Category: Knapp

            Okay, it’s been a while since we had some solid, deep, digging-in-the-gross-stuff discussion about writing. So let’s get back to basics, shall we…?

            A couple years back I had the fantastic opportunity to spend about an hour on the phone with Shane Black.  If you don’t know his name off the top of your head, he’s the writer-director behind (among others) Lethal Weapon, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Iron Man 3, and just recently The Nice Guys.  He knows a lot about storytelling, and during our talk he tossed out a dozen or so useful lessons, one of which I’d like to share with you.

            Yeah, I’ve talked about this before, but I came up with some new ways to talk about it, and I figured it’s a good refresher…

            Pretty much any book, movie, television episode, or short story can be broken down into two parts—the plot and the story.  The plotis the events and moments going on outside my characters.  The story is all the events and moments that are going on inside my character.

            Here’s another way to look at it—plot can affect lots of people, but the story is mostly going to affect my character.  A bomb going off is going to affect hundreds of people.  Phoebe marrying Wakko instead of me is mostly going to affect… me.

            Let’s go into some more detail.

            Plotis the external threats and goals in my book.  Most books tend to have the plot scribbled out on the inside flap (the jacket copy, they like to call it).  If I pick up a BluRay, they’ve usually got the plot of the movie or show on the back.  For example (using a book I’ve mentioned recently), the plot of Anamnesis is about a bottom-tier drug dealer, Ethan, who tries to learn more about a custom drug that’s appearing on the streets, and then has to try to save himself when he discovers some of the people behind this drug.

            After looking at a lot of books or movies from the storytelling point of view, one thing I noticed is that the plot is almost always an attempt to do something.  Win the big race, get the guy, stop the villain, save the orphanage, save the world.  As I mentioned above, the plot involves a goal, and any decent goal in my story is going to take some effort to achieve.

            Another thing I’ve noticed is that plot tends to get a bad rap.  A lot of artsy folks will scoff at the idea of “plot,” like it’s some crude tool that only hack writers use.  Which is just wrong–plot’s an essential part of storytelling–all storytelling.
            Now, in all fairness, there are a decent number of “plot-heavy” films and books out there.  The characters are kind of… well, irrelevant.  And these tales might be great to kill an afternoon with, but that’s all they’re ever going to be.  To anyone.
            As it happens, though, a lot of those artistic “character based” works of film and literature tend to meander and not really, y’know, go anywhere.  I think that’s because of the refusal to have a plot.  As I mentioned above, plot  means the characters are trying to do something, so “no plot” means the characters are… well… not doing anything.

            That brings us, nicely, to story.  Story is the flipside of plot. It’s all the internal desires and needs and struggles of my characters.  It’s a big part of the character arcand the reasons behind that arc.  Story tends to be what we tell our friends about when we explain why we like a character.  We enjoy the plot, but what we get invested in is the story. 

            To use Anamnesisagain, Ethan’s story is that he suffers from severe retrograde amnesia—for all purposes his life began just a few years ago when he woke up on a beach.  So the memory-erasing drug that appears on the street—and the people suffering from its effects—strikes a chord.  He feels compelled to help them, even though it’s really not in his best interests.

            Every now and then, you might hear someone say there’s really only seven plots (or six or nine or something) and there’s a bit of truth to that.  The reason there are millions of different books, though, is because of story.  If I drop two different characters into the same situation, I’m going to get radically different results, because they’re going to approach things… well, differently.  If Peggy Carter had gotten the super soldier formula instead of Steve Rogers, Captain Americawould’ve been a radically different movie, on a bunch of levels.  An example I’ve used before is Never Let Me Go and The Island, two movies with almost exactly the same plot but very different stories. End result–two very different movies.

            I’ve talked a few times about working on Ex-Isle, which came out back in February.  One thing I realized as I started the second draft was that I had a plot, but no real story.  What was going on inside St. George, one of my main characters, while the plot progressed around him?  And figuring out his story (his ongoing need to help people vs. how his position and purpose at the Mount was changing) helped solve some knots and eventually even changed the ending of the book.

            Now, let’s play with this a bit…

            Who’s heard of the Moonlighting curse?  It’s the idea that if you have a TV show with a strong “will they or won’t they” element, it’ll collapse as soon as they do. It happened famously with Moonlighting and more recently, alas, with my beloved Castle.

            But we’re talking about this as writers.  So… whydo these shows collapse at this point?

            The plot of Castle is that a wildly popular crime novelist (Richard Castle) ends up working with the homicide department of New York’s 5th precinct.  His personality grates on them a lot, but they can’t deny he has a quick mind and some amazing insights into human psychology and criminal motives.  Plus, he’s friends with the mayor… so they’re kinda stuck with him as long as he wants to be there.

            The story of Castle is about the developing relationship between many-times-married Castle and married-to-her-job homicide detective, Kate Beckett.  They each have a lot of baggage, but they also have a lot of chemistry.  And the chemistry kept growing even as they came to accept (and even admire) each other’s quirks and hangups.

            All sounds great, right?  But does anyone see the problem?  It’s something we’ve talked about before…

            See, the basic plot of Castle is pretty much infinite.  I think we can all agree there’s no foreseeable future where New York City is going to have a drastic shortage of homicides.  So that part of the series can keep going forever.

            But… the story of Castle pretty much ends once Castle and Beckett become a couple.  Our whole story was “will they or won’t they,” so once they do… that’s it.  Done.  My story’s over. Sure, in some cases we can stretch things out a bit with all the usual new-relationship stuff (early riser vs. late, snoring, family and friend approval, toothbrushes, how far is this going, etc.), but the longer a series runs, odds are a lot of that will already be established and resolved.  Hell, before the two of them ever kissed, I think Becket had celebrated three or four Christmases with Castle, his daughter, and his mom. 

            Y’see, Timmy, the plot of Castle was still going, but the story’d come to an end.  Which means the series either stumbled into that plot-heavy area I talked about up above… or it came up with a reason to extend the story. And as we’ve talked about in the past, that kind of artificial extension usually doesn’t go over well.

            So, plot and story.  Every good tale should have both.  They can overlap.  They can intertwine.  But if I’m missing one or the other, no matter how many excuses I want to make… my work’s going to be lacking.  And my audience is going to be able to tell.

            Next time…

            Well, next time is going to be a few days before Christmas.  And Hanukkah.  We’ll all have things to do, so I’ll try to do something brief.

            Until then… go write.

            Hey, folks.  Sorry about last week—I had, alas, a family emergency I had to fly back east for, and there just wasn’t time to get a ranty blog post put together.  So, now that I’m back, I thought I’d give you this for now and return to our usual semi-useful writing stuff on Thursday…

            As I have in the past, it’s time for me to toss out a few more titles and names for you.  Essentially, these are a bunch of books I really wish I could say I wrote.  They’re not in any order, and I don’t even think they all came out this year, but if you’re looking for something new and different for somebody (or for yourself), it’s going to be tough to go wrong with any of these. In fact, you may have heard me mention some of them before…

            As before,  I’ve put links to a few of them, but you can also just go to your local bookstore.  You may spend an extra buck or two, but you’ll feel better about yourself in the long run…

The Unnoticeables/The Empty Ones by Robert Brockway– This is a fantastic, twisted little series about punk rock and stuntwomen and angels.  It manages to swing back and forth between damned funny and seriously unnerving, sometimes on the same page.  The first book works as a stand-alone, which is why I was stunned when he pulled off the second one.

Experimental Film by Gemma Files—If someone you know is a horror fan, they’re going to love this book.  If they also happen to be a film fan (as in, the process of filmmaking), this is going to be their new favorite book.  It’s about a film student who starts researching one of the early pioneers of filmmaking in Canada, a woman who had some very eerie subject matter.  This is one of the very few books I’ve read in recent years that  freaked me out and actually made me feel nervous about shutting lights off at night. Seriously.

Rise of Io by Wesley Chu—If you know his Taobooks, this is the first of a new series set in the same universe.  Although now things are flipped—Ella is a smart, savvy street-urchin in a future-shantytown who finds herself sharing headspace with one of the most incompetent Quaslings on Earth.  It’s got action, humor, a touch of romance, some political intrigue—it’s just fantastic and a beautifully smooth read.

Anamnesis by Eloise Knapp—This overlooked gem is half identity crisis, half biomedical thriller.  Ethan’s a low-level drug dealer whose life began a few years ago when he woke up on a beach with full amnesia.  He stumbles across the new thing hitting the streets—a drug that erases recent memories—and feels compelled to help people affected by it.  Now imagine every creepy thing you could do with that drug… Wonderful character stuff with a creepy-as-hell plot

Invasive by Chuck Wendig—I’m sure you’ve heard about Wendig’s Star Wars books, and if that’s your thing you should definitely check those out (they’re fantastic).  Invasive is for everyone, though.  Unless you have a thing about bugs.  And if you don’t now, you will by the end of this.  Hannah’s a brilliant character, and the premise is skin-crawling.

The Voodoo Killings by Kristi Charish—This is another one I got an early peek at, and then I was kind of annoyed because I couldn’t talk to anybody about it for another four or five months (and now I’m waiting for her to finish book two so I can whine and plead to see that one early).  This book takes zombies back to their voodoo roots, and imagines a world where the supernatural is real, publicly known, and so heavily regulated that our main-character, sorceress Kincaid Strange, has to pay the bills by summoning up dead rock stars for frat parties.  And then an illegal zombie shows up in her neighborhood…

Panacea by F. Paul Wilson—If all goes well, this book is the start of a fantastic ‘80s homage series.  This one starts with a simple premise—what if there was a substance that could cure anything?  And then think of all the different reasons people might be searching for it. It also has, hands down, one of the most horrific death scenes I’ve read in years.  So there’s that…

The Crooked God Machine by Autumn Christian– Do you like Ray Bradbury?  The Addams Family?  Small town America?  Dystopia?  If you can answer yes to any of these, you’ll love this story of the life of Charles, his family, friends, and the girls he falls in love with. It’s dark and beautiful and one of my absolute favorite things I read this year.

Made To Kill by Adam Christopher—This is a noir detective novel about a robot assassin, Ray Electromatic, in 1960s Hollywood.  And if I need to say any more than that to make you pick up this book, you are dead to me.  Seriously.

Breaking Cat News

The Last Adventure of Constance Verity by A. Lee Martinez—I just finished this one a few days ago on a plane (it had been on my Kindle for a while) and I absolutely love it.  A young child, Constance was blessed (or cursed) to have a life of action and adventure.  Now, after over two decades of fighting monsters, cults, ninjas, clones, and killer robots—having stopped wars and saved the world countless times—she just really, desperately wants to have a normal, boring life.  This book is to the action/adventure genre what Shaun of the Dead was to zombies.

            And there you have it.  Eleven books I’ve really loved.  Please check ‘em out, or feel free to mention anything I’ve overlooked down below.

            Next time, long overdue… I’ll be shouting at you.

            Until then, go write.

            And maybe do some Christmas shopping and pick up a few books.

            So, a month or so back I outlined a simple experiment to check some of the ongoing stories , articles, and rumors about Amazon reviews and who can post them.  It’s been a month, so I figured I could toss down a few lumps of data for your perusal.

            First off, the books I reviewed.  There’s a full list below.  I’ve included links to Amazon just to make it quick and simple for anyone to follow up on each review. There’s also a few letters by each name that cover a bunch of other variables.

t  = I follow the author on Twitter

T = We follow each other

F = Facebook friends/followers with said author

A = Amazon verified purchase

C = Control review. This should be rejected immediately, for reasons

            The dates I’m listing are the dates I wrote and submitted the review.  As mentioned in the earlier post, they all had at least twelve hours between them.  Most of them went up in minutes.  In a few cases cases, there was a delay of anywhere from hours to almost two days before the review actually posted on Amazon.  And yet… every one of them did go up.

            They’re roughly alphabetical, except in a few places where I had to swap out titles for one reason or another (a few books I’d planned to review for this didn’t actually come out yet…). That’s more a function of the original list I threw together, not anything else.  All of them are books I’ve read in the past year, more or less.

            I know originally I said I’d only do positive reviews.  After the second or third day, I decided to only do five star reviews (to smooth out one more variable).  Again, these are all honest reviews. I really, truly loved all of these books and I think you should read a bunch of them right now or at least put them on your Christmas list.  On a few, I mention that said book was maybe a 4.5, but I rounded up since Amazon doesn’t allow partial stars.  This also meant I had to switch out one or two books (because believe me… not everything I read is five-star-wonderful by a long shot).

            All the control books either have a blurb from me right on the cover or there on the Amazon page in the editorial/press material. The one exception is Kaiju Rising, an anthology I have a story in, where Amazon lists me as the sole author, and most of the editorial/press stuff mentions me as well.  On all those reviews (as you can see) I openly, blatantly stated my connection to the book, both for Amazon and also so it wouldn’t look like a cheap/bogus review that might reflect back on said author.
            If there’s some factor you can think of that I missed, please let me know and I’ll see if it’s something I can include the next time around..

            Anyway, here’s the list of books/reviews…

1st Alight—Scott Sigler (T)

2nd Life Debt: Aftermath– Chuck Wendig (T)

3rd Anamnesis – Ellie Knapp (T, F, A)

4th Chapelwood—Cherie Priest (T)

5th Crooked—Austin Grossman (t)

6th The Crooked God Machine – Autumn Christian (T, A)

7th Creeping Stones— Cullen Bunn (T)

8th Experimental Film – Gemma Files (T)

9th Grave’s End—Sean Patrick Travers (T, A)

10th Head Full of Ghosts – Paul Tremblay (T)

11th Hoo-Doo Mountain Horror – Jonathan Moon (T, F, A)

12th Mistakes I Made During the Zombie Apocalypse– Michelle Kilmer (T, A)

13th Made to Kill—Adam Christopher (T)

14th Ms Marvel: Generation Why—G. Willow Wilson (t, A)

15th Lois Lane: Fallout –Gwenda Bond (t)

16th One Dead, Two To Go—Elena Hartwell (T, F)

17th Panacea – F. Paul Wilson (T)

18th Perdition Score – Richard Kadrey (t)

19th Railroad! : Collection 3— Tonia Brown–  (T, A)

20th – Okay, I spent the day at the LACMA Guillermo del Toro exhibit and went out to dinner with friends.  Sue me.

21st Shoot This One – Javier Grillo-Marxuach (T, F, A)

22nd The Unnoticeables—Robert Brockway (T)

23rd Dark Ascension: A Generation V novel—ML Brennan (T)

24th The Water Knife–Paolo Bacigalupi (t)

25th Zero World – Jason Hough (T, A)

26th The Big Sheep—Robert Kroese (T, C)

27th Desert Bleeds Red—Jason Hornsby (F, C)

28th Impact Earth – Timothy Long (T, F, A, C)

29th  Kaiju Rising –assorted authors (T, C)

30th Phoenix: A Road Less Traveled novel—C. Dulaney (T, F, C)

31st The Voodoo Killings—Kristi Charish (T, F, C)

            Now, with those titles and dates in mind, here’s a few things that’ve happened already…

            First off, doing a review a day becomes oddly time-consuming. Especially trying to write an honest-I-read-this-review without giving away any spoilers.

            Also, I never knew this before, but… things people buy as gifts off your Amazon wish list do not count as verified purchases.  Yeah, I know—weird.  Creeping Stones and Experimental Film were birthday/Christmas gifts, yet neither reads as a verified purchase. I mention it just because I’m trying to put down all the info I can.  I’d guess it’s because even though the item was clearly bought for you, you’re not the one who purchased it. Something to work on, Amazon…

            And as of this writing, all thirty of them are still up.  It’s been six days since I reviewed The Voodoo Killings and over five weeks since I reviewed Alight. 

            We’ll check in on this experiment one more time in early October and see where things are at.

            Spectacular spectacular!

            What I’m going to do this week is run through a few questions and requests that have shown up here this summer.  A few of them I can do a full post on, but some of them are things I’ve touched on before (or, at least, I think I have) so I think I can answer them with a few paragraphs and links.

            So… let’s get to it.

            Tricky question that’s going to be a little different for every writer and for every project.  For me, once I get a pretty solid draft, it’s really rare for things to change that much.  It happens sometimes, but not often.  I think once the plot and story are solid, for most writers, there won’t be any real changes to them.

            Please note, though, that I didn’t say no changes.  Every draft is going to be a little different as I tweak and cut and make other adjustments.  But all of these adjustments serve the plot and the characters.  Things are just getting tighter and clearer.  Maybe it means omitting a few story beats or changing someone’s second language from French to Spanish.  But these changes aren’t changing the bigger picture, they’re enhancing it.

           It’s probably worth mentioning that if I’m making changes that do radically alter my plot or characters, what it really means is that I don’t have a solid draft yet.  Yeah, even if I’ve done six drafts before this.  If I suddenly realize Yakko should be my main character while Dot’s the supporting character who dies in the second act… that’s a big change.  That’s a lot of changes.  It means different interactions between different characters, new motivations, possibly a whole new linear structure.  And it also means I’m kind of going back to square one.  Now I need to tweak and cut and make adjustments to this plot and story.

            Do you have any thoughts on working on multiple projects at once? Like editing one, drafting another, plotting a third? Is that something you do?

            Yeah, I do this, but in a bit more limited sense.  When I’m working on a first draft of something, I focus pretty much exclusively on that.  Once I’m out of that, though, and into the editing, I’m always jotting down character ideas, lines, beats—all sorts of elements—for whatever I’m going to be working on next.  So while I’m doing drafts on one I’m setting all the groundwork for another.  I’ve also  found this helps me as far as any kind of block goes—being able to dip my toes into something else helps keep my brain from getting stuck on a project.

            Overall, though, this is one of those things that’s definitely more advice than rules, because it’s all going to come down to the individual.  Am I someone who can split their attention or not?  And to what extent?  Some folks can do it (to different degrees), some folks can’t.  Unfortunately, the only way to find out is to try it once or thrice.  I’m comfortable at the level I just described.  You might be able to do two or three  things side by side.  Someone else might need to focus on one thing at a time.   

            I do think it’s worth noting that “another project” can easily be a distraction, too.  Sort of like eating when you’re bored.  I’ve also seen some folks use multiple projects (consciously or not) as an excuse to never finish anything. Sooooo… something to keep in mind.

I’m still struggling with how writers develop an interesting narrative voice – character voice I think I’m getting the hang of, but the narrative bits still sound like me reading a grocery list. 

            Narrative voice can be tough.  Part of it depends on how much I want to insert myself as the author. Some folks do this extremely well, others… not so much.

            As far developing a narrative voice goes, think of it like a narrator. Who’s actually telling this story to the reader?  I’m not saying my book or short story has to be in first person, or that a narrator even has to exist, but in my perfect world, who’s reading this aloud?  Christopher Lee?  Felicia Day?  Doug, the guy down at the garage?  Ms. Phoebe, my college English professor?  Knowing the narrator tells me how they talk and what kind of words my narrative voice will use. 

            So, from a certain point of view, the narrative voice is another character. Even if it’s me, it’s the version of me I’m choosing to project through my writing (a friendly me who wants you to enjoy the story and is going to tell it in fun, simple terms, and who also has much better abs…).  So narrative voice is a lot like character voice, which is something I mentioned here just a few months back.  Well, okay, a year and a half ago…

            It’s probably worth mentioning that if there isn’t some kind of narrative voice in my head to start with, that might be a sign of a bigger problem.  If I have no sense of how my story should be told—how my audience should be hearing the words in their heads—I may need to stop and think about things some more.   Maybe the plot or the story aren’t as solid as I thought, and if they’re not clicking with me, there’s a good chance they won’t click with anyone else.

            Do you feel  an author should stick to one genre for the most part?  I want to go write something as far from my current genre as possible. Will that throw my fans for a loop?  I notice that you and most other authors pretty much stick to one thing.

            Well, I’d argue not much of my work falls in the same genre, unless we’re talking in broad, sweeping terms.  I’ve got a superheroes vs. zombies series (sci-fi fantasy with some soft horror), a suspense-mystery-horror novel, a sci-fi thriller, a classic mash-up where I share credit with Daniel Defoe, and I just started work on a historical time-travel road trip story.  I’ve also got some short stories out there that are straight horror, some that are straight sci-fi, and even a pulp action war story.

            And I’m not alone.  The majority of writers work in a bunch of genres.  They may be known for one thing, but they’ve usually got a lot of other stuff past that.  Jonathan Maberry, Seanan McGuire, Scott Sigler, Craig DiLouie, Eloise Knapp, Timothy Long—and these are just the ones I know personally. All of them have written in at least two or three genres.

            Heck, look at Stephen King.  He’s known as a horror writer, but Firestarter and The Dead Zone, two of his earliest works, are pretty much straight sci-fi when you really look at them (there’s a post in that alone).  Under the Domeand 11/22/63 are both pretty solidly sci-fi, too.  The Dark Tower series is an epic fantasy.  Eyes of the Dragon is a young adult novel.  And then there’s “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption,” a  prison drama/character study that was adapted into a wildly popular film by Frank Darabont.

            So, no.  I don’t think an author needs to stick to one genre.  Yeah, there are some fans who might get upset I’ve moved away from their particular interest, but there’ll be just as many who’ll be intrigued to see how I deal with something else, and new ones who’ll come to me because of that something else.  And it’s my opinion that flexing those other muscles, so to speak, usually makes someone a better writer overall.

            I will say, though (there’s a “however…” on almost all of these, isn’t there?), that I don’t recommend chasing the popular trend.  It’s tempting to jump on the nymphomaniac-android-biker-school-romance bandwagon, I know.  But it rarely works out well in the long run.
           

            And I think that’s everything for now, yes?  Okay, I went over three or four paragraphs for some of them, but if you’re going to complain about that… Also, if I misread your question somehow, or if my answer just wasn’t complete enough, please say so down in the comments and I’ll try to answer there.  Or maybe bump it up to a full post.

            Next time, I’m going to answer one of those larger questions I mentioned up at the top. 

            Until then… go write.