Fantasy stories and healing powers go hand in hand. If it’s not a D&D-style healing potion or healing spell system, then it’s an X-Men style super healing type thing. This just makes sense – fantasy stories, especially stories that have anything to do with superhero archetypes, or any tropes that Western fiction shares with shounen anime, are often made much easier with the presence of a healer. It lets your heroes take a lot more damage before they’re out of the game entirely. Continue reading “Fantasy Healing”
Genesis
One of the most frequently-asked questions for writers is ‘where do you get your ideas?’ Well, I can’t speak for other writers, or even most of my other ideas, but this is where this one came from.
Back when I lived in Canberra, I used to have a big, long bus ride to buy my groceries every week, including a reasonable walk from the farmer’s market to the supermarket, then back to the bus. In order to keep myself entertained during this walk (before I found audiobooks), I would put on a music playlist as I went.
I also used to be a Troper which for the uninitiated means that I spent far too much time reading a wiki page dedicated to clichés and idioms in fiction (TV Tropes, which I won’t link here because it’s known to absorb entire days if you’re not careful) I’d been reading some character tropes, and come across the page for the Ferryman, and there was a throwaway line on the page about the Ferryman often being a “mentor character”. That phrase had stuck in my head, for some reason – a story about having Death as a mentor held an appeal for my brain, and while I could see exactly what sort of mentor I wanted Death to be, I still had the problem of who the mentee was going to be.
At the time, a friend had recently gotten me into Patrick Wolf, and as I was walking to the farmer’s market, the song To the Lighthouse came on. You can YouTube it if you’re not familiar.
I’ll list the first lyrics of the first verse:
The day the house collapsed, I
Went down the street, I
Followed the swans like I
Followed my dreams, oh
I was living on borrowed time
In a borrowed house
For a borrowed crime
In need of help, I came
To your door
Saw the spike of the railings
From the 23rd floor, saying
Build your castle
Stop collecting stones, and the
River bed will not be your home
The keen-eyed among us will notice that that is incredibly similar to the first few chapters of The Ferryman’s Apprentice.
Wilom’s character came from the coda, the part speaking about not collecting stones in order to stay out of the river bed. Wilom was going to be a Troubled Kid. I knew he had to be someone who lashed out at the world as a sort of pre-emptive defense to the world lashing out at him, and that he’d have to stop that destructive reflex in order to get what he wanted.
The move to his aunt and uncle’s came from the “borrowed house”, and his friends from the “borrowed crime” – but I quickly decided that I wanted Wilom’s problems to be mostly his own fault. Nothing grates on my nerves quicker than a hero who is Just Misunderstood, and is an outcast in their town without ever “really” doing anything to deserve it. So that’s how Wilom came to be: A certified Angsty Teen with communication problems the size of the rubble where his house used to be.
For a long time during the drafting process, I tossed up starting the story earlier, when he first got sent away, but I’m glad I went with adding the extra ‘runaway’ scenes instead. I’ve always been very attached to those opening lines of the song, and I like having the little nod to them in the first line of the first chapter.
Unfortunately, the swans didn’t make it into the final book.
The rest of the book basically came from needing to give him something to do.
At the time, I had a big bee in my bonnet of ‘forced romances’ in stories, so I decided that I’d add in Vanda, who in any other book would have been the focus of a romance B-plot, but in this one I decided that she would be just a friend, no matter what.
I’ve still stuck by that – Wilom and Vanda are very close friends and nothing else. I mean, obviously I can’t control what the fandom thinks (I still hold out hope that I will have a fandom eventually), but if you want Vanda/Wilom romance scenes, you’re going to have to hold out for the fanfic.
Obviously, the lighthouse keeper came from the “to the lighthouse” line – however Wilom got to his apprenticeship, he’d need to go through a lighthouse in some capacity.
The first draft of the book was written in my first NaNoWriMo, because I needed a break from the project I was then doing (and have since scrapped and stole the characters for a different plot). I finished the whole 50,000 words, but it took me another three months or so before I was finished the entire story. The first draft topped out at about 95,000 words, if I remember right.
It then went through a series of increasingly frustrated revisions. I added sections and plots, I removed them. I changed characters, added characters, and moved them around.
I’ll talk more about some of those moves in next week’s Gallery of What Could Have Been, because otherwise I won’t leave myself any material for that.
I was always unhappy with the first section of the book – the section when Wilom is in his apprenticeship. It was always one of my favourite sections – it had a great tone and feel to it – but it couldn’t carry an entire book on its own. And the tone and topic changed so dramatically afterwards that I always felt like it was a 60-page prologue, rather than a real part of the story. But of course, Wilom did so much of his development in that section that I couldn’t leave it out and tell it in flashback. Or, at least, I didn’t want to. So I kept it there, I kept cutting it down and cutting it down, but I never quite reached the point where I was happy with it.
A few years later, after I felt like I’d gotten the book as far as I could (I actually sent out the book to some agents. Of six queries, I received four form rejections and two no-responses), I was starting to feel frustrated. I’d finished my degree, but my writing just didn’t feel like it was going anywhere, and I had been applying for jobs for a long time without getting anywhere.
I had been running the blog for a while, then, and, never being one to do things like “wait”, “be patient” or “be sensible”, I decided that I’d give a serial a shot. I’d use it as marketing practice, I said – I’d try to figure out what would work and what didn’t, and possibly start getting some feedback from a more general public about my writing.
But I had to decide which story. I had a new one that I thought would work, but then I looked back to the mostly-abandoned last revision of The Ferryman’s Apprentice, and realised that that first section that felt so awkward in the story would actually do pretty well as the first of a few “seasons” or sections of story.
It took another eight months of revisions to get the first season into something that I’d be willing to publish, and without a plan beyond “put it up there and see what happens”, the first chapter of The Ferryman’s Apprentice went live in August 2016.
After the Stream
Just a quick update for everyone.
Thanks to anyone who checked in on the Twitch stream last week! We had fun, though we also had technical difficulties, so I wouldn’t blame anyone for leaving in frustration.
We’ve just about got those fixed, though, so don’t let that stop you from attending future streams!
Because there will be future streams. This week didn’t happen because two of our characters were out of town, but we’re going ahead next weekend, Sunday 7pm AEST same as usual (we’ll let you know if that changes). Join us for the actual story, now that all the worldbuilding is out of the way!
Watch for the hype on social media. We’re excited to get to the story, and we hope you’ll be excited to listen to it!
The Second Folder
The Heads’ meeting was held in a moderately well-kept warehouse on the other side of the city. Wilom was starting to suspect that nobody he knew actually did business in sensible places, like offices, and realised just how much that said about his life choices. Vanda left him outside the door, and went in to make her case to them. Continue reading “The Second Folder”
Unruly Characters
Characters. When we talk about stories, we tend to talk in terms of what I call the Big Three categories: Setting, Plot and Character. There are as many different ways to build and develop characters as there are writers. Some use sheets, some prefer not to use sheets, some like to write drabbles and scenes with their characters before writing the full story, some like to develop as they go – there are a thousand and one ways to make your characters. Continue reading “Unruly Characters”
Announcement: Live Gaming
Hey, all! Quick update.
People who’ve been around for a while know that I occasionally plug Liberation Industries, a gaming podcast I have a semi-regular involvement in.
Well, tomorrow (Sunday) at 7pm AEST, courtesy of Cassk Designs (Twitter @casskdesigns for those interested), we’re doing an Actual Live Gameplay Stream on Twitch.
The system is Karma in the Dark, the game is cyberpunk shenanigans, the characters are getting wild and wacky already, if our group chat is any indication.
If you’re interested in getting in on this, the channel is the Whimsy and Metaphor Twitch Channel. The video may be available to watch after the fact, we’ll keep you updated on that.
It’s Not Length We’re Looking For
Make your jokes now, people. I’ll give you a moment.
I’m admittedly a little biased on this one. I come from the fantasy genre (which hardly needs re-stating by this point but years of English essays drilled this stuff into me, so bear with me), so my genre has a long tradition with epics. Continue reading “It’s Not Length We’re Looking For”
Tea and Coffee
Wilom had honestly hoped that Vanda’s meeting with the Heads might have been moved forward, so that he didn’t have to wait another day to see her. Even if it was just to have a cup of tea and listen to her complain, he would have welcomed the company. Continue reading “Tea and Coffee”
Wisdom
Vanda didn’t appear the next day, but the day after. She found Wilom in their usual tea shop. In a moment, they were above ground, then there was a brief impression of the city, and then the countryside. They weren’t walking for very long before they arrived at the lighthouse. Vanda pulled Wilom around the side of the tower, and suddenly they were standing in the lighthouse keeper’s living room, where he was just putting on the kettle. Continue reading “Wisdom”
10 Things I’ve Learned
Recently I marked my birthday, and as close as I can tell, the 10 year anniversary of when I started wanted to write.
Well, that’s not quite true. I still remember telling my Year 5 teacher that I wanted to be a writer when I grew up, but I think 10 years ago was when I started actively working towards it, rather than just saying it was a thing that I wanted to do.
So, to mark the occasion, I want to list 10 things I’ve learned in the time between when I started really trying to learn how to write, and now who I am as a writer.
- You can always change things
I’ve always seen writing compared to various kinds of surgery here, and I don’t necessarily think that’s a fair comparison, but the fact remains: You write something once and that doesn’t have to be the final version. You always have the chance to rewrite. The exception here would be if your agent/publishing house wants the final draft on a particular date, but I think most people reading this blog won’t have this problem. Instead, I will say, you always have time for one more read-through before you send a query letter, and you always have time for one more draft before you tell people that you’ve written a story.
- Books are more malleable than you think
You might think certain things won’t make sense unless you’ve written certain plot points first, but you may be surprised. If you’re willing to move secondary scenes around, it’s impressive what will just fall into place, narratively. Don’t think you “have” to have certain scenes first. The audience is intelligent, and you will find a way to put all the subtle hints into the first scenes so that it works out in the end, even if the order feels inevitable when you read through your first draft.
- Don’t trust yourself
This sounds harsh, but it’s true. If you want to know what you actually said vs what you meant, seek beta readers.
Now, that’s not to say you take beta readers’ advice all the time (in fact, I can list a few times in the last month when I’ve discarded beta readers’ advice because I thought their questions illustrated that I had accomplished what I intended to) but whenever you get criticism, read through it carefully and be aware of why you are rejecting or accepting their criticism. They’re not always wrong and they’re not always right.
Just listen to them, because you’re not always right, either, and it’s worth the extra set of eyes.
- You will need more drafts than you expect.
This one, I think, is true of all writers starting out. You think you have this writing thing sorted, and then you start writing and suddenly you feel like everything is going wrong! But at least you know why, and you can fix it on the second draft!
It will take at least three drafts, and possibly more, to get to where you’re happy with it. Learning to accept ‘fixing your own mistakes’ as part of the writing process is part of learning the job.
- Yes, you need to read that.
You can gain inspiration from a variety of places, and yes, you need to understand your genre if you want to write genre fiction. Some say this isn’t necessary, but I believe it is – that’s an argument that’s still ongoing. But we’re talking about things I’ve learned and if there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that you should never shy away from reading or watching another genre just because you think it’s something you won’t enjoy. You might enjoy it, you might learn from it. As my parents taught me when I was young, give every book 30 pages and every book 30 pages to catch your interest before you give it up as ‘not my thing’. You’d be surprised what you end up liking in the end, and what you can add to your own writing.
- Be open to criticism.
Just as I said before that stories are more malleable than you think, if people say it isn’t working, listen to them. It might be a couple of people you trust, or it might be that a few people are telling you that a particular scene is falling flat. Learn to trust them. They may not be right in the ‘why’, but they are probably right in the ‘what’. Learn to listen to them, to interpret, and to ask them questions. The people who are willing to tell you that something is wrong are one of the greatest resources you will come across.
- Wait.
No story ever sprang to the page full formed, at least, not for me. Be willing to put a story aside while you come up with sideplots, secondary characters, nuances of the main characters, and all the other bits and pieces that transform a story from ‘good’ to ‘great’. Just because you thought of something doesn’t mean you need to write it right away. I like to keep book of my plot ideas separate and put ideas for plots I haven’t written yet in there, so that I don’t forget them. I also go through a worldbuilding process almost a full year before I put any pen to paper, so I know I understand things before they get written. That might not be everyone’s bag, but that’s what works for me, and that’s what I’ve learned in the 10 years during which I started seriously writing.
- You are more capable than you think you are
Keep a list of the things you think went wrong in your first draft. Often you’ll fix more problems than you think you did. Even if you had to ignore them and just continue to get the first draft done, your questions that you logged along the way will reveal more insight than you think they do. Trust yourself when things aren’t paced right, or aren’t set up right. You’re probably right, and you can always fix it in the second draft, before anyone sees it except you.
- Don’t tell anyone a set date until you’re certain
Corollary: It will always take longer than you think it will. Even if you’ve got the whole story ready to go, you will always need more time to format it, get your site working, get your cover art aligned, everything that you need to make it work than you think. Always allow more time than you need and never announce a definite date until you’re 100% certain you can deliver by then. This is something I am still working on.
- You may need to start again
I wanted this to be something inspiring, like ‘trust yourself’ or ‘write what you want to write’ but if I’m honest I already knew those things. I already had that from a lifetime trying to write things. The number 1 most important thing I’ve learned is that you may need to scrap everything and start again. You may need to try a different genre, a different format, a different style … even just a different story altogether. And if you need to do that, don’t be afraid of it. Just accept it, if you need to, write another story between them to cleanse your palate, and do it. They’re not all out yet, but I can tell you this: The Ferryman’s Apprentice changed formats, The King’s City had to be entirely rewritten, Same Coin had to be given a new set of protagonists and a new setting to work … never be afraid to completely rework something if you feel that would make it a better story. You’re not under any deadline except that which you set for yourself (unless you have a publisher who is setting deadlines for you, which is a different matter). So just do it! You’ll feel better in the long run, and trust me, the story will be better too.
Whimsy and Metaphor 