by Mayumi-H | Jun 18, 2012 | Fearless, Process
One of the themes with which I like to play in my stories is juxtaposition.
Trait (or character) juxtaposition can manifest in different ways. In the last big story I wrote (1 More Chance!), the heroine is a small-town girl who falls for a big-city boy. Nothing new, there…except she was the fighter (and the dominant) in this relationship, while her boyfriend filled the role of gentle artist (and submissive, for the most part). During the course of the story, though, they ended up changing roles depending on the situations that arose, and they learned you don’t have to be just one type of person or another. They grew together to trade off responsibilities and character traits, where warranted.
I prefer these relationships.
One of the aspects of “typical” romances that really bugs me is how women (seemingly) have to be powerful in business, money, skills, whatever, and then the man (usually) breaks them down into a damsel, for sake of the typical role fulfilment. When I wrote 1 More Chance!, I was dealing with pre-conceived characters, so I was thankfully able to ignore that. With Fearless, the situation is different.
I wanted Amber to be a strong woman. But I didn’t want to make her powerful. Part of what Ross (the main character and point of view) finds so alluring about her is that she’s audacious, worldly, and intrepid…but she’s still very much a girl. She likes clothes and shoes and wants to be pretty. She also wants to prove herself (and that gets her into trouble). But she isn’t someone who threatens or emasculates him, which is what I see many supposedly “strong” women characters do to men.
Woman on top
http://bonusparts.deviantart.com/
I’m perhaps playing into a more masculine mentality with this story, and that will likely alienate romance readers. But Amber as she is feels so true to me. I don’t want to make her a genius or a tough fighter or something else that feminism might demand me to do with her, to make her more modern.
And I really enjoy writing the role reversals that come with the conflict of the story. Not only does it show what Amber’s capable of…but it lets Ross grow, too.
I’m interested to see what my beta readers think of Ross and Amber (and the rest of the crew) when they get to reading it. Not that I think I’ll be willing to change who they are. Because I’m just stubborn like that.
What are your feelings on “strong” women?
by Mayumi-H | Jun 11, 2012 | Process
I apologize for the delays in comments and replies…but I’m on holiday in California this week, enjoying the beautiful surf for which I’ve so longed these many moons! (Only two-footers yesterday, and today looks like we’ll get 1.5’s at 15 seconds, but the sun breaks at midday, and the current is constant. Yee-hah!)
Here’s what yesterday’s swells were like.
For my writer friends, a piece of advice: research is great, and I love it…but nothing quite beats experience! 😀
by Mayumi-H | Jun 9, 2012 | Uncategorized
I have a friend whose young daughter is interested in fantasy comics and anime. This is not a bad thing. This friend’s daughter is so inspired by these comics and cartoons that she has decided she wants to write her own stories in these worlds. This is not a bad thing, either.
The bad thing is that I’ve read some of those stories, and they’re…pretty terrible.
She’s young, impressionable. I want to help foster her love for stories and creating worlds with words. I was like her, once, and I know how valuable it can be to have your work accepted and – yes – praised. Because when all we hear is criticism, it often leads to a quick trip to the toilet, to flush our stories and ideas down the drain forever.
I do not want to do that to this girl. Because I’ve been there, standing over that bowl of bluish water with the words of my dreams half-crumpled in my fist, wishing for all of the world that somebody would just understand me. (Cue melodramatic pre-teen angst.)
I now wish some of my ideas were this clear…!
I’ve worked with a lot of students here at university, and I have no trouble talking with them about what works and what doesn’t in their stories. They are (usually) mature enough – both emotionally and intellectually – to understand that any critique they’re given is not a personal attack. (“You asked me for help. I am trying to help you.”)
I don’t want to dash this girl’s hopes and excitement by pulling out a red pen. But I also know that if she receives only praise for her work, that will hurt her in the long run. She needs a balance. (“I really like what you did with part A. But you might want to rethink part B.”) How do I walk that line of supporter and critic without turning this young woman off to a joy of writing?
For those of you who edit, teach, or have aspiring young writers in your family: what would be your approach to my conundrum?
by Mayumi-H | Jun 4, 2012 | Fearless, Persona 4 Fan Fiction, Process
I read somewhere that it can be helpful to take a step back and just look at your work. Not from an artistic perspective or a storytelling or an editing one, but from a visual one. The idea is that, if every page looks the same (whether it’s big blocks of text or lots of lines of dialogue), you may need to switch up your storytelling style a bit. It’s just another subtle way of keeping your readers’ attention, I guess.
So, on a recent revision of my manuscript, that’s what I did. I took a step back, and looked at the first page and a half of a chapter.
I have to point out, here, that the reason I did this was because I was leery about starting another chapter with a lot of textual explanation, as I’d done the last chapter. Anyway, here’s what the initial draft looked like:
The original start to Chapter 15.
Whoa. What a wall of text. It’s necessary text, though. There’s a fair amount of explanation that happens, to set up the minor conflict of this chapter. But there’s already a lot of description and setup that happens in the surrounding chapters, and I didn’t want to subject the reader to having to read these huge intros every time.
So, here’s the second draft:
The revised Chapter 15 start. Looks nicer, yes?
All I did differently was break up the blocks of description and explanation with some more personal insight from my main character, answering questions from other people. The same information is offered, but it’s broken up into what I consider more manageable pieces.
And, doesn’t it look a little nicer to read, too?
I’m not afraid to read lush description, but sometimes you just need to change it up, for sake of your reader’s eyes. What about you? Would that wall of text have scared you off? Do you find it helpful to look at your stories in a visual way?
by Mayumi-H | Jun 2, 2012 | Process
My sister runs an online RPG (role-playing game). One of her players writes his group interactions – including combat – with a wall of text: probably about thirty different actions in one response.
This isn’t how you run a game in person, let alone one played over the Internet, where everyone has to read everything.
When I played these games (usually around a table with a half-dozen similar geeks), we were told that our “actions” – what we did in the game, usually as a reaction to a stimulus (such as a club being swung at our heads) – would be about ten seconds. If it takes you longer than ten seconds to describe what you’re doing, that’s too long, and it requires more than one action. (And we’d get smacked by our Game Master for such a transgression. This is likely why my default answer for most conflicts was, “Uh…I fire another arrow, I guess.”)
Rolling the dice for a fight
This short-but-sweet technique can help with writing, too, especially when it comes to fights.
My first “real” fight scene – a thankfully brief tussle between a spearman and a cavalryman – read like Kirk fighting the Gorn captain. I described everything in detail, which slowed everything down. Then I remembered the 10-second rule. Any action in a fight scene should be able to be read in at most the same amount of time it would take to perform such an action. Time to read description =< action itself.
Rrg. Arg.
Kirk “fights” the Gorn in the episode “Arena”
Of course, you can vary it a bit, depending on the situation. I wrote one fight scene that was supposed to be very balletic, so I described a lot of it. I thought that was warranted (even if maybe it wasn’t; that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it). But most of my fight scenes, I prefer to keep short. Hack, slash, fall, run. I’ve also found that writing fight scenes with a quicker tempo works better for creating tension.
If a sensei and a gakusei (teacher and student) are having a sparring match, they might be talking and explaining during the moves. A slower, more descriptive block of text might be warranted. But in a life-or-death situation, the curses, punches, and kicks should be flying. One of the best ways I’ve found to keeping this excitement up is not to dwell on any one action for more than ten seconds. Really, more than two seconds is probably too long. But I’ll grant ten seconds, to start.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcoVryJmCX0?rel=0&w=560&h=315]
This isn’t homework, necessarily, but take a look at the video above, from the excellent Fist of Legend. Now, decide how you’d write it. (I can tell you how I wrote it…but that would be cheating.) Remember that stylish action should be quick and to the point. You can drop some elaborate moves in there once in a while, but a fight scene is not a dinner party; don’t waste your reader’s time with a lot of unnecessary detail.
So, what’s your technique for writing fight and battle scenes?
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