So I finished The Order, soon to be known as The Empty West, better known by its working title, My God This Is Going On So Long Make It Stop The Horror, nearly two months ago now. A slurry of editing, a debate over publishing methods and a brief discussion with my tiny but devoted preview readership rightfully delayed the release until a few notable kinks had been suitably ironed the hell out.
Many of these kinks are irrefutable. Typos are a certainty; stylistic miscues brought on by late nights and constant re-editing (such as using the same adjective three times in as many clauses), equally so. Irritatingly obtuse word choice? Fine. I accept that "frangible" is not a word in common usage.
But there are some tweaks which bear second scrutiny. There are deliberate design decisions that go into any given work, and there are hundreds more completely accidental cock-ups that nevertheless become suddenly core to your ideology the second someone else decides they don't belong there.
That, stunningly, was not the case here.
My first review of The Order discovered a rather interesting unintentionally notion: I had managed to scribble out 592 pages of dialog and description without once ever describing the physical traits of my characters. Age, height, build, number of limbs, all were up for grabs. Save for the tacit implications of English pronouns, even their genders would be in question. It was a complete void.
To my surprise, I soon discovered that it hadn't been a simple oversight, a lack of translating my vision onto paper: I honestly had no idea what the characters looked like. I could recall, instantly and with great precision, the exact image of each locale, even of chief contests within the work.
Swordfights and sunsets alike flashed in perfect picture before my mind's eye yet, with the exception of one character's remarkable shade of hair, not one physical detail for any of my main characters sprang to mind.
I couldn't believe it. I'd been working on this book since roughly September of 2008, I'd written at least two of the characters almost 8 years prior to that in Gunner 7, and yet I remained with no physical notion of them at all.
I was astounded.
Understand, I'm a visual person. If you say "two elephants tap-dancing in tutus," within milliseconds I will hold in my mind a startlingly sharp notion of precisely that. I can tell you the shape of the elephants, the color of their tutus, even the expressions on their faces (probably something like "why in the hell are we tap-dancing, we're elephants, for heaven's sake").
Yet in something shy of eleven years plotting the fictional lives of these characters, it hadn't once occurred to me what in the devil they might look like.
...And then I was delighted.
I was delighted because, for years, I've fretted over race in fiction. Gender roles, differences in sexuality, the various modes of historical perspective were all hurdles I had long since herded. Race, or more specifically the implications of race through arbitrary physical features, remained a difficult road to navigate.
Normally, I might pause at this moment to go into my own race (or rather, features) to shed light on the unique perspective they bring to the argument, but the thing is, they do not. It does not matter what features you possess, if you are alive and a writer, race is, has been, or can be an issue for you, whether you have any awareness of it or not.
I will, however, pause long enough to emphasize the notion of denotation: by race, I here mean cultural identity. By features, I mean the physical qualities of your person. In our society, one typically defines the other, so people often mix them up, but they are not the same. Still, it's good to be aware that they are often mixed up so as to avoid accidentally offending anyone, or as I like to call it, "pulling a Lucas."
So upon realizing that I could write an entire novel without limiting the number of faces my characters could wear to any given reader, I decided to leave the characters as I had found them: essentially faceless. With the exception of adding a few notes on attire and relative ages to establish proximity to the world-ending event on which the setting was based, I left all physical descriptions on the cutting room floor.
This, I soon discovered, came as an annoyance to at least two of my readers.
My hope was that, without predetermined features, each reader would place their own details over the empty mannequins before them. However, the void proved too deep a chasm: without any identifiers to latch onto, their minds, instead of filling the blank canvas with colors all their own, simply picked up their proverbial crayons and went home in a huff.
I found myself at a crossroads: to put in any physical descriptions meant hedging the reader into potentially dangerous implications above and beyond any I'd ever intended, especially in a setting where there are few heroes and nearly everyone has something unsavory in store. To leave them blank meant frustrating potential readers with unidentifiable characters with whom they might have trouble connecting.
It wasn't as difficult a decision as I had been expecting.
If features sincerely don't matter, then adding them shouldn't change anything. That simple rule was enough for me to add them back in, largely chosen at random. All the natural qualities were picked out of a hat, I only put thought into the hairstyles since the character had liberty to change them.
Arguably, I could've taken it a step further and thrown the dice on their genders as well. That's how Shinigami Blues became a romance story between two men in the first place: I made a change to a feature I told myself made no difference, and fittingly, changing it made no difference.
I shuffled things up a few times to see if I was completely kidding myself, and everything read exactly as it had before. I'd never been more thrilled. My little accidental experiment had shown consistent results.
Hooray, science!
...Yes, in reality, there's all manner of personal bias involved, but without funding a proper double-blind study (key word being "funding"), it feels nice to have at least fooled myself.
The lesson of all this is to not feel locked into character traits.
For fantasy and sci-fi authors, I personally recommend against defining any race or species by skin tone where possible unless you're trying to actively make a point of its futility. As a gut-check, take any quality, any trait, physical or otherwise that stretches across an entire nation or species and change it. Radically.
Instead of blue skin and braids, give them six arms and two hearts. Instead of a fondness for music and poetry, try puzzles and games, sport and the hunt or, hell, macrame and underwater basketweaving, whatever it takes to clear your mind of its preconceptions.
See if it seriously changes anything. Does their culture revolve around that one aspect? Is it defined by it? Or is it superfluous?
If you're going to use aliens, elves and the like to represent human nations or qualities, by all means, do so; but know that you're doing it. If you're doing it by accident, it's best you know sooner rather than later.
Personally, I still have a fondness for the faceless model. In a story without a message of its own, it might serve as a great mind-expanding exercise, or a wonderful trick to play in the final pages. Layer Cake managed something similar by never revealing the protagonist's name.
Ever.
But when you're looking to establish characters for a long-running series, identity becomes too key a card to set aside in the name of an ultimately unnecessary experiment. So long as the features you choose are features alone and independent of any larger or seeming agenda, there's no danger in adding them, no matter what anyone will tell you.
Now if only I could fund that double-blind study...
Friday, April 29, 2011
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Update: The Two-Fold Method of Publishing Prospects
Writing the damn book, it turns out, is only step one.
After spending nearly a year writing what has turned out to be far and away the biggest book I've yet written, it quickly settled in that I needed to step back and decide both why, and how, I was doing the proverbial "this." With years now invested in crafting entirely new worlds, carving characters out of clay and breathing life into their pithy dialog, I could no longer rest content in the illusion that I was doing this "for the fun of it."
It isn't to say that I don't still enjoy my writing, or that I will stop if my "career" in it goes no further, merely that I needed to set the pen down long enough to appraise my situation at large.
To wit: "...now what?"
The Order (soon to be retitled) is large enough to aid in home defense. Almost two years of regular work went into its production, as well as a number of hours on the part of friends and family to see to its improvement. It is still in dire need of polishing, but as manuscripts go, it's largely submittable.
Yet it's sitting all alone on my hard drive, unseen by any unfriendly eyes.
I support I always had an eventual plan for when the book was finished. "I'll send it to a bunch of publishers," I said. "Surely, one of them will at least read it. Even if they don't pick it up, perhaps the critique alone will be enough for me to improve and return later this year with a polished and fully-printable copy of the same."
...which, as I understand it, is at least one step beyond where most burgeoning writers have typically gotten by this point.
The bad news is that the first piece of this plan, that measly nine-word glimmer of a sentence is a good bit more complicated than any of the very simple words that make it up.
First, there is the agent issue: many publishers prefer or even outright require that all manuscripts come through agents rather than authors directly. For anyone finding this notion pretentious, consider the sheer volume of would-be writers who might submit their alternative-universe Twilight novel as printable fiction.
Just like with email, one comes to need filters just to get through all the spam and onward toward something of potential worth. Forcing any hopefuls to go through the sieve of at least one other human being's eyes cuts out the wide base of an otherwise unpleasant pyramid.
The concern with agents, then, is that most writers take time to see any dividends at all. Hiring an agent out of pocket when one's pockets are already threadbare seems like a risky endeavor at best. Until I learned an interesting fact:
Most reputable agents work for commission only.
Agents who charge exorbitant "reading fees" or otherwise force potential clients to pay up front just to have a manuscript considered are generally the type of agents you want to avoid. If the fee seems more like a way to scare off any half-hearted attempts ($10-$15 per manuscript), it may just be that the agent just needs a filter of their own. Any more than that, and it's likely you want to keep looking.
That said, with an agent who works for commissions, you're having to sell them from the get-go. Since they only get paid if your work gets sold, they're only going to take on the projects they believe in. Be prepared for rejection.
But first, be prepared to wait. It can take someone 2-6 months just to read a preview proposal, let alone a full manuscript (think more like one year).
For that reason, it's best to hedge your bets and submit to a number of agents or publishers at once. Just be sure to check their info for any mention of a policy against "simultaneous submissions" first, just in case. It may not stop you from doing it, but it at least makes you aware of the potential objections.
In addition, if this is your first submission (as it is mine), it's best to have the whole work done. As I've mentioned, writing the damn book is usually the make-or-break point for the amateur author. Once the book is finished, you're already in the narrower part of the pyramid.
Lead with the good foot. If you can grab an agent's attention from the start, it's going to be that much more likely that they finish reading the thing and get back to you sooner.
Also, know your audience. Whatever your opinions on a given genre, understand that there are very established lines in the publishing world; less because they want to mandate what is "art" and more because they're looking to set the book on a given shelf with a given label.
If you're going through an agent, they'll likely take care of the triage process when it comes to submitting to a publisher, but if you're going straight to the publishers, know what genres and styles they prefer. Find out what other authors they've printed in the past so you have a feel for what they're looking for.
You don't have to tailor your work to match their preferences, just keep looking till you find a good match. It's like speed dating: if it's not a good fit, move on, don't waste time with square pegs and suitably un-square holes.
The last factor is the format. In this digital age, most people still prefer reading on paper. If you're lucky and your agent/publisher is fine porting your PDF to their e-reader, you're golden, but be ready to mail a paper manuscript along with it. Otherwise, the agent has to burn a hole in their Xerox machine printing out 400 pages of what for all they know might be utter slop. That is an obstacle you do not want working against you.
For going electronic, aim for .doc format, which an be opened in anything going back as far as Windows 95. If you have access to Acrobat, send a .pdf version as well. If they have an e-reader, they can load it easily and make their comments or remarks on the Word-formatted file.
Your Word file (and printed manuscript) should be double-spaced with 1-inch margins all around. Use the whole page (8.5x11), number your pages, and use a nice easy-to-read font at size 10 or 12. Now it's primed to be red-penned to all hell and back.
And, though it should go without saying, spell-check the damn thing. Grammar-check too, if you have it (though don't trust everything the little squiggly green line tells you. Read the rule and see if you agree. Word's grammar check is built for office and legal content, not the stylistic leanings of fiction. Still, too many commas is too many commas. Now is no time to be proud).
It all boils down to one simple notion: pamper your reader. This is your gateway to getting a book published at large. You want them to be happy. Tailor the format to their specifications. Bend over backwards if you have to. Swallow your pride and sweat the details until you're confident that a total stranger will see the efforts you went to to make the process painless for them.
That leaves only the story, and that is exactly what you want.
For those wondering about my departure from the growing trend of self-publishing, I have by no means set that possibility aside. There's simply no reason to rule out traditional publishing out of hand without having at least tested the waters to see if a number of the up-and-coming publishers might have more updated notions about genre blending and unique delivery formats.
I plan to submit at least two completed, polished works to as many agents as I can find, drop a little money on mailing manuscripts into the wild, and then get back to writing while I wait to hear back. If more than two years passes without any positive motion forward, self-publishing is always on the table. Either way, a new chapter is beginning.
After spending nearly a year writing what has turned out to be far and away the biggest book I've yet written, it quickly settled in that I needed to step back and decide both why, and how, I was doing the proverbial "this." With years now invested in crafting entirely new worlds, carving characters out of clay and breathing life into their pithy dialog, I could no longer rest content in the illusion that I was doing this "for the fun of it."
It isn't to say that I don't still enjoy my writing, or that I will stop if my "career" in it goes no further, merely that I needed to set the pen down long enough to appraise my situation at large.
To wit: "...now what?"
The Order (soon to be retitled) is large enough to aid in home defense. Almost two years of regular work went into its production, as well as a number of hours on the part of friends and family to see to its improvement. It is still in dire need of polishing, but as manuscripts go, it's largely submittable.
Yet it's sitting all alone on my hard drive, unseen by any unfriendly eyes.
I support I always had an eventual plan for when the book was finished. "I'll send it to a bunch of publishers," I said. "Surely, one of them will at least read it. Even if they don't pick it up, perhaps the critique alone will be enough for me to improve and return later this year with a polished and fully-printable copy of the same."
...which, as I understand it, is at least one step beyond where most burgeoning writers have typically gotten by this point.
The bad news is that the first piece of this plan, that measly nine-word glimmer of a sentence is a good bit more complicated than any of the very simple words that make it up.
First, there is the agent issue: many publishers prefer or even outright require that all manuscripts come through agents rather than authors directly. For anyone finding this notion pretentious, consider the sheer volume of would-be writers who might submit their alternative-universe Twilight novel as printable fiction.
Just like with email, one comes to need filters just to get through all the spam and onward toward something of potential worth. Forcing any hopefuls to go through the sieve of at least one other human being's eyes cuts out the wide base of an otherwise unpleasant pyramid.
The concern with agents, then, is that most writers take time to see any dividends at all. Hiring an agent out of pocket when one's pockets are already threadbare seems like a risky endeavor at best. Until I learned an interesting fact:
Most reputable agents work for commission only.
Agents who charge exorbitant "reading fees" or otherwise force potential clients to pay up front just to have a manuscript considered are generally the type of agents you want to avoid. If the fee seems more like a way to scare off any half-hearted attempts ($10-$15 per manuscript), it may just be that the agent just needs a filter of their own. Any more than that, and it's likely you want to keep looking.
That said, with an agent who works for commissions, you're having to sell them from the get-go. Since they only get paid if your work gets sold, they're only going to take on the projects they believe in. Be prepared for rejection.
But first, be prepared to wait. It can take someone 2-6 months just to read a preview proposal, let alone a full manuscript (think more like one year).
For that reason, it's best to hedge your bets and submit to a number of agents or publishers at once. Just be sure to check their info for any mention of a policy against "simultaneous submissions" first, just in case. It may not stop you from doing it, but it at least makes you aware of the potential objections.
In addition, if this is your first submission (as it is mine), it's best to have the whole work done. As I've mentioned, writing the damn book is usually the make-or-break point for the amateur author. Once the book is finished, you're already in the narrower part of the pyramid.
Lead with the good foot. If you can grab an agent's attention from the start, it's going to be that much more likely that they finish reading the thing and get back to you sooner.
Also, know your audience. Whatever your opinions on a given genre, understand that there are very established lines in the publishing world; less because they want to mandate what is "art" and more because they're looking to set the book on a given shelf with a given label.
If you're going through an agent, they'll likely take care of the triage process when it comes to submitting to a publisher, but if you're going straight to the publishers, know what genres and styles they prefer. Find out what other authors they've printed in the past so you have a feel for what they're looking for.
You don't have to tailor your work to match their preferences, just keep looking till you find a good match. It's like speed dating: if it's not a good fit, move on, don't waste time with square pegs and suitably un-square holes.
The last factor is the format. In this digital age, most people still prefer reading on paper. If you're lucky and your agent/publisher is fine porting your PDF to their e-reader, you're golden, but be ready to mail a paper manuscript along with it. Otherwise, the agent has to burn a hole in their Xerox machine printing out 400 pages of what for all they know might be utter slop. That is an obstacle you do not want working against you.
For going electronic, aim for .doc format, which an be opened in anything going back as far as Windows 95. If you have access to Acrobat, send a .pdf version as well. If they have an e-reader, they can load it easily and make their comments or remarks on the Word-formatted file.
Your Word file (and printed manuscript) should be double-spaced with 1-inch margins all around. Use the whole page (8.5x11), number your pages, and use a nice easy-to-read font at size 10 or 12. Now it's primed to be red-penned to all hell and back.
And, though it should go without saying, spell-check the damn thing. Grammar-check too, if you have it (though don't trust everything the little squiggly green line tells you. Read the rule and see if you agree. Word's grammar check is built for office and legal content, not the stylistic leanings of fiction. Still, too many commas is too many commas. Now is no time to be proud).
It all boils down to one simple notion: pamper your reader. This is your gateway to getting a book published at large. You want them to be happy. Tailor the format to their specifications. Bend over backwards if you have to. Swallow your pride and sweat the details until you're confident that a total stranger will see the efforts you went to to make the process painless for them.
That leaves only the story, and that is exactly what you want.
For those wondering about my departure from the growing trend of self-publishing, I have by no means set that possibility aside. There's simply no reason to rule out traditional publishing out of hand without having at least tested the waters to see if a number of the up-and-coming publishers might have more updated notions about genre blending and unique delivery formats.
I plan to submit at least two completed, polished works to as many agents as I can find, drop a little money on mailing manuscripts into the wild, and then get back to writing while I wait to hear back. If more than two years passes without any positive motion forward, self-publishing is always on the table. Either way, a new chapter is beginning.
The real work starts now.
Friday, April 15, 2011
Porn with a Plot: How to Write Steamy Fiction That Sells
The oldest profession remains one of the oldest obsessions, and literature is no exception. The simple fact is that smut sells, and whatever your lofty ideals, some of the greatest artists, writers and directors you know of have at some point dipped into the dirty pool to make ends meet.
But despite its reputation and the many moral quandaries that come from it, porn in the literary sense offers a lot more benefit than just benjamins.
First is the obvious: Harlequin-style romantic novels fly off the shelves the way candy leaves a "take one" basket on Halloween. It doesn't even have to be good; if it's on the right shelf, it will get bought, and your work will get out there (if only under your clever pseudonym, "Q. Allister Rybart, III").
Outside the immediate monetary gain, it gives you the confirmation that you've passed the bare-minimum standard of printable fiction. It also lets you experiment with worlds and characters that might never get bought in conventional markets. There is no out-of-bounds in the game of trashy novels. You can't embarrass yourself.
...Okay, maybe that's taking it a bit far. Some people can burn water, after all.
But beyond making a bit of spare change while you test the easiest waters on the planet, there are rewards to writing the basest form of entertainment short of fanfiction. There are elements intrinsic to literary erotica that don't exist at the same depth and breadth anywhere else. Yet at once, many of the lessons learned from shaping volumes of smut are readily applicable to perfectly clean writing.
Let's start at the beginning.
In any genre, the best way to get noticed is to be different. In porn, that means having a plot.
...I mean a real plot.
Characters with personality, witty dialog (or at least more than a montage of filthy-minded puns), and a setup that makes sense (honestly, how hard is it to get two people to have sex?), and you're already heads and tails above the lion's share of the field.
Of course, if it were that simple, everyone would do it. If you're fumbling for inspiration, don't get frustrated (yuck yuck). You don't need a ten-page backstory for "I'm here to deliver your sausage pizza" guy, just give him an actual personality. A quirk, maybe two.
Go to a club for an hour and watch how people behave. Sit in a coffee shop somewhere and listen to the dialogues around you. I guarantee you'll have plenty of a readily-identifiable human being (or at least enough of one to pass in porn). It's a good lesson in learning how to pick up on people's quirks without having to rely on who or what they are to make them three-dimensional.
That said, do NOT use people you know. Even ex's.
...Especially ex's.
Putting people you know into romantic fiction always ends poorly. Unless all you want to think about is "Amber gasped at the sight of his trembling" whatever each time you see your best friend walk by, stick with strangers. It's safer that way.
Learning the twin lessons of how to pick out a persona from a stranger sipping a mocha and why putting your friends into fiction is unwise is no doubt a benefit, but neither of these cannot be garnered from perfectly reasonable genres that don't involve awkward collisions and oddly-soundproof walls.
One of the challenges you're unlikely to run across in any other genre is just how far you can stretch a thesaurus over a relatively small subset of the language.
Quick, think of every word you know for penis.
Seriously, go on. I'll wait.
Got a list? Now chop off the ones you wouldn't feel right putting into fiction (even bad fiction) because of how they sound. That includes every euphemism and two-word phrase that sounds like it was thought up by a trio of frat boys in the midst of a serious bender.
Look at what's left, and remove anything that looks like it belongs in a biology textbook. Finally, remove the word "member."
That is your arsenal.
Now imagine stretching it across at least three scenes, one of which should be (appropriately) climactic. That is the challenge before you: make a scene work with only a handful of words to choose from. You'll have to work descriptions into winding suggestive mazes of thought that are intricate enough to avoid directly naming the thing you're indicating without losing the reader in the process.
Now do it two more times.
There are few better ways to learn the power (and difficulty) of subtlety in description than by avoiding using just another noun for the same object. When you have to talk around your subject and can't afford to be too flowery, your only avenue is the linguistic sweet-spot between too much and too little.
That is where you should be writing all the time.
And to think, all this while you'll be pandering to the most forgiving, most lucrative fanbase for amateur writers known to man.
So shelve your objections, pick a nickname that sounds like a cross between a Hollywood baby and a Tolkein extra and get to writing. It isn't hard to stand out in the world of "romantic" fiction, and the journey through the mire and muck will leave you with plenty of wisdom for the cleaned-up road ahead.
Remember: just because it's trashy doesn't mean it has to be rubbish.
First is the obvious: Harlequin-style romantic novels fly off the shelves the way candy leaves a "take one" basket on Halloween. It doesn't even have to be good; if it's on the right shelf, it will get bought, and your work will get out there (if only under your clever pseudonym, "Q. Allister Rybart, III").
Outside the immediate monetary gain, it gives you the confirmation that you've passed the bare-minimum standard of printable fiction. It also lets you experiment with worlds and characters that might never get bought in conventional markets. There is no out-of-bounds in the game of trashy novels. You can't embarrass yourself.
...Okay, maybe that's taking it a bit far. Some people can burn water, after all.
But beyond making a bit of spare change while you test the easiest waters on the planet, there are rewards to writing the basest form of entertainment short of fanfiction. There are elements intrinsic to literary erotica that don't exist at the same depth and breadth anywhere else. Yet at once, many of the lessons learned from shaping volumes of smut are readily applicable to perfectly clean writing.
Let's start at the beginning.
In any genre, the best way to get noticed is to be different. In porn, that means having a plot.
...I mean a real plot.
Characters with personality, witty dialog (or at least more than a montage of filthy-minded puns), and a setup that makes sense (honestly, how hard is it to get two people to have sex?), and you're already heads and tails above the lion's share of the field.
Of course, if it were that simple, everyone would do it. If you're fumbling for inspiration, don't get frustrated (yuck yuck). You don't need a ten-page backstory for "I'm here to deliver your sausage pizza" guy, just give him an actual personality. A quirk, maybe two.
Go to a club for an hour and watch how people behave. Sit in a coffee shop somewhere and listen to the dialogues around you. I guarantee you'll have plenty of a readily-identifiable human being (or at least enough of one to pass in porn). It's a good lesson in learning how to pick up on people's quirks without having to rely on who or what they are to make them three-dimensional.
That said, do NOT use people you know. Even ex's.
...Especially ex's.
Putting people you know into romantic fiction always ends poorly. Unless all you want to think about is "Amber gasped at the sight of his trembling" whatever each time you see your best friend walk by, stick with strangers. It's safer that way.
Learning the twin lessons of how to pick out a persona from a stranger sipping a mocha and why putting your friends into fiction is unwise is no doubt a benefit, but neither of these cannot be garnered from perfectly reasonable genres that don't involve awkward collisions and oddly-soundproof walls.
One of the challenges you're unlikely to run across in any other genre is just how far you can stretch a thesaurus over a relatively small subset of the language.
Quick, think of every word you know for penis.
Seriously, go on. I'll wait.
Got a list? Now chop off the ones you wouldn't feel right putting into fiction (even bad fiction) because of how they sound. That includes every euphemism and two-word phrase that sounds like it was thought up by a trio of frat boys in the midst of a serious bender.
Look at what's left, and remove anything that looks like it belongs in a biology textbook. Finally, remove the word "member."
That is your arsenal.
Now imagine stretching it across at least three scenes, one of which should be (appropriately) climactic. That is the challenge before you: make a scene work with only a handful of words to choose from. You'll have to work descriptions into winding suggestive mazes of thought that are intricate enough to avoid directly naming the thing you're indicating without losing the reader in the process.
Now do it two more times.
There are few better ways to learn the power (and difficulty) of subtlety in description than by avoiding using just another noun for the same object. When you have to talk around your subject and can't afford to be too flowery, your only avenue is the linguistic sweet-spot between too much and too little.
That is where you should be writing all the time.
And to think, all this while you'll be pandering to the most forgiving, most lucrative fanbase for amateur writers known to man.
So shelve your objections, pick a nickname that sounds like a cross between a Hollywood baby and a Tolkein extra and get to writing. It isn't hard to stand out in the world of "romantic" fiction, and the journey through the mire and muck will leave you with plenty of wisdom for the cleaned-up road ahead.
Remember: just because it's trashy doesn't mean it has to be rubbish.
Friday, April 8, 2011
By The Hour
In honor of the growing popularity of flash fiction, I wanted to try my hand at a new test: one hour, uninterrupted extemporanea.
The goal was to keep it within a 1000-word limit, to not plan a single bit but rather write entirely off-the-cuff and see where it went, in hopes of having a complete story (or reasonable facsimile) by the end of the hour.
It worries me a bit that, each time I try this experiment, I wind up in the areas of horror or suspense, with the occasional foray into dark fantasy. Somehow the first thing that comes to mind when I give myself the abstract order of "Write!" is never light-hearted romance or the unabashed fluffiness of kittens.
This must be how Steven King feels all the time...
Without further ado, here it is:
___
"Alexia?" Bryant's voice echoed into the dark room. A sliver of light peeked through the boarded-up windows. Old dust swam slowly through the air, disturbed by his intrusion.
No answer came from the empty study. Bryant narrowed his eyes at the spines of the books on the corner of the desk, unable or just unwilling to cross the doorway and violate the sanctity of the scene. It had taken all his courage just to enter the house in the first place, but he needed answers, and this was the only place he could hope to find them.
He could barely make out the words "Spirits and Soul Trafficking" staring back at him from the cracking binding. The warped leather of the cover belied the tome's relative youthfulness. It wasn't difficult for Bryant to recognize the signs of forced aging. Years in his uncle's library had made him all too familiar with the lengths people would go to to foster antiquity.
Hearing a hollow whistle from further down the hall, Bryant quickly pulled his head out of the room and stared in the direction of the noise. He could swear he saw a soft light like a fading candle emanating from one of the rooms upstairs.
Hesitantly, he made his way up, cringing at each painful creak of the dry, mahogany steps. The sound brought to mind memories of snapping bones and the bubble of a thick stew boiling. He had never questioned his uncle's peculiarities, but here in the house that had been a strange sanctuary to him in his youth, Bryant began to wonder why he had never noticed the chill running through every corner of this place.
The upstairs hall was even darker than the foyer. With only his hands for guidance, Bryant made his way cautiously down the hall toward the room where he had caught sight of the earlier glow. "Alexia, is that you?" he whispered, unsure whether or not he still cared for an answer.
As he neared the far end of the hall, the glow returned, lighting the dark edges of the hall through the seams of the bedroom door. Bryant froze, not wanting to startle the source of the strange emanation. The light pulsed quietly in time with his own guarded breathing as he watched from the silence of the hallway.
There was little point turning back now. The answers he sought were on the other side of that door. Swallowing his own objections, Bryant reached out for the doorknob, his eyes not leaving the pulse of light from under the door, watching for any shift in its mood.
He felt the cold metal of the knob butt against his fingers. Turning it slowly, he felt the latch slip out of its hold with a barely-audible click. He started to pull the door open with the sort of care the pages of his uncle's ancient texts had always demanded.
What awaited him inside filled Bryant with a mingle sense of hopefulness and abject fear. Standing, or rather, floating in the unkempt room was the ghost of his cousin, the lines of her narrow face as clear as his own in the reflection of the mirror that stood behind her.
The pendant around her neck, the keepsake he had given her as a child, pulsed with a pale gray light as if marking the beating of her stilled heart. Two white baubles that might once have passed for eyes stared back at Bryant, as one long, thin finger pointed to the nightstand beside the bed.
Stepping into the room with caution, Bryant watched his cousin's spectre closely. In the days since her death, Alexia's spirit had appeared to him regularly, always leading him forward without ever saying a word.
He had hoped in her guidance he might find some explanation for her sudden death. The coroners ruled it a suicide. If that were true, Bryant thought, why had they never found the knife? The police had combed her apartment and the street outside, but no sign of the weapon had ever been found.
The going theory was that it had been discarded and picked up by a transient in the street. Bryant found it about as likely as if it had sprouted legs and walked away.
No, he thought, if this had been a suicide, why was she haunting him now? Why had she been so insistent that he follow her down dark roads to the old projects and the house his uncle, her father, had raised them in?
He moved to the nightstand without question, no longer fearful of the ghost but rife with anticipation for what he might find. Fresh marks in the dust marked a recent visitor. His uncle, Bryant thought, returning to old haunts. The thought alone made him chuckle. The man had never had any love for this place. With his daughter dead, he must have finally found something sentimental in it.
Bryant tried the handle on the drawer. It slide half an inch out of its holdings, but then the wood caught and refused to budge further. Wrapping both hands around the small, ironwrought handle, he wrenched the drawer free with a sudden surge, sending him sprawling to the hardwood behind him.
Wincing as he got to his feet, Bryant paused to spot his cousin still looming nearby. It might have been just imagination, but he could have sworn he saw her smiling at him. Brushing off the urge to smile back, he stared at the drawer in his hand, only to find it empty. He scanned the edges, feeling about for a secret compartment, but the dimensions matched. The drawer was empty.
He tossed it aside and returned to the nightstand, peering inside to see if the clue she was guiding him to might be somewhere inside. There was nothing but the workings of an old wooden nightstand, its track knocked askew by his recent efforts with the drawer.
In a huff, he rolled back onto his haunches, staring up at the apparition and throwing up his hands in defeat. "There's nothing here," he told her, feeling suddenly tired in the wake of his excess adrenaline.
That was when he spotted it: taped to the underside of the drawer was his cousin's knife, with the same ornate bone handle he remembered. There was even still a glimmer of blood dotting the blade. It had been bound to the underside of the drawer to keep it hidden. But what was it doing in his uncle's bedroom?
Before he had long to consider it, he heard the sound of the front door opening. His uncle had come home early tonight. Bryant looked to his cousin for answers, but the ghost only loomed silently over him. There was nowhere to hide in the small room, and the old floorboards would doubtlessly mark his passage if he tried to flee down the hall.
As he searched desperately for an alternative, he didn't notice how close his cousin's spectre had drawn. The icy touch at his shoulder was his first warning, but when he turned to ask her what was the matter, he felt his lungs seize. Her ghostly hand reached inside him, wrapping around his insides until he could barely breathe.
He felt his heart start to race as she moved inside of him, overtaking his form with her own. His panicked pulse throbbed in his ears as he felt his arms start to move on their own, guided on her unseen direction. His cold fingers wrapped around the knife, tearing it free of its bindings as his uncle made his way up the stairs, unaware of what darkness awaited him.
Bryant tried to cry out, but his body was no longer his to command. Slowly, he shuffled toward the door, the dagger clutched at his side. He slowly became aware of a soft, gray glow coming from his form, filling the small room as his uncle made his way to the end of the hallway, only then looking up from the business of inspecting his hands. They bore the fresh nicks and burns of one of his rituals.
His uncle looked up when he spied the light, startled to see his nephew standing before him. "Bryant?" he said. "What's are you doing here?"
"Nothing, father," Bryant heard himself answer. "Just tidying up this mess."
"What mess?" his uncle asked, only then spotting the weapon in his nephew's hand. "...Bryant?" He took a step back, his eyes going to the boy's face. "No," he whispered. "Alexia!"
Bryant felt his feet move beneath him, charging at his uncle with the knife raised. There was a brilliant flash of light from somewhere high on his chest, and then everything went black. The last thing he heard was the soft, sweet voice of his delicate cousin, whispering "thank you" into the back of his mind.
___
Commentary: 1481 words. While the writing rate on my extemporania is promising, I feel like I barely got through a scene. Much flash fiction is 300-500 words. By that point, Bryant hadn't even gotten up the stairs. I need to work on better encapsulating the story and using the right balance of omission and metaphor to round the corners on the whole thing and get more story with fewer words.
The goal was to keep it within a 1000-word limit, to not plan a single bit but rather write entirely off-the-cuff and see where it went, in hopes of having a complete story (or reasonable facsimile) by the end of the hour.
It worries me a bit that, each time I try this experiment, I wind up in the areas of horror or suspense, with the occasional foray into dark fantasy. Somehow the first thing that comes to mind when I give myself the abstract order of "Write!" is never light-hearted romance or the unabashed fluffiness of kittens.
This must be how Steven King feels all the time...
Without further ado, here it is:
___
"Alexia?" Bryant's voice echoed into the dark room. A sliver of light peeked through the boarded-up windows. Old dust swam slowly through the air, disturbed by his intrusion.
No answer came from the empty study. Bryant narrowed his eyes at the spines of the books on the corner of the desk, unable or just unwilling to cross the doorway and violate the sanctity of the scene. It had taken all his courage just to enter the house in the first place, but he needed answers, and this was the only place he could hope to find them.
He could barely make out the words "Spirits and Soul Trafficking" staring back at him from the cracking binding. The warped leather of the cover belied the tome's relative youthfulness. It wasn't difficult for Bryant to recognize the signs of forced aging. Years in his uncle's library had made him all too familiar with the lengths people would go to to foster antiquity.
Hearing a hollow whistle from further down the hall, Bryant quickly pulled his head out of the room and stared in the direction of the noise. He could swear he saw a soft light like a fading candle emanating from one of the rooms upstairs.
Hesitantly, he made his way up, cringing at each painful creak of the dry, mahogany steps. The sound brought to mind memories of snapping bones and the bubble of a thick stew boiling. He had never questioned his uncle's peculiarities, but here in the house that had been a strange sanctuary to him in his youth, Bryant began to wonder why he had never noticed the chill running through every corner of this place.
The upstairs hall was even darker than the foyer. With only his hands for guidance, Bryant made his way cautiously down the hall toward the room where he had caught sight of the earlier glow. "Alexia, is that you?" he whispered, unsure whether or not he still cared for an answer.
As he neared the far end of the hall, the glow returned, lighting the dark edges of the hall through the seams of the bedroom door. Bryant froze, not wanting to startle the source of the strange emanation. The light pulsed quietly in time with his own guarded breathing as he watched from the silence of the hallway.
There was little point turning back now. The answers he sought were on the other side of that door. Swallowing his own objections, Bryant reached out for the doorknob, his eyes not leaving the pulse of light from under the door, watching for any shift in its mood.
He felt the cold metal of the knob butt against his fingers. Turning it slowly, he felt the latch slip out of its hold with a barely-audible click. He started to pull the door open with the sort of care the pages of his uncle's ancient texts had always demanded.
What awaited him inside filled Bryant with a mingle sense of hopefulness and abject fear. Standing, or rather, floating in the unkempt room was the ghost of his cousin, the lines of her narrow face as clear as his own in the reflection of the mirror that stood behind her.
The pendant around her neck, the keepsake he had given her as a child, pulsed with a pale gray light as if marking the beating of her stilled heart. Two white baubles that might once have passed for eyes stared back at Bryant, as one long, thin finger pointed to the nightstand beside the bed.
Stepping into the room with caution, Bryant watched his cousin's spectre closely. In the days since her death, Alexia's spirit had appeared to him regularly, always leading him forward without ever saying a word.
He had hoped in her guidance he might find some explanation for her sudden death. The coroners ruled it a suicide. If that were true, Bryant thought, why had they never found the knife? The police had combed her apartment and the street outside, but no sign of the weapon had ever been found.
The going theory was that it had been discarded and picked up by a transient in the street. Bryant found it about as likely as if it had sprouted legs and walked away.
No, he thought, if this had been a suicide, why was she haunting him now? Why had she been so insistent that he follow her down dark roads to the old projects and the house his uncle, her father, had raised them in?
He moved to the nightstand without question, no longer fearful of the ghost but rife with anticipation for what he might find. Fresh marks in the dust marked a recent visitor. His uncle, Bryant thought, returning to old haunts. The thought alone made him chuckle. The man had never had any love for this place. With his daughter dead, he must have finally found something sentimental in it.
Bryant tried the handle on the drawer. It slide half an inch out of its holdings, but then the wood caught and refused to budge further. Wrapping both hands around the small, ironwrought handle, he wrenched the drawer free with a sudden surge, sending him sprawling to the hardwood behind him.
Wincing as he got to his feet, Bryant paused to spot his cousin still looming nearby. It might have been just imagination, but he could have sworn he saw her smiling at him. Brushing off the urge to smile back, he stared at the drawer in his hand, only to find it empty. He scanned the edges, feeling about for a secret compartment, but the dimensions matched. The drawer was empty.
He tossed it aside and returned to the nightstand, peering inside to see if the clue she was guiding him to might be somewhere inside. There was nothing but the workings of an old wooden nightstand, its track knocked askew by his recent efforts with the drawer.
In a huff, he rolled back onto his haunches, staring up at the apparition and throwing up his hands in defeat. "There's nothing here," he told her, feeling suddenly tired in the wake of his excess adrenaline.
That was when he spotted it: taped to the underside of the drawer was his cousin's knife, with the same ornate bone handle he remembered. There was even still a glimmer of blood dotting the blade. It had been bound to the underside of the drawer to keep it hidden. But what was it doing in his uncle's bedroom?
Before he had long to consider it, he heard the sound of the front door opening. His uncle had come home early tonight. Bryant looked to his cousin for answers, but the ghost only loomed silently over him. There was nowhere to hide in the small room, and the old floorboards would doubtlessly mark his passage if he tried to flee down the hall.
As he searched desperately for an alternative, he didn't notice how close his cousin's spectre had drawn. The icy touch at his shoulder was his first warning, but when he turned to ask her what was the matter, he felt his lungs seize. Her ghostly hand reached inside him, wrapping around his insides until he could barely breathe.
He felt his heart start to race as she moved inside of him, overtaking his form with her own. His panicked pulse throbbed in his ears as he felt his arms start to move on their own, guided on her unseen direction. His cold fingers wrapped around the knife, tearing it free of its bindings as his uncle made his way up the stairs, unaware of what darkness awaited him.
Bryant tried to cry out, but his body was no longer his to command. Slowly, he shuffled toward the door, the dagger clutched at his side. He slowly became aware of a soft, gray glow coming from his form, filling the small room as his uncle made his way to the end of the hallway, only then looking up from the business of inspecting his hands. They bore the fresh nicks and burns of one of his rituals.
His uncle looked up when he spied the light, startled to see his nephew standing before him. "Bryant?" he said. "What's are you doing here?"
"Nothing, father," Bryant heard himself answer. "Just tidying up this mess."
"What mess?" his uncle asked, only then spotting the weapon in his nephew's hand. "...Bryant?" He took a step back, his eyes going to the boy's face. "No," he whispered. "Alexia!"
Bryant felt his feet move beneath him, charging at his uncle with the knife raised. There was a brilliant flash of light from somewhere high on his chest, and then everything went black. The last thing he heard was the soft, sweet voice of his delicate cousin, whispering "thank you" into the back of his mind.
___
Commentary: 1481 words. While the writing rate on my extemporania is promising, I feel like I barely got through a scene. Much flash fiction is 300-500 words. By that point, Bryant hadn't even gotten up the stairs. I need to work on better encapsulating the story and using the right balance of omission and metaphor to round the corners on the whole thing and get more story with fewer words.
Saturday, April 2, 2011
On the Right Foot - The Importance of the First Three Chapters
There's an old adage about first impressions:
"Don't screw them up."
People can forgive a great deal once they have someone to look forward to, but by the same token, life is short: people won't linger long in pastures that aren't lush and plentiful, they'll keep moving.
Now imagine your book is that pasture. How can you best get the cows to come and eat it?
...Okay, so it's not a perfect analogy. Think of it instead like flowers and bees. You need these bees to survive, so you can keep making more flowers. But bees are fickle and know nothing of what lies inside, only what they see as they flutter past.
Which brings us back to first impressions.
As you write a work, even a short work, you continue to evolve. You go, you learn, you iron out all the details and brilliant points of the characters, the plot and the setting. You dig for gold in your climactic conflict, your happy ending, your final line, and then sweep through to edit away any typographical hiccups before throwing it off to the presses. Which would be great.
If people read backwards.
But any agent, any publisher and any reader is going to start with the first line on the first page. If they're not sold by the end of that leading paragraph, it doesn't matter that you've invented entirely new sub-genres of brilliant fiction with legendary characters that will change the very shape of society, it's going right back on the shelf.
The first three chapters is an arbitrary but useful estimate to exactly how far the average person can be expected to read before giving up entirely. Historically, this hasn't been a good judge of fiction. Consider The Fellowship of the Ring, the most miserably bland first-hundred-pages in popular literature.
These days, the average reader doesn't have all weekend to stomach a dozen three-page elven poems just to get to the good stuff. You need to have them hooked by page one, and hold them to page ten, and then have them hungry again before long.
If you're working with a novel, focus on the first three chapters above all. By the end of chapter three, we should know the main character and the conflict should be kicking off, if it isn't already well underway. If it's a romance, we've met the love interest. A mystery, the first body has turned up. In fantasy, we've met our first elf.
You get the idea.
By the end of chapter three, we need to know who, what and why. Where is just as important, especially in the realm of science fiction. The order you focus on doesn't matter, but be sure you have them all covered: who we care about, what their situation is and why it's changing now.
Once you have the details ironed out, focus in on the first paragraph. This is where to pour your gold. The first word, the first sentence and the first page aren't nearly as powerful as that first paragraph together. That is the first mouthful that will feed a reader's mind.
It is their introduction to your voice, your storytelling, your hero and/or your world. It is the face they see across a seedy bar filled with dozens of potential lovers, any or all of whom may be a complete scumbag just waiting to be regretted. That first paragraph is the shy smile from the corner of the bar that gives them hope that the night might not be a waste after all.
So when you write the last word on the last page and you're feeling the wash of relief at being finished, remind yourself that you aren't quite done until you begin again.
It's time to polish that smile.
"Don't screw them up."
People can forgive a great deal once they have someone to look forward to, but by the same token, life is short: people won't linger long in pastures that aren't lush and plentiful, they'll keep moving.
Now imagine your book is that pasture. How can you best get the cows to come and eat it?
...Okay, so it's not a perfect analogy. Think of it instead like flowers and bees. You need these bees to survive, so you can keep making more flowers. But bees are fickle and know nothing of what lies inside, only what they see as they flutter past.
Which brings us back to first impressions.
As you write a work, even a short work, you continue to evolve. You go, you learn, you iron out all the details and brilliant points of the characters, the plot and the setting. You dig for gold in your climactic conflict, your happy ending, your final line, and then sweep through to edit away any typographical hiccups before throwing it off to the presses. Which would be great.
If people read backwards.
But any agent, any publisher and any reader is going to start with the first line on the first page. If they're not sold by the end of that leading paragraph, it doesn't matter that you've invented entirely new sub-genres of brilliant fiction with legendary characters that will change the very shape of society, it's going right back on the shelf.
The first three chapters is an arbitrary but useful estimate to exactly how far the average person can be expected to read before giving up entirely. Historically, this hasn't been a good judge of fiction. Consider The Fellowship of the Ring, the most miserably bland first-hundred-pages in popular literature.
These days, the average reader doesn't have all weekend to stomach a dozen three-page elven poems just to get to the good stuff. You need to have them hooked by page one, and hold them to page ten, and then have them hungry again before long.
If you're working with a novel, focus on the first three chapters above all. By the end of chapter three, we should know the main character and the conflict should be kicking off, if it isn't already well underway. If it's a romance, we've met the love interest. A mystery, the first body has turned up. In fantasy, we've met our first elf.
You get the idea.
By the end of chapter three, we need to know who, what and why. Where is just as important, especially in the realm of science fiction. The order you focus on doesn't matter, but be sure you have them all covered: who we care about, what their situation is and why it's changing now.
Once you have the details ironed out, focus in on the first paragraph. This is where to pour your gold. The first word, the first sentence and the first page aren't nearly as powerful as that first paragraph together. That is the first mouthful that will feed a reader's mind.
It is their introduction to your voice, your storytelling, your hero and/or your world. It is the face they see across a seedy bar filled with dozens of potential lovers, any or all of whom may be a complete scumbag just waiting to be regretted. That first paragraph is the shy smile from the corner of the bar that gives them hope that the night might not be a waste after all.
So when you write the last word on the last page and you're feeling the wash of relief at being finished, remind yourself that you aren't quite done until you begin again.
It's time to polish that smile.
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