Writer Senses

My protagonist is a doctor who euthanizes the terminally ill and suicidal - anyone who asks for his help to come to a quick and painless end. Now I'm at a scene where he and another character are arguing their philosophies, with my intent of digging into the nuances of each position: life vs death. However, I'm so far stuck in my MC's head that I'm drawing a blank on his opposition. His argument: "Everyone suffered and died. He wondered why anyone lived these days." So what would justify a miserable existence suffering indefinitely to the mere possibility that life gets better? (Also note that this is a low-tech fantasy world, where there aren't psychologists or psychiatric drugs. So no one's going to get any professional help.) So can you answer him?: If someone wants to die, why don't you let them? Why shouldn't you help them come to a quick, painless, and humane end if their life isn't worth living anymore? If they're suffer...

Writer: Is it ever OK to deliberately write poorly, as long as it serves a function of the story? I have a character who, throughout the story, has their memory altered to forget certain events, or to influence their perception. From a critic's perspective, it would seem as though the character just isn't written well; they don't react the way a normal character would given their circumstances, except that's intentional on my part. Flowers for Algernon did something similar, I remember, with its main character's speech changing over the course of the story. The MC's dialogue, in the beginning, has poor spelling/grammar, but it's OK because the story allows for this. In Flowers for Algernon it's easy to accept the poor grammar and spelling because we, as readers, know it's a part of the story up front. Is this OK? Can poor writing be excused by the plot? What about if the plot requires it to be kept secret? Can it be conveyed in other ways that so...

Image courtesy of Pixabay.com. Writer: 1. Do you describe the surroundings only when they drive the plot/story forward? Or [do] you like to describe them to give the reader a sense of the mood/setting/atmosphere? 2. How long are your descriptions? How do you decide the length? Dear Writer, Questions of craft are tethered to context. That said: I often want the reader to be oriented to the immediate setting, even if the immediate setting isn't the most significant setting. In such cases, I choose a handful—usually no more than three—orienting details that engage some of the five senses and establish in broad terms where the characters are and what it's like to be there. Even in a film or television shot of a detailed setting, the camera often doesn't linger on the setting's details unless it is to draw attention to something significant (Chekhov's Gun). More often, the cinematographer will use wide shots to broadly establish the setting and then cut to c...

As I explore this new world of writing, I come across some “rules” that can be amusing, if one recognizes them for the holy mantras they are, or confusing, if one doesn’t. Recently, the “no adverbs” religious utterance came to my attention. Why should a writer exclude those incredibly beautiful words? (Please don’t start your answer with the words “Stephen King”.) ******** Dear Writer, Two things on this. First, on the concept of "rules" in writing. "Rules" are usually overcorrections. The fundamental principle of art is: "Do what is effective." Sometimes adverbs are "what is effective." Often, they are not. Second, on what those who parrot such rules are getting at: Adverbs are often redundant. Certain verbs are neutral and will require an adverb to bring out nuance. "I walked to the store" implies something different than "I ran to the store." Both of those sentences are fine. It's also fine to write, ...

"Poppy Field" by Claude Monet. Image courtesy of Pixabay.com. To dialogue or not to dialogue? What does dialogue do for fiction? Is it necessary? Generally recommended? Vital? Or is it completely optional and its absence has no bearing on the quality or palatability of the writing? ******** Dear Writer, Nonfiction writers regularly do not include dialogue in their work. In many cases, we would find it strange to do so. The core question, as with any craft-related issue, is what is necessary for a given work to succeed. This is largely dependent upon the goals, skill, and style of the author. In fiction, it behooves most writers to include dialogue since stories are told from the perspectives of sentient characters or through anthropomorphized, otherwise inanimate, characters. (For a great example of this, see the old Animaniacs episode, " A Gift of Gold .”) Failure to do so for avant-garde reasons will likely isolate a large portion of your potential au...

I've read that prologues are acceptable if written well and are not blatant info dumps. But I've also heard they are a death knell in the minds of agents and editors who might be considering a work and think they are amateurish. ******** Dear Writer, If you are still in the process of writing, my recommendation would be to just write the story and ignore professional sensibilities. You need to finish the story and have fun doing it. Maintain your artistic integrity as long as possible, and understand what your goals for the story are. If, however, you are looking at a second or above draft and desire professional publication, consider the following: Prologues are frowned at by contemporary professionals because they are often unnecessary. To the gatekeepers in the traditional publishing world, a prologue should be relevant to the main plot of the story but should have significant thematic, perspectival, or chronological differentiation. If your prologue star...

I was surprised to learn that I received an honorable mention for my third quarter, 2018 entry of the prodigious WRITERS OF THE FUTURE CONTEST. Image source. Honestly, I submitted on a whim because it had been about six years since I'd tried. Although I did not win, I consider this a win because it means professional, working writers and editors think highly of my work. One day I will win one of these things.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.com. Languages in the Ark Saga are not any Earth Prime language. My philosophy of writing the characters’ idiom – how they speak and write as natives – was rooted in the principle that my narrative style is a direct translation of their fictional language (vocabulary, syntax, and grammar) into idiomatic American English. Years into writing the books, I formalized unique alphabets for two of the languages represented in the fictional world of the Ark Saga. For the language the main characters speak, I realized that, given my philosophy of language within the story, any time a unique letter was named, there was not a complete correspondence between the English alphabet and the fictional alphabet. What this meant was that any time a character wanted to talk about the language they speak, they didn’t call it “English.” When any character had to directly name a letter or directly spell a word, they had to name the letter(s) in their language, not English...

After gaining some killer advice at the Chicago Writing Workshop 2016 , I cut up the first Ark novel, An Autumn Veil , into the first two  Ark novels: A Flood of Silence (previously: A Steel Horizon )   and An Autumn Veil . Book 3, A Labyrinth of Smoke , is still in the works, and book 2 has been undergoing restructuring now that it's standing on its own two feet. I've also been working on book 2.5: Goddess from the Machine . Though properly a spin-off of the larger Ark saga, GftM features a plot and characters with touch points to AFoS and AAV, especially its protagonist and one other major character. It provides a fleshed-out background story for ALoS. Beta readers have already expressed appreciation of the characters and plot. GftM is different than anything I've written. Originally a character study of an important, tangential character from AAV, the histories of the characters of the original short quickly overtook the narrative, ultimately demanding a more matu...

Listening to:  Final Fantasy 7  soundtrack ____ This is the second installment of my favorite stories series. A glaring gap in my prior entry was of the literary breed. How can an author not have a book on his list of favorite stories? Unbundy your undies and read on. THE NAME OF THE WIND Cover of "The Name of the Wind," by Patrick Rothfuss.  Source. " I have stolen princesses back from sleeping barrow kings. I burned down the town of Trebon. I have spent the night with Felurian and left with both my sanity and my life. I was expelled from the University at a younger age than most people are allowed in. I tread paths by moonlight that others fear to speak of during day. I have talked to Gods, loved women, and written songs that make the minstrels weep.   You may have heard of me. " -From the book jacket of  The Name of the Wind The Name of the Wind   is New York Times bestselling author  Patrick Rothfuss's  first novel. And wha...

“ Stories you read when you're the right age never quite leave you. You may forget who wrote them or what the story was called. Sometimes you'll forget precisely what happened, but if a story touches you it will stay with you, haunting the places in your mind that you rarely ever visit. ” - Neil Gaiman Good fiction both informs and is informed by reality. I'm not a big reader. It is strange juxtaposing this truth with my being a writer. Do chefs hate food? Only if it's so oily the US wants to invade the plate . I'm not a lover of books, mostly because I find so many books to be poorly-written, and who has sixty hours to read something that everyone  says  is good but my own two eyes can't stop bleeding at? No, no. I love  good  books just like I love  good  movies, and I have no time for bad books just as I have no time for bad movies.  Well, not  all  bad movies . To confuse the medium for the core, that is, the story, w...

Current Wordcount of Autumnveil: ~194,000 Playing: Torchlight 2 Listening to: The Civil Wars ____ A STORY So I would like to tell you what happened. But before anything else, I would be grateful for you to become a follower of this blog. I'm  not asking you to read it every day (or at all, even). The mere fact of you following makes a difference. After you read the rest of this post, you'll see why I'm asking for your help in this. Thanks. So anyway , here's what happened. I was minding my own business, checking the prices on sloth-themed merchandise online , when I started thinking about the Blogosphere . Specifically, I was thinking about how I kind of hate the Blogosphere. Why? On the few occasions I've peeked into it , it has shown itself to be overflowing with purposely-controversial rhetoric , people hiding behind their anonymity , strategically placed up-voters and down-voters, professional trolls , and other shenanigans . As a st...

Though my blog's primary purpose is updating readers about my novel's progress, I like to deviate from time-to-time with insights from other writers and discussions about the craft. The past (almost three!) years of writing has been enlightening, and since the beginning, one of the most important tools to my growth as a writer has been Scribophile.com . Writing is a solitary pursuit, and for an  ENFJ  like me, particularly difficult in that respect. I enjoy the social aspect of storytelling. Comic and writing conventions featuring popular stories like Star Wars , Lord of the Rings , or, more recently, Avatar , are awesome because they incorporate the celebration of story. What excites me most about my story is the possibility that it will unite people, that people will be so fascinated with it that they want to talk about it, laugh about it,  shake their fists at me over it. To that end, Scribophile has been a laboratory in which to test this aspect of storytelling. I...

Word Count: 116,500 Page Count: 502 Double-Spaced Listening to: The Last Airbender: We are Now the Gods by James Newton Howard ____ Yesterday marks the two year anniversary of the completion of the first draft of the first chapter of ARK. A DIFFICULT YEAR One year ago the manuscript contained 90,000 words, this year, just over 116,000. It is startling to think that in one year I wrote 90,000 words and the next less than a third of that. It’s been a difficult year of writing. I mentioned in a previous blog that it took six months to write the climax (chapters 18-23, respectively) of act (or “book”) one. The events of the climax, while complex, still needed to be believable. As my own biggest critic, I asked myself constantly why something less complex wouldn’t have happened, or why this or that wasn’t present in a certain scene when we could reasonably expect it would have been. When I finished book one, I told myself I was not going to go back and edit...