Sizzle

Something Andrew Vachss said in an interview once really stuck with me. For any of you who don't know, Vachss is a man who has dedicated his life to exposing and punishing child molesters, and his authorship is one aspect of his mission. Unlike so many with axes to grind, he's actually damned good.

Asked about this, Vachss made an analogy to a steak: if you take a piece of meat without a bit of fat on it, the thing is going to taste like cardboard. You need a little bit of marbling to give the meat a bit of sizzle, a bit of taste.

This week I've read the first three Travis McGee books and The Little Country, an older work by another favorite, Charles DeLint. The first thing that struck me is sizzle.

A big chunk of what makes the McGee books so compelling are Travis's riffs on society, culture, our humanity and inhumaity and the strange, sad, savage journey we all make from cradle to grave. John D. MacDonald vents his anger and sorrow and love, his world-destruction fantasies and, ultimately, his pride as our frail and foolish species rages against the dying of the light.

A bunch of years ago, I thought JDM wrote his novels in order to publish his rants. Later, it seemed to me that he put those wonderful, compelling riffs in to flesh out his slightly skeletal stories.

Now, I'm not sure which is the steak and which is the sizzle.

MacDonald's writing is deceptively elegant. Like a well-marbled steak, his work is threaded through with entertainment and flavor. For example, both The Little Country and The Deep Blue Good-by follow the time-tested structure of scene and sequel.

Throughout The Little Country, the protagonists act, assess, then act again. This structure is unobtrusive, and it keeps us grounded in the believability of the characters' actions. It's well done.

The first chapter The Deep Blue Good-by, McGee acts: he refuses to help the damsel in distress. Chapter two, McGee goes to a party, drinks a little too much, has sex with a stranger, drinks a little more, riffs a little bit on the emptiness of his life. The whole chapter is all of five or six pages, and it does an amazing amount of work:

1) McGee's dissatisfaction and ennui is plain and convincing. We understand why he's going to take the job.

2) McGee is revealed as a complicated character: his conscious and unconscious desires are wildly at odds. He tells everyone, including himself, that all he wants is laziness and pleasure, and stealing from thieves is a way to afford this life. But faced with just what he professes to want, we see, even if he doesn't, how much he despises the prospect of endless frivolity. He *needs* to do a good deed in a bad world.

3) We get a peek into a hedonistic lifestyle that for most of us is alien and exotic.

4) We get one of those marvelous mini-essays, dripping with mid-60's angst.

And JDM does this kind of thing throughout the book!

Dead Horses Beaten, Some Not Enough

Just a few dead horses I want to whup on a little before I move on to other topics.

One final word on scene and sequel: to pep those sequels up, add a little sizzle. Don't just finish a scene and have your characters walk through steps 1-4. Here's some free stage-business to put in your tool box:

Talk it out. Disguise the sequel-steps in dialogue. Elmore Leonard uses this a lot, so did Eugene Izzi.

"You okay?"

"What do you think?" Frank rubbed his shoulder. It hurt like hell.

"Buncha guys in Halloween masks just tried to throw you out a window, is what I think."

"Assholes just wanted to scare me, is all. Fuck em."

"Maybe we should cool it awhile," Eddie said.

"You know we can't do that."

"So, we still going ahead with the plan?"

"Nah. Won't work now they're on to us. We need something new..."

The two men smoked in silence. Eddie watched the models on the infomercial pretend to use the abdominator.

Frank stubbed out his cigarette. He had that look in his eye.

"Your sister still work at the DMV?"

See, all the steps, in order! Or you might try...

Telling locale. Like eye-gouging, location is a cheap trick that WORKS. Put your character in a location meant to evoke their inner state and let the reader draw the parallels. Put your heroine in a big empty room, shivering in front of a window as she looks out at the cold dark night. Tell us her husband isn't home yet. When she picks up the scissors and marches into the closet, we'll fill in the blanks.

Sex and Violence. I could have just called this give 'em something else to do, but notice how I got your attention? Let your viewpoint character work through their sequel-steps during moments of intense other-business to keep the reader flipping pages. James Lee Burke uses sex scenes brilliantly for this, and James Ellroy does a bang-up job using violence.

Maybe the best examples are from the worst medium for sequel: the movies. Luke learns Darth Vader is his father in the middle of a swordfight. He feels the pain, sees the truth, loooks at his options (though we're all pretty sure he *won't* pick join me on the Dark Side) and chooses suicide. The near-climax of Grosse Point Blank, John Cusack's expository dialogue with his ex and her father is just sequel-through-dialogue (since it's all about *his* feelings, thoughts, options and decisions), made *extra* distracting with a gunfight!

My last word on sequel: how much you dwell on the emotion, the logic, the various options open is a matter of taste and context. The REALLY IMPORTANT thing is that your character emerges with a new decision about their next action.

###

Sloppy writing may in fact turn out to be a more serious problem - outright theft.

Now, personally, I don't see the literal transposition of out-of-copyright material as theft: sloppy, lazy and boring maybe, but not theft. The whole point of copyright is that the creator gets a period of time to enjoy the fruits of their labor, *then* that creation passes into the ongoing dialogue that is our popular culture. This helpful video explains it well, and points out how Disney is trying to bollix the whole concept. Ironic, considering uncle Walt built his early empire on out-of-copyright creations like Pinocchio, Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, etc...

But I digress.

My point was, Edwards may have been too lazy to put her research in her own words, but she wasn't breaking the law. Bad writing is bad, but illegal. This matter with the similarities between Savage Dream and Laughing Boy may be a different story.

For me, it's certainly a scarier one. At least some of that *may* have been unconscious.

Looking down those lists of similarities, I see a *lot* of poetic imagery. Good, 'sticky' imagery. Now, Edwards may have been sitting with old books, scissors and paste, gleefully assembling the latest tale with maniacal laughter, or Laughing Boy may have made a bigger impression on her than she knew. I know James Lee Burke once described a 'sky like torn plums', an image so powerful and evocative that it sticks with me long after I forgot which book it came from.

Lines like that can make you want to be a writer. On a bad day, they can make you want to give it all up. What they can't do is show up IN YOUR WORK. You have your own voice. It will be informed and influenced by those you admire, but it must be your own.

I think Ms Edwards's life is about to unravel. I foresee a future of lawsuits and disgrace. It's a harsh price to pay for laziness. Harsh, but maybe fair...

Sequel and Pace

So, on to the third part (For a change, actually done... third). To recap:

Sequel (as in scene/sequel) is the squidgy bit between your action-packed, conflict-driven scenes.

More than just a slack bit of slow-moving nothing, sequel is where the character reacts to their last setback (and it had *better* be a setback, or the story's over) and decides on their next action. And they had *better* decide to do something else to reach their goal, or the story's once again over.

This reaction/decision process happens in four parts: Emotion. Thought. Options. Decision. You can skip a step, but never, never do them out of order. (When that door slams, FIRST Jane feels shock and loss, THEN she acknowledges that Tom's gone. THEN Jane toys with the idea of going sleeping with his best friend/worst enemy, taking up a useful hobby like a foreign language, moving to a villa in Tuscany or joining a nunnery and forgetting men forever. FINALLY, her decision moves the story forward to the next conflict. You don't have to show every step, but imagine how silly it would be to address them out of order...)

Scene (conflict) sets up sequel (reaction/decision) sets up scene, sets up conflict. This cycle continues, pressing your protagonist harder and harder until the story's climax.

And last in the recap, these decisive moments are exactly where the reader emotionally invests in your characters. Skill at handling sequel can make the difference between powerful characters acting in believable ways and books thrown at the wall.

Now, new business!

Sequel is also your greatest tool for controlling pace.

With all their exciting conflict, goals struggled for and denied, scenes move fast. Whether cruel and violent men are plotting the hero's downfall or a smoldering Frenchman just moved in next store, scenes are exciting. They zoom along.

If scenes are the throttle, sequels are the brake. How much or how little you use depends on the pace you want to set, and the difficulty of the plot turns in the racecourse.

Maybe I stretched that metaphor too far. I'll walk it back.

Ever read a book that seemed to fly right through? You whizz from even to event until the last page is turned, close the book and ask yourself, "What was the point?" That's a case of going too light on the sequels.

Or how about a book that seemed to take forever to go not very far at all? You bravely forge through page after page (usually carried by lovely language and not much else), waiting for something to happen. Too much sequel. Waaaayyyyy too much. In real life we may wallow in our reactions and agonize for way too long over our decisions, but try showing that in real time and you lose readers.

Of course, you may win prizes, but that's another story...

How much is too much? How little is too little? To return to my automotive metaphor, picture your story as a mountain road race. You want that pedal to the metal in the straightaways, but you damn well better use the brake on the turns. You might only blip the brake pedal at a bend in the road, or you might have to do a full-on handbrake-assisted bootleg turn to get through a tricky switchback without coming off the road.

One time to get right into the sequel and really grind is on those MAJOR plot turns. I mean the ones that, if the character doesn't choose right, don't just change your story, they end it.

The walls are bleeding. Disembodied voices are telling the family to GET OUT. Why don't they? Short answer: if they do, your story's over in Scene I. Long answer: well, that's where you need to do some real work. Why *don't* they pack right up? I sure would...

From Prince Consort to escaped outlaw in one awful night, we only need short quick checks to stay with Ruenn Maclang's feelings of betrayal and the decision he makes. Later, his decision to seek out his brother gets the time and space it rightly deserves...

The other time you need to dig into your sequel is at the emotional heart of the story. When it's really, REALLY important for us to feel your character's heartbreak, lust, terror, anger, etc., you really need to stop the world for a moment and let that happen. Especially if you're setting up powerful and conflicted choices, and I hope you are.

Dave Robicheaux is such a memorable character precisely *because* of strong sequels. His lifelong struggles with his violent nature are often directly opposed to his loyalty to those he loves. As the blowtorch-sociopaths and shark-souled profiteers smell blood in the water, we're firmly rooted in Dave's conflicts. When his temper gets the better of him, those violent scenes are threaded with a mingled sense of triumph and loss.

Otherwise, he'd be an eighties action movie. Don't believe me? Rent Heaven's Prisoners. Or better yet, don't.

James Lee Burke's sequels also tend to dilate the time in his books. Days, even weeks often pass between scenes, covered in two and three page passages that invest us heavily in the timeless beauty and Arcadian innocence of Dave's world, and the sweet-tinged sorrow of its inevitable loss.

Elmore Leonard uses a shorter timeline. His books often take place over a few days, sometimes even less, and his sequels usually reflect that. Two guys have coffee and shoot the shit, emotional reaction and decision coming out through dialogue. A lonely woman looks around her crappy apartment, and in the time it takes to microwave a Lean Cuisine, decides to steal half a million dollars. Quick pace, but full investment, it's an artful balance.

I shouldn't have mentioned Leonard. A wide variety of subtle tools do a huge amount of work in every passage. One could devote an entire blog just to pulling the tools apart and looking at them. And he's that sort of master makes it look effortless.

One last thought: This scene/sequel construction is just one way to look at your stories. This isn't Newton mechanics, this-way-and-no-other type stuff. It's more a quantum physics particle-wave-and-four-kinds-of-spin-its-state-depends-on-how-you-look-at-it sort of thing.

As always, take what you like and leave the rest... :-)

Sequel Neglected, the actual first part

A Quick Apology: I put the cart in front of the horse a bit yesterday. I didn't give enough space to the whole scene/sequel construction, instead diving right in to the how-to. I'll try to clear this up today...

'Sequel' in this case doesn't mean the second book/movie/episode in the series. There's a particular way of looking at dramatic construction that says a scene is conflict, a sequel is the aftermath that sets up the next conflict/scene.

Example:

Polly needs to get to the hospital, a matter of life and death.

Scene: Polly drives to fast in her rush. The car spins out of control. Polly's struggles to stay on the road are conflict.

Because it's early days yet, she's unsuccessful and crashes!

Sequel: Polly is shaken by her brush with disaster. The car is now useless. She thinks of various ways she could get to the hospital.

Because the story isn't over, Polly's decision makes things worse: she decides to get in the van with that friendly man in the trenchcoat. Well, maybe not friendly exactly, but he does keep rubbing his hands together and smiling...

Which will set up the next conflict, Polly in the van with the maniac. Scene creates sequel, creates scene, creates scene/sequel/scene/sequel ad climaxium.

You can write a whole book this way: Dean Koontz's best thrillers follow this pattern relentlessly, and to great effect. His less successful efforts indulge a certain tendency to wander... James Lee Burke and John Connolly use the formula as well, but with a less compressed timeline...

I know a lot of writers consider sequel 'that squidgy bit in between', but treated properly, it's a powerful and multi-purpose tool. One major use is to get the reader sympathizing with the character.

*NOW* go back and read the bits about the four stages of experiencing a sequel. All right, we're back on track! :-)

Now, how you handle your sequels depends on the type of story you're writing.

Literary fiction tends to dwell *heavily* on sequel, often to the detriment of, you know, stuff happening. I recently read a literary novel where over the course of 500 pages, maybe three actual incidents occured. I knew the heck out of the protagonist, though I didn't much care... Next time you read a book that seems to bog down, look at how much time the author is giving to the protagonist's inner workings versus, you know, stuff happening.

Romance, sequels lean heavy on the emotional side. The storyteller there wants you really, *really* feeling the heroine's pain. Crime, on the other hand, tends to run to the thought side: we don't mind that Jack Reacher isn't too emotional about the stuff happening around him. It's part of his charm, and his major strength is his ability think about the evidence.

Suspense tales are heavy on decision. As those heroes and heroines find themselves under more and more pressure, we readers like to *see* the walls closing in. There's nothing better seeing a character make an awful choice but knowing that all the choices are bad. Do it right, and we step inside that dark room with the heroine, defenseless and alone. Do it wrong, and the reader shouts at the page, "Just fuckin' call the cops already!"

Action stories dwell lightly on sequel. Right now I'm reading Wings Over Talera, and the author treats sequel with a deft hand. Short passages in the center of chapters. They have to be in the middle, since every chapter ends in a cliffhanger, so the next chapter has to resolve that one, and so on. But even in the midst of all this rollicking great action, Ruenn is having understandable reactions and making understandable decisions. Which lead to something worse happening.

If the writer handled these crucial passages wrong, we might have a cardboard hero pursuing conflict for its own sake. Or a passive character bobbing like a cork from trouble to trouble - for an action hero, a fate worse than death!

My time's about up, so I'll get to using scene and sequel in your pacing tomorrow.

Sequel Neglected

I've noticed I have a fair few posts about scenes, but I've completely neglected sequels. I can't imagine why. Scene and sequel go together like ham and eggs. Pork and beans. Night and day. Well, you get the drift.

Sequels are important. Vital, in fact. I'll even go so far as to say that a well-written sequel is THE way to get readers to give a damn about your characters.

Basically, scenes are about conflict and events. Sequels are about processing those events. Sequels are the natural follow-up to a scene, so natural that even if you've never heard of the concept, you'll have written at least a few unconsciously.

But that's the road to mastery: the natural and unconscious are brought to the light, taken apart, closely examined and eventually refined until they are eventually unconscious again. Dancing, cooking, fighting or writing, this process is why amateurs look spastic and lost, intermediates look like they're trying and the best make it look seamless, easy and natural.

So on that road, let's turn to the sequel.

Your scenes are where your 'stuff' happens. Your sequels are where we see inside the character, where we buy in or shut down.

Sequel is where you account for *why* your character stays in the damn haunted house. And how they feel about taking down a skyscraper full of terrorists single-handed.

Handle your sequels wrong, and Elinor Dashwood may come off as a wimp. Scarlett O'Hara is just another coniving gold digger. Jack Reacher, John Rain and James Bond all become just so many violent murderers.

Handle them right, and you just may create characters who are memorable, powerful and immortal.

No pressure, right? :-)

After an exciting event, people react. The reaction may take place over years or the space of a single heartbeat, but it *will* take place in a reliable sequence:

1. Feelings

2. Thoughts

3. Options

4. Choice

When I was sixteen, a young man pulled a gun on me.

1. The sight of the weapon engendered an intense limbic reaction, which is a fncy way of saying a sudden and visceral sensation of 'Holy shit!'

2. Fast on the heels of the emotion of fear was thought: The gun was still in his waistband, it had a good couple of feet to travel before the barrel would point at me. Which thought led to...

3. Options. I could have tried to outrun a bullet. I could have stuck my hands up and relied on an armed asshole's mercy. I suppose I might have negotiated, but I honestly wasn't that on top of things back then. Instead, I made a different (4.) choice: I charged in and fought.

By the numbers, and all in the space it takes one fool to call another one a motherfucker.

About ten years later, a young woman I loved wanted an open relationship.

1. I felt hurt and jealous, oddly betrayed and even more inexplicably lustful.

2. I tried to rationally deny my jealousy. After all, she wanted to keep seeing me, and she sure didn't mind me seeing her friends. And her friends were, um, attractive as well. What was monogamy anyway but an antiquated social construct intended to gaurantee a father's loyalty to progeny definitely his own? Yeah, my thoughts were stupid...

3. I really did look at my options. Breaking up with her was tempting as hell. So was trying to make the open thing work, especially when she was breathing on my neck...

4. I made a choice. Later, I changed my mind and left town.

Depending on how the writer handled that material, I could be the hero or the villain. Hopefully, my subsequent actions would make sense.

The night she told me was a scene (and man, was that a scene!), the next few months were the sequel. Depending on how I'd try to write that story, the next scene might be the first night I was alone and she was with someone else, or the last morning we were together before I left town. It all depends on....

Pace.

Scene and sequel are the beating heart of your story. Scene is the throttle, sequel the brake. And when it comes to controlling pace, sequel is the more powerful tool.

I'm running on too long, so I'll return to sequel tomorrow, this time with the focus on using it as a pacing tool...

OOps, one last thought: Unlike real life (I'm actually pretty happy with my decision to fight that kid), the choice your fictional character makes MUST make things worth. The phrase I use when I'm writing is 'Into the Lion's Mouth.' Your characters make things harder and more complicated until they're pressed so tight the story, well, climaxes.

That's kind of related to pacing, and I'll try to cover both tomorrow. Otherwise, I guess I'm in for a three-parter...