Gracie O'Neil's Blog

I haven't said much here recently. Life seems to have happened. :-) But today I came across this fabulous post and I just had to share it.

The Winnie The Pooh Guide to Blogging
http://www.copyblogger.com/winnie-the...

Hope you enjoy it!

I often find a wonderful little snippet for a character in an aspect of someone I meet, but I'll only ever use an aspect. A laugh maybe. A way of walking. I think that to pick up an entire person and put them into your work is intrusive and rude.

In general my characters either spring out of my brain fully formed twenty minutes before I even think of them (if you can understand that weirdness), or they need the gestational period of an elephant—twenty-two long difficult months complete with morning sickness, food cravings, and frequent bathroom visits.

Half the fun of creating characters is just that ... creating. Use your imagination! :-)

It depends pretty much on the tide, the wind, the weather, and where I'm at with my own writing.

If I'm writing suspense I tend to stay away from suspense novels or I start to feel my work sucks. So I load up on urban fantasy by people like Ilona Andrews (fantastic writer), or steampunk by people like Bec McMaster and Shelley Adina, or historicals by people like Courtney Milan, Anna Campbell, Amanda Quick, and Bronwen Evans.

Sometimes I also need to clear my brain completely and that's when I go back to my old favourites,
Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
A Girl of the Limberlost (Gene Stratton Porter)
The Last Trail (Zane Grey)
Gaudy Night (Dorothy M. Sayers)
the Amelia Peabody series (Elizabeth Peters)
and anything by Terry Pratchett that has Granny Weatherwax, Commander Vimes, or Tiffany Aching in it.

Actually, I adore all Terry Pratchett's work except for the books that star Rincewind the wizard. Rincewind is ... no. No. I'm not going there. :-)

I also read as many books about writing craft as I can. There is always something to learn.

I've missed out a whole lot of really excellent writers here because this is only supposed to be a brief answer.

I guess I like to read books that pull me into the hero/heroine's world right from the first paragraph. I like to know exactly what is at stake as soon as possible so I can worry at my own speed until the end.

Cool question! You know, when I first started out writing I thought that world-building was only for fantasy and sic-fi authors, and I thanked my lucky stars that I wrote contemporary "real-world" books.

But, in fact, every story needs a certain amount of world-building.

You're world-building when you describe the every-day setting of a billionaire hero.

I don't live in that kind of world—most of us don't—so it's strange. Therefore it needs careful communication, and enough description that it conveys both the similarities and the differences between our lives and the life being viewed through the page.

Make it both familiar and unfamiliar. That's not a vase on the mantlepiece. It's a Ming Dynasty moon flask. Your heroine takes a shower—and later learns the tiles on the bathroom floor are medieval ceramic tiles from Persia.

Don't mention anything in detail if it's not central to the story, but if you're going to have the heroine knock the villain out with the vase she needs to become aware (at some point) that she's just lost the hero a couple of million dollars.

Same goes in a fantasy world.

For example, riding a flying horse would be much like riding an ordinary horse—if it weren't for the wings ... and the (gulp!) distance one would fall to the ground. So take the familiar (the horse) and, having established the familiar aspects, introduce the unfamiliar.

Where do you sit on a flying horse? In front of the wings or behind? Why? Who "drives"? :-) Does the horse talk? If so how? What about sound? No thudding hooves. What do you hear instead?

See what I mean? Think through the mundane aspects of your world and then contrast the mundane with the magic.

The real genius for this is J.K. Rowling. Think of Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans—which are basically jellybeans with attitude. Chocolate frogs that really jump. Travelling via a fireplace with Floo Powder. Rowling takes the unfamiliar, twists it, and hands it back as something still familiar, but even better.

THAT is world-building! :-)

Me personally? It's never happened. Seriously. Never. I have more ideas than I can poke a stick at. My problem is getting to write them all down in readable form! :-)

I think the most effective way of getting ideas is to be open to them. A lot of people wander through life with their eyes closed. They don't see the weird things, the funny things, the gut wrenching things that happen around them every day.

Often, ideas for a story come in the juxtaposition of two or more of those things. More often, you have to let your mind out to play.

For example, you see a mother pushing a toddler along the street in a stroller. A little later you happen to notice the same mother sitting at a table outside a cafe, looking bombed and exhausted, and drinking coffee. The kid is sitting in the stroller staring at an old guy sitting on a seat under some trees a little further away. No, he's not. He's looking at the guy's dog.

BUT...

WHAT IF (always a great idea starter!!) the dog and the kid were actually psychic shape changers sent to infiltrate a group of intellectual property thieves run by the eccentric millionaire old man on the bench.

WHAT IF the woman is the wife of a local FBI agent who doesn't know her husband has agreed to have their child put into protective custody while a shape changer takes his place, and is wondering what the hell has happened to her previously laid-back baby.

WHAT IF, the only exchange of information that can take place is between the dog (who is always present at the old man's meetings) and the child (who has to report to his "father" every night).

What if ...

Your turn! Have fun. :-)

Good question. :-) Thanks for asking.

I've always loved skulduggery, and I've always loved romance—probably in that order, if I'm being honest. So when I decided to have a go at writing a novel I gravitated toward what I enjoyed reading.

I identify with heroines who are wounded yet gutsy. I gravitate toward heroes who are in desperate need of the redeeming love of a good woman (the heroine, of course). So I write about huge stakes, betrayal, and secrets, and the way old sins come back to haunt us.

Yes, in my current series, THE SCROLL OF SHADOWS TRILOGY, there is a paranormal element as well. I think this element can add to the stakes in a thriller.

Plus I've always wondered ... what would it be like to be able to touch something and know its background (as Megan Alistair does in Touching Shadows)? And what would it be like to suddenly find yourself unable to control your already terrifying gifts (as Emma Brown does in Shadow Seer)?

I love books where I can put myself—safely—in the heroine's hands, and experience things I'd hate to experience in real life. And, like every other woman on the face of the earth, I guess, I want to relive the joy and terror of falling in love and being loved in return.

Anyone else got a question for me? Ask away! :-)