(writing craft/navel-gazing) Pondering on the vagaries of a story...

[vg_ford]

I'm listening currently to Owner's Share by Nathan Lowell. and it's making me think about storytelling. If you haven't listened to and/or read any of Nathan's stuff, I highly recommend it. Although there's a bit of a body count in Ravenwood, his fantasy novel, it's the Ishmael Wong stories that have captivated me since I was introduced to them last year about this time.

I don't usually like stories that don't have what I guess I'd call "Save the World" plots. You know, defeat the big bad or the world as we know it will end. Then again, I like more fantasy/sword and sorcery/urban fantasy type stories. That, or horror. The stuff I write, usually.

The Tales of the Solar Clipper are not really like that. It's a journey, one that starts with Quarter Share and sadly, will end with the end of Owner's Share. It follows Ish from the horror of his mother's death (she dies in the first or second paragraph of Quarter Share, so that's not really a spoiler) right after his 18th birthday all the way through his life - his career as a spacer, his choices, how he deals with life in the Deep Dark. It's a fascinating listen/read, and I highly recommend it to everyone, not just because it's that damn good, but because it's That Damn Good.

Nathan is a storyteller. He spins amazing stories, with real, honest characters. It's not the production, although he's solid in that respect. It's that, when he reads his words, the worlds and lives he's created spin out like a movie, or one of the really good radio dramas of old. He's got everything, and even the minutiae of Ish making coffee or Cookie making dinner is fascinating.

I keep relistening to them, hoping to figure out how he does it. Kind of like going over and over to a magic show, watching the magician in the hopes of learning how he does the amazing illusions. And I think I'm starting to figure it out, just a little.

Nathan KNOWS his characters. I get the feeling, as I listen, that he knows every single little nuance of their beings, even if he doesn't realize it at first. You can hear it in the way he voices them, in the small details that seem like throwaways but really reveal the deeper character. These aren't just words on a page.

They're PEOPLE.

Stories don't work unless the characters, the PEOPLE, in the stories do. And that's what I'm beginning to realize is one of the keys to good writing. Folks care about the people in the stories.

I'm thinking that's why the Advent Story clicked so well. I was getting emails, not about the story, but about Molly and Schrodinger. What were they going to do next? What else could I come up with? I won't lie - the emails continued after the story ended. And that was really cool.

So I've got characters on the brain. I'm hoping you folks will like the next set I trot out (more on that soon, as soon as I can talk and post stuff about it). And I'm thinking about the next novel I want to write, when I finish Rites, which WILL BE THIS MONTH.

More later. Now, I gotta get to bed.

Comments

[peartreealley.livejournal.com]

The "how do I make poignant stakes that aren't END OF THE UNIVERSE" is something I'd been pondering about for a while. I've been reading more and more books without them (mostly outside of sf/f genre, although that doesn't mean they don't exist), and when I was reading Writing the Breakout Novel, the mechanics of how that worked for me started to click. You're coming down the right idea path: if you can make the reader care enough about the character, the things important to the character, even if they are more about saving the family home than saving the planet, become as important to the reader is if the world were at stake.

[vg-ford.livejournal.com]

Exactly. The next part is figuring out HOW to make those characters ones that people want to invest it - it seems equal parts craft and luck. Which is why I linked to Nathan's books, because I have yet to read something of his that doesn't hook me like that.

[irysangel.livejournal.com]

You know, this is something I am still learning. I think I walked backward into it for the first series, but with the new books (and my YA that I am revising for my agent veeery slowly) I didn't give the characters big emotional stakes.

Someone told me that I needed to give them something they wanted. Like the Disney song that the heroine always sings at teh beginning of the movie. Belle wants adventure in the great wide somewhere. Ariel wants to be part of your (human) world. Mulan wants her reflection to show who she is inside. Etc. Then you give them a task that goes against everything they want.

That's the most boiled down shorthand version I can think of easily (ha!) adding personal stakes that have nothing to do with how big or small the plot is around them.

[peartreealley.livejournal.com]

... okay, I love the boiled down version with the Disney heroines XD

[vg-ford.livejournal.com]

Me too! Disney heroines FTW!

And yes, this does make a lot of sense.