Category Archives: Craft & Skills

As a reader, I want new stories to enjoy, but I’m also looking for the types of stories that I enjoy.

This means I hit the fantasy and science fiction aisles of the bookstores, not the horror or literary fiction aisles. For the, ah, three decades that I’ve been reading these kinds of stories, a lot of the same themes, archetypes, plots, and settings have occurred. You name it, I’ve seen it – probably at least twice.

But I keep seeking out these kinds of stories.

Because each author has their own spin on farmboy-goes-to-big-city.

I like the predictability of what should happen, what I expect to happen, and the light vibration of something new that I feel from the first chapter that grows as I read a new book, letting the author lead me down a path that feels familiar but I know I’ve never traveled before.

As a writer, I tell the kinds of stories I like to read. It is my job to entertain the reader, to give them something the same but different, to fulfill their desire for new stories that are the same as the stories that they enjoy.

Some days it is easier than others.

A. C. Crispin had a recent ACCess blog post about “How to Satisfy Your Reader without Being Predictable” which I found to be a great read on this topic.

Then Brandon Sanderson talked about how one archetype his early novel Mythwalker worked (and eventually became his later novel Warbreaker) while another tried-and-true fantasy plot didn’t pan out in his “MYTHWALKER Prologue + Updates” blog post.

I think Brandon best surmised this balancing act of the same but different, being predictable and original, when he said …

Not every aspect of the story needs to be completely new. Blend the familiar and the strange-the new and the archetypal. Sometimes it’s best to rely on the work that has come before. Sometimes you need to cast it aside.

I guess one of the big tricks to becoming a published author is learning when to do which.

Black and White vs Grey Part 2: The Grey Camp

August 12, 2011

mary

In my last article I wrote about a particular audience of readers whom I called the “black and white team.” These readers enjoy stories where clearly defined heroes and villains face off in battles of good vs. evil. These stories can feature complex interplay between the heroes (and also between the villains), but in the end, there is never any question as to which side is “good”, and which is “bad”. Facing off against the “black and white” team is the “grey camp,” who are looking for something different from their fiction.

I first encountered the “grey camp” as a group of people who’d watched a cartoon series and realized that they sympathized with the villains moreso than the heroes! To their minds, the villains were strong, assertive, independent and persistent, whereas the heroes were passive, forever reacting to the villains instead of taking their own initiative, chastened by their leader if they went off on their own. Small moments of dialogue and animation showed hints of affection between the villainous characters, indicating that the villains just might have a “life” outside of fighting the heroes.

This fandom’s “grey camp” hoped for more fiction that would develop the villains as rounded characters.. They argued that fans could care about the “bad guys” as much as they cared about the heroes. As it turns out, some of the ongoing fiction has begun presenting the villains as characters with conflicting beliefs, legitimate grievances, and admirable traits of their own.

These stories provide a challenge in that the protagonist must have enough positive traits for the reader to be interested in her and care about her actions, but she also must be “villainous” enough to be a credible member of the “enemy” side. I think about “All Quiet on the Western Front,” a novel where the main character is a German soldier in the First World War. Originally written in German, the translation into English allowed English readers to see the conflict “through enemy eyes.” In other cases, the protagonists may do “bad” things, but the enemies they are fighting are worse, and therefore readers feel good about cheering for these anti-heroes.

Taken one step further, the “grey camp’s” stories can go beyond the good guy/bad guy dichotomy to show complex situations where two sides, both with positive and negative aspects, are set against one another. Or, the hero might find herself with an ally who behaves in ways she finds disturbing or immoral. These stories challenge the reader to see issues from different points of view. They illustrate how upbringing, beliefs, personality traits, and life experience can affect a person’s interpretations. Characters may experience the same event, but draw wholly different conclusions from the result. Protagonists suffer from flaws and sometimes behave badly; antagonists show courage, loyalty, and friendship. Characters, and readers, sometimes wonder which side is right, and why?

Writing the “grey camp” can be very challenging, and I will devote the next article to some of its pitfalls while providing suggestions and techniques.

Don’t forget the Bliss

August 5, 2011

Leigh Galbreath

Craft & Skills Leigh Galbreath Starting a Career The Writing Life Writing as An Emotional Outlet 6 Comments

It is said that everyone has a book in them. Not only is it ingrained in the human psyche to tell stories, but also for most of us, there’s something inside that just can’t stop telling a tale. It’s a passion that keeps us coming back, day after day, to the blank page — a hunger to fill the white spaces.

And like most of people with a passion, we dream of the day when that passion pays off and we can quit our mundane lives to devote all our time and effort into a job that we truly and absolutely love. Like the high school girl who heads off to Hollywood to become the next big movie star or the college kid who quits law school to become a rockstar, we who are called to the written word dream of being the next Bestseller. The only problem is that, unlike movie and rockstars, the bestselling author rarely gets the glamour or the big paycheck that sets them up for life.

We all know this, right? Writing will not make most of us rich.

And yet, we strive and shell out hard earned cash for workshops and seminars and books on craft so that we improve and can one day write that stunning masterpiece that will put us on the map. As we become more and more devoted to that dream, we put more time and effort into learning the business, pushing ourselves out of our solitary writerly existences to learn things like web design and marketing and promotion. All in the quest for becoming a published author. To be quite honest, I don’t so much feel that the “business” side of the writing business is outside my comfort zone as much as, when I do that stuff, I feel like someone is shoving bamboo rods under my fingernails.

I really hate doing that stuff. So much so, that I avoid it as much as possible. For I’ve come to realize that if I pay too much attention to that part of things, I start to forget why I liked writing in the first place. In hearing over and over how much work is demanded to building a name before a publishing house will touch you, or singling yourself out from the e-mob on Amazon, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by all the stuff that has absolutely nothing to do with writing. It’s easy to forget the bliss.

In the end, it’s not fame and fortune that really drives us to write — that’s what record producers, TV networks, and movie studios are for. It’s not the ease of the work — writing is just plain hard most the time if you’re doing it right. It’s not the collaboration — even when working with other writers, most the time you’re still working alone.

It’s the passion. The bliss. It’s the drive that won’t let you think of doing anything else, because you just can’t kick the addiction to the written word.

So, strive, make your goals, work hard on that dream to become the next Big Thing in books. But don’t let the work make you forget why you dreamed the dream in the first place. Don’t ever forget the bliss.

Taking Advice

July 29, 2011

Brandon M Lindsay

Brandon M. Lindsay Craft & Skills Publishing The Writing Life 4 Comments

Everybody has an opinion. Oftentimes, a person’s opinions and ideas about a given subject will contradict those of other people. Writing is no exception.

Take any topic within writing, ask a bunch of writers what they think about it, and the answers you’ll receive will be all over the board. It doesn’t matter if the topic is agents, dialogue tags, or the best hours of the day to write–opinions on such things will vary widely. But does this mean there is no one right answer to the question you’re asking?

At first, it might be easy to think so. After all, what these authors are doing obviously works well for them. But there’s the rub: what they’re doing works well in their situation.

Now, I’m not advocating the position that there are no universal truths in the world or in writing, which I would argue is a philosophically invalid and practically worthless position. What I am advocating is the notion that these universal truths only apply within a given context.

For example, let’s say you’re trying to design a book cover for your Tolkienesque epic fantasy novel. You might think, “Well, book covers that have tramp-stamped female characters on motorcycles holding shotguns are selling like mad. I’ll think I’ll jump on that bandwagon.” Doing so would absolutely ruin your book and everyone who read it would hate it. Why? Because books with that kind of cover only sell well in the context of urban fantasy novels, not epic fantasy novels.

The reason context is so important is because our careers, our writing styles, and our stories, could potentially manifest themselves in a vast number of ways, some of which could be very unlike others who have written in our respective genre. While a particular method for getting published or selling books might have worked for one person, that same method applied by someone with very different personal qualities or writing strengths could crash and burn.

That doesn’t mean we don’t have anything to learn from those who have come before us. It does mean that we have to know ourselves, our situations, and our writing, and that we have to know how to apply the things we’ve learned in a way that benefits us. While our writing and our careers may look nothing like someone like Stephen King’s, there is still much we can learn from him (if you haven’t already, read his book On Writing).

So if I were to give you one piece of writing advice that is universal, it would be this: do what is appropriate for your story, and do what is appropriate for your career.