World Building and Swearing *gasp!*

The reason for my blogging hiatus can be found in the title of the post. That's right. World building and swearing. Who'd a thunk it could take months from your life? Maybe swearing really is evil.

I have been engaged in an all out revising war with my manuscript. I had a deadline to get a revised copy my editor (yes I made it, just under the wire) and so began the war. The trouble started while brainstorming 12th Dimension book 3 with my writers group. We had just read and discussed the first draft of book 2 and discovered how much set up was lacking in order to provide book 3 with a satisfying conclusion. This meant R.A.G.E. itself needed to be put under a major remodel if I was to ever be able to write book 3. This involved taking a major character with a bare bones back story and giving her her head.

Yes, I had to descend into the mind and the alternate-dimensional world of this character and build her world. It went well, honestly, as much as it scared me. I enjoyed the world building. I loved/hated writing the character (she's psychotic and I didn't like being in her head) and I sent off the new chapters to my writers group.

They read and mere weeks before my deadline, we discovered some holes. As I mentioned above, this character I've been fleshing out is psychotic. And she swears. A lot. The trouble was, my writers group didn't feel like it fit in her world. In my new world of science, logic and for the most part non-religious, the expletives we use in our society whether they be religious terminology, or biological terminology, simply didn't work. As one of my Alpha readers stated, "Swearing is cultural and you've created a different culture."

No, this is not about propriety or offending people's sensibilities. This is about being true to your world. So began weeks of research concerning this topic. My aforementioned brilliant-Alpha-reader suggested looking up one of the Writing Excuses podcasts (go and listen because it took me an eternity to find myself) about religion and world building.

What it came down to is this: Find something that your world's society cares a lot about . . . and take it in vain.

Electricity/power is of supreme importance, lack thereof would be worth swearing over. Science/facts are important, philosophy and possibly religion would be looked down on. (I'd love to add some of my made up cuss words in this post, but I won't. Mostly because I'm getting more protective of my novel the closer it creeps to publication.)

What this exercise really did for my novel, (aside from discovering and creating some cool words for my characters to yell at each other) was that it made me dig deep into my world and discover what matters most to the society I've created. I had to think of history, wars, leaders, conflicts, religions(or lack thereof) and build it from there. It gave depth to the surface story I already had on the page. It gave my characters deeper motivations and their opposition clear motivators as well. And it made the make believe world feel real and ancient. And after all, isn't that what a fantasy/sci-fi writer is going for?

All that from the need for my characters to swear authentically. Who'd'a thunk, eh?

Reading Your Work Outloud

It's no secret that authors get close to their work. Really close. Dangerously close. So close in fact that criticism can hurt as badly as if someone were criticizing your child or threatening to do them harm.

Don't get me wrong, it's good to love your work. You are your manuscript's best advocate and if you don't love it there is simply no hope that anyone else will either. The problems come when you get so close to your work that your refuse, or are physically unable, to see the faults that are staring you every time you go through it.

Let's face it. You know every word, sentence and paragraph you've written and you know exactly why you wrote it and the importance it is to the manuscript. So why would you even consider taking it out? "Killing your darlings," as they say.

I recently discovered just how close I was to R.A.G.E. and just how hard it was for me to kill anything.

I work on my novel a lot. I consider writing a job in fact and put the necessary amount of time into it. So it came as no surprise the other day when my almost 12 y/o son came to me and wondered when he would be able to read this work I never seem to step away from.

Now R.A.G.E. is an adult book but it does have some cool aspects that a 12 y/o would like such as power over electricity and lots of guns and grenades and such. I'm also in the middle of a heavy edit and I thought, "Hey why not read it out loud to him?" I could bleep out a few choice words while I was reading and it would be fun. This way I could catch all those things your eyes pass right over when you're reading in your head as well as spending some quality time with my son and my manuscript.

I've read my book out loud to myself before so I was unprepared for the way I would view my own manuscript while reading aloud to SOMEONE ELSE who has no idea what the story is about.

And you know what I found? Way too much exposition.

I kept wanting the story to move along. Get to the dialogue. Get to the next relevant item. I began yelling at my main character to stop thinking about stuff so much and just get on with it already!

I couldn't believe the change in my perception of my work. It was though I was viewing it from my son's eyes. And then it hit me. I could actually distance myself from my work. It would take my son's help but I could do it. Today I went back through the chapter I read him last night and edited out a lot of the extraneous exposition.

It's amazing what a new perspective can give your work. How do you distance yourself from your manuscript?