Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

Writing Meditations

Characters that grow while I write

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Growing together.

I love building characters that I wish I could visit.  These days I am working with Mick and Emily.  I like them because they like each other.  Emily understands Mick whether he is pacing up and down with excessive energy, moping around about some thing that is bothering him or just grinning at her.
But Emily will not put up with the moping and she tells him so.  He’s a good guy.  He thinks about things and though he won’t pull himself together all at once, he will think about what she said and try to be better.

Mick had a bad heart and it sidelined him, kept him out of enjoying doing activities he wanted to do.  It stuck him on a mountain in a house looking at the paper trail of his company but unable to manage it himself.  It left him growing Christmas trees, but it never left him bitter.  He had Emily and that made all the difference.  But having Emily, for a man of the 70’s era meant he had to accept that he would probably not be able to protect her if he ever had to fend off an attacker.  So they lived in a small mountain town where everybody knew everybody, and he didn’t have to fear not being able to protect her.  I suppose it’s his man thing because there was never any sign of danger to make him worry.

In this third book in the Student of Jump series, Mick finds himself no longer held back by his heart.  But fear is much harder to replace with confidence.  He is a knight with armor, sword and shield, a fair lady by his side.  But he has never jousted before.

As I work through this redraft, Mick and Emily grow.  They don’t become steady in the clinches.  They don’t have all the answers.  They don’t find themselves in situations that bear easy answers.  But they have each other, I think.  I am not sure how it is all going to end.  Sure the book has an ending, but these two keep growing with experience.  Emily didn’t have anything holding her back.  She stayed back for Mick.  She gets as frightened as he does, just about different things.  But together they manage; they support each other even when both are trembling.  That’s why I like these two characters.

If you are a writer, who are your favorite characters at this time?  If you’re not a writer, what character and from what book do you wish you could visit.  Why?

I was inteviewed by Indie Author Land!

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This is a big share post.  Indie Author Land posted their interview with me about the second book in my Students of Jump series.  In Times Passed and No-Time Like the Present are both available at Smashwords.com under all the major formats and Amazon.com as well as other major e-book outlets.

See my interview at Indie Author Land today.

Keep universal symbols in mind when you write

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white rose = purity, plastic = fake

Every writer should keep aware of their use of the symbols (mythologies, metaphors, colors, etc.) that subconsciously attract, repel and inform readers.  For instance, let’s use the age old feature of color.  Red denotes passion, rage, anger, love, disease, destruction, corruption, etc.  So if you put a woman in white, you could be providing a contrast or a condition.

  • The woman is corrupted but presents herself as pure.
  • The woman is pure
  • the woman is potentially pure, but in danger of being corrupted
  • etc.

Let’s examine red when it is combined with white.  Hawthorne did this with great effect in “Young Goodman Brown.”  Brown’s young wife wore pink ribbons.  Did the ribbons represent her inexperience (youth) or was it the fact that she was a wife (therefore no longer pure) so her once white symbols have passion/love diffused into them?  Or has she lost purity and been corrupted by the devil, and the symptom of this corruption is the pink ribbons in her hair.  Were her ribbons white, could the reader then assume she is innocent?  But her ribbons are pink, so has she been corrupted?  The journey of Young Goodman Brown is based on his concern over her purity.

These features add depth to the work.  So the writer must examine their work for those universal symbols that our readers will catch consciously or subconsciously, thus providing greater depth of characterization and perhaps conflict of character.

Symbols to consider:

  • names
  • color
  • occupations (general:  cabinet maker, hero, prince, clock maker)
  • hats
  • objects
  • shapes of features (narrow set eyes denote criminals, large eyes innocence)

Here is a simple example.  One of my students named two of her characters John and Sheela.  The student chose the names because she felt they were common everyday names and would place her characters with the working class.  John was concerned that his wife was cheating on him.  I pointed out to my student that the name John when combined with Sheela created a symbolic factor that played well with her plot.  John a term used for men who solicit sex in exchange for money combined with Sheela a term with conflicting mythological meaning regarding corruption (either as protection from devils or symbolic of sexual fertility) would lead the reader to assume the wife was in fact cheating on him and perhaps he was just as flawed because he viewed her as a means of sexual satisfaction.  The student was shocked she had chosen names that would have this effect.  She changed the name of the woman immediately. 

I used the name Miranda for one of my characters because I liked the added connotation of knowledge and wisdom that went with the name.  Vivian, an overly attentive mother, for its closeness to vivacious, and Misty, Miranda’s daughter, because of both her internal conflict over her relationship with her father and his conflict about being a single father.

What symbols have you made use of in your work?  What symbols have you seen used by other writers in the works you have read?

Different ways I limber up the writing muscle

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Since my time to write is extremely limited as well as seasonal, I have to be ready to write the moment opportunity arrives. In some ways, knowing that this is the only time I’ll write for the next week does make me write whether I am feeling it or not.  And summer is my writer’s holiday.  You can’t pry me away from the computer whether it’s flowing or not.  But I have found a few ways to make those first minutes writing worth pushing cobwebs aside.  I have several ways of limbering up.

  • I reread what I have written so far and hope to get pulled in by the bread crumbs I left behind the last time I closed the computer.  This does not always work as sometimes I am in a hurry and forget to leave the crumbs.
  • I lay down on the couch and tell myself to take a nap.  I think about the story and wait for the lights in my head to go out. As a sleeping technique, this never works.  My characters immediately sit up and start talking.  I start eavesdropping, and then off to the computer I slink hoping nobody notices.
  • I get on the treadmill (a real one, jeesh) and just think about what is going on in the current scene.  By the time the first ten minutes have gone by, I am dying to get off and start writing, but I have an unwritten contract that states I must remain on the treadmill the full twenty minutes.  That gets me my workout and a real desire to write.  Sometimes three scenes will unfold in front of me, and I do everything I can to hold on while I work from scene to scene.
  • I tell my daughter the problem.  She recommends a solution which causes me to explain why that just won’t work though I assure her it is a fine suggestion.  By the time I am done explaining, I know just what I need to write.  I hope I am not destroying her confidence.  Hmm, better talk to her about that one.
  • I send my best writing bud Marcy an email, usually vaguely worded.  After we toss a few clarifying comments back and forth, things start to rev up in the muse department.  Marcy’s great.
  • If these fail, or I forget to do them, I sit at the computer and say, “Just write whatever is falling out.  Something is bound to be useful.”  And that’s what I do.  Write, write, write until I am limber, and then I write a whole lot more.  This is the there is no-time-to-take-a-nap, ask another person, no-crumbs-left-behind approach.  Just sit down and type.  

Not one of these is the best of the bunch.  They all ultimately work for me.  In fact, this particular post relied entirely on the last technique.

How do you limber up?  Are you a consummate planner, a panster by practice, or do you fight with the wordsmith every time you sit down to work?  How do you make sure you pull the narrative out of the bag?

I found a hole in my publishing activities

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I knew Smashwords covered all the main bases in distributing to e-book sellers, but I overlooked the Amazon portion of that distribution net.  Apparently, my books were not available at Amazon.

Three years ago when I was looking into e-book publishing, I checked out Barnes & Noble and Amazon.  Through my research I kept seeing posts about Smashwords, so I finally followed their trail and did more research.  I created accounts at all three as I worked out my decision for which one I wanted to use.  Two accounts remained dormant as I made my final decision and published with Smashwords.  I still feel I made the right decision.

But recently, finding that hole forced me to do some more thinking about this.  Smashwords offers the option of closing out a distribution route, so I closed Smashwords distribution to Amazon since I did not meet the eligibility requirements to get on the list and went direct to Amazon and published all four of my books this past week.  Hole closed.

Moral of story: (is not women are entitled to change their  minds) Stay aware of the process you are working and adjust as needed.  I am still with Smashwords, but I am with Amazon, too.

Students of Jump, Book 1:  In Times Passed
Smashwords http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/77866
Amazon http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E6HEQ1C


Students of Jump, Book 2:  No-Time like the Present
Smashwords https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/338367
Amazon http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E6XLFF6

Gardens in the Cracks & Other Stories
Smashwords https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/177065
Amazon http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E6VKC0W


The Little Handbook of Narrative Frameworks
Smashwords https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/331101
Amazon http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E7G44NM

I dare you to find me.

Since I own a Sony ereader, I largely go to Sony for my e-books.  Sony also has my books through Smashwords.  Where do you look the most for ebooks, and where do you buy them from (could be different places)? 

Researching Boston streets adds credibility to a time travel scene

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The third book in my series Students of Jump is in
redraft.  The addition of scenes to complete several jumps back in time
required some research.  My current endeavors involve determining which
streets were in existence in 1851 in Boston, whether or not they were paved
with “cobs” (round stones commonly annoying the farmers in those
parts) or setts (rectangular cut-granite stones) considered to be the better
street paver for use by horses, carriage wheels and pedestrians, and where the
major newspaper publishers were located.

I had originally assumed the
roads would be dirt, but after looking at pictures, I saw the streets clearly
indicated pavers.  So I had to find out
what kind and when they were in use. 
This is what I have learned so far.

Cobblestones were used but not throughout Boston and were
often replaced with the flat sett granite stone for ease of rolling carriage
wheels over, otherwise horses tripped and wheels broke more easily.
There were several papers in existence, the Boston Globe, the Boston Herald and the Daily Advertiser,
to name a few.  Fine, but when?  Well, the Globe
did not exist until the 1870’s, so that threw out that paper.  The Boston
Herald existed but had several names over the years and had the frequent
habit of purchasing other papers and incorporating their names into its
own.  But when and under what incarnation
was the name in 1851?  The Boston Herald
bought out the Daily Advertiser but not until the 1880s.  So that means I could use either the Herald
or the Advertiser for my purposes. 
But that hardly made things easy.  There was a section of town known as
newspaper row, but it was located in two different sites due to movement of
paper publishers over a period of years.  I finally
had to accept that there was no definitive address for either paper until the
latter part of the century.   So I settled
for Washington Street because it bisected both areas that went by the designation Newspaper Row.
I settled on the Daily Advertiser in the end (Sorry Boston Herald. I know you are still in
existence, but I needed to be sure there would be an advertisement of the
nature I wanted.  And the name sold me.)
I have been staring at maps of Boston from 1847 and 1950 using
magnifying glasses and my daughter to confirm my reading of the nearly
unreadable print to make decisions on how my characters are moving through the
streets to perform the task they must complete. 
The latter map made it possible to read the street names of the earlier
one.  (My mother loved books and had the
foresight to purchase an amazing Atlas printed in 1950, which was given to me
when I married.)  You would be surprised
how many times I have turned to it. 
(Save old atlases and dictionaries if you are a writer.  Words evolve and roads change names.  My classroom has two sets of dictionaries, a
brand new set and a 1980s set.  There are
times when my class is reading from an old text and that 1980s set comes in
handy even when the work is Middle English. The words are missing from the new set or have taken on new meanings
that don’t apply in the old texts.)
By the way, the most useful site turned out to be the South
Boston Historical pages.  The site had
several clear pictures labeled with useful information.  I even got a nice glance at the fashion of
the day for ladies and men as well as the building architecture, types of
wagons and carriages likely to be seen and some history.

Hours of research for a 1000 word scene.   I even spent my childhood in a suburb of Boston. The sound of the wind still stirs memories, so I have the feel of the place just not the details.  I was busy chasing a dachshund and riding my bike.

I wonder what the ratio of research is to writing.  Has anyone made a point of figuring this out.  Hmm, maybe I don’t want to know the answer to that question, or not until I finish the book.  But I am curious, so tell me if you have.

I’m off to research the trees in Boston Common in the 1850’s.  And I learned to write “Commons” with the “s” is incorrect.