ThePoetSky Archive

Even when writing fiction, I find myself needing to do research. Whether including some historic events or figures, real places, or processes that other people might now, there is an element of fact in my fiction. Not to mention trying to stay true to Harry Potter when writing Girl in Red. When research is necessary, it’s critical to use primary sources.

A primary source is original research. This might be textbooks, encyclopedias, or their electronic equivalents. This is opposed to secondary sources, sources of information that may have been edited due to creative licensing.

One of the best examples of why it’s important is Hamilton. Even though Lin-Manuel Miranda did his research, the facts aren’t perfect. One example is in the play, Hamilton is confronted by Burr, Jefferson, and Madison about his correspondence with Reynolds. In reality, James Monroe, along with congressmen Muhlenberg and Venable, were the ones that confronted him. However, this would’ve involved introducing three new characters for this scene, which wouldn’t have been good storytelling.

And that’s the problem with secondary sources. When other authors use information, they have to tweak it for their work. Learning from stories isn’t always a good way to learn. Which is why when I began working on Skwyr Court, I didn’t rely on what I’d seen of blacksmithing, I looked it up. I found a series of videos of professional blacksmiths going over the basics. Thus, I was able to gleam enough to make it believable enough for the common reader.

In the end, the goal isn’t to get it perfect. Most people aren’t experts on history or blacksmithing, so it doesn’t have to be perfect. I only know that bit about Hamilton because I researched him (after seeing the play). But if you can get the big things right, people will trust you on the little things.

#Essay #Planning

© 2023 Sky Starlight CC BY-NC-SA

In February 2020, my friend Mike celebrated his 60th birthday. On my way there, I thought “I should’ve written a poem for it”. Of course, that thought was immediately followed by the start of a poem. It laid dormant in my head for a little while as I continued processing it.

While I was there, Mike asked if I’d written a poem for him, because he loves my poetry. I said I hadn’t, but didn’t mention the one forming in my head. While his son Bobby played music, I continued processing, then slowly started to write.

About an hour later, I flagged Bobby down and asked if I could steal the mic for a moment. He also knows my poetry, so he agreed. Up at the mic, I said, “Mike asked me earlier if I had a poem, and I said I didn’t. Now I do.”

That poem was Part of the Family. I’ve noticed over the years that one doesn’t simply become friends with Mike, or his wife Laura, or their children. They welcome you into the family. Laura would always bring food to open mic, offering it to anyone that sat with them. Every one of Bobby’s friends that came by was welcomed by all of them with open arms.

It’s been a privilege to be welcomed into their family the same way.

#StoryBehind

© 2023 Sky Starlight CC BY-NC-SA

If there’s more than one of these, you’ve done something terribly wrong. In my case, most breakups happened when one side died. This was how most all relationships in sixth year ended. So I’m going to skip over those and focus instead on two relationships where it didn’t end with someone dying: Sally-Anne Perks and Viktor Krum, and Harry Potter and Ellie Langley.

Background: Both couples got together after the Yule Ball in fourth year. Sally-Anne, being friends with everyone at Hogwarts (including the visiting students), got to know Viktor Krum while finding out who was friends with whom for the second task. After encouragement from her former prefect, Alexandra “Alex” Nertlyn, she accepted his invitation to the Yule Ball. At the time, she had a crush on Harry, but after finding Ellie, a mute girl from Hufflepuff, pining for the only boy she knew that knew sign language well enough to understand her, Sally-Anne pushed her toward Harry, who could read lips (note: the fact that a mute girl was able to mouth words well enough to be understood, which is hard to do in general, was a mistake on my part).

Sally-Anne and Viktor stayed together through fourth year and into fifth year, until Viktor had an accident that warranted the removal of his eyes. Believing his Quidditch career over, he told Sally-Anne never to speak to him again, pushing her away so she wouldn’t be “wasted on him”. She later remarks to her parents that she likes helping people, and she didn’t want to be with someone too chivalrous to ever accept her help.

This was a valid reason for breaking up. They were two different people, with different plans for their respective futures. Viktor was noble and chivalrous, but expected that he’d be the one earning money, while his wife stayed home taking care of the kids. Sally-Anne was proactive and liked helping people, while Viktor refused to show weakness around her. These traits were shown throughout their time together (even if not always well), so while it hit Sally-Anne hard, it wasn’t entirely out of nowhere.

Harry and Ellie broke up due in part to Ellie’s insecurities. She’d lived her life as a burden to everyone around her, already thrown aside by her friend Max for another girl. When she found out Sally-Anne at one point had feelings for Harry, and that Harry had at one point had feelings for Cho Chang, she refused to be second place again. She pushed him away before he broke her heart, despite the fact that he had no intention of doing so.

There are a few takeaways from both of these. The first is define your characters well. The reasons for breaking up should be believable, and not involve “because the plot says so”. Establish that the two of them are too different to be together, or that there’s some major issue they can’t look beyond. The second is that while both of these breakups came out of nowhere, that’s because they were both set off by something that happened out of nowhere. Sometimes bad things happen, and things simply go horribly wrong. Even so, make the breakups believable. If the characters have become unhappy with one another, one will eventually end things.

Like everything else, breakups should be realistic. They will be emotional moments, as they are in real life. If the phrase “if only they’d talk to one another, they’d be alright” fits the situation, there should be a good reason they’re not talking. Breakups happen for all kinds of reasons, so if they break up, the reasons should fit the characters.

#Essay #Romance

© 2023 Sky Starlight CC BY-NC-SA

Back in 2018, my dad was invited to play bass for a friend of ours at open mic at the Fairport Brewing Company, at the corner of Church and Main in Fairport. Shortly thereafter, I started going to support him. As I watched, I wondered if there was something I could do to perform. I sang in choir in middle and high school, but there weren’t any songs I particularly wanted to perform. However, I had just started writing poetry at the time, so I thought “I can read poetry”.

Jump ahead to July 29 2019. I’d written more poems, and people had just about come to expect me to read at open mic. And my friend Mike says “Ian, I have an idea for you for a poem. Summer Nights on Church and Main.”

The wheels started churning in my head. Glancing every now and then at the sign up sheet, I began to write. By the end of the night, I had a rough draft.

The next week, I read Summer Nights on Church and Main. I introduced it by saying what Mike had said to me, then saying to him “Mike, I have a poem for you. It’s called Summer Nights on Church and Main”.

Jump ahead to August 26. Bobby, Mike’s son and runner of open mic, was leaving soon for New York City. It was his last open mic, and before that, we’d been talking about putting music to the poem. For his last night, he performed it. One day, I’ll find the words to express how happy that made me.

#StoryBehind

© 2023 Sky Starlight CC BY-NC-SA

Once the characters get together, it’s all about the direction the relationship takes. Real people change in relationships, so the characters should change too if the relationship lasts long enough. But that’s not an excuse to completely change your characters. The progression of the relationship should feel natural.

In Amber Abandonment (year five), Neville and Luna start dating. They get along well together, but circumstances separate them. In that time, Luna changes, growing stronger and more independent. She does so because she believes that she’s holding her friends – Neville in particular – back. Even then, her odd self is underneath the new exterior. That desire to not burden him motivates many of her actions in the following year as well, causing her to remain hidden after she becomes blind.

Another way characters change in a relationship is when they try to “fix” one another. While this didn’t take too much of the focus of Villain in Vermilion, Lavender Brown did this with Ron Weasley. She nudged him in different directions, and often made him feel uneasy when he realized she was doing it. As this type of a relationship often does, this caused conflict between them, and likely would’ve caused them to break up if Rose hadn’t forcibly ended the relationship herself.

Not every conflict should threaten to break them up, though. People can argue but understand that it’s only temporary. In the show Firefly, Zoe and Wash argue when Wash feels she listens to the captain more than she does to him. At no point is there a chance they’re going to break up, but it still causes tension and conflict, shaping the rest of the episode. Even when Luna and Neville are separated, they still care for one another.

There are a lot of ways to write a relationship, and I’ve found that it’s the characters that ultimately decide how it will happen. The same principle applies to the plot. If they have the ability to shape it, then they will. As the writer, it’s up to you to find out how.

#Essay #Romance

© 2023 Sky Starlight CC BY-NC-SA

Whisk passed away in October 2004. She lived a long life for a mouse, but I wanted to fill the void she left. On October 20th, I got a dwarf hamster that I named Talis. He had white fur, with flecks of gray so he looked silver.

Like me, Talis was a bit of a hermit. He’d come out, run around, explore a bit, then return to the little hamster potty we got him. He brought this shred-a-bed stuff we got him – little squares of material he could shred and fluff up to build a nest – inside and pack himself in.

That’s how I remember him. A bit grumpy, ready to explore the world around him, but knew when it was time to go home.

I posted Time to Go Home on the day we celebrated as his birthday, July 20th, three months before I got him. Like Whisk, we only had a rough guess as to when his birthday was, but we celebrated it every year all the same.

Also like Whisk, Talis had a lesson to teach me all these years later. I don’t go out much (especially not now), but I don’t always keep track of the time when I do (or when I’m doing anything else, really). It’s important to know when to take a break, and it’s important to know when it’s time to go home.

#StoryBehind

© 2023 Sky Starlight CC BY-NC-SA

A trick to build dramatic tension leading up to a relationship is the “Will They, Won’t They” approach. This is the part in every Hallmark romance movie ever where the writers try to convince us that maybe the main characters won’t get together (spoiler: they do). There are good ways to do this, but if it’s done poorly, it can lose members of your audience to cynicism. As with the previous post on writing romance, I’m going to focus on the approaches I used in Girl in Red.

The wrong way is for the main character to constantly tell us (or his/her friends) reasons not to be with the obvious love interest. “I’m focused on work”, “It’s not good for so-and-so”, or “Maybe it’ll fail” are all common excuses. If we see in the beginning that they’re pulling all-nighters at work, only ever talk to the security guards or janitors, or see them mess up yet another relationship, that could work. But if they say “I’m focused on work” while out at a bar with friends, it’s a lot harder to believe them.

I did this unintentionally with Sally-Anne Perks and Ron Weasley in Crimson Caster (year seven). Ron was convinced that he wasn’t good enough for Sally-Anne, while Sally-Anne was still getting over the death of Draco in Villain in Vermilion and wondering if people simply shouldn’t be around her. This wasn’t the only problem with that relationship, but I overdid the “Will They, Won’t They” despite it being obvious that it was heading that way.

Of course, there are valid reasons for them not to be together. The important part is to not only have the character point it out, but to show that it’s a big problem. Romeo and Juliet is a good example of this. The first few scenes establish the family feud between the Capulet and Montague families, making it that much harder for Romeo and Juliet to be together.

In Girl in Red, after almost two books of build up, Sally-Anne and Draco got together in Villain in Vermilion. The “Will They, Won’t They” came from Draco’s family. Draco knew if his family ever found out about his feelings for Sally-Anne, the consequences would be dire for both of them. Sally-Anne was willing to help him get through that, until she learned he’d joined the Death Eaters, building on the feelings of betrayal she’d had the previous year with Umbridge.

As with most approaches in writing, it boils down to “show, don’t tell”. That comes up a lot in writing, and it’s one of the most valuable rules there is. Take the example earlier of the main character in a bar. The character is telling me that he/she is focused on work, but the writers are showing me that the character isn’t. That’s only scratching the surface, but it’s the biggest takeaway here.

#Essay #Romance

© 2023 Sky Starlight CC BY-NC-SA

On September 10, 2003, I got a pet mouse. I named her Whiskers, or Whisk for short. She was a funny little mouse, with sleek black fur, and smarter than I gave her credit for. I was told she was two months old when I got her, so I’ve always celebrated her birthday on July 10th.

Soon after I got her, my friend spent the night. We slept downstairs, and I asked if I could bring Whisk’s cage down. My parents okayed it, so that’s what we did. While we were lying awake, we heard Whisk running in her wheel. Then we heard her stop. Then she started again.

I thought that was odd, so I got up and looked in her cage. Sure enough, she was running, full speed ahead, then coming to a stop and swaying back and forth in the wheel. It was the funniest thing.

That’s my favorite memory of her, one I’ve always held dear. As her birthday arrived this year, I wrote Time for a Break thinking of that memory. It’s a good lesson to learn, even if I don’t always remember. There are many times I’ve worked through lunch, or lost track of time in my determination to get something done.

All these years later, she was still smarter than I gave her credit for. She knew when it was time to take a break.

#StoryBehind

© 2023 Sky Starlight CC BY-NC-SA

For a relationship not already in progress at the start of a story (and sometimes for ones that are in progress), the introduction to the potential relationship will be initial chemistry. This is the build-up to the relationship itself, and has to get the audience invested in it. Without this, the audience is watching or reading about two people faking it, wondering if there’s something else they could be doing with their time.

When the relationship is the central plot of the story, it should be given time to develop. It takes more than simply having two characters spend time together to develop their chemistry. This comes up a lot in bad romcoms. The two characters will spend time together, but not get to know each other or find common interests. The male lead never sees the female lead as anything more than “some woman” or “a female friend” until she puts on makeup and a nice dress. To me, that says two things: 1. her only redeeming quality to him is her looks, and 2. that relationship isn’t going to last.

I mentioned finding common interests or getting to know one another. In Girl in Red, one of my favorite relationships to write was Luna and Neville. Luna helped Neville at critical moments during the Triwizard Tournament by being her normal, weirdly optimistic self, even helping him to find some confidence in himself. They both provided a shoulder to cry on the following year after Rose’s apparent death, which hit them harder than anyone apart from Hermione. Neville listened to Luna go on about magical creatures that may or may not have existed, and Luna listened to Neville talk about Herbology. This made it feel natural when the two became more than just friends.

If the relationship is already in progress, and it’s important, there needs to be chemistry between the characters so we understand why they’re together. In the show Firefly, there’s mutual respect between the characters Zoe and Wash, despite them being very different people, so we can understand why they’re together. Or it could be simple, like in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. When Roger’s wife is asked what she sees in him, she simply responds “He makes me laugh”.

Chemistry between two characters in a relationship is important, otherwise they’re just two people. If the chemistry is done right, people are invested in the relationship, so when it’s threatened, it will keep readers on the edge. They’ll care about what happens to them and if they get together or not, or if they are together, they’ll want to see them stay together.

#Essay #Romance

© 2023 Sky Starlight CC BY-NC-SA

Whenever I’m driving, I usually have music playing. It’s something to pass the time while I’m getting from point A to point B, and I enjoy listening to music.

One time as I’m driving home from work, one of my favorite songs comes on. For reference, I store my music on my phone, because then I can listen to the music I want when I want, vs. using a service or the radio that randomizes it. So I can always listen to it, but I hadn’t heard it in a while, since it hadn’t been on the current playlist in a while.

But of course, I’m also driving, so my focus is on the road, especially on the interstate where I was at the time. That being the case, I couldn’t enjoy the song as much as I wanted to. When I was able to tune back into the song, it was almost over. The moment was gone.

I realized that it was a lot like life. Those moments that pass you by because you were paying attention to something else, something that seemed so important at the time, but looking back, maybe it wasn’t. In this case, paying attention to the road was very important. But sometimes it’s not. You missed that moment for something that might not have been so important.

Enjoy the Moment is my thoughts on that, and a lesson I’ve learned. I hope other people may learn from it too.

#StoryBehind

© 2023 Sky Starlight CC BY-NC-SA