Interviewing the Author of a Fantasy series
Of paramount importance to those writing in the action genre and are having troubles with writing a female character
1. What was your initial dream when you applied to Texas A&M University?
Well, I initially wanted to become a geneticist. The mysteries of the human genome were (and still are) infinitely fascinating to me. There’s so little we know about our own blueprints, and I feel there is boundless opportunity for healing and immunity buried within our DNA. I applied to the biology program at Texas A&M and, by some miracle irrelevant to my less-than stellar GPA, I was accepted.
However, I quickly discovered that I did not have the talent required to thrive and be successful in a lab, so I switched my major to English — which was pretty stupid of me.
Never attend an expensive university to get an arts degree.
You will never see a return on that investment.
I still love science and nerd-out about the human genome every chance I get. If I ever win the lottery, I’ll probably blow it all on a huge laboratory and recruit the brightest minds in the world to solve our biggest problems — which I know sounds like the backstory of super villain, but I’m willing to take that chance.
2. Are there any key things that can make or break the fluidity or impact of an action scene?
Word choice is paramount when describing any scene crafted to elicit a specific emotion. One of my high school English teachers said this to us during our first week of class: In language arts, there is no right or wrong. There is only what is best, most appropriate, or most effective. And that lesson has stuck with me ever since.
I try to apply that principle to every scene I write, down to the specific choice of words.
If two characters are fighting, and they lock swords, you could say: Their swords hit together and the force shook their grips, and that wouldn’t be wrong. But would it be more effective to say: Their swords clashed together and the jolt rattled their bones?
If you want to be able to draw some emotion from your readers, you need to think about how certain words effect you. You need to think about the way they hit your ears and the reverberations that trail behind their meanings, and you need string them all together in a song that makes sense.
Have you ever read To Kill a Mockingbird? There is a passage that I believe perfectly illustrates this principle of best, most appropriate, and most effective (ebook version, page 6, paragraph 2, “There was no hurry … fear itself.”). Harper Lee could have just said: “It was towards the end of the Great Depression, people were still broke, and FDR was president.” But a simple relay of information doesn’t elicit any emotion. So she chose to say it differently.
3. Did you have any 1 or more go-to people who you’d contact to give you feedback for your work in progress?
My mom. The strength and patience that woman has exhibited throughout all the ups and downs of this adventure is nothing short of astounding.
I don’t let anybody read my drafts until they are about one edit away from being ready to publish.
But after the end of a long writing day, I found I needed someone to review/brainstorm with. So I would come downstairs, and we’d cook dinner and just talk.
It was always sort of a mental “recharge” to be able to have a conversation at the end of the day. My mom is one of the most intelligent people I know, and one of the wisest. She talked me through a lot of my writer’s block. I live alone now and I honestly miss having that end-of-day chat. Netflix is not nearly as helpful
4. Did you study up on stances/fighting techniques with a sword, dual blades, etc. while working on your first book? Or did you only study weaponry before you began working on it? Did you continue to study fighting methods and hand-to-hand combat while working on the other books in the series (esp. Dragonsbane, as that’s where you said most of the action would be taking place)?
I will preface this by saying that I had a very interesting childhood. My Nana lives on several acres out in the country, and my cousins and I were basically allowed to run wild all day. It was pretty common for us to watch an action movie and then try to reenact the battle scenes. Indiana Jones, The Vikings, and that Robin Hood with Kevin Costner in it were some of our favorites.
Imagine, if you will, a band of children with near-limitless imaginations and access to all the tools and weaponry afforded by a Texas ranch. Our reenactments were very real — if I failed to block an attack, I got cut. Or scraped, or bruised, or suffered whatever damage that particular dueling weapon dealt.
In one instance, we were trying to reenact the scene where Indy sticks a flagpole through the spokes of a nazi’s motorcycle and launches him into the air (we questioned the physics). Turns out it was pretty realistic: I flew off my bicycle and slid across the concrete driveway, scraping all the skin off my chin.
I do collect a wide variety of weaponry, and often times it helps to actually hold something in your hand. Harbinger was based off a machete I liked; the giants’ scythes were designed after a naginata. If you find a willing sparring partner, you should definitely practice the action scenes for yourself. There’s nothing like the shock of getting rapped across the knuckles by a quarterstaff.
5. Things to keep in mind while writing a female character: what should we remember, and what pitfalls should we avoid? Since some male writers read as if they’re out-of-touch with their heroines.
I think a strong female character begins with a world based on the idea of equality. We are products of our environment, and readers can certainly become fatigued in a world that is too misogynistic or too feministic. This response is directed at aspiring authors of all genders, not just men.
The very first thing authors should do is stop raping their heroines.
If women are treated like cattle and raped every other paragraph, it would take an insane amount of time and skill to convince your readers that a woman living in that world could be strong on her own, without some serious intervention from a male character. Also, that trope of a society built upon carnal objectification is completely tiresome. It’s dry and played out, and in the vast majority of cases it’s completely unnecessary. If a character’s story has been affected by a sexual crime (like my character, Elena) then I would urge writers to focus on the aftermath. Write about her transformation from victim to victor. Avoid writing about the act, because it is a crime that elicits sympathy only from those who have endured it. To everybody else, it’s just another act. Most people (thank God) lack the life experiences required to transcribe the residual horrors of a sexual crime with any sort of truth, and their attempts to write about what they “think” rape is like just winds up reading like a sex scene — which desensitizes your audience’s reaction to something that is a very real, very traumatic, life-altering desecration of the soul.
Stop. Raping. Your. Heroines.
It is also exhausting — and I repeat, exhausting — for your heroine to constantly be met with sneers and snide remarks every time she tries to take action: You can’t do that ‘cause you’re a girl! Yes, we get it. She’s a girl; she also kicks ass. It’s confusing for all the tiny-minded NPCs in her local pub. Too much “girl power” theme can cheapen your characters’ actions and limit her abilities with the qualification of: well, that’s better than what the average girl can do. Why can’t she be better than the average person? The average dragon? Whatever she is or isn’t, why can’t she just be a badass?
The Fate’s Forsaken world was largely egalitarian. Nobody cared about the fact that Kyleigh, or Gwen, or Elena were women — because they were just warriors. Folks were so worried about catching the edge of their blades that they didn’t have time to sneer at them. That’s the kind of world I want to live in, and that’s the kind of world I wanted to write about. If you want your heroines to thrive, then drop them in the middle of an equalized society and set them loose. They’ll take care of the rest.
6. What was it like getting your series’ audio book nominated for the 2015 SOVAS awards?
It was a little nerve wracking, simply because it required me to fly out to California. Critics and “the powers that be” do not like my work, and I have never won an award. But I was very excited to meet our wonderful Fate’s Forsaken narrator, Derek Perkins, and I was sad when he didn’t win (but he wound up winning an Audie just a few months later, so his brilliance did not go totally unrecognized). Mr. Perkins was very kind and gracious to me when most people aren’t, so he’s definitely got himself a fan for life.
7. It says on fatesforsaken.com that you had the “opportunity” to work on this series in 2010, which means it took two years for you to complete Harbinger. Tell me a little about that process, and what was this “opportunity”? Had you already been approached to make this series even before your first novel was written?
I had definitely not been approached to start working on the Fate’s Forsaken series. Literally nobody asked for it. I just did it.
I graduated from Texas A&M in 2010, and moved back home to work on my master’s degree. I chose to study Human Resource Management because I knew my English degree was worthless and I was trying to do something practical. But I realized half a semester in that I hated HRM and did not want to do it for the rest of my life. So I started to write Harbinger in an attempt to escape my reality.
The first 25K words I wrote got wiped out when my laptop’s hard drive broke.
Then, I wrote another 100K words that were just absolute garbage. It was October of 2011, and I was officially giving up on becoming a writer. Skyrim came out in November, and I had so much fun playing my way through that game, making choices that would alter my characters’ world, that I kind of rediscovered my passion for storytelling. I started writing again. And by August of 2012, I had a master’s degree in HRM, a completed manuscript, and a big decision to make.
I call this episode of my life an “opportunity,” because I was so lucky to have parents who let me come home and pursue my dream. They let me live with them the entire time I wrote the Fate’s Forsaken series, and that gift of just being able to write was truly life-changing. They still believe in me to this day, even after I wrote my first flop, and I am just continuously grateful for their love and support. I truly could not do it without them.
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Account-@shaeford_author
