Awkward Romance

So, NaNoWriMo is coming up, and like many years I have a pretty bare-bones type of plan in mind for it. One that could go anywhere, has potential to be silly, and, most importantly, does not compel me to believe the resulting novel will actually do anything for my writing career. (This last condition is the trump card against my inner editor.)

The way it does this? By blurring the line between fan fiction (something based in another creator's work) and originality. My novel, tentatively titled "The Lifey Thing," is rooted in an intellectual property that is now not only a story but an entire culture. This culture, which can now be seen filling conventions everywhere, is where the main character resides.

Yes, like me, my character Aaron is a big fan of the hit hybrid-media webcomic Homestuck. Actually, he's a bigger fan. Instead of just buying some cards and throwing together a cheap Halloween costume to show his love for it, he discovers it and then immediately becomes obsessive. To the point where he starts taking all the quizzes out there to find what character role fits him, and then does everything he can to follow it.

Not only that, but he gets into things like "troll romance," in which love is divided into four quadrants that are symbolized by playing card suits. Hearts is pretty much what you expect, while diamonds and clubs are more or less platonic. It's spades that makes this really weird stuff. Spades represents the kismesis, a person you hate passionately but are somehow still very attracted to. Aaron believes that he'll only be satisfied if he can somehow get both a traditional romance (which he never had any success with in the first place) and a kismesis.

Needless to say, the people around him have no idea why he's acting the way he does. It makes no sense. He may throw away reason and the things that are best for him just to get into this. Is there even the slightest possibility that his extreme attitude would ever pay off? That's what I'm setting out to explore this November.

Ready for NaNoWriMo?

Oh, boy. This is going to be a tough month.

As you all already know, I've got college and work going on, and it's been a tough juggle. Trying to update this blog and make even a little bit of effort on The Third Face each day has been about all I could do.

So basically, when November rolls around, I will never have a spare minute.

If you're new to my blog and you don't know what NaNoWriMo is, back up a bit. Read this a sec. I'm trying to write a novel in a month here. Craziness by itself, but I've done it before. (You should too.) It was tough every time. I didn't have this kind of workload back then, though.

The problem is finding those spare hours, every day, and actually having the will to use them. It's about still wanting to work on something when I've already been at work all day. It's about still being able to type after doing homework for hours. It's about still having some energy after taking classes until 9 at night and driving home. Every. Single. Day. For 30 days.

Can I do it? We'll see. You'll definitely know whether I do or not. As usual, when I'm in the midst of something big like this I can't help but share what's going on with it through this blog. In fact, next time I'll tell you exactly what I have planned for this year.

Novel Planning: How Much?

If you're as serious about novel writing as I am, then you've probably gone out of your way to find the best advice there is. How can you write a novel that people will love, and that will actually sell?

There are a lot of different opinions on it. I see a pattern where some writers call for a lot of planning. One site claimed that you should outline your novel so thoroughly that you have a paragraph explaining every single chapter, and then write the actual thing as fast as you can with minimal editing. Yeah, I'm SURE that will solve everything.

More recently I had a look at Storyfix.com, a blog by author Larry Brooks that suggests there are certain areas of any novel (or film) which all need to work together to make it great. Like many others, Larry Brooks advocates a planned structure: four parts with their own specific functions, and several key points that either highlight or separate them. It's a very involved, disciplined way of looking at things.

The question is, is this overdoing it? Is it going to kill the novel-writing process? I guess that depends on what you want most out of it, and how close you feel to having it right yourself. I know I'm still not happy with the way mine is written, so to me, it's worth a try.

Still, there's a full-page checklist on there and after an hour's concentration I'm still working on the opening sequence here. This thing is asking a lot! But it seems to me that there's a lot of merit to at least answering these questions, and using them to write the novel--whether I decide to actually go with the structure prescribed or not.

Basically what I'm saying is, I'm going to give the techniques in that blog a try. Some day I'll let you guys know how that came out. First, though, I have NaNoWriMo--look out for talk about that next time.

The Man in the Brown Bandanna

Today you get a free short story that doubles as an introduction to The Third Face. Enjoy!

Art Attack

Good storytelling is a visual thing. The whole idea of it is to engage your reader's senses in your events. To do that, the author has to have those images very vividly in his or her mind as well.

The more strange or abstract that world is, the more it helps to have backup for the words on the page. Usually that means art.

Needless to say, I like drawing. I don't consider myself a great artist, but all the character illustrations that went with the release of The Third Face were mine. To the left here is another drawing of those characters that I did a bit more recently.

Other than this, though, I haven't drawn a thing in months. Time to fix that! There's another major character I want to introduce that way, and a bigger project that would be great to have done by Halloween.

So yes, expect images on blog posts to be a much more common thing from now on.

Review: The Subtle Knife

One of my first ever blog posts was when I reviewed Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass. Why it's taken me almost two years to get to and read through the sequel, The Subtle Knife, is anyone's guess.

The first book took place in a world where everyone has a daemon, or spiritual animal, alongside them. Witches, shamans, and other strange cultures stand alongside an all-powerful church that worships "The Authority." There are always little names and places that hint at it being very similar to our world, but it feels like a fantastical parallel that Pullman has used in place of Earth.

That all goes out the window when we meet Will, who lives in the real world. Somehow, though, he manages to find a gap in reality that takes him to other worlds, and these "windows" are the focus of this book. Like Lyra, Will has an internal struggle to deal with while he learns the art of using a powerful tool. The call of childhood comforts constantly pulls at his need to fight, to win, to kill in order to survive.

I said in the first book's review that you can kind of ignore the religious undertones in it. That, too, has completely changed. The flight of the Angels and the impending war to destroy The Authority are pulling that into light, and I can expect to see this issue take over completely in The Amber Spyglass.

There are other things that have changed, which I don't like so much. Lyra seems really dumbed down here. While she and Will fight a bit early on, after a while she decides she's just going to do what he says. Where's the strong-willed, clever girl with the savage mind I grew to love in the first book? Other characters acknowledge the change, but only in passing.

Because of this closeness that gets established between the main characters, Pullman likes to jump between them freely, revealing the thoughts of both in the same breath. While this could have to do with Lyra's apparent powers of perception, it's still kind of an unfocused view. I felt a little detached at times, and the narrative, filled with vague thoughts, sometimes bored me even though I was rabidly eager to find out what happened next in this amazing plot.

Still, the things I'm unhappy about are certainly not enough to make me drop a story as daring as this one. One thing that still hasn't changed: Philip Pullman is not afraid to take risks, and that is where his work shines.

WeMiSciFan... Fans?

Gah that is hard to try and abbreviate.

What I mean to say is, West Michigan Science Fiction and Fantasy Fans. That's quite a mouthful, isn't it? But it's the only thing that can properly describe the group I recently started over on Facebook. Maybe we should come up with an entirely different name... hmmm...

Anyway, yeah. I invited my friends who fit the description, and they invited some of their friends, and we're definitely off to a good start for a week-old Facebook group that doesn't have another organization behind it. It's nothing fancy and there aren't really any rules or anything, but who needs that stuff anyway? Not unless we see some huge growth in membership...

Still, we're doing quite a few cool things already. The main thing, of course, is plain ol' discussion, where we debate about zombies and bring up our favorite (and least favorite) pieces of sci-fi and fantasy. In addition, there's already at least one piece of writing that a member has put on the table, a science fiction poem he wrote. Other events we're getting started with are Book of the Month and Friday Reads (in which everyone brings up what they're reading on Friday.)

Sound good? It's an open group, and the "West Michigan" part is not a hard border on who and who cannot join. It's more like a phrase that I include so that I'm not trying to be competitive with groups on the national or international level, because this is a smaller group. The point is, anyone is welcome!

If you're interested in joining,