see them pull it off with a single guitar. If you haven’t seen it, it’s well worth watching, but it’s not being played on repeat at my house like the other two are.

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6 Harsh Truths

This, jadies and lentilmen, is a link to a Cracked article.

For those of you unfamiliar with Cracked, they are known for humorous, offensive articles that point out obvious things that nobody wants to think about. Things like … clownfish behaviors in real life and what that would mean about Finding Nemo.

The language is NSFW and only a very small portion of the world wouldn’t be offended at least once (at least a little) when reading their articles.

This article is no different, and yet I am linking to it and recommending a read anyway.

Cracked.com’s 6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You a Better Person

For those of you who don’t want to read, I’ll do a Tami-summary here, but I’ll be rephrasing and paraphrasing rather a lot.

6, 5, 4, 3, 2 : What are you DOING?

I’ve combined quite a few of Cracked’s headings into a single point, because I believe they blend together very well.

What are the things you WANT? You want money, fame, respect, food, shelter, love, etc.

What are you DOING to get those things? What are you offering the world? What are you giving up?

You don’t apply for a job as a programmer at a corporation, show up in sweatpants, insist that you crochet lovely mittens, and expect to get hired on.

Sitting on a couch watching tv and eating junk food all the time may lead to success for some people, but the odds are NOT in your favor.

Bring something to the table. BE something. DO something. If you met yourself, would you even like who you see? Stop wishing you were someone else, and figure out what you want and what it’ll take to get there.

A quote that hit me pretty hard:

Do the math: How much of your time is spent consuming things other people made (TV, music, video games, websites) versus making your own?

Apple Trees

Followed by a FANTASTIC discussion of “who you are on the inside” and “what you do on the outside”. If you’re an apple tree, then who you are on the inside is the DIRT in which you’re growing. No matter how good the dirt is or how lovely the tree, most people ONLY CARE ABOUT THE APPLES.

What fruit are you producing?

Inside, you have great compassion for poor people. Great. Does that result in you doing anything about it?

also

How many of you are walking around right now saying, “She/he would love me if she/he only knew what an interesting person I am!” Really? How do all of your interesting thoughts and ideas manifest themselves in the world? What do they cause you to do? If your dream girl or guy had a hidden camera that followed you around for a month, would they be impressed with what they saw? Remember, they can’t read your mind — they can only observe. Would they want to be a part of that life?

The Final Point

Everything about you is going to reject change.

Whether you do it by getting defensive, attacking the “attacker” who says you need to change at all (what does Tami know anyway? And certainly what does that Cracked article know?) or nitpicking the bits you don’t personally believe in, your inner self will do everything it can to make sure you keep sitting on that couch, watching that tv and eating that junk food.

It’s comfortable. It’s easy.

You can certainly get by that way. Make your way through life without ever producing fruit. You’re not actually an apple tree, and nobody’s going to cut you down for not producing. You’re a person. You can get government aid pretty easily these days, and then you don’t even need to get a job.

My Apples

That’s not what I want, though. That’s not who I want to be. And I know for plenty of you, that’s not who YOU want to be, either.

This blog isn’t my fruit. It’s just me, figuring things out, trying to learn and share as much of that knowledge as I can. My blog is flowers on an apple tree branch, but not actual fruit.

I want my apples to be my books, my stories, my characters and worlds and I want them to be sweet and fragrant and utterly irresistible.

You

What do you want your apples to be?

Related posts:

Giving Myself Permission
Recipe! - Apple Sausage Burger
The Trees Are Spilling Joy

[Perry] Magic Systems: The Bait and Switch

Alright.

With regard to magic systems, we’ve talked about the good and the bad.

Now let’s talk about the ugly.

What I consider the bait and switch magic system is one that starts off by having you think it works a certain way, but then turning around and yelling, “Gotcha!” as it yanks the rug right out from under you.

To be clear though, this isn’t a reference to the system of exceptions. Stories that use the idea of exceptions are usually the ones that use prophecies or ‘Chosen Ones.’ They’re the ones that take place in the land of the blind but a poor farm boy somewhere gains the power to see and goes around overthrowing tyrants and the Big Bads all over the place.

No, this isn’t a reference to those systems at all. They have their place.

To use a more concrete example, we’ll take a look at a novel called Playing for Keeps by Mur Lafferty.

There will be major spoilers for said novel in this post so if you feel like taking a gander at the novel first before reading any further, by all means =)

With all respect to Lafferty, I thought that the novel had a wonderful concept that suffered a bit of a misstep about halfway through.

The story is about a city where superheros and villains duke it out on a regular basis but centers around a group of misfits, “third wavers” who have powers that just aren’t that…crime-fighty.

The protagonist, Keepsie, has a passive ability where anything that falls into her possession, nobody can take it away from her without her permission, express or implied. Attempting to do so results in the person getting frozen in place until Keepsie lets them go.

The story was fine for a while, very promising in fact. While Keepsie has what’s regarded as a minor power, it becomes useful when a villain slips an important object to her for safekeeping (because nobody can take her things away from her). The heroes come looking for it but tired of being pushed around, Keepsie refuses to give it up and there’s this wonderfully ambivalent moment where you’re rooting for the villains even though you know you’re not really supposed to.

Things get sort of interesting a little later on with the revelation that Keepsie can’t be killed. She can’t be killed because murder is essentially ‘stealing’ someone’s life and as we’ve established, nobody can steal something from Keepsie without her permission.

It’s after this promising development that things kind of go to the pot and I’m going to place the lion’s share of the blame on the magic system.

One character who can ‘know’ details about a person by smelling them discovers that if he kisses them (taste being a part of the sense of smell), he can know MUCH more about them. Then he accidentally inhales another person who could turn into gases and there’s this whole possession thing going on.

Another character’s talent is that she can lift bar trays with perfect balance and no effort, regardless of the weight or if it’s balanced or not. This character discovers halfway through that she can lift ANY flat surface with perfect balance and no effort regardless of its weight or if it’s balanced. At one point, her friends hop onto a bed and she lifts it without any problem (cause it’s a flat surface, duh) and off she goes, carrying everybody around the city.

Oh, there’s a villain who’s power is that he can make machines out of metal and they do what he bids. His name is Doodad. At one point, he receives an injection that amplifies his powers and he creates a gateway to another dimension (cause he’s so awesome with machines) and winged demons and a huge tentacle monster form the final conflict that our heroes face.

No, I’m not exaggerating in the slightest bit.

Here’s what I think the problem is.

You see, from the start, we’ve been shown a very specific magic system and the development with Keepsie’s powers (the first incident) is a deepening of that system. It’s plausible because despite her power ALWAYS working this way, if nobody’s ever tried to kill her before, it’s definitely possible that this ramification of her talent might have escaped her until now.

The other developments are increasingly implausible and it shows. Is it reasonable to assume that the sniffer guy hasn’t kissed or licked anyone, EVER? He’s portrayed as a guy in his late twenties, early thirties and I find it a little hard to believe that he’s never been on a date or ever kissed a girl in his life.

What about the bar tray girl? Are we to seriously believe that she’s NEVER tried to lift any sort of flat object before and noticed that it weighed nothing?

I don’t even want to go into Mr. I’m Going To Create a Portal to Hell. The story just completely jumps the shark there for no discernible reason and it was incredibly frustrating. Frustrating because I really liked what she had been doing up until that point and then I just wanted to throw the book across the room.

In a way, it hit me the same way the movie Hancock did, with Will Smith. It seemed like a wonderful idea but about halfway through, the execution falters and it all goes to pieces.

The fault, to me, lies with the way the magic system worked. When the story starts, we’re told the magic works like this and the story will be about that. Halfway through though, suddenly the magic works this other way instead and as a direct result of the change, the story is now about dimensional gateways populated by tentacle monsters.

The end of Playing for Keeps extends the silliness even further when Keepsie is lauded by the city for helping to save it. The mayor presents her with the key to the city and Keepsie, with a devilish glint in her eye, says, “My city, huh? I like the sound of that.”

This implies that now her power extends to the city with a sly nod and a wink.

This only makes the problem worse. With that little smirk-y ending, it makes the car wreck of a magic system infinitely worse as it combines the worst of the bait and switch with the worst of the arbitrary systems!

It’s HER city? It was HER city before they gave her the key too, wasn’t it? And on that note, isn’t it HER country? Couldn’t you say that this is HER religion? Earth is HER planet? Her universe? Her reality?

Ugh.

Despite all of this though, I feel I would be irresponsible if I didn’t stress that I’m not saying the bait and switch is ALWAYS bad.

It’s just that compared to the other systems out there, it has more potential to be misused and to hurt your story by attempting to incorporate it.

The only times I think I’ve actually seen something like this put to good use are more…satirical or comedic pieces, like the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett.

The bait and switch is hard to do well and if you’re someone that can pull it off, more power to you. For the rest of us, I would advise a great deal of caution and a LOT of advice/thoughts from the trusted readers and writers in our lives.

Related posts:

[Perry] Magic Systems: Arbitrary Versus Rules
[Perry] Magic Systems: The Hook
Audio Book Magic

Best of the Blog - 2012 Edition

Year in Review

Looking back, here are my picks for my favorite posts this year, one per month. (I didn’t count Perry’s posts. he can do his own review if’n he wants to. *grin*)

January

Abandoning a Project, or How To Tell If  A Story is Broken

In which I found myself struggling to continue working on a project.

February

My Treasure Box

In which I share my idea box — the place I keep my notes and story ideas.

March

Writer’s Sketchbook

In which I talk about how important it is for writers to allow themselves the same freedom as an artist in their sketchbook.

April

Story Dissection and Evaluation

A quick method to give a first pass evaluation on a new story idea.

May

On Learning to See Flaws in your Writing

In which I discuss the stages of writing and learning to become a better writer.

June

On Short Stories

A three part post in which I discuss my growing disappointment with the short story environment.

July

Being a Writer Makes it More Difficult To Be A Reader

In which I talk about the pain of realizing old favorite books aren’t always as good as remembered.

August

 Reading, for Writers

In which I discuss the importance of reading.

September

On Forgiveness

In which I discuss the importance of a forgiving nature as a writer … forgiving YOURSELF as well as others.

October

 The First Quarter of the Book

In which I discuss what I think the first quarter of a book should contain, plot-wise.

November

 Mary Sues, the Dirty Truth

In which I discuss the REAL truth about Mary Sues … the fact that everyone kind of loves a character that rides the line.

December

Resolutions for a new Year

In which I try to turn the “resolution” of writing a book into reachable goals.

Related posts:

2009 Best of the Blog
Writing Status, July 2012
Sketchbooks for Writers