Simple Mystery

And I’m an addict.  A video game addict.

Plenty of my friends, including my beloved Mark, are game programmers, so I am somewhat reluctant to say this next thing I have to say.  But I feel I must tell you, interwebs: video games are a blight on the human condition.

See, here’s how I see it: we, as human beings, are driven to accomplish things.  To make, to create, to do.  It’s a need–one at the very top of Maslow’s Pyramid, but a need just the same. It’s why we write books and compose songs and put people on the freaking moon.

Games fill that need.  Or rather, they provide the illusion of filling it.  In the same way that a Krispy Kreme doughnut is fake food, games are fake accomplishments.

And just as a doughnut is sweeter than any legitimately nourishing food, in-game accomplishments come faster and more reliably than any legitimately nourishing acts.  They fill you up, too.  Who really needs to write a book when you’ve just completed your collection of skull cut gems in the Sims?

Would you like to know how many hours of my time this picture represents? Yeah, so would I.

All of this is my way of saying that if I have one true enemy in my quest to become a published writer, it is EA Studios.  No, wait, it’s Wizards of the Coast.  No, wait, it’s me.

I’ve spent the past week toiling away on another project, and now I am back to working on Character Storylines for my sequel.  There is a lot of work to be done here, but it is fun work, the kind of work that I most enjoy doing.

3:35 PM: Ok.  I feel like I can really get Gallo nailed down today.  There’s a major hanging plot thread from the last book that he needs wrapped up, as well as the things he’s got going on in this book.  Integrating these things will probably be my toughest challenge, planning-wise.

4: 38 PM: Argh, I am so distracted today!  Ok.  Seriously.  Gallo.

5:31 PM: Break for… uh, a meal.  What do you call a cross between lunch and dinner?

6:28 PM: Back.  So, what I have accomplished so far today is mostly… invisible work.  The sort of stuff that is necessary, but results in absolutely zero words on the page.  As much as I know this part needs to happen, I find it frustrating.  It leaves me feeling like I’ve done a big pile of nothing.

8:41 PM: All right.  That was not the best day of liveblogging.  But I think for better or worse, it’s over.

Well, here I am, on Step Five of the Snowflake Method.

Can I just say, I am loving it? Here’s the thing about the Snowflake Method: it breaks your novel up into discrete chunks you can deal with. Trust me when I say that you cannot hold the plot of your entire novel in your head. I know it seems like you should be able to, because you can do it with books you’ve read. So why on Earth couldn’t you do it with a book you’re writing?

Well, because there is both more and less detail in your own proto-novel. There’s less detail: that whole muddy stretch where your protagonist Learns Something Crucial. You don’t know exactly what or why, but you know that it advances you to the next plot point. And there’s more detail: that part where the victim’s wife gets killed, except maybe it’s actually his ex-wife, or maybe it’s actually his mistress. And maybe she doesn’t get killed, she just gets beaten into a coma, which leads to that whole plot thread where your character wonders whether she’ll recover in time to name her attacker. There are tons of competing, incomplete plot threads that all exist in parallel in your head, and the whole effect is… well, murky.

Which is sort of what the Snowflake helps you cut through. Today I’ll be working on Step Five, Character Storylines. Basically, I’ll be writing a page that tells the story from the point of view of each of the main characters. This is going to be a hard step, because I have a lot of the story from Kitty’s perspective, but Gallo and Koko each have a strong subplot that is really pretty germinal right now. Also, I’ll need to work through the antagonists’ storylines and make sure everything they do makes sense from their perspectives. Should be fun!

2:59 PM: Having a hard time deciding who to start with. I guess it only makes sense to start with Kitty. She should come together fairly easily.

3:34 PM: Or not.

3:49 PM: Officially opening Excel to begin my first scene-by-scene spreadsheet for Book 2. Exciting!

4:32 PM: Ok, so Kitty’s storyline is done. I guess. It needs more detail, but that’s ok, it’s only supposed to be a one-page overview. Time to move on to Mr. Gallo. This one’s gonna be tough.

5:47 PM: Whoops. I got lost in a rat hole on the internet. Back now.

6:01 PM: Ok. Now I’m back.

6:04 PM: Whew. I just realized there’s a major plot thread that I need to deal with that I completely blanked on. Ok. That should make this harder.

7:40 PM: Ok. I’m in kind of a funk here. I need to find some way to refocus on this task. So, I will take ten minutes and just stream-of-consciousness write. Basically, what I’m working on here is a way to tie up lingering threads from Book One.

7:59 PM: Question: What is melodrama? Is it scenarios that are intended to be dramatic, but fail to resonate because the underlying work of building up the emotions has not been done? Or are there situations that are always melodramatic? Basically I’m asking, can I be all soap opera if I earn it?

8:09 PM: So, the stream-of-consciousness got me thinking about some of the major issues, but it didn’t actually land me anywhere. Stream-of-consciousness writing is basically my way of forcing myself to think. If I think inside my head, my thoughts range all over the place, but if I think with my fingers, I can stay on task. My fingers are easier to discipline.

But, as I said, I am still basically in Murkville. More stream-of-consciousness? Whew, here we go.

8:50 PM: Time for desperate measures.  I’m going to go think in the shower.  Which is another way of saying I’m going to relax for a half an hour.

9:34 PM: All right, nothing really got resolved during that shower, but it was nice all the same.  I think I’m done for the day.  See you next week.

I am still working on plans for The Big Life: The Sequel.  I thought today I’d try to work few a few steps of Randy Ingermanson’s Snowflake Method, which is a sort of well-known novel-planning guide bandied about on the interwebs.  I definitely recommend clicking over and having a look, but essentially it is an outline for beginning with the large strokes of your plot and working your way down to finer and finer details until you have a complete design for a novel.

The Snowflake appeals to me deep in my soul.  All the organization, all the clarity!  And when he gets to the end and starts talking about three-ring  binders and red pens?  Oooh, bliss.  Seriously.  Whenever I think of the Snowflake Method, I see that three-ring binder in my head.  It would contain everything I needed to know about my novel, all the decisions I needed to make.  (I can write a scene in a couple of hours, but I can spend any amount of time making a decision about it.)

But despite that, I’ve never used it to entirely plan out a novel.  Sometimes I futz around with it for a while, and then I get excited about some idea or other and just start writing.  For the rest of the book I’ll write a little, plan a little, write a little plan a little, write.  Which is absolutely fine, but it does leave you with that dreadful moment at three quarters in, when you’re certain nothing can be done to reconcile your plot.

I would like to avoid that moment this time around, if I could.  So, hi-ho, Snowflake!

12:23 PM: The first step of the Snowflake Method is to write your plot in a single sentence.  I think I should be able to accomplish that relatively quickly.

12: 25 PM: Yup, that was easy.  So, here’s the dilemma I’m always stuck with on this blog.  Not giving details about what I’m working on is obviously a little boring for you, the reader.  But giving you details would, in an awful lot of cases, spoil the plots of the novels I’m hoping to publish.  So, ok, here’s what I’ll do: I’ll split the difference.

Kitty and Mr. Gallo are hired to locate a missing man, only to learn that ____________________________________________.

Ok, that probably wasn’t too satisfying either, was it?

12:30 PM: Next step: same material, one whole paragraph.

12:36 PM: Ok, done.  I think.  It doesn’t feel perfect, but I think that the whole purpose of this system is to sort of go back and forth a little, perfecting the earlier steps based on what you’ve learned in the later ones.

12: 47 PM: So, the next step.  Character outlines, just the broad strokes.

1:16 PM: One character down, seven (eight?) to go.

1:45 PM: Ok, still working on Character #2.  But this is definitely helping to generate new ideas, and illuminate the places where the storyline is weak.

2:02 PM: Ok, Character #2 done.  Perhaps slightly messy.

2:04 PM: So, one thing keeps bugging me, which is the name of my missing man, Amos Wayne.  Actually, his surname.  I wanted something that suggested a somewhat impoverished, working class character, and I guess it does.  But that twang in the middle of “Wayne” just keeps saying Southern to me.  Which he isn’t.  So, I need a new name and I’ve been putting it off because it seemed like something that could be done at any old time.  But I guess I want to go ahead and take care of it.

2:21 PM: Amos Black?  Amos Pitt?  Amos Hogan? Amos Hodge? Amos Skinner?  Amos Orr? Amos Sears? Amos Best? Amos Barry? Amos Horne? Amos Peck? Amos Sykes? Amos Haines? Amos Heeney? Amos Hewatt?

2:22 PM: Amos Heeney.

2:23 PM: Does that still sound Southern?

2:33 PM: Three characters done.  One important plot point changed and now infinitely more resonant.

2:34 PM: Ok, I need another name.  This one for a corrupt cop.  At first I was thinking McGinty, but I dunno… it’s begun to sound sort of half-hearted to me.

2:36 PM: Sort of too cute, I think that’s the problem with it.  Also possibly too common.

2:37 PM: I do sort of want something Irish though.  Kennedy?  Burke? Flynn? Nolan? Maguire?  Cullen…. no, wait, that’s reserved for vampires… Bell?  Boyle?  Cassidy?  Dolan?  Keating?  Kirwan?  Killoran?  O’Dea?  O’Dowd?  O’Hagan?  Prendergast?  Quigley?

2:48 PM: Ok, I know it has a humorous bent, but I am really drawn to Quigley.  Which would of course require me to give up Heeney.  Dangnabit.

3:18 PM: Ok, we have two corrupt cops: young, bright Matthew Keating and his older, balding errand boy, Patrick Quigley.  Which means Thelma and Amos Heeney are now Thelma and Amos Hodge.  Ain’t planning grand?

3:33 PM: Four characters down.  One thing I really like about the Snowflake’s character sketches is that they ask you to find an epiphany for each character–AKA, what that character learns.  And while it’s easy to have your antagonist, or at least your secondary or tertiary antagonist learn nothing in a novel, I think it’s worthwhile to push yourself to write down an epiphany for every character.  You can always discard it later if it feels out of character or two touchy-feely.  But so far, coming up with characters’ epiphanies has been an excellent prompt for discovering new aspects of the novel.

3:36 PM: If you include Quigley, I actually have not just a secondary and tertiary antagonist, but also a quaternary antagonist in this book.

3:37 PM: Internet awesomeness: you can just type “what comes after tertiary” into Google.  Life is good.

3:49 PM: Five characters down.  Boom!

3:50 PM: Ok, Character #6.  Primary antagonist.  I have left him this long because I do NOT know what his goal is.  I mean, I know what he does, and what that action accomplishes for him.  But there’s a missing piece in his motivation:  what he does also significantly helps a rival.  That’s the part that doesn’t make sense.  That’s what I need to unravel.  That’s what’s been messing up all my plans for this novel thus far.

5:03 PM: All right, still not done with Fiore, but I’ve got to sign off.  A couple of guys are coming over here to whup my butt at bridge tonight, and I need to make up some of my famous chili so that I can still feel good about myself after I’m down 30 IMPs.

Today I thought I would work on plans for my second novel, the sequel to the Big Life.  I have a few scenes written for it, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that I need a firmer plan.

Two nights ago my writing group workshopped the first couple of scenes.  And we wound up having a long conversation about sex.

I have known for a long time that the chronic issue in Book 2 will be the resolution of Kitty and Gallo’s relationship.  It will be about them coming together in that final way that people do.  It will be about the transition from that youthful love that says “I want you” to that more mature love that says “I want you to be happy.”  It will be partially, but certainly not entirely, about sex.

As Book 2 opens, they have been dating for a year.  And they are not yet doing the nasty.  My writing group found this sort of implausible.    They thought it would be torture for my male lead, and just not reasonable.  They’re a great bunch, and I don’t intend to discount their collective opinion lightly.  But there’s a certain piling on that can take place in a workshop, where Reader A says something bothered him, and that sounds like a reasonable complaint to Reader B, who echoes it even though it didn’t actually bother him during his read-through.  And regardless of whether that happened in this case, it’s my name on the book.  And I’m just not sure I agree.

Here are my points:Point #1: We’re talking about 1929.  I’m sure people had normal sexual desires in the twenties, but I’m not entirely persuaded that their sexual expectations were similar to today’s.  I think women found sexual advances more threatening once upon a time.  Because they were more threatening.  Condoms weren’t really in popular use until WWII (they were widely distributed in an effort to keep down V.D. among the troops).  And yes, people always had ways of preventing pregnancy, but they weren’t necessarily as safe and reliable as today’s.

And Point #2: There’s real time, and then there’s story time, and the same rules don’t necessarily apply to both.  My readers will be aware, when they pick up Book 2, that a year has passed since Book 1.  But they won’t have felt it pass.  I think this makes a difference.  I don’t think the first three or four years of Ross and Rachel putting each other through the ringer on Friends bothered me, even though I found their inability to communicate maturely about their relationship at least as bizarre as my group found my characters’ sexual abstinence (and yes, after five or six years, it did get old).  The way I see it, it’s a story.  It really only exists when we’re observing it.  You can say that those first seasons of Friends took three years, or you can say that they took thirty-six hours.  The real answer is probably somewhere in the middle.

All of this is to say that I am not quite sure whether to follow my writing group’s advice and either (1) compress the timeline between books, or (2) move my characters into a sexual relationship before the start of Book 2.  Currently I am leaning toward No, but I would welcome any opinions on the matter.

4:41 PM: What I need, I think, is a good overview of Book 2.  I have 3 ideas for significant storylines, and bandwidth for about two.  Which means it’s time to flesh them all out and see which one to cut.

5:37 PM: A lot of what I do when I’m planning, or trying to work out problems in a story, is a kind of stream of consciousness writing.  It’s all stuff like, “Ok, so I no longer like the ending where she kills her husband, I need another twist.”  Basically, this is my way of forcing myself to think.  I try to keep it going as rapidly as possible, and that’s what I’ve been doing for the last hour or so.  I am getting close to trying to shoehorn all three stories in.  If I do cut one, I think it’s going to be the one I introduced to my writing group on Tuesday.

6:02 PM: Distracting myself with chat.

6:05 PM: I now have a very good intersection for Plotlines #1 and #3.  Which means things aren’t looking so hot for plotline #2.

7:48 PM: Still mostly bits and pieces.  But time for dinner anyway.