Chris Howard's Writing & Art

Novel writing and bowling--like fire and gasoline?

I've been thinking about a physical analogy for the writing process, and here's the sort of lame idea that came to me:

If you bundle the plotting, characterization, everything that goes into writing a novel, then the process looks like this:

You have an infinite (or nearly so) stretch of flat ground in every direction (imagine standing by yourself on the salt flats with no distinguishable features, nothing but blue sky and white sand to the horizon) and an infinite number of bowling balls, as well as a just-in-time manufacturing facility for any color or size bowling ball.  You want solid gold with swirls of purple ice?  Done. 

Page one...You got your special bowling shoes on?

So, you're standing in the middle of nowhere, white sand in every direction, and there's one of those bowling ball delivery systems...just coming out of the ground with any number of bowling balls.  You can talk to it, too, ask for a bowling ball to represent your main plot line, ten more for sub plot lines, scenes, pivotal points, any kind of action.  

On this writing ground that goes on forever, directions correspond to plot lines, and the kinds of bowling balls--color, patterns, materials correspond to individual plot elements, individual characters, actions, scenes, even lines of tension.

In the course of writing your novel, you're going to be grabbing a bowling ball and rolling it in a specific direction.  In the beginning of your novel that's all you'll be doing, grabbing the next ball that comes up, pick a direction, get your stance, take your steps and release.  The ball is away.  Go back for another.

Now, let's look at what your novel looks like halfway through.

Here's the way it works.  You can send fifty bowling balls off in almost the same direction--close enough that when the time comes to start wrapping up plotlines, you don't need to travel too far.  You're a mile out and you have plenty of room and time and stop one from rolling forever. 

You can send fifty off in roughly the same direction, and then turn and send another ten in the opposite direction.  You still won't have trouble wrapping up your story, because you'll have time to cover both directions.

Now, if you're planning something grand, a series with plots that extend well beyond the current book, there's no problem sending bowling balls of many colors off in twenty different directions.  You'd have to be a genius--and very quick--to close all those down with probability and reader satisfaction in one book.  But in all likelihood, you want them to just keep rolling.  You'll pick them up in the next book, maybe even give them a kick to change direction, or a shove to increase speed.

Make sense to anyone?  No, I didn't think so.  Me neither.

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Another novel done...with a whole new beginning

Really sorry to have missed WisCon this weekend, but I completed my fifth novel instead.

I'm still doing some cleanup, working through an edit pass, but, five months of hard work, a 110k words, and this one's done.  I started thinking about this story about three years ago, started taking notes, creating characters, building worlds in 2006.  There's actually one scene which started out in my journal about a year before that.

I painted this first character sketch of my protag late 2006, early 2007, along with a character interview, the end of which goes like this:

Interviewer:  Thank you.  This has been very helpful.  How about we go for a cup of coffee when we're through here?
Character:  [Smiling cheerfully] How about I kill you, consume all your bones, flesh and organs, and then go get a cup of coffee for myself with the cash in your wallet?
Interviewer:  [Uncomfortable]  Oh...uh...I guess I'll take that as a 'no'.
Character:  [Surprised]  Oh no. We can have coffee.  I just thought we were throwing out some options.
Interviewer:  [Wishing he hadn't brought up coffee.]

19th Wedding Anniversary

Alice Arzaga in a long white gown.  14th of April, 1990, in Morgan Hill, California.  Machado School, a nineteenth-century two-room school house with a bell--yes, we were married in an old school.  Beautiful sunny spring day.  Lots of family and friends, a few late because we started right on time at 2PM. 

19 years later.

I'm a tough person to surprise...

I have a 50-minute x 2 commute into the Boston metro area every day of the week.  We live in coastal New Hampshire.  I get in my vehicle yesterday morning, start it up, plug in my iPod, and I'm backing out of the driveway when my phone rings.  Alice calling.  She tells me to turn off the iPod and play the first track on the CD she's secretly put in the player.  A love song.  It's beautiful.  It's not something I'd normally listen to, but I love this so much.  I was completely surprised.

I love you, Alice.  No surprise there.  Here's to another 19!
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On Righting Processes

The pantser-vs-plotter debate flares up every once in a while, but I don't think there's a wrong way to write a book, just the right one--the one that works--for a particular writer.  I'm a pantser--as in seat-of-my-pants.  You can also call it "organic" which really does have nice ring to it.  Pantser sounds like I'm totally winging it, which I'm not.  Not totally. 

Just trading tweets with InkGypsy on writing processes, and here I am writing a post on what I do and what seems to work for me.  If deep outlining works, if it helps you complete a novel then do it.  That's what writing is all about, getting to the end of the story.

Here's a quick outline (ha ha) of my process:

I used to outline a little, just a very light framework.  I didn't do any outlining for my last book or my current one--halfway done and rolling along nicely.

The Beginning...

I don't typically start with characters.  I may have settings, characters I want to use, times, places, technology, but I need to know a little about what's going to happen before I can write.  So, I start with an idea like "misplaced revenge" and I'll write out something like this: a revenge story in which the reader knows the real killer, but everything points to someone else, and the protag spends the entire story hunting down the wrong person.  The reader can understand why she's doing what she's doing even though she's wrong.  And what if she succeeds?  (A lot of ways you can play with a reader's sympathy with this story line, the reader can admire your protag's drive for justice, determination, and even when she's got the wrong guy at gun point, there's always the hope that she's going to realize it's not that one).  After that it's all details.

The End...

I write the end of the story before I get to the middle.  Not all of it, but I know what's going to happen.  I know who's going to make it.  I know who's not.  I even know how it's going to end--the key climactic events.  I don't spend a lot of time trying to wrap up every thread now, because things change during the storytelling.  Just let them.  Get a stake in the ground--way out there.  Build some substance around it, then go back to your early chapters.  The end will be over the horizon from where your characters are standing in chapter five or six, but at least they--and you--will know it's "that away."

The Middle...

The middle, Act 2, whatever you want to call it, can be tough for any writer.  This is where I spend the majority of my writing time--and where I'm writing in my current novel project.  This can be tough because even though you may know where you're going (the end is for the most part complete), you don't want to get there too quickly. You also don't want to start another story line that doesn't fit in with what's already happened, or that cannot be shaped and directed to meet up with the ending.  Also, just because you have an ending, doesn't mean you can't change it a bit.  If the story demands something different in chapter twenty, modify your ending to take it into account. 

Other ideas...

I like my characters to grow significantly throughout the story, stepping into the first chapter as one person and out of the last chapter someone else--if they make it that far, bwahahaha.  For me, deep outlining and plotting hinders a character's growth in the story.  It puts chapter one and chapter thirty-four too close together, and doesn't seem to allow enough room for growth.  Again, whatever works for you.

I'm looking at my manuscript right now.  It doesn't bother me at all that I have a handful of chapters in the twenties with no plot.  Nothing.  Empty space. But I'll get to it.  I'll let the story and characters drive those chapters.  I'm not bothered by it because I know from the past they'll just sort of show up when I need them.  They always have.   

Plant your hooks and hints everywhere--and lots of them.  Don't worry about following through with them all.  Drop some mysterious company names, roads that seem to lead somewhere interesting, characters unearthing non-human technology from a Bronze Age archeological dig, a half-filled glass of Scotch with ice sitting next to the phone--and no one in the house drinks.  Think about these kinds of things when you're writing description.  Stick in something that may pan out later.  You can always weed out the ones that you don't pursue.

Character motivation can cause trouble for pantsers.  Keep an eye on what your characters want. I think without tight plotting, it's easy to let them wander--when in reality people forced to live through your plot wouldn't have time to tie their shoes much less make lifestyle changes  mid-chapter. 

I said I don't outline, but I do on a micro scale.  When I start a chapter, I typically write what it ends with, like "Ends with Nicole stabbing Keith with a steak knife."  Divide at the joints--don't end a chapter just anywhere, find a dramatic point, stop typing there, and start the next chapter.

Okay, so that's a little bit about my writing process. So, how do you do it?  Are you a pantser or plotter?  Organic plotter?  Deep outliner?

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Words I love

Looking up a completely different word in the dictionary, I found this treasure:

Torpedoist

Tor*pe"do*ist\, n. (Nav.) One skilled in the theory or use of torpedoes; also, one who favors the use of torpedoes.

I love the idea of favoring "the use of torpedoes"--as opposed to, say, other marine munitions/weapons like mines, or...dolphins trained to do underwater demolition, killer swarming bluefin tuna, wrestling whales? 

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First person POV and better dialogue

I write in 3rd and 1st primarily, and every once in a while I'll play with others.  I'm well into a novel, a little over 40k words, and it seems to me that my dialogue is just on, it's sharper, more meaningful.  It also occurred to me that it might have something to do with writing in first person.  My last two books have been in 3rd. 

There is the notion that it's easier to get into a character in 1st, easier to play the role, easier to feel what the character's feeling, easier to find the voice, but does this have a positive influence on the dialogue you write? 

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Colonists

I'm in the middle of short story about colonists from two different worlds meeting on a planet that isn't home for either--and they have to get along.  New worlds can be nasty places, and even experienced explorers get hit with anxiety when unpredictability's in the air.  And with all the tech, crossing the street is still dangerous on any world.

Here's a quick scene I penciled while helping Chloe with her homework.
  

Short Fiction as Strategy

Okay, I've jumped into this short story writing groove lately.  I submitted another this morning--my second in a couple weeks.  I'll have a third wrapped up this week, and probably sub'd over the weekend or early next week.  And there's no slowing down.  I have so many story ideas built up in my journal that it's more a matter of which ones do I spend time on, which ones am I passionate enough to chase?

As we know, an author's problem is never a lack of good ideas, but time to pursue the ones we already have.  I've spent the last two years completing three novels, one of which has been published--Seaborn, the second is Seaborn's sequel and is with my editor, and the third is at a different publisher, under consideration. 

I saw Craig Shaw Gardner at the SF in the 21st Century panel at UMass Lowell a couple weeks ago, and in a conversation about short fiction, he remarked that "short stories are great advertising."

Hmmmm…  Tapping my chin, looking up at the ceiling tiles in thought.  So many great SF novelists also create great short fiction, and I'm not just talking Heinlein and Asimov and the great SF golden age storytellers, but all the way up and including the great storytellers I read now, like John Scalzi and Kelly Link and Tobias Buckell and Elizabeth Bear and Mary Robinette Kowal and a hundred others.

I have a few novel length ideas going strong, but what I really want to do--at this moment in time--is help Seaborn continue to sell, to continue being stocked on the shelves at B&N. 

What's an author to do?

Not just write more, but complete more.  And the only way to do that is to go short.  After three novels and armed to the eyes with ideas, I've found that I've become a better short story writer.  I writer shorter, faster fiction.  A couple years ago I couldn't keep a story under 6k words.  Now, I'm writing 3000 - 4000 furious words and sealing the story shut.

My strategy is to continue writing short fiction, submit to the big four or five, write more SF, and get some of these published.

Another change is that I've written one story--and I have ideas for others--outside SF and F, but I mean just outside the genre door, close enough that the story might be thought of as fantasy, but mainstream enough to be considered for magazines and journals I've never considered for submission. 

Okay, it's not just publicity.

I'll add that writing short fiction is very gratifying.  I can see why some authors prefer short form to long. (I don't--but maybe that will change?)  There's the rush of completing a story that feels right.  Short fiction is like getting dessert every time you're hungry--without the other problems that lifestyle might carry with it.  Novels--like 38 course meals--take so long to complete, and sure the book-complete rush is almost blinding, with a short story you get the goodness in nice enjoyable dollops, sweet enough to keep things going. 

Write short!

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Productive week

Last week, that is.  I'm a bit late in posting.  I completed two short stories last weekend and had them in the mail and email by Monday.  One is SF, the other is...not sure. 

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My first appearance on a panel...

...and it was damn fun.  I'd guess about 20 People or so.  It started out funny because Skott was driving and I told him 7PM when it turned out to be 7:30.  Speed records and law breaking ensued and we got some exercise running for the Alumni library only to find out...we were early.  Some interesting questions from the audience, and a good balanced panel, some serious, some funny.  Basically we talked for an hour and a half about SF and it’s future.  I don’t think it could have gone better.

Jeff Carver moderated, kicked off discussions.  The talk ranged over everything SF, what's new, what's next, how is our genre changing, touching on subjects that could feed whole new panels, writers blogging, graphic novels and predicting the ending of Lost (in which I was lost, because I've never seen the show).

I know Jeff Carver and Craig Shaw Gardner from the SF workshop they run every year in the Boston area (In the caves under Pandemonium Books in Central Square in Cambridge).  First time I've met both Alex Jablokov and Matt Jarpe--although I've seen them at cons.  Alex was hilarious, a great sense of sarcasm, and since I can't wait for Brain Thief to come out next summer, I'm going to track down A Deeper Sea because, well, it's the sea!  Matt's novel Radio Freefall is next on my list to read--I've heard nothing but good things about it. 

The local Barnes & Noble in Lowell had a stack of books for sale--and for each of us to sign.  Jeff's novel Sunborn just came out and they had a cool cover display.  Man, I want one of those!

Happy Halloween!

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