Posts about writing

Dec112011

Failing to Fall in Love or “Just How Timelagged Are You?”


We all love certain books a bit more than others. They might not be bestsellers, or they might be critically acclaimed, but we think of them as ours, like no one else knows they even exist.

My ex used to carry a copy of Connie Willis’ To Say Nothing of the Dog around almost constantly. His copy was dog-eared and worn, yet he’d faithfully re-read it, annually. For perhaps that reason, like I felt that I’d be trespassing on his devotion, I didn’t read the book until now.

What I found was a novel of comic misadventure and wonderful misdirection as two time travelers stumble about the Victorian era, trying to find a hideous piece of sculpture whose whereabouts are responsible for a possible melting of the continuum. No pressure. And yet, the contemporary Victorian characters, completely oblivious to the situation, thwart the travelers through all their eccentric meandering.

The book satisfied, particularly at the denouement. Pets, who I think don’t get enough presence in fiction, are a large part of it all. Mysteries compound and resolve. As much as I enjoyed the story, I didn’t love the book. I can analyze it to death: the tension took a bit too long. I was never as caught up in the circumstances as I wanted to be. Willis’ characters are clever. The end really wrapped it all up nicely. I think this is what agents mean when they reject a manuscript with the confusing statement “I just didn’t fall in love.”

To Say Nothing of the Dog is a good book, one I’m glad I finally read. Yet it definitely didn’t inspire in me the devotion it does in Brian. Conversely, I know that trying to explain my love of Gail Carriger or Margaret Atwood and convince people to read their books doesn’t always go very well.

What drives us to fall in love with a book? What makes a book so important to one person but completely passable to another? I don’t think there’s a good answer, which is what makes that agent response so frustrating to the aspiring author. It’s as an ineffable quality as what makes us love a person. Sometimes, to the outside observer, it’s something only we can see.

Apr132011

We All Come from Somewhere, but Does Anybody Care?


Each of us carries a backstory. We share the details of our pasts with others. They pay attention depending on their investment in us, or how well we tell it. Or they don’t. Someone who wasn’t there, who didn’t share the experience, simply cannot feel it the way we did. The inherent challenge in sharing our history is to make it exciting. You can probably recall a time when someone told you a boring anecdote. Maybe they included too much detail or unnecessary tangents.

Fictional characters are much the same way: their background informs and shapes them. It helps to establish who they are. Often a characters’ past includes vital information, but writers can err and include backstory in large boring lumps that readers don’t want or need.

Fictional characters aren’t real people. Their psychological composition just isn’t as complex, no matter how well we write them. Yet this isn’t a lack. It actually gives writers an advantage. We can determine which parts of the character’s background aren’t yawn-inducing and which are compelling enough to be worth sharing. We can tweak a characters’ background to make it serve the story, and we can learn what to tell the reader or what to leave out.

Any piece written in third person narrative is a recount of the characters’ past. The narrator is looking back on events and telling us what happened. To the reader this recap seems to happen in real time. A sense of immediacy is crucial to pace and keeping things in motion. Backstory is important, but it should never be more compelling than the main tale. If the past is so juicy that it must interrupt the present action, then you’re probably starting the story in the wrong place.

This is one of those areas where a writer must be honest with their self. Much like that tale you’ve told on every first date, it might not be that funny or interesting to the other party. Look at the level of backstory you’re including. If an objective reading tells you it’s essential, consider if it deserves to be center stage. If it bores you, keep it to a minimum.

Mar262011

The Point Might Be the Journey, but the Destination Still Matters


A book’s ending has to satisfy. You want to close the door on your story in a way that lets the reader move on, knowing it’s finished. Maybe you conclude on a question or open a new door, but either way you turn out the lights and close up shop. Something has to indicate that a book is done. In a series you might leave with a cliffhanger or a new development, a wrinkle that will grow into the next book’s conflict.

Endings are tricky things. A good one leaves you with a positive remembrance of the book. Bad endings can make the entire exercise of reading the story unfulfilling, like a long meal capped with a flavorless dessert. When I look back on the books that really captured my attention, their endings are usually strong. They evoke emotion years later, such as in Three Junes when two major characters drive into New York. When I try to specifically think of books whose endings were weak, I have a harder time. The books themselves are less memorable. Some books, Smilla’s Sense of Snow comes to mind, do not seem to know where to end. They just come to an abrupt stop. Cliffhangers that are never resolved trouble me the most. Much like a television series which is suddenly canceled, you’re left wondering how the story ended.

In fantasy, the story is too often a showcase for the world, a vast travelogue for amazing places and robust vistas. Endings can become less important. The longer a series, the more epic the scope, the more weight gets placed on the climax and the subsequent conclusion. The payoff has to be worth the buildup, or the reader is let down. I often find that the climax isn’t the part that sticks with us. The villain is defeated, the world saved, but there’s always that little moment after that truly settles in as the bit we remember. The ending has the opportunity to sound a little quieter, The heroes retire. Luke joins his circle of friends at the campfire. Terry Brooks seems fond of marrying his heroes, giving them a reason to leave the adventuring life behind. Jim Grimsley, ended Dream Boy with a mystery that I still ponder to this day.

Beginnings are when you hook the reader, drawing them in. Middles are where you hold them. It’s crucial that you don’t lose them when the pace slows a little and the characters catch their breath. But every part of a story is important, so don’t forget the ending.

Oct52010

Giving Death His Due

Now our luck may have died and our love may be cold
But with you forever I’ll stay
Were goin out where the sands turnin to gold
Put on your stockins baby, `cause the nights getting cold
And maybe evrything dies, baby, that’s a fact
But maybe evrything that dies someday comes back

– Bruce Springsteen, Atlantic City

Halloween is coming, and everywhere I look, death seems to haunt popular culture. The undead have ruled supreme over genre fiction for a good while. Some of the hottest shows on television involve bloodsucking monsters. Even the X-men are fighting vampires in the Marvel universe, which tells me that vampires have definitely jumped the zombie were-shark.

With so many dead walking about, I’m starting to think Death hasn’t just taken a holiday. He’s moved to Maui and taken up residence in Margaritaville. Characters keep sneaking back in the door well after they’re properly dead and buried. Zombie apocalypses happen so often in fiction that Hades is close to empty and insurance companies raise your rates if you live near a cemetery.

The idea that death isn’t permanent in comic books has become enough of a cliché that whole crossovers, like DC’s Blackest Night, have been devoted to putting some power back into the Reaper’s hands. The dead walk, talk, and romance the living so often I’m surprised they haven’t unionized under a chant of “What do we want? Brains! When do we want them? Now!”

Heroes have a unique relationship to Death. They cheat him, beat him, often bringing their entire supporting cast along for the ride, at the cost of the story’s impact. When a series reaches a major turning point, or milestone, you need to see a price for the victory. Otherwise, it rings hollow. Heroes can descend to the underworld and return, they’re heroes after all, but doing so is a major effort.

Comics have third stringer death down. When a new creative team takes over a book, one of their first moves often involves killing off the supporting cast to make room for their own creations. Even then, return is always possible, should another writer see the need to bring a dead character back into play. Only the poor redshirts beaming down with Captain Kirk aren’t coming back. Usually nameless and indiscriminate, they’re convenient in their disposability. They stick out, like the sweet girl in the zombie flick, only there to die.

Sometimes heroes don’t return. They lose the fight or their victory is Pyrrhic. The good fall and stay down. Returning becomes the sole province of the villain, such as in Harry Potter, where resurrection is only made possible through black magic and wicked deeds. Great evils often re-arise in fantasy, putting themselves back together after long centuries, and a new group of misfit heroes must sally forth to save the day.

Whether it involves heroes or villains, when the gates to the underworld are a revolving door, it becomes difficult to create a world where death has meaning. The hard part is keeping the balance. I’ve read quite a few books where the stakes of the plot were high, but every hero and side character squeaks through. When you’re reading a series, and this pattern repeats book after book, you start to doubt that anyone can truly die. Fiction is strongest when it reflects reality, and the reality is that we must die. It is one of the incontrovertible truths of our lives, and it should be true for our characters as well.

Aug282010

Experience is Research


Florida isn’t my usual comfort zone, but here I am, sitting on the little patio at my hotel suite, coffee in hand, laptop on lap, watching a lizard (I think it’s an anole) try to sneak up on me. He’s not terribly subtle, being the color of a fresh leaf and flaring the little flap on the underside of his neck. The Florida air couldn’t be less like Colorado: it’s not even nine am and I’m already steaming. I always feel a bit greasy here, despite the best efforts of the ubiquitous air conditioning. I can’t believe I need to iron anything. I would think the air itself would flatten the crease in my work shirts.

There’s a lot of swagger in Tampa. Men are bulkier than in Denver, where we all bike, run, hike, something. Women seem thinner, more inclined to wearing as little as possible (and I couldn’t blame them if they went full-on nudist in this climate). My former impressions of this place led me to think of it as monolithic: polluted, traditional, and unhealthy. I’m seeing that there’s more to it than that. There’s a strata of progressive culture and diversity mixed in. I’ve been to Whole Foods and found a yoga studio. The food, which I’d thought of as solidly corporate chain, has proven to have a mix of diversity. Today I’m trying a divey little Greek place and last night I sampled an off the map Thai place next to a head shop.

I’m down here for the day job, but I’ve stolen this morning to do a little writing and catch up with my personal email. When I travel I get a lot of ideas, but few of them are immediately useful. They get stored away, put into the notebook, tucked into the eaves, and hopefully when I draw them out later, I’ll find them useful. They’re research, fodder for the creative compost, and when I need to bring a scene to life, they serve me well. I write a lot of about my theory of craft, and one thing I want to stress again is that experience is research.

Getting out of our comfort zones can be so hard, and unfortunately, it’s often not by choice. The person with the tragic life can share experiences we hope to never have. Yet we crave reading about them. We get a thrill from the vicarious experience. We imbibe a sip of what happens to another, never really able to fully experience what they did. Isn’t this the heart of fiction, possibly of reading? The vicarious experience drives it all. We feel the danger faced by heroes, we empathize with tragedy, feel a twinge of our own romantic longing when we read a good love story. It’s an incredibly powerful contrast: we need the safety of the distance reading gives us to judge or evaluate a story. Yet we also need connection in order to empathize with the character. A fully unlikeable protagonist can’t lure us back for a series’ worth of reading.

Imbuing a story with real experiences can be tricky: after all, so much of what we experience may connect us as people, but it’s also usually pretty boring. Some of the first advice you get in writing is to avoid staring with characters waking up, brushing their teeth, or doing anything too mundane or regular. Yet all of us have unique experiences, witness interesting anecdotes as they happen, get a peek into human nature day by day. These are just experiences that relate to character. As I sit here, in the sun, I feel the air warm. I’m sweating. I never sweat in Colorado. There’s a vegetable smell, like something in sweet decay, lacing the air. Just this contrast with the Denver air is an experience I can use for setting. If I wrote about a tropical heat without having felt it myself, it would likely come across as stilted. Obviously, we can’t experience the bite of a vampire or the prick of a killer’s knife (and we wanted to), but we can fill in the gaps. One reason I think the Sookie Stackhouse novels work so well is that they’re firmly grounded in Sookie’s financial troubles. Not a book goes by without her expending a little energy on domestic issues like cleaning. These experiences are universal and help anchor a story. There’s a balance to using these experiences in your work, as there seems to be so often in writing. You want to anchor without boring, captivate without droning on or worse, taking your readers off track. I’ll work on blogging some more while I’m here, but for now I’m off to the beach.

Jul22010

Staring Into Space: the Work Before


There’s that weird aspect to writing, which isn’t writing. Writing is surgery, confidently wielding words and getting them out by pixel or pen. That’s the fun part, especially when you’re working on something new. I love virgin territory, diving into a new scene and bringing it to life. I love getting a bit of inspiration that helps me twist things around and surprise a reader. But before the fun part comes the planning, thinking things like plot and conflict through, sorting ideas, remembering a character’s motivations, and generally meditating on what I want to do in a scene. I call it the staring into space phase.

I usually write twice a day, once in the morning before work, and once at night, after. The times between can often stretch on depending on the stress level of the day job. I can lose the rhythm and tone of the work in progress. I try to leave myself on a cliffhanger with the scene, the moment before a big action or change. If time runs out I leave a little note for myself preceded by an asterisk. Carving out the time to write is simple for me: I force myself to commute by bus and it puts my butt in a chair without the distractions of home, Internet, or hungry cats. If I’m in a good spot when I get home I can sit down and stretch out the work (after the cats have had their dinner). It’s finding time to stare into space and contemplate that’s hard for me.

Part of that is the nature of thinking about the work. Like yoga or meditation, you have to discipline yourself to the task at hand. Driving out other thoughts, especially stressful concerns like “did I leave the gas on?” can be particularly tough. But putting it all aside and focusing on the work at hand is essential. Plot holes start to emerge as you counter argue the strengths of your story. New solutions and angles spring to mind to answer those arguments. Most importantly, you keep your story on the rails and avoid any crashes off track.

Failing to frame my writing and prepare for it can cost me valuable time. I’ll take a scene or section in the wrong direction. Then I’ve got to retrace my steps, possibly delete work, and start over. I’ve never been a solid outliner. I like to figure things out as I go, but I do strongly believe in milestones. Certain unalterable events have to happen in the plot for the story to function: villains have to show up, doors have to be opened, and changes have to occur. I don’t keep an outline but find a roadmap is handy. So I start my planning sessions with a quick review of my story’s path. Staring off into space, I try to put myself as closely in tune with the story as possible. I pour a cup of coffee and make sure the cats are fed. Then I get to work at staring into space.

Jun272010

“To the Man With a Hammer Everything Looks Like a Nail.”


Google attributes this quote to Mark Twain, but I first encountered it in regards to writing in my Introduction to Literary Studies course during my Literature BA. Dr. So was referring to semicolon usage, something he’d picked up on in our papers. Once we’d learned how to properly use a semicolon, we were putting them everywhere. The point he was making was that just because you have a tool doesn’t mean you always have to use it. It’s something to watch for in your writing, and it extends to many things, not just punctuation. When we write there’s a certain level of comfort with what we know. We might embrace certain stylistic constructs or punctuation uses because they’re familiar, and we risk overusing them and giving our prose a flat, repetitive quality.

Eastlight’s first draft contained an insane amount of nodding. I was overusing that beat constantly. That was a problem easily solved once it was picked up on, but other repetitions were subtler. My history degree trained me to write more academically, more passively, and I still cling to weak phrasing like seemed as in it seemed darker versus it grew darker. One of the biggest patterns I’ve faced is making my verbs more active, and that took investing into the Oxford Writer’s Thesaurus* and using it daily. It’s fortunate that I enjoy word-smithing, though it’s easy to get lost in the weeds if you’re not careful and while away precious writing hours by picking sentences apart. The old adage of putting a manuscript away for a while is crucial here. You often don’t recognize a repetitive pattern while you’re in the middle of performing it. A little distance is a good cure. Reading back through a manuscript a few months later will definitely help you spot patterns both good and bad. All of this thought on process is teaching me that multiple drafts are never going to fade away. When I set out to write my first novel, I knew there would be lots of drafts, and there were. But I thought Eastlight would have fewer. It didn’t. It had the same number. It all goes back to that continual process of improvement: you stop making some mistakes, but you learn you’re making others. You grow in your craft and take bolder risks, introducing new patterns you need to work on. Widen your toolbox and use everything you’ve got on hand.

*I recommend the investment, though don’t stop there. The Thesaurus is strong, but I’ve found it to be incomplete. I supplement a lot with www.dictionary.com’s thesaurus, and that resource is free.

Jun122010

Slow Down: Pace, Plot, and Observation

I used to take walks with my ex, before we were exes, wandering the city, street to street, alley to alley. I found it utterly boring. I needed a destination, somewhere to go, a point to it all. It’s one more thing I should apologize for. I’ve since learned to meander, ambulate, and drift. I’ll take turns down new streets because I like the house on the corner or into an alley based on the graffiti. This tactic is a great way to think, to plot, to turn ideas over and let them rise like bread. It’s not a bad method of warming up my brain and slipping into my character’s skin.

It’s also become one of my favorite ways of capturing unique details, images and snippets that I file away for later use. You observe more at the slower pace of walking. You hear more without the muting of car windows or the rush of the wind. Landscape and setting don’t pass you by. As I’m often reminded when a fox crosses my path in the park, cities are full of unexpected wildlife, people, and details. Things jump out at you more clearly, but most importantly you learn to slow your mind down. When I’m writing I tend to get very excited about ideas, many of which aren’t bad, but they don’t fit the scene or piece. It’s important to check ideas before I just start altering a work; and I often find the idea isn’t going to work and file it away for later. Rewriting a scene without thinking it through can be disastrous. A story is a tapestry. Once you start pulling threads or introducing new images you may create problems that ripple through the entire work. I realized in my latest edit that I was putting all of the revelations at the climax, and while this effectively brought the plot to a tightly written end, it created a desert of meaningful events in the preceding section. An edit later and I’ve moved things around a little. The pace of the novel is less like a sudden crescendo, where all of the secrets unravel at once, and more like a gradual ascent, with peaks and valleys of revelation until the most major secret stand exposed. You need little rests along the way, accomplishments, and respite from whatever is hounding you.

The trick to understanding that I needed to make the change was feeling the novel’s tempo and knowing where to speed up or slow down. When I looked at the points in the book where the story crawled I often found a lot of slack, extra writing that while not bad, didn’t contribute to moving the story forward. Cutting these pieces and repurposing their strongest lines at other points went a long ways to speeding the book up. I had to get go of a pre-determined word count and give the story what it needed most.

Each story has its own pace: a cross-country chase will feel very different than a cozy murder mystery. The best trick I’ve found for learning my story’s pace is to read it aloud to myself, which certainly earns me a few interesting glances on the bus. I’m fortunate that I studied poetry so long. It helps me a lot with understanding the iambic rhythms of English and if I’m lucky, avoiding staccato beats.

I guess if there’s any advice in this post it’s to listen: to your work, to your environment. Try to get a feel for the world around you with a pointless walk, unplugged from technology. Leave your phone behind, your iPod, and your laptop. Bring nothing but your eyes, your feet, a notebook and a pen. When you’ve got a story finished, take it with you. Find somewhere quiet to sit and read it aloud.

May232010

The Cycle and Struggle of Writing

There’s been a wave of blog posts lately regarding rejection in writing, reiterating how hard it is get published and succeed. I don’t feel the need to beat that horse, but I do want to talk a bit about what we learn when we start writing and aspire to publication. First, let me give credit to the wonderful Betsy Lerner, whose post put the bug in my head.

I had an idea early on that writing a book was only the first step. Having watched my aunt struggle to publish in my teens, I used to say that writing the book was only half the battle. Now I’m pretty convinced that the initial writing is closer to ten percent. There’s querying (which in of itself is not a simple process), coming up with a marketing plan, networking, learning to write a strong synopsis and elevator pitch, avoiding scammers, and thickening your skin till it has the consistency of concrete. You need to be actively reading all the while to keep the rhythms of English close at hand. There are a lot of decision points mixed throughout this process: is a critique group right for you? Should you blog, use social network sites like Facebook, invest in a website, joins local associations, and invest the money to attend conferences? Then there is the writing itself, revisions, polishing, and growing in your craft.

One of the biggest misconceptions I face in telling people I write is that it’s an automatic sign of success, having written a book. Just explaining the idea of a practice manuscript can be a bit draining.

So why write and persist when the process is so hard? The easiest answer is that I love it. It defines me. The few times in my life when I’m put it away, tried to walk away, have been the most depressing I’ve had. Each step in the process of writing and publishing is a lesson, a learning experience, and a struggle. When it all gets me down, especially the notion that I might never publish in an industry undergoing seismic upheaval, I turn to my computer, fire up Word, and start a new project. I try to find that spark that first drove me to want to write down a story. The best answer to getting frustrated with writing, perhaps ironically, is to write.

Feb282010

An Interesting Article I Thought I’d Share

Laura Miller on Salon has posted a Reader’s Advice to Writers. It’s a great read, and I found it helpful as I line up my next project. There’s some overlap here with books I’ve read on writing, but reinforcing core concepts is never a bad idea.

It’s here.

I’m still delving into the comments on the article, but don’t miss her link to the Guardian’s article on rules by 28 writers.