Posted on by seasonsshadow

It’s Levi-OH-sa, Not Levioh-SA: Spellbound by the Spoken Word

Recently, I was invited to a poetry reading. An amateur poetry reading. Visions of a room full of beret-wearing college kids filled my mind, all snapping after one word is spoken into a microphone on a sparse, poorly-lit stage. It could be any word, but it’s spoken artistically. If you don’t see the way ‘balustrade’ perfectly reflects the social situation of racial tensions in some faraway country, then you’re not artsy enough to be here.

Of course, that’s nothing close to what it was like.

A historical building converted into a coffee shop. Mismatched tables and chairs are crammed into any space available. A great, old, carved bar serves as the order counter. The smell of coffee and pot pies hangs in the air, and soft acoustic music allows for hushed conversation and the sound of scratching pencils against notebooks. Yeah, okay, the building itself passed the vibe check.

But the people? They were all sorts.

A traditional Goth sat in one corner with her drink. A couple on a date shared desserts off of fine china. My own soda bubbled, and my sister’s tea steamed. A raggedy man, a middle-aged businesswoman, and an artsy type share a table and some sort of card game. Peppered throughout the building are young adults dressed in black. Someone knits. Another crochets. A third is drawing with confident strokes in a sketchbook. A couple of people are reading.

This is the scene I joined, waiting to find out what kind of experience the event would offer.

The first poet stood with trembling hands and a downcast gaze. She read her words as she had rehearsed. Her voice was even, but it seemed as though a tremble waited for only the smallest opportunity to creep in. Her poetry was good, but at the end of her segment, I was left uninspired. Unmoved. But not uninterested. Hers were words to devour with your eyes, not the sort that called to your imagination as a siren calls to a sailor.

The second poet took the stage. Feet rooted as those of mountains are, she began with a bang. Or rather, a swear.

Now, I don’t typically enjoy things that use vulgarity for shock value, but somehow, this time, it was perfect.

Galaxies and bones stirred my mind. Heartbreak and betrayal, alien to me, haunted my fabricated memories. It was raw. It was uncomfortable. It was captivating. Yet if I had just read it, with the emotions it sought to evoke confined to a page, I doubt I would have liked it.

The third poet took the stage and compared life to peanut butter. He had stage presence and a nice voice. The pomp and absurdity of his words should have endeared me to him. It didn’t.

I’m currently in a period of my life that requires me to read aloud nearly daily. I had already noticed that things which were pleasant to read weren’t always pleasant to speak. I was trying to get my thoughts together for a post about it when I was invited to the poetry reading.

And I saw my point in three parts.

What is it about a good storyteller that enchants us? What is it about the voice that can draw us into something we may not relate to? How can a good orator transform mediocre words into ambrosia?

I hopped on Google. I searched for what makes a good storyteller. It provided me with some tips on how to connect with an audience and how to enhance my writing. I switched to Google Scholar. I searched for articles about the parts of the brain that activate when being told a story. That yielded articles on lying, body language, learning, and culture. I tried to reword it. I came away with some, honestly, really very good tips on presenting. What I didn’t find was a consensus on what a good speaker does to us in the context I was looking for. An interesting link between listening to stories and listening to music, though.

So, until science (or the internet) comes to prove me wrong, I’ll go with this:

Some people just have magic in their voice.

Posted on by seasonsshadow

Is the Spice Finally Too Spicy?

This post deals with topics of abuse in various forms. If this isn’t something you want to digest at the moment, see you in the next one!

I can understand the underlying fantasy. Every girl wants to be “The Special”. Picked out of a crowd even when she’s plain. Treated like a princess by someone perceived to hold power. She wants to be the exception to the rules of his behaviour and be treated kindly and/or differently from all the Other Girls. She wants to indulge in the romanticized notion that she can be the one to alleviate someone’s emotional and physical suffering through the power of love. She wants to be someone’s first choice. Their only choice. Their whole world. It would mean being accepted as an inherently flawed self at the expense of accepting another’s flawed self. Doesn’t seem like too bad a trade. After all, isn’t it romantic when he says that if anyone else touches her, he’ll make them pay?

But what happens when this obsessive kind of love becomes mainstream and heralded as romantic?

Dark romance is REAL popular on social media right now, and I have some opinions. Not the kind of opinions where I just hang out here and crap all over an entire genre, but I definitely have reservations. Ultimately, it’s not the content itself I have a problem with, but the normalization of “romantic violence” in quantity and extremes.

Stop it. I’m crying. And begging. But mostly crying.

When something is trending, it not only gets seen by the target audience who are already consuming related topics, but also by those who typically wouldn’t search out and interact with that topic. Think back to when Twilight came out and how many people who were not normally readers picked it up. Think about how many experienced 50 Shades of Grey in one form or another. Those are just two quick examples of unhealthy relationships in popular media that are idolized, but there are many more.

Just like how the media can shape our perspective of beauty with their airbrushed models and influencer content, popularizing, and more relevantly, romanticizing, inherently abusive behaviours does the same thing, but to our idea of what is and isn’t tolerable behaviour. It’s not a question of desensitizing us, per se, but it’s the issue of repetition. How many times do you have to hear that abusive behaviour is romantic before you start internalizing that message?

I could go on a tangent about the Alpha Male movement. I could discuss Stockholm Syndrome and retellings of Beauty and the Beast. I could talk about how the romance of obsessive lead characters often mirrors the tactics used by romance scammers. I could even complain about the broody, morally grey anti-hero that has been popular for eons. But I won’t. Ain’t nobody got time for that. Not even me.

What I will talk about is the cycle of abuse and how these dark romances can warp our perception of and ability to identify the cycle of abuse in real life and push the boundaries of what we’re willing to accept from a romantic partner. We can say that we’d recognize an abuser and would get out of a relationship that was toxic before it got dangerous, but it’s not usually that clear, that simple, or that easy.

Unlike the previous generation and their hate-on for video games, I’m not trying to tell anyone that dark romances are desensitizing the masses and will cause people to become abusive in their relationships when they weren’t already predisposed to it. Or that it’s more likely to make someone accept abuse. What I am trying to say is that when you are shown or told something repeatedly, by multiple sources deemed trustworthy (e.g., peers, influencers, media), a certain part of your brain begins to internalize that. If not as a belief of your own, then as an understanding of acceptable societal norms. I don’t like my For You page telling me at least three or four times a day that something like stalking is romantic. That intimidation is romantic. That violence is romantic.

It’s not.

Now, dark romances have existed for a long time, especially if you’re willing to include less mainstream sources. I’m not mad about that. If people want to use the genre to work out their own kinks in a low-stakes environment, more power to them. If they are seeking a way to process abuse and trauma experienced by either themselves or those around them, cool. I’m glad these resources exist. I even have no problem with the curious who want to dip their toes into the genre to see if they like it. Or people who read it just because it’s fun for them. I’m not here to say books with dark topics should be banned.

I’m here saying we should identify abusive behaviour as just that, and stop calling it romantic. Abusers don’t need any more ammo than they already have. We don’t need to give them frequent, viral, wide-reaching romanticization of their behaviours. The cycle of abuse is confusing enough as it is.

For those of you unfamiliar with the cycle of abuse, let me give you a quick rundown.

The first stage is tension. Tension that the abuser builds up either consciously or subconsciously with their behaviours and actions. Ever had the dishes done angrily at you? That’s what I’m talking about. But tension is also a highly desirable state in romance reads. Of course, it’s typically less the violence kind and more the sexual kind, but the problem is we’re currently blurring lines between the two in things like mafia and dark romances.

The second stage is usually an emotionally charged incident. A physical fight. An argument. A one-sided outburst. Know what romance novels typically have? A fight or a breakup scene. The difference is generally only a matter of severity.

The third stage is reconciliation. Reconciliation can be love-bombing. It can be gaslighting. It can be a grand public show of devotion and willingness to change. It can be self-depricating comments about the self in an attempt to gain sympathy or arouse guilt. After all, the abuser is just a silly goose who can’t live without you. You’re the reason they’re alive. The reason they strive to be a better person. See? They recognized their own bad behaviour, and you’re the reason they’re changing. If you left, they’d be lost. They couldn’t be the person they want to become. You’re their inspiration, and without you, they might as well be dead.

Wow, didn’t that escalate quickly?

As for the fourth stage, it’s a return to normalcy. Calm. Life as usual. Or maybe life as a little bit better than before. This primes the victim, or that female main character, for the next instance of building tension, escalating from the previous incident. It’s for the sake of the plot. Promise.

When comparing the cycle of abuse to romance novel plots, and especially dark romances, I hope you can see my point. When you’re reading a book about a stalker who starts to isolate the female main character from her friends and family, it’s really easy to forgive a stupid little fight about where you leave the remote. Or look past your partner punching a hole in the wall when the Book Girlies on TikTok are telling you that it’s romantic to forgive your partner for shooting someone over your shoulder and making you bleed. He deflected. It was for your own safety. He was only thinking of you. Double promise.

It’s also easy to mistake the reconciliation stage of abuse as progress towards changing your significant other. Especially when gaslighting is involved, because when things go back to that calm stage, is it really just like before? Or are they better, and you’re just not noticing their efforts? Before, they wouldn’t have been able to hold it together for so long. You’re responsible for that. It’ll keep getting better from here on out. Triple promise.

So please. Call abuse what it is.

A final note.

I use heteronormative speech throughout this article, but abuse can be perpetuated AGAINST any gender or sex and BY any gender or sex in ANY configuration of relationship. Abuse can be physical, emotional, financial, and more. If what I’ve described above hits a little close to home, please talk to someone. Very few of us are the exception to the rule of our partner’s abusive behaviour, and we will not save them from themselves. Stay safe out there.

References
Posted on by seasonsshadow

A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes

You may be familiar with the story of how Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer, was written based on a dream she had. According to her, chapter 13, called Confessions, is essentially a transcript of that very dream. But what other books and media were based on dreams? This has been on my mind lately, so I decided to take a bit of a deeper look.

Here is a list of SOME books, video games, and TV and screen media that are all allegedly based on dreams.

  • Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
  • Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
  • The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
  • Tintin in Tibet by Georges Prosper Remi
  • Misery by Stephen King
  • Dreamcatcher by Stephen King
  • The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo
  • The Returned by Jason Mott
  • Stuart Little by E.B. White
  • Sophie’s Choice by William Styron
  • Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
  • Beyond the Wall of Sleep by H.P. Lovecraft
  • The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
  • 3 Women by Robert Altman
  • The Terminator by James Cameron
  • Over the Garden Wall by Patrick McHale
  • Deltarune by Toby Fox
  • Omori by developer Omocat
  • Salesforce by Marc Benioff

Now, this is an impressive list. I don’t know about you, but my dreams are often things like being on a beach, collecting pencils someone stuck in the sand to pay for some hippies to let an elephant out of their campervan. Either that, or my degree is being revoked because I missed a math test I didn’t know I needed to take. Please note that I graduated more than ten years ago.

No part of either of those things would make for a good book. Or at least not a book I personally would write. In addition, I was under the impression that adults didn’t really dream all that much anyway. Turns out, I was wrong.

On average, people can recall having dreamed 1-3 times per week, and those who report not dreaming AT ALL are the minority, only up to 6.5% of the population.

The ability to report your dreams depends on several factors.

First of all, for all those who suffer from broken sleep, good news! The more you wake up in the night, the more dreams you are likely to recall. If you are the kind of person who wakes up right in the middle of your REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, that chance is even higher. Fun fact, this is what fuelled the hypothesis that humans only dream during the REM stage of the sleep cycle. Surprise! We actually dream during all stages of sleep.

Stressed individuals tend to be able to recall and report their dreams more. My own personal theory on this is that when you have dreams while you are stressed, those dreams tend to be awkward and embarrassing. We are hardwired to remember things that are awkward and embarrassing. This is an unfair advantage for stress dreams, if you ask me.

Another thing that can affect your ability to recall your dreams is whether you are woken up abruptly or whether you are woken up gradually and naturally. If your sleep is interrupted, you are better able to recall dreams. Gradually and slowly, the dreams tend to fade faster. If you think about a dream right as you regain consciousness, this helps solidify details of the dream in your brain.

The ability to remember your dreams is also linked to creativity and intelligence.

So, what kind of dreams do people have? What are the available “genres,” so to speak? How come some people have dreams about sparkly vampires, bringing back the dead, and time-traveling robot hitmen, when the best MY brain can do is trying to chase a mouse on a pogo stick?

A popular theory is that there are seven main genres of dreams.

  • Nightmares- Distressing dreams that cause the dreamer to feel stress, fear, or other elevated negative emotions.
  • Lucid Dreams – When you have some sort of conscious control or apply agency to a dream that would otherwise progress without input.
  • Current Event Dreams – Things that have happened, you have read about, or imagined in the last day or two.
  • Metaphorical or Symbolic Dreams – Dreams that help an individual emotionally or mentally process life events from the present or the past. These dreams often have similar emotional weight to the original life event, but the subject matter may differ.
  • Fantasy or Comfort Dreams – Aspirations, compensations, or wish-fulfillments to evoke positive emotions and comfort, or a sense of control over a situation that otherwise may make an individual feel hopeless or depressed. This may be a self-soothing activity.
  • Creative and Problem-Solving Dreams – Dreams that the dreamer feels to be inspirational or give some kind of epiphany in things that can translate to real-life problems or situations.
  • Supernatural Dreams – The kind of dreams people feel are premonitions, telepathic, shared with other people, or where they believe they are visited by someone deceased.

If anyone out there has any tips on how to increase the instances of fantasy or comfort dreams and/or creative and problem-solving dreams, I’m all ears! My personal projects will certainly thank you.

References
Posted on by seasonsshadow

Murder and a Skeleton Crew

This post is about a lot of things. About the Bechdel Test, about killing your darlings, about disposable characters, about fridging a character’s partner, about running your story on a skeleton crew, and about how to navigate a cast of characters in a way that is optimal for the reader.

Let’s start with some definitions.

The Bechdel Test is a pop-culture guide designed to determine if a piece of writing or media has “significant” female characters or appropriate female representation. I’m neither here nor there on the applicability of this line of reasoning, but I understand the motivation behind it. For those of you who don’t know what the test questions are, they are as follows:

  • A piece of media or writing must FEATURE two female characters.
  • These two female characters must have at least one conversation with each other.
  • The conversation MUST NOT be about a man. (interpret: must not be about love interest)

Take from this what you will, but I want to highlight the fact that if you have added a girl best friend that exists solely for your other vanity character to talk about love with… maybe don’t. Maybe employ an internal monologue. A diary entry. A fight between the main character and said love interest. When a female character is added for what feels like the sole purpose of talking about another character… it’s sloppy. Find a different way.

Killing Your Darlings is a piece of writing advice where even though you LIKE having an element in the story, if it’s not adding to the story, take it out. Things that fall under this category are subplots, romantic partners, background characters, certain settings, or flowery descriptions. Ever read a “love triangle” where it’s really 2 characters that are into one another and then one sad sop you feel bad for because they are super in love with one of the other two and can’t catch a break or be included in anything plot-relevant? Take a GOOD. HARD. LOOK. Is this love triangle actually making your story better/more effective? Or do you just like it? Do you have a chapter where you explain a really cool magic tree, and you’re so proud of it, but it does nothing for the wider story? Maybe time to chop it down.

Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.

Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Disposable Characters fall into the category of “Killing Your Darlings” as well, but it is specifically about people you have written or created JUST to have them die and cause emotional levity in the story. Now, I’m not saying you should never kill your characters – but often if an author knows in advance a character isn’t going to make it through the whole story, that character isn’t as fleshed out as the rest of the cast and it’s really obvious.

Going hand in hand with Disposable Characters is the term “Fridging your Wives” which is a personal favourite of mine. I didn’t know the origin of the phrase until I was pulling articles/fact-checking myself for this post. If you’re curious, it’s from Green Lantern: A New Dawn when the antagonist shoves the dead body of the superhero’s love interest into a fridge for the hero to then discover later. It was to do emotional damage and propel the plot. The term “Fridge your Wife” now refers to when a character’s significant other is killed, hurt, maimed, assaulted, or otherwise traumatized to motivate another character. The issue with this is we’re not treating characters as people. We’re treating the person SOLELY as a plot device. It’s a lot of work to create a character simply simply to sacrifice them to get the hero off their butt. Think bigger. Think better.

The last definition before I talk about my point is Skeleton Crew. To keep it short and sweet, a Skeleton Crew is the minimum quantity of individuals required to successfully maintain an item or corporation.

So. The point of murder and skeleton crews is this: As writers, we are in charge of populating worlds and making them feel real. Lived in. Working. But this ultimately can bog down the progress of your story and confuse the reader. It’s exactly the same as writing dialogue. Real dialogue is filled with meandering, “um” and “wha-yeah-huh”s. But we don’t include that in novels. We want it to be clear and purposeful when a character speaks, while still maintaining that fascimile of reality. How many characters do you really need?

How many of you have read a fantasy novel where it felt damn near impossible to keep track of the characters because their names were unique in that fantasy-name kind of way? Or did you need to continually reference a list in the front of the book as to who was in which role? Or even worse, have you ever stopped reading and had to flip back a couple chapters because you have two characters mixed up?

All of these are symptoms of the same thing. Either the characters are so plentiful that you legitimately can’t keep track of who is who, or the characters are too similar to one another (or just don’t have a clear enough voice!).

Kill your darlings. Make a list of all the characters you make specific mention of in your work in progress. Divide them out into characters that are actually necessary, and characters that support the others. Find the fridged partners and the disposable characters, and try to figure out if there is a non-human way of motivating your protagonist or plot. If you can’t, that’s okay too, but think about it.

Something we did in theatre, was if there were not enough “background” actors to fill up the lines, we would just reassign lines to the background actors. The baker had the shopkeep’s lines, or the blacksmith became the general store so he could reference the price of apples. Townswoman 1 through 4 could be cut to two without it harming the clarity of the scene.

So look at your support character list again. How much of the information they provide to the protagonist can be delivered by someone else? How many of these roles can be combined to clean up this list – not only for yourself, but for your reader?

Now, obviously, if you have a sprawling space epic where your characters are going to multiple planets every chapter and are meeting with representatives from each of those planets, there’s no sensible way to combine roles. The places I’m asking you to target are the faces in the crowd, the people you have in your world that are just there to make it bigger.

In the space epic example, target the crew. How many crew members does the main character talk to and the audience are expected to keep track of and remember? Do we have to name your crewmembers and give them a backstory for them to show up on page and deliver bad news about the functioning of the ship? Or can the holoscreen flicker to life, the engineer sweating bullets as she tells the captain that the slipdrive is drifting and there’s nothing she can do? Can you decrease the size of the ship? Or is it important for it to feel busy and populated because you’re implying the military ship is heavily manned?

Does your story take place in a school? Can the school be smaller? How many professors do you need to actually make it operate? How many students would viably be accepted into the school at the same time? How much of this can you imply without directly mentioning and forcing the reader to keep track of your complicated roster?

Think about it, and take some names off your support character list, even if you like that character. Take some settings away if the same goal can be achieved by staying put. Take that cute subplot away that you worked on for a month, even though you love it. Kill your darlings. Strip your WIP back to a skeleton crew and press forward. Your story will be cleaner, easier to keep track of, and ultimately, the reader will thank you.

Everything you remove, put it in a file. Post it to your fanpages or your blog. Fans will find it if they want it. They’ll be delighted to see it exists, without the pressure of it being forced into the story.

References

Posted on by seasonsshadow

Inside Out or Outside In?

The class I’m taking on writing for video games recently raised a point I can’t stop thinking about. To put it plainly, the point was whether it’s better/easier to create a character from the inside out, or the outside in.

For context, when you are writing for a video game character you are often a cog in the wheel of production. Even as a head writer, you may not have any say in what a character looks like. You may not have a say in the way they are programmed to walk, to move, when they speak, or how much they can say. It is up to you to take every piece decided by the narrative director, the programmers, the artists, and the other writers and make a GOOD character out of it.

This is why looking from the outside in may be more beneficial.

It’s irritating to play a video game where the player character or the NPC don’t seem to jive with the surroundings. Their entire family was murdered by assassins, but they hire assassins on a regular basis? That’s a little sus. Oppressed by the local monarchy but is seen cheering earnestly in the crowd when royalty drives by? Hmm. They have a limp but it’s never addressed, it’s just an empty character trait? Boo. The character’s backstory says they were a lazy orphan, but yet they talk about their fond memories of lavish parties because it suits their archetype? Frustrating, and usually the catalyst for me putting down the game and doing a quick internet search because… did I make that up in my head? Or is it a narrative error? Either way, I’ve PUT THE GAME DOWN and have gone to do something else. Not the reaction a game designer wants.

So how could this apply to writing?

Not everyone just sits down to write a story and has the perfect character walk into their brain immediately. Not everyone gets to start with a character at all! In one of my most recent works, I had “NAME1” as a placeholder for 80 pages before I figured out who the late-stage character was.

Sometimes you have to start with the story you want to tell and build the character from all the bits and pieces you find along the worldbuilding way. Is medicine difficult, expensive, and risky? Maybe this gives your character a glass eye and a whole bucket of resentment that fuels their desire to overthrow the government with a secret society. Is education restricted to one gender of one social status? Maybe your character is neither of those and it made them start a study ring when they were younger. Maybe this leads to a core personality trait of being a patient teacher.

Planning a book, a short story, a game, or other media doesn’t always go as planned. It doesn’t always go in order. Being able to consciously flip your character design from internal to external could be a valuable way to unstick your writing process.

It could also make you realize something about your character that would cause some readers to be pulled out of their immersion.

This means there’s the potential for rewrites but it’ll be worth it. Having characters that feel real, in a world that feels real, relating to each other in a believable way, is SO valuable. Trying to put a bandaid on a plot hole or misalignment of character to their environment is very noticeable to the reader. Even more so than not addressing it at all.

I’m sure you could tell me many instances of a hastily-thrown-in paragraph or page explaining something that otherwise doesn’t matter at that point. Or matters to the reader but not to the character. Fourth Wing and Violet’s early habit of spewing history facts while trying to calm herself down in a dangerous situation comes to mind. It’s a lazy way to deliver exposition. How many people do you know that can rattle off a concise history of their school while people are trying to harm them?

I can’t even remember my name under pressure.

There also haven’t been many events in my life where I just lore drop because I think the people I’m talking to might need context. Can you imagine how weird it would be if everyone justified their thoughts with an immediate context comment? That’s not how conversation works. And when someone forces the pattern, you notice. For example, I had the following conversation with a landlord and it was jarring.

It went like this:

“There’ll be a dog coming for the weekend, we’re pet-sitting. Is that okay?” – Landlord

“May I ask what kind of dog? Big dogs make me really nervous.” – Me

“Oh, they’re little. Kickable size. Are you afraid of dogs because you were attacked by one?” – Landlord

First note, this is not in reference to the cute white dog I’ve previously posted about. Second note, I do not condone someone referring to a dog’s size as “kickable”. Third note, that comment made me uncomfortable. I now had the option to talk about why I was nervous about big dogs (spoiler, I was NOT attacked by a dog) or I could abruptly cut the conversation off.

Which can narratively serve a purpose, but certainly doesn’t feel natural. Another example would be a conversation recently had with a neighbour.

This is the FIRST time I was in a conversation with her and the second time I had ever met her. She talked about how she never cooks anymore. How her family doesn’t come and visit as much as she’d like. How she can hear the neighbour above her burp and fart and walk, and what he does with his girlfriend. How she wanted to insulate her ceiling. How one of her sons was going to open a shop now that he’d graduated from university. How she knows someone on the strata council. She showed me her house. She pointed out all the parts about it she thought were stupid. She gave me a cabbage and half a bottle of oil from her fridge.

Affectionally, she is now the crazy neighbour lady.

It was a non-standard interaction. It felt weird in real life, and it feels weird when you’re forced to read it.

So. Coming back around to my point. Write your characters from the inside out. Then write them again from the outside in. Make your characters bloom naturally within your book. Make your characters make sense in your world. Make your readers consider your characters well-built, and NOT the crazy lady next door.

Posted on by seasonsshadow

Strategic People Watching and Stealing Everything That Isn’t Nailed Down

Okay maybe the title of this is a little dramatic, but I’m sure you’ve heard the joke that if you date a writer, you’re gonna end up in a book. Or that if you’re a Game Master for a tabletop RPG, you steal everything that isn’t nailed down. When I first heard this, I was in grade school and thought to myself: “The author isn’t doing a very good job if the person can recognize themselves as a character in someone’s book…”

Ah, young self. You missed the point completely.

If I had been an artist, I would have been one of those horrible people who thought copying/tracing as an exercise or as practice is against the law or something.

So let’s talk a little bit about people watching and stealing things. Ideas. Concepts. Characters.

Are you looking at your screen in disgust? Hear me out. How many of the most popular books right now are retellings of fairytales? How many websites out there host fanfiction from well-known series such as Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Twilight, etc? How many times are there “waves” of books of one central trope that become really popular? How many authors see these tropes and it inspires them to write their own take on something?

Hopefully you’re still reading after that explanation.

Characters and stories are MEANT to be inspiring. They’re meant to stick in your imagination, make you think about their wider world, long to know them, long to explore different scenarios with the same base framework.

So where does watching people strategically fit into this?

As part of creating a character, you should know their likes and dislikes. As part of that, you should know where they like to hang out. If that is a real place, and a safe place, go there! Don’t just assume you know what kind of atmosphere a place has or what kind of people hang out there from TV and other books.

Is your character a gym buff? Join a gym. Hang out on the bikes or walk on a treadmill. Put in your headphones but don’t turn on any music. What do you see? What do you feel? What do you hear? What do you notice?

Is your character a regular at a bar? Find one that’s similar to the one you’d see your character at (if it’s safe to do so) and order yourself a drink and sit at a booth with a notepad! Copy down snippets of conversations. Sketch the lighting. Review the menu. Freak the staff out! But not in a creepy way, in a you-might-be-a-food/bar/beer-critic kind of way.

Does your character go to the park to think things out? Go to the park (if it’s safe to do so) and find a place you can imagine them sitting. Are there a bunch of bugs there? Does it smell like pine? Are there dogs barking? Would that annoy your character?

These little observations make the reader feel. Feel like these are places they have been to or could go to. Like your characters and story exist within a realm of near-possibility.

So strategically people watch. Steal everything that isn’t nailed down.

It’s an age-old tactic! How many legends and stories do you know that are similar to one another, with one or two details changed? Things such as names, local landmarks, or the result of such a story?

I mean, Joseph Campbell didn’t make all that money explaining a Monomyth for nothing!

So, I’d love to know… what are some of your favourite retellings of fairytales or other legends?

Posted on by seasonsshadow

What’s in a Holiday?

Whether you are writing something that takes place in our world or a world you’ve made up yourself, likely you’ll at least be mentioning some kind of holiday. Maybe it’s a feast day, a civic holiday, a festival, or a ceremony to honour the dead. Maybe you’re expected to spend it with your family, with your friends, or with your neighbours. Is there food involved? Do you bring some with you, or are you expected to fast? There are so many facets to holidays that I think it’s always worth thinking about the little pieces that go into making up a holiday, and how you can utilize real-word knowledge to build believable celebrations for your own story.

Anyone can make a holiday – but how do you get yours observed?

Who has heard of National Talk Like a Pirate Day? How about National Love Your Pet Day? Now what about Valentine’s Day? And Easter? These are all called holidays, but they all have different functions. Easter, you may get offices and city workers getting one or two days off to observe Good Friday and Easter Monday. Valentine’s Day, people know when it is, it is widely recognized, but it is typically not taken off work (unless you have big plans). National Talk Like a Pirate Day is more obscure. Most people don’t know when it is, why it came about, or what exactly you’re supposed to do to celebrate it.

You can actually register a day as a national holiday of your choosing, but it means next to nothing without widespread knowledge about what the day is for, what you are supposed to do with it, and when it is.

Here in Canada, we recently phased in a new holiday. National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

What is it for? To increase awareness of the First Nations children who did not return home from residential schools, and the ongoing and very real impact residential schools had on families. In Canada, the Gordon’s Indian Residential School remained open until 1996. I was 5 years old. This is not ancient history.

What are you supposed to do on this day? Well hopefully, you’ll attend some First Nations run events. Speeches. Reconciliation Ceremonies. Performances. Or maybe just look up an article about the history of abuses around you.

When is it? September 30th.

It took the Canadian government 2 years to phase in this holiday. Phase one was announcing the day as approved by the government giving the civil servants that day off, and encouraging events and demonstrations linked with the Every Child Matters movement. Phase two was to roll out the holiday as a civic holiday for salaried employees. It is now celebrated every year.

So. If you are making a holiday for your story, consider whether the government would approve it to be a civic holiday. If not, would there be any exceptions to that? How about backlash? Would the citizens work around this judgement, carrying out their celebrations in the evening when everyone had finished their daily duties? Or would they take it upon themselves to call in sick and celebrate anyway? In a capitalist and consumerist hell such as the one we currently live in, would they need to use their vacation to get the time off? Would this cause upset and dishonesty?

I’m not saying you should know the answers to all this. I’m just saying you should think about how a character REALLY FEELS about the holiday you mention, the holiday you create on a whim as an excuse to have a cool festival or a day off work. Holidays impact people’s emotions and mentalities regardless of who they are in the great machine that is society.

Why do we Celebrate the Days we do?

Do you live in a religious country? How many of your religious holidays are civic holidays? In Canada, there are two. Easter and Christmas. You still have to go to work and/or school on things like Ascension Day. What pushes a country to observe some religious holidays but not others? Why is it only Christian denomination holidays that are considered for civic holiday status here?

Well, Canada is (as of the 2021 census) 52% Christian or similar. That’s not a big majority, but it is still the largest of any singular other group. Besides. Those that don’t care about Easter (such as myself) can plug themselves into video games and thank the unrelated religious views for the extra day off.

At the end of the day, I can choose not to celebrate the holidays I don’t have any attachment to because our holidays are very centred around the family. Family events. Family dinners. Sure, some community events happen too, but there are rarely any social consequences for not appearing at gatherings. Not on a large scale anyway.

But what would happen if that wasn’t the case? What if it was a mandatory religious observation? What if they took attendance? What if there were very real and very severe consequences to skipping a holiday’s traditional activities?

Things to Consider When Making a Fake Holiday

What is the basis of the holiday? Is it purely a political observation? A religious observation? A seasonal festival? Something to do with your ancestors? The fertility of the land or people? Is celebration or observation restricted to a certain gender, race, religion, occupation, or class?

Is the holiday still celebrated in the spirit of the reason it was created? Are some of the older generations going to feel one way about the festival or holiday while the children feel another? Are there protests against it? Are there conflicting views about how to celebrate it? Does it cause a societal divide if certain characters are seen observing certain rituals or superstitions?

Does it matter to your character? Are they expected to be a part of it by their family or their peers? Would they prefer to stay at home and read or play video games while the world celebrates without them? Do they want to avoid certain people so they don’t have to explain for the millionth time why they’re not celebrating? Is it inconvenient because their favorite stores or attractions are closed?

Of course, the reader doesn’t need to explicitly know any of this. You don’t have to give them a background on the last 100 years of celebrations and a graph showing attendance. What it WILL do, is build up the environmental storytelling when your character navigates through the day, making comments that imply a world that lives on past the reader’s experience.

After all, you want to build a full world that the reader is eager to explore through the character, or you create a character that the reader is eager to explore through the story. And if you can manage both, you’ll be golden! These are the two most successful ways to retain a reader, and if your world lacks the depth created by social and societal interactions, that severely limits your avenues of interest.

References

Posted on by seasonsshadow

When Can Distractions Help Us Focus?

While I am writing this, I am watching a show with my friend online. It means that I am going slowly, but it is also keeping me in one place to complete this post which I have been procrastinating for almost a week. Similarly, when I have book scenes to write, I jump into some related ambiance. If I am drawing or colouring then I load up the latest podcast from Morbid and listen to that.

At school, I caught all kinds of flack for “multitasking”. I was told that my attention span was short. I was told that I would do a better job if I just did one thing at a time and focused on that. I was told that I couldn’t possibly be retaining information from studying if I was also blasting punk rock into my ears.

Okay, maybe they were right about that last one, but that’s because I just wanted to sing all the songs and my textbook was really boring.

The average attention span for a single-factor task is about 8 seconds. Do you know what the average goldfish’s attention span is? 9 seconds.

Notice that I said a single-factor task. This would be something that stimulates your senses on a very basic level. Think of scrolling YouTube Shorts, or TikTok. Not mindfully looking for videos, but just letting the media come, one after the other. It doesn’t necessarily pertain to your interests, it doesn’t necessarily provide any information, but it does stimulate you visually. For a few seconds.

One more thing I want to touch on before I talk more about attention is why I put multitasking in quotation marks above.

Multitasking implies that you are actively attempting to accomplish more than one thing at a time. Please take note of the word ‘accomplish’ there.

Do I think I am accomplishing watching this show with my friend? Nope. It is on in the background, but I am more or less ignoring it while I write. I am accomplishing writing. I am not accomplishing active consumption of this show.

So then if this isn’t multitasking, what is it?

Selective attention is the ability to filter out stimuli that aren’t important in favour of stimuli that are important.

Part of the problem with attention spans is that there are SO many distractions available at the tips of our fingers. How many people have their phones around them at all times? How many different notification settings are there? Blinking lights, vibrations, sounds, little icons, screen activation, and the list goes on.

So when you have notifications coming at you, emails to check, noises coming from outside, maybe a pet distracting you, maybe a roommate or a child commanding your attention, it can be a lot. This is where the selective attention comes in. Get yourself a good pair of headphones. Find something that you can ignore. Put that thing on to intentionally ignore. While you are busy ignoring that thing, do your actual thing.

What’s the difference between this and multitasking? Multitasking you are doing more than one thing with the intention of making progress or consciously interacting with all the things you are doing. Selective attention is when you only anticipate making progress or being a conscious and mindful consumer of one thing, regardless of what else is happening. With our attention being pulled in many different ways, it’s super easy to interrupt your train of thought. Ping! An email. Bark! Your dog sees something outside. If you have one thing that is bigger, better, louder, and more forward than the other things, it drowns out all those little attention grabbers and distractions. Then you can commit much less effort to ignoring the one thing, and focus on your task.

Music without lyrics, ambient music mixers, shows you’ve seen before or don’t care about, podcasts that have hosts with nice voices, movies you’ve nearly memorized at this point, white noise, sensory videos for babies, and video game soundtracks are all great choices to actively ignore.

TL;DR – Multitasking is bullshit, but if you utilize one distraction to drown out the invasive attention-grabbing stimuli around you, and then actively ignore your selected distraction, you can conquer tasks easier.

I’d love to hear what kinds of things you do to help you focus! Let me know!

References

Posted on by seasonsshadow

“That’s Neat”! “That’s Neat!” Or… “That’s Neat,”!

Do you know what grammatical duo are complete bullies? Quotation marks and punctuation. I hold this to be true because I feel like my editing journey can sometimes be entirely derailed by the gaslighting they provide. There are 6-ish rules for using them. There are 15-ish situations where you may have to stop and think about what you are doing and what the punctuation is saying. Here I’ll talk a little more about the ones that are most relevant to my day-to-day writing.

The first word in a direct quote should be capitalized, even when it doesn’t look like the punctuation suggests it should be. For example,

It was hardly a whisper, “Did you hear that?”

Except when you are splitting it up, of course, and are continuing a quotation already started earlier in the sentence.

“I was just thinking,” it was more to himself than her, “we’re not very well hidden.”

To boot, the above example also illustrates another point. When you are breaking up someone talking to interject additional information or context, induce a mental pause for people by slapping a comma at the end of the break. More clearly:

“Could you,” slowly the idea was coming to her, “reach behind that box,” her nod indicated which one she was talking about, “and get that board loose?”

Okay, okay, it’s not the most eloquent I’ve ever been, but it belabours the point and repetition is the key to remembering.

The comma continues to take the spotlight as we continue. When you have a direct reference to the person speaking, even if you think you want to use a full stop, it is not a full stop. It’s only a full stop after your preferred synonym for ‘said’.

“I think so,” he replied.

This comma rule *might* not apply if you are using the quotations for when the speaking character is quoting another character – quoteception, if you will. In this case, it’s entirely possible that there’s no punctuation at all until you are well away from whatever the quote within a quote is.

“Are you serious? There’s no ‘I think so’ about it! Yes or no!”

Now that I’ve spent an obnoxious amount of time talking about commas, let’s shift gears for a little bit. Let’s talk about more specialized punctuation, like question marks.

A question mark! Where do you put it? Always inside the quotation marks? Where all good punctuation gets tucked in? Not always.

If the speaker is asking specifically about a quote, then the question mark goes on the outside of the quote. So, what if you are questioning or seeking clarification about a question?

“Wasn’t it you that said ‘How bad could it be?’?”

Look how stupid that looks. I regret typing it with my own fingers. Luckily, that is not proper. Not the capitalization part, that’s proper, because ‘How bad could it be’ is a full and complete sentence by itself. If it was a fragmented thought or a partial quote, then it would NOT be capitalized. So, to accommodate the proper punctuation, it should have been:

“Wasn’t it you that said ‘How bad could it be’?”

The punctuation at the end, because it would legitimately be a double question mark, is just removed. If the quotation ends the speaking line, then typically, as a courtesy, you would end the quotation with the single quotation, leave a space, then end with the double quotation mark. Are you with me still? There are three things I want to talk about left, and I promise I’ll tie it up in a neat bow after.

“I can’t believe you’re blaming me! YOU’RE the one who suggested it! ‘It’ll be fun,’ you said!”

See that there? You thought we were done with commas, but they really are the star of the show here.

She adjusted herself as best she could against her bindings, and peered out through the slatted closet door. “Of course I said it would be fun! I was flirting with you! I was happy you seemed receptive!
“Besides. Don’t you think it’s kind of romantic to go somewhere scary? With someone you like, who offers to protect you from anything bad that might happen?” There was a chill to her tone.

When you’re splitting a person’s speech over a paragraph break, you leave the initial paragraph with open double quotations and begin the next paragraph with quotation marks again. This, as far as I can tell, is a simplified indicator to the reader that it is still the same person droning on. Like when you have them delivering an evil villain speech.

The last point is something I want to be careful about. Using quotation marks to indicate something’s name, or to indicate sarcasm. Too many times, people use quotation marks to emphasize things. Please never use quotation marks for emphasis. A great man said that. Weird Al Yankovic. If you go against those wise words, it makes people think there’s something wrong with the thing you are emphasizing.

“I can’t help it if my ‘friend’ hyped it up! She said it was popular! ‘Teen Scene’ ran a whole article on it,” his cries echoed loudly. Footsteps, heavy on the old wooden floors, started approaching.

When you read that, you didn’t think that the person who recommended this was *really* a friend, did you? ‘Friend’ being in quotations immediately implies sarcasm. Hopefully, I can hammer home my point with the following example:

If you put out a cup of bucatini (a long spaghetti-like pasta with a hole running all the way down the middle) in a cup, it would be perfectly acceptable to label it “straws” WITH quotation marks. Why? Well, they sure as hell AREN’T straws, but they’ll work like a straw!

The difference between single and double quotation marks is for reasons of clarity. Since things within the speaking line still need punctuation to indicate that it is a quote or emphasized within the line, using the single markings is common practice.

Now! Remember when I said I would tie it all up for you in a nice little bow? This whole thing makes a passage. It includes most instances of quotation marks and their associated punctuation frequently used in creative writing exercises.

It was hardly a whisper, “Did you hear that?”
“I was just thinking,” it was more to himself than her, “we’re not very well hidden.”
“Could you,” slowly the idea was coming to her, “reach behind that box,” her nod indicated which one she was talking about, “and get that board loose?”
“I think so,” he replied.
“Are you serious? There’s no ‘I think so’ about it! Yes or no!”
“Wasn’t it you that said ‘How bad could it be’?”
“I can’t believe you’re blaming me! YOU’RE the one who suggested it! ‘It’ll be fun,’ you said!”
She adjusted herself as best she could against her bindings, and peered out through the slatted closet door. “Of course I said it would be fun! I was flirting with you! I was happy you seemed receptive!
“Besides. Don’t you think it’s kind of romantic to go somewhere scary? With someone you like, who offers to protect you from anything bad that might happen?” There was a chill to her tone.
“I can’t help it if my ‘friend’ hyped it up! She said it was popular! ‘Teen Scene’ ran a whole article on it,” his cries echoed loudly. Footsteps, heavy on the old wooden floors, started approaching.

So tell me! Is something like this helpful? Do you have your own ways of remembering the many rules of punctuation and quotation mark bullies? If you have a clear way of explaining the dreaded colon and semi-colon, I’m looking forward to hearing it!

Resources

Posted on by seasonsshadow

Make a “Top 5 Tracks” List

Jobs that pay by the word are common. In those cases, bust out your inner Victor Hugo or Kronk from the Emporer’s New Grove. “And here you have a moment of confirmation – the poison. The poison for Kuzco. The poison chosen especially to kill Kuzco. Kuzco’s poison. That poison?” Some companies pay 3 CENTS a word. THREE cents. If they’re going to be like that, pull out all the stops. Craft beautifully written, 12-line sentences.

I want to talk about one of my favourite editing techniques for when the word count does not influence your pay. The “Top 5 Tracks” technique.

By default, I am a fairly wordy writer. I write things out like I am talking to someone face to face. My punctuation tends to indicate where, in my mind, a speaking voice would pause. I’m sure my university professors loved receiving my essays that were NOT concise and NOT succinct.

Please take a moment of silence for the head writer in my department. She is likely one more instance of a comma splice away from throwing her whole computer at me.

So what is this editing technique that from the sounds of things, has nothing to do with punctuation?

Have you ever been speaking with someone and suddenly noticed they say ‘um’ or ‘like’ a lot? This technique is like calling yourself out for exactly that behaviour.

Pick five words that “weaken” your writing. Ones you know you are bad for. Here are mine:

WORD:WHY’S IT BAD:
ThatNine times out of ten, when I delete it, the sentence doesn’t change. At all.
Sort ofNine times out of ten, when I delete it, the sentence doesn’t change. At all.
JustNine times out of ten, when I delete it, the sentence doesn’t change. At all.
VeryNine times out of ten, when I delete it, the sentence doesn’t change. At all.
ReallyNine times out of ten, when I delete it, the sentence doesn’t change. At all.

Do you see where I’m coming from?

If we were to talk in person, I’m SURE a quarter of my vocabulary would be those five. (Not really, but it feels like it.)

Now, you may be thinking to yourself “yes. There are many words that water down sentences.”

I agree! A quick google search of “weak words” will show you hundreds of articles detailing which words you should or should not use, ways to catch yourself, things to replace, etc. I have a problem with absolutes, so I don’t like this. Case in point, many guides out there will tell you not to use adverbs ending in -ly. At all. Because it’s telling instead of showing. Okay, but sometimes it fits the tone! Sometimes I’m going for a tone! Or sometimes, the moment is not important enough for me to expect the reader to pick up on the subtleties of the context cues! For example, what if the maid gently excused herself? What if I just want to say that and move on, rather than describing her movements when she’s not an important character?

With that being said, this is where the Top 5 Tracks comes in. Review your writing. Read a few articles about weak words. I’m sure you will find one or two you KNOW you overuse. If you don’t, try using CTRL + F on something you’ve written recently, and start testing words. The results might SHOCK you.

The articles you may read during your research will outline anything from 4 to 600+ words experts and professionals caution not to use. Know what’s going to be impossible to remember? An arbitrary number of words you may or may not be in the habit of using. This is why you pick the biggest offenders.

Biggest offenders are going to fluctuate depending on genre and style, but should be fairly (Adverb ending in -ly, take that list!) stable for each individual. Pick five of the ones you have trouble with, and focus on those.

CTRL + F within your document for each of the 5 offenders and delete them, or judge them an exception.

“What? Don’t just delete them!?” No! Because look! There’s a “just” in that sentence, and if you deleted it, you’d lose your meaning! “Don’t delete them” implies that you keep them all! “Don’t just delete them” implies that there are additional steps to consider before the action is taken. I guess you could reword it. “What? Don’t delete them without consideration!?” Which I guess gets the point across, but all this to avoid the word ‘just’? Why?

Especially when the words you are using are common, you can’t wholesale delete things.

So.

Read a bunch of your work, pick your Top 5 Tracks, and happy editing!

References