Midwinter Blogfest: Winter Celebrations

This post is part of Marieke's Midwinter Blogfest!

Here's some information from her blog:

What does your MC do for Midwinter? Any special celebrations? Yule, Christmas? Celebrations for a midwinter solstice? A Festival of Light? A Wild Hunt? Perhaps something else completely? Christmas on the beach or winter in June? Maybe your MC has good memories of a winter’s day past when life was easier before the story you as Evil Writer wrote?

You’ve plenty of time to think about it, because the blogfest will take place in, you guessed it, December. Specifically Saturday, the 11th. The blogfest will remain open for three days when everybody has a chance to read the entries and comment. The more you comment, the better the response will be on your own entry!

During that time the judges will select a the top entries and the following week everybody will have a chance to vote on their favorite. The only requirement is that you link back to the blogfest and keep your entry under under 500 words.

So of course there’s also a special prize… A special Midwinter themed How To interview on my blog on December 21st. A chance to tell us about your story, your blog and everything it takes to write a great seasonal scene!

My story--as many of you know--is Science Fiction. I also have a lot of characters, and the ones I focus on the most are either not the celebratory type, or there is no room for celebrating in their world (it can get pretty rough, and many are focused on just surviving). But some of my characters do engage in the Winter Celebrations, and here is a piece on what some of my characters who live in the city might find during this part of the season:


The government might be oppressive. They might confine their citizens to saying only what they want them to say. They might be the strictest regime in the history of the galaxy, but that doesn’t stop the people from having a good time when the cold weather rolls in and the snow begins to fall.
   Each planet hosts their winter celebrations at a different time, since all have their winter weather at different moments in planet orbits and tilts. There are a variety of holidays—religious days, days to honor people, days just for fun. Cultures merge into a mishmash of all kinds of ways of celebrating the season, from elaborate food to elegant rituals.
   All of the planets have one thing in common, though—a white tree.
   Not green, not red, not any other color—it’s always a brilliant snowy white. Sparkling lights and snowflakes dance on the tree in every capital when the winter celebrations come around; usually the tree is tall, over 50 feet high, and there are often events held beneath its branches. In the cities, it almost rivals the skyscrapers and corporate offices in height and grandeur. It glows in the night, all white and gleaming, like a spire of what the time of year means to everyone.
   For the buildings in the cities and the towns, it’s tradition for them to light up in the winter, their storefronts decorated in twinkly tinsel, red and blue lights, and snowflakes. Snowmen to spring up on street corners, and reindeer and other symbols of the season appear on billboards. The houses deck themselves out in lights and figurines, and some of the parks and public places turn into a shining dance of lights and snow.
   One year, one of the regimes even decided to decorate their buildings. It was an uncommonly festive move for them—and when the large ribbons appeared, criss-crossing the windows to make it look like one giant present, the people temporarily forgot their troubles with the regime and laughed.
   Laughter is everyone’s favorite part of the season. Jokes, gift-giving, visiting families, and surprises abound in this time of year, like a massive April Fools’ Day, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, and  Thanksgiving rolled into a span of time of only two months. It’s a time of goodwill and hope—and not just a little craziness—for there are few other holiday times.
   And there’s the music. It ranges from the heavy metal to the classical, but it all follows the same tunes, all over the galaxy—if you enter a subway station during the celebrations, they’ll be playing Snow Is Falling. If you go into a department store, a singer is singing Peace Be With You. If you walk into a park, chances are they’ve got their speakers up and the lyrics to White Is My Dream seem to dance around through the lights.
   It’s a glorious time of the year, when people can put away their troubles and have some fun, even for just a little while. The cheerful mood is infectious. Everyone smiles—at least once.


If you are participating in this blogfest, do leave a comment and tell me! I'd love to visit and read your entry.


-----The Golden Eagle

Elements of A Good Plot

A story has to keep the reader's attention. It's what a reader expects when they pick up a book--something that will suck them into a new place and hold them there, as the characters go on quests, fall in love, fight the villains, do things that the reader wishes they could, all following a complex and page-turning plot.

As a writer, it's only a matter of knowing how to create a page-turning plot.

Here are some suggestions:


1. Mess with the reader's head (it's always the writer's job to mess with the reader's head).

Surprise the reader with secrets, (about the characters, about their world, about anything important) events, (coincidences, occurrences, attacks) and ramp up the tension as the character(s) head for the goal. Hinting at one of the surprises can help--little mention of something strange here, a name wrong, a move that seems odd in some way. The good ol' plot twist can go far in keeping the reader hooked on the story.

For the writer, plot twists have the benefit of taking up that no-mans-land of space between The Beginning and The End, called The Middle. They can also take up story-time whenever the plot's slow or not moving the way you want it to.

2. Keep the reader glued to their chair (or seat, or steps, or . . . wherever they may be reading).

Once you've gotten the surprises in there, plus the anxiety-inducing hints, never let that tension release. Don't allow interludes--anything beyond a short, tired collapse by the oasis, so to speak--to appear. Have the character(s) run into more problems as they strain for that ultimate goal; send someone/thing into their death throes, if necessary, but don't let up!

Don't let that tension continue on forever, either. If it does, then the reader will get exasperated, and bored--make sure that what's going to happen, happens soon enough, but not so fast that the plot ends up whipping back and forth. Pace it so it flows like a river, not a thundering, crashing waterfall or a gentle, burbling creek--a river! Get a raft, if necessary.

3. Never allow your plot to resemble Swiss Cheese (no matter how good the stuff tastes).

Sew up every hole. Bring things together. Create something that goes from the onset to the conclusion, resolving the issues (unless it's a series, in which case you should leave the reader wondering about some things) and reaching an end that involves the goal the character(s) set out to complete. Don't allow the character(s) to do unrealistic things just to get to some point in the story, or a to a certain place--keep it tight, true to the character(s) and their environment. Don't cut corners.

Don't let the reader see holes, or allow them to see through badly-patched holes, either; make sure that your plot is strong throughout, and feel for every possible weakness in an event here, a twist there. If a reader can sense what's to happen with certainty and without feeling that the other possibilities are in any way likely, (and they're right about what's to happen) then the rest of the book isn't gripping--it's just an add-on.


Condensed:

1. Surprise the reader.
2. Maintain the tension.
3. Have a tight, hole-free plot.
4. Throw in a gryphon.*

*(Just for fun, of course.)


-----The Golden Eagle

Ease or Throw the Reader?

Some books put the reader straight into the setting the story is based on. Others try to ease you into it, through discoveries made by the main character.

I prefer the kind of book that puts you straight into the setting without preamble, another reason SF/F are my favorite genres most of the time. There's no preamble, and things are usually described in the first chapter or so, as you get used to the character's surroundings. Or they're just stated, and the reader is shown how the world works.

Easing the reader into the story--sucking them in, even though there are just clues as to something bigger that may or may not be around the corner--can be hard, and it's easy to bungle. A lot of authors pull it off well, but some do not. I find this especially with books where the protagonist is finding out something about another character, who typically has some sort of secret behind his/her existence, or when the secret's about the MC him/herself.

One problem I find with simply putting the reader into the story is because some things just don't make sense at first. I can occasionally get lost in Science Fiction with the technology--the books appeal to my geek side, but sometimes it's hard to understand the jargon, especially when it comes to things like gaming. (I know little about gaming.) And sometimes the terms are completely made up, and you have to guess what they're talking about, which can be annoying.

But easing the reader into the story can be jagged and feel wrong. The discovery has to be smooth and not terribly obvious, so that the reader has something to actually guess at. Otherwise, that part of the magic is lost. It can work if the reader already knows what's behind whatever's happening in the story, but if the character is unrealistically reacting to things and saying something that fit their character (or general common sense) then it doesn't. And when the MC finds out the secret . . . well, they can't be all "ooooh, goody!" or "I still trust you besides the fact you can kill me and I know practically nothing about you!" because in good ol' Real Life people don't do that. They freak out and tell their friends the person's insane.

Hopefully, anyway.

I could be being too literal with this . . . it's just fiction. But if the world isn't presented right, or if there's something I don't understand, it bugs me. I like my books wrapped up tight, and if they're not, then I tend to get frustrated.


What do you think? Ease, or throw the reader into the story? Do you prefer either? Does it affect your opinion of a book if the beginning events aren't explained completely, or if the protagonist is reacting in a way that's not true to life?


-----The Golden Eagle