Fiction Writing

What I've been up to

2012-11-10T16:04:00.001+00:00

Since my last post I have started (and closed) a blog dedicated to giving book reviews. The response was overwhelming and I felt that I couldn't commit to doing so many reviews whilst trying to keep some sanity and remain on par with my school-work.

I have been writing a lot though. I write all of the time. I want to work on some poetry - maybe it's a subject for another post, another time, but it is a really exciting topic. I can't wait to start my creative writing course at a university next year. The idea of a poetry slam is exciting!

Anyway, thanks for the obscure page views from different nations (hi, Russia!), and I'll try to get back on schedule this month.

Happy NaNoWriMo!

Dale

On the importance of romance

2012-07-01T19:42:00.001+01:00

Beatbox32 posted on /r/writing:

I was working through the exercises in Nancy Kress's Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint and one of them said to choose a favorite romance novel and fill out a mini-bio on the heroine. I couldn't think of any romance novel that I've ever read, let alone a favourite. That genre has never really interested me, but I'm wondering if it might be worthwhile to pick a few books up.

This is a great question! I responded with this:

I write fantasy and crime thrillers primarily. I have found that every good story I have written has a love element in it. Back when I first started writing, I had some really bad romances in the books. Then I read Twilight. (Please don't judge me)
I hated everything about it and myself for reading it, but it was the first 'romance' I read. After that I began to see that in almost every book ever written there is a strong tie to the romance genre!

Take my fantasy stories. The protagonist always seems to have a girl back home waiting for him, and it really helps to read some hardcore, pure romance novels to learn how to write these relationships and make them more believable.

In short, pick up some romance novels. I'm talking cheapo-1p-off-of-Amazon-used-copies-chick-flick novels. I read about 10 before I started writing my next crime thriller, and all of a sudden my noire story took on a whole new dimension.

I'm not saying copy the stuff in the romances you read, most of it is written like that to appeal to bored housewives who desperately need a holiday, but definitely, definitely take inspiration from them and it will help you to form more realistic characters in the future. I mean, practically everybody has a love interest in the world, and it makes sense to let the reader know about it, right?

PS. Don't read Twilight.

Any thoughts on this? Comments are open and welcome below!

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How my world is coming along

2012-06-22T22:00:00.003+01:00

So inspired by /r/worldbuilding I began to build my very own fantasy world.

Having never tried cartography before, I decided to begin by coming up with a system of gods. I created 'The Six', plus two outcast gods who are shunned by the world.

I have taken an unusual route of making elves the most hated (and feared) race of the realm. Also, inspired by ancient Greek and Roman literature, I have created the gods to be truly anthropomorphic immortals. They lived human-like lives, they created cities and they lived in palaces. This went on for about 11,000 years. Then something happened (I haven't determined what, but I'm probably going to attribute it to weariness and boredom of the gods making them leave - the atheist in me is going to have a field day) and people haven't seem them for about 400 years at the time of my story taking place.

I have included saints as well. These work like the Christian saints, and each one has performed miracles. There are over 4000 saints in total and each of them has achieved fame and nobility through their works and they are followed by groups of people. There is only one living saint alive now and he is the king of the realm. His struggles are going to form the background for my story and my protagonist will end up meeting him somehow.

I then took up the task of drawing the map for my world. Well, I use the term 'draw' lightly. I used notepad and ASCII characters to draw it. Here's a sneak peek:

?^^^~?~####?
^^^~~~~~####
^^^~~~~~~###
^^^~~~~~~~##
^^__________#
^^^;;____/-@-\
@^^;____/;@\:_
^^;;:______/--\_
^^^^:__::______
^^^;:@_____^^^
^^^;;________^^
^@^^;;_____::^#
^^^^^;;;;;;@####

Obviously from an outside point of view this looks like a load of random nonsense, but the important thing is it makes sense to me. I don't need a fancy drawing to guide my around my own fantasy realm, just seeing the spike (^) of a mountain let's my imagination run wild and conjure up an amazing scene, characters, history and events surrounding it.

The point is, use whatever techniques work for you.

Try out http://www.rainymood.com to get yourself in the mood to start writing!

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How to "find" a new character

2012-06-06T14:25:00.003+01:00

Creating new characters is an arduous, scary process. It involves describing them, working out their social standing, developing their psyche and creating a background for them - not to mention the elusive name.

Now try this.

Take an empty chair and set it down in the middle of your room. Grap a pen, paper, tablet, phone, computer, Dictaphone - anything, and prepare to write. Imagine a person sitting in front of you in the chair. He or she fits perfectly into your novel, maybe they are the protagonist, maybe the evil overlord, how about a minor character? Someone who flits in and out of the protagonist's vision. This person sitting in front of you is the perfect person for the role you need to fill to progress your book and make it perfect.

How is the person sitting? Perched on the edge of the chair, ready for sudden danger? Asleep after the hard journey they have been on? Maybe lounging on your chair staring straight at you as if to say, "I own this chair. This chair is my chair now."

What does the person look like? Male? Female? Alien? Does the person look as if they look after themselves? Long hair? Short hair? No hair? Four hairs? Does the person have a bag or a purse? What's in the bag? What's in their pockets? Do they have pockets?

Set yourself a time limit for these questions. Grab your phone right now and set the timer to 5 minutes. It's all you'll need, trust me.

When your time is up and you have finished writing, look back at what you have written. Now answer yourself this: who the heck is this guy? Where have they come from? Why are they wearing muddy clothes? What's so special about them? The storyline of your character (and maybe your whole novel) will develop from answering these questions.

Just remember, the character doesn't come from the name, the name comes from the character.

This technique was inspired by lngwstksgk's helpful post on /r/shutupandwrite. Check it out.

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Ideas, Sandwiches and Alliteration

2012-06-04T14:34:00.000+01:00

I have an idea floating around inside of my noggin for a story, but I can't quite figure out any sort of plot. In my head there are characters, places and events happening, yet there is absolutely no metaphorical glue to stick it all together; no rope to tie the points into cohesion.

The idea came to me when I was sitting at the bus station with my girlfriend in Canterbury town centre. For some reason there were a lot of feathers floating around and we were talking about where they could have came from, when all of a sudden she snaps one out of the air with a deft movement of her hand. She holds it up to me so I can see it and I see that it is a very small fluffy feather, the type that young birds get before they achieve their fully fledged flight feathers (try saying that 400 times in a row). After looking at it, Laura drops the feather and I watch it flutter down to the ground, but falling into the deep pitch black of a drain. All of a sudden my mind is racing and I have amazing ideas for civilisations living underground and serial killers and a protagonist, but I just don't have a plot to hold it all together.

I have the bread.
I have the butter.
I have the salad.
I don't have the *insert preferred sandwich filling here* to go in my tasty lunchtime morsel.

So where do I go from here? I guess I am going to have to start saying yes to a lot of new ideas when trying to work out my story. I feel like the more that I try out new ideas in the process of trying to get at least 1 chapter down on paper, the easier it is going to be. Perhaps I will be worrying more about thinking of ways to incorporate new techniques and the story will just flow out naturally. In any case, I have a lot of thinking to do before I get started.

How do you get ideas for stories? Comments always appreciated.

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