Year: 2019

March 7, 2019 / 4 Comments

The Outline Experience

Hey everybody!

(Hi, Doctor Nick!)

I’d like to thank you all for your patience while I was off finishing that book.  I went through a brutal last week of work on it.  I decided to change the last five chapters and then still squeeze in another polish draft.  Because why not, right…?

And I’m assuming you’ve all been patient.  For all I know this was the last straw and you all said screw it—Victoria Schwab just tosses out great writing advice on Twitter.  Why am I wasting time waiting for this guy to come back?

I may just be writing into the internet void.

Ah, well.  I’ll give it a few weeks to be sure.

So, speaking of the void, a couple months back I talked about outlines, and how my attitude toward them has changed over the years.  And it is so weird to say “over the years.”  I’m still amazed I’ve been doing this for as long as I have.

Anyway, I talked a bit about outlines and promised to revisit the topic because… well, this book I just finished was the first time I’ve done a book with a really full, complete outline.  The analogy I made was going from roughly planning out a trip to having an hour-by-hour itinerary.  And since my previous attempts to work with an outline hadn’t gone so well, I thought it would be worth talking about what I did and how it all worked out in the end.

First off, as I mentioned before, the outline for this book was huge.  Forty-two single-spaced pages, almost double what I’ve ever done before with this kind of blueprint.  I had everything broken down by chapters, I had notes of which chapters were done from which points of view.  And I had another four page document that was just notes on characters—names, backgrounds, wardrobe.  I could probably say I had fifty pages of this done before I sat down to start actually writing it.

Remember that last bit—we’ll come back to it.

It’s also worth mentioning that I spent almost five weeks working on this outline.  More than a month.  There were many false starts.  There was feedback.  I pretty much went through drafts of my outline.

Was it worth it?

Well, taking the holidays and a week with a bad back into consideration, I finished up a first draft in just under nine weeks.  That’s pretty good for me.  My first drafts are usually somewhere between two to three months, so this one basically scraped right up against that, on the quicker side.

But…

It’s also worth noting that this was a much, much tighter first draft than I usually do.  I’ve joked about the number of notes I’d usually leave for myself in a first draft.  MAKE THIS SOUND COOLER or ADD A CHAPTER EXPLAINING THIS.  Usually, I’d have ten or twelve of these in a first draft.  This time around I had… four?  Maybe five?  And only two of them all that big.  So my second draft took just over a week, if memory serves.  About eight days, altogether.  In the past, that’s been a three to four week process, patching over all those holes.

Now… let’s crunch some numbers.

I’m sure one or two of you are seeing this as a brilliant validation of outlines.  They make things go so much faster and easier. Three months down to two?  Three weeks down to a little more than one?  Fantastic! I shaved 33% or more off my time.

 Did I though…?

I mean, as I mentioned above, once I add in the five weeks of work for that outline, the overall work period is just about as long as it used to be.  It went much smoother, yes—much less head-banging-on-keyboard—but I’m almost tempted to say it took a little bit longer.  Not drastically longer, but I’m not sure it really saved any significant time in the long run.  I just used the time differently.

Also worth mentioning—what’s that old chestnut, no plan survives contact with the enemy?  Same thing here.  No outline survives contact with the actual story.  As things are building and fleshing out, they change.  These are no longer those characters, able to carry out those actions.  One character in this book had a complete 180 personality change from first to second draft, from angry yelling guy to eerily calm smiling guy.  Which worked so much better for the story and made one of those fill-in-the-blank sections turn out completely different than I originally planned.

That’s also why the ending changed, as I mentioned at the start.  I rewrote the last five chapters of the book.  The last seven, really, because once the characters were well-established and the pace was set… well, I came to some realizations.  One was that some of my ending was pointless conflict—just drama and action for the sake of drama and action, nothing else. Also, I had a much clearer view of how some characters would react, and those little tweaks changed how some things needed to happen.

One other thing to keep in mind that I’d never considered—using a really dense, detailed outline can be a bit brutal if you’re someone who likes tracking their word count.  Every day I’d type out 1500-2000 words and feel really good about myself.  And then I’d delete all the notes for that chapter, which would knock the overall word count back by 500-750 words.  Yeah, I still wrote the same amount, but… well, if those numbers mean a lot to you, it can be kinda disheartening.

What does all this boil down to?

Well, not much.  As I’ve said in the past, an outline is a tool for my writing arsenal, but there’s no law that says I have to use that tool.  For me—someone writing on a hard deadline as part of my full-time job—yeah, I think I may try using this tool again.  For you, maybe not.  Maybe you’re still at a point where you can take the time to just feel your way through the story.  Maybe you just don’t want to deal with an outline and have that much planned out for you.  These are all fine things.  Like so many things on the writing side, it comes down to what works best for you.  That’s the Golden Rule I mention here so often.

And those are my thoughts on outlines.

At this point I’ll toss out the reminder that my latest book, Dead Moon, is currently available exclusively from Audible.com.  It’s set in the Threshold universe, so if that’s your thing you may like it.  You may like it anyway.  Please check it out, and if you already did reviews are always appreciated.

Also, if you’re in the southern California area, this Sunday is the Writers Coffeehouse at Dark Delicacies in Burbank.  We’ll be there noonto three chatting about exposition and types of contracts.  As always, it’s 100% completely free (no fees, no dues, no sign-ups, no emails, nothing), and much like this blog, it’s kinda entertaining and semi-educational.  Feel free to stop by.

Next time…

Well, it’s been a while.  If anyone’s had a topic gnawing at them, please let me know in the comments.  Otherwise I’ll just babble on about spelling or superheroes or something.

Until then… go write.

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February 22, 2019

Tom Gauld

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February 13, 2019 / 1 Comment

The Talk

           I’m posting this one a bit early because… well, hopefully you’ve all got other plans for tomorrow.  I know I do.  Alita: BattleAngel is finally out.  And also some book about zombies on the moon…
            Oh, yeah, and it’s Valentine’s Day tomorrow.  With all the fun activities we associate with said holiday.  And that’s kinda what I wanted to talk to you about…
            Look, you’re getting to that certain point in your writing career.  Your voice is developing.  Your body is changing.  Your facial hair is growing out nice and thick, which is probably a big change for most of you women.
            Anyway, I figured it’s time we sat down and talk about… well…
            Writing sex scenes.
            Yeah, this is going to be a little awkward for all of us.
            Like sex itself, a lot of this is going to come down to our own personal preferences, comfort zones, and what works in a given situation.  As such, it’s going to be really tough to offer any specific advice about when and where and how these moments should happen in your book.  I’ve tossed out some general suggestions in the past if you really want them.
            What I wanted to talk about here is more of the act itself, so to speak.  Writing sex scenes is a tricky skill to master.  It’s a constant balancing act of too much and too little, exciting the reader or maybe horrifying them, and it’s ridiculously easy to make people roll their eyes (not in the good way).
            So here are three big things I think should be in mind when writing a sex scene.
            Firstis that we don’t always need to show sex happening in order for sex to have happened.  Subtlety and nuance are a huge part of sexiness—on the page and in real life.  If we know Wakko and Phoebe sneak off to the supply closet for half an hour during the office party, we can make an educated guess what they’re probably doing in there.  Especially with the appropriate context around them sneaking off and how they sound/look/act when they come back. 
            So depending on the overall tone of my story, maybe I don’t actually need to write out my sex scene—I can just let my reader fill in the blanks themselves.  And again, like so many well-done subtle things, this can end up being much, much sexier than actually showing stuff.  As an artist friend of mine once pointed out, “nudity isn’t sexy.  It’s what you don’t see that gets you turned on.”
            There is one small pitfall to doing things this way.  If I’m too subtle, people might not get what I’m implying.  Their assumptions may go much too far, not far enough, or maybe end up on that awkward balancing point where they try to figure out what just happened.  Or if anything happened.  I don’t want to knock my readers out of the story with a confusing “did they or didn’t they”—unless that was the whole point of my fade to black.
            Second, if I’m definitely going to show my sex scene, I need to remember that sex is… well, action.  I don’t mean it needs to be wildly enthusiastic, just that this is a case of actual, physical things happening.  And any sort of action can get boring fast if it’s written poorly.
            I’m a big believer that most action shouldn’t take longer to read then it would take to happen, especially when we’re in the moment.  A punch shouldn’t take three paragraphs to describe.  A car crash probably shouldn’t take two pages unless it’s some massive, seventeen-car pileup
            Likewise, if I’m telling you these two people are ripping each others clothes off, but it’s over six pages of description…  you’re probably going to start skimming.  And that’s never good.  I don’t want to slow down action—any kind of action—by stretching it out with too much description.
            And talking about describing all that action…
            Third,if we’re going to be writing things out, brings us back to personal taste.  I think the catch with explicit sex scenes is they essentially become porn.  Porn, as a friend from work once pointed out, is when we see everything.  And after a certain point, that’s pretty much exactly what we’re talking about with any written-out sex scene.
            And some people like porn, some don’t.  No judgment either way.  That’s just a simple truth.
            But there’s more to it than that.  Even the people who do like porn don’t all like the same kind of porn.  This particular act really turns me on, but you find it kind of quaint and almost routine.  That might weird me out, this might be a complete non-starter for you, and that… okay, that seriously disturbs both of us on a number of levels.  So it’s a pretty safe bet that the more explicit/niche my sex scene becomes, the less  people it’s going to appeal to.  And the more people it’s going to repulse.
            Y’see Timmy, this is where empathy is going to be really important, and also a very clear, honest sense of who my audience is.  The people who pick up a thriller aren’t expecting the same kind of sex scenes as the folks who buy romance novels, and I’m thinking neither of them are expecting five pages of hardcore, strap-on orgy action.
            And if that last sentence made you a bit squeamish… you get my point.
            So go forth and write your sexy moments.  But think about if you really need them.  And how they’re paced.  And who you’re writing them for.    
            Hey, speaking of sexy things, I’ve got a new book out tomorrow, exclusively through Audible.  Have I mentioned that recently?  Dead Moon is a fun little zombie story set… well, you can guess where.  And it’s also set in the Threshold universe, so there may be some other things in there that appeal to a few of you.  Please check it out so I can keep buying cat food and rum.
            Next time…
            Well, okay, look.  I’m in the last few weeks of finishing up another Threshold book, so I don’t have a lot of time.  Truth is, I’m probably going to take the next week or two off to focus on that.  If you want to use this time to toss out a few suggestions for thing you’d like me to rant about, that’d be fantastic (thanks in advance).
            And one way or another sometime very soon, I’ll be revisiting the whole outlining thing.
            Until then, go write.
            Happy Valentine’s Day.
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February 7, 2019 / 1 Comment

In Context

            I’m writing up this post as I levitate upside down in my office.  Which—cool thing about this new house—exists in an orbiting satellite that’s only accessible through a teleport array we found in the attic.  Really cuts down on the commute to work, let me tell you…
            Okay, we’ll get back to that.
            I wanted to expand a little bit off something I touched on last week, and that’s the idea of context within a story.  When we talked about it before, I was using it to show how I can’t pull random elements from that story, copy them into my story, and expect them to work the same way
            Quick semi-related question.  What does it mean if I walk up and smack someone?  Full on, five fingers, hard across the face.
            Well, it could mean any number of things.  It could mean they’re a complete jackass.  Or maybe I am.  Maybe they deserved it.  Maybe they’re in shock and I’m trying to bring them around.  We don’t know enough about the circumstances, the background, the existing relationships between me and the person I smacked.
            What if I just walked up and kissed them?  Or slapped their ass.?  Kinda the same thing, right?  We don’t know enough.  Maybe I’m a complete sleaze.  Maybe this is my partner of several years.  Hell, this could mean different things depending on where it happens. Doing it at the office could be extremely inappropriate, but in the locker room this could be a congratulations, and in the bedroom it might be foreplay.
            All of this additional information—the stuff we don’t know in these situations—is the context.  It what makes actions creepy or exciting or exciting in that other way.  As I’ve said before, there can be many different interpretations of the same thing depending on all the other things around it. 
            This becomes extremely important in genre fiction, because one of the big aspects of genre is that we tend to tweak the world a bit.  Maybe superheroes are real.  Or dragons. Or cybernetic implants.  Maybe they’re not just real, they’re common.  Boring, almost.
            For example, take my opening paragraph.  It probably made you smile, because it’s absurd in two or three different ways, right?  Complete nonsense, because we all know how the real world works and I am, no matter how many times I’ve wished otherwise, part of said real world.
            In a genre story, though, all of that could easily be true.  Then it isn’t laughable—it’s setting.  Possibly important plot elements. 
            Charlie Jane Anders made a wonderful observation a while back about how some of her least favorite stories were the ones that got pitched as something like “it’s a world just like ours, except everyone can turn invisible.”  The problem with these stories is that if everyone could turn invisible… well, the world would be completely different.  Views on privacy would’ve changed massively, possibly in different directions depending on how long this power’s been available.  Social views would be different, because anyone might be listening.  Heck, traffic laws would need to be adjusted because what if an invisible three year old wandered into the street?  Technology would be different, because there’d be whole-new priorities in this world.
            And if none of these things have changed… well, that just doesn’t make sense, does it?  Try to think of an aspect of your life that wouldn’t be different if there could be two or three invisible people in the room with you.  Any room.  At any time.
            Context lets me know what is and isn’t possible in this world.  By extension, it lets me know when people’s reactions are appropriate or wildly inappropriate.  If my story doesn’t explain what the limits of my world or characters are–or if I don’t give my readers enough to figure it out—it’s going to limit their investment and immersion in the story.
            For example…
            I watched this movie a while back where a guy hires a live-in maid (occupations and genders may be changed to protect… I don’t know, surely somebody deserves it).  Nothing weird or unusual there, right?  Except when the maid shows up, she’s kind of… well, unnatural.  Pallid, almost gray skin.  Dark circles under the eyes.  Blank stare.  Never speaks.  Tends to move in a kind of slow, lurching way.
            You can kinda see where this is going, right?  Zombie maid.  Clearly.
            But here’s the thing.  Our protagonist and his roommate don’t notice anything unusual about her.  They act like she’s totally normal.  One of them even thinks she’s kinda hot.  Same with other people who stop by.  They all just treat her like… well, the maid.  Or, at the very least, the woman staying at Yakko and Wakko’s place.
            And let me save you an assumption.  This wasn’t a comedy movie.  It bordered on melodramatic horror, really.  Except… nobody was horrified. 
            Well, maybe me…
            So what was going on?
            I watched the whole damned movie and I still don’t know.  Was she a normal woman who just happened to look and act like a zombie for some reason?  Maybe?  But if that was the case, wouldn’t people comment on it?  Since nobody in the movie ever mentions that the new housekeeper looks like one of the walking dead, it seems like this might be, well, a common thing.  In fact, there are two or three scenes where the characters pretty much treat her like an appliance, even putting her in a storeroom at one point.
            But if she wasa zombie maid, shouldn’t that come up?  Heck, even if it’s the most normal thing in this world to have undead people cleaning your home, you think someone would mention it.  And plus… the rest of the time they’re talking to her and acting as if she’s a completely normal person.  Hell, like I mentioned before, the roommate’s even mildly obsessed with “how hot she is” and more than once talks about trying to get her in bed.  Which is a bit odd if she’s supposed to be a zombie.  At least worth a small discussion, yes?
            The real problem was that I couldn’t tell how to feel about any of this.  Were the guys being jackasses who objectified their maid—which would imply I shouldn’t like them, right?  Or was this a normal reaction, the way you or I would treat the vacuum cleaner when we weren’t using it?  Was the roommate’s desire to have sex with the maid kinda weird?  Full on creepy?  Hell, maybe even normal?  I don’t understand the world, so I don’t have any context to base these reactions in.
            And just to be utterly, completely clear—there’s nothing wrong with a story about zombie maids.  That’s the basis for a very cool story.  I’d never say otherwise.  Heck, it’s the basis for Fido, a really fun movie.  But if this is the world I’m setting my story in, I need to be clear this is… well, the world my story’s taking place in.
            Now…
            All that said, it’s really common to start off with a story set in “the real world”  and then it suddenly veers off into the realm of magic, aliens, and/or elder gods.  We’ve all seen it.  If you like hearing about three act structure, this kinda thing is a common way the first act ends.  Again, nothing wrong with this.  Like I said, it’s really common and I bet we’ve all got a favorite story or six that does this.
            Why can they do it?  Well, if you look at these stories, the big reveal that zombie cyborg lizard men are secretly running Wall Street is pretty much always structured as a low-level twist—it doesn’t alter the context, it enhances it.  These reveals force us to look at a lot of earlier story events in a new light.  They don’t actually contradict anything we’ve already seen in those first two or three chapters.  And since they happen early in the story, they’re not asking us to rethink a lot of assumptions or beliefs about these characters or the world they live in.
            There’s also another way to pull off this context shift, and it’s one that you’ve probably seen done a couple times.  I do it in Dead Moon.  Heck, J.K. Rowling copied it from the original Predator.  No seriously.
            Okay, not seriously.
            Just tell them right up front.
            Most people tend to forget, but Predator begins with an alien spaceship doing a fly-by of Earth and launching a landing pod as it zooms past.  That’s the very first shot in the movie.  Seriously.  And then it’s half an hour of Arnold and Shane Black shooting guys in the very real-world jungle before we see another hint of the alien.  Same with Harry Potter.  Sure, there’s all that stuff about Harry’s miserable childhood with the Dursleys, but the first chapter’s all about magic cats and a flying motorcycle.  Rowling all but openly says right up front there’s a magic world the Dursleys are desperately trying to ignore, despite their clear connection to it.
            What this does is establish right up front these are genre worlds, no matter how normal they may seem as we ease into the story.  When they take their sharp turn, it isn’t out of nowhere. It’s just a reminder of what we’ve already been told.
            Y’see, Timmy, without this context, my readers are left in a kind of “anything goes” situation.  Which it makes it really hard to have stakes.  Which means they won’t be able to make any kind of investment in either the plot or the characters.
            And no investment means no reason to keep reading.
            Next week is a double-header for me.  It’s Valentine’s Day and I have a new book coming out.  Have I mentioned Dead Moon?  Two or three times?  Today?  Okay, just checking.
            Anyway, I’m going to be busy on Thursday.  But I’ll probably put something up earlier.  In the spirit of the holiday, I’ve been thinking it’s about time we talked about… you know.
            Until then, go write.
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