No Fun?

Writing character sketches is one of those things you learn in writing class. Something you have to do, a writing exercise, if you will. It’s not supposed to be fun.

Or is it?

I’ve been writing sketches all week and every time I do this I forget how fun it actually is. I’m writing a bunch of stuff that will never see the light of day. I’m making up last names, names of parents, names of siblings, and can be as ridiculous as I want. The other day I decided the main character’s mom, who grew up in the 1970’s, loved disco. Now, fifty years later, nobody says they like it, but somebody must have. Will anything at all about her musical tastes make it into the novel? Probably not.

But at least it fleshes out the character in my mind. And by translation, in the minds of my characters. They know some of this information, although it’s not necessarily a topic of conversation. My main character? He knows his mother had a thing for disco. Is it important to the story? No. Is it fun to invest my characters with quirks and traits? You betcha.

Hobbies

Yesterday I finished the first run through of Next Time since I completed the first draft back in December. I think it went well and found no need of major revision. I have several tweaks and made a list to track them, but the first thing I’m going to do is the character sketches.

As noted previously, I didn’t even remember all the characters or names in the book. Reading through the manuscript gave me the chance to create a sketch document for every character. I was curious how many there were and just went and looked in the folder on my computer where I keep those docs, and found I came up with 22 characters for the book. Some make very short appearances, but easily half of those are major or important minor characters.

I asked myself a question late yesterday while I was thinking about these sketches: what’s my main character’s hobby?

I don’t know, and that’s what the sketches are for. I should know background for my characters, including what they like to do in their spare time. Does that information have to be in the book? Not necessarily, but it does give opportunity for extra scenes or even a snatch of a conversation, both of which can help round out a character.

Knowing a character’s hobbies is just one aspect I try to flesh out. In my character template I not only determine their physical characteristics, but also their education, jobs, likes/dislikes, motivations, and even what a “man on the street” sees when he notices them walking down a city sidewalk. Do they walk with purpose? Are they timid and meander? Does the look in their eyes grab you if you make eye contact? Stuff like that.

Just to be clear, though, I don’t think any of them will have writing as a hobby. They can get their own hobbies.

Strays

Maybe this is true of more than just writing, but stray thoughts enter my head at odd times when I’m working on a book.

For example, I keep getting those random moments where something pops into my head about my book Next Time, which I’m editing now. Sitting at breakfast, trying to fall asleep, watching a movie…all are settings where the story makes an appearance in my brain.

I’ve written before of how it’s helped me to go for a walk or a run and come back with something resolved in the story I’m working on. These other stray thoughts, though, don’t usually seem as impactful as those. Granted, they’re good ideas, but lower on the seismic scale of shaking up the story or characters.

In editing mode, the thoughts have more to do with emphasizing a scene late in the book, inserting some moments along the way to better explain a payoff toward the end, and even taking out some dialogue, in this case the pseudo-scientific explanation for a character’s condition. If I leave in the original text, which talks about science way over my head, all it’ll do is get me in trouble.

Maybe I should carry around a notebook with me to jot these things down. Wait, I do. It’s called a smart phone.

Liking It

Sorry if I’ve asked this before, but how do you know when something you’re writing is actually good?

Let’s start with the opposite: if I don’t like it when I’m in the middle of writing it, then I know other people won’t like it, either. I’ve been 15k words down a particular branch in a story when I realize I don’t like how it’s going. It could be that I’ve written myself into a corner where the only way out of the situation will be against what I want for the book, like an unbelievable escape or a resolution that changes a character in a fundamental way I didn’t intend. In those cases I saw off the branch and start a new one.

I asked myself the question at the top of this post yesterday. The reason being that I’m really enjoying Next Time as I edit it. I’ve found myself caught up in the story and have been looking forward to this morning for my next editing session. Granted, I know the novel’s not perfect and there’s still plenty of work to do, but if I like it this much then I think that’s a positive sign.

Does that make it good, though? That’ll be up to the reader to determine. As with anything, I’m sure some will, and some won’t. For what it’s worth, I think it’s good.

Editing

After writing the last post, I pulled up a list of notes I’d jotted when writing Next Time. That jogged a few brain cells, but made me realize it was going to take longer to get back into this book than I’d expected. After all, I finished it right before Christmas, which by my count is over 70 days ago.

I pulled up a couple of character sketch documents and struggled for a few minutes. I couldn’t remember the names of some of the characters. That was when I decided a quick read-through of the manuscript was necessary.

Rather than going full-in on editing I think it’s best to refamiliarize myself with the story, get a sense for the flow, take notes on the characters, and heck, get their names right. I don’t know how much this will add to the editing process, but I also don’t have a hard deadline. My goal is to get it right, not get it done fast.

Another Done

I finished the final edit of Assignment Day on Saturday morning. For anyone keeping score, that’s two books in the can and ready to publish.

This book was the toughest to write so far, but I think the end result turned out very well. Last summer I did some major rewriting since I didn’t like the way it was going. That proved to be the right decision. When I’m the one writing it and I don’t like it…well, that’s a bad sign.

I feel like I did quite a bit of self-diagnosing along the way as to what worked and what didn't. At the risk of being completely wrong, I think experience helped tons in that regard. Also, having gone through the previous book with an editor gave me ideas of what to spot. For example, one of the characters was supposed to be a hacker, but I didn’t have anything earlier in the story to display those skills. I remedied that in order to make the later scenes believable. Consistency with some of the technology was also a point I found I needed to fix.

I’ll write more here about the experience in the near future.

In the meantime, what’s next?

With two books ready to go, I need to redouble my efforts to get them published. Otherwise, I’m just going to end up with a bunch of books nobody but my family reads.

Beyond that, the next project is to do my first edit on Next Time. I’ll probably start with rounding out the character sketches and listing the elements I know need to be addressed in edit mode. That should keep me occupied into next month.

Fantasy

Since I wrote a post about reading SF, I figured I should do the same with the fantasy genre.

Looking back, I probably read a little more fantasy than I remember. Lord of the Rings was a standard, and I’ve mentioned before about how many times I read the Chronicles of Narnia before I even exited elementary school.

I never liked the hard fantasy with evil wizards and lots of magic spells, but tended to remain in a different section of the genre. Once I started thinking about it I remembered reading the Pern series by Anne McAffrey and several of the early Xanth books by Piers Anthony. I read them so long ago I couldn’t tell you specifics about any of them, but at least in the case of Anthony I remember the humor and unseriousness. The Pern premise was interesting enough to keep me going for several of the books.

I also read The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant and the subsequent follow-up trilogy. I tried to read the final four books, which came out much later, and got bogged down. About 5-6 years ago I also tried to re-read the originals, and made it almost to the end of the fifth book. It was a fascinating, complex series. My lack of perseverance is my fault to bear.

So, like I said, I read more in the fantasy genre than I recalled. What influence did it have on me? I guess those books and series reinforced the fact that when I write something, anything goes. Plus, the supposed boundaries of a genre don’t keep you from telling a good story.

SF Books

My first three books I self-published fall into the category of thrillers. However, years ago I wrote several non-published books in a SF series and my three most recent adventures are all set in the future or have futuristic elements in them.

When it comes to reading SF, I recall reading some when I was younger but not as much as you’d think. I read a little Heinlein, the Foundation trilogy (which was over my head), and tried many other books that looked interesting but left me unsatisfied. I did read a lot of Star Terk books, though.

When the first Star Trek movie came out I was right in that stage of entering adolescence. The only books in circulation were a series of twelve, written by James Blish, that adapted several of the original series episodes into multiple short stories per book. Another set in the same vein gave a similar treatment to episodes from the Animated Series. And finally, a smattering of original books lurked out there in some publisher’s backlist and if you wanted one you had to be lucky enough to find it in a store or know the title so you could order it from your local bookseller, who might or might not be able to get it.

I had that frame of mind to constantly search for new titles, whether it was the library, a bookstore, or a convenience store. We had no way of knowing when something new or different was coming out - yes, it was a tough life without the Internet.

After Star Trek: The Motion Picture came out things changed. I still remember the first time I found a new ST book in a convenience store near my grandparents’ house. The paperback was The Entropy Effect by Vonda S. McIntyre. The cover was clean and modern, and Sulu had a mustache and long hair! It was unexpected and sooooo cool. That was just the beginning.

For better or worse, I read most of the Star Trek books that came out over the next couple of decades. Was it great literature? See my entry on comic books. Whatever the quality, the stories were about characters I knew and liked and they piqued my imagination.

Comic Books

In my recent stream of posts I talked about reading and specifically, my reading habits over the years.

I realized I left out comic books. During my mid-teens and early twenties I read quite a few and kept most of them, a fact anybody who helped me move during those years remembers. Or at least their back does.

People have debated whether comics are worthwhile, harmful, worse than pulp mysteries, literature in disguise, and more. Having read probably thousands of comics I can say the quality varied wildly. I did live through some interesting times, though.

For example, X-Men was Marvel’s biggest comic back in the day. Maybe they still are? Anyway, the stories and characters that would become the basis for the first X-Men movies were published in those days when I read comics. Interestingly enough, future cinema heroes Iron Man and Captain America were B-level characters at best. The Avengers were okay with a cast that seemed to change every month, and they even opened a West Coast team with their own comic book. Seemed like every Marvel character was in the Avengers at some point.

I do remember the pinnacles of comics, at least at the time: Watchmen and The Dark Knight. The first was as close to a literary classic as the comic world ever came. I recall even at the time we were witnessing greatness. The latter changed the world of Batman, one of DC’s mainstays, into a grittier existence and pointing the way for the eventual Nolan-led Batman trilogy.

How did comics inform my writing? Well, I learned no character is ever dead and can come back to life when the story needs a jolt; popular characters would pop up in other titles whenever that title needed a jolt in sales; the traditional morality and storytelling of comics since the 40s and 50s was on its way out; and bringing in a new creative team was an opportunity to reboot an entire run and ignore everything that came before.

Sounds suspiciously like soap operas.

Reading Pt. 5

I was thinking of how to end this short series of posts on reading. I decided to list several books I consider favorites of mine. These are ones I’ve read multiple times and they occupy a permanent place on my bookshelf, even when I send a box to the library or put a bunch of them in bins to de-clutter.

These are my favorites. For various reasons, they might not be yours. And that’s totally fine. So here we go with a non-exhaustive list in no particular order of some of my favorite books:

• Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

• Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

• A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving

• Apollo by Charles Murray & Catherine Bly Cox

• The Lords of Discipline by Pat Conroy

• The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn

• Ball Four by Jim Bouton

• The Search for God and Guinness by Stephen Mansfield

• Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

• The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

• The Complete Calvin & Hobbes by Bill Watterson

I have a feeling I’ll be thinking of books I should have added to this list and there will be a supplemental post at some point in the future. For now. that’ll do.

Reading Pt. 4

I made the statement last time that life is too short to read bad books. Which begs the question: how do I know when I’m reading a bad book?

I have a confession to make. I’m a person who likes to finish what I start. Whether it’s a TV series, painting a room, repairing something on my truck, breakfast, or whatever, I’m one of those weird people who doesn’t like to leave things undone. Including books.

This character quality, or flaw, whichever way you look at it, means I’ve stuck with some bad books all the way to the end. Let me give a couple of examples where I got burned by some bestselling authors.

Look, I’m not a literary critic and I am hardly one to tell somebody how to write. All I’m saying is that these two books didn’t work for me. Both authors wrote plenty of other books I enjoyed, which maybe goes to show not everyone bats a thousand.

The first that comes to mind is Red Rabbit by Tom Clancy. In the vein of most of his early books, this one was long. And ultimately anti-climactic. It’s about a failed assassination plot against the Pope, and I remember finishing the last page and thinking, that’s it? I spent hours and hours reading and that’s it? I think part of the problem was that I knew how it was going to end early in the story, and that’s never a good sign. I like endings with twists and that avoid cliches. I never read another Clancy novel after that experience.

The other is from John Grisham, a book called The Chamber. It’s about a man scheduled to be executed and how his attorney grandson tries to free him. Overall, good elements for a good story. Except in this case it read more like a pamphlet from the anti-capital punishment crowd. I wanted to read a good story, not feel like I was being preached to. I don’t know about you, but sometimes I read a book and the author’s bias on a certain issue comes through blatantly. Books are entertainment and when I find someone trying to convert me to their way of thinking, as subtle as it might be, I stop. Or in the case of that book, wish I’d stopped. I read a few more Grisham books over the years but always with a wary eye.

Ultimately, I think the definition of a bad book is more subjective. Trust your gut. You know it when you find one. Whether or not you want to finish it is up to you.

Reading Pt. 3

Like most people, I read a variety of genres and authors. What do I look for in what I read?

I think I’d have to answer that question this way: I want a good story.

I’ve read self-published books with grammar and spelling errors but finished them anyway because the story was excellent. Likewise, I’ve read books by bestselling authors where everything was professional, from the slipjacket to the title page to the font for the text, but stopped partway through because the story was not good. In my opinion, of course.

My favorite author is Louis L’Amour. He wrote a lot of westerns during his lifetime, as well as a few adventure and mystery novel, but it is the stories of the American frontier for which he is best known. Safe to say he’s probably not at the top of the all-time best author list for any literary critics.

Why does he rank so high on my list? Because he told great stories.

His tales didn’t have to be complex with interwoven plot lines and surprise endings. He told stories about people. To me reading one of his books, which I still do, is like sitting around a campfire with someone telling a tale, the old oral tradition of passing along stories. Granted, some of his books had similar plotlines or characters you feel could be the narrator from another of his books, but in some ways that’s actually a good thing. It’s like eating comfort food.

Each of us knows what we like in our choice of reading. I pick what I like and live by the phrase that life is too short to read bad books. I know I’m not giving advice in this blog, but that right there is gold.

Reading Pt. 2

Is there anything worse than when someone tells you about a book they read? Actually, yes, yes there is. When someone insists on telling you about the dream they had last night.

I don’t intend to go into details on every book I’ve ever read. That would be boring and impossible. Let’s keep this high-level.

In summary: I read a lot. And from a wide variety of genres.

I remember reading the Chronicles of Narnia multiple times in late elementary school. In my teen years I read westerns, Star Trek novels, and Lord of the Rings, among others. In college I tended toward longer, epic novels by James Michener and James Clavell, and threw in short stories and classics along the way. After graduation I caught up on all the books I should have read in a literature class. I was a latecomer to Charles Dickens and wonder what I was thinking when I used the Cliff’s Notes on A Tale of Two Cities for a high school book report instead of reading the book itself.

I liked biographies when I was younger, especially of the U.S. Presidents. Now I enjoy bios again and books by Erik Larson with lots of context about significant events and people. I also read history of various kinds, but here’s a strange quirk: I’ve read books about aspects of the Civil War, but I’ve never really dug into it since I fear I’ll become obsessed about the whole thing. I’ve done the same with WWII, although I have to admit I’ve gone a little deeper below the surface.

Now that I read a lot on Kindle Unlimited, I find a lot of books I probably wouldn’t have otherwise. Mostly mystery series or SF, with some thrillers in there, too. I’ve discovered several series of 15+ books that I get into and read through in a month or two. The only downside is less time with books in printed form. As long as I’m reading, though, I don’t consider that too big a problem.

Reading Pt. 1

What do I read?

Before I say anything about that, let me just say I don’t think you can be a writer without being a reader. Revolutionary words, I know, which I’m sure no one has ever said before. Okay, now that we have that out of the way…

My reading habits have changed over the years. I got my first library card when I was five. I already knew how to read at four but the library wouldn’t give me a card at that age because I wasn’t in school yet. My Grandma Brown, who was a schoolteacher, was extremely mad about that, so the family story goes. My source of books for many years was the city library and then school libraries. I remember vividly the library at each of the schools I attended, probably because I spent so much time in each.

When I started mowing lawns, I came up with a little disposable income. Working a part-time job starting in my mid-teens gave me even more. I spent a lot of money on paperback books. And later, I added comic books into the mix.

Book-buying continued and with a steady paycheck in my twenties I had the ability to buy the latest releases in hardback. And I did.

Now I rarely buy the physical coipy of a book, at least compared to those earlier days. I still love the feel of a good book in my hands, but most of what I read right now is on Kindle Unlimited. My wife likes to listen to books, but I prefer to read.

Now you know the medium I use for reading. Back to the original question: what do I read?

Dialogue

It’s tough to write dialogue to make it sound like people actually talking. It’s one of those things I struggle with during the editing process.

When I hired an editor to give me feedback on the First manuscript, one of her suggestions was to review the way the characters spoke. She suggested going to a coffee shop and listening to conversations. As a person who’s been talking for several decades and listening plenty, I feel like I have a pretty good grasp of how human beings converse. But as my editor pointed out much nicer than I would, putting it on paper is a different story.

That’s one of the main reasons I read my books out loud to myself as part of the editing process. Hearing myself speak the words pokes plenty of holes in the way the words are written. If it doesn’t sound right when I say it aloud, I change it so it does.

I also try to keep a few things in mind as I’m writing. People don’t tend to speak in long expositions. In a good conversation there’s a lot of back and forth, prompting each other or inserting comments. When I follow those guidelines I feel more like the characters and their words jump off the page at me.

I think those are good rules but tough for me to follow. When I edit my manuscript I still find long paragraphs of explanation that help advance the story but don’t sound like someone talking. In those moments I tell myself it’s okay; that’s what editing is for.

How I Edit

I’ve spent the week editing Assignment Day. Like I said previously, the manuscript was in better shape than I thought.

That doesn’t mean it’s anywhere near perfect, though. When I finished the story last year, I created a new document where I put a list of bullet-pointed notes about things I needed to fix. Some of them are small, while others require a little more work and even moving sections or scenes around.

One big example was the ending. I wasn’t happy with the how the original climax of the story worked out, feeling I’d missed the mark by quite a bit. I fixed that in the previous edit so that this time around I was able to see what was still not quite right. Hopefully I plugged the holes and it will come off better to the reader.

Here are some examples of other things I listed:

• More examples of how deeply people are addicted to X

• Introduce the Y concept earlier in the story

• A helping out B after being mad at him needs to be better explained

• What about Z?

That last one came to me yesterday when I was out for a run. I realized I hadn’t explained what happened with one of the secondary characters who disappears mysteriously halfway through the book. There’s another plug for how exercise helps my writing.

I still have more bullet points to address and get the manuscript in the shape I want it. I expect a few more days of this before moving on to the next step: reading it out loud to myself.

Scheduling

I’ve been adding posts to this blog every day (except Sundays) for over a month now. I decided earlier this week to change the schedule and only do updates here three times a week on a M-W-F schedule.

Don’t worry, I’m not running out of subject material. My random mind can always come up with something to write about. No, I thought it would be best to spend the off days (T-Th-Sat) on other pursuits, like updating social media and taking care of any business that needs attention. Plus, I don’t want this pursuit to take away too much from my main goal, which is to produce readable books.

Once I finish updating Assignment Day I’ll start editing the draft of Next Time. And after that it’ll be time to write another book, all while hopefully publishing First and the subsequent two.

This change in scheduling is not set in stone, of course. What if I want to post something on a day other than M-W-F? It’s my blog. I can do whatever I want. Gosh.

Editing Update

I finished my first read-through of Assignment Day last Friday. I have to say, it wasn’t in as bad of shape as I thought. Mind you, it’s not perfect and still needs a few changes to some of the struts supporting the frame, but overall better than I expected.

The reason I think it’s in decent shape is because of the ripping and replacing I did last year. I added some elements to make it more interesting and bring in more conflict. I made the stakes higher for the main character. And threw in some additional drama at the climax of the story to give it more resonance.

Is it publishable yet? No. This week I’ll go back to it and add in some paragraphs here and there that tie into the last third of the book. Those add-ins will give some depth to the time period and attitude of society. I’m also thinking about some additional conflict for the mom of the main character, providing another layer to the story.

That last one is the kind of thing I struggle with. Too often our entertainment portrays parents as stupid and selfish, or as bad people, and for the most part in this book I’m trying to frame a normal home life for the narrator. Nevertheless, I think some additional drama could be a good thing.

With a little more work this week it’ll be on the edge of publishable. That means two books ready to publish and one more to edit, which should be done by late this month or early next. It’s amazing to think I’ll have three books ready to go this year. I love it when a plan comes together.

More Running

Continuing the theme in my last post about how creativity and clarity appear sometimes when I’m running, I was thinking of other things I’ve encountered along the running path. Don’t worry, this isn’t going to be another of those blog posts about why everyone should be a runner. I don’t think that’s true, anyway, and I sure don’t want to write that post.

Podcasts. Some people listen to them all the time. I tend to bounce around the dial when it comes to listening to podcasts when I run. I bring this up because over the years I’ve listened to a few writing podcasts. Most of the time when I go out and run I listen to music since it allows my mind to wander, but sometimes I’m just in the mood for a good ol’ podcast.

I don’t subscribe to any but pick out episodes that intrigue me. My sister turned me onto a couple: Six Figure Authors and The Creative Penn Podcast. I’ve learned a little from both of them and I know there’s a lot more out there in the podcast universe. I guess if I was a little more dedicated to podcasts in general I’d check out more, but I also like history podcasts and enjoy those.

Without getting into it too deep, I’ve found a few good ones that talk about the business of writing and advice from other authors. The part that’s encouraging is there are people who might not become bestselling authors but can make a living, or close to it, from the craft. And maybe the best lesson I’ve learned is that I’m not alone. Other people are going and have gone through the same struggles, and that’s woth a listen.

Running

In the previous post I talked about the importance to me of taking off a day every week. In the same vein, I’d like to mention how being a runner has actually helped my writing.

In one of my earlier posts I covered the topic of how ideas about stories pop into my head. I can’t count how many times I’ve had a thought about a story I’m writing while I’m out for a run. It seems like the physical activity, the scenery, and my wandering mind, all combine to inspire clarity. Sometimes I’m not even thinking about my story when it happens.

Let me give an example. My project at the time was Assignment Day and there was a critical plot point I couldn’t resolve. About 2.5 miles into a 4-mile run the solution suddenly became clear. It was like I had to disengage my brain from the writing process to solve the writing problem.

I’ve been running for a few decades now and completed quite a few long runs. Beyond what it can do for your writing, exercise gives the obvious health benefits. I was going to say a healthy writer is a better writer, but plenty of writers proved otherwise, like Edgar Allan Poe for starters.

Running, walking, cycling, rowing - any of the common cardio exercises provide the same opportunity for your brain. I’m not sure anaerobic exercises, like lifting weights, would do the same. There’s just something about getting into the rhythm of an aerobic exercise that allows my brain to disengage. Even so, I’m not so much a running evangelist and instead have told friends and family they need to do whatever exercise they like.

Inspiration and solutions come at unexpected times. I’ve found the best forum for me is outdoors with a pair of running shoes on while I sweat in the hot summer sun.