Trying to be the Next Shakespeare

Everyone who has ever put pen to paper (or imagination to some sort of medium in an effort to create a novel) has at one point or another, thought of themselves as the next William Shakespeare. To which I say "Poppycock!" while also admitting that I am personally guilty of such thoughts. *blushes* Allow for me to break down both why our world today is making it more and more impossible for Shakespeares to be reborn.

So, Shakespear is known for a lot of things, iambic pentameter, moving speeches that ring in our hearts for ages, stories we will never forget, but there are three things that people can unanimously say define Shakespeare: a world class sense of humor, moving dramas, and wordsmithing.

Humor is something that requires great whit, something that many authors have in spades. I have a fantastic friend in the UK that has such a brilliantly dry (and very British) sense of humor that I can read some of her stuff and crack up for hours afterwards just remembering her sharp lines. The problem is that this humor, often times, removes us from the overall drama of a deep and interesting story line. Shakespeare was, in his highly gender biased, highly classist Britain, was able to blend these two things in such a way that it appealed to both sexes and all classes. His humor bled into his dramas. His drama bled into his comedies. This is something that is often lost in modern literature.

On another note, Shakespeare didn't have to worry about these stereotypes. From the dull underclass soldiers in Much Ado About Nothing, to the highly staunch and aristocratic McDuff in That Da** Scottish Play Shakespeare writes highly stereotyped, classist characters. And yet, we love and drool over these plays as some of the highest pieces of literature ever written.

So, why can't we write similar stereotypical characters? In modern terms, you'd have to write a plethora of stories that cross all classes, truly human stories. In our world of multicultural, international extremely diverse relationships, it's becoming increasingly difficult to write something that you feel may apply to all human kind without being called racists. This is particularly true for American writers.

The accusations and cat calls of whitewashing characters, calls for more diversity, are attacking our creative abilities. I write international characters. But I still believe that my characters would best represent their areas by not being hyper stylized, or hyper stereotyped! At the same time, there is absolutely nothing wrong with your character realistically representing a certain culture and that culture fitting certain stereotypes. Some tropes and stereotypes are true and accurate representations, but they do not represent the full depth of a character. We, as authors, must be careful when walking these stereotype lines.

Having addressed these two things, which are often addressed in modern literature and have indeed been conquered by many modern authors - JK Rowling, Steven King, Stephanie Meyers (particularly with The Host, I don't even count Twilight), and Suzanne Collins are just a few of the most popular modern authors that have managed to entwine humor, drama, and transcendentally human stories.

Now! Wordsmithing! In modern culture, it seems that wordsmithing has been transitioned from authors to music artists like Snoop Dog that think that adding -izzle to the end of a word all of a sudden makes the word cooler. But then when authors go to their editors with a new word that they feel fits the description better than any existing word and the editor tells them that the word doesn't work... this is a disservice to creators everywhere.

In Hard Bank Left one of the chapters is titled "Unwillfully Discontent". It is not a hyphenated/compound word. This is a portamento. My friend and editor offered me some better antonyms for "willful": involuntarily, unwillingly, unconsciously, unfeelingly, unintentional, unknowingly, disregarded, forgotten, neglected, unplanned, chance, indeterminate, methodical, wittingly, impartially, unenthusiastically... The list goes on. But the words didn't sit right with me. They didn't convey precisely what I meant with the word. For me, the meaning of "unwillfully" or "unwillful" means, "against what one intends to do, but not without desire to do so." In other words "unwillfully discontent" = "being discontent out of duty to one's personal code rather than being discontent by what one actually feels" or "being discontent out of sheer stubbornness, but wanting to enjoy one's self." I'm sure that any number of the antonyms would have done well, but I was looking for a perfect match - and seeing as how many if not all of the antonyms have predefined cultural and contextual definitions, they wouldn't do. I had to come up with something more specific.

When editors are involved, and you have Grammar Nazis around every corner all of whom see it as their duty to correct what they think are nonsense words like "acclimatize" *cough* my dad *cough* then the English language is not allowed to evolve. Sure, you have sites like Urban Dictionary that do post popular nonsense words, or words that are so obtusely mispronounced that they are considered a new word. But most true blue editors and hard core Grammar Nazis will use such sites as proof that new words cannot and should not be invented. And yet, there are so many options of what words can and should become.  Editors should not put limits on author's creative license because they (the editors) believe that there is a better word. Sometimes the author isn't just pulling crap our of thin air, sometimes they have actually weighed all the options and decided that their word is more tasteful and better fits what scope of language they are going for.

If anyone is interested in the English language, it's origins, and where it's headed, I strongly recommend one of my new favorite books: The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got That Way by Bill Bryson.

Fan Art Friday

Wow... is it Saturday??? Where did my week go? No seriously, my husband has a different work schedule on Saturday than he does the rest of the week, so I was freaking out when he got up at 8 and I thought it was 10... yeah, that was a bit of a shock.

So! Fan art Friday... again, I have little fan art to present, but I figured I might keep up with my theme of sharing what inspires me. (Seriously, I have a bunch, so I'll keep it coming.) So, it's bad guy day!

You've heard me make references to her, and seeing as how she's playing a bigger role in HBL, it's high time you guys see my inspiration for Ero Gleilien. This character, like many of my characters started off as something completely different in a completely different universe. Ero was originally a crazy Wild Elf in an RPG that had a major schtick with goblins. The best image I can give you of what she used to look like is this:

courtesy of Ashli Hara

But then I started writing a sci-fi novel and Ero became a care free pilot with an attitude that went a little something like this:

I still love this character, but I found in writing HBL I needed Ero and her partner Caprisha to fill a role, so she turned into more of a staunch bounty hunter working with a federal agent. Of course, all that would be a cover for her true self - a Commandant in the Shadow Cast's private military. (No worries my other characters got renamed, they have not gotten lost in the mix up!) So, now Ero looks a little something like this:

mixed with a little of this

 Yeah... I know, figure that one out. But I had a dream and somehow it worked! So, you'll just have to read on and see what I have in store.

Decission Making and 276th drafts

If you've taken even the most basic writing class you will note that probably the most tedious part of writing is the extensive drafting process a.k.a. The Rewrite. It's  unpleasant, it's messy, and, most importantly, it's diheartening. I cannot tell you how many rewrites have left me wallowing in a pit of self-loathing because either A) "How could anyone hate this first draft? It's perfect, and yet I must rewrite!" or B) "How could I have been such an idiot?! I swear I did not write this crap." *sets about completely rewriting the story and creating an entirely new first draft which must be edited again*...

Does anyone else feel my woes?

With self-loathing pit A, I'm usually so deep in a pit of "woe is me" that I seriously can't see what's wrong with my writing unless someone else points out what is good with it. Take for example the situation that The Next Big Writer has set up where in order to post anything you must earn as certain amount of points by reading and reviewing other people's works. Normally this leads to constructive criticism, bolstered confidences, and new writing buddies that you can do fun projects with. However, in many a case, it also leads to a newbie getting bombed by other newbies with no social skills who turn around and tell them that their piece has a million spelling errors, that their sentence fluency sucks, and that they have a poor vocabulary, and wind up saying nothing about the story in general. The major problem with this should be obvious: if you don't tell someone what's good about their writing first, they will be less likely to accept your criticism. (Seriously you newbie reviewers, read How to Win Friends and Influence People; it should be required reading for being a member of the human race.) In short, sometimes we need a little outside help to get the ball rolling with edits.

But then there's self-loathing pig B... This may be best demonstrated by a little story about a little story I've been perpetually rewriting since I was - oh, we shall say - 10. It's gone by a number of different names over the years, but recently the entire conglomerated world that I've created has been known as Legend of the Fallen Moon.  When I was 10, this was my little outlet for my D&D obsession as well as a number of other imaginative things I had floating in my head due to an overactive imagination and a love of fantasy books. As you might imagine, it took my 10-year-old mind about two years to put these imaginings into more than a few scribblings in the back of an old notebook. And, at the ripe old age of 12, I was absolutely convinced that I was the best writer in the world. I'm thinking of putting some of my 12-year-old scribblings on my website as motivation to aspiring writers that they won't always stink...

This fantasy story has evolved over the last decade and a half until it reached its current state which mainly consists of a map, a list of races, and an extensive planetary history. Given the state of things, it would be better suited for development into an MMO RPG than a series of novels, but we shall have to see what my mind is up to after I'm done with the Shadow Cast Chronicles. I may very well write a book based off the story line of an MMO I develop out of my notes. Let me know in the comments below what you think after checking out the wiki!
I guess what I'm trying to say with that story is that your edits don't always turn out to be exactly what you intended them to be. Sometimes they fizzle, sometimes they soar.

Luckily, with the Shadow Cast Chronicles, I've had a bit more success in staying focused, though it might not always seem that way. When I first started writing the Chronicles, I was writing first person from multiple perspectives and it was really confusing. This pre-first draft went into my "original concepts" folder never to be seen or heard from again.... No, seriously. I only use that draft for some basic references of what I had originally thought would happen. It serves to keep my thoughts straight, but does little else.

The really hard work has come with Hard Bank Left. HBL has been the most time consuming project I've ever worked on. And what's worse! I didn't even have the plot straight when I was writing it! I wrote down the beginning and the end and that was pretty much it for about two years. Then, about a year ago, I sat down, put together a play list on youtube of music and videos that I figured would fit HBL pretty well. After that, I compiled a plethora of inspirational pictures. This got me in the right spirit. After that, I set down a goal for myself: one chapter a week, and I started writing.

That was pretty much it for the first draft. It didn't have to be pretty, it just had to get done. And, as soon as it did, I felt as though there was a huge weight lifted off my chest. I felt that now that I had the story and all the characters down on paper, I could really begin to flush out the story, the characters, and all the details with a fine toothed comb.

...I am finding that fine toothed combs usually find unpleasant snarls - particularly in the "cliche" and "plot device" categories. Needless to say, it's still a work in progress.

Something I've discovered that has really helped in this tedious process is turning your novel into a short story. This... really hurts. Really, REALLY hurts. You have to cut out all the pretty words and fancy fight scenes and elaborate entangled character relationships, and condense the entire story into about 10,000 words. This, for me, has really helped strengthen the core of my story. It's helped build a back bone on which I can fit all my fancy filigree and crazy plot twists.

After this, after all the maiming of my convoluted story, I had a friend instruct me to do what her hubby made her do with her comic: reduce the story to one sentence. With HBL, this was difficult. I had so many things going on, even in short story form, that it took me until very recently to narrow it down. For me, HBL can be simplified to this:

Hard Bank Left is about overcoming and becoming.

It was a phrase that I'd heard since childhood which has had such a profound affect on my life. I didn't even realize that it had seeped its way into my story. Keeping that sentence in the forefront of my mind, I can rewrite the second draft to more clearly reflect the intended message of the novel. This way (hopefully) by draft three, I'll mostly have to worry about nitty gritty things, instead of having my editor point out that my story has no core. (Frankly, nitty gritty things, while tedious, are possibly the easiest things to correct when editing.) 

Fan Art Friday

Again, I am a little low on fan art, but at least I'm getting a few more fans. :) *waves hello to the half dozen people paying attention* But, I have my website up and running! So, if you're still looking for the latest webisode of Target Lost to pop up here, you're out of luck, because it's over there now.

Whelp, I suppose it's about time I talk about the Keypers and their keys. I know, you haven't really gotten there in the book. I've only posted two chapters. But! For those of you that have seen the pictures of the really cool keys that I keep posting I still owe you an explanation.

I stumbled across Keyper's Cove about a year ago and was immediately inspired by their array of fantastical keys. This inspiration bloomed into an obsession with underground, grass roots movements society... thing! (Yes, I know that seems a little redundant. I'm getting to it!). Underground because it's society that has taken root among a culture/group/sub-race of humans that most people don't know exist, and grass roots movement because the majority of the culture doesn't even know the society exists. If you have (a) better word(s) to describe what I just said, feel free to offer it.

In my mind, there are many traits of these keys that are unique, which I really won't go into detail about here (a woman has to have her secrets), but the main feature is that each member of this society-thing has their own, one specially made for them and specially attuned to their aether (not to be confused with The Aether).

Here are just some of the keys from Keyper's Cove that I've used as inspiration in The Shadow Cast Chronicles:

 Cadence's key

 Jeldhen's key

Krys's key

Lia's key

Adrianna's key

Casandra's key

Drystan's key

Nereida's key

Renee's key

and finally...

Gabe's key

*waits patiently for the sudden wave of key enthusiasts*

The Damsel in Distress: Jeldhen

Alright, so most of you are familiar with the "damsel in distress" cliche and how it objectifies those that are captured, blah, blah, blah. If you really want to get into it here's a feminist vlog that addresses this concept in depth (I strongly recommend that you take the time to watch the series later, though they're rather lengthy):

The essence of the cliche is that women are reduced to objects or victim states as a plot device to propel the story forward and motivate the main characters (namely men) into defeating the bad guy.

I've had some people voice concern over the squeal to Hard Bank Left -  Tailslide - being little more than a cheap use of a trope to motivate Krys and force her to confront her darker side. I can see where this idea comes from. All you have to do is read the description of the book and this is the first concept conjured. I want to assure you that this initial bulrb is intentionally misleading with the intention of forcing the reader to come to their own conclusion as to what Krys's inner darkness is. But, yes. Jeldhen does get "kidnapped" and Krys is intent on rescuing him.

Now, without giving away too much *inhales deeply and tries not to burst*, in the first book, Krys is put into a situation where some damselling occurs, but it is clear throughout the book that Krys has the ability to take control of the situation and simply has to figure out how. She is never objectified in the reader's perspective - though she is objectified in the eyes of her captors. I did this in an effort to draw attention to what women go through when being brutalized or victimized. However, rest assured that her kidnap is not merely a plot device, it does serve a higher purpose - and no, it's not the purpose of making Jeldhen come after her. There are greater powers at work here. What that is, though? You'll just have to read and find out!

In Tailslide *again holds breath and attempts not to explode* Jeldhen has already been captured, forcing Krys to confront her so called "inner darkness". Here's where one might draw the line between the damsel in distress motive and the sire in distress:

When a woman is put into the damsel position and the main character is a man, the essence of the theme becomes (as Anita points out here) is that the man is driven by a loss of masculinity due to an implicated failure of his duty to protect the ones he loves. While this is not wrong, nor is it a misrepresentation of what husbands, boyfriends, and fathers would truly experience if put through a member of their family being kidnapped or killed, this is not what Krys, nor on a whole women, go through when put in the reverse scenario.

When Jeldhen is kidnapped, Krys - much like any male counterpart in a similar scenario - is anguished over losing her best friend, experiences feelings of inadequacy in her ability to protect the ones she loves, and overall feels as though she has lost all control. However, she does not allow these things to stop her from progressing as a person. She is not solely driven by her need to prove herself, or a need to get her best friend back - though this is certainly how it seems at first.

Krys does not go on a solo, destroy all Shadow Cast killing spree (even though she would really like to). Instead, she steps up to her tasks as a Keyper and does what she has to to bring them down without unnecessary loss of life. She does not become a super soldier, even if she is capable of it, nor does she become the universally praised hero that wins metals and gets all the recognition. Krys is the epitome of an every day soldier with a cause, and (hopefully) someone young people of every gender can look up to.