Busy

Just a heads up: in light of a few things that have been going on in The Real World (and my jumping back and forth between "Six" and a few other things), I anticipate progress on my fics to be slow for the next week or two.

Update and advice

A quick update on my progress with "Six:" I have two and a half chapters completed ahead of schedule as of right now--but they're tentative, at best. I'm going to be doing some weird stuff in the next few chapters, so I'll have to see where it takes me before I'll feel comfortable posting any of it.

Because I am lazy and still haven't finished the stuff I'd planned to post on here (characterization, diction, scene decisions, etc.), I'm going to cop out and pull up a David Marnet article KG linked one day on his LJ. (Which is a bonus because I don't know what I'm talking about half the time, anyway; professional advice trumps anything I could say.) See it here.

It's an article from a screenwriter's perspective on how to write drama. Though not everything in it directly applies to writing, most of it does, and the understanding of several of Marnet's points are essential for good writing.

Along with said posting on LJ came these notes, which I feel obligated to reproduce because they also touch on some issues I hear about fairly often in this fandom:

My favorite excerpts (but you really need to read the whole thing):

QUESTION:WHAT IS DRAMA? DRAMA, AGAIN, IS THE QUEST OF THE HERO TO OVERCOME THOSE THINGS WHICH PREVENT HIM FROM ACHIEVING A SPECIFIC, ACUTE GOAL.

SO: WE, THE WRITERS, MUST ASK OURSELVES OF EVERY SCENE THESE THREE QUESTIONS.

1) WHO WANTS WHAT?
2) WHAT HAPPENS IF HER DON’T GET IT?
3) WHY NOW?


and

HERE ARE THE DANGER SIGNALS. ANY TIME TWO CHARACTERS ARE TALKING ABOUT A THIRD, THE SCENE IS A CROCK OF SHIT.

ANY TIME ANY CHARACTER IS SAYING TO ANOTHER “AS YOU KNOW”, THAT IS, TELLING ANOTHER CHARACTER WHAT YOU, THE WRITER, NEED THE AUDIENCE TO KNOW, THE SCENE IS A CROCK OF SHIT.

DO NOT WRITE A CROCK OF SHIT.

YMMV, as always, but you could do a lot worse than keep the above in mind when trying to write something dramatic. For novels, the standards are a bit looser--you don't *want* every scene to be FULL OF DRAMA. You need to pace it out, build tension, and so on. I also think you can stretch the "two characters talking about a third" when the third is a dramatic figure--think about Al Capone in "The Untouchables." One of the most memorable scenes is Sean Connery telling Kevin Costner in the church "that's how you get Al Capone."

But if you're worried that your story is too flat, not gripping enough in the places where it should be, well, go back and re-read those rules. It's also possible to have a lot of STUFF happening in an action scene and still have it be boring because while it is active, there is no drama. Again, check the points above. What does the character want? What's stopping him/her from getting it?

Happy writing! Hopefully the update to six might maybe possibly perhaps be finished sometime within the next year. Or two weeks.

"The Ambassador" Preview

In light of a few asking about The Ambassador, I've posted the first chapter up on the stories blog. Find it at:

http://jaslazulstories.blogspot.com/2010/04/ambassador-preview.html

This is turning out to be a deep story, even though it started as something half-comedic. It's a thematic story with lots of allusions and careful diction to hint at its message. It is not a romance story, though it might have a few romantic subplots (with whom, I do not yet know; each person I've shown it to sees it spiraling in a different direction). It's pseudo-fanfiction, meaning that it's set in Lylat, playing heavily upon settings like Corneria and upon game events like the Command ending that ends in the settlement of Venom. All the characters, though, are my own.

My biggest issues right now are at the beginning and at my current point, trying to figure out what to do next. There are different ways I could take this story, all of which lending it different themes and plots.

In other words: tell me what you'd like to see, even if it's something silly. Or just say what you think about it--you guys have no idea how much just hearing an opinion sometimes can influence the path of a story. And if you're really good, you can suggest stuff for the beginning (the one that I don't like very much)!

Anyway--in the words of Guardian1: enjoy yourself; I know I do.

Six update

So, uh. Next chapter of "Six" is up. Sorry it took so long, but I took most of this last week off for personal reasons. I'll also be taking most of this next week off for business reasons, so don't expect another update for at least another week or two.

In other news, I've been contemplating writing a short FFIX oneshot/twoshot. I'm going to start it tonight, but who knows? Maybe it'll end up as another thing that never gets in shape or fully written. (I certainly won't finish it tonight, and like I said earlier, this next week will be murderous for me.)

Six and Appearance

So, turns out I got up the latest chapter up six after all. It's kinda shortish, but oh well. Now, on to the appearance thing.

When creating a character, a common fault is to create the Cool Look you think the character should have. You like those tight, holey jeans, so give him some tight, holey jeans. You like orange, so give him an orange shirt. You like Pokémon, so give him a Pokémon-flavored shirt. An orange, Pokémon-flavored shirt. When designing the appearance of a character or a room, you have to aware of what your appearance is saying about your character, because whether you (or they) realize it or not, people are going to analyze the crap out of your character's appearance.

Consider those jeans: they're common now among the goth/emo crowd. Does your character identify with that particular group? Consider the shirt: is your character a gamer or a card-collector, or is the shirt a hand-me-down from a sibling who was one of those?

One of the best examples of characterization by appearance I've seen is from Eudora Welty's "A Worn Path."

It was December—a bright frozen day in the early morning. Far out in the country there was an old Negro woman with her head tied in a red rag, coming along a path through the pinewoods. Her name was Phoenix Jackson. She was very old and small and she walked slowly in the dark pine shadows, moving a little from side to side in her steps, with the balanced heaviness and lightness of a pendulum in a grandfather clock. She carried a thin, small cane made from an umbrella, and with this she kept tapping the frozen earth in front of her. This made a grave and persistent noise in the still air that seemed meditative, like the chirping of a solitary little bird.

She wore a dark striped dress reaching down to her shoe tops, and an equally long apron of bleached sugar sacks, with a full pocket: all neat and tidy, but every time she took a step she might have fallen over her shoelaces, which dragged from her unlaced shoes. She looked straight ahead. Her eyes were blue with age. Her skin had a pattern all its own of numberless branching wrinkles and as though a whole little tree stood in the middle of her forehead, but a golden color ran underneath, and the two knobs of her cheeks were illumined by a yellow burning under the dark. Under the red rag her hair came down on her neck in the frailest of ringlets, still black, and with an odor like copper.

There are some great details in here that you'll process without even realizing you're doing so. For example, consider her umbrella cane and sack dress. Is she poor and unable to afford a real cane or dress? She must also be resourceful to think of using those common items as utilities. There's also the rag in her hair (implying that she's too poor to have her hair done), the blue eyes (cataracts), the tree in her forehead (symbol of strength), and the golden color ("Phoenix" Jackson).

Writing like Welty is something that I believe is neither desirable nor necessary (not that she's a bad writer), especially in fan fiction, but this short passage has lessons from which almost anyone could benefit. To drastically improve your description, just remember this: when working with appearance, do not put in what you think is Cool; put in what will help to create the character the story needs.

(That's something I always come back to, it seems; the story always is and always will be more important than anything from the author's preference.)

* Also see my description mini-tutorial on Apocrypha, which has a short section on this.

sloooooooooooow

Uh. So, I haven't opened and modified any story documents in, like, a week. i so slo! I feel kinda bad about it, but at the same time it's unavoidable (mainly because of medical reasons and school stuff this time). I had a nifty little electroshock cardiac-pacing test today (terrible procedure!), in order for the doctors to tell me what I already pretty much knew--that I have a slightly deformed heart with an extra electrical pathway. So, I'll be going in for an ablation in a few months and that'll hopefully be the end of that.

The end of this weak (and more the next week) will give me a good bit of time off to work on the stories. Man, I have too many of them to tell.

* I can't say for sure, but I'm expecting the next chapter of "Six" to come out this weekend.

Amendment: that didn't happen. We'll see where I end up by the end of the week.

Writing: disconnection

One of my biggest turn-offs when reading a story is seeing the author pop out at me, meaning that if I know the writer personally or read his profile (less so on that, though), the language there is the same as in the stories.

Stephen King's On Writing has a big section on how you should write--meaning what environment you should be in. Should you have a giant desk? Use pen and paper? Dark or light? Door open or closed? He addresses all of these topics (leaving most of them to the writer's discretion), but one of the things he asserts is that you must never come to the blank page lightly.

When I read a story where it feels like A Person and not An Author is telling the story, I feel like That Person has come to the blank page lightly.

I read Cloud Atlas recently, and one of the most amazing parts of the book was seeing the drastic shifts in style. The book uses six short stories (mirrored; it's complicated) all from different time periods (1800s to the post-apocalyptic future), and each one has a distinct, perfectly-crafted style. The first is a Brontë-esque journal, followed by a fiery series of narrative letters, a tight-knit manuscript for a suspense novel, a memoir of an arrogant publisher, an interview with a clone, and a story by an uneducated man. Following is an example passage from each different section of the novel.

After the service, the doctor & I were approached most cordially by an elder "mainmast' of that chapel, one Mr. Evans, who introduced Henry & me to his good wife (both circumvented the handicap of deafness by answering only those questions they believed had been asked & accepting only those questions they believed had been uttered--a strategem embraced by many an American advocate) & their twin sons, Keegan & Dyfedd.

Couldn't say if Ayrs felt humor, pity, nostalgia, or scorn. He left. Locked the door and climbed into bed for the third time that night. Bedroom farce, when it actually happens, is intensely sad. Jocasta seemed angry with me.

"Before I left Swannekke, I gave Garcia a present to give to you, just a dolce far niente." He tries to make the sentence sound casual.

What in God's name is he talking about?

"You hear me, Luisa? Garcia has a present for you."

A more alert quarter of Luisa's brain muscles in. Isaac Sachs left the Sixsmith Report in your VW. You mentioned the trunk didn't lock. He assumes we are being eavesdropped. "That's very kind of you, Isaac. Hope it didn't cost you too much."

A trio of teenettes, dressed like Prostitue Barbie, approached, drift-netting the width of the pavement. I stepped into the road to avoid collision. But as we drew level they tore wrappers off their lurid ice lollies and just dropped them. My sense of well-being was utterly V-2'd. I mean, we were level with a bin! Tim Cavendish the Disgusted Citizen exclaimed to the offenders: "You know, you should pick those up."

You have no rests?
Only purebloods are entitled to "rests," Archivist. For fabricants, "rests" would be an act of time theft. Until curfew at hour zero, every minute must be devoted to the service and enrichment of Papa Song.

Now you people're lookin' at a wrinkly buggah, mukelung's nibblin' my breath away, an' I won't be seein' many more winters out, nay, nay, I know it. I'm shoutin' back more'n forty long years at myself, yay, at Zachry the Niner, Oy, list'n! Times are you're weak 'gainst the world! Times are you can't do nothin'! That ain't your fault, it's this busted world's fault is all! But no matter how loud I shout, Boy Zachry, he don't hear me nor never will.

I cannot distinguish a single trace of David Mitchell in any of this. Each one of these different styles is crafted to suit the story it's trying to tell--in fact, it's almost like there are six David Mitchells, each writing his own part of it. I can definitely tell that, however many of them there are, he did not come to the page lightly. When I read this story, instead of thinking, "This author is trying to tell me a story," I just see a story. That's the way any writing should be, and if you can do it that well (among other things), you're bound for success.

tl;dr: You cannot write the way you want to write. You must write the way the story tells you to write.