Tag Archives: writing advice

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Don’t forget your notebook

I took a few days off work to spend some time writing, and wrangle the kids on my own for a couple days. Naturally, since I’ve got all that quiet time during school, I’m doing virtually everything, but writing.

This morning, after getting the kids off to school, I went home, got the computer fired up, found the place where I was working on some revision, and immediately got a distraught text from my wife. This proved a big distraction, and as she was already not pleased with stuff, I wasn’t going to get any “thank-you’s” when she got home to dead chickens and or ducks. So, I went on to feed and water them (Which sucks at 30F in 35mph wind by the way, but as we’re in Alaska, though hard, that’s actually pretty damn good conditions for the time of year.) Soaking wet and covered in duck $***, I marched back to the shed to find there wasn’t any chicken feed, don’t think we’ve had any for a few days. No big deal, the gym is on the way to the feed store, I could squeeze in a quick run on the way. I wanted to run anyhow, right? In any case, I decided they were chickens and a few more hours weren’t likely to hurt. So, I went back in to a phone call from my wife to continue the text conversation we’d started just a bit before. Once we’d got all that sorted out, the dishes were calling, along with the finding of appropriate attire for the children to wear to their Christmas concert.

Finally, I managed to get back to the computer, just long enough to get distracted by you-tube movies on guitar making (check out crimson custom guitars if you’re into that sort of thing. That guy is good.) Needless to say, before I knew it, it was time to think about running out for that feed and exercise, so I pulled a comb through my hair, found my red rocket-ship underpants, and headed off for the gym.

After struggling my way through a 3 mile run on a tiny track, I stood in the shower for waaay too long before deciding it was time to get under way again. Time check after loading up the feed gave me an hour and a half before it was time to get the kids. It was just enough time to try out that new sushi restaurant and maybe scribble some notes in my notebook, because that’s writing too… and yeah that sounded real nice. Sushi and writing, actually hell yeah! Wait. Forgot my notebook… UGH…

Don’t forget your notebook – EVER.

PS – I bought a notebook on the way to sushi and wrote this post, the sushi was good, can I call it a win?

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Where’s Waldo?

How many characters should I have?

This question borders on stupid, really, the answer is obvious: As many as it takes to tell the story.

Okay, great, as many as it takes, got it… How many you reckon that is?

For someone like me, these questions don’t seem stupid, nor does the obvious answer help. In my mind these are major issues. As a reader it’s easy to look at a huge epic fantasy series with dozens of main characters and think: “I am NOT going to to that” – or – “I totally want to do that”. I’m in more of the where’s Waldo? camp. That is, I really prefer to know who the main character is within a chapter or two. I get frustrated at stories where I’ve got to re-read a chapter just to meet and remember all of the characters who seem equally important. Now, it’s not that I think these are badly done, it’s that I don’t like them. From that perspective, I’m going to focus on writing a story where there are fewer characters to deal with.

When I started on my current project, I tried to keep the number of characters to an absolute minimum. This was a problem. Mainly because you’ve got to start with enough people to have dialogue and also conflict, even if it’s something as simple as a stolen horse. Someone’s got to do it and ideally there will be at least a couple of others to talk about it. Right off the bat that’s 3 people, and I haven’t even gotten the main character out of his village yet. Perhaps it’ll take a few more people to get him down the road. Turns out my minimalist ideal wasn’t an approach that would work with the story I’m writing, and after thinking about it starting off with 3 seems like a good rule of thumb.

So, what was my solution to keep the number of characters to something I felt comfortable with? Well, first of all the story is a 3rd person limited, with a focus on two specific characters with the idea that I’m going to stick with that one sub-plot. The second bit is that I’m trying to keep the number of characters in any given scene in the range of 3-4, more than that is hard anyhow (not impossible, of course, just hard). Thirdly, and most importantly, I only add in characters who are absolutely essential to the scene. The last part is that I avoid naming characters who aren’t significant to the story as a whole. So, a character might be essential for a scene, but doesn’t get a name because she isn’t essential to the larger story. This category of character is only given a one or two word description instead of a proper name – this is a super common approach, but I’m taking it a little further than you usually see it in that these names are how the main characters think about them and apply to people that would usually get a name.

These are tricks I’ve seen in tons of other stories, and so I don’t know that it qualifies as advice, or even gets to the point, but this is how I’m approaching my story. I’m sure I’ll have more to say on the subject at some point.