GAY MAN'S GUIDE TO WRITING FANTASY FICTION

I just put together a new feature for my web site that I should share on this blog, since it's about writing: it's called THE GAY MAN'S GUIDE TO WRITING FANTASY FICTION and it's really cool. There is an illustrated tour of the basics of the three-act structure as it applies to fantasy novels. There is also a walk-thru to help visitors to the site to put together their own working outlines for a fantasy plot. There is also a very useful page of Resources, web sites, etc., of value to fantasy writers.

You can find the guide at my web page:

ADRIAN SWIFT'S OFFICIAL WEB SITE

Enjoy!

Adrian

How Do I Develop Characters?

I know I said I wouldn't post to this blog anymore, but I thought I should add my postings to the forums for National Novel Writing Month 2007. Here's the first one, in response to a question in the Fantasy Genre section on how writers develop their characters....

However I first imagine a character, or whatever the source that inspires me, or however I brainstorm ideas to flesh out the character, I make sure somewhere along the way to consider his/her role in the story, his/her goal(s), the obstacle(s) that will or that might stand in his/her way, etc.

Then, I look over these general ideas, which are my plans for the character, and try to turn this into the character's own perspective.

To me, the most important ingredient, and one to work on before writing the character into the story, is to identify the character's strength(s) and weakness(es). The strength will help him/her meet the goal, the weakness will work against him/her, make it difficult, or possibly even impossible. In order to draw on the strength, the character must first overcome the weakness. The weakness is a learning opportunity. The character may have the ability to overcome the obstacles and achieve the goal all along, but still the weakness will get in the way. Or, the strength is not strong enough, but overcoming the weakness will add to the strength in some sense. If you know the strength(s) and weakness(es), you know what will drive the dramatic tension surrounding that character. By the way, it's important to match up strengths and weaknesses in a way that makes sense. They are not arbitrary, but connected to each other in some way, and to the story, and your overall theme. They also play off the strengths and weaknesses of other characters, allowing you to draw out your theme through the variety of examples which each character represents.

I also find it helpful to think my way through the story from the point of view of each main character. This includes the protagonist, his/her love interest, any additional supportive characters, the antagonist, and any additional characters that support the antagonist. I typically have only a handful of main characters, three to five, that play the largest roles in the story, but there may be a dozen or more on the next tier, also important but not to that same extent. I write a narrative (telling, rather than showing) from each point of view, describing where each is before entering the storyline, how/why/when they enter the storyline, and following along with their goals and obstacles until they exit the storyline. If they are alive, I also note where they go after they leave the storyline.

Finally, I use a trick I learned in a playwriting course, which helps with dialogue: make sure each character has his/her own, unique, distinct voice. How would he/she talk? What kinds of things would he/she think to say? Could you tell who is speaking even if no names were attached? This doesn't mean using extreme or excessive ways to distinguish dialog. It does mean that each character has a unique personality and point of view, and will speak from that mindset. Can you glance at a line of dialog, given the context in which it occurs, and know readily exactly how it would sound if spoken? Could someone else do that also when reading your story?

Best wishes to others working on their novels,

Adrian

JACK & JILL: THE UNTOLD STORY (Read It Here!)

NEW WEB SITE NOW ONLINE!

Check out my new web site! I am revamping the information here and adding new material to create a series of articles in several different categories concerning the writing process.

Please add a bookmark to this page:

http://www.geocities.com/americanauthor


That is the "Entry Page". Please bookmark only to that page, since the other pages will change over time.

EXCITING OPPORTUNITY:

I will probably not post to this blog anymore, since this information will appear on my web site in a better form. However, I will check back here regularly for any comments. Feel free to add comments here about the Tips & Tricks articles, as they appear here or on the web site. And, there is an exciting opportunity: a new feature on the web site is "Novel Writing FAQ'S", a section where I write short answers to common questions. Feel free to email me or to post a comment here with a question you would like to see answered in the FAQ'S!

Adrian

WRITERS' BLOCK

A few quick comments on the infamous disease known as Writers' Block (ooh, just seeing that phrase is sooo scary!). I'll use the Q&A approach to sharing my thoughts.

WHAT'S WRITERS' BLOCK?

A condition wherein the writer (Specimen A) cannot figure a way to continue writing no matter how much depends on it (Exhibit A: the writer's heart; Exhibit B: the writer's soul; Exhibit C: the writer's life).

WHAT ARE ITS MAIN CAUSES?

There are two known causes. Both are insidious, wretched causes (the worst kind according to the CDC).

The first is fatigue, also known as burnout, excessive tiredness, and chronic lack of sleep. When a writer (Specimen A) becomes so worn out from writing, and/or the other struggles of life, there is too little energy to devote to writing.

The second is ignorance, professed or otherwise, also known as veritable quandary, uncertain intention, prior oversight and the just desserts of laziness. The primary indication of this cause is an inability to answer the simple question: "What happens next?" WARNING: May present with disorientation and tremors.

WHAT ARE ITS TREATMENTS?

For the first cause, fatigue, the best possible treatment is bed rest with a healthy dose of REM sleep. However, in many specimens, this is not adequate. Serious fatigue also necessitates a period of "feeding the soul" (should only be attempted by trained and certified personnel). Music, art, poetry, walks in the park, fine dining with heartwarming conversation, Bette Davis movies and marathon viewing sessions of GONE WITH THE WIND have all been proven helpful. Once proper rest and nourishment for the soul have been provided, this type of Writers' Block usually disappears on its own.

For the second cause, ignorance, apart from a healthy dose of "I told you so!" there is only one way to get over it, and that is through it. The specimen must be forced (physical restraints may be required, such as leg chains attached to the desk) to confront the questions which have not been answered, until such time as answers have been identified and committed to. See this posting for further details on a strategy that has proven successful in overcoming this easily preventable and therefore most unnecessary form of Writer's Block.

DISCLAIMER:

This information is provided for entertainment purposes only and should not be construed as offering viable medical or any other advice. Take only under direction of a qualified physician. Past performance is not a guarantee of future returns. Many happy returns.

THE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTIONS TO ASK YOURSELF

When you are first thinking about your protagonist, the main character, the hero of your story, you will have some impressions of him/her. You may have some idea what he/she wants to accomplish in the story, what obstacles stand in the way, and how things will turn out. You should know these things, in detail, in depth, before you start writing your novel. Your understanding of them can grow and change while you write, but you will get better results while you write the more you know before you write. Here are some questions or points to consider while thinking about and planning your novel, before you start writing. Refer back to your answers while you write: they will surely evolve over time.

CAN YOU DESCRIBE YOUR STORY IN ONE SENTENCE?

This means reducing your story to its simplest terms. Your sentence would sound something like this:

"This is a story about a man who wants to build a house by the river."

Specify who the main character (MC) is ("a man" is good enough, unless you need to be more specific, such as "an engineer" or "a fisherman"), and specify what he/she WANTS or NEEDS.

WHY DOES THIS PERSON WANT OR NEED THIS THING?

This is very important. It is ultimately what will make your story compelling. There must be a reason why this person wants or needs this thing. There can be some background, another story that happened long ago, that you will not tell directly, but you may give hints about it, or have a character tell us about it in some scene, so that we will understand what happened before that makes this goal so important now. Whatever it is, the person must really want or need, not just sort of want or need. Why?

Human interest, human interest, human interest!

WHAT OBSTACLES STAND IN THE WAY?

Brainstorm a list of various things that might stand in the way of the MC achieving the goal that you stated. There could be a long list. Some will be minor things, easily overcome, more irritations than serious obstacles. Others will be more challenging. Some will be very challenging. And one or more might even be "make or break", the sort of stuff that could totally stop the MC from achieving the goal.

Pick the main obsctacle, the thing that could serve as the main conflict at the end of the story, the final conflict, the big climax. The MC will fight this obstacle at the very end, win or lose, winner take all. What is it?

WHAT STRENGTHS/WEAKNESSES DOES YOUR MC HAVE?

Now, consider how you conceived of your main character. What sort of person is he/she? You have some idea. Flesh him/her out further. Get a clearer sense. Most importantly for plot purposes, look at the list of obstacles. Who would find those things to be obstacles?

If one obstacle to building a house by the river is having enough money to do it, then it helps if your MC is poor, so that having enough money is more of a struggle. Or, if your MC is well-off, maybe something happens first that puts him/her in a position of not having the money.

Look at the main conflict that you identified, the one you may use for the climax. What sort of character would find that obstacle challenging? If it's a fist-fight, then a body builder would probably fare well, while a 90-pound weakling who just recovered from a serious illness after a 3-month hospital stay would probably find the fist-fight much more challenging.

Thinking about the conflicts and your basic conception of the MC, make a list of strengths and list of weaknesses that you might apply to him/her in your story. Can you pick the one main strength necessary to overcome the one main conflict?

And, very interestingly, can you take that same strength, flip it over, and turn it into a weakness? For example, a person who is very strong-willed will have the inner strength to face a difficult circumstance regardless of what others think (a strength when confronting difficult circumstances). However, this is also a weakness because it means the person will be so strong-willed that he/she may not really listen to others, work well with others, take others into account. That strong will may make intimate relationships more difficult. We've all heard the story of the workaholic who had an amazing career with great success but lost his wife, the kids, the house, and everything that truly mattered to him because he spent way too many hours at the office. What is the flipside of the MC's greatest strength? This will be his greatest weakness relevant to the plot.

TIP: GREATEST WEAKNESS = LESSON TO BE LEARNED

Once you know the greatest weakness, you have identifed the lesson your MC must learn. As surely as his/her strength is great, it is brought down by this weakness. He/she must overcome this weakness, learn some way to overcome it, in order to finally be able to use that greatest strength to overcome the main obstacle in the climactic scene. The hardworking office guy? He has to learn that success at work is not the only success. His family matters, too. Once he learns that, you can bring things together for him, and enable him to use his strength to overcome whatever obstacle he faced. Maybe his goal was "success" but he wrongly thought it would come from so much hard work. Now he knows real success is when he comes home at the end of the day to a family that loves him. Once he reduces his workload, repairs his relationships, reclaims his place in the family, he comes home from work a real winner.

USE YOUR ANSWERS TO THESE QUESTIONS TO DRIVE YOUR STORY PLANNING!

This stuff drives your story. It drives character development (your MC grows, learns, changes) and plot progression (list of obstacles in ascending level of difficulty = steps in your plot!). Use your answers to these questions when you contemplate your story. Apply the same basic concepts to your other primary characters, the antagonist (villain), the "love interest" (husband, wife, lover), and any other characters important enough to deserve attention, such as in subplots.

Use these concepts to help you build your 12-Step Outline!

HOW TO FIND AN ANTAGONIST

I blogged some time ago about "How to Find an Antagonist". I wanted to provide a link here to that posting, which was on my main blog, Chronicling the Novel. I faced a problem of choosing one main antagonist when more than one was possible. Remember, the antagonist is the "bad" guy", AKA the "villain", the one who most stands in the way of the protagonist (ie, "hero") as the he/she tries to reach his/her main goal.

You can find that posting by clicking here.

THE 12-STEP OUTLINE

I use a twelve-step outline, based on three acts. This outline is the key to my being able to see my way through, work my way through, write my way through, a complete manuscript of 120,000, even 130,000 words.

I actually start with a four-step outline of main pillars, which I write down to describe the key story points in one sentence each. You can also add a fifth item at the start, the "inciting incident". When you are finished with this, you have a list of five sentences that give an overview of your story. I believe they will work just as well for shorter stories and novellas as they do for novels.

Here are the main pillars of your story:

0. What is the event that sets everything in motion?

1. What happens at the end of Act I? (This is where the MC makes the commitment to the situation, or the situation is now unavoidable.) [Step 1 below]

2. What happens at the Mid-Point? (This is the end of the first half of Act II, the mid-point of the story, the point where a key decision by the MC moves him/her toward a path that will lead to the final confrontation/climax.) [Step 6 below]

3. What happens at the end of Act II? (This is the big disaster or circumstance that now requires the road to turn into the final approach to the final, big conflict that provides the climax in Act III.) [Step 9 below]

4. What happens in the final conflict at the end of Act III? (What is the final outcome?) [Steps 11/12 below]

You can then take these five sentences and use them to form a paragraph, which you edit as needed, and which forms the basis of your back-cover blurb!

Using those pillars, I then take the same outline and flesh it out to twelve steps, a beginning, middle and end toward each of these key points, themselves also significant plot events. They can be looked at this way:

ACT I

Step 1: The Call To Action (something upsets the order of things)
Step 2: Refusal of the Call
Step 3: Turning Point 1 (the "Quest" or adventure is now unavoidable)

ACT II Part A

Step 4: Strategy 1 (first attempt to solve problem, or gathering friends/resources)
Step 5: Pinch-Point #1 (a crisis that reminds us of the main conflict, a complication to the first strategy)
Step 6: Mid-Point (another conflict with a decision that turns path toward the climax -- this will be like a pinch point, reminding us of the main conflict)

ACT II Part B

Step 7: Strategy 2 (another major attempt to solve the problem)
Step 8: Pinch-Point #2 (another crisis that reminds us of the main conflict)
Step 9: Turning Point #2 (another conflict that now turns us toward the final conflict -- this is usually a massive failure for the MC, the worst now seems to have happend, yet somehow we know it will get worse still)

Act III

Step 10: Low Point (the MC is reeling from the disaster in the last step, finding inner strength to go on, devising a strategy to fight back, suffering from a terrible loss in some way)
Step 11: Final Confrontation / Climax
Step 12: Resolution, Denoument (order restored)

When writing, keep your outline handy. You can write from this, or you can take this and do more with it, developing a list of scenes, separating those and grouping them into chapters. You can add as much support in the form of notes, tables, lists, etc., as you need, or use very little, but no matter how much formal planning you do, you really should THINK about your story before you start to write it, and the basic structure above calls upon you to ask yourself the important questions.

If you don't know this stuff, you can't write your story. This stuff IS your story: your story is the stuff that happens in your story, right? What happens in your story? You decide. But if you don't know the beginning, middle and end of your story, you don't have a complete story, do you? THINK your way through. Use this template to help you do that.

It's your story. Write whatever you want. But you must know what you are going to write at some point in the process. If you start with a plan, you can always meander and change it as you go. If you don't have a plan, you may get lost and have no clue where you are headed, or where you are, or how you got there.

"Look before you leap" or you may find yourself getting stuck in the mud, and that ain't no fun!

TIP: The Q&A Method for Solving Problems

TIP: When you can't proceed, it's almost always because there are questions which you haven't answered, which you need to answer, in order to know how the story goes!

THE QUESTION-AND-ANSWER METHOD FOR SOLVING PROBLEMS:

If you're ever finding yourself too unsure which direction to proceed in, or how it all ties together, etc., then maybe try the "Q&A" approach I use. It helps me a lot. I make a list of all my questions, then I type out answers to each, brainstorming paragraphs or pages as needed. When I am finally ready to make decisions, then I write a summary of which choice I made and why. This helps me focus on just what I don't know that is keeping me from progressing, and helps me explore options in making decisions.

The value of this method is that it takes your problem, the question(s) that you need answered, and reduces them from some impossible-to-solve abstract notion in your head to a concrete question on paper (or on your computer screen).

The hardest part sometimes is actually writing the question down. I know sometimes I have a question but I don't even want to put it into words, in my head or otherwise, because I know I'll have to do some hard, serious thinking to figure it out. I know it will raise a lot of other questions. I know the solution is going to be tough, a lot of work, redoing what I have already written, etc. But the most important thing is to do it, to ask the question.

One time, I remember, it was all I could do on day just to write the question down. I then had to put it away immediately because I did not want to face it. But the next day I mustered the courage to look at the question in writing, and when I did I found the question wasn't so intimidating after all. I had to work for several hours, writing more questions that arose as I tried to figure out the major plot problem, working through the entire story in my head, talking out loud to myself, pacing the room, making various groans and whining noises, but in time, after a few hours, I did have all the answers I needed, and I was able to resume work later that day.

So, no matter how tough the problem you are facing in your work in progress, when you can't proceed it is almost always because there is something you haven't decided. A decision you have put off. You were able to write around it, to avoid it, but finally you reach that point where the story can go no farther until you answer it. That's what you have to do. No matter how painful, write it down, face it, and solve it. Once you do, the dam will be opened, the creative flood will wash over you and you will be swept away again to the joys of writing new stuff, which is what it's all about.

Good luck with it!