Class and Value in Fiction

I think it’s safe to say that most books have protagonists that come from one of two categories: the struggling poor or the comfortably rich. It’s uncommon to see a character that’s middle of the road, or even one step above being poor. The amount of money a person has influences their outlook on life and their actions. Lack of money usually drives a character to prove themselves, whereas most character that don’t have to worry about money often have to overcome some other aspect of their life, such as accomplishments, love, a sense of worth, etc.

Recently I’ve been reading Patrick Rothfuss’s The Name of the Wind. It’s the first book in a fantasy trilogy, and while it is well-written, it’s also reminded me of the fantasy books I used to read in my teens and early twenties. Just like Rothfuss's book, many of the characters in the fantasy books I’ve read over the years have tended to be poor or penniless, which is a stark contrast to the paranormal romances I also like to read, which usually feature characters with lots of money.

In a way this makes sense since most fantasy books, especially epic series fantasy, tend to be set in a low technology (think no electricity) world, whereas most paranormal romances are set in the modern day. There were more ways around not having money in the pre-technology days, but it is much harder to do in modern times where a person needs an identification card, an address, and references to even apply for a job. The best way to avoid all of this in modern day settings is to give the characters money and have them face other problems.

I’ve created characters from all classes of society, but when you come from a poor background, the passages that commiserate with my experiences are the ones that stand out. There have been two such passages from The Name of the Wind and I’ll close by sharing one below. This passage exhibits some of the same feelings I felt upon recently finding a full time job again; I too was one small catastrophe away from ruin.

If you have never been desperately poor, I doubt you can understand the relief I felt. For months I’d been waiting for the other shoe to drop, knowing that any small catastrophe could ruin me. But now I no longer had to live every day worrying about my next term’s tuition or the interest on Devi’s loan. I was no longer in danger of being forced out of the University. (p. 444)

The Specificity of English

This week I started my new job, which sometimes requires me to translate things from Japanese to English, and while I did this a lot in college and when I lived in Japan, this is the first time I've really thought about how vague Japanese can be.

Now, this isn't news to any student of Japanese, but the process becomes a lot harder when you're doing it for a job and not for a grade; people now rely on the information of my translations.

For example, the overuse of his, her and they can cause confusion in English, which is the last thing you want to do for your readers. In Japanese, however, vagueness becomes an art form. I just hope that my translating and reacquaintance with the language doesn't affect my English writing ability. In addition to the vagueness of Japanese, the sentence structure is different, with the verb usually falling at the end of a sentence. My English abilities suffered when I lived in Japan, I just hope it doesn't happen here, in the US too!

The Return from Practicality

What was once questionable is now a reality: I have found a proper job. No more time wasted with searching job postings, writing cover letters and tweaking resumes; I'm going to use my free time once again for writing fiction.

Speaking of which, I've come across an important discovery: always keep the drafts you start but think you'll never finish. With my recent writing hiatus, I decided it was best to read through the two ideas I had started back in January/February. The one I was sure would be the better of the two turned out to be weak and lacking in character. The other story, which I had given up on because of the feeling of hitting a "wall", I re-read and loved. The opening scenes draw you in, the pacing is good and you can feel the emotions and frustrations of the characters.

All of that was accomplished in three to four chapters.

The read-through filled my head with ideas and inspired me. I now know that I will continue the story to the end, attempting roadblocks as they appear. The story began as an exercise for myself--could I write something without an outline? I did have most of the world-building completed from the first book I finished (The Secondworld Stranger), but the story takes place not in the past, but the present time. It's a bit more dangerous, a little bit dark and will be a lot more steamy. This will be a paranormal romance, maybe even a romantic paranormal suspense.

Surprisingly that exercise--writing without an outline--was and is more fun than I imagined. Characters come nearly formed in my head, which also mixes up plot elements and makes them work. I know for a fact I'll have to fix things later on, but that's to be expected. All in all I'm just excited to be writing again for me instead of writing letters about me. A world that has an Asylum for Magical Threats sounds a lot more interesting than how stellar a worker I am, right?

The Importance of a Conclusion

Imagine that you've finished reading the second to last book in a series and it ends on a cliffhanger. You inwardly groan when you learn the final book won't come out for twelve months. And then it's delayed further, making it a full 17 month wait time. The book comes out and you manage to get it straight away. Not caring if you'll be up late reading, you open the book. And then...

It falls flat. Quickly. By page 85 you realize it just isn't worth the effort and decide that while you'll read it some day, you are in no hurry and put the book down.

This happened with Karen Marie Moning's final book of the Fever series, Shadowfever. Usually I refrain from mentioning the books I criticize, but this is an example that I cannot in good judgement let slide by, especially as I sung KMM's praises earlier.

Building up events, drama and tension in a series to its breaking point is no easy feat, but if an author doesn't write a satisfactory conclusion to a series, he or she will lose readers; after all, if you wish to remain a successful writer, you must keep reader loyalty and their willingness to refer titles to their friends. (A great example of this is Melanie Rawn's unfinished Exile series. It's been more than ten years and the series still remains unfinished. This destroyed her fan base and reputation.)

For KMM, she did everything you're not supposed to do: a slow beginning, pointless scenes, lack of tension, and even an annoying point of view style (Dani's). In the 85 pages I managed to read, the main character walked a little, had a weird dream and did a lot of talking with a man she thinks killed her sister. Compare this to the previous four pageturner books, and you begin to wonder what happened.

The most noticeable thing is the size; the book was nearly twice the length of the other four books. Now, a bigger book doesn't necessary mean it's boring (Sherrilyn Kenyon's Acheron was twice the size of her other books and I couldn't put it down). The problem with Shadowfever is that it suffered from a lack of editing. There were clearly sections that should've been cut, but weren't.

Another problem was its tension and pace. All of the four previous books had event after event, with lots of tension thrown in, and kept you turning the pages. This was not the case for Shadowfever. It's as if the editors knew everyone would buy the book regardless of editing, and left it as is. Or that the book was written in such a hurry that no time was left to put it aside for a month or so and go back to it and revise. Editing is a pain to complete, but it is one of the most important steps in writing and shouldn't be overlooked.

Thirdly, don't introduce an annoying point of view. In Shadowfever's case, it was for a character called Dani. The writing was written in overly-tough-teeanger-slang that drives you crazy, especially the overuse and abuse of the word "feck." Throw in some words that are supposed to make the character appear to be Irish (I was unconvinced), and it's hard to read more than a page at a time for this POV.

So if you're going to write a series, and create enormous obstacles to overcome, make sure you know how to tie it all up. Nothing can irritate or anger readers more than a poorly written conclusion. If I'm going to spend hours and hours reading through a series, it had better be worth it by the end.

A Different Kind of Writing

February has come and gone, and yet here I am with my first post of the month. It isn't because I have nothing to say; on the contrary, I almost always have an opinion ready, but this month has been different. Any unpublished or unestablished author has no choice but to have a supportive significant other or to work. I lack the former and am forced to do the latter. Yet as the economy is anything but grand at the moment, my career choice of teaching has become a burden. There are no teaching jobs and unlikely to be any in the near future. This leaves me working as a substitute teacher.

Being a substitute is unpredictable and energy draining; even with my fairly good classroom management skills, students seem to think it's fine and dandy to harass a guest teacher more than the regular teacher. It probably doesn't help that I have higher expectations of the students than most regular teachers. At the end of the day, this leaves me drained, with many students wanting me as their regular teacher. I love teaching, but unfortunately surviving comes first. I decided I must find another job and have been at it for months.

Over the last six weeks, I've been focusing not on fiction, but on another type of writing: cover letters. Some people use the same one for everything, but I learned that this approach rarely gets results, so in February I decided I would craft custom letters for each job I was applying to. The result? Me spending my evenings writing how good of an employee I'd make and not focusing on my fiction writing.

I didn't realize how much this affected me until this last week when I finally decided to start writing fiction again. Sitting at the keyboard, thinking about characters and impossible situations, I felt more like myself. I enjoyed doing it and realized that as much as I must focus on finding a job, I must also focus on writing for me.

I am exploring the challenges of writing a romance novel that is not cheesy, overdone or too dark and it's not easy. I haven't quite hit the mark yet, but I'm hopeful it will happen soon. In the meantime, I've at least learned my lessson: we must have money to survive, but we shouldn't sacrifice our very self for it.

Writer's Block or....?

Up until now, I've never really experienced writer's block. My imagination runs wild and usually gazing a few minutes out a window or taking a walk will solve my problem. Sometimes waking up in the morning and staying a few minutes in bed is another way to kickstart my creativity. With my latest attempt, however, it's been a different story.

The premise of the book was a woman from 2010 is transported back to 1774 Boston and finds herself in a situation where she has to marry a British soldier. There is all kinds of conflict simmering, from internal to external, and at first it was fun. The first chapter was easy to write. The next two chapters I rewrote two or three times before it was passable. Then, I wondered where was this story going? Will this really work? How can I weave the history and fiction together? How can it be believeable? I let it simmer for a week or so and came to a conclusion: I loved the characters, but the story felt more forced than anything else I'd written in a long time.

For anyone who writes, if something feels forced, warning bells usually go off in your head. I'm not denying that parts will be difficult to write, I've been there before, but there's a difference between difficult and forced. Parts of the second book of my Secondworld series were difficult, but never forced. The only reason I stopped writing that story (for now) is that if I can't sell the first book, writing the second is a little pointless. I have ideas of how to change it into a stand alone book if I have to, but I've put it aside for now, content to come back to it when the time is right.

My Boston story, however, feels forced. I don't mind rewriting scenes (I'm not one of those people who can just write it all out, never looking back until the first draft is complete), but having to rewrite two consecutive chapters two or more times is a warning bell. So I decided to shelf the idea for now, until the idea develops or the feeling of writer's block for that story goes away. I had one idea on a shelf for five years before I wrote something that was worthwhile, so there is hope.

All is not lost, however. I've taken the world of my 1891-1892 Secondworld books and put it in the context of the 21st century. The idea came while reading the two novellas in Deep Kiss of Winter and Stephen King's, On Writing (what if?). It's in the vein of the paranormal romance books I read religiously and if I read so many of them, and enjoy them, then why am I not writing one? I'm reveling in my no-plot mode and just typing away. Let's hope the story never becomes forced.

Liberating First Person

When it comes to writing, one of the most important decisions an author makes is which point of view to use. Most of the fiction I read uses third person, specifcially limited third person (also called single-third). The pronouns are "he" or "she", never "I" or "me".

In the past, I have always used third person. I vaguely recall using first person for a story I wrote in high school, but on the whole, I've used third person singular. This doesn't mean I had only one character, but rather that the character's thoughts are limited to a scene or chapter, switching to another character's third-singular point of view (POV) later.

You can imagine my surprise when I sat down to start my most recent story (set in 1774 Boston) and the words started pouring out in first person. I typed away Kate Johnson's thoughts (my character) and at about 1,000 words, I took a break, read what I had written and wondered if it would be safer to write the same scene in third person. So I opened a new document and started typing. After two paragraphs, I realized it was hopeless. If this story and set of characters was going to work, it had to be told through Kate's thoughts and personality alone.

At 7,000 words in, I find using first person challenging yet refreshing. I have the chance to make the story much more personal and bring the character competely to life. The entire story is told from one person's POV, similar to real life where we have one mind to interpret the world around us. Just like real life, it can be frustrating. We never really know what another person is thinking unless they tell us. A lot of times, as readers, we expect to know how two or more characters think, but this is impossible in first person. The dance between a solder and a woman out of place becomes more complicated and subtle; we must be convinced of their feelings through dialogue and actions alone.

I finished my first book last year, and know I am capable of finishing a 300+ page work. Now I have a new challenge: see if I can finish a 300+ page work told through the eyes of one person.