LKH- making mistakes so we don't have to

[x-trickster-x.livejournal.com]

Okay, children! The lesson for today is simple: What have you learnt from LKH?

Weird question, I know, but whether it’s good or bad, what do you think you’ve learnt from reading her books? And I mean absolutely anything- whether it’s how to create interesting character dynamics or just that proof reading really is a lifesaver. I just wanted to throw that out there.

Personally, I think the biggest things I’ve learnt are to do with juggling enormous casts of characters, naming and worlds. LKH has a ghastly amount of characters that are completely worthless or meaningless beyond being there for Anita or Merry to bonk and she does quite a poor job handling (haha, handling) all of them- I’m always forgetting who characters are, to be honest.

The second thing was naming. As of late her names are getting worse and worse. Wicked? Truth? Requiem? Yikes. Okay, I don’t think I’d ever have strayed into that style of name but if anything, it’s made me very cautious about it anyway.

Lastly, I think we’re all in agreement that whether it was on purpose or by accident, LKH managed to create a thoroughly interesting and involving setting, particularly in Anita Blake. However, no way in hell does she ever fully utilise it. There’s so much of her world she could explore and so many things are just touched on briefly- it’s pretty frustrating. So, the last thing I’ve learnt is that if your world is as interesting and exciting as you think it is, show off as much of it as possible (within reason, of course)

So, in essence, what things have you taken away from here that you’ll use in your own writing?

Comments

[kessie.livejournal.com]

What I've learned?

Kill your darlings.

Seriously. Sometimes there needs to be a death readers will care about, whether they rejoice or weep over it.

[x-trickster-x.livejournal.com]

That's a really good one, actually. She just doesn't seem to get it at all. I'd like to add "Don't think of your characters as your children, PLEASE" to this.

[kessie.livejournal.com]

Also don't buy them presents, no matter how much you love them.

[x-trickster-x.livejournal.com]

There're not going to call you back, no matter how many messages you leave on their answering machines. D=

[kessie.livejournal.com]

...this could be a verrrry long list...

[knowthyself.livejournal.com]

Also, they don't have answering machines! ...or phone numbers!

[x-trickster-x.livejournal.com]

No way, you mean it? Awww, man, and here I was planning a big party for all of them. =(

[syrinx.livejournal.com]

That's why I love Kim Harrison's books. She decided a character really wasn't useful anymore, then BAM, created a death that was a plot for more books <3

[cicipsychobunny.livejournal.com]

Never get my really close friends and relatives to be my proofreaders and advisers. Even though I *know* they wouldn't be Darla/Jon-style yesmen, I'd just rather not wonder if they're somehow just telling me what I want to hear rather than giving good concrit.

If writing a long-running series, make sure that whatever world or character details do need to be explained in each book aren't just cookie-cutter paragraphs indistinguishable from book to book - and definitely don't explain the entire backstory of characters who appear in fewer paragraphs than it takes to remind the reader of who they are!

[cicipsychobunny.livejournal.com]

Ooh, and for the love of God, TAKE BREAKS when it's all getting too stressful and too demanding.

[acidamoeba.livejournal.com]

I definately learned to be quite ruthless with my characters. If I need it, they will die.

Those books also challenged me (if that's the right way to phrase it) to write in 1st person POV... something I've never tried before. Oddly enough, it's going quite well.

Oh! and also showed me how annoying a tough independant female protagonist can be.

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

What's annoying is that she ISN'T a tough independent female protagonist but we're supposed to believe that she is.

[lovefromgirl.livejournal.com]

Sex is to be used sparingly and for a purpose -- and used like real people use it! Yes, even if I am writing about half-cats!

[moonsinger.livejournal.com]

The things I've learned from LKH. 1) Getting published is part luck and finding a niche that attracts a lot of readers. 2) If you are a published writer, don't talk about your personal life on your blog or complain about deadlines as fans will rip you to shreds. Also, make sure that you have short posts that you can edit carefully because fans will tear you apart for grammatical/punctuation/style issues as well. 3) If you want the character that represents you to have lots of sex convince your husband to roleplay the kinky sex scenes out or write fan fic of that if you must, but stick to the plot in your books. If you have multiple sex partners in your books make sure it makes sense to the world/plot/character and that it isn't Mary Sueish. 4) I don't know if she's got contracts that overwhelm her, but I will make darn sure that I have plenty of time to write what I commit to do. 5) If you do series fiction, make sure that each book has a beginning, middle, and end (She's not even remotely the only writer who has taught me that). 6) If you slip up and talk about your personal life, do not talk about your sex life EVER. 7) Don't tell anyone you're a gamer, they'll think you ripped off some game in your writing even if you didn't.

[deadroman.livejournal.com]

Oh man, so many things...
But the first 'lesson' that comes to mind is about the relationship an author has between his/her characters: before going off to write a series of books, an author must have a stable relationship with the characters.
For example, if an author is having some personal problems, they can't let their emotions take over their writing; their characters can't be allowed to suddenly go crazy and do things that are totally out of proportion with their established personalities.
And god... I've seen this happen so many times, characters aboutfacing because the author-character relationship changed...
This is the obvious cause of Richard, Jean-Claude, and Anita's huge personality shifts; LKH's personal problems seem to have even screwed up her general ability to write.
And then there are the other authors who've gotten out of control as well. Some, like Anne Rice, seem to have fallen in love with one of their characters (Lestat), and that character as a result became the author's stunningly handsome, invincible mouthpiece. Or some authors got sick as hell of their characters and tried to kill them for good (Sherlock Holmes, anyone?).
I remember after Stephenie Meyer's uncompleted first draft of Midnight Sun was released onto the Internet, she responded with a very lolzy comment: "With writing, the way you feel changes everything. If I tried to write Midnight Sun now, in my current frame of mind, James would probably win and all the Cullens would die, which wouldn't dovetail too well with the original story."
A professional author (yeah, I don't consider Meyer to be in any way 'professional') can't let that happen. I forgot who said it (I remember Stephen King using this quote), but he said something like a good author must be able to write great emotions in a calm and collected state of mind.

Soooo... yes. Characters have to stay consistent. They mustn't be subjected to the wild emotional shifts and deranged whims of their creator. THAT job is, of course, for the fanfic writers. ;)

[knowthyself.livejournal.com]

I suppose at least Meyers recognized that and stopped writing, knowing her emotions weren't going to help her out any. (But man, would that version of the story have been awesome!)

[snarky-imp.livejournal.com]

I'd like to third/fourth/fifty-fifth the 'don't be afraid to kill' notion. As much as I hate that my favorite characters in other series are usually the first ones killed, good God, sometimes you just need to kill someone off.

[shadwing.livejournal.com]

"Which character would I like to kill? I have no problem killing characters, I can kill any one any time I want. I have a word processor, I have the POWER!" *long pause* "Though I wouldn't mind seeing the Merlin dipped in boiling lead..."

Jim Butcher after being asked by a Fan which char would he like to kill the most.

[snarky-imp.livejournal.com]

...I wasn't sure it was possible, but I think I love him even more for that.

[were-lemur.livejournal.com]

Bwahahahaha!

But OMG, he makes the deaths count. When he killed (SPOILER) I felt like I'd been kicked in the chest.

[knowthyself.livejournal.com]

Sex =! plot

[quill-shadow.livejournal.com]

That Mary-Sues can be published. I know that sounds catty, but honestly, even though I liked the first few Anita books I was going through them thinking, 'This is a giant Mary-Sue'.

Corollary to that - there has to be something interesting about your book. The ideas, the characters, the world - preferably all of the above, but something has to get the readers' attention.

[lukita.livejournal.com]

Don't drag your personal life into your books, don't blog about it and definitely don't tell your readers who character X is in real life.

[easol.livejournal.com]

That a strong female protagonist should not be written as a huge self-important paranoid bitch, and guns don't make you manly or tough.

That pet phrases will get annoying after the third usage.

That deadweight characters either need to die or be written out ruthlessly.

That unless you have a reason to do otherwise (like the Rangers Apprentice series), you should put some time between each book for your characters.

That "it's my speshul magikpowahz!" is NOT an acceptable way to explain stuff.

That you shouldn't decide to work out every single issue you've ever had through your emo Sue. Maybe one issue discreetly (such as the loss of a loved one) but not the messy complains you have against your ex hubby.

That you should either have normal time passing for your characters, or pick a damn time period and STICK TO IT. (People in the Anitaverse are still using videotapes, aren't they?!)

Don't make your character a drooling idiot because you assume that the readers are too dumb to understand.

Sex does not make a book sexy.

[galhea.livejournal.com]

I learned, back when reading the first six books years ago, that humor can go a long way in making otherwise dull characters interesting. Later on, I learned that making nearly every character have some really odd quirk (really terrible fashion sense, random interest in stuffed penguin collections, etc.) will seem like the author is trying too hard. Even later, the books taught me that minor characters suddenly becoming main (boinking) characters need an actual personality to be remotely interesting. I also figured out that giving into the Constant Smut Muse is a very bad idea, and that plot is essential (duh) to keeping readers entertained, especially without the witty and sarcastic quips I'd loved so much in the first half dozen books.

[sandit.livejournal.com]

Writing for yourself is an indulgence for your own enjoyment, conceits, whatever. Writing for pay probably shouldn't be the same.

[albinowolf.livejournal.com]

How about... have a better way of filing info for your characters than post-it notes. Having your characters change names/appearances/sexual orientations in *printed* works is really not a job well done.

[magdalen77.livejournal.com]

AW, that's one of the things I was thinking of. If you're going to have two series with enormous casts, write yourself a "bible" with character personalities, physical descriptions, their personal histories, what their purpose is, what they were doing when we last "heard" from them, etc.

It would reduce egregious mistakes like random height/eye color/hair color changes and mistaking one similar character for another.

[cryptaknight.livejournal.com]

I think I've learned that sometimes you have to be hard on your characters. It's tempting to love your characters and want to give them everything, but that's how you end up with an Anita or a Merry. You have to hurt characters, you have to let them feel pain so they can grow. You have to have them hear "no" sometimes.

On the names thing, she's even repeated names. For example, in Mistral's Kiss, we have the problem of the two Nerys's- two Nerys's- one that's being tortured by Andais, and one that was killed by Merry in the first book in the series. In the fairy land of outlandish names, LKH had to give two characters the same name? And I'm sure that's not the only case.

[alexandra-cade.livejournal.com]

10. Clinical is not sexy.
9. Redundancy CAN make words disgusting (spill anyone?)
8. If you are batshit crazy, don't blog about it. Ideally you'd want to keep that from your fandom as long as possible.
7. Spellcheck is your friend. So are editors.
6. Finish your shit on time. Better yet, never sign up for a publishing schedule that requires you to crank out complete crap.
5. Don't switch genres in the middle of a series (I'm talking to you, too, JR Ward).
4. Having your number one fan boy (also your husband) and your number one fan girl be the only ones to give you feedback on your writing...probably won't help you talent evolve.
3. Don't write a book where the protagonist is based on yourself. It leads to things like bashing your ex and the completely obvious twisting of characters.
2. When your caste of characters only grows to give your protagonist someone new to boink, it's time to start killing fuckers (pun intended) off. Thinning the herd is good.
1. Sex, while it fills pages, does not equal plot.

[amamelina.livejournal.com]

I read number 5 as "Don't switch genders in the middle of a series".

[easol.livejournal.com]

I'm sure we'll get that in another few books -- Anita growing a metaphysical penis is one of the few superpowers she hasn't developed yet.

[digitalusrex.livejournal.com]

death to spill!

[mizmalice.livejournal.com]

Don't get too attached. If you're super attached to your characters you wont be able to take them and the story to places it needs to go. You wont be able to cause them serious pain or kill them and sometimes thats what is best for the story.

[alondra-del-sol.livejournal.com]

Be flexible. I mean obviously it's good to have ideas in mind, but writing isn't a static practice. Allow your characters to grow, but with guidance and direction. Let the story take itself places, but never, ever let the characters start making authorial decisions, etc.

[pandorasblog]

- Be prepared to kill your characters.
- What uigenna said above about deliberate humour easily feeling forced - it's certainly been true of anything funny I've consciously tried to do.
- A character who is always convinced she's right about everything is hard to warm to.
- Ditto self-insertions.
- Ditto insertions of the kind you can't talk about in front of your granny. Thankfully I've never had the urge to write about sex, but it's good to know how not to do it.

[ellenel13.livejournal.com]

I'm not a writer but I became paranoid about the use of the words loose, lose, breathe, and breath to the point that whenever I use them in schoolwork I read read the sentence to make sure I used them correctly. See also, than vs. then.

[missamii.livejournal.com]

Between LKH and JR Ward, I'd say that they have taught me that in a five hundred page book, four hundred+ pages of that book better not be completely irrelevant crap that could be excised and have no noticeable impact on the plot and whose removal would actually enhance the flow of the story.

And if you are going to go the off-putting, psychotic shrew route with your main character, A) make people's reaction to their personality believable and B)at least give them a background where it's half-way plausible that are deranged. Because I swear, the heroine that basically becomes the state-sanctioned hit woman of supernatural-beastie-of-your-choice out of some idiotic rebellion against the white middle class lifestyle and yet still has people lining up around the block to shag her makes no sense! (I'm also looking at you, Jenna Black.)

[beloved828.livejournal.com]

What a good question! I think I've learned to keep my world simple (at least at first) and to stay focused. Many sci-fi/fantasy authors loose me because they break the suspension of disbelief by making their stories too fantastical or too complicated in the beginning. I'm not saying that complicated is bad, but I think it needs to be small enough to flesh out. The author can always build up on a small, but good base. If they start out too big, they can't go back. Rewinding the story (like the series "Witchblade") does not work.

LKH was a great idea person, but her execution was never very good, mostly because she lost focus. Much like George Lucas, she came up with great concepts and cool characters but isn't that great at the writing portion of it. If she had stayed on topic and kept her world a more managable size, she would have had room to grow rather than having her stories spin wildly out of control. Since the main focus of her books are now sex, the plots she comes up with are too complicated for her to keep to. Anne Rice wrote a three book sex fantasy series (that laid the groundwork for LKH, in my opinion), and it worked because the plot was fairly simple. Anne Rice also wrote books that had a great deal of sex in them, but she stuck to the plot and used those sex scenes for spice rather than the bulk of the story.

Either by accident or design, LKH starts her books off with a plot, and then fills her pages with scenes (mostly sex) and dialog that don't further that plot. She quickly looses focus and runs out of time. She winds up throwing the rest of the plot into the last 10 pages of the book that way. She focuses too much of her attention on visuals, her characters' clothes and appearance especially.

The most important thing that LKH taught me is to never, never treat my characters like real, living people. They are not. As the author, I am in control of their lives and actions. Her unwillingness to kill off characters is part of what forces her cast to grow so large. It's good to create a character that people can believe in, but it's going too far to obsess over that character's happiness with the story that one is writing. I would also refrain from basing my characters on real people in my life, and then acting out my fantasies on them in my stories. It's okay to base some physical attributes or a few personality traits on someone in one's life, but not so much that it's no longer fiction. It ties into that other, "my characters are not real" rule. If they are based on real people, they might be shaped by that person, and not by me (the author). My like or dislike for that character might be based on my feelings for that person, and characters in books should not be used as voodoo dolls. Irrational treatment of a character ruins the suspension of disbelief, and having the character's behavior change as my relationship and feelings change with its model does the same. It also makes for an awkward read, especially for the person that character is based on. It's much better to make my own characters from scratch.

[beloved828.livejournal.com]

Ah, I forgot another good one. "Write about what you know". LKH has managed to upset many people in the BDSM community by writing about BDSM the way someone who was never a part of the scene would. She insists that she did research, but either her research wasn't very complete or she asked the wrong people. Rather than giving a knowledgeable account, she told people what they wanted to hear in order to spice up the story. It's the same thing that Arthur Golden, the author of "Memoirs of a Geisha" did. Both authors wrote what they wanted, and then went on to act like experts on their subjects. LKH does the same thing with weaponry, state law, and anything else that doesn't work in her story. Rather than shaping her story around the facts, she shapes the facts around her story. It's the wrong way to go about things, and it shows.

I'm always surprised at how many basic rules of writing LKH manages to break and still get published. I learned "stick to your plot" and "write about what you know" in a 6th grade writing class, and those rules have never failed me.