Writing Success, Thanks to Mr. Pareto

All things being equal, no two things really are equal, are they? That strange little fact, along with a rule thought up by an Italian economist, could improve your fiction writing, or at least allow you to manage your fiction-writing time and other resources better.

220px-Vilfredo_ParetoVilfredo Pareto came up with a principle now named for him—the Pareto Principle. It’s also called the “80-20 Rule” and the “Law of the Vital Few.” Pareto noted the following inequalities, or uneven distributions: only 20% of the Italian people owned 80% of the land, and in his garden, 20% of the peapods contained 80% of the peas.

It’s surprising how often this rule applies in everyday life, and it could even apply to your writing. Let’s say you’ve written ten stories and had them published, and over a given period, here were the number of sales:

Title Sales
The Wind-Sphere Ship 12
Within Victorian Mists 40
Alexander’s Odyssey 8
Leonardo’s Lion 4
A Steampunk Carol 9
The Six Hundred Dollar Man 6
A Tale More True 1
Rallying Cry / Last Vessel of Atlantis 2
To Be First/Wheels of Heaven 1
Time’s Deforméd Hand 4

If I sort the data in order from most to least, make a bar chart, and add a line representing the cumulative percentage, I get a Pareto Chart, like this:

Pareto chart

If these really were my sales numbers, I’d note it’s not quite true that 20% of my stories were getting 80% of the sales, but this graph still illustrates the concept of the vital few.

Seeing this data, you might be tempted to shift all your marketing efforts to the three or four books currently selling well. Not a bad idea, but I’d caution you to continue monitoring the books out at the ‘tail’ of the curve. Watch for a book that’s trending leftward and increasing in popularity.

If you had enough data on your (and others’) writing efforts, you might find:

  • 80% of your writing time is spent on 20% of your writing product. Thanks to Bob Parnell for this one, and the next two.
  • 20% of all writers achieve 80% of the sales income.
  • 20% of writers are sending 80% of the submissions to publishers.
  • 20% of your science fiction world-building will be enough to satisfy 80% of your story’s needs. Thanks to Veronica Sicoe for that.
  • 80% of your sales come from 20% of your marketing efforts.
  • 20% of your blog posts get 80% of the hits.
  • 80% of all fiction book sales occur in 20% of the genres.

I’d caution you not to take a strict interpretation of the Pareto Principle. It’s just a guide to show you the outputs of your efforts are not uniform, and give you ideas about where to focus. There’s a good critique of the Pareto Principle written in a guest post by author Debbi Mack.

For now, I think we’d all agree that 80% of the best fiction out there is written by 20% of the authors, especially that one who calls himself—

Poseidon’s Scribe

April 3, 2016Permalink

Been to Utopia and Dystopia, and I prefer…

Judging from recent literature, the future looks bleak. The Hunger Games, Divergent, The Maze Runner, Delirium, Matched, Legend, and others paint visions of worlds much worse than our own.

Without question, these books sell well. Some have become movies. We readers have a fascination with dismal futures, possibly because:

  • They make our own present seem better by comparison;
  • We like to imagine the end result of current downward trends;
  • The character’s stakes are high, the conflicts larger than life;
  • We identify with being a victim of society;
  • It’s inspiring to read about characters making the best of things in the worst of places; or
  • Millennials, raised in the shadow of 9-11, actually believe their future will be worse than their present.

city-654849_960_720From the writer’s point of view, dystopias have this advantage—at least one of the book’s conflicts is baked in from the start. There will be some sort of man vs. society conflict going on. Whatever other conflicts are present, you’ll find a struggle between the individual and the state. By contrast, in utopias, conflict is harder to come by.

For this post, I’ll define utopian literature to refer to fiction set in a future world that’s better and more technologically advanced than our own, but is not necessarily a perfect world. Dystopian literature is fiction set in a future world worse than our own (with either more advanced or less advanced technology), it’s but not necessarily a completely hellish world.

spaceship-499131_960_720Utopian literature doesn’t seem to be selling as well as its dystopian opposite. Such books once rocketed off shelves. Almost all science fiction written in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s assumed society and technology would advance and life in general would improve.

Such utopian books didn’t portray perfect futures. The characters suffered from problems and challenges as dire as those in any novel. After all, if someone traveled to our present from almost any period in the past, they’d view our modern era as utopian, thanks to our long life spans, medical advancements, reasonably plentiful food, and readily available technology. We look around us and see no end of problems, but in the eyes of our ancestors, we all inhabit Utopia.

Does the prevailing literary mood reflect society’s predominant attitude toward technology? In the 1940-1970 period, could it be that the Space Race, combined with the baby boom (which produced a huge number of youthful readers), result in a yearning for optimistic literature?

Might it be that today’s readers no longer hold a positive view of technology? Has the rise of terrorism, increasing surveillance, climate change, cybercrime, and a fear of artificial intelligence biased the current book-buying public against science?

Possibly, but Baby Boomers had “bad” technology, too—namely, the Bomb. And Millennials have plenty to be optimistic about, such as driverless cars, household robots, 3D printing, hyperloops, missions to Mars, etc.

If each generation knew both good and bad technology, then why would they hold such different attitudes toward it? Or is it something besides a prevailing view of science?

Could it be all due to the Boomers alone? Maybe that “pig in a python” generation is, all by itself, influencing literature as its population ages. That is, when Boomers were young and optimistic, they preferred Utopia, but as they became older, sadder, and wiser, they pulled up stakes and moved to Dystopia.

Hieroglyph coverWhatever the reason for the current literary preference, some evidence indicates the reaction against dystopia and back toward utopia has begun. In 2011, author Neal Stephenson helped found Project Hieroglyph which seeks fiction and nonfiction depicting a positive future. The published anthology, Hieroglyph, is on my list of books to read.

I prefer utopian fiction. Being a techno-optimist, I prefer to think the future will be better than the present, and reading such books keeps me in that mindset. However, I’m not Pollyannaish; I know society could well backslide, much as the thousand year Dark Ages followed the Roman Empire. Further, I know readers of dystopian books don’t necessarily believe the future of the real world will be dismal.

Let me know your position on this spectrum. Do you read solely utopian, or solely dystopian books? Or perhaps you don’t care, so long as the book is good. Your comment may influence the type of fiction to be written by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

March 27, 2016Permalink

8 Rules for Writing The End

Writing the ending of your story can be as difficult as coming up with its opening lines. After all, the ending is the part that will (or should) linger in your readers’ minds. It’s important to craft an ending that satisfies, intrigues, and leaves readers hungry for your next book.

The EndWhat should you do to create a memorable and striking ending? Here are 8 rules to follow, distilled from great posts you should also read by Dee White, James V. Smith, Jr., Brian Klems, Crista Rucker, Joanna Penn, and the folks at Creative Writing Now and WikiHow:

 

  1. Resolve the story’s main conflict(s). Even if the external conflict isn’t fully resolved, the protagonist’s internal conflict should demonstrate growth in that character.
  2. Ensure the final events result from the protagonist’s actions and decisions. For better or worse, the hero must bring about the ending, not stand by and watch it happen. Do not allow a Deus Ex Machina.
  3. Strive for an ending that’s inevitable, yet unexpected. I’ve always found Beethoven’s music to be like that. “Yeah,” you’re asking, “but how do I do that?” Take the expected ending and give it a twist; that’s how to give readers something they don’t expect. The way to make that ending inevitable is to go back and drop foreshadowing hints into the story. If these hints are subtle, then your ending can be both inevitable and unexpected.
  4. Allow only a brief resolution after the story’s climax. The end should be a rapid relaxation of tension as I depicted here.
  5. The end should refer to story’s theme, but not be preachy like a morality play.
  6. If you’re unsure how to end your tale, write several draft endings and either choose the best one, or combine elements from two or more of the best. You may end up with as many drafts of the ending as you wrote for the beginning hook.
  7. You needn’t fully wrap up all the story’s loose ends (except those pertaining to the protagonist and the main internal conflict), but they should be addressed or hinted at.
  8. The end should reflect back to beginning, but in a spiral manner, not a circular one. By that I mean that things can never be as they were in the beginning of the story; too much has changed. By referring back to the beginning, that will emphasize this change to the reader.

Adherence to these rules should help you end your stories in a manner satisfying to your readers. At last, riding off into the sunset on his amazing rocket-powered pen, goes—

Poseidon’s Scribe

March 20, 2016Permalink

Modernizing the Muses

What is the source of creativity? Why are some people creative, and others not as much? To those who aren’t, creative people can seem imbued with magical power, able to see beyond, and to make something out of nothing.

The ancient Greeks judged many such abilities to be god-given, and attributed creativity to the Muses. Later Greek mythology settled on their being nine of them, all goddesses, and all daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne. Each was an expert in some field or group of related fields. Though a muse might inspire a certain level of skill in a mortal, woe be unto the mortal who dared to challenge a muse herself.

I’ve blogged several times (notably here, here, and here) about muses, since I’m interested in creativity and enjoy the idea of somehow making that mysterious attribute more tangible and understandable. In my own uncreative moments, when stumped for a story idea, I wonder if I’d be more creative if I had a muse figurine. If I stared at such a figurine, would the muse herself inspire me?

Xanadu MusesGuilty pleasure confession: I liked the 1980 movie Xanadu, especially the scene where the nine muses emerge from a wall mural, to the tune of the wonderfully exuberant song “I’m Alive,” by the Electric Light Orchestra.

For today, I thought I’d ponder the various fields mastered by the ancient muses, and see how we would update that and assign modern creative fields to 21st Century muses.

Here are the classical muse job assignments:

Muse Name Domain
Calliope Epic poetry
Clio History
Euterpe Music, Song, and Elegiac Poetry
Erato Lyric poetry
Melpomene Tragedy
Polyhymnia Hymns
Terpsichore Dance
Thalia Comedy
Urania Astronomy

Today, I’m not sure we’d count History or Astronomy as being such creative endeavors as to be each worth having their own muse. Also, I doubt we’d split poetry three ways. Note that prose fiction (my preferred field) is nowhere on the list.

Here’s my initial attempt to modernize the muses, taking into account the different and newer creative endeavors available today:

Muse Name

Domain
Alpha Literary arts (fiction, poetry)
Euphemia Performing arts (music, dance, choreography, theater, movies, singing, comedy)
Idola Visual arts (painting, sculpture, photography, architecture, interior design)
Mágeira Gastronomy / chef
Polycassandra Multimedia artistic works (comics, video games)

My list has only five, not nine. But even ancient accounts weren’t clear about the number of muses.

I stuck with the idea of giving them Grecian names (or feminized versions of Greek words). Alpha is, of course, the first letter. Euphemia means to speak or declare. Idola means vision. Mágeira is intended to refer to chefs and cooking. Polycassandra is intended to mean manifold helper.

Perhaps in a future blog post I’ll re-examine this list. I might be able to split up their duties in a way to better even out their workload. After all, Idola and Euphemia would be very busy, compared to Mágeira.

What do you think? Have I left out any creative fields of endeavor worthy of inclusion? Is there a better way to organize the assignments? In the task of modernizing the muses, it’s time for you to get creative and to out-do—

Poseidon’s Scribe

March 13, 2016Permalink

The 7 S’s of Your Writing Cave

You’ve heard of man-caves. Do you write in a cave? A nook? A special room dedicated to your craft? A place where all you do is write?

I’m curious about the percentage of writers who have such a place. Also, what’s the percentage of writers who don’t have a cave but wish they did?

Let’s explore the concept of writer’s caves and their characteristics. I believe there are seven features you might seek in setting up such a place. You could be looking for one, two, or any number of these aspects. Conveniently, they all begin with ‘s.’

  • Stimulation. You chose your cave because its window scenery inspires. Or you brought motivational aids into the space, such as pictures, incense, or music. You laid out the room so that it stirs your creative fluids and launches your mind in flight.
  • Silence. The cave is the one room in your dwelling that’s quiet. No conversation noise, no traffic noise, no TV or radio. You need peace to write and can only find it here.
  • Separation / Solitude. Okay, that’s two s-words, but they are related. To write, you need to isolate yourself from others, to be alone. The presence of spouse, children, or roommates requires you to attend to their needs, to engage with them, and you can’t write under those conditions.
  • Single-mindedness. You dedicated this chamber to writing, and that is all that occurs within. No distractions permitted. Here you focus only on creating masterpieces of fiction. You’ve banned all mental wandering, research, games, daydreaming, and navel-gazing from this room. It’s nose to grindstone here.
  • Supplies. You need certain stuff to write. Perhaps this stuff includes your computer, printer, ink, reams of paper, favorite pens, reference books, etc. You’ve gathered all these things in one space, convenient and ready at hand.
  • Security. Your cave didn’t start out as anything special, and perhaps it isn’t special now. But you’re just comfortable here. It’s become a habit. Since it’s working, why change a thing?
  • Setup. In your cave you’ve achieved ergonomic perfection. You’ve chosen a chair shaped for optimum comfort and proper spine support. The computer screen is at the right height. You’ve positioned the keyboard and mouse such that you could work here all day without fear of repetitive strain injury.

I’ll make two guesses about writer’s caves. First, I’ll bet they used to be more common than they are now. I say that because pens once required frequent dipping in an inkwell, and you didn’t want to be toting one of those around. After the advent of typewriters, those machines weren’t exactly portable either. These technologies chained writers to specific desks.

Only the invention of pens with internal ink reservoirs freed writers to write anywhere. Today’s laptop and tablet computers also provide portability that allows you to write wherever you choose, and to bring your digitized reference materials with you.

My second guess is that most successful authors have caves. Those who churn out best-sellers might cite any of my 7 s-reasons for their own caves, but after awhile, it amounts to Security. They’ve found something that works and see no need to change.

That’s not to say that caves are essential to writing success, or that all the best authors have their own caves.

What does Poseidon’s Scribe’s writing cave look like, you ask? I used to have one, but don’t any more. I had a den that I set up with everything I then needed—spacious desk, shelves of books, inspirational framed pictures, internet connection, printer, supplies, etc.

Subway writing caveI don’t write there very much anymore. Now I write first drafts while commuting on the subway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At home, I take my laptop wherever I’m close to an outlet, and it could be in any room, any seat, like Couch writing cave on the couch in the living room. In good weather, I sometimes write out on the deck.

 

 

 

 

 

In short, the world is my cave.

How about you? Do you write in a special place? What do you call it? What is it about that space that makes you want to write there?

Leaving a comment about that is your homework, assigned by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

March 6, 2016Permalink

They Don’t See What You See

If you aim to be an author, you must observe the world as a writer does. You’ll write better stories if you do.

When I use the word ‘observe’ I mean it in the general sense of perceiving by one or more of the five senses (or beyond those five, even). I’ve blogged before about conveying the five senses in your stories, but here I’m referring not to your characters, but to you perceiving the real world.

Writer ObservationBefore we get to writers, let’s discuss observation in general. While acknowledging there are other epistemological theories, I’ll assume there is a single, physical world out there, and each person observes it differently. Those differences are due to observations taken from different physical locations, accuracy of senses, mood, previous experiences, and many other things.

Observation, then, is a combination of a signal from one or more senses, and the mental activity resulting from the signal. We perceive with our senses and our brains.

Early in life, we discover the universe is too big and filled with too much stuff for us to see every little detail, so we learn to filter some things out. We focus on the parts we find most useful.

We recognize patterns, and form mental models of how the world is. That way we can tell at a glance if something doesn’t fit, and we can fill in the details we can’t sense but assume are there. Some people hone their senses to a fine degree of accuracy through practice, and some do not.

What does it mean to observe the world as a writer does? A good writer:

  • Considers the world as a source of story ideas, details, and descriptions;
  • Sees places as potential story scenes;
  • Notices people and incorporates aspects of them in story characters;
  • Hears all talking as potential dialogue;
  • Watches people when they’re experiencing intense emotions, so as to pick out appropriate appearance, expressions, and gestures for story characters;
  • Tastes food with the intent to describe it as a meal in a story;
  • Picks out the most telling details in real places or people, so as to better describe scenes and characters;
  • Goes ‘people-watching’ and imagines background stories for the observed people; and
  • Practices observing with all senses to improve both sensing accuracy and the ability to describe in words what is sensed.

You might doubt this advice will help in your particular case. Maybe the scenes in your stories look nothing like the world you live in, and your novel’s characters are completely unlike anyone you know or see. That’s common when writing fantasy or science fiction.

Even in such cases, it benefits you to practice and improve your powers of observation. That ability to pick out and convey the right details, in a manner that transports the reader to your fictional world, will help you no matter how unusual your scenes and characters are.

For further study, I recommend you read this WikiHow article and also this post by Maria Popova.

If you practice perceiving the world and people around you, really strive to develop that skill, one day you might achieve the acute observational prowess of—

Poseidon’s Scribe

February 28, 2016Permalink

8-Fold Approach to Marketing Fiction

You’ve spent innumerable hours all alone writing your book. That’s done; the book is published. All you have to do now is switch personalities, become an extreme extrovert, and market your book. For some, that’s easy and fun. For others, not so much. This post is for those who are confused by, and a bit scared of, marketing their fiction.

Marketing Your BookThere’s plenty of advice out there, both online and in excellent books, about marketing your stories. Many websites provide long lists with scores of tasks for you to do. It’s a bit intimidating.

My intent today is not to make marketing easy, but rather to break down the problem into chunks. Specifically, just eight chunks. I encourage you to explore the subject further. Read the long-list blog posts. Read the books. Watch the videos. But go into it knowing you won’t be doing everything they suggest. Nobody does that (because nobody can).

Your marketing campaign will be different from that of all other authors. Uniquely yours. You’ll do the things you can, the things you’re comfortable with. In time, you’ll stop doing the things that don’t work, and you’ll experiment creatively with new things.

What follows is my attempt to organize the marketing process into parts. There’s some overlap between them, because the process is interconnected as an integral whole, all focused on getting readers to buy your books.

  1. Plan the Campaign. Here’s where you do the advance thinking, figuring out your target audience, your approach, and your budget. You’ll study how others have done it. You’ll write out a marketing plan. You’ll consider timing your book launch for maximum effect, and create your launch strategy.
  1. Brand Yourself. In this step, you craft the picture of you that you want potential readers to have. This is about you, not your book, though your book must be a consistent part of the story, or image, that is you. Through your website, social media, author photo, e-mail signature, and practiced elevator speech, you’ll convey your intended brand.
  1. Explode Outward and Reach People. The goal here is to seem to be everywhere your potential fans are. Not in an annoying way, but suddenly they can’t stop noticing you. Wherever they are, you are, on podcasts, at conferences, book signings, social media, e-mail newsletters, interviews, etc.
  1. Think Like a Potential Fan. You need to put yourself into a reader’s place and make it easy to buy your book. Test out all the links and all your promotional material to ensure they aim toward the sale. You want every interested person to be able to buy your book with ease and without frustration.
  1. Tempt Future Readers. Work on your “curb appeal.” Ensure your website, book cover, author photo, book trailer, etc., are irresistible. Run contests, offer coupons, provide giveaways, show free book excerpts, and hand out swag.
  1. Create Buzz. The idea behind this might seem identical to Step 3, but this one is intended to leave others talking about you and your book. This involves book reviews, blog tours, press releases, entering contests, etc.
  1. Maintain Reader Connections. Here we think long-term and work on retaining your fan base, once initially established. Keep contact with loyal readers via newsletters, e-mail social media, etc.
  1. Manage Your Time. As I said earlier, you can’t do it all. You’ll have to budget your time; stop doing what isn’t working; schedule some time for each part of your marketing plan, and balance that with writing your next book.

This is just the start of your marketing journey. Read these excellent posts by Kimberley Grabas and Caitlin Muir for more in-depth information. By grouping the overall process into eight chunks, I hope this post has simplified and de-mystified the marketing game for you.

Oh, yeah. And buy all the books you can find by Steven R. Southard, also known as—

Poseidon’s Scribe

February 21, 2016Permalink

13 Rules for Writing Fight Scenes

Conflict is central to fiction. Not all conflict is violent, of course, but at some point, one of your stories might require a fight scene. Therefore, even if it’s distasteful to you, it’s best if you learn how to write such scenes.

Fight ScenesViolent interactions can take many forms beyond individual combat. These include war, rape, terror, shooting sprees, etc. This post focuses on fights between two characters, but many of my suggestions apply to other situations.

People use a variety of weapons when fighting, including bare hands and feet, clubs, knives, swords, guns, any object available in the environment, and a wide array of science fiction or fantasy weapons. Again, most of the guidelines for fight scenes are general, and applicable to any weapon type.

For the following list of fight scene rules, I drew from, and combined, ideas from the following people’s blogs: Joanna Penn, Angela Bourassa, Amber Argyle, and the contributors to Wikihow. They’re all great sources of information, and I recommend you read each one. Now, here’s my list:

  1. If possible, observe a real fight. Note offensive and defensive movements, tempo, exploitation of speed vs. strength, etc.
  2. Study fictional fight scenes written by great writers. Pay attention to details selected, sentence structure, word choices, and techniques used to heighten tension.
  3. Ensure your scene is relevant to, and advances, your plot.
  4. Consider using the fight to reveal or further develop the characters’ personalities, and maybe the story’s theme. SwordintheStonePosterMy favorite example of this is the “wizard’s duel” in the Disney movie The Sword in the Stone. During their fight, Merlin and Madam Mim are each turning themselves into various animals. Madam Mim’s animals emphasize power and strength; Merlin’s emphasize cunning and intelligence. The superiority of brain over brawn is the lesson Merlin has been trying to teach young Arthur, and is the major theme of the movie.
  5. Ensure you’ve established that both characters have appropriate motivation. Why is each one fighting? What does he or she hope to gain by winning? That helps the reader care about the outcome.
  6. Break up the lunges, punches, slices, gunshots, etc.—the mechanics and logistics of the fight—with short dialogue or description to keep from boring the reader. When using dialogue, skip the ‘said.’
  7. Don’t overdo the description of the fight itself; trust the reader’s imagination to fill in such details.
  8. Use short sentences, with few adjectives or adverbs.
  9. Weave in all five senses in the fight, to put the reader there.
  10. Show the Point of View character’s thoughts and emotions as the fight goes on. This is as important as the description of the fight itself.
  11. Ensure your word choices and detail selections are appropriate to the genre and your intended audience. A fight in a military thriller must be accurate, believable, and authentic. A fight in a romantic adventure should focus on the POV character’s feelings.
  12. Don’t forget about the aftermath of the fight, how much the POV character hurts, his or her feelings about the opponent, thoughts about whether the fight was worth it, etc.
  13. In subsequent drafts, cut to the minimum.

It’s my hope these rules will help you write effective and compelling fight scenes in your stories.

Not to brag, but your characters couldn’t last one round with characters written by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

February 14, 2016Permalink

The Well-Written Villain

Villains, or antagonists, have come a long way. During the history of literature, they may have evolved even more than heroes, or protagonists. We’ll discuss that evolution, and show you how to create a well-written villain for your story.

A villain is a character opposed to the protagonist, who is usually cruel and who may be involved with crime. Not all stories have villains. The word ‘villain’ comes from the same root as ‘villa’ and once simply meant ‘farmhand.’ Only later did the word get loaded down with evil connotation baggage.

VillainFor centuries, when much of literature served the purpose of inculcating morality, authors portrayed villains as one-dimensional characters devoted to pure evil. Writers made it easy for the reader to distinguish the villainous characters from the good ones, by appearance, speech, and actions. Authors provided no reason for the villain’s malevolent nature, nor were such reasons expected. The villain was just bad, that’s all.

Then a change occurred in literature, and villains evolved. From the timing, I associate it with the advent of psychology, the study of the human mind and behavior. I may be wrong about that linkage, but it makes sense to me.

Since the early- to mid-Twentieth Century, it has not been enough to portray a villain as purely evil, without explanation. Gone are the black cape, the curled moustache, and the menacing sneer. (Well, maybe you can use such a stereotypical character for comedic effect.)

The modern villain starts out as a normal person, indistinguishable from any other character. Something happens to that person; a disturbing event triggers a change in the way they think. (Rather than a single event, the character could be raised from childhood in a peculiar way, but then that way must have an explanation.) The character twists the event, obsesses about it, and it becomes a driving factor for later behavior.

As this happens, the villain may not change in outward appearance, so he or she will be indistinguishable from other characters. This warping toward villainy occurs only in the antagonist’s mind. The resulting villain will likely have many good, even endearing, traits, all while harboring a secret inner drive toward nefarious ends.

While writing your story, you’ll need to convey this explanation for your villain’s behavior, even if it’s backstory. No modern reader will accept a character who is evil ‘just because.’

Moreover, the chain of events must lead to the villain being opposed to the hero. The protagonist and antagonist are a matched set. Often, the villain’s desired ends have nothing to do with the hero, but the hero becomes the irritant the villain must deal with to achieve his goal.

To ensure your story is interesting and to give your protagonist a worthy problem to solve, the villain must be at least as smart and powerful as the hero. Your hero must strive beyond his or her own perceived limits, and suffer nearly insurmountable hardships to overcome the villain. But neither can your villain be invulnerable. You should depict your villain as being on a quest of his own, contending with problems where not all of his machinations work all the time.

In preparing this post I studied, and villainously stole from, other wonderful posts on this topic, including this one on wikiHow, the Wikipedia article on ‘Villain,’ and Hallie Ephron’s article in Writer’s Digest. I encourage you to read each one for more in-depth information.

Now you should be ready to create your own villain. With this blog post finished, I can get back to my fiendish scheme to take over the internet! Bwa-ha-ha-ha! Soon the entire world will bow down to—

Poseidon’s Scribe

February 7, 2016Permalink

Inside Each Other’s Heads

For a male writer (like me), it’s difficult to write a story in a female character’s point of view. I’ve read that it’s also difficult for female writers to get into a male character’s head and write realistic stories. Still, we’ve all read books by authors who did this very well. If others have done it; you can too.

writing opposite gender povAdvance warning: this post is full of opinions that may sound stereotypical and sexist. As a caveat, let me say the characteristics I’ll ascribe to women and men are generalizations. Not all men, nor all women, are as described below. There is plenty of overlap in thoughts and behaviors between genders.

Your goal, as a writer, is to produce an entertaining and meaningful experience for your readers. Say you’re female and your lead Point of View character is male. You want readers of both genders to enjoy the story and not get jolted out of it with thoughts of “No guy would think (or do) that!”

Of course, all fiction writing involves getting into someone else’s head, someone different from you. Even characters who share your gender have personalities unlike yours, so you’re always setting your own feelings and motivations aside as you write what someone else would think, say, or do.

Writing from the other gender’s POV is like that, only a bit more so. Think of the following suggestions as tendencies, directions in which to stretch a little without going too far.

For you male writers dealing with a female POV character:

  • Ensure she takes in the appearances of things, and notices minute changes over time
  • Have her look into other characters’ eyes
  • Employ more dialogue, especially small talk
  • Allow her to comment on others’ appearances, clothes, and health
  • Have her care more about other character’s feelings, and to validate them
  • Make her more willing to share her own feelings with others
  • Ensure she talks more about people, their connections, and feelings
  • Show her inner feelings more frequently and more deeply
  • Have her think about people as a network, where each person is on a spectrum between nice/good and mean/bad, and connecting lines between people are strong or weak based on how the two interact

For you female writers dealing with a male POV character:

  • As he takes in a scene, ensure he focuses more on the functions of things, even how he could use or change them
  • Have him look around more at a scene than into other characters’ eyes
  • Make his dialogue more sparse, with less small talk
  • Have him care more about other characters’ problems (and how he could solve them) than their feelings
  • Make him reluctant to disclose his feelings to other characters
  • Ensure he talks more about objects and abstract concepts
  • Have his thoughts move quickly from feelings to action (i.e. what is he going to do?)
  • Have him think about people as being in hierarchies, ranking either higher or lower than him, and how to treat them appropriately

Others have written about the process of creating a convincing opposite-sex POV character. For example, Author Shaquanda Dalton suggests focusing more on the similarities between the genders. She recommends concentrating on dialogue and getting help from opposite-sex beta readers. She also says that the thoughts of fictional characters will focus on the plot problem whether they are women or men, and won’t be significantly different. Lastly, she urges writers to observe real people to get ideas for character actions.

Author A. L. Sowards believes there are differences in the way men and women think, and a writer should keep these in mind. Women, she states, often stew over upsetting things longer, while men get angry but let it go quickly. Women think about many things at once, while men focus on one. She claims it’s untrue that women are more detail-oriented; it’s more a matter of interests. A female character might describe flowers using more specifics, but a male character would describe all the facets of a car engine in the same degree of detail. She advises writers to read books written by and about the opposite gender, and to get to know the character’s personality, strengths, and weaknesses well.

We may try, in our modern age, to dismiss any differences between the genders, but on average, there are some characteristics common to women and others typical of men. You should understand these differences, so you can become capable of writing from the POV of either gender.

Looking back, I’ve only done this with two characters in my published stories— Dr. Anusha Bharateeyanakshatra in “The Finality” and Galene in “Against All Gods.” It’s up to readers whether these female characters were realistically portrayed by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

January 31, 2016Permalink