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

[dwg.livejournal.com]

That's a really cool list, though I'd argue that conflict isn't necessary in every single scene because then you're just rolling from one thing to the next without getting a chance to calm down and breathe. It's important to know when to take a break before diving back in or upping the ante.

That said, I'd also add:
A) ACTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES. And sometimes they might seem minor at first but can snowball into something massive later. But having a heroine that gets to do whatever she wants because of handwavey laws/superpowers when she demonises (and has killed people) for lesser offenses. I still can't wrap my head around how it's okay for Anita to enslave people to her harem but it's OH SO TERRIBLE for Belle Morte to do it because BM totally doesn't love her sweethearts. And how Anita's defeated MOAD but evidently suffered no side-effects from devouring the power of the oldest and most powerful thing ever or how nobody's really noticed MOAD's sudden disappearance.

Mostly this provides the pay-off for victory -- a character that doesn't struggle for it isn't interesting to me. This is a major problem that I had playing Dishonored because Corvo starts off as the most badassed character ever and only he and his particular skills can pull off these missions, and in the end...he's still the same guy. There's no learning curve, there's a brief moment of being kicked when down but it's okay because he gets his swag back and resumes being the most awesome. (Also the whole thing with the Outsider grates because he's like 'here, have some magic powers because of reasons!' and then turns up to be Captain Exposition from time to time. WHAT IS YOUR POINT, DUDE.)

B) INFODUMPING: look at various ways to do it effectively. In the case of AB:VH the big mistakes are constantly asking, 'What does that mean?' and having information regurgitated often several times saying the same things makes the heroine look like she's a complete idiot. It's a real kicker given that Anita's supposed to be an expert in her field. Plus it grates on my nerves that the author feels the need to coddle the audience and explain every. minute. detail like I'm too stupid to figure something out for myself or read between the lines. Likewise having, "As you know, Bob," lectures between two characters who should probably already know this stuff can get irritating as hell.

The other danger in this is that slabs of internal monologue can break up the pace of a scene. I'm trying to get back into Kiss the Dead and got two pages into the first chapter before saying, "I can't do this right now," and closing the book because there was so. much. unnecessary. waffle about this vampire's hair and how unaesthetically pleasing he was, meanwhile the actual scene was vampire weeping in terror before the heroine and her trying to get information about a missing girl. #priorities (But this is where I'm grateful for terrible writing because I've learned to become a better critical reader?)

But seriously, if we don't actually need to know this information right now...then don't include it. It will probably save on repetitive splurges later when you might have found a place to insert this information in a more organic fashion. "Show, don't tell," is a good rule of thumb, but sometimes exposition is kinda necessary. Knowing when to do that is tough.

(argh, to be continued because I'm too wordy for LJ comment fields)

[dwg.livejournal.com]

C) BE ACTIVE. I've begun to really hate Anita because she never actually does anything. She just sits around and waits for something to happen and then reacts. Then more things happen and she reacts. She never decided to pack a bag and go to Paris to blow up the Council when they were psychically beaming themselves into her house. She never went on some deep spiritual pilgrimage to learn how to control the Ardeur or find some lost temple of monks in Tibet that can tell her what happened to defeat MOAD the first time around. There are a bazillion different things that could have happened instead of staying at home and whining that she has to have more sex with more hot guys noooo. And worse, she's stuck in this cycle of angsting, having someone point out "you always do that, you have so much awesome now!" and she's like "no you're right!" and then does nothing to fix what she was complaining about so she can slide back into complaining again. Case in point of the Ardeur where she's told she has to eat right to keep it in check, but she constantly skips meals or gets unhealthy take-out and then has to go nail someone.

I could ramble on, but then we're just going to get into a list of my personal gripes against the series rather than anything terribly helpful. Except maybe that characters should have their own motivations -- and lives beyond the scope of the protagonist -- "because of reasons!" is very rarely effective.

[christwriter.livejournal.com]

OH MY GOD YES I always forget that one. Active. Yes. Main characters should be the main for a reason. If it is a choice between having the MC do something and character X do the same thing, and it doesn't matter which one they do, have the main character do it. If the main character has done too much, have them help. And for the love of GOD let them make some of the choices in their own life. Both Anita Blake and City of Bones had the same damn problem. The main characters never chose to be involved in the terrible situations. They just went with the godawful flow. Sometimes Anita might as well be a stuffed doll the boys lug around.

[kyoko-minamino.livejournal.com]

HOLY CRUNCHY JESUSJACQUES YES. There have been so many times where I've reenacted one of Linkara's best gags due to her inactivity:

"Should we DO something?"
"We should DO something!"
"Should we DO something?"
"We should DO something!"

Seriously, the melodramatic whining and lack of solving problems at the source are a pain in the patella. And man, are they repetitive. She spends far more time talking about an issue than actually making the steps to solve the issue. Anita should be a member of Congress. She'd be great at filibusters.

[kyoko-minamino.livejournal.com]

That's why I mentioned internal and external conflict. I don't mean literally someone throwing a punch in every scene or anything, I mean that each scene has a relevant sense of conflict. I.e. a problem that needs to be solved or something important that needs to be addressed. Nothing should be coasting in a story, imo.

All of those are legit points. Thanks for your input! :D

[dwg.livejournal.com]

I don't mean throwing a punch in every scene either, I mean having a time-out to eat pizza in yoga pants or walking the dog and having some fun every now and then before their apartment blows up/they have to have that awkward family dinner/whatever. And while it might be boring having a character lying face down on the sofa drooling into an empty pizza box, it could be the much needed break both the character and the audience need before you, say, hurl a severed head through the window or just have the cat jump on top of them and the character is then like "wait, I don't have a cat. @____@"

[maladaptive.livejournal.com]

Re: infodumping:

This is so hard, because on the one hand your audience is smart, on the other they're dumber than a box of rocks, so who are you writing for-- the ones who solve the puzzles right away, who are vocal but a minority, or the ones who, well, are infuriated that Rue is black and Magnus Bane is played by Godfrey Gao? And while that's a minority, the majority will never notice some things. I've written things that I thought were totally in your face, and only a few people got it.

Beta readers! So important.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

Yeah, infodumping is hard. But I guess it's one of those things that relies upon the author knowing what the hell they're doing -- you have to know conventions in order to break them, you have to screw up in order to put structure back in.

Word on beta readers. A good beta is worth their weight in gold. I know what I'm doing a lot of the time, but sometimes I need someone outside of my head to go "this makes no damned sense."

[maladaptive.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I wish beta readers were easier to come by, honestly. I keep seeing recommendations of having lots of beta readers, and I'm lucky if I can get one who gives really meaty opinions! Most of them are like "I like it" or "it was good but felt incomplete" which is good to hear but not really good to wrestle with.

Though I dunno how much of it relies on knowing what you're doing versus assuming your audience's knowledge base. I had a story about a snake-haired woman encountering a mirror salesmen at her island home after some terrible blind dates, and one person out of the workshop of 20 knew it was Medusa and "that hero guy." Like, I couldn't have made it more obvious-- I just assumed Medusa was more of a cultural touchstone than she is, especially among writers. I showed it to genre fans and everyone got that it was Medusa and Perseus within the first page. I didn't think people had to know Perseus, but I expected knowing Medusa!

[dwg.livejournal.com]

See, I wouldn't be worrying about people who don't get it. They don't get it and that's okay - maybe they got something else out of the story, maybe they'd ask someone or go look things up for themselves and later have a laugh, maybe they'd set it aside and never think about it again. That's something that's completely out of your control and you'll inevitably run into people like that. Your job as the writer is to the story you want in the best way possible.

If you're worrying about how someone might not get it, you might wind up sabotaging yourself or falling into the trap that LKH does of "[quote here]" "omg did you just quote [movie/book]?" "Why yes I did! Let me explain to you how it's relevant!" And, like, I know it can get disheartening when you've got something that you feel is smart and fun while everyone's having orgasms over 50 Shades or Twilight, but I think it's more important to stick to your own style, your own voice rather than trying to appeal to the broadest spectrum.