Writing A Souffle: Guest Posts and The Stickines of Real Life

Not long ago, I was approached by the lovely Seana to do a guest post on her blog - which, due to my unending enthusiam for such things, I did. Regrettably, that was one of the few things I did get round to doing recently.

The road to not-blogging is lined with shiny distractions. Also pizza.

And now I'm about to go and do very irresponsible adventure-like things in Bavaria for a week. No fear, my friends! Although the place is filled with cows, mountain pastures and people in lederhosen, they do have internet access, so I will be back now and then. Hopefully with pictures of me looking amusing while failing epically at performing the aforementioned adventure-like activities.

In the meantime, please enjoy the post I wrote for Seana - and try not to miss me too much. In the words of Schwarzenegger: I'll be back!

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There are many varied and wonderful metaphors for writing a book, but, personally, I’ve always thought it was most like making a soufflé; incredibly time-consuming, needlessly complex, and unless it does anything short of explode, very difficult to tell if you’re doing it right.

Now imagine two or three other people in that same kitchen with you, up to their elbows in flour, eggs and all those other ingredients none of you can pronounce, each every bit as confused and sticky as you are.

Chaotic?

Yep. Inescapably. You may be absolutely certain that your biggest priority is to bring the geriatric oven up to temperature, but the pie dish has other ideas and one of your companions is shoulder-deep in something that looks like it’s achieved sentience in the most malevolent meaning of the word.

That said, it is a lot easier to wrestle this culinary abomination into the oven when there’s three of you to keep it from dissolving into a portal to the underworld through the kitchen floor.

Writing, of any sort, is never going to be the easiest job in the world. But, should you choose to make an oxymoron of ‘the world’s loneliest profession’, here are a few tips from me on how, perhaps, to avert the worst of the inevitable ‘splosions.

1 – Plan! Set! Action!

Admittedly, with anything between two to twenty-thousand brains on the project, you can have a slightly greater degree of flexibility when it comes to plotting the exactitudes of the narrative. Nevertheless, having a plan is important. For all the oven temperature may rise with every exchange, the soufflé will be rising slower than a turtle in treacle unless each collaborator does their bit to make the mix.

What these goals are is up to you; whether you want to work out the whole thing, beforehand or just set goals as you go along. What’s important is that you have those goals, and that you’re all helping to reach them.

2 – Communicate!

Well done, Captain Obvious!

When writing alone, the need for communication is fairly minimal outside of talking, screaming and making deeply insidious noises to yourself at various stages of operation. Not so with collaborative writing – if even one of you is left behind when plans change, then you might as well add TNT to the recipe and wait for the blast.

Depending on the size of your group, you may need to adapt your method: three-way emails certainly proved more a bane than a boon in our case. But, whether it’s Skype or smoke signals, as long as everyone’s in the loop, that’s one less thing to worry about.

3 – Take A Chance!

My stronger sensibilities prevent me from bursting into the full refrain of the famous ABBA song, but the sentiment remains. One of the great joys of collaborative writing is knowing that, even if your wordy creativity is so low you wouldn’t recognise the alphabet if it sat on you, there are other minds out there who are still capable of producing herrings so red you can see them from the top of Mount Everest with the naked eye. Should a brainstorm turn up something that gets all three of you excited, don’t be afraid to get out the red pens and start redacting the original recipe. An idea that makes all three of you toss back your heads and cackle with glee is, in all likelihood, going to make a much better story than something that barely warrants an amenable “meh”.

Besides, if it all goes wrong, a semi-combusted plot is much easier to amend than a kitchen that looks like it’s been through a World War fought with angry dragons made of Martian space goo.

-

Now . . . soufflé, anyone?

~ Charley R

Eight Ways Writing a Novel Can Broaden Your Horizons - a guest post at the Office of Letters and Light!

In between Adventures in Dress Shopping, Adventures in Sleeping, and Adventures in The Ill-Advised  Art of Cooking Things, I'm afraid I rather lost track of the time in which I planned to write a blog post today.

Luckily, I can point you to something far more awesome.

Eight Ways Writing a Novel Can Broaden Your Horizons

I approached the lovely people over at the Office of Letters and Light - to those who don't know, these are the incredible breed that run NaNoWriMo, Script Frenzy, and the Young Writers' Program, among other things - about a month ago with a tentative proposition of writing a blog post for them.

And, lovely people that they, are, they said yes. So now you can see Miriam and I, in all our hive-mind-y glory, giving the top eight things that writing novels has taught us. Or, rather, top eight things that are useful in more than simply grounding us very well in the how-to of breaking limbs and correctly specifying the horrors of the Black Death.

Enjoy!

~ Charley R

Writing For Your Audience

Quite a while ago now, the lovely Pure Grace asked me to do a blog post about "writing for your audience".

The actual post: "Guest Post by author Charley Robson" can be found here.

Please go over and give it a look! Even if you hate the post itself, the rest of Grace's blog is full of lovely things.

Also, I'm sorry I didn't link to it sooner - I got distracted, most probably by another attempted alien invasion - but I do hope you'll all enjoy it!

I shall see you lovely people on Thursday. For now, I'm off to make my bid for a place at Oxford University!

~ Charley R

In Honour Of Banned Book Week

To those who don't know already, this week is Banned Book Week. Banning books is every bit as controversial as the rise of the ebook, self publishing and the increasing sentience of Furby toys, but for most of us - living as we do in Western democracies - we don't think about it all that much.

Go hunting on the Banned Book Week website, and you might find an awful lot of your favourite books on there. I nearly fell out of my chair with ironic mirth when I realised that most of the books I've been set as school reading throughout the years were on this list . . . and that, when I tried to include the themes they are so frequently banned for, my teachers used to look at me as if I'd just declared myself Field Marshal of the Penguin Armies of Mars.

Some people were sharper off the mark than I was, though, and the lovely Notebook sisters - the frabjuous Cait and Mime, whom you have doubtless met in the comment section of my posts - invited me over to their blog to do a post on the subject of banned books.

You can hop on over and read "Another Banned Guest Post" here. Don't forget to leave comments - the sisters, as I know from experience, will love you forever, and leave you some seriously awesometastic replies. I'll be heading on over to check up too . . . so be there, or be goo-gunned for desertion! 

In the meantime, what about you lot? Are you writing a post in honour of Banned Book Week? What are your views on banning books? Do you agree with what I said in my guest post? Am I talking rot? How many rotten corn-on-the-cobs are you going to throw at me for my foolishness?

And most importantly . . . what's your favourite banned book?

~ Charley R

Welcome To The Show - Abra

I always say, as my mother said before me, life ain’t no fun without a little colour. Though I tend to scrap the “little” – if less is more, I’m queen o’ the biscuit gnomes.

Me name’s Abra – at least, that’s me stage name. “Abrakadabra” if you want the full version. I work the high ropes and trapeze with a travelling show currently based in the dirty great mess of a city called Scatterank, sometimes with a bit o’ dancing if the folks are in the right mood for it. It’s a hairy business, and it can get right squicky when things go wrong, but it’s taught me things.
Not in the least the value of suspension. Suspension of disbelief, that is.

The audience will raise their belief as high as they can, but you’ve gotta give ‘em something to rest it on. Smoke and mirrors it may be, but in that moment there ain’t nothing more real than what you and your friends are doing on that stage.

It’s called “drama” for a reason.

If you have a show with no tension, there ain’t a show. You gotta keep people interested, else they’ll take up their hats and storm out and leave you with not a scrap to pay your rent with.

So to up the drama in anything – performance, story or anything at all, you need your smoke and mirrors.

Here’s an inside look at the ones that work best. Trust me, I have a very good view from where I’m sitting.

I’ll start with me Mam’s favourite – colour. It pays to be imaginative with it, ‘cause nobody’s gonna sniff nothing of yours if it don’t look interesting. Giving people a touch of the colour makes it more real, ‘cause no matter what the scientists say, I refuse to believe we dream in black and white. And if you make it real, they’ll believe it. Keep it sensible, though. Anyone who says they met a lady with “emerald eyes” and “fuschia lips” is either drunk or trying to sell you something. Possibly the lady herself.

Next up, sound. It’s not something many think of, but any of you who’s been to them moving-picture things will know that it’s always the music that gets you. Don’t tell her I told you this, but Charley always starts cryin’ in a certain scene in Lord of the Rings ‘cause of the music. If you can’t use music, though, make sure you describe your sounds where appropriate. Battles, dances, whispered conversations heard from the rafters – they sound about as alike as chalk, cheese and a kangaroo. But what sort of cheese? That’s the sort of detail I mean.

Costumes next – me personal greatest irk. There’s nothing harder than dragging your tired, grumpy carcass up the wires in a costume that bites your ribs like a dog with a bad case o’ the mange. Think about it – if a soldier turns up to duty in a pink tutu and a flowery hat, he’d be laughed out of the country. Your costume is part of your identity on stage, and the same goes for folks in books, except they can’t dress ‘emselves without you working it out first. An’ for mercy’s sake, make sure you know the style and period o’ dress you’re working with. Elsewise you look a right Mediaeval cracknob at your Victorian-era dig.

I’ll finish off on sommat fun. A good friend o’ mine, Rembrandt, he’s one of them poetic types that runs around shoutin’ metaphors from rooftops (and that’s when he’s sober – it gets far more colourful once he’s had a cup or two). He’s a great words man, and his stuff sells like hot cakes on a Sunday. But once I got hold of a rough journal of his, and I got so lost in all the frills and frippery I hadn’t a clue what he was on about! Turns out it don’t take that long for him to write the thing the first time – what takes up all his time is cutting out all the rubbish that’s snuck in while he wasn’t looking. Near drives him crazy getting rid of it all, and there’s at least one notebook that’s ended up in the fireplace or speared on something pointy over the mantelpiece.

Watch your fluff, it’s deadly stuff.

Hope I’ve made some sense for you, folks. Love and kisses all round – come see me in a show sometime, I’ll get you good seats so you can get best view of the fun!

Kisses,

~ Abra

Best Laid Plans - Vidal

Something very amusing happened to me last week, you know.

It must have been sometime in the evening when some strange gibbering furry creature came bounding into my presence, looking very flustered and waving a piece of paper in front of my face. Once my mind had dropped to the appropriate level of intelligence, I deciphered the near illegible scrawl as a note, asking me to write some manner of themed article for the blog of my authoress – who, you doubtless have realised, is the aforementioned noisemaking hairball. She requested that I word my post based around the theme of some dull and dreary story-planning technique, because – the note assured me – I was one of the few who had the necessary skills.

The thing that amused me so much was that she thought I would listen.

There are very few things in life that I have patience for, and regrettably my creator has yet to make it onto the list. She can find any innumerable number of sycophantic fools in my city of Tanelorn alone to prate on about the pros and cons of pre-planned stories over improvised ones - they follow her orders out of fear of becoming victim to any member of her vast array of weaponry.

They have yet to work out the art that I am going to inform you of today, my friends. That of subtle insubordination.

First of all, know your enemy. And by that I do not mean memorising their favourite foods and what colour clashes worst with their off-coloured toenails. I mean know your enemy, the way you know your route home from your friend’s house, or the way your cat will invariably vomit its dinner onto the rug if you don’t give it the correct number of tummy rubs after supper. Know them so well that their behaviour is second nature. Know them better than they know themselves.

This is the true secret of success. Now, whenever you act, or even contemplate acting, you will not have to waste precious seconds thinking out your foe’s reaction. Because those seconds are going to make all the difference between your victory, and the local law enforcement scraping your entrails off the wall the next morning.

Next, you must gather your resources. Information, allies, weapons, jars of congealed fish guts, whatever you need for your current endeavour. Don’t waste time with things that “might come in useful”. Those are the things that you will trip over and impale yourself on later – literally, or metaphorically.

If you didn’t know what you were going to need beforehand, please stop reading and go and drown yourself quietly in a corner. It will save your enemy the trouble of doing it themselves.

The next stage is the truly dangerous part. Before you put so much as a hair over the threshold of action, you need to think long and hard about your course of action. But whatever you do, do not plan it out in detail. Detailed plans are all too easily derailed by the smallest thing, and that’s when the fur flies. One or two key events – particularly, personal interaction with your foe – are all you need, no matter how long your endeavour. Those markers are the only pre-planned action you will take. The rest, to put it bluntly, is nothing more than spontaneous acts of inspired improvisation. Make the most of your resources – you got them because you knew you needed them. Not because you knew why.

After this, there is the simple matter of taking the leap and hoping you reach the other side. Odds are you won’t – your enemy may have taken the bait you laid for them, but there is always some unknown factor waiting in the wings to scupper best laid plans. Do whatever you must to ensure your goal. Those of you who are squeamish over breaching moral codes will doubtless fail spectacularly at this.

The only action you should never take is to give up, for success can come from the most unexpected outcomes. I once knew a certain half-breed bastard who took the wrong side during the bloodiest civil war my people have ever known. By the end of it, the Crossblood was a Kingmaker.

Charming fellow, by the way. If a little smug.

We are all deer, my friends. Deer who snort and run around in circles the moment the wolf shows its teeth before the herd. The best hope the deer have is to run – those who hesitate, or attempt some act of altruistic stupidity, will die bloody deaths to stand example for the rest. However, the clever deer know they don’t have to outrun the wolf. Just the other deer.

Wouldn’t you say this was a far greater use of your time than reading about “brainstorming” and “plot milestones” and “flexible approaches to ad-libbing”.

Wait.

Ah.

Well played, author. Well played.

- Vidal

Blood, Birth and Social Mannerisms - Rahad

Greetings, noble friends!

I am Rahad al Raegar ad Azaran, of the proud nation of Skerabia. I fear my titles would be somewhat lost on you, save for the fact that my author – in her infinite wisdom – saw fit to mark me as a “minor character” in that trilogy that she so enjoys muttering about when she’s looking for something to throw at a wall.

“Minor character”, bah. If it weren’t for me, the first book would have ended very differently, and there would be no trilogy whatsoever. And yet she repays me simply by allotting me a cameo in the final book? The ingrate!

Ah, apologies, I seem to have deviated. Forgive me, it is not often I get a chance to speak to such an esteemed audience without having something thrown at me by the band of intoxicated nincompoops that I live alongside. Their manners are best described as being on par with those of monkeys, though I would not repeat that for fear of insulting the monkeys. And as for their language . . . I hope you can envisage me shuddering.

Manners, as I am sure you are all aware, are absolutely crucial in marking out from whence and from what lineage one issues. Which, by some act of serendipity, brings me on to my allotted topic for this post.

Due to my expertise in the area, my authoress has requested that I draw from my vast stores of experience and give you a few choice tips on mannerisms, and what they can mean for a given individual. Fictional individuals, that is. I regrettably have no experience with any others.

I shall begin with the most obvious thing one can mark about a person upon meeting them: their accent.

Place two denizens of the same nation together, and listen to the way they speak. The variations in their pronunciation of words, and their usage thereof, can not only tell you from what part of the country they come from – which is very helpful if the region you are dealing with is large – but may also reveal something of their social background. I tested this experiment on two of the denizens of my own tale; the mercenary, Rin Takarsson, he whose hair impersonates a tangerine, and the infinitely pleasant, if somewhat stony-faced, southern lord Petrolien of Aven.

The difference between them is impossible to miss – Rin’s thick northern accent and use of shorter words betrays his area of origin, his rustic upbringing, and his lack of education. The way the man abuses syntax is unbelievable.

Lord Petrolien, meanwhile, is softer spoken, and has a larger vocabulary – as befitting a man of his rank. He also speaks with an inflection of the voice that is very particular to the upper class . . . meaning he talks through his nose, but don’t tell him I said that.

There are, of course, innumerable other things one can watch out for, including these:
1 - Use of certain colloquial phrases (I once said “as confused as a camel in a sandstorm”, and only my compatriots understood me. Everyone else asked what on earth a camel was).
2 - The way one carries oneself (I have never seen anyone swagger half as much as minor gentry do)
3 - Local superstition creeping into practice (the traders who visit my home city always spit over their shoulders when talking about unfavourable weather conditions, while diplomats always shake your right hand - your weapon-wielding hand - first, as a sign of friendship)

Sometimes even small actions that accompany an individual's conversation can be enlightening, though its study may be more helpful for marking out liars, or those with secrets. Unless, you, for some unfathomable reason, are living in a city consisting entirely of thieves, in which case I wonder what sort of map you were using to end up there.

I could go on but, I fear, I am lingering. It has been my pleasure to make your acquaintance, and I do hope I shall have the chance to reconvene with you in the future.

Until then, may the Almighty smile upon you.

~ Rahad al Raegar ad Azaran

Past and Present - A Guest Post by Cathryn Leigh

Today has been a very special day here at the Leaning Tower of Plot. For starters, this little corner of the internet has welcomed its 30th (and 31st!) follower! Welcome to the fold all, and I hope you enjoy your time in this little bastion of madness.

In other news, it has also been a very special day for one of my bestest buddies, the lovely Cathryn Leigh from over at Elorithryn's Diary. Today, she finally published the final chapter to Phoenix Triumphant, the last of the Vervellian Phoenix trilogy! And, as her prime squealing fan (seriously, I'm really quite terrifying when I squee, ask any of the readers!) I though today would be a good day to lend her the reins to this little pony and let her bask in her glory.

So, without further ado, here's Cayla on books from her past that still have influence on her present:


When I offered to do a blog post exchange (or at least that’s what it ended up being) I asked Charley for some direction on what I should write. She wanted to know what my favorite books from childhood were and how they influenced my writing.?Childhood was a long time ago, or so it feels, despite my ability to become a giggling and squealing teen at a moment’s notice. *grin* that’s just me not growing old, sadly my body still ages and occasionally memory goes with it. Anyway, back to favorite authors from child hood. I’m going to extend it into my teen years and early adult hood, as well, otherwise I’ll be skipping the most important one. So, in chronological order:


•   C. S. Lewis – All seven Narnia books
My Narnia books were so well read they were falling apart by the time I was ten, didn’t know he wrote Sci-Fi too until recently. Oh how I wanted to find a portal to another world. Since that wasn’t likely to happen I started writing about one.


•   Laura Ingles Wilder – All nine books
Forget the “Little House on the Prairie” show, I had all eight of her books, before I found out they were a biography of her life (and her husband’s). I had to read them all over again after that, plus procuring one published after her death in its raw form*. I also bought a biography on her life.?* “First Four Years” reads completely differently from the other novels. It was my first glimpse into what editing can mean.


•   J. R. R. Tolkien – The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy
I can’t remember when these books were first read to me, but I was fascinated by the maps. I absolutely loved having maps to look at to see where the heroes had come from and gone, which probably started the love affair I have now with map making.


•   Anne McCaffrey – everything, or at least nearly everything
I started with her Harper Hall trilogy and quickly moved to the Dragon riders of Pern trilogy. She’s bolded because she had the biggest influence on me. What I like best is how Anne McCaffrey melded fantasy – dragons that bond to riders – with science fiction – the humans are colonists who have gone low tech by choice. There is no magic on Pern, other than some of the mental abilities of the Dragons, which turn out to be a combination of something the humans bred in to them and the survival tactic of the indigenous animal they were bred from.I too use a fantasy backed by facts approach in my writing. It creates a logical flow to follow and a need to attend to detail. Something a few people have noticed I have a knack for. (So much so, that rather than having plot holes in my first drafts I have plot mountains. *grin and chuckle* Okay, not quite, but ask Charley or Miriam if they stumbled into any large plot holes in the first draft of Phoenix Triumphant?) There are some other authors who have likely influenced me, I’ve listed them below. I’m only considering them because I don’t have to look at my book shelf to remember their names. I suspect they helped me develop my vocabulary and word usage. Probably taught me grammar without my knowledge too. Just like everything else I’ve read.


•   Marrion Zimmer Bradley – Thendara House Trilogy and a couple other Darkover novels (another fantasy meets science-fiction)


•   Mercedes Lackey – The Black Swan and as a collaborator with Anne McCaffrey (for some of her science fiction works)


•   Orson Scott Card – Ender’s books, I read them all one summer


•   Douglas Adams – Hitchhikers ‘trilogy’ (he shares my maiden name *giggles*)


•   Terry Prachett – Rincewind and a couple other books, I created the Sapient Radio as an ode to Luggage, in a crazy collaboration on Protagonize.


However I cannot deny the influence Anne McCaffrey has had on my work? She got me though a tumultuous time in my teen years. She’s the only author I’ve written fan fiction for (two stories, in fact). *grin* Not to mention, I’ve memorized a number of the songs from her books, and have been known to sing them as lullabies to my kids.?
:} Cathryn Leigh

***

Was anyone else squeeing as much as I was while reading that? So many of her favourite books are mine as well! What about you guys? Do you share the Tolkein and Pratchett fangirl affliction? Have any of you read a lot of Anne McCaffrey's Pern books - I have yet to get my mits on them, much to my ever-mounting horror.

Also, as a final Easter Egg of fun, clicking on the "Vervellian Phoenix" link up the top there will not only bring up Cayla's lovely stories (which you'd better read fast before she takes them in for edits!), but also proof of our madness and buddyship. Possibly both at the same time, hee hee!

- Charley R