Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

creative writing

For writers, tragedy is a good thing

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Caught up in the moment

No one wants to read about everything going right.  Readers want things to go wrong so they can watch the characters find their way through their difficulties.  Houses burn down, people get sick or lost or lose their jobs.  They get angry and lose their temper.  We readers know this happens in real life.  Watching someone go through these kinds of difficulties and come out the other end stronger gives us hope.

In my classes, my students often ask me questions after we have finished a book.  So many times they are questions I cannot answer because the characters aren’t real, and I cannot call them up and check on their progress.  But often my students see them as real, that there is more yet to come.  Every writer should aspire to the kinds of questions my students ask.

  • Did he go back and find her?
  • Why did she leave him if she knew he needed her to stay awhile longer?
  • Will they every see each other again?
  • Did she have an unhappy childhood?
  • What did her family think about what she did?

All I can say is, “I am not sure.  Why do you think they did it?” Or some other statement to put it back on them to consider the possible answers.  Their question are proof that my students have connected to the characters.

Readers find understanding, lessons and experience in the books they read.  This is why writers find tragedy a good thing.  It makes our characters live in reality in a way that brings our readers insight and emotional release while they are “safe” from reality at the same time.  

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?

If you travel back in time, you better know the rules

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PhotoTime Travel has rules, but they vary by user, which is the
point of this post.  I have read a lot of
time travel novels over the years and gotten into a few strange conversations
with my husband. He views me as a sort of armchair specialist in this
area.  Well, I do talk a good talk, but
in reality, forward or backward, I find it just as confusing as the next
person.
  1. You can go back,
    but everything you do is already done according to the future you are a part
    of.
  2. You can go back,
    but everything you do will change what has already occurred in the future you
    are a part of, so be prepared for huge change.
  3. You can go back
    but only as an observer because time has a mechanism to keep you from changing
    anything.
  4. You can go back, but any changes you make will create an
    alternate universe running alongside the one that was and still is in existence,
    but you probably won’t know that and therefore won’t be concerned.  If you are aware of the new universe(s), it
    will either bother you because you really messed up or make you happy because
    what changed worked out well for you or those you love.
  5. You can go back,
    make change, return and live to enjoy it. 
    But be careful, some things are dependent on other events you altered
    along the way.
  6. You can go back; it’s the return that is tricky.   Good luck with that one. 
  7. You can go back, but avoid running into your self who you might not get along with, may cause serious problems for, might endanger by making people angry at the other you thinking you’re her/him, and it just gets crazy from there.
  8.  This is the one my
    time travel novels are based on:  You can
    go back, but we all make mistakes and those are the things that just keep
    tagging along, baggage we have to face because for the time traveler every move
    is still forward.

Add to my list:  what
other time travel rules have you noted while reading or writing the genre?

Narrative Mode ~ #15 Sleeping Beauty

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I like sleeping beauty because I always felt my own mother
lived a life that fit a large part of this framework. She was a classic good
girl who thought life as a secretary would be made to order.  It had some challenge, and she did well and
even did some modeling on the side.  But
life lost excitement, had no adventure for her. She did travel, but it was
basically from her parents to her grandparents. 
Boredom set in ,and she felt trapped, almost asleep while life went on
around her.  And then the dashing
engineer arrived interviewing for a position at the company where she worked.
They grew close and soon she was learning how to pilot a plane and traveling to
Cuba and other South American countries. 
After five years of adventuring, they married, had children and well,
lived  happily every after.
The basic plot is easy to lay out:

  • A girl is born and the family sees danger in her
    future.
  • They protect the girl by limiting her
    interaction with others
  • She is innocent of the danger and trusts
    everyone
  •  
    The dangerous situation takes place and…
  • She falls into a deep sleep due to the backlash
    of the measures taken to protect her. 
  •  Another stranger arrives and breaks through the
    protection to awaken her
  • She then lives happily ever after.

Simplest way to adapt this to a modern story is to make the
protection and its affects a metaphor. 
Imagine her innocence as a type of sleep.  She is unaware of life outside a set locale
and group of people.  The protection is a
valid and necessary one, and she will face that danger too, but she can also come
out of that sleep through an activity, through meeting someone or through a
physical or mental challenge.  She will
struggle to gain a sense of understanding and then finally reach the moment of
complete awareness.
This one is not particularly demanding as frameworks go, but
for simple bones and easy adjustments to bring in complications, it is a nice
one.



The Little Handbook of Narrative Frameworks available on Smashwords and Amazon.

Narrative Mode ~ #14 Arthurian Legend

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Okay, so I thought I was finished with the narrative frameworks, but it turns out I am not.  A few more have come to mind.  Arthurian Legend is a great one to consider as the mythology is quite fluid with a variety of shifts that change who is related to whom and the motivations behind their actions.  T. S. White did a lovely extrapolation of the story behind Arthur with The Once and Future King. But limiting yourself to just Arthur in the height of his kingship leaves plenty to work with, though the early days before he became king are also chock full of opportunity for creating a story about a young boy unaware of his parentage being cared for by a foster father and annoyed by his foster brother as he learns the rules of engagement, be it knighthood, business or modern politics.  However, I am going to focus on the adult Arthur as a framework.

  • A man strong in power and human understanding wants to bring peace to the hierarchy he leads.  
  • He has a beautiful wife and many trustworthy friends who will lay their life down to protect and support him.  They believe that he can shape their world into a place where they all can prosper.
  • But there are undercurrents, past deeds and associations which are at work to pull his kingdom (company, position of authority) down or at least replace him.  The child he had with another woman wants to be recognized as the true heir.  The child’s aunt would do anything to undermine Arthur, place the now grown illegitimate son in control and gain power herself through manipulation.
  • Then there is the faithful, most trusted among his supporters who is in love with Arthur’s wife.  Does she return the sense of connection or control her desire?  Does it get to be too much for them both?  Do they actually remain true to Arthur despite what others believe and their own strong feelings?
  • When Arthur is forced to face the fact that his wife and his best knight have a long term relationship (you define its actual limitation), he must respond as the others close to him expect and in the action also deal with the insurrection brought on by his son and his half sister.

There is plenty of room in this framework to write in most any genre.  In science fiction, Arthur can be the captain of a ship, the leader of a colony, a business mogul.   A romance novel could just as easily work.  The shift could be made to highlight the wife and the lieutenant as they work through their feelings and their loyalty to Arthur.   A contemporary novel could fly with it as well in the business world or on a ranch.

Key point to remember in the Arthurian Legend is the fact that he is a good man with a difficult job who honestly cares about the people he leads, and what makes him great is also what makes him vulnerable.  He would rather take the bullet than have someone else suffer.  It is his flaw as much as his finest quality.

 The Little Handbook of Narrative Frameworks available on Smashwords and Amazon.

                                                                                • Then there are the other men who pride themselves on their