Let’s Talk About: Fantasy Side Character Names

So, last Friday, a friend wrote to commend me for my recent spree of posts.

In particular, he mentioned last week’s Let’s Talk About, saying it actually helped him, because he was considering writing some fantasy but was afraid he’d unwittingly use a few genre tropes.

So, with that in mind–and because I love writing about fantasy’s pitfalls–I decided to talk about the names of fantasy side characters and why it’s really easy for them to be super terrible.

The thing is, fantasy is a genre that requires its writers to create everything. Characters, settings, languages, trends . . .

And, naturally, names.

Now, all of us go in hard when it comes to making up the names of protagonists. If you’re a fantasy writer who’s anything like me, you usually put your favorite sounds into main character names.

In fact, I often find myself reserving those sounds for main character names, even if I don’t realize it.

And sometimes, if I stumble onto a good name, I save it . . . for main characters.

And I know I’m not the only fantasy writer who does all of this . . .

. . . because of names like “Len.”

And “Kel.”

And “Tam.”

Names that make up the pantheon of monosyllabic, fantasy side character names.

Now, despite all of the evidence to the contrary, I’m not trying to name names here; I never want to pick on particular writers, so if these names are used in one of your favorite series, apologies in advance–I didn’t know.

I’m also not talking about nicknames here (I know “Kel” is short for Sanderson’s “Kelsier,” and I love that character and super respect the man who created him).

More than anything, I’m not saying that I’m the Name Master–I basically just explained how I horde names for main characters, and I meant that.

What I am saying though is that the fantasy genre has a crappy-single-syllable-names-for-unimportant-side-characters problem. Particularly such names that are only three letters long–sometimes four, but with one letter repeated.

And, because I don’t want to keep making statements that sound like horrible, sweeping generalizations, I’ll relate all of this to myself from now on.

I struggle with this problem.

In the best novel I’ve completed so far, Memory, there exists the protagonist’s friend, Penn. Before that, in War of Exiles, I had a bunch of side characters with incredibly lazy names, my favorite of which was, and still is, “Cel.”
Now, this isn’t to say that I can never give side characters short names, but, in my experience, a short name like Penn or Cel . . . almost guarantees that the character attached to it doesn’t matter. In fact, there’s about a 95% chance they’ll be dead in two chapters.

I mean, being real about it, Penn is absolutely dead before Memory even starts.

Cel didn’t die over the course of War of Exiles, but I believe she had only one line of dialogue, at best.

It’s so bad of a trend in my fiction that the exact opposite is also true: having a rad-as-fuck name almost guarantees a side character will survive. In fact, I once texted someone about it, joking about how I just couldn’t throw away a cool name like that (and I believe I was talking about WoE’s Yodesmar, who lives on to this day).

And, maybe it’s just my hatred for spoilers, but I find that seeing all of this in fantasy fiction–finding a short side character name in a novel–while not always disruptive, absolutely destroys my immersion. Not in a “Why is that knight named Marty?” way, but in an “I just got a glimpse into the writer’s mind and hold on while I say goodbye to ‘Jek'” way.

Now, not all fantasy writers indulge in throwaway names, but I will say that some writers do. Even published ones, although they’re more likely to create side characters with lazy-sounding names that are still powerful and meaningful to the plot.

But, regardless, what I want to say here is that it’s incredibly easy for any fantasy writer to broadcast their intentions with monosyllabic side character names.

Significantly less easy: making sacrifices for realism.

Fixing It

The easiest solution for me was to start taking down names that I hear in my day-to-day. If I like it, I write it down.

And then I use it.

For any character it suits.

The Hand and the Tempest is currently riddled with such names, and the effect is awesome; everyone sounds like a living person, no matter how far in the background they are.

Even Becco, Modis’ best friend, who we may never see in the novel, is believable as a real kid who probably loves food.

There may be a simpler solution (mixing long, elaborate names with short, lazy names to keep readers guessing), but if you have to kill your darlings to write better fiction . . .

. . . then do it.

Later, Becco. I liked you so much that I was considering using you as Modis’ new name.

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Well, that was a fun one. I hope it helped someone. I also hope I didn’t just sound like a judgmental asshole.

Tune in tomorrow for I-have-absolutely-no-idea-what!

Until then, thanks for reading! And, as always, write well!

A Mess of Small Goals

Man did April blow up in my face.

If you follow this blog, you’ll know I had an incredibly clean, specific plan for April. A plan that started with a content edit of War of Exiles, the book I’ve been working on since 2005 through various phases of my writing career. A plan that was so clean and so simple that I should never, ever have expected it to go smoothly.

Because, hey, we’re writers, right? Writing comes first… until work and life come first. Without getting into it, I had a family crisis that thankfully resolved itself, but before I knew that, I was preparing to move and resigning myself to fail at paying my mother’s debts like I promised I would a year ago. No big. No problem. Just an epic personal failure and a disruption of my life plans.

Of course, the crisis being a dud was nice, but the effect is, I’m starting the content edit for War of Exiles way later than intended.

The odd thing about it is how incredibly guilty I feel. I’ve already opened up a lot more than I usually do with my posts, so I’ll keep leveling with you here; I feel like a lazy scumbag because I haven’t started the edit yet… despite having perfectly good reasons. The reasons being the crisis, the fallout (compiling and sending a bunch of story files from my ancient iMac to myself because that’s Writer Priorities right there), the second fallout (trying to catch up on work hours I missed because of the first fallout) and maybe a matinee of The Winter Soldier somewhere in there (shut up—it was essential).

The thing is though, those were perfectly legitimate reasons… to not write. So why am I beating myself up about it? As my friend and fellow writer, Justine Manzano, put it in an email, “I love how you say you weren’t diligent enough because you were working.”

And why is that, when I clearly see how unrealistic that guilt is, my reaction is still a distracted grunt and, “Damnest thing… You write today, btw?”

I really don’t have an answer for this one; this is absolutely not one of my workshoppy, peer-counsel posts.

All I can say is, I’m… actually glad that I reacted to that guilt… with pressure.

Is that horrible? I have no idea. But regardless, I’m making absolutely no effort to change that writing pressure reflex, even though it sucks. Because, to put it into the most mature terms I can think of, every writer… wants to be that Lvl. 99 Master of the Iron Quill. I used to be completely incapable of writing anything if there was any noise in the room… until I forced myself to work through the cars blasting music outside and the party going on upstairs. That’s Lvl. 5 nonsense of course, but the point is, if I ever trip, I should hit the floor with red correction pencil and the final page of a manuscript in hand.

And, as obviously unrealistic as that is, it’s always better to strive for that than shrugging and thinking, “Meh. I’ll get to it next week,” isn’t it? Or do I have this all wrong? This is the profession where you compound super unhealthy mannerisms like staying inside and shunning the real world with totally unrealistic personal standards, isn’t it? Phew. Thought I was in the wrong place for a minute.

At any rate though, through a mess of small goals, I’m finally ready to start the content edit of War of Exiles (the Project Progress Bar at the top right of the page has already been changed—that’s commitment).

To summarize, I finished March with a solid short story outline for The Hand and the Tempest with lots of extra plot details and a much looser novella outline I’m planning to expand on after the content edit of War of Exiles is done. Of course, I have to own up and say that March wasn’t as productive as I was hoping and, as it always goes with writing, I wasn’t able to finish a large project in the tiny, unrealistic window I gave myself. But I promise to continue striving for “Still not good enough.” : )

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I will be busy with the novel, but I’ll keep taking time out for posts (and I promise I’ll get back to the usual, workshop content in the weeks to come). Although not necessarily in this order, another Games for Writers is coming up along with a post about compiling old notes (because, seriously, all of us with the notebooks and the sticky notes everywhere, amirite?). There may even be a third issue of Red Comics, that web comic I put together whenever I seriously, seriously want to procrastinate.

So maybe pass by again or subscribe. But no matter what you do, thanks for reading!

Louis Santiago’s Fantasy Story Stats – Week 3: Tone and Spirit

Welcome to Week 3 of my Fantasy Story Stats. This is another exciting Week as it’s another where I get to go on about one of my own Stats. And really, it’s the statiest of the Stats so far—Spirit. Spirit, which was actually the first of them and the reason these posts exist at all.

But anyway, enough pre-rant. Let’s get to it.

First…

Tone: The Overall Mood of your Work

As per usual with my posts, let’s start off with something familiar that you really don’t need to hear much about—Tone. The weird thing about Tone is that I’ve always heard people mention it, but… always just mention in; I’ve been taught about characterization and narration, plot and settings, but never tone. It was always just the word—Tone.

In part, it’s because it’s obvious. Question: what’s the tone of a story? Answer: it’s the tone of a story. Light, heavy, dark, gritty, tone is obvious within the first few pages of a book and the first few moments of a movie. The very first exchange between Waymar Royce and Gared of the Night’s Watch makes it clear that George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones is going to be serious; Will’s observations of Waymar’s armor make it clear that it’s going to be a realistic approach to a genre that often celebrates impractical armor and weapons. To polarize a bit, the intro to Brandon Sanderson’s The Way of Kings boldly embraces the fantastic, establishing a much lighter, less realistic Tone. Each story defines their Tone early on and carries it for the whole book, assigning it an emotional weight that’s consistent throughout the entire story.

And, right there, that’s how I classify Tone: the consistent, emotional weight of a story (from Light to Heavy [but with an added, second classification of Fantastic to Realistic that usually coincides directly with Light to Heavy]). Light would be anything emotionally simple or literally light-hearted; something like a fun superhero comic, a more jovial or cool horror movie like The Cabin in the Woods, or a Terry Pratchett Discworld fantasy novel. On the other end of the spectrum, Heavy would be Watchmen, The Walking Dead, or Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower.

I believe the added classification of Fantastic to Realistic explains itself, but to quickly provide examples, a Light/Fantastic story would be Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time, a Medium/Semi story would be Patrick Rothfuss’ The Name of the Wind, and a Heavy/Realistic story would be Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire (by fantasy standards… at the beginning, anyway).

Finally, because I feel I have to say it, consistency is an incredibly important part of my definition for Tone. Because I’ve seen a story drastically shift from Medium to super, crazy Light in Tone and it was incredibly jarring. And I don’t usually do this, but (with a quick disclaimer that Stephen King is an established and skilled writer and I totally respect him) I will say that it was the Dreamcatcher movie. If you want a fantastic example of what not to do to your tone, you should watch Dreamcatcher. I don’t want to explain how, but it goes from emotional and personal to “Really!?” in the span of seconds.

Spirit: The Completely Subtle or Absolutely Obvious Playfulness of Your Work

Spirit is my concept and the fast way of describing it is to admit that I thought of it as “Camp” for a while. I felt I needed to change the name because camp has a pretty intensely bad connotation, but the idea persists; Spirit is the degree to which the author engages the reader. And that makes it sound incredibly unwieldy and obvious, doesn’t it? But no—it absolutely isn’t; Spirit can be subtle and silent or it can be ham-fisted and campy.

But to clarify, Spirit is a classification of playfulness. A story with High Spirit actively engages its readers through its elements, its dialogue, and its events.

A fantasy story with High Spirit Elements will feature a Millenial Fair where a kid gets special powers that only he/she can use to banish whatever evil is approaching from the north. In other words, there are elements that the reader knows and can trust that lead to moments a reader expects and welcomes subliminally. An old wizard/mentor will show up to guide the hero into the wild and teach him/ her about their powers, the hero will meet a special someone along the way, etc. And all of this is extremely comfortable for the reader because it’s so familiar.

A story with High Spirit Dialogue would be something written by Joss Whedon; obviously not exclusively, but if you’re a big fan of the Marvel Universe of movies, almost every other line of dialogue on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. so far has been a reference to previous movies or characters, often with those characters having no knowledge of those characters or their dialogue (“With great power comes a ton of weird crap,” spoken by Skye in the first episode is a fantastic example). This approach is inclusive—you’re in on the joke and you like it (or hate if you want to be like that). In other cases, the dialogue might simply be familiar with fantasy characters using one-liners or variants on Earth-Modern or Fantasy-fandom centric insults (“By Grog’s hairy balls!” or something like that, for example). At its most basic and simple, the ferocious dragon you expect only to breathe fire might instead turn out to be a female dragon who starts talking about how lonely she is, playing with the reader’s expectations and likely getting a laugh from them.

A story with High Spirit Events will follow a comforting plot structure. To put it simply, all sports underdog stories are High Spirit; you go in absolutely knowing that the Mighty Ducks (or whoever) are going to win. More relevantly, you always know that the young hero or heroine with the super rare and exclusive magical powers is absolutely going to kill that evil from the north in the end.

In contrast, stories with Low Spirit aren’t comforting. That’s the difference I want to make here; High Spirit isn’t “campy.” A story with High Spirit is not a bad thing, which I’ve tried to reflect in the examples I provided above. High Spirit stories are friendly. And engaging. And comforting. You enjoy them and they’re an easy choice when you don’t want to experience a completely unpredictable and often Heavy story.

Not to say that Low Spirit is bad either. By my definition, Jonathan Stranger & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clark would be Low Spirit. So would Johannes Cabal the Necromancer by Jonathan L. Howard, and I enjoyed both of those books. They just had very non-standard, unpredictable elements and plots that were more challenging than comforting. The very fiber of those examples was doing something completely different to great effect.

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That said, I don’t think I can keep going here without running into next week’s stats, Novelty and Concept. If this is your first time reading and you’ve enjoyed, I’d appreciate a Like, Comment, or a Subscription. If you haven’t checked out my other Stats, you can find an introduction here, Week 1 here, and Week 2 here.

And, as always, here’s where I stand on my list of Stats:

War of Exiles

Genre… Fantasy

Subgenre… Dark Fantasy

Theme… Living with loss.

Focus… 1-Character, 2-Plot, 3-Setting

Tone… Medium/Semi

Spirit… Medium

Louis Santiago’s Fantasy Story Stats – Week 2: Theme and Focus

Apologies for getting this one out so late; crazy week. Crazy enough that I’m writing this in a laundromat. Seriously. There’s a Marc Anthony video playing on the big TV they have here… Let’s do this!

So, I’m excited about this week. This is the first time where a stat that I made up actually gets a mention—Focus. So let’s not waste any time. First..

Theme: It’s the Uniting Concept of Your Story

I feel I don’t need to spend too much time on Theme because I’m sure you already know at least 10 of its 30 million definitions.

But Theme is the uniting idea behind what you’re writing. It can be direct and it can be abstract, but it acts as a foundation for what you’re writing. It can be the moral of your story, but it can also be vaguer than that. It can be something as simple as “Doubles,” or something as complex as “Who we are as opposed to who we want to be.”

The thing about your Theme is that it should permeate every aspect of your story. It doesn’t have to, but a good writer reflects their theme in their descriptions and their dialogue. It’s mirrored in the plot and the characters, making a singular, united experience. For a theme like “Doubles,” characters should be mirrors of each other. Descriptions should be used at least twice, or perhaps certain settings should be visited at least twice with a large time gap in between (or something). So, really, of all the Stats, Theme is probably most important because it’s a foundation for your story.

And as a foundation, Theme should be your first step towards perfectly composing all of the elements of your story and a focal point for all of your Stats (particularly because it should come naturally early on in the story-building process [somewhere between making up characters and starting your plot]). Is your Tone too light for your story? Are you unsure it has enough Spirit? Does your Focus make sense for your story? Well, how do all of those elements work with your Theme?

Anyway, enough of that. On to Focus.

Focus: It’s the Story Facet You Unintentionally Focus On

Wish me luck—they put on kids shows now and I can barely do this with Mickey Mouse soft-shouting about Mouseketools.

So, Focus (ha—ironic) is the part of your story for which you take preference. This doesn’t mean a story only focuses on one facet (because no stories do that), but the one facet will naturally be more important and garner more attention from the writer. It’s not something that they realize and not necessarily something that needs to change; ultimately, I’m not even sure that a writer can change what they generally Focus on, but hey, why not try?

So, what are these facets of Focus?

Characters
Settings
Plot

I’m sure there could be more, but seriously, Mouseketools, so let’s just focus on these three.

A Character-Driven story relies very heavily on its characters. A Song of Ice and Fire is a fantastic example of a character-driven story; there are a ton of characters and we’re expertly made to care about (even/especially the villains). The major incentive for reading the series is seeing what happens to the characters. Seriously, the chapter titles are the names of characters.

A Setting-Driven story focuses heavily on the area where the story takes place that place. In most cases, the setting is ultimately the most important element and winds up being a character itself, engaging the reader by making them wonder what they’ll see next. Alice in Wonderland is a fantastic example of a Setting-Driven story. For something a little more contemporary, any of the Silent Hill games or movies are Setting-Driven.

A Plot-Driven story is something more along the lines of a thriller. The Focus isn’t on what the characters will do next or what they’ll see next, but instead what will happen to them next. These are essentially Character-Driven stories where the characters don’t have control over what happens to them (for the most part) and don’t decide what they’re doing. Generally, horror stories are Plot-Driven; you watch a horror movie waiting to see how the next person dies (or, in simpler terms, how the next plot event happens).

Now, again, all of these distinctions are not exclusive; characters will always influence your stories, just as setting and plot will. However, the prominence of these elements in your writing is important to your stories and your style as a writer, and being aware of them is another solid step towards looking clearly at any piece you’re putting together and considering its composition honestly.

For the sake of clarity, I’ll add here that when I list a story’s stats, I list Focus on a ranking system (literally as “1-,2-,3-” to denote an order of Focus [which feels more accurate]).

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Thanks for reading, and again, here’s where I stand on my list of Stats:

War of Exiles

Genre… Fantasy

Subgenre… Dark Fantasy

Theme… Living with loss.

Focus… 1-Character, 2-Plot, 3-Setting

Brand New Day – Week 24 – All in Good Taste

So, I’m winding down to the end of this time in my life. For that reason, I haven’t been too diligent about updating this blog (or, ya know, seeing friends); I’ve finally worked myself into a really productive writing schedule that’s actually supporting multiple projects at the same time. And, it’s seen me through probably more chapters in the past month than I’ve written in the past 4 combined. Do I wish I could’ve found this schedule and devoted myself to it months ago? Of course, but hey, discovering this stuff–working it into my life and devoting myself to it–is what Brand New Day’s all about, so I can’t complain. What matters is, I’m on schedule to finish the outline within the next two weeks and then devoting 100% of my time to looking for a new job (instead of 20% of it).

Being so close to the book in the past month has taken its toll though; I realized the other day, while working on chapter 14, that I had no idea whether the book was… I guess I should say “marketable.” The characters were chatting about the course of action and while reading it over again, I thought, “Will this be boring?… Is this boring?”

My brain replied with, “Well… You did just have like… a huge action scene. And this chapter is really engaging.”

To which I said, “… 8 | …,” because I realized that was not an answer.

Now, alone, that’s not a problem–I definitely ascribe to the mantra that a writer should write what they enjoy, not what they think others will enjoy. I could’ve just remembered that and shrugged the whole mess away.

But… this had happened about… I dunno, a days after I realized (finally) what the plot for the rest of the series would be. Now, you’re possibly confused by that–how the hell could I not know what the rest of the series would be like?–so let me explain; I’m more of a… casual brainstormer (I’m making up terms). I can (and totally do), just sit down and put pen to paper and ideas come out. But really, for me, the best ideas come out of nowhere when I see or hear something that triggers brainstorming when I’m not even trying. Usually what I get from a trigger is an image that I then expand on slowly. Most of the time, it’s a character doing something (a kid frantically painting a rune over and over again while a battle happens nearby, for example).

And that’s the kind of thing that happened with the plot for both sequels of The War of Exiles, which, ya know, was awesome.

Only it turns out the rest of the plot is heartbreaking.

It was either on facebook or twitter (@TheGrandSilence) that I mentioned how I hoped a character wasn’t going to die in the chapter I was currently working on. I… don’t remember if that happened (#blatantlie), but the fact is, that can always happen; I try to be as open as possible with events, leaving it up to the characters to choose what happens while I set them in different, crazy settings. Turns out though that writing like this can accidentally lead to intense bouts of depression; my characters are like… more than friends, and all they have is really rough times coming. I’m personally getting a bit jaded with character deaths, but suffice it to say that I’ve found something far worse; the second installment in the series is going to be really tough to write (if I get the opportunity to write it at all).

So, the uncertainty and the depression set in a short while back. Well, not depression, but sadness–I cried (#HoldYourViolinsTilTheEndPlease–#TheyllJustMakeMeCryAnyway). Regardless, the result was a day or two’s break, with all sorts of questions: Was this seriously worth it? Should I even bother? Are the questions the sequel’s going to pose too dark? Is the way they’ll be conveyed going to just make everyone unhappy? Was this whole Brand New Day thing stupid? Should I have just tried to get the original book published and then just try to get a steady job instead?

Well… ultimately, I realized that because the questions and themes of the sequel were so damn serious and heavy, I had a responsibility to write them down–a responsibility to the character who goes through the absolute worst of them first, and (if it so happens that this series gets published) a responsibility to the public second, as a writer, to not pull punches or sugar coat anything.

But, still, that left a residue of “Is this good?” A film of “Am I writing shit again?” and “Are people going to want to read any of this?”

And then, Ronin of HotMop Films (@RoHotMopFilms) posted this video on facebook.

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a video that was as perfectly timed as this one. As perfectly timed and, as a result, as validating; I had already at least gotten over this hurdle, right? I realized the first version of the book was terrible and I’d already worked past that. I didn’t give up.

No. I didn’t. And I won’t.

A Brand New… Vamlemtime’s Day Tribute to Baelbericht, the “War of Exiles” Character Who Got Away

If there’s one thing I love to do on this blog, it’s say one thing and be all, ” ‘S fuckin’ right, dude. S’a way to do it!” but then totally come from the other hand with, “<sigh>… Yeah… That’s the… way to do it. *sniff*”

So, hey, I thought I’d do some of the latter to celebrate this Valentine’s Day. And, ya know, maybe talk about writing at the same time—maybe stumble upon some kind of meaningful, important concept… maybe.

But, really, the learning—the important concept—shit’s not important. What’s important is paying tribute to a character who, I realized earlier today, totally did not make it to the rewrite of War of Exiles. Ladies and gentlemen, this post is for my friend…

<3 Baelbericht <3

So last year, Week 13 of Brand New Day, I wrote a post that was all about how I’d deleted a character. That was Ozi, who I’d called “the Laughing Ghost.” Still love that guy, still totally going to use him somewhere else (and I’m really excited for that), but this isn’t about him. In that post, I talked about how great and important it was to delete a character and chapter that were just not working with the rest of the plot. That’s still a good and healthy thing to do because a lot of aspiring fantasy writers (and I’ve totally been guilty of this) tend to add way too many ideas to one world or plot. The result?

Well, think of it like cooking; you’re trying to make your first dish the very best dish ever, which isn’t the worst idea, only you try to do it by adding in everything that sounds delicious… which is, like, everything in the cupboards. There’s already a jalapeno in there (intrigue?), but fuck it—empty the jar. Chocolate (romance) is awesome, so I’m going to throw that in there! Wait! Lemons (Jar Jar Binks)!? Going in! That last one was a joke, but the point’s gotta be clear; whether or not these elements are good or bad, they can’t all work jammed together with no rhyme or reason. Even a trained chef can’t make every single awesome element work in the same composition (i.e. why Dinosaurs aren’t in Game of Thrones). The discerning writer knows this and it’s ultimately why deleted scenes / characters / chapters happen.

But sometimes, deleted scenes are awesome and that’s what this post is (supposed to be) about.

Baelbericht was an awesome character who I really loved. He was a barbarian (they aren’t called that in my story, but I don’t want to get into the mess of naming analogue races [or, ya know, the mess of analogue races] right now, so I’ll just say barbarian). He had an awesome weapon that was so cool I’m not even going to talk about it. I will say that his shoulder guards were bear skulls (only the skulls were faced inward, so that it looked like he’d shoved his arms down their throats)… Not really sure how that armor worked out visually, but it was a cool, smaller detail on a character I liked a bunch.

Of course, the thing is though, I totally didn’t remember he wasn’t in the book, which says a lot about my capability to love things, right? But months ago, I’d planned out exactly how and when he would make his appearance in the rewrite.

It just didn’t happen.

So am I going to go back and write him in? Well, of course not. That’d be ridiculous and although I’m on a really awesome writing schedule right now, I don’t have time for bullshit like adding a character into chapter six and editing back up to twelve.

And really… Looking back at this character who I’d thought was so damn awesome, at this point, is like looking back at another time in my life. It’s perhaps, the same reason why I took out Ozi; I’m different now in the same way that the rewrite is different. Two years ago, War of Exiles was something else. Something I enjoyed at the time, but something that was, ultimately supposed to be a really quick project written by someone who definitely hadn’t read enough fantasy or tried to do anything more than create analog races (in a written story, at least [the series I started planning back in high school had a bunch of original races that I often go back and tinker with]).

When it came down to it though, the me I am now, nearly at the end of this extremely weird time in my life, just didn’t remember Baelbericht. Somewhere between figuring out (and always [always] writing down) exactly how my characters feel and just which twists are / should be hinted at in a scene, I’d completely forgotten to put in the generic dude with the crazy bear armor and the wicked cool weapon. And the plot (sorry, Bael) totally forgot as well. Because it isn’t a plot about giant warrior dudes battling zombies with their electric guitars (I swear that never happened in the first draft); it’s a plot about emotional people with real problems, thrown into a terrifying situation and trying to get out of it (add a bit of jalapeno).

So what’s my point here? How is this even a Valentine’s Day post? What does it have to do with anything?

Well, a major part of love is letting go, right? Whether it’s letting go of insecurities so you can trust someone or letting go of the one who got away so you can find someone else, goodbyes are essential for love.

So I thought it was appropriate I say goodbye to Baelbericht tonight.

I know I’ll see him again somewhere down the line, and I know that when I do, it’ll be awesome and he’ll be a real character. But for me, it’s just one of those Valentine’s Days that’s all about letting go.

2nd Draft Prologue Down

Today I cleaned up a few more things on the website. Primarily, I added links at the bottom of the page. Aside from that, I took back the War of Exiles Prologue I’d been so proud to show off a few months ago. I know–no backsies–but I had to; the new draft is so different in tone that leaving the old intro there felt like me posting my high school yearbook photo for everyone to see. And no, I’m not that brave.

At any rate, I’ll make up for the pull with a bunch more posts on the Photography, Inkwork, and Character Art pages. Stay tuned.

“Hey! Look at you!”

Finally a new look for the site and a few pieces up for your viewing pleasure. Nothing too major–mostly old, old inkwork. But there are two character sketches up as well–one of mine and one by Peter John. Check them out and expect more soon.

Also coming up in the near future–a look at my new writing methodology–lovingly called THE OUTLINE: for friends and family, a solid excuse for why the new draft is taking so, so long.

A Split in the Road

I remember finishing the second draft of my book. I made the last corrections and was content. My friends and I had a barbeque over it and I was pretty certain I was about to achieve total victory; there was just one edit left–the one where I would spruce up all of the writing and tie up any holes.

Only, the agent I had an eye on wanted books that were about one hundred pages shorter than mine, so major cuts had to happen. But facing that challenge, I didn’t shrink away; I knew immediately what would go. At the time, it just felt like I was being prudent. I looked at parts I’d earmarked for deletion and thought, “These chapters aren’t really important to the story.” “This scene kind of annoyed me.” “I didn’t really think this should have happened anyway.”

And then a friend linked me to a post on Patrick Rothfuss’ blog where he explained his editing process. And from there, things kind of snowballed. I found myself wondering why I was ready to send out something that had multiple nonessential chapters. I realized, really, that a few parts of my own book made me cringe because they were so campy. Most important though, I realized why these things happened: I started writing the book in 2005. Such a long, long time ago. I was 22, I was conceited, and I was a completely different writer with a whole different set of priorities. I remembered wanting things to look good and be fun, never giving enough thought to how original and different everything was. I had the ground work set for something interesting, but then dropped in old cliches because I didn’t know better back then. The result was something I enjoyed, sure-probably something that a lot of people would enjoy-but not something I wanted to submit.

So I told a coworker of mine one morning that I’d completely rewrite War of Exiles only if I could imagine a better, more original version of it’s prologue. I began plotting it out at 6:30 AM. By about 7:20, I knew there was nothing to be done. It was too much better. And there were too many other possibilities-chances to make changes that were too complicated for simple edits.

So, here I am-back to square one. My goal: to finish my “first draft” before 2012.