About Writing: Part 2

Well, I figured it was about time to finish my ran- er, blog about writing.
Where I left off, I was talking about context and culture, continuity and all those nice “see” words. (saying “c” just looks wrong to me.)
    There is really not too much that I want to say, other than this: You must put yourself into your writing.
Yes, I mean long nights scratching your head, trying to make all the frayed (if you weren’t careful, and sometimes even when you were) plot ends come together, and all that wonderful, agonizing, fulfilling stuff.
    But more so I mean putting you into your work. That’s right. you. (Meaning the writer, which, hopefully, will mean YOU you. And yes. I just used caps. But hey. This is a blog, right? Anything goes… but shouldn’t.)
    What I mean is this. You (speaking to the writer, not the reader) can put a quadrillion hours into researching for your book, can wrack your brain for the most intriguing plot twists and can try to be as original as possible-- but all this will fail to make a good book unless you put your heart into it.
    Let me give an example.
    I read (most of) the series “the furies of Calderon” by Jim Butcher (he also wrote the Dresden Files). The first book was great. It was about this kid in a magic world, who, by birth or by design, had no magic himself-- yet he made himself useful, and indeed essential to his world. Books 1-3 were great.
    I got to book four-- and he finally got a little bit of magical power. And I was like, okay, sweet.
But then I got to book five… And well. Things just got monotonous. And I know that all that was rather vague, so let me re-do that a bit.
Jim butcher had an interesting protagonist, good supporting characters, and an interesting setting as well as culture (based roughly on ancient Roman civilization). But after the third book, Jimmy made several big mistakes, and he murdered his own series.
    First of all, everything worked out for the protagonist. He got the girl. He got the family he always wanted. He got the magic ability. He got the kingship, for Pete’s sake. He got the alliance with the ancient enemies (to unite against a bigger, badder enemy). And eventually (it took him waaay too long, but) he got rid of the bigger, badder enemy too.
    I’m sorry, but this is a departure from reality. Since when does life work out so well all the time?
    Granted, small minor (redundancy intended) characters die. The protagonist says he’s sad about all the no-name citizens who were killed by the nigh-indestructible, always adapting and improving, wax-eating, exponentially growing, never-logically-explained Vord creatures (aka the bigger, badder enemy). But we’re viewing the world through the Protagonist (and a small cast of almost-protagonists). And none of them experience acute suffering. (Sounds kinda like Twilight, huh? Okay, sorry, sorry…)
    Why is this important? Why must someone die to make a good book?
    Well, the fact is… They don’t.
    Yeah. I just contradicted myself. Boo-yah!
    Let me explain once more. Death, in all its macabre er… aura, is a thing that (almost) all of us can relate to. It’s something that a reader can connect to emotionally. And there is where Mr. Butcher (was that a coincidence?) made his mistake. He forgot to give his readers characters that they could connect with.
    In the second book in the series, there’s a scene with a girl (who ends up to be the girl) and the protagonist.  The girl (Kitai), who was the only one of her people and culture in a large city of foreigners, felt very alone, very out of place. The Protagonist (Tavi), is a young man without magic in a world centered around the use of magic; and feels very alone and out of place. In the scene, they comfort each other, and realize that the only place they won’t be outcasts is with each other. It was a really touching scene, and yeah. It made me tear up.
    But why? Why was it such a touching scene?
    Because we’ve all felt alone and out of place in our lives. We’ve all felt like outcasts at one point or another. It’s something we can relate to.
    And I have a feeling it was something that Mr. Jimbo related to very strongly as well. That’s what made that scene so poignant.  He put his heart (or at least a little bit of it) into that scene. And I, as the reader, felt that, and connected with that.
    But it’s a little hard to connect with the powerful king of a large country, who orchestrates the destruction of the enemy that is threatening to annihilate all of his world-- with the use of lots and lots of magic.
That’s where Butcher slaughtered is story. He took the humanity out of it, and then it just became words connected in sentences, and paragraphs, and chapters, and then books.
You have no heart? You have no story.
And that is the bottom line.
    Does that mean that you have to write every single line with tears winking out of the corners of your eyelids, revealing your heart’s deepest secrets with poorly-veiled names like Tonica Mocral? (Hey. That has a ring to it, actually.) Of course not!! You don’t lay your heart bare every few minutes in real life, do you? No.
    But in the moment when everything is crushing down upon you, you lose it. When your friend drives a knife in your back, you bawl. When someone whom you love dies, you don’t go frolic in the daisy field.
Life imitates art, they say, but art should also imitate Life.