Good Problem

Well, crap.

I have another book idea and it’s hijacking my brain.

This is a good problem to have and I can’t complain. The reason I started this post that way is because I already have a book I’m planning on working on next. The same thing happened when I was ready to start on said book but my efforts were derailed by the appearance of Next Time in my thoughts. Gotta be honest, this feels a bit like deja vu.

I have a premise and a main character, but what I don’t have yet is a plot. That’s going to take some additional thought and then I have to prioritize. Does the new idea take precedence over the previous one? If the new idea does bubble to the top, why? What makes it better for me to write than the other? And don’t forget the fundamental questions. Why write this book in the first place? What’s its purpose? What is the reason for it to exist?

TBD.

Writing Software

No, this is not a post about writing software code, although that is something I did for a living a few years back. No, it’s about what I use to write books and do my editing.

First up, let me state there are a number of good writing programs out there. Depending on what you’re writing, it might make sense to invest a little money into one. Especially if it’s a non-fiction book where you’re going to have a lot of citations or pictures.

You’re probably going to be disappointed when I say I use Microsoft Word for all my writing. How boring. And how much of a corporate sellout is that?

Before you unfavorite this site, let me just say that I get all that. Here’s my thought process: when I’m writing I don’t want the software to get in the way. In fact, years ago I wrote several books longhand and then typed them up because I didn’t want to get caught up in what the word processor was doing to take me out of the creative mode.

I used Scrivener for a time about 7-8 years ago, but I didn’t really need what it offered. It helped in moving chapters around, but other than that Word does all the same stuff for the most part, and does it the way I’m used to. I liked Scrivener and maybe someday I’ll use it again, but for now I’m keeping it simple.

Waiting

As Mr. Petty said, the waiting is the hardest part.

Here we are, now into the fourth month of the year, and honestly I haven’t made a whole lot of progress toward getting my books published. Some of that is me, some of it is waiting on others. That’s the hard part.

Last year I spent way too much time trying to see if an agent would be interested in me and my book. This year I’ve finished editing one book and will be done with another by the end of the month. I’d like to take time right now to dig into the publishing part, but I don’t want to lose momentum on editing Next Time. So, I think I will finish that and then take whatever time I need to get my books published before I start on the next.

I’d like to be further along in getting these published, no lie. If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that I don’t always get to pick the timing of what I want, and when it finally does happen, it’s at the perfect time. I’ll have to keep telling myself that.

Too Easy

What am I working on this week? Glad you asked.

I’m reworking some chapters of Next Time just a bit. I’d made it too easy for the narrator in the last section of the book and decided he needed more conflict.

Was the previous story okay? Yeah, it was, but everything fell into place too easily. That’s not why people read stories. They want to see the characters struggle and come out on top. In other words, they have to earn it. I could have left the last several chapters alone but if I wasn’t happy then readers wouldn’t be.

The ending chapter is fine, although I think it needs to be more vivid in tone and setting. I’ll work on that in the coming week. For now, I have a little rewriting to do.

The Routine

I probably talked about this before, but for me one of the things that really helped my writing to take off was getting into a routine.

Yes, I wrote three books without a daily routine. I look back on that time over ten years ago and wonder how I pulled it off. Young children, lots going on with sports and church activities for all the kids, a job I didn’t like, training for marathons…yeah, no idea how I managed to fit writing into my schedule.

Whereas it took me 6-7 years to write those three books, this time around I’ve written three in less than 18 months. Although I’m still editing the third and technically you could say I haven’t finished it yet. Whatever.

The key for me was establishing a daily routine. Usually within a half hour of waking up I’m sitting in front of my computer with a mug of coffee. That timeline gives me about 75 minutes to do the writing thing. The thing about a routine is that you also learn the routines of other people.

My office is at the front of the house; therefore, I see the people walking their dogs, the kids driving to school, the guy across the street leaving for work a little before 7:30 every morning, and on and on.

Routines. It’s how we get stuff done.

Tight Scenes

Last time I wrote about making each chapter like the scene of a movie or TV show. What do I mean by that?

The example that always comes to mind for me is Breaking Bad. I can’t say much about that show that hasn’t already been said before in probably an infinite number of reviews inhabiting every alleyway of the Internet. For me, one of the things that made it outstanding was how each scene was crafted.

Especially as the series progressed, every part of the script had purpose to propel the story forward. I remember the intensity of the dialogue, the physical responses the characters displayed, and my personal investment in every episode. Each scene is vivid. You could pull apart every episode and do a masterclass in all aspects: writing, blocking, editing, setting, props, etc.

How does that work with writing a book? At least for me, I want every chapter to function like a scene in Breaking Bad. I’m not that good a writer yet, but I keep trying. If I can make it so the reader walks away from a chapter with a clear visual image of the scene and even a small emotional investment, then I’ve succeeded at least that much.

The Edit Bus

I finished the character sketches and now I’m back on the edit bus.

How does this work for me? In other words, what’s my methodology? Maybe I do it differently from others, or strangely similar to what you’ve read in other places.

For those keeping track at home, I’ve done a read-through and fixed glaring typos and grammatical errors. This phase of editing will be larger in scope. I’ve kept a list of things I know need to be fixed, from minor plot points to gaping holes where I need to add a new chapter. I’m also considering a complete change in one character to add conflict later in the book. I don’t want things to be too easy for my narrator. And of course, I’ll incorporate pieces from the character sketches into the narrative.

I’ll go down the list, or more accurately I’ll pick and choose what I want to work on each day until I cross off all the items in the list. One of the items is something I put on the list for every book I write. It’s a reminder that each chapter needs to be tight, like a television or movie scene. Start in the middle of a scene, if possible, and close out each chapter with something to propel the reader forward. It’s a good reminder and though I’m not always successful, it’s an ongoing goal.

Now I’m off to hop on the edit bus. It promises to be a fun ride.

Sketching

I’m still working on character sketches for Next Time. It’s been an enlightening experience.

I’ve completed sketches on all the major characters, including the family and friends of the narrator. Let me give an example of how this has gone.

In the book, the main character’s sister is married and has three children with her husband, who I portrayed in the draft as somewhat hostile to his wife’s family. When I wrote it I knew he was a jerk, but didn’t know why. What happened in the past to cause him to act that way? Was it something they did? Or was he a jerk to everyone?

As I started filling in the blanks in his character sketch, I placed his hometown just outside one of the bigger towns I used in the book. He became a high school jock who parlayed his skill into a scholarship, which he then lost with two season-ending injuries in a row.

Aha! Now we’re getting somewhere.

Add in a dose of resentment for having to drop out and work a blue collar job, coming from a town considered inferior to its larger neighbor, no hobbies other than fantasy football and playing pool at the local bar with his buddies, and now I’m getting a sense of why he’s surly at family gatherings. He doesn’t want to be there.

I don’t have to write a book about this guy to figure out his character, but fleshing him out so I know reasons behind his actions is incredibly worthwhile.

What do I do with this additional background on a minor character? Do I add a page or two of exposition to explain it all? No way. I throw in snatches of conversation, comments, and stray moments, which all add up to layers of character development.

I don’t have to fully flesh him, or many of the other characters in the book, into major characters with deep backgrounds. It’s not that kind of book or series. What I’ll be doing instead is giving the reader enough information to round out the characters in their own mind. And to do that, they have to be rounded out in my own.

Series Burnout

I started a new book on Kindle Unlimited this weekend. It’s the latest in a series which now spans more than twenty books. The previous books were imaginative and built up an interesting world and group of characters over that time.

I’m no book critic, but I do now what I personally like to read. With this latest story I’m wondering if the author is suffering from series burnout. Compared to the previous books, this one jumps from scene to scene without transitions or reason, characters act differently than we’re used to over the course of the series, and the story itself is somewhat fantastical.

For example, the villain of the piece is high up in the U.S. government. She captures the main character and his team of assassins, but they escape via an unseen battle. Then there are no follow-up ramifications from the villain, which should have followed rapidly when a dozen people are killed in your own home.

Anyway, it just got me thinking that maybe it’s tough to keep up a certain level of quality over so many books. Or maybe it was written by AI. Heck, maybe this was written by AI.

Just kidding, but give it a year or two.

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.