Elements of Great Storytelling - Character Development

A few months ago, I experienced a writer's watershed of sorts. It all began with the decision to participate in a local writer's group session.

Now, I've never really been to one before - I'm a bit of a loner by nature, especially when I'm into my writing. This time, something made me think, why not?

And thus did chance play its hand:) I met a fellow writer who kindly met up with me later and volunteered to critique a short story of mine.

Our conversation illuminated something. I'd always felt that an important storytelling element has been missing in much of my work, especially in my novels, but I could never put my finger on what it was. Friends and family often observed that I can be very long-winded, just a bit vague, and that my stories aren't gripping enough. But, somehow, I couldn't understand what they meant.

I mean, to me, my stories were beautifully written, elegant, full of little quirks and humour and wit. Why weren't they gripping my readers?

What my writing friend pointed out made a writerly lightbulb in my head go off.

On the first page of the short story he was critiquing, he pointed out two things:

a) I went on and on about what my protagonist thought of a receptionist in the room with her (ie long-windedness)

b) it was unrealistic for someone to expect a receptionist to start a conversation with them in a waiting room (which was what my protagonist expected).

I explained to my friend that the entire scene was meant to convey the protagonist's paranoid and attention-seeking psyche. He, accurately, pointed out that this hadn't come across to the reader. And then it hit me:

I'd over-described the protagonist's environment, and under-described the protagonist herself. And this was a pattern in ALL my stories.

Wow! Talk about feeling bad and excited at the same time! I felt bad of course because I had severely neglected one of the strongest elements of great storytelling - the main character itself. Excited because, hey, this could be fixed!

Yes, I would have to engage in rather massive rewrites, but it was a fixable problem, and character development at this point could only make my stories shine once I got it done.

The short stories were revisited pretty quickly. The novels - not as fast as I'd have liked, but revisions are now going surprisingly smoothly. Once I got down to focusing on the main character instead of her surroundings, what needed to change became extremely clear. The plot holes, the unrealistic moments, the draggy prose - everything was easier to spot and remove/amend because it detracted from my protagonist's motivations and character arc. And solidifying my character's psychological make-up added a wonderful depth to the tale that 'completed' the vision I'd always had of it.

The basic rule of thumb I've drawn from this experience is: writing a story is ultimately about writing a character.

We read Lucas, JK Rowling, Agatha Christie's mysteries etc because we want to know what happens to Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter and Hercule Poirot. Random things happening to a random character just doesn't cut it - we want to read about events happening to the characters we love. And to fall in love with a character, they have to be extremely well-written, holistic - they have to resonate with their human readers.

There's a lot of literature out there about creating and executing a three dimensional protagonist that resonates with the reader. Believe me, after the above hit me, I have been googling and reading like mad, and have been pretty pleased at what I've been learning so far. A great site to check out is of course storyfix.com. There's a lot of good stuff there. Though I haven't gone through the 'six core competencies' advocated by Larry Brooks in any detail yet, the series on characterisation is certainly very helpful. Do check out this post in particular for some great ideas on getting the kinks out of your characterisation. Ha nice line that:)

*sigh* I still shake my head at the thought that I had made everything else in my story into the main character EXCEPT the main character itself. I'm just grateful the lightbulb went off before yet another year had passed. Now, to reconstruct my main character so that readers of all ages (or perhaps just my target group:D) can fall in love with her... just as I fell in love with her in the world of my imagination so long ago:)

Elements of Great Storytelling - Character Development

Boldly Addressing the War of the Sexes - A Review of 'The Bloody Chamber' by Angela Carter

During the course of my studies, I've had the good fortune to write a paper on an interesting short story/novella, entitled The Bloody Chamber. Written by Angela Carter, a prolific reteller of faerie tales, The Bloody Chamber is a reimagining of the famous Bluebeard story (by Charles Perrault).

Unlike Bluebeard however, The Bloody Chamber's rich prose bravely interrogates complex patriarchal ideologies underlying so much of humanity's gender relations.

By use of symbolism and imagery, Carter successfully exposes flaws in societal systems governing the relationship between the sexes. Such systems are often taken for granted in the approach sexes have towards each other, a situation which - sadly -creates a high potential for abusive behaviour.

(Warning: Spoilers ahead)

19th century 'Bluebeard' illustration
by Gustave Dore

The Bloody Chamber follows the path of an un-named heroine who willingly marries a sadomachistic Marquis for his wealth and status. In return, she is to bear him an heir.

Following their marriage, the Marquis corrupts the heroine's ideals and sexuality. He dominates her view of her nature and role in the world. When the Marquis leaves the heroine to go on a business trip, he provides her with keys to all the chambers in his castle, but forbids her to enter one of them (as depicted in Gustave Dore's 19th century illustration). The heroine of course disobeys the Marquis's prohibition, only to discover inside the bloody chamber the bodies of the many wives the Marquis had previously murdered. He returns, intending to kill her for her disobedience, but she is ultimately saved while he is killed; she inherits his castle and wealth.

There are a lot of layers to Carter's story. What stood out to me was that the heroine's discovery of the bloody chamber ultimately turns her aware of abusive patriarchal roots in humanity's social systems.

The high maternal mortality rates symbolised by the bloody chamber made the original Bluebeard tale tilt towards feminism if read as a warning against the death that marriage commongly brought to the women of Perrault's time (the 17th century). What I found interesting in The Bloody Chamber however is that Carter has gone a step further in depicting just how victimised the male psyche is by abusive patriarchal systems as well.

In this context, the Marquis's evil became understandable to me (his ancestry was one of such violence and misogyny, it would have been remarkable if he didn't turn out the way he did). Carter contrasts the Marquis's worldview with the opposing gentle male psyche of the blind piano tuner, Jean-Yves who - though he supports the heroine - cannot truly assist her in any meaningful way as the Marquis is more powerful than he is.

The ultimate hero of the piece is the heroine's mother, who rides to her daughter's rescue and dispatches the Marquis with a single bullet. To me, this was a powerfully variant feminist ending to the tale - when have mothers ever ridden to the rescue of their children in any faerie tale, despite many doing so in real life?

Indeed, when have mothers ever been portrayed in traditional storytelling as powerful and strong figures who successfully combat evil?

I couldn't help reading Carter's ending also as a reinterpretation of traditional (and arguably patriarchal) views of the Biblical 'original sin' event. Instead of being a one-dimensional and painful punishment, woman's ability to give birth becomes also a gift to true wisdom from love (by creating the parent-child bond) instead of fake/meaningless wisdom from the cold-blooded motivations of the intellect (or mind-centred curiosity, which ultimately led Eve to eat the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden).

There may be flaws to this view of the world - that considerations of the heart should supersede those of the intellect. I've always thought that a holistic person is one who embraces both mind and heart. But perhaps the point is that compassion and kindness distinguish the thinking human from the merely intellectual.

From this compassion-friendly vantage, there is an attractive humanism in Carter's approach. She doesn't balk at considering the abuses suffered by both genders under patriarchal societal structures; she neglects neither masculine nor feminine genders in her exploration of society's abusive gender role-playing.

For this reason, The Bloody Chamber (and Carter's other faerie tale retellings in her short story collection The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories) have truly been a stimulus for my seeing the way genders are constructed by illusory systems that cause us to abuse each other for the benefit of man-made motivations: the bartering for power.

I only wish that I had had the pleasure of reading stories like these in my younger years, so that my eyes could have been opened all the sooner to the manipulative power structures that have been so coldly entrenched in our world for so many generations. It is stories like Carter's which shed light on why men and women behave the way they do. More importantly, such stories remind us that structures which violently influence gender relations can be re-thought and changed, if only by one's individual courage and compassion to challenge the abusive status quo.

Prominent blogger Nathan Bransford wrote recently on how we make sense of the world around us through our interpretation of narratives/stories. Like him, I believe stories are powerful mediums through which we can reimagine our world in clearer (and perhaps more truthful) colours. Books like The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories only strengthen my belief in the power of storytelling to expose narratives that are built on abusive - and false - premises.

I am hopeful that the more writers write about such issues, the more arbitrary man-made systems may one day be transcended to achieve fairness and equality between all human beings.

In the meanwhile, if gender studies/narrative studies is something you're interested in, Carter's excellent collection of stories might be something you'd like to have a look at. In any event, I'm certain you won't be disappointed by her richly crafted stories:)

Boldly Addressing the War of the Sexes - A Review of 'The Bloody Chamber' by Angela Carter

Ebooks and Print Books - Can We Have Both, Please...?

I was at a big bookstore earlier today, browsing its shelves. I could get that 'fresh pages' scent when I flipped the pages of some new arrivals. You know, that 'this is a brand new book sent out for you to love and enjoy and read until dawn' kind of scent.

Tall racks of books surrounded me as I walked down the aisles, and I loved how solid they were, those racks of multi-hued books. Thick or thin, tall or short, I loved seeing tangible representations of storytelling all around me, almost as much as I enjoyed the solitude that envelops one when you're reading - the kind of solitude that is merely peaceful, not lonely.

For some reason though, I began to feel sad. I couldn't understand why at first. There didn't seem to be any reason for me to turn depressed when I was somewhere I loved, doing something I loved.

And then, it hit me - I really, really adore print books. Only, I was afraid they would disappear in my generation, along with the brick and mortar stores that housed them.

It was an awful thought. Printed books might be unwieldy, inefficient, take up too much space and start turning 'yellow-old' too fast, but I love everything about printed material. There's a particularly lovely texture to printed pages - the sight of black ink impressed onto white/cream paper - that I can't find anywhere else.

It's something I definitely can't find online/in the ebook experience. In a bookstore, I can feel the book in my hands just as much as I feel the story in my mind. That feeling is lost online.

Let's put it this way: I'm the kind of person who buys a book twice simply to possess an edition with a lovelier cover than the last. That's just something I do. I'm a sucker for art anyway, but on books, it's like a double whammy when you get a great story with a cover to match - it's like a gift with oil-painted wrapping or something. Who could resist something like that? Er, well, I can't anyway:)

The way I look at it, if the book's a good one, I'm happy to donate my earlier copy to a nearby children's home/the general downtown Oxfam-like organisation, while savouring the one with the cover I can gaze at every so often. It's win-win all around then:)

I did that today- buy a book twice for its cover, I mean. The book was Angela Carter's 'The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories'. It's a collection of faerie-tale retellings (in an adult style) that I've loved since I first read it earlier this year. Unfortunately, I hadn't been able to get my hands on the cover I liked, one with an intriguingly caped Red Riding Hood figure scurrying towards the book's spine.

Today, when I saw this particular edition on the shelves, I simply couldn't resist it. My copy with a red wolf on its face will find its way to readers elsewhere. Later, I think I actually went pale at the thought of not being able to smooth my fingers over book covers I like before buying books in the future. It's a petty thing, I suppose, but I'm tactile by nature, and this is one of life's little pleasures for me:)

Another book I saw sitting pretty on a shelf was Slyvia Plath's 'The Bell Jar'. So much for not judging a book by its cover. This was a simple cover that caught my eye, of a woman in an old fashioned but elegant off-the-shoulder white dress that was sculpted to her body so that she formed a kind of gorgeous hour-glass figure that suggested grace and elegance but also enforced captivity within her attire. Her face was turned to the side (judging from the angle of her throat) but couldn't be seen. She stood almost carelessly against a cream backdrop, with a relaxed demeanour that contrasted oddly with the sense of captivity I mentioned earlier.

To cut a long story short, it was an enticing shot that made me wonder if Sylvia Plath was as staid a writer as I'd gotten the impression she would be. For some reason or another, I'd never gotten around to reading her work and debunking this impression. The cover staring at me from a random shelf made me pick the book up though. And I was glad I did.

Flipping through this gem of a tale was like playing in my very own personal playground. The passages spoke to me. And something about the weight of the book in my hand, the shuffle of the pages as I read it, the smoothness of its simplistic cover as I thumbed my way absently through its pages... it was an experience all its own.

Just those few minutes... was an entire experience. And the writing was only a part of the experience, though of course it was a big part, no quibbling there. Needless to say, I bought the book:)

Btw, I'm all for the ebook revolution and the opportunities it's affording to readers and writers alike. I can't possibly be against it, can I, seeing as my own stories and poetry are out as ebooks?;) But today, I found myself hoping that print books on bookshelves will somehow survive what's happening in the publishing industry.

I don't mean at the expense of the ebook world, or self-publishing world etc, but just to co-exist somehow. I'm not sure how this could happen but I've been racking my brains thinking of workable solutions.

The obvious solution is if print becomes cheaper. I'm pretty sure books would start flying off shelves if that were the case.

Or... if bookstore shelves in later years are rented by publishing houses/writers to stack their print books as a form of sellable products cum advertising material.

Do you think that's possible? Would this be one way for bookstores and print books to survive the deluge of electronic goods out there?

After all, bookstores are beginning to store electronic items for sale (like ereaders and so on) because the profit ebooks make exceeds print books. But if print books have (instead of meagre profits) the benefit of paid rental space, would that be something to help both bookstore and author? Hmmm, or would it only help the bookstore? That, I'm not sure...

But in the future, when print becomes as much advertising as it does an actually saleable product, shelves just might be worth renting out. And if there is a worry of money being the sole, valueless arbiter of what ends up on the stores, I would think that making prices compulsorily equal per shelf would mean that the bookstore would still be able to choose which book it wants to shelve.

The only problem I can see here would be the price of rental, but since a contest between the price of cheap rental vs profit of expensive books would probably be won by rental, bookstores might be better off renting space out even at low rates.

I dunno, this may not be a workable solution for the future. But it just might be. In the far future maybe.

For now, bookstores are definitely not going anywhere fast where I am (Asia). Ebooks simply haven't proliferated here at the rate they have in the US or Europe (no doubt in part due to Amazon's current set-up, as mentioned in this informative post by David Gaughran).

Despite wishing I could get my hand on Kindle ebooks for various reasons (all the way from convenience to pricing), I'm kinda thankful for this state of affairs. As selfish as it must sound, I'm glad I'm getting the best of both worlds for just a little longer. Print books when I need their comforting weight in my hands, and ebooks (via channels other than Amazon) for when I need to try out something new and (mostly) cheap:)

I don't think that's a bad deal, is it?:)

Ebooks and Print Books - Can We Have Both, Please...?

'This Rough Magic' by Mary Stewart - A Book Review

This week has been a long one, full of unexpected happenings and the tiring travails of moving house. Fortunately for me, one of those unexpected happenings was the discovery of a new, brilliant author! Mary Stewart, the author of suspenseful romances, was a gamble when I bought her book, 'This Rough Magic'. How surprised I was when I finally began to read it and was swept away to Greece and the island which might well have been Prospero's in Shakespeare's 'The Tempest'.

'This Rough Magic' (in itself a quote from The Tempest) begins with Lucy Waring's arrival in the Greek island of Corfu, a place rich in myth and tradition. Lucy joins her sister, Phyllida Forli at one of the three houses the Forlis own. The other two houses have been tenanted out, one to a photographer named Godfrey Manning, and the other to thespian Julian Gale. Lucy herself is a down and out actress who is in awe of Julian Gale but almost immediately on arrival at Corfu, she locks horns with his brusque son, Max, a musician.

While Lucy and Max's relationship is rocky at best, their interaction provides a stimulating background to the odd happenings at the island, with drownings and dead bodies ultimately leading Lucy to stumble on a conspiracy that might well cast Max as the villain of the piece.

Needless to say, 'This Rough Magic' is a testament to Stewart's mastery at melding together the two genres of suspense and romance. The mystery in the story did not take second place to the wonderfully subtle courtship between hero and heroine - neither did Stewart neglect to paint a remarkably effective portrait of the island with its patron saint, St. Spiridion.

It was all those little touches of the romantic (not romance, but just a subtle appreciation of aesthetics and beauty) - together with a keen appreciation of the cruel, the eccentric, and the sometimes just unexplainable quirks in human personalities - that brought the whole novel together so very well.

As I was reading the book, I couldn't help drawing comparisons between Mary Stewart's work and that of the more well known mystery writer, Agatha Christie.

The exacting, keen sense of deductive reasoning that that wonderful creation of hers, Hercule Poirot, embodied has always been a delightful feast for my mind, albeit more when following the old TV series than reading the books (my sis was more a Poirot reader than me unfortunately). Having just got off a Christie binge of sorts though (purely books this time:)), Poirot's stoic adherence to Reason was becoming a tad monotonous - which might be why I was a grateful recipient of Stewart's rich detail and lush imagery in 'This Rough Magic'.

Stewart definitely emphasises description over dialogue in her writing, quite in contrast to Agatha Christie, but her descriptive tone is often delicate and nuanced and atmospheric, inviting her audience to fully appreciate the surroundings she depicts without resorting to painting the island with an artificially exotic veneer (though there were some elements of this).

A different animal too is Hercule Poirot's genius intelligence when compared to the stumbling amateur efforts of Lucy Waring. Though Poirot's intelligence and skills of observation made him uniquely suited for solving those mysteries which made Christie famous, it was more relatable somehow to think in terms of the amateur Lucy, to have to follow a girl who was neither qualified nor inherently suited for solving mysteries, as she in fact solved the mystery in 'This Rough Magic' and unmasked the villain.

It was the lack of neatness in Lucy's detective work perhaps that was oddly endearing, and which made the story all the more suspenseful.

I followed Lucy's footsteps through the story as she tries to get to the truth of the mysterious and deadly occurences on the beautiful island of Corfu, and couldn't help feeling an enjoyable sense of partaking in the uncertain life of an individual walking strange paths in a foreign country - only to form within a sense of understanding and appreciation of such otherness.

Well, now that I'm done with 'This Rough Magic', all I can think of is the next Mary Stewart, and I have just the one in mind: my recently purchased 'Nine Coaches Waiting' is, er, waiting on my bedside table, ready to lure me into Stewart's imaginative vision and beautiful wordplay. What a gorgeous bedtime read to look forward to!

'This Rough Magic' by Mary Stewart - A Book Review

Why Fantasy Will Always Find Its Many Readers

Elf Markwoman by Kathrin "Kitty" Polikeit, taken from Wikimedia Commons

As I was reading a forum thread earlier today, I came across a topic close to my heart, on people feeling ashamed to be reading fantasy.

Oh no, I thought. Not that again!

How can anyone be made to feel ashamed of reading a genre as gorgeous and provocative as fantasy?

But I suppose this is a common enough occurence in every fantasy reader's life:) I've personally been accused of not being mature/grown up, of being overly-escapist, of not appreciating 'real' literature... all that silly stuff that's pretty much myth:), simply because I've chosen to enter worlds of magic and enchantment instead of dry reality.

As I was reading through the thread comments, I was reminded of an old post on my personal blog, written to explain my fascination with fantasy. I'm reproducing the post here (with some tweaking) as it may help those who are dissed for reading fantasy to remember why this is as powerful a genre as it is.

As I write this post, I am reflecting on the dismay/bewilderment of many readerly and writerly friends who can't understand why one of my all-time favourite genres to write in is fantasy. Yup, it's a literary genre that's seen its fair share of disapproving frowns or raised eyebrows. There are those who categorise fantasy as formulaic, cheap, gimmicky or downright absurd.

But - though many don't like this fact - it's a genre that's survived the centuries with no trouble, evolving and recreating itself all the time in one name or another: myth and legend, fairytales, science-fiction (blasphemy to most SF fans, but I do think SF is fantasy at heart, 'else I wouldn't like it so much:D), dystopian fiction, romantic fiction, horror, poetry, paranormal fiction... The list goes on.

Most would recognise The Lord of the Rings (duh) as the archetypal fantasy masterpiece. Many fantasy writers still stick to the tropes that JRR Tolkien established (high fantasy tropes involving quests, heroic battles etc), but many people aren't aware that these tropes were based in turn on elements of existing myth and legend, notably those of Norse and Germanic origin (one of Tolkien's most famous influences was the epic Beowulf btw).

With this rich literary base on which to build, fantasy writers since Tolkien have gone on to create many different types of fantasy works, exploring new ideas and worlds with enthusiasm. Though the essential style remains the same - one of either grandeur of setting or character, sometimes both - high fantasy now has within its home precocious sisters and brothers.
The more notable fantasy categories now include urban fantasy (the City of Bones series by Cassandra Clare for eg, or the famous Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer) ,YA/middle-grade fantasy (the two examples above would qualify, as would JK Rowling's Harry Potter and Christopher Paolini's Eragon), romantic fantasy (Sharon Shinn's Twelve Houses stories for eg, or the gorgeous Crown Duel/Court Duel set by Sherwood Smith) and of course faerie tales galore, including their retellings (such as Robin McKinley's Beauty (a take on Beauty and the Beast)).

Many stories that are termed 'literary' also fall under the categories above. Cormac McCarthy's The Road- dystopian fiction. Yann Martel's Life of Pi - urban fantasy/contemporary fantasy. Angela Carter's beautiful collection of short stories that re-tell faerie tales from a gender-interrogative perspective, The Bloody Chamber and other stories, are truly fantastical in the best sense of the word. And who could forget the brilliant, utterly unforgettable The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde - that paranormal/fantastical work still gives me delightful little chills.

There are too many pieces of literature to list here, though I'm tempted to give in to the urge to list 'em. Suffice to say, from HG Wells to CS Lewis to George Lucas, fantasy is pretty well-represented as a literary genre that can change the world... for the better:)

Frankly, I think most - if not all - fiction writing is fantasy. It amazes me that so many people sing the praises of so-called literary fiction (most of which bores me to sleep btw) as being distinctly not fantastic when it is merely a variation of writing theme and style, and is in fact no more 'real' than any other fantasy is (in that it is ultimately a creation of the writer's mind).

You'd be surprised (or not!) at how often fantasy readers and writers get charged with being in denial of the world around them, of being escapist in the stories they tell. I'm not going to totally deny some denial and escapism here, but I think it's a fair amount, an amount present in all writers - you have to escape something when you write, even as you embrace a whole lot more than what you're escaping.

On top of all this though, fantasy goes beyond denial or escapism - it's simply a whole different animal.
 

What is the nature of fantasy, you ask? Why do writers write it?

Well, why do writers write anything?

To escape, yes, lots of times to entertain. But also to make sense of the world.

And what better way to make sense of the world than to include elements of our world in the backdrop of something totally different from it.

That's one of the main reasons I write fantasy. It's liberating. By altering the contexts of my characters' lives from my own, I can push the limits of my understanding of this world by use of another. My perception of a setting on Earth as we know it is so corrupted by those everyday things in life that we're all so used to (exhaustion, frustration and downright boredom come to mind) that I see clearer when my characters are put into an unusual environment/are unusual themselves. Fantasy enables me to explore the workings of philosophies, concepts, personalities etc in situations or environments that cannot be found on Earth. At the same time, my characters, situations etc are somewhat similar - have a connection enough - with our 'normal' lives, to make the story meaningful.

It's for these reasons that the charge often levelled at fantasy writers - that they are trying to escape the world around them - is absurd to me because it's a charge that can be levelled at absolutely any writer, with equally absurd results. The point is, the process of writing allows writers to explore/identify the elements that make up human nature and behaviour. This is an element of writing that remains true regardless of the genre one is writing in. If fantasy writers weren't able to retain bits of humankind in their stories, if they didn't put something recognisable or believable about human nature into any other world they create it would become hard to maintain the illusion of that other world in the reader's mind. A fantasy reader would know in an instant if my fantasy isn't 'real', the same way a reader of supposed literary fiction would know if the story they're reading doesn't ring true to life.

Not everything's about making a philosophical/experimental point of course. I do also write fantasy simply cause it's fun and requires a lot of imagination. Can't deny something as visceral as that, can I?:)

Painting by Russian artist
Elena Konstantinovna Gorokhova (b.1933).
Taken from Wikimedia Commons.

Ultimately though, fantasy's magic lies in its versatile, beautiful nature. It is curious, mysterious, unknowable, never-ending and challenging (it's harder to write a believable fantasy than it is to write a believable anything else, believe you me, because you have to construct the entire internal logic of a fantasy story, its own uniquely fantastical parameters).

Yes, there's some denial, some escapism, but most of all, there's lots of exploration, and for that I'm increasingly thankful.

 

Thank you, Fantasy, for brightening my mind and broadening its borders. May you do so always and forever.

Why Fantasy Will Always Find Its Many Readers