A writing query for you all

[kyoko-minamino.livejournal.com]

Hiya. Long time lurker, infrequent commenter. I have a question poking around on the squishy grey shelves of my brain that I'd like hear some answers to that relate to our shark-jumping heroine and the deterioration of her storyline.

What lessons have the post-Narcissus in Chains novels taught you all?

I ask because I am a novelist and I've written four novels so far, working on getting them published, which is hard. I've heard bits here and there that suggest some of you are also writers and so I wanted to know if you too have been taking notes on what to do and what not to do based on the crap that Hamilton pulls with Anita.

For the interest of brevity, I'll toss my lessons into a list. Feel free to add yours below if my post strikes your fancy.



1) Avoid a sausagefest. This one was a bit difficult considering my novels have to do with pre-established characters (the archangels of Heaven, who are almost all male), but I've made sure that my main character has a healthy spread of supporting female characters. None of them are crazed judgmental bitches or jealous haters. Anita's vendetta against feminine women has taught me to make sure to show all sides of each woman's personality, from the sweet to the vengeful to the tomboy to the girly girl.
2) Do not force in extraneous love interests. I admit there's a love triangle going on in my first novel series, but I've made it clear that it's just two guys. No one else in my main character's life is in love with her, they do not worship the ground she walks on, and they don't compliment her every single time she walks in a room. Unlike Ms. Blake, who must be worshiped by the opposite sex pretty much all the time in the post NiC novels, to my continual disdain.
3) Keep the main character humble and grounded. Anita's got the worst case of high horse syndrome I've seen in a long, long time. I hate how up her own ass she is sometimes, so I've made a point to have other characters point out my girl's flaws and call her out on things when she's being unreasonable.
4) Conflict needs to be in every single scene. Whether it's internal or external, conflict is absolutely necessary in every scene. This does not fly in the post-NiC novels. A particularly horrific example is Cerulean Sins, where there are literally chapters and chapters of nothing but exposition and info dumps that are boring and have absolutely no conflict whatsoever. If you don't believe me, read the first three chapters. You'll probably gawk at the unabashed lack of conflict there.
5) Everything is not about her. There are other characters who have problems, desires, and inner turmoil, and I try my best to allow them to develop throughout the course of the story. Anita's complete lack of sympathy for her poor sex slaves astounds me sometimes. Consider Nathaniel's background. Or hell, Asher's. Both of them should be receiving oodles of love and support and should have character arcs, but Anita and her magical vagina are clearly more important so they just keep getting kicked off screen like red-headed stepchildren.
6) Try to stay modern and do research to keep the details realistic. Many of you brilliant folks have pointed out how behind the times Anita is, especially when it comes to long term birth control and keeping herself clean before and after sex sessions. I've made sure to pull my glasses on and research everything that I possibly can to avoid the dreaded "Did Not Do the Research" label that other writers and readers will be happy to slap on my work otherwise.

Those are the most obvious ones for me. I hope to hear from you guys because I'm genuinely interested and I'd love to talk shop with other writers. Tchau.

Comments

[the-mome-wrath.livejournal.com]

There can be more than one awesome female character. There is not a finite amount of awesome in the world, you don't have to horde it all for one character. I see this a lot in urban fantasy, the female main character is often the only female character that is allowed to be strong. All others have to be weak, petty, backstabbers, or damsels in distress. LKH is a big offender when it comes to this. Downgrading all the other female characters does not make Anita look better by comparison; it just makes LKH look like she hates her own gender.

Make sure your female characters have female friends and spends time with them. Most people have friends that are the same gender as them. Most people spend time with their friends, even if it's just to get together and gripe about how much work sucks. And on this note, make sure your female characters pass the bechdel test. Love lives are not the be all and end all of existence. The scenes with Ronnie and Anita going jogging and talking about cases did a lot to develop Anita's character and make her more real. Getting rid of those was one of the worst choices LKH has made.

Little mundane moments of life are a great way to ground the reader in the universe. Make sure you have them sprinkled thoughout the story. It's also a great way to show how the supernatural affects the everyday. LKH used to be good at this in the early books. The scene where Anita is trying to get the blood off her penguin collection is a particularly memorable one. Also, what happened to Anita's angelfish? I don't think we've seen those since the early books. I remember a scene where JC was staring at her fish and they had a conversation about them in the Laughing Corpse. Also little details about checking holy items in the entrance to some of the night clubs really gave you a good sense of how vampires being out in the open changed the world setting. There's a huge lack of effective scenes like these in the latter books and while you know what everyone looks like and what they're wearing they might as well be walking around in a void. You know the setting is analogous to present day, but you have no real sense of anything else. You know Anita spends a lot of time in strip clubs, but you don't know if they're seedy or high class. Is the police station well funded or are they trying to scrape by with their budget?

Protagonists are characters that move the story forward. If your character is merely reacting to the events around them, they aren't being good protagonists, they're being passive. Passive characters are very difficult to make interesting and it's really difficult to have an interesting story with a passive character. Those kinds of stories tend to drift aimlessly and things happen around the character since they're not actively engaging in most of the events. This is the core of the problems with the newer Anita books. Everything interesting happens off screen when Anita isn't there because she's busy reacting to the aurdeur, or drifting from pointless event to pointless event. Things take forever to happen because something has to be contrived to get Anita there because she won't do it on her own. She won't take care of herself, others have to do it for her. The bad guys have to pretty much kick down her door to be noticed. Anita does noting to move the story forward on her own. She just stands around and talks about how awesome and edgy she USED to be.

[plastraa.livejournal.com]

"Protagonists are characters that move the story forward. If your character is merely reacting to the events around them, they aren't being good protagonists, they're being passive. Passive characters are very difficult to make interesting and it's really difficult to have an interesting story with a passive character."

This reminds me of the movie War of the Worlds with Tom Cruise, the number one complaint I heard from people was that he was just some dude that was having all this stuff happening to him and he was just there. Not instrumental in doing anything to solve the issues. The tripods were driving the story and he and his family along. I personally don't like Tom Cruise but love sci-fi and I could identify with a dude just trying to stay alive in that situation, and not everyone is always going to be the dude who solves stuff...but it does make it harder to connect with the story or the character. On that note I did like it. BUT I think it's his lack of driving the story that made so many people not like it.

I could have just said...YES THIS...and save a paragraph...but YES! THIS! To your point. haha

[the-mome-wrath.livejournal.com]

In a lot of ways War of the Worlds is more of a survival movie than a scifi movie because it is about a normal guy trying to survive through these extraordinary events. He's not a scientist, he's not a soldier, he's any guy you could pull off the street and there's very little he can do against the alien onslaught, but the inability of humans to fight the aliens is ultimately important to the story. This makes the story compelling when you're reading it since you have his narration to help pull you into his struggle for day to day survival. However it makes him seem more passive in the movie versions since you don't know what he's thinking or feeling.

The difference with Anita is that she isn't some random person you can pull off the street. She's supposed to be a powerful force and her ability to fight the supernatural is important to the story. The early books often explored where the line between human and monster was and how close she was to crossing it at times. Now, she just lets things happen as they will and no greater theme is being served by this. All the themes have been dropped in favor of bad porn. The most Anita will do anymore is go to another city when required after that she just sits back, feeds the arduer, and then waits for the enemy to be killed off screen. In War of the Worlds they might have been hiding in a basement but there was a lot of tension, drama and even a murder down there.