Creativity

In the comment trail of the post below, the one on 'The odds of getting published,' I was nattering on about the creative process.  I have a certain stake in this, being in one of those particularly creative professions, like knitting or cooking or being a confidence trickster. 

So I pondered about process a bit.

Whether a writer comes up with cool-and-wonderful creative or three-day-old-mackerel creative, I think it's the same process.  That is, good writers, mediocre writers and downright poor writers probably all go about it in pretty much the same ways.  There's not one supergood process and fifty bad ones.

Being organizational here,
(I do love to sort and categorize,)
you got . . . hmmm . . . three paths to creation,
says I.

The Bricklayer Process. 

'I sketch the plan and get out my measuring tape and blue chalk line.  I keep laying bricks down till I have a barbecue.'

The Boys in the Basement Process. 

'My subconscious does the work.  I toss a hook down into my mind and pull up pictures and ideas.'

And the,

I Haz Got Muse Process. 

'There's a force that comes from outside.  If it comes to me, I write furiously.  When it doesn't, I can't write.'

Most writerly folk combine these methods, doing a bit of one and a bit of the other. 
It's not about being good writers or bad writers, skilled writers, hack writers, wildly unusual writers, commonplace and predictable writers, LitFic writers, Romance writers in upstate Maine, S.F. writers, or Steampunk writers with purple hair.  I think everybody uses roughly the same methods.

Though it occurs to me Mystery writers, being plot heavy, might tend to go more with the brick-and-mortar approach.
And LitFic writers may be more 'muse oriented', them being above the crass commercial need to create a comprehensible plot or deliver on deadline,
(Is this so?  I darkly suspect LitFic writers claim an innate superiority for the muse method by virtue of its being associated with The Gigantic Importantness of Teh Literary Fic.  Hah, says I.)

But I digress.

Anyhow,
if a person's creative process leans toward the bricklayer -- or they can learn to be creative in that way -- they've got a commercial writing process. 

When a writer leans towards having a muse -- they may be less commercial.  Writing to deadline gets iffy when you have to wait till Godot  the muse shows up.

I'd call myself 40% bricklayer and 60% Boys in the Basement.

I don't have any sense of an outside force at all.  The work is all me.

The whole 'muse thingum strikes me as slightly creepy, in fact. 

The creative part of writing feels like . . .
(I'd be happy to hear what anyone else's creative process feels like.)

I have a sense of myself as an island of awareness floating on a vast dark sea of unawareness.  Creation happens down there in the madness and dreams.

Up on the island I do the story organizing and the plot bricklaying and the chinking and tapping of individual words into place.

But the 'making up' of the story' . . . not so much.

The creative process is me settling down and trying to go to that, 'near sleep state.'  I build up a mental nugget of what I need.  I say to that ocean in my mind -- "I need to hear and see the scene where Hawker and Justine meet at the foot of the guillotine."

I let go.  I jump overboard and sink into this sea of translucent, formless crazy.  The process is dreaming. 
The process is watching
shimmerystrangecreatures swim by.  I grab some of them and yank on the rope to get pulled back up.

Then, at the top, safe on the dock again, I lay my catch out on the boards and turn over what I got.  I have to write this down before the flopping bright critters turn into clear water and leak out between the cracks.  Even when I pick 'em up for a good look, they're already running away through my fingers.

The good scenes, the ones that 'ring' right, come to me this way.

cat and mice cc attrib TanyaT, dog and cat image attrib GNU Wolf Howard

Technical Topics -- Beginnings and Tipping Points

I was thinking about story openings, since I will have to do one soon. I was trying to decide what makes a good opening, and how I start my own stories. These two are not necessarily linked by bands of steel.

Thinking about process ...
The story opening is determined by the big crisis that lies at the heart of the story. The Climax. The Big Kahuna.

Now, of course, there's lotsa stuff that leads up to that Crisis. Various characters did this and that and weather happened and a declaration of war and Susie came down with the pox.
But when I go seeking for a good opening, I'm looking at what the female protagonist does -- Her thoughts, actions and decisions. Because, for me, the book is about the female protagonist. She's going to determine where the story begins.

So ... I look at the protagonist's actions as far as I have them figured out.

Of course, I don't look at every bloody thing she does.
There are those actions that are absolutely necessary for The Crisis to occur and the story to take the path it does. This is 'story action'.
Then there's a whole bunch of to-ing and fro-ing that could be changed without affecting the story much. That is not 'story action' and I can kind of ignore it.

Entering the vampire cave is necessary. It is 'story action'.
Buying eggs at the market -- not so much.
It's like that.

When I wander through the protagonist's story action, what I'm looking for is 'tipping points'.
One of these tipping points is going to be the first scene in the story. I just have to find the right one.

"'Tipping points'?" you say.
And "?"
Yeah. Ok.

Every story has many places where a different decision would lead to a different Crisis and a different story. These are 'tipping points'. These are moments where the protagonist has an opportunity to change everything. Her decision could go either way. What she decides matters.

Going aside here to natter about generalities ...
Tipping points make the protagonist strong and interesting. Story is not about what happens to the protagonist. Story is what the protagonist decides to do with what happens to her.
And the tipping points are her decisions.
This is where she grabs hold of the story by the throat and wrestles it down and makes it do what she wants.

Writers -- giving my opinion here and knowing it is not necessarily true -- want to show these tipping points, because they are so important and so revealing and just so generally cool. Even if everybody who's slogged their way to page 134 knows the protagonist will not run from the upcoming battle, the reader still wants to see that decision to stay and be brave. She wants to see the 'tipping point' where the protagonist has a choice and makes it.

All of which is just generally to speak in praise of tipping points.

Anyway. Getting back to where the beginning of the story is going to be.
I look at my protagonist's actions. I look at her decisions.
I want to start the story with a tipping point.

Why do I pick one tipping point and not another?
What is characteristic of the scene and the tipping point that starts the story?


*-- The tipping-point decision in the scene that starts the story is necessary for the action of the story. It directly leads to the Crisis at the end.

*-- The start scene is early in the long sequence of protagonist actions related to the Crisis.
(Right. The beginning scene is early. yeah. duh ...)
But not too early.

What it is ...
There's a long line of protagonist actions, stretching way into the past and extending far into the future. Maybe like, y'know, beads.
Only a little section of this action can happen 'on stage' in the book.
We know the last on-stage actions are going to be when The Crisis is resolved.
The first on-stage actions ...
Well, we're working on the beginning right now.

We want to scoop as much important story action into the book as we can. We want all the good stuff to happen 'on stage'. Essential story action that happens before the beginning of the book has to be shoved into some flashback or backstory or some kind or prologue. This is a weakness in the story structure.

Note how I'm talking only about 'story action'. We want to scoop in story action. The important stuff. We want to write it out as scenes and put it on stage.
We don't want to write scenes that have no story action and only convey information. We especially do not want to start with a scene like that.


*-- Ideally, we want to start with a scene that is chronologically tight with the rest of the story. That is, we do not want an outlier in time. This avoids a hiatus in the action.
If we can manage it, we don't go all prologue-y with a, 'Two years before' . . .

Prologues are necessary in some stories, but I feel it may not be the tightest of all structures. There are folks who disagree with me.
Full disclosure time here -- I have to keep knocking my hand off the keyboard to keep myself from writing prologues.

*-- A tipping point means the protagonist makes an active choice. She has the capacity for some sort of action.

Sometimes there doesn't seem to be much the character can do. The protag is a victim trapped in the dungeon. A Cinderella bound to her stepmother's will.

What the writer does is shake the story around to give the protagonist choice. Even a limited choice can be the tipping point.

In the dungeon, the protagonist makes a decision not to reveal her secrets whatever happens. Her silence keeps her alive long enough for the partisans to rescue her. She gives half her bread to the other inmate -- the man who will later be the key to getting her out of the fortress. She palms a spoon to scrape through the rocks and thus has a weapon the next time the cell door is opened.

Cinderella decides to approach each daily, demeaning, unfair household task with a stalwart heart and a generous spirit. It is her light-hearted singing --rather than sullen acceptance -- that leads the Prince to her.

The tipping point is a decision that changes the story.
It can be made even when the character is under fierce constraints.

And if the protagonist's actions and decisions keep not affecting the outcome of events . . . why not?

*-- It is especially exciting if the tipping point is a decision that rests on a knife edge. Where it could go either way.

*-- All else being equal, I like a tipping point that involves 'big screen action'. That is -- the protagonist makes a decision that results in big bodily motion. Getting-into-a-car-and-racing-down-the-mountain decisions, rather than stern conversation or hiding the jewels in the sofa cushions.

This is just me. Personal preference. Ignore it.

*-- For the first scene, you want a tipping point that reveals one of the most basic aspects of your protagonist. It's not just an important decision. It's the decision this character, idiosyncratically, would make.

*-- A tipping point is always encased within 'story action'. Every scene is built around 'story action, of course, (did you notice I don't use initials for tipping point?) but the first scene is especially built around story action. And the tipping point is embedded in this action. It is not just wandering off in the mist somewhere admiring the action over its shoulder.

The tipping point can never be description of an average morning or talking heads informing us about the lost gold mine.

*-- While the tipping point has to occur somewhere in the first scene, it need not be laid out right in the opening lines. It doesn't have to be the major action shaping the scene.

It can be quite a small thing. Not obvious.


*-- In genre Romance, one or more tipping points are likely to arise in the hero/heroine meeting.

These are neat tipping point to start the story with because the H&H meeting all by itself ties up a bunch of plotting thingums the writer has to get out of the way in the first couple chapters.

So, in genre Romance, a good beginning might be the tipping point where the female protagonist decides how to deal with the hero . . .

'Will she rescue the hero or leave him in prison?'

'Will she approach this dangerous man on the street, or back off and find some more cautious way to accomplish her ends?'

'Will she stay to spy on the approaching stranger on the chance he is the messenger she's waiting for, or will she run to safety?'

Three small decisions. (Three books.) The decisions pass almost unnoticed in the scene. But these tipping points define the protagonist. If she had acted differently -- no story.

Plotting . . . plotting . . . plotting . . .

Sometimes, it's just one plot problem after another. You fix one, and another pops up.

Kinda like . . . this.

Technical Topics -- Beginnings

Let's say you have finished a good rough draft of the manuscript,
(Yipee!)
and you come back to look at the beginning,
and you don't know whether it's any good.

How do you judge a beginning?

You can do something like this here below.
This is just a starting point for thinking about your plot, but it has the merit of being both specific and brief.

1) Pick up the first three pages only.

-- Do these first three pages put you in an interesting place?
-- Does something happen?
-- Does that action give rise to what is going to happen in at least one scene after page fifty?
-- Do we connect with at least one character and her problems?
-- Do we understand who she is and what she wants?

2) Set the first three chapters to one side,
(over there on the edge of your desk,)
and look at the beginning of Chapter Four.

-- What action takes place before this point that is wholly necessary to tell your story?
-- Could you just as easily start the story here?

No, really.
Could you start the story right here and it would all be understandable and the plot would work just fine?


3) Slip a paperclip onto page 10, page 23, page 37 and page 48.
Read the story quickly, from the beginning.
When you get to the bottom of a paperclipped page, set it down and ask yourself:
--What intriguing question fills your mind right now?
-- Is that question so enticing that you must pick that manuscript up and read on?

4) Take out two colors of highlighter.
Yellow and fuschia maybe.
You're going to go through the first four chapters.

Use yellow to mark a line along

-- dialog, (with the exception of someone explaining and telling stuff,)
-- dialog tags,
-- a character thinking about something or someone they can see right in front of them,
-- an action that is happening onstage right now,
-- the POV character smelling, touching, tasting or hearing something,
-- the description of something the POV character can see.


Use fuschia to mark a long line along

-- anything that happened in the past,
-- a character thinking about something that is not immediately in front of her,
-- the description of something the POV character cannot see,
-- anything related to a character who is not present,
-- one person explaining anything at all to the other person,
-- one person telling the other person what happened somewhere else.


Do you have lots and lots of yellow?
Maybe 80% yellow?

That is the here-and-now of your story.
If the reader is not in the midst of the here-and-now of your story . . .
where is she?

5) Finally, just read the first five chapters.
Do you care about these people?
Do you see them headed somewhere?

It is an interesting exercise to go through this with authors you enjoy.
Pick up one of Nora Roberts' books that you've somehow managed to acquire in duplicate. Limber up your yellow marker.
It is instructive to see a master at work.

An Outtake from MLAS

Martha, in the comment trail, asked about scenes that don't make it into the final book.

As a generality, there are Good Reasons why scenes quietly disappear from the ms before the Editor ever sees them.
The scene is boring.
Or it twiddles off down a line of minor plotting, instead of telling the love story.
Or it is talking heads conveying information.
Or all three.

Here below is a scene that got written
and then a draft or two later got grubbed up by the roots and tossed out.

The scene is not dreadful in and of itself. It explains why Jess, (our heroine in MLAS,) is knee deep in kimchee with the British Government.
But we do not write scenes to 'explain things'.

The stage action I kept, because I need the little jigsaw piece of scene to transition from one place to another. The action shows up, much modified, in MLAS as pages 152 to 158. But the version that hit the book is all about the love story instead of suspense plot and intrigue.

Below, you're looking at Second Draft work, not Final Draft work.
There's lots of awkwardness and bad phrasing.
And I've left in my 'notes to myself'.

*************** See the out-take here ******************
It begins ....


Adrian was propped against the wall in the stuffy closet they used as a listening post, reading from a black, bound notebook. He crooked a finger in invitation and kept reading. "Close the door."

There wasn't room for three in the cubbyhole. He slid in behind the table, the rack of pistols on the wall poking into his back. Trevor, the spy in training, sat at the table, his ear pressed to a brass ear trumpet that emerged from the wall and wrote, scribbling fast. The only light in the room came from the dark lantern at his elbow. Three sides of that were closed, the fourth open. In the bright oblong it cast, his pencil made a manic, dancing shadow across the page. Three books, like the one Adrian held, lay to his left. Another dozen were stacked and ready.

This was where the British Service watched and listened to what went on in the library. Jess was right -- the walls were full of rats.

... and it ends ....



"You and Josiah are playing games. Jess isn't."

"Then it's time she did." Adrian was still a moment. "Josiah knows what I am. Eventually, Jess will. Do you know, there are times I do not find being Head of Section at all amusing. Shut up, now. When I open this they can hear us."
****************

Couple of MLAS Q & A

Kind reader, Eva, writes with some questions about My Lord and Spymaster. I thought I'd bring 'em out and talk about them here. (She says it's ok.)

Eva writes: First- did Adrian ever have feelings for Jess? I can't tell if he views her as merely a friend or a woman that he believes is off-limits to him but has secretly lusted after.
When Adrian first knew Jess, she was only twelve. He was about twenty. Eight years is a huge barrier at that age.
In a way, Adrian never 'reset' that distance between them. Even when she's grown, he sees her as 'the child grown up.'

The original relationship between them would have been . . . smart-mouthed preteen and her very cool uncle or Olympic hopeful and the silver-medallist who's coaching her.
That is to say ... close, but never sexual.

Eva writes: Is Annique the only Frenchwoman that he claims to have loved?

We haven't met Adrian's woman yet.
I think she's going to turn up in Maggie's story.

Eva writes: By the way, I am seriously waiting on pins and needles for Adrian's story...... Hint, hint ;)
I plan to start Adrian's story as soon as I finish up the Maggie manuscript. That'll be early in 2010.
I haven't the least idea what I'm going to write.

Ah well, we wrestle only one alligator at a time.

Eva writes: what role has Eunice played before she began rescuing women? Was she a spy as well? Why is she protected by Lazarus? You drop sooo many hints about her but I'm just not sure if I'm putting the pieces together in the correct way.....
Leesee ...

Eunice is the daughter of a duke. (That's why she's 'Lady Eunice'.)
She was married at sixteen to a very unpleasant man, twice her age, who physically and emotionally brutalized her. He obliged everyone by dying when she was twenty-five.
(May we speculate that she helped him to his reward? That would be so satisfying.)

Eunice was left a widow with a miniscule income, an irreconcilable split from her family, and a burning desire to right the world's wrongs. By sheer force of will, she became a power in charitable London. Check out any well-run orphanage or home for wayward women; she's probably on the Board of Directors.

Standish is the love of her life.
(How could he be otherwise?)
She met him when she was in her late thirties and long past any thought of falling in love with anyone. He was doing a 'dig' of a Roman site in a ditch in East London. When they met, he was firmly -- if somewhat ineffectively -- protecting his pottery shards from the local disadvantaged youths who were sure he'd uncovered gold.

As to Eunice and Lazarus.
Eunice amuses Lazarus, which is reason enough for him to let her play in his part of town.

There's some practical reasons as well.
When he identifies himself with a force that brings food, clothing and medical care into his territory, Lazarus plays the good guy, and wins approval in the hood. That's the same reason he protects the Reverend.

Also, Lazarus doesn't want the daughter of a duke killed on his turf. He's tolerated by the authorities, in part, because he keeps that sort of thing to a minimum.

He finds Eunice useful as an object lesson. Having a place girls can run to is a salutary lesson to pimps who batter the merchandise.

And when he protects Eunice, Lazarus places a limit on the power of the most brutal and stupid of his gang. She becomes, symbolically, his power to do any damn thing he wants. It's a symbol that costs little to maintain since she's already well protected by her connection to the British aristocracy and, in later years, by Sebastian.

I think Lazarus is maybe a little cowed by Lady Eunice. She's intimidating when she sets her mind to it.

Now Eunice was never a spy. She's a flaming radical and has dicey intellectual ties all over France, but she's not really a political animal. She's a hands-on, practical sort.

Because of these ties, she's an excellent source of what we'd now call intelligence. She's first to hear the latest intellectual news from Paris. She's on an in-your-face framiliarity with half the criminal element of London. And she's related to everyone powerful in and out of government in England. (She's Galba's second cousin on his mother's side.)

Meeks Street uses her when they need a safe place for women who are hurt or on the run. She's willing to provide introductions to British Service agents who need to move into the fringes of the 'ton'.

Eva writes: why is there so much animosity\anger between Josiah and Lazarus? Aren't they related?
Josiah and Lazarus came to London as young men to seek their fortune. They worked together, getting rich and trusting each other and being rivals a little bit.

What drove them apart was Jess' mother. Lazarus had her. Josiah took her away.

After some serious conflict, they patched up an uneasy tolerance. For years, Lazarus envied Josiah his little family. Envied him the extraordinary child that Jess became.

Then Josiah was out of the picture. Lazarus stepped in.

In the years she was with him, Lazarus was training Jess to be a master thief and part of his gang. Someday, if she got strong enough and mean enough, he would have made her his successor. He thought of all this as 'teaching her the trade.'
He's not a nice man, but he wished her well. He loved her in his way. And because he loved her and the world is a dangerous place, he didn't cut her any slack when it came to following the apprenticeship he'd set her.

Family quarrels are the bitterest. But it's still family. Despite his words, Lazarus wouldn't have let Josiah hang. He helped Jess when she came to him. He would have intervened more directly if Josiah had actually come to trial.

Now ... as to why he scared her to death when she came to him for help ...

Jess betrayed him. She chose Josiah instead of him. He's pissed off at her, and he's hurt.

From a practical standpoint -- Lazarus is good at seeing things like this -- Jess isn't really safe walking the streets of London unless she's a true part of his 'gang' again. He can't just decree that she is. He needs to sell it to his people. Her fight with Badger is a 're-initiation' into the gang. It is the ordeal that transforms her from spoiled-aristocrat-outsider-who-deserted-us into 'one-of-us'.

And ... Ummm ... wandering into deep theoretical, pseudo-literary territory here ...
Jess' return to the padding ken is a symbolic death and rebirth. Lazarus (the name indicates rebirth from death ... ...) is the past that must be conquered and reconciled with. She makes this passage through the underworld in the company of Sebastian, (who is named after the saint who restored sight and speech and freed prisoners.)

Eva writes: And the woman who Lazarus had hostage until she was practically in labor- does he actually care for her? Why did she go back to him with the baby?
Second question first. She went back to Lazarus because women are such fools.

First question. Yes. Lazarus does love her.

We only see one moment of a long, tumultuous relationship, and we only see if from the outside.

She's going to 'reform' Lazarus in the end, I think, and he'll call her 'Fuffy' even when she's old and grey. They end up in Baltimore, become respectable, and their many descendents brag about their aristocratic roots.
If only they knew

Eva writes: I truly loved MLAS but I would have liked another intense, passionate scene between Jess and Sebastion.
I wish I'd had a little more time with MLAS. I write slowly, and there's stuff I didn't have time to get quite entirely right. I would have liked another sex scene, too.

Eva writes: firmly believe your books would make fantastic movies.
From your lips to Hollywood's ears ...

More plogging

This is me plotting










I've been plogging, (i.e. plotting + slogging,) my way onward in MAGGIE.

I do this thing I think of as 'post plotting', which is where I go writing along, saying to myself ... "This isn't working. This isn't working. This is crap " ...
which isn't the most efficient way to go about it, but heck, we all have our method and suddenly I'll go
==Head desk ==
and see how to do it and zip back and move things around and slip in some new material.

Which is what I did today.

I've been having this knock-down-drag-out fight with myself for a couple months now over which beginning to use -- the book roasting scene or the rabbit scene.
So this morning I thought,
"Why not use them both?"
which is either brilliant or comes from having the flu.

AND while I was working out how I could use both beginnings I finally saw the action+emotion scene I needed to slip in just before the H&H canoodle.

So, anyhow,
a good and useful day was had by all, unless this turns out to be a virus-induced delusion in my little pea brain
in which case I'll read what I've written tomorrow and it will make no sense whatsoever like those notes you write on a scratch pad when you wake up in the middle of the night and in the morning it turns out to be something about a dwarf and leg waxing.

Technical Topics -- 'First Meeting' scenes

For a while now, I've been pondering on the 'first meeting' scene of MAGGIE in a futile, disorganized, uncomfortable way.

Romance genre contains the story of a love relationship at its heart. The H&H tend to meet early so this central story gets underway.
One doesn't vamp indefinitely beforehand.

When I have nothing better to agonize over, lately, I've been looking and relooking at the first 5000 words of MAGGIE and asking myself when and where and how I should position this 'first meeting' scene.
At the opening of the ms?
A couple thousand words in?
And how do I coordinate this 'meeting' scene with the beginnings of the other six or seven stories I'm telling in the ms?

So last night I was mulling over 'first meeting scenes I have known' and naturally started thinking about Lucia St. Claire Robson's classic, The Tokaido Road.

Tokaido is not genre Romance, of course, since the stage ends up strewn with corpses at the end of Act V, a la Hamlet, and heaps of still-twitching corpses piled from horizon to horizon is a clue you're not in a Romance.

Tokaido is interesting to the great world of Romance, however, because it's the story of a love relationship where the H&H don't actually meet for most of the book. They exchange letters.

Tokaido differs from, for instance, Kinsale's My Sweet Folly, because in Folly the letters, though vital, are presented more or less as backstory and the 'first meeting' is an early and intrinsic part of the on-stage action.

So, anyway, I was uselessly pondering on all this last night.

My mind goes wandering off this way instead of doing serious work and I hold onto the pommel and kick my heels into its flanks,
(note to self -- 'Are those flanks that get kicked or is it some other part of the horse?')
and hope I'll wind up on the trail again, eventually.

Then a movie came on TV -- the Lake House -- where the structure of the on-going action is the H&H exchanging letters.

Hmmm ... says I. Synchronicity.

Now it happened that I picked up Hot, by Julia Harper, out of the TBR pile because I don't generally give movies my whole attention and Hot was on top of Julia Ross, Nights of Sin, rather than under it, so Hot it was.

(Hot is funny and well-done. It's on some 'Best of 2008' lists and deserves to be.)

Now I'm a third of the way through Hot, and the 'first meeting' has still not come down.

The H&H are exchanging cell phone calls, cell phones being the new letters, which will deprive future generations of untold literary correspondence, won't it?

Anyhow, synchronicity squared.

So now I'm wondering if I might use this idea of webbing together 'relationship at a distance' later in the story when Maggie and Doyle are in Paris.

But maybe not. Probably I'll file this under 'cool stuff I can't use', which is a whole drawer in my mental filing cabinet.

Technical Topics -- Talking Heads I

When to use 'Talking Heads'?

I brought up a message and response down in the comments trail that deals with one specific use of Talking Heads.


I stopped by to comment on MLAS (aka Jessamyn). I just started reading it . . . and was wondering if you kept the scene about Sebastien rooting through Jess's bedroom (I recall it from a previous post . . . and although it's a little different, it's still there!)
Yah! Why did you think an editor would cut it?


A raft of Really Cool Scenes got cut out of the manuscript. I had to write other stuff to replace them.

The searching-Jess's-room scene managed to escape the slaughter.
This pleased me.

Putting the matter in a philosophical teacup --

All scenes have to justify their existence.
Scenes that do not contain the H&H interacting really have to justify their existence.

At heart, the structure of the search-Jess's-bedroom scene is Talking Heads Exchange Information. Sebastian and Adrian are -- I hope -- interesting Talking Heads, exchanging vital information and doing nifty stage business while they're at it.
But they're still Talking Heads.

This is a weak structure for a scene. An easy, self-indulgent structure.
You have to ration yourself to maybe one or two Talking Head scenes per manuscript.
This kinda scene is the first to get chopped if your pacing is slow or you need to lose words. Rightly so.

So ... why is this scene in the final book?

I think the search-bedroom scene survived the cuts because it was truly about character revelation. (i.e. it was not using 'character revelation' as an excuse for taking up space.)
The scene 'told' stuff about these three characters that would have been difficult to 'show' in any reasonable length of time . . . which is one of the justifications for Talking Heads.
The scene is short.
It found a spot where I could afford to slow the pacing.
And it made an efficient framework to reveal character.
I let Sebastian look at Jess's possessions and straightforwardly tell the reader what they 'said'.

You'll say this sort of scene isn't so much 'efficient' as 'bloody obvious' and 'heavy handed'.

Hmmm ... yes ....

Warm-up exercises

OK. Maggie and Doyle are about to meet.

But I'm 6700 words (of Rough Draft Two) in.
:headbang:
:more headbang:

I have no icons.
You must imagine.


Anyhow . . . That's too many words of warm-up.

I know better than this.

If somebody came to me and said they'd spent six chapters messing around in one head and then the other head, just revealing volumes about the characters,
but still hadn't brought the H&H face to face,
I'd say to scrap it all and start with the moment of meeting.

But -- dang it -- the shape feels right, even if it's not proper Romance genre plotting shape.
This feels like good story.

I will have to be more disciplined.

So . . . I'll write forward till I get some perspective.
When I have another ten chapters of RoughDraft2 under my belt I'll be stronger and wiser and able to cut this 6700 words of warm-up perplucketimity.

6700 / 130000 words. 5% done!


I'm going to plog onward (plog = slog + plot).

You remember the story about the two frogs who fell in the butter churn?

One of them was realistic and wise and knew he was doomed.
He gave up and drowned.

The other one was a fool. He just kept paddling and paddling and eventually he churned up a big pat of butter and climbed on top and floated there, safe and happy, till the milkmaid came in the morning and opened the churn and screamed bloody murder and beat him to death with the butter paddle.

I take comfort in these wise old fables.

Progress ... sorta

The good news is, I've pulled out paragraphs and sentences and a lot of weed-words from the early scenes,
so the beginning is speeding up some.

Maybe I won't need to toss out the whole first five chapters,
which I seriously consider doing on even days.

Tomorrow is an even day, so I will consider it.


The further good news is I've done some just excellent clever plotting to fix the major pacing problem that was clunking up the last quarter of the story.

Yeah!!!


The bad news is
I keep tossing out words and tightening up the Second Rough Draft.
Instead of moving along and making progress
I write and write and the word count doesn't go anywhere.

I hope I chug along faster now that my Maggie and Doyle are about to meet.

I wish I could do all this faster.

5700 / 130000 words. Only 4% done, unfortunately

On to the next draft

So. The First Rough Draft Of MAGGIE is done.

I've started the second draft, which I call the Second Rough Draft. I've finished Chapter Two.

2000 / 125000 words. 2% done
Second Rough Draft

On the other hand again ...

I spent three solid working days on the new opening.
I wrote a pretty good couple-thousand words.

But ... it isn't 'right'.

If somebody came to me and said,
"I have two openings. One drops us down in the middle of action. The other is folks thinking and talking and the action happened a week ago. Which should I use?"

I'd tell them to go for the action. Go for stuff happening. Danger and chaos and decisions belong on-stage, not mulled and mumbled over later.

But when I try to follow that advice,
it's just not working.
That will make me a little less ready to give advice, maybe.

So I'm going to go back to my original opening ... bunny scene and all.
Bunch of time and effort wasted. Much useless gnawing of fingernails.
I wish I didn't keep doing this to myself.

The old one-step-forward-two-steps-back

Sunday, I hit 76,000 words on the First Rough Draft.

Mostly, I have some bad writing to cover everything that's happening. There are a few important scenes in the last quarter of the manuscript that exist only as
"Maggie and Doyle stagger upstairs and make love'
or
'All the good guys sit at the kitchen table and plot'
or
'Everybody goes into one room. They duke it out and the bad guy loses.'



After agonizing back and forth, I've decided to change a perfectly good opening for what may be a better one. I've lifted out Chapters One to Five, 12K words, and saved them in my discard file.

Now I'll redo the beginning. We're still in Rough Draft One mode.

So ... I'm back to:

64000 / 80000 words. 80% done

Progress of a sort, I suppose.

Writing along in Rough Draft One

Lots of stuff to write today. They're amorphous scenes, some of them, because I haven't done the research. I have to sketch.

My H&H feel mushy. Everybody else who walks on stage steals the story.

And I'm not happy with anybody's 'voice'.

Problems:
(minor) I'm still dithering about the action that kicks off the story.
(major) I don't have my teeth gripped into Maggie's motivations.


I didn't get much done yesterday. I stopped to chat with a friend.
Good prospects for work today though. They had Danish at the coffeeshop, (yeah!) and I think it may be going to rain.

Mulling the opening of Maggie

I'm zipping right along to the end of the First Rough Draft of MAGGIE.

Rough Draft One

64300 / 80000 words. 80% done!


You will note I'm much closer to finished with the First Rough Draft than I was a few days ago.
This is because the First Rough Draft is going to be shorter.
Not 130,000 words.
More along the lines of 80K.
Progress is like that. Illusionary. Or illusive. Or hiding in the bushes laughing at me. Or something.

Where I am ...

-- I have the last scenes imagined, but not written. Some I can see clearly and it's just a matter of sitting down and writing.
Some, not so much clear.
I'll keep plugging along, doing that.

-- Next ... I'll look at the 'shape' of everything that's happening in the whole plot. I'll see it visually and in color. I'll draw the plot on paper with high excitement points and low and see what characters are coming forward or falling back. I'll draw character arcs. See how my central love story is holding the stage.
Or not.

I do know I need more of Maggie and Doyle. I need them together more.


-- Then there's Major Research.
I have major and weird research to do.
I'll have to visit the university library. But I'm not going to find most of what I need.
I'll try.
Then I'll bother actual living folks only as a last resort.

-- There is this one pivotal scene.
I have to put my villain and Doyle and Maggie all in the same room right near the end. This is, of course, for the express purpose of allowing them to be, respectively villainous, heroic and heroine-oic.
And we do this denouement thingum.
I just need to get them there. Plausibly.
That's technical plotting junk and will doubtless clear itself up.


-- All the time, I can't decide which of three possible ways to write the opening scenes.
Things are not looking good for the bunny scene, though.

Alpha Heroes

Christine Wells said, over on the Berkley-Jove board : here


And Jo, about talking your way out rather than hitting someone--do you think that characteristic precludes Doyle from being alpha? I never quite know what an alpha male is. To me, he's the one who will take the lead in a given situation, the one other men/women will instinctively turn to to solve their problems. A man of action, yes, but not necessarily violence.

What does an alpha hero mean to you?


So I replied ...

I've done the ponder-ponder-muse-muse bit on this.

This starts out being a little confusing to me because 'alpha' in Romance does NOT mean the same thing as 'alpha' in animal behaviour. I keep forgetting that.

In Romance, 'alpha' is all about the power balance in the male-female relationship.

Set aside whether the hero is rich or competent or dangerous or useful to the community as a whole. Set aside whether he gives orders to other folks.
The alpha- or beta- ness of the hero, in Romance terms, lies in who gives the orders in the H&H relationship.

Do they eat Chinese or Thai? Who makes the decision -- or voluntarily passes decision power to the other?

Some of the most interesting stories involve changes in the balance of power
or struggles between the protagonists to determine the BoP
or relationships where strongly assertive H&Hs approach intimacy while dancing around an undetermined and unsettled BoP.

So ... you thought I'd never get to the point, didn't you?
... when I look at my super-competent Doyle. My sneaky and covert Doyle. My hyper-self-aware Doyle ....
I see him as alpha in a relationship.

Anyone this self-contained does not have within him the capacity for trust of a beta hero. It's going to be hard enough making Doyle even moderately honest and open when he falls in love.

This being the case, I must make Maggie self-contained and independent and a little isolated as well.

I'm setting her to useful and forceful actions, or course. But I'll also give her some kind of overt bang-slap-pop thing to do near the end -- probably in the confrontation with the villain -- just so everyone KNOWS she's powerful.

Technical Topics -- Preliminary thoughts on the Balance of Power

I blog over at the Berkley Jove site.
Here.
And I wrote a long and involved post and thought I'd compound the offense by double posting it. To wit:



This is what I'd originally posted:
All-in-all, this was a very useful bit of advice -- the call for a direct hero-and-villain confrontation. Thinkiing about it has helped me tremendously.

Christine Wells said:

That's the kind of thing you know in your gut should happen but sometimes you forget. And then someone reminds you and you say, of course! That's how such stories are usually told.

This discussion made me realize that the book I've just written is mainly my heroine's story and there is a final confrontation. But I'd like my hero to kick some butt at the end, too. I'll have to think about how I might arrange that...-

So I said:


Knowing nothing about the story, I'd nonetheless be in favor of bringing the hero in at the cusp of major struggle.

Otherwise you got all that missed an opportunity for H&H to interact and for their relationship to change or consolidate or whatever it is you're doing at that moment.

But that's the trick ... isn't it?
You bring your guy in without lessening the heroine.
You build power in both hero and heroine -- whatever power is appropriate to your characters -- without one power diminishing the other.



I try to do this. I've tried to give the overall story to the heroine. It is her 'quest', if you will.
But I want to keep the hero heroic.
And that means he has to have his own heroic story, not merely heroic attributes.

The way I think of it ... the shape of the plot should be reciprocal.

Even though I am writing 'her' story, I want the totality of the fiction to be such that if we looked at the line of events primarily from hero's Point of View, HE would plausibly be the one moving the plot.
The hero needs his own set of fruitful, effective action and a story that can be followed from beginning to growth to 'black moment' and denoument. His story doesn't have to happen 'on stage', but I feel it has to exist.

Because even where the heroine is primary,
the hero has to be an edgy force with motives of his own.
He has to be big enough to be heroic, here, in the story that's underfoot right now.
Heroism, like heroine-ism, is in the action.

Or, at least, that's what I think. I'm still working out the basics of this writing stuff.


Anyhow ...
what I've done with my villain confrontations, so far --

(Can I say 'so far' with only two books? It seems ... cheeky,)

I've made the true and important and meaty action lie between the HEROINE and the villain,
then I kinda call my hero in at the last moment to do some heavy lifting,
in part because his own 'story' calls for him being there.

This is probably not the best shape to that sort of scene.

This is a danger that the 'heavy lifting' of the scene -- which is apt to be full of bang-pop-slam action -- is so impressive, the reader can miss the quite obvious fact that the heroine -- like your heroine -- was managing nicely on her own.

So if you place your hero in the showdown scene with the villain,
which I think is a good idea,
you may wish to keep a lid on his contribution to the bang-pop-slam.
Which I have failed to do, myself.

The fact that BOTH H&H are winning needs to be, like, obvious.

Maybe you can have the heroine stab somebody or run over them with a truck.
Or something.

Progress in Maggie

Moving right along in the rough draft of MAGGIE.

45200 / 130000 words. 35% done!


Very choppy. Very sketchy. and my H&H are not together. I'm trapped in the toils of the plot ...

New look to the blog

You know how folks decide to put up a website and three or four weeks later ... Shazamm ... there's a website?

It's taken me a little longer.

Ok. Much Longer.
But I'm getting reasonably close. Couple of weeks now, I think.

Anyhoo ... I've changed the face of the blog so it'll look sorta like the rest of the website and everything will be symmetric and pleasant when the website goes live.
(Cue to spooky music and someone shouting, 'Give my creature life!')

So what am I doing this week?
I'm settled down firmly on the first draft of MAGGIE ...


Rough Draft of MAGGIE ...

37000 / 130000 words. 28% done!

Which is less progress than it may look like,
and less progress than I should be making,
but we're headed in the right direction.

Can I speak up about Nora Roberts here? Or is that name-dropping and crass?

I saw Nora Roberts at a panel she gave at RWA National. It was one of about four workshops I actually got to attend in the whole four days. I had no idea National was such a madhouse.

But I picked well. It was useful as well as decorative.
N.R. said her working method was to write her first draft right from beginning to end, not going back to fix anything. Just laying it down.

"Oooooh," says I. "That sounds good. I can do that, too."
It kinda 'clicked'.

The meter shows my progress, NOT on the story, but on the First Rough Draft.
(Which is a really, really rough draft.)
When I get finished with that first draft, I'll be about halfway through the writing.
Maybe not quite halfway.
And this is not counting research, which I have, like, the Baltic Sea still to go through, teaspoon by teaspoon.

This zipping-to-the-end approach feels comfy, natural, satisfying, fruitful. If it were food, it'd be pumpkin pie.

I've been trying to find an efficient modus de writing. I'm optimistic. This might be it.

Where I am right now in the story --

Adrian has just crawled his secret and unregarded way out of British Service Headquarters in Paris, headed for the slums of ... someplace in Paris. I haven't looked up where the slums were. OK.
Adrian is -- putting it in modern terms -- pursuing his own agenda.

We're in his POV.

Re Adrian POV -- this is challenging because
a) Adrian-at-twelve doesn't sound like Adrian-at-twenty.
b) a long stretch of Adrian POV gives him more weight in the story than I really want him to have.

But my plot demands it.
If I could just learn to plot.

So. Next.
I have to balance my people here. I can't do too long a straight run of Adrian because this is Doyle and Maggie's story and the secondary characters are not allowed to run away with the reader's sympathy and attention.

So I now need a strong vignette of Doyle -- which I have in my head. And then I need one of Maggie -- which I haven't the least idea of what it is.

Maggie, Maggie, Maggie ... tell me what you are doing.
If you don't, you're going to sit there with a hairbrush in your lap, looking at mirror, thinking about things.
We don't want that, do we?