Talent, a Dirty Word

I don't like the word talent. See, we use this word to say someone is good at what they do, and that's fine, but the word "talent" implies they are good because of some natural ability. It implies they did not work hard to become good -- they were lucky, not persistent, blessed, not persevering.

It also implies a division: between the talented and untalented. It implies that, regardless of what you want to do in life, if you haven't "got it" you'll never be good enough no matter how hard you try.

I know what you're thinking. I'm making too much of this. You don't mean all that crap, just the compliment, right? The truth is, I'm not bothered so much by talent as a compliment. What really bothers me is the thought that comes after: I could never do that.

The thing is, I've quit so many things in my life because I saw someone amazing and thought, "I'll never be that good. Why bother?" I quit piano. I quit sports. I stopped writing and drawing for years.

I quit because they had something I didn't. To quote Leia, they had a power I didn't understand and "could never have." Without talent, I thought, I'd never be good enough, so I didn't even try.

I regret those years. I could've learned so much if I'd known what I know now. But you know what? Regret is useless too. All that matters is what I want now. I can do anything I want to do, and I can be really good at it, if I'm willing to put in the work.

So can you.

It's true, not everybody's starting block is in the same place. Not everyone has the same hurdles. But nobody gets to the finish line without working hard to get there. You find me one person born with professional-level skills, and I'll show you a hundred people just as good, who practice everyday. (And probably that one person practices everyday too).

So don't say, "You're lucky to be so talented." Say, "You must have worked really hard." Don't say, "I could never do that." Say, "I could do that, but I'm working on other things right now."

Or better yet: "I'll get there, too. It's just a matter of time."

Make It Tense

Tension is what drives a story. Without it, a story is just a bunch of stuff that happens. Not just the story, but the synopsis and query too. You need tension everywhere.

Tension is whatever the reader is afraid will happen. Morpheus might die. Greg might lose the respect of his future father-in-law. Julianne might not get married and/or might ruin her best friend's wedding.

In my own writing, I've realized places where I don't know what happens next are boring because there's nothing to be afraid of anymore. The trick is, in every chapter and every scene, to ask, "What's the tension here? What is the reader afraid will happen?" and then crank it up.

Make Me Care
In order for the reader to be afraid for the characters, they have to care about them. Have you ever watched a horror movie and wanted the bad guy to kill every last one of them? That's probably because you didn't care about the characters, so you didn't care when their lives were in danger.

It's the difference between strangers in an accident vs. your wife and kids. To make the reader care about the characters, they need to be believable and sympathetic.

Back Up Your Threats
Good parents know not to make empty threats. A kid who stops when Dad says no is one who has ignored Dad before and been punished.

In fiction, give the reader what they're afraid of, and make it worse than they feared. In Mrs. Doubtfire, Daniel wasn't just caught in the act, he was caught in a public place, in front of his boss, his ex-wife, and her boyfriend.

What if you can't back it up? Everybody knows the good guy (usually) never dies. If you want the reader to be really afraid, try this: kill someone the reader thought was safe. Joss Whedon did this in Serenity. George R. R. Martin does it in every freaking book, and now I'm afraid for everybody.

Crank It Up
So the reader cares about your characters, they know you'll back up your threats, now it's time to crank up the tension. Except at the end, and maybe at the very beginning, there should be some tension at all times. The amount might rise and fall throughout the story, but it should generally increase until the climax, when everything goes BOOM.

There are lots of ways to do this. One is by raising the stakes. The Incredibles starts with Bob in danger of losing his job, then his life, then his whole family. Crank, crank, crank.

Another way to raise tension is by putting the protagonist in increasingly precarious situations. Notice how in every movie where the protagonist is pretending to be two people, there's always a scene where both people are supposed to be present at once? This is what they're doing.

If the protagonist is safe at home, force them out. If the last place they want to go is their ex-boyfriend's party, make them go to the party. Never give them a break. Ask "What's the worst that could happen?" and make it happen. Your characters will hate you, but fortunately, they're fictional.

A Pirate, an Author, and a Baby

One sketchbook page today, three pictures. Also a demonstration of the difference between what I draw from life (or, in this case, pictures of life) and what comes out of my head.

I'll save the best for last, cuz I'm like that. So first up is Fitch Mickells, an air pirate whose only loyalty is saving his own keel. It's almost a shame he hooked up with Sam Draper when he did.

Drawing from my imagination like this is fun, but hurts my fear of failure. I never know where everything is supposed to go. So I figure if I draw like a thousand real faces, I'll be better at drawing made-up ones. With that, here's one of my very favorite authors:


And one of my very favorite sons:

Trying New Things

Although I love planning and starting new novels, it makes me a little crazy too. I mean, in addition to all the normal worries (e.g. am I wasting my time? will I ever get published? if the previous novel(s) didn't get me an agent, what makes me think this one will? etc.), I have worries about new things.

I have to try new things. Unless it's a sequel, I need new characters, a new world, and a whole new idea, otherwise, what's the point? But new things are scary.

For example, The Cunning will be the first time I've tried writing a female protagonist.* Not only that, but she's a teenager. I don't know if I can do that convincingly. What if I'm trying something I'm just not good enough to write yet?

And Suriya doesn't even speak English. Am I going to have a lot of dialogue tags with "she said in Thai"? Will Suriya and Anna** have telepathic dialogue the entire time? What about the times Anna tries to speak to Suriya in English and she doesn't understand?

It also looks as though the entire first book (I think in trilogies) takes place in Thailand. I wanted to give this story something unique from my experience, but I'm afraid I'm going overboard with it -- including every little thing I know about this place. Even crazier, what if it does work, everybody loves it, but they're all disappointed because Book 2 takes place in the US?***

What if I can't find Suriya's voice? What if I do and it's no good? What if I can't bring the humor from Air Pirates into this story? What if I force the humor in and it doesn't fit?

I'm being totally stupid, I know (and thank you for caring enough to read this far, btw). Ultimately this is just a fear of failure I need to get over. The truth is if I don't try new things, I'll never know the answers to any of those what-ifs and I'll never get to tell Suriya's story.

I keep thinking that if this doesn't work it will be a year (or more) wasted writing this story, but the only way it would be wasted is if I didn't learn anything. What I really need to do is stop writing to get published and start writing for me again.

Hey, how about that? The crazy's gone.


* No, wait. The original "Joey Stone" had one, but she wasn't a teenager. Also, that story wasn't very good.

** For those of you following along, Charity's name is now Anna.

*** Think that's crazy? I'm also thinking, "What if I can't write Book 2 because I haven't lived in the US for 4 years?"

Planning Ahead

If you didn't know, I'm a planner. (Also, if you didn't know that it means you're new, so welcome!).

I love planning. I know everyone's different, with their own process that works for them, and so I can't tell you how to write. But listen. If you don't like your process, if you feel like your stories lose direction halfway through, if you find yourself quitting on stories because they don't go anywhere... you might try planning.

You might even like it.

So first of all, I'm neurotic (totally selling you on this planning thing, aren't I?). When I'm in a draft, I can't skip scenes, I hate retconning the beginning, and I have recurring nightmares about getting to the end and finding out it's stupid.*

But when I'm planning, I can do all those things and it doesn't bother me. Maybe because revising an outline takes like a hundredth of the time it takes to revise a draft. Maybe because I'm insane. I'm not sure.

I've seen people say they don't like planning because it takes all the surprise and creativity out of writing - as if there's no reason to write the draft once we know what happens. But see, there's so much surprise and creativity that happens while I'm planning, but it happens faster. It's like taking a week to discover the story instead of a year.

Does that mean the draft is a chore once the planning is done? Heck, no!** I'm obsessive about planning, but even I don't plan every little detail. I know who wins the fights, but I don't know how. Someone convinces the protagonist to change their motivation, but I don't know what they say. Characters I didn't realize I needed appear sometimes. Sometimes my outline even changes.

I know, I'm such a hypocrite.

And even if I know exactly what happens, down to the details of who hits who and how hard, there's still the surprise and creativity of figuring out how to say it. It's not like I ever think, "Oh well, gotta write this scene now. Sigh." The scenes I've thought the most about are the ones I'm most excited to write. Always.

So for me, planning doesn't remove any surprise or creativity; it just shifts it around. At the same time, it gives me some element of confidence that the weeks and months spent drafting are not wasted on a story doomed to crap out on page 212. It lets me know, in a relatively short amount of time, that the idea is sound (even if I fail later on execution).

Like I said, everyone's got their own process that works for them. Planning might not be for you. If you're not sure, maybe try it out on a short story or even just a chapter. Outline it down to a sentence or two per scene and see what happens. It might be better than you think.


*I still do those things, but planning helps minimize it - all the more as I get better at writing.

**Well, yes, sometimes. But I've never met anyone for whom drafting isn't a chore at some point, planner or no.

Thinking Through Airships

I've been debating increasing my blog output here to 3x a week. I'll try it for a bit, see how it goes. No guarantees.

I've also been thinking about posting my sketches. As I've said before, I'm trying to draw once a week, but I'm more motivated if I know people are going to see what I draw.

That said, these sketches are pretty old, but I wanted to show you the evolution of the Air Pirates' airships a little. This first one is how I envisioned them looooooooonnnnggg ago - about 4 years. Back then airships were called cloud busters or dusters (in my story). Their airbags were called squits. Thankfully, very little of that slang survived.


I never liked that version, and anyway, airbags are not very conducive for ship-to-ship battles - one bullet through the bag and it's done. Below is another sketchbook page from a couple years ago. It's me trying to figure out what I wanted the airships to look like (I don't know who the girl is).


The ship at the bottom is Shadow's End, a 'dropout' belonging to a pirate named Kiro. That design survived and makes its first appearance in chapter four, "Hagai's Death". (You may also recall Natalie used the same design in her drawing of Sam).

Don't expect all my sketches to be about what I write. I'm rarely happy with the drawings that come out of my imagination, preferring to draw from life instead. But who knows? The more I do this, the better I get. Right?

Hero's Journey

Last time I talked about the Three Act Structure as a way to map out your story. Today I want to talk about the Monomyth, or the Hero's Journey.

This one's kind of cool because it has transcended both time and culture (i.e. it's really old and lots of cultures' stories use it). Meaning this story is one that, for whatever reason, resonates with us as people. In fact, you'll see a lot of similarities between this and the Three-Act Structure.

The hero's journey is separated into three sections: Departure, Initiation, and Return. Each section has its own features, not all of which are present in any given story. But you'd be surprised how many are.

DEPARTURE
Innocent World: The hero starts in the normal and mundane, though they are not always mundane themselves. Frodo in the Shire. Luke on his uncle's moisture farm.
Call to Adventure: Something happens that draws the hero outside their world. Frodo inherits the Ring. Luke meets Ben Kenobi. There is often a refusal of the call at first. Frodo doesn't want to leave. Luke refuses until his aunt and uncle are killed.
Supernatural Aid: Once the hero has committed to the quest, their guide appears - Gandalf or Obi-Wan.
Crossing the Threshold: The hero passes through some ordeal to leave the innocent world and enter the world of adventure. Frodo is hunted by a Ring Wraith. Luke and Obi-Wan fight their way out of Mos Eisley.

INITIATION
Road of Trials: The hero faces a series of tests, often failing. Frodo's fall at Weathertop. Luke's attempts to save Leia.
Meeting with the Goddess: The hero finds his love, or something like it. Frodo meets Galadriel. Luke meets Leia.
Atonement with the Father: The hero reconciles with whatever has been holding him back. Gandalf's death and Boromir's betrayal forces Frodo to set out on his own. Obi-Wan speaks to Luke after his death.
Apotheosis: Literally, becoming divine. In the story, this is when the hero comes into his/her own. Sam faces temptation from the Ring and rejection from Frodo, and he overcomes them. Luke turns off his computer in the Death Star trench.
Ultimate Boon: The hero achieves their goal. The Ring and the Death Star are destroyed.

RETURN
Refusal: Sometimes the hero does not want to return to the normal world. Frodo wishes to stay with the Elves.
Flight: Sometimes, when the quest is complete, the hero must escape, and/or there is a return threshold that the hero must cross. Frodo and Sam escape Mt. Doom. Luke flies away from the exploding Death Star.
Master of Two Worlds: Part of the resolution shows the hero as competent both in the adventuring world and their normal world. Frodo and friends rescue the Shire from Saruman. Luke (later) returns to Tatooine as a Jedi.
Freedom to Live: This mastery of both worlds leads to a new contentment, freedom from fear, and love for life. Sam gets Rosie. Frodo leaves for the Gray Havens.

Obviously not every story is a hero's journey, but it's surprising how many of them are. Personally, this is one of my favorite stories. I find myself constantly coming back to this structure when I'm plotting. I hope this is useful for you too.