The kid character (Just to start small)

Let's talk today about 'that kid character'. Now depending on what you are writing, this could mean different things. If you're writing fiction for children then your kid character is most likely the main character. But in this case I'm referring more to Young Adult and Adult books. This is the adorable character who often draws affection from most of the good guys. They are innocent, eager, and totally unaware of the harsh reality of life. So let's dive in and see the stereotype and the three dimensional character.

The stereotype: The child is a generic, cute younger sibling, friend or child of the main character, made either for the purpose of showing a harsher characters soft side or giving you a taste of the main characters normal life. Later on in the story they will likely be put in some kind of horrible danger (Kidnapped or something of that sort) and the main character will have to save them. We want to see them succeed because we don't want to see a kid get hurt or killed.

The problem with this kind of character, however, is that they're not really a character. They're more a tool to pull out feelings from the main character or motivate them to do something. Outside of a bubbly, innocent exterior, they are a plot device. And you never want your character to just be a plot device.

The 3D character: A kid becomes a character when they start making contributions on a deeper level. Maybe they help the main character out, maybe they make an emotional contribution outside of just making the readers go "aw!" Maybe they actually have some insight into a situation that adults couldn't see. The kid should have an arc like anyone else. It also helps if you don't just put them in there to be kidnapped.

A good example of a stereotype turned 3D in books is Prim Everdeen from the Hunger Games. She did basically start out as an innocent, adorable motivator to get Katniss into the Hunger Games. But later on in the books she contributes more. We get to see her connect more with her sister. She's a good nurse and she really wants to help people. Plus she's a little older than a typical younger sibling which allowed for a little more depth.

In anime, a character named Edward is a good example of a 3D kid character. She is from Cowboy Bebop (Yes I said she.) and she is bat s*** crazy insane. However, she's a genius, and can hack practically anything which helps the rest of the adult crew when they're trying to catch bounty heads. She is never kidnapped and she rarely is any danger at all. But she's still very helpful and her character doesn't need that 'Oh no! She's in danger!' aspect to make her awesome. Edward is still one of my favorite characters of all time.

In my book I have a character a little similar to Edward, except for she is more of a twelve year old stuck with a six year old mind. She isn't a hacker, but she can shape shift into a cat, which gives her the opportunity to spy on the villains. She contributes and she rarely gets into fights with them. I actually play with the idea of kids just being innocent because that's what a lot of the other characters think about her to. When things start getting darker, they want her to stay out of it, so she decides to prove she is useful to them. Even though she's young, she's not stupid.

And that's the key. Children aren't just innocent, adorable balls of fun. They are very smart and perceptive and they understand more than some people think. They can be a great tool so use them to your advantage!

-Authoress Anonymous

Characters (And the Joys they bring me)

Well it's been a little while since I did a series on something. I've done a series of posts on romance and a series of posts on women in fiction and now I'm just going to do a series on characters in general.

A little while back I did a post on my favorite characters in books and movies and how predictable they often are. Well now I'm just going to talk about every kind of character. And I mean every type. These posts will be categorized by stereotypes but will also verge into the characters that really go the extra mile to become less of a category and more of a real person.

So as a preface to this series, I'd like to talk about what characters mean to me.

I may have said it already on this blog but characters are my absolute favorite thing about both writing and reading. To create identifiable people who are almost as real as people in real life is a real treat. I like to fall for characters, become obsessed with characters, memorize every iota of the characters back story and rant about it to whoever will listen. When a character doesn't have a back story, I make it up, because I can.

In my own books I take character very seriously, to the point where I will do hundreds of character activities just for fun. I want to get to know my characters beyond what I write about them on a page. I know some things about my characters that most people will never know.

And that is a wonderful thing. Somehow I think characters reach people even better than a plot or a theme. Characters are the things we can relate the most to and the aspects of a novel that pull us the most into the book. They must be carefully constructed or you don't really have a novel.

Take as much care with your characters as you do your world and your theme. Because it's only through people that said plot and theme can really come across.

-Authoress Anonymous

Music (And the inspirational qualities it possesses)

I love music. I'm envious of it in fact. I'm envious of it's elusive ability to capture the realm of emotion with such perfection. Music can accomplish with emotion what words never can.

But as annoying it is that musicians can so accomplish what we authors cannot, it can also be inspirational. I know that I personally have created several playlists for my writing. Songs for action packed, epic scenes, songs for characters, songs for happy tones and depressing tones. But especially songs for pure emotion.

I find instrumental songs to be the best for this category. Songs that do not use words and are thus, somehow beyond a plain of existence we can totally understand.

I often turn to one composer in particular for my instrumental needs. Her name is Yoko Kanno. Ms. Kanno is a Japanese composer who can literally compose for every single genre. From heavy metal to beautiful classical pieces that fully capture emotions from joy and exhilaration to heartbreak and agony. Her work that isn't instrumental is sung in anything from English to Japanese to a language that she just...  made up herself. I know. Don't you just love those people?

She has music for just about every genre and every mood so I highly recommend checking her out. Look up Yoko Kanno playlist on youtube and you'll have a lot to work with.

What kind of music do you use for inspiration? Let me know.

That special moment (When you almost die of joy)

So, I don't know if you've been keeping up, but since going on submission, I haven't been getting a lot of positive feedback. Just form rejections. I was starting to feel a little discouraged, as everyone gets, and even starting consider all the reasons my project wouldn't get represented. I was thinking about moving on and trying again later with this manuscript. This afternoon I half heartidly sent out a few more queries.

Then one agent (Who apparently has an 8 week response time) asked for the first 100 pages within two hours. And I. Just. Died.

First came the shock. The "Am I really seeing this" moment. It lasted for about two blinks. Then I opened my mouth to scream, but nothing came out. I was such a ball of energy in that moment that I could have won the Olympics in track. So I ran about my house, shouting my news to the world. Then I collapsed on the floor of my bed room, muttering incoherently.

Familiar with this feeling? If you're not, I hope you will be soon.

The funny thing is, even if this isn't the agent I end up signing with, it doesn't matter. This was just the right sign I needed to know my idea is worth pursuing. Maybe my writing still needs work or the actual book needs fixing but I have hope.

And hope is a great thing.

But it would be nice to sign with this agent too.

-Authoress Anonymous

Wow... I haven't blogged in awhile (What to talk about...)

It is beyond me how a blog continues to get hits despite the fact that it has not been updated in several weeks. But hey, apparently people are interested. (Accidentally stumbled across someone quoting me... that was an interesting experience)
I suppose I should do a report on how the publishing journey is going. I'm still on submission for agents and haven't gotten requests yet, but I'm not discouraged. I decided to revise my query letter completely so maybe that will turn in different results.
I've also decided to do a complete overhaul edit of book 3 in the series. Just for a little back ground info, the history of my book 3 has been an interesting one. I ended up making a huge plot change last spring which was going to make the book much longer. I decided to break up book 3 into two books because I didn't want the third book to be too much longer than the other two (I'm a consistency person, what can I say? I'm the same way with the lengths of my chapters)
But dividing the book into two was spreading the plot too thin. It seemed like I was needlessly dragging out scenes, taking too long with the plot, and writing too many scenes that weren't required for the plot to move forward. So I decided to combine two books into one again. With that I will have to delete several scenes, condense others and get the book moving more quickly. It's certainly not easy but it will be worth it in the end. I think it's better for a book to be packed with drama and turmoil than stretched too thin and moving at a boringly slow pace.
I've planned out my edit but have yet to enact it. So, (Wipes brow and takes a deep breath) wish me luck!

-Authoress Anonymous

Death Scenes (And my love hate relationship with them)

Since I'm back from the lovely writing workshop I suppose I'd better blog about what I've learned I'm good at. You know, my greatest strengths in writing. I have a lot of weaknesses too but there are a few things that just flow more easily onto the page when I type.

One of those things is death scenes.

Ah, death scenes. How I both love and despise you. What is it about you that makes me such a time bomb of emotional instability?

Well it's the reader and writer at war inside me of course. The reader in me is screaming, "HOW COULD YOU?! YOU ARE A TERRIBLE HUMAN BEING AND YOU DON'T DESERVE TO LIVE!" But the writer is saying, "Good, good! Make your readers cry! Squeeze every drop of depressing you possibly can out of these words. Dance puppets, dance!"

This is all going on at the same time while I write death scenes. I can't help but feel both self hatred and joy when I write because I am good at death scenes. I don't know what that says about me as a person but I'm good at making people cry.

So this year at the workshop I decided to try an experiment. I met a friend while I was there who was very empathetic and easily prone to tears. She cried at everything... well not everything... but she got easily invested in characters so when it came time for them to die she was sobbing. It was a kind of empathy that I really admired in her (Being a cold, heartless, cynic myself)

So I decided to try an experiment. I had written a death scene for my current project that was undoubtedly the saddest thing I ever wrote. It was so brutal I was crying when I wrote it and I don't really cry at books. So I wanted to take this scene that my friend had no prior emotional investment in and see if she would cry.

She did. Hard. And she screamed at me. Even though she didn't know this character. And I couldn't stop smiling because, well, SUCCESS!

Now, that's just my empathetic friend but imagine if she had been with these characters for four books. The reaction would be much more intense.

It's interesting that this is my talent because I've never witnessed death. The people I've known who have died I haven't been particularly close to. I don't know what it's like to feel that empty and can't right from experience. I just create it in my head somehow. I imagine the feeling. According to people who have read my stuff I'm pretty close.

Death scenes are also difficult for me to write in an emotional sense because I always seem to kill off my favorite characters. In fact in my top ten characters for my book every single one of them dies, almost dies or is psychologically tortured. Or sometimes more than one of these. It's just because I love them that much I guess.

What are your strengths in writing? What scenes come the easiest to you?

-Authoress Anonymous

Creative explosions (What happens in a void of creativity)

So I've been gone for the past... oh... three weeks. I didn't intend for that to happen at all. I was fully planning on updating at least every two days. Clearly that didn't happen.

You see for the last three weeks I have been entrapped in a void where time and space have no meaning; a void where reality doesn't exist. I was at a two week long creative writing workshop and then at a close friend's house for the next four days. I just got in last night.

In this workshop, which shall remain nameless in hopes of protecting my identity (An endeavor that I doubt will succeed for long), about fifty five aspiring writers were split into five groups of eleven. The first week we created our very own fantasy world together. And I mean the whole thing. Religion, species, gods, environment, cultures, politics, economy, fashion. Everything all in one week. And it's not like we were locked in to our groups either. When we weren't in our groups we were listening to lectures by visiting writers, eating meals and talking non stop with each other, taking trips to the local book store etc. And of course we were writing in our spare time.

In the second week, we began writing our short stories. They had to be 3,500 to 8,000 words. Which may seem like plenty of room but in two days, I hit 9,200 words and I had to cut 1,200 words out of my story. Exactly that amount. In the end my work was exactly 8,000 words.

The short stories were then critiqued in a few days by the visiting authors and we got some wonderful feedback on our strengths and weakness. I made so many wonderful and true friends there that I was very sad to leave. It's a good sign when you feel like you've known the people for months rather than days.

So, as you can see, I was in a creativity void, in which I am often prone to creative explosions. I pumped out over 9,000 words in two days which is much faster than my usual rate. Everyone else thought I was psycho too.

"So how much do you have so far?"

"Oh I just broke the minimum."

"I've got 4,000 now!"

"Oh that's good! What about you?"

"I have 9,200."

"...Seriously?"

"...Yeah..."

Usually I'm more of a 2,000 words a day kind of girl but that's what this workshop does to me.

My point is, workshops are wonderful opportunities. Opportunities to form lifelong relationships, opportunities to connect on what you love to do (Because even though a lot of us are quiet, when someone is listening to us we love to babble on and on) and an opportunity to really let yourself go. You can't worry about outside distractions so you just write.

It's definitely worth the money.

-Authoress Anonymous