Writing Tips: Picturing Places

For those of you who didn’t know, Myrrhlynn was able to get the final cover of Beauty and the Beast to me earlier this weekend, and here it is!

Myrrhlynn (pronounced like Merlin) is my cover artist who is a regular wizard with Photoshop. (Hence the nickname.) I apologize to those of you who suffered through viewing the previous place holder covers I whipped up. Myrrhlynn did another great job with this cover, I’m so glad she reads my books before I release them because she makes the images very meaningful. This cover depicts Elle in a dark cloak (Which is very fitting, as those who have finished the book will agree with me.) in a snowy forest. Chanceux Chateau–Aka the beast’s castle–is in the middle of a woods, making the setting in the cover perfect. Myrrhlynn chose to use a winter scene because about half to a third of the book takes place in winter. Snow is something of a plot device in certain parts of the story.

Keeping Myrrhlynn’s reasoning for the cover design in mind, today I thought I would reveal a bit of my writing/inspiration process. When I’m writing a story I try to get clear pictures in my head to make the places and characters feel more real. For Life Reader I mapped out the library building design and had a folder on my computer that had dozens of photos from incredible libraries. For King Arthur and Her Knights I viewed A LOT of armor photos, and looked at A LOT of castle blueprints. For beauty and the beast I collected a lot of different garden photos/art images–Each part of the gardens (like the rose garden, the walking hedge area, and the fountain in the flower garden) were inspired by different images. The same goes for the Chateau. I originally planned for Severin to have a castle, but as I looked for images and photos of french castles I learned more about chateaus and decided that was a more appropriate setting. I even collected photos of papillons, mirrors, and roses.

My point is that the pre-writing footwork isn’t just research, it’s also imagining. Granted I changed a lot as I went because I needed to mold the scenery for the sake of the story, but if I ever got stuck or bored I went back through and looked at my pictures for inspiration.

Thanks for reading Champions, and an extra big thank you to Myrrhlynn for another spectacular cover!

Writing Tips: No Plot? No Problem

Before I start today’s post I want to announce that I hope to upload Beauty and the Beast to Amazon tonight or tomorrow. Due to Amazon’s publishing system even if it is available tomorrow I might not be able to get the book lined up for a free promo day. Because of that I’m pushing back B&B‘s freebie days by one day. You can plan for it to be available for free on Friday–December 13–and Saturday–December 14.

Ok, on to the fun stuff! I know I just recently did a writing tips entry, but this weekend I checked out a marvelous book from the library and once B&B is launched I will be filling this blog with B&B news. Plus I’m dying to talk about it and if I tried to bring this kind of thing up among my social circle most people would eye me oddly.

The book is called No Plot No Problem, and I cannot recommend it highly enough for new writers. The book is written by the creator of NaNoWriMo–or National Novel Writing Month–and the book focuses on the purpose of NaNoWriMo–writing a novel (50,000 words) in a month. What makes this book so valuable is that single idea.

The author is very upfront in saying that you probably aren’t going to produce the next great American novel by writing a book in one month, but the experience is priceless. I don’t mean to sound discouraging, but the first novel you write is like a set of training wheels. It’s what you learn on, it’s not an example of your finest work. I wrote at least four full length, finished books before I produced anything of worth. I went back and rewrote the punctuation off my earlier stories so they are great products now, but I would rather take a vow to be a hermit than to let you, Champions, read the first drafts of Princess Ahira or Life Reader.

So if you know your first novel is going to be less than stellar, why not write it fast and get it over with? Instead of starting with that Epic Fantasy you’ve been dreaming about for the past five years, write a shorter book that will teach you through experience about the craft of writing. Your dream book will benefit greatly and your rewrites won’t be as painful.

That is not to say your first novel is going to be trash. Lots of people who participate in NaNoWriMo take time to clean up their novels and make them into great books, but no one can deny that your first draft of your first book is basically an experiment. Even if you know that it is still a lot of fun, and I promise you’ll feel accomplished when you finish it.

No Plot No Problem also gives you the tools to figure out how to squeeze writing time into your life, and it talks about the importance of deadlines. In a nutshell, most people don’t write a novel even if they want to because they never give themselves a sense of urgency/looming deadlines. Having a goal will help you make yourself write. I use this method myself. My goal isn’t necessarily to write a novel in a month, but I do try to come up with a word goal for every month. (For instance I’ll say my goal is to write 30,000 or 40,000 words. All of my King Arthur and Her Knights books are typically written in 30ish days.)

No Plot No Problem also has a lot of great advice from people who have participated in NaNoWritMo. They talk about the midway slump, how to keep slogging through, keeping yourself encouraged, and more.

The biggest ideas I want to endorse with this book are 1) write with a deadline and 2) write that  first novel FAST and don’t be ashamed about it. Given that NaNoWritMo is a fairly big phenomena I’m pretty confident you’ll be able to find a copy of this book in your local library system. Find it, read it, embrace it! Believe me, as a writer I want you to succeed. Most people want to write a book, but very few people ever do. No Plot No Problem is a great tool to help you get over that first hurdle, separating you from the want-tos.

Thanks for reading, Champions!

Writing Tips: Character Motivation

Greetings Champions. It’s been a while since I’ve had a writing tip entry, so today I want to talk about character motivation.

Whether you fly by the seat of your pants and just write or you tediously plot out your stories, one thing that you absolutely must decide on beforehand is character motivation. Your heroes must have motivation as a group and individually, and your villains must have a motive for doing what they do.

If we want to look at it from the villain’s viewpoint, Sauron from Lord of the Rings is an obvious example. His motivation? He wants to take over Middle Earth. He’s very upfront and predictable in his desire, but that doesn’t make him any less dangerous. An example of a less blunt villain would be Miss Bingley from Pride and Prejudice. Her motivation is that she wants to marry Mr. Darcey. This desire sets her up as Elizabeth’s enemy, and it eventually affects her friendship with Elizabeth’s sister, Jane, when she concludes that having anything to do with Elizabeth’s family is dangerous.

So Sauron, the dude with the spiky helmet? Yeah, this is him before he went through his gothic phase. He was actually named Mairon and was a good guy until–you guessed it–he was otherwise motivated. The image is NOT mine.

Heroes are much the same. Robin Hood steals from the rich and gives to the poor because he wants to provide for those in need. Pirates look for treasure because they are driven to find gold.

Motivated characters drive a plot forward. It’s what pushes them to reach, run, or pursue. This is true in any kind of genre. In horror books the characters are fighting for life, in romance they’re fighting for love. Typically the fate of the world is at risk in fantasy books, and the desire to stop a killer is what pushes the detective to solve a murder mystery. Unmotivated characters make for really boring books. When you craft your plot make sure your characters are motivated to see the story through. Give them personal reasons to, and raise the stakes.

You also must be sure to include personal motivations. In Princess Ahira Azmaveth creates Kohath because he is driven by his curiosity. He wasn’t romantically interested in Ahira at first, but his personal motivation came back and bit him on the rump to make that happen. The plot for Red Rope of Fate revolves around court intrigue, kidnapping, and blackmail. But the romance of Red Rope of Fate starts with Tari’s motivation to befriend Arion because she feels obliged to. Individual motivation will explain why the character does what he/she does.

A character can and should have more than one motivation. Sometimes the character’s motivations aren’t even discussed in the book, but you can see the way they affect the character. (Tari’s career as an Evening Star is a perfect example. I don’t come out and say “EVENING STARS PROTECT HUMANS” until 3/4 through the book, but you can see that mindset in Tari from the first page.) Sometimes books are even better if you don’t tell the readers what the character’s motivation is, but you still MUST give them a defined motivation because it will help you set a pattern for the character to react off.