Waterstone Media

Stories Matter

Welcome the Newest Member of Waterstone!

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Ryan’s Note:  Hi Everyone!  For those of you actually interested in the behind the scenes here at Waterstone, we have big news today!  Our company is growing.

When I started Waterstone last year, it was intended to be more than just my own books.  My goal was to create a home for the type of fiction that I enjoy, fiction that is exciting and moving.

I recently hired Bryce Allen, a fellow writer I met through my own experiences with martial arts.  He’s been working on a fantasy series that I think is really, really cool.  But as he’ll mention below, he’s a new father focused on raising a gorgeous little girl.  It provided an opportunity for him to join my one-person team.  Although he’ll be doing a number of odds and ends, in general he’s helping me with the administrative side of the business and keeping me on task.  This should allow me to spend more time doing what I love:  writing stories.  I’ve asked him to introduce himself.

 

Hey everyone, my name is Bryce Allen, and I have the honor of being Waterstone Media’s first employee! I will be helping with a variety of awesome projects that Ryan has in store for Waterstone Media’s future. I wanted to take a second and introduce myself to you all.

I enjoy long walks on moonlit beaches and working out every day…. Sorry, wrong blog!

Let’s get the basics out of the way. I am 27 years old and live in the Twin Cities with my beautiful girlfriend and our baby girl. I am new to the father thing, but I learn something new every day. Family life is definitely my priority right now.

I grew up in small-town Minnesota. I made all the mischief I could in High School, and somehow ended up in college. I made my way through college by arresting shoplifters for a major retailer. It provided its fair share of adrenaline rushes, but also exposed me to lifestyles I’d never experienced in my hometown.

I attended college for about six years. I was lucky enough to spend some time in France. We studied and documented Roman ruins, and it was amazing.  When I returned, I juggled different majors until I settled on political science. By some bizarre twist of fate, I actually earned a degree.

Armed with my shiny new piece of paper I set forth into the world, ready to earn millions of dollars… That didn’t immediately work, as you may have guessed.

These days, I have two primary interests: martial arts and writing.

I have been training in Shotokan Karate for roughly 15 years. It has been a major part of my life as far back as I can remember. The only thing I enjoy more than doing karate, is teaching karate. As soon as my instructor allowed it I began instructing. I currently hold a Nidan (2nd degree black belt) rank in Shotokan. Paired with my martial arts experience, fitness has been a priority in my life. I am constantly looking for new workouts to research and perfect.

Writing has also been an important part of my life. Throughout my childhood, my passion for telling stories grew. I would write for the joy of it, rarely showing anyone my work. However, as I entered college, that passion faded a little. Pressure from my peers to make money and avoid the arts contributed to my writing hiatus. I allowed myself to dismiss the art of storytelling altogether.

That is when Ryan came along. He helped to reignite my passion for writing awesome stories. Under his mentorship, I am currently working on a series of my own. This is also part of my work here at Waterstone Media.

In addition to writing books for Waterstone, I will be doing research for future projects, helping manage the administrative side of the business, and grooming Ryan’s cats. I consider myself a bit of a renaissance man.

I’ll be doing odds and ends around here, but if you have any questions, please let me know down in the comments!

Bryce

The stories I like . . .

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Ever since I was a little child, I’ve been in love with stories. I have fond memories of my mother yelling at me to come to dinner, but I couldn’t hear her because my eyes and mind were buried too deep in a story I loved. I got in trouble frequently, but it was worth it every time.
I have no doubt my love of stories has guided me towards my career in writing.  I could write about stories for a long time, but today I’m thinking about what makes a story good, in my opinion.

Plot

I know good stories are character first.  I have no doubt of that in my mind, and without good characters even the best plot goes nowhere.  But even with that being true, the best stories, in my mind, are tightly plotted masterpieces.  I love the complexities of revenge in the Count of Monte Cristo and the idea of child-geniuses fighting our most important battles in Ender’s Game.  You’ll never hear me doubt the importance of characters, but a great plot elevates a story to a higher level.

Real Endings

In my mind, all stories, even fantasy and science fiction, are a reflection of our real lives.  Because of that, I sometimes struggle with heroes who face insurmountable odds and manage to win their happily ever after.  They aren’t a deal breaker for me, but I do think the very best stories have real endings, endings that contain both positive and negative aspects.  I won’t spoil the ending, but my favorite ending in recent memory is Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn trilogy.  I couldn’t think of a more perfect ending to that story.

Antagonists that matter

I’m a sucker for action movies, where the villain is a one-dimensional bad guy seeking to take over the world, but the most memorable stories pay attention to their antagonists as well. Everyone has motivations, and if a story doesn’t do justice even to those who would do harm, it’s only telling half the story.

and finally,

Stories where something is at stake

This is probably my biggest complaint when it comes to most literary fiction (at least a lot of the short fiction I end up reading), and one of the reasons I personally am drawn to sci fi and fantasy.  These are stories that ask big questions, stories where something meaningful is at stake.

One of my favorite quotes about writing comes from the paragraph below.  It was given by William Faulkner when he won his Nobel Prize:

He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed – love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.

These are the stories I like, but what about you?  What stories do you like, or what makes a story good in your opinion?

Keep reading,

Ryan