Who's Being Funny?

I apologize in advance if this becomes a random nothingness of dribble, but I haven’t been well this week. Damn head colds! Bleh! After only 2 minutes of sitting in front of the computer my eyes went all blurry and I couldn’t see clearly. Not a good thing when you’re a modern day writer and the keyboard and screen is the new paper and pen (I mean imagine using a pen to write! OMG). As a result this has been written in fits and starts.

I wanted to talk about humour in writing, but seeing as I’m unwell I’m really not in the mood for being funny. Which, when I thought about it, is exactly the problem humorous writing has, isn’t it?

Let me explain.

Humour (or as some would say ‘humor’) is extremely subjective. Sure, you can pick up a book from the ‘comedy’ or ‘humorous’ section of a bookstore and you’ll be pretty sure that’s what the author intended the content of the book to be. Trouble is, what if the book is from the horror section and 20 pages in you’re roaring with laugher? Or worse yet, it’s an erotic novel and god forbid the bedroom scene has you in stitches instead of feeling all gooey and warm. (well, that’s how I feel with a well written love scene).

Believe me, I have read plenty of books that are supposed to be serious and are actually pretty damn humorous. I would imagine that wasn’t the author’s intention. So what goes wrong with writing that’s supposed to be funny and isn’t? Or worse yet, serious writing that’s laugh out loud hilarious?

The truth be told it’s actually very hard to write humour—well, good humour anyway. I have a kind of scale I like to go by when it comes to humour and the world of writing. I like to have little scales and charts and what not around my computer. They keep me focused.

At one end of my humour scale is the slapstick kind of humour, which, sprinkled in sparingly can be quite effective. A moment or two of pure unadulterated ‘pie in the face’ writing can be hilarious. But used too much and it can become really boring really quickly. (I think that’s the problem with some of those horror novels I’ve read. With all those bucket loads of blood pouring out everywhere one can only laugh…and then get tired of it quickly. Which I suppose would explain why I don’t read too many horror books that go this way). I think Douglas Adams did slapstick really well in his book The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, especially when Arthur Dent and gang got to the Vogon Home World. The independent thought ‘slap in the face’ was in my opinion done perfectly. Not too much, but enough to give a belly laugh and then move on. Which is what I’m basically saying. Less is more when it comes to humorous writing, I think.

The other end, or the upper end, is the ‘dry as a bone’ satire kind of writing. Satire is hard to keep up. Even the most hardened writer would find it extremely difficult to complete a novel of satire at the darker end of the scale. Sure, it can be done and has been done quite effectively…it would just be hard trying to write a book where every word is dripping with dark (and ultimately dreary) satire.

Personally, I find a lot of satire tends to slide into silliness if not kept under control. That silliness then becomes slapstick, and, as I have just explained, that’s at the other end of the scale. Of course, you can disagree with absolutely everything I have just said…just get ready to duck that pie.

That’s not to say slapstick, silliness and satire can’t be all in the one story. Some demand it. I just think, for a novice, keeping things simple and leaving the audience wanting more is a far better approach. Sure, write that satire, you may even do it well. But I bet the reason it has been done well is because you’ve focused on keeping the theme of the satire simple. Not taking on too much. Yep. Keep it simple. (I think that’s why political satire does so well. It sticks to one subject and squeezes everything it can out of it).

Until next time…because my eyes are now burning in their sockets and who the hell made computer screens so bright?

P.S. (and written the next day—I do feel a bit better) It seems my next novel, The Pauper’s Prize will be due out in November some time with eXtasy Books. I’m excited about that.

Here’s a promotion thingy/banner I whipped up for the book to help me get the promotion ball rolling. Next week I might post the blurb and a snippet of the book to tease. I like teasing.




P.P.S. Reading back my post I have to say that I think I did pretty good considering I was out of it most of the week.
*Hugs*
Mark Alders.

April Fool's Day!!

Happy April Fool's Day!!

Well, it's almost 1 pm here and so far no jokes have been played on me. I'll be keeping my fingers crossed that none happen today since I know some very creative people!

I looked up some interesting April Fool's Day information I'd thought I'd share in honor of this fun holiday.

~April Fool's Day is often called All Fools Days.

~The "Kick Me" sign put on people's backs originated from this holiday.

~April 1st was actually New Years Day long ago but someone switched it when they redesigned the calendar.

~Mexico's April Fool's Day is Decemeber 28th.

~You can read about the top 100 April Fool's Day jokes at http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/aprilfool/

Don't forget to tell me about your April Fool's Day stories!

Talk to you next Wednesday,
Wendy Ely

An Interview with King of the Orgulocks! Oooh-La-La!

Hey all you Wicked Blog Hoppers! I'm working on deadline this week so I had my good friend step in for me today. See you next week! ~Alisha

My name is Sha-Sha Snow. Thanks, Alisha for giving me this opportunity to blog at Wicked Thorn and Roses today. See, I’m an avid reader too and I love to interview my favorite characters. I’m in London now, sipping latte on a sidewalk café, interviewing Special Detective for The Metropolitan Police, Vex Savaker, featured in Alisha Paige’s Nocturnally Vexed.




Sha-sha: Good morning, Mr. Savaker. You have a rather interesting ancestry.

Vex: Good morning, Sha-Sha. Call me Vex. I’m King of the Orgulocks, originating from Xurath.

Sha-Sha: Orgulocks? Xurath?

Vex: *deep chuckle* Aye. Xurath is a black planet, void of light, in another dimension. All blood suckers and shifter-rapts were created there by two lesser gods, Folog and Garmut. My clan, the Orgulocks are hybrids, half blood sucker/half shifter-rapt.

Sha-Sha: But haven’t the blood suckers and shifter-rapts been at war forever?

Vex: They have, my lady, but my father, Cole was captivated by an orphaned shifty, my mother, Zephyria. She’d been banished because of her uncommon beauty.

Sha-sha: So, the pairing resulted in the Orgulocks as we know them today?

Vex: It did indeed. My father was a very powerful blood sucker, the leader of his clan. They’re union changed everything on dark Xurath.

Sha-sha: Let me get this straight. You’re a vampire AND a shape-shifter?

Vex: Absobloodylutely! Except the correct term is blood sucker and shifter-rapt. Vamps and shapeshifters are only found in fiction.

Sha-sha: And you’re not fictional?

Vex: You’re here talking to me, aren’t you? Do I look real enough?

Sha-sha: Hmmm…can I touch?

Vex: *Laughs out loud* Go ahead.

Sha-sha: Mmm…nice biceps. You feel pretty solid to me.

Vex: *Sniffs the air* Good, you’re safe.

Sha-Sha: I beg your pardon?

Vex: From Jack.

Sha-Sha: Jack?

Vex: Aye. Jack the Ripper.

Sha-Sha: Whoa! Wait! Jack killed over 100 years ago. Are you saying he’s back?

Vex: He’s back.

Sha-Sha: You’re a man of few words, Vex. Good to know but how can you be sure I’m safe?

Vex: I sniffed ya. You’re clean…er…were clean…actually you’ve been sullied up a bit..no offense, miss, but I can tell you’ve…er….had men.

Sha-Sha: *Laughs nervously* Are you saying you can smell my virginity or lack of virgin snow, rather?

Vex: *Nods and grins* Orgulocks have ultra sensory powers. A most useful tool in dark Xurath. Here too. The law enforcement agencies love the services we offer. That’s why I’m working on the modern day Jack the Ripper case. I think he’s a shifty.

Sha-Sha: That would explain why he eluded the authorities all those years ago. Is it the same guy?

Vex: We know it’s the same guy. We have DNA evidence to prove it. He left a hair in the wax he sealed a letter to the police back in 1888 and we have DNA from his recent killings. They’re one and the bloody same.

Sha-Sha: Wow! But I still don’t understand why I’m safe.

Vex: You’re not a virgin. Jack is after virgins this go around.

Sha-Sha: Virgins? But he killed prostitutes in the 1800’s.

Vex: Aye. I believe he’s doing the exact opposite this time.

Sha-Sha: In order to fool the police?

Vex: Either that or for his sick kicks.

Sha-Sha: Just one more question before you go, Vex. And it’s an icky one.

Vex: Shoot.

Sha-sha: Do you feast on humans in order to survive?

Vex: I’m no blood sucker. I’m no shifter-rapt. I’m an Orgulock. We have evolved into greater creatures, keeping the better qualities of each species, honing our skills in order to survive and thrive, both here and on Xurath. Sometimes I do feast on female humans, though.

Sha-sha: Oh?

Vex: Only if they ask me too.

You can find out more about Vex and the Orgulocks by reading Nocturnally Vexed!


Click Here to View the Trailer for Nocturnally Vexed

Alisha Paige

Why would you do that?

I’m in the middle of revisions and I’m having difficulty with characters doing things that don’t make a lot of sense. Why? Because, they’re confused. They don’t know why they’re doing these things. They’re basically just doing what they’re told to do, because I made the mistake of interfering in their lives. I’ve led them to do what I wanted them to do, instead of the way it should be, them leading the way and me following along. Why? Because, I didn’t get deep enough into their characters to know their real motivations. 

I wrote this story over a year ago. I really had no clue about motivation at that time. I’ve learned so much since then, yet I know I still have a long way to go. So, today, I’ve decided to blog about motivation. Not only do I hope this will help you, but I also think it will help me get a clearer picture in my head. 

People do things for a reason, even if they don’t know what that reason is. Everything we do, we do it because something inside us is guiding our actions. We all have needs. Some are more important than others. For example, if we’re starving, we’re not going to worry about our love life. We’re going to worry about finding food. You have to meet your basic needs before you can worry about others. This is the basis of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. I’ve included a basic diagram below to show which needs are the most important.
 

As you can see, the lower level is the largest, and the most important. You have to have this foundation before you can move up to the higher needs. Without it, the pyramid would collapse. 

So, why do I have my characters doing things when really, they should be doing others? Because, I didn’t follow the rules. I haven’t met the more basic needs first. No, I don’t have my characters starving, but I do have them worrying about things that are less important to them at that particular time. No wonder they’re confused. I would be, too. 

I have to step back and find out what their goals are. Once I know that, I can find the motivation behind it. If their goal is to keep their job, then I need to know what motivates them to reach that goal. Why do they want to keep their job? Is it because they need it for food, bills, living expenses? Well, yes, to one degree that’s why we all work, right? But, why this job? Why can’t they just find another job? There are other jobs out there. Okay, I’m not talking about the economy here, I know it’s bad, but that’s another story. Why do they need to keep this particular job? Maybe it’s a job with the family business. They don’t want to let their family down. That’s a higher level need, and as long as they’re basic needs are met, then they might worry about that. As long as there’s food on the table, then these other motivations can be important to them. 

So, my character wants to keep her job. Her motivation isn’t that she’s starving, but that she fears it. She grew up without her most basic needs being cared for. She never knew if they would be met, or not. So, she fears being without. That’s one motivation. 

Right now, though, those needs are being met. So, why this job? It provides her with respect, something else she never received at home. Could she find that at a different job? Yes, but not as quickly. She’s worked her way up through the company. If she loses this job, she’ll have to start over, which means she’ll lose the respect she’s already gained. She doesn’t want to lose that. That’s another motivation.

Okay, so she has two motivations, which one is more important? The first one is, because it’s a basic need. She’s not going to worry about respect if she’s too concerned about needing food. If she leaves this job to find another, she might lose respect, but she might also make less money. She’ll have less for food and bills. That is more important to her than the loss of respect. In tough times, we have to do what’s most important to us at the time, even if it does cause embarrassment. We have to forgo our pride to meet our basic needs. 

My hero, on the other hand, wants to solve a crime. Why? Because that’s what he was hired to do. Why this particular crime? His motivation isn’t as basic. He doesn’t worry about needing food or lodging. His motivation is also a respect desire. He wants to be respected for his work. After becoming injured in the military, he was unable to pursue his dream of becoming a cop, like his dad and brother. So, he has to win respect as a security specialist. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to measure up because he doesn’t wear “the uniform”. So, solving as many crimes as possible gives him the self-respect he wouldn’t have otherwise. Even though his family doesn’t look down on him, he looks down on himself. And, he thinks maybe they don’t respect him as much as they say.

His motivation isn’t as strong as the heroine’s because it’s not as basic of a need. The stronger the need, the stronger the motivation. The stronger the motivation, the better the story. If both of their motivations were weak, the story would fail. Nobody wants to read a story with weak motivations. We read to escape. If the problems faced by the hero/heroine are less than mine, why would I want to read about it? They need to be facing difficulties strong enough to makes me root for them. They need to have a strong enough motivation to get through those difficulties. Otherwise, why would I bother to care?

What do you think? Would you care about characters whose motivations are weak? How do you get deep into your characters motivations? Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Kernels That Go Pop!

All right, I'll admit it, parts of this post I have written on other blogs, articles or given in lectures, but the information is so important I think it bears repeating.

Where do you go to find your story ideas? For me they come from snippets from dreams, documentaries I watch, news stories. There is nothing out there that is sacred or off-limits as far as subject matter that might show up in a book. Granted, I'm not going to listen to a friend's confession of a sorted affair and then turn the details into a novel about love gone wrong - I do employ a high level of confidentuality in that arena. However, the same conversation overheard in a restuarant between two people I've never met- fair game!

Case in point. During a snack break at work one night, I was sitting alone enjoying a cup of soup and looking through a women's magazine. There was an article about a couple who went to celebrate their wedding anniversary. During the dinner, the husband decides to confess he'd fallen in love with another woman, to the point he'd asked the other woman to engage in an affair with him. To his shock, this woman was living with her lover...another woman. Yes, the object of his affection was indeed gay. (I can't help it...at that point in the story I started to laugh. It served the asshole right. Really it did.) - However, I felt so sorry for the wife. The article goes on to say that she stood up from the table and told him that she was glad he got that off his chest, but now it was over. Their marriage. Good for her, says I. Imagine my shock, horror and shaking of head, when she lost weight and took him back. (His complaint was that he didn't find her sexy anymore - well, boo fucking hoo!) The part that continues to ring in my head is that SHE TOOK HIM BACK!!! - Oh, yeah. I really needed to rewrite this story with a less namby-pamby ending and a heroine with at least half a spine to her.

Enter the Cougar Club.

Wild Rose Press has a line in their Scarlet Rose catalog that has cougar themed stories. What a perfect fit for this rewriting of history? I decided my heroine would go through a similar experience, but instead of taking her husband back, she hooks up with a hunky man 7 years her junior who is in all respects a sex God. <---See how one idea gleaned from an article gets morphed into a story that can be placed with a publisher's established line?

And the fun doesn't end there.

Pick up any copy of Scientific American, Archeology Times or Fate Magazine and you'll find a plethora of ideas leaping off the page, waiting to be plucked, stewed and ready for reader consumption. And the wonderful part about using media for ideas is that you can tweak, twist, turn, torch, tickle or torque any idea to fit any genre your little heart desires. Any genre.

Take an article I read in a science journal (I beleive it might have been JAMA or one of the other medical journals hanging around the hospital where I work) that had to do with articial hearts and prostethics that have sensors that can sense heat, and the differences between carpet and concrete. Fascinating. That same article placed in different authors' hands can become a romantic suspense, thiller- either industrial, medical or other, change the parts from microprocessors to gears and you have steam punk, change them from chips to nanotechnology and put it on a space station and you have futuristic or sci-fi. One kernel...many possibilities.

As for dreams, they too can have impact on what we write. A few months ago, I woke from a dream heart pounding, eyes darting, looking for the car that was heading straight for me. Yes, folks, I dreamed I was about to be in a head-on collision. Yikes! The details of the dream were so vivid they wouldn't let me go for the rest of the day. In it, I (or at least me as main character because the person did not resemeble me in the least nor did they live anywhere I even recognzied) was at a party where she got into a fight with a couple of really big men about another man. Now, in the dream I didn't get a sense of who the man was that the fight was about, but that's not important now. So, my dream self left the party and was driving down a dark, windy country road at night (cue tension-inducing music)there was a car coming down the road in the other lane. Suddenly a van behind the first car, swerved out and started heading for my car. At the last minute I swerved the wheel and ended in the ditch.

Scary kids!!!

Later that night, I was in Romance Divas chat room and started chatting to the regular crew about the dream and how I thought it really needed to be exploited and turned into a romantic suspense. In a few hours, that one rather disjointed dream turned into not one, but three stories set in the same town featuring two families and a whole lotta trouble. I plan to turn it into a series to pitch to either Harlequin Intrigue or Silhouette Romantic Suspense. One kernel...three ideas.

I often joke that if I never got another fresh idea again as long as I live, I already have enough material to keep me busy for four liftetimes. As a matter of fact, I think I have too many ideas. (That's not a declaration of open-season on the ones I've shared here. They are mine. Mine. MINE!!!) It's just proof that ideas can be found anywhere, anytime and any place and they can be prolific in scope and genre. And sometimes, if you're really lucky, you can hear them go..POP.

-Kate

Fanfiction

Fan Fiction…It’s all over the web. Open up any television series forum and it is there. Okay, there is probably more, but this is all I’m familiar with. There are some really talented writers out there writing fan fiction. So, tell me…what do you think about it? Do you write it? Have you ever written any of it?

Until last summer, I scoffed at the idea of writing fan fiction and reading it. It felt strange writing about characters someone else had created. In some ways it felt like theft even though I was crediting the creator with their creation. Basically, it had me feeling gauche even though I would have felt honored if I had affected someone so profoundly that they wrote fan fiction based upon my characters.

So, this past summer I found myself entering a fan fiction challenge. I’m still trying to figure out how I got prodded into doing it. Awkwardly I stepped into the role of writing canon characters and adding my own characters to the mix. I had a mission and an ultimate objective, but it was my creativity that had to find the resolution not based on canon rules. I wrote my first piece and discovered that it was a hell of a lot of fun! Imagine my surprise when I realized that my fan fiction wasn’t complete as I had thought. It was missing something.

Background. History between the canon characters and my characters. Okay, now it was getting more awkward. How presumptuous of me to want to write more, right? Well, I did and without the loom of a challenge hanging over my head. I wrote a beginning to my story, blending the beginning with the challenge I had already written. The beginning shaped a comprehensive history between my characters and the canon characters. Then, as if that wasn’t enough, I wrote more. Picking up from the ending of the challenge story, I wrote about what would happen if their journey together continued. By this point, I decided I had lost my mind and, more importantly, I was/am too obsessed with someone else’s characters.

But through this insanity, I learned a very valuable lesson. By writing fan fiction I was able to get into the head of my characters—not the series canon characters, but my characters—and I was able to stay in their heads because I had created distinct lives for them before I ever started writing.

Wow! That was and still is a defining moment for me. This is not how I had ever written any character since putting the first words down on paper. I’ve always been a pantser, letting my character muse guide me wherever she/he wanted to go. And while I still do not think that’s wrong, lately it has created distinct problems for me. In the last year, I have started two novels and halfway through I’m bogged down with the reality that I still do not know the basics of at least one of my main characters. Nothing is working, nothing sounds right, the personality is blah, so boring it is bringing me to tears, and it would be easier and less painful to bang my head against the wall. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the action is worse than watching grass grow and the romance is so tepid I would run screaming if the hero/heroine looked in my direction with a romantic bent. If my muse doesn’t want to visit them often enough to write about them, then how can I expect a reader to want to read about them?

So, I find myself in this unique position. I’m inspired and eager to write fan fiction because I know the characters. Not just the canon characters, but my characters that I have created. The main point is I KNOW THEM and I want to keep revisiting them even though there is no real romance left, everything is resolved, but still they keep fighting and begging for more storyline. Frustrated, I was thinking WHY when I needed to do some “real” writing.

And then it hit me. I’ve already said it more than once, but I KNEW these characters from the inside out, everything about them. There’s real passion in them, charisma, depth, shallowness, flaws, life and death challenges, all of it I see and realize clearly in my head. While they may be just characters in my head, they are as real as any flesh and blood person beside me.

Then I got to thinking about the novels I had set aside. What did I know about those characters? I was stunned to realize that even though I’d written half of their life, I still did not know who they were, what they stood for, or even what made them tick. This is what I need to know if I want to give them personality and breathe life into them. So, my goal is to revisit them, write out specific goals, characteristics, personalities, traits, all the things needed to make a character crackle and pop with vitality and life…just like the characters I created for my fan fiction.

Basically, I think writing fan fiction has helped me realize some of my weaknesses as a writer and has further developed and honed my writing skills. It certainly has made it clear how important it is to flesh out a set of characters before going in depth with their lives.

A shout out for what’s to come!

Hi everyone!

Since my brain is so scattered right now to come up with a topic about writing, I've decided to blog about what is coming to our blog. No, not the tax collector but guests whom I believe we'll all benefit from. Oh, yeah. And I'll share my latest news as well. Maybe the part about me is not as exciting, but hey, I'll share the news anyway. :D

Here we go.

• April 3, 2009, Friday ---Lancer Kind, SCi Fi Author whose work appears in several anthologies such as Ruins Terra (ed. Eric T. Reynolds), Speculative Realms (ed. Sasha Beatie), and Teacher Miracles (ed. Brian Thornton) will be blogging for us.
This author is so knowledgeable and rich with fantastic ideas on speculative fiction stories I am sure Sci Fi enthusiasts will enjoy his blog. Oh yeah, he'll be mixing love, sex and what's out there in his topic so be sure to check him out.

Lancer lives the Pacific Northwest with his lovely wife Shelli and their imaginary rooster Jimmy. Hmm... I think I want to meet Jimmy.

If you want to check him out now here is the link to his site: http://lancerkind.com/


• April 6, Monday ---Lori Perkins, author and NY literary agent will be our guest. Yes, ladies and gentlemen. Lori is a literary agent and part owner of Ravenous Romance. So, make sure to come back on April 6 to find out more about Lori. Leave her a comment or ask her questions. Being a journalist and newspaper/magazine editor, she possesses a broad range of experience and perspective that she will definitely share with us. How cool is that? Yeah! So come back and meet her. Don't miss this opportunity.

Lori Perkins blog: http://agentinthemiddle.blogspot.com
Visit ravenousromance.com


• About Me! This is the promo part. Hey, being a Wicked Thorn and Roses member, I am entitled to use this site to brag, right? :D Anyway, recently I sold my novels, Wicked Night: Tristan and Where My Heart Is to Red Rose Publishing. Yey! No covers yet. I will share that part later as soon as I have the covers ready. Also, my books To Trust a Wicked Man and Three Christmas Kisses are both available for purchase at Fictionwise. That's it. Not that boring, eh?

Tierney's website: http://tierneyomalley.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/TierneyOMalley