So I’m in the process of going through the proofreading for Mara and the Trolls, and I’ve discovered I’m illiterate. This makes me sad.
Necessary but uninteresting
In writing you often find yourslf doing uninteresting things because if you don’t, the interesting things won’t make sense.
Alice, Bob, and Chay walk into a room for the big fight.
Who’s already in the room? What are they wearing? Where are they sitting? What does the room look like? All that? No one gets excited about blocking, but if you don’t do it, and do it well, the big scenes don’t work.
I read a lot of stuff by people trying to talk about big, tent-pole scenes, sometimes called set pieces, and struggling with the difficulty of it. Battles are like this, but regular fights are too. Often, the author’s struggle is they want to dive into the battle without doing the setup, and that just doesn’t work.
The secret is do it first, do it quickly, and be done.
“Alice walked into the crypt where the Children of Night gathered around a catafalque. They held down an exhausted woman, Isabelle, who had long since spent her energy on useless struggles, and her shouts didn’t escape the old stone. Heaphin stood at her head wearing black robes that seemed to drink in the light, while his Children held Isabelle’s arms and legs. Alice could only see their eyes clearly, fixed on her as she appeared.”
And done. Have some action.
Is Alice going to feed and become a vampire? The scene is set. Is Bob coming in to shoot people with his blood gun? It’s all in the execution. Are other vampires going to come in and fight for power and the victim? Battle on.
But the point is, the setup was quick, clear, and over. Now the author can move on to the fun stuff.
Capitalization
There’s a bit of subtlety in the way Mara narrates things.
She’s five. Mara doesn’t really understand that other people have houses and apartments, that those homes have kitchens and bathrooms, and that people live there.
To Mara the kitchen isn’t just the kitchen in her house that she and her family use. It is the Kitchen, singular, the only one. It isn’t a common noun because other kitchens don’t exist in her world view. It’s a proper noun because when discussing kitchens, she is going to be discussing the Kitchen which is as distinct as the Atlantic Ocean is from other oceans. Probably more accurately, the Kitchen is as distinct as Mom is distinct. There aren’t lots of moms, there is one Mom: hers.
Cassie and Jack would not see it that way. They’ve seen a lot of kitchens, homes, and foster parents. Mara and Hector haven’t. To them, the mom issue would be: there are many moms but this Mom is mine. To Mara, there is only one Mom.
Nor have the younger twins really had the time to think about it. What’s the age of reason? About five? They’re suddenly understanding that yeah, these are things. There are many kitchens. Their parents are teachers. Wait until the fireworks happen when they realize that their teachers may also be parents.
Self Publishing
Recent events have certainly helped me put my difficulties with Amazon in perspective.
I think I’ve fixed the carriage return issue. It will take a few days to propagate. The error did not appear on the ebook page, so that’s good.
Mara and the Trolls will come down from AO3 in a few weeks, perhaps a month, when I shift to Kindle Preferred Publishing. That enables me to run sales and advertisements more easily, but they require that Amazon have the lowest price. MatT (heh) can’t be available for free anywhere.
Obviously Matt’s (heh) writing will remain most places, including AO3. And if it matters, I encourage all not-for-profit use of my works, including fanfiction, provided they’re disseminated for free. There’s a GNU that covers this, and I’ll figure out which one it is.
Status
Mara and the Trolls still hasn’t appeared on Amazon. It’s been radio silence for a few days after an initial reply.
Nothing to report. Perspective remains critical. I wish I had some antacids.
Mara and the Trolls
The ebook preorder link is here: Mara and the Trolls
I’ve never done a preorder before.
I still don’t know what’s going on with preordering the paperback, but I’m working on it.
Stay safe, everyone.
Ebook
Mara and the Trolls Kindle Version is opened for preorders and will go live on Amazon June 1st.
The paperback should go live May 15th, but Amazon isn’t taking preorders for that. If they do, I don’t know how to do it yet.
The ebook will go up for $10 ($9.99), and the paperback for $14.99. Pricing is largely set by Amazon, and I don’t have a whole lot of control over those levers. This a full length book though, about 279 pages. BH was much shorter.
Speaking of BH, I’m not sure why the new edition isn’t automatically updating on Kindle readers and the Windows app. I’m going to work on that while I’m waiting for responses on the Mara stuff.
Cover for Mara and the Trolls
The cover is done. 
The layout is being done by Jim, at jaad.com, and the trolls were drawn by Fergal O’Connor. His information is on the credits page.
Bechdel Test 3
On to talk about big characters.
I reiterate for the umpteenth time, I’m not doing this to judge other works. The scale I use for that is ‘did I like it?’ I think the BT has a lot of utility to improve my own writing though, so that’s what I’m writing about.
There are a few preliminaries to keep in mind. First, is the POV 1st person? If so, any demographic group other than the narrator will probably not pass the BT. If they do, this will require some odd gymnastics.
Take the Chronicles of Amber. The first five books were 1st Person POV by a male character, Corwin. It would be odd for him to overhear a conversation wherein he isn’t mentioned, and yet the conversation is significant enough to be included. Not impossible, but it would be odd. Furthermore, Corwin is a tremendous jackass and has a monomaniacal fixation on defeating first one then another of his brothers. He’s a bit obsessed. He’s also an immense jackass. He probably wouldn’t pay attention to anything that isn’t about him or one of his nemeses. Again, monumental jackass.
What I’m addressing is that the BT is a hammer. Don’t think all your stories are nails. POV, setting, and main character personality will influence whether this tool is useful. You can hammer in a screw, but I do not recommend it.
So I’ve got main characters Bob, Alice, and Ivan, the Face Stealing Serial Killer. Once Ivan gets introduced, he is going to dominate the plot. If Alice and her coworker Tasha are discussing the daffodils while Ivan stalks the office, they’re going to come across as loonies. On the other hand, they should have lives outside of Ivan.
So that’s fairly simple. Establishing their lives should be done before they interact with Ivan. This builds empathy with the reader, we have active motivations instead of negative, and we can do a little foreshadowing, drop a few plot hooks, etc. Later, we want to heighten the tension, but that isn’t exclusively about Ivan. It can be, but it isn’t always. If Ivan locks the doors and he’s inside with his meathook, characters can discuss how to unlock the doors, how to turn the power back on, how to put out the fires, etc.
Active motivations, ‘I want to live!’ are almost always better than negative motivations, ‘I don’t want to die!’ They’re more engaging, help me push the plot along, and when a reader wants to empathize with someone who wants to live, the reader wants to read and see if the character lives. If the reader wants to empathize with someone who doesn’t want to die, the reader can just stop reading and close the tab. Then the character doesn’t die for them. And I don’t want my readers to stop reading and close the tab.
So we have a clear timing issue. Alice and Tasha should have a conversation that isn’t about Ivan before Ivan interacts with them, or they should address some tension building facet after he’s introduced. Maybe Tasha got promoted from building maintenance, and she knows where the circuit breakers are. Maybe Alice has a gun in her desk. That’s a really good one, because most people don’t really know how to shoot guns, or even that there’s a skill involved, so the two of them could talk about how guns work. Sets up a nice contrast between ‘I’ve never even shot a gun because I feel bad for the paper targets!’ and Ivan, who murders people and steals their faces.
None the less, putting characters through the BT gives the author an opportunity to develop the situation.
Problem: Ivan’s disabled the power and the elevators don’t work. The building is also on fire. Ivan’s in the stairway.
Tasha: I can go to the power room and override the emergency brake on the elevators!
Of course something terrible will happen because everyone’s in a tiny metal box on janky power when the building is on fire, but hey, that’s drama!
Bechdel Test 2
As a small step, the proverbial one that starts the journey of a thousand miles, I often ask myself of smaller characters: if they got stuck in a room together, what would they talk about?
I try to do that for all the big characters too. Those ones are more likely to get stuck in a room together, so it’s not pointless.