Story Forger

Friday, April 8, 2016

“Too Many Ideas” – How to Prioritize Good Things

We all have ideas.

Some ideas are better than others, and some people have more ideas that other people.

Sometimes, people get really, really good ideas. Fantastic ideas. Have you ever had one of those? I hope so; the feeling of having a fantastic idea is exhilarating. It makes you want to smile. A lot.

Which is unfortunate for writers, because our good ideas are usually stories. And people start to worry when you spend a long period of time smiling at a word document.

So. How many ideas do you have?

I know a few writers who have dozens of story ideas, and I know a few writers who have maybe two. They’ll finish one idea, then come up with another, while the other writer has to plough through their pile of stories to be written.

For instance: I currently have nine story ideas that I’ve collected over the last fourteen months (one of those ideas is a series of thirteen books, so that’s really twenty-one novels all told). This isn’t counting those ideas which are finished (and there are plenty of those, too).

Ideas come and go all the time. Some of them we forget, some of them we remember.

What do you do with all those ideas?

Obviously, you can’t write them all right now. You could try, but you’ll burn out before you finish them. Instead, you have to pick an idea and run with it until it’s time to pick up the next idea.

Okay, that’s pretty simple, right?

Well, it is until you reach this question:

What do I do first?

Of all the questions to ask, that’s a hard one to answer. But I’ll try, like I always do, to come up with a solution that amuses you just as much as it actually answers the question.

The Very Beginning

To quote The Sound of Music, the beginning is “a very good place to start”.

So I suggest we start there. The beginning.

When you have idea, start at the beginning of the idea. Usually, this means developing it, caring for it, thinking about it, and outlining it.

I wanted to make this short and sweet little point to remind you: jumping in head-first isn’t always wise. You might find a school of piranhas waiting for you.

Sometimes ideas need to wait. Sure, your story just looks so cool and inviting you just want to jump right in. Don’t. Instead of plunging into the idea without any sort of consideration, stop and think about the idea. Some ideas end up becoming failed ideas. And that’s okay. We all have to fail at some point.

Now I don’t want you to wait so long that you never start. Even as you wait you can be preparing; as you consider the idea (especially as you consider it for clichés and plot holes), outline it. Develop the characters. And keep an eye on the time. If you spend enough time with the story, you’ll come to realize whether or not it’s worth pursuing.

Once you know that, don’t wait any long. Never wait for inspiration for your story. Instead of waiting for inspiration, wait for insight.

Insight, in this case, is the ability to look at your story and say “this is a good idea”. When your story looks worthwhile, it’s time to write it.

The “One”

No, I’m not talking about your “one true love”.

Ew.

We all have that one (or sometimes two) idea that is it. It’s our big one, our brainchild. Of all our story ideas, this one is our favorite. We treasure it and can’t wait to write it. Because it’s going to be awesome. This story will be the defining moment of your writing because it is your story.

Do you ever fear writing it?

For a while before I started Agram Awakens, I was a little nervous. I knew I wanted to write a High Fantasy series that was gritty and real and deep and long.

At the same time, however, I didn’t want to ruin it. I put it off, waiting for that magical time of being “experienced” with life. A lot of people say that it takes life experience to know something well. That you have to be really old before you can write on some subjects because then you’ll be all wise and whatever.

Um… maybe not?

As I’ve said before, there’s no use in waiting for inspiration, and the same can be said of experience. If you wait until you have enough “experience”, you’ll never start writing.

All the same, it can be daunting to start writing “the one”. This is the story you don’t want to mess up. After all, you probably want this one to get published, you want this one to be your legacy, right?

Then here’s a piece of advice: don’t start with the “one”.

If you haven’t written much before, I want you do write something before you start the pinnacle of your career. If you start that high, you can’t get much higher.

Rather than being concerned about messing up your best work, start with something else, a different idea that you love, but isn’t your favorite. Then, when you’ve gotten your feet wet, start the big project.

It’s what I did with Agram Awakens. I wrote a pair of fantasy novels, a steampunk novel, a futuristic satire novel, and a half a dozen novellas before I started it. This is the “one” for me. I want it to be fantastic.

It’s going to be gritty. I tackle ideas like racism and religion and faith and love and hate and patriotism and humanity. Some of those ideas might seem “mature”, especially for some like me (a highschool senior) to be tackling.

But if I never tackle them, I may never understand them at all.

Don’t wait forever to start your brainchild story. If you do, you’ll never start and a beautiful story will go wasted.

Picking One over the Other

So this all very nice, right?

But what about actually picking the story?

All these thoughts about “waiting for insight” and “being okay with starting your brainchild” are nice, but what about the rest of the ideas?

It’s easy to look at your stack of story ideas and say “I love them all I can’t choose”.

Well…

You’re going to have to.

Because you can’t write them all at once, you have to decide which story to write first. So I want to give you three things to consider as you choose:

1) Be willing to change you list. Before you even start your list of ideas, I want you to do this: if a good idea comes your way, be willing to change the order of your list to incorporate it. Otherwise you’ll be in turmoil over the idea because it’s /fantastic/, but you feel obligated to write all these other ones first.

Don’t do it.

2) Start with those you know best. If you’ve developed one story more than another, write the developed story first. It might seem obvious, but it’s worth stating. Write what you know first, then take a little while to develop that which you don’t.

3) Whatever story you’re currently writing, take the time to enjoy it. Writing isn’t simply about finishing the story. It’s not just about getting something published. It’s about telling stories you love, the stories you want to read. As you write, take time to fall in love with the characters and the world. Let the setting and the people become wonderful in your eyes. The more time you invest in your story, the more it will show in the final draft.

When the Time Comes

Some stories have to wait.

You’re busy with writing one story, perhaps, so the other has to wait. Or perhaps you need to research nuclear physics before starting (been there, done that), so that story has to wait.

And it’s okay.

Whatever story you decide to write first, whichever idea you pick to start your list with, choose to write it well.

And the second one… I want you to write that one well, too.

And the third.

All the way down the list, all the way down as it grows and changes and becomes a compilation of wonderfully complete stories.

Why You Shouldn’t Wait for Inspiration

5 Reasons You need to Stop being Your Worst Critic

Sequels and Threequels

Conflict vs. Emotion

Dark and Light and Shifting Shadow

For the Sake of Diversity…

Plots – Bringing it All Together

Why Do You Write?

Why Outlines Aren’t Evil

Monday, April 4, 2016

World Blip – Time

This blip is a bit of a crossover.

Because time is important not just to your world, but also to your prose. Things need to happen in this much time in order for your plot to time out, but it turns out that your world has a different moon cycle and so you need to adapt that to fit your world.

Time is a complex idea. It’s created, in essence, by our consciousness to perceive the changing from one state to another. When there is motion, we perceive time passing. Without motion, there is not time.

This idea, when you simplify it, can make novels harder to write. Your character is walking to the village and you’re not quite sure how long it takes, so you don’t really show us. Instead, you’d rather just “he walked to the village” and get on with the story.

At the same time, you also want to show us what time of day it is: “the sun hung low in the sky, dipped its golden glow on the horizon”. And maybe what time of year: “freshly fallen leaves crunched underfoot”.

All of that is great, but that all seems like a prose blip to me, doesn’t it? How does this all relate to worldbuilding?

Shall we inspect such an idea?

A World of Time

What day of the week is it?

Unless you’re a college student or busy mother, you probably know off the top of your head that it’s Monday (if you didn’t know that, I thought I’d let you know: it’s Monday).

Does your character know what day of the week it is?

This is something so insignificant we hardly ever think about it, but at the same time, it can be really important. The day of the week often affects the mood of people (for whatever bizarre reason) and if your reader and character know the day of the week, they might conjure up their own mood (yay for creating emotion).

So what day of the week is it?

For your historical fiction and contemporary and dystopian writes, this is easy: well, it’s either Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, or Sunday? (Admit it, you started to sing the days of the week like your mum taught you; if you didn’t, go back and sing them like the rest of us did.)

For the fantasy and sci-fi novels (and maybe alternate worlds?), however, this just doesn’t… work. What are the odds that in the whole universe, your world just happens to name all of the days of their week like ours does?

That’s like the odds of you meeting Hitler in the next thirty seconds. That is to say, it takes a meddling time-traveler to make it happen.

In addition, why does your fantastical planet use a seven-day week? The influences on the seven-day week are largely religious, upon inspection. So unless your world has a religion which demands a seven-day week, you don’t need a seven day week. Using one will keep readers from being confused, because we naturally think “oh, a week is seven days”, but at the same time, why not be unique?

My current project, Agram Awakens, has a five day week. Each of the days has a different name (although I’m not sure I’ll keep them…). In addition I’ve got not twelve, but fifteen twenty-five day months. You’ll notice that doesn’t add up to 365, but why does that strange number have to be the amount of time the world orbit around its star?

Well, because we’ve scientifically and mathematically proved that the time it takes the earth to orbit the sun is just a bit more than that, so we rounded down.

Easy enough.

Does your world?

Your world might orbit faster or slower. I like to keep mine within ten days or so (the world in my current project appears to take 375 days). The science behind planetary movements can go over your head, if you try researching it, but go for it, if you like that sort of thing.

Now. Why did I choose these numbers? Well, I had to randomly choose, but at the same time, I chose my random numbers carefully. I decided to go for symmetry. Every month has the same number of days and weeks, no week ever overlaps a month. Therefore, a five day week fits into a twenty-five day month five times and so I have five weeks in a month. Then you round that number of days per month to the nearest month per year based on 365 as a basic number of days per year.

It’s that easy.

Well, easy if you can do basic elementary math. I see you complaining about math, but really. Unless you’re ten, you can do this in your sleep.

The Timing of Story

So why is this important to your story?

It allows you to know exactly what time of year and month it is. You know that it’s autumn, and that autumn just started. You know that winter is [these months] so your characters have [this long] to reach the mountain pass and rescue the princess before snow covers the paths and blocks them from ever finding her.

Time, relative to your story, is important.

When you have more than one main character, none of whom are together at the start of your story (like my current project), things get complicated fast. Especially when you need them to meet up at a particular place on the same day.

Thing is, that won’t work out if it takes one character five days to get there in the story, and the other one fifty.

When your various plot arcs don’t mesh, you can’t write a good story. So that is where time comes in. You can plot how long it takes each character to reach their meeting place and then tweak their individual timelines to fit the overall story.

There are many ways to do this. If you’re good with your head, you can do it all in there. If you need to, write it out on paper. Or try Microsoft Excel (or the Apple equivalent which is… something?), or even better, find a timeline application.

I use Aeon Timeline, which is a fantastic program that allows you to creature your own time structure and timeline from scratch. You decide how long the year is, how long the week is, and how many months there are. You can add events and people to multiple timelines, view the time lapse between events, and watch people and objects age over the course of your story.

It’s a fantastic program.

Or, if your story is simpler than that, you can just scratch it out with a pencil on a piece of paper and tack it to the wall. I’ve done that and it works.

Time can help your story make sense, and your world come alive.

Two good things.

Two very good things.

Plots – The Weaving of Arcs

Why Your World Needs a Calendar

When Your World is too Big

Stagnant Worlds: Unchanging Fantasies

Friday, April 1, 2016

4 Reasons to Introduce a Pelican to Your Novel

Yes, it’s a strange name for a post.

And yes the name is on topic.

I think your novel needs a pelican. You know, one of those birds with the really large beak that live near the sea and eat fish? Yeah, that kind. The kind that are known to Christians as a symbol of self-sacrifice (for really interesting reasons… you should look it up).

Your story needs a pelican.

And here’s why:

One: A Pelican is not a Pelican unless it Pelicans

By now I hope you realize that I don’t mean an actual pelican, but the kind that the Christian church uses as a symbol.

If you didn’t realize that… well, now you know.

A good story has sacrifice. If nothing is lost – and if nothing is there to lose – then your story will be rather… boring. When nothing changes, when your reader has nothing to lose, we won’t want to read anymore. We read to feel emotion; emotion includes tension and pain and loss and “why me”.

What does a pelican look like?

A pelican can be anything. Specifically, the pelican in your novel can be any noun you come up with: sister, treasure, love, kingdom, loyalty, city, dragon, etc.

If it’s a now, you can use it as a pelican.

It is something your heroine stands to lose. If she fails, it’s gone. She can’t get it back if she doesn’t win.

That is the power of a pelican. While often one of the most beautiful things in your story, it is also the most common thing to be lost.

Loss is a powerful emotion. Too much can create despair, too little can create apathy. But in measured, pelican-sized doses, it can turn your story into a powerful journey of emotion.

Two: A Pelican is its Own Thing

There’s this thing about “loss” and “stakes” that often creates problems in stories: the thing to be lost seems helpless. And that’s not right.

Especially when the “helpless” thing is a human being. This is where the “damsel in distress” and the “independent, headstrong young woman” stereotypes come from. One is the melodramatic extension of what could have been a wonderful pelican, and the other is the rebellion against such a useless stereotype.

Here’s the deal: when a pelican is a real pelican, it is its own creature. It can care for itself, it is self-reliant. A real pelican doesn’t need you to go fishing for it, nor does it want you to make it a nest.

Instead, it does all those things on its own.

So should the pelicans in your story be. They should be self-dependent. Yes, they should be in danger of extinction, but they shouldn’t have to rely on your main character for every breath they take.

That is not a real pelican. That, friends, is called a plot device. When you have a plot device that is so blatantly obvious, you’re not doing it right.

Let your pelican be real. Let the kingdom in danger of invasion be autonomous from your main character. They can fend for themselves while the hero goes to assassinate the enemy’s king. The world doesn’t end until the hero fails.

The damsel in distress tries to escape, but fails because there is this thing called “reality” in which very few princesses are able to overcome four armed guards twice their size.

But she still tries.

Three: A Pelican Chooses Sacrifice

Have you looked up that “self-sacrifice” of pelicans? You should.

…

Okay fine: basically, there is this legend (or maybe it’s fact, I’m not sure) that a mother pelican would (will?), in times of famine, feed her young with her own blood. She would sacrifice her own life that her baby pelicans would live.

Yes, it sounds weird (no, pelicans aren't vampires), but just think about it. That sacrifice is amazing and is so symbolic.

The sacrifices in your novel should be akin to the sacrifice of the pelican. Instead of your main character sacrificing their hometown, let the hometown sacrifice themselves for the hero.

They choose to be rampaged by the dragon so that the hero can fulfill the quest.

When a character sacrifices for the hero, it needs to be their own choice. A sacrifice has to be self-sacrifice.

Any other kind has become fake and cliché.

Four: Metaphors are Fantastic

Now this isn’t really a reason, but this is the part where I unravel the idiocy I just spouted about adding pelicans to your novel.

Consider what you’ve just read (or go back over it) and replace “pelican” with “human being”.

That’s right. You need to add human beings to your novel. Not just characters that fit formulaic spots on the cast, but real people. They need to make real sacrifices with real decisions and real loss with real emotion.

I need to be able to empathize with your characters and catch the meaning of their choices. The idea of consequences needs to soak into every page of your story.

And then it will inspire me.