Getting Visited by the Bad Review Fairy and Other Tales of Self-Doubt by Arielle K Harris

Getting Visited by the Bad Review Fairy and Other Tales of Self-Doubt 

Arielle K Harris

I recently received the worst review I have ever gotten in my, admittedly short, published writing career. And when I say it was a bad review, oh holy moly was it a bad review. In the first paragraph alone (of which there were several) this individual writes: “A sadly colossal mess of a novel […] Seriously, I can't find something to praise here as hard as I'm trying to!” They helpfully list every facet of my book which leads them to this judgement, from my novel’s very premise, to my writing skill, to even including what they felt I should have done to make it a half-decent story.

I didn’t want this to affect me as strongly as it did, because clearly people have their own opinions which shouldn’t matter. But they do matter. I know that there are worse things in the world than a bad review, and quite frankly in the last couple of days I have experienced a tragedy which struck close to home, so I get it. It’s just words on a screen. 

But words are important. You and I both know this, or else we wouldn’t be here.

It bears mentioning that I’m not seeking sympathy, or fishing for more positive reviews by writing about this. Quite frankly I almost decided against writing about this situation at all for fear of seeming petty, but I realized that every one of us who has writing and publishing as our goal will be inevitably visited by the bad review fairy. We need to talk about it, because it affects us all.

So having realized that, I then began to wonder about the authors who I idolize and could only dream of becoming. How many of them get ripped to shreds in anonymous reviews?

All of them, clearly.

I took to Amazon to find 1-star reviews of some of my favorite books by some of my favorite authors. It makes both amusing and dreadful reading, but ultimately I feel it helps to know that we are all among good company.

Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens

“Kindle Customer” writes:

The "book" made no sense. Just random snippets of unrelated subject matter. Suggests the possibility of the use of recreational drugs. Complete waste of time.

Ursula Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea

“JB” says:

Very slow, dull, predictable, and wholly uninteresting. At no point does anything that happens come as even the slightest surprise. The battle sequences are very slow moving and would not interest anyone. It is a small book but it still took me over 3 weeks to drudge my way through this garbage. Afterwords (sic) I used it to start my fireplace, a task I am not sure its (sic) even worthy of.

Patrick Rothfuss’ The Name of the Wind

This user decided to title his review: “Gary Sue wrote an autobiography and called it porn.”

I would use this as a form of torture or punishment. Doing chores or taking a nap is more interesting than the struggle of getting through a single chapter. […] This is just the life story of the arrogant long sided douche bag that catches you at the coffee shop each morning, and because everyone else likes him, you have to pretend to enjoy it too. But this book for people who have no taste, identity, or you flat out hate. They will love it, and you will seem like a really chill dude.

Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonflight

“Elmyr” informs us:

I wasn't able to get to the second chapter, because her writing-style was too stilted, and didn't have any flow to it. It was like she wrote down a basic idea, then went to a thesaurus to pepper the passages with adjectives.

David Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks

Someone whose username includes the information that they are a writer themselves tells us:

This author had more imagination than ability. This book plodded along for more than 600 pages. You never quite grasp what is going on until the very end. The only reason I finished reading itbwas (sic) I kept waiting to read the good part Stephen King read. Easily the worst book I read in the last year. Waste of paper.

So there it is.

We all suck in someone’s eyes. I guess the trick is to either accept that this will always be the case, or to simply refrain from reading reviews of your own work at all. Honestly the latter tactic is my usual one, because I know my thin skin and easily obsessive 3am-litany-of-all-my-faults nature when it comes to these kinds of things. For this reason I didn’t actually see this review until months had passed, but the sting remained new and fresh.

So what do you do when someone tells you that you don’t know how to write? Well, you write. But it’s not them you’re trying to convince, it’s you.

There’s some aspect of our brains which is unnaturally quick at believing the worst in ourselves. We will wave aside every compliment we’re ever given as “oh, they’re just being polite” but even the slightest hint of criticism has us instantly convinced. Do we want to believe we’re terrible? Or is it just easier to accept that we might be awful rather than perform the mental gymnastics required to allow ourselves to believe we’re pretty damned awesome?

There are certainly those who have no problem accepting their fabulousness. They are fabulous, and they deserve to know it. I’m happy for them. But for whatever reason it seems that the majority of creative types are not this kind of person. Our path to creativity was perhaps driven by traumatic life experiences, a history of over-thinking and self-doubt, and various dark, angsty thoughts. Many of us were shunned by the social norm and pushed to the fringes, and often literally told throughout our formative years how wrong we were for simply existing.

Is it any wonder how easily we believe criticism as adults?

Our minds are wrong, but we can’t escape them. It’s even harder when mental illness preys on our thoughts, helping to drive these ideas into our minds like nails through flesh. The fight against these dark forces is one of the hardest things we can put ourselves through.

I lost a friend two days ago who lost that battle.

Please listen to me, anyone who needs to hear it: don’t listen to the bad reviews, don’t even read them if you struggle to separate another’s words with your own feeling of worth. Most importantly, don’t listen to yourself when you fall into the cycle of self-recrimination. It’s hardest of all to ignore those little voices, but they’re wrong.

You are fucking fabulous.

Arielle can be found online at her own website: www.ariellekharris.com as well as on Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/ariellekharris/ and her published work can be found on Amazon here:https://www.amazon.com/author/ariellekharris

If you would like to write a thinly veiled promo for your own work guest blog for Writing About Writing we would love to have an excuse to take a day off a wonderful diaspora of voices. Take a look at our guest post guidelines, and drop me a line at chris.brecheen@gmail.com.

Writing About Not Writing (And Ukuleles) by Arielle K Harris

Writing About Not Writing (And Ukuleles) 
Arielle K Harris

I am a writer who has written things. Among them, I self-published a novel retelling Beauty and the Beast, titled Bestial, in September of 2016, and then shortly after released a very silly short story called The Adventurous Time Adventures of Doctor When: A Steampunk Time Drama in Eight Acts – which has inexplicably remained in the top 100 on Amazon for its genre for the two years since its publication. I have written guest posts here before, including a series on story fundamentals in early 2017.

But then something happened around the summer of 2017: I stopped writing.

I could blame the fact that at that time I needed to get a job, and the one I was qualified for is a field which is emotionally and physically draining, requires long hours and late nights, and can be utterly heartbreaking. I could blame the fact that I now had to do a lot more juggling in order to be a single mother with these responsibilities, and that I just needed a little damned break. I could blame so many things, and at times I do exactly that in order to give myself a free pass, but ultimately it was no outer influence that stopped me writing. It was just me.

Something happens when you let hard-won habits slip – inaction becomes addictive. The longer you let it go the harder it gets to pick it back up, each day of your lapsed discipline feeling like a weight you must lift in order to start again. You want so much to do it, to make beautiful things that have extraordinary meaning, but it’s so very heavy by now and so difficult just to try. Your fear of failure becomes practically insurmountable.

For almost a year I let this feeling overwhelm me. I would try half-heartedly to write something short-form like a poem or song lyrics from time to time, but never attempted another novel. This summer, however, I realized that it was coming up on two years since I published Bestial, and that at the time of its release I had told myself I would try to write a new novel every year. So I did something drastic.

I bought a ukulele.

“What the hell does a ukulele have to do with novel-writing?” I hear you cry out in bewilderment and perhaps a little bit of concern for my mental well-being. “Are you becoming some kind of rabid hipster?”

No, my dear readers, I was not succumbing to a lifestyle of mason jars and flannel and beard-appreciation. I was merely looking for inspiration.

My creativity has often been tied to music, I have sung in bands at university and I have written songs since I was an angst-ridden teenager. I needed a kick in my creative ass, and a shiny beautiful instrument with which I could be challenged was the perfect kick.

So I started writing songs, spending my evenings attempting new and unusual finger contortions when I used to sit in a stupor watching bad television. I wrote lyrics that spoke to me. I made beauty again.

And then, because it still wasn’t enough, I joined a MeetUp group for writers. It was a special kind of writers’ group because there was no emphasis on sharing your work or having workshops of any sort. I sought it out for this very reason as I’m the kind of writer who needs to write in solitude and I can’t think of a worse kind of hell than doing writing workshops. Sorry, fellow writers who enjoy those, it’s just not my jam.

On a random Thursday night, we met at a downtown Boston steakhouse, drank cocktails, and talked shop. I found myself feeling oddly like I belonged in ways I hardly ever do in a social setting. And when we talked about our respective works of writing I shared mine and felt validated. I was a writer; I had written, and even published. I then found myself later explaining my methods, and told them about the discipline I used to have and the schedule I used to keep. How rigorous I was about remaining focused for an entire “work day” of writing. I heard myself speak and I respected my past self while simultaneously feeling disappointment in my present self. Not writing was not just a failure of my discipline, it was also a failure to be who I am as a creative individual. I was not trying hard enough.

So when Chris sent out his call to ask his former guest bloggers if any of us were able to offer a new post, I knew this was a challenge I had to meet. I no longer want to feel disappointed by myself.

I should be writing.


Arielle K Harris is the author of the novel Bestial as well as the ridiculous steampunk time travel drama short story The Adventurous Time Adventures of Doctor When. She is responsible for one very opinionated small human as well as a writer, poet, falconer, knitter of many half-finished scarves, drinker of tea, enthusiast for wine and sometimes has been known to have wild birds in her spare room.

She can be found online at her own website: www.ariellekharris.com as well as on Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/ariellekharris/ and her published work can be found on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/author/ariellekharris

If you would like to guest blog for Writing About Writing we would love to have an excuse to take a day off a wonderful diaspora of voices. Take a look at our guest post guidelines, and drop me a line at chris.brecheen@gmail.com.

Story Fundamentals, Part the Fourth: Plot and Other Things by Arielle K Harris

Story Fundamentals, Part the Fourth: Plot and Other Things  
Arielle K Harris

This will be my last installment of this Story Fundamentals series, as this has been taking up a lot of my brainspace that should be focused on writing my own stories.  So I plan to cover quite a few things in this final article.

So far I’ve discussed Style, deliberately chosen as the topic of my first article as I find this to be a largely unrecognized and unappreciated part of the writing process.  In it I explained why how you write is as important as what you write, and how imitation of writers you idolize is often key to developing your own unique authorial voice.

I then discussed Setting in my second article and the care you must take when creating a believable world.  I showed you two maps (one somewhat more attractive than the other) and warned you about the dangers of the dreaded infodump.

In my third article I discussed Character and the importance of giving your characters autonomy from their author, and how much fun it is to have people you created living inside your head and arguing with you.

Now I plan to discuss plot, but also several other things.  I’ll discuss the process of actually writing the damned story, through the help of outlining or otherwise.  I’ll briefly touch upon the difference between plot and narrative.  Then I’ll share the most important thing I’ve learned that a writer must do with their completed first draft before attempting to edit and revise their manuscript.  And lastly I’ll tell you what the point of this whole nonsense is, how to handle criticism, and the magic secret to making a living as a writer that I was once told by acclaimed author Hugh Howey.

Just a few things, right?  So let’s get on with it.

Firstly, on the topic of plot.  Plot seems like an easy thing to understand and define: it’s what happens in the story.  It’s how people describe a book to their friends and is helpfully summarized by the blurb on the back cover.  For writers in the middle of writing, however, the #2 reason for Writer’s Block is that they don’t know what will happen next.  (The #1 reason being the utter and abject feeling of fear, failure, and crushing depression, but that’s the topic of a whole other article.)  They get stuck, their characters are frozen in time, and no one is able to move forward.

Some writers try to forestall this by outlining their plot in detail before they ever begin writing it, and many are successfully able to follow this outline like following the directions in a recipe.  This is all well and good for those authors but if you have autonomous characters with their own motives and self-interests they may simply decide that, no, they will not be doing what you planned at all.  Their sudden mutiny therefore negates all of your best laid plans, but to refuse to allow this is to browbeat your characters into becoming puppets rather than their own people, the very thing your careful character-building was trying to avoid.

I never outline much, personally.  I have a reasonable idea of where I’ll start and I may know how I want it to end, and perhaps a few key scenes in between but discovering the path from one to the other is part of the joy of writing for me.

Let’s look at the recipe metaphor again.  You’re making spaghetti sauce by following a recipe, you use the usual kinds of tomatoes, herbs, vegetables, all in the proscribed order.  You stir and chop and mix all as you knew you would, no surprises.  It works.  It tastes like sauce, just as you wanted it to.  Job done, but was it fun?  And will the person you’ve invited to dinner enjoy it?

Let’s try again.  You’re making spaghetti sauce without a recipe (or deliberately going off-recipe) and you do whatever feels right at the time.  You chuck in a splash of that red wine that’s been opened for a month.  You sprinkle herbs in, no measuring, no order, garlic, shallots – and what wild fool puts cinnamon in spaghetti sauce?  This fool, that’s who.  Soon you’re cackling over the pot as you stir, invigorated by the freedom.  Your heart in your sleeve, you taste the sauce.  It’s different, it’s not what you expected, but by Zeus it’s delicious.  You serve it to a loved one and they look up at you in surprise.  “What did you put in this?” they ask, amazed.  “Cinnamon!” you exclaim, grinning with delight.  It surprised you and it surprised them.

Now some people can craft a recipe that gives them that feeling of excitement and freedom, can make a plot outline that still has surprises.  That’s excellent.  Everyone writes differently, and there’s no rule to it.  Whatever gets you writing, that’s the way you should write, outline or no outline.  Recipe or no recipe.  Cinnamon or no cinnamon.

However you write, I would say to keep in mind that it’s the unexpected which makes the reader turn the page, and it’s hardship which shows the true mettle of your characters.  When writing you should be asking yourself what would be the worst thing to happen to your character at this point in the story, and then do it to them.  Frequently.  This is what furthers the plot.  Don’t love your characters too much to hurt them, and don’t feel obligated to give them a happy ending.  Write what the story needs, not necessarily what your character wants, or even what you want.

Sometimes the plot itself has its own motives, a bottom line akin to a thesis which the action will underscore, again and again.  It has its own fate, it is fate, the unrelenting passage of time which reveals truths and horrors for the characters on their journey.

And then it ends, either a temporary end which preludes a sequel or an end with true finality.  A temporary end should leave the reader wanting more, make them need that next book.  Things left unsettled, questions left unasked, story arcs still arcing, things still unfinished.  However, be mindful that many readers resent a cliffhanger ending which intentionally manipulates their emotional attachments to the book and its characters.  Tread lightly here.

As for a final ending – well, it’s always personal preference, just like every other aspect of writing is personal preference.  This is why I had a disclaimer along with my first article of this series.  You know what you like to read so you use that to inform how you write.  What I’m writing in these articles is based on my own personal experience.  For myself, I don’t like to read neat little endings with every loose end tied up and the characters living happily ever after, everyone is still friends, they’re all having babies, and oh, the babies are friends too, how nice.  No thank you, I like some ambiguity, a touch of harsh reality.  Sometimes the bad guys win, or better yet sometimes there are no bad guys and no good guys and no one wins.  Your mileage may vary.

So let us just summarize plot by saying that you need a beginning, an ending, and some interesting things happening in between.  Can we agree on that, at least?

What about narrative?  How is it different than plot?  Well, plot is the cause and effect chain of events.  Narrative, however, is limited by your character’s point of view.  Events (plot) can only be described as your characters perceive them (narrative).  Thus, readers hear and see the plot through the narrative voice of the characters.  It can be linear or non-linear, clear or ambiguous.  Sometimes you have an unreliable narrator who deliberately keeps the reader in the dark, or misleads, or lies for any number of reasons.

Skipping ahead, let’s say you wrote your story.  You had a style, whether unique or emulated, you had a detailed, well-realized setting, and you allowed your characters autonomy despite the occasional mutinies you suffered as you wrote the story to its end.  You have a first draft and it’s complete and messy and wonderful and terrifying.

Now what?  What’s the secret that I promised?  Between finishing this draft and beginning your revision/editing process there’s one important thing you should do.

Are you ready?

…

…

…

Put it away.

Literally hide your hard copy, if you have one, in a drawer.  Close your word processing program on your computer.  Step outside, familiarize yourself with the real world.  Remind yourself what season it currently is.  Reconnect with friends and family members who you neglected while you were writing.  See a movie, go out to eat, take a long walk, smell the goddamn flowers.  Read someone else’s books and forget about your own for a while.

Do this for at least two weeks, if not longer.  However long you need to disentangle your mind from your story.  I use this time to send the draft to my beta readers, knowing that it may take them a week or two to get back to me with their thoughts.

Then, when you do go back to your story you’ll have a better chance of seeing it, really seeing it, for what it is.  When you’re too embroiled in the process your mind fills in gaps for you, and things which don’t make sense to an objective third party seem totally clear.  When you start your revisions you need to remove that perspective through distance.  Come back to the story after enough time has passed so that you see can it from a reader’s eyes and not just your blinkered writer’s view.

The next step is to be brutal and honest with yourself, cut scenes that aren’t necessary, tighten dialogue, remove overly purple prose, no matter how pretty it sounds to you.  Check for grammar mistakes, lack of clarity, consistency, typos.  Read it aloud to yourself to hear the rhythm of the words.  Editing is arguably the most important part of the writing process in the aim of creating a publishable final draft.

And finally let me finish this article by saying that this should indeed be your aim as a writer, to create work that you publish, however you can publish.  A writer who holds onto her stories out of fear of failure and never puts them into the world may never fail, but she’ll never have a chance at success either.  She’ll never learn how her stories are received by wider audiences than the few she trusts and allows access to her work in private.  Your friends and family may think you’re the best writer they know, but it’s a harsh yet necessary lesson to see if total strangers agree with them or not.  This is how you learn and develop as a writer.

You will get criticism.  People talk about having to develop a thick skin in preparation for this aspect of being published but I disagree.  Your emotional and mental skin shouldn’t be so thick as to prevent criticism from affecting you.  It should affect you, but constructively and without devastation.  Don’t dismiss your critics, you may not like what they have to say but they’re telling you the truth.  At the same time, remember that they’re telling you their version of the truth.

One person may hate your book, but that single opinion doesn’t put your book into question, especially without details about why they hated it.  Someone might pick up on a typo you missed or a grammar rule you flouted, and choose to judge your entire book based on a single mistake.  (True story, despite having about a half dozen beta reader while I was editing, none of us caught that I’d written “dog fun” instead of “dog fur” – a slightly different image than the one intended!  If I ever get famous those first copies will be the ones worth big money.)  However, a pattern of several people telling you that your book is unreadable with typos and grammar mistakes all over the place, or that the narrative flow is off, or that your dialogue is stilted is something to take on board for future books.  Because there will be future books.  There needs to be.

Around four years ago I was given advice from the author of the bestselling Wool series, Hugh Howey.  To this day he’s the only author who actually replied to an email I sent him.  I was impressed by his self-publishing success and wanted to know how he did it, if there was any secret to making a living as a writer.  I was wildly presumptuous to ask but I assumed that he’d probably never even see my email, let alone have the time to read it.  However, less than a half hour later he replied:

The only secret I know to making a living as a writer is this: 1. Assume you never will.2. Write and publish as much as you can.3. Hope.

This advice has helped shape my path towards where I am today, and helped develop the attitude I’m trying to maintain: a complex amalgamation of harsh realism, sheer bloody-minded determination, and a cautious edge of optimism.

If you’ve enjoyed reading my series on Story Fundamentals please take a moment to consider supporting me as a self-published author by purchasing, reading, and reviewing my work.  It’s a small cost to you but makes a big impact to someone trying to make a living as a writer.  My novel, Bestial, is a retelling of Beauty and the Beast turned on its head, telling the story of a female Beast, a male Beauty, and a lot of allusions to traditional fairytales.  It’s not what you expect.  I added cinnamon.



Arielle K Harris is the author of the novel Bestial as well as the ridiculous steampunk time travel drama short story The Adventurous Time Adventures of Doctor When. She is responsible for one very opinionated toddler as well as a writer, poet, falconer, knitter of many half-finished scarves, drinker of tea, enthusiast for wine and sometimes has been known to have wild birds in her spare room.

She can be found online at her own website: www.ariellekharris.com as well as on Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/ariellekharris/ and her published work can be found on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/author/ariellekharris

If you would like to guest blog for Writing About Writing we would love to have an excuse to take a day off a wonderful diaspora of voices. Take a look at our guest post guidelines, and drop me a line at chris.brecheen@gmail.com.

Story Fundamentals, Part the Third: Characters by Arielle K Harris

Story Fundamentals, Part the Third: Characters
Arielle K Harris  

In my previous articles I’ve discussed the Style and Setting aspects of storytelling, two essential aspects of the writing craft.  However, I believe there’s an argument to be made that modern readers care more about characters than previous audiences through the history of literature and are generally more willing to forgive a lack in other areas of a story if the characters are compelling enough.  So this stuff is important.

Like in world-building, building a character is an exercise in details.  It’s as easy and as hard as making up a person, a human being complete with flaws, motives, secrets, quirks, aspirations, doubts, love, hate, and all the rest.  (Unless you’re not writing about human beings, but even then most of those things likely still apply.)  Every character has a story, even the most minor character, and it’s your job as their writer, their creator, to know what that story is even if it’s never fully told.  You never know when a minor character might suddenly become a main player.  Your earlier casually-dropped details about that minor character are now effortless foreshadowing for what’s to come.

A lot of writers talk about this element of unexpectedness when dealing with characters, having a protagonist go off-outline whether the writer likes it or not, or self-determining sudden actions previously unaccounted for.  Inexperienced writers, or those disturbingly normal folk who aren’t writers at all, might be like, “Eh??  But they’re your characters, you made them up so you can have them do whatever you want to, right??”

Sort of.  Yes, you’ve made a character up, it exists only inside your brain and on paper, and you can control what it does.  To a point.  There comes a time, however, when you find that you’ve given your character too much autonomy, like a rogue AI program that suddenly becomes self-aware.  The part of your brain that houses that character is now an autonomous part of your consciousness with its own motives and self-interests which sometimes gives you sass and argues back when you try to impose your original plans upon it.

And this slightly disturbing development is precisely what you’re aiming for as a writer.

You want a character that’s been so well created that it becomes its own voice inside your mind, because if you haven’t reached that point then you’re not chronicling the story of unique and compelling beings.  Instead you’re moving puppets around a backdrop, and the voice that comes out of their mouths is your voice, not theirs.

What’s the key difference between your voice and your character’s voice?  Well, in some writing there is no difference.  There are some stories which, whether deliberately or not, transpose the author into the main character, for better or for worse.  I would like to make the argument, however, that this is not ideal.  In order to write effective fiction with compelling characters I honestly believe those characters need to gain autonomy from their authors.  This is part of the craft of fiction writing.

Given their own flaws, motives, secrets, quirks, aspirations, doubts, love, hate, etc., etc., as previously mentioned should be enough to help you find a character’s unique voice, or better still, to let that character find their own voice.  By all means use your own experiences to “write what you know” and give authenticity to their journey through the story, but your character may respond to events differently than you.  Give them the freedom to do so.

In speculative fiction when you’re worldbuilding don’t forget how that world affects your characters.  They have their own language, though you’re helpfully translating into one your readers can understand.  And for the love of all things literary please don’t just call it the Common Tongue.  Language is so rich and interesting, don’t let your created language down.  Obviously there are very few of us capable of creating actual languages themselves to the high standards of the likes of Tolkien but even if you don’t actually create the language you should know what it is, what it’s called, and what other languages exist on your world.  To be a realistic world there should be other languages, unless your world is very small indeed, or recently colonized.

Let me get linguistic on you for a minute.  There’s are lot of links between worldbuilding and language and character, as geography affects both the physical interactions of societies and their language development.  Languages lend each other words when they interact regularly, so physically distant groups of people who don’t interact develop languages which are more obviously distinct from each other.  Consider this phenomena fully.  How do your world’s languages interact?  Who can understand who, and how do they reach that level of understanding?  Generally only the wealthy, who have free time and funds to spend on learning, will know more than one language unless necessity or constant multilingual interaction of the lower classes results in otherwise.  However, misunderstandings are a great way to further plot and create tension, so you don’t necessarily want to gloss over the difficulties of language interaction.

Religion is another important world-building facet which links to character development, and just like language this can provide another conflict between either groups or individual characters.  This affects how characters speak to other characters who are within their religious group or outside it, how they utter obscenities, and how they make promises to each other or swear fealties.  This may affect what foods they eat, and when, what holy days they observe, or deliberately don’t observe.  This may affect a character’s relationships with other characters, determine expected gender roles, or have serious repercussions if they defy those precepts.

I think it’s important for a writer of speculative fiction to answer all the important questions of language and religion, philosophy and society, and every other facet of worldbuilding before deciding even the most basic of details about a character.  Even something as simple as a name is firmly rooted in language and/or religion and has societal implications and significance.  Names have so much potential to impart subtle messages to the reader, and sometimes messages that are… not so subtle, e.g.: Cruella de Vil, Voldemort, Hannibal Lecter, and Kilgrave (Jessica Jones said it herself, “Kilgrave?  Talk about obvious.  Was ‘Murdercorpse’ already taken?”) so don’t throw away the opportunity to underscore something of importance to your readers.

Above all, avoid writing character stereotypes.  The farm boy who would be king.  The questing hero with his band of followers, never forgetting to include the one feisty female included to add sexual tension and to prove that the (inevitably white cis-male) author is giving a nod to feminism.  (He’s not.)  The plain little Mary Jane who has one endearing character flaw like being unable to cross a parking lot without getting nearly killed, who is oh so very unattractive, which she bemoans at length, but somehow is caught in a love triangle with two hot guys with rock-hard abs and optional sparkles.  Yeah, just stop that.

Given enough thoughtful detail a writer should be able to avoid all the pitfalls in character creation, and then be blessed with several argumentative new brain-friends.  After that, all you need to do is tell the story.  I say that like it’s easy, but of course it’s not and my next article will focus on this next vital and devastating step in the process of storytelling – telling the damned story.


Arielle K Harris is the author of the novel Bestial as well as the ridiculous steampunk time travel drama short story The Adventurous Time Adventures of Doctor When. She is responsible for one very opinionated toddler as well as a writer, poet, falconer, knitter of many half-finished scarves, drinker of tea, enthusiast for wine and sometimes has been known to have wild birds in her spare room.

She can be found online at her own website: www.ariellekharris.com as well as on Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/ariellekharris/ and her published work can be found on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/author/ariellekharris

If you would like to guest blog for Writing About Writing we would love to have an excuse to take a day off a wonderful diaspora of voices. Take a look at our guest post guidelines, and drop me a line at chris.brecheen@gmail.com.

Story Fundamentals, Part the Second: Setting (by Arielle K Harris)

Story Fundamentals, Part the Second: Setting
Arielle K Harris  

So you don’t want your writing to be crap, and you’re here for advice.  You now know, either by reading my last article Story Fundamentals, Part the First: Style or by using your own acute observational skills, that style is a thing and as essential to writing as your pen and paper, or your fingertips and your word processor.  What I failed to mention in that article is that style doesn’t necessarily need to be a conscious choice or decision you make, just a sense of self-awareness.  If you try to consciously adopt a particular style it may quickly backfire on you and become forced and contrived if not done perfectly right.

The same goes for the next element of storytelling I’ll discuss, which is setting.  A poorly contrived setting is as easy to see through as that of style, but even worse is a story that omits setting details altogether and relies on vagueness, minimalism, and hopes that the reader fills in the blanks.  A story written like this doesn’t really have a setting, it has a set.  Not the good kind of set like for a high-end movie or HBO series, more like a middle-school production of As You Like it where the Forest of Arden is constructed out of toilet paper tubes.  You know how much I love to quote Ursula Le Guin, well I’m going to do it again:

“It is a fake plainness.  It is not really simple, but flat.  It is not really clear, but inexact.  Its directness is specious.  Its sensory clues – extremely important in imaginative writing – are vague and generalised; the rocks, the wind, the trees are not there, are not felt; the scenery is cardboard, or plastic.”

You can clearly see the fakeness in a setting made of cardboard, and with that awareness no reader will be able to immerse themselves into your story.  A setting must be fully realized, solid, and instantly felt and seen through your words.

I’m a fantasy writer so I worldbuild my settings.  This is my favorite part of the writing process; it’s like traveling but free, inside your own head, and you always know the language.  Building an entire world out of nothing can be daunting but I actually find it less of an undertaking than setting a story in the real world.  Real world stories require intense research, especially if the location is not where you live, or have lived, and if you get it wrong then critics can easily point to flaws in your assumptions.  Worlds you make up are entirely under your control so you can’t make up a street that shouldn’t exist.  If you’ve written it then it does exist.

However worldbuilding requires utmost consistency, maybe you wrote that street into existence on page 25 but by page 60 your characters are running around and that street no longer leads to where it used to, unintentionally (there are times when, of course, this may happen intentionally).  Or the path through your forest is supposed to be going east but several scenes later your questing hero drags herself forward, nearly reaching her destination, but is now facing into the sunset (unless of course you’ve already made it clear that your world has a sun which sets in the east).

The best way I’ve found to ensure internal consistency in worldbuilding is with maps (this could easily be true in real world settings too, and the maps are already drawn for you).  There’s no better way to make sure you know your way through your world than to put it down on paper and refer to it frequently.  Your map doesn’t need to be particularly attractive or artistic if it’s just a writing resource for your own personal use, it just needs to show you the geographical space your characters are moving around in so you can see directions, limitations, and distances.

What do you mean that this isn’t a good map, it has a compass and everything!

The above was my working map for the first part of Bestial, and I have to admit it was not my best effort at cartography.  It did the job, though, I was able to orient myself appropriately when my characters moved between these three locations.  Sometimes it’s really as simple as that!

There is of course something to be said for a more detailed map that covers more geographical area, but that’s only necessary when your story takes place throughout a larger region.  If your entire story takes place in one city it’s unlikely you’ll need to know the geography of a whole continent.

That's a bit better.

This one was a map I drafted for an older, unfinished novel and it looks a bit more like one might expect of a fantasy map – it even has simplistically-named mountain ranges à la Mount Doom.  I did intend this one to be added into the book which is why it’s all pretty and stuff and not on a post-it note.  This novel was going to take place across the whole of this landmass so I needed to know a lot more than the orientation of three locations.  I intended to do a second map just of the capital city of Cobault as well, giving myself street map with which to orient myself and inform my narrative, so that I wouldn’t get lost in my imaginary metropolis where a lot of the action would happen.

When in doubt always worldbuild in more detail that you might actually need.  Even if you don’t think you’ll ever refer to the types of vegetation that grows on your world’s hills, or the region’s primary exports (which is invariably determined by its geography), or the relative position of the sun when your characters start questing, you should know it.  The more you know about your world the more fluent you are in its details.  Those details are what makes a setting fully realized, believable, and lacking in cardboard.  For a great worldbuilding resource have a look at Patricia C. Wrede’s Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions which are incredibly detailed and pretty damn comprehensive.

One issue I’ll discuss in terms of those beautiful details, however, is the horror that is the infodump.  You know infodump, it comes at the beginning of many stories, often labelled as a Prologue (I’m looking at you, Anne McCaffrey, the first mother of dragons, may you rest in peace), and what follows is an expositional orgy, sometimes as much as ten pages of it.  You might feel like there’s a lot about your world that needs explaining but infodump is a surefire way to bore the pants off your reader.

So your world has two moons and an unusual tidal pattern because of it.  Don’t tell me “On the fifth planet from the star K4-B lies a planet with two moons and an unusual tidal pattern.”  Tell me something like:

“J’ruk looked up quickly to orient himself, seeing the second moon Hoj rising towards its sister Ko.  He readied his fishing gear on the sand, grateful for the exposed length of sandbar and the brilliance of the sky.  This would be a good night to go derssi-fishing as the lithe and elusive cephalopods would only found in the tidal pools on this, the lowest tide of the cycle.”

Make the details embellishments to your story and, further to that, have them drive your story onward.  If the tides hadn’t been that low J’ruk wouldn’t have been out there that night, leading to whatever exciting action is bound to happen next.  If there hadn’t been two moons then this incredibly low tide wouldn’t have occurred.  It’s all connected, or at least it should be.

A good setting is more than just a backdrop to your story, it should be part and parcel of it.  Your story shouldn’t be able to exist without it.  Could Lord of the Rings have happened anywhere other than Middle Earth?  No, certainly not.  Throughout the writing of your story the setting will influence your character’s decisions, motives, history, and even their moods (I dare you to try to stay cheerful on a long, difficult journey in the rain).  It will determine limiting factors in battle and define whole civilizations.  It will tell you what foods are eaten, what fabrics are worn, and what professions people have.  Only once you understand your setting and have created your world in its entirety are you able to tell the story taking place in it.

But first you’ll need to know your characters, so stay tuned for the next installment of Story Fundamentals!


Arielle K Harris is the author of the novel Bestial as well as the ridiculous steampunk time travel drama short story The Adventurous Time Adventures of Doctor When. She is responsible for one very opinionated toddler as well as a writer, poet, falconer, knitter of many half-finished scarves, drinker of tea, enthusiast for wine and sometimes has been known to have wild birds in her spare room.

She can be found online at her own website: www.ariellekharris.com as well as on Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/ariellekharris/ and her published work can be found on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/author/ariellekharris

If you would like to guest blog for Writing About Writing we would love to have an excuse to take a day off a wonderful diaspora of voices. Take a look at our guest post guidelines, and drop me a line at chris.brecheen@gmail.com.

Story Fundamentals, Part the First: Style (by Arielle K Harris)

Story Fundamentals, Part the First: Style 
by Arielle K Harris  

I’ve been undertaking the writing of a new novel and I thought that perhaps it would be helpful, for others as well as myself, if I wrote a series of articles on the fundamentals of storytelling as I go about the process.

A disclaimer before I go any further: I don’t profess to be any kind of writing expert, that’s not what this is about.  Everything I say comes purely from my own personal experiences, my interpretations, and from sometimes wildly quoting my writing idols at length.  Feel free to take everything I say with a pinch of salt, if not a heap, or quite simply ignore it altogether.  Every writer writes differently.

However, let me put my feelings of imagined presumption aside.  My first article is about an essential part of storytelling that often gets ignored by new writers but without it your story would fail to exist.

To explain with an example, let us consider the following of Chris’ excellent meme collection posted the other day:

I think this is from a Tumblr post, but the land of memes is so incestuous, I'm not really sure
-Chris

What is the difference here?  Each of these passages describe the exact same event but written very differently.  The difference is each example’s authorial voice, its style.  And that changes everything.

What followed in the comments section was quite simply amazing as many of you followed this exercise through to other writers.  I admit to cackling to myself rather a lot and getting concerned looks from my dog.  You’d think he’d be used to me by now.  Each example you made was brilliantly accurate in capturing each writer’s voice, and this was possible because the authors quoted have a unique style that shines through even in mimicry.

This is what we’re aiming for, my dear writing comrades.  This is the reason for developing your own writing style because a story is so much more than a list of plot points.  Style is everything.

Let us hear some words from my personal hero Ursula Le Guin on the matter, for not only is she an excellent writer of both science fiction and fantasy but she is also a brilliant essayist and critic.  From her essay “From Elfland to Poughkeepsie” she writes:

“Many readers, many critics and most editors speak of style as if it were an ingredient of a book, like the sugar in a cake, or something added on to the book, like the frosting on the cake.  The style, of course, is the book.  If you remove the cake, all you have left is the recipe.  If you remove the style, all you have left is a synopsis of the plot.  

This is partly true of history; largely true of fiction, and absolutely true of fantasy. 

In saying that the style is the book, I speak from the reader’s point of view.  From the writer’s point of view, the style is the writer.  Style isn’t just how you use English when you write.  It isn’t a mannerism or an affectation (though it may be mannered or affected).  It isn’t something you can do without, though that is what people assume when they announce that they intend to write something ‘like it is’.  You can’t do without it.  There is no ‘is’ without it.  Style is how you as a writer see and speak.  It is how you see: your vision, your understanding of the world, your voice.”

She goes on to discuss the next important thing about style: it takes time to perfect.  I think I can safely say that all writers learn to write by reading, and so it follows that writers learn how to write their own style by first imitating the styles of those authors they read.  Even Neil Gaiman has admitted to this, and in one particular blog post he wrote about discovering some old stories he wrote when he was a teenager.  But he says of them: “there was almost nothing there that was written by me”.  He could tell exactly what he had been reading at the time from reading those stories, and none of them were in what he recognized as his own style.  The important thing, he noted, was that he was writing.

This is how we all learn, just as we learned language in the very first place as toddlers.  Mimicry is an essential part of language acquisition, and that’s exactly what writers are doing: acquiring their own language, learning to speak their own words.  It’s a long, hard process and there are no shortcuts.  To begin you must simply start writing, and then keep writing.  Discover what makes your view of the world unique, because it is, just as you are.

I’m still learning, and still imitating.  My novel Bestial is certainly a mish-mash of various fairytale authors’ styles, but as I wrote it I began to find myself in it, too.  I’ve come to discover that my own style is some strange combination of (often thesaurus-driven) serious prose with a touch of utter wackiness.  I can’t help but add touches of comedy into my stories because I sometimes go to some very dark places, and without humor I don’t think I’d survive telling it.  My readers may not survive reading it.  This is why the climactic scene in Part 1 of Bestial, when my Beast is in the grips of self-pity, despair, and quite nearly suicidal out of loneliness, includes an exchange with a torches-and-pitchforks waving mob about a cow.  A dead cow.

Now I’m in the beginning stages of writing a new novel and the very first thing I’m concerning myself with is the style of it.  I know what I’m hoping to write, but I need to establish how I’m going to write it before I can proceed.  A novel should tell a good story, certainly, but the plot can’t exist in a vacuum.

Further to narrative style, which is to say your authorial voice in showing your readers around the world and its events, there’s another style that needs to be considered: the style of each of your characters and their own unique voices.  This is the stuff that makes writers seem like they’re suffering from multiple personality disorder, because the voices you hear your characters speaking in will be different – different from your voice and different from each other.  There have been too many novels by inexperienced authors I’ve read where if I took away the character’s name tagged on to a piece of dialogue I’d have no idea who was speaking.  This shouldn’t happen.

Obviously not every piece of dialogue can be wholly unique, sometimes they’ll just need to say “Yes” and that’s that.  But even then maybe your character says “Yeah” rather than “Yes” because they abhor formality.  Maybe they say “Aye” because they’re a rogue Scotsman wandering through your pages.  Each character must have their own unique voice that only comes from a fully realized persona complete with motives, flaws, history, aspirations and doubts.  More on that later in another article, however.  For now let us suffice to say that style and voice are as crucial in dialogue and characterization as they are in narrative.

The reason I’ve made style the topic of this first article on story fundamentals is because this is the stuff you need to decide on before anything else can happen.  Style affects everything, because style is the story.  The style is you, writing it.

Look at the authors you idolize and identify what makes them so incredible at their craft.  Read their stories with a critical eye in order to figure out exactly what about their style is unique to them, and then try to imagine their stories without it.  It’s impossible.  One can’t exist without the other.

As writers we’re told that “every story has already been told, but not by you”.  This couldn’t be more true.  You make it different and your unique style is that difference.


Arielle K Harris is the author of the novel Bestial as well as the ridiculous steampunk time travel drama short story The Adventurous Time Adventures of Doctor When. She is responsible for one very opinionated toddler as well as a writer, poet, falconer, knitter of many half-finished scarves, drinker of tea, enthusiast for wine and sometimes has been known to have wild birds in her spare room.

She can be found online at her own website: www.ariellekharris.com as well as on Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/ariellekharris/ and her published work can be found on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/author/ariellekharris

If you would like to guest blog for Writing About Writing we would love to have an excuse to take a day off a wonderful diaspora of voices. Take a look at our guest post guidelines, and drop me a line at chris.brecheen@gmail.com.

Write What You Know (BS Writing Advice That Isn’t As Trite As It Seems) [Arielle K Harris]

Write What You Know (BS Writing Advice That Isn’t As Trite As It Seems)  

by Arielle K Harris


I used to think that one of the least helpful writing maxims was “write what you know” – especially in writing fantasy.  I thought, “Why would I want to write about what I know when the whole point is to write about the unknown?”

Then I wrote my recent self-published novel and found that writing what you know doesn’t need to be a transposition of straight facts.  It can be interpretation, the use of ideas taken out of context, or knowledge of one subject used as the basis for another.  (Having written this out it sounds pretty basic, but for the longest time this epiphany eluded me.)

My novel, Bestial, is a fairytale retelling which reimagines Beauty and the Beast.  I thought about how I wanted to portray my main characters, my female Beast and my male Beauty in this reinterpretation, and how to write the relationship between a man and an inhuman creature.  Then I realized: I know this!

No, of course I didn’t have direct experience with mythical griffin-like Beasts, nor am I now or have ever been a man, but I have long experience with the working relationships between humans and some of the proudest, most intractable of inhuman creatures: I’m a falconer.

This is definitely one of my more unusual hobbies, and something that I can use as a wildcard when desperate making small talk with strangers (because I suck at this) or on an awkward first date (I suck at this even more, because what’s worse than talking to a stranger – talking to one who is judging your worthiness as a potential mate based on your ability to not be socially awkward for a whole two hours at a time.  I’m not sure that randomly talking about birds really helps me with this, however...)

For the last six years I have had the privilege of working with a wide variety of birds of prey while I lived in Scotland, and am currently pursuing the various permits and licenses in order to continue practicing now that I live in the USA.  For much of that time I was employed in this capacity, doing educational displays at a wildlife park, and enjoyed the great amusement of being able to write “Falconer” on the line marked “Occupation” on boarding cards every time I took a transatlantic flight.  It gave me and Border Control something to chat about, and goodness knows they need a bit of entertainment during their day.  But above all, I got to develop relationships of trust with the birds I worked with, and grew to love them all for their fierceness and their independent nature.

Except owls.  Those fluffy wide-eyed bastards are assholes.  (I kid, sort of, but whoever first thought that owls were wise certainly never had much experience with them.  What they lack in intelligence, however, they make up for with utter contrary stubbornness, and I will admit [though not in their hearing!] that I love them, too, for exactly that.)

It began with my educational work, but I was soon determined to experience true falconry – that is to say, hunting with a bird of prey in their natural environment, and since then I’ve hunted with a male German Goshawk and a male Red-tailed Hawk.  When you fly a hawk you cast them off your glove totally unencumbered, apart from the leather anklets and jesses they wear which are designed not to hinder flight and perhaps a telemetry tag in order to track them should they be drawn out of sight by the hunt.  They’re completely free-flying wild birds, and the only thing keeping them from disappearing over the horizon is the trust you have built with them.

It’s an awe-inspiring act to call down the hawk you’ve trained out of the high branches of a tree, and to have him respond to your whistle, glide down with outspread wings and alight upon your glove in perfect trust and partnership.  He trusts that you’ll provide him with the chance to do what he does best; you’ll help him locate his prey, flush it out for him to catch, and help him secure it on the ground.  He trusts that if he misses he won’t go hungry.  He trusts that if he gets injured, you’ll care for him.  Life with you is far more beneficial than life without you.

In return, you trust that he will stay by your side, in a not-too-distant tree, watching your every move, waiting on your word, and allowing you to take part in his wild existence.

So when I sat down to write about a man and a Beast and a love story that wouldn’t choke the feminist in me, I drew from this experience of trust and partnership.  I wrote what I knew.

It didn’t mean that I needed to restrict myself in any way, I could still write about fantastic creatures and unknown places.  I didn’t need to write autobiographically, this could still be a fantasy novel.  Only I could now write my character’s burgeoning relationship with authority and believability, drawing on my own depths of knowledge on the kind of relationship I was describing.

While I don’t believe that an author must always have personal experience in everything they write about, there are some things you just can’t easily pretend to know without true experience, and Google doesn’t replace foot-on-the-ground research.

I’m reminded of a fairly silly romantic comedy movie, The Decoy Bride, set on a fictional island in the Outer Hebrides.  David Tennant plays the character of a writer who set his bestselling novel on the island, but never set foot on it until later events bring him there when he attempts to discreetly marry his famous actress fiancée. Hijinks, obviously, ensue.  His fictionalization of the island becomes a point of tension and comedy between him and the island inhabitants, and he finds that the reality of the island is very different from what he described.

This is a real danger for a writer who might choose not to write what they know or, perhaps more accurately, choose not to know about what they write.  Not only the danger that you might be wrong, but that you might be ridiculous.  But this can be prevented.

In writing to the second half of Bestial, I decided I needed to draw from a greater canon of fairytales, especially those of the Grimm’s Brother’s collected folktales, because I couldn’t face either a moral conclusion in the style of the original tale, or a Disney-style happy ending.  I didn’t know these fairytales yet, but I knew I needed to.  So I studied them and their history, drank them in, read every tale I could find in every spare moment I had until I did know them.  I made myself an authority on a subject where previously I could only profess ignorance.

But, above all else, you need to be an authority on your book itself, your book’s world and those living within it.  This is especially true for fantasy, science fiction and other speculative fiction because, as your world’s creator, if you aren’t the authority on it who can be?

So don’t be too quick to dismiss the trite advice often handed out to writers.  Sometimes you may find that there’s a reason why a tired old idea is so old and tired, and that maybe, just maybe, it’s right.

[Ed Note: Leela Bruce has some similar things to say about "Write what you know" here.]


Arielle K Harris is the author of the novel Bestial as well as the ridiculous steampunk time travel drama short story The Adventurous Time Adventures of Doctor When.  She is responsible for one very opinionated toddler as well as a writer, poet, falconer, knitter of many half-finished scarves, drinker of tea, enthusiast for wine and sometimes has been known to have wild birds in her spare room.

She can be found online at her own website: www.ariellekharris.com as well as on Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/ariellekharris/ and her published work can be found on Amazon here:https://www.amazon.com/author/ariellekharris

If you would like to guest blog for Writing About Writing we would love to have an excuse to take a day off a wonderful diaspora of voices and you can even make a couple of bucks. Take a look at our guest post guidelines, and drop me a line at chris.brecheen@gmail.com.

Arielle K Harris

Arielle K Harris is the author of the novel Bestial as well as the ridiculous steampunk time travel drama short story The Adventurous Time Adventures of Doctor When.  She is responsible for one very opinionated toddler as well as a writer, poet, falconer, knitter of many half-finished scarves, drinker of tea, enthusiast for wine and sometimes has been known to have wild birds in her spare room.

She can be found online at her own website: www.ariellekharris.com as well as on Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/ariellekharris/ and her published work can be found on Amazon here:https://www.amazon.com/author/ariellekharris

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Story Fundamentals–Part the First: Style