Tag Archives: texture to your writing

Let’s Hear it for the NPCs

by Gail Z. Martin

At Lunacon, I was on a panel called “The Magical Middle Class” where the topic was secondary characters (or as gamers refer to them, Non-Player Characters—NPC) in fiction who possess magic but don’t have awesome jobs.  It got me thinking about how important background characters are, and how poor our fiction would be without them.

There are a lot of magical middle classers in the Harry Potter series.  Mr. Weasley is a perfect example.  He has magic powerful enough to be among the Order of the Phoenix, yet he has a job as a mid-level government bureaucrat.  Think about the series, and you find a number of people with jobs as shop keepers, bus drivers, and even Hagrid, the grounds keeper, who have very ordinary jobs despite magic that would make them extraordinary in our world.

In any book, but especially in a series, those background characters add life and texture when they’re done well.  They may never have a heroic role, but they make the world feel more real.  They are, as Mr. Rogers put it, “The people that you meet each day.”

Often, these characters serve as a source of information, an unlikely intelligence network, or an unofficial Greek chorus.  They’re the bartender, the cop or night guard, the janitor, the barrista, the waiter, the neighbor.  They’re the casual acquaintances, the people you see often enough to have a conversation with, and yet don’t know quite well enough to invite them to dinner.  Yet their conversations and interactions can reveal a lot about characterization, and can provide important, even essential clues to action.

So the next time you’re reading, pay attention to the NPCs.  They’re not the hero or the villain, but they are an essential support team, and play a role far more important than is often acknowledged.  Hooray for the magical middle class!

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Come see me at a signing!

by Gail Z. Martin
Come see me at a signing!

  • In-store signing at Books-A-Million at Carolina Mall in Concord, NC  on Mar. 30, 5 – 7 p.m.
  • Ravencon, Richmond, VA April 14 – 15
  • In-store signing at the Barnes & Noble at Birkdale Village, Huntersville,  NC on April 21, 2-4 p.m.
  • In-store signing at Park Road Books in Charlotte, NC on Apr. 27, 7 – 8:30 p.m.
  • Watch for more in-store and con signings to come!

I’d love to hear from you—please comment on my blog or on Facebook, and of course, I always really appreciate it when you forward my posts to your friends.

I hope to meet you at a convention or signing this year.  Enjoy!

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Who Are Your Favorite Villains?

by Gail Z. Martin

OK, so I’ve talked about favorite heroes, but what about favorite villaians?  Who are the people I love to hate?

I don’t buy into the idea that a villain needs to be sympathetic. Understandable, but not sympathetic.  While a good villain needs a back story, I don’t think it’s essential to identify with them.  Sure, no villian believes he or she is bad.  Yes, many villains had terrible childhoods or endured some kind of trauma.  But so do many other people who don’t become villains.  In fact, the split in the path between hero and villain lies in the choice of what to do after the trauma.  Do you identify with the victim, and vow to keep terrible things from happening again, becoming the hero, or do you identify with the perpetrator, choosing to make others suffer as you have suffered?

I have a fondness for comic book villains, maybe because they’re just so  cool.  So  yes, all of Batman’s foes make my favorite’s list.  Ditto for Spiderman and the Fantastic Four and the X Men.  I liked the nuances that were so much a part of Voldemort, but I found the “banality of evil” of Cornelius Fudge and Delores Umbridge to be equally scary because they are so real and I have met their real-life counterparts.  For sheer stage presence, you gotta love Malificent (great costume), and the Shadows of Babylon 5.  Angelique from Dark Shadows had a single-minded stalker quality that made her pretty scary.  I never really bought into Anakin Skywalker–perhaps he should have been fed to Louis from Anne Rice’s books and they could have been angsty together.  But I think one of my very favorite villains is Belle Morte from the Anita Blake series and

So who are your favorite villains and why do they rock?

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Who are your favorite heroes?

by Gail Z. Martin

I did a post recently for Orbit’s blog about some of my favorite SF/F heroes.  You can read it here:

Of course, there’s not enough room in one blog post for all my favorites.  I’ve been a Batman fan since I was a kid (goes with the vampire thing, I’m sure).  And along with that certainly goes other favorite vamps like Lestat (because Louis is too whiny), Barnanas Collins (the Jeremy Iron’s version), Acheron,  the Count Saint-Germain and even Sinclair from Mary Janice Davidson’s Undead series.

Big surprise that mages also turn up on my favorites list.  I was pleased to watch Harry Potter grow into a strong heroic character.  I liked Belgarion from the David Edding’s series, pretty much all of Mercedes Lackey’s main characters, and Camber of Culdi.

I like heroes who have self doubt, who aren’t arrogant in their power, who are conflicted and question themselves, which keeps a hero from becoming a vigilante.  I want heroes who are believable as real people, not just cardboard cutout, square-jawed action figures. I also want to see heroes who have meaningful personal relationships, someone who has people he or she truly cares about, who has a reason bigger than him/herself to act.

That’s what I try for in my own heroic characters, although I think each of them would try to wiggle out of the term “hero.”  So here’s where I’ll turn it over to you.  What makes your heroes tick?

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Adding Texture To Your Writing

by Gail Z. Martin

Does your fictional world have texture?

By texture, I mean details that make your world immersive for your reader, engaging all their senses as well as their imagination.

Think about the “texture” in your everyday life.  That includes things like the weather, background noises, ambient scents, and the colors, people and landmarks you see each day.  How would your world be different without those things that form the setting for your life?  Now think about your writing.  Without those textural details, what’s missing from your characters’ world?

Without texture, our fictional worlds and characters seem flat and unrealistic.  When we don’t work those details into our writing, our readers lose out on the feeling that they have truly visited.

How can you add texture to your world so that readers can recall not just what happened, but the sights, sounds, smells, feeling of the world itself?  If you’ve ever visited someplace on vacation that was very different from where you live, you know that years later, you recall not just what you did or saw, but the food you ate, the color of the light itself at different times of the day, the smell of flowers, the feel of bed linens, the voices of people you met.

Make your fictional world come alive in a whole new way when you add texture to your writing, and make your story memorable for your readers!

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