Author: Nat

Apr 3, 2008 by

Naming Characters

Okay, so I’m stealing post ideas from LibraryThing, because the writer-readers group is full of people asking good questions.

For the most part, I try and give characters ordinairy names, often old friends or people I went to school with. No one I know too well, in case they ask questions! Preferably names belonging to multiple people I know. Sometimes, I repeat names of minor characters, especially common names, because that’s how real life works. Honestly, it gets a little creepy when there are over a hundred named characters in a series and not one repetition of either fore or surname.

I only have a few charactes with made up names, despite being a fantasy writer; Laina and Vaughniter Fale. ‘Vaughniter Fale’, as a name, came to me in a dream, which mostly proves that dreams are a bad source of names. ‘Laina’, despite a change in naming philosophy since I named the character, is going to stay, but the rest of the family will have equally unusual (bu real) names. Consistency in naming, I feel, is important.

I deliberately avoid giving characters ‘meaningful’ names; I want my readers to decide based on my writing, not my naming, whether characters have certain traits. Much as I love latin, and etmology in general, name meanings are hard to do tactfully enough not to annoy bright readers; if Dolores is depressed, I’m going to be annoyed with the author for showing off. The same goes for names with certain connotations, especially historical names. Is Alexander a bit of a conquerer? A redhaired, left handed, bisexual conquerer? Do I want to slap some subtlty into you?

Having said this, I have stuck myself with a family in which all of the characters have ‘virtue’ names. It’s actually an improvement on Arthurian names (in the above paragraph, I am very much speaking from experience), which were chosen based on Bernard Cornwell’s characterisation in his Arthurian series. I changed this, but it was important to me to choose a series of names with consistency; it’s a family to which lineage is very important. That I chose virtues was almost artibtrary; an ancestor of the family was called Trust, and it seemed like a good place to start. The difficulty was in choosing names that neither reflected nor rejected their personalities; I’ve gone for fairly generic traits. It turns out, masculine virtue names are hard to come by in English speaking countries, and once I’d used Earnest and Valiant (thank you Oscar Wilde and terrible 80s Arthurian cartoons) I had to make up another for my main character.

It was Diligent, in the end. Positive, but not predictive.

I’ve also been naming characters in another project after fantasy heroines. I started out with traditional and literary characters, but that’s overused, so any fantasy film in the last twenty years is being explored. Badly. I’m probably going to change my mind about this (as I have done every time I’ve started a new draft of this story – two different sisters have been named Lucy and I can no longer remember which I’m refering to without the story to refer to).

In my pulpy projecy I made a point of giving the characters fairly cheesy names, to suit the tone of the story. Honey Smith and Dirk Miles; the names make me happy. They aren’t going to get changed, not unless there’s a real Honey Smith or Dirk Miles who’ve done something massively famous that I’ve managed to miss. That has happened to me before; it’s always worth googling names, just in case.

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Apr 3, 2008 by

Fixed!

Thanks to my lovely co-host, SignificantKinks is back online. It’s absence was apparently blogger’s fault; the present of blogger in the ‘allow hotlinks’ (which I’d done in the hopw it’d sort the ftp issues) list caused the problem. Anyway, darling person fixed it, after I’d tried deleting the whole site and the subdomain and reuploading both.

I’m keping my blog on blogspot for now; though I’d love to reimbed it, I don’t think it’s worth doing until I find something a little more reliable. Or learn enough PHP to unstand what cutenews is on about.

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Apr 1, 2008 by

Tenses and Voice

I’ve been chatting to kvtaylor about some pieces I intend to submit soon, and we’ve been exploring tenses. It’s a very interesting discussion, and I thought I’d expand on it here.

For clarification before we being: ‘past’ refers to imperfect, perfect, pluperfect and the rest, for example, and ‘first’, ‘second’ and ‘third’ person can be singular or plural.

Now, as the monologues I wrote for my degree reveal, I like to play with voice as much as tense. Unusual combinations of the two, and so on. Of course, they’re all quite short (the limit for the three combined was 5000 words, which naturally kept them brief). Tense is interesting to experiment with in short pieces, but in long the unfamiliarity of certain combinations can create an unintended challenge for the reader.

For example, when it comes to the Present tense (Third Person limited) in longer fiction, I’ve tried it in something about 20,000 words long, and it’s tiring to read (which, in that, is deliberate, considering the point of view). It’s not something I’d try in a novel or novella without a very definite reason before beginning. In something novel length it’d have to be a bit Joycian. This is a shame, because if readers and writers could grow more accustomed to it, it could be well employed in stories requiring suspense, especially when it’s first person.

First Person Past is a combination that I struggle to enjoy. It often destroys suspension of disbelief. Memoirs of a Geisha brought this to my attention during my teens, with the protagonist’s ability to remember conversations that happened decades ago word for word. Now I can’t help but notice it. It’s more bearable in something like a detective story, or perhaps speculative fiction, where the disbelief is suspended rather higher, but it’s still painful. If you’ve chosen first person past, there are some sacrifices you have to make, and dialogue is invariably one of them.

Some tenses suit voices better than others. First Person Future is just surreal. First Person Past, as mentioned, has its issues. First Person and Present Tense slot together in much the same way as Third and Past (though that’s a combintion of convenience and familiarity). Second Person and Future works, but it’s noticeably pretentious, and not something I’d do often. Second Person Present (and imperative, as second person present is wont to be) also works, but I suspect Second Person Past would, again, crush any suspension of disbelief. After all, the reader knows that they didn’t experience what you described.

So:
Second is probably the most engaging voice, and I do enjoy it, but it’s always a conscious decision. First allows for the most identification (it’s best used when playing with characters one would not immediately identify with, in order to make the reader question themself), but is often abused. Third can be used for anything; and paired with any tense.

So:
Present is good for suspense, and can raise interesting questions about reliability, too. Past is so often used due to familiarity, without any thought of reliability or identification or voice, which is a shame. Future dares people, but is usually abused in deliberate pretention – like second, it’s best used sparingly (Stephen King and Peter Straub use both well in brief segments of Black House, as I recall). All three tenses, though, are flexible in intention: you can use them to create intimacy or distance depending on how you pair them with voices.

I’m glad I wrote the three monologues, to deliberately play with tense and voice combinations, and I’ll probably do some more chopping and changing in future pieces to see if I can make certain combinations work. Otherwise, I must admit, tense is usually instinctive for me – it is only on very rare occasions that I make a conscious decision, such as when I’ve used the future. Voice defaults (I’m almost ashamed to admit) to third, though some pieces have a reason to be in first (like Unsent Letters, being a kind of epistle itself). Second tends to come on me by surprise, but it is fun to write.

– I’m having real trouble posting this. Blogger tells me it’s there, but also tells me it’s still loading, while on the blog itself sometimes it appears and sometimes it doesn’t. Le Sigh.

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Mar 28, 2008 by

Comparing drafts of Greenhelm

I’ve been working on the Greenhelm rewrite, and I thought it was time to break out a bit of the first draft again, for amusement’s sake. Well, the very first draft was on paper, and I’m not going to type it up right now, but it’s pretty similar to the second draft, which was the first to make it to a computer.

Just trying to find two versions of the same scene to compare is a bit of a struggle; the plot has changed so dramatically that I wouldn’t recognise it as the same story. I’d forgotten so much of what I now consider to be digression had seemed vital at the time. I had a huge blind spot to certain gaping plot holes (why has the head of a nation joined nother nation’s army? What?) and felt obliged to spin bits of the plot out to make it longer (that lasted into draft three, which got hacked into draft three point five as I went along). It was also deeply, deeply derivative.

Stylistically, I know there are still flaws, not all of which I’m dealing with in this draft. There will be, once I’ve written the second book (and preferably the third, but I know myself well enough not to hold hope), a fifth draft, but hopefully there won’t be any more dramatic changes to the plot.

Anyway, the following contains some pretty strong spoilers for Greenhelm. I don’t suppose anyone cares at this point, considering the most recent draft isn’t finished yet. Comparing two versions of what is essentially the same dream sequence. The second is cut to pieces because it’s (a) quite long and (b) mostly not concerned with the dream that the other draft contains. Diligent and Galahad are the same person, he just suffered a name change.

Aged 13, draft 2:

“I’m family, you know it” taunted the blonde mage, “you know it.”

“Don’t be stupid, I’ve got none.”

The blonde mage showed Galahad the ice blue Magick in his fingers. Galahad could see the same Magick in himself.

“I’m family.”

Galahad shrugged nonchalantly. “You’re no brother of mine.”

“A lot more secure tonight, aren’t you. You actually believe your friends will never desert you. Friends forever. Of course, it’s not like you’ll ever have a girlfriend.”

“I what?”

“You’ll always be single, never marry, never sleep with a girl, never kiss. No girl will find you attractive. Always alone. You’ll go mad with loneliness. Watching your friends marry and have kids, watching everyone around you laugh and smile with their partners. Ethan will leave you, not want to even acknowledge knowing you. Ivy will fear you, in case you lash out at her, rape her even because you’ll be so desperate. Everyone will hate you.”

“But, but you said my friends will never desert me.” Quavered Galahad.

“I lied!” The blonde mage sneered.

Well, that was physically painful. Is there some rule about gratiutously bringing up rape? There should be.

Aged 21, draft 4:

[…] He’d been dreaming of home, too. His chest tightened slightly: the blond man, now a recurring theme, had mentioned the curse.

Diligent sat up, pushing the heavy covers away from him. His nightshirt was damp with sweat, and the air was heavy around him. Shoving open the curtains on the bed didn’t help. He climbed out of the bed, the beginnings of a headache threatening at the back of his mind and a faint, unfamiliar nausea swimming inside of him. He stumbled over to the window and opened the shutters. The atmosphere remained oppressive, but the burst of raindrops that splattered across his face and chest was surprisingly welcome.

He arranged himself on the already wet window seat, leaning his forehead on the damp stone outside of the window and taking deep breaths of moist air through his mouth.

He wondered, one hand wrapped around the slimy wood of the shutter, if he was coming down with something. Maybe that was what the dreams harboured. He coughed, but felt neither better nor worse for it. Maybe he was just overheating as he slept.

He’d dreamt of flames; he’d dreamt of the blond watching them. It hadn’t been his home burning, though. No sense of what was on fire. Sometimes they had looked more like the blue of his Blessing than real fire. Again, always, that sense of knowing the blond. Handing the key to him.

[…]Diligent supposed he must have dozed off sitting upright, because he opened his eyes with a start and a mortal fear of Trusbury House. The watch and key were still firmly grasped in his lap, the window was still spitting rain at his feet. His heart was thudding, though, and he could feel the sweat on his skin. His breaths were fast and shallow.

[…]The blond face rose in his mind, the dreams leaving the imagined stranger linked with thoughts of his home. Maybe it was his father, Diligent realised. Maybe he was dreaming about his father. It would explain the guilt, the fear, and the knowing. It made sense. He was not ready to deal with what had happened to his father, and what it meant for himself. The curse.

And yet… No. Diligent refused to acknowledge the nagging doubt. He was dreaming about his father, that was all, and he was protecting himself from the dreams by changing the man a little. Making his father more like himself. Recognisable. It was just grief, that was all.

He fell asleep, wondering if he ought to cry.

Well, at the very least my grammar’s improved!

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Mar 26, 2008 by

If immitation is the highest form of flattery, then I write because I like reading

If I’m writing about writing, I suppose I should write about why I write.

Partly, I suppose, because I like sentences like that. Language is fun. Layout is fun; I like visualising sentences and paragraphs. I like knowing when I want to use italics or bold or underline, when to use uppercase or lowercase, whether I want a comma or a semi-colon, which font I want and how I’m going to place the heading.

I don’t write because I feel I have to. I wouldn’t go mad if I couldn’t write (well, I’ve not put it to the test). I don’t have the characters clammering in my head. I don’t miss it when I don’t write. I don’t feel a desperate need to share my thoughts with the world. I don’t need to write.

But I still do, and I always have.

I remember writing a story about foxes on a little black-and-green screen computer. I can’t have been more than about six. It was, and I think I realised this even at the time, not very good. If I could remember why I’d sat down to write that story, I’d know why I write now; instead, I can only surmise based on the fact that it was very heavily inspired by Farthing Wood:

If immitation is the highest form of flattery, then I write because I like reading. Simple.

I write for the same reason I made tomato soup cake last week. Because I felt like it. I was inspired (by a recipe, I hasten to add), and I had time, and I wanted to enertain myself. The cake, by the way, was probably the best cake I’ve ever made, though the icing was a bit of a disaster. If you want the recipe, let me know.

The Dark is very much tomato soup cake. Greenhelm is more of a three course meal, I suppose, and god only knows what the rest is. I enjoy writing far more than I enjoy cooking. Cooking is a chore; it’s something I have to do to live. If I had to write to live, I wouldn’t enjoy it either. I have no intention of ever becoming solely an author; I need structure in my day to tell me when I’m ‘on’ and when I’m ‘off’. Doing an arts degree hammered that home, but I already knew it from watching my mother work from home. I don’t want to be wandering around at ten o’clock at night feeling obliged to work because I ‘wasted’ the morning cleaning the house (or rather, I would have not cleaned the house because it would have felt like wasting the morning, and spent the time watching TV and feeling guilty instead). I earn money to live from nine to five; I buy food and collect prescriptions and pay council tax on days I’m not at work; I write whenever I have a day I’m not doing either. At the moment, that’s not actually very often, but I need to stop accepting quite so many extra days at work (I don’t feel bad, because on quiet days I can write at work, but it’s just mindless jottings and feels more productive than it actually is).

I like writing best at night, when it’s raining, with a candle lit and Einaudi playing. To be honest, I just like being when it’s like that, but I’m not good at doing nothing (I prefer to be doing at least two things at once; right now I have five tabs open on firefox and Walking with Monsters on tv and a casserole cooking), and writing is the most context appropriate thing to be doing. I don’t like writing after work, unless I’ve had a hugely inspirational day, and I don’t like writing when I’ve been running around doign prosaic things all day. I don’t like writing when I know there’s going to be a cut off point, like before work, and I don’t like writing when there are guests in the house, even if they aren’t here to see me. I don’t like writing in silence, but I don’t like writing with music with lyrics playing.

Despite all this, I still like writing, and that’s why I do it. I like it because I like reading. Immitation – flattery. Writing.

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