Archives: Writing

Character Design, Part 2

My friend Mick wrote in the other day on the site and told me he’d “love to hear more theory about how you pick weaknesses and flaws and how you use them.”

I’d originally planned to show a filled-in character sheet for Lisette, as discussed in the post of part 1, but Mick’s question intrigued me more and more when I realized I didn’t have a ready answer. So I’ll hold off on that character sheet for a few more days.

Link Day

Copyright Darian Jones

My absence this week has all been due to keeping up the homestead and working away on writing deadlines. I have a lot more writing pointers to discuss, but today I’m just going to provide some links.

First, part 1 of a 4 part story featuring Lisette, one of the point-of-view characters from my new book, Stalking the Beast, is now available over at Paizo. You can find “Bells for the Dead” there.

Second, Jon Sprunk penned a nice “things you ought to know if you’re going to succeed at writing” piece for Black Gate this week. Go take a look.

I’ll be back soon with some stuff of my own.

Link Man, away!

Character Design, Part 1

Matt Groening designed characters that could be recognized by silhouette alone.

I had the privilege of sitting down with Patrick Rothfuss at Detroit’s ConFusion last January, and he was kind enough to discuss some of the methods he uses to build characters. I think the observation that most struck home for me was that it’s hard for readers and writers to remember everything about a character’s appearance. Pat personally felt that you shouldn’t give a character more than three “tags” to identify them.

Being a student of the pulps I was familiar with the idea of creating a character with something distinctive  you can revisit to help the reader picture what’s happening. But I’d never heard advice about tags distilled quite this way, and I think Pat gave me a central truth.

I thought about that tag limit for my own characters and realized I’d been doing it unconsciously for a lot of them. Dabir has a spade beard and bright blue eyes. Elyana has auburn hair and violet eyes and, well, she’s an elf. Drelm’s a half-orc, which is distinctive enough, but the things that stands out are his immaculate clothing and armor, and the noble way he carries himself.

Still, I don’t think I’d made these tag limits deliberately, and now when I create characters I remember Pat’s advice. Lately I’ve been striving to be  more systematic — writing is my job now, and I am constantly striving to do better at it.

What follows is the character design template I’m using these days, partly inspired by Scrivner’s Character Sketch template and character sheets from various role-playing games, but mostly inspired by what I’ve learned, the hard way, that I need to know about a character as I’m writing.

Character Writing Prompts

I didn’t understand writing prompts or their purpose when I was younger. Maybe it’s because I always knew what I wanted to do even though I wasn’t aware that wanting wasn’t quite the same thing as knowing how to achieve that writing objective. Writing prompts? I’d roll my eyes at them all through high school and all through college writing courses because I was so eager to get to the story I already had in mind. (The story that wouldn’t work because my characters were cardboard.)

As a result of that eye rolling, I, who thought himself so special, wasn’t open to learning some techniques that really could have helped me get better a lot sooner. (Aren’t all of us who like to write sold that bill of goods about being special from movies and books that celebrate how magical it is to be a writer? Post for another time.)

Yesterday I was writing about how important it is to know your character if you’re going to write swiftly. Well, one of the ways you can get to know those characters so that the prose flows smoothly is to ask some essay questions and then try to write answers in that character’s voice. The trick to avoid making the task onerous is to give yourself a time limit — no more than 5 or 10 minutes. Time yourself, and stop. If it sucks, you haven’t wasted much time and have actually SAVED yourself some time by discovering stuff that can’t possibly work.

On Writing Swiftly

Sometimes I write quickly. Occasionally, when I write quickly, I write well. Most of the time, though, I don’t. I have to revise and re-revise and throw things out.

You’ll find me peering with envious eyes over the shoulders of great writers who write quickly, studying, studying, trying to divine the secrets.

And I think I’ve learned a few. I AM getting faster. Some of it just comes from experience, but some of it, for me at least, comes down to conscious choices.

Thinking back over the best successes I’ve had with writing well, swiftly, I can recall a Dabir and Asim story I wrote in one sitting (“Servant of Iblis”) and an occasional chapter or two that ended up with only a few words changed between when I crafted it in a blaze of inspiration and when it appeared in print. And I think about what I’ve learned talking to talented writers who write swiftly and reading about those from the past. As a result I can make a few generalizations. Maybe they’ll help you as National Novel Writing Month gets into full swing.

Stalking the Beast

My new book is out, NOW! You want monsters, monster slayers, death defying feats, a canny, intelligent female leader? Check out Stalking the Beast. It’s a standalone sequel to Plague of Shadows, which means that most of the heroes who happened to survive the first book take center stage in the second. Get thee to a store and get to reading!

Here’s the official back cover copy:  “When a mysterious monster carves a path of destruction across the southern River Kingdoms, desperate townsfolk look to the famed elven ranger Elyana and her half-orc companion Drelm for salvation. For Drelm, however, the mission is about more than simple justice-it’s about protecting the frontier town he’s adopted as his home, and the woman he plans to marry. Together with the gunslinging bounty hunter Lisette and several equally deadly allies, the heroes must set off into the wilderness, hunting a terrifying beast that will test their abilities-and their friendships-to the breaking point and beyond. But could it be that there’s more to the murders than a simple rampaging beast?”

For more details, visit SF Signal, where I was recently interviewed by Patrick Hester about both this novel and my Dabir and Asim books. Or you can swing by Paizo and look over my Q & A about the book, or read an essay where I talk about both writing for Paizo and my gaming background.

Vincennes Writer’s Festival

I don’t think I’ve ever turned the blog over to anyone else, but today I’m going to do so, because Judy Kratzner has said everything I’d say about the matter, and with all the detail required. In short, if you’re in the region and want to learn about writing and talk to some writers (including this one!), I hope you’ll swing by. Take it away, Judy:

The Knox County Public Library is hosting the Second Annual Writers Festival, Saturday, November 2nd, 9-3 p.m. Speakers include award winning authors Margaret McMullan, James Alexander Thom, Howard Andrew Jones and Vincennes University faculty Bernie Schmitt and Matt Groneman. Registration is underway . The $30 registration includes attendance at all sessions, handouts and snacks. Stop by the library for the registration form or go online www.kcpl.lib.in.us.

November 2nd an author Meet & Greet with the speakers and an additional ten authors is free and open to the public from noon- 2 p.m. The additional guest authors include Marlis Day, Dale Glenn, Rick Kelsheimer, Holli Rebecca Burnfield, Darrell Case, Jeanne James Cox, David Lottes, Jennifer Mackinday , Venessa Purdom  and Angie Mayfield.  The authors will have books for sale and signature.

For information on the Writers’ Festival call Judy Kratzner, KCPL Literacy Coordinator at 812-886-4380.

Writing Mistakes, Part 2

Puny Banner poses beside Hulk’s Car.

Well, I finally performed the proper web site magics to add Stalking the Beast to the Home Page book slider. I forgot how I had done it the last time, so it took a good chunk of the evening.

Today I wanted to take another quick look at parts of my Writing Mistakes list, particularly the ones I thought needed clarification. I’ll just pick the ones that sound vague to me and offer more explanation. If there were some from last week that you wanted to know more about, drop me a line.

My List of Writing Mistakes

A month or so back I was contacted by a reader and fellow writer who’d heard about my mistakes list that I keep in my writing notebooks. She wanted to know what those mistakes were. Today I thought I’d share them with you.

One thing I’ve finally figured out at 45 is that I’ll keep inventing new mistakes, even though I will slowly (too slowly, it seems) get wiser. I believe I’ve already mentioned that I always carry around a mini-pen and a small writing notebook, one that can fit in my back pocket, or even a smaller model (a Paperblanks Micro) that I can slip into a front pocket. You can find a link to my discussion of that very subject by clicking here, along with some photos of my favorite notebooks and size comparisons.

While on that recent vacation I mentioned yesterday, I found it handy to carry around the Micro notebook featured right up there. As my daughter rode and re-rode the Tower of Terror (once was enough for me) I sat on an uncomfortable stone bench and plugged away on an outline and had almost as much fun as she was having plunging up and down. It would have been just as much fun, if not for the bench. I love to write.

Hulk keep list too. Do Not Smash List!

Vance, Robert E. Howard, and the Role of Women

I’m  having trouble sleeping again, but this morning at least I’m putting it to use and am up early writing. I’ve got a lot of work to do on two projects I’m really excited about, so I’ll keep the entry short.

First, in my continuing effort to be everywhere on the Internet, I had a Q and A over on the Paizo boards about my upcoming novel, Stalking the Beast (which reminds me — I’ve got to create a “cover slide” for the new book so it can join the other four rotating at the top of my main page — hope I remember how!) You can find it here.

Second, on a long trip yesterday I started and finished Jack Vance’s Big Planet, courtesy of John O’Neill giving me one of his four extra copies (thanks, John!). I started to take Charles Saunders’ The Naama War — the fourth Imaro book — but was afraid it would get dinged up on the journey.

Big Planet was typical Vance and a great read, but it was also a product of its time. Lengthwise I can’t imagine it was much longer than 65 thousand words, which left barely any room for characterization. Vance can frequently be pretty light on characterization in some ways, although he will add details to even minor characters to bring a culture to life. But I don’t usually read Vance for his characters (unless said character is Cugel the Clever) I read him for the wild inventiveness about culture and events and amazing scenery, which he again, even in this early work, tosses off with careless ease that few others can even approach. Over the course of Big Planet the main characters travel through a vast landscape and encounter all manner of environments and societies, each different from the other and well described and fairly plausible even in their weirdness. And, as is almost always the case in his work, the pace never flagged. The man was a master and there’s still a lot to learn from him even while you’re enjoying his lighter fare.

Having been written in the early 1950s, it has some artifacts of its time that it can’t really be blamed for. It’s assumed and never, ever questioned, that adventuring and important duties are for men — sexual equality isn’t even on the radar. It makes me wonder how I’d ever share this book with, say, my daughter. Most authors can’t be expected to look beyond their time, and I’m sure in 50 years, assuming anyone’s still reading my books, someone will find something that I’m not doing that makes me dated. Still, in contemplation of this sexism I can’t help thinking about Robert E. Howard’s Valeria, from “Red Nails.”