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Tara's Corner
A 21-year-old who has been writing for almost her whole life and wants to share her skills with the world
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Writing Exercise: No Emotions
For this exercise, try to write a scene without using any feeling words. No, "She watched him with interest" or "He stared hungrily at the food." This forces you to pay more attention to your verbs and to the characters' actions and body language: "She studied the boy" or "He stared at the food as saliva collected in his mouth."
It also helps you turn your character into a person. Anyone can stare at food hungrily, but how does your character do that? Do they bite their lip, or just let their mouth hang open? Do they put a hand over their stomach? Do they inch closer to the food? Shuffle their feet? Details matter, and they can bring life to your characters.
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Author Review: David Eddings
Official website here:Â http://www.eddingschronicles.com/index.html
Eddings has a way with dialogue. His witty banter is one of the staples of his work. He knows how to show companionship between members of a group through the way they interact with one another and what types of jokes and jabs they make at each other. He really portrays the dynamics of groups quite well in the three serieses I’ve read of his, The Belgariad, The Mallorean, and The Elenium.
He also creates rich and diverse cultures and excels in dealing with the politics surrounding such cultures. Unfortunately, he falls prey to some of the quite common pitfalls of fantasy writing, such as creating villains who are *truly evil* (see my discussion of villains: X) and heroes who can take no fatal wounds (not quite as bad as R. A. Salvatore’s Drizzt Do’Urden, however).
Another problem is in his depiction of women, particularly in The Belgariad and The Mallorean. He has a few strong females, namely Polgara, and I love the way Ce’Nedra rallied her armies, but the way he speaks of marriage is problematic. Almost every girl in the novels are depicted as scheming and manipulative, aiming to “trick” their beloved into marriage. The guys always come across as “dazed” by such tricks, or “in a happy but confused stupor” after the wedding.
The one female who does not “manipulate” a man into marriage is Polgara; however, the strongest (physically, mentally, emotionally) female character in the entire novel is reduced to a loving, doting, willing housewife. It is what she has always wanted out of life, and I respect that, and I respect a woman’s choice of living - but when the only depiction of a strong, healthy, fully consensual marriage leaves the women in a subservient position, that tells me that the author is sexist, and as a female who loves to read epic fantasy, it is a bit unsettling.
His sexism rears its head in a few other places as well. Throughout his novels, the men often cheat on their wives, and though sometimes these men are berated for it, most of the time it comes to nothing more than a “you shouldn't do that you know” and then the question is never raised again.
I had hoped that in The Elenium, Eddings would have risen above such misogyny the way he rose above many of his other writing cliches, but unfortunately this is not the case. One of his characters, portrayed as the most practically clever guy out there and a generally wholesome fellow who loves his wife and family, cheats on his wife and has an illegitimate son. His best friend frowns at him, feels a little unsettled, but then everything is okay because, “oh but she was special.” The friend brushes it off, and it never resurfaces.
So it is okay, in Eddings’ eyes, as in the eyes of many other male writers out there, to cheat on your devoted loving wife, as long as this other girl is *special*. (See also: Ned Stark, Game of Thrones) Nothing more needs to be said. After all, it’s just a vow you were probably tricked into making anyway.
Other than his rampant sexism, however, Eddings is a brilliant writer. His work is a great place to find well laid geography and wonderful, realistic dialogue.
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Writer's Block
Just about everyone has reached this awful point. You just aren’t inspired like you were before. At first, the words just came flowing out with a rapidity that was as exciting as it was startling, but now you have exhausted your creativity, and you just don’t know how to keep going. What do you do to get over this hurdle?
Take a walk.
Sometimes all you need is some fresh air. Throw on some shorts or sweats, a t-shirt, and take a walk around the neighborhood. Walk to the end of the road, or around the block, or to a destination. Don’t even think about your story. Just clear your head for a little while, and come back when you’re feeling refreshed and recharged.
Listen to music.
Music can be one of the most inspirational art forms out there. Listen to some of your old favorites on your MP3 player, or find a new and exciting Pandora station. Listen to music with words, without words, whatever you feel like listening to. Take some suggestions from your friends, or stick with what you know you enjoy. Sooner or later a lyric or a beautifully placed guitar solo will spur you back into the writing mood.
Talk to people.
You can talk about your story, or you can talk about something else. You can call up your best friend and just chat about her day. Call your family and see how everyone’s doing, if anything exciting has been happening lately. Look over people’s feeds on Facebook or Twitter. Start up a conversation with someone you haven’t talked to in a while. Anything can provide inspiration.
Read a book.
Nothing inspires me like reading a really good novel by a brilliant author. Checking out how others create amazing characters and tie together subplots and loose ends never ceases to amaze me. Sometimes after reading a great book, you’ll want to imitate the author’s style of writing, and that’s okay! It can be a really great technique to practice, and imitating a lot of different authors eventually leads to creating your own unique style of writing.
Sometimes, no matter what you do….
…. it just takes work. Writing can’t always be about inspiration, unfortunately. Most of the time, you just have to force yourself to put words on the paper. Maybe your writer's block is only for a few hours, or a few days, but maybe it’s for a lot longer than that. It’s like walking: one word in front of the other. Your first draft isn’t supposed to be perfect, it’s just supposed to be done. That’s what editing is for, to make your work shine later, after it’s all down on paper.
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The Importance of Notebooks
Not every writer has the best memory. Sometimes you just have way too many ideas floating in your head, and by the time you finally get home after a long day of school or work to write them all down, they’re gone.
The best thing you can do is keep a small notebook and a pen with you so that you can jot down anything that pops into your head. You can write down brainstorming for a new story, or a scene for a new one. You can also write out anything interesting you hear or see for the day. No idea is too big or too small to write some notes on.
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Worldbuilding: Geography
Geography is an important thing to think about when creating a world. It determines the climate of your setting and helps you determine what sort of challenges one might face when travelling in the area. There are a few things to keep in mind about geography.
A good way to build geography is to decide what type of climate(s) you need for your story. Climates are based on heat and amount of precipitation. A society near an ocean or sea will likely experience tons of precipitation, though its latitude will determine whether the precipitation is rain or snow.
If you want part of the story set in a desert but another part set in a jungle, use mountains. The wind blowing towards a mountain usually contains water, which collects and falls on the windward side of the mountain, creating suitable conditions for interesting plant and animal life. The mountain stops the water from falling on the other side, and so the other side is stuck in a rain shadow and becomes a desert.
Always remember that most societies tend to form around a reliable source of water, such as cities built on rivers or lakes (unless your race of creatures do not need water to survive, then these creatures should form around other necessary resources). People like to stay away from regions more difficult to live in, such as deserts and tundras, and prefer more moderate climates.
Many authors like to create a map of their worlds before or after they begin writing. This can help orient your reader as well as yourself as you use your characters to explore the area. Even a crudely drawn, general-gist kind of map can help you keep in mind where you want certain biomes and cities and keep continuity.
There are many ways to tackle geography, but in general, as long as you research and stick to the basic rules of geographical formation (or make up your own rules, as long as they make sense), you really can’t go wrong.
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Commonly Confused Words
Here are a few words that are commonly confused, and what the differences between the words are:
Accept /Â Except
Verb; to agree to receive; to recognize as valid; "I accepted the toll from the nobleman." "He can't accept her opinion that the poor shouldn't have to pay taxes."
Preposition; not including, omitting; "Everyone was waiting except the leader."
Assent /Â Ascent
Verb or noun; to approve or to agree; approval or agreement; "He assented to the mercenary's proposal." "She waved her hands in tacit assent."
Verb or noun; to rise; the rising of a person or object either physically or to power; "She ascended the stairs with grace."; "Upon his ascent to the throne, he was marked for assassination."
Complement /Â Compliment
Verb; to match, to go with; "The tiara complemented her chain mail shirt."
Verb or noun; polite praise; "She complimented the boy's fighting style."; "The man loved hearing compliments about his horse."
Conscience /Â Conscious
Noun; morality; "His conscience stopped him from leaving the tavern without paying."
Noun; being aware of; being awake; "He was conscious of the fact that she was secretly a thief."; "She rose to consciousness after a long, restless sleep."
Hoard /Â Horde
Verb or noun; to keep a lot of things in your possession; a stash of items; "Dragons often hoard their riches, never circling them back into the economy."; "The king's hoard of cash was kept locked away in a chest."
Noun; a large grouping; "The horde of beasts attacked the walls day after day."
Effect / Affect
Noun; a change that occurred due to a cause; "The effect of the siege on the city was famine for the citizens."
Verb; to act upon something; "The geography affected how the army had to travel."
Weary / Wary
Adjective; tired; "After a long day of travel, the weary lad took refuge in a local inn."
Adjective; cautious; "The travellers were wary of bandits as they walked through the forest."
Grisly /Â Grizzly
Adjective; grotesque; "The twisted form of the demon was a grisly sight to behold."
Adjective; a type of bear; "The huge grizzly bear reared onto its hind legs."
Exercise /Â Exorcise
Verb; to work out; "She jogged around the building for a little exercise after the long court meeting."
Verb; to get rid of a demon; "We had to exorcise her using Holy Water and a strange incantation."
Elicit /Â Illicit
Verb; to evoke a response from another; "He tried to elicit a reaction from her as he spoke about the stolen money."
Adjective; forbidden by law or custom; "The illicit love affair between the queen and her personal guard happened right under the king's nose."
Coarse /Â Course
Adjective; rough to the touch or through personality; "The king's beard looked awfully coarse that evening."; "She was a little coarse in her way of speaking, using many words the farm boy had never heard before."
Noun; a route or direction; "They took a roundabout course to return to the castle to avoid detection."
Bare /Â Bear
Adjective or verb; basic, simple, unadorned; to uncover; "The floor seemed bare without the ornate rug that usually rested in front of the door."; "She removed her cloak and bared her arms to the guard, showing that she had no weapons."
Noun or verb; the animal; to carry; to endure; "The bear growled as we entered his den."; "The servant was bearing a tray of silver upon his arms."; "She could not bear the thought of leaving the house unattended."
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Accessible Language
When writing, the main goal is for the audience to understand you.
Avoid lengthy vocabulary - instead of “his opinions were picayune”, just say that they were petty. You don’t want to make your readers sit next to a dictionary while reading your novel (unless you’re an elitist Modernist). You must communicate your message clearly, so try not to use any “words of the day”, because no one knows what they mean.
Why befuddle your meaning when you can just make everything clear from the get go? It will only serve to alienate your readers. If I pick up a book expecting a fun read with some interesting characters and get an essay on the mannerisms of the patriciate, I’m probably just going to put it down and find something that doesn’t remind me of the articles I’ve had to read for class.
Of course, there are exceptions to every rule. In The Enchanted Forest Chronicles, Patricide Wede writes a character who only speaks in highly technical terms for most of the books. The rest of the characters get frustrated with him, and usually someone winds up puzzling out the meaning and translating, or they make him use simpler words.
Character dialogue is the exception to any writing rule, though. Another way to bring the “keep it simple” rule would be to use it as a contrast. You spend most of the novel using common words, but when a character sees or gets involved in something extremely confusing for him, perhaps the prose can delve into the more complicated words to mirror the character’s feelings.
Usually, however, there is little you cannot say using words that everyone knows.
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Author Review: Joss Whedon
Official website here: http://whedonesque.com/
Joss Whedon is known for plenty of movies and TV shows, such as Buffy, Angel, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, The Avengers, Firefly, Cabin in the Woods, and many, many more. His work is, in a nutshell, pretty incredible.
Whedon’s characters defy stereotypes and rail against clichés. Perhaps the best part of his work is his treatment of women: all of his female characters are strong and complex, without necessarily trading in their femininity for it. His women are never objectified on the screen as many women are in modern cinema.
I especially noted his treatment of Black Widow in The Avengers. There was a single short scene in the entire movie where she shows cleavage, and only because she using misconceptions about femininity to trick a man into believing she was weak. Her cleavage is never focused on as the central point of any shot, and I never felt like I was forced to objectify her or reduce her to her sexuality. For a canonically fan service character, this is impressive.
Joss Whedon excels in many other respects as well. His worlds are always interesting and complex, with the sense that an even richer and deeper history is lying beneath the surface of every show and film. He understands how to split screen time between a diverse cast so that no one gets left out; again, The Avengers treated all the characters about equally, and though Iron Man had by far the most screentime, it didn’t feel as though the others got short shifted.
He also knows how, when, and where to employ humor, which can be a huge tension relief or tension creator if used appropriately. The comedy of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog creates the drama and irony of the final tragic scenes, giving the whole movie a much more emotional impact than it would have had otherwise.
Joss Whedon has his problems, of course, but overall his movies and shows never disappoint me. Be sure to study his pacing and humor the next time you watch his work.
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Worldbuilding: Race
Not just talking about humans, elves, dwarves, etc. Let’s take a look at race as we know it - skin color - and see how it fits within fantasy.
Here is a small list of things that people will read about in a fantasy novel without batting an eye:
Magic
Dragons
Fairies
Elves
Dwarves
Unrealistic fight scenes
Divinely chosen kings
Prophecies
And yet, if you say that one of your characters is black, people will look at you strangely and claim, “But your story is based around medieval Europe, there were no black people in medieval Europe.”
For one thing, that is inaccurate. (http://medievalpoc.tumblr.com/) For another, so what? I’m pretty sure there were no dwarves in medieval Europe either. Or plumbing. And yet you never see characters going to the bathroom in a hole in the ground.
When considering whether or not to include people of color in a story, take a look at the climate and geography of your land. In places with lots of sun, like deserts and near the equator, darker skin develops among generations to give protection from the sun. In places with less sun, skin lightens back up in order to capture as much vitamin D from the sun’s rays as possible.
So if your fantasy world has two suns, chances are more of your world’s population will be darker to accommodate. If, on the other hand, your main setting is in a land of ice and snow, go ahead and have mostly light skinned people (but remember that dark skinned people can always travel from places where sun does exist, and that the Inuit are still dark because they live mostly on fish, which provides the vitamin D they need).
Always take into account how the environment affects the biology of your characters. It will provide a diverse and realistic cast that people will enjoy reading.
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Worldbuilding: Naming your characters
Names should have less to do with your character’s personality, and more to do with where she comes from.
This is where worldbuilding comes in. You have to know your character’s parents, or at least their culture, in order to determine a good name. Your villain should not be named Diablo - his parents probably never expected him to grow up to be evil. They probably hoped he would have gotten a good education and a decent job, maybe as an accountant, and named him a suitably bland name, like Dave. Maybe Chaz for a little extra flair of eccentric.
Names should always be based on context. You can bend rules if you want, of course, since it’s your story - if you really want a character named Amethyst, then make her society commonly choose names based on gemstones. Her friends could be named Emerald and Topaz.
That may be a little hard for some readers to adjust to without laughing, but that’s what you get for wanting to stick a character with a name like Amethyst. If you can’t name everyone the same way you named your protagonist, you should probably change your protagonist’s name.
For my stories, I prefer to create names I make up using random rules. For one story, I decided that royalty uses names with two to three syllables while commoners use names with one. In this society, names ending with “n” and “th” are the most common - I have Riven, Trellin, Kain, Seth, Ruth, and plenty more.
For another story set on another world, most guy names end in “-or” while girl names end with a vowel, usually “i” or “u”, and all names tend to have hard consonants. Canthor, Rakor, Mitsu, etc. These are just the humans, though. The other race of creatures that inhabit the world, the faen, prefer slightly longer names that flow better, with more “l”s and “r”s - Erianna, Kiel, Mirelia, etc.
You can make up whatever names you want, but if you try telling me that a character named “Sara” comes from the same culture as a character named “Eliandriel”, you’re going to need some strong history for your world to back it up.
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Superficial Character Traits
Your character’s appearance is not important.
Unless it matters to the plot - maybe the character is trying to blend in with a group of elves, but all elves have dark hair and she is blonde, so she has to either dye it or wear a hat to keep from being discovered - don’t spend a lot of time on superficial detail. What your character does is far more interesting than the exact hue of her eyes.
Some people believe that certain hair or eye colors mean a certain personality for a character - red heads are hot tempered, blondes are ditzy, and brunettes are smart. The truth is that hair color determines nothing about a character. Blondes can be smart, brunettes hot tempered, and red heads ditzy. It really does not matter, and using hair color as a shortcut to tell the reader your character’s personality is lazy. Take the time to show off your character and their strengths and weaknesses.
Eye color is one of those traits that gets a lot of attention from writers. If eyes aren’t sparkling emerald, they are ocean turqoise, or shimmering hazel, or [adjective] [fancy color name]. Again, unless eye color is important, don’t spend so much time on it.
Your readers are just going to create their own headcanons for your characters anyway. Movie adaptations never please everyone, because they all have different ideas for the characters’ appearances. No matter how many times you say “he was 5’6” weighing 150 lbs with a small nose, topaz eyes, dark blonde hair, and a lopsided smile,” people will still picture Orlando Bloom or some equally unfitting image.
Let the character's actions define them, not their appearance.
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Series Review: The Legend of Drizzt
Official website here: http://www.rasalvatore.com/
[spoilers ahead]
Drizzt Do’Urden is the most boringly perfect character I have ever read, and he and all his friends are simply immune to failure.
R. A. Salvatore’s work is rich in description and history, but his characters are so “special” that they become bland. Drizzt just so happens to be the one and only good dark elf in his home city. He also happens to be the absolutely best fighter anyone has ever seen. Oh, and he’s really good at magic too, and if he really tried he could probably be the best wizard in history. And he has purple eyes which is really weird for a drow, and no one’s quite seen eyes like his. Should I go on?
The Dark Elf Trilogy, the first three books, are probably the best in the series that I’ve read. They detail Drizzt’s childhood and his past, before he becomes the perfect, highly trained, worldly ranger he is in later books. He still has flaws in the first trilogy - mainly his naivete, which actually gets him into trouble time and time again.
The rest of the series follows perfect Drizzt, with his keen senses and captivating purple eyes, as he and his friends confront evil wizards, find lost treasures, and get into all sorts of highly descriptive combat.
Unfortunately, though two of his friends are only human, none of them are exempt from Drizzt’s perfection. I had a little hope when one them died, but when he returned a few short books later, I had to put the series away in disgust. If none of the characters are allowed to mess up, if I know there are no consequences and that they will defeat any enemy no matter how powerful with no casualties, why continue reading? (It didn’t help that he was brought back to life instead of my favorite character)
The only characters worth a reread are Zaknafein, Drizzt’s mentor/father who was also a good guy but worked within the drow society to survive instead of running away; Entreri, Drizzt’s human arch-nemesis who is basically evil-Drizzt (but not as good because he’s just not the purple-eyed dark elf); and Jarlaxle, a drow bandit who can turn any situation into profit.
If you can swallow several unrealities, such as clever and powerful Drizzt taking on scores of fellow dark elves without even a scratch, and don’t mind knowing that no matter what happens, Drizzt and co will win out and beat even gods and goddesses while wowing their peers with deft displays of daring-do, then go ahead and give the series a read. Otherwise, you might want to avoid this one.
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Write what you know
The misinterpretation of this phrase drives me crazy. I have met so many people who scoff at this phrase and insist that it is stupid - if you only write about what you know, you’ll never be able to write fantasy, because you’ve never experienced magic.
But that isn’t what this phrase means. This phrase does not mean to literally only write what you know. It means you should write about what you don’t know in terms of what you do.
So what does that mean? It means that, though you’ve never been on a grand quest to find the sacred relic that can slay the dragon and save the world, you’ve probably been on a hike, or at least on a really long walk.
Imagine hiking for days. Weeks. Months. There have probably been times when the others with you walk too slow, or too fast. Maybe you’ve gotten lost before, and you’ve seen how tempers flare, how some people insist on continuing on this path while others insist that you should’ve turned left two miles ago.
This is the information you should use to color your stories. You probably wouldn’t want to spend a whole novel describing sore feet and and irritated glares between group members, but you should think about how these things would affect your characters and their relationships.
If one character is always getting left behind on the walks and the other characters make huffy remarks about “if you would just hurry up, we would be there by now”, it might make a little more sense for that character to accept the bad guy’s offer to betray his unsupportive “friends” in favor of never having to sleep on the cold hard ground again.
Maybe getting lost along the way costs your characters so much time that the bad guy slips out of the town they’re heading to before they can catch him. While the characters are busy arguing over whose fault it is that he got away, the town thief might make off with their magical relic and sell it to the bad guy, or to someone who wishes the group harm.
There are endless ways one can write about what they know - about the thoughts and emotions behind even simple decisions - and create an interesting and compelling story.
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Worldbuilding in General
If worldbuilding doesn’t excite you, writing might not be your thing.
Worldbuilding does not only mean creating a new world for your story to take place on. It also refers to the process of people your character’s life and imagining what sort of influences surround your character.
Even if your setting is the real world, you must consider where your character grew up, what her parents taught her, where she went to school, what kinds of friends she had, what movies she watched growing up, what kind of music she might have listened to, what food places does she visit, etc.
Creating a whole new world is one of my favorite parts of writing. I love to imagine where my characters came from and how they became who they are. Here are a few things to take into account when creating your character’s universe:
How old is your character?
How old are his parents?
Where do his parents come from, and how did they choose your characters name?
How did his parents raise him?
What type of government runs your character’s city? His country?
Are there any political factions, and how do they interact with each other and with your character?
How does your character’s city or country deal with other cities and countries?
What religion does your character follow?
Are there any other religious factions?
Are there some people of his religion who do questionable things, or who interpret their religion differently?
What does your character’s community think of people with different views than their own?
What kind of food does your character’s region produce?
What kind of art does the region produce?
What does the community do for entertainment in the region?
What food/art/other items does the region import?
How often do foreigners come around?
How are foreigners treated by the region?
There are, of course, countless other questions to consider. These are just the tip. Always remember that your character is the product of his environment - chances are, he shares the views that those around him share.
If he doesn’t share his community's views, there better be a good reason, such as latching onto the viewpoint of his parents who come from a different region, or perhaps following the teachings of a foreigner he was inspired by when he was young.
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Character Essay: Villains
Villains don’t exist. People are not evil just for evil’s sake. Remove the concept from your mind before you develop your story.
Call your “villain” an “antagonist” instead. The only thing an antagonist needs is a goal that runs directly counter to your protagonist’s goal. And make these goals make sense for a rational person. For example, why would your antagonist want to destroy the world? He’s living on it. Any real, thinking person would realize that destroying the world you live on is counter productive and would likely cause you to die. Your antagonist should not want to die.
And do not cheat by saying your antagonist is “just crazy!” or “has some deep-seated issues that caused him to jump off the deep end into insanity!” Those are lazy writing copouts.
Your antagonist is a real, thinking, breathing, living person (or as much one as any of your characters are). Treat him (or her) the same way you treat any character. Give them a legitimate personality founded on a decent backstory and strong, logical motivations.
Most of the time, people do what they believe is right, or what they believe they must do to survive or provide for their loved ones. Consider a few questions:
Is it moral if a homeless mother steals bread from a bakery to feed her starving child?
What if she steals bread from another homeless person to feed that same starving child?
What if she has no child, and instead steals from a fellow homeless person to feed herself?
The last question is probably the most difficult to answer, because rather than selflessly providing for another, she is providing for herself. Still, one would not - should not - consider her evil, just trying to look out for herself. That’s how people are, and that’s how your antagonist should be.
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Why Clichés Are Bad
A bulleted and annotated list.
They are lazy.
Clichés require no thinking on the writer’s part. This goes for descriptions and plot devices. You have a red headed girl in the group? She’s obviously “a fiery red-head”. The writer doesn’t have to bother coming up with specific examples of her “hot temper” because the reader already has dozens from other works to think about. A person is creeped out? “His skin crawled.” No need for the character to casually cross his arms and rub his hands up and down his upper arm, trying to hide the goosebumps.
They are predictable.
There’s no tension. The audience knows that the gruff mercenary secretly has a heart of gold, and even though she left the group a chapter and a half ago, she’ll show up right when the villain thinks he’s won and save the hero. No casualties, no irreparable damage. Even if someone does die, one of the gods of the world has been watching the group and will bring the character back to life because he’s just such a good guy.
They are boring.
Why bother reading a book if you know exactly how it will end? Why do we care about the sad, lonely-eyed boy when we know he’s going to wind up saving the world with his “unexpected” bravery and gain dozens of friends along the way? If I know that by the end, the cold and logical machine-like girl will have warmed up to the hero and completely changed into a caring lover, why should I read it? I’ve read it a hundred times, a thousand times, so give me something new.
They are unspecific.
Good writing relies on showing rather than telling. Instead of saying someone is “fit as a fiddle”, instead show the person jogging up to someone he knows rather than simply walking, or lifting a tree branch off the road with little to no effort while someone pudgier has been struggling with it for the last 10-20 minutes. You can trust the reader to draw his own generalized conclusions from specific details like that.
They don’t mean anything to the audience.
If you hear a word or phrase enough, it becomes meaningless. How many “summer blockbusters” did you go see last year? How many songs have been “America’s #1 top hit” in recent years? These phrases no longer mean anything because we’ve heard them so many times. They translate to “a good movie/song”, and people rarely make conscious decisions on what to watch or listen to based on phrases like those.
A lot of them don’t make sense.
If a character is “shaking in uncontrollable anger”, then why haven’t they started throwing punches left and right? Uncontrollable typically means a character can’t control it, but if they are just standing there shaking, then obviously they are controlling it. And why is there always a bumbling sidekick who somehow manages to stumble onto, into, or over the exact way to stop the bad guy? How often does a complete clutz actually help the mission rather than hurt it?
Clichés are best when you spin them on their head. Make your red-head a quiet, shy girl who bursts into tears when a dog growls at her but will still reach out to try and pet him because she loves animals. Let a character die - in fact, kill a character in the first five chapters, and then your readers know they can’t trust you and that their favorite characters could disappear at any given minute. Create new ways to say the same old phrases, or instead of just saying phrases, show some actions. Let the characters do rather than just be.
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Series Review: The Bartimaeus Trilogy
Official website here: http://www.bartimaeusbooks.com/
If you’re looking for something to read, check out The Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathon Stroud. The series is about modern day London with a magical twist - magicians have the power to summon demons from another world and use them to oppress the common citizens and keep their position as the power center of the world.
Stroud’s brilliance shines in his reimagining of history. Rather than simply creating a world where everything is the same except that magic exists, he takes a look at how the entire history of the world would be different with the introduction of the supernatural. Countries have traded off ruling the world as the power of their magicians grow and fade. Modern day Britain is still in control of the American colonies, though civil unrest there and in other parts of the British Empire has started to work its toll on the magicians that run the government.
The characters are also to die for. The demon Bartimaeus tells most of the story, though the magician Nathaniel and the commoner Kitty also get their share of the narrative as well. Every character has a detailed and interesting back story that informs their thoughts and actions, and even better, Stroud allows them all to have flaws and make mistakes with very real consequences. For a study of character creation and development, one should definitely check out this series.
What Stroud does perhaps the best of all is his humor and how he uses it to create and enhance tension. The intelligent, sarcastic Bartimaeus’s witty remarks color the series, but Stroud knows when to use his humor to enhance the drama, and when to let the humor drop to underscore just how serious the situation is.
The Bartimaeus Trilogy is a true delight and is my favorite book series of all time. If you have a chance and are interested in examples of great world-building and character creation, you should really check this series out.
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