@hope-ann
Active 10 months, 1 week agoForum Replies Created
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@arindown Yep, everyone can comment. Thanks for the thoughts!
@esmeralda-gramilton You can tag whoever you like; you probably better know the people here who would be most interested in this question.
I like your answer. And another way to do it is using the MC as an unreliable narrator. If he or she actually does have a really good relationship with the villain, then they’ll be more likely to trust him and trust his reasonings. You can show little hints, like Esmeralda said, with the villain not showing up on time for rescues or doing these little things here or there but the MC is so sure of his friend that the reader is emotionally sure of him while someone looking closely will start to get suspicious.
There are various things that can help with this, but one of the largest is something Brandon said in a recent podcast we recorded.
If you don’t take your writing seriously, no one else will. Be willing to sacrifice free time or gaming time or such. Show that you are dedicated to what you are doing. It doesn’t mean you’ll get everything right away. But if others see you are serious about something, they’re much more likely to treat it as serious themselves.
Any thoughts or others to tag, @daeus?
My answer:
I’ve struggled with this myself. I had two MCs in different books. Both were nice, kind people who just wanted to help and save everyone. And they started feeling way too similar. There were a few things I did to figure out differences.
One was to put them in the same situation and then watch them carefully to see where they acted differently. What did one character notice that the other didn’t? Did one character pace while the other was content to sit still? Even if they’re brothers, they’ll have different backstories–or rather, different ways they view their backstories. How do they view each other? Do they fear different things? Want different things? Do others treat them differently and what is their reaction to that? It takes work, but dig down deep and you’ll find differences.
@naiya-dyani If the world isn’t real, then it’s speculative fiction; probably fantasy. 😉 There’s lots of kinds. Some have magic. Some don’t. There’s one fantasy series that is pretty much ‘this world’ except for the names of the lands and peoples. So there’s lots of kinds.
Also, here’s a cool list of fantasy sub-genres. You have to scroll down a little. I’ve not even heard of some. Honestly, you can couple about any genre with the term ‘fantasy’ and make something out of it, I think. Even if there isn’t an official term, it’s still a ‘steampunk fantasy’ or ‘western fantasy’.
Also here’s that link: http://bestfantasybooks.com/fantasy-genre.php
It’s basically…not real. So involves magic or superpowers or sci-fi or supernatural fiction.
Google defines it as: a genre of fiction that encompasses works in which the setting is other than the real world, involving supernatural, futuristic, or other imagined elements.
Ooo, hmmm. It depends on the definition of fantasy, I suppose. XD I had a girl reading a book in a fantasy world once, and it was about a futuristic type of setting. Though I suppose it could also involve powers and magic that the world doesn’t have. A world with fire powers obsessed with stories where water powers are a thing and such. Now I want to see this…
As in… fantasy is speculative fiction? Or what is fantasy? Or how many kinds of sub-genres of fantasy are there?
In the newsletter, we have discussed language once before. Actually @daeus answered that question because I didn’t know. So I’m going to post his reply here. And maybe he’ll have other people to tag since I’m woefully out of date when it comes to who is active on the forum right now.
First of all, I wouldn’t be Tolkien until I’d already mastered writing fairly well. It makes a story deep, but it’s far from essential for good writing.
From Daeus:
I suggest not getting overzealous and to just work with what you already know. The language I invented was based on the ones I had some familiarity with—Greek, Latin, and English.
If writers are trying to be original, focusing on making up dialects and slang like Brandon Sanderson may be easier.
Finally, if you do invent a language, I think it’d be neat to make the way the words are formed symbolic. For instance, in the language I created, each noun has a prefix from one of five categories, each symbolically linked to one of the four races + monsters. A noun with a prefix linked to a certain race is thought to have qualities similar to the stereotypes of that race. It could even be possible to make the construction of language grammar thematic, though I can’t say I’ve heard of it being done.
There is also a professional book on this topic that I haven’t read called The Art of Language Invention.
@daeus-lamb Nice! The one critique I have is the first line.
Failing to save her fourteen years ago haunts his memory,
The ‘her’ is vague and not explained and threw me because I was expecting to be told who she was. If it was even just a generic description like ‘sister’ or ‘one he loved’ or… something better than that. XD But something, I think it would be better.
@naiya-dyani They are fairly similar though there are distinctions like the ones mentioned. Those were mainly formed later as we focused on where we wanted to go.
How everything happened is a bit of a long story. But the basics are that Reagan was the owner. And had just got married and was really busy. And Josiah helped run things for a bit, but in the end it didn’t work out because they both had slightly differing visions. So they decided it would be best to implement the different visions separately. So Josiah got up the plan for Story Embers and since Reagan was very busy with life, he kept up Kingdom Pen until Story Embers was running, then put it on hiatus until he could actually devote the time it deserved to it.
It will be interesting to see where things go from here though since he’s been back on. 😉 Kingdom Pen was where I found my best friends and, well, pretty much all my friends. I’m not sure what I’d have done as a younger writer without it, and then with Story Embers afterward.
Oooo, INTJ stuff. *grins and rubs hands*
First a disclaimer. Just because this is how I’d react doesn’t mean every INTJ would act like that. But it’s somewhere to start, I suppose.
1. How is she likely to act under intense pressure (like life-and-death pressure)? Probably very ‘in control’. Inwardly they might be freaking out. Outwardly they act like they know what they are doing. They take charge. They give orders and are constantly calculating and recalculating everything. Feelings will hit with a rush afterward and leave them shaking, but at the moment they are zoned on the action/danger and what needs to happen right NOW.
2. How is might she act around people she cares about, and how would she express her love for them?
She expresses her love by taking care of them. INTJs love deeply; they just aren’t the best at showing it in all the outward manners other people use. But they will take care of them. Protect them. Get them things. Tease them but always be there for them when they are hurt. And this probably depends on their love language too, not just personality type.
3. How might she react if someone she cares about talks about things that matter to them or about hard things in their life (both internal and external reactions)?
She’ll listen and her gut reaction will be to try to fix the things or at least want to. If it is something they are struggling with, her mind will go to all the ways they could maybe fix it; the ways she could help; what can be done. For them, pain and struggle means something is wrong. And if something is wrong, they want to fix it. They can sit still and just hug them and be with them. But not being able to do anything about it is hard.
4. How is she likely to react to seeing someone she cares about being bullied (verbally and physically)?
Internal rage. Not a hot rage that’s going to leap at them and tear their eyes out. But a very icy cold rage that is going to insert itself into the middle, between the friend and whoever is hurting them, glare at them, and get involved verbally. They will probably be controlled enough to not lash out physically, but they’ll probably want to. And if the other shoves them around enough, they will eventually lash out.
I hope that helps. 😉
@daeus-lamb *pops in real quick* It seems like a very sound argument. Now, writing consciously doesn’t mean we’re writing overtly Christian stories. The themes might still be subtle and background. But I think any story will be stronger for a conscious thought process and point.
The main thing about your ‘argument’ that struck me is that I’ve heard it in regards to how a Christian should live. ‘If you’re a Christian, light will shine through you. No need to go out of your way to talk about it all the time’. I don’t have any complete thoughts on how your argument couples with this idea as well, but it’s something I’ll be mulling over. Because just like a person should be conscious of their faith as they write, so they should be conscious of it as they live, even if every action isn’t an ‘overt, shove a track in your face’ type of thing.
