Beauty vs. Sublime

Darling House in The Dreadful Darlings

In doing preliminary research on my next book, I was pondering the difference between beauty and the sublime. Beauty, as you may know, is concerned with symmetry and harmony...order. 

The sublime on the other hand is almost the opposite. It is beauty and wonder in the face of the awesome and terrible and usually chaotic. Much like witnessing a lightning storm while on a mountaintop. 

The Dark Alley by Kimerajam

Frightening, yes. Awe inspiring, indubitably. Able to make you ponder your own mortality....absolutely. Seductive, definitely.

I've always had a fascination with the edgier side of literature. My mother was a huge Poe fan and her favorite poem, The Highwayman, is rife with imagery that would inform a lot of my earlier, amateur writings as a teen.

Angst and dread. Sacrifice and true love. The inevitability of death. The hope of redemption. Ahhh the adolescent goth years. Boy do I have some pictures to prove my love of matte crimson lipstick.

So to find the darling in the darkness. Hope in the horrible. And epiphany in the eerie. That is my goal these next few months as I start to gather the pieces of my next tale. I've been inspired by so many things, but photos by far help me to really get into the dark and dangerous aesthetic of the genre.

More news on my progress as it comes. I'm taking my time with this series. I intend to savor the writing process. Get back in to the love of just spinning a good yarn.

What has fascinated you since your youth? Has it changed or does it still drive your choices?

+Raquel Byrnes 

Pulling Them Into Flesh

Whenever I am fleshing out a new lead in one of my books I always seem to go back to that childhood image of Han Solo frozen in Carbonite.  Inside that cold stone is a flesh and blood man struggling to emerge.

That is what your characters are in the throes of becoming real to you and eventually your reader. They alread exist...in your mind, as part of the world you're creating, ingrained in the words you type. You just have to dig them out. 

Ask yourself these things...

• Can you 'see' them? Not the color of their hair or what they wear. I mean really SEE them. How do they walk...with a swagger, a limp, with measured movement? Why? What made them walk this world that way?

• If you were to meet them, what would be their first words to you? How would you feel reaching to shake their hand or get into their car? Now make the reader feel that.

• Define the qualities that make them the focus of your story. Are they brave, ruthless, selfless...or driven and cunning? Why would we follow them over the other characters? What makes them MORE?

• Figure out your antagonist -- make them better or stronger or more capable of something than your lead. Make the adversary a true test for your hero.

• You know how your lead begins the story...now imagine how they are at the end of the journey. How have they changed? See them in the midst of your story's climactic moment. Do they win? How? Write out what they do, think, and feel at that moment.  Now  you have a trajectory for them.

• What is the ultimate cost for them in your story? Is it their life? What would happen to them if they didn't overcome what they face? Can you define it...and is it bad enough to motivate the reader to care?

Asking yourself these things will help you wrap your mind around the more abstract elements of your lead character.

For a concrete worksheet to add to your understanding, author Jody Hedlund has a great one on her author blog found here.

What about you? What are some writing hacks you've developed to flesh your hero out in your mind?

by +Raquel Byrnes 

Duck...No, Weave!

So, I do a lot of research on things that I will (hopefully) never encounter or need in my real (housewife) life. To do this I have tons of books on strange subjects. I wrote about them in a past post called, Trickery, Deception, and Other Essentials.

Today we are learning how to dodge bullets! Yay for survival books!

The Worst-Case Scenario, a survival handbook by Joshua Piven and David Borgenicht, is one of my  "Go To" texts for situations that I know nothing about.  There is a chapter about surviving if you are in the line of gunfire where they have diagrams and everything.

In our scenario, our hero, let's call him Survival Stan, fresh from stealing a secret government vial of uber-doom, is confronted with evil henchmen-guards and fired upon. In the movies we would see him running across the courtyard a trail of bullets churning up dirt at his heels as he bee-lines it for the door...WRONG!!

See, according to my trusty handbook, running in a straight line across a clear open area is a sure fire way to get gone!  You are instead supposed to run in a zig-zag pattern while putting as many obstacles between yourself and the henchmen's bullets as possible.

Zig-Zag, people.  It doesn't look cool, kind of like an ostrich at a ballet, but most people do not have the training to properly track a moving target, much less a wavering one, to hit it.

Also, if there is a corner, use it.  Hide behind cabinets or doorways. Untrained shooters usually cannot hit a target more than sixty-feet away, so start running...fast.  Don't wait...run.

Also don't bother pulling a Dirty Harry  and counting the bullets. There is no way of knowing if the shooter has more ammunition and we all saw The Matrix...there's ALWAYS more ammo hidden in those trench coats.

If you are outside and there are cars around, get to a car on the opposite side of the street and get behind a tire. They will stop small caliber bullets, but armor piercing rounds will punch holes in the car like it was made of paper....so keep that in mind.

Finally, I want to remind all of you that this is purely a hypothetical situation for your characters...I'm in no way an expert. The point is to get you thinking about research and how the details of a scene can really pull the reader into the experience and make it believable.

I'd love to hear of any great books or research techniques you've used to create a vivid and riveting universe for your story.  Until next time...Go Write!

Raising the Stakes on Your Character



I was talking to my critique 'group' this weekend about stakes. Not the juicy kind you eat, but the type of stakes that your character faces.

I've been re-reading Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass, and if you haven't read this book...then run right out and get one...like NOW!

For those of you who aren't familiar with this man, he is a literary agent in New York who's sold many bestsellers to publishing houses. His book takes your writing to the next level...in all aspects.

One of the things he talks about is stakes -- both public and private for your character. In chapter three of his book, Maass asks you, the author...

"Are the stakes in your current manuscript as high as they possibly can be? Can you define the stakes? Can you point to the exact pages in which the stakes escalate, locking your protagonist into his course of action with less hope of success than before?"

If your answer is no...then you may have a problem. With your plot, your characters, your concept.  You see Maass writes to authors of all genres, not just the suspense or the mystery writer, and low stakes are a common problem with beginning writers.

Ask yourself these two questions: What is my character's goal?  What happens if they don't achieve this?

So...*coughs nervously* let's put this into practice, shall we? Lets take a storyline from my WIP, Bayou Blue.

What does my character want? 
She wants to prove her brother was falsely accused of a terrorist act.
What happens if she doesn't achieve this goal? 
Then a plot to ignite a natural gas tanker will incinerate Boston harbor.

Okay...so private stakes are high, her brother is charged with terrorism and all that entails. And public stakes are high...lots of death and destruction.  Woo Hoo! Now we're cooking with gas!  No pun intended.

I'm off to a good start and with some more tension, character layering, and TONS of hard work...I'll have a story worth telling...

But the stakes also don't have to be as far reaching as mine are. Maass gives an example of public/private on a small scale in his book when he explains how Thomas Harris turned the hunt for a single man into a harrowing psychological ride. I'm talking about the breakout hit, The Silence of the Lambs.

The book, not the movie, is a great example of raising the stakes by deepening the characters. Look at his players...Buffalo Bill a crazed serial killer who skins his victims, Dr. Lecter, a brilliant but psychotic man who alone has insight enough to stop the killer, and Agent Starling, a young woman with a driving need to understand and stop what is happening. 

Harris raises the stakes in his novel, not through formulaic plot points, but by pushing his characters to the edge and beyond.

Agent Starling is so intent on stopping the murder of not just any woman, a Senator's daughter, that she is willing to give up pieces of herself, her most dark and painful memories, to the one man who can help her stop the carnage.

Whew...Talk about high stakes!  And there is no galactic calamity or worldwide plague to deal with here.  One man, one woman and the chase to stop a murder.  But the characters are so vivid, so deeply written, that your emotional investment goes through the roof.

So now I challenge you to take a look at your characters and plot. What are your stakes both public and private...are they compelling or ho hum?

Until next time...Go Write!

Remember the Girl with the...?

Photograph by Hill.Josh

Have you ever had a conversation where you started to describe someone and the person you were speaking to knew exactly to whom you were referring? 

You didn't even have to finish your sentence. You just ran your hand over the spot where they had the tattoo, the scar, or the amazing eyes and your friend nodded. "Oh, yeah, the girl with the mole or the guy with that girly voice..."

The person didn't need explanation because they were memorable. In some particular way, that person left an impression on you. They may have appeared normal in every way save for their strange laugh. You might have forgotten the waiter if it wasn't for his incredibly deep and velvety voice.

Our characters need to leave an impression on the reader like that. Is your main character memorable? Do they stick in the reader's imagination so much that they need to know what happens to them?  Are they the kind of person who would catch your eye in real life, either for good or bad reasons?

I'm not talking about appearance only. Are they particularly benevolent or terribly greedy? Do they sweat when they get into elevators? Is there some secret that makes the events unfolding tense because it may be revealed at any moment?

Think about your favorite characters in fiction. What made them stick out in your memory? One of my favorites is the main character in Robert Ludlum's Bourne Series...not the movie dude, but the fictional Jason Bourne.  The one Ludlum wrote. Here is a guy that is just packed with memorable traits.

He is fished out of the ocean. He has amnesia...okay, unusual but...meh.

Then things get interesting. He has a plastic tube with a Swiss bank account embedded in his hip. He can speak several languages. He's blindingly fast and terribly dangerous in a fight.  He has no idea why. To top it off...people are hunting him.

Okay...uh, what? 

Jason Bourne could have been a stock assassin character, but Ludlum made him memorable by making him the opposite of a killer...he made him vulnerable. He made him loving. The Bourne Identity turned action and suspense in the Cold War era on its ear.

So now I take a look at my own characters. What is memorable about them? What draws me to their world to tell their story? What did I learn from knowing them...about myself and others? 

As I start to build my novel and character outlines *stop cringing you pantsters* I hope to truly understand the grip these 'people' have on my psyche. Mostly I hope to pinpoint it for the reader and entice them on the journey with me.

Until next time...Go Write!

My Eye Twitches

Photograph by Istolethetv.

Putting a character together, for me, is one of the best and most trying aspects of writing. Layering personality, quirks, mannerisms, and finally description can be both fascinating and frustrating. Part of the fun for me is the people watching.

For example...my neighbor always, ALWAYS, puts his briefcase on his car hood and checks it before leaving for work. My friend still covers her brilliant smile when she laughs because somehow, the horror of braces still skirts around in her psyche from time to time. Especially when talking to men.

I'm no different. My deaf friends almost never look at my eyes when we're talking...they lip read and watch my hands exclusively.  They can tell if I'm sad before the tears get to my eyes because they say its in the way my shoulders slump, or my hands shake, and mouth looks tight. My eye twitches when I'm stressed. My laugh can be heard upstairs through music...at least my kids say so.

People are more than their descriptions. They are energy and sound and movement. They wear their hair long or short for a reason. They stand close to or far from people by design. The image they project to others and the way they move can tell a lot about their internal workings whether intentional or not. 

The book I am working on now, at least in the outline phase, has a main character who is deeply flawed. She's not your typical heroine...she's not really all that sympathetic in the beginning of my story. She's suffered a lot at the hands of others and therefore has a 'watching out for number one' type of attitude. She's not nice.

The thing is, I know what her voice sounds like when its laced with sarcasm. I know that she rubs her elbow when she's scared because an angry adult once broke it when she was little.  I know she hates that her lip trembles when she cries because she thinks it makes her look weak. She is striking, but not beautiful, and therefore doesn't like women who trade on their looks...not because she finds it demeaning, but because she doesn't have that luxury.  She guffaws, instead of laughs.

These are all things that do not describe what she looks like. That always comes last for me when I develop a character. The looks, the mannerisms, the personality...they all give birth to the appearance.

My question to you is this...how do you conjure your characters? Are they based on people you know? Do you use pictures of actors for inspiration? What makes them come alive for you?

Until next time...Go write!

Breaking the Rules - Memorable Characters

Photograph by tibchris.

We are taught that the elderly are wise and frail, princesses are beautiful and helpless, and monsters are evil and should be slain. We grow up with these archetypes in our fairytales, our movies, and in witness to real life.  Its an unspoken rule that a babe is innocent and should be protected, a gangster is ruthless, and heroes win because they do what's right...right?

Sometimes great stories break the rules and the character is better for it.  Think of your favorite type of character and give them an unexpected twist in the opposite direction.  You may end up with a beautiful milkmaid that is cruel or an assassin that risks his life for a child. Sound familiar? These are famous takes on heroes and villains that made us remember, root for, and talk about.

What about changing an expected outcome on its ear like a monster attack making someone stronger, or a hospital that is intentionally killing people? These types of changes give you as the author a whole new set of conflicts to throw at your characters. If your thug is afraid of guns or your village elder is an idiot then that makes for a great set of circumstances that can be delightfully unexpected.

Characters like this allow for story threads not available to their traditional counterparts. They give your novel originality and with a market saturated with similar themes, memorable takes on the tried and true set your story apart.

Think about what you could do with a cowardly knight, a dare-devil granny, or a wicked angel. Your character twist doesn't necessarily have to be opposite either, just unexpected. A favorite blogger of mine uses well known literary and historical figures in his supernatural thrillers with rivetting results.

So give it a try. Defy convention - break the rules. You may be pleasantly surprised. How do you keep things fresh in your writing? What tricks to you use to avoid stereotypical characters?  I'd love to hear your secrets.

Until next time...Go Write!

V is for I'm a Veronica.

If you were a teenager in the late eighties...you had to have heard of the movie Heathers. If you haven't, then let me explain.  The movie takes place in a fictional high schoool and plays on the stereotypes of cliques. Theres the jocks, the stoners, the band geeks...and the gorgeous girls that everyone both loathes and envies. In the movie Heathers, the queen bees are all named Heather.  Except for one...whose name is "V" is for Veronica.  She, as it turns out, is not a vapid mean person. It just turned out that she is beautiful and rich and therefore thrust into existence with others of her kind.

Well the movie gets interesting when a new guy comes to school and starts wreaking havoc among the student body. The dark comedy demostrates, in exaggerated fashion, the destructiveness of simply following along with the herd  and blindly copying the popular kids. Plus...they blow stuff up, which in my opinion, is really great film making. Thing is that although he is obviously dangerous and turns her life upside down, Veronica can't help herself...she's totally gone for this guy.

The reason I love this film is that the main character's love interest is played by Christian Slater and he does the most awesome job of capturing the dangerous allure of a bad boy. Granted he eventually tries to blow up the school, he is what I used to swoon over...cavalier, risk-taking, smooth talking...a bad influence if my mother ever warned me about one. But the charater Slater created was more than a rebel without a cause, or a misunderstood youth. He was funny and sarcastic, wicked-smart, and had a dark sense of humor.  He was not an cliche, or an archetype...he rang true.

In fiction there are several archetypal personalities to build on for a love interest. Theres The Playboy - a ladies man, loves women, charming You have the Alpha Personality - think spy or fighter pilot, an adrenaline junkie.  Then we have my personal favorite, The Bad Boy - he's all fast cars, swagger, and wrong side of town. Finally we have Wounded Dude - he's the guy whose family died, or lost a partner in a shoot out or something sufficiently torturous for him to brood over.

There are other archetypes; The Nice Guy who ends up being an Alpha, etc. But thats all they are, a framework. Its up to the writer to layer in the personality quirks, mannerisms, and a voice that makes it clear why the heroine is attracted to and flustered by the love interest you've provided. 

What are some of the things you use to layer a character? Do you base them on people you've met? I'd love to hear what you do to make a character real to you as a writer and by extension, your readers. Until next time...Go Write!

Photograph by divemasterking2000, Uploaded on January 5, 2009. Photograph by Someone Somewheres Life, Uploaded on March 5, 2008.

L is for Lock 'Em Up!

If you've ever read an Agatha Christie novel, you'd understand how important location is in suspense. Her books like the Orient Express utilize setting to the utmost as a tool for driving the story forward. When you think about it, the principle applies to all writing. I know that most writers like to concentrate on character and plot, but setting can make or break a story. The wrong setting can deflate the suspense or confuse the reader.

One thing that Agatha Christie often did was “L” is for Lock up her characters; whether on an island, or on a train, the characters were a captive audience. As a result, so was the reader. Riveted by the imminent, inescapable danger lurking in an enclosed area, I kept turning the pages into the wee hours. She never wasted the opportunity to turn her setting into a living, breathing member of the cast. Spooky, and suspenseful, Christie was a master of using setting like another character in her stories.

Think about novels that you remember well after reading. Chances are the author didn’t neglect the setting. Whether it was the steaming moors of a sweeping love story, or the gritty streets of a detective novel, the setting worked to set up the story. Great writers use setting as a way to move their story along a certain path.

Let’s say you set up your story in a stranded ship. It sets a creepy tone. The characters have to evade one another or pair up to keep safe from a killer. Throw in the fact that they are running out of food, or the ship is sinking and your setting creates natural conflicts for your characters to overcome. No let’s say that the ship is in the path of a storm, and that the only way to be rescued is to be out in the open on deck. Your setting just put your characters in danger, both from the impending storm, and from the killer.

I encourage you to take a look at how your setting plays a part in your work. Is it incidental, or instrumental? Could it be Anywhere, USA, or is the location a major factor? I’d love to know what you come up with.

Dont forget to sign up on the side bar for The Primal Scream Blogfest - Your Most Heart Pumping Scene! The Blogfest will take place on May 5th...can't wait!

Until next time, Go Write!

Photograph by wili_hybrid, Uploaded on March 16, 2009. Photograph by ~MVI~, Uploaded on August 24, 2008

Conflict

the fight
Originally uploaded by alicepopkorn

This week I am exploring conflict in the fiction novel. Conflict is the driving force behind any great drama. Conflict in the form of an internal struggle, an opposing force, even nature can take a serene scene and turn it into something surprising and compelling. Great stories have conflict in its many forms accost the main character and by extension, the reader.

One form of conflict is confrontation. Not the boring confrontation in a typical family, but the unusual, unexpected, the can’t-look-away type of family drama that keeps the reader hooked. Or maybe its confrontation in the form of a rivalry, for example, competing with your new boyfriend for a coveted job, or your father to win a case. Confrontation can be your main character against a destructive part of themselves, an addiction or a phobia. Perhaps they’re suffocated by the thought of enclosed spaces and they have to go spelunking to solve a crime, or save a loved one, and everything goes wrong.

This brings me to my next point. The conflict has to occur early on in the story. Some successful novelists say that they try to introduce conflict within the first two or three pages. It’s called in medias res, Latin for “into the middle of affairs”. It means dropping the reader in the thick of things. Star Wars is a great example of this literary device. We meet the young Luke Skywalker in the middle of a rebellion, during an epic battle his father helped ignite.

Its this device that made me love all those old detective novels I used to read. These books open on a courtroom and a contraversial verdict sends the crowd gathered into a rage. Two men, ready to shoot each other, each with their hand on a manila envelope. A meteor rockets into a field sending plumes of acrid smoke that downs anything living near it…these are great openers from some of my favorite stories. I got hooked immediately because the writer threw me into a conflict early on.

Conflict compels the characters to act, and the underlying motivation or drama gives them a reason to act outside of their comfort zone. And that, hooks the reader. It gives them the chance to hope for the heroine to face her demons, overcome the obstacle, and triumph. That’s what a good read is, an opportunity to take a journey with a compelling character. Whether it’s a race through the jungle, a frantic search for a missing child, or a desperate plea to stave off an execution, the reader has to care what happens and that only happens if you draw them into the story from the get-go.

Until next time…Go Write!

Heart of the Matter

String of hearts
Originally uploaded by aussiegall

I received an email the other night from a fellow blogger that my main character would be featured in her Treatment Tuesday article on her blog, here.
The blog, written by a licensed therapist, takes character sketches and uses them to break down the motivations and actions of people in your novel.

To a writer, this is a great tool. I want my characters to be complex, layered individuals that the reader likes. You have to want to cheer for them, yell that they are being stupid, or hope for them to get the guy in the end. On the other hand, you can’t have a ‘Shrinking Violet’ whipping out a pistol and chasing down a bad guy, unless you’ve sufficiently motivated her to do so.

So I sketched out the main character for my next book, Ruby Dawn, and sent it in to the Character Therapist blog. I had a lot of questions about a series of calamities that Ruby faces, such as how she would react given her troubled past. I also had a few questions about closure in her life over familial abandonment, and a returning love interest.

I have to say, Jeannie did a wonderful job addressing my questions and offering sage advice. It was a fun experience and I feel like it helped me to confirm that I am on the right track. Feel free to hop over to the blog, there is a link in the first sentence of this entry, and The Character Therapist is also in my blog roll on the side bar. I’d love to know what you think.

Thanks again for all of your support and encouragement!

Getting in Their Heads

Inside the Acting for Film & Television campus
Originally uploaded by vancouverfilmschool

My friend once asked me how I got into the heads of the characters I write. I usually use the first person, so the character is as close and personal as possible. I told her about my drama class in high school. We used to do these exercises that involved using props that we thought our characters might have. I fiddled with fake pipes and fedora hats pretending to be a noir detective for class. It was great fun.

What I didn’t realize was that these skills would help me to be a better writer. I find that some of the methods actors use to really understand the character they want to inhabit -- help me with the characters that inhabit my mind. I keep little pieces of detritus that might come from a desk, or a special music box. I had a character in a novel that travels the world stealing back high-technology. She kept coins and seashells from her travels in the book. In real life, I have some of those things from my own travels on the shelf next to my notes for that book.

I try to notice quirks, mannerisms, and personal habits of people and write them down. I have a friend that no matter where he is, he finds paper and folds it into origami animals. You can tell if he’s been in the room because there are tiny frogs on the table or staring at you from coffee mugs. A cop that I knew used to go through a couple of packs a gum a day. I remember him chewing, thinking, chewing, unwrapping…chewing some more. His speech patterns were punctuated with snaps of the gum in his mouth.

All of these methods that actors use are helpful in layering the characters in your own stories. A quirk can make a character memorable, endearing, or even intolerable. Although I only took the drama class for an easy ‘A’, and have no interest in acting, I believe I took away some useful tools from that class. I wonder what insights I might find in the other arts. Come to think of it, I’ve been eyeing a welding and metal art class at my local community college…