Writing Lessons From Reading Piers Anthony
Okay, if you’ve never read a Xanth novel than you probably should, though only if you are really into fantasy.
When people think about humour in fantasy and really rich and interesting worlds and characters they usually look at Pratchett, for good reason. Pratchett is a master of weaving the absurd into his stories and still making this amazing, insightful tale. Yet I find Piers Anthony to have created an equally rich and vibrant world of magic and zany characters though the writing style can feel a little dry at times (probably because the books were published before I was born).
Xanth is a world of magic. Every person (though I use the term person loosely) and everything must have magic or they are exiled from the land. The main character is Bink and we first meet Bink when he is facing exile because he cannot exhibit a magic power. It turns out he does have magic and extremely powerful magic but if I tell you anything else about that it will ruin the very first Xanth novel so you’ll just have to find out for yourself. The setting in these books is alive. The trees each have a magical function. This one grows shoes, that one will grow blanket, and the next one will eat you, etc, etc. The wildlife is intelligent and deadly and you really do have to pay attention to where you step in Xanth.
I really loved reading these books.
What did I learn about writing from reading these books?
- Even if your main character seems weaker than the others, they don’t have to be tearful and pathetic. So many protagonists in fantasy novels start out simpering and useless. Bink may start out weak and he may never rival some of the other characters for strength, but at least he always has strength of character. At no stage do you want something to eat him just so he’ll stop complaining.
- There does not need to be a big, dark, evil in a fantasy novel. There are all manner of conflicts your characters can face. Bink goes up against the rules of his society when he faces exile. Nobody is evil but there is a problem that has to be overcome. In one of the later books the characters choose to seek the source of Xanth’s magic and go on a quest. There is no evil stopping them but it is still a quest filled with danger and excitement.
- Said was not always the dialogue tag of choice. I can – and did – open ‘The Source of Magic’ to any number of pages with lots of dialogue and I found that said was used once. What was used was ‘cried’, ‘exclaimed’, ‘retorted’, ‘urged’, ‘murmured’ and so on. Yes, the current convention is to not use dialogue tags or to limit it to said. I am hoping that the trend changes because I enjoy people exclaiming and shrieking and all those other things that they used to do in books.
- Keeping your characters (and your readers) in the dark makes for a really interesting story as nobody really suspects where things are going to go and yet the story still makes sense.
Over the Top Blog Award
Last week Carol Kilgore at Under the Tiki Hut passed on the Over the Top blog award to me.
This is a cool award. The rules are that I must mention Carol’s name and blog. Also I must answer a string of questions with one-word only answers and pass the award to five other bloggers here and by leaving a comment on their blogs.
So first I’ll answer the questions, then we’ll talk about passing it on.
Your cell phone? Paperweight
Your Hair? Unpredictable
Your Favorite Food? Chocolate
Your Dream Last Night? Freaky
What Room Are You In? Study
Your Hobby? Reading
Your Fear? Accidents
Where Do You See Yourself In Six Years? Somewhere
Where Were You Last Night? Bed
Something That You Aren’t? Forgettable (hopefully)
Wish List Item? Magic-wand
Where Did You Grow Up? South-East QLD
Last Thing You Did? read
What Are You Wearing? clothes
Your TV? Functional
Your Pets? Kitten
Friends? Possibly
Your Life? Manageable
Your Mood? Reflective
Your Favorite Color? Red
One Place You Go To Over And Over Again? Fridge
And the five bloggers I’m passing the Over the Top Blog Award to are:
Elizabeth Spann Craig at Mystery Writing is Murder
Alex J Cavenaugh at Alex J Cavanaugh
V.V. Denam at V.V. Denam
Corra McFeydon at From the desk of a writer
Please visit their blogs and you’ll see for yourself how Over the Top they are – and in such awesome ways.
Reflections on the Week That was 14
This week has been crazy busy and I know some of my posts have been pretty short. Still, it has been a great week and I am pleased to share some interesting links for the week.
Just reminding everyone about the series of guest posts I will be running from Feb 15. The title of this series is Novel Elements and I have asked writers (published or unpublished) to share what they think the most important element of a novel is and why. So far I have only been emailed a few responses but I know that other people were interested in participating. If you want to be a part of this series please email me your answer (try to keep it to about 200 words). The email is cassandra (dot) jade (dot) author (at) gmail (dot) com. Looking forward to reading some of these responses and I can’t wait to share them with my readers. Also remember to send a brief bio, a link to your blog, and a picture (the picture isn’t essential but it is nice).
I hope everyone had a great week and here are the links.
Recommended Read:
Big Beat From Badsville shares a fantastic post on how to turn something from Noir to Cosy in 12 easy stages. Well worth a read.
My posts for the week:
Following on from ‘Oh Sock’ – Response to Elspeth Antonelli’s post about missing socks.
5 Heroic Traits – what makes a hero?
Things that go thump in the night – wondering why so many characters over react to mundane noises and why the ignore things that might be important.
Best Movie Endings - What makes a great end to a movie?
A Banquet for the Characters – I sat down my latest cast and watched the chaos unfold. I still don’t know what my characters like to eat.
Old Friends or New – Do you call on the protagonists old friends or do they meet somebody new?
Other Posts on Writing:
LawrenceEz talks about using flash-backs and repressed memories.
Richard W Scott discusses why writing what you know might be a myth.
Margot Kinberg looks at characters bearing grudges and motivation.
Katie Ganshert explores using hooks at the end of chapters to keep people reading.
The Old Silly shares some advice on moron dialogue – more importantly, he gives examples on how to improve the dialogue.
Elizabeth Spann Craig discusses the bad guys and how to make your antagonist interesting.
DNBRD explores Steampunk and provides some great examples of authors from the genre.
Following on From ‘Oh Sock’
Elspeth Antonelli recently had a post titled “Oh sock, where art thou” in which she asked why socks go missing and where do they go? She provides a number of possible theories and it got me thinking about all the things around us that we can’t explain that we could use for a story.
Now obviously I’m not about to launch a new project entitled the Slimy Socks of Saturn Strike Again. Mostly because I don’t like that much alliteration in a title and secondly, because missing socks would probably get old quickly and can you imagine trying to edit something like that. But…
Other things go missing. Not just socks. Rings, remotes, the last chocolate bar in the fridge, keys, documents, emails. These things just disappear. You can stand behind someone and watch them type in your email address (correctly), press send and it confirms that it has been sent and that email will still never appear in anyone’s inbox. It is gone. Lost in – well, who knows.
Socks by themselves may not make a story however the mystery of things disappearing has made many stories. Trolls, gremlins, brownies, and all manner of other mystical nuisance has been blamed for theft of objects and pranks on people. So have sink holes in time and space and all sorts of other things.
What if someone is making these things happen? Now we have a bad guy.
I love questions where I can’t be expected to know the real answer. It leave my mind open to come up with the most absurd. The absurd is always more fun than the logical and as neither answer can be proven or disproven, you might as well have fun.
Thanks Elspeth for such a thought provoking post and now I have to go and try to find the missing partner to my favourite pair of socks.
5 Heroic Traits
Okay, heroes come in all shapes and sizes but when we just think the word hero there are certain things we do think of instantly. This is my list of 5 heroic traits (though just because I associate them with heroes does not mean my heroic characters exhibit them):
- Totally selfless – this is kind of a nasty one because we all want someone to selflessly help us but people who don’t have a sense of self are kind of boring. It is the selfish nature and little hang-ups a person has that makes them interesting and yet that isn’t what we want from a hero. That must be contrary human nature.
- Brave – Should go without saying. You can’t be a hero if you are hiding under the table but brave does not mean fearless. People without fear are unimaginative.
- Strong – No point being brave if you can’t do anything. Strong is definitely something we all want our real life heroes to have.
- Smart – Maybe not on everybody’s list of heroic traits but it is definitely on mine. I would like to believe that heroes can think their way out of trouble as easily as into it.
- Flawed – Forgetting everything in 1 – 4 a hero has to be flawed in some way. Otherwise they are untouchable and a little unbelievable. There have to be flaws.
What is on your list of heroic traits and how much fun is it to create heroes with few to none of them?
Things that go thump in the night
Things that go thump in the night are fairly predictable. You lie in bed hearing a clattering on the roof, a bang, a tinkle, a crash, a thump and swishing noise and you count them off in your head.
Tree.
Cat /possum.
Another Tree.
Fallen branch.
Gutter pulling away from the roof.
Slight gap in the window so the wind is making that weird noise again.
Tree.
Nothing overly earth shattering. Not really. I actually find comfort in these sounds and others because I’m so used to them. When they stop I wonder why and the silence is actually more alarming than the myriad of sounds I usually hear.
Sometimes things that go thump in the night are perfectly mundane and sometimes we just tell ourselves they are and both can work really well in a story. If your character jumps at every single sound then people are going to be wondering if they had a sheltered upbringing but if they roll their eyes and ignore the sounds, and ignore even the important sounds it could make for some interesting possibilities.
Incidentally, the two thumps I couldn’t ignore: a car crashing into a wall down the road and a tree falling through a fence. Those two things were definitely not part of the usual nightly sounds and both got an immediate reaction.
Best Movie Endings
The Best Endings For Movies (Yes there are spoilers if you have not watched the movies):
- The Matrix (the first movie) – The story itself had ended. The protagonist had gone on his journey, discovered the truth and learnt to use his inner power. Yes there were still problems but they weren’t important to this story. This story was about Neo finding out what the matrix was and who he was. He did that. The end. No sequels. I loved the ending of this movie.
- Once Upon a Time In Mexico – I think I have to love a movie that ends with everyone really getting exactly what they deserve. The ending is explosive, it is a little gory and it brings together multiple plot threads in a really interesting way.
- The Princess Bride – Classic fairy tale ending for both Buttercup and Westley and the grandfather and his grandson. Beautifully told and it just leaves you feeling very happy.
- Willow – Same as the Princess Bride really. He saves the day, returns to his village, is reunited with his wife and shows the bully what for. Classic ending and well-executed.
- Kill Bill Vol 2 – The ending of this surprised me. The violence throughout the story kind of had me anticipating a massive fight sequence with way over the top gore but instead it ended with a more intimate family note. Yes there was still a bit of violence but it was definitely a sequence more about experiencing emotion. Plus, Bill’s speech about Superman has to go down as one of the most interesting monologues in a long time.
I think what all of these movies have in common is that the ending fits the plot, it resolves the main issues, it is interesting, and it ends. That might seem odd but there are quite a few brilliant movies and books out there that just don’t seem to know when enough is enough. We don’t need to see anymore of Westley and Buttercup. They kiss as the sun is setting the end. Yes they are then going to have to find somewhere to stay for the night and figure out what they are going to do now that Westley is no longer a pirate and Buttercup is no longer a Princess but we don’t really need to see any of that.
What are your favourite movie or book endings?
A Banquet for the Characters
My characters don’t eat meals anywhere near often enough in my stories. I guess nothing overly interesting happens while they are eating because it doesn’t seem to be a focus point. However, they do eat frequently while walking or just have a snack and I’ve noticed that almost all of my characters are addicted to sugar. Particularly chocolate.
So I’ve decided to sit all my characters that I am currently trying to work with down and to have a banquet.
The problem being that as soon as the first course (chicken and corn soup with sweet bread) was served I had two rival factions throwing the bread at each other from across the room and about a dozen minor altercations breaking out at various tables. Clearly sitting all my characters down and feeding them wasn’t going to work if I actually wanted to find out what food they would eat.
Having called security to run all these rampant characters out of the room I decided to just have a few of the main characters at the table with very strong security forces lining the walls and a clear sign reading ‘no violence’ on the table. They didn’t like it but they did try the soup.
The main antagonist of the story told me that soup was not suitable food for someone of her station and the bread was far too dry. After one mouthful she pushed it aside with a sniff.
Most of the other characters ate it and when asked their opinion shrugged. They didn’t really care. They had other things to worry about than food.
That might be why food does not get a lot of time in my books. The characters have a few other concerns.
How do you work with food? Do you worry about it? Is it important to your story?
Old Friends or New
As many protagonists run through the drama of whatever plot they are trapped in they get help from friends. Mostly because they need it and without those friends the story would come to a screeching halt as the protagonist curls up into a little ball on the floor and cries for three chapters.
I was wondering the other day whether it was more interesting when the protagonist meets new people and becomes friends with them or when the protagonist hooks up with an old friend who helps them.
New friends can certainly be interesting. We get to know this new character with our protagonist and it makes sense when the protagonist asks them questions about them and so we get to find out all sorts of interesting things about the character. We also don’t know if this character is going to betray the protagonist later because they’ve only just met and the protagonist doesn’t know whether they are being lied to or not, they have no earlier encounters to judge them by.
However, that is also the downfall of new friends. There is no natural rapport between the protagonist and this new person and you have to get them to know each other fast if you want to move the story forward. If the protagonist doesn’t ask them certain questions it leaves the reader wondering why not. If you ran into someone in a dungeon you would ask them why they were there even if they were helping you. If that person avoided the question you should certainly have some doubts about them. The other problem with introducing new friends is that some times it just feels too convenient. Oh, the protagonist got themselves caught in a trap. Along comes a helpful person who just wants to see them get on their way. Oh, and they’ll travel with the protagonist because they don’t have any kind of life of their own that is being interrupted by this.
So we look at old friends. Someone the protagonist has known forever. They have a reason to stand by the protagonist and help them out. They have a natural rapport with the protagonist and they can be helpful in revealing past exploits that we may not have otherwise found out about. Old friends can help fill in back story we may not be able to include otherwise and they allow us to see a fuller picture of the protagonist.
Yet old friends come with baggage and issues and they may distract from where you want to the story to go. They may not have the skills needed to actually help the protagonist out. The protagonist may be somewhere they’ve never gone before and running into someone they know would be slightly suspicious. Plus, it is harder to naturally slip in facts about the old friend because the protagonist would feel the need to ask them what they’ve been up to if they spoke to them the day before.
Which do you prefer? Introducing someone new to your protagonist or drawing someone from their past to help them out?
Reflections on the Week that was 13
Another fun week down. Not a lot done on the writing front this week but enough. I spent some time getting to know my new protagonist again. I already relocated her story from a complete fantasy world to a slight variation of reality and have since given her multiple character adjustments. The most recent is going to require a complete renovation of everything I’ve already written. I gave her a sister. Too much internal dialogue was just dragging the story and I decided she needed someone who knew her well to converse with and to help move things along at times. Also, just someone who would tell her outright when she was being a pain in the neck. Oh well. The story itself is still working really well and I’m more or less pleased with the supporting cast although I may have to tweak the villain a little more. I think they are playing it far too safe at the moment.
Anyway, I actually did read quite a few blogs this week and I am pleased to share some of my favourites with you though just reminding everyone that the Novel Elements Series is going to begin on February 15 and if you would like to participate I really need your response by February 10.
Recommended Read For The Week
Laura Renegar – Confessions of an Exclamation Mark Abuser – Too funny and it makes an excellent point.
My Posts for the Week
The Hero’s Journey and Other Things – Some fantasy books don’t involve a journey.
Thinking Outside the Box – Finding ways to write about things you may not know, experience or think.
Sleep Deprived Characters – Using sleep deprivation as a plot device and just being aware that characters occasionally need to sleep.
Writing Lessons From Reading Traci Harding – One of my all-time favourite authors and the lessons I have learnt from reading her work.
Sunrise or Sunset - When do you hang someone?
5 Ways to Gain Inspiration While Shopping – Plus a few suggestions from other writers who have also taken advantage of shopping times to brain storm.
Other Posts on Writing
Dee Scribe – Turn your writing upside down – create the unexpected.
Conan the Grammarian – Affect vs effect.
Kathryn Apel – Creating Believable Fantasy Worlds
Elizabeth Spann Craig – Where do your ideas come from?
Michelle Locke – 10 Ways to be a better writer.
Jody Hedlund – Does blogging really help sell books?
Plus – Just for fun and nothing really to do with writing.
