Guest Post: From Julie Eberhart Painter-- Distance Lends Perspective

                                     

As a reader there’s an advantage knowing the writer has been “there,” and not simply researched the setting of your current read. For the writer the opposite can be true. Too much detail works its way into a plot and smothers it. Instead of a description, we get historical backstory and a map.

Three authors I’ve followed were very good at distancing themselves from their locales—physically. James A. Michener, Pearl S. Buck, and Pat Conroy. Jimmy Michener and Pearl S. Buck, “my hometown writers made good” were neighbors, so I already knew the map. But they wrote their books about our community or about their former community (China) from elsewhere. Giving distance enhances perspective. 

Michener lived in Texas when he wrote Poland. He wrote most of The Tales of the South Pacific, for which he won the 1948 Pulitzer, from New York City. When he penned his second novel, Fires of Spring, the scandalous exposé set our 5000 citizens of Doylestown, Pennsylvania into fiery criticism. They called it a pot boiler and whispered around corners trying to identify the people in it; another good reason to distance oneself. He wrote that from New York and  Bucks County, PA. Forty years later Fires was rereleased as The Novel while he live out of state. 

 Buck wrote from China while there, and about China when she came back to the States. I used her voice (hesitant and respectful) from The Good Earth to write my short story, “The Egg Man”, a real happening in Beijing. I wrote it after I was home and trimmed excess details to keep the focus on the hapless Chinaman lying under his broken product with a months-worth of egg money sliding into a ditch.Pat Conroy, a Carolina boy, was in Europe when he authored Beach Music, expressing his love for his home state and his flawed family.

As a writer, what’s fascinating about the distancing process is that it was thrust upon me. Our family has moved 17 times from the Northeast to the Southwest to the Midwest and eventually to the real South, and Florida. From my office in Daytona Beach, distance kept the perspective and discipline in Mortal Coil while I waxed poetic about Georgia’s Kennesaw Mountain.

Main character, Ellen, recently from Ohio, observes this historic Civil War Mountain lost to the Yankees.

The view of what she had come to think of as her mountain rose majestic, silhouetted against a cerulean sky. This spring morning, Kennesaw Mountain blossomed to life with lacy pink and white dogwoods peeking through greening winter branches and long-leaf pines—a festive prelude to the pre-summer season. Despite what was going on inside Kingsley Nursing Home, the outside façade of the one-story building rested like the center of interest in a dry brush painting that changed daily.

Each glance restored her, remembering how she had fallen in love with the South. For all its contradictions, Southerners’ resilience and warmth charmed her. Only here in the foothills of history did people commemorate their losses as well as their victories. She would have to learn that skill.

Thanks to distance, that description was mercifully short. 

Find Julie at:

Twitter: @JulieEPainter

Facebook-  http://www.facebook.com/julieeberhart.painter

Linked-In-   http://www.linkedin.com/search/fpsearch?type=people&keywords=Julie+Eberhart+Painter&pplSearchOrigin=GLHD&pageKey=member-home&search=Search

Julie is a regular blogger on-  http://thewritersvineyard.com/ 

and feature writer for 

http://cocktailsmagazine.wix.com/fictionandgossip#!issue-14  an online slick. 

Her flash fiction appears under 

http://bewilderingstories.com/bios/painter_bio.htm

Visit Julie’s Web site at-  www.books-jepainter.com

http://bit.ly/17GtxDh  for Bewildering Stories, 

My Bio

Blog for The Writers Vineyard, every fourth Monday, July 14 next Link:  

thewritersvineyard.com

So You Think You Want To Write A Fantasy Series?

Guest Blogger- Bobbye Terry!


So you think you want to write a fantasy series…

You can’t stop thing about it, an idea nagging at the back of your brain that won’t go away, a heroine with kick-assitude who keeps waking you up from your dreams or a hero who woos you awake with his evaporating kisses. But where do you begin and how will your idea spawn not one but many books around some central theme?

Before you sit down and busily start to get the first chapter down, stop. Be smart and consider the following list. Know where you want to go so you don’t have to come back and backtrack, and yes, pantsers, this will work for you (so said the queen of all pantsers, me).

Series Worldbuilding-List of Things to Consider:

1. Fantasy in current world or other world? Will your world co-exist with our current world or will it be different, play be new rules? If so, what are those rules?
2. Future, Present Day, Past or Time Travel?

Is this in the future on our planet Earth? If so, how did we get where we are? Background here...is it a dystopian world, ravaged by war and devastation of a flourishing paradise, or a world now controlled by one sect? How will you best illustrate the change in conditions? Is it in the past? If so, have you done your research about dialect, clothing, customs, conditions,  activities and occupations for daily living? Is it a time travel? If so, how will you best contrast the dichotomy?

3. Fantasy beings—in human form with special powers, category beings (i.e., vampires, witches, angels, zombies, demons, etc?), or totally new category?

If your characters look like humans but have powers, what are those powers? Is there a limit or an Achilles heel? If they fall into a category of beings, do they act like the stereotype of those in other novels, or do your beings look or act differently? If they do, bring that out early. Are they in a new category? If so, how do you describe them and how do you suspend belief?

4. Items, terrain, locations, special features that remain in all books?

What is the glue that holds this series together, the constants? Think of one or a small number. In my series now in progress, the series centers around the holy book, The Book of the Beginning. If you use the same locations each time, make sure these locations, their places, etc., stay the same in each book.

5. Do the Hero and Heroine stay the same in every book or do they change?

If the hero and heroine are the same, how will you ensure that they can hold your readers from book to book? What is suspenseful that continues to propel readers forward? If hero and heroine change, what continuity do you bring over from earlier books?

6. Tone of the books—needs to stay similar.

You can’t have one dark and one light, one funny and one somber, one sweet and one ultra hot. The books need to be smooth like a nice glass of wine or a great piece of jazz music.

7. Keeping all the characters straight—do you have them written down somewhere, including physical and personality details?

This is very hard after you write 80-1000,000 words times three or four or five. Write down all your characters, their idiosyncrasies, their traits so you can reference to make sure they stay the same. Even if they’re short-term in the book or the series, you need to keep track of the names and using the same letters, etc. Consider doing some backstory, other things about what make them who they are. You may want to do a companion book like Sherrilyn Kenyon did for the Dark Hunter series.

8. Website—does your world have its own distinct website?

This may be a good idea if the series is long. I have one for my Book of the Beginning series. It’s not complete yet, but will be a s the first book debuts. Always be ready to greet your readers and fans with information to whet their reading appetities.

I hope this has gotten you to start thinking, or maybe a single title sounds real good about now…

---

Bobbye Terry is the multi-published writer of fantasy, suspense and romantic comedy novels under her own name, her solo pseudonym, Daryn Cross, and her co-authored one,Terry Campbell. Her previous works have garnered finalist awards in the Booksellers’ Best and other RWA-sponsored contests. Her most recent release is It’s Magic by Daryn Cross & LJ DeLeon, Crescent Moon Press. Craigs’ Legacy by Terry Campbell, will debut as one of Black Opal Books’ first releases on February 11th. Additionally, she has a new short story, “Legend of the True Love Angel” by Bobbye Terry, in Turquoise Morning press’ just released Be Mine, Valentine anthology.

What is the MICE Quotient?

According to Orson Scott Card,


Every fictional story has it.  But the question is, what is it?  


MICE is an acronym which stands for Milieu, Idea, Character and Event.


So every story fits into at least one or more of these categories.  

• Milieu - The Milieu is the world--the planet, the society, the weather, the family--all the elements that went into creating that special world.

• Idea - Idea stories are about the process of finding information.

• Character - The Character story is about the transformation of a character's role in the communities that matter most to him or her.

• Event - Event stories focus on events which rip the fabric of the universe or disrupt the natural order and cause the world to be in a state of flux.

  
  
  There are other great things in this article-- check it out at:  
  
  
  http://triton.towson.edu/~schmitt/311/pages/tsld004.htm