Rising out of Divizah’s murky atmosphere, dim lights mounted on the wings of some eerie unseen vessel could be seen off the Astronomer’s starboard wing. The ship swiftly veered as the Astronomer turned back up toward the ring system for cover. Suddenly, it sprung from the atmospheric haze and charged after them. It was enormous, but very maneuverable, and it swept forward in the Astronomer’s pursuit with the form of a headless bird.
Author: A.L. Buehrer
Categories
Six Week Countdown!
From this point on, it’s only a six-week countdown until the Stardrift Trilogy will be available from Abbott Press’s website. That would date party time August 25. At last.
You know, I’ll probably post the whole story of my adventures in subsidy-publishing once they’re over. For now, I’ll just give you a teaser, saying, “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”
In the meanwhile, I’ve got one more thing. In these weeks counting down to printing and distribution, I’ll be posting snippets from the Trilogy here on As the Stars Drift interspersed along with my other posts. Stay tuned.
Two things: First of all, I have made two new advances into the online world. I recently made an author’s website that you should be certain to explore. I’ve never made a website before, but it was really surprisingly simple and I’m pleased with the results. The other slightly less impressive development is, I’ve joined Pinterest. I try to avoid these kinds of things because they can be such time-sinks, but I have to say, I enjoy it a little too much. Check it out.
The other announcement is even more exciting. As of a few minutes ago, I sent of my final manuscript with additional maps, a glossary, and some fourteen illustrations I made to improve it. Now, pretty much all I have to do is wait. As soon as I know an approximate release date, I’ll post about it.
For the first of hopefully several novel discussion posts, I’ve chosen a novel I got for Christmas last year. Leah Good is a young, self-published, Christian novelist. This can be a good thing or a bad thing. I was convinced to put Counted Worthy on my Christmas list because there was some excitement over the book on The Rebelution.
First, before I go on, let me say that I am almost literally impossible to please when it comes to novels. (And I use ‘literally’ in the literal sense.) Modern novels have even less of a chance. I don’t like the typically scanty atmosphere they are barely able to muster. Nonetheless, I decided to try to stay positive, and read Counted Worthy.
There are a lot of different little things I could say about this book, but I’ve narrowed it down to a major good point, and a major bad point. Bad news first:
In a word, worldbuilding. The term “worldbuilding” is commonly thrown around in the realms of speculative fiction writers, but really, it applies across the board. You must build your world. Counted Worthy is a futuristic dystopian novel. One of the essentials of the dystopian genre is to give a very strong sense of cultural decay by vivid, imaginative worldbuilding.
Good slacked a little bit here, in my opinion. No, she did try a bit. You have the typical banned-book list and incinerator combo, the neglected city slums, the hyperactive corrupt police force…but she stopped there.
Frankly, what she needed was either more imagination or more ability to express it. We have here, the framework of a dystopian culture—the bare essentials. We need some specific details.
For example, she metions briefly that the clothes people where in the inner city are extravagant. But she never describes a single outfit that would typify these fashions. So, the reader is left wondering if it’s really okay if they’re imagining Hunger Games style mock 17thcentury garb.
Likewise, you hear next to nothing about architecture, technology, or transportation. Okay, so we know people have these things called ‘pocket screens’ which are essentially no different than today’s iPhones. For whatever reason, we just call them pocket screens now. (Think about this: do names for technology usually become more bland and literal, or more trendy and brand-based as time goes on? Television is called TV now.) Also, she does avoid the problem of creating futuristic means of transportation by saying that cars are too expensive for non-government people to drive, therefore they stick to old-fashioned bicycles. In my opinion, this makes some of the action scenes a little bit humorous to imagine visually, but for some reason I’ve never been able to take cyclists seriously.
On the other hand, the main thing I observed about the book was a good thing. There are a ton of Christian writers at work today, but barely a handful actually write Christian fiction.
In saying this, I’m not judging Christian authors as writing immoral or un-Christian novels, what I’m saying is what they’re really doing is pumping out a lot of ‘clean’ romances. If you took the occasional prayer, or church service, or scripture-quoting out of the manuscript, not much would change. Not so with Counted Worthy.
The subject matter of Good’s novel is what makes it good. It’s not just a mediocre story with some good things in it and, most importantly, some bad things not in it. The essence of the story is Christian. What’s more, it’s a very non-rosy, non-happily-ever-after story about gritting your teeth and hanging on when things look hopeless. For that reason, I hope it starts a trend.
But keep in mind, if you intend to write a dystopian novel, you will need to invest in your setting. Hone your worldbuilding skills. Have fun with it. Your readers will thank you.
Categories
Don’t Do The Mirror
People really struggle with figuring out when and how to describe their characters’ physical appearances. Some people just throw it in there in the middle of the narrative as a rather long, off-subject aside. Others skip it altogether. But one of the most common and lazy ways to get the information out there is the mirror.
So, you’re in the first scene of your novel. Your character is getting ready to go somewhere, or just waking up in the morning, or something convenient like that. So, of course, he or she looks in the mirror. How natural is that?
Well, here comes the unnatural part. For some reason, we readers are forced to look in the mirror too, and are subjected to a detailed report of what is reflected there. And (voila) we have our physical description of the main character.
Here’s what makes it awkward: when you look in the mirror, what do you see? Of course, you see a rather sickly-looking sandy-haired girl with long bangs, light freckles and denim-blue eyes, if you happen to fit that description. But you’ve seen that for years. You’re not checking to see if your hair-color has changed, or if your eyes are now brown. You look in the mirror to see if you’re presentable. Or to find out of your eye is still swollen, like it was yesterday.
You could approach a mirror scene in this more realistic way, but it still doesn’t solve your problem of trying to describe your main character. You have to find other ways to do this.
Really, you have to rely on your own imagination and judgement to make this work out right, but here are some tips.
· You can get away with a brief couple of physical attributes mentioned on your character’s first entrance. Just keep it quick.
· You can be sneaky and compare you character to somebody else in your story, or outside it
· People tend to complain about how they look. Take advantage of this.
· It’s almost always fine to mention any physical attribute that would be relevant to the action.
Along the lines of that last one, as a reader, I’ve always been bored to death by descriptions of clothing. However, if your character just donned a knit-cap, or needed a raincoat on a wet day, this is an exception. Likewise, if they have some reason to be thinking about clothes at the moment, it’s okay to bring attire into the narrative then, as well.
Really, timing and relevance are important here. Keep in mind that everything you write in a novel has to have a reason to be there. Don’t let awkward description scenes trip you up.
To start my off the series on clichés, I’m going to expose one of my favorite hackneyed characters: the mentor.
Mentors serve important roles in fiction. They play to part of an example, somebody who’s been there. The main character needs guidance. They want things explained to them. They want to ask questions of somebody who knows what it’s about. There’s nothing wrong with having a character like this.
The problem lies with portrayal. Something to always remember: no character is a role. Every character is a person. The difference between a person and a role is essential. When a character is simply a role, everything falls into place just a little too easily. Here are characteristics of a mentor role:
· A mentor is older than those they are teaching
· A mentor knows just what it’s like to be in the main character’s position
· They’ve been there—and come away wiser. They’ve somehow managed to learn all the important lessons
· They always know just how to verbalize those lessons in pithy little sayings (clichés.)
· They are officially done making mistakes themselves (you know, we’ve all got to get over that sometime.)
· They say “Ah,” a lot more than us normal people do
Yeah. You know these people. It’s quite convenient to throw these characters in, just so somebody can be there to be the source of all those profound one-liners you’ve been thinking up to drive your novel’s message home. The problem is, that’s all they are.
In my opinion, every character should have something to gain from being in the story. They learn, they change, they develop. Mentors don’t. They’re already all finished and complete at their first entrance. No real character is ever finished.
You’re mentor character is an individual. Don’t deny them their rights as an individual. Develop a character profile for your mentor character that lends itself to progress—a story of their own. Remember they have a life. In their life, they are the protagonist. Who’s going to answer their questions?
Here’s a small list of quick twists that you might use to flesh-out your mentor character:
· They have a troubling secret
· They don’t actually live by all those pithy little sayings
· They sometimes lose their temper with the protagonist
· They sometimes can’t express what they truly mean
· They’re secretly in love with the antagonist
You need to remember to have fun with every one of your characters. Don’t worry that these little twists will make them less helpful to your protagonist. (Some might actually help. Think about it.) A character is always more likable if they are more real. You want your reader to connect with the mentor. They’ll listen to them better if they do.
And, one final thing: “Ah.” If you really have to make your character use this interjection…fine. I guess.
Categories
Series Starting Soon
Hey. So, I’ve done a lot of general “fiction writers’ advice” so far. I thought I’d start a series soon on clichés. It’s always fun for me to find ways around typical fiction clichés, and I’ll try to make it fun for you too.
I also am going to start occasionally including feature posts on particular novels, comparing their pros and cons and doing a little by way of review. I’ll also be focusing on fictional characters in some well-known (and less well-known) books that might interest you. These posts will also serve and studies in methods of characterization.
Should be fun. Stay tuned.
Something occurred to me recently. I was thinking about novels—successful novels, unsuccessful novels, classic novels nobody reads, cheap paperbacks everybody reads—and I was wondering…why do people like certain novels more than others? When a reader picks up a book with the intention of reading it, what are their expectations? What do they want?
Well, I’m sure it’s a little different for each reader and each novel—but not a lot different. When it all boils down, the reader wants a story. In the end, they don’t care a lot about your grammar, or your descriptive power, or your atmospheric development. They just care about you story—and maybe your characters. What they really want is an emotional attachment, and ability to sympathize with the characters. Once you have those bonds established, you proceed to take those characters–your reader’s new–friends and comrades—through a labyrinth of fear, pain, sorrow, confusion, joy, thrill, love, and victory. If you do that—and don’t overuse dashes (or parentheses, like some people)—you will write a novel people will hunt down in bookstores, and search for on Amazon.
People want to be moved, above all, when it comes to art. The same is true for all art, really. With music, it’s the same. A pianist of great skill, with fluid artistry, and technical perfection, could play some monstrously complex Bach composition on a top-of-the-line instrument and everyone would know it was great. But a very mediocre singer singing some ridiculously easy folk song a little bit flat will get everyone to listen—if only they can bring out the audience’s emotions with their own raw intensity. This is what really matters to people.
Is this a bad thing? Not really. It’s a very natural thing, and for many people, it should be very encouraging. Readers couldn’t really care less if you’re perfect. They just want a story that they can grasp and feel. But as for me, I’m a perfectionist. I feel like I really do have to be perfect when it comes to creating art. And that’s okay too, just as long as you don’t forget the essence of it. You need to move your reader. That’s what they were looking for when they opened your book.
Nothing keeps me reading like secrets. In fact, I might even venture to say that nothing is more important to a good plot than the ability to keep a secret. The delicate art of hiding, hinting at, and revealing secrets is not only the essence of a good mystery or suspense story. It’s also the driving force behind novels of all kinds, all genera—the thing that keeps your reader’s eyes open.
Secrets come in many forms. Commonly, characters harbor secrets: secrets of identity, origin, motives, past conflicts, etc. It’s the author who has the secret of their future, their purpose, their final decision. Settings have secrets: what is this place? What happened here?
You have to decide how much you want to hint at a secret. Sometimes it’s fun to startle a reader by bringing out a secret suddenly that was never suggested, or even appears to contradict evidence that you’ve arranged to cover it. It makes a brilliant plot twist if you can skew information so that it seems to suggest something else, and then later reveal what was really going on.
Hinting, however, is the language of suspense. Some twists and blind curves can be used to surprise your readers out of the blue, but those hints that almost can be pieced together—but not quite—are what gives them a reason to keep perusing the story. Be conscious of how much evidence you put forward, and how often. How frequently you hint at some hidden element depends on how soon you intend to reveal it. If you’ve got a secret you don’t want to reveal until the climax of a novel, don’t bring it up in every chapter. Let your readers forget about it for a chapter or two now and then, and take that time to develop some other subplot. If you keep obsessing over a bit of information you’re not going to reveal until much later, your reader will very likely become impatient with the whole thing. You want your reader motivated and intrigued—not impatient.
Also, don’t give hints that are too obvious. It drives people crazy if an author pretends to know less about something than the reader already found out about. Don’t keep hinting about a secret that’s already pretty much out of the bag.
Sometimes, when you finally do let a secret out, you still don’t have to be obvious. Never over-explain anything. At least, as far as I’m concerned, I like to be able to read a book a second time and marvel at the author’s subtlety. If there’s something I didn’t fully catch onto, I’ll probably go back and figure it out. It’s more fun for a reader to feel like they’ve gotten in on a secret, than it is to feel like they’ve had it all explained to them.
Categories
Talking about the Weather
I keep hearing people say that yet another detail you should never include in your fiction-writing is reference to the weather. Nobody wants to hear about it, they say. Just get straight to the action, don’t bother setting the scene, nobody has the patience for that, just go, go, go.
And most importantly, never ever open a scene, or (flinching) a book with weather.
Again, I could be completely weird, but I personally am not all that offended when an author takes note of the atmospheric conditions. People, especially the kind who write cash-fiction, seem to have lost all regard for the idea of mood in writing anymore. Also, unless your story is set in a ridiculously temperate climate, it’s very likely that weather will actually affect the plot. Even if you are the kind of writer that only writes down what happened in the story, and nothing else, remember that blizzards, droughts, ice-storms, and hurricanes also happen. I like meteorology, I’ll admit that. I also love richly atmospheric writing. Mood in writing isn’t just a disembodied emotional or mental feeling, it can be intensified and symbolized by the physical world. Weather is a very natural and artistic way to do that. Wind blows restlessly down the empty streets as the sky darkens, the heat intensifies in the afternoon and purple haze stifles the distant trees, the hero wakes up from a bizarre nightmare to the sound of thunder, and lightning blazes over the snow-covered world. Please!!! We can’t stand reading about this. Edit that out, you’re losing your readers!!!!!
Really?
The Stardrift Trilogy opens quite unabashedly with weather, as does the Rhapsody Threnody series. I honestly don’t see why that would be such a drawback for anyone. Don’t omit details if they can be used to make your writing strong. Ever. Details don’t have to be boring or irrelevant. Try manipulating them to see if they can work for you before throwing them out.