Hitting the Books

One of the points all three judges made of my manuscript was that the story started too far from the action. I wondered about that, because I thought I had started as close to the action as possible and still set the scene properly. I think I’ve finally figured out the problem.

I’m trying to transcribe a movie.

Trying to set down every little action, snippet of dialog, bit of scenery that shows itself on the screen in my head when I’m thinking through the story. But what takes a few moments to play out on-screen takes 4 or 5 pages of exposition to show to a reader. And that’s far too much information, far too slowly.

I’m pretty good at showing, not telling–I’m just trying to show too much. (That’s also why I’ve been very tempted to turn my fantasy series into a graphic novel, if I could only find an illustrator I could trust.)

So now I’m trying to learn the balance between describing exactly what I see in my head and giving the reader enough information to imagine the scene for themselves. I suppose I should be thankful for a vivid imagination, but it is rather difficult to pare back all those little details. It’s not something I’ve done particularly well up to this point, in all my other writings, not just this story.

Which also answers the question why I’m pretty good at adding in sight and hearing details, but not touch, taste, or smell–those things don’t show up in a movie.

Does anyone else struggle with this? Is it a common issue among writers? How do you get around the problem?

His head hurt. His back hurt. Everything hurt. He couldn’t see through the mask of blood drying on his face, but he could still hear. Hear Ellen tearfully beseeching any saint who would listen. Hear Rob using words he wasn’t supposed to know yet. And he could hear Aunt Jo weeping as that devil half-carried, half-dragged her to his wagon. A too-loud slap and her crying stopped abruptly. Then the wagon rumbled into the distance.

He tried to move, but his body wouldn’t obey. So he lay there in sticky blindness and repeated Rob’s curses under his breath until Ellen and Rob came down off the porch and helped him inside.

Within a fortnight the news trickled back from Baltimore. Aunt Jo was dead. The baby had come too soon and the doctor couldn’t save either of them. But Travis knew better. Her drunken beast of a husband had killed his beloved Aunt Jo, as certain as if he had shot her.

That night Travis snuck downstairs and out into the moonlight, his da’s dress sword clasped tightly to his chest. He would have preferred to use Great-grandfather’s huge claymore, but it was mounted far too high for a boy of eight to reach, not without making enough noise to rouse the house.

He stopped behind the stable, carefully drew the sword from its sheath, and looked at it doubtfully. What now? His books always spoke of knights swearing oaths on their swords, but never of what the proper words and actions might be. He’d have to make something up. He could do that–imagination was not something Travis was short of.

He sat down in the dirt, cross-legged, and lay the sword across his knees. He stared at the moon-silvered steel for a few minutes, then placed his hands on the hilt, just as the stories said to do. Closing his eyes he said, “I, Travis Samuel Black, swear upon my father’s sword and upon my honor always to act when a lady needs help.”

Not fancy, but to the point. He hesitated–what about blood? He’d better be careful cutting himself, or else Mum would ask questions. But he figured if he was going to take an oath, he ought to do it properly. Taking a deep breath, he ran a finger lightly along the edge of the blade, squeezed a few drops into the dust, then hurriedly stuck the finger in his mouth.

Somehow he managed to sheathe the sword and get it back in the house without getting blood everywhere. Once back in bed he lay there staring into the darkness, thinking. His finger felt on fire, and the still-healing wound on his forehead burned too.

Travis tried to be manly and ignore the pain by focusing on his promise. When he was grown up, he would never again be helpless like he had been that day. Never. And he’d make certain that no woman had bruises and scars, and those awful, empty eyes like Aunt Jo had had, not so long as he could do anything about it.

“I swear it,” he whispered fiercely into the silent room.

I’m still in the process of rediscovering who Travis, the hero of An Uncivilized Yankee, really is. I’ve used multiple sources: 45 Master Characters, Bonnie’s synopsis of Donald Maass’ Writing the Breakout Novel, and Holly Lisle’s –respect from others, fame, glory, sometimes dominance thenhref=”http://shop.hollylisle.com/idevaffiliate/idevaffiliate.php?id=15153_22″>Create A Character Clinic.

I’ve figured out his archetype is that of Protector. That’s pretty obvious; I’d say 80-90% of the heroes out there are Protectors. But I’ve found archetypes to be of limited help. They show tendencies, not actual characteristics.

Haven’t gotten to doing Maass’ exercises yet–the cool flow charts in the CaC Clinic distracted me.

One of the first things Holly’s clinic suggests is using Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as an easy way to discover what drives your characters.

Starting from the most basic, these needs are:

• Physiological–air, water, sleep, food, sex, etc.
• Safety–shelter, income, protection from predators
• Love and Belonging–to be accepted and cared for
• Esteem–respect from others, recognition, glory, sometimes dominance, then respect of self, competence, independence
• Self-Actualization–to fulfill potential, become complete

The upper needs can not be dealt with until the lower ones are filled.

For example, my heroine, Stella (actually, she’d shoot me if she knew I was calling her Stella in public–she prefers her nickname of Star), is in desperate need of Safety. Especially protection from human predators. That is her primary focus throughout the first part of the book. Because she does not feel safe, she can not feel loved and cared for, nor can she allow herself to love anyone in return. Once she feels she is safe, then she can move to the next level and find a place to belong, and a person to love.

So far I’ve figured out that Travis is much further up the pyramid. He’s got a good home, a good family, etc. His problems center more around the need for esteem. He’s lived all his life in the shadow of a genius older brother (while he loves his brother, he still wants attention and respect for himself), he’s 24 and still living at home (he doesn’t feel like a man and does not have his independence), and feels incompetent in many ways because he cannot find a purpose in life.

And that’s as far as I’ve gotten, but that’s still a lot more than I had a few days ago.

If you’re struggling with motivation for your characters, try this method. Works for any character. In fact, I’m eager to put Jake, the antagonist, on the couch and dig into his head. Right now he’s fairly one-dimensional, but I’ve never been able to pin down exactly what he wanted.

Well, I shouldn’t keep Travis waiting–he’s got a wee bit of a temper. That much I’ve known for quite a while

Bis spater.

Okay, so I said I was going to go interview Travis, the character I’m having so much trouble understanding. And I did. A little. Got side-tracked for a few days though.

When I bought Holly Lisle’s Create A Character Clinic, I also downloaded her Create A Language Clinic. I admit it freely–I’m a sucker for foreign/made-up languages. Tolkien was a genius at that, and I love reading the appendices of Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion and drooling over Angerthas Daeron and Tengwar runes and Numenorian vocabulary.

I too have a fantasy series I’m (slowly) writing. And I’d already created my own language for it. Vocab, cases, tenses, syntax, an alphabet–everything. Over the past 7+ years I’ve been toiling at it, reading dense tomes on how language develops, perusing my collection of dictionaries (let’s see, I’ve got: Welsh, German, Russian, Vietnamese, Indo-European roots, Arabic, Polish, Scots, Irish, and a few more I can’t think of off the the top of my head), and pulling out my hair trying to keep everything realistic, but not copied.

So I sat down with Ms. Lisle’s excellent book, and in the course of a couple evenings had all my notes and scraps of paper organized into a nice, neat, useable notebook. It pleased me that I had on my own come up with much of the stuff she explained how to do. But she gives a quick and concise roadmap to follow, while I had explored all that territory on my own, stumbling blindly through blizzards, getting lost in deserts, and falling off cliffs.

Now that I’ve gotten the primary language of Yma down, I’m itching to start into some of its offshoots. But I really should be doing characterization and rewrites and actual getting words down on paper. And I can’t wait until the other two clinics in Holly’s Worldbuilding series come out: Create a Culture and Create a World.

I know I’m not the only writer out there who gets so enthralled in Worldbuilding that s/he forgets to actually write. What sucks you in the deepest?

Ak’lasiano susotzw!

(Arghhh. I just spent 45 minutes trying to get that phrase to sound right. Had to come up with a command marker and a verb for “to write.” Not Ms. Lisle’s fault–I just don’t have a large enough vocabulary list yet.)

Ingeld’s Daughter, by Carla Nayland.

You can read it here. Here is the synopsis from her website:

Ingeld’s Daughter is an adventure, a love story, and a stirring tale of rebellion, civil war, the price of justice and the economics of taxation and trade.

Irinya is Ingeld’s daughter, rightful heir to the Lordship of Carlundy. Her cousin Radwulf usurped the lordship after her father’s death, married her by force to legitimise his weaker claim, and has held her effectively a prisoner for twelve years. When Gyrdan, a stranger on unknown business, escapes from interrogation by Radwulf’s guards and takes refuge in her chamber, she conceals him partly out of sympathy and partly out of a desire to thwart Radwulf wherever possible. But, by working together, they find they are able to escape.

Now Irinya is on the run with a stranger she has only just met, whom she dare not trust and whose history and purpose she does not know. She must decide which is the greater danger, Radwulf’s soldiers and allies pursuing her, or Gyrdan at her side. Exiled in a strange land, she is determined to oust Radwulf and reclaim her rightful position as Lady of Carlundy. But to do this she must somehow enlist support from the radically different cultures of prosperous Billand and the fiercely independent clans of the Black Hills, and convince the people of Carlundy to fight for her and for a better life.

Her relationship with Gyrdan develops from suspicion into friendship and slowly blossoms into love. But Gyrdan has a dark secret in his past, and when it catches up with them Irinya finds herself in a terrible trap. Her courage and integrity will be crucial if she is to overthrow Radwulf - but will they also force her to order the death of the man she loves?

First off I want to say I really enjoyed the book. I started reading it around 1030 Wednesday night and finished around 4pm the next day. It’s a well-written, fast-paced read with plenty of action (plenty of action–I don’t think the plot took a single breath once it got going), romance, and humor :). Carla has created an extrordinarily realistic society and her characters are deep and multifaceted.

I have only a few nitpicky comments:

1. There were some anachronistic phrases such as “Indian summer,” “Junoesque,” and “a liner surrounded by tugs” that had the unfortunate result of jolting me out of the story for a moment.
2. Corin. By the end of the the book I was rather hoping he would get killed. Then they could avenge him, but at least he’d be out of their hair.
3. Written-out dialects are often very hard to read (tho’ Carla did a superb job with them), especially for people like me who don’t actually read the words, but rather “chunk” sections and take them in all at once. (Had to read Riddley Walker in college. Written in total phonetics. Drove me nuts!)
4. I felt that the trial scene went on just a touch too long. Granted, it was the crux of the story, but I was starting to skim by the time the assassin finally showed up.

Two other quick thoughts:
1. Not a bad thing, but boy, does Carla put her characters through the wringer. Torture, rape, bogs, bottomless pits, caves, burning at the stake…I was exhausted just reading about it
2. I apologize greatly, but Gyrdan kept reminding me of Strider the Ranger (aka Aragorn), especially in the beginning. For a while I actually thought his deep dark secret was that he was the last of the ancient bloodline, the one who could rightfully claim the kingship.

Bottom line? I liked it muchly. Definitely recommend it. Click on over to Carla’s website and read it (the nice thing about e-books is you can sneak reading time in when you’re supposed to be doing other, more “productive” things on the computer )