32,000 words (and climbing)
I couldn't think about what to write today, since my head's full of book. Better get out of it, too, since it's Valentine's today, and the Tiny Dynamo's getting her piano tuned, there are walks in the hills to be taken and picnics to go on, etc. She's tiny, but dynamic!
Anyway, I think we could all do worse than to heed Elmore Leonard's Rules of Writing. I've shamelessly lifted them from his blog. The full article is here.
Being a good author is a disappearing act.
By ELMORE LEONARD
These are rules I’ve picked up along the way to help me remain invisible when I’m writing a book, to help me show rather than tell what’s taking place in the story. If you have a facility for language and imagery and the sound of your voice pleases you, invisibility is not what you are after, and you can skip the rules. Still, you might look them over.
1. Never open a book with weather. If it’s only to create atmosphere, and not a character’s reaction to the weather, you don’t want to go on too long. The reader is apt to leaf ahead looking for people. There are exceptions. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways to describe ice and snow than an Eskimo, you can do all the weather reporting you want.
2. Avoid prologues.
They can be annoying, especially a prologue following an introduction that comes after a foreword. But these are ordinarily found in nonfiction. A prologue in a novel is backstory, and you can drop it in anywhere you want.
There is a prologue in John Steinbeck’s “Sweet Thursday,” but it’s O.K. because a character in the book makes the point of what my rules are all about. He says: “I like a lot of talk in a book and I don’t like to have nobody tell me what the guy that’s talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks. . . . figure out what the guy’s thinking from what he says. I like some description but not too much of that. . . . Sometimes I want a book to break loose with a bunch of hooptedoodle. . . . Spin up some pretty words maybe or sing a little song with language. That’s nice. But I wish it was set aside so I don’t have to read it. I don’t want hooptedoodle to get mixed up with the story.”
3. Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue.
The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But said is far less intrusive than grumbled, gasped, cautioned, lied. I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with “she asseverated,” and had to stop reading to get the dictionary.
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said” . . .
. . . he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange. I have a character in one of my books tell how she used to write historical romances “full of rape and adverbs.”
5. Keep your exclamation points under control.
You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. If you have the knack of playing with exclaimers the way Tom Wolfe does, you can throw them in by the handful.
6. Never use the words “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose.”
This rule doesn’t require an explanation. I have noticed that writers who use “suddenly” tend to exercise less control in the application of exclamation points.
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
Once you start spelling words in dialogue phonetically and loading the page with apostrophes, you won’t be able to stop. Notice the way Annie Proulx captures the flavor of Wyoming voices in her book of short stories “Close Range.”
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
Which Steinbeck covered. In Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” what do the “American and the girl with him” look like? “She had taken off her hat and put it on the table.” That’s the only reference to a physical description in the story, and yet we see the couple and know them by their tones of voice, with not one adverb in sight.
9. Don’t go into great detail describing places and things.
Unless you’re Margaret Atwood and can paint scenes with language or write landscapes in the style of Jim Harrison. But even if you’re good at it, you don’t want descriptions that bring the action, the flow of the story, to a standstill.
And finally:
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.
A rule that came to mind in 1983. Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them. What the writer is doing, he’s writing, perpetrating hooptedoodle, perhaps taking another shot at the weather, or has gone into the character’s head, and the reader either knows what the guy’s thinking or doesn’t care. I’ll bet you don’t skip dialogue.
My most important rule is one that sums up the 10.
If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.
I ought to tattoo that last sentence on the back of my hand so it stares up at me while I type. I've got the needles and the ink, but it takes two hands to tattoo...
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Shock and Awe
Status: 30,000 words
Some writers don't read while they're in the middle of a book. Some writers read, but not in their genre. I can understand why. A couple years ago, all it took was one good book to shift my narrative voice. Suddenly, I was piling on the adjectives like Michael Connelly, or waxing poetic like John Connolly. Or trying to reel out the laconic, time-stretched action sequences of Sarah Gran, UPSIDE DOWN by John Katzenbach. Truly fine books, one and all. DOPE was the most intimidating for me, though. It's closest to my own writing style, and she's intimate with the same world I write in. If we weren't on the same bus ride through Hell, we definitely booked with the same tour company.
I'm glad I read it now, while I'm full of enthusiasm for my new work, and not in another month or two, when I'm lost and lonely and not at all certain this thing I'm doing will come together at all.
It will, of course, but a sleepless night or two is a part of that process.
Anybody out there have books/authors they avoid while writing? Or ones they seek out for inspiration?
Some writers don't read while they're in the middle of a book. Some writers read, but not in their genre. I can understand why. A couple years ago, all it took was one good book to shift my narrative voice. Suddenly, I was piling on the adjectives like Michael Connelly, or waxing poetic like John Connolly. Or trying to reel out the laconic, time-stretched action sequences of Sarah Gran, UPSIDE DOWN by John Katzenbach. Truly fine books, one and all. DOPE was the most intimidating for me, though. It's closest to my own writing style, and she's intimate with the same world I write in. If we weren't on the same bus ride through Hell, we definitely booked with the same tour company.
I'm glad I read it now, while I'm full of enthusiasm for my new work, and not in another month or two, when I'm lost and lonely and not at all certain this thing I'm doing will come together at all.
It will, of course, but a sleepless night or two is a part of that process.
Anybody out there have books/authors they avoid while writing? Or ones they seek out for inspiration?
Friday, February 9, 2007
28,000 words (very, very odd words.)
The big left turn is still waiting around a bend somewhere, but I've been doing the prep work for it. My villain's going through some changes, getting bad and worse.
Part of it was finding out that my initial setup was only possible in Auckland. Part of it was a growing sense that the bad guy I was sketching out belonged in a very different sort of thriller.
And part of it was a sense of connection between him and two other characters, connections that weren't possible as things stood.
Overall, I'm happy with the changes I'm seeing. My new villain's much more gritty and ferocious, and maybe slightly unhinged. Makes him fun to write, and it's been exciting waiting to see what he'll do next.
The last few days, I feel like I'm living Stephen King's archeological metaphor. That's the one where writing is like digging up odd-shaped bits and trying to figure out how they fit together. I feel as though in my initial enthusiasm, what I thought was a bit of arm bone or something actually belongs in the jaw. But then, if that's the case, I need more bits. And that means this thing I'm assembling must have really big teeth...
Or something like that.
Mostly I want to finish so I can see how the story turns out!
The big left turn is still waiting around a bend somewhere, but I've been doing the prep work for it. My villain's going through some changes, getting bad and worse.
Part of it was finding out that my initial setup was only possible in Auckland. Part of it was a growing sense that the bad guy I was sketching out belonged in a very different sort of thriller.
And part of it was a sense of connection between him and two other characters, connections that weren't possible as things stood.
Overall, I'm happy with the changes I'm seeing. My new villain's much more gritty and ferocious, and maybe slightly unhinged. Makes him fun to write, and it's been exciting waiting to see what he'll do next.
The last few days, I feel like I'm living Stephen King's archeological metaphor. That's the one where writing is like digging up odd-shaped bits and trying to figure out how they fit together. I feel as though in my initial enthusiasm, what I thought was a bit of arm bone or something actually belongs in the jaw. But then, if that's the case, I need more bits. And that means this thing I'm assembling must have really big teeth...
Or something like that.
Mostly I want to finish so I can see how the story turns out!
Wednesday, February 7, 2007
Feeling Pregnant
26,500 words
Not a bad day's work, but there's a lot of flailing in there. In fact, if I look at the last book, I wrote 140,000 words and pared down to 85,000. Agent Anne wanted to see more of the soft side of my protagonists, so that brought the count back up to 90,000. In a way, I could still be twenty-odd thousand words away from anything usable!
Except it doesn't work that way. Not exactly. We'll see how much of these early days makes it in, though...
Feeling pregnant. Yes, indeed. Heavy. Full. Like something big's about to come out of an opening too small. And like I'm going to get more and more uncomfortable until this whatever-it-is comes out.
It's that feeling I get when the story's about to take one of its sudden left turns. And I think it might have to do with my villain. Right now, he's just too nice a guy. And there's stuff missing. What stuff? I don't know.... stuff!
John Ramsey Miller hates this seat-of-the-pants way of working. Elmore Leonard likes it. All I can say is, I've tried to work with outlines. Really, I have.
An outline is part of the reason Poison Door took 140,000 words. I had an outline, character sketches, all that stuff. But all the fun of discovery got used up in the outline. Sitting down to write the book, I got thirty thousand words in before everyone turned wooden. Then balky. Characters kept doing things I didn't want them to do. I started feeling heavy. Full. Uncomfortable.
I threw everything out and started over. Same names, close to the same premise. Totally different story. It flew.
Until the next time I started to feel heavy. And full. And really, really uncomfortable.
I pity the Tiny Dynamo at these times. I'm not the best company, whether or not I've got the keyboard in my lap. BUt I've learned to recognize the signals. The story is about to tell me something exciting...
Not a bad day's work, but there's a lot of flailing in there. In fact, if I look at the last book, I wrote 140,000 words and pared down to 85,000. Agent Anne wanted to see more of the soft side of my protagonists, so that brought the count back up to 90,000. In a way, I could still be twenty-odd thousand words away from anything usable!
Except it doesn't work that way. Not exactly. We'll see how much of these early days makes it in, though...
Feeling pregnant. Yes, indeed. Heavy. Full. Like something big's about to come out of an opening too small. And like I'm going to get more and more uncomfortable until this whatever-it-is comes out.
It's that feeling I get when the story's about to take one of its sudden left turns. And I think it might have to do with my villain. Right now, he's just too nice a guy. And there's stuff missing. What stuff? I don't know.... stuff!
John Ramsey Miller hates this seat-of-the-pants way of working. Elmore Leonard likes it. All I can say is, I've tried to work with outlines. Really, I have.
An outline is part of the reason Poison Door took 140,000 words. I had an outline, character sketches, all that stuff. But all the fun of discovery got used up in the outline. Sitting down to write the book, I got thirty thousand words in before everyone turned wooden. Then balky. Characters kept doing things I didn't want them to do. I started feeling heavy. Full. Uncomfortable.
I threw everything out and started over. Same names, close to the same premise. Totally different story. It flew.
Until the next time I started to feel heavy. And full. And really, really uncomfortable.
I pity the Tiny Dynamo at these times. I'm not the best company, whether or not I've got the keyboard in my lap. BUt I've learned to recognize the signals. The story is about to tell me something exciting...
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
Quarter Turn and a Hurdle - Research
25,000 words (75 more to go!)
Yeah, it's a meaningless milestone, but it feel like I've done something anyway. I've been at this almost a month, and I've got major and minor characters strutting and fretting upon the stage, a sense of what they all want and how they all get in each other's way, and everything seems to be shaping up nicely.
Until I hit the hurdle.
One thing about me: I *love* to waste time. I love to read. Writing can be hard. Put those three things together and you have 'research'. I can surf the net for hours, or check a big old pile of books out of the library, or better still, spend half a day in a musty used bookstore looking for something I'm *sure* I need. Calling it research somehow makes it okay.
Except it's not. It's time-wasting procrastination, is what it is, and I don't get much done that way. So these first drafts come rolling out without a darn bit of research. Except for whatever I was reading that got the guys in the basement excited in the first place, of course. Oh, and my street atlas. But even that one's not strictly necessary.
Mostly, I just hit the first draft at a dead run. I use my general sense of people, how we work together and how we don't, the sorts of rules we set to get things done and the ways we shade them to goof off.
The rest of it, I just make up.
Where I *must* have a proper name, date, whatever, I *highlight* it (Like that) and go back and find it later. Later that day, later in the second draft, later. The made-up stuff I also go back and check up on. Weird thing is, I'm right more often than not.
Most of my research (the real stuff, not the time-wasting) comes on the net (thank you wikipedia!) or from the library. I interview real people whenever possible, and that info is gold. Not so much for the dry facts I could find elsewhere, as for the little stuff no one would think to mention (do detectives take their unmarkeds home at night? can a knight in armor really do a somersault? what gets sore first on a street hooker?) (the feet and the lower back, apparently). And more, much much more importantly, a sense of the way my informants look at the world. What do they want? What are they worried about? How do they think their world could be a better place? Do they think it's getting better, getting worse, or staying the same? How do they feel about their job?
I'm lucky. I meet a WIDE variety of people, and I genuinely like *most* everyone I meet. I try to see the world through lots'n lots of eyes. Makes it easier when it's time to make stuff up...
A lot of times, people give you little gems you'd never have thought to ask for. Pour dark rum over the roots of marijuana plants to up the sugar levels. A two-handed battleaxe requires a zone offense and defense; for a rapier, it's all about beats. Tuck folded newspaper or magazines up your sleeves to protect your inner forearms in a knife fight. The street girls can order whatever drugs keep them going through the night by cell phone and have them delivered right to their corner.
So this weekend I met a manager at Paparua Men's Prison. Funny thing, the phrase 'I'm a writer, and I was curious...' seems to relax just about everyone. Enough to open up to a guy looks like me anyway. I got lots of little stuff about the prisoners, the guards, the upper management and the sometimes strained relationship between Corrections and the cops.
And I hit the hurdle.
Turns out the news item about the mall cops handling prisoner transport was only true in Auckland. My book's solidly set in Christchurch. I've got some changes to make.
What am I doing about it? At this point, nothing. Sure, somewhere in the back of my head, the gears are spinning, but mostly I'm just trying to get through my first draft. Baker needs to break jail. That's all I need to know right now. I'll sort out how when it comes to me.
Yeah, it's a meaningless milestone, but it feel like I've done something anyway. I've been at this almost a month, and I've got major and minor characters strutting and fretting upon the stage, a sense of what they all want and how they all get in each other's way, and everything seems to be shaping up nicely.
Until I hit the hurdle.
One thing about me: I *love* to waste time. I love to read. Writing can be hard. Put those three things together and you have 'research'. I can surf the net for hours, or check a big old pile of books out of the library, or better still, spend half a day in a musty used bookstore looking for something I'm *sure* I need. Calling it research somehow makes it okay.
Except it's not. It's time-wasting procrastination, is what it is, and I don't get much done that way. So these first drafts come rolling out without a darn bit of research. Except for whatever I was reading that got the guys in the basement excited in the first place, of course. Oh, and my street atlas. But even that one's not strictly necessary.
Mostly, I just hit the first draft at a dead run. I use my general sense of people, how we work together and how we don't, the sorts of rules we set to get things done and the ways we shade them to goof off.
The rest of it, I just make up.
Where I *must* have a proper name, date, whatever, I *highlight* it (Like that) and go back and find it later. Later that day, later in the second draft, later. The made-up stuff I also go back and check up on. Weird thing is, I'm right more often than not.
Most of my research (the real stuff, not the time-wasting) comes on the net (thank you wikipedia!) or from the library. I interview real people whenever possible, and that info is gold. Not so much for the dry facts I could find elsewhere, as for the little stuff no one would think to mention (do detectives take their unmarkeds home at night? can a knight in armor really do a somersault? what gets sore first on a street hooker?) (the feet and the lower back, apparently). And more, much much more importantly, a sense of the way my informants look at the world. What do they want? What are they worried about? How do they think their world could be a better place? Do they think it's getting better, getting worse, or staying the same? How do they feel about their job?
I'm lucky. I meet a WIDE variety of people, and I genuinely like *most* everyone I meet. I try to see the world through lots'n lots of eyes. Makes it easier when it's time to make stuff up...
A lot of times, people give you little gems you'd never have thought to ask for. Pour dark rum over the roots of marijuana plants to up the sugar levels. A two-handed battleaxe requires a zone offense and defense; for a rapier, it's all about beats. Tuck folded newspaper or magazines up your sleeves to protect your inner forearms in a knife fight. The street girls can order whatever drugs keep them going through the night by cell phone and have them delivered right to their corner.
So this weekend I met a manager at Paparua Men's Prison. Funny thing, the phrase 'I'm a writer, and I was curious...' seems to relax just about everyone. Enough to open up to a guy looks like me anyway. I got lots of little stuff about the prisoners, the guards, the upper management and the sometimes strained relationship between Corrections and the cops.
And I hit the hurdle.
Turns out the news item about the mall cops handling prisoner transport was only true in Auckland. My book's solidly set in Christchurch. I've got some changes to make.
What am I doing about it? At this point, nothing. Sure, somewhere in the back of my head, the gears are spinning, but mostly I'm just trying to get through my first draft. Baker needs to break jail. That's all I need to know right now. I'll sort out how when it comes to me.
Sunday, February 4, 2007
Where Y'at?
Status: 23,800 words (a little behind)
I'm up stupidly early this morning and thinking about setting.
Minnesota was home once. So was New Orleans. Now it's Christchurch, New Zealand. In between I've seen big chunks of the US and Europe, the Middle East, China and Australia. Maybe a bit more I've forgotten, since I'm prone to forgetting the odd detail.
This morning I'm watching FARGO on dvd, and tomorrow is Waitangi Day here in NZ. As a tip of the hat, this post's title comes from a common greeting down in New Orleans.
We've all read books or seen movies that could've been set geographically anywhere. Some stories just don't require it. I've written a few of those myself. Those stories are set somewhere, to be sure, but they don't really have to be. Leather Tales was set in Minnesota, but it could have just as easily been Cleveland or New York, or (with a few small changes to firearms and transportation) the Old West, some quasi-medieval fantasy realm or outer space.
If the characters and their conflicts (the psychological geography, if you will) are vivid enough, the reader may not notice a pale or generic setting. Two of my absolute favorite authors are sometimes guilty of this: John D. McDonald and Robert E. Howard. I love both their work, and both evoke a sense of place beautifully, but setting was still a weak point.
Conan (and Krull, and Bran Mak Morn, et al) traveled far and wide, but the places he visits remind me of the time I had a four hour layover in Memphis. I know it's a vibrant city with a rich heritage, but mostly I just had a cup of coffee in a diner that could have been any diner anyplace. Maybe that's because REH wasn't much of a traveler himself. He was imagining stuff second-hand.
John D McDonald, on the other hand, definitely definitely went to his locales. Lots of research, to the point where you wish he'd maybe shut up a little about it. Thing is, Travis McGee (and many but not all of his other heroes) could have been having his adventures in Mexico, Hawaii, Jamiaca, etc. right back home for the most part, and I often suspected the author of looking for a way to write his holiday off on his taxes.
Sometimes authors actively deny setting. I think F Scott Fitzgerald was trying to make a point that the lives of the wealthy were one long swirl of drinks, and that the houses, restaurants, and hotel bars all had a numbing sameness to them. Or maybe that's just the way it seemed to him and Zelda.
Then I think about James Lee Burke's New Iberia, Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar, Dickens's London, VS Naipal's Trinidad, Carl Hiassen's South Florida, George Pelecanos's Washington DC or the wildly different New Yorks of Tom Wolfe and Andrew Vachss. So vivid and real, they're practically characters of their own.
Derry, Maine and Tuonela, Wisconsin aren't even real, but they sure feel that way.
And one thing all those places have in common: the stories set there couldn't be set anywhere else.
My initial temptation to set my work in Christchurch was convenience. I actually walk the neighborhoods and talk to the sort of people who show up in my books. And I do love it here. This place is home like no other has ever been for me.
But then I saw what was unique about this setting. Cops don't carry guns here, but criminals do. We face a rising crystal meth problem (called P here), but there's virtually no cocaine, and certainly no crack. Prostitution is legal, the drinking age is only eighteen, and Christchurch has just 300,000 people but a raging heroin problem.
Suddenly, my city was trying to tell me stories about itself.
Sometimes we set a story in a certain place because we love the place (I work off the odd bit of homesickness with Minnesota settings), or because the research is easy (putting that holiday, or that degree in Medici Italian History to use, for example). And sometimes that love or that research shines through. It can be powerful.
But even more powerful is when a writer goes past the love, past the research, gets at something of the spirit of their setting. What about your setting (or historical period, or SF/F world) makes your story unique? Or put it another way: what story can only be told in your setting?
I'm up stupidly early this morning and thinking about setting.
Minnesota was home once. So was New Orleans. Now it's Christchurch, New Zealand. In between I've seen big chunks of the US and Europe, the Middle East, China and Australia. Maybe a bit more I've forgotten, since I'm prone to forgetting the odd detail.
This morning I'm watching FARGO on dvd, and tomorrow is Waitangi Day here in NZ. As a tip of the hat, this post's title comes from a common greeting down in New Orleans.
We've all read books or seen movies that could've been set geographically anywhere. Some stories just don't require it. I've written a few of those myself. Those stories are set somewhere, to be sure, but they don't really have to be. Leather Tales was set in Minnesota, but it could have just as easily been Cleveland or New York, or (with a few small changes to firearms and transportation) the Old West, some quasi-medieval fantasy realm or outer space.
If the characters and their conflicts (the psychological geography, if you will) are vivid enough, the reader may not notice a pale or generic setting. Two of my absolute favorite authors are sometimes guilty of this: John D. McDonald and Robert E. Howard. I love both their work, and both evoke a sense of place beautifully, but setting was still a weak point.
Conan (and Krull, and Bran Mak Morn, et al) traveled far and wide, but the places he visits remind me of the time I had a four hour layover in Memphis. I know it's a vibrant city with a rich heritage, but mostly I just had a cup of coffee in a diner that could have been any diner anyplace. Maybe that's because REH wasn't much of a traveler himself. He was imagining stuff second-hand.
John D McDonald, on the other hand, definitely definitely went to his locales. Lots of research, to the point where you wish he'd maybe shut up a little about it. Thing is, Travis McGee (and many but not all of his other heroes) could have been having his adventures in Mexico, Hawaii, Jamiaca, etc. right back home for the most part, and I often suspected the author of looking for a way to write his holiday off on his taxes.
Sometimes authors actively deny setting. I think F Scott Fitzgerald was trying to make a point that the lives of the wealthy were one long swirl of drinks, and that the houses, restaurants, and hotel bars all had a numbing sameness to them. Or maybe that's just the way it seemed to him and Zelda.
Then I think about James Lee Burke's New Iberia, Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar, Dickens's London, VS Naipal's Trinidad, Carl Hiassen's South Florida, George Pelecanos's Washington DC or the wildly different New Yorks of Tom Wolfe and Andrew Vachss. So vivid and real, they're practically characters of their own.
Derry, Maine and Tuonela, Wisconsin aren't even real, but they sure feel that way.
And one thing all those places have in common: the stories set there couldn't be set anywhere else.
My initial temptation to set my work in Christchurch was convenience. I actually walk the neighborhoods and talk to the sort of people who show up in my books. And I do love it here. This place is home like no other has ever been for me.
But then I saw what was unique about this setting. Cops don't carry guns here, but criminals do. We face a rising crystal meth problem (called P here), but there's virtually no cocaine, and certainly no crack. Prostitution is legal, the drinking age is only eighteen, and Christchurch has just 300,000 people but a raging heroin problem.
Suddenly, my city was trying to tell me stories about itself.
Sometimes we set a story in a certain place because we love the place (I work off the odd bit of homesickness with Minnesota settings), or because the research is easy (putting that holiday, or that degree in Medici Italian History to use, for example). And sometimes that love or that research shines through. It can be powerful.
But even more powerful is when a writer goes past the love, past the research, gets at something of the spirit of their setting. What about your setting (or historical period, or SF/F world) makes your story unique? Or put it another way: what story can only be told in your setting?
Friday, February 2, 2007
The occasional mental kick
status: 22,000
Over on his blog, Neil Gaiman's trying to play a wee practical joke on Penn & Teller fan, m'self.
I was going to write a little bit about 'quiet listening' as a part of the writing process. Then I realized Stephen King said it better here.
Yes, I'm finally getting comfortable with the link-thingy. First it was the Bronze Age, then everyone was going over to iron. Now I have to learn hyperlinks...
The book's trundling along. It's all about the subplots at the moment. I'm getting a clearer and clearer image of where the book ends up, so now the challenge is getting it where it's going. Mostly I listen. Sometimes I have to prod myself a bit.
Last night, I couldn't think of how the next scene would shape up. Mostly I'll go into a scene with a sense of the characters involved, the conflict/tension between them, or at least their different goals so I can found out how that shapes the conflict, but last night I just couldn't see it. I had an odd picture in my head and one sentence.
One mental kick in the ass later, I wrote that sentence. Then the next. And the one after that.
1200 words (I'm saving the extra 200 as a safety cushion in case I need it today) and four lean scenes later, I could have written heaps more. Stupid sleep...
Over on his blog, Neil Gaiman's trying to play a wee practical joke on Penn & Teller fan, m'self.
I was going to write a little bit about 'quiet listening' as a part of the writing process. Then I realized Stephen King said it better here.
Yes, I'm finally getting comfortable with the link-thingy. First it was the Bronze Age, then everyone was going over to iron. Now I have to learn hyperlinks...
The book's trundling along. It's all about the subplots at the moment. I'm getting a clearer and clearer image of where the book ends up, so now the challenge is getting it where it's going. Mostly I listen. Sometimes I have to prod myself a bit.
Last night, I couldn't think of how the next scene would shape up. Mostly I'll go into a scene with a sense of the characters involved, the conflict/tension between them, or at least their different goals so I can found out how that shapes the conflict, but last night I just couldn't see it. I had an odd picture in my head and one sentence.
One mental kick in the ass later, I wrote that sentence. Then the next. And the one after that.
1200 words (I'm saving the extra 200 as a safety cushion in case I need it today) and four lean scenes later, I could have written heaps more. Stupid sleep...
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