Olympic Drive

I am sure other, more witty, better looking, and smarter people have made similiar parallels between Olympic athletes and writers. 

But those people are busy right now, so you're stuck with me. :D Sorry about that.

Anyway. My family and I were talking yesterday about what it takes to be an Olympic athlete, namely the sacrifices.

Consider how many hours of practice it requires. How many missed outings with friends and family. The amount of money spent it takes for them to even be considered for the team.

N0, seriously, think about this.

Because there's a lot of decent athletes out there. Talented athletes, who might have had the chops to go for the gold, but instead made different choices. There's nothing wrong with those choices, but it takes a certain amount of sacrifice to keep working at something day after day.

AND AND AND

These athletes going to the Olympics aren't guaranteed anything. They aren't guaranteed they're going to make the team, or place, or place high enough to win the gold medal. They do all of that work, on the hope they might win a gold medal (or settle for the silver or bronze, if you can call that settling).

So why bother?

I'm not an Olympic athlete, so I don't know what drives them. I watched one of the road races, as they cycled in the rain (SHOCKING in London, right?) for three and a half hours. I just kept thinking, "No way. No way. I would have stopped after the first half hour."

Because that's not my passion. Writing is. 

Writing is the thing I can do, day in and day out. When I'm tired and the words won't come, and when I am typing lightening fast in a white hot fire, word-drunk. Why? Because it's my passion. It's the thing that gives me release and challenges and makes me feel alive. 

And even though like an Olympic athlete I have no guarantees of an agent, a book deal, of selling to more than just my mom, it's going to keep me going.

Plus, the cool thing about writing is you can do as much practicing as you want by yourself. Because seriously, the first time I fell off a balance beam I would just die from embarrassment.      

Series Breaking: Don't Let This Happen to You!

Okay, so for today, I am going to froth at the mouth a bit, but I seriously do have a point.

And for those of you looking at this post in your blog viewer, and don't want to listen to me expound upon my point, here it is up front: when you have a series of anything--comics, books, TV shows, you "break" that series by doing something radically different than you established in the first book/show/issue.

Still with me? 

*cricket cricket* 

Okay then!

There are a lot of examples of effectively executed series, and plenty of example of...not so effectively executed series. I am going to talk about a TV show near and dear to my heart, Criminal Minds. It's a police procedural about FBI agents who are profilers. They use clues and behavior to catch serial killers and other bad guys. This show has a very regular cast of characters. They've replaced regular cast members before, but this last season the show has dropped a major ball (all of this is entirely my own opinion).


In an effort to reach a younger audience, they got rid of two of the regular female characters and instead brought in a new (younger) female character. Most of this is pretty standard television shenanigans, but the big problem came with the new character, Ashely Seaver, and her lacking backstory.


They have spent the entire six seasons of the show talking about how these profilers are elite. They mentioned it in the very first episode of the series, that one does not just decide to become a profiler. You have to go through special classes, and have prior experience in the FBI before you would even be considered as a candidate for the team. The show set up the "rules" of their world, just like you set up the rules of your world when you write a book. People cannot fly. Magic needs spell components. Profilers are elite.


If you break these established rules, you break your series.


When the new character Seaver was introduced, it was as someone who hadn't graduated the FBI academy yet. They pulled her in for an episode because her father was a serial killer. They thought she could give an inside scoop on a gated community. 


Now she's a series regular. She hasn't met any of the requirements they set down, and yet, here she is. Profiling. To make matters worse, the TV show executives are aware that a lot of fans dislike the character (for those reasons and because most of us think she can't act well, and her character is generally annoying) The writers of the show have now tried to make Seaver seem cooler on subsequent episodes, but it just makes it worse.

When you have a series, you set up reader/viewer expectations. There will be no aliens on CSI: Miami (expect Horatio) and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the TV show) did not suddenly turn into a police procedural. As writers, we hear about genre, and some of that goes into your series, but it's more than just that.


Your plucky always-the-bridesmaid-never-the-bride heroine in your romantic comedy series is not suddenly going to go goth. It's not that the characters can't evolve, but there are certain core traits inherent in your setting (the presence of aliens or police procedures), your characters (the lack of suicidal depression, the presence of manic hyperactivity), and your world (always set in New York City, never set in somewhere cold) that people are looking for to ground them. You break these elements at your risk and peril.


In the case of Criminal Minds, they broke a big rule (Profilers must be trained and have lots of prior experience) and made an exception for this character. Instead of addressing these problems in the show, and having the character SHOW us why she needs to be there, why it's okay she's an exception, they just tell us how essential she is, and how she's a part of the team. 


And my question is WHY? You must justify everything to your audience. You put something in the episode, in the book, in the comic because it matters in some way. It adds to the setting. It shows X aspect of the character's personality. It foreshadows the events to come. You cannot sit outside of the medium and say "Yes, this character is awesome and you all should really love her" and then do nothing to show us why. It comes down to that old sawhorse "Show don't tell". 


We don't want to be told someone is awesome. We don't want to be told why we should love or hate someone. You have to show us this person doing a triple back flip from a high dive while on fire and holding a box of orphaned kittens. You have to let the reader come to love or hate the characters through their actions, not through what you are telling them.


When you break a part of your series, the effect is tangible. Watching the later episodes of Criminal Minds is a very different experience than the earlier episodes. Because Seaver is so under-qualified, the other characters are having to break their characters to maneuver around her. Characters who would normally protest at a new person being there are staying silent. Characters who would made it harder on the new girl are welcoming her with open arms, because the TV exes know that there's a large portion of the fans who strongly dislike Seaver, and don't want the characters on the TV showing similar dislike. 

The entire show is getting warped around this one rule breaking. You can either ignore that the rule was broken or you try to explain it away. Both situations have their drawbacks.

The important point is to recognize what are the core elements in your series, and stick with them. If you choose to have the main character go through a major personality change, show the reasons why. Show the other characters commenting on this character's change. Show the consequences of those actions. Don't just hand wave it away.

Can you think of examples where a show or book broke character and it ruined things for you?

Crimes of Passion: Larceny

Wikicommons

So maybe you've managed to get half way through your first draft without any problems. Or maybe you tried to bribe yourself, and you ran out of stuff (not that I would have any experience with that). Or maybe you just like the idea of stealing. Who knows. Point is, we're all here now, and writing a first draft can be soul sucking.

Writers must resort to some tactics that aren't always pretty. But we do what we must to get that draft done. Sometimes, in order to jump start a stalled draft we have beg, borrow, and steal.

No, I am not advocating you steal from other people. But you can steal from yourself.

You know that stack of unfinished stories you have laying around? All those stories you started and never finished (not like you're going to do here, no, because you're going to finish this book if it kills you)?

You can mine those stories for good bits. I have a whole document folder dedicated to pieces and ideas and concepts that I don't have a home for. This can be anything from a cool secondary character to a plot twist to a neat setting. You would be surprised how many of your failed novels hold ideas that are pure gold. A great way to open up a new dimension to your failing work in progress is to re-purpose old ideas and use them.


You're stealing from yourself, but that's okay. You'll never notice.

Crimes of Passion: Bribery

Money courtesy of Wikicommons. Too bad isn't not real.

 I know the title is cheesy. Don't you just love it?


Sometimes to get through a difficult patch in your novel you have to bribe yourself. It's nothing to be ashamed of.


Maybe the scene isn't coming out the way you wanted, or perhaps you're just not "feeling" it. Perhaps you've had a shiny new idea demand attention and you'd rather play with that. 


You cannot stop working on your book. Don't believe your subconscious when it stays, "Let's take a break for a day. Just a day. We'll get right back to the book, after we jot some ideas for this new book down." If you take a break from the book without a time frame or consequence you might not ever pick it back up again. Your subconscious is trying to trick you. 


So you trick it back. You make deals with yourself. You find some appropriate reward, like chocolate, a new book, night out on the town, or a new pet cheetah (hey, I won't judge) and you bribe yourself.


"Okay, I will write this scene and then I get to surf the Internet for 15 minutes."


Or: "I write 2 thousand words and then I get to read a chapter of my book."


What if there's a shiny new idea pestering you? Same rule applies. "I will reach my daily word count goal, and then I get to stop and brainstorm for the Shiny New Idea."


Notice a few things about the bribery. It's specific. You don't say, "Okay I will stop writing the WIP and work on something else." You have to make each part of the bribe specific. You wouldn't want to bribe a mobster "a lot of money" if he "offs your coworker" because he might decide "a lot of money" is a billion trillion dollars. 


It's also quick, instant gratification stuff. Now is not the time to buy yourself a new toy every time you write a scene (unless you're rich and have money to burn). Give yourself small goals and small rewards. Things you can do right now. Like taking a break to read a chapter, or brainstorming for another idea.


I know this sounds sort of cheesy, but it can work like a charm. I can be very contrary. The minute I feel like I *have* to do something I loose all interest. I know it's very third grade of me, but I can't seem to help it. So I work around my subconscious's weird mannerisms with bribery. I tell myself to write a scene, and then I can read a chapter of the book, and suddenly, writing is fun. I am not chained to my computer, but doing it out of desire again. 


Recently I had the strong desire to write the scenes leading up to the climax in my book, even though it's out of order. I normally write in order and knew it would mess up the plot if I totally skipped the middle and went straight towards the end. So again, I bribed myself. I could write whatever scene I wanted, but then I had to go back and write one in order. I managed to not only write one scene in order, but I picked up a new thread and wrote several in order.


By bribing yourself you're creating a small system of goals and rewards. Each time you reach a small goal you feel good about yourself and your book. You're eating that elephant baby, one bite at a time.