Master Manipulators

My favourite characters in books are the ones that seem to be behind everything.  And yet, they never seem to be behind anything.

I realize that sounds contradictory, but anyone that reads a decent amount of books knows what I'm talking about.  They're the characters that you're fairly certain are idiots who have no idea about anything going on, but then turn out to be the ones behind it the entire time.  Where at the end of the book you think 'no freaking you.  Seriously?  You're the one that did that?'

Sometimes, of course, I have to wonder if the author intended that to happen.  Because, as a writer, I've got to tell you: I very rarely am intentionally creating those characters.

On more than one occasion I have started writing a character that I assumed was background, only to have the entire story turn around at the end and I suddenly realize that the character I thought was no one was more important than any other character in the story.

Why am I talking about this?  Normally these sorts of speculation are brought on by one of my own characters.  But, no.  This time it's because of a critique that I gave today.

In the book we've been critiquing, the author has lined up this character who often appears to simply be stumbling through the world, unsure of what he's doing or if he's even heading in the right direction, and yet things tend to work out for him.  Up until this point in the book, I was wavering between him being competent, and everything just being a happy coincidence.

Unfortunately I have a bit of an insider's point of view, as I know exactly who is pulling the strings, but at the same time, I still don't know all of the details.

This past chapter, though, that character finally pulled up his socks and admitted that he was, in fact, competent.  That he wasn't just a puppet whose strings are being pulled, and that he could manipulate at least those closest to him without too much trouble.

It was nice to see.  Because I enjoy those characters (so long as they're not completely evil with no redeeming qualities) he instantly shot up in my regard.  Suddenly he's far less of a character whose chapters I have to suffer through, and much more one that I look forward to reading about.

As for my own writing, manipulators seem to be few and far between.  At least in my current project (Birth) where all I have is a main character whose voice I can't seem to figure out.

But that's another blog post (check back Wednesday...) For now I'm going to impatiently wait until next week when I should get the next chapter in the book I'm critiquing and see where he takes it.

What's your favourite kind of character?  Do you ever wonder if authors do everything in their novels on purpose?

Critique At the End of the Tunnel

In my critique group we, of course, exchange critiques.  Every fortnight (we've decided that we're resurrecting this generally considered archaic word, as it applies to so much in our lives) we get together and tell each other what we thought of the latest chapter that was sent in.  It's been extremely helpful, especially in areas like description, where we all lacked when we first started out.

We also started meeting up every couple of months with short stories and getting feedback on those.  We dubbed these meets 'Pen Duels'.  Basically what we do is I send out two writing prompts, and everyone has to come up with a story based on one or the other of the prompts.  Then we get together, read them out loud, then discuss.

This time we decided to do things a little bit differently.  Rather than getting together and reading them out, we sent them out to each other and are doing critiques on them before we get together to discuss on Saturday.

When we originally decided to do this, we talked about how these critiques shouldn't be too long.  Not like what we do for regular critique group.  Just small summaries of what we thought while we were reading through the stories.

Turns out, my brain isn't so good at holding back.  My first critique is behind me and it's just as long (if not longer) than anything that I've done for critique group.

This wouldn't be a problem, of course, except that I now have two more short stories to critique before Saturday, and a chapter to critique by Monday.

Yep.  I know.  We planned that well.

So now I'm sitting at home working on my pile of critiques rather than working on Pandora, which I'm supposed to be sending out at the end of the month.  I'm starting to feel like I might have taken on too much this year.

For the record, I've decided to cut back the epiphanies to only 100 for the year, rather than trying to get through the entire 201.  More manageable, and I won't feel like I'm going crazy.

Anyway, to get back on topic: Critiques.  Lots of critiques.

I'm working on critique # 2 right now, and I'm planning to, at the very least, get done the short stories tonight before I head to bed.  Though, if I really make myself do work, I might even get the chapter done.  Somehow, I doubt it, though.

So much to do, so little time to do it!

Are you in a critique group?  Do you ever find yourself spending more time on critiques than on writing?

Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

As a writer there are certain things that affect your ability to write.  For example, I find it nearly impossible to write when I have a headache.  Each word I drag out sends another round of pain shooting through my skull, and when I look back on any progress I may have made I realize just how bad it actually is.  Especially if the mood of the scene isn't angry or annoyed.

So, I've learned to adapt.  Or, rather, I've learned to accept the fact that writing is not going to get done if I can't get rid of the headache.  It's not an excuse, it's the matter of whether it's worth it in the end, and I've determined that it just isn't.

Of course, there are other things that can affect this as well.  Things like what happened to me on Monday.

On Monday I had a bad day.  It started right when I got to work (I'll admit that I'm not a huge fan of my day job, but I can usually get through the day without thinking about quitting).  I'm not going to get into details of why it was such a bad day, but suffice it to say that by the time the day was over, my mood was foul.  And I left work early!

Unfortunately my bad mood didn't just affect my writing.  I didn't get to just go home and do nothing while moping around and indulging in my bad mood.  (I know what you're all thinking, but I let myself wallow in my bad moods.  They last one day, and they don't happen all that often, so I indulge.)  Instead I got to go to critique group.

Now, normally I love critique group.  I love getting feedback on my work and learning how other people interpret what I've put down on the page.  I enjoy the dynamic we have in our group and how much I learn as a writer from the process.

When I got there on Monday, however, and one of my critique partners said something negative, I found myself fighting with him.  Arguing his point and not letting him explain where he was coming from.  I was getting frustrated and angry, and I really couldn't control those emotions, even though I knew I was being irrational.

I even had the thought that I should just toss that novel and pretend I had never written it.

These aren't normal things for me.  While I love a good discussion about my work, or anyone's work, for that matter, what I was doing on Monday was fighting.  And defending my work.  And thinking that I should scrap an entire novel because of one moment of feedback?  I just spent the entire day yesterday restructuring a novel that I've already rewritten twice.  I don't just cast things off because of one piece of criticism.

It was hard for me to accept what was being said because my emotions were already shot from the hard day I'd had at my day job.

I hate that a job that I don't enjoy can make the thing that I do like so much harder.  This is the reason that I don't want to be working a day job.  Unfortunately I don't have a choice at this point.  I'm not published.  I don't have someone that just wants to let me work on my writing full time.  I have to continue to pay my bills in order to keep writing.

So I just have to work on trying to not let a bad day at work colour everything else I do.  This would be so much easier if I could compartmentalize.

Now to make it up to my critique partner.  Maybe I should buy his dinner at the next critique group.

How Soon We Forget

With Nano ending only a couple of months ago, I've been hard at work editing.  In December I finished Pandora, and this month I've been working on Stolen Magick, and it's been going quite well.  I've gotten through the chapters at record speed for me.  The manuscript is reading more like a second draft than a first, and it's been making me feel pretty good about myself.  Especially since I've been finding myself with some actual free time because everything is getting done, and it's getting done early.

So what can possibly happen that would knock me back a few steps?

A short story.  Simple as that.  I had to write a short story for critique group, and I had it scheduled for Monday.  So I sat down to work on it at 11:30 in the morning.  I didn't expect for it to take too long.  I guessed about an hour.  Two tops.

Then I stared at the blank screen in front of me, not quite sure where to start.  I had an idea, but I just didn't know how to start it.

And then, when I finally got the words put down on the page, they weren't right.  Nothing was right.  I stopped after about three sentences, and immediately erased everything.

Next I started to do some research.

I just want to stop and point out here that I don't like research.  Actually I hate it.  With a passion.  I don't even like to do it for my novels.  And yet I found about six tabs open, all of them with different bits of information that I needed to write the short story.

When I had finally managed to get everything that I needed to know, I pulled up that blank page again.

It still didn't go well.  I needed names.  And then there was a million other things I needed to look up in the process of writing.

By the time the story was done it had been five hours.  FIVE!

It hasn't taken me that long to finish anything since...well...since Nano!

That's when I remembered.  Drafting doesn't always go as smoothly as I want it to.  In fact, it never does.  If I'm not struggling to force the words out, then new things that I didn't plan are appearing, and I find myself getting annoyed, and more often than not, frustrated.

I'm not saying that I hate drafting.  Far from it, it's one of my favourite part of the writing process.  I'm just glad that I remembered that before I started working on the first draft of Malice next month.  I can't wait to do it, and I'm glad that I didn't remember just how long it can take when I was getting started on a novel I have to work on for a month.

Now I just need to finish Stolen Magick so that I can move onto Malice without getting distracted.

Do you ever forget about parts of the writing process?  How do you get yourself into the story so you can write it??