Another A-to-Z discovery. Some people just have amazing themes. Prakash Hegade is an Assistant Professor at KLE Technological University and for the A-to-Z challenge he choose the theme of “Architecture of Mind”, exploring hidden biases. An amazing series, with each day explaining in wonderful bite-size pieces how the mind biases work. Read them all at your convenience.
Let’s start with on of the easy ones “Framing Effect” – how presenting information can change how it is received and reacted to.
On that I complain about is how house pricing is advertised, “available in the low 600’s”. Soooo, over half a million, close to two-thirds of a million.
And then the numbers we have all been trained for “$3.99” … it is under four dollars.
These articles are top level, but they give you a place to dig deeper.
We need food at home, we need food at work, we need food at school, we need food at play, we need food on Earth…
We need food in space!
Most of us are familiar with the story of Tang (Cordell). And astronaut ice cream, a freeze-dried delight. Many of the modern hiking food packaging has come from innovations of getting food from here to orbit. Food weighs a lot, and humans, especially active humans executing space walks in Earth’s orbit, need a lot of food.
At this time, humanity has a good handle on getting take-out for field trips into orbit – from tubular scrambled eggs to three-D printing pizza.
Next problem to crack for the noming of noms in space: long-distance food. What happens when a quick resupply with a dip down into the gravity well of humanity’s crib isn’t available? What happens when we set up shop on the moon or maybe even take a road trip to Mars? Toward this end hydroponics and aeroponics have been tested on the International Space Station (ISS), the science of feeding all of humanity and feeding the distant humanity pushing innovation on both fronts. Doing it for an isolated spaceship alone in the dark is going to required next-level food innovations for space, and the resulting science will also help feeding people whose feet stay on the ground.
To that end, NASA is in the hosting a Deep Space Food Challenge: Mars to Table. This isn’t just recipes like they did for the 2021-2024 challenge; things that can be cooked in the particular conditions of no gravity, limited machines, air restrictions (think of all those Earth recipes with high altitude adjustments and multiple the tweaks needed by a thousand), etc. This is a full design challenge of a food system: things packed, things grown, things reused; a food system nutritious enough to prevent vitamin deficiencies and other health issues (scurvy anyone?) while not taking up too much duty time because during the long round trip everything outside the ship is going to try to kill the humans within the ship a lot, like a lot a lot.
“The challenge will officially conclude in September 2026 and has a total prize purse of $750,000.” Registration deadline is July 31, 2026. (NASA Mars to Table)
Cordell, Lyndsay. “Tang: The Orange Drink That Got Its Start From NASA.” Wide Open Country. 18 February 2021. (https://www.wideopencountry.com/tang-drink/ – last viewed 11/14/2023)
Hey y’all visiting for the A-to-Z challenge, welcome and salutations. One of my jobs is being an editor of genre fiction, both a developmental editor and a copy editor. Once a month in this blog, I go off on rants about what I see a lot of – so writers know what editors see a lot of and know to NOT DO THAT.
Today’s rant: Likeability.
Your characters need to be likeable or at least sympathetic.
If you are writing a romance, the romantic leads NEED to be likeable. Mysteries can break the likeability rule as it helps reader think anyone could have been the killer, but please, for romances, at the very least, make the leads likeable.
And to pull likeability off, some of the following things need to happen:
One: The First Impression cannot be a negative one. Just like meeting people in real life, first impressions with fictional characters need to be positive. Don’t have your character kick a puppy, or whine, or betray their friends or any of that before we see something we like about them first. Strangely, you can have the positive first interaction, and then do a flashback where they kick the puppy, and the reader will be more likely to forgive them or make excuses because they know the person is a “good guy”. Do likeable things first.
Two: For a Point of View character that will be around for a while (like in a series), make sure they are entertaining enough that the audience wants to hang with them for multiple books. Do they make a reader laugh, make them think, or make them feel comfortable? No one wants to hang with people they don’t like.
Three: Create a connection (empathy) with the reader (before anything bad happens) in two of the following five ways: Likeable, Sympathy, Jeopardy, Power, or Humor (this list was suggested by Darynda Jones way back in 2014 on Magical Words). Likeable is not telling us everyone likes them, it is showing us people like them. Make them a nice character. Sympathy is a understanding what the character is going through, stuff like a parent recently died or getting yelled at by the boss. Jeopardy is something is a problem, they are late with their rent (through no fault of their own), they just got kidnapped. Power can be used to make a bad guy more connectable; everyone loves a person with power. Humor – snark is a wonderful thing.
Make your characters someone that people want to spend time with.
AVOID THE FOLLOWING (ALL EXAMPLES FROM BOOKS AND MANUSCRIPTS)
Don’t have the character be an impulsive, lazy, backstabbing thief to friends and family, before they are exiled. The developmental recommendation is start with the exile (jeopardy) and their skill at breaking into buildings outside the community to get the food needed (power), THEN backtrack to them stealing from family and friends, lying about the stealing, stealing impulsively when they decide they are hungry. I hated that main character so much for all the damage they did in that first chapter before their exile. The author needed to switch the first two chapters. Yes, the main character was a teenager learning how to be a better person as the character growth arc for the book, but the reader needed the YA protagonist to not need a slapping when they first meet them.
Don’t treat profanity and vulgarity as humor. Unrelenting cursing is not witty dialog; Reservoir Dogs worked because of the meaning of what they said, not the words used. Shock-value is a power-play, not humor. Witty dialog takes work. Humor isn’t easy. Yes, profanity and vulgarity can be used in a humorous way, but focus on the HUMOR, not the expletives. If you want to be funny, be fucking funny not just fucked up.
Don’t have us meet our anti-hero while he is being more anti- than hero. Don’t have us meet him promising to kill someone after bribing someone else, then blowing up the bar which the other characters we have already met are performing at, before we see the first little bit of the hero side. Once the impression of “a-hole” has been set, it isn’t going anywhere.
Don’t have a reader read the chapter title of “Ask Me If I Care” and have them answer “You know, I don’t” and close the book.
Make your characters likeable.
Comment below on a book where the likability of the characters made you either (1) stop reading or (2) keep reading even though you didn’t enjoy the plot, you just like the characters.
Today is the second day of the A-to-Z challenge and the letter is “B”. For a writers, what we often face is the beloved Writer’s Block. Something has stopped the story dead.
In November, a person reached out with a question: “I’m writing a futuristic/sci-fi political drama which I was keeping fairly grounded to genre. But now that the main plot is picking up, I need something to happen to motivate my MC, kickstart her into action. So far, my favorite idea is her getting cursed. Which is very much not the tone for a futuristic/sci-fi political drama. I’m still early in working everything out, so not a big thing, but it feels a bit silly to be stuck (for weeks!) debating a curse mixing up the genre. Any help will be welcomed.”
I said it sounded like two things were happening:
You want your MC to start taking action.
You are going for a quick fix, which you know is wrong for what you want to write.
The result for the author was writer’s block. They were stuck because they were trying to drive the story where it didn’t want to go. I’m going to go out on a limb and say, after exhaustion, this is the most common type of writer’s block. Either consciously or unconsciously your story is telling you “don’t go there.”
In this case, the author was introducing an element which didn’t fit the story and they knew it. More often the writer’s blockade is unconscious; they have to have the character hit a story beat so they are making their character act against their nature and the seething-ocean of story creation refuses to throw up words to crash onto the screen.
If something is wrong, then maybe a different approach is needed. I gave three suggestions because each writer and each problem to be solve needs a different approach; writing is NEVER a one-size-fits-all solution.
The Problem: The MC is lacking agency or action, so how to get her motivated to interact with the plot?
Solution One
If motivation is wanted, goals can help. What does she value – short term (today or in the couple of days), medium term (wants to accomplish this month/year), and long-term goal? How are these compatible and how to do they clash – for example, don’t want to cook tonight so want to eat out but also want to save money for a house – the medium goal of getting a better job doesn’t apply at the moment. But that can kick in because while out at the restaurant, she sees a “now hiring” at the establishment next door to the restaurant.
Then, with the typical meanness of an author giving trouble to their characters, you CRASH all her motivations and make her reevaluate her life. Releasing she didn’t have enough money to even by a pizza slice because prices just went up, she walks into the job interview and gets abducted by aliens.
Meme I created after the SAGA 2023 writer’s conference
Less overt, while eating at the restaurant, she overhears something related to the city job situation which she then investigates.
Solution Two
The curse is a stick method to getting the character to interact with the story. They have no choice in the matter. If the stick method is throwing up a writer’s block, maybe try the carrot method. The goal solutions list in Solution One is one method to discover carrots and sticks particular to the character goals; sticks with goals can be they had been thinking about leaving work and something forces them to stay or leave. But other sticks can be of the more common variety: an accident or general life event. Other carrots could be an invitation to a party or seeing their favorite candy on sale. In general, the inciting incident which changes the status quo of the MCs life can be a carrot or a stick. Most authors go for sticks, because most people don’t change their comfortable status quo until something makes it uncomfortable. Using a carrot can be a change of pace to get the MC moving; the stick method can be saved for the dark-of-soul moment. If you have hit a complete block, brainstorm a dozen or so sticks and an equal number of carrots, both at least ten in number and some can be really crazy, and see if any work at getting the character motivated.
Solution Three
Maybe the character isn’t the right person for the story you want to tell. The third option is to interview the character. If the story is fighting you, sit down with your character(s) and have a chat, it can be on paper or in your head.
Ask them why they don’t want to go along with the story. Ask them if they want to do it (the action required to get to the next part of the story), what DID they want to do. Would they be willing to return back to the plot after that sidequest? How does the sidequest fit in to the main story? Ask the MC if she doesn’t want to be part of the story you are trying to write, if she can recommend someone else. You might get an answer, well, duh, I hate to travel but my baby sister ran away three times while we were growing up. “Can’t it just be you?” “Nope, it is my sister and her best friend.” (Yes, they are imaginary, but we build them to feel real, and sometimes “someone” related to the MC build is the one the story is actually about.)
WRITING EXERCISE: Work with one of the solutions suggested to better understand a character from your present work-in-progress (WIP) or dig out one of your failed stories which had hit a writer’s block. Either do a goal spread for short, medium, and long term; do a carrot and stick brainstorm of at least ten carrots and ten sticks; or sit down and have a conversation with the characters about what they want to do and why.
Hey y’all. Welcome to my humble blog. I have participated in the A-to-Z challenge before and have been blogging since 2016. Normally, my blog publishes three times a week. Sunday is a flash (short fiction). Tuesday is something book related (book review, editing rant, or a BookQuote I created for my YouTube channel). Thursday is the greater writing universe (a writing exercise, memes, science articles, or other people’s blogs). This year for the challenge I choose to supplement the normal blog schedule with meme pictures.
Looking forward to seeing everyone again as well as the new bloggers.
NOTE: Unlike most, I take Saturday off instead of Sunday for the blog.
