R. Garrett Wilson

• Babies take a lot of patience… and I don’t know where they put it.  I’m still trying to find mine.
• If it were only possible to speak after you thought something through, some people wouldn’t talk at all.
• Practice makes perfect, but some people need more practice than others.
• It is easier to succeed if you focus on the goal rather than the distance.
• Stress takes a large, physical toll on the body.

There are two things to remember when executing your most beloved friend.  First, he knows it’s nothing personal – even when it is.  Second, …

“Mom.  Mom!  Come on!”  I chased her down the hall to her room, my (or her) boyfriend scrambling behind me.  “It’s not like that, really.  He was just showing me his…”

Fresh linens flapped on a clothes line just off one side of the patio and a broken rocking chair rested against the wall on the other side.  A lock on the door popped, a chain jingled, and the hinges creaked while the door opened.  Both uniformed officers removed their hats and made eye contact with the frail women as her hand came up to her mouth.  “Mrs. Stanpike, may we come in?” asked the smaller of two, his voice gentle.

Interesting week, these last seven days.

• Won a contest I didn’t enter – tangible prize and everything (yay!).  The original contest I entered rolled into another contest, which was pretty cool.  Thank you to Lee Crystal and Outpost 13.
• Played drums at church for the third time in 12 1/2 years.  I had told the worship leader that I don’t like to play music that’s in 3/4 time, just 4/4.  Well, there were three 3/4 songs, one 6/8 song, one 4/4 song (yay!), and one song that had a repeated pattern of five measures of 5/4 time and then one measure of 3/4 time.  The worship pastor hates me.  I know it, deep down he hates me.  It was so stressful.  I was told by many people that I did great, but I still want to crawl under a rock to recover.
• Finished Diamond of Darkhold (which finishes one series I’ve been reading), reading Jumper: Griffin’s Story (which finishes another series for me), and have The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner in the queue (which will finish that series, again).
• Decided I am going back to school next year for a Master’s… unless something unforeseen comes up.  I have off-and-on wanted to go back to school for four years now.  I’m finally at the point where I am willing to dedicate the time and energy.
• Made five commitments on my time this weekend, overlapping commitments.  It will be interesting to see how I survive.  Two weeks ago I didn’t have many weekend plans and it was the busiest weekend I can remember.  Maybe the one will work the other way around.
• Finished one round of edits on a short story for the FSFW anthology.  Some friends, C. Michael Fontes and P. D. Wright gave me a little feedback and, as improved as it was, there is still a lot of work to be done.

Have you ever vacationed by the ocean for an extended weekend and not seen a single wave, just gentle ripples in the water for hour after endless hour?

Have you ever been caught out in the desert when the wind picked up?  Had sand pelt your face, forcing your eyes to shut and your arms to rise defensively?

Have you ever expected a light dusting of snow on a romantic weekend getaway and received 42″ (without having chains)?

These are not just the mishaps of my vacations, but metaphors for stories too heavy on characters and/or plot.  Characters are what you see, like water.  Plot is the power behind what you see, like wind or storms. 

Without plot, the story can become drudgery instead of enjoyment – characters bobbing up-and-down without ever cresting or curling in exciting fashion. 

Without a good set of characters to connect to, the story arc is dry and it slaps at the reader’s face. 

When there is too much, dozens of characters who never get a chance to recover from the hundreds of plot elements, the reader is overwhelmed and misses the chance to fall in love (because they are thinking, “Where are my chains?  I can’t get traction.”).

Make your characters interesting, colorful, and dynamic.  Make your story arc full of action, adventure, or intrigue.  Give your story room to breathe, and in turn give your reader the same chance.

Give your reader the chance to experience the ebb and flow of your story with time to enjoy the crests, curls, and splashes of your characters’ experience against the driving power of the plot.

It’s time for my weekly post on Character Development and Introduction, but I’m not going to do one this week.  Instead I will be piggy backing off of a friend’s post, Roh Morgan’s “Characters Who Impact.”  Instead of working with your own characters, Roh is asking you to step back to acknowledge characters who have had an impact on you.  One great part about this post is, if you participate, you can win prizes, and who doesn’t like winning prizes?  So venture over to her site/contest and jump in.

It seems the more available time I believe I’m going to have, the more congested and busy my life becomes.  Early last week, I had three plans for my long weekend: get out of the valley for a day, mow my lawn, and visit my parents for a couple hours.  The rest of the weekend was supposed to be relaxing with chances to read and write.  Three days, three plans, life is good, right?  <sigh>

Saturday: gas up my car, drive to Santa Cruz with crying baby, drive home with moaning baby (it was really sad), drive to dealership for 30,000 mile service (which had a nice price tag attached to it), drive home, pay bills.  Time: 7 1/2 hours driving, 1 1/2 hours in a dealership waiting room, and 1 restful hour at home.

Sunday: mow lawn, no church (wife and baby not doing well), watch baby, clean stove, do dishes, watch baby some more, run to Target, watch Paycheck (I needed the break), play with baby (yes, watching baby is different than playing with baby… one feels like work while the other doesn’t), clean counter, watch baby again, rearrange electronics in house, get call about sick aunt who just had emergency surgery, crash in bed to critique a piece from writing group (1 1/2 pages critiqued).  Relax time: 2 hours even.

Monday: run garbage out to curb, hedge bushes, see aunt in hospital, Baby’s R Us trip, install electronics at parent’s house, kind-of almost watch Iron Man with parents, rib dinner with sister (fun, but not restful), gas up my car, gas up wife’s car, fruitless run to Borders, purchase at Borders.com (it was a good coupon, couldn’t give up at the store), go to bed with piece to critique (1 1/2 pages critiqued).  Total down time at home: 0 hours, 0 minutes.

No work on my manuscript.  No work on my synopsis.  No work on my short story.  Did not complete a critique for any of my three group members.  Little down time.  Three days which were supposed to be empty but weren’t.  I now need a weekend from my weekend.

One of the big rules in fiction is: the main character must change over the course of the story.  Another big rule is: characters must act in a believable fashion – they must stay in character.  Okay, now we have two rules that seem to oppose each other at times, but must play together within our manuscripts.  Or maybe these two rules aren’t opposed, but are the start of one rule explained in multiple parts.

A character must reflect reality – real people.  We, real people, learn and grow, stumble and try again, are good at some things and weak in others, and all have something beautiful in us as well as something ugly.  Everyone has a history as well as a future, and we dread some potential futures even as we look forward to others.  We may or may not act as expected all the time, but we have our reasons.  We change, but rarely from something strictly within, rather from an external influence: a rumor, a lesson, an observation, an experience, a conversation, a tragedy to ourselves or someone we know, a hardship, a blessing, a baby, a death, or even something small that sparks a realization – these small things are often the most meaningful over time.

When writing a character, I try to make her/him change only after an event, even a small event sparking a larger realization.  In between these changes, the character is static – almost predictable.  Fortunately, change is a constant in real life, so it happens often to my characters.  The trick to writing a believable character over the course of a novel is to establish the character early and show the events triggering each change.

Since I joined the Chris’ small group, I have started to hone my craft at a different level, much the same way my writing improved at FSFW.  Between learning new rules, researching writing, spending more time critiquing, and thinking more while writing and editing my own work, I have seen drastic improvements in the work I am producing.  This wouldn’t be possible without the help of Chris, Paula, and Julie, who have been helpful and patient. 

I have started to notice trends in my work, and theirs as well, which are simple fixes.  Sometimes, when I point out a troubling trend in their work, they will turn around and show that same problem in mine – which is both irritating and funny.  These are simple problems with easy fixes.  I hope you can learn from our mistakes and improve your writing.

• Telling is not the most basic of problems because there are various viewpoints on what telling is.  Some people view telling as ‘what you tell’ while others view it as ‘how you tell it’ – there are disagreements within those camps.  I have already posted on this topic, so I won’t address it again.  In the end, both versions need to be addressed to make the piece well rounded.
• Teaching and summarizing – easy traps to fall into when writing science fiction and fantasy.  Some things need to be explained, but in a way that doesn’t feel like a textbook.  Some spans of time need to be consolidated into a few paragraphs without making the reader feel like they were shorted.  These are hard things to balance, too much versus too little, bringing the reader along or leaving them behind.
• “That” is a horrible junk word.  More and more, I find myself hating THAT word.  It has its good points, places where it has to be.  However, many times it is used where it just doesn’t belong.
  • Good: “Look at that guy.”  In context, this points out a specific person.
  • Bad: “I can’t believe I let that scare me.”  That guy, that action, that day?  Even in context, this can be a little confusing.
  • Worse: “Some people think that human cloning will become a reality in the next 20 years.”  ‘That’ is a pointless word which can be removed and the sentence will flow with more ease.  This usage of the word ‘that’ makes up the majority of instances in my group (including myself).
• ‘-ly’ adverbs are another form of junk words.  I don’t think all ‘-ly’ adverbs should be removed, and I don’t have any problems with other forms of adverbs, but the overuse of ‘-ly’ adverbs leads to weak verbs, summarizing, telling, and alliteration issues.  A few ‘-ly’ adverbs are evil in writing because they defeat the purpose they were written for: suddenly, quickly, immediately, instantly, and abruptly.  There are more, but those are the ones I can think of right now.  They are meant to speed up the action, but they slow the flow.  “He immediately shot the villain” takes more time than “He shot the villain.”
• Repeated words and poor sentence structure seem to go hand-in-hand.  Short choppy sentences tend to bring the repetition of “I,” “he,” “she,” or “they.”  Long winded paragraphs often have the same verbs or nouns in various forms.  Trying to address one issue will sometimes help with the other.
• Motivations are not explained well enough, so the characters are unbelievable or an action is out-of-character.  I have a whole line of character posts, so I won’t elaborate here other than this: if you show your characters motivations and allow the reader to connect, anything is possible – short of that, anything is questionable.

These are common problems in my writing, my group’s writing, and possibly the writing community as a whole. They are my group’s current hot, push-button errors.

I would love to know what comes up in your groups, please share.

• Everyone needs to take a break – even from their breaks
• A sleeping baby is a good baby
• A smart stray cat is an evil stray cat
• Our perception of the magnitude of problems is proportional to the percentage of sleep we have missed
• It is impossible to write while the Backyardigans is on my TV
• Good friends stay close, even when they are far away

I recently had a birthday.  I haven’t been excited or fearful of my birthdays in the past; however, I was blue for the whole day of my party (2 days before my birthday) and also on my birthday itself.  I told people I was tired, which wasn’t a lie, but that wasn’t the problem either – I was depressed.  It could be because I am the oldest of my current writing group, or the fact that people younger than me are complaining about being old, or just that I’m a father now and my priorities have changed. 

Last night and this morning I’ve been thinking about life goals.  I hate to admit it, but I’m getting old enough to think ‘old people’ thoughts.  So I created a series of questions for myself, based loosely on things I heard in a college class – 15 years ago <sob>.

What are you goals for:
• 1 Year
• 3 Years
• 5 Years
• 10 Years
• 20 Years
• Lifetime

What do I have to do:
• Today to accomplish my 1 and 3 year goals?
• This week to accomplish my 1 and 3 year goals?
• This month to accomplish my 3 and 5 year goals?
• Within six months to accomplish my 5 and 10 year goals?
• This year to accomplish my goals?
• Within three years to accomplish my goals?
• Within 10 years to accomplish my goals?

I have already started answering these questions myself, and I might share at some point, but I wanted to share the questions with you (in case you are tackling the same problems I am).  Feel free to share your thoughts as well.