"Literary Stardust"

Writing Advice, Shameless Self-Promotion, and Memes.

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There are a lot of things to worry about in the first draft like “who are my characters” and “what the hell are they doing” and “oh no it’s not following my outline anymore!”.

Here are some things not to worry about in your first draft:

Foreshadowing--as explained once by one of my professors, it is almost impossible to foreshadow in your first draft. You might get a few major points hinted at and that’s great, but don’t worry about putting in foreshadowing on purpose.

Length--your page count is going to change a lot. Don’t worry about it. For some people, their first draft is the shortest because they’re just trying to get the story down. They add the fancy fluff in the second and third drafts. For others, they put down EVERYTHING in the first draft, then cut back in the other drafts. Both ways are ok. Don’t stress about the length.

“That wasn’t in the outline--everything’s changing now!” Yup. That’ll happen if you’re a hardcore outliner. Even folks who mostly just dive in will have things charge as they work and that’s to be expected. You’re telling the story for the first time. You’re (or your characters are) going to change things to make it a better tale.

Editing. Don’t do it. Wait until you finish the whole draft, no matter how tempting it is.

“I’m not writing well”--that’s what editing is for. Later.

“Am I doing it right?” Are you writing? Yes, you’re doing it right then.

[literarystardust-blog]

Writing a novel can be daunting, especially when you’re dealing with a world outside of “classic Earth”. Trying to flip through draft pages to remember things like dates, character appearances, settings, and other such details can leads to continuity errors too that’ll give you massive headaches later when you’re trying to edit.

While I work, I like to create what I call “The World Encyclopedia”. I’ve seen some people call documents like this Lore Guides, World Wikis, and World Bibles. Honestly, it doesn’t matter what you call it. What matters is the stuff in it. For mine I actually modeled it after a Dungeon Master’s binder. For some people, my method might seem to methodical (lol), but I personally work well when I have my research organized under different sections. How you organize your world guide is up to you.

I usually start my World Encyclopedia on a digital document that I edit as I work on my first draft. This allows me to constantly make changes as I come up with characters and lore. Some people prefer to keep their notes looser during their first draft in composition notebooks, but again, I like to keep my work fairly organized (I blame grad school for that). No matter what stage I’m at though, I try to keep the same sections for my work.

The first page of my World Encyclopedia has the title of my novel and the last day it was updated on. I put the date to make sure I’m always working off of the most recent version of my Encyclopedia. This was a trick I learned from narrative designers in the video game industry and it’s helped me out a lot.

The next page has my table of contents. You can organize this however you want, but for mine I have my various “chapter” headings (Settings, Beings (if you’re working with non-humans this is helpful), Myth and History (history isn’t always accurate in the real world, so sometimes people accept myths over actual history. This section also covers the mythology of the world), and Characters) and the corresponding page numbers. Some of these sections have subheadings, such as different major setting points or the pages for specific major character profiles. Again, this is all up to you.

How you break down each section depends on how you work. For some people, it helps to write a general summary of the different things in a Sparknotes format before summing up important details with bullet points. Some folks do all bullet points, some do massive paragraphs. It honestly depends on how you like to find your information. I write mine a bit like a wiki page. I start with a paragraph or two summarizing everything, then go into specific details as needed for things I need to expand upon.

You can put pictures, maps, or anything else you want into your story bible. After I finish my second draft, that’s when I usually print mine out, since by then most of my lore is pretty solid. Having a World Encyclopedia will help you out with editing and in the long run, mining out potential new storylines. A separate post on creating new lore from existing lore will be coming soon!

Hopefully you found this helpful. Feel free to drop an ask if you want me to expand on anything from this post, or if you have any other writing questions!

Like what you read and want to send a coffee?

[literarystardust-blog]

NaNoWriMo PSA:

If you want to publish your work after NaNoWriMo, DO NOT post large portions of your draft online. Most literary magazines and publishing houses won’t pay for work that is already published and that includes posting it online. This is because most literary magazines and publishing houses want First Serial Rights.

I intern for a literary magazine and one of the first things we check is that the submission hasn’t already been posted to a blog, which counts as a form of publishing. Most editors I’ve met through grad school and through my internship say the same thing. So PLEASE make sure you only post small portions of your novel if you have to share.

[literarystardust-blog]

With Camp NaNoWriMo going, I thought it was time to share this post again.

Please, PLEASE be aware of how your publishing rights work! It’ll save you a lot of pain in the long run!

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The Importance of Creating Characters - The Protagonist isn’t the only important person in the world.

It’s easy to get caught up with the protagonist. I know I have a huge problem with creating a really rounded protagonist, but then cheating the rest of the cast out of development and motivation.

The truth of the matter is though: those characters are just as important (is it too extreme to say more important) than the protagonist and if you don’t care about your supporting cast, neither will your reader.

The immediate cast creates the world for your protagonist to act in. Better still, giving motivations, secrets, and growth to the supporting cast will help you create a plethora of subplots and can potentially help you work out rough patches in your plot. Think of your side characters like potential quest givers in video games or companions that join your character on their journey. They’ve all joined for their own reasons and chances are, they’re going to have something outside of the main ‘quest’ that they want to achieve as well on the journey.

You don’t have to go through and write out massive character sketches for every supporting character to get more out of your characters either. Just ask them three questions:

What motivates them to keep going? If your character isn’t motivated, your audience isn’t going to give a damn about them or their problems, no matter how dashing they are.

What are they holding back from the rest of the group? Chances are, a person isn’t going to tell you everything about them when you first meet them, so why would a character? Everyone’s got a secret and so do characters.

How are they going to change by the end? Are they going to change or are they going to reject it? If they do change, is it for better or worse?

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I had to have a professor who used to say at least once during every workshop: “It was well written, but it felt like an episode, not a full piece”.

It’s easy to write a conclusive piece that follows the standard arc of beginning, middle, and end. It’s harder to write a self contained story that answers most (maybe not all) the questions that it raises. As a writer, you might not even realize that you haven’t answered all the questions your reader might ask. Most of the time we know the answers to things we haven’t put into words yet. 

As a culture we watch a lot of TV and it almost becomes the default to tell a story in the form of an episode. In itself, an episode is self contained (it has a beginning, middle, and an end) with the expectation that things that weren’t answered now will be answered later. Take Avatar the Last Airbender. During the first episode (technically the first two since they aired at the same time) we’re introduced to the world. We get enough of a taste to understand that there is a conflict: Fire Nation is bad, Air Benders wiped out, Avatar (was) missing, and that we’re going to be going on a journey to master all four elements. We also know that somehow Aang disappeared and during that time, the Fire Nation launched an attack on the world. We don’t know why, but we expect to learn why later, and we do. As a viewer we see that the first two episodes are a complete and contained arc in the story, but know more is coming. That is why we accept the questions that we still have.

It’s different for short stories and novels. When it comes to writing a self contained short story or novel, you can’t leave the reader wondering about the 'ifs’ and the 'whys’ unless you intend to continue it in a second novel (that doesn’t work so well for short stories for obvious reasons). You need to make sure that everything is contained.

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So things I’ve learned today while researching for NaNoWriMo:

The bottom part of the ship is called a keel

EMPs don’t make a sound unless they’re caused by something really big and dramatic

Draugr are also called “aptrganga” which means “again-walker” and I think that’s beautiful.

[literarystardust-blog]

NaNoWriMo PSA:

If you want to publish your work after NaNoWriMo, DO NOT post large portions of your draft online. Most literary magazines and publishing houses won’t pay for work that is already published and that includes posting it online. This is because most literary magazines and publishing houses want First Serial Rights.

I intern for a literary magazine and one of the first things we check is that the submission hasn’t already been posted to a blog, which counts as a form of publishing. Most editors I’ve met through grad school and through my internship say the same thing. So PLEASE make sure you only post small portions of your novel if you have to share.

[literarycastaway]

Writing Advice: Objective Correlative

What is an Objective Correlative? Beyond sounding like an obnoxious literary snob word, it’s actually something that is used quite frequently in literature and film. A lot of folk use this technique without even realizing it.

As it was described to me by my previous fiction writing professor, an objective correlative is an object that acts as a reflection to the situation. An objective correlative acts as a mirror, or even a magnifying glass. It’s an elegant way to hammer home specific points you want to make to your reader.

If you’re looking for a more proper definition:

Something (as a situation or chain of events) that symbolizes or objectifies a particular emotion and that may be used in creative writing to evoke a desired emotional response in the reader (source).

The term was first coined in 1840 by Washington Allston, though it wasn’t popularized until its use by T.S. Eliot.

A great example that comes to my mind of an objective correlative in action comes from this scene from Lord of the Rings, the Two Towers.

In this scene we see Eowyn who has just had a fairly negative interaction with the man who’s helping to poison/enchant her uncle, King Theoden. Her brother has been banished from Rohan and her nephew, Prince Theodred has just passed. The kingdom is in shambles.

As she looks out over the land, noticing Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, and Gandalf approaching, one of the standards rips off and flies down towards the group. In particular the flag lands before Aragorn as he is entering the gates.

In this scene the flag is the objective correlative. It represents Rohan. Right now it is broken, flying away an no longer standing as an established power. By having the flag land in front of Aragorn, it symbolizes his future aid to the Kingdom. He helps fight for it and aids the rightful rulers in taking it back. Along the way, he also helps bring back the spirit to the people of Rohan.

Objective correlatives are a really elegant way to bring forward the main idea that you’re trying to convey in a particular scene. So much can be explained in a few sentences of imagery with an objective correlative.

So next time you’re reading, keep an eye out. You’ll notice these a lot now that you know what to look for.

[literarycastaway]

Writing Advice: Writing Addicting Villains

Everyone has a villain that they love even though they know that person is utterly insane or mislead. From Loki to Scar, to Yzma and Gaston, we love to hate these characters. But what makes a villain interesting? Why are there some villains, like Loki, that we cheer for?

It’s easy to set up a paper villain. They’re the villains who have one goal and lack any character development throughout the novel. Examples of such villains would be Sauron (in the Lord of the Rings NOT the Silmarillion), Grendel from Beowulf, Scar, and Iago from Othello. What makes these characters flat? They all generally have a single goal in mind, usually without any other explanation beyond ‘I want power because ‘X’ reason that wasn’t previously explored, but will be mentioned briefly’. Before the Silmarillion, not much is known about Sauron. He is an invisible foe that goes bump in the night and sends his minions out to hunt for Frodo throughout his journey to destroy Sauron’s ring. In the Lord of the Rings, he has no motive beyond wanting to dominate the world and to get his ring back. As Gandalf said, “He is seeking [the ring], all his thought is bent on it”. Every good fantasy or fiction needs a villain. That’s why it’s so easy to fall into the trap of making a standard paper cut out villain who lacks motive or even defined backstory. The only reason we fear Sauron in the Lord of the Rings is because the other characters fear him. We follow their lead because we trust their opinion on the matter. Who in their right mind would argue with Gandalf after all (trick question, lots of people do)?

This doesn’t always make a compelling villain though. We don’t root for Sauron. We don’t care much about his goals. There is no dilemma in our moral compass, wondering if the hero is really who we want to win.

That’s why you want a dynamic, addicting villain. They’re not just there. They’re a person who has goals, dreams, and hopes; a person who has lost or yearned for something. In their mind, they’re the hero. They’re the ones who’ve been slighted.

My favorite example of this sort of character is Loki from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Right from the beginning we know that he’s a manipulative little shit, but there is still an innocence about him. He loves his family. He is simply a trickster (sure, he let in the frost giants to ruin Thor’s day, but who’s counting a small prank like that?). What happens when Loki finds out about his past? He breaks. His character transforms. Loki discovers that he’s been lied to his whole life and realizes that this is why he’s been treated the way he has. So what now? He thinks, 'well father loves Thor, what does Thor do? Thor kills frost giants. I don’t like frost giants, they abandoned me as baby apparently. Let’s trick them, set myself up as the hero, then kill them’. This logic sets Loki in a downward spiral. He wants the throne, he wants to prove he’s worthy. He’s seen the worst of Thor, the Thor we saw briefly at the start of the movie.

“And if I do, then what? I love Thor more dearly than any of you, but you know what he is. He’s arrogant, he’s reckless, he’s dangerous! You saw how he was today. Is that what Asgard needs from its King?” –Loki, Thor

In his mind, he’s the hero and Thor is the villain. He fights with words whereas others whom we consider to be 'heroes’ fight with swords. Loki sees both options as just as worthy in his mind. 

“I could have done it father! For you! For all of us!” –Loki, Thor “I never wanted the throne, I only ever wanted to be your equal!” –Loki, Thor

These two quotes set him up as a drastically different character from other usurpers that we’ve seen. Scar from Lion King wanted only power (again, based purely on the first movie and not external sources, which set him up as sympathetic and give him an actual backstory). Loki however wanted to show that he was as capable as Thor, the ideal warrior, the perfect son (except for his arrogance).

We know that Loki is bad. We know that his moral compass is wrong. His lack of care for life and constant lies prove that. However, because they set him up as someone who was hurt, who had hopes and feelings, we partially rooted for him. We felt bad when we saw him on the rainbow bridge ready to fall to his doom. We wanted him to be saved.

Don’t create a villain just to have opposition.

A villain has to have their own thoughts and complex story. To have a compelling villain, you have to be sure to give him/her/them just as much attention as your heroes because in another story, they’re the hero. Make them the reflection of your hero. Make them the complete opposite. Make them some guy on the street who decided it was time for a change of pace. Figure out their favorite food. Find out what their guilty pleasure is. Make them human.

Villains aren’t just paper cut outs. They’re characters too. You can’t have a hero without the contrast of a villain.