Category Archives: Writing Tips

Tween the Weekends: Good, Evil, and Tween Books

Tween the Weekends, Writing Tips

Tween_the_weekends

There ought to be a bright yellow sign that pops up whenever an author sits down to write tween fiction. Caution! Develop with care! Why this warning? Because tween fiction is harder to write than it looks.

This “Tween the Weekends” post addresses one of these problem areas. If handled correctly, it helps your tween read become a powerful, memorable, and satisfying story. If mishandled, however, it makes readers want to gag and throw the book out the window. What is this problem area? The stark handling of good and evil in typical tween fiction.

It’s well known among psychologists that developmentally, children think in far more black and white terms than do adults. Things are either wonderful or terrible. They love brussel sprouts, and they hate whipped cream. (Or maybe that was just me.) More relevantly, people are either good guys or bad guys: there is no in between.

Most beloved tween fiction, even if not written specifically for children, maintains its broad appeal because of its strong good versus evil characterization. Harry Potter versus Voldemort. Percy Jackson versus mythical monsters. Luke Skywalker versus Darth Vader. Aslan versus the White Witch. Even historical figures and ancient myths are made “child-friendly” by simplifying motivations or characterizations and painting individuals as either good or evil. Robin Hood versus the Sheriff of Nottingham. King Arthur versus Mordred. Hercules versus Hera. (That one’s fun to read in its childproofed versions…) As a note, non-tween fiction may also employ the use of good versus evil, but also tends to feature characters who are far more gray. Examples include the popular Game of Thrones series, or even C.S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces.

A problem, however, comes in when authors see the form on its surface, but fail to look more deeply at the characters beyond the form. “Oh,” says this prospective author, “I can write a tween book! Captain Perfect versus General Despicable, here we come!” The result, unfortunately, is ghastly. Once you’ve met one perfect character, you’ve met them all. The same goes with reprobate villains. I won’t name names, but I recently put down a tween book halfway through because its Evil King who poisoned the rightful heir to the throne did nothing except, well, be evil. It was simply boring.

But, you ask, how are Voldemort, Darth Vader, and the White Witch any different from General Despicable? The same way that Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker, and Aslan are all different from Captain Perfect. They’re all people. And that’s the trick. A talented author of tween fiction writes a person and uses him or her as an embodiment of good or evil in a given context. A less talented author writes an embodiment of good or evil and calls it a person. People are complex; embodiments are flat. People are interesting; embodiments are boring and predictable.

Going back to examples from popular tween literature: Harry Potter has anger issues, is impulsive and stubborn, and doesn’t take school seriously. But he’s still “the good guy.” Sandry, Tris, Daja, and Briar from Tamora Pierce’s The Circle of Magic are “the good guys,” even though Sandry is imperious, Tris is hot-headed, Daja looks down on those of other cultures, and Briar is, well, a convicted thief. Even those protagonists who don’t have major flaws still have personalities: Jonas from Lois Lowry’s The Giver is a very different person from Lucy in C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and Matthias the mouse in Brian Jacques’ Redwall. (And not just because of differences in sex and species.)

Similarly, villains can be presented as “pure evil” and still have a personality. Voldemort fears death, hates those of impure blood, and cares for Nagini his snake. Darth Vader fears no one but his master the Emperor and serves him loyally – until he has to choose between the Emperor and his family. The White Witch is eager to claim her rights and fearless when she knows the law supports her, but terrified of the Lion who can break her curse.

These are the stories that children and adults enjoy together. The ones where good triumphs, where evil is vanquished, and where an ending is unambiguous. But just because good triumphs, evil is vanquished, and an ending is unambiguous doesn’t make a story enjoyable. Caution. Develop with care. Your readers will thank you.

Savvy Saturday – Magical World Building, Part 2

Writing Tips

How do you make a world that will leave an impact on your readers? Make it believable.

Last week, I posted about how to start writing a believable magical world by categorizing what magic can and can’t do in the world you’re creating. As a recap, if magic can do too much, then your characters will either find it too easy to solve their problems (if they can use magic), will wind up dead too quickly (if their enemies can use magic and they can’t), or, if everyone can use magic to do anything, the world you’ve worked so hard to build will end up destroyed in just a few pages. And we don’t want that.

But why would the world end up destroyed, you ask? Why can’t you just write it so that the characters do what you want them to do with the magic, and nothing else? That question brings us to the point of today’s post: To make a believable magical world, you have to 1) think through what real-life people would do if they had magic in this context, and based off of this, 2) how magic would realistically affect a society.

 To illustrate these, let’s go back to our music-as-magic example society that was proposed last week. What would happen if music was magical – that different instruments, including the human voice, could influence nature and other people?

To make this distinction, you first have to think through how basic human nature (which remains true to life in every well-written society) will come through in your setting, and contrast this with the societal and temporal differences that make your world unique.

On an individual level, if you lived in a music-is-magic world, you’d want to know as much as you could about music, the different kinds of music that exist, and what to look for in a “good” and “bad” musician. Based on this knowledge, you’d likely be wary of people who carried around a “dangerous” instrument, but would welcome visitors who played healing instruments or other time-honored beneficial instruments.

(This distinction would speak to a basic human nature of fleeing danger, seeking gain, and pursuing necessary knowledge to tell one from the other.)

You’d also probably want to get as much training in music as you could, in as many different instruments as you could master. You’d certainly want your children to be musicians if they had any talent at all, and you’d likely pay a fair amount of money to give them that training. If you were strategic, you’d also want to have multiple children who could play different instruments so that your household could take advantage of different types of magic. On this note (so to speak), most people would likely choose easy-to-play, beneficial types of music if they’re not especially gifted. However, if they’re extremely gifted, they might want to choose a more difficult instrument that would gain them more fame and power.

(This is similar to our world’s system of education: only those who are extremely gifted and dedicated choose to put in the work to become doctors, for instance, but most people know basic first aid.)

People who are extremely gifted at music would likely become “stars” as they do in our world, only more so. They would likely become political and military figures – advisers to the leaders if not the leaders themselves – as well as simply musical celebrities, since they would have significant power to accomplish things for their respective kingdoms.

This could make things interesting from a governmental perspective (and this takes us nicely to talking about societal level effects). If the type of people who are phenomenal musicians – stereotypically emotional, high-strung artistic types – also are the ones who can make things explode, strike fear into the hearts of their listeners, or bring a drought down on the land, how much do you want to put them in charge of? But how can you afford to not give them what they want, if they have this power?

One way is to raise talented musicians to believe that they owe their service to the government, and to be so grateful for the training and gifts that they have, that they won’t want to use their gifts against those in power who aren’t musicians. This would lead to the establishment of governmental conservatories and mandatory attendance for everyone identified as gifted.

Additionally, a government might want to regulate the creation of musical instruments, make it illegal for certain types of music or instruments to be played (at least without a license), come up with a musical code of conduct, and enforce it with deadly strictness. If the government didn’t do so, you could very well end up with weather wars as different musicians attempted to call up contradictory weather patterns for different individuals in a localized neighborhood, with a Pied Piper raising up an army of entranced followers to rebel against the king, or more generally, emotional and material chaos as musicians did whatever they felt like. (However, taking a stance like this would also probably lead to underground musical training – a black market/mafia – for those people who didn’t like the government’s harsh control of all music and musicians.)

As a side note, this is a force of human nature that should always be taken into account. “Power corrupts,” as the saying goes, and even otherwise good people have the tendency to use “special” powers or abilities for their own advantage. Without a regulatory system in place, music will be the downfall of your government quicker than you can sing “London Bridge is Falling Down.” With too powerful a regulatory system in place, however, musicians will eventually rebel against the government. Then see above.

Since great music typically requires learning from a great musician, you’d also likely have different schools of music forming around different great players. Most likely, since geniuses tend to have their own artistic style, these players would also likely specialize in different types of magic. Just as an individual in this world might become a jazz pianist or a classical pianist, or a drummer in a band as opposed to a timpani player in an orchestra, individuals in a magical world would likely have to choose to specialize in a specific stream of musical magic. Within these streams, different theories of how music and magic should be used would likely develop, leading to rifts and misunderstandings as musicians approach their craft from different assumptions.

For instance, one could imagine a martial school of music (a la the Army Band) that would focus on how best to use music to immobilize and weaken one set of individuals (the enemy) while empowering and strengthening another at the same time (your forces). A healing school of music (a la Chinese traditional music) might believe that music should only be used for peace and harmony, that it should be gentle, and that winning a war by means of musical magic is not honorable.

These are just ideas, and a hundred different cultures could be created from the idea of music-as-magic. But the believable ones will share one thing in common: they’ll hang together as a realistic picture of a society. They’ll feel “right” as you build them.

This doesn’t mean your society has to be monolithic. There can be built-in inefficiencies, conflict points, and downright contradictions in a society you make. But there has to be a reason that it still works – beyond the reason that the author wanted the society to work that way. It has to make sense internally.

Unfortunately, creating a believable world takes work to do well. Fortunately, once you’ve created a world, your characters will be able to have better adventures, their world will be more alive and exciting, and your readers will find themselves transported to a new reality that feels as real as the one they live in.

And it’s then that your writing has impact.

Savvy Saturday – Magical World Building, Part 1

Writing Tips

Question: How do you write a believable magical world?

As the author of a published fantasy novel, I get asked fairly frequently how I write stories about a world so different from my own. The answer to this is actually fairly simple: writing that takes place in a magical world is no different than writing that takes place in any other kind of culture about which the author is initially unfamiliar. You have to know the rules, and a bit of sociology, and after that, just think things through and do what makes sense.

A story about a tribe in historic ancient Africa, for instance, will only be believable if the culture makes sense to the reader – if the reader can say, “Yes, I understand why that happened,” or “Oh, I wouldn’t have thought of that, but it makes sense.” A story that has elements that don’t make sense, either in terms of the culture itself or in the way that characters act, will leave readers dissatisfied. (And the last thing you want as an author is a dissatisfied reader.)

For instance, if our characters in a tribe in Africa are portrayed as being hunter-gatherers who use wooden spears and bows, they shouldn’t be traveling by bicycle. Similarly, if a tribe lives near where a rare and valued herb grows that they can use for trading, they would likely try to find ways to either plant more of it (and thus to increase their revenue stream) or to guard it and keep it secret, to keep other people from gaining access to their source of income. What they wouldn’t do, however, is 1) destroy the plant, 2) broadcast the plant’s location to everyone, or 3) move away without taking the plant with them. (At least not without a very good reason.) Or, if the same tribe is struggling to survive a drought throughout the story, it wouldn’t make sense for their shaman to suddenly send a rainstorm to flood and drown their enemies. (If he could make it rain, then why didn’t he just fix the drought earlier?)

Though these issues seem obvious when put in the context of our world, authors often have a difficult time thinking them through in a fantasy setting. Too often, magic is layered on top of an already-existing historical setting (generally Medieval Europe) without considering what the existence of magic would actually do to that setting and the people in it. Alternatively, magic is used as a deus-ex-machina: if you get into trouble in your plot, well, just have magic fix it! Readers, however, are smart and will ask, “If magic could solve a problem now, why couldn’t it solve a similar problem before or after?”

To write a believable magical world, then, you have to start by asking what magic can do and what it cannot do. You have to ask how this existence of magic would affect the society in which it’s found. You have to ask what would make sense for people to do in a context where they had magic, or where other people had magic. No matter how cool an idea is, if it doesn’t make sense in context, don’t do it. (Or, if it’s REALLY cool, then tweak the way the culture works to make it make sense somehow.)

For the next couple of posts, then, I’ll present a case study in world-building to make these ideas more concrete. This post will focus on the first part of world-building: asking what magic can and can’t do.

Let’s say that we love music, and we want to write a world where music is the conduit of magic. (That’s a world where I’d love to live!) The first thing we have to do is figure out what it would make sense for music-magic to be able to do and not do. There are a thousand ways that you could choose to have this happen in your world; here are ten possible ideas.

  • Idea 1: magic only affects whatever is in hearing range of the music, so softer instruments have a smaller range than louder instruments.
  • Idea 2: magic can be split up into two kinds: instrumental and vocal, each with its own powers. Combining the two creates incredibly powerful, and likely dangerous, magic.
  • Idea 2a: instrumental music can be used for “nature” based magic – enhancing the potential of what already happens in nature, or making natural things happen. This would include weather magic, control over the earth and crops, and inducing emotions.
  • Idea 2b: vocal music can be used for more purposeful magic – making things happen that wouldn’t happen in nature. (Words, logic, and thought are required.)
  • Idea 3: music must be played with both feeling and high technique to have maximal magical impact. A technically accurate musician who doesn’t play with heart will be able to perform mid-level magic, but it will be weak. A musician who really lives the music as he or she plays it, but who can’t play complex pieces accurately, will perform low-level magic extremely well, but won’t be able to perform mid-level magic.
  • Idea 4: different types of instruments are more suited to working different types of magic
  •     Idea 4a: wind instruments are best for influencing the weather and emotions
  •         Idea 4a1: bagpipes strike fear into the hearts of all who hear them
  •         Idea 4a2: horns can inspire courage and energy
  •     Idea 4b: string instruments are best for influencing physical health, sickness, and subtle workings of the mind
  •         Idea 4b1: harps can make a person more willing to agree with the musician (subtle mind-control) and can make an enemy weak
  • Idea 5: master vocalists, when they accompany themselves skillfully with a stringed instrument, can cure disease, cause disease, or manipulate people’s minds to their cause; they can also build, cook, clean, or do a variety of other tasks if they compose appropriate lyrics. However, it is a rare musician who is both adequately skilled at vocal and at instrumental music to perform high-level magic.
  • Idea 6: for vocal magic to work, a song must be written that has words and meter that flow well with the purpose of the magic. Thus, a better-written song will be more powerful than doggerel, and it takes time and effort to compose a piece that will do a new type of magic
  • Idea 7: magic CANNOT be used to bring back the dead, time-travel, give immortality, or create true love
  • Idea 8: the more contrary to nature a magic work is, the more skill and the greater the length of a piece that is required. For instance, it would take far more skill and energy to make oneself fly than to give oneself a boost of energy, and it would take far more skill and energy to make a snowstorm in the summer than in the winter.
  • Idea 9: if a mage takes a life with magic, his attempts to perform high-level light magic are forever soured. They may work more or less, but they’ll always come with side effects
  • Idea 10: the more skilled a mage is, the longer he or she can play/sing during a single day, but even the most skilled mage won’t be able to perform magic for more than a two or three hour stretch, and then he or she will have to rest for several hours.

These ideas are just examples, but you’ll notice that if I were to present characters with a problem of a villain and his army who are invading the kingdom, you’ll note that they now have some options that make sense, and some that don’t. They could try simply killing the villain and his army with magic, but that would cause severe consequences for the musician who was responsible. They could employ a bagpipe brigade to strike fear into the hearts of their enemies, but they’d want to make sure that their own troops were far enough away not to be affected. They could attempt to stir up a storm to slow down invaders, but if it isn’t the season for storms, this would be very difficult and tiring, and perhaps not a good use of the musicians’ strength.

In the next post, I’ll continue with this case study and look at the culturally unique factors that would likely arise in a society where magic like this occurred, and how people’s mindsets might be impacted by the presence of music as magic. Until then, enjoy your own reading, writing, and world-building! If this post applies to your world, or if you have examples books that you read that either did or didn’t make sense in their world building, please leave a comment – I’d love to hear from you.

Savvy Saturday – Fantastic Combat

The Quest of the Unaligned, Writing Tips

Question: How do you write good combat in fantasy?

Whenever I’ve spoken with fantasy lovers, I’ve noticed that we have things in common. We all love stories of epic battles, of life or death struggles, of fierce and heroic combat between the protagonist and his or her mortal enemy. We remember and replay in our heads the moments where heroes and villains come face to face and confront each other with steel, with magic, and with wits. We cheer as Eowyn battles the Witch King of Angmar (Tolkien), we hold our breath as Prince Kelson duels with magic against the witch Charissa (Kurtz), and we turn pages so quickly that they could fan us on a summer’s day as we read the final battle of Hogwarts (Rowling).

But how as an author do you write a battle or a duel that grips readers and keeps them glued to the book, unable to hear or see anything but the world that the words on the page are creating for them? That depends on a few things:

  1. The realism of the scene,
  2. The clarity of the writing, and
  3. The personal investment that readers have with characters.

Whenever an author charges into battle (scenes), he or she needs above all else to know what he or she is talking about. If I were to write about a character wielding a great-sword in each hand, charging into battle on foot, and slashing through enemies’ plate armor and shields, I would immediately lose the respect of every reader who had ever studied medieval history or weapons in general. A great-sword, such as the Sword of Kings that Alaric is given at the beginning of The Quest of the Unaligned, is a two-handed weapon and quite heavy. Even so, it wouldn’t be able to slash through armor; swords of that type were primarily used for slashing at places unprotected by armor, or for stabbing through where armor pieces joined. (Fire-spiders, fortunately, don’t wear armor, and so were quite susceptible to Alaric’s attacks.)

It’s relatively straightforward, if time-consuming, to research and accurately portray various types of historical combat. It’s far more difficult to realistically portray combat with magic. That is, it’s far more difficult to portray a viable world that allows combat with magic. If magic is a catch-all solution for any problem, then how would a mage combat magic that’s used against him? This is where careful world-building must come into play. As an author, I have to know what my magical characters can and can’t do with their powers before I can figure out what they will attempt to do, and what will actually happen.

For example, the character Naruahn in The Quest of the Unaligned is a ruahk, or air-mage. He can “pop” (teleport) to any location that he can see, or to which he has been, or which another ruahk can describe for him in sufficient detail. He also can generate winds of his own, which can slow or stop projectiles. This is a great advantage in combat, as he can appear and disappear at will. However, it also means that one might pop oneself into a trap. In addition, while air-magic is quite good at transportation, it’s not as good at direct attack. A ruahk can find himself in a great deal of trouble if he is placed in a confined location (such as a dueling circle) and another mage attacks with a more offense-based weapon (e.g. a wall of fire).

Next, writing must be clear. I’ll give you an example.

Roland the Great strode into the arena. His armor glistened, and his sword shone in the light of a thousand torches. All around the arena, spectators in the stands cheered his name. He saluted them, and then his emperor, then turned toward the gate in the far side of the arena. It rattled open. Less than a breath later, a tiger sprang through the opening. With a growl, he sprinted toward him, launched himself at his face, his ten claws each as sharp as his sword. He leaped backward, raising his sword to shield himself from the beast. He yowled as the blade bit deep into his paws; his blood dripped to the sand below.

Since “Roland the Great” and “the tiger” are both “him/he” in this scene, it quickly becomes difficult to tell who is performing which action to whom. Especially in battle scenes, where multiple characters may be swinging swords, blocking with shields, sidestepping, throwing bolts of lightning from their fingertips,  etc., it’s vital to specify who is who. In this example, changing the nouns just slightly yields…

… With a growl, the beast sprinted toward him, launched itself at his face, the tiger’s ten claws each as sharp as his sword. Roland leaped backward, raising his sword to shield himself from his foe. The tiger yowled as the blade bit deep into his paws; feline blood dripped to the sand below.

Clarity is a big reason why an author needs beta readers. Something that makes perfect sense in my head is occasionally (all right, often) confusing for people who aren’t me.

The last crucial element in gripping readers during a battle scene is to make them have a high level of personal investment in the scene. This means, typically, that you have to be writing about people that they care about, when there is an element of uncertainty about how an event is going to unfold, and that the consequences are real. Readers may care that the left flank of the Good-Guy Army broke over the hill, as the tiny right flank fought the Evil Enemy from the valley, thus gripping the Evil Enemy between them with a pincer movement. But they probably won’t care for more than a few sentences, unless Our Hero happened to be on the front lines of the right flank, overwhelmed by the enemy, and hoping that the left flank will draw the enemy’s attention or else his small force won’t last another half hour.

Alternatively, if Our Hero is back in the castle for some reason, it would also be possible to focus in on Johnny No-Name, a common soldier in the ranks who the audience has never seen before, and experience through his almost-anonymous eyes the terror of combat, the loyalty that his commanding officers engender, the despicable evil that the Good-Guy Army faces as personified in a single soldier who Johnny battles, and either the thrill of victory and power as the life leaves the enemy’s eyes, or the revulsion and horror that Johnny experiences in killing, or perhaps even the shock and pain of Johnny’s own death.

This necessary personalization of combat is part of the reason that I have (thus far) tended to write duels rather than large-scale warfare. Alaric versus a dragon. Ruahkini versus Gaithim. Swords, magic, all of the above. Any option can – and has – made for good stories over the years, as long as it follows the three rules above. Simply put,

Realism + Clarity + Personal investment = Victory.

Why “Tween” Books are Amazing

Tween the Weekends, Writing Tips

This is an “Emblazoners: Tween the Weekends” post. You can find out more about this group of writers of “tween” fiction at www.emblazoners.com.

 

I dare say that most of my favorite book series either are, or started off, as “tween” fiction. What is “tween” fiction, you ask? It’s fiction written at a higher level than children’s books – high school level, typically – but that doesn’t involve what is stereotypically called “adult material.” The type of books that you’re looking for when you’re a ten year old who consumes books like locusts consume crops, voraciously devouring words until the children’s section of the library is bare of new material in what seems like mere seconds. (Do I speak with the voice of experience here? Why yes, I do.)

When you’re ten, and twelve, and even thirteen, you want a good story with enjoyable, believable characters, a story that’s well-written, a story that’s fast-paced and exciting and ends well – in fact, you want everything that an adult reader wants – it’s just that you want it without the four-letter words and bedroom scenes that are so typically found in books written for older readers.

And you know what? I still love to read them. From C.S. Lewis‘s The Chronicles of Narnia to J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter, from modern novels like Lois Lowry’s The Giver and Carol Kendall’s The Gammage Cup to classic works such as Tolkien’s The Hobbit, there are a large number of critically acclaimed and beloved works that, in my opinion, fall into this niche category.

Call me simple and naive, (Ph.D. student though I be), but I often come away from more current books written for adults with the thought, “I really enjoyed that story and those characters, but I wish they’d left out the language and graphic content.” It’s because of this desire to see more books that I would want to read myself that I write what I would term “tween” fiction. (Not that I typically call it that – I stick to “YA” in general company, or when I’m speaking to older audiences, I just say that I write fantasy.) But I do love to be able to recommend my novel, The Quest of the Unaligned, to adults as enjoyable reading material, to professors as potential class supplemental reading material, and to parents and grandparents as Christmas gifts for their tween family members.

One of the best compliments I got on my book was left as an Amazon review written by a pleased father of a 12-year-old girl: “thank you…for teaching while delighting both my daughter and me (and for provoking some good evening discussions about some very important topics).” That’s what’s amazing about tween books: deep enough to teach adults, safe enough to delight children (and their parents on their behalf), tween literature is a common ground where adults and children alike can enjoy the beauty of a well-crafted world and the journey of its characters together.