On Writing:

I've tried to think of topics that affect me on a day to day basis to put in this blog. I didn't want to make it a “writer’s blog” that would only interest writers. But I know, based on my Twitter following and the Sub-Reddits I post on, that I would have to write some things about writing.

So here is my general view on writing. This includes the things that have been bugging me in the last week or two while browsing Twitter and Reddit.

Write 

Why are you not writing? I’m not talking about avoiding distraction or scheduling time in. I’m talking about finishing the shit that you’ve started. Please stop posting five paragraphs of your first chapter on Reddit, then taking the feedback you get and starting the chapter over from scratch, then posting the new paragraphs of the same chapter again, then... you get the idea.

Clichés

Okay, I know clichés can be off-putting. I’m not talking about the turns of phrase you’ve heard a million times. I’m talking about the concepts that have pervaded certain genres for decades, if not centuries. Some of these concepts are archetypes. They speak to the audience we are trying to reach. I write fantasy. From a fantasy perspective, there are certain archetypes that I’m hearing now are being considered hackneyed or clichéd.

• The orphan with a great destiny: I loved stories like this when I was a kid. They spoke to me. And in these times of bullying and terror in schools, this is a great archetype to hang on to. If I were a kid nowadays, I’d love to escape into a fantasy novel where the hero is a young person like me. I think that writers don't like this because they are now grown up and don't relate to the orphan anymore. But if you are writing what is now called YA (which most of the fantasy from my childhood would be called if it was written today), then your audience will relate.
• The Hero’s journey: I heard on a writing podcast that we shouldn't write stories about the hero’s journey anymore. They are old and clichéd. I wanted to reach through the speakers and strangle the popular fantasy author who said this. The hero’s journey is an important story to tell. It describes the perilous path to self-improvement.

The important thing here is that there are many stories that are told over and over again for a reason. They deserve different interpretations.

There is the key: Different Interpretations!

Don’t tell the same story in the same way. In my trilogy, The Never-Born, I tell these stories, but I tell them in my own way. I take clichés and turn them on their head. That is part of the reason I’m writing the story. Hell, the bad guy is even the “orphan” kid’s father! And I make fun of this idea when one of the characters blurts out “Do you know how Star Wars that is?”

But in The Never-Born, I take this hero’s journey and pay it off at the end in a completely different way. I have tried to make my interpretation different than others. It’s the story inside these concepts where the reader will see the payoff. It’s fantasy. It’s escapism. It’s telling a story that resonates on a subconscious level. These are the important concepts of writing. There is nothing new. No one is telling an original story. No one. Not Neil Gaiman, not Brandon Sanderson... no one. We are only telling the same stories in different ways. That is what being original is about.

Take the cliché and make it your own.

Voice

How do you express your voice? This is a question I’ve been seeing on the periphery of a lot of Reddit and Twitter posts, not to mention many blogs I’ve been reading. Veteran authors are constantly telling us newbies to “find your voice”. What does that mean?

To me, it means telling your story how you want to tell it. I’m constantly reading posts and articles about “how” to write. People telling me that I can’t write a certain way.

For example, they say, “only use said and asked” for dialogue. Never use any other type of dialogue tag. Use action to express how a characters voice sounds.

Well, I’m an auditory guy. When I write dialogue, I hear the voices. I want my reader to hear the voices as I do. So sometimes I’ll use things like “growled” and “whispered”. Why should I leave a reader guessing about the sound coming out of my character’s throats? I want the passions to be expressed without having to resort to stage actor blocking (The type of OVER-EMPHASIZED ACTIONS that stage actors use so the people in the back row can see them).

That is my voice. That is how my books will always be and I make no apologies. My dream is for my readers to suddenly break out in reading the dialogue aloud as they read as I used to as a kid.

I’m a dramatic writer. I trained as a screenwriter, for film. My writing is short on exposition and fast paced. I try to be cinematic, so I use motion and the environment when I can. I use conflict dialogue a lot. I feel uncomfortable when I need to write long descriptions, but I know sometimes I have to. I discovered while writing my second Never-Born novel that I had to recap some of the events from the previous book and that nearly killed me. It was "too much" exposition, even when it was scattered through the book as needed.

That is my voice. What is yours?


There was another thing that was bugging me, too, but I forgot what it was and this post is running long anyway. If I remember or the issue rears its ugly head (see that? Cliché! Bite me!) again, I’ll post about it. And, who knows? I might just change my opinion on “said and asked” for another project. I’m only 3 novels in, so I’m still learning and finding my voice.

I think by the time the next post comes along, I’ll have seen Ender’s Game. I’ll post my first movie review here when I do. I’ve posted reviews of almost every fantasy/sci-fi movie I’ve seen on Facebook for the last few years, but I’d like to use this blog for that from now on. I can be more detailed and express myself better in a slightly longer format.

Well, I’ve hit my 1000 word mark, so I’ll catch you all later!