First off all, yes, I’ve been reading a lot of Lovecraft and R. E. Howard. How’d you guess? This chapter is a bit of homage more to Lovecraft than Howard, granted, but I think there is more room in Tijervyn for the unthinkable and eldritch than for barbarians. It is also more Halloween-ish, and yes I’m a weekend early for that, but whatever. And who knows, perhaps a Conan or Sword and Sorcery-type feel will work its way in. Or perhaps I’ll just write a short to scratch the itch. Whatever. This isn’t what I want to talk about today. What I want to talk about today is Jak and Gust.

So, I’ll go ahead and spell it out for anyone who didn’t catch it. Jak and Gust are lovers. Did I make a big deal of it in the story? Nope. Am I going to? Nope. At least, not any more than I would of any two characters that are romantically involved. Now here is the really funny thing, though. I had no clue they were lovers (or gay at all, for that matter), until I was plotting this chapter, and it hit me that it would be really poignant to have Gust be the one that actually found Jak. Then, it just kind of hit me like a lightning bolt. Why has Gust been giving Markus so much harder of a time about Jak than everyone else? Why do they both not speak Sentatian after years of working with a Sentatian gang? Why were they two peas in a pod before it the fateful events at Dunny Manor? Lightning, I tell ya.

See, when I first made these characters, they were just two close friends. I did not think “and this couple will be gay” when I was plotting out, because I’ll be honest, that just isn’t something I had ever really thought about on my characters. Yes, I was guilty of ye olde heteronormative bias. I thought I was being fairly progressive by having these two dark skinned foreigners that have equal status to everyone else in the gang, and no one really notes one thing or the other about them. So, yes, it surprised me when I figured out this new depth about them.

And you know what, that is part of the fun of writing organically. If I had hard plotted this trilogy out, I probably wouldn’t have really left the room in the outline for me to even think to do this, let alone actually been able to work it in without major rewriting. I love learning my characters. It is like getting to know a good friend even better.

And I could get into a long winded discussion of LGBT in fiction, but I’ll save my thoughts on that for next week. Yay.

I will admit that I try and write catch phrases, although they are more of a secondary to me.  Truth is, people in real life have sayings they live by, be it Murphy’s Law for most engineers, or The Golden Rule for elementary school teachers (which I must admit, I still am not 100% sure what that is).  Heck, even I have a few one-liners I like to throw out from time to time.  So why shouldn’t a character have a credo or zinger they like.

The trick I’ve found when trying to write these is to let them come naturally.  If it is one thing that will kill the phrase fast, it is being thrown out because of a contrived situation.  Characters need to find themselves as you write them, in my opinion, and to decide when doing the initially pre-writing brainstorming that Character X is going to say Y a lot is a good way to make Y a pain.  Cause then you are thinking of how to make Y useable, and it breaks the other characters around Character X as authorial fait takes over to force the catch phrase.

But did the best phrases come that way?  Well, without interviewing a buttload of authors, I can’t say one way or the other, but I’m going to be almost all of the “super-memorable” kickers were accidents or natural growths out of the characters (that they didn’t get looked at by a doc? *rimshot!*).

So, if you are writing, my advise to you: don’t worry about the catch phrases.  They will come on their own, but do look for them.   If a character says something quotable in the natural creation of a dialogue, don’t be afraid to have them repeat it later.  I have found that trying to make characters say things in new ways all the time actually loses their voices.  A little repetition is actually very natural, so run with it.  And that is about all I have to say about that.

There are instants where it actually isn’t all that bad, but in those cases, it typically isn’t called by this term either.  Things such as random dumb luck, a single coincidence (authors are usually allowed one before they get called on being too convenient), or the laws of physics bending but being explained on the why of it.  But, those aren’t what I’m here to talk about.

No, I’m here to talk about the bad.  About the Terry Goodkind lobotomizing his characters so he can write his “philosophical treatise with fantastical elements” or even Tolkien completely ignoring the Eagles as a means of getting the Ring to Mordor.

The typical worst instance of A.F. is when a character forgets who and what they are and makes a decision that is a really sucky decision for no reason at all.  Sometimes these are supposed to be covered up by “gut feelings” and “hunches”, but really, they are thinly veiled attempts of the author writing themselves out of a corner.  And it usually comes down to a bad effort at plotting.  Either the characters are to smart and need to be occasionally dumbed down for the badies to even pose a threat (such as the characters forgetting things they saw or heard only moments before), or the good guys are just out matched and out gunned and need to have dumb luck or random strokes of Idiot Savant-hood.  Yeah, really kills the story for me.

Slightly less horrible is when a random unrelated event conveniently changes the course of the plot.  A person was thrown off their horse and died (looking at you GRR Martin), or a meteor crashes and kills someone, or the peasants who had been off screen and apparently unreliable did manage to show up and save the day.  It is just about as bad as when a Dungeon Master gets angry at their players and has them all be eaten by a dragon.  Not that I play AD&D or anything . . . nope.  Not me. (really, not me.)

So . . . oh heck.  I don’t even know where I was going with this.  Authorial Fait bad! Fire good!  Plotting and character balancing good!  Random meteors bad!  That is all.

And yet, you really sit down and think about it, and the sheer realization of how the stress of situations should affect a person are never directly expressed in a lot of writing.  Yes, people crack under pressure, or show anger, but it is always in a second-hand sort of way.  You don’t hear about the random panic attack that blind sides them out of nowhere.  You don’t hear about strange shortnesses of breath and exhaustions out of nothing.  No, the direct effects of stress are glossed over, and we get the next layer.

Why?  Well, I’d imagine part of it is the author not wanting to feel that his or herself.  I can’t speak for every author, but I can tell you, whatever my characters go through, I feel.  When I write it, it is real for me too.  I write about my character thinking his wife has betrayed him and left him for dead, my heart feels stabbed.  I write about an addict who is jonsing for a fix, my hands get the shakes.  So, why on this green Earth would I want to give myself the effects of hideous high stress?

Still, it seems like authors, myself included, could actually bring up the direct effects of stress more.  You don’t face world-threatening situations with only a slightly ill temper and maybe some heartburn. Alas, not ever hero is (or should be) Jack Bauer.

And to the real life part of stress, yes, I hate it. Who doesn’t?  It never helps you solve a problem, and in the end only feeds itself because the problem is all that harder to solve.  And yet, we still feel it, even certain bartender friends of mine who deny it.  So, what can I say? Have a beer and find some friends to help you laugh.  It doesn’t fix the problem, but it helps in an indirect way by giving a break from that back-muscle-killing, stomach-upsetting, sleep-depriving stress.

Now, granted, a work of fiction is, in and of itself, just one big fib.  But sometimes it works to have the characters lie to each other, or even themselves.  But, just as in real life, where lies add extra levels of complexity to what is almost always already a complex situation, so is it in writing.  Before you know it, you will have the plot depending on internal lies more than anything else, and then it is going to be a painful, tangled mess when, at the end, you have to explain “whodunit” without being boring and more or less retelling the entire story again.

There is also the issue of plot simplicity.  Yes, a lie here or a lie there can add a nice twist, but in real life, people have a habit of lying through their teeth once they get started, and if you do that in a story, well, see the first point I made above.  It can also be annoying to the reader, depending on how much the character lives the lie, without an adequate amount of foreshadowing and subtle hints in actions and words to indicate the lie.

The last thing with lies is to make sure they aren’t really far out there, or immediately contradicted, and have the person being lied to completely miss it.  While maybe this can work for a character who is just that dumb, but seriously, if it is more than a spear carrier, don’t do it.  It just makes me want to tear my hair out.

Oh, and on the real life lying thing: yes I know how, but I despise myself when I even lie by staying quite or omission, let alone full up falsehoods.  What grinds my gears the most, though, is when I’m lied to, especially for no reason at all.

And no, I haven’t been lied to (that I can confirm) recently, just had a random twitch make me want to write this.  So nyah.  Happy Holidays and all that.

Well, research!  If it is one thing that writing is about, it’s about research.  So I watched movies about older people, read books that had those types of PoV in them, and then, I tried to live it myself.  I’d imagine it was probably a pretty funny sight, a 20-year old trying to be somber and grumpy like a 60 year old.  To this day I still say “dagnabbit” and “whippersnappers” sometimes.

I found something through this though, and that was a stronger love of these characters.  So often, the hero or heroine of a story is young, anywhere from a true child to barely an adult.  This lends itself to throwing in a coming-of-age story like it is nobody’s business, but what about older characters?  Don’t they come-of-age too?  Just because you stopped physically growing doesn’t mean you have stopped as a person, and I think it is fairly under-represented of the older coming-of-ages.  What about the middle-aged man coming to grips with the fact that he isn’t a young 20-something anymore, or the old person in general coming to terms with mortality.  For me, there is a double benefit to these situations.

One, I get to write about something I don’t see written about much (or just isn’t in the books I read).

Two, I get to sort of live these situations early.  And honestly, having given the serious thought to my older characters, I have come to think of my elders less as cranky curmudgeons and more as at least having a valid point of view.  Don’t let my dad know I said that.

So, yeah, if you haven’t honestly tried to write an old person, try it.  Sit down and think out their life and why they are how they are, and see how you can help them to grow that next step.  It might just help you stop wasting your youth on the young. (hurhurhur)

And when Pandora opened the box, all of the evils of the world were let loose.  Plague, famine, pestilence, war, hatred, jealousy, and anger.  All that was left in the box was a single, small glimmer of light.  Slowly, she reached into the box, wondering what small light could have survived in the box with so much darkness, and she found Hope.

Sentience is sometimes defined (in part) as having the ability to contemplate one’s own death.  Morbid, and perhaps not exclusive to humans (or “sentient life”) but it’s a good place to start on why hope is so intrinsically human.  Everyone feels it in one form or another.  The good religious person hopes for an afterlife, and the good atheist hopes that there is a rational, “scientific” reason for everything.  The good hero hopes to win and so does the good villain.  A boy might hope that he didn’t come off as too pushy, and a girl might hope she hasn’t made a mistake by starting a relationship with a bang.  We hope that our lovers don’t hurt us, and we hope that our enemies never have the chance.

So, to tie into writing for a bit, a character building trick is to understand what your character hopes for.  What does he or she have faith in or hold out for despite having no “good” reason?  What is that light that can hold out against the bleak despair of a universe that has perhaps been most aptly described in its carelessness by H. P. Lovecraft?  And no, I’m talking about fish-men, but about how it will grind us in its gears without a second notice, or a first for that matter.  If you can understand these things, you are going a long ways bringing your characters into the third dimension.

OK, back to philosophizing.  Want to know how to get into a character’s head?  Get into your own.  What do you hope for, and why?  I mean, really, why?  Why do so many people hope for an afterlife, any afterlife at all?  Not all of the major religious afterlives offer reunion with lost love ones or blissful continuation of your mind (or soul, as you may prefer).  Why do some people hope to be reborn instead?  Or to be absorbed into an eternal tranquility where they can live on without actually having to?  How can an atheist contemplate death (and mark my words, they do) without falling into utter bleakness?

Personally, hope for me is a self-made thing.  I carry hope in myself to be a good father, a caring lover, and successful writer.  Hey!  I can’t be completely mushy and sublime, can I?  But yes, I don’t hope for some “lucky” break where an editor is taken by an odd mood and grabs my stuff up.  Well, alright, yes I do, but I want that mood to one of “I want to publish the next good thing I see.”  And I want that good thing to be my manuscript, and the only thing that can make it good before the editor sees it is me.  Well, me and my small cadre of test-readers.  (LOVE YOU GUYS!)  Do I have any logical reason to think I’m gifted specially to do these things I hope of myself?  Not really.  I just know that if I hope, it will actually help me to make it happen.  And that, I think, is all the hope one could ask for and ever need.

See my reasoning is that a birthday, even if for non “plot” important reasons, is a great way to develop the character and draw in the reader.  Just the way a person treats their birthday is extremely telling.  For example, I typically down play my own, although today I actually kind of lived it up in the PM.  My coworkers did jack for me (although they knew), my drinking buddies did lots.  And my reactions to both are probably very telling to someone who pays attention.  It’s those small reactions and nuance that turn a 3-d yet still flat character into a living, breathing thing.

So, I guess when writing, consider: is his/her birthday a big event to your character, or just another day.  Must they, at all costs, have a cake, or do they not care, or are they non-traditional and want pie or something.  Are they going through what every post 21-yr old goes through on birthdays and thinking about getting old and the future, or are they different or not even at that point in their life yet?  Even to the most stoic, uncaring person, a birthday has some meaning, even if just a symbol of the inexorable progress of time.  Show me that.  And, honestly, in the next novel I write, I think I very well will show it too.  Tit for tat, eh my friends?  Tit for tat indeed.

“Purpose is that little flame that lights a fire under your ass”
Princeton, Avenue Q

Purpose in writing is a multiple level idea.  I’ll ramble about the meta-writing later, and right now just focus on character purpose.  Now, I feel like I’m repeating myself, perhaps from back in the stakes post, and perhaps I’ve just rambled to poor people who sit next to me at the bar, I don’t know, but I think it goes without saying that every characters needs a purpose.

Well, I guess that is a lie.  It is more that each and every characters needs a sense of purpose.  I’m sure I’ve said it before (and if not, what’s wrong with me?): every character is the hero of their own story.  Even if they are just a spear carrier, in a fully developed world and story, that character has their own story they are trying to live.  Alas for them, they don’t always know what it is, though.

Fortunately, we the writers have the power to give them that purpose via plot or conception.  Now, some may say this is too much work.  Why should I care when I’m writing if spear carrier Bob has two kids, a wife, and likes nachos.  I’m just going to kill him in two pages anyway! SPLAT!

OK, that was a little extreme, but still, I can see where it can be contrived to try and deduce purpose for every little bit part that walks on the stage.  But, I will argue (just watch me) that the more purpose you know, the easier it is to write.  No, you don’t need to know the wife/kids/cheese thing, but just knowing why that character is there on the stage, even if it’s a “duh” reason, helps.  Why did Bob pick up the spear?  Is he a good carrier?  Did he want to pick it up?  Was he conscripted?  Is he just pulling his 9-5, or is he a die-hard?  Knowing these things really helps me (and I’d imagine a lot of writers) conceptualize the scene and know where it’s going.  So nyah! Learn your purposes.

And, also, consciously thinking about these things makes sure you don’t accidently make a villain or hero that is acting without reason beyond Authorial Fait, and anything to prevent that hideous and show-stopping trait (which I have sadly seen in far too many novels) is worth it, even if it does turn out to be a little more work.  Little effort for great effect, yo.

See, it is hard to read a serious book with there being some mention of children, even in passing.  They are part of our society, even if they are not typically set up to be prime actors in it.  And, to an author’s perverse joy, they are perfect for eliciting emotions out of us.  Want to show someone is kindhearted, have them help kids, or stop to admire them play.  Want to show someone is truly evil?  Have them hurt a child, or even kill one.

Want the reader to feel these more first hand?  Have one of your PoV characters be that child.  I remember back when I was reading The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, and a good section of the book is dedicated to the protagonist’s youth where he was ripped from his loving family, had to bury the bodies by himself, and then his wondering journey as an orphaned urchin in the streets of a giant city.  Let me tell you, he spared no punches.  I had to put the book down several times reading it for how gut wrenching this child’s life was, and even knowing it must eventually get better–the entire thing is a flash back from the protagonist in his mid-thirties–it was hard to read.

So, be mindful of children in stories.  They are there a reason.  They are part of our lives, part of our stories, and part of our hearts.  And, if you are a parent, do me a favor: hug your child extra tight tonight for me.