Camp NaNoWriMo Week Two Update

Tags

blood phoenix saga, Camp Nanowrimo, candy makers, Ernest Hemingway, Hercules Candy, NaNoWriMo, pantsing, torturing characters, writing goals, writing while traveling

Hello, lovelies!

This week I had a good time with my writing goals and with my family. I got spend a lot of time with my mom, dad, and step-dad, two days with my aunt and uncle in Rochester, some bonding time with my cousins, and a lot of laughter with my friend Donna—we made some silly jokes about Ernest Hemingway.

Want to watch me make a fool of myself? Check out my Camp writing vlog below.

I really picked up the steam this week, lots of words and extra minutes, and a ton of pecking away at this beast. My pantsing magic dropped some great details on me in the last few chapters. I never thought I’d say this, but torture has become mundane. I’ve had to issue a lot of it on my main charrie. I’ve condensed a few of the chapters to limit the redundancy, and I’m glad we’re closing in on the end of it, for Ria’s sake, mine, and my readers’.

As a side note, I got to meet the great candy makers at Hercules Candy, who I found on YouTube this past winter. They are some funny people, and I loved chatting with them while I was there. I knew they were my kind of people when I found out they were from my home town, even though I found them while I was all the way down in Oklahoma. Shout out to those good people!

So, here are my number so far:

Minutes Completed: 740/720

Words Written: 4,575

So, I’m behind by 110 minutes, and that’s a big step forward from last time. Since I go home tonight, I will be pecking away at those extra minutes over the next week.

But first, I’ll have to feed my husband and son, and spend some much needed time with them after a month away.

I’ll be back next week with another update and another writing vlog. In the meantime, let me know what you’re working on or what you’re reading in the comments below.

 

Camp NaNoWriMo Goals and Plans

Tags

blood phoenix saga, Blood Phoenix: inferno, Camp Nanowrimo, NaNoWriMo, project planning, tatiana's diary, writing goals, writing projects, writing vlog

It’s been a long time since I successfully completed a NaNoWriMo project, but this year, I feel like I’ve got a better handle on it.

Want to see me talk about this in a video instead? Check it out on YouTube here:

I like how the goal options include minutes and hours instead of just word count. This has freed me up to work writing into my schedule this month due to traveling and family time. Usually, spending time with my family trumps my writing goals, but I’ve established a nice balance this year.

So, here are my goals: 3,720 minutes of writing this month. That’s equal to two hours a day, which means I can hammer out around five-hundred words on average. This connects well to what I’ve done for the last three months and allows me some wiggle room to catch up on writing minutes for those days that I simply won’t have time to sit down and create. Like when we go to the water park, which is my niece’s favorite trip because she’s a little fish.

Also, I’m going to be working on two projects, and since I’m not sure what my end word counts will be for them both, minutes makes this easier, too.

Now that we’ve got the goals down, let’s talk about the stories.

First and foremost, I plan to finish BLOOD PHOENIX: INFERNO. I’m currently hovering around 67,000 words, so the hope is between 13,000 and 20,000 more words will get me to the end of this bad boy. That word count is topping my normal goals, but as I reach the end of my stories, words tend to come faster. At least, until I hit those last few words. I struggle there because I know how important endings are.

Second, I am going to launch myself into TATIANA’S DIARY, which is a companion story to the BLOOD PHOENIX SAGA, and the diary style of it will be both a blessing and a curse as it means that I have a lot of freedom in formatting and the depth of scene I can sink into. I originally planned this to be 8,000-16,000 words, but my last short story came out 2,000 words less than intended, so I guess I will have to see where it takes me.

So, with the 3,720 minutes, I also want to write between 21,000 and 36,000 words during Camp NaNoWriMo.

I will also be documenting this process vlog style on YouTube with weekly check ups here, and I would love to know if you’re participating in July’s Camp NaNoWriMo? Whether you are or not, let me know what your creative goals are this month!

Quarterly Update: Setting Up Quarter Three and a Quarter Two Review

Tags

#authortube, book bingo, goal tracking, productivity, quarterly check in, quarterly review, quarterly update, writing goals, writing productivity

Hello, lovelies!

Round two of the quarterly review. Let’s see if I learned anything between the two quarters or if we find some trends.

If you’d like to see my process more fully, watch me plan here:

I stuck with the same basic set up and questions.

What I overestimated. Welp, my time, again. I got more edits done for Time, but they’re going slower because I’m trying to combine two steps into one to save time overall, and that’s to edit the stories I like before moving on to read another submission. It’s kind of working.

What I’m learning from this transition is that I can start editing a story to discover how much work it will take, which makes it easier for me to solidly say yes or no to a specific story instead of ending up with so many maybes at the end of an open reading session. For the last few anthologies, I racked up WAY too many maybes, which meant more time spent reading and trying to decide than was necessary. We’re moving in the right direction at least.

I’m also behind on marketing and advertising. To be honest, I can barely keep up with what I’m doing now, so it keeps slipping to the back burner. However, I am hosting a live launch party this weekend, so…maybe there’s a little progress there.

My finance tracker went by the wayside. I used it for a month, kind of. Set it up for two, and forgot about it on the third. A big signal that it’s not working for me in the form I’m trying. I think I need to sit with my parents and get some budgeting advice. They both have two very different systems, so I can mutate what works for me.

And finally, nothing of a surprise here. I’m not that great at compositing art. I’m learning, but man, I have a long, long, long way to go.

What I underestimated. Again, this shouldn’t surprise anyone, but my ability to admit when I need a day off and the benefits taking a break can offer my overall productivity. It’s funny because I preach to others about taking breaks when they’re stressed over their work or life, but I really like working… Man, that sounds crazy, but it’s true. I love what I do, so I tend to pile myself with all the things that I want to do and need to do. I’m in need of some prioritizing, and what a perfect opportunity to do that, right?

I think I’ve come up with a compromise for myself. And it’s one of the notes I made to myself in the spread, which is to slow down and take more time on projects, which offers more time for marketing and ads, and helps to keep mistakes to a minimum. Less rush and more buzz. Um, no brainer?

I’m pretty sure that last quarter I mentioned this as well, but my creative potential is so much more than I allow myself. This comes back to that prioritizing idea. I’ve made writing every day a priority, so it’s getting done, and I. Am. Loving. It. Oh my shit, y’all. As of today, I’ve written 77,680 words. And although I’m sure some writers might scoff at this, it’s MASSIVE for me. I’m almost done with my newest book. After three months? Are you kidding me? It usually takes me close to a full year to write a novel. Now, there’s a lot of changes that’s allowed me to progress so much, but man… Man, that’s a big stepping-stone to my dream of writing multiple books a year.

Next is actually YouTube. I stumbled into #authortube, and I am really enjoying consuming and creating videos. I have a way to go as far as growing comfortable talking and filming myself, but it’s a new way to move forward in my industry, which keeps me from wanting to jump into another one to cure wanderlust, and I’m all for it.

If you’ve been following any of my video updates, I’ve been working freelance on a cookbook, and I totally underestimated my joy for this type of thing. I love food, the recipes are super new for me, and the photography is amazing. YAS!

My last note is to carve out more time for family. Next month will have buttloads of this, but I need to make it a more regular part of my day. This goes back to overestimating my time. It’s an all-around problem, and it hasn’t changed much. I must change this.

My current vision. Simplify popped up again. Yup. It’s getting better, but we’re still not there yet. Simplify your life, Alisha. Get it together. Do the things. Be an adult.

I also listed consuming more books. I love books, obviously, I write and publish them. It means I read a lot, but it’s not the same as simply reading for fun. At least a chapter a night or a day, or something. Damn it. This is doable. I’m going to make it doable. I also made a Book Bingo Board in my bullet journal to help motivate me.

Freelance more. This was a surprise. I like it. I want to do more. That’s pretty much it.

Finally, I’ve listed to find joy. I’ve loved writing so much, working freelance, and building my business. That’s what I need to make happen on a more realistic and sustainable scale. Also, I’ve loved having a show to watch with my husband every day. We need another one. If you have a suggestion, by the way, make it in the comments below.

Current pain points. Other than what I’ve already outlined above, and frankly, I know can babble on about this stuff for far longer than necessary, but here we are. I need to step up and use focused power blocks to get through work more efficiently. Ahem. Simplify.

I’m trying to juggle too many projects at once. SIMPLIFY.

I really need someone to delegate to, which of course requires money. Maybe some day.

Oh my shit. We have a giant increase in submissions. Like I think we’re hovering around 200 since April. Much love to Authors Publish Magazine for that shout out. I’ve been subscribed to them for a long time. Helpful resource.

And yeah, I need to decide on whether to finish my complete revamp of my Blood Phoenix covers now, or wait until all five books are written. The problem here is that people who have already bought the first three books wouldn’t have complete sets if I shift gears now.

However, some of the big marketing pushes I would like to get into, like Bookbub, won’t be as effective, aka lower ROI, until I do the revamp. My current plan is to do both, but that’s going against my goal of simplifying my life. I don’t know. I could use some advice before I dive into the marketing part of my WIP.

Quarter Three plans. Anyways, here’s how this transformed into my quarter three goals and project plans. It’s still jammed pack with stuff. Probably too much stuff, but I’ve given myself some relief in not trying to push to publish this new anthology, TIME, by the end of 2019. If it happens, cool. If not, that’s okay, too. The fall semester is way too busy for me to push myself like that, and I need to learn to accept that.

The take away. Less is more. Haha. Less distractions. More focus. Less busy work. More productivity. Less worry. More progress.

My motivation to keep writing is on track.

Overall, a successful quarter. Bring on the next.

What are your goals this quarter? Did you get everything you wanted done last quarter? Tell me about them in the comments below!

How to Conduct a Character Interview, Part One: The Questions

Tags

book marketing, character building, character development, character interview, character sketch, fantasy interviews, How to conduct a character interview, interviewing fictional characters, questions to ask characters

I love interviewing my characters, especially to give those who don’t get an internal voice the chance to express themselves and provide the reader with more insight.

Coming up with a new list of questions with each new book, story, or character either becomes repetitive or draining. This often leads to endless searches on the internet.

So, instead of repeating this process each and every time I want to write a character interview, I decided to compile a list of my favorite questions from the lists I often visit.

This is going to be long, y’all.

 

I took a good chunk of questions from The Writing Kylie below, but she has SO many more for us get to know our characters, but I tried to pinpoint the ones I thought would work best for interview purposes instead of development. There’s even some for villains in the mix:

Do you have a motto? If so, what is it?

Do you have any annoying habits, quirks, strange mannerisms, or other defining characteristics?

How would you describe your childhood?

would you describe your childhood?

How much schooling have you had?

Did you enjoy school? If not, why did you struggle?

Where did you learn most of your skills and other abilities?

Did you have any role models? If so, describe them and why they were your role models.

How did you get along with the other members of your family?

What did you want to be when you grew up?

When and where were you the happiest?

When did you have your first kiss, and who with?

What do you consider the most important event of your life so far, why?

What is the most evil thin you have ever done so far?

Do you have a criminal record?

What is your greatest regret?

If you could change one thing from your past, what would it be and why?

Are you optimistic or pessimistic?

What is your greatest extravagance?

Do you believe in the existence of soul mates and/or true love?

What is the most evil thing a human being could do?

Under what circumstances do you find killing acceptable or unacceptable?

How do you measure success?

Have you ever been in love?

What is your most treasured possession?

Do you like to read? If so, what?

How do you spend a typical Saturday night?

What makes you life?

How do you define happiness?

How do you deal with stress?

What are your pet peeves?

Which talent would you most like to have and why?

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

What three words best describe your personality?

If you have 24 hours to live, what three things would you do in the time you had left?

If you were to die and come back as a person, animal, or thing, what do you think it would be, and why?

What do you have in your pockets or purse?

What is on your nightstand?

What’s in your fridge?

 

These next three are from “37 Questions to Ask Your Character”:

What is your earliest memory?

On Monday morning, are you excited to go to work, or are you sad?

If you could go back in time for one day, where would you go?

 

The next set are from Helping Writers Become Authors. They have a nice infograph and a character interview sheet that you can print to develop your characters as well. But these are the ones I like best:

What do you like best about the main (other main) character(s)?

What do you like lease about the main (other main) character(s)?

If you could do one thing and succeed at it, what would it be?

What kind of person are you?

Who do you sympathize best with?

 

Here’s another chunk from Gotham Writers. They gave another few I hadn’t seen in the others:

What was your favorite journey?

What is your most marked characteristic?

Who is your favorite fictional hero?

On what occasions is it okay to lie?

What do you consider the most overrated virtue?

Which words and phrases do you overuse?

 

And another snippet from Writers Write. They, have a great, long term process for understanding your characters:

What was it like being raised about your parents?

What traditions are important to your life?

Which teacher or authority figure had the most impact on your life?

What’s your favorite quote?

 

Here’s Writers Write again, with another list that has a lot of personal prompts for creative nonfiction writing that inspired me:

What’s your best physical feature? Why do you like it?

Which part of school did you enjoy the most?

Would you wish upon a falling star?

What superstitions do you believe in or follow?

What was your favorite toy as a child?

What’s your favorite season?

Do you connect with your zodiac sign?

What would you tell your younger self if you could?

What would a wanted ad for your ideal roommate read like?

Can you describe your personal style?

Do you believe in fate?

What would you like to teach the world if you had a platform?

If you had to wear a sign around your neck explaining something about yourself before somebody spoke to you, what would it say?

 

AutoCrit offers “Four Methods For Interviewing Characters,” which has an interesting example of a free-form interview for development that also showcases the way character answer questions that may pry into topics they may not answer in an expected way:

If you had a free day with no responsibilities and your only mission was to enjoy yourself, what would you do?

What impression do you make on people when they first meet you? How about after they’ve known you for a while?

What’s your idea of a good marriage? Do you think it’ll happen for you?

Do you think you turned out the way your parents expected?

What would you like your tombstone to say?

 

I relish an opportunity for new and non-traditional questions, and WayUp gave us a few traditional job interview questions and what their answers might be:

Batman vs Spiderman: Who Would Win?

In what ways are you lucky?

If you were a cartoon character, which one would you be and why?

If you were a crayon (or paint swatch) color, which would you be and why?

 

Novel Factory gives us a couple new questions amongst their Ultimate Character Questionnaire:

What would you ask a fortune teller?

If they could have a superpower, what would it be and why?

What is your favorite fairy tale?

Do you believe in redemption?

What is your favorite proverb?

What or who would you dress up as for Halloween?

 

Labotomy of a Writer provides a LONG list of questions with a whopping 253 questions. Here are a few I really liked from it:

Are you spontaneous or do you always need to have a plan?

What do you do when you’re bored?

What time of day or night is your favorite?

What do you think about being supernatural? Is it cool or have you been screwed?

Do you have a mentor? Describe them.

What is something you had to learn during your training that you hated?

How would you convince the opposing side to join your team if you could?

What would you wish for if you found a genie?

What time period would you live in if you could?

 

These come from Roleplaying Tips’ Mother of all Character Questionnaires. This has a lot more fantasy-based world and character building questions as well:

Do you have a notorious or celebrated ancestor?

Do you have a parton Deity?

Do you enjoy “roughing it,” or are you a creature of comfort?

How do you feel about the government (rulers) in general? Why?

If your features were destroyed beyond recognition, is there any other way of identifying your body?

 

Would you rather questions also make for interesting answers from questions, but it’s best to sprinkle these amongst others rather than having a 20-question volley with your character.

 

And finally, since we’re on the topic, here’s one last great resource of questions for fantasy world building from Patricia C. Wrede that is just massive, and I couldn’t do it better justice if I tried.

So, there it is. My list of questions. Stay tuned for part two, where I elaborate on how I choose questions for characters, how I answer them, ways to create a scene or indicate movement during an interview.

 

Got a favorite question that I missed on my list? Leave it for us in the comments below.

Breaking Down Satire: Colloquialism

Tags

Breaking Down Satire, character voice, colloquialism, creating realistic characters, creating realistic dialogue, dialect, dropping "g"s in literature, idioms, jargon, slang

Colloquialism uses informal words and phrases within a dialect to include aphorism, idioms, profanity, or other words that occur regularly in daily speech. Spoken by a specific group, dialects are a language within a language that uses unique words, slang, and accent.

Additionally, colloquialisms pop up frequently in poetry, prose, and drama, especially concerning dialogue or first-person narration. This gives characters a more lifelike quality because a character’s voice is one of their defining features.

This literary tool is used in two main ways. First, some colloquialisms are words or phrases that only appear in a specific dialect. For example, in my hometown, Syracuse, NY, we call white-hot hotdogs coonies. We are the only place in the world that call them that because we’re stubborn, and that’s what they’re called.

Second, these words and phrases appear widely but have different meanings amongst certain dialects. For example, in Oklahoma, the word coke refers to any kind of soft drink, while in most other states, it refers to the brand Coca-Cola. The first time my husband ordered a Dr Pepper after we moved here: “Hey, I want a coke.” “What kind?” “Dr Pepper.” It absolutely flabbergasted me. Still does.

These can also include contractions (y’all) and profanity (bloody) and idioms (“That thing is all cattywampus,” a version of caddy-corner).

Colloquial expressions allow literature to reflect a writer’s society, how people talk in their real lives, and this helps writers form strong connections with readers via realism.

Slang and jargon help with this kind of realism and are sisters to colloquialism, although overlap can occur. The differences are that slang is used within a specific social group, like teens, and colloquialisms are understood across demographic barriers. And jargon is also used only by certain groups, like doctors, accountants, lawyers, and writers! Yeah, go on and talk about the POV in your WIP or the issues you’re experiencing between the Beta and ARC stages of the process, then watch as people’s eyes glaze over with confusion.

With all of that in mind, here are a couple lists of common colloquialisms:

 

• to bamboozle – to deceive
• go bananas – go insane or be very angry
• wanna – want to
• gonna – going to
• go nuts – go insane or be very angry
• look blue – look sad
• buzz off – go away
• penny-pincher – a stingy person
• I wasn’t born yesterday – I’m not an idiot.
• There’s more than one way to skin a cat – There’s more than one way to complete this task.

 

Now, employing this device will often stand out to the reader, but writers are cautioned away from overusing easy dialectal cues, like dropping the “g” at the end to create a Southern twang, since it’s diction that creates vernacular, not stylizing words.

For instance:

We’re goin’ to the store. A generic dropped “g” that may indicate a country or southern accent, albeit, not well.

vs

We’re fixing to go to Walmart. Note that I didn’t change anything about the words, but it has a hell of a lot more voice to it because of the dialect.

 

By the way, this kills me since fixing is one of my least favorite words. I really live in the wrong state to make this argument though.

 

But when colloquialism is used well, readers will find the story and its characters more genuine. In fact, many authors use colloquialisms unconsciously in their writing.

 

Some of my favorite colloquialisms and like devices define my side characters: how Vincent’s Australian accent peeks through via idioms, like “what are you having a wobbly about?” or how he refers to females a sheila. How Boden doesn’t use articles and confuses his prepositions because English is his third or fourth language. How most of my slang comes from Ari, like her use of “bitch trip” for a group trip to the girls’ bathroom.

My paranormals also have their own words, like renegades being new, unauthorized vampires; bosex taking place of the shifter; and claims meaning the control of a full-fledged vampire has over the renegade in their charge. Most of how I used these devices aren’t strictly adhering to satirical standards, but I do so love to mess with genre norms that they seem fitting.

 

Do you use colloquialism in your writing? Tell me in the comments below.

 

 

Sources:

https://literarydevices.net/colloquialism/

http://www.literarydevices.com/colloquialism/

https://www.litcharts.com/literary-devices-and-terms/colloquialism

 

 

Breaking Down Satire: Antithesis and Anticlimax

Tags

Anticlimax, Antithesis, blood phoenix saga, Breaking Down Satire, deus ex machina, figure of speech, juxtaposition, parallelism, rhetorical device, The Girl with the Glowing Hair

First, allow me a disclaimer by saying that although these words have some similarities, they’re really not connected all that much. I clumped them together because I wanted to and for no other real reason.

Let’s start with Antithesis, which can be defined as a person or thing that is the direct opposite of someone or something else. It is often used to emphasize an idea through the perceived analogy and draw the attentions of readers.

Here are some examples:

“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Neil Armstrong

“Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.” Muhammad Ali

“We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.” Martin Luther King, Jr.

“HAMLET: To be, or not to be, that is the question—
Whether ’tis Nobler in the mind to suffer
The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune,
Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,
And by opposing, end them?” William Shakespeare

And one I use in class every semester:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way…” Charles Dickens.

Each of these quotes is meant to highlight something specific about the topic in which they focus. Space travel indicates monumental progress for mankind, even if only a few men got to step foot on the moon. Boxing is a mix of peaceful floating—or dodging—and aggressive stinging—punching. We have to put aside petty differences and act like a family, even if dysfunctional, or the constant fighting will ruin us all. Life is struggle and death is peace, but if we choose peace, we choose nothingness. And turmoil amongst the French Revolution, accentuating the division and confusion of the people in that era.

Much like paradox, antithesis relies on juxtaposition to emphasize key qualities that are similar amongst the opposition. The parallel structure of antithesis sharpens the meaning that comes with specific combinations, as the repetition makes the contrast clarifies the intended message, which is not to say that it must ALWAYS be parallel, but it aids in the overall understanding. In fact, antithesis seems to be built around the “or” construction.

To sum up, we use antithesis for several purposes: to present a stark difference between two options, to express the magnitude of range, to express strong emotions, to create a conflicting relationship between two ideas, and to accentuate the features of one thing by placing in opposition to another.

I don’t think I’ve ever used it purposefully or not, but I’m sure going to be more aware of the option as I draft.

Now, anticlimax creates a disappointing end or conclusion to an exciting or impressive series of events. It often does not meet the expectations that the narrative has built, and the error occurs because the solution to a problem is so trivial or comes without the protagonist using any of their skills, like using a deus ex machina. Essentially, the anticlimax is not nearly as good or brilliant as the rest of the movie. This is not a plot twist but an obvious ending, an unrelated ending, or one that leaves the reader hanging.

Here is examples of an anticlimactic ending from The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins:

“I spread out my fingers, and the dark berries glisten in the sun. I give Peeta’s hand one last squeeze as a signal, as a good-bye, and we begin counting. “One.” Maybe I’m wrong. “Two.” Maybe they don’t care if we both die. “Three!” It’s too late to change my mind. I lift my hand to my mouth, taking one last look at the world. The berries have just passed my lips when the trumpets begin to blare.”

What an excellent example of deus ex machina, although we see Katniss use her skilled logic to understand that either way, she’s defeated the system by not allowing a single winner. She probes us for an emotional ending. No survivors means usurping the hope it’s meant to create for the people via the lack of a real war, but two survivors provides too much hope and more drama for the society and the capitol. This, of course, was done on purpose to create a cliffhanger that sets up the rest of the trilogy.

Another example is the ending of Signs in which touching water kills the aliens that came to take over Earth. For the fate of the world, this seems like such a simple solution that garners a bit of a flat response because no real intervention was needed; however, for the characters of focus in the narrative, this has been set up nicely, and therefore, has a satisfying ending for them.

Also, anticlimax can be used as a figure of speech when it appears somewhere else in the story. These are statements that gradually descend in order of importance, arranging a series of words, phrases, or clauses in order of decreasing importance. For example, he lost his family, his car, and his cell phone. Typically, we like to accentuate importance by putting the most important at the end of a sentence for effect, but here, we begin with the emotional impact—his family—something that he cannot replace, and we leave with an object of little value that is easily replaceable, his cell phone. Although, I’m sure a great many young adults would argue its lack of importance if they could. Overall, this creates a humorous effect and produces great surprise, but readers may see it as an error unless the author intentionally meant to produce ridiculousness.

Here are a few more examples of anticlimactic figures of speech:

“In moments of crisis, I size up the situation in a flash, set my teeth, contract my muscles, take a firm grip on myself, and without tremor, always do the wrong thing.” George Bernard Shaw

“He has seen the ravages of war, he has known natural catastrophes, he has been to singles bars.” Woody Allen.

The buildup and the payoff here do not correlate well, but they do create humorous and unreliable characters.

This one is a tool I use loosely—more so in THE GIRL WITH THE GLOWING HAIR when I’ve utilized a dues ex machina, but the character planned it. Does that make any sense? In the BLOOD PHOENIX saga, I also tend to have anticlimactic fights between Ria and Gene that always devolves into her and my coffee obsession.

 

Are you familiar with these rhetorical tools? Do you utilize them in your writing? Tell me how in the comments below!

 

 

Sources:

http://www.literarydevices.com/antithesis/

https://www.litcharts.com/literary-devices-and-terms/antithesis

https://literaryterms.net/antithesis/

 

http://www.literarydevices.com/anticlimax/

https://literarydevices.net/anti-climax/

https://www.quora.com/What-exactly-is-the-difference-between-the-climax-and-anti-climax-of-any-movie

 

Obnoxious Character Planning: INFERNO Character Personality Types

Tags

blood phoenix saga, Blood Phoenix: inferno, character development, INFP, Myers Briggs personality model, personality types, writer planning, writing tools

So, I’ve been on a planning kick lately, showing the intimate details of how I prepare myself for a big project, like a book. I’m going to be honest, the way I prep myself changes each time, and this go around, I might have gone a little crazy with notes and etc.

But here’s a bit of my rationale. I’m working with a series. While I have limited myself to five books for Ria’s BLOOD PHOENIX saga, I do have a slew of other characters, books, and stories within this world, so I need to start keeping track of little things that will connect and manifest throughout.

Now, this is a little wild for planning purposes, but I thought it was so much fun to peg down each of my characters by personality type, so here’s my list:

One of the interesting things I discovered from doing this is that Ria’s personality, although remaining the same amongst most of her previous lives, did change on a few. Even with reincarnation, culture and genetics played a role in how they behaved. Since Ria’s past lives impact Ria’s present quite dramatically, I hope can keep them separated enough to do them justice.

Another interesting note about personality types is that even with the same four-letter determinations, their personalities are not precisely the same. For instance, Ria, Mark, Colista, and Layla have the same categorization—INFP, but each of their descriptors are different: the Spunky Kid, the Lost Soul, the Waif, and the Nurturer, which comes not from the Myers-Briggs model but from the character archetypes of heroes, heroines, and villains, although honestly, none of these four are villains in the slightest.

But INFP clearly fits all four: poetic, kind, and altruistic people, always eager to help a good cause. They are the most idealistic, have strong personal values, seek order and peace, are creative, non-directive, and reserved with people.

Anyways, I could devolve into a rambling about personalities and the types of how each connects, but I’m not going to do that. I merely wanted to share how assigning base personality types helped me differentiate characters and keep them true to their original dispositions, even as they evolve as people.

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So, I want to know what kind of categorization, notes, and tools do you use to develop and/or maintain your characters? Let me know in the comments below.

 

Plotting INFERNO: the Transition from Pantser to Plotter

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#100daychallenge, #100dayproject, blood phoenix saga, bullet journal, Harmon's Plot Embryo, panster, plotter, Rachael Stephen, three-act structure, writing journal, writing spreads

So, if you’ve had a chance to peek at my writing journal, you’ll know that I’ve recently invested more time on plotting elements of my novels and stories via plot embryos, the hero’s journey, and the three-act structure.

I have been a long-time pantser doing little planning other than major scenes that I knew I wanted somewhere relative to each other in a general arc, which is basically saying that I bullshitted my way through most of my writing.

Well, the last novel I wrote, THE GIRL WITH THE GLOWING HAIR, flowed out of me so much faster with a general guide for each of my chapters. I also developed them with a chart and the five-idea method from Rachael Stephen.

This worked so well that I implemented the plot embryos for my shorter works to gauge a general structure.

Then the year ended, and it was time to start my new BLOOD PHOENIX novel, INFERNO. And man, the embryo was a nice start, but I needed more to power through as many words as I really wanted to get through this year (~112,000 words), so I tried my hand at a three-act structure, and here’s what I came up with.

 

How I plotted BLOOD PHOENIX: INFERNO (some spoilers but no biggies).

Here is where I used the traditional Harmon’s Plot Embryo, below is a comparison of the  my use of the tool. The blue bits are major spoilers.

After I let that marinate for a little while, I created a list of all the plot points I could think of for each act, not worrying about an order. Like this:

 

This is when I used the three-act structure in a stricter sense, putting those on my list into the act where they belong. At the bottom, I had notes that came from looking at the story arc again and again.

Finally, I made the project its own notebook, listing each act’s plot points down the side before shifting them into appropriate chapters with other details to help me not get stuck between, which is where I typically struggle the most with writer’s block.

So far, this method has allowed me to hammer out 16,000 words last month and another 4,000 this last week with the #100daychallenge or #100dayproject.

But this little book I’ve slapped together has some extras that help me remember character motivations, keep secondary threads going, plan out the past to understand how it affects the present, and after the halfway mark, I’ve started gathering notes for a Broken World guide after requests from readers to explain all of the connections and cross-overs and research that builds the series.

And that’s the process I’ve been using. I’ve found quite a spike in my productivity since I started plotting more and writing more consistently.

I hope you’ve found this helpful, and if you have any suggestions for plotting or writing research, leave them in the comments below so that I can add them to my list!

Also, join me on Instagram or my personal page as I document my journey writing 500 words a day for 100 days!

Breaking Down Satire: Paradox

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Breaking Down Satire, contradictions in literature, dichotomy, exaggeration, good vs evil paradox, paradox, Pride and Prejudice, satirical analysis, satirical elements, the good guy complex

Paradox is a statement or proposition that, despite sound (or apparently sound) reasoning from acceptable premises, leads to a conclusion that seems senseless, logically unacceptable, or self-contradictory.

This is the definition I offer my students when we begin the satirical analysis paper—aka my favorite assignment to teach. And here are some of my favorite examples to help:

-“I can resist anything but temptation.” Oscar Wilde

-The more you try to impress others, the less they’ll be impressed.

-“It’s weird not to be weird.” John Lennon

-You must be cruel to be kind.

-It was the beginning of the end.

-“The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

-“What a pity that youth must be wasted on the young.” – George Bernard Shaw

These are all used for situational or rhetorical effect to reconcile a hidden or unexpected truth with the reader. We also often refer to them as dichotomies, where a sharp contrast is required to create drama, cause conflict, or add depth to a character or situation. Think:

-There can be no pleasure without pain.

-You can only hate someone you’ve once loved.

More complexly, let’s look at Mr. Darcy, whom I love to compare my character Gene to. Mr. Darcy holds several opposing characteristics: he’s arrogant but bashful, tactless but generous, proud but broken.

Okay, that last one may not exactly be opposing, but they’re close enough for my tastes, as that’s something inherently infused in Gene’s personality. He’s so highly strung because he’s sensitive, and he’s had to learn to hide it in order to protect himself.

Another paradox presents itself in most of my stories, especially the longer ones, and more honed in on Ria’s story in the BLOOD PHOENIX saga, and that’s:

Good people must accept that, sometimes, they will have to do bad things to bad people to protect the ones they love.

For her entire story arc, Ria fights to be what she deems as a good guy, struggles to keep her humanity because she doesn’t want to become like any of those corrupt women in charge. But she slowly learns that she must act like them to defeat them and is willing to sacrifice her humanity to keep other, innocent people safe.

But so long as she continues to struggle with the decisions she makes and whether or not she’s done the right thing, she’ll stay on camped across that good line.

You may be asking yourself, how is this satire? Well, it’s subtle. Paradox and dichotomies help us focus on our satirical intent and gives us new ways to exaggerate or understand or otherwise highlight our main message and its parts.

What paradoxes are you a fan of? Let me know in the comments below.

 

 

 

Breaking Down Satire: Chekhov’s Gun

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blood phoenix saga, blood phoenix: claimed, blood phoenix: rebirth, Breaking Down Satire, Chekhov's Gun, false premises, foreshadowing, literary device, the broken world series, writing payoff

Chekhov’s Gun comes from the saying, “If in Act I, you have a pistol hanging on the wall, then it must fire in the last act,” although the version I heard was a bit different as it featured a table instead of a wall, and many variations exist. In any case, the lesson comes in foreshadowing and cohesion, and Anton Chekhov’s point was that every element introduced in a story should serve a function.

Essentially, Chekhov’s Gun means not making false promises or creating red herrings by introducing important details, elements, or themes without following through with a purpose for it. Why note it otherwise? Often mixed up with foreshadowing, which hints or makes a reader aware of a specific element or detail but doesn’t bring special attention to it.

But let’s clear up one more thing: Every single plot point or detail does not need to be massively meaningful. The blue curtains might not mean melancholy or depression, as I’ve heard so many students groan when we analyze stories in class. The elements or items must play a significant role when presented in a dramatic way or receives special focus.

 

More interestingly, Chekhov’s Gun does not have to be an item like a gun. Scenes, memories, and characters quirks, etc. can all be used in tandem to propel a story forward, and to keep from confusing readers, false guns should be eradicated. Even if they’re your darlings.

Personally, I come across these when I’m stuck writing. Details I don’t know are significant until I have a hurdle to get over often reveals a gun I didn’t know I placed on the wall—or table in my case—and my subconscious is far smarter than I like to give it credit for.

Okay, before I delve into my own uses too deeply (am I setting myself up here or what?), I want to show how this links to satire. Well, typically that focal point reflects the main cause for criticism. We take special note of facts, characters, and events in satire, so we highlight them in dramatic ways in order to make our arguments.

 

For instance, control is one of my big-hitter satirical notes as a sister to conformity. Once Ria wakes up as a vampire, she attacks her maker, drinking his blood and receiving a lecture about how his blood will not benefit her. Well, this serves two gun-like purposes.

One, control plays up throughout book one, but in a big moment, when Ria’s captured and held by the Assetato, they feed her a little girl. The on-going practice of wrangling her hunger, of maintaining control over the new animal inside of her, and trying not to hurt humans comes to a culmination when the child is offered to her. This also hits that satirical note of not letting what others do to her control her actions. She’s strong-minded and individual, and she will not conform. It’s a pretty consistent theme for me in each story I write, but it manifests in several, different ways.

And two, the emphasis on the benefits of paranormal blood becomes a serious issue in book two, CLAIMED, and if I’m being super honest, for the rest of the series, it grows into something that keeps control over her. See what I did there? Okay, cheekiness aside, her need for paranormal blood means a couple of drawbacks: she’ll need consistent volunteers—okay, maybe not a complete drawback given the three men in her life—and it also marks her as the anomaly she is. The scary bit is coming in book four, which I’ve just started drafting.

Much like the need and the control, this is a double-whammy gun moment. But Ria’s worst fears from the end of REBIRTH, book one, will finally come to fruition. Her secrets are going to be revealed, and she’s going to suffer the consequences of her birth. It should be an interesting and nasty experience.

Over the years, I’ve gotten a better handle on Chekhov’s Gun, but I wasn’t always so great at it. Naturally, writers seems to use this technique in some way to create twists and turns in a plot, but we certainly can generate more impact when we understand the usefulness of hanging that gun on the wall in Act I.

 

Let me know what you think of Chekhov’s Gun and how you use it in the comments below!

Happy reading and writing y’all.