Leasspell

Nowadays, we’ve expanded, and have members all over the world. So sitting in the same room means using Google Hangout and a moderator, so everyone has equal air time.

Needless to say, we don’t do that very often. We typically use Google Drive: someone uploads a couple of chapters, and the rest of us take two weeks to read and comment. Yes, it’s more sterile, and yes, it’s a slow process. But so is diamond mining—worthwhile doing for the occasional gem you get.

I have gone on record attributing any success I’ve had as a writer to my group. But it’s not for everyone. I was told once that there is no such thing as “constructive criticism”; only feedback. That’s what you’ll get, and lots of it. How you use it is up to you.

A writer’s group isn’t a cheer leading squad, routing for your every word, and whooping for your unique ideas. It’s a tool. Nothing more.

You wrote a book. You want someone to read it. You want someone to tell you the idea is sound. That’s not what the writer’s group is for. That’s what a husband/wife is for (okay, some call them beta-readers, but we know the truth).

The real problem with writer’s groups is they are people. People have ideas. And these ideas aren’t always the same as yours, or even each other’s. Some people think you should use more onomatopoeia, and some people hate that. Some people like alliteration, and some people hate that. Consider then if you write, “Sally sickeningly smiled at the blade as it hit its mark with a satisfying thwack,” you’re liable to get two people hating it, for completely different reasons. It’s your work; it’s your decision. Maybe you hadn’t realized that you used too much alliteration and this was a good reminder. Or maybe you really like the sentence as it stands. That’s your choice.

Writer’s group are sounding boards. They are readers. And if you’re in a good one, odds are few people on the planet want you to succeed more than them.

You’ll get a few “I hate whatevers” in the group, and you know that and ignore it. But if everyone in the group told you, “it’s too wordy, and you need to get to the point,” then odds are it’s too wordy, and you need to get to the point.

“But,” I hear you ask, “fixing that sentence isn’t fixing my world. That’s what I need! I need to know if this is working.”

Are you sure? You’ve read many stories that failed to have a beginning, or a middle, or an end, and it didn’t matter to you. The writing is what kept you going, kept you turning the page. If there were typos, if there were terrible, flat characters, or if it was hard to read, it could be the most engaging quest imaginable, and you wouldn’t care. You’d set it aside and wait for the movie.

Writer’s groups aren’t supposed to help your creative process. They’re supposed to help you iron out the rough patches and preen your point of view. They are combs to help you untangle your words and ideas.

“I don’t have that kind of time,” I hear you say. “I need immediate feedback.” This is a tool. Like any tool, rushing its use will yield shoddy and sloppy work. Your fellow writers would like that too, having everyone read the entire book. There’s only so much time we all can spend writing and reading and commenting and re-writing.

It’s hard to hear criticism, especially regarding something you love. Writer’s groups are a way to hone the writing skill. They aren’t supposed to simply read your work, they’re supposed to make you a better writer.

And I firmly believe, there is always room for improvement.

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DON’T FORGET: Leave a comment this month on any blog on Leasspell and win The Dead Man’s Deal for your Kindle.

When Winki Witherspoon lost her husband, she inherited his New Orleans mansion and his magical “talent.” Can she master it and discover her husband’s traitor before she, too, is destroyed?

 

When writing fantasy novels, I combine my imagination with first-hand accounts of explorers and athletes. But research can only take you so far. Unless you have years of fight training yourself, it’s not easy to create a believable action scene. Also, don’t impose on experts you may find at the SCA, the ren faire, or your local boxing gym. Pro fighters mean well but they shouldn’t choreograph your scenes for you. They are not writing your book. Ultimately, it is your story. If action is not clear in your mind, then it won’t be clear on the page no matter how thoroughly you discuss “what if…” with your source.

Over the years, I have come up with a unique method for staging a fight scene. Drawing stick figures and football-play type diagrams did not give me enough information. Then, I was inspired by those old war movies where generals use model battleships on a tabletop. I decided to make a 3-D storyboard by using figurines as a stand-in stunt crew.

My model figurines of choice?  Barbie dolls.

Don’t laugh. I have a big box full of Barbie and Ken dolls from my own childhood and from my daughters. If you don’t have a Barbie collection, then scrounge your local thrift shops and garage sales. The newer dolls have jointed limbs and can be posed in realistic ways. They are 11 to 12 inches tall, which scales to 2 inches per foot in the real world.

In a fight scene involving multiple characters, dolls help me keep track of all the moving parts during the days or weeks that it takes to churn out a first draft.  It reminds me not to neglect people in the background. Like a stage or film director, you can study the positioning of figures from all angles. It reveals obvious problems in your choreography and suggests movements that would not occur to you simply by sitting at your keyboard.

Some Tips

Mark out the dimensions of your scene with string or painter’s tape. Or, you could invest in a cardboard cutting board from your local fabric/craft store that has graph lines printed on it. At 2 inches per foot, a 60 foot span (such as the distance from a baseball pitcher’s mound to home base) converts to 120 inches and could be staged on a driveway, a patio, or an empty garage. How far can your hero throw that battle-axe?

Keep track of distances between characters as they move about the scene. How close are two characters standing before one makes a lunge? An average 10×12-foot room would be represented in miniature with a 20×24-inch cardboard box. Where is the window, and is the villain blocking the hero’s escape? Does he have enough room to swing his sword or would he knock over a candle and start a fire?

Use props like cardboard for walls, books for furniture, rolled up bath towels for landscaping, canned foods for rock and trees, stuffed animals for fantasy monsters, and so on. How many heroic fighters are needed to surround a troll? Popsicle sticks make good swords, and BBQ skewers can be used for spears. Masking tape can easily attach “weapons” to the dolls’ hands. A lamp or flashlight can simulate the sunshine—would it be glaring in your hero’s eyes as the villain attacks?

To make the dolls stand up, you could either invest in actual doll supplies or DIY something at home. My quickest, easy method is to wrap a sturdy rubber band tightly around the doll’s waist. Then, stick the handle of a stainless steel dinner fork in the rubber band with the prongs facing downward. The fork’s prongs should be level with the “ground” surface and be curving away from the doll’s heels. You can experiment with various sizes of utensils to see what works best.

Use a digital camera to take snapshots and quickly create a storyboard of your scene for future reference.

Question 9. Everyone has an interesting story related to their work—what’s one of yours?

The most memorable story I have related to my work is actually a sad one. One client commissioned a painting of an angel with the facial likeness of his girlfriend as a gift to her. It was to have large, elaborate wings, a sparkly dress, and be shown melting away the snow from a wintery forest to herald the arrival of spring. Excited about the idea, I set to work, sending in a preview for the starting sketch, the halfway point and finally, after upwards of a month of scribbling away, the final preview. Oddly enough, although the initial responses had been fairly quick, the one to the final never came. After some waiting and reminders, I concluded the client must have for some reason decided to bow out and left it at that.

It wasn’t until a few months later that I suddenly received the payment for the finished painting and a response; however, it was not from the client, but from his girlfriend. It was then that I learned that the original client had passed away just before the painting had been completed, leaving her a final parting gift. It has been several years since this happened, and I can safely say I’ll never forget this story.

Winter Angel, in memory of Isaac, can be seen on Liiga’s site.

 

The second book, currently titled The Cook’s Curse, is complete, and in the hands of beta readers now. I hope to have it released in May of 2015.

There is something I have been dying to ask. The idea of a cockroach as a magician’s familiar is hilarious. What inspired that?

I knew I wanted Winki to have a familiar to help her through her new life. The traditional role is a cat, which has been done to death. A dog was recently done in the Dresden Files (one of my favorite series). I wanted something unique to New Orleans, and something small so Winki could carry it in a pocket, and I IMMEDIATELY thought of a cockroach. And I IMMEDIATELY dismissed the cockroach because, well, ew! No one wants to read about roaches, right? But, the thought wouldn’t go away. Hence, Hercule.

The Dead Man’s Deal combines elements of mystery with traditional fantasy: the training and testing of a champion. Which came first, or was it all part of your initial inspiration?

The fantasy element came first, and specifically the idea of the tournament. As I wrote it, however, I wanted Winki to be more reluctant about her new role, and the mystery unraveled itself.

You changed the gender of your main character from male to female because a writer friend suggested it. It’s hard for me to imagine Winki any other way. Besides the obvious, how did that change the way you saw his/her character?

Her attitudes towards (for example) cockroaches and spiders were much easier to write since they aligned with my own biases. Surprisingly, little changed as to how I saw the character – brave, caring, a bit thick – but it changed her voice tremendously.

How did that change impact the plot?

The biggest change plot-wise had to be the beginning. When the reader meets Winki she’s in a state of depression, lacking any interaction with the world. She starts her journey from a more frightened place and grows into the champion, whereas a man would come from a disbelieving place, I think.

The book is, on the whole, light-hearted, but there are some horrifyingly cruel things that have happened to characters in the past or that threaten characters at the time of the story. Was it hard to balance those so that the tone of the story didn’t change drastically somewhere in the middle?

It was, and it remains a tough line to walk. But that is life, really. We joke, we laugh, we live, yet horrible things happen to all of us, and happen all around us. It’s our own strengths that make us laugh again.

I’ve read that you were a math major and were drawn to math because you like solving puzzles. What was it like putting together a puzzle in the form of a mystery inside a fantasy novel?

A task involving many notes! I keep lists of problems and questions (as well as characters, places, and descriptions) to make sure that I answer everything – I even had a carry-over list for “things yet to be fully explained.” The secret to fun fantasy is the tiny line of plausibility!

How much planning do you do in advance? Do you begin with an outline, or do you begin with only a general idea and write the story to see what will happen next?  Or is it a combination?

Since this is a series, I have a major story arc. Each book has a “what happens here,” a major plot point on the arc. Then. For each book, I outline – I love an outline. I don’t always stick to it 100 percent, but it gives me breadcrumbs to follow to get to that story’s big reveal.

The inevitable question in an author interview: who are some of the writers that have particularly influenced your own writing?

I’ve enjoyed Jim Butcher (The Dresden Files), Anne Rice (the Lestat novels), Laurie R. King (the Mary Russell books), and recently Christopher Moore (the novel Lamb). The largest influence came from direct feedback from my writers group, who’ve been helping me develop for over ten years now.

Did you choose fantasy, or did fantasy choose you?

I chose it. I’ve written mysteries and science fiction in the past, but fantasy just rings my bell.

You’ve lived all around the country. Do you think that has influenced your writing?

As a kid we moved a lot, and making friends could be a long process. In the meantime, I daydreamed. I think that primed the creative pump, making tapping into the bizarre and “what ifs” a little easier now. It’s also made me open to change. I’m not tied to a particular story or character; so when someone suggests, for example, the hero needs to be a heroine, I shrug and give it a whirl.

New Orleans, where I currently live, gets a bunch of credit. It’s one of the oldest cities in the US, and it hums with history and mystery. It’s hard NOT to daydream here!