#a simple YA solution to some very big and complex elements

[aroaessidhe]

2023 reads // twitter thread

To Shape A Dragon’s Breath

YA fantasy

a young Indigenous girl finds & bonds with a dragon hatchling - the first time in many generations for her people - and is required to go to the coloniser’s dragon academy in their mainland city, to learn how to raise her dragon and the science of its magic

historical inspired setting on the cusp of industrial revolution with steampunk vibes

bi polyamorous MC, Black lesbian SC, nonverbal autistic SC

[lovetheangelshadow]

N’Pressions: Artemis Fowl Movie

Well it has certainly been a while since I have written a film review. So I watched Artemis Fowl last night. Admittedly it was not exactly a movie on my radar. It initially was until I saw the trailer and much like Mulan it felt off. I came across the books quite by accident years ago in Borders when the first four books were out in print. And I would eventually get the rest in hard copies as soon as it came out. Personally I enjoyed these books more than I liked Harry Potter and I dropped those after Goblet of Fire. Personally Artemis felt more like a character to me who had a much stronger arc than Harry did. I know people are going to argue with me on that point and its fine if you disagree with that-that is just how I feel about the situation.

Now the book has a very simple premise: Artemis Fowl is a 12 year old genius who is part of a criminal family known as the Fowls. His father Artemis Sr. disappeared during one of his business trips and Artemis has been using the Fowl funds and network to try and find him so they can keep the business going. But he is running out of money and needs a boost fast. His solution? Fairy gold. So after dealing information out of a drunken sprite-he kidnaps Holly Short and uses her for ransom. The rest of the book is the fairy squad trying to get Holly out of there and not pay the ransom and Artemis has several plans to halt their advances until they finally comply. In the end he gets the gold (or half of it) and the fairy’s leave. It’s basically Die Hard but for a younger audience and it gave everything you needed for a film. You didn’t have to go big scale and fate of the world stuff or conspiracy. That’s later books like Artic Incident and the Opal Deception. Artemis as a calculating genius who has traces of humanity, that gets built upon as the series goes by, but he is a master planner and manipulator and troller even when he’s pretty much a good guy by the seventh book. For crying out loud, he sacrifices himself but has a contingency plan to come back to life in the last book.

So I will be judging this on two fronts: as an adaptation and as a film on its own. Because sometimes the films can be poor adaptations such as How to Train Your Dragon or Howl’s Moving Castle but can be good films on their own. So how does this film start? Well certainly not in Saigon where Artemis is making a deal/blackmail with a drunken fairy to get a book that contains most of the information they need to set up this ransom and it is in the trailer! Like I expect this from trailers but that is one of the biggest character plots of the film because it shows his resourcefulness, how formidable Butler is, and a small hint of his capability of humanity. Like he could have tried to kill the fairy and taken the book but is like-no need to take risks, just bargain for a few minutes to copy the book and we’ll cleanse you of your alcohol poising. Also the mother isn’t dead (seriously Disney ya CAN move away from the trope, it’s okay) she’s just in a delusional state because of the grief of losing her husband. And while she isn’t a major character she does come into play later especially at two points towards the end.

Ignoring that the film decides to go in the common tripe of making a story on a grander scale than it needs to be. It’s not just “hey a human is ransoming one of our kind for gold and we need to get them back without paying the ransom”. Instead this thing that doesn’t have a lot of explanation called the Aculos that supposedly has a ton of power that could be used to dominate both human and fairy worlds and a radical named Opal wants it. Honestly, what is wrong with a simple battle of wits between two forces and ultimately one will win. Artemis is no saint but there was enough likeably about him that you wanted to see if he would succeed. There are times when things blows up in his face, but he can work them to his advantage. Honestly I could go on how the changes they decided undermine a lot of what made the books solid (except maybe Atlantis Complex-it’s not some good scenes in it but its pretty average compared to the other books)

To the film itself, a lot of problems I have with it honestly are similar to Last Jedi. The pacing is all over the place and a lot of it feels a bit slideshow. The film drags on where it didn’t need to and not enough time where it had to be. Like we spend so much time on the whole Aculos thing that barely plays much of a part anyways. The film just felt slow. Not exactly boring but not enough to really have tense interest. Also, Artemis is a villain. He’s a smug, arrogant, intelligent, little troll who doesn’t respect anyone. Heck he doesn’t even acknowledge Holly until book 2. Look I know it’s this thing you’re doing making villains more misunderstood and all that but come on Disney-we know you are capable of better stuff than this. We know you’re capable of interesting villains. We know you’re better than this even at reinterpeitating books such as Mary Poppins and Beauty and the Beast. Also the whole sequel bait thing. I know it worked with Marvel but a lot of the first films worked because they focused on complete stories. If there happened to be a sequel it was a bonus. I suppose I should not have been entirely surprised but more disappointed than anything. Even the supposedly emotional moments feel more like slideshow checkpoints than actual scenes. Honestly the films feels like a paint by numbers fantasy film. My dad compared the thing to a more kid version of Men in Black and along the lines of Spy Kids. Which I would be fine with except the film doesn’t have the wit or the goofy charm those had. Heck, imagine if it had been directed by Robert Rodriguez. Like it would have been silly but at least it would have had a charming style to it even if it bombed.

Not everything in the film is awful. The designs are pretty decent if a little generic at times and mostly the characters looked like counterparts. I’m not like 100% miffed they made Butler black and I just made a damn pun joke-but he doesn’t feel as threatening as he should be. In the books he donned on a suit of armor and single handedly took down the troll. Kids will more or less like it, but it really isn’t for adults. It’s not as bad as Wrinkle in Time either. Honestly if I had to put it somewhere on the recent live action Disney films it’s just below Aladdin and above Maleficent. Like the elements are there but it need a far different team to handle it especially for something that has been in development hell for years.

Overall it’s okay for kids but pretty skippable for adults and I don’t see any sequels coming anytime soon. Until then I’m Noctina Noir and I am one Nox of a Nobody.

[garrettauthor]

Hello, Writer, and welcome back to my life.

It's Writer Wednesday, the day where I give you my tips and advice on the art and the business of writing, and tell you how I do what I do as an indie author.

Today's question comes to us from patron Kristen Stevens, who asks:

How do you find a cover artist that you like?

That's it. That's the question.

We've been answering a lot of questions like this recently—questions about people to work with. There's been questions about editors, review teams, and beta readers. I hope that means the Writer Wednesday community is growing up, and we're finding the people we need in order to actually take our books to a done. I hope that's the case with you. Feel free to let me know.

All right. How do you find a cover artist that you like?

This is, again, one of those important ones. Your cover is the number one thing that sells your book.

It's a hackneyed joke in the indie publishing community that "Everybody says you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but everybody does, haha."

It's 100% true. That's why people design book covers. If people didn't judge books by their cover, every single book would just be white paper.

Before you even begin the search for your cover artist, you need to make several important decisions about your cover. And first you have to decide: what KIND of cover is it going to be?

I've talked about how you need to write what's important to you. You need to write something, not because you think it's going to be the biggest moneymaker, not because you think it's the hot genre right now—that will lead you to a career of misery—but because you WANT to write it, because you are passionate about it.

And it has to be in a genre that you truly love, or a combination of genres, if you're mixing and matching things a bit. That's fine.

Either way, it needs to be something that is important to you—WHEN YOU'RE WRITING YOUR BOOK.

But when it comes to cover design, you need to throw that whole viewpoint away completely.

Every artist, every author, and particularly every indie author, has to be able to switch between the art and the business side of things. When you are working on your book, you wear your artist hat. You with your passion, your tools, and your creativity.

When it comes to your book cover, you need to take off your artist hat and put it far away, where it is not going to influence your decisions in the slightest. And then you need to pull on your business hat and strap it under your chin.

Because if you make cover design decisions based off of the whims of your heart, you just won't sell any books.

Cover design is the number one part of indie publishing where you must be absolutely 100% market-driven in order to get the best results.

Before anybody misunderstands, obviously you still have to be honest. Honesty IS market-driven. Dishonest people don't last long. Don't ever design a cover to "sell a lot of books," but which isn't REPRESENTATIVE of your book.

Theoretically, you could design a cover that looked just like a Jack Reacher novel. They're simple: a textured background with a target symbol.

Shoppers might assume it was a Jack Reacher cover and buy it for that reason. And then they would be very pissed off at you, because you're not Lee Child and it's not actually a Jack Reacher book.

Never do that. That's not being market-driven, that's being dishonest and criminal.

Designing a market-driven cover means finding out what sells well in your market and doing that in a way that is representative of your book.

I think of book cover designs in three broad categories.

THE GRAPHIC COVER

The graphic cover doesn't usually contain illustration. It rarely depicts characters. It's about symbolism.

This is the only one of my books that has a graphical cover. It's a simple symbol, designed to perfectly encapsulate what the reader will find in this literary book.

And graphic covers are primarily seen on literary books, including YA lit, such as John Green's The Fault in Our Stars:

Graphic cover. One of the best graphic covers out there.

And while we're talking about the Green brothers, the cover of Hank Green's new book was just released:

Another graphic cover. No real image, just a simple design communicating a lot of meaning.

In addition to literary and YA lit, nonfiction often features graphic covers.

THE PHOTOSHOPPED COVER

The next broad category is photoshopped covers. That's what I call them. There might be a better name, but you understand me.

Mark Dawson's books are perfect examples. A man on the run, usually with a gun, on a city background. I'd guess that two or three stock images are combined in each of these, in a very artistic way.

But photoshopped covers CAN get much more complicated.

This is the second edition cover of Nightblade, the one I had before my current cover. It's all Photoshop. About fifteen images from stock photo sites, combined to create this image.

Photoshop covers are also massively popular in romance. Two very attractive people, representative of the main characters of your story.

Photoshopped covers are also very popular in urban fantasy, and then there are some very good ones in military sci-fi and other sci-fi. You can definitely do photoshopped covers for genre, it's just more applicable to CERTAIN genres.

THE ILLUSTRATED COVER

The final broad category is the fully Illustrated cover, where every single pixel on the cover (except for the lettering) is hand-drawn by an artist.

These covers can be complex or simple. My individual books have one character on the front, and then for the bigger volumes, I have multiple characters from an iconic scene.

Illustrated covers are immensely popular in epic fantasy. They're the go-to standard. But illustrated covers are also very popular in sci-fi, particularly space opera—to the point that space opera covers can look a little bit samey.

Similar images of a planet in the background and a tiny little ship flying past it. They're great, but I do like some variation from that very common theme.

So the first big decision that you have to make is: what kind of cover are you going to get? And that is entirely dependent on your genre.

If you are writing epic fantasy, I firmly believe that you must do an illustrated cover. The one prominent exception that I can think of is George R.R. Martin and the Song of Ice and Fire books, which LOOK like photoshopped covers. And I'm not even sure about that. They're simple elements on a textured background. They could be illustrated, or they could just be heavily photoshopped.

If you're writing space opera, I think you should have an illustrated book cover, though I haven't done full market research on that. If the biggest space opera books of all time haven't had illustrated covers, don't feel obligated to do so.

If you're writing urban fantasy, paranormal romance, thriller, or regular romance, you almost certainly want a photoshopped cover. That's the standard. That's what your readers are looking for.

And if you're writing YA or literary fiction, consider a graphic cover.

But you have to make this decision first. It does no good to find an amazing Photoshop cover artist if you're writing epic fantasy. It doesn't matter how amazing they are. That's not what your genre demands.

While we're on the subject, because I can just see somebody bringing this up: The Name of the Wind has a photoshopped cover.

It's also an awful cover. It's one of the worst covers I've ever seen come out of traditional publishing.

I'm sorry. It's one of my favorite fantasy books. The cover is just not great. It is anti-great.

(And I can say that because it's not MY cover artist. Looking at you, Terry Goodkind.)

Moving on.

So you've determined what kind of cover that you need, based on your genre. Now comes an even harder part. Now you have to find the right person.

Not just the right person, but the right person who you can easily communicate and work with.

Not just the right person who you can easily communicate and work with, but the right person who you can easily communicate and work with, and who you can afford.

And I have no easy solution for you. I looked for a very, very, very long time before I found my current three cover artists, and I tried lots of covers before them that didn't work out, for one reason or another.

I have designed entire covers that were taken to full completion—and of course I paid for them—and I didn't use them, because the vision was not executed correctly. It was executed WELL, but that artist and I didn't jive on what we were going for.

That's the thing. It doesn't mean that that artist was bad. It just means that we aren't in sync enough to work together as author and cover artist.

I know they can turn out great work. I looked at their portfolio before I hired them.

But people can have compatibility issues, as I have discussed before. You can find a really good editor who YOU cannot work with. That doesn't mean they're a bad editor.

So you've got to do the grind, walk the beat. You have to look at art websites. Spend a lot of time on deviantart, if you need an illustrated cover. (There's good Photoshop work on deviantart as well.)

Talk to other authors. Find out who they used. Find covers from your contemporaries and ask where they got them.

Talk to a bunch of artists. Find out how their process works. Find out how much they charge.

You might go through five artists who you don't work well with—who would be perfect, and their art is very good, but something's off. You don't work well with them, or you can't afford them.

And then, finally, you'll find the person. You work well together, you're in sync, and you can afford them.

I can make a couple of recommendations. These are people I know and have worked with in one capacity or another over the years.

My three cover artists for illustrated covers for the Underrealm books are Sutthiwat Dechakamphu, Sarayu Ruangvesh, and Miguel Mercado. Their names are linked to their artist accounts.

If you're looking for illustrated covers, you should absolutely hire them. I don't generate enough work to keep them working full time, and they deserve stunning careers as artists.

If you're looking for Photoshop covers, Domi over at Inspired Cover Designs designs my text templates, and she does a lot of Photoshopped cover work for indie authors.

For more graphical covers, the best person I can think of is Risa Rodil. I've never commissioned a book cover from Risa, but she is an amazing graphical artist who has done lots of work with the vlogbrothers (and with me) for merch.

You've seen my "Have I Mentioned I Write Books?" t-shirt. That's a Risa piece of artwork. If I had a book named Have I Mentioned I Write Books? (maybe one day) I would totally take that piece of artwork and slap it on the cover.

Again, all these artists are amazing people. They're easy for me to work with, they're super flexible, and I have had a great experience with them every single time.

They might not work for YOU, because some people just don't work together. So if you do happen to reach out to one of these people, and it doesn't work out for whatever reason, it doesn't mean they're bad. It doesn't mean you're bad. It just means you need to keep searching until you find the people you click with.

That has been what I feel like was a very, very long answer. Thank you so much for the question, Kristen. I hope that you and others found the answer helpful.

A reminder to everybody else watching this video that my $5 patrons on Patreon, like Kristen, are the only people who get to ask questions for Writer Wednesday, and they get these videos two weeks ahead of everybody else. If that sounds interesting to you, check out my Patreon.

Thank you so much, and I will see you next Wednesday. Bye!

[sweetandunholy]

YA novels are composed by many different aspects and formulas that make them the genre that they are, young protagonists, complex (and often pointless) love subplots or triangles, dystopian type societies… And one component that I very often see and very much throughoutfully despise: First person switching Point of Views.

If you didn’t skip your middle school literature classes, you surely are aware of what a narrator is: The voice who tells the story and the determinant of the point of view. If the narrator is a full participant in the story’s action, the narrative is said to be in the first person. A story told by a narrator who is not a character in the story is a third-person narrative.

But narrators do so much more than just telling your story, as the type of narrator you use can do so much more for you. YA novels tend to focus on the likability of their main characters (often turning their protagonists into Mary Sues, sigh) while doing the least amount of work possible and thus it has become a very common occurrence for these types of authors to choose first person narratives because of several advantages they always wish to exploit: ➜The spoon feeding of your main/secondary character’s ambitions, thoughts and motivations through letting them explore their thoughts.

➜The cheap shot at immersion with your readers by allowing them a generic character. Because of how hard it is for main characters to describe themselves without sounding like they’re roleplaying on Omegle (F, 20, brown hair and green eyes) most authors avoid giving characters a clear description of themselves and more of a blank slate personality that’s described through other characters (“But MC! You love going to the movies with us ! Are you really going to pass on hanging out to help rescue animals instead?”)

An overplayed phenomenon in romance oriented YA is this precise blank slate main character who attracts the handsome, new bad boy in school and he finds himself unnaturally drawn to her. This is nothing but lazy play for uncaring readers— Your reader projects onto the main character and swoons as her love interest is here to sweep her off her feet and thus become too busy fangirling over how sexy the love interest is and how much you root for him. (Bonus points if you thought of any novel that wasn’t Twilight, because I could easy list a few many, many more)

It’s cheap, its lazy and its such an over used YA trope.

➜The bias of first person narrators, as the stories are filtered through their brains and emotions. Thus, making it easier to be able to quickly flag characters as “Good guys” and “Bad guys” without having to spend any time developing them as to us to figure it out by ourselves.

➜The unbelievable ease by which first person narrators are able to dump exposition on you without having to resort to the intelligent pacing and logical cohesion of explaining the world as events unfold and make it properly that third person forces you to do.

➜If the novel is thoughtful or intelligent enough to include some good mysteries or complicated plot twists, a character’s musings are a simply way to spell out what’s going on and move on without allowing the reader to discover it for themselves.

Now at this point, I have only spent some time describing why I think a first person narrator is lazy— Not even mentioning the more obvious disadvantages like self-indulgent novels can become within the narrator’s emotions by overreaction and making everything about themselves, the limiting POV by not being able to create action where the character isn’t present, making perspective and perception on the bigger picture almost impossible, the lack of focus and inability to work on secondary subplots as you’re only focused on one story thread, the unreliability of the narrator because of the bias of its brain (which in cases this can be worked wonderfully into a novel, but this is what I call a literary device for non-lazy authors) and the extra time needed to be spent figuring out the narrators voice without being out of character: Alas, a “creative” mind like Tahereh Mafi’s Juliette using heavily complex and scientific terms in her descriptions. Then again, just like Mafi, many YA authors don’t care for this later point and tend to ignore it all together.

But notice how I mention the “limits” of what a first person narration can do to your novel, and backtrack on the immediate thought that’s plaguing your head: “But Hime ! That has a very easy solution !” And it does ! It’s precisely the object of this essay this fine morning: Multiple Person POVs.

If you haven’t clued in into what they are just yet, allow me to explain. Multiple Person first person POVs is a phenomenon that occurs when you narrate a tale in first person, and then switch up the character narrating most commonly when entering a different chapter i.e. Maria narrating chapter one, and Pancho chapter two and Pedrito chapter three and switch back, back and forth. Surely, this phenomenon solves many of my aforementioned problems like: The limiting view of only one person’s bias now extended to multiple, the new found ability to throw some focus and spotlight into other character arcs and subplots and the convenience to narrate situations that are going on outside the main character’s perspective.

If you are doing this, let me tell you one hard truth: Your novel most likely reads like fanfiction.

Those who have spent their years in Wattpad surely understand what I’m saying. There isn’t anything more distracting than beginning a novel and first thing reading the character’s name on top of your page. It is very, very off putting.

It’s lazy, and when not developed properly, really brings out the amateur in a writer. You might think that many readers of YA don’t mind this, and that is the cold hard truth, but there are many other writers and readers out here that still value writing as an art form and not as a self indulgent check-list of how to get a best seller. Put effort into what you do. 

Dual POVs are the most common occurrence of this phenomenon, and usually indicate a clear romance between both parties. This is by far the easiest and the laziest because it avoids having to go through the trouble of really giving each of your main characters a voice: One is a boy, and one is a girl. They do boy girl things until they encounter each other and then think about each other when they are apart. Fun.

Problem arises when the same lazy author I’m describing attempts to add a third or more POVs into the story and everything goes down into a shit show. If you’re not taking the time to give your character voices, then you will most likely turn your lazy cop out into an unpleasant read. Characters will become nothing but names blending into each other you will force your readers to have to constantly remember to tell them apart (A big problem I encountered with The Thousandth Floor but still gets half a pass because the story sort of premised revolving around these five characters- It was just done very, very incorrectly).

Narratives who do this tend to become very convoluted between every minor character and major character that they book switches to. Authors tend to forget the main point they were trying to make and get derailed between the myriads of new character thoughts, and motivations, and glances into their brains that are simply not needed in the story. You’re spending less and less time with the main characters that the reader came in for in the first place. In fact, the biggest pitfall that authors using this system fall with is very simple:

The simple possibility of ending up with readers liking one POV dramatically more than they like the other. Imbalance occurs between POV characters who are given equal amounts of time on the page and the experience becomes tedious and unpleasant.

Most authors who do this switch and jump between characters only to make sure they cover every piece of action away from the main character and I am tired to say this, but it is simply a cheap cop out that doesn’t push the writer to find a creative way to present all the information it wishes to convey through their book.

So enough complaining, what would you do?

Third person is my go to answer. It doesn’t mean my personal stories are all written in third person, but allow me to explain why I would always recommend going for this style.

It forces you to be creative.

Not only that, but you can very well achieve the same advantages from a first person perspective with a third person perspective, along with several other advantages.

Most writers choose to include elements of first-person points of view by mentioning character thoughts and feelings without using ‘he thought’ or ‘she felt’ next to italicized text. This allows for more intimacy whilst maintaining different perspectives and helps break down the distance between the narrator and the characters. In fact, through the third person can still think, feel and experience, but so can other characters.

I believe writing is all about the subtleties, about showing and not telling and third person can work wonders for multiple POVs without even feeling like a multiple POV. Here’s some examples on novels who did it right and novels who did it wrong and why

Novels who did it right:

The Raven Cycle Series by Maggie Stiefvater The Raven Cycle series tells the story of 5 boys looking for sleeping King in the magical, rural Henrietta. Each chapter opens on a third person limited view focused on a different character. Each book discretely changes main character focus by giving one of the 5 characters more screentime than the others. This is barely noticeable, making it a very subtle and pleasant change. Nevertheless of a great plot, the story is also very character heavy and fully immersive. I perfectly know each and every one of these complex and intricate characters, I’m familiar with their voices and characters and switching their focus to each other was pleasant and almost unnoticeable ! … All achieved through the third person.

Carry On by Rainbow Rowell

Carry On is a multiple first person POV novel that just did it right. The novel doesn’t take itself too seriously in its plot and its mostly character driven. This story in fact depends on it constantly switching out narrators for us to really understand what was going on in characters heads as that was the important part of the novel, not what was going on outside of them and in the plot. As the plot was their feelings, their emotions, their thoughts… A really amazing read that almost didn’t bother me with the constant narrator switch (as I really couldn’t bring myself to care for the bits with the Mage, Nico or Ebb, all minor characters that resulted distracting to me).

Novels who did it wrong:

  Pure by Julianna Baggott

Is also an ever jumping first person multiple POV novel that constantly distracts itself by distancing itself from the main two characters and showing distracting, minor characters POV.

It also suffers from another of the aforementioned problems where for a good 100 pages of the book, one of the main characters is completely insufferable and his chapters result bland and heavier to get through.

  The Thousandth Floor by Katherine McGee

Because this book is all about a web of character driven drama, the first person multiple pov approach to it should be making sense. But it is the lazy and effortless way its written that makes this bad, for the characters lack voices of their own or any sort of distinguishing features other than their names. It makes the reading tedious and just hard and complicated to keep up with who is who. It’s like having homework on a Friday.

  Carve the Mark by Veronica Roth

The book is completely incoherent— It is a duality that begins as a third person POV when following Akos, but turns into a into a first person POV when following Cyra, the second main character. It is distracting, frustrating and beats any sort of advantage from using third person or first person as a narrator.

Akos is a blank slate and to make it even worse, his story is told through third person as if we weren’t emotionally disconnected enough as it is because the author refused to convey his feelings and character through action.

So ! What do you think? Are there any other books you’d consider did the third-multiple person POV right? Or more rants about who did it wrong and resulted distracting? I’d love to get more thoughts and examples !

Taking a moment to rant about the laziness I've seen in writing YA narrators & how to fix it.. YA novels are composed by many different aspects and formulas that make them the genre that they are, young protagonists, complex (and often pointless) love subplots or triangles, dystopian type societies...