For those of you who don't know, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. It's an event that takes place in November, where participants try to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. It's really awesome and I highly encourage anyone who can to give it a try; the website is www.nanowrimo.org, and if you wait a couple of days before clicking on that link, you'll the shiny new 2010 version of the site.
I took part in NaNoWriMo for the first time last year, and I absolutely loved it. It was an amazing expirience, allowing me to create an entire novel - with a plot and characters and everything! In one month, plus a little extra time for finishing up after the month was complete. I'd written a novel before, but never like this! I was able to connect with other writers, get feedback and critiques on excerpts and characterization, get my questions answered, and push through writer's block in an entirely new manner. This was even more fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants writing than I was used too.
As December rolled on, however, I found that without the excitement of NaNoWriMo, I didn't have much enthusiasm for my project. Most of this, I later realized, was beccause of my eagerness to begin the editing of my first novel, which I had been brainstorming for ever since I finished it in late October. So I finished it, wrote one of my best epilogues ever (I was very proud of that, since I struggle with endings) and put it in a folder on my computer, thinking I wouldn't do much with it again.
Sometime in early spring I dragged the dusty old document out of my computer files and gave it another once-over. You know, I realized as I read through some of my favorite chapters, this wasn't half bad. The concept was original and I created some of my best characters yet. Maybe I'll give this another shot and edit it over the summer.
Let me tell you right now, THAT idea went entirely out the window. I'm going to be lucky if I finish the edits on the first novel, which I started revising in January, before the end of October. I am going to be very, VERY lucky. So I revised my writing schedule and figured that I'd move the editing of NaNoWriMo 2009's "The Kingdom in the Stars" to AFTER NaNo '10. It didn't seem like a big deal. After all, it wasn't as if ideas had been abounding like they were for the revision of "Battle for the Throne." (I know, I have a long-titles problem. I'm working on it.) I could put it out of my mind for the month of November at least.
So, I put thoughts of 2009's NaNoWriMo out of my head. We were getting a shiny new site; the forums were going to be wiped of all my silly questions about archery, my profile was going to be transformed into a clean slate where I could post my new novel synopsis and title, and my word count would be reduced back to zero, ready for me to start tracking my progress on November 1. I started writing down a few characters and a tentative setting, searching websites for good character names, finding a folder to dedicate my notes too. Everything was good. Kingdom in the Stars? What kingdom in the stars? What awesome elf-like beings who draw power from their constellation, which is also their namesake? That's ancient history!
Uh-huh. Sure. It was, until my mom turned on the National Geographic Channel.
The first thing you need to know about me is that ANYTHING will spike an idea. An entire plot took shape from remembering a book I read as a little kid and staring at the lines on my hand and wondering why they're like that. And one thing that has always given me ideas for, at the very minimum, a short story - shows on the History, Discovery, Science, and NatGeo channels. Short stories derived from snippers of MythBusters episodes? You bet. My 2011 NaNo plot entirely based off the show Life After People? Heck yeah. Fantasy worlds inspired by watching MonsterQuest and superhuman races formed by watching The Most Extreme? Well, duh. Religons that combined the best of Egyptian and Mayan mythology, gathered by late-night History Channel marathons? Well, you get the picture.
But I wasn't thinking about this when my mom switched the channel. The extent of my thought process went to "Ooh! Stephen Hawking!", because I'm just that much of a geek. But as soon as they started talking about expanding universes, orbiting planets, and colliding galaxies....Oh, yeah, THAT kingdom in the stars. THOSE elf-like beings who drew power from their namesake constellation. Heh. It's all coming back to me now.
So now, the plot bunny that has been silent since...I don't know....January? Decides to poke it's fuzzy little nose out of it's dark little hole, JUST when I need it to go into hibernation. I swear, I need to send all of these nasty little brutes to Plot Bunny Obidience school, because they have a nasty habit of popping up right when I need them to go away, and then going away right when I need them to pop up.
Although I guess I learned my lesson. No Stephen Hawking before NaNoWriMo. :-(
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Fighting Your Way Through Battle Scenes
This blog entry is inspired by a post the wonderful author Gail Carson Levine wrote about writing action scenes. I'm not a proffesional writer and I don't claim to know anything that she doesn't, but I write a lot of battle scenes in my books and so I thought I'd throw my two cents in.
To get an idea of how I write high-action scenes, I went back and reread a few of my battle scenes from the original (and very rough) draft of my novel. A few things immediately jumped out at me.
If you struggle with writing character's specific thoughts and actions during a fight scene, if the battle is more of a takeover - one side is clearly going to win - or if there's a lot of leadup to the battle that you want to include in the same scene or chapter, one option is to write the battle in more of a summary format. I did this with the second battle scene I wrote, where the army from one country, Sevania, is taking over Alandia's biggest trade city. I got inside the head of one of the people fighting - in this case, the only girl involved in the battle - for the leadup but the actual battle was written in a few short paragraphs. You can try this approach, throwing in, as I did, snippets such as "enemy soldiers were falling like dominoes" and how she could "see flashes of golden light from Miveerna's magic". If you're going to write this way, it's generally better to have it be a shorter, more one-sided fight that doesn't require as much detail. I closed with sentences including "the battle was over almost before it had begun" and how "within two hours, they had taken Yalda." (Keep in mind, this was a VERY rough draft, and so the examples here aren't my best work.)
For longer, more drawn out battles, I wholeheartedly agree with Ms. Levine's advice about creating a map. If the battle takes place in a castle, draw up a floor plan - nothing fancy, just the major walls, rooms, secret passages, et cetera, that will affect the fighting. If it takes place in a forest, you don't need to draw every tree - that's the fun of writing forest scenes, you can add in a fallen log or a stream whenever you need to - but you should include major landmarks like rivers too wide and deep to wade, cliffs or dropoffs, and major trails.
Once you've created your map or floorplan, I highly suggest making several copies, either on a copy machine or with tracing or carbon paper. It helps immensely. If you know how many scenes you're going to have in the fight or how many times characters are going to move, make one copy for each so you can plot out your character's locations.
One of the hardest things when writing a battle scene can be keeping track of where everybody is. Before you even set pen to paper you need to be able to answer the following questions.
How many characters are going to be your POV characters during the battle? If you're writing from third person omniscent, you still ned to know this, even though your POV characters may be more numerous. If you're writing from several close-focus third person or first person POVs - switching only at the end of a scene or chapter - then you should generally limit it to the people whose POV you've been using for the rest of the book. Adding a new POV character in the middle of a battle scene may confuse readers and slow down the pace. Introducing a new character altogether should just be illegal.
Where are all your POV characters when the battle starts? On one of your maps or floorplans, pinpoint the location with a seperate colored pen or pencil for each POV character. Write "Beginning of Battle" or "Starting Point" or "Scene One" or whatever you want on the top of the page. Write "The-Place-Where-The-Whole-Darn-Thing-Gets-Started" if you want, but just make sure you know that this is the beginning of the battle.
Are any deaths going to occur in the battle? Who is going to die? Where is the death going to take place? What other characters are going to be present at the death scene? On another map, mark the place of death of the character who's dying his or her own color. (If they're a POV character, use the same color you did before; if they're not, use a new color.) Add in the people who are going to be present at the death, again, assigning each character there own color. Don't add any other characters yet, and don't number this map. You can write "So-and-so's Death Scene" if you want, but don't number it. Set it aside.
Where is everyone going to end up at the end of the battle? If it doesn't really matter and no one needs to be in a certain place for the plot, you can wait and see how it works out. If only a few characters need to be in a certain place, mark them down and leave the rest to end up where they will. Write "end of battle" or some such name on the top and set it aside.
Okay. Now, you have some things to work with. You know where everyone is at the beginning of the battle, where you need to get them for the death of so-and-so, and where you need to get them from the end. Decide when any deaths you've planned will fall as far as time, and then use your remaining maps to chart the significant movements of characters as you get them where you need them to go during the battle. Add in supporting characters, if you want. Have characters moving in groups. You should end up with a wonderful color-coded conglomeration of charts. (By the way, I hope you've got a reference somewhere for your colors, as in, green = bob, purple = dave, blue = phil.)
So, now you know where everyone's going to be, and now you have to write the thing.
Obviously, you can't use the summary format for something so big and that you've spent so much time on. You're going to have to get inside character's heads more and describe specific actions. This can be tricky, so don't worry if you don't get it right the first time around. Every time you try again or rewrite it you'll improve, until writing battle scenes becomes as easy as any other aspects of your writing.
One of the things that I find the hardest about writing battle scenes is avoiding repetition. Before you begin, I reccomend doing a synonym search (www.thesaurus.com is a good place) on words like sword, armor, soldier, blow, stab, block, and other words that you'll be using frequently. Make a list and save it as a new document or write it down and put it where you can easily see it while you're writing.
There are other things to avoid repeating, too, such as sequences of events or character's thoughts. Every oponent shouldn't be dispatched with the same tactics - mix it up and describe different strategies, movements, and methods. If you're writing a large battle scene with relatively equal forces on both sides, you can devote more time to describing the action between two people since most soldiers won't have to worry about fighting more than one or two people at a time. If one side outnumbers the other four to one? You're probably feeling overwhelmed trying to keep track of all the people bearing down on one character. Don't worry, that's exactly how the one character feels as he tries to block blows - it's going to be easy for you to slip into his mind, now. Write about blows coming so fast that he can't tell where they're coming from, about all his enemies seeming to merge into one ubitiquous force, to cut down on having to keep track of whether Soldier #1 or Soldier #3 was cracking his ribs while soldier #2 kept him distracted.
Action scenes are primarily composed of, well, action; however, if you're feeling like you need some dialogue, fear not! This can actually be a very helpful tool. If you allow the specific jabs and swordthrusts to fade into the background, it can take some of the monotony out of depicting each one. Remember when you decided that Character A and Character B would fight together for a brief span in Scene 7? Well, that was sheer brilliance on your part, because you've got two characters who, presumably, can communcate - hey presto, dialogue! If they're old rivals facing each other in battle, they can trade insults in the same breath as blows, and as long as you imply that they're fighting, you only need to point out a few specific moves. If they're friends, they can discuss how they're going to get out of this situation or what they need to do next as they hack through rows of enemies.
Another tip is to imply swordfighting through onomatopoeia that punctuates dialogue. One example of this is a scene I wrote in one of the first battles of my book. My character switched sides in the middle of a war, and ends up facing the queen he betrayed - who's also his ex-lover - in battle.
As for keeping things fast-paced, I only have two pieces of advice. First of all, if you're like me and are addicted to description, don't worry. There have to be some adjectives in there besides the ones used to describe the force behind a sword. Just remember that when writing description, if well written, short sentences comprised of a few adjectives, a verb, and a subject, can pack just as much punch as a collosal one like this.
My other piece of advice, which will help battle scene writing all around, is to get into and excited about what you're writing. If you get really into your story, then you'll be just as anxious to finish writing the end of a chapter as your reader will be to finish reading it, and so you'll naturally shift into a faster pace of writing. Basically in writing, whatever you as the author feels as you are crafting your book, the reader gets a watered-down version of, so make sure that above all else you're keeping yourself on the edge of your seat.
To get an idea of how I write high-action scenes, I went back and reread a few of my battle scenes from the original (and very rough) draft of my novel. A few things immediately jumped out at me.
If you struggle with writing character's specific thoughts and actions during a fight scene, if the battle is more of a takeover - one side is clearly going to win - or if there's a lot of leadup to the battle that you want to include in the same scene or chapter, one option is to write the battle in more of a summary format. I did this with the second battle scene I wrote, where the army from one country, Sevania, is taking over Alandia's biggest trade city. I got inside the head of one of the people fighting - in this case, the only girl involved in the battle - for the leadup but the actual battle was written in a few short paragraphs. You can try this approach, throwing in, as I did, snippets such as "enemy soldiers were falling like dominoes" and how she could "see flashes of golden light from Miveerna's magic". If you're going to write this way, it's generally better to have it be a shorter, more one-sided fight that doesn't require as much detail. I closed with sentences including "the battle was over almost before it had begun" and how "within two hours, they had taken Yalda." (Keep in mind, this was a VERY rough draft, and so the examples here aren't my best work.)
For longer, more drawn out battles, I wholeheartedly agree with Ms. Levine's advice about creating a map. If the battle takes place in a castle, draw up a floor plan - nothing fancy, just the major walls, rooms, secret passages, et cetera, that will affect the fighting. If it takes place in a forest, you don't need to draw every tree - that's the fun of writing forest scenes, you can add in a fallen log or a stream whenever you need to - but you should include major landmarks like rivers too wide and deep to wade, cliffs or dropoffs, and major trails.
Once you've created your map or floorplan, I highly suggest making several copies, either on a copy machine or with tracing or carbon paper. It helps immensely. If you know how many scenes you're going to have in the fight or how many times characters are going to move, make one copy for each so you can plot out your character's locations.
One of the hardest things when writing a battle scene can be keeping track of where everybody is. Before you even set pen to paper you need to be able to answer the following questions.
How many characters are going to be your POV characters during the battle? If you're writing from third person omniscent, you still ned to know this, even though your POV characters may be more numerous. If you're writing from several close-focus third person or first person POVs - switching only at the end of a scene or chapter - then you should generally limit it to the people whose POV you've been using for the rest of the book. Adding a new POV character in the middle of a battle scene may confuse readers and slow down the pace. Introducing a new character altogether should just be illegal.
Where are all your POV characters when the battle starts? On one of your maps or floorplans, pinpoint the location with a seperate colored pen or pencil for each POV character. Write "Beginning of Battle" or "Starting Point" or "Scene One" or whatever you want on the top of the page. Write "The-Place-Where-The-Whole-Darn-Thing-Gets-Started" if you want, but just make sure you know that this is the beginning of the battle.
Are any deaths going to occur in the battle? Who is going to die? Where is the death going to take place? What other characters are going to be present at the death scene? On another map, mark the place of death of the character who's dying his or her own color. (If they're a POV character, use the same color you did before; if they're not, use a new color.) Add in the people who are going to be present at the death, again, assigning each character there own color. Don't add any other characters yet, and don't number this map. You can write "So-and-so's Death Scene" if you want, but don't number it. Set it aside.
Where is everyone going to end up at the end of the battle? If it doesn't really matter and no one needs to be in a certain place for the plot, you can wait and see how it works out. If only a few characters need to be in a certain place, mark them down and leave the rest to end up where they will. Write "end of battle" or some such name on the top and set it aside.
Okay. Now, you have some things to work with. You know where everyone is at the beginning of the battle, where you need to get them for the death of so-and-so, and where you need to get them from the end. Decide when any deaths you've planned will fall as far as time, and then use your remaining maps to chart the significant movements of characters as you get them where you need them to go during the battle. Add in supporting characters, if you want. Have characters moving in groups. You should end up with a wonderful color-coded conglomeration of charts. (By the way, I hope you've got a reference somewhere for your colors, as in, green = bob, purple = dave, blue = phil.)
So, now you know where everyone's going to be, and now you have to write the thing.
Obviously, you can't use the summary format for something so big and that you've spent so much time on. You're going to have to get inside character's heads more and describe specific actions. This can be tricky, so don't worry if you don't get it right the first time around. Every time you try again or rewrite it you'll improve, until writing battle scenes becomes as easy as any other aspects of your writing.
One of the things that I find the hardest about writing battle scenes is avoiding repetition. Before you begin, I reccomend doing a synonym search (www.thesaurus.com is a good place) on words like sword, armor, soldier, blow, stab, block, and other words that you'll be using frequently. Make a list and save it as a new document or write it down and put it where you can easily see it while you're writing.
There are other things to avoid repeating, too, such as sequences of events or character's thoughts. Every oponent shouldn't be dispatched with the same tactics - mix it up and describe different strategies, movements, and methods. If you're writing a large battle scene with relatively equal forces on both sides, you can devote more time to describing the action between two people since most soldiers won't have to worry about fighting more than one or two people at a time. If one side outnumbers the other four to one? You're probably feeling overwhelmed trying to keep track of all the people bearing down on one character. Don't worry, that's exactly how the one character feels as he tries to block blows - it's going to be easy for you to slip into his mind, now. Write about blows coming so fast that he can't tell where they're coming from, about all his enemies seeming to merge into one ubitiquous force, to cut down on having to keep track of whether Soldier #1 or Soldier #3 was cracking his ribs while soldier #2 kept him distracted.
Action scenes are primarily composed of, well, action; however, if you're feeling like you need some dialogue, fear not! This can actually be a very helpful tool. If you allow the specific jabs and swordthrusts to fade into the background, it can take some of the monotony out of depicting each one. Remember when you decided that Character A and Character B would fight together for a brief span in Scene 7? Well, that was sheer brilliance on your part, because you've got two characters who, presumably, can communcate - hey presto, dialogue! If they're old rivals facing each other in battle, they can trade insults in the same breath as blows, and as long as you imply that they're fighting, you only need to point out a few specific moves. If they're friends, they can discuss how they're going to get out of this situation or what they need to do next as they hack through rows of enemies.
Another tip is to imply swordfighting through onomatopoeia that punctuates dialogue. One example of this is a scene I wrote in one of the first battles of my book. My character switched sides in the middle of a war, and ends up facing the queen he betrayed - who's also his ex-lover - in battle.
"They always turn on you when you least expect it.” Wham. “And Flamefoot, I thought maybe you cared.” Clash. “But, then again, they always say it’s the ones closest to you that you have to watch.” Bang.
It's clear that they're fighting, but I don't have to describe each individual move.As for keeping things fast-paced, I only have two pieces of advice. First of all, if you're like me and are addicted to description, don't worry. There have to be some adjectives in there besides the ones used to describe the force behind a sword. Just remember that when writing description, if well written, short sentences comprised of a few adjectives, a verb, and a subject, can pack just as much punch as a collosal one like this.
My other piece of advice, which will help battle scene writing all around, is to get into and excited about what you're writing. If you get really into your story, then you'll be just as anxious to finish writing the end of a chapter as your reader will be to finish reading it, and so you'll naturally shift into a faster pace of writing. Basically in writing, whatever you as the author feels as you are crafting your book, the reader gets a watered-down version of, so make sure that above all else you're keeping yourself on the edge of your seat.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Creating Religon
Oh yes, this is always fun.
When you write primarily fantasy, as I do, you can of course create the basic aspects of your world and stop there. I've seen this done well plenty of times, and there's nothing wrong with it. But, maybe because I have a tendency to get over-involved in projects, I love delving further into my world's culture by getting into myths, religion, Creation stories, and more.
Make no mistake, this can be hell. Wait! Is there hell in my fantasy world? Heaven? A God? Many gods? Deities of any kind? Religion? Myth? Help!
Yepp, that's pretty much how the entire process goes. However, I've decided to offer some tips and tricks that I had to learn the hard way in an attempt to make the grueling journey less painful for you.
1. Decide how much you need to know from the outset.
How much you need to decide depends on how much you're willing to revise later. At the beginning of the first draft of my novel, I had little culture and no religion. Now, halfway through my second draft, both are fully developed. I don't mind major revisions because I usually scrap countless chapters anyway, so it wasn't a big deal for me to work things in as they came to me. If you don't like to majorly overhaul your plot, however, you might be better off deciding at least some things before you start. Write things down until you feel comfortable with what you've got, and the begin your novel.
2. Things will come to you if you need them
When you started your story, you had an idea, right? And if you've written anything of significant legnth before, you know that ideas tend to develop as you write them. The story you end up with might not even be in the same genre as the idea you started with, and that's okay. In fact, when you're trying to create history and religion, sometimes it's better just to let things fall into place.
For example, if your idea involves a young man who wants to become a hero and earn the favor of the gods in the hopes they'll reward him by healing his dying sister, then you already know that the gods are going to play a role in your story, if only a background one. You still have to decide smaller things - how many gods are there, are they kind or cruel, involved in human life, how are they worshipped, etc - but the major one's already done. Yepp, you have gods.
If your story, however, is about an older man who wants to write a "Magic will" that leaves all his power to his grandson, but has to struggle against a jealous son who wants all the power and complicated laws that he doesn't understand, then maybe religion isn't important. Or maybe it is; as your story developes, you'll find out whether the main focus is about the old man trying to be fair, or if it's about him trying to give his grandson one last gift before he dies. If you find that the old man's death is involved and becomes central to the plot, then where he goes after death could be important. Just write your story, and elements of religion, myth, or superstition will turn up if you really need them.
3. Know what you're doing before you revise
After you've written the first draft and have what you think could be an inkling of a story - this is when you should nail down some concrete facts, so you know what's important in the second draft. Here's a brief list of things that I think are important. It's not all-encompassing, and if you think of other questions, feel free to add them.
-Do you have gods, creators, spirits, or other deities?
-What kind of power do they have?
-Are they worshipped in any way? How?
-Is there magic in your world?
-What part, if any, does it play in religion? How is related to the gods if you have them?
-Is there an afterlife?
-Heaven? Hell? Different places for good and bad people, or doesn't it matter?
-Is there superstition?
-Do people worship any gods that don't exist?
-Are there multiple religions?
-Is one true?
-How do the different religions treat each other?
You should be able to answer most of these.
Well, that's all I have to offer. Best of luck, if there is any; may the gods be with you, if they exist or care; and may your magic, if you have any, never fail, if that's possible. ;-)
When you write primarily fantasy, as I do, you can of course create the basic aspects of your world and stop there. I've seen this done well plenty of times, and there's nothing wrong with it. But, maybe because I have a tendency to get over-involved in projects, I love delving further into my world's culture by getting into myths, religion, Creation stories, and more.
Make no mistake, this can be hell. Wait! Is there hell in my fantasy world? Heaven? A God? Many gods? Deities of any kind? Religion? Myth? Help!
Yepp, that's pretty much how the entire process goes. However, I've decided to offer some tips and tricks that I had to learn the hard way in an attempt to make the grueling journey less painful for you.
1. Decide how much you need to know from the outset.
How much you need to decide depends on how much you're willing to revise later. At the beginning of the first draft of my novel, I had little culture and no religion. Now, halfway through my second draft, both are fully developed. I don't mind major revisions because I usually scrap countless chapters anyway, so it wasn't a big deal for me to work things in as they came to me. If you don't like to majorly overhaul your plot, however, you might be better off deciding at least some things before you start. Write things down until you feel comfortable with what you've got, and the begin your novel.
2. Things will come to you if you need them
When you started your story, you had an idea, right? And if you've written anything of significant legnth before, you know that ideas tend to develop as you write them. The story you end up with might not even be in the same genre as the idea you started with, and that's okay. In fact, when you're trying to create history and religion, sometimes it's better just to let things fall into place.
For example, if your idea involves a young man who wants to become a hero and earn the favor of the gods in the hopes they'll reward him by healing his dying sister, then you already know that the gods are going to play a role in your story, if only a background one. You still have to decide smaller things - how many gods are there, are they kind or cruel, involved in human life, how are they worshipped, etc - but the major one's already done. Yepp, you have gods.
If your story, however, is about an older man who wants to write a "Magic will" that leaves all his power to his grandson, but has to struggle against a jealous son who wants all the power and complicated laws that he doesn't understand, then maybe religion isn't important. Or maybe it is; as your story developes, you'll find out whether the main focus is about the old man trying to be fair, or if it's about him trying to give his grandson one last gift before he dies. If you find that the old man's death is involved and becomes central to the plot, then where he goes after death could be important. Just write your story, and elements of religion, myth, or superstition will turn up if you really need them.
3. Know what you're doing before you revise
After you've written the first draft and have what you think could be an inkling of a story - this is when you should nail down some concrete facts, so you know what's important in the second draft. Here's a brief list of things that I think are important. It's not all-encompassing, and if you think of other questions, feel free to add them.
-Do you have gods, creators, spirits, or other deities?
-What kind of power do they have?
-Are they worshipped in any way? How?
-Is there magic in your world?
-What part, if any, does it play in religion? How is related to the gods if you have them?
-Is there an afterlife?
-Heaven? Hell? Different places for good and bad people, or doesn't it matter?
-Is there superstition?
-Do people worship any gods that don't exist?
-Are there multiple religions?
-Is one true?
-How do the different religions treat each other?
You should be able to answer most of these.
Well, that's all I have to offer. Best of luck, if there is any; may the gods be with you, if they exist or care; and may your magic, if you have any, never fail, if that's possible. ;-)
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Writing From Older Character's POV
One thing I've always been good at is writing from adults point of view. It's probably because I spend so much time around them; only children tend to be more comfortable around adults, and I'm no exception. During a volunteer job I spend a lot of time at the Senior Center in our town, and so I'm very comfortable around older people. My dad has a lot of business trips and I usually go, and at the receptions and dinners I'm generally the only fourteen-year-old, so I've developed a skill for conversing with people in their thirties, forties, and fifties. I think I could probably pull off a businessman in his forties pretty well.
However, the difference is less noticable in fantasy, because while characters are definitely important, a lot of fantasy books tend to be more plot-driven. Also, in an alternate world, the twenty year olds aren't dealing with life in a tiny apartment and the forty year olds aren't dealing with putting their kids through college. Instead, they're dealing with battling the dark overlord or whatever. (Although I hope your story is a lot more original than just that.)
Still, because I tend to think of myself as writing young adult fantasy, I never let my characters get too old and I usually have one protagonist whose a bit younger. In the novel I'm currently revising, for example, I have four POV characters: A sixteen-year-old girl, who comes across as very naive because she's inexpirienced, two fire-elementalists, both in their mid- to late- thirties; my oldest POV character is the king of one of my countries, and he's thirty eight. I'd say that my supporting characters are pretty even as far as younger ones (say, 14-20) and older ones (say, 30 and up.) Oddly enough, I have very few characters in their twenties.
But anyway, I want this to be a novel that young adults can read, which is one of the reasons that I'm going to keep the 16-year-old a POV character in the planned sequel. There are many other characters who's heads I want to get inside, but if I didn't have her, I don't think I would be able to say it was young adult fantasy anymore, and while it wouldn't be any different, the thought of writing adult fiction sounds a lot scarier.
However, the difference is less noticable in fantasy, because while characters are definitely important, a lot of fantasy books tend to be more plot-driven. Also, in an alternate world, the twenty year olds aren't dealing with life in a tiny apartment and the forty year olds aren't dealing with putting their kids through college. Instead, they're dealing with battling the dark overlord or whatever. (Although I hope your story is a lot more original than just that.)
Still, because I tend to think of myself as writing young adult fantasy, I never let my characters get too old and I usually have one protagonist whose a bit younger. In the novel I'm currently revising, for example, I have four POV characters: A sixteen-year-old girl, who comes across as very naive because she's inexpirienced, two fire-elementalists, both in their mid- to late- thirties; my oldest POV character is the king of one of my countries, and he's thirty eight. I'd say that my supporting characters are pretty even as far as younger ones (say, 14-20) and older ones (say, 30 and up.) Oddly enough, I have very few characters in their twenties.
But anyway, I want this to be a novel that young adults can read, which is one of the reasons that I'm going to keep the 16-year-old a POV character in the planned sequel. There are many other characters who's heads I want to get inside, but if I didn't have her, I don't think I would be able to say it was young adult fantasy anymore, and while it wouldn't be any different, the thought of writing adult fiction sounds a lot scarier.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
The Coffee Lover's Survey
Here's a nice, light topic after my previous iTunes rant [EDIT - I deleted my 'iTunes rant' on 5/29/11] - coffee. The idea for the post came from all those email forward messages - I love the surveys with questions like what's your favorite drink, what are you wearing right now, etc - but they all sound the same. So I decided to create a new one, based on - you guessed it - coffee!
Without further ado - here's my survey, with my answers below. Post your answers in a comment, send it to friends in an email, whatever. Maybe some day it'll get forwarded back to me.
1. What roast of coffee do you normally drink?
Light!
2. What do you put in your coffee?
Cream, and a little sugar
3. Alternative coffee drink of choice? (latte, cappucino, etc)
Latte
4. Do you do flavored coffee? What's your favorite flavor?
Yes! Vanilla, caramel, or cinnamon
5. Iced Coffee?
Sometimes, if it's sweet.
6. What was the best non-flavored coffee you ever had, and where did you have it?
On vacation in Maryland. The hotel's coffee was really smooth and not too strong.
7. Best flavored coffee/coffee drink?
St. Michael's Mocha - again, in Maryland. They have really good coffee in St. Michael's.
8. Decaf, half-caf, or regular?
Usually decaf
9. Starbucks or Seattle's Best?
Starbucks!
10. Weird coffee quirks?
I don't like it too hot. That's why I usually put milk in it.
Without further ado - here's my survey, with my answers below. Post your answers in a comment, send it to friends in an email, whatever. Maybe some day it'll get forwarded back to me.
1. What roast of coffee do you normally drink?
Light!
2. What do you put in your coffee?
Cream, and a little sugar
3. Alternative coffee drink of choice? (latte, cappucino, etc)
Latte
4. Do you do flavored coffee? What's your favorite flavor?
Yes! Vanilla, caramel, or cinnamon
5. Iced Coffee?
Sometimes, if it's sweet.
6. What was the best non-flavored coffee you ever had, and where did you have it?
On vacation in Maryland. The hotel's coffee was really smooth and not too strong.
7. Best flavored coffee/coffee drink?
St. Michael's Mocha - again, in Maryland. They have really good coffee in St. Michael's.
8. Decaf, half-caf, or regular?
Usually decaf
9. Starbucks or Seattle's Best?
Starbucks!
10. Weird coffee quirks?
I don't like it too hot. That's why I usually put milk in it.
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