Browsed by
Category: Writing

Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: Serial POV – In its Myriad Forms

Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: Serial POV – In its Myriad Forms

Comments 0 Comment

This is part 6 in the Choosing Your Narrative Point of View Series

infinity mirror

Continuing in our exploration of 8 distinct POVs, we come to:

#5.  Serial: 1st,  2nd, Tight Limited 3rd, Limited 3rd, or Blended

The Serial POV is a common variation of Mixed View Points in genre fiction.

It’s sort of like serial monogamy. You use more than one character’s viewpoint, but you don’t go hopping around in multiple heads in the same sentence, paragraph, or scene, often not even in the same chapter. This can be done with a series of alternating 1st Person, alternating 2nd Person (Very unusual!), alternating Tight Limited 3rd, alternating Limited 3rd Person, or an alternating blend of some or all of the above.

…

Read More Read More

Why We Shouldn’t Hunt The Trope To Extinction

Why We Shouldn’t Hunt The Trope To Extinction

Comments 6 comments

Drake Peter McLean-smallThe incredibly addictive TVTropes.org website has this to say about the trope :

Merriam-Webster defines trope as a ‘figure of speech.’ For creative writer types, tropes are more about conveying a concept to the audience without needing to spell out all the details.

Wikipedia uses a lot more words to say basically the same thing.

It’s important to understand that this doesn’t make the trope a cliché, but rather a sort of shorthand for writers to convey an image or concept or character to the reader in as few words as possible.

The poor old trope had had a lot of bad press in recent years. A lot of people seem to want to deconstruct the little critter, or subvert it or discredit it. Basically people seem to want to hunt the trope to extinction, and I think that’s unfortunate.

Now I agree some members of the trope herd have got a bit long in the tooth and are probably due for culling. No one really needs to read another fantasy novel where a simple farmboy turns out to be the Chosen One / Long Lost Heir who is foretold by prophecy and destined to save the world, do they? No, so the “Farmboy” trope is probably due to meet the huntsman, and I think the “Damsel in Distress” has probably had her day too.

…

Read More Read More

Big Magic in a Business Suit

Big Magic in a Business Suit

Comments 0 Comment
Marshall Versus the Assassins-small
12th century and mystic conspiracy stuff — Go!

So I am doing a historical project for a client. I’ve done this before several times now: “12th century and mystic conspiracy stuff —  Go!”

How does this chime with Elizabeth “Eat, Love, Pray” Gilbert’s Big Magic that was all about; “Be serious about having fun being creative but don’t burden it or yourself by taking it too seriously or expecting too much from it”?

What happens when your creativity becomes a serious thing because (a) people are paying you for it, and (b) you are using it to pay other people (like shops that sell food your children eat)? What happens when you are (c) doing it to order?

In my case we’re talking writing fiction. In other cases it could be sword fighting (I know several people who do this professionally), writing, costuming, dancing, burlesque…(we know who you are).

How do you play for money?

…

Read More Read More

Tommy Guns, Prohibition, and…. Magic?

Tommy Guns, Prohibition, and…. Magic?

Comments 4 comments

Black City Saint-smallEpic fantasy has been and I think always will be a mainstay of the fantasy genre as a whole and it is for this which I am of course well-known thanks not only to my Dragonrealm saga, but also such shared worlds as Dragonlance, World of Warcraft, Pathfinder, Iron Kingdoms, and more. I certainly enjoy epic fantasy as well, naturally having read among so many others the Lord of the Rings. Still, as with most readers, I also enjoy a variety of other offerings in fantasy, especially urban fantasy… which leads me to Black City Saint.

I have delved a bit into urban fantasy in the past, most notably Frostwing. Still, although I utilized Chicago as the background in that novel and two others, never before Black City Saint has the city, its history, and the characters been so entwined. It’s far simpler to merely set a story in a modern setting that everyone knows and put in those touches that remind the reader where they are. More complex — and at the same time more exciting for me as the author — is to turn to a time period that, although not all that long ago, remains sharply different from that in which we live. Having grown up around the Chicago area, I had heard many of the names, many of the stories, concerning the prohibition era. Always a fan of the mystery genre, I assumed that I might use those stories in that way, but the notion of Nick Medea entered and changed everything.

I love the mixing of genres. Some of my favorite novels include mysteries with magic. It was therefore not at all surprising to me that I took a few steps farther than I had with my previous excursions into urban fantasy and introduced into Roaring Twenties Chicago possibly the least likely protagonist — St. George of dragon fame.

And, yes, the dragon came with him.

Adding a character such as St. George into the mix meant making certain that the world he lived in had even more depth. With his lengthy life, that meant research had to go back beyond the Roaring 20s, which in turn brought into the story new elements that not only helped cement character development, but added to the depth of the city itself. The actual history of Chicago became a character of its own, molding the story and the protagonists in the process.

…

Read More Read More

Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: Pro-Tip From A.J. Aalto

Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: Pro-Tip From A.J. Aalto

Comments 1 comment

AJ AaltoNicknamed “The Writerghoulie” in the early days of Twitter, A.J. Aalto is a Canadian urban fantasy writer, author of the paranormal comedy series The Marnie Baranuik Files, and an active member of the Horror Writers Association.

Butt-In-Seat: Discipline and the Muse

The Muse loves to strike when you’re in the drive thru or walking your llama and can’t immediately capture those perfect snippits of dialog or subtle plot twists.

There are many ways to get around this. First of all, don’t own a llama. Secondly, set up regular meetings with yourself, to get your creative mind into the habit of showing up for work on your schedule.

Any time I have trouble being disciplined, I return to the habit that seemed to work best for me. Pro tip: 4 A.M. is prime creative time. I set my alarm, snarl at the clock, slap it a few times, throw myself out of the sack, slog to my office to load my documents, and put on a pot of tea. While the kettle heats up, I curse my boss; since I am my boss, I know exactly which insults cut the deepest.

Then I start the music in my headphones: Dubstep, K-pop, whatever music my teenagers say I’m too old to listen to. Then I shake my booty in the dark kitchen, where no one but my cat has to witness my cool-ass dance moves. Once the tea is ready, I’m wide awake and ready to work; thanks to the habit, the Muse is, too. In the beginning, you may need to bribe yourself to show up at 4 A.M. (I find that desk-chocolates work and desk-kale does not), but once the habit is fixed, it’ll be much easier to get your butt where it needs to be.

…

Read More Read More

Superhero TV: That’s Agent Carter To You

Superhero TV: That’s Agent Carter To You

Comments 8 comments

Carter 1I don’t know how I forgot “superhero” when I wrote about characters and their jobs a couple of weeks ago, but I was powerfully reminded of my lapse – and inspired – by two excellent posts from my friends and fellow BG bloggers, Derek Kunsken (Supergirl) and Marie Bilodeau (The Flash). Today I’d like to put in a word for the Marvel TV universe, where there’s at least one heroine that’s neither an alien, nor a human with superpowers: Peggy Carter of the Strategic Scientific Reserve (SSR) is 100% human.

A number of factors make this show stand out for me. For one, the creators have managed to pull off a series that is a little bit prequel, a tad bit sequel, as well as a sort of spinoff, that doesn’t rely on deep knowledge of either Captain Americ or Agents of Shield – or anything else in the Marvel universe for that matter. Plus, it avoids the drawback of most prequels: you know who isn’t going to die.

…

Read More Read More

The Midnight Games and Why I Wrote Them

The Midnight Games and Why I Wrote Them

Comments 0 Comment

The MIdnight Games David Neil Lee-small“One might not think of our city as a muse,” began a recent review of my first YA horror novel The Midnight Games in a Hamilton magazine. But if you ask me, good horror novels, because they assume that monstrous secrets lurk behind the facades of everyday life, always convey a strong sense of place: I’m thinking of the New York City of Whitley Streiber’s The Wolfen, the Los Angeles of Robert McCammon’s They Thirst, or even the east coast gothic of Tim Wynne-Jones’ Odd’s End (which is an archetypical Canadian production — a horror novel about real estate).

In any case, Hamilton, Ontario, just southwest of Toronto, is a grimy little city that, like a lot of its relatives in the USA, dearly misses the great days of its industries (in this case, steel); days that have passed and that will not return again. One result of this is a working class culture, deeply depressed, that tends towards the nostalgic, and by nature I am a relentless optimist who regards nostalgia with a distaste approaching revulsion. For all that, I’ve lived in Hamilton since 2002 and the city has been good to me in many ways; let’s just say it’s enabled me to write a lot of books.

One day a local Hamilton publisher, Noelle Allen, put out a Facebook call for Hamilton-based books on behalf of her company, Wolsak & Wynn. I replied, “What we need is a horror novel, set in Hamilton, that people will read on the bus.” I volunteered to write such a novel.

Like it or not, for the past twelve years my family and I have lived a couple of blocks from Ivor Wynne, the local football stadium, and we hear all the noise from the Tiger Cats games. So I began a novel in which my protagonist hears a racket from the stadium at night, which he thinks of as “midnight games.” However, they are not games at all, but the cruel ceremonies of a local cult which is trying to summon to earth the Great Old Ones of the H.P. Lovecraft Cthulhu Mythos; trying with what turns out to be a fair degree of success.

…

Read More Read More

Check out the For a Few Gold Pieces More Kickstarter

Check out the For a Few Gold Pieces More Kickstarter

Comments 0 Comment

For a Few Gold Pieces More-small

Q: Would you introduce yourself?

A: Hi, I’m Richard C. White, a science fiction/fantasy author and occasional blog contributor here at Black Gate. I’m also the sponsor of the For a Few Gold Pieces More Kickstarter. Along with my writing, I’m a member of the Writer Beware committee for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

What is this project about?

For a Few Gold Pieces More is a collection of ten short stories I originally did for an e-publisher a few years ago. After having the rights to these stories returned, I decided it was time to release them as a collection, both e-book and in print. It’s tough to promote an e-only series at conventions, because as soon as you get people interested, they want the book now — not when they go home and try to remember what the book was or who wrote it.

The idea for the stories was to take folktales, fairy tales, and legends and given them a decidedly dark twist. And speaking of dark twists, my protagonist isn’t exactly a hero, but he’s not as hard and cynical as he like to think he is. Suffice to say he does what it takes to get the job done.

…

Read More Read More

Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: The Skeleton Matters (Or, Why It’s Not OK to Skip Scenes in Your Third Act)

Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: The Skeleton Matters (Or, Why It’s Not OK to Skip Scenes in Your Third Act)

Comments 1 comment

Seriously, [novelist’s name redacted],

I get that you were writing a romance with a post-apocalyptic setting and plot, and not a post-apocalyptic novel with romantic elements. I get that the pacing and structure is significantly different between those two categories.

gas mask lovers-small

BUT, I don’t care which one you’re writing: you don’t get to leave out the middle of the third act! It would only have been a couple scenes; they could have been done in as little as 4 or 5 pages (though 8-10 would have been better), but they were important scenes. You can’t just toss the events off in a couple of graphs of narrative summary in the scene you jump to.

You had built that villain into a bad mo-fo: you can’t cheat us out of the meat of their encounter!

…

Read More Read More

The Amazing Authentically Authentic Latina Author!

The Amazing Authentically Authentic Latina Author!

Comments 3 comments

Certain-Dark-Things Silvia Moreno-Garcia-smallCategorization is a funny thing when you’re Latin American. Everything I write, people want to call it magic realism.

And then, when I write science fiction, sometimes people have no idea it’s science fiction because they don’t have enough cultural info to figure it out. When you’re writing a dystopia or an alternate history set in the USA, it’s pretty easy to figure out it’s dystopia or an alternate history. Everyone knows the USA! Hey, I knew your president cut a cherry tree and you had a Civil War when I was like seven years old and couldn’t speak English.

But is it fact or fiction that in Mexico when you apply for a job people can ask you to state your age, marriage status, and religion, and affix your photo? Sure! That’s not a dystopia. So sometimes I write a story and outsiders think, “That’s too fantastical,” or they confuse an ordinary detail with the fantastic.

More than once I’ve been told something is not “science fiction” or not “science fiction enough.” Needs more hyperdrive. There’s also the dreaded “doesn’t ring true.”

Doesn’t ring true generally means people expect you to bring in the exotic. They’ll be like “I once went to Acapulco so this gives me super great knowledge about your country and therefore this is not exotic enough.” Awesome. They want you to show a sarape, bring out the donkey. Check out the rooster in The Three Caballeros. That’s the sense of place you should aim for.

Someone once wanted me to change a name because it looked weird. It was a real name used in Mexico.

In Mexico City there are women-only designated subway cars so you won’t get groped. There are subway gangs with youths, hair combed back with too much gel who go to reggaeton shows, and like a story I read online, if you encounter a bunch of them it looks like you’re living in a “Spanish-language remake of The Warriors.”

…

Read More Read More