#MusicMonday 6/18

Currently listening to:

This killer Imagine Dragons mashup.

 - Found via this killer Marvel fanvid.

"Good to You" - Colum Scott   - currently being used in an AmEx commercial, and really love it.  

"The Wolf" - Siames 

"God's Gonna Cut You Down Remix" - totally a Sons of Rome song pick

"The Man" - Ed Sheeran 

"Judas" - Lady Gaga - another SoR pick 

First Look: #DragonSlayer

A first look at Sons of Rome book three, Dragon Slayer, due out this fall. (2,555 words). 

Dragon Slayer

Copyright © 2018 by Lauren Gilley

All Rights Reserved

Val couldn’t suppress a yawn as Mother tugged his nightshirt down over his head.

She chuckled. “My sleepy little prince tonight, hm? Too much fun today?” She smoothed his shoulder-length hair down with several long, gentle passes of her hand.

“Mama, it was amazing,” he declared, going limp and flopping backward on the bed. “They were so beautiful. And the way they moved.” He lifted a hand and swept it through the air in demonstration. “Can I be an acrobat?”

“Well.” She lifted his legs and tucked them beneath the covers, pulled the blankets up to his chin. “You’re already a prince, and I think that’s pretty special, don’t you?”

He made a face.

The Questionable Morality

The Questionable Morality

I think it's no secret by this point that I like to poke fun at what I call the "morality police" critics of my writing; the ones who think that my characters ought to typify what they personally deem as "good" and "correct" behavior and ideologies. Those critics are SOL. But I did receive a comment on my Maggie post - "thank goodness morality has no place in your writing" - that left me wanting to clarify some points about fiction in general, and my writing in particular. 

Firstly, I'm glad said reader wholeheartedly agrees with my approach! But I would like to say that I don't believe morality "has no place." Rather, I strive not to put my morality off onto fictional characters who are nothing like me, and who are not fictional representations of the way I interact with the world. Because my books are about the characters in them - they are not about me, they are not about my readers, and they are not about pushing a particular moral viewpoint off onto others. I would argue that all of my characters, even the truly dark ones, have their own morality codes. It's cliché, but "a man's got to have a code," you know? But those characters' codes don't necessarily align with my own, or those of my readers. 

I've talked at length before about my belief that fiction should serve as a window rather than a mirror, so I won't go into it again here. Suffice to say I don't feel like it's my place to present a character to the audience, and then use my narrative voice to try to convince anyone that this character is "right," and therefore morally superior to anyone else in the book. Or superior to anyone sitting at home who just wanted to read an exciting book and escape for a little while. 

I've been reading Mary Renault, and I love the way her historical fiction presents us with the reality of the age without judging it by modern-day standards. Anne Rice did the same thing with her Vampire Chronicles: here is the age, here are the people living  in it, here are their flaws, their faults, and the internal reasoning for their actions. Both authors ask you to love and enjoy the stories of their characters, but - and this is important - they never ask you the reader to excuse, justify, or approve of anything they've done. 

Enjoying a book about a problematic character does not mean you approve of the problematic behavior. 

It does not mean you forgive whatever vile things he or she has done. 

A perfect example of this is the love fans (including me) have for Loki in the MCU. I've had it said to me that, "I can't like him. Why do you like him? He's a bad guy! He did bad things!" I think, in general, Loki fans are not apologists who try to rationalize his morality, trivialize the horrible things he's done, or make excuses. We know he's killed people. We know he's let emotion get the best of him. (We want he and Thor to just have a brotherly hug that doesn't involve stabbing!) Rather, he is a character for which we have empathy, who is fascinating, who is, despite some tough odds, endearing and sympathetic. And we know that loving his character doesn't mean that we approve of his (sometimes) villainous behavior. 

Because...

Enjoying a problematic character does not mean you approve of the problematic behavior. 

I also believe that the redemption journey of a problematic character can be one of the most inspiring to read and watch; that seeing a character's shifting moral foundations is truly epic to behold. I personally enjoy writing the backstories for those characters; peeling back the layers and explaining the whys of them to the audience. It's an exercise in psychology, one that I think, ultimately, can help us better understand the world around us, and the people around us. 

Long story short: authors like to play in fictional toy chests. For me, the challenge of making a problematic character loveable (and boy do I have my hands full with Vlad in Dragon Slayer) is one of the most rewarding and thrilling. I'll probably never stop getting those pesky one-star reviews from people who think that my books are some kind of expression of the fact that I personally endorse murder, abuse, or think that people like Mercy have the moral high ground. Those critics may not like or agree with my characters, but that doesn't make them any less realistic. And if you're like me, and you enjoy your problematic characters, don't let others shame you and ruin the enjoyment for you. They're seriously not worth your time. 

Deep Character Development: Show Don’t Tell

Deep Character Development: Show Don’t Tell

We’ve all heard that little pearl of wisdom, haven’t we? And in theory, we understand that it’s the author’s job to reveal a character’s thoughts and feelings through dialogue and action as opposed to exposition…but rarely do I find a more practical explanation of how to do that. So in the interest of deep character development, I’m going to tell you about my experiences with one character in particular in the hopes that it will shed some light on the tired old “show don’t tell” conversation.

Nikita Baskin

Nikita is a character from my Sons of Rome series, first introduced in White Wolf, and a character of whom I’m immensely proud. He’s the product of years of writing, and six years, specifically, of published writing.

He started, as all my characters do, with a baseline identity that I then added to and built into something three dimensional. To start, I knew that Nikita was three things: Russian, a member of the secret police, and also, secretly, a White (one of those Russians loyal to the deposed and then murdered tsar). These three main identifiers were the foundation of my research; I needed to understand what it meant to be Russian, what it meant to be a Chekist, and what it meant to be a White, and then fuse this information into a character profile. Because he was a White, I knew that he hated his Communist masters, and the government in general. And because it was 1942, and he was gainfully employed as a Chekist, he was going to have to play the long game, and do a lot of things that turned his stomach in order to get by. He was Russian, after all, and a survivor. An ace at playing the long game. When we first meet Nikita, he’s a man living a double life, and struggling beneath the weight of that mantle. He’s someone who feels deeply, and pretends not to, who burdens himself with guilt after guilt after guilt.

Once I know a character, then it’s time to decide how to reveal them piece by piece to the audience so that they can come to know them too. For me, the goal is to be explicit with details, but subtle with the meaning delivered by them. So with Nikita:

·         His failure to eat isn’t forgetfulness. Between anxiety, low blood sugar, and the weight of a guilty conscience, he tends to skip meals intentionally. He beats himself up, figuratively, and one of the ways he does this is to deny himself the things he wants or even needs. (And oh boy is that going to be an ongoing conversation that comes to a head in book four, featuring a certain wolf)

·         His coldness is a way to distance himself from others. He’s lost people, and he hates it, so he resolves not to get emotionally attached…an effort which always fails spectacularly.

·         Being a White isn’t, for him at least, so much a political leaning as it is a way for him to justify the things he’s done. Does he truly support the Romanov family? Yes. But more than that, his secret identity provides an excuse for the terrible things he’s done in the name of the Kremlin. He can justify the evil if he thinks that he’s waiting to make his move and turn the tide. And he can tell himself that when he does make that move, it will be to topple a government that will be made better by a return of a tsar. This is part of the reason it hurts him so badly to meet Alexei and find out he’s kind of…a little shit.

All of these things are revealed through the course of the book, one event, and one revelation at a time. Showing the audience his heart and mind in this way creates a portrait of a man that is more human being than archetype, and that for me is always the ultimate goal.

Deep Character Analysis Contd.: Lit Analysis

Literary Analysis

So there’s this gap. It’s a gap that exists between wanting to do something and actually being able to do it with any kind of authority. It’s a gap that exists at the outset of every artistic/athletic/professional journey, and it’s a gap that we must bridge with a combination of knowledge and experience. I was once a little girl who wrote a terribly-spelled “book” about Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, and a thirty-year-old who just released her twenty-second violent adult novel. In between those very different stages came a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. A lot of hard work, a lot of studying, a lot of failures, and a few quiet victories.

What I’m getting at is this: we all start somewhere. We are all students of the craft in our own ways, and there is no right path. But I do believe that – structured or informal – literary analysis is an important part of becoming a stronger fiction writer.  

I was lucky enough to have the chance to study literature in high school, and in college, but that is by no means a requirement. Because, truth told, I’ve learned more from self-directed study at home than I did in school. Do you have to study literature formally in school? No. Do you have to study in some way? I believe yes. And it’s not as intimidating as it sounds.

If you’ve ever engaged in a conversation about a book you enjoyed, you were performing your own literary analysis. The most important trait of a successful writer is the ability to create an emotional connection between your characters and the readers. Being able to break down and understand the literature that did that for you is an important step in the learning process.

*Fair warning, before we go farther, with the exception of my first books, the Walker Series, I tend to write about characters who would be deemed “problematic” for the morality police of the book world. So the following example is about craft and character, not about morality. Morality has no place in my writing, thank you!*

Let’s take a closer look at an example with my character Mercy (since he’s arguably the most popular of the bunch).

I’ve talked at length in the past about the fact that Mercy was heavily inspired by Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights, and is my modern day, outlaw biker take on the Byronic Hero. If you wanted to write a character like Mercy, then my recommendation would be to go read Bronte’s novel, and then, for clarification, check out some literary criticisms of it. Because superficially, those two don’t have much in common. Mercy is, after all, a Cajun biker with a seedy past who likes to hit people with sledgehammers and then goes home to read Tolstoy in bed with his old lady. But, like Heathcliff, Mercy is temperamental, passionate, violent, and deeply, almost childishly vulnerable. He’s obsessive. He loves with a singular focus that would, rightly so, frighten most women. He’s the kind of guy who is, let’s face it, darkly romantic on paper, but rather terrifying in real life.

The reason readers love – or even hate – Mercy is because he’s a complete person, flaws and all, and though simple on the surface, becomes slippery when you try to pin him down in a formal book review. But why? It’s because Mercy is a character designed to draw strong reactions out of readers, and he usually succeeds. Despite initial impressions, readers don’t actually love him because he’s tall and has long dark hair; nor do the haters hate him because he kills with relish. No, Mercy is the kind of character who preys on a reader’s desires and fears without, haha, mercy. Indiscriminately.

Okay, let’s break it down.

When I design a character, I start with the deep questions first. Who is this person at heart? What are they afraid of? What do they want most? What do they lack in their lives? In the early stages, I decide things like family history, shortcomings, religion (even if it’s never touched on in the book), phobias, and guilty pleasures. The answers to those questions, just like when we ask them of real people in our real lives, are rarely simple. Early character design is like a psychological evaluation.

For me, Mercy was always fascinating because of the stark dichotomy within his nature. He’s very mature, and also very immature. He’s incredibly cold, and incredibly tender. These could be traits of any number of fascinating fictional characters. The mature/immature dichotomy shows up often in characters who were forced to grow up too quickly, or without exposure to peers, and so have had an unusual emotional development. You see the cold/tender combination quite often in BDSM fiction, in which the urge to punish is then overwhelmed by the need to comfort.

It's the dichotomy that makes Mercy interesting. The books, the sledgehammer; being sweet to Tango and then torturing Ava’s ex for intel…all of that is window dressing. Those are the symptoms, if you will, that allow us to see deeper into his psyche to unearth the traits that lie at the core of him.

His physical size is a superficial strength – it’s his unfailing loyalty that is a true character strength.

As a writer, it’s your job to know the core of your character, and reveal it slowly through increasingly-in-depth scenes that reveal the superficial first, and then peel back the layers as you go.

As a reader, you have to work backward, starting with what you can see, and then digging deeper and deeper.

So, your homework: pick a favorite fictional character and try to break them down to their base parts. See what you can come up with. It isn’t a tagline or a particular nervous tic that makes them loveable – it’s who he or she is. Learning how to “diagnose” characters, if you will, will be a huge help in creating your own characters.

Writing 2200: Deep Characterization

Now that we’re in the 2000 level “courses,” so to speak, it’s time to work on refining our craft. This next portion of the seminar is all about characterization.

I posted about characterization a few weeks ago – a standalone post that covered a lot of territory. Over the next few weeks, we’re going to take a deeper look at characterization, and also go more slowly. Posts will be spread out in smaller chunks – this is partly for you, but mostly for me since my writing workload is crazy right now!

First off, let’s talk about Inspiration and Originality; chiefly, how to figure out what inspires you, why it inspires you, and how to study literature in a way that enables you to use that inspiration to come up with your own original characters and plots.

Inspiration and Originality

There’s a phrase that I like to use: “Every story has already been told, and Shakespeare told them all better than the rest of us.” Yes, I do love Shakespeare – serious Shakespeare, and dick-joke Shakespeare – but the real point is: I don’t think there’s any such thing as a “new” story anymore. Fiction is rooted in fact. Human fact. Stories are about people struggling, people triumphing, people falling in love, and people doing unspeakable thing. Most writers are working off a Classic literary canon, and we’re all trying to tell our own stories amidst other stories that might sound like ours. There will be inevitable similarities. There will be homages and tributes; there will be rewrites, retellings, and reimaginings. There’s every chance that someone on the other side of the world is right now writing a story eerily similar to yours, and neither of you know it. And then there are pop culture icons that are modern versions of beloved Classics…the original fanfiction, don’t you know. The best thing any writer can do is read widely, work hard, and focus on your own story.

I want to take a brief moment, since I fussed about it on my IG story this weekend, to acknowledge that sometimes…it’s not a coincidence. There are predatory writers out there. The ones who think publishing books is a great way to get rich quick. Who scan the market, see what’s selling, and pick authors to outright copy from. These people are not paying homage to a favorite author, nor lovingly referencing the Classics. These people are outright stealing; sometimes it’s a simple matter of using another author’s ideas – anything from plot lines, to archetypes – to literal copy/pasting and name-swapping on entire scenes. Like I said: predatory. Malicious.

We’re not going to waste another second on that sort of thing.

Then there’s benign copying. It’s unconscious. It’s not malicious, and we’ve all done it. It’s how we learn how to write. It’s how we go from attempting our first stories to finding our own literary voices. When we start out, we mimic the styles of writers we revere, and eventually, we start to understand the ins and outs of execution, and can accomplish the same thing using our own unique characters, cast in our own unique story.

Though I do believe there is such a thing as a natural propensity for writing, no one starts out with his or her own confident, original style. That comes through lots of reading, lots of practice, and lots of hard work and dedication. We begin to learn our strengths and how to use them, and the more we read and study literature, the more we understand what really makes a character lovable, and a book readable.

In the next few posts, we’ll take an in-depth look at the characters we love, and why we love them, and hopefully you can pick up some ideas for your own work. I’ll walk you through some of my own early, embarrassing writing attempts, and share what I’ve learned along the way.

DVD Commentary - #RedRooster

Some "DVD Commentary" author notes on a Friday! This is the sort of stuff I always like to read, so I like to write it too, when I can and when I remember.

These notes are from one of my favorites scenes in Red Rooster. I've been researching Vlad for a year-and-a-half now, so by the time I finally got to actually bring him to life on the page - I was nervous, and put a lot of pressure on myself. This was one of those scenes that proved to me that doing a ton of research is key to finding your footing in moments like these. 

This is the Vlad readers will expect from casual mentions in documentaries, and over-the-top film depictions. The emotionless, unfeeling tyrant who drank the blood of babies.

Or is it?

I like to say that Vlad is the Middle Ages embodiment of "Look What You Made Me Do." He's got a list of names, and they're all in red, underlined. His father was betrayed, he himself was captured as a political hostage; his father and brother were murdered. Terrible things happened to his little brother. The Vlad who took the mantle of prince in Wallachia had an ax to grind, both with foreign enemies and traitorous nobles at home. Will I ever excuse his actions? No. But his motto was, more or less: "My name is Vlad Tepes, you killed by father, prepare to die...by impalement." 

With the highlighted line above, he's - as will became clear after later books - mocking not only Nikita, but himself as well. Because Vlad was the very definition of "no chill." He wasn't rampaging-ly violent, but, rather, cold, cunning, and committed to grudges. Machiavellian in the extreme, he nevertheless managed to nurse personal hurts and carry out revenge in a way that would later be painted as "senseless" by some historians. 

He was eventually betrayed by friends. So, again referring to the highlighted line, he doesn't see much value in friendship. Or...is it more a case of him feeling deeply, deeply hurt to know that his friends didn't value their friendship? 

Themes I look forward to exploring in depth when I get to finally write from inside his head.

The poem "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats has always been a personal favorite and provides modern readers with some context for the idea that things are "the worst they've ever been." In the poem, we see reflected the idea that WWI marked the coming of the apocalypse for many. The Great War, or even simply THE War for many, seemed like the darkest days of human existence. An end to all things, insurmountable. 

A sentiment that can be found all through history, at every major, devastating battle.

In the highlighted passage, we're seeing growth for Nikita. Born in the shadow of WWI, conscripted by the Bolsheviks to fight for a cause that he loathes, asked to do unspeakable things, and then thrown into the midst of the Great Patriotic War, Nikita has a hopeless outlook through most of White Wolf. Here, seventy-five years later and now immortal, we see that he's realized there will always be a new disaster. Once a fighter, a tsar's man, he's now a fatalist, and he doesn't want any part in anyone's war. He'll battle if he has to, for the people he loves, but he's nobody's solider anymore.

That's what he thinks. 

Vlad would argue that if you're not a soldier, you're a victim.

It'll be fun to explore those contrasting (?) viewpoints as the series keeps progressing.

Oh, Alexei. I loved this exchange for nerd reasons - holy cow, I got to write Alexei Romanov and Vlad Tepes having a conversation! - and also because there's such a stark contrast between the two "princes." 

Alexei was the only son of Nicholas and Alexandra, and therefore the de-facto heir. Vlad was not only a second son, but a second son in an age and a territory in which simple genetics weren't a guarantee of power. It was common for sons to ascend after fathers...but it was also common for leaders to be deposed, challenged, or forced to fight for their seats against bitter rivals. Prior to the collapse of the empire, Alexei had no such challenges. 

Also, poor Alexei was sickly, and lived a largely indoor life. He was only a boy when the family was murdered; pair his youth with his disease, and he had very limited physical experience. 

Contrast that with Vlad who was brought up a proper knight, both in his native Romania and during his time with the Ottomans. Swordsman, horseman, warrior, tactician - there were so "summer dachas and sailor suits" for Vlad. 

(Also worth a chuckle was the real-life fact that Nicholas started a war based on the recommendation of the real-life Monsieur Philippe after the old man predicted victory during a séance. So...let's not talk about diplomacy, Alexei. Though his father was far more diplomatic that certain previous tsars.)

So...there you have it. My long-winded breakdown of one of my favorite scenes, and the thoughts that went into shaping it. Hope you enjoyed. Maybe this also shed some light on the reasons why it takes me so long to write a book 😊