Getting Schooled

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As I’ve vowed to make this journal a record of not only my actual writing processes but my attempts to publish or otherwise further my writing career, it’s now time for me to talk about graduate school.

Because I want to be a professor of creative writing, I need to aim at a terminal degree. Technically, there is a Doctor of Philosophy degree available in the subject at some schools, but the Master of Fine Arts degree is widely accepted as the terminal degree in the field. Thus, I went into research mode to find MFA programs with an emphasis on teaching assistantships, without which I would have a terrible time getting a professorship. (Unless, of course, I manage to publish a bestseller before then . . .)

I got a book called The Creative Writing MFA Handbook: A Guide for Prospective Graduate Students by Tom Kealey. I found the writing a little rough at times, but the book has been excellent for practical concerns: it has step-by-step descriptions of the application process, suggestions for a chart to keep track of what schools ask for what materials, and – most helpful of all – a comprehensive list of MFA programs (and MA and PhD programs) in writing in the USA. (Also a much shorter list of programs abroad.) I should say “comprehensive,” as this website, suggested by a creative writing professor, seems to have some that his book lacks.

I made my long list first. I went through the book’s list, examining each school’s website to see whether it seemed like a place I would possibly, possibly go. (Read: Would I attend this school if it was the only one to which I was accepted?) Mostly, schools only got ruled out if they had no TAships at all. I ended up with a list of sixty; for each, I had written any important or interesting facts (“TAships very competitive” or “completely funds all students”) and the e-mail address of the program’s contact person.

Next, I drafted a polite e-mail asking whether my preference for writing mostly – though not exclusively – YA fantasy might mesh well with the program. I sent this to each contact person separately, both to avoid a long list of additional receivers and so that I could mention specific details in some of the e-mails (“I notice that at least one alum of the program, [alum’s name], writes for young adults”).

This helped me narrow the list considerably, but was also somewhat unnerving. While many programs have replied, rather doubtfully, that anyone can be accepted if s/he has a fabulous writing sample, I’ve had a number of outright “no” responses. I find it rather funny that no one wants to touch not just genre writing but popular fiction. Some of this is academic elitism – and, in some cases, with good reason. I’ve read bestsellers with terrible writing. Many schools indicated in their replies that they felt ill equipped to work with genre or popular fiction, though. That, I think, is another key. A popular fiction author is either unsuccessful, in which case s/he may not be qualified to teach writing at the college level (or simply may not be an attractive candidate for the competitive job), or successful, in which case s/he may see no reason to take a teaching job. Professor Robbins is an exception to the latter rule, of course. At any rate, this means that the professors of creative writing at almost all schools write one of two perfectly admirable, but usually less lucrative, types of work:

1. Literary Fiction

2. Poetry

Some few of them also write nonfiction. Visiting seventy or eighty MFA program websites showed me this time and again – virtually no other types of writing appeared, ever. This, and some of my e-mail’s cagey responses that toss the word around, makes me wonder: What exactly do they mean by “literary?”

It is a slippery term. I’m familiar with informal definitions ranging from “well-written fiction” to “fiction that doesn’t sell.” The responses I got suggested “fiction that’s about more than that story.” (This is indicating, I assume, universal themes. You know, like the ones in Harry Potter? Oh wait . . .) Some also echoed the “well-written fiction” idea, indicating that any genre could be “literary,” while others drew a line between them “the focus of our program is on literary fiction, not genre fiction.” One suggested that writing could “transcend its genre and could be called literature — the way Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlings mysteries transcend the mystery or detective novel genre.” (The same professor added “If your aim is to become an instructor of creative writing at the college level, you’ll almost certainly want to do some literary writing in addition to your work in young adult fantasy.”)

This makes me wonder whether my desire to become a professor will mean writing outside my real area of interest for two or three years. *Wince* I hope not. I’m young to pigeonhole myself, I know, and I do enjoy forays outside of YA fantasy, but I certainly can’t see myself writing long works set in the here-and-now without fantasy elements. This is a dilemna. Every school indicates that the most important part of the program’s application is a writing sample, usually two to three short stories or the first few chapters of a novel. All of my novels are YA fantasy; very few of my short stories – and none of the ones I see as mostly likely to get me admitted – are. So, I can either bet it all on the quality of writing in my novels, or I can totally misrepresent the way I most commonly write with my short stories. If I do the latter, what happens if I’m accepted? If I start writing YA fantasy there, will they think I pulled a bait-and-switch? Will I have to be a closet genre writer while going to workshops with short stories where people angst and live gritty lives of hopelessness and elegant metaphor? (Though, to be honest, I don’t think my literary fiction would be safe from comic relief and happy endings.)

I do not yet have my final list of probably about ten schools to which I will actually apply, but should narrow it down soon. My GRE is scheduled for August 19, and I’ve been reviewing for that. None of the programs require subject GREs, but several require the general test. Others note that, while optional, any supplied GRE scores may be used to help determine admission/financial aid/TAships. Generally speaking, I test well, and the sample questions on the GRE website make it seem about as difficult as the SATs. At this point, I’m actually pretty happy about taking the test – it’s one part of the applications package that’s straightforward and doesn’t require me to question my choices all that much.

I will keep this journal updated on my progress!

Magic! (Some Restrictions Apply.) Also: Moving It!

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My biggest writing revelation of this past week was a possible new factor to tie together my fantasy world’s magic system. If I can get it sorted out right, it should give the magic system some limits that don’t seem arbitrary as well as giving the world flavor – and a reason for not using gunpowder or electricity. The lack of those technologies is, I admit, one of the flimsy points in my fantasy world – one of the points where the true, out-of-story reason is simply “because I want my characters to use swords and candles.”

I don’t want to get specific about this new concept at the moment. This is partly for security reasons (I am somewhat paranoid about putting specific ideas on the Internet, especially as this journal will hopefully soon be embedded in a website that I will publicize to the utmost of my ability). The other reason is that I have not entirely figured this out yet – it will probably have implications for my magic system that will require changing otherwise-completed works. (Not a bad time for it, actually, as I meant to do some editing on those works as soon as I can get around to it. Never a dull moment!) It may raise more issues. I only hope there will be no problems too, well, problematic, to be solved in a way that works for my world.

Beyond that excited, if cryptic, explanation, I have also made some progress on The Dogwatchers. Specifically, I’ve blundered through what I think may be the toughest (read: least-interesting, most exposition-heavy) scenes in the story. It will need to be absolutely dismembered in editing. But it is done! And now I can move on in the story.

That part of The Dogwatchers also made me consider an element of many novels – the Big Move. This is when the protagonist spends most of the story in one physical location, or at least calling using one place as a home base, but that place is not where s/he started out. Obviously, this does not appear in all stories: most journey stories, such as the Lord of the Rings books, do not have a home base, while some (especially series) take place entirely in one spot. (Arguably, though, a journey story can begin with a Big Move from the starting location to the journey itself. For plot purposes, this can be similar to other, clearer Big Moves.) Sometimes, too, location is not very important to the story.

The Big Move is common to many stories. A Little Princess. Most of the Harry Potter books (though it is most pronounced in the first one). Moby Dick (even if the second location, the ship, is itself mobile.) (I read things that aren’t British children’s literature! Really!) And, of course, Howl’s Moving Castle. Sometimes, the move is not permanent, but still seems to qualify as a Big Move for its significance to the story; I might argue that Jane Eyre has a Big Move when Jane goes to Mr. Rochester’s house, though she does not stay there for the remainder of the book.

Often, the story cannot really begin until the protagonist is in place. Often, the place itself is special, but is made much more so by what came before and the transition: certainly the Harry Potter series wouldn’t be much without Hogwarts, but neither would Hogwarts be so special if the reader didn’t Harry’s miserable life with the Dursleys, then his wonder and delight at the change. Sophie certainly could not have started out at Howl’s castle – but she must go there, or there is no story. One could call some of these Big Moves metaphors for beginning a journey out of childhood, becoming free, and so on, depending on the story. Sometimes, too, it may be as simple as allowing the protagonist to explore a fantastic place with the same first-time curiosity as the reader. Along those same lines, it makes it easy for readers to get to know new characters as the protagonist meets them.

Regardless of purpose, the difficult scene I wrote this week dealt with the reasons behind the heroine’s Big Move. I flipped through a lot of my favorite novels to reassure myself that my protagonist was not making her Big Move too late in the story. Some of what I found surprised me. It takes Harry a long time to get to Hogwarts in Book One! Some characters, on the other hand, start their stories already on the train (or car, flight, etc.) to their new location. Some may even fake out the reader – think of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. (“Oh, they’re going to live in a big house with a wacky old professor. Or in Narnia!“)

Identifying the Big Move, if your story has one, can be helpful to plot structuring. It is easy to organize events into what happens before and after, especially as some things may only be possible in one location or the other. One easy way to tell whether a location change is a Big Move: Does it figure in the short-short synopsis of your story? I.e. “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone is about a boy who finds out he’s a wizard, goes to a magical school, and fights a villain with the help of his friends.” Notice that the phrase “goes to a magical school” really is key to the story – otherwise, you’re left with a totally different impression of the book. If the shortest summary you can make of your story’s plot includes a location change, then it may be helpful to think of this as your story’s Big Move.

The Fluffy Factor

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Oops! I usually update this blog on Sundays, but I missed yesterday. Call it summer scheduling; I’ll try not to be late again.

So, I am now about sixty-five pages into The Dogwatchers. This story, unlike many of my others, has a villain! However, I am somewhat concerned that he may be fluffy.

By “fluffy,” I mean something incorporating “too sympathetic” and “not nasty enough.” I’ve expressed this worry before about my villains. Now, to sort out some thoughts on writing bad guys via discussing villain types as I see them.

The Traumatized Terror

Many villains rely on emotional scarring – often to the point of insanity – for their actions and motives to seem realistic. Common is the “crazed with grief” or “mad with the desire for revenge” villain. Generally, she was driven to villainy by something in the vein of:
– murder (or perceived murder) of a loved one
– being rejected in love (especially if another person – say, the hero/heroine – replaces the villain)
– physical pain
– serious psychological abuse
– persecution (or perceived persecution) of the self or a group including the self
– extreme fear
– some combination of the above
Think Darth Vader, Dr. Octavian from Spiderman, or Two-Face in the recent Batman movie.

This villain type has a high potential for fluffiness. If the trauma was bad enough, people may think “Well, of course she became warped and murderous! Just look at what happened to her entire family, ancestral home, and pet puppy!” The main thing that makes her a villain is that the heroine, had this happened to her, would probably have handled it better. Indeed, sometimes these things happen to the protagonist as well: think of Harry Potter and Voldemort. Both start out as orphans in rather poor circumstances, but only one becomes evil. But I’ll talk more about Voldemort later, since he doesn’t really fit in this category.

The main way I have seen people keep the fluffiness down in these villains is by injecting a heavy dose of pride. As in, “She’s not upset because she cared about the puppy; she’s upset because someone dared to do that to her puppy.” Or, “She thinks she will be seen as weak if she fails to annihilate the entire tribe that did such a thing to her puppy.” Fluffiness can also be lowered by making the villain obviously malevolently insane, mostly expressed by giving her high collateral damage and really twisted plans.

The alternative is to create a “Good person driven mad by trauma does terrible things, repents, and sacrifices self in a last act of goodness” scenario. See again Doc Oc. This allows for fluffiness on a level that otherwise cannot be sustained, because just at the point when the villain’s bad-guy identity would collapse under the weight of reader (or viewer) sympathy, the character goes out in a blaze of redeeming glory.

The Psycho Without a Cause

I have to refer again to the recent Batman movie, as the Joker is a good example of this – rather blatantly so. His lack of an apparent past and detailed explanation of his chaotic motives make it pretty clear that what he’s about is pure, violent crazy.

Sometimes, this villain is a sadist, sometimes a sociopath, sometimes a narcisist who wants to prove that he can get away with this, or to crush someone who seems to have wronged him. Extreme and immovable racism, classism, and so on can land a character in this territory. There may be unhappy circumstances in this person’s past, but not enough to qualify for the above type – or, even if things were bad enough, it is clear that those circumstances did not make this person the villain he is.

Some characters who are merely jerks, not actually evil, have a stripe of this in them: they like bullying people, or they clearly see themselves as superior. Obviously, this does not make them psychopaths, and it rarely makes them villains. The key difference is commitment.

This villain type is common among creatures that the reader cannot be expect to understand, or that need not evoke sympathy. He may be an alien overlord who sees all Earth life as expendable, for example, or a low-intelligence monster that eats people. Technically, these may not be “insane,” but their minds do not follow healthy patterns for a human, those with which the reader is expected to be familiar, and their motivations therefore need not play by the rules of what seems reasonable.

Really, this is where Voldemort goes.

The Iffy Villain

While definitely an antagonist, this is not really a villain at all. She is a sort of Bad Guy Lite, and may have difficulty carrying a book or movie alone. She makes an excellent stumbling block for the protagonist, and may be an unwitting servant of the real villain. (She may even be a witting servant, but one who becomes reluctant once the villain’s true evil comes to light.) Think Draco Malfoy, or (if you’ve read it) the irresponsible parents in Diana Wynne Jones’ Fire and Hemlock.

This encompasses most antagonists who:
– think they are doing the right thing
– are motivated by laziness, selfishness, ignorance, greed, or an overzealous concern for rules
– only have a problem with the protagonist because of something tangential and/or unimportant (“She looks just like my sister that Mom always loved more!”)
– are cowards
– have no objection to the protagonist, but only to a specific goal of the protagonist’s (“I don’t care what else she does, but she’s not getting this amulet of puppy-restoration!”)
– are unwilling to go to great and evil lengths (often, this means “not prepared to kill people”)
– do not have enough focus in the story to be the main villain (the “miniboss” – common in Redwall books as the murderous lieutenant of the real bad guy)

Depending on the motivations and depth of the character, a high potential for fluffiness arises. (Just ask Draco’s fangirls.) The upside is that these guys can afford fluffiness, as they don’t usually have to carry the entire plot, except in young children’s stories. Indeed, they are often allowed to survive, and may even turn good.

So, though I didn’t plan it this way, my division of villain types mostly came down to those with understandable, human motives versus those without. (“Human” motives need not require a human character, of course.) Some characters walk the line between these, or seem to fluctuate. Some stories leave the villains’ motives and minds largely unexplored, leaving the reader to assume or guess (though many of these – especially in, say, generic serial-killer mysteries – fall into Category Two). Still, this is probably the most important and basic distinction.

The issue I run into is that my villains often lack the evil oomph to make it into either of the first two categories, and languish in the third. In Lord of the Dark Downs, I have a villain who is really only threatening enough to be a miniboss. Fair enough; he should be all right once I go through in editing to enlarge and hopefully darken his role. In The Dogwatchers, the bad guy seems dangerously fluffy – a traumatic experience plus not having done anything all that bad equals a weak force to stand against the protagonists. Hopefully, I’ll be able to build his bad guy cred without shedding too much blood, something I can hardly ever bring myself to do. And it’s tough: in a fantasy world with magical healing but no resurrection, injuries don’t pack much punch unless they’re either fatal or extremely nasty. It’s possible this will be a job for “oh, you mean it was him that did that awful thing all those years ago?” – less because of my unwillingness to kill off actual characters (though I admit to that wholeheartedly) than because, well, awful things did happen all those years ago. We’ll see!

No puppies were harmed in the writing of this journal entry.

On Short Stories, and the Remixing Thereof

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I visited my roommate recently, and she had an excellent observation on the rewriting of short stories.

To back up, I’ve been meaning to rewrite my “cross-dressing dragons” short story for weeks. It was the final project for my Advanced Fiction class last semester, and my professor was kind enough to talk with me about it on the phone this summer. He had some great suggestions, and I know the story can be rewritten better – but it does need rewriting. Even deep editing will not cut it. And knowing that, I’ve had the toughest time getting together motivation to start.

As often happens, Becky had the answer. In this case, though, it answers “why is this happening” more than “how can I change it,” so it doesn’t abolish the problem. It’s still good to know.

“Yeah,” quoth Becky. “I have a hard time rewriting short stories. It feels like I had that story in me, and now I’ve gotten it out, and I’m done with it. I just don’t feel the need to do anything with it after that.”

It’s true. Short stories often revolve around a limited concept (you know, something like “cross-dressing dragons”), and I personally have had little success in writing short stories which involve characters from my longer works, or writing multiple short stories about the same characters. Once I’ve written the story, I’m happy to edit, but less able to rewrite.

“I’ve already written my cross-dressing dragons story,” I’ll say. “What’s the point in writing it again?”

Obviously, the point is to make it better, but I’ve had enough experience with writing a half-dozen false starts before a class deadline to know that having reasons to write a piece isn’t always enough to get things going. There is definitely a mushier element of “feeling it,” or whatever you want to call it, that you need.

In exploring the differences between short stories and novels, I’ve found an interesting comparison with my Dad’s work in the visual arts. Since my parents are artists, I’ve always liked to find ways that their artistic process is similar to and different from mine. Dad once told me that, when he has only a little while to be in his studio, he sometimes has time to work on a painting but not a drawing. This would seem odd, perhaps, since the paintings take much longer than the drawings. Dad’s drawings – like my short stories – tend to be completed in one take (or very few, at least), and reflect a sort of fleeting mood and artistic goal. The paintings, like novels, are larger projects which can take a little work on any given day, regardless of mood. They have larger timespans, are larger commitments, and hold interest longer. I have plenty of days when I couldn’t sit down and write a short story, but practically no days when I couldn’t do a little work on whatever novel I’ve got going.

This is a bit of a ragtag entry, topic-wise. Hopefully, I’ll be back on an informative, helpful technique/experience-based track next week, but I felt the short-story stuff was worth mentioning.

The Scary Thing About Publication

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Yesterday, Renard’s Menagerie sent me the final proof for my story that they’re buying. This was massively exciting to me: there was my story, but looking slick and magazine-like, with the first letter of each section all big and the whole thing in a very slick font. And one other thing –

– the writing wasn’t as good as I could do now.

Mostly, I blame the fact that I wrote this story before taking two semesters of Advanced Creative Writing with Professor Robbins. Those classes made a world of difference in the quality of my writing. I did edit the story after that, but not mercilessly enough, clearly.

This feeling has struck me before. I often get nerves about submitting work for possible publication, because I have seen work that I liked, work I thought was good, get much better after I edit. What’s to say that this work I now think is good, good enough for publication, isn’t one more edit away from massive improvements? Publication takes a work out of a fluid, easily-edited state and effectively carves it in stone for anyone who cares to look. Personal pride dictates that I send out only work that is as good as I think I can possibly make it. Obviously, I can’t keep giving it edit after edit, or I would never send anything out, but it is tough to decide that something is good enough.

It isn’t just a question of whether the writing is good enough for the public eye. In many cases, as you surely know, the work doesn’t reach the public just because you’ve sent it out to an editor or two. And there’s the other risk: if the magazine or agent rejects the story or novel, and then I edit and improve it, they likely won’t want to see the same piece again. This happens to me quite a bit, and is especially tough with novels, because agents more frequently accept multiple submissions than magazine editors, so you’re more likely to have hit them all with the unedited version, and be left not knowing where to turn once you’ve fixed it up. So there’s that balance. Sending out work that’s not as good as it can be spells failure (or, if accepted, a bit of cringing at the knowledge that the general public will read a piece of your work that’s not at its best). On the other hand, you’ve got to send it out sometime!

I think this hits me particularly hard because my serious writing career is pretty young. I wrote my first novel when I was fifteen, for a high school creative writing class. Since then, I’ve edited it at least twice, and I shudder at the idea of people reading the original. My fantasy world – totally removed from Earth – had people speaking Latin. And calling it “Latin.” I laugh to remember that I did, in fact, send the manuscript around to agents when I was about seventeen. Not only have my fiction writing and editing skills improved vastly since then; my query letters have gotten better, as has my judgment of when work is ready to send out. Experience, reading, research, editing, classes, and – of course – writing, have all helped me.

To return to my original subject, I should point out that the story picked by Reynard’s Menagerie is far from worthless. It isn’t confusing, and contains no errors, just the occasional flabby or awkward sentence. True, if I wrote it today, the prose would be more polished, but:

1. The story is not in my usual style, which made it more difficult to edit.

2. When editing this piece, I was distracted from the prose by the storyline, of which I’m rather proud. In this latest reading, I finally got past the storyline because of how many times I’ve read the piece lately, and was able to look at the prose on its own. (Thus explaining how I didn’t notice its iffiness in earlier proofs.) Such is my theory, anyway.

3. Most importantly, it will soon be published. Whatever I publish next may be better edited, but this one will still be a valuable literary envoy from me to the world. And I get a little experience with the world of professional writing, as well as a check.

So, while it was a blow to see work that I could improve in this final proof (extensive editing is NOT the reason the magazine sends people final proofs, or I wouldn’t be having this issue at all), I can dust myself off, pick up my laptop, and use this as motivation to be a more stringent editor. After all, what better incentive than presenting my very best work to legions of potential adoring fans? 🙂

Mild Genre Identity Crisis

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To begin at the ending, as it were, I think I’m going start calling my work not just “young-adult fantasy” but “character-based young-adult fantasy” or similar.

I’ve known for years that sci-fi and fantasy are often considered “plot-based” genres, focusing more on wacky, impossible-in-the-real-world happenings than on character development. Obviously, there are exceptions – loads of them. The best sci-fi and fantasy, I think – certainly the kinds I like to read and to see in movies – have both. In the Harry Potter books, for example, magic runs rampant and many important plots and subplots rely on a fantasy world to happen, yet the characters are vivid and compelling. The same is true of many Diana Wynne Jones books.

Recently, when submitting short stories to magazines, I found that many magazines of science fiction and fantasy have a lot of what I would call “world-based” stories. It was easy to spot these, even though I wasn’t actually reading the magazines. The advertisements for the current issue would say something like the following:

“Author A takes you to a swamp world whose flying inhabitants have never seen solid ground. Meanwhile, in Author B’s ‘Moontalk,’ explore the politics of a village of werewolves. Ever wonder where your cats disappear to? Why, to ‘The Jellicle Tavern of Space and Time,’ and Author C will show you the way.”

The above, of course, being totally made up by me. And to be honest, I now kind of want to write at least one of those. If I did, though, it might not be pitched that way. I realize that one certainly could write one of the above stories with strong character development, but some audiences seem to be looking for world at least as much as characters – or at least, the advertising at these magazines think so.

This is what threw me a bit this past week: I realized that most of my work does not pitch well without really looking at the characters. I write primarily in one fantasy world, and that world is – *wince* – somewhat generic. I’ve spent years building it, and it is rife with complexities, politics, different species, magic, and so on, but the world itself simply is not all that different or catchy-sounding. It’s a pretty recognizable swords-and-sorcery-type fantasy setting. It has elves, centaurs, and hobgoblins, which are all my own takes on those species (and decently reasoned out, if I do say so myself), alongside original creatures. It has countries and cultures based loosely on not only medieval Britain, but ancient Japan, India, and Russia. It has (some) checks and balances on its magic system. Overall, I would say it is consistent, workable, and in some ways original, but it still doesn’t advertise well alone. “Anica Lewis takes you to . . . a world with magic, elves, and centaurs!” Fantasy fans of the world say, “Um, been there, done that.” No, my query letters tend to focus on the “who” and “what” of the stories, not the “where.” (Interestingly, Dragons Over London is a total exception. So are a few of my short stories, like the one accepted to Reynard’s Menagerie.)

All this leads me to one small conclusion and one big worry.

Conclusion: I should be submitting some of my fantasy to more general fiction magazines, providing that they do accept genre work. Possibly, though my work certainly is fantasy, its strengths lie outside the realm of what some fantasy editors value most (i.e. taking readers to a wildly new, different place).

Worry: Some of my work, it occurred to me, might have no real reason to be fantasy. To be clear: my own personal standards would never shut down anyone’s work of fantasy that didn’t seem to have a real reason for needing magic, elves, etc. (Especially elves.) This is because:

1. I personally enjoy reading fantasy, even when it’s mostly just neat little things that happen outside of main plotlines.

2. I understand that, if your fantasy world were a real place, important and interesting events might happen which do not necessarily depend on magic, and I don’t really mind reading those stories.

Still, because the default setting of fiction is the real world, there is a feeling of needing a reason why your story is set in a fantasy world – something important to the plot or premise of the story which simply could not happen in the real world. Basically, the author is asking readers to accept and remember a different set of rules from those governing our world, and owes those readers a payoff. For some readers, such as myself, the fantasy is a payoff, but even I admit that I prefer a fantasy story with a plot that somehow couldn’t happen in the real world.

Many of my stories have this sort of premise. Dragons Over London does not take place in my fantasy world, but brings fantasy elements into the real world – the characters’ reactions basically are the story. Rabbit and Cougar has relatively little magic, but a malfunctioning spell is responsible for one of the biggest problems to be solved in the story; there are also numerous subplots and characters that are overtly magical and have roles in the story that depend on that. Guardian to the Prince, my first novel, is similar in those ways. But I worry that The Dogwatchers may not have enough fantasy in its basic plot elements to avoid that most feared (and thoroughly annoying) question: “Why is this set in a fantasy world?” And looking at some of the plots I have jotted down to write in the future, I realized that at least one involves virtually no fantasy elements. Others do have significant plot reasons to be set in a fantasy world, but still, this makes me wonder.

The conclusions I’ve drawn from this are, first, the one which starts this entry: that I need to qualify my work as being character-based fantasy. Secondly, some of those plots without much fantasy may need serious retooling. After all, why am I writing them in a fantasy world? “Because I don’t want to be limited to a world without elves, familiars, and spells” may be an answer in my own mind, but not a very good one, even as I see it. Certainly not one I can expect a lot of readers to accept.

This worried me for awhile. I’ve always loved reading fantasy, and have long considered myself a fantasy writer, but I wondered whether I was really using this world just for the flashy tricks that characters could do there. At least I haven’t committed the ultimate fantasy faux pas – pulling magic out to solve nonmagical problems. As Diana Wynne Jones writes on her website, fantasy is, whether intentionally or not, a sort of metaphor for reality. Magical solutions (if well-enough explained not to take the reader by complete surprise) are perfectly fine for magical problems, but to solve a nonmagical problem with magic is a sort of mixed metaphor. I don’t think I’ve ever done something like that, but I still worried.

Now, I feel better. Diana Wynne Jones, my writing heroine, sometimes puts her fascinating plots and engaging characters into a world which isn’t all that shiny and new, fantasy-wise, on its own. Indeed, the setting of Howl’s Moving Castle hardly turns paradigms on their ears, though it does mock them a bit. Her description of that world appears in the first line: “In the land of Ingary, where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exist, it is quite a misfortune to be born the eldest of three.”

On Yet Another Note . . .

Posted on by chaoticgoodLeave a comment on On Yet Another Note . . .

This past week, I came to a decision on a matter which highly impacts my immediate plans for professional writing. Since I hope for this journal to be interesting (and perhaps useful) in different areas of writing, including professional development, I will explain what happened even though it bears little relevance to my actual day-to-day writing.

My plans had been to attend Bath Spa University this fall for an MA in Writing for Young People. The program accepted me way back in fall of 2007, and I’d thought my plans were solid. This summer, my parents and I began to plan specifics (including travel, etc.), and found it very difficult to get hold of information we needed. The people with whom I communicated were pleasant and tried to be helpful, but continued to mail information that never reached me. I confirmed my address repeatedly and sent multiple e-mails – and made some phone calls – to let them know that nothing had arrived via courier mail. Eventually, I was able to find most of what I needed on the website or by e-mail queries. At this point, I determined that the one-year MA, with living costs and travel, would cost nearly $50,000.

After some figuring and some sadness, we realized that this simply would not work well. Not only would I end up with thousands in student loan debt, I would have a degree not sufficient to become a professor. I would still need to get an MFA. Not only would this mean more costs – my dad, an art professor, told me that it might actually be harder to get into an MFA after having had an MA elsewhere! He had this problem himself. And I couldn’t pursue an MFA at Bath Spa University, as they do not offer one.

In the end, I decided not to attend Bath Spa University this year. Instead, I will go this fall – with some close friends – to work in England for six months using this program. This will allow me to get a Britain fix – including traveling with my college roommate, also a writer, to sites mentioned in her novel, and possibly to see places from Dragons Over London, though I was mostly less specific than she about locations.

My new goal is to enroll in an MFA program directly, starting next fall. I am investigating schools now, and mean to apply soon.

Much of what made this situation tough was the similarity to one I encountered when applying for colleges: I was accepted by my first-choice school, Bard College, where I wanted to major in Creative Writing, but then could not afford to go. When I went to the College of William & Mary (which has no Creative Writing major), I majored in Chemistry, intending to become a Chemistry professor who wrote YA fantasy on the side. After two years, I realized that going the practical route was killing me. Though my grades were good and I liked theoretical chemistry, I couldn’t stand labwork. I switched to a Psychology major, hoping to use what I learned there to write the best possible characters.

This seemed like another incident of life telling me that, while I might be talented enough to follow my dreams, I do not have the money. It helps to know, though, that things came out for the best at W&M – I had a fantastic time, made wonderful friends, learned a lot, and would not trade my experience. Besides, I learned from the post-Bard fiasco. Hitting a wall doesn’t mean to stop trying; it just means to find another way to get where you want to be.

Facing Several Frontiers

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At the moment, I’m trying to sort out a jumble of priorities, writing-wise. Happily, I’ve made progress on one of them: I edited two short stories and submitted both to magazines. It somewhat surprised me, but pleased me, to see that the one I’d written for Professor Robbins’ class last semester needed much less editing than the one I’d written at my study-abroad writing program last summer. The surprise came from the fact that I’d thought of that story as being rather good. I’d edited it at least once, probably two or three times. It was good, I think – just fluffy with unnecessary adjectives and sometimes a bit awkward of phrase. I did what I should do much more often – read it aloud. This worked wonders. Phrases just fell into place, much smoother and more natural-sounding. I’m going to try to edit all of my writing that way. (I have been saying this for some time, but I become more determined every time I actually do read a piece aloud and see the difference.) Anyway, those two went to magazines that are quite big within the sci-fi/fantasy market, and at least one seems like a long shot, but if it comes back I’ll just turn it around and send it somewhere else. I really ought to submit things more frequently. It’s fun!

Besides that, I face a dilemma of, as I said, priorities. I should edit Dragons Over London to begin podcasting it. I should edit Rabbit and Cougar to submit to a second round of agents and, possibly, to send the whole thing to a publisher that reads manuscripts from its slush pile – Daw Books does, and I believe Tor does, also. I should edit Lord of the Dark Downs for a first round of agent submissions. I will do all of these things – but which to do first? Besides that, I have the website itself to work on, a short story that I plan to soon rewrite, and of course my continuing work on The Dogwatchers. The website is important and time-sensitive in a broad way, insomuch as I want it ready in time to add the address to my author-description when Reynard’s Menagerie asks for it. The other things are important insomuch as I will not get a novel published if I’m not submitting my novels to people. For what it’s worth, the work I’ve actually started editing this summer is Dragons Over London.

Of course, the upside to all this is that, no matter which of these things I do, I’m getting something done that needs doing. And I enjoy editing. Yes, it can be frustrating at times. I don’t often edit the piece I’m currently writing, but I recently took out a piece of The Dogwatchers, the piece for which I needed the dead rat mentioned in earlier posts. 😛 But it’s so much fun to see my work improve!

One last note, tangentially writing-related: my favorite author, Diana Wynne Jones, had a book come out June 10. It’s called House of Many Ways, and I just finished reading it. It always inspires me (in the you-can-do-it way, not the I-steal-your-ideas way) to read awesome books, especially in my own genre. Hurrah!

“Writing”

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The quotation marks above are intended to communicate that I have largely been doing non-writing things this week, even in the general area of writing. I think I can say that I have done something toward my writing every day this week, but it’s been largely on the promotional side. My energy has been funneled into working on my website.

This is a good thing, especially now that I’ve made some progress. It cracks me up to see how long ago I posted hopefully that “the website should be up this week!” Actually, it’s nice to have waited. When my wonderful and extremely helpful roommate and I thought that we might have the site up before graduation, I was prepared to settle for images (two borders and one decoration) that didn’t really make me that happy, knowing I could change them later and just wanting something up now. Back home, however, I realized that I can create the images I want.

One of my first ideas for the two vertical borders my site will have was to look for parchment-y or old paper-like designs. After all, it’s a site for writing and medievalesque fantasy. I couldn’t find any good images in that vein. Here, I was struck with inspiration while walking with my mom.

“Mom,” I said. “I can make my own parchment design, and then photograph it or scan it or something! I can take some paper, and crumple it up and tea-dye it – you’ve done lots of things with paper. Do you know any special ways to get it to look old and parchment-y?”

“You could say ‘Mom, can I have some of your parchment or old handmade paper?'” said Mom.

Oops, that’s right, my parents are artists.

I decided to make an old-paper design for those borders; I’m going to try writing and drawing things on them that will make them look like a spell or a mage’s notes. Then, perched on the corner of the paper, I decided to have a moth. I wanted to give the moth symbols on its wings which repeated in the paper, making it look magical, perhaps as if it were created by this spell. I decided to make the moth first.

This took days. My original plan was to use Photoshop on pictures of real moths (taken by people I know or, in a pinch, from free photos online). Then, I realized that I could have precisely what I wanted if I created my own moth . . . outside of Photoshop. This was what took so long.

I planned to make the moth larger than I needed and then shrink it down in photos, thus glossing over things which might make it obviously a fake. First, I made wing-shapes from construction paper and cut a body from furry fabric, which I trimmed down. Our living room has a large vase full of peacock feathers in one corner. Dad pointed out to me that each feather is made of hundreds of tiny feather-like pieces. Two of these became Mulligan’s antennae – this is probably my favorite part of the moth. (His name is Mulligan because, in the card game Magic, that is what you call it when you scrap your hand and draw a new one. I scrapped Mulligan several times and restarted.) Then came the lengthy process of getting the wings as I wanted them. I used Mom’s pastels and my shimmer eyeshadow to get color and a powdery look on the wings. I made a stencil, but it still took me several painstaking (yet messy) drafts to get the wings just right.

Dad helped me photograph Mulligan with the professional-level camera setup in his studio. Remember those big lights and silvery-umbrella things they had on school picture day? Dad has those. Mulligan may be the world’s only fake moth to be so photographed.

The Photoshopping process still took a long time, largely because of the difficulty in removing the background around Mulligan. Now, though, it is finished. Tomorrow, I will start the borders!

The other big thing I did this week was to research audiobooks and the podcasting thereof. I found a wonderfully helpful website, Podiobooks.com. I also discovered two amazing – and really fun – websites for listening to people speaking English with different accents: the International Dialects of English Archive and the Speech Accent Archive. This will be helpful and important for my ability to read Dragons Over London, which contains dialogue in English from characters who are English, Irish, Scottish, Chinese, Japanese, Egyptian, and Finnish. I also began to read Dragons Over London aloud to myself, taking notes on the various voices I’ll need to do.

A Different Kind of Active Character

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I’ve talked about “active protagonists” before in this journal. However, I decided recently that it was worth taking a look at another meaning of the term – what might be considered the “efficacious protagonist.”

Recently, I read some books of a series which I very nearly found intolerable due to the characters’ complete inability to be effective. Massive numbers of plot points rested heavily on the characters’ failure to act. This was not limited to the main characters – in fact, I came to accept the series mainly by deciding to regard it as taking place in a fantasy world wherein one of the rules was that no character may be effective.

This is not to say that characters should be good at everything. The main point I’m trying to make is simply that characters should do what they can, especially in serious scenarios. In the aforementioned series, characters would stand around, not taking the obviously beneficial course of action right in front of them, in life-or-death situations. The resultant feel of the characters was somewhere between extreme hopelessness (they just figured it would never work) and extreme stupidity (it didn’t occur to them).

There are a number of in-story reasons why characters do not take appropriate action to their circumstances, but many are thin disguises for the fact that the plot needed it. Good reasons stem from character: He has an established fear of water, so he cannot cross the river to safety. She was taught to see animals as people, so she won’t eat meat until the point of starvation. And so on. In some stories, however, we get things like the following (example completely made up; not taken from any story of which I am aware):

“Edward suddenly understood the cook’s threat: his father’s tea must be poisoned.
‘Father!’ he cried. ‘Don’t drink the tea!’
‘Don’t be silly,’ said his father, raising the cup.
‘No!’ Edward watched helplessly as his father took a sip.”

Now, who can think of how dear Edward could have been more effective? He never said “The tea is poisoned,” and made no attempt to physically stop his father from drinking it. And frankly, anytime a word like “helpless” is used, there had better be a good reason for the character to be helpless. The main issues here are believability and whether or not the reader can – and wants to – identify with someone so useless. (Though even non-protagonist characters, who are not burdened with providing the reader a guide through the story, should act as appropriate to their situations.) Here, chances are that the imaginary author’s imaginary plotline involves Edward finding an antidote, or witnessing his father’s death, or finding out that his family’s male line carries a bizarre biological immunity to poisons, or some such. If he prevented his father from drinking the poisoned tea, the plot would not progress. However, Edward’s motivation should not be “to advance the plot,” but “to save Father.” He should put appropriate resources toward any goal based on its seriousness – thus, in this case, all his resources.

This can be a particular problem in stories with young protagonists and aimed at young readers: these sometimes seem to imply that the characters could not act effectively because they are children. Not only does this insult young readers, it gives them a solid vote of “no confidence.” Besides that, it is unrealistic. A child character may not apply CPR when someone falls, but she can certainly go for help.

Most readers do not expect characters to act as they would in those circumstances, but they expect the characters to act as they would if they were those characters under those circumstances. One person might think “Boy, if my father was about to drink poisoned tea, I would use my ninja skills to shatter the cup with a shuriken.” Still, she would probably not expect this of Edward.

I thought these points were obvious, but they seem not to have occurred to a number of authors at all. At any rate, this may be a quasi-rant, but if I can make one person think twice about writing inexplicably helpless characters, I will call it a job well done.