Brainstorming and You

Song Playing: Spark by Tori Amos

I signed up for three blogfests recently, because I am a glutton for punishment. So here they are before I get on with today’s post.

Charity Bradford is having a Baking Scene Blogfest: http://charitywrites.blogspot.com/2010/03/50-followers-baking-blogfest.html

The Write Runner, also known as Iapetus999, also known as Andrew Rosenberg is having a Bad Girl Scene blogfest, which I totally have covered:
http://blog.dawnsrise.com/2010/04/blogfest-voting-results.html

And finally, Tara is having a Bar Scene Blogfest:
http://t-fouts.blogspot.com/2010/03/announcing-bar-scene-blogfest.html

Also, the lovely Mia is having a Deleted Scene Blogfest, that I will sign up for if I can think of something! So go on, check them out. It’s fun to write a scene with a specific goal in mind. I like to use these scenes to stretch myself as a writer, so it doesn’t just have to be a distraction from your normal schedule.

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Brainstorming. Every writer does it. Whether it’s just thinking about how the idea you’ve had can play itself out, or a more formal jotting ideas down on paper, you’ve had to brainstorm your idea every time you write a book.

Given the frequency a writer will brainstorm, I was surprised I didn’t find more information about various brainstorming methods on the Internet and in books. So I decided to post about it myself.

I have already touched on the idea of brainstorming in one of my earlier posts, “Hypnotize Yourself While Writing”, but I didn’t really expand past mentioning you need to brainstorm.

Now, you might be thinking you don’t like to brainstorm, you hated those tree diagrams and free association just isn’t for you, but like I said, my theory is EVERY writer brainstorms, it’s just a matter of how.



Let’s back up. What do I mean by brainstorming exactly? I mean when you have an idea for a book, and you think about how that idea could work itself out. Probably the idea comes to you in a piece. My ideas almost ALWAYS come as a situation between two characters.

Case in point: two nights ago I had a dream that a rich, high society girl was traveling by a large ship across freezing waters with her high society family. She snubs a soldier on the boat, but later she falls overboard, and starts to drown. Her parents are standing on the boat, crying out for her, but not doing anything to help. They assume she’s already lost because the waters are freezing, and by the time they can get a lifeboat out to her she’ll already have drowned.

The soldier guy she snubbed earlier dives into the ocean, and drags her back to the lifeboat the other soldiers have lowered into the water. The girl gets medical attention, but now has a huge dilemma. She just had literal proof her parents wouldn’t risk their lives to save her. A complete stranger—one that she had been mean to, no less—was the one to risk his life. Not her family. She had always suspected she was just an asset to her parents, but here was the ugly truth (note: I realize that not diving into the freezing ocean doesn’t necessarily mean someone doesn’t love you. But that’s how it was in my dream. ;) ).

That’s the idea. In it’s entirety. A typical idea for me, where there are two characters that are connected through a complicated, not easy to define way, and they both have to deal with internal issues.

Everything I do to develop this idea I consider brainstorming (or will do since I am just writing this idea down for later, since I have several others books already in the queue).

Let’s say you do need to do some brainstorming. If not now, in the future. How do you go about it? The neat thing is almost anything can click with you and make you see your idea in another light. Actually, I try to allow that synergy to happen as often as possible, so when I have an idea, I write down everything I know about it and then let the idea stew for a while (the above example’s idea page is longer than what I explained to you. Sometimes just the act of writing the idea down will spark more ideas, or uncover more information. Like, when I typed that up I KNEW her older sister was a rival, and her parent’s greatly favored her older sister over her).



Some people prefer to not write the idea down and let it stew, but I do my best stewing with I have something jotted down, even if it’s just a sentence. If you are passively brainstorming, you’re acting like a normal writer and observing the world around you, thinking “What if this happened?”, reading books, watching movies, watching birds, listening to people talk, thinking about the idea while driving, talking to people etc. And sometimes you see a picture or watch a movie that clicks and opens up more potential for an idea you’ve already had. Those kismet moments are what I live for as a writer (among others).

Sometimes you decide you want to do some more active brainstorming, for a variety of reasons. Here are some, according to the most common for me.

1) You are in love with an idea, it burns deep inside you, and you absolutely must work on it. Right now.

2) You already have most of the basics of the idea down. Maybe you have the characters named, you know the theme and setting. All you need now is a plot. (Because in my case, I almost NEVER had ideas that come with plots. Situations that could spin out into a plot? Yes. But not a whole lot of ideas relating to plots).

3) You are bored, feeling creative, and your mind is wandering. Out of curiosity, you what to see what comes out.

So you’ve decide to brainstorm. What next?



Brainstorming is as personal as creating characters, but here are some of the methods I have run across in my time as a writer:

1) The Free Form
This one is also called Stream of Conscious, or something along that line. Basically you sit down, and write everything that comes to mind while vaguely thinking about your plot. For my girl falling off boat idea, Free Form could look like this: boat, ocean, Titanic, life rafts, SCUBA diving…

I don’t like to do this so early on in the brainstorming process, but some people swear by it. I almost never come up with something useful when I have so little already planned.

2) The Web o’ Ideas
We all know this one. This is where you draw a circle, write the character’s name in the middle, and draw another circle. You write something in that circle, like BOAT. Maybe you have another idea related to BOAT, so you draw a circle off of BOAT and write LIFE RAFT. Or you have an idea for the character and write PARENTS USE HER. You get the picture. There’s all sorts of data why this is useful—because you’re engaging both sides of your brain, because you’re drawing, because you’re harnessing order and chaos.

I don’t really use this method a whole lot either. I don’t do well with anything resembling free form. I don’t know why. I just keep recycling the same ideas over and over. So I get frustrated, crumple it into a ball, throw it across the room, and do something more linear.

3) The List
This form of brainstorming is where you either write long hand, or type in a new document some short bullets of your idea. It’s a cousin to the Web o’ Ideas in that most of the time the bullet builds on the one that came before it. It’s different from Free Form because you normally group similar ideas together, but very similar since you are just sort of throwing ideas out there as they come. So in the continuing example, my list could look like this:

*Somehow the soldier has to function in her world, instead of going the expected route and making the parents destitute, and having to rely on him. He is granted a huge amount of land and title for saving her life?

*Her sister is the main antagonist? She’s prettier and engaged to a prince or something?

*Or war could break out where soldiers are more needed, the soldier guy gets titled, and then moves up the ranks. Leadership, where you have people under you. Grant land from a traitor and give it to the soldier?

*No one showed the soldier how to be noble. He doesn’t know how to deal with finances because he’s been a soldier his entire life. The estate has a huge upkeep, high, falling to ruin, deeply in debt, the girl helps him out of it? Mined his own land, and kept his land. Social etiquette part?

*The girl listened to all the chatter of the high society, talk about the latest fashions, runs across the soldier, so he’s a different person and has different things to talk about.

I use this one a ton, so that is a real life example from where I wrote my idea down. See how the ideas jump around a bit, but mostly stay on topic? I also have several permutations of a situation—in this case how the soldier will come into play later—and I basically think out loud.



4) The Hundred Questions
This is also called several different things, and I have also blogged about this method a little bit, in my post “From Idea to Story” when I talked about brainstorming. You sit down with a piece of paper or new word processing document, write out your basic idea, and start asking yourself all sorts of questions. Like, what if X happened? What would happen from that? How would that work out? Where would that happen? Who would do it? You could follow this train of thought as far as you want, with as many detours as you want. You could decide you didn’t like this line of thought, and go back to the start, and ask yourself the same questions.
Example:
A girl falls overboard from a huge boat, in the middle of freaking nowhere, and the water is ice cold.
What if she was really pushed overboard? What if her parents paid to have her pushed? What if she fell due to her own stupidity? What if someone saves her but now they are stuck with each other because of the customs of the land? What if she realized her parents didn’t love her because they assumed she was dead? What if she decided to sabotage her parents because of this hurt? What if she joined the mafia? What if she embezzled all her parents’ money and turned to a life of crime…

And so on. I have NO idea where the mafia thing came from, but see how I started to follow that train of thought? Initially I would say that there is no mafia where they live, so she can’t join it, but maybe I could have a criminal element? Maybe they are merchants and her father belongs to the mob in their world, and she sells him out? Maybe I keep the “stealing all her parents’ money” part and drop the mafia angle.

Maybe not, but it’s something I could keep in mind. Many times I have come up with a random thought I didn’t think fit the story at all, only to think of a way include it much to the betterment of the story later.

I really really really…REALLY like this method. I always do this as some point in time to my plots. It helps me make sure I have really found the best, most original way for the story to unfold. Usually I have one part of the idea, and then I ask myself what if over and over, and just write whatever springs to mind. Half of what I come up with is awful, but that’s not the point. The point is to think your idea through as much as you can before you actually write it. Sometimes you can spot an idea that’s going to fizzle during this stage, or a glaring problem that you’re going to need to address.

And plus, it’s loads of fun! I think writers should play “What if” at parties.

5) With a Twist!
Something you can do at any stage in any method of brainstorming is twist your idea. Take whatever you just wrote, and twist it. You can already see how I twisted an idea with the previous example. Girl falls over board, guy saves her. I decided I didn’t want to just write a damsel in distress story, so I twisted it, and started thinking of ways that she could also “save” him. And not in that sappy, “He’s a jerk, and she melts his cold heart and saves her with LOVE” *cue sappy music* sort of saving him.



Also, most people would simply have them fall in love, and then have her wealthy parents loose all their money, and it turns out that her parents rely on the soldier for food and shelter. It would turn into Romeo and Juliet Take a Chilly Cruise in a heartbeat. So I decided to head that off at the pass, and left the nature of their relationship up in the air, and twisted the idea so that the soldier would have to learn how to function in the upper class’s world. Somehow. The details are still sketchy.

Or you could use a synergy of any or all of the above. I knew a writer who used the web, but also Free Formed ideas in a sidebar on the same paper. Different forms of brainstorming might be more useful at different stages of the book for you as well. Like I said earlier, I don’t like to use the Web or Free Form early on, but once I have most of the details worked out I will sometimes do that to see what other ideas shake down from my subconscious.

To start with, I usually use a combination of the List and the Hundred Questions. You can actually see the questions buried in the bullets, where I was already asking myself why? How? What? Who? And When?

Something else to consider: put yourself into the story. No, I am not talking about making a Mary or Gary Stu. But somewhere around the stage when I am twisting and wringing the idea for all it’s worth, I start asking myself, What do I like about this idea?



That questions can save your book if you know the answer. If you get to the middle of the book and run out of steam, you can look back at the brainstorming stage and read over what made you so excited in the first place, and rekindle the book.

Finding out what you like about the idea can also keep you on track with your plot. We know that by making one decision about the plot, we also affect every other future decision we make on the plot in a chaos-butterfly effect way. Let’s look at my example. By deciding the soldier was going to have to deal with the high society, I changed a lot of the other options I had for the plot. It would probably take place in high society more now, than if I had went the “family goes bankrupt” route. Every decision takes you down a different path, and sometimes it’s hard to know which path you want to go down.

If you know why you are so excited about the idea, you can make sure your plot stays within that idea. I don’t know if you have ever had this happen, but sometimes I would either write an idea out or plot it out, and suddenly I was no longer interested in it. The book morphed at some point into a story I didn’t care about telling.

Once I started identify what caused the fires to be stoked, I never had that problem again. AND it helps while you revise the book.

This reason doesn’t have to be meaningful, or insightful, or even make sense. I like the girl falling over the boat idea so much because I love wondering how she’s going to deal with finding out her parents don’t love her. I also love the “pride comes before a fall” concept, so the girl finding out there’s more to life than fancy parties intrigues me. It’s that simple. When my plot starts to veer off course, I bring it back to: what situations would force her to come to terms with her family? How can I milk that for all it’s worth?



Some ideas I liked just because I had a great feel for the main characters. Others because I had a good sense of the world. This reason can be anything you like. Once you realize what draws you to the idea, you can also proceed to put more of what you find fascinating into the story. Why stop with just one thing?

Here is something that has really changed the way I write, and create ideas. I have noticed a huge difference in my stories after I started doing this.

Keep a file on your computer, call it whatever you think is appropriate. Mine is called “My theme” and subtitled “The Shiny”. Write in this file ideas and concepts that fascinate you. For example, I think dreams are really cool, and I want to write a story about someone controlling their dreams. Some other things I find cool to think about:

*Why is it that the things we want hurt us the most? Is it the act of wanting it? Or the thing itself? Is it us? Our choices? Something we can’t control?

*Why is it to really live sometimes you have to die? Why is it ironic, why do you have to give up your hair for a hair comb? Why?

*Forgiveness: are there some things someone can do to you that are so terrible, or just hurt you so bad that you could never really forgive them? What if this was a loved one? A family member?

Finding your themes is easy. What topics do you find yourself debating until the wee hours in the morning? What subjects are guaranteed to keep your interest? A quirky sidekick? (maybe you could write a story about a quirky sidekick, and what it’s like to play second fiddle) Angels and demons? Do you, like me, love those movies that came out in the 90’s that dealt with heaven and hell fighting each other?



I also have a list of subjects that intrigue in the same file. Here is a small sample:

survival in a dystopia
survival after an apocalypse
ghosts
zombies
angels and demons fighting, exorcism
Morpheus
Orpheus going back to the underworld
death is not the end
bouncers
serial killers
1940’s gangster
gang wars
Cyberpunk
Mental illness

I am not suggesting you write the same story over and over, but to have a place you can regularly go to for ideas that you love. In the girl falls off a boat idea, I could easily see myself asking the Forgiveness question. Could she forgive her parents? Could they make things better? Worse? How would she get over it (without whining through the entire book)?

Once you story identifying how you brainstorm best, and what excites you about a story, you can reliably create interesting ideas. I am not saying you don’t still need your muse (I would never suggest such a thing. I love my muse. He’s the greatest, bestest musing muse in the history of muses…there. I think I placated his ego enough) but when you have all the rest of this stuff in place it makes it a lot easier to start cross pollinating and getting eureka moments.

What is the best way you have found to brainstorm? What topics rabidly interest you?

(P.S. I could say I used all pictures of glasses to symbolize how brainstorming fills your creativity up, but that would be a lie. I just found those pictures aesthetically pleasing. Thank you, FreeDigitalPictures.net for the pictures)

The V Factor: Break It at Your Peril

Song playing: When You Were Young by the Killers

Spring has sprung, so it’s been a steady 80 degrees outside all week. The pollen is so thick in the air it lands on your car and turns it green. You think I am exaggerating, but just wait. I will have pictures of this phenomenon.

As such, my sinuses are killing me, but I can’t take any allergy medicine, because seriously. Me and medicine. Doesn’t work out well if I want to function the rest of the day. So I shall suffer in not-quite silence.

But my sneezy, itchy nose isn’t what I wanted to talk about today. Something much more important.

There is a plague sweeping our fair writing community, one that must be stopped at all costs. Call up the hobbits, Gandalf, Aragorn, and Legolas will have to leave Roxy for a short period of time (sorry Roxy, it’s his civic duty). It’s time to combat something worse than just a measly overlord trying to enslave the world in darkness.

I am talking about verisimilitude. Which is a really fancy way of saying the character acts believably. Jim Butcher shortened “verisimilitude” to “V-factor” and I think that’s a great idea.

Note how I did not say the character acts in character, although that is part of it.




No, I said “believably”. Here is a short quote from Mr. Butcher’s article on Characters:

“V-factor is the second most important element in creating interesting characters. The most exotic character in the world becomes nothing more than an annoying cartoon figure if he doesn't behave in a consistent and believable manner. (*kaffkaff*JAR-JAR*kaffkaff*)”

Notice how Butcher says “consistent” AND “believable”. Consistency is what we are all the most familiar with. It’s pretty basic Writing 101 stuff. We know that once you establish your character with certain traits, he has to keep acting as you have established, unless you GRADUALLY show his development and change.

If I establish my character Scud as a bad boy who doesn’t like to play by the rules, and bucks up to authority, when Scud gets pulled over by a cop, the reader is already tensing up in his seat. The reader knows there’s trouble brewing, because Scud has a bunch of illegal guns in his trunk, and needs to keep the nice police officer happy, but Scud ALSO can’t seem to keep his mouth shut either.

If Scud doesn’t mouth off to the police officer it might be forgivable. Maybe the threat of illegal guns and getting his kneecaps broken by the goons he’s transporting the guns to is incentive enough to keep quiet. You do have some latitude with your character traits, because you don’t want to make a caricature either. BUT if Scud goes out of his way to be nice to the police officer, takes a bullet for him or something of that nature, the reader will be quicker to call foul.

All of that is consistency, your characters acting within character. We already know about this.



Something that doesn’t get touched upon however, is believability. It’s closely related to consistency, but not the same thing. The good news is that most writers subconsciously have this sucker down pat, so they don’t run afoul of the Believability Police. But lately I have read several books, by well known, published authors—even bestselling authors—whose characters sometimes don’t act in a manner that is believable.

Let me tell you, there is nothing that throws you out of story quicker than a character who doesn’t act in a believable manner.

Here is an exaggerated example: A bomb is about to explode. Your character, a normal smuck who’s worked out of cubical his entire life, diffuses it. Not even a sentence in the beginning of the book about his “Bombing Diffusing and You” class will suspend your disbelief on this one. You just don’t believe that a normal guy would know how to diffuse a bomb IN REAL LIFE.

Note how I said “in real life”. This is where believability comes into play. Yes, I agree that characters should have exaggerated personality traits to entertain or inform, you pick your poison. And yes, fiction is not real life, but a close facsimile to it.

BUT your character still has to act in a manner that we can believe. And our belief comes from our real life experiences. There are all sorts of ways a writer can slip and break the believability of a character. Actually, my earlier post “Characters Who Need to Be Shot” covers one such example, that of a bossy heroine mouthing off to a big bad guy and never suffering the consequences of her actions. I do not believe that a person can act like a know-it-all jerk without there being consequences to those actions. And yet, it happens a lot. Sure, they are masochistic people who are attracted to this sort of person, but not every person in the whole world will bow down or put up with this character’s crap.

I blame movies. Movies are really bad about having a character act in a really extreme way—altruistic, jerkish, naïve—without showing the consequences these actions have on their life.




A character’s personality is just one way you can run afoul of the Believability police. Their job is another area rife with ways to screw up. Whether the character comes up with a convenient skill they didn’t have before, or wouldn’t really know (like bomb diffusing), or acts in a manner someone of that profession, social class, race, color, religion, planetary origin would not, your character is not acting in a manner we can believe. And that breaks our suspension of disbelief.

The flip side to this is with proper motivation, explanation, setting, etc you can make ANYTHING believable. And not only will it be believable, but the story will be more awesome for it. We are writers after all. Given enough time, set up, details, and all of the other stuff you put into your book to make it seem “real”, we can make you believe in people that never existed, worlds that never were, and events that never happened.

My former example? Office smuck who diffuses a bomb? There are several ways to make that work. He could have amnesia and been a bomb tec in his former life. He could be dating a bomb expert. He could secretly be training himself because he wants to be on the bomb squad. He could have no idea what he was doing, and diffuse it on dumb luck. With the right details, anything is believable, but you have to take the time to make it work. You have to set it up so I believe he can diffuse a bomb.

It all boils down to you, as the author, really thinking things through. I know having a smart mouthed character is really fun, and I too can get swept up in the events of the plot. It all makes sense to me, because I can feel the character and I know all the tiny reasons behind what they do. But you have to make sure you look at all sides of your story, character and plot alike.

You also have to make sure your character isn’t just a puppet to the plot, or your idea. You have to make sure the character acts like a real person.

It’s very inconvenient when a character acts like a real person, because then you tend to write your characters into situations you have NO IDEA how to get them out of. But think about it—if you can’t see how he’s going to get himself out of trouble the first time around, the reader won’t either. And the story will be much more organic and thrilling for it.

But how do you do this? I have droned on and on about the evils of breaking the V-factor, but how to do make people believe in the unbelievable?



Jim Butcher has some suggestions in his article on Characters at his Live Journal.

And I have some as well.

First, make a list of what your character has to be able to do by the end of the book to make your plot work. He doesn’t have to be able to do it in the beginning, but by the end of the book he has to know how to diffuse a bomb. Or if your character is shy, and you’re writing a poignant coming of age, he has to get over his fear of speaking onstage.

Work out some steps for him to take to get to that goal. Then work out how you’re going to write that into the story, hopefully in a subtle manner. Not “Gee Bob, I sure am glad I took that How to Diffuse a Bomb at-home study course. And you poo-pooed it!”

Also, examine your character from every angle. Spend time with people in his profession, if you can. Cops don’t just go around breaking the law, you might note. Lawyers tend to work really long hours. Try to collect as many details about your character and what that means for a person in real life with those flaws, those merits, that profession. Notice how the office jerk does has dates on Friday night, but no family to go home to on the weekends. Notice how the shy mousey girl gets walked on by other people.

Remember. The devil is in the details. Don’t let something so important ruin an otherwise perfectly good book. And relax. As I said, most people inherently grasp this concept. Once you know what you’re looking for, it will be easier to spot lapses in V-factor where you made a quick jump to further the plot.

What do you guys think? Am I raving mad? Any examples of blatant disregard for how people act in real life?

I Blame Snow White

Song Playing: Shimmer, by Fuel

Hello! I hope everyone had a great weekend, filled with eggs and candy. I am excited to report I have progress to…report. Yesterday before the obligatory family dinner I especially made some excellent progress.

So here is my progress:

*I loosely outlined my current WIP, my mermaid book (only in the book it’s a merman, not maid, but hey, work with me).

*I started taking a class on revision to help with revision of Masquerade. The class is given by Holly Lisle, and it’s already helped me oodles, so that’s exciting. I printed out the worksheets and made my revision binder, and I am currently working on lesson one. The class is very intense, and I think the first two lessons alone are worth the money I shelled out. Since the class is five months long, I decided to go ahead and let a friend of mine beta read the draft as is, so I can get some feedback on the current state of affairs.

I feel a little sorry for her, because I imagine the book is going to read a little…schizophrenic, shall we say. I edited the first 130 or so pages heavily, rewrote the last 20 or so pages, and the middle has been lightly edited while I was doing my scene comparisons. So yeah, that’s going to be interesting for her. Thanks Linda! My mom has the draft (I am calling it draft 2.5) as well, but…you know, she’s my mom. She loves everything I write, even my To Do lists. It’s what moms are for.

*I made a map for one of the planets I made up, which I am currently calling Gritty Dystopia Land. I really enjoy drawing maps for my countries, cities, and planets. Like, a lot. If I had the supplies and more free time I would be painting and oil pasteling my maps. At the moment it’s just graph paper and pencil, but once I start finalizing the different countries I will color in the different climate zones and population areas. Can you guess how the economy is doing as a whole on my planet, named Gritty Dystopia land? :D
I plan to set a few books in Gritty Dystopia Land, but in different countries.

Actually, let me elaborate further on the matter of preemptively setting books on planets I haven’t developed very much yet. It might seem odd, and I personally blame Snow White. It all started when I had this awesome idea about what it would be like if a girl found her recently deceased mother’s journal, and discovered some less than wonderful aspects of her mother’s life that she and her sisters never knew about. Like how her mother was really in love with another man, but her father said if her mother left him, she would never see her children again. (Ouch!) The Snow White reference comes from the stepmother trying to kill the step daughter. I thought her father’s mistress might have poisoned her mother, so she could take her place.

I was originally planning on setting this story in the Georgian era of European history, because of all the strict rules for marriage and etiquette would fit with the trapped situation her mother (and now she) is in. There I was, happily reading about the social etiquette of having tea when I realized there were still sooooo many details of daily life that I didn’t know. At this point, I was already several months into the research phase, and I hadn’t even scratched the surface.



I determined:

1) I didn’t want to spend months on research, and still not get the entire picture of daily life in the Georgian Era. This was the second time I wanted to write a historical fiction novel and couldn’t find enough details (the first was set in medieval Japan, and if you think it’s hard to find information on medieval Europe, try researching Japan).
2) No matter HOW much research I did, I would still get letters from history buffs informing me that horses didn’t wear bridles until 1906, even though I clearly mentioned my main character holding onto a horse’s bridle on page 12, paragraph three, line four, and was I lazy and not bothered to do my research?



3) There is a reason why historical fiction writers spend most of their time writing books set in the same era. And why they are history majors.

So! I decided to make it all up. I would simply set the story on another planet, similar to Earth, and make up all my own rules for etiquette and social graces. I AM a fantasy writer after all. Making things up from scratch is a specialty of mine. I also moved the story I was researching medieval Japan for to the same planet. A few months later when I had another idea that seemed historical-ish, off it went to the same planet I have now dubbed Historical Fantasy Land.

Later, when I had accumulated several ideas for a dystopian setting that were similar enough in setting, but self contained in conflict, plot, and characters, I knew what to do. Hence Gritty Dystopia Land was born. I also have Futuristic Bio/Cyberpunk Land. I plan to set each individual story in a different country on their respective planets though, so it’s not like the entire planet has the exact same form of government, laws, and population.

I also managed to do laundry yesterday, and cleaned up my bedroom. I know! I was very productive yesterday. I always feel so satisfied whenever I get a lot accomplished. Today I have to work, but I plan to work on the book I am beta reading, revise Masquerade, and possibly work on the mermaid book depending on how fried my brain is by the end of it all.

What about you guys? How do you organize your ideas that are similar but not similar enough to be the same story?

Author Interview: Joseph L. Selby

Okay Ladies and Gentlemen! It’s time for the first writer interview! Let’s welcome Joseph L. Selby to the stage!

*the crowd goes wild*

Before we begin, I would like to tell those of you who don’t know, I am interviewing authors about their day jobs or their writing habits. You don’t have to be published to qualify, and you can use a pseudonym for your day job if you want to. So if you would like to participate, just email me at: writer (dot) elizabethpoole (at) gmail (dot) com and let me know.

Today I am interviewing a talented writer with great taste in TV series. I found him through his user pic, of all things, that proclaimed himself to be a “Browncoat” a Firefly reference. Since Firefly is awesome, I looked up his website, which was clean and efficient. I also follow his live journal. If you would like to follow his livejournal and you don’t have an LJ account, you can just create an account. I did! I am lucky enough to be beta reading his novel WANTED: CHOSEN ONE, NOW HIRING and I am enjoying the book immensely.

Here is his website: http://www.josephlselby.com/

And here is his livejournal: http://bccreations.livejournal.com

Welcome Joseph, please tell us a little about yourself:


My name is Joseph L. Selby, I write primarily fantasy (contemporary, classic, and epic), but have a few other out-of-genre projects as well. I have degrees in English (creative writing) and theatre (playwriting) and wrote a 10-minute play that got some attention at the college level. I then went on to do freelance work for Wizards of the Coast and Kenzer & Co. writing D&D adventures, and have finally come to mass-market fiction. I am soliciting representation for my first two novels (unrelated to one another), but am otherwise unpublished.


1. Why did you decide to become a writer?


I was writing long before I made the decision to do so. That moment where I thought about life and said, "This is what I want to do" came in grade school when my religion teacher, Brother Stephen, wrote a book (EAGLES AND ANGELS, DRAGONS AND DEVILS) of religious parables. I wanted to do that. I wanted to take the worlds I was creating and put them in a book and have people read them and they would be excited and love me. Of course, there were plenty of other things I also wanted to do, as is typical for that age. But here I am regardless.


2. What is your writing environment like now?


I've tried writing at places like Borders and Barnes & Noble and I just don't get anything done. I most certainly don't get anything at home. Wife, cats, movies, video games, high-speed internet, there's just too many distractions. So I go out in public where the distractions become a type of white noise. I either write at a diner or on the commuter train to/from work. This allows me a minimum of two hours of writing time five days a week. I clock in many more than that.


3. What is your ideal writing environment like?


If I were writing full time, I would buy a commuter rail pass, get on the train, ride somewhere, get on a different train, ride somewhere else, eat lunch, and make my way home. I'd get to explore a new suburb of Boston (all the way down to Providence, RI) and get a good four hours of dedicated writing time every day.


4. Do you write with music? Why or why not?

5. How do you find time to write in between the other demands on your time—kids, family, job, etc?


See commuter rail above. :) Before I started working in Boston, and I still drove to work, it was a constant give and take between me and my wife to find time for writing while keeping time for us. I tried setting boundaries, but they always eroded and it was a huge source of friction. Now the train fixes all that. The train doesn't get any faster than it is and I can't afford to drive down to the city. So bam, two hours of time for writing.


6. What are your comfort books? Those books you can read again and again, that foster and rekindle your desire to write?

Anything by Lois McMaster Bujold. I have read CORDELIA'S HONOR a ridiculous number of times since I bought it. She's a fantastically written strong female character. Put that and Memory together and you have the best stories of the Vorkosigan series.


7. What authors do you find influential?


Lois McMaster Bujold, Tad Williams, Kurt Vonnegut, and Louis Carroll.


8. Do you belong to a critique group? Writing organization? Why or why not?


I belonged to a critique group but it fell apart shortly after I joined. It was a small group. It had four other members. One, Tim, is a good guy but he had too many family commitments. He just couldn't keep up. Another, Peggy, is a forty-something mother who just started writing. She has BOATLOADS of talent. It's ridiculous how much potential there is there. She just needs the self-confidence to risk long-form fiction. Those one-sentence fiction exercises on Twitter have given her a safe place to hide, and I hate it. The third person was an older woman whose name I no longer remember. She was awful. She was the exact opposite of Peggy. There was no unrealized potential there. I never said that two her. I never said anything negative to her. I offered constructive feedback because that's what crit groups do. But she was intimidated by the disparity in writing quality and quit shortly after I joined. Then there was Chuck. Chuck is the guy who formed the group. Chuck is a mini-L Ron Hubbard. He didn't form the group to create a cooperative writing community that could help and support and encourage one another. He wanted fans. And Chuck was published! ...except that it was a Publish America publishing. I was the only one in the group that knew how worthless that claim of publication was. Unfortunately, when Chuck and I disagreed (often), Chuck's opinion was seen as more valuable because he was published. You can imagine how that sat with me. Chuck disbanded the group when he was working on a new project and it was particularly dreadful. Chuck can't write women. He can make dependent damsels in distress who fall in love with the heor as soon as she sees him. That's all he can write. Chuck was also a marine, so he tells us. And that new fact proved the downfall of the group. In his new work where the female character was preposterously bad, the remainder of the group (me and Peggy) just couldn't stomach it any more and we both tried to explain to him just how horrible it was. He didn't like this, so he pushed on. And that's when it happened. There was some disparity in military ranking he was referencing. I had presumed the entire time that he had been writing about a guy in the army. Why? Because he kept calling them solders. Over and over, chapter after chapter, he called them soldiers. For those of you who don't know, Airforce = Airmen, Army = Soliders, Navy = Sailors/Seamen, Marines = Marines. He had been writing about a Marine the entire time but calling them soldiers. Now, this is an excusable mistake for a novice author...unless he was actually in the Marines. A Marine will never, EVER, call himself a soldier. He calls himself a Marine. And the fact that Chuck, who claimed to be a marine himself, made this mistake was telling. I pointed this out to him and the group was disbanded. He started a new group with new members so that I could not expose him for the fraud he is. Last I heard, they caught on as well and that group eventually disbanded.

As for whether I want to be part of a new one, I actually would like to, but there are problems. I write fantasy, which the average person doesn't read some I'm unlikely to get people who understand the genre. More importantly, I live in a town of 82,000 people and the availablilty of professional-level (or even professional-possible) writers is hard to come buy. The return isn't really worth the investment. That's too bad. (I still keep up with Peggy and offer encouragement when I can. She could write a publishable book if she'd just try.)


9. Have you ever been to a writing conference? Why or why not? If so, what was your experience like?


I went to ReaderCon a few years ago. It was interesting at times. One panel was so sycophantic that I actually had to leave, but most of them were fun if not informative. It was more for fans of books than prospective writers, so I have not been back (mostly because my current job is very busy that time of year). I keep an eye out for sf/f conferences to see if they're worth the expense.


10. Are you querying? If so, what’s keeping you sane?


I am querying, and getting rejected. Getting ignored is the one I hate the most. You said you'd respond in 6-8 weeks. It has now been 16 weeks. I no longer expect you to respond. Why are you telling me 6-8 if you can't manage 16? Why are you even saying you're going to respond? At least for those people who say they don't respond with rejections, I know my time limit has passed and that opportunity is closed. I keep wondering what's up with these people. Did they get the query? Did it get lost in the shuffle? Come on people, I followed all your rules. You follow them too.


11. What are your favorite kinds of characters to write about?


Strong women. I'm not sure why that is. Most of my main characters end up being men and the majority of my characters are men, but the strong women are always my favorites. Most likely because so few people actually write good strong women. They usually write women that act like men, which is not the same.


12. What are you favorite kinds of characters to read about?

13. Are you an outliner or a seat of the pants writer? Why?


No outlines. I can only see a maximum of seven chatpers ahead except for the actual end (which I will know from the beginning to some degree). If I try to outline, once I get past seven chapters I get bogged down by a lack of data. I have not begun entire projects because I couldn't finish the outline, and that's not acceptable. Not that I ever get to the end the way I had planned (and that's if the end is even what I planned at the beginning, it has been known to change when the story takes an unexpected turn). I outline when I see the next few chapters and all I do there is add a new page with the chapter number and write down my idea. I flesh it out when I get to that chapter.


14. Would you like to be a bestseller or have a smaller, more manageable following?


Best seller. :) Not just best seller. I want my name referenced by media who don't actually know the genre and just use the name they hear all the time even if it's not the best example for the subject on which they're speaking (*cough* Gaiman *cough).


15. Do you have a writing "process?" What is it, if so?


Don't suck. ;) I have a story idea. This might be a beginning and an end. It may just be the end. It may be an interesting premise of something that gets overdone that I have turned on the ear. I then come up with a title. I can't write without a title. I then begin writing.


16. What is the single best writing advice you have ever received/come across?


Baring psychological or physical reasons preventing you from writing, there's no such thing as writer's block. If you find yourself in a situation where you are unable to continue forward, it means you've made a mistake. Your subconscious is refusing to let your conscious continue until the error is fixed. Work backword and find where you messed up. Fix it, and you'll find you're able to continue writing. (I believe that came from Vonnegut, but I can't remember for certain.)


17. Any fears about becoming published?


Performing so badly that I'm not published a second time.


18. Where do you get your ideas from? (*grin* sorry guys, I had to include that)


All over. My most recent manuscript I finished, a friend was visiting and we were driving around New England. We were trying to hit all the states in one day (which we could have done, but we got tired in Connecticut and skipped Rhode Island and Maine). He was telling me about the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, and the changes they made to divination to make it less of a game breaker. Specifically, prophecies weren't working any more. My first thought was, "Huh, must suck for the prophets." And that's when the idea sparked. Imagine a world where prophecy was so readily accessable and commonly accepte that you had proffesional prophets. Now imagine what would happen if all of them lost the ability to prophesy. And hence, WANTED: CHOSEN ONE, NOW HRIING was born.


19. What is your biggest pet peeve in your genre?


Wizards. Wizards have become the instrument in which nerds who couldn't get the girls and were picked last for games at recess make themselves feel good about themselves. They live vicariously through their wizards and allow their wizards to do the most ridicusulous things in the world so they can feel just as powerful. I've grown to hate wizards. I'm not against magic in stories, but I so rarely use it because it's just reached an epic level of lameness. I'm also tired of dragons, vampires, and werewolves, as they've all been overdone.


20. What is your biggest pet peeve in books in general?


Stop trying to make ebooks conform to a printed book model. It won't save you. Adapt to your environment or go out of business.


21. What is the biggest writing issue you’ve had to date, and how did you fix it? (writer’s block, crappy first draft, realized the main character sucks, etc)


Finishing my stories. This happened a lot. I had trouble finding writing time and when I did, I wasn't finishing my work. So at the beginning of 2009, I said I was going to write a novel. If I did not finish by the end of the year, I was done. I would give up trying to write for publication forever. I finished my 110,000-word manuscript in September.


22. Do you like books about writing? If so, which books would you recommend and why?


Nope. There are some blogs I like that I find education, but books tend to be wrong, repetitive, or condescending. Blogs let me hunt for the information I need while skipping the stuff I already know.


23. And lastly, if you could only read one book for the rest of your life, which would it be?


The complete works of Geoffrey Chaucer, anotated, with his works in the original middle English.

Well, that’s all we have time for today folks! Stay tune for more interviews and helpful stuff from your host, Elizabeth Poole.

A New Pet for Me!

I am sooooooooooooooooooo excited! I am picking up my new pet today. I had to wait a while, since the waiting list is so long, but it’s definitely worth it. I had a yellow lab, but he died last December. I’ve had enough time to mourn, and I think I am ready for a new companion. Instead of another dog, I opted to try something new. You may not have heard of them, because they’re shy creatures, but I am bringing home my house buffalo today!

*happy dance*


(They love water and can often be found in your bathtub at night)

I did a bunch of research before making my decision, since miniature elephants



and toy hippopotamuses are starting to get popular



but in the end I thought a house buffalo would be the best fit for me. They’re obviously a lot smaller than a regular buffalo, so they only grow to be about 10 pounds, about the size of a cat. Some breeds can get to be 50 pounds or so, about the size of a large dog.



House buffalos are majestic creatures, giving you a lifetime of unconditional love, loyalty, friendship, and the gentle pitter patted of hooves on linoleum. They live for up to 15 years, and are great with kids. They’ve been known to start herding toddlers together, so the House Buffalo Awareness Organization, or the H.B.A.O., is creating a program to bring house buffalos into daycare centers.


(Like this only smaller! And with toddlers!)

Because house buffalos required special care, I had to fill out all sorts of forms, and provide three different forms of identification. I volunteered to take a class on caring for your house buffalo to increase my chances of getting one before next year, and apparently it worked, because I got the call this morning. Huzzah!

I am thinking about naming her Sam (Isn’t it cute when girls have guy names?!! :D ) but I will make my final decision when I bring her home with me. I have to have her mircochiped of course, because even house buffalo like to graze, and she might get out of my fenced-in backyard. If I want to walk her outside of my yard I have to keep her on a leash, so I bought a purple leash and collar for her, along with a litter box, bed, house buffalo kibble, and lots of peanut butter. Peanut butter is a favorite treat, and if your house buffalo ever hides somewhere inside your house, you can just lay some peanut butter down in the kitchen and they come stampeding over to the peanut butter. House buffalo are adept at hiding in small dark places. The H.B.A.O. believes that many people have wild house buffalo living in their house, within the walls and underneath the furniture. Since they’re nocturnal and exceedingly shy, most people don’t see them.


(Sleepy! It's too bright out!)

If you want to find out if you’re sharing your home with a house buffalo, just get a paper plate and spread some peanut butter on it, like a salt lick for deer, only it’s peanut butter for house buffalo. Leave it on your kitchen floor overnight. Usually you won’t see anything for a few days, since they’re so shy, but if you leave your peanut butter lick out long enough, you’ll eventually find tiny hoof marks in the peanut butter. That’s a sure sign of the presence of house buffalo. Don’t worry, they aren’t pests. They used to be found only in the Midwest, but when people started traveling more and more, house buffalo would find their way into people’s trunks while they stopped at rest stops, or in a trucker’s cargo and eventually, came to live in most parts of the United States and Canada. There are some reports of house buffalo migrating as far as Europe, but the H.B.O.A. haven’t confirmed most of these sightings yet, due to the house buffalo’s shy nature.


(You can take the buffalo out of the prairie, but you can't take the prairie out of the buffalo)

I also bought Sam some toys, and matching food and water dishes! The H.B.A.O has already taken care of her first round of shots for me, but then I have to take Sam to the vet a few weeks afterwards. I haven’t told my vet that I am getting a house buffalo yet. I can’t wait to see the look on her face when I bring Sam in for her next round of vaccinations. Hehehehe, won’t SHE be surprised? ;)


(Lookit how happy he is! He's probably working on a peanut butter lick right now)

The only downside to getting a house buffalo is I will have to stop eating at Ted’s Montana Grill. They serve bison. The guilt would be too much. I don’t think I could have a bison burger and then come home and look Sam in the eye.

I wish I had pictures to post, but I haven’t picked her up yet, so you guys will have to wait until I bring her home. So you’ll have to make do with regular buffalo pictures.

Back from the Dead

Song Playing: Holding On by VNV Nation


Hello! I am still alive! Class was intense but rewarding. I have returned, armed with enough CEU credits to choke a horse.

Hello newcomers! I hope you enjoy the madness here. I try to post helpful stuff about writing, but that doesn’t always work out. I have a feeling that today isn’t that day, considering my brain is still fuzzy from 32 hours worth of training in four days.

I went to a Qi Gong training seminar and it was exciting, exhausting, even life changing. Qi Gong is an exercise that focuses on controlling your breathing, and using slow movements to increase energy and flexibility. I feel awesome, but exhausted. So if the post doesn’t make any sense whatsoever today, I blame exhaustion.

Would you believe I went four entire days without even looking at the Internet? FOUR entire days, and I lived!


(I am aware that is actually a hamster. Thank you for your concern.)

I got home every night in time to eat something and crawl into bed, and then it was up at 6:30 the next morning. 6:30 in the morning. Let me explain something to you.

I am not a morning person.

This is a gross understatement. I do not regain the ability to talk until I am awake for at least an hour or so, longer if I had to get up early. So if you expect to communicate with me right after I wake up, be ready to translate grunts. Some of you might be complaining/rolling your eyes, thinking you have to get up earlier every morning, so what’s the big deal? I must be a huge whiner. My best friend Melissa is a nurse, and she had to get up at 5:30 every morning to be at work at 7. My fiancée has to get up at 5 in the morning. I know the world does in fact start before 8 in the morning. When I worked at a gas station, occasionally I pulled the opening shift, and we opened at 5 in the morning. Which meant I had be awake before 5 in the morning, when normally I worked the 4 to midnight shift. Lucky for me, I lived two minutes away, so I rolled out of bed, got dressed, and drove to the store all in about ten minutes.

BUUUT you forget I work the night shift (or afternoon, depending on your POV), and have for years and years. I don’t get off of work until 8 or 9 o’clock most nights, when most people are winding down for bed. I try to be in bed by 10:30 so I can get up at a decent hour (8 in the morning is a decent hour. 6:30 in the morning is an indecent hour). So I am not used to getting up that early, on top of not being a morning person anyway. I need time to wake up.



We commuted to the Atlanta World Congress Center where our training was held with three other therapists, one of them my sister in law, and another was a coworker/friend (she’s the same one who came over for Saint Paddy’s Day, for those of you who saw that post. If you haven’t, I suggest you check it out. It involves squirrel whispering.) The other therapist was a friend of my sister in law’s, but this was the first time I met her.

She was so amused at how different of a person I am in the morning versus during the day, after I wake up. In the car ride there, I stared out the window looking squinty eyed, and mumbling. Then the morning’s training would commerce, and by lunch time, I would be awake and bubbly It almost became a joke, and when I confused myself with directions (The Atlanta World Congress Center is a BIG place), they’d laugh it off and say, “It’s okay, it’s not 10:30 in the morning yet.” By the time we were ready to go home, I was bouncy from not socializing for hours.

This experience made me think about how other people view your habits. To me, it’s perfectly normal lie awake in bed for ten minutes or so before I get up for the day. I use the bathroom, get some iced tea (but not breakfast. I can’t eat as soon as I wake up), and check my email. It’s around this time I start waking up. Some people are wide awake the minute they open their eyes (my sister in law is a morning person. So are my dad and my little brother. Morning people don’t annoy me like they do some people. I like that they talk enough for the both of us. They just shouldn’t expect me to carry my end of the conversation.). Morning people are strange and should be studied by science.



I know this not getting up early thing will change when I have kids, but in the immortal words of Aragorn, that is not this day (by the way, MS Word recognizes “Aragorn” as a real word. How cool is that?).

There, everything you never wanted to know about some of my daily habits.

I have the day off today, in a serendipitous event where the training ended yesterday, and I usually have today off anyway, so I didn’t have to take extra time off of work. I am not really sure what I am going to do. I am beta reading a novel that I am excited about, so I imagine it will involve lots of loafing around and reading. I feel like I need to recharge my battery.

I am having some issues getting all my tax stuff taken care of, and that’s making me anxious since I only have two more weeks to get my taxes done, but hopefully I will get the rest of the information I need today. *crosses fingers*

What about you guys? Any morning people out there? Or do you know where I am coming from when I say I am nonverbal when I wake up?

(Once again, thanks goes to I can haz cheeseburger for the pictures)

Characters Who Need to Be Shot

Song Playing: Anthem by Kamelot

Happy Friday!

A quick note before I forget, I will not be blogging on Monday, Tuesday, and possibly even Wednesday next week. Instead, I will be at class for my massage therapist Continuing Education Units (CEUs). In order to keep my license I have to attend a certain number of accredited hours, and since I would like to keep my income, off I go. Normally this requires tons of money and taking time off to attend a weekend class here, and seminar there, but I lucked out and found a program that lasts four days and gives me more hours than I actually need. So from early tomorrow until Tuesday I will be attending this class, bootcamp style.

All that to say, I don’t know when I will be home and it will probably be only long enough to eat and then crash into bed.



So no blog posts. I know, you’re all going to be besides yourselves with grief. Feel free to caper about in the comments section while I am gone.

Also, there’s a squirrel outside the size of a terrier. Yes, Mom’s still feeing the squirrels. Since I live a few houses down from my parents, I assume this is one of the ambassador squirrels. Nutter Butter is what Mom is calling him after I told her about all of your comments about the squirrel whispering, and Michael Emeritz’s comment about Ambassador Nutter Butter in particular.



Today I have characters on the brain. Between revision and my WIP, I have been working with my characters a good deal, and I noticed I tend to have a diverse lot. Some authors seem to prefer to only write about terse men who smoke and drink too much, others prefer spunky heroines who mess up as much as they help the conflict, and still others prefer the tough, combat boot wearing female who doesn’t take lip from anyone.

A brief digression on those types of tough heroines: they get on my ever-loving last nerve. I am not saying they can’t be done well. I really enjoy that sort of heroine on TV or in books when she’s portrayed well, but I noticed a trend towards this type of female, and I always get the urge to smack her in the face more times that not. It’s like the author says, “Well, this is her flaw. She’s tough, masculine, and doesn’t like to wear pink. She’s one of the guys.” And said author goes on to write about the trouble the character gets into.

All of this is fine. That’s not the obnoxious part.

The obnoxious part is when said mouthy heroine acts out of character, or has no consequences to her character flaw. When she runs into the Big Bad Guy she doesn’t mouth off to him, even though every situation up to now points to she speaks first and thinks about it later, thereby breaking her character. But the author knows if she mouths off to Big Bad Guy, he would just shoot her in the head. End of story. So the author has her break character, and bite her lip. “I wanted to give him a piece of my mind, but I knew he would shoot me where I stand if I did.” The author also substitutes her mouthing off to the bad guy by having her glare at him too. All of this to cover up the fact that she just breaches character. I am not saying that your mouthy characters should be suicidal, but don’t show them mouthing off to everyone without forethought up to now, and then suddenly they have found restraint.

OR she does mouth off to Big Bad Guy and one of two things happens.
a) Big Bad Guy respects her spunk, and pats her on the head. No one seems to care.
Or
b) She mouths off to him, she and her comrades get tossed into the dungeon where they make a daring escape, and it’s back to business as usual. None of her comrades seem to care she can’t keep her mouth shut when it would be suicide not to, and no one even gets ANGRY with her. They just saunter off and congratulate themselves for a job well done.

HELLO?

If I hung out with someone who constantly got me into trouble because they couldn’t keep their mouth shut because “I don’t let anyone boss me around” I would drop them in a New York Minute (which is quicker than a regular minute).

Again, I am not saying there’s anything wrong with a tough heroine. I have several. I am not saying there’s anything wrong with having them act according to character, and mouth off to people they shouldn’t, if that’s the sort of person you’ve shown them to be.

I am complaining about character traits that magically go away or are inconvenient to the plot. And I see it most often with the tough heroine. People want her to be cool, but they don’t think about the real life consequences that sort of person would incur.

Okay, I am done ranting…for now.



I noticed in my own work that my characters run the gamut between out spoken and quiet, gutsy or mousey, cowardly or brave. It’s not intentional, I don’t say to myself, “Okay, I had an outspoken guy with authority issues last time, now it’s time for a mousey, shy girl who blushes when people look at her.” It just sort of happens. Mostly because I try to make the character directly relevant to the plot, but also because it’s just the character that pops into my head at the time.

I think if you’re only comfortable writing a certain character type, then there’s nothing wrong with that. I would recommend challenging yourself with different types of character once in a while, but that’s your call.

If I had to say, I have a slight preference for females over male, but only because I worry my male characters come across as too feminine and/or unrealistic. But I haven’t had any complaints and some of my best characters are guys, so there’s that. I am also the sort of girl who has more guy friends than girl friends, even though recently the number is balancing itself out, so I think that helps with the guy characters. And I don’t believe that guys can’t write convincing girls or vice versa. Hello, She’s Come Undone is one of the best books I’ve ever read, from the POV of a girl, and written by a guy (Wally Lamb is the author).

One thing I do struggle with is weeding out characters. Every time I start a book I have several characters that try to cram themselves into the work. So they all duke it out thunderdome style, until the winners crawl out and get to be in my book.



It doesn’t make cutting them any easier. I have read advice on combining characters when this happens, and I can manage that sometimes, but most of the time, I can’t. The characters have a specific job or race directly tied to their persona, and combining the two normally means the absolute death of one. This means I have a lot of characters lying around, waiting for their book to be up. I suppose it’s a good problem to have, but frustrating at times.

So what about you guys? How do you feel about tough heroines? Any character pet peeves in books? What about your books, do you have problems with over or under population? Any preferences for character types? Any worries about cross gender characters?