Attribution

So I noticed something on my latest WiP (working titles A Madman's Mercy or Wrecking Ball): I'm most of the way through Act I and there's not a single bit of dialogue attribution. No 'he said' or 'she said', let alone 'whispered', 'shouted', 'muttered', 'growled' or any of the rest of it. It was an odd thing to notice.

This wasn't a conscious decision. I mean, I have definitely been moving away from the attributive excesses of my early work. In its recent rewrite, my first novel lost over eight thousand words of useless attributions alone. In the beginning, I was absolutely said-happy!

I certainly reined that impulse in early on, and apparently the process continues. These days I'm favoring what I call stage-business attribution:

"The fat man promised us Christmas off." Jackson's fingers brushed the butt of his gun. "We always get Christmas off."
"You want to be the one to tell him?"
"Shit, I look like I got a death wish?"

It's a way of sneaking in character, mood, tension, layers of extra meaning, whatever the scene needs right then, and I don't have to bother with said.

Try these:

"The fat man promised us Christmas off," Jackson said. "We always get Christmas off."
"You want to be the one to tell him?"
"Shit, I look like I got a death wish?"

and:

"The fat man promised us Christmas off," Jackson said. His fingers brushed the butt of his gun. "We always get Christmas off."
"You want to be the one to tell him?"
"Shit, I look like I got a death wish?"

Now, this is all down to individual style, but for me that second one (just using 'said') still delivers the 'punch line' at "death wish", but these could be Wal-Mart employees for all we know. The third does up the tension and the stakes with the gun, but it's just that teensy bit more flabby than the first example.

And I do try to keep my work lean.

Occurs to me now as I type, two of my recent Kindle-reads were No Country for Old Men and The Postman Always Rings Twice. Written forty or fifty years apart, in neither work will you find a single instance of 'he said'. The voices are clear and easy to distinguish, and if I found myself a bit lost for a moment, I usually caught up with a line or two more of dialogue...

Just thought I'd share. :)

Subtle Tools

My last post was about characterization. I used cinematic examples, something I often do because the odds are better that you've all seen the same movies than that you've read the same books. Unfortunately, I feel that I managed to snare myself a little bit there.

You see, talking about movies, it's too easy to fall into the visual language of film. Too easy to overlook some of the novelist's finest tools.

Sure, there are some things movies do that books can't. The best car chases I've ever read (all by George Pelecanos, as it happens) still struggle to compare to the average Hollywood action movie. And the fine fight scenes of John D MacDonald, Joe R Lansdale, John Connolly or Lee Child still don't compare to the adrenalin rush of watching Jason Bourne, Daniel Craig's Bond or Jet Li.

Movies do visual. They do it well, brilliantly even. But that is also Hollywood's weakness: they can only put an image on the screen.

Novelists have a wonderful array of much, much more subtle tools at their disposal.

I'll use the former example of a 'Clark Kent' character, someone who may seem mild on the outside but the reader is to understand possesses hidden depths.

Thoughts: It may seem too obvious, but we do have the power to let our readers in on our characters' thoughts. Way back when, mild-mannered Clark might have thought, "Janet doesn't suspect that I am Secret Heroman, the one she seeks." These days, it's more fashionable and effective to have another character give that information to the reader:

Janet watched Clark move around the room. He always came off like a big shaggy dog, sort of clumsy and sweet, but Janet was never able to escape the sense that Clark was a steel trap, coiled and ready to spring.

Now, no matter what a dishrag Clark is over the next few chapters, we'll still have that little seed in the back of our minds. And notice that in addition to moving into another character's head for the thoughts, I also didn't present those thoughts as dialogue.

Small Reactions: Movies do a pretty fair job with the big reactions, and a particularly gifted actor can express a wide array of subtle emotions just by lifting an eyebrow. But a filmmaker cannot be sure of getting their star of choice, or of the shot they want. And there's no guarantee the folks in the seats will see interpret that raised eyebrow the right way, or even notice it. With prose, we can isolate these expressions and make sure the reader knows what it means.

Janet's eyes narrowed. That car had come within inches of hitting them, and Clark didn't seem to care. Her own heart was racing, her breath short. Clark was cool and calm, quiet and poised. Almost bored.

"That maniac could have killed us," he said.

We know how we would react to a minor crisis like a near hit and run. Clark's unusual reaction, and Janet's careful appraisal, plant that crucial seed. Also, her more normal reactions are there for contrast.

Outright Exposition: This tool isn't subtle, but one of our strengths as novelists is the length of story that we have to work with. Every second of screen-time in a movie costs a small fortune, quite a bit more than a page of print.

"You stand around there, looking all sleepy and slow and not too bright, but you don't fool me." The old man shook his head and laughed. "I was there that night the Jonas brothers showed up drunk and high and God knows what else. They were pure tearing the hell out of the place, and you just stood there like a big dope watching. Right up until those boys laid a hand on Miss Polly."

This time the old man laughed until he coughed, and he coughed until he spat, thin and brown.

"I was there, boy. You can't fool me."

John D MacDonald used this one a fair bit. Yeah, it sidetracks us from the narrative. Yeah, there are more economical ways to drop this hint. So what. You make it entertaining enough and your readers will be too busy imagining what happened that night with the Jonas brothers to notice that they were sidelined.

Environment: This one's great fun. You get to be all poetical and stuff. Basically, you take some quality of the environment or element of the natural world and juxtapose it against your character to make a point.

"The wallet, dickhead. Give it." The gun in the mugger's hand was a little block of chrome, no bigger than a child's toy. To Janet the barrel looked as wide as the Holland Tunnel.

It was a beautiful summer day in the park. Children played on the swings, students threw a frisbee on the lawn and an urban hawk wheeled overhead, still and slow.

Clark stood. He held his hands low and out to his sides.

"You hear me, dickhead? The wallet."

Janet thought she might wet her pants. If the gun in the mugger's hand bothered Clark, he gave no sign. His eyes moved from the children to the students and back to the man with the gun. He pulled a flat square of dark leather from his front pocket. The hawk's shadow glided over the grass at his feet.

The mugger grabbed the wallet and ran. Janet bent over, knees shaking. Tears rose hot and shameful, blinding her.

"Goddammit, Clark, why couldn't you do something? God damn it!"

Clark said nothing. The hawk plummeted, a dark shadow out of the blue sky, seizing its prey.

James Lee Burke is really the master at this. His latest book features a brilliant scene in which a mild-seeming man confronts an underworld figure. The man's words are quiet, his manner assured. On the far side of the picture window, a shark menaces a group of swimmer's. The hitman's true nature, and the danger he represents are clear.

There are probably a few more I could think of, but right about now I need to be getting back to the ol' novel...

Joke

About a year ago (or was it two? They all blend together sometimes), I was fortunate enough to hear a talk by crime writer Mark Billingham. For those of you who don't know, Mark is an actor, stand-up comic and bestselling crime writer. It wasn't surprising that his talk was entertaining, funny and on point.

Something he said stuck with me. More accurately, his remark bounced around in the back of my head for eleven-and-something months until it finally hit me in the bath tonight. And the nature of this wonder comment?

A murder mystery is like a joke. In both cases, the storyteller sets up a situation, carefully leads the audience down a false path only to deliver a big twist at the end. We know we're being duped, and we go along willingly, happily even! That gap between expectation and delivery touches some deep and primal sense of human enjoyment.

With a joke, the gap is a twist of words ('Nope, I'm a frayed knot'), of situation ('Shut up and keep swimming') or perception ('But this one's eating my popcorn!'). With a mystery, the twist is finding out who the *real* killer is, and why. In both cases, the storyteller is deliberately lying to the audience, and the audience is happy to go along with the lie.

The full truth of this finally occurred to me tonight. Call me slow, but there you are. :)

One further insight: I realized I also structure my chapters this way. I'm just coming up to the end of a chapter, and the cliffhanger-y, suspense-y note I decided to go out on is also something of a punchline-- a small reveal that shows the situation is not what the reader thought.

You see, story is a protagonist wanting something, and being frustrated in the getting. Each scene plays out need, action and frustrated desire. And as part of that old adage 'Enter late, leave early', I try to leave scenes at unexpected moments and in unexpected ways.

(And yes, I am feeling rather well rested at the moment: last night I fell away from the earth for eight or nine solid hours. Like a switch being thrown, it was though for a few short hours I ceased to exist...)

Making Passes

Last night, the printer chugged out the first printed copy of BURIED. I started work in August, finished the first draft shortly before Halloween, and just now, *finally* am ready to turn the damn thing over to The Tiny Dynamo and the Beta Readers (they're down in the basement right now, practicing MoTown covers).

So what did I do in the last five months? Well, I moved house, made a couple of *very* drastic changes to my day job, and suffered the usual assortment of pains and ills to which all flesh is heir.

I also did something like eight drafts of my novel.

You see, the post One Leg at a Time No Longer marked a new direction for me in my approach to writing. I wanted to write more like the way I draw. So I started with a basic idea. Then I 'scribbled' my way through a rough outline. My big concern there was plots and subplots and their turning points.

Then I sat down and wrote the damn thing. Took ten, maybe eleven weeks. Freakin' paradise.

That was my first pass. To me, it was like moving from a loose sketch to tight pencils. And the same as I'll take my drawing, scrub the whole thing down with an eraser and go in again, I took my novel and started making pass after pass, tightening with every step.

They are, in order:

Just the Facts, Ma'am: I read through checking and correcting. What time *would* it be in France at that point? How *does* one say 'fuck off' in Thai? Is that character named Marjory or Mabel? Pick one!

Also at this point, I'm scanning along for weak spots, sore places, obvious bruising in the story. I'll be back for those later.

The Hero's Head: Two things about the way I write: I often don't know my characters very well when I start, and I like action. By the end of the book, I'll know my hero (heroine, in this case) much better than at the beginning, but I'll tend to be light on Sequel.

This pass, I hunted for things the hero wouldn't have said, things she wouldn't have done, etc. I also made sure I took the time to let the reader know where she was going and why.

Plant and Payoff: This pass really deserves its own blog post. It also might have been better done second instead of third, but I was just too itchy to go back and straighten out some of the hero's wrong steps early on. Basically, anything you need later in the book, you need to plant early. We've all heard that if there's a gun on the mantelpiece in Act I, it damn well better go off in Act III. Well, it works in reverse, too.

This pass is about realizing you had gunfire in Act III and going back to put the gun on the mantel...

Mustache Twirling: That's right, the villain gets his own pass, too. This meant going through the novel with an eye out for nothing but the villain. Sometimes I'd pretend I was a Famous Asshole Actor who cared nothing about the script as a whole, only about my part.

Writing this pass, I focused on the villain's introduction, motivations, what they're doing when I can't see them onstage, that kind of stuff. This needs to be done for each and every major character, and sometimes for the minor ones.

And since in this story the hero is surrounded by MANY hostile forces, each villain (and a few who seemed bad but weren't) got his own draft. I made five separate passes to give the devils their due.

Better, Faster, Stronger: Remember those weak spots, bruised places, dead areas I spotted in my second run-through? Last thing I did was to go through the work and take a long hard look at any that were left.

You see, by the time I'd focused on the hero, then the plants and payoffs, then all the villains and major characters, a great many of those 'bad areas' had been cleared up.

Of course, the ones that were left were thorny as hell. I kept at it every day, and it gradually came together. Might've gone faster with more hours spent, but I'm not complaining.

Now the readers will start in. I'll discover that Mabel is unexpectedly Marjorie (because the Find/Replace missed that one). That the hero oddly stood a moment in the moonlight in the middle of the afternoon. That I didn't do enough to explain why anyone would put a live snake down their pants.

Before Agent Anne gets it, there will be another pass...

Mmmm, Turkey

In what is becoming something of a tradition, I present Steve's Third Annual How-Not-to-Write Revisit of the Turkey City Lexicon.

A few of the rules are specifically geared toward Science Fiction and Fantasy writers, but there's plenty there for all of us.

And as a bit of mashed potatoes and stuffing, or perhaps cranberries and pumpkin pie, here are a few more helpful tips on Bad Words, the Look of the Thing and the Heirarchy of Sloth...

And, for that cold leftover-turkey sandwich two hours after you were sure your stomach would explode but now you're hungry again, I give you some Scooby Don'ts.

Bon Appetit!




That's right, it's a clip show....

Saggy Middles

As the ab-tastic Olympics wind down and one's WiP races to its Act I climax, a young man's thoughts turn naturally to the Great Saggy Middle.

You've got a great idea. You've got a slam-bang opening, and a slam-bang way to end your story. But somewhere between the first 50 pages and the last 50 pages, writers have a tendency to get lost. Plotting can get heavy and bog down. Characters get lost and wander aimlessly. That slam-bang finish might lay somewhere on the far side of this swamp, but will the story ever get there?

I think in part, the Great Saggy Middle is a difficulty with infatuation. A lot of folks think they have a book in them (usually way too autobiographical and way too derivative of their influences, but that's another story) and sit down one quiet night to FINALLY WRITE. They start in a big rush of emotion and excitement, because the start of a new book is emotional. And it's exciting.

More accurately, it's infatuating. And infatuation wears off. For most, that means a 50 or 100 page fragment in a drawer somewhere, never to be spoken of again. For those of us with more stubborn than sense, it means 'holding on when there is nothing in you, except the Will which says... "Hold on.!"'

It means we have to get through the Big Middle.

To that end, here are a few tricks I've cribbed from books and movies. As always here at Full Throttle Productions, take what you like and leave the rest...

1) Subplot Climax: To help cover that wide stretch between Act I and Act II, bring one or more subplots to a climax. The resolution of the Daniel Cleaver subplot in Bridget Jones is a good example, as is Jim Carrey's realization that he's a bad father in Liar Liar. Or Darth Vader putting a swift end to Han and Leiah's plans in Empire.

2) Tentpole Action: Putting a big, vivid, splashy bit of action or sex or excitement in the middle can provide a useful distraction. James Lee Burke often throws a colorful psycho or two at Dave Robicheaux right around the middle of the book, and many a pulp writer found a good reason for a fistfight to smooth the way through. The bar Shaft is in gets machine-gunned in the original (and still the baddest) version. The protagonist in High Fidelity has a sexual encounter that keeps his journey back through his exes from turning tedious, and in Ilsa leaves Rick as the Nazis conquer Paris in Casablanca.

(For those of you with more lowbrow tastes, y'ever notice the standard gratuitous sex scene happens just about halfway through every cheap 80's action movie? Just sayin'.)

Sometimes, these big splashes can form a mini-story of their own, complete with setup, complication, climax and denoument. Casablanca's a good example, as the trash-compactor scene in Star Wars.

3) Local Color: A variation on using action to distract, but with a vivid personality instead. Just trot somebody exciting or fun on stage, maybe have a joke or fun story.

My all-time favorite example of this is Mike Yanagita in FARGO. The guy's weird, random, funny, sad and creepy all at once. He practially steals the show, and he definitely distracts from the fact that Marge really doesn't do much in her time in the Twin Citites.

4) Multi-Act: Instead of trying to successfully navigate across three acts, your story may be better told in four, five, six or more acts. There are two ways to do this:

Set up a mess of subplots and set about resolving them. Quentin Tarentino does this in Kill Bill, as the Bride works her way down her laundry list of funeral-candidates. (Pulp Fiction *sort of* does this too, with seperate vignettes jumping back and forth in time, each supporting a theme of second chances, but Tarantino likes to get complicated with structure.) Four Weddings and a Funeral has five sets of relationships to resolve on its way to hooking up the sixth.

One goal, many discrete obstacles. In The Quick Red Fox, Travis Mcgee pursues his quest through something like five acts, each as important as the last. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indy does much the same thing. In pre-Daniel Craig days, the silver-screen James Bond often chased his villains all over the show.

In fact, the multi-act structure seems to work well with pursuit/quest stories. Anybody care to count the acts in Lord of the Rings?

For that matter, Shakespeare liked a five-act structure, too. His way of keeping the story from developing a Great Saggy Middle was to keep reversing the main plot. (Those kids won't get together. Wait, they might. No, they won't! Yes, they WILL! Oh wait, they're both dead.)

Anybody think of any I've missed?

And let's see... we're here at Day 16 of BURIED, and the Full-Throttle Daily-Wordcount-o-Meter stands at 17,100 words. This pleases me.

Lazy, Frustrated Action

Working on the new effort (BURIED), I notice one of the problems I had in the first draft of the last effort. As always, it got me thinking...

1st Principle of Action: Humans are lazy creatures. We don't want to work harder than we have to, even in pursuit of our heart's desires.

Or, in the words of the Red Dragon from BONE, "Never play an Ace when a two will do."

Every single character in your story, no matter their goal, will start by doing the least action to get the job done, as perceived by that character. To pump a guy for information, a barmaid might flirt. An affable detective might tell a disarming story about his wife's cooking while a hard-ass cop might start with 'you want to go to jail'. Marv from SIN CITY starts interrogating a hitman with a stab wound in the gut and the promise that death will be swift. For each of these, this is the quickest, simplest way to get the information they want. (In Marv's case, what's the point slapping a tough guy around for hours and making promises you both know aren't true?)

2nd Principle of Action: These actions will be frustrated. At least, they will unless you want the shortest, boringest (yes, boringest-- it's cromulent) story ever told. 'I tried something aand it worked' simply isn't a story.

Girl likes Boy. Girl casts shy glance at Boy in halls at school. Boy stops, asks Girl out. They date. The END.

Even The Little Engine That Could had more conflict and interest than that. Those first actions cannot succeed. If Boy walks past like Girl doesn't exist, she's going to have to do something else. You've got something started.

3rd Principle of Action: Action escalates. Both 12-steppers and business-seminar types agree, repeating unsuccessful actions is the very definition of insanity. I'm not sure I'd go quite that far, but it sure will kill your story dead.

Your characters want their goals, and they want them badly. Badly enough to do whatever it takes to reach them. In real life, we may take a few hesitant passes at shallow goals and quit. Those aren't the days you tell the grandkids about. 'Let me tell you about the time I joined a gym and went for three weeks' doesn't pack nearly the punch of 'Let me tell you about the time I avenged the death of the only person who was ever kind to me,' or even 'I remember when I was your age, I was crazy about this boy...'

As each action is frustrated, your character will make a harder, more difficult effort (as perceived by that character) to reach that goal. In comedy, those actions lead to farce. In action, to bigger and rougher fights. In drama, to difficult choices. And, of course, there's no reason a story can't be any combination of these, even all three.

But I digress. The point is, your character (heroes as well as villains) will keep plugging.

Boy ignores Girl's shy glances. She tells a friend, hoping to do that my-friend-likes-you thing. The friend likes him too and lies about Boy's rejection. Girl follows Boy, trying to figure out how to MAKE Boy like her. This creeps Boy out.

Will Girl get a makeover? Dive deep into Boy's favorite hobby so they have a common interest? Drink too much and make an ass of herself at a party? I don't know, not my story. But you can bet whatever she does, it'll top the last thing.

4th Principle of Action: In the immortal words of Less Than Jake, It Gets Worse Before It's All Over.

Your poor bastards are going to be stumped, stymied, blocked at every turn. Their best efforts sweep them farther and farther from their heartfelt desires. The poor, shy Girl gets teased for being creepy. Her lying-ass friend spreads cruel rumors. Boy thinks she's a stalker. Faced with rumors of stalking and possible Columbine-behavior, (how big of a bitch IS that friend, anyway?) school counselors get involved, and Girl is suspended.

How is she going to get Boy? I don't know, but you can bet she's going to have to dig deep, and do something she never would have though possible at the story's start.

It's going to be a time to tell the grandkids about...

Day 9: The Full-Throttle Daily Wordcount-O-Meter stands at 10,500 words.

On track and, actually, not working too hard. We'll see how I feel in Act II...

Conflict and the PPK

Not that kind of PPK. Sure got your attention, though, didn't it?

I seem to be growing heavy with book once again, so my thoughts seem to be turning more and more to craft. And the ways craft goes wrong.

Conflict is the heart of story. It's the heart of life. From cradle to grave, we fight. We compete for attention, for resources, for love. We fight to be better people. Even given everything we could ever possibly want, we quest for the next challenge.

Small wonder that every moment in your story should contain conflict.

Every. Moment.

The only reason to have two characters in a scene together is if they want different things. Enemies, sure. Detectives and suspects or star-crossed lovers, of course. But even best friends, if they're going to share a scene together, will have goals at odds with each other.

Since I'm reading them at the moment, take Travis McGee. He and his best friend Meyer share one of the most memorable friendships in literature. But notice how often Travis is motivated by anger at the preditors and Meyer is hanging along because he's concerned about his friend. In most of their conversations, Travis's goal is get Meyer to help think up a way to get the bastards. Meyer's goal is keep Travis from going off the deep end or help my broken friend to heal.

Early on, McGee's main buddy is the Alabama Tiger. They're close enough for the Tiger to lend Travis a speedboat in The Deep Blue Good-by, yet the Tiger never once shows up on the page. Why? No conflict. As drawn, the Alabama Tiger's needs are simple: booze and women. He has both on his boat, hence no need to leave. And no way to meaningfully interact with the tormented, hedonistic half-hearted Puritan, that reluctant hero Travis McGee.

Or consider Itchy and Scratchy. Remember when Marge got to make them 'just get along'?
EXT./DAY, a front porch.
Itchy and Scratchy rock together on the porch, a pitcher of lemonade on a table between them.

SCRATCHY: Lemonade, Itchy?
ITCHY: Thanks, Scratchy.

THE END

Any conflict-free moment in your book is just PPK: a Pointless Pace Killer. Dead weight. It doesn't matter how prettily it's written, a moment without conflict isn't worth the paper to print it.

This doesn't just count for moments between characters. This is also the *real* reason that we don't spend pages watching characters brush their teeth, pee, balance their checkbooks, etc.

No. Conflict.

Two apparent exceptions actually serve to prove the rule.

Lonely Tension: this lovely heroine is all alone on those slippery stone steps. Even though I painted this, I don't know where she's going, or why, or what she'll find when she gets there. The point is, her lonely midnight walk is fraught with tension. Like any burglar prowling a night-dark hall, or a lonely and bored housewife eyeing the sherry, the tension between the apparent quiet and the understood threat is a form of conflict.

Sequel: Lots of writers set their heroes alone with some stage business to get through the stages of sequel. A character may flyfish in an icy river, or sweat on a treadmill or do repairs on a houseboat as stage-business for sequel. But remember, sequel is emotions and thoughts, options and a choice. It's about frustrated desire and a fresh plan of attack. And that's a product of inner conflict.

***

SQT raised a good point in the comments: what about moments of apparently idle comaraderie? She cited John Sanford's detective novels, but other such scenes abound in literature-- the protagonist just sort of hanging out, shooting the shit with a buddy or two. What gives?

Three possible reasons come to mind:

1) Act II Bump: One way to keep that Big Middle of the tale from going all soggy is to introduce a bit of random color as distraction: a vivid but pointless character (think Mike Yamagita from FARGO), an exciting activity (Freefall in Crimson features a hot-air balloon ride) or mysterious encounter (Dean Koontz loves to use slightly unearthly animals) or a good story (Andrew Vachss uses examples either humorous or harrowing). My first guess is, if you look at the place Sanford's funny stories appear, they'll come right when the second act needs a little bump.

2) Pointful Pace Killer: Every now and then, a storyteller will have a *reason* to kill the pace of their story. That random color in Act II might be one example of this, though I feel that use of color should still serve the general tone of the story. Otherwise, you may have a plot hole that needs patching, or a 'natural' break in the pace that needs glossing over.

For instance, your sleuth's quest for the truth is faltering, but a big break falls in her lap. To keep the break in logical progression from being too jarring, you throw a little misdirection at the reader. Disney does this all the time with their song-and-dance numbers, and therein lies the danger: those numbers are boooooring.

3) Indulgence: Then, as now, some writers got away with any darned shortcomings they cared to. Everyone makes money, but once editors fear to alter, it's the stories that suffer.

Scooby Don'ts

Remember Scooby, Shaggy and the gang, solving mysteries every week? Well, it seems there are a few writers out there who never forgot our dear friends and their psychedelic Mystery Machine.

Charles Gramlich did an interesting post recently on reading bad fiction. It got me thinking about the relative value of learning from good fiction (inspirational!) to learning from bad (a, well, different kind of inspiration, I guess), when I realized that everything I might learn from reading crap fiction, I learned watching Scooby Doo!

1. Graceful Exposition: Now, we all need to lay a little pipe here and there, to set the stakes (or reiterate them), to fill the reader in on PERTINENT background, or to set the scene. To see how to do this gracefully, read Cold in the Light: Charles reveals detail gradually, as needed. He does this naturally, in conversations. When deep background is needed, he brings in a character whose LIFE DEPENDS on being filled in. The stakes raise, and we learn more.

By contrast, how often did Velma start the show with things like, "Gee, it sure is dark out here in the forest at night." or "Jinkies, Shaggy, I'm sure there's nothing to these rumours about a haunted mineshaft."

Then again, they were all so stoned, they thought the dog could talk...

2. Mystery: A good mystery has more than one suspect. I believe I was four by the time I figured out that it was ALWAYS the creepy old man.

3. Suspence: Not every story has to be a whodunnit. Or in Scooby's case, a What-dunnit (psst! before you call an exorcist, check out the creepy old man...), but an element of suspence is, shall we say, desirable. Highly desirable. Even in a romantic comedy.

Actually, Scooby and the gang weren't too bad at this. I mean, yeah, I was a kid, but those ghosts flying down the mineshaft/across the graveyard/over the fog-shrouded docks, with their blazing eyes and unearthly howls... Yeah.

Except...

4. Rational Action: You're dealing with a Terror From Beyond the Grave, or else some delusional and possibly violent madman (after all, he's already hoping to scare you death- the hatchet might be next!), what's a rational course of action? Some sort of trap involving electric fans, 10,000 rubber bands and a lot of feathers, of course!

Now, Scooby Doo was farce, and in farce your characters can be assinine. Look at all those Comedia del'Arte plays where the young man doesn't recognize his own sister because she has a *teeeensy* little mask on, or that his page these many years is actually a REALLY HOT CHICK with her hair up under a hat. Like I said, farce, that sort of thing is allowable (within its own set of rules, of course), but ANYWHERE ELSE, your heroes (and villains, please God the villains) Must. Act. Rationally.

And last...

A Powerful Climax: Remember being little? Remember when those howling Terrors From Beyond the Grave were so scary in the first twenty minutes of the show? I was left alone once watching Scooby Doo, just a little feller. My folks weren't gone more than ten minutes (trip to the donut shop, back in the days before children lived their entire childhoods on permanent lockdown), but by the time they got back I was shaking in terror. What if the ghost was here? In the apartment? Was that a noise?

No need to worry about me wandering off, or fucking with the stove. I was too rigid with fear to move!

That's what a strong First Act can do. Now, remember how you felt when that Dread Spectre turned out to be a seventy-two year old man in a bedsheet? On roller skates? When his unearthly howl came from tissue on a comb?

My sense of betrayal knew no bounds.

That is what a crappy climax can do. Even as a child, I hated the sell-out wusses at Hanna Barbara. yeah, I know now that they were bowing to pressure from the network, who were bowing to pressure from the advertisers, who were running in terror of every purse-mouthed, sexually-repressed, bitter old lady whose one great pleasure in life was finding Satan on a jar of peanut butter.

But, dammit, they messed up the STORY. They took away the end. And for the audience, the audience who've stayed with you from page one, messing up the end is the worst, the absolute WORST thing you can do.

(Oh, one more thing. These points, all are actual reasons I've dropped books in the last few weeks. Some of them, I dropped with extreme prejudice...)

Shady Pasts and Fifty-Three Tangled Blue Words

We live in an age of economical storytelling. Wherever you can, let your readers fill in the gaps. Instead of pausing each character in front of a mirror (*shudder*), just tell us he's tall and dark, she's short, with gray eyes. And for heaven's sakes, give us as little history as possible!

I've seen this a fair bit recently in my reading, and I've been ruthlessly pruning it in my editing: characters with a compulsion to provide detailed histories upon introduction. Sure, it's customary in opera, Elizabethan theatre and superhero comics for a new hero or villain to take a moment, leave the action, step down to the front of the stage and wax eloquent about their origins, hopes, dreams and how they came to be in this place at this time.

And in those stylized, hermetic worlds, this works. Kinda.

Modern storytelling? Not so much.

I put three books down this week because they introduced a dark and mysterious protagonist, only to have him/her spill their whole history before page fifty. Oddly, it dimished the heroes and heroines in my eyes: the pasts on the page weren't as interesting as the pasts I'd imagined!

Take two great mysterious strangers: Shane and Rick the American.

Shane's just passing through. The man's trouble, and he looks it. The boy's dad runs him off at gunpoint, and the rancher's thugs don't dare mess with him. And this is *before* he pulls his sidearm out of storage!

What do we know about Shane? He's a restless man, always on the move. He's a gunslinger, disenchanted by the violent nature that's always so close to the surface of his actions. He's got the hots for the boy's mom but respects the boy's dad. And he knows there's no place in their peaceful world for men like him.

These four facts drive a great story. Jack Schaefer's prose is lean and hard. In the face of the boy's (and our) questions, Shane's silence about his own history makes him compelling.

Rick doesn't even have a last name. He's just Rick the American, owner of a North African nightclub and a man who 'sticks his neck out for no one'. His past is shady and mysterious: all we get from the Gestapo's file is that he was a gunrunner who backed the good guys, even when they lost.

We don't need Rick's history. We need his present. If you ask me, Casablanca would be even better without that damn Paris flashback: it stops the action dead to tell us what we already know. When Ilsa walks into that bar, Rick's reaction is all the history we need.

Now imagine alternate drafts of those two stories.

Imagine Shane casually mentioning (a sequel told over some farmwork-y stage business) that he grew up on a little farm Back East, but that he ran away at sixteen to join the Marines. He served tours in Okinawa and the Phillipinnes, learned a little judo or karate (he uses oriental martial arts in the novel), won a few medals for marksmanship. After he mustered out, he spent a few years signing on for whoever paid. After a bad experience, he put that life behind him. Now he's wandering West, maybe to homestead a little place outside of Spokane, etc. etc. etc.

Or Rick, chatting to Louis about how he's from Ohio. Used to sell insurance, until he caught his wife cheating on him. After that the Spanish Civil War looked good, but a bad bout of influenza kept him out of action. He could still serve by running guns, though...

Two. Dead. Characters.

Those sequels, no matter how well written, add nothing to the story at hand. They actually take away from it! You've turned your exotic strangers with the mysterious pasts into a couple of schlubs! And it's not just the action/thrillers, either.

The Breakup dies right at the opening. 'Meet cute' in the baseball stadium, photo montage of the relationship, open with That Fateful Night. The dinner and its leadup where written well. The photos were inoffensive. But the meet? Not cute enough. And unnecessary. Too much history. Without that scene, we would have imagined something LOTS better.

You can pull this stunt and get published. The three books I dropped this week are proof of that. Thing is, your story will be better if you concentrate on the story. Not the events leading up to the story, but the story itself. Where you do need the past (and let's face it, you do need some past), be as economical as possible.

Take a cue from master storyteller Bob Dylan:

She was married when we first met, soon to be divorced.

I helped her out of a jam I guess, but I used a little too much force.

We drove that car as far as we could, abandoned it out west...

Split up on the docks that night, both agreeing it was best.

A whole novel's worth of story. Romance. Violence. Fugitives on the open road. The sorrow of loss.

Told in four lines. Fifty-three words.

Size Matters

I've had this conversation three times in two weeks, so I figure it's worth a blog post.

You've just written a novel. That long hard slog is over, and now you're ready for the next stage: agents and publishers.

Size is different when you're writing. I spend my first draft in three stages:

1. Do I have enough here for a novel?

2. Will this damn thing never end?

3. Aargh, everything's happening so fast! I hope it doesn't end too soon!

Writing, your novel is an artistic creation. Written, it's a product. And to sell your product, it needs to be 70,000 to 120,000 words. Oh, and those are outer limits. The closer you get to 85-100,000 words, the better your chances.

Why? Imagine you're a reader, shopping in a bookstore: A title by an unknown author catches your eye. You pick it up off the shelf.

If the book is 120 pages, with blank sheets between chapters and REALLY BIG PRINT, you're not going to pay full price for it.

If the book by the newbie is 790 pages of tiny dense type, with a sticker price twice the titles around it, you'll probably pass.

Fact is, most readers will only take a punt on a new author if the book is a respectable 250-350 pages, and the price is in line with other titles on the shelf. There are other reasons relating to printing costs and such, but it all boils down to publishers wanting to entice our future fans and make a few dollars for themselves and you in the process.

Length varies a bit by genre, too. Fantasy and historical fiction are generally more sympathetic to the high end of the spectrum, crime and thrillers to the low end. And yeah, there are exceptions. There are always exceptions, but you're more likely to be published if you don't run around forcing people to make an exception for you.

So your work doesn't fit? Have no fear, Full Throttle help is here!

Too short? Your grand novel ends at just over 40,000 words? You can't chop it into a short story and the market for novellas is dry, dry dry?

Don't Pad: The first impulse is usually to pad your story out. You know, introduce some worthy thoughts and musings from your viewpoint character, maybe a little philosophy, or a lecture on the inner workings of the four-barrel carburator from the friendly mechanic.

Do. Not. Do. This. Padding always smells like padding, and it don't smell good. No no no nononono. No.

Do:

Reread your work. Have you gone from scene to sequel, scene to sequel? Have you given each their proper due? You may find that by the time you give these elements their proper due, you're up to a reasonable length. You may also find yourself plugging some plot holes.

Consider a subplot. Especially one that relates to the main plot. Say your marshall has to make the decision to face the gang of outlaws coming on the noon train. Why not introduce a deputy who should probably stand with him but makes a different decision, turning coward instead? Why not look at the outlaw's old girlfriend and the decision *she* makes?

You can do it!

More likely, your brand new magnum opus is a gentle giant. My first, 'training', novel (a pretty straightforward thriller) wandered out of its first draft at 160,000 words! My first cruel edit reduced this to 140,000, but eventual diet and exercise got that tale down to a lean 92,000.

How do you do it?

Eliminate:

That. Most unnecessary bloody word in English. Do a global delete of every 'that' in your document and then add the three or four that absolutely need to be there back in.

Said. ANYWHERE the reader has a good idea who's talking, wipe out dialogue attribution. The savings can be mighty.

Then. I beg your pardon. That is *not* the most unnecessary word in English. Then is.

Up and Down. Again, useless. 'He looked at her' is just as good as 'He looked down at her.'

For more takeaways, read this post on unnecessary language, and this advice from lean style-master Elmore Leonard.

Long description. Long explanation. Any of those long bits readers tend to skim. If you write sf/f, consider deleting those 'world-explanations'. Just drop your reader in the world and let them pick it up as the tale rolls. Jim Butcher, Charles DeLint, CJ Cherryh and Neil Gaiman all rock at this.

Done all that and you're still too long? Put on your aprons and goggles, dear writer. It starts to get bloody...

Amputate. Take a good look at your subplots. Say goodbye to one. Slice it out. No one but you will know...

Split. Maybe you have two stories. Or three. Or six. Just make sure the first one stands alone.

When he first wrote LA Confidential, James Ellroy had a few modest-selling titles to his credit. He turned in a manuscript that was insanely long. So long that his publisher wouldn't touch it. Everyone agreed it was a good story, but they'd have gone broken printing it.

Arguments ensued. At one point, Ellroy says to his agent, "What's he want me to do, take out all the 'a's, 'the's, and 'but's? That'd shorten it up."

Lightbulb: on. Ellroy's style: born. Final book: 512 pages.

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...

Lest We Forget

For the first time in almost a decade, I'll be celebrating Thanksgiving. You see, not only is the fourth Thursday in November not a holiday here, unlike the US, a mammoth bird doesn't sell for $10-20. Oh, no. No, no no no.... A turkey that would have an American family giving you evil looks, here in New Zealand that bad boy goes for over sixty bucks!

At those prices, once a decade will probably suit me. :-)

At any rate, in honor of the approaching holiday, let's all revisit the Turkey City Lexicon. Solid, timeless advice on what NOT to do...

Official Not-so-Daily

Wordcount-o-Meter:

19,458 words

I'm determined to finish this damned thing by my birthday!

aaaaaaaaand...... ACTION! Take 3

Spit It Out.

Funny, but not a lot of writers think of this one. Don't move artfully away to the fireplace from those action details. Don't draw the moment out and break it down.

Just say it.

Each of these techniques gets a little harder. This one's a balancing act as fine as the edge of a razor blade.

And like a razor, it can cut deep.

I'm behind with my writing today, so you'll be spared my own examples. Instead, I'll give you a sample from some real masters of the technique:

J.C. and Tommy at the table, guzzling beer.

Say what?

What the--

J.C. first -- silencer THWAP -- brains out his ears. Tommy, beer bottle raised -- THWAP -- glass in his eyes.

James Ellroy, White Jazz.

I could feel the other cons come in behind me, watching. Nobody did anything. It was a crazy, wild place, that prison-- they wanted to watch me kill him. I got my thumb in his eye. Pushed it through until I felt it go all wet and sticky.

The guards pulled me off.

Andrew Vachss, Shella

I took her in my arms and mashed my mouth up against hers... "Bite me! Bite me!"

I bit her. I sunk my teeth into her lips so deep I could feel the blood spurt into my mouth. It was running down her neck when I carried her upstairs.

James M. Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice

(NB. Notice the structure of that last Cain paragraph? Short sentence. Two longer ones. End on the evocative word 'upstairs', not something lame like 'her' or 'it' or 'doing', etc...)

These are some of the most hardboiled writers in print. I don't know if that's just my reading and writing taste, or because this technique lends itself to short, sharp narrative voices, characters who take the highest and lowest moments of our lives and only indirectly allow the reader to see how they are affected.

Using the Spit It Out technique is a balancing act. Do it wrong, and you deaden the impact of what ought to be an important moment in your story. Do it right, and those moments live in the reader's memory...

Official Daily Wordcount-o-Meter reading:

10, 548 words on, what are we on Kate, Day 6?

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