Season Two of Bridgerton

Thanks to the second season of the hit Netflix drama, Bridgerton, adapted from the historical romance series written by Julia Quinn, we are having a much-needed international conversation about colorism. This season featured a 19th-century steamy love triangle between the most eligible Englishman, Anthony Bridgerton (played by Johnathan Bailey), and the regal and captivating South Asian sisters, Kate (played by Simone Ashley), and Edwina Sharma (played by Charithra Chandran). Some of the conversations have centered around the excitement of casting two dark-skinned British women with Indian heritage in leading roles.

Bertha Antoinetta Mason

Bridgeton made me think of another romance novel set in the 19th-century that featured a love triangle between an Englishman (Mr. Rochester), a devoted English governess (Jane Eyre), and a Jamaican and Creole madwoman (Bertha Antoinetta Mason). Of course, I’m referring to Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 novel, in which the character Antonietta was portrayed as a gruesome caricature of a mad black woman. Upon meeting Antoinetta, Jane describes her as:

• “a woman tall and large, with thick and dark hair hanging down her back.”
• “Fearful and ghastly to me…It was a discoloured face—it was a savage face. I wish I could forget the roll of red eyes and the fearful blackened inflation of linaments.”
• “a figure ran backwards and forwards. What it was, whether beast or human being, one could not, at first sight, tell: it groveled . . . on all fours, it snatched and growled like some strange wild animal”

Instead of simply dismissing Bronte’s racist character descriptions as a sign of the times, let’s explore further. 

It’s important to remember that there is no biological basis for race. Race cannot be determined through science. Race, instead, is a social construct developed by the British ruling class to validate white racial identity and vilify blackness, to protect their power at the time. For over two hundred years, the myth of race was perpetuated through American institutions and society.  Bronte’s racist rhetoric is evidence of a job well done. 

But, in order to fully comprehend the social construction of race, we need to go back to the Bacon’s Rebellion.

The Birth of Racial Identity

Bacon’s Rebellion, led by Nathaniel Bacon over frustrations with the British and the ruling class, was the first rebellion in the American colonies. It took place in Jamestown, Virginia from 1676 to 1677. The most scandalous aspect of Bacon’s rebellion was that he dared to join forces with indentured servants, Native Americans, and Africans to attack the ruling elite. 

This deadly rebellion led to a conscious effort to create a white ruling class, to avoid being overrun. Suddenly laws were being created that granted access to public office, property, housing, and work for Whites only. Whiteness was defined by the physical attributes that were common for fair skin. White racial identity became a mode of upward mobility. For those who were willing to assimilate, change their names, lose their accents, and hide their customs, prosperity was promised.  

Understanding that racial identity is a social construct, created to advance one group while stifling another, helps underscore the impact our characters’ physical attributes can have on our readers. This is especially important when considering the historical undesirability associated with black features. These attributes can carry both painful and triumphant histories.

Accent, hair texture, eye shape, lip thickness, nose width, and skin color are all legitimate ways to illustrate a character’s racial and ethnic identity. But we can longer ignore that these attributes come with explicit values of good and evil. 

In fact, those character descriptions and traits associated with blackness are often deemed as too much, when they appear on black bodies. Lips that are too full, noses with nostrils that are too wide, bodies that are too curvy and take up too much space, hair that is too curly and unruly, and, in returning to our focus on colorism, skin that is too dark.

Colorism

Colorism refers to the explicitly communicated value for light skin tones over dark skin tones within Black Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) communities. Its use as a weapon lays bare for us the cost of white supremacist standards of beauty. As a result, BIPOC communities continue to obsessively identify, evaluate, and categorize each other based on skin color. The way the world perceives lightness or darkness can lead to very different realities. 

Walking through the world with light skin can provide unearned advantages in BIPOC communities through its association with superior morality, normalcy, and intelligence. For example, motion detection devices were designed with light skin in mind. Items like makeup, shapewear, band-aids, and flattering color patterns that match your skin tone are readily available. There’s no need to pray that the school photographer has experience in capturing your skin tone. Popular celebrities and fictional characters of your racial group often match your skin tone.  

Walking through the world with dark skin can mean navigating more than the obstacles like the ones mentioned above. Society associates dark skin with criminality, untrustworthiness, and a predilection toward violence, which can jeopardize health and safety. 

Back to Bridgerton

Season two of Bridgerton is a great example of the power of representation over tokenization. The characters Katie and Edwina Sharma were written as dynamic and courageous women, which provided the space for Charithra Chandra and Simone Ashley to bring them to life and connect with audiences. The story did not overly focus on, nor hide from, their cultural differences. This is what is possible when we craft complex characters and build dynamic worlds that readers with marginalized identities can connect with. #charactergoals

Things To Consider

Crafting character descriptions that include racial identity can be messy and imperfect. We need to accept that we can’t portray “the” experience or create characters that represent everything for everyone. 

We can, however, offer intentional experiences and viewpoints that illustrate the complex experiences of BIPOC. Are there things you would change in your current writing project or character descriptions after reading this passage? Use the questions below to guide you in your writing.

Considerations for Crafting Racial and Ethnic Character Descriptions

• Be specific: why have you chosen this identity group?
• How does this character enhance or advance your story?
• How can you demonstrate the way your character’s racial identity impacts their view of themselves and connections with others?
• Be intentional with the descriptions that portray racial and ethnic identity. Research using credible sources. Interview and listen to BIPOC with varied experiences.
• Consider including the unique and complex experiences of biracial identity.
• Consider using more than skin color to convey race and ethnicity.
• Consistently describe all characters’ traits, not just BIPOC characters.
• Consider describing skin color by pairing hues, shades, and tones instead of relying on food.
  • Note: Using food descriptions to refer to BIPOC is not considered a politically correct writing practice because it can be seen as reinforcing colorism. This is a relatively new concept for me, as someone who has been raised to hear love and affinity in these types of descriptions. However, after researching this concept, I haven’t been able to overlook the possible association that chocolate, brown sugar, or honey could have with the crops my ancestors were forced to grow. Did slave owners use food descriptions to sell my ancestors at slave auctions?

Tell us in the comments: Are there things you would change in your current writing project or character descriptions after reading this passage?

Colice Sanders is a blogger and motivational speaker.  Colice writes YA, poetry, and memoir. Her blog areasontorise.com chronicles her journey of radical self-acceptance through the lens of childhood trauma. You can reach her on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram!

The post It’s Messy in The Middle: Unpacking Racism & Colorism in Character Descriptions appeared first on DIY MFA.

Have you signed up to be a DIY MFA Radio Insider yet? This is an exciting new monthly newsletter especially for our podcast listeners. Every month, you’ll get an email from our podcast producer with recaps of the most recent episodes, a curated Listening List of episodes on a particular theme, and other fun goodies we only share via email. Best of all, it’s free to join! The theme for April is Picture Books, and you can become an insider by signing up with your email at diymfa.com/insiders.

In this episode Claire Stanford and I discuss:

• The meaning of happiness, its relationship with social media, and how that plays out in her novel.
• Why she classifies her novel as literary fiction as opposed to speculative.
• How she navigated writing a novel about a character who is strongly opposed to change.

Plus, her #1 tip for writers.

About Claire Stanford

Claire Stanford’s fiction has appeared in Black Warrior Review, The Rumpus, Third Coast, Redivider, Paper Darts, and Tin House Flash Fridays, among other publications. Her work has received fellowships and grants from the Jerome Foundation, the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, the Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts, and the Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts & Sciences.

She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Minnesota and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in English at UCLA, where she studies science fiction/speculative fiction, narrative theory, and novel theory. Born and raised in Berkeley, she lives in Los Angeles.

Her debut novel, Happy for You, will be published April 19, 2022.

You can find her on her website or follow her on Twitter or Instagram.

Happy for You

Four years into work on a still-unfinished philosophy dissertation, and anticipating a marriage proposal from her long-term boyfriend, Evelyn Kominsky Kumamoto feels stalled. Meanwhile, all around her, everyone else seems to be getting on with their lives: her corn-fed, relentlessly optimistic boyfriend, Jamie, has no hesitation about committing to a shared future, and even her reserved father is energized by a new relationship—his first since her mother’s passing.

Looking for a change, Evelyn accepts a job as a researcher at the third-most-popular internet company, where her team is tasked with developing an app that will help users quantify—and augment—their happiness. Confronting Silicon Valley’s norm-reinforcing algorithms and predominantly white culture, she struggles to find belonging: as a biracial person, as an Asian American, and as a person who doesn’t know how to perform social media’s vision of what romantic partnership, motherhood, and womanhood should look like. But when an unexpected development in her personal life upends her assumptions about the future, Evelyn must embark on a journey towards authentic happiness all her own.

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link, where if you choose to purchase via the link DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Spotify, or Google and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available.

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Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 405: Change vs. Stasis: Character Development in Literary Fiction – Interview with Claire Stanford appeared first on DIY MFA.

Have you signed up to be a DIY MFA Radio Insider yet? This is an exciting new monthly newsletter, especially for our podcast listeners. Every month, you’ll get an email from our podcast producer with recaps of the most recent episodes, a curated Listening List of episodes on a particular theme, and other fun goodies we only share via email. Best of all, it’s free to join! The theme for February is Romance, and you can become an insider by signing up with your email at diymfa.com/insiders.

In this episode Alana Quintana Albertson and I discuss:

• What inspired her to turn Shakespeare’s tragedy into a rom-com and how she pulled it off.
• How she kept raising the stakes for her characters, while keeping it realistic.
• Using world building to convey deeper elements of culture and community in her story.

Plus, her #1 tip for writers.

About Alana Quintana Albertson

Alana Quintana Albertson is a Latina bestselling romance author (her book Badass hit #3 in the entire Amazon paid store, she has had multiple novels in the top 100 paid store, and her Se7en Deadly SEALs romantic thriller serial has over one million views on the Radish fiction app). She has written thirty books and landed a three-book six-figure deal with Berkley Publishing for the upcoming Latinx romantic comedy series, Love and Tacos. The first book in the series, Ramón and Julieta, was recently optioned for television. Alana holds a Masters of Education from Harvard University and a Bachelor of Arts in English from Stanford University. She’s the former President of Romance Writers of America’s Contemporary Romance, Young Adult, and Chick Lit chapters. She’s the founder of the non-profit dog rescue, Pugs N Roses. She lives in Poway, California, with her husband, two sons, and too many pets.

You can find her on her website or follow her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Ramón and Julieta 

When fate and tacos bring Ramón and Julieta together on the Day of the Dead, the star-crossed pair must make a choice: accept the bitter food rivalry that drives them apart or surrender to a love that consumes them.

Ramón Montez always achieves his goals. Whether that means collecting Ivy League degrees or growing his father’s fast-food empire, nothing sets Ramón off course. So when the sexy señorita who kissed him on the Day of the Dead runs off into the night with his heart, he determines to do whatever it takes to find her again.

Celebrity chef Julieta Campos has sacrificed everything to save her sea-to-table taqueria from closing. To her horror, she discovers that her new landlord is none other than the magnetic mariachi she hooked up with on Dia de los Muertos. Even worse, it was his father who stole her mother’s taco recipe decades ago. Julieta has no choice but to work with Ramón, the man who destroyed her life’s work—and the one man who tempts and inspires her.

As San Diego’s outraged community protests against the Taco King take-over and the divide between their families grows, Ramón and Julieta struggle to balance the rising tensions. But Ramón knows that true love is priceless and despite all of his successes, this is the one battle he refuses to lose.

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link, where if you choose to purchase via the link DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 395

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Spotify, or Google and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available.

Also, remember that sharing is caring so if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please tell them about it or leave us a review so other listeners will want to check it out.

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 395: The Many Levels of Character and World Building in a Rom-com – Interview with Alana Quintana Albertson appeared first on DIY MFA.

The question takes me back to one of the earliest articles I wrote for this column in which I explored the idea that there are six basic elements (Time, Place, Person(s), Event(s), Culture, or Legend) that are mixed in one way or another within all good Historical Fiction—and that an author may take any one of those elements as the starting place for a narrative. 

That’s all well and good at a sort-of ten-thousand-foot level, but where the rubber meets the road—when you have to decide precisely what story you want to tell—how does one map concept to execution?

Start with what you love

The cliché advice to anyone wanting to write is “write what you know.” There’s nothing wrong with that advice, but, in my opinion, it doesn’t go far enough. You may know an incredible amount about the Vietnam War, but if you have a particular aversion to that period of American history, trying to write about it may quickly begin to feel like drudgery. It’s unlikely you’ll tell a very good story if you don’t enjoy what you’re writing about.

So think about what speaks to your heart. Are you intrigued by the dangers faced by the resistance movements in Europe during World War II?  Find a historical figure—or create your own character—and plunge into the story. 

Are you fascinated by women who’ve played remarkable roles in the distant past? These weren’t always political figures. They might have been in science or medicine or the arts. Go looking for some of the lesser-known ones and spin their tale. 

Do you think it might have been fun to have lived during the Renaissance in the orbit of someone like Leonardo da Vinci or Michelangelo? Why not create a character who was an apprentice or assistant to the great master? Or, perhaps even more intriguing still, a character who fancied themselves as a rival to the great one? 

Do you love music? Choose a composer—perhaps a less well-known one—and tell their story. Perhaps tell it from the point of view of someone in their household? Or maybe tell the tale of the creation of one of your favorite masterworks.

Tell the more intimate story

When you find yourself feeling like “that story’s already been told over and over,” don’t despair. Yes, maybe the story of Henry VIII and all his wives has been well hashed. But if you love that era of history, why not find—or craft—a little-known tale set against the backdrop of Henry’s quest for an heir? Henry’s break with the Church of Rome led to the dissolution of the monasteries in England. There might be quite a poignant tale in the life of a monk who lived through that purge.

Clavell created a fictional character shipwrecked in the feudal world of 1600s Japan to explore that society. And the choice of a protagonist who really had no idea what was going on around him was a tour de force of immersing the reader in a world no one had ever experienced at the time.

Cornwell and Follett are masters of setting the stories of fictional characters against the backdrop of epic periods of human history. By telling the more intimate tale of what living through an epic period of history felt like to “ordinary” people, they draw their readers into those times in a way that feels like a very personal experience.

Look to your own family

Thanks to the internet and modern genealogical research sites, it’s now far easier than it used to be to discover our ancestors and where they lived, and what they did. Maybe it’s no more than one generation back, as is the case with a release from this past summer: The Caves of San Pietro, in which the fictional narrative is based on a family story that links the 1918 Spanish Flu, the heartbreaking story of the Orphan Trains of the early 20th century, and the liberation of Italy in World War II. On the other hand, your ancestral inspiration may go back hundreds of years, as in the case of Bernard Cornwell’s Last Kingdom series.

In my own case, we think we’ve traced our family back to members of the Norman aristocracy in medieval England. One branch of the family received honors from the Crown within English territory while another branch received grants of land in the American colonies. I wonder which branch of the family might be the most fun to write about?

So, why revisit an earlier article?

First and foremost, it seemed a good topic for this column to connect some dots between concepts and the actual germ of a story. But secondly, I’ll admit to feeling a bit nostalgic as I put pen to paper (or more accurately, fingers to keyboard) for this article as it’s to be my last in this series.

It’s been a truly wonderful experience to have had the opportunity to share my thoughts with the DIY MFA community. But I’ve hogged the podium for three and a half years now, and it goes without saying that there are other novelists in our genre who have thoughts they’d love to share. They deserve their chance. And the community deserves the chance to hear a diversity of ideas—it makes us all better at what we do.

While I’m passing on the pen for this column, I’m not abandoning DIY MFA. I’ll be hanging out on Word Nerds Unite and continuing to follow the excellent content on the website, listening to podcasts, and constantly looking out for what’s new here to help me improve my craft.

Thank you, Gabriela, for the opportunity to be part of your team. And special thanks to those who’ve found reading my column worthwhile.

I’ll leave you with two parting thoughts. The first is from Hilary Mantel, which I find a wonderfully succinct summation of our genre: 

And the other from Albert Einstein: “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.”

Happy writing!

An award-winning author of historical fiction and a freelance editor, Pamela Taylor loves helping others polish their stories almost as much as she enjoys writing her own. She’s a member of the DFW Writers Workshop and the Editorial Freelancers Association and spent four years on the judges’ panel for the Ink & Insights Writing Contest. She shares her home with two Welsh Corgis who frequently remind her that a dog walk is a great way to get inspiration for that next chapter.

The post Where to Start with Historical Fiction appeared first on DIY MFA.

I would like to introduce you to Kids on Bikes and its magical younger sibling Kids on Brooms. These are indie games from Renegade Game Studios and Hunters Entertainment. Kids on Bikes was created by Jonathan Gilmour and Doug Levandowski, and the pair collaborated with Spenser Starke for Kids on Brooms.

Kids on Bikes

Kids on Bikes takes place in a small town where the whole table works to create together. I like this collaborative world-building because it eases the Game Master’s job in creating and populating the world, and aids in cementing the players in the setting of the game. Collaborative world-building can also be a boon to your writing because your table will flesh out parts of the world you may not have considered. Other people will make decisions that inspire your own creativity, and you’ll create something collectively that you could not have created on your own.

The idea of Kids on Bikes is that the players take on the roles of inhabitants of the small town you create together then investigate a mystery or supernatural conspiracy that the Game Master creates. Think Stranger Things or Stephen King’s It.

Kids on Brooms

Kids on Brooms uses a very similar system, but rather than the characters being inhabitants of a collectively created small town, they are the faculty and students of a collectively created magical school and the Game Master creates a magical mystery adventure for the table. Think J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter or Ursula K. LeGuin’s A Wizard of Earthsea.

The Logistics

Indie games are fun because they tend to be rules-light in their systems, favoring narrative decisions from your table. These two games are no different in that respect. The systems focus heavily on narrative drive rather than character stats and rolling the dice. One thing that I love about the system these games use is that character abilities vary widely from character to character because stats are assigned dice to roll rather than points.

Character Stats

The character stats in these games are Fight, Flight, Grit, Brains, Brawn, and Charm. When creating your character you assign each standard polyhedral die to a stat. The thing your character is best at would get your d20 and the thing your character struggles with most would get your d4. If a character fails a roll they gain an adversity token which can be spent later to boost the outcome of a roll by 1. This is used in the storytelling to show the times when someone does something outside of their normal abilities in the heat of a moment, like when a mom lifts a car off of her child in a rush of adrenaline.

The Difficulty of a Roll

The difficulty of a roll is set by the Game Master but the average difficulty threshold of a roll is between 5 and 9. This may sound like characters will always fail rolls involving their d4 stat but if the maximum is rolled on any dice roll, then that die “explodes,” meaning the player gets to roll it again and add the new result. This means that if you roll a 4 on a d4, then roll the d4 again and get a 3 your end result would be 7. There is no upper limit on the number of times a die can explode, so you just keep rolling until you do not roll the maximum. This mechanic leads to excited shouting around the table as players cheer for roll streaks and intense moments of pregnant silence while players wait with bated breath to see if their teammates succeed. 

Narrative Control

Another unique aspect of these games is that narrative control passes based on the level of success or failure. In most tabletop games, narrative control lies firmly in the hands of the Game Master. Players control what their characters do, but typically their control ends where their character does. In Kids on Bikes and Kids on Brooms, narrative control shifts between the players and the Game Master. 

If the outcome of a player’s roll is over the difficulty threshold by a significant margin, then narrative control switches to the person who rolled that outcome. That means they get to dictate not only how their character does something but also how the world around them responds. If the outcome of a player’s roll is under the difficulty threshold by a significant margin then narrative control switches to the Game Master, or remains with the Game Master if it were not in someone else’s hands, and the Game Master may also explain how the character reacts. This loss of character control is not for every table, but I do appreciate that these games attempt something new.

Applying It to My Writing

The area in which these games have contributed something different to my writing practice that I haven’t found in other games is in their focus on sensitivity. These games have entire chapters focused on setting boundaries for safe play and maintaining sensitivity in the portrayal of diverse characters. They recommend a session 0 before active gameplay starts where the Game Master can ask players about the subject matter they are comfortable with and the types of characters they want to play. This session also serves as a place to let players know that they can come to the Game Master with their sensitivities privately. 

These games suggest an outline for these boundary-setting conversations called Lines and Veils and it was created by Ron Edwards in his 2003 game Sex and Sorcery. This activity involves players and the Game Master sharing the things that they are not comfortable having in the game at all. These “lines” are topics that should not ever be in the game. Once these borders are put in place, the conversation then should turn to topics that table members are OK with having in the game but should take place off-camera, not described in detail. These are called “veils.”

This boundary-setting conversation is helpful in writing because it not only expands your mind by thinking about things that are sensitive to others that you may not have thought to consider. Veils also give you a chance to flex your creative muscles to evoke something sensitive without being too graphic.

Kids on Brooms and Kids on Bikes also recognize that a single sensitivity conversation is not always enough to keep the game a safe space for everyone so they also encourage the use of a system called the Script Change Tool by Brie Sheldon. This is used during active gameplay to allow players to “pause” the game to give them room to deal with something that is playing on their sensitivities before the game proceeds that way, “fast forward” over-sensitive description that they do not want described in detail and to “rewind” the game to change the direction of storytelling entirely to avoid a topic they’re uncomfortable with.

Though I don’t believe that sensitive topics should be avoided in writing entirely, I do think that practices like these allow writers to consider how and why sensitive topics are used in their work.

Tell us in the comments: Do you think you’ll make use of these exercises?

Kris Hill is working on several genre fiction novels because she has difficulty sticking to writing one project at a time. In her daily life, she attempts to navigate the corporate world as a data analyst. When Kris is not working, she can be found sprawled on a couch reading or running tabletop adventures for her friends. She lives in Canada’s capital city with her husband, her best friend, and four cats.

The post Kids on Bikes and Kids on Brooms appeared first on DIY MFA.

Khanh is the author of Flesh and The Demon Who Peddled Longing. 

He is a seven-time Pushcart nominee, finalist for the Mary McCarthy Prize, Many Voices Project, Prairie Schooner Book Prize, and The University of New Orleans Press Lab Prize. 

He is the recipient of the Sand Hills Prize for Best Fiction, the Robert Watson Literary Prize in Fiction, The Orison Anthology Award for Fiction, and The C&R Press Fiction Prize. 

His new novel, Mrs. Rossi’s Dream, was named Best New Book by Booklist and a 2019 Foreword Reviews INDIES Silver Winner and Bronze Winner

In this episode Khanh Ha and I discuss:

• How he writes death scenes in a way that is comfortable for him and powerful for the reader.
• The difference between style and voice and how writers can make both unique.
• Why writers need to stay faithful to their character when creating the POV of the narrative.

Plus, his #1 tip for writers.

About Khanh Ha

Khanh Ha is the author of Flesh and The Demon Who Peddled Longing. He is a seven-time Pushcart nominee, finalist for the Mary McCarthy Prize, Many Voices Project, Prairie Schooner Book Prize, and The University of New Orleans Press Lab Prize. He is the recipient of the Sand Hills Prize for Best Fiction, the Robert Watson Literary Prize in Fiction, The Orison Anthology Award for Fiction, and The C&R Press Fiction Prize. His new novel, Mrs. Rossi’s Dream, was named Best New Book by Booklist and a 2019 Foreword Reviews INDIES Silver Winner and Bronze Winner.

A Mother’s Tale

A tale of salvaging one’s soul from received and inherited war-related trauma. Within the titular beautiful story of a mother’s love for her son is the cruelty and senselessness of the Vietnam War, the poignant human connection, and a haunting narrative whose setting and atmosphere appear at times otherworldly through their landscape and inhabitants. Captured in the vivid descriptions of Vietnam’s country and culture are a host of characters, tortured and maimed and generous and still empathetic despite many obstacles, including a culture wrecked by losses. Somewhere in this chaos readers will find a tender link between the present-day survivors and those already gone. Rich and yet buoyant with a vision-like quality, this collection shares a common theme of love and loneliness, longing and compassion, where beauty is discovered in the moments of brutality, and agony is felt in ecstasy.

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link, where if you choose to purchase via the link DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 382

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Spotify, or Google and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available.

Also, remember that sharing is caring so if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please tell them about it or leave us a review so other listeners will want to check it out.

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 382: Character, Setting, and Cinematic Storytelling in Short Stories – Interview with Khanh Ha appeared first on DIY MFA.

If you want to experiment with parts of your planned story before you commit time to writing it, then collaborative storytelling can help you flex narrative muscles in a low stakes and fun way. Collaborative storytelling also provides a lot of opportunities for writers to work in concert to create something wonderful.

Last time, I discussed how you can use table top games in your world building as a writer. I hope since then you’ve given some thought to making collaborative storytelling a part of your writing practice. If I haven’t sold you on role playing games by explaining how useful it can be in world building, then allow me to present how you can use it when creating characters.

Character Headspace

In most collaborative storytelling games, players will create a character. If you’re a player, you will use one of many methods for character creation such as assigning number values to attributes and skills as in Dungeons and Dragons, assigning descriptive traits to your character and other characters in your group as in FATE system, or by selecting one of many archetypes particular to your setting as in the Powered by the Apocalypse system. 

While creating your character, think about the person you want them to be on the page. As you are required to select traits or apply number values to your character, you will have to prioritize what is most important to your character and what they have spent their time doing. You’ll ask yourself questions about how they deal with conflict and how they approach other people. Asking these questions will get you closer to your character and help you work out how they make their decisions, but the best way to get into your character’s headspace is to play as them. 

In a collaborative storytelling game, as you play your character, you’ll occupy their headspace and become intimately familiar with not only the choices they make, but how they come to those decisions and how they rationalize the outcome. This level of intimacy with your character makes writing them easier because whatever happens as your story unfolds, you’ll know how they would approach it.

This works well even if the setting that you’re playing in differs vastly from the setting of your story because decision making, rationalization, and prioritization are deeply rooted in who your character is as a person. You can apply that deeper personality to your character in any setting.

Character Relationships

Collaborative storytelling games involve a party of characters, and you’ll be playing as only one of them. The friends you’re playing with will make their own characters and you’ll work together to solve problems. It is valuable for you to experience how your character interacts with others, and party members are especially useful to explore relationships because they will be the people your character interacts with most. 

As your party moves through the game together you’ll decide how your character works in a group, how they collaborate to solve problems, and how they argue or debate to defend their positions against people they must continue to be around. You’ll see what qualities they value in their party members and how they form friendships and develop trust.

I think the most valuable part of character development using party interaction in a collaborative storytelling game is that you’ll see how your friends and their characters perceive the character you’re creating. This is helpful because it will allow you to fine tune your character. 

Maybe you want to create a sneaky thief with a heart of gold, but you cross a line that makes your party see you as irredeemable or evil. When you’re writing your story, you’ll know that you will need to pay particular attention to explain those types of decisions carefully to your readers. 

Perhaps you want to make a principled and stalwart character who is lovable and vulnerable, but your party members only see one side of your character. You then know that you need to do more to illustrate the fullness of the character you’re trying to portray. 

Regardless of the character you create, the perception of that character from other party members is priceless feedback you can use to bring the truest version of your vision to life.

NPCs

Non-Player Characters (NPCs) are plentiful in role playing games. The friendly bartender, the cagey espionage contact, and the wise mentor are all NPCs. Though you may not realize it, there are NPCs in your story as well. The minor characters who flesh out your world and make it seem lived in, but aren’t important to the plot in a major way, are your NPCs. These characters don’t require as much development as major players in your story, but the more interesting they are during their short time in your story, the better.

If you are running a campaign for your friends to play you’ll need to populate your world with people for the party to interact with. You can see which NPCs capture the party’s attention most and you will be able to tell why. You’ll also get an opportunity to see how many different characters interact with your minor characters as player characters will have different styles and personalities. Getting to see your minor characters in these different situations will help you craft memorable characters and natural dialogue in your writing.

I hope that I’ve inspired you to try collective storytelling in your writing practice. I wish you much success in your writing, but not on your role playing adventures because failure is usually more fun!

Kris Hill is working on several genre fiction novels because she has difficulty sticking to writing one project at a time. In her daily life she attempts to navigate the corporate world as a data analyst. When Kris is not working, she can be found sprawled on a couch reading or running tabletop adventures for her friends. She lives in Canada’s capital city with her husband, her best friend, and four cats.

The post Creating Characters Using Collaborative Storytelling appeared first on DIY MFA.

“Find Your Voice.”

Find. Your. Voice. Weaned on this advice, we fiction writers know that when an otherwise well-built narrative lies comatose on the page, only a fresh infusion of voice will revive it. 

We mean well.

We’re on it. Inspiration flashing, we roar into our languishing stories to resuscitate our prostrate viewpoint characters with a misguided solution: we inject them with more personality.

Our protocol? We load ‘em with extroversion or introversion, excitability or steadiness. Dose them with the stuff of charisma or grit or milquetoast. We infuse them with unique verbal timbre and inflections—and distinctive language. You know . . . like the quirky syntax in Uncle Albert’s pontificating. 

Whew. So much personality.

Personality’s a good thing, right? Doesn’t it give that young farmer a hair trigger when his baby cries? Or cause a shy child to fidget? Won’t personality make a bed-ridden grandfather laugh? Prompt a loner to scowl, shoulders hunched? 

Of course. But . . .

Personality’s not enough.

When I began writing Sugar Birds, protagonist Celia arrived in a third person objective point of view as a buoyant, witty teen, squabbling with her father—entertaining but superficial, and stalling. She evaded deeper emotional engagement, dodging me at every turn. I blamed her missing depth on the POV. Given a firecracker personality like hers, what else would keep her so shallow? Hadn’t I brought authentic interactions to the story? I’d worked with teenagers for years. Even raised a couple of them. 

Determined, I rewrote Celia in a new POV, this time in first person. I reached for her, drew her closer, and offered her an even bigger personality. Given the more intimate viewpoint, the girl responded . . . and talked to me, a little.  Her voice budded and the narrative inched forward. My heart bent toward her, hopeful. I believed that by upping her personality in this new POV, I had doctored her enough to breathe life into her narrative.

But Celia’s new POV and enhanced personality were not enough. The girl niggled at me from the page until I admitted that for her voice to develop fully, she needed to tell me more. No matter how much disposition and language, wit and style I gave her, that personality wouldn’t carry the whole essence of her personhood. Nor would it allow her to change as the plot progressed. 

Your viewpoint character needs tone, too.

I had to face facts: unless I conveyed Celia’s deepest motivators and the worldview that emerged from them, she’d be sock puppet empty on the page. How could she connect with readers in that condition? Clearly, she needed to fill her personality with attitude. 

She needed tone. 

To provide it, I had to understand what was churning inside her, what compelled her. What was the “why” behind her words and actions? How had her life circumstances, personal history and ideology shaped her heart and mindset? 

My eye again caught the greeting card I mentioned earlier. Below the red fingernails on that microphone, I read this:

“Find your voice, then listen to it.

Even when it shakes.

Especially then.”

The word “listen” leaped at me . . . and a light went on. Here was a teenage girl, shaking with heartache, and I hadn’t paid attention. I’d been too intent on her stage presence—her personality—to notice. More interested in directing Celia’s actions to conform to the plot than on hearing her pain. 

Ask. Listen. 

Humbled, I brought her coffee. Apologized for not listening to her. Told her I really wanted to hear her. To understand what she believed and what she was feeling. To write her truth. “About your dad, for instance.”

She drank half the cup. Eyed me warily. 

“How about when your dad told you he was leaving you with Mender?” I said. A risk, my asking that. Coaxing could have shut her down.

Instead, her floodgates opened, and I got an earful. She ranted for ten minutes before her voice trailed off.

“So he left you.” Only a whisper, but she heard me. She whispered back, between sobs. 

Personality + Tone = Voice

I recorded her emotional deluge verbatim, scribbling notes. I listened intently, without presuming or steering or superimposing judgments or language on her. Asked her more questions.

And when I did, she let me in. Shared her belief that her father had deserted her, and how badly she wanted to retaliate. Her distinctive, dramatic personality intercepted her rage and longing, sorrow and passion, and expressed those feelings, all born from her sense of abandonment. 

From that moment, her emotions and attitudes—her tone—fueled her personality, and something magical happened. With personality plus tone, Celia’s voice became fully dimensional, and gave her story the engine it needed to dive deep and travel wide. Her voice painted the setting in colors unique to her perspective, even as she viewed herself in those same colors. She presumed other’s motives based on her worldview’s template. Her decisions flowed from those attitudes, and she acted them out as only Celia could.

Once her tone burst through, it tag-teamed with her personality, creating the voice that drove her narrative. Here are samples of where and how Celia’s voice showed up:

In her setting: When impulsive Celia jumps from her father’s car and runs toward her grandmother’s, she views the surrounding landscape through her hurt and anger:

“The rusty barbed wire quilting the fields may as well have been razor wire topping chain link, with me gripping the mesh. Angry as I was, the beauty still found me . . . Enormous trees lined the fields and hills between me and those mountains and beckoned me like mothers who care—nothing like mine.”

In her self-concept: The night she arrives at Mender’s, emotional Celia reacts to a farmer with suspicion birthed from her feelings of abandonment:

“’Sorry to interrupt.’ He flashed me a wide smile.

‘Not at all. This is the granddaughter I told you about. Celia? Jake.’

I knew it. My grandmother was telling every random person with an injured bird that my dad had dumped me here.”

In her choices: She jumps at the chance to hurt her dad for what she perceives as his rejection:

 “’I tapped my chin, thinking through the week . . . This plan would give Daddy convulsions. Yeah. If I disappeared, that would punish him, all right. Gram would have to tell him I was missing. He would wet his pants when he got the call.”

A Tip and a Nutshell: 

Your viewpoint character’s voice needs both personality and tone. To avoid mistaking one for the other, remember that personality is typically static, predictable. Celia’s personality remains constant throughout her narrative. Tone, on the other hand, is dynamic. As Celia’s attitudes and feelings change, her tone transforms, too, and it propels her along her arc to the story’s conclusion.  

Voice. Listen to it shake. Discover both the implicit personality and tone that create it. Then, and only then, introduce it to your story.

Your comatose narrative will revive.

For most of her life, Pacific Northwest naturalist, photographer, and award-winning author Cheryl Grey Bostrom, MA, has lived in the rural and wild lands that infuse her writing. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications, including the American Scientific Affiliation’s God and Nature Magazine, for which she’s a regular photo essayist. A member of the Redbud Writers Guild, she has also authored two non-fiction books. Sugar Birds is her first novel. She currently resides near Lynden, WA.

The post Tone of Voice (It’s More than Personality) appeared first on DIY MFA.

Brandie spent most of her childhood onstage or reading, as both activities let her live in fantastic stories. She moved to Los Angeles to study acting at UCLA, and eventually branched out into costume design and playwriting. While she spends most of her free time writing, she will still take any excuse to play dress-up, especially if it involves wearing a crown. 

She happily promotes more stories as a marketing director for kids’ films and anime. When not writing or marketing, she can often be found doing aerial arts, playing board games, drinking too much espresso, and coming up with new art projects. She lives with her husband, two spoiled rescue pups, a spoiled cat, six fish tanks, and five bookshelves.

Today we’ll be discussing her debut novel, Gold Spun.

In this episode Brandie and I discuss:

• How a love of fairytales and a unique NaNoWriMo project led to her debut novel.
• Why she likes morally grey characters and how she brought that out in Goldspun.
• What factors influenced her decision to not worry about historical accuracy.

Plus, her #1 tip for writers.

About Brandie June

Brandie June spent most of her childhood onstage or reading, as both activities let her live in fantastic stories. She moved to Los Angeles to study acting at UCLA, and eventually branched out into costume design and playwriting. While she spends most of her free time writing, she will still take any excuse to play dress-up, especially if it involves wearing a crown. She happily promotes more stories as a marketing director for kids’ films and anime. When not writing or marketing, she can often be found doing aerial arts, playing board games, drinking too much espresso, and coming up with new art projects. She lives with her husband, two spoiled rescue pups, a spoiled cat, six fish tanks, and five bookshelves. 

You can find her on her website or follow her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok.

Gold Spun

Nor was once the happy daughter of a miller, but that was before her father died in the Southern War and soldiers set fire to her village. Now, she’s a seventeen-year-old swindler, performing whatever tricks and deceptions will bring in enough coin to feed her and her brothers. One day she finds a faerie boy being held captive by outlaws. Though Nor knows all the tales of the fay and their deadly blood magic, she goes against her better judgement and frees him. In return, the beautiful and mysterious faerie, Pel, gifts her with a golden thread.

Nor decides to use the thread to convince local villages that she can spin straw into gold, but just as the con begins, Prince Casper arrives in town. Seeing through her deception, Casper intends to make an example of Nor, forcing her to spin all her straw into gold, with the promise of marrying her should she succeed. But should she fail, her life and those of her brothers will be forfeit. In desperation, Nor calls on Pel for help, even knowing that his dark magic comes with a price.

From thief to future queen, Nor’s story has only just begun. Attacks from the fay force Nor to question her friendship with Pel, while preparing for her life as a queen makes Nor wonder if this is the life she truly wants to lead.

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link, where if you choose to purchase via the link DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 367

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Spotify, or Google and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available.

Also, remember that sharing is caring so if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please tell them about it or leave us a review so other listeners will want to check it out.

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 367: Character Dynamics in a Fairytale Retelling – Interview with Brandie June appeared first on DIY MFA.

Jeff grew up in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where he spent two of his high school years at a boarding school much like the one depicted in his debut novel Attachments, which we’ll be discussing today.

In the ’70s, he studied film/tv/theater production at Emerson College in Boston and then moved to LA, where he worked as a concert lighting designer and toured the country with national rock and reggae acts while teaching himself to write screenplays on the side.

Years later, he was teaching high school English and running a martial arts school when heard the call to write again. In 1989, he sold the school he’d built, rented a small office, and gave himself one year to write three screenplays. 

The second of those―a quirky romantic comedy where the two lovers don’t even meet until the very last page―sold almost immediately, and Sleepless in Seattle became a surprise megahit worldwide. 

For his screenplay, Jeff was nominated for an Oscar, as well as for Writers Guild and BAFTA awards, among others. His other credits include the Disney adventure film Iron Will, New Line’s romantic comedy Sealed With a Kiss, and the independent comedy Dave Barry’s Complete Guide to Guys. His script for Saving Milly, based on Mort Kondracke’s searing memoir, earned the 2005 Humanitas Nomination, an honor he treasures. 

Jeff is a father, stepfather, father-in-law, and grandfather and is based in Malibu.

In this episode Jeff and I discuss:

• His method for moving characters with their own agendas through the plot.
• How to avoid the dreaded info dump and his advice for what to do instead.
• Why you shouldn’t focus on the theme, but should worry about the story instead.

Plus, his #1 tip for writers.

About Jeff Arch

Jeff Arch grew up in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where he spent two of his high school years at a boarding school much like the one depicted in his debut novel Attachments. In the ’70s, he studied film/tv/theater production at Emerson College in Boston and then moved to Los Angeles, where he worked as a concert lighting designer and toured the country with national rock and reggae acts while teaching himself to write screenplays on the side. Years later, married and with a young family, he was teaching high school English and running a martial arts school when heard the call to write again; in 1989, he sold the school he’d built, rented a small office, and gave himself one year to write three screenplays. 

The second of those―a quirky romantic comedy where the two lovers don’t even meet until the very last page―sold almost immediately, and Sleepless in Seattle became a surprise megahit worldwide. For his screenplay, Jeff was nominated for an Oscar, as well as for Writers Guild and BAFTA awards, among others. His other credits include the Disney adventure film Iron Will, New Line’s romantic comedy Sealed With a Kiss, and the independent comedy Dave Barry’s Complete Guide to Guys. His script for Saving Milly, based on Mort Kondracke’s searing memoir, earned the 2005 Humanitas Nomination, an honor Jeff treasures. Jeff is a father, stepfather, father-in-law, and grandfather and is based in Malibu. Attachments is Jeff’s first novel.

You can follow Jeff Arch on Facebook and Twitter.

Attachments

At a boarding school in Pennsylvania, a deathbed request from the school’s dean brings three former students back to campus, where secrets and betrayals from the past are brought out into the open―secrets that could have a catastrophic effect on the dean’s eighteen-year-old son.

Told in alternating points of view and time frames, Attachments is the story of best friends Stewart (“Goody”) Goodman, Sandy (“Pick”) Piccolo, and Laura Appleby, the girl they both love. The friends meet in 1972 at a boarding school in coal-country Pennsylvania where they encounter Henry Griffin, the school dean, whose genuine fatherly interest and deep human bond with them is so strong that when he has a severe stroke almost twenty years later, he uses what could be his last words ever to call out their names.

Attachments is a puzzle―and the only one who knows how all the pieces fit is in a coma. In the process, longtime secrets are unearthed, revelations come out into the open, and Young Chip Griffin is about to learn something he may or may not be able to handle.

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link, where if you choose to purchase via the link DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 359

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Spotify, or Google and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available.

Also, remember that sharing is caring so if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please tell them about it or leave us a review so other listeners will want to check it out.

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 359: Trust, Threat, and Truth: A Journey Through the Craft of Writing – Interview with Jeff Arch appeared first on DIY MFA.