What To Do With A Clichéd Character

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So I was struggling through the end of Spark this weekend, as promised. I got to thinking about it and realized that part of my hangup is that I don't know who one of the characters is. Actually, no, that's not right, I do know who she is, she's based off of someone I've known. But when I go to write the character she comes out so clichéd.

Through the various versions she's seen a few different incarnations, one closely based on reality, the next pure evil, the last a bit more caring and concerned. So when I sat down to write her big scene I had to come to terms with these different aspects. That's when I wrote an interview in her voice, basing it off of things that I've heard in real life.

The surprising thing was, when I got done I found that, no, she is just as clichéd as she sounded originally before I tried to add to her character.

I mean, clichés and stereotypes come from somewhere, don't they? I guess, the key is in finding that bit of unique truth hidden within the cliché. For Cara it's this misguided mothering. She can be so cold and cruel with her work, but at the same time she sees herself as a mother figure, the rock to which her brothers can tether themselves to.

I'm wondering what other characters I have that are coming off as clichéd and what unique truth I can find in them.

Does this give anyone any thoughts on their own characters?

And I'm sorry about another short post. I'm desperately trying to catch up and then get ahead in preparation for the out of state wedding this weekend. So much to do and such little time. Sigh. I almost decided on taking a week off from the blog, but I won't fall off of the wagon now, I can't. I've been making too much progress to toss in the towel, even for a break. 

Monday Funny: Road Trip

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It's Monday, and it's not funny. No completed Spark. Not happy about that. No time to write. 

"I don't tell my parents, and I don't tell my friends, I'll just grab some rubber tubing and pull on my depends, and then I drive. It's time for a road trip." 

Writing Your Beginning Later

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Let's end the week on beginnings. We started out by talking about them, but I had another thought that I wanted to add to that discussion. Along with not doing a serious critique of the first chapter until you've reached the end of your novel, so too must you be ready to trash said beginning. And not just in a novel, in shorts as well.

The only reason I bring this up is because I for one, and a few others that I know as well, tend to stress about beginnings. We can't get started until we fully understand where the story is going, who our character is, who they will become and so forth. The trouble is, you've got to get something  onto the page before all of that is going to spring from the eternal fountain of brilliance that is your head.

Honestly though, this might be one of those discovery writer sorts of things. Outliners might not have this problem (cue for the Outliners to chime in in the comments section). I'm terrible at it myself so I can't really say. But what I have tried with outlining would still tell me that I'd likely still need to rework my beginning after I got to the end.

I've found that I do that with posts for the blog. In fact, that's how the thought occurred to me. I sat down one night to write a post and found myself agonizing over the words for the opening. Then I stopped and thought about it. “David, you're just going to rewrite the beginning of this post when you get to the end anyways because that's what you always do. You just need to start. The beginning will come later.”

Keeping this idea in mind with regards to beginnings will help in two ways. First, and most obvious, letting you get started without having to worry about coming up with the perfect beginning. Second, it keeps you open to the possibility of trashing it later on during a revision.

Sometimes suggesting that a beginning isn't working and needs to be scrapped is hard to hear. But like I said in Tuesday's post, that beginning is what gets your foot in the door with an agent, publisher, and reader. So much rides on that opening that it doesn't pay to be stubborn about the beginning.

And that, my friends, is it for this week. Sorry about there not being any pictures today, but its been a long week and there's a long weekend ahead. But keep your heads up, I sense that things are turning around for everyone. Remember the friend whose relative was in the hospital? Well the relative is doing much better and the dreaded swine flu is leaving the friend's body

Happy Writing!

Pitfalls Of Putting Yourself Into Your Characters

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Write what you know. Right? And what could you possibly know better, than yourself? Probably a lot of things. You see, I don’t think we really know ourselves as well as we think. We have issues and hang-ups that we haven’t even begun to discover yet. They are what holds us back, ties us down, and clouds our minds. And I don’t think anyone lets those things carry on knowingly. 

But here’s the thing, even when we don’t think we’re writing about ourselves, we are. And when we do so unknowingly, the writing gets harder. Sure, your character is more interesting because they’re actually dealing with real issues, but you have to be willing to deal with those issues yourself before you can get your character to.

Case in point: Spark, the infamous never finished but always mentioned short story. I finally realized why I’m having such a hard time moving forward with it and putting it to bed. I don’t have the issues that I had when I started it. Sounds pompous, right? Hear me out.

Spark came to me one night as I crept into bed after a long day’s work. I snuggled up to my wife, placed my hand on her belly and tried to feel my son dreaming away inside her. Like most writers, I had a dream of my own. That dream led to Spark, where a young man, too afraid of the commitment, challenges, and responsibilities of having a child causes the death of his unborn daughter. The story is his quest for retribution.

Here I am over a year and a half later working on a revision to the ending and I can’t think like that frightened father-to-be anymore. Not only am I Dad, I’m Stay-At-Home-Dad. I spend more time with my son than most moms get these days, let alone dads. And you can call me conceited on this one if you want, but I’m a damn good dad. At this very moment I’m watching a baby monitor while my boy sleeps and though he’s three rooms away, were he to pop up and make a move for the edge of the bed, I’d be there before he could fall. (LOL, he must have heard me thinking because he just woke up. Don’t worry, he’s fine, just needed to know I was nearby and went back to sleep.)

I’ll eventually be able to put myself into that frame of mind and playact what it was like, but I fear that it won’t be as powerful. But that's what's holding me back, fearing that I won't speak truth to the character any longer.  

And what about the other instance, the one where you don’t even realize you’re writing about yourself? You know your character’s problems, what holds them back, what they have to deal with, but you can’t write it. It could be that one of the reasons you can’t deal with your character’s issues is because yours and theirs are one in the same.

Have you considered that? Have you looked at your character’s flaws and considered that they might be your own? Are you ready to deal with those flaws in your own life so that you can write your story? Maybe that’s not you, but it is definitely something to consider.

 

Behaviour & Communication:
How To Be The Best Dad In The Galaxy

One last thing. A little patting myself on the back. This marks my 100th post and come Friday this will be my 15th straight week without missing a post. So yay me. I shall celebrate by poring cement, preparing dinner, washing clothes, washing dishes, and writing another blog post. :) 

Collective Angst and Airplane Gremlins

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So I had something else in mind for today, but honestly, I'm exhausted. A late night storming session yesterday with a writer friend to get her book going, my wife's open house tonight that brought me and the little guy out to her school with dinner (and that means entertaining him by chasing him around on the grass for hours), the Novel Crit group started yesterday, I'm helping my wife photograph a wedding on Saturday, my sister's wedding is in less than two weeks out in Colorado and I am performing the ceremony (have NOT practiced), the house is in no way ready for the rains and the cold, a friend is coming to stay the night, the dog kennel needs to be finished or a separate dog house built for the third dog, the garage is decades from completion, money is tight, queries to write, stories to finish, the blog, the house, don't get me started on the house –

And that's what today's post is about. You're not alone. It seems like everyone is going through all kinds of stress right now. Another writer I know just got back from a relaxing two week vacation only to find that her daughter is going in for surgery and another relative had a stroke. She's missing her favorite annual event. And to top it all off, she's got the flu so she can't visit any of her loved ones.

It's everyone right now. You. Me. Everyone.

Forget the Collective Unconscious, this is like Collective Angst.

I mean, what the hell? Is there like some evil gremlin out on the wing of flight 607 nonstop to Happyland and we're all on it or what? (Wanna see something creepy? I picked 607 off the top of my head, wrote that sentence about Happyland and thought, “I wonder if I'm using a flight number from a recent crash and that's why it's stuck in my head. That would be wrong.” So I googled it. No way I could have known ahead of time what I ended up finding. No known cause. Just creepy. Really creepy.)

Really, that's it. No long winded post today. Not because I don't think you deserve the best I can give you, but because I think that everyone is running a mile a minute right now and we all just need to slow down, collect ourselves, take in a deep breathe, and relax. Maybe think back to better times, when life was slower. For me, that's the beginning of the 80's when I was two and you can't possibly have fewer cares.

And you know what always makes me feel a little better when I'm stressed . . . THE MUPPETS!

Just something about it. My folks used to record episodes on a cassette deck so that we could listen to them way back before there were VCR's. Or maybe there were VCR's and we just couldn't afford one. Remember those? Back before they had clear plastic for cassettes? I can still hear that Muppets Star Wars episode they did.

So remember, when life tortures you with gargling Gershwins be ready with a good song and dance number. “You are my lucky star. I saw you from afar.”

I Will Not Read Your Fracking First Chapter

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So everyone has read that rather juvenile piece written by Josh Olsen by now. If you haven't, you've likely read clips of it here and there because agents and editors are eating that shit up. And yes, it's crap. The general premise is a good one, that hobby writers need to leave people who are working professionally ALONE, and that real writers aren't deterred from honest feedback. Unfortunately, that message is lost in Olsen's Junior High bitch fest because he won't own up for his own part in the incident that spurred his tirade. (Amber Gardner does a great job of pointing this out on her blog, and honestly, I thought she spoke more truth to the subject as someone just starting out than did the supposed professional script adapter Josh Olsen.)

I've been cultivating another critique thought for a while now, and Olsen's tirade brought it to fruition. We're starting up the Novel Critique group this week and that will bring a lot of first chapters my way. In addition to that I've recently critiqued a few first chapters by different writers, and I have to say, first chapters suck to critique.

The first chapter is pivotal to the entire story. Whether or not your story is even read is based on those first few pages. Agents tend to ask for just the first five, and if you can't sell them in that span then you're on the chopping block.

This brings us to our problem. As writers we look for a good critique of that first chapter to help us fix it and make it as amazing as it needs to be, but I honestly don't think that is possible. Your critic doesn't know your characters, they don't know where the story is going, they don't know the feel or mood of the story, so how are they supposed to help you fix it? They can't, not based on the first chapter. They can give you general thoughts, fix style issues, grammar, punctuation, flow, setting, so on and so forth, but the really important stuff, the Story Worthy Problem, the Inciting Incident, the Surface Problem, how all those things tie together and relate to the journey ahead and your character – they can't help you with that.

That's why I purpose that we stop critiquing first chapters. Put them out there as an introduction to your story, maybe collect some very general feedback or first impressions, but save the serious critiquing for later. Get several chapters into the story or ideally, done with it, before you ask for a serious critique on the first chapter.

I'm even willing to say that the first and last chapters should be critiqued side by side. That ending needs to tie directly into the beginning. It's a cycle. You need to have come full circle. You can't tell that about the first chapter until you've read the last.

So no, the title to this post does not mean that I'm turning into a professional dick. I would hope that I approach these writing topics with little more care than some “professionals” do. What I mean is that I think we should stop basing our critique interactions on first chapters. Yes, that's all that an agent gets, but that's not our goal in critiquing. Our goal in critiquing is to make that first chapter the best it can be. When we critique it first we do a disservice to the story. And that's what I'm saying.

See the full version of that amazing “full circle” picture here.

Monday Funny

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In honor of  a recent crit session in which I was totally playing the part of Ben Stiller. Oh, and we had a chicken vanish recently so this ones for you nameless chicky, your eggs will be missed. 

Coming this week:

No, I Will Not Read Your F@#&!^* First Chapter

And other STUFF!

(Don't worry, it's not nearly as bad as it sounds) 

Spread the Word Saturday

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I had a few things in mind for sharing today, but then I read the following article about Michael Jordan's acceptance speech at last nights Hall of Fame induction ceremony. I'm not a big sports fan. Heck, I don't even have a TV. While my soon to be brother-in-law is busy setting up his three television sets in their living-room so that he can watch three football games concurrently, I'm busy scratching my head and wondering why. But I always did marvel at Michael Jordan when I was growing up. 

I think it's because he looked like such a little guy on the court. I always cheered for the small guy that could make the big beefy guys look like fools. Hence my love of Bruce Lee. And last night while I was out with a couple of my buddies being reminded why it's so great NOT to be single, I watched clips of Jordan tearing up during his speech and thought, "Man, that guy always had such class." 

Then I read this article, an article that's more of a character sketch of the man. It shed a different light on him and his career and totally changed how I look at him. It also made me think of character flaws and how traits can be perceived differently by different people. But don't take my word for it, go read the article.

Valuing Your Freelance Work

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So many of us talk about valuing life, but I don't think that we really do. As a matter of fact, I think that most people, at least in the states, see the life of another person as rather worthless in practice. Sure, when we stop and think about it we would say the opposite, but our actions speak otherwise. 

This post had been on the back burner until I read something by a successful author who was trying the self-publishing route. Said author (who shall remain nameless to protect MY safety) talked about his own venture into self publishing. He gave a long and interesting list of expenses and headaches suffered along the way. Freelancer after freelancer bailed on him at the last minute for flaky reasons. But two stood out.

The first was an artist who was approached to do the cover. While not all of the details were given, concepts were produced, a specific design chosen, revisions were made; but in the end the author felt like it was going to take too long and be too expensive. So the author made his own cover and paid for some touch ups to be done to it. As for the original artist, no money is said to have gone his way.

Our second freelancer, “turned out to be a bargain. I [sic] friend at a publishing company recommended a freelancer who was nine months pregnant. She did not go on vacation and did the job for $20 per hour—about $160 total. Earlier bids for typesetting had been between $1000 and $2000.”

Now, if you're waiting for the part where the author says that he gave her a bonus because he felt both bad about taking advantage of a pregnant woman, and grateful for the services she provided . . . don't hold your breath.

We All Do It

Kind of makes you cringe, doesn't it? But this author is actually a really good guy. He seems to do his best at helping out other authors, in fact the whole point of him sharing his ordeal was to steer others away from the same mistakes. He shares information freely, and in the end only hopes that you'll pick up one of his books. He's an artisan just like you and I, but he's also got bills to pay, a family to take care of, probably even a mortgage or two. If he can get a break, he'll take it even if he does have enough money tucked away on the side to experiment with self-publishing.

This is an unfortunate fact of life, folks. If you don't value your time, no one else will do it for you. In fact, they will knowingly take advantage of you if they think they can get a “bargain.” These same people may very well be members of the artistic community just like you and I. They want their work and time valued and paid for appropriately, but when it comes time to doing the same in kind there's a good chance that it's not going to happen.

I know this sounds a bit pessimistic, but it is Friday, and this is snark. Along with that, this is true in many cases. If you don't stand up for yourself, you will be taken advantage of. I was going to use examples from my own life, from being a freelance graphic designer and doing construction. People that know me are always asking me to bid jobs for them hoping I'll do it on the cheap, and frankly, I usually do. The most recent one I bid in at nearly half the going rate which was still too high for this person. Rather than cutting my price, I wished them luck on getting the job done right.

What You’re Paying For

You see, we have to remember, you're not just paying for the person's time, you are paying for the years and years worth of study and practice that went into them being able to do what they can do. A person might look at a job quote and choke at the price compared to the number of hours spent doing it. Well you're not paying for the hours; you're paying for the experience.

Take a person that knows nothing of the craft and ask them to do the job for you. See how long it takes them and what kind of quality you get out of it. Unfortunately, people don't think in those terms. They think in terms of a Walmart bargain culture where cheap prices come at undervaluing the work used to create said product. They want the best, (or what looks like the best) but they don't want to pay for it.

So as you head out in your freelance ventures, keep that in mind. Do the appropriate market research. Know what price your quality of work is going for, and bid appropriately. Then stick to your guns. It's rather tough to ask for more money after the job is done.

If you really need the money, then you have to do what you have to do. But consider this, in the above typesetting example, if we take the going rate for the job as being $1500, that poor woman would have to do nearly ten jobs before she made what she was worth. On the contrary, had she held out for one person to pay her the appropriate wage, she’d have the same amount of money and would have done one tenth the work.

Please keep this in mind when you become rich and famous and can afford to pay people what they are worth. I know I can’t, that’s why I do everything myself.

 

Just as a side note, if that driveway looks like a good job to you, please don’t ever touch concrete. EVER. Don’t even look at it. In fact, I’d suggest not walking on it either.

 

 

Speak Truth

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I wanted to do a brief follow up post to yesterday's post about censoring your online existence. After a long debate with my wife about where we would be if folks like Emerson and Thoreau had heeded my advice and kept their yaps shut, I decided that I need to make a point clear: Understand what you want to get out of this.

If your driving passion in life is to speak truth to a cause, then by all means, do so. Just understand that you will have to navigate your ship accordingly. If you are extremely conservative, believe that homosexuals should not have the right to be married, and so on, and not only convey that in your writing but also in your public persona, fine. Understand that you won't get your foot in the door with a very liberal agent from San Francisco whose best friend is a lesbian whose marriage was just disallowed by a state law that you backed (hypothetical, I have no idea if this person exists).

You'll also have a hard time reaching those in the middle of the road because they're not going to want to rock the boat. And depending on how you've portrayed yourself, you may have made it easier or more difficult to sell your work. They might perceive you as being difficult to work with because you come across as being so headstrong.

I guess I just look at it differently than most. I'll admit, I was getting very riled up and outspoken with the last election cycle. I spent hours researching my points, seeking the truth. Trouble was, no one else paid any attention to that truth. In the end I was left with a lot of anger and resentment.

That's when I turned back to fiction. I realized that I was so much happier dumping myself into the cause of good writing. I could tell my stories, show people the possibility of a better world through my words without trying to hammer it into their heads. At the end of the day I came away from it satisfied. I wasn't angry or fed up or left feeling helpless. I felt content.

For me, my biggest drive is to have my words read. I'm not going to change my message or beliefs in order to make that happen, but I will accept that I am trying to take on the role of an entertainer, not a politician or activist. Until I can make my own rules like Card and others, I'll keep quiet and let my stories do the talking.

So please, speak truth in your words. Just be sure that your words get heard. Otherwise, you end up speaking the truth of silence and those who knew how to play the game get to inundate the rest of us with their views.