The Art of the Character

My recommendation is to always mold your main characters out of what you understand. Using bits of personality from people you know and respect as well as aspects of yourself allows you to write a truly life-like protagonist. I enjoyed coming up with and molding the characters in my Fantasy novels. I built separate personalities that not only resonate with me but have a lot in common with my own personality and those of their namesakes.

In Oliver, the scared, unsure, but ultimately determined and curious Seeker, I see myself. Not only as a boy but even now after a decade in the military I still tend to walk through life with an unsure determination and desire to do something good. I am still coming to terms with me and I and it was an interesting exercise to put myself in the story of The Seeker’s Burden and write Oliver’s character to reflect many aspects of my own character. This character is named after my son, a four year old boy who is one of the most alethic, bright, moody, and voracious learners I know. Every time he sees my first book with the cover of the older Oliver, he yells, “It’s the book about me!” 

In Ethan, the experienced, sure, and righteous leader I wrote in the aspects of character that I aspire to. Empathy alongside a commanding and assured presence in times of danger. Like Aragorn before, Ethan is a leader among men who fights for the weak and against whatever evil encroaches. He is as fearless and skilled as his namesake, the eldest son of a dear friend. A born leader he leads with passion and fury and yet with a tenderness as well.

Lucy is the strong willed personification of my daughter whom she was also named after (see a trend?). In her character I see the strength and willingness to offer help that I see and hope to always see in my two and a half year version. My daughter is a bulldozer who falls and pops right back up saying, “I’m ok”, and has a tender and loving heart. I shaped the book character around her and my hope for her future.

Writing the characters this way allowed me not only to put realism into their persons, but gave me a greater appreciation for the art of entwining the real world with the fictional. I wanted the characters to be relatable and realistic while still being heroic and inspiring to show that even the most common people have the spark of greatness. Heroes also feel pain and uncertainty, the only difference is they keep striving to do good in a broken world.

Amazon Book Deals 101

  I and many others I am talked to have been confused or have not taken advantage of some of the book deals out there. I am not being asked to or paid to push anything, this is only information. There have been a couple changes to how Amazon offers eBooks recently. There are two primary ways to read books for “Free” (after you pay a set fee).

  First is having a Prime membership. The majority of people get the $99 per year membership to take advantage of the free 2-day shipping and access to video streaming. What few know or utilize is you also have access to thousands of eBooks in the Prime program that you can “borrow”. The main caveat is you can only borrow one book per month (Once you borrow another book, the last one is removed from your library). Want to test the system to see if it works for you? Try the 30-day free Prime Trial and borrow a book. The link is to the left.

  Second and most recent is the introduction of Kindle Unlimited. Working similar to a paid music streaming account, you pay a set monthly fee ($9.99) and have access to thousands of eligible eBooks to read for “free”. There is no limit to the number of books you download and read per month but you can only borrow one at a time. This is a good option for the voracious reader that wants access to a broad range of genres to read at will. If you generally purchase multiple eBooks per month at the average cost of $2.99 + this may be the right fit. Again here is a link with more info:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1002872331

  I hope that clears up some of the mystery surrounding the Amazon book marketplace and of course my two novels, An Emerging Threat and Path of Darkness are available in both the offered programs.

Let your experience color your writing

  When I began to wrestle with the concept of my first The Seeker’s Burden novel, An Emerging Threat, I was in the middle of a thirteen month vacation in Eastern Baghdad. And when I say vacation, I of course mean a mind numbing and life changing military deployment. I fought against the sameness of working 10 hours a day 7 days a week month after month by diving into another world of my own making. It was an escape from the chaos I had little ability to effect. I journeyed to the Tri-Islands and went on adventures with the characters I began to bring to life. Like the world I was physically stuck in, the world of The Seeker’s Burden was coming apart at the seams.

Eastern Baghdad from above

  Danger lurked in the periphery of the land and within the ranks of those that governed. There was pain and death and grief. I could have begun, continued and ended in that way, but I as a desperate romantic, strove even as my heroes on the pages did. There was friendship and light and hope even in the darkness.

Morning Drive

  Some of the people and circumstances that my characters experience are direct reflections of my time in Iraq. In a way it was healing to put those things in writing, to acknowledge the horror, place it within a fictional place, and forge ahead. Now don’t get me wrong, I was one of the fortunate ones. I was never placed in the position where I had to use force against another human being. My heart goes out to those that were not so lucky, the ones that will have that shadow weighing them down their entire lives. I was blessed to come out of a war as physically and mentally whole as I did.

Morning Stroll

  The experiences I lived through in battle-ruined and down trodden Baghdad were incorporated in myriad ways into my Fantasy series. Arrogance, hate, vileness, and fear. Beauty, mystery, compassion, and courage. I am thankful for the experiences and they continue to color my writing and daily life.

The author (on the left)

And...Scene

  I have an overactive imagination. It helped me enjoy my childhood as we often lived in the country and were homeschooled. It was me against the world when my brother or sister had other things to do. I took it so far that I would at times be both the good and the bad guys, shooting arrows in one direction, running to pick them up or pull them from trees and shoot them back. It was glorious fun. I was the wounded hero that sacrificed himself for those in need, struggling to stand and bring my weapon to bear against the charging enemy. I was and am a romantic adventurer with broad ambitions for glory. The history books and novels that I read fueled and established this baseline.

  When in college, I decided to follow my brother into the degree of Digital Media, a degree so new at least one class a semester was the first time it had been offered. My brother focused on web design and animation while I went the path of cinema. Amongst the graphic design and art classes I took classes studying the history of the movie and wrote many papers on the messages that can be taken from the stories on screen. I was forced to write script and come up with film ideas and even helped produce a very well-directed short film. This and the foundation of reading and imagining led to how I now write.

  I write in scenes. Before I ever put fingers to keyboard I imagine the scene and the interaction between the characters, the story and the world they inhabit. I see it so clearly that I often struggle to do the scenes justice on paper. Where in my mind is the entire scene, to include sound and music, on paper it seems bare. Writing in scenes is my way to take a snapshot before the images in my head fade. Only when I am able to read a passage and it takes me into the scene I had imagined do I feel comfortable to move on. Taking it scene by scene also helps me in time management as long as I start and finish an entire scene and the elements in it, I feel satisfied that the book is eventually going to be complete.

  The hardest part is the communication between imagination and my brain and fingers. My imagination is nearly limitless, my body and mind, not so much. I am still learning how to write and effectively put voice to the ideas that prance along their merry way in the world where I am king, pauper, cowboy, hero and creator; my imagination. 

Why is it that the best ideas come when unprepared?

  Why is it that my best book ideas hit me while driving or falling asleep? It is frustrating and though I have been able to jot things down every now and then, the majority of the time I spend the next morning dissecting the jumble of dreams to get at the wandering thoughts that so closely preceded them or when arriving at my destination wildly searching for pen and paper even as the ideas seep into my memory vaults, to be opened only at specific and ultimately unknown times…

  Sigh.

  Anyone else ever experience this? How did you combat it? I have taken to carrying 5x7 cards with me during the day and having a pen or two around in case something strikes me.

Reply

This is a reply to a comment made on my last blog post and I thought it had something for everybody.

Adrienne,

Thank you for the comment and welcome to the club! I agree on your point about the pressure to write and complete. It is and has always been mostly my own expectation and pressure to hurry up and write and not an external force.

Stealing from a blog post I wrote years ago:

“Mirror, mirror on the wall who is the fairest of us all? What do you see when you steal a glimpse of yourself in a reflection? Generally speaking we are our own worst critics, downplaying the good and highlighting the bad. If we have a positive thought about ourselves, we almost have to combat it with a negative to maintain the balance between me and I.”

We are cursed and extremely blessed to be the force behind our art. It necessitates a balance of writing time and time spent establishing oneself in other aspects. I often wish I had more time to write, a dark and quiet space that I can slink away to and focus. I have not achieved the balance yet and I am jealous of my time though I waste much of it.

One of the ways I reenergize my writing is focusing on a character or scene that grabs my attention and running with that string of events until it is complete and then look for another. I wrote my first book mainly in order but my second was written by character. Once I finished the books storyline for one I would go to the next. It was easier to force completion but harder to figure the chapter spacing. I spent many hours with the printed pages on my floor, fitting them together like a puzzle piece. Once that was done, I went back and wrote/edited the chapter endings to better transition to another character, etc.

There are all sorts of trick I have used to fool myself into writing! Thank you for purchasing my book and I hope you enjoy it!

Mark

The Slump

I have been stuck lately. The storyline for the third and final book in my fantasy series, The Seeker’s Burden, is bursting at the seams of my mind in its attempts to make it onto paper, but the physical requirement of fingers on keys has been met with resistance. I went through a similar phase between books one and two, where for several months I paced lethargically before my computer, stealing guilty glances at the waiting keyboard. The story was running laps in my head, waving its arms and screaming at the top of its lungs. It was driving me crazy, I felt like a too full balloon. Then suddenly, I began to write and in just over three months the first draft of book two was complete.

It is routinely called writer’s block, but I call it a breakdown in the physical manifestation of mental knowledge. Sounds smarter.

All I know is, based on my small breadth of experience, I should expect to be able to breakdown the mental barriers and put my fingers to work soon.  I have to remind myself constantly that yes, I am having difficulty expressing what is inside, but in spite of this I have finished two books in the very recent past. I am proud of that. The hardest part of writing is over, completing the first book. For me, once the first was complete and available for purchase, it was as if a door was thrown open and my personally forged chains were cast away.

My passion for writing goes back to my childhood and is only growing stronger. I am in a slump, but I will pick myself up and forge ahead soon enough. Writing is becoming a reason for joy and the reinvigoration of the desire to produce something tangible and singularly mine.

Feel free to reply with some of the blocks that have hampered your writing or other artistic endeavors. I would love to talk to others struggling to voice what is inside.

I like a good bad guy

When my wife recently read a passage of my latest novel, Path of Darkness, and visibly recoiled and grimaced I got excited. When she told me that the creature in question was gross and disturbing, I was elated. Mission accomplished.

I have always enjoyed great bad guys in fantasy and sci-fi; Darth Vader, Sauron, and the demons, Reaper, and Jakara in the Shannara series. The juxtaposition between the good of the main characters and the evil and threat of the enemy serves up the most exciting and sometimes poignant moments in stories.

We all want a clear bad guy. I think it gets down to this; if we have a clear enemy, a clear antithesis to all we understand as good and moral, the easier it is to decide on your path in life. Not only that, but there is the feeling of success when there is even the smallest of victories. As simple as speaking a kind word and giving someone your time when the enemy inside wishes nothing but me, me, me.

Fantasy allows me personally to live out and visualize my desire in life. Live morally and fight against the evil in the world. The bad guys in the best of this genre celebrate the hard, drawn-out struggle of good vs evil. The best is never easy, never pretty, armor is torn and wounds inflicted. Without the pain and hardship, the sweetness of success when it finally comes would be lost.

I love a good bad guy when those that struggle against it/them never give up though grief and loss gathers close around them and threatens to pull them down. The art of writing a bad guy that can and should destroy the hero is allowed to show its power before coming to its end by the combined desperation of good.

Without desperate struggle against evil this life and these novels would be extremely dull.

Burn Out

As a writer, I have experienced this routinely. When I’m on, I’m on and meet or exceed my personal goal of a minimum 1000 words per sit down. Then there are the days where the desire to write exists but the ability to put digital pen to paper drains to zero. This is ok. Writing is not my full time job, no matter how much I would love that, I am consumed with my day job, my other job and spending precious time with my wife and kids. At times, when I am able to set away time to write, as I sit down, the words that had been ready to pour through my typing fingers get stuck in place.

The good news for all that have been or are bogged down in the pit of despair as the story that you had been close enough to touch fades into the distance, is that the rain will come, washing the cobwebs from your mind and freeing your consciousness. Make sure to take advantage of these times. When I began to write book one of my Fantasy series, The Seeker’s Burden, I wrote nearly two chapters and then flailed my way through a drought of three to four years. I would often sit down to add to the story only to break down within mere sentences. The ability to make it through a full paragraph was heralded as a great success.  

Then one day in December 2012 the clouds parted and the words tumbled from me in a violent stream. Each new character bolstered my passion, each experience and story twist begged to be followed by more words until the book was suddenly done three months later. I wrote chapter after chapter, the total story holding my attention. Once the book was done and in the editing process, I was burned-out. Though I continued making notes and theorizing about the direction of the story arc, it took a couple months to want to get back into the hard work of writing.

Suddenly, I was once again hard at it, struggling to type before the screaming flow of words and information overtook my ability cope with the task. Within four months book two was written and in the editing process. I now have both books published and find myself back in the in-between space of contrasting lethargy and desire. At least this time I know that eventually, and soon I hope, the desire will overcome and I will once again be in the fight to get the words on paper before they are lost in the following words straining for my attention.

A word of encouragement. Do not give up. If you have the desire to write, the words will eventually build up until they are able to scale the ramparts of your mind and stream through the breach with bagpipes leading the charge. Be ready for that time. Allow yourself time, even when you are unable to write, to just sit and think about writing. Think about the story until the world or situation you want to write about becomes a part of you to the point that when someone asks a question about a gap in the story, you will be able to effortlessly fill it and more.

Enjoy it. If writing frustrates you, take some time away from it. Treat it like a relationship where sometimes a moment alone goes a long way to ease the tension. Do not force it until you hate the process. Write something you would want to read and open yourself to the possibility that however long it takes, the process, the creation and evolution of the characters and worlds, are what truly matters.

Completing a manuscript does not hurt either.

The Aftermath

One of the many surprises that have come out of writing books is the breadth of experience I have received. Not only have my feeble English skills been put to the test time and time again, but I have been forced to learn marketing, formatting using © Adobe programs, graphics and layout, and more.

As hard as writing is at times, I have been blown away by the aftermath of a finished manuscript. I may or may not have a private victory party in my head when the final words leave my brain and meander their way to the page that gives them a certain permanency. The mental hangover soon hits, threatening to dissuade me from ever partaking in the bliss that is completing a book again.

My timeline has been getting shorter but still holds to a certain format (To clarify, I hold a full time job and have toddlers at home and my editors and artists have similar constraints). The bulk of the writing (Creation) ends after four to five months and then the editing (Quality Control) process begins. Depending on how many editors the time needed to let them do their thing is roughly one to two months. Then the finalized text must be formatted and the typesetting must be done (Production), taking another two weeks or so. Another part of production is the cover art, which in my case takes up to three months of back and forth due (during the writing) to limited availability of time on the artist’s part.

I need to find some pain relievers just thinking about it… Once all the separate parts have been completed I then submit the files to be made into a book. I wait a week and receive the first of a couple proof copies and two weeks later I officially publish. A sigh of relief. Until the next day when I start checking the sales of course. Oh, and did I mention marketing?

So about a six month process with a lot of moving pieces that I mostly enjoy doing but causes white hairs to compete with my brain for supremacy of the general head area. Is it worth it? Personally, yes it is. I wish any aspiring Author could hold a completed book in their hands, the feeling of accomplishment and pride is worth every painful and rewarding moment. Even then I do not consider myself an Author as the title denotes a sense of experience and legitimacy that I do not feel I have the right to. But, the following definition is open ended enough that I feel somewhat less uncomfortable with others calling me the prestigious title:

Author: a person who writes a novel, poem, essay, etc. (Dictionary.com)

Whew…that etc. sure helps.

Honestly, I have enjoyed the experience and plan to continue to write for many years. If anyone would like to ask questions or just commiserate with me, please comment below or sign up for the newsletter on the contact tab for more dialog on the writing process and my Fantasy series.