Category: Suffering Map

Again, if you don’t get the title reference—expand your horizons.

So, a phrase you may have heard echoing about now and then is “killing your babies.” It’s just as gruesome as it sounds. Honest. I just heard it from a friend of mine a few weeks ago as he gutted the opening of a script he’s been working on for almost a year. One fellow brought it up when I interviewed him last week about his new film.

Many folk have heard the phrase, but how many understand it?

In every piece of writing, there’s at least one thing the author is extremely proud of. A clever line of dialogue, a character nuance, a dramatic moment or reveal that just could not be any better. We’ve all had them. A place where the language and the creativity and the skill all hit that perfect point where it’s hard to believe we created something this good. I usually fret over them for hours, convinced I must’ve read it somewhere else before and unintentionally copied it. After all, there’s no way I could’ve written something that good…

Perhaps it’s not even necessarily high art, just something the writer’s very fond of. Maybe it’s a clever reference you know a handful of friends will get. A loving tribute to someone special. A sly wink at some other book or movie. Heck, it could even just be something silly and pointless the writer got obsessive about. As a not-so-wise man once said, “the alien love-child stays in no matter what!”

The problem is, while these bits often are very well-done within their own limits, they don’t always work in the larger scope of things. As a writer, your loyalty has to be to the big picture. Not to individual scenes, but to the story as a whole. We’ve all heard awful cases where firefighters have to cut off someone’s leg to save them from a burning wreck. History tells of us brave generals who lost battles so they could win the war.

Y’see, Timmy, what it comes down to is… writers need to make sacrifices sometimes. And the gods of storytelling are ancient, dark gods. So when they call for a sacrifice, they don’t want to see a small tithe or minor inconvenience. They want something big.

They want something you love.

A story…

Submitted for your approval is San Diego Police Officer Andrew Barroll. He was one of the supporting characters in my oft-exampled first attempt at a novel The Suffering Map (now on sale absolutely nowhere). He first appears in a flashback one character has as a uniform officer she met almost a year ago. Halfway through the book he reappears, now a detective assigned to investigate the series of horrifically mutilated corpses that are being discovered around San Diego because of… well, let’s just say it’s part of the story and leave it at that. For the second half of the book, five different plot threads are getting wound tighter and tighter, and Barroll and his partner get closer to discovering who’s committing the brutal murders. He was the good cop. The solid, dedicated, everyman character. The kind of character where you knew he’d just have to get a bigger part to play in a later book.

Alas, the first draft of The Suffering Map was just over 150,000 words. Somewhat huge for a first novel from an unknown, completely uncredited writer. The second draft was even longer. It wasn’t until the third draft that I began to snip those words I thought might be excessive, and it wasn’t until the 4th draft that those cuts were noticeable.

In the fifth draft, a little over 90% of Barroll’s thread of the story vanished.

I remember feeling a dreadful churning in my stomach as I was highlighting and deleting entire chapters out of my first completed novel. A great end-of-the-chapter button vanished. Two carefully thought-out characters ceased to exist altogether. If you worked it out time-wise, probably about eight weeks of writing was deleted over the course of half an hour. Freddy Krueger aspires to be the slasher I was that afternoon. It took a few days of work to patch up the loose ends after the slaughter.

That’s what “killing your babies” means. It means doing things you hate to do. It’s when you’re willing to take huge swaths of your writing, hours and hours of work, and send them to the bin for a tighter, stronger story. You do what needs to be done, even if it means trashing your absolute, favorite part.

Alas, some folks just can’t bring themselves to make these big sacrifices. They can’t bear the thought of omitting the character they based off their high school sweetheart, refuse to admit the story doesn’t need that brilliant monologue on capitalism, and can’t figure out why the beautiful seven page description of a forest brings their story toa crashing halt. Which is a shame, because it’s the only way someone’s writing can get stronger. If you can’t look at your work objectively and see the difference between what needs to be in there and what you want to be in there, you don’t have any chance at improving.

In the end, detective Barroll appeared in one chapter of The Suffering Map. A morgue scene as the body is examined and a gruesome clue is revealed, more for the readers than for the investigators. That’s it.

And, while it pains me to this day, the story is much stronger for it.

Next time, I’d like to talk a little bit about basic concepts.

Until then… get back to writing.

Know what would be nice after the brutal tax season? Well, pretty much anything…

So, what’s the easiest way not to be seen?

Not to stand up.

If you get that joke, points to you. If not… Seriously, expand your horizons…

Anyway, if you’ve been following this rambling, ranty blog for any amount of time, you’ve probably figured out writing is almost never easy (despite what you may see on Castle). It takes a lot of work, and it kind of sucks that when you’re doing your best work as a writer no one’s going to notice.

Allow me to explain.

The best compliment you can ever hope for is someone forgets they’re reading your story. Not in the sense they stop reading for lunch and forget to pick it back up, but in the sense they honestly forget they’re reading a story.

Back when I was playing with my first real attempt at a novel, The Suffering Map, I handed it off to a few folks who I knew could be brutally honest about it. One of these people was my best friend, Marcus. Yes, he’s a friend, but we’ve been friends so long we both have no trouble telling each other when one of has screwed up. Sometimes there’s even some glee to it. And, yes, I freely admit nine times out of ten it’s him pointing out how I’ve screwed up.

Marcus took longer than anyone to get back to me with notes on The Suffering Map, and he finally admitted it was because he kept forgetting he was supposed to be making them. He’d go for dozens of pages without noting any mistakes or jotting down comments.

Silly as it may sound, this was one of the best compliments I’d ever received. It meant Marcus had forgotten he was reading my book and was just getting caught up in the story. The author and the medium fell off to the side and he just got absorbed into the tale of Rob, Sondra, Gulliver, and the Polynecros Transporter. The fact it was his friend’s story became inconsequential.

This is what we should all be shooting for. Our audience would forget they’re reading the latest John or Jane Smith novel or screenplay, perhaps even forget they’re reading a written work altogether, and just let themselves sink into the story. This happens when the audience forgets they’re reading, and the easiest way for that to happen is for them not to see your writing.

It always feels satisfying to avail oneself of an exuberant flourish of words and demonstrate not just the verbosity and vocabulary we’re capable of as proficient wordsmiths (and thesaurus owners), but also the clever intricacies we can interweave between character, plot, and theme. The problem is, every time we make the reader hesitate or pause just for a second, we’re breaking the flow of the story. Whenever the audience becomes overly aware of us, the writer, leaning over their shoulder and saying “hey, check out what I did there,” they’re going to pull back the same way anyone would. If you don’t mind the touchy-feely analogy, it’s an invasion of their personal space.

Think of some of the times you’ve been painfully aware of the author you’re reading. Ahhhh, Stephen King is doing that down-home-folksy-supernatural thing again. Look, Anne Rice is drifting back to her softcore porn roots again. Oh, that’s the same twist Harper Lee used in her last book. Sometimes this works, but more often than not if the audience is pausing to be aware of the author it’s just a chance for them to become aware of the world around them, to register they’re just holding a manuscript and not experiencing a story.

As writers, we should aspire to being invisible. Oh, we want our characters to be seen. We want our dialogue to be heard. We want our action and passion and suspense to leave people breathless. But we are just distractions. Less of us is more of the story.

By the way… if you are actually in possession of any other book by Harper Lee besides To Kill A Mockingbird, you are sitting on a gold mine.

Just saying.

So… some ways not to be seen.

Names. If used in moderation, names are invisible. They’re just shorthand for the mental images we’ve all formed in our heads. If I say Angelina, there’s an immediate link to the actress, just like saying Bob will make your audience think of your character Bob. It’s also worth mentioning that simpler, more common names blend easier than rare or unnatural ones. Tony doesn’t stand out as much as Antonio, Edward is easier on the frontal lobe than Ezekiel, and all they’re nothing compared to Bannakaffalatta.

Moderation is the key, though. If names repeat too often, they start to get cumbersome. Even if the name is something short and simple like Bob, when I see a paragraph about Bob reading Bob’s book shortly before Bob decided it was too hot outside and so Bob went in where it was air conditioned… well, personally at that point I start counting them, which means I’m not reading the story I’m auditing it. This is why we have…

Pronouns. When names start to get too noticeable, we call in the almighty pronoun. Just like names are shorthand for story elements, pronouns are shorthand for those names. When names start to clutter up your writing, they’re there to leap in and shoulder the weight. It’s how Bannakaffalatta becomes he, that mysterious island becomes there, and the Maltese Falcon becomes it.

The catch here is to make sure your pronouns are clear, because the moment someone gets confused about who she is, they’ve just stopped being part of your story and started studying the page. A good rule of thumb—after you’ve referred to Angelina as she six or seven times, drop her proper name back in once. It’s been long enough it won’t look repetitive, and it’s a gentle reminder of who she is.

Said. We talked about this just last week, but it’s worth saying again. Said is invisible. No one’s going to count up how many times you use said (except maybe my friend Meredith), but people will start noticing if you constantly respond, retort, or exclaim. If you plan on having several characters pontificate, depose, or ejaculate, don’t be surprised when your audience stops reading to scratch their collective heads or giggle. Usually while they’re pointing right at you.

Vocabulary. We all know what red means, but viridian can make us pause for a moment. Some things glow and some are effulgent. That guy can be hairy or he can be hirsute, which means you might also think of referring to him as an ape or perhaps an anthropoid.

A huge problem I see is writers who can’t figure out what common knowledge is, and argue adjectives like atrementous or glabrous are valid simply because they’re in the dictionary. Pruinose is a real adjective, too, but there’s a reason it doesn’t come up much over drinks. Any word a writer chooses just to draw attention, to prove they don’t need to use a common word, is the wrong word. And the fact that it’s drawing attention means you’ve just been seen again.

So duck behind the bushes, crouch down inside that water barrel, and prepare to write. Once you’re out of sight, that means the audience can only focus their attention on your characters and your story.

Next week… what should you have in common with the people who built the pyramids and the hanging gardens of Babylon? It’s not the lost continent of Atlantis, I’ll tell you that much.

And don’t let me see you until then.

For now, go write.

Variety, as a wise man once said, is the spice of life.

There’s a lot of truth to that. After all, it never hurts a person, especially a creative person, to go out and try a lot of new things. Visit new places. Taste new foods. Learn new skills. Or go out to sow a bunch of wild oats, as my eighty-eight year old great-aunt Marie said I should do right before graduation.

That was an awkward lunch, let me tell you.

Heck, even within our writing, variety is a pretty good. Repetition of words makes people’s eyes glaze over, and makes it look like you’ve got an extremely limited vocabulary. Heck, that’s why we have pronouns, so we don’t need to repeat the same nouns all the time. As Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla once said, using all those nouns over and over can really wear you down.

When I was starting out as a wee little writer, back in the days when Brian Daley’s Han Solo Trilogy was considered the apex of modern literature by most intelligent folks, I understood the need for variety. There were lots of things I didn’t know about writing, but my early exploration into words showed me that something could be blue or sapphire or sky-colored. Hair could be golden or flaxen or blond (and sometimes blonde).

One thing I came to realize was the number of descriptive ways dialogue could be attributed to speakers. My characters could declare. They could retort. They could intone. At times I had them growl, mutter, curse, hiss, whisper, shout, shriek, cackle, answer, and respond. On rare occasions, they were known to moan and gasp and groan. Once, I clearly remember one of them pontificating.

Before I was twenty I had set down a personal rule of variety, so to call it. Words should never duplicate on the same page. Especially not for mundane things like dialogue descriptors. There were so many more colorful and exotic and specific ways to get across what a character was saying.

However…

About ten years back I had the lucky chance to sit down with an editor from Tor books at the San Diego State Writer’s Conference. I’m ashamed to say I can’t remember his name, even though I’ve gone digging through old notes and emails trying to find it. This polite gent looked at the first few pages of The Suffering Map. He thought the bit with the payphone was wonderfully creepy and even liked the ravens at the library that finished off the first chapter. One thing had him shaking his head, though, and I think my face probably went a little slack as he demolished one of my long-standing personal rules.

(I’m paraphrasing a bit here, since this was face to face and about a decade back).

“Said is invisible,” he explained. “People skim over said without even realizing they’ve read a word, so your story moves faster. You don’t need all these words.” He showed me the first two pages, with a good two dozen red circles across them.

My clever attempt to show off my vocabulary and add color to my writing had left an editor shaking his head.

What shocked me even more, though, was discovering how right he was. I went home, sat down at the keyboard, and about 90% of those words became said. And the story did more faster. Heck, I even lost two pages off the total length. Just like that.

I still come across folks who believe as I once did. And it’s easy to see why they do. Whispering something is very different than saying it. Snarling an answer implies a different tone and subtext than saying it.

But how much of this is the reader going to do for you? Once I know the character and the context, doesn’t that set most of the tone and subtext for me? We all know the Joker has that hysterical edge to his voice. Does he really need to giggle or chuckle or cackle his lines?

Want proof?

Look back up at the opening of this little rant, and some of the folks I talked about. The wise man. Rufus. My wonderful great-aunt Marie. Nobody intoned or declared or advised. They all just said. That’s it. And you cruised over it quickly, smoothly, and without effort.

I’m not saying never use these other words, but they should be the exception in your writing, not the rule. I’ve suggested limiting yourself to four adjectives per page and one adverb. Try going back over something of yours and using just one or two clever dialogue descriptors per page. When they’re rare, they’ll have weight. They’ll have punch. And that punch is what makes your writing stand out.

Next week, just to keep you all on your toes, I want to talk about how no one should ever see your writing. Absolutely no one.

Until then, back to writing.

Most everyone loves a good mystery. Some people like having the puzzle to solve as the clues are doled out one by one, or perhaps as it becomes apparent they were sitting out in the open all along. Other folks love getting the big twist they should’ve seen coming, but the writer managed to slip it past them. Solving mysteries makes people feel clever, a good part of the reason this storytelling form has survived for well over a century.

A great example of the mystery story and structure is Scooby-Doo. No, seriously. In the classic series, it wasn’t unusual for Scooby, Shaggy and their pals (anyone mentioning a much later “puppy power” add-on to the cast will be banned from this blog) to go off somewhere and encounter a ghost, a haunted deep-sea diving suit, or even a reanimated mummy seeking its magical coin. However, as the story progressed, clues would be found, motives revealed, and what seemed eerie and impossible at first began to look more mundane and plausible. In the end, it wasn’t too much of a surprise to finally find out the reanimated mummy was really Doctor Najib in a costume, trying to steal the coin so he could sell it to a collector.

That’s the point of a good mystery. When all the pieces fall into place and everything makes sense. Readers (and agents and editors) love that beautiful moment when all the clues line up and they can look back over the story and say “Ahhhhhhh… I see.”

Now, here’s the one real catch, in case you missed it. Just having someone speak cryptically doesn’t cut it. Neither does deliberately withholding a ton of information from the audience. Nor do piles of weird occurrences or clues which don’t seem to mean anything but your characters treat like the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls. If you want your story to have that cool, odd air of mystery that makes people wonder and question and remember your story…

Well, you need to actually have a mystery.

A fairly common flaw I see is writers trying to convince readers there’s a mystery going on in their story. They don’t actually have one, mind you, but they know Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie became famous with them, plus shows like LOST and movies like The Prestige got people talking. So these writers will have an aloof man in a trench coat who drops one-line, indecipherable comments. An unusual reference that keeps cropping up again and again throughout the story. Sometimes (wooden as it sounds) just a character who keeps repeating lines like “What does that mean?” or “Who are you?” or “I don’t understand!”

Again, there’s no actual puzzle, just the implication there’s one the reader can’t see. The best sign of this is that nothing is ever solved or revealed—the story is just an ongoing series of empty, random events attempting to evoke a sense of mystery.

There needs to be something behind the words on the page, even if it’s something your readers don’t immediately get to see. When Velma, Shaggy, and Scooby find that smear of white paint on the wall, they and the audience all need to believe this is something important and not just a randomly inserted MacGuffin the writer stuck in to fill a few script pages. As the writer, you need to know what that smear of white paint means long before those meddling kids even see it.

In my oft-referred-to work The Suffering Map, the character of Bareback often talks in a deliberately vague, roundabout way. He also subtly displays a knowledge of future events. When the full workings and history of the Polynecronious Transporter are explained, Bareback’s prescience suddenly has an eerie logic behind it, and his earlier, obtuse way of speaking now makes sense. It’s a mystery, but it’s a real mystery.

What you want, as a writer, is to be a magician rather than a con artist. The magician shows you empty boxes and hats, a cage full of rabbits and a deck of cards. Then he or she does something amazing with it and you know they’ve done something amazing. Maybe you even have a vague sense of how it was done, even if not a complete understanding. You’re left feeling thrilled and excited.

The con artist, though… when he or she shows you those empty boxes it’s for a very different reason. It’s because they don’t really have a trick, and they’re hoping they’ll never have to show you something in the box. They’ll just take your money and you’ll be left standing there waiting for something to happen. They’re the ones who know the truth of what’s going on will just annoy their audience.

It sounds silly, but if you want your story to have a mystery, then it needs to have a mystery. It has to be smart. It has to be hidden for a reason within the story. It actually has to mean something.

If it isn’t… you’re just another con artist.

And we all knew what happened to the con artist at the end of Scooby-Doo.