Category: first

And here we are once again. Or maybe we never left. Maybe we’ve been here all along, obsessively reading news articles and checking on friends in hotspots.

No? Just me? Really?

I find that hard to believe…

Anyway, it’s back to the A2Q, this rambly, sprawling series about how to write a book from bare-bones idea to finished manuscript. And it’s the day you’ve all been waiting for. We’re going to start writing. Finally! I mean, this is what the whole A2Q thing was supposed to be about, right? Writing a book. And yet, for some reason, we’re not getting to “writing the book” until part eight. EIGHT? What the freakin’ hell?

Hang on, though.

There’s a reason we took the long path. Well, I took the long path and just sort of led you along with little bread crumbs and Reece’s Pieces and maybe shots of whiskeys. Trust me, I lured you out this way for a reason.

Remember how I compared outlining to road trips? We can make a very loose, bare-bones plan or we can map out the whole thing and schedule every stop along the way. There’s plusses and minuses to both of these, but for the moment I want to flip this idea a bit and compare it to something else.

Have you ever needed to go somewhere you’ve never been before? Not wanted to go—needed to go? Maybe a doctor’s office or a job interview or a bar where that person is waiting for you and you really want to be there and make a good impression? And that place is… six or seven miles away? Maybe ten? Google gives two or three routes and it doesn’t seem quite sure where you’re going but you’ve memorized the names of a couple cross streets and maybe two stores that are supposedly nearby.

What’s that drive usually like? Overly-focused? Watching the clock a lot? Maybe a bit nerve-wracking because you thought you left early enough but you still haven’t found it and you’re watching the clock tick closer and closer to the time you’re supposed to be there and now you’re doing mental calculations about how far you think you’ve still got to go and find parking and… look, you know this feeling, right?

Compare that to the last time you drove to your significant other’s place. Or the grocery store. Or the mall. Did you think about street names? Did you even notice any of the stores along the way. No, of course not. It was familiar and easy and you barely thought about it at all. You just did it.

That’s why we’ve been talking about all this stuff up front. So you’ll have the characters and the setting and the plot and the story solidly in your mind. Heck, maybe you’ve got some bare-bones thoughts about theme. And because we talked about outlines and you moved things around a bit on paper—or even just in your head—you’ve got an idea how all these things fit together. Most importantly, you know what happens next. You’ve got an endpoint you’re aiming for, which means you can always keep going.

So, let’s get writing.

No, seriously. That’s it. Dive in. You’ve got the story in your head, so start writing.

Okay, fine. Here’s some more advice. Just because I like you.

First, dump any idea you have about art. Throw out all those books. Don’t even mention your muse. We’re not making excuses, we’re writing. The only way this happens is you pick up a pen or sit down at the keyboard. That’s the biggest thing. You just need  to do it.

Second, think of this a lot like NaNoWriMo, just without the time limit. If it takes you six weeks or three months or half a year to do this… so what? You work at your own pace. You’ve probably got other stuff going on in your life and sweet jeebus there’s a lot going on in the world. Right now you’re under no time limit and nobody’s expecting anything from you.

More importantly, just like NaNoWriMo, absolutely nobody’s going to see this. Seriously. It’s a first draft. It’s going to be messy, you’re going to change a bunch of stuff as you go, and it’s definitely going to need editing. So much editing. Don’t worry, we’ll be getting to that point soon enough.

If it makes this easier, I forbid you to show it to anyone. Just like that. Forbidden. It’s going to be awkward to explain to your friends, I know, but it’s a little bit of a relief, too, isn’t it? Now you don’t have to worry about it being perfect. You can just put a bunch of words down on the page. And then do it again the next day. And the day after that. Are they all the right words? Probably not. Good thing you’ve been forbidden from showing it to anybody.

Third, don’t judge your process off anybody else’s. Some people can do a first draft in weeks, some need a few months, but like I just said up above—none of them are you moving at your speed. Don’t worry that he turns out great first drafts or that she claims she doesn’t even do drafts(that’s usually a bit misleading anyway). This is your book. It’s just about you. I absolutely, hand-on-my-copy-of-On Writing swear your editor or readers will not care in the slightest how long you did or didn’t spend on this. Unless I tell them I wrote my six-hundred page masterpiece in a week, in which case… they’re going to go into it a little leery.

Fourth, because it bears repeating, please remember nobody’s going to see this. You can’t disappoint anyone. No one will know about those typos. That big plot hole is going to go unseen. You can’t even disappoint yourself. It’s all my fault. I forbade you from showing anyone, remember?

So for now, forward motion. Just get it done. We’ll clean up that other stuff next time. Honest.

I’ve got nothing to back it up past my own gut, but I think readers can tell when the writer is bored. If I’m not enjoying writing it, they’re not going to enjoy reading it. My lack of energy for a character or a point of view or a sequence is going to be clear. Again, just my opinion, no hard research behind it, and there are always exceptions to the rule. But I really think it’s true.

So for now, just write. You’ve got the story in your head. Put it on the page “good enough” for now, we’ll make it better later.

That’s a rough, first-draft, off-the-top-of-my-head page and a half. It’s not great, I’m probably going to tweak the dialogue, and I already have some thoughts on word-choice. But the point was just to get it out.

I’m a big fan of exploring and learning stuff in a first draft. But I think a lot of people get caught up because they don’t have a good sense of their characters or the world, and they don’t know where they’re going. They’ve got too much to explore, and so a lot of their first draft gets eaten up dealing with… well, all that stuff we’ve been  going over for the past few weeks.

But when you’ve got enough of it in your head, you can just go.

Will it be perfect? Definitely not. But that’s okay, because we’re just doing a first draft.

So get to it.

Next time… should I keep going with the A2Q? Or should we take a break and I could talk about something else for a bit? Let me know what you’re thinking.

Until then… go write.

Write like nobody’s going to see it.

 Is it still a pop culture reference if I’m referencing one of my own books? I mean is it really a “reference” when J.K. Rowling talks about Harry Potter? Or is it just self promotion…?

Anyway, this week I wanted to blab about an issue that cropped up in a book I just read. I mean, it’s a fairly common problem, truth be told, and it’s easy to see why it happens.  But it’s one of those things that almost always makes readers grind their teeth. Even if they’re not sure why they’re grinding their teeth.

And to explain this, I’d like to start by talking about my mom.

My mom had me when she was really young.  Not scandalously, Gilmore Girls young, but young enough that there was still a touch of scandal.  Especially back in New England during Nixon’s presidency.  It’s struck me a couple times in my life to think where she was in her life at the same age.

Of course, I didn’t always think like this.  I didn’t really put the math together until some time late in high school, I think.  Because my mom didn’t look young. She looked… well, mom-aged.  Why would I look deeper into something that was totally normal?  My thoughts just never turned that way.

No, the odd thing when I was growing up was how all of my friends had old parents. I think I was around seven or eight when it first struck me that the friends I’d ended up with all had parents that were at least a decade older than my mom. It was odd, yeah, but I logically assumed that all those many, many parents I hadn’t met were normal mom-age.

Hopefully the point I’m trying to make is clear.  All of us assume our lives are normal.  That we’re the baseline.  Even when we come to realize they might not be normal in a greater societal sense, they’re still normal for us.  It still doesn’t surprise me that my mom’s not-quite twenty years older than me because… well, she always has been.

And this is true for fictional people, too.  The world they live in is—big shocker—the world they live in.  It doesn’t surprise them.  Kincaid Strange isn’t shocked spirits and voodoo are real because that’s her world.  Since Charles grew up in a world of metal spiders, a horned God on television, and mechanical implants in the back of people’s skulls, these things are more annoying background noise to him than disturbing.   Constance Verity doesn’t get surprised by aliens or androids or monstrous creatures at the center of the Earth because for her… well, that’s a Thursday.

Granted, they can still get surprised when something changes in their world. We tend to call that “plot.”  But the day to day aspects of their life shouldn’t come as any big shock.  They’ve seen it and experienced it before.  It’s normal to them.

One mistake I see a lot in stories and screenplays is when characters in my story go for a hover-drive, go to work at the vat-meat processing plant, or telepathically scan perps for evidence of crimes… and are in awe of these things.  Maybe even feel the need to dwell on these things for a paragraph or three.  It knocks a reader out of the story because it’s immediately apparent this is something the characters should be familiar with.

But it’s not just genre stuff. This happens in “real world” stories, too.  I’ve seen characters be eyes-wide amazed at the smell of dog food and the price of milk.  Not because these things are radically different than expected, mind you.  Just because… they’re there.

Let me put it a slightly different way. And I’ll give you another personal example.  Or, in this case, you can give yourself the example.  No, you don’t need to share or even write it down, don’t worry.  Just keep it in your head.

Do you remember the very first time you saw your current (or most recent) significant other naked?  Girlfriend, boyfriend, wife, husband, whoever they may be.  I’m not asking for a date and time—do you recall how you felt at that moment, at the sight of them exposed to you?  What was running through your mind?  What your heart was doing in your chest?

Okay, now get yourself under control–there’s a follow-up.

How did you feel the last time you saw them naked?  Maybe this morning or just the other night. Were you as focused? As breathless?  Heck, were you even thinking about them?  Not in a “someone else” way, I just mean maybe you were working out a problem from one of your own stories.  Or thinking about stuff you had to do this weekend.  Heck, maybe you were reading and they were just walking around in the background.  You knew they were there but you just had to finish this chapter.

Y’see, Timmy, sometimes, storytellers get focused on the fact that this is the first time my readers have seen Wakko perform an exorcism.  Or it’s the first time we’ve seen a dynochromium field in use.  Or it’s the first time we’ve seen Phoebe and Yakko together (in any sense). And so the writer want to explain these things—to show how horrible or amazing or beautiful they are.

But just because this is new for the reader doesn’t mean it’s new for the character.  It’s not their first time.  These are normal things for them.  Mundane. Perhaps even a little boring.  Definitely not cause for heart-pounding excitement.  

When I start shaping dialogue and reactions to be informative for the audience rather than to make sense for the other characters, my focus is going in the wrong direction.  It might seem right on a quick-pass, mechanical level, but when we really study these examples… they just don’t work.  You may recall all the times I’ve brought up that most hated of dialogue phrases– “as you know.”  It’s a perfect example of writing my dialogue for the reader and not for the characters.

Now, there’s an addendum to this, and it’s a real killer.  It’s when I make plot points out of these things people should’ve known about before.  If my characters all know Wakko can actually use dowsing to find water, they shouldn’t be completely baffled why he’s digging a deep hole out in the field.  At the very least, they should have some suspicions about why he’s doing it. 

Because if they don’t—or they don’t even consider his dowsing abilities—well, they’re going to look like idiots in the end.

An easy way to get around this is something I’ve mentioned a few times before.  I call it the Ignorant Stranger.  It’s pretty much the opposite of “as you know.”  In some cases it can help a lot to have a character in my story who’s not quite as in the know.  Someone who things need to be explained to, because this is the first time they’re being exposed to something.  They can even be my protagonist.  In fact, it’s not a bad thing if they are.  If my hero needs things explained to them, it means they’re in new, unknown territory.  And—as mentioned above-that’s where I tend to find a plot.

One of the worst things I can do as a writer is confuse the first time my readers see something with the first time my characters do.  It’ll ultimately come across as false and it’s one of those clumsy mistakes that’s hard to recover from.  I need to find the balance point, the sweet spot where I’m informing my readers but things still make sense and feel natural for my characters.

Next time… okay, I’m trying to get a draft done before the end of the month, so next time might just be a few quick questions for you to think about.

Oh, and if you’re going to be at Wonder Con this weekend, I’m there all day Sunday.  At 11:00 I’m doing a two hour version of the Writers Coffeehouse, at 2:00 I’m on a panel called “Knowledge: Handle With Care,” and we’re doing a book signing right after that.

Until then… go write