Word-Whores Tuesday: Contemporary References in SFF

Image Credit: Lee Moyer

Today, I'm over on the SFF group blog Word-Whores, talking about adding modern-day references to bands, brands, places, and more in your novel.

Hint: I also explain why it's awesome to write second-world high fantasy.


Image Credit: Lee Moyer

When the Kaiyaiing Beast Takes Over Your Writing

Lately, I've been inundated with stories told in First Person, particularly in Urban Fantasy (UF) and Romance novels. When an author chooses that voice and that point of view (POV) to tell their tale, that author has committed to an extraordinarily difficult task. There are the obvious reasons:

1. Being fully within the character's head/Becoming the narrator -- Princess doesn't talk about her "junk" and Butch never considers fuchsia a fabulous color
2. Revealing tidbits as the character learns about them -- Unless Barfy has x-ray vision, he's not going to know about the bogeyman lurking behind the door
3. Seeing settings and behaviors through the character's eyes -- Snuggles can't see the malevolent storm rolling from the north if she's under the bed

Obvious, right? Limiting what the reader knows is the best reason to write from First Person. Rational people don't wander into a house with a bomb ticking, but if Max has to put the Haagen Dazs in the freezer before the other sniffy-snouts abscond with it, a time bomb isn't even on his radar...neither is the were-bear charging toward his window.

The death trap of First Person writing is when the prose sound like a beast with its tail caught in the door.

I stalked the werebeast, my blade held high. I moved when it moved. I peed when it peed. I was almost done when it squatted lower. I couldn't do that. There was poison ivy at my feet.

Can you hear it? "I...I...I...I"  Yes, it makes you want to run from it while your ears bleed or dash in and save it while your eyes bleed. Either way, the reader is no longer focused on the story but on salvation. In fairness to the authors, kaiyaiing is a second revision edit. Remember:

First draft = story spewed pages. Second draft = clean up on aisle seven.

Some readers will chuck a book if it's written in First Person. I'm not one of them unless someone is attempting it in romance. I have yet to read a He-Loves-Me He-Loves-Me-Not (published or hoping to be) written in First Person that made me feel the love and the passion. That genre lends itself to the titillation of third person, possibly because there should be a "her" POV and a "him" POV. If it's all "I, I, I," the reader suffers a crisis of gender and sexual preference with a little dash of androgyny. Intriguing character complication in some genres, but not suitable for mainstream romance.

For those intrepid writers who love the First Person, please, be kind to your Betas and save them from the kaiyaiing beasts.

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So Close to Perfection...If I was a Hydra

I just finished reading a steampunk paranormal romance that was so close to being brilliant. The plot, the prose, the pacing, the dialogue, the world building, all of it was spectacular.

The problem? Head Hopping.

Flagrant, willy-nilly, no discernible pattern, head-hopping kept me from becoming one with the pages. I couldn't get lost in the tale because I was lost in who thought what about whom. Worse? Random characters stole paragraphs to spout their POV. Some of those characters weren't secondary characters, some were third or fourth (disposable) characters. At one point, five characters dickered on one page.

Why? Why? Why?  

::sob:: 

A little more effort and this author would have been promoted to illustrious "pre-order hardback" status.

But, KAK, to properly convey all of the nuances of the scene, multiple Points of View (POV) were required.
Malarkey. That is lazy writing. If the first draft is a big puked up pile of POVs, fine. The point of a first draft is get the story written. Second draft summons the POV police. One POV per scene. Protags are allowed to have a POV and sometimes the antag. More than that and the author does a bibbety-bobbety-boo on the beloved reader, changing a voracious bibliophile into an irritated hydra. You mock? Only something with nine heads can keep up with characterus-interruptus-whosiesaidwhatists.

Pfft. There are lots of published authors who change POV with each paragraph. If they do it so can I.
Somewhat true. There are well known hydra fangirls who publish multiple books and series in different genres. Their forums are robust with dedicated readers who name children after characters and get inked based on cover art. Do you know how they attracted that fan base? Their worlds, their characters, and their plots were so strong that the combination compensated for laborious back-tracking and guessing. Imagine their success had they combined the trio of assets with strong story-telling.

Writing is an art. Rise to the level of artist or sink into the clutches of the hydra.

What do you know? You're not a best seller or an editor.
Fine. Don't take my word for it, take theirs:
Writer's Digest's Jane Friedman & Guest Blogger Jim Adam "Point of View: Stories Are About People"

Remember: Hydras eat things. They don't buy things...like, say, your next book.