Category Archives: Writing

On Rainbows (Beginning, Middle, End)

Posted on January 22, 2013 by Stephanie Alexander| 13 Comments

Today I like: Harris Teeter
Not so much: The Pig

A rainbow followed me to school a few weeks ago. Not one of those wussy splotches of abstract color against a leftover cloud, but a full on, horizon-to-horizon band of red, orange, green, blue, purple. The kind of rainbow you probably drew as a kid, all the while hoping your fat Crayola marker didn’t run out of ink before you finished that all important red band. Maybe you added a pot of gold at one end or unicorn capering beneath the purple stripe.

My kids tracked the color from the car windows, and inevitably my five-year-old son asked, “Why is it following us?”

I explained that we were following it, chasing the rainbow over the bridges of Charleston.

I noticed something about this particular rainbow, however, that didn’t quite match up with my memories of childhood doodle pads. Although it reached from one end of town to the other, in the middle, it got…fuzzy.

Like, I wouldn’t have had to worry about my marker running out of ink, because my rainbow would have been more realistic if it had gone pale in the middle.

I was chatting with a friend the other day, and he mentioned that he had problems organizing his thoughts on paper. He was referring to writing legal opinions (or some such legal something-or-other that is way off my radar screen) but I still told him to try focus on this idea: Beginning, middle, end.

I follow that pattern when I write anything, and I think it holds true for any written communication, from letters to academic writing to short stories to longform fiction. Beginning, middle, end.

It’s the middle, however, that usually gives me (and a lot of writers I know) the most trouble. You know where you’ve been, and you know where you want to go, but how do you get there?

I need to pick up my unfinished manuscript, the third book and conclusion to The Cracked Slipper. I’m in the middle, and I haven’t worked on it in roughly six months. My first case of writer’s block, something I thought only happened to other people. Jokes on me, hahaha, because I’ve realized you throw in some major life changes, and eeeeert! Creativity, stop.

So now I’m looking at an incomplete first draft of my manuscript and thinking to myself, where the hell was I going with this? What was my initial logic? I know where I want to end up, and I have a pretty solid beginning… but wait, who are these freaking new people? And places? And why are my old friends doing what they’re doing?

I can compare this pattern in the rainbow and in writing to life in general. When you start down a path, make some choice, you often have a sense of urgency. You know where you’re going… and you can see how it will all end up. Then you get in the middle of it, the reality, and everything gets muddled. The colors that kept you hopeful become muted and sometimes they fade away to smears of light. The people and places and motives around you seem a bit confounding.

But, I think, middles need flexibility. If you’re writing, you have the luxury of going back and changing your argument or your plot details and character motivations. In life, we can’t rewrite, but we can always adjust. Figure out new ways to make the colors bright again, and get back on the path.

The connection between the beginning and the end of the rainbow is still there. You’re following the same curve.

I took pictures of that rainbow and sent it to some friends who were going through ups and downs at the time. It took me a few more weeks, and some intimidating sessions in front of my computer, to realize that I could conquer that manuscript… and what’s more, I really want to. It might take longer to find the bright colors than it did with my previous novels, but the urge to work again is the biggest hurdle. I’ll get where I need to be.

Beginning, middle, end.

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Posted in Balance, Writing

Twitter: Is the Honeymoon Over?

Posted on July 23, 2012 by Stephanie Alexander| 22 Comments

Today I like: Target
Not so much: Belk

This time last year I was singing the praises of Twitter on a daily basis. I checked in regularly to chat it up with my Tweeps…and by regularly I mean several times a day. Hilarity ensued as I commiserated over the writing life with a bunch of fabulous people from all over the world.

I remember a Tweet that resonated with my 2011 view on Twitter: “Twitter makes me like people I’ve never met, and Facebook makes me dislike people I actually know.”

So what happened in the past year? Why has my love affair with Twitter gone south? I have two theories.

Problem One: Too many Tweeps. Ever since I hit about 1000 followers, and maybe 600 or so follow-ees, it’s become a free-for-all. Gone is my tight knit circle of like-minded, genuinely interesting and interested Tweeps. They’re still there, of course, but now they’re buried in a stream of self-promoting, spammy Tweeters who don’t make any attempt to engage on a personal level. I’m sure the good stuff is still there, but it’s too time-consuming to sift through it.

I’ve been hovering at around 1300 followers, and while I know I should be pushing for more, the whole Twitter reciprocity thing makes me hesitant. There is at least a marginal expectation that one will contemplate returning the follow…until one reaches Stephen Colbert status. He has 3,700,000 followers (me included) and he follows…no one. His Twitter feed is pleasantly uncomplicated. Unfortunately for the rest of us, it doesn’t exactly work that way.

Solutions:

Unfollow, unfollow, unfollow. Sorry, people, if you tweet about nothing but your book and you do so twenty times a day, I’m out.
Make lists. The time has come to sit down and REALLY organize my Tweeps into those I “know” and those I “don’t.”

Problem Two: About six months ago I started hooking up with my favorite Tweeps on Facebook. (The fabulous Hallie Sawyer was my first Twitter-turned-Facebook-friend!) Suddenly I got more than just 140 words snippets. My Twitter friends became real people, with houses and cute dogs and cuter kids and opinions on stuff other than writing and books. Being writers, they are all still insanely witty and clever with their status updates…I got the total package. Like, if a Twitter friendship is Happy Hour appetizers, a Facebook friendship is Sunday dinner at Grandma’s.

I found it that much more fun to connect with everyone on Facebook. We all send links to our blogs and books and thought-provoking and funny articles about the writing game…but since I’ve already invested in these literary compatriots, I KNOW I’ll be interested in what they have to say. They’re all there, with no spammy annoying-ness to muddle it all up. Easier by far…and so my Tweeting trickled off, from a steady stream to a slow drip.

Solutions:

Reignite the Twitter flame by Tweeting all things writing. Focus my Tweets on bookish stuff, beneficial to both me and my Twitter friends…and have real life fun with these great people on FB.
Search out new quality Tweeps. Once my lists are organized, it’s time to dive back into the literary community via hashtag… #AmWriting, #AmEditing, #FridayReads #AmReading… all those old favorites. With the literary community expanding every day, it will just take a bit of effort to find like-minded Tweeters.

So, the lessons I’ve learned in the past year can be summed up as such:

Social media is all well and good, but it’s really the personal interaction that makes it fun and beneficial. The Twitter friends I’ve made “real” connections with are much more likely to support my work, and vice versa, than the random writers who spam, spam, spam. When it comes to the personal, I believe Facebook has an advantage over Twitter.

Second, beware social media fatigue. With the massive expectation on writers to utilize every network out there, it’s easy to stick with the one that feels easiest and most enjoyable. Twitter, Facebook, Google +, Goodreads, LinkedIn, personal blogs, group blogs…whoa. I’m going to utilize a couple and make the most of the personal relationships I can craft…rather than spreading myself too thin. Quality over quantity.

So, while Twitter has lost a bit of its luster, I’m not giving up on it yet. My new mantra will be: “Facebook is where I like people I met on Twitter, and Twitter is where I go to meet people I will someday like even more on Facebook.”

Do you find your dedication to certain social networks wanes after a while? Do you prefer the clippy Twitter friendship or the more involved Facebook one?

 

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Posted in Twitter, Writing

What Women Want…in Female Protagonists

Posted on May 22, 2012 by Stephanie Alexander| 15 Comments

Today I like: Getting back on the horse
Not so much: Headaches

I’m about to sound off on one of the great conundrums of our times….not healthcare reform…not Afghanistan….not gay marriage. I mean the Katniss/Bella debate.

Full disclosure: I’m coming at this from a skewed viewpoint. I love me some Katniss…do not love Bella, because Bella does not have many redeeming qualities. Of course, there’s the argument that Bella’s appeal is in her banality. She’s living the dream of every shy, plain Jane high school girl (or grown woman) who hoped the most unattainable boy in school would just open his eyes. See her as special…beautiful…wonderful. And let’s not forget about the second most attractive boy in school…two hot guys fighting over one average girl! Yes, I get the appeal…but I think as writers we have a responsibility to give our readers something to aspire to while we entertain.

That’s why I love Katniss…she’s a near perfect protagonist for the modern girl (or woman…like Twilight, The Hunger Games defies an age-specific audience) to emulate. She’s tough and smart and she’s a survivor. At the same time, she’s flawed in very believable ways. Being a survivor lends itself to selfishness and manipulation. There were times Katniss really got under my skin. The way she treated Peeta made me want to climb into the book and slap her around a bit.

I’ve talked a lot about flawed characters (see my posts on the Prince Charming archetype and my seemingly nonsensical love of Eminem). The Bella/Katniss debate gave me some new insight into crafting balanced personalities.  It all goes back to forcing the reader to like someone despite the person’s inherent flaws…and much of that can be summed up in one word: Respect.

I respect Katniss, even if she can be a selfish bitch at times. Bella, on the other hand, is not a character that commands respect, either from the reader or her fellow characters.

So this brings me to the question, what do women really want in their fictional female role models? My favorites, Elizabeth Bennett and Scarlett O’Hara, are more in line with Katniss than Bella…but I’m sure many a novel has ridden the road to success on the train of a more simpering gown. I guess I just can’t remember any that I enjoyed…

And what about us, ladies? Do we emulate Bella or Katniss in our real lives? And which archetype is more appealing to men?

I’ve been conducting an admittedly unscientific poll of those of the male persuasion…what attracts you to a woman? Overwhelmingly they came back at me with some version of confidence/independence/comfortable with herself (a nice butt seemed to be up there, too, but that’s another post).

This seems more in line with Katniss than Bella…yet still the Bella ideal lingers in our collective female consciousness. Maybe it just takes less effort to be a Bella, to sit back and let the guys do all the work and be worshipped for mediocrity. I have two girls, however, and I’m going to steer them in the Katniss direction. We all have our flaws, but if I can help it, they’ll be the rescuers…not the rescued.

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Posted in Characters, Women's Issues, Writing

Finding Room To Feel, Fictitiously

Posted on March 29, 2012 by Stephanie Alexander| 14 Comments

Today I like: Brown. I have this new brown dress, and brown is an underrated color
Not so much: too much quiet

I’ve had some crazy stuff going on in my personal life lately. No need to go into it, but it’s life-altering, emotionally draining stuff. I’ve had several people say to me comments along the lines of:
“Well, now you have great inspiration for you books!”
“Let it all out on the page!”
“Put all that emotion to good use.”

Now, I’m sure these people have very good intentions. From where I sit, however, I’ve realized that the idea that an artist can dump all his or her emotions into the creative process does not hold much truth. Maybe it’s different for visual artists, or musicians…but what I’ve realized is this: It takes ALOT of emotion to craft believable fiction.

It’s an emotionally exhausting process in itself. You must live inside your characters, and their feelings. You have to breath their joy and pain in and out of your own lungs. When your chest is full of your own real emotions, there’s not much space for fictitious ones.

I was definitely in my most frantic, obsessively productive writing place during a time in my life when I didn’t have much going on at all, negative or positive, in my  own emotional life. I could channel everything that wasn’t happening into the lives of my characters.

Now, I’m sort of drained, and it’s a bit harder to find the energy to create realistic emotional lives for my imaginary friends. This doesn’t mean these experiences won’t show up someday, when I’m more able to process them. When I’m in the thick of it, however, myself is more than enough.

How about you, writers? Do you agree with me, or can you channel your emotions in the here and now?

 

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Posted in Characters, Writing

Hey Writers: Can You Talk the Talk?

Posted on February 19, 2012 by Stephanie Alexander| 14 Comments

Today I like: tons of kids running around my house
Not so much: feeding them!

My girls are taking Chinese and Spanish at school. I can get by with the simplest French when in France (Je m’apelle Stephanie. Je suis une touriste Americaine.), and pick out a word or two in the more heavily accented areas of the Caribbean (In Haiti I understood manger and bonjour. That’s about it). So, I’m stoked they are getting this exposure now, from both a linguistic and a cultural viewpoint. Bring on the hola and the ni hao!

One thing that’s amazed me, particularly with the Chinese, is the girls’ pitch-perfect accent. Asian languages have tones the average Germanic or Romance language speaker can’t easily replicate. Ever try to pronounce the names of the menu items at a Thai or Vietnamese restaurant? There’s a reason they generally have numbers beside each entrée.

“Can I have the…Mwwnnaa…trraaa….the number seven, please.”

My kids, however, at six and eight, come home singing Chinese songs with perfect enunciation. They’re not shy or self conscious about it. They spit out the numbers one through twenty as easily as my four-year-old sings his ABC’s. It’s amazing to me how easily their little tongues wrap around tones that I couldn’t replicate if I tried. I’d produce sounds somewhere between a lowing cow and a dental patient emerging from anesthesia with a mouth full of Novocaine and a few less teeth.

We all know children with bi-lingual parents. They can switch between languages in one conversation, never missing a beat or dropping a cookie. Everyone knows that the younger one is, the easier it is to pick up a language. And here’s where this idea becomes relevant for writers.

I started reading adult novels, the ones my mom brought home from the library, around age eight. While some of that subject matter was a little intense (as I’ve stated before, Stephen King’s IT gave me nightmares for months at age ten), I truly believe that early exposure to novels shaped whatever ability I possess in creating long form fiction.

In reading (adult) novels from such a young age, I was absorbing, without realizing it, the basics of good storytelling: plot, character, dialogue. How scenes flow from one to another. Foreshadowing. I was learning the language of novel-writing at an age when I could easily take it in. Make it part of my native tongue.

If I loved a book, I’d read it over and over (sometimes thirty times over the years, as in the case of All Things Bright and Beautiful, The Stand, Pride and Prejudice, and later, Angela’s Ashes and Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood). This re-reading…the repetition…sealed the voices of these stories in my head, and in turn blended them into my own narrative voice.

I developed a habit, around age six, of telling myself stories to help me fall asleep at night.  Made-up scenarios, running through my head, every night. I’ve never stopped. Nowadays, as I drift off I write the next day’s scene in my mind. Character and dialogue. Intro, build up, climax, closing. Usually in the third person. As if I’m sitting in front of the computer typing away. Weird, yes…but also very effective for a writer. I’ve been practicing non-stop for twenty-nine years.

I always wonder about “writers” who say they don’t read. Reading is practice for writing. The idea of learning a new language now, when my brain is set in a very specific communication pattern, is daunting…not matter how envious I am of my bi-lingual friends. So how do those who don’t read, and have never really read, suddenly expect to be able to understand the language of novels?

If I tried to learn Chinese now, my accent would be bad. I would be self-conscious. My words stilted, unnatural. Even if I wanted to say something a certain way and knew the correct words, it probably wouldn’t come out right…and it certainly wouldn’t be eloquent.

So, if you’re toying with the idea of writing a novel, and you’ve never been a reader, stop and think. Are you at a point where you can realistically devote the time to learning a new language? Is your mind still flexible enough?

If not, there are many accomplished novel-speakers out there. Grab a book and experience the beauty of fluency.

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Posted in Characters, Plot, Prose, Setting, Voice, Writing

In Which Real Life Has No Discernible Plot

Posted on January 29, 2012 by Stephanie Alexander| 10 Comments

Today I like: Homemade ice cream
Not so much: Sponge Bob’s laugh. “Hehehehehehehe…” Shoot me.

Darlin’ do not fear what you don’t really know…
–Brett Dennen

Writers generally fall into two camps: Plotters and Pantsers. Those who plan out their work (plotters) and those who wing it (pantsers). There’s sort of a tradition amongst writers to look down upon others who don’t follow your individual mantra. Plotters think pantsers are undisciplined. Pantsers think plotters are rigid. Blah Blah Blah. It’s like a literary Mommy Wars. Anyway, I fall into the plotting category. I’ve been thinking about this lately, and I’ve come to the conclusion that my “plotter-ish-ness” is really a reflection of my personality.

I like to know what’s going to happen. In my own life, I tend to plan things out. Lists, schedules…love them. So, it makes sense that I plan my work. It’s comfortable to know where my characters are going, and have an end goal. I write a detailed outline before I even write one word of a scene in a new novel.

Sometimes, however, this doesn’t work out, and that’s where I drift away from my outlines…and sometimes even my end goal. Where the flow of events in the story, the characters’ evolutions and plot points, decide that my plan is not where it’s at. This can be a little disconcerting…having to reorganize my thoughts and wrap my mind around a new direction. Usually with a good run and some serious mulling over, the new path takes shape. Cue re-write on the grand plan…but still, there is a grand plan.

That’s the great thing about fiction. You can always change course, and it’s like the original course didn’t happen. Ugh, plot hole. This scene is just not working. Guess what? Delete! Whoo hoo! It’s gone! New scene…all better. Things are back on track. Rolling toward the end goal.

Unfortunately, real life isn’t like that. You pick a course, write a scene, and you’re stuck with it. There’s no time to figure out the perfect reaction or bit of dialogue. No ability to control the other characters. One scenario can lead to another, and you feel like you’re trapped in the most poorly edited film ever recorded. When it’s all over, you can’t believe it happened…and you have absolutely no idea what to do with it. Where to take it…if mistakes have been made, how to fix it. The end goal is invisible…or at least seems out of reach.

Not knowing frightens me. I don’t do it well, in writing or life. I try to keep in mind, however, that sometimes in my books, the scenes I never saw coming teach my characters the best lessons. Even the most dedicated plotters have to be pantsers once in a while.

So are you a plotter or a pantser? In writing, life, or both?

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Posted in Balance, Plot, Writing

Take Me In, Let Me Wonder

Posted on December 20, 2011 by Stephanie Alexander| 10 Comments

Today I like:  Sullivan’s Island
Not so much: Wrapping paper

Brooklyn, Brooklyn, take me in
Are you aware of the shape I’m in?
My hands they shake, my head it spins
Brooklyn, Brooklyn, take me in
–The Avett Brothers (I and Love and You)

My second daughter, she of the white blond hair and blue eyes; she who looks nothing like me, is a child after my own heart. I think she might have a writer’s soul. She takes it all in.

Songs, for example. She always asks me, “Mommy, what is this song about?” This is her reaction to every artist from Kesha to Bob Dylan. Usually I can come up with a pretty succinct, child-friendly answer. (“She’s mad at her boyfriend! He wants to go to a big party! He likes big butts and he cannot lie!” Ok, really, I change the song on that one…) Sometimes I’m stumped…and the above song, I and Love and You, by the Avett Brothers…which I have recently discovered and with which I have fallen in love…is an example of such a song.

When I had that inevitable question, this time I said, “Why don’t you just listen to it, and tell me what you think at the end?”

Load the car and write the note
Grab your bag and grab your coat
Tell the ones that need to know
That we are headed north
One foot in and one foot back
But it don’t pay to live like that
So I cut the ties and jumped the tracks
Never to return

She kept up a commentary. “So he’s going on a trip? North…it will be cold. Is it Christmas?”

When at first I learned to speak
I used all my words to fight
With him and her and you and me
Oh but its just a waste of time
Yeah its such a waste of time
That woman shes got eyes that shine
Like a pair of stolen polished dimes
She asked to dance I said it’s fine
I’ll see you in the morning time 

“He messed something up. Maybe his girlfriend is mad.”

Three words that became hard to say
I and love and you
What you were then, I am today
Look at the things I do

“I and love and you. That’s like I LOVE YOU.”

Dumbed down and numbed by time and age
Your dreams to catch the world, the cage
The highway sets the traveler’s stage
All exits look the same

“What kind of exits?”
“Like the ones on the highway.”
“They do look the same. But they have numbers. What number is Brooklyn?”

As we were listening, I thought of how the best songs tell a story. Like novels do, but in the very shortest, simplest form. Sometimes the most eloquent and emotional. It made me think of that old writers’ adage: Show, don’t tell.

Songwriters tell their tales in emotion, and give the reader room to interpret the details and the message in an individual way. What one person hears, where he or she finds some commonality, might not be how the songs resonates (no pun intended) for the next listener. So, as long form writers, I think the lesson we can learn from great songwriters is this: Don’t over explain. Give your readers a chance to come to their own conclusions, and maybe even leave them hanging a tiny bit. Tie it up, but keep the sense of wonder. Give your readers credit for having individual points of reference and creative intelligence. And of course…tell the story in as few words as possible. Just make sure they’re the right ones.

So, at the end of the song I asked my girl what she thought it meant.

“He’s sad. He misses home. He wants to go back and fix things.”
“Do you think he did?” I asked.
She nodded. “Yes, definitely.”

I’ll let her tell me the rest of the story when she’s ready.

 

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Posted in Plot, Prose, Writing

What Math Taught Me About Writing

Posted on December 2, 2011 by Stephanie Alexander| 24 Comments

Today I like: Rhianna
Not so much: Kids Place Live on XM. I can only take so much Laurie Berkner

“…I’m all about them words
Over numbers, un-encumbered, numbered words
hundreds of pages, pages, pages, for words,
More words, than I had ever heard
And I feel so alive…”
–Jason Mraz

Let’s start out by saying, academically speaking, I’m a words person. Give me term papers and poetry readings and fifty page dissertations. Let me make outlines and take copious, long-winded notes. Read bulky text books. I don’t want just one answer. I want to see all sides of an argument. I want differing points of view, so I can prove my opinion. Makes sense, novelist and all.

This leads me to admit: I hate at math. I never enjoyed it. I know, as a feminist I should be a strong female role model, and I hope I am…as long as I’m not required to figure the square root of anything or do long division. I have to agree with that much-maligned Barbie…math is hard.

So I avoided math as much as possible. Not difficult, since I did not attend the most stellar of high schools (PG County’s finest). Didn’t take any math my senior year, and somehow squeaked by with B’s the three years before that (maybe because my basketball coaches were my teachers? Who knows.) I got to college and was promptly placed in remedial algebra, which I managed to pass with a lovely D that screwed my GPA for all eternity. Damn you, letter D! After that I took symbolic logic, and I hoped I’d be finished with x‘s and y‘s forever.

Oh, no. Fast forward to grad school. As a sociology student, I had to take A LOT of statistics. I literally cried my way through every problem. Twenty-five years old, sobbing, “I CANNOT DO THIS. I WILL NEVER GRADUATE. MY BRAIN IS OOZING OUT MY EARS IN A SLOW FLOW OF P-VALUES.” Regression analysis made me regress to age six.

I’m thinking about age six because my sweet six-year-old daughter is struggling right now. She’s having trouble with her math facts. Last night she sobbed at the dining room table.

“BUT IT’S HARD, MOMMY. I CAN’T DO IT. IT’S HARD.” Big blue eyes seeping tears all over her subtraction worksheet. Smudging the smily elephant on the top of the page, the one I’m sure she’d wanted to stab with her pencil.

So I told her my story. About statistics, and how it almost killed me. I really got into it. Cue me boo-hooing and pounding my fists on the dining room table and pretending to hurl my computer out the window. She loved it, and the scary part is my rendition was actually a fair representation of the truth. She sniffled and got back to business, and we plodded through the worksheet…came out the other end with smiles.

Now, I pulled through in stats. It all finally clicked…and my final class earned me an A. One I actually deserved. Honestly, that experience taught me that I’d never worked hard. I was lucky enough that I didn’t have to. I could put in a modicum of effort in school and get a good result. I think my daughter is the same way. She’s accustomed to things coming easy.

These days, I think back on what I could have accomplished if I’d actually tried throughout my academic career. Put in the kind of effort I put into statistics. Those god-forsaken classes changed my life. It took me until age twenty-five to really understand the value of hard work.

So when I sat down to write a book, yes, it was going to be a challenge. But I never had any doubt I could do it. If I could conquer statistics, I could conquer anything.  Writing is sometimes emotionally exhausting, no doubt. But nothing feels better than the combination of hard work and passion.

I hope my daughter learns that lesson quicker than I did. I think she will. She’s a smart cookie.

 

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Posted in Motherhood, Uncategorized, Writing

On Fog and Other Opaque Topics

Posted on November 21, 2011 by Stephanie Alexander| 12 Comments

Today I like: Bridges
Not so much: Jungle Junction. What a ridiculous show, even for 4yo’s.

In my attempts to be a better doggie parent, I’ve been walking Rosie the Round Ridgeback after the kids go to bed. Last night, when we hit the sidewalk around 9:30pm, fog was covering my little slice of Daniel Island like a layer of opaque frosting. Running along the tops of the trees in a shifting gray mass. Lit from below by street lights. A damp, stick-in-your-nose kind of smell, with just a hint of salt thrown in from the surrounding brackish rivers.

Didn’t bother Rosie, who was intent on sniffing out any possible food item, including cigarette butts and smooshed wads of gum. I was a little disoriented, however, and I realized the reason: I couldn’t see The Bridge.

The Bridge would be the Arthur Ravenel Jr Bridge. It connects Mount Pleasant with downtown Charleston. It’s a testament to function and creativity, sweeping over the Cooper River like a graceful roller coaster. I see it from different angles at least fifty times a day as I run around town, and usually drive over it more than once.

But tonight all I could make out were a few faintly blipping red lights…meant to discourage novice Air Force pilots from crashing into its spires. The fog kept that comforting, constant concrete place marker from me.

I’ll admit, I’ve been struggling a bit to get the words on “paper” (computer screen) lately. I can force them, but they’re not coming with their usual easy tidal patterns: in, out, in, out, repeat. If you’re a writer, you know what this means: I’m in for some rewrites. It can be disheartening when you feel the story in your head…but it…sits…there…like a content lizard on a hot rock. You poke it, but it merely hisses at you.

The thing is, just like the bridge, the story is still there. It’s all in my mind, hidden behind the fog. I can see the colors, hear the voices. They’re just muted right now.

Sometimes I find myself in similar situation in my “real” (read: non-fictional, unicorn-and-dragonless) life. Wondering how to sift through the issues we all run up against: doubt, untruths, ambiguity. I guess in the end, all we can do is wait for the weather to clear. For the fog to blow over, so we can decide if the structure underneath is sound.

I know the bridge will endure. I know my story will find its way out. And when I have to ask those kinds of questions, I hope for bright sunlight and a strong wind.

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Posted in Writing

World-building and Wikipedia

Posted on October 18, 2011 by Stephanie Alexander| 18 Comments

Today I like: Watching the river from my front porch
Not so much: I can’t really think of anything

This afternoon I’m visiting another country. I’m working on book three in my Cracked Slipper trilogy, and the characters have left the confines of my enchanted kingdom. They’ve crossed borders, gone north, past the mountains. So I’m leaving a land I’m very familiar with. I can recite the history of Eleanor’s kingdom backward and forward. Now I’m in a new place. A tourist in my own head.

As I started thinking about this northern nation, I pulled my pre-writing documents from The Cracked Slipper. Ah, how nostalgic those pages seem now! I was just a fledgling novelist trying to figure out how to make this process work for me, and how I would get this huge story out of my head and into my computer. I knew the importance of world-building in fantasy novels, and I wanted to get it right.

So I wrote out as much as I could possibly come up with about my imaginary kingdom. Here are some of my headings:

Geography (sub-headings: Bordering Nations, River and Mountains Systems, Major Cities)
Weather
Religion
History (Major Wars, The Monarchy)
The Arts (Literature, Music, Dance)
Culture (Holidays and Traditions, Attitudes about Alcohol, What is the Character of the Typical Citizen?)
Gender Roles (Patriarchy, Attitudes about Sex)
Animal and Plant Life (Levels of Animal Intelligence, Enchanted Creatures)
Education
Magic (Integration into Daily Life, Roles of Witches/Magicians, Power Limits)
Class Systems
Economy (Trade, Raw Materials, Magic and the Economy)

Now I look back at these documents, and surprisingly they hold very accurate. I think I needed to have this background information in my head before I started writing, so I could concentrate on the characters and the plot. I thought of it as background research. The same thing a historical novelist would do before starting a story about 16th century Holland. You can’t place your characters into a context you’re not familiar with.

So, my notes are really like my own personal Wikipedia entry. Something I can use to check the facts. Fortunately, I don’t need to verify anything about my made-up world. I can count on it’s authenticity, and if it’s biased, that’s ok.

So now I’m off to work on a Wiki version of my northern nation. Research my own imagination. :)

What’s you’re favorite story world? If you’re a writer, how do you craft the world your characters inhabit?

 

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Posted in Setting, Writing