Technical Topics -- Setting

Whether our story takes place in the trackless jungle, on the third moon of Jupiter, or aboard a fishing boat off Haiti, it's always there. Setting. The, 'where the devil are we?'

Setting gives the characters something to stand on. It keeps everybody from floating around in a formless white void.

Good setting is the polar opposite of that void. It has physical dimensions the characters can waltz around in. It's full of color, smell, sound and texture. It has a certain underlying reality, which is why it helps to know something about the place you're describing.

Good setting changes while we're looking at it and it changes one scene to the next. We go inside, if we've just spent time outdoors. Quiet after frenetic. Safe after danger. Bright after dark. Crowded after solitude. Shiny and mechanical after pastel and pastoral.

Good setting is a stuffed-full-of-possibility place that's interesting even after your characters walk off the set. A pair of boots left by the door says somebody will go out to milk the cows in a bit. A cleaning rag, stuffed hastily in a pocket, tells us the woman who answers the door has been dusting. The bicycle leaning outside a shop says someone has stopped in to buy milk. Good scene ties us to the wider fictive world. It holds the loose ends of of unrelated stories. It has a before and after that continue when the scene is done.

All this drama, color, and contrast keeps the reader from nodding off in the middle of Chapter Six, which is one of those writerly goals we have.

For the rest of this posting, go to 'The Other Side of the Story,:  Here. 

Giving Away Black Hawk (What I'm doing here . . .)

This is soooo overtaken by events.  Just read right on through.

Welsh Law and 'The Comrades'

We're here today with Lynne Sears Williams, well known to all of us over at the Books and Writers Forum.



JB:  Hi Lynne.  Glad you're able to be here today.  Your book, The Comrades, is set in Wales in the Ninth Century.  I understand you did a lot of research into Welsh law in that period, especially law relating to women Can you give us a quick overview of what was gong on in European law?

LSW: Many countries in the 9th Century had codified law to some extent.  The Anglo-Saxons in England had a lock on the feudal system, and decided the inheritance of a deceased man went to the eldest son. No money or property passed into the hands of a daughter; illegitimate children were ignored.

Wales took a different view, which focused on people in terms of status. Essentially, it was a caste system with a Celtic flare.

JB:  Give me some examples of how Welsh law dealt with the status of women.  Marriage law, for instance.

LSW:  Marriages were usually made for dynastic reasons, to form alliances and women never married a person of higher status. When codified in the 10th Century, "The Laws of Women" took up considerable space in the book.

The daughter of a king was worth 24 pieces of gold and brought a dowry that might include livestock, pots, pans, or jewelry.

JB:  What about divorce?

LSW: Divorce was permitted, though the Church, fostered by Irish priests, deplored it.

One factor could initiate the process. If a groom discovered on the wedding night that his wife was not a maiden, he could leave, with a certain weapon fully erect. Once he located witnesses to show his 'disappointment' they all had to go check the bridal sheets. No blood, no bride, no marriage. Divorce was instantaneous.

There were many categories for divorce; if one person changed his or her mind the next day, if a partner turned out to be infertile or wait seven years and divide everything.

A song in our century once asked, "What's love got to do with it?" The answer in Wales: "Nothing!"

JB:  Can you give us something of the flavor of the law in Wales in the Ninth Century?  What are some specifics that would feel odd to us today?

LSW:  Law prescribed everything possible. The seating arrangement in the Great Hall included specific people who would sit with the King, including the priest. He would sing the Pater Noster before meals. The falconer and the bard had places of honor.

The law stated that if the queen desired to hear more music, the bard would play quietly, just for her.

'Claim-time' occurred once a year when people who'd been arguing needed to settle the affair or have the king step in. The only capital offence was theft; in a land where controlled order was needed, to steal was anathema.

JB:  So you could say law dealt mainly with property.

LSW:  Every man, woman and child had a specific 'price' that would be considered by the King if a person was harmed. 'Honor price' entered the stage and could never be ignored. 

Land law, surety, how to treat a person not born in Wales were logistically calculated as were dogs, tamed or wild.  Then to the truly different: all of the king's possessions had a specific price, including his cat, who was worth a sheep and a lamb if killed or stolen.

Curiouser and curiouser, Alice might say.

Not in 9th Century Wales, my dear. Go on and chase your rabbit; we are busy looking for the King's Cat. It's missing.
Again.

JB: Heh heh.  Tell me a little bit about your book.


LSW:  In The Comrades, Evan, king of Powys, returns from a wedding to find a village ransacked, with women and children dead. Neighboring Gwynedd has broken the peace, crossing the mountain to pillage and murder. The dead babes tear his heart, and Evan vows to break the heart of Gwynedd.

Gwynedd's most guarded treasure is a pampered princess. In a bloody raid, Evan's comrades return to Powys with Gwynedd's heart.

Evan knows holding the princess will be dangerous and her safe-keeping may mean the difference between the lasting peace he desires and a bloody war. He's prepared for her to be kept safe but unprepared for the girl's intelligence, compassion and damnably kissable mouth.

"Evan took in the vision of a scarlet gown, which barely disguised the shapely form and a river of black curls that caressed to girl's waist.  Oh, Lord. He wished he had ordered sackcloth."

Morleyna's secret gift of Sight reveals a cruel betrayal that sends Evan on a mystical journey where he discovers his only chance for redemption rests in the hands of his captive.

Her brothers will arrive to claim their sapphire-eyed sister. Will her kinsmen, bent on revenge, destroy Evan and his comrades? Or will destruction come from Morleyna who may be the reincarnation of someone whose beauty captivated a nation?

JB:  Lynne's book is available from Amazon and as an e-book kindle, Nook, and iTunes.  And here's the lovely book trailer.

Hands. Just because.

I have a scene in the back of my mind that I really want to sit down and write.  I will, as soon as I get some mental space.

I'm about to introduce the character of Pax -- Camille and Pax -- to each other.  I want Camille to notice Pax's hands.  So I'm thinking about hands in general.  You are about to reap some of that.

Some gems and some heroines

Jess, Maggie, Annique and Justine. 
Four heroines.
Four gems.

Which gem goes with which heroine?

Can you match 'em up?

Find out over at The Romance Dish, and get a chance at a copy of The Black Hawk.

Diamond and pearl are Smithsonian.  Ruby attrib JOBAfunky. Amber attrib ericskiff. 

Giving Away Black Hawk. (Where I'm doing this . . .)

I've bumped the giveaway post up a bit, just so it stays on top.  I'll do this as long as I'm blogging around the town and giving away books.

Technical Topic -- You're Out of Order

Someone asks, more or less,

"When it comes to publishing a series, can I start somewhere in the middle and fill in the blanks as I go?"


Well, of course you can.
People do weirder things than that every day of the week.

You can start anywhere in the timeline and slip the next book in before or after, as you please.  This is what I do.
I'm headed into planning the sixth book, the PAX STORY, and it'll hit about midway through the series, timewise. 

If I were giving advice, I'd say:


-- Every story should be standalone.

This doesn't just mean each story has a full story arc and that you've shovelled in the needed backstory.

It means your twelve-year-old minor character doesn't telegraph what he's going to be at twenty.

You suppress foreknowledge.  Even though you know a character will die six years after the close of the book, you don't write her as 'doomed'.   In this book, she's not.

And you try not to pull characters in from other books just to say hello.  Continuing characters appear if they earn a place in the plot.  If not, they wander off to live their lives outside the book.


Certainly, leave Easter Eggs for your insiders.  That's part of the fun. But these references have to be invisible to the novice reader.








--  Be stingy with backstory

Well, one is always stingy with backstory. 

But in a discontinuous series it's especially wise to avoid handing out all the particulars of, 'what has gone before'.  You may want to write something cool ten years in the past.  Something that hasn't occurred to you yet.

Give yourself room to maneuver.  The more you've tacked down the past, the more you limit what you can do there. 


-- Every book is trapped in its own moment of time.

We deal with this all the time when writing historicals.

We know the French Revolution turned out badly. Folks in 1789 didn't. They had high hopes.  When we write what characters thought and did, we can't let our knowledge of future events creep in.



-- Imagine the entire lifetime of the characters.

When you write your fifty-year-old man, try to image him as a twenty-year-old and a twelve-year-old.  You may someday need him in that capacity.  You want to make him a useful character, doing interesting things at all ages of his life.

I find it easier to imagine forward than to imagine back, as it were.  Easier to see the old man who grows from the young dude than pulling the young dude out of that old man.




-- Leave big empty patches in everybody's life.

When we write chronologically, we're free to build any future.  ("Always in motion is the Future.")  We are so powerful and unconstrained. 

When we set a story in our fictional world's 'what has been', the action must be consistent with and lead to what comes later. Our feet are all tangled up.

Some of it we can avoid somewhat.
I mentioned above that we don't get specific with backstory.  Being vague about our character's past is particularly important.   We try not to just randomly predetermine our character's life left, right, and center.

So we might be specific about stuff that won't affect anybody's action but coy when we assign life events that do constrain.  We'd say, 'he was promoted to lieutenant in 1809,' rather than 'he fought at the battle of Corunna'.  That way we don't sit down to write a scene set in Paris in 1809 and suddenly notice, (by way of those charts we're keeping -- see below,) that somebody we need is off fighting in Spain.

And we leave some years in the chronology just as empty as we can.  We don't say what anybody's doing.  Those years are vacant lots where we can build something.


And, finally:

-- Keep records

From the first chapter you set down in electrons, make notes.  Make charts, year by year and even month by month over the whole period covered by your books.

What's going on in the world?  Where is everybody?  What have they got themselves up to?

If you don't write this down, you are not only going to get stuff wrong and feel like an idiot, when somebody points it out to you,
you're going to get cross-eyed with looking things up when you have three or four books out.