Author Archives: Ace Jordyn

Serendipity really is a weird mistress. I mean, I’d been wondering for months what I could do to take my writing to the next level. I’ve edited an anthology, I’ve published and yet I found myself feeling absolutely stuck. A mentor was what I wanted – someone to show me how I could improve. But where are they? All the really good writers I know are writing and publishing with little time to spare. My critique groups (I love every writer in them) felt predictable. Plus, I couldn’t afford to go on an expensive training session. So where could I get the injection of awareness and learning to improve my craft?

When Serendipity cast her hand, I was elated for my help came in three ways:

Psychotherapy for writers and their characters
Based on his latest book Writing the 21^st Century Fiction: High Impact Techniques for Exceptional Storytelling, Donald Maass’s one day workshop focused on making writing deeper, more meaningful, more palpable and more energized. It was psychotherapy for the writer and story characters. Here are two examples of the exercises he had us do. If you answer them honestly, then it creates an opportunity to take your writing to the next level because the core of who you are becomes the core of your characters and that’s what readers find interesting.

Example #1 What can’t I say in my story (what is it I fear writing about)? When does my protagonist fear the very thing I’m not saying? When does my protagonist become me?

Example #2 What makes me blissfully happy? How is it different for me than for anybody else? When in my story will the protagonist experience the same bliss?

Example #3 What feeling was new to me in the last year? When in the story will my protagonist experience this same new feeling? What happens that stirs this new feeling?

An awesome revision checklist
My imagination is boundless – I have five first draft novels on my desk waiting for revision. Yet the very idea mortified me – if I’m writing at a certain level, how do I know what to look for? How do I make my story better? When I attended Nina Munteanu’s one hour presentation on revision at the When Words Collide Conference the pieces to the puzzle fell together and now revising is totally fun!

I was elated to discover that I had many of the skills and resources I needed to revise. What I lacked was structure for the task. Revising, I learned, is a ten step process. The second step, Dig Deep, is the most exciting for it gives permission to restructure and change things to make the story better. For example, I had been toying with changing the gender of a main character but was unsure. Then, Nina said it was okay. Bingo! When I did it, I discovered that I hadn’t made the original character as strong and unique as I thought – there were trite mannerisms and stereotypical reactions I had subconsciously written. Why should a female wail and a male not? Or did I want either of them wailing? Was that the reaction I wanted? Of course not! Out with the stereotypes, in with more concrete characters and writing. It’s given me a whole new perspective as I examine all my characters.

The other helpful thing about the book is that Nina has a good succinct information on things important to telling a good story such as an overview of the hero’s journey, using the metaphor, getting sensual, the Zen of passionate writing and more. Simply and succinctly written, The Fiction Writer: Get Published, Write Now is an excellent resource which has helped me get my writing to the next level. Simply written (I don’t have the patience for long dissertations), it makes its points quickly on essential things such as the hero’s journey, using the metaphor, getting sensual, the Zen of passionate writing and more. Nina will be our guest next week, so be sure to join us then.

Learning from each other
Many writer friends, including some in my critique groups, also attended sessions, took workshops or did cool things like attend Odyssey for six weeks. Now, we have some truly interesting discussions, brainstorming sessions and meaningful critiques. I learned that the mentors I sought weren’t some magical gurus from best seller lists (although I wouldn’t turn one of those down!). They’re local writers who continue to learn and grow. Because we each pick up on different things, we can see issues in each other’s writing that the writer cannot. The importance of having a learning, supportive group becomes evident when you read a novel’s acknowledgement page. Great mid-list and best seller authors credit numerous people for everything from technical information to proof reading and editorial advice. We all need a community to help us get to the next level.

So yeah, taking my writing to the next level was as simple as 1,2,3: psychotherapy, a revision checklist, and having a community of good supportive writers who have the same aspirations. Serendipity provided me the tools I needed to grow as a writer – I just needed to take advantage of them when they presented themselves. I’m really glad I did.

Happy writing!

Ratatouille – A Recipe for Success

July 29, 2013

Ace Jordyn

Ace Jordyn Craft & Skills Reviews No Comments

If you’re going to name a food, you should give it a name that sounds delicious. Ratatouille doesn’t sound delicious. It sounds like “rat” and “patootie”. Rat patootie. Which does not sound delicious. (Linguine talking to Chef Skinner)

Aye, that’s the secret of success for the movie Ratatouille. Something ordinary, something that doesn’t sound delicious is made special, quintessential in fact, through its treatment. This ordinary dish, with extraordinary treatment saves the day for our heroes. And it is this simple story, with its simple theme and simple circumstance, with attention to detail and character which makes an ordinary tale an extraordinary one.

Dear, sweet, innocent Remy is an ordinary rat with an extraordinary dream and a talent that only he believes in. As many writers and artists know, there’s a little Remy in all of us for coming of age isn’t just about teenagers – it’s about all who struggle to follow their hearts when no one else sees, let alone believes in the dream. This is the life lesson in Ratatouille and it is one which has been told countless times in books and movies but never as poignantly or memorably. Released in 2007, Pixar’s eighth film it grossed $623M, won an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and garnered other honours.

What makes this movie it so appealing? It is its ability to take the ordinary and make it extraordinary. It does this in terms of craft and emotional appeal. It’s a simple coming of age story told well with setbacks, physically dangerous moments (shotguns, sewer rapids, poison), emotional highs and lows and quintessential characters who aren’t overdone. Take the “bad guy’ Chef Skinner. He’s not an evil monster, just someone who has perverted Chef Gusteau’s dream for his own dreams of wealth. Emotionally, Remy’s passion to cook is something we can all relate to on a very basic level (we all like to eat) unlike fanciful dreams of having super strength, special powers or conquering evil demons. We all aspire to live our simple dreams, to have our talents grow so we can live them fully.

We are told that what seems extraordinary really is ordinary and the dream is within everyone’s reach. This happens when Colette tells Linguine, the garbage boy turned Chef with Remy’s help, that “People think haute cuisine is snooty. So chef must also be snooty. But not so.” She then gives Linguine the sordid bios of everyone cooking in the kitchen.

The movie also gives the option for settling – subverting the dream to do what others find acceptable. When his keen sense of smell saves his father from eating poisoned food, his talent is used sniff-check all food for poison before the pack eats it. Remy is now destined to suppress his desire to become a chef and to do work that benefits the pack. But settling isn’t an option when passions are followed and that’s when break out moments happen and that’s when Pixar plays to our deepest fears of rejection.

Unable to still his passion, Remy finds a piece of cheese and tries to cook it but he’s struck by lightning. Now, he needs some saffron and he knows it’s in the old woman’s house. While there, we learn that he reads and watches TV, something that rats don’t do. When the old woman she sees him, she grabs her shotgun and in the ensuing melee shoots down the roof, revealing the rat colony. In the ensuing escape, Remy is separated from his family. This is the ultimate break out point – alone, separated from his family emotionally and physically by his passion. Yet, this isn’t the only break out moment. The others happen when Remy and later when Linguine risk everything when they reveal themselves and share their secrets. Remy makes himself known in Chef Gusteau’s kitchen and is nearly drowned for it. Linguine reveals that he isn’t a chef, Remy the rat is and he loses his staff. Linguine and Remy reveal themselves to the food critic at the risk of losing all.

And though these trials and tribulations, the recipe for success is given for life and for the artist. When Colette is teaching Linguine about working in the kitchen, she tells him the golden rule: It was Chef Gusteau’s job to have something unexpected in every dish but it is their job to follow the recipe. That is the lesson every writer is told – learn the rules, master them and then only break them when you know what you’re doing and why. Incompetent Linguine can barely follow a recipe and is destined for disaster when Chef Skinner has Linguine cook Chef Gusteau’s worst dish ever. But it’s his mentor, Remy, who has studied food forever, who saves the day by breaking Colette’s golden rule.

Ratatouille is a beautiful movie that appeals to people of all ages, all walks of life and to everyone with a desire to follow a dream. It is a movie where the glamorous is made ordinary (French haute cuisine) and the ordinary is made glamorous (ratatouille, an ordinary stew becomes a signature dish) as the downtrodden (rat and orphan garbage boy) succeed. And it does this with grace, humour and wit without skirting the consequences of the journey.

When we make the ordinary extraordinary we indeed are masters of our craft.

Tools for Creating Your Own Mythology

June 20, 2013

Ace Jordyn

Ace Jordyn Craft & Skills Fantasy Ideas & Plotting Setting and Milieu Storyline World-building No Comments

In yesterday’s post we asked if it was possible to create mythology and why, as writers, we need to. In this post, I’ll talk about some of the tools I use to build mythology.

The truth is that our rational minds want to and need to rationalize what we cannot control. We need to make sense of the paradoxes and the unexplainable. It doesn’t need to be far out – it can be based on pagan principles (survivalist on Maslow’s hierarchy*), technological environment (Robert J Sawyer’s trilogy, Wake, Watch, and Wonder in which hte world wide web wakes up. Although doesn’t tackle the question of myth creation directly, it makes a good case for a developing a myth based in technology). In a world of proto-people, vampires, werewolves, zombies, revenants and the rest, how do your characters view their own origins and existence? How do the humans view them? Are these proto-people like mythological figures to the humans?

The starting point is to look at the geography, the world that your characters inhabit. Is it a harsh environment like the polar ice cap, low gravity of mars, void like the moon, rich and abundant like Tolkein’s Middle Earth, or is it an urban setting on modern? Whether it’s an alien on/from another planet, ancient peoples, futuristic people on space ships, a post apocalyptic world (in Hunger Games they lived with the mythology, the “gods’ who determined whether they were chosen to die) you need to know your environment and then determine how your characters will respond to it.

So, what challenges will your protagonist face based on where she lives? How does her environment affect her and those around her? Most importantly, how does she make sense of what is happening around her? In my current work, a fantasy with historical overtures, the ancient civilization lives on a volcanic island. Rules, conduct, religious practices are all based on keeping the God of Thundering Mountain happy so he doesn’t erupt. When He rumbles, then the Magic Master is in trouble. Throw in the Earth Mother and her goddesses who have been upset since the God of Thundering Mountain arrived. Now the world is rife with possibilities. Of course, we don’t get to see the God and Goddesses interact, we know the tension exists between them through the interactions of the High Priestess who serves the goddesses and the Magic Master who serves the god. Throw in some commerce-based political drama, a murder and a foreign kidnapping and all actions in this new mythological background are bound to blow up – literally and figuratively … especially when we learn that the God wants to be incarnate so he can walk the world and rule it.

So you can see how this mythology developed from the environment. First, by determining the geography, the time period and the level of technology. Then there’s the interpretation of that world by its inhabitants which then determines how people act and react. But let’s talk about technology for a moment. In the time period I’m working in, 2000 BC on Crete, archaeologists discovered that the Minoans had developed some basic, actually very sophisticated, astronomy.

The cool thing is that the constellation we know as Orion’s Belt, was known to them as the Double Headed Axe. That’s all we know about it – not even why they saw it that way. Isn’t that the most exciting piece of information a writer can have? I mean, it’s the perfect symbol in the book! When it pops up, all sorts of things are going to happen! And, I’ve even mentioned that for one character, the double axe looks like it’s slung on a belt. That modern reference draws the astute reader further into the mythology because there is now a ring of truth, a familiarity to it. So even basic technology and information can tell us a lot about how people interpreted their world and how they would have reacted. Most importantly, it can help us create that mythology with a deeper meaning rooted in basic survival.

The thing to watch for is not to assume that the current value systems we hold, religious, political, economic and law enforcement systems we adhere to are the same for the characters in your book. If they are, that makes for safe, dull writing unless you’re writing a great emotional drama in that specific environment. The purpose of writing is to entertain, to challenge readers with new thoughts and perspectives. Readers want to understand and experience the world you are delivering. Even if it is set in modern day, they want to read about those who rightly or wrongly challenged the status quo, became the hero, went on an epic journey mentally and physically. And the easiest way, to my mind, is to do that by developing a new mythology for that makes it a fun and safe way to deal with paradoxes.

I’ll share one more tidbit with you. On Minoan Crete, they had tholos tombs where bodies were put to rot before the bones were placed in pithos jars. Cool, eh! So the basic questions are, why? What did this mean? How does it relate to their world view and what’s happening? My answer was that the Earth Mother, who helped give them life needed to feast on the flesh of her children to welcome them back into her womb and her world. The bones remained so people would remember their connection to their ancestors and the Earth Mother. What’s your interpretation? Go, delve into the world you’re creating. Look closely through the eyes of your characters and let them tell you how they see it. You never know what great mythology lies in that first inkling of an idea!

*for more information on Maslow’s check out my post: http://www.fictorians.com/2011/10/17/valuing-your-characters-or-maslow-for-writers/

***

Just a small reminder to not forget about Monique Bucheger’s Book Bomb today! You can now get 30 ebooks by participating, 19 free and 11 at $.99. Go to Moniquebucheger.blogspot.com for full details.

Creating Your Own Mythology

June 19, 2013

Ace Jordyn

Ace Jordyn Craft & Skills Fantasy Ideas & Plotting Outlines Setting and Milieu Storyline World-building Writing Tools 3 Comments

Creating your own mythology – how cool! And loads of fun! We write in an era where readers embrace modern and new myth. When Bram Stoker penned Dracula, he took an obscure legend, gave it its own rules and a new mythology was born. Today, we understand the social action and values for vampires, werewolves and zombies. This is newly created mythology has been embraced by generations of readers. In Tolkien’s books, the fantasy world received a new mythology Middle Earth and that lore, that mythology, is still embraced by people today.

There are those who argue that because myth is defined as being of the distant past, that it has its own cultural criteria and that it requires organic growth in a culture, that it can’t be instantly created. Humbug! Myth is a way for people to reconcile the paradoxes of life – the things that don’t make sense to us. How was life created? How do the gods and people interact? What are the rules for interaction? Apply it to everyday life and we can call it religion. Apply it to books and we call it world building.

And perhaps that is the difference – scholars will argue that because what writers create isn’t part of the everyday, ordinary belief systems for people, then it isn’t legitimate myth. But who draws that line? Who determines when an idea crosses that line? And does it matter? Is it any less compelling? I think not. We no longer believe in the Greek Pantheon of gods yet they’re as popular as ever in literature like in Rick Riordon’s Percy Jackson and the Olympian’s series. Do we have to believe in those specific gods for the mythology to be relevant, to explain creation, our relationship with the world, our struggle with life’s paradoxes and our need to have legitimate heroes to inspire us? Not at all. When we delve into other people’s belief systems, we challenge and enrich our own. We discover new ways to escape and to solve problems.

Mythology creates rules. How do heroes, people and proto-people (vampires, werewolves and the like) behave? What kills them (silver bullets, kryptonite or a stake through the heart)? Who are the gods, and what are their rules? How did creation happen and what happens after death? Why are their problems? Can man solve them or is he powerless?

We’ve established that not only can we create new mythology we must do it to explain the rules of the new worlds we’ve created. And many myths born of ancient legends and modern science are being created and believed by people (no judgements here). This is the mythology of ancient aliens coming to earth for their own purposes and seeding mankind (biologically and technologically). It is all a way to rationalize, to understand our history, what makes us human and to explain the anomalies and paradoxes of who we are and where we’ve come from.

And where will the next new mythology arise? The future. Outer space, I think. With the newly emerged and proven theories of space and time and the universe expanding faster and faster (not more slowly as some would believe) to end up in a black hole that swallows it entirely – like how do we explain that? Mythology, that’s how. A futuristic mythology born of predicted apocalyptic events. How cool would that be?

In creating the mythology for my books, I look closely at the world I’ve built along with the premise of the story. Mythology is about explaining how things came to be. Why they are the way they are. Why people believe as they do. It’s answering these questions that makes a world unique and believable. In one series, I asked what makes this one item so valuable? Why is it such a threat? How did it get where it is? What happens now that it’s been loosed upon the world? What do people believe about the item and their power to change destiny?

In the historically-based fantasy series I’m currently working on, the creation and afterlife myths mythology are crucial to how this world acts. The problem is, there is very little information about societal beliefs for the time period I’ve chosen to write about and I’ve been scouring academic journals for months. And that, for a writer, is perfect! From minute tidbits of factual information on tools, trade and astronomy, I’ve got just enough information to ground the story in history yet enough leeway to create a whole new mythology as to why things were done the way they were. This has forced me to really see the world through my characters’ eyes and in doing so, their actions and reactions have a genuine truth. And in doing that, the story has become so real, so alive and so fascinating!

You can take more modern or current historical events such as the decay of an empire, an evil despot trying to conquer the world, invading armies, geological tragedies, interpersonal tragedies, whatever you wish – take these larger events and change the details of the experience. Create a new world, a new way of looking at things, a new mythology which your characters use to explain their circumstances, their world, why the scourge seeps through the country – use all that to create and influence your hero, your proto-humans and your society. Or, take one of the ten basic creation myths, put you own spin on it and ask yourself, how would this influence a given society? Again, Rick Riordon did this in his series when he brought the Greek gods to America. Neil Gammon has his own unique spin on mythological figures come to the Americas in American Gods.

So go for it! Create new worlds with ground breaking, mind bending mythologies. There’ll always be a flick of our modern realities and value systems in them, how can there not be? Besides, those bits of our world in them is what will make the issues, the dilemmas and the challenges ring true for the reader. Mix, mash and have fun with it.

In tomorrow’s post I’ll talk about how I create new mythology for my worlds.

Happy mythology building!