Digging Deeper

I had the good fortune last Saturday to attend the Donald Maass Workshop, Writing 21st Century Fiction, put on by the Rose City Romance Writers (see Meggan's post from Tuesday). If you're a writer and ever have the chance to attend one of his workshops or lectures—do it. You won't be sorry.

A lot of the information was familiar, but it was presented in a way that it struck a new chord (for me, anyway). Here are the highlights that resonated the most with me.

"Don't write what is safe."

Writing what's easy, expected, common, familiar, will not touch readers. You need to dig deeper into the story—and into your own experiences—and write what you're afraid to write.

We—and by extension, our characters—never feel just one emotion at a time. Use those secondary emotions, instead of "skimming the surface" by writing the primary (expected) emotion in a scene, to create a visceral connection to the reader.

"Write the unexpected."

What is the one thing your character would never do? Write that. Now what happens?

Yes, this is a variation on "don't write what is safe," but I can't tell you the epiphany I had as I thought about this question. I'd done all the usual things while plotting and writing The Lazarus Gambit — escalated the conflict, made the bad moments worse, and, and, and...I realized I'd played it safe, for my heroine and for myself. Well, not any more!

"Stories are inherently bigger than life."

Don't be afraid of the fromage! Just be sure to set the context before you deliver the cheese. In other words, don't be afraid of writing "over the top." Readers are engaged with and want stories that are bigger than life.

"Story is an infinite well."

Don't save things. Series writers have a tendency to hold things back/save things up for future books in the series. Don't! Put them in — you'll find more later! Story is an infinite well, and the more you write, the more the ideas will come. If you hold back, out of the fear that you won't be able to think of something later, you'll short-change what you're writing now — and it will show.

These are a few of the things that stood out to me in a workshop packed with great information. I've already planned serious changes to The Lazarus Gambit, and I know I'll apply these to future books, as well.

Deborah Wright
Website: www.Deborah-Wright.com
Twitter: @DeborahBWright
Facebook: Deborah.Wright.Author

 

Genre: A Home for Your Story

Current Project: Blindsight
Status: 87% First Draft

I don’t believe in chasing trends. However, if a genre or subgenre seems to be on the rise and a story or character you’re developing fits like ice cream in a cone, there’s nothing wrong with tweaking the story to fit the genre, IMHO.

For example, a few months ago I was in the process of prewriting what started out to be a Contemporary YA with a strong mother/daughter conflict. I’d come up with plot twists and characters and my protagonist’s internal and external goals and conflicts. Included were a mad-scientist mother; a rebellious daughter; an accident with a time machine; zombies (of a sort); a missing father and brother; and a love interest who turns out to be half-alien (revealed at the end, which leads into the sequel).

But there were ways in which the story didn’t quite fit into the contemporary world. For instance, I couldn’t seem to come up with a believable way for two twelve-year-old boys to break into the mother’s lab. Nowadays, with the security available in top-secret government laboratories, nothing seemed to work. Then there were the ‘zombies’, who seemed to move the story into the paranormal realm. But the time machine and alien boyfriend gave the story a science fiction-ish feel.

Then I took an online class to learn more about an up-and-coming genre: Steampunk.

Although I’d taken the class out of simple curiosity (I roomed with a steampunk writer named Mae Pen at the Emerald City Writers’ Conference), by the end of the first week of class, I knew I’d found the right genre for my story.

Talk about excited; I was thrilled! Mad scientists and zombies are perfectly acceptable characters in steampunk tales. Home laboratories were the rule in the Victorian era, and steampunk stories most commonly have a Victorian setting. Girls rebelled against society’s restrictions – think Suffragettes. Wild scientific theories and inventions abounded. Everything clicked.

Descriptions, settings, dialogue, manners, perhaps even history will all change from my original vision. New elements will be added. My inspiration for the entire story, a title that popped into my head one day while I was feeding the dog, sadly has to go. ‘The Fixer-Upper Boyfriend’ no longer fits. *SIGH*

But I’m okay with that. Maybe ‘the fixer-upper boyfriend’ was never supposed to be a title; maybe the phrase was meant only to inspire one heck-of-a-good story!

What do you think? Am I chasing a trend?

Quote of the Day: Conventions and Genre

Today's quote is from filmmaker David Cronenberg:  "Working in any genre has the same problem," says Cronenberg, whose work includes such twists on science fiction as The Fly and eXistenZ. "You gain great strength from the genre, great power, because the audience instantly knows where you are. They've seen that; they get it; you don't have to waste time establishing the conventions. But then the conventions can come back to kill you because, if you follow them absolutely, you will be boring and predictable. So you have to overturn them, even as you use them."

This quote really resonates with me, because I'm struggling now to tell my own stories within the more rigid framework of a particular line of books.  In order to do that, I need to understand what the audience is expecting from those books, and be sure I give it to them, while still being true to my own voice, and not being predictable.

I'm struggling right now with the idea of being aware of the genre conventions, but finding a way not to bore people with a predictable story.  During our discussion at the last chapter meeting someone said she gets tired of stories that are so obviously leading to a happy ending.  I think the problem isn't the happy ending per se; I think it's that you really don't believe in the reality of the characters--you don't think they really have such strong conflicts and such deep motivations that they have any question about getting together.  Nothing is surprising, or new, and it's boring.

I'm not saying that clearly.  I think it's like reading a mystery:  you know what the mystery is.  You know it will be solved.  You know the villain will get his/her comeuppance.  But that doesn't make a mystery boring.  You read to figure out how and why all these things will happen, and a good mystery author can have you questioning just how the story can possibly get to the resolution--because it's not predictable.

In a romance, you know the two characters will end up together.  The question is, how can people with such deep conflicts, with so much standing in their way, end up happy together?  If you don't believe in the characters, feel they're real and that they have pasts and wounds and beliefs and opinions of their own, you won't care about how they get to their happy ending.  If you believe in them, if you are rooting for them, then it's like watching someone you care about falling in love--you are filled with joy that they finally got the happy ending they so richly deserve.

Now all I have to do is make that happen in my books....

World-Building, Like Toppling Dominoes

This post is a bit of a meander, I know and I apologize. It's kind of like what happens when I research. Going off on a tangent? Who, me?

Writing alternate history is a lot like starting with one of those huge arrangements where dominoes are set up to topple and knock one another down to create a design and then you take a handful of tiles and move them. And you realize that in order for the moved tiles to knock others over, you have to keep moving tiles. Sometimes you can leave tiles in their original position, but most you have to change. Eventually you end up with an entirely different design using the same tiles.

The first glimmer of my current project came about when out of the blue one day I wondered what would the world be like if Queen Victoria hadn't lived to be 82 (domino #1) and what if she hadn't married Prince Albert (domino #2)? Writing any kind of historical fiction—even alternate universe historicals—requires a certain amount of research and it's funny where that research can take you. Because you can't just change one or two things in history (Victoria and Albert) and expect everything else to happen the way it did in our world. So I kept researching and making more changes until I felt I'd done enough to allow for the end result I wanted.

By the time I was done I had a three-day headache, a completely different set of British monarchs starting with William and Mary in the mid-1600s, and a North America and Europe—heck, an entire world—that looked nothing politically like our world looked in 1920. That's a whole lot of dominoes to move!

Let's switch gears slightly and play a little game. Off the top of your head, do you know the difference between a Zeppelin, a blimp, and a dirigible? How about when the first known submersible was built, or the first military submarine? No? Well, I didn't either before all this research. Don't worry—I'll give you the answers at the end of this post.

What do Zeppelins and submersibles have to do with anything? Well, I knew I wanted fantastic devices and Zeppelins or dirigibles or blimps (and aren't they all the same?) in my world. I wanted to get the details right, or at least understand the basics so I'd know where I wanted to change things. And let me tell you, keeping track of the changes is no picnic, either. There are times when I'm so immersed in the world I'm creating that I have to stop and remind myself which history really happened and which is made up.

Do you ever get so involved in the world you're creating, or even a world of someone else's creation while reading a book, that it seems a bit more real than reality? (hmmm...maybe I shouldn't admit that...)

Oh, yeah, the answers. :-)

Well, Zeppelins, blimps and dirigibles are all forms of airships. The differences are: Zeppelins are rigid airships with full skeletons (originally pioneered by Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin). Blimps are small airships without internal skeletons. Dirigible is simply another name for airship (or "lighter-than-air" aircraft). Therefore, all Zeppelins and Blimps are Dirigibles.

The first recognized submersible was built in 1620 in England. The first military submarine was the Turtle built in 1775 and used in the American Revolutionary War by the Continental Army. Imagine that!

Romancing the Genres

Current Project: Blindsight, Romantic Suspense
Status: 85% First Draft


As writers of popular fiction, we have a plethora of genres and subgenres in which to tell our stories. What does that mean for us as writers? How does our genre or subgenre choice affect our writing?

Let’s agree on a few things right up front:

• The primary aim of genre fiction is entertainment.

• All genre (popular, commercial, mass market) fiction involves telling a story through a plot that has a beginning, middle, and an end.

• These stories must have well-defined characters, including a protagonist (whose choices and actions in pursuit of a goal propel him through the setting) and an antagonist (who opposes the protagonist.)

• A setting, or story world, challenges the protagonist and, together with the antagonist, forces him to emerge either triumphant or defeated.

• A theme unifies the story and the characters’ growth arcs (or lack thereof.)

What sets a genre apart?

Specific conventions such as:
• Plot events
• Settings
• Character types
• Focus (Ex. Romantic suspense or mystery? Which plot is the strongest, takes up more pages, etc.—the romance or the mystery?)
• Styles of writing (Pacing, POVs, etc.)

Other factors may come into play, such as:
• Intended audience (Mainly young adults, men, or women?)
• Feelings the story evokes in the audience—especially the feeling the reader experiences at the close of the book. (Think thriller or horror or romance.)

So what sets a subgenre apart?

These are the ideas I came up with:
• Different aesthetics (Ex. Besides the setting, a Regency historical has a certain unique ‘feel’. The optimism inherent in a true steampunk reflects the Victorian aesthetic.)
• Different Tone (Ex. A light paranormal vs. a dark paranormal, a sweet contemporary vs. a chick lit)
• An unusual setting for the genre as a whole (Ex. A Czech historical, an ancient Greek paranormal) or an imposed setting restriction in a genre (Ex. urban fantasy, Scottish historical)
• A blending of major features of two or more genres or subgenres (Ex. A western steampunk romance, a paranormal thriller)

Can you think of any other factors that may set subgenres apart?

Quote of the Day: Does Genre Matter?

Here are two very different quotes about genre from two very different authors:

"Focus in on the genre you want to write, and read books in that genre. A LOT of books by a variety of authors. And read with questions in your mind."

"Genre is a bookstore problem, not a literary problem."

Can you guess who the authors are?  More importantly, can you guess what kind of books they write?

I thought this was very telling.  The first quote is from Nicholas Sparks, named "Best Author" by readers of Entertainment Weekly. 

The other quote is by Rick Moody, the author of The Ice Storm among many other books, a darling of the Village Voice set.

Both authors are wildly successful in their chosen genres, but they are as unalike as they can be.  And their views of genre are, not surprisingly, worlds apart as well.

Does genre matter?  

If you are writing literary fiction, if you are writing for your own pleasure, if you are interested in telling a story without any concern for marketability, then the answer, I think, is no.  It is just a "bookstore problem," something outside of your field of view.  All attention is on story, and story alone.  The readers you want are those looking to be challenged, those who want to meet you halfway, those who want to be taken somewhere new and different and who want to see the world from a completely new perspective.

If, on the other hand, your goal is to reach a mass audience, if your goal is to entertain, if your goal is--yes--to make money and hit bestseller lists, then genre does matter.  

Genre is the label that not only bookstores use, but readers.  They use it to find the kind of books that interest them in the vast sea of words out there.  Do they want a quiet, gentle tale that comforts?  Do they want a rip-roaring adventure that excites?  Do they want a tear-jerker, or an intellectual mystery, or a sweeping family saga?  The reader wants to be able to find--quickly and easily--the particular pebble that interests her in the overwhelming tide of stories hitting the market.

Does genre matter?  It matters as much, or as little, as you want it to.

Finding My Genre When It Doesn't Exist

I grew up reading genre fiction. To be honest, I didn't realize the SF, Fantasy, Mystery (and Ian Fleming!) novels I pilfered from my brothers' bookshelves weren't just regular old fiction. By the time I figured out that some people thought genre fiction (any kind of genre) was something to look down on, well, I was already hooked and couldn't care less. When I decided to write for publication, I knew I'd write some type of genre fiction.

I've said, semi-seriously, several times in the last couple of years that I'm a writer in search of a genre. That's partly because I enjoy reading so many different genres that I've found it difficult to figure out where my voice belongs. I'd start a story, full of hope that this would be the one, only to end in confusion with an unfinished manuscript. Rinse, lather, repeat.

Since I've had so much difficulty trying to shoehorn myself into a genre, I decided that maybe what I need to do is invent my own. I've had a setting rattling around in my head for a few years, but I've been reluctant to try using it because it's...different and I haven't felt confident that I could pull it off. It's sort of a follow-on to Steampunk, only set later in history—around the mid-1920s—and I've sort of jokingly been referring to it as Decopunk. The images from the movie Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow are close to what I see in my head when I visualize this world.

I've been having a blast nailing down the framework of my Decopunk world, figuring out the changes to history and how things work. And, thanks to some timely brainstorming at the last RWA meeting, I'm getting a pretty good handle on the characters and the kernel of the story, including a romance subplot. Best of all, I can't wait to start writing!

What about you? Do you have a favorite genre or do you genre-hop? If you're a writer and like several different genres, have you ever thought about taking the elements you like best from each and creating your own sub-genre?

Genre Hopping Lush

Current Project: Spirit of the Sky
Status: 20,000+ words

I love the topic for this month. Why? You ask. Because I'm a genre hopping lush. I'm not addicted to one genre, no, I go where my characters go, be it historical western romance, contemporary western romance, paranormal historical romance, action/adventure romance, or mystery with romantic elements.

The only key genre for me is romance. And I don't understand why they make people use different names when they write different genres. If you like a writer when they write one thing, I would think their core theme and voice, which is probably why you read, them would come through.

Or not, I like Nora Robert's older stuff, but I don't like what she writes as J.D. Robb. I don't care to read or watch things about the future or sci-fi. But I also read one of her newer Nora books and it was on the verge of too gritty for me. So I go back to her character driven books of her earlier writing years sitting on my book shelf and read those. Yes, I know this about myself while I like a good mystery plot, the other thing that hooks me in a book is the characters. I have to like them to keep reading.

So do you know your genre or are you a genre lush like me and write books for the characters and not the genre?