I've been a fangirl of Joanna Penn's The Creative Penn since I first started wondering about self publishing. Naturally, then, when fans suggested Joanna and I do an interview on Twitter, I could not say yes fast enough, and here it is!!
We had a fantastic time, and if you enjoy publishing shop talk, I think you will, too. We talk abut writing fast (obvs), how to write for long stretches, marketing, working with spouses, creating story arcs, and a whole bunch more. It really was a blast, so go listen!
There's also a text transcript of the interview at the bottom of the post, in case you just want to read!
If you don't already read it, Joanna's Creative Penn is one of the best sources for serious business talk about indie publishing on the internet. I've been a fan for years and stolen many, many good ideas from her and her guests. Can not recommend enough! Thank you so much to Joanna for having me.
Hope everyone's week goes well, and happy writing!
- Rachel
Travis is doing his civic duty by answering his jury summons, so there's no business post today. But all is not lost! We just got word from Amazon that BOTH Nice Dragons Finish Last and One Good Dragon Deserves Anotherare part of the August Kindle Big Deal!
So if you've been waiting for the right time to try my Heartstrikers series (or force them into someone else's hands on the cheap) now's your chance! You can buy both for the price of one and be entirely caught up in time for No Good Dragon Goes Unpunished, which comes out on ebook THIS FRIDAY!
I've got some awesome stuff planned for y'all to celebrate the release, so be sure to check back on Wednesday for all the goods. We're also this close to having the print edition ready to go and we've got the audio book lined up to launch on September 13! It's a dragon bonanza!
There's a lot of great stuff in the pipe, and we'll be getting to it very soon. For now, though, I hope you buy some books on sale and have an awesome Monday!
Until Wednesday, I remain your friendly neighborhood Spider Man author,
So there's no official Writing Wednesday post today because I am getting everything together for the No Good Dragon Goes Unpunished print edition, which should hopefully be out at the same time as the ebook! (YAY!)
But while there's no writing post today, I do have a treat for you guys. Remember that post a few weeks ago where I asked you if you had any questions for Bethesda? Well she answered, and the result is below...
Behold!
That's right, you don't have to wait until No Good Dragon Goes Unpunished launches on August 5th for more Heartstrikers! I've got a special short story featuring everyone's favorite terrible parent spilling clan secrets that you can read right now.
Even better, it's free! The only thing you have to do to get this story is sign up for my New Release Mailing List!
Wait, whut?
Hear me out! This isn't some kind of spammy email pester service. I only send out emails when I've got a new book coming out or when I'm giving away something free, like this story! Even better, people on my mailing list get everything first, like this story!
If you want to get first dibs on all my new stuff and you don't mind getting the very occasional email (seriously, I think I've sent out 3 this year), then I hope you'll sign up for my list. All it takes is an email and a second of your time. As soon as you sign up, you'll automatically get a welcome email with links to download all of Bethesda's terrible secrets. How awesome is that?!
So if you're dying for your Heartstrikers fix and you're not part of my mailing list yet, I very much hope you'll give it a try. (And if you're already signed up, THANK YOU! I hope you enjoyed the story!)
I'll be back next week with a real blog post and (hopefully) some fun Heartstrikers release swag! Until then, I really hope you enjoy Bethesda's story. Obligatory social media links are here: Twitter / Facebook / Tumblr / Google+. Follow me for fun updates!
(Oh, and Trav will be here on Monday with a really fantastic business post. He's actually writing it behind me right now, and it looks so cool.)
Until then, keep writing and reading! Enjoy the story, and I'll see you next week!
Travis is forced away from Pokemon Go (aka, "walking off a bridge waiting to happen") to put together a really awesome blog post on creativity! But first, great news! The first three books of my original series, The Legend of Eli Monpress are on sale!
If you've ever wanted to try my older series but never got around it, this is a great chance to do so on the cheap. So get out there and try a book! Eli swears you won't regret it, and in this at least, he's always trustworthy!
Okay, okay, sales pitch done. Take it away, Travis!
Hi Folks,
Today I'm going to talk about the neuroscience and biology of writing. While this isn't a bio-hacking article, we're definitely going to go over how to maximize ideal conditions around the neurology that writing depends on. Also, I get to say that having sex will make you a better writer, so this is a great article!
Where'd this come from? Well, as a programmer looking to cut more and better code I've read lots of articles about how to boost, though conserve is more appropriate, the mental output potential of my biology. This research has been ongoing in my life for years now and I've used it as just a grunt coder, as a lead developer, and as Rachel's partner.
Everything here has a strong scientific backing and has been tried and tested by us. It's gonna be exciting!
So, let's talk about...
The Science of Protecting Your Creativity
The weird part of this article is that it's less about finding boosts, which would be bio-hacking IMO, and more about avoiding penalties. See, there's a lot of boat-anchors weighing down the creative mind. Some of these are just the normal mental challenges of life. Many, today's topic, are biological and can be reliably avoided with simple habits or life changes.
To start off with,
How [part] of your brain works
There's been loads of neuroscience research on how our brains work under different conditions. What's really important is how we have basically two different modes focus and not-focus. Yeah, that article I linked was huge and dry, so please let me summarize.
Your brain has one area that we're particularly concerned with and that is the pre-frontal cortex. Other than language, this is one of the most important parts of a writer's brain. It governs a lot of what you'd consider to be your 'conscious thought' and it has two modes or configurations if you will. I'm going to call the mode A and mode B, those aren't technical terms however.
Rachel here, commandeering Trav's blog day to ask you folks for a little help. As you might have heard from a fewpreviousposts NO GOOD DRAGON GOES UNPUNISHED is coming out in just a few weeks (preorder it here!). I actually just sent the final version of the text to the proofreader, so that means it's time to start doing fun bonus book launch stuff! Yay!
Free stuff?! THIS. IS. RACHEL'S BLOOOOOOOOOOG! (so yes)
One of the projects I have in mind is going to be (hopefully) really cool, but to make it even cooler, I wanted to ask for your input. Without letting the dragon out of the bag too much, I'm going to be doing an...interview of sorts with everyone's favorite terrible mother, Bethesda the Heartstriker! So if you ever had a question you wanted to hear Bethesda answer about her children, her clan, dragons, or her life in general, please ask it in the comments below.
Bethesda, she's not as bad as she looks! She's actually way worse.
I'll be picking the best ones (or at least the ones I can answer without horribly spoiling the series) for her to answer in a special Heartstrikers short story that will come out before the release of book 3. YES! EARLY HEARTSTRIKERS! WOO!
This story will be free and made specially for you guys, my awesome fans! So if there's a question you desperately want to see Bethesda answer that I haven't addressed in the books, ask it below, and let's have some fun!
Thanks as always, and I'll see you guys on Wednesday for more Prose Summer Camp!
Ah, summer. The sun's out, the heat is oppressive, and there are UNINVINTED GUESTS in my house. Clearly, the only thing to do is to break out the swimwear and dive into the nitty gritty details of writing at the prose level. It's,
A badly photoshopped sign using stolen Park Service fonts! No, wait, I mean it's...
Prose Summer Camp!
Yaaay! Today we're going to be focusing on dialogue. Not how to come up with good dialogue (for that, see this post), but how to actually write the stuff in a way that reads well and makes sense on the page.
Now this might not sound like a big deal, but I can't tell you how many books have been ruined for me by, shall we say, unwise dialogue and dialogue tag choices. Even if the dialogue itself is decent, it's hard to appreciate witty banter when you're trying to figure out how someone can gesticulate a word (are they using Sign Language?). I know that sounds nit picky, but when you're talking about your book, these are your nits to pick. Voice in a book is made up of thousands of nit picky choices just like this.
Choose well, and no one will notice because they'll be too busy paying attention to your characters and plot. Choose poorly, and the little bad decisions will be all your readers notice. It's like a big old scratch in the paint job of a brand new car. Sure it might not actually change how the car runs, but no one wants to buy a new car with a scratch on it. If you're going to sell that thing, it has to look its best, and this kind of attention to detail is one of the ways we get there.
It should also be noted that these sort of decisions are often considered a stylistic writing choice, which means unless you're really murdering the grammar, no copy editor is going to fix them for you. (And if you are murdering the grammar, you shouldn't be depending on a copy editor to fix that in the first place.) You're the writer here. It's up to you to write well, so let's dig into how we do that.
But first, a disclaimer:
**This is how I write. All of the tips below are drawn from my taste and experience as a writer. Some of the rules I lay out below are universal, others are stylistic choices. Either way, if you don't like my writing style, seeing how I make my dialogue choices might not be very useful. This is fine! Everyone writes in their own voice. I hope, of course, that you will still find some it helpful, but please don't take any of this as me setting down the One True Path of Writing. I'm just telling you what works for me in the hopes that it might also work for you. Enjoy responsibly! **
Now that's out of the way, onward to...
Writing Wednesday: How to (Actually) Write Dialogue
Rachel clapped her hands and looked around the virtual room. "Okay," she said, positively vibrating with grammatical excitement. "Let's talk about writing and talking, my two favorite things! Dialogue in text is one of those writing things we assume everyone just knows. After all, we've all read books before, which means we've seen proper dialogue in action. But seeing isn't always understanding. To truly get what's going on, we have to understand why these authors made the dialogue choices they did."
"And I suppose you're going to tell us?"
Rachel looked up in confusion to see Brohomir, Great Seer of the Heartstrikers, sitting at the back of the room, feeding his pigeon from the tray of complementary snack crackers. "What are you doing here?"
"Shameless self-promotion," Bob said with a grin. "The third volume of my adventures comes out August fifth, and I wanted to make sure everyone in your audience knew they could preorder No Good Dragon Goes Unpunished."
"I don't see how they could have missed it," Rachel said, pointing at the long line of announcement posts, tweets, and other various public declarations. "But since you're already here, how would you like to be my example?"
Bob sighed. "Why are you even asking? You're the writer, and I've already foreseen the end of this little mise en scène. Even if I say no, we both know you're going to make me do it anyway."
"But of course," Rachel said with a cruel grin. "That's the price of being a fan favorite. When the author needs people to pay attention, you get pressed into service." Her smirk widened. "Characters exist to be used."
The dragon seer arched an eyebrow. "Careful," he warned. "Your Bethesda is showing."
There's no Writing Wednesday today because I'm on a roll to finish my edits for HEARTSTRIKERS THREEEEEE!
Yes, No Good Dragon Goes Unpunished is very nearly done! I'm hoping to wrap it up early next week for a publication date sometime in August. Until then, Casa de Aaron/Bach is dragons all day, every day. Until then (if you haven't already), please enjoy my very clever husband's amazing and epic post on How to Craft Your Author Brand he put up on Monday.
Again, I apologize for the slacker non-post, but I promise you it'll be worth it! To make it up to you, though, here's a bit of art I just got from my amazing cover artist Anna Steinbauer of a certain growly dragon...
Click to see in full, glorious resolution!
We all know who this is, right? ^__^ Oh yeah, no one's getting out of this unscarred. I hope you're all ready to comfort poor Julius. Kid has it rough this book! (Evil author cackling)
I'll do the full cover reveal when I have an actual release date for the book other than "sometime in August." But it shouldn't be long!
That's it for now 'cause I've got a book to finish! Again, if you're at all interested in book publishing/selling, check out Trav's marketing post. It is the jam. Seriously, he's been throwing himself hardcore into the business side of publishing so I can focus on writing for a year now. Dude knows his shit. He put stuff in here that I hadn't even thought about. Can't recommend enough!
See you all next week. Until then, keep writing and reading and generally being awesome!
Here on Pretentious Title, we talk a lot about the professional, technical, artistic, and financial sides of writing, but while that's all well and good, there's another very important part of being a writer that I have sorely neglected, and that is the all important fandom angle.
Despite our lack of red carpets and endorsement deals, writing is most definitely a glam industry. People dream of being writers just like they dream of being musicians or actors, and the ones who do make it work their butts off to get there. For good reason, too, because things happen for writers that just don't happen for most of humanity, like, for example, fans making amazing fan art for your stories!
I genuinely can not express how thrilled it makes me to see someone else's (far more talented) interpretation of my imaginary friends characters. It makes me fangirl about my own stuff. But how can I not?! I mean, just look at Justin and Julius!
Are they not the best?! And just look at Bob (complete with pigeon!)
How can I not look at these and feel like a rockstar?! I know I go on and on about being a professional writer and making a living, but that's all just practical adult stuff. You know, the part of me that has to pay off a house. When I get art like this, though, made by someone who genuinely enjoyed the story I wrote, THAT's when I feel the really giddy joy that makes me remember why I dreamed of being a writer in the first place.
I mean, just look at Marci and Ghost!
Or MARCI AND JULIUS!! ❤
How can I not be delighted? READERS, I CAN NOT NOT. Looking at these makes me squee for years. I mean, check out Bethesda!
And Amelia?! OMG Amelia. (Or should I say, Aaaaaaaa-meila)
Mother/daughter issues much?
Straight up, I had a different mental image in my head when I wrote her, but the moment I saw this, this became my Amelia. That's the power of good fan art. It was so good, so absolutely what I was trying to do, it changed the story cannon in my head. I mean, damn.
And it's not just major characters, either. Check out Ian! And the Cs, Chelsie and Conrad (all of whom will have big roles in book 3)!
And let's not forget our star villainess, Estella!
SO GOOD. FAN GIRLING REACHING UNCOMFORTABLE LEVELS OF EXCITEMENT!!11one
(deep breaths)
I know, I know, I'm freaking out, but I can't help it! I mean, Gergana, of her own volition, chose and illustrated one of my absolute favorite scenes from One Good Dragon Deserves Another, when Estella confronts Julius in the hallway to draw out Bob.
She even got Bob's bathrobe!! (And Julius's look of unholy terror). Not joke, I legit had heart flutters of happiness when I saw this. All of it, really. It's more cartoony than the covers, but I feel the art really gets the feel of the story and the characters in it, and that makes me happier than words can say.
There are many, many reasons to want to be a writer--fame, money, making a living doing what you love, getting to tell stories all the time--but the best, the best, is stuff like this. When fans read your story and love it so much, they're make their own fanart or fanfic or whatever of your characters and your world, that's amazing. I know it sounds cliche, but my fans truly are the best part of my job, and when I see art or read a gushing review, or see someone I've never met on Twitter talking about my stories like they love them, like they know them inside and out, I feel a happiness no money could ever buy.
Getting to fan out with my fans over these stories that I loved so much, I spent years writing them is one of the true unsung treasures of being a storyteller. It is a joy that is absolutely worth all the work, and I am so so so grateful to all of you for making this possible.
So grateful, in fact, that we decided to something in return!
To thank you all for being so patient waiting for book 3 to come out (which should be this summer!), we commissioned Gergana to draw some custom, high res Julius and Marci art!!But not just any Julius and Marci. We wanted to show Julius as a dragon, something that hasn't been illustrated on the covers yet. Fantastically for us, Gergana was willing, so we worked with her to show the littlest Feathered Serpent in all his glory!
Click the pic to download the full size!
Taaa daaa!!! Isn't he ADORABLE? I loved the feathers and how happy he looks (Enjoy your happiness while it lasts, Julius... BWA HA HA HA ha ha ha AH HA HA HA #evilauthor). Ahem, anyway, this art is for you guys! We're going to be using it on our stuff, of course, but feel free to take it and use it however you want. Make icons! Make backgrounds! Print it out and put it on your wall! Do whatever you want, and then please show me what you did via Social Media (Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Google+) because, in case you haven't noticed, this stuff makes me really happy!!! XD!
Again, huge thanks go to Gergana Hristova for making all this possible. If you like her stuff as much as I do, please check out her site, because there's tons of awesome there!
As for Heartstrikers book 3, now titled No Good Dragon Goes Unpunished, there's a lot of big news coming! Seriously, you guys are going to LOVE THIS BOOK! I'll be posting stuff here and on Twitter/Facebook/Tumblr/Google+ as it comes out, so make sure to follow me for all that.
I hope you all enjoyed this post with as much fangirl delight as I had making it!! As always, thank you so so SOOOOOO much for reading my posts and my books. I'll be back on Wednesday with a craft post as always, but until then, enjoy the pretty pictures!
Can you hear the squee echoing around the world? That's me, because today I have the fabulous Rhonda Mason, author of one of my favorite reads this year: THE EMPRESS GAME, which comes out today!
One seat on the intergalactic Sakien Empire’s supreme ruling body, the Council of Seven, remains unfilled: that of the Empress Apparent. The seat isn’t won by votes or marriage. It’s won in a tournament of ritualized combat. Now the tournament, the Empress Game, has been called and the women of the empire will stop at nothing to secure political domination for their homeworlds. Kayla Reunimon, a supreme fighter, is called by a mysterious stranger to battle it out in the arena. The battle for political power isn’t contained by the tournament’s ring, however. The empire’s elite gather to forge, strengthen or betray alliances in a dance that will determine the fate of the empire for a generation. With the empire wracked by a rising nanovirus plague and stretched thin by an ill-advised planet-wide occupation of Ordoch in enemy territory, everything rests on the woman who rises to the top.
Did you read that? This book is basically the Thunderdome of Space Opera! The main character is a total take-no-shit badass, the combat is unrelenting, and there's kissing! That's a recipe for Rachel catnip right there. Is it any wonder my blurb is on the paperback cover singing its praises to the sky?
Click to enlarge, and thank you Hisham El-Far for the picture!
Now, me being me, the moment I finished the book, I reached out to author Rhonda Mason in a rush of fangirlish glee to invite her onto the blog because interviewing badass ladies who write SF is becoming quite the thing here on Pretentious Title. (Click here to read my last interview with Jennifer Foehner Wells, author of FLUENCY.)
To my delight, she agreed. She's also going to be giving away a SIGNED COPY!
Souvenirs! My husband asked me to bring him back the most Texas thing I could find. Mission accomplished!
If you were anywhere near my Twitter feed last week, you're probably more aware than you'd like to be that I was in Dallas, TX for the Romantic Times Book Lover's Convention, one of the biggest Romance genre conventions in the world. I didn't actually know that before I signed up because, ya know, I'm not a Romance author. Even FORTUNE'S PAWN, the most romantic of all my books, only has romance as a sub-plot, and my covers most definitely do not have pretty dresses, leather pants, or rock hard abs. So why did I, an SFF author, go to RT?
Well, in the beginning, I went because Ilona Andrews (whom I already owed a bar's worth of drinks for giving me a great review of FORTUNE'S PAWN on her blog) asked me to be on her Urban Fantasy panel. At that point, I was only vaguely aware of RT as a place where Romance authors went to have epic parties, but when Ilona Andrews asks you to be on a panel, you say yes. So of course, I accepted instantly, and then I scrambled off to the internet to find out what, exactly, I'd signed myself up for.
The answer was a lot more than I expected. RT started as a reader con, but these days it's more of a giant who's who in the Romance writing and publishing world. Everyone, and I do mean everyone--big NY publishers, small presses, self pubbers, Amazon's KDP team, NY Times mega bestsellers, readers, reviewers, fans, bloggers, book store reps, librarians--who has any connection to the Romance genre was packed into a giant hotel meeting and partying and moving through panels in a giant mass of networking fury.
As a mid-list author who is only tangentially connected to Romance, this was a pretty intimidating world to dive into. Other than a few Twitter/email interactions, I knew no one there, and I was constantly worried no one would care about me or my books since, again, I'm only a "Romance Author" by the furthest stretch of the definition. Also, like any giant con, RT was expensive.
Given all that, you can imagine how nervous I was, but I'm happy to report that my RT gamble paid off better than I could have hoped! It was absolutely worth the time and money for me both as an author and a Romance reader. I could gush for hours about all the awesome connections I made and the fun I had, but I think I've fangirled enough for one month, so here's the same information in useful bulleted list format.
So a week ago, fellow fantasy author and all around hilarious fellow Sam Sykes made me an offer I could not refuse. He was going to be running a panel at this year's Phoenix Comicon called the Batsu, or Punishment Game, and he needed my help.
"The goal of this game," he told me, "is to make the panelists laugh so that they will be punished. To do this, I have asked certain authors to pen half a page or so of fanfiction about one of the panelists doing something weird in a suitably epic style. My problem was that A) I had too many male authors, B) not enough fanfiction about the female panelists. Fortunately there is a solution in C) I love your work, D) I would like you write me half a page of fanfiction about Delilah S. Dawson."
I considered this for about 0.00001 seconds before screaming yes so loud the internet shook. I love Delilah and her books almost as much as I love fanfiction, and I accepted the challenge with manic glee. I emailed Sam the finished product at 7 the next morning, chuckling at the image of Delilah desperately trying to read it with a straight face in front of a crowd. My only sadness was that I wouldn't be there to witness the awesomeness myself.
Unfortunately, I had to add a second sadness. In all the rush of the con, there wasn't enough time to get to my short piece of epic author fanfic. But here on the internet, we have all the time in the world, and so I present to you, my darling, hapless reader, my first work of fanfiction in many years. I hope you enjoy it, and if you don't, blame Sam Sykes. It was his idea.
Pretentious Title Presents
DELILAH S. DAWSON AND THE INTERNET TROLLS
an original authorial fanfiction by Rachel Aaron, who should probably be ashamed of herself.
My husband and I have been on a Project Runway binge lately (we've only just finished season 8 so NO SPOILERS!!!). A few days ago, I joked on Twitter that I was going to do a post on all the lessons I've learned about writing while watching the show. Things like "When someone tells you they hate your book/look, don't argue, just quietly hate them." (Seriously, Gretchen, SHUT UP. You are only digging that hole deeper when you argue with the judges!) or "Make separates and accessorize. The designer/writer who makes the same cocktail dress/book every time always goes home early."
Anyway, the whole thing started as just an excuse to make Project Runway jokes on Twitter, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized I wasn't actually joking...
At its heart, Project Runway is a show about being creative under pressure. It's about putting your work and yourself out there to be judged, often harshly, by a jaded and fickle industry famous for chasing trends. It's about staying true to your artistic vision even when other people hate it, because if you change your style to try and please everyone, all you end up with is boring. It's about balancing art with commercialism, drama with practicality, structure and craftsmanship with time limits, all while staying within the constraints of a tightly defined medium...
Sound like anything else I talk about on this blog?
The parallels between writing and designing are by no means perfect, but the ones that do exist are pointed enough that I feel justified in making an entire post on the subject. Please note that while I won't be referencing specific events in the show, I will be assuming at least a basic understanding of Project Runway and reality TV elimination shows. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, the Wikipedia article on the show has a great breakdown of the basic format. You can also watch several seasons for free at Lifetime. Note that I am not being compensated by Project Runway or Lifetime in any way for this post or these links. I just really freaking love this glorious, redonk, catty circus of a show.
You tell it like it is, Heidi.
Anyway, now that's out of the way, on with the post!
Art vs Commercialism, or, "You Have to be True to Yourself as a Designer"
The more I think about this topic, the more excited I get, and not just because it gives me an excuse to post pictures of Tim Gunn (though that was a definite bonus). See, as I've done my yearly "Ask an Author" thread on the NaNoWriMo forums, one of the themes I run into again and again is this idea of "What should I do to sell my book?" This question manifests in many forms, from the ever popular agent questions to "I notice there's a lot of X out there, can I write Y and still get published?" to questions about how long a novel should be in order to be acceptable to publishers. My answer to these questions is always the same: keep the restrictions in mind, but always stay true to your story and your vision. And every time I say I say this, I hear Tim Gunn in my head saying "you have to trust your instincts and be true to yourself as a designer."
I know this all sounds a little cheesy, but work with me here. On Project Runway, the ultimate goal, the Holy Grail, is an outfit that is creative and beautiful, but still wearable. A dress you can't walk in is useless, but a dress that's too plain is boring (which is the kiss of death on Project Runway). The judges always go crazy over the outfit that is wearable, but still interesting. Something that is exciting and sexy and beautiful without being costume-y or overwrought. They want something that will make them go "Wow!" but can still be sold at a department store.
This delicate balance between creativity and commercialism is also at the heart of publishing. Publishers and readers are constantly looking for the next new thing. They want a story that knocks their socks off and shows them something they haven't seen before, but at the same time it can't be too far out there. The book still has to be readable, and it has to be something that can be summed up in a 150 word blurb and make people want to buy it. Bonus points if the story's on trend for what's hot in reading right now, but it can't be too trendy or it will seem old hat before it's even published.
Just as the designers on Project Runway are scrambling to meet this seemingly impossible standard, so are writers struggling to balance their own creative vision with the needs of the modern publishing world. Even people who self publish have to meet reader expectations. Books that are too weird might be extremely creative, but readers and publishers will often pass over them because they're too strange to be taken seriously. Does this mean the book is bad? No, it simply means it's not publishable, which isn't the same thing at all.
It is perfectly possible to have a fantastic, non-commercially viable book just as it is perfectly possible to make a gorgeous dress that is a work of art and yet will never be mass produced or available for sale. But publishing, just like Project Runway, isn't about art. Or, at least, it's not wholly about art. It's not a show for making dresses that will sit on mannequins in a showroom. It's about who can make the best, most interesting clothes that could potentially be sold toreal women.
By the same turn, whether you're going through a traditional house or doing everything yourself, commercial publishing is about writing books people want to buy and read. This is why it's so important to know what you want from your writing career. If you want to be an artist first, then commit to that. Accept that your vision comes before sales, and don't get upset when you're not commercially successful. If you want to be a bestseller, same story. You need to commit to your decision and focus on how to make the biggest, most interesting splash while still playing within the tightly defined rules of your genre. And if you want to be both (which is what I and I think the vast majority of authors really want) then you need to commit to learning how to balance art and commercialism.
I'm not saying this is easy. Reliably creating a new, exciting, wonderful stories that are commercially viable is just as difficult as creating beautiful, interesting, new types of clothing that are still wearable and comfortable. If this crap was easy, everyone would win Project Runway, and everyone would be a mega successful author.
Personally, I take great comfort in the fact that it's not easy, because then, when I fail, I know it's not because I'm a failure, but because I've set myself to a nearly impossible task. I also know that I can pick myself and keep working, because unlike Project Runway, I don't have to worry about getting sent home and losing all my dreams forever if I have a bad day. Bonus!
The Vast Effort behind "Effortlessness"
Nina Garcia and her dreaded Death Glare.
Not to betray my endless Tim Gunn love, my favorite point of view on Project Runway is actually panel judge and Marie Clare Creative Director, Nina Garcia. Where Michael Kors is the (bitchy) voice of the pro designer and Heidi Klum fills the role of the potential client, Nina is the voice of the Fashion Industrial Complex. She is the one who looks beyond artistry, beyond technical skill, even beyond her own personal taste to see where a design can successfully go. She thinks about how a dress would be styled in an editorial spread, she thinks about hanger appeal, she is constantly asking "Who is your customer? Who wears this dress?"
These are all amazingly pertinent, professional questions that a lot of designers don't consider, especially in the beginning of a season. But if we replace the word "dress" with "book" and "designer" with "writer," all her questions are still important. It's very easy as a writer to get caught up in your own vision of the story, and having someone like Nina Garcia haul you up and ask "Who reads this book? How will this book be sold?" can be fantastically eye opening.
If Project Runway was Project Bookshelf, Micheal Kors would be the Tom Clancy style big bestseller, Heidi Klum would be the book buyer, and Nina Garcia would be the acquiring editor. Fortunately for us, most fiction editors are not nearly as mean as she is, at least not to their authors, but it's their job to ask these same sorts of questions. And that's really important, because these are vital issues a lot of authors don't consider, or worse, don't feel they need to consider until the book is done. But just as those designers got a lot better after they started taking Nina's criticism to heart, I think we as authors can't help but improve if we start out our projects thinking about the realities of the markets our books are going to face and incorporate those decisions naturally into our writing process rather than trying to shoehorn our vision into a commercially acceptable shape later (or worse, standing on the runway and arguing with the judges about why they're wrong. No one wins that fight.)
All of that said, however, one of Nina Garcia's favorite words is "effortless." You can always tell when she really likes something because she'll trot out that word, especially if draping is involved. But when she says "effortless," she often qualifies it with the reminder that effortless doesn't mean easy or undesigned. This is because "effortless" in fashion and writing only means the appearance of serendipity. Just like Heidi Klum's ageless makeup, it is an illusion of careless grace that actually requires an enormous amount of care, thought, and work to produce.
Illusion is the key. When all that work is visible, garments (and novels) are criticized for being "overworked" or "overdesigned." Designers (and writers) are told they're "trying too hard" for adding purposeless details like zipper embellishments or piping in their effort to show how much work went into something. Nina's other favorite phrase is "you need to edit." She is constantly telling designers that they need to step back, look critically, and edit their work down to its essence. "Less is more," she says over and over when some designer has stuck 50 bows on his dress and styled his model's hair in a big Lady Gaga style bow bun. "You need to remove, not pile on."
Of all the advice I steal from Project Runway, this is the sentiment that translates most directly. Writers are creative people by definition, and as creative people, it's very easy to get lost in our own work. When you have an amazing idea that doesn't really fit the story but is too cool to leave out, writers will think of all kinds of wacky rationalizations why they don't need to cut the scenes they love. We often defend these decisions by saying we're adding depth and hooks to our novels when, in reality, we're doing the writing equivalent of over designing.
To be fair, a lot of over written books do well, but then, a lot of ugly, over designed clothing gets sold for reasons I can not fathom. But just because some people get away with it is no excuse to go easy on our own editorial eye, because the best books/designs, the ones that endure, are the novels/dresses that appear effortless and natural. The end goal of all work in writing is to appear like no work at all. To give the reader a story that simply flows like it was always meant to be.
In writing as in fashion design, if you do your job right, no one will even notice how hard you worked to do it. They will not see your struggles or your late nights or your botched scenes or how you rewrote the first paragraph 100 times. All they will see is the beautiful, effortless finished product, perfectly presented, and that is as it should be.
"Make It Work"
I couldn't possibly do a Project Runway themed blog post without talking about the show's famous catch phrase, "Make It Work." I might not be working 18 hour days, sewing and creating under enormous pressure just for a chance not to get eliminated from the show that has promised to make all my dreams come true, but it's still powerful mojo. When I am upset, the sound of Tim Gunn saying "Just make it work" is like a Pavlovian trigger for my ability to get up and press on. And that's really, really important, especially in writing, because the moment you start writing on a deadline, Make It Work becomes your mantra.
Whether you're writing for yourself or for a publisher, there are times when the book just has to get done, and you don't know how it's going to get there. Maybe you've written yourself into a corner, or maybe you went entirely the wrong direction and now you hate everything. Maybe you're just stumped on a plot point and you have no idea what to do next, but you need to figure it out pronto, because if you don't get this book ready to turn in to your editor in the next month, you're going to throw off your entire publication schedule. Your book will be late, your readers will be mad, and you won't get paid when you thought you were going to be. DOOOOM!
Okay, so maybe I'm exaggerating a little bit, but when you're in the middle of the crisis, the idea that not finishing this book on time will destroy your career feels absolutely real. More than one author has crumbled under the pressure, but funny enough, this is where Project Runway has us beat, I think. Because no matter how stressed those designers get, no matter how crazy the time limit on the challenge, when it comes time to put on the show, they always have something to send down the runway. It may not have been their best look, but in the end, the designer who can pull it out and make it work is the designer who is successful, and the same goes for writers.
I usually shy away from generalizations, but I don't think I'm going out on a limb when I say that every writer has faced a moment where they didn't know how to go forward. When this happens, especially under a deadline, the difference between writers who choke and writers who succeed is their ability to do like Tim Gunn says and make it work.
This isn't just a careless bon mot. The ability to resist panic is not a natural one. We're born panicky, wary animals who seem predisposed to jump to the absolute worst conclusion, and the ability to rise above this, to be calm and creative under pressure and get the job done, is the line that separates the professional from the amateur. Fortunately, it's also a talent that can be learned, and part of Tim's role on Project Runway is to teach this ability to panicked designers who've just realized how screwed they are.
No matter how carefully you plot or how good you are at managing time, if you pursue a career in writing, you will eventually come face to face with the "I'm totally F'ed" moment. When this happens, it is perfectly natural to freak your shit. Once that's over, though, it's your job to calm down and find a way to make it work. Because you're a professional, and professionals always find a way to deliver. The same "never give up" attitude that gets you published keeps you published, and the harder you embrace that truth, the more quickly you recover from disappointment and find your way to make it work, the more successful you will be.
***
One of the most amazing things about being a professional artist, or professional anything, is discovering that the more things change, the more they stay the same. The pressures of being a commercial artist vary wildly from industry to industry, and yet the core remains unchanged. Designers, writers, graphic artists--we all face the same struggle to produce creative yet salable work under pressure while not sacrificing the vision that makes this art our own.
My situation is very, very different from the contestants on Project Runway, and yet I can still learn from their mistakes, and that's a lot more than I ever expected from a cheesy reality show about making high fashion dresses on ridiculous deadlines out of random crap. So thank you, Project Runway. I learned a stupid amount about myself from your ridiculous programming.
I hope you enjoyed this absurdly long blog post about a television program! Thank you for putting up with my waxing rhapsodic over reality TV personalities, and as always, good luck with your writing!
First up, I wanted to share with you a preview snippet from some promotional writing I'm doing for Fortune's Pawn. It's a bit out of context, but I'm so proud of this paragraph I think I might burst.
"I'd actually say that the most pernicious aspect of sexism in Science Fiction isn't that there aren't enough of us [women], but how often the women who are here and have made huge contributions to the genre get ignored and passed over in favor of their male contemporaries. This vacuum of recognition isn't just unfair and dumb (seriously, why would you want to ignore Ursula LeGuin? That's like ignoring cake), it leaves every new generation of women writers feeling like lonely pioneers when we're really just the latest addition to a long, wondrous, and tragically undervalued cannon of female authored Science Fiction."
Ahhhhhhhhh.
Okay, now that I'm done tooting my own horn (for now, at least), I want to talk about something much more serious. It's no secret that I'm a huge fan of SFF book review blog The Book Smugglers. I don't always agree with their reviews (because who always agrees with anyone?), but I absolutely love the way they approach genre fiction, a class of literature that often skates past critical scrutiny on the grounds that it's "escapism" and therefore below reproach, with the sort of serious analysis good writing deserves and bad writing needs. I especially love the way they call bullshit on sexism, racism, and privilege whenever they see it, and their take downs are some of my favorite reading on the internet.
But while Reader Rachel eats this stuff up, Writer Rachel gets a little nervous. This sort of criticism (which is by no means limited to The Book Smugglers. There's a whole host of fantastic review blogs out there putting genre books through the wringer and being entertaining and informative while they do it) sets a very high bar for thinking about my own choices in a novel--how I represent gender, is my cast all white, am I falling into any blind zones of stereotype, etc.
Now make no mistake, this sort of thinking is a Very Good Thing. Choices in novels should be carefully considered, that's what makes you a good writer instead of a thoughtless hack churning out unexamined drek. But at the same time, it's easy to overthink yourself into a panic, especially if your book is about tough topics like racism, sexual violence, addiction, or any of the other darker parts of the current human condition. You want to tell your story in an impactful, hard hitting way, but you (or, at least, I) don't want to get called out for being an insensitive jerk when that's not what you meant at all.
So how do you do it? How do you safely write about the hard stuff without softening it up? Well, the easiest path is just to stay away from controversial topics. No one can call you out for handling rape badly if you don't write it, right? And if you never write a character of a race, gender, sexual orientation, or socioeconomic background other than your own, you're safe on that score, too. We're also missing the point.
The truth is, it's pretty much impossible to write anything that matters safely. Art, even the stuff produced purely entertainment purposes, is meant to push boundaries. If it doesn't, it's only reinforcing the same old status quo, which is a problem in and of itself. But just because it's pretty much impossible not to step on toes when you're herding sacred cows doesn't mean we should just let them be. These are powerful stories, and they need to be told. The key, though, is to always be sure to allow these topics the room and depth they deserve within your narrative, and, most important of all, to be sure you actually know what you're trying to say and feel proud standing behind it.
That fact that you're even considering how to write hard things the right way already puts you miles above the really problematic authors (you know the sort), but it can still be a complicated minefield, and one I was especially afraid of entering. It took me years to gain the courage as a writer to start tackling the harder topics, but caution can be rewarding, and I think I've worked some good rules of engagement over the years to make sure I don't accidentally come off looking like a jerk. And since this wouldn't be a Rachel Aaron writing post without a list, here they are!
1. Don't be a jerk.
This is kind of obvious, but considering some of the author reactions I've seen, it clearly needs to be said. If you are an actual jerk with jerky opinions who writes jerky jerk work, then all the writing tips in the universe won't stop readers and reviewers from calling you out for it. That's the price of jerkdom; not being liked or taken seriously. This isn't to say that you can't be a mega-bestselling jerk, but if you insist on putting offensive material in your books, then you can't get mad when people get offended. You will get mad, of course, because you're a jerk, but you have no ground to stand on. Not that you'll see that.
Fortunately, you, my lovely reader, are not actually a jerk, and so this point is not for you. Unless, of course, you are a jerk, in which case I'm very glad to have made you aware of your jerkitude. Acknowledging you have a problem is the first step toward recovery.
Caveat: this isn't to say you can't include characters who are jerks. Villains are the obvious example, but side characters and even protagonists can be homophobic, sexist, entitled, racist assholes and still be good characters. The key here, though, is to make sure the narrative calls these people out on their awful opinions and behavior. Have another character say something, or have appropriately bad things happen to them as a result of their biases (Woman Meteorologist, "Don't go out there! It's acid monsoon season!" Jerk, "Pah, what do women know about weather?" *Jerk goes out door, is melted by acid monsoon* and SCENE.)
That example's a little extreme, but you get the idea. The key here is that you're using the narrative to separate a jerk character from the story as a whole. You may not be a racist, but if you put a racist character who says racist things in your book and then allow those ideas to go unchallenged, readers have no reason not to think that's what you actually believe. I'm not saying that every character who's not a well-adjusted saint has to get melted under an acid monsoon, but there's got to be something that lets your reader know that this character's bigoted opinions are not reflective of your own. Unless, of course, they are. In which case, see point one.
2. If you're going to tackle a big idea, make sure you give yourself the room to do it properly.
Say you have a character in your book who is raped. That's heavy stuff. Maybe it happened a long time ago, or maybe it happens during the course of the plot. Wherever or whenever the rape occurs, though, it changed that character enormously, and it's not the sort of thing you can gloss over or hand wave away. Rape is not character development, it's a real and horrible tragedy that 17% of your white female readers, 18% of your black or latina female readers, and 34% of your Native American/Alaskan female readers have personally suffered.
Think about that for a second. That is some heavy heavy ordinance, and it needs to be handled as such. I'm not at all saying that a raped woman's character needs to be defined by rape (god, PLEASE don't do that), but at the same time, it's not something you can ignore, especially since there are readers (myself among them) who often just won't read books with rape in them because it is so upsetting and it's often handled so so badly.
Does this mean rape is a verboten topic? Absolutely not. But it's also not the sort of thing you can just throw in because you want something bad to happen. You can't have a character get raped and then be fine in the next scene. You can't have a character rape another character and then patch everything back together with an apology and a thirty second "You know what I learned today" life lesson. You can't have a character condone or ignore a rape and then expect us to like them without a serious "oh God, how could I have been so wrong!" character redemption arc. Rape is the nuclear weapon of things that can happen to characters, and if you're going to put it in your story, you have to be ready to handle the fallout with the respect and care that it deserves.
Rape is just one example. There are plenty of horrible, horrible things that people do to other people, and if your book is going to be widely read, chances are that parts of your audience have suffered those humiliations and pains first hand. So if you're going to tackle a hard topic, don't insult your readers, the people who make your dream of writing possible, by reducing their tragedies to a plot point. Instead, give yourself the narrative space to explore the implications and consequences of serious issues properly. You don't have to pull your punches, in fact, I hope you don't, but you do have to think long and hard about where they land, and, more importantly, whom you're knocking out.
3. Don't make the victim the butt of the joke.
Man, this is getting heavy! Let's lighten it up. Let's say for a second that you're like me, and you like to write fun, action packed books, but you still want to include issues like racism and sexism because they're important and make for cracking good stories. How do you reconcile serious heavy matter with a lighthearted story? Is it even possible to joke about this sort of stuff?
This is a pretty loaded topic, but I'm a firm believer than joking about the hard stuff is actually the best way to start breaking it down into something we can actually deal with. The key (as always) is that you have to be aware of what your joke is doing. Even a joke about sexual assault can be funny, provided you never ever ever make the victim the butt of the joke.
For example, comedian Louis CK has a very famous clip about how there's no greater threat to women than men.
In this bit, he talks about how a woman agreeing to go on a date with an unknown man is an incredibly courageous act, and also insane, because men are the greatest cause of injury and suffering for women. “If you’re a guy, imagine you could only date a half-bear-half-lion," he says. "‘Oh, I hope this one’s nice! I hope he doesn't do what he’s going to do.’”
At its heart, this is a joke about rape. Yet unlike other, awful, white-hot rage inducing rape jokes, this one actually works, because the victim is not the one being made fun of. We are not laughing at the person who was raped, or rape itself, or even the rapist. We're laughing at how screwed up our society is where this sort of thing is still allowed to happen.
By pointing the joke in that direction, Louis CK gently leads his audience to consider "hey, that is screwed up." And then maybe they'll start thinking about it, and maybe the next time they see something questionable happening, they'll say something, or do something they wouldn't have done if they hadn't heard that joke.
That's the power of making fun of awful things, it tricks people into thinking in ways they're not used to, or don't want to. That's the power of fiction, too, but as Uncle Ben says, with great power comes great responsibility. This sort of humor takes a lot of careful thought and consideration, and even then, humor is subjective. What I find funny, other people may find in horrible taste, that's just how it goes. But if you think about what you do before you do it and always take the time to consider "whom am I really making fun of here?" you can find some really new and creative ways to tackle difficult issues in a non-depressing fashion, and that's always a good thing.
So that's my post. I hope my box of tricks helps you tackle your own stories. I'm always interested to hear how you've tackled this sort of thing in your own writing, so leave a comment below if you care to. Also feel free to leave comments telling me how you disagree. I'm not quite as happy to get those, but they are important none the less.
As always, thanks for reading, and happy writing!
- Rachel
So there's been noise around the internet about this article by Tor UK editor Julie Crisp. The basic gist of the post is that the low number of SciFi books by women on the shelves isn't because publishers are locking the door on women, it's because they just don't get a lot of SciFi submissions by women, and they can't publish what they don't receive.
Now, there have been some thoughtful posts decrying this as buck passing: "Oh, it's not our fault the vast majority of genre books coming out are written by dudes. Lady authors just aren't writing the stuff. Step it up and solve sexism, women!" And while I don't entirely agree that's what's going on here, (okay, that's exactly what's going on here, but I don't think it's being done mean spiritedly), the truth is that sexism everywhere, but specifically sexism in genre fiction, is far far FAR more insidious and deeply rooted than this sort of "the numbers don't lie, boss" reductionism would imply, especially when it comes to Science Fiction...
...Annnnnnd since, (SHAMELESS PLUG) I have a SciFi novel coming out in November that is not only written by a woman, but has a female main character (DOUBLE RAINBOW!), I thought I'd take a moment to explore why many women aren't drawn to space in books.
The lack of women in SciFi fiction is really strange and striking when you consider the overwhelming female fanbase for SciFi in other media franchises. Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Babylon 5, and (everyone's favorite) Firefly all boast impressive female viewership and fandom (and fanfic writing). Clearly, women are capable of understanding and enjoying the hell out of space stories, so why aren't more women writing/publishing Science Fiction novels?
Well, first off, women ARE writing Science Fiction. I actually grew up reading SciFi written by Anne McCaffrey and Ursula Le Guin. I also read Dune and a metric ton of David Brin, and of course all the Hitchhiker's books. Today, I read Anne Aguire and Elizabeth Moon and Elizabeth Bear. But while there are lots of women telling successful Science Fiction stories, the undeniable truth is that they are the vast minority of the Science Fiction out there.
I think a big part of the blame for this discrepancy can be placed squarely on the shoulders of Science Fiction's rep as a "man's game." For example, all those female authored SciFi books in the last paragraph that I grew up with? They were from my mom's shelf. I read them in the classic tradition of teenage reading: because they were what I had. And I loved them, don't get me wrong, but when I grew up and started buying my own books, I went almost exclusively into Fantasy (UF and Epic) and all but ignored Science Fiction. Looking back, I did this because subconsciously I knew that SciFi was "for guys," and even though a specific book might look interesting, it would probably just be a bunch of dudes doing manly, dude stuff with no female characters of note. So I didn't buy.
Was this dismissive of me? Sure. Did I miss a bunch of awesome books because of my own preconceptions? Almost certainly. But I got those preconceptions--that space stories aren't for me, that I wouldn't understand, that I'm not welcome in this genre--from Science Fiction itself. From the way it is marketed and discussed, from the covers, from the truly sexist SciFi dudes who make it their mission in life to keep girls and their girl cooties away from their hallowed spaceship tomes. True, no one ever stood in front of a bookshelf and told me I couldn't buy Science Fiction, but there was definitely push back, and as a woman in a book market where I had so many choices about how to spend my reading time, I simply didn't see the point of putting in the effort to read a genre where they didn't want me around in the first place.
This is the cycle that has ultimately created such an enormous gender disparity in Science Fiction readership and authorship. Stories are written by men and then marketed to men, who read them and become inspired and write their own male-centric stories that get published and then marked again to men, and the whole thing starts over. In general, it's not a mean or vicious "No Girls Allowed" sort of thing (though that does happen). It's just the rut, and ruts are very easy. Sexism, in general, is easy. It's a lazy way of thinking that replaces complicated actual experience (ie: women are people and thus come in every personality imaginable and are often self contradictory) with a label (Women, yeesh! Amirite, guys?!) which is why it's so so so hard to combat.
The trouble is, this sexist rut is hurting everyone. Even as popular culture at large becomes nerdier and nerdier with big SciFi movies like Star Trek and Pacific Rim coming out as the huge summer blockbusters, Science Fiction as a written genre continues to be small and stagnate. It's not for lack of quality, amazing books are coming out, but so long as SciFi continues to allow itself to be perceived as old, sexist, white guy reading, that will be its audience.
It's almost laughable that a genre built on big new ideas and pushing boundaries has let itself be pigeonholed into such a small box. But if it wants to break out, then everyone involved in the genre--marketing, publishers, writers, and fans--needs to work together to break down the harmful stereotype that Science Fiction is a boys club. How you ask? Any number of ways! How about covers that feature female characters doing badass things? How about marketing Science Fiction book that also feature strong romantic plots to Romance readers? How about writing more interesting and rounded female characters into your stories? How about making sure Science Fiction conventions are places where women can feel safe rather than excluded and/or preyed upon? How about having a main cast that is something other than overwhelmingly white and male?
There are any number of ways to open up the Science Fiction genre to a wider audience, and we should be scrambling to do them. These stories deserve a wider readership, and, in turn, a wider authorship. Because writers tend to write what they read, and until the SciFi readership is balanced between men and women (and people of color) we're never going to see a true parity of male/female authorship in the genre or a wider range of non-white authors, and that's just sad for everyone, especially people who want to keep reading new and amazing SciFi stories.
To be clear, I'm not hating on or attacking Science Fiction itself. Hell, I wrote three freaking books about a powered armor user who shoots aliens and flies through known space on a trade freighter. I love me some Science Fiction, and I want to write a lot more of it, which is why I'm writing this post. Because Science Fiction as a whole is never going to escape the low sales numbers corner it's painted itself into by catering only to white men until it starts reaching out and welcoming a wider readership.
So let's stop digging in our heels and passing the buck on sexism and start working to change things. Because this genre deserves more than this. We deserve more, and we can have it if only we have the will to reach.
So, at long last, I'm able to announce my newest book! It's a bit of a depature from my Eli series, but I think we'll all agree I'm headed in the right direction!
And so, without further ado, may I present: A NOVEL!
Presenting Rachel Aaron's newest work of fiction: A NOVEL.
Jane is a woman with a motivation. To get what she wants, she'll have to take action... but can she? When complications arise, she'll have to team up with other named characters to finish the plot and maintain the narrative tension, or it's happily never after for everyone!
"If you enjoy the physical act of reading, get ready to work out your eyeballs over five hundred pages absolutely filled with letters, number, and the occasionally ASCI symbol for that extra treat!" - Civilian Reader
"There were parts of this book that came as a total surprise and parts that didn't. There were female character and male characters interacting. It was like looking at life in another world, only through words on paper, and without the ability to turn your head to look at other stuff." -The Book Smugglers
"You have to use your imagination because there are no pictures, but that's what reading is all about!" - Far Beyond Reality
I know it's been a long time, folks, but I swear A NOVEL is worth the wait! Look for it in bookstores everywhere at some date in the future which may or may not occur!
There's an old Buddhist story I think about a lot. It goes (more or less) like this.
A farmer was having a hard time of things: his crops were failing, there was a drought, etc. Desperate, he went to ask Buddha what he should do. When he got there, though, Buddha told him he could not help.
"What do you mean?" asked the farmer. "You're supposed to be a great teacher!"
"All humans have 83 problems," Buddha replied. "Even when you resolve one, something new rises to take its place. In the end, no matter what you do, you'll always have 83 problems."
"But what's the good of all your teaching if it can't solve my problems?" the farmer cried.
"My teachings can not help with your 83 problems," Buddha said. "But maybe I can help you with the 84th."
"Which is?" asked the farmer, crossing his arms over his mud stained chest.
Buddha gave him a kind smile. "That you don't want to have 83 problems."
***
I read a lot of books. I did this before I was an author, but now that I can write them off on my taxes, I read a LOT of books. In fact, I'd say the only thing I read more than books are the book blurbs I go through trying to figure out what to read next.
I mention this now, because if there is one sentence I've read in blurbs more than any other (especially in YA) is "Character X had a perfect life."
I see this all the freaking time, but I have never understood why. What is up with all these characters having perfect lives that proceed to fall apart? First, perfect lives are booooooring, good only for wrecking so the real action can begin. Second (and the reason for this post), is that perfect lives don't exist.
One of the things about trying to write characters who are also people is that they suffer from universal human complaints. One of these, as the story above illustrates, is that everyone has problems. Even people who appear to live perfect lives--the famous, beautiful, fabulous people eternally adrift on a sea of family money so vast they can never spend it all--have problems. In fact, the problems of the rich and famous are the most well documented of all.
It's easy to write these complaints off as First World Problems, which indeed they are, but the fact still remains that even these ostensibly "perfect" lives are riddled with annoyances and frustrations. Everyone has things that annoy them, things they consider problems to be fixed or eliminated or ignored. The reason you only hear about perfect lives in fiction is because the very idea of a "perfect life" is the greatest fiction of all.
This isn't to say a character in hardships can't remember the life he/she lost as perfect. Romanticising the past is a character trait. But when an author declares, "this person's life was perfect until X happened!" I declare, "Bullshit."
The point I'm trying to make here is this: if you are an author, and you want to start your main character off in a sweet spot so that they can have a precipitous fall into the main plot, that is totally cool. That opener is a classic for a reason: watching a fall is almost as enthralling as watching a rise. But please, please don't ruin it by describing things, or worse, having your character describe their own life while they're in it, as perfect.
If a character is a person, they will find something in their life that annoys them. It's human nature. No one describes their own life as truly perfect unless they're talking about a foggy romantic memory or they're trying to impress you. To that end, even a character who starts a novel in a "perfect" life should be entirely consumed by their 83 perfect life problems. Maybe their private chef never cooks their eggs the way they like, maybe their insanely rich parents don't love them like they think they should be loved, or maybe their unicorn ate all the clover and now there's a bare patch on the crystal palace green.
To whit, the character who resides in arguable perfect should still be annoyed about SOMETHING, and this annoyance can actually be a huge source of character development once the real plot kicks in. You thought the unicorn thing was bad? HA. You would kill to have unicorn problems now, wouldn't you, kiddo? That sort of thing.
I mean really, which sounds better? "Caroline had a perfect life, lead role in the high school musical two years running! But it all came crashing down when zombies invaded her small town." VS. "Caroline thought her biggest problem was keeping the lead role in her high school musical for an unprecedented third year in a row, but when the zombies show up to auditions, she has to choose between making the final cut and making it out alive."
Okay, so those are really dumb examples, but you get the idea! Everyone, even characters leading ostensibly perfect lives, has 83 problems. It is our nature, our super power. We can literally bitch about anything, no matter how petty or mundane. And when that basic humanity is not reflected in a character's situation, those scenes can't help but come off as flat and unrealistic.
So please, fellow authors, if you must have perfect lives, fill them up with First World Problems before you smash them down with Real Plot Problems. The fall from grace will still be horrible and engrossing, only now the person tumbling down the mountain will be far more believable.
