I shall call him George

Stumbling over old advice yet again, I've decided to share another little pearl here.

We've all had these moments. We're just getting the momentum rolling in our next, great saga. Our hero pushes open the door to meet... that guy... with the face... and the hair... and we have no idea what his name is.

Now, obviously, this can all be avoided by making yourself one of those handy bibles I've been hearing so much about. Basically dreaming up every detail of your world and writing it all in one place before putting a single syllable of your book to paper.

Look at you, with all your planning and preparation... Whatever. That's all fine and dandy, but let's face it, stories evolve. No one is capable of knowing every little detail that's going to spring up. The best laid plans of mice and men, and all that.

Recently, I had the problem of coming up with a name for a restaurant in my book. It needed to sound like a fancy place just by its name. Oh, and one little caveat, there are no foreign languages in my world. So De La Fantaisie is out.

I tripped over this moment and lost traction in my story. Why does this happen? Because writing is a creative process. You're dreaming up this world with the right side of your brain. Names and labels, on the other hand; you guessed it! Left side!

Now it may be a safe bet to say that the best writers have a pretty even balance across their brain. However, no matter who you are, if one side is on a roll, you don't want to fumble things up by getting in its way. If you run into this problem, and you stop to try and dream up a name, you'll be knocking all of the wind out of your sails. Assuming you do come up with a clever name, you'll find it so much harder to get back into your writing zone.

So what's the solution? Find & Replace! Just put something down. It will be stupid. It will be inappropriate. Who cares! Once you're done writing for the day, you can sift through your grey matter for a better name then just use the handy "find and replace" feature of any word processor and swap it out. The key is, don't stop writing!

My restaurant, by the way, was called Fancy Pants Restaurant for a week before I came up with something better. I also have a character in my book who has been named after one of the Thundercats since I dreamed him up... he may actually keep that name. There's my easter egg to you, once my book is published.

Creating Characters that Create Stories

I've watched a lot of videos and read a lot of articles regarding character development, story outlining and brainstorming. While each have contained priceless tips and insight, they've also covered vastly different subjects and have contained varying viewpoints.

I took all these nuggets of knowledge and dropped them into the blender of my brain and, I think, come up with a few helpful (albeit, not entirely original) tips myself. For those interested in the raw ingredients, look up pretty much anything from Pixar. They have some incredible videos and articles on creating stories.

One tip I received a long time ago was to begin my story concept with the villain. So many people focus on their main character/hero, that their antagonist often falls flat. Even in the original draft of my current WIP, my heroes were fascinating characters with hopes, desires and goals. My villain, on the other hand, just went about doing villainous things for the sole purpose of putting obstacles in the way of the main character and his friends.

"I'm going to detonate this bomb!"
"Why?"
"...cuz I'm the bad guy... it's kinda my thing."

That may have worked for old school television episodes of Batman, but people tend to have higher expectations these days.

Now, of course, you can still create a believable antagonist as a secondary thought, but I've found that the easiest way to do this is to start with them. Dream up your bad-guy. Who is he? What does he want? What moral shortcomings does he have that will make him the villain on his way to achieving these goals? Grab one of the seven deadly sins and just run with it.

The result of this, is that your main character will suddenly become much more easy to develop. All they have to do is have a slightly more stable moral compass and be in the wrong place at the wrong time (or however you want to get them involved). Your main character will then automatically act heroically in response to your antagonist. Look at that! You've got a story well under way.

Now, I recently watched a video of a Pixar seminar on brainstorming. Their basic structure for creating any story is something like this:

1. "Once there was a __________ who wanted to ___________"
2. "Every day he/she would ___________"
3. "Until one day __________"
4. "Because of that __________"
5. "Because of that __________"
6. "Because of that __________"
7. etc, etc, etc, story
8. "Until finally _________"
9. "And ever since then __________"

This is a great structure to help you develop your outline and walk yourself through the story. However, this runs somewhat counter to the previous advice of "start with the villain".

So! Bippity boppity, timey wimey!

Use this structure but STILL start with the villain! Then, run through the structure again, this time with your hero. Then again with one of your supporting characters (everyone should have goals). And again, and again, until all of your characters have believable stories of their own, that everyone can relate to.

For example:

1. Once there was a young jedi, who wanted peace in the galaxy.
2. Every day, he would train with his jedi master.
3. Until one day, he was asked to spy on the chancellor.
4. Because of that, he began doubting the intentions of the jedi.
5. Because of that, the chancellor was able to convince him that the jedi were evil.
6. Because of that, he joined the sith.
7. Until finally, he helped the chancellor overthrow the corrupt government and defeat the jedi.
8. Ever since then, he has ruled at the chancellor's side to maintain galactic peace.

See how that works? We suddenly have a character that we can understand. He has depth, and we can relate to his actions (even if they were manipulated and a bit misguided).

Now run through the same process with the heroes, and just watch how their tales intertwine. I think you'll be impressed at how rich and believable your new concept becomes.

Introducing Myself

My real name is Phil Peterson (for now), though I will be writing under the pen name, James J. Rook. There are a few reasons for the name choice, but they aren't terribly important.

People seem to think authors choose pen names for super-secret reasons. That's not usually the case. Some authors do choose a pen name because of the content in their writing. For instance, Anne Rice, went by the name Anne Rampling when she wrote her saucy porn novels, simply because she didn't want to give her poor, Catholic mother a heart attack. (That, and Anne Rice's birth name was actually Howard.)

Others believe we choose pen names because we want to feel like super heroes. "My name is Butch Hammer; creator of worlds and defender of the written word!" That is also not... entirely true. I'm a writer, not a ninja. (Ok, I am a ninja, but that's unrelated.)

This is not the Phil Peterson
you're thinking of

The real reason we choose these unusual names is actually quite simple, and not very interesting. Google. Simply put, we want you to be able to find our work as easily as possible. Go ahead and Google "Phil Peterson". You'll find everything from realtors, to photographers and, for some reason, this photo:

Now! If you were to do a similar search for James Rook, things get much simpler. You'll find a handful of obituaries and something about a British soldier in the Napoleonic Wars. Add in the middle initial and we're golden!

Alright, now that I've thoroughly justified my secret agent name to you, let me give you just a bit of background. I've been writing since fifth grade, when I first discovered my mom's electronic typewriter. I wrote dozens of small stories that my mother was kind enough to read to my brother and I as bedtime stories.

Years later, despite this loving family upbringing, I found myself as a homeless bum in the wintery streets of central Wisconsin. (There is a whole pile of content that lead to that, including cult wars, murder attempts and the FBI, but I'll save it for my autobiography.)

I was cleaning tables in a local diner in exchange for a hot breakfast each night. They also employed my artistic nature to sketch caricatures on their dry erase board to announce their daily specials. Then, sometime around Christmas, one of the waitresses gave me a set of really nice pens as a gift.

I used those wonderful pens to invent a character and sketch him onto the back of one of their placemats. Akara Krosse. I took all of the terrible things that had happened in my life and poured them into this mysterious figure. Then, I gave him the ability to shut off his emotions whenever he wanted.

Soon, an entire, epic saga began to develop out of this character and those horrid life events. This began the first draft of SNAKE EYES LIE, the first book in my science fiction trilogy, THE MALLIS TRAGEDY. I scribbled it all down in a notebook that I carried with me everywhere (along with my character sketch). That was 15 years ago.

Now, after a rocky career as a self-employed game developer, and at the repeated pleading of my fiance, I've decided to finally sit down and finish my novel. Granted, my writing from 15 years ago was still pretty awful, so I'm actually rewriting most of the old work, but I'm determined. I only have a couple chapters to finish up and it will be on to some heavy proofreading and critiques.

I will stop by and post my mad ramblings here whenever I feel like procrastinating. Some of it may be useful to other writers (or gluttons for punishment). Some may just be nonsense. Either way, I hope you enjoy and share your thoughts with me as well.