I’m hating what I have to write tonight. I have a fear of commitment.
There comes a point at which suspense becomes frustration; instead of keeping the best parts hidden, you’re just frustrating the audience. But once you’ve given up enough of the story to the audience, you risk losing the best parts of it: is the moster ever as scary once you’ve actually seen it in full frame on the screen? Obviously, no.
This is the point I’m at: some of the curtain has to draw back — I know this because of the main character: by god, if she doesn’t find some stuff out right now, she’s going to fuckin’ walk out. I can’t ignore her anymore, but I still hate this part.
Up to this point, the mind of the reader does a lot of my work for me: whatever I don’t say they fill in for themselves with the most delicious terrors and boogeymen in their own head. Now I have to shine a light in there and say “here’s the boogeymen that I see”. Some people will see it and say “that’s what I figured” and some others are going to say “eh, I’ll deal with that”, and the rest will just lose interest.
At least that’s how it plays out in my head. I love the suspense, the shadowy zones of undefined space, but if I leave it that way for too long I’ll get to the end of the story and everyone will be writing me to ask what the hell they just read.
It’s the thing you’ve eventually got to do, hoping that most everyone says “well, now that I can see the rest of ride, I’d say it looks fun and I’m staying on”. That’s what you hope. Here’s hoping.
This is how we do it… [sing]
Sol said (in comments): “How do you do it?
Well, Zelazny’s method works very well for some: every time you flip over to the screen where you’re writing, you have to promise yourself that you’ll write at least three more sentences before you leave that screen, basically.
For me, that probably wouldn’t be enough… somewhere in there, something has to kick off and make something more of itself. What I do is commit to getting 500 words out every time I start writing — by the third time I write that day, I’m getting close to the 1800 I want, per day. Here’s a few other bits…
– Never edit: If you want to spellcheck, that’s good, but the next run is for editting — people get hung up trying to make one page perfect (rearranging sentences and scenes) instead of writing more imperfect pages. It will never, ever be perfect, so write like crazy and edit later. One of the best things keeping the word count going is that you have to force yourself to accept what goes down on the paper as your first draft, good or bad, and move on.
– Embrace productivity, not perfection: it doesn’t matter if what you’re getting down is crap, it’s your crap, and by god there’s a story there somewhere. Eventually you’ll find it, but for now just write write write. Nobody writes a perfect book, certainly not the first time. Stephen King writes 60k words a month so that after he does his second draft he’s still got 54k.
– Take lots of showers: Seriously. Something about those water drops hitting your head make ideas come.
– Never write everything: Finish each writing session with something you still haven’t had a chance to write lingering in your head. Let that small bit you haven’t done sit there and fester germinate. By the time you get around to writing that part, it’ll have lots of little word buddies that are waiting for you to write them as well.
– If you don’t know what comes next, move: You’ve got lots of characters (and if you don’t, add some, or make your main character schizo, or something). When you’re stuck on what happens next to character A, move to character B: someone else that you DO have an idea about. Readers will think you’re building suspense and heightening anticipation — they’re dead wrong, but who are you to correct them?
There are lots of people who know more about this than I do — these are just tricks for getting the words out there. Everything after that is gravy, so wallow around in the keyboard and just push. :)
Update:
Chris Baty’s suggestion: “Keep those guilt levels high and stay away from that delete key.”
One of those things you find out
Can’t remember where I ran across this little pearl of wisdom — it was sometime last year — but I can’t argue the accuracy.
1) A glass of wine seems like a good idea. It’s not.
2) A bottle of beer doesn’t seem like a good idea. It is.
Appropos of nothing — just felt like sharing.
Hidden Things, Nov. 8 snippet that I liked:
At the security desk Vikous paused, his hands jammed in his coat pockets, the cigar leaking a thin line of smoke into the air from the corner of his mouth. The guard eyed them both suspiciously.
“Business?” he asked.
“Top floor. The party.” Vikous looked bored.
“Invitation,” the guard said, leaning forward with a hand extended. Vikous just looked at him. The guard settled back in his seat, his eyes hooded. “How do you know there’s a party if you don’t have an invitation?”
Vikous’ shiny black eyes watched the guard without moving. With slow deliberation, he pulled his right hand out of his pocket and laid it on the desk counter, leaning on it toward the guard as he said “Well, there would have to be a party, wouldn’t there?”
Calliope couldn’t see his face clearly from that angle but something in the guard’s face seemed to give way for just a moment, leaving his eyes showing white all the way around as he looked at Vikous.
“Second elevator on the right,” he said, his voice barely audible.
If you’re interested in reading it as it comes out, go here.
She has issues.
Just a happy little TGIF gift, an excerpt from the last batch of stuff for Hidden Things:
“What’s with the open window?”
“You smell like the parts of the coastline where birds have died.”
He shrugged. “Not a lot of bathing opportunities in my simple life.” He pulled out a mangled but mostly intact cigar from an inner pocket and pointed at a passing road sign. “Turn here. Mind if I smoke since we’re gonna die of pneumonia anyway?”
“Could you just shoot yourself in the chest instead?” she said without rancor, taking the exit he’d indicated. “I can tear your trachea out with my bare hands and rub asphalt on your tongue afterwards if that would help you get the buzz. Maybe I could leave your body lying on a pile of burning tires.”
He simply stared at her, then tucked the cigar away. “You have issues. You know this?”
“It’s been mentioned before,” she muttered.
“Everything I need to know, I learned from Doyce’s NaNoWriMo”
Today, we learn how to deal with an assailant, with an example from the heroine of Hidden Things:
Calliope pointed at the lighted office window. Her heart hammered in her chest. “There’s an armed policeman sitting right in there,” she said. “You might want to call him for help.”
…and then the ass-kicking began. *curtsey*
As of right now I’m exactly on track for my word count but I’m sure to be behind come midnight tonight, since instead of being a good little boy and writing when I get home I’m going to the No Doubt/Garbage coliseum tour show.
Snippets
So, the name of the story is Hidden Things:
She smiled in the darkness and pushed herself further underneath the comforter with the phone. “Hey you. I thought you’d be home and asleep by now. How was the trip?”
There was a short pause, the strange hiccuped silence of an interrupted cell connection. “A few things came up; I’m still out on the road, actually.”
“Oh cripes, really?” The bed frame creaked slightly at movement on the other side from Calliope. She half-glanced that direction and started to pull herself out of bed. “When… hang on, I’m switching phones.” She padded to opposite side of the room, found a cordless handset and turned it on as she hung the first phone up. “When do you think you’re going to get back?” As she spoke she headed for the door to the bedroom, grabbing a robe on the way.
“I’m… I’m not really sure. Everything’s pretty complicated.”
“Complicated how?” Yawning and still half-asleep, Calliope shuffled into the kitchen and pulled open the refrigerator door. “Espain pees.”
“Can’t. It’s too late to get into any of it, anyway. You going to be all right?”
She shrugged, still staring blankly into the refrigerator, “I’ll be fine; I’m in my own house, not bored out of my mind and crank-calling my friends at two a.m.”
She should hear him smile just a bit on the other end of the line. “You’re cranky. You should take a shower and wake up.”
She shook her head in mock denial, pushing hair out of her face. “See, this’s the main confusion in the conversation. I don’t want to wake up. I wasn’t actually laying in bed thinking ‘oh, I wish someone would call and give me a reason to get out of this nice warm bed, because I’m so bored’. I wasn’t thinking that or anything else. I wasn’t bored. I was asleep. It was good and I was enjoying it. I’d like to get back to it sometime tonight if possible.”
“So…” she could hear the smile broaden in his voice. “No shower?”
There’s another snippet at WiD. If you want to read the thing while I write it, find my name on the right side of that page and click on “story”.
Writing Help
Here are some good books that assist me with my writing:
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King
The first section is a brief memoir of his live and how it led to his career in writing. It is interesting to see how his young life went and how he became a writer. It is entertaining and helpful in that “if he could do it, I can do it” way.
The rest of the book encompasses his methods and views on writing. he preaches Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style pretty heavily, for obvious reasons. He is self-depreciating, to the point, and delivers some sound advice for aspiring writers.
It covers topics such as writing style, the process of writing, setting up a place for writing, how to get through writing the whole book, and how to write a publishable manuscript, among many other points that are well worth studying. Extremely good stuff. I heartily recommend it.
The Elements of Style (4th Edition) by William Strunk, Jr. & E. B. White
This dinky book doesn’t look like much. It is thin and the cover is not flashy. If you skim through it, you will notice that there are no paragraphs and that the entries are short and blunt.
It is also the single best book about the craft of writing. All of those goodies that you learned about how to craft sentences in school are boiled down into a few sections of this outstanding little book.
If you are serious about writing, get this book. I guarantee that most editors own it.