Category / General

by Matthew

Stealth Lemon Juice

Whilst preparing a marinade for tonight’s grilled chicken, I cut my finger. What does this have to do with writing fiction? Consequences!

Because I was in a bit of a rush, I elected to cut the soon-to-be-juiced lemon in my hand, rather than take the safe approach and use a cutting board. Thusly, when the nice and sharp knife deftly cleaved the lemon in twain, it went into one of the fingers that was holding said lemon. I appreciate your concern, but the cut wasn’t too bad.

Right when I did it, my immediate thought (as the finger bloomed red and the scent of lemon wafted into my nose) was, “Well that’s gonna sting.” But it didn’t. Told ya the cut wasn’t that bad. Wash hands, apply a bandage, and finish cooking, right?

So that’s what I did. Flattened and scored the chicken, tossed it in marinade, and into the fridge it went.

And that’s when the pain started. It wasn’t immediate, as expected. Just a five-minute Alexa timer late. But when it hit, I found all the colorful metaphors I could muster. And, more importantly, the stealth lemon juice forced me to acknowledge the error of my ways.

Choices have consequences.

As a character on the journey of making dinner, I made a choice to cut corners. Who doesn’t want to save a little time in the kitchen where they can? The consequence of that choice was excruciating — albeit brief — pain in my finger. And I didn’t save any time in the end either. Did I learn my lesson? Definitely. Next time I go heroically up against the nefarious evil of the dinner menu, I will bring my cutting board.

Part of the point of the Trials, Allies, and Enemies phase of the Hero’s Journey (or the first half of Act 2 of the three-act structure) is to teach our protagonists lessons. Cross the Death Star chasm with a Stormtrooper’s utility belt and a kiss from the princess for luck. Knock out the troll in the bathroom to save Hermione. Solve the riddle to get the first key to the easter egg that saves the OASIS. These challenges help our protags grow into the heroines and heroes we need them to be to triumph over lemons (or evil, your choice).

Naturally, as we humans go through the course of our lives, we learn from our mistakes. But I think better character growth in stories happens when a hero has to deal with the unintended, and (hopefully) delayed consequences of their actions. Here are a couple condensed examples from my own stories.

In Dangers to Society, the four protagonists each have quirky superhuman abilities. One of them (Steve) can distinguish truth from lies. Another (Ben) can manipulate minds to believe any manner of things. So, I had Ben subtly use his ability on Steve (and others) for something frivolous, just out of convenience. Chapters on, I had a side character casually say something in front of Steve that was in direct contradiction to what Ben had done. This triggered Steve’s ability and caused a cognitive dissonance between the lie Ben placed and the truth Steve heard. It wracked Steve’s brain and risked his health. Ben had to deal with that. He also learned something about using his ability from this encounter. Steve learned something for his arc as well (about Ben), though he wasn’t aware of what it was at the time. The results of the consequences collide later on in the Ordeal phase.

In The Pentathax Contingency, my current work in progress, one protagonist is escaping a planetary conflict in the opening chapter. In my head he’s a bit of a young space scoundrel type, and to create conflict for him as he was escaping, I destroyed his ship (naturally). So he needs another one. He finds an available ship with a testy pilot getting ready to depart. In a bit of a Han Solo vs. Greedo I-live-or-you-live standoff, he shoots the guy simply to escape from the planet. Wasn’t personal. Motivated by survival, and a choice I can see a lot of us making, were we the young space scoundrel type fleeing a planetary conflict. Later on (when I get around to writing it), he’s going to have to cope with the fact that the pilot he killed was a close family friend of our other protagonist (and potential love interest). Oh my, the consequences of that.

An airlock will be involved.

These are the kinds of darlings we get to keep. If the tests you put your protagonists through don’t matter in the end, they’re not worthy of your story.

Make ’em count. M

by Matthew

Process Your Process

Hello again! Thanks for dropping by to read my ramblings.

Today I thought I’d ramble upon my writing process. I am (as of 4/16/22) in the early throes of the first draft of my fourth manuscript, tentatively titled The Pentathax Contingency (henceforth referred to here as TPC). It’s a YA sci-fi story.

I’m working on the fifth chapter, about 10k words into the story as a whole (out of 75k or so I’d guess), and have been around that number for a couple weeks now. When I’m at my most productive, I can do 3-5k a day. So as I sat there one night, not doing much with the story other than rereading and tweaking the already done chapters, I asked myself why.

I didn’t immediately know. I love writing, and I like my plan for this story, but I’m not in love with TPC. Not the way that I love the first three manuscripts I’ve finished. And I couldn’t quite put my finger on the reason.

When I thought back to those first three manuscripts, I found a commonality: I had hovered around at the exact same spot in the story for all three. I got inciting incidents locked in. Refined the voice. Little bit of worldbuilding and backstory, and then… paused. Tweaked. Edited. Revised. But then I worked my way through that blockage and powered through 106k, 128k, and 56k words to cross those finish lines. Why?

Like our heroes, I had crossed the threshold. Accepted the call to adventure. Understood the stakes and the payoff. And I’m not quite there yet with TPC. So why is that?

Well, I’m a pantser. I write as I go, without much of an outline or plan written down. Perhaps I’m a little bit of a mental plantser (planner+pantser), if I want to be perfectly accurate. I think about my stories a ton. Like all the time. Probably to the detriment of remembering things I should probably remember. Rarely does a shower go by where I don’t have a eureka moment for my current work in progress. As a result, I (generally) know where my stories are going, both in the coming chapter and overall. And I do know where TPC is headed. Protagonists and side characters are established. Antagonistic force is known and introduced. Climax setup is there. Have some ready subplots to add depth and complexity as needed.

But I’ve not crossed the threshold yet. I’m not ready to write TPC.

For one, I’m not quite certain I have the voice yet. It’s told in first person from two different points of view, and so far, each protagonist has had two chapters to establish their way of telling their side of the story. They’re different enough, and I think it’s young enough for YA, but they’re in space and commanding spaceships with the fate of the planet at stake, so a certain maturity is required as well. Things just don’t feel quite right yet. So I tweak. In addition to the voice, I think the way my brain thinks it likes to have little details in the narrative already lined up for use later on. Be that characters or names or technology or conflict or whatever. With all that stuff as ready as it can be, I don’t have to go back and find the right spot later when I have that idea. I wait to have the idea, put in the clue or character or whatever in the opening scenes as needed, then it’s ready when I need it. So I tweak.

What reasons might the little alien driving my subconscious have for writing this way? First and foremost, I think I’m inclined towards first time quality. The idea of writing THE END and parking a story in the drawer for a month, only to come back to it and tear it completely apart to fix stuff isn’t appealing to me. So I edit as I go. I make micro revisions in situ. By the time I finish a first draft, I’ve been over the story dozens of times and it’s already 95% ready to query. I like that.

Of course, the manuscript goes to an editor. Things need clarifying, grammatical foibles are found, inconsistencies in world building get identified, and — my specialty — overly long and complicated sentences are highlighted. We fix those. And we revise again. And again, until those issues are no longer present. Takes a few times, but those are easy fixes. The story comes out of the gate developmentally sound and needs no surgery. That’s what the little alien driving my brain is telling the rest of me to do. So far, I’m pleased with the results.

Now during National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), this approach probably doesn’t fly if I’m to hit the 50k word goal. But outside of that event, I find I don’t mind the nights where the daily word count doesn’t rise by thousands. Still feels like being productive as I’m honing the early chapters into fine-edged steel.

I think it helps us as writers to analyze our writing processes, because, like our stories, they are unique. Every approach to creativity is different. But every new story is an adventure for the writer. Because like our heroines and heroes, every time we commit to finishing a story, we are crossing the threshold. Apparently, part of my writing process is making absolutely certain I am fully prepared for the journey before I step over that line.

Don’t get me wrong on TPC, I’m close. Very close. I’ll get there any day, and then the words will start flying. I expect the first draft to be done by the end of May. But for now, I don’t want to jump into the Millennium Falcon and fly off until I’ve given the droids their oil baths, I understand the structure and history of the Galactic Empire, the vaporators have been turned off, and I’ve had one last glass of blue milk.

Keep writing! M

by Matthew

Hello worldbuilders!

Thanks for visiting my new blog. This here is my very first post. Many more to come…

In many of my posts on Building Worlds Blog I will be reviewing parts of movies or books (well, audiobooks probably), and presenting my thoughts on how well those stories line up with the established path of the Hero’s Journey.

“What’s the Hero’s Journey?” you ask? Get thee to Google, my friend, and look it up. Better yet, go get a copy of The Writer’s Journey by Vogler and enjoy. No time for that? Well, okay, I’ll distill it for you. The Hero’s Journey is a twelve-step pattern that humans have used (quite unintentionally until the Journey was defined) to tell stories. Modern writers of all kinds use it as a guideline to structure their stories. It is a guide, not a requirement. Though, as we are all children of modern media, throughout which the Hero’s Journey is carefully used and hidden, I dare you to write a sensical, and enjoyable, piece of fiction that doesn’t include most of those twelve steps. 

I finished the first draft of my first novel before I ever learned about the Hero’s Journey. After taking a class on it and analyzing what I had written, I discovered I had used ten of the twelve steps without even trying, and mostly in the proper order as well. I had also included a number of established character archetypes as well (though we’ll get into those in future blog posts). Seeing the Hero’s Journey laid out in my own work confirmed for me how effective it is as a tool to help writers tell coherent — and entertaining — stories.

Study the Journey enough and you won’t be able to watch, listen to, or read another piece of fiction without analyzing it first, and enjoying it second. So, beware. But, if you really want to be an author, you gotta do it.

Why do it? Well, as an aspiring author, analyzing the structure and success of other stories helps me with crafting my own. With practice, it becomes second nature to identify the various milestones in a story and analyze how effective (or ineffective) they are at the implementation. While adherence to the Hero’s Journey isn’t a requirement to tell a great story, you will use some components of it — it’s impossible not to. And if you get stuck somewhere along your path, it’s a pretty good resource to use to analyze what’s not going right in your manuscript. Plus, it’s kinda fun to break down a movie at a deeper level on the drive home. At least I think it’s fun.

So to take part in the fun, check back often, and join in the discussion in the comments (be nice!). Don’t forget to sign up for the e-mail list to be notified of new posts!