Why we need characters with mental and physical disabilities.

 Every character you write should have a weakness. You want believable characters and real people have faults, even the superhero and supervillain. 

Writing lesson for the day, done.

What’s that? You wanted an example? I guess the topic of the week is which tic/tell/weakness have you given a character that they’d rather foist on their worst enemy. 

Well, that's complicated. Or maybe not. I do have a character in my fantasy novel, The Dark Queen’s Daughter, who has a tic. Why did I give him a tic? A very specific, chin-jerk, throat-clearing tic? Why bother to give a character a flaw caused by a medical issue? 

Because I'm the mother of a child with PANDAS, Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal infections. And because I want my child to see a character that has to deal with the same mental and physical challenges, but also see that character make a difference in their world.

If you’re not familiar with PANDAS, it’s basically a strep infection gone wild. Strep is exceptional at hiding from our immune systems and eventually confuses it enough that it starts attacking our bodies. It messes up parts of the brain, like the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. To sum up, your brain gets stuck with the gas on and it can’t stop. There are so many symptoms to this but for some it comes out as OCD tendencies and for some it’s a tic—motor, verbal, or both. 

Figuring out unsolvable health issues is definitely not fun. It’s emotionally draining. But it’s worse as a parent and you feel helpless to provide for and take care of your kid. Trying to explain why they can’t have certain things that all the other kids are having or can’t do things that everyone else gets to do is difficult. And then there’s the constant fear that their peers will turn on your child and ridicule them for something they can’t control. 

If you're a parent struggling to find a diagnosis for your child, or if you yourself are fighting to figure out what's happening with your health, my heart goes out to you. 

Mental disabilities and physical limitations are so difficult and so varied and leave you feeling so alone. That's why I believe it’s incredibly important to have characters that reflect what challenges us in real life. We need to see ourselves and those we love reflected in the characters we read and write. We need the emotional release of something finally working in their favor. And we need to see those flawed characters have a happy ending.

I’ll continue to write characters with mental disabilities and health problems. And I hope that my stories find at least one person that can relate, that can see themselves in a character, and cheer them on to the triumphant end. 

#NeverGiveUp

Tics and Tells: Gettin' Gassy

Tics and Tells, what's the worst I inflicted on a character that the character wishes they could foist on their enemy?

This is a harder question than it seems. It's the "unconscious behavior or verbal habit" part that's tricksy. Uhm. Hmm.

That's not to say I have flawless characters because that'd be hecka boring. I've given my protags plenty of personal challenges to help with that whole "internal conflict" character-building requirement. Physical limitations abound with secondary characters, but those aren't tics or tells. Then there's the foisting on the enemy bit, which, some things in the hands of good people are inconvenient yet in the hands of bad people are disastrous for others.

See? Harder question than it seems. I think the winner of this one goes to:

Gurp the goblin from The Immortal Spy series has a flatulence problem, particularly when he's scared. It doesn't bother him, but those around him gift him with charcoal undies fairly frequently. While he's not the sort to wish ill upon most folk, he'd probably find it funny if an archangel developed a bad case of the flying farts.

Tic and Tell

 Tics and Tells: What tic/tell/weakness have you given a character that they'd rather foist on their worst enemy?

That's this week's subject matter. And I'm going to keep this one short and sweet, because I have serious deadlines.

Are you ready?

Jonathan Crowley is one of my recurring characters. How recurring? I have tales with him in Victorian England, the Old West, World War One and World War Two, the seventies, the eighties and all the way through to today.

He gets around. check out the illustrations at the bottom to see a FEW of the places where he ahs shown.

He has a MAJOR tic, and if he were real and had the chance, the odds are good he'd beat me to death for giving it to him

You ready? He is a completely normal person until he is invited to help someone. No special powers, no added perceptions, none of the things that keep him alive. But once he's asked to help and agrees, he is as powerful as the foe he is fighting.

You bet your butt he'd throw that flaw at his enemies if he could. I don't let him, though, because EVERY HERO SHOULD HAVE A FLAW. Without that, he has the potential to become a "Mary Sue."

It's his weakness and he's stuck with it.

He's survived despite his flaw, and that, too is a weakness. Jonathan Crowley is immortal. Should a supernatural threat be around, he will, inevitably, regenerate, whether he likes it or not. He has lost families, loved ones, friends, over the centuries and still he prevails.

He's a wee bit bitter about that, too, believe me.

Without a flaw, without a goal, a character is too powerful. That's why Superman needs the radiation of a yellow sun, and why Kryptonite will weaken or kill him. People always say "Superman is too powerful." He's supposed to be, but that doesn't make him limitless. That merely means he has more power than most, and he's tempered by his morals. He does not kill (Though one writer made him kill and I ignore that story) He does not break the rules. He has a strong moral compass, and believe me, Crowley would consider that another limitation.

Purple Striped Alien Mutant Plot Bunnies for Me

DepositPhoto

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is all about those Plot Bunnies: How/where do you corral them? How much room do you give them to grow?

I have what I refer to as “author brain” and no, it’s not an affliction. It’s the way I view the world and everything in it as possible points for a story. So I’m very good at recognizing the infamous plot bunnies, which for me anyway are the little factoids I run across in my daily life, especially when reading nonfiction articles and novels. Our own world can be a strange and awe inspiring place. Those quirky-but-true items set my author brain off on a flight of fancy – usually science fictional in nature – and I start to envision a story around the core idea. Like pearls build up around a grain of sand.

The rabbit analogy works because there are a zillion plot bunnies, an author can really “go down a rabbit hole” chasing one as they try to find out more about it and/or start working out a plot featuring it and often one plot bunny leads to more. Plot bunnies can be a real problem if they cause an author to keep abandoning whatever story they’re in the middle of writing (aren’t we always in the middle of writing something?!) to chase the newer, shinier idea.

Although occasionally an idea is so compelling an author can’t let go of it and then yes, I support switching gears and writing what’s really got the creative juices bubbling. Go for it!

As an author, I’m never very tempted to go chase those rabbits right away. Although I’m renowned as an impatient person, I have infinite patience for plot bunnies. I’ve been known to sit on them for years before one might make its way into a novel. In the old old days, I’d rip the article or the inspirational photograph out of the magazine – the Wall Street Journal and Vogue used to be two of the places I found the most bunnies, oddly enough, with Business Week close on their heels – and stuff it into one of the many bulging folders I kept in boxes, lugged around through various household moves and…usually never looked at again. Eventually I leveled up to merely writing down one or two sentence fragments for myself that encapsulated what it was I found so interesting and stuck those scraps of paper into newer, still bulging folders. Which again, I don’t look at very often, if ever.

Only when I’m moving and trying to cut down on the number of boxes…

No matter how many bunnies I capture by scribbling down the nub of a flicker of an idea, I’ve found the ones that really intrigue me stay with me. No need for paper or clippings. Not that they’re constantly running or hopping through my brain – perish the thought! – but my Muse will bring them forward when I’m at a point where they can be useful. Maybe I need a new Pets In Space® story (hint: PISA® 5 will be releasing on October 6^th) and since I write those at a certain times of the year to meet the deadline, they don’t arise organically in my head, as in “Ooh, next I’m going to write that empath-in-love-with-a-Special-Forces-guy because it’s SHINY and I can’t wait to pound the keyboard and tell the story.” It’s more of a process that starts with “Okay, time to write my next annual PISA® story, what cool elements do I have that I could blend into a good adventure with romance, set aboard my interstellar cruise liner?

Some of the larger plot bunnies stay with me for years and do become the central theme of a novel, like taking the story of the Titanic’s sinking and setting in in interstellar space. More often though, the bunnies become small elements of an overall book. It’s really important for me to stress, these ideas aren’t the pure Angora plot bunny that first tickled my interest when I read the WSJ article or saw the arresting photograph. The idea, whatever it was, has gone through a lot of processing and revising and adjusting and sometimes the link to whatever prompted the particular plot point is visible to only me and I could never explain it to someone else. So by then I guess it’s a purple striped alien mutant plot bunny?

I’ve shared a few plot bunnies here with this post that played a part in inspiring story elements for a few of my books on these graphics…but there’s a lot more to each novel than the bullet points (or bunnies) mentioned here.

Happy reading!

PETS IN SPACE® 5 ANTHOLOGY BLURB:

It’s time for an escape! Pets in Space® 5 is back for the fifth amazing year! Escape to new worlds with twelve of today’s top Science Fiction Romance authors. They have written 12 original, never-before-released stories filled with action, adventure, suspense, humor, and romance that will take you out of this world. The giving doesn’t stop there. For the fifth year, Pets in Space® will be donating a portion of the first month proceeds to Hero-Dogs.org, a non-profit charity that supports our veterans and First Responders. If you are ready to forget the world around you and make a difference while you are having fun, grab your copy before it’s gone!

Amazon: https://amzn.to/2BRiWxU

Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pets-Space-5-SE-Smith-ebook/dp/B08F2XF73Q/

Amazon CA: https://www.amazon.ca/Pets-Space-5-SE-Smith-ebook/dp/B08F2XF73Q/

Amazon AU: https://www.amazon.com.au/Pets-Space-5-SE-Smith-ebook/dp/B08F2XF73Q/

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/pets-in-space-5

Apple Books: https://apple.co/30maDUg

Nook: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/pets-in-space-5-s-e-smith/1137421518?ean=2940162669395

GooglePlay: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/SE_Smith_Pets_in_Space_5?id=AGH0DwAAQBAJ&hl=en

Plot Bunny Mob

Plot bunnies are everywhere. In everything. In everyone. In snippets of conversations overheard in what passes for public these days. There's no need to hunt them. If you're open to them, you'll stumble over them at every turn. A little like tripping over a cat who wants to be fed.

Plot bunnies carry no malice as far as I can tell. Might they be distractions wrought by a brain desperate for a bit of cognitive conservation of resources? Sure. Human brains consume a crazy high percentage of the daily calories we consume. We're designed to want to shirk heavy mental loads. So along come plot bunnies to tempt us to follow them into the weeds in a day-dreamy daze. They could also just be the delight of human brains that are designed to take a bunch of disparate data bits and combine them into new and interesting patterns.

I can't say I notice that plot bunnies strike more often while I'm supposed to be working on something else. In fact, quite the contrary. For me they mob me when I'm already doing something else - something like taking a walk, washing dishes, vacuuming the floor - anything physical that requires low cognitive input. Ideas come gamboling out of nowhere. So it pays to have a strategy for handling them. Otherwise, you end up starting twenty bijillionty things and finishing exactly zero. Don't ask how I know this.

I pat my plot bunnies on their furry little heads, smile, and say, "It takes a number, and it stands in line." The idea gets jotted down in barest form - a few sentences - just enough to spark the idea back into life at a later time. The file gets a name and gets remanded to a folder with the imaginative name of "Story Ideas." 

Have I ever mined that folder? Indeed, I have. The Nightmare Ink books were an idea languishing in "Story Ideas" folder when I hauled it out and got to serious work on it. The books and the original plot bunny bear only the slightest resemblance to one another. When a bunny graduates from the "Story Idea" folder, it gets a name of its own that serves as the working title for whatever it's going to become. 

It means I have plot bunnies in various stages of metamorphosis. Some are still itty-bitty things nibbling grass. Others have turned into the Vorpal Bunny of Antioch. They've got these big teeth. I have one of them chewing on me right now. It looks a lot like Frankenstein's bunny, being a mishmash of Civil War historical, fantasy, and a little horror. It doesn't know what it wants to grow up to be, so we just keep staring at one another over the pages of the SFR I'm contracted for. So yes. Sometimes, the plot bunnies start looking a little like the clown from IT.

Where...where's the plot bunny?!

 

(me doing my version of hunting...not very well)

Shhh…be vewy vewy quiet, I’m trying to write. 

Have you ever come to a point in your manuscript where you thought you were going to reach the end, but you find out the tunnel veers a different direction? You keep digging and digging, but you can’t find a plot bunny for nothing! 

I’ve been there. Sheesh have I been there. 

Wait…we’re talking about how do you corral plot bunnies? That means you have too many of them, that you have to pick and choose which plot bunnies to keep and cuddle! And if you don't know, a plot bunny is a sudden, wonderful, story idea…that may or may not be related to what you’re currently working on.

I guess that means I find two different kinds: plot bunnies that take my current work in progress (WIP) in a new direction and plot jackalopes that are completely new ideas not related to anything I’ve written before. 

And now I wish I had some statistics on plot vs. jackalope bunnies! Looking back, I’d say I’ve caught way more jackalopes. Currently, I have roughly a dozen documents of new book beginnings on my laptop. I'm not sure about the number on my external hard drive. 

When those plot jacks bound on in I have to write out the scenes they bring, I have to. They’re intriguing and shiny, who can resist intriguing and shiny?! And once I have the scene at least sketched out they can sit and rest. The reality is because these undoubtedly show up when I’m in the middle of a project I need to finish, but also because I like to let the new ideas percolate and see if they stick around…meaning, does it stay sparkly and continue to draw me back to imagining what happens next, or do they hop away and drift into the out-of-mind zone.

Now, plot bunnies…the I-need-a-new-story-direction ones. I sure could use more of those. I’m a scientist, I follow the procedures. Beginning. Middle. End. And if I’m stuck in a tunnel that failed to stay straight I get a bit bogged down in the muck. Plot bunnies…plot bunnies…I'd be alright upping that side of my statistics.

WHERE DO YOU FIND YOUR PLOT BUNNIES and can I have some?

In Defense of (Plot) Bunnies

As a farmer, I sort of suck, but that doesn't prevent me from planting things and watering things and talking to things. In a Texas summer that stands to go down as one of the hottest and driest on record, just keeping plants alive has been an time- and worry-consuming project. And the wildlife aren't helping. Early on in the Austin Oven Season, something ate all my Easter lilies. Then they ate my strawberry plants. Then, a couple weeks ago, I surprised a wild rabbit in my herb garden. It had damaged a sproutling and clearly nibbled on some other nearby leaves. But as I watched that rabbit hop away guiltily, I saw how thin it was. At 9 in the morning, we were already well into the 90s (F). That little fur-dude was just trying to survive. After that, I left a bowl of water out and am content with whatever happens to my plants.

I know what you're thinking: Um, Viv, you've gone off the deep end. This is not a gardening blog; it's a writing blog. Also, the topic this week is not wild herb-destroying bunnies; it's plot bunnies. You know, the nigh irresistible story ideas that bounce into writer brains unsolicited and sometimes damage whatever current story headspace we're in.

To you I say, I know.

Also, there's a reason why we call them bunnies. Those story ideas might not be the garden we're tending, but they deserve our attention nevertheless. Sometimes plot bunnies enhance a story I'm working on. Sometimes they take it in a new direction. Sometimes they give me a what-if scenario that doesn't pan out but at least made me think about a character or plot point differently.

It's okay to feed the bunnies. 

I write them in a notebook, and although I almost never go back and expand those stories, sometimes I re-read them and they remind me that once in a while a story hops into my brain fully formed, just waiting to wiggle itself all over the page. My brain can do that! How cool is that? Doesn't meant I need to feed the bunny, but it would be worse than a waste of time to chase it off screaming.

In her book Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert talks about books kind of as if they're free-floating spirits looking for a home. If a book idea (aka bunny) comes to a writer, that writer is not always in the right place to bring it to the page. The writer might be in the middle of another book or struggling with depression or contracted to write something completely different. The bunny, Gilbert says, doesn't cease to exist. It just goes on to the next writer. This is probably why that weird vegetarian vampire idea you had in seventh grade ended up making Stephenie Meyer a crudton of money. It moved on and found a home.

So I guess my take on bunnies is twofold: 

1. It's okay to feed the bunnies. They might be a little annoying, but ultimately they don't hurt and can often help our creative adventures.
   
   
2. Don't hoard bunnies that don't belong to you. They are wild and might be welcome in somebody else's garden.

Plot Bunnies: The Coffee Test

Plot bunnies. I love them. I will hug them, and squeeze them, and call them George. The ones that really love me, I'll take to bed. If they're gone by morning, c'est la vie. If they last three nights, well, dear readers, they get their own notebook page, maybe even two, while we share the first cup of coffee. I can be generous like that.

For the ones that hit-on me while I'm "researching" on the internet? Well, that's what the Bookmarks folder is for, aka "the Plot Bunny Graveyard." Oh, and the ones that give me a little tail wiggle on Twitter? Those poor buggers end up in the limitless Likes list, never to be seen or heard from again. Tragic the short lives of those bunnies. 

Plot bunnies, if they stick around for coffee, we could have a long tumultuous future together.