Honeymoon = GONE

This week has been extremely difficult, writing-wise. Feeling I am so close to the brink of really nailing Castle 8 rewrites in a way that I think will shine through with my original vision, and yet feeling so inadequate in making it actually happen.

Also, I am tired. Though most of my jobs have stopped for the summer, they've only been replaced with summer employment (bills must be paid in June and July, after all), which means now instead of having three jobs, I have FOUR.

But that's not the real reason for my fatigue, believe or not. Most of my weariness has stemmed from my writing, which - up to this point - I would have told you was pretty much impossible.

I had coffeehouse meetings with four different writers this week, and I detected the same fatigue in two of those four writers. At a couple times the conversation actually lagged as we just stared at each other wearily across the polished wood table, wondering what to say next.

The meetings were entirely worth it, of course - they always are. But the truth of the thing was underscored for me: the Writing Honeymoon is officially over. For me and, I think, a couple of my writer friends.

photo source

The more strained of those two bah-humbug meetings happened this afternoon; or at least, that's how the meeting started. Fortunately, we did not give up on our writing talk, or the writing date, either. We stuck around another hour after the collective depression over our projects set in, and bought another cup of coffee. And talked some more. Compared more notes. Asked more open-ended-you-couldn't-possibly-answer-this questions.

Eventually, remarkably, a "eureka" moment came - not for me, but for my friend. By the end of the session, her enthusiasm had penetrated my funk. I wasn't feeling nearly so down, but I was still feeling tired. But the kind of tired that keeps on writing.

In exchange, my friend gave me something hard to think about concerning Castle 8. So hard that it took me all evening wrestling with it to admit that she was right: One of my major characters had to go.

Nor was she the first one to point it out. Two other beta-readers whose opinion I value highly had said the same thing. I've spent the last six months trying to argue them down, explain to them how that was dead wrong. My character was witty, charming, great with a comeback, handsome, a lover of music and poetry, and a redhead goshdarnit!! So of course he's necessary!

But wit and beauty and a love of beautiful things does not a necessary character make. I sat down and considered the hard question: What would this story look like without my pet character?

The hard-to-swallow answer: A lot tighter. Much more driven. Less prone to wandering. It eliminates several plot detours. Action goes up. WAY up. Nostalgic detours drop to zilch.

Ugly truth: I eliminate my pet, and my manuscript reaps amazing benefits. In all quadrants.

I admit I cried, a little. That's a definite a first for me. I always thought stories about writers who cried over their characters were nutzo. Now I'm one of the lunatics, I guess.

This will take a few days at least for me to get over. Won't lie about that. But after an hour of eliminating The Pet from my narrative - only an hour; he was in woefully few parts once I sat down and really looked at it - I have to admit that my narrative is already healthier, in many ways.

But you'll forgive me, I trust, if I drown my sorrows in a couple days of raging jigpunk music. Or frozen yogurt. Or maybe a good book that will remind me that I am not the first writer to realize that the Writing Honeymoon was over.....and write through it anyway.

Anyone else ever been there?

Visual Storyboarding (pt 2): By Hook or By Crook

A couple days late, but here it is - Part Two in my current series on Visual Storyboarding!

(Didn't catch the first post? Look for it here.)

Now - to cut to the chase!!!

The Hook That Grabs You

Part of knowing how to visually storyboard is to really grab on to one detail: How did the story come to you in the first place?

Of course there are myriad ways this happens to any writer. You overhear a snatch of conversation. You see one remarkable person in a crowd. You have a wacky day (or a glorious vacation, or some other event) and think: “You know, this could have gone another way…”

Sometimes the idea coalesces from various bits you’ve gathered from books you’ve read or movies you’ve seen. Sometimes you’re ambushed by an idea entirely.

My current project, Castle 8, literally ambushed me while I was driving home from an after-Christmas dinner with friends on December 26, 2010. More specifically, I was ambushed by four brothers. I knew their first names, I knew their faces, I even had a general idea of their (very strong!) personalities. They just needed a last name and a story to wrap around them.

I went home and immediately got out pencil and paper, and started hashing out who these four young men were that had crowded into my car during the long dark drive – leaped, as it were, out of my imagination and into my reality.

I was hooked. More than that – I had my hook.

If It Hooks You, It Hooks Your Audience

Granted, Castle 8 is nowhere near completion yet, though I have made it my personal goal to get it polished and query-worthy well before the end of the year. Expanding on the idea was fun, and it led me into all sorts of interesting narrative quirks that absolutely thrilled my nerdy, writerly soul. But as I worked on it, I found that I kept returning to the original idea that hooked me in the first place – the brothers themselves.

Usually, when we talk about what hooks a reader into a story, it comes down to: What was it that hooked YOU in the first place? The situation? The place? A specific character?

For me, it was the four brothers: Greg, Errol, Finn and March. They were so real to me that I kept going back to them as the central focus of my tale. Naturally it followed that the tale itself became a character-driven story.

This was confirmed even in the responses I received from my first round of beta-readers. Though the narrative was choppily rendered, with detours it didn’t need and even a few unnecessary characters, everyone honed in on the four brothers as the one thing that drew them in.

Everyone had their favorite brother, just like everyone pointed to another brother they thought was weak or “unnecessary” ~ though interestingly enough, no one ever pointed to the same brother as the “throwaway.”  I chalked that up to my bad writing and figured it was okay to keep all four of them. But it meant that I had to sift through some serious plot holes in the story.

The whole process was a priceless lesson for me. It taught me that if the hook was good enough to hook me – it’s good enough to hook my audience. Even if I fall on my nose during the actual telling of it.

Visualizing Your Hooks

That realization brought me back to the big problem I had with my narrative: it was, in short, a jumbled-up mess. And that’s putting it politely.

So what was my problem? I had visualized the Swackhammer brothers so well that I hadn’t taken the time to visualize the rest of my story. I knew it happened in the future, but a plausible future, based on technologies and machines we have now. I had an intuitive understanding of some of it, but not a lot of specific knowledge.

Scratch that. I had NO CLUE what I was doing in creating this world.

I knew the Swackhammer brothers were where they needed to be. I just didn’t have a clear idea of what that being entailed – what it looked like, smelled like, how it all fit together. Heck, I didn’t even have a map to know where everything belonged!

No wonder the narrative sagged so brutally. I had my hook, but hadn’t taken the time to fully visualize it. ALL of it.

Saved From the Black Hole

End result: in January of this year, I put Castle 8 on the back burner. WAY on the back burner. I was so discouraged with the narrative mess it had become that I figured it would be years before I could get it out of its black hole.

Boy was I wrong.

In the past four months, I stumbled across a couple of tools – some very old school, others very new – that have enabled me to get a lock on the full three-dimensional aspect of my story. I know what it looks like. I know what it feels like. I have my map. I have sounds and notes and photos and all sorts of creative detritus that has given me a tighter visual control on my project.

I’m currently rewriting Castle 8 as we speak, from the ground up.

It’s hard, of course – but only in the tenacity required to keep at something I’ve already written before. Because now I have all I need to make the story come alive – not just the brothers, but everything that surrounds them, including the dangers and locales to which future installments will take them.

How did I manage that? Well – I hate to be a tease, but that’s a subject for next time. But the next update WILL deal exclusively with the tools I’ve used to really build up my project.

Heck, I’ll even post photos. Lots of photos. Doesn’t that sound like fun?

Cannot wait to share the next step – it’s probably the most fun, if you ask me.

But tell me – what do YOU do when you realize you haven’t fully realized something in your story world? I’d love to hear of other’s techniques. I know I haven’t thought of everything.

Got a comment or idea? Let me know in the comments below!

And as always – thanks for reading!

Brutal Compliments

This past week I was paid a very high compliment by a fellow writer. She offered to do a "cold read" of the opening five pages of my current manuscript. I let her.

The compliment? She went through those five pages with a scalpel.

By the end, my five pages bore the scars of a literary knife-fight. There was hardly a line in those 1400 words that didn't have some kind of deletion, highlight or other detritus of relentless trimming.

And to tell the truth - her handling of my manuscript made my day.

Her knife-fight with my opening pages was itself a high compliment. She cared enough to not only read what I had to share, but the gumption to show me what stood in my way of getting published.

We all know what it is to be criticized. It's that awkward moment at work or the family get-together, when someone pulls you aside and says: "You might not want to hear this, but do you realize...?" Then they tell you something about yourself (or spouse/child/final project) that you really don't want to hear.

But consider: What doesn't kill us really does make us stronger. In that sense, for writers to take constructive criticism on their work-in-progress is tantamount to taking literary vitamins. It strengthens your bones. Clarifies your skin. Flushes out impurities. Bolsters your immune system. If you're a serious writer, you want this - even if it hurts. More often than not, criticism does hurt. But as the poster suggests - if you avoid criticism entirely, then why should anyone note what you're saying or doing? Are you doing anything of note, if you cannot endure criticism?

My friend's critique was a litmus test for me. Though it was initially a shock to see "my darling" all marked up, it was not a crippling event. The exercise showed me several things, all of which were encouraging in their own way.

     * It showed me criticism is temporary. After a momentary "Oh!" and the eyes-round-with-shock moment, I found myself rolling up my sleeves and readying for the next round of work. I quickly went from the oh-my-what?? moment to the "I can do this" moment; and once I crossed that line the discomfort was behind me.

     * It showed me issues I would never have seen myself. I knew I had a problem with passive voice, and had even cleaned up those five pages tremendously, with that error in mind. But my friend, who has a much more grammar-ish mind than I do, saw other incidents of passive voice (and run-on sentences, and other embarassing faux pas) that I had entirely missed.

     * It showed me how a reader coming "cold turkey" to my book would respond to the introduction of my world. Once I narrowed my attention on her individual comments, I realized I had not done a thorough job of establishing my world from the outset. She showed me how a new reader would interpret the opening scene, and in so doing showed that the opening five pages still needs a LOT of work.

     * It proved my tale was battle-worthy. In spite of all the slicing and dicing, my opening premise seems to have weathered the storm quite nicely. This was the most encouraging thing for me: the realization that I likely have the right beginning point, even if I did word it rather shabbily.

Brutal compliments are part of the Writing Life. Sometimes the compliment is in the actual words; sometimes in how your tale holds up to the beatings it receives. Sometimes the compliment is knowing someone cares enough to tell you when you're capable of more.

We are all capable of more. The question is whether we will endure the criticism needed to get there.

What about you? What are your critique experiences?