Research Geekiness

Okay, one of the things I adore about research is how I always find these great serendipitous connections, and I had to share this latest one.

I’m currently working on the third Nathaniel Fludd book, The Wyvern’s Treasure, which takes place in Wales. And one of the fun, geeky things I’m doing in each book is weaving Fludd ancestors into the history and culture of this different geographic areas. So, I was researching Wales, where Nate and Phil Fludd go to deal with rampaging wyverns, working on creating my fictional history of how Fludds came to have a covenant with these wyverns. And what do I find? In one of the earliest myths about a Welshmen taming a dragon, the Welshman’s name is . . . Lludd. Which is EXACTLY how I was going to Welshify Fludd (that double L thing just screams Welsh). And the name already exists historically, exactly where I need it to!

God, I love my job!

Edited to Add: And the winner of this months drawing is ASPIRING WRITER. The random number was generated in a most scientific fashion, one that involved me calling out to my husband, Pick a number between 1 and 59, and he said 17, which was AA. Email me with your snail mail address AA, and I will get a copy of Character and Viewpoint out to you ASAP.

Micro Voice

I’ve been floundering a bit, trying to think of what to blog about, partly because my own writing has stuttered to a halting, bumbling stop. It reminds me a lot of when you’re driving along on one of those perfectly nice stretches of highway, then with a bone-jarring, teeth-rattling thud, hit one of those metal grills across the road to keep cattle from crossing? Yeah, that’s the feeling. But it seemed too lame to blog about, and so I was stuck. Then Aspiring Author came to my rescue with a question in the comments. (Which is a good reminder to you all that you should feel free to ask questions in the comments!)

Her question was on voice, which I covered a lot here, but didn’t answer this specific question.

"What ways can you make two characters talk different? I only know one and that's one seldom speaks and uses short sentences and the other doesn't.
do you know any others? "

It’s a good one, and this is where I would instruct you to all pull out you worksheet from a few weeks ago, found here. If you go down this list, you will see that some of these things will affect speech patterns

Part of this is developing an ear for they variations in ways that people speak. A great learning tool is to go to a food court at a local mall and hang out for a couple of hours, paying very close attention to the conversations around you. Some speech patterns will be clear; the way a mother talks differently from her tween girl, the latter’s usually more peppered with slang (and lots of sighs and eye rolling.) The difference between a boy and girl will be marked too, the boy often using fewer words, if not downright monosyllabic, and the girl more chatty. A group of three girls however, might be very, very similar. My guess is if you knew them better, you would be able to pick them out from their speech patterns alone, but not with a casual listen. And this then is the answer, as an author get to know them well enough that you become aware of their speech patterns.

Now here’s the thing, I don’t think about most of this when I write. The speech patterns come from how the character speaks in my mind, and they all speak very differently. For me, writing is sometimes like being an actor, and I jump back and forth between inhabiting the bodies of my characters and speaking their lines.

However, it can still be broken down, dissected, and analyzed.

How much education do they have? Often that will be reflected in their speech patterns, but to different degree. For example, someone who is very conscious of being “college educated” and for whom it is a really big deal, might consciously choose to use complex words and sentence structure in an attempt to be sure everyone knew about his education.

Gender differences are also present. In her work, You Just Don’t Understand, Deborah Tannen talks about this very thing; women see language as a way to connect, whereas men are more about stating things baldly. Women will sometimes end their sentences with a question mark as a means of not wanting to appear too aggressive, whereas men rarely do.

Sometimes the difference in speech patterns are easy, Theodosia, a girl from the upper classes of Edwardian Britain speaks much differently than Will, the street urchin. The differences between Theo and Grandmother Throckmorton are more subtle, but still there. Grandmother is very stiff and proper, but also she is often saying critical things. And she sniffs a lot.

In Nathaniel Fludd Beastologist, there are some very clear differences between Phil Fludd, the world’s last remaining Beastologist, and young Nate. One’s in their late forties and knowledgeable, educated, world traveled, and trying to reassure and teach Nate. Whereas Nate is a bit timid and uncertain, so it comes through in how he speaks, tending to ask questions, lots of hesitation, and backing into things he isn’t sure about. Cornelius, on the other hand, is very full of himself and over impressed with the Fludd’s and his own status, so speaks in a very stuffy sort of tone.

When all other ways fail to create differences in the way your characters talk, consider assigning them all some speech tics and unique word choices. Some people’s speech is more filled with hyperbole, and others with more exclamations or expletives. Other’s speak an a very inclusive manner, wanting to cover all the options and be sure to leave no one out or offend anyone, while others just spit out whatever is on the tip of their tongue, (and often have to apologize for it.)

Develop tic words for them, what is their favorite slang? Swear word? The expression they use when angry, frustrated, sad?

Some use short, to the point sentences, others more flowing or complex sentences.
Simple words versus more evocative words.
Simple sentence structure versus more complex clauses and phrasing.

Some people use lots of adverbs and adjectives and others don’t. Some split their infinitives and end sentences with prepositions. Others don’t. And some people begin their sentences with conjunctions. Not to mention sentence fragments.

Some people are challenging when they speak: “Really? Is that what you think?” And others more placating, “I can certainly see why you might think that, but I’ve found…”

Sometimes characters might be cryptic, Awi Bubu, a character in the upcoming Theodosia and the Eyes of Horus, is very cryptic, and a foreigner to boot, so his speech is a little formal, his syntax a little off, and full of riddles and half answers.

An engineer with a love of precision and clarity will speak differently than an English literature major.

The metaphors they use, the clichés they favor, the analogies they make. All those will flavor their speech patterns.

If they are a pessimist, they will address everything with Eyeore-like glumness, if optimistic, with a more Pooh-like look on the bright side approach.

Also, don't forget if you want to be entered in this months contest for a copy of Orson Scott Card's Character and Viewpoint, today's the last day to leave a comment and be eligible!

Now Make It Worse

Let’s say you’ve spent some time and come up with this perfect conflict for your character. There is even something at stake if she fails. Go you!

Now think of a way to make it worse. Seriously.

My bff, Mary Hershey, and I had an opportunity to attend one of Donald Maass’s all day workshops, and he asked this question. Many times. So often, we got to giggling, however, it was highly effective in driving home his point. Push the limits. Dare to take your character to the wall, then blow the wall away and take him even farther than that.

So, have you found a way to make it worse? Good.

Now make it matter even more. No, I’m not kidding. And there is a subtle different between making something worse, and making it matter more. Making something worse is about upping the stakes, making it matter more is about upping the emotional intensity of those stakes.

For example, when I was writing Theo, my initial external conflict was that she was going to discover this cursed artifact and removing the curse was going to fall on her shoulders. To make it worse, I decided that curse had the power to bring feast, famine, drought, and destruction to the entire country. To make it matter even more, to twist the conflict so that it uniquely and intensely skewered Theo, I had it be her mother who had unknowingly unleashed this horror on the world. For a child who felt responsible for her parents and whose familial role was to take care of them, this really upped the intensity of the conflict. Not only was it the worst that could happen (death and destruction on a national scale) but it would be her family’s fault, which gave her an added impetus to stop it.

So now take a look at your conflict.

How can you make it worse?

How can you make it matter even more?

Can you make it even worse than that? Oh go on, try. I bet you can.

Some things to consider:
Make your characters suffer. Whoever your hero cannot live without, cannot possibly succeed without, remove them. (Maass suggests killing him, but I write for kids so I take a gentler approach.)
What is your character’s greatest asset? Take it away.
What is sacred to your hero? Undermine it.
How much time does he have? Shorten it.
What matters most to your character? Threaten it.

You get the idea.

The thing is, Maass said that of all the manuscripts that cross his agency’s desks, few fail because they go too far or push too hard. No, the majority of them fail because they don’t go far enough, they don’t take things to their extremes. Which relates to my post of a couple of weeks ago about failing gloriously. Don’t let your failure be a whimpering one. If you aim for the bleachers, you have a better chance of getting past first base.

(Or something like that. I’m not so good with sports metaphors.)

Speaking of Conflict

Okay, back to plotting…

Conflict drives the story. It’s pretty much that simple. If you don’t have conflict on some level, you don’t have a story. The good news is, conflict comes in many shapes and sizes, flavors and colors. The bad news is, most people tend to avoid conflict, so it can be difficult to grab it with both hands and force your characters into the thick of it.

Besides, we writers usually like our characters. We don’t want to put them through the wringer. But alas, if we want to effect a transformation in their lives, we must. Remember, we are the meddling, interfering Olympian gods in our book’s universe. It is our JOB to mess up our characters’ lives and force them to change or teach them a life lesson.

One of the first things I do after I’ve managed to come up with an internal and external GMC for my characters is I step back and try to decide if the nature of the conflict is actually big enough to sustain a book. The truth is, all of the manuscripts that languish under my bed are there because the initial idea simply wasn’t big enough or didn’t contain enough conflict to sustain an entire book. It is also one of the most frequent mistakes I see when editing or critiquing beginners' work. Keep in mind that an average MG book is about 100-150 mss pages, and an adult book is around 300. There’s a fair amount of conflict needed to keep things clipping along toward the end. Without conflict, you have no dramatic push or narrative drive. Things just float along, attention wanders, and suddenly readers are putting your book down so they can go surf the net or watch a reality TV show.

So one of the first questions I ask myself is, If the protagonist doesn’t attain her goal, what is at stake? What does she stand to lose? And I usually need two answers to this, one that can be addressed by the physical actions of the story (if Theo doesn’t return the artifact to Egypt, her mother will have infected Britain with a curse so vile, it brings down the entire country) and a second one that addresses the emotional wounds or scars of my characters (If she saves the world, surely they’ll love her then. They'll have to.)

The second question is, Why this character and this problem? This is where irony comes in, or Fate, or Kismet. Why has the universe graced this particular character with this particular problem? Why her?? Why is this the worse thing that could happen to her?

In fact, if you have a character in mind for a story and you’re not being able to get any sort of conflict to gel, ask yourself, what is the worst possible thing that could happen to her? That is conflict.

The thing is, random crappy stuff happens to people in real life all the time. Life is hard and then you die, as the saying goes. But the one thing we can do to prove that saying wrong is to choose to embrace our circumstance and learn from it. As writers, we simply have to plan that out ahead of time. Fiction can't be random, it needs to mean something in order to resonate with readers.

Theo, a child who is emotionally abandoned and somewhat willfully ignored by her parents, gets by by being invisible and uber responsible. So if she suddenly starts blabbing about magic and curses, her parents are going to see her as being very fanciful, irresponsible, and constantly in the way and underfoot. They will stop taking her seriously, and she will lose what tenuous connection she has with them and will be completely dismissed by them. Considering the day and age she lived in, she might even be committed to a sanitorium. If her parents were more attuned to her, or more doting, she might have stood a chance in telling them the truth. But in light of their current dynamic, the truth didn't stand a chance.

On the external plot level, the Why her? question is embedded in Theo herself, a young girl with few resources except an ability to detect ancient magic and evil curses. If she didn’t have that ability, she’d never have gotten wrapped up in all this business to begin with. For all intents and purposes her parents museum would have suffered a normal burglary and that would be the end of it. But since she does have that ability, she gets drawn into far more than the average bear.

So take a look at your conflict. First of all, do you have any? And if so, is it big enough? Is something truly at stake for your character if they fail? Lastly, why this character and this problem?

Things Left Unspoken

First of all, my apologies. I did not mean to leave the blog untended for four days in a row. I meant to post something Friday afternoon, but my artist's date turned into an all day thing and I simply couldn't rouse myself to come up with a post. Then yesterday, I was totally sidetracked by real life. So here I am. Finally. And I will get back to plot stuff, I promise.

But one thing I've been thinking about a lot lately is something I heard a long time ago at a business seminar. The speaker said, It is the things left unspoken that define the relationship, and boy, did a flashing light and a gong go off in my head.

If you think about that for a moment, you will begin to see all the ways that it is true; it is the things we are too afraid or too angry to say that often define the shape and quality of our personal relationships. That betrayal you felt from your sister that you never dared to tell her about will shape all your future dealings with her. The fury you felt at your father, or the heartbreak your husband unknowingly dealt you; all of those emotions will bend and distort your interactions for years to come.

And it occurred to me what a powerful tool that would be to use in our writing, what an effective layer of subtext. So consider asking yourself, what is left unspoken between your characters? And how does it distort and drive their relationship to each other?

Plotting - Sources of Conflict

So Greek Girl had a great question in the comments yesterday. She asked how to work this plotting thing when the character's problem was poverty or racism, something societal or cultural.

Some writing theory says that the conflict should take the form of an antagonist, a real live breathing human being that acts in opposition to the hero. I am not quite that set in concrete. I think other elements can work as a source of conflict; self, acts of nature, Fate, etc.

I do think though, if you’re going to have the source of conflict be society, it makes it much easier to write if you can encapsulate societies views and mores in actual characters in a book rather than simply an abstract concept.

For example, if a person is struggling against racism, that absolutely manifests itself through relationships with people; coworkers, strangers on the street, teachers, familial ties, the banker you deal with, the person you buy your groceries from. Racism comes in all forms, too. Conscious, mean spirited, and clueless. How much more powerful will your novel be if you can show all those different ways discrimination raises its ugly head?

One route to conflict might be the hateful, bigoted racist, some specific person making your character’s life hell on earth intentionally.

But it is important to remember that all an antagonist has to do is obstruct the main character’s goals, and that can be done out of love or a sense of protection just as easily as it can out of a sense of hatred or anger. In fact, if you look to your own life, who has caused you the most pain, set the most obstacles in your path? Those who love you or those who hate you? So cast a wide, broad net as you look for the source of your conflict, but if it’s society, do consider encapsulating society’s views into an actual person.

The second societal conflict, poverty, is harder because it isn’t necessarily imposed on one person by another. It can be very impersonal. Again, if you can find secondary characters to help personify this, you may have an easier time of writing it. The social worker who can only do so much, the teacher who can offer only the smallest of aid, the friend who tries to make it better, but ends up making it worse. Those kinds of things.

But ultimately, I think the trick to making poverty an active force in the novel is to really delve deeply into the character and get those personal reactions to poverty onto the page; all those small deaths by a thousand cuts type of ways that poverty destroys ones spirit. If you live in a world ruled by poverty, you live in a world entirely different from the one many of us occupy. If you’re writing about that, make sure you get that different world view on the page so we readers can experience it viscerally.

If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend John Scalzi’s post on poverty, intense, heartbreaking stuff. Just a few examples:

Being poor is feeling the glued soles tear off your supermarket shoes when you run around the playground.

Being poor is finding the letter your mom wrote to your dad, begging him for the child support.

Being poor is stopping the car to take a lamp from a stranger’s trash.

If you even pick a handful of the experiences on his list to incorporate into your character, it will be very powerful.

Please feel free to ask more questions in the comments. And don’t forget, everyone who comments will be entered in a drawing at the end of the month for a copy of Orson Scott Card's, Character and Viewpoint.

Plotting - Baby Steps

Okay, so let’s say you’ve figured out—kind of—what your characters motivations and desires. You even have a pretty good idea as to what is standing in their way—a bad guy, a raging storm, a stalking fae, a lovesick werewolf, whatever. Now how do you take what you know and shape it into a plot?

What I do at this point is I sit down and look at both the internal and external GMCs. Then I try to brainstorm four to six baby steps the character will need to take to achieve both the internal goal and the external goal. In real life, change may happen over night, but in fiction, we readers want to see the process of change, make that journey to a new, improved self along with the character, so it helps to be sure and break down the change into manageable bites.

Now is probably a good time for me to explain that I don’t do all of this at the very beginning. I usually spend some time writing what I do know, either snippets of scenes or dialogue, details about the world, setting, or characters. Sometimes, I’m pleasantly surprised by how very much I instinctively know about the story. Then I use these exercises to fill in the blanks.

Other times I’ll have a pretty clear idea of the external plot, but then need to be sure the action precipitates growth in the character. In that instance, I’ll look at the baby steps for my internal GMC, and make sure that the scenes I have for the external plot change the character’s internal landscape, using those baby steps as my guidelines.

Other times, I’ll have a solid idea of an internal journey, but no clue as to what has to happen physically in the story. In that case I’m pretty wide open for brainstorming the most effective (and dramatic) external events that will bring about those changes.

It’s also not a bad idea to write an entire discovery draft, learning about your characters and their internal landscape, friends and relationships, before applying any plotting or structure to the manuscript.

The point I’m trying to make here is that whatever you way you approach the story is the right way. It’s just a matter of finding a process that allows you to plug up the holes you don’t know yet.