Guest Post from Mercedes M. Yardley: Find Your Literary Voice

Note from Cat: March 2 kicks off two months of blog content dedicated to promoting my new (first!) novel, Beasts of Tabat. There’ll be guest blog posts, original fiction, essays about writing, feminism, and life in general, and even some giveaways and contests. Here’s our first guest blogger, Kim Mainord.

(Warning: there is a terrible pun below. If you are allergic to groaning please enjoy this cartoon instead. http://youtu.be/ykwqXuMPsoc)

When I decided that I wanted to be a writer when I grew up I started collecting writing advice. Not tidbits from websites or manuals written by literati who wouldn’t touch a genre novel with a ten-foot pole. I went to my favorite authors, batted my puppy dog eyes, and said, “Please sir, I’d like some more.”

All right, I didn’t have to be that persuasive. Good thing too. I was so nervous I looked like Shaggy on espresso. Anyway”¦

One of the pieces of advice I received most often was “don’t give up” or some variation thereof. At that point in time I was still pretty naive. I had yet to complete my first story, I didn’t know about the caprices of the market, or the sting of rejection. What I did know what that this was the only career I truly wanted and there was no way I would ever consider quitting.

Oh, the schadenfreude when life proves me wrong.

What I failed to understand was that sooner or later we all have that moment. There’s no magical egg timer ticking away, warning us that it’s coming. No, like a regretful ex it rings when you least expect it and fills your life with woe.

Woe, man.

(Sorry. I couldn’t resist.)

Just like the timing, the cause is different too. It could be the daily grind, the solitude, the rejection, the one star reviews, publisher hijinks, internet trolls, etc. Whatever it may be it brings us so low that the easy 9 ““ 5 looks really appealing.

For some people it happens before the completion of that first trunk novel. For others it’s during a yearlong drought after a series of pro sales. Maybe it comes when that self-published book doesn’t do as well as you wanted. It may come in twenty years when arthritic hands insist that retirement is a good idea.

Whenever it happens the choice is the same. Tough it out or pack it in. It’s never an easy decision. But you know what? There are so many options now. Hands aren’t able to type anymore? Get voice recognition software. Self-published book not doing well? Time to try a different promotion tactic. Feeling lonely? Get some writer friends to join you in a G+ hangout or on face time. Rejection slips piling up? Use them to make lewd origami.

There are so many options, and resources for writers now there really isn’t a good reason to quit. Everything from support groups to indie publishing forums is a click away. It’s awesome!

Yes, being a writer can be hard. Publishing can twist your brain into knots faster than a Mensa puzzle. But it’s also one of the most fun, and exciting fields I know. What other occupation allows you research bomb construction techniques without fear of arrest? This is the best job around! It would be a shame to miss any of it.

If you want to know what Kim may be doing next, check out her blog: http://ninjakeyboard.blogspot.com.

Want to write your own guest post? Here’s the guidelines.
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Enjoy this writing advice and want more content like it? Check out the classes Cat gives via the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, which offers both on-demand and live online writing classes for fantasy and science fiction writers from Cat and other authors, including Ann Leckie, Seanan McGuire, Fran Wilde and other talents! All classes include three free slots.

It’s an aphorism that great fiction requires a great plot, but it also requires great characters. But what are great characters, and how do you create them?

To begin with, great characters must seem real: not superheroes, not perfect, not omnipotent and certainly not omniscient. Sometimes they make a wrong decision. Sometimes they’re afraid or even petty. Sometimes they do stupid things. My own favorite character has a very serious problem with authority. Good characters, like real people, have flaws, and may even have serious or crippling ones. If your characters do have such flaws they will have an appeal to your reader that no heroic cardboard paladin could ever match. Readers have even been known to fall in love with tragically flawed characters.

Great characters have their own complex motivations. Even in fantasy tales of good versus evil, every significant character needs to have their own motivation for what they are doing. Whether it is love, duty, hate, revenge, lust, greed or atonement, the reader needs to know just what it is that motivates the character to do what they are doing. Whether told by backstory or brought out via conversation, each significant character’s motivation should be exposed in order to make them more interesting to the reader, and to get the reader more involved in the plot through the characters. Along with having their own motivation, every significant character should be in pursuit of something – victory, success, escape, money, fame, freedom or even just their next meal – and the reader should know what it is.

Great characters are not described in detail. Certainly the character’s general appearance and nature should be presented; but the details of the character should be spelled out by the character itself in the character’s motivations, actions and dialogue. Leaving the character as an essentially blank canvas to be filled in later by what the character does is far more effective than actually going into detail about them. Additionally, any details deliberately left out by the writer will be automatically filled in by the imagination of the reader, thus making for a more personal and more enjoyable reading experience. A writer can even use the sudden exposure of a previously-undisclosed facet of a character as an effective plot device.

Now that as an author you have created some great, human, flawed, motivated characters, what do you do with them? You ruin their lives. You do that by menacing or hurting them or someone (or something) they love, by putting them in harm’s way, by tormenting them, by making them suffer. Why? So the reader can see who they really are. As Dwight Moody famously said, “Character is what you are in the dark,” and when things are darkest for your characters is when the reader learns the most about them. Failure also helps with character development: how someone deals with failure is far more telling about them than how they deal with success ever is, both in fiction and in real life.

And, last but not least, have at least one character for everyone to sympathize with. By this I don’t necessarily mean to try to present one character in a way that is sympathetic to everyone; what I mean here is that given the totality of human nature, try to have enough variation in the characters that at least one of will be able to appeal to a reader no matter what the reader’s nature, worldview, philosophy, politics, or sexuality are. Yes, this is an argument for diversity in characters, but it’s not a political argument: there are readers out there of all types, and as a writer who wants to succeed you want your fiction to appeal to all of them, or as least as many as you possibly can.

Great characters make great fiction, so be sure to make great characters.

Bio: John Johnston III is a scientist, a fiction and non-fiction writer, a board vice chairman, a university faculty member, a member of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (as well as the chair of its Grievance Committee and a recipient of its highest honor), a lifelong baseball fan, a patriot, and a political independent. He thinks that personal websites are even more vain than requested bios and refuses to have one.

Want to write your own guest post? Here’s the guidelines.
#sfwapro

Enjoy this writing advice and want more content like it? Check out the classes Cat gives via the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, which offers both on-demand and live online writing classes for fantasy and science fiction writers from Cat and other authors, including Ann Leckie, Seanan McGuire, Fran Wilde and other talents! All classes include three free slots.