Tag Archives: David Carrico

“There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays, and every single one of them is right!”
– Rudyard Kipling

Every writer does things a little bit differently, and that’s just as true of building/creating characters as it is of any other task in the writer’s list. That being said, there are still some common elements that we as writers can talk about when it comes to the creatures of our minds that inhabit our stories.

So how do characters come to light? To my mind, there are three basic paths you can take to create characters, none of which are mutually exclusive.

First, characters can grow out of world building. If you’re a writer who spends much time creating a self-consistent story universe before you begin writing the story, you may well create the universe first, then ask yourself what kind of people would inhabit it. I know of several authors for whom this would appear to be their favorite method, but probably the most well-known example of this would be J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle-Earth. Tolkien first invented the amazing languages in his stories, then tried to imagine what kind of people would speak them. Out of that grew the stories that served as bedrock for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

Second, characters can grow out of situations. This tends to be very true of writers who tightly plot their stories, from what I can tell. If you’ve got this great idea for a end of civilization as we know it story, what kind of character would tell it?

And third, sometimes the characters steps onto center stage in your mind, full-blown, full-grown, out of seemingly nowhere. This tends to happen a lot with writers who are pantsers. (Raises hand. Happens to me a lot.) The problem then is trying to figure out what story needs to be told for that character.

There’s going to be more posts later this month about specifics of characters and characterizations. I’d like to spend the rest of this one dealing with one thing we as writers sometimes don’t think about very much.

I’ve often heard it said that one of the keys to successful story telling is having believable characters. That’s true, as far as it goes. But in today’s reading environment, it’s just as important-if not more so-that characters be ‘connectable’. In other words, do the readers connect with them-do they feel what the characters feel? If your readers don’t feel some kind of empathy for at least one of the characters in your story-preferably the hero-it’s not going to succeed. But for your readers to connect with your characters, you have to connect with them first.

Case in point: Marion Zimmer Bradley told an anecdote on herself in a story introduction she wrote for a story in The Best of Randall Garrett (edited by Robert Silverberg, Timescape Books, 1982). She was talking about the friendship she had with Randall, and how many times and ways he had helped her. At one point she tells of being five chapters into writing a new novel. It wasn’t going well, and she could tell that it wasn’t going well, but she couldn’t figure out what the problem was. It was driving her nuts. So she drove over to Randall’s house, handed him the manuscript, and asked him to tell her what was wrong. She waited while he read the five chapters. His response after doing so was as follows:

“Honey, you know what’s wrong with this book? It’s written very well and it’s a nice idea. But your hero is a klutz. Nobody wants to read about a klutz.” (The Best of Randall Garrett, page 44.)

Marion concluded the anecdote by saying that she immediately recognized that his critique was valid, that she rewrote all five chapters to make the hero into a different person, and the rest of the writing went smoothly.

I told you that story to make the point that no reader is going to connect with a character that we as writers don’t connect with, that we don’t understand, that we don’t have some form of empathy for. It doesn’t matter if they’re bad guys or good guys. It doesn’t matter if we built the characters like Legos in the world building process, if we discovered them dealing with disaster, or if they sprang full-grown from our foreheads in search of a story like Athena from the brow of Zeus. If we don’t feel them, if we don’t understand them, if we don’t connect with them, our readers won’t either, and the story will fail.

If you want your stories to work, you don’t necessarily have to like your characters, but you do need to understand them and feel something for them. This will come through in your writing.

In the Spirit of the Season

December 24, 2012

David Carrico

Doing Good in the World Life Philosophies The Writing Life 2 Comments

This is a very different article than I had planned to post. As I write this, it is the day after a very unsane (as opposed to insane) young man named Adam Lanza walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and started shooting people. By the time he was done, eight adults and twenty children were dead, including himself. I have not been as horrified by one man’s actions since the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. My stomach still churns in nausea. What Lanza did was just evil. No other word applies.

Yeah, I know, that’s kind of a heavy thought with which to begin a Christmas blog.

Christmas is associated with Jesus Christ. The very name is a reference to him. And regardless of your beliefs or feelings about the person of Jesus Christ, you have to admit that he was (and still is) one of the less than a handful of people who truly affected the lives of people and tribes and nations all over the world for well-nigh 2000 years.

And regardless of your beliefs or feelings about Jesus, you have to admit that his teachings on ethics are very powerful.

Jesus is credited with speaking what’s usually referred to as The Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” That’s actually a paraphrase quote from Matthew 7:12. A modern translation puts it this way: “In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you.”

There is no question that both history and modern society would be very different if everyone lived by that principle; if we-each one of us-treated everyone we met: rich or poor, literate or inarticulate, genius or mentally challenged, healthy or ill, complete or handicapped, regardless of race, creed, denomination, nationality, or political beliefs, with the same courtesy, care, and consideration we would like to receive; if their needs were of higher priority to us than our own.

We live in an imperfect world, comprised of imperfect societies and filled with imperfect people. And to be honest, I see no hope of attaining perfection on this earth. When I read the Bible carefully, I see people just like the people I work with and for; just like the people I live among; and, unfortunately, some people not much different from Adam Lanza. Homo sapiens hasn’t appreciably improved in the last 2000 years, from my point of view. Oh, we have more knowledge; we have more extravagant philosophies; and we certainly have a lot more toys with which to get into trouble. But inside, at the core of us, we haven’t improved. And that means that things like this tragedy will continue to occur.

Does that mean we give up? Does that mean that we just let the evil that exists in the world today take control? Does that mean that we allow acts such as Adam Lanza’s to occur in our world and in our lives without response?

I submit to you that the answer is a loud and resounding “No!”

Here’s another quote:

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

No one really knows who first stated that in just those words. It’s been attributed to Edmund Burke, John Stuart Mills, and Charles F. Aked. But really, knowing the authorship doesn’t affect the truth of that sentence. It is, by every standard I can apply, a true statement. And from it we can draw a corollary that if good people want to resist the triumph of evil, they-we-must do something.

I submit to you that this is not a question of programs, or societies, or governments. I submit to you that the only solution that will work is The Golden Rule. Resistance to evil must begin with each one of us and how we relate to each other, whether it’s a co-worker, a neighbor, the barrista at the local Starbucks, the check-out clerk at Wal-Mart . . . you get the drift.

John Wesley, Christian evangelist and the founder of the Methodist denomination, I think expressed what our reaction should be as well as anyone. He put it like this: “Do all the good you can. By all the means you can. In all the ways you can. In all the places you can. At all the times you can. To all the people you can. As long as ever you can.”

So in the true spirit of the Christmas season, and in the wake of the tragedy in Connecticut, here’s our challenge:

Do good to everyone you meet. Be kind to everyone you meet. Not just at Christmas season, but every day of every week of every year. To do less is to give in.

Merry Christmas.

Keeping the Ball Rolling

December 19, 2012

David Carrico

Craft & Skills First Drafts The Writing Life The Writing Process No Comments

So, once you have the work started, how do you keep the words flowing?

Sometimes, of course, you don’t have that problem. Sometimes you have to hustle to keep up with the flow.

But sometimes, eh, you might have to encourage things a little. This isn’t going to be an essay on the art of encouragement. Rather, it’s a short list of things you might find useful in keeping word productivity up.

First, some general tips/rules/suggestions:

#1 – Write. This may seem silly, but if you don’t plant your posterior in the authorial chair and exercise your fingers on the keyboard, nothing is going to happen. Really. (Unless you’re one of a handful of writers that I know of who dictate everything. But even then, the principle holds.) Good intentions, well-laid plans, “gonna get around to it” generate no words. Only the actual act of writing can do that.

#2 – Write consistently. Most of us, whether we want to admit it or not, are creatures of habit; we do better at our craft if we exercise it on a regular basis. (Okay, I’ll grant that there are writers who seem to be “burst writers”, who will produce a book or two or three almost in a blur, then not do anything for weeks or months. But they are the exception to the rule.) There is validity to the idea of “being in practice.” It’s easier to slip into the creative trance if you’ve been there recently.

#2A – Be organized about your writing. This is especially important for folks who have kids at home, or who have a day job, and therefore have to manage their time closely. Try to write every day, but if that’s not possible, then at least set up your schedule so the back of your brain knows when you will be writing. You almost have to have a minimum of an hour per session in order to give your mind time to get back into the flow. Whether it’s early in the morning, late at night, three nights a week, or all day Saturday, your mind will be more prepared to write if you’ve got a regular schedule worked out.

#3 – Do as much of your research as possible before you start writing. Those two activities require two different mindsets, and if you have to stop in the middle of the creative flow to look up something you need for a plot or character point, you can blow yourself right out of the creative trance. If you’re lucky you can get by with just throwing in a NOTE TO SELF at that point and moving on and doing the research in the edit pass.

#4 – Another potential mindset conflict: don’t go into editor mode while you’re in the middle of the creative flow. That’s another case of two different mindsets needed for the two different activities, and they are often not compatible. If you suddenly start doing heavy editing and critiquing, the odds are good you will again blow yourself out of the creative trance.

Now for a few tips and tricks about actually getting the flow started every time you sit down.

#5 – When you stop working for the day/night, don’t halt at the end of a major section, especially if you know it may be a couple of days (or longer) before you come back to it. I don’t recall which writer I learned this from, but I can attest to the fact that it really does work. I have hamstrung myself a couple of times by ending a night’s work at the end of a chapter or even an arc within a novel, only to have a totally blank mind when I finally was able to get back to work on it. After the second time, I make it a point not to leave a work at such a point. If I’m at the end of a chapter or an arc, I’ll go ahead and write the first couple of paragraphs of the next chapter, just to set the tone and point where I’m going to go next. Sometimes I’ll even leave the last sentence I’m writing that night unfinished. That kind of primes the mental pump for the next session.

#6 – I think this one came from Robert Silverberg originally: if you sit down to continue and nothing wants to start flowing immediately, go back and retype the last two or three paragraphs (or maybe the last page) of what you had written last session. Again, it seems to prime the pump, and when you get to the end of that section your mind and fingers should be ready to put out and take down new words.

#7 – This one comes from David Morrell (First Blood, among others) in his book on the craft entitled Lessons From a Lifetime of Writing. (If you haven’t read it, do. It’s worth the price of admission.) One of his techniques for getting past stumbling blocks (or even the dreaded writer’s block) is to sit down and interview the character, or sometimes interview himself, asking questions as to what the problems are that are being faced, and what the character (or the author) might do to overcome them. For those of us who are pantsers (as opposed to plotters), this may be something we’re already doing almost unconsciously. Sometimes doing it as a conscious exercise, even talking out loud as we type, can really help.

There you go-seven suggestions/tips/tricks that can help keep productivity up and words flowing.

Good luck!

Rule Six

September 19, 2012

David Carrico

Craft & Skills Editing First Drafts Ideas & Plotting Rewriting The Writing Process 2 Comments

What do you do when your brainchild is stillborn? What do you do when the story you’ve spent months-years-in crafting and writing, the story you’ve almost literally sweated blood over, the story you love more than all your other literary children . . .

Just . . .

Doesn’t . . .

Work . . .

Last week I gave another writer a beta read on the second draft of a science-fiction novel he’s writing. (All third-party pronouns in this post are generic, so don’t bother trying to guess who it was. Not telling.) I was able to report that the writing was really good. I was also forced to report that the novel had issues that I felt kept it from being publishable. (Said issues mostly lay in world building, but aren’t germane to this discussion.)

My friend accepted my thoughts with grace and class, and agreed that the novel definitely needed more work. We parted still friends; which, to me, is perhaps the sign of a premier friend-the ability to accept criticism of a personal labor of love and still be warm to the critic.

A couple of days after our conversation, this thought occurred to me: Should I have told him to cut his losses and move on to something new?

At first I was shocked that the thought had even crossed my mind, but then I realized what had prompted it.

Rule Three of Heinlein’s Rules of Writing states: You Must Refrain from Rewriting, Except to Editorial Order. Now most of us understand that rule not to mean that Thou Shalt Write Only First Drafts, but rather, that to spend excessive amounts of time rewriting and polishing a work is ultimately counterproductive and contra-indicated for building income. (A writer I once read comes to mind who said that after he finished the first draft of each book, he would then spend a year reviewing every single word in the draft, one by one, considering whether it was the best word in that place. Eep.)

So that was part of what was in the back of my mind, because I knew my friend had already spent a pretty fair amount of time on this work, and I had just indicated a lot of it needed to be taken apart and put back together differently, which would take a lot more work.

But there was something else in the back of my mind.

You see, I finished my first novel in 2002. Before you congratulate me on that, I have to say I started it in 1977.

Twenty. Five. Years.

I was young. I was stupid. I was working solo, without the benefit of knowledgeable readers. I had started it in a fit of temper after finishing a particularly bad SF novel which I threw across the room.

I wrote for a few weeks, then bogged down in the story. I gave it up for a while, went and read some more good science fiction and fantasy, then came back and tried again.

That was the pattern for the next twenty-five years: write until I became frustrated, then go away for months, or even a year or so, but eventually circle back to it, frequently starting over again. By the time I finally drove it to a conclusion, I estimate I wrote over a half million words. The finished manuscript was well under half that length, and it was too long.

It didn’t sell.

I gave it another full revision/rewrite/polish.

It didn’t sell.

Although I had never heard Robert Sawyer’s addendum to Heinlein’s Laws (Rule Six: Start Working on Something Else), I intuitively knew that I couldn’t just fixate on that novel; I couldn’t just hover over it and continue to try to pump life into it. That way led to stagnation and sterility. So I put it on the shelf, and moved on to other things, and before long did find my author’s voice and began selling professionally in 2007.

I still harbor love and affection for that first story, that first novel. It still resonates in my mind. But I realized something this week as I considered my friend’s novel: mine will probably never be published, because I have too much new stuff I want to write to consider going back and trying one more time to build an edifice of words on a faulty foundation.

In the end, I answered my question about my friend’s novel: “No.” It wasn’t a warranted question. It wasn’t my call to make. And besides, there’s no doubt in my mind he can address the issues and write the story.

In the end, I answered my question about my novel: “Yes.” With a certain amount of sadness, I let it go.

Rule Six: Start Working on Something Else.

Tomorrow.