Fire in the Night - When Life Sucks, Write It

There is an old saying, “There is no substitute for experience.” After last night, I can tell you, this is true.

As a writer, it’s our job to make our readers feel every experience our characters go through on a visceral level. We must place our characters in jeopardy (for without that, there is no conflict), put them in the worst possible situations and watch them get themselves out of said situations, all the while summoning forth every emotion we can from the character’s gut, even, and perhaps especially, the most intense and frightening.

Grief. Rage. Hatred. Fear. Many writers have written their characters into scenes most of us only see in movies and television. Floods. Tornadoes. Car crashes. Hijackings. House fires. But how many of us get to experience those things before we write them?

It’s one thing to write about a car crash or a house fire based on how other writers write it, or through a second hand account. It feels a whole lot different to write about something like that after you’ve gone through it.

Ok, let me back up and tell you the story.

On Friday night, the hubby and I were at home, enjoying his first week off in six months. We’d invited my BFF to come down from Brantford for the weekend. It was one of those perfect weekends where you think nothing could go wrong. Hubby had made us his famous sausages (famous in our house anyway), and we’d spend a few hours watching one of our favourite TV programs before my friend and myself decided to leave hubby to his internet surfing and turn in for the night. I’d only been asleep for a couple of hours when I heard people screaming outside on the street.  

Someone was screaming bloody murder, right outside my house. In retrospect I should have jumped up and gone to check things out right away. But I had just been ripped from sleep, and I was still in that confused state you’re in when you come out of a dream. That, and the neighbour who was yelling and his girlfriend fight all the time, often having public shouting matches in the street every so often. I thought this was just another fight.

Then my hubby went to the door, and I heard him talking to a panicked sounding neighbour. Little did I know, he had already called 911, and while I had slept on, outside, a nightmare unfolded. But something in the neighbour’s voice began to seep into me now. I scrambled out into the living room. And that’s when I heard it.

Outside, from what sounded like the backyard.

Crackling.

Still confused, I tried to see what was going on. Then the neighbour said, “The house next door is on fire.”

I tried to ask if we should leave the house, but the neighbour had left, my hubby was on the phone, calling 911 for the second time. Amazingly, my friend was still half asleep.

Then, someone came up the steps and I heard a man’s voice, fearfully say, “That house is going to blow.”

It was as if those words snapped me out of a daze. I can’t describe the fear those words imprinted on me in a way that does it justice.

The three of us bolted from the house. I remember someone helping me down the stairs, and then we were running. I remember sparks flying, and a large chunk of burning ash flying passed my head. My friend froze for one horrible moment as the house next to us burned from the inside out, an orange blaze trapped inside a flimsy shell.

I remember ordering my friend to run. My hubby grabbing me and pulling us along. I have terrible knees, and they were screaming in pain, but the glow of orange light chased me from behind and I kept going.

“That House is going to blow.” Those words. Yeah, I ran faster than I have run in years.

Once we were across the street, I looked at the blaze and saw that in fact two houses were going. I thought ours would soon catch flame.

I remember that horrific moment when I realized our cat was inside and there was no way to get her out. She hides, and when she does, finding her is impossible. I think that’s when I started to scream for someone to get her out. I started to cry. I remember my friend holding me while my hubby tried to see if our house was going to go.

I noticed that the street was filled with people and at some point, fire trucks had pulled up our street, at least 4 of them, along with at least one police car. And smoke. There was so much smoke.

I remember us having to walk through it, down the street to get away from the blaze. The smoke was like a thick fog. I couldn’t breathe. None of us could. I couldn’t see. I could hear my friend behind me, and feel my hubby pulling me through the wall of white.

When I could see again I was down the street and a neighbour was helping us up her steps, her on one side, hubby on the other. She gave us water, a bathroom, and for my friend and I who have trouble standing for extended periods of time, places to sit.

We were safe.  For us it was over.

Our house remained untouched. It would be the next day before I would realize how close it was to going up. The metal fence that runs between our house and the next had melted, burning half way to the side of our house. Our entirely wood house.

Our next door neighbour’s house and the one beside it are unliveable. The fire gutted the homes. At least temporarily, four families have no place to live.

With the seriousness of the fire and how hot and dry things were, all it would have taken was one spark, one falling piece of orange debris, and our house wouldn’t be here. My hubby, my friend, my cat, or I, might not be here. Had the wind carried the flames and smoke in our direction, our house would be gone instead of the one on the other side. We are all alive and unharmed, because a neighbour had the sense to get us out in time.

Because the wind chose to blow north instead of south.

Now, at the time, I was barely thinking from one moment to the next, and much of the details I only recall now, as I write this. But now, I find myself trying to notice which details would stand out on a page and how various characters in my novels might react, what they might notice. I’ve written more than one fire scene, but how differently will I write it when another one is called for, now that I have witnessed one firsthand?

I might be tempted to go for the obvious. The memory of how the smoke choked me. The distinctly fearful voice of the neighbour telling us to get out. The almost eerily calm way my hubby called 911 even though this was the second time he called, the house next to us was ablaze, and they still hadn’t come. The way my friend froze, staring at the flames in horror. The absolute horror that my cat might die and our house be devoured in flames.

Many writers seem to have similar ways of describing things and when they replicate a scene such as this from somewhere, they tend to duplicate the same sensory details as everyone else. But after you go through it firsthand, what might you see that wouldn’t be in the text if it was second hand or based on something you saw on tv or read in the paper?

To me, as a writer who puts this in prose fit for a book, the neighbour’s voice wasn’t just fearful, or filled with the concern for others that mirrors the good Samaritan tone you always hear about. It carried the edge of a steel blade as it’s pulled free with a concerned hand. (Yes, you can tell I wrote medieval epics. LOL).

To me, the smoke didn’t just choke or block my view with a wall of white. It seared my throat and closed my airways until I wondered if I could breathe long enough to get through it. My throat hurt for a good day afterward.


When the neighbour said the next house was going to blow, I didn’t just picture us all dying as our house was consumed in flames. I pictured orange death roaring toward me for one final moment before I saw my hubby’s and my friend’s faces reduced to fiery light, and then my own life gone in a single blast of agony. 

I wasn’t just gripped with fear of losing our home or our cat once we got outside. My mind raced with thoughts of what we would do if we lost either, knowing we had nowhere to go.

And hours later, when I could think straight again, I worried that my friend’s parents would refuse to let her near our house once they heard about this. I was even afraid this might be the last time I visited with her.

And the whole time, I remember thinking not only how lucky we were to have come out of this unscathed, but how fortunate we were that my hubby happened to be on holidays, that he’s almost storybook hero cool in a crisis, and that a hundred other things that could have gone wrong, didn’t. I doubt my friend and I could have gotten out without him. I kept thinking, if I didn’t believe that a benevolent god watches over us before, I do now. 

And as a writer, when the need for such a scene arises, as painful or frightening as it may be, I will try to put myself in the head of those who lost their homes, imagining how they feel so that I can better describe how my characters feel. Not with the same clichéd descriptions everyone else uses, but with the much more powerful, rare, real life descriptions that come only from seeing or feeling it first hand. 

My point. Most of us are never faced with the kinds of ordeals we as writers must thrust upon our poor characters, and I would never hope or wish for this to happen to myself or anyone again. But these things do happen in real life. And when they do, there is no better way to make a book come alive, a scene feel more real for our readers, than to mine the worst, and best, events of our lives for our stories, putting the diamonds we find amidst the rubble onto the page and letting the readers see it as though they are there with us every step of the way. 

R.C.

Throwback Thursday!!

**One of Michelle's very first piece of advice....come take a look!**

USING DESCRIPTIVE SETTINGS

Descriptive setting has none of the excitement of an action scene, none of the glamour of dialogue.But too little description and the reader can get lost, unable to figure out what’s happening.Too much of it and the reader is yawning.Who hasn’t skimmed over paragraphs of description of countryside and weather to get to the good stuff?I do it all the time.

So it’s no surprise, descriptive setting is my least favorite type of writing.It’s usually way down on the list of priorities.Plus, avoiding passive writing and lazy ‘was/were’ sentences is always a challenge for me.Much easier to write ‘the forest was full of tall evergreen trees’ then to craft it into an entertaining sentence like ‘evergreen trees rose tall and straight along the road creating a dense screen’.Leaving out the descriptive setting, however, is a missed opportunity.There are three potential ways for this type of writing to increase the wow of your story....(Continue reading HERE)

Foreshadowing

Foreshadowing, as defined by Dictionary.com, means “to show or indicate beforehand; prefigure.”

Foreshadowing allows for the writer to turn rather innocuous or unimportant details into something that carries significance at the end of the work because of the way they move the story along and/or affect the characters. Two things are key: Atmosphere and symbolism. Atmosphere allows the reader to get a feel of the mood, what emotions they should feel for the character and what sort of importance this place or overall mood has on the character itself.

Foreshadowing often works hand-in-hand with the symbolic meanings of things, people or events according to that characters universe; or with the characters own desires and fears, as a way for the writer to “tell the future” of that event or character without spoiling the journey.

But in order to foreshadow future events, you must first have a plan. A set up. Like building a house, you must have a foundation before you can begin on anything else. With foreshadowing, your foundation is what you want to foreshadow. Do you want to foreshadow a death? A character having to face a fear? A character having to do something in order to reach his goal? Or maybe you want to foreshadow a big revelation that throws everything off track?

A good film that shows a form of simple foreshadowing and a character overcoming his obstacle to continue his journey, is Disney’s The Haunted Mansion. In it, the main character’s son is afraid of spiders and won’t squish one on his bedroom window with a rolled up magazine. Later on in the film, the main character and his daughter are trapped in the mausoleum where they had to search for a key to solve the mystery of the mansion. When the door closes, trapping them inside with zombies that have come alive, wanting the key back, the son must open the door. Only problem is, big spiders crawl out of the door and he doesn’t want to get near them. In order to save his father and sister from the zombies, he has to face his fear of spiders and open the door.

Whatever it is, you must scatter clues early in the manuscript in order for any future events concerning those clues to have any sort of impact. In her blog post about foreshadowing, blogger Debz Hobbs-Wyatt says: “…Don’t draw the reader’s attention to something, some aspect of a character’s personality, like a phobia of spiders, if you don’t draw on it later.”

It might take a few drafts, but, if done subtly, foreshadowing also allows you to reveal things about a character, using bits and pieces of backstory to foreshadow reactions and fears that may lead to certain decisions and actions later in the novel.

Foreshadowing can incite many emotions but there are three chief emotion “types” of foreshadowing:

1. Doubt/ Dread: The foreshadowing that incites doubt or dread, like any scene in the novel, should fit with the character and situation. This type should be foreboding, incite worry for the character.

An example of that type of foreshadowing is shown in Suzanne Collins’s YA dystopian fantasy, The Hunger Games, when Katniss tells her little sister, Primrose, that she won’t be picked for the Reaping and sent to die in the Hunger Games, where children are forced to kill each other for the entertainment of the public. The reader feels Katniss’s dread about Prim being chosen for the Games—but this foreshadows Prim’s name being chosen and Katniss’s choice to go in her place.

2. Excitement/Anticipation: This type is the kind of foreshadowing that makes people curious as to how things connect, how this symbol, event, or character, associates with the rest of the story. Most often, this foreshadowing is used to indirectly suggest an outcome for a character or event.

An example of this type of foreshadowing occurs early in Robert Jordan’s epic fantasy, The Wheel of Time, in book one The Eye of the World. In it, Moiraine, an Aes Sedai—a magician who can wield the One Power—tells Egwene, an innkeeper's daughter from the village of Emond`s Field who can wield the One Power, that she “…may go far. Perhaps even the Amyrlin Seat one day, if you study hard and work hard.” The Amyrlin Seat, while also being a chair where the head of the Aes Sedai sits, is also the title given to them, likened to a king or queen. Much later in the series, just as Moiraine said, Egwene does become leader of the Aes Sedai order.

3. Surprise/Shock: This type of foreshadowing often comes with a huge revelation or an event that the character didn’t expect. With a reader, the foreshadowing specifically for that moment will often come during the second time reading the novel as they see what led up to the climax, what clues they were given by the writer to try and piece together the character’s journey.

An example of this is in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the third novel in the Harry Potter series. For this example, I’ll only be using the events from the film adaptation as it’s been a while since I’ve read the novel and do not currently have it on hand. In both the novel and the film, Hermione seems to be taking two classes at the same time and managing to be present for each. Ron and Harry can’t figure out how she can be in two places at one time. It’s revealed near the end of the film, that Hermione has been using a Time Turner—a device that allows the user to go back in time—in order to take two classes in the same time slot. Using the Time Turner, Harry and Hermione travel back to save a supposedly “dangerous” Hippogriff, named Buckbeak, from being slaughtered. Using Buckbeak’s ability to fly, the pair are also able to retrieve Sirius Black, Harry’s godfather, from Azkaban.

Earlier in the film, the event that foreshadows the use of the Time Turner itself, is when Harry, Hermione and Ron visit Hagrid and, somehow, end up being hit with thrown snail shells. When the Time Turner is used, Harry uses these shells (in much the same manner as before) to get the attention of his “alternate timeline” self, thus changing the outcome of many events.

Have you noticed examples of foreshadowing in the books you’ve been reading? If so, what are some of the types you've seen?

- HC

Throwback Thursday!!

**It's that time again! Take a gander at another blast from the past**

LINGERING: MAKING MOMENTS MATTER

Lingering. Lovely word isn’t it? It rolls off the tongue, overflowing with a certain strange…nostalgia. And that’s partly what lingering does.

Imagine your hero or heroine standing before a mirror, dressed in a well-cut suit or a beautiful dress or even in armour. Now if you wanted to give this moment impact you would use lingering—it lets you pause, almost freeze-frame the moment in the book. To capture it.

Lingering employs two concepts. One I like to call “tiny details” and the other is character arc. Character arc is the way the character is in the story—their viewpoint—and, as the story progresses, how that viewpoint changes.

Tiny details in a novel are like moments in life you remember in retrospect. Like, for example, how hot one summer was, how that coffee stain on the carpet never really went away. Basically, tiny details are the little, specific things that make moments memorable.

How do you apply these two concepts to our hero-at-a-mirror example? Easy....(Continue reading HERE)

Making Scenery Come Alive

Scenery is perhaps the hardest thing to make interesting on the page. Your characters need to travel, see the world—be it as simple as a room in their house or an exotic place across the globe or maybe another dimension entirely. FTLOW blogger, Raven Clark, did a post on weather openings and how to make them work. I thought I’d follow that up with another, similar topic that authors often use for openings: Scenery.

Now, don’t get me wrong—scenic openings can work, and many famous writers often use them—but there’s a difference to someone who’s been published before and someone who’s just started out. Novice writers often think setting the scene is the very first thing that the reader needs to know before they even meet your hero. They need to know where your character is, yes, but not every excruciating detail about the world.

Ask yourself this: How do we care about the setting and the predicament, if we don’t know who we’re supposed to be rooting for? With openings written by novice writers, I’ve noticed, they seem to separate character and scenery so much when they begin, that when the story begins, the opening lacks tension or is slow.

So, when thinking about scenery and scenic openings, don’t just write about the warm summer day, write about how the summer weather makes the character feel. Set a mood with the character as the mouthpiece. What makes this day, or this moment, different then any other day?  Whatever makes this day different then any other, then, is a sense of things changing. This change is often a good source of conflict or tension.    

In total, there are about four techniques—similar to weather openings—you need to make a scenic opening, and scenery itself, come alive.

1)      Make the scenery active.

2)      Create tension within the prose.

3)      Make the scenery as much a part of the plot as possible.

4)      Use the senses to make the scene real for readers.  

What do I mean when I say you have make scenic openings and scenery active? I mean, does the scenery appear to be doing anything? Does it appear to have a personality, almost as if it were alive? To give an example, I’ll use a part of the prologue from the first novel, The Eye of the World, of Robert Jordan’s epic fantasy series Wheel of Time.  

The palace still shook occasionally as the earth rumbled in memory,
groaned as if it would deny what had happened. Bars of sunlight cast
through rents in the walls made motes of dust glitter where they yet
hung in the air. Scorch-marks marred the walls, the floors, the
ceilings. Broad black smears crossed the blistered paints and gilt of
once-bright murals, soot overlaying crumbling friezes of men and
animals which seemed to have attempted to walk before the madness grew
quiet. The dead lay everywhere, men and women and children, struck
down in attempted flight by the lightnings that had flashed down every
corridor, or seized by the fires that had stalked them, or sunken into
stone of the palace, the stones that had flowed and sought, almost
alive, before stillness came again. In odd counterpoint, colourful
tapestries and paintings, masterworks all, hung undisturbed, except
where bulging walls had pushed them awry. Finely carved furnishings,
inlaid with ivory and gold, stood untouched except where rippling
floors had toppled them. The mind-twisting had struck at the core,
ignoring peripheral things.

Did you notice how Jordan gave the destroyed castle almost a personality? How “The palace still shook occasionally as the earth rumbled in memory, groaned as if it would deny what had happened…” Or how the fires “seized” and “stalked” the palace occupants, or how the stones of the palace itself “…had flowed and sought, almost alive, before stillness came again.” It’s a building, yet, using similes and metaphors, he is able to give the reader a clear picture of how the scenery ‘reacted’ to the disaster.

Now, this opening is told in omniscient point of view (an all-seeing POV. Almost like a god.) and we are not introduced to a character until the next paragraph. Today, that isn’t a good idea as it seems like you’re head-hopping—jumping between POVs. The opening above could only work for an established author nowadays, as opposed to when this novel was published, back in 1990. The rules have changed regarding pace and tension and openings, so if you try to do this type of slightly slower opening today, you’d have a hard time selling your novel. So it’s better to tell the story through a character’s reactions and have your hero describe the scenery in his/her voice rather then using omniscient POV.

On the second point, creating tension within the prose, is based on a few factors:

A)    Word choice: Do the words you choose evoke an image? Do they evoke a mood? Does it incorporate the senses? (I’ll explain about that later in this post).

B)    Situation: What is happening to your character? Where is he or she? What is he/she doing? What is her goal for the scene?

C)    Stakes: What happens if your character fails? What or who does the character lose if she loses? What about if she succeeds? The higher and riskier the stakes, the more tense and powerful the scene will be.

For an example of tension within the prose, I’ll use a scene from my WIP novel, The Last Wyvern. In this scene (in the 3^rd chapter, so it’s not the opening of the novel), my heroine, Calias, has been captured by the main villain, King Sacriel, who is part of a race of bird-like creatures called the Queye. She must escape and is successful, with the help of the novel’s hero, Owen. In their attempt to escape, however, they must leave behind other prisoners of Calias’s order.

A rumble of thunder drowned out his next words as he gripped her wrist. He pulled her towards the door, and slowly eased it open, the cries of the Guild members like the shrill noise of gulls overhead, nearly drowned out by the thrashing waves and rain. Guilt forced its way into her chest, lodged like a stone within. We must make this sacrifice. It’s us he wants. Slipping through the shadows, Owen guided her to the lifeboats she’d seen earlier. As he set one up to be lowered, the possibility of being caught burned in her veins, the awareness of so many Queyen eyes watching the ship’s deck, patrolling it, setting her nerves dangling on a jagged edge. No time. She kept watch as the ship cut through the waves, her heartbeat louder than the storm.

“Climb in.” He hissed.

“Owen, I—” A clap of thunder overwhelmed her words. No time. Escape. She stumbled forward as he hoisted her up into his arms and set her in the lifeboat. “Owen!”

She glimpsed a smile as a flash of lightning cracked the sky. “Don’t worry, I’m coming too.”

“No—” She glanced down, feeling sick. Below, the black waves swelled, like quicksand, threatening to swallow her whole—looming closer and closer—as Owen began to lower the boat. One thought slammed into her, and she gripped the sides of the boat with white-knuckled hands. I can’t swim…

Glancing back up at Owen, the rain soaking through her clothing, blinding her, Calias cried out as guards swarmed upon Owen. Oh, no… Weaving out of the reach of gleaming swords, Owen pulled his own blade from its sheath and combat ensued. Battle cries and shouts of pain echoed through the night as Owen delivered blow after blow, a few lifeless bodies tumbling into the sea. A sword swing caught one of the ropes and Calias gripped the boat as it lurched to one side, hanging a few feet from the waves. Don’t cut the ropes…please don’t cut the ropes! She had a brief image of the boat capsizing, tossing her into the water and a sudden bout of panic threatened to choke her. Lower the boat. Don’t cut the ropes—this storm’s bad enough! As the boat jerked again, she watched—the breath frozen in her lungs—as one rope began to unravel.

Sacriel’s voice rose above the storm, a thunderous roar. “Find her, bring her aboard!” She could imagine the Queye king, his eyes blazing, one hand unconsciously rubbing his throat, as he marched across the deck, ordering his men. “I want that witch skinned alive!”

Owen spun, swinging to cut the second rope, and Calias felt her heart plummet to her stomach as the boat fell. Caught in the violent swell of the sea, its clutch determined to overturn the tiny lifeboat, Calias grabbed the oars and forced the boat through the water, determined to get away. And leave them? The weight of the Guild prisoners’ feeble cries for help echoed in her mind. She grit her teeth and forced herself to focus.

Looking up, watching the distance slowly grow, she saw Owen—his form briefly set aglow by a flash of lightning—as he dove off the ship and disappeared into the dark water. Sacriel’s guards set crossbows and fired, arrows hitting the water, just out of her reach and that strangling terror set in again. Scanning the waves, she couldn’t hear nor see Owen. Where is he? For a few moments, she stared at the water, imaging the pain of arrows stabbing into his back one by one, the dread threatening to make her sick.

The oars felt heavy in her hands, dragging like lead weights across the water, the water itself black as liquid night, viscous like honey. Where is he? Pools of crimson splashed across her vision, staining the ocean red. The white caps of waves became fins that cut through the storm like the curve of a sword. She blinked and they were gone. Muttering prayers under her breath, gripping the oars with sore hands, she stared as Sacriel’s boat drifted, the glow of lanterns growing smaller. She hunched her shoulders as the wind cut through her clothing, cold and ruthless as the sea. “I can’t do this alone…” Calias pried numb fingers from the oars, letting them fall limply to her sides. “I can’t.”

This is rough, and definitely needs improvement, but the tension is there. I’ve tried to use particular words or descriptions, like: “…the cries of the Guild members like the shrill noise of gulls overhead, nearly drowned out by the thrashing waves and rain” Or: “…the black waves swelled, like quicksand, threatening to swallow her whole…” Even using objects to describe the scene: “The oars felt heavy in her hands, dragging like lead weights across the water, the water itself black as liquid night, viscous like honey.”

So the word choice factor is done but the important thing is, I’ve let the character have to make necessary sacrifices in order to escape the villain and the fact she can’t swim only adds to the brutality of the storm and her situation—stakes are up and the situation is dire, which—if done well—should compel readers to continue.     

But how do you do that for your writing—especially if your novel isn’t all thrilling action? That’s OK, as long as you have what I like to call “subtle tension”.

Subtle tension in openings and in scenery itself is often used during the rising action moments—when the character thinks everything is fine for now, when both the reader and the character get a chance to breathe.

Subtle tension derives from the word choice, this time using mood and active scenery, rather then dire situations or high stakes (though they aren’t totally left out), to create the tension and bridge conflict to the next huge event. An example of subtle tension with scenery and openings, is the first chapter of Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time: The Eye of the World:

The Wheel of Time turns and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that
become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten
when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the
Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long passed, a wind rose
in the Mountains of Mist. The wind was not the beginning. There are
neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time.
But it was a beginning.

Borne below the ever cloud-capped peaks that gave the mountains their
name, the wind blew east, out across the Sand Hills, once the shore of
a great ocean, before the Breaking of the World. Down it flailed into
the Two Rivers, into the tangled forest called the Westwood, and beat
at two men walking with a cart and horse down the rock-strewn track
called the Quarry Road. For all the spring should have come a good
month since, the wind carried an icy chill as if it would rather bear
snow.

Not much happens in this paragraph, and this, again, suffers from the use of an omniscient POV, but as an example of subtle tension, it works. The subtle tension is there if you look for it. It’s in the description of the weather itself, how it “…flailed and beat at two men…” And, as if the wind had a mind of its own, “carried an icy chill as if it would rather bear snow.” The weather is made into a personality, one that carries foreboding, as if the wind and chilly weather is an extension of the main villain of this series, a metaphysical being called the Dark One.

Another point with scenery and scenic openings is to make the scenery as much a part of the plot as possible. I’m not talking about how much detail you put in the world but how the scene reflects the tension. It’s perhaps the hardest to do without the scene coming off contrived. With this point, you have to mix active tone and tension, while increasing conflict within the story with the scenery itself. I’ll try and use another rough example from The Last Wyvern:

Owen allowed the question to hang in the air for a few moments and the silence stretched between them—shattered by the snapping of twigs and underbrush, like breaking bones. An impossible darkness shrouded the wood, the tangled branches above them closing them in, eclipsing the sun. Her heartbeat sounded, loud as a war drum in her ears, and she put a hand on her mount’s neck seeking comfort, holding the stone aloft. Owen still hadn't answered her questions, his expression once again hard. Unyielding. He walked ahead, maneuvering his mount around a fallen tree. She followed him and froze. What is that?

Something dangled from the branches above them, like thick silver umbilical cords. Fear latched onto her heart like the claws of a bear trap and Calias glanced around, peering into the darkness, but saw nothing but the never-ending paths—broken by fallen trees, some spreading into forked labyrinths.

“Owen...?” Her throat clenched around her words and she struggled to breathe, drowning in panic. “Owen!”

Owen spun, holding the torch high, anxiety tensing every muscle. “What is it?” His voice was barely a whisper. Then, he paled. “Calias...”

She looked at the Crystal Iris as it pulsed in her hand, a seizing heartbeat of violet light. Oh, gods. We’re close...

The noises of the forest seemed louder, every step and inhale of breath like the crash of thunder, the hiss of a twister. The trees closed in on them—dark, frail assassins moving in for the kill, to cage them within bark and moss. We can’t back down now. It’s just your imagination playing tricks! Remember what Kydren said: Focus on the mission! She took a deep breath and the trees stilled, the branches no longer looking like reaching hands.

“Easy, easy.” Owen yanked at the reins as his horse began to panic, its neck shining with perspiration, the whites of its eyes showing.

   

Her stomach twisted as a distant rumbling reached her ears. Too soft and consistent to be thunder, she looked at the shining, sticky film that coated the trunks of trees, dripping from the branches and cold sweat dampened her brow. Her ears strained to hear the sound, trying to judge where it came from, the rumbling echoing around them, coming from every direction. The shadows swam before her, lost amid Choketree Wood, and Calias suddenly felt very small. Insignificant.

 

Another point to make scenery and scenic openings, come alive is to use the senses. The basic senses: Sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch should paint a picture in the readers mind of what your scene looks like, what sort of mood the readers should feel. But there are four other senses that are often ignored: Temperature, kinetic sense (position of the body), pain, and the body’s sense of balance and gravity.

However you write your scenes and open your novels, the techniques above still apply regardless of genre, point of view, or setting. If you can make scenery engaging as an opening, try it but if not, it might be best to introduce the hero first and have him interact with the world, and create tension, compelling readers to continue.

- HC

Don’t Talk About the Weather

Over the last few years, writers have been hearing a lot of fuss about certain types of openings in books, and one of the most hated openings for agents and publishers - and veteran writers - is the dreaded weather opening.

You’ve seen them. Those books that start with something like, “The sun rose high over the crystalline water…” Or “Thunder rumbled over the little hamlet…” But why are these sorts of starts considered no-no’s?

Starts like these are often used by beginning writers who see this as an easy way to bring the reader into the world of the story. But where novices seem to think they’re interesting, more often than not they’re boring and slow. These starts are rarely half as interesting as the writers would think.

But, we have all read more than a few openings based on weather in many a bestselling novel, and writers have found success with such beginnings. Is there a trick to constructing an effective opening to a novel based on the weather going on outside your house right now? What if you just have to start with this kind of opening? How do you get the attention of an agent or a publisher instead of landing in the slush pile?

Based on several novels I’ve read on writing by bestselling novelists, including The Breakout Novelist by literary agent Donald Maass, there are three tricks to creating an effective weather opening.

1)      Make the weather active.

2)      Incorporate tension into the prose

3)      Tie the weather into the conflict of the plot if possible.

Now keep in mind I’m not an expert, and the examples are off the top of my head, so they won’t be stellar or publish-ready. But they should be good enough to illustrate my point. So let’s take a look at these aspects one at a time.

Make the weather active.

What do I mean by active? By this I mean, write the description of the weather so that it appears to be doing something. Active as appose to passive.

I’m told this is very hard to do, and I think for most, it is. But for me, this is the easiest of the three. Look at the example below to see what I mean.

I sat on my bed, watching the rain pour down from the sky, leaving watery trails on my windowpane. The sky looked down, a gun-metal gray that did nothing for my already sour mood. The memory hit me so suddenly I blinked in horror. I left it outside! My heart sank as I imagined the water washing away such an important piece of evidence, evidence of his crimes.

Now if you really pay attention to that paragraph, it isn’t entirely bad. In fact, after the first two lines, it could work for a compelling opening. It raises lots of questions and produces tension. What crimes? What evidence? What piece of critical evidence will the rain wash away? The wording suggests something ominous and perhaps even horrible happened before the character came across the page. Questions abound. Which is what you want in the opening of a novel. It’s the first two lines that are the problem. Why? Because nothing is happening. The words just lie on the page, evoking no emotion, no curiosity, no desire to read on. And we all know, first impressions are everything. You only have ten seconds to hook a reader. It’s within that first ten seconds of opening a novel that readers often decide whether to pick up a book by a new author or move onto something else. So how do we change the first two lines to make them stronger? First, make them more active. Use more compelling word choices. Let’s see that again.

The rain slashed at my windowpane, relentless as the thoughts that threatened to drown me in my own fear. Photos of him lay sprawled across my bed. I pushed them off and they scattered, as if whipped by the wind tearing through the maple trees outside.  The sky glared, a cold, steely grey slab. The memory hit me so suddenly I blinked in horror. I left it outside! My heart sank as I imagined the water washing away such an important piece of evidence, evidence of his crimes.

See the difference? The weather in the second example not only does something, but it seems to take on a personality, and one that fits to set a tone for a story. Do you want to read more? Good. That’s the point.

But we’re not done yet. The start of the paragraph is better, but it could be better still. So let’s add the second layer, the tension. The changes to the start of the paragraph already created some tension, but it’s too low key. And it’s a bit derivative. We need more. Try this.

The rain slashed at my windowpane, relentless as my own whirling thoughts. The memories of what he’d done held my mind in a stranglehold of panic, icy as the coming winter. Photos of him lay sprawled across my bed. I pushed them off and they scattered, as if whipped by the wind tearing through the maple trees outside. The sky glared, a cold, steely grey slab. The memory hit me so suddenly I blinked in horror. I left it outside! My heart sank as I imagined the water washing away such an important piece of evidence, evidence of his crimes.

That’s better, isn’t it? See how the weather takes on a menacing tone that seems to match the unnamed character our heroine is worried about? The suggestion of an unpleasant character rests in the wording, and rather than merely laying on the page in static repose, the weather only serves to amplify the sense of alarm. But can we make it better still by adding the third layer?

This, tying weather description into the plot of your story, is perhaps the hardest part. For this to work, not only do you need the active tone and tension, but the weather has to somehow either produce or increase the conflict in the story. This, without feeling like it’s contrived. Let’s see what we can do to fill our paragraph with weather induced conflict.

The rain slashed at my windowpane, its deluge cutting off my only escape. Photos of him lay sprawled across my bed, the images holding my mind in a stranglehold of panic icy as the coming winter. I pushed them off the bed, and they scattered as if whipped by the wind tearing through the maple trees outside.  By now the banks would be flooded. I wouldn’t get far. The sky glared, a cold, steely gray slab. Power lines stretched across the horizon, near the too small house, lightning strikes causing flashes of electricity to play across them in deadly arcs. If I fled, a single strike would stop my heart. The realization struck like a blow to the chest. I left it outside! My heart sank as I imagined the water washing away the only evidence of his crimes.

Whoa. Now it’s getting interesting. That paragraph breathes conflict. I’m not saying agents would jump at the chance to read a book that started with this, but I trust you see my point. In general, readers don’t care about weather. They want something to happen, something exciting, intriguing, interesting. And publishers and agents get so many manuscripts a day, so you need to really wow them to get them to read past the first line. The standard rule is that weather is none of those things. It doesn’t wow. But there are ways to use even weather as an effective hook. If you can make your weather riveting, do it. If not, best pass up the sunny opening in your head for something more gripping.

Raven

Magic: Making Readers Believe

Wow, it’s been forever since I blogged. Had a busy month, so much that I missed my scheduled date to blog a few Mondays ago. Things have finally started to calm down for the first time today.

So today’s topic is on creating believable magical systems in a fantasy novel. For those of you who don’t know, the term “magical system” refers to the way in which magic operates in a particular story. It’s the rules and limitations that govern the magic in that particular story’s universe. In fantasy, it’s the writer’s job to bring the reader into their world and make them believe what they’re reading so completely that they forget they’re reading a story. We as writers must suspend a reader’s disbelief so that, for the time they hold our books open, when we say that magic exists, not for a moment do they think, “But magic’s just make-believe!”

For those of you who read a lot of fantasy, you know that the types of magic that can exist in the worlds writers create are as diverse as the races that grace the pages of such books. There’s magic like that in Harry Potter, which allows practitioners to accomplish a wide range of tasks, everything from producing light or paralyzing someone, usually by using a wand as a casting device, with the spells triggered by a specific word. In many fantasies, magic is based on the elements, allowing users to control elements like fire or water. There’s also ones like that in Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn Trilogy, in which those who have the ability to do magic can burn different metals in order to allow them to do certain things, such as enhance strength or senses, ward off sleep, or heal wounds.  There’s also magic like that in the Wheel of Time, in which channeling a force called the One Power, a force derived from the five elements of Earth, Air, Water, Fire, and Spirit allows those who can channel the Power to perform different tasks depending on the particular element from which they draw. For fans of these novels, each magical systems is so well developed and so believable that people the world over talk about them as though they are real, and the laws that govern those differing systems have seeped into the consciousness of the world at large. Every avid Wheel of Time reader knows the five elements or “threads” of the One Power, that only women can channel the Power safely, and that if men do it, they go mad. And because of Harry Potter, every child the world over knows that “lumos” is the spell that produces light at the end of one’s wand, and “Alohamora” unlocks a door. Was it just luck that readers came to believe in these magicks so completely? Well, perhaps it was partially that. But it was also the result of knowing how to create a believable system under which the magic operates on the part of the writer. But what’s the formula for creating such a thing?

From what I’ve read and through experience, creating an effective magical system has five components. Source, Limitations, Credibility, Purpose, and Price.

Let’s start with Source, since it’s the easiest to explain. It’s just what it sounds like, the source from which the magic of your world comes. This can be a person, a place, an object, or other element. Magic should never just come from nowhere, without ever being explained. In every great fantasy, magic comes from a source that is eventually revealed to the reader. When it is revealed later in the story, readers still have a sense, early on, that there is a source for the magic even if they don’t know what the source is. In Wheel of Time, the provider for the One Power is literally called “the Source,” and it’s described in detail in the series. In Harry Potter, magic was carried through a wand, but the sources for the magic itself were various elements that existed at the core of the wand. Dragon heartstring, unicorn hair, phoenix feathers; elements like these embedded in a wand gave the wand it’s magic. Establishing a source for the magic in your world ensures that the magic doesn’t feel random or thrown in without being planned out and thought through.   

Our next component when creating a well thought out magical system is limitation. It’s important to implement limitations on the use of your magic in order to create a “real world” feel. Much like a source, everything we do has a limit. Airplanes only fly so high, humans are only so strong, elastic bands only stretch so far. In terms of magic, limitations run from what tasks a person can perform with which enchanted object or element they use, how much power they can draw on or when, and who can use what power and in what way. Without limitations, things would be too easy for your characters, and it would be impossible to create conflict. Limits are put on us in real life because without them we would not be human and life would be very boring. Along with any other element in a fantasy, magic needs to work the same way. A character who can defeat anyone or overcome anything without struggle or limits has no opposition, and without opposition, there is no conflict. Without conflict, the story has no driving force.

It’s also important to give readers a sense of the limitations that exist within your magical system as early in the story as possible. Rules like, who can use magic and why, how it’s used and when. This helps to establish a real world feel and allows your reader to feel grounded within the story, rather like allowing an alien visitor to quickly see how the world works so that they don’t feel lost. Early establishment of magical rules also lets publishers and readers sense the possibility of a strong conflict in the story, despite the existence of something that, without clear rules, has the potential to wipe out all limitations.

For limitations, I’ll use the Wheel of Time series, since it has the most definitive set of rules of any magical world I’ve read. Set in an alternate-Earth type world, the primary force of magic in the series is the One Power, which I described earlier. Early on, the author, Robert Jordan, established three core rules about the Power.

1)  Based on the five elements of Earth, Air, Water, Fire, Spirit, the One Power comes from the Source, which is divided into two halves, the male half (Sadin) , and the female half (Sadir) Only males draw from Sadin, only females from Sadir.

2)  Only women can Channel the Power safely. If men do it, they go mad.

3)  Women who can channel are born with the ability, and are comparatively rare. Usually they have to be taught to channel or they die, but an extremely small amount are born with the instinctive knowledge of how to do it, and these, called Wielders, can channel without risking death.  

These three facts were laid out early in the first book. With them, Jordan establishes three things. By telling us who in his world can channel the Power, Jordan shows us that the ability to channel is not a common, everyday thing, and there are limits, such as that only women can do it safely. If everyone in a story can use magic, magic is no longer special, and becomes too ordinary. It gets boring. Telling us how it’s used and where it comes from (from the Source, drawn on like water from a skin) he establishes origin, making us feel grounded in the story with the knowledge that the magic doesn’t simply exist because he says so. By telling us that women have to be taught or most often die, he’s offered the possibility of conflict. Early in the story, he also established what each element of the One Power does. Fire, Water, Earth, Air, Sprit. This gives us a sense of cohesion, that the magic has a defined, solid, and consistent formula by which it operates. Later in the story, he allows us to see the complex underpinnings of his system when he reveals that those who channel can perform added tasks if they draw on more than one element at once and weave the magicks together, such as using Water and Spirit to heal. Throughout the series, the magic always works the same way, remaining consistent. Which brings me to my third essential component in developing an effective magical system. Credibility.

Credibility is simply the ability, on the part of the writer, to establish the rules of his/her world and then back them up with action and information that fits those rules. Once rules within a world have been established, you can break them, but there has to be a reason why.

Lets use Harry Potter for this part. Rowling established early in the first Harry Potter book that spells are cast with the use of a wand. She also revealed that Muggles are people who can’t use magic. The moment we saw the spell used, we knew that the word ‘lumos’ lights up the end of one’s wand, a lot like a light bulb. If a character suddenly said lumos to make something float (the word for that is ‘wingardium leviosa’) Rowling would have lost credibility. Similarly, if a Muggle said lumos, with or without a wand, and light suddenly appeared in the darkness, she’d have lost credibility, since we already know that only witches and wizards can use magic.

In the fifth book, Rowling appeared to break the rule at first. A well known Muggle from Harry’s neighborhood suddenly came to rescue Harry and started talking about wands and Muggles and other magical stuff that only a wizard or witch would know about. But then we quickly learned that the woman was in fact secretly a witch, employed to watch over Harry while he wasn’t in the wizarding world. Rowling backed up the credibility of her world and its rules by having the woman use a wand just like any witch, having her know things witches know, and having her familiar with certain people Harry knew to be other witches or wizards. Had the woman failed to use magic the way every other witch does, and didn’t know certain things about that world, readers would have stopped trusting Rowling as their guide through the Harry Potter-verse. They would have been pulled out of the story, no longer able to freely suspend their disbelief enough to take the impossible, that magic exists, as fact, for the time they are reading the stories.

So, onto the forth step. Purpose. When inventing a type of magic for a novel in which fantasy is your primary genre, it’s necessary to create a system as unique as it is interesting. But magic also has to have a purpose within the story. In other wards, you shouldn’t invent magic just because you like the idea, or because it’s fun. The magic has to, if not provide the key conflict within the story, then be elemental to the main conflict in some way. In other wards, if you take the magic out, the plot doesn’t make sense and the story can’t be told. Things must happen in the story that couldn’t occur without the magic present.  

For example, the main villain in Harry Potter was Voldemort, who was an extremely powerful dark wizard. Throughout the series, Harry had to become quite good at magic in order to defeat him. Without magic, there would have been no Voldemort, without Voldemort, there would be no villain, no main villain, no main conflict. Magic was also a part of every facet of the series, in that the main focus of the books was Harry and the other main characters learning how to use magic. Without it, the story would have fallen apart.

In Wheel of Time, the entire series, and every event that occurred in it, brought the main character, Rand Al’Thor, closer to the Final Battle, a confrontation with the Dark One. The Dark One is trapped in a prison in a place called Shayul Guol. The series isn’t finished, and the Final Battle hasn’t happened yet, so we don’t yet know what it is Rand will have to do in order to defeat him. But, it is clear Rand will have to use all his abilities and strength with the One Power in order to destroy the Dark One when he finally escapes his prison, all while avoiding the Madness that worsens every time Rand uses the Power. Though the Dark One can’t actually walk the living world or attack Rand directly, he does find other ways to hurt him, such as through dreams, usually making the use of the Power more and more dangerous. Rand’s only advantage against, not only the Dark One, but also other minions who serve him, is the One Power. So, like with Harry Potter, without magic, the story would make no sense. In both stories, magic is not the main conflict, but it’s the primary weapon with which fights are won and battle is waged. The magic isn’t there to pretty up the story, it has a purpose, one which another form of weaponry could not accomplish without completely changing the plot.

This leaves us with the final component necessary for an effective magical system: a price, or put another way, a drawback. This probably sounds like it falls under the category of limitations, but this is a little more definitive. What I’m speaking of here is the price those who use the magic pay for doing so, the drawback that comes with using it. Why is this important to have in a magical system? Well, in this sense, the price works the same as other limitations. Without a drawback, your characters would be using magic all the time and things would become too easy.

For the example here, we’ll go back to Wheel of Time. When using the One Power, the price men paid was the Madness, which caused not only the implied insanity, but also a wasting decease that eventually caused slow and painful death. In addition, this particular type of insanity caused the man to kill everyone around him. So it was pretty easy to understand why men didn’t want to discover they could channel, which, if they could, happened usually without them even meaning to do it. In the case of both men and women, each time they channeled, they felt an irresistible urge to draw more of the Power. The more one channeled, the more one wanted to channel.  For men, this meant the Madness came faster, death sooner. For women, if they drew too much, they ran the risk of “stilling” themselves, which basically meant they permanently cut themselves off from the Source, never able to channel again. Once that happened, the woman would long to feel the One Power coursing through her all the time, a longing comparable to the grief felt after a loved one’s death. So women had to learn to ignore the temptation to channel without need, and to fight the urge to draw too much. Plenty of conflict there. There were other prices imposed on the use of magic in this series, depending on the situation, but the aforementioned were the constant ones that permeated all facets of channeling. By attaching these prices on the uses of the magic, Jordan accomplished several things. He established magic as something that couldn’t be used as an easy way to solve conflict, he avoided characters becoming too powerful to create problems for, and he established a real world feel to his magical system that made it easy for readers to feel they were a part of the story.

Save God alone, everything in this world comes from something, all things have limits, everything is there for a reason, and nothing that produces easy solutions ever comes without a price in real life, so why should readers expect less of your worlds?

These days it’s becoming increasingly rare to read a fantasy without a form of magic that doesn’t feel overdone, or which doesn’t make things appear too easy. What about you? If you could choose to create any type of magic, what would you like to see? And what do you see writers doing that ruins an otherwise great magical concept in a story? Tell us!

Until next time everyone, write on!