Write About Now

The World of a Series Detective

There's always much more to the story than ever reaches the page -- or at least, there ought to be. Part of what gives a novel its reality is the reader's sense that things are being left out, that much more could be said than ever will be, that the imaginary world keeps ticking once the book's cover is closed. While I learned this a long time ago, I'm appreciating it in a whole new way now. 

Back on Murder, the first of my crime novels set in Houston, is more or less written, and now I have two more to go. The sequel is very much in process, and will be done before the first hits the shelves next summer. Because all three of the contracted books will feature the same hero, I'm living with him in a way I normally wouldn't. One thing I'm beginning to realize is that, in just three books, there's no way I'll manage to tell all his stories.

Already, I have a file full of them. Various cases and incidents, some full-blown in my mind, others fragmentary, some connected to what happens in Back on Murder, some not. Over the weekend, I tried organizing them all, asking myself which episodes were the most promising, the most telling, and it quickly became clear that I have four of five novels worth of material. 

So this must be how a series develops. The character's world expands, and the only challenge is to figure out which places are worth going, and for how long. Because like I said, you can't use everything, or even most of it. The lion's share needs to be left out to give what's left a sense of compressed urgency. The trick is knowing what to keep.

Kiss the Rules Goodbye

The problem with the rules of fiction-writing is that they come from rule books, not great books. This is why, when reading both bestsellers and classics, you always hear the literal-minded complaining: "Hey, she can't do that! She's breaking the rules." But she can do it, as witnessed by the fact that she has. You might try arguing that the book succeeds in spite of breaking some rule or other, but in fact, success in fiction has nothing to do with keeping or breaking rules.

All the author has to do is create and sustain an illusion, and anything that accomplishes the job is just fine.

Which is a relief for people trying to learn the craft, because it gives them one thing to focus on instead of a hundred. But for those who teach, it sucks. Because it's easier to teach a set of rules than it is to teach illusion-making. That's why so many "how to write" courses, whether offered by those who can write or those who can't, consist not so much of revelation but of rehash. "You can never hear these basic truths too often," we're told. And we'd better believe it. The day we stop, a lot of these classes are going to fold.

The Perils of Research

The succinct, conversational style of Walter Mosley's recent how-to book This Year You Write Your Novel makes it easy to recommend. In a hundred not-so-cramped pages, Mosley distills the basics without slipping into the dry, textbook tone of so many by-the-numbers guides. There's plenty he leaves out, and this is by no means an exhaustive introduction to writing a novel, but you have to admire a guy who devotes a page and half to getting published and hits most of the highlights. Not to mention it's a beautifully produced, slender hardback, making it a pleasure to read in every sense.

His advice on research strikes me as particularly good. "I write books about places I've been," he admits, "and people I like to think I understand," so research isn't his strong suit. But he has this to say, and I think it's priceless:

"All of these questions are valid. Before the book gets into print, you should have the answers. But many writers allow questions like these to help them procrastinate. They tell themselves that they can't go on until these questions are answered.

"Nonsense. Put a red question mark next to the place where you have questions and get back to it later.

"I almost always do the research for my books toward the end of the last draft. By that time I know the book is written and that my creative energies will not be sapped by needless fretting."

When I read this, I gave a little cheer. I always do when my own work habits are validated. I learned the hard way that doing the research up front is a killer, not because it's so hard but because I like it too much. I'm one of those people who hates not knowing something. Research sucks me in like a whirlpool. A little history, a few facts, and a new world opens up. The problem is, it's not the world I'm supposed to be creating.

Tuning Your Advice Filter

Writing is a job, but not a normal one. Most people doing it don't get paid enough to keep at it for the money, so they need additional motivation. Thus support structures are born, communities of aspiration where writers can share their work (and their dreams) with each other. These communities inevitably take on a teaching role. In addition to support, new members are offered advice, plenty of it. I say, writer beware.

If you need to learn your craft, enroll in a class or pick up a good book like Stephen Koch's Modern Library Writer's Workshop. Better yet, read great books and pick them apart until you understand how it's done. A critique group composed of people you know and trust is also helpful. (And for goodness sake, if you have one, don't refer to its members as "beta readers," as if you're just another software developer cranking out code.) Whatever you do, don't join a professional organization, a local club or whatever to learn. You'll just end up confused and off track. People have a tendency to major on the minors, to pass along dictums they don't fully understand and generally spout off from a position of ignorance.

THE ADVICE FILTER
Join, but keep your guard up. New writers lack confidence, and are therefore especially susceptible to groupthink and bad advice. They tend to be the ones who are preyed upon most by the advice industry, too. All writers need an advice filter. You need to sort the good from the bad, and then re-sort the good -- what's good for me won't be good for you. And you'll have to distinguish between aesthetic advice and commercial advice, because the latter often masquerades as the former. I want to propose a few filtering questions to help out.

- Who's it coming from?

I have an MFA in Creative Writing from a top program, have published fiction and nonfiction, have served as an editor, have even been paid good money to "fix" problem manuscripts, and in spite of all that, I think you should take most of my advice with a healthy dose of skepticism. I could be wrong, after all. I frequently am. The only time you should take my advice is when it rings true (see below). That goes for most everyone else telling you what writing is all about, too.

Research and the Island of the Lotus-Eaters

"Write what you know" isn't a maxim for nothing. Teachers give that advice because it cuts out a potentially crippling phase of the novel-writing process: research. I know firsthand what a black hole research can be. In the mid-90s, I started writing a novel about the fall of Constantinople, and the more I dug into the history the more gaps in my knowledge emerged. Finally I found it all but impossible to continue. Will the book ever be finished? Your guess is as good as mine.

But a writer who knew much less about the topic than me could have written a perfectly convincing story about it. The problem wasn't ignorance. It rarely is. My hang-up was a lack of confidence -- and writing fiction (even well-researched historical fiction) is ultimately a confidence game, in both senses of the word. Novelists are constantly making things up when they don't have the facts, but to do that effectively you have to believe in the lie. You have to be innocent in a peculiar way.

I'm amazed when I look back at my earlier work. My grad school thesis included stories set in Cambridge and Nuremberg, and when I read them now, the most convincing aspects are the settings. I used what I knew and found reasonably clever ways to avoid what I didn't. Trying to do the same thing today would be much more daunting, because I've lost some of that early innocence, the confidence that whatever I write, people will believe it.

Hence research. The trick is not to let the research overwhelm the writing. I know authors who can't write a word without some solid research under the belt. Others can improvise and check the facts later. The key is to know how much you need. The danger is that, like a glutton at the table, you won't know when to say when. That was my challenge with Constantinople. I got to the point where I didn't want to make things up, when making things up was the whole point.

So for me, research is a problem. But it's a problem I resolve as I write, the same way other people work out their shortcomings with dialogue or description. On the one hand, I can't do without research. On the other, I can't allow myself the luxury of too much, or I'll be lazing around on the island of the lotus-eaters, oblivious to all deadlines.

Planning a Novel, Part 3: The Treatment

The thrilling conclusion of my series at The Master's Artist.

Planning a novel isn't rocket science. In Part 1, I discussed the conceptual grid that gives structure to your novel, and in Part 2 we turned to the topic of pre-writing, which solidifies the story world in your imagination. Now, let's conclude with the step that brings them both together: writing a treatment of your novel.

What's a treatment, and why bother writing one? Think of a treatment as a dramatized summary. It's more than just a bare bones outline, but less than a fully-fledged novel. Imagine you're fast-forwarding through a movie, stopping for the highlights, or skimming a novel for class the night before the big test. A treatment is like that. It gives you the major contours and pulls you in just enough to give a glimpse of what the finished book will be like.

Planning a Novel, Part 2: Pre-Writing

The second installment of a series I'm writing for The Master's Artist. Enjoy!

In Part 1, we considered the "grid," the conceptual landscape of the novel you're about to write. It's divided into chapters and scenes, and we superimposed a dramatic structure, which gave us a rough sense of what should happen when. (Or rather, what sort of thing should happen when, since we haven't quite reached the what.) You might think of the grid as an old-fashioned card catalog that's been emptied out for your use. It's a set of pigeonholes, nothing more. The real work begins when you try to fill them.

Sometimes a story writes itself. You begin on the first page, stringing one word after another, and before you know it the book takes on a life of its own. The planning, if there is any, happens subconsciously. The writing experience is ecstatic and it carries you forward to the rollicking conclusion. I'm guessing this is how many first novels are written, and some of them go on to be published, though not the vast majority. What happens, though, when you attempt a follow-up and the story doesn't magically happen? That's the dilemma I found myself in. My first novel, written in the heady days of college, was one of those late-night osmosis affairs. The stack of pages grew and grew, and it all seemed so outrageously simple. I was convinced I must be some kind of genius. Then, in grad school, I tried to knock out a more ambitious kind of novel, and I ended up stymied for something like eight years. I knew very well how to write a novel, but I didn't know how to plan one, so the more ambitious the story became, the less able I felt to grapple it down onto the page.

Planning a Novel, Part 1: The Grid

This is the first installment in a series I'm writing for The Master's Artist. I'll be cross-posting the material at Write About Now, since it's practical, writing-related stuff. If you have a comment, you can post it here or there, whichever you prefer!

Planning the Novel, Part 1: The Grid

In honor of National Novel Writing Month, I'd like to begin a series of posts about how to plan a novel. Notice I said plan, not write. Over the next few weeks, I want to consider the thought process that goes into the novel before the writing begins. I realize that, for many of us, that amounts to approximately nothing. We start planning a few minutes after we start writing! Even so, the things I'll be discussing might prove helpful -- if not as action steps, at least as a conceptual framework to keep at the back of your mind.

Planning a novel is not like drawing up plans for a house. You're not going to create a blueprint, perfect in every way, that can then be executed. Instead, planning a novel is like planning a military campaign. You're going to marshall your forces, get your supply lines sorted out, and do everything you can to make sure that, on the day, you can improvise as needed.

Like a battle, your novel has a landscape. It's going to take up space, so we'll start by thinking about the conceptual landscape of your book. I'm going to call this the grid, for reasons that will become clear in a moment. So, what's the grid?

Summary Execution

So you hate writing outlines, but you're tired of not knowing where your novel is going until you get there? I might just have a solution for you. Be prepared, though, because it involves the dreaded s-word: summary. Most authors I know hate summaries. We write them last of all, once the real work is done, and only because editors require them in the proposal. That little requirement bugs us, too, because of all it implies. Why do you need a summary of my manuscript when I'm sending you the manuscript itself? Can't you people just, you know, read it? Editors can, but not everyone is the decision-making chain is going to, so a good summary is important. But that's not what we're here to talk about.

What if you wrote your summary before you wrote the book? And what if, instead of a summary, it was really a treatment -- a fleshed-out, highlight-oriented narrative that suggests both the character development and plot arc of the finished novel.

On Advice

A good writer medicates himself. No, I don't mean he writes with a bottle of pills at his elbow. What I'm saying is, he's constantly diagnosing his shortcomings and prescribing solutions. Think of it that way and you understand why not all good advice is good for you. There's plenty of medicine behind the pharmacy counter that you simply don't need, because you're not sick in that way. Taking the wrong advice can actually make you sick when you were fine before. To guard against this, like I said, you have to be your own diagnostician. Look at the symptoms and make your own evaluation.