What is it that creates the sensation of story drive?
There is no one single thing that does, of course (no surprise). A character with goals, a sense of danger, making sure not to include any irrelevant description (or any description that doesn't fit with the mental state of a protagonist in a dangerous hurry). But that generally is what happens within the narrative, as you're reading along through a chapter.
How do you sustain story drive over a chapter break?
Point 1: A cliffhanger ending alone is not sufficient.
Cliffhangers come in different forms. Someone can be literally hanging from a cliff, can make a dangerous discovery, etc. Anything that makes a reader go "Aigh, what happens next?" Just make sure not to keep the answer hidden. Pick it up in the very next sentence if possible. I can't tell you how frustrating it is to be left demanding the answer to something and then either have the answer appear in backstory to the next chapter so you never see it, or have the next chapter not address the question at all. It doesn't have to answer the question directly, necessarily, but please don't make me ask that question and then hide the answer outside the narrative. "Aigh" quickly turns into "Argh!"
Point 2: A continuous timeline is helpful for drive, but not necessary.
I really really like switching chapters inside of a critical moment. One chapter ends one second, and the very next second, the next one starts. For example, I have one direct handoff (this is my nickname for them) where Tagret's father takes him into a room and Tagret discovers that his father has been interviewing the servant Aloran. This is a real shock for Tagret because it's a move that will really upset his mother, and he's been fearing that his father is hiding something from his mother. The instant he makes the discovery, I switch chapters and begin with Aloran going, "Oh, no, it's Tagret!" We already know what the stakes are for Tagret, and it's less obvious how Tagret walking in is bad news for Aloran...but it is, and switching to his point of view allows me to show that, and then have Aloran take the narrative in a different direction immediately thereafter.
When you are using a continuous timeline, even if you aren't using a direct handoff, your readers don't have to do the work of re-orienting themselves every time they start a new chapter. This is work that will pull them off the drive of the story conflict, so if you want high drive, try to reduce the amount of orientation work they have to do at the beginning of any chapter.
Point 3: Even without a cliffhanger, and even without a continuous timeline, you can create a sense of direct continuity between chapters.
The way I recommend doing this is to look for cohesion elements. These are things that readers will recognize because they have seen them in the previous section of narrative, and they then show up in the next. Cohesion elements are very flexible. For example, you could have an object in the first piece and then have it appear in the second piece: I'm imagining a scene where a criminal encounters a hand mirror at a crime scene, and then in the next section you have the detective picking up the mirror to examine it as evidence. (I'm sure you've seen this done on TV also!) It doesn't have to be an object though. It can be a topic of conversation picked up by the protagonists. Or it can be a location. A location can be mentioned in conversation in the previous chapter and then you can show up there in the next one. It can be an activity that appears on either side of the divide (with or without different people engaging in it), or a theme.
Point 4: If you have no obvious cohesion elements, you're placing a big demand on your readers. You're saying to them, "Trust me, this is relevant." And in fact they'll probably go with you up to a certain point... but they will be actively searching for cohesion elements. I've been reading this lovely book - Dragon in Chains by Daniel Fox - and he achieves a very dreamy sense of the entire story by not connecting all the pieces directly, but by making sure to drop cohesion elements when you're looking for them (sometimes two or three paragraphs into the scene, and you'll have this "Aha!" moment). It's very effective, but it's also risky and I could imagine some readers feeling confused at different points.
When you're working on a novel, keep your eye out for these cohesion elements. Try to use them consciously to bind the story together and keep up a sense of drive. Be aware that tiny things can make the difference between your readers taking a running step between chapters, taking a slow step, taking a long floating leap, or floating right off the page and out of your book for good.
It's something to think about.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Me, and book reviews
This weekend at World Fantasy Convention I was asked several times if I do book reviews. The short answer is that I don't. However, I did encounter a couple of people who were interested in getting my opinion about specific aspects of their books...and that I feel is within my purview. TalkToYoUniverse is all about language and culture and writing, and those of you who have been following me for a while know that I get pretty analytical sometimes. So if you're interested in having me look at your book and analyze a small piece of it to look at worldbuilding or point of view or cultural representations etc. I'm willing to consider it. It will be something of a different angle on the book than you'd see in a general review, and more congruent with my theme.
In this vein, then, I'm going to be doing a piece in the next week or two about a new book that's coming out called The Fallen Queen by Jane Kindred. Lucky me, I was given it in Advance Reader Copy by an agent at the convention, and it's a lot of fun! I'm also hoping to see another ARC from someone I met... this could be really cool and interesting.
In this vein, then, I'm going to be doing a piece in the next week or two about a new book that's coming out called The Fallen Queen by Jane Kindred. Lucky me, I was given it in Advance Reader Copy by an agent at the convention, and it's a lot of fun! I'm also hoping to see another ARC from someone I met... this could be really cool and interesting.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Wish me well at World Fantasy!
I'm headed off to World Fantasy Convention tomorrow morning, early. I'm really looking forward to it. For those of you who are less familiar with it, World Fantasy Convention is a wonderful convention that is more focused on industry professionals - authors, editors, and agents - than fans. If you're in a position where you're breaking into writing, it's wonderful. There's a whole lot to learn, a lot of really wonderful people, and a lot of fantastic intelligent conversations going on.
And if it so happens that you're already going, keep an eye out for me!
And if it so happens that you're already going, keep an eye out for me!
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Magic Systems 11am PDT today on Google+ Worldbuilding Hangout
Today, Wednesday, October 26 at 11am PDT
I'll be holding a worldbuilding hangout on the topic of Magic Systems! This should be a really wonderful one because I have opinions about magic! Now you will all laugh, because I have opinions on everything. But there are a lot of great magic systems out there, and a lot of not so great ones, and then some that you may be designing yourselves. I think we're going to have a really awesome discussion. Come and join us!
Here's how to get there: go to Google+ (you need an account, but it's not hard to get one). Look up my profile, Juliette Wade. At the time the hangout is going on, that should be the top entry on my stream, so click "join" and there you go.
I'll be holding a worldbuilding hangout on the topic of Magic Systems! This should be a really wonderful one because I have opinions about magic! Now you will all laugh, because I have opinions on everything. But there are a lot of great magic systems out there, and a lot of not so great ones, and then some that you may be designing yourselves. I think we're going to have a really awesome discussion. Come and join us!
Here's how to get there: go to Google+ (you need an account, but it's not hard to get one). Look up my profile, Juliette Wade. At the time the hangout is going on, that should be the top entry on my stream, so click "join" and there you go.
Manners: a Google+ Worldbuilding Hangout Report
My visitors for this hangout were Kyle Aisteach, Dale Emery, Glenda Pfeiffer, and Harry Markov. It was good to see Dale back after not seeing him for a while! Glenda had a few audio difficulties, so she doesn't appear as often as the others in this report - sorry, Glenda!
We talked about manners. What do you think when you think of manners? I asked. Kyle thought of "A comedy of manners," while Dale thought of choices you make about how to moderate interaction, and Glenda talked about greasing interaction. All of them are correct.
When I start into the topic of manners, which is one of my favorites, one of the big issues I face is that many people think just of fancy manners when you say "manners." Manners is a much bigger deal than that, for two reasons:
Manners in your story are more than just having one prim and proper character.
We then tackled the topic by discussing two aspects of manners language that I had studied:
phatic talk (the talk whose content and meaning has less importance than the social fact that stuff is being said) and Speech Acts, which are contexts where you are "doing" something by saying it (requests, refusals, marrying two people, etc.)
Any time you perform a speech act, you are potentially insulting someone or "threatening their face." Not literally, of course - you're not likely to damage someone's visage with a refusal. However, if you think of "face" in terms of your social image, like "saving face," you'll see what I mean. There are lots of ways that people use to mitigate this possibility. If I add some nice pretty words it will make the threat softer, and protect me from this person who could potentially be very upset.
Kyle told us a very interesting story about how difficult it was for people to get women's accounts of the Titanic disaster, because it was considered rude to ask a lady about anything upsetting that had happened to her in the past. Apparently some people's stories were lost forever because whenever they were asked about it, they would get all affronted!
We asked, "How can you approach somebody? What is appropriate?" Sometimes there is a socially licensed way to approach a person. Sometimes it's easy, as when you are friends. Sometimes you can't approach that person at all, and have to use elaborate work-arounds.
Dale asked me what I meant by "elaborate work-arounds." The most common everyday example I could think of is when a girl who is not a member of a particular social clique likes a boy who is a clique member, and asks an intermediary to approach him - or even asks an intermediary to approach another clique member, who can then approach him on her behalf.
Kyle mentioned that when you see a celebrity out eating dinner, it's inappropriate to interrupt their dinner and ask for an autograph. This leads to people standing by doors, lying in wait outside the bathroom, etc. hoping that the celebrity will stray across their path in one of these socially autograph-licensed areas.
I gave an example from my current novel in progress of a servant who faces social pitfalls when trying to return to his lady the key to her diary, which has been stolen. The servant can't go to the thief and demand the key back because the thief is a more senior servant than he is. In addition, he can't take the key to his lady himself because he'd risk having her think that he had been trespassing into her private thoughts without permission (and he hasn't yet won her trust). In the end he enlists the help of the lady's son, who as a nobleman is of higher rank than the thieving servant, and who as the lady's son is someone she trusts. In the end she and her son both admire him more for his discretion. And that's one of the critical things that manners can do for you.
In this context, Kyle mentioned N.K. Jemisin's The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms as a great example of a story that handles subtle and complex social rules. That's one I'm going to have to seek out!
I mentioned the situation in Japan, where it's uncommon for you to meet anyone as a casual street acquaintance, and much more likely for you to be introduced to someone through correct connections. This situation makes a lot of sense if the language requires you to use different manners depending on the person's relative rank to you. How are you going to guess the rank of a person on the street if you haven't been introduced?
Kyle told the story of Saint Bernadette, who was a peasant in France who met the Virgin Mary. Apparently she knew she was in the presence of a deity because Mary addressed her in the formal "vous" form, and nobody in her life had ever addressed her in the formal!
We briefly discussed the idea of formal and informal pronouns (tu and vous in French), which is common to the Romance languages. Formerly, these pronouns used to be used as reflections of power relationships, where vous referred to someone of high rank and tu to someone of lower. However, this usage has changed over time, and now it's much more common for people to say vous for people they don't know, and tu for people they know, turning it from a power measure into a solidarity measure. According to Kyle, this is at least in part deliberate, as an attempt to move away from old definitions of social class.
At that point I had a chance to introduce another really useful academic concept about politeness: the difference between Positive Politeness and Negative Politeness. The adjectives used here are not the most useful in reflecting how this works, but because it can be really helpful in developing social interactions, I'll explain.
Negative Politeness is the one we most often think of. This is the kind of politeness which involves saying fancy things in order to make sure another person knows we didn't intend to step on them in any way. The core idea here is that the person "doing" negative politeness is emphasizing how willing they are to protect the other person's autonomy, and their right to do things unhindered.
Positive Politeness is the opposite in that it involves getting closer to a person, rather than moving farther away. Autonomy is not the idea here; alignment is. This is the kind of politeness which involves approaching someone and saying something to make sure they know we're on their side. The things we say can seem impolite, especially when looked at from the perspective of negative politeness which relies on autonomy.
Different people, and different subcultures use these two different styles. I have friends who expect negative politeness from me, and others who expect positive politeness. I have helped friends through situations where someone tried to use positive politeness with a person who expected negative, and inadvertently offended them by crossing their personal social boundaries.
At this point, Harry joined us, and we engaged in some greetings and other social smoothing!
As we move through our lives, we are constantly called upon to take social stances - to act like we're members of this social group or that, to approach someone in a humble or a friendly or an authoritative way. I find it really interesting how I have to change my voice and my mode of expression when I go from chit-chatting with my kids and their carpool friend in the car to telling them they've crossed the line and they need to settle down or I won't be able to drive!
Manners are everywhere. They're in your stories, too. Just take an example of an interaction from a story that you're writing and take a closer look. Play it out. Look at what is at stake socially.
Dale mentioned a context in which someone in a position of service, i.e. someone who was socially obliged to carry out another person's orders, was asked to "promise" to do something. Promising is a prime example of a speech act, but unexpected in this context because carrying out an order is something that should be so normal it's unnoticeable here. To ask someone who serves you for a promise, you'd need to be asking them for something that is well outside the boundaries of their normal service.
How many stories do you know about oathbreakers?
Harry mentioned the unbreakable oath taken by Snape in the Harry Potter books.
Dale gave a rather fascinating example of manners in a workplace culture, where if someone suggested you take on a job or a function, you were essentially forbidden to refuse. However, you were not necessarily expected to succeed in carrying out the job or function. You were only obliged to take it on.
I mentioned an example that my husband shared with me: if you receive an invitation from the Queen of England, you can't refuse it. If for some reason (illness or disaster) you can't attend the event she has invited you to, you gratefully accept her invitation, and then say, "unfortunately, I won't be able to make it..."
Manners are everywhere. They are in social restrictions on behavior, approaches, and speech. They are in group membership behaviors. They are in ceremonies and rituals. I encourage you to think about all of these things as you write. It's very easy to fall into a kind of theoretical stance when writing, to think about your world from the standpoint of the author and say, "I have these social groups and this gamepiece is blue, this gamepiece is red, this gamepiece is yellow..." Take it further. Look closely at how the different groups are expected to interact, and what manners they need to follow in different situations.
My Varin world has special greetings that people use to express respect for the people who are of higher caste rank, and the group asked me to explain some details of the world. Essentially, each group has a different job function (officers, public/private servants, laborers, knowledge workers, etc) and each group is proud in its identity and the way in which it keeps life in Varin running. "We've got the real power here, no matter what anyone else thinks; Varin wouldn't survive without us" is the general attitude. The greetings thus reflect the perceived core value held by each caste.
To greet a merchant: "May riches spring from your footsteps."
To greet a laborer: "Fearless labor is the foundation of prosperity."
To greet a knowledge worker: "The focused mind is the sustainer of life."
To greet a knowledge worker who graduated from the University: "May you take your place in the Record of Great Masters."
To greet a public servant: "May your honorable service earn its just reward."
To greet a soldier/officer: "The heart that is valiant triumphs over all."
There are no special greetings for the nobility, to whom caste is more or less invisible, or for the undercaste, because nobody is low enough to owe them a polite greeting. I decided on these greetings very early on in my world design, but they made a great basis for later refinement of the intercaste interactions. If you can start your manners on a basic level, you can move on from there and increase subtlety as you go.
Thank you to everyone who came for the discussion. We decided that today's discussion would be about Magic Systems. We'll be meeting at 11am PDT today on Google+, so I hope to see you there!
We talked about manners. What do you think when you think of manners? I asked. Kyle thought of "A comedy of manners," while Dale thought of choices you make about how to moderate interaction, and Glenda talked about greasing interaction. All of them are correct.
When I start into the topic of manners, which is one of my favorites, one of the big issues I face is that many people think just of fancy manners when you say "manners." Manners is a much bigger deal than that, for two reasons:
- People don't ever not have manners
- Manners are managed subconsciously
Manners in your story are more than just having one prim and proper character.
We then tackled the topic by discussing two aspects of manners language that I had studied:
phatic talk (the talk whose content and meaning has less importance than the social fact that stuff is being said) and Speech Acts, which are contexts where you are "doing" something by saying it (requests, refusals, marrying two people, etc.)
Any time you perform a speech act, you are potentially insulting someone or "threatening their face." Not literally, of course - you're not likely to damage someone's visage with a refusal. However, if you think of "face" in terms of your social image, like "saving face," you'll see what I mean. There are lots of ways that people use to mitigate this possibility. If I add some nice pretty words it will make the threat softer, and protect me from this person who could potentially be very upset.
Kyle told us a very interesting story about how difficult it was for people to get women's accounts of the Titanic disaster, because it was considered rude to ask a lady about anything upsetting that had happened to her in the past. Apparently some people's stories were lost forever because whenever they were asked about it, they would get all affronted!
We asked, "How can you approach somebody? What is appropriate?" Sometimes there is a socially licensed way to approach a person. Sometimes it's easy, as when you are friends. Sometimes you can't approach that person at all, and have to use elaborate work-arounds.
Dale asked me what I meant by "elaborate work-arounds." The most common everyday example I could think of is when a girl who is not a member of a particular social clique likes a boy who is a clique member, and asks an intermediary to approach him - or even asks an intermediary to approach another clique member, who can then approach him on her behalf.
Kyle mentioned that when you see a celebrity out eating dinner, it's inappropriate to interrupt their dinner and ask for an autograph. This leads to people standing by doors, lying in wait outside the bathroom, etc. hoping that the celebrity will stray across their path in one of these socially autograph-licensed areas.
I gave an example from my current novel in progress of a servant who faces social pitfalls when trying to return to his lady the key to her diary, which has been stolen. The servant can't go to the thief and demand the key back because the thief is a more senior servant than he is. In addition, he can't take the key to his lady himself because he'd risk having her think that he had been trespassing into her private thoughts without permission (and he hasn't yet won her trust). In the end he enlists the help of the lady's son, who as a nobleman is of higher rank than the thieving servant, and who as the lady's son is someone she trusts. In the end she and her son both admire him more for his discretion. And that's one of the critical things that manners can do for you.
In this context, Kyle mentioned N.K. Jemisin's The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms as a great example of a story that handles subtle and complex social rules. That's one I'm going to have to seek out!
I mentioned the situation in Japan, where it's uncommon for you to meet anyone as a casual street acquaintance, and much more likely for you to be introduced to someone through correct connections. This situation makes a lot of sense if the language requires you to use different manners depending on the person's relative rank to you. How are you going to guess the rank of a person on the street if you haven't been introduced?
Kyle told the story of Saint Bernadette, who was a peasant in France who met the Virgin Mary. Apparently she knew she was in the presence of a deity because Mary addressed her in the formal "vous" form, and nobody in her life had ever addressed her in the formal!
We briefly discussed the idea of formal and informal pronouns (tu and vous in French), which is common to the Romance languages. Formerly, these pronouns used to be used as reflections of power relationships, where vous referred to someone of high rank and tu to someone of lower. However, this usage has changed over time, and now it's much more common for people to say vous for people they don't know, and tu for people they know, turning it from a power measure into a solidarity measure. According to Kyle, this is at least in part deliberate, as an attempt to move away from old definitions of social class.
At that point I had a chance to introduce another really useful academic concept about politeness: the difference between Positive Politeness and Negative Politeness. The adjectives used here are not the most useful in reflecting how this works, but because it can be really helpful in developing social interactions, I'll explain.
Negative Politeness is the one we most often think of. This is the kind of politeness which involves saying fancy things in order to make sure another person knows we didn't intend to step on them in any way. The core idea here is that the person "doing" negative politeness is emphasizing how willing they are to protect the other person's autonomy, and their right to do things unhindered.
Positive Politeness is the opposite in that it involves getting closer to a person, rather than moving farther away. Autonomy is not the idea here; alignment is. This is the kind of politeness which involves approaching someone and saying something to make sure they know we're on their side. The things we say can seem impolite, especially when looked at from the perspective of negative politeness which relies on autonomy.
Different people, and different subcultures use these two different styles. I have friends who expect negative politeness from me, and others who expect positive politeness. I have helped friends through situations where someone tried to use positive politeness with a person who expected negative, and inadvertently offended them by crossing their personal social boundaries.
At this point, Harry joined us, and we engaged in some greetings and other social smoothing!
As we move through our lives, we are constantly called upon to take social stances - to act like we're members of this social group or that, to approach someone in a humble or a friendly or an authoritative way. I find it really interesting how I have to change my voice and my mode of expression when I go from chit-chatting with my kids and their carpool friend in the car to telling them they've crossed the line and they need to settle down or I won't be able to drive!
Manners are everywhere. They're in your stories, too. Just take an example of an interaction from a story that you're writing and take a closer look. Play it out. Look at what is at stake socially.
Dale mentioned a context in which someone in a position of service, i.e. someone who was socially obliged to carry out another person's orders, was asked to "promise" to do something. Promising is a prime example of a speech act, but unexpected in this context because carrying out an order is something that should be so normal it's unnoticeable here. To ask someone who serves you for a promise, you'd need to be asking them for something that is well outside the boundaries of their normal service.
How many stories do you know about oathbreakers?
Harry mentioned the unbreakable oath taken by Snape in the Harry Potter books.
Dale gave a rather fascinating example of manners in a workplace culture, where if someone suggested you take on a job or a function, you were essentially forbidden to refuse. However, you were not necessarily expected to succeed in carrying out the job or function. You were only obliged to take it on.
I mentioned an example that my husband shared with me: if you receive an invitation from the Queen of England, you can't refuse it. If for some reason (illness or disaster) you can't attend the event she has invited you to, you gratefully accept her invitation, and then say, "unfortunately, I won't be able to make it..."
Manners are everywhere. They are in social restrictions on behavior, approaches, and speech. They are in group membership behaviors. They are in ceremonies and rituals. I encourage you to think about all of these things as you write. It's very easy to fall into a kind of theoretical stance when writing, to think about your world from the standpoint of the author and say, "I have these social groups and this gamepiece is blue, this gamepiece is red, this gamepiece is yellow..." Take it further. Look closely at how the different groups are expected to interact, and what manners they need to follow in different situations.
My Varin world has special greetings that people use to express respect for the people who are of higher caste rank, and the group asked me to explain some details of the world. Essentially, each group has a different job function (officers, public/private servants, laborers, knowledge workers, etc) and each group is proud in its identity and the way in which it keeps life in Varin running. "We've got the real power here, no matter what anyone else thinks; Varin wouldn't survive without us" is the general attitude. The greetings thus reflect the perceived core value held by each caste.
To greet a merchant: "May riches spring from your footsteps."
To greet a laborer: "Fearless labor is the foundation of prosperity."
To greet a knowledge worker: "The focused mind is the sustainer of life."
To greet a knowledge worker who graduated from the University: "May you take your place in the Record of Great Masters."
To greet a public servant: "May your honorable service earn its just reward."
To greet a soldier/officer: "The heart that is valiant triumphs over all."
There are no special greetings for the nobility, to whom caste is more or less invisible, or for the undercaste, because nobody is low enough to owe them a polite greeting. I decided on these greetings very early on in my world design, but they made a great basis for later refinement of the intercaste interactions. If you can start your manners on a basic level, you can move on from there and increase subtlety as you go.
Thank you to everyone who came for the discussion. We decided that today's discussion would be about Magic Systems. We'll be meeting at 11am PDT today on Google+, so I hope to see you there!
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
TTYU Retro: Similes, Cliché, and Added Information
Here's a hilarious post from Nicola Morgan about similes. If you aren't sure what a simile is, it's that thing you do where you say something is like something else. "He moved like a cat." "Her eyes were like sapphires." You've seen them before; they're everywhere, and a lot of them are clichéd.
So how do you avoid clichés and keep your similes under control? Nicola Morgan suggests that the simile must add meaning to the writing in order to be worthwhile, and points out that the entire content and connotation of the simile will be added (so be careful).
Question: what does that mean? What kind of meaning does a simile add?
My answer: two kinds.
First, a simile provides a comparison of a story event, character or object, with something else. As it does so, it lends all the qualities of that something else to the object (etc.) it describes. Here's an example, from my story "Smoke and Feathers":
What's happening here is that a boy, Ryuuji, is having water poured over him from a bucket. However, the effect of the water is far more than him getting wet. (I'll save that for those who read the story.) The simile compares the water to a hand reaching out, which gives the impression that the water could either grip Ryuuji, or maybe even cast a spell on him - things that hands, not water, can do. Thus when strange things start to happen afterward, we've already had a warning of it in the form of this simile.
Depending on the kind of word we choose to compare, the simile can bring along more connotations or evoke a more complete scene to go along with the thing that's being described. This is all included in the first kind of information that a simile imparts, through drawing a comparison.
The second kind of information that a simile can give us is character (and world) information. By this I mean, not comparing a character to something using a simile, but having the comparison itself reflect upon the person making it. If you are using point of view in your narrative, any simile you use will suggest things about the kind of person who would draw such a comparison. Here's an example that Nicola Morgan provided as being a bad example of a simile:
The information that similes (and metaphors) give us about the point of view character is in fact extremely valuable, and I highly recommend you take advantage in it as you write. Think about what kinds of comparisons your character would make, and why. The comparisons they make will show readers how they judge a situation, and will reflect on their sense of themselves and their own world. Similes give us an enormous opportunity to add dimension and life to our stories.
It's something to think about.
So how do you avoid clichés and keep your similes under control? Nicola Morgan suggests that the simile must add meaning to the writing in order to be worthwhile, and points out that the entire content and connotation of the simile will be added (so be careful).
Question: what does that mean? What kind of meaning does a simile add?
My answer: two kinds.
First, a simile provides a comparison of a story event, character or object, with something else. As it does so, it lends all the qualities of that something else to the object (etc.) it describes. Here's an example, from my story "Smoke and Feathers":
...water reaches out over Ryuuji like a hand of glass.
What's happening here is that a boy, Ryuuji, is having water poured over him from a bucket. However, the effect of the water is far more than him getting wet. (I'll save that for those who read the story.) The simile compares the water to a hand reaching out, which gives the impression that the water could either grip Ryuuji, or maybe even cast a spell on him - things that hands, not water, can do. Thus when strange things start to happen afterward, we've already had a warning of it in the form of this simile.
Depending on the kind of word we choose to compare, the simile can bring along more connotations or evoke a more complete scene to go along with the thing that's being described. This is all included in the first kind of information that a simile imparts, through drawing a comparison.
The second kind of information that a simile can give us is character (and world) information. By this I mean, not comparing a character to something using a simile, but having the comparison itself reflect upon the person making it. If you are using point of view in your narrative, any simile you use will suggest things about the kind of person who would draw such a comparison. Here's an example that Nicola Morgan provided as being a bad example of a simile:
His words paralysed me. I was like a deer that's been transfixed by an arrow, right in its spine, so that it was alive but could not move. [The first sentence says it all. The simile simply adds some wholly unhelpful and, frankly, bizarre, extra images. We learn nothing extra and yet are bombarded with extraneous images of a dying Bambi.]She says that the first sentence says all it needs to and we don't learn anything extra. I'm not sure about that, though - I personally think the simile suggests something unexpected and (perhaps) unwanted about the character making it. The original writer probably didn't have it in mind to suggest that this POV character was sadistic, or obsessed with death, or anything of that nature. Yet somehow they did. There's added information here, certainly, but information which can only confuse readers about the point of view character.
The information that similes (and metaphors) give us about the point of view character is in fact extremely valuable, and I highly recommend you take advantage in it as you write. Think about what kinds of comparisons your character would make, and why. The comparisons they make will show readers how they judge a situation, and will reflect on their sense of themselves and their own world. Similes give us an enormous opportunity to add dimension and life to our stories.
It's something to think about.
Worldbuilding Hangout on Google+ Tomorrow
Here's another announcement for tomorrow's worldbuilding hangout on Google+. We're going to meet at 11am PDT to discuss magic systems. All you need to do is go to Google+ and look up my profile (Juliette Wade) and the hangout should come out right at the top. Remember, you don't need to have a working camera or microphone to participate, and you don't need to be exactly on time. We'll fold you in by whatever means, even if it's by IM chat. These discussions are really thought-provoking and inspiring, I find - they're a great opportunity for us to share ideas. I hope to see you there!
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