25,000 words (75 more to go!)
Yeah, it's a meaningless milestone, but it feel like I've done something anyway. I've been at this almost a month, and I've got major and minor characters strutting and fretting upon the stage, a sense of what they all want and how they all get in each other's way, and everything seems to be shaping up nicely.
Until I hit the hurdle.
One thing about me: I *love* to waste time. I love to read. Writing can be hard. Put those three things together and you have 'research'. I can surf the net for hours, or check a big old pile of books out of the library, or better still, spend half a day in a musty used bookstore looking for something I'm *sure* I need. Calling it research somehow makes it okay.
Except it's not. It's time-wasting procrastination, is what it is, and I don't get much done that way. So these first drafts come rolling out without a darn bit of research. Except for whatever I was reading that got the guys in the basement excited in the first place, of course. Oh, and my street atlas. But even that one's not strictly necessary.
Mostly, I just hit the first draft at a dead run. I use my general sense of people, how we work together and how we don't, the sorts of rules we set to get things done and the ways we shade them to goof off.
The rest of it, I just make up.
Where I *must* have a proper name, date, whatever, I *highlight* it (Like that) and go back and find it later. Later that day, later in the second draft, later. The made-up stuff I also go back and check up on. Weird thing is, I'm right more often than not.
Most of my research (the real stuff, not the time-wasting) comes on the net (thank you wikipedia!) or from the library. I interview real people whenever possible, and that info is gold. Not so much for the dry facts I could find elsewhere, as for the little stuff no one would think to mention (do detectives take their unmarkeds home at night? can a knight in armor really do a somersault? what gets sore first on a street hooker?) (the feet and the lower back, apparently). And more, much much more importantly, a sense of the way my informants look at the world. What do they want? What are they worried about? How do they think their world could be a better place? Do they think it's getting better, getting worse, or staying the same? How do they feel about their job?
I'm lucky. I meet a WIDE variety of people, and I genuinely like *most* everyone I meet. I try to see the world through lots'n lots of eyes. Makes it easier when it's time to make stuff up...
A lot of times, people give you little gems you'd never have thought to ask for. Pour dark rum over the roots of marijuana plants to up the sugar levels. A two-handed battleaxe requires a zone offense and defense; for a rapier, it's all about beats. Tuck folded newspaper or magazines up your sleeves to protect your inner forearms in a knife fight. The street girls can order whatever drugs keep them going through the night by cell phone and have them delivered right to their corner.
So this weekend I met a manager at Paparua Men's Prison. Funny thing, the phrase 'I'm a writer, and I was curious...' seems to relax just about everyone. Enough to open up to a guy looks like me anyway. I got lots of little stuff about the prisoners, the guards, the upper management and the sometimes strained relationship between Corrections and the cops.
And I hit the hurdle.
Turns out the news item about the mall cops handling prisoner transport was only true in Auckland. My book's solidly set in Christchurch. I've got some changes to make.
What am I doing about it? At this point, nothing. Sure, somewhere in the back of my head, the gears are spinning, but mostly I'm just trying to get through my first draft. Baker needs to break jail. That's all I need to know right now. I'll sort out how when it comes to me.
Showing posts with label blogger labels. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blogger labels. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
Friday, February 2, 2007
The occasional mental kick
status: 22,000
Over on his blog, Neil Gaiman's trying to play a wee practical joke on Penn & Teller fan, m'self.
I was going to write a little bit about 'quiet listening' as a part of the writing process. Then I realized Stephen King said it better here.
Yes, I'm finally getting comfortable with the link-thingy. First it was the Bronze Age, then everyone was going over to iron. Now I have to learn hyperlinks...
The book's trundling along. It's all about the subplots at the moment. I'm getting a clearer and clearer image of where the book ends up, so now the challenge is getting it where it's going. Mostly I listen. Sometimes I have to prod myself a bit.
Last night, I couldn't think of how the next scene would shape up. Mostly I'll go into a scene with a sense of the characters involved, the conflict/tension between them, or at least their different goals so I can found out how that shapes the conflict, but last night I just couldn't see it. I had an odd picture in my head and one sentence.
One mental kick in the ass later, I wrote that sentence. Then the next. And the one after that.
1200 words (I'm saving the extra 200 as a safety cushion in case I need it today) and four lean scenes later, I could have written heaps more. Stupid sleep...
Over on his blog, Neil Gaiman's trying to play a wee practical joke on Penn & Teller fan, m'self.
I was going to write a little bit about 'quiet listening' as a part of the writing process. Then I realized Stephen King said it better here.
Yes, I'm finally getting comfortable with the link-thingy. First it was the Bronze Age, then everyone was going over to iron. Now I have to learn hyperlinks...
The book's trundling along. It's all about the subplots at the moment. I'm getting a clearer and clearer image of where the book ends up, so now the challenge is getting it where it's going. Mostly I listen. Sometimes I have to prod myself a bit.
Last night, I couldn't think of how the next scene would shape up. Mostly I'll go into a scene with a sense of the characters involved, the conflict/tension between them, or at least their different goals so I can found out how that shapes the conflict, but last night I just couldn't see it. I had an odd picture in my head and one sentence.
One mental kick in the ass later, I wrote that sentence. Then the next. And the one after that.
1200 words (I'm saving the extra 200 as a safety cushion in case I need it today) and four lean scenes later, I could have written heaps more. Stupid sleep...
Monday, January 22, 2007
Conflict & Lying Pipe
status: 11,600 and climbing
In the last post I mentioned in passing that every scene I write has conflict at its heart. I didn't invent this guideline, just found it somewhere and like any good magpie, added it to my box of tricks.
"Laying pipe" is a TV writer term for putting unrealistic dialogue in a character's mouth to get the exposition out there. You know: "Wow, I can't believe we're going to be selling lemonade at the State Fair." Like the guy standing at the booth didn't know how he got there.
It's not that Fred and Daphne need Velma to tell them where they're going (Fred's doing the driving, after all); it's that Velma needs to tell us.
TV can maybe be forgiven for laying pipe. They've got 22 or 48 minutes to tell a story, and the less time wasted getting the setting down the better. Pipe-laying is an artificial mannerism that TV audiences have learned to overlook. In its way, a half hour or hour of TV is as strictly mannered a performance as Kabuki or opera.
Or professional wrestling or Springer.
(Do they still do Springer in the US? It's been so long since I've lived there that Clinton was president at the time!)
Anyway, TV writers, pipe away. Have at it. We novelists aren't so lucky. Or so cursed.
A novel is free of those weird time constraints. We can let a story develop more organically. That's a strength that can also be a weakness.
One pitfall I have to watch out for in my work is the rambling. I write by the seat of my pants and explore the characters as I go. It's tempting to do pages and pages of two guys in a car talking about stuff, that sort of thing. It goes quick and easy, and I can point to a big old word count and pretend I'm doing great.
Thing is, it's not progress. These guys have talked in the car for six pages and the story's gone NOWHERE.
Cut, cut, cut.
Here's the other big pitfall for me: Put those same two guys back in the car, still shooting the shit, but now they're also dropping little bits of information, telling the reader what's what. The dialogue flows along, and the story's moving, right? I mean, there they are, telling us all this useful stuff.
Problem is, it creaks. These days we call it ASYKB (short for As-you-know-Bob), and the device is so old it needed oiling back in Grandpa's day (and one of my Grandfathers was born in the 1880's, about the last time this was acceptable). Back when he was a baby it was still the norm for two servants to appear at the start of the story and lay pipe all over the place as part of a 'conversation'.
I won't say I never do it, but every time I do, it's a failure. The key to success?
Conflict.
Every scene where a character appears - major or minor - that character wants something they're not immediately able to get. It can be big or small, but it needs a goal and an obstacle, preferably another character with a cross-purpose.
For instance, last night Sarah, my hero, needed to find out that the villain had robbed an armored car (There are fuck-all firearms here in New Zealand, except in the hands of farmers and criminals. The dramatic possibilities abound).
I could have had Sarah show up and look siliently at the scene, a little internal monologue dropping the facts on us, and out. Dead boring. even if she stands in some rain or fog or something.
I could have had her ask a uniform on the scene. He could give her the facts, ma'am.
Meh.
What I did was have another detective (Mark) catch the call for the armored car and bring Sarah in when the connection was made to her case. This other detective is a muscly ex-jock with a bit of a Short Man Complex. He acts cocky to get the world to overlook his height.
Sarah's five inches taller with a higher close-rate. Mark's desire to be the big man has an obstacle in its way, and will have every time these two meet. He can't just give up and be humble around Sarah, so he's always looking for ways to one-up her.
Sarah's a woman in a man's world, and a misfit anywhere. If she gives these boys an inch, they'll walk all over her. She demands, and gets, respect. No way Sarah's going to let Mark act like something he's not.
These two like each other, but that tension is there in every encounter. And their gamesmanship makes it easy to drop in a few facts abot an armored car robbery without anyone yawning.
At least, it will when it's gone through a couple of edits. At this stage in the game, I'm just spewing the scenes out as fast as I can type them. Later, I'll go back and look at what I've done, pick out themes and symbols, decide what to amplify and what to drop. Right now, I need to turn off all of my inner critics and just GO!!!
In the last post I mentioned in passing that every scene I write has conflict at its heart. I didn't invent this guideline, just found it somewhere and like any good magpie, added it to my box of tricks.
"Laying pipe" is a TV writer term for putting unrealistic dialogue in a character's mouth to get the exposition out there. You know: "Wow, I can't believe we're going to be selling lemonade at the State Fair." Like the guy standing at the booth didn't know how he got there.
It's not that Fred and Daphne need Velma to tell them where they're going (Fred's doing the driving, after all); it's that Velma needs to tell us.
TV can maybe be forgiven for laying pipe. They've got 22 or 48 minutes to tell a story, and the less time wasted getting the setting down the better. Pipe-laying is an artificial mannerism that TV audiences have learned to overlook. In its way, a half hour or hour of TV is as strictly mannered a performance as Kabuki or opera.
Or professional wrestling or Springer.
(Do they still do Springer in the US? It's been so long since I've lived there that Clinton was president at the time!)
Anyway, TV writers, pipe away. Have at it. We novelists aren't so lucky. Or so cursed.
A novel is free of those weird time constraints. We can let a story develop more organically. That's a strength that can also be a weakness.
One pitfall I have to watch out for in my work is the rambling. I write by the seat of my pants and explore the characters as I go. It's tempting to do pages and pages of two guys in a car talking about stuff, that sort of thing. It goes quick and easy, and I can point to a big old word count and pretend I'm doing great.
Thing is, it's not progress. These guys have talked in the car for six pages and the story's gone NOWHERE.
Cut, cut, cut.
Here's the other big pitfall for me: Put those same two guys back in the car, still shooting the shit, but now they're also dropping little bits of information, telling the reader what's what. The dialogue flows along, and the story's moving, right? I mean, there they are, telling us all this useful stuff.
Problem is, it creaks. These days we call it ASYKB (short for As-you-know-Bob), and the device is so old it needed oiling back in Grandpa's day (and one of my Grandfathers was born in the 1880's, about the last time this was acceptable). Back when he was a baby it was still the norm for two servants to appear at the start of the story and lay pipe all over the place as part of a 'conversation'.
I won't say I never do it, but every time I do, it's a failure. The key to success?
Conflict.
Every scene where a character appears - major or minor - that character wants something they're not immediately able to get. It can be big or small, but it needs a goal and an obstacle, preferably another character with a cross-purpose.
For instance, last night Sarah, my hero, needed to find out that the villain had robbed an armored car (There are fuck-all firearms here in New Zealand, except in the hands of farmers and criminals. The dramatic possibilities abound).
I could have had Sarah show up and look siliently at the scene, a little internal monologue dropping the facts on us, and out. Dead boring. even if she stands in some rain or fog or something.
I could have had her ask a uniform on the scene. He could give her the facts, ma'am.
Meh.
What I did was have another detective (Mark) catch the call for the armored car and bring Sarah in when the connection was made to her case. This other detective is a muscly ex-jock with a bit of a Short Man Complex. He acts cocky to get the world to overlook his height.
Sarah's five inches taller with a higher close-rate. Mark's desire to be the big man has an obstacle in its way, and will have every time these two meet. He can't just give up and be humble around Sarah, so he's always looking for ways to one-up her.
Sarah's a woman in a man's world, and a misfit anywhere. If she gives these boys an inch, they'll walk all over her. She demands, and gets, respect. No way Sarah's going to let Mark act like something he's not.
These two like each other, but that tension is there in every encounter. And their gamesmanship makes it easy to drop in a few facts abot an armored car robbery without anyone yawning.
At least, it will when it's gone through a couple of edits. At this stage in the game, I'm just spewing the scenes out as fast as I can type them. Later, I'll go back and look at what I've done, pick out themes and symbols, decide what to amplify and what to drop. Right now, I need to turn off all of my inner critics and just GO!!!
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