Craig Schaefer's Blog, page 23

Writing Challenge Tuesday: Prophesy

Destiny. If you ask me, which you probably didn’t, but allow me to ramble anyway, destiny is some dangerous stuff. The sense of self autonomy and agency come into question when we introduce ideas like prophesy, destiny, and one true love.

I’ve seen two schools of thought on this, in fictional stories. One is that destiny is a crock, all things can be changed, your fate is never predestined, and you must strive to break out of the mold. This has a lot of merit to it. I’ve known people who thought they were destined to die alone, people who are married with six kids now. I’ve known people who went into the armed forces and didn’t expect to come back in one piece. The ability to put destiny in its place is important.

The other school of thought focuses on the moment the prophesy is heard (point A) and the way the story is meant to end (point B). The story becomes about everything between points A and B, and how the protagonist either gives into or fights against his inevitable fate, only to reach point B all the same. Bonus twist, sometimes point B isn’t what it seems.

For instance, in a very mundane, Ethan Fromme sort of story, your protagonist could be told, “You will be killed by a rich man who will feel no guilt.” That sounds horrible. Cut forward to the “point B” moment, and you discover your protagonist has crippling ALS which has reduced them to a fraction of their quality of life. S/he begs a friend to whom they will bequeath their fortune to end their suffering.

Both the philosophical models of destiny (change your fate! or find your way to the end only to realize it wasn’t what you thought) have important applications.

Take Brave, for example. (spoilers.) The movie talks a great deal about fate, about magic and expected outcomes, and how things laid out generations before must be followed. The focus on this story is in the notion that there is no predetermined end. That we have the power to change our fate and break away from the past.

As a counterpoint, take the Greek tragedy Agamemnon. Cassandra is given the gift of prophesy by Apollo. When she refuses to go and become his consort, he lets her keep the gift, but with an added curse. No one would believe her. She is forced to watch as twisted prophesies become realities which are unstoppable not just by magic of fate, but because the people around her become the force that causes them to come true.

(I might be mentioning Cassandra, because she relates to a plot point in the next Faust book. Just saying, I might be.)

For this week’s writing challenge, I offer up a notion. What would your protagonist do when faced with a premonition, a prophesy, a dream of doom? What if someone believed they would die? Would your protagonist believe it? What if someone told him or her that they were destined to meet the love of their life tomorrow? Would they be looking at every new person with a little skepticism, or would they stay in bed and binge on Netflix and sleep?

Writing Challenge Tuesday: Consent Politics

I try not to wax on about current events. I really try. I like to think of fiction as an escape from reality, especially when that reality is a disappointment. That being said, I can’t help but feel a sense of responsibility to also act. I like to write in my fiction so that it improves my general living sphere, not just exists in it.

There’s so much going on right now, and I’m not exactly in a position to comment on a lot of it. I’m not a poly sci major. I don’t have a degree in social work, an in-depth understanding of criminal justice, or any way to really contribute useful thoughts about a lot of huge news events right now.

I can say something about Fifty Shades of Grey, however. Now, I’ve never said a bad word about any author in this blog, and I’m not going to start today. I think that the novel was written from the point of view of an outsider to a scene they didn’t understand, and that’s okay. But for this week’s challenge, I’m looking at people who know the scene and asking, “What would you write instead? How do you confront topics like this with sensitivity and clarity instead of… This?”

I won’t lie. This series makes my teeth hurt. But I’m reminded that some of my earliest work was deeply problematic too, and I grew from it. So instead of just ripping apart someone else’s work (which I’m not into) I want to ask how we improve the situation.

How would you write a sex-positive, potentially kinky scene? What elements of consent would you include? How do you communicate that characters can be excited and fearful without actually being afraid?

Food for thought. I think moving forward, it does make me really analyze how the things I write come across. There are definitely times I deal with consent politics in my writing, and I think that’s important. Granted, my demographic isn’t exactly impressionable youth, but it’s still something worth discussing.

Food for thought.

Inspirations: Jennifer Juniper Mix

I’m finding that, for my Thursday posts, sharing my playlists is far more fun than wracking my brain for something to somehow relate to my writing. Forcing the issue is just no fun, and sharing music? Way more awesome.

This week’s mix is about Jennifer Juniper, AKA, raucous hippie girl. I love writing her, I admit, and I take a certain glee in seeing her flirt, or cast magic, in showing off her particular brand of dysfunctional… Magic users are not generally the most healthy folks.

With that in mind, here’s a link to her mix.

Good Die Young - Jennifer Juniper Mix (Faustverse)

Brown Eyed Girl - Van Morrison

Spark - Data Romance

Love’s the Greatest Instrument of Rage - Thea Gilmore

All Along the Watchtower - Bear McCreary

Eyes of Mercy - October Project

Up All Night - Take That

Hopeless Wanderer - Mumford & Sons

Bottom of the River - Delta Rae

Your Love is My Drug - Kei$ha

This Ain’t a Scene it’s an Arms Race - Panic! At the Disco

Kids - MGMT

Ride Me Like a Wave - Janis Ian

Born to Die - Lana Del Rey

We Found Love (feat. Calvin Harris) - Rihanna

Riverside - Anges Obel

Spectrum - Florence & the Machine

I’m Not Lost, I’m Exploring - Jana Stanfield

Writing Challenge Tuesday: Constellations

As I’ve mentioned before, I follow a lot of fantasy authors and read just about everything I can get my hands on. This week’s prompt comes from that. In this case, I’m really interested in astronomy, and constellations, and the stories behind them. So I thought of a prompt which was completely off the wall and also befitting the theme.

If your protagonist was to be part of a constellation, what would that constellation be?

I know this one is a little oddball, but hear me out. Imagine they’re part of a mythology, or part of a greater story. What would they be in that story? A warrior? A healer? A savior? A criminal? I don’t think my protagonists tend to have much in the way of illusions about their own public image. Daniel cares about his morals, but doesn’t care much at all about how people view him. In fact, he tends not to think of that at all, because it doesn’t often occur to him that anyone takes notice. That gets him in trouble now and then.

Felix cares more about how people view him, but the content of his actions is more important to him than the effect others see. I think if Daniel was a constellation, I’d think of him as a pistol, or a chalice, whereas Felix would be a warrior, or archer.

Who or what would your protagonists (or secondary characters) be?

Inspirations - Blood and Glory

As I mentioned earlier this week, I’ve got a new mix up on my 8tracks account. You can follow me on there with this link. But if you don’t have an 8tracks account (which everyone should) you can still listen to my mixes.

This week, in celebration of the latest Faust book out last week, I’ve made a mix in honor of Daniel’s leading lady, Caitlin. Without further adieu, here’s the info on it!

Blood and Glory - Caitlin Mix

Cheap and Evil Girl - Bree Sharp

Dark Angel - VNV Nation

Bedroom Hymns - Florence and the Machine

Traeumst Du - OOMPH! feat Marta Jandova

King and Lionheart - Of Monsters and Men

Breath Control - Recoil

The First Taste - Fiona Apple

Swallow (Unplugged) - OOMPH!

Retaliate - VNV Nation

This Corrosion - Sisters of Mercy

Juke Joint Jezebel - KMFDM

Bad Romance - Lady Gaga

The Way You Like It - Adema Lucky - Bif Naked

She’s Always a Woman - Billy Joel

Come in Closer - Blue October

Leather - Tori Amos

Take Me to Church - Hozier

Naturally, this mix is heavy on the women-who-could-kill-me-with-a-look style music, and I’m sure that’s no surprise. Caitlin is a nice muse to have, and far kinder than the twins. Hopefully everyone will enjoy the latest book - and here’s some music to go along with it!

Writing Challenge Tuesday: Message in a Bottle

Dammit. Now that song is stuck in my head. Oh well, it’s already there, might as well inflict it on everyone else. Sorry about that. Okay, not really.

So, I’m away on a trip right now for a sort of working vacation, but I return home tomorrow. Hopefully refreshed and full of verve for writing. Realistically, full of hatred for snow and missing the Vegas warmth. Ah, well. Plus side, my area isn’t being hit nearly so hard as most of the northeast, so I can’t complain so much.

On my trip, I’ve been thinking about travel, about messages and how different it is to be in one place or another. What we leave behind, and what we come back to. There’s a scene in White Collar (love that show) where Diana Barrigan and Neal Caffrey are pretending to hook up in a hotel. Long story. While they’re there, Diana tells Neal about a secret; that travelers and particularly children of diplomats and traveling businessmen often leave secret messages and art for other travelers.

Sitting in my hotel room this weekend, I thought about where a message could be hiding. Sadly, I didn’t find one. But it did make me consider how I’d go about leaving one for someone else. So, for this week’s writing challenge, I wanted to put forth a concept - how would your protagonist leave a message for the people who came after them? Would it be a tragic last ditch effort, or a gesture while on a journey? Would they hide it behind a painting frame, or under a lamp, or along the back rim of a television in a recessed entertainment center?

If they left a message, what would it say? Warnings as to what they faced, or messages about life? Would it be practical, or philosophical? Would they check for other messages as they walked through life? What if they found one? Could it be pertinent to their situation, or would it be something random and beautiful?

Thursday, I’ll be writing about a brand new 8tracks mix. Oh, and you might be curious if I left a message behind in my hotel room.

I’m not telling.

On Productivity

Hi everybody, and happy Post-Release-Day Day! (That's a holiday, as of now. It's official.) Got a really good question from a reader and I figured I'd put up the answer here, in the hopes of being helpful to any struggling writer-folk. They wanted to know how I manage to maintain a prolific output while keeping quality high.

Well, the answer is quite simple. I'm actually not a writer at all. Daniel's adventures show up in my mailbox once every couple of months, written out in a fevered longhand, and the return address is an empty lot in Utah where an insane asylum burned to the ground fifty years ago. I just type the notebooks up nicely and format for print.

(Or there's the alternate theory: that I'm an employee of the Southern Tropics Import-Export Corporation, and these books are just a sneaky way of getting you used to the idea of an infernal takeover years before it happens, so you won't panic when it all goes down. Would YOU tell Caitlin and Emma that you can't meet a deadline? They don't understand that "cracking the whip" is supposed to be metaphorical...)

In all seriousness, there are a handful of tricks that get me where I'm going. These are not Earthshattering Secrets of Writing Wisdom, and at least one is super-duper-obvious, but maybe they'll help you look at your own work in a different light.

Discipline (Not the Fun Kind)
Let's do the obvious one first, shall we? Everybody knows that if you don't do the work, the work don't get done. Butt in chair (or standing desk, or treadmill, whatever you're into), fingers on keyboard, brain in high gear. I've never met a successful writer who wrote "whenever they felt like it," or only when the muse struck; do that and you'll never finish anything. The key to success is routine: whether you write for a set period of time every day, hold yourself to a constant word count, or both, every day you write is making it that much easier to do it again the next day.

It's kinda like going to the gym, really. And like the gym, every day you let your discipline slide makes it harder to get back to work. So write every day. Even if you're convinced you're churning out dire crap. Even if you think you'll have to rewrite every single word tomorrow. Do it anyway. And once you're done, be proud of yourself, because that's hard work and you just achieved something cool. Have a cookie. Unless you're going to the gym.

Deadlines
What's that? You're an indie writer? You don't have deadlines, because you work for yourself? Wrong. You work for your readers. And part of the obligation writers owe to their readers (write the best damn stories you can, and always be studying the craft and trying to up your game) is not keeping them waiting. That doesn't mean rushing and compromising your quality. It does mean that every day you go jet-skiing or mountain climbing or playing full-contact air hockey instead of writing, is one more day that your new story is not in your readers' eager hands.

For me, setting a fixed deadline is a great way of training my brain to hit my targets. If I gave myself forever to finish a book, I'd...probably take forever to finish a book. Set a date for the finish line, though, and it flips a little mental switch. Case in point: right now I'm working on the second Revanche Cycle novel, with a deadline of March First. Every day I can sit down, assess my progress on the draft, and see exactly how long it's taken me to get where I am and how much remains to be done. I can set realistic time goals and know how to prioritize the work. Without a deadline, that just turns into a big mishmash of "whenever".

Know Where You're Going
This one is huge, and I wouldn't be able to keep my pace without it. Knowing where you're going starts with an outline. Yes, I know some writers can sit down with a vague idea for a story in their heads, write a whole novel by the seat of their pants, and have it come out both fantastic and on time. I am not one of them. I'm kind of awed by their ability, because it's just beyond me. When I sit down to work, I know exactly what scenes I'll be writing that day and what has to happen to move the story forward; this minimizes writer's block and makes it that much easier to hit my targets, since there's very little "staring at a blank screen, trying to figure out what happens next" timewasting.

An outline doesn't have to be a straitjacket, either! If a better idea spears you mid-chapter, nothing's stopping you from making tweaks or just throwing the whole damn thing out and writing a new one. You're the artist. The outline's a tool in your bag of tricks. As far as detail, that's up to you and the needs of your story. For the Daniel Faust novels, I write a few pages of notes in Scrivener with the plot written out beat by beat. For the Revanche Cycle, I have charts in Scapple. Great, gigantic, tangled-ball-of-yarn charts, one approximating an outline and one to keep track of all the stuff going on behind the scenes that the readers don't see until later.

(Tangent: if you haven't checked out Scrivener and Scapple, a couple of fine products by Literature & Latte, try a demo. Both of them have been fantastic organization and productivity tools for me, and I wouldn't write with anything else.)

For series authors, outlining can go far beyond a single book. I have the next five Faust books in various stages of plotting and almost ready to roll, along with notebook blurbs with rough ideas for at least six more. More importantly, I know where the series is headed. A draft of the last scene of the last book in the series has already been written. However many leagues and however many books stand between here and our final destination, I know what big beats are needed in order to drive the story arcs to the finish line. 

Planning things that far in advance, even just as brief "this is the book where Jose reconciles with his son, we'll figure out how later" sketches, also provides the opportunity to have a little fun. Like, for instance, the easter egg hidden in A Plain-Dealing Villain. Don't go looking for it just yet, because the information needed to spot it is in an upcoming book. Once you see it, though, the implications...well. Spoilers.

(And no, I don't mean Herbert, though at least one sharp-eyed reader has figured out who he is.)

There's a You in Team
There's some truth to the stereotype of writers being solitary creatures, but that doesn't mean you have to go it alone. Writing is a business. Treat it like one, and get help from professionals to do the things that aren't your forte. Editing? Hire a pro. Cover design? Hire a pro. Ebook and print layout? Hire a pro. I use Bookfly Design (represent!) for my editing and art, for example, but there are pros out there at every price level and offering every kind of service you might need.

Time is not money. Time is infinitely more important than money, because money is a renewable resource and time isn't. If you can buy time by bringing on outside help, do it, because there's a good chance you can earn that money back. Let's say, outside the actual writing, it takes my team two months to get a book ready for sale. Even if I could do all the things they do, to a professional level of quality (I can't, not by a long shot), that'd be two months of doing things other than writing. That's a lot of stories never getting told, and a lot of lost revenue too. In that light, can you afford not to hire professional help?

You're a writer. Focus on being the best writer you can, and giving your readers the best experience you can deliver. That's the important part. Everything else, you can outsource -- and get more time for writing.

That's all for now. Take care, and have a happy Post-Release-Day Day celebration.

A Plain-Dealing Villain is Here!

It's launch day! You can grab the new Faust novel on Amazon right now, and on B&N, Kobo and iBooks as soon as they get around to making it live. The paperback version is slightly delayed, because someone* screwed up some interior formatting and it needs a quick fix before it goes on sale, but it should be up tomorrow or Thursday at the latest.

*it was me.

A Plain-Dealing Villain: Up for Pre-Order

Morning, all! I'm pleased to announce that the fourth Daniel Faust novel, A Plain-Dealing Villain, is up for pre-order and coming out next Tuesday, January 20th. What's it about? Here's the scoop:

It's hard to make a dishonest buck in Sin City, especially when a rogue FBI agent is gunning for your head. Flat broke and one step ahead of the law, Daniel Faust flees Vegas and lands in Chicago, where a risky heist promises to fill his pockets with cash. 

There are the risks you can account for, and then there are the risks you never see coming, the ones that leave you blindsided and fighting to survive. Daniel is a stranger in a strange land, out of his element and surrounded by corrupt sorcerers, demons, and worse. Still, with a friend's soul hanging in the balance -- not to mention a pile of stolen cash -- giving up isn't an option. 

Before he's done, Daniel will descend into the depths of Chicago's occult netherworld, competing in an underground poker tournament where the winner takes all...and with the infernal Court of Night-Blooming Flowers running the show, "winner takes all" has an entirely new meaning. The Flowers haven't forgotten Daniel's past insults, and if they get their way, he'll never leave the Windy City alive.

Want to read the first three chapters right now? We can arrange that. Or, wait 'till Tuesday and read the whole thing at once. It's your book. Do note that this is the fourth in the series, so newcomers (or folks who have only read Winter's Reach and haven't dipped their toes in the Faust series yet) should probably start with The Long Way Down.

Writing Challenge Tuesday: The Shoe Fairy

So, many years back, I lived with a roommate. This roommate was… How shall I put this delicately? An adorable slob. I say adorable, because it was sort of the way you feel about little lost cats and toddlers who miss their face with a carrot. He wasn’t malicious, he wasn’t a pain, and he’d clean up if you pointed out an issue. This meant that getting on his case or yelling at him was generally both out of line and unnecessary.

To adapt to my adorable slob, I’d say humorous things about “there isn’t a shoe fairy, put them in the pile by the door!” or “there isn’t a toilet paper fairy, put the new roll on the holder…” It was my way of coping and letting him know when it got to me without actually becoming an asshole or getting too much on his case. It made it funny. It made me a lot less frustrated. It made him likely to listen, because I was being amusing instead of an ass.

So I was scraping the distant regions of my brain tonight to come up with a writing prompt, and I was reminded of the shoe fairy, and of house elves, and so on. So for this week, here’s my challenge:

Who is your protagonist’s shoe fairy? Do they clean and cook, or make more messes? Are they like Seanan McGuire’s Aislin Mice? Are they pressed into service? Is your protagonist enslaving fairies? What would be the impetus for a shoe fairy in your protagonist’s life? Maybe it’s just a roommate who yells at them now and then. Maybe they have a dear aunt who helps take care of things because your protagonist is a crime fighter who has big things to do at night.

Whatever the story, I’d like to see concepts of who that is, and a scene with them in it. It’s something for me to contemplate; who of my characters would have a butler? I think of Daniel with a manservant or a valet and just start laughing. The poor fool.

Join me on Thursday for a new music mix and some inspirations!