M.B. Weston's Blog, page 29

Surround the Unbelievable with the Believable: The Transformation Example

Making Make-Believe Believable: Surround the unbelievable with the believable by transforming believable items into items that are unbelievable.

If you are new to this blog, I’ve been writing a series of posts about writing speculative fiction, including fantasy, science fiction, steampunk, comic books, paranormal, and horror. For the full list, click here or on the category called “Making Make-Believe Believable.”

For the next week or so, we will be concentrating on the first technique for helping your reader suspend disbelief: Surround the Unbelievable with the Believable. Here are a few examples of methods we can use:

The Details Example (click here for the blog post)
The Transformation Example
The Social Norm Example
The Hybrid Example
The Archetype Example

Today, we will focus on the transformation example.

My high school friend, Dean, owned a 1976 Toyota Celica. Bear in mind that my high school pulled from the wealthiest neighborhoods in Naples. Many of the students in the school drove Porsches and other such cars. A 1976 Celica may not have seemed exciting, but that was before Dean got hold of it. He painted it teal (a popular car color at the time). He also added a few James Bond-esque touches. If you happened to be sitting behind Dean at a stoplight, you might get sprayed with water or smoke, and he even stored a tiny jar of Grey Poupon in the dashboard in case anyone might ask for it. (If you watched commercials during the early 90’s, you know why that’s awesome!) Dean may not have driven a Porsche, but he had the coolest car ever. All he needed to so was transforme a believable Celica into something unbelievable.

You might find it easier to transform items that are believable into items that are unbelievable than to throw unknown items at your reader. Here are a few examples:

The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien. I love the scene in The Hobbit where Thorin and Gandalf are smoking pipes in Bilbo’s dining room and blowing smoke rings—perfectly believable things. We understand smoke rings; we know what they are. Gandalf’s smoke rings, however, change colors and move in between Thorin’s smoke rings. Tolkien surrounded Gandalf’s ability to do magic with believable smoke rings. He actually had transformed Gandalf’s smoke rings into something unbelievable, and it is the first bit of real magic we see Gandalf do.
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by JK Rowling: The Weasley family car is an example of transforming a believable item into something unbelievable. The car is a normal car, except that Mr. Weasley has tampered with it and given it magical properties. Speaking of cars…
Back to the Future: Science fiction writers, look no further than Dr. Brown’s DeLorean transformed into a time machine.
Dr. Who: He has a Tardis. Need I say more? Believable item. Unbelievable properties.
Outlander by Diana Gabaldon: The heroine, Claire, touches a standing stone on a Scottish hill and is transported back in time. The believable standing stone contains unbelievable properties.

Make sure to use items you wish to transform that are applicable to the time period in which you are writing. If you are writing a steampunk story, you can’t use a cell phone. Likewise, if you are writing science fiction, you need to use items available to your characters in the future. Note that characters in any genre might find a relic or something from the past that possesses a magical power (such as in our Outlander example).

What to take from this: Giving unbelievable properties to believable items is a great way to surround the unbelievable with the believable, provided that you make sure the item is something your character would have access to.

Mainstream Writers: Add wonder into your stories by transforming an ordinary object into something believable but outrageous. Remember Dean’s Celica. Transform a gym into a prom setting. Have a character take a dress from Goodwill and make it a dress to die for. You can keep your story bound by natural law, but still create the same magic Cinderella once experienced.

Speculative Writers: If you feel like you are struggling to create something big, awesome, and magical, try pulling back and using a regular object instead. Your reader will already be familiar with it, so you won’t have to spend precious words describing it, and it might just make your reader feel the same way she did when Dorothy put on those oh-so-famous ruby slippers.

Fantasy novelist M. B. Weston is the author of The Elysian Chronicles, a fantasy series about guardian angel warfare and treason. Weston speaks to children, teens, and adults about writing and the process of getting published. For more information on M. B. Weston, visit www.mbweston.com. Find out more about The Elysian Chronicles at www.elysianchronicles.com.

Writing Speculative Fiction: Surround the Unbelievable with the Believable

Making Make-Believe Believable: The first technique to help your reader suspend disbelief is to surround the unbelievable with the believable.

If you are new to this blog, I’ve been writing a series of posts about writing speculative fiction, including fantasy, science fiction, steampunk, comic books, paranormal, and horror. (For the full list, click here or on the category called “Making Make-Believe Believable.”)

For the past few posts, we’ve discussed understanding the reader’s mindset and expectations when it comes to getting our readers to buy into our make-believe worlds. We are now taking a closer look at the three techniques writers use to create suspension of disbelief:

Surround the unbelievable with the believable.
Make the unbelievable feel believable.
Govern the unbelievable.

For the next week or so, we will be concentrating on surrounding the unbelievable with the believable.

First, we need to define our terms:

The Believable:

Story elements that are governed by the same physical laws (gravity, physics, biological) that govern us.
Technological story elements that are the same technology that is available when the story was written or when the story was set.

The Unbelievable:

Story elements that are not bound by natural law
Technological story elements that include technology that doesn’t exist when the story was written or when the story was set. (For instance, Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea would be considered unbelievable during the time it was written and during the time it was set. It’s science fiction even though we have the ability to replicate the technology now.)

The unbelievable worlds that we create must contain elements of the believable as well as the unbelievable. The believable makes us comfortable. It feels familiar. Too much unbelievable can make your readers feel uncomfortable—depending on your genre, of course. Comic book writers can get away with a lot more unbelievable than paranormal writers.

Writing Technique #1: Surround the Unbelievable with the Believable

I like to think of Advil as an example. Advil, along with most other pills, is quite bitter, which makes it hard to swallow (no pun intended). Fortunately for all of us with headaches, Advil is coated in a candy shell and tastes just fine when swallowed.

Surrounding the unbelievable with the believable works the same way. Put a candy shell of reality around the unbelievable elements in your story. When you introduce the unbelievable elements to your reader, include believable elements that your reader understands and can associate with.

Here are the techniques we will be discussing over the next week:

The Details Example
The Transformation Example
The Social Norm Example
The Hybrid Example
The Archetype Example

Today we will concentrate on The Details Example: When you are introducing the unbelievable elements in your story, make sure to surround them with believable details. Remember to use the familiar as much as possible. The best way to illustrate this is with an example from one of the great fantasy masters: CS Lewis.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis: The main character in this story, Lucy, and her siblings live in the mainstream world—until Lucy discovers a wardrobe that is actually the gateway into the fantasy world of Narnia. Lewis’s inclusion of ordinary details surrounding the unbelievable wardrobe is part of the reason the Narnia series is successful.

It’s an ordinary wardrobe—a believable piece of furniture that most people during that time could associate with.
When Lucy opens the door to the wardrobe, moth balls fall out. Mothballs were common, believable items to people during that time period.
Lewis filled the inside this wardrobe with fur coats. While most of us don’t have fur coats nowadays, I’m sure they were common—especially in an English professor’s old house. The coats being fur also give us an added sensory detail. It’s so much more fun to snuggle with soft fur than to snuggle with boiled wool.
When Lucy enters the wardrobe, she reminds herself not to shut the door all the way and lock herself inside. This would have been a normal thought.
Even after Lucy enters Narnia, she first experiences a snow-filled wood. Lewis doesn’t throw Mr. Tumnus into the mix right away. He first lets Lucy, and therefore the reader, experience believable snow and trees.

Lewis sugarcoats this unbelievable wardrobe with believable details, which helps us swallow his fantasy pill.

What to take from this: No matter how unbelievable your world might be, you can always find some believable, familiar details to add into your story that will help the reader feel comfortable and continue to suspend his disbelief.

Mainstream Writers: Your mainstream characters might find themselves in 1) unbelievable situations, such as meeting the Queen of England, or 2) situations and places that most of your readers have never experienced, such as Buckingham Palace. Bring in some elements of familiarity by including details about things your readers know about already.

Speculative Writers: Reread your scenes that contain unbelievable elements and add in some believable details. Your readers will thank you for it!

Fantasy novelist M. B. Weston is the author of The Elysian Chronicles, a fantasy series about guardian angel warfare and treason. Weston speaks to children, teens, and adults about writing and the process of getting published. For more information on M. B. Weston, visit www.mbweston.com. Find out more about The Elysian Chronicles at www.elysianchronicles.com.

Suspending Disbelief: Understanding the Reader’s Reality Filters

Making Make-Believe Believable: Before you can get your reader to suspend his or her disbelief, you must have a good understanding of your target audience’s reality filters.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, most of us relied on this thing called dialup to use the internet. Our computers needed a special cord to connect to a phone line, which is what gave us internet access. If someone wanted to use the phone, you had to get off the internet. Remember those days?

During these dark times, I remember a commercial about a computer that could connect to the internet without using a cord. I couldn’t imagine how this technology could be real. It didn’t make sense to me, and to be honest, I didn’t really believe it. (Imagine how I felt when they first came out with smartphones…)

The problem: I based my views of what could and couldn’t be done with computers on my limited knowledge of how they worked. The computer companies needed more than just one commercial to get me to believe in wi-fi. For someone in the computer industry, however, the commercial would only confirm what they already knew was coming and already believed in based on their study of technology. My computer technology filters differ greatly from that of a computer whiz.

The key to understanding how to write speculative fiction is to understand each reader has different reality filters. If you present your reader with something that doesn’t fit through their reality filters, he will shut down and take his hand off the I Believe Button.

What affects a reader’s reality filters?

The Reader’s Age: It’s easy to convince a child that Santa Claus is real. My parents rarely discussed Santa Clause with me as a child. They put presents out in front of the tree every Christmas, and that was the extent of their attempt to make us believe. However, I believed in Santa Claus because I went to school and hung out with kids who believed in Santa Claus and watched movies about Santa Claus. Children are more likely to believe in Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, the Easter Bunny, and monsters under the bed than adults. They are also more likely to include speculative elements in their playtime and imaginative fantasies than adults.

The Reader’s Personality: At the age of 7, I figured out that Santa Claus didn’t exist. Every Christmas, however, I want to believe he’s real. I want to suspend my disbelief. I love reading about Santa, watching movies about Santa, and pretending for just one evening that some old man with a reindeer sleigh gives all of us presents. I press the I Believe Button willingly because the magic of Christmas still sparkles for me.

I am also the type of person who wishes that the world of Tolkien was real. I wish magical things existed, and that’s one of the reasons I read speculative fiction. Some people don’t have those desires, and they will tend to read mainstream fiction.

The Reader’s Experience: A reader’s reality filters also vary based on their experience. A few years ago, I received an email forward about Santa Claus written by an engineer. The essay discussed the physics of Santa Claus. After counting the number of households in Western Hemisphere and calculating how fast Santa’s sleigh needed to be in order to hit each house, the engineer concluded that the necessary acceleration of the sleigh would be so high that the reindeer, sleigh, toys, and Santa would disintegrate. The point: This man’s experience with physics and lab work, combined with his personality, made him immune to the world of make-believe. (Personally, I think this poor man needed to get out of the lab a little more often and enjoy some eggnog.)

The reader’s experience is most important when writing science fiction, steampunk, or paranormal fiction. If you are dabbling in these genres, make sure you live up to your readers’ experience. (For example, some sci-fi fans don’t like Star Wars because there is no sound in space, and George Lucas added sound in the movie.)

Our job as writers of speculative fiction is to push our world through these filters. We need our readers to believe in wi-fi. We need our readers to choose to suspend their disbelief about Santa Claus.

NOTE: The same basic human instincts and emotions exist no matter what a reader’s age, personality, and experience. Young children believe in Santa Claus. They get a tingly feeling inside when the subject comes up. Santa represents the magic of Christmas. Adults don’t believe in Santa, but they do believe in the magic of Christmas. A story about someone who gives freely of his time and money can cause the same warm feelings in an adult as Santa can cause in a child. Adults watch Christmas movies specifically because they believe in the spirit of Santa. Likewise, younger children fear the monster in the closet or under the bed. Adults fear the burglar who might sneak in their home. The key to writing good fiction, speculative or mainstream, is to access these feelings.

What to take from this: Know your target audience!!!! I cannot stress this enough. If you want to make your audience tingle, you must know what makes them tick.

Mainstream Writers: Remember that every good story still contains magic. You are bound by the constraints of reality, but you can still touch the audience. You can still get your readers to access the same feelings your readers felt when they played make-believe. Figure out how to recreate those feelings within your world of reality.

Speculative Writers: Knowing the reader’s age, personality, and experience simply gives you the boundaries in which you can play, and you can expand these boundaries with a few good techniques. Never forget the art of storytelling, however. Getting your adult readers to fear the monster under the bed the way they did as children requires more than parlor tricks. It requires an excellently composed story.

We’ve covered understanding the reader’s mindset—especially when it comes to suspending disbelief, from here on out, we will be covering the actual techniques writers can use to create suspension of disbelief:

Surround the unbelievable with the believable.
Make the unbelievable feel believable.
Govern the unbelievable.

If you are new to this blog, I’ve been writing a series of posts about writing speculative fiction, including fantasy, science fiction, steampunk, comic books, paranormal, and horror. For the full list, click here or on the category called “Making Make-Believe Believable.” Thanks for stopping by!

Fantasy novelist M. B. Weston is the author of The Elysian Chronicles, a fantasy series about guardian angel warfare and treason. Weston speaks to children, teens, and adults about writing and the process of getting published. For more information on M. B. Weston, visit www.mbweston.com. Find out more about The Elysian Chronicles at www.elysianchronicles.com.

Understanding the Suspension of Disbelief

Making Make-Believe Believable: Getting your reader to suspend his or her disbelief is key to writing make-believe. First you have to understand the reader’s expectations.

One of my favorite scenes in Peter Pan is the scene where Tinkerbell almost dies and Peter pleas with the readers to clap their hands if they believe in fairies in order to save Tink. I’m sure even parents reading the story play along and clap their hands along with the children.

Do the parents believe in fairies? No.

Have they chosen to pretend fairies exist? Yes.

Do the children believe in fairies? I’m not answering that. Let’s focus on the parents.

The moment the parents clap their hands, they have chosen to take their disbelief in fairies and set it aside. They are pretending. In writing, we call this the suspension of disbelief. The reader has decided to say to herself, “I don’t believe in fairies. However, for the purposes of the story (and my child’s mental well-being) I’m choosing to take my disbelief in fairies, and set it aside. I’m going to put it far away and pretend that fairies are real while I read this story.”

I call this “Getting the reader to press the I Believe Button.” It happens when the reader chooses to believe your world is real.

The key to getting the reader to suspend disbelief is getting the reader to agree to pretend along with you. You want to get your readers to clap their hands because they believe in fairies—even though they don’t. Once the reader decides that our unbelievable elements are too unbelievable, she will stop suspending her disbelief, and your story will collapse. Don’t be discouraged, speculative writers. J. K. Rowling has already proven that even lovers of mainstream literature can enjoy fantasy!

NOTE: Mainstream fiction and speculative fiction both require the reader to suspend their disbelief. When a reader buys a fiction book, be it mainstream or fantasy, the reader must choose to believe in the book’s world. Returning to our James Bond example, all of us know James Bond is not a real person. We also can be pretty sure that MI6 isn’t actually like Ian Fleming’s vision of it. And who knows if 00′s exist. James Bond is mainstream fiction, and yet we still must press the I Believe Button when we read it. A poorly written mainstream story can feature a world that seems more unbelievable than Hogwarts. Fifty-Shades of Grey is a huge hit right now because the author convinced her readers to buy into the world she created—a much different world than most of her readers have experienced.

Writers must understand know two things about their readers before they can adequately get the reader to press the I Believe Button:

The reader’s expectations
The reader’s reality filters

Today we will focus on the reader’s expectations. I once met two guys who were leaving a movie theater with a lot more angst than they should have been feeling after watching a movie. We ended up chatting and I asked them what they had seen. One of them frowned. “Twilight,” he said with a slight snarl. “I saw the previews on TV and thought it was going to be a normal vampire movie.” Clearly, Twilight did not meet this young man’s expectations of a vampire movie, and he was quite perturbed about it.

Readers have a few expectations about the books they purchase, and they should. After all, it is their money.

Expectation One: The book will be of high quality. I’m not going to belabor this too much. Readers want a book’s physical construction to be of high quality. The expect it to be edited. They expect e-books to behave like most e-books.
Expectation Two: The story will be of high quality. We discussed the magic of good story telling in an earlier post. Make sure you have a great plot, character development, and setting. Remember that as authors, we are entertainers. That means we are but mere street performers on a literary stage.
Expectation Three: The book will fall within their content/genre expectations. Like the young man who was expecting Twilight to be Blade, readers will become perturbed if the book they read isn’t the book that they were promised. Readers pick up a paranormal thriller because they want to read a paranormal thriller. If the book ends up being about a middle school kid attending a wizards’ academy, they might become miffed. That being said, you can play around with this one if you construct a great story. If you choose to break this rule, break it well…
Expectation Four: The story will allow the reader to escape into a different world. This, right here, is the key to creating suspension of disbelief. Readers buy books with the expectation of already suspending their disbelief. They are prepared to place their hands on the I believe Button—within the bounds of the genre they have purchased.

What to take from this: To suspend disbelief, you must understand your reader’s expectations of your story. Use your genre as a guideline. You can jump over it on occasion, but try to stay within bounds. If you decide to cross over a line, make sure to take your reader by the hand and gently lead him or her along.

Mainstream Writers: Play around within genre and make sure you write an incredible story.

Speculative Writers: Remember that your reader is already expecting speculative content. This should give you freedom to stretch the boundaries. However, make sure you provide the reader with an incredible story as well.

All Authors: Don’t skimp on quality. Make sure your story is well-edited and your book is high quality.

If you are new to this blog, I’ve been writing a series of posts about writing speculative fiction, including fantasy, science fiction, steampunk, comic books, paranormal, and horror. For the full list, click here or on the category called “Making Make-Believe Believable.” Thanks for stopping by!

Fantasy novelist M. B. Weston is the author of The Elysian Chronicles, a fantasy series about guardian angel warfare and treason. Weston speaks to children, teens, and adults about writing and the process of getting published. For more information on M. B. Weston, visit www.mbweston.com. Find out more about The Elysian Chronicles at www.elysianchronicles.com.

The Magic of a Good Story

Making Make-Believe Believable: A story’s true magic has nothing to do with fantasy elements. Don’t neglect the essence of storytelling simply because you write speculative fiction.

First and foremost, it’s important to understand why people read fiction. Readers want to escape into another world. They want to experience something they can’t experience otherwise. A story transports the reader out of his or her own reality into a new one. Some readers want a world that is just like their own, but one where they win. They want a world where they get the boyfriend, they save the world, or they go on an adventure they never dreamed possible. Some want to escape to a different world altogether. Our goal as writers is to create the world they want.

Mainstream fiction may be bound by the same physical laws and technological advances as speculative fiction, but mainstream stories still create a bit of what I like to call “story magic.” For example: statistically speaking, James Bond is an anomaly. The majority of people caught in his situations probably wouldn’t survive. He is bound by the same physical laws that govern us, but he overcomes. Bond also is governed by different social laws, it often seems. He always gets the girl, and often more than one per movie. We love James Bond’s world because he always wins. We get a thrill when he enacts his super-spy feats. We love his suave character. We love the Aston Martin and the exotic places Bond gets to visit.

Notice what three aspects of storytelling these things represent:

Plot
Character Development
Setting

I call these the Big Three. The skillful use and intertwining of these three items is what creates a story’s true magic.

This idea of story magic differs by genre and by audience. Romance readers crave a different sort of hero than action/adventure readers, etc., but each magical plot-point, piece of character development, and bit of description is what touches a reader’s soul. Even though mainstream fiction is bound by natural law and operates in the realm of the believable, it is still full of magic.

Speculative fiction writers have another arsenal of story magic that is unavailable to mainstream writers: actual magic and science fiction (as referred to in an earlier post: the unbelievable). Our fantasy characters use wands. Dragons and unicorns exist. Light sabers are real. Spaceships fly at light speed. Captain America can kill as many Nazis as he wants, and ghosts can scare the life out of people. Our speculative fiction tools give us an edge over mainstream writers. Unfortunately, this edge is part of a sword, and both sides are sharp.

Having so many extra techniques in one’s writing arsenal can make the speculative writer lazy. We might concentrate too much on world building and not enough on character building. Our dialog might feel as though it came straight out of a children’s book. Our plot might be full of holes and uninspiring. I think of movies like Krull, Conan the Barbarian (the original), and Clash of the Titans (the original). Their fantasy elements inspired our imaginations. Their plots inspired us to make parodies.

What to take away from this: Whether you write speculative fiction or mainstream fiction, your story needs magic. Study the art of storytelling. Learn to develop character. Understand the basic story arch. Enrich your description. These elements can add more magic to your story than your speculative elements.

Mainstream Writers: To create magic in your story, you must master the big three: plot, character development, and setting, more than speculative writers. A big part of this involves understanding your particular audience and what/where they want to escape to. Enhance the magic in your books by creating awe-inspiring settings. Reread myths and legends as models for epic characters. Your story might not leave the bounds of physics, but you can still make your readers feel as though they have been on a fantastic journey.

Speculative Writers: You don’t get a free pass at the big three just because you get to use magic and science fiction. You have double the work before you. You must master the art of telling a story and master the use of speculative elements.

Stay tuned for the next post when we discuss the suspension of disbelief.

If you are new to this blog, I’ve been writing a series of posts about writing speculative fiction, including fantasy, science fiction, steampunk, comic books, paranormal, and horror. For the full list, click here or on the category called “Making Make-Believe Believable.” Thanks for stopping by!

Fantasy novelist M. B. Weston is the author of The Elysian Chronicles, a fantasy series about guardian angel warfare and treason. Weston speaks to children, teens, and adults about writing and the process of getting published. For more information on M. B. Weston, visit www.mbweston.com. Find out more about The Elysian Chronicles at www.elysianchronicles.com.

New Writing Series: Making Make-Believe Believable

How to write fantasy, science-fiction, steampunk, comic book heroes, paranormal, and horror in such a way that even “muggles” will want to read it.

I’m going to begin an extensive writing series called Making Make-Believe Believable. My goal is to help writers of speculative fiction, but most of the techniques apply to any story.

We’ll start by discussion fiction, which I will define as stories that aren’t true. I often speak to schools about writing and what it takes to be an author. During my discussion, I usually tell the students, “I’m an author, and that makes me a liar and a thief.” Then I explain that most of the creatures I use in my novels—such as angels, dragons, and unicorns—are creatures I didn’t create myself. I stole the ideas from other people, which makes me a thief. I also explain that none of the things that happen in my stories really happened, which makes me a liar. I often hold up one of my books and proclaim, “This is one big lie.”

We fiction writers are liars. We just happen to tell really outrageous lies in such a way that people want to hear them again and again. (At least, that is—or should be—our goal.) For the purposes of this Making Make-Believe Believable series, I want to divide fiction into two main categories.

Main Stream Fiction
Speculative Fiction

Mainstream Fiction: fiction that operates within the confines of the believable. The majority of fiction stories are called mainstream fiction. They may not be true, but their characters:

Are governed by the same physical laws (gravity, physics, biological) that govern us.
Have access to the same technology that is available at the time of writing.

Take the James Bond stories and movies for example. The same physical laws that govern you and me also govern Mr. Bond. James is subject to the laws of gravity. He cannot create magic. If he gets poisoned, he must find an antidote. Bond also only has access to our available technology. He must use whatever Q. creates for him. Granted, some Q’s toys may seem a bit fantastic, but they feel possible. James Bond may get a tripped-out car, but he never gets a hover craft.

Speculative Fiction: fiction that contains elements of the unbelievable. In speculative fiction, the characters are either 1) not bound by natural law, 2) have access to technology that doesn’t exist or 3) both. The genres are ever changing, but here a few of the most common speculative fiction genres:

Fantasy
Science Fiction
Comic Books/Graphic Novels
Steampunk
Paranormal
Horror (depending on if it has paranormal or fantasy elements)

Speculative fiction writers encounter problems with storytelling that mainstream authors don’t have to deal with. First, using different physical laws and technology than those that govern humanity makes it difficult to get readers to buy into our ideas. The reader will find it easier to believe that James Bond really can jump out of an airplane, fall through the air several hundred feet, land on another airplane, and save the day—alive—than to believe that fairies exist and therefore erupt into spontaneous clapping to save Tinkerbell’s life. Second, writers can easily destroy their stories by mishandling the unbelievable elements. We tread quite unstable ground when working with the unbelievable.

This series will concentrate on melding the believable with the unbelievable while still maintaining the story’s overall structure and content. I hope you all enjoy it!

Fantasy novelist M. B. Weston is the author of The Elysian Chronicles, a fantasy series about guardian angel warfare and treason. Weston speaks to children, teens, and adults about writing and the process of getting published. For more information on M. B. Weston, visit www.mbweston.com. Find out more about The Elysian Chronicles at www.elysianchronicles.com.

Updates to M. B. Weston’s Convention/Signing Schedule

I’ve updated my convention/signing schedule on the website. Click here to see if I will be at a science fiction/fantasy convention or book signing in your area. Keep checking for updates, as there is more to come!

The Writer’s Descriptive Techniques: #4— Use Comparisons that Relate to Your Main Impression

 

Well-placed comparisons are powerful tools that not only help your reader better understand what’s happening in your story but also evoke your reader’s emotions.

We’ve all learned about the two comparison tools our Language Arts teachers taught us:

Similes: figures of speech that compare two unlike things, usually using like or as. Here is an example of a simile from A Prophecy Forgotten:

Running with precision, [the unicorns] sounded almost as one, and their white coats made them look like ghosts in the fog.

Metaphors: figures of speech in which a term or phrase is applied to something which it is not in order to suggest resemblance. Here is an example of a simile from my short story, “The White Rider.”

The Society made a huge mistake. By stripping me of my social security number and my bank accounts, they made me a phantom. According to the world, I don’t exist. This makes me extremely hard to catch.

Is my character really a phantom? No. He’s human. But “phantom” gives the reader a much better idea of how he operates.

This post will focus on two tips for using similes and metaphors that will help enrich our main impression.

Tip 1: Use comparisons that will enhance the mood you are trying to create. When we use comparisons, we are drawing a connection in our readers’ minds to something outside our story. If we are going to bother drawing a connection, we should make sure this connection aids in helping the scene’s main impression.

For example, in this scene from A Prophecy Forgotten, my characters are staring at some snowcapped mountains. You will see the comparison, a simile, in bold lettering. (I really hate using like or as. I’d rather be more subtle with my comparisons):

Finally, Davian’s unit reached the Enbed Mountain range, which marked the eastern border of Morvenia. The snowcapped mountains towered over them. They reminded Davian of jagged minotaur teeth, and that alone was enough to keep him from exploring them.

I could have said, “The snow on the mountains sparkled like a mound of sugar,” and it probably did. However, I don’t want my readers thinking sparkly thoughts about a candy store. I want them to feel uneasy.

Later in A Prophecy Forgotten, I used this metaphor:

Davian flung himself off Cassadern and stared at the gates that used to be beacons of hope and rest that welcomed him home from his many missions. Now they were shadows that concealed unsurpassable evil and treason.

I wanted to make sure the reader felt how Davian felt, and I wanted to show how Elysia had changed since the beginning of the story. Hence, a metaphor about the gates, especially since I made a big deal about them the first time I discussed the gates. (You can read that here in Chapter One of the sample chapters.)

Make sure to use comparisons that will affect the mood of the scene. This will help enhance your main impression and affect your readers’ emotions.

Tip 2: When using comparisons, remember that you are bound by your POV (point of view) Character’s knowledge. Your POV Character is the character whose voice you are writing. It’s the character “holding the camera” per se. In the above example with Davian, I used minotaur. Because I’m writing from Davian’s point of view, I must stick with comparisons to things which he is familiar with. I can’t compare the mountains to something from our world because Davian wouldn’t think those up.

This is especially important if you are writing fantasy, science fiction, or steampunk. In my steampunk short story, “The Survivor,” I ran into a problem. I needed to describe the wreckage of an airship (What is steampunk without blimps?), but no one in the Victorian Era had actually ever seen an airship. After reading a bit about the Hindenburg crash, I knew I needed to figure out how I might describe the ribbing of the balloon melting, but from the point of view of someone from the late 1800’s.

Angelica and the officer turned and watched what resembled a molten, round skeleton collapse to the ground with a metallic groan.

I figured that people in the Victorian Era were familiar with skeletons and rib cages.

Later in the story (during a flashback), Angelica is staring out of the airship in the middle of the night, looking down at London. I wanted the reader to see how the Thames River would have looked like black nothingness against the lights of the city, which is what I often see when I’m looking out an airplane window when flying over a river at night. However, no one in the 1800’s has ever been on a plane, and describing black nothingness would take way too long. I tried to use a comparison that a person from the 1800’s would be familiar with:

Below, the lights of London flickered. [Angelica] watched the Thames River wind through the city, like a black snake slithering among embers.

If you keep your comparisons bound within the world your POV character lives in, you will keep your reader engaged in your story’s setting, and you will make your writing feel believable. Making sure these same comparisons affect the main impression of your scene will keep the reader on the edge of his seat, waiting for the last page.

If you’re new to this blog, I’ve been writing a short series on description techniques. Here are my previous posts:

The Writer’s Descriptive Techniques: #1—Create a Main Impression
The Writer’s Descriptive Techniques: #2—Choose Details that Enhance Your Main Impression
The Writer’s Descriptive Techniques: #3—Group Related Details Together

Hope you enjoy them!

Fantasy novelist M. B. Weston is the author of The Elysian Chronicles, a fantasy series about guardian angel warfare and treason. Weston speaks to children, teens, and adults about writing and the process of getting published. For more information on M. B. Weston, visit www.mbweston.com. Find out more about The Elysian Chronicles at www.elysianchronicles.com.

 

The Writer’s Descriptive Techniques: #3—Group Related Details Together

Increase the power of your description by keeping related details together.

I’m writing a series of blog posts on description techniques. Here are my last two:

The Writer’s Descriptive Techniques: #1—Create a Main Impression
The Writer’s Descriptive Techniques: #2—Choose Details that Enhance Your Main Impression

Today we will focus on keeping related details together and how that can aid our story’s emotional punch.

I have an extensive teapot collection, and I love to use them in my decorating. Imagine coming to my house and seeing a teapot in the living room on a table. When you visit my kitchen, you see two teapots on display, and you find another two in my den. You might think, Hmmmm, I see a theme here, but that might be all, or you might find yourself distracted by other decorative items and fail to notice my teapot fetish.

What if instead I took all twenty of my teapots and displayed them together on a few shelves. When you walked into my home, you would think: Wow, look at that teapot collection! (Or, Wow, this chick is a little wacky about her teapots.) Whatever you might think, my teapots would have impacted you more grouped together than they would separately.

In decorating, collections always look better when grouped together. It’s the same with writing.

An example: In A Prophecy Forgotten, a few of my characters went to the county fair. The scene wasn’t about the fair, however, it was about my character with amnesia regaining her memory. I needed to get the readers to the fair, feel like they were at the fair, and then worry about the more important parts of the scene. This was my opening paragraph:

Gabriella’s eyes grew wide as she beheld the bright blues, reds, greens, and purples on the tents and carts at the fair. She took a deep breath, and several different smells hit her nose. Some she recognized, like popcorn, cotton candy, and sausage. Others, including a sweet aroma of fresh bread that Jim called funnel cake, she had never smelled before. She, Jim, and Tommy rode on rides like the Scrambler, which spun her around in three different directions at the same time and made her dizzy when she tried to walk afterwards, and the Bumper Cars, where she and Tommy banged into Jim at least ten times.

Boom! County fair. You’re there. I’m there. We’re all there. And now Gabriella can do what she needs to do without me worrying too much about the description. I also tried to keep the colors together, the smells together, and the rides together, which makes a bigger impression than scrambling them all together. (Below, I discuss the “Rule of Three’s.” While I have included more than three actual details here, notice that I have three sets of details I’m describing: Colors, smells, and rides.)

Here are a few tips to remember when you are setting your scenes and grouping your related details together:

When introducing a character, scene, or landscape, take a few sentences to give the reader a few key details. Remember to go beyond sight & sound.

In A Prophecy Forgotten, Lorraine is an important character. She is the mother of one of my main characters, and her horrible treatment of him is key to his development throughout the Elysian Chronicles series. Unfortunately, Lorraine only enters two or three scenes. I don’t have much time to mess around with her. I need my readers to hate her immediately. I introduce Lorraine with this:

Tommy crawled toward the ruined tank, but a pair of enemy, black high heels halted his re-covery mission. He followed the heels up and saw his mother, Lorraine, a slender woman with perfectly highlighted blond hair wearing a business suit that showcased more cleavage than most offices found appropriate. Her manicured fingers were clenching a wooden spoon, and she was glaring at Tommy with what Gabriella called the “Psychotic-Glare-of-Death.”

Lorraine has black high heels, she dies her hair blond, and does her nails. No harm there. I make sure to add in the slightly risqué business suit and the death glare to show her personality. I also chose to use enemy to describe her heels [Tommy is playing with his army action figures]. The spoon is foreshadowing. We are now all on the same page when it comes to Lorraine.

Don’t forget to describe the effect the details have on your character. For instance, if your character walks into a dark room on a sunny day, it will take his eyes a moment to adjust to the dark—and vice versa. Mentioning how your setting affects your characters is key to effective description.

In Out of the Shadows, a few of my characters were able to escape from a dungeon in which they had been imprisoned. Note that the details of squinting, sunlight, and slits in his eyelids are grouped together. I’m letting the reader know how the new setting affects my characters physically.

Davian, Theo, and Klous climbed out of the cave, squinting at their first sight of sunlight. Through the slit in his eyelids, Davian saw the outlines of thirty mornachts unloading the sulfur on a small ledge overlooking the Cragdern River Canyon.

Always remember the Rule of 3’s (or 4’s). Surprisingly, the reader only needs 3 to 4 well placed details to get a clear picture of your setting. With each (major) character/landscape/scene, try to pick out 3 key details about a scene that will leave your reader with the best mental picture. Work the rest of the details into your narrative. (I love to stretch a rule as much as possible, so I will include groups of details as part of my three. See the description of the county fair above as an example.)

This is from a short story I wrote called “The Survivor” that will be published in Dreams of Steam III, a steampunk anthology by Kerlak Publishing that is due out in October, 2012. The year is 1886, and my character is riding in an airship. I don’t have time to describe everything on the airship, but I want the readers to feel as though they are right there with Angelica. My three details are in bold letters:

Angelica lingered in the dining room where plates of partially eaten food still spotted the tables. She sat on a plush, velvet bench right next to one of the French-paned windows that surrounded the bow of the hull, allowing patrons a full view of the sky.

The kind of china used and the color of the velvet doesn’t matter. The reader is there with Angelica, looking out at the night sky. (For more details on the Rule of 3’s, be sure to read Stephen King’s book, On Writing.)

Keeping your related details together in your description will add punch to your scenes. Just remember to keep three or four main details when you are setting your scene, and blend the rest into your narrative (which we will discuss in another blog post).

Stay tuned for the next post where we will be discussing using comparisons!

Fantasy novelist M. B. Weston is the author of The Elysian Chronicles, a fantasy series about guardian angel warfare and treason. Weston speaks to children, teens, and adults about writing and the process of getting published. For more information on M. B. Weston, visit www.mbweston.com. Find out more about The Elysian Chronicles at www.elysianchronicles.com.

The Writer’s Descriptive Techniques: #2—Choose Details that Enhance Your Main Impression

Using descriptive language that affects your readers’ emotions will enhance the main impression you want your readers to take from each scene.

We’re focusing on description for the next few posts. Yesterday, I wrote about what it means to create a main impression in each scene and how that will help our readers fill in the details we don’t have time to describe (click to read: The Writer’s Descriptive Techniques: #1—Create a Main Impression).

While your characters actions and dialogue will help affect the reader’s emotions, it’s your description that will drive those emotions home. Description in a book is like a soundtrack in a movie: both can influence the scene more than the audience realizes. Today we will discuss the easiest main-impression-creating descriptive technique: choosing details that enhance your main impression.

Picture yourself at your favorite outdoor café. (I’m choosing Tommy Bahamas’ Naples because they have the best crab bisque in the world, and I’m hungry.) Close your eyes and imagine your your café. Pay attention to the details that you might often miss. Don’t forget the smells, the tastes, and the feeling of the breeze on your face.

Here are a few things I can think up with Tommy Bahamas’

The tropical décor
The smell of silk from their shops and coconut
Palm trees
Casually dressed waiters with Hawaiian shirts
The caliber of people who flock there
The types of people who hang out at the bar
The crab bisque
The terracotta tiles
The gulf breeze
The vase with an magenta orchid on each table
Sea green wooden accents

I can continue listing detail after detail, and if the restaurant was a scene in my story, I would certainly have enough details to totally bore my reader. I don’t have time to list all of these items. I have to choose the important ones that will make the biggest emotional impact while still helping my reader feel like they see everything I see.

The challenge is laid before us as writers, isn’t it?

You have your setting, now imagine a few scenarios within that setting:

Your character is running from the mafia, meeting a friend to ask for help
A first date between your characters
You character’s spouse has just left him, and he is alone at a booth

(Notice that each of those situations have the potential for emotionally-charged conflict. Our scenes should never be about our favorite restaurants. They should be about the story, the conflict, and the characters.)

With each of those scenarios, I want make sure to choose details about Tommy Bahamas’ that enhance the emotions I want my readers to feel.

If my character is running away from the mafia, I might point out how open the restaurant is, making it difficult to hide. I would mention the man at the bar wearing a trench coat with something bulky inside. I might include the fire on the grill that makes my character nervous. I would discuss how all the umbrella-topped tables would make a difficult getaway. The booths may be sea green, but I would make sure to mention how they echoed, making it impossible to have a quiet conversation. I would definitely mention the private room with the beaded strings for curtains. My character might not be as interested in the bisque as he is on survival.
If my characters are on a first date, I would muffle the sound and dim the lights. I would mention the candle on the table and the orchid. I would bring out more of the sensual details in the food—especially the flourless chocolate cake. I would be sure to mention the lights hanging from the palm trees and the cool breeze that blew a few strands of hair in the heroine’s face.
If my character has been dumped, I would make sure he isn’t sitting at a booth. He’s either alone at a table or alone at the bar. I would point out the happy patrons purposefully to show how lonely my character is. I would make sure one of them reminds him of his wife. I would mention how the food doesn’t taste as good as normal and how the palm trees and the rich coconut/silk smell from the adjacent Tommy Bahamas’ stores remind him of their honeymoon. Basically, I make the poor guy even more miserable that he was before he came to the restaurant.

Each of these scenes takes place in the same café; I’m just choosing details that will enhance the impression I want to leave with my reader. I’m also going to make sure to link my details with the feelings or thoughts they inspire in my characters to drive my readers’ emotions even more.

Here are a few examples of my own blah description in a few of my first drafts and how I changed the details to enhance my main impression:

I saw a barracuda swimming next to me. Boring isn’t it. It doesn’t leave the reader feeling nervous and scared. What about this? To my left lurked a three-foot-long barracuda—a thin, silver torpedo of a fish with needle sharp teeth—that glared at me as I passed. Details such as: lurked, torpedo, needle-sharp teeth, and glared give the reader a main impression of, “Oh dear. This ain’t good.”
Davian entered the Treetop Inn. I wrote that sentence in A Prophecy Forgotten , and quickly realized that I needed to add something in. I wanted my readers to feel cozy, so… The Treetop Inn had been the most popular meeting place in the City of Ezzer for five centuries. The vast tavern’s only light came from a few torches and patches of sunlight that poured through its multicolored crystal windows. It had plump, cushy booths for quiet conversations, immense, round tables with soft chairs for lively parties, and the best honeywine and the finest service in all Elysia.
In my second book, Out of the Shadows , I wanted to show how Elysia had changed. When I introduced the Treetop Inn, I used much different details: Maurice wiped the Treetop Inn’s bar for what felt like the fiftieth time. The lacquered counter already sparkled, but Maurice preferred wiping to gazing across the tavern of empty tables that should have been full of patrons talking or playing jalonga… A drop of sweat trickled down Maurice’s cheek and into the folds of skin between his chin and neck. Though the sweltering weather kept him from lighting fires in the fireplaces, his Treetop Inn still felt cold. [And later…] Davian removed his helmet and burst through the carved wooden door, barely noticing its creak as it swung back and forth. Usually, the Treetop’s wood-paneled walls made him feel cozy and comfortable, but not today—especially with the sterile aroma of soap instead of food filling the inn. He flew to the bar and hopped on a perching stool, ignoring the two merchants who strained their necks to peek at the Treetop’s newest patron. Davian glanced at Maurice, who wiped the far edge of the bar’s counter, muttering to himself.

Today’s assignment: go back to some of your scenes that need more emotional punch and see how you can change up some of your description. Also, make sure to tune into the next post where we will discuss how grouping related details together can help create a main impression.

Fantasy novelist M. B. Weston is the author of The Elysian Chronicles, a fantasy series about guardian angel warfare and treason. Weston speaks to children, teens, and adults about writing and the process of getting published. For more information on M. B. Weston, visit www.mbweston.com. Find out more about The Elysian Chronicles at www.elysianchronicles.com.