Here’s the
cover for my new book, A Wolf of Her Own. It’s the next one in the Two-Natured London
series so the cover resembles the previous books. As always, it’s my own
creation so all the praise and blame can be directed at me.
A Wolf of Her Own by Susanna Shore
I’m happy
with the cover, although I may change the colour of the author’s name yet. I
have two choices and I change my mind about them constantly. The other would be a slightly
lighter blue, almost similar to the white of the title. It looks clearer
in the thumbnail, but otherwise I like this one better.
What do you
think? Is it a good cover or do I need to tweak it some more?
***
A Wolf of Her Own comes out next week if things go as planned. Those who subscribe to my newsletter will get the first chapter sent to them in coming days. The rest will have to wait for it a little longer. Or you can sign up too. You will get a free short story set in the Two-Natured London world when you do. Subscription form is on the column on the right.
***
Postscript, December 1st: I made a small change to the cover after some helpful comments I got. Basically, I changed the colour of the man’s shirt so he stands out a bit better. What do you think?
I’m making
a cover for my next book, A Wolf of Her Own, so I’ve spent quite a lot
of time on various stock photo sites trying to find the perfect photos to use.
Since I’m not a Photoshop expert – or GIMP, the free equivalent that I use – perfect means pictures that are both suitable
for the cover and something I can work with relatively painlessly. It took some
searching and studying the wares of more than one site, but I found what I
needed. Come back next Monday to see what I made of them.
In the
meanwhile, here’s a list of my favourite stock photo sites.
They all
have a nice selection of quality photos for many different purposes. All photos
are royalty free, meaning you don’t have to pay for their use. There may be
some limits to their use though, such as how many copies you can make of a
photo. It’s usually quite a huge number so you don’t have to worry about it. However,
make sure to read the terms of use before buying.
They all
let you buy pictures with credits – you can spend as little as $10/£10/€10 on
them – so that you don’t have to commit to expensive subscriptions when you
only need one picture. iStockphoto even lets you buy individual pictures
without buying their credits.
All sites
are relatively easy to use, but they have differences in their search
functions. The more you can narrow a search, the more effective a site is
finding accurate pictures. When it’s a difference between going through 10,000
pictures or 1000, you tend to value effectiveness. Fotolia has perhaps the best
search functions, but since the photographers add the search words themselves,
it’s not always optimal either. I tend to use loser parameters for that reason.
The credits
cost approximately the same in each, but the photo sizes and how much they charge
for the largest photos vary a lot. Fotolia is occasionally more expensive when
you’re buying larger pictures, but not every time. And the fact is that when
you find the perfect picture, you’re willing to pay a little extra.
All sites
allow you to store your favourite images to light boxes for easier comparison.
Dreamstime has made it easiest to sort the pictures to different files even as
you save them.
All three
sites offer some free photos too, but their range and quality aren’t great.
However, there are a couple of sites that offer photos for free. The photos
tend to be smaller and not suitable for book covers, but they’re great for illustrating
your content on blogs or G+ for example. I’ve mostly used these three:
Of these
three, I like morgueFile the best. They have beautiful photos for almost every
possible purpose that work especially well as illustration. And unlike the
first two that exist to drive traffic to paying sites – they only show a few
free pictures and then suggest paying ones – they show their own stock first. Many
pictures on this blog are from there. They’re large enough to work as book
covers too, should you find something suitable. However, the paying sites are
infinitely better for that purpose.
These six
sites should get you started. If nothing else, you can spend hours on them,
looking at beautiful photos. Sometimes that’s valuable too. Just don’t get lost.
Every now and then, I come across
blog posts or tweets about world-building, be it for fantasy or science fiction.
The reason it comes up, among other things, is that imaginary worlds tend to
divide both the readers and writers. Some like their worlds filled with endless
details, so they can marvel at the imagination of the author that conjured
them. Others prefer stories to lead and the world to follow it to as little
extent as is needed.
As a reader, I fall somewhere in
between those two positions. I like imaginative worlds, especially if the
author has dared to imagine a world wholly different to ours. But they seldom
do. In fantasy, especially, it seems to be a rule that the world is fashioned
after some imagined human past that then dictates the way the world functions.
I say imagined past, because
often the only features assumed from our past are the unfair social hierarchy,
gender disparity and a rudimentary level of technology. No author ever makes
use of the facts that people didn’t live past forty and that everything
smelled. A medieval town, where human and animal waste, rotting food and offal
were dumped on the streets, stank to high heavens.If you can overlook that in your fantasy
world, you can overlook pretty much everything else from human history and let
your imagination roam free. A society that can magically keep their streets
clean can have women in more prominent position than in our world. For example.
I’ve seldom come across an
imagined world where I would have been given too few details. The only
exception is perhaps Doris Lessing’s Canopus in Argos series
where I spent quite a lot of time raking my brain filling in the details. But that only meant I had to concentrate on my
reading or miss the clues otherwise.
On the other hand, the opposite
has often been true. There is a certain type of fantasy that I avoid reading simply
because I believe the sheer size of the books indicates attention to detail I
have no patience with. I don’t mind clever details, but if I have to wade
through half a book reading specifics for battle arrangements, I’ll lose my
interest in the story itself.
What I like is people. I want to know how they
feel and how they would react to and make most of their environment. That is true
for stories set in our world too, not just imagined worlds. I agree with the UF
author Allison Pang who notes that she is a “fan of organic world building. I
don't need to have everything set up for me – give me characters I can relate
to and let me learn about it as I go.” I like details to emerge as the story
unravels and only insofar as they are necessary for the story. I try to follow
that in my own writing too.
I write urban fantasy – or
paranormal romance – where the world is like ours with additional paranormal
elements. I don’t have to imagine everything, be it the infrastructure or
cultures. But I can’t take everything for granted either. In my urban fantasy
world, humans have always lived openly side by side with two-natured, my
version of superhuman creatures. That has to have affected the course of
history somehow, and the way things run.
I need to ask questions like what
kind of power structure the world would have. Vampires are the most powerful
creatures in my world, but do they rule it. I decided early on that they don’t
so I had to come up with an explanation for why. The solution is that humans
outnumber the two-natured and that two-natured don’t have interest in ruling
the world – at least openly. I also created a long war that would have weakened
the two-natured and affected the way societies structure themselves.
So there were quite a lot of
basic questions about society to solve before I could start figuring out the
details. Most of it is just for me and won’t make into the books until they are
actually needed. I’ve mentioned the war a couple of times, even though it’s in
the past, as a way of explaining why one of my creations, sentients, are
basically absent from my books.
Then come the endless details.
When an imaginary world is so close to ours, the details for how they differ
are necessary. What makes vampires tick? How do shifters shift and when? But
even they have to serve the story. No detail is valuable for its own sake. Only
when it’s important for how my character behaves or is able to function is it
necessary.
The temptation to fill the books
with details is great. I’ve spent quite a lot of time honing them, trying to
make them unique, so I would naturally like my readers to learn about them
right away. I often write them in and then delete most during the editing to
keep the story flowing. Because, in the end, I have to remember that I write
romances. What matters is two people finding each other and falling in love.
The rest is just garnish.
If you are trying to balance the
thin line between too much and too few details when you plan a world, here are
some questions you can ask yourself:
Is it similar to or different from
our world?
How much does it differ? Could it
differ more? Could it differ differently than is done before?
Would it be
better to assume one large basic cultural difference than many little ones? How
would that large difference change the entire world?
Are the differences necessary for
the story? Can you make them necessary for the story? Make use of the
differences so that it justifies them.
How detailed does your world need
to be to make the story understandable? If you need endless details, is your
story perhaps too weak to manage on its own?
I’m sure there are other
questions, but these will get you started. Imagining worlds is fun, but it’s
easy to believe that the world is more important than the story, if you’ve put
a great deal of energy and effort into conjuring it. Write a strong story;
everything else will follow.
A Wolf of Her Own, the next book
in my Two-Natured London series will come out at the end of November. Subscribe for my newsletter to be the first to read the opening chapter and learn more
about the book. There’s a short story set in my imagined world for all who sign
up.
A Wolf of Her Own, my upcoming third novel in the Two-Natured London
series is currently undergoing heavy revising. And I mean heavy.My books always change enormously during the rewrites, but this one has almost become a different book.
I
don’t plan my books much before starting them. I usually have a
brilliant idea, a character or two, and a goal where the plot should be
heading. Those elements remained more or less unchanging in this book
too. Everything else, however, was free game.
Scenes
changed places to make the pace better. A character was edited out
completely and another, different character appeared, but not to take
the first one’s place. My hero and heroine gained characteristics and
lost others in order to make them more believable and to make their love
story worth rooting for.
The
changes are worth the effort, however, if the result is a better book.
And let’s face it. No one will know what the original version was like.
The only thing the readers will see is the finished book.
It
hasn’t been an easy lesson to learn. When I was revising my first book,
my heart bled every time I had to make major cuts. Now, writing my
fifth book, I didn’t even blink an eye. If a character had to go, it
would get cut. Some of the deleted scenes I may be able to use
elsewhere, but most likely they will be gone forever. And that’s fine.
Nothing I write is so perfect I would have to cling to it.
