Memory Lane

So, I recently re-read my ebook, Crossroad Blues. I wanted to see how it played out on Kindle, correct any formatting errors, etc. I did find a few (corrected now), which was good.

Thing is, I also found something more.

I started out reading with my editor's hat on. But as the book progressed, I found myself actually sucked in to my own work. It was a strange experience: on the one hand, I wrote the damn thing. On the other, I couldn't wait to see what happened next.

Not to pat myself on the back, but Crossroad Blues hums. I love the pace of it, the action, the murderous intensity of Maeve, the overwhelming arrogance of Jack Terraboone and the sheer creepy monstrosity that is Harlan Winters.

I read that book, and I hated the novel I'm working on. Right now I'm lurching from scene to scene. I can see revelations coming, but I have to write my way through where I am before I can get there. If where I am even leads me there at all. My current novel is nothing like the streamlined mayhem of Crossroad Blues.

And then I remembered:

At one point, Jack Terrabonne had a wife. She was the real genius, stifled by her husband's success and terrified of his fixer, Harlan.

At one point, Kane was in a love triangle with Maeve and Beth. Sometimes he was with Maeve and attracted to Beth. Sometimes vice versa.

At one point, Harlan Winters was a dapper little gray man, sharp and slick and looking to capitalize on his employer's indiscretions.

By the end of the book, things changed...

Jack's wife left. There were some great scenes between her and Harlan, real scary stuff. But as Harlan developed, I realized there was no way in hell he'd keep his hands off something he wanted. She shows up off-stage as a soon-to-be-ex, with a younger boyfriend, a hit album and a scandalous photo spread in (I think it was) Vanity Fair. It was the least I could do for a woman who suffered so much only to be written out.

As Kane revealed himself, I realized I was writing a Western. He's the classic cool-eyed stranger in town, a gunslinger who doesn't pack a gun. He was honest and decent and upright, a solid moral point in a wicked, wicked world.

That guy couldn't be in a love triangle. I lost scenes where he met Maeve and traveled with her for a time. Where he found himself disgusted by her wickedness (back then she wanted to hook a rich man, which is how she fell afoul of Jack) and was increasingly attracted to local girl Beth. I lost something like 30,000 words of that plotline.

And Harlan. What to say about Harlan...

He started out dapper and smooth. In those days, Jack's sexual appetites led to the death of the French girl and Harlan stepped in. He covered up the crime and began to extort Jack for his own purposes. There were some mighty nice scenes where the balance of power in that house shifted.

And I cut them all.

The Harlan who stepped up about halfway through the book was half based on a ruthless predator in my family, and half based on a family friend who used to babysit me-- a man now wanted for questioning in the rape and murder of one of his neighbors.

What I'm getting at is, Crossroad Blues came to be streamlined. It grew into something fast-paced and coherent.

This memory, this process, helped me. My current novel is nowhere near such a mess as that one was- and look how that turned out!

Combining Characters

So the new reboot is going well. Thorny and tangled at times, but that's writing, innit?

I'm a big believer in the saying, "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear." Mostly, I think the teachers are all around us, waiting for us to notice, but that's another story.

This time, the teacher was Donald Maas's book Writing the Breakout Novel. Three bits of advice gave me so much to think about that I'll probably be years digesting them. One sentence in particular struck me with the queasy truth of the sound of an elevator cable snapping:

Anywhere you can combine characters, you should.

Basically, the idea is that too many characters in fiction are flat and cardboard. One way to achieve depth and complexity is to have one character fill two or more roles. For example, I've read a lot of thrillers/detective stories where the hero has a Mentor, a Love Interest and a Bete Noir-- usually three different people who walk on and speak their parts and then are heard no more. Only Silence of the Lambs combined all three to create Hannibal Lector.

Or look at Pride and Prejudice-- where Love Interest Darcy is also an Antagonist when he comes down hard on Jane's romance with Bingley. For that matter, he also appears as a Powerful Ally/Deus Ex Machina when that little git (I forget her name) runs off with that asshole Wickham.

I could probably think of more, but as is so often the case these days, the Hour of the Needles (i.e. time to go to work) closes in.

In my own case, I had a Good Girl/Sidekick (poor Lila, who featured in my previous post) and a Bad Girl/Femme Fatale. Classic dichotomy, and boring as hell. The moment I started thinking, 'What if the Bad Girl was also the Sidekick?' things got... INTERESTING.

I have to admit, I started the rewrite with no idea how I was going to pull it off, only the conviction that this was the right way to go. This week, things started to click: The Bad Girl really is a rotten human being, but she really does like our hero. She's using him, but she's also in love with him. And in a way, he's using her too. A bond is forming between the two, and both of them realize they may just have to turn on the other. The relationships have gone from being all crisp and clear to being messy, heartbreaking and human.

I'm having fun again...

Reboot

*sigh*

The inimitable Mighty Proctor, She of the Many Names (CS Harris, Candice Proctor, CS Graham, and many, many other aliases) was right: The godawful slowdown I've been suffering was in fact my subconscious trying to clue me in to certain, um, *problems* in my story.

Of course, the subconscious mind being the Creepy Wee Beastie that it is, the poor thing has trouble communicating with this thin skim of gray matter that walks in the light and believes it is all that exists. In short, I got bad sleep and bad dreams, bad writing and no writing, all of it getting worse and worse until finally I was at my wits' end and the Creepy Wee Beastie was able to speak clearly.

My problems were three. And they were important.

One. My protagonist was not outsider enough. Not by half.

Two. One of my subplots stank. Really, really stank. That is to say, it contributed nothing to the central thrust of the book, and if anything muddied the waters of the themes as I see them.

and Three. My Act I climax *needed* to hit A LOT sooner. Which meant collapsing some of the early 'action' (which, frankly, could afford to be collapsed), which led to old characters saying and doing different things, and to new characters coming in to make things happen.

Of course, fixing Problem #1 meant amplifying and creating problems, and fixing #2 meant writing out a character I was rather fond of anyway.

Needless to say, the result is a complete, from-page-one reboot of my manuscript.

I think I may be able to save a few paragraphs here and there.

So it goes.

What Counts

Hard toremember sometimes, when we write: what counts.

Robert Heinlein was the first to clue me in: a good few of his characters were writers, adventurers who'd had adventurous lives and thought nothing could be easier than writing about their real-life experiences.

They soon found that the only way to successfully write adventure was to forget what they knew.

Some of us have this problem. Some writers have the opposite problem: I call it research-itus, where you research and research until you kno w every in and out and the subject lies dead under your fingertips.

I'll be honest. Along with a lot of writers, my process is half close-my-eyes-and-remember, half close-my-eyes and-imagine.

Remembering, I'm back with the the thump-thump-THUMP of my heart as a blade flashes in the sunlight, the vague brutality (like lightning looking for a place to ground) that drew me to nerve centers, floating ribs, weak places in joint-construction. This is very hard to turn into interseting reading.

Very. Hard.

To tell the truth, (and I want to tell y'all the truth), trying to chronicle these moments, however cathartic, leads to damned boring reading. The excitement is more taking that, and imagining...

More often, I read the other guys: writers who've done so *damned* much research and just. Can't. Wait. to show it. Whether it's the average rainfall of California or the three easiest takedowns against an armed assailant, these writers really, really, *really* want you to feel the depth of their research.

Guess what, all of us:

It don't matter.

Research doesn't count. Not really. Neither does experience.

What counts?

Words on a page.

We write words. Some of us draw pictures. A few of us do both. But, as always, the main thing is the story.

Tell a story the audience can't wait to hear, and they don't give a damn about your research. Or your experience.

They just want to hear what happens next.

Don't believe me? Check out the Iliad. Homer had all the access he wanted to seasoned veterans, men who could give him any detail he wanted about spear-maintenance, overlapping-shield tactics and the friner points of battlefield injuries.

What survived the last two or three thousand years? Achilles dragging Hector's body behind a chariot. Athene stepping in with her poisoned arrow. Helen, lovely and troubled, standing at the ramparts of Troy.

Gilgamesh? Nobody gives a rat's ass about the finer points of Bronze Age warmaking, only that the big bastard set out in a small boat to battle one hell of a big serpent.

More recently: most *real* pirates plundered tar and timber, rope and rum. Compare that shabby truth to the story told in Treasure Island, and be thankful RL Stevenson's research and experience wasn't of a higher caliber. In the end, every one of us who makes a mark on paper is just like Blind Pew...



In other news, Shauna gave me a lovely award. I'll pass it along when I'm sober. Meantime, thank you very much Shauna. Glad you find a little bit you like in this blog...

Spin It Back and Grandkid Days

A little while ago, a writer friend and I met for coffee and got to talking about characterization. Recently, Lisa has been posting on the subject, Getting to Know You being my favorite so far.

The way I approach character, it's not quite as structured as the 'Dossier' approach, where you know your main folks' shoe size and taste in breakfast cereals before you start. Nor is it quite so fey as the 'Found Object' approach, where folks show up on stage and gradually reveal themselves, though of the two, it's more the latter.

What I do, I start with what I need and spin it back. In other words, based on what I need this character to do, what sort of person are they? And go from there.

In Poison Door, I needed a young girl to be out in the middle of the night, where she witnesses a gangland murder. Eleven to thirteen was about the right age: old enough to credibly handle the crises I threw at her but young enough that boys and liquor and so on were... interesting, but still in the future.

What kind of twelve year old runs around the city by herself in the middle of the night? A dangerously underparented one. Her homelife wouldn't be anything flash. In fact, it'd be the sort of thing to make her want to stay out. Her mum was a full-blown alcoholic and addict, at which point the home life practically wrote itself.

So did the hope: Michelle had a ringside view of the trouble that came with guys and liquor and all the stuff the older street kids got up to after dark. She saw pregnancy, substance abuse and overdose take kids like her, one after the other. Unlike some other kids in the same situation, this one had a gritty determination to steer clear of that stuff, to keep her head down and stay in school long enough to grab a normal life. Assuming she can survive the rest of the week.

By the time I was done writing, I could tell you about Michelle's favorite subjects in school, her taste in clothes, movies and cute guys. Whatever you wanted to ask. But at the start, I knew I had a young girl, alone in the dark, watching horror unfold in front of her eyes. And being seen by the killers. Everything else unfolded as I spun it back.

Why a girl? Why Michelle? Well, that's how she showed up. Bit of a 'found object' that way.

Which sort of brings me around to Grandkid Days. For me, I start writing with an event or situation, the kind of day you want to tell your grandkids about.

By this I mean that the events in a story should be seminal in the lives of their characters, turning points in their lives or, at the very least, total red-letter days:

I ever tell you kids about the time bad guys locked up Father Christmas and I stepped in to do his job? (Hogfather, Terry Pratchett)

I ever tell you about the time I met my long-lost dad and he drew me into a war with the gods? (American Gods, Neil Gaiman)

You kids ever hear about how I met your father? I'd pricked my finger on a spinning wheel and fallen into an enchanted sleep... (Sleeping Beauty)

The War? Let me tell you kids, the war was hell, but even worse was what came after... (Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell)

I'll never forget the day our little island first got the vote. Those were fun times! (The Sufferage of Elvira, V.S. Naipaul)

Some characters, Jack Reacher and James Bond come to mind, would have a lot of colorful stories. Some, say Hamlet and Macbeth, would have only one. And yeah, they'd probably have some trouble telling it, seeing as they're both dead at the end. But you can't argue that the events leading to their deaths were seminal!

For me, I start with the event, or with a situation like a powderkeg ready to blow. Who's there, what are they like and what do they need to do? From there, I spin the characters back, even as I march them forward.

How about you? How do you approach it?

Fan Factor

This is one of those best/worst days: four, five drafts down the road, sitting down with a printed copy of the new manuscript and actually reading the damn thing.

Sure, I make notes here and there. I'm still trying to iron out the weather and make sure nobody's name changes too much, but that's all little stuff. The literary equivalent of 'mom-cleaning', the saliva-drenched thumb scrubbing vigorously across the child's face in the moments before they're turned loose.

The big stuff is Suction. Does the story draw me in? Can I forget that I wrote this story and just enjoy it? Would I feel good about buying this book? Does this story make me a fan?

You see, I'm my hardest reader. I always see something I might have done differently, maybe a little better. Same with paintings, drawing, everything. Sooner or later you have to let go and move on, but the urge remains. And the urge is to fix those 'horrible' mistakes.

So far, this one is pretty promising. I keep finding myself worried less about my own techniques and more about what's going on with these people, all of them on the cusp of the worst day of their lives.

But rest assured, there's still plenty of technique to worry about...

Little more on that next time!

PS. As always, I have that odd sense of amused wonder: I *know* there were days I HATED writing and was sure I sucked. And days where I LOVED writing and was sure I ROCKED. But reading through the manuscript. I can't find those spots!

Feelings about work are impostors. The work itself is true.

A Strong Spine

I'm hard at work on the third pass for Crossroad Blues. The second pass went well: the spine of the story showed through, nice and strong.

What's the story's spine, you ask? In the Full Throttle toolbox, the spine of the story is that sentence or two that forms the essence of the story, its core.

The spine of Double Indemnity is two shiftless lovers plotting to get away with the murder of her husband. The spine of American Gods is Shadow's deepening relationship with his father in the face of the coming war. The spine of Crossroad Blues is a decent man thrown into a nest of human vipers.

This first draft was hard. There was a lot of flab and dead tissue before I got both hands wrapped around that spine. And as often happens, by the time I wrote 'the end' I knew I needed to change a few things at the beginning. And a few more. next thing I knew, I was deep in the second pass.

And of course, by the time the second pass was done, I could see that I had to get back in for a third.

My second draft was relatively minor. There were hours spent looking up facts I glossed over in the heat of the first draft: which private jet does the rich guy use? What's its range/how many refueling stops/what kind of time does he need? What breed of horse works best in this terrain? What would this expert actually know, and how would he say it? The usual.

Also, I'm shocking for changing the names of minor characters mid-book. Lots of search 'n replacing there.

Third run at the material, now I'm grappling with structure. I need to add some new material to set up more of the end of the story. Certain scenes, I need to change the viewpoint characters. Which means changing the voice of the narration, sure, but also, the information one character takes from a scene will be different from another. (Example: a sixteen year old girl and a middle-aged auto mechanic will see wildly different things when they look at a car.)

As I move through this stage, I keep one question at the front of my mind: Is this true to the spine? Because you can monkey with a lot of things in a story, but you touch that spine, you may very well kill your story.

Take Double Indemnity. Does Walter need to be in inurance? It helps, but you could write the story differently. Does Barton need to be so tenacious, or even there at all? Not really. You could write the story with a different set of complications and pressures. Now imagine it without the adultery, or the husband, or the money. Any one of those things come out, what's left?

Or how about American Gods? Shadow could meet different gods. He could go different places in his quest. I think the decisions Neil Gaiman made are brilliant (especially Laura and the abandoned hotel at the center of the US); they contribute to and enrich that core story. But the truth is, some things could be done differently and still have a similar story. Not so with Shadow's father, or the coming war.

So I work, trying to figure out what contributes, what can come out, what needs to change and what doesn't. In all these things, I try to be faithful to that spine. I want to make it better, faster, stronger.

Because I really like this story, and I want to do it justice.

Groping for Fishhooks

In Lisey's Story, Stephen King talks about story-ideas as bits of colored string, found half-buried in the ground. In his absolutely *brilliant* book Which Lie Did I Tell, by William Goldman describes these idea fragments as 'connectives'.

I call 'em fishhooks.

In the course of any given day we all come across news items, bits of historical trivia, things you see in the street. Some of those items suggest a story. Heck, most of what we see can suggest a story, but some are definitely 'stickier' than others.

Usually, two or three unrelated things catch together and give me the germ of a story. I read about a teenager who kills her parents, see a little girl alone in a supermarket, tears brimming in her eyes, and BAM. What if that little girl just killed her *latest* set of parents and is putting on her 'crying orphan' act to get a fresh set?

This sort of thing happens to me several times a day between books. Maybe a couple, three times a week while I'm writing...

So you get this little cluster of fishhooks. As Goldman puts it, you have to ask, "Is this in my wheelhouse?" I've always thought of it as, "Is this my line of country?" Can I tell this story? And can I tell it well enough to spend six months of my life doing so?

In other words, am I hooked? :)

Sometimes, those answers are close enough to yes that I 'sketch' a little - a chapter, maybe two or three. The little girl cries, a concerned soccer mom tries to help. How does the little tyke go home with the woman? Haven't a clue. If I don't find one, we're dead right there. If I do (I'd imagine the little girl could be pretty charming and persuasive - and like many predators, quite adept at choosing her victims), we're on: what happens next?

And how excited am I by what's happening?

To be honest, I'm not excited yet by this premise. So I grope in the darkness for more fishhooks and see what I snag.

How about that little hitch of reluctance I felt before I went to help the girl. Scary-looking single male, talking to a child not his own... the Tiny Dynamo assures me I will be locked up for my altruism, but I still do the right thing. I have faith my pure heart will be recognized. So far it has, but there may be a novel in the day that it's not...

What if the little girl latches onto a guy? Maybe an ex-con who means no harm but will never get a fair shake from larger society? Some big, blocky bastard, more scar tissue than skin. Most people shy away from this monster (I'm thinking Frankestein, with that little girl), but here's this kid, this little kid, looking up at him like she knows, *knows* he'll help her.

He looks back over both shoulders, looks down from his great height and mutters, "Where's your ma?" She looks up at him with those big wet eyes, and what swims behind them looks something like triumph.

Or how about a different kind of woman? ex-con, maybe a recovering addict with a yucky past, sees a bit of herself in that lost kid? Stringy peroxide hair and scarred track marks, prison tattoos and cigarette burns.

She looks at that kid and remembers herself at that age. She scratches a gray welt of scar tissue below her collar bone and knows what waits for a little kid like that, vulnerable and alone.

She bends down, "Where's your mum?" "Heaven." "Sorry. Uh, who's lookin after you?" The kid looks upset and sucks her thumb. Too old for it, but she sucks her thumb and tries to hide her tears. "C'mon, kid, let's get you somethin to eat..."

Either one might have legs.

And yeah, I noticed too that my hero's an outcast. That's a fair-sized fishhook for me. It's a condition I relate to, also quite useful when things get rough in the story. Neither of these two is going to call the cops for ANY reason, and both of them, grown though they are, are orphans themselves. They know (or believe they do, anyway) what happens to the kids nobody cares about, and no way he or she's gonna let that happen to *this* little tyke.

And so on I'd go, hooking from one fishhook to another, chaining them together and inviting the barbs to bite deep when they hit flesh. Some of those hooks might come from my past, some from my basic human empathy (I had a pretty nice childhood, but you can't help feeling for the ones that didn't), some from the news or history books.

As I get deeper in, the hooks will tend to attract each other. My subconscious mulls the big issue: how does a small child (right now I'm thinking 6 to 8) overpower and KILL a full-grown adult? Is she a firebug? A poisoner? What? I'll find myself noticing stuff in the news, catching shreds of conversation in the tattoo shop, whatever. I'll attract the right hook to pull me onto the next part of the story.

Mostly, for me, the writing process is about exploring those hooks: Outcast tries to help. Innocent mask hides a predator. How does this kid keep doing this? Maybe I tattoo a parole officer (or meet her in a supermarket, or eavesdrop on his conversation in a coffee shop, whatever) and get to thinking about the parole board's role in our hero/heroine's life. Or maybe...

One way to look at it is letting the characters fight it all out (this story would be real cat-and-mouse), but while they're doing that, I'm swinging from these damn hooks and looking for more...

Sweet as Pie...

(this was the pumpkin pie I made all by myself - without even canned pumpkin to help! Mmmmm....)




Right now I'm soooo close to the Final Showdown.



But.


But I've got all these notes about things that need to happen, and things that need to change.



I've got a couple of REALLY important plot points to change.



So I've gone back to the beginning and am doing a rapid rework. And I do mean rapid: roughly 10-20,000 words a day. My word count is staying about the same, mainly because I rip out almost as much as I put in.



Being so close to the end is the best place to see the beginning. And to tighten any flab from the middle. Also, tomorrow or the next day, when I *do* finally reach the Final Showdown again, I'll hit it with the momentum of a runaway bloody freight train!

Synchronicity: After staggering to bed at 1.30 last night (back up 5, but that was Butler's fault), I decided to 'chillax' with Joyce Carol Oates' Faith of a Writer. The essay I picked, Miss JCO talked about doing just the same thing I am, and for just the same reasons.

Oddly, that makes me feel better.

And for anyone who wonders about life with the Tiny Dynamo, I did do an 18"x48" painting on a break from writing yesterday!

8 Days Later....

Five pounds lighter...


Twenty hours of sleep total...


The work stands at 68,238 words.


Events took some unexpected turns. Things that baffled me (why is that girl Irish? Why is she in here at all? What's with the horses?) have become clear. An encounter I'd been expecting the whole book never materialized. There are notes scattered through the text telling me what I need to add earlier...


The final showdown is underway.


The end is so close I can taste it.


Oddly, the Minor Bastard is still alive. I'm starting to wonder if he'll make it through the whole book. For that matter, I'm kind of wondering about the Hero and the Main Bastard as well. Both are more resourceful than I would have thought, and nothing is as simple as it seems.


I'm not quite finished, but I *am* having the time of my life!


Of course, once I'm finally done, I do plan to sleep for a week. That too will be most enjoyable!



In other news, the birthday was much fun.


The Tiny Dynamo provided me with some very nice gifts and a truly ginormous chocolate cake!

After all, I do have some missing kilos to put back on....

Write Like the Wind

Burned the midnight oil on Sunday, then lit it up again Monday morning. So far, I am pleased.

It's a little daunting to know that I'm aiming for my Act II climax (which will also be the cliffhanger that carries us into Act III) by Thanksgiving. This point, it's all faith that these tangled bits of colored yarn will lead anywhere useful. But faith is part of the process.

Emotional Stages of Writing a Novel:

Infatuation: Like any relationship, we all start with that first rush of excitement. Based on anecdotal evidence, this rarely lasts more than 50 pages. After that wears off, mix at will:

Pride: Not just any old pride. No, I'm talking Luciferian Pride. Every word you write is pure gold. You're the shizzle, and you know it. Any old moment now, the world will lay at your feet.

This feeling is a lie. A tempting lie, but still a lie. Thankfuly, these days don't come too often. Not without chemical help...

Insecurity: The work's no good. Anything good you may have done, that was a fluke. Your words taste of ashes, and the light goes out of the sun.

This feeling is also a lie. Suck it up and keep moving. Tomorrow's another day.

Grinding: Most days are like this. Not too high, not too low, you just gotta have the endurance to keep putting in the work.

For me, these days are the challenge. It takes discipline to stick with the project and not chase after the next great idea. That's why I do 1000 words a day, like it or not.

Gethsemane: Every novel or graphic novel I've ever written has taken me through at least one long dark night in the garden. I'm pretty sure we all go through these. You just gotta have...

Faith: Where I'm at today. The work has enough of its own weight behind it to lend some momentum, but as writers we suspect the story is still fragile enough to shatter into a thousand fragments.

It isn't, but it feels that way. Hence, the faith.

Excitement: For me, that's usually when I turn the Act III corner. Everything's locked and loaded for the Final Showdown, and soon I'll be... DONE!

Sorta-Daily Wordcount-o-Meter:

24,572 words, not too shabby....

aaaaaaaaand...... ACTION! 2

Action Technique #2:

Break It Down Now: Probably the most common way of showing action in fiction. Also the easiest to screw up.

The basic idea is simple. As the action heats up, our description of it slows down. We break everything into individual steps, stacking them one on top of the other. The reader (hopefully) gets a clear idea of what's going on. The writer gets to spend time getting deep into the most exciting parts of the book.

I think this technique is so popular because it intuitively mimics the effects of adrenalin on the human nervous system. Our time sense distorts. Memory scrambles. Perception sharpens.

"You shouldn't be here," Bob said.
"I know."
Sylvia took a half step closer. Bob felt the heat of her breath curl in the hollow of his throat.
Neither touched. The moment stretched, widened, spun out of control.
They fell together, growling. His hands were strong and knowing. Her tongue was hot and quick, her teeth sharp.

Lee Child may well be the current king of this method. He's certainly a damn sight better than I am. (I tend to be real sparing with this method, so it's not my strong suit.) Pick up any of Child's books, and you'll see the simple act of racking a slide and pulling a trigger, or of throwing a punch, pared down to tiny fractions of a second. Often with long lectures on physics!

Thing is, when *he* does it, it works. :-)

When it doesn't work, it falls flat. Your big action scene lies dead on the floor.

So, how do we make it work?

1. Choose the *right* details. This is the heart of storytelling talent, and it may be the one thing no one can tell you. Best advice I can give is to stay tight in your POV character's head and, no matter how tempting, do not use a detail your character would not notice.

2. Make conscious decisions about sentence length. Short sentences tighten tension. Long ones reales it. Even within an action scene, you need to tighten and release. See As Above, So Below for more on structure.

3. Forget what you know. This is the single biggest falldown I see, especially in fight scenes. Plenty of us out there have done some karate, swordfighting, shooting, etc. Expertise is good, and we all like a feeling of authentic detail when we read.

But. How often have you read an action scene where the 'expertise' gets in the way? I see it too often: Swordfights and fistfights that sound like they were taken out of manuals. Gunfights that read like advertisements for Smith & Wesson. Love scenes that make one think of Tab A and Slot B, barbeque assembly instructions.

Bad enough if your place/time exposition reeks of 'look at all my research!', but heaven help your story if you do this with your action!

Remember, your readers want the emotional experience of action. Make sure every word gives them that experience.

Official Daily Wordcount-o-Meter:

9459 words, every one a struggle

aaaaaaand.... ACTION!

Sex. Violence. Car crashes. Explosions. Those of you who write that kind of contemplative, solipsistic fiction where nothing much ever happens *might* just want to stop right here!

This might get a little basic, but it's on my mind lately. After all, the action is the juicy meat of the story. And nothing knocks me out of a story like bad action. Or maybe I should say action, badly done.

I'm going to have to let go of my coveted triple-tap here, because the way I see it, there are four basic ways to show action:

1. Cut to the Fireplace: An oldie but a goodie, and still a favorite of mine. Back in the days of the Film Censorship Board, the couple would kiss, the violins would swell and the camera would move to the fireplace. Or the pounding surf. Or a train going through a tunnel. So that *we* knew they were, you know, doing it.

I like this technique because your readers fill in the blanks. And they have much, much nastier imaginations than you do. *Much*. :-) You just show the upraised axe and cut to the scream, and their fevered imaginations strike the blow for you.

She stood in the doorway. Her body was framed in shadow and her eyes stayed on his.

"You shouldn't be here," he said.

Her bare feet made a whisper of sound crossing the threshhold. She locked the door behind her.

Drawbacks: Two things you have to look out for with this technique.

The. PRIME. Consideration. is that you don't shortchange action that needs to be in the story. If how the love scene, fight, crash, etc. happens matters to the story, you'd damn well better put it in there. If not, by all means, fade to the fireplace...

Also, be sure that you're clear enough to your target audience about what happened. The Tiny Dynamo *loves* the Bridget Jones movies (yet she likes me anyway - go figure), but it wasn't until we watched the director's commentary that she found out Bridget had anal sex with Daniel Cleever. That particular item was handled too subtly for her innocent ears to pick up.

And I say target audience. Readers know the ins and outs of their genres, but what might seem cliched to a 'regular' might completely stump a 'newbie'. Some people may read Miss Marple and wonder how this little old lady's supposed to be solving crimes the police can't. And I still don't see why every romance has to have a Big Misunderstanding in Act I that isn't cleared up until Act III. Your 'fireplace' action needs to take reader's expectations into account. Of course, since you probably read the sort of stuff you write, it likely will anyway.

(All right, this is taking longer than I thought, and I've got some novel to write. I'll pick up Part 2 tomorrow...)

And without further ado, today's

Official Daily Wordcount-o-Meter: 8898 words

Don't know what that is since yesterday. Simple math is beyond me this morning....

Latest Methods

Official Word-o-Meter Day 4 Word Count: 6621 words



As readers of this blog may remember, I was, for a considerable portion of this current WIP, reduced to writing with a quill pen.

Yup. Dip. Scritch scritch scritch. Dip. Scritch, scritchscritch. etc.

Well, the quills are back in the art supplies now were they belong. That drawing in the top right corner was done with a quill. But writing with one? Let's just say, some things are obsolete for a reason...

These days, my method has changed a bit. So far, it's working for me. Finding out it worked 3000 words' worth was a surprise,but a happy one.

My newest method:

I keep a pen and paper with me and 'sketch' out scenes. Quick notes, in present tense to keep me from taking it too seriously and 'binding up' on word choice and language. Sometimes, I hear dialogue, or that telling detail of imagery swims right up. I jot 'em down. Otherwise, I just kind of loosely walk the characters through their conflicts and challenges.

Mostly, I do this at night. But I keep the tools with me, just in case. Yesterday, I sketched out a fine scene while the Tiny Dynamo shopped for shoes. I'd been thinking about it while we were at the supermarket. Basically, no scrap of time goes to waste.

When it's 'writing time', I sit down with the laptop in my, well, lap and my sketched notes in front of me. Now, I'm listening to imagery and language and what, exactly, is going on in the scene.

This: Kane up early. Not too rested after uncomfortable top bunk:

lights on & off

snoring, loud & wet

vomit smells

1 person sick again

He picks up some overpriced food & walks up into the hills.

Back of the mountain, hawks circle.

Becomes:

Kane was up with the dawn. Hostel dorm beds were the same the world over. Thin mattress and squeaking bedsprings, other backpackers turning lights on and off or stumbling drunken in the dark. Between the loud wet snoring and the faint smells of vomit from the bunk below him, Kane’s sleep was fitful.
Finally, he quit trying. Kane climbed down from his bunk, took his pack out of its locker and dressed in the dark. At a small market on Frankton Road, he paid too much for apples and cheese, nuts and french bread and a bottle of water. The mountain air was still watery and gray when Kane walked into the hills.

Midmorning, Kane stopped. He took his rest on a flat rock, warm in the sun and sheltered from the wind. The cheese was sharp and strong, the apples crisp and tart. Overhead, hawks circled, riding the thermals, hunting.

After a time, Kane moved deeper into the autumn forest. Leaves were turning all around him: yellow and gold and orange and brown and splashes of deep brilliant red. He hit a path and followed it. Bright leaves and dappled trunks gave way to stunted alpine scrub and harsh cold sunlight.

Faint scallops were visible in the grass. Deer, passing through. Past the ridgeline, the tracks descended into the forest shadows.

Kane felt at peace.

Now, careful readers might notice this scene breaks one of my own main rules: there's no conflict. Fair cop, guv. Guilty as charged. But I feel this scene is necessary for three reasons:

1. Pacing: We need a little rest between to high-tension plot points.

2. Characterization: Kane's a solitary man. One of the best quick and dirty shortcuts to charcterization is to put your character in a fitting environment and say 'he's like this place'.

3. Foreshadowing: I'm not sure how this story ends, but I do know that Kane needs to be comfortable outdoors, and a decent tracker, too.

And, this is the first draft. Before this thing is done, I may well have a scene that does all three of these things *and* throws in some conflict too!

It Begins.... AGAIN!!!

Kate's making a big push on her WIP and thought a team effort would help her along. Anything to help out a blogbuddy! :-)

So in the interests of Science and Friendship, the old Daily Word Count-o-Meter is once again out of mothballs!

Day One: we'll start with the clock set at 'zero'. Handy for me, since I've *no* idea how much I've already written will go into the torturous Work in Progress. (Anybody like my Dickensian use of Capitals? I do promise to Stop, soon. Probably.)

So...

Official 30 day Word-o-Meter Word Count: 0

There, that wasn't so hard. but wait, there's more.

Actually, we're on Day 3, and I only just got the news. So.... (brief pause while I tally up three days' progress. Feel free to play your favorite music while on hold... still holding.... there!) we jump ahead to ....

Official 30 day Word-o-Meter Word Count: 3511

Staying on track, I guess. I might've done more, but yesterday was spent wrestling my lawn. Right now I plan to post about it on my other blog.

All right, back to work...

Set Em Up, Joe

I talk a lot about character, not nearly enough about setting.

We consider our methods to be 'event-driven' (plotted) or 'character-driven' (seat of the pants), but when I look closer, how much of fiction might be said to be 'setting-driven'?

Science-fiction, fantasy and Westerns are certainly characterized by their settings. But I don't want to go there, at least not yet.

Right now I'm thinking of a different kind of setting drive: stories whose inital 'kick' (for the writer) is their setting, and where the character's environment directly impacts their actions.

Lee Child gets his ideas for the Jack Reacher books on vacation. He doesn't spend a lot of time in 'his towns', and doesn't feel it hurts him. Reacher is a drifter only in town for a few days, so it probably helps Child to see the world through those eyes. Basically, he rolls into Muncie, Indiana or Big Tuna, Texas and says, "Yeah. A murder..."

Rebecca was written while Daphne Du Maurier lived in Egypt, homesick for the soggy, gloomy English countryside. Manderlay was a real place, and it burned in her heart, long before she ever set pen to paper.

Charles hasn't said, but I believe Talera was a place for him before a certain earthly swordsman ever set foot on its shores...

Besides 'What if?', one of my favorite storytelling questions is 'why not?' What-if tells you what your story *is*, but why-not tells you it *isn't*.

I play with that question all the time, rolling answers around in my head to see what changes, what sounds false, what rings true. For setting, the constant question is,"Why here, and not somewhere else?"

Because I have something to say about this place is a fair answer (John D MacDonald and Carl Hiaasen come to mind). So is This place is fascinating (George Pelecanos' Washington DC or Joe Lansdale's East Texas), and this place is more real to me than reality (Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter anyone?). One favorite is I know this place like the back of my hand, and it's always telling me stories (the New Yorks of Andrew Vachss, Candice Bushnell, Edith Wharton and EdMcBain, for instance). The only unacceptable answer is a lazy one (and tomorrow I'll confess to my own lazy sins).

My favorite answer in my own fiction is because this story couldn't happen anywhere else. It's not the only answer I've ever come up with, but it is the one that makes the writing easiest. Usually by making things hardest for the hero.



For me, Poison Door was a book that grew out of its setting. I do live in Christchurch, but that was just convenient. The truth is, I'd have written about this place if I'd only spent a couple of days here. A few facts about Christchurch that toggled my imagination:

Cops don't carry guns, but crooks sometimes do.

Prostitution is legal here, as are synthetic and herbal versions of popular drugs (we call em 'party pills').

This little city (350,000) has a population of heroin addicts out of all proportion to the rest of New Zealand.

Being the biggest city on the South Island, it's a natural center of gravity for runaways.

But *most important*, Christchurch is a very, very Victorian city. It presents a squeaky-clean public face that completely denies any of these dark truths. By day, the addicts, whores and street kids are pale, unseen ghosts at a banquet of well-fed workers and tourists. By night, they serve those who shunned them by day. This is a city in constant conflict with itself.

Also, better roads and helicopter airlifts changed the face of rural medical care. The result? We have a countryside dotted with the ruins of abandoned hospitals!

For me, that setting begged for a story long before Sarah, Michelle and Tommy's lives collided.

Tomorrow (or the next day, first draft willing), I'll talk about stories where setting was a secondary consideration. At some point soon, I'll also try to talk about setting pitfalls...

Progress

Butler is bigger.

So is my novel. As my tools have slowed down (still on the dip pen), my storytelling's speeded up. It's kind of fun writing this way, even if it is all a bit Still Life With Woodpecker. ALl the same, I hope it's just this one story.

At least the story's humming: 75,000 words, every one of them a struggle that made me feel like Jet Li's evil twin at the end of The One-- no matter how many of the bastards I beat, there's an endless swarm still coming.

That feeling's eased off a fair bit now. The characters are clear about their actions and not shy about letting me know what they are. The bad guys have been a long time in an increasingly untenable situation, and their whole dirty house of lies is about to come crashing down on them.

Oddly, I have no idea how much longer this story will go. On the one hand, I may find out that the first fifty thousand was just back-story and warm-up. On the other, my end may be closer in sight than I realize!

One thing I do know: I remain surprised. Part of it is supporting players retreating from the scenes or coming to the fore. After all, *they* don't know they're supporting; they think they're the stars and have to act accordingly. Part of it is a still-growing understanding of my leads and their own agendas.

But a lot of the surprise comes from my hero in this one. He's smart and tough, but also honest and direct. In fact, he's probably the only honest and direct person in this whole ball of wax.

When I started this story, I had in mind that a lot of his troubles would come from the deceits and manipulations of others. Instead, that direct approach to problems has been a real conflict-engine.

Last night, he went up to the viper's nest and knocked on the front door. He wants to see for himself if there's any truth to the rumors.

I can't wait to see what happens...

The Tamagotchi Gesture

I am very much a willing victim of what William Gibson calls the Tamagotchi Gesture.

I shave with straight razors. That means honing and stropping (a lot of stropping), a cupful of lather applied with a brush, and a certain degree of care. And sure, a few bloody wounds in the learning. Shaving now takes me the best part of half an hour. It's as far removed as possible from the world of ten-to-a-bag, blue plastic disposables.

It's also wonderful.

This is the very definition of the Tamagotchi Gesture: They're pointless yet needful, comforting precisely because they require tending.

Cut throat razors focus the mind. Zenfolk talk about being fully present, and nothing does that quite like having a big wedge of unimaginably sharp steel moving across your face. I come away from each shave centered and still, my soul the quiet eye of my usual cyclone of activity.

I think that's the heart of the Tamagotchi Effect. When too many things in one's life are instant and disposable, the overall effect is subtractive. By adding something that requires care and tending and concentration, we are nourished.

I'm writing my current novel longhand. And not just any longhand. After I ran Skatey the Skater Pen over with the car (yes, yes, I know!), I ended up switching to a dip pen.

That's right. A. Dip. Pen. Write a couple words. Dip. Write some more. Dip. Keep that pressure light, or you'll spatter all over the place. At first, it required almost as much concentration to form words as to think up what those words should be. (as much thought to write as to write, as it were)

The odd thing: My output actually *increased*. Something about the concentration in making the words frees the part of my brain that's trying to listen to the story from distraction.

There's no point using a hundred year old steel quill (I have a thousand or so lying around) to write a novel. Ballpoints are cheaper, cleaner and way more convenient. And the laptop is right here. But for me, for this novel, this works.

PS Finished the Tin Roof Blowdown last night. I need to let it settle a bit before I throw in my two cents. Or ten, as that's our smallest coin in New Zealand. Or 6.8 cents, as that's what ten of our cents are worth in America....

Now *That's* a Second Draft!

Other Writers, Other Methods:

Last week I mentioned Robert McKee's writing method, specifically, his practice of pitching the synopsis to friends and colleagues before he starts writing.

I've never seen anything like this before.

Check out this article on Raymond Chandler's writing process. This was a man who took my metaphor of first draft as 'rough sketch' to its farthest extreme: he read his first draft, picked the bits he liked and, get this, jettisoned the rest!

Mark Coggins even shows us sample paragraphs. Chandler underlined his most resonant phrases (or even single words). Those stayed in later drafts. All the rest of the language was subject to change. All. Of. It.

I've always approached my second drafts with an eye toward honing down the language, eliminating excess words, excess scenes, excess actions, trimming fat in every possible way. Chandler's method seems to turn the story from a draft into a sort of outline-slash-haiku/tone poem (draft 1.5?). From these bones he built the novel back up.

It's radical stuff. The very idea gave me a happy little shiver.

I've got a novel marinating right now (first draft written at full throttle, second as carefully honed as the finest razor's edge) that might be a good candidate for this method. Or, I'll end up tearing out a few dreds before deciding it's not for me!

For every artist, a method...

Take What You Like and Leave the Rest

As a martial arts student, I tried a little of everything I could get my hands on. Some of it suited me better than others. I took what seemed useful and politely left the rest.

When I decided to get serious about writing, I did the same thing. For Avery, here's what I got from Robert McKee.

Robert McKee teaches screenwriting, and does a fine job of it. His book, STORY, is one fine in-depth analysis of the nature and power of drama and our modern concept of, well, story. I heartily recommend it, though maybe I shouldn't be *quite* so hearty. My copy's been passed from hand to hand around Christchurch on the strength of those recommendations...

McKee's a big believer in the beat: A beat is a decision a character has to make. Usually, this is in conflict (even if its subtext) with another character. The beats build until a crisis point is reached and resolved. That's a scene.

Scenes build, one on top of another, until a major turning point is reached. That's an act. Three acts is standard, but use as many or as few as the story itself needs.

This is harder than I thought without the book handy...

Basically, the story is the hero's evolution through crisis. Rick, going from 'I stick my neck out for no one' to shooting a Nazi in front of the chief of police. John McCain, confused and adrift in a failing marriage -- until the bad guys take over the skyscraper. Sophie's wild, excstatic dance with death, begun with a choice in Poland years before...

Stories are about characters pushed into places they don't want to be and the decisions they make when they get there. And yeah, it always gets worse before it's all over.

I sucked that stuff up like a sponge. Love those ideas. His working method... It didn't work for me, but what the hey. Maybe it will for you.

First, write no scenes. No dialogue. No cool, atmospheric openings. Don't.

Instead, get a stack of 3x5 cards. A BIIIIG stack. Jot little notes on them. Bits of the story as they occur. Try to start big and go small. You're listening for the beat. It's usually easier to find the big beats than the little ones.

Pretty much, do a step by step outline of your plot. You work out who your characters are, discover their conflicts, know where and how the story moves and make sure its tight. Expect a very tall stack of cards, or one very full corkboard. All you outlinin' folks know what I'm talking about, I'm sure.

Then, and this is where McKee 'got jiggy with it' (to use the slang of theYouth of Today), put the cards aside. No chapter one yet, no chapter anything. Resist the temptation.

Instead, write a treatment. One page, maybe two, covering the story in that stack of cards. yes, you have to shave off a whole lot of subtext, backstory, and nuance. Lose it. One page. Maybe two.

Then, when you've got that treatment done, sit a few friends down and ask for five minutes of their time. Pitch them your story. Watch them as they listen. You're looking for that electric moment when the story catches them. That 'ooooh' factor.

No 'ooh', either rework your treatment or ditch your story. Go start on another one. All you're out is the outlining time.

I can see some real benefit to this. All of us only have the time to write a certain number of stories. They might as well be the good ones. This would save one the effort of spending a year or more on a bad book.

Also, come time to write query letters and such, you'd be the kid in class who wrote your term paper the first day of Christmas vacation: smug and at ease.

I imagine this is much how Candice writes. Pitching synopses to her editors and getting the book picked up based on the successful pitches.

It's a great idea. My problem is that by the time I've got the plot outline done, the actual writing isn't all that interesting to me. And fleshing the characters out more fully in the writing process, I find them doing all sorts of things that deviate from the outline. It's exciting and fun, but it sort of defeats the purpose of outlining in the first place...

Wordy post. I'll go out on a joke: