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Boarders Writing A Novel: Volume 14 A Memory of Civility


SpaceChampion

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I got a little sidetracked from my main project because I felt inspired and wrote a premise for a novel called Strangers, which would be about eight people living in the same city, each one broken by life in a different way, and each one stuck in a downward spiral. As their paths start to cross some of them learn to hope or love again, and others, well, don't.

The thing is, I'm not sure whether I have the skills to succesfully write something like this. One of the eight people is a woman who loses her husband, three children and use of one limb in a car accident. I want to get inside her head but that's going to be really hard because she's so far away from me. I'm not sure how to succesfully portray the mental state involved. Another character is diagnosed with cancer the same week her pregnancy test comes back positive, and another is mentally ill.
Does anyone have any tips when it comes to writing these kinds of characters? On how to get in their heads?

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Try talking to people online who have the experiences you're looking for. I've been emailing recently with a vet who had a pretty traumatic experience in Afghanistan to research PTSD for a character I'm working on, and I learned a lot. I read in an interview that GRRM corresponded in a similar way with a disabled fan when he was first writing Bran Stark.

There are plenty of websites and chat rooms dedicated to the subject matters you've mentioned. Just make sure and be up front about your agenda and be respectful and I'm sure you'll find people who are willing to talk about their experiences.

Thanks. I've done research that way before (though that was more of a happy accident) and it's probably the best approach.

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Final sales figures for "KERBY" in 2015 (from 04/03 to 31/12) stand at 584!

* There were 102 five-star reviews left on Amazon (there's already been another 2 left in 2016!).
* At its peak, the book was selling over 30 copies a day.
* In November, "KERBY" broke into Amazon's Top 40 Humour chart.

Thanks to anyone who bought the book, recommended it to friends, or helped in some way to make it an incredible year - here's to 2016!

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I think I end up with like 3000+ for the most part, but I'm usually unhappy with that as I like long chapters. I'm weird and keep my text formatted like I'd want to see it in a book so it ends up being around 6 pages whereas I'd like 10. I've no idea how many pages it would be if I kept to a more standard manuscript format.

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Anyone else get a story idea with characters and everything, and then go, hmm, but maybe if I told it with the characters this way, or maybe tell it with the characters that way. Keeping the characters but changing where they start off in the story, including backstory to some extent.  What do you do? How do you combat it?

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I've boiled it down to looking at who knows the most about what is going on and is driving the story, and then NOT telling the story from their point of view.  But their actions are revealed at the inciting incident and reveal one part of the story that triggers everything else.  There are four possible things that could be:

1) What's their goal, idealistically, and how does that affect events?

2) What's their motivation, and who does that impact or depend on in the social setting and political or personal relationships?

3) What's their plan (steps, metrics, benchmarks etc.) and how does that affect the suspense?  This one needs cool ideas.

4) What's their methodology / attitude / rationalization, and how does that affect their psychology? This is usually mirrored by the viewpoint character.

This person may be the antagonist or the protagonist (like in Mad Max: Fury Road -- Furiosa drives the plot and knows the most).  These aspects about the plot driving character's story needs to be space out evenly to feel like appropriate pacing of the story.

So I pick one of those aspects and keep the others hidden.  But at three other turning points in the story, the last being the climax, those get revealed too.

Then I figure out how my characters would react to each revelation.  Which one of those get's the main characters to move from reacting to acting proactively?  Keep that for the midpoint of the story.  Which one knocks them off their feet? Keep that for the revelation before the climax, their dark night of the soul that makes them question and doubt.  Which one might they agree with?  That might make a good temptation for the climax.  Which do they disagree with? That might be the inciting incident.

And that's where I'd start.

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Two questions. Do you want it to appear mysterious to the characters in your world or to the readers? And do your POV characters have magical abilities?

1. A little bit of both. Aspects of it will be known by certain characters, but most of it is unknown.

2. My POV characters have rudimentary magical abilities.

Though there are spells in my universe, that is not the main focal point of the magic. It is more of a natural phenomenon than it is a form of wizardry like in Harry Potter. It actively effects and infects the landscape. I'm just having a hard time working out how to give it "screen time" while also keeping it from becoming boring. You know in videogames like Skyrim where you basically just walk through hordes of Draugr every few minutes without thinking much of it? I want to avoid falling into that sort of pattern. Are there any techniques for displaying magic without revealing to much about it? I realize this may not make a lot of sense, but I'm just trying to grapple with my own thoughts on this.

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For the fantasy writers here: how do you deal with the inclusion of magic in your world? I am struggling with finding a balance in showing that my world is magical, while also trying to keep it mysterious, without making it appear cheesy or cliched. Any tips?

My entire world is structured on the premise that everyone can do magic - in this case, necromancy. Politics, economic structures, and social organisation are entirely dependent on it.

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1. A little bit of both. Aspects of it will be known by certain characters, but most of it is unknown.

2. My POV characters have rudimentary magical abilities.

Though there are spells in my universe, that is not the main focal point of the magic. It is more of a natural phenomenon than it is a form of wizardry like in Harry Potter. It actively effects and infects the landscape. I'm just having a hard time working out how to give it "screen time" while also keeping it from becoming boring. You know in videogames like Skyrim where you basically just walk through hordes of Draugr every few minutes without thinking much of it? I want to avoid falling into that sort of pattern. Are there any techniques for displaying magic without revealing to much about it? I realize this may not make a lot of sense, but I'm just trying to grapple with my own thoughts on this.

You could hint that there is an unknown source to this magic, or various kind of magic (see the Mistborn trilogy), or possibly as of yet unknown uses of this magic (the Farseer trilogy). Both trilogies feature magic-users as main characters, and both gradually reveal more about their respective magic systems. Even in the third Mistborn book 'we're still learning more about the magic, you could give it a look.

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Been writing fantasy but never really found room for much magic in any of it. That stuff just doesn't come naturally to me and feels very artificial if I ever try to tack it on to the plot/setting. Is magic really a necessary ingredient in writing a secondary world style fantasy?

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Been writing fantasy but never really found room for much magic in any of it. That stuff just doesn't come naturally to me and feels very artificial if I ever try to tack it on to the plot/setting. Is magic really a necessary ingredient in writing a secondary world style fantasy?

Far from it, there's a lot of books or series without it. My own story doesn't include magic either.

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For the fantasy writers here: how do you deal with the inclusion of magic in your world? I am struggling with finding a balance in showing that my world is magical, while also trying to keep it mysterious, without making it appear cheesy or cliched. Any tips?

Technically I write science fantasy: Sailor to a Siren is shelved as space opera for marketing reasons.  If I wanted to keep my magic completely mysterious - I don't do so - I'd have to avoid having any Spellweaver viewpoint characters, or have them not understand the nature of their magic.  As soon as you show a magician using magic from hir perspective you start to uncloak the logic behind it, unless zie has had no opportunity to wonder how incanting a certain spell produces a certain effect.  Maybe the best you can hope for is avoiding the cheesiness by ensuring the characters don't take it for granted - fear or awe might well be able to cloak that.

Chapters are as chapters do.  The extent is going to vary very significantly according to subgenre.  While Sailor to a Siren averaged just over 3000 words per chapter, it's in thriller style: anything epic is likely to trend to longer chapters as well as longer overall word count.  I'm not far off finishing (first draft of) the climactic chapter from The Book I Shouldn't Be Writing (the fifth one in my chronology - more epic than thriller).  It's at nineteen thousand words and climbing: I'm now only missing at most couple of thousand from the sub-scene I'm on at the moment, five hundred at most from another sub-scene, and the protagonists all running away at the end.   No idea how long the escape scene is going to be.  This is quite extreme, I'm aware, but by this stage in the book I think I'll have established the pattern of one-chapter-per-day or -month well enough that readers would stay with me even if 7th November turns out to be rather eventful.

Reminder that Gollancz are currently open to direct submissions.

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Technically I write science fantasy: Sailor to a Siren is shelved as space opera for marketing reasons.  If I wanted to keep my magic completely mysterious - I don't do so - I'd have to avoid having any Spellweaver viewpoint characters, or have them not understand the nature of their magic.  As soon as you show a magician using magic from hir perspective you start to uncloak the logic behind it, unless zie has had no opportunity to wonder how incanting a certain spell produces a certain effect.  Maybe the best you can hope for is avoiding the cheesiness by ensuring the characters don't take it for granted - fear or awe might well be able to cloak that.

Chapters are as chapters do.  The extent is going to vary very significantly according to subgenre.  While Sailor to a Siren averaged just over 3000 words per chapter, it's in thriller style: anything epic is likely to trend to longer chapters as well as longer overall word count.  I'm not far off finishing (first draft of) the climactic chapter from The Book I Shouldn't Be Writing (the fifth one in my chronology - more epic than thriller).  It's at nineteen thousand words and climbing: I'm now only missing at most couple of thousand from the sub-scene I'm on at the moment, five hundred at most from another sub-scene, and the protagonists all running away at the end.   No idea how long the escape scene is going to be.  This is quite extreme, I'm aware, but by this stage in the book I think I'll have established the pattern of one-chapter-per-day or -month well enough that readers would stay with me even if 7th November turns out to be rather eventful.

Reminder that Gollancz are currently open to direct submissions.

Damn, if only I had mine finished. Hopefully the have other openings sometime later down the road.

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