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How to write fiction – Página 4

Etiqueta: How to write fiction

  • 5  reasons to write fiction learning a new language

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    Yeah, undoubtedly to write in your mother tongue gives you the advantage of the local flavor. Unusual idioms and synch with everybody’s ideas instead of having a genius telling them what to do,… There should be marvelous phrases to salt pepper the tones and environments. I mean, narrative should be all this. Pompous, fat and overdressed words.

    To write in your own language saves you taxing annoying downpaths and it is easier to memorize the grammar rules since you already learnt those at school. It is easier to learn new words or to stablish your own style.

    So… why to learn a new language? Up to very little, there weren’t as much books about how to write fiction in Spanish. Most were manuals on grammar and spelling (spelling can be awfully more complicated in Spanish) It’s dwindled on editors to sell you courses as doors to the publishing world to become one of the published guys.  All for only 1500 euros. Isn’t that attractive? To be able to get yourself soaked in this kind of knowledge? And by published guy I mean anyone who writes.

    (1) People write in English by reading to authors who write in English whilst people write in Spanish reading to people who write in Spanish. The same in French, Russian, Vietnamese.. Missing on the opportunity to read great books the way they were constructed around in their own languages. You can’t really notice how a plot works, unless you read the thing in the original language.  Wodehouse will never work in Spanish. Truly.

    Do you think I read Cathy Birch, Chuck Wendig or Sarah Domet with Google translator? Nein[1]! Besides that, the best short story tellers were Russian. Aha.. now tell me you have Hemingway, Faulkner or Bradbury. Still, isn’t Chejov a must for any writer? Are Russian as good in Russian or even better? What the bloody heck do Russians say about their president, that’s not the same said in the western media? Have you noticed how translated poetry becomes graceless in your language?

    Therefore, learning a new language is not a total waste of time. (2) Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentinian guy; learnt by himself…I don’t really know how many but he learnt them and he was a kicking ass writer. To have access to that stuff almost impossible to get outside its original language that can help build your authority. Of course, nowadays the fashionable browsers restricts searchs to the available stuff in your language, closing in and limiting what we have access to.

    And yet (3), there’s nothing like browsing in another language cause you will land in the most unexpected stuff.

    It can be used to give tone or mood (4) to characters or to whatever it is that they think about. Authors like Tolstoi or Elizabeth Gaskell quote in other languages and that’s interesting in a way more lasting than mere novelty.

    Aren’t you convinced yet? (5) What about delaying or holding dementia? To speak a second or thir language helps you to be more open to new ideas. Besides, keeping your “small gray cells” active since it requires rewiring sinapses. Protecting your brain from being pigeon holed.

    Milan Kundera explains in “The insufferable lightness of the being” that there are some words whose existence can only happen in a language and that language alone. To know these words, to be able to understand them, opens your creativity to new styles. Plus, writers are usually well versed in more than one language.

    Can you imagine yourself in another language? Do you think it would be fun to write in a different tone? Dale like, suscríbete, odialo, tomálo. ¡Haz algo!

    [1] No, I happen to be impervious to German. It doesn’t seem to like me at all. Russian feels a bit sympathetic. French amusedly shows off how much it is related to English. And Korean… well Korean is pretty much like a hard to get woman.

  • How to write fiction telling half truths or lying better

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    —Grandma, why do you have those big ears?

    —To listen better what people say around

    —Grandma… why do you have that big mouth?

    —To tell better lies when I tell you stories, my love

    Let’s face the fact. To be a writer, particularly a fiction writer, is to lie…a little. I mean, you won’t become that despicable being whom lies to everybody. Maybe, and only maybe, you’ll come to become a brutally honest person in a total opposite reversal of the situation. It isn’t like you will tell people the national oil company that went bankrupt years ago needs to re-structure its debt or to promise to do things you won’t be able to.

    To lie is to write fiction? Yes. And this only from a certain point of view (since looked at in a certain way it is lying). You will lie along the day…or better said: along your story. Your mission, were you to take it, is TO HAVE US BELIEVE. It comes with the craft and takes imagination as a requirement. It takes to tell the reader there’s a cow eating their rhododendrons (in spite of no cow or flowers being there) and have them to believe so.

    To imagine is to see and project into someone else’s mind what’s not there; at least for Monte Wildhorn, the writer character in Magic of Belle Isle. Robert McKee says you have to achieve the common individual to throw away their disbelief and pay attention to you through identification or sympathy with the character. The moment they ask themselves “IS this even possible?”; your credibility is gone away. And with such credibility, sympathy does too.

    You see…my brother and Big-Choma recommended me All you need is kill. An action manga with nice drawing and a suitable plot but…the damnest fine mistake of using the almost blind without spectacles character. How the bloody heck does she keeps the round half face covered glasses in place every single time she looks downwards?

    Shortsighted as I am (terribly shortsighted) I know any plastic, either High-Index Plastic lenses or simple plastic or Aspheric lenses; takes some thickness related to its power. Anything above 10[1] dioptres is HEAVY. It is uncomfortable and it slips down your nose as soon as you look to the floor. I have had lenses crashing onto it because. Nothing has broken but still, they get scratched.  A perfect reason to avoid frames when you’re wearing 18 dioptres.

    This tiny bity minuscule detail spoils plots for me. Why? Cause I know it is impossible. The empiric physics about lenses that I possess, tells me: the thicker the lens, the heavier it is. The bigger the frame, the bigger and heavier the thing becomes. Heavier means it is easier for it to fall.

    Thus to lie convincingly, in Kinsey Millhone’s words (character from The crime alphabet[2]) you must: tell three quarters of the truth and add invention for the remaining quarter. Wending explains that you lead the reader by giving them three ascertainable facts and feed them a probable or possible yet to be ascertain fact. So its plausibility makes it believable.

    Which takes us to a really interesting and also boring side of the fiction craft. RESEARCH. So, how is it that one lies by telling three quarters of a truth?

    If you look at fiction as the creation of an unreal world, with characters that outside such world don’t exist and probable but nor real facts; we’re talking in a way of a lie. Essentially from the POV of the journalism. So to tell fiction is the same as lying… in a way.

    For the time being, wash your hands going back home and touch your face the least possible, have alcohol gel handy. I know, we’re mask free! Still, Covid has been one of the most resilient and strange things out there. And people is still getting sick. This blog entry tough, is virus free. You can like it fearless of contagion…What am I saying? I would love this blog to infect the world! So like it, share, subscribe, whatever.

    [1] I started wearing contacts 10 dioptres at 12… Along the usual resting glasses. From then on, the prescription went up to get settle in 18 or 19. Each and every single time I changed spectacles, I cursed the artifacts for they were heavy and cut my nose’s circulation; causing headaches. I mean, I’m an expert of sorts since without glasses I’m practically blind. And the sensible recommendation to minimize this is to choose smaller frames.

    [2] I don’t open a quote since I’m using it directly from my memory and my memory (as human memories in general) is fallible. I don’t think myself able to remember what book of that series I read it so to start looking it up. I’ll greatly love if you know and share with me your knowledge.

  • How to write fiction making up questions to help yourself to create characters

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    Characters…those little details. Ah, no, not details. Characters are the core of any story. What we can tell as minor details are all their tiny tics or ideas that have us go from the type to the individual. Let’s see how I tried and how you can go adding things you’re interested in, your friends, the things that matter to IG and that can be used to build up characters. So to say, let’s watch Seker the abstemious vampire who drinks tea with biscuits, being born.

    1. Car they might posses (in case of having one)

    Seker would have a Lambourghini (his circumstances in the story wouldn’t allow him to possess nothing as a fact)… Unfortunately, I’m zero car oriented thus to name a brand was (at the moment) quite eloquent. The idea comes from the fact that Sue Grafton describes a lot Kinsey Millhone’s car. It ain’t bullshit the idea is Instagramable since there are a lot of people who like cars and car’s photos are very attractive.

    1. What do they clean their window shield with[1]?

    Seker is quite proper and specially clean. He might have a special cabinet filled with micro fiber cloths in black, special waxes and detergents; intended for specific cases. Plus, he would vacuum the car every day and take it to the garage every six months.

    1. What would they do in case on an unexpected burial*?

    In Crimson Relish, the vampires can’t touch plants or flowers with their bare hands. Seker might sent someone to buy them or he’d buy them in wax. Preferably, someone else from Arisa. He always has a black suit with black shirt and matching black tie and black shoes. This is another IG characteristic for people don’t use to take selfies of themselves in the cemetery but a particular pic in zoom with an stone angel behind…

    1. Were they to fall, would they feel embarrassed?

    As a vampire, Seker has marvelous reflexes….except that his own mental state has him to fall or get hurt under pressure since he feels like a klutz. In case of forgetting this, it would be impossible. Given the case of stepping on a banana peel and falling –like in cartoons or old movies; his face would remain fixed whilst his inner self would have red ears. This is another IGable thing. Imagine your character on the floor! What about Tik Tok?

    1. Whom do they call in case of sickness?

    Arisa. No one else. Seker didn’t arrive to this world as an introvert. It’s the shame and embarrassment of being a “monster” what stops him to become friends with others. And yes, vampires will never get sick unless they don’t eat well. Seker, at avoiding feeding blood, is usually dizzy and his immune system might get in shock by ingesting blood by accident.

    1. Where do they get their haircuts?

    He doesn’t need to. His hair will always be the same shape and length.

    1. Undies’ brand

    Black. Armani or Boss. Medium size. The same way Arisa would buy a three cotton package or micro fiber together with a sports’ bra

    1. Do they cook?

    In lieu of my great inability to cook decently, I’d like all my characters cook well. Seker could…if he had to. Unlike Arisa and Nineveh, whom can just sit in front of the food. More IG. Photos of what we all do. What did I eat today?

    1. What kind of music can you listen in their scenes?

    Classic. Handel or Strauss plus a flash light of Stripped by Depeche Mode.

    1. Can they sing?

    Seker is so good at nullifying musicality, he is so proper and stiff that fun is out from his ammo.

    1. Playlist?

    I have recently met a girl whom creates playlists for her characters. Big-Choma puts together a list with the songs he listens to among the year… Music is something almost vital to our lives and can also be published in the Stories of IG. Seker would have Bach and Mozart in his playlist, besides Nick Cavendish.

    1. Photograph of their bookshelves?

    Nothing more sexy than peeking in someone else’s bookshelves. And book pics are popular. ¿Which are the favourite books of the character? Seker is fan of Paradise Lost by Milton.

    1. What’s in their garden?

    Truly beautiful and slightly toxic foxgloves? Adelfa? Tomatoes and roses. More to sell in IG, potos of the garden. Seker loves sunflowers.

    1. Smartphone

    Nothing more tell-tale tan an i-phone…Overpriced and snob or super chic. Seker owns a Galaxy. He doesn’t trust anything that doesn’t have anything in common to other brands.

    As you can see, the details which make a character to be an individual; can be so different that you might find Macma biscuits side by side with the corner stand tacos plus Trueno undies. Criticise, share, have a nice time, subscribe, comment. Etc. I don’t think that my secret ambition for you to use this nonsensical questions would become true, unless you help a little.

    *[1] Another Sue Grafton’s characteristic. I think most of them come from her books.

  • How to write fiction using drugs (namely addictive characters)

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    Drug…what’s a drug according to the not as almighty Merriam Webster[1]?

    Drug. Noun. \ ˈdrəg  \ plural drugs


    1a: a substance used as a medication or in the preparation of medication according to the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.

    (1): a substance recognized in an official pharmacopoeia or formulary.

    (2): a substance intended for use in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease, prescription drugs: drugs for treating high blood pressure

    (3): a substance other than food intended to affect the structure or function of the body

    (4): a substance intended for use as a component of a medicine but not a device or a component, part, or accessory of a device

    2: something and often an illegal substance that causes addiction, habituation (see HABITUATION sense 2b), or a marked change in consciousness

    Now, deviating a bit (by not standard measures) from this accepted meaning; I’ll take Chuck Wendig’s idea about characters: the characters of a story are the drug in it that makes the story addictive.

    Aha…did he mean I must sow poppies in the garden and pop out a bit of opium derivates to suffuse the pages on them or….I must entertain my own flowerpot with green weed to fill brownies? More or less. To tell the truth, there are a number of recipes to do so and my recipe book is not exactly in the chef’s amount of expertise and yet…We can review those I know with transforming your characters into real peyote as goal.

     All right. The same way, there are special mangas in the language learning section in book stores   —right, to learn Japanese!; there are some that show how to create characters… As a matter of fact, many of the traditional mangas  — include Korean and Chinese versions; portray a section of one or two pages depicting a profile section (the size may vary) with character’s blood type, s&m tendencies, birthday, favourite clothes, favourite food, if they like Line or any other messaging service. And this might be thought as creating a “type”. A simple perspective of individual… when a really addictive character requires even more detailing.

    In Fitzgerald’s words (F. Scott):

    “Begin with an individual and you find that you have created a type, begin with a type and you find that you have created—nothing.”

    In my unathorised opinion, a character ends being something CONTRADICTORY AND AT THE SAME TIME very PREDICTABLE. It has to be someone you know so well, but so well you already know if they might go back to save their family instead escaping alone. It has to be someone you know who will take the sword and sail to conquer the Holy Land….

    They’re like Shrek and onions. They have layers. According to Wendig, it is much better if they become more and more complex every time. The character might look like deceptively simple at the beginning. They can’t be perfect. Remember; if they’re perfect they’ll never get themselves in problems and without problems, there’s no conflict. Chuck Wendig, Libbie Hawker and Cathy Birch agree that the character has to have serious issues.

    Even the most unmovable and seemingly perfect characters are not so. Unless you want to end up with a plot you can’t move anywhere towards and you see yourself in the need to finish it ASAP with an extra sweet happy ending that never solved the problems derived from your  original plot. Something I don’t like but can be very popular; specially for romantic stories. Such is the case of Eggnoid[2], a very popular webtoon at the moment; which sparked the problem of the notion to the right of eradicate the lives of human beings for the crime of destroying a planet and which main focus ends being the ultra handsome stud with a beautiful soul…who might never exist anywhere. Yet we need to drool over something, don’t we? No matter if the name is k-drama or romcom. Besides, diversity is something wonderful and can give birth to a great range of different plots that I don’t criticise it as evil or mediocre but as something that left me unsatisfied about solving the said problem.

    Robert McKee stablishes the character as something that should evolve to keep our attention in order for the movie to stop being a summer screening and become a break from the usual patterns of storytelling. Just like Kinsye Millhone devours fast food inside a vocho (VW scarab) whose floor is more tossed wrappings than metal; and at the same time training her body to be able to run a life’s marathon. Seriously, Kinsye is all the time running away from the bad guys at the end of all her literary lives.   

    So far, you and I know that to make a peyote, molly, snow, cocaine character we need to:

    1. Create contradiction so we can reveal its complexity along with the development of the plot
    2. Make them trickily simple

    Make them predictable to the point we know them better than we know ourselves. Consequently, we know exactly what they will do. What we don’t know is what we (the author) are about to #$%”$%& in their lives.

    [1] Strangely enough, Spanish has Royal Language Academy which regulates everything happening to Spanish whilst English doesn’t! Yet the recognized? Dictionary to dictate the fashionable use of words is the Oxford. Tough I could only access either the Oxford reference or the Merriam Webster. Hence…

    [2] To analyse what you think is good as well as analyse what you consider a failure helps to develope your own style and improve your narrative skills.

  • How to plan your fictional character in 6 steps

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    Pantsing…is an untranslatable word to Spanish and I ignore if Libbie Hawker in

     “Take off your pants. Outline your books for faster, better writing”  is the only one to sue it as a homemade remedy for the blank paper: to stare at it until the story grows itself like weed does. And what some other author; yes one of those who matter since they’re published[1], describes as a daily routine of: seating on front of the blank page, write a bit, strike through, erase, crumble the paper, practice long shots with them into the bin. No idea if the guy recycles at all.  In my house, used pages end up with the grocery shopping list on them; tough that’s not precisely real recycling.

    To some other authors, this pantsing business is like getting lost in the middle of the forest…Once in a lifetime, I got lost together with a group of Junior high school classmates in Chapultepec forest —…kinda small compared to the size of Central Park — and it is so true that you might end up anywhere. Specially if the wood is large and your inner compass is incompetent; which might have you getting lost in Pachuca and Irapuato, provincially small cities. Thus, writing a half decent novel is like getting yourself in Siberia. There are stories one doesn’t get out from. If you don’t happen to plan.

    …which is a bad habit when writing more than one a book a year is your surviving meal ticket. Today, it is impossible to work without an outline o scene programme so Jump gets out every Thursday and you boast the insane number of 50 titles by the age of 35. Of course, literature jewels don’t seem to have been written that way… depending on what kind of jewel you’re. Humberto Eco wrote a book every ten years or so…in theory. Whilst some other authors are very, very prolific.

    And while in the meantime you discuss with yourself what to do with your story, let’s review in a Merriam way what is it that Libby proposes for planning characters. If by chance you would like to take compass and map to the writing forest. )Remember, like, subscribe, share, let it be or do whatever you feel like doing)

    Summarised, it isa ll about to know your carácter. So much, you can tell if they likes chocolate mint ice cream or if they would rescue a baby from a bus on fire. And what are they Machiavelli imaginations to get whatever it is they desires.

    How to plan a character and conflict in 6 steps?

    1. Without regard to how much you plan on filtering to the reader; you need to know: height, weight, zodiac, favourite subject, favourite food, bathroom breaks’ schedule.  I mean, they physical and emotional being.
    2. What do they want from life? To conquer the world every night? Live in Mars? To eat ramen in Japan? What??!!
    3. Who is they rival? Is there a moustached evil laughter guy dressed up in military green who wants the same from life? OK, it doesn’t need to be THE villain but someone who wishes for the same and fights the main character for it, even in not so daring ways. It can be like with a said vampire of mine…who drinks tea and eats biscuits who happens to be his own enemy.
    4. This is a joke of mine… Does they have an animal guardian? Dragon? Racoon? Camelean? Every princess has their own sidekick[2]. Who is their helper? Does they have siblings, friends, lovers who might help in any way?
    5. Does they make it? Sometimes the best part is not if the character gets what they wants but the process. Sometimes their goal has to be abandoned in favour of something even better or they get destroyed in the way precisely by getting what they want. Accomplishing the goal or not is just the chatacter’s goal; yours as a writer is to have them frustrated.
    6. Does they have vices? Characters need to have fatal weaknesses that help us to get in their way. Weaknesses that take them to take bad decisions enough to get to situations, problems or places to work with. When a character only behaves sensibly…you can’t have an story. A character’s a drug[3] and you can’t have the reader to get stuffed on them. You have to dosify it to minimal dosis so the reader is still hooked in their stupidity.

    Let’s study a case

    Rosy is my family by Gerald Durrell.

    1. Main character: Adrian Rookwhistle, dark haired, disorganized, orphan of both parents in a  boring job with a boring life…until uncle Amos dies from cirrhosis and leaves him an inheritance of a slightly alcohol driven elephant.
    2. In the beginning, he wishes for emotion, adventure…but the moment Rosy comes into scene (of whom he believes to be a female drunken acrobat) and menaces to put everything upside down; he starts to desire everything as it was.
    3. Adrian himself since by wishing everything to remain the same, he negates himself the right to enjoy and adventure.
    4. Rosy, whom in her elephantine chaos and destruction trail; takes Adrian to meet Sam, her father, Sir Magnus, Black Nell and other nice people.
    5. He doesn’t accomplish his goal. Adrian comes to discover on the way that Rosy is his last living relative, that he is in love and that he doesn’t want back to his old job.
    6. Adrian is stubborn and overthinks. He lacks assertivity to take decisions, thus he is unable to take situation in control and avoit the small catastrophes coming his way.

    [1] Interviewed in Laberinto, Saturday complement in Milenio Diario.

    [2] That’s right Maui and Moana.

    [3] At least for Chuck Wendig.

  • How to write fiction taking advantage of genre

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    Tags…not everybody likes to be tagged. Generalising or not, being x, y or Covid generation. Hipster, bohemian, queer; the truth is every one of us would like to belong to one and only category of being ourselves.

    Nonetheless, to the given case of fiction narrative, the genre tags are there to guide the reader/audience into the right decision AND an outline or instant guide on what is required to comply with the plot.

    To Robert McKee, one should choose a genre and believe on it, stubbornly[1]. Why? Cause the correct genre helps TO STABLISH THE RIGHT EXPECTATIONS. The reader/audience knows what to expect and where to expect it. A bad choice of genre is like go buying Playboy and open the magazine to read religious stories… besides the naked models.

    Such is worthy, even for novels. Even when your name is a niche in itself. Ray Bradbury is not someone to fit to a T horror, science fiction or any other genre you might catalogue him into. He is his own genre. Regardless, he is still within library code to find him among a bunch of books.

    Yet…Yeah, I’ve got a case to destroy the genre argument. Asimov. A guy that must have adorable in his lectures, in the clubs he was member of and as an author in book fairs…He admired Agatha Christie and P. G. Wodehouse —I like them both a lot too— which is why he included word games to humorize his stuff. He even has an essay “About humour”.

    The problem lies in —I haven’t read a single one of his pieces in English — it isn’t funny. Not even with imagination aid and the defense of his honour by arguing how untranslatable is the joke to Spanish. Not to say the riddles of The black widowers are irking and arrogant and… in general, disagreeable to any under privileged mind[2]. To solve those, you need an IQ of over 100, belong to MENSA or to have read and remember every single Shakespeare line plus miscellaneous data[3]. Unlike the queen of mystery, whose craft needs only logic —and logic ain’t within my strengths. Still, I’ve been able to solve two of all the crimes I’ve read so far. 

    The genre and its demands are not just a know-it-all-about-inside-out matter. It comes from affinity too. I read manga, manhua, manhwa and webtoon; particularly boy love. Why? Because shoujo genre uses to be cliché over cliché, in a way that seems that if you read one, you read them all. FAIRY TALES in which the characters get the flu, fall, need to be rescued… So the exaggeration applied to the same principles with masculine details used in boy love, made of this genre something fun and even cute. Till the genre little by little fell in a sort of slump similar to shoujo. And this doesn’t mean that shoujo or boy love doesn’t have its great exceptions. Sometimes, there is someone who thinks hard enough how to exploit better the conventions of the genre.

    Ah..got lost, right? Cutting to the chase, if we match what I like reading with what I end up writing; you can see how genre goes hand by hand with natural affinity. I want to be serious; I end up being ironic and funny. Want to be cold, brainy and scientific? Magic and feelings come out. But never of the kind “read thread of destiny”… Whenever I want to be dignified and mathematical; I end up being Mozart writing to Nannette. Which takes me to Quino.

    Quino hated being in people’s minds because of Mafalda. He wanted things like “Yo estoy bien y usted” to be also regarded as his. So maybe, maybe it isn’t a matter of just a conscious decision to know what genre suits us better. Perhaps we need to dig deep into our brain. And face on what comes from it.

    What genre do you write?

    [1] Story. Of scriptwriting. Robert McKee.

    [2] Like mine, completely average.

    [3] Note that Asimov is one of my writing models and I like many of his stories.

  • How to write fiction plagiarizing Historical moments

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    History?  History is a science of just dates and happenings and boring stuff…it is a snob thing…It is for intellectuals… History repeats itself, it is boring…

    Maybe….or not. Do you know what character from a very popular HBO hit is like the historical version of Maria de Medici and her husband, “le French rooster” who ended dead hunting? Did you know that the same character shares some features copied from the most popular version of Lucrecia Borgia[1] about her brother Caesar?

    Wikipedia ain’t trustable? Sometimes…it is a start to knowing where our feet are. Historically speaking. Specially without time, connections or Historian friends. And it ain’t the only place. There are…documentaries. Yeah my little friend of a grasshopper comic drawer or scriptwriter, you can do that if reading isn’t for you. I know of someone who would complain with your complains about not wanting to read but…not everyone likes reading.

    Not bad. Or worst. Anyway, not everybody likes video games or the same “first person shooting” type. Or watch the football (soccer if you’re a dude more than a chap). There are baseball fans out there too. So go…and seek.

    Have you realized of whom am I talking about? I’ll give you a clue. Her name begins with C. And she cuckolds his husband with her brother…More? Are you starting to understand why History (in Spanish it is kinda confusing since an story is the same as history) is good for stories? So be it Bill Clinton’s too.

    Asimov wrote Fundation the way he wrote it since he wanted to write a Historical book. Just that he wasn’t a Historian and he didn’t want to waste time looking up a History line that hadn’t been told. Thus, he invented his own with footnotes referrals to an imaginary  Encyclopaedia based in the Roman Empire. (And other civilizations maybe). That’s why you don’t need to be a historian, if you don’t wish to be, to become a historical writer but perhaps you might need to become a little fan of the H.

    Julian Fellowes, scriptwriter of Downton Abbey, never wrote a documentary but a beautiful series about technological and ideological changes about 20th century that takes us around what could have been a frivolous plot about a count trying to marry off his three daughters without any male heir, if it weren’t because such changes get in the way of such feat.

    1923, Honshu island twerks to music synched to an scale of 7.9 to 8.2 Richter grades. This movement caused any stuff: a tsunami, fire everywhere, genocide… and takes part of the ending of one of my favourite manga. Yumekui no kenbun by Shin Mashiba ends with this particular event that changes the characters´ lives into a living nightmare like the ones Haruko feeds from and the one provoked by the earthquake. Anyone can see how much of an impact the earthquake made in Japanese life but it takes someone who knows about History to make of it a superb story.

    And for some who write historical novels and decide to run by the facts…they have to guide readers through dates, happenings and verifiable data. Decisions already made which might seem absurd to us, that weren’t at the moment. Those…those are able to turn Robert of Artois into nice guys.

    To know History is part of the research to ambient our…narrative Frankenstein and plagiarize unpunished. No one will complain cause you have stolen the idea of a group of people stabbing the new tyrant on the back…Or will call you mediocre for creating someone Cleopatra like.    

    If by chance I haven’t convinced you, I’ll try quoting Homo Deus by Nuval Yoah Harari:

    “Science is not just about predicting the future, though. Scholars in all fields often seek to broaden our horizons, thereby opening before us new and unknown futures. This is especially true of history. Though historians occasionally try their hand at prophecy (without notable success), the study of history aims above all to make us aware of possibilities we don’t normally consider. Historians study the past not in order to repeat it, but in order to be liberated from it.

    Each and every one of us has been born into a given historical reality, ruled by particular norms and values, and managed by a unique economic and political system. We take this reality for granted, thinking it is natural, inevitable and immutable. We forget that our world was created by an accidental chain of events, and that history shaped not only our technology, politics and society, but also our thoughts, fears and dreams. The cold hand of the past emerges from the grave of our ancestors, grips us by the neck and directs our gaze towards a single future. We have felt that grip from the moment we were born, so we assume that it is a natural and inescapable part of who we are. Therefore we seldom try to shake ourselves free, and envision alternative futures.

    Studying history aims to loosen the grip of the past. It enables us to turn our head this way and that, and begin to notice possibilities that our ancestors could not imagine, or didn’t want us to imagine. By observing the accidental chain of events that led us here, we realise how our very thoughts and dreams took shape – and we can begin to think and dream differently. Studying history will not tell us what to choose, but at least it gives us more options.”

    And more imaginary worlds.

    [1] I say popular versión since it seems that modern discoveries have made of her a less gossiped version without the incest and more real letters to discard people poisoning left and right.

  • How to write fiction stealing time from life

    Tenet? No, this ain’t such a plot. It is something like a said about Argentinians: “sencillito y carismático[1]. Because when one writes, earthquakes come and happen…. I mean, things come unannounced. Life throws anything that can be thrown your way. Laziness included.  

    To Cathy Birch, author of “The creative writer’s workbook” says that all of a sudden; doing the laundry, reviewing your twits, reading webtoon, going to May’s party or leveling up Manor Matters[2] becomes even more attractive or relevant than getting seated and write.

    Plus, real jobs[3]. Then writing or designing goes to forth or fifth place. We just don’t have this inner drive to stare at white pages with better eyes than the ones we use to look at the dishes on the sink[4].

    To Cathy, the solution is quite opposed to what Chuck Wendig and others propose. To place your a…amazing derriere on the chair and write the humongous amount of 25,000 words a day[5]. The other alternative being to sit down, scribble a little, tear it apart, compress it to a ball, measure the parabola of a trajectory  and throw it to the bin since you have no idea what to put down in paper. Cathy calls this pantsing, a term that has no translation to Spanish. Something to do with scene planning and blah blah…to deal with later.

    So…none of the two above sounds appealing. I can’t figure out how to sit 7 hours a day staring at a white page. I feel like getting up and do something else. Having a job? Impossible. Do you have kids? Even less. Unpractical. So what to do? (Inner yelling).

    We use a regular short slice of time….OK. Put aside 10 minutes a day to write. It can be 10, 20, 30 or as much as you can spare. WRITE. WRITE AND WRITE. EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. Is it appalling? Give a sh….shiatsu. Good, bad, whatever, writing a little at a time is much more than nothing. And when you believe you already have something that makes a bit of sense, then yes! Compare, expand, edit, explore. Immortal prose is to be born of doing, not from thinking if it is good or not. If it is good or bad, there is only one way to make it better….WRITING.

    If you’re, like me, not familiar to work with self imposed objectives but those the company sets out for you; this helps a lot. But a lot. Our inner judge tends to make fun of our own tryings and; oftenly it will have us giving up because “we are not good enough”. Maybe we are not…so what? This is not the time to wonder, it is time to write.

    Ready? 10 minutes in the timer, your behind on the chair, pen and paper (or smartphone). Go! Write. Think later. So like this, suscribe and do something for the sake of the universo.

    [1] Simple and full of carisma; it is a mocking phrase about Argentinian carácter but the truth is they quite have reasons to be proud of themselves.

    [2] She doesn’t say it quite like this, I’m adding some of my own “demons”.

    [3] Something your nephew can do easily, right? In third world countries, these jobs are looked at as fancy stuff to do in your free time….Wait, even in powerful, technologically advanced countries, it is underestimated.

    [4] For those of you with a dishwasher…this ain’t a trouble at all. But for us in the third world still washing dishes by hand…

    [5] Can someone explain to me how to achieve such a feat? I belong to the minimalism about words. Almost, almost to the micro novel style. A paragraph is already a lot for me.

  • How to write fiction scared and being stubborn

    Out there…out there are a lot of writers, scriptwriters, comic drawers. You can’t count them. There are those who are successful, those about to, those who gave up due to economy, those ho study and write once a week. A mob to compete with.

    So you have on your hands your first new born (written one). You’re so proud of it, you start showing it to anyone who can read. In your imagination, it has the right to be seen or read by editors, juries and movie directors to be loved, prized and make money, royalties… a universal change. You send it to any contest and wait. Keep waiting. There’s no answer. Might the juries be blind as umpires are? The next step you take is to self publish or print a few ones to sell them. Making the massive offer of titles to chose from even bigger. And so in the HBO-Netflix era means just another title more in an ocean filled with big tasty fish[1] against you, little fishy soya flavoured. Popular. With tale telling skills above yours. Lightyear further.

    Is it now the time to hive up? Maybe… There’s still the titanic labour of promoting that might make you reconsider if you’re a sales man or a writer. A job normally done by an editorial instead of the author and the reason why authors look up to be devoured by the bigger fish. They have more resources.

    Are you still there?

    Let’s go back to the beginning. Your first born comic-script-novel-short piece is awesome for the single fact of being finished. Others have given up before that. Which doesn’t mean it deserves to be published. Are you as good as Monterroso, Stan Lee or Ingmar Bergman?

    You know the answer. If you’re still comparing yourself to them, you don’t have idea what you can really do or will be able to do. But if you have stopped comparing yourself…you have become an arrogant bastard, specially if no one publishes you yet.  Such a depressing thing, enough to smash self steems. Am I good enough?

    No…not yet. You’re in the way to be. About to break through. Are you going to give up now? Now? A home run from winning in the ninth in? Take a few more beats.

    Are juries-editors shit?

    They might, they might not. There is an author with a Saturday column in Milenio Diario. He sometimes can be amusing and sometimes a prickly snob. Well, he says there are editors who have come to hate reading for the single fact of despising their job. Why? Because they read so many horrible writing that they can’t take it anymore. The momento I read that I thought that there is no way to know what is good if you don’t read.

    There are mangas I wouldn’t have given a cent to the first ten pages and afterwards became relishing. Of course there are some that taste honey and milk from the first line or drawing. And those which start like soda pop bubling and end up in nothing. The same some movies earn their right to be left unseen.

    An editor finds not one, hundreds of manuscripts. They have their own filters to deal with the straw. Filters that begin with marketing issues, no matter how good the content is.

    A publishing house or contest gets a bunch of manuscripts. Not all from people who REALLY WANT to learn the craft. Some copies of soap operas with a youtuber speckle of pepper. (I’ve read things as such (reading habit I had to get rid off due to mental health issues and time being limited). Editors HAVE TO read that pile. They can’t just throw the manuscript away must cause they didn’t like it…I mean, John Dos Pasos couldn’t get me hooked whilst some editor thought he was great.

    So they create rules for themselves and those in the trade. To get rid of whatever that is not in format, is bad spelled, lacks acceptable conflict. You are not a victim. You are an author. LEARN. RESEARCH. You’re here since you have one talent: to persevere.

    Fear is out there for everybody. After a number of contests, rejections and self-publishing without sales. Remember: Harry Potter was rejected 20 times and even then, that first edition went to libraries to be read…an editor wasn’t doing his job properly[2].

    The match isn’t over till the bell rings. If you have made it here, you still have seconds in the panel.

    [1] Just two names to erase your self-steem: Game of thrones and Magpie Murders

    [2] Out of gender bias perhaps?

  • How to write fiction, 7 reasons why to plagiarize opera

    people performing in opera house
    Photo by Victor Freitas on Pexels.com

    Or the opposite. How to write operas plagiarizing fiction[1]…

    Do you believe the opera is something old fashioned? Is it boring and expensive? Impossible to understand a snail what the bloody heck is being sang?

    Yep, yep and yep. It ain’t as modern as musicals. It is expensive to go; in Mexico the opera programmes are offered only in the Auditorium and only to watch re-runs from the New York MET.  Stuff sang in long intervals is difficult to understand… specially if you don’t happen to spit in French or German. Above it all, if they’re modernized, they end up being even more incomprehensible.  Why would one want to sit down and watch an opera play then?

    1. It is related to the musical tradition of soundtrack…To anyone who has watched any copy-paste movie alike to Mision Impossible or Secret Agent X but without music of the same quality; this is more than obvious. A solid musical choice can and does highlight a persecution till we’re breathless. Or get our tender hearts to bleed with a bit of emotional blackmail. The shape of water by Guillermo del Toro is not as exciting without sound. Opera is made so we understand the story through the music.
    2. Music is capable of provoking feelings directly in our brain by modifying breath rhythm, heart pumping and/or our own comfort in space. No author can say they have mastered the “show, don’t tell” if they can’t say what emotion they’re feeling and describe it only by the physical reactions of their bodies.
    3. Opera plays have a proficient use of clichés. To compose Turandot, Pucini invented the “oriental music” by including piano melodies in which only the black keys are played. This has become our cultural reference about what we think should be oriental music. Robert McKee says we need to include every specification associated to a plot gender to satisfy our target. Opera has years doing so including pertinent associations to each story. Plus the music, of course. To learn more about opera you can watch “This is opera” (as you see opera can get percolated to bigger audiences).
    4. Some authors love to create characters who like opera. Such as Henning Mankell and Andrea Camilleri. To Mankell, Kurt Wallander sometime dreamt of becoming an opera singer so he carries around opera cassettes in his Renault. Camilleri describes Montalba whistling or humming Aida in euphoric times. Becoming an author deals with becoming a bit of an intellectual. An intellectual, not a pain in the…you know.
    5. There are TV programmes where they explain what and how a certain play works. Just in case you believe studying music is the next step then or that you need becoming a crammer to cultivate your mind. I know…not everybody can learn how to play an instrument and not everybody likes reading with such zeal. In Mexico the open channels 22 and 28 offer programmes of the kind. This is opera is offered some channel up or down F&A. If you know of some other programme like this in your country…will you help telling us about it in the comments?
    6. Not only Rigoletto seems a copy of Hernani; La Traviata is like an adaptation of La dame aux camellias to a musical. Did you believe the best writers never plagiarize anything? Oh, they do. Just that they do it better than using crtl+c/crtl+v.
    7. Just in the same way Greek myths are re taken and re kindled in webtoons as wonderful as Lore Olympus; an opera play can become a pretext for a spin off like the one of Nodame Cantabile. Where the content of The magic flute is the ordeal to create conflicts for the characters. Some as simple as…”The prima donna doesn’t fit in the dress and our budget is not big”

    Have you been to the opera? What’s your favourite?

    [1] Just in case I don’t speak about it again, it is said Pucini stole the idea of Hernani, by Victor Hugo to create Rigoletto.