Insights

Your Environment: The Other Character

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Today’s blog post was inspired by this excerpt from the comic, Breaking into Comics The Marvel Way. The passage from which it is taken focused on advising new comic book artists:

Include more backgrounds to give us a better sense of place. Think of your background as another character in the story and use it to help enhance the storytelling and the world your characters are inhabiting.

While the writer, C.B. Cebulski, was talking about comic art, his advice could just as easily apply to fiction writing. It’s so easy to forget the importance of the background. When developing a story, we’re often trained, formally or informally, to think about sentient characters and their development.

But the background, and here I mean the environment or the setting, is critical to your story in that it provides that layer of texture that grounds the more ethereal qualities of dialogue and action. Not only that, but it’s also a key element in differentiating your story from all other stories. And by thinking of your environment as a character, you can really flesh out its nuances and peculiarities.

I suggest writing up a character persona on your environment. And finally, think about how that persona interacts with the other characters in your story. What do each do for the other?

Why Write When You Can Relax Watching the Latest J. J. Abrams Concoction?

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I’ve heard other writers say, “I write because I have to. ” A lot. And maybe it’s true. Maybe it’s some universal truth among writers. I even used to buy it of myself. But I don’t anymore.

I’ve had dry spells where I wasn’t writing. Turns out, I didn’t self-implode or shrivel up or anything equally horrible. I survived. I’m here writing this to prove it.

But what I do know is that when I’m creating, I’m happier. I’m more alive. And I see the world more poetically. Things are more magical. Those things of value are amplified and those of insignificance are diminished. And I know, intuitively, that it’s just a better way to live.

I think I must be an artist first, and a writer second. If my talents lent themselves more to music, I would have followed that path. I think we must all find that one thing that makes us burn with life and follow that thing, with a vengeance. If we could all do that, I’m certain the world would be a better place.

Layers of Transformation and Depth – Repeat – Repeat – Repeat

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I’ve wrapped up the first draft of book one (about 130 pages), and I’ve got this nagging feeling that there will be no end to revisions. I’m moving on now to book two, but I know, in the back of my mind, that I need to return to this first book with:

  • more details in various places (specifically, technology and the speech style of certain characters)
  • setting up certain scenes in more dynamic, engaging ways
  • opportunities for tension-tightening in certain areas

It sounds simple, but I keep finding more revisions to add to the list. Not to mention, I’ve already been through a few rounds.

This reinforces my belief, of course, that most great art is brought about through the use of layers. When I refer to layers in fiction, I mean to say this going over the text repeatedly to add and transform, and essentially to add depth. There is a direct comparison, I believe with painting.

The Big Scene: In the Thick

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I am nearing the end of book one (of which there will be two or three), and I am ending it with the “big scene.” This is the scene that inspired the entire novel. It was one of the first images I saw in my head when conceiving the story, and it has been the primary driver in creating the rest of the world, its characters and its sub-plots.

And let me tell you, it is sheer thrill. Much more so than if I had written it first. Because now, as characters act and cause great change, I understand the impact of those actions, I understand the nuances, and I suspect, I hope, the reader will too. It is a writing experience charged with passion and adrenalin (mine).

Enough. I’m getting back to the thrill.

The Concentration of Art

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It has come to my attention that quick hits and “sudden bursts of inspiration” will not alone create great art. Because good art, by its inherent nature, is a focusing of the mind, in which we, the artist, dwell with our subject for extended periods, dredging its depths. It is a process that requires concentration and long doses of it.

I have been working steadily on the novel and have entered a strange loop within the first six chapters in which I have been constantly discovering more material that needs to be inserted here and there. It’s a very enriching and proactive experience, and I feel like my attitude around pace is very healthy, for the work and myself. That attitude is this: I will work steadily every day, but I will not be concerned with page or word counts, only with quality and progress. It seems to be paying off.

In thinking about this idea of pace, I was struck with the nature of pace when I was writing fiction for undergraduate and graduate work. Then, it felt like page count was the all-encompassing necessity. I think perhaps, because I’ve written so many pages of fiction at this point, fifty pages more or less have much less of an effect on me. What good is fifty pages if it’s crap? Now, I’ll spend an hour on a few paragraphs sometimes, just because that’s what that moment of creation requests. It’s almost as if I am outside of time. Which, of course, is ridiculous.

Chapter Two: Slugging it Out

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I refuse to be stumped. Okay, that’s not true. I refuse to accept a prolonged state of stumpedness.

After I rewrote the first chapter, I got about halfway into the second chapter and was not at all satisfied with the interaction of my main characters. I mean, the characters as individuals were interesting, but they weren’t interacting in interesting enough ways with each other. Part of the problem is the scene that was stumping me was centered around a conversation in a bar — not inherently engaging. I pondered this for several days, trying several different tactics. I began to fear that I was going to have to re-arrange major parts of the plot and characters. (And hey, that might still happen.)

But eventually, I took a big sheet of butcher paper and taped it to the inside of a closet door. And I went to brainstorming. I was thinking that I needed to write standing up to solve the problem. I needed to see it on a big white space and feel free to sketch ideas wherever they occurred to me in a sort of spatial thinking space. I was right. I solved several problems with the scene, made a few of the characters much more interesting and seeded future interesting sub-plots. It was incredibly refreshing.

That Poor Guy

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So, as I’m writing the second chapter, I come to a section where the heroes are surprised by a deadly force, and I realize that I need one of the heroes to die here. But I’m in a bind because I realize that I need all of those characters later. What to do?

And then it occurs to me in the most obvious fashion: Red shirt. I’m looking forward to going back through the first chapter and adding this new character…so I can kill him in the following chapter. Muahahaha.

The Inevitable Impressions of Good Writing

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How often has this happened to you? You’re working on a novel, and simultaneously you’re reading a good book or story. And as you’re reading, you start thinking, “Hmm, maybe I should do something like that in my story.”

It happens to me constantly. I’m considering changing the entire genre/sub-genre of my novel just because I read a couple of good short stories. It’s crazy, right?

My excuse his time is that I’ve never read this particular genre/sub-genre, but still, it seems a bit drastic. Of course, I usually advocate drastic, so I’ll do it.

I never plagiarize, but I do tend to zero in on emotions, moods and character relationships. I was just reading a story about this group of friends who were a team with one, aristocratic leader. It was done very differently from what I was used to reading, and I became inspired.

Here’s a completely different thought I had recently. The word “unspeakable” is horrible, isn’t it? Because it’s non-specific, it calls on the worst possible thing you can think of, which is, of course, horrendous. It very much reminds of Lovecraft, who often referred to things so dark and horrible that to just know of them would drive a man insane.