Need a title

Many things to talk about today. Let's start with a review of last week's writing group. Last Thursday was the first day the writing group had gotten to look at my writing. They had a lot of comments. I agree with most of them, and about half of them were actually covered by the previous blog entry.

First thing, they didn't like the characterization of the narrator. Apparently she comes off as younger than I intended, and more masculine than I intended. Same with James. So I either need to grow them up, or let them be younger. I'm not sure which I'd prefer. THey also agreed with my assessment that the diary wasn't working. It introduced more problems than it solved, and while I like the idea, it's not well executed. It'd take some serious work to get things up to shape that way, and it might be safer to just remove it all together.

While they loved the worldbuilding, they thought there wasn't enough exposition about it. I was so worried about avoiding an info-dump (esp. because of the diary medium), that I didn't actually accurately describe the setting. Going into deeper detail of the crazy artifice would have been awesome. They agreed that there wasn't enough emotion (/ reaction), which I knew. Some of the reactions were also out of character (wondering something the character would know). And the stakes weren't well defined, or didn't generate the correct worry/fear, because of the lack of depth in the explanation of the guilds. THe book came off as too much of a McGuffin, probably because it was introduced accidently. On a more amusing note, they expected a note in the bakery scene (which was present, but cut out in edits).

So it sounds like I have 3 main things to think about for the next step: Think a bit harder on my characterization (make sure they seem the age they're supposed to, etc.), provide more description / grounding into the setting, and show more reactions / emotions. Beyond that, some elements of craft (consistent capitalization, formatting, etc.) need to be read through a little more carefully before I throw it up online.

So, with that in hand, I want to talk a little bit about my ideas for my DragonMage rewrite. Now only a handful of people have read the original draft, and frankly it has a lot of problems (I almost wish I had submitted a few chapters of that just so the group saw how far I came before what they saw / tore apart ;)). I've been tossing around genre considerations for a few weeks on it. As written (or at least, as it was in my head), the novel is the first in a trilogy, with each book in the trilogy in different genres. It's not going to work that way. I was listening to an interview, with Patrick Rothfus, at San Diego Comic Con. He talked about his definition of urban fantasy, and fairy tales. This got the gears rolling in my head. The basic premise of his definition is that there are two worlds, the mundane normal world, and the magical other (faerie) world. And basically, the plot happens during the interaction between the two worlds. So, by keeping Magic in the shadows, I could in effect leverage Faerie/UF themes and tropes to keep consistency through the three novels, as they jump from setting to setting. I'm still thinking through all the ramifications, but it is a promising idea.

The other idea I've been kicking around lately is a different way of fleshing out characters. My characters are pretty 1D, and they need more. Secondary characters suffer more than primary, naturally, but even my primary characters have some problem with this. I've heard a couple people mention t his method before, but I never read too much into details, and I've never investigated it myself. So, for this blog entry, I will attempt it. THe basic idea is to do a tarot spread for the character, to discover who they are, what blocks them, and what's in their future. From there, I hope I can plan an arc for the character that is interesting, and I can more consistently characterize them.

So, for this exercise, I will pick the narrator of the sequel for DragonMage, Jeshi the Bloodmage. I've talked about her a little before on this blog (which is why I'm starting with her, truth be told), but this may completely reinvent her.

The spread I'm using is called the Mandala Spread. The deck I'm using is the Shapeshifter Tarot, which includes all the minor arcana and major arcana (though renamed to fit the decks themes), as well as three extra major arcana.
So let's get started!

1. An overview of self - Seeker of the Earth: Initiation, inner and outer strength
2. Ambitions / Goals - The Sacred Flame: Emotion, Energy
3. Ideals, Dreams - The Warrior of the Earth: Self-responsibility, Shapeshifting
4. Real achievements to this time - Deception: Spying, Loss through deception, wrong choices
5. Dependencies, Faulty beliefs - Wealth: Abundance, Gain, Family, Strength
6. Strenghts and positive traits - Abundance: Healing, Success, Prosperity
7. Faults and Weaknesses - Transformation, Release, Renewal
8. Self Perception - Happiness: Contentment, Success, Love
9. Desires - The Lovers: Attraction, Enticement

Well, I'm not sure how I'm going to put all that together. A lot of the data seems to fit more with Sabine, rather than Jeshi how I originally imagined her. (Though the tie to energy is how blood magic works). Look for my next entry on the magic system, and an attempt on how to tie it together.


Before we close, an accounting of the two books I've finished since my last entry.
Witch and Wizard
  The first book in the series by James Patterson, Witch and Wizard tells the story of two young kids who get arrested under charge of witchcraft, and it changes their whole world. The mythological worldbuilding is decent, but the political  landscape pulled me out of the UF genre, where I thought I was. I had a hard time believing in the New Order, at least as it sit in modern time, though the rest of the setting was placed as such.

The Problem Child
Third book in the series by Michel Buckley, we see an arc I've always loved in fiction: Magic addiction. Probably because I'd be prone to it myself, I always sympathize with characters who get touched by magic and find themselves overwhelmed, and reaching for it as a first solution to every problem. The stakes are higher now, and the villain has been revealed to be a pawn. All in all, a good step forward. They're keeping the tension high, even though they've made progress on what I thought was the overarching plot.

First attempt at character modeling

So I've started, over the past few weeks, to try and model one of the characters for my novel. So far, I'm pretty unhappy with it, but it's  awork in progress. I suspect, at the moment, that I've included too many polygons, and it's becoming hard to clean things up, so when I make some small mistake, it blows up quickly.

However, in the interest of completeness, I'll post what I have so far here.

Breasts are definately harder than I expected, and if I went back and did them again, I might have a better shot. However, as it is, I tried it one way and am somewhat regretting it. The hip/groin area I'm also not happy about, though it's much better than it even was just this morning. All in all, progress but this is going to take some work. Arms and Legs are my next major area to tackle (as you can see, they're quite low detail).

Physical Description and my Super Secret Summer Scheme

Today we're going to talk a little bit about description. As a storyteller, I think description is one of my weaknesses (though let's be fair, my strongest strength is an average to below-average command of plot...). I've noticed it more and more in my RPGs which makes it really hard to set a good mood. I noticed this very strongly the other night when I was using a description from a module, for a body orchard (a grove of trees etc. which are basically made out of human flesh. Flowers w/ ears, trees with eyes and blood running down the trunk...it's a poignant image.)

So the trick of course is to balance plot and exposition. Margaret Roland wrote a post about this last week in the Magic District blog. Her big comment was that you have to balance what hte reader needs to know and what the reader already knows. Stephen King mentions in his book On Writing that adverbs should only be used if they change the readers perception of the event. Chuck Wendig makes a similar post in his blog post on physical description. His argument is that you pick one salient feature of your character, something that's exaggerated, and bring that description into play. What distinguishes your character from any other person. Jim Butcher mentions similar ideas in his post on Characters, between his arguments for exaggeration and his tags & traits model.

So I've come up with a plan to help with this, at least with my characters. We'll try and talk more about scenes and scenery in another post. So for characters, I have a hard time holding a good image of the character in my head. Certain aspects are usually exaggerated traits stolen from people I know IRL, which is a dangerous road to walk down since if they don't like the character, that's an issue. So despite my complete lack of any artistic ability, I'm going to try and create a visual representation of some key characters. Probably going to select a few characteristic poses, and maybe a couple other aspects. I'm going to use Blender, an open source 3d modeling software. I've been watching tutorials in much of my spare time for this week, and I think I've got a handle on the workflow and controls. I started modeling a simple cruciform sword, and I might post it online once I've added some more detail to it.

The trick with modeling people, at least at first from what I've seen from these tutorials, is working from a good set of reference images. At least 2 shots, one from the front and side in the same pose. The one people seem to like to work with is the Da Vinci pose, that he used to illustrate the proportions of hte ideal man. The problem is I haven't managed to find some reference images, and there's a few reasons I can't really ask anyone, most obvious being that the less clothes the better.

So the current plan is to try and get some generic body references, and then use whatever pictures I have (either on my hdd or facebook), to try and get some better individual detail. So my homework for the week is going to be to try and find images I can use for the bodies, one stock male and one stock female, and then we'll see about modeling that first. The other thing I'm doing in the short term is starting to think about poses, and props, for each of the 3-4 characters I want to model. Current plan is my 3 protagonists and my main antagonist, and then I'll go from there. May also do the lead character from my short story, but we'll see how things go.

Writing Experiment: Characters

So I've posted a few pieces about writing advice. Let's try taking some of it, or at least using it. So let's take a look at one of my charactes from my book, and try and flesh her out a bit.

First though, let's see which portions I'm going to nab.

Goals / Motivation / Conflict / Stakes
This is a good first step, and I think it'll be a good start to the character.

Concept

I'll probably start with this one. Having a quick summary of the character can't hurt.

Tags & Traits
So i like the idea, but I don't know if I'll take it quite as far. One of the things I want is that Magic in my world will leave a sign, a Tell, as well as a tattoo of power. I got this idea from the RPG Sorcerer. So I'll include a tell and a tattoo. Since this is a fantasy novel, and there will be some martial conflict, I will also include a signature weapon, and the two main manifestations of her magic.

I might revisit Tags & Traits later, depending on how this works out.

The Character: Jeshi, the Bloodmage

For the purposes of the exercise, let's only try and stat her out in terms of the second book, since she's the narrator. I picked her, rather than the narrator of the first book, because I've a less clear picture of her.

• Concept - A girl lost her memories to chaos magic. Magic finds her and brings her back on the quest. 
• Goals - Find the lost city of Atlantis / Find the Crystal Sword / Find the cure for the sickness
• Motivation - Save her ex / Restore the royal bloodline
• Conflict - Adrielle is summoning daemons / Jeshi doesn't remember her own power
• Stakes - Kale's life / Rule of Chaos / Loss of the blood of Kings
• Tell - Fire-red eyes, hair turns to flame under strong emotion
• Tattoo - Fire on the palms of her hands
• Weapon - Spear
• Element - Fire
• Power - Blood (Can mimic another power w/ sample of their blood.)

Well, it certainly seems like a start. I'm not sure I could writer her any better now. Maybe tags and traits won't be a bad idea after all. But I've already spent a whole day on this, and so I should let the post stand for a moment and think about it. 

Writing Advice: Characters

While plot is an important piece of a story, many would argue that the characters are even more so. The biggest complaint about both my first novel and my piece for the fiction writing class was that my characters are weak, so how can I strengthen them up?

A couple things have been bouncing around in my head, but we'll get to that later. First let's see what some more successful people than me have to say about it.

Chuck Wendig
So I've talked about Chuck before. He's not a famous novelist, but he's published short stories and does a lot of work with White-Wolf (the people who make Mage, the game I'm so enamored with).

His advice on character building starts with a concept sentence. A sentence or 3 that boils down the characters to their essential purpose. His second big piece is a story arc for that character. How does she evolve or change over the course of the story? Then you list a bunch of surface details, what's the person's life like. Then you go deeper, and talk about why they are the way they are.

Jim Butcher
Jim Butcher takes a much more simplistic view for building characters, though he argues for interesting characters just as hard as Chuck. He argues for the inclusion of 4 simple pieces.

•  Exaggeration - The character has to have something that makes them more interesting than the average person. Shakespeare was also a huge fan of this one, from what I remember of HS English.
• Exotic Position - In addition to being out of the ordinary, your character should be in an exotic position. One of the examples included a young woman in a high orbit shuttle, or Mr Incredible working in the insurance company.
• Introduction - The character should be introduced in a manner which completely typifies who he is. This establishes the charcters personality right off the bat.
• Verisimilitude - They should act believably. This one isn't really a surprise, but he goes into more details about how this can be achieved.
•  Emotion - Reaction - Decision. - The character should excibit all three of these throughout the story
• Tags  & Traits - Tags are words that are only used to describe that character, and traits are characteristics, could be props or features, manarisms, anything. 
• Empathy - No real tips on how to get this one, but the hope is that if you hit the other 4, you have a shot at this one.

He argues that most of this work happens in Sequels (which are not just 2nd, 3rd, etc. books, but also the reaction to a scene (where conflict happens)).

Kelley Armstrong

I mentioned that I found her posts online, but this is the first one I've had a chance to write about. In her post Outlining 102b, she gives her own approach to making characters.

1. The first step is a variation on a Psychological model I'll talk about in a bit. A character needs 4 things:
1. Goal - What are they trying to accomplish?
2. Motivation - Why do they want it?
3. Conflict - What's stopping them?
4. Stakes - What happens if they Fail.
2. GMCS should also have internal/external manifestations. 
3. Rather than make exhaustive lists, she likes to just include a paragraph about what the person's like
4. Last step, take the plot and tell it from the POV of each of your major characters. Not the whole novel, just a quick synopsis. 

Other Models

There are lots of place to take other ideas. One of the ones I've been looking at recently, given my hobbies, is Tabletop Role-Playing games. While traditional games involve very external stats (strength, intelligence, etc.) some of the newer story-intesnive games have been trying to add mechanicial benefits for looking deeper into your character. 

(new) World of Darkness rpgs include Virtue and Vice as part of the character creation. The virtue is one of the 7 heavenly virtues that your character aspires to, and Vice is one of the 7 deadly sins that holds your character back. Doesn't mean you can't use all of them, just which typifies your reactions. In addition, merits and flaws let you state mechanicially how your character is different from the norm, very similar to tags & traits from Jim Butcher's work.

Burning Wheel is another game I've been investigating recently. This one attributes 3 beliefs and 3 instincts to your character. Beliefs can range from concrete goals to ideals. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the mechanics, but they're there.

The Savage Worlds system, in particular the Deadlands setting, ask you to list your characters worst fear.

There are many others that I just haven't played, so I can't comment much. 

Another option is to look at psychological literature. One of the models that shows up in psychology, computer science (especially embodied agents research), is a simple 3-part model: Beliefs, Desires and Intentions. This is very similar to the Goal / Motivation / Conflict model. Beliefs and Desires affect the goals, and Intentions describe the rankings of beliefs and desires, to handle the case when two of them are in conflict. 

One of my friends,Kim, has mentioned that she likes to talk about her characters fears, and what happens when they are pushed to the extreme. This hits bits and pieces of what has been listed before, but in different ways. 

My fiction writing class talked about using two types of descriptions: Physical and Personal. Physical descriptions are external, and Personal describes different pieces of their personality, as expected. I'm looking back over my decisions there and realized that I didn't actually use any of them. Not a single thing came into my story.

Conclusions

So those are the pieces of advice that I've collected over the past couple months. The funny thing is none of these are mutually exclusive. Taking bits and pieces of each one might make for a very complete character portrait.

Now that I've talked a little bit about different types of advice, I think it's time to put my nose to the grindstone and actually try some of these planning activities. Look for it in the next week or so.