Changes in My Head

I started the rewrite of Silver Mask about a year ago. It was taking a dramatically different path than I expected. Then I stalled. Not for lack of ideas, but mostly due to life.

And this stalling hasn’t been bad. I know that sounds weird, but I have mentioned the importance of prewriting in my previous posts. The ideas have kicked around, rolled around and somewhere along the line they grew up.

I think life has had an affect. I have gone through a very dark period the last two years, with this last year being the absolute darkest. This reality has altered how I treat my characters. As a response, the setting and plot and every little bit has changed.

Oh, and the change is for the better! I am no longer afraid to torture my characters. As I have fought depression, anger, and bitterness and been forced to accept these things in me it ha become all right for my characters to have the same flaws and others as well.

Source: sharbuck.tumblr.com via Drea on Pinterest

They may have been flawed before, but I think I over-romanticized them. That leaves the world feeling a little too sanitary. It’s bright colored and clean in the mind’s eye rather than dark, dirty and gritty.

Source: kesrows.tumblr.com via Drea on Pinterest

As reality lies somewhere between those two extremes, so do my characters need to be between the extremes, rather than standing nearer one end. This means that I can allow my characters to mature and let their emotions determine plot as much as the inevitable outcome I know the story will take. The tale becomes a lot more character driven.

I must say, too, that going through a darker period seriously informs one’s idea of how to torture characters, and how they react to adversity. There are things that have happened in the “prewriting” that are about to come out on the computer screen that I never would have considered. I would never have exploited my main female character’s naivete because, perhaps, I didn’t want her to be naive. It makes sense to have her be more trusting at the story’s beginning and through her trials the stuff that I was “telling” in previous drafts is shown instead and in a way that couldn’t happen before.

Images:

Landscape: Pinterest

City: sharbuck.tumblr.com

If you're following the project: an aside

Last week, poor health struck. It always happens at the worst times. Right before my health slid my characters decided to become unpredictable. Midway through that last "chapter" they went off on tangent I didn't expect. They might be taking me down a different plot than I planned for.

So while the next chapter is started, I need to weave myself back into the complete surrender for the chapter to finish. What happens is that I plunge on, and let the characters carry me. When the whole thing is done, there is a high probability that where the novel started (and what the world--and magic look like at the onset) is not what it will be when the last sentence draws to a close.

For me, I spend a lot of time "planning" but a plannings session is more like watching the characters dance along in my minds eye. Sometimes I run through an idea before it hits the page. But with "non-Don-Yin" stories that isn't likely to happen with the same frequency.

Pausing when writing is really a bad thing. Especially when I just got in the swing of things. But I couldn't control my health.

sometimes, I feel guilty that life strikes. I blame myself for not pushing myself when I don't feel well. Perhaps I should try to push next time...but this last week, a wash, i sin the past.

So...if you're curious about process, this is a bit of an inside to how it works for me :)

Elessa Chianic and the Magics of Chiadina

Next up! Gods, Magic, and choosing my main character.

Planning a world requires planning how it works. I usually like tying magic to gods, it just has always made sense. I mean, when we hear of magical things happening in mhythology, it's generally tied to some god, goddess or mystical creature that originates from the Realm of the Gods. If I go off of the concept that we need to draw boundaries in order to formulate identity, than it stands to reason that in order to wrap our minds around the concept of mortality (an unavoidable reality) we create stories of what immortality is. By understanding the fiction, we can begin to grasp fact. So structuring a belief system and how that belief system is practiced in each realm gives a better understanding of how each realm operates.

In Togan, it makes sense that the religious leader is closely linked to the herds. The person may or may not also be a secular leader. Because I picked Togan as the place to satrt thestory, and because my main character is not going to spend a long time there, it mmakes plot-sense to join the secular and spiritual in the leader that also commands the group-owned herd of Genn. Since the leader is affiliated with the Genn, it makes sense that his/her title will derive from the animal's name. Hence "Genna-ko."

In the more hierarchical realms, it makes sense to see more institutionalized forms of religion. With magic affiliated with the gods, the Temples become places that someone can learn magic.

I like magic as an inborn trait, generally accompanied with a physical representation of the magic. I have a bad habit of choosing eye-color as a representation of ability. Perhaps this was due to Dune's influence, or maybe just because I love the "window to the soul" idea. Still, if magic is in part a spiritual thing, than a "soul" link makes sense. There needs to be a tie to the divine, though. And divinity need not be perfect--they can be flawed as any Greek god--but the link needs to be there for this to work.

Now, that doesn't mean that magic is kept out of politics. Honing belief into a weapon is a skill humans have perfected many times over. This, again, I think is part of our pattern in constructing our identity based on structuring first what it is not.

The crazy bit of this is that most of the "Not" is so far from accurate that two sides can think exactly the same thing about each other "They eat babies!" --without ever realizing how fallacious their interpretation of their neighbor actually is.

But moral judgments based on fiction is how we vilify an enemy. Governments have to create an extreme "Other" to gain support for war, so propaganda goes out. That includes making war a moral imperative. and if there is a moral imperative to war, it is okay to use religious figures (priests and priestesses) and magic in the fight.

When this is achieved, however, and the people are calling for a moral impertive to fight, the political/socio-economic origins of the conflict are often obscured or wholly disregarded. Politics and economics cease to matter when humans think that war is necessary for the triumph of "goodness." So in the pursuit of maintaining "ghoodness" humans can easily sanction extreme evil, or even their own enslavement without batting an eye.

(This is me planning a plot based on some more academic/intellectual interests)

So enter the main character!!!

Ellessa will be Chianic-- the most powerful of the 4 magics.

born in Togan where there is no one to train her

--pastoral and foraging communities tend to have much smaller populations than agriculture as there is less need for massive numbers of offspring and generally a plant around that can prevent pregnancy, abort a developing fetus, etc--yes, there are natural birth control plants, but human's insatiable appetite for them over the centuries has led to extinctions of these plants. One of my profs in college had lived with a foraging society that still used one of these plants quite successfully. However, they weren't keen on sharing it because they knew their neighbors would descend and steal the rest of the plants, which were becoming endangered as it was. The most famous birth control herb was obliterated by Roman women in ancient times, and was related to licorice--

So Elessa will be sent to Lartien to train with the Priestesses.

Her ability and situation will create a manner to explore plot and story through a character who knows little or nothing, making the exploration of story easy for a half-developed world, and easier to follow for a reader.

The war can mount in the background, and the main character's outside perspective will make the situation more tense. The Lartien government and priestesses will try to use her to achieve their own ends. But the fact that her people, back in Togan, have high hopes for her as a leader make her seek away out of her training.

The Lartien don't make it easy, and she has to find a way out before her training is complete.

Character & Environment, in Honor of Earth Day

Myths and Legends abound with fears and stories of natural disasters. Humans have this ability to shove the natural world away, and forget it's out there. if it's too rainy, or too windy, or too hot, or too--whatever, we complain. As if the weather the world were constructed for our inconvenience.

But our constructs--like the fence in my yard--are alterations in a terrain that once belonged to the natural world. Our human constructions are...artificial...existing to validate our sense of self, society, world and so forth.

When creating fantastical societies, it's easy to create a terrain which your characters pass over. Sometimes weather is used to reflect emotion, plot tension, accent a scene with an appropriate ambiance. But the natural world can also be personified. Often gods in ancient myths are associated with natural features--mountains, lakes, the ocean.

In order to bring your environment and thus the setting of your world alive, imbue the environment with meaning in your characters' eyes. Populate it with myth that reflect an understanding of niche and ecosystem. Do not assume that because we dress up these concepts with scientific terms that people prior to industrialization lacked an understanding of them. They had their own way of interpreting the same information, and noting the relationships between animals, plants and natural features.

And in urban environments, have the natural world encroach. Wild turkeys wondered through my yard a few times this past winter. They came in from the river and based on Facebook statuses had been seen as far as midtown.

To think that our urban lives are untouched by wilderness is inaccurate. We just don't like to see it. And yet, seeing a particular bird overhead, perched in a tree outside a window, or a nuisance in the yard can place your city geographically, reflect your characters' biases, and provide details that make setting pop.

(Re)Building Lara with Polyvore

I'm going to try this one out for a week! We'll see how well I like it :D

Meanwhile, I have been distracted by Lookbook and Polyvore...

It can be fun to create characters' outfits on Polyvore. Mind, all the branding makes these items far more expensive than my High School student characters in Wished Awry would actually wear...but the style is very Lara.

Lara by dreamca01 featuring vintage style tees

How does this help build a character?

I am not the best at description. I barrel into fight scenes, I draw conversations on longer than they need to be--and have discovered that I use these devices as a crutch.

So now that i am sitting on a complete rough draft of this Urban (Ya?) Fantasy, I am back tracking. I am fleshing out the characters (again) because now that the draft is complete, they've had their say--and changed my plans. So back to the drawing board! Then to make certain the puzzle pieces fit :)

Oh, and btw--I think I'll try a few new templates, so feel free to comment and leave your votes!

Derailed...Kinda Sorta

I love outlines. I think...I set everything up, I know the characters, and then...voila! I'll know how it goes.

But, it never happens that way. I just reached chapter 5 for my NaNoWriMo project. The characters started subverting my carefully set plans two chapters ago. I think they're laughing at me... somewhere... thinking "Su-cker!"

I certainly feel like it. The story will still reach the climax I anticipated...but not under the same conditions I'd expected. And for the next two to three chapters I have no idea what's about to happen.

But I know where it's headed. So there's that.

Back to work :P