The Rules of Fiction

I'm baaaaaaaaaack!

I know all of you nonexistent people missed me. I'm touched. Truly.

In all seriousness, it was a busy summer for me. My motivation seems to be on the mend, however. We'll see how long that lasts.

Anyway!

In this edition of the Lorelee Tate show, not only will I be making my usual stupid jokes, but I shall also attempt in an unprecedented feat to explain something of the rules of fiction. Because yes, fiction has rules. We're still talking about the English language, folks. You'll never escape. Muahaha.

Now, I know that all of you probably harbor long-standing grudges with your childhood English teachers for subtracting all those points off of your writing assignments for comma splices and fragments and run-ons and whatnot. Think of it as that nasty-tasting cough medicine that was supposed to taste like cherries but actually tasted something more like mouthwash mixed with rubbing alcohol: it may suck (pardon my French) when you're taking it, but it makes everything a whole lot better in the long run.

But grammar rules are not the point here. Sure, you can end a sentence with a preposition and the world will not end. But there are other things to keep in mind as well.

I'll use this as an example: don't switch points of view. Pretty basic concept, really, and it has a good reason for its existence. When you switch points of view, it becomes more difficult for the reader to follow the writing. If you start off in Billy Bob's point of view, and then suddenly switch to Sally Sue's, somebody's not going to follow somewhere at some point in time.

But here's where it gets fun.

Are you ready?

Yes?

Okay.

Brace yourselves.










Rules in fiction are meant to be broken.

With discretion, that is.









I'll give you a moment to recover from the shock.




Better now? Okay, then.

I'll confess something to you. I've switched points of view before in my writing. And do you know what else? I'm not the first. Want to know why? Good, because I'm going to tell you anyway. Because rules aren't as clean-cut in fiction. Think of them more as guidelines than actual rules, and yourself as the literary equivalent to Jack Sparrow.

In fiction, writers break rules right and left. The key is that there has to be a reason for it. If you're switching points of view just because you want to make sure that your reader is paying attention, that probably won't cut it. But if you're switching between the protagonist and the antagonist in order to develop the relationship between the two characters, that will probably work.

The thing about writing is that it's not a science, so there are very few absolutes, if not none. Writing is an art, and art is extremely subjective. I will confess something to you: I despise TWILIGHT and everything related to vampires, particularly when they sparkle. But that's just my opinion. Obviously there are people out there who disagree with me and find Edward Cullen to be the epitome of masculinity and heroism. And you know what else? That's fine. It's art. It's subjective. I can sit here at my desk and write about how you shouldn't switch points of view or use dialogue tags other than "said" or "asked" or that you can only have a certain number of adverbs per page, but that doesn't mean I'm right. If you are just burning to use the word "pontificated," I can't stop you. And the world won't end. Amazing concept, I know.

Now, that's not to say that there are no suggestions that shouldn't be taken seriously. There are always going to be ways to improve your writing and sometimes it takes another opinion in order to be able to realize that. But the rules can still be broken.

Here's what I say about rules in fiction: know them before you break them.

Quote of the day: "There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are." --W. Somerset Maugham

Apathy

So.

I'm actually not going to talk about apathy as it relates to writing. I might eventually, but who knows? I told you I was going to talk about plot, and then I didn't. It's how I roll. I just keep everyone guessing.

What I'm actually going to say is that, due to my severely apathetic state presently, I will probably not be updating this blog any time soon. I know you're shocked, seeing as how my last post was a month ago. If I do update before the end of May, it will be incredibly spontaneous and probably due to intense boredom, don't you feel special now. 'Cause that's how I roll.

Quote of the week/month/year/semester/quarter/season/whatever the heck you want to call it:
"That's what writing is all about, after all, making others see what you have put down on the page and believing that it does, or could, exist and you want to go there." --Anne McCaffrey

Plot

So I still don't really feel like writing this at this point in time (I mean, come on! It's a Monday for crying out loud.) but I'm going to anyway. I figured that if I screw up royally and say something dumb, it won't matter since there's no one reading this. Once I have finished discussing plot, I shall then reveal valuable CIA and FBI information that I'm actually making up off the top of my head. And no one will ever know...

Anyway. Plot.

First, let's clarify something: every novel has a plot. I know I made some comments when talking about characters about how some authors don't have a plot, but that's what we call hyperbole, to sound all fancy and literary. If you don't know what that means, here is a handy link to dictionary.com. Back to what I was saying, every novel, every story, has a plot, however simplistic it may be. Yes, this does include TWILIGHT. Poetry is a little bit different, but I won't get into that. To be honest, I'm not an expert on poetry so I probably won't ever talk about it here. Not that anyone will notice.

Let's use LORD OF THE RINGS as an example, since I have no shame when it comes to plugging. A very simplified version of the plot is as follows: dark lord Sauron creates Ring, Frodo gets Ring millennia later, Frodo and friends go to destroy Ring, thereby ridding the world of evil, Frodo and friends encounter countless hardships spanning many hundreds of pages, Frodo destroys Ring, everyone is happy. You get the idea. By the way, if any of you nonexistent people reading this have no idea what I was just talking about, you'd better spend some quality time at your local video store. The library would be preferable, but I can't expect too much of you seeing as how you don't even exist.

Do you notice anything about all those plot points I just mentioned? (The correct answer to this question is yes, by the way.) Every single one of those plot points mentions at least one character. *insert dumbfounded looks and head scratching followed by mutterings of "I thought you were talking about plot..."* Just to make sure we're all on the same page, I am talking about plot. The thing is that plot and characters are really inseparable. If you have characters at all, chances are extremely high that they will be involved in the plot. As in, I have no idea how you would have characters and not have them involved in the plot. That just baffles me. And, what's more, since we're talking about fiction here, it's pretty much a given that there will be characters. Even if you're writing about an inanimate object, chances are that you'll do something to personify it. I know, big words.

Now, I'm sure all of you know something about the structure of plot. At least I hope you do. You know, like rising action, climax, falling action, resolution, that type of deal? Yeah, well, I'm not really going to go into that at the moment. I might break it down more in the future, but I'm not making any promises. That's the beauty of such an informal medium. I can be as noncommittal as I want and no one will be able to do anything about it.

You probably also know something about plot-driven (also known as action-driven) stories vs. character-driven. But the difference is, in a few words, that plot-driven stories focus more on the action (see how the other term ties in now?), whereas character-driven stories tend to focus more on the characters and their emotions, reactions, reflections, etc. In a character-driven story, things still happen. In a plot-driven story, there will still be characters. That's because it's almost impossible to have one without the other. I'm probably beginning to sound like a broken record, but I can't stress that enough. The next time you read the most boring book of your life, like one of those books you had to read in English class before you wrote several essays on it in order to extrapolate every unimportant detail, just remember that there is actually a plot there. It may not be very exciting, but it's there.

But that's not what I'm getting at here. I can hear you all groaning now and wondering when this stinking blog post is going to end. You've read this far, you might as well actually get to what I'm trying to say here. The point is this: plot and characters together make up a ginormous portion of what we do as writers. Yes, I just used the word ginormous. Get over it. It's easy to think that an exciting story alone will sell the novel to those reading it. But you can't have a plot without characters. Don't sacrifice one for the other. It'll only hurt your writing.



Quote of the week: "The atmosphere of orthodoxy is always damaging to prose, and above all it is completely ruinous to the novel, the most anarchical forms of literature." --George Orwell

My Rant About Villains

Prepare your imaginary selves for some ranting.

Okay, so I know I said I was going to write about plot, but that will just have to wait. Besides, I said I would write about it when I felt like it. Your first mistake was assuming I would feel like it.

So. Villains. We love them, we hate them, we love to hate them, we hate to love them, and any combination thereof. Imagine your favorite classic Disney villain, just so that we're all on the same page. Personally, I'm torn between Scar, Gaston, and Prince John. If you don't know who these characters are, you need to spend some time refreshing your Disney memory.

Now, the reason I'm using Disney villains is because they're all very much alike and all very much how people typically think of villains. They all have some nefarious scheme in mind that will greatly benefit them while making everyone else completely miserable. They feel that they deserve it and that everyone else can just suck it up because they're lame anyway. Scar feels that he should have been the Lion King (pun alert!) instead of Mufasa, Gaston feels that he should be the one to marry Belle, and Prince John feels that he should be king (also a lion, coincidentally) instead of King Richard. Why? Well, Scar is smarter than Mufasa, Belle is the most beautiful girl in town and therefore the only one worthy of Gaston, and King Richard is off doing the whole Crusade thing and while we're on the subject everyone always liked him better anyway so Prince John deserves at least a little recognition thank you very much.

But my main question is this: do villains always think that they're evil? Maleficent certainly does, since she repeatedly references her own evilness. But now think of a person (a real person, not a Disney character) who you would consider to be a villain. For my example, I'm going to use this really annoying kid that I knew through middle school and high school who liked to spend most of his time antagonizing me. Did he realize just how much he annoyed me? Difficult to say. I told him, but he might not have believed me. Did he genuinely believe that what he was doing was wrong? Probably not. It's not like he was killing kittens or something to that effect. Even though I considered him evil incarnate, did he? Of course not. People don't think of themselves as evil. They may do things that they know are wrong, but they will find some reason to justify their doing it.

The thing that drives me crazy about so much fantasy is that the villain is a stock character. Villains are incredibly important. If you want to write a realistic character for your villain, you need to ignore the stereotype. Villains are humans too. Or lions, if you're dealing with Scar and Prince John. They need to have human (or lion) motivation. When you have a random guy going around with a laser shooting everyone and laughing about how evil he is, he's not very believable. The giant robot who goes around crushing cars and tearing down buildings and shoots laser beams out of his eyes may be badass and over 9,000, but he's not really that interesting. And when all the hero has to do is get in that one perfect shot to the occipital lobe or hit the kill switch before the bad guy gets them, you're kind of hurting on plot.

In my writing, I don't really have any characters I consider villains. Now, that's not necessarily how everyone should write (although I know you all want to be just like me). But for me, the struggle is more interesting when it's between two people instead of between a person and a cardboard cutout. Can you have a character who is a villain without being a cardboard cutout? Of course. But after all the movies and comic books and video games, it sure is difficult.

Characters

Hello again, to all of my nonexistent readers! Since I'm imagining you, I've decided that you're all very happy, interested, and polite. Ah, such dreams.

Now, I'm sure it seems obvious to some of you that characters are very important in fiction. In my imaginary-land where all of you live, you're all slapping your hands to your foreheads and waiting for me to get on with it. But just in case there are some non-imaginary people out there, I'll elaborate.

To summarize why characters are so important: characters sell the story. If your characters suck (to be very frank), the plot won't really matter that much. You can have the best plot in the world, but if the characters are merely floating around there with nothing to do with it, it won't work. You might as well just write down a random sequence of events. Or, if you're like certain specific authors who shall remain nameless but automatically just to my mind, you nix the plot completely so that it matches your lack of characters.

Some of you are probably thinking that it's really hard to have a good plot without characters in the first place, since characters are the ones doing all the actions. You have done well, young grasshoppers. This is quite true for character-driven plots, but that term does not apply to all stories. Some plots can be very exciting without requiring a decent character.

So what do I mean by a decent character? I'm glad you asked. Of course, since I'm imagining you, I knew you would.

Not every character has to be completely developed. Stock characters do actually have their uses. It's mainly the protagonist(s), antagonist(s), and other supporting characters. Do you have to know the entire history of the servant who appears in Chapter Two to tell the main character and his friend that dinner's ready? Of course not. Should you know the main character's history? Absolutely.

But the character's history is only one part of it. Generally, another large portion of it is their motivation. Why does this character act this way? The two may sound unrelated, but people's histories influence their actions. People learn from experience. Ideally, at least. Maybe the main character's mother died when he was young, and so he has spent his whole life trying to prove himself to his grieving father. A classic example of history influencing motivation is the old revenge story. Family is murdered, son goes off to avenge their deaths and "right the wrong", introduce love interest/further complications, etc. Now we're getting back into plot. I'll talk more about plot tomorrow or Wednesday or whenever I get around to it. You don't care. You're imaginary.

We, as writers, must try to make our characters as realistic as possible. As I said when discussing the God Complex, writers can be surprised when their characters do something unexpected. That's because they're like real people. Sort of like you, only they're actually believable. While history and motivation are two large parts of a character, they're not the only parts. There are so many different facets of the human psyche that I can't list them all here. There are aspects of human thought that not even the experts understand. As if having the patience to write 200 pages isn't enough, now we have to create something that scientists don't even understand. Feeling lucky? I hear McDonald's is hiring.

I can't really teach you how to create believable characters via blog. There's no magic formula. The best way is simply to observe people and how they behave. Look at the way they dress, the way they speak, the way they move. Then try to figure out why. There are thousands of explanations for why people do what they do and even if you don't find the right one, it's valuable practice. Just make sure that when you're watching people that you're not doing it in a way that could possibly result in a lawsuit, jail time, or a fine.

The God Complex

Okay, so I'm sure no one is reading this at this point, but I'm going to imagine people out there.

One thing I've noticed as a writer is that it's incredibly easy to develop a God Complex. Translation: writers tend to think they're God when it comes to their writing. Just in case no one figured that out.

What the writer does is essentially her own form of Genesis. She creates her own world, albeit one that does not exist beyond the page, complete with her own Adams and Eves. With those first words on the page, she introduces light to her world. She looses her characters, curious as to exactly where they'll go before their story ends, though she has an idea of it. Not to start an argument on theology, of course.

Now, this sounds all well and good. But it's what this leads to that causes problems.

Controlling every aspect of the novel can, and often does, lead to perfectionism. When something unexpected occurs, it's almost literally the end of the world. A writer can plan out her novel perfectly, every plot point mapped out, and yet still be surprised by something a character does. In one of my old stories I wrote in high school, I was crushed when I realized that my own favorite character had to die. I had introduced him with the intent of his being a comic relief of sorts (the subject matter was rather angsty), and then he evolved into something I hadn't planned. As the creator of my own little world, this was not something I was prepared to handle gracefully. I could have let him live, of course, but the story would have been negatively affected. I will admit that I cried.

The fact is, a writer can do anything with her own novel. If she wanted to have it suddenly rain jelly beans, she could do so. Obviously, this doesn't lead to the greatest literature, but the possibility is there. And that's where the God Complex starts. When a writer becomes so deeply immersed in her writing, she can forget the limits of her control. Everyone wants to believe that their novel is the next Great Expectations or Pride and Prejudice. A writer who is so confident in her own literary genius will think that even if she decides to cause a jelly bean hurricane, her novel will be brilliant.

Now, godawful writing aside, here's the dangerous part: when a writer spends so much of her time in her world, she starts to take on the same attitude of ultimate control in other aspects of her life. Everything that goes wrong is a tragedy. How dare someone defy such a deity?

The fact is, even though we have control in our own worlds, we can't micromanage the real world. If every writer was the center of the universe, the universe would be a very confused place. A writer can't choose who lives or dies in the real world, or whether or not it rains jelly beans. The sphere of influence ends past the paper (or word processor, as it were). And speaking for myself, thank God for that.

Introductions

I suppose it's always good to get everyone on the same page.

I'm Lorelee Tate, a writer. At least, Lorelee Tate is my pen name. My real name shall remain unknown at my discretion. Muahaha. I write primarily fantasy novels, set in a world of my own creation. I currently have one finished novel, SON'S VENGEANCE, for which I am seeking publication. Easier said than done, I know. Also, I am a die-hard Tolkien fan, so anyone who disrespects Lord of the Rings is welcome to leave. And just for fair warning, I am a cynic. Without irony, my life would be sadly incomplete.

My purpose in writing this blog, apart from taking valuable time away from paying attention to my poor, deprived cats, is to discuss various aspects of writing while shamelessly plugging authors and musicians I admire. At least I'm being honest here. I may occasionally post some of my writing here, though probably no more than a chapter at a time. Novels are long and I'm already stretching my attention span to its limit just by writing the dang things, let alone remembering to post chapters on a regular basis. Can't deny paranoia, either.

Just to sound as narcissistic as possible, here are some other random facts about me: I play the mandolin (if you don't know what it is, look it up), I can sing the musical Les Misérables from start to finish, Braveheart is one of the greatest movies ever made (okay, so it's not specifically about me, but it's worth saying), and I currently have two of my four cats curled up in this room waiting for attention. I believe I must now oblige them.

Just because I feel like it, I am posting a song by Loreena McKennitt called The Dark Night of the Soul. Yes, The Dark Night of the Soul does sound rather depressing, but Loreena McKennitt is pretty awesome.. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Loreena McKennitt: shame.