30 Days of Writing #17: Favorite Protagonist?

17) Favorite protagonist and why!

My favorite protagonist would have to be Akane Moroboshi, aka Radian, from Superguy. She was originally introduced as an ancillary family member for another hero, Rad, and later on got powers of her own. From there, she got into a team series, and then I really started screwing with her fictional life.

What I liked (and still do) about her so much is how perfectly willing she is to not be understood, to remain an enigma in situations where someone else might be trying to explain their actions to avoid sanction and gain forgiveness. (She needed this on a few occasions, such as when she tried to destroy the Earth, see.) Her defiant nature was invigorating to write, and has come up in other characters I’ve written since (notably characters in Brutal Light). I suspect Akane remains my favorite because she is the one through whom I really learned to tap that feeling in my writing.

30 Days of Writing #16: Write Romantic Relationships? What Of The Goinking?

16) Do you write romantic relationships? How do you do with those, and how “far” are you willing to go in your writing? 😉

Romance and sex have been part of many things I’ve written, from some fairly straightforward romantic subplots in Superguy and SfStory, to some partially-to-completely dysfunctional relationships in Brutal Light and True Places. My novels have been more explicit in terms of sex scenage, though I took great pains to have them be part of the story, rather than something that stops the story dead for x number of pages. (Given the nature of these novels, this also means that the scenes end up being very weird and possibly disturbing, and overall not likely to simply take you to your happy place.)

30 Days of Writing #14: Map Out Locations?

14) How do you map out locations, if needed? Do you have any to show us?

If it’s an interior space, such as an apartment or a house, I visualize a place I’m familiar with, such as my residence or that of a friend’s–altering details as necessary. If it’s a larger or more fantastic space, I’ll sketch out a map if I don’t have something visual in mind. For exterior spaces, it depends on the story. Brutal Light has Detroit and its suburbs in mind. In a previous iteration of the novel, it was set in Chicago. I had a map on the wall with particular locations marked out, with the idea that I would eventually go to the city and make more detailed notes on what was around. (If that sounds unlikely, well, that’s why I changed the setting to Detroit, near where I live.) For the jungle-setting short story sequence I’m coming up with, I’m going to sketch the exterior locations out, very loosely based on real locations. None to show you just yet, so sorry.

30 Days of Writing #12: Best Job of Worldbuilding?

12) In what story did you feel you did the best job of worldbuilding? Any side-notes on it you’d like to share?

I’ve in the past not been a disciplined worldbuilder, preferring to feel my way along as I write and see what falls out of my head over nailing things down ahead of time. This has sometimes worked well–in Brutal Light, my answer to this question–but oftentimes it has come back around to bite me, forcing significant additional revision time. I’m working on changing that in my upcoming projects–the short story sequence set in a remote jungle location on what may or may not be another world, for instance, is something I’m very aware I have to put a lot of extra pre-writing worldbuilding effort into. My next novel project, Minions, will also require some considerable forethought, though more of it will be left to ‘discovery.’

That said, I don’t think Brutal Light would have been as strong a novel if I’d tried to get things lined up right at the start. Some projects are just like that. In this case, it was the end result of years of thinking about stories like it, and iterations of working on previous attempts at novels and even some of my Superguy material. It had spent so much time incubating that, had I tried anything like formal worldbuilding, I might never have stopped, and might never have gotten around to writing the actual book.

30 Days of Writing #10-11: Weird Situations? Favorite / Least Favorite Characters?

10) What are some really weird situations your characters have been in? Everything from serious canon scenes to meme questions counts!

There’s too many of these for me to enumerate. Just off the top of my head, in Brutal Light, one of my characters has been imprisoned in her memories while another character runs her physical body, and realizes the way out may involve murdering herself in said memories. In True Places, there’s a situation where a character finds he can only escape by, essentially, holding himself hostage. In my current SfStory storyline, various characters are trying to thwart the revenge of a breakfast food item from before the start of the universe. And… well, I could just go on. Most of what I write could be counted as ‘weird situations.’

11) Who is your favorite character to write? Least favorite?

This, of course, depends on the universe and the situation. I find that the characters of mine with the fewest internal brakes are the ones I like writing the most. Kelly, from Brutal Light, is one — a trickster type with no detectable moral inhibitions, who is undermined only by his tendency toward distraction and unwillingness to remember, let alone stick to, a plan. Conversely, characters with a lot of internal baggage, such as Kagami, another Brutal Light character, are my least favorite to write. Emphasis on ‘to write’ — I wouldn’t carry that baggage for the character if I didn’t like them — it’s just a lot more work. Satisfying in the end, though!

30 Days of Writing #8: Favorite Genre to Write and/or Read?

8. What’s your favorite genre to write? To read?

Historically it has been, for reading, science fiction. I cut my teeth on Asimov, Clarke, and Herbert (but not Heinlein or Tolkien, strangely enough — at least not until I was past my teen years and less prone to, shall we say, ‘exuberant overidentification’ with the worlds they created), plus rather more Star Wars and V tie-in novels than I would care to admit. And while SF is still a reading staple of mine, it has been eclipsed in my later years by fantasy and horror.

When I say ‘fantasy,’ I generally mean what I guess you’d call ‘urban’ fantasy – Simon R. Green’s Nightside series and Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series being examples. Also some works from the more eccentric wings of fantasy, such as the books of Avram Davidson and Hal Duncan. Plus, of course, Terry Pratchett’s wonderful and expansive works, both Discworld-based and not. Horror has drawn me in as well, including works by Clive Barker and Stephen King.

I think what draws me to such material in reading is the visceral nature of dark fantasy and horror – the way a good writer can draw you into the moment, despite (or because of) the sheer weirdness of the situation. It’s also why I don’t read all that much of traditional ‘high’ fantasy – there’s nothing in it that really calls to me. Viscerality is also a key component of works I enjoy outside SF and fantasy, such as the mystery/crime works of Michael Connelly (the Harry Bosch series) and Jeff Lindsay (whose Dexter series is a concept I dearly wish I’d come up with).

So it should be no surprise that my favorite genre to write, these days, is ‘dark/urban/fantasy/horror.’ Insofar as I might be expected to shoehorn Brutal Light into a category, that is where it would go. Visceral (and sometimes bloody) action, philosophical and metaphysical weirdness, and characters that (hopefully) show depth and some degree of realism as they try to deal with it all.