Why I Hate Love Triangles

17 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by Jessica Wood in anime, Blog, writing, writing advice

Tags

anime, character, character development, drama, plot, romance, story, storytelling, villain, writers, writing, writing advice

When I was at school and just getting started with writing, I devoured shojo manga and anime. This somehow got the idea into my head that love triangles and complex love charts were the key to drama and therefore great storytelling. As such, I made sure that all of my stories had love triangles in the hopes that they would become better.

It was only when I became a little better at writing that I looked at my plots and realised that the love triangles I had shoehorned in for the sake of drama were completely unnecessary. They did nothing but add unneeded subplots and worst of all made my characters seem unlikeable.

Now I avoid love triangles as much as possible, or at the very least the ‘which boy should I choose’ variety (and yes, it is almost always a girl who has to choose between two boys). I also started to avoid reading stories that rely solely on love triangles for their drama. I’m clearly not the only one who feels this way; just look at the backlash against Twilight and its ‘Team Edward’ and ‘Team Jacob’ camps. But then again, there are also books like The Hunger Games which subvert the trend and make a love triangle work. So is it really possible?

These are the reasons I’ve found why love triangles seldom work:

Creating unnecessary drama. As I mentioned above, many newbie writers, myself included, fall into the trap of thinking all love stories need love triangles to give them more drama. In fact, most of the time they merely create a pointless obstacle to the main couple getting together.
Telling us who the ‘right’ type of love interest is. How many times have you read a book and wished that the protagonist got together with someone else, instead of the partner they ultimately chose? Even if that person is obviously wrong for them and in the worst cases abusive, they are meant to be together because the writer said so. If the protagonist had a fling with the ‘wrong’ person then they are punished for it before realising the error of their ways.
There is always a backup boyfriend. The worst implication of love triangles is that if something happens to the chosen guy, it doesn’t matter that much because the girl has another guy who’s madly in love with her who she can run to. That person has to live with the knowledge that they were ultimately the second choice and only with the girl because they got lucky.
And a backup love interest for the losing partner. How many love triangle stories have been resolved with a forgotten minor character showing up at the last minute and making an instant connection with the losing partner? The writer wants everyone to have a happy ending but can’t consider that a character getting over someone and doing something else with their life is an option. One of the reasons that even hardcore fans turned away from Twilight (I promise this is the last time I’ll use that as an example) was when the losing partner Jacob imprinted on Bella and Edward’s newborn daughter. I suppose the implication was supposed to be that he could tell that she would grow up to be his soulmate, but it came across as incredibly creepy and probably the worst possible way to end his story.
The characters are turned into horrible people. The moment I stopped putting love triangles in my stories was when I realised that the characters I was trying to portray sympathetically were coming across as horrible because they were jealous of each other. It’s hard to like a character who will string along two different people and put them both through hell just because they can’t make up their mind who they want to be with. If done incorrectly, love triangles can make characters seem indecisive, cruel, malicious, and uncaring. There is also the trap that one of the love interests will be painted as a villain just to make the other look better by comparison. Think of Rose’s fiancé in Titanic for an example. It’s not particularly good writing when you need to show a character being mean to emphasise that the other character is nice.
It’s obvious that one partner is going to either fail or be the villain. It’s not so much drama if we know that only one love interest will be chosen. Nine times out of ten that person is obvious from the outset, making the whole idea of a love triangle seem pointless. Love triangles involving villains or the above example of one partner being nasty are also far too common. These stories make it clear that the protagonist will be pushed into the loving arms of the person they were obviously going to end with while the other will spend their nights crying and eating ice cream.
Everybody loves someone who doesn’t deserve it. Most of us are lucky to have just one person fall in love with us, so why does your protagonist get two or more? If your character is just such a nice person that many people would realistically be in love with them then fine. But chances are they aren’t, or your character isn’t as special as you think they are.

So is it possible to make love triangles work? It’s difficult but if your writing is good enough, then yes. The most important way I’ve found to do this is with good character development. Give both of your potential love interests clear goals, motivations and both positive and negative character traits to show genuine reasons why your protagonist would want to be with them. Develop your protagonist equally well so that the reader can believe why they are so beloved. If you are going to introduce a backup love interest for the losing party, develop that character as well and give them their own story arc. Unless you’re intentionally going for tragedy, leave every character in a good place by the end of the story with something they genuinely wanted and needed.

Writers, how do you make love triangles work in your stories? What do you think are the best and worst examples in fiction?

How not to market an e-book

10 Tuesday Feb 2015

Posted by Jessica Wood in indie, internet, self publishing

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

author, e-book, marketing, self publishing, writing, writing advice

Last week I wrote about six things to avoid if you want to write a good e-book. As difficult as writing a book is, any self published author will tell you that the writing isn’t the hardest part. Now that it’s finished, you have to market your book. I’m not a book marketer, there are many talented people out there who can tell you the right ways to market your book, but I do work enough in the industry to recognise the warning signs of when a book isn’t going to sell.

The good news is that if you followed the advice in my last post and have written a great book, then you’ve already given yourself a huge advantage. Read on and you’ll find out why.

Assume the cover alone will sell it.

A good looking, professionally designed cover is essential for your e-book sales and it goes beyond sticking on a stock image of a sexy lady or a shirtless hunk (or whatever does it for your target audience). If you hope people will just pick up your book thanks to the cover and not bother to take a few moments to read the first page then you’re assuming your readers are idiots. Don’t think that you can sell an inferior product if it comes in nice packaging.

Believe you can sell sand to the desert.

If you’re stuck with a hastily written book with a tacky cover, you might hope you can use your savvy sales skills to move copies. Any marketing professional will tell you that no amount of marketing plans and expensive advertisements will sell something that is terrible. You’ll save yourself a lot of hassle by putting the time in to write a decent book.

Bug people online.

Social media is a great way to gain a following for your written works but you have to do it in the right way otherwise people will know you’re just trying to flog something to them. Sending hundreds of friend requests on Facebook will get you banned and mass following on Twitter won’t get you any genuinely interested readers. Also, don’t send hundreds of annoying messages asking bloggers to review your book, especially if they say on their website that they don’t review self published books.

Order 2000 paperback copies.

Many self publishing services offer printing options but these should be taken frugally. If you had a new product you were trying to sell, wouldn’t you test it first to see if there was a market for it before you set up a factory and made a huge batch? Similarly, would you order 2000 copies of a book when you don’t even know if it’s going to sell a single copy?

It’s disheartening to order lots of books only for them to either take up room in your shed or be pulped. Instead, use a reliable short run printer that can print a few dozen books at a time so you have enough to sell at your book launch and can give one to your granny. Or alternatively wave one in the face of your old maths teacher to prove that all those years of daydreaming in class weren’t a waste.

Ask anyone you know (or don’t know) for a review.

It’s still true to an extent that one of the best ways to move books off the shelves is to have an endorsement from a famous writer somewhere on the cover. That said, I’m not the only reader who’s becoming annoyed with the blurbs on the back of books being replaced with quotes.

Unfortunately, it’s near impossible for a self publisher to get one of these celebrity endorsements. Margaret Atwood wrote an entire poem about why she doesn’t provide blurbs, so under no circumstances should you ask a famous author for one, unless you’ve actually saved their life and they owe you a big favour.

Even worse is asking anyone you know who’s even remotely well known to give you an obviously fake quote. This becomes awkward when you see a former mayoress saying how much she loved a gory zombie horror book.

Write in a genre because it’s popular.

It’s becoming depressing to walk into a bookshop and being surrounded on all sides by rip offs of whatever happens to be popular at the moment that were obviously put out quickly and cheaply to cash in on that book. It’s especially disturbing that currently that book is 50 Shades of Grey…

Once again this comes down to writing just to make money. If you genuinely enjoy reading and writing in that popular genre then go for it. But if you don’t, it would be a waste to try.

The best thing about self publishing is that you don’t have to worry about what’s currently selling down at the supermarket. You can be as niche as you like without having to worry about appeasing your agent or publisher. Your time is free for impressing the most important people in the publishing industry – the readers.

8 creatures that fantasy needs more of.

12 Friday Dec 2014

Posted by Jessica Wood in Dungeons and Dragons, fantasy, musings, story, writing

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beholder, dames blanches, dragon, dryad, dungeons and dragons, fantasy, fantasy archetypes, fantasy creature, fantasy creatures, fantasy story, fantasy world, fantasy writing, gelatinous cube, golem, griffin, kelpie, mermaid, monster, monsters, pegasus, tsukumogami, unicorn, will-o-wisp, writing advice, writing tips

I love dragons. And griffins and pegasi and unicorns and mermaids. That’s why I populate my fantasy worlds with them, as do many authors. But these standard fantasy creatures have been done to death so much they have become boring and unoriginal. Writers don’t need to restrict themselves to fantasy archetypes. There are numerous creatures in mythology and monster manuals that are just as interesting, weird and terrifying and serve the purpose just as well. These are just some of the creatures I’d like to see more of in fantasy:

1. Kelpie

From Scottish folklore, they look like those weird water ponies from My Little Pony except that they can take on human form outside of water, except for their hooves. They lure people to ride on their backs and then drag them under water and drown them. An interesting and twisted alternative to mermaids.

Dames Blanches

Or ‘white women’ are like the bridge keepers that show up in fantasy and won’t let you pass unless you answer a riddle, except instead of a riddle they’ll throw you into a thistle patch if you refuse to dance with them.

Tsukumogami

A Japanese myth of objects gaining life and sentience after 100 years. My favourites are the ittan-momen, bolts of cotton that wrap around people’s necks to choke them and the kasa-obake, living umbrellas that hop around on one leg. There is a whole list on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsukumogami. This sounds like the sort of overblown whimsy you see in Ghibli films, but there’s no reason a fantasy novel can’t have a similar concept.

4. Beholder.

Possibly one of Dungeons and Dragon’s most famous creatures, they look like big floating heads with scary huge teeth and single eyes. From their eye stalks they fires rays that can cause damage, put you to sleep, restrain, levitate, confuse, induce fear, or disintegrate.

As they are registered property of Wizards of the Coast, you probably can’t use the word ‘beholder’ but you can use them as the base for your own monster.

5. Dryad

Tree nymphs from Greek mythology, with similar creatures in many other countries’ myths as well. They usually appear as human women and their lives are tied to their trees. They must replant their trees whenever they move somewhere new and if the tree dies then they die with it.

Gelatinous cube.

Anyone who’s ever played Dungeons and Dragons has just groaned. These things are horrible and nearly impossible to defeat. They are literally just ten foot cubes of ooze which cause paralysis when touched and absorb anything they come into contact with. You’d better have a good magic user in your party because they can’t be hurt with physical force or weapons.

Will-o-wisp.

There are many stories of lights that float over swamps or bogs, seemingly to lure unsuspecting travelers away from safe paths to their deaths, but there are many variations. Scandinavian folklore says they point the way to treasure, especially on Midsummer’s day. The German version likes to make fun of couples making out. There are numerous possibilities that your wisps can have.

8. Golem

Also known as a construct, guardian, homunculus, and many other names, these are inanimate beings made of metal, stone, wood, mud, or sometimes even human flesh brought to life by magic, spells or some kind of energy. I don’t know why but I’m fascinated by things like these. Maybe it’s because mythology had the concept of a robot long before science fiction ever did.

Some tips for filling your fantasy world with monsters:

Use mythology books or RPG monster manuals for inspiration. But if the creatures are under copyright, such as the ones invented for the Dungeons and Dragons games, use them as a base instead of directly copying them.
If you still want to include dragons or griffins or any other standard fantasy creature into your book, that’s still fine, as long as you find an original angle for it and don’t rely on decades old stereotypes that have long since become old. For instance, Futurama had a beholder working an office job!
‘Please don’t tell my supervisor I was sleeping!’
Avoid the ‘calling a rabbit a smeerp’ trope. This is where authors are trying to be clever by using a made up word for something that doesn’t need it, which only confuses the reader. It would make sense if the dragons in your fantasy world are called ‘wryms’ or ‘drakes’ but not if they are called ‘Qiznars’.
Use real life animals for inspiration. How about a dire hyena or a ten foot tall swan? All mythology has a basis in reality, after all.
Combining two animals into one is another popular option. Just off the top of my head I have penguin-monkey, owl-toad, and horse-bear. Ok, those need work but you get what I mean.
Mix and match your mythological creatures to create original combinations. One of the best short stories I ever read was a dryad who fell in love with a dwarf.