Tag Archives: Ace Jordyn

Your inner muse is the voice of your experiences – both real and desired.

I think my muse went this way.... — I think my muse went this way….

That inner muse can be elusive. It is who we blame for our writer’s block.

But there is a secret to keeping that muse away from the straight jacket of silence. That secret is understanding the two truths of the inner muse which no one talks about.

Those two truths, once realized, will forever unfetter your inner muse. This month’s theme is about how life’s experiences shape what we write. We know that our experiences shape our perception and hence what we write. Experience also shapes what our inner muse reveals. But, did you know that there is a way to tap into those experiences while letting the muse do its sorting and compiling to create those aha! moments?

Tapping into our experiences happens when we’re aware of the two truths about the inner muse that no one talks about:

1) Inspiration isn’t always obvious; and
2) You may not realize what you know.

It seems that I’m stating the obvious. But without conscious awareness of these two truths, your inner muse doesn’t have permission to stay away from the straight jacket of silence.

What these two truths mean is that what inspires you to create a world and to write the story can be hidden somewhere deep inside and you don’t even know it.

Can you dig it out? Find it? Use it? Of course you can. The best way to do that is to not go looking for it. Sometimes, you’ve just got to let it happen. Sometimes you just have to be literal about being inspired. Here’s what I mean:

To be inspired means to be in spirit. That means giving your muse permission to access all that information in your head, all those observations and the situations you’ve experienced. It means letting your muse make the associations it needs to and to draw from the library of your inner knowing.

All you have to do to succeed is to trust it. Yes, trust your muse, trust what you know even if you’re not aware of it. Why? Because:

1) Inspiration isn’t always obvious
Sometimes we have an aha! moment which inspires a scene, a story even or a moment in the book. More often it comes from somewhere deep within. How often have you read what you’ve written and wondered how you knew to write that, or to word it that way, or your character has surprised you? Those are the moments when inspiration isn’t obvious and you may never figure out what inspired you to write what you did, but aren’t you glad your inner muse was working for you?

Our brain likes to make associations, find familiar in the unfamiliar, and find patterns. It sees shapes in clouds, a face in a whorl of wood, that phone number is all primes and if I add the first two numbers together…

The trick is to trust the inner muse and to trust that it’s working for you. Forcing the writing, forcing a scene, rarely works. It has to come from the characters and the situations we created and from the inner muse which understands those creations at a much more profound level than what we are sometimes aware of.

2) You may not realize what you know
I’m a kid from the farm. It took a little while for me to realize that most of my stories happen in rural settings in whichever genre I’m writing. I have detail which I take for granted and other people have to research. I understand the relationship people have with the land and animals. I have planted, harvested and marketed, I have prepared and stored food for the winter and have experienced limited access to store bought foods,.

It’s the same thing with the characters we create. We tend toward the familiar, especially when it comes to relationships. That’s when patterns in our writing occur. Strong female, weak male characters or vice versa. Female characters who hate their fathers. Male characters who are emotionally deprived heroes. There are countless patterns and stereotypes we fall into because it’s subconsciously familiar in some way. It’s the material the muse has to work with.

Whether it’s settings or characters, relationships or values and ethics, our inner muse has the information of who and what we are and uses it, even if we don’t realize that’s what is happening.

So we don’t always realize what we know and even what we don’t know. But when we consciously let the muse do its work, when we become consciously aware of the work it is doing, then we can form a relationship with it that changes what we write. We can give the muse permission to explore new situations, characters and relationships. This awareness allows us to ask for help to change the pool of information the muse has to work with. In a critique group I’m in, a well published author informed us that she had become aware that she always wrote a specific father-daughter relationship into her stories and she understood why. Now she wanted to change it up.

The two truths contradict each other:

“Trust inspiration” versus “Don’t trust what it’s telling you”.

Or, so it seems at first glance. But the real axiom is:

Trust Inspiration. Understand what it’s telling you so that you can change it up – if you wish.

We, and our inner muse, are the sum total of our experiences. As writers, we’re not always aware of what we know and what we don’t know. The more we write, the more opportunity we have to understand what informs our writing and to change and expand upon that.

You know that the writing myth that says you’ve got to write a million words before you’ve got a chance to be successful? It’s not about the word count, it’s about understanding your inner muse and developing a comfortable, trustworthy relationship with it. Sometimes, it takes a million words before you realize you’re basically writing the same story, the same themes albeit in different settings and milieus. Once you realize that, you’ve hear your inner muse. Now, you can give it new fodder, inform it with new information and experiences. You can give it permission to shake it up a bit.

Will you need a million words to do this? Maybe yes. Maybe no. And remember, I used the word ‘myth’ for a reason.

Inspiration isn’t always obvious and you may not realize what you know – once these two unspoken truths are understood, your life experiences will shape your writing in ways you never imagined it could! So, trust Inspiration and understand what it’s telling you so that you can change it up – if you wish.

Divining Character with Tarot

January 12, 2016

Ace Jordyn

Ace Jordyn Character Ideas & Plotting 1 Comment

You’ve written several stories and the characters are all beginning to sound the same. How can you mix it up without using the same old characteristics that are embedded in your subconscious?

Try Tarot.

It’s fun and it’s easy.

Although the exact origin of Tarot cards isn’t known, we do know that during the Renaissance the cards were designed to explore archetypal and psychological patterns. For example, death is an archetypal event because it exists in all cultures and a psychological event because of the changes in a phase of life, changing events or people in our lives ,or because of personal emotional changes. Tarot cards are meant to be read on all these levels.

There are too many cards to summarize their individual meanings and the book accompanying the set you use provides that information. The deck I’m using is The Mythic Tarot: A New approach to the Tarot Cards. It was designed with the images of the Greek gods because of their influence on Western society.

Let’s use the Celtic Cross and Sword Spread. The Cross Spread gives us information about the protagonist while the Sword Spread tells us what lies before our hero. Here’s how it looks:

The position of each card means something specific. There are books and websites which have reams of information on each of these aspects. This version has been grossly simplified for brainstorming purposes.

Now, we need a character and the story premise. Let’s have a hero who must save the world from an evil sorcerer. I know it’s been done a million times before but that’s why it’s a good example about how Tarot can be used to mix it up.

Allan, our hero, lives in the rural Midwest. Life on the prairies is hard but it’s a good community, strong with family values but there are things that make him miserable like his cruel father. The day before an old bookstore is torn down in the neighboring town of 500 people, Allan explores the derelict building and finds a book hidden in a wall. He opens the book, reads a verse out loud and unleashes a sorcerer. His best friend is a girl named Becky.

This exercise is in three parts:
A) What the card’s position means;
B) What the card itself means; and
C) What means for our character.

Cards 1–6 (Cross Spread) tell us about the protagonist.

1A) The Heart of The Matter
This card is the primary focal point for the hero. It focuses on a central issue or a major concern. It may be in the form of a dominant characteristic, a major influence or a basic worry.
1B) Five of Swords
With the capacity to create good or evil fate according to the strength of his beliefs or principles, the hero needs to face his limits to go forward. Doing so will allows him to accept his own destiny and to earn his right to manhood and eventual kingship.
1C) The Meaning
Allan has unleashed a sorcerer who is now on a rampage and that freaks him out completely. After having only read superhero stories and growing up in a rural community, he feels inadequate to the task of stopping the sorcerer. Allan needs to find and bolster his inner strength, overcome fears of inadequacy and step up to the challenge.

2A) The Opposing Factor or Adversary
Literally, as seen on the spread, that which crosses you. This is a contrary element, a complicating factor.
2B) The Hermit
The lesson of time and the limitations of mortal life – a lesson that normally comes with age and experience wherein the hero arrives at maturity, a deep respect for his limitations, and a firm sense of identity.
2C) The Meaning
Allan decides to do something because he’s the only one who can but he isn’t sure of himself, and doesn’t have the confidence to go it alone. For this reason, he seeks help from people he shouldn’t trust.

3A) Crowning Card/ Root Cause
That which hangs over the protagonist in the immediate present. It’s directly under the protagonist. It may be an unconscious influence, a hidden influence, or something from childhood. Whichever it is, it’s the source of the protagonist’s problem.
3B) Eight of Wands
Confidence and new energy is gained after triumphing over obstacles. A period of action after delay or struggle. Travel is implied.
3C) The Meaning
False confidence fills Allan’s head after experiencing a minor success. He now believes he can be the things his domineering father told him he could never be or do. Yet, his underlying fears and his father’s voice in his head undermine him.

4A) The Base of the Matter or the Immediate Past
Something related to the hero’s immediate past such as a belief, an event, an opportunity, a fear, a hope, or something resolved like a task, or unnecessary baggage. It may be an unconscious influence, a hidden influence, or something from childhood. Whichever it is, it’s the source of the protagonist’s problem. An unconscious motivation is brought to awareness.
4B) The Devil
The hero must face his own darkness must free himself by gaining knowledge by confronting all that is shadowy, shameful and base in his personality.
4C) The Meaning
This spread of cards continues to focus on Allan’s need to understand his inner self in order to conquer the sorcerer. There are several options. Will he face his own darkness through a dream or a situation the sorcerer has put him in? Will his untrustworthy companions betray him? Will they jeopardize a girl he secretly likes? What is that darkness? Had he done something that he perceives to be as cruel as his father, like pulling the wings off a fly?

5A) The Alternate Future
What could happen, a potential development. This card can also be used to determine aspirations or where trust is placed.
5B) Queen of Cups
Symbolizes the emergence of deep feelings and fantasies which may appear in the character of a woman who is may be either lover or rival. The woman may be mysterious, hypnotic or even seductive.
5C) The Meaning
Allan really likes Becky and she’s done nothing to deserve being held by the sorcerer. Allan finds he can dig down to do what’s right. Or, the sorcerer is a woman and he must overcome her hypnotic ways and again, he can only do that by facing and overcoming his sense of inadequacy.

6A) Future
What lies immediately in the hero’s future. It may be an event, a belief, a fear, a person, an event, an approaching influence, and unresolved factor which must be considered or even something to embrace.
6B) Seven of Pentacles
A difficult work decision must be made – continue with the project or do something new.
6C)The Meaning
Seriously? This card? We already know that Allan has to either overcome his beliefs about himself so he can move forward to be the hero he must be. Come on Allan – embrace your inner self! Actually, this card would fall perfectly in the scheme of the try/fail cycles. It’s the point where he must embrace his inadequacies, move forward and vanquish the sorcerer.

Cards 7-10 (Sword Spread) tell us what lies before our hero.

7A) Mirror
How does the hero see himself? This card reveals his temperament, his way of being or perhaps his self-image, how he presents himself, the idealized version of himself or a talent he can use.
7B) Three of Swords
Strife, conflict or separation, a painful state is necessary as blindness and self-delusion cannot continue.
7C) The Meaning
The Three of Swords says it all. Allan will face strife, conflict and pain because he’s not facing up to the realities of what haunts him and who he really is.

8A) From the Outside
How do others perceive the hero? What are their expectations, their view of the problem, the hero’s effect on them?
8B) The Lovers
Love makes people blind to their choices or actions so one must look carefully at his choices. It may mean making a choice between love and a career. It may mean a love in one’s life.
8C) The Meaning
His need for acceptance, even by the untrustworthy troop with him, makes Allan easily duped and keeps him from facing his fears and sense of inadequacy. This allows the group to take advantage of him for their own benefit and he suffers for that. He may have to choose between Becky (the girl) and the gang (vanquishing the sorcerer).

9A) The Guide or Hopes and Fears
What are the hero’s deepest hopes and fears? This card indicates how the hero will approach obstacles and opportunities.
9B) Ace of Cups
Ready for a journey of love, there is an outpouring of raw, overwhelming feeling. There is a potential for a relationship.
9C) The Meaning
He wants to be loved by his father, anyone. He wants assurance that he is not some horrid warped creature like his father, but a good person at heart.

10A) The Outcome
This card doesn’t mean ‘forever’ but rather tells us what the natural outgrowth from all the things we have divined about the hero. Everything leads to this point.
10B) Six of Swords
Insights smooth difficult times and insight and understanding and dignity and self-respect are maintained.
10C) The Meaning
I didn’t pull this card deliberately! But it is a story worthy conclusion. Insight, understanding and facing his inadequacies smooth the path for Allan who is now able to vanquish the sorcerer, save Becky and maybe even live happily ever after until the next villain appears for who knows what other demons the book holds?

This is a quick example of how Tarot can be used to develop a character. Authors also use Tarot to develop the plot. Mark Teppo’s book explains how he does that so check it out. Here are the two books I used to help divine this blog:

JUMP START YOUR NOVEL by Mark Teppo can be found here.
THE MYTHIC TAROT: A NEW APPROACH TO THE TAROT CARDS can be found here.

Write a short story? I’d Rather Floss Chicken Teeth!

January 6, 2016

Ace Jordyn

Ace Jordyn Craft & Skills Narrative Voice No Comments

Flossing a chicken’s teeth would be much easier than writing a short story. Or, that’s what I thought.

I found myself facing this problem after writing six novels. I couldn’t wrap my head around a shorter piece of work. Everything I tried I sounded like an outline for a novel.

Books on outlining didn’t help. Workshops provided little insight. Critique groups, well, I could help someone to better tell their story. Heck, I’d even edited an acclaimed anthology, but I couldn’t write a good short story to save myself.

How could I overcome this block?

I really wanted to know what eluded me about this form. After many attempts, I found a formula that helped in all aspects of short story writing. This four step process taught me how to write short stories:

1) Read short stories, not novels. By reading short stories I learned what forms and genres I really liked and disliked. There’s no point in trying to write in a genre or with a style that doesn’t speak to you.

2) Choose a genre which speaks to you. For example, I love some literary style authors and I love science fiction stories. Literary style I can read but I can’t figure out the voice. With science fiction I understand the voice and the genre, but I’m not as adept as I’d like to be with the science. Hence, I don’t have the confidence to write it. How did I learn this about myself? Check out point number three …

3) Retell the stories that interest you. This is how I figured out if I had the desire, the passion to write certain stories. When I retold a story, I paid close attention to the plot and how it unfolded. I became aware of style, plot, character and the tropes common to the genre. Most importantly, I had to feel the voice and the passion for the genre. Once I discovered what stories energized and excited me, the final step was easy.

4) Write an original story in the genre and voice that excites you.

That’s it. It’s that easy.

Should you publish or submit a retold story? That’s another matter. Issues of public domain arise and rightly so. Some stories I deleted because my intent was only to learn from them. Others, even if there are no public domain issues, may be published in the future but with full disclosure as to the source of inspiration.

Where did I finally find my voice? With fables and fairy tales and people’s stories of old. I love it. The most curious thing I learned was that it wasn’t about setting for me for I’ve set my stories in worlds of fantasy, science fiction, and yes, there’s even a literary one or two! My real journey was to find my story telling voice.

The cheat of the matter was this: later on, I recognized that my writing voice had always been with me. I had heard it, felt it even but I had tried to squeeze it into forms and stories that didn’t suit it. That was the heart of the problem. That is the heart of this journey – to hear the voice within you and to find the form that fits it.

Dueling Parasols and Creating a Steampunk World, Jayne Barnard Tells All

December 16, 2015

Ace Jordyn

Ace Jordyn Interview Steampunk 1 Comment

Welcome to my second interview with author Jayne Barnard and her steampunk novel MADDIE HATTER AND THE DEADLY DIAMOND.

In my previous interview with Jayne, Jayne Barnard on Maddie Hatter’s Steampunk Society, we spoke about Maddie’s life as a Steamlord’s daughter, the constraints and attitudes of the Victorian era and how it affected Maddie’s quest for independence. Jayne’s historical accuracy made this steampunk novel very believable. Even the mechanical gadgets, like Tweedle Dee the mechanical bird who is Maddie’s companion, seem commonplace.

Today, we’ll learn more about how Jayne chose to create Maddie’s steampunk world, and about Steampunk’s fine sport of dueling with parasols.

Dueling parasols? It’s not in Maddie’s book, but I know you’re personally involved in this sport.
Victorian women’s lives were very much constrained by the clothing they wore and social rules of their class. Even more than in this age of internet slut-shaming, their behavior could be judged without mercy by their peers and, if their families were important, by the tabloid press. Their chances of marriage, the only career open to most of them, were dependent in large part on not attracting public notice. Thus they had to swallow a lot of subtly and overtly insulting behavior from other women who, because of their relative money and social power, did not need to be as well-behaved.

Men could settle combat by dueling with swords or pistols, by fisticuffs (aka boxing), by racing, or any other means they chose. They considered those means honourable, and a man who shirked, or who did not abide by the result, lost his honour. It was an outgrowth of the old trial by combat system. Parasol Dueling, a non-contact combat sport based on ranking parasol moves or ‘figures’, gave Steampunk women a means to settle insults rather than allow them to fester until the women broke out in mean-spirited or socially unacceptable behavior. Parasols allow for non-contact dueling that any two ladies may engage in at any place where a parasol might be carried.

Where can we learn more about dueling parasols?
Steampunks around the world now learn, practice, and occasionally duel with intent, but the World Championships are held annually in Calgary, where the sport originated. We’ve aligned with Beakerhead, that five-day festival where Arts & Sciences meet. Planning has just begun for next September’s Beakerhead, so I can’t give you details on that yet, but the Regional Championships are held during Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo. Meanwhile, you can learn much more about the fictional and very real histories of Parasol Dueling at the Steampunk blog Gears, Goggles & Steam and on Facebook at Madame Saffron Hemlock’s Parasol Dueling League for Steampunk Ladies (hey, I didn’t give it that very long name!)

Fashion – that’s what I love about steampunk. You must have spent hours dreaming about the wardrobes, drawing them out and then finding just the right words to describe them so succinctly yet vividly. Can you tell us a bit about the process of creating your world of fashion?
Pictures. Lots and lots of pictures. That’s the short answer.

Steampunk fashion draws primarily from late Victorian style but interprets freely and is not as class-bound as it was in our history. Thanks be to Google for directing me to page after page of photos and discussions of original, preserved costumes as well as modern reproductions that are accurate in cut and – as much as possible – fabric down to the thread in the hand-stitched knickers. Before photography there were portraits, admittedly mostly of rich people, in which garments were thoroughly depicted. In Steampunk, I get to make my own fashion rules, and the rules governing Maddie Hatter’s fictional world are grounded in but not tightly bound by historical fashion.

But Maddie is a young woman skirting (pun not intended!) the precipice of the upper class and the middle class. How do her fashion choices reflect her chosen status?
Maddie’s clothing, as befits her modest lower-middle-class job, is fairly conservative in cut and colour. Browns and grays and blues instead of crimson, purple, and metallics. She sometimes yearns for the vivid and beautiful – and very well-tailored – gowns she used to wear when her father was footing the wardrobe bill. She retained a few good dresses from her Society life, but only those that could pass for a well-dressed journalist’s. They are now a few years out of date, which is good. Their age (in a fashion sense) demonstrates to the upper classes, on whom she reports, that she both understands good clothing and is not in competition with her supposed betters.

The upper classes assume Maddie bought her best dresses second- (or third-) hand, and don’t think less of her for that. Historically, lower classes wore clothing that was at least one full style-generation behind the upper classes; this was partly because employers often gave their out-of-style cast-offs to their servants as part of their wages and benefits (along with food and shelter), and partly due to a thriving trade in strongly-made second-hand clothing, which was often all the working classes could afford before widespread mass-production of clothing (imagine finding one of Jackie Kennedy’s or Princess Diana’s gowns in a consignment store).

Much of my research, and my fascination to date, has been in English fashion; however I will be exploring some other countries’ and other cultures’ fashions in future Maddie adventures.

The world you created includes homage to only one historical personage, Mr. Flinders Petrie. Why him?
I have great respect for history, and for humans whose deeds were sufficiently great to be recorded for posterity. The only truly historical personage mentioned in the Deadly Diamond is Mr. Flinders Petrie, one of the most respected of European Egyptologists, who was working in Egypt during the real-life period covered by our alternate-history. Mr. Petrie is generally credited with curtailing the wholesale upheaval of archaeological sites in search of treasures, and with ushering in a new standard for the recording and preservation of Egyptian antiquities. Without him, the history of Egypt would be far less complete. But, in a novella, there’s not a lot of room to be true to the known facts and foibles of historical individuals – or not as true as I would prefer to be – and thus Mr. Petrie alone gets his name on the page, as a mark of my respect for a man who changed history.

To the best of my ability, though, I accurately recreated the ranks of the various military personnel, the colonial structure of the British Protectorate in Egypt, even the dining room of Shepheard’s Hotel Anglaise in Cairo as it looked in 1898. It’s a world one technological tweak separated from our own.

So then your decision not to write an alternate history by including real people was deliberate. What aspects of the society did you focus on?
Because English-language Steampunk is almost entirely based in the manners and social structures of the late Victorian era, Queen Victoria is there by implication. Like monarchs before and after her, she gave peerages to industrialists who revolutionized the country’s economy. The Steamlords, my fictional class of peers, were first granted peerages around the time of the Napoleonic Wars, when steam power was just beginning to be harnessed for industrial and military purposes. These technological trail-blazers naturally made fortunes licensing and exporting their steam technologies, and gained power and prominence quickly as the 19th century Industrial Revolution unfolded….much to the dismay of those families traditionally close to the reins of power in England.

That concludes our interview, but if you’d like to read MADDIE HATTER AND THE DEADLY DIAMOND and see what other people have said about it, you can find it at Amazon and Tyche Books, and there are reviews on Goodreads.

Jayne Barnard is a founding member of Madame Saffron’s Parasol Dueling League for Steampunk Ladies and a longtime crime writer. Her fiction and non-fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines. Awards for short fiction range from the 1990 Saskatchewan Writers Guild Award for PRINCESS ALEX AND THE DRAGON DEAL to the 2011 Bony Pete for EACH CANADIAN SON. She’s been shortlisted for both the Unhanged Arthur in Canada and the Debut Dagger in the UK. You can visit her at her blog or on Facebook.