Royalty, Nobles, Beggars, and Thieves (ConCarolinas 2015 Writing Panel Notes)

Well, that wasn't very pleasant. Nothing like a nasty flu to throw me off my intended schedule. At least the dizziness and vertigo have finally abated.

And very soon, I have a very special feature that I've been wanting to share for months. But for now? The notes I'd intended for Monday, before this latest bout of yuck hit.

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Royalty, Nobles, Beggars, and Thieves

Niko Brooks, Kyle M. Perkins, David B. Coe, Alexandra Christian

A discussion of race, class, and economic assumptions in epic fantasy

Lowport: A book about people in a spaceport, the underclass, folks not represented

When you’re writing the work that you write, do you consciously look for ways to work in those characters who are less well-represented in fantasy, or generally focused on kings, queens, shapers, and movers, because that’s where the epic action is?

NB: Wrote about what it would be like to have someone who isn’t nobility, and how it could shape how the king and people ruling act and rule. Could the leaders have someone who’s not part of the yes men, telling it straight to them and not trying to please them?

KP: The noble action is there, but you do need the people on the bottom to establish the foundation, and work up. Without them, you have nothing, and the people at the top have nothing to lean on. Having the underdog stories is beneficial. If you don’t include them, they don’t exist and your characters who are noble have nothing to fall back on. They help round out the story, establish the universe.

AC: Anytime that you’re writing about a new world, you have to know who those people are, understand the background of how those people work. Those stories interest her more than the ones about the kings and the queens. And if she is interested in the king or queen, they’re always reluctant characters. More interested in the underdog characters.

DBC: Has a history background. The new wave when he was studying was social history. No longer about great people doing great deeds. Needed as historians to get back to the lives of the people who were living the world every day, even if they weren’t shaping them. But they’re boring as hell. So writing stories about things happening that leads to the destruction of life as your characters know it, don’t we risk diminishing the stakes in our books by focusing on the lives of the “little people” rather than those who control the major events?

AC: Likes that in Tolkien, small people can change the world. That’s what people enjoy in an epic fantasy, little people making a difference. The idea that they can change and shape.

DB: The four hobbits in Lord of the Rings are the little people, but really it’s a story about great people doing great things, and the four hobbits thrown in as characters we can relate to.

NB: Yes, but with the little characters, how do these big meta events and major changes affect them, too?

There’s a difference between cinematic text and literary text. With Lord of the Rings, in the book, the corruption trickled down even to Hobbiton. That didn’t happen in the movies. The hobbits realize how narrowly the world escaped complete destruction, and everything would have been fine and no one would have known. Which is more realistic?

KP: Modern perspective: the concept of the little person making changes that can make the large aspect change in the world, but then we have our lives. How much would we be affected? Would the hobbits have continued to remain blissfully unaware if they didn’t go? How small people react to big events, and what happens up top, affects and impacts the world as well.

Audience Question: The Higher-ups make decisions based on power. Little people make decisions that affect their community. Why are the little people stories so effective?

DBC: Even the smallest person’s decisions can have deeply powerful effect on events. The decisions that Gandalf et al make are big decisions that affect the whole world, but all of these are made after Bilbo found a ring and lied about it. One person can do something that has ramifications beyond that. Rosa Parks was highly educated and an activist, so her decision to sit at the front of the bus was an informed and conscious step. But it’s something that’s been highly romanticised.

AC: We can relate to these characters. It is a romantic idea, very loosely based in reality, but that’s what people read for. To escape, to have a world they can completely lose themselves.

Audience question: In the book The Age of Reason: The earth slows its pace, an apocalypse is happening, and the main character experiencing this is who the story is told through. Why are we focused on this one young girl? So is the story better told from her perspective or someone who has a level of power?

Audience member: Likewise, literary classics are about normal people thrown into weird, strange situations and how they handle them. How can we translate this to fantasy?

DB: It can and has been done.

NB: Multiple times. Christopher Paolini, Eragon. The idea that we don’t have these decision making powers, either, so we relate to this. We make up the majority of the population, so we relate to them very much. The underdogs are us.

DBC: And we relate to the underdog not just because they’re they little guy, it’s the little guy with the hidden power, nobility, or talent. If they could be that, then we could, too. (Harry Potter, King Arthur, etc). Something about taking the ordinary person and having them face these big problems that speaks to us.

DBC: It doesn’t have to be the kid who think she’s ordinary and then becomes this special person. They can be just an ordinary guy doing ordinary things.

Aud: It’s about the feat, too, not just the cataclysmic event. We’re just focusing on one point of view. Choosing that hero makes the difference.

AC: Everything in The Shining is told through the child’s eyes (Danny’s), and it makes everything more intense.

NB: Especially in apocalypses, one of the concepts is, how do we save future generations?

AC: Could be why we have such a fascination with YA right now.

DBC: In the movie Hero with Dustin Hoffman and Andy Garcia, DH was a bum and a grouch but he saves a bunch of people, but then goes back to being a bum. The point of this panel: does a hero have to look like a king, or can they be a young street urchin living on their own and trying to make it? How can we reconcile heroism with having higher stakes involved?

AC: As a second-grade teacher, taught fairy tales: and the idea that you can always tell the princess because she’s pretty, and the villain because he’s ugly. We’ve reversed that and we’re fascinated with doing that.

NB: Yet we still have fascination with the perfect hero.

AC: Superman is boring.

DBC: More people would go to Iron Man because of Tony Stark’s snark.

BB: There will still be a population who wants the perfect heroes.

AC: Writes romance, so she sees those stereotypes. But asked her fans, and many want to see people with disabilities.

KP: The hero’s evolving from the perfect sculpture to someone we want to relate more to.

AC: It comes and goes in phases. Right now we’re getting back to that flawed thing. Maybe because we as a society feel flawed?

Audience comment: Even Superman doesn’t entirely understand humanity, and is damaged.

DBC: Now he is. He didn’t used to be.

Audience member: Even bad characters have to have good elements to them, and vice verse. The perfect doesn’t exist anywhere.

NB: There is a physical aspect to it as well. There’s a mold and a look that we still want to fit into.

Audience member: People want more diversity. That we’re having this conversation matters. We want to see the Spikes, too. Diversity not just in the writers, but the main characters, is good.

DBC: It’s hard to look at Legolas and see any flaws. The good characters are white bread, and the bad ones are evil incarnate. You can find examples of it.

Audience member: Fantasy is growing up, now we’re seeing more complex characters.

DBC: Stephen R. Donaldson wrote Thomas Covenant. The books are difficult reads and he’s a disgusting character, but he’s the prototype for the interesting antihero. It can be these guys who are dark as hell and do heroic things, and it changed his view of fantasy.

AC: Michael Moorcock’s Elric books. A scarred-up albino. He’s not necessarily a hero, he’s just trying to get through.

Audience Question: In the same vein: making thieves and assassins the hero or protagonist? Is there a way to make the murderer the protagonist and still have them do awful things?

AC: Dexter.

NB: Someone born to be a killer uses his skills to keep others safe: Weapon of Flesh.

AC: Remember, nobody is the villain of their own story. You have to write from the pov of the character you’re writing from. Maybe the person in your story isn’t necessarily a good person, but they accidentally do good things.

DBC: In his Winds of the Forelands – he has an assassin character, working at odds from the protagonist, but still a sympathetic character because he disguises himself by wandering around as a traveling musician, because he loves music. He [DBC] spent time working on the character for this reason. It’s about showing human beings doing what they do even if it’s against what your protagonist believes.

Audience Question: But to make people want to root for him, want them to succeed, you have to find some connectivity with that character. How can you manage it?

DB: That’s Thomas Covenant. He’s an awful person, but in the end you want to root for him because he’s trying to save the world.

AC: The Joker. A deplorable human being. He sticks with us, and people love him.

Audience member: You have to have a fantastic villain to make the hero strong enough to fight them.

Audience question: But are they just victims of their circumstances doing what they can to survive?

AC: Everybody has the capacity to be good.

Audience member: Breaking Bad.

AC: There’s a certain amount of escapism in wanting to do all the terrible things. Maybe that’s why the Joker and Breaking Bad can do that.

KP: Office Space, too.

Breathing Life into Your Characters (ECCC 2014 Writing Panel Notes)

Aaand we're back, with more great notes from last year's Emerald City Comic Con! I really enjoyed the insight here in this great Q&A panel about character.

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Breathing Life into Your Characters

Emma Michaels, Marie Frances, Cornelia Funke

Moderator: Heather Reasby

With short stories: do you have tips and tricks to help add quick depth to a character?

EM: Put them into a situation that tests them. The situation and how they react to it is vital.
MF: Come in with a backstory, what character they’ve developed..
CF: The leaner you can get, the better – you can get so brilliant, sometimes do the first draft fast, rewrite it many times, then read it aloud. Keep some secrets (don’t explain too much). Have them contradictory, have a lot of fun with it, then work on the language. If the language doesn’t work, the story won’t work. Don’t think about how it would sell. Feel like a magician when you do it, and it will be fine.

Do you have any secret weapons or go-to techniques, best ways to get into characters and really develop them?

CF: A character sometimes just comes to you. Keeps a character bible by hand, images of characters she doesn’t know yet – don’t just use actors as models because it’s so dangerous, the characters are already taken and overused.
MF: Characters just come to her. Sees someone who looks distinctive and the character will come to her. Allow the character to surprise you.
EM: Don’t force it if the storyline and character don’t mesh. Do a lot of people watching. Think about the people you love, and even they have flaws.
CF: Every character has a little bit about yourself.

What are some tips for trying to understand in a way characters, especially main characters, that are very different from you?

CF: Expect that they will lie to you, surprise you. (Doesn’t believe in writer’s block, it’s just that the story tricked you and you are stymied by the surprise.)
EM: Observe, make sure the characters don’t give you illusions about them, don’t let them become more than who they are (characteristic wise). Don’t be afraid to test the limits, or to test your own limits as well. Write like only you can write.

Characters more interesting in story you put them in – how do you fix that?

EM: Don’t be afraid to not think of them so much as your friends but of yourself as an onlooker. Put them in extreme situations and circumstances.
CF: Don’t overdo plot. Find out what your style is.
EM: Don’t be afraid to have your fiction be honest. Don’t just write tailored work. Write what you’re actually feeling.
CF: Don’t expect overnight success. Also, characters are only interesting if they have an interesting story.

What comes first, the situation or the character? Tips for characters for both types?

CF: Both work. Can make the location, have a canvas on which you paint, then the location will give you the character. The richness of the location can sometimes evoke characters. But sometimes a character will step into your life and demand a story.

How do you illustrate a character’s flaws when writing young, flawed characters – especially younger ones?

CF: Don’t write the flaws down. Young characters know who they are. They’re not as masked, they’re clever. The older we get we put ourselves in a box. A child is a hundred people at the same time, and is okay with that. Grownups question everything they say, how they are perceived. Children are in many ways our better selves. Make them as clever and clear as you want. They are surprising with how clever and how much they know.

EM: Sometimes story or character comes from an object.

CF: Often it’s back and forth: story feeds into character into story. Every story is another challenge. They’re so interwoven.

Tips on making characters sound different?

MF: Listen to the characters, let them say what they’re going to say, give them the freedom to do that and evolve on their own. They’ll develop their own voices. Don’t let them completely derail the story, wrangle as necessary, but do listen to them.

EM: Choose something you know they’d be judged based off of, and show that it’s actually really beautiful, fascinating, wonderful.

CF: Watching the world from a slightly different angle is a privilege.

EM: Even getting to see the world as uglier is a privilege.

How do you approach a character with an accent?

CF: Can’t do it in German – doing so is perceived as dumb, making fun of the character.

EM: The same way the character comes to her. Also, if a different language is your first language, the order of the way you think about things, the thought pattern, is different. The character’s language can be simpler, more complex, more poetic.

HR: The devil is in the details. Look at word order but don’t throw a heavy amount of dialect to overwhelm the reader.

CF: Different speakers use word choice differently, too.

How do you convey to audience what the character is thinking, get into characters’ heads, to your audience?

CF: Complete inner monologue chapters, association, remembering, but do it indirectly but have it echo from an object or incident. Inner dialogue.

EM: You can explain things without spelling them out – a word here and there can hint at their thought process. Also, tries switching between first and third person to get the outside, the inside perspectives to see it anew and then choose.

How do you avoid writing stereotypes?

MF: Think outside the box, make characters for the fun of it. See how they evolve.

EM: Look beyond what the stereotype shows. There’s always a reason for something, something that caused something, the way things are.

CF: Sometimes people are actually a stereotype. Some people hide from themselves, wear the mask, want to be just the stereotype. Can use for comedic effect.

What about giving a villain an in-depth story?

CF: The villains are the ones she knows last. Not cliché. Voldemort is a good villain. The ones that surprise you.

MF: Loves writing complex villains with understandable motivation. Usually villains act and heroes react. Villain should be complex, more interesting, to explain why they’ve turned to those actions. The best villains she’s ever read had something redeemable about them, something likeable, so you can sympathize.

EM: Think about the villains in your life. Who’s made themselves a villain to you and how did they do it, how did they become a villain in your eyes? Sometimes it’s about them making a mistake at the wrong moment. Sometimes villains view themselves as having messed up, and working that into a villain can help you know why they’re doing what they’re doing.

CF: Sometimes we underestimate evil. You think there can’t be as much evil in the world as you hear about. It’s easy to romanticize villains. There’s a danger in romanticizing violence, evil, understanding every crime as something we all do. So when you create a character, don’t necessarily make them charismatic. Evil isn’t romantic. It’s horrible. True evil is crippled, and someone who doesn’t love, feel compassion, is a dark hole. Try to make them hateful, have the reader want them to die. Have respect for that. See the potential in evil that it is crippled and not glamorous.

CF: Write for the passion, not to trends.

The Hero’s Journey: Writing Fiction with a Female Protagonist (ECCC 2014 Writing Panel Notes)

DonRocko and I have started going to Emerald City Comic-Con (ECCC). This year was the first time I realized there were also writing panels at the convention. And wow, was there ever some great stuff to attend! The next few sets of notes will cover what I'd hoped to get to sooner ... but such is life. *sigh* For a more detailed excuse, please see my first post of the year.

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The Hero’s Journey: Writing Fiction with a Female Protagonist

Sharon Skinner, Jenn Czep

Moderator: Bob Nelson (publisher, Brick Cave Books)

“We are people first and gender comes after.” – Sharon Skinner

How does the Monomyth feed into the stories today?

The Hero’s Journey: Joseph Campbell’s original monomyth

-          Feeds into our need for story and the way we tell story, relate to story

-          How it helps us to learn and grow

-          But Campbell was writing as a man at a time when all of our heroes were men

-          So his idea of the hero’s journey is still in many ways one-sided.

Call to adventure – takes you out of comfort zone

-          At some point you go into a new realm

-          Adventures, helpers, etc

-          At some point you succeed, and bring something back to your people

The Heroine’s Journey

-          Basic premise: the female’s inner journey is internal

-          More emotional

-          Not necessarily an adventure

What Matters Here
-          A hero’s journey needs both the masculine and feminine perspectives

-          The more balanced a hero’s journey is, the more satisfying it is

-          So it may involve internal journeys, yes, but also external journeys.

-          The most satisfying journeys encompass both the internal and the external.

BN: Jenn, Blackstrap is a female captain pirate at a time not known for female captain pirates. Want to talk about it?

-          JC: Not true. Piracy was not all men.

-          One of the first female entrepreneurial choices was piracy.

-          Women know how to run a business. But they weren’t allowed to own business, or have rank, unless they married.

-          But they had the skills, so piracy was an excellent option.

BN: Sharon, Kira comes from a very specific examination of the feminine hero. Want to talk about it?

-          Kira came as a character SS followed around

-          Her stories are very layered. A story, patriarchal norming, navigation of the established system and taking the system apart

-          Used Kira’s story for thesis in Master’s in Creative Writing

-          Fantasy and SF as resistant text for young people – resistant text that pushes back from the social messages youth are getting – gives young women a place to go

Audience Question: Resistive text: what you were reading years ago was male-based. Did that make it difficult to get inside the minds of your characters?

-          JC: started reading a balance – Wrede’s Dealing with Dragons

-          Also, reading male characters – you can relate to them, that sense

-          SS: Read a lot of Heinlein, etc, very patriarchal bases, male SFF – didn’t hurt her any, but didn’t clue her in enough when she wrote the first version of her book, The Nelig Stones. Fell into the female protagonist trap – where if you’ve been fed these messages all your life you write the female that needs to be rescued. But also still reads male character stuff. Nick Fury YA,

Audience Question: JC, when researching Blackstrap, did you have difficulty researching female pirates?

-          Yes and no. Western pirates, yes, but Eastern pirates had a wealth of information

-          Also, has a friend with a PHD in pirate history

-          Some of what the women historically did was crazier than the stuff she wrote

Audience Question: So what constitutes a strong female character?

-          A strong female character isn’t much different from her male counterpart

-          She’s someone who owns their own destiny by the end of the book

-          They have to own it and they have to be willing to own it

-          As a writer, write a character who can be tempered through the challenges of the fire they face.

-          Character needs to start in a place where they have room to grow and become that character they need to be at the end of the book

-          They have what they need to have, but need to be tempered by the fires of all of the obstacles they face

-          And the fire that tempers them is what makes them their own instrument to take on their own destiny

-          That’s the most satisfying – so what can grow into so they need to be at the end of the book

Audience Question: Do you need to be masculine to be a hero?

-          JC: Not the case at all.

-          Game of Thrones: Strong female characters are strong in every way a fem character can be strong. Even Cersei. A strong maternal character. Even if it means killing everyone else off. This is a strength women hold.

Audience Question: Masculine in the sense of being nice, instead of just being perceived as bitchy?

-          Sansa’s trying to fit into society, play by society’s rules with the cards she’s been dealt

-          About being in their environment, finding their way within the system – they can be disliked, but they’re doing what they can with what they have

Audience Question: Resistant texts – how do you write female antagonists without parroting the bad guys in society?

-          SS: Has a female character in Healer’s Journey doing what she thinks she needs to do to make her way in the world, but people hate her – what matters is that the character is real enough.

-          The key is keeping it real, and making your characters fully faceted individuals.

-          If an antagonist is too all bad, they can come across as not real. Make them real.

Audience Question: Sansa as a Strong Female Character – she has very little agency, everything’s directed by outside forces. Can you write a character who is strong despite choices being made by outside forces?

-          Can be done, but again, you just have to make them real

-          Ask yourself: whose journey is it really?

Audience Question: What typically do male authors get wrong from a female perspective, and can you think of any that get it right?

-          Joss Whedon. But he gets it all right.

-          Nowadays we’re seeing more male authors who are getting it more right.

-          Back, looking at comics, they’re not getting it right. 

-          Garth Nix – Sabriel – incredible protagonist

-          Neil Gaiman and Arthur Golden also get it right

-          Example of getting it wrong: CS Lewis – Perelanda series – “Now, because I’m becoming a real woman, I can give up my frivolous dreams and become a real mother.”

Audience Question: Do you find it harder writing internal strength, or external strength?

-          SS: It’s the balance of both matters. In the character arc, growth must be internal and external for them to become that instrument. Sometimes that means learning to swordfight, sometimes that means learning to nurture.

-          D&D books, not much internal growth – some readers like that

-          Some prefer emotional rollercoaster

-          She likes both.

Audience Question: Resistant texts – how to make a character likeable but strong – we also should read widely. Can you think of texts we shouldn’t read?

-          SS: Twilight. No real character arc. Prime example of this.

-          The Host – likewise, the character didn’t change.

-          Very escapist

-          This is a matter of taste

-          Mentor texts: You read widely, eclecticly, to learn how to do it well, and then you also read ones where you learn what NOT to do. Texts you can decipher and dissect. Go back and read those pages that teach you.

-          As a painter, you learn to copy the masters. As a writer, when she had to learn to write a battle scene, she picked several battle scenes from books she’d read and liked, then picked them apart for how they pulled it off. Copy the techniques. Example: George R.R. Martin gives an eagle view of the battle, then makes it personal.

-          Likewise if you get thrown out of the narrative when reading a book, think of it as a bad example, and *don’t* do that.

Audience Question: What do you think of writing trans* protagonists?

-          JC: Hasn’t written any, but it’s important to remember that the journey is still just as much about the internal and external journeys. It’s about being human first. Gender isn’t about what they are, it’s about who they are, so you can show what growth there is, and what character arc there is, regardless of who they are. It’s a different character arc for that person.

-          SS: It’s all about love. About being human, not being afraid to take that leap, especially when you’re going into a territory your character clearly knows, even if you don’t.

Audience Question: Exercise in gender perspective – wrote a scene with a male protagonist, then changed all the pronouns to female. The story completely changed. Is this how society views it? Or do you need to write men and women differently?

-          SS: When you’re writing a character, it’s about how effeminate or masculine you want your character to be, male or female, and the strengths you choose to give them. Not so much about gender as it is about their masc/fem sides of who they are

-          JC: The reader will read it in their own way. Pirate books – many of the characters go either way, and it’s not about sexual pref but more about power, and with one villain with a fem harem, it was about having power over others. But if she wrote that same character as male, it would be a flat character. But some will read it differently.

-          Sharon: We all see the word though our own lenses. As a writer we hope that our readers get lost in the world, but if our readers see it slightly differently.

-          Sharon: Human motivation is what drives us all. It’s all about motivation. You have to make sure the motivation behind what your characters are doing is what makes them real.

How to pull away from the tropes?

-          JC: One example: Cimorene – rebellious princess, but with mad skillz. Arya Stark, too.

-          SS: Take the trope and turn it on its ear.

-          Take the cliché character and change something drastically about them, give them some major skill or huge character flaw, an Achilles heel, and switch it up.

-          Character tests and sheets are helpful tools, but don’t let them run your life or tell you how to write or not to write.

-          The biggest tool is to write your heart out. If you don’t enjoy spending time with your characters, then you need to rethink what you’re doing.  But don’t let the rules and the tools get in the way.

-          Every book will tell you how to do it, but that’s just how the one author did it. We’re artists, first.

Messages to men when they grow up: about being strong, etc. But if you’re writing strong female characters, is it a challenge to write strong males?

-          Characters should balance each other out.

-          The difficulty was not in making the male characters weaker or the female characters overpoweringly strong – it’s about making them both strong in diff ways.

-          About being human, not about gender.

-          JC: Male characters aren’t necessarily unlikable if they’re very strong or very weak, but something should offer assistance to fem character. If they’re weaker, there’s got to be a strength within them that isn’t a physical strength. They could be mentally adept.

-          SS: Stumbled in allowing both male and female characters to be their own people – stumbled because didn’t want her character to have too much help, needed more tempering – want her to have a character arc.  Struggled with figuring out who’d the characters would be together, how their strengths and weaknesses would play off one another. Figuring it out now.

When writing trans* or intersex characters, or say aliens without identifiable sex or gender – How do you avoid problems  with them becoming just objects for traditional characters who bounce their gender issues off other characters?

-          SS: whatever issues they struggle with, temper them, put them through the fire.

-          Get back inside the head of your character and find out what that journey really is.

So what’s the key to writing a female hero?

-          SS: Butt In Chair. Make the person human. Whoever they are, whatever they are, make them human, as real as possible with strengths and flaws.

-          Make sure you throw lots of obstacles and challenges at the characters. Temper them as much as possible. Make them the sword they need to be at the end of the story.

-          JC: Pay attention to people. The realistic characters you’re surrounded by.

-          Characters are very much us, but also the people around us. If you know a strong woman in your life, pay attention to what makes them strong.