Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

Writing

Use these 11 “nations” of the US to create depth in the characters you build

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I read an article about the various distinct cultural nations within the United States and found it very useful for determining the underlying influences of characters in fiction. In this article which made use of the work of Colin Woodard, Matthew Speizer provides (This map shows the US really has 11 separate ‘nations’ with entirely different cultures) descriptions of the type of people who live in specific areas in the US and what their political/cultural viewpoints are built on.


At first while reading it, I was focusing on identifying where I fit in the demographics described. It wasn’t hard to figure out. I’ll give you hints and let you pick my niche: born below the Mason Dickson line, but raised into my teens in northern New England, I then lived several years in Oregon after finishing high school in California. My adult life was largely in the Northwest, with southern influences. 

Now that I’ve written it down, all I can say is good luck with locating my cultural position within these described “nations.” I might be harder to label than I first thought.  Blame my dad who never seemed to be able to stay in one place very long.


But my point is how great is this for determining the underlining influences for character building and interaction. Imagine a “Yankeedom” having to rebuild a demolished world with a “Greater Appalacian.”  Utopian leanings vs very constrained. The conflicts are built into the individuals and the “cultures” they bring with them.


How about a (space)ship’s captain with “el Norte” sympathies with a first officer who’s a “Left Coaster.” Plenty of room for common ground and still areas where the two would argue specific issues of “expression,” “exploration” and regulation.


In my SF time travel novel (book 3 of Students of Jump), Next Time We Meet, Mick Jenkins is largely Greater Appalacian. But the society he is now trying to make a home in is New Netherland in many respects. He wants order where they encourage a general “go with the flow attitude.”


I can see these “culture” breakdowns of political viewpoints as one more useful tool for building individual character behavior and interactive conflict between characters. As you design characters, consider where they fall in these niches. Support the influences with attitudes, heritage, and biases that add depth to the individuality of your characters.  

Follow the link to the article and take a look at it yourself.  11 Nations of the United States.


Do you see any of your characters falling under these cultural labels? If so, which character, which story, and what qualities most standout?


#culture
#characterization
#writing

8 Ways to Strengthen Your Writer Posture

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Every writer needs a strong posture.

I recently watched a TED talks video, Amy Cuddy’s “Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are.” As a teacher, I understand the dynamics of body language. I read my students’ body language all the time and modify my approach to match or alter their attitudes so the class runs smoothly and achieves my intended goals for learning.

Watching this video brought to mind that this approach to body language relates to writers and how we do what we do.

The obvious connection is how our characters respond to given situations. The postures we describe our characters holding tells a lot to our readers about how the character is feeling about the situation. Do they expect to win or lose? Are they going to fight or run? Do they like the people they are with? Which ones more than others? How is the day going so far?

When that described posture is combined with narrative evaluation or internal dialogue, we end up with contrast, support, and definition.

Every writer makes use of body language.

But what about the writer as writer? How does a writer adjust his/her posture for power and confidence, raise testosterone and lower cortisol in the other aspects of being a writer?

I have read numerous descriptions of writers as shy, quiet, non-social, and insecure people. We present big, but in actuality lack confidence in being writers. I don’t know if that is true since fifty years back the typical writer was often viewed as a heavy drinking, loud, drug taking, know it all. Were they faking it?  Were they, to paraphrase Cuddy, faking it until they became it? Everybody is “coming out,” so perhaps authors are too, and maybe we really are totally insecure. I know I am a shy person who has a teaching persona my students often describe as demanding. Being a demanding person would not work for me as a writer. And I am not interested in following the drinking, loud, drug taking, know-it-all approach to ensure my “writing persona” is strong. So how can we use Cuddy’s ideas to present a strong writer posture in our writing endeavors?

Here are 8 ways to use Cuddy’s ideas to strengthen our writing posture.

  1. Before you start writing, take that power pose — hands on your hips, feet shoulder-width apart and chin just a bit above parallel with the ground (called the Wonder Woman for a reason.) You should hear the theme: “Wonder Writer, Wonder Writer” playing in the background. Do this before you sit down to write that post, chapter, poem, etc. 
  2. Unless, of course, you are trying to write a downcast character and you are one of those writers that act out your characters as you write — so a low confidence pose would be good to start with: shoulders curled in, arms down and held close to the body clutching the torso or neck protectively — gather a sense of what that feels like and then power up and sit down.
  3. Going for an interview: written, audio, video, in person — first stand up, raise your hands in the air and shout (or whisper very loud) “I’m being interviewed” like it is an Emmy award you’re receiving. Now go show them your stuff.
  4. How about that important phone call: Power pose it. By the way, according to Cuddy you have to hold this pose for two minutes. Now pick up the phone and make the call.
  5. About to upload your formatted eBook:  Walk around larger than life, take a stand in the middle of the room, power pose. Now go upload that baby. It’s ready to face the world.
  6. Putting together a proposal to an agent? Feeling daunted by the task? Time to power pose. You got this. Now write that proposal.
  7. About to edit your fully drafted novel? Definitely time for a power pose. This is the second most common time for low confidence in the writer. (For me, number 4 is the number one low confidence time.) You’ve put in all this work and now you’re saying it is done and ready for clean up. 
  8. Did somebody just say, “I hear that you write”? Get big, take up space — chest out, arms a little away from the body, chin up a bit or go for the power pose. Remember that’s hands on hips, feet apart, chin up. “Damn straight, I’m a writer.” Yeah, that’s asking a bit much for me, too. But it would give me a rush of confidence, enough to say. “Yes, yes, I am.”

It’s been nice having this little chat. Consider following me, tweeting this post, checking by again. I do occasionally …. can you give me a couple minutes….  Okay, I’m ready now. So you enjoyed this post. Follow me, Tweet my post, come by each week and you’ll find something valuable in my  writings to take away with you. I challenge you to check out my earlier posts. Yeah, power posture.

#powerposture
#writing
#confidence

Writing metaphor: two dogs, shedding a little of the dark and the light

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Two sides to writing

It is Wednesday evening and for two days running I have not been writing on my #wip. Arggg! I even am a bit late on my blog. Not good.

So what is the status on Book 4 of Students of Jump you ask. Well, so far it is the longest book I’ve written, coming in at just a bit under 100,000 words.  Besides watching out for typos and diction errors, I’ve been adding a scene here and a scene there. My fabulous beta readers, friends and fellow writers Marcy Peska and L. A. Hilden have pointed out some issues and areas for expansion and those have been keeping me quite busy this month. (By the way, all my books are available at Smashwords, Amazon, Kobo and other fine ebook retailers.)

I have been busily writing and content editing. Until yesterday. Family stuff, a bit of Trivia Crack and dog maintenance. Let’s deviate off the path of wherever I was going and focus on dog maintenance a moment. I have two Labradors, lovely ladies. We call them the bookends because they tend to take positions right next to each other and either mirror each other or lay identically. Of course, one is a chocolate and the other a yellow so they are always opposites in one way. The yellow sheds year round, while the chocolate sheds twice a year.

Consider this: they are both Labrador retrievers, not quite a year apart in age and they live in the same air conditioned residence. Yet, when I brush Cagney, the yellow, I am left with enough hair to cover a whole other dog. Lacey, however, produces about half a tennis ball size of hair fluff, unless it is the start of spring or early fall when she drops considerably more. After an hour of brushing Cagney, I simply give out. If I keep brushing, she just keeps letting go of hair. I look her over, and other than looking sleeker, she’s still well favored in soft yellow hair.  Do you remember those dolls that had hair that you could pull out of the top of their heads or roll it back in by pressing a button at the center of her back? I had one of those, still do in a cedar trunk. Cagney is like that. No, no buttons, but it sure seems like there is an unlimited supply sprouting from her skin, perhaps brush activated.

Where am I going with this? Well, I will admit, I had no idea at first. But something came to mind, just now as a matter of fact. Here it is. Sometimes writing is like this. There are days when I am a Cagney and the keys just keep activating my word production and other days I wonder if I am trying to write in the wrong season. See Cagney is the lots of words day and Lacey is the drought day. And if you think about it, they are the same but opposite too. At the end of the day, something was written. Good/bad, a lot/a little, brutal/effortless, willingly/forced, ears back/ears forward, mouth open and panting/mouth clamped shut.  Writing is like having two dogs, same breed, but different.

It was a struggle, I know, but I found a connection. I challenge you to write about something that enters your mind and show how it is an metaphor for an activity you love. It need not be writing. But if you got to the bottom of this twisted doggy run, you are probably a writer, or at least a reader. Thank heaven you exist.

#writing
#creativity
#dogs

Wordsworth still makes daffodils dance for me

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Dancing with the daffodils


I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud by William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling leaves in glee;
A poet could not be but gay,
In such a jocund company!
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

I’ve read this poem so many times with my students. When I first began to teach, this poem showed up in my ninth graders’ literature book. I skipped it feeling I had evaluated this poem into nothingness in college and did not want to revisit it with ninth graders.

It showed up again when I began teaching college British Lit. Again I passed it over as I made selections for my syllabus. But when we read excerpts from Dorothy Wordsworth’s journals and found references to the walk the two had taken that carried this image, I had to go back and reread the piece. Motion and color, brilliant sparkles and breeze dancing daffodils filled my mind. But that wasn’t new, though it was fresh again for me. It was the last lines that were so suddenly telling. The image of the sea of daffodils had stuck but not the message.

Startling events, snippets of conversation, fragrances, and images come to us in those quiet moments of repose. They come alive again, thrill and move us. Writers live on these enveloping sensory memories. We can aspire to recreate them, be a Wordsworth (D or W), and leave an impression on our readers that will find a place in their quiet moments.

#writing
#Wordsworth
#imagery

Exercise: Writing the logline

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Getting my logs in a line

I visited +HannahHeath’s blog recently and read her great post on writing loglines for novels. It galvanized me to work at mine a second time. So here’s my loglines for all my Student of Jump books.

In Time Passed, Students of Jump Book 1


Logline: An accidental inventor of time travel
takes his desire for anonymity back 200 years, but his struggle to live as an
average Joe demands he accept the expectations present at his birth and use
them to recreate society and put into motion what he jumped into the past to
avoid.

No-time like the Present, Students of Jump Book 2
Logline: The abandoned daughter of a time traveler takes
her skill of testing prototypes to their breaking point and applies it to a
time jumper sent to check on her, convincing him he must take her forward in
time to demand answers from her father whose guilt for leaving her and devotion
to her dead mother is both less and more than she could have expected or
imagined understanding.

Next Time We Meet, Students of Jump Book 3
Logline: Recently trained to travel in time and set to
take a honeymoon in the past, an anachronistic building contractor and his
quick-witted wife find the leisure life lacks challenge, so they take on locating
a missing and notably annoying physitech, placing them in the cross hairs of the
kidnapping entity as they jump through time chasing clues of uncertain reliability.

That’s the Trouble with Time (publication date sometime this summer), Students of Jump Book 4.

Logline: When a student of jump taking his first
solo time traveling assignment meets up with a determined renegade fighting
the world government for freedom from oppression, he finds losing his jump unit
is just one problem he has to fix, quickly followed by how he can protect his
heart from being the next thing he loses, especially when she keeps throwing it
back at him.

Follow this link if you are looking to revamp your own loglines and need a refresher course.
Hannah Heath: How to Write an Awesome Logline for your Novel

#writing
#loglines
+HannahHeath

Writing with obstacles and rainstorms barring the way

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Steering around the logs

We’ve been getting a lot of rain lately, several weeks worth actually. Water is gathering on our side walk, and pooling there for days because the ground is so saturated. But the last two days have been dry and warm, so off to the lake we went to water ski.

The lake we usually go to was over capacity and the ramp was unsafe, so we headed for one further away but likely to be able to put our boat in.  We arrived and it looked great. I drove the boat off the trailer and my husband parked the truck. It wasn’t long before I was idling toward the dock to pick him up and head out into the wide lake while he prepped for skiing. Once he sat down, I increased the throttle and headed off for one of our favorite parts of the lake where we were sure to find smooth water. But I hadn’t gone more than a few hundred yards when I had to slow the boat and turn the wheel this way and that to avoid sinkers (logs floating just beneath the surface and not favorable to boats racing along).

My husband ever positive that there is a place on the lake for him to ski encouraged me onward. At first I complied, picking up speed and straining to pick out the telltale signs of a branch poking up from a hidden log positioned to hole our hull. I pulled back on the throttle after going halfway across the lake and got ready to turn into the arm we favored.  By then my husband was standing up in the boat, watching out over the canopy for sinkers he might need to warn me about. The boat speed kept the bow tipped up, so in order to see, I had been propped up on one knee and turned sideways in my seat so I could see over the windshield that was low cut and interfering with my view when I sat. My leg was starting to feel the strain of holding me on the seat, and my foot was wedged awkwardly against the seat back. There was no adjustment I could make without giving up the best view of the water ahead. I was certain we would not be skiing today, and I knew my husband would have to drive for himself to come to terms with that, besides my leg was beginning to cramp. It had been a long winter.

I told him to take over. He did without a word, driving the boat all the way into the arm, searching for a clear place to ski. But the lake was studded with sinkers and short thick branches and gnarled knots of wood floating every ten feet as though someone had applied a grid.

We played about dodging the long limbs and knots for an hour. Then we headed back in, put the boat on the trailer and resigned ourselves to not skiing for at least a couple weeks, if the rains were done.

As we drove home, I realized that this was the perfect metaphor for my writing this year. I had been steering around various obstacles: work, getting a college-bound high school senior organized for graduation, visiting my dementia-suffering mother, and taking care of this and that. I hadn’t any time to write and had to wait for the weather of life to abate a bit. So now I am here writing again and certain my planned date of publication for my fourth Students of Jump book was now delayed and my plans to fully draft my first contemporary fiction would have to be reconsidered.

It looks like the sky will be dry for awhile and life’s obstacles are looking sparse as well. So I am back to writing and hope all of you have clear skies, too.

#rain
#writing
#obstacles