What of You in Your Writing

Do you ever include any of your own moods or events into your story? Everyone has a bad day once in a while. Your character should too. How about a bad hair day? Have you ever had this really annoying song stuck in your head? Or how about some incident - something like a random accident - something like stubbing your toe and now you're limping for a day or two, or cutting your finger and now you're left handed for a while? All of these little things add flavor to your character and helps them come to life without detracting from the overall storyline.

Be careful though, all you want is a little flavor. Though a limp might slow your character down, or having to write left handed might cause some difficulty, these are all things that are plausible and believable. Having a song stuck in your head could be fun to play with. You could have your character singing in the shower or while driving, or even while walking down the street, and then you could stop and cuss yourself out for keeping that annoying song alive a minute longer.

Never be afraid to add moods too. I have, and they too add flavor. It's okay for your character to just get up on the wrong side of the bed once in a while. Maybe he or she didn't get much sleep during the night for whatever reason. Heck, for a girl/woman, it could be PMS - for a boy/man it could be his girlfriend's/wife's PMS. Or how about those days when everything just strikes you as funny.

Your story, whatever it is, is supposed to be life for your character, and like life, we all have random things happen. As you write, things happen to you too. Go ahead and saddle your character with the same thing. Have fun with it. Paying attention to all these little details can be perhaps daunting or tedious, but if you let it, it can also be a release.

Go ahead, let your character step in a hole and twist an ankle. See what kinds of twists your story takes then.

Making of a Mage-King

Have you ever had a series of dreams that simply dominated your life? This is the way Making of a Mage-King came about. As I wrote, my nights were rife with dreams of future scenes or events, and sometimes, though I knew they related, I had no idea how. You know how dreams can be? Twisted and nonsensical. Some say it's my muse. I've even heard it described as channeling, and it certainly felt that way from time to time.

I've posted about dreams before and how they fueled my writing most of the time. This story was by far the most loaded up with such dreams - actual dreams - with very little altering to fit the moment.

So here's the evil fun part: Though such dreams increase in book 2, White Star, and even more so in book 3, Mage-King, they are in all three books. I challenge you to find them. I'm not sure what I can offer you for doing so. I'd gladly sign your book but you'd have to send it to me. Course, I'd gladly do that anyway. I'm going to have to figure out how to sign eBooks too. Hmmm maybe I might be able to send you a copy of the next book if you find the dreams in the first book. I'd have to think on that. What do you think? Do you think you could find the dreams that fueled this story? Have fun looking.

Starting with an Idea

This is how many of my books start, though sometimes these things end up as just a scene within a different story. Last night I had a dream. In this dream, magic was commonplace and we were moving a castle. You might think this entailed a good deal of work but it seems, either it didn't, or someone else was doing all the heavy lifting. Anyway, as is common with many of these dreams of mine, this one had a history, and I remembered that I'd had a previous dream on the same subject. In that one the final location was picked out for where we were going to move this castle.

During the course of last night's dream, the passage of time was marked by the seasonal transformation of a hanging plant I was tending. There were other details about the move too. At one point we were crossing or going down a large river (it had to be very large) and there was debris floating along with us, but it was passing us by. 

As the season progressed, the plant lost it's leaves, and then the moss growing on the outside of the pot fell away revealing a round black pot like you get a plant from the store. This pot was different from the 'other' such plants I had, so I transplanted it. Why I wasn't worried about these plants surviving the winter hanging in their pots, I don't know, but winter was setting in and it was time to find a place to stop for the winter.

The lord of the castle came up to me as soon as things were settled and we were discussing the inefficiency of the move. We should have been moving at least as fast as everything else floating on the river, if not faster.  I apparently was the person responsible for seeing that this didn't happen again.

Hmmm - I wonder what the next dream installment will bring.