Recently in Writing Category

I've spent the past several days playing around with Writing.com (WDC).  It's been good for me, as it's helped get me motivated again to actually write.  And I've enjoyed the feedback I've gotten from some truly skilled writers over there.  Tonight, I decided to further participate in the site by joining my first writing contest.  I chose to submit an entry to the Character Creation Contest. I figure I'm pretty good at character creation, so it's a good place to get my feet wet. I'll move on to more challenging contests -- one that force me to work on my weak points -- as time goes by. So I put together a character profile for Hargath, a dark priest.

Hargath is actually a recreated and edited version of a character I played in an online freeform roleplaying campaign. The way I came up with him always amused me.

When the group on the BBS decided to set up the room for the campaign, I hadn't decided if I was going to participate yet. So I sat back as people started making posts introducing their characters. I noticed that everyone was creating noticeably good -- as in morally upright -- characters. As I watched the party form up, I realized that this was looking like it would be a campaign where the players worked together perfectly well.

Now, perhaps it's because one of my favorite roleplaying games (though I never got to actually play it) was Paranoia, but that state of affairs didn't sit well with me. I felt that like good storytelling, good role-playing (I'm also of the opinion that the difference between the two is almost negligible) required some conflict between characters. It wasn't enough to just have to overcome the obstacles of the NPC's. There needed to be some obstacles to teamwork that needed to be overcome as well.

So I decided to introduce a dark priest. I forget what his name was, and I don't think I described him quite as well as I've described Hargath. But he was definitely the dark cloud looming over the party. And his presence did make for some interesting role-playing.

Shortly before the campaign fell apart (those of us involve simply found ourselves with not enough time to continue it), I remember an exchange between my priest and the mage that my friend, Ben played. At one point, the party came up against a particularly nasty captain we had to get rid of. The party agreed that assassination was the best course of action, and my priest volunteered to do the dirty work. The mage decided that my priest needed a disguise in order to get close enough. The mage happily helped out in that department obliged, by transforming my priest into a woman!

Of course, my priest got his revenge. His new disguise allowed him to get the captain in private and dispatch the captain in a formal ritual sacrifice to the dark goddess. And the mage's spell further enabled my priest to psychically link said mage to the victim. The end result, the mage experienced everything done to the captain as if it was happening to him. Ben thought the whole idea was a hoot. In fact, he wrote the entire scene for me because I didn't have time.

Of course, my choice of characters did create problems between me and at least one other player. Another friend, Jared, played a Druid. Jared was interested in Druidism himself at the time. And my priest character did a couple things (like steal the soul of a horse so that it would bend to his will) that freaked Jared out. Note that I said it freaked Jared out rather than his character. Jared was mad at me for days. That much was unfortunate. But as I explained to him, part of role-playing and fiction is allowing some characters to do things we wouldn't dream of doing in real life. After all, if all characters were the goody-two-shoes most of us try to be, our games and stories wouldn't be nearly as interesting.

And I admit that playing an evil character helped me write such characters much better.

The following is from the first chapter of a new story I'm working on:

Josh awoke with a start. He let out a strangled gasp before his mind began to process his surroundings. He looked round, finding himself in his own bedroom. His sheets were pushed off to one side, probably due to him moving around in his sleep. He took a few deep breaths to calm himself. He willed his heart to return to a slower rhythm. "It was only a dream. Only a dream," he whispered. "It doesn't mean anything. Guys dream about all kinds of things."

He knew that was true enough. He had done a bit of research online, and found that a lot of young guys dreamed about having sex with other guys and still grew up to be heterosexual. He'd even read that some experiment with male friends before going on to get married. So he tried to reassure himself that this one dream didn't mean he was one of those terrible homosexuals.

However, his mind kept nagging at him. This wasn't just one dream, after all. He had been having a few dreams like this since he turned fourteen nine months ago. He wondered if there was a point where it quit being something any normal teenager might experience and starting being the sign of something more serious.

"And it's not just the dreams," he whispered to himself as he lay there, confused and frightened. "After all, I've been getting those feelings when I'm awake too." He thought back to that afternoon he and Tim went skinny-dipping. While it had been innocent fun when they had actually gone swimming at age eleven, it morphed into something more sinister-seeming whenever he thought of it now. Tim had even suggested they go skinny dipping again this past summer. But the thoughts and feelings it stirred in Josh kept him coming up with excuses to put off such an excursion.

Josh lay there, feeling more miserable the more he thought about everything. He wondered how his parents, who raised him to be a good little Baptist boy, would react if he told them he was attracted to other guys. He wondered if they would send him to counseling or even disown him. He was too afraid to find out.

And yet, he yearned to tell someone, anyone. He hated having to keep this secret. It felt like a terrible burden - a burden he didn't want - to carry alone. And yet, he didn't know anyone he could tell. He was pretty sure everyone he knew would react badly.

"No, you're on your own on this one. Just try to make the best of it," he told himself. Then he added in a quick prayer, "God, please help me. And forgive me. I don't want to be gay. I want to do what you want me to." He rolled over and waited for sleep to claim him again, to give him a break from all his worries and doubts.

If you like it, please read the rest of the chapter and follow the story using the links above.  I hope to write more soon.  And of course, feel free to check out the rest of my portfolio on Writing.Com.  Though I'll warn you that some of the other stories are sexually explicit.

The old woman continued her weaving.  Her slender, gnarled fingers deftly moved along the loom, positioning threads and locking them in place.  She studied her handiwork for several seconds before speaking to the younger man who stood behind her.  "What's on your mind, Jeffrey?"

"You make the most beautiful tapestries, Grandmother."

"Thank you.  I've had many years to practice."

"And yet, it takes you so long to finish a single one."

The woman frowned and her hand paused in its work.  "Good craftsmanship takes time and patience, Dear."

"Perhaps.  But there are machines that would allow you to work faster, Grandmother."

"And those machines would rob me of the joy I find in my work.  Working faster would be a poor substitute for the care and love I put into each tapestry."

"But working faster would mean having more tapestries to sell."

The woman sighed and turned to face the forty year old man.  She noted that he was still in the dress pants and shirt that his job required, though he had taken off the tie and jacket.  "And that would mean more money."  She smiled as his pale face flushed at her words.  "Yes, I thought you might be coming to that.  It usually does with you."

"Grandmother-"

"No, Jeffrey," she said in a soft, firm tone.  "Listen to your old grandmother.  You are a good man.  You're smart, and your business sense has provided much for our family.  For that, I am proud of you.

"But sometimes you seem to only think in terms of money.  And for that, I feel sorry for you.  Because some things are more important than money.  And my weaving is one of those things.

"You're right.  I could buy machines that could help me produce a single tapestry in a few days, rather than the weeks it now takes me.  And if I was doing this for the money, it would make perfect sense to do exactly that.

"But I don't do this for the money.  I have money enough as it is - as hard as it may be for you to believe that.  Instead, I weave for the love of weaving.

"When I weave, I create something beautiful, as you already noted.  I create it thread by thread and row by row.  Each move I make is an act of love and creation, a chance to pour another ounce of my soul into each tapestry.  That's something I cherish.  It's something that the money from a thousand machine-produced tapestries could never buy.  And I'm not willing to give that up just to collect money I don't need.  It's too high a price to pay."

"But what of the things you could buy?  Things that would make your life easier?  More comfortable?"

"An easy life is overrated, as are excess comforts.  I have comforts enough.  Any more would make me value my life less, I imagine."

"Are you saying I have it too easy, then?"

"That's not for me to say, Dear.  I'm merely saying what's right for me.  You'll have to decide what's right for you."

"Oh."

The woman paused a moment.  "I do admit that I worry about you at times, though."

"You do?"

"Yes.  I sometimes wonder if you've lost sight of why you became a businessman."

"What do you mean?"

"I remember when you first went off to college.  Yo were so excited to learn about business management.  The first time you came home, you talked incessantly about your classes.  I didn't understand most of what you said, but I loved your passion and excitement.

"You took that passion and excitement into your first job, too.  You spoke of the challenges you faced enthusiastically.  You loved the problems and puzzles you solved.  Back then, it was about the adventure.

"But at some point, it seemed like you began focusing on the money.  And the passion changed.  Some days, I wonder if it's there at all."

"I see."  The man sat down heavily.

"Do you, Dear?  Don't misunderstand me.  Money's not bad.  And you've always made a lot of money doing what you do, which is right.  But before, you thought of the money as a side effect of doing something you loved.  And now, it seems as though the money is your main motivation - maybe even your only motivation.  And that change seems to have stolen something from you."

The pair sat in silence for a few moments.  Finally, Jeffrey spoke.  "I think I need to ponder this some more."

"I hope you do, Dear.  I'd really like to see that fire in your eyes again when you talk about your latest venture or investment.  It's a wonderful sight."

"It's a wonderful feeling, too.  I think I'd forgotten that."  He walked to the door, then paused.  "Grandmother?"

"The old woman looked up from the weaving she had returned to.  "Yes, Dear?"

"How did you ever get so wise?"

"Years of living and learning."  She paused, then added, "And weaving."

"Weaving?"

"Yes, Dear.  When you pend this much time in front of a loom, you have plenty of time to think."

He chuckled as he left the room.

Recent conversations over at Slacktivist have increased my interest in writing again.  Hopefully this will lead to some actual writing in the near future.

The main conversation that has gotten me thinking was the discussion about Mary Sue's taking place in the comments section of Fred's latest Left Behind post.  Wikipedia defines a Mary Sue thusly:

A Mary Sue (sometimes just Sue), in literary criticism and particularly in fanfiction, is a fictional character with overly idealized and hackneyed mannerisms, lacking noteworthy flaws, and primarily functioning as wish-fulfillment fantasies for their authors or readers.

The discussion of Mary Sue's made me wonder about my own writing and my own characters.  I began to wonder if I have been creating any Mary Sue's.  So I ran three of my characters through the Universal Mary Sue Litmus Test.  All three came out with a score that fell in the "most likely Not-Sue" category, though they were all on the high end of that range.  And a separate litmus test did suggest that Berit may be shading into "Borderline Mary Sue" territory.  This is a fair assessment, I think.  As such, I'll be watching her character and how she affects the story somewhat carefully.

I think that what gets me about Mary Sues is that one of the seemingly primary traits is their ridiculous degree of perfection and capability.  Cactus Wren offers a powerful example of this trait when she describes a Mary Sue from a particular Harry Potter fan fiction author:

Callmebuck always reminds me of a particular Pottersue, a fifteen-year-old transfer student from America who was impossibly beautiful, slender yet curvy, had an IQ of 520 and ten given names, and besides being a more talented witch than Hermione was a brilliant actress and singer and stage director and filmmaker and was friends with all the characters from CardCaptor Sakura. (Who just happened to also be studying at Hogwarts.) And she was rich (her family had "estates" in about eight countries) and fluent in a dozen languages. Whenever anyone pointed out that this character was just too perfect to be tolerable, that she needed some flaws to keep the rest of the cast from killing her, the writer wailed, "But I can't think of anyyyyy!"

Now personally, I can't imagine writing such a Mary Sue, at least not that one extreme.  None of my characters are masters of every trade out there.  Nor can I picture them being so perfect.  I like my characters to be more human than that.  After all relatively ordinary human beings are what I find most interesting, personally.

Of course, reading through the litmus tests, I do find myself wondering if I'm not in danger of writing my characters as all being too likable and too agreeable.  After all, a story needs conflict, and personality clashes offer a great source of conflict.  So maybe I need to think a bit more about actually showing the conflict between Berit and Brother Jens that I've imagined all along.  Perhaps I need to work on those grating personality traits.  And of course, I need to working on having characters respond appropriately when those traits manifest.

It gives me a few things to think about.  And all this thinking is creating a desire to do some writing.  Now that's a bonus.

Recent conversations over at Slacktivist have increased my interest in writing again.  Hopefully this will lead to some actual writing in the near future.

The main conversation that has gotten me thinking was the discussion about Mary Sue's taking place in the comments section of Fred's latest Left Behind post.  Wikipedia defines a Mary Sue thusly:

A Mary Sue (sometimes just Sue), in literary criticism and particularly in fanfiction, is a fictional character with overly idealized and hackneyed mannerisms, lacking noteworthy flaws, and primarily functioning as wish-fulfillment fantasies for their authors or readers.

The discussion of Mary Sue's made me wonder about my own writing and my own characters.  I began to wonder if I have been creating any Mary Sue's.  So I ran three of my characters through the Universal Mary Sue Litmus Test.  All three came out with a score that fell in the "most likely Not-Sue" category, though they were all on the high end of that range.  And a separate litmus test did suggest that Berit may be shading into "Borderline Mary Sue" territory.  This is a fair assessment, I think.  As such, I'll be watching her character and how she affects the story somewhat carefully.

I think that what gets me about Mary Sues is that one of the seemingly primary traits is their ridiculous degree of perfection and capability.  Cactus Wren offers a powerful example of this trait when she describes a Mary Sue from a particular Harry Potter fan fiction author:

Callmebuck always reminds me of a particular Pottersue, a fifteen-year-old transfer student from America who was impossibly beautiful, slender yet curvy, had an IQ of 520 and ten given names, and besides being a more talented witch than Hermione was a brilliant actress and singer and stage director and filmmaker and was friends with all the characters from CardCaptor Sakura. (Who just happened to also be studying at Hogwarts.) And she was rich (her family had "estates" in about eight countries) and fluent in a dozen languages. Whenever anyone pointed out that this character was just too perfect to be tolerable, that she needed some flaws to keep the rest of the cast from killing her, the writer wailed, "But I can't think of anyyyyy!"

Now personally, I can't imagine writing such a Mary Sue, at least not that one extreme.  None of my characters are masters of every trade out there.  Nor can I picture them being so perfect.  I like my characters to be more human than that.  After all relatively ordinary human beings are what I find most interesting, personally.

Of course, reading through the litmus tests, I do find myself wondering if I'm not in danger of writing my characters as all being too likable and too agreeable.  After all, a story needs conflict, and personality clashes offer a great source of conflict.  So maybe I need to think a bit more about actually showing the conflict between Berit and Brother Jens that I've imagined all along.  Perhaps I need to work on those grating personality traits.  And of course, I need to working on having characters respond appropriately when those traits manifest.

It gives me a few things to think about.  And all this thinking is creating a desire to do some writing.  Now that's a bonus.

Be still. Know beauty. Let it flow from the depths of your soul. For that is its source. Let it flow through you into the rest of the world. Let it flow and watch as it is reflected back at you.

This is the nature of beauty. It is perceived and projected. it can only be seen by those who allow it to come from themselves. There is as much beauty in the word as you put into it.

Those who say beauty is transitory are wrong. Beauty is eternal, for it is an essence that flows into and through the cosmos. What is transitory is your own willingness to see it.

Yesterday, I bought a copy of How NOT to Write a Novel and began reading it. I learned about the book reading the comments over at Slacktivist, and the title (not to mention the part Fred's commentor quoted) just called to me.

The book is written by a couple of people in the publishing industry. They decided that rather than writing another book filled with hit-or-miss techniques for writing a great novel, they'd describe the numerous mistakes that fledgeling authors make, mistakes which guarantee their manuscript will find the shortest path to the recycling bin.

So far, I've finished the three chapters having to do with common plot mistakes. I'm pleased to report that I've so far managed to avoid most of those in Harald's Story. However, the one section did give me reason to reconsider an early scene in the story. I don't plan on removing or editing it yet, as I think I can justify the scene and it's not that bad -- at least not in my opinion. But when I finish the first draft, I'll go back and look at it as part of the editorial process.

The book itself is rather humorous. I think the examples of bad writing they provide are even funnier. A lot of them involve some sort of fusion between ergonomics and hydraulics, which is just plain weird. I'm starting to wonder if they've chosen to weirdness of the plot device to further emphasize the bad writing they're trying to draw potential writers' attentions to. Or perhaps they created such a totally bizarre subject to avoid hurting anyone's feelings by choosing something that might resemble a potential reader's own poor attempts at writing.

I've been writing a lot of posts about the writing I've been doing. I think I may be getting obssessed. I'm not sure that's a bad thing, though.

Tonight, I wrote the next installment of Harald's Story. If I did everything correctly, it should automatically show up on WOTL tomorrow. At this juncture, I thought it appropriate to offer some of my own musings on this story, and possibly on writing in general.

The section I wrote tonight contains a couple events of significance. The first event is the departure of Father Delling from the tale. Strangely, his passage into the shadows is rather understated, given how fond I and some of my readers have become of him. There's no fanfare or grand speeches. In fact, the goodbyes themselves are not recorded because they are observed from a distance. And yet, this seems appropriate for the old monk. I do not know if he will return. I have played with the possibility that he might make a brief appearance as the story wraps itself up. But even that is merely a possibility.

The other event of significance is not about plot, but the storytelling itself. I have added a new point of view to the narration. This new section is told from the point of view of Captain Soren. To be honest, this both surprises me an troubles me. When I introduced his character, I had no intention of telling his point of view. And yet, tonight's work made it clear that it was appropriate to do so.

This troubles me because I find myself wondering if Soren, a character I introduced to play a relatively small part, might have just taken on a bigger role than I had planned. I grant you that he would not be the first character in the story to do so. Both Berit (who I planned to deny even a name beyond "Girl" when I first imagined her) and Brother Jens were originally introduced as small actors meant to merely push the plot along, and somehow managed to insert themselves into the heart of the tale against my own plans.

Alas, I am a poor author at the mercy of his characters! I fear they may next demand that I include their names be added to the author line. Or perhaps one of them will make mention of their cut of any royalties. It's an amusing thought, though I'm not sure how amusing it really is.

I think the next installment I write will likely be told from Jens's point of view. I'm a bit concerned by that possibility, as I'm not sure I can catch his inner voice correctly. Point of view can be tricky like that, and Jens is possibly the character whose point of view is most difficult for me. I'm not sure whether that's due to how unfamiliar his mindset has become to me or how familiar it used to be.

I'm reminded of a friend of mine, whom I shall call Trish. Six or seven years ago, she tried her hand at writing. For her, writing was one of the ways for her to try to process through her own confusion and resentment toward her funamentalist Christian background. Her main villain was a domineering woman who embodied everything she despised about those from Trish's background that had hurt her. To put it mildly, this villain was a caricature of pure evil. And unless you're trying to write a fairy tale, such caricature's don't really work that well. Fortunately, Trish was trying to write a fairy tale.

Unfortunately for Trish, she tried to write a few chapters from her villains point of view. I can honestly say that those chapters did not work at all. A narrator who oozes that much evil is simply unbelievable, even in a fairy tale. Under such circumstances, you have to make the person's point of view seem at least someone reasonable, even if it's ultimately objectionable.

I sincerely hope that my efforts to relay Brother Jens's point of view is more realistic than Trish's portrayal of the inner workings of her villain's mind. But I still worry that I'll be able to do it justice. Hopefully Brother Jens himself will step up and guide me through the process, as so many of the others have already done.