Writing Prompts - 4/4/14

A couple prompts to get your weekend off to a good start. If you use them and want to share, leave a comment with a link to your work: I'd love to see!

1) Your opening line is: "It wasn't the pain of the change, or even the annoyance of losing your clothes when you changed back that bothered Terran; it was the fleas that were the worst.

2) Your main character has woken to the sloppy, wet kisses of a strange dog. After pushing the creature off her, she finds she is hunkered down in a narrow alley leading out into an open marketplace where foods, wares, and services are being hocked, each louder than the last. She is dressed like a peasant, but upon further inspection, she notes she has on a fine silk dress beneath her raggedy cloak. She can remember nothing of how she came to be here, but an incessant need to keep her identity secret is nagging at the back of her mind. If only she could remember her name!

He steals only what he can't afford.

3) In a fictional world, parrots are sacred. Why?

P.S. Today's prompts are brought to you by Aladdin, apparently.

Describing Ethnicity in Fantasy Fiction

Source

In fantasy fiction, the physical descriptions of people (places and things too--all the nouns, really) play a major role in immersing the reader in your world. Of course, none of us are Tolkien, so we probably shouldn't describe a single tree for multiple pages, but I feel like a big part of creating and presenting a fictional world is how it looks. I've read a lot of criticism that insists that what your characters look like is largely inconsequential and can be left to the reader's imagination, and while I agree that a character's actions should hold more weight than their appearance, I think the importance of the physical manifestation of a character and how the author intends for them to be seen should not be glossed over.

I say this because I think representation is important and (again, since none of us are Tolkien) we have this great opportunity* to include the gamut of skin tones and facial features and body proportions and *gasp* even genders in our work. Currently, fantasy fiction is flooded with pseudo-European-medieval worlds exclusively full of white people. While this isn't even historically accurate, we're not going for historical accuracy anyway: we're aiming for fantasy, and that can be whatever you want it to be.

Fantasy fiction lends itself quite well to allegorizing racism. Unfortunately, this often leads itself to two things: lazy writing in the form of sweeping generalizations (all orcs are bad), and actual racism (orcs are "black-skinned" and "slant-eyed"). However, this post was not really intended to discuss representation or racism, but how to go about describing physical characteristics of multiple ethnic groups throughout your work.

If your story takes place in in the modern world, you've got a handful of useful non-visual tools you could use to denote ethnicity like a character's name, how other characters describe them, or even directly citing their country of origin/heritage, but in a fantasy world there is no Asia, Africa, Europe, just a bunch of made up place names that you're responsible for recounting. It's common to mold your world's races after existing ones, and I have based the races of the peoples in my upcoming fantasy on existing ones, but, for example, I can't use "Hispanic" to describe Kimber because, well, that ethnicity just doesn't exist in her universe!

Instead, I write up the parameters of the body shape and facial features of a group, and then try to focus on one or a few characteristics that I intend to describe for the reader. For instance, if I am basing a race off of, say, the people of southern Italy (where many of my ancestors are from) there are many broad generalizations I can make about the physical make up of the people: olive skin, dark brown and wavy hair, dark and round eyes, heavy brow, large nasal bridge, oval face shape with longer ears, few blemishes/freckles, cropped facial hair, average body hair, wide mouth, slightly shorter than average build, slightly wider than average build. Now, none of this is particularly novel-worthy description, and, frankly, not very attractive sounding either, but that is not its purpose. I use this as a base for characters, then choose one or two characteristics aside from skin tone that I'd like all or at least most people from that region/background to have and for the reader to be told of. For this race, I'd choose a prominent T-zone (heavy brow and large nasal bridge) because it's not subtle and would be recognized by others immediately (also I find it personally appealing, but that's probably not a great reason, ha!). Contrary to what you may think, it's not limiting. A character with this feature could range from frightening and Neanderthalic to dashing and mysterious depending on the severity to which it's described and, of course, who's seeing it.

I like to write (and read) from limited third person. I do this for a multitude of reasons, but especially because it affords me a set of eyes with which to guide the reader and show them new things. Jayn, the main character of what I'm currently working on, has barely been out of her village, so the reader gets to see everything new along with her, including ethnic makeup, and it makes sense for her, trying to learn the differences between people, to relate similar visuals between people. She becomes familiar with Kimber and learns about her background, and when I introduce another character who looks similar to Kimber, Jayn is able to compare, say, their cinnamon skin tone and the reader can make that connection as well. Of course, Jayn can voice this connection to her companion, which gives Kimber the opportunity to correct and teach her about her people, but again that discussion might be better left for a post actually intended to be about representation.

"I'm wearing miko robes for goodness sake!" - Source

Finally, it's important to at least realize that every reader likely has a "default" character. You may have perhaps heard or read about white Americans asking why all anime characters are white. They aren't, but to a white viewer they don't appear Japanese because "white" is their default, and probably most everyone else's too. Sort of like how male and heterosexual are typically default. Again, I'm not writing a post about representation or "otherness" (wait, am I?), but I think it's important that, in our descriptions of characters we make an effort to not allow there to be a default, or a "normal" ethnicity.

I thought I'd end this post with a few links to lists of possible descriptors for facial and body features. They are not divided by ethnicity--that's your job as you're creating them--nor are they anywhere near conclusive, but just a jumping off point. And remember, it's all relative to your world and the point of view from which the story is told: if there are no chestnuts, then no one's going to have chestnut-colored eyes, skin, or hair. Similarly if you're character's never seen a beach or jewels, she's not going to describe the prince as sandy-haired and sapphire-eyed.

Skin Tone
Skin Tone (with color swatches)
Hair Descriptors
Hair Color (with color swatches)
Facial Features (general)
Nose Descriptors
Anglo Noses (with pictures) - Ignore the title and text, I just liked the captions
Eye Descriptors
Eye Action and Color
Eye Color (Wikipedia) - I just love this article, I don't know why
What you're really saying when you use "almond eyes"
Build
Female Body Shape Chart** - Not necessarily words you'd use, but they do make you think beyond typical descriptors
Male Body Types**
Beards According to Herman Melville
General Descriptors
More General Descriptors


*Not that Tolkien didn't have the opportunity, he just didn't take it. Also, it's probably more of a responsibility than an opportunity.
**I don't think these have to specifically be female or male

Also, despite that it might be included in some of those links, I don't condone using any variant of "slant" in describing eyes. Ever.

Writing Prompts 3/16/14

Feel free to use these to chip away at your writer's block:

1) Your opening line is: "Xavier just refused to stay dead."

2) Your neighbor of over five years, an elderly but able-bodied man, passes away. You shared only vague pleasantries when he was alive and knew next to nothing about one another. A young woman knocks on your door a few days after you learn of his passing, and she thanks you for your kindness and friendship to the old man, her great uncle, before handing you a box and leaving. Sufficiently confused, you open it to find a plethora of pictures of yourself and the man together at a multitude of local functions and others of him at your family gatherings--all places you very clearly remember him not being, and some you don't even remember going yourself. There is also a letter inside. It reads: ...

3) Come up with a handful of idioms or proverbs for a fictional world, and write how the each came into being and how the spread.

Making the Most Out of Your Vacation from Writing

For the past week I've had a plethora of guests in my home and writing has been a big no-go. Whether it's because I was trying to squeeze every last second out of our time together, we were all running about to the beach or other attractions, or I couldn't get into the right head space to churn out some words, I got very little done. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, of course. Taking a break from your work, from ALL of your work, can be quite the opposite. I'm not only ready and inspired to start writing again, but excited about it.

This isn't all to say I did nothing over the course of the past week, though. When we planned to have everyone come stay, I knew I would not have hours a day to devote to writing. In fact, I assumed I wouldn't write a word. But then I decided I would not look at this as a hindrance, but as an opportunity. I was about the spend a week with a group of people who I rarely interacted with and did not see live and in-person save for once a year.

I was about to see a bunch of potential characters audition for my next book.

I pretty much keep to myself. I imagine most writers are like this. It's probably how we all got this way! Besides my husband, I don't talk with a whole lot of people. It's exhausting and anxiety inducing, and I'd rather avoid it as much as I can. Unfortunately, without interacting with people, learning how we all communicate and the differences between us, all of my characters will be the exact same person, won't they? So I decided to use my husband's family's vacation to do mini character studies of them as the week went on. They were trapped in my house, after all; they couldn't help but be observed.

I felt a bit like what I imagine a psychologist feels like. Why does he say that? What makes her feel that way? Why is this four year old so interested in pretending to be a dog? I looked at how they held silverware and wore their hair and said good morning, and I tried to put meaning behind everything. I asked them questions and listened to their stories and tried to piece together how they got to this point in their lives.

Then I found myself equating them with my existing characters. How like my brother-in-law is my character Jack (name pending, will most likely change) already? My brother-in-law (BIL) may be in his first year of college and Jack may have recently been broken of a hypnotic spell and run away, but they are both embarking on new experiences where they are on their own for the first time in their lives. They're both young, male, heterosexual, cisgendered, naive, curious, ambitious. So I began to apply some of BIL's traits to Jack, imagining how Jack would do a thing, and then being pleasantly surprised to see BIL do that thing in the same way. It was like watching Jack come to life before my eyes.

Now, I know Jack will change as his story unfolds, and he will slowly drift further and further away from BIL's character, but I feel closer to Jack now and more confident to put his actions and words into writing. I have a more solid jumping off point, and that is a wonderful feeling.

So despite that I typed up very few lines (I did get some!) over the past week, I still made progress. Of course, I wouldn't suggest forgoing your precious time with your family to psychoanalyze them, but if you're anything like me (and if you're a writer, I bet that you are), you'll probably find yourself doing the same thing.

Creating A Calendar for Your Fictional World

As I've mentioned, I'm currently working on a tradition fantasy quest story which takes place in a fictional universe. While I know a significant portion of this world's history and makeup, my mind is not an acceptable place to keep all that information, and I certainly haven't crafted every detail or every year's events, so I decided that I needed to create an official timeline to keep everything in order and to fill in any gaps. Truth be told, I've been putting it off because it's a big undertaking, but it needs to be done.

I searched online for some acceptable timeline making software, something that would allow me to set the years and place events, moving them around at my leisure and tying them to others, and it had to be free, but there was nothing that seemed to work for me for the low, low price of nothing, so I begrudgingly decided to make my own using a spreadsheet. The task seemed overwhelming to just jump in and do, so I searched for examples of others, but stumbled on something I wasn't expecting.

I needed a calendar!

I'd referred to a number of festivals already in the plot, and even used the term "week" thinking, I wonder if their week is equivalent to our week? (like I wasn't the person who was supposed to come up with that answer), but I had failed to really plot these things out over the course of this fictional world's year. So before a timeline could be made, a calendar had to be set. I wasn't disappointed about that.

Calendars can be complex things. The Gregorian calendar, which is most likely the one that you use as it's internationally the most widely used, is simple only because we use it everyday in so many aspects of our lives, so things like leap years, off-numbered months, the moving dates of Thanksgiving, Veterans Day, (here in America) etc, are not strange to us, but to imagine what a reader might feel like with a new calendar, you need only look at a non-Gregorian calendar. Most of these are not so different from ours that we can't understand them because most are based on solar and lunar phenomena and we all, of course, have the same sun and moon, so if you're creating a new calendar like I did, starting with the natural phenomena of your world is a good place.

I've read lots of warnings about making your fictional universe too funky in this regard, that much deviation from the seven day week/twelve month setup we have is too much for a reader to handle. I don't know, they seem to be able to handle all manner of created beast, and, ya know, MAGIC, but maybe a totally wonky calendar would be the tipping point. I imagine if you had a very strange, specific calendar that was a focal point to your story you could make it work--anything can work if done properly--but it would be easier for your reader if the calendar faded into the background and didn't disrupt all the other fun, new concepts you'll be throwing at them.

The Gregorian calendar is solar-based which means one can tell the position of the earth as it revolves around the sun based on the date, but I'm a fan of the lunar cycle because the moon is all mysterious and awesome and feminine, and I'm also probably a werewolf, so I set my calendar around that. Now, your world can take however the frick long you want it to revolve around its sun or multiple suns or you can have a rhombus-shaped moon with an 86.7 day cycle, but I gave my world a sun and moon almost identical to ours with a slightly shorter lunar cycle so that I could have my months all be exactly the same length with lunar phases all set on the same days each month. I'm also not an astronomer, so there's that. My calendar ended up with 13 months so it would be similar in year-length to our own, but also for their 13 gods. Each month is comprised of four seven-day weeks, totaling 364 days in a year with no need for leap years. I felt like this was enough deviation from our calendar to be unique, but not so much that it couldn't be understood with little to no explanation, especially since I don't intend to discuss the calendar during my story unless it's essential (and I doubt it will be).

One thing I wanted to keep in mind, and I would suggest for you as well, is that since the calendar affects how people tell time, it will play a major part in aging and birthdays. If you have a species of humans who have a natural lifespan similar to ours (with or without modern medical advancements), their body will age at our rate, but if their year is significantly longer or shorter, they will have fewer or more birthdays. Maybe this seems insignificant to you, and if you never give exact ages it certainly doesn't matter, but if one must be of a certain age before they take the throne or are considered marriageable age, it may come into play. In a year that has 700 days, your character who looks and acts like she is 20 years old is only fictional-world 10 years old, and that can may confuse your reader depending upon in which situations she finds herself. If you want that same character to be 20 in your world and treat fictional-world 20 in a similar way that we treat real-world 20, fine, but remember that she has the equivalent of 40 years of our life experiences, and her body may or may not have changed depending on how her race ages (hence the wisdom of old-as-balls elves). All this could be useful in non-traditionally aging races, of course. For a super-fun example check out Kes and the Ocampa species from Star Trek: Voyager. (Actually, just check out Star Trek: Voyager. All of it. It's amazing. Kirk or Picard? Please. The answer is and always will be Janeway.)

But I digress!

So since I'm a cheapskate and don't have the for realsies Microsoft Office bundle, I use Google's wonderful cloud-based programs (which is an extra safety feature for the girl who's had her hard drive crash and lost everything she ever wrote which was basically her whole life and no I don't want to talk about it). I pulled up a new Google Spreadsheet and looky there, all the days are already numbered on the lovely Y axis! Now this certainly isn't the only way to do this and is probably far from the best way, but it's what worked for me, and I'll be tweaking it as I go.

I added enough rows to the bottom of the spreadsheet (it only goes to 100 initially) as there are days in my year, giving me 364 rows. In the first column I listed the numbers 1 through 28 and copy and pasted this until I had all 13 months numbered and then went back and color coded each month, highlighting just the first 28 cells and making them red, then the next 28 orange, and so on. This allowed me to see, at a glance, the boundaries of months. In the second column I numbered the months. The name of the month will later be added here which will be based on the god that it represents. In the third column I listed the lunar phases as that is important in this world (and likely in most). I chose for the new moon (when there is technically no visible moon in the sky) to end the month. This allowed for the first quarter, full, and third quarter moons to be visible at the end of each week of the month. (This could probably be merged with the month numbers/names column, but I don't wanna do that.) I listed the seasons, dividing them pretty much equally among the 13 months, in the forth column, but placing their official start date on a moon phase as that is how this society tells time. A note here on seasons:

As I mentioned, I am using a world similar to our own, and so their seasons would be similar to our own. The country much of my work is based in is similar to the mid to southern section of North America, but if you're working with a tropical climate or a polar climate (consider adding in frequent thundersnows!) or any other, your seasons will need to obviously be adjusted, accounting for a rainy or dry season, a fire-falls-from-the-sky season, or a completely unaccounted for, immeasurable frozen season. Also, I based my climate on a six season model due to the fact that the people there are very in-tune with their environment and would recognize six distinct seasons. This gives my world pre-spring, spring, summer, high summer, autumn, and winter. Finally, I have always been weirdly sore about the fact that our year begins in the middle of winter. I know this is unique to only some parts of the world, but a new year should be all about new life and celebration and not the freezing dredges of snow. So, my calendar begins on the first day of spring. This is indicative of the people, though, so your world may view a new year in a totally different way.

Back to the spreadsheet. So, I color-coded the seasons, again so I could more easily see where I was when I scrolled the 364 rows. These colors were more season-specific, as opposed to the months which I picked at random. then the fun came--holidays! This is where your people's culture shines through. Whether based on environment, religion, history, magic, you can basically do as your world desires. I listed the holiday's name (or a name place-holder) in the fifth column and a description in the sixth. I followed some of the holidays from the modern Pagan's Wheel of the Year since they are so closely related to the seasons as my starting point.

You can easily continue to add columns for multiple races' and countries' celebrations, for celestial events, for minor holidays, character birthdays, or anything that is annual. If something doesn't necessarily happen every year, but is reoccurring (for instance, there is a set date for coronations in my world regardless of when the previous leader passes away/abdicates) it can easily be added with an asterisk. And of course some of these columns can be merged or spread out to your liking. Here's a screenshot of mine when I was in the middle of the process:

At this point I did not have any official names for months or holidays and had meager descriptions as placeholders, but you get the general idea. Again, it's not perfect, and it's not the only way, but it's what worked for me! It's very likely that I will never mention 90% of what is on this spreadsheet in the book, and most of what is here is simply background and setting, but with it finished, I've got a much clearer idea of how my world's year works, and when your story spans actively a year or more, a physical calendar can make a world of difference.

World Building

How do *you* world build?

There's nothing I love more than a fantasy world. I imagine most people would agree that a story's ability to transport you somewhere else is its greatest value. Personally, I like that somewhere else to be a place full of magic and adventure, so, naturally, I try to craft my worlds in a similar fashion.

In The Nephilim, Sophie and her cohorts exist in a modern world, much like ours, with layers of fantasy on other planes of existence. But those layers are largely based on Judeo-Christian and Zoroastrian mythologies that I've doctored a little (or a LOT) for my own purposes as opposed to creating an entirely brand new world from scratch. I suppose we never TRULY create any world from scratch--I firmly believe every thought has already been thought, that the bake an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe and so on--but there is a lesser degree of difference between the world of The Nephilim and our world than most others that I've written.  Despite that I've created their world, I don't consider it formal world building (that's probably dumb, but it's just a classification for my mind only). Of course, it's got its magic, its creatures, and most importantly its rules, but it felt a bit more natural to me. I knew how things worked on instinct. That's probably because I grew up largely without religion but surrounded by Catholics (What? How? Don't ask me, I don't know!), so I've had a vague idea my whole life that things like Heaven and Hell, angels, and some dude named Satan existed somewhere that I couldn't see, and I just wrote The Nephilim's world to be the place I came up with to process all of that incomplete information. (And then I sprinkled in vampires because, why not?)

Now I'm working on a more classic fantasy quest tale, taking place in a medieval-esque world with elemental magic, elves, knights, and all that fun stuff. I have been attracted to the genre my whole life, but always felt, I guess, "left out" of it because I was a girl, but I didn't want to be saved: I wanted to go on the adventure (more on that in a future blog post), so I took to writing my own. I've crafted a number of fantasy worlds, some purely for my imagination, some based heavily on existing ones that I tweaked for my own liking, and some I've even actually put down on paper (who would have thought?). But they all start the same way: with a character.

I don't initially build around a concept for magic, a creation myth, or a specific history, but a person. I like character-driven stories and I always felt strongly about focusing on relationships and internal struggles even before I knew what that was. A character presents herself to me through a dream, an overheard conversation, or even the face of someone at the grocery store, and I start in on her life. She gets a vague backstory to start with and then a purpose. The *thing* happens to her. I let her come alive through a scene, typing it up and putting in random details that sometime I don't even understand at that moment. At the end, I don't always use that scene or I rewrite it so completely that it's unrecognizable, and sometimes it's the beginning to my story, but that is almost always my base.

Then I take a step back. I ask myself what kind of world would she live in for these things I've just written to be true. I do a lot of social construction at this point because I like creating a world where my characters have to defy a norm to complete their objectives. Society is a good, passive antagonist, and I believe fantasy should always hold up a mirror to our world and make us stare at what we've done. I work on socio-economic classes, gender roles, and race relations, and that usually helps me form some supporting characters that either adhere to, enforce, or defy those roles. Then those characters get fleshed out in a similar way to my main character. They may not get a free-written scene, but I give them a patchy backstory, a purpose, detail their relationship with my main character, and give them a place of origin. Then I have to ask myself again: in what kind of world would these people exist?

Maybe that seems backwards? It sounds like cheating, but don't be fooled: if a character wants to do or be something, it has to fit within their world. There won't be any computer hackers in medieval Imaginaria, but if a character presents herself with the qualities of one she may be employed to, say, resolve a cryptogram. And when multiple characters start coming to life, so do the rules. And by "rules," I do not mean social expectations, but the natural laws of the world: things that cannot (for the most part) be broken or changed. Gravity. Weather. Childbirth. My rules usually first pertain to magic and its true origin. That origin may not be what some or any of the characters are taught or believe, it may never even be revealed, but it is vital to know because everything else must harmonize with it. Magic use may look like chaos, but once revealed its existence must harmonize with its genesis. Again, the characters must fit. Are you a sorcerer who can stop time? Sorry, buddy, you're actually not because no one can do that. Perhaps instead you can hypnotize others into thinking they've lost time, or your can paralyze them so that you can sneak about unnoticed, but I know the truth, mister!

From here I typically start filling in the plot of my story. My main character's purpose and goals give me a skeleton to start with, and the supporting characters make up a nervous system of meetings and partings and conflicts and love, but here I add on the muscular system of the plot. The thing that keeps the story moving. I still consider this world building because I learn a lot about my world from plotting the story. Oh, they run into mountain trolls? So, wait, mountain trolls exist here in Imaginaria? No, there aren't humanoid creatures like that here, but there are shapeshifters, so perhaps they'd be more likely to be accosted by a band of rogue stagmen. The plot also allows me to flesh out the map. Because, again, even if my character doesn't know where she is, the location of everything else in the world must be relative to her and makes sense if and when revealed.

I then go what you might call "a little crazy." This is the part where I step away from the computer on a day when I'm home alone and I cook or clean or do something that keeps my hands busy, and I talk to myself. A lot. Animatedly and loudly. Bonkers, I know, but I am most productive and imaginative when words are spewing out of my mouth and I'm hearing it back, like live-action editing. I talk through some of the ideas in the world, like how the most popular religion works, and ultimately try to explain it the way a certain character would to the main character as that's typically how my reader will learn new information. Sometimes I write this dialogue down, sometimes I don't, but it's a good way to wade through the shit ideas and get to the good ones.

At this point I have likely begun writing. I make myself a lot of notes as I go (GoogleDocs is awesome for this) so that I can remind myself that a certain place needs a name, or to ensure a magical occurrence follows the natural laws, or to give a character a name that has similar phonetic sounds to the place they're from, but since I know that ideas about my world will evolve as I write, there is no reason for me to put the story itself on hold until every detail of that known universe is carved in stone. I usually get too excited to hold back anyway, and I've actually learned a great lesson in editing by doing this: before I hated removing sections and rewriting plotlines because I would become way too attached to what was on the paper, but now I write with the expectation that things will change, and it's considerably easier to let go.

Of course, world building is exponentially more involved than all of this, but that is my basic method. So how do you world build?

I Hate the Word "Said"

Before I get going, I just want to say, this is not meant to be advice, and it's not bashing the work of others, it's just my itty bitty opinion on a single word and its usage. Okay, clear? Fabulous.

I've seen a lot of people recommend using "said" and only "said" in speech tags. No one should whisper, giggle, shout, sneer, or express their dialogue with any sort of inflection other than just saying it. "Said" is supposed to be invisible to the reader, and its solely used to let the reader know who's speaking. Of course, there are also those who insist you should never use "very," "like," or even any form of "to be." While I agree that "very" is probably the least "very" word, and metaphors usually trump similes, and most of the time I prefer specific details to the vagueness of just existing, all of these words certainly have their places. I will even use "said" on rare occasion, despite loathing its existence and the love some have for it. I don't mind "said" if the character actually just said what they said. (I'm getting nauseous.) I just don't believe in any hard and fast rules for writing, and this "said" thing exasperates me!

I don't buy that "said" is invisible. Reading anything dialogue-heavy (or even more than a couple lines on a page) with only the use of "said" becomes insanely repetitive. (Aren't you already a little sick of "said" at this point? Maybe it's the use of quotation marks that's bothering you and not "said" at all! Oh, wait a minute...) That little word that's supposed to be invisible is suddenly the most used on the page, and it starts sounding weird, like you're not sure it's actually a word anymore and you couldn't spell it if your child's life depended on it. And often you're not a complete idiot--you, as the reader, know who's doing the talking--maybe "said" is completely unnecessary!

Just hearing it once usually burns my biscuits. I'm not entirely sure why, but I almost always envision the character simply standing and reciting. It throws me out of the scene, out of the action they are taking part in, away from whatever emotion they're experiencing, and suddenly the character is fifteen, alone on a stage, sweating under a spotlight, poorly performing their first monologue from a crumpled piece of computer paper because they want to kiss the most popular boy in school. Actually, no, that's not it at all. That at least somewhat conveys anxiety.

I understand that using "said" is supposed to allow your character's words to speak for themselves. What they say is much more important than how they say it. It's showing and not telling, all of that loveliness. Perhaps I am just not that advanced, but people don't always say what they mean. In fact, I think we rarely do. And real people (and thus real characters) aren't (usually) poets. They sound stupid, use words incorrectly, are sarcastic, mean, funny, loving. It's easy to say a thing, it's harder to hide your tone, to disguise your body language, to not let your face do a weird little blurp. Your main character may not be Sherlock Holmes, but she's probably able (and so your reader is probably able) to deduce a bit of the meaning behind what those around her say by how they say it.

More preferable to speech tags, in my opinion (remember, that's all this is), is using action, so maybe this whole rant is pointless. (Maybe? By golly, of course it is!) I'd rather know that the officer slammed his fist down on the desk prior to speaking than read his dialogue and know he shouted it. But we're not always doing this, right? Sometimes we are on stage, shakily reciting Kat's poem from 10 Things I Hate About You. Sometimes we stutter, sometimes we mumble, sometimes we whisper. And sometimes, I guess, we do say. But whenever I have come across it in reading I've grumbled.

"I am not liking this very much," I said.

Do you love/hate/feel indifferent about "said?"

Self Publishing with Amazon KDP

It's a lovely, sunny Sunday here in Florida. The light is streaming in on the back patio, and I can just glimpse the edge of our bright pink hibiscus in full bloom. But I'm inside, curled up under comforters on the daybed with an anxious cat trilling at my feet. Husband has just started playing League of Legends, so I think I've lost him until dinnertime. It's pretty much the perfect setting to write my first blog post.

I thought for my first post I would talk about the ease (and, surprisingly, the fun) of self publishing with Amazon. The Nephilim: Book One has been out for a few days, and I loved every minute of getting it ready and clicking "publish." Okay, maybe "love" is a bit of an exaggeration. Trying to figure out how to put in a live table of contents almost made me cry, but looking back on myself raging at the computer it's like "awww, baby Bridge, don't be so upset--it'll all work out!"

I decided I wanted to self publish for many reasons, chief among them that I don't like to wait. I also like the idea of people writing and publishing exactly what they want to say. This, of course, means the story will be much farther from perfect than if a couple of professional editors had their eyes and red pens all over it, but maybe it's just a little bit like when you buy something handmade as opposed to mass produced? A little bit more love and sweat and blood in there? Anyway, this isn't to say I don't love me some professionally edited writing. A typo or a plot hole or confusing dialogue can ruin the greatest of stories, and I know I've been guilty of these, but my impatience and romanticized notion of indie publishing won out. And who's to say a publisher would ever want to pick up anything I'd ever written? (Don't let me fool you--that's the biggest fear right there.)

So self publishing it was, and I have not been disappointed. Amazon makes it very easy. After you've got your content, you just need to format it, preferably in Word it seems, and they've got fabulous directions on how to do that. Husband's computer has Word Starter 2010 (not the for-realsies version), but it still worked out for me. Then it was basically inputting the information onto Amazon's website (which included reading the Terms and Conditions VERY carefully) and committing to putting my work out there for all to see. Yes, I almost hyperventilated, but yes, I'd do it again.

I found, after the book was published, that there was a Teen and Young Adult category, but when choosing my own categories, it wasn't available. I emailed customer services, expecting to not hear back for a few days and to get a nonsensical answer, but in less than 12 hours I had an incredibly kind response, and they'd moved my book into the category I wanted. I was shocked and thrilled with the service for something I wasn't really even paying for. I suppose Amazon profits from the book selling, so it's in their best interests to get it put in the right place, but they'll profit so much more from a billion other things that I was surprised by their helpfulness to little old me.

If you go the KDP route, you get a couple other great perks like 70% royalties, inclusion in a sharing program, much like a library, and access to the global market (the anglophile in me got all excited to see my book listed in pounds), but my favorite thing is easily the sales tools. You can list your book for FREE for five days every 90 days. That's fabulous access to readers, especially for a no-name like myself. I've used one free day already and will use the other four over the long weekend coming up, Valentine's Day through President's Day. It's just working out perfectly. Now, if only I could get a fabulous review up there before it goes on sale again! There are plenty of other great little advantages too like real-time reports on sales and the ability to edit details on a whim if you find a mistake. You get a lovely author page as well.

Of course, marketing is essentially all up to you. Your book gets the benefit of the "readers who bought this also bought" links below other titles which can be helpful, and Amazon reserves the right to market your work at any time, so there is the possibility they might throw you up on the front page, but if that happens you're probably already selling off the charts. I've only been doing my own marketing for a few days, but it's actually kind of nice. I love Twitter largely because it feels a little like a community, and I try to find other self published authors to retweet and get the word out about their stuff as well. And I'm hoping karma will pay me back in the long run.

No matter what the outcome of all this, I'm glad I did it. Publishing, well, just FINISHING a novel has been a dream of mine for as far back as I can remember, and now I've done it. Of course, it's just the jumping off point, but I consider myself incredibly lucky to be living in a time when we can self publish with such ease. Huzzah to the indie author!