Living the Fictional Dream

I think writers walk a fine line when they create dialog. You want dialog that sounds like something people would actually say, but you don’t want to get too bogged down in the realism, either.

Shows like My So Called Life that really get into the “realistic” dialog (complete with a full complements of ums and stutters and run-on sentences) get on my nerves before too long. And reading such things instead of just listening to it would be even more irritating. Dialog is such an important part of a story, that if it irritates me, I’m very likely to get thrown out of the fictional dream and not care about fighting my way back in.

I like dialog that is crisp and clear and that portrays important information. I want it to be realistic, but in the best way possible — realistic for someone who’s into public speaking or has had training. Forget “uh” and “um,” and also forget boring dialog that, while we might say it in real life, has no bearing on the actual scene at hand. We don’t have time for that in our fiction today!

Writers have to be careful about information portrayal in dialog, though. Too much is just as much of a faux pas and dialog that is not relevant enough.

I get turned off when I read a conversation between two characters where they tell each other stuff that they would already know. For example:

Joe: When are you coming home tonight, honey?

Jane: Well, I work in a law office, so I have to stay until all the other partners are gone for the night. I probably won’t be home until 9.

If Joe and Jane are close enough that he would call her honey, they are close enough that he would already know she worked in a law office, so Jane would not feel the need to say that. The information was just thrown in so that the reader would get it. If that’s the only reason the information is in the dialog, cut it right out of there. If it’s that necessary to the story, find a way to get it in through narration or naturally in a scene. Don’t shoe-horn it into dialog.

And, now I’m off. A long weekend at the cabin. No internet — I hope I manage to get some writing done. Perhaps I’ll work on dialog! Either way, I expect to enjoy a relaxing weekend, which is probably the most important thing!

Naming is such a tricky thing. Sometimes, if I’m lucky, a character will spring to mind with his or her name already in place. Sarah Kirby from “The Widow and the Stranger” was like that. Some of the characters from my novel-in-progress — Caryn, Sean, Brilynn — as well.

And then there are the ones I have to struggle for. I flip through name books or name websites, looking for the perfect name. Sometimes I’ll pick a letter of the alphabet and go through all the names for the appropriate gender that start with that letter. I’ve always believed that characters should have names starting with different letters so it’s easier for the reader not to get them confused. In a novel, you can have a couple with the same initial, but the shorter the story, the more strictly I try to adhere to this rule.

I always thought that my experience naming characters would be helpful when it finally came time in my life to name a child, but now that my first little one is on the way, it’s not proving such an easy task. Of course, for the baby, my husband and I actually have to agree on a name. (Well, I guess that’s not always true, but it’s important to me — I want him to love what we name our child just as much as I do.)

The problem is, we have very different ideas about what makes a good name, especially for girls. We had our boy’s name totally picked out, but since the ultrasound said girl, we’ve been wrangling back and forth for months.

I love plant names… Sage, Holly, Rose, Laurel. He thinks that those names are too sissy, and has outlawed all plant names. Left to his own devices, he chooses many names that I think are too common or boring.

And, as if we didn’t have enough trouble between the two of us, there are always plenty of other people to offer suggestions and opinions. My sister loves the trendy names, like Piper and Taylor. My in-laws prefer more traditional names, like Ann — and they especially dislike names coming from the natural world (like Sierra) or names that would have nicknames. One friend told us that we should be sure to name our baby something that you can find on those racks of keychains in souvenir shops, because the child would be disappointed all of her life if she couldn’t be a part of that. Another friend tends to point out negativity in the meaning of a name (Leah was the unwanted sister in the Bible, Sage is a big ugly bush).

Now I understand why some people don’t tell anyone the name until the baby is actually born and the name is on the birth certificate, LOL! But a lot of times, the comments are helpful and encouraging, and sometimes other people see something that we didn’t see before. My husband especially gets a kick out of announcing the “name of the day.” I think it amuses him when people don’t like it!

We still have several months to go, and I have faith that eventually my husband and I will settle upon the perfect name for our little one. We have three top girl names that haven’t really changed in a while. And, of course, if the ultrasound proves wrong about the gender, we still have that boy’s name all ready. I suspect that, at this point, we need to meet our little one before we can decide on the perfect name.

But all this drama and back and forth over names has made me appreciate how much easier it was when I was just naming characters. Sure, those characters are very real to me, but if you’re writing along and suddenly the name isn’t working for the character, it can always be changed. And, when it comes to a character’s name, there is only myself to please.

Whether for a real person or a character, names are important. Names are identity. Names say a lot about who a person is. Nothing tells everything about a person, of course — I’m sure there could be an assassin or a ninja out there named Ethel or Maude — but names send a certain impression out into the world, and, for both my baby and my characters, I want to make sure that impression is a good one!

I’m working on another flash piece right now… it started with one of the prompts from my writing group’s April prompts writing contest. The prompt challenged me to write a story about ice. I wanted to do something different than just have the story take place in an icy setting or have an ice cube as an object. So, instead, ice is the main character… in a way.

Now I just need to buckle down and do revisions after my writing group was so helpful as to send critiques to me. I don’t know why I’m having such troubles making myself sit down and write or revise these days. Maybe my group should have more write-ins… I find myself being more productive at planned writing activities than in finding time on my own. When I’m at home right now, there is always something else to do — usually baby prep.

Memorial Day weekend is coming up, and we’re going to stay at my parents’ cabin for the holiday. It is usually so quiet and peaceful out there — also, there is no internet or cable to distract me. Perhaps I will find some good writing time while we’re there — when we’re not at my friends’ pool party!

I’ve been reading a series recently that, despite having intriguing characteres and a well-drawn fantasy world, repeatedly commits what I consider a big sin for an author — leaving emotional moments out of the story.

The author has such an engaging voice and conceives such good characters, I don’t know why she keeps making this misstep. I’ll be reading along in the story, and she’ll start building up a dramatic moment or event. In the most recent book, basically one of the main female characters had to participate in a magic spell. The spell would kill her — something that had to be done to achieve the end result they needed — but someone would be standing by with another spell to (hopefully) revive her afterwards.

You can probably tell just by my description that such a moment should have been pivotal. It’s the potential death of a major character — talk about a moment rife with drama. The idea of this spell was mentioned in the second-to-last book of the series, and when the character’s husband heard about it, he lashed out at the messenger and then nearly died himself because the messenger had a magic mirror that reflected the blow back on the caster. For the rest of that book and the beginning of the last book, the other characters utilize all this effort convincing the husband that there is no other choice and this risk is their only option. Either his wife is killed to save the rest of them and possibly revived, or all eight brothers and their wives die.

Finally, the husband is convinced. Then we spend pages getting more detail than I personally needed about the mechanics of the magic involved and what would happen. Then there is a scene break, and the beginning of the next scene starts after the spell has been cast and the wife has been revived without a single hitch.

… WTF? …

Talk about feeling cheated! I endured all that set up — some interesting, but some, frankly, a little boring — and then I don’t even get to see the moment of truth? What happened? How did the husband react when his wife was dead? Was there any moment when it seemed as if she would not be revived in time?

And this is not the only time that this author has committed this sin of omission. She doesn’t do it with every emotion-packed moment, but several times throughout the series she had the chance to write a very impactful scene, a scene that she’d been building up to for a while, and then just doesn’t write it. Instead, she skips over it to the happy conclusion and moves on to the next plot point.

As a reader, I feel cheated. As a writer, it amazes me that the author of this series is willing to skip these moments. The climax may be a challenge to write, but it’s the big pay out. It’s why we’re all there? Why would you ever want to skip it, when that’s the moment that affects your characters the most?

Perhaps its an offshoot of a problem that I sometimes have in my writing — being too easy on my characters. My characters are my babies — I created them out of nothing and I want the best for them. Sometimes it’s hard to hurt them and so I wuss out (when I do, though, my sister and my writing group mates always call me on it!). Maybe this author has the same problem and just can’t always manage to write about the dramatic/bad/hard stuff that happens to her characters?

In this instance, I enjoyed the world enough that I was a forgiving reader and kept going, despite my dissatisfaction with this tendency. However, if I’d been busier at the time or had other books that I wanted to read, I would have been more likely to drop this series and move on to the next one.

As a writer, you can’t guarantee that readers are going to forgive such a faux pas. Instead, the writer needs to do their utmost to keep the reader immersed in the fictional dream — don’t let them escape until you’re done with your story, and you have a much better chance that the readers will keep coming back for more.

Sorry for disappearing on you guys for a week. I caught this horrible crud last week and it laid me low for a long time. I’m only just now finally feeling sort of normal and getting back into the swing of work, and I’m still suffering from the lingering cough and runny nose. It really sucks being sick when you’re pregnant — you’re not allowed any of the good meds!

But, enough about that boring stuff. Let’s talk about writing.

When I logged into my email account after having been down for so long, I was rewarded with one acceptance and one rejection. It was nice that they balanced each other out!

A very strange story (about superheroes and vomit, of all things) was rejected. I wasn’t surprised. There were some really stomach churning descriptions in there (yes… I wrote it under the influence of first trimester morning sickness!). Now I have to look at it again (if I can find the stomach for it) and see if there is something revisable in that mess. I liked it at the time, but now… I’m not so sure. Maybe it’s because I’m now past all that nausea?

On the happier side of things, I wrote a little ghost story flash called “The Last Ball at Concord House,” and it will be published in the inaugural issue of 10Flash. I’m excited about that — it’s really neat to be part of a brand new ‘zine. And congrats to K.C. for all the work she’s been putting into it! I think it’s going to be a really fun publication!

And, speaking of K.C., if you’re interested in writing flash, you should read this post over on her blog. I enjoyed it a lot.

Finally, this is a little late, but my writing group mate Alex had a story published on Every Day Fiction earlier this week. It’s called, “The Squeeze.” It’s very short, and the ending will make you laugh.

Thanks to last night’s write-in with my writing group (and fellow attendees Stephanie and Sandra), I managed to finally finish the flash piece that I’ve been working on for a couple of months. And, after that, I popped it in an email and sent it off to the market it was written for. We will see if they like it!

Either way, it was a nice sense of accomplishment to actually finish a story this year. There hasn’t been enough of that lately. I know I have my excuses (all called pregnancy, LOL!), but it felt nice to actually finish a story and get it out the door.

Maybe I need to make myself a small but managable goal for the next few months. If I could make myself sit down for, say, two hours a week and either write or dust off stories for submissions, that would at least be a little progress. I don’t want to put too much pressure on myself, but I also don’t like slipping into the void of absolutely no progress.

Hmmm… something to think about anyway.

Happy writing everyone (especially Virginia and Dauna who have challenged themselves to write a story a day for the next two weeks)!

The power of the sense of smell is fairly amazing when you think about it. Especially considering that humans are so much less dependent on that sense than the other four, especially sight. But it is so crazy how a certain aroma will take you back to a specific memory almost instantly.

When I was a kid, I loved going to the library. For much of my childhood, the small town where I grew up didn’t have its own library, so on Saturdays and during the summer my mom would take me to the main library branch in the larger town about 30 minutes away.

I remember the smell of the building that would waft over me when I stepped through the doors. It was kind of musty and old, but not in a bad way. I loved that smell, and I loved how it clung to the books when I would take them home. When I was young, I always assumed the scent had something to do with the books themselves, but now I think that it probably had more to do with the age of the building.

The library I went to as a girl was built in… I guess the 50s or 60s. It had a bomb shelter in the basement, if that helps date it for you. There is a building across the street from where I work, a bank, and every time I walk in there (there’s a Subway on the first floor where I like to pick up lunch sometimes) I catch a whiff of that library/old building smell.

One whiff, and I’m suddenly 11 years old clutching an arm load of books and waiting for them to run my library card through their little machine. Though they later got scanable cards, the ones in my memory are the ones they had when I first got a card — they were pink and made of paper and they went through some kind of machine that pressed them and made them warm to the touch after when you checked out books.

Another scent memory that sometimes strikes me unawares is the smell of sun on grass. It’s been a while since I got a really good whiff of this one, but I used to smell it a lot when I was in college — I guess because they were always working on the grounds. The smell of sun-baked grass used to cling to my first dog’s coat when he would come back in the house from his back yard time. Sandy (a cockerspaniel) was an inside dog, which made smelling the outdoors on him all the more unusual. Sandy passed away while I was in college, but whenever I inhale that sunshiney, grassy smell, I’m transported back to when that little stinker used to sit on my feet or want to play tug-of-war; I can totally see him standing in front of me wagging his little stump of a tail.

The power of various smells and aromas can be utilized to great effect in one’s writing, in my opinion. The more senses you invoke in the story, the richer and more detailed your fictional world will be come, which makes you better able to draw in your reader and hold him there, right where you want him.

Hearing and sight are the dominant senses we describe in stories, but if you add the scent of woodsmoke; the taste of the cool, crisp water; or the way the fur carresses your main character’s fingertips, it gives the story an extra layer of depth. And, every detail you add has the possibility of resonating with your audience in ways you can’t anticipate — we all have our own associations with sights, sounds, smells, etc., and the more we can tap into those within our readers, the more bound they will be to our stories.

Over the weekend, I started reading the Sookie Stackhouse mysteries by Charlaine Harris. (These are the books upon which the HBO TV show True Blood is based, but I think the books are better than the show — different, but in a good way.)

I won’t do an in-depth book review on the series right now, as I’m still in the midst of reading it. However, this series really has me thinking about one thing writing-wise, and I wanted to get some thoughts about that down while they are still fresh.

Reading this series, really got me thinking about what makes a good character.

It’s fairly inevitable that the Sookie Stackhouse series would get compared to the Anita Blake series written by Laurel K. Hamilton. They are both urban fantasy. Both include significant vampire and werewolf/shape shipfter action. Both involve vampires “coming out” as legal citizens of the United States. Both have strong female protagonists with supernatural abilities of their own, and both women have significant romantic relationships with other supernaturals over the course of the series.

Despite all these similarities, I find myself heartily preferring the Sookie Stackhouse books to the Anita Blake books — both the books themselves and the heroine. I started asking myself why this was, and when it gets down to it, it’s all about the main character. (There will be some points in this post that would be considered spoilerish if you have not read the series, but I’ll try not to get too specific.)

I read a lot of the Anita Blake books when I first discovered the series, and I really enjoyed it at first. However, as the series continued, my enjoyment in it began to wane. The focus of the series seemed to me to shift in a direction that just wasn’t to my personal taste. Even if you have not read the Anita Blake series, you may have heard it described as “erotic” or “sexy.” At the beginning, though there was a lot of sexual tension and romance, it wasn’t the focus — the focus was more on the plots and mysteries, as well as on Anita’s life. But, by the point where I finally gave up the series, it felt to me like the plot in the books was merely an excuse to allow Anita to have crazy supernatural sex with a huge harem of guys — the love triangle beween Anita, vampire Jean-Claude, and werewolfe Richard widened to include more vampires, more shifters (especially the werepanthers), and others.

My other problem came with Anita herself. Over the course of the novels (I gave up the series after reading Narcissus in Chains), she became more and more powerful — to, what seemed to me, an absurd degree. In the beginning, Anita was a normal woman who just happened to be an necromancer. She also had trained herself physically to be a vampire hunter. As the series went on, she gathered more and more powers and titles to add to her burgeoning collection — lupa of the werewolf pack, part of a triumverate of power with Jean Claude and Richard, alpha of the werepanther pack, etc., etc. And then she suddenly developed Jean Claude’s talent of drawing energy from sex (and getting weaker if she didn’t get said sex), which made things even crazier for her personally and for her huge amount of powers.

I liked Anita when she was a normal person with one significant power and some skills that she’d trained into herself by working hard. I didn’t like it when suddenly she was all-powerful.

Sookie Stackhouse starts out her series similar to Anita (I’m currently in the middle of Definitely Dead). She’s a normal girl, a barmaid in a restaurant, but she has one supernatural power to deal with. She’s a telepath. Then she meets Bill the vampire and discovers that she can’t read vampire minds — she is immediately intrigued because it is restful for her to be around Bill — she doesn’t constantly have to fight against being bombarded by stray thoughts.

Through her association with Bill, Sookie is introduced to the supernatural world (both the world of the recently legalized vampires and still underground supernatural creatures, like Weres, shifters, and fairies), and becomes embroiled in supernatural affairs.

Like Anita, Sookie is given some enhanced powers — the difference is, they don’t last. In Sookie’s world, humans gain power from drinking vampire blood — it enhances their strength and speed, their looks, and other abilities. However, the effect is temporary, based on how much she’s had and how old the vampire in question was. So, she has these abilities, but only for a while. Other than that, she never adds to her supernatural skills, though, over time, she does learn how to control her telepathy better and use it in new (and believable) ways, such as projecting thoughts to other telepaths (but not to regular Joes).

Also like Anita, Sookie becomes greatly in demand in the supernatural world. However, unlike Anita, the supernatural world doesn’t fall at Sookie’s feet. She’s dragged into it (or sometimes rushes into it head first), but she has to work for the acceptance that she gets there (and she is not always accepted).

For example, Sookie meets a werewolf named Alcide and they are attracted to each other. However, (1) they do not hop immediately into bed together and (2) Sookie does not gain any type of leadership position in his pack. She is named a “friend of the pack,” but that is because she alerts them to a problem in their territory and helps out a pack member who gets hit by a car. In fact, despite dancing around the issue for a couple of books, Sookie and Alcide never actually have a relationship. They are interested in each other, but each has a load of personal baggage (in the form of exes and other issues) that gets in the way, and the relationship is never even consumated.

Sookie does have a relationship with vampire Bill, and a couple of other supernatural guys are interested in her, but the interest is believable. I never wonder why all the guys are so taken with Sookie (like I did with Anita), and there are plenty of guys in the series who aren’t actually taken with her. Also, every supernatural guy Sookie meets does not automatically become her bedmate.

The difference between Antia and Sookie, I’ve decided, is the Mary Sue phenomenon. If you haven’t heard of a Mary Sue, this is a term that came from fanfiction writers. A Mary Sue is a character written into a story about an existing universe (Buffy the Vampire Slayer was always my fanfiction neighborhood of choice) who basically represents the author’s wish fullfillment. This character is instantly loved and embraced by the main characters of the existing universe — all the guys fall for her and all the girls want to be her best friend. Everything a Mary Sue does comes easy for him/her, and she gets everything that she wants in the end. And any “weakness” a Mary Sue has is usually a strength in disguise and never gives her much trouble.

As the series progressed, Anita felt more and more to me like a Mary Sue. Everything came too easily for her, too many guys liked her (without enough reason) and liked her so much that she was able to treat them like crap and they would still give her whatever she wanted. Her powers got exponentially stronger to an insane degree, and even her weaknesses just don’t seem that bad.

Sookie, however, doesn’t feel like a Mary Sue to me. She feels like a real, vibrant character of her own accord. She’s strong, but she has real weaknesses. She might have a selection of cute guys to be interested in, but she doesn’t get to have all of them. And the relationshpis she does have include real life issues and don’t always work out. She also has issues in her life that don’t magically get solved — like money problems, problems with her brother, and problems with the law. Sometimes she will find ways around them — like earning a significant sum of money using her house as a hide-out for a vampire on the run — but inevitably something will happen to set things back again — like a house fire resulting in a huge expenditure setting her finances back to ground zero.

The writing lesson I’m taking away from all this debate is a reminder of just how important characters are to a story. Without characters the reader can really invest in, they are more likely to stop reading (like I did with Anita Blake, whom I could no longer relate to). But a character a reader really likes becomes an old friend that they want to visit in every subsequent novel (like Sookie is for me — at least so far, I’ve got a few more books left to read).

Part of making characters that readers will like and identify with, in my opinion, is being willing to be hard on them. They need real obstacles to overcome. You can’t be too easy on your characters or there is no real struggle for them to go through and suddenly your character is a Mary Sue.

When I first started writing, I was way too nice to my characters, and the stories suffered for it. I still struggle with that, but I’m becoming much less benevolent to my characters as I mature as a writer.

If you enjoy urban fantasy and murder mysteries, I would definitely give the Sookie Stackhouse novels a chance. And if you like True Blood, I think that you’ll enjoy the books, as well.

Happy reading, watching, and writing, y’all!

Last night, I woke up several times (not unusual — pregnancy is heck on the middle of the night bathroom runs — preparation for midnight feedings, perhaps?), and as I crawled back into bed and tried to coax sleep back into the room, I started imagining a story. The opening scene is there, fully formed, in my mind. I was too tired to get up and type it out last night (plus, my laptop battery was low), but I still remember it in detail this morning.

I will have to work on it on my lunch break today or maybe tonight when I get home. I need to get that opening written down before it eludes me.

Of course, once the opening is written, then I’ll actually have to figure out a plot for this story. I have a character, a setting, and a genre, but I’m not sure why in the world this girl is doing what she’s doing.

Isn’t writing fun?

The Sword & Sorceress market has opened again. Another anthology of sword and sorcery stories with strong female protagonists. I really love the idea of this anthology. I like fantasy, I especially like fantasy with strong female protagonists, and I enjoy a good action story (if it is well-written and has more than just action to sweeten the story).

This is one of those markets that it would be a dream to be included in. As such, I probably never will be, LOL! Seriously, this is a really tough market. I have submitted several stories to them in the past couple of years and gotten the form rejection every time. Not even good enough for a personal comment! Some of my writing group mates have submitted as well, and none of us have gotten a nibble. Competition at the professional level is killer.

Last year, while on vacation, my husband had me reading a series of short stories about two characters named Tarma and Kethry. These stories were some of the first works published by Mercedes Lackey, and I believe they first came to light in a S&S anthology or some other of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s publications. While reading them, I was really struck by the difference between publishing now and publishing back when these stories first came out (I think it was in the 1970s, if I remember correctly, but I’m lazy and not looking it up, so don’t hold me to that!).

In these stories, Tarma is a female warrier. All of her tribe is slaughtered by her, so she swears herself to the warrier goddess, takes a vow of chastity, and devotes herself to getting vengeance for her tribe. After that is complete, she devotes herself to helping women in trouble who have no one else to save them.

By Tarma’s side is Kethry, a sorceress of astonishing power who has a magic sword that can lead them to other women who are in trouble. The pair forge a solid and real friendship and spend their lives saving the world together — both on their own and as part of a mercenary fighting garrison. Kethry’s children help Tarma re-start her lost tribe among the horse people, and in their later years they run a school to train both boys and girls in the art of fighting and magic.

If you have some time to kill, I would recommend these stories. I found them very interesting, and over time I really grew to love the characters.

However, it’s that “over time” part that really marks the difference between then and now in the publishing world. Nowadays, there is no time for building an audience, especially in the short fiction market (though, I think that is also more and more true for the novel market, as well). A short fiction author is lucky if readers don’t give up on their stories within the first few paragraphs. As a reader myself, even I’ve been guilty of this. If a flash piece doesn’t grab me at least a little bit at the beginning, I’ve been known to bail on it, even if it was less than 1,000 words. I just don’t have enough time for reading something I’m not that into.

But back then, you had the luxury of time. If you were a good writer, your stuff would get published and your audience was allowed to grow. When I first started reading the Tarma and Kethry stories, I remember thinking, this is an interesting premise, but if this story were submitted to a market today, it would get rejected. There isn’t enough punch at the beginning, not enough of a hook. To really get invested in the characters, I had to read the first two or three short stories in the anthology — back when they were first published, these stories weren’t even in an anthology all together, so you only had one at a time to read.

So, as I ponder if I have any ideas worth working on and submitted to the S&S market this year, I think back to Tarma and Kethry and realize how much things have changed. Its a faster and more competitive world out there for writers, and snagging readers is more difficult, so we have to be at our best all the time, and even then our stories may not get accepted.

However, I don’t want to end this post on a down note. I really want people to take away from this that I’m discouraged about writing or publishing, because I’m not. I just try to approach it with a realistic mind set and no false hopes.

If I never become rich and famous in this game, that’s fine. I mean, I wouldn’t turn down rich and famous, but I don’t expect it. I just want to write, and I know that’s something I’ll be doing forever, no matter how many stories I have published (or don’t have published).