Tag Archives: character-building

Preferred Varieties of Villainy

Posted on by under One Hundred Days of Blogging 2.0

This has nothing to do with tonight’s post, but Fall Out Boy’s “Immortals” has been my jam since I watched Big Hero 6 a couple nights ago. I may not know what the Hell half of the lyrics are, but it’s fun listening. Also: it probably has a bit of a boost in how much I like it because I associate it with Big Hero 6, which is an absolutely phenomenal piece of cinema. Relating to movies, music, and so on, I’d like to take a moment from tonight’s post to say goodbye to Screen Robot. I found out it’s shutting down today. Screen Robot was one of the first homes to my writing that I didn’t create. I’m sad it’s gone, but as their Twitter pointed out I should be happy it existed and so I am.

Here’s a transition sentence because I’m feeling all sorts of lazy right now. Don’t you judge me, damn it.

It’s safe to say by this point I’ve established I prefer villains over heroes. One could even go so far as to say I’ve belabored that point, but that’s wrong because there is just so much to love about the wonderful world of villainy. Seriously, people: who do you think has more fun? The unlucky bastard who has to travel all the way to some far-off evil lair, getting battered and bruised along the way, or the evil genius with the frickin’ doomsday device? The answer’s obvious.

Villains are simply more fun to write. There’s no denying that, and with so many varieties of villainy it’s easy to get lost in having fun while writing them. I’m going to keep this relatively simple because I don’t want to write a thousand pages on this topic. There will be plenty of other blog posts down the road on the same damn topic anyway. Without compelling, well-written villains, even the best heroes aren’t any fun to watch. Their victories become hollow and bland. Here are just a few of the many entries one might encounter in a proper gallery of rogues. Continue reading →

On elves, orcs, and other standard, fantasy fixtures

Posted on by under One Hundred Days of Blogging 2.0

Fantasy creatures are all pretty well universally recognizable to most fantasy and non-fantasy readers alike. Orcs are usually the big, burly ones with green skin and a need to break bones, invade places, and generally wreck things in the name of honor, family, and glory. Elves are beautiful, often androgynous, woodland-dwelling masters of archery. There are certainly plenty of variations on these themes, but they are tried and true enough to keep readers (and viewers and gamers) coming back. Is it because these types of characters are familiar, bordering on near-family? Or are they more like set pieces to the overall story?

One of the driving forces behind A Princess, A Lich, and Some Murders is that I wanted to play around with these races of characters. High elves are always the most revered, esteemed characters, but why can’t they be laughable, lowly gutter-scum? Why not make orcs sophisticated, reformed from their more bloodthirsty ways? Does deviating from the tried and true versions of orcs and elves and so on reduce them to something less than they are meant to be or help them grow into something more?

Are writers better off sticking to the usual of what works or should we focus on mixing things up more often?

I’m asking these questions as I write, of course, but my focus is elsewhere. I’ve been slacking, and this novel has been sitting. There’s writing to be done if I ever expect this to be the novel that gets me noticed by HarperCollins (wish me loads of luck, please).

One Hundred Days of Blogging – Day Twenty-Nine

Posted on by under One Hundred Days of Blogging

This week has been good to me, despite some minor troubles here and there. The good’s outweighed the bad enough that I’m willing to ignore the little frustrations.

I also have to say how I can’t stop thinking about Guardians of the Galaxy. It’s everywhere I look, and for good reason. What a brilliant job Marvel did creating that movie. Tonight’s post isn’t my GotG review, but it ties in a little bit. One of the many, many (so very many) things I loved about Guardians of the Galaxy is how it focused on a group of heroes (move over, Avengers), but it also gave a great deal of love to the supporting characters. Even the ones who were minor in the overall scheme of things were paid their dues. Also, and this is probably my love of villains talking, but I couldn’t help but feel a little bad for The Collector. No spoilers! Just, you know. He seems like the likable, albeit perpetually stoned, doofus of the Marvel Comics Universe movies.

And so it only seems appropriate to show a little love and support for supporting characters. Continue reading →

The conundrum of dividing chapters

Posted on by under General Writing-Related Posts

Or “At least I didn’t just name this post ‘The chapter conundrum,’ despite my love of all things alliterative (oh god, I did it again)”.

There are plenty of elements to writing that could potentially bug the shit out of me, but only one particular thing consistently irks me. Dialog is easy enough, in a pinch, in terms of making sure characters don’t all sound the same (and in the event little bits of the narrator’s voice bleeds through, there’s always editing to fix that). World-building is time-consuming, and can be a tough, but necessary, evil.

I absolutely hate coming up with the right places to start and end chapters, because I almost never feel like they’re organic (and when I do, it’s because I’ve managed to set up a system of “oh-no-what-now? cliffhangers to be directly followed by the starting point of the previous problem’s resolution). Let’s just get this out of the way now: I’ve started drafting another novel idea I had some time ago (tentatively titled The Devil Made Me Do It), before Joshua’s Nightmares even crept into the creative areas of my brain (the existence of which can be debated, of course), and I find myself butting heads with the very issue of wanting to shift the focus of the story ever so slightly, but not enough that I feel like it’ constitutes a chapter change. This is how I’m choosing to occupy my time between short stories (or, more likely, punctuated by short stories as I work on this) while I wait for the last bits of critiquing to wrap up on Joshua’s Nightmares. 

Did I mention it’s only two pages and a paragraph into the story? Because that’s certainly a factor in all of this. Also, I suppose it couldn’t hurt to add a page to the top of Misadventures in Fiction to offer a synopsis of The Devil Made Me Do It.

The story begins focusing on the main character going through his morning routine, focusing on certain aspects of it being entirely unremarkable. I want to shift to another character (consider the title) and focus on his typical morning. The two narratives eventually come together, of course, but I’m really fighting myself on if I want to have a two-page-and-a-paragraph first chapter or not, and how to properly handle this situation. What similar issues do you, fellow writers, run into?

If nothing else, this post should confirm something I already knew: I have a serious writing addiction, and I’m completely okay with that.

The Monsters of Joshua’s Nightmares

Posted on by under Joshua's Nightmare Updates

Or “I totally just posted about villains not even a day ago, but have some more stuff about villains.  I’m not even a little sorry.”

I wrote what amounted to a love letter to all things villain-related just hours ago, and it spawned another idea that has been bouncing around my brain inconveniently (and preventing me from sleeping, which is awful as I have to be awake in less than four hours from now).  I’ve done a lot of talking about Joshua’s Nightmares here, which makes sense because this blog was born as part of my efforts related to working on it.  I have a page about the novel-to-be (that needs revising, I fear) that gives a solid enough synopsis of its plot.  Beyond that, I’ve not really posted anything from the actual story, whether it’s for fear of it being swiped and used elsewhere (gasp!) or just because I’m overly-picky over who gets to see works-in-progress.

However, it only seems appropriate to share a little, and so I present the villains and monsters (a sampling, so as to not bring out any major spoilers) of Joshua’s Nightmares.  Obligatory “the following characters and locations are my intellectual property, and are not to be used in any way without my express permission” comment goes here. Continue reading →