Art by Sean Phillips from surebeatsworking.blogspot.com
Investigations are part and parcel of being a creative person especially a fiction writer. Something triggers a thought and that leads to one thing, which leads to another and likely to another.
But what’s the trigger? A piece of conversation. A throwaway line of dialogue in a film. A song lyric. The way a sunbeam falls across a picture in the living room. The way a bird is perched in a tree. The snake that’s ready to steal the bird’s eggs.
Any of these can lead me down an investigatory path.
Like Sara, I love to learn and keep on learning. Like her I have learned to read and appreciate reading for information. I can’t read as much non-fiction as she does (One a month? That’s waaaay beyond me.) but I do read a couple of magazines that get delivered to the house, usually from cover to cover. I’m reading more fiction than ever before, though, and reading a wider range of genres (including literary fiction) more than ever before, too. (more…)
The seller’s agent shook his head but didn’t unlock the front door of the house.
“Gerry, I know,” the buyer’s agent said. Her blond hair blew across her face and she brushed it away. “I’ve never had anyone do this. I hope it’s not a trend.”
“You know what it is? It’s that damn book by what’s-his-name… Anson.”
The woman nodded. “Probably. You know they’re making a movie out of it?”
He chuckled. It was a hopeless sound. Gerry looked at his watch and tapped its face. He’d made plenty of money selling real estate and even though it wasn’t a Rolex yet, it would be someday.
“Maybe we should go see it together,” Jerry said.
“What?”
“That movie.”
She paused. “Oh, I don’t know.”
“I know you like me Jeri, and you know I like you.” He smiled. It was the smile that always closed the deal and he knew it. They were about the same age and had known each other for years.
“Well…”
“Think about it,” Gerry said. He pointed with his chin. “Here they come.”
The little Ford, bright and shiny, well-kept, pulled into the drive. Both Gerry and Jeri had parked on the street. Jeri waited for them to get out of the car before approaching them.
Gerry watched her interact with them and admired her skill in the situation. She’d probably spent less than four or five hours total with these people and she seemed as intimate as an old friend. She hugged the woman and put her hand on the man’s shoulder. They were maybe ten years younger than both Gerry and Jeri, and this was going to be their first home together.
“Hello, again,” Gerry said, extending his hand when Jeri escorted the couple to the front door. “Good to see you Phil, Tara.” He shook hands with them both. “Are we waiting on —?”
“Mrs. Vecsey,” Phil said. He was taller than Gerry, more muscular. “She chose to drive herself. Said she wanted to get a sense of the neighborhood.”
“Well,” Gerry said, taking out the key to the house. “Let’s go inside, then, and wait for her. She knows the address?”
Tara nodded. She was pretty, dark-skinned. Gerry decided she must be at least half-Japanese. Her enormous brown eyes lit up as he held the door for her.
That means I have to write this post in the first person.
What’s really important when I’m choosing which story to write is how best to tell it. Whose Point of View is most important? Is that character reliable enough or not to tell the story? Because if not, that changes everything. I usually tell tales in the past tense because I dislike present tense. Not intensely but enough that it doesn’t appeal to me.
See, for me, it’s about telling. That means one person is relating what has happened. That’s how we generally tell stories over lunch, having drinks, in any number of situations. I think that if a character is telling his reader or viewer what’s happening as it’s happening, then she’s not focused enough on the events of the story. Maybe that’s crap, I don’t know, but it’s how I feel about it.
I just don’t like limiting myself to one narrator or point of view in a story. I want the reader to either a) want more by switching POV or narrator or b) want more because they really like the narrator or POV. So I have to be as interested as possible in what I’m writing.
Random rolling of multi-sided dice isn’t how I decide these things but you probably already knew that. Rather what I do is look at the overarching story and figure out which of the seven stories told and retold it is:
Boy Meets Girl (Boy Loses Girl, Boy Finds Girl Again)
Man v. Nature
Man v. Machine
Man v. Society
Rags to Riches
Love Conquers All
Portrait of the Artist
(Okay, I have to ‘fess up and say that I cannot find any sort of agreement on what the Seven Basic Plots are. Everyone seems to be referring back to a particular book that I don’t agree with. For the purposes of this post, let’s say this list is it. Afterwards you can argue as much as you like about how wrong I am. This is what I remember of the talk I heard Kurt Vonnegut give in the middle ’80s. All right?)
So. Where does the story fit and who among the characters I’ve devised is best suited to tell the story? I have to look at where the character fits into the story itself then decide if I like that fit. If I don’t like it how could I expect the reader to? Next, since I don’t want to use first person (usually) I will decide who are the important characters to follow. No more than three, really, and if I can keep it to one or two I like that better. It’s fun as a reader to know what else is going on in a story that the ‘main’ character might not. Build up some suspense. Also gives ‘em a break. After all, I don’t want to waste anyone’s time.
Then it’s all about beginning to write. It may be that I’ve chosen wrongly and the character I want to follow isn’t interesting enough. That’s happened quite a bit. Happened with last year’s NaNoWriMo novel. It just does, I guess. So then I reassess if the story is worth pursuing if I change point of view or which character is the main one.
I will look at my bookshelves for a story that’s similar to the one I want to tell. I may even pull it down off the shelf and skim through it, looking for a solution to present itself.
Easy to get lost in here. Chrissy, bring me the big knife!
When I’ve completed a draft of a manuscript, I have to get away from it for a while. Sometimes it’s a week, sometimes it’s a little more. During that time I’ll begin work on something else or pick up another manuscript that needs some attention.
I like to sit down with a red pencil and a paper copy, but that’s not always possible.
See, when I’m on the computer I have had a hard time in the past (and especially lately) getting distracted by the Internet. I refuse to buy software that I can turn on and off if I really want to be distracted. Doesn’t make any sense to install something I won’t use and can work around. All my writing, and editing, is about rhythm and desire. Forgive the digression.
Am I ready to dive in? How much do I want this? Everything depends on the day job and its requirements of me and what’s going on with my family. I haven’t hit the lottery yet and I’m not daring enough to take the plunge on being a full-time writer. I need to make house payments and eat.
So really, the first step is getting into the proper headspace to pull out the blade and begin excising the cancerous words and phrases, marking the bits for improvement or deletion.
Then comes the cutting.
Stuff has to go, stuff has to be reworked. Things have to change.
Thank goodness it’s not all plot stuff any more. The last year has been spent mired in learning about passive voice and how awful it is. The ability to recognize it escaped me for so long that plowing through the novel to reshape those bits was daunting. I took several weeks off while doing that because I couldn’t believe how bad it was and how much I hated that I’d done it. Worse, I offered a couple of critiques where I pointed out passive voice that was obviously intentional in retrospect. I was so trapped in that mindset the crits were bad.
Learning experiences, I suppose.
But then my process for editing includes sending out the manuscript to others to read, if they have the time. Then waiting for notes back.
So I pick up something else that needs attention or I write blog posts (like this one) or I veg out in front of the TV. (Which I know isn’t good for me but sometimes I need to hear or see other people’s stories.)
And when the notes come back, it’s stepping onto square one and starting again. Wash, rinse, repeat as necessary.
In the end it’s good for me. I’m learning. Doing is learning as long as one isn’t repeating the same mistakes over and over. Spinning Wheels belong in songs, not in a writer’s process, right?
I don’t want you to be in the middle of the road, I want you to be on one side or the other.
I’m open to people reading my works and telling me exactly what they think. After all, I wouldn’t be sharing my writing if I didn’t want a reaction.
When I finished my novel in December of 2011, I was tired and proud. Nervous, too, because it was the longest sustained work I’d ever written. Nervous because the protagonist is female and I’m not and by daring to write her the way I did I’m opening myself up to criticism that I don’t know how women behave.
Worse, still, I was worried that I would be revealed to be a fraud as a writer, too. That my skill at turns of phrase and world-building and simple sentence construction were terrible, awful, and not deserving of anyone’s time to read was perhaps my biggest fear. (Run-on, overly complicated sentences notwithstanding.)
So I really, really thought hard about what I wanted from a critique of my work.
Honesty, more than anything else.
If my writing can’t elicit any kind of reaction from a reader, I don’t deserve to have my work read. It’s one thing to just spew words on a page or a screen and hope for the best but once a story is written, I want you to feel something. Anything. Revulsion is fine but in general not the reaction I write for. Sadness is better. Shock. Any kind of reaction. Happiness is best.
The best stories move the reader. If I can do that I’m better at this than I thought.
So when I get notes back from editors or first readers, that’s what I’m looking for.
Now, that said, I will read through the comments and then put them aside for a while. I’ve been infuriated at a couple of comments because it was obvious that the reader just didn’t get it. As recently as a couple of years ago I would be upset with the reader who told me what I didn’t want to hear. But since I’ve asked for honesty, I have to admit that if the reader didn’t get what I was going for it was because I didn’t do my job as a storyteller.
Dammit.
That meant I had more work ahead of me. It meant more time in a world I thought I was already beyond. It meant I didn’t know enough. It meant more revision, more re-writing, and more work.
In general, the feedback I’ve received has pushed me to become better, to tell the stories more clearly, to WRITE. But that dissatisfaction with my skills can overwhelm me and I will set aside a work that doesn’t fire back with the reaction I hoped for.
But worse, it’s no reaction at all that’s so discouraging.
I won’t go all knee-jerk and fire up inflammatory responses because that’s unprofessional. But what I say in the privacy of my own writing space… Well, let’s just say that I’ve been harder on myself than on anyone I’ve asked to read my stuff.
When it’s said and done, critiques are difficult for me but they spur me to work harder. What I have to avoid are the shortcuts that put me in the wrong place to start with.
I suppose there’s SOME resemblance but not enough for me to actually be mistaken for Kevin. Right?
“Is Kevin signing today?”
The fan was earnest. I thought he was joking. Surely he could see the difference between me and Kevin Smith.
The artist looked at me, expectant.
I didn’t know what to do. This was the first time I’d been mistaken for anyone famous. I was sitting down so he couldn’t tell I’m five or six inches taller than Kevin but even so. The fan held his issue of Kevin’s current work which the artist had just scrawled on. The artist smiled.
Did I like it? I’ll always like it. But there may be some things you want to take a look at. Here, I’ll tell you…
One of the best parts of being a writer is getting to read another writer’s work before it goes out to the public. It’s one of the most stressful times for any writer, too. Getting any kind of report back on one’s abilities to tell a story can be nerve-wracking. No one wants to hear “you suck” or “sorry, I just didn’t like it.”
So I try not to do that.
When I’m reading someone’s work I’m always going to make a note of what I liked. Always. “That’s a nice phrase” or “that made me chuckle” or “ROFLMAO” are nice to see in any notes.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me reset just a second.
Okay.
First, I like critiquing – actually prefer – by using PDFs rather than Word docs. There’s nothing wrong with Word, we use if for notes in the Actionopolis books I write, and just about everyone has it. It’s an industry standard. But what it does is line up all the comments on the right side of the page with arrows pointing into the text. When there are four people commenting on a piece, it can get more than a little hectic.
Acrobat Reader. I can’t recommend this enough for anyone who sees a lot of PDFs. When I’m adding a note to a text I can move the call out box right into the paragraph and it points to exactly the point that caused me to want to make that comment. (I’m not sure if this is available in the basic free version you have to download in order to read PDFs from the web. I invested in Creative Suite and that’s the version I use. Your mileage may vary.) I’ve gotten feedback from one writer who says that it’s a lot nicer to scroll through and see those little boxes in the text than a rainbow bar of comments and changes on the right side.
That’s the visual stuff.
As for how I read for critique, generally the questions I ask of the author start with “Have you thought about…?” because I’ve found that really, really helps me. I live comment the first pass through, then delete things as I think are necessary. I’ll tell the author what I’m thinking as I read. “Did he really say that?” “I bet this is going to suck.” “Oh, yeah, now I hate you for what you just did.” I think this is so helpful because we don’t get that kind of feedback from ‘regular’ readers. It speaks to pacing and foreshadowing and all the little things we do to draw the reader in.
Finally, I offer an overall opinion and suggestions for improvements. Everything I offer is up to the author to take or leave. I make no judgement because I don’t know enough to be snooty about someone not taking my advice. I think it’s important that when I’m saying “you might rethink this passage” that I at least offer something that sparks an idea for the author to pursue. It probably isn’t what I would do (else I’d be writing the story) but that’s the process.
By the way this is what I want from people who are critiquing my work.
Look, I’m not a line editor nor a strict grammarian. You’re not going to get that from me. What you get are thoughts and alternate solutions. I think that’s way more helpful than pointing out misspellings and the common errors in usage. That stuff is for later drafts and the author will catch it as she’s editing herself.
I liked that this was a switch more than a button. I spent way too many hours playing games on this old console.
“Butt in chair, fingers on keys.”
I don’t know who said that first and I guess it doesn’t really matter. It’s true. It’s how I have motivated myself to spend the time I need to writing. My Twitter feed tends to be filled with people who are also writing stories and when I’m distracted from actually making words into stories, I can usually find some motivation in there. The You Should Be Writing meme is helpful, sometimes, too. Especially when it’s Neil Gaiman glowering at me. I don’t want to give you the impression that I make time to write exclusively out of guilt because that’s not the case but sometimes it’s true. Like most of us, I’m easily distracted.
You played what in Words With Friends? Who beat my high score in Solitaire Blitz? (more…)
I like to be entertained by stories. I want to be taken away to a place I’ve never been or to see place I’m familiar with in a new way.
That’s not asking too much, is it?
Now, don’t get me wrong – we need all kinds of stories. We learn from them, we are informed by them, hopefully we take them to heart and not too seriously. Except when we should. It’s complicated.
But it shouldn’t be. We should be able to discern which stories are entertainment and which are informative. The blurred lines of our society right now make that sometimes very, very difficult. (more…)
Asimov’s robots are the ultimate in customer service. Humans should learn a thing or two from them.
I’m primarily a fiction writer. Actually 99% fiction writer. The exceptions are these posts for the Cafe, some real-life stuff on my own blog and a rather largish pamphlet I wrote back in the early 2000s (the Naughties – heh) on the subject of making mini comics.
Once upon a time there was a website called SixShooterComix.com (it’s now defunct but you can see a shot of the forum here thanks to the WayBack Machine). I met Rob Schamberger and Thom Thurman at a comics convention in Kansas City around 2001 and we hit it off. Rob has gone on to become recognized for his paintings of wrestlers and we’re still friends.
Before I go any further, 6SC was very good for me. I met a wonderful artist in Svetlana Chmakova and we produced exactly one story together. There was potential for another but things never worked out. Anyway, based on the success of that story and the fact that I was still producing mini comics on my own, Rob asked me to write a column on the forum about my process. He anticipated three or four columns, but there’s a lot to making comics. Add that in with the fact that I like to talk and I produced I don’t know how many columns. Eighteen or nineteen if I remember correctly. (I have a copy around the house somewhere but it would take earthmovers to dig it out.)
