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how to write

Etiqueta: how to write

  • 5 things I learnt…in Terrible minds with C. L. Clark

    C.L. Clark: Five Things I Learned Writing The Unbroken

  • A mermaid in the Sahara: using characters out of setting

    Mermaid playing a lute



    Your story might start like this… Or with a mermaid who needs swimming classes. Maybe a zombie who has gotten all its teeth out to softly bite in a TV programme[1]… Are you nonsensing again, Merriam

    THE UNEXPECTED

    I shrug, I’m always nonsensing but this time it ain’t mine. It is Patricia Highsmith in Plotting and writing suspense fiction.

    <<I imagine that most suspense writers begin with a germ of an idea which is a piece of action, and this generally has a setting: the New York business world; a boat at sea; a small town in America; a lumber camp; a government spy headquarters. The setting will very much govern the kind of characters you will use. But it might improve your story to use a character not at all typical of this setting, not at all a person one might expect to find in such an environment. There is a limit as to how far one can go with incongruities, but the result, if it comes off, is more interesting than the typical.>>

    EXAMPLES OF CHARACTERS OUT OF SETTINGS

    The principle is clear in Rise from Ashes ( Madeleine Rosca, webtoon, finished) where an exorcist medium girl starts the tale as… Nothing less than a ghostbusted ghost!

    In addition to this setting, we might also meet an abstemious vampire in Crimson relish (yep, shameless by me and self published so no one has to read it). Not that it is weird to find a moralist vampire who will refuse to drink blood and then allows themselves to «gravitate towards the sin of drinking».

    Differently from other consort princesses, the one in Tong Lin Fei and married to Ye You Ming (probably still unfinished as it was when I wrote the Spanish version of this nonsense, manhua and anime adapted version of the light novel); can see and exorcise ghosts, jump like a true martial artist and show true interest in other people. Far cry — at least within the plot— from the rich daughters of courtesans around the prince since she is one who is free of ulterior motives and therefore, speech free. Though, I shouldn’t forget her frontal attractive is big enough to cut dry a man (some stuff never changes, thanks to whomever who invented yaoi to put pressure on guys too).

    HOW?


    The trick is to find a character who is anything but a fish in the chosen landscape. Our mission? To have them see it black enough to make unexpected but unavoidable choices (according to Robert McKee in Story). What would a farmer be doing in Wall Street? Why is a mermaid in the Sahara? How can an assassin remain a saint in Heaven?



    And since I’m not a literature major writing about writing, I gotta make my escape before anyone notices I’m not fish in water. Someone might feel like reading this. Have the greatest of time writing. Pasto kalo.

    [1] 31 minutos, children puppet show about a TV chain you would wish you could watch but, it is in Spanish… By the way, the zombie says rawawarawara which means «We’re on air».