I went to the beach last week. It was supposed to be a celebration, a reward for hard work. My trip was preceded by another one of those insane deadline weeks – coming off four days of travel for the South Carolina Book Festival, the fifth book, THE IMMORTALS, was nearly finished. I'm talking inches away from being submission ready. I was just going through one last tweaking revision based on my critique partner's comments when the page proofs of EDGE OF BLACK came in. Cue panic, and scrambling. What was supposed to be a leisurely revision became an all out push to make sure both books got their proper due.
In a feat worthy of David defeating Goliath, I managed. Hubby went another four days without leafy greens and I turned in both books with an unbelievable sigh of relief. Washed my hands of them. Sent them to the powers that be and let them worry about it. Because I NEEDED A VACATION.
Florida was sunny and warm. My flight was eventful, only because of my elderly seatmate who was tippling in the Bloody Marys. She skedaddled off the plane when we landed in Orlando, but she was continuing the flight on to Ft. Meyers so the flight attendants had to capture and reseat her before anyone else got off. Tipsy little old ladies = herding cats. Priceless.
The beach was welcoming, salty air and ocean breezes. Lovely, really. Deep breaths. Unwind.
Not.
I spent the first day there on the horn to
New York worrying about a section of EDGE that might have a copyright
issue, and another day dealing with a long-overdue project that needed
some TLC so I could get it off the ground, which of course involved 17
emails of back and forth discussion – all of which I attempted on the
iPhone whilst laying in the sun. Bikinis and iPhones don't mix unless
you're on Girls Gone Wild, which I certainly wasn't.
With the advent of laptops and iPhones, I know I have to go to
Herculean efforts to actually get away. So I tried. I really did try. I put the phone away (but I had to keep
checking to make sure the copyright issue was settled.) I turned the
laptop off (but I had to turn it back on because I had to read a book
for a blurb that was on it. Note to self – always, always insist on hard copies from here on out.)
Did I get a vacation? Well, sort of. I walked on the beach, read three books, played two rounds of golf, ate fish three times and had salads daily to fight off impending scurvy, went to the movies (WATCHMEN was very cool) and saw three more at home, and attended a dinner party with friends and fans. We watched the shuttle launch, and I have to tell you, there in nothing, NOTHING, cooler than a sonic boom that shakes the very earth. Humbling as hell. And of course, I engaged in that time-honored vacation tradition – Twitter.
That's a pretty full week, to be honest. Aren't you tired just thinking about it? Because I'm exhausted.
Here's the problem. The whole time – laying on the beach, teeing off, reading, relaxing – a little voice inside my head kept banging away. "You need to get back to work, JT. You have a book due in September. You know you'll have to do revisions on THE IMMORTALS in the middle of that, and plan a tour for EDGE. There's that cool standalone book you started that's suddenly gelling that needs your attention. You have to finish the project your promised for ITW. You need to do your newsletter, and… and… and…."
Damn voice. I'd like to strangle it, but that might hamper my efforts to be creative, and we can't have that.
I've learned that when the Muse is speaking, you kind of have to tell everyone and everything to shove off and get whatever she's saying out of your head and down on paper so you don't lose it. I'm a firm believer in all good ideas stick like glue in your mind, but I also know my brain well enough that I know if I don't write these brilliant gems down somewhere, they will eat at me.
In the middle of it all, while I was supposed to be relaxing, I formatted a new document and wrote the first line of book six, THE PRETENDER.
So much for vacation.
Remember a few months ago I started working a new system of organization into my daily writing life? It's working. My Moleskine is filling up with ideas. My inbox stays empty. My To Do list stays manageable. My deadlines are met, my daily word counts pile up. All good things. I feel very much in control of all these balls that I'm juggling. Sometimes, to be honest, I think too much in control. Therein lies the problem. I need to find a way to let it all go, stop worrying, thinking, plotting and planning, and just be. There's not enough of just being anymore. And I have a feeling I may not be the only one with this problem.
My question for you today – what advice can you give to help? Any great tips or ideas for turning it all off, for living in the moment? Because I'd love to hear some…
Some people are natural short story writers – I’m not one of them. That’s not to say I don’t write them, but I’m not in the habit of dashing off a quick tale every time I’ve a spare moment. My brain just doesn’t work that way. If I want to concentrate on something, I have to make a conscious effort to open a particular mental door and see what’s inside.
In some ways, I recognise that I went about this writing game slightly backwards. I didn’t have my first short story published until two years after my first novel. And it wasn’t something I’d had lying around in the bottom of a box in the attic, waiting for the occasion. I happened to be at a Northern Chapter meeting of the Crime Writers' Association – which is not nearly as Hell’s Angel-ified as it sounds – when I bumped into Martin Edwards. Martin was editing the CWA anthologies, and he casually suggested, as we funnelled into the dining room for lunch, that I might like to submit a story for the latest collection.
That year’s anthology was called GREEN FOR DANGER. It followed a previous anthology called CRIME IN THE CITY, so the countryside theme was a natural progression. In his introduction, Martin quoted Sherlock Holmes: "It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside…" How could I resist a brief like that? The result was ‘A Bridge Too Far’ about the bridge-swinging activities of a local Dangerous Sports’ Club, some of the details of which were drawn from life – including the fact that the local strict Methodist farmer had banned the club from using an ancient viaduct on his land every Sunday morning because he couldn’t stand the inevitable blasphemy as they launched themselves into the abyss.
I didn’t tell Martin until after he’d accepted the story that it was my first attempt, but he didn’t seem to mind. And no-one was more surprised than me when it was subsequently reprinted in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.
Since then, when asked and given a brief, I’ve written maybe another half-a-dozen shorts, including one for another CWA anthology, ID: CRIMES OF IDENTITY, called ‘Tell Me’, which has been used in a Danish school textbook, and turned into a short film. Is this a good time to admit that I wrote the whole thing during a long car journey?
When Megan Abbott was putting together her A HELL OF A WOMAN anthology, she particularly wanted stories about the forgotten female characters of classic detective fiction – the secretaries and waitresses and girlfriends. Those who lurked in the shadows rather than took centre stage. And when we missed a ferry to Ireland and ended up killing time in a little café in Stranraer on the west coast of Scotland, I watched the diners singularly ignoring the hardworking wait staff, and the story of Layla, a wronged waitress with a forgettable face, was born. ‘Served Cold’ was the result.
Writing a short crime story for the in-house magazine of a private bank was a tricky brief – no sex, no violence, no bad language. Lenny Bright arrived out of the blue, as an inept getaway driver who does and doesn’t quite get away with his crime. I was careful in ‘The Getaway’ to make the robbers target a building society, though, rather than a bank.
But give me no brief, no deadline and a very loose word count, and I tend to flounder. I think this goes back to my original route into writing, which was non-fiction. I started off as a freelance feature writer for the motoring magazines – the photography came along a little later – and I quickly became interested in car stereo, for which there were, at the time, several specialist publications. I was asked if I would take over a regular back page column for one of them, which was called ‘Random Play’. The brief was fairly loose – a round a thousand words of anything vaguely connected with car stereo or security. And I mean anything.
My first effort was a conversation between three men in a pub of the more and more extreme lengths they’d gone to in trying to prevent their cars being nicked. Nobody complained, so after that I filled the back page with weirdness – reports of strange military experiments with sound-based weapons; spoof letters from Members of the European Parliament outlining the latest pieces of bureaucracy gone mad, designed to stop anyone having a good time; tales of bass addicts and the lengths they’d go to satisfy their cravings.
For several years, I churned out this as a regular thing. Looking back, some of them were actually reasonably amusing, and the publisher kept sending the cheques, which is the only real indication of approval of your work that you seem to get in this business.
But then I decided that the time had come to move on, although I promised to do a guest spot if a really entertaining idea occurred to me. Needless to say, without the pressure of a regular deadline, it didn’t, and I never wrote another ‘Random Play’ page.
So it is with short stories. If someone says "write anything", it’s too much choice. The more guidelines or restrictions, the more my mind gets to work on integrating or circumventing them. Last year, I was asked to judge a local short story competition, with the theme of ‘Wild’, which was open to any interpretation the entrants cared to place upon it. And in the end, the final decider – in addition to the usual qualities – was how well the winning story incorporated some aspect of that theme.
So, when I was asked to do the second chapter of a round robin story this year, I was thoroughly intrigued, but not a little apprehensive. It’s another first for me. Stuart MacBride was kicking the whole thing off and I received his opening chapter a couple of weeks ago. Not an easy act to follow, isn’t Stuart. Mainly because his stuff is effortlessly very funny, dammit.
So, I tapped into the humour vein I haven’t opened up since those ‘Random Play’ days and went for a similar tone and style. Only time will tell if I’ve managed to carry it off or not. But if the person writing the chapter in front of you makes it dark and tragic, or light and comedic, do you follow suit, or go your own way? I think I’ve picked up the threads he left, continued the characters he introduced, plus one of my own, and doubled the body count. What else could I do?
So, my questions are, how do you feel about short stories? Do you enjoy reading them? Do you enjoy writing them?
If you have a series character, do you write short stories that include your series character, or do you enjoy the break from them?
If you’re writing for an anthology with a specific theme, how closely do you try and follow that theme?
Have you ever tried out a new character in a short story, and then gone on to write a book involving them?
Have you come across characters in short stories that you wish the author would carry forwards into a full-length book of their own?
This week’s Word of the Week is paramnesia, which is a memory disorder in which words are remembered but not their proper meaning; the condition of believing that one remembers events and circumstances which have not previously occurred. Its roots are from the Greek para beside, beyond, and mimneskein to remind.
If you've been following the publishing news site Galleycat recently, you may have read about the brouhaha that erupted at the recent South by Southwest (SXSW) conference panel entitled "New Think for Old Publishers". There's a pretty good synopsis at Medialoper, which can be boiled down further to this: Traditional publishers, joined by social-networking guru Clay Shirky, were supposed to do a panel on the changing nature of the publishing industry. It quickly became clear that the publishers didn't have any idea how to negotiate the changes brought on by technology and accelerated by the troubled economy. Eventually , the panelists asked the crowd "well, what do y'all want?" The crowd got unhappy and occasionally downright hostile, and let the panel know it via comments. Interestingly, they also shared their disgruntlement via a special SXSW Twitter feed. Some "tweets included: "publishers have no clue how to save themselves and little interest in models readers want," and "This chance for learning has become a lean back and listen for the panel. It's audience funded brainstorming!"
The Medialoper piece summed up with "As presented, the panel was an insult to the audience and a waste of time for everyone involved."
I confess I was a little startled, not only by the reaction, but by the vehemence of it. Now, I wasn't there, so I may be totally off base (and if any of you were there, let me know, I'd love to hear your thoughts.). But from what I read, it sounds to me like these were people who apparently felt they'd been cheated because someone was asking them their opinion of which way things should go.
This was startling to me because when it comes to panels, blogs, what have you, interactivity is an article of faith with me. If moderating a panel, I like to go to Q & A as early as I can get away with it. When blogging here, I like to end up with a question or two. Sometimes, as in my last two posts here, I've spent the whole time asking you questions about what worked for you, and it seemed to go pretty well for everybody. I don't think I'd even read a blog that didn't allow comments. At least I wouldn't read it for long.
I don't just do it because I'm lazy. I mean, I AM lazy, but that's not my only motivation. But a few months ago, I saw a video essay by the aforementioned Professor Shirky, who's a professor at NYU (and who, as you can probably tell, has become a major influence on my recent thinking about media). The essay is transcribed here, and you can view it here. I definitely recommend you check out the whole essay, but one of the the main things that stuck with me was the story Shirky relates about friend of his, the friend's four year old daughter, and their DVD player:
in the middle of the movie, apropos nothing, she jumps up off the couch and runs around behind the screen. That seems like a cute moment. Maybe she's going back there to see if Dora is really back there or whatever. But that wasn't what she was doing. She started rooting around in the cables. And her dad said, "What are you doing?" And she stuck her head out from behind the screen and said, "Looking for the mouse."
Here's something four-year-olds know: A screen that ships without a mouse ships broken. Here's something four-year-olds know: Media that's targeted at you but doesn't include you may not be worth sitting still for.
So what I like to do, every chance I get, is hand you the mouse and let you control things for a while. It never occurred to me that asking for audience participation would actually make people angry.
Or maybe the SXSW audience was irritated because they didn't know the answers either. In the current unsettled publishing environment, if the people who are supposedly in charge don't know which way things are going to fall, then the uncertainly just gets ramped up that much higher. And fear leads to anger. And anger leads to suffering.I think Yoda said that.
But here's the thing: we are seeing a revolution. And revolutions, by their very nature, are unpredictable. No one can really say with any degree of certainty (at least if they're honest) exactly what effects things like e-publishing, Kindles, eReaders on iPhones, or even POD are going to have on traditional publishing, or even if what we've known as traditional publishing is going to survive.
In a more recent essay, Shirky describes the revolution that took place after Gutenberg's invention of the printing press:
During the wrenching transition to print, experiments were only revealed in retrospect to be turning points. Aldus Manutius, the Venetian printer and publisher, invented the smaller octavo volume along with italic type. What seemed like a minor change — take a book and shrink it — was in retrospect a key innovation in the democratization of the printed word. As books became cheaper, more portable, and therefore more desirable, they expanded the market for all publishers, heightening the value of literacy still further.
That is what real revolutions are like. The old stuff gets broken faster than the new stuff is put in its place. The importance of any given experiment isn’t apparent at the moment it appears; big changes stall, small changes spread. Even the revolutionaries can’t predict what will happen. Agreements on all sides that core institutions must be protected are rendered meaningless by the very people doing the agreeing.
So in this brave new publishing world, the only way to stay on top is going to be to keep our minds–and our ears–open. To keep experimenting. And to keep asking questions. Because the next great idea could come from anywhere.
BTW, I was fascinated by Pari's experiment on Monday where everyone was invited to help write a piece of the story. It really took some unexpected turns. Maybe THAT's one potential new genre: the WikiStory.
So, today's questions:
Is interactivity important to you? For example, would you keep reading this blog if it didn't allow comments? Would you rather hear from us, talk back to us, or a little of both?
What's your idea to save publishing or if you don't want to save it, what's your idea to replace it? IOW, what models do you, as readers, want?
The blogs are all full of sun-kissed memories of Left Coast Crime in Hawaii. Hibiscus as big as a plate. Whales that cavort around your outrigger canoe. Panelists that left you breathless with their insight and good humor. Those things are all true, but they weren't the truth for me on Hawaii's Big Island last week.
You see, I was co-chair of Programming for the con with Judy Greber. And that means that we'd been working for almost two years to attract and assign interesting writers and readers to interesting panels.
We weren't responsible for any of the "event" kind of functions – the luau, the Desserts to Die For, the Awards Brunch – just everything else that happened between nine and five for a five and a half day period.
You ever try planning a bunch of activities for kids at a birthday party? Stretch that party over six days and invite another 320 kids with ADD and you've got some idea of what I'm talking about.
First you've got to come up with the panel ideas. Bill and Toby Gottfried, our uber-committee chairpersons, had billed this as "the Unconventional Convention" but, hey! No pressure! Really! Just make every panel discussion something no one has ever done before.
You've got to include the basics, of course, like Bad Guys in Crime Fiction and Debut Novels. But maybe there's a way to discuss those differently than has been done at other cons. Take "Setting" as an example: maybe we ask, "Does Geography Determine the Genre?" and get the fur flying that way.
Naturally, everyone wants to be on the Research Panel. Why is that? I think that would be the most boring part of any presentation I gave. Maybe these folks do more interesting research than I do.
And you also want to try some new stuff, like Kate Stine's look back at "The History of the Mystery." And the six Aussie readers recommending Australian crime fiction writers. And the panel "Things That Make Me Stop Reading" with fans and reviewers chiming in about their pet peeves and dislikes.
The panels I like best are the ones where authors are not talking about their own books, so we created a panel just like that: authors recommending other authors' books.
So you've finally got a list of potential panels and you begin to see the confirmations come in. Then the real work starts – reading reviews and author websites, combing through "panel preferences" and travel schedules, emails flying back and forth like an army of dull-tipped arrows – to find the right mix of names for each topic.
And you email the attendees to let them know when and where they'll speak.
And they reply.
* One author said he didn't want to do any panels because he'd be there with his girlfriend and didn't want to participate. But could we put his name and picture in the brochure all the same?
* One reader wanted to be on panels, but was planning to go birding and see the volcano and go whale watching so would Wednesday afternoon between two and four be okay for all panel assignments?
* One writer said she couldn't do anything public until after noon each day. We didn't ask why.
* One woman complained that the author who had been assigned to the panel she wanted was nowhere near as competent as she to speak on the subject. Please move her into that slot.
* One was only available on Sunday. Another only on Tuesday. One was leaving before the Awards Brunch (could we reschedule it please?).
Get the picture?
I tried to calculate the number of hours Judy and I spent on Programming over the last two years but as the hundreds morphed into multiple thousands, I gave up.
Programming doesn't end there. Then you've got the last minute cancellations – a couple because of family emergencies, several more when the reality of their financial picture met them in the mirror. (It was not an auspicious year to be asking folks to fly to Hawaii. All told, the economy did impact us, but not to as great a degree as I would have predicted. Hats off to the organizing committee and the reputation of LCC in general for attracting as many folks as we did.)
And there were a couple of folks who paid their money, got panel assignments and planned on coming but just never showed up. Phooey on you guys. You made other folks pick up the pieces at the last minute and that's not nice.
I didn't get to the pool, the volcano, the beach or the whale watching boat.
So, my memories of LCC Hawaii?
Panels that were interesting enough and well enough distributed that there was a good crowd at each one. Spending time with Simon Wood who is the funniest man on the planet. Drinks with a female soldier named Brandy who showed me a whole new side of the American Armed Forces. Meeting Dr. Thomas Holland, the smartest (and sexiest) Indiana Jones clone I'll ever get close to. Lunches and dinners and last minute-piece-picking-up with Judy Greber, who is the funniest woman on the planet but doesn't know it.
And, oh yeah, that massage I treated myself to when the conference was over. I think it was worth all those thousands of hours.
P.S. Left Coast Crime in Sacramento in 2011? I'm not volunteering to do Programming.
A question for you, my 'Rati troops: what's the best panel you've ever seen or been on at a convention? And Happy St. Patrick's Day!
(Hi all. I've had a rough few days; the rescue dog we adopted bit one of our children and we had to take him back. It was heartbreaking, like losing a friend all over again. So, I decided to do something different for the post today. I trolled through the beginnings of my short stories and found this one. It's a good start. How about we write the rest of it?
Here's how I see this working: Everyone who comments adds a sentence, a paragraph or two to the already existing prose from other writers. Toward the end of the day, anyone who wants to take a stab at the ending can do it — just let us readers know that's what you're up to. Anyone can contribute more text at any time; heck, I might do that, too.
I'm not sure this is going to fly, but thought it'd be an interesting experiment.
Let's see what happens.
One . . . two . . . three . . . HERE GOES:)
The janitor found the kid back by the dumpters before morning announcements. The child's face had already grayed, his body arched in a weird rigor mortis. No need to feel for a pulse. Eyes that glassy no longer held a soul.
"We can't just leave him there," said the principal, her breakfast returning from its first voyage down her throat.
"Can't move him either," said the janitor. "It'd mess up the police investigation."
"How do you know that?" she said too quickly, suspicious.
The janitor just shook his head and pulled a dingy handkerchief out of one of his many pockets. He dabbed at his eyes.
"You're telling me I don't want to know?" she said.
He closed his eyes and shook his head again.
The principal stepped back a little, her high heels making a clicking sound on the asphalt at the desolate edge of the parking lot. Cell phone at the ready but not yet open, she addressed the man who'd discovered the child. "Juan, would you go get Mr. Valdez? I'll need him to keep things calm while I deal with the police."
"Yes, Mrs. Henry." He started to leave, but she reached for his arm.
"And please don't tell anyone else about this. Not yet."
"Yes, Ma'am."
Her hand remained in place a minute after he left, the heat of their connection turning cold in the winter wind. It was times like these she hated her job, hated that there were parents who neglected their children or, worse yet, who paid the wrong kind of attention to them.
She took a deep breath, letting the tears fall from her cheeks onto her wool coat, and dialed 911. When that was done, she called the superintendent at his home and explained the situation.
"I wish you'd waited to call the police," he said. "You know the media will be all over this. Four kids in four weeks." His cough was phlegmy. "I'll get someone from communications out there to handle them right away. You just hold tight."
That was just like him to worry more about image than anything else. He hadn't even asked if she knew the boy. Horror of horrors, she did . . .
Oh, I am a sucker for anticipation. I've been thinking about this for the last week-and-a-half because I decided to go ahead and have the LASIK surgery (as I write this, on Friday) and normally, I'm one of those people who researches all sorts of things–from how much pressure it takes to pull the trigger on a Remington sniper rifle, to work tools of the 1700s, to the ignitability of dust in a grain silo. I enjoy research, and I have an incredibly random collection of books and bookmarks to make any analyst confused. And I said "normally" above, because when it comes to the LASIK, I don't want to know. They kept trying to explain the procedure to me and I was all mature and plunged my fingers into my ears, all la la la la la, I can't hear you. Because there is no better way to build my anticipation and fear than just enough details to create just enough awareness of the dangers, and no ability to control them.
[Seriously. I am going to be hopped up on valium. I'm not going to be able to explain back the procedure to my doctor or do anything more than giggle. I just hope I don't say something insulting, like commenting on his botoxed brow.]
All of which led me to think about how much anticipation means to story-telling. There have to be stakes raised from the very beginning–I'd say within the first few pages. We might not know the ultimate stakes of the story, but something has to be at risk, and we, the readers, have to anticipate what the main character is going to do… and then the writer has to surprise us. If the character does everything exactly as we predict, leading to the outcome exactly as we predicted, then the anticipation of the next event goes to zero–or worse, the reader will put the book down.
But building anticipation isn't just a matter of naming the stakes–the ultimate consequences. I mean, after all, thousands of people have LASIK surgery every day, somewhere in the world, and it's not like I had this pressing sense of urgency about the procedure before last week. And I'm pretty certain that my doctor (who, thankfully, has done thousands of these surgeries), didn't think about one day doing surgery on me and then his life would be complete. For him, it's routine.
For me, it's my eyes.
It's personal.
Now, as I was sitting there in the consultant's office last week, studiously trying to ignore her description of the procedure, I did catch one part. She explained that at one point, as the doctor's working on each eye, there will be a few seconds where I won't be able to see. She said that he tells the patient, "Okay, you see that light above you? I'm going to turn it off for about ten seconds, and I'll let you know when I turn it back on." But really, she explained, you can't see because right then is when they're doing something to the cornea (I DON'T REMEMBER DO NOT TELL ME I DON'T WANT TO KNOW I AM NOT KIDDING) and then something something happens and "you can't see for a few seconds," and then she saw the look on my face and hastened to add, "but he's never not had a patient able to see the light as soon as that part of the procedure is over. Don't worry."
And I, being a fiction writer, immediately thought, Oh, shit. What are the odds of him doing THOUSANDS of surgeries and NEVER EVER having ANYTHING BAD ever happen, EVER? That would be akin to him being PERFECT and we know people aren't perfect so OH, GREAT, I'm going to be the one in ten thousand he has to admit to later who did not turn out so well. And I immediately wanted to ask about back-up generators (in case of a freak storm) and how many additional staff they had (in case a serial killer bursts in and takes out a couple of nurses) and did she know how long the wait was for new eyes from the organ donor people? [I did not bring all of this up, because I figured that freaking out the staff and making them nervous before I got there was probably a bad thing.] [I did ask for extra valium.] [They said no.]
So… anticipation. Tension. Raising the stakes.
There are fundamental elements to how to do this in story-telling, and many variables on these basics, but the main things we need to remember in order to build anticipation are:
1) create risks for the character — there has to be a downside to any choice they make along the way during the story. They have to feel like if they choose a path, there is the potential that they will lose their ability to achieve whatever their goal is.
2) they have to have a goal (which I am putting second, because I think people sometimes forget that there can be a SERIES of goals, leading to the ultimate goal of the story). That ultimate goal, in my case, is to come away from that LASIK surgery with improved eyesight so that I don't have to wear contacts or glasses all of the time. But I have a smaller set of goals which can be summed up by DO NOT FREAK AND CHICKEN OUT OF GOING.
3) both the risks and the goal(s) have to be personal to that character. Not just happening to them personally, which isn't the same thing, but personal to them–they have to care, greatly, about the outcome. They have to have something unique about them, and their story, so that the risks makes us concerned for them. We have to care.
4) things have to go wrong, and not in the obvious way. The things that go wrong for the character cannot go wrong in the way the character anticipates and fears… it has to be worse. It has to be worse in a way that they shouldn't have been able to anticipate, most of the time. If they can anticipate something going wrong and it goes wrong exactly as they anticipated, they don't seem very clever. If WE can anticipate it going wrong in a certain way and the character cannot, and that's the exact way it goes wrong, then the character is going to seem pretty stupid. If you want that character to seem stupid–if that's the point–then that's fine. But if you want us to root for them and to wonder oh, hell, what are they going to do NOW? then you have to twist the consequences and surprise us. Whatever you do, each time they anticipate something and try to do something logical, the outcome needs to get worse.
5) things need to go progressively wrong and that progression needs to escalate from bad to worse to horrible to no hope in sight to no way to win. One of the worst mistakes in a story is to have something go horribly wrong early on and the next two or three things that go wrong are about level to that first one (or worse, easier on the character)–because our interest will plateau. It will feel like they're marking time, like the writer is marking time until he or she gets a certain number of words done and can procl
aim the story "done." Keep the order of progression in mind when you're plotting (even if you're pantsing).
6) educate the reader along the way with only as much information as they need to understand the next section of the story. Build the information they need to know in bite-sized moments through the story, not in one big honking swallow up front. Readers are going to trust you that you're going to give them more information as you go. They're also going to trust you that you're only going to give them the highlights of what they need to know right now, not every single detail. They do need specific details, however. Do you think I'm ever going to forget her comment about that light going out? Nope. Not for years. She used a lot of technical language up 'til that point, but that point? Stuck in my brain. Do you think I'm not going to be counting those seconds when that damned light goes out? You bet I am. Do you think that I'm not also going to be listening intently for the sound of the storm, the sound of the outer door opening, anyone crying out in pain that may distract the doctor? Ha. Those are going to be some long damned seconds. For a crisp story, one that moves fast for the reader and makes them want to turn the page, give them the least amount of information that you absolutely have to give them for them to see and understand that moment.
7) we need to understand the emotional state of the character as these things go wrong and they try to figure out a solution. If we tell the story completely from the outside and don't get into the emotions, the reader has no reason to care.
One of the best stories that I saw recently that played with anticipation is INSIDE MAN with Clive Owen and Denzel Washington. It's a brilliant film, and one of my favorites. The story starts with Clive Owen's character telling you exactly what's going to happen next. He warns you that you're not going to understand (if I remember correctly) and he's not going to repeat himself. And even with that warning, you're still going to be surprised, because it's an excellent game of three-card Monty. (Figuratively.) And even as you see what they're doing, your mind is anticipating something specific and you're filling in those details and they end up meaning something entirely different. The thing that I liked so much about how this film accomplished its goal is that Spike Lee (director) and Russell Gewirtz (writer) didn't cheat the viewer. When you realize what it was you actually saw vs. what it was you thought you saw, you realize how the filmmakers used your own anticipation against you–and you respect them for it, because the clues were all there, all along.
That leads to:
8) use the reader's anticipation against them. Sometimes this means giving something a double meaning, or having a character lie. (It is critical to note that the CHARACTERS can lie to the reader, and to each other, but the AUTHOR cannot cheat by offering a suddenly different explanation to something that was already explained, just for the convenience of being a "surprise.") You do want the reader to be surprised, and that has to come from the duality of what's going on in the moment–not from acts of God or random coincidences at convenient moments.
Building anticipation is one of the simplest ways to look at plotting because as a person, you know how to anticipate. Think about those elements as you're writing; if it feels like something is stagnant, then you've probably hit a tension plateau–nothing worse is about to happen to the character. If it feels like it's taking too long to get moving, then look to see if you've over-educated the reader for that moment. Etc. Think about how to paint your character into a corner and then surprise us by how they get out.
I'm sure there are other elements of anticipation, but for now, tell me what movie/TV show or book have you seen/read lately that does anticipation really well?
[Update: the LASIK went well — painless, easy, and I can now see better than when I had contacts. I'm kinda floored. No serial killers bursts into the offices, no hurricanes or earthquakes. I have never been so happy to be so boring.]
My third novel, Invisible Boy, is due in to my intrepid editor and his astonishingly wonderful henchwoman on Monday. That would be this coming Monday. As in, somewhat less than two days from this very moment, as you read these words. (And, hey, isn't this cover awesomely bitchen? Let's hope I don't deface its magnificence with a crappy novel on the inside. {Oy, the pressure…!})
Deadlines may well be the elixir of the scholarly life, and necessary, and goodness knows they light a fire under my sorry butt, but they are still big and scary and have large ugly teeth.
And then, right when you're chugging full-steam toward the finish line, you can get that weird thing where it suddenly seems as if you're typing in Lithuanian, and everything just looks wrong, if you stare at it long enough. Take, for instance the word "moreover." Does that look right to you? Is it a word you should EVER use? Is it even a WORD, or just a random sprinkling of letters?
And what does "threnody" mean? Could I use it to describe someone's sob of grief? Not to mention, come to think of it, that the very phrase "come to think of it" is pretty weird. And maybe a little dirty?
Seriously: Lithuanian. I'm sure it's a lovely country, but I'm supposed to be crafting a narrative set in Queens and Manhattan, circa 1990.
Not one in which this might be the preferred local headgear:
This is not just the third deadline I've faced for a novel, it's the third deadline for THIS novel, which adds an extra element of scary, to me. I think it might actually make sense this time, but who knows?
What I do know is I have picked up a few things that make the last couple of crazed days go down a bit easier, both for myself and for those forced to be in close contact with me in my hours of final deep contemplation and typing.
Moreover, I would like to share these important safety tips with you, to try at home:
1. Treat Yourself to Ridiculously Expensive Junk Food
Are you broke? Fat? Heart condition? Vegan? Forget all that. This is an emergency, and you can go back on that lemon-juice-cayenne-maple-syrup fast the minute you attach your manuscript to a groveling email and hit the "send" button, in about 48 hours.
This is no time for half measures (or, for that matter, herbal laxatives). This is time for junk food of the highest order. But you don't need Snickers bars, you need dark-chocolate-coated caramels dusted with high-end French sea salt crystals that were scraped by hand from the luminous tail feathers of free-trade organic albino baby amphibious peacocks.
And screw Maxwell House, go for the eight-dollar latte. Or better yet, invest in a built-in German espresso maker that you can program to greet you in eight languages, including Portuguese and Dutch:
Don't just give up on cooking and eat Top Ramen straight out of the package (crunchy!)–find the most outrageously over-the-top pizza in your neck of the woods and ask them to lard it with foie gras, then deliver. (If you live in the Hamptons, that is actually possible–though I prefer the lesser escargot-laden pie in that particular vicinity).
In Berkeley, my Deadline Food of Choice is Gioia Pizza, the current menu of which offers the "Broccoli Obama" (broccoli, nicoise olives, capers, red onions, calabrian chilis, garlic and mozzarella cheese) and the "Radicchio" (roasted radicchio, pancetta, gorgonzola, garlic oil, and fresh thyme) during winter months. If your best local pizza place offers anything with goat cheese and a side of pomegranate coulis, embrace the hell out of that sucker.
Make sure that your ridiculously haute cuisine 'za has a New York style crust–thin, chewy, and with a nice "pull" to it. This is not a time for Round Table or Domino's, and it's important that you eschew crappy Bisquick-esque bases, or those crunchy ersatz crusts my ex once refered to as "ketchup on a matzoh," while on a business trip at a paper mill in darkest Newfoundland (also, if memory serves, the home of PFK–Poulez Frites a la Kentucky).
The proprietors of Gioia totally have the crust thing down. This is because they are members of what I call "the Brooklyn pizzafarian diaspora," people one wants to keep serious tabs on, when living west of the Garden State Parkway.
I'm not saying you should eat a ton of food, or anything bigger than your head–you have to stay sharp, not nap away precious writing hours in a pizza-induced coma.
It's not about quantity, but truly, my dear ones, you must remember that you are eating to support your brain in full-on Blue Angels throttle mode. Do not skimp on the quality.
2. Suck Down Those Stimulant Drinks, Baby
Don't skimp on the kick-your-ass beverages, either. It is important to have that college-allnighter mini formula-one cars racing through your bloodstream thing. Espresso… Red Bull… Diet Pepsi with Lime… Jolt Cola… Caffeinated Water… Espresso brewed with caffeinated water. (I mean, hey, Lee Child claims to drink 30 cups of coffee a day, and occasionally brews it with caffeinated water. So that MUST be a good idea, right?).
And if caffeine isn't quite enough, or makes you a ravening freakshow, there's also mateine, which is some groovy stuff, let me tell you–like green tea with afterburners (great mental clarity, a lot less jitters).
You can buy Yerba Mate (the South American beverage-substance which one imbibes for a mateine boost) in most decent grocery stores, these days. For a dual power shot, you can get coffee beans with Yerba Mate blended in.
Wheatgrass juice is just fucking lame, though.
Also, it might make you barf. Barfing is not what we're after, here. It takes too much time away from writing (or ruins your keyboard). And besides which, who wants to barf green, even on St. Patrick's Day?
3. Read Only Really Bad Books, if You Have Any Downtime
This is SO not the time to take up reading Nabokov, or Shirley Jackson, or Denise Mina, or William Gibson, or Ken Bruen, or any other consummate stylist. And don't read anybody who's really amazing at plotting, either. When you're finished writing for the day and want to unwind with someone else's book, make sure it's an indelibly awful one.
Don't read anything that will throw a spotlight on your own talent angst. Do not allow the brilliance of others to make you question your own creative validity at this time, or you will crash and burn during the crucial last forty-eight hours.
You need downtime reading that sucks so utterly hugely and voraciously on every level that you will feel like a goddamn genius by comparison.
I'm talking Bulwer-Lytton, or The Book of Mormon, here, folks. Tin-eared early Asimov is good, back issues of the Weekly World News even better.
It's also a good idea to read outside your genre, at this time, (while still sticking to the "sucks utterly" designation.)
I am currently re-reading an astonishingly ill-conceived and worse-rendered '90s historical romance faux-sequel (to an actually good book by a dead author). I've put it down on my bedside table each night this week and gone to sleep convinced I am the most talented writer who ever lived, at least in comparison to this woman's stinking pile of unreadable crap–an essential delusion when I'm closing in on typing that elusive "THE END."
Which sure as hell beats throwing up, or sobbing/shrieking with fear.
And when you're done, reward yourself with a GOOD book:
4. Housekeeping, Schmousekeeping
Are you the person in your household expected to keep the entire domicile lemon-fresh and squeaky clean? Two words: fuck that.
Strike a blow for anarchy in these desperate hours. Throw dirty dishes down the garbage disposal. Throw laundry down the garbage disposal. Then rename your vacuum cleaner "Anna Karenina" and find a handy oncoming express train.
When you've done all that, tell your family they will henceforth be learning the old-school table etiquette of Tamil Nadu:
eating with their hands off banana leaves.
Embrace entropy. Tell your children to hitchhike home from soccer practice, and/or ballet. You are busy crafting the uncreated conscience of your race in the smithy of your soul, after all.
Should they complain, advise them to Google "the second law of thermodynamics," then remind them that childhood is not just a job, it's an adventure.
This will not only build character, it will give them something to bitch about at cocktail parties when they grow up. (And they will probably become novelists, too. Or at least pen interesting memoirs.)
5. Dress for Success
Forget Queer Eye, ignore that snippy no-taste What Not To Wear chick, you need serious combat gear: huge ugly ripped sweatshirts, coffee-stained pajama pants, threadbare mismatched socks, paint-spattered frat-humor-slogan t-shirts with big holes under the arms.
The last hours of the final draft are an inward journey. Dress yourself as though you never expect to be seen outside your own house again, even by the visually impaired. This will also help keep you inside your house, working your ass off (bonus!).
Forget Tom Wolfe. The look we're going for here is pure Slapshot Hansons: "bloodied but unbowed."
And with that I wish all deadlining writers the world over a hearty "Sėkmės! Geros kloties!" (which is apparently "good luck" in Lithuanian)
How about you 'Ratis? Any tips for living through deadline world? Any favorite expensive junk food? Please share…
[And now for a bit of blatant self-and-others promotion: My writing partner Sharon Johnson and I are putting on the Berkeley Mystery Writing Intensive, a full-day conference for aspiring crime fiction writers, on Saturday, April 18th.
Registration is $140, which includes catered breakfast, lunch, and afternoon snacks, parking validation, and a no-host cocktail reception/book signing at the end of the day. The event will be held at the historic Berkeley City Club:
designed by Hearst Castle architect Julia Morgan
Please see my website http://www.corneliaread.com for more details, and a downloadable PDF registration form)
What I do believe in is getting stuck in a story. See, writer’s block implies the inability to write…anything. My feeling is I can always write something. Maybe it’ll have nothing to do with the story I’m working on, but it will be writing. Maybe I start a short story, or write a scene that has nothing to do with anything, or maybe I just write some emails. Whatever works.
Recently I got stuck on the book I’m currently working on. Now my deadline isn’t until May 1st, so just before I got stuck I was thinking that there was a good chance I would finish a month early. I mean, I already had over 300 pages written, and I usually top out at just over 400. So even writing another 100+ pages and doing a rewrite of the whole book at that point was very doable.
I knew how I wanted the book to end, but I also knew I had a lot of loose ends and things that needed to be changed. I kept writing, though, until I suddenly came to a point where I said to myself, “I’m not really sure what I should write next.”
I’ve got to say, I was annoyed. But to be fair, I knew I’d get to that point eventually. I always do.
So I did what I’ve done in the past, I went back to the beginning and start my rewrite even though I hadn’t finished the draft. But something different happened this time. I got about two-thirds of the way through the rewrite when I hit another snag.
Okay, not a snag completely. But I knew I needed to do something different. I realized I just needed to take a step back and look at the story as a whole. I knew I had a good plot, and the characters were all solid, but I was afraid that I was missing something. So I decided to take two days and not touch the manuscript at all. That’s not to say I didn’t write anything. In fact I wrote a ton. Only none of it was on my laptop.
I got a couple of things from Office Depot to help me out. One was a 2’ x 4’ dry erase board. The other was one of the coolest things in the world. Did you know they make Post-it notes that are actually 2’ wide by 2 1/2 ‘ long and come in pads of 30? They are so AWESOME! I mean like award winning awesome! Check them out next time you’re in a office supply store, you’ll see what I mean.
Anyway…here’s what I did.
I summarized all the chapters I had written so far on the dry erase board. Then, using a different giant Post-it note for each of my main characters, I wrote a point-by-point rundown of the story from that particular character’s point of view. Once done, the Post-it went up on the wall of my living room. Eventually most of the empty space on my walls was covered. (Thank God I live alone…the notes are still up and not attractive to anyone but me.)
I then took a step back to see what I had. Suddenly several things became clear to me: chapters that needed to be moved around, some that needed to be removed entirely, and two characters that needed to be combined into one, among other things. And most importantly, I realized that I wasn’t as far off as I had first thought.
I grabbed another post it and wrote out a chapter-by-chapter list of things I needed to do, then threw it up on the wall. My final act was to photograph each post it and import them into my computer so that I’d have them with me wherever I ended up working. Old school meet new school.
Yeah, I know. It sounds like a lot of work. And it was. But, man, did it open me up. That sense of being stuck…gone. That feeling of not knowing what to write next…also gone.
I know I won’t be done by the end of March like I wanted to be, but I still think I’m going to beat that May 1st deadline.
So I guess what I’m trying to point out if you’re a writer who sometimes gets stuck, maybe you just need to take a step back and look at the big picture. Or maybe you just need to put the story to the side for a day or two and try writing something else entirely. But what you should never do is think that you are blocked. That’s just a state of mind.
Find your method. Find what works. And move on.
Song for today: FALLING SLOWLY…I LOVE this song. It’s the kind of song I wish I had someone to sing it to. Someday, perhaps.
I mean, I love movies. I love great television shows. Going to Broadway plays is one of the highlights of my trips to New York…
But there's nothing, nothing like a good book.
Years ago, when I was in my twenties, I went to Las Vegas with my wife and her family. I like to play craps — which, once you know the rules is a lot of fun — but I tend to get bored with gambling quickly, so I usually have a book along with me to read while everyone else is rolling the bones.
This time, however, I had neglected to bring one, so I strolled on down to the Union Plaza casino gift shop and started browsing through the racks until I found a book called RED DRAGON.
As most of you know, RED DRAGON is the first (and best) book by Thomas Harris to feature the world of Hannibal Lecter, although Lecter only makes a brief appearance in the story.
Anyway, once I started reading RED DRAGON, I couldn't stop. Harris hooked me and hooked me bad, and I spent most of the trip sprawled across the hotel room bed, my nose buried in the pages. Between that and cheap buffets twice a day, I must've gained ten pounds over the weekend.
But I didn't care. I just wanted to read. To completely immerse myself in the story Harris was building. And I got in so deep that nearly everything else around me ceased to exist.
It's like that with every good book I read. Once I'm hooked, all I can think about is getting back to the author's world to find out what his or her characters will do next. And when it ends, I'm both satisfied and sorry. A good book makes me want to stay with those characters forever.
And so it is with writing.
I'm coming to this realization late in the game. I'm sure most of the writers here (and just about everywhere else in the world) have already figured this out a long, long time ago, but it just recently occurred to me that when I sit down to WRITE a book, I'm essentially doing what comes naturally:
I'm reading to myself.
After so many years of reading other people's books and getting an almost orgasmic enjoyment out of it (yes, I said it. Orgasmic), I — like most writers — have taken the reading experience to the next level and have begun reading to myself and writing it down.
Some unconscious part of my brain is dictating the story to me, immersing me in its world and pushing it out through my fingers and onto the computer screen.
I like to pretend I have control over it, but I really don't. That's why characters like Solomon from WHISPER IN THE DARK started out as a walk-on only to insist on becoming a major force in the story. That's why when Blackburn got hit with a particularly emotional blow, I started to cry.
When I'm "writing," I'm in so deep that I'm merely a spectator, a passenger on the train, no more in control of where it's headed than I am when I'm reading someone else's book. The only thing I DO control, in fact, is the language. I'm constantly refining the language — but again, that comes from a place so deep that I sometimes wonder if I control even that.
When I've finished writing a book I'm drained. Emotionally and physically. And just as I do when I read a good book, I feel satisfied and sorry. Even when the experience is nerve-wracking and scary and utter hell, I'm sorry to be leaving that world — which is never the same again once you re-enter it.
All the control returns during the polishing phase. I say polishing because that's all I really do once the book is done. I take my editors' suggestions and buff the thing up, because most of the grunt rewriting work has been done during the first draft (I "rewrite" as I go).
So, in the polishing phase, after the majority of the work is done, I feel relaxed and confident and completely in control. And not nearly as deep into the thing as I was the first time around. It's much like rereading an old favorite that I'll always have a fondness for. An almost melancholy return to an old haunt.
But that first time around, it's all about reading to myself.
So it makes perfect sense to me that many readers go on to be writers. I've met quite a few people who haven't read more than one or two books in their lifetime and say they want to write a novel.
Uh-huh. Good luck to you.
Because unless you love reading as much as we do, I doubt you'll ever reach that particular goal.
Because, let's face it. If you don't like reading other people's work, the chances are fairly slim that you'll ever start reading your own mental dictation.
And that, as they say in Hokey Pokey-land, is what it's all about.
In Clancy's 1994 novel Debt of Honor, a 747 jet is intentionally crashed into the Capitol building, killing the President, the Supreme Court, and most of Congress. Seven years after the book's publication, on September 11, a similar scenario came to pass in real life, albeit with different targets and a different set of perpetrators. Still, the parallels were eerily close enough to make many people wonder if the attackers might have been inspired by Clancy's novel.
It also made Pentagon officials realize that the government's failure of imagination had left the country vulnerable to attack. Which is why they turned to storytellers for help.
"Over the last two weeks, a group drawn from Hollywood's talent pool has begun imagining what possible terrorist attacks could befall the nation next, not for the sake of entertainment, but for the sake of national security.
The group, composed of what is said to be fewer than 100 entertainment industry representatives volunteering for the job, was convened at the Army's request to help the military "think out of the box" about terrorism and how to respond.
The idea of tapping fiction writers to dream up the possible parameters of terrorism, a move that once might have seemed far-fetched, no longer sounds outlandish to many. Before Sept. 11, who would have imagined that hijackers would pilot commercial airliners in coordinated attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon?"
— Chicago Tribune, Oct. 15, 2001
Tom Clancy certainly imagined it.
And that's a thriller writer's job, isn't it? To describe hair-raising events that are far-fetched but still seem as if they're possible. When we sit at our desks, we allow our imaginations free reign to wander the universe. But when it comes time to actually write the story, most of us feel compelled to maintain at least some semblance of plausibility. We want our readers to believe that our plots, no matter how outlandish, might actually happen.
Sometimes, our stories actually come closer to reality than we ever expect.
I've been thinking of Tom Clancy's prescient novel because of a phone call I recently received from a criminal investigator. This investigator was very interested in me, and seemed to know a great deal about my personal life — something which I found a little unnerving. The reason for the phone call was even more unnerving. The caller was part of a police team investigating a series of murders, and they wanted to know why I was so familiar with the inside details of these attacks. "We've read your novel," the caller said. "You seem to know an awful lot about this killer. How he thinks. The victims he chooses. You even know the details of his technique." The crimes had started before my book was published, so they knew the killer wasn't being inspired by me. But the details in my novel were so precise and specific that the investigator felt I must have been in contact with the killer at some time. The killer might even be someone I know well. Like my own husband.
Oh yes. They'd been looking into my husband, too.
Naturally, I freaked out a little, realizing that — however briefly — I'd been considered a possible suspect in a string of homicides. Then I really freaked out, wondering how I'd managed to describe murders that had actually happened. And describe them so accurately that the investigators themselves got chills reading my book. (Or so the caller told me.) Did I know the killer I described in my story?
The truth is: Yes, I do. I know him because I made him up. He's not someone I've ever met in the flesh; he's not someone I've spoken to (at least, I hope not.) But I know him more completely than I could ever possibly know a real human being, because I've been inside his head. I know how he thinks, what he desires, what he fantasizes about.
I explained to the investigator that when I created this killer, I actually crawled into his mind and lived there for a while. I looked at the world through his eyes, and saw what he saw. I'd walk through a mall and imagine people as prey. I looked at children and thought how easy that one would have been to snatch. I noticed which women already looked like victims, which ones weren't paying attention to their surroundings, and which ones looked like they'd never fight back. I understood this killer so well that I also knew how he'd hunt. And I knew exactly how he'd kill. It was sheer coincidence that I'd created a monster who was so similar to the real thing.
It probably makes me sound scary. But I'm not, really.
I'm just a novelist.
Sometimes it's storytellers who get the closest to truth. Sometimes we see it before anyone else does.
Years ago, I sold the feature film rights to my space thriller Gravity, about a killer microbe that gets aboard the International Space Station. I did a ton of research for the book, and figured out a way to plausibly have that microbe slipped aboard ISS via a security weakness in the Payloads directorate. New Line Cinema hired an astronaut from NASA to pick apart the story and tell them which parts were implausible. The astronaut said it'd be impossible for a hazardous microbe to be intentionally sent up to ISS without NASA knowing about it.
Then she consulted NASA's Payloads directorate. And she was surprised when Payloads told her that my scenario was indeed possible. It was a security weakness that they hadn't considered … until it was proposed in my book.
With my most recent novel, I came up with yet another bizarre premise that's almost as farfetched as microbes in space. In The Keepsake, a murderer has killed a woman and turned her into a mummy that looks just like an ancient Egyptian relic. I knew it could theoretically be done, but I worried that I might have gotten a little too creative with that premise. I worried that I'd get slammed by the critics for crossing over into implausibility.
Then I had a conversation with Egyptologist Bob Brier, who told me of a real case he'd encountered in his own research, of a modern murder victim who'd been mummified to look like an ancient Egyptian relic. Not only was my mummy premise plausible, it had actually been done.
The fictional world of crime is a pretty scary place. But I'm starting to think that it's nowhere near as frightening as reality.
