I’ve come to one… well actually, I’ve come to several (not jumped to, either, for a change), but one important one with regards to my first book.  Are you ready for it?

It still needs some work…

Yup, you heard it here first, folks… I need to dig back into it and do some major editing.  I never thought I would say that; I did, after all, spend ’7′ years writing it in the first place.  I should have got it right, shouldn’t I?

But no.  There are things that need to be changed.  It took me walking away from it for this long to see the (many) weaknesses in the first draft.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m pretty proud of it and it is the primary reason that I was able to knock off my second extended work in a period of 3 weeks.  It proved to me that I could do it and now I will never look back.

One of the main things I’ve noticed is that my villains don’t ever become anything more than some dark force out there.  While it is true that in series like “Lord of the Rings” and “Harry Potter” (the first ones, anyway), the bad guys spend much of the time being talked about in hushed, frightened voices and we see the effects of their henchmen, but we don’t really see them as anything but… some dark force.

In my case, the dark force is never given a name and that seems to be a major difference.  I’ve also decided that my villains need to have a form to work in my story, I think.

There are also some weaknesses in how the book begins and I want to build up the characters more so this is likely to become a fairly major overhaul.

Happily, that doesn’t cause me the fear that it did when I first finished it.  I remember rushing upstairs to tell my wife that it was finally done.  A few minor edits and I could send it out to be published.

I made those few edits and sent the book out into the wild.  You may remember me posting about it.  I’ve gotten a few rejections for it.  I expected that.  But I also expected it would eventually find a home.

I just wasn’t ready to look at it with the critical eye that it needed.  Now that I have, I realize that it isn’t quite ready.  It may never be, but I’m still going to give it a chance, so starting next week, I will begin to tear it apart so I can make it better.

I still think that there is a lot in there worth saving.  Those parts that are will remain.  The characters will evolve more, a few more baddies will show up and, I hope, a much more compelling story will result.

Only time will tell.

Whatever the result, it will be a great exercise for me to do.  I HATE editing with something approaching passion (or mental illness), so I need to get past that or my future work will always suffer too.

Strange as it may sound, I’m looking for to the challenge.

For those of you who don’t already know, I have been fortunate enough to do some traveling this summer.  In fact, it wouldn’t be a huge stretch to say that I’ve been from one corner of North America to the other (Mexico to extreme Northern British Columbia).

I know, it’s a bit of a stretch.  I just said it wouldn’t be a huge stretch.  

Anyway, I went to Cancun with the intention of seeing the (historical) sights and experience the culture.  I’ll admit, I expected differences and similarities in the Mexican way of life, too.  I had heard that Cancun was an Americanized Mexican city, after all.

Were there similarities?  Naturally, since they use the metric system there are some peripheral things that were the same.  That’s pretty much where it ended though.  Their interpretation of speed limits was laughable… and the way they approached life was very different too.

To sum up, the family and I enjoyed the sights and sounds and food and people, but we were happy to be home too.

That trip was almost immediately followed up with a driving holiday (for a wedding) to extreme Northern British Columbia.  All told the round trip was approximately 40 hours of driving.  The wedding was at a small town (Kitimat) which was fine… I’m from a smaller town so I had some idea what to expect.  What surprised me was that the lifestyle differences (see culture) between Kitimat and Calgary were almost as big as those between Cancun and Calgary.

Almost, but not quite.

Still, it got me to thinking about the fact that culture is different between countries, provinces and even cities in the same province (or state).  Canadians often say that they share a common culture, but I can tell you that the difference between Calgary and Toronto or Calgary and  Vancouver is noticable.

That’s all great, but what am I trying to say?

Well, in a nutshell, culture is going to be part of your story, regardless of where or when it’s happening.  But how do you get the culture across?

You could go to the extreme and try to create dozens of new and unique (and strange and bizarre) cultures like Robert Jordon has done in his “Wheel of Time” series, or you can draw from one you are familiar with.  Either way, you need to frame the culture in terms that any reader will be able to identify with.

Easier said than done.

When I was preparing to write my first book, I wrote a “study” to work out some of the cultural peculiarities of my world.  It was an interesting exercise.

What I learned in that work is that whatever you do, the culture is either familiar to the character or alien to him or her.

In the case where things are similar, you gloss over what the character would consider everyday.  You may not even give it more than a passing mention.  In that way, the reader begins to understand what is “normal”.

The same holds true when your character sees something unusual.  It’s perfectly fine to have the character marvel or remark on the differences from what they know to be true.  Again, the reader begins to see through your character’s eyes.

I remember watching “Sliders” when it was on television.  Every week, Quinn and the gang entered a new dimensional Earth.  Every week, the new Earth was slightly different than the original world.  The fun part was watching to see what would be different from the new to the original.  It might be a change in history, or it might be evolutionary.  You just never knew.  But anyone who watched the first episode was grounded with present day San Francisco, Earth Prime.  You could see the differences immediately.

It’s not always that easy to form a frame of reference for your story, especially if it is set in a fantastic future world or mythological realm.  The only thing you can do is maintain consistancy.

If you betray the rules once your reader thinks they have figured them out, that person is likely to feel betrayed and throw the book aside.

So long story short, set the rules, have your characters react to their surroundings (including culture) appropriately and always obey those rules.  No matter what.

Consistancy.  Yup, that’s the ticket.