Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos · 2 Comments

VILLAINS AND HEROES – A LIST OF PERSONAL FAVOURITES (not what you might expect)

I’m sure all of you have a list of personal favourites in the stories you’ve read (or written). Here’s my list.

Be warned, there may be spoilers along the way.

HEROES

1. Raistlin Majere

Raistlin
He is one of the heroes in the core set of books for the Dragonlance saga. Though his role is somewhat ambiguous and is often driven by personal gain over the needs of the team, I can’t help but favour him over everyone else in the group. To be honest, he is more of an anti-hero. If you haven’t read the books yet, I can
assure you there will be times where you won’t know for sure if what he does benefits anyone but himself. But that’s what makes him one of the best, as far as I’m concerned.

2. Frodo Baggins

Elijah_Wood_as_Frodo_Baggins

The smallest of humanoids in Tolkien’s world is tasked with completing the hardest quest ever. I imagine you have watched the films by now, but if you haven’t, Frodo is the main character in The Lord Of The Rings. He is dedicated, well aware of the risks, and almost never falters. Technically, he is battling with the will of an immortal Valar/Ainur (Sauron), which makes him one of the protagonists with the purest heart and mind probably ever written.

3. Anasurimbor Kellhus

Aspect-Emperor

So another character from another epic fantasy. Do you see a patern here? 🙂 Anyway, if you’re into fantasy but not familiar with R. Scott Bakker’s masterpiece (in my mind at least), Prince of Nothing, then shame on you. The first book is called The Darkness That Comes Before. Anasurimbor is a monk in the world Bakker created, who has the power of persuation and manipulation through logic and deduction over the rest of Men. In fact his entire race is like him, though very few of them remain, following an event that decimated the human population known as the Apocalypse. I won’t give you any spoilers, but lets just say he manages to shape the world around his will. Be prepared to delve into some heavy philosophical thinking while reading the books.

4. Brother Francis Gerard

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This is a character out of the work of Walter M. Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz. He is the first of the three characters to guide the reader through a post-nuclear devastated world. The story begins sometime in the 26th century and continues with events taking place every 600 years after that (31st century), then 600 years later (37th century). Why he is dear to me? Because he is the simplest in mind and most innocent of the rest of the narrators, the purest of heart, and is the one who shapes things for the other main characters. The closing pages of the book (in the 37th century), makes a full circle with the MC of that time frame, holding the remains of Brother Francis Gerard in his hand and realising a fundamental truth about humans; a truth Francis Gerard learned the hard way. It’s a sad book, but excellently written.

5. Tyrion Lannister – Bran Stark

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Chances are if you haven’t read the books you probably have seen the show. For those of you who opt for the show… read the books. It’s hard to choose between Tyrion and Bran. Who’s best? I honestly think Bran is destined for supreme power, though something like that always comes with a price. G. R. R. Martin convinced me of this, the moment I read A Game of Thrones (the first book in the A Song of Ice and Fire saga, where Bran is having the last dream before he came out of his comma, the one with the crow, and starts experiencing a power
greater than just being a warg. I wouldn’t be surprised if he ended up ruling some of the supernatural world. That is of course, if Martin doesn’t kill him… I’d be VERY annoyed if that happened.
Tyrion on the other hand, though without any such power, he is the master of… well, everything man-made as far as I’m concerned. If you were to run a  country, kingdom, or state, he is the person you want to be by your side. He too shapes the world around him, though from behind the scenes. Honestly, I can’t decide who’s better between the two.

VILLAINS

OK, so this list is going to be shorter than the previous one. Not that many awesome villains to go around for my tastes. Perhaps it’s also because the villains in a lot of the books I’ve read are not people, but a hostile environment, a supernatural entity, or a group of people rathen just an individual. Maybe it’s because I’m too demanding from the bad guys.

1. Pennywise the Clown

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I can honestly say I have never felt so scared while reading a book in my adult life. Whatever tricks Stephen King used as he was writing It, whatever pacts he made with supernatural beings, it worked. I was reading the book last summer mostly at nights, and there were moments I had to keep the lights on while reading. If I wore a hat I’d tip it at Mr King. If you haven’t read the book, It is the name a group of kids give to a supernatural entity that haunts their town and murders people. The entity appears in many forms, but the most prominent one is that of Pennywise the clown. I was looking forward to reading more of the book, while at the same time I knew it would drain the colour off my face.

2. Big Brother

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Though in Orwell’s masterpiece, 1984, we never actually see Big Brother in person, since it’s more of a concept, it’s easy to understand how nasty and messed up things are when any one or any group of people want to monitor and spy on other people’s activities, thoughts, and feelings. What makes it worse is that Orwell painted a very accurate picture of our present day world, way back in 1948, and spoke of the fact that people will actually forget they live in a totalitarian world, misguided by false pretenses.

3. Padan Fain

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This character lives in the world Robert Jordan created for The Wheel of Time. Padan Fain was under the service of The Dark One (in the books, those who ally with the him are called Darkfriends) and was given special powers to track down the Dragon Reborn (a name given to one of the protagonists). Now you might say “what’s so special about this dude? Sounds cliché.” He starts like this, and we all think he is an insignificant character (God knows Jordan has a thing for bringing in characters that some times are important and some times they just
disappear without a trace), BUT things change for Padan Fain. As if being a Darkfriend with special powers isn’t enough, he is possessed by Mordeth, an ancient spirit so evil that could probably match the Dark One. When the two evils met inside Padan Fain, Mordeth’s spirit merged with him instead of consuming and overtaking him. This resulted in Padan Fain succeeding in breaking his vows to the Dark One (not a small feat) and go solo (or as solo as someone with too many entities controlling him can ever be). He grew so powerful that when he entered the Ways, a world beyond reality, Machin Shin cowered from him. For the uninitiated, Machin Shin is the original name of the Black Wind that devours souls. Many had in the past entered the Ways and met the Black Wind; Padan Fain was the only one to come out of it alive AFTER the Wind caught him. Yeah, he is nasty and persistent.

4. The Night’s King

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SPOILER ALERT (bigger than the previous ones)

This guy has only made his appearance in G. R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire, indirectly. If you’ve watched the show, however, you have seen him. In the books he is mentioned once or twice. Not much is known about him, but since he appeared in the show it’s probably safe to assume he will appear later in the books. I say probably because the show has gone off on a different tangent than the books almost in everything. Please don’t get me started on this. When will he appear? My guess is around the time Daenerys decides to leave Essos and  march against Westeros. So, this guy was once-upon-a-merry-time the Commander of the Night’s Watch, entrusted to guard the realms of Men from the Others beyond the Wall. For those who don’t know, the Others are a humanoid race made probably of Ice and Death and able to raise the dead. Oh yeah, extreme cold is probably related to their coming, though the opposite may also be true. Why is he evil? First of all, those who join the Night’s Watch take sacred vows never to leave it, and die at their post defending the realm. In times of yonder, it was the greatest honour to be among them. When I say times of yonder, I mean during the Night’s King time. He was the commander of the Night’s Watch, so when he met the Queen of the Others and married her, well… you get the picture. He claimed one of the castles along the Wall (the Nightfort) as his own and there he reigned for thirteen years. That was 8000 years before the events of the books. The atrocities he committed are still told in the North, though in the form of folk tales. Based on his appearance on the show instead of the Queen of the Others’ I assume he is the one in charge of the frozen undead hordes that threaten to overwhelm the weakened kingdom, which means complete and utter enslavement of every living thing. You don’t want to be caught anywhere near him.

So, what about you? Who are your favourite villains and heroes?

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos · 4 Comments

Deep Point of View

This is going to be a longer then my usual posts.

As I mentioned before, I chose to write The Darkening from a deep point of view, but only AFTER I finished the first draft AND after I rewrote the whole thing to change the plot. The reason I decided to do that was simple: John Piscus, the main character, is paranoid and he hears voices. The world and himself are his main enemies, and the best way to present this was to show his fears and thoughts (and paranoia) and survival struggle through a very tight POV. Now, I could have gone for First Person POV, but the way the story plays out (no, I won’t give you spoilers, even though I love them myself) felt like the wrong choice. So I decided to go with third person Deep POV. I had never done it before, had never written a story with that POV, and it was a challenge at first. It took me a while to figure it out.

So what does it take to write in deep third person?

1. First off, you need to spend more time than normal inside the main character’s head. You need more of the MC’s thoughts, which is a good way to show some characterisation. This is the best time to show us the way he/she thinks, certain words the MC uses, unique to him/her. To achieve this you need to spend some time with the MC, get to know how he reacts to certain stimuli. Would he/she curse if things didn’t go as expected? Perhaps accept it meekly and move on? What would drive the character to each decision?

2. Based on the previous point, it’s best to avoid having long passages of action without inner monologue. For instance: “She nodded a good morning to her assistant, opened the door to her office, sat down, and adjusted her skirt. She saw the pile of paperwork she had left for her assistant the day before was still there, unsigned. She heard her cellphone ring. She rummaged through her purse, found it and answered the call.” OK, this may not be the best example or the best writing (I’ve done it on purpose to stress some points later on), but as you can see it’s a long list of actions taking place, but we have no idea about the MC’s thoughts. Is it a call she expected? Was the caller someone she enjoyed talking to? Had someone annoyed her before? Did she enjoy having to sign all these documents, etc? It’s a good idea to insert some thoughts and feelings about things happening to the MC, otherwise the passage feels as if the reader is sitting at the other end of the room, eating popcorn, and watching a movie. It’s superficial. Not to mention the sentences don’t seem to sound/read/flow smoothly.

3. The other thing I learned while writing The Darkening, was how bad the tags “he/she thought” really are for deep POV. Lets have a look at the previous example again:

The pile of paperwork her assistant had left earlier, was still there, unsigned. Figures… why waste precious ink from our fountain pen, when Martha can do it for us, huh? It’s not like she’s got anything else to do, she thought.” Boom! The moment you insert that little tag “she thought” you dragged the reader out of the MC’s head and reminded them they are reading a book. You stole the magic. Deep POV and thought tags are not very good friends. Also, avoid using italics for the thoughts, as there’s no need. The same goes if you choose to use the “said” tag for things the MC says. If the MC is saying something to someone else, there’s no need for dialogue tags to indicate the MC is talking. Think about it; why would you tap the readers’ shoulder, take them out of the “spell” you’ve put them, and remind them that a fictional character says something, when you’ve gone into all that trouble to immerse them in the character’s head in the first place? If the MC is the one with whom we are taking this 300-400 page journey, who else would be saying his/her lines? Use action beats instead and describe what the character is doing or thinking. Do use dialogue tags for the other characters though. Otherwise, the dialogue won’t make sense.

4. Remember this post where I mentioned filter words? Remember how it was related to show, don’t tell? Guess what? It’s something you get to use here. A lot. All those filter words related to telling thoughts and telling feelings, words like see, hear, think, feel, realise, remember, watch, wonder, assume, believe, look, hope, touch etc, you want them out of your story. Use a macro to find and highlight them if you must, but they are not helping you or your strengthen your work. They have to go. If you’re in deep POV, pretty much everything not related to something happening to the character is going to be thoughts, things the MC realised, conclusions he/she makes. Readers get that. So why mention it again? It’s like having people waiting for a concert to begin when someone walks on the stage and announces they are there to watch a concert. So in the above example, “She saw the pile of paperwork she had left for her assistant the day before was still there, unsigned. She heard her cellphone ring,” you want to remove “she saw” and “she heard.” If you do that it will read “the pile of paperwork she had left for her assistant the day before was still there, unsigned. Her cellphone rang.” Everything that’s happening in that room, at that moment, is filtered through the MC’s senses so there’s no need to repeat yourself.

We all follow (or at least try to) the “show, don’t tell” rule. The same goes for words describing feelings. If the MC is terrified of something, try to avoid using the word terrify. Instead, describe the feeling. Perhaps his/her mouth is going dry, or the heart is racing. Yes, these descriptions are things everyone uses and tend to be called “clichés,” but you can come up with stuff of your own to describe the emotion.

5. Where things get a little trickier are the passages you’ve written which aren’t things the MC would say, but actually it’s writer’s intrusion. If you know your characters well enough, you ought to know what things they would say at any given time. That’s true even more for the MC. If you’ve shown your MC to be a misanthrope or a sociopath who would laugh when someone falls flat on their faces, have his thoughts, behaviour, and interaction throughout the story reflect that.

This is not the only intrusion a writer may unintentionally do. Another blatant example is when the MC is remembering things for the sake of backstory. If the scene demands the MC to recall something of his past, in other words be introspective, then by all means use it. But make sure it happens when it makes sense, when it’s the right time. In the above example, would there be any reason for the MC to remember (and tell the reader) the time she and her brother were playing in the backyard, and he pushed her and scraped her knee? How much she cried and for how long her brother was grounded for, or what she did to him to get even? Is it related to the workload waiting for her on her office? If so, then write it. If not, delete it.

6. Head hopping. Deep POV dislikes head hopping. In the example I gave, our MC can not know what her assistant is thinking. She can guess, and that’s something you can show, but not know for sure. Not unless the assistant has clearly stated whatever it is he’s thinking. Any thoughts the MC has about someone else are filtered through his/her lenses. It’s a personal opinion and if used correctly it adds more to the characterisation. Pay close attention to what is known to your MC and what is known to other characters (a.k.a. the writer). Remember, everything is filtered through the MC’s perception.

7. Prepositional phrases. I believe this is something everyone should be aware of, but it becomes more apparent when you write in deep POV. In sentences like “She slammed the door in anger,” the prepositional phrase “in anger” is problematic. First, it’s overwriting; if someone slams the door, chances are they are angry. The behaviour (slamming the door) is a good indicator of the emotion. Second and more related to deep POV, when you use something like that, which is intended to show something to the reader, that’s once again writer’s intrusion. That’s you forcing the reader to pay attention to the emotion. However, by using a prepositional phrase, instead of showing the emotion you end up telling it, so you have more than one problems there. This is probably an area I still need to work. I usually draft a story with such phrases strewn in it. Logically, the editing process should eliminate them, but I often miss identifying them as mistakes. For some reason I forget about them, and don’t spot them until several months and rejections later.

I think these points cover the basics about deep POV. If you think I’ve missed something, please share.

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos · 5 Comments

Published short story

I got published for the first time in 2014. That year was great for me, and totaled three short stories published in webzines. Loved them all, and it saddened me when two of those magazines ceased their operations. I think there’s a kitten whimpering with its head hung for every literary magazine that closes. For some of you, three short stories are nothing. Okay, maybe most of you craft that many in a day or so. But for me, short stories aren’t all that easy. I prefer coming up with longer narratives, stories where I can delve into some world building, deeper character arcs etc, so three were just fine 🙂 Lets not forget I had only started writing a year before that.

I had high hopes for 2015, and I kept whoring my stories left and right, as Faulkner once said. Alas, 2015 sucked! I probably collected more rejection emails from that year than a seamstress has pins in her arsenal.

2016 on the other hand, seems to be a promising one. “Seems” is the keyword, as always. Bride of Chaos will publish a short story of mine for its 9Tales Told in the Dark series, sometime around April. Have a look at them, and if you like horror, fantasy, or sci-fi consider supporting the magazine. I’ve already stated my opinion on literary magazines in a previous message, and I stand by what I had said back then.

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos · 6 Comments

Synopsis, Query, and other dreaded stuff

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working on two things (actually, one for the most part, but I just started on the second a couple of days ago): my query letter and the synopsis.

I’ll be honest with you, I honestly did think they would be easier. I’m a newbie, I should have known better; guilty as charged. I’ve already revised my query several times, and the thing I’ve been focusing on is the main character (John Piscus – you can read a small introduction to him here) and what’s at stake for him. Every time I think the letter is in a better state than before, and every time I post it online for critique, the comments and suggestions I receive make it seem as though I’ve done it all wrong. Which for all I know, it probably is completely wrong. Last critique round, an agented writer made some valid comments, so I thought I should follow her suggestions primarily and fill in with things the rest of the other helpful commenters said. So I revised, rewrote everything, and posted it again feeling confident that this time, thanks to her and the help of so many others who provided feedback before her, I had finally nailed the damn thing and would have a lot less to worry about. All the conflict was there, every necessary bit about the main character was there, the main twist that pushed the plot forward to the point of no return was there, what could possibly be wrong, right? Right? WRONG!

The commenters thought it was worse than before.

ezgif.com-gif-makerEither I am dumb or I’ve reached the point where if I keep following suggestions from different people, the whole thing will indeed turn into an unintelligible assortment of letters put one after the other. In other words, gibberish. And yet, it can’t have reached the point of perfection so soon. It’s impossible. They must be right. This thing takes time, yes? Months of working on those two paragraphs that will cause the potential agent to say “I’d like to have a look at that. Sure, why not?” Months of rearranging those 250-300 words within their sentences in such a way that they will be the most melodious thing anyone has ever read. It can’t be ready in a matter of a couple of weeks. No way!

That was when I decided to take a break. It was time to work on something unrelated to the query. Kind of. And thus I had a look at my synopsis. I know that some agents won’t ask for one, but I thought it would be better to have it ready and handy for those who would ask it. It shouldn’t be a problem; after all anyone who uses the snowflake method knows that one of the first steps is having the synopsis ready beforehand.

BUT

From drafting the story all this time ago to having completed the novel, I had changed the story, the plot, and the characters twice after I finished the first draft and once more before that, after I had finished outlining (are you seeing where this is going, folks?). Newbie writer as I am, I never updated my outline after I finished the novel. I just left it there for the future me to remember how different my story was when I first conceived it.

Here’s an insider’s tip. You ready folks? This is all the wisdom of the world. You sure you’re ready? Here goes: don’t do that. Yeah. Don’t. If you outline, save yourself the trouble and update that outline as you go along. Your future self will thank you. Learn from my mistakes.

nice one centurionFun times!

So what stage have you reached with your WIP?

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos · 2 Comments

Inspiration prompt 20

Aside from the fact that it’s a really nice photo and the filters used make it even better, there’s a story behind it. At least I think there is one. And if there isn’t, well, I’m pretty sure we can invent one, yes? Isn’t that what we’re supposed we do? Create reality when there’s none?

Now, what do you think the story here is? Two elderly men talking about what? Their lives? Their past failures? disappointments perhaps? Let’s take it up a notch and go into the realms of fantasy, shall we? What if whatever story you had in mind, was told through the umbrella’s point of view? If you don’t like that, how about making the umbrella into a magical item, perhaps one that could control the weather, or something that could grant wishes? If you’re into more humourous stories, how about the umbrella being cursed and its bearer is always under a personal cloud pouring rain all the time, or perhaps the umbrella had abandonment issues and wanted to feel it is needed by its bearer. What would the dialogue be between the umbrella and the two men?

Lots of potential here. What do you think?