Friday 26 December 2008

Our garnish

You know, I have this cousin that is a cook and I sometimes watch Iron Chef and a few other cooking shows (basically when there is nothing else on). Something that they talk about is the parts of the meal that they are preparing. You have the meat of it, the garnish, the side dishes and a few others that I can't remember. Anyway, I was just thinking about how that can be our simile of the day.

If you were to think of a story as a dinner that you have to worry about what is on the plate. Let us say that we're cooking steak. You have the steak itself, what people are going to love to dig into. This is the part that really makes us drool, but let's be honest, a steak is nothing if it's too dry and too boring. If it's just meat we can last a few bites then sigh in disappointment. What does every steak need? Just ask Heinz, they'll tell you. It needs the sauce, the garnish, the topping. Pick whichever word you wish to use.

Well, if we were to apply the same thought process to our story I would call the characters that populate our story the marinade of the steak. The stuff you let the meat sit in for 24 hours just so that each bite gave you a yummy rush of flavor that just make you dive into the steak even more vigorously....just thinking about steak is making me hungry....yum.

Thinking of our characters like this hopefully gives an idea of just how important they are to a story. While yes you can have that slab of steak without any sauce on it, be honest, you want it to have the sauce. Well, the story has to have characters, no questions about it.

Now I've never had any problems with creating characters, anyone that has RPed with me will probably agree because I purposely go out of my way to make my characters engaging and delightful. They have quirks, pet peeves, inconsitencies, emotions (except for that Vulcan I did once, but she was a special case being a Vulcan), they have things that make them laugh, they have sense of humors. Some are pessimests, others are optimists, some are amibitious while others are philathrapists or just don't give a shit. They are people to me, I make them that way. Why? Well, because if to me they are people. They have faces, voices, hand movements...etc. I'd go on, but I'm pretty sure you get the point.

Now, please don't mistake me. I'm not saying that it doesn't take effort for me to create these characters. I don't think I've ever made an interesting character in just a few hours, at least I can't recall of any. It usually takes at least a few days, at most a few years. I'll trot out one of my favorites, she's always accomodating me in that regards so I may as well take advantage of it. Nyx started when I was a kid though I didn't recognize her as being a potential story character until my teens. Spending all the years that I have has made Nyx's stats long enough to be an actual book.

Now, I wouldn't actually suggest that anyone spend twenty plus years on a character. That's a bit too much time and I would hope that you would want to get published long before that. My point though is this: Know your character, inside and out. Know things about him or her that no one else would. Sometimes we all fall into the trap of developing only as much as you need to, but let me warn you all (and remind myself) don't do that. It may seem very time consuming to figure out the stuff that won't make it to print, but trust me, knowing it is a heck of a lot better because you never know when you'll have to go back to that third draft and add something you didn't think you needed. Better to have it and not use than need it and not have it.

You know, the question I have each and every time that I start working on a character is knowing what I do need to know. I've been trying to find a pattern to use for such a need, but each time I start a character that pattern changes. Now, I suppose I could just shrug it off, but it really bugs me.

Right now I'm starting a character whose first name is Genie. She's a CIA Agent...sort of. It's complicated, the sort of bit, but in working on her it has gotten me thinking, what pattern should I use because she is not the only character that will be in this. Currently I already have 9 characters that need to be fleshed out. I would like to develop all nine and any subsequent characters in the same format, have the same questions answered. To do that I'm starting with Genie, get her fleshed out (the beginning stages) then go from there.

I have opted to start with the physical, what we would see...assuming she was a real person that is.... then moving inwardly. So I know how tall she is, her weight, her age, her eyes. Basically I have a picture of her. I know how she sits, how she moves, how much she works out...yadda yadda. Yet the question I have to myself is, is this enough? Should I get categories and work on them from there for all future characters? I mean, the stuff I know for Nyx is very different than what I know for Alex or Mark or Jack or Genie. That makes sense, but there are basic qualities that I know of beyond the physical.

In other words I'm a big mess in making that decision and sometimes I feel like I'm floundering then I get a great idea, like who chose Genie's name and why.....

Essentially my marinade still needs some work, yet I find myself having a lot of fun poking and prodding Genie, trying to get her to tell me everything she knows. I have to figure out my questions for her, but in the meantime I'll still continue to talk to her and see what she has to say......

One last thing.....Merry Christmas to everyone!

Sunday 14 December 2008

Holiday Season

Well, as you know it's the holidays. What does this mean? It means that we all run around with our heads chopped off! Yep, that's the truth. Find me one person who is completely calm and at ease and I'll faint from shock. I love Christmas, but I'm in a cynical mood right now.

So I finally got to page 71, I'm at midnight in the story...finally...and what happens? I get stuck. Arg, nothing more frustrating than that.....no, that's not true, what's frustrating is when my e-mail doesn't send the reply that I created. Now that's frustrating!

The problem with my book isn't that I can't think of where to go. It's how to express what my main character is feeling. I can't write much about what she's doing because she's tied to a chair and let's be honest, this is more about a mental journey than in a physical one (though there is some physical to it as well, okay a lot but at this moment in the story, we're going mental....LOL). So how do I write it convincingly? That, my friends, is the crux of it all.

Sigh, well I can't write much more than that today. We're planning to go get some Christmas shopping done, find presents for my mother-in-law then hang up our pictures around the house. Though, now that I think about it, I'm not really in the mood to get in the car and go anywhere. I'd rather stare at the computer and pretend that I'm doing something worthwhile. Did I mention that I also happen to get a bit lethargic in regards to normal activities around the Holidays? No? Well, I still probably shouldn't. VBG.

Wednesday 3 December 2008

An Idea

You know, I was trying to think back to when I started this story about Alex and Mark. I keep wracking my brains, trying to figure out why they stood out as being worthy of a story. I can remember how, I can remember what inspired, but I can't seem to remember why. I'm not sure why it's important to remember right now either though.

Maybe it will come to me later, I'm not sure or perhaps it's not as important as I think it may be.

I want to talk about the idea though. It's where it all starts for just about anything, from writing to politics all the way to the way a city is laid out. Someone had an idea, then spent time and energy to help it grow. Much like what we do with children and gardens. It takes effort. Yet, it seems to me that the only profession that gets asked the most about their ideas are those in the various writing fields that are available, especially fiction writers. I don't hear about how people ask an architect or a Doctor where they get their ideas. Sure, they ask about their inspiration, but that's a different kettle of fish.

Perhaps artists get the question to, I'm not sure yet. I've only started as an artist so I haven't been asked that yet. I have been asked as a writer though. The question is simple: where do you get a story idea?

The answer that almost every writer gives in some form or another is 'I don't know. It just pops into my head and then I explore it.' It's a frustrating answer, even to us writers I think simply because we want to know too. Sure, we can point at things in our lives that may inspire a good idea. Books, movies, conversations, dreams, name the activity and I promise someone can be inspired by it. But to take that idea and turn it into a possible story, well that's a different ball of wax (yes, I know I'm using a lot of metaphors, forgive me for it).

For right now though I'll try to express my process of how something that inspires moves into a story idea. I'll use one that will probably never be published. Why? Because unless I get really gutsy and confident enough, which I doubt, I might be willing to show it to a publisher or editor. Then, and only then, it will only be published if the individual in question also decides to be gutsy and take a risk.

Anyway, when I was in High School I had gone over to my boyfriends house to pick him up for school. His mother and I got along really well even though her son and I didn't always (we only dated about two days btw). One day, as a joke, when she answered I put my hands together as if I was saying a prayer, bowed then said, "I am Siam and I am here to sell you something." She got a good laugh out of it, I laughed then went about my day.

Three days later that phrase came back to me and just kept repeating itself over and over until I asked myself a few questions. What kind of person is Siam? What would she be selling? And that's how it starts for me. For just about every story that I've written it all started with a question or a series of questions. Even for all the stuff that I role play, it begins with a question. What would happen if.....? How would so-n-so deal with this?

I have notes upon notes of questions like these somewhere in my house...we just moved so I have to find them again...and for the stories that actually go somewhere I go back to it, look it over and sometimes I even answer the questions a bit more completely.

What does Siam sell? Everything, something or nothing at all. Ah, but what does that mean? It means that she can grant your wishes, make your nightmares come true or just walk away. Who would buy stuff from her? Who wouldn't?......

I think everyone brainstorms in their own way. Some use the bubble format...which I love except I always run out of paper. Some use the outline. The possibilities are endless as point of fact.

Another method I use is to go from the angle of a character. A book I read about writing was talking about going somewhere, sit with your notebook and just describe the people around you to help come up with ideas for characters. There is this nifty outline that you can fill in, both with what you see with your physical eyes and your creative eyes. I tried that...frankly it didn't work for me. I do know people that it works for like a charm. What works for me though is to find a name. I wrote an article for RPing once that talked about the symptoms of Multiple Player Disorder. One symptom was "An insatiable urge to make up names."

That, folks, is my biggest symptom. I love names, I can try to make up names all day and be happy....okay, maybe not all day, but I'm sure you get my point. Anyway, that is often how I build my characters. I figure out their name then I build their personality.

I have a character, her name is Nyx. Yes, you're reading that right. Nyx means two things. 1. Nothing and 2. Night. I picked the name because of both meanings. The psychology of it is a totally different story that would take all night to do it.....sorry, really couldn't resist.

Anyway, once I had her name it was easy to go from there. What does Nyx look like? Well, she's tall, about six foot. She has dark black hair, not the dark brown that looks black in a certain light, but black. Midnight black to fit her name after all. And her skin, well, it's white, alabaster white. Then her eyes, ooh, let's make the gray as stone. Now....why is she like that? She's an outdoors kind of person so logically she should be able to get a tan, but she can't....why???? Ah, I know, perfect, when she was a child somehow most of the pigment in her skin was leeched out.....but how and is that possible? Oh, an easy answer - it's fantasy so anything can happen....

See, there you go, an example of a character building moment from Jess McClary. Cool huh? Now there's a whole lot more involved in the creation of Nyx and to tell that would require a life history that frankly, I'm not interested in giving.

I could go on and on about this, showing examples galore, but let's not waist time. My point is this, the answer that writers give when asked about where they get their story ideas is valid and in fact, the only one that can be given. We can say what may have inspired us, we can tell you how it all began, but where it comes from? No one really knows and personally I think it should stay that way.

Now, if you wish to be a writer, but fear that you don't have that magic sensing rod for potential story ideas, don't. I have a strong belief that anyone and everyone can stumble on a story idea. I can't promise that they will be a good story idea, but I can promise that you can and will get one when you least expect it. The trick to being a writer though isn't about getting ideas, it's about crafting those ideas from being something small and occasional to being something fantastic that makes people want to read it. Think of every idea that you've ever gotten, about anything, like being a child. With some encouragement, time, effort and good compliments along with some discipline, it can grow up to being a fully functioning construct where the wonders of the world can sit and sparkle.