Writers in the Storm

Catherine Spangler

Hello all! I’m thrilled and honored to be included in the Writers in the Storm Blog community. Since I write science fiction romance and urban fantasy romance, I thought we could discuss creating alternate worlds and world building, and the elements needed for “other-worldly” romances.

Building an Alternate World

There are a number of other-world scenarios:

1) A complete other world, not set on Earth. This could be science fiction, fantasy, dystopian, futuristic, basically any type of story. These stories would occur on other planets, in other galaxies, and so forth. A good example would be my science fiction romance books, the Shielder series. Also, Catherine Asaro’s Skolian Empire series and Linnea Sinclair’s SF romances are in settings other than Earth, as are many other SF and futuristic books.

2) A hidden world within our actual world. Many stories about witches, vampires, shape-shifters, faeries, etc., take place as secret societies on Earth that most humans don’t know exist. My urban fantasy romances, the Sentinel series, are an example. J.R. Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood books and J.R. Rain’s Samantha Moon books are two more examples.

3) Other-world societies coexisting on Earth with human societies. Nalini Singh’s Guild Hunter series, where the angels rule the humans; Kim Harrison’s books, where the supernaturals live apart from the humans; and the Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris, are good examples.

4) Stories set on Earth, but with scenarios that are not normal for our world as we know it. This could be time travel, or traveling between Earth and other planets, set in the future, or apocalyptic. Such stories could be classified as paranormal, science fiction, futuristic, dystopian, and more.

In creating your world, you can basically do whatever you want, but there are some requirements.

1) You need to create the rules and parameters of your world: Planet specifications (if applicable), types of people and creatures, their physical characteristics, their powers (and how those powers or any magic works), languages, society mores (how the characters mate, how they survive, how they deal with criminals, etc.), technology, weaponry, and many more details.

2) Most importantly, once you create your world, you must be completely consistent throughout your story. You should follow every rule you have established. If you need to deviate from that for any reason, then you should have a very plausible explanation.

I faced this challenge while writing the fifth Shielder book, Shadow Fires. The hero was a Leor, and the Leors were a fierce and savage race. The heroine, a Shielder, agreed to marry the hero, as part of a deal to save two Shielder colonies. Since I had introduced the Leors in previous books and established their culture, I was bound by those parameters, and found myself writing about situations that were unsettling and certainly wouldn’t be my reading preference. Yet I had to be true to the world and the story. Shadow Fires was the hardest book I’ve ever written. It also received a RITA nomination! I believe that was in part because the story was real and honest, based on the world I had created.

You have to be consistent in your world.

Two reference books that I have used and recommend are oldies but goodies:

• How to write SF & Fantasy by Scott Orson Card
• World-Building (A writer’s guide to constructing star systems and life-supporting planets) by Stephen L. Gillett

There are many more good books out there that can be helpful for world building.

Writing Your Paranormal, Science Fiction, or Fantasy Romance

While there can be substantial differences in your worlds and societies from normal settings on Earth, the rules for the actual story are the same as they are for all stories. Good writing is good writing is good writing.

No matter what the world, your story should have the following elements:

1) Strong, believable characters. Your main characters should each have goals, motivations, and conflicts that drive both the characters and the story. They need to be fully fleshed-out characters with whom the reader can identify, for good or bad. Debra Dixon’s book, GMC: Goal, Motivation & Conflict (The Building Blocks of Good Fiction) is one of the gold standards for GMC.

2) You need a strong, believable, and logical plot to drive the story. Contrivances have no place here. Going back to GMC above, find ways to motivate the events that happen in the story. Make them a natural outgrowth of your characters’ motivations and actions, or those of your societies. You can write almost anything if you motivate it properly, and the reader will go right along with you.

3) Emotion. You must engage the reader and make him or her care about the characters and what happens to them. Since we’re discussing romance, and most romances are character-driven, if you’re writing romance, the relationship(s) should be front and center in the story. Even in plot-driven stories, it’s essential that the reader relates to the characters and cares about the outcome.

4) Employ what I call “Quad D”: Details, Description, Dialogue, and Development (story and characters). There will be more about this in my weekly writing tips (see below).

To sum it up:

Build your world and populate it with your characters, stick like glue to the rules of your world, and then write your story like every other well-written story, no matter the setting or the time period or the world. Good story telling transcends all genres.

Thanks for having me on the blog!

Do you enjoy world building, or find it challenging? Do you think world building differs between genres or remains pretty much the same? Any questions you'd like to ask Catherine?

About Catherine

Catherine Spangler is a national bestselling and award winning author of the Sentinel series (urban fantasy romance) and the Shielder series (science fiction romance). She is a two-time Golden Heart finalist and a RITA finalist and has received numerous other awards and honorable mentions.

She is an active member of Romance Writers of America and her local chapter, Dallas Area Romance Authors. A frequent speaker at writers’ groups and conferences, she has taught workshops on the creative process, writing techniques, writing paranormal romance, and goal setting.

Catherine lives in north Texas with her husband and a menagerie of critters. She loves reading, taking naps on the sofa with a good football game for background noise, eating chocolate, and playing poker.

Don't miss Catherine's newly released book Shamara, the third book in her Shielder series. She posts a weekly writing tip each Tuesday, so please visit her at her website, Twitter or Facebook.

Over the last couple of months I’ve noticed something disturbing on Facebook—lots of my writer friends have been attending writing retreats. Why disturbing? Because I haven’t been able to go to any (cue violins).

I read once that a writing retreat is to creativity, what a good nights sleep is to physical well-being.

With the way my last few months have rumbled down the speedway of life, I haven’t been getting much writing done, or sleeping for that matter. Going away for a retreat was out of the question. But I had a week of kiddo-at-camp coming up.

A little creativity, a lot of flexibility and, voila, I had a personal writing retreat. Here’s how:

1) Redefine your expectations for a retreat

Mine started as this …

Redefined to this …

Time and finances dictate what’s doable. If you can get away to that first picture (or whatever retreat location floats your creative boat), please take me with you.  ;-)

Time and finances dictated a different scenario for me. And that was okay. I chose to write on my front porch with the blooming Jasmine plant and dragonfly chimes. When the weather didn’t cooperate, I moved to the sunroom with the water fountain, blooming orchids, and the paintings I’d brought back from Bermuda.

If you can write with distractions, try a coffee shop or a park. Maybe the pool if you want that “vacationy” feel (and assuming it’s summer, probably not as inspirational in the dead of winter). If you need quiet, try the library.

My WIP revolves around horses, so one of the days I took my notebook and went to the stable.

2) Commit to yourself

I had limited time for my “retreat.” Camp was from 8-4 so whatever I was going to do, had to fit within that time. First thing I did was canceled all appointments for that week, except for a pedicure (that was part of the retreat plan but more on that later).

Whatever time you have, make sure it’s yours. This isn’t the time to have your teeth cleaned or get the oil changed in your car (unless your manuscript calls for an oil change in a scene and then you can chalk it off to a creative-inspiration writing spot). Your time!

3) Set your goals

Write down what you want to accomplish within the time you have. Be realistic and specific. Don’t set yourself up for overload. You shouldn’t need a vacation to recover from your retreat.

I’m not known for being realistic in my goals. Specific very much so, but I always think I can get more done with the time I have. This part tested how flexible I was willing to be.

For each day of my retreat week, I wrote down the hours I had. Then made my list and prioritized. I ended with the following: write 6k in my WIP, read one craft magazine, catch up on blog posts, sign up for a kid lit one-day conference, finish the novel I’ve been reading.

And there was one more thing on the priority list: relax. Crazy concept, right? See how I managed to justify to myself the time for a pedi? Relaxing and doing “nothing” are valid goals. After all, sometimes the best thoughts come when we’re not trying to force them. So I read the novel and relaxed. Oh, and came up with a fix for a plot problem that had been torturing me for a couple of weeks.

4) Be prepared

Make sure you have what you need handy before you set off for your writing destination, even if it’s only another part of the house. Don’t spend your precious writing time running up and down stairs, although if exercising is a goal, I suppose that could count.

• Laptop charged, especially if you’ll be outside without access to an outlet
• Charger if you’ll have access to an outlet
• Any instructional or inspirational material you reach for on a regular basis
• Music or noise canceling headphones
• Pens, highlighters, sticky notes, notepad, etc.
• Gummy bears or whatever munchies get you through the creative hiccups

5) Unplug

I see some of you twitching!

Remember what we said at the beginning—this is your time to dedicate to your writing. Unless one of your goals is social media, you can survive for a few hours without internet. Trust me!

Close your browser and turn off email notifications. Put the phone away or at least turn it to stun so you don’t have the constant pinging of texts and emails. Between the kiddo rock climbing and family concerns, I had to keep my phone near by. I turned off text and email notifications though. And I didn’t answer any calls that weren’t family related.

Since I hadn’t put social media as one of the priorities, I only gave myself an hour each day. An hour AFTER I finished writing.

Guess what? After the first hour on Monday fighting the must-check-email twitch, I was fine. Not one twitch the rest of the week.

Confession time: I did open a browser a couple of times but only to look something up for the WIP. I totally resisted checking in with Facebook and Twitter. Honest!

After my retreat week, I had almost 8k of shiny new words—my goal was 6k. Score! I’d read one craft magazine the entire way through. Oh yeah! I signed up for that one-day retreat and even sent in my picture book manuscript for a critique. Rocking the retreat. I read a handful of blog posts that had been open in my browser for dare-I-confess a couple of months although not nearly all that I’d hoped. And I made it to the ¾ mark in the novel I was reading. Still progress.

The top priority got done plus some. Best of all, I did indeed feel renewed energy for writing. I reconnected with my WIP and the blog posts gave me some overdue “craft” inspiration.

"A writing retreat is to creativity, what a good night's sleep is to physical well-being." Very true. Now if I could just figure out how to master the good night's sleep.

Your turn … any retreat DIYers? What tips do you have for making a Stay-retreat successful?

About Orly

After years of pushing the creativity boundary in corporate communications, Orly decided it was time for a new challenge. Three women’s fiction manuscripts later (plus a handful of picture books), it’s safe to say she’s found her creative outlet.  When she’s not talking to her imaginary friends, she’s reading or at least trying to ignore everyone around her long enough to finish “just one more paragraph.” Orly is the founding president of the Women’s Fiction Writers Association.

You can find her on Twitter at @OrlyKonigLopez or on her website, www.orlykoniglopez.com.

 

 

Last week, I saw an infographic in GalleyCat titled, J.R.R. Tolkien’s 10 Tips for Writers, and was so inspired. What if he'd never written his books? What if there had been no Hobbits and no Gandalf, no Legolas or Frodo? The world of story would be an entirely different place.

Our stories matter. They really do.

10 Tips from the “Master of Middle Earth”:

1. Vanity is useless.
Truly, Tokien wrote his books to please himself and answer the writer inside him. He expected them to go “into the waste-paper basket” after they left his desk, not live on in popular culture. I'm not saying we don't need to learn good story craft however, if you entertain yourself, at least you know one person that enjoyed the hell out of your book.

2. Keep writing, even through adversity.
It took the man SEVEN years to write The Hobbit. He balanced a demanding day job, illness, and worry for his son who was away in the Royal Navy. I'm reminded of Laura Drake, her brick wall, and her 400+ rejections.

3. Listen to critics you trust.
When his editor said, “Make it better,” he didn't throw the advice away. He read and re-read, and he tried his best.

He credits listening to knowledgeable feedback, and working to make it better, for what he considered the best scene in the Lord of the Rings: “the confrontation between Gandalf and his rival wizard, Saruman, in the ravaged city of Isengard.” Oh, and the editor he listened to? C.S. Lewis, the creator of the Chronicles of Narnia.

4. Let your interests drive your writing.
Tolkien's original interest was in languages. He took that and created new languages, and then an entire culture, around it. Our own contributor, Kathryn Craft, was a dancer, choreographer, and dance critic. She tapped all that experience to write The Art of Falling, exploring themes of love, dance, friendship, and distorted body image. that passion and truth will resonate with readers.

5. Poetry can lead to great prose.
When he could not express his thoughts in the prose he wished for, he wrote much of it in verse. Authors as diverse as Charlotte Brontë and Langston Hughes started in poetry before moving to longer mediums. Next time you get stuck, you might try Tolkien's trick of writing your scene as a poem first.

6. Happy accidents.
No matter how much you plan, happy accidents occur on the pages of every book. Jennifer Crusie calls it “the girls in the basement,” saying they hand her up treasures as she writes. Others might call it “the muse.”

One more kick in the pants from our own Laura Drake:  If you don’t put your butt in the chair and do the work, you won’t have any “happy accidents.”

7. Dreams give us inspiration.
All of us have dreams so strong, they push us to the page. But what about literal dreams? Angela Ackerman at Writers Helping Writers did a great post called How to Mine Your Dreams for Story Gold.

When Tolkien dreamed of drowning, he channeled the experience into motifs and prose for his stories. His "letters" describe how that drowning dream morphed into the drowning feeling of Mordor’s invasion of Middle Earth and the drowning of Isengard.

8. Real people make great characters.
Tolkien drew on real people to populate Middle Earth. You can draw on people you know for your stories as well. Real people do amazing things, both big and small, and rarely do they recognize themselves on the page. It’s a win-win for authors.

9. You may be the next bestselling author.
Tolkien did not expect the acclaim he received from his first book, The Hobbit. He felt like it was a happy accident. Here are fourteen bestselling books that were repeatedly rejected by publishers. You won't know until you send it out. Perhaps your cross-dressing unicorn superheroes will be the next phenomenon. (Yes, I made that up.)

10. Books you write may seem trite.
We can’t see our own work. A scene we find melodramatic, the reader might find moving. Tolkien believed that if you learn some craft and pour your heart and imagination onto the page that the work will resonate. I believe that too.

What tip would you love to pass on to other writers? It can be one you received from someone else, or a philosophy of your own. Let's inspire each other down in the comments!

 

Note: Here's a link to Tolkien's work in its entirety. The aforementioned infographic summarized material from a wonderful post by Roger Colby at Writing Is Hard Work, outlining his research on writing advice shared by the Lord of the Rings author in the book, “The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien.”

About Jenny

By day, Jenny provides training and social media marketing for an accounting firm. By night she writes humor, memoir, women’s fiction and short stories. After 15 years as a corporate software trainer, she’s delighted to sit down while she works.

When she’s not at her personal blog, More Cowbell, Jenny can be found on Twitter at JennyHansenCA or at Writers In The Storm. Jenny also writes the Risky Baby Business posts at More Cowbell, a series that focuses on babies, new parents and high-risk pregnancy.

photo credit: kugel via photopin cc