Stephanie O'Brien's Blog

Restoring Balance in the Force

30/4/2013

Wow. What a couple of weeks it’s been.

I apologize for the very late post; I’ve been working on getting a new marketing business running, and it’s been taking up most of my time. Which, I suppose, is simply because I’ve been letting it.

Nothing tells you what you were born for like not doing it for a while. For the past couple weeks, I must confess that I’ve been neglecting my fiction writing while I worked on getting everything else together. And it really started to grate on me. I felt trapped, like there were worlds I should be creating and exploring, and people I should be interacting with.

I started to miss my fictional characters, especially Romorran, a particular favourite of mine. (Sorry, I’m afraid you won’t get to meet him for a while; he belongs to a series that’s still in the editing stage.)

After a couple weeks of all facts and no fiction, it got to be too much. I’d taken on way too many projects at once, and I was pulling 15-hour days, staying up ‘til all hours of the night, and still getting no writing done. Or anything else I enjoy, for that matter.

I realized it was time to take a step back, rethink my life, and restore balance in the Force. So I delayed some of my projects, and reworked my schedule so that I could serve my clients, structure my business, and still have time to spend on my first love.

I’ll admit, fiction is harder to market consistently than anything else that I know of, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to stop. Even if I wanted to.

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Where do You End and the Characters Begin?

20/4/2013

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Have you ever wondered where you end and your creations begin? I’d say I have a strong sense of self, but when it come to my writing, the lines begin to blur.

The darkness that lurks in the corners of my heart takes form in my more evil characters, and the impulses I notice enough to give them shape but do not choose to act upon evolves into villains’ motives and schemes.

The errant thought that the maker chooses to discard can become a driving force, a modus operandi, if allowed to incubate in the fertile grounds of a creation’s less fettered mind.

The moments of heroism I like to think I would perform if need arose, the courage I’ve made myself bring to life’s challenges, and the skills and intelligence I’ve worked so hard to hone shine through in the scenes where the characters rise up and triumph, or even when they simply bring their best selves to a situation where they could have done far worse.

The moral dilemmas, the shades of grey, the situations where there may not be an answer that everyone finds right... the trials of life, and the mistaken conclusions that a child naturally draws... These are the seeds from which the best plots and personalities seem to grow, the tangled threads I can pick from the spiderweb of my own mind to weave the tapestry of a fictional person’s soul.

Have you ever felt like that?

Have you ever written a story or essay, composed a piece of music, or drawn a picture, and felt like you’d given a full, fleshed-out shape to a fragment of yourself? Have you ever found that your own mood bleeds into the characters, notes and lines?

Sometimes that happens to me. There have been times when I’ve written a scene where the characters are hungry or exhausted, and only when I’m halfway through do I realize that I myself am tired or in need of food. I was projecting myself into them so completely that I forgot to pay attention to the body that carries my mind.

But I suppose that’s when I do my best work. When I’m not writing a character who exists only on the screen, but am instead giving voice to the part of myself that they came from, letting that bit of me have a personality all its own and pass through circumstances that the rest of me has never experienced.

Have you ever had a moment like that? I’d love to hear about it. You’re welcome to comment and share your experience with your fellow Fiction Fans.

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3 Plotlines that are Usually Foregone Conclusions

10/4/2013

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It tends to make me happy when fiction can genuinely surprise me. After so many generations of authors, filmmakers and playwrights using every plot they can turn into something worth writing, there are very few things that are honestly new, and it takes some talent to use plot twists that have been done before in a way that's fresh and unique.

Unfortunately, some genres and plotlines appear to have more trouble with this than others. A cringeworthy lack of originality seems to be built into their very premise.

Granted, the ride can be fun at times, but you always know what will be waiting for you when the rollercoaster glides to a halt.

And so, in honour of all my fellow Fiction Fans who have noticed these nagging trends, I present the 3 Plotlines that are Usually Foregone Conclusions, starting with...

Romance

I recently wrote a post about whether or not My Fugitive is a romance novel.

For those of you who read the post, you may have noticed that I'm not thrilled with the idea of romance novels in general, not because they can't be good, but because unless the relationship is primarily a subplot in a larger scheme, it doesn't leave much to question.

Will he look past her homeliness and see the beautiful heart inside? Can she thaw his frozen soul? Can two people from very separate worlds defy the rules and find love together?

If the person writing on the back of the book or movie cover even has to ask, the question is already answered. Of course they'll get together.

Even if they hate each other, it's totally implausible, and/or the relationship is obviously doomed to be horribly unhealthy, I'm pretty darn sure that they'll get their happy ending.

Which means, of course, that the characters and the world they live in are guaranteed to survive long enough for that to happen. Which brings me to...

Saving the world

Unless you're looking at Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the Earth will probably survive. Because no matter how advanced the aliens are, how outgunned humanity is, or what kind of terrifying organization has risen from within our own ranks, humans are special.

And writing a world in which every bit of cultural context the writer has grown up with is utterly gone would probably take too much imagination for most to try to take on.

Hm... I might have to take that as a challenge someday. And speaking of challenges...

Sports, underdog stories and contests

The underdog wins. The end.

...I'm sorry. Did you want something more than that? Because sometimes, there simply isn't anything more to be had.

Yes, I'm looking at you.

True, a well-done story will have subplots and conflicts that are either disconnected from or amplified by the overarching plot, but how often do you see the ragtag bunch of protagonists lose?

This probably has a more interesting story behind it than the other pigeon pic.

All in all, there are some plotlines that I doubt I could bring myself to make the primary point of a story. Unless, of course, I was feeling rebellious that day.

Does it bother you when you can predict the ending just by reading the back cover?

Have you noticed other plots that almost always end the same way?

Feel free to share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.

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Restoring Balance in the Force

Where do You End and the Characters Begin?

3 Plotlines that are Usually Foregone Conclusions

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