Showing posts with label Grey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Grey. Show all posts

Friday, August 10, 2018

Some random questions on the stories

A kindly reader has asked a few questions.  I paraphrase the questions and answer them below, in case anyone is interested.



Lucille seems tragic, but with a touch of inhumanity. 
The long and short of it is, Lucille is not a nice person. 
Taking a toddler to France in dangerous political times is iffy at best, so we start with that. Then Lucille's loss of her husband and her imprisonment, rape, and torture made her very hard. Cold. Fanatical almost.
Annique paid the price.

Annique's eidetic memory was recognized as soon as she could talk. It's the key to why she was in France at all. If she hadn't been uniquely useful, her mother would have sent her back to England when Annique's father died.


Frankly, Lucille exploited Annique and spared her very little. Just as Lucille spared herself nothing.

Was Lucille a villain who manipulated and used her daughter and later Justine in a despicable way
or a heroine who stepped up when England's existence was at stake?
Was she a woman who sacrificed everything she cared about for England's sake?
Or a selfish ideologue?

Or, like, all of the above?
 

I don't explain and we never go into her head. I try to show her as a woman with regrets. I'm hoping the reader will find her believable as a person and wonder about her and feel sorry for her. 



She had just a touch of inhumanity

On the exculpatory side:

Lucille, as a high-level officer of the Secret Police, curbed some of the evil things going on. Justine's rescue from the child brothel and sending Justine to help the last of the Caches are two examples of Lucille's work.


Did she really keep a brothel?


 Well ... yes.


I have trouble writing about historical whoredom. It needs somebody wiser than me.


Women had few career choices in this era. Some women, for one reason or another, became whores. A rich, well-run brothel like the one Lucille ran was an island of safety in a city visited by war, revolution, riot, and the occasional bout of starvation. The woman working there were grateful to be in the place. They had different expectations than run in the world of 1867 or 2018.

So I'm trying to deal with difficult historical realities in the context in which contemporaries would have judged them. Also trying not to be too realistic.


She raised Annique to be a spy, naively committed to France, while using her for the opposite cause. She set Annique up for the heartbreak and disillusionment in TSL,


Lucille wouldn't have felt it was morally dreadful to be a French patriot. Lucille spent her whole life among French patriots and, I think, loved some of them. Arguably, France was on the right philosophical side in that war.

Lucille chose loyalty to the British. She left Annique free to choose which side she'd be on. 

Annique feels betrayed when she sees all her letters and reports have found their way to the British. A tough day to be Annique.


What happens to Grey and Annique?

I don't say what happens to Grey and Annique after the end of TSL, since I want to be free to return to the timeline and write a story there if I ever decide to which I probably won't though.

I'm sure they had a true HEA, which means they both found uses for all their talents. Maybe out in India. Or maybe they went under deep cover in the south of France and ran a safehouse. I know they did exciting things.



Why does Shandor have a Hungarian name? At least, the spelling isn't Hungarian but the sound of it is.


It's a Kaldarashi name. A Rom name.


At the end of Rogue Spy, what was Galba's final reaction to Pax's insubordination?

All along, Doyle and Grey kept Galba in the loop about what was going forward. Galba, in the manner of senior management since the dawn of time, turned a blind eye to what he couldn't prevent . . . and what was ultimately serving his purposes.

Galba would have preferred that Pax not be the one to kill his own father, (Who among us wishes to promote patricide?) but he approves of the overall outcome.

After the close of the book Galba gives Pax a legendary and wide-ranging chewing out. Then Grey, Doyle, and Galba take turns interfering with wedding preparations to brief Pax on what they expect from him when he heads back to Italy.


Who replaced Grey when he retired?


Some "guy I didn't need to name or worry about what happened to him" took over. Then another guy, likewise. Then Adrian.



When Adrian stepped into Galba's shoes as Head of Service, the position of Head of the British Section was taken by -- you guessed it --  another "guy I don't need to name or worry about."


All else being equal I'd rather not name or describe characters who aren't necessary to the action because I always have more than enough characters anyhow.


How did Justine learn about Lucille's death and how was she affected by it? I expected to see this come up in The Black Hawk when the story moved parallel of the events in Spymaster's Lady and Vauban's death was mentioned.


[SPOILER]
What we're looking at here is the section of Black Hawk that begins with Hawker coming to Justine's window carrying a letter and ends when Justine shoots Hawker.

[END SPOILER]

In this time frame Vauban had been dead about a week. Lucille, who has been in Italy for months, has been dead a few weeks. 
The action of TSL begins after the action of this section ends.

Before this Black Hawk section opens .... Lucille dies. Annique leaves immediately for Paris. Soulier's resident spy sends word of Lucille's death to Soulier in London. LeBlanc's assassin, having killed Lucille, spends a lot of time attempting to find Annique and finish the job. He then wastes more time trying to track her north. Eventually the assassin rides for Paris and reports to LeBlanc.

During the TBH section, only LeBlanc, Soulier, a couple messengers, folks in Italy, and Annique know about Lucille's death. Justine meets none of these people except LeBlanc and he's not about to reveal he knows Lucille is dead because he has no legitimate way to have this news.

After the BH section, Paris Secret Police get the info.

So Justine doesn't learn about Lucille's death "on stage," as it were, and we don't see her reaction.

Saturday, September 14, 2013

Technical Topic - Why Are They having Sex on a Cactus?


Someone mentioned --
this is a kinda summary and paraphrase here --
the unlikelihood that our Hero and Heroine would fight a pitched battle in the morning, scamper like hell cross-country in the afternoon, and then fall onto their bedrolls in the evening with energy enough to stage a six-page sex romp.


And I have to agree.
Even when I was young and and limber I could manage no more than two out of three of those on a good day.

So why do we see love-on-rocks romps and stufflikethatthere in good Romance?

Why do skilled writers give us this sort of over-the-top scene?
More to the point -- why do readers love these scenes?
Why does the reader suspend disbelief here, when she'll go ballistic on the authenticity of the fish knives?

Couple of tropes at work here.
One I think of as 'Naked in the Heather':

genuine heather
Our redoubtable hero and heroine think nothing of stripping down to the buff and having at on a heather-covered hillside in the Highlands, in March, taking no notice of gorse bushes and rocks and bristly heather and, well . . . March in Scotland.





genuine sand
The H&H make love on beaches, (with sand in every crack and crevice and I do not mean among-the-tidal-rocks crevices,) in haystacks, on New York City ledges high above the traffic, and in public toilets at the airport, (Ewwww.)


The other trope I call 'It's Only a Flesh Wound, Honey', which is often also Glad-to-be-alive Sex.

Our H&H take time out for some nookie while fleeing packs of ebil men armed with AK-47s or rising hurricane waters or, nowadays, zombies. Nor are they deterred by various wounds acquired in their travels.
One can only marvel at the good health and general enthusiasm of all concerned, frankly.

Why are these tropes not merely tolerated, but popular?
I haz theories.
genuine passion
One is that readers see sex in these unlikely situations as a sign of overwhelming passion. They know they would be distracted by the prospect of hermit crabs scuttling over their private parts on some secluded beach.
The heroine isn't ...
because she's transported by passion.

Many folks come to Romance genre for a fix of exactly such overwhelming, transformational, the-world-well-lost-for-love, crazy passion . . . an indifference to gorse bushes and gunfire being absent from most folks' real lives because they are not fruitcakes.

And readers enjoy the mix of desperate, adrenalin-producing action and sex because it's just plain exciting. They'll tolerate the unlikelihood that one would pause for a quickie in the middle of hot pursuit if the sex is really, really good.

Romance writers use these old reliables because they work. The tropes heighten emotion. They feel familiar and comfy to long-time readers. 

Now.  Full disclosure here.  I did the Glad-to-Be-Alive-Sex thingum once that I know of.  It was in  .... um ... My Lord and Spymaster.  Jess and Sebastian have escaped, unhurt, from the lair of Lazarus.  Jess had done some knife fighting in that incident.

genuine Romance book
****

Oh, but she was amusing him, wasn't she? 

 [Sebastian said,] "When you brush up against death, you want to couple afterwards.  I found that out years ago.  I didn't know it worked the same with women.  Does it?"
 

"Does this time," she said frankly.  "Mostly I was real young.  And the last couple times I was so seasick I didn't want to do anything but curl up and die. 

******

So that is my own particular contribution to this trope.


Writers have the special joy of watching really good writers subvert these tropes.

not quite a sex scene, however
Remember the scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where a bruised, exhausted Indy falls asleep before the H&H can make love? Spielberg pokes fun at 'It's Only a Flesh Wound, Honey,'and makes the writers in his audience fall in love with him.

Sunday, June 23, 2013

One of Those 'Friends Without Benefits' Situations



A kindly reader asks:

"I was a little questioning about the interactions between Annique and Adrian. Some other reader's reviews suggested that he was a little bit in love with Annique, now obviously this was after he had met Justine so I was wondering if  you could elaborate  on this ..."


You roll your characters up in the same blanket in a ruined monastery and folks wonder if they're maybe a little bit more than 'good friends'.
But, really, I was just trying for friendship between those two, which is probably naïveté on my part.  Maybe there is a certain unlikeliness that one would cuddle up next to Hawker and feel only an innocent appreciation of the warmth.

Would they just be good friends, those two?

Well ... why friends at all?

Once Adrian and Annique meet, a sense of camaraderie between these two is almost inevitable.
They're experts in the same profession; they speak the same 'language' as it were; they depend on one another; they're running from the same enemy. 
And Adrian has always had an admirable gift of true friendship with women.

At the beginning of Spymaster's Lady, Annique feels protective toward Adrian and amused by him.  She likes him.  She respects him for the spy he is and the greater spy he will become.  But it's not romantic love.  (I maintain.)  Annique is sexually attracted to the older, harder, more powerful Grey instead of the wild, brave, brilliant boy her own age.      

But why not both?  Why not les sexy overtones between Adrian and Annique?
What are they, deficient in vitamins?

Well ... there's this.  Adrian quite deliberately marks out a platonic relationship between himself and Annique.  He teases, but makes no real sexual overtures.  Once it's clear Grey is attracted to her, Adrian doesn't let himself even think of her in a sexual way.  That's one of the virtues he brings from that criminal gang background of his youth.  A friend's woman is utterly taboo. 

And then, there's Justine. 
The influence of Justine defines the Adrian-Annique friendship.  She's only glancingly mentioned in Spymaster's Lady, and not by name, but she's at the forefront of Adrian's mind throughout the book.  We don't see this because we don't go into his thoughts, the book not being about Adrian, after all.  (We go into his POV once.  I think it's once.) 

The action of Spymaster's Lady takes up a few days after Justine shot Adrian.  (We see it happen in Black Hawk.)  When, in TSL, our feverish Hawker jokes about the wound, he's remembering that Justine led a pack of soldiers after him.  That she tried to kill him.  That's what he's not saying to Grey and Doyle when he's being lightheartedly heroic.
Justine's betrayal is the subtext of Adrian's behavior through much of Spymaster's Lady.

(I love to use the word 'subtext' and don't really care if I'm using it right.  Life improves tremendously when we learn not to care about using the word 'subtext' incorrectly.)

Anyhow, TSL opens with Adrian's betrayal and loss. That bullet hole defines Adrian's reaction to Annique.  He's been so battered by the end of his passionate, deadly, complex relationship with Justine that a new sexual attraction would only be painful.  The protective friendship with Annique is exactly the healing he needs.  Maybe the emotional tie with Annique is stronger because he thinks he's lost Justine forever. 

So anyhow -- responding to that question --  that is how I see the relationship between these two.  But every book is a partnership between the author and the reader.  If readers see the Adrian/Annique relationship differently and the books don't directly contradict . . .
Go for it.
Take the story where you want it to go.
Or, anyhow, go for it till I write something elsewise.

Monday, March 25, 2013

Out-take from Spymaster's Lady

A bit of old draft attrib photostever
Doing other stuff today and writing on the WIP, I came across a bit of Spymaster's Lady that didn't make it into the manuscript. 
So I figgered --  I'm never going to use this.  Let's post it on the blog and maybe somebody can get something out of it.

This piece would have fit in the part of the story where Annique and Grey are first entering London.  Instead of passing through Covent Garden and heading off to Meeks Street, they stop for a while.   In this early draft version, Annique was going to write something important at this point.  That disappeared in a later draft.


The fictional locale -- this tavern -- continues to exist in the Spymaster's fictive world.  It just hasn't made its way into a book yet.

****

Covent Garden
ETA this first paragraph.

She had slept, on and off, through the night and the early morning while Robert, and the horse Harding, brought her all the way to London.  She awakened suddenly in the dawn to the sound of wagons on cobblestones and women in white kerchiefs selling ladles of milk from the huge cans on the back of their carts.  The sky was still pink when he brought her into the Covent Garden, which was not a garden at all but instead a market of incredible size, full of flowers and vegetables and chickens in cages, complaining.

In a street to the side of the market was the tavern called the Crocodile, which from the look of it was an accustomed meeting place of smugglers and other clandestine types.  They knew Robert well, but did not once say his name or look at him directly or ask for payment.  It was only 'Yes, Sir,' and they brought him ale to drink and a meal of beef which was a loathsome habit in the morning and thoroughly English.

For her, by some miracle, they conjured up black coffee in a tin pot and fresh rolls, so she was ready to forgive them as much as they wished.  She allowed Robert to gift her with that coffee and another meal later in the morning.  She did not have the strength to argue with him any longer, being disheartened and frightened by what she was about to do. 

He was an even more important smuggler captain than she had realized.  He sprawled at the end of the bench, his feet propped up, his back to the wall, his coat lapped about him, and dozed all the long morning.  Men of all types and degrees, and a few women, came and went from the tavern.  Not one glanced in his direction.  Only important men can be so anonymous. 

He made her safe there, from the denizens of that place and from those far worse who lurked in the streets outside.  In safety, she could perform the next step in the great task she had set herself.  She chose her spot, near the window where the light was good, and wrote and wrote and wrote in the small black book she had bought.

She held it now.  To buy a blank-papered exercise book and ink and quills and blotting paper had consumed three and tuppence.  But that was not in any way the cost of the book she turned over and over in her hands.

"I did not know I would be this afraid," she said.  "Or that I would be ashamed."

Robert stood beside her with his arms crossed.  It was as if he were on watch while some smuggled cargo was landed – alert and focused and awaiting events.  The horse Harding would have been more inquisitive.

********

ETA:  This out-take above slid into another, also not used.  So I will add that.  Two out-takes for the price of one.  Hey.  Such a deal.

Anneka, in this draft, is carrying a coded book to England.  She has promised Adrian to drop it off at Meeks Street.  As part of her own plans, she is doing that.

In the later draft I simplified the story and eliminated the whole six- or seven- thousand word subplot.  Aren't you glad? 


*****


She held it now.  To buy a blank-papered book and ink and quills and blotting paper had consumed two pounds, ten, and tuppence.  But that was not in any way the cost of the book she turned over and over in her hands.

"I did not know I would be this afraid," she said.  "Or that I would be ashamed."

Robert stood beside her with his arms crossed.  He was a brew of complex emotions, most of them hidden from her.

 Number Seven was made of gray stone.  Thin, white curtains hung in the windows, so one could see out of but not in.  She did not know if anyone were watching her at this moment.  "I must reveal myself to these men," she said.  "I have the greatest wariness of them.  Fouché's organization is the best on the earth, of course – those are the men in France I worked for when I was a spy, you understand – but these British are nearly as good.  I have been their enemy all my life.  Now I stand in their country not twenty feet from their stronghold.  It is a sobering thought.  I must leave London immediately when I have passed over this book to them."

"Yes," Robert said.

"You are being silent to me again."  The book was getting damp in her hands because they were sweating so.  "You have not even asked what it is I do here."

"You're going to bring that book to that house."

"Truly one would think you were a fish, the amount of curiosity in you.  What I do here is risk my neck, all so I may become a traitor to my people.  It will keep me awake at night for the rest of my life."

"I doubt it."  He was a man of many certainties, Robert the smuggler.

"Hah.  I will show you."  She opened the book and let the pages flow under her fingers.  "Look.  This is code.  Not one I know, and I have no skill in dissecting them.  But I do not need to take the code to pieces to know what is in here.  When I saw it first in France I saw at once what it must be, written in so many hands, with the numbers in it, and organized just so.  This is a report on the ships that Napoleon builds to invade England.  When and where and how.  It is the work of many cunning men, this book."

"I see."

"You do not see.  For you there would be no problem.  You are not political  You would toss it overboard, or light a fire with it, or give it to those men ..."  She glanced once more at Number Seven, Meeks Street.  "... in there.  It would be all the same for you.  For me, matters are less simple.  A mile from here is a man named Soulier.  A Frenchman.  By all the duty of my life, I should take this book to him." 

"Why don't you?"  Robert crossed his arms.

"Oh ... it is complicated."  She scuffed her feet upon the pavement.  "I made a promise, for reasons that seemed good at the time.  That is some of it.  But, in truth ...  "

Truth stuck in her throat, as it did, occasionally.  She would say it, though.  She would admit to herself what she was doing.  "I am come here to put a weapon into the hands of the English."

"A weapon?"

"Of a kind.  Not a weapon of soldiers.  One of politics.  Battles do not hinge upon seven ships here and twenty there, most of which the British have been told many times.  And they do not know of the false hulls, which will never be completed, and the many ships hidden in the south and ...   well, many matters that make this book not so correct as the men who wrote it would like to believe.  But I will not tell you these things.  They are not good for you to know."  She sighed.  "The dangerous secrets ... matters of battle plans and troops and supplies.  I assure you, they are not in this little book."  They were firmly in her brain.  But of that she refused to think at all. 

"Useless is it?"  Robert looked at her without any change of expression.  For all he was a smuggler captain and most intelligent, she could be speaking Romany to him.

"Useless to soldiers.   This is another sort of weapon.  Words can be most powerful, my Robert.  Your English diplomats will lay this tally of ships upon the conference table and give the lie to Buonaparte when he claims that he wishes peace and demands concessions."  She scowled at what she held, since it tormented her with several hard choices.  "This book will be the cat in the pigeons of many dovecotes.  The French, themselves, do not know of these ships.  The ordinary people.  They do not want more war."

"Nobody wants that."

"Perhaps not.  But those nobodys do not become traitors this fine morning."  She wiped first one hand, and then the other, upon her skirt.  "So I will tell the French what Citizen Buonaparte keeps up his sleeve.  And it may be the men of Paris and Lyon and Rouen will see that those hundred ships never sail at all.  I have planned this for a week, my betrayal of my country.  Now I must do it.  When I have finished, I shall be so disgusted with myself I shall not even care if Duval finds me."

"Don't be silly, Anneka." 

"You are right.  I shall still care and for that I despise myself also."  She shrugged.  "But this is to make a drama.  I have been well trained not to make the dramas.  Stay here, mon ami, when I go across and do this thing.  These are not people you should involve yourself with."

"I go with you."  He said it in a voice not susceptible to argument, being like paving blocks, set closely.  So she let him come because she was frightened and wanted him next to her, even if it were dangerous for him, a little.  With a man such as Robert beside her she could face even this. 

Dull and respectable was written on all the stones at Number Seven Meeks Street which showed that even stones could tell lies.  The wide door was placid, as if it were a mouth that had swallowed a thousand secrets and grown fat on them.  It was a solidly built house with bars on the windows.

"Go ahead, Anneka," Robert said.  "Let's get it over with."

So she rapped loudly, using the knocker which was in the form of a curled rose.  In a minute, a boy opened the door, taller than she was, but probably three years younger.  Anneka dropped the book quickly into his hands.  "A man asked me to bring this to you."

But the boy wasn't looking at her.  He was looking past her.  At Robert.

Robert took her shoulders, which startled her for it was the very first time he had willingly put his hands upon her.  The boy stepped back and Robert pushed her carefully and rapidly across the threshold, into the house, into a room which was a dull, tasteless parlor, stiff with disuse. 

"Robert ..."  She tried to turn, confused.  His hands tightened.  "I don't want to be here, Stop it, Robert."  The boy locked the door behind them and went to unlock another door on the far side of the parlor.


Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Technical Topics -- Character Description

Someone was asking whether they should pour out the whole description of a a character all at once -- which might be dull -- or chop it up some and spread it out over a chapter or two.

It occurred to me that this was missing the point somewhat.

So I thought a few scattered thoughts on describing characters.
 
When you describe a character, you can give a mere list of the obvious. Hair color, eye color, what he's wearing, height, skin tone. But description is more interesting and useful when it serves a secondary purpose. That's thrifty writing.

So we describe our characters and do something else as well.  Here's three or four of the several ways to add value to character description:
(ETA, I made that five ways.)

1) You can tell story with description. Make the appearance part of the ongoing action. The description shows result of what has been and intention for what is coming. You could think of it as description propelled by the action.

Not -- 'he had blue eyes'.
So much as -- 'he opened blue eyes, bloodshot from last night's bender'.

Not -- 'she had brown hair, worn long'.
But -- 'She wrestled with wind-tangled brown hair, taming it before she walked into the meeting.'

Not -- He was a huge, rough-looking man with a scar on his face and gray streaks in his hair. He dressed in the respectable, worn clothing a laborer might wear.

But -- He was dressed like a laborer today . . . a big, ugly, thuggish, barely respectable giant in sturdy clothes. His hair was wet and the gray streaks didn’t show. The scar that ran down his cheek was fake. The imperturbable strength wasn’t.

See how the first set of these is a static description. The second is a description that could only be right in that exact moment.
We don't just say, 'this is how Doyle looks', we imply he has looked different in the past.  It's not how he happens to look; his appearance is related to the rain outside.

2) We do not just see our fellow; we see him through one specific set of eyes. The POV character adds value, insight and weight to the description. The description turns around and reveals that POV character.

She watched him work for a moment, disquieted by the edged beauty of his face. Lines of his hair fell in thin slashes of black. His lips were strongly marked.


She was totally feminine in every movement, indefinably French. With her coloring—black hair, pale skin, eyes of that dark indigo blue—she had to be pure Celt. She’d be from the west of France. Brittany, maybe. Annique was a Breton name. She carried the magic of the Celt in her, used it to weave that fascination the great courtesans created. Even as he watched, she licked her lips again and wriggled deliberately, sensually. A man couldn’t look away.


Could that description of Hawker come from anyone but Justine?  Could Annique be seen that way by anyone but Grey, right then, right there, in their prison?

3) Description is not a 'fill in the blanks' list of things we need to convey. It's part of an overall impression. We do not need to be only literal. For the larger portrait, we mix physical details with metaphor and symbol, story history, archetype. Give the hair color, shape of nose, texture of skin.  Sure. But also enmesh them in meaning when you do it.  Imbed them in the intangibles of the character you are creating.

She had the face of an ardent Viking. Strands of wet hair lay along the spare curve of her cheek, outlining the bones. Her eyes were the color of Baltic amber.

He was young to be captain. Thirty, maybe. He had black hair and a big beak of a nose, and sailor skin, dark and rough, burned by suns that weren't polite and English. Colorful splotches of blood were drying on his shirt. That would be her blood, probably.


4) We use the small details and all the senses.

He couldn't remember the last time he'd wanted a street whore. This one was fresh as a daisy, clean and sweet. She smelled of soap and flowers and spices. Even her fingernails were clean.


ETA:  The comment trail, and a comment elsewhere, brought to mind another common use of character description.  This uses description for a structural purpose. 

5)  Let's say you're going to step outside the on-going action, bring the narrative drive to a screeching halt, slow the pacing to molasses, and do some backstorying or philosophizing.  Character Description is a great way to segue into the internals you're laying down.  Backstory, for instance.  

Lookit here.  We're fairly early into Black Hawk and I'm filling in the What Has Gone Before column. 

“She’ll make it. She’s hard to kill.”

“Many have tried.”

Her hair spread everywhere on the pillow. Light-brown hair, honey hair, so soft and smooth it looked edible. He knew how it felt, wrapped around his fingers. Knew how her breasts fitted into his hands. He knew the weight and shape and strength of her legs when they drew him into her.

A long time ago, she’d shot him. They’d been friends, and then lovers, and then enemies. Spies, serving different sides of the war.

The war was over, this last year or two. Sometimes, he walked outside the shop she kept and looked in. Sometimes, he found a spot outside and watched for a while, just to see what she looked like these days.


The last time they'd exchanged words, she'd promised to kill him.  He hadn't expected her on his doorstep, half-dead, running from an enemy of her own.
 

I have the most dangerous woman in London in my bed.  


That's description opening the door to backstory.  We go in the order:
a) See her now. 
b) Think about her then.
c) Talk about the past.
d) Bring it back to the present. In this case I do that with a line of Internal Monolog.





ETA2: It occurs to me that I didn't really answer the question at the top.  
How long can a piece of Character Description be?  

Keep it short.  

Do not indulge in the flowery crap that readers skip anyhow.  
Doesn't matter how beautiful the words are, they have to earned a place in the story with something more than pretty.
This here is a famous example of what readers skip. 

I don't say you can't describe at length.  But if you've written more than half a page of Character Description, you should probably go back and reconsider.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

When to use saidisms.

A 'saidism' is one of those nifty replacements for 'said'.
He whispered, he noted, he declared, he suggested, he promised and so on and on and on.  

You run into the rule sometimes --
No Saidisms.

And it just seems so wrong.

What it is . . .

there's this unfortunate tendency of novice writers to pluck creative dialog tags, apparently at random, from a list they have in the back of their three-ring binder from sixth grade.

This leads the friendly folks who put together writing books to grow thin and haggard and tear their hair out and make a rule
No Saidisms
which probably relieves their minds considerably,

but it's, like, y'know, more of a guideline.

When do we use saidisms?
Lots of places.

Pretty obviously, the first thing we ask ourselves when we come up with a nifty saidism is whether this word
-- and all the information packed into this word --
has been put into a dialog tag because we need that information.

Are we writing he complained because the complaining is important
or have we just decided to tag dialog in a novel way because we're sick of using 'said' and Mrs. Grundy told us in sixth grade not to repeat words?


A dismaying proportion of the saidisms used by novice writers are information that
-- does not need to be conveyed,
-- or can be revealed another, better, way,
-- or is exaggerated or inappropriate.



When you use a saidism, what you get, a lot of times, is:

"I'll tell them to leave the mayo off your sandwich," Maurice stated . . . (or declared, cajoled, promised, expostulated, argued, complained, opined, or maintained.)

Really.  No.
Don't use that saidism.  Use 'he said.'
Maurice didn't promise or declare.
He just said it, for Pete's sake.


Before we use a saidism, we assure ourselves the saidism is logical and necessary and not exaggerated and we're dealing with information the reader must be told.


Even if this is necessary information -- is a dialog tag is the best way to get it across to the reader??

The brute force way to determine this is to try out a couple different techniques that convey this necessary and exciting information.

One way to convince ourselves we don't really need to tell the reader that Maurice is asserting and maintaining and cajoling about mayonnaise is to drag those saidisms out of the dialog tag and put them into action or internals.  That's when we suddenly realize that Maurice ain't doing any such thing as cajoling, nohow.



Anyhow . . . let's say we got this character is whispering.

First we satisfied ourselves that the character is really whispering
and not just 'saying'.  

We also decided we need to tell the reader the character is whispering
and we have decided that the nature of the dialog itself and the surrounding action does not at this time make it clear this is all in whispers.


Ok.  So, having got those questions out of the way, we look at our saidism as a dialog tag --

She whispered, with a child’s simplicity, “I do not need to see your face, Citoyenne Finch.”

We change it around a bit. Take it out of the dialog tag and put it into action or description or internals.

They could only speak in whispers. She said, with a child’s simplicity, “I do not need to see your face, Citoyenne Finch.”

We convey it in Internal Monolog.

I must not be overheard. She said, with a child’s simplicity, “I do not need to see your face, Citoyenne Finch.”

We drop the information into description.

“I do not need to see your face, Citoyenne Finch.” The words snaked out from under the rain; words made of cool wavery sounds.


When we look at these couple alternatives, the simplicity of simply laying out the whisper as a dialog tag is obvious.
We place the saidism in this sentence and we know it's right.
We can break that 'no saidisms rule' and still sleep easily at night which is nice.



Speaking generally, it has been my experience that verbs in the class of saidisms that relate to the actual mouth-moving action of speaking,
like whispered, murmured, muttered, yelled, spat out, grated under his breath, and so on
 are the most apt to become elegant and thrifty dialog tags.

They are simple, straightforward actions that lend themselves to expression as simple action verbs.

Having determined that we should tell the reader about the mouth movements, we may often do this with a saidism.


Moving along -- there is a much larger class of saidisms that show intent and emotion. Avowed, complained, averred, promised, guessed, questioned, concluded, wished, harassed, rejoiced, mourned, remembered, and so on.

These are the saidisms that end up getting latched onto sentences that do not deserve them.
What we tend to forget is that these are powerful words. You can't just drop them down anywhere.

This is where we get the infamous:

"I'll tell them to leave the mayo off your sandwich," he promised. Or avowed, stated, maintained, declared, cajoled, expostulated or stone-walled.

All those words are too important and exciting to get attached to a sentence about mayo.  They are BIG.  In this case, he didn't promise or declare.
He just said it, for Pete's sake.


Speaking very generally again,
these saidisms that carry intent and emotion are full of complex information and abstract concepts.

The concepts are so big and floppy they want to spread out comfortably in Internal Monolog, in other internals, or in the dialog itself, or in really sneaky and significant accompanying action.
 The information -- and we are assuming it is vitally necessary information and relevant and all that -- doesn't like to be crammed into a dialog tag.

Let's say we have something to say about Hawker's state of mind.

“You don’t eat your own donkey. And you don’t use your own woman as bait,” Hawker complained. "That’s one of those delicate distinctions gentlemen make.”


or

“You don’t eat your own donkey. And you don’t use your own woman as bait,” Hawker said sarcastically. "That’s one of those delicate distinctions gentlemen make.”

But let's put it into action instead.

“You don’t eat your own donkey. And you don’t use your own woman as . . .” Hawker kicked a loose chunk of cobble in the gutter. It rolled end-over-end and rapped up against a wall. “bait. That’s one of those delicate distinctions gentlemen make.”

The action carries the big, complex emotion in a way the dialog tag can't.

 If we have an emotion to convey, we take it out of the dialog tag where it is all cramped up and simplified. We stop trying to compress big important emotion into the tone of a voice. In IM, in action, in description, we can use more words, basically.
And it lets us pull in some images we got lying around in our brains doing nothing in particular.


The final class of saidism is the fairly innocuous
replied, answered, repeated, interrupted, cut off, and so on.

These talk about the mechanics of the dialog train. Useful friends of the writer, this lot, but only if the answering or repeated or interrupting is significant.

We don't use them when it is obvious that one line of dialog is in answer to the other. (Well . . . duh.) We don't use them when the act of answering or repeating is not in itself important.


The whole -- 'when do we use saidisms' question -- is like talking about anything else in writing.  You read the advice in the writing books.  Take some.  Leave some.  Some gets rained out.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Spymaster's Lady detail

Wonderful reader Eva writes to ask ..

haven't found anything to help me understand how Grey & Adrian were captured and put in that French prison with Annique. I feel like it was something with Adrian's injury but I'm not sure why I believe that. I think I just get so lost in the story I forget to look for those missing pieces of information. Is it written somewhere?

Ah. Here we have wandered out of Annique's story and into the edges of Adrian's story.

In the weeks before Spymaster's Lady opens, Adrian is on assignment as the key element of a large operation. It's an important op indeed, since Grey is in France, in person, directing, and ready to pull Adrian out if it all goes south.

Spying his merry way through the operation, Adrian has the misfortune to run into an old adversary. Old adversary, old friend, old lover, old rival ... anyhow, she knows him very well.
It's just bad luck she's there. Sometimes, on an operation, you run into bad luck.

Covers are blown. Carefully laid plans go awry. Plots unravel. Adrian gets shot when he's naked in bed with his old lover.
She shoots him. Talk about your wake-up calls.

Our lad is out the window, grabbing his clothes on the way.

Adrian's done this much . . . the op can be salvaged. Grey and Doyle step in to do that. But Adrian's on the streets, running.

When Grey goes to scoop him up, they're both captured.

This all happens outside the bounds of Spymaster's Lady, though. We catch only the merest whiff of it there.

ETA in July 2010:  When I actually sat down to write the JUSTINE story, I decided to do things somewhat differently.  So this is not what happened.
Just forget about all this part . . . okay?

Monday, July 14, 2008

Adrian, Grey, Jessamyn . . . look like . . .

Emlyn says ...


And because you mentioned that Annique resembled a young Natasha Kinski, could you put a face on Adrian as well? And Jess as well?

I got Jess tacked down someplace or other as Robin Wright, in The Princess Bride. Further back in the posts a bit there's links to pictures for both Jess and Annique.

Adrian ...


Two artists' rendering.
painted about five years
apart.












This is Sebastian.
Here, .

[Edited to add -- I've pulled out the copyright photo and put in a link to it. Now we are all legal again. ]



And Grey.










.


creative commons Bollywood Sargam
You are a witch, btw. These characters are ALIVE to me.
.
(jo blinks.)
You mean they aren't alive?
.
.
WAAAAHHH!

Sunday, July 06, 2008

What they look like . . .

For Grey -- remember, he is not particularly handsome. Maybe Javier Bardem. Photo here, here,



Or possibly Hugh Jackman here and here


For Doyle ... how about Bruce Willis? here