Afterlife

Is there such thing as an afterlife?

Sometimes, I can’t even begin to fathom such an idea. When you die, the lights go out, and nothing happens. You’re frozen in time, eyes glazed over. People cry and scream like they do in Jodi Picoult novels on the outside of your unfeeling body. Warmth flows away, your breathing stutters and stops altogether. And that’s it. There’s nothing more.

But you do need comfort, so I’ve imagined a few other outcomes.

Outcome A: You go on to the next body, the next rung on the rope ladder. You learn what you have to learn there, and you pass on and on until you’ve reached bliss. Then comes Heaven.

Outcome B is a little more mainstream. Straight on to Heaven.

What do you think?

Livin’ in the Childhood

It would seem to me that we are who we are because of what happened in our childhoods. I know people who have had extremely hard childhoods, and others who walked a nice, buttery path where unicorns poop butterflies. And I notice there’s a big gap between the two, in terms of their cores. Naturally, everyone’s different. However, there are some pretty big clusters when it comes to being raised.

Difficult Childhoods

People with difficult childhoods are often more empathetic and able to offer advice. They’re understanding and patient. But there are also deep, emotional scars you have to deal with. If you’ve had a harsh life, it must be for a reason, and yes, you do need to include this in your writing. If you don’t, I will personally walk over to your house and whack you over the head with a copy of The Catcher in the Rye.

Are we cool?

Good.

I’ve seen far too many people in roleplays try to make their characters emotionally wounded, and it just, uh…

…So what you need to do is add some depth. Please. And, whatever you do, don’t have an emo kid with an obvious problem refuse to tell his girlfriend, the main character, of course, what’s wrong. I mean, Godric’s Hollow, that’s such a cliche, and one of the most overrated and overused ones in circulation. No, it does not make you look cool and rebellious, nor does it make you look like the next Shakespeare.

Potential Roots: Why is Your Character so Disturbed?

1. Orphan- Maybe he/she has no sense of identity or place in this world, and has nowhere to start.
2. Mental disorder- People not knowing how to deal with them, being scared to reveal themselves.
3. Family trauma- Go wild on this one.
4. Complexes- Be careful with this one.

Reality B

Now onto the second type of childhood, Reality B for Barbie. Nothing bad has happened to them, they get everything they want, and they’ve never had the whole painful, growing up experiences that most have. They don’t quite know how to deal with people who are more mature with them; they can’t relate to the hardships. They always appear in a state of constant euphoria.

Most of the time, you won’t see these people in novels as anything other than the foil. However, in Scott Westerfeld’s book, Pretties, the main character is transformed into a careless, bubbly, cheerleader-type. Needless to say, I stopped reading fairly quickly.

Cause and effect is the main driving force in both realities. Depth takes work, but it’s definitely worth it.

Good luck and don’t forget to subscribe!

Rachel

Danged Teenagers, Not Attending Their Social Functions.

…Yeah. I’m not at Midwinter now, so I figured I would just write a bit about social gatherings, functions, and that sort of mess. You see, the way I see it, there are three types of people in your average high school, and you shouldn’t neglect any of them in your writing.

Wallflowers

Alas, I guess I fall into this category. Wallflowers don’t go to social events because they’re too rowdy. They sit at home and blog. /is slapped. They aren’t necessarily anti-social, but they just don’t see the point in gathering in a huge, dark room and jumping around.

Partygoers

I know a few. Pretty much, they go to anything and everything that involves strobe lights and pulsating music. They’re known for being the only people awake at five in the morning. When you call them at that time, you’ll hear loud, window-shattering music followed by squeaking restroom stalls. And then a drowsy, “Hello?”

Ehh-Maybes

These are the people who just can’t be bothered to go to events. They may want to, but they most certainly can’t get off their butts to buy a ticket. So they procrastinate and procrastinate until, finally, the tickets are sold out. And then the tickets are suddenly worth ten times their worth in gold.

Fin

Choose your characters wisely. Thank you. /Twilight Zone music.

I’m so mad that I’m gonna put her in my novel and KILL HER!!! HAHAHAHA!!

No. Please. Just… don’t. Put away the pen. And the pencil hidden in the holster up your sock. Good. Calm down. Take your happy pills. Are we good? Okay.

It must be the most annoying thing in the world to see someone completely redirect their emotions into their writing. “Oh, I’m enraged, so I think I might just write in a character who looks suspiciously like my teacher and kill them in a gruesome way.” Your novel–hopefully–isn’t a fan-fic. So why go there?

If you’re feeling mad, just go and write an intense scene. If you want to relate things to your own life, scribble down some poetry. It always helps. :)

Thank you all very much.

Suuubscribe! :D

DEATH. Yes, you heard right.

“Careful. You may end up in my novel.”

Sure, it’s a fantastic line and looks just amazing on a t-shirt. But is it really all that wise to kill off people you put into your novel because they remind you of people? Let’s explore that, shall we?

10 Commandments of Killing Off People

1. Thou shalt not use the disappearance trick. Meaning you can’t just make someone disappear without a reason. You need to tell readers exactly why the character died. Well, that’s not to rule out ambiguity. That can always come in handy, especially when dealing with cliffhangers. But you can’t go an entire series without explaining why the mentor died.

2. Thou shalt not resurrect. Please. I beg you. Never, ever do this. Killing someone off is a serious thing and does crazy things to people’s hearts (a la the Dobby Chainsaw Massacre of ‘07). Let’s respect the readers by not letting them cry in vain. If they sob, you’ve done a good job. If they sob and, twenty pages later, John Doe reappears, you need to scrap it.

3. Honor thy characters as thyself. Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones was a great example of the effect of death on other characters in the novel’s world. Whether it was the tear-jerking scene of the toy sailboats or the exhilarating fight scene in which the father is beaten in a field after coming after a strange boy he believes to be his daughter’s murderer, everything is startlingly realistic, and almost psychological. If someone dies, readers better know that it’s not isolated; it’s going to set off chain reactions.

4. Thou shalt not useth Velveeta. Really. I don’t like cheese on my books. It tastes disgusting. And it won’t cover up your faults. After all, would you like some more cheese on that crap? I thought so.

5. Thou shalt useth the prophecy only for good. Your prophecy should make perfect sense while remaining ambiguous. I don’t want to have someone die of food poisoning when the prophecy made it out to be some epic battle between good and evil. Kapeesh?

6. Honor thy death. Sirius Black was killed by drapery. Do I make myself clear?

7. Thou shalt inject some matter of meaning in the death. Eth. The death itself doesn’t have to be dynamic. Look at The Bridge to Terabithia; Leslie died without a huge fight scene, and I cried. And sometimes the death unseen is the most poignant, like in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.

8. Thou shalt remember thy genre as thy significant other’s birthday. If you’re writing an Orwell-esque novel, please, please, for the love of Big Brother, don’t kill someone in a humorous way. And if you’re writing a comedy, don’t drop a huge weight in the middle of the plot. Make the reader laugh, right?

9. Thou shalt choose carefully between accidental and intentional death. Both can serve different purposes; accidental is natural whereas intentional is darker. In The Lovely Bones, the protagonist is murdered, yet her killer remains unscathed by local authorities; he dies when an icicle hits him and knocks him into a ravine.

10. Honor thy logic. No, sporks cannot appear out of nowhere and kill your characters. Unless they’re Edward and Bella, which in case–

/sounds of being stabbed by a million sporks

D:

It was a dark and stormy night, lightning was flashing, and then there was–

This is the point at which I shove the author out of their chair and start deleting each and every character. Why? My friends, it is indeed possible to over-dramatize things. I’m not just talking tabloids. Novels are also susceptible.

BAD Examples

So there was this girl, Susie. Nice kid. Terrible writer. When asked to write a dramatic scene, she wrote:

“Terriana looked into Georgerella’s glistening irises, sweat slipping out of her gentle face pores. Lightning crackled so close it electrified the air and sound waves that passed out of her dry lips. They couldn’t be heard, and the light suddenly disappeared.”

It is dramatic. Don’t get me wrong. But it’s verbose. A really great writer can get their point across in only a few words.

Good Examples! :D

George Orwell, one of my all-time favorite authors, is very blunt when compared to, say, Robert Fagles. There is one difference, though. Fagles translates Ancient Greek epics, which allows for a little leeway when it comes to make something dramatic. When it comes to prose, your main goal is effectiveness. No one cares if you have a thousand pages of crap; that’s what we have Twilight for.

To make things a little more contemporary, let’s bring in Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson. My favorite scene in the book is between the protagonist and her rapist:

A sound explodes from me.

“NNNOOO!!!”

I follow the sound, pushing off the wall, pushing Andy Evans off-balance, stumbling into the broken sink. He curses and turns, his fist coming, coming. An explosion in my head and blood in my mouth. He hit me. I scream, scream. Why aren’t the walls falling? I’m screaming loud enough to make the whole school crumble. I grab for anything, my potpourri bowl–I throw it at him, it bounces to the floor. My books. He swears again. The door is locked the door is locked. He grabs me, pulls me away from the door, one hand over my mouth, one hand around my throat. He leans me against the sink. My fists mean nothing to him, little rabbit paws thumping harmlessly. His body crushes me.

This scene isn’t very complex in terms of vocabulary or even syntax. What grabs your attention is the tone. It’s fast, there’s less punctuation. It’s not grammatically correct, but if you actually follow those rules all the time, you’ll never get anywhere with your writing. What helps is that it’s first person. In fact, I doubt you could do a trick like this with a third person perspective.

For example, I try to stuff as much vocab as possible into my writing, but that doesn’t work for a fast, action-y scene. Which sounds better:

A. He dashed towards me, wrapping his spindly fingers around my neck. His nails were stone-cold and reminded me of locker room mirrors before school.

B. He was here, on me. His fingers twisted on my neck, warping me. His nails felt like death.

To put it simply, don’t use more than you have to. Effectiveness is key to writing, not word count. If you honestly need to have more words, try an epilogue. We’ll get to that next time.

The Mary Sue Litmus Test

I actually found a really great resource for people who are unsure about whether their characters are Mary Sue status or not. There are tons of tests on the web, and this is by no means the most precise in terms of answers, but the results are great.

Click me or dragons will eat you!

“Where Did We Meet, Again?” /awkward silence

You remember where you meet some people. Heck, for some people, you remember what the air tasted like. But sometimes, you just… don’t. How did your characters meet?

To get started, throw away all of your cliched Bio-class meetings or passe “sitting on the same park bench.” Just crumple it all up, and toss it into the nearest trash can, hand gestures and all. Shun!

Done?

Good.

Creativity is essential to writing. If all you’re going to do is recycle what everyone else says, go write a reference book. So you need a good, individual meeting place and reason.

Setting: Examples

Setting can be very crucial. For instance, if you meet someone in the X-rated section of the library as opposed to in the supermarket’s coffee aisle, you’re going to have some kind of preconceived notion, right? If you’re going for the creeper, pervert-type person, go ahead and spring for the former. But otherwise, I’d suggest tamer methods.

In Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, the idea of remembering an idea as meaningful as where you first met someone is a major point; it signifies that you haven’t succumbed to the dull weight of the dystopian society. When the protagonist, Guy Montag, asks his wife, Mildred, where they met, she can’t remember, and gives up. He, however, keeps struggling to remember, and by the end of the novel, he finally does remember: Chicago.

In George Orwell’s classic, 1984, the protagonist, Winston Smith, meets his love interest, Julia, at his workplace in the Department of Records. While it’s only a cover-up, Winston does believe at first that Julia is chaste, which was intentional. It sets the stage for their rebellious love affair.

Modernizing Things

But if your characters are in a modern fiction/fantasy story, where are some good places they could meet? First off, you’ll want it to be natural. Start off with some ideas of places you’ve met people, like at work, parties, or school. Then give it a bit of a twist. Say it’s a costume party, like in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, or even at a completely bizarre job, like in “30 Rock.” Not only will it bring up a conversation between the characters, but you’ll find it’ll flow easier and writing will be less tense.

There’s a Reason for Everything

And, of course, there’s the all-important reason. Your character can’t be wandering around and decide to randomly drop into someplace because they feel like it. That’s totally Holden Caulfield. To make a plot more interesting, you do need a reason.

Maybe they’re shopping for a friend, or looking at axes for someone in Bolvangar. Don’t use Bolvangar; that’s just me being lame with fantasy names. Here are some things to think about:

1. Were they forced to be there?
2. Do they want to be there?
3. Why/why not?
4. What’s the weather like?

Good luck, and don’t forget to subscribe for more.

Rachel

Midnight Premieres

I went to the midnight premiere of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince a while back, and it was amazing. Not the movie, but the general hey-it’s-three-am-and-we’re-nerdy atmosphere. It’s great because people get really into it. If you’ve ever been to a midnight premiere, you know what I mean.

So what’s your take on it? Any interesting memories?

Hey, Soul Sister

Such a pretty song. :)