Eccentric Characters

I wanted to point out the usefulness of eccentric characters for comic relief.

In a lot of serious stories there are high stakes and without a little humor to break the tone of constant running and fear, the story will become tedious and the reader may lose interest. By using an eccentric side character to break up the tone, you can inject some humor and make a lasting impression on readers.

From my own experience in short filmmaking, I notice that it's the films that make people laugh that are the ones most talked about. People like to be entertained and watch someone wacky either make a fool of themselves, make fun of the main characters and their attitudes of seriousness, or save the day. These are all great things that you can have a side character do, all while moving the plot forward and making your readers chuckle (hopefully).

Don't be afraid of going over the top. You can always dial it back in the second draft.

My latest comic relief character fascination: Frances Conroy in the third season of American Horror Story. Definitely check it out if you haven't had the chance yet! She's a riot.

What Ryan Murphy Has Taught Me

It's all about tone.

It's all about the characters.

It's all about their inner demons.

If your work doesn't have these things, it doesn't matter how intricate the plot is - it will fall flat.

Take a look at how many television series get canceled after only four or five episodes. Why don't they click with the audience?

I use the example of Tera Nova, a series that I waited an entire year and a half for. It was supposed to be Jurassic Park meets Dinotopia meets Stargate, and it didn't turn out that way at all. After the first episode the entire series fell flat because the characters weren't strong or consistent enough to keep the viewers interested in their struggles on Tera Nova. Secondly, the tone was all over the place. Was this supposed to be a family drama? A science fiction action/adventure? A romance? The writers didn't seem to know, and the audience definitely didn't know. I lost interest fast. Add to that the one-dimensional character yanked directly from Spielberg's War of the Worlds (no surprise, since he executive-produced this series) and you have a yawn-fest.

With Ryan Murphy's American Horror Story, you know what you're getting from the very first scene. It's horror. A haunted house. Ominous music. The characters are all struggling with their inner demons - and they are believable. We want to know more about them, and we do! Who didn't want to spend more time with Constance Langdon, the extraordinary Jessica Lange? Who wasn't intrigued by Violet and her romance with the troubled ghost, Tate? I couldn't get enough.

Tone is the veil that lays over everything in the story, tying it together into a cohesive whole. If you can get the tone and your characters right - and consistent, everything else will fall into place.

Learning From Episodic Television

I believe that if we find a television program that hooks us immensely, it is worth it to study that program and see what makes it so gripping to us as an audience.

What can it teach us about writing, you ask? Plenty!

For starters, an episode of television has a finite amount of time to tell a story. Usually this amounts to about forty-five minutes during which it must give us a beginning, middle, and end. That means the hook needs to grab us in the first thirty seconds or we will tune out. As an example, I have been re-watching the first season of American Horror Story and am amazed that once I get a minute into the show, I'm hooked until the credits roll.

What else can we learn from a show like Horror Story? Well, we can learn about structuring overall story arcs. If you're like me and you want to write a trilogy of novels, you need to have a beginning, middle, and end for each book, but you also need to have a beginning, middle and end for your entire trilogy. That makes those books feel like a complete story. What good would a season of television be if we only felt the need to watch a single episode and skip to the end? All those episodes need to fit into the overall story that the writers are telling, and the same can be applied for your series of novels.

Last, but not least, episodic television teaches us that we don't have to tell everything all at once. Watch Downton Abbey. Our first impressions of Lady Mary are that she's a cold, selfish woman. After three episodes we learn that there's so much depth to her as a person that we can't help but sympathize with her as she struggles with her place in the world. We need to harness this ability to reveal only what is absolutely necessary in small chunks in our own novels. We don't need to tell the audience our protagonists whole life story in the first chapter. We have an enormous number of chapters to utilize as we slowly pull back the layers of our characters to reveal their heart and soul within.

So, the next time that someone gives you guff for watching an episode of television, tell them that you're studying!

Fanfiction: Yay or Nay?

I've read a few different blog posts that discussed the idea of fanfiction, and with Amazon's recent Kindle Worlds unveiling, I decided I would put my own two cents in.

I am a huge supporter of fanfiction. When I was a freshman in high school I was distraught that Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was taking so long (indeed, it didn't even have a release date or title at that time) and was craving something to read that was Potter related. My friend Kim introduced me to fanfiction.net, and I was in heaven. There were five or six different full-length Harry Potter Book Fives on there, and I reveled in the exploration of different themes and characters who weren't the central heroes of Rowling's work.

Needless to say, I am a writer, and quickly found myself spinning my own Potter stories. I learned a ton about writing from beginning to end, as that was how I uploaded so quickly. I started planning ahead a few chapters at a time, and found myself up to 40,000 words within a year. Better than that, I got regular feedback from a handful of fanfiction readers (I've never met any of you in person, but I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your criticisms and your encouragement! I hope you're all doing well and still writing your own stories!). I also joined fanfiction.net around the time that the "hits" data was being tested. I could see how many people were looking at my work daily, from which country, and which stories were most popular. What a revelation! Imagine the encouragement that people from across the ocean were reading something that I wrote. It was powerful.

As writers, we all want our words to reach many people around the world. Will my novel entertain someone riding a subway car in the UK? I certainly hope so! Will someone in Los Angeles be checking out my books while they wait in rush-hour traffic? That would be fantastic. These goals would have seemed unthinkable if I hadn't started out writing fanfiction. Exploring the craft within the confines of a pre-existing world was a great learning tool for me, and a lot of the terminology that the website used ended up priming me for a future in digital publishing. I encourage anyone in school to check out all the fantastic work on fanfiction.net and elsewhere around the net.

But, what do I think about Amazon's Kindle Worlds? I'm a little lukewarm on the idea. So far none of the franchises that are involved are ones that I am into. Vampire Diaries? Meh. They're all a little too CW for my taste. Now, if they were going to start allowing people to write Smallville fanfiction, I would jump all over that! It's a neat idea, but until they broaden their scope, I'd much rather write fanfiction for a website and learn about the craft of storytelling while getting some feedback on my writing style. Even if I'm not making money from writing or reading fanfiction, I am getting something else out of it creatively, and that's providing entertainment until a new season of American Horror Story or Downton Abbey comes out!

Music As Inspiration

This is another writing tip that I've come across recently, but found that I've used it a lot without realizing what was happening.

I love genre. Going into a book store back when I frequented one weekly, sometimes a few days a week, I absolutely loved being able to walk to the horror section, or the computer technology section, and find a handful of books related to what I was interested in. Just recently I've started exploring some romances and also a few science fiction/dystopian novels. They all work so well within their defined genres - but they also surprise me when those genres are stretched and combined by gifted writers who love to play.

My first draft of the manuscript has thirty pages left to work through, and then I start the meticulous task of adjusting each page in Scrivener to reflect my notes. Once that's done, I'm sending out the completed piece for feedback, which will then lead to a final draft before publication. It's going to be hard work - and it has been mentally exhausting (I took a break from serious work last night to recharge, re-watching an episode of American Horror Story, season one!) but, I know that in the end it will be worth it. Even if this book isn't perfection, I hope it's entertaining, and I definitely learned a ton about story structure and revisions with this one.

However, as I near the ending of one project, my first ever completed novel, I am faced with a double-edged sword. On the one hand, I am thrilled that I've seen something through to the end. Just ask my family and friends how often I finish something of this scope, and they can count them on one hand! On the other hand, I am now free to work on something else. I have almost finished plotting out a sequel to my first manuscript, which was the plan from the start, but I am also curious to see if I can try something new in between that will speed up my writing process. I keep reading blog posts about fellow authors who finish a rough draft in three months, and darn it, I want to be like that! The ideas are there, but how do I nurture them into fleshed-out novels, or even novellas?

On the commute to work this morning I put in the fantastic, atmospheric, and chilling soundtrack to the film Insidious, by Joseph Bishara, and found my imagination going wild with a new idea I've come up with for a horror novel. This idea came to me a few weeks back and I jotted it down in a notebook, but was determined not to let it take over my attention before I got the second draft of my manuscript to my wonderful beta readers (who I hope are harsh on me so that I can really see what's not working, or what needs to be beefed up). Wouldn't you know that just listening to this creepy music in the car this morning got my brain working, and the characters leaped out at me - their struggles with the paranormal, their family situation, and the protagonist becoming clearer and more vibrant with every passing mile on the road.

If you are a writer like me and are searching for inspiration to nurture that idea in your mind, give listening to some genre-specific music a shot while you lull yourself into a meditative state. I find that driving is usually the sweet spot for me because I'm focused, but my creative brain isn't occupied. That leaves the door open for all sorts of wonderful revelations. If you're writing a young adult novel, give the top forty chart a shot. You might be surprised.

I don't listen to music while I actually write anything, but just getting the creative juices flowing is a huge head start for when I get to the blank page and start off sprinting. I think I might give that horror story more of a shot and see how quickly I can complete a draft when the going is good. Maybe a little distance from my other characters is what I need for a month or two before I seriously begin telling the second chapter in their story. We'll see!