Hey Cassie! I just have a quick writing question, specifically about writing romantic relationships. Everyone knows that you write some of the best love stories out there (coughWessacoughMaleccough), and I was wondering how you come up with the character dynamics for these relationships. When writing my books, I'm inconsistent about creating ships and find that some of my best ones surprise me after the story is outlined. Do you have a methodical way to make the magic happen? <3 fair-but-wilde-child I think it often depends on what angle you approach story from. I usually approach it from the angle of having a particular kind of relationship or dynamic I want to write, and then the story falls into place around the dynamic. (With TID, it was “love triangle where everyone loves each other equally”, with TDA it was “friends to lovers” with Sword Catcher it’s more “enemies to lovers”). I would say however that knowing a dynamic isn’t the same as knowing all the small details that make people love a pairing. With Alec and Magnus I started with wanting to change up the very-popular-at-that-time “immortal magical guy falls in love with human girl” and have it be “immortal magical guy falls in love with another guy.” But that doesn’t tell you all the things about Magnus and Alec that make them who they are and makes their relationship special. I would say 1) Know your dynamic and then 2) Really live in that dynamic for a while — think of the small things your characters share, the things they agree and don’t agree on, the unique way each character fulfills something in their romantic partner that nobody else can. 3) I wouldn’t say there’s a methodical way to make that happen, but I’d say one quick exercise is to imagine three high-stakes situations and put your characters in them. (Jane and Lynette have just discovered their best friend may have betrayed important secrets to the villain that will doom the Galactic Empire. If they tell, they might save the world but doom their friend; if they don’t tell, the universe could be destroyed. If one of them tells but is wrong, they could both be killed by the Galactic Police. They disagree on what to do! Who thinks what, and how does the couple handle the situation?) Run them through a few of these scenarios to get a better idea of how the pairing works together, and how you want them to work, so you can alter what you need to alter. Also, that is the only science fiction I will ever write, and I think we can all see why. Posted 1 day ago 338 notes Tagged: creative wrting. Hi Cassie, hope you're well! I have a SoBH question, I hope it's okay to ask because it's not about writing/publishing. I was just wondering, don't Emma and Jules go through all the portraits of past Blackthorns to try to figure out who the ghost is? I can't wait to find out the ghost's identity! Also, kudos to the SoBH translators :D Happy December! mrswilliamherondale It’s ok, I still have writing/publishing questions to answer but I’ll be mixing them up with SOBH stuff. I mean, they don’t really have all the portraits of every past Blackthorn, and it wouldn’t do them much good if they did. They have some portraits, in the LA Institute, which I’m sure they’re aware of, but — 1) They don’t have a reason to think the ghost is a Blackthorn — they just know the ghost reacts to the Blackthorn name. The number of Blackthorns who lived in the house in Chiswick is much less than the generations of Lightwoods who lived there. Deciding the ghost is a Blackthorn at this stage would divert their attention into what seems like an umpromising channel. 2) If they did go through all the portraits, I’m still stuck on what good that would do! They don’t know what the ghost looks like, so the portraits wouldn’t help there. They don’t know when the ghost lived, so they can’t use that to narrow anything down. They’d wind up with a bunch of names (which they could have gotten as easily by just picking every name off an old Blackthorn family tree) but … 3) If they did have a bunch of names, what would they do? Meaning, there’s no reason the ghost is going to necessarily cop to being whoever they are anyway. They could stand in the house yelling “Mortimer Blackthorn! Esmerelda Blackthorn! Gustavio Blackthorn!” and waiting for the ghost to reply, “Present!” but …even if they got the ghost’s name right, there’s no reason the ghost would respond to it, so they’d have no way to know they were right. 4) The ghost is actually giving them directions — like “Go to the Devil Tavern” — so it seems like the most practical thing to do is follow those directions? Even just knowing the ghost knows about the Devil Tavern is more useful than going through portraits or family trees when they don’t even know the ghost’s last name. Really, the things they’ve been doing — like asking Ty to look into the background of the house to see who might want to haunt it — are perfectly sensible; “Who has a reason to be connected to Blackthorn Hall?” is a better question than “What are the names of every Blackthorn ever?” We would all like them to solve the mystery faster so we know who the ghost is, but mysteries are harder than they seem. ;) Never fear, the Devil Tavern is not a dead end. They just haven’t yet figured out exactly where they need to look… Posted 1 day ago 278 notes Tagged: sobh, mystery. Heyy Cassie hope you're doing well I absolutely LOVE your books and I LOVE the content we're getting right now💚 I had a question for consul Alec how is he doing? How did he react to Magnus' letters? Where did he get his shirt? How are Max and Rafe? wtf-is-reality Ha! Alec is doing fine, and I assume his reaction to Magnus’ letters was “sounds like Magnus.” He’s very used to Magnus by now, and would not be at all surprised that a short trip became longer because Magnus wanted to help someone! Max and Rafe want their own Hawaiian shirts. Rubber ducks, anyone? Posted 1 day ago 353 notes Tagged: sobh. Hi Cassie! How do you decide who to give the POV in scenes where there are exactly 2 people conversing or doing something? Is it a matter of who has great insight in a given situation? Or is it a matter who has more secrets, i.e., the more secretive one gets the non-POV? gavrielscuppies A lot of times you’ll have picked a set number of POV characters for your book — characters whose POVs we get, and ones we don’t. So you’re specifically picking from your pool of active POV characters here: I would say you always give the POV to the character who has the most at stake in the scene. Whoever has the most to lose, the most to risk, the most emotional investment in what’s going on. Give the scene to them. Posted 1 day ago 372 notes Tagged: writing. I was just wondering - what's the ghost's opinion on, say, Herondales and Lightwoods? If a Herondale or a Lightwood were to step into Blackthorn manor and loudly announce themselves, how likely are they to get ass-whooped by the ghost? 🤔 magnus-the-maqnificent We are likely to find out. ;) Posted 1 week ago 676 notes Tagged: sobh. Now, about publishing... I really want to know how you make the decís to chose the cover of your books? I mean, is it based of the main character or something about the plot... Idk, it will be interesting to know your opinion. Also would you be interested in leaving some clues on the covers? 👀 folkleverty Well, this is probably heartbreaking news (and the last question about writing I’m going to answer today as, my writer friends have pointed out, I am procrastinating bigtime) but usually writers have little to no input into their covers at all. Certainly for the first books I wrote, I had no input into what went on the covers, and the first time I remember being consulted at all was about Clockwork Angel (even then, the decision was made by the publisher as to who would go on the cover: it was Will because Tessa had to go on the third cover as they didn’t want to pair the title Clockwork Princess with a picture of a boy.) The decisions are generally made based on the theme and feel of the book. The “main character” doesn’t mean anything to anyone unless you’re in a series and you have fans actually interested in who shows up on what cover, in which case the publisher will take that into account. But what they are interested in above all other things is conveying what kind of a book it is. Fantasy books should feel fantasy, if the fantasy is very dark, the cover should convey that. A mystery book should feel mystery, a happy rom-com should feel happy. If you are in a series, then there is also the issue that the cover must conform to the books that have gone before. Chain of Thorns could not have, say, an abstract black-and-white cover because it wouldn’t look and feel to buyers like another Last Hours book and what it has to convey above all other things is this is the third book in this series and you can tell because it looks like the other books. What I will say is I’ve had more input as I’ve been publishing longer (I asked for an underwater cover for Lady Midnight, and “Cordelia’s hair turning into leaves” for Chain of Gold) and that’s generally true for most people. With Sword Catcher I created a file I shared with my editor that contained images I loved and wanted to evoke and they worked off that. Posted 1 week ago 544 notes Tagged: publishing. hi cc, my questions here is how do you do to write such amazings arc redemptions?? Like when I try to write the arc redemption of a character I feel that no matter what I say, it always seems like people aren't going to understand their reasons or they going to hate that character and is so difficult to me to accept that (sorry for my English) myangelbach Okay, I’m going to tackle this from the perspective of “Here is how I approach redemption arcs” rather than “I WRITE GREAT REDEMPTION ARCS” because I promise, nobody thinks about their writing that way. Writers are all balls of neurotic self-doubt, my friend, and we all think we suck. We just do. :) So here’s my general thoughts about redemption arcs: 1) Know from the beginning you plan to redeem the character. People often write an irredeemable character, then want to redeem them, but it’s too late. There’s no way back from what they’ve done. 2) The character must genuinely have a reason for the bad things they did. This reason is not there to excuse what the character did. It is there to explain it. You are not trying to convince the reader that what the character did was okay. You are trying to reveal the thought process that led to the bad behavior. It’s not your job to tell readers that bad actions are actually fine, it’s your job to illuminate the universal truth that sometimes people do bad things, and that they do not do them thinking “I am doing this because it is bad! I love evil!” but rather because they have reasoned themselves into believing it is justifiable or right. 3) The character must genuinely want to change and make redress for their wrongs. They must want to do this because they regret what they did, and they regret the harm they caused; that regret must be genuine. They cannot do it in order to get something. If someone wants to be better in order to win someone else’s love, well, that’s not redemption even if it’s sympathetic. The character has to want to redeem themselves in order to right the wrong they did. In order to ameliorate the pain they caused. They have to know that they are not doing this with any expectation of forgiveness, or being loved, or getting literally anything out of it at all for themselves. 4) The process should be gradual. Redemption doesn’t happen overnight. 5) Lastly, don’t worry too much about whether people love or hate your characters. Worry about them finding the characters interesting and compelling. Love and hate tends to be really personal, and people will always surprise you by hating characters you find perfectly likable and liking characters you thought were repellent. What you want is for people to think “This character is super compelling” and want to follow them on their journey. Posted 1 week ago 774 notes Tagged: writing. What would be your advice for someone wanting to try and get something published? Should they try and send out (what they believe to be) their polished manuscript to publishers or start with something small and self publish? I feel like no one would even glance at a writer who hasn’t published anything before. xxawalkinwonderlandxx Actually, that’s not at all the case! Publishers are desperate for new writers and big “debuts.” They want people who’ve never published before. The worst situation you can be in is to have published something and had it sell only a few copies; then the publisher has to deal with the bad sales of past books, and jump through a ton of hoops like convincing bookstores that this new book, unlike your last book, will sell. They would much rather have something new and fresh they can go out and convince everyone will be “the next big thing!” I would definitely go with sending your polished manuscript, though not directly to publishers. You want to send your manuscript to agents, not publishers. Most publishers don’t accept unsolicited manuscripts, meaning they will literally only look at something that has an agent representing it. Agents do a lot of other good stuff for you, too. Posted 1 week ago 514 notes Tagged: publishing. To the Ghost, How's it going there buddy? deep-fried-brain-cells 👻👻👻👻👻 Posted 1 week ago 439 notes Hey Cassie, hope you're having a good day Can you talk a little bit about international publishing? I think it's very interesting and sounds bureaucratically scary I was wondering about how it would be like to try publishing a book somewhere else without having it already out in your home country (assuming the material is in the language of the target country, so no translation needed, just standard revision & editing) xxo thanks darkxlya Ideally, when you get an agent (and I very much recommend getting an agent), they will work with with either 1) a foreign rights agency or 2) what are known as sub-agents, meaning agents in foreign countries who do the work of both representing authors in those countries, and also foreign authors whose work will be published in translation there. For instance, I have a foreign rights agency that works with my agent. When I am selling a book, they take that manuscript and bring it to publishers overseas, and to international book fairs, and they sell to publishers in France, Brazil, Japan, Thailand, etc — every country where books are published. You don’t really have to do anything, which is pretty nice. I recommend you keep track of who is publishing your books where and have relationships with your foreign publishers, but you don’t have to learn thirty-six languages or anything. :) I would not recommend writing a book in English, or whatever your first language is, and then trying to translate it into another language in order to sell it: publishers like to use their own translators. If, like Nabakov, you are a master in more than one language, you might be able to work something out, but only after they buy the book, not before. If you want to handle it all yourself I can’t advise you but only take my hat off to you because it sounds terrifying. :) Posted 1 week ago 327 notes Tagged: publishing. next page → I'm Cassandra Clare. I write about the demon-fighting Shadowhunters. (And the Magisterium series with Holly Black). My next book, CHAIN OF IRON, comes out in March, 2021! My first adult fantasy book, SWORD CATCHER, comes out in fall 2021. My blog All of Tumblr Follow on Tumblr Following RSS Feed Random Archive Mobile © 2011–2021 Powered by Tumblr