Writing Tip #15

I'm participating in Camp Nanowrimo, which is the same as normal Nano, but less formally organized and such. Probably not coming near a 50,000 word novel, but I'm trying, at least. I just kind of fell on this particular idea I hold when I write, and I figured I'd blog about it instead of raising my word count.

Tip #15 - Keep love levels realistic.

Assuming you're not writing a romance story, love is something a lot of writers tend to avoid using as the main focus. We typically care more about how our hero's battle with the dragon progressed or how far the adventurers are from home than what was in the letters they sent home to their lovers.

Still, having a little love - even just a little attraction or a few sexual encounters - is important and realistic. Romance is a part of life. Very few of us go through life without ever falling for someone, liking someone they can't have, or making a mistake with their best friend.

When I wrote Among the People Lost, I didn't have a set plot in mind, and all the romance I put in really pushed it in a different direction than what I think I was going for. I think it worked out in the end, but someone reading it for the post apocalyptic setting might not get as much out of it.

If we look at works of major importance, regardless of setting, there's typically always at least a little romance present. It's what gives characters drive to defeat their foes, seek brutal revenge, or find their way home. The Lord of the Rings movies have a wedding after the day is saved, partly symbolizing the rebirth of happiness and peace after the war. I Am Legend (both book and movie) has a main character who frequently has flash backs to his wife and child, both of whom died years ago. Just to shift to video games for another kind of love, Drakengard's main character is a sadistic psychopath killing to avenge his parents and protect his sister.

Love of all kinds is a great way to make a point, especially where missed chances are concerned. Killing off your main character's love interest before he has an opportunity to tell her how he feels is the perfect way to ruin his life for a little while. It can really help make a point of the sacrifices involved in going off to save the world or being too lost in finding himself.

Like everything, I think it's all about balance. You'll have some characters who will abandon the quest to start a family, some who will fight side by side with their partners, and some who will never have any interest in any of your other characters. You'll have the over-protective and the tragically unrequited. You'll have romantic and platonic and fraternal. To some degree, though, you'll have it. 

Forgotten Tunnels

I had a pretty miserable year most of 2011. There were some highlights, sure, but most of it was downright bad. It was bad enough that it leaked into 2012, with January and February seeing the worst depression I'd had in a while, if ever. I was starting to think I was completely losing my mind and all fragments of myself, and I wondered often if I'd ever see the light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe it was a tunnel that only went down into the dark, or it was a dead end. It might never open up again.

Sometime around the 10th - 12th of March, Tim and I were at Denny's for dinner. When we were leaving, I asked if we needed anything from Walmart, since it was late and that was one of the few things open. I just really felt like going, I guess. I like wandering around Walmart. Well, we went, and we met up with a friend I had worked with at Target. She was also a seasonal hire there, so, like me, Target dropped her when the season ended. She told me to apply.

I can't explain the draw I suddenly had for Walmart, and if I tried, it would sound so absurd. I'm sure not many people look at Walmart and say, "Oh my God, I absolutely positively want to work there. That seems like the best idea I've ever heard!" I hadn't even been actively looking for a job. I was still way too busy being sad that I existed, but I went home, got on my computer, and applied.

Needless to say, I got the job, and that was probably the best spontaneous and stupid decision of my life. Because of my job, I'm far healthier, both physically and mentally. I posted about the end of my relationship with Tim and the beginning of one with my coworker Will, and almost a month of officially dating later, we're doing great. We're both wonderfully happy to be together, and I think we're improving each other's lives a lot without even really trying.

Look at this guy. He's adorable!

Because of the hours of my job, I barely see my family anymore, which means much less stress at home. I wake up, Will gets me for work, I enjoy a day of unloading trucks and moving things, and then Will returns me to my house, where I usually make him food and we talk for hours about very random things like lemon turtles. He's there for me when I'm too tired to scoop my own ice cream, and I'm there for him when he's hacking up a lung and needs soothing tea.

I was just looking back over my blog earlier tonight and saw all the posts about being very depressed. It feels like that tunnel I was in is now a lifetime behind me, completely overgrown and hidden away. It feels like everything has settled into place, like everything is where it should be, and like this is how it was supposed to be all along. 

Love and Stuff

I'm mostly posting this for the friends on Facebook who are probably very confused about the change in relationship status. Well, it's going to get more confusing.

Tim and I have known for a months that there was a very strong possibility he would be moving to Florida. There were times I really wanted to go with him, and times I really wanted him to stay. Sometimes I felt like he was abandoning me or pushing me aside, even though I consciously knew that there was so much more to it than that.

The people he knows in Florida are very important and special to him. He'll have a far better life down there than he's known up here in Pennsylvania all his life. At the same time, the life he's going into just isn't a life for me, and a large part of me has always known that. We've seen a break up coming for a long time.

He decided not too long ago to make a visit to Florida, and we decided that would be a deciding factor. Obviously, he decided to move down there, so we ended our relationship.

Here's the other big chunk of fun. It's called Will.

About two weeks before Tim would be leaving for Florida, I started talking with one of my coworkers. I'm not a very outgoing or social person with new people, but I opened right up to Will, and we got really close really fast. We were texting constantly and started going out to lunch together at work.

When Tim went to Florida, Will was my ride home most of the week. Sometime during that time, whether it was in my kitchen while I cooked him dinner or at the table where I talked to him about work, we got really damn attached.

Everyone at work noticed, of course. There were lots of jokes about it, and we didn't care. It was better to laugh about it at work than try to hide it and go home unhappy. There's no shame in admitting you care about someone. Still, there was the return of Tim looming on the horizon, and we had only a vague idea of where things would go from there. 

As it turns out, Tim found his calling in Florida. He found everything he could have ever wanted, all rolled up in one little town. When he came home, we talked for hours about our situations, laughed over the absurdity of it all, and mutually decided that everything had worked out far better than either of us had expected. We decided that his place is in Florida with his friends, and mine is here, with Will.

I'm sure that all seems to be some combination of stupid, sudden, and bizarre. In the end, we all know what we're doing is for the best. I'm very happy with Will. It's the kind of happiness that kind of overuled all other happiness and even took away the attraction I had for Tim. I've never experienced anything like it before. Tim's calling to Florida is the same. In that one week, we found where we need to be, and we're completely okay with the fact that our places are taking us in different directions. It's sad to see a long relationship end - it always is - but we'll stay friends, and there are absolutely no hard feelings on either side. After a long time of uncertainty, everything feels right, and in the end, that's what matters most.

Where Life Is Headed

Life's been a little insane lately, to say the least. I've got a lot going on in quite a few different areas, and there's a lot I want to balance out and get done.

Life

Personal life has some major shifts, which there will be posts about later. They've taken effect already, but it's just that they're such a huge change, they'll need a post all their own.

Gardening

I have plants growing! Sage, oregano, spearmint, and habanero peppers, to be exact. They're doing so well. It's happy-making. :)

Writing

I'm considering tackling the sequel to Among the People Lost and getting it done already. Not sure if that's what I'll do, but that's an idea. I've still got the prequel to finish writing and a few other major chunks of literature concerning the characters, and that's a lot of work. In other projects, I have The Devil's Blade and my futuristic cyborg dragon story to write.

The Dragon's Claw

I really need to sit down and come up with a game plan for this thing. I really want to get back into it, but it's really hard to do all the work myself when half the point is getting people to submit articles and such. I have enough time to put it together each month, but writing five articles an such makes it tough work.

College

I'm putting it off at least another year because (and you're going to think I've lost my mind) I love working at Walmart too much to quit.

Work

I'm really loving my job in the back room at Walmart. The people are great, and it's like getting paid to go to the gym. I've put on a lot of muscle, likely gained some weight, and generally gotten a little healthier.

Art

I'm going to be doing a lot of photography soon just because of how nice the weather should be getting and everything. I'll keep fractaling, and I haven't had much time to do drawings, but I have a bunch I need to finish and I'd like to do more speedpainting practice. Craft fairs are sprouting up this time of year, and I would do more if I had stock, but as it is, I mainly need to sit down and have a jewelry-palooza.

Summer
My friends are rebooting their gaming series Snack and Fitzgerald, so I imagine I'll be spending a good chunk of my summer days off filming videos. It should be a good excuse to get lots done and play lots of board games. 

Writing Tip #14

This is one of those things I think of every time I see something I consider to be poorly structured, and something I think is a requirement for long prose.

Tip #14: Learn how to use hated punctuation.

Semicolons, colons, dashes, and ellipses must be the loneliest punctuation marks out there in the big world of English grammar. I use all of them on a regular basis; they're pretty handy.

Semicolons are a comma/period hybrid, even in appearance. They're way easier to use than most people seem to think. The semicolon is used in those awkward sentences that would be a run-on if you used a comma, but would seem broken up if you used a period. Examples:

"It's not that it's too heavy; it's just bulky." 

"I didn't get a chance to wash the dishes; they're still there."

Colons aren't quite hated, but they're certainly misused. I think the biggest rule about colons is they never follow a verb. "The following items I need are:" is not a proper use of a colon, yet that's the way many writers use them, from what I see around DeviantART and such. Proper usage of a colon actually varies quite a bit because the examples are so specific, so if you're curious, take a look over on Wikipedia. Just for the record, I don't like the use of a colon in independent appositives. I think a semicolon looks much more intelligent. To me, using a colon seems like you aren't really sure what you're doing. I've never seen it in published writing.

Dashes are, in my opinion, a really good way to establish a voice in your writing. They can break up a sentence for more impact, whether something is just that important or it's being said or thought by a character whose thoughts happen to be very muddled. They're another punctuation mark that has lots of uses, but in prose, they're really good for one thing - cramming extra stuff into a sentence. Examples:

"I went to the store - without you, I might add - and got those billion things you wanted."

"Every time you laugh - even when you just smile - it takes my breath away."

Ellipses are one of my favorites. They're another that adds voice to a piece of writing. Let me get this basic, simple, stupidly easy rule out of the way: three dots; no more, no less. I get where a lot of amateur writers are coming from when they make an ellipsis with twelve dots. It's a longer pause in their head, so it should be more dots...right? No. English (most languages, probably) doesn't work like that. The rules on spacing varies, but as a general rule in writing, as long as you're consistent, it never really matters too much. I never use a space on either side of the ellipsis, but there are a multitude of spacing options considered grammatically correct. Ellipses are used to indicate a pause, but they're different from commas. A comma indicates different clauses and should never be used solely for a verbal pause; ellipses can pop up anywhere. Examples:

"I just don't know...which one do you like better?"

"I...you...I don't even know what to say." 

Ellipses, unlike a lot of other punctuation, can also be followed by another punctuation mark in certain cases. I've often seen an ellipses followed by a period for a total of four dots in a row, which I've done myself after seeing it in a lot of published books. Personally, I feel an ellipsis on its own isn't really a closing punctuation mark, but that opinion varies, and grammar rules are a little loose there. That's different than making an ellipsis four dots just for the hell of it. Examples:

"We're going where...?"

"She's just...I don't know...." 

So there you have it. A few rules on some very neglected and misused punctuation marks. 

The Fear Has Been Doubled!

On Easter, I slept in pretty late, and since I needed to wake up for work the next day at the early hour of 1 PM, I decided to take a sleepy pill and get to bed early.

I dreamed I was in a field on a clear, sunny afternoon. I don't know what season it was, but everything was yellow. The leaves and grass, all yellow. The real life equivalent of this field is actually at the end of my street, where there's a pond on the right, woods to the left, and a highway. In the dream, though, all traces of man were gone. There were no power lines, no light posts, and no road. Just a grassy, yellow field. I had the knowledge in the dream that some sort of catastrophe had occurred, and I was one of very few survivors.

My mom was with me, walking through the grass, and my friend Travis was off in the distance. My mom left to go to Travis, leaving me with that big wet field area to my right where the pond is/was. In that area, there was a guy probably about 20 years old, and he was afraid. He only liked me. No one else was allowed near him. I gave him food and helped keep him alive.

I gave him a bundle, started towards Travis and my mom, and then decided to explore instead. I turned around to go the opposite direction. After this point, my mind stopped including Travis, my mother, and that guy in the dream. I found a very quick way I could have gone to give the guy that bundle of food instead of the way I took, and I was pleased that next time I wouldn't have to travel over thick underbrush.

Then ghost children started pouring out of the woods.

They were lead by a little boy, about ten years old, with short, dark hair. I don't remember was he was wearing, but his shirt definitely didn't have sleeves. That's important. I also feel he may have been very dirty, but I'm not positive. I know for a fact that his hands were dirty, with yellowed nails that had dirt under them. I knew in the dream that he had been my son, and that he and the other children behind him - several dozen - were dead.

The boy mentioned something about the parent suffering as the children had suffered, and how I would feel the pain they felt. Using his right hand's middle finger, he tore a very deep gash in his own left arm, starting near the shoulder and going down about three or four inches. It must have been half an inch deep.

I felt a searing pain in my own arm, and I clutched at it as I backed away from them. Typically, pain will wake anyone from a dream, but not when sedatives are involved. I chose a bad night to have sleeping pills in my system. I don't remember if my own arm bled, but it definitely hurt a lot.

I turned to run, and when I turned around, a little girl - about six or so and in some kind of ruffly dress - was standing there. I knew that she was another ghost, and also my other deceased child. She didn't do anything. She just stood there, as I was panicking and unsure of which direction to go.

Some part of my mind recognized that I needed to escape, and even that I needed to wake up, in a very primal, basic sense. I turned again to face the boy and his followers, and since I was clutching my arm, I lost my balance and fell. As I was hitting the ground, I woke up.

I woke in a room that was not my bedroom. It was another dream. The room was a perversion of my bedroom in my old house, which had my bed on one wall, a closet on the opposite, and a window on the wall to the left, with the door on the wall to the right. Only the layout of the room was from memory; the rest was created from nothing.

My bed was a black bunk bed with many pillows, and there was a nightstand near the door with a purple lamp. The room was dark, with a purplish glow from the lamp. It looked like it was sunset outside by the lightness of the sky, though I suppose it could have been dawn, too.

I knew instantly that it was not my bedroom. It wasn't where I was supposed to be, and again, that primitive need to escape surfaced. For those of you unfamiliar with lucid dreaming, breaking free of a dream is like clawing your way up through tar. It feels like you're drowning and struggling to break the surface. Doing it while sedated is even harder.

I managed to break through the layers of fog to wake in my own bed, in my own, real, physical bedroom. Too tired to know any better, I went back to sleep a minute later.

I had a dream about children with their parents on some strange kind of elevator made of chairs. It's strange and mostly unimportant, I think.

I woke up in that dream bedroom again, and it was even more horrifying. There was a large panda plush, and this time Tim was there, holding this panda and telling me to go back to sleep or something. I don't honestly remember, but I know he was there and talking to me. Once again, I had to pull myself out of that dream world to fully wake up.

Over the course of the night, I ended up in that freakish, demented bedroom a few times, and it was always slightly different. I don't know how many times I was there in total. Most notable about the night was a painful dream of creepy ghost children in a destroyed world, and a distorted bedroom.

It was not a fun night. 

Writing Tip #13

It's been a while since I've done one of these, and my laptop is pretty much the only entertainment I've got all day, so I'd better get some writing in. This is something I think should be pretty obvious, but sometimes we writers get so wrapped up in our epic battles and raging gunfights that we forget about stuff like this.

Tip #13: Write vignettes for practice.

Vignettes and flash fiction pieces are quick pieces of writing that are not exactly "stories," as they lack a specific plot, conflict, and conclusion. They give a short glimpse into everyday life when your characters are interacting simply to interact, rather than to save the day and advance the story.

Writing vignettes has several purposes. First off, it helps with character development. Anyone following my blog at all should know how high I value that particular device. We all know how our main hero responds when someone points a gun or a sword at him, but what about his days off? Would he ever just go for a walk to enjoy scenery, or does he have people he talks to and jokes with when he's not off saving the world?

Another good use is to develop your setting. Take your characters on a little adventure. I have friends who have explored a nearby park and gone diving off a small waterfall. There's an even closer park with big tunnels that go beneath the interstate. I think a lot of people in the area must know that area like the back of their hand. Even if the reader never sees any of these little adventures your characters have, you at least have the locations in your mind and can draw upon them when you need to add a little padding to your main plot.

Vignettes are also great for focusing on characters who don't get much attention. I often notice that I end up with a few characters who have only a small handful of appearances, and that makes them harder to write when I feel they should come up. It goes along with character development, though this is more for determining their mannerisms and how they carry themselves rather than how they respond to stimuli.

Perhaps the most fun part of vignettes is releasing them to your readers after they've finished your novel and want more writing. It's fun to read about our favorite characters outside of the main plot. It gives us more information on what it would be like to know them, or even to be them.

Overall, I'd say vignettes are a great way to practice. I must have a dozen at least, and I plan on filling in enough gaps in Among the People Lost to eventually combine them into one book.