Do You Have a Mothering Complex?

A close up of Tell Me Your Happy
by Wenqing Yan

Mothering Complex- Wish to keep your characters safe from truly evil individuals. Unwillingness to allow your characters to die. No trauma of any sort befalling any main character, often causing little to no character development.

I'll admit right now this is a term I made up. If there is a real mothering complex in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders I apologize. This blog has mainly to do with writing, and since I made up the term I will admit I have a problem.

I have a mothering complex.

I like my characters to be happy, to be quick on their feet, and I don't like to see them get hurt. I don't like to see them have their friends die or experience heart ache. I like them to be safe and sound.

Part of my upcoming notes for God Syndrome will include a detailed plot chart. In there I hope to create some true hurdles for my characters. A place for them to experience life to it's fullest, including the crappy parts of it. I'll make it a personal goal for my character to experience death in some way. The reason I'm doing this is because I have a tendency to tell a story full of roses with only minor characters dying on the side. Often the deaths have gone unnoticed by the main characters. I've been analyzing some of my old writing and I've come to realize how little readers and characters get to know those who die. It's a clean cut that doesn't have you balling like when Fred Weasley or Sirius Black died in Harry Potter. 

I suppose you could say that you don't need to have those moments. However, I think it's important that on some level writing mimics life. That sometimes when shit goes down everything isn't okay. My favorite pieces of writing have always had a bit of tragedy in them. Girl With the Dragon Tattoo trilogy, Harry Potter, and from my comics The Demon Ororon are among the pieces I have read that I loved and yet made me cry. So one more writing goal for myself is to break my mother complex, and to give my character a life. One that is measured by both successes and failures. One that has that little stroke of reality to make you feel your own life in that moment.

Its one heck of a goal and I certainly haven't decided who will pass on, but in the end it is something I want to experience as a writer.

Is It Possible to Write an Original Story?

I made the cover for a SF course I took in college.
I had decided to make a comic out of the manuscript.

One of my greatest fears as a writer is to write a book that's already been written. I admit sometimes I'll see a book already published with a flap copy that is similar to an idea I have. So, instead of reading it, I put it back on the shelf. Afraid that my thoughts were already someone else's.

I think that's why I stopped my first major project, Dreida. I had written two full chapters, almost thirty pages, when I became acquainted with the movie Blade Runner. While the stories weren't even fifty percent the same, they did have very similar elements. The main underlying question they both had was, what makes us human?

I had plans to add alien cultures. The story was going to take place between India and Germany. The characters were going to be a bit over the top, a little science fiction mixed in with fantasy. I had side stories about the scientists who created the humanoid beings called humanisapiens. Humanisapiens are biologically human, save for a few minor brain adjustments that makes them emotionless and obedient.

The thing was, those plans felt silly after I had watched the movie. Part of me is now worried that God Syndrome, my current project, will be similar to some other story line I'm not yet aware of. Part of me thinks I need to get over this worried mentality. The story, as far as I know, is original. Unlike Dreida I've been taking notes on this baby for almost a month now. I have thirty pages of just notes on viruses, deities, doodles, and plot ideas. I should feel secure that even if this sort of story has been written before, that I can do it in a way that is better. In a way that is all my own.

However, I won't lie I'm hoping that God Syndrome is an original piece. One that won't make me want to chicken out. Right now though, I feel pretty certain I'm on the right track.

Happy Writings!

Planning Ahead

I'll admit it, I used to be a worthless writer. In high school I received mostly A's. So, thinking all was well, in my junior year I took Advanced Placement Composition, a college level writing class. I received an "A" and decided to take the eighty-nine dollar test. A.P. tests are scored 1 through 4 with four being excellent, three being normal, two being poor, and one being awful.

I received a two on the test. POOR.

I remember being stunned that I had done so badly. My grades certainly didn't reflect the score I received, but my parents knew. They had known for awhile. They were not happy when I showed them my final portfolio. My parents went to the principal to complain about my good grades. It was plain to them that I didn't grasp some of the basic rules of English and therefore didn't deserve them. It was humiliating to say the least.

The next year, against the advice of my high school, I enlisted in a remedial English course for college students. That course taught me grammar, spelling rules, and how to compose a paper properly. She drilled into our heads that pen and paper helped you think while writing. She mandated we edit every paper we turned in. We had to have a first and second draft for every paper.

I haven't picked up The Classic Guide to Better Writing since then. Part of me was naive and embarrassed  I never wanted to face my weaknesses or pick up the book again. Reading the book reminded me how feeble my memory can be and that even after my remedial class it helps to review some of the rules.

The first chapter is about mapping a plan for what you want to write. It basically says while you might be able to deliver a message nobody will want to listen to the garbled mess you'd make up on the spot.

The last few weeks I've been producing notes and research on various things for my future novel The God Syndrome. While these notes will help me keep information short at hand, they won't help me write my story in a fluid fashion. They are a garbled mess that have no meaning by themselves. My story requires a fleshed out plot mountain. I have one I did when I originally thought of the story four years ago. However, that diagram is very basic and doesn't help me know what I'll write in advanced or how I'll stitch together all the notes I've taken.

I think the last week of December I'll start fleshing out this plan. Making sense of the amalgamation of notes in my notebook. It will give me a good jumping point for those first 50,000 words in January.

I may have been a poor writer in high school but that won't hold me back now. I'm going to use every tool I know to make my writing enjoyable.