Ink-Stained Scribe

Crossing the Fail Road

sakurazawa@gmail.com (Lauren "Scribe" Harris) — Mon, 14 May 2012 14:58:00 +0000

Last week was a bad week. Some good things happened--Raven and I went to see Wicked with tickets she won at the charity event we both attended earlier this year, and on Wednesday, we hung out with our friend Andrew, who was in town for a book signing (A.J. Hartley, Darwen Arkwright and the Peregrine Pact).

But it was a bad week. Like most bad weeks, it wasn't the product of One Big Thing, but a stew of disappointments, stress, and bad-timing. It left me feeling pretty low, and Friday I finally let it all simmer over as I sat in my car in the parking lot of my local coffee shop, crying, wondering why I was even bothering.

I'm writing this now not because I want encouragement. I'm actually feeling pretty good today. I'm writing this because I'm now on the other side of that feeling, and I wanted to address it.

I reached out for support that day--on Facebook, which is not always the best of forums, but served me well. I didn't want compliments or reassurances, since I have a hard time believing those when I'm in the best of moods, let alone the worst. But I got encouragement. I got support. I got sympathy from others who had been in my shoes. I got the love of my friends.

It's times like that, when the future is uncertain and we realize there's nothing we can do to keep the world from spinning on, that it's good to know we're not alone.

I composed myself, got out of my car, and walked into the coffee-shop. I sat down with my drink, opened my laptop, and pulled up a story.

I started writing.

If there's one thing I've learned about writing, it's this: when I feel bad about my writing, when I feel like I'm never going to get published, or I'm never going to be good enough, or this book that I bled my heart out for is never going to see print, there's nothing that will make me feel better as quickly as getting back to writing.

When the tsunami hit Japan last March, I wished more than anything that I could be back there, in the country that had been my home for three years, doing something. I felt the need to take all the feelings boiling up inside me and turn them into energy, into action, to do something to get that healing-train moving. I couldn't go to Japan, obviously. I would just be a drain on its much-needed resources. There is no feeling quite so terrible as helplessness.

Back then, I turned to the local university and Japanese community to help in the fund-raising efforts. I performed at a benefit concert, and worked together with my friends to get Adryn home for a few weeks, and out of the upheaval of Japan's post-tsunami climate.

It's doing something, effecting a change in my situation, that makes me feel better when I'm down. So when I feel bad about writing, I write.

This weekend, it really helped. I got another whole scene written on BULLRUSHING THE GHOST, and the story is turning out much more touching than I'd anticipated. It was supposed to be a comedy, but it's now also somewhat romantic.

I'm also blessed with wonderful friends, who push me to be better, who support me without babying me, and who understand that I don't want to be told how great I am when only improving my weaknesses will make me feel better...but still find ways to encourage me despite myself.

Writer Wednesday - What I'm Working On

sakurazawa@gmail.com (Lauren "Scribe" Harris) — Wed, 09 May 2012 18:15:00 +0000

I got inspired by Darci Cole's post today, where she described the various projects she's working on.

I have a lot of different projects, all at different stages, and I guess it would do me some good to put into words exactly what they are, where I am with all of them, and where I hope to be in the next few months. I'd also like to hear what you guys are working on! Drop me a link to your own blog, or let me know in the comments.

Also, because I have some new followers...

PROJECTS

I have five projects I'm working on right now; this is what they are, and what I'm doing with them.

1. Title: THE MARK OF FLIGHT

When the slave-boy that rescued kidnapped Princess Arianna is once again abducted by slave-traders, Arianna faces a choice: forget the freedom she promised him and rush home to prepare her kingdom for war, or risk her life to free the young man who gave up everything to save her.

Length: Novel (first in THE MARKMASTERS TRILOGY)

Genre: High Fantasy

Status: Completed (on submission)

Description and excerpt HERE.

2. Title: HELLHOUND

Shapeshifting "Hellhound" Helena Martin has only one chance to keep her pack and her human friends safe: make peace with the sorcerers who killed her mother.

Length: Novel (stand-alone)

Genre: Contemporary Fantasy

Status: Draft 2.5

Description and excerpt HERE.

I did a major plot overhaul during NaNoWriMo 2011, and got a good chunk of it rewritten, but still wasn't totally happy with it. I've finally given up and decided to shift the entire book into first-person. I've got about ten new scenes to write, which will be much easier in first person.

3. THE BEGGAR'S TWIN

In a world where Nobles live in a city above the streets and touching one means death, PROCNE, a street girl with a forbidden magical gift, poses as a male student at the Magicsinger University, vowing to use her chance at power to bring down the society that killed her brother and made her an outcast.

Length: Novel (first in a duology)

Genre: High Fantasy

Status: Detailed Outline

Description HERE.

I have a detailed outline of the first book note-carded, with only a few gaps in the plot that I plan to fill in as I write. The world is very detailed and strong in my mind, but I'm working out a few more specifics with the magic system (since it's based around music). This is the book I took through my Plot Workshop for NaNoWriMo. :)

4. A DIVIDED HEART

A dragon rider pair must make the choice between murdering hatchling dragons, or letting the precious resource fall into enemy hands.

Length: Short Story

Genre: Steampunk (with dragons)

Status: Revision

This story has been through three beta readers, followed by a workshop. I know what needs fixing, and now just need to sit down and hack at the middle, tweaking motivation and intensity, making the characters' relationships clearer and more important

5. BULLRUSHING THE GHOST

"Big Girl" High School junior Georgia wants two things: closure on her one-sided romance with her best friend Hiroki, and an iced vanilla latte. So when their school's priest fails to exorcise the ghost of a tormented AV geek, Caroline agrees to go along with Hiroki's plan to solve the murder...but it wasn't the close encounter she was hoping for.

Length: Long Short Story

Genre: Paranormal...comedy?

Status: Working on first draft

I posted the first page of this short story a few weeks ago. The voice is strong and compelling, I know the subject matter, but my short-story chops are still a bit weak. The major problem I'm having with this story is that I know parts A, C, D, & E. I have no idea what B needs to, well, be. I don't want to lose the voice of this story, so I'm probably just going to power through it and let part B suck.

What are you working on? Where are you in your process with it?

5 Reasons Libraries May Not Buy "50 Shades of Grey"

sakurazawa@gmail.com (Lauren "Scribe" Harris) — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 19:55:00 +0000

image courtesy babble.com

Those who are curious about reading the Self Pub phenomenon 50 Shades of Grey may not want to shell out the $$$ for copies of their very own and turn instead to their local libraries. The haven of speed-readers, word gluts, and underfunded book-lovers, most people assume the library would jump on any opportunity to buy a book with so much buzz. Heloooooo, door-count!

They'd be 50 shades of WRONG.

Okay, well, maybe that's exaggerating. Libraries are run on a county-wide basis*, so the decisions are going to be different for every system. While some libraries may, in fact, purchase copies of 50 Shades of Grey, my librarian source provided me with the top five reasons many won't buy into the 50 Shades phenomenon, and they may not be for the reasons you think. Sure, most people are going to assume that librarians are the prudes who keep pasting diapers onto the naked butt and dangly bits of the little boy in the The Night Kitchen, but not so (seriously, that's certain members of the public stapling the pages together, y'all).

A patron walks purposefully up to the front desk, her eyes keen and sharp, her jaw set for a fight. "I want to read 50 Shades of Grey. I didn't realize the library was so prudish. Why aren't you buying it?"

The librarian smiles patiently, thinking of all the Zane novels she's had to read the titles of over the phone. ("You'd like Purple Panties 2? Yes, of course I can hold that for you, sir.") "No ma'am, I'm sorry. We won't be purchasing 50 Shades of Gray. We do have several other books filling that niche, which I'd be happy to direct you to..."

THE TOP FIVE REASONS YOUR LIBRARY MAY NOT BUY 50 SHADES OF GRAY

(And it's not because it's porn.)

1. FLASH IN THE PAN
For all its unexpected commercial success, 50 Shades is, in the words of Tee Morris, nearly "universally panned" online. But the library isn't in the business of buying books for their literary merit (or lack thereof). The library is there to provide the public with books.

Though it began as fanfiction for the Twilight series, there is no indication that, like Twilight, the book will have any staying power in the market. The prose is described as plodding, overly-detailed, and too long. Read React Review states "90% of the traditional romance arc has been completed, and then two more books drag out what, in a romance, would be the last two chapters". And that doesn't bode well for the continued success of books two and three.

If the library system orders 50 copies of 50 Shades and the rage has died down by this time next year, they'll be stuck with a stack of books that society has lost interest in. Better to wait it out and establish its...endurance. (Yes. I went there.)

(See New York Times, Daily Beast, Read React Review for some reviews that are relatively balanced. More Troll-in-the-dungeon reviews can be found at Amazon, & B&N.)

2. LOWFUNDSA (it's not an STD)
SURPRISE! We're in a recession! Like most government organizations, libraries are suffering from a severe lack of funds. Many libraries can't afford to have more than two copies of established bestselling books by established bestselling authors like Stephen King. Committing to 50 Shades of Grey before it's proved to be more than a flash in the pan isn't something a library in such dire straits can afford to do.

And it's not just 50 Shades of Grey. The library system is unable to justify purchasing books that aren't either by bestselling authors or filling a niche. And that's just how it is right now.

Want to help resolve that issue? Donate to your local library. :)

3. NICHE IS FILLED
As readers of erotica already know, the niche for BDSM is by no means empty. The library system already has plenty of erotic fiction by authors with an established fan base, so buying 50 Shades would not fill a need in the library's collection, meaning that particular justification won't stand up long enough to perform. (Yes. I did.)

4. NOT REVIEWED BY A PROFESSIONAL REVIEW SOURCES (yet)
The library buys many of its books based on book reviews provided by Professional Review Sources such as Booklist, and due to 50 Shades of Grey's self-published nature, there are no reviews for the book as of yet. True, a publisher has picked up 50 Shades for release now, so there may eventually be a review available, but as of April 30th, 2012, Booklist has not posted a review.

In order to defend the purchase of a book, especially in times when the library is so strapped for cash (badum tsss), a review from such a professional (as in, the librarian profession) resource is extremely helpful. Without one, librarians may find they have to exercise restraints. I mean. Restraint. Singular.

5. IT'S A TRILOGY
Again, this rule may vary from library to library, but in many systems, if a library purchases the first book in a series, it is then obligated to purchase the rest. Committing to the whole ménage à trois when the series might be a flash in the pan, the library system is underfunded, the niche is already filled, and it's not reviewed by professional sources is an exercise in poor planning, especially given the relatively lukewarm reception of the second and third books in the series.

*Edited to provide some additional linkage:
Florida Today's Article: On Brevard Library pulling 50 Shades from the shelves.
Heroes and Hearbreakers' Article: A response to Florida's Brevard Library pulling the book from the shelves.

And if you haven't seen Ellen's comedy skit about "reading the audiobook for 50 Shades", you must watch it now.

Does your local library have 50 Shades of Grey? Do you think libraries should purchase the book or not? Why? Have you read 50 Shades of Grey? What do you think?

*Edit: Sometimes. They're sometimes state-run, or privately-owned, or business-owned, or city owned, or...well, you get the idea. Libraries aren't going to be governed by a single, agreed-upon set of rules.

The First Ever Markmasters Trilogy Cosplay Ever (Ever)!

sakurazawa@gmail.com (Lauren "Scribe" Harris) — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 05:48:00 +0000

Sonja Carter and Dee G. are two lovely ladies I became acquainted with through cosplay. You may remember Sonja as the lovely lady who took the pictures of my friends and I in our Suckerpunch costumes at Dragon*Con 2011. She is SoulFire Photography, and she is amazing and generous.

Dee is not only absolutely gorgeous, but one of the most fabulous cosplayers I've ever met. (Seriously, go look at her Facebook fan page and you will be amazed.)

In early drafts, Arianna wore a white dress at her Ceremony of Womanhood, where her hair was revealed to everyone (including herself) for the first time. The white dress is a single line in the new opening, but you can get a sense of how I eternally picture Arianna from Alukale (a mysterious observer at her ceremony):

The crowd hushed, and the silvery keen of a bell hung across them like ice--the time had come. The four handmaidens reached for the headdress, and the princess's hands clenched in her heavy white skirts. It took all four women to lift the fan of silk and gems.

A heavy rush of ebony tumbled down the girl's thin shoulders, catching on the beaded bodice of her dress.

A flicker of pride tugged Alukale’s lips as his brother's descendant stared at her waist-length black hair, as though she were unable to comprehend it. In a few years she would be lovely as the Maiden Moon. Her foreign father had given her his obsidian hair, and if Alukale were to guess, all that makeup covered skin tinted with Danaian gold. That, at least, was lucky -- a princess needed to be unique.

In my head, Arianna is always wearing a white dress, and she always has her waist-length black hair down.

So when I saw Dee post a progress picture of her Princess Garnet (Final Fantasy IX) cosplay dress, I immediately typed a frantic, typo-ridden plea for her to take pictures in it before she painted on the ivy.

Within days, Dee and Sonja had sent me an entire picasa folder FILLED with pictures of PRINCESS ~~ARIANNA OF RIZELLEN~~ DEE.

I'mma have to make a new cover.

AND NOW, IT'S TIME FOR ARIANNA PICSPAM!

Dee, looking so very much like Princess Arianna.

Arianna heading out to the stables to ride Star, because royalty doesn't think
about silly things like getting white dresses covered in horse hair.
Also, this is such a gorgeously framed and lit picture. Sonja is awesome.

This, on the other hand, reminds me of Arianna at the end of the first book,
full of determination and a newfound understanding of her own power.

"She spun around, her silk mourning gown snapping at her ankles, ebony shards clicking in her loose hair as purpose drove the anger and sadness into the back of her heart. She would pull them back out later, probably, when she tried to sleep and sleep would not come, but the Princess of Rizellen could not revel in grief just yet. She had to act, and to act, she needed to have a clear goal. "

Reminds me of the cover for Ruins of Ambrai! Which means I love it.

This picture is perfect BECAUSE of the unfinished hem. It looks like Ari
has been running around. :) Have I mentioned that Dee is gorgeous?

This is pretty much exactly how I envision Arianna at the beginning of
book one, when she's still so naive, and has no idea of her own strengths.

There's no longer a scene with Arianna in the garden, though there used to be. Maybe I'll just stuff her in a white dress again in book two, just so I can have an excuse to say this picture is totally canon.

I couldn't not put this picture in. Dee's smile is so natural and so beautiful here, and there needs to be more Smiling!Ari

Book II. Thinking about a certain missing slave boy...

Just the right amount of mischief in that smile. Princess Arianna
has quite a reputation for listening at doors, and her extremely accurate
aim with tossed teacups.

The hills are alive~

Have you or your friends ever cosplayed original characters? Who? Pictures? Links? Have you ever cosplayed a character from a book?

Using the Online Cloud Word Processor: Yarny

sakurazawa@gmail.com (Lauren "Scribe" Harris) — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 17:03:00 +0000

Hope you had a great Easter,
Passover, or Spring Celebration!

Remember last week when I blogged about making a schedule? Well, even though I haven't been writing every day, I've been getting a good amount done, all things considered. While not the long, unbroken stretches of writing time I usually like, I dedicated the following time last week to writing:

Three lunch breaks (ah-ah-ah...)
Two evenings during the week
A few hours on Saturday night, after coming home from Rosemary's bridal shower.

I'm not sure what the total word-count was, but it definitely feels like I've written more than I was managing before. Although I miss lunch with Raven, she doesn't get hungry as early as I do, and I do manage to get work done in that time frame.

Also, I find that writing at lunch gets me jazzed to go home and continue writing, so I'm more likely to ignore how tired I am when there's a scene I really want to continue working on. I tend to use three different programs when I write: Word, Scrivener, and Yarny.

When I'm not at home, or haven't brought my computer with me, I like to use Yarny. It's a cloud-based word processor with lots of great features like sharing, timeline writing (so you can revert to a previous version of the same document if you make a change you don't like), tags, and a really nice sorting method. It also saves automatically every few seconds, so you don't have to worry about losing your stuff. I started out with the free version, and ended up liking it so much, I shelled out ten bucks for the premium.

It's nice not to have to worry about transferring my writing between computers or from phone to email to word processor, so I highly recommend this website to folks who do a lot of writing at lunch or on the go. Below, I've provided a basic run-down of some of it's most useful features.

HOW YARNY WORKS

Organization

See that little box on the top center? I click on the title and it comes down, showing me which folder I'm in. On the left, you can see which "snippets" are in that folder. These snippets can be organized within their own folders, as you can see in the drop-down with all the colored files.

Colored files? Oh yes. That's another feature, though I can't quite remember if that's a premium feature or not. I used it to quickly identify which scene was which, though I imagine in the future I will use it to distinguish POVs (when I'm writing a multiple POV story again).

Tags and Timeline

Below the document, you can see a little tag icon that lets you, duh, add tags. Next to it is a little clock--when you click on the clock, it brings up a slider, which lets you scroll to previous versions of the document. This is useful when you swap back and forth between writing on the computer and writing on the iPhone app (premium only). I accidentally opened the iPhone app with a previous version of the document I was working on, and it auto-saved, overwriting about a thousand words of writing. I opened the computer version, scrolled back to the previous save, and didn't lose a thing. Genius.

iPhone App

I've purchased an upgraded account on Yarny, since you have to be a premium member to get the iPhone app, which I love, since I can write when I'm standing in line at the supermarket, or waiting in front of the microwave at lunch time, or stuck somewhere without a pen (my nightmare), and not have to compile from three different places or struggle to remember where I was.

Establishing a Schedule

sakurazawa@gmail.com (Lauren "Scribe" Harris) — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 19:46:00 +0000

Problem: I am not getting the amount of writing done I'd like.

Plan A: Over the next few weeks, I'm going to work on establishing a schedule for my writing.

I've never really had to do this; I've always found it easy to come to the page almost every day. Recently, however, with the obligations from work piling up, and several hours a week disappearing into the gym or writing club (which is usually critiquing or brainstorming rather than writing), I've been finding it difficult to balance my time between obligations, creativity, and rest.

I'm usually more of a binge-writer than a snacker. I might make notations in five or ten minutes, get a scrap of something going, but I don't generally crack my knuckles and get down to work unless I've got at least three unbroken hours in which to work on my WIP.

I think that's going to have to change. I mean, I'm cool being a weekend warrior, but as a single twenty-something, I also want to use that time to go out and do things--to fill the well. I want to get more writing done than I have been managing to accomplish recently, so I'm creating a tentative schedule for myself.

Instead of going home and sitting at my computer and watching YouTube, updating Facebook, or otherwise wasting my time, I'm going to see if setting a timer will work. That way, I can get it in my head that the time I'm using is writing time. It's possible a physical reminder like that will help.

If that doesn't work, I'm going to try getting up early.

We shall see.

Do you have a writing schedule? What does it look like? Do you sprint or marathon when you write?

Learning to Write Short: Part II

sakurazawa@gmail.com (Lauren "Scribe" Harris) — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 05:22:00 +0000

I finished a short story that was, like, actually short...and I started another one.

Say WHAT?

Okay, so, by "short" I mean "under 10k", which is damn short, when you consider most things I write turn out to be more like 130k.

In the six lessons I took with Cat Rambo in her short story class, I managed to isolate some of my problems with writing short:

1. I don't think in terms of immediate conflict.

2. My thoughts for a story's "scope" is usually too big.

3. I like background, especially character background, even if it's not necessary to the immediate conflict (see #1).

I was working on the dragon story during this class, so I'm using that as my example to illustrate these three issues.

Immediate Conflict

I used a world that Adryn and I developed for a novel and set it back about 15 years, exploring a pair of side characters "in their prime". My first mistake was trying to bring the world-level conflict between two cities (which is the conflict of the novel) into the main line of action immediately.

The conflict of the story is a dragon-rider pair deciding whether to destroy the nest their enemy is after, or endanger the city they’ve sworn to protect by refusing to become murderers. The heart of that conflict is not the question of "which side gets the eggs", but "what will they do?"

Well, I complicated things. I tried to start off the story with the two squadrons attacking each other, but it wasn't working. I couldn't get the main characters into that dragon's nest, and the conflict over what to do with the eggs seemed less important when the battle was being held back by the rest of their Wing.

So I chopped it out, deciding to save the aerial fight for the ending.

Story a little crowded? (artist unknown)

Scope

My two main characters, Howell and Giddeon, are the leaders of a Wing. I originally had them flying out on patrol with their Wing, randomly spotting the nest, and going in to get as many eggs as possible. But I was having trouble with my narrator, Howell, splitting his attention unnecessarily between getting the eggs, and directing his Wing through his dragon's telepathic bond.

Also, as soon as I took out that opening battle, getting the eggs out became less important. Suddenly, there were lots of dragons to carry the eggs back, lots of dragons to fight off the enemy as soon as they arrived.

Lots of dragons to get in the way of the real question of whether Giddeon's ruthless logic or Howell's compassion would win out.

So I axed them, deciding that patrols would be limited to single dragons to a certain area, for both cities.

And boy did that simplify EVERYTHING.

Backstory

Just the fact that I was able to go back 15 years with side characters and need no extra planning or character brainstorming should tell you something about how much I like background.

I'm not one of those people who writes out everything about my characters since they were five (okay, well, not ALL of them), but I do tend to know the events that shaped each character--both the circumstances that were out of their control, and the choices they made to get where they are.

In a novel, there's time to explore that. In a short-story, it doesn't matter nearly as much as the present conflict. That's something I have a hard time getting through my head.

See, to me, identifying with a character is part of what I love about stories, and part of that is about knowing where they came from. I'm strongly context-oriented, and part of the reason I read more novels than short stories is that desire to get really, really close with a character.

So excising backstory is hard.

After my first critique session with the story, I was able to cut out quite a bit of backstory, leaving only the crucial information to set up context for a character's actions. In fact, I probably don't even need that (but I'm clinging right now, so we'll see if I get over it).

What are your trouble points with writing short or writing long? How have you changed stories around to better suit the length? How does your "stride" as a writer change between these two forms?

"Deliberate Schizophrenic State" - Editing with the 10% Solution

sakurazawa@gmail.com (Lauren "Scribe" Harris) — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 23:38:00 +0000

Image via Green Heat

In the last meeting of Cat Rambo's Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Story Class, we discussed editing and submitting stories. One of the books Cat encouraged us to look at was The 10% Solution, by Ken Rand. My classmate Chris ended up finding it online for less than two bucks, so a couple of us gave it a shot.

The 10% Solution teaches writers how to cut their manuscripts by searching out words indicating weak sentence structure and rewriting for stronger, clearer sentences.

In my favorite segment, the author points out that writers force ourselves to be schizophrenic in order to serve the dual functions of writing and editing:

Writers divide their brains into the art department, which creates the stuff, and the marketing department, which peddles it. The art department is subdivided into creative (right brain) and editorial (left brain). Writers are schizophrenic.

Successful writers separate their brain functions deliberately and at will. They write with passion, from the head and the heart. They write fast. They dispassionately edit what they've written as if somebody else wrote it.

Later in the book, he calls this a "deliberate schizophrenic state", and that analogy pinpoints one reason the editing process is so difficult. Most aspiring writers understand that we have to "get distance" from a piece to edit it effectively, but I hadn't considered that I might also be getting distance from myself. When we write, we reach for emotions--maybe something we've experienced, or maybe with intuitive empathy--and finishing a scene, a chapter, a story, gives us both a sense of satisfaction and a sense of catharsis for those emotions we've dredged up.

If we can't get enough distance from the "self" that wrote it, editing might feel like denying that experience. That's why the "deliberate schizophrenic state" makes so much sense to me. In order to edit objectively, we have to cut ourselves off from the self that has emotional connection to that piece. That can be really difficult, and it requires practice, and time. Just like time is the greatest healer, it's also the best thing to create distance for a piece.

But what if you don't have time?

If you're like me, when you finish a piece, you Must Do Something Right Now to start polishing it. One thing I like about The 10% Solution is that I can edit a piece right away. It gives me the ability to look at sentences out of context, which severs the connection to story. (I've also heard of people reading backwards, sentence by sentence, to the same effect. I've never been able to do that.)

By searching for "ly", we can judge whether that particular adverb is necessary within that sentence, and then jump to the next without ever having to read more than a sentence. It's a great exercise in objectivity to edit this way, because we don't get caught up in the emotion, in the current of the story. It's just words. I was able to cut about 1,000 words of an 8,600 word short story using this method.

The method's strength is limited to the technical level, but I think the idea of a deliberate schizophrenic state goes beyond simply editing your words. Where being "schizophrenic" helps the most is in getting feedback from other people. It's easy to slip into "writer" mode and cling to the piece when getting a critique, but the distance of the "editor" mode will dampen the emotional connection, sort of like laughing with people rather than being laughed at.

While I certainly do not suggest cultivating schizophrenia, I think we as writers do need to learn to wear many different hats. I recommend the ones below for both fashion and usefulness.

The Writer Hat

The Editor Hat

The Marketer Hat

The "I'M PUBLISHED" Party Hat
(by Santiago)

Have you used The 10% Solution? How far along are you with your writerly schizophrenia? What helps you get distance from a piece?

New Short Story?

sakurazawa@gmail.com (Lauren "Scribe" Harris) — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 20:07:00 +0000

Working on a new short story.

I'm as shocked as anyone. The first words came to me in the car, and I started writing it down at lunch. I got about 500 words, and to prove that I'm not lying (because I know you don't believe me), here is the first page of my totally unedited short story, about monsters, music, and Shinto exorcisms.

***********

I imagine Kamiki Ryunosuke would play Hiroki well.

I always said Hiroki Satou figured out whatever he laid his hands on, whether that was stringed instruments, the electronic locks on our high school's AV Room, or exorcism manuals; the day Aaron Nguyen appeared on the soccer field with his head smashed in, Hiroki used all three.

"Ghosts are bad enough," he said, talking around the cigarette he'd bought off the science teacher, careless of the ash falling on the lapel of his school blazer. "Asian ghosts are fucking terrifying."

And with murder as the sure reason for Aaron's death, a ghost was basically guaranteed.

I rolled my eyes. There were a few things he still didn't get about American English--prepositions, articles, idioms like "you can't have your cake and eat it too", which, if I thought too hard about it, didn't make any goddamn sense to me either--but I took personal pride in the fact that, by the end of sophomore year, he'd perfected the vast and varied usage of the word "fuck". Sure, he'd done all the memorizing and mistake-making, but I wiped a lot of spit off our desks just teaching him how to pronounce the "f", so I'm entitled to some credit.

Hiroki flipped the page in a book filled with low-res crime-scene photographs, all claiming to have been some paranormal connection. I waved away smoke, glancing across the brick courtyard separating us from the soccer field, which was now cordoned off with flimsy, taxi-yellow caution tape. The priest and half the nuns all clustered around it, clutching their rosaries and shaking their heads.

"Kay," I said. "So what's Aaron Nguyen's vengeful spirit going to do--strangle students with Mac cables? Program a continuous loop of Justin Beiber into the PA system?"

Hiroki smirked, glancing up at me through his lashes, eyes glittering in that deeply mischievous way that had first attracted me to him. I tried not to notice the 9am sunlight stealing through the filigree of leaves next to the chapel, catching the tawny skin and lighting his eyes to eerie amber. I'd given up on him years ago, right around the time I hit 5'10" and he stubbornly refused to get any taller than 5'7", but he was too goddamn pretty for his own good sometimes.

Like half the girls in our class, I'd been in love with Hiroki since sixth grade, when he'd transferred from his school in Arashiyama, Japan, to Millroad Academy--the only middle school in North Carolina with its own Starbucks. Probably the only middle school in the entire South with one. The fact that "the South" didn't include Florida was a matter of intense confusion for Hiroki, and was one of those cultural details he held as evidence that American education was inferior to Japanese, along with the fact that, at 12, we hadn't even started algebra, and we didn't know what the fuck a lesser panda was.

The day Hiroki transferred, he'd spoken enough English to answer a stat-sheet of questions almost correctly: favorite color--blue; favorite sport--soccer; favorite animal--the lesser panda. Even the teacher had to Google it, and it was so cute and new that the class had fallen in love and insisted it become the class mascot.

To me, Hiroki was cute and new. I'd stared at those dark, mischievous eyes, those long eyelashes and high cheekbones, that slim neck disappearing into our school's regulation green polo, and immediately decided to hurl myself in front of an SUV if he didn't like me. He must have been hot-shit in Japan, too, because he was an arrogant little fuckhead, even if he couldn't say "Carolina".

I'd heard Japanese people were supposed to be polite and shy, but Hiroki put his feet inside his desk and leaned back in his chair with a Nintendo DS, the Japanese version of a new Pokemon game, and a bad-boy grin that said "I am a Pokemon Master--please, let me rape you in the ass". His prowess with Pokemon earned him instant, reverent popularity. He also had a penchant for cussing in Japanese when he lost.

"K'SAGH!" is what it sounded like to me, and it means 'shit'. By the end of the year, everyone in class was saying it.

Fuck the lesser panda. Hiroki was our mascot.

Luck 7 Writing Challenge

sakurazawa@gmail.com (Lauren "Scribe" Harris) — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 04:33:00 +0000

Adam Gaylord and Darci Cole BOTH tagged me in the Luck 7 Writing Challenge, which originated at the Fiction and Film writing blog, by Kate Larkindale.

1. Go to page 77 of your current MS.
2. Go to line 7.
3. Copy down the next 7 lines, sentences, or paragraphs - and post them as they're written. No cheating.
4. Tag 7 authors.
5. Let them know.

Here are seven paragraphs from "The Mark of Flight", which takes place at a back-country inn Arianna finds herself at after being kidnapped by her foreign tutor, Markmaster Tashda.

"I require a bath," she snapped, but the tremor in her voice belied the haughty tone.

"I require a word," he said, "and then I’ll call for a basin."

Arianna breathed in raggedly and kept her mouth shut. A basin indeed. Her body screamed for a full tub of hot water to soak away the soreness, but she had already dared too much today to push him further. She would hear what he had to say, and then make her need clearer. "Very well."

Tashda gestured for her to sit on the edge of the bed. She watched him a moment, distrust thick in her mouth, but despite wanting to keep as much distance between herself, Tashda, and the bed as possible, she crossed stiffly to the uneven mattress. It gave an unexpected crunch under her, but she put the question of what the dirty muslin contained out of her mind as Tashda drew nearer. Promise or not, if he so much as touched her, she would scream.

"Before the evening is through," he said, "twenty seven of my men will return to this very inn."

It was so far from what she had expected him to say. Twenty seven men. Arianna became suddenly, violently dizzy. What did that mean--soldiers, retainers? Was he Centoreinian Nobility? Arianna's fingers clenched in the mattress, her heart pounding in her throat as the prospect of his forcing her into bed became exponentially more plausible. But it didn't make total sense, for even if he did drag her back to Centoren and marry her, Rizellen would never acknowledge the ceremony. And the likelihood of Arianna producing a child when her own mother had struggled through so many miscarriages was low enough to preclude his gaining power that way. But if he meant soldiers...

Arianna swallowed, trying to calm her pounding heart. Tashda, with his charisma and fine words, could easily lead hundreds of men. And would have, she realized, if he'd intended to kidnap the Princess of Rizellen. She forced the pace of her breathing to slow and looked into his eyes with all the distaste she felt.

"Am I to be impressed?"

*****

I'm pleased with how the seven paragraphs contained a single beat. I wonder if I couldn't make all of this tighter. Then again, I always wonder that.

I'm tagging:
1. Michelle Ristuccia
2. Adryn Henard
3. Bryan Lincoln
4. Tee Morris
5. Justin Macumber
6. Rebecca Niles
7. Cat Rambo

Interactive Landscape

sakurazawa@gmail.com (Lauren "Scribe" Harris) — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 17:33:00 +0000

Speaking of interacting with the landscape, check out this
kick-ass table from Jailmake studio! I want one with catnip.

In Cat Rambo's Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Story class, our homework was to write a scene of no more than 500 words during which our characters were to do one of the following things:

Wake up
Go to sleep
Prepare a meal
Eat a meal
Spend a large sum of money
Work at his/her profession

That may not have been the choices exactly, but it's the general idea. I wrote my scene (below), and when we came back to class the following week, Cat explained that the reason behind doing one of these scenes was to have the character engage with the world they live in.

Worldbuilding is a key element to all writing, but most pointedly to genre fiction, where the landscapes are often very different from our own, or similar to our own, but with key alien elements. The difficulty is not in creating that world, but in showcasing it through writing. With this exercise, Cat gave us a method for showcasing the worldbuilding: creating scenes or scenarios in which the characters interact with the world around them.

I realize I've done this before. In THE MARK OF FLIGHT, what started out as a scene during which Arianna, her mother, and a gaggle of noblewomen were weaving favors for a festival the following day, all the while having a discussion about Arianna's future marriage prospects, turned into a scene in which the women were participating in a sport that incorporated not only an allusion to the world's magic system, but showcased the fashion, character, and values of the upper class society. The conversation they had didn't change at all, just the trappings and level of excitement.

Instinctively, I knew it was a better scene, but I didn't know why. Thanks to Cat's class, I have that explanation. By giving the characters something to do what was unique to their world, I could make the scene serve several purposes: getting out important information through the conversation, and showcasing the world and society through the interaction with the physical landscape, and HOW it's done.

Following is the scene I wrote for Cat Rambo's class, involving two dragon-riders named Howell and Giddeon.

*******************************************

Howell was dirty, bruised and buzzing when he dragged himself to his quarters and shut the door on the last twenty hours. Most nights, the liquid beams of the desert moon spilled through the window, but not tonight. He'd dammed them up behind the casement's steel bombardment shield, which he’d cranked shut that morning just in case there was any truth to the raid reports.

Which, of course, there had been.

Now, the squat room was dark but for the tarnished illumination of a dragons-eye globe sunk into the wall. Mottled splotches of oxidization on the orb’s surface forced the amber light into a filigree pattern on the claw-marked floor, shifting like the protean shadows of leaves in an oncoming storm. They didn’t use that light much, but Giddeon must have left it on for him, for what good it would do. Which was, in fact, very little.

Curtains of shadow hung on the contours of their heavy wooden bed-boxes, and Howell squinted at the much-abused floor, picking his way around disassembled blasters, half-repaired combat leathers, and the other hazards his Shanlori had left.

Giddeon's figure made an irregular range of angles against the far wall of his bed-box, one pale, wiry arm slung over the side and boneless with sleep. A twang of loneliness fell flat in the cacophony of Howell’s abused body parts; in Giddeon’s situation, he probably couldn’t have waited up either. But it was still annoying to face the evening by himself.

He shucked tortured gloves and mucky boots, stripped out of sweat-lined canvas and leather. The musk of the stables still clung to his clothes, and the half-flask of scale-oil spattered across his boots did not improve the consistency of caked-on dust and dragon-dung, but he couldn't spare the energy to take care of it now. He rinsed his body in the basin by the door, pulled the tie from his storm of black curls, and pulled on the shirt and shanks least in need of a wash.

His own bed-box was packed with the artifacts of that morning’s chaos. Howell swallowed against the knot in his throat, chest clenching in an unreasonable reaction of despair. He was too tired to clear it off. He was too tired for almost anything.

Howell climbed over the side of Giddeon's box and fought his way under the quilts. The Shanlori grunted a greeting, or maybe a protest--it was hard to tell--and Howell stretched out on the sunken cushion at his back. Lights flashed beneath his eyelids. His muscles vibrated and twitched, as though his body refused to acknowledge the fight was over, refused to drop its guard. Giddeon's ribcage swelled and shrank against his back, reminding Howell that he had only lost a battle, and not everything. He had not lost his dragon. He had not lost his Shanlori. And that was almost good enough.

The dragon-eye light flickered once, and went out, finally giving up its own protracted fight.

HELLHOUND - A Snippet

sakurazawa@gmail.com (Lauren "Scribe" Harris) — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 05:01:00 +0000

Aside from putting myself on a diet, I've put HELLHOUND on a diet. I just had too many things going on in that story, especially after I added in a new antagonistic group. A tertiary character and her subplot got hacked out, and I shifted the storyline to show more of where Helena came from, so the contrast between the gang-like lifestyle of her upbringing and the "normal" college atmosphere she's shoved into becomes more pronounced.

In the title, I promised a snipped, so here it is. Please try to contain your excitement. I know it's difficult. Fanmail can be sent to youseriouslythinkigetfanmail@gmail.com.

****
Chapter Two

I want Christian McGrath to do the covers for all
of my novels. Dear God, she's clothed! And
not posing! Incidentally, he also did the cover of
Thieftaker, by my friend David B. Coe.

Atlanta, Georga was the most depressing city Helena had ever seen. Maybe she was just too used to the smells of sea-breeze and sun-baked asphalt, but the grimy streets of Atlanta smelled...homeless. At least, this part of the city did. Sulphur, urine, and desperate unhappiness clung to the gutters, mingling with the scent of trash bags, which overflowed from alley ways and were almost indistinguishable from the heaps that actually were homeless souls, curled in whatever place would cradle them away from the drizzling rain at 4:30 AM.

Not that Helena had any right to judge. Because of her—or was it thanks to her? Hard to say anymore—the Hellhounds, too, had become homeless.

Still, her gut twisted in guilt as she and Cai walked past those breathing bundles, weighed down with convenience store shopping bags full of food for her pack. She repressed the absurd urge to hide the bags, to deny that she was passing these people by because the couldn't help them--even if she wanted to. She turned her head toward the buildings and study them so she didn’t have to look. Their destination was the bus station, which was a slab of asphalt and steel-girded concrete crouching beneath the tan and gray towers.

Somehow, the rain and wind still made it past these giants of concrete. Half of them were new, with glistening steel and tinted windows, but the rest were grungy in a way that the rain didn't wash away, their concrete hems sucking up dirt like the cuffs of Helena's jeans. Through the drizzle, the city was hazy and slick as an eel, but the sidewalk was gritty, doused with bottom-of-the-coffee-cup sludge.

Beside her, Cai inclined his head to the intermittent beads of rain shattering over the bill of his Miami Dolphins cap. At 17, Cai was nearly as tall as his father Eamon, but not yet broad or scarred. Eamon had skin like cinnamon, with a close-trimmed beard shaped around his lips, and a wide, flat nose. Cai looked like his mother, Beth--a deep, rosy brown that contrasted with their Hellhound tattoos, long curling eyelashes, and slender throats. Cai didn't like being called pretty, but he was, even with a black eye and his clothes in need of several washings. Her little brother, in everything but blood.

Helena hiked up the bags cutting into her palms and stepped closer to Cai, using his height as a shield from the rain. He bumped her shoulder and Helena’s boot splashed into the polluted concrete creek-bed. She gave a squawk, aiming a swing at the back of Cai's knee with her shopping bag. He grinned and stepped out of the way.

His smile came easily as a human, whether he was wrestling with Helena for control over the radio station or leaping at police officers under the compulsion of Gwydhain's spell. The latter, at least, was over.

They passed beneath a breezeway connecting buildings on either side of the street, and Helena listened for sounds of life, peered through the hazy gray city for early risers or late returners-home. They were infrequent, raincoats fluttering dull and gray as pigeon wings. They mounted the top of a hill, and the bus depot came into view. A knot of people was beginning to form outside the distant station, and even from a distance, Helena noted which ones were armed, which ones were drunk, and that the two groups had a menacing amount of overlap. Jesus, but Atlanta took itself seriously.

Well, hopefully everyone would keep their pistols and switchblades to themselves for the duration of the ride. They would, if they knew what was good for them. Usually, folks took one look at either Morgan, or Eamon, or Rodolfo, and backed the hell off anyway.

Helena's stomach grumbled. Since last night, no amount of food had seemed to fill her up. It had something to do with using magic, she was sure, but her body was desperately craving something that the packets of crackers and cookies from the rest-stops had not replenished. She dug inside one of her rain-dappled bags, just as a man slid from a taxi ahead of them and started walking toward the station. He looked like a business man, except his neck was rail-thin, and the close-shaved hair on his head had subtle patterns razored into it.

"Hel," Cai muttered, his eyes remained placidly on the sidewalk, though a muscle in his jaw jumped, like he wanted to bite.

"Ten-four, puppy," she said back, still digging in the bag for the tube of powdered donuts she knew was in there. "Shit. That dumbass cashier put them at the bottom.” She wriggled the package from beneath a mountain of jerky. "Look at them--they're all crumbly." She brandished the donuts, which had split and crumbled in places to reveal yellow cake.

"Big deal," Cai said, playing along. He clicked absently at his cell phone. "They'll taste the same."

"No. They won’t. The whole point of powder donuts is eating them whole. It's scientifically proven that they taste better that way." She popped open the package, training her eyes on her target.

"Oh, right. In that same study where they proved Oreos are better when eaten deconstructed." Cai's fingers hit SEND, and he slid the phone back in his pocket.

"You saw that documentary too, huh?" Her eyes locked on the man's heels, his twitching fingers, and she felt Cai bristle next to her.

How had the guild found them so quickly? They hadn't been followed--otherwise, why wouldn't they have attacked at one of the many rest-stops on the road from Miami? Maybe Hellhounds were just obvious to someone who knew what to look for. A big group of tattooed men and women, using public transport, with less than a backpack apiece. They did look a bit different, magically—they shouldn’t have been recognizeable.

Her fingers clenched around the package, wrapper crinkling, donuts collapsing in her grip. If they were going to be attacked, it would be on her terms. Not like last time. Not like her mother. Anger swelled in her chest, and Cai must have smelled it; he walked so close that his shoulder bumped hers, the corners of food containers in his bag smacking into the back of her leg.

"Well, I guess I can't eat these now," she said.

The tension in the sorcerer's back gave him away. Just as they drew even with an alley between two buildings, the sorcerer spun, and Helena hurled the package. A gun glinted in his hands, rising to shoulder level just as the donuts smacked the sorcerer across the forehead, spraying crumbs of white powder that caught in his eyebrow rings and poured down his shoulder in white streaks. He jerked his head in surprise, blinking away the crumbs caught in his eyelashes, but the shock didn't stall him for long.

A bullet clicked into the chamber of the Walther PPK--the same flashy model favored by the Demon Hunters of the Miami Sorcerers Guild. Like they all thought they were James Fucking Bond. Helena adjusted her gaze, let it slip a bit and blur over him, and the bright flow of magic flared out from his gun, over the tattoos of teardrops on his face and Chinese characters on his neck.

"Hel," Cai snapped. "Don't feed the wildlife."

The pair of them dove behind the alley wall, just as the Sorcerer fired.

Fit 2 Write

sakurazawa@gmail.com (Lauren "Scribe" Harris) — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 18:45:00 +0000

High School me in all my oblivious
athleticism. Seriously, look at my arms!

I haven't been blogging as often as usual lately, and part of that is because I've been devoting more of my personal time to fitness.

About a month ago, I reached the top of the flight of stairs I have to climb at work, heart pounding, breath sharp, and realized that they cardiovascular health had gone the way if the zombie (dead, and poorly revived into a rapidly-decomposing example of resurrection-gone-wrong). Like many people I know, I was athletic in high school - I did dance for a number of years and was also a member of my high school's crew team. (Take a look at the picture on the right. Hard to believe I was dissatisfied then.)

As I collapsed into my rolley-chair, hand over my heaving bosom, I made a decision: I needed to take control of my health again.

Confession: I've always sucked at diets.

I grew up with a combination of home-cooked meals and processed foods, and never really bothered to think about what I was putting into my body. Even when I got old enough to feel the pressure to diet, I never really managed it. I suck at denying myself things I want, especially when they're readily available, and when your brother is as picky as mine, there's usually at least one unhealthy option. I can't blame it all on my brother, though. I was doing dance or crew during high school, so even though I wasn't totally satisfied with my body, it didn't stop me from eating pizza on Fridays or guzzling peach soda at Adryn's house after school.

When my family started doing the Sugar Buster's diet, my world sort of...broke. The plates of understanding and forced ignorance sort of shifted into place. I'd known I wasn't eating right, but I had very little concept of just how much sugar was in all the things I consumed daily. I wasn't 100% on this diet like my mom was, but I actually stuck to it pretty well my freshman year of college, when I rode my bicycle around campus and kept my weight down to a toned 115. I fell off the wagon around sophomore year, but I learned two important things on that diet:

1. There is sugar in almost everything processed, and you have to learn to look for it.
2. If it's there, and I want it, I can't resist.

I've hopped on and off the diet bandwagon since then, and generally it's that "knowing I'm on a diet makes me want bad things more" mentality that has me slinking off into the wagon ruts.

As a person with a desk-job and a desk-hobby, I know my diet is going to be important in keeping and maintaining my weight. Even in the past two weeks I've been on my current diet (eating organic, whole foods and steering clear of wheat-based and processed foods as much as possible) I've noticed a difference in my energy level.

Seriously, something like this would have to happen to get
me moving going faster than a light jog. (No idea who this
photo is by; please let me know if it's yours!)

Confession: I hate running.

I've had problems with my hip and lower back since about high school, and the pain has made it difficult to do impact exercises such as running. Being a rather busty specimen is another hindrance in that regard, since finding a sports bra that actually holds Barnes & Noble* in place is pretty challenging.

I'm just going to put this out there: I'm lazy. I can always find something I want to do rather than work out, and it's usually pretty easy to find an excuse not to go to the gym...

...so I took away my excuses. I hired a personal trainer. Yes, it's expensive, but if it wasn't expensive, I would have a much harder time forcing myself to get my ass down to the gym. By the time I've gone through my 24 lessons, I'm sure I'll have seen results enough that I want to continue coming to the gym on my own. I'll have made it a habit.

So far, I've dropped about five pounds, and shed 1/2"-1" in all four of the measurement areas (bust, waist, hip, thigh), and have noticed a difference in my cardiovascular health. Raven and Skrybbi independently commented that my face looks thinner and my arms look more toned.

photo by maniwa_pa

Confession: I've got to have someone to hold me accountable.

I have fitness goals that I'm working to, which is helpful, but the terror of not looking like Angelina Jolie in my Dragon*Con costume is a little too remote to light a fire under my ass right now.

Just like making goals and deadlines has helped me with my writing, I figured it would help me with my weight-loss goals as well. So what did I do?

I made a new podcast, of course!

Introducing: Fit 2 Write Podcast: Three writers weighing in, because calories count as much as words.

Learning to Write Short - Post # 1

sakurazawa@gmail.com (Lauren "Scribe" Harris) — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 20:50:00 +0000

Not sure if want (write short).

Since today's post involves a discussion of length, let's just get this out of the way: that's what she said.

Good.

When it comes to writing, I think we all have a natural length we're comfortable with, a sort of natural pace, scope, and idea-size. The ideas that appeal to us, and the extent to which we develop them are both indications of what format and length our writing will take. In other words, some writers are natural short-storyists (SS) and some are natural novelists (NN).

The hostesses of Pendragon Variety, for example, would break down thusly:

SHORT STORYISTS
Mica
Skrybbi
Rosemary

NATURAL NOVELISTS
Scribe
Adryn
Raven

Have you ever been in a group and written from a prompt, only to be shocked at how vastly different each person's idea was? It's funny how these things start, how people's minds work in such different ways. Skrybbi and I, for example, came up with a story idea while watching a documentary. The next day, we were shocked to find out what the other had come up with.

She fashioned the perfect scene to capture just the edge of the concept and leave the audience wondering, I started brainstorming the who, the why, the how, and the what-does-it-mean-for-society. I'm less interested in the inherent "whoa-factor" of the concept than I am in how it affects people, whereas Skrybbi likes to set things out with no explanation, and let the reader imagine their own effects. She doesn't want more than that. The untapped potential of that drives me nuts.

I want to write a story based on this picture.

I have trouble coming up with ideas small enough to really be considered a short story. I managed it a few times by accident, but more often than not my ideas spiral out of control in terms of scope and scale and I end up with a conflict that can't be resolved in under 20,000 words, or a world I can't do justice to. I would say this is because I prefer longer works, and so that is what I'm compelled to create, which leads to a lack of experience with short-story-sized conflict.

I've had this problem of writing short stories for a while now. I used to write short stories, before I started working on a book in earnest [read: ten-ish years ago]. Now, I find it difficult to plan short stories. Sometimes they happen without planning, but I'd like to be able to know for sure that I can come up with an idea, plot it, and execute it. I don't want to just leave it up to chance.

So I signed up for Cat Rambo's Fantasy and Science Fiction Short Story workshop, which Cat generously bartered for, since I'm not in a position to afford the price right now. I'm really hoping this will help me shore up the areas where I'm deficient (plotting small) and recognize the areas I have strength in, and give me a good boost up the ladder. I'm already having a great time writing the practice vignettes for class.

I've submitted "Steam Kids" for workshopping this Saturday. We'll see if it's got as many problems as I think. Hopefully, with other people to point out where it's broken, I can fix it and have something strong that can stand on its own.

The Bookkeeper (Flash Fiction)

sakurazawa@gmail.com (Lauren "Scribe" Harris) — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 02:11:00 +0000

(artist unknown) The Poet

The night my grandfather disappeared, the R.B. burned Coraline Library to the ground, and since then, I haven't spoken a word of my own. When I started talking at the age of two, my mother cried in relief because she thought I didn't have the gift.

But she'd been wrong.

I only know this because she wrote it down. Places, faces, images, sounds: they don't stay with me long. There's no room for them there, in among the words. Creak, dunk, thrush, fit. Affable, shrapnel, firebrand, tor. Tickertape snatches of things once thought and recorded, inked on paper, branded, bound, and handed down; they have stamped themselves on the inside of my skull, the permanent impressions of steel typewriter bars going click, click, click.

"I cannot live without books." Thomas Jefferson.

I wish that were so for me, because I can't speak without them. I have a million lines reeling through my head like newspapers dashing through machinery, flashing ink-stained underskirts in the stamping-dance of the printing press. Ah, that paper maiden. Corporeal, no--but constructed of a billion words. She is knowledge and ideas. A literal, lingual muse.

It would be one thing to die without reading a chapter of some non-reality--to be unable to measure your own life's sorrow against the imaginings of what could or might be. Torture, to be certain, for humans are creatures that thrive by measuring and comparing, sharing and communicating--if we can't do this, then we do not know how to live. If we can't find the edges of what we know to be normal, we can't expand and dream beyond. Without information, we do not know how to be human.

Without words, we are powerless.

Which is why my gift is also a curse.

*****

This was originally intended as an opening for a longer piece, which I've decided--for the moment--not to write. I liked the beginning, and I thought it stood on its own as a concept, if not a story.

George Lucas - The Phantom Audience

sakurazawa@gmail.com (Lauren "Scribe" Harris) — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 23:23:00 +0000

I've been a Star Wars fan since I was a little girl. In middle school, one of my walls was a collage of posters, pictures, and fan-art, I had a one-foot model of the Millenium Falcon suspended from my ceiling, and enough extended universe books to build a desk.

Recently, George Lucas announced that he was stepping back from making feature films because of the negative reaction he continues to receive from fans about alterations he's made to the Star Wars films. The Guardian cited a NY Times interview with Lucas, in which he said the following:

"On the internet, all those same guys that are complaining I made a change are completely changing the movie. I'm saying: 'Fine. But my movie, with my name on it, that says I did it, needs to be the way I want it.'"

"Why would I make any more," Lucas says, "when everybody yells at you all the time and says what a terrible person you are?"

[Insert appropriate joke about going to the Toshi station to pick up power converters here]

After my initial eye-roll, I had two reactions:

1. Lucas, as the creator, has the power to do whatever he wants with his franchise, but should have been prepared for a negative backlash.

2. Lucas's reaction to audience backlash suggests that he views his audience as witnesses rather than collaborators.

As a creator, I find Lucas's reaction both understandable and problematic. I understand the desire to go back, to tweak things and try to make them more like what you see in your head, but once a work has made an impact on society, the time to make changes has passed.

I'm a firm subscriber to the belief that art belongs to the audience, not the creator. It's is going to be true no matter how much the author wants to control, revise, or retract the original work, because experiencing art is personal, and what we come to understand through that experience weaves itself into our ideas of who we are and where we fit into the world. Both parties come out of it changed, having created the experience inside their heads as something meaningful and indicative of self, even if it's as simple as "Anakin is way more annoying than Luke -- I didn't think that was possible".

While a work of art reflects the audience more than the artist, it is also important not to take the artist entirely out of the equation. Art is the product of the ideas and values of the artist, and an audience resonates with the evidence of those ideas and values, even if their interpretations are completely different. Intention has nothing to do with it. They may want to know what the artist "meant", but only because they have already decided what the work means to them, and want to find out how they compare, and where that places them in the scheme of society/morality/the bright center of the universe.

Whether the intention and interpretation turn out to be the same is irrelevant. For example, no matter how many times Tolkein stated that The Lord of the Rings was not meant as a Christian allegory, the audience member who interprets it that way isn't wrong. He sees the parallels in his own minds, and those parallels become part of the meaning of The Lord of the Rings for him, part of his experience. It has somehow strengthened or created pathways of thinking about the world in relation to something that matters to him.

Respect of an audience's reaction is valuable to an artist as well, because it allows her to grow and reevaluate herself. By deciding whether the interpretation of the audience is or isn't what she intended, an artist can create her own meaning and understanding of self through the reaction.

Unfortunately, Lucas didn't get the chance to visit the Vader-cave on Dagobah for a little self-reflection. In a 2004 interview, he said:

[T]o me, [the original version of the trilogy] doesn’t really exist anymore. It’s like this is the movie I wanted it to be, and I’m sorry you saw half a completed film and fell in love with it.

Whoa. Stop the Bantha.

Deriding fans for falling in love with something you created, even if you see it as incomplete, is rude enough to inspire Force-lightning. If there's anything Lucas should try to take back, it's that. Let's pretend the fans shot first.

To claim that the original version of the trilogy no longer exists is to say that this whole collaborative sub-culture built around the works, and the meanings derived from the experience of it, are invalid. To Lucas, the film may have been "half completed", but it was released to the public - with or without his permission - and millions fell in love.

He often claimed to have been disappointed, and yet something kept him going after A New Hope, and I doubt it was the desire to keep producing "half completed" films.

Image from nakedglitter on tumblr

When John Green wrote Looking for Alaska, I'm sure he was proud of it. Later on, however, he stated that he no longer agreed with what he'd set out to write in that book, particularly because some fans pointed out the unfair treatment of a female character. Rather than going back and making changes, however, Green used that change in philosophy to grow as an artist. He wrote another book -- Paper Towns -- in order to reexamine the parts of Looking for Alaska he no longer agreed with.

And that, in my opinion, is how it should be done.

Once a work of art has moved into the public view, it ceases to belong to the artist because each member of the audience develops his or her own unique version -- it becomes a collaboration. The audience gives the work meaning, rates its significance, and uses it to make more art and more communication and facilitate more development of self. Art doesn't just reflect one or the other, artist or audience -- it's a set of facing mirrors that reflect each other indefinitely.

Rather than treating his audience as collaborators, involved in an ongoing process of development, and allowing the original Star Wars trilogy to remain as it originally was, he treated his audience as witnesses to his inability to move on.

Further reading: Flavorwire's Open Thread on George Lucas.

AND TO PROVE that art inspires collaboration and dialoge and change and art, I've written the following song, using the music of YouTuber gunnarolla, as a tribute to George Lucas.

How Do You Balance Your Life?

sakurazawa@gmail.com (Lauren "Scribe" Harris) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 05:48:00 +0000

How do you choose to spend your time?

My life has six categories of time expenditure:

Work
Health
Writing
Entertainment
Social Life
Sleep

I'm awesome enough to balance all six.

You hated me for about a second, didn't you? OK, stop now. I'm pretty sure it's difficult to balance more than three at once. Maybe that's just me, but let's go with it. The three I've been operating under recently are work, health, and social life. I really want to be writing, but when life gives you best friends' birthdays, you buy cake. And a round of shots. Anyway, the major difference hasn't been two nights of reckless abandon and carousing...

I've recently started back at the gym, and pretty soon, I'll be starting up a fitness podcast with a pair of really awesome guys...but there's one thing I've noticed about trying to get back in shape: it takes up a lot of time. On days when I work out, I've got less than an hour of writing time if I decide to entirely ignore my roommate. I'm not a sprint-writer, so this has been a bit tough on me. I like to binge.

Friday, I have plans in the evening, but my plans on saturday are to crawl back into my cocoon and work on my short story for Pendragon.

Which of the three are you prioritizing at the moment? Which three do you want to prioritize?

photo by patriziasoliani

Hot Mess

sakurazawa@gmail.com (Lauren "Scribe" Harris) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 23:22:00 +0000

The oft-spoken platitude "things always get worse before they get better" is especially apt when it comes to housework and writing.

You know that moment where you look around at your house/bedroom/apartment/etc. and decide you need to rearrange so that everything is more accessible, more organized, and more of a reflection of you? Well, my roommate and I did just that last weekend. Our living room was okay - we'd painted a wall and hung pictures and barn stars, but it just seemed weird to walk into our apartment and not see...books. I mean, she's a librarian and I'm, you know, a writer. Books are sort of what we do.

It would have been awesome if we could just Mary Poppins (<--honorary verb) our apartment, but just like in writing, there's no easy button. Before we could move anything, we had to PULL OUT ALL THE THINGS. By Sunday night, we'd rearranged the living room to our liking: books and knick-knacks and pictures and posters signed by Neil Gaiman and John Green...

...and the rest of the house had descended into chaos. We blamed the cats, and ignored it until Friday, by which point the kitchen...

Anyway, you get the idea. Right now, HELLHOUND is at the same point as my apartment. I've gutted it, chopped it up, and spread out the pieces. I've added characters and cut others, done away with subplots and worked in better ones. But as I fix one part of the story, another part falls off into jumbled, irreparable madness. I've hit that moment where I think everything is as messy as it's going to be, and I just need to figure out where everything goes, and what I need to fix it.

So I'm note-carding again, looking at the characters and subplots, filling up the giveaway box and making room for only what's good and necessary, only what accurately represents the story I want to tell.

Unfortunately, there are no cats to blame for this madness. Fortunately, no one else has to see it until it's ready.

As for the apartment, it's Sunday evening, and things have gotten better. I've rearranged my room, Skrybbi has built her desk, and we've done approximately 5 loads of laundry. The kitchen is no longer a war-zone, and even though my cat knocked a bottle of Kahlua onto the floor at 3AM last night, we're feeling good about how everything is shaping up.

Pendragon Variety Call for Submissions!

sakurazawa@gmail.com (Lauren "Scribe" Harris) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 20:25:00 +0000

The first issue of Pendragon Variety Literary Magazine is scheduled for release in May, and we need YOUR contributions to make it happen! This will release first as the Audio Literary Magazine, and later as an e-book.

The theme for Issue # 1 is "DRAGONS". This issue will be dedicated to the life and memory of Anne McCaffrey, so every story should include dragons in some significant way. Cyber dragons, genetically-engineered dragons, dragon mech-warriors–use your imagination. But they must be pivotal.

Deadline: March 5th

ART:

If you would like to contribute insert art Pendragon Variety Issue #1, please email PendragonVariety@gmail.com with the subject “ART SUBMISSION – Your Name” with relevant links and/or attachments.

FICTION:

Length: 100 – 5,000 words. If you have something longer, please query first – we will consider it.

What we want: From Sci-Fi to Steampunk to Sword and Sorcery, anything speculative! Reprints accepted.

What we don’t want: Anything you would be ashamed to read in front of a random selection of people from a Dragon*Con hotel lobby, including at least one person dressed as Darth Vader.

Format: A properly-formatted .doc or .rtf file

Send it to: PendragonVariety@gmail.com; with “SUBMISSION – Your Title” as the subject header.

We will discuss preferences for audio production after the acceptance of your story. At the moment, we regret that we are unable to pay our authors. If you would like to help us pay our authors, please go to the site and click on the DONATE button.

Two Flash Fictions

sakurazawa@gmail.com (Lauren "Scribe" Harris) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 06:02:00 +0000

So, my friend and fellow writing club member, Elyse, made me write flash fiction stories today. I thought, since I've been caught up in a billion projects recently and haven't had time to write a post, I'd inflict these stories upon you all! They're inspired by randomly-selected song lyrics.

Flash Fiction Piece 1

Xan slid through the dingy crowd packed between the facades of every shop on main street, carefully keeping his face covered by the high collar of his coat. The curious, milling crowd was little more than a forest of feet. Some were shod, others not, but they all scuffed over the mud-veined cobbles, trouser hems and petticoats sucking up the muck as the people in them sucked up the lies of the Benefactor.

Xan had had enough of lies, and his answer to them was in a single word, burning in his mind, on his tongue, from his pen.

Revolution.

It had taken only one word, whispered in the dark of gas-lamps, coded into the articles he wrote to extoll the Benefactor's virtue, to amass an army of bodies. It would take many thousand more to convince them to fight.

Xan made his way to the monument of the City Benefactor and took the watch from his pocket. The chain spilled out in a silky tumble of delicate gold links, tugging lightly on the clip in his waistcoat. He clicked it open, glanced at its backwards-ticking hands, and checked it against the enormous clock-tower casting a knife of shadow over the courtyard. The hands would match up in less than a minute.

The journalist lifted his head then, eyes scanning the crowd he would soon arm with the greatest weapons: words.

(I am an arms dealer/ Fitting you with weapons in the form of words.)

Flash Fiction Piece 2

The fool’s voice was a low, grating crumble of a sound, like the earth around a gravestone. The throne room was cold, soundless but for the minor lullaby he hummed under his breath. The planks were smooth on his bare feet--worn soft as velvet by the many feet dragged to and fro across them every day.

“At your pleasure, my liege,” he mocked, bowing to the throne he knew was empty. “Shall I slit his throat, my liege? Burn his family before his eyes till he begs for blinding, my liege?” He cackled, raising two spidery, knuckley hands to his own face--to the hollow sockets--and prying wide the gaps in his face, tipping forward as though staring at some tortured soul.

He cackled, danced forward with steps too practiced to need counting, and leapt onto the dais, collapsing lazily across the throne. “The king of fools sayeth…” He turned his head, slow as an owl, and stared sightlessly.

“Give him riches, ten stones in measure, and chuck him in the moat.”

(Are you blind when you’re born? Can you see in the dark? / Dare you look at a king? Would you sit on his throne?)

Specific Motivation for Characters

sakurazawa@gmail.com (Lauren "Scribe" Harris) — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 15:15:00 +0000

You may be surprised at the changes...

While doing the outlining workshop, a few of the folks tried to pass off "to be happy" as a character motivation. Sorry, folks - no dice.

It's not that "to be happy" isn't a motivation, but it's sort of the quintessential motivation, and that's the problem. When you're setting up what your character wants, it needs to be as specific as possible, because that specificity will help your character seem unique.

"To be happy" is not unique. Just like we can trace all life back to the sun (well, as far as I know), everyone is motivated by the pursuit of happiness. Does your villain want to destroy the world? Why? Because on some level, world-destruction makes that character happy, or at least satisfied.

And satisfied is like happy. For sociopaths.

Anyway.

Motivation needs to be specific, and if it's not, all the cool shit they can do doesn't matter, because we don't know why it's important. A while back, I saw a youtube video about how Disney princesses always have their "motivation establishing song." I can't find that video now, but here are some of the relevant songs:

Belle: I want adventure in the great wide somewhere...

Ariel: I want to be where the people are...

Mulan: When will my reflection show who I am inside...

Snow White: Someday my prince will come...(barf.)

Ignoring the gag-inducing passivity of the Snow White motivation (If you haven't read the "YA Cover Trends" [aka, Dead Girls on Covers] essays over on Rachel Stark's blog, Trac Changes, I command thee go read.) you can see that all four of these chicks at least know what they want, and we learn that before they have to start fighting to make it happen or, in Snow White's case, before she is rudely taken advantage of by her step mother, and then randomly sexually assaulted by some chump with a white horse and a crown, and then circumstances allow everyone else to make her dream happen.

But how does one go about figuring out a specific motivation for a character?

The way I've decided to define specific motivation is by breaking it down into two parts:

DESIRE + METHOD

Desire is whatever it is your character wants. This should be the thing that pulls them toward the ending, the thing that they want to fight for. For example, the two main characters of HELLHOUND:

Helena: to gain true freedom and peace for herself and her pack.

Jaesung: to take care of the people he cares about (the way his father didn't).

Method is the course of action your character plans, must, or eventually decides to take in order to achieve their goals. To know this, you must know first what is keeping them from achieving their desires. Again, I'm going to use the cast of HELLHOUND as an example.

What stands between desire and:

Helena: Gwydhain is hunting the Hellhounds, the Sorcerers Guild is hunting her, and Jaesung's attention/suspicion puts her in danger of revealing her secret.

Jaesung: Helena won't tell him what's going on, so he can't protect her from it. He's still in school and doesn't make enough money yet to help resolve his father's debt.

So, what's their course of action, given these obstacles?

Helena: protect the book with the Hellhound creation spell, learn enough magic to defeat Gwydhain, keep her autonomy from the Sorcerers Guild, and keep her true nature hidden from her roommates.

Jaesung: find out what's going on with Helena so he can support her...and to make sure she's not endangering anyone else he cares about; finish his degree in applied mathematics and get a good job so he can take care of his family financially.

From these pieces of information, we can decide what each character's specific motivation is. For now, I'm just going to pick the most important obstacle.

THIS IS WHAT IT SHOULD LOOK LIKE

Helena: wants to gain true freedom and peace for herself and her pack BY protecting the book with the Hellhound creation spell and learning enough Magic to defeat Gwydhain.

Jaesung: wants to take care of the people he cares about (the way his father didn't) BY finding out what's going on with Helena so he can support her, or at least make sure she's not endangering anyone else.

CHARACTER wants to achieve DESIRE by taking a COURSE OF ACTION.

I don't think your characters' initial courses of action need to be successful - Helena fails both to protect the book and to learn enough Magic to defeat Gwydhain, and so must come up with an alternate solution. I'm not going to tell you if Jaesung is successful or not. You'll just have to wait and see...

What is your main character's specific motivation? Is their initial course of action successful? What's their next course of action?

Why Flaws and Motivations Matter More

sakurazawa@gmail.com (Lauren "Scribe" Harris) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 21:14:00 +0000

What's that? I can't hear you over my AWESOME!

Have you ever created a character so sublimely kickass you can't believe they somehow rocketed straight from your subconscious?

He's a white-haired elf who doesn't realize he's a half-demon, and comes back to save the undeserving village that ran him off, only to die a slow and painful death (with an epic death-speech that would make Mercutio weep in a fit of jealous awe) to teach us all a lesson in tolerance. Speaking of tolerance, he's gay! With a demon. Isn't he awesome?

No. He's not. Maybe the above description intrigues you, and that's not a bad thing. Most likely, you're rolling your eyes. How do I know? Because I haven't given you a reason to care. It isn't that there's anything wrong with being a soliloquizing half-elf-half-demon still fighting to protect the ones that would have him killed (and getting some action on the side), but as it stands he's boring.

Here's the deal: anyone can heap awesome skills and powers onto a character. Anyone can throw a sad back-story and a tragic ending at a character. Anyone can give their character a controversial trait. (May I add, here, that making a character gay is not a quirk, flaw, or free-pass on making your character unique?) I can't embolden, underline, italicize, and capitalize the following enough: NONE OF THIS MATTERS WITHOUT FLAWS OR MOTIVATION.

Stories aren't about how awesome a character is. It's about the problems--internal and external--those characters overcome, and why they overcome them. Sure, how they overcome those problems is an important aspect of the plot, but it's in the "why" that we readers find a reason to care.

Looking for even more tips on writing? Go check out freelance editor CA Marshall's blog for her special Editing Advent contest - you could win a free 10 page critique from someone who knows what she's talking about.

Writing Romance - What About MY Needs!?

sakurazawa@gmail.com (Lauren "Scribe" Harris) — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 17:31:00 +0000

Writing Podcasts seem to have a certain synchronicity for me--when I'm struggling with something in my own writing, I hear it discussed in a podcast soon thereafter. It's not even that I seek out the episodes so much as I work my way though them, and the episode I need just happens to be there. That's happened to me with all three of my favorite writing podcasts: The Dead Robots Society, I Should Be Writing, and Writing Excuses. That's what I hope my own podcast, Pendragon Variety, can do for other aspiring writers.

The other day, I was listening to the Writing Excuses podcast, and heard something that seemed like common sense, but which I sometimes lose track of when writing romance between two characters. I'm not talking about romance novels (not that there's anything wrong with them). I'm talking about every romance you write, and what keeps it from feeling forced--what draws your characters to each other, by proxy drawing your readers to the relationship: knowing the needs the two characters satisfy for each other.

In "The Mark of Flight", Shiro and Arianna were pretty simple to figure out. Shiro fills Arianna's need to be seen, appreciated, and loved for who she is and not because she's a princess. Arianna fills Shiro's need to be believed in, and his need to be valued as a person. Funny enough, they satisfy a very similar needs for each other, though they come from completely different backgrounds. Their romance was never really an issue for me, so when I started writing HELLHOUND, I imagined everything would fall perfectly into place.

Not so. Part of this was my fault in writing without any idea who my characters were, what motivated them, or what they even wanted. But I feel like I should have figured it out by the end of the first draft. Something wasn't quite working--it was totally unbalanced. They went from 0 to 40...then back to 10...then to 80...and then piddled along to the end. It's not because they're not both likable, interesting, developed characters. It's not because there wasn't plenty of attraction on both sides.

I knew that Jaesung was a good influence on Helena...but I couldn't quite figure out what it was about HER that made him stick around. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about when I say that, sometimes, I don't think one protagonist quite has as much to offer as the other. "Because he loves her" might be valid, but sometimes I still want a little more.

What does Bella have to offer Edward (besides the feeling that he's a horrible monster for wanting to eat her all the time)?

What does Ron give to Hermione (besides at least three reasons to cry in every book)?

What is it about Clary that makes Jace willing to brave even the possibility of incest for her? (*squick*)

Jaesung gives me that problem. When you're a 23-year-old grad student juggling lots of goslings, what's going to draw you to a girl whose most likely background is "drug mule in witness protection"? Okay. Her hot legs. At first. But when shit starts going down, there's got to be something more.

Helena tries to do everything herself. She truly believes she has something that only she can do, and that she's got to do it alone. Unfortunately, her character flaw is in her inability to look past the moment and see consequences. Because she's too afraid to think about a future she thinks is hopeless, she gets herself into a lot of trouble for making decisions that don't seem to have any foresight.

Jaesung, on the other hand, has effectively killed his ability to live in the moment by always thinking about the past, and trying to figure out how to avoid making the same mistakes as his father. He works hard at something at which he's rather mediocre to make sure he can support his mother and his future family, while relegating his passions into the "hobby" box. Of course, he enjoys them...but he's not the type of person who can let himself disappoint people.

Helena never thinks about the future. Jaesung always does. This causes tension in their relationship, to be sure, but it also gives each of them something to contribute to the other. In a way, their flaws when it comes to life in general become their strengths for each other. Helena's lack of foresight gives Jaesung the opportunity to help her find her "light at the end of the tunnel" (Oh hai, theme). Her recklessness forces him to admit what he truly cares about, whether that lets people down or not.

Because I think flaws are so important, I have to make sure they grow, but don't fix each other, because the story isn't about overcoming flaws. Like many good stories, it's about overcoming adversity despite a thousand things that are in the way, including those flaws. Helena will probably never be able to plan ahead the way Jaesung does, and I know he will always feel duty-bound to take care of everyone around him.

She'll drag him out to play in the snow at 4AM. He'll remember anniversaries. She'll remind him to take a break from doing taxes. He'll make sure they get done later. She'll hunt demons for the safety of the world. He'll make sure she doesn't do it alone.

Yeah. They're a good match.

The Four Temperaments (for You and Your Characters) - Part II - Sensing/Perceiving

sakurazawa@gmail.com (Lauren "Scribe" Harris) — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 23:58:00 +0000

Last week, I discussed how to use the sensing and intuitive distinction in characters in description and exposition. As I mentioned in that post, the largest division of temperament occurs in the method of gathering and processing information (Keirsey). The next division is within the sensing and intuitive types.

This next bit goes into the background of the distinctions, so if you’re just interested in the behavior of the SP temperament types, skip everything between the camels.

In Please Understand Me, Keirsey describes the reasoning behind the division:

The Ns...opt either for...spirituality (self actualization) or...science (powers). ... The Ss...choose either...joy (freedom to act) or...duty (social status). ...[F]eeling now distinguishes the...self-actualization motive from the thinking...power motive. ...[J]udgement (J) distinguishes the...duty motive from the...freedom motive (P).

Because intuitive (N) types experience the world in a more metaphysical way, it makes sense for the distinction to rest on whether they are thinking or feeling types, or--as Keirsey states--whether they persue self-actualization or powers (which he defines as knowledge or skills). This gives us two of the four temperaments:

NF & NT

There seems to be some disagreement over how the distinctions are made when it comes to the sensing types. In the first post in this series, there was a graphic that split up both Intuitive and Sensing types by whether they’re thinking or feeling. Considering the sensing types are mostly concerned with the facts, the experience, and the present it makes more sense to me to distinguish Sensing types based on their need (or lack of need) to make conclusions and create deadlines, or the pursuit of duty versus the pursuit of freedom.

So for the purpose of this blog series, I’m going to be using Keirsey’s distinction. Thus, the sensing temperaments are:

SP & SJ

Temperament of the Day

SP
(Sensing / Perceiving)

Dionysian

(Joy/Aesthetic)

Dionysus riding a leopard.
Like a boss.

Sensing/Perceiving types are best embodied by the idea of the free-roller. Dionysus, the Greek God of wine and general debauchery, is a great example of the independent, fun-seeking SP.

They are independent, and rather than a work ethic, these types have a play ethic.They are optimists with a strong belief in and desire for equality. SPs are impulsive, and like being impulsive. They are the heart-breakers, the epicurians, and the easily bored.

SPs don't tend to pursue goals. They may have them, but the goal itself tends to be arbitrary. They run because they feel like running, not because they want to reach a finish line. This often means they have an inexhaustable endurance in comparison to more goal-driven types, because SPs aren't looking for a finish-line. It's all about the experience. As soon as the experience stops being fun, the SP can cast aside the goal like a banana peel (which also sometimes leaves the people around them in...slippery situations).

SPs go along with rules and regulations until a crisis strikes, or until they feel their autonomy is being challenged, at which point they break for the exit like Kim Kardashian in a wedding dress.

Despite their flaws, SPs are generally well-liked for their optimism, sponteneity, and the sense of adventure they bring to every day life.

Some Suspiciously SP Characters in Fiction Are:

Falstaff (Henry V, The Merry Wives of Windsor)
Sirius Black (Harry Potter)
Ron Weasley (Harry Potter)
Howl/Howell (Howl's Moving Castle)
Menolly (Harper Hall Trilogy)

The Four Temperaments (for You and Your Characters) - Part I

sakurazawa@gmail.com (Lauren "Scribe" Harris) — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 19:58:00 +0000

Before I get into specifics of each type of temperament, it's necessary to explain a little bit about each letter combination in MTBI. If you've done Myers-Briggs before, you're probably familiar with what's known as the four dichotomies:

Extroverted / Introverted - [E / I]

Sensing / Intuitive - [S / N]

Thinking / Feeling [T / F]

Perceiving / Judging [P / J]

If you're not familiar with these, or need a refresher, there is a very concise and (as far as I'm concerned) reliable break-down available here on Wikipedia. Each person has a tendency toward one side of each dichotomy, and in the end, his or her personality type is based on the combination of those four tendencies. For example, Raven and I are both INTPs, meaning we are Introverted, Intuitive, Thinking, and Perceiving.

There are sixteen possible combinations, and of these sixteen, they are split into four major temperaments.

According to "Please Understand Me" by David Keirsey, the widest gap in temperament actually comes into play with Sensing versus Intuitive, because this deals with how information is gathered, understood, and interpreted. Considering the overwhelming significance of perception in shaping who we are, it's no surprise that the four temperaments are first divided between Sensing and Intuitive types.

S / N

The Intuitive vs. The Sensing

Within the Four Temperaments, two of the temperaments are "Sensing" types and two are "Intuitive" types. I'll break these down further later on, but I'd like to point out something I find useful for writers in terms of "sensing" versus "intuitive" characters. We can apply the information-gathering and processing methods to characters through the way we use them to show our readers information.

Description and Exposition are two of the major ways in which we give our readers information about the milieu of our story, and ideally this will all come through the lense of character. The type of things our characters notice, think about, and draw conclusions from can give us as much information about them as it does setting.

The best part? It's not something that is likely to register consciously in a reader's mind, but we as writers can utilize it to help differentiate voice.

Sensing Characters

Sensing characters are grounded in the tangible reality and will be much more in tune with their five senses. Bring your powers of descriptiveness to bear on these characters--let them be the eyes, ears, and noses of your world.
When a sensing character walks into a room, they observe everything, giving a more integrated "big picture" view. They might be more likely to notice color-schemes or mismatched furniture
Though everyone gets "hunches" about things, the sensing character is more likely to squash hunches and draw conclusions from what they can see. A sensing character might walk into a room and observe that it is quiet, that everyone is frowning, and that another character has red-rimmed eyes. From these details, the sensing character will deduce that something is rotten in Denmark. They might reference history rather than possibility.

Intuitive Characters

Intuitive characters live in the realm of thought. The are far more likely to get so caught up in a train of thought that they lose track of their surroundings.While less likely to wax eloquent about a sunset or mountain vista, the intuitive character is your ticket into the less-tangible elements of your world. You can use these characters to describe the thought processes of culture, the theory behind your magic system, or to ponder the fate of the universe and their place in it.
When an intuitive character walks into a room, he will focus his attention on a few small details, often missing the forest for the trees.
The intuitive character will "sense that something is wrong" as soon as they enter the room. They will make broader assumptions about the situation based on what is possible, and may have already come up with several theories by the time they get around to gathering the "sensing" clues.

Of course, it's not totally black and white. Sensing characters also get hunches, and intuitive characters also make observations. At least in terms of writing, I think it's fair to say that order is important.

A sensing character would notice what is present and tangible first, possibly referencing history, the things he knows:

The first thing I noticed was the silence, like someone had sucked all the usual chatter from the steel barracks. It wasn't completely unprecedented, of course--we did spend at least some of our time studying--but none of my classmates had books out, and none of them were smiling. Even Amber, whose perpetually-upturned lips gave her the mischievous look of a cat about to pounce, looked pale and grave. What the hell had happened? I scanned quickly, counting. Five. Where was Sean? My stomach turned over, and I placed my hand on the doorframe to steady myself. "Hey," I said, and though I was dreading the answer, forced myself to ask the question hanging in the air. "Where's Sean?"

Contrast that with the same scene, written from the perspective of an intuitive character:

I stopped in the doorway, repelled by the sudden, solid tension that made the air inside the room hard as a titanium slab. My friends sat trapped by that unspoken emotion, suspended in the solidity of it. Frozen. I didn't have to wait for Shannon to turn her red-rimmed eyes on me to feel the static of panic start in the back of my mind. Something awful had happened. Someone from our class, sent to the brig. Or expelled. Or dead. My stomach turned over, and I placed my hand on the doorframe to steady myself. "What happened?" I said, and only as they turned familiar faces on me did I realize who was missing. My voice barely escaped. "Where's Sean?"

Does your idea of the characters come off differently in these two exerpts? What about your feeling about what role the narrator plays in this group? Do these narrators come across as vastly different types of people?

Middle-Ground

Here's a funny anecdote for you: when Adryn first took the test in high school, she came out as an "N". However, in reading the break-down in temperaments, I had the very strong sense that, while Adryn did exhibit a lot of N traits (imaginative, and a lover of fantasy, the theoretical, and the possible), she was also very S.

Adryn's father is about as S as I am N, meaning we rest at opposite ends of the spectrum. Adryn and her father love driving around in the moutnains, seeing gorgeous scenery, eating wonderful food, and getting knee-deep in whatever present, physical experience. They seem to feel closest to each other when sharing experiences. In contrast, I feel closest to Adryn when we are imagining the possible, creating worlds and characters and concepts together, letting our minds spiral out of the realm of what is.

So I read the type descriptions for ESFP and ENFP to try to decide which one she is, to no avail. BOTH types describe her perfectly.

Frustrated, I had Adryn take the test again last week, and she scored:

S: 49%
N: 51%

"I see myself easily in both of these. It's sort of like I have two modes, and I can switch into whichever one suits me better at the time."

Moral of the anecdote: remember that your characters don't have to be completely sensing or completely intuitive. We're all a blend of both, and some of us just have split personalities.

Are you an S or N? How about your characters? How does this affect your writing?