I’ve taken a few questions asked by readers and have decided to answer them here on the blog! This quasi interview was originally posted on my old website, but is now being migrated over this way in addition to other flavor articles and additional content in the days to come.
Q: What are the hardest things for you as a writer?
A: Hmm, that’s an interesting question. Various things for various reasons really. One thing that can be difficult is getting my characters out of a certain scene to move on to another one. I’ll have a destination in mind, sometimes I’m clear on how to get there and other times not so much. Either way, there’ll be road bumps, like a family breakfast or time spent in a car ride. I’ll be bored to tears and really kinda want to drop kick somebody; getting them out of that darn car drives me nuts. Then I kinda sit back and realize “Oh, I can just do this. Okay, we’re done now. Moving on.”
Another difficulty I run into is keeping dialogue descriptors fresh. I hate saying “said” “smiled” and “laughed” in over abundance; I feel like it kind of detracts from the story if I do. So, I try to explain how someone said something, what type of smile, how are they laughing. The thesaurus, as well as Google to find out colors you’ve never heard of unless you’re a fashionista, have become my best friends. Still, there’s only so many ways that you can say “said”, “smiled”, and “laughed”.
I hate taking the time to describe settings. I always have, and I always will. I also don’t exactly like describing outfits, although for girls it’s a lot of fun. I have an actual fashionista on staff at Dragon House Studios and I text her at all hours of the night asking what colors go with what, what outfits look cute, what’s fashionable, that kind of thing. We don’t always agree; I don’t necessarily think orange and black or yellow and black look fantastic, but, that’s not really important. What I want is for a girl to pick up a book with a female lead or supporting cast member, read the description and think to herself “Oh, that’s cute! I’d wear that!” or “Oh wow, that’s really chic!” I want a girl to pick up the book and know that I tried.
Which is funny, because I actually have found girls are a little easier for me to write than boys. I think my roster has more female leads than male leads, which is becoming problematic *laughs*
Lastly, if we’re talking in terms of emotionally difficult, sometimes it’s an entire story itself. I’m transparent, I write from the heart. I’m willing to sacrifice a lot of myself to tell a good story. It can be very painful sometimes, but also healing. One of the novel series, The Blackest Rain, which talks about slaying vampires and demons and other things that go bump in the night* has a subject matter that is really touchy for me. It talks about infidelity; Rose was madly in love with her boyfriend Vincent who cheats on her and leaves her high and dry in a scenario that mirrors my personal life enough that it hurt to write it. It also felt kinda good though. By the way, in my books I have a personal rule where I never start a sentence with “It”. You can probably count on one hand the times that I do it in each book.
But, yeah, writing that scene was very painful. Writing that book was very painful. I also found it very freeing. I tend to doubt I’m the only person who tried hard, got cheated on and was left holding broken glass and lemon water, so, if someone else can read about someone getting hurt like that and realistically moving on with their lives and that helps the reader, well, it was worth it then.
*laughs* Vincent kinda became my punching bag character. Every writer has one whether you know it or not. Every writer has one character that none of the other characters think very highly of; Vincent is that character for me. He’s one who people generally refer to as “That ass” or something else equally crude. Believe it or not, it’s done without malicious intent. It’s realistic. Vincent hurt Rose dearly, and Rose has a lot of people that are quite protective of her. This sort of thing tends to happen. I personally don’t like Vincent, not just because of my own experiences, but because he doesn’t lend himself to being very likeable.
Anyone who knows anything about me knows that I take ire with vindicating characters. There are some stories that do a really great job with vindication, like King of Fighters. Man, I hated Ash Crimson something fierce, and not just because of his character design *laughs*. Ash was a jerk, I mean, a royal jerk. He was about as unlikable of a villain as one could possibly be, and he made one of my favorite characters (Iori Yagami) kinda lame to play as for like, four or five games. Then the new King of Fighters came along, and without spoilers, I’ll just say that I see Ash in a different light. I think I might’ve cried at the end of the story.
Still, I believe that if I tell you that you should hate a character, that it’s kind of a jerk move to suddenly make you feel bad about hating him or her. I almost did it with one of the villains in The Blackest Rain. At the end of the day, I left him (and no, it wasn’t Vincent) as an evil, terrible person through and through. Honestly, it was better that way; the story was stronger that way. And, more realistic. Sometimes there isn’t a dark and foreboding secret as to why bad people do bad things; sometimes people just do sick things. Sometimes people just hurt you. Sometimes they don’t have a reason. Sometimes they’re selfish and they justify it in their mind. even when they have a reason, that doesn’t make it okay. I don’t think anyone stopped to think “Well, maybe Scar was so darn evil because he felt inferior to Mufasa, and that makes me feel sorry for him.” Nope, I’m pretty sure we were all like “Scar is a jerk, TAKE HIM DOWN SIMBA!”
There are times when it’s okay to vindicate a villain. There are times when such a decision is appropriate and a fitting literary tool. There’s also times when it’s okay to have an antagonist that you can just plain hate and not feel odd about it later. By and large, sometimes people just hurt you simply because they can. There are such things as pure evil in this world.
Q: Is being a Christian Fantasy/Science Fiction Writer difficult?
A: Not quite as difficult as when I want to write a horror story *laughs*! Sometimes it can be hard. For one thing, I deliver the Word in ways that are considered incredibly unorthodox. I don’t think that there’s a lot of Christian fiction that depicts youths in a post apocalyptic settings wielding a beam sword fighting giant robots, or Korean assassins fighting wild west cowboys to the death. That’s a good thing though; it means I’m hitting an untapped market here, it means my stories stay unique.
I actually haven’t been met with anywhere near as much negativity as I expected, but, by the same token I haven’t exactly blown up yet. I’m sure I’ll have different groups holding book burnings soon enough. That’s okay; they still have to buy every book that gets burned!
On a more serious note though, writing what’s expected of me under the stigma of being a Christian writer is difficult. The Ballad of the Damned was hard; I feel like I didn’t get to cut loose anywhere near as much as I would’ve wanted too. Maybe that’s not right, I had to cut loose differently.
When I first got the idea for a Korean Sword Epic/American Style Grind House while listening to some Akira Yamaoka off of the Japan tribute album he provided a song for, I immediately was aware of the difficulty I would run into. I wasn’t concerned about trying to shoehorn in gratuitous sexual depictions; I wouldn’t write those anyways. What I was concerned about was the gore factor. Grind House is known for three things: Cheese, gore and breasts. The latter wasn’t going to be a factor, and the prior was going to be downplayed in lieu of cinematographic writing a la sword epics. The bit in the middle was going to be hard.
In my head I envisioned fountains of crimson, limbs flying, ya know, the usual stuff that goes with Grind House. How I was going to do that and not be labeled a flaming hypocrite (which is bound to happen anyways) was difficult. I decided instead of focusing on over the top violence, I would utilize tasteful violence. There would still be just as many severed heads and flying limbs as there should be in a good grind house, but it would be tasteful. I wasn’t going to gross you out with graphic depictions of capillaries and sinews and all that; I would tastefully describe the spray of crimson wafting through the air like a fine mist as Yoon and the warrior went one way, while the warrior’s arms flew the other entirely.
Descriptions like that are more tasteful, and, when you think about it kinda humorous in a slightly macabre sort of way. That way, I was able to achieve my goal of taking my readers on a great road show while respecting the Christian aesthetics that go with my work.
Some genres are naturally easier to write; real life dramas such as Memoirs** and Dear Diary**, and romantic comedies like Why I Hate New York*** (sorry New Yorkers!) are easy because of the subject matter I deal with. Still, every book presents its own unique challenge. Other genres like horror (Which is one I’m cautious to explore; I can create a truly frightening experience in my writing. Sometimes I scare myself!) are harder; it’s difficult, for me anyways, to write serial killers and heroes trapped in mad men’s laboratories and lairs and still maintain balance.
To elaborate, how much is too much? At what point have you crossed over from creating a hopeless, frightening setting for heroes to overcome and instead are crafting something in which the message is lost in the terror? I don’t ever want to create something that can be labeled as “sick”. That’s inevitably going to happen; everyone has varying thresholds for what they consider sick. Some people are more sensitive than others, some people are more uptight than others. Still, I kinda have a personal metronome that keeps me on task. After a certain point the rhythm just feels off. On occasion I’ll write a scene and think to myself “Wait…is this too much?” When that happens, I’ll generally bounce the scene off of my family and let them tell me “No, go for it” or “You might want to change that up.” More often than not, I’m okay with changing the scene and feel that its stronger for it. There are those occasions though where I think to myself “Man…that was a really great scene I had to cut…”
Basically, at the end of the day I want to avoid a situation where someone is too caught up in the psychological horror to receive the message or enjoy the ride. This makes some stories hard; how do I kill off protagonists in a frightening manner without it being gross? As a result, Dragon House Studios has yet to release a horror story. Well, a pure horror story. We do of course have stories with a horror element such as The Blackest Rain, The Magician’s Crescendo and More Than a Fairytale.
There are many ways to scare people; leaving the reader feeling helpless as their favorite character is beaten, battered and broken as the antagonist stalks toward them to finish them off, isolating someone away from the others and having the proverbial walls closing in on them, or simply getting a glimpse into the mind of a wounded little boy or girl trying to find a way to keep moving.
Horror never has to be all chainsaws and death traps. As a matter of fact, the moment it becomes that, it stops being horror. It simply becomes gore for the sake of gore.
Dragon House Studios never has, and never will produce gore for the sake of gore.
Q: What sort of things do you worry about when you write?
A: Personal deadlines, dry spells, are people going to compare me to other things and turning people off by reality are among the top of my list.
I have personal deadlines every time I start working on a story, which is good because when Dragon House Studios ultimately makes the leap from Indie to Syndicated then I’ll definitely have deadlines to keep. To be candid, it really kinda pisses me off when a deadline is missed. I hate time wasted, so when time isn’t used wisely or dates are missed it leaves me kinda ticked. We are our own worst critics they say!
Dry spells drive me mad. Ask my friends, I’m a little unbearable when I can’t write. Writing is in my blood more than anything else save for Jesus. I think I love writing even more than I love hip hop (That’s hip hop, NOT rap. I’m lookin’ at you Lil Wayne…) and jazz, and that’s saying something. I always have to have something to write with on me. I’m never without my laptop, tablet (paired to a bluetooth keyboard) and at least one notebook devoted to writing concepts and ideas. There’s never a time when I’m not thinking about a story. When I’m sick and I can’t think straight, it drives me crazy! Reality is really boring without a story in your heart and a concept on your mind.
Generally after I finish a novel or two, which I generally do in the space of a month tops, I hit a dry spell. I never have writer’s block, I always have a new story in mind. I just get burnt out, which drives me batty. There’s nothing more frustrating than knowing exactly what I want to write and being physically incapable of doing so. I sit down to my laptop with the story in mind and I know exactly how to go from A to B to C and so on, but I just stare at the page and the keyboard and think to myself “I couldn’t possibly care less” and walk away.
I try to write little fun what ifs to keep my mind going, but, this doesn’t always help. Thank you to my friends, especially those that I talk to daily for hours on end. I am aware I am certainly…we’ll say intriguing to be around when I can’t write, and not in my usual beguilingly roguish way :P!
I won’t spend a lot of time on this next one, because the moment I start naming things that I’m concerned about being compared to people will automatically start comparing me to them. By the very nature of saying I’m concerned about comparisons, people will start thinking them up. Eh, never mind. Forget I said anything *laughs*.
I worry about the kick in the teeth that harsh reality brings. I talk about very dark subjects from time to time, or at least subjects that are considered dark. Having lived through most everything I write about, I don’t know that dark is the word that I’d use. Rather, there’s a social taboo on certain words and occurrences. Racism happens, but you aren’t supposed to call it what it is. Children are molested, but God forbid we talk about it. People are cheated on, but you’re not supposed to go in depth about it.
I do. Nothing that I ever do is ever for the sake of shock value or senseless self gratification; it’s because it happens. People hate people for the color of their skin, whether it’s black, brown, gold or somewhere in between. Sick people hurt children. Callous people break hearts. It happens. And, Hollywood does everything it can to make sure we never move on.
You see a lot of stories about racism, but how many of them really get into the heads of the people that are hurt and the people that breed hate? What’s more, how many show how to cope with that and move on? How many are content to say “RACISM IS BAD, FIGHT THE POWA!” but never talk solutions or brighter days beyond saying that someday something may or may not change but it probably won’t?
How many stories go much more in the subject of molestation or rape beyond using it as an excuse for why someone rejects certain things or as a catalyst to move the plot along? People are afraid to actually get into the topic and the nightmare that every day can be for that person, as well as accountability for what they do in their lives and how to move on with them. Typically it’s only used as a device to drive up your hatred for an antagonist, raise up the hero status of the person who goes after them, and force a knee jerk emotional response to a supporting cast member.
Writing in this way is cheap and easy. You hate the villain without question, you have a driving excuse for your hero to kill the villain, and you have an immediate need to feel connected to and pity the victim without any real depth or reason beyond something bad happened. Before this gets twisted around by someone looking for an internet fight, I’ll put it another way. If I say “This villain is bad” then he may or may not be bad. If I say “This villain is bad because he hates kittens” then he’s kinda bad. If I say “This villain slaughters whole villages” then you dislike and maybe even hate him. If out of the blue I say “Also he ravages women” then that seals the deal. You’re able to throw out that taboo without really doing anything to build the character up as a villain; you just made use of something that is overwhelmingly evil as a means to not have to add depth to your character. Does that make sense?
It’s the same thing for the victim in the story. You do not have to do any work whatsoever to associate a deep emotional response to a character beyond saying “This terrible thing happened.” Instantly, without any work to provide any depth to the character, you’re sucked in. This is bad writing, and honestly, this is insulting to real life survivors.
With that said, I do worry from time to time when the subject comes up. Maybe it’s my social programming, I don’t know. While it’s not as though every other character you read about in a Dragon House story has had this happen, it is a subject I discuss in more than one story. And, I’m never glib about it. Before I go on, something you will never see is a graphic description of the act. You will be told what happened, and you will receive unparalleled insight into the survivor’s psyche and day to day struggles, but you won’t be reading a gratuitous blow by blow. That’s not what I’m about.
Still, not unlike the horror unseen, perhaps the struggle is that much more real because of it. It’s often been said that the terrors that the human mind can craft are far more effective than anything that can be seen or described. That topic is no doubt debatable, but, there ya go. In a lot of ways it’s true. When I’m playing something like Clock Tower 3, Fatal Frame or to a much lesser extent in modern iterations, Silent Hill, I’m always more afraid when there’s no enemies on the screen. When I’m surrounded by ambient noise and the ever present threat of a certain terrible something lurking just beyond the next door or alleyway, I’m always far more afraid than when the enemy is on screen.
The moment I can see the monster after my initial shock, I go into my psychological combat mode. I don’t have fight or flight, I have fight or annihilate. As such, as soon as I can see what’s trying to hurt me, it’s goin’ down. Also, it’s not scary anymore. Same for horror movies. I don’t like American horror (see: gorefest and jump out atcha), but I love Asian Horror Cinema. Movies like Ringu, The Ghost, Blood Pledge, Re-cycle (though that’s more of a psychological drama), The Orphanage and more are my bread and butter. It’s not that they don’t scare me; they’re fun to watch every now and again because they do. And they get horror right. The actual ghost has very little screen time beyond stalking the hero and making the viewer sit at the edge of their seat terrified for when that evil, whatever it may be, is going to present itself.
In my stories, I feel that when I don’t describe something, that very something can be even more frightening or disturbing. Whether that comes in the form of a demonic entity stalking a relatively defenseless protagonist, or in the revelation of trauma, sometimes the words left unsaid can be the most descriptive ones indeed.
Q: Any closing thoughts:
A: Buy my books? *laughs* No, but seriously, whether you’re a Christian or not, there’s something for everyone in my books. You don’t have to be saved to enjoy stories about giant robots, dragons, beam swords and martial arts extravaganzas. You don’t have to be a Christian to be struggling on the fringe of heartbreak, betrayal or assault. My books are for everyone. I hope you’ll all give them a chance whether you order one online from http://www.lulu.com or see them in stores (when I finally find a distributor!).
Please be on the lookout for The Blackest Rain, The Matriarch’s Daughter Book 1: Silentium Nocturne, Academia Book 1: Birth and More Than a Fairytale Book 2: Leah’s Story. All of these novels are planned for Q3 and Q4 2012 releases. Follow me on the twitter, @DragonHouseAK and like us on Facebook, Dragon House Studios – Eugene Ward.
Last but not least, be blessed! Peace!
*The Blackest Rain is not for sale at this point in time, but is estimated for a Q3 2012 release.
** Memoirs and Dear Diary are not for sale at this time and are currently listed as TBA.
*** Why I Hate New York is not for sale this time and is currently slated for a Q4 2012 release.
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