#WordWeavers March 6: If you have several stories, which one should a new reader start with? If 1/not yet published, what other works might your readers enjoy?

I have a short about a guy who's three-year-old is a superhero. It's really about covid and releasing your kid into a huge, dangerous world to be taken care of by people who are effectively strangers. That story tells you a lot about my sensibilities as a writer.

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#WordWeavers March 7: How do you define a “strong” character? How do you create one?

One that is defined and has depth. You have a "strong" sense of who they are, their values, the ways they tend to solve problems or react to challenges. They can also surprise you, though, because there's more than one way to react within them. It's a really fine balance, and that's a whole separate discussion from how they grow and change over the course of a story.

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#WordWeavers How *I* create a strong character is to get a sense of their voice and body language, but it's 90% voice. If I know what they sound like, then I can improvise them through any situation. That's not the same as creating backstory, so instead, I generate backstory as I go. It's the groove that D&D left in my brain. :)

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#WordWeavers NB: This is *not* the same as "realistic" characters bc actual human beings are collections of contradictions. We're irrational and unpredictable. We do Weird Shit all the time.

Fictional characters are expected to be coherent and consistent. It's the mode of writing that surrounds us, it's hugely influenced by the early days of Freudian psychology--hence "psychological realism"--but it's not *real*. It's important we all recognize that.

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#WordWeavers March 8: How do you approach stereotypes while creating characters?

Subvert them every time I get the chance.

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#WordWeavers March 9: If you need to share an important piece of history/lore, what’s your approach that avoids infodumping?

Dialogue. Get people talking about something. Avoid having one person directly explain if you can, but sometimes, that's just the most efficient option. I think readers are smart and can tell, "Aha, this is information I need," and they will judge whether I made it pleasant enough to read.

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#WordWeavers I should say, in my current project, my main character lapses into memories of her parents, so she'll remember something they told her as a way of communicating that to the reader. It's a feature of the text, and I justify/rationalize it as a reminder of how much she misses them and would rather not have been abducted into a paramilitary child-soldier cult in space. (It's the Jedi. She's a padawan.)

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#WordWeavers March 10: Antagonist POV: Imagine you achieved your goal. What's next?

Tea.

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#WordWeavers: March 11: Give an example of brilliant writing. What's special about it?

I don't have something to quote, but my go-to example is how Cat Valente's narrator voice is different in every piece. She tailors it to fit the story. She's so good!

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#WordWeavers March 12: How could someone who knows your MC well console them after the last time you made them suffer?

This isn't the *last* time she suffered, but it is a time when someone who cares about her managed to make her feel better.

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#WordWeavers March 13: Tell us about a quirk your SC has.

She *loves* weeding. Weeds are just plants that need a new home.

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#WordWeavers March 14: Is selling your work for money important to you when you write?

The actual money isn't super important to me. I am very lucky to be employed. But I would love to *be paid* at some point. Of course, the publishing industry is SCREWED right now, so I've essentially given up on that dream.

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#WordWeavers 15 March: If your SC came across a large crystal that was glowing from within, what, if anything, would they do with it?

Brant [standing back]: "Hey, we shouldn't. I mean."

River [looking from behind Brant's arms]: "It's so pretty! I wonder what it is?"

Sim [rushing forward]: "I bet it'll give me super powers if I lick it!"

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#WordWeavers March 16: Do you have any kind of ritual to get in the mood to sit down and write? If so, what is it?

Open the file. Read something. If I can will myself to do that, then my fingers are already on the keyboard making changes.

If I'm meant to write something new, I open a fresh file and write what's in my head.

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#WordWeavers March 17. Did you ever receive formal education in creative writing?

I took an online course at SFU's "adult learning centre." Funny story, I started writing a story abt a guy who's toddle is a superhero and how terrifying it is. Halfway through, the instructor said, "readers like to see characters make choices," and I was like, yeah, I should do that. So the story is literally about him being tortured by the choice of whether to take his kid's powers away.

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#WordWeavers Mar 18: Tell us about a time when your MC failed.

"I killed her. I didn't want to. I couldn't stop myself. She's dead."

(NB: This was a fair fight between two women, both trained combatants.)

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#WordWeavers March 19: Share something that makes your SC different from your MC.

Sim *so* wants to be a Big Damn Hero, and she does ~not~.

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#Wordweavers March 20: How much romance is in your story?

Almost none. I'm not interested in it for this story.

I often think how hilarious it would be if (somehow) this book were made into a "sexy YA adventure" movie/show w 20-somethings pretending to be 15-year-olds. There's one very obvious love triangle that could be forced on the text,and the reason I don't do it is none of those characters should ever *date*. [shudder]

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#WordWeavers March 21. Where does your MC fall, on a scale of timid to recklessly brave?

She starts quite reckless--because she was raised in an environment with basically zero danger and a great deal of freedom (as in, she doesn't know what "talking back" even is), but then she learned to be way less so once she's trapped in a paramilitary space cult. (It's the Jedi Academy. She's in a padawan.)

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#WordWeavers March 22: Is there a subject that's represented poorly in media that you'd like to cover in your work?

#Antiauthoritarianism. I mean. there's LOADS of that on the ground--up to and including fully articulated #anarchism (something I'm not really qualified to represent)--but there's also a *lot* of slathering worship of soldiers and kings in SFF, and I cannot stand that shit.

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#WordWeavers March 23: What are you careful about when writing?

Ideology. I never want to publish something that carries values I don't actually believe in.

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#WordWeavers March 24: Tell us about something positive you experienced because of writing.

Cackling.

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#WordWeavers March 25: What do you feel thinking about the last scene you wrote?

Hesitant pride. The last thing I wrote from scratch was the closing scene of my book, which is very much arm's-length description rather than a scripted scene, so I need to find a way to embody it, and I made one specific choice--to introduce sexuality to the book at the last second--and it's for a reason, but I don't think I nailed it. It'll require a full rewrite.

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#WordWeavers

Oh.

I know how to do it.

My protagonist is going to have to fend off someone flirting with her. I need to signal that she's not uninterested, but she's also not *ready* for that.

Yeah, that's the way to do it.

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#WordWeavers March 26, SC POV: What’s your favourite smell?

"Books. But like, the paper ones. Screens are fine. But paper's... smelly."

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#WordWeavers⁩ Mar. 27—Which character would be the most fun to be around?

Sim. By a mile. He's the funny one.

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#WordWeavers Mar. 28: When was the last time your MC got excited? Why?

Depends on your definition, but if you mean in a good way, that would be when she stole someone's lunch and it had coffee in a thermos.

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#WordWeavers Mar. 29: How big is your cast of characters?

One protagonist. Three secondary characters. Two supporting. One main protagonist and a "dragon."

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#WordWeavers Mar 30: How do you keep track of important info related to your characters, world, etc.?

I make character and setting notes. I have a simple bullet-point list for outlines. To be fair, the tone of my book is not consistent, so maybe I should be doing more to track that kind of thing.

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#WordWeavers Mar. 31: Share or tell us about a fun scene you recently wrote.

"Recently" and "fun" are both relative, but I got to have some fun with one character in the middle of a pretty grim fight. He still wanted to be the big hero, so his inner monologue says something like,

"It was the ultimate dual-weapon combination, rapier and dagger. It was called Florentine. He'd looked it up."

(Dear reader, it is not called Florentine. That is a myth.)

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#WordWeavers Apr. 1: Your opinion on April fools day & do you incorporate the day into your work?

Nah. It was never part of my life, except for that one BBC video about pasta harvesting.

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#WordWeavers Apr. 2: Do you use any special means to get to know your characters? E.g, character sheets, prequels, interviews, etc.

Nope. I key into their voice. If I know how they talk, then I know them, through and through.

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#WordWeavers Apr 3: For which characters do you come up with a backstory?

I haven't bothered with villains because fuck 'em.

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#WordWeavers Can you create a character/place/storyhook/device on the spot, if you need to?

Dana was born in India, and not under that name, but her family moved to Seattle when she was two, and they wanted her to have a name white people could pronounce, so only her official documents say "Damini." She thinks of herself as both American and Indian with no contradiction. Of course, American racism doesn't see it that way.

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@orionkidder Damini looks pretty easy to say. I'd assume it's /daˈmini/ when enunciated properly, and becomes /dəˈmini/ in casual, everyday speech.

So, no harder than a word like linguini or a name like Olivia or Emily.

Any white people who have trouble with that need to get over themselves. (Or just admit that their real problem is they're racists.)

@kagan Yeah, that's the weakest bit of the character I built. I didn't spend enough time finding something harder to pronounce. I should have used the spelling I found, "Daamini."

Alas. This is what second drafts are for. And thirds. And sevenths.

@orionkidder That's something I need to hammer more deeply into my own awareness: I'm working on the *first* draft, not the last. Until it's published, I can always go back and change stuff. It doesn't need to be airtight, or even particularly polished, right now.

It just needs to *happen, at all.*

Gotta find the right pithy, mantra- and/or slogan-like version of that, and then keep saying it to myself.

@orionkidder Oh, and just to clarify: I wasn't trying to criticize your choice of name. I was trying to criticize the kinds of white people who would very definitely consider Damini to be "too hard to pronounce. I'll just call you Dee. You don't mind, of course."

Seriously, fuck those assholes.

I saw something on Reddit one time, about someone whose white relatives were claiming their mixed daughter's name was too hard to pronounce, and then it turned out to be something along the...

@orionkidder ...lines of "Kendra" or "Kesha". (Obviously neither of those, but it was something like that, two syllables long, NO sounds that aren't in General American English, and I'm pretty sure there was a short E in there.)

Basically, they were responding to the person's color, not the length, sound, or complexity of her name.

I think Damini would work fine for showing up the stupidity of the "too difficult" bullshit.