The first edition of Blue Bells of Scotland was officially retired today. Copies are still available at amazon through a couple of sellers, and signed copies through my website www.bluebellstrilogy.com. The second edition will be available in approximately a week.
Many thanks to all who are stopping by!
Creating setting puts your reader right there, and makes the story real for them. In recent years, I think setting in fiction has become less elaborately described than in previous centuries when people did not have television, and words must create their vision and entertainment. Descriptions of setting in older novels might go on for paragraphs. Today, readers are less patient with such elaborate and lengthy description, but it remains important.
Choose your words wisely, pick words that say a lot in the shortest possible space. Think about what words really convey full, vivid meanings. Give a few details. For instance, does the house in your story merely have white walls? Or are they antiseptic white, off-white or cream? Are they freshly scrubbed, has someone put hand-down motifs across the top, or do they sport a host of fingerprints at waist level? More interesting yet, does your character glance up and see large footprints on the walls two feet above her head? Honing in on even a detail or two brings an added depth to your setting, in addition to telling something about your characters.
Use all 5 senses. If at all possible, experience your setting first hand, and if not, use the internet to find pictures and research. Use forums (nanowrimo is a great one) to ask questions of people who have experienced it. Travel forums, such as Travelpod are also great tools, where people blog about their travel experiences, in addition to posting pictures.
Writing about Shawn and Allene hiking the Highlands was one thing; being there myself and recording every detail was another altogether. After being there, I knew the sights of oak trees, sunlight glinting off veins of stones lying on the bottom of a stream, lichen-covered boulders, scrubby grass, shaggy Highland cattle with huge horns, and just how dark it is at night with no street or city lights; the sounds of sheep bleating nearby and the lowing of cattle carrying up the hill from a mile away; the smells of cow dung in the fields and coffee shops and fish and chips in the village below; and the metallic taste of the water from the streams and hot coffee and bridies after a long hike.
I learned what it was like to hike through heather and moorland, with my feet sometimes sinking down farther than I expected and clumps of heather at times reaching past my knees. It was not the flat and easy walk it appeared in pictures! I gained an appreciation for just how cold 60 degrees can be at the top of a Scottish monroe with a stiff wind blowing the whole time, what it’s like to climb in medieval boots, and just how much and for how long muscles ache when not accustomed to such activity!
When creating your own settings, list the five senses–sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste–and spend some time listing as many items in each category as you can, for each scene in your story. Don’t forget to write down what emotions the setting might provoke. Research what you don’t know personally. You don’t necessarily need to use everything you list, but it will help bring the places to life in your own head, which will bring it to life on the page for your readers.
Happy writing!
The last six weeks or so have been packed with activities. In writing, I am finishing up the last of five appearances this Saturday, blogging and working on three books, to varying degrees, preparing Blue Bells of Scotland for expanded distribution in several venues and a book awards submission, and reviewing books for other authors. I’m also keeping up with my music studio and my children’s activities– the Christmas program season is on us, so there have been and are, choir and band concerts for my children, and my music students’ recital coming up! I’m really enjoying the concerts, have seen some wonderful playing, and am thrilled to have my advanced students playing some jazz arrangements of Christmas carols.
But it means I have been shamefully remiss and dropped a few things I’m juggling. So, first, my apologies to Jennifer for the delay, and second, my thanks to Jennifer for her review at her book blog, Rundpinne. Jennifer keeps a very active blog covering a variety of genres in both fiction and non-fiction. Recent reviews include cookbooks, a book on digital photography, a memoir on dealing with a child’s illness, and a novel that delves deep into two women’s decisions about pregnancies. (This is from another Minnesota author, Joy DeKok, whose website I will definitely be visiting.) Jennifer’s blog is well worth following if you love reading.
Jennnifer posted her review of my book on December 4, giving it 5 coffee cups (equivalent to stars, of course!)
Some excerpts from her review:
“The story line sounded promising and Laura Vosika does not disappoint….
A delightfully intricate tale of time travel, life lessons, challenges of faith, and redemption….
I found the story moving, witty, and captivating. This was indeed a page-turner and I look forward to finishing the trilogy. I highly recommend this novel to anyone. It makes for a fantastic read and would make an excellent gift.”
Now seems like a perfect time to add a comment on the characters to whom people are drawn, and why. Jennifer says in her blog that she is more drawn to Niall, because he actually cares what happens to people, and thinks through the effects of his own actions on others. Among the members of my writing group, Night Writers, there are those who prefer Niall– because he’s a better man, because he’s all we hope for in a man or hope our sons would grow up to be– and those who prefer Shawn.
Why would someone prefer a self-centered, drunken, gambling womanizer? One member of my group said, tongue in cheek, because he’s taking notes on Shawn’s methods! A member of the audience at Tuesday night’s talk also brought this issue up, noting how Shawn got all of the attention that night. She thinks it is partly because rogues fascinate us, as they get into all sorts of scrapes we would never dream of. They live lives that sound fun, exciting and daring, but which our own better natures and common sense prevent us from emulating. We live vicariously and safely through literature’s rogues. And partly, Robin said, we love rogues because we can look at someone like Shawn and feel better about ourselves, seeing we’re really pretty decent people after all, in comparison. I think she made a good point about human nature.
I enjoy hearing people’s views on whom they prefer and why, in part because I’m pleased to find I’m conveying exactly what I’d hoped to!
As we’re now a week into National Novel Writing Month, with over 120,000 members scribbling and typing away this year (join us, resistance is futile!– www.nanowrimo.org), an article on writing seems appropriate.
Authors are often asked how they create their characters. The answer varies from author to author, from book to book, and from character to character. Sometimes, characters just walk onstage, so to speak, fully formed, absolutely sure of who they are, and behave exactly as they please, regardless of the author’s intentions. Diana Gabaldon, author of the Outlander series, says this is how Claire Beachamp Randall came to her. She simply walked into a shack full of Scottish Jacobites and announced herself in very un-18th Century language. It is how my characters Shawn and Niall came to me. They simply are who they are, they’ve never been anything else, and I couldn’t make them be if I tried. Interestingly, this even goes for looks. I have had the experience twice now, of meeting someone who is the spitting image of the character I’ve been writing. Not that I had an exact face in mind. But somehow, sometimes, as an author, you see someone, and you just know: that’s him!
Some characters walk onstage but are a little less clear. This is how Angus, in The Minstrel Boy (Book 2 of The Blue Bells Trilogy) appeared. He walked up to Amy and gave her coffee. He has caused me no end of trouble by doing this, possibly altering the entire ending of the series from what I planned. And yet, he is rather reserved, and I’d spent quite a bit of time with him when one day he announced that he plays bagpipes. Now, why didn’t he tell me that before?
Many characters are drawn from real life, modified from combinations of people we know, or saw in passing at the store, or spent a few days getting to know on a job somewhere. I recently read a quote in Voyager, by Diana Gabaldon, to the effect of writers being cannibals: we take various parts of people we know, mix them together, and let them simmer. Very true. Ironically, the quote was spoken by one of her characters.
Then there are the characters that take actual work. You need a villain. Your main character needs a daughter. Your protagonist needs a boss. And you need to create them. There are many sites out there with ‘character interviews’ and ‘character dossiers’ of various lengths. One site I really like is www.storyright.com but there are plenty of them. These interviews cover all aspects of a character– what does he look like? Short, tall, heavy, thin, hair color and length, facial hair, neat, messy, what does he wear? What is his personality like? Outgoing, talkative, reserved, opinionated, slow to form an opinion, expressive, stoic, funny, serious? What kind of family did he come from? What is his education? When you’ve created the answers to enough of these questions, you begin to get a feel for who these people are.
You’ll know you’ve done the job well when your characters start to act for themselves and ignore the outline you’ve spent months working out to perfection. This is a good thing, really! It means they’ve become real people, to you and to your readers.
