 Misty Massey
read all posts by Misty MasseyWhen I was a kid, I loved to pretend I was someone special. Yes, I know, we’re all special, but that’s not quite what I’m going for here. One summer we visited the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Back then there were a number of shipwreck ruins on the sand. I climbed onto them and played pirates, the wind whipping through my hair as I waved a stick for a sword. Another summer we traveled north from Virginia all the way to Canada, staying in a bunch of lushly wooded campgrounds along the way. My cousin and I wandered among the trees, pretending to be Robin Hood’s men and hunting for magical geodes, armed with my daddy’s hammer and two bows we’d constructed from sticks and string. (My cousin had a sliver of granite in her thumb until the day she died, from our continual rock-bashing.) When I moved [...]
Continue reading You Are What You Read
Misty Massey
read all posts by Misty MasseyLast week, I was invited to participate in SFSignal’s Mind Meld. It’s a weekly feature in which the blog invites various genre professionals to answer a set question of interest to genre fans. This week the question was “If you had the liberty to do so, what genre figures would you crossover in a book, show or film?” It was great fun playing with ideas to cross over some of my favorite characters. Who hasn’t ever toyed with the notion of bringing their best fictional friends together in one place? It’s a staple of fan fiction (although sometimes the physical relationships are so farfetched they become comedy gold. For example, these.) In addition to the crossovers I suggested for the Mind Meld, I’ve always thought it might be fun to see superspy Michael Westen (Burn Notice) joining forces with the Leverage team. Their missions are similar, and their combinations of [...]
Continue reading Crossing Over
Misty Massey
read all posts by Misty MasseyNot long ago, a book I’d placed on hold at the library arrived for me. It was a book I’d seen a few weeks earlier, when another patron placed it on hold. At the time, I’d read the book flap and decided I liked the premise, so I was tickled when my turn popped up. As soon as I was done working for the day, I curled up on the couch to enjoy a few pages. Only to discover this:
“You walk into the hallway. The elevator is just closing, but you press the button. The doors open again, and you step into the empty car.”
Yes, the book was written in second person, present tense. I couldn’t get much past the first page. Instead of being able to lose myself in the wonder of the story, I was being ordered around by the author with every sentence. It felt [...]
Continue reading Tenses and Persons
Misty Massey
read all posts by Misty MasseyWe’ve talked quite a bit about flawed characters lately. Flaws make heroes into real people, people we, as readers, can relate to and understand. But what about the bad guys?
The problem with a villain is that in order for him to really be threatening, he also needs to be someone we readers can identify with, same as the hero. Think about it for a second – the thing that makes a villain truly terrifying is the idea that we could easily be as dangerous, given just a nudge in the right direction. A villain who’s purely evil, or utterly undefeatable, is just no fun to read about. My husband and I watch “Once Upon A Time” on Sunday nights. The characters are all story book characters who’ve been trapped in the real world by a horrendous curse the Evil Queen cast. She was just hoping to ruin Snow White [...]
Continue reading The Flawed Villain
Misty Massey
read all posts by Misty Massey“The seven deadly virtues, those ghastly little traps, oh no, my liege, they were not meant for me…” — Mordred, Camelot
Last week we talked about mining the seven deadly sins to flesh out your character’s flaws. It’s pretty simple to create flaws based on bad behavior, but what about flaws born out of good behavior? Oh yes, those sorts of flaws exist. In fact, giving a character a flawed sense of goodness is probably even deeper and more interesting for the reader.
The Catholic church teaches two sets of virtues – four cardinal and three theological. The list I’m going to work with today, though, was derived from the Roman Christian poet Prudentias’ epic poem Battle for the Soul, written around 400 AD and considered to be the first of the medieval allegories. The poem describes conflict between virtue and vice as if it was an actual battle, with [...]
Continue reading The Seven Virtues
Misty Massey
read all posts by Misty MasseySo last time we were here together, we were talking about flaws, and how they serve to make characters believable and even likeable. The point of flaws is, of course, to give the reader something to share with the character, an aspect that graduates him from two dimensions to three. As much as we want to read exciting stories that take us far from our ordinary lives for a little while, we also want to feel a connection to the characters, a connection that allows us to enjoy the adventure as if it was our own.
But what makes a flaw right? And how do we tell the difference between a flaw and a bad habit? Isn’t a bad habit a flaw? Not necessarily. The trick is to burden your character with some unpleasant personality trait, fear or weakness that must be overcome before the character can succeed. You’ve got [...]
Continue reading The Seven Deadly Sins
Misty Massey
read all posts by Misty MasseyTwo weekends ago at Stellarcon, A J Hartley and I, along with Magical Words’ good friend John Hartness, were abducted by the wild women of the Pendragon Variety Podcast, plied with champagne and interviewed about what happens when you finally sell that first book. There’s much discussion about advances (and the lack thereof in some cases), promotional attempts (successful and un) and more. We were even tricked into singing “Daydream Believer” in honor of the recent loss of Davy Jones. I’m not telling you which voice is mine, but I can promise I was one of the ones on key! Today being Saint Patrick’s Day, I imagine most of you are out carousing with bottles of Newcastle and Flogging Molly songs, but if you’re in need of more cerebral entertainment, here you go!
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How To Write Magical Words
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