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Writing from the Core – Characters

WARNING: I discuss my series The Unfinished Song, though I have tried to avoid details or reveals, I do discuss themes, characters and events in the books which might be spoilers. If you haven’t read it yet, you can start the series here for free: The Unfinished Song: Initiate (kindle or kindle app). Or, if you want a different format, email me here: tara@taramayastales.com.

For some writers, character is the core of story. At least, character would come before theme and setting. Fair enough. For a certain kind of story, that works. But I wouldn’t even be able to know my characters without knowing their setting, and I wouldn’t know their setting without knowing what kind of story I want to tell.

Or maybe that’s complete bull.

I had a very good idea of who Dindi was before I had a clue about what kind of world she lived in. That’s because, like many writers, I cheated and kinda based her on me. Eventually, I had to wean her off that, because she had to be much more heroic than I am in real life, but let’s face it, I took the idea of a girl who wanted to dance, but was not allowed to, from my own life.

In high-school–that dreadful Initiation tomb American youth are sent to suffocate in for some years–I was a cheerleader. But I also had scoliosis, and had to wear an unsightly backbrace. The teacher did not want me on the team, but she had no excuse to throw me off. So she refused to let me perform and harassed me, hoping I would quit. In The Unfinished Song: Root, Dindi is a not allowed to actually dance, but she does go on stage to set out props for the other dancers. That is what I was allowed to do. Put out the pom-poms.

However, basing characters on your own pathetic dramas in life can only take you so far. It won’t work more than once or twice, even if every character, including the villain, has a bit of the author inside. That’s the nature of the beast, but we shouldn’t be content with merely letting characters be shadows. They have a right to grown into themselves. The best way to do that is to give them a world to grow in, and then take seriously the consequences of such an upbringing.

Sometimes working against the grain helps, though. For instance, I fancy Kavio would have made a good scientist or chess-player or tactician in our world, but his world doesn’t have science or chess or… well they do have war, but it’s mostly just a lot of guys running at each other screaming and waving spears. Until Kavio comes along and tries to bring some strategy to the bloody business. Part of the fun in writing his character is that his mode of analytical thinking isn’t really usual or valued in his society, which glorifies brute force much more.

The kind of characters you have also depends on your world in a more subtle way–on your theme too. If the whole slant of the story is cynical, you’ll have a different set of characters than if the slant is epic. Faearth has its days of gore and its moments of pathos, but on the whole, it’s still faerytale country. My characters tend toward heroic. A bit larger than life. When they fail, they fail big, when they triumph, it saves the world. And in the end… well, you’ll see. But I don’t consider it a spoiler to tell you I believe in happy endings. Faearth is a world of happy endings, and my characters are heroes in the traditional sense of the word. That doesn’t mean there won’t be sacrifices, and even deaths, along the way.

Writing from the Core – Setting

WARNING: I discuss my series The Unfinished Song, though I have tried to avoid details or reveals, I do discuss themes, characters and events in the books which might be spoilers. If you haven’t read it yet, you can start the series here for free: The Unfinished Song: Initiate (kindle or kindle app). Or, if you want a different format, email me here: tara@taramayastales.com.

Previously, I discussed how theme, hooked on a few vivid metaphors, lies at the core of the novels I write. However, a book that was just a bundle of themes and metaphors would be nothing more than an allegory. Or some form of hideous experimental fiction that has no plot or characters only a series of absurd images.
Tolkien once said, “I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence.” (His opinion of hideous experimental fiction is not known.) I agree. Allegory sucks. It’s thin, it’s obvious, it’s pretentious, and it’s often preachy. Let’s not go there.
But that means that the bones of one’s themes must be plumped up with some meat, truly heroic thews. In many stories, this place of honor would be held by Character, in another kind of story, it might be held by Plot, but I’m writing Epic Fantasy here, so, like Tolkien, my next layer, almost as foundational as the theme, is the Setting. This is not as far from Character as it might seem, since the setting is itself almost a character.
I began writing The Unfinished Song (then called Rainbow Dancer) twelve years ago. (Egads.) I wrote three chapters, then stopped cold. I couldn’t go any further because although I already had an idea of the heroine and her goal (clumsy girl with no magic longing to be a magic dancer) and the antagonist and his goal (the man in black seeking to kill her), I had no clue where they were. Without knowing where they were, what kind of culture they grew up in, I couldn’t say anything more about their character or their goals.
Those original three chapters were set in a Generic Fantasy World. Dindi was a peasant girl (possibly a Long Lost Heir), in a quasi-European medieval village, and Kavio was a prince. (This sounds funny to me now.) It was a burnt-toast setting: completely overdone.
I put the chapters aside and worked on other things, while I wrestled with how to fix my story. I don’t remember how I hit on the idea to make it Neolithic rather than Medieval. I’ve never seen another fantasy story set in that level of technology, which is why it appealed to me at once. 
At first it was a stripping down process. I removed the plows, the forks, the books, the wagons. No iron, no draft animals, no bronze, no writing, no axles. Then I realized I also had to take away Kavio’s crown, because there were no princes yet, nor kings. I had to remove the doors from the doorways because there were no hinges! Some things were on the border: Horses? (Yes, but no reins or stirrups.) Wheels? (Yes, but not for vehicles.) Agriculture? (Yes, but not everywhere.) Cats? (Yes, just because I like them.) Would the germ of my story bloom in this soil? Yes–better than ever. It fit perfectly with the mode of magic (dancing) that I had chosen.
So next I began building the world, up from the bones of the theme. I wanted a raw, primordial faerie world, an amalgamation of many world cultures, as if the birthplace of all our own fairytales long before they were written down and given medieval settings. I began to pore over anthropologists’ reports and ancient histories, archeological digs and missionaries’ letters. I looked for customs to steal and technologies to describe. It has to be admitted that I love this part. I love world-building, I love research. 
Sometimes I simply read and read, just for inspiration, an oddbit here, a detail there, a sound, a smell, a taste, a joke, something which toggled my own imagination, something I could insert into a page or paragraph. Hakurl and mariahs and menhirs. But sometimes I went into my research with specific questions in mind. For instance, I knew I wanted to describe, from an eye-witness, the rise of the Bone Whistler. This meant I had to know, how does a tyrant take power? How does a whole society go mad? We are more used to the modern examples: Hitler, Stalin, Cambodia, Rwanda. But those involve modern tools, such as mass media propaganda, blitzkrieg and gulag. How would the tyrant seize power when he has nothing but the magic of his own lies? Or is it purely modern for a whole society to go mad all at once, to nearly tear itself apart in a cannibalistic frenzy of hate? I suspected not. I found some interesting, heartbreaking examples, and used those as my model. (The result is Tomorrow We Dance, which will be worked in as one of the side-stories in Book 10 or 11.)
When world-building works, it lifts a story out of dreary allegory into (imagined) history–which, ironically, is a much richer field of allegory than mere Allegory Itself. World-building is the source of all the delicious tastes and putrid stenches that fill the page with tactile details. It is also the prerequisite for knowing characters inside and out, so it’s no surprise that Characters will be the subject of my next essay.

Why I’m Not Commenting On Your Blog

I wanted to comment on your blog.

But for some reason, Google will no longer let me comment. It’s annoying. I write out an elaborate remark. Underneath the box, it says, “Comment as” and I toggle the thingy that says, “Google Account,” and then I push “publish.”

And my comment disappears.

This has been happening for a while, and I’m getting exasperated. My dh suggested that perhaps I have been Banished for Inappropriate Content but I can’t imagine why or when or by whom. Has anyone else had this happen? Any solution?

Living Metaphors

Well, I cheat by writing fantasy, where I can get away with all sorts of living metaphors. In the first book, Initiate, I have a character who has been hexed, tied to a rock, walking in circles for ten years. Later (Spoiler Alert) we find out that he has cast the hex on himself, because he hated his own clan so much he planned to destroy them and leave; but also loved them so much he would not let himself. So he is a living metaphor, literally walking in circles in a rut of his own making. More subtly, he’s also there as a hint (metaphor? foreshadow?) about what will later befall the heroine and hero. It’s hard to make a living metaphor work as a main character (even in fantasy; good fantasy should be more than mere alegory) but they do make a good supporting cast.

5 Signs You Might Be A Writer

1. You read. A LOT.
You read constantly, or at least did at one point in your life. Some of us had more time to read (for pleasure) when we are kids, but are swamped with work now. For others, literature seemed boring when we were younger, but now has appeal. In my case, I devoured science fiction and fantasy when I was younger, but while I was in grad school most of my reading was non-fiction. Once I graduated, I had time for fiction again. I do still read non-fiction for pleasure and for research.

2. You have been coming up with stories since you were a kid.
You have way more story ideas than you could ever write down. When did you write your first “story”? Okay, maybe it wasn’t much of a story, but when did you start trying? In my case, I made little pretend “books” out of folded paper and scribbles before I could write my ABCs. I wrote my first four complete and illustrated stories in fifth grade and completed my first novel in Jr. High. Granted, they all sucked rocks. But I know I am not unusual in starting out young. Most writers I know began writing early. This doesn’t necessarily mean that they published early, or that those around them recognized their efforts.

3. You have a bunch of manuscripts under your bed.
It’s one thing to write stories in your head. That makes you a storyteller. But not yet a writer. If you’ve actually written down your words, that’s what makes you a writer. Not getting published. Writing is what makes a writer. Getting published, and more to the point, selling copies, is what makes you a paid writer, a professional writer, a writer who can actually eat something other than ramen noodles, and that’s a good thing. But you’ve already started writing without any idea whether you can sell those words or not.

4. You write for love, not for money.
Let’s face it. You know that being a writer is not as lucrative as other jobs, like doctor, lawyer or fast food employee. Screw that. You’re writing anyway. Cruel reality may force you into a day job. It happens. You write anyway. You’re jotting down ideas for your novel between flipping burgers, or taking notes on your character in your office cubicle. You care enough to constantly hone your craft. You would write even if your plane crashed on a deserted island. Even if you were locked in a prison on Gamma Beta IV. Even if you had to become an accountant.

5. You write for money, not love.
Nah, this doesn’t really contradict what I just said. It only seems to. Because if you really love writing–or any art–enough, you’ll realize that the only way anyone will let you do it full time is if you can get good enough to earn mullah at the same time. Yeah. By selling your writing. So even though it feels like jabbing steak knives into your eyes, you send out queries, you send out review requests, you–ugh, self-promote. You sell your sweat and tears as if it were vacuum cleaner parts. And on days when the sky is grey and your nose is runny, you feel sorry for yourself because it turns out that writing is a job, and all jobs have moments that suck. The rest of the time, you appreciate–I sure hope you appreciate because otherwise why do this?–that you have the best damn job in the world.

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You can still sign up for a free copy of Wing, the next book in The Unfinished Song epic fantasy series. If you haven’t started the series yet, and want to give it a try, you can find it free on Amazon or email me for a free copy in another ebook format. The first book is also available in print on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

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