Category: Characters & Setting

Naming, research, maps, and other fun.

Making Ourselves Believe the Make-Believe

A hallmark of well-crafted fiction is when readers effortlessly suspend their disbelief. Creating good fiction calls for writers to suspend their disbelief as well.

For instance, to write our ghost story we need to convincingly portray a world in which ghosts exist, so we have to embrace that alternate reality. In our Divided Man series, it was extra-terrestrials, nanotech, and psychic powers. In the Music series, it was something else (which you will not be able to guess, ever, we guarantee that), and in the Science series it was immortality. Each story we tell gives consensus reality its own unique twist, which on a certain level becomes “true” for us also. That immersion is crucial for us to bring richness to the setting, and to keep its physical laws consistent.

And that’s the easy part. Writing a novel calls for the author to see the world through potentially disturbing eyes. Could be a cult leader, a mad scientist, a serial killer, or a televangelist. If you’re a nice person — which we’re sure you are — the behavior of such characters seems unthinkable to you. Then again, you’d probably make a rather dull bad guy. Every villain is the hero of their story. They believe in what they’re doing. So the writer must be able to believe in it too, at least while they’re writing. This is still true even if the villain isn’t a POV character! Like an evil marionette, it’s relying on you to pull its strings.

A writing partner is someone who encourages delusional ideation, but only when you’re on the clock.

Specter-Vision

Our WIP is a ghost story (perhaps we’ve mentioned that) and as it happens some of the scenes are ghost-character POV. Our take on being a ghost is that it has a definite effect on one’s outlook, and indeed upon the physical reality of one’s surroundings. Dying changes a person’s entire take on life.

Of course we always remember that when we’re doing their scenes. (Eye-roll)

Okay, there’ve only been a couple of times that we actually had to go back into the text and account for that. It tends to happen when the locale has been previous rendered in ordinary human terms, which would make another detailed description feel redundant (if the current POV character had ordinary human perceptions). It’s just one more aspect of “wearing the right head” to tackle a given character. Likewise if one member of the cast were a dog, meaning they can’t see what’s on the kitchen counters but they can smell and hear lots of stuff that the human characters can’t. So even though it’s the same house everyone’s living in, it can feel like a whole different world for certain characters. (Spoiler: the ghost POV character is not a dog.)

We don’t do real spoilers around here, so we can’t say anything too specific about what it’s like to be a ghost in our story. We asked one of the specters to sum it up for us, and here’s what we got back: “There’s some interesting scenery, but overall it’s kind of a hassle.”

A writing partner is someone whose point of view helps you express your characters’ POV.

The Saga of Gigi and Pierre

It’s amazing that, no matter how conscientious you try to be about looking around all the corners during the outlining phase, stuff always finds places to lurk so it can ambush you during prose.

Naturally, we’ve known all along that Gigi and Pierre will become a couple, and that their bond will be tested. We talked about how things look from each of their perspectives, what’s different about Pierre’s attitude toward the relationship, etc. And we identified the moment when the first test will crop up. What we didn’t do was spec in a scene to show the fallout of that event. Then the prose draft had caught up to that point in the narrative, and this felt like an omission.

We had to discuss what to do about it. The default stance here in the Writing Cave is that we don’t like scenes that exist solely for depicting Relationship Drama. Words like “soapy” get tossed around sometimes. Scenes need to earn their keep, and we love it when they accomplish more than one job. So, we tried to talk ourselves into sticking with the blueprint, i.e., not adding a unitasker relationship scene and thus keeping the Gigi/Pierre breakup implicit.

Thing is, our original concern was that not making the couple fight explicit leaves a gap in the story. And that’s because the real rule about scenes earning their keep is that you include the ones that carry the story. Ask, “what’s this story about?” and, “what is this scene about?” When they line up, you have a winner. (NB, stay alert for too much of a good thing; if you showed it already, you probably don’t have to show it again.)

The story can be “about” multiple things. In our case, it’s about ghosts and it’s also about this Gigi/Pierre thing. Their romance and its ups and downs shape the choices they will be making later on. So, while we don’t want to give anybody soap poisoning, we need to give readers a decoder ring for why those two behave the way they do. So, this instance of Relationship Drama merits a scene, even if that’s the only job it does.

A good writing partner is someone you work well with, so that the soap operatics are confined to the page.

Sometimes We Can Have Nice Things

There is no shortage of story in As-Yet Untitled Ghost Novel #2, and no shortage of cast members either. That doesn’t stop us from coming up with more. We just need to keep it from getting out of hand.

One good way to control proliferation is by giving characters multiple jobs. Recently, we had a chance to apply this to our work-in-progress. We’ve known since pretty early on that one of our characters was going to need an accomplice. The plot doesn’t really work otherwise. Much more recently, we came up with some very colorful individuals that we wanted to put on the page because they’re a lot of fun. There’s no contradiction implied; we absolutely could have taken the “more is more” approach. As noted at the top, though, we already had probably more than we needed, so we had to be mindful about throwing in stuff that we just wanted.

Our way to have it all is that one of the colorful new people becomes the accomplice. It’s an elegant way to combine something that we need with something that we want.

A writing partner is someone who looks for ways to make the fun stuff work as an integral part of the story.

With Both Hands, And…

A map is a very handy thing for a writer. It can help you gauge how long someone’s journey would take, or remind you of the river between points A and B. If you’re using a real-world locale, then you’ll want to keep your depiction in line with reality. If your locale is your own invention, then you’ll want to keep your depiction internally consistent.

Way back at the start of things for As-Yet-Untitled Ghost Novel #1, we created a map of the main setting, which is a place we made up. Over the course of actually writing that book, we annotated the map with a great many pencil marks showing adjustments and additions. It’s become sort of a mess.

So, as part of our preparations for diving into prose on As-Yet-Untitled Ghost Novel #2, Kent is updating the map so we have a clean version to work from. The more we write about the place, the more we learn about it ourselves, so we assume we’ll need to do more map updates when we get to books 3 and 4 as well.

A writing partner is someone who helps you keep your bearings.

Novel in a Bottle

As-Yet Untitled Ghost Novel #1 mostly occurs in one locale. About 80% of the scenes take place in that spot. We briefly considered making that the only setting we would use, but chose not to impose that restriction on ourselves.

It would be very hard to make it work. Not that “it’s hard” is always a good reason not to do things, but this would be a giant amount of work. Even if all we needed to do was eliminate 20% of the scenes (or figure out how to move them to the right setting) that would take a lot of effort. But it would be worse than that, because we would have to change things around in other scenes too in order to keep everything lined up. This book was not planned with “only one setting” in mind, and doesn’t really lend itself to the treatment.

There are certain types of story that lend themselves to certain types of constraints. For instance, mysteries often work very well in first-person narration. The satisfaction comes from feeling the solution come together — all the clues must be assembled into one picture, and it’s the picture seen by the narrator. But there’s not much epic fantasy that’s told in the first person. Having just one viewpoint available greatly limits the bandwidth for world building.

When only one locale is available, you get a bottle episode. Some stories don’t have to stray beyond one place. Strangers thrown together at a remote motel is a standard trope. But many stories do want some room to run. There’s a reason why “strangers coming and going yell exposition at each other across the lobby” isn’t such a well-known setup.

A writing partner is someone you don’t mind sharing one location with.

Getting to Know You

Sometimes characters’ personalities change once you start writing them. Your villain turns out to have a sense of humor. The hero’s loyal ally proves to be secretly sort of a dick.

Outlining is based on plot kinetics, concrete events. To the extent that anyone’s interior state is represented at all, it’s very broad. Probably based on the role or archetype of the character more than details about their motivations. “Bob opposes Alice, so when she enters the bake-off he… switches her sugar and her baking powder.”

Writing the prose is when you start to see out through these people’s eyes. The antipathy between Bob and Alice becomes something you can feel, not just a specification for the project. And, that ingredient switcheroo is easier said than done. Bob looks up at you and asks, “How do I not get caught?” and you sternly order him to figure it out. He does, or when he gets caught he talks his way out of it, or he invents a completely new way to sabotage Alice, and in the process you figure out how his mind works.

There’s also the grit of everyday life, sensorial stuff like clothing choices or a favorite snack, little challenges like too much traffic or too little coffee, and so on. Small-scale things that reveal so much more about this person than we get from the macro plot structure.

Here at SkellyCo Amalgamated Fiction Enterprises, each of us tends to “adopt” a subset of the cast. This spreads out the load, so each of us only has to learn to wear half as many heads. The initial adoptions have a tendency to stick, but we rarely make formal assignments — Kent might take the lead with a given character, but Jen can step in to write later scenes in that POV, which helps round out its voice.

A writing partner is someone who gets to know you a little more on every page, as you get to know them better, too.

Too Villainous? Is That a Thing?

All the characters in the story have to be true to themselves. Their actions in response to a given situation have to be what they’d actually do, not what’s convenient for the plot. That applies to the bad guys just as much as the heroes. Well, of course it does. Right?

Yes, but. This is one of those rules not to be followed off a cliff.

In our case, the discussion was over a matter of degree: how horribly will he treat this particular person? It wasn’t a matter of would he do the nasty thing, but would he do it more than once.

When you have questions like that, the real questions you should be asking are, what kind of story am I writing, and what can the plot survive.

What kind of story: just how cruel is your villain, and when you do justice to depicting his depraved actions does it skew the tone or the direction of your story in undesireable ways? Showing what he’s capable of is important, but once that’s established it might start to seem gratuitous to let him keep living his best life.

What can the plot survive: there’s a difference between choosing what’s convenient and avoiding what’s lethal. If the heroes are neutralized, or the object of the quest is destroyed, then the story no longer works.

Back to our situation: we’re leaning toward the once being enough. (Our bad guy will still have plenty of chances to be naughty.) We don’t want the victimized character out of play for too long, and we don’t want to make victimization thematic.

So, yes. There is such a thing as too much villainy. Don’t let your villains kill your story.

No One Here Gets Out Alive

It might not be as dire as as the title suggests, but very few of our characters float through our novels unscathed. And now that number is even smaller. A nice enough guy who made it through Book 2 experiencing nothing worse than some hinky interpersonal shenanigans has just found himself drafted into service as a major player in Book 3, where his future looks a lot stickier. Right now we don’t know his ultimate fate, but from what we do know, he’s going to be put through the wringer before he reaches it. Good for our story and those reading it, not so good for him.

Sorry dude, but you knew the hazards when you signed up. You say nobody told you? Hey, not our fault you didn’t ask around. Anyone from any of the other series could have put you wise. Well, half of them are untrustworthy. That’s a fair point.

(All this sass from someone who initially showed up in our notes as “boy-toy.” He should appreciate what a promotion this is.)

Sometimes characters will try to just drift off the page and leave their subplots without a payoff. You’ll want some kind of perimeter alarm system: a laser grid maybe, if it’s a sci-fi setting, or just a little string and some empty cans for lower-tech environments. Now, you don’t necessarily have to catch every last one of them. Not on our account, at least. But you do want them nervous. Right now Boy-Toy is giving us epic stink-eye, but who knows? He might end up doing something really heroic!

A writing partner is someone who will patrol the perimeter with you.