Mary Catelli's Erraticly Updated and Exceedingly Ill-Organized Journal

Ah, Love and Freindship.  I first ran across any mention of it in an essay by G. K. Chesterton -- an introduction to its first publication with the rest of her juvenilia, but one that I read isolated in a book of essays. It took me a while to track it down.

( Read more... )
.

One thing I've always hated -- and I know I'm not alone -- is when characters show up and aid the hero.  For no apparent motive.  And they never acquire any such motive or even grind any axes of their own.

( Read more... )

Another reversal trick starts much earlier in the story.  When you know something will be needed in the future of the story, introduce it as the opposite of what it will turn out to be.

( Read more... )

A story needs clutter.  Well, maybe not a short-short, but even a short story longer than that, and a novel even more so.  Hints and bits of business that make the world seem large and concrete.

You can call it "local color" if you prefer.

Besides the benefits of world-building, it can -- if it's the right kind of clutter -- combat one tendency to Mary Sue.

You can make it clear that she's not unique and the universal center of attention.

There can be suggestion of other people's magic things as well as the marvel the character has; if your character has several, we can hear of others who also do so.  There can be prophecies about other people, places, and times.  We can hear of feats performed off-stage that are marvelous as the character's -- perhaps a little more, perhaps a little less, perhaps the same, according to how skilled you want the character to be, and how early it is in his career.  And people can talk about things that don't feature in the story and therefore don't relate to the character.

And -- it helps with the world-building, too.

Two birds with one stone, always useful.

How to steal a story.  How to file off the serial numbers and make it your own. . . . it's easier when you read a story and think "He threw away that idea." or "Those minor characters are more interesting than the main plot"  or "That development was a stupid waste when she could have done this." or "That backstory would be a wonderful story on its own" -- but some of the same tricks may be needed as when you just want to steal the story.

There is nothing like practice.  I am glad that my many, many, many pieces of juvenilia were handwritten -- in my virtually illegible hand-writing no less -- but it was good practice all the same.

The first trick is to always change the names.  Besides the psychological effect of making them your characters, besides the legal effect of escaping copyright, names have baggage.  You may find that Catherine has dark hair, which will change the heroine's hair all on its own.  (You can't count on the reader picking up your baggage, but you can find it useful if you write it in.)

It can be like prying a gemstone out of a rock.  You may have to take several stabs at it -- put it down and come back a few days later, when you have more distance between you and the original story.  It may feel like it can't be done, because the original story all hangs together.  But it's a necessary step.

And then you start to look at what else you can change without changing what interested you in the first place.