Saturday Story Building - 1st Person POV

A first person narrative puts you directly into the story, by utilizing the memories and perceptions of the narrator. The narrator can be the main character in the story, or an observer watching things play out with the true main characters. However it is done, first person narrative must be done well or it can ruin a good story.

A first person narrator must have their own voice. It must be an individual voice, differing from your own. You need to immerse yourself in the character to capture their attitude, their mannerisms, their thoughts and their memories. They are unreliable narrators in the fact that we only get to see their side of things. Their memories may be faulty, their thoughts narrow and close minded, but we live and breathe through them.

You have to maintain a balance in your narration. If the narrator becomes too emotional, they run the risk of being melodramatic; too graphic and it's too intense; too cold and calculated they become too distant. Think of how Watson narrated Sherlock Holmes' adventures. Where we might have despised Holmes for his calculated thinking and his unemotional state, we can admire the man and welcome the logic with which he solved his cases while still seeing the human side of him through the more emotional Dr. Watson.

One of the problems with first person POV is the distance in time from the events. Usually your narrator is telling the story from some distance, as the events are in the past. But distance in time can lead to faulty memories and the story becomes skewed as the narrator tells things from their unreliable thoughts.

If you're going to make your narrator unreliable and a liar, show us. Let us catch them in a lie. If you're going to make them cruel, don't tell us. Show us. Let us see how they justify their actions. If you're going to have them do something heroic, make it so they don't realize how heroic they're being. If they boast about it, it makes them distinctively unlikable.

A really good example of the first person narration that I've personally read is the Hunger Games trilogy. Our focus narrows to Katniss and her world. Her thoughts, her emotions, her beliefs color our perception of the world. Her sensory descriptions help us live through her eyes.

Saturday Story Building - Music as a muse

Last week I wrote about how a picture is worth a thousand words, and Megan left me this comment:

"I think the concept extends to a piece of music, a dance performance, or other artistic expressions which can inspire as well. There are certain universal truths (joy, love, pain, fear, etc.) which cannot be expressed in regular words. It takes an artistic form to convey them. 

When one artist is able to capture that truth, other artists feel compelled to join in. Not in competition but in harmony of expression. This is why music compels us to dance."

Music doesn't just compel us to dance. It can compel us to write. As Megan says, we feel compelled by our connection to music to reach out and speak the words that it inspires in us. I think that's why so many of us have playlists or radio stations that we listen to as we write. The music we hear brings us the mood we want to set.

I don't have a set playlist for any of my stories. I listen to types of music. When I want to write something intense I listen to gothic/symphonic metal like Within Temptation, Delain, and Krypteria. When I'm writing something quieter, I listen to classical music from Bach, Mozart, and Pachelbel. When I'm writing something lively, I listen to folk music like Faun or Blackmore's Night. Each sound inspires something different in me and that inspiration bleeds down into my writing.

Sometimes I write in silence, needing to be alone with my thoughts. Other times I'll have something like a movie or anime playing in the background as I write. But mostly I play music. I get my music from Pandora or IHeartRadio, and the stations that I've created work very well for me (for the most part).

What about you? What music do you listen to as you write? Do you have a specific playlist you use for each character or story? Do you have specific songs that you equate to certain characters? Or do you not listen to anything at all?

Saturday Story Building - A picture is worth a thousand words

How many times have we heard the phrase "a picture is worth a thousand words"? I know I've heard it a lot since I was a child. I know that I'm often inspired by a photo or a painting or a sketch I see. I've seen fantasy art that's inspired me to write stories. I've seen old black and white photos and wondered about the lives of the people in them. I've even written a few stories based on these things.

I love looking at fantasy art. The three places I go the most often are DeviantArt, Elfwood, and Epilogue. Now, Elfwood and DeviantArt have a lot of amateur pieces so you have to pick your way through the galleries. Epilogue is a lot pickier about what they accept so it's easier to find good fantasy and science fiction art there.

But those pictures are not the only places I've drawn my inspiration. Pictures of ancient Roman ruins have inspired buildings in my stories. Photos of recreated ancient houses and ships have given me ideas on how to make the same things in my world more realistic. Pictures of fashion through the ages gives me an idea of how to pattern the clothing of the characters of my stories.

So go find a picture that inspires you and write your 1000 words.

Saturday story building - HEA and HFN: Do we need it in every story?

Last week I talked a little about the romance genre, and I was reminded of one of the tropes that is characteristic of that genre. That is the "happily ever after" or at least "happy for now" ending for the hero/heroine. My question is do we need that in every genre?

My opinion is no we don't. There doesn't have to be a HEA or a HFN in other genres. In horror there generally isn't one to speak of, at least that I've noticed not being an aficionado of that particular genre. But in fantasy and sci fi, the two genres I primarily write in, what are the requirements for endings?

Two of my stories I have endings that can go either way. I can make them a HFN ending or I can totally screw with the reader and kill off my darlings. I'm leaning towards killing off my darlings, because that's not something I've seen a lot of. But my problem is how is that going to affect the reader? Are they going to read the rest of my books? Would that be a betrayal to my readers/fans if I killed off the main characters they've grown attached to in the books?

That's the biggest question as an author that I have to ask: do I need it? Do I need a HEA/HFN to keep my readers? Or can I get away with doing what I'm thinking and making it a tragically heroic ending for the characters in question? Well, one of them at least. I know in one of my sci fi series the ending I have planned for one of my main characters is rather ambiguous at best but still a valid ending because it leaves some hope.

All this rambling still leads to this one question: in fantasy and sci fi, do we need a HEA/HFN ending for the main characters?

Saturday Story Building - Genre and sub-genre/Science Fiction

Last week we talked the genre of fantasy and some of its sub-genres. This week I thought we'd take a minute to discuss another one of my well loved genres - science fiction. Sci fi is a broad genre that covers several sub-genres, some you may not even think are classed as sci fi.

One of my favorite versions of sci fi is the space opera. You know like Firefly and Babylon 5. In space opera, a good portion of the story takes place predominately in space and deals with space faring situations. Now, you might be able to give me a good argument that Babylon 5 is also military sci fi, and I wouldn't argue with you. But to me, those two shows epitomize space opera.

Then there's hard sci fi. This isn't a sub-genre I prefer, not being interested in the dry factual dissemination of technology. In hard sci fi, the science is meticulously described and could also be quite plausible based on the scientific standards of the modern day. The science in the Jurassic Park books is a good example of hard sci fi.

Then there's the punk sci fi. Two that specifically come to mind with this sub-genre is cyberpunk and steampunk. Yes, steampunk is classed as sci fi. Sci fi doesn't have to take place in the future. It can take place in an alternate past as well. Cyberpunk deals with computerization of people by fusing them with machines to create cyborgs. Cyberpunk also tends to be more dystopian in nature.

There are other sub-genres of sci fi, but I'll leave you to explore those on your own. Just know that science fiction, in its own way, is as broad a genre as fantasy.

Saturday Story Building - Genre and sub-genre/Fantasy

This week I want to talk a little bit about genres and sub-genres. Specifically, I want to talk about the fantasy genre and its myriad of sub-genres. If you want the complete list, you can go here. I'm just going to focus on a few of the many sub-genres here today.

Let's talk one that's gotten a lot of attention over the past few years: urban fantasy. Urban fantasy and its cousin paranormal romance are sub-genres of fantasy that focus fantasy elements on an urban setting. Usually it's a hero or heroine trying to deal with magical or supernatural forests in a city. Now the definition on that site shows that it can be past, present, or future. I contend that what we know as UF/PR is set in modern day. That fantasy set in the past is something different while UF/PR set in the future is better placed under the sci fi genre. The Forever Girl by Rebecca Hamilton, Greywalker by Kat Richardson, and the Black Dagger Brotherhood books by J.R. Ward are prime examples of UF/PR.

Then there's epic/high fantasy. This is more what I write. In epic fantasy, you have sweeping story arcs and grand adventures. Your characters are very well developed and you see them grow and change over the course of the story. Setting plays as much a key role in these stories as the actual characters do. The Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien and The Song of Ice and Fire books by George R.R. Martin are fine examples of epic/high fantasy.

The list goes on and on and I could talk forever about the different variations on fantasy. But I'm going to stop there and let you investigate the list yourself. What is your favorite sub-genre of fantasy? Do you like all of them? What are some of your favorite books and where do they fall in the fantasy genre?

Saturday Story Building - Writing fight and sex scenes

Let's be honest. I write epic fantasy, urban fantasy, and sci fi. Inevitably I'm going to have to write fight scenes and possibly, if I feel like it, the occasional sex scene. I went looking for some helpful advice on how to do just that. And I found it.

The first helpful article I found was this one. The writer of the post interviews two authors who have real world fighting experience about how to write a significant fight scene. One of the pieces of advice in this article is to go take a martial arts class. Or if you can't, spend a great deal of time researching different fighting styles. They also bring up the point that you don't have to mention every move by name. Being vague isn't always a bad thing in fight scenes.

Then there's this one. This is the first article I ever read on writing fight scenes. Some of the advice it gives is setting the scene before the fight begins. Have the characters visit the spot in an earlier chapter. They might not remember all the details but they're going to remember something. Another bit of good advice is about sentence structure. You don't want all of your sentences to be short. A few longer sentences with good, strong language works as well as the short sentences.

Now in regards to sex scenes, I found this article by Diana Gabaldon on writing sex scenes. In it she discusses the Rule of Three - if you use three of the five senses, it makes the scene three dimensional. She also brings up the point that sex scenes are as much about the emotions as about the actual physical activity of sex.

In this article from the Huffington Post, the author describes the conundrum of figuring out how much is necessary. He also talks about using appropriate language. He talks about how sex can be a physical failure and an emotional success.

This and this offer even more links to valuable resources. Take some time to research what these people have to say. You might be surprised at how much they help your writing.

Saturday Story Building - Putting it all together

I've talked about different pieces of building up a story. I've talked about the research, the character sketches, the world building. Now the question is, once you've gotten all this information, how the heck do you put it all together for a story?

The first thing you have to do is decide how much of that information you're going to use. You can have an entire novella/novel length book of world building, but is all of it really necessary for the story you're telling? Most likely not. You have to choose the most important items out of all of that work you did and find a way of putting them into the story. You might not have a purpose yet for that dissertation you wrote on the culture of a foreign country, but save it. You can use it in another story.

Characters. You've written these beautiful character sketches. If you're like me, they've got more information in them than you're likely to use. I tend to add a full background, a list of likes and dislikes, and maybe if I'm ambitious what their favorite foods/colors/etc. are. I don't do that lat one very often but I do tend to be very thorough in creating my character sketches.

Obviously, all that lovely information isn't going to make it into the book. If it does, you're probably going to bore your reader. So how do you decide which is the most important information? Think about how your story is going to go. Pinpoint the most important details that you can share in the story and make note of them. Those are the details you're going to use for your story.

Now, about that research you did. You've probably done a lot of reading and note taking on several different subjects. At least, you have if you're like me. You have all this lovely, useful information. The question again is how much are you going to use? That obscure culture you researched and referenced in your notes may be wonderful for a story some day but is it pertinent to the story you're working on now?

Once you've sorted your information out, then you can start writing your story. And even here you've got options. You can be a plotter - build yourself an outline, lay out precisely how your story is going to go, and work from that. Or you can do what I do - figure out the beginning and the end, and come up with a rough idea of some of the events you'd like to have in the story. And then just start writing and hope everything comes out all right in the end. Or you can avoid all of these steps and just start writing. Hey, it's all fixable in edits, right?

Saturday Story Building - Spreadsheets and story notes

Last week, I put up something about world building as my post. I mentioned a spread sheet of ideas. In a comment I received, the question was posed, "What do you mean by a spreadsheet of ideas though? I can't quite see that in my head. Would it be possible for you to maybe put up an image for example?"

So I've decided to include a couple of my spreadsheets to show you what I do. The first spreadsheet is a character list. I list each character in my books, three characteristics, basic hair/eyes information, and any other notable physical characteristics.

The other spreadsheet I'm going to show you is the one I used to sort out my races. It's very much like the character one, except that it has different information required on it.

I also leave myself notes on things, whether it's a character who decided to pay me a visit or a dream that won't go away.

However you keep track of your world building and story ideas is fine if it works for you. This is just a small example of what I do for my projects.

Saturday Story Building - Creating your world

What is the hardest part of being a fantasy/sci fi author? To me, and this is my opinion only, I think the hardest part is building the world you want your characters to inhabit. There is so much detail to work out, and you never put all of that detail into your books. At least, I would hope you didn't put all of that into your books.

The most comprehensive version of world building put into a print form comes from David and Leigh Eddings in the publication of their The Rivan Codex. Into this book they put all the details they came up with for the world that the characters of the Belgariad and the Mallorean series inhabited. Not all the details were used in the books, but enough of them were there to establish that this was a populated world and each race was unique.

The grandest scope of world building, from what I've read, is a toss up between J.R.R. Tolkien and his Middle Earth and George R.R. Martin and his Westeros. The details needed to create the rich tapestries that make up those worlds is astounding.

I'm discovering this as I work to build Aleran. There are so many details to work out, details that will probably never end up in the story but are still essential for me to know. Races, lands, laws, coinage, mannerisms, costumes. All of these things need to be worked out. Thankfully I'm able to do so with a little help from Himself, who has built many worlds for his D&D campaigns.

What world building tips do you have? Mine is keep a spreadsheet of ideas that you're using. The more you expand on them, the better you'll do.

Saturday Story Building - Research

It doesn't matter what genre you write, research is the key to your writing.

Research can be as simple as reading books in your chosen genre to see what others are writing. Or looking up information on the city you're using for your setting. It can be as complex as researching the lives and cultures of different races to incorporate them into your world. It can be simply looking at maps or it can be poring over old documents to get a better feel for how things were done.

I've done a lot of research on what life was like in medieval times. Most of the books I've read detailed medieval England, but there was enough in them to show me what medieval life was like in other parts of Europe. I've started doing research on Ancient Egypt, on Ancient Greece, and the Roman Empire. These things will all find their way in some form into my stories, whether I borrow whole cloth or use just snippets of information to create my societies.

I know one author who researched how to cook over an open fire. Another one researched food in the Middle Ages to make a feast scene she was writing more believable. I know authors who have researched the etymology of the names they're using to make sure they fit with the story.

It doesn't matter what type of research you do, just do it. Open your mind. Expand your knowledge. Even if what you're researching isn't precisely what you need for the story you're working on, don't discard it. Keep it. You never know when you might need it for a story.

Saturday Story Building - Sensory description

During the #WritersRoad chat on Monday, we talked about sensory descriptions in stories. How many times have you been drawn into a character's life by their perceptions of the world around them? How many times do your senses tell you about the world or trigger a memory?

Sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell. These are the five senses. Unless your character has lost the use of one of these senses, he or she will experience all of them. Writers need to give their readers those experiences. As a reader, we want to know what's going on in the character's world. As a writer, we need to tell our readers what's going on in the character's world.

That doesn't mean allow yourself to get bogged down in details. We don't need to include everything. As a writer, we want to whet the appetite of the reader so they continue in our world. We need to give them that world through sensory perception. Since they can't see the world as we do, they don't experience it the way the character does, we need to give them something to go by.

For example:

She walked along the shoreline, remembering. The breeze, redolent with the odors of salt and fish, drew her back to her childhood. The soft fabric sliding over her skin now was a far cry from the rough cloth of her clothing back then. Her shoes rubbed her feet raw, the stiff leather scraping against her skin, when she was still a child. Now she wore shoes that were soft and well fitted. They were as odd as her clothing was now with the memories of the starving child she'd been. Her stomach twisted in knots at remembered hunger and her hands shook as the cold, uncaring waves beat against her tiny body during the storm that almost claimed her life. She shook her head, chasing away the memories.

We see through this character the scent of the breeze, the feel of the fabric she's wearing. We see through her memories what life was like when she was a child. How different things were for her then. We can feel the difference in fabrics from her adult self to her child self. The ill fitting shoes she wore as a child compared to the shoes made for her feet as an adult. We see all of this through the use of sensory description.

Who's an author that you like who uses the character's senses to tell you more about the world they inhabit?