Category Archives: Writing Tools

A discussion of the various software that authors employ to write, plot, backup, and ultimately use to write a novel.

How Much Blood is Right for You?

Craft & Skills Gregory D. Little Writing Tools No Comments

“This is a horror story: the mandate is to present a malefic universe.” That quote is from science fiction and fantasy (and occasional horror) author Daniel Abraham and I agree that this is where all horror stories begin. Once past that initial point, of course, there are a lot of different directions you can go. It’s a gross oversimplification, but horror is often divided into two categories: psychological and visceral. There are many degrees between the two extremes, not to mention all the various genre qualifiers that can be appended to any form of horror. but if you are beginning a horror story, it helps if you can decide roughly what kind of horror you are going for.

Is this story all blood and guts, tapping into the primal fear of being killed and/or eaten by a creature or entity you are incapable of fighting back against? Or is this a story of shifting shadows and fleeting glimpses of something insubstantial but terrifying, something that causes you to question the laws by which our world works? In short, are you trying to tap into the primal terror in the animal portion of the brain, or the existential terror that is our consciousness’s most dubious gift to us?

Since I’d wager that more people watch horror movies than read horror books, I’ll look there for examples. Movies actually adhere pretty rigorously to this stylistic split. If you’re watching a slasher flick like a Friday the Thirteenth or a Halloween, you’re trending more towards visceral horror. If you’re watching something more like 2013’s The Conjuring, you’re in more psychological horror territory.

When you get into the written word, however, an interesting thing happens. Movies, after all, have one distinct advantage over books. As a species sight is our primary sense. Graphic novels aside, we generally can’t show readers actual pictures. We have to hijack their imaginations to tell the visual parts of stories for us. But a movie, provided you keep your eyes open, can force you to look at whatever horrifying image the filmmakers want you to.  With a book the the reader’s mind is free to imagine the story in as vivid or as vague detail as it wants. For this reason, I think that visceral horror stories have to work a lot harder to have the same impact on the page as they do on the screen. By the same token, psychological scares on the page can prey upon already-primed imaginations, giving them a short cut to terror.

This is not to say that visceral horror in book form can’t be done. I challenge anyone to read Scott Sigler’s Infected or Scott Smith’s The Ruins and not be terrified (and nauseated)by the extremely visceral body horror elements present.

Ultimately the most effective horror stories make at least some use of both methods to achieve maximum impact. This is really more of a continuum than it is a set of polar opposites. You’ll have to determine what effect you are going for and utilize the correct techniques to scare your readers silly.

Bad Boys and Anti-heroes: Why the Gals Love Them

Character Clancy Metzger Writing Tools 2 Comments
buffy and spike
From: scorchingflame.deviantart.com

So, you killed someone? You have a dark past, present or future? That’s okay. You too, can still get the girl and find love!

Don’t believe me?  Let’s look at what makes a character a bad boy or anti-hero and see if we can discern why the women swoon for them. Because they are, I promise. And your flaws are part of the attraction.

First, what defines a bad boy, anti-hero or what some call Byronic Heroes. We know the bad boys – the guys you can’t bring home to meet the parents. They may wear too much leather, have a disregard/disrespect for authority (and that includes dear old dad), brood, be rebellious, or be one of those long-haired music types.  We know them by their clothes, their hair, their motorcycle, their attitude, their criminal record. And damn if they don’t draw us in with their sexy bad boy ways. Think James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, Judd Nelson in The Breakfast Club, or Brad Pitt in Fight Club.

Anti-heroes are those characters who lack conventional heroic qualities. They possess both good and bad qualities. They show us what real human nature looks like. We root for them to redeem themselves and though they are not someone we can look up to, we like them and fall for them anyway.  These guys are also the ones you may not want to bring home, but we want them despite their flaws.  Think Vin Diesel as Riddick in any of the Riddick films, Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow in The Pirates of the Caribbean, or Harrison Ford as Han Solo in Star Wars.

Byronic Heroes are those who are proud, moody, cynical, vengeful, miserable and yet capable of deep emotion and strong affection.  They can be obsessive, tortured and arrogant, yet we have to believe that our love can change them.  Think Mr. Rochester (too many great actors have done this role – take your pick) from Jane Eyre, Hugh Jackman as the Wolverine from the X-Men, Laurence Olivier or Tom Hardy as Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, or Gerard Butler as the Phantom in Phantom of the Opera. And let’s not forget Tom Hiddleston as Loki in Thor. They’re all just so irresistible!

So, why do we women-folk want them? I think it’s that we like a bit of the dark with our sweet.  Too much nice can get cloying. Too much bad is not healthy for us. They may be murderers after all. But, if you can find that perfect balance, or kid yourself into thinking that you have, then voilá – love.

Something caused these guys to be like they are, we reason. They had rough childhoods. Some girl tap-danced all over their heart. They were orphaned, beaten, had bad role models… whatever. But something caused it – they weren’t born bad. We have to believe that if we want to believe we can help them on their road to redemption or believe that we will be the catalyst that spurs that redemption. It’s terribly romantic.

Okay, I may sound a bit snarky on this, but really I’m not. I buy into this all the time. I love these characters. I love these guys. I love the pure optimism and hope in it all. Jane Eyre totally saves Mr. Rochester and they live a long happy life together. Yes, they go through their share of tragedy and heartache, but still… at the end, they’re together, in love and she was the reason for his redemption. What isn’t to love about that?

In Buffy the Vampire Slayer (don’t roll your eyes – that show rocked!), Spike is a villain through how many seasons? He kills humans without remorse. Kills slayers with glee and much future boasting. He’s cruel, sarcastic, and if he can mess with you in any way, he will and smile while doing it. Even at his rottenest, we like him. He’s funny, sexy, and gets away with doing all the awful things we wish we could. But he cares deeply for Drusilla (who’s a total wacko) and later, Buffy, so we know he isn’t all bad. And who of us didn’t have a thing for him the minute he showed up in Season 2, Episode 3? Later, he becomes Buffy’s sex-toy, and then friend and at the end of the series, Spike is a hero of sorts. He and Buffy aren’t always nice to one another, but ultimately they bring about change for the better in each other.

Han Solo is a mercenary. He’s selfish and self-serving. He’s a sexy space cowboy with the coolest wingman ever.  He’s a womanizer, street smart criminal, and hangs with the wrong crowds. He is not Dudley Do-Right, but under that gruff exterior beats the heart of a romantic softy who was willing to give up the love-of-his-life to his best friend when he thought that was what she wanted.  Yes, indeed. This is a guy I can fall for. With ease. And don’t friendship, a worthy cause and the love of a good woman bring about a better Han? Yes they do. Love scores again.

Characters – the moral here is that even if you’re a killer, cruel, selfish, broody, and have loads of flaws, you can be redeemed and there’s a gal out there just waiting to be your salvation! Mind you, not all of the bad boys and anti-heroes can be redeemed, but that won’t slow the women down from trying.

Writers – characters don’t have to be perfect for readers to love them, want them, want to be them and find them emotionally relatable. Flaws add depth and are more interesting. Perfect characters are boring, so explore the dark side a little and see what happens.

 

February – Love and Murder

Matt Jones The Writing Life Writing Tools No Comments

black-32834_640[1]February. The month that Greeting Card companies and Flower Stores wait for each year. The month where love and passion rule, and all things are possible. Where your true love holds you close and rips your heart out of your chest, still beating, to show you before you die. And why not? Every good novel needs some tension to balance the mushy love parts, right?

This month we will look at this balance and focus on the craft of writing a great love scene or a terrifying horror novel. We’ll seek out the secrets that have fueled stories told around camp fires for centuries. And we will look at why, when we are out in the middle of nowhere surrounded by whatever horrors our imaginations could dream up, the thing we inevitably do is create stories even more fearsome.

Both horror and romance work on playing with the readers emotions. They focus on the emotional response, a sense of longing or a chill of fright. They both focus on the passion that make us who we are. Even if you don’t write in the genre, we all want to elicit an emotional response in our readers.

So welcome to the Fictorians take on Love and Murder. Come in close where we can give you a kiss while we slide the blade home between your ribs.

Never Stop Learning

Classes & Seminars Conventions Craft & Skills Goals Leigh Galbreath Life Philosophies Making Progress as a Writer Motivation Teaching The Writing Life Writing Tools No Comments

I don’t think I can count the number of times I’ve heard people say that some aspect of writing couldn’t be taught. My personal favorite is that you can learn all the technique you want, but you’re either born with the ability to tell a good story, or you’re not. That you can’t learn how to tell a good story.

I personally think that the people who espouse these ideas have either spent entirely too much time dealing with writers who aren’t willing to put the work in, or we’re all a little confused on what, if any, difference there is between technique and telling a good story.

Writing is a craft, after all, and no one’s born a master of any craft.

Of course, we will probably never be utterly fantastic at every aspect of the writing craft. Some have fantastic world-building but a slow plot. Others great characters but not enough setting. Stephanie Meyer, for instance, has long been derided on her writing style, and has even admitted herself that she’s not the best writer, but she’s does a hell of a job weaving emotion into every scene and tugging the heart strings of her readers—which is exactly what her readers want.

The point being, just because you’re not the greatest at something doesn’t mean you’re not a good enough writer to be published. At the same time, ignoring your weaknesses because “it can’t be taught” is a total cop-out, in my opinion.

Like most everyone here, I dream for that day when I’m going about my usual day, doing something boring and what-not, only to happen upon someone reading a book with my name on it. I feel the despair that I’m not quite there yet and hear the clock ticking away the time that means there’s one more day I haven’t achieved my dream. And yes, I’m a realist. I know a good portion of that is fear of putting my work out there, but I also know I’ve still got some serious weaknesses that I need to address.

When I was a teenager, I had a choir instructor who explained that he taught people who were tone-deaf how to sing. It’s in understanding the real root of the problem that allows something like that to happen. With the tone-deaf people, they had to learn how the notes related to each other to be able to figure out how to go from one correct note to another correct note without wandering off, so to speak.

With writing, I think, it’s much the same. If you understand what the real problem is, you can fix it. You just might have to look a bit harder and be a little more creative to get the results you’re looking for.

My personal demon at the moment is plot structure. Something’s always escaped me about how to put one event before another and have it work to engage the reader, move the story forward, and still service the characters.

As a discovery writer, I lean toward minimal effort spent on deep planning before writing. Unfortunately, I’ve been struggling with a few stories that I have come to realize really need to be plotted before I start writing in earnest. So, recently I decided to dedicate a good portion of this year in workshops and classes specifically geared toward pre-writing. Currently, I’m doing David Farland’s online prewriting class at mystorydoctor.com, and while it has done a fantastic job in helping me learn how to plan a novel before I write it, it incidentally  opened my eyes as why plot structure has always eluded me.

For me, there was one exercise in particular that helped me figure out what the real problem was. The idea was to establish circularity between characters in opposition to each other, by writing out how each character reacts to the actions of the other. This forced me to find the cause and effect of the conflict…and suddenly I know how my plot is supposed to work and how the sub-plots interact with it. Suddenly, I get it.

So, that’s my goal for this year, to focus on becoming a better writer by taking my weakness and working to learn how to get better at it.

I refuse to believe that there are things I can’t learn. The only thing I was born with was a love of stories. The writing portion is a work in progress.