The Craft, She is Huge!

I sent out four new submissions recently, and I'm looking at sending out my very first non-fiction proposals.  I also went to the Lucky Labs meeting yesterday (it seems like forever since I've been!) and had a pint.

I felt like the meeting went well, but then I didn't get my story piled on.  It can get tough when there's a consensus, and the consensus is, 'this didn't work for me,' followed by an explanation of everything that went wrong.

Which brings me to abandonment.  The thing about writing is, like every other skill, it requires practice.  That includes practice of every aspect of writing.  I'm sure I'll miss some, but these are basic areas of writing that need lots of practice:

* Spelling and grammar

* Starting a project effectively

* Finishing a first draft

* Managing a first edit

* Receiving/understanding feedback

* Employing feedback

* Deep revision (where no element is held sacred)

* Polishing (also known as line editing)

* Tightening, or loosening (most people need to tighten)

* Establishing voice for a piece

* Establishing authorial style

* Character development

* Enrichment of setting

* Developing a satisfactory middle (muddle)

* Creating a satisfying ending

* Creating scenes with character and plot archs

* Transitioning

* Research/life experience development

* Learning about tropes, cliche's, and norms for a given genre

* Developing a narrative flow or rhythm

* Nurturing a critical eye for your own prose

* Nurturing an analytical eye when reading in your genre

* Nurturing and honoring the creation process

These are all difficult skills.  None of them are straightforward.  For example, spelling and grammar.  You'd think that would be straightforward, but it's not.  The rules are made to be broken, but they have to be broken in a way that makes reading more, not less, of a pleasure.  What about nurturing and honoring the creation process?   That's just care and feeding of the muse, right?  Not really.  Honoring includes respecting your own writing time--daily writing.  Nurturing means you have to learn how to create, and then practice creating.  Learn about outlines, try different brainstorming techniques, take lots of baths or showers (there's something about hot water and creativity--I'm not the only one who's noticed this!)

Lots of people come out of high school thinking they can write.  On the one hand, yes they can.  On another ... there's a whole lot more to learn out there, way more than even four years of dedicated college can teach you.  The good news is that you can sell your experiments when you reach a certain stage of writing, and that certain stage might be right out of high school.  The other good news is, writing never gets boring if you're a writer at heart.  There's always something more to learn.  There's always another hill to climb.

Which wraps back around to abandonment.  You might think that a story that was (almost) universally tromped ought to just be put out of its misery.  That depends.  Has the author learned everything s/he can from the work?  In this case I think the answer is clearly no.  I felt that this author hadn't learned how to fix problem manuscripts yet.  He hadn't learned how to take and consolidate the feedback, use that to re-examine the manuscript with his own critical eye (the feedback is, after all, a set of observations and suggestions, not a job order) and, if he couldn't figure out how to fix it on his own, start reading and researching like crazy in an effort to find out how other authors have solved those problems.  

Think about it.  If a story doesn't work and you abandon it every time, yes, you might eventually learn what does work when you line up all the stories you've written that receive positive feedback and write stories just like that every time.  But there's a danger of pigeonholing yourself.  Maybe all your successful stories are about a young female abuse victim who gets the upper hand over her former abuser and is instrumental in sending him to jail forever.  Some writers make a good wage repeating the same sort of story over and over again.  I'm not going to denigrate that.  But if you can't find that niche and make a career out of that, you'll be a one hit wonder.  If that's your goal, great.  But if you really want to learn the craft, you have to learn as many items on this list as you can, and some things that are not on this list.

I invite INKers and Friends of INK to think, and even blog about, some of these elements of writing.  Each one deserves a post all by its lonely.  Or, just file it away, and get to writing.  We're wasting daylight, people!

[This article is also posted on the INK faq]

Professional Editing

This seems obvious to me, but I haven't heard anyone talking about it at conventions or read it online from someone who is an authority until now at the Query Shark blog.  There are all manners of writers, agents and editors in the world, so the usual caveats apply, but this makes sense to me:

I really don't like to hear that your book has been professionally edited.  For me, it's not the persuasive piece of information you think it is.  You think it says "my book is polished and ready to go."

What I infer is "your book was polished by someone else and god help us when we get to the edit letter from the editor, and you don't know how to do this stuff"

Freelance editors tell you a book needs to be edited before agents will look at it.  What they are doing is selling their services.  Only one of my clients employed an editor and that was for non-fiction.

All my novelists write, revise, and edit their own books.

I've seen professional editing work out for people.  The way I've seen it work is via a teacher-student relationship with easy access to those services (aka not so many clients that the freelance editor doesn't have time for your project) and with money available to go over the work again if necessary.  

Ideally the freelance editor should include notes on (generally) what was done and why.  Even better is if there's an ongoing discussion so that the writer learns how to do the editing themselves.  Then, if there's a sale and a call for further editing (and I can almost guarantee there will be a call for more editing in the case of a novel!) the writer has access to this same freelance editor (for stylistic continuity since that style in part is what sold the book--see how this becomes really important to have and be able to afford an ongoing relationship?) and they can work together (the freelance editor continuing to teach as they go) to get those changes sent back promptly to the purchasing editor.  

Being on deadline in this situation would be incredibly stressful for me.  I would be at the mercy of the freelance editor's schedule.  Ack, I say, ack!

But wait, there's more.  This freelance editor/writer relationship isn't a trivial thing.  The freelance editor needs to have some sort of motivation to teach the writer to not need them anymore.  So in comes the deeper reason for why I feel it's ideal to hire a writing teacher who does editing on the side--because the reputation for the teaching services will help bring new clients in the form of students, counter-balancing the fact that eventually the freelance editor's services won't be needed anymore if s/he is doing their teaching job right.  If there's no motivation to teach clients to fly, there's every reason for a freelance editor to keep clients dependent.

I don't think it's wise to become dependent on a freelance editor unless you're the sort of person who relies on a kind of ghost-writer relationship in the first place: basically your primary marketing angle is that you're a celebrity or expert and the writing is just a means of delivering something of interest to an existing audience.  That's why the mention of the non-fiction sale makes so much sense to me.  If you're a novelist, it really is best to learn the craft.  If you have the money, get lots of quality instruction and make that the priority over freelance editing.  With high-quality instruction you can accelerate the learning process all writers go through, and maybe even avoid some classic writing errors in the process.  

Don't expect that if you get a freelance editor to do a once-over that suddenly your manuscript will be sellable, and even if it is, that the sale is followed by a happily ever after.  It can turn out to be just the opposite.  If you get a multi-book deal, only of which the first book has been written, and you leaned heavily on professional editing, you can expect that part of your advance will be spent on purchasing ongoing services.  Considering the cost per page of editing and the state of advances, this may eat your entire advance.

Not the way I would hope to spend an advance, should I be offered one.  But that just may be me.

Critiquedit

I enjoyed a very good critique session today that could have only been made better if the folks currently at Worldcon were present.  I'm ready to put the short story in question into something approximating final form.  

The thick stack of paper I end up with after a critique session used to daunt me.  I'd begin the process of procrastination by setting it somewhere not-my-desk, where it would fester for a while.  Every time I looked at it I'd think I should get to sorting through that, but first I have to scrub around the kitchen faucet with a toothbrush.  Right now.  Just like a cat that has to interrupt crossing a room right now to lick itself, I'd feel a compulsion to get busy doing something unrelated to going over the written critiques as soon as possible.  

But, no more.  A lot doesn't get said during a fiction critique.  No one wants to point out every single little grammatical error or the fact that when the character teased out a nosehair you laughed so hard you blew milk out your nose, and you weren't even drinking milk at the time.  So going over the written comments is important, as is going over the notes you write during a critique.  Don't give me that look.  No, you aren't supposed to file those with the copies of manuscript into your to-do pile.  Your sex partner goes in the to-do pile.  The manuscripts go on the desk, so that when you next sit down to write (not blog or surf the net) you have to move them in order to get to work.  I'm a firm believer in not letting manuscripts that have been critiqued stew.  They've stewed already.  They've stewed while you waited to hear back.  The longer I wait, the more good ideas I lose as the short term memory is taken up by details of daily life that isn't going to be important five minutes later.  I don't need to utilize the fact that I had pizza for dinner.  I need to utilize the expression on a critiquer's face as she detailed the impression my work had left on her.  I need to remember what "Yes to Sara and C.S., go with the bastard" means.  

With that, I'm off to edit.  Cue music!

Action!

So, I've hit my one and only combat scene in the script.  I get to write magical combat with zero special effects.  I'm pretty sure of how I want to do it, but that doesn't mean it's going to be easy.  Yes, this is going to be a low budget very short film done by a high school student with the help of his friends and the drama department.  Yes, it's probably going to be, ahem, of emerging quality.  But that doesn't mean I shouldn't try to set this up so that they have the best chance of succeeding.  So I'm keeping the melodrama down to a minimum, and this combat, when it happens, should give the director, actors and cameraman the best opportunity to make the fight look creepy and wonderfully nasty.  This is going to require quite a bit of thought and planning ahead, so that when it comes time for the director to shout 'action!' it won't turn into a silly, messy headache.  Or, if it's going to be a silly, messy,  headache, it won't be because the script called for something beyond the reach and scope of the project.

Now if we had $68 million to play with?  Oh yeah ...

Of course that sort of attitude is bass-ackwards.  It's still best to write it simple and tight.  After all, special effects may save an otherwise bad film, but no one will be fooled.  They'll always say, gee, it would have been so much better if the dialogue and the acting and, well, pretty much everything was at least as high quality as the CGI.

Swamped

I have to leave much of August open, but that doesn't mean taking all of August off as far as writing is concerned, either.  My happy medium--since any day now I'll get the reading list for the master's course set for next spring, I'll include reading how-to books as part of my August goals.  I think I can manage writing a story too.  When I can I'll write on one of my novels.

August isn't usually a slow writing month for me but I've got a lot going on.  I still may use the hot part of the day to write or read and the cool parts to garden, but a lot has to happen in the month.  I've got a dead-deadline coming up for office remodeling, a big yearly party to plan and execute, have to move all the downstairs furniture and books and clutter out and tear out all the carpeting, and Gilder to frame for it.  I'm swamped!

I know, if I haven't got my health, I haven't got anything.  Right now I'm feeling pretty stressed and nauseated and I had a nasty headache last night (almost certainly from stress) so I've got to tone things down.  Writing goals are not usually my pressure valve.  I always write.  But things are especially pressed right now so I suspect that my ability to do all work, including writing, will be depressed and I'll have to scale back across the board.  While meeting major goals.

It should be an interesting month.

Fighting Crime with Radioactive, Magical Mosquitos

At the Fireside today I plan on hand writing again.  I still haven't had any valuable insights about the process.  The thing that I keep coming back to is that it's slow.  Is slow more careful, deeper writing?  So far, not to my experience.  Is transcribing cool?  Does it add a special layer that I can't get through normal editing?  Not that I've seen, yet.  I'll hang onto that yet for a bit longer under the assumption that I'll still be learning more about the process over the next four weeks. 

 I don't have much choice as far as handwriting or not at this point because my options for Fireside writing are, well, let's see, hand write or pout, and I'm not big on pouting.

We do have a laptop in the house, my son's, an old powerbook he inherited from me.  Recently, somehow Snape ended up with a problem--the OS went bye bye for reasons unknown.  So, my original reasoning of "I'm not going to abscond with my son's computer every Tuesday for my own stuff" has become "and even if I wanted to, I couldn't use it."  So as a gift I'm going to take the poor Mac to the mighty techs and see what they can do with it.  

Tech voice in Kami's head:  Did you try starting it with a bootable CD?

Little kid sulky voice:  Yes

T:  Did you remember to hold down the c key?

L:  Tried that.

T:  What about the CD reader, does it sound like it's spinning?

L:  Yes!  I'm going to pout now.  See my lip?

I'm sure the boy would loan it to me if I asked, especially if I showed my lip, but this is good for me.  At least, I think it's good for me.  Is this just a case of me being stubborn?  Why do I want hand writing to be different, better, or at least teaching?

I guess because I haven't published yet and I want a magic radioactive writing mosquito to come along, annoy me by whining near my ear, land a couple times so I swat at it but it escapes with blinding mosquito speed, and then zap!  It bites me where I can't get to it and infuses my blood with that special something that turns me into The Belly Avenger!

Hey wait, I wanted a writing--

The Belly Avenger, mild-mannered housewife and goat wrestler by day,

Stop, no, I wanted--

Superhero by night, she fights crime with her hypnotic belly dancing, helping the helpless, saving the savingsless, and bringing jerks to justice.

Oh I give up!

Time to head to the place of all things good techie, Power Mac Pac.  See ya at the Fireside with my pen, paper, and apparently my hidden powers of belly dance.

Structure and Style.

I'm deep into reading about story structure and style, something I didn't know anything about. Three-act structure? Uh, what's that all about? I get that now though I'm still struggling with how exactly one goes about accomplishing it.

In an amusing moment, I discovered what structure style I use, one completely un-taught, the one I had always gravitated toward writing: The Slice of Life. I already knew what this was called but had always been told it wasn't a real writing style. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that outside of the westernized world, it's a preferred story structure. Apparently, it's accepted, somewhat loved even, in parts of Europe. Interesting.

To help me internalize the traditional three-act structure, I printed up a cheat sheet of steps and requirements. Whenever I find myself straying from turning points, temporary triumphs, reversals, and final obstacles through to climaxes and resolutions, I'll slap my hands and delete all that Slice of Life nonsense...until I'm no longer a newbie writer and can get away with writing in my former, preferred style once again while getting paid for it. But for the time being, it'll be all about identifying each in stories. Easier said than done.

Stretching

As of two minutes ago I've set a personal record for number of manuscripts out.  Six manuscripts is not a lot but it's a big number for me.  I think I'm going to strive for double digit submissions and see how long it takes me to get there.  For now I feel like I've just massively increased my odds of getting something into print soon.  I'm excited to get more out there but I'm keeping myself reined in so that I don't, in my haste to submit, start mailing out stories that aren't my very, very best work.

Maybe I should have used six verys in that last sentence, like a six gun salute or some such.

I hit a point like this with my artwork (which is languishing at the moment) where I had a deep enough portfolio of current (as in created within the last year) work that I actually had choices about what to put up in the art shows I attend.  It's more than a feel-good moment.  It's a sign that I'm getting my act together as far as creative production.  

Speaking of production, a long time ago I had a discussion with someone about the commercialization of one of my favorite musical groups.  Had they sold their souls to become commercial successes?  I thought not.  I think they grew and improved from their early, if passionate, days.  I still hear that passion in their music but without the raw and, I feel, unrefined quality.  As far as lyrics and political messages I still see lots of compassion, philosophy and, yes, politics in their music but they're no longer whacking their listeners up side the head with a 2x4.  When the message is clear its still artful, not screaming for attention.

Although I may worry occasionally about  'production' and whether I'm just cranking out words because I can (or because I want to get paid,) I only worry about that when I examine my overall volume or how many subs I have out.  When I'm actually writing instead of handling the business part of writing, I'm fully engaged in the story.  I care about the characters and what happens and what means what and pay attention to whether I'm connecting with the reader or not.  When I stop caring, then I'll be in trouble.  I think when a writer stops caring their stuff becomes less compelling and less publishable, and we see less and less of them in print until they fade away.  Same with artists.  

Part of caring is striving and stretching limits.  If it's comfortable, it's not my best work.  When I'm struggling with those words, or the paint, I know I'm trying to achieve something that may be beyond my skills and I really focus.  That focus shows on the page or canvas, for better or worse.  Maybe that's an element of my older work that has staying power--I tried to write something beyond my skill level and although I didn't quite make it, that struggle and passion ended up on the page and became memorable.

Well, it's back to the creation part of my day.  Time to produce, and strive, and struggle, and reach for something that may be beyond me.

I can rest on my laurels when I'm dead

It's been an intense couple of weeks on all fronts.  I'm holding it together with one raw nerve.  Thanks for listening.

In writing news I've got my energy focused on one short fantasy and one flash fantasy that need to come back from critiques before I send them out.  I'm very tempted, especially with the short, to send it out as is.  Although I always welcome critiques and I truly believe that I come out with stronger stories after I've heard what tripped people up and what they took off running with, I have just enough confidence (or is it arrogance?) in my writing to feel that the stories do okay without the critiques too.  

I think unpublished writers really have to make their stories extra tight and compelling before they'll make it into publication.  My goal as a writer is to write that irresistible first published work and then keep writing tight and well-paced stories and novels throughout my career.  I don't ever want to become lazy and rest on my laurels.  Yes, it would be very nice to relax.  There's a part of me with a silken, seductive voice that says once you're 'made it' then readers can sit back and really appreciate every thought, every sentence as it comes to you unadulterated by hair-tearing revisions and word by word editing.   They'll be amazed by your brilliance, Kami, you'll see ...

Stupid voice.  Shut up!  The goo goo goo that babies make is only awe-inspiring to their parents.  Let's go put some words together and then make them shine with careful editing!

Moving Forward

Today, after feeling a little guilty for working on Signet, I decided boo to all that.  I need to move forward in the series.  In fact, if I want to give Signet stewing time I'd better get hopping.  In the unlikely event that I sell Masks this year, Signet better be ready close behind and, well, if I haven't finished writing the rough draft I may be looking at a rush job.  The idea fills me with horror.  Over the years I've shortened up my editing time considerably on novels, but it still took me a good 2-3 years to get Masks into decent shape.  So, forget the reward system.  I'm going to write me a novel!  Yay!

Book in a Week?

Who needs a kick start to get themselves writing again?

I was reading about writing a book in a week on Broad Universe and something clicked.  No, absolutely I'm not going to write a book in a week.  I've got too many books I've written in a month that need my tender loving editing care to write yet another, especially since I'll probably do Nanowrimo again.  But when I got to the part about heroines of straw I thought aha!  That's something valuable to observe.  The author focused on lack of preparation leading to her failures but I thought her mention of her characterization was a bigger clue to her underlying issues.  Or not.  She was writing about her process, not mine.  

I wondered, can you prepare a character?  Technically, I guess.  You can decide their hair color and eye color, if they were molested as a child and how that makes them act out, if they drive a Cadillac or take the bus, and so on.  You can even 'motivate' them.  "My character wants, more than anything in the world, to travel to outer space."  Is that going to be your climax, then?  She finally gets to go to outer space?  Or is that just the beginning?  With the first choice, you've got a whole lot of empty to get her there.  With the second, you've got the deadly 'now what?'

So I thought about characters and what happens when I've got a good one.  And I realized that my favorite characters are strangers that I connect with and learn about as they grow in the story.  They're people when, as our eyes meet for the first time, I get this tingle.  I want to get to know them.  Maybe it's a shallow impression.  Man, is he hunky, and yet he's so shy!  Or maybe it's that moment of we're all in deep doo doo and she looks like she knows what she's doing.  I may be wrong, but my instincts say she's going to get me out of this mess alive where no one else can.  

Hopefully you're getting that idea.  I think this is yet another situation where 'write what you know' gets a lot of writers, including myself, into a little trouble.  I can think of a novel in particular where I put so many of my own insecurities and philosophies and everything else into the character that she didn't have much going for her.  Well, she had about as much going for her as I do.  I can be pretty entertaining and I have a lot of friends, but for a character to carry a novel I think she needs to be surprising, uncomfortable, edgy--something (even if it's just one thing but hopefully several things) that's not me.  I don't want her to be predictable and always react the same way I'd react if I were in the same situation.  

I'm not saying characters have to be larger than life--not at all.  But think about the first time you met your best friend, the love of your life, the teacher that changed your life, someone who impressed you even when you didn't know that much about them.  I propose that a character needs to pop for you the same as real people pop out of society's swarm and instantly become individuals.  Great actors can make even the most mundane secondary character interesting.  You want to get to know them, even if they're bad guys (or maybe especially, if you think that way.)  

The strongest short story I've recently written had this fun voice.  I didn't know much about that character's history, but I immediately wanted to get to know her.  She was a pistol.  I think I'm going to try to write something like that again, about someone I'd want to really get to know.  I think she's going to make a fabulous first impression on me.  I'll combine it with the garden challenge, I think.  Doesn't really matter, as long as I get to write about her.  I can't wait!

Memory, Patterns and Pain

"I Remember the War" came back from the Lucky Labs with some great comments and lots of encouragement, so it's time to open that old chest, dust off the weapons, saddle up Longshanks and head off to the big city.  

I realized (how did I not see this when I wrote it?) that my newest short, "Strangers Think They Know Me," is not only also in first person (lately I've been writing a lot of first person--weird because I normally vastly prefer third) but also revolves around the past and memory.  Huh.  Do I have an issue I don't know about yet?  Am I trying to use the prose as a therapy whipping boy?  

The words have got to come from the heart, but there's a fine line at the edge of an abyss between standing on the solid ground of theme and story arch and characterization that's informed by life experience and plummeting into the realm of re-experiencing your own pain for the sake of 'true-life' drama or flogging the reader with political views/frustrations and so forth.  I understand the impulse, I really do, and sometimes it leads to great writing.  I would not want the world to be deprived of C.S. Lewis' A Grief Observed because someone told him that he shouldn't write while he's in the midst of a traumatic event or right after one.  But writers ought to be cautious and remember the lessons of various authors who have written 'the divorce novel' or other such works.  

I suspect that works of fiction are particularly vulnerable.  They're very heartfelt and are written with passion when an author is under the influence of a crisis, but they may turn out to be tattered orphans that sleep under the porch and dig around the garbage cans for food while the rest of the children are well kept.  I've heard that when a writer goes through a traumatic event, editors are of course immediately concerned about the welfare of someone they've worked with and often bonded with, but that there's an accompanying dread that they may end up with a trauma novel on their desk.  

Maybe it's better to write about the experience as non-fiction if you're in the middle of it.  Then it's more... what?  I can't put it into words.  I guess the story isn't trying to be something other than what it is.  There's also nowhere for the author to hide (which obscures what's going on) and it's less likely that, if the author is in the middle of a trilogy, established characters will suddenly start acting crazy, accusing each other of infidelity or becoming sobbing wrecks that can't drag themselves out of their depression long enough to combat the Big Bad.

Anyway, for whatever reason, memory is on my mind.  It's possible that I'm just in the midst of a series.  Painters paint in series.  It's smart, actually.  You work with a certain palette and get good at a type of composition or a certain subject and run with it.  I don't think it works for short story writers in terms of marketing, unfortunately.  Editors, and readers, will want to see new and different things.  The closest writers have to a painter's series is the novel series and/or the themed short story collection, though I think that single-author themed short story collections are rare.  ?  Something to find out.  In the meantime, though, I don't have to worry about repeating myself.  Two stories revolving around memory isn't a trend, it's a blip.  Now if the next story is about memory in some fashion, then ...

Then I might start building a symmetrina (with thanks to Bruce Holland Rogers for writing such a beautiful and effective one for Polyphony, handily entertaining and instructing me in one swell foop.)  

I think it's a mistake to panic about something abstract, and so many of the rules and worries about writing that plague us are abstracts.  It's a safer bet to concern yourself with the concrete stuff--structure, grammer, narrative style, etc. than to flip out about what you're writing or why.  Save that for later, the kind of later that never comes around.  You know, the 'I'll start brushing the dog's teeth every day, but not right now" kind of later.  (Apologies to folks who brush their dog's teeth every day.  You have my sincere admiration.  I just know that I'm never going to do it even though I should.)  It's enough to be aware.  I'm aware I should brush my dog's teeth.  I'm aware that I should be cautious when I'm writing from direct experience if that experience happened to me recently or is happening right now.  But it won't stop me from writing about it, fiction or non.  I just might let it simmer a little longer on the back burner before I go to edit, revise and market it.  If nothing else, something that comes that deep from my heart deserves extra care.  Just in case this memory thing is coming from the storm around me, I'll keep this all in mind, but I suspect it's just happenstance.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Tougher Than I Remember

I don't remember Script Frenzy starting out so rough, but then again, last year I scrapped the first ten pages I wrote and started over with an entirely new script, so I guess that could be called rough.

I've spent an hour writing two pages. Just 577 words. An hour. At this rate, it's going to take me a couple hours a day to do the five pages I need for each. Which is pretty much most of my free writing time.

Five pages doesn't sound so bad, does it, when Nano demands seven each day. And honestly, Script Frenzy only demands three pages a day (100 pages in 30 days), but since I'm leaving town on the 22nd, I have only 20 days (I'll need the 21st to get us all packed and ready--or to make up the last few pages).

100 pages in 20 days.

And not just any ole 100 pages. 100 SCRIPT pages.

What I truly forgot was how different the thought process is for script-writing versus prose writing. I have to twist my head all into visuals. For example, this morning I'm thinking about my second scene, which introduces the main characters. And I've already gravitated toward a point of view character, Carly Wells. I'm thinking about what action she'll be doing (cleaning up the apartment she shares with her fiance) and I'm crafting bits of narrative as I go ("She loved Will for his scientific brilliance, not for the Texas Hold'em parties he threw every Friday night, leaving her with a mess to clean...") when I realize, Stop! You are thinking in prose!

Erase, rewind. Start again.

INT. STUDIO APARTMENT -- MORNING

CARLY WELLS, a twentysomething co-ed with a sense of orderliness, is throwing away empty pizza boxes and beer cans. And does not look happy about it.

The first day is always the roughest, but now that I'm wrapping my head around the style once more, I'll be in full swing soon. And thank goodness, because I'll be plotting building by then and I'll need all the brain cells I can spare for that part!

It's good to be script-writing again.

Trusting the Story

We had a stellar INK meeting last night.  I got home a little after one a.m. and had a long work day today, so if I'm less than coherent, blame the woodstove.

One of the many things that came up at the meeting was trusting the story.  This has been discussed everywhere and in-depth, but it bears repeating and repeating and repeating.

There's a common syndrome that bugs the bejeezus out of everyone so much that they tend to focus on it to the exclusion of other writing issues.  It's the writer who won't listen, won't take critiques, who will tell readers and editors and agents and book critics that they're wrong, and won't change a single word of their precious baby to suit anyone.  Some of them are brilliant writers and can get away with it, but most don't learn how to write well in the first place (since they're convinced that they're perfect and don't need to, you know, learn and change) and simply exist to annoy editors and agents with hate mail telling them how stupid they are and how sorry they'll be when this, the next great American novel, will sell billions of copies and become an intergalactic best seller.

There's another, more quiet syndrome that plagues writers and that's the one I want to focus on.  This quiet syndrome befalls the writer who tries to edit and adapt their story to please others.  Some will even go further and listen to the vicious voices in their heads that tell them their story is crud and only changes will make it barely serviceable.   Sometimes the changes suggested are valid, but they don't always work together.  Unfortunately it seems that the people who suffer from the first writing syndrome I mentioned above use this syndrome as an unshakeable reason to never listen to reader response.

This is where a wise author will become as Buddha.  No, not with the big belly thing and the creepy smile.  The middle road thing is overused and cheapens the concept in some ways because it's so familiar it can be dismissed.  Pair it with 'the truth lies somewhere between' and the concept of story integrity and hopefully the story won't fall victim as easily to either problem.  

Both syndromes have similar medications that help relieve the discomfort and sometimes even inspire a partial cure.  None of us are free from disease, though, not when it comes to writing.  I'm afraid we all have to live with being riddled with chronic writerly illnesses.  

Ask yourself why you're writing the story.  What is the inspiration, the thing you're trying to express?  It could revolve around a theme, a character, an event, or something as abstract as a sensation you felt when you saw a dog sharing an ice cream cone with a three year old.

Break it down to the scene.  Why this scene, this way?  Does each element serve a purpose?

Look at the characters.  If you were in their shoes, would you respond in a similar way?  Or do you know someone who responds that way?  Can you get inside the character's head and understand why?  

Are there ins and outs?  Can you see yourself or someone else getting into this situation and finding the events you pen out inevitable even if they're surprising?  On the other hand, is there a way out?  It doesn't have to be a pleasant way out, but there are always, always options.  If there aren't other options, it's not going to read in a realistic fashion.  And if there are better options that the character doesn't follow, the reader will wonder why this poor, helpless puppet is being forced to do something stupid/illogical/pointless instead of doing this other thing that fixes the problem.

Finally, is there reason?  Almighty Reason is our guide and light, and it has many colors.  Characters need reasons to do things, and they need to be strong motivational reasons if things get tough, or a real person would give up.  There should be a reason why you're describing this time and place, and no other.  There should be a reason why the readers ought to bother reading your story, and you should give them that reason.  "Because I love this idea and it won't let me go," is a start.  The first syndrome writer has no issue with this, but the quiet syndrome writer may in fact be missing this.  The quiet, insecure writer may find that their personal enjoyment (*cough* obsession) of the story is insufficient reason to write it, so they must alter it in the hopes that the changes will make it matter to others, or worse, alter it so that it will reflect a literary ideal rather than their own hearts and minds or hopes of reaching a real, flesh and blood reader.    

What's the harm in trying to adopt most or even all the changes that readers suggest?

Well, aside from the fact that readers can be wrong (no! really?) and could contradict each other (you mean people might like or hate things that other people hate or like? Dang!) making changes in line editing, working in partial conceptual revisions, altering character motivations and other such rewriting always runs the risk of inserting discontinuities and tone changes, as well as outright contradictions.  Artifacts appear in the writing from previous versions that didn't get eliminated.  This happens all the time in revisions.  It's part of the process.  But the more changes an author makes the more opportunities there are for continuity, logic and voice/style issues to arise.  Too much line editing, like overworking a painting, will turn the words to gray, lifeless mud.  Working in conceptual revisions is like overworking a collage--you'll end up with a gaudy thing that makes no sense.  Altering too many character motivations is like changing all the expressions in a family portrait--suddenly they don't look like family anymore because they aren't natural and themselves around each other.  They become artificial and disconnected.

What's a poor writer to do?

Outline writers will disagree with chronological/character-driven writers, but both styles of writer will agree that the truth will come out when you return to the heart of the story.  You can start writing from scratch--blue screen writing.  Write it like you remember it.  Anything you leave out probably wasn't that important, and new things might come in that bring the story back to life.  You can return to the outline, a homecoming of sorts.  You can never go back home again, they always say, but returning to an outline after wandering the wilderness can help ground you for a beginning-to-end rewrite.  You can Snowflake the work and see if you can find missing elements and build character motivations.  You might even find a subplot or two.  You can edit one aspect at a time from beginning to end.  It's tiring, but worth it to go through and look only at one character's part in the story, then start again from the beginning looking at passive voice, and then again looking at setting and sensory detail, and so on.  Lastly, you can go to the masters for advice.  Revising Fiction by David Madden.  Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King.  Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee.  Read writers who write better than you.  Rudyard Kipling.  Mark Twain.  Miyamoto Musashi.  William Shakespeare.  Ernest Hemmingway.  Homer.  James Herriot.  Khalil Gibran.  They've lasted and their names are known throughout the world for a reason.  Read them for pleasure, or if you can't enjoy their work, try to figure out what it is that's made them last.  Was it a message?  The flow of their words?  An amazing idea?  Characterization?  Sensory detail?  Listen to their voices.  What are they talking about?

Then think hard about what you're talking about.  If you had only one story you could tell the world before you died, what story would you choose?  Would it be a fantasy, or a story from your childhood?  Would it be long?  Or would it be short and punchy, something you could tell aloud by a campfire before wandering off into the darkness?  Do yourself a favor and tell that story when you sit down and write next time.  If you're still having trouble figuring out what it means when people say trust the story (what is it that you're trusting really if everything is so malleable?) think about the crucial images and scenes that you want to transmit and the feelings you want to inspire in the telling.  If you find a special reader or three that you trust, listen to what they have to say.  Let their impressions guide you deeper, kind of like therapy with a really good counselor, but own your story like you own your life.  The story is part of your life, even if it's fiction.  Once you've found the critical elements that must be there, they become like history, and then it's your job to make history come to life for the reader.

When you're done, if you survive, there's always the next great story waiting to be written inside you.  If you're like me, there's a whole lot of them excited and ready to be told. 

Start Now!

A long while back I mentioned that writing a synopsis will help focus a novel.  It will do nothing but good, even if you abandon said synopsis in the course of revising the novel.  

Another good reason to write a synopsis early on in your project is that writing a synopsis is hard.  A good synopsis will take a long time to write unless you get lucky or you think in terms of synopses and can write a 'take me, take me now, take me hard!' synopsis in an hour or less, in which case I hate you and you don't need to come back here ever again.    The synopsis has to go through the same review process as any other writing you plan to submit, so waiting until you're all done with writing your work will only delay your submission.  You have to write it, get it critiqued, rewrite it, get it past your best readers, give it a final polish, and don't forget to kiss it goodbye when you send it off, or at least give it a good spank on its tight little butt on its way out.

Here's some help I found recently thanks to a link of a link of a link.

Short?

I wrote a short story yesterday, the first one in a year.  It's not a good length for me, and I think the lack of dynamic plot is telling.  This could easily be the first chapter of a book, it's so quiet.  (Nooooooooooooooooooooo!)

But I'll submit it to INK the next time around and see what happens.  

The things I'll do to avoid working on taxes.  Now I have a list of avoidance.  Things that are higher on the list will get done before things on the bottom of the list in an effort to avoid doing the things on the bottom of the list.

Vacuum, do dishes

Work on a troublesome novel opening

Wash windows, scrub out tubs and toilets

Trim cat claws

Write a short story

Work on taxes

Escape

My brain is looking for escape routes.  Yesterday I wanted to write on anything except what I was supposed to.  Last night I even came up with a new story idea.  This morning I came up with more ideas--luckily one was for Masks--but the primary idea was for a project that has been on a backburner and will probably stay there for a long time.  I can blame my heavy schedule for this bout of escapism, but that would be just an excuse.  I know how to kick this.  Write anyway.

Definitely owe INK a dollar, and considering Radcon, that'll be another dollar because I'm not going to get a sub in by next Monday either.  Might as well pay up now.  But hey, after Radcon I'll be home free for quite a while.  With two day jobs days of work a week, three max, and the fact that lately my schedule has been arranged so that the workdays are consecutive, I'll have a lot more free time to get writing projects done.  I'm really, really looking forward to that.  Radcon has become my Thunderdome, and all I want to do is get beyond it (she said, dating herself yet again.)  I'm sure once I get there, though, I'll have such a blast that I'll forget all about these silly things called deadlines and goals, at least for a while.

At the risk of repeating myself, I wanted to write about critiques in general and specifically what a wonderful group INK is and how privileged I feel to be a part of them.  

Steve is a picky reader, especially when it comes to internal consistency.  When he has trouble with the logic of a particular scene, I listen very carefully.  I don't want to become that author who writes about characters that do stupid things because it serves the plot.  I especially don't want to become that author with implausible happenings, ridiculous solutions and character motivations that make absolutely no sense.  He is also our only man.  I hope he doesn't start to suffer from estrogen poisoning at our meetings, because I really need that testosterone perspective, particularly since lately I've been writing male pov characters.

Carole is my eye-roller reader.  She doesn't technically 'do' fantasy, or to look at it another way, she prefers dark fantasy and magic realism.  She's my oh puke reader, and if I'm not making her puke there's a very good chance my writing could reach mainstream readers.  She's also a detail reader.  She's done so many jobs and been enough different places that she has tons of facts packed into her head, while having the valuable skill of being able to discriminate between what I mean versus what a reader who is unfamiliar with said item will hear.  For example, it never occurred to me that a reader would think that even the leaves on a bougainvillea vine would be red when I'm talking about papery carmine bougainvillea vines.  Not only did I assume everyone had seen them but I also looked like an idiot if someone had seen them (like CS) and thought I hadn't and had mis-described them from ignorance.  BTW, Carole, I have a baker character in the next book.  I'm looking forward to your impression of him and his workspace.

Carissa is my form and function reader.  If it has no function, she suggests eliminating it.  If the form is flawed, she catches it.  She also helps with things like details and character motivations, but where she really shines as a reader is as a surrogate editor.  She has read so much fantasy (and continues to read fantasy regularly) that she'll catch it if I'm falling into cliche'.  She also gets impatient with my writing in many of the same ways that editors get impatient with writing.  Their time is valuable.  As a rule they don't like excess wordage, extraneous scenes, scenes that go on too long, characters that have no purpose, expository lumps, etc.  No matter how carefully I disguise them (even from myself) Carissa catches them.  If a description passes muster with her, I'm confident that it'll pass muster with darned near anyone.

I had a really good critique, as always, on Masks with INK this last meeting.  I learned that I'd butchered what probably had been a perfectly fine fight scene before I 'streamlined' (read, took out too much for anyone to follow the action) it, that I'd turned my intelligent character into an unsympathetic hormonal mess, that I'd removed too much calculation in a character's reasoning and turned a dark scene into a mini-buddy movie that lacked chemistry, and many other things.  I also got some great brain-storming ideas that will have repercussions across two, maybe all three of the trilogy that Masks begins.

I sometimes worry that you think you're playing second hat to the Lucky Labs (who I'm also very, very grateful to,) so here's my note of appreciation and reassurance.  You're great readers, and you are all so definitely going to be in the acknowledgements.  Without my readers, I'd be a much less effective writer, no doubt about it.  You also have the horrible job of checking every blessed little tiny scrap of crap I write.  From my bios and cover letters to synopses and outlines, nothing goes out without an INK okay.  You also listen to my endless yammering on WIPs and bleeding characters and plotlines.  We've become more than a critique group.  We're a team, a business venture, and I'm very glad to be a part of you.  Thanks, INK!  You're the best.

Motivation From the Car Muse.

Watching the evening news tonight, a story about the severe drought in the U.S. south perked up my ears. Lake Lanier in George is drying up if you haven't already seen the report. My eyes went to the manuscript before me. Lake Lanier. Yep, there it was. One of my secondary characters in my car novel comes from a wealthy family who builds communities around the usually beautiful Lake Lanier area. Hmm, that information may have to be adjusted in the final draft depending on the situation down there.

Last week, I was in Barnes & Noble bookstore; not a local one but one across the river in Oregon. As I browsed the markdown book aisles, I ran across the obligatory 'exotic automobile' area and, I'm not kidding here, the exact second I picked up a book on Super Cars, the music on the store's speakers switched from some pop ditty to "Lil Darlin'" by The Diamonds. It's a tune from 1957, a favorite amoung some car enthusiasts, myself included, and is featured briefly in my car novel. I've gone years upon years without hearing that song anywhere but my own music library, yet there it played, out of the blue in Barnes & Noble...but only, I'm convinced, after I touched that car book.

Things like this, little things that make me think of a piece of writing I'm usually involved with at that time, happen a lot to me. I've got a list of other coincidences that relate to the current novel I'm working with but the two above are the ones that come readily to mind. And rather than think of them all, as odd or unusual as they might seem, as nothing more than coincidences, I can't help but see them as motivational pushes from my muse. It's odd but works for me.

Go on, Car Muse. I'm listening.

Exercise: Cover Quotes and Blurbs.

In my quest to learn everything I can about the authoring business (in between reading, writing, plotting and losing electronic devices), I've been seeing a lot lately on cover quotes, also called blurbs.

Apparently, when you've got a book coming out and you mention to your agent you like such and such author, a good agent just might contact the agent of that author and ask if they can send a copy of your book to them and get a cover quote for the next printing. If the author likes your book, they might authorize the use of a cover quote to help sell your book.

Ingenius! Especially if the author actually reads your book.

"Doesn't suck," would be a great Stephen King quote I'd like to see. I think he might actually do this some day.

"This book could stand on a shelf next to any classic," is another good one. Technically, if the spine of the book isn't mush, I guess it probably could stand next to anything -- a work by Shakespear or a bowl of tapioca equally well.

One I'd like to see is "Bigger than the Potter series!" Then discover what the publisher left out was "[This author's ego is] Bigger than the Potter series!"

And how about one of your own pseudonyms blurbing about your own book. "C.S. Cole's 'Enthusiast' is like The Fast and The Furious on speed," Carole Cole, a reader in Vancouver Wa.

What cover quotes would you like to see for some of your own works? What quotes would you rather NOT see?