Avoiding 'The Thinker'

Little to report again, this week.

Currently "Good" WC is 34,000 with a total of 51,000 so it's as half as long as it needs to be and there's still lots to be done. Which is nice.

I've been feeling a bit slow this week but I have to consider the factor that now I'm getting into the real meat of the story things are getting more complicated. I have to think of what order to place the issues in and make sure I don't repeat the same points twice. It's difficult to thread a theme or argument through a book without blowing your wad and having the whole discussion in the first third, to not have your characters have all the thoughts they need to have in one 'the thinker' sit down moment, then get up and get on with it a changed man or woman with their new world view fully formed. People just don't work like that.

But the other danger is you have them running around repeating themselves as they have the same argument over and over again, developing it only a little each time. It's a fear of this repetition that's slowing me, I think. There's an urge to have your narration keep pace with the reader's thoughts, to have the character have the startling revelations at the same time as the reader but this can sometimes lead to the same 'thinker' style scene where everything changes all at once, so there's always the inevitable danger that the reader will see what's coming before the protagonist and then label your story 'predictable'.

It's a tricky one, but maybe there's just no helping that.

On a more cheerful note, I very much enjoyed The Guardian's 10 Writing Tips from famous authors article which you can find here and here. I don't agree with all of them but I do agree with most of them and it's nice to feel that as a writer you're not alone in feeling a lot of these things.

Enjoy!

Thanks for reading.

Planning

A delayed post again.

Luckily little has happened. I'm working hard on a scene in chapter 31, hasn't quite come together yet, just haven't found the right mixture of things to add to it to make it sizzle yet but I'll get there.

This week, before launching into chapters 30-39 I made a book plan. Now, normally I don't do plans, I just like to add ingredients and see how they work, I like to go with the flow, following my finger, find out what the characters want to do and steer things a little by just adding the right ingredients to alter their courses to where I want them to go, it is a very subtle manipulation that I hope will work out. But at the moment I needed a book plan, to lay out on paper all the themes and events I need to happen so I can set them up, add hints, think them through, sometimes it's nice to just brain dump onto a single A4 sheet of paper and make sure all the important things have been considered. So far it's worked quite nicely and once I've got past this scene I hope that chapters 31-39 will be fairly smooth sailing.

And now I've just jinxed them.

Like a Red Rag to a Bull

Today I thought I would talk about clichés.

From early on in my writing career (if I can call it that), and in most people's writing careers, I'd imagine, it was drummed in that clichés are to be avoided at all costs. Like the plague, if you will.

As I have progressed, I have found that this is not the case.

Case in Point. This morning while writing I conveyed my main character's anxiety by describing how he was taking his water in very small sips as it felt as though his stomach had 'shrunk to the size of a walnut'. Now, you might agree that the walnut analogy is a cliché. I think it is. But, you see, the thing is it gets the point across. Quickly and succinctly the reader will know what I mean. Walnuts: small, wrinkled, wouldn't fit much water. Anxious stomach, possibly small, possibly wrinkled, doesn't fit much water. Quick. To the point.

I could have tried to avoid the cliché. I could have sat and strained my brain for another way to say it, found another thing that it could have been as small as, but why, when there's perfectly good walnut phrases standing idle? Why strain over this small sentence when I have anxiety-ridden events to be describing? Clichés have their place, they've become so well known because they work, because everyone who has read them know instantly what it means, it conveys something everyone relates to.

There are books that avoid clichés at all costs. Though I haven't read many, the Star Wars books are good for this. "Cut through a ferrocrete bunker like a neutrino through plasma." Pardon me? 'Hot knife through butter' works just as well, better in fact. The reader will go 'yup, know what that means, what happens next?' instead of stopping midway through the action to think 'ferrocrete? neutrino? plasma? Oh! You mean like a hot knife through butter!'

There are of course better writers that will think of something better than a stomach the size of a walnut to describe my character's situation. I can't right now, and I'm too busy making sure the story works than putting in a clever little, original line that might jar the reader's attention from what's happening. Rather a good story that lasts in the mind than a good line, read, admired and discarded in the space of a half-second.

Ahem. Anyway.

No real news this week. F&SF rejected Promises, Promises with a standard rejection. Grrrr. I'm going to wait until Weird Tales rejects No Longer Living before I send it again. The novel is going fine, just put chapter 28 to bed and working on chapter 29.

Oh, and I came up with a title for my third novel. It's going to be called White Rose. I came up with it on the way to the shops and it works on a lot of levels for what the story will be about. Hurrah!

Anyway.

Thanks for reading.

Finely Polished Words, in the pursuit of

A slightly late post this week.

It's been a fairly busy week this week. After the initial flurry of activity editing Act Two has frankly become a bit of a bitch. It's like starting a roll of sticky tape; I've just been skimming the surface unable to get my nail back underneath where it needs to be. It's getting easier, however, and I'm slowly getting back into it as I go.

I've written in new scenes I thought were needed, there's one I'm not sure will remain, there's a good chance it will get cut. Truth is I've never been sure about it, it breaks the flow of the story a little, I feel, but I really like the message it gives, I enjoy its juxtaposition with the status quo of the rest of the story, how human it is. So right now it has to stay until I either a) give in and delete it regardless or b) manage to fit the message in a different way. So that means it's just a massive A4 post-it note reminding me to try and get that message in.

In other news RWBW was rejected again. This time by Future Fire who said (and I quote):

"This was a well-written and convincing horror story, with nicely fleshed out characters and clever, well-paced narrative; the finale was especially chilling. However, the theme and content are not really what we are looking for in the magazine."

So that's 2 mags that loved the ending to 1 that hated it. A victory to me (for now).

That's all there is to report really this week. All there is left to do is copy and paste this section from Neil Gaiman's blog (link here to the full thing) which I found especially comforting and useful about the second draft stage.

"On the second and subsequent drafts, you do four things. 1) You fix the things that didn't work as best you can (if you don't like the climactic Rock City scene in American Gods, trust me, the first draft was so much worse). 2) You reinforce the themes, whether they were there from the beginning or whether they grew like Topsy on the way. You take out the stuff that undercuts those themes. 3) You worry about the title. 4) At some point in the revision process you will probably need to remind yourself that you could keep polishing it infinitely, that perfection is not an attribute of humankind, and really, shouldn't you get on with the next thing now?"

Thanks for reading.

So much for make-believe

I have to give it to them, Shimmer Magazine were very quick to respond when I sent them RWBW. I only wish that they had accepted it. Editor Beth sent it back with the comment

"I've read quite a few stories where priests consider their faith; it's really hard to make such a classic story feel fresh."

A fair enough comment, I suppose. If that's how she felt about my story then that's how she felt. It was only to be expected as they have a long list of things that they don't want to see which will make me scrutinise their magazine much harder next time to find out exactly what it is they do want. They seem awfully picky (would I be saying that had they accepted? Perhaps not.).

The worrying thing about the comment, I guess, is that her comment which can be summarised as 'your story isn't original' is near the opposite of what Murky Depths said about the same story 'fairly original,' (or something).

It's strange having my work getting such mixed comments, so which of them is right? It's bringing a lot of worries to the surface about the novel. How will agents and editors look at it and decide whether it's good enough? All these writing tips pages say to get it as good as you can. But how good do they mean? I can keep writing and fixing and drafting but will it still get rejected if it has, say, 15 minor errors like typos and misplaced punctuation? Will it then get rejected, commentless, leaving me to wonder why it got rejected when all it needs is a slightly better copy edit rather than an extensive rewrite? Is it like a driving test? One major mistake or fifteen minors and you fail?

I can only try my best in the end but still it's causing me some concern at the moment. Plus, as each rejection comes and goes I'm becoming less and less enamoured with the stories doing the rounds at the moment and I don't think the next batch are any good either. Maybe the third generation shorts will have potential....

Oh well, bugger it. Back to work.

Thanks for reading.

Too Hard?

Good morning!

At least it is while I write this.

I was having a lot of difficulty with editing recently. I was reading each line, cursing because I didn't think it was very good and then trying to exchange it for something better. It was all taking a very long time even to get a page done and I was absolutely exhausted by the end of it all.

Now here's a strange thing you didn't know about me; most of my epiphanies happen in the shower. When I was younger they happened when I was brushing my teeth, now its the shower. It's like my brains been working hard on something without consulting me and hands me the results with a rather self-satisfied smile on its face while I rub shampoo into my curly locks.

So here was the epiphany I had on Wednesday. I'm trying too hard. Editing needs a gentler touch than the one I've been giving it. I could sweat over a single sentence for hours over how Theo opens the door but I shouldn't be. If the sentence says clearly and concisely what needs to be said that's all that matters!

No matter what kind of story you're writing or whatever scene, horror, romance, comedy the sentences themselves don't matter. They need to be clear, of course, they need to give that crucial bit of info to create the image in the reader's head, but the horror or romance or comedy comes from the paragraphs, the story, not the sentences.

I recently finished reading Dexter in the Dark by Jeff Lindsay and there was one scene in particular that sent a chill down my spine. Now ask me to point out the one word or the one sentence that made that scene scary. I can't, of course I can't. It was the scene being described I found scary, the situation itself. I imagined myself in that situation (someone trying to break into your house while you're still inside, unable to see out the windows because your own reflection obscures the glass) and I got scared. That's how you write. That's how you make the reader feel what you want them to feel. Pretty, well chosen words are great and help to enhance but clear, well thought-over description beats all.

Right, with this newfound idea on editing and redrafting (which is working wonders) I have to go rewrite a few scenes.

Weird Tales still has my story RWBW. If they haven't got back to me by Wednesday I'll chase them. Also I'll be sending Of the Father to Shimmer magazine if I have time today.

Well, that's it from me.

No wait! I had a strange dream last night and the last thing I remember before my alarm woke me was a song. It had a kind of samba rhythm and the only lyric I recall was "I played my Xbox but it was a Kiss Box." Not the best lyric ever but it seems so... not like something I'd think I'm near convinced it's part of an actual song but can't find it anywhere on Google. Can anyone conform its real or am I just nuts?

Thanks for reading!