Good Advice on Writing: One Author's Perspective on Another's

A week or so ago I was given a book titled Good Advice on Writing. The book is a tome of quotations from famous authors to other writers about a variety of topics. I thought it might be pertinent to share a few of the quotes that caught my eye, and to talk a little about them. 

AUDIENCE

"Better to write for oneself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self."

                                            --Cyril Connolly

As I was browsing the quotes in the book, this one was the first to catch my eye. What Cyril Connolly is trying to say resonates with me a level that I think many writers can relate to. Writing is an artistic endeavor, much the same as painting or making music. When we put our thoughts on the page we are baring our souls to the reader with the distinct hope that what we have to say will mean something to someone else. 

Why write for yourself? I can only speak for myself to answer this question, but the truth is that if I worried always about what my reader might or might not like, my books would never get written! I was a reader before I was an author, and so the specific loves I have for certain tropes and themes finds its way into my own stories even if I don't realize it at the time I'm writing the novel or story. The same thing goes for the aspects of stories that I don't like. One of the particular tropes that I dislike would never find its way into my story because I don't write stories that I don't like. 

Shouldn't authors think about their audience before they write? Of course we should! Doing our homework is part of the business of being an author. But there are two separate sides to being a published writer. The WRITING AUTHOR and the PUBLISHING AUTHOR. The writing author is the side that must concern themselves with the craft of the story. The writing author must keep plot and character motivation in mind while making the story they love come to life. The PUBLISHING AUTHOR is concerned with the business side of writing. This includes selling the stories we write. In order to find our targeted reader groups we have to do research and study genre and shelving and meta-data tags. It's hard to meld these two sides of writing when it comes time to put our stories on paper. How do we choose between what our target audience EXPECTS us to write, and what we WANT to write? There's no real answer to that question, because each author approaches the solution differently based on their personal goals for their career. 

In many ways, my books don't fit into expected genre roles. Redshift is both hard science fiction, romance, and time travel. Desolation is fantasy romance and literary fiction. Providence combines fantasy romance elements, many pantheons of gods, and pirates! Deciding how to present these stories to readers can be a challenge, because there are so many categories the stories can fit in to, and many readers who can relate to them. When it comes down to it, as an author I fall squarely into the category of writers who write to satisfy themselves first, with the hopes that readers will fall in love with the stories, too. I could never force myself to write to reader expectation if I hated what I was writing-- my distaste for the story would show in every word and readers would see it immediately!

So, in the end, I think I have to agree with Cyril Connolly. Writers who satisfy themselves first, will inevitably satisfy readers. And that's our true goal-- transporting readers to worlds and into situations we create with hopes they will love them as much as we do!

FIND THE BOOK HERE

Writing Characters No One Likes

Writing Characters No One Likes

Writers have a hard job. We sit down to write a story that we hope will appeal to readers, and that our readers will ultimately enjoy. But, sometimes we have to write about characters we know our readers won't like, won't identify with, and probably won't understand. It's not fun, but it's necessary. 

But, Amy, why do you have to write about characters I might not like?

Well, dearest reader, frankly, some people suck. It's a universal truth that spans all continents, all countries and all levels of existence. For every good, decent and amazing person you are blessed to know, there are those you wish you'd never met. But, you know what makes those people necessary? They help you grow. Learning to deal with them, interact with them, and overcome them is what helps to mold the person you are today, tomorrow and forever. The same is true of the character in the book that you might despise. Hate. Want to punch in the face. That character is important both to the reader and to the protagonist/main character. 

Amy, I can't think of any characters I don't like.

Well, let me help you with that. Readers of Stephen King novels might remember Andre Linoge from Storm of the Century. He was a bad, bad guy. Intriguing. Evil. Necessary. Readers might have hated him for what he did to the poor people of Little Tall, but he was necessary to propel the story and to force the other characters to evolve. This example is a bit of a cheat, because I chose the obvious villain of the story. You're supposed to hate him. 

Let's discuss another Stephen King work: The Gunslinger. While Roland Deschain is arguably the main character of the opus, he is also a wholly unlikable fellow. He is admittedly selfish, narcissistic and plagued by an obsession for his Tower that rivals the heroin addiction of his friend Eddie Dean. King did a masterful job of making Roland's flaws evident to the reader to the point where hating him becomes a second nature, but you're invested in him. You must see him through to the bitter end. 

Have you ever written a character that readers hate?

Well, reader, that's a question for the readers. I love all my characters, even the ones who are irredeemable. If you forced me to choose a character that readers might hate I'd have to say that Edge from An Enduring Sun might be a good fit for this category. The "man" literally has no redeeming qualities. He is about as appealing as bikini wax with a hive of African Hornets. In other words, he's a nasty fella. But, he is necessary. Edge and his cohorts appear in An Enduring Sun not as the villains (though they certainly are) but also as squalid memory of a past my heroes would much rather forget. Stomping them out is cathartic for the guys in Aeon Project, and so Edge and his nastiness is necessary for my heroes to evolve as they must. 

Ever want to redeem the irredeemable?

I LOVE villain to hero stories. Especially if the author can make the turnaround all the more surprising! My favorite book in ALL THE WORLD is Heart of Obsidian by Nalini Singh. She took a character that seemed downright evil in the first few books of her series, and she gave him a redeeming quality that turned that black-hearted devil into a hero that no reader could ever forget. I CRIED when his past and his reasons for his actions were revealed to the reader in the most masterful turnaround in all of writing history. It's a credit to an amazing writer who knows her characters so well that she could make him loveable. He's still not necessarily a "good" guy in the best sense of the word, but he's not evil and that's just swoon-worthy stuff for a romance reader. 

So, to sum it up-- writing a character no one likes shouldn't be reserved for the villain only. Don't get me wrong, we need villains, too. But your characters will have a bigger impact if their flaws can be used to create evolution in the story and the other players in the game. Being able to create worlds where mean-spirited, nasty people live will make it much more realistic than a world where everyone farts rainbows and sings in the choir. Sometimes, the bad guy wins, too. 

--From the desk of AR DeClerck, lover of all black-hearted rogues with secret hearts of gold. (But sometimes, a jerk is just a jerk!)