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Other Cool Blogs: Writers Helping Writers November 18, 2015

Erin Penn

Image courtesy of vectorolie at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

How Many Cameras Do You Need?

POV (Point-of-view) characters are the cameras recording the action in a book. Like television and movies, specialty cameras in writing may be close-up exclusive, close first person, or used in panning shots, omniscient third person. Different genres required different cameras. In movies, science fiction now demands the Steadicam while horror like a bouncing “you are there” feel of handheld video. In books, first person is popular for urban fantasy and superhero while epic fantasy likes third person with switching POVs between cast members.

When dealing with multiple cameras, POVs, how much is too much? Marcy Kennedy addresses the question during her guest appearance on Writers Helping Writers via a post entitled “How to Decide How Many POV Characters Our Book Needs“.

Central questions to figure out which POV are needed:

  1. Who is the protagonist?
  2. Would it improve the story to include scenes from the antagonist’s viewpoint?
  3. What’s the scope of our story?
  4. Which characters play a key role at the climax of the novel?

To see these questions (and more) expanded, visit the posting here: http://writershelpingwriters.net/2015/11/how-to-decide-how-many-pov-characters-our-book-needs/

Writing Exercise: Scenery and People

Erin Penn

Photo by Erin Penn (2013)

Scenery, especially personal spaces, can give a great deal of insight to a character. While easiest to see in movies, like the mural in Uncle Ben’s house in Star Wars and Andy’s bedroom in Toy Story, what a person surrounds themselves with at home, in a garden, in a car, or on vacation can fill in the blanks on how a person may be feeling or her history, even when the person is not the focus of a first-person or close third-person narrative.

Many writers focus on physical and clothing descriptions, but stop describing a room beyond, say, the paint on the walls. These descriptions combine with dialogue, inner thoughts, and landscape description, sweeping the story through strong and hard without ever letting us know who the people other than the main character truly are.

In Home Cooking Part 1, Troy studies Mrs. Carter’s apartment to learn a bit about her. The spoken dialogue reveals only what she presents to the world and who she was before illness took her: a strong-willed woman, older, southern. The worn out apartment tells of a life without money, no husband as support even though she uses “Mrs.”, a throw hiding the worst of the damage to a sofa, and, most damning, the one button on her remote control completely worn out – not on/off, or a preprogrammed channel, but search. She is locked in, unhappy, and has no options. A far cry from being ONLY a kindly but firm grandmother offering something to eat to her daughter’s new boyfriend.

Further, we gain insight into Troy, because he notices these things. Not the focus character in Honestly, I revealed very little about Troy, taking a significant portion of the story before divulging his disability in all its details. We don’t know much about his military service other than he got shot once. The only real inner feelings disclosed, other than his infatuation of Kassandra, is his (mild) jealousy of Dewayne, which the Home Cooking flash indicates is alive and well.

What he noticed in the scene first, the ability to walk through it, exposes his ongoing life struggle with footing. The rest of it, well, his ability to pull apart a room for a personality profile indicates something other than standard grunt-level training.

READING EXERCISE: Choose one scene in your present book and figure out what information you learn about the characters from the scene and what from the dialogue. If only the dialogue was provided, how would what you know about the characters be different?

WRITING EXERCISE: For a character from your present work in-progress (WIP), write a scene description of their favorite living space where they had control of the decoration – bedroom, desk at work, work room in basement, etc. from the viewpoint of a person entering the space to learn more about them, a spy, a date, their mother. Do not directly describe history or feelings of the WIP character, only what the person entering the space can see and infer. For example, I never out-and-out go into why a remote control writing may have worn off, but a great deal of information can be inferred.

Geeking Science: Advertising

Erin Penn

We Sell It – You Buy It

Advertising is a big business – forget multi-million or even multi-billion. If you are in business, you advertise by word-of-mouth, by business card, by video, by social media, – every means humans take in information to their brains is tapped. It is studied by scientists and con men alike, by people selling you breakfast cereals to the person asking you for a date.

And the Sell factor goes way beyond the simple advertising of putting the word on the street. The Sell encompasses a wide range of tactics including market studies, public relations, customer support, and media planning. Marketing – the creating and sustaining of a Market for the product is every business.

Writers are in business and not only have to sell their product through advertising, but market themselves. I market me, “Erin Penn”, through the website (erinpenn.com), through a blog (erinpenn.blogspot.com), through my Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/ErinPennBooks/), by going to conventions (events) and attending a writer’s group, by talking to people and helping people get their writing started with advice and connections, by learning editing, and dozens of other ways so people not only know about my books but also about me and my reputation.

One of the easiest ways to connect to people is making the advertising fun. Look at the back of all the children cereal boxes, each has a game reiterating the name and logos of the cereal over and over again – this over and above the toy inside. Fast food puts in play areas and offer fun packages for children, setting up long-term associations with happy times and their food in people’s minds. Beer companies host parties and support sports.

And the military has found the movies. It’s fictional depiction of the perfect propaganda recruiting tool.

If you have read my book (Honestly), you find I both support the military with all my heart but do not turn my eye away from the dangers. The injuries, both physical and mental, sustained by the Troy Nguyen were inspired by like issues from friends who have served, including the loss of leg. I don’t do platitudes of “Thank you for serving”; I sit beside my friends during the Fourth of July and hold their hands while fireworks light the sky and deafen the present they are in with the noise of bombs exploding in their past. I believe in the military and support it; I also know the cost of freedom must be paid with every generation and I will not cheapen it by glossing over the cost. You will find characters from the military appearing again and again in my flashes and published works. And, I promise, they will always be human – good, bad, hero or villain – at the end of the day, they are human.

That being said, and remembering this is a Geeking Science Post, one of the ways the military tapped into the science of marketing and advertising last year is Wicked Cool. This cross-branding method is up there with the Heroes television show-comics-mobile-app-social-media mix. Goosebumps covered my arms when I first watched this video from the Pop Culture Detective. Science is Wicked Cool and this Geek’ed me out!

The ending is something every writer should inscribe in their minds, for this is a tremendous power and responsibility.

“Fiction can be a very powerful and very effective way to influence people’s actions and attitudes.” – Jonathan McIntosh, Sept. 28, 2016 (Pop Culture Detective: Military Recruitment and Science Fiction Movies)

 

Author Spotlight: Katherine Kurtz

Erin Penn

Amazon Cover

The first time I read Katherine Kurtz, her historic rich voice drew me in. Her amazing stories kept me there. From the Deryni Chronicles, a fantasy-psychic kingdom, to the Adept, urban fantasy problem-solver, each world is built from the ground up in lavish detail. I could live in these world for days.

While she is no longer as widely read as in her hay-day, she still has a weekly chat with her fans on her website every Sunday evening.

At one point she played in the SCA under the name of Countess Bevan Frazier of Sterling.

 

Flash: Flower Power

Erin Penn

Woman with Flower Stock Art

Image courtesy of imagerymajestic at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Rating: Mature (Language)

“Gods, I cannot believe what a bunch of losers you guys have become.” Donnie waved with the hand not holding his beer, encompassing the group sitting throughout the upscale living room where they had collapsed after an exhausting evening of interspecies political wrangling. The rant went on and on about the old days and how everything had changed since his friends started pairing off with “the girls,” finally ended with, “We’re monsters for crying loud!”

The host adjusted himself on the arm of the cream and maroon striped settee to better watch his wife as she bustled around the kitchen. “Just because I have chosen to hand the reigns to someone does not mean I am tame.” He nodded happily as Ketzal gave him a wave before she opened the refrigerator. With her hidden behind the stainless steel door, Ebon returned his full attention to his guests, smiling with his canines exposed.

“Get real, the ring on your hand is like a ring through your nose,” Donnie sneered. “Dude, you are so pussy whipped I can’t even hear the crack of the leather anymore.”

Ebon moved faster than even the vampire of the group of immortals could observe. One moment Donnie was leaning against the sofa with Maria and Lorenzo, the next the shifter was holding him at arm’s length with Donnie’s legs swinging nearly a foot above the floor. Black hair sprouted along Ebon’s elongated arms, rock-hard muscular arms ending in claws around Donnie’s neck. The back of the dark elf’s head lay gently against an undamaged silk wallcovering.

Everyone stopped moving, and those that could held their breath.

“Do not think my marriage makes me any less dangerous.” Black eyes glowed red in the centers. Ebon stepped closer to the wall, bending the arm without effort while keeping the elf suffocating mid-air. He brought his short snout and full set of glistening teeth closer to the Wild Hunt rider face.

“Dinner is ready in ten…Ebon, my heart, put Donnie down.”

“Dead or alive,” he growled unmoving, staring into the eyes of his trembling prey.

Ketzal’s sweet voice replied. “I don’t really care, but if you kill him, you will need to dispose of the body after dinner.”

“What are we having?”

An exasperated puff came behind him. “What do you think?”

“Something tomatoey,” her husband replied after sniffing the air close to the elf’s neck.

“Creole Boil.”

If anything, Ebon’s toothy grin grew wider. “You live.” He opened his left hand.

Donnie fell to the floor gasping, rubbing his neck.

“And if you have a minute, can you fetch some wine for the meal?” The brunette swung her waist long hair behind her as the shifter stalked closer to her to give her ear a quick bite.

Whispering into it, which did not obscure the communication to anyone in the room because of their heightened senses, he said, “I will need to give it a taste to choose the right match.”

The goddess of flowers and ephemeral things giggled softly a second before turning her lips to his. “I just sampled the dish.”

He kissed her a long moment.

“The Sidewood Sauvignon Blanc, 2012, should do.” He opened the small door between the living room and kitchen for the wine cellar stairs.

The satisfaction of Ketzal’s sigh left no doubt about the happiness of the couple’s relationship, even as it moved into its second decade. “Dinner is ready for seating as soon as someone helps me set the table.”

Tykevius and Carissa glided from where they had been hovering near the ceiling toward the dining area.

“Oh, and Donnie.” Ketzal’s musical tones carried the bass throb of power.

The elf snapped his head toward the Aztec goddess.

Her sweet smile looked even scarier than her husband’s. “I wouldn’t have seconds if I were you.”

(words 636, first published January 15, 2017)