Bump in the Night - Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Halloween, the sci-fi/fantasy junkie’s most beloved holiday, is only five days away. To me, Halloween is a time to take risks and let your unconventional side roam free. In today’s post, therefore, I am not only going to challenge you to explore your own writing through a prompt, but also to get involved in the most thrilling event in a prolific writer’s year: National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). From the NaNoWriMo website (www.nanowrimo.org):

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30. Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved. In 2007, we had over 100,000 participants. More than 15,000 of them crossed the 50k finish line by the midnight deadline, entering into the annals of NaNoWriMo superstardom forever. They started the month as auto mechanics, out-of-work actors, and middle school English teachers. They walked away novelists.

Now, I realize that not everyone has the time (or even the inclination) to write 50k words in 30 days, so my challenge to you is to write the first chapter of a novel by the end of November. The official NaNoWriMo values quantity over quality, but I think the most important thing it offers is an opportunity to begin to unleash your bottled-up creativity. To foster the communal spirit of National Novel Writing Month, you could start a club at your school or join up with a bunch of friends to meet once a week during November to write. You may find that you enjoy it so much that you want to keep working on your novel through December and beyond!

At the end of November, I will try to post a novel chapter of my own and find a place where readers of this blog can share their work (the Teen Ink bulletin boards may be one contender).

Ok, now on to the Halloween prompt!
It is a dark and stormy Halloween night. Too old (or cool) for trick-or-treating, you find yourself curled up on the couch in front of a classic horror movie. Suddenly, you hear a knock on the door. Nervously, you tiptoe across the room and open it. No one is there. When you turn back towards the living room, the TV is gone and something sinister is sitting at the bottom of the stairs…

I have always been intrigued by literature that weaves elements of traditional fantasy – magic, monsters, and apparitions – through what seem on the surface to be entirely realistic narratives. More subtle than frankengenre-ism, this style of writing leaves the reader unsure of what is pure imagination, embellishment, or merely unlikely truth. Beginning with folklore and progressing through the “magical realism” of the works of some South American authors in the mid-20th century (Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude” is one example), this genre invokes a child-like joy of finding the remarkable in the mundane. Following this theme, today’s prompts are designed to help you integrate your every-day experiences as an author with your wildest fictional creations.

• Think about any event in your life. It can be something significant, a once-in-a-millennia type of experience, or an example of a routine that you follow almost every day. Write a short story about this event that incorporates elements of fantasy to emphasize its most important aspects. For example, instead of missing the bus and getting rained on, you could describe missing the bus and being chased by hungry shadow-creatures to your school.

• Write a description of the town or city where you live. Begin with obvious, incontrovertible statements (“City X is in state Y”) and progress to complete fabrications (“the grass in city X eats pets and small children; dogs barking at night are alarmed victims of man-eating vegetation”). If you want to make this a little more elaborate, you can write it from the point of view of a new resident of the city or an FBI agent who is investigating strange claims.

• Have you ever threatened to do something that you would never actually do because it is illegal/immoral/defies the laws of physics (“I’d like to kill that person” is one obvious example)? Imagine that you actually followed through on your threat. What would have happened?

Have fun writing!

This week, I present you with six essential questions and six writing exercises. So sharpen your pencils…

What: The economy is struggling, and you are desperate to find a job. Finally, a marketing firm agrees to hire you if you can sell their latest product: an ordinary cardboard box, priced at $1,000. Obviously, this will take some creative advertising. Write a sales pitch that dresses up the ordinary box (It’s a chair that can also be used as storage! It’s remarkably unique luggage!) without lying outright, and makes the $1,000 seem like a bargain.

When: The year is 1034. You are a peasant in a small European village. One day, you wake up to find what later generations will call a Furby outside your house. What is your immediate response? What are the long term consequences of this discovery?

Where: Humans rely heavily on sight to tell us about the world, and this can show in our writing when we forget to include other sensory details. Imagine you are anywhere - a bakery, a skyscraper, mars. Describe that place in five sentences or less as you would perceive it if you were blind.

Who: Go to a place where people are talking and relaxing, like a restaurant or coffee shop. Find a group of two or more people who are having an animated conversation, but are too far away to hear. Write the dialogue and back-story to go along with their body language. Could that arguing couple actually be a CIA operative and her reluctant source?

Why: You, reader, have a terrible secret. Well, at least for the duration of this exercise. You have just killed someone, and now you’re in a public area (a mall, subway, or park are some possibilities). Write a page in first person about how you act and feel. Then write the same scene from the perspective of a curious bystander, who is trying to think of reasons for your strange behavior.

How: Fantasy and science fiction writing is often full of action. Even if you know you want to include a fight or chase scene in your story, it can be difficult to translate your vision into a step by step written version. So pick an action scene from one of your favorite movies or TV shows, watch it, and write it out as it would appear in a novel or short story for practice. This exercise works best with a video or DVD that you can pause and rewind to compare your description to the original scene.

No matter how high its mountain ranges or how vast its deserts, any world bereft of unique, living creatures will be of little interest to a reader. As a writer, the task of imagining legions of distinctive beasts can seem intimidating - but it doesn’t have to be. If you think about the process of creation like a puzzle instead of a divine act, it can become one of the most engaging and enjoyable parts of crafting a story. Below are three simple techniques that I have turned to many times when the wilds of my mind (ha!) refused to reveal the creatures lurking within.

Fusion
Creatures born from the fusion technique are so common that we have a special name for them: chimeras. The theory behind creating a chimera is straightforward - take two (or more) animals that already exist, and combine them to create something new altogether. This is one situation where you may want to play with extremes: fusing an ant and an anteater, for example, or a fish and a bird. The most interesting chimera that I have ever heard about is a plant with a flesh-eating sheep (yes, you read that correctly) where it would normally have a flower. Just to give you two more examples, the first chimera was a composite of a lion, goat, and serpent in Greek mythology, and the most famous is the sphinx, a half-woman, half-lion monster with a penchant for riddles.

Division
The opposite of fusion is, of course, the minimalist approach of division. Take an element of a living creature - a wing or an eye, perhaps - and find a way to make it stand on its own. Though less prolific than chimeras, beasts that originate from the division method can be more terrifying (floating skulls), humorous (a giant nose), or bizarre (a walking tongue??) than their composite cousins.

Evolution
This technique is the most complicated of the three, but it is also the one that can lead to the most intuitive creatures for the world they inhabit. Think of any animal - right now, my puppy is biting my feet, so let’s go with that - and place it in an unfamiliar environment. How would a puppy need to change in order to survive 5,000 feet under the sea? Would it turn dark blue to blend in with its surroundings, sprout gills or fins from its tail, or even become luminescent? What adaptations would that same puppy need to survive in the desert?

Have fun imagining the most outlandish creature you can (using one of these techniques or your own methods) and post it as a comment!

The treatment of most villains in fantasy and science-fiction - both by the author and the protagonists - is almost enough to make you feel sorry for this maligned, neglected group of lads and lasses. Here are the three of the worst grievances reported by those who have found themselves on the dark side of the Force.

Villains are People, Too
Cardboard is not frightening or provocative - and neither are two-dimensional antagonists. Just as you would take the time to meticulously plot a back-story for your hero in shining armor, so too should you consider your villain’s roots and influences and how they effect his or her actions. Every realistic villain has at least one soft spot, from the goofy (teddy bears and chocolate) to the poignant (affection for a living or dead relative). When they are not plotting nefarious schemes, your villains probably like to watch movies, play with their pets, and read books (that are not about the 101 most effective methods of medieval torture) as much as the next person.

Dark Motivations
One of the gravest mistakes an author can make is to omit a believable motivation for their primary villain. Despite B-movie indications to the contrary, no one is simply and unequivocally evil (or unequivocally good). Everyone thinks in shades of gray. Most people who commit immoral deeds believe that they are doing the right thing, at least initially. The difference between right and wrong often depends on your perspective. And no one risks time, money, and lives to do something just “because.” A trigger for your villain’s actions must exist in their past or present fears and desires.

The Evil Intelligence Paradox
All too often, I have read novels where the villain is intelligent enough to put together an army and a master plan that thwarts everyone but the protagonists, only to make ridiculous mistakes at the last minute. The final-showdown-monologue is one potent example - if you have your enemy in your grasp, don’t gloat for twenty pages, just kill them already!

Here is an exercise to help you develop empathy for your villains and make your story more effective in the process: rewrite a scene from the point of view of your antagonist, and do everything you can (while still maintaining the basic storyline) to make the reader sympathize with him or her. And if you have the opportunity, I highly recommend reading Wicked, by Gregory Maguire.

One of the most fundamental skills for any writer is the ability to see the world from an unfamiliar prospective: that of your characters. This is an even more important capability for writers of science fiction and fantasy, who may have to accurately portray the perspective of an alien from another galaxy or a member of the undead. Compelling, relatable characters can become the bridges that pull readers from this reality into another that has been turned upside down. Today I am going to introduce a simple template that you can use to practice creating unique viewpoints and shifting between the narratives of vastly different personas.

First, the setting. I am going to give you a location as an example, but any place you could think of would do just as well - just remember to keep it simple. While I will have blog posts in the future that go into the intricacies of “setting the stage” for your story, the setting you choose for this exercise does not have to be overly complex to suit our purposes.

Imagine an ancient room, painted in shades of purple and grey. Cobwebs dangle from the corners of the ceiling and across an ancient, sturdy desk against one wall. A giant tribal mask carved out of wood hangs over a dark-stained marble mantel. There is an old chess set sitting askew on the table in the middle of the room, between two chairs with their backs facing inwards.

Now I am going to give you a list of “characters,” from which you should pick two or more:

The mask
An ant crawling along the edge of the desk
The white knight from the chess set
A black pawn
A confederate-era ghost haunting the corner
A creaky wall
A spider on the floor
A man (or woman) sitting in one of the chairs
Anything else you can think of

Take your first pick and write a paragraph from that creature or object’s point of view. First consider the five senses. What do they see, what do they hear, how do they feel, what do they want? What things do they notice in the room, and what things would they be likely to overlook? Think about speech patterns. Would they be more likely to speak slowly or quickly, with an accent or with none? For example, I imagine the spider speaking (or thinking) in quick, one or two word staccato sentences, while the ancient mask growls in low, fluid paragraphs. Where did your character come from, and how did they come to be in this room? You could even extend this into a full story if you wanted.

Now, switch characters and repeat the exercise. What was different between the two paragraphs? What do you think were the most important factors that shaped each character, and why?

Here’s a test to see if you can keep your characters’ voices distinct: what would happen if they got into a conversation?

You can repeat this exercise as many times as you like, or even use it to “test drive” characters before you write them into a story or introduce them into novel situations. Try looking for interesting pictures in old magazines (National Geographic works well) that could provide a new setting and characters that you might not have imagined on your own.

If you end up with some interesting results, I would love to hear about it in the comments section (or you can make your own guest post on this blog). Stay tuned for more on character development in the coming posts!