A.J. Maguire

Tag: fiction

  • Wherein I Forecast 2019 (Writing-wise, of course)

    Last week I noted the things that I managed to complete in 2018 – which was a lot and I’m still patting myself on the back for a good year. I recognize that only die-hard fans really care about this stuff, and for those of you out there who count yourselves among this rare breed of reader, let it be known that I love you all and pray you never change.

    For those who watch the blog for the writing class updates and other content, this might not be the post for you. And that’s OK!

    If, for reasons neither of us can fully explain, the idea of peeking inside an author’s deadline calendar entices you, then I fully welcome you to read on. Otherwise, this is mostly to keep my head on straight through the year.

    So, what do I want to accomplish in 2019?

    • A short story every month. These stories will vary in theme and substance and, hopefully, will find their way into the market. Others may find their way onto this site for FREE content.
    • 2nd and 3rd drafts of The Castle of Three Kings completed. And then, of course, start submitting this MG/YA story to places.
    • 2nd and 3rd drafts of The 13th Month completed. Also with the submission process in full swing.
    • Record Enemy Souls into audio to be released in segments for FREE. The hard copy will be available for sale if people don’t want to wait a week to find out what happens.
    • Release the Fact vs. Fiction edition of Tapped at the same time as Enemy Souls.
    • Inmate rough draft. (Camp Nano)
    • Warpath rough draft. (Nano)
    • City of Cemeteries rough draft.

    I am sure I’ll get sidetracked by something and replace stuff and/or scrap a project, but for now I’m sticking with this list. I look forward to seeing how much of this I can get done and I hope everyone else has fun in the coming year.

  • NaNoWriMo 2018 Results

    Even with a holiday visiting my mother – on the other side of the nation, I might add –  I managed to make it passed the 50k mark and win NaNoWriMo. The rest of the year will be spent finishing this novel about ghouls and goblins and dragons. It has been great fun to write Pru’s story, though I did have to drift away from hand writing and start typing the thing.

    Wrist cramps are a thing. And sometimes my fingers get sore when I’ve spent too much time writing by hand.

    That being said, I am pleased with the results for this year. As soon as I have the entire book completed (which should happen on the 31st of December, if not before) then it will be tucked away until April.

    Also this year I had my son participate. While his goal was not 50,000 words, he was assigned to write 200 words a day and for the first half of the month he did this beautifully. But then the laptop died and with it, his means of typing.

    It was a joy to watch him work. Around the third or fourth day that he came to me, wide-eyed, and said; “I get why you like writing now. Anything can happen!”

    My heart swelled with so much pride in that moment, I feared it would burst. I look forward to including him in future National Novel Writing projects when I’ve secured a personal laptop for him.

    To those of you who participated and made your goals, I applaud you. Imaginary confetti is dusting your shoulders as you read this.

    To those of you who participated but missed the mark, I still applaud you. Writing is a frightfully dangerous endeavor. As my son says; “Anything can happen!” The fact that you braved the blank page and started to fill it tells me you’re the courageous sort and I truly believe you’ll finish that story no matter what.

  • Character Auditions – WE Master Class Blog

    Two weeks ago I mentioned the Writing Excuses Master Class put out a few years back. This is a free class that you can access via audio or transcript on the Writing Excuses website and I recommend it to anyone and everyone who enjoys the writing process.

    Moving along in the course, I have my initial idea: a new app that can be downloaded directly into our consciousness goes horribly awry. Famous fictional characters bleed into our victim’s minds and take over, bringing new life to some of the more heinous creations in literature as well as the heroes meant to catch them.

    I recognize that I’m going to be reading a lot of classics to widen my scope of literary characters I can choose from. The low-hanging fruit, in this case, would be Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty and I think I’m going to go ahead and use those two, if only as introductory players that help the narrative get moving.

    The next assignment was character auditions, which is a new concept for me. Normally the character comes before the idea, and the plot grows out of what I know about them. This is an organic process that I have enjoyed over the last decade of writing, but I’m going to admit that I enjoyed doing character auditions.

    The act of trying different voices helped broaden my understanding of the idea as a whole. From the surly detective who has to figure out which character is infecting which avid reader, to the dirt-poor boy who hacked his way into downloading the app, I was able to explore different ways this story could go.

    In the end, I was stuck between two choices, which I will share now.

    Detective Josephine Margot, first person POV. When writing out her first 500 words, I got a Blade Runner/Johnny Mnemonic feel to the narrative that I liked. She’s a cynical woman who gets called to a murder scene on a prominent college campus, which she is equal parts annoyed about and relieved to be working. Because as long as she’s on this case, she doesn’t have to be downtown at her brother’s wedding.

    Makenzie Leeds, third person POV. When writing her first segment, I got a lot more humor, which I enjoyed because I always enjoy humorous voices. Also, I grabbed the low-hanging fruit and had her infected with Sherlock Holmes. In this scenario, she’d downloaded the app as part of an extra credit assignment and found herself plagued with an additional voice in her head.

    I may bounce between the two before I settle, depending on what the assignments show me in the coming weeks. Until then, I’ll play around with Jo and Kenzie and see if maybe I can blend them together.

     

  • August Round Robin – Creation of a Writer

    When we last visited the subject about what prompted our writing careers, I mentioned an assignment from the sixth grade where the teacher read the opening of a story and then told us to write what came next.

    While I still consider that assignment the launching point for my love-affair with the written word, there were other influences too. I’ve always been a dreamer, letting stories play themselves out in my head, but I didn’t always love reading.

    Or at least, I didn’t love finishing a book. I liked getting started, being introduced to impossible worlds with magic and mayhem, but I didn’t always connect with the characters on the page. When that happened, my happy brain took off and made the story my own, adding characters that I enjoyed better.

    I suppose that could be seen as an early form of fanfiction, but I was in grammar school so I can live with that. And really, I didn’t start writing them down until that fateful assignment in the sixth grade.

    I really should track that teacher down and thank her.

    Throughout high school, I kept a special notebook that held all sorts of stories in it. Mostly fragments, scenes that came to me in the middle of class that entertained me. It wasn’t a full novel, not even a short story because there was no structure to the notebook.

    To look at it now, it seems a testament to my own personal attention deficit disorder. A scene begun on page five was interrupted by a series of scenes about an earthquake rattling the school, forcing me to become the hero and help lead my fellows out of the rubble.

    So what got me from that chaotic fictional buffet to full novel writing?

    To be honest, I think it was my mother’s electronic typewriter. And I know mentioning that archaic bit of machinery is likely to date me, but I’ll own my age for the day.

    One of my earliest stories was written after we visited family in Alaska. I loved the cool air and rugged mountains and vast seascapes that we saw there and, per typical youthful exuberance, commemorated the visit in fiction. As with everything back then, I focused on the people in my life, so the main characters were none other than myself, my brother, and my cousins.

    But what I remember most about writing it, was sitting at the absurdly large desk in the living room and pressing the keys on that typewriter. Something about the whirring-snap sound it made every time I hit a letter filled me with absolute glee.

    There was a permanence to the story I was writing. It was there in the whirr-snap of every letter, my own personal mark in the world.

    This is probably why I have a very noisy keyboard. It may not have the same whirr-snap sound of the typewriter, and I can delete things almost as quickly as I write them now, but the sense of accomplishment is still there.

    Check out what my fellow authors have to say about what started their writing careers in this month’s Round Robin…

    Connie Vines http://mizging.blogspot.com/
    Victoria Chatham http://www.victoriachatham.com
    Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea
    Judith Copek http://lynx-sis.blogspot.com/
    Dr. Bob Rich https://wp.me/p3Xihq-1ke
    Beverley Bateman http://beverleybateman.blogspot.ca/
    A.J. Maguire  https://ajmaguire.wordpress.com/ (YOU ARE HERE)
    Fiona McGier http://www.fionamcgier.com/
    Margaret Fieland http://margaretfieland.wordpress.com
    Rhobin L Courtright http://www.rhobinleecourtright.com

  • Violence in Writing – July Round Robin

    Anyone who’s read my writing can tell you that I use violence a lot in my work.

    We don’t call it that, though.

    We say it’s “action-packed” and full of conflict because the word violence tends to connote negative things. And really, it should.

    As a parent, I find myself repeating the mantra that it is never all right to hit, that there are better ways to solve our problems. Because I don’t want to visit my son in prison one day.

    But in my writing, the violence runs rampant.

    My first novel, Sedition, starts with a duel in a tavernesque place. My second novel, Witch-Born, starts with an assassination attempt on the main character’s life in the middle of a crowded cafe.

    Deviation begins with a hold-up in a bookstore.

    Granted, those are all early works and there are a lot of things wrong with them. I really held to the “in medias res” concept and I recognize that it’s hard to care about a character being shot at if you don’t know who they are.

    These days I try to focus on how the violence affects my point of view character in any given scene. While it was fun following Dorian Feverrette through the steampunk world of Magnellum as he hunted witch-assassins, I can admit that I never stopped to consider what sort of man that made him.

    The truly interesting heroes are the ones who commit to violence and are then affected by that violence. We see them walk a tightrope between wanting to live in peace and needing to fight for that peace.

    This tightrope holds a great deal of tension and opens up the character for deeper development. I’m still trying to find the right balance between action and the effect that action has on the character, but I hope to learn it soon.

    Check out how my fellow authors work with violence in their novels.

    Dr. Bob Rich https://wp.me/p3Xihq-1i2
    Victoria Chatham http://www.victoriachatham.com
    Connie Vines http://mizging.blogspot.com/
    Anne Stenhouse  http://annestenhousenovelist.wordpress.com/
    A.J. Maguire  https://ajmaguire.wordpress.com/ (YOU ARE HERE)
    Marci Baun  http://www.marcibaun.com/blog/
    Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea
    Fiona McGier http://www.fionamcgier.com/
    Anne de Gruchy https://annedegruchy.co.uk/category/blog/
    Rhobin L Courtright http://www.rhobinleecourtright.com

    Judith Copek, //http://lynx-sis.blogspot.com/

  • What I Learn from my Characters – February 2018 Round Robin

    Characters are a bit like the writer’s pox. Instead of itchy red dots all over our skin, we have itchy personalities peppering our minds. Some are louder than others and we end up scratching those first because no matter how many times we’re told we shouldn’t scratch, the itch cannot be ignored.

    As we scratch, fleshing that character out on the page, their voice becomes clearer and their story apparent. Often the process draws blood, a mix of fiction and fact that bleeds onto the page until it is difficult to distinguish between character and author. Neither would exist without the other, after all.

    In my novel Deviation I have two women abducted through space and time, one a writerdeviation-510.jpg and one a mother. The writer finds herself being hailed as a prophet for things she wrote in her fiction, which was a horrifying thought for both the character and me, the author.

    If you’ve read any of my work, you’ve seen the horrible things I put my characters through. I’m pretty sure most would want to kill me if they were real and standing in my apartment.

    The other character, the mother, is desperate to get home to her family. She has a young son who needs her and she has to get back.

    Midway through my revision of the novel I realized I had written my real life struggle into the plot. You see, at the time I was a new mother. My son was only months old and I felt like I was two people – a devoted mother who wanted nothing more than to see to the needs of my son, and an author who needed to carve out time to write.

    As I completed my revision of the novel, I came to an understanding that has carried me through the last ten years of my son’s life; both the writer and the mother are essential parts of who I am as a person.

    While the novel never addresses this personal journey, the ending still reminds me of the lesson Reesa and Kate taught me. I will always find a way to write, and I will always be a mother.

    See what lessons my fellow authors have discovered through their characters in this month’s round robin…

    Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea
    A.J. Maguire  https://ajmaguire.wordpress.com/  (YOU ARE HERE)
    Marci Baun  http://www.marcibaun.com/blog/
    Marie Laval http://marielaval.blogspot.co.uk/
    Judith Copek http://lynx-sis.blogspot.com/
    Dr. Bob Rich https://wp.me/p3Xihq-1c1
    Rachael Kosinski http://rachaelkosinski.weebly.com/
    http://rachaelkosinski.weebly.com
    Beverley Bateman http://beverleybateman.blogspot.ca/
    Rhobin L Courtright http://www.rhobinleecourtright.com
    Fiona McGier http://www.fionamcgier.com/

  • The Character-Driven Plot

     

    IMG_1186
    Here’s a baby turtle for the heck of it.

    I began writing Song of Swans several months ago and was determined that it would be more character-driven than my other works. I wanted to get into the depths of my characters, to follow them and find out what happens via their actions.

     

    This means that my outline has been smacked around quite a lot. I am currently on chapter five, but the things happening in it are things I meant to have in chapter three.

    There are some people who would say that if it is truly character driven then I wouldn’t need an outline at all, I would just discovery write (aka – go by the seat of my pants) but I have found that I need an outline in order to get to the finish of a book.

    SO!

    For those of you fellow Outliner’s who might be reading this … I learned a trick that I thought I would share.

    You see, once I finish writing the chapter – the actual chapter, not the outline – then I go through and I highlight all the things that have happened to my character and make a note of it in the margin. Then I go through everything that’s happened and I write down in my OUTLINE for the next chapter the things that still need to be addressed.

    Example …

    Cassy steals something in chapter 1. She isn’t a thief so there was already a debate about taking said item, but in the end her curiosity and hunger won out. MARGIN NOTE: Item has not been fully investigated yet.

    Chapter 2 has her on the run, trying to get someplace safe before she opens said item and

    IMG_0853
    And some baby geese, too.

    sees her loot. Unfortunately, she gets caught. MARGIN NOTE: Cassy got knocked on the head pretty good and likely has a mild concussion. ITEM STILL NOT INVESTIGATED.

     

    Basically, anything highlighted in the margins of the previous chapter needs to be addressed in some fashion during the next chapter. Even if I don’t want to answer it yet, I have to at least mention it somewhere in the narrative.

    This has had an unexpected benefit. While I might moan about the fact that I’m two full chapters longer than anticipated at this point, the flow is remarkable. I had always meant for the characters to get to where they are now – currently huddled in a cave, suffering from shellshock – but what is happening on the page is far deeper and makes more sense than what I had originally outlined.

    Another thing I’ve had to do is take a step back, breathe, and really put myself in the room with my characters, to let them lead and show me what happens next.

    As an author with several published novels under my belt, it seems strange that I would only just now be coming to this point in my writing, but it’s true. And the difference is undeniable.

  • Weather and World Building

    img_0486
    So much snow.

    It seems that Mother Nature has decided to kick off 2017 with a laugh. My son has not been back to school since leaving for Christmas break and we’re both getting a trifle antsy about that.

    I got stuck in the snow twice already and we just got even more, which is just … glorious.

    But as with everything, this brings to mind writing problems and techniques. Specifically weather patterns.

    Weather has an impact on characters and setting and even plot in a novel so it’s important to pay attention. Currently I’m world building for a novel tentatively titled Swans, which is a High Epic Fantasy … if you want to get technical.

    As I was world building I came to a mountain range and at first I envisioned tons and tons of snow because … I’m currently surrounded by the stuff. But then I remembered that scene from Lord of the Rings where they’re climbing the mountain through the snow and Legolas is leaping lightly on his elegant elf feet and snow is matting in Gandalf’s manly beard and …

    img_0482
    Nuisance looking quite unsure about the snow

    Yeah.

    I think just about every fantasy novel takes a walk through waist deep snow on a summit somewhere.

    Well, not every one. But certainly a lot of them. And while it might be a beloved cliche, it’s also something I want to try to avoid. I don’t want readers thinking; Same old, same old. Girl hasn’t got an original thought in her head.

    So!

    I changed some of the weather patterns for the novel. Not tons, but enough to make it different (I hope).

  • Problem Characters and How to Negotiate

    Since beginning Usurper I have had one character in particular who troubles me; Evaliana Auliere Dyngannon.

    Nice long name, I know. She goes by Liana, for obvious reasons. Who wants that mouthful every time you’re being spoken to?

    Liana and I constantly have issues, which I know makes me sound insane but I’m an author so I’m allowed. (I hope.) But when push comes to shove, every time I try to write in her point of view I end up hating the scene.

    Loathing the scene.

    It’s too shallow.

    There’s not enough oomph to the character.

    I don’t know her the way I know Trenna (her mother) or Nelek (her father) or even Kaden (her brother). She’s this … anomaly outside of her family.

    Or inside it, however you want to look at it.

    She is … angsty.

    And I hate angsty.

    Seriously, I avoid angsty with all my power.

    But as I’m going through this edit I’ve come to the understanding that … I’m going to have to deal with angst. In order for Liana to be a three dimensional character on the page, she has to be allowed to explain why she’s so … arrrgh! About everything.

    So …

    I keep her scenes fairly brief.

    I just have to. For my own sanity.

    Until she grows up and gets over herself, she has a limited word count. (This is part of the reason I don’t do the Young Adult market all that well, can you tell?)

    In return, I let her angst all she wants for that limited word count.

    And then, once the angst has been written/edited/dealt with in some manner, I get chocolate.

    Boom.

    Those are my negotiations … with my fictional character … who only lives in my head and on the page …

    Yeah, I know how crazy it sounds.

  • Round Robin Discussion – Scarring your characters

    This month for the Round Robin topic we are talking about emotionally scarred characters. The questioned posed is; “What mental, physical or spiritual wounds or scars have you used in your stories?”

    The truth is … we all have scars. Whether they’re big or small or whatever, we have them. They define us as people. And the same should be said of any fictional character.

    Now as a writer I don’t sit down with a particular “scar” in mind for the characters I’m dealing with. It’s really a discovery process for me. But once I’ve discovered that particular “wound” in my character’s personality I make sure to highlight it during the editing process and really draw it out.

    Because being a writer is really being a student of humanity. We’re here to show what it is to be human and touch on subjects, both painful and joyful, that are often too complex to be fully expressed.

    But which scars have I actually used?

    Well, Trenna Dyngannon (Sedition series) had a serious issue with her mother that was really brought out in the second book of the series; Saboteur. Basically there was neglect and self-worth issues that Trenna had to battle through, which I found very interesting given how very strong Trenna is as a character.

    One wouldn’t expect someone like Trenna Dyngannon to feel a sense of inadequacy, but due to close contact with her mother she finds herself struggling to remember that she isn’t actually defined by what her mother does or says.

    In the Tapped series, both Seach and Jorry are deeply scarred by the fact that they had to abandon their former Captain. Relo’s absence is a deep burden for both of them given that they know exactly what has been done to him at the clutches of the government.

    On top of that, Jorry and Seach are haunted by things that happened during the war. Moments that they wish they could forget, and truly traumatic orders that they found themselves bound to follow. This particular scar carries through the whole series (I’m in the middle of writing the second book now) and, inevitably, will come to a crisis point where they have to make a decision to either fight again, or try to find some other way to change the galaxy as they know it.

    But perhaps the most noticeably scarred character of mine is Reesa Zimms from the book Deviation. Reesa is a science fiction novelist who has used her writing as a means of therapy for herself (no, this is not even remotely autobiographical, I promise) and in the book … well … let’s go ahead and give a snippet. I haven’t done one of those in ages.

    —

    “I’m dying, Matt,” she whispered.

    She felt him move to her side, felt his knuckle graze her cheek, and heard him sigh.  “David is very good at what he does.  You should have a little faith,” he said.

    Opening her eyes again she met his gaze. “And why should I be spared from a fate I forced onto the whole female race?”

    He frowned, gently pushed a lock of hair behind her ear, and made a thoughtful hum.  She waited for his answer, praying it would be right.  She needed him to have an answer, to have some form of redemption for her.  Perhaps justice was served in her death, but even death-row inmates were given a chance at clemency, weren’t they?

    A final prayer, a last wish, she thought.

    “I think we’ve come to the matter of your own motivations, Reesa,” he said. “Tell me why you really wrote the books.”

    Her heart might have stopped at the sudden wash of pain.  She certainly wished it would.  Fixing her gaze on the juncture between wall and ceiling above them, she was transported through her memory, to the small clinic exam room when she was eighteen years old.  Her mother’s voice rang loud in her ears, calling her irresponsible and thoughtless, convincing her that a child would ruin eight years of modeling competitions and progress.  And in her hand, Reesa could still feel the coarse, politely brown paper bag of contraceptives she’d been given after it was all over.

    Matt made a soft, soothing sound and wiped the tears from her face.  Reesa closed her eyes, unwilling to look at him as she made her confession.

    “I wrote a book where everyone was as ugly as I felt.”

    —

    Take a look at what others are saying about scarring their characters!

    Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea
    Victoria Chatham http://victoriachatham.blogspot.ca
    https://bobrich18.wordpress.com/2016/08/27/the-wounded-healer
    Rachael Kosinski http://rachaelkosinski.weebly.com/
    Anne Stenhouse  http://annestenhousenovelist.wordpress.com/
    Helena Fairfax http://www.helenafairfax.com
    A.J. Maguire  https://ajmaguire.wordpress.com/ (YOU ARE HERE)
    Fiona McGier http://www.fionamcgier.com/
    Rhobin Courtright http://www.rhobinleecourtright.com