This won’t be a long post, but it will reference two articles that I found useful.

First, Mystery Man summarizes the “Raiders of the Lost Ark” story conference between Spielberg, Lucas, and Kasdan, and one of the most surprising nuggets he finds is this:

What happens in the past, off screen, good or bad, does not affect sympathy. It’s what we see the character do in the present that determines how much we will or will not care about that character.

He got this from how the men tossed around the idea of Marion being as young as 11 when she seduces Indy (as part of their shared background).  They settle on 15 and only give a hint of the relationship (and the age discrepancy) in the movie:

M: “I was a child!  I was in love.”
IJ: “You knew what you were doing.”
M: “It was wrong.  You knew it.”

So, what a character does before the story starts, no matter how reprehensible, does not affect how the audience reacts to the character.  What the audience (or reader) experiences with the character is all that matters.

Moving to my next post of interest (the first one was short, huh?), the blogger Limyaael puts fantasy cliche into very simple light: too much black and white, and the story becomes boring.  “There is no beautiful evil, no perilous sidhe, no hero who does not triumph.”  Too much beauty bugs me.  I’m not particularly interested in writing ugly characters, simply because readers don’t like ugly, but I am interested in characters who can be described as “interesting” instead of beautiful.  When I write a beautiful character, I want them to be honestly above average.  Which means above average when compared to my other characters, not just compared to the people you see in the supermarket.

I blush when Limyaael mentions modern folk getting sucked into fantasy realms.  My first book (unpublished and staying that way in its current form) is “modern girl gets thrown into fantasy world!”  A few months ago, I dug it out and nodded over it, then put it down and went to talk to my husband.

I said, “Honey, I like my fantasy story, but it needs some rewrite.  For one thing, it doesn’t have enough conflict.  Characters have struggles, but you don’t really feel them the way you could.  But more than that . . . the whole modern day character origins gives nothing to the story.  I think I’m going to take it out.”

And he tilted his head to the side and said, “Yeah, I can see that.”

Since then, I’ve been tinkering in my head with the world in question, the countries and the rulers, the cultures and conflicts.  It’s a much more traditional sword and sorcery world than my current project, though my aspiration is to be more Sherwood Smith than Tolkien-ripoff.

I really enjoy testing my old plot in the new frame I’ve been working on, since the original story is solid.  It just needs more punch here and finer execution there.  But it was the first good story I finished.  Not publishable, but very readable.

Limyaael is popular enough that her articles on writing have been catalogued at TV Tropes, a terrific resource for recognizing common plot devices — and deciding if your device is a little too outdated.  I particularly like their Evil Overlord List.  I hope one day to make an intelligent evil overlord who follows all of those simple rules.

Maybe he’ll even win.

My NOCCA writing teacher, Ms. Gisleson, once read me the riot act on how fantasy is cliche, how its based on a foundation of cliche, how I shouldn’t turn it in for her class, yadda yadda yadda.  The general theme was “You can’t write good fantasy unless you’re Tolkien.”  (Yes, she totally brought up good ol’ JRR.)  I guess, in her defense, what she said was more like “Good fantasy is out there, like Tolkien, but it’s rare.”  Which implied I probably couldn’t write any.

Once I left that class and got properly mad, it made me want to prove her the hell wrong.  Which means generating new ideas, interesting characters, and a world full of common complexity, where the heroine doesn’t win in a wild burst of magic she never knew she could wield until she got really really upset and a supporting cast that doesn’t automatically love her due to her beauty/prowess/power/awesomeitude.

And that’s what Limyaael’s rants/essays are about, so anyone interested in writing fantasy should browse through them.  She makes good, practical suggestions on how to freshen your fantasy plot.