Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Category Archives: Writer’s Life
My little humorist
More later. I thought I’d dash this off before fixing dinner.
I’ve been teaching my son grammar from Strunk and White, and from Karen Gordon’s books, The Deluxe Transitive Vampire and The New Well-Tempered Sentence. He finished reading Gordon’s chapter on commas last week, so now I’m having him go back through it and write sentences demonstrating each of her major points. Here is what he has done so far, uncorrected by yours truly:
Monday:
He barfed, he heaved, he blew his nose.
I barfed Sparky up, and I saw her half-digested tail wagging. Sparky didn’t like being in Sam’s stomach, but she liked his intestines. He wanted lunch and she wanted a heart. He always salted her before eating, but he thought she was bland all the same. [Eeeew.]
I woke up covered in barf [I think I understand the theme of this composition] and said, “Let’s go again! Let’s go again!”
Tuesday:
Sam tumbled and splashed and rolled around in the radioactive waste. When the radio started saying, “Recently there has been a radioactive spill and we would just like to caution everybody from playing in it, that is all”, he started drinking the foul liquid.
Sam drank the water so that he would get 6 extra eyes. From the left, a boy rose up and Sam saw his tentacles. At dark he thought 30 tentacles were enough. Out of the murky water appeared a girl with 6 red eyes and 4 tentacles.
I’ll make him a blogger yet.
D.
Synopsisisizing
I wrote a synopsis of my first four chapters today. It took me 2,168 words to synopsize 23,177 words.
A question for the more experienced writers in my li’l crowd: WTF is wrong with me? Should I keep it more concise, or is this 10% ratio typical for a synopsis?
Long-winded explanation:
I’m hoping this synopsis will make it easier for me to restructure book one. In other words, if I can boil things down to smaller, more easily grokkable units, I may be able to shuttle chapters this way and that, reshuffle things to obtain a prettier whole.
I want to move one of my major storylines to book two. This will make book one tighter, and book two more of a unique experience (since readers will be introduced to a new cast of characters). I can do this because the two major storylines only intersect at the end of book three.
Bottom line, I’m writing this synopsis to help me edit the trilogy, but I think it would be foolish not to create a document which, with a little massage, could serve as an agent-ready synopsis. If it were just for me, I wouldn’t give a damn how big this thing is. I’m only wondering if it’s too bloated for agents.
Why, why couldn’t I have had an idea for a 90K-word story?
Yeah, I know there’s no answer to that one (except, perhaps, inexperience).
D.
Editing: How I do it
Believe it or not, one of y’all emailed me questions about writing. Me. The guy who has only published stories in e-zines and one, ONE, print mag, Continuum.
I felt flattered, and more than a little like a charlatan, but then I remembered how many books I have picked up and put down because of inferior writing. Why should I have to be a published author to pontificate, when so many published authors so clearly suck at their craft? And I mean suck.
Not naming any names, mind you.
Then I realized: in surgery, we do this all the time. Folks with no academic experience whatsoever publish “How I Do It” articles, because the rest of us enjoy reading about a different perspective. You don’t have to be Josef McBlough, III, PhD, MD from Haaaahvaaaahd to write one of these articles, and in fact, none of us private practice guys would listen to Joe McBlough because we all know he has residents to Do It. He couldn’t take a tonsil out to save his soul.
Before I launch into the How I Do It portion of our program, don’t forget to check out PBW’s Ten Things for Editing Novels, which includes links to Holly Lisle’s articles, and PBW’s article, too (her method is close to mine, with a few neurotic quirks on my part . . . more below). I haven’t read all of those articles, by the way, and I’m not sure I will. (Frankly, Elizabeth Lyon’s Can Your Novel Pass this Test? made me want to scream by question #2.) But, at least now you have a quickie link to other resources.
By the way, don’t forget to buy Renni Browne and Dave King’s Self-Editing for Fiction Writers. This is one of my most-thumbed resource books.
But back to my favorite subject (as Maureen likes to point out), me. How am I editing a 306,000 word manuscript?
I never meant it to be that big. Really. I blocked it out on three-by-five cards, wrote out a modestly detailed outline (by chapters, not by scene), began writing, and promptly strayed from the outline. Halfway through the novel, I felt like Wile E. Coyote did when he raced out past the cliff’s edge, paused, and realized gravity had something to say about all of this.
With my ending riveted in my brain — without that, I would have gotten lost — I plunged on, trusting my muse, and she didn’t fail me.
I’ll never be able to write a “fast and dirty” rough draft. Misspellings, grammatical errors, tortured sentences, and even repeated words caused me physical pain. Once I noticed them, they HAD to be fixed.
I reread every chapter after it was written, but by the time I’d finished the chapter, most of the basic errors were gone. Most of ’em never found their way onto the page in the first place.
As I wrote the first draft, problems surfaced which I knew had to be corrected. For the most part, I kept a To Do list for these items. In some cases, however, the problems were so irritating I had to go back and fix them NOW, DAMN IT! because the muse insisted.
Lots of folks will tell you this is bad, that you must work through until you are done and then go back to the earlier material. I’m telling you different: it’s far worse to piss off the muse.
This may have nothing to do with editing, but it has everything to do with my method. I had a real, live audience for this novel, folks who stayed with me to the very end. Knowing that I had to keep them interested forced me to focus on narrative drive and a steady increase in tension.
My audience kept me writing through the dark times. If I failed, I’d be disappointing more than just me. Jona, for one, would fly across the pond and do unspeakable things to me.
Working from my notes, I fixed what I thought were all of the major problems. Done, right? Hah!
I got twelve different-colored highlighters . . .
Just kidding. I worked from a hard copy and corrected as I read, circling problems, writing notes here, there, and everywhere. I kept a new log of Major Problems (65 of ’em, at last count*) which I did not try to fix right away. I tried to identify consistency issues, which scenes I would slash, which scenes were missing, what didn’t work, and what could work better.
That’s where I am right now. Simultaneously, I work from the edited hard copy, and I read/edit on the computer. I call this a read-through because yes, I really do read everything (I’m not just skipping down to the next circled word or underlined sentence).
I correct the 65 Major Problems as I go, but I also keep my eyes open for new problems I may have missed the first time through. Yes, I realize I could edit this to death, but I promise you: this is the last read-through.
Ach, I’m tired. I’d tell you what comes next, but I haven’t made it there yet. Wish me luck.
D.
*These vary from the trivial to the complex. For example:
39. Naka hunt: keep all the numbers straight!
44. Think about where to break into separate novels.
45. Change Mora’s name at the end (the janitor).
That #44, man. It’s a bitch.
Fractales: the ending (and rules)
Flora held the Critter Keeper up to her eyes, shook the cage, and clucked softly. “Li’l feller’s kinda cute.â€
“Not a chance,†said Bob. He peeled back the foil from his Big Mac and polished off the burger in five bites.
In the Critter Keeper, only a pink smudge remained.
“You can try again,†said Flora.
He patted his hands against his belly. “Yeah, better luck next time. So, Skinny — how would you like to make love to a fat man?â€
Her mouth twitched into a smile. “You mean it?â€
“I’ve been itching to see you in that Cat Woman outfit for the last three weeks.â€
“You got a deal, Doughboy,†Flora said, and plastered him with sloppy kisses.
In case anyone’s curious, these are the last 119 words of my short story “Sprouts,” which hasn’t sold, and is currently not out for consideration. I reserve the right to publish my own version of the story, which I completed in February 2005.
1. Read the whole story chain before deciding how you wish to continue the story backwards.
2. Write however many words you please describing what happens before this snippet. I recommend 150 words or less.
3. Post your contribution on your blog. At the end of your contribution, write “Read what happens next!” (or something similar) and hyperlink it to this blog entry.
4. Cut and paste these rules to the end of your blog entry. It’s that easy!
For those of you who are coming on board at the very beginning, rule #1 is irrelevant. If you’ve read this far, you’ve read the whole story.
You’ll notice I’m not tagging anyone, nor am I giving you a “tag so-many people” rule. If this is a crappy idea, I’d like it to die a natural death, without me flogging it along. Besides, if other folks think this idea is fun, it should take off on its own power — like the blonde joke.
Ready, set, go!
D.
Fractales: here’s the idea.
Remember that dumb blonde joke? It led me to realize the power of the internet*. As blog memes go, the blonde joke possessed humor, originality, and minimal sting to its host — all you had to do was post a bloody link, for heaven’s sake, and rave about the joke. Easy**. Consequently, like any catchy meme, it spread like wildfire.
But what did that meme produce? A single joke. I thought: you know, with a little extra effort, we might have had our own version of the Aristocrats gag, but it wouldn’t have been one joke — it would have been hundreds of them. Thousands.
What we ought to do is tell a story. Tell a million of ’em. It will be just like a story chain, only we need to start at the end, not the beginning. If you think about that fractal tree image, you’ll see the logic in this, since folks will want to follow the story forwards, not backwards. If we (the writers) work backwards, your audience will get to read the story forwards.
Of course, some of them will want to add to the story, and they will do so by continuing the backwards writing process.
I’m going to call this a fractale. Catchy, eh?*** This meme may die a cold, lonely death, but what do we have to lose? Go on, do it! Leave your mark on the tree.
Above, I will post the end of the story and the rules of the game. The rest is up to you.
D.
*No, really. Why must you always assume I’m joking?
**Not like some memes that ask you to name one hundred things you want to do before you die, your one hundred most favoritest songs, and so forth. “Item 99: I would like to finish this meme before I die.”
***A cursory google tells me that ‘fractale’ is French for ‘fractal.’ I don’t see anyone else using the term in this fashion.
Sheila gets medieval on my . . .
Blog. What did you think I was going to say?
Thanks to PBW’s liberal use of pliers and a blow torch, I hunkered down and did a good bit of editing today. I’m one chapter away from finishing the edit on book one, but that sounds like I’m closer than I really am.
I still have the task of turning this into a stand-alone novel. That means either adding scenes or tweaking scenes to give book one at least a partial sense of closure. And that means finding resonance at every opportunity, and loading it into my final chapters.
In Stein on Writing, Sol Stein devotes a whole chapter to resonance. He doesn’t provide much of a definition:
Resonance is a term borrowed from the world of music, where it means a prolonged response attributable to vibration. In writing it has come to mean an aura of significance beyond the components of a story.
Stein gives examples of different ways of giving your work resonance:
. . . by names, by reference to religious sources, by naming the parts of a book, by the use of aphorisms and epigraphs, and ideally by the writing itself, by the writer’s skillful use of similes and metaphors.
Perhaps I’m using the term incorrectly, but for me, resonance is an echo. Something in the novel makes me resonate — perhaps by the techniques Stein lists, but more often through the author’s use of repetition. Thoughts, dreams, lines of dialogue, and imagery introduced in the novel’s earliest scenes reappear near the end, horribly, tragically altered*. For example, John le Carre used it to great effect in Absolute Friends.
In the chapter I edited today (book one’s penultimate chapter), I used a myth to achieve resonance (I hope). The night is a dome of blinding white light, but we see only darkness, for the sky is full of the shadows of those who came before us. Starlight peeks through between their crowded forms.
Only on a moonless, windless night, can you hear their wings rustling**. My character has heard this all his life from his mother and father, but he never believed it. When tragedy befalls him, everything changes:
Flying eastwards, he fought to keep his eyes open. Every time he closed them, the rustling noise built to a furious crescendo.
Mother, Father? I hear them now. I hear their wings.
You were wrong about the night sky. Any darkness will do.
Chokes me up every time. Remains to be seen what it will do to the rest of you.
Resonance by repetition may be a magic trick, but it’s charged with power. Closure by return. If I do a respectable job of it, my readers will feel that sense of completeness even when faced with one whopping great cliffhanger.
D.
*That assumes you are writing tragedy. Comedy need not work so hard, but those of you who read Terry Pratchett might agree with me that his strongest novels are the ones which harbor, if not a grain of tragedy, then at least a bushel of poignancy: Night Watch, Feet of Clay . . .
**These characters are intelligent black birds. Guess I should have mentioned that earlier, eh?
Wish he could have been my writing coach . . .
Here’s Nathanael West, author of Miss Lonelyhearts, The Day of the Locust, A Cool Million, and The Dream Life of Balso Snell, writing about writing:
Forget the epic, the master work. In America fortunes do not accumulate, the soil does not grow, families have no history. Leave slow growth to the book reviewers, you only have time to explode. Remember William Carlos Williams’ description of the pioneer women who shot their children against the wilderness like cannonballs. Do the same with your novels.
Some writers* provide the know-how you need to get the job done; others, like West in this passage, or like John Gardner in The Art of Fiction, light a fire under your ass and demand that you get the job done.
Both are useful. Right now, two days into my three-day weekend and not a single page edited, I’d take the pyromaniac over the technician. That’s why I’m reading and rereading West’s war cry.
West and his wife Eileen died in a car accident in 1940. West was 37.
D.
*Writers who write about writing. Eh, you know what I mean.
PBW’s new feature
Paperback Writer starts a brand spankin’ new gig:
For this new feature, I’d like to do a weekly variation on the open thread: 20 Questions Friday. You post a writing- or industry-related question in comments, and I’d try to answer it, up to twenty questions max per Friday (any more than 20 and I’ll never get any work done.)
Damn me, all I can think of is something dumb like, “Do you have a pill that will get me to edit ten times faster?”
Hopefully, some of you night owls will step in where I have failed. Pony up those questions, folks! This should be a great feature.
D.
An introduction to tragedy
Yesterday, I caught the end of The Moody Blues’ Nights in White Satin, and it made me think — as it always does — of a summer in the early 1970s, the livingroom of my first house, a slow morning, our old console hi-fi, Derek & the Dominoes’ Layla (the original version, of course, not that acoustic horror Clapton later perpetrated), Nights in White Satin, and the end of John Christopher’s The City of Gold and Lead.
The City of Gold and Lead is the second of Christopher’s Tripods trilogy, which was H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds written down for kids. (A reviewer over at Amazon made that observation, not me. But it irks me to have this pointed out to me thirty-some years later. Damn it, I should have noticed.) The story itself is unimportant. Earth has been subjugated by aliens who roam the planet in giant mechanical tripods. They live in domed cities and enslave human children. A group of friends, all young boys, enter one of the cities as part of a plot to defeat the Tripods . . .
Spoiler alert. (But Christopher wrote the trilogy in the late 60s/early 70s. If you haven’t read it yet, I doubt you will now.)
. . . and some of the kids don’t make it out.
I’m finding it difficult to put into words the magic of that ending. You know how middle books in a trilogy are supposed to be the weakest of the three? Not this one, not for me. The first and third books combined didn’t have one-tenth the impact of this book, all because I had never before read a book with such a sad ending.
I’d read disturbing books before. Julia Cunningham’s Dorp Dead creeped me out, but had (as best I can recall) an uplifting ending. I’d read Golding’s Lord of the Flies, but I don’t think I understood the ending until I reread it as an older teenager. The only comparable experience I’d had was not with a book, but with Nicolas Roeg’s film Walkabout, which I saw at its Los Angeles premiere in 1971 (hey, I got around. And, might I add, Jenny Agutter’s naked body made quite the impression on 9-year-old me). If you’ve never seen Walkabout, I won’t spoil it for you. Find it, rent it. It disturbed me for days. It still disturbs me.
The ending of The City of Gold and Lead didn’t pack the same emotional punch as Walkabout, but I have never forgotten my reaction:
Sadness, of course.
Surprise, that a book could end this way.
More surprise, that a book could make me feel this way.
It changed the way I looked at books. I began to realize how much I enjoyed the emotional reaction evoked in me by a good book, and how pleasurable it could be to feel such powerfully unpleasant emotions.
I’d like to say this was the first of many such experiences, but sadly, for me such books have been few and far between. Yet the ones which have stuck with me are all tragedies.
Your turn.
D.
Name that book
Buggery Blogger is only part of the reason I haven’t been posting much lately. It’s back-to-work week, and my mind and body agree that waking up early sucks. I feel like crap, and even Edna Mode can’t cheer me up.
This comes from Bookseller Chick:
Since you’ve read lots of Harlequin Presents, would you maybe have any recollections of a book I’m trying to find? –A girl gets together with a guy in a van during a snowstorm. They are complete strangers. To keep warm, they may or may not have sex. Through most of the book, he thinks she is all too promiscuous. This tortures him. Of course she is actually a bookworm and introvert. He just happens to see her a second time after she has just had a makeover and is wearing a form-fitting sweater.
The cover features a brunette wearing a yellow sweater and maybe a plaid skirt. It’s a plain white background. Published before 1996 I believe but newer than the early 80s ones where nothing happens before marriage. Can you help?
If any of you can name that book, go help out the BSC, okay? Link above.
Here’s one of my own:
Pub date, 1970s. Science Fiction. A guy wakes up one day to find himself in a 12-year-old body — his own, about thirty years ago. Somehow, he’s living out the fantasy of being a kid again “with all I know now.” He turns the tables on his flirtatious cousin who used to make his life hell, and he rakes in the dough on horseraces (conveniently, he remembers some key race results). The mob gets wind of his success and wants to know how he does it. Eventually, he gets gunned down by the mob.
He wakes up on a space ship. Aliens have granted him three wishes, and he just screwed up his first wish. The next two-thirds of the book concern his other wishes. In one, he’s back in his 40-something-year-old body, but with superhuman strength and amazing sexual powers. Trouble is, his physiology is different, so alcohol makes him violently ill. Things end badly after he throws up on an important business client.
***
While I have Bookseller Chick’s attention . . .
Yesterday in the grocery store, I picked up a paperback edition of Tuesdays with Morrie. I remembered reading something about this in a magazine, and it sounded like a cool idea for a book. In the store, I looked at the acknowledgements. Author Mitch Albom acknowledges, among other people, a rabbi. Okay, so that’s good. Next, I read the first two pages. The writing is a bit too slick and a bit too cute, but still, the guy writes a good hook. I’m a millimeter away from buying this thing, but then I get to the deal-breaker.
You see, I’m curious about this “wisdom” thing. If Morrie is so full of wisdom, says I, I ought to be able to open the book at random and find some of that wisdom. I did just that, and soon realized that all dialog in the book is written like this:
“Here’s me saying something.” That’s Morrie. No ‘Morrie said,’ nothin’.
And here’s the author saying something back. No quotes. No ‘I said.’
Albom distinguishes between his voice and Morrie’s by the use of quotes or the lack of quotes. No saids at all.
I’m not saying it was intelligent or rational to put the book back on the rack, but I did. Maybe it’s a wonderful book. I’ll never know. Looking at that single page of dialog, I knew a whole book of that would drive me nuts.
I have other quirks, too. Pretentiousness is a deal-breaker for me; I’ve never made it past the first page of Unbearable Lightness of Being. I liked the first sentence of Stephen King’s The Gunslinger,
The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.
but after the second sentence, I put it back on the shelf:
The desert was the apotheosis of all deserts, huge, standing to the sky for what might have been parsecs in all directions.
First I’m looking at a crisp cinematic image (good), then I’m looking at King tap-tapping at his keyboard (not good).
The first paperback I ever bought with my own money (for fifty cents, I think), The Path Beyond the Stars, had as its first line,
It was axiomatic, Jon Wood groused.
How do I remember that? Because my brother, who thought it ridiculous for a six-year-old to spend his money on paperbacks, snatched the book from my hands and said, “Look at that! There’s two words in the first sentence you can’t possibly understand.” Never mind that he didn’t know the meaning of axiomatic or groused either. This was a dare and, dammit, I read the whole thing. And remembered that first sentence forevere’n’ever.
But I’m not six anymore. For adult Doug, if an author wants to throw apotheosis around, he’d damn well better have a good reason to do it.
Call me snobbish or neurotic or a miserable little prick. I deserve it. All I’m saying is, these are deal-breakers for me, and I’m one of the guys in your book-buying audience.
What are your deal-breakers? Bookseller Chick, do you have any thoughts about this?
D.