How to Write a Looooong Book...

Fiction Lessons:

Do long novels intimidate you?  I alluded to measuring the length of , Elizabeth George's This Body of Death on the store book shelves for several weeks.  I enjoy Elizabeth George's straight mystery characterizations and plotting almost as much as Laurie R. King, James Doss, and Deborah Crombie, but her 1,000 page book intimidated me.  [OK.  950 pages.  It's still looooong.]

So, how do you write a loooooong novel that's publishable?  Believe me, it's not by adding a lot of description or walking your characters step-by-step to the action.  It's by complicating your plot with potential bad guys and giving your secondary characters a life of their own.  

So, how does George write a looooong novel without padding?  With these elements:

1. a sub-plot where one villain's previous crime [a child murder than mirrors a real-life British murder] which impinges on the current London murder of a "missing person" in another part of Britain;
2. the complications of Thomas Lynley, the major detective, returning to his old crime unit while still coping with his wife's murder and a new supervisor, who's auditioning for his old temporary position;
3. a sub-plot involving his old partner, who the new supervisor is pushing to look more professional, and a change in the relationship with her ethnic neighbors.  [Dress is a point of humor for long-time readers of the series.]
4. several possible villains, including three from the previous child murder, who are investigated by various members of Lynley's old unit; and  
5. several people who add facts and observations about the murder, including several red herrings and a busybody who gums up the works.

The total gives the reader one long book without violating the various craft rules you keep reading in books and blogs. 

Other Stuff:

Rather than pull a bunch of stuff from the web together since I haven't been spending much time there, I thought I'd mention some useful articles in the May, 2011 issue of the The Writer.  Their article on 12 tips for an air tight contract hooked my attention, what with me being negotiating all sorts of stuff for the trailer.

The issue focuses on freelancing, but there are other topics of interest to fiction writers too.  Ideas on keeping your stories from bogging down, centering you story's emotional core, and creating/controlling conflict. 

I should mention that Writer's Digest did another best of the web section for 2011. 

Progress:

Yeah.  I've finished my edits of "Dark Solstice", but haven't combined the chapters yet.  I'll learn the bad news tonight.  Then, I'll slap my hands if I try to make any more changes.

I did take a detour and turned a flash fiction piece, "Devil in the Details" into a short short story, thanks to E. J. Wesley's mention of some e-pub that likes stories about bugs.  The big light bulb in the sky flashed.  I added beetles as the imminent danger.  Now, I have to smooth the edges.

Almost got the critiques done for our next session.   Oh, there's a short piece on good critiquing in The Writer too.

Trivia:

Our lawn is filled with blooming violets, both purple and white.  Must say I like them better than the grape hyacinths.  Violets are tidier.  --  And, it snowed an inch, a rarity this winter.

Hard Hook, Soft Hook

The Read ... presented a different opening hook than the ones I've found in more recent books -- a soft hook.  I think I mentioned I found a used copy of Dorothy Gilman's Kaleidoscope published back in 2002 [maybe her last published book].  Now, I never cared much for her Mrs. Pollifax spy character but read the first The Clairvoyant Countess (Madame Karitska) several times.  [My favorite book of hers is The Nun in the Closet.]

More important, Ms. Gilman was chosen as this year's Grand Master (2010) at the Edgar Awards.  All in all, I'd say this is an author to pay attention to.  That said, I must say, Gilman's books don't fit the mold of the books I've been buying lately.

The hook feels passive when compared to current openings.  "Madame Karitska, leaving the shabby brownstone on Eighth Street, gave only a cursory glance at the sign in the first-floor window that read MADAME KARITSKA, READINGS.  It was ironic, she thought as she stepped into the bright noon sunshine, how a talent that had earned her whippings as a child, and for which she had never before accepted money, had led her so firmly to this street a year ago, and to this brownstone, to place the sign in the window that at last admitted her gift of clairvoyance."

A lot of info was packed in there, but I wonder if a working editor would sharpen the old red pencil and trim/change the opening paragraph.

More important than the opening hook being softer is the fact the structure of the whole book differs.  Today, publishing blogs from all sectors mention story arcs.  Imagine a covered esplanade with arches letting in the sunshine leading you from one point to another.

Gilman works with entwined threads of vignettes of Madame Karitska's clients, some pertinent to the continuing story and some one time happenings.  I often felt like Gilman was trailing a number of red herrings behind her.  Teasing the reader to guess which vignette adds pertinent plot info and which just adds color to the skein. 

I wonder if the book could still be published -- even though I enjoyed it immensely.  No danger made the reader care about the main character.  No plot offered a great puzzle to solve.  Indeed, Karitska is mostly a passive observer -- though she does get her ankle kicked by one of the villains in the book when he is arrested.  Karitska supplies the information, and the police solve the crimes.  The book, in this sense, almost feels like real life.

Progress ... Have been working on motivations.  Ye New Critiquer faulted me [rightly] for being too obtuse.  Now I've been going back and revising ... mostly beginning chapters.  For Kaffy Anne [Voices of Ghost Creek], I've been foreshadowing her ability to sense ghosts.  For Britt [There Be Demons], I've been adding more indications about what she wants to happen [and ain't].

For Emma, her expectations of bad luck are delivered right in the first chapter without anyone telling me I need to do more.

Trivia ... Bid for a critique on Nashville Relief.  Someone bid $5.00 higher minutes before midnight ended the auction.  I think I was asleep.  ...  Little green demon's saying:  Now you can keep your charity closer to home.

Secret to Writing Bestsellers Revealed: Parnell's Formula and More

How to Write Bestsellers:  The AW Water Cooler yielded a golden nugget of wisdom for writing success today.  "If there's ever a passage that smacks of 'good writing', you must ruthlessly delete it."

This insight comes from Rob Parnell's blog "Easy Way to Write" [ http://easywaytowrite.blogspot.com/2...r-formula.html ]  **  I laughed so hard, I'd follow him in an instant -- if I could have discovered how.  [I don't like subscribing since I really don't check my emails that often.  --  Have I ever said here that I hate computers?]

To be serious, he gives a great modification of the snowflake prompts.

Addenda:  Contests are sprouting like weeds.  Guess Spring's coming, and bloggers wants more traffic.

1)  Chuck at Guide to Literary Agents is offering all you people with a potential best seller a chance to strut your your YA or adult paranornal urban fantasy romance stuff to an agent.  See: 

http://tiny.cc/vsiID

then, look for the Lucky Agent Contest.

2)  Then, the Dark Wyrm has a link to a contest to win an electronic reader:    http://tiny.cc/wsUPv  

The Read:  Finished Tamora Pierce's Beka Cooper: Terrior last night and went to bed early.  The big revelation:  Pierce had snuck three plot lines into the story:  the disappearing miners of magical fire opals,  the kidnappings/killings of poor children for the one item of value their families' possessed, and the replacing of the "ruler" of the thieves of the Cesspool.  All three center around Beka's learning to be a "Dog" aka cop.  Pierce accomplishes this all masterfully using a modified "police procedural" structure.  The villains' plots collapse when greed pushes them beyond their capabilities.

I won't mention the usual YA line of an adolescent discovering their strengths and weaknesses.  Hate to inflict another sequel on you, but it's coming.

Progress:  It's the 30th or 31st or something.  The last day of Emma dinking -- with the manuscript.  Starting tomorrow, I slap my hand if I even think of changing something -- unless a person in publishing power (agent or editor) tells me to change something.  I can still modify my stupid query.  

The query has to be stupid because the six agents I sent it to, haven't jumped and asked for fulls ... or even partials.  Don't give me any excuses about the agency review time lines not expiring.  Two agents already sent form ejections of my 'best selling baby'.  -- Note I'm not saying agents are stupid for not grabbing it.  The fault is mine.  I didn't grabbed their attention by hitting their interests.

[Truth in Whining:  Previous queries have elicited a few partials which were eventually rejected.]

Now for Maren.  Was feeling a little smug about my "first" chapter -- until I did the critique class with Victoria Hanley (sponsored by the Northern Colorado Writers).  Hanley told me my first chapter was "underwritten".  I needed to expand it, basically into two chapters.  At least, she didn't say my weird opening was trash.  [She's too polite a person.]

Sigh.  I didn't leap into March with my defining chapter drafted and ready to complicate Maren's situation -- recovering from a coma after causing a massive explosion when she entered my never-never California gold country world.

Trivia:  Have to pay the unwanted bills today.  They're clamoring downstairs in the box, waiting to be sorted and paid.  Then, there's the checkbook that needs to be balanced so I know how much money I have available to spend.  --  I think I prefer to sink back into Maren's world.

** I tried to tinyurl this, but it didn't work.  Sorry.

Seeking An Launching Pad

Lectures from My Reading:  I hear over and over how people hate prologues.  Then,  Jane Haddam has a 48-page one in Cheating at Solitaire -- describing possible suspects wandering through an afternoon until she ends with the discovery of the murder victim.  

Next, she "starts" chapter one back on Cavanaugh Street (in a former Armenian ghetto in Philadelpha) with Gregor Demarkian, her detective, wondering how he can avoid the preparations for  his wedding to Bennis Hannaford, with whom he's been living and solving murders with for years.  The fussiest of his wedding preppers is tired of his fidgeting and suggests he go find a police department that has a murder they can't solve.  The book is off and running.

(I'm looking forward to a lovely read.  But, Haddam's writing is dense so it'll take me longer than most books.  We're talking page long paragraphs here.)

Still, Haddam has given me a possible idea for starting Maren with multiple viewpoints as a way to fill in a lot of backstory since her being shoved through a portal to earth starts the story.  I don't think I'm going to set up a series with Maren as the mystery solver,  but it may help me launch the chapters in my first draft.  Wonder how many people I can turn off by that.  --  Oh.  It's all in the execution, AWer's say.  Now I have to wonder about writing it right or executing my chances of getting the finished project published.

Progress:  Emma.  Revised chapter 6.  Wishing I wrote faster.

Maren.  Thinking more than anything else, but taking some notes.  Have to go back and try to clean my second card table so I have more room to spread out my notes...

Critiquing.  Am behind for the local group which meets Wednesday night ... in a predicted snow storm.  Waiting for a new chapter from my on line critiquer.  Decided I'm too busy and not ready for a beta reader.

Trivia:  Enjoying the same old rut.  Chiropractor on Tuesdays so I can sit at my computer and still unbend when I get up.  More important.  I'm meeting with a website person to polish my blog.

Coming Up for Air ...

As far as I'm concerned ... 

Christmas is over (except for the easy part --
eating, and talking ... and revising???).  

Now, it's on to Los Reyos and more seasonal excess.
Happy Solstice, by the way.

Lessons from My Reading:  I'm slogging through Kim Harrison's White Witch, Black Curse, as a part of my best seller read-a-thon.  It's as dense as chewing taffy with dentures.  Of course, I'm jumping into book seven in a series, but I get a little annoyed when Harrison mentions a bunch of characters and proceeds with the action without giving me an idea of where she's going.  I started the first chapter at least three times.  I'm now 200 pages into the book.  It's a nice complicated story with several plot threads twining around each other.  --  But I think the editors should be on alert that not all readers of a single book ... have read all the other books in the series.

Guess I should define "dense".  Like on page one, Harrison mentions three characters -- Kisten, Ford, and Edden plus the narrator/MC Rachel Morgan.  You get an idea of who Ford is by the action in the next two pages.  You get an idea of who Rachel is by her first person viewpoint of the events.  Kisten's murder is mentioned, but not who he? or she? was.  Edden is just a name in the middle of a sentence.  Having reached the middle of the book, I now know that all these people were/are important continuing characters.  A simple tag (like what she used to describe "... Ivy, my roomate and business partner," on page 2) would have made following the text much easier.


Compare this to my current gold standard (along with Lee Child), Carol O'Connell.  On page 1 of Bone by Bone, she sets up one character the M/C Oren Hobbs.  On the second page, O'Connell introduces the secondary M/C, Hannah, around which the two related mysteries in the book intertwine.  She also begins defining the structure of the relationship between the two people mentioned.  --  In comparison, Harrison was still confusing me on page 3.

In plain English, I'm complaining about Harrison's handling the back story of the series.

Progress:  Emma.  The revision progresses.  Actually, I've almost finished going through it once.  But ... I'm thinking after I transfer my corrections to the confuser, I need to reprint it and revise again.  I may get a friend to read it to see if its a bunch of  *^#%*^@*.  Only, I don't have friends who read fantasy.  Or, I may see if I can find someone willing to read a full novel at the AW Water Cooler.   First, I have to decide whether I want to read a full novel in exchange.  Decisions.  (Or, is that just more work?)

Critiquing.  Finally got my obligations done.  Must say I like seeing stories getting fleshed out chapter by chapter.

Demons/Gargoyles.  Haven't heard a peep or seen an ejection. 

Trivia:  I'm baking pies for Christmas dinner ... for which we have to drive down to Brighton (CO).  We'll be picking up the NYC son ... so I probably won't be blogging much until the New Year.  Hopefully, I'll soon be able to get this thing whipped into shape.

Have a safe and comfortable Christmas.

Wrapping It Up

Trivia:  The week's ending -- and I haven't accomplished anything.  Until I look at Emma, that is.  A chapter and a half to go.  Even figured out a way for mortal kid Emma to best a magical spriggen.  Better yet, I've foreshadowed it all along through the manuscript so I don't have to go back and seed info.

Guess, I can treat myself to Red Lobster and shrimp as a reward.  The old man doesn't like shrimp so I've stopped cooking it at home.  Too much trouble juggling portions.

Reading Lessons:  Haven't been reading much either.  Did read Berk Breathed's Flawed Dogs.  A sort of Westminster dog show meets Gaiman's graveyard.  Laughed out loud many times which may have made it worth it.  Still, it left me down.  Wishing for Opus?  Not really.  I don't think I'm really into "dark".

Also, have given up on Phaedra Weldon's Wraith.  Really loved the premise of someone who could travel outside her body and solve crimes (specifically murders).  The secondary characters were promising too.  But the voice.  I'd be sinking into the plot, suspending belief, and then, the character would grate me molars by her observations.  

In short, Zoe Martinique isn't someone who I'd go out of my way to have coffee with.  -- A disturbing thought.  Since it probably is an indication of my chances for getting published.  Not very many people would go out of their way to have coffee with me a second time.  (Think of Ms. Snark in a bad mood.)


So, what have I been doing.  I finished up my unviewed episodes of The Omega Factor and The Dresden files.  Omega is a 70s supernatural show with low-budget, low-tech effects, but scary as all get out.  Since it  was written for a different marketing set I won't mention more.  

But, Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files.  I'm going to be spending part of my week-end studying the pacing of the things.  Something made easy by what I think were commercial breaks.  Just like a chapter should, TV shows leave a dangling hook just before the break.  (Gotta bring the viewers back after they've channeled-surfed the commercials.)


Progress:  Tangled critiques.  Getting good pertinent comments.  Since my critiquers are showing me why things remain "trunk or under- the- bed novels", I'll continue chopping because I'm learning so much from the exercise.   Critiquers telling me where I come up short is a bonus.  More important, the lacks in the characterization/plot has made it difficult (impossible) to write a decent query.  -- I think that gives me a clue for further revision if I get around to it.



Emma.  Am finally feeling good about it.  I'm going to write a new novel this year after all.  Of course, I doctored the board.  Turned it into MG which only needs some 35,000 words.


Maren.  Got the short story prequel drafted except for the fight scene.  Over the Christmas slow down, I'll have to think more coherently about the book for 2010.


I keep my pace of about 500 words plus backtracking (aka revising/editing) ... I could never do NaNo.

It's Colorado, The Snow's Melting

Trivia:  It's Halloween!  We made the dentists happy and gave out candy to all the little beggers.  Actually, the old man did in his Basque beret.  I went upstairs and wrote.

Lessons from My Reading:   Thoughts on Series... Managed to read the next two of Yasimine Galenorn's mysteries -- Murder Under a Mystic Moon and A Harvest of Bones -- since my last blog.  The likeable characters had me ignoring the news and reading.  Of course, plot and a fast moving story line had something to do with it too.  Each of the important characters appeared in each book with an added dimension to their previous appearance.  Hey, even the cats get their due.   

Still liked the series enough that I thought about getting the next in the series -- One Hex of a Wedding.  Hints inserted into the Bones book suggest it'll be as interesting as the others.  However, the two bookstores I checked didn't have it so I was saved.  I get to mine my "to read" pile.

Since publishers keep doing series, I assume there are a lot of people out there who like returning to comfortable worlds, even if they have their scary moments.  The mystery and fantasy genres are filled with series -- which is great for me since that's what I mostly read.  From a writer's point of view, I'd think economy of effort keeps them going.  From a reader's, you know you're going to get a good read -- at least until the writer works their ideas into the ground and start repeating themselves. 


Galenorn's an interesting case for me.  I've read in two series of hers:  Emerald O'Brien (human psychic) and the D'Artigo sisters (half-fae witch, vampire, and shapeshifter).  I'm willing to read more in the O'Brien series, but not the D'Artigo one.  Reason:  The mystery in each O'Brien book is significantly different from the the previous ones while the half-fae story lines felt repetitive.  

My Progress (if any):  Critiques:  Critiquing amuses me since I am set up as having some expertise by default.  So far, my comments seem to be appreciated ... which feels strange to me since I never had an English class and wouldn't know a theme from a hole in the plot.

Tangled:  Lanquishes.

Emma:  Have revised the previous draft into a middle grade format.  On Monday, I get to draft new stuff.  The end.  Lucky me ... if I can decide what the ending is besides a bunch a swirling possibilities.