Pacing Stories

Pacing... it's the bane of any writer. I stress out a lot about this issue, and reading the helpful insights on Kristin Nelson's blog doesn't help my nerves.

It does, however, help my writing.

I'm getting a story prepared for submission. I wrote my query letter and sent it to a dozen or so close friends and writer buddies for critiquing. Of those, maybe three know what to look for and will give me the brutal advice I'm looking for, yet vague positive feedback from friends helps too.

So while I wait for feedback (only got two replies so far), I'm spazzing at 4am over the first thirty pages. Ideally, I should wait until I get a positive response, but I'm in a total writer's block, and reading anything besides vapid shojo manga is simply not appealing at the moment. Because I feel like I've wasted a day if I don't do at least something in my manuscripts, I'm thus spazzing.

Over thirty pages.
Condense, condense, condense!!!

I realized in my second draft of this story, I had done the dreaded "info dump." The first chapter was a literal history lesson. The main character sat in a classroom, hardly speaking, while her brother and his ex-wife, her nursemaid, fought over political issues, gender equality, and how to rule a clan.

Problems? 1) The audience had no clue who the main character was. In fact, the nursemaid sounded more like the MC. 2) No hints at what the big issue will be. Politics? Social issues? We learned about a troubled country, not about our beloved characters. 3) History classes are boring. So was this!

That chapter got scraped so hard, it went from 15 pages to three, and recently I trimmed it even more. A little info to realize we're in a matriarchal clan society, fine... but we don't need to know the whole fricking history of the country!

Now I'm tightening more. I wanted the first four chapters to fit in those 30 pages. The thing is, there's this castle. I describe the castle. I describe it loquaciously! Whereas it's great to step back and see an aerial view of the castle and land where this scene will take place, it does not have to fill up three pages of my first thirty pages. Those "Holy 30" make it or break it. Although it's an example of descriptiveness, something I have a weakness toward, it's telling, not showing. The plot isn't moving yet in these thirty pages.

There is so much that must happen before my main character meets the love interest, a whole royal ceremony to name her the heiress, hints about the main mystery, political allies and enemies to meet, her family and childhood friends who form the nebulous of her "five-man band."

Is this all good for pacing? Does the story lag? Am I getting into the meat of the story too slowly? How can I fix it?

These are legitimate issues that writers must deal with through time and learning, not just me being obsessive-compulsive again. Well, perhaps a little of that too. This manuscript was so challenging because I went into it not blind. I had the characters and their histories all worked out ahead of time, so I wanted to explain it all quickly. Now I'm reading these initial pages, and I'm seeing a grotesque info dump. It's scaring me!

Do I really think I'm ready to send this out? If even I, the author, am seeing issues, does the story stand a chance against the far-more-experienced eye of a literary agent?

I love this story. I want this to work.

I wish I had someone I trusted, someone who knew what things to look for in voicing and pacing and such, someone who would read my story and not just say "Yeah, it sounds great." I don't want praise! I want harsh criticism. I am a masochist when it comes to editing. I want to be beaten and whipped into shape, to have my story blood red with corrective ink.

However, I want someone to tell me my faults before I get my hopes up with sending in a query, then thirty pages, then a whole manuscript, just to have the agent say, "Sorry, but your pacing is all wrong." Reading Ms. Nelson's blog post reminded me of that little hidden fear in me. What if this was my story? What if she was reading it, and in 30 pages or even 100, it just wasn't working?

I want this to be perfect.

Yes, I'm obsessing... again. I need to stop doing this, but I'm not sure how without icky drugs.

Then again, by obsessing, I'm growing to become a better storyteller. For artists and writers, striving for perfection is not only recommended, it's practically mandatory! So I'll go back, tighten the belt of those thirty pages, while I wait for a response from an agent.

Wish me luck!

Sapere aude!

Writers Workshop Blues

I'll be blunt. Some days, I need a swift kick in the rear.

I've really not been able to write for quite some time. Oh, I'm getting editing done, sure, but that's nowhere near as fulfilling as finishing a chapter of new content, fresh off the press of my imagination.

Nope, since at least December, it has been all editing work. Maybe a page here and there, but my brain has hit an Ayers Rock, a block in the middle of nowhere; or perhaps I should compare it to Auyantepui, the Devil's Mountain, where, ironically enough, Angel Falls tempts adventurers with a piss-shower from heaven... or hell? Whether I imagine my writers block as a sea cliff, a monolith, or the Great Trango, my metaphors fail to correct the problem of somehow surmounting this impasse.

And of course, I suck at rock climbing.

I thought sitting in with a writer's group would help. I don't know many writers around here, besides a few I've befriended during Nanowrimo. My lack of literary companions leaves me wishing I had made it to more write-ins. (Note to self: get over my social anxiety by next November.)

I was part of the White Knights Writers, but they disbanded before we really got a chance to get started. I'm far too shy to simply sit in with a group I don't know. I never feel "good enough" to be in the presence of such people. It's all about talking, and I communicate via keyboard, not vocalizations. If I could speak that eloquently, I would have gotten into radio.

Workshops can be outrageously brutal to the pocketbook. Tin House Summer Writers Workshop at Reed College costs $1,100 in tuition, meals & lodging $575, plus mentorship is $750-$1,000. A cheaper one is the Write to Publish Workshop at PSU, which is a mere $120 all day, or $35 for each workshop. What's a starving artist to do?

I can't recall my last writing workshop, it's been that long. This is not the longest writer's block I've had, but considering I haven't even been able to write anything more than one short poem and some snarky forum posts, it's perhaps the most complete writer's block.

At least I can read through old stuff, but grammar checks are the tofu to my smorgasbord of creativity. I need a kick in the pants, a stick of dynamite to blast this stupid rock so I can plow through without worrying about carabiners and climbing harnesses.

The best I can do at the moment is blog. That's...pathetic. But at least it's something.

So...anyone know a good writing group in the Portland (preferably Tigard/Tualatin area) with free meetings?

I love being snarky

I woke up in a snarky mood. I was researching the top speed of the fastest human Usain Bolt, and of course I got distracted by animals. This led me to a site supposedly to teach kids, where it was stated that "the fastest animal on earth" was the cheetah. I was immediately alerted. "Nooo, don't teach our children ignorant things like this!" Fastest animal ON EARTH is so misleading.

Luckily, someone below gently corrected them... wrongly. Another poster made a claim for peregrine falcons. Another said some PBS show told him that ostriches were the fastest animals (seriously???) Another came in claiming sailfish were fastest, another said it was some insect (only because it could jump so fast given its small size) and some supposed cheetah trainer claimed gazelles were faster. It devolved into childish bickering between swift lovers, admirers of the peregrine falcon, and cheetah fans, as well as debates if "fastest animal on earth" meant on land on within the sphere of this planet. When two kids came in with "dude, I'm only 12 and I know the sailfish/gazelle/random-bird is slower" I just cracked up.

I felt it imperative to straighten all these idiots out before they went off teaching our children wrong things. And I was feeling snarky. I was also a little cranky at how stupid some people are. Maybe a hair bitter? Anyway, I posted this, then realized it was educational as well as insolent. And just maybe it'll stop the back-and-forth debate.

--

I gotta say, I couldn't even read half these posts without groaning at the stupidity of mankind. Arguing "fastest animal on earth means on land, no it means in all the world, no it means that's ever existed, no it means..." Sheesh, the 12-year-olds sound smarter! You middle school kids who are putting these adults in their places deserve a lifetime of cookies. The rest of these genetic rejects deserve to be eaten by cheetahs.

First off, the fastest fish is the sailfish, as some people above said, but it's only 68 mph, so it's slower than the cheetah. Saying "well it's got water resistance so that means on land it'd be faster than the cheetah" is as ignorant as saying if you tossed a cheetah out a plane, it'd be faster. Hell, if you want to talk about unnatural environments, just put me in the cockpit of an X-15.

Secondly, that pesky peregrine falcon seems to have caused a lot of confusion for the ignoramuses of the world. This lovely bird has been clocked in freefall at 260 mph, making some people claim it is "fastest." Properly, others have pointed out that this is its speed while in a dive. The peregrine falcon that was clocked at that speed was also thrown out a plane at 30,000 feet so it could be high enough to reach terminal velocity. That's cheating in my book.

Contrary to what others have posted, humans do not also freefall at this speed. There's a thing called AIR RESISTANCE which slows us down. Only in a vacuum do all things fall equally. Go back to high school. Or try copying the homework of one of the smart 12-year-olds.

As impressive as our bird-sans-parachute is, animal speed records are taken by HORIZONTAL movement (be it flight or running), because otherwise, let me run down the face of Grand Trango and I'll beat the pants off Usain Bolt.

In horizontal movement, the cheetah beats all other land animals at claims (not proven) of 75 mph, and a record made by the cheetah Sarah of 70 mph. In horizontal flight, the spine-tailed swift is the fastest bird at 106 mph. The peregrine falcon doesn't even land in the top ten for its horizontal speed. It falls fast, that's all. It's not the "fastest" by how experts measure animal speeds. Otherwise, go test your speed at terminal velocity until you surpass 260 mph. But remember, parachutes mess up air resistance. Don't wear one. Darwin will cheer you on.

If you want to argue that the peregrine falcon is the fastest animal in the world, first ask the folks over at Guinness to change their rules. Offer them cookies. If they're as naive as some of the people who posted here, they'll fall for it.

A Ginger Step into the Mire of Fanfic

Okay, so I wrote a fan fiction.

It's not my first. Matt and I worked together on two, one a Quantum Leap story that we never finished, the other one a Star Trek: Voyager piece (it was all a dream). However, writing slash fiction is new, and an experiment I'm hesitant about. I've written love scenes before, beautiful collisions of passion, but never something wild, brutal, and... never gay.

Maybe because I'm not a man, so I don't fully understand the "sweet mystery of life" as it pertains to the hairier sex, and I'm not into girls, but... I just never bothered writing homosexual love scenes before. Heck, I once wrote a love scene between a human female and an alien who got his kinks having his ear licked, but never two people of the same sex. Such a deprivation in my repertoire had to be corrected. What better venue than the mired bog of Fanfiction.net!

This was indeed a challenge, a way to open myself up as a writer, expand that sanitary attic of my mind, and tackle the bareback boundaries of the bedroom. I picked a manga ripe with homoerotic overtones: One Piece. Face it, even the artist plays around with the idea that Zoro and Sanji would make a great gay couple.

In fan fiction circles, this running gag has become reality. I read some of this stuff (as with all fan fiction, 10% is decent, 90% is a mawkish excuse for cheap porn). It's funny how utterly certain the fanfic community is about Sanji and Zoro's relationship. And not just them. The two women aboard the Thousand Sunny are, of course, made into slutty pirates who will do anyone in anyway and in anyplace, although the crow's nest seems to be preferable. The whole ship is seething with potential orgies.

Before you gawk and scream "OMG, how could you even think to write such smut?!?" please be warned, this is an experiment. I've done writing experiments in the past. This is like an artist who paints nudes purely to gain a better appreciation for the human body. Perhaps they are personally uncomfortable with nudity, but it can be artistic, too.

My goal was to write a homosexual love scene and keep it artistic while still being raw and... fulfilling, for lack of a better word. I wanted more than "yo, Sanji, love hotel, let's do it" followed by page after page of way-too-textbook lovemaking and 70s porno dialog of moans. I wanted angst, passion, memories flashing through the mind, regret, awkwardness... everything writers tend to leave out in fanfics.

So... here we go!

Memories in a Bubble - a One Piece erotica fanfic (note, I have moved the story to a new location after a certain cousin was traumatized, so this version was posted much later than 12/5/2010)

If you are under the age of 18, do not read this.
If you are offended by profanity, do not read this.
If you are offended by homosexuality, do not read this.
If you are offended by sexual content, do not read this.

Otherwise... enjoy!

Sapere aude!

The End of NaNo

Notice I have not written in a month. This is because of that once-a-year nightmare and miracle called "National Novel Writers Month." During NaNoWriMo, I magically transform from a hermit sitting in my darkened apartment typing with feverish fervor, to a "WRITER"... nay, even more, a "NOVELIST." The special effects team never arrived, though, so the transformation looked less like Sailor Moon...



... and more like what I was doing before, only a little more insane and pressed for time.

The last two Nanowrimo contests, I pushed for the Double NaNo, writing a novel, not just 50,000 words long, but 100,000. I did it, too. This year, knowing publishers do not like epic tomes, I decided to aim for something a bit more humble. I finished the month at 80,780 (I like round numbers).

The story lacks only one more chapter, a scene I skipped because I'm not sure what to do with it. Lizby is in Purgatory, and as she is being led back to the "world," she is shocked to see that her mother, whose sudden death led to her own suicide, is in Purgatory too and about to be led away to whatever task she must do. It's supposed to be a real tear-jerking scene, but I'm stuck. I'll wait a few weeks to let my brain rest.

So what's next for this writer? Well, I have a few people who want to read Last Days, so I'll finish that up. I also want to do another read-thru of Daughters of Ashby because my dad wants to read it. Yikes! I never let my parents read my stuff, it's embarrassing!

Eventually, I want to return to my roots, to Shadowstrider, and finish the last book. Even if I'm left with an issue of what to do with novels that exceed 300k words, I at least want to finish the series. A morbid part of me wants it completed before my stereotypical untimely death, at which time Shadowstrider will be discovered and turned into another post-mortem classic.

A more practical side of me, the one who ignores the Keatses and Poes of the writing world, wants to finish it so I can look at the entire arc of the story and break it into bite-size bits. Or set it aside and publish a bunch of novels that become huge hits so I can pull a "Robert Jordan" and publish Shadowstrider as-is, 300k words and all, and no publisher will glare at me. No, they will joyously accept this epic tome with dollar signs in their eyes and Hollywood on the phone.

MWAHAHAHA!!!

Ahem, yes, that is the more "practical" side of my life. Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia, after all.

My Nano Novel: Last Days

I've been piddling around on which story to pick for this year's Nanowrimo. Usually I pick an outline that has been sitting on my computer for years, waiting to be told. Last year I invented an entirely new story, coming up with about 30 characters, an entire plot, and a few key scenes all in about two days and only a week before November 1st. This year, I'm picking something that has waited almost a year for attention.

I had first decided upon my Jane Austen-esque YA novel, The Gardens of Bidding Hall, something I began in 1995 for my Junior English class in high school. It wasn't received too well, at least not the first chapter. My teacher said, "You write along the same principles as Charles Dickens, going on elaborate tangents which, eventually, all tie together, but leaves the reader guessing at their importance in the meantime." To this day, I'm not sure if that was a compliment or a criticism. I assume it was both. Anyway, I thought I had only the first couple chapters written and an outline for the last scene, I checked it again and I've already written 22,000 words, nearly halfway through the Nanowrimo goal of 50,000 words, so that one's a no-go.

Then I realized I had this mainstream fiction "what if the afterlife is all bureaucratic" type of story, nothing but a rough outline, a first paragraph, and the last page written out. That's more in the spirit of Nanowrimo, to write something from almost scratch, notes and outlines allowed, but not completed chapters.

Thus... (drum roll please) ... Last Days will be my Nano novel this year. Huzzah!

---

"Welcome to the Last Days. Be sure to fill out all forms."

Elizabeth "Lizby" Siddall has recently killed herself. She ends up in the Last Days Department, a bureaucratic sub-section in Purgatory for people who commit suicide with no other major sins against them. They are given the duty of living out the last days of terminal patients who have prayed for God to end their suffering. They have a time period in which they must live through the sufferings of that person, anywhere from a few days to weeks. They have some flexibility in what they do with their time, but there are plenty of rules.

1) Don't reveal anything about the afterlife.
2) Don't cause the death of others.
3) Don't do anything that might damn your host.
4) Don't kill your host.
5) Don't save your host.

But when Lizby is put into the body of an old man who doesn't have to die, she begins to want to live... and that's against the Last Days rules.

---

Like it? The plan is that each chapter follows what person she "possesses," seeing different lives, feeling physical pains, witnessing emotional upheavals of those realizing the person is about to die, and slowly being redeemed.

It follows religious ideas I don't personally believe in, but it's a fun story. The idea of a literal bureaucratic purgatory is fun, and this will also be my first attempt at writing an entire novel in first person. I experimented with that in I Saw Lydia Cry, another not-quite-completed novel, where Lydia is telling her story first person, a journal she left behind, but many pages are missing, so the story is interspersed with interviews of the other characters who fill in the missing gaps plus details Lydia herself never knew. I'd like to tackle that story again; however, I wrote it in 1994, so it's outdated politically and technologically and in dire need of a plot overhaul, not something for Nanowrimo.

So this is a good change for me, something more mainstream, something actually publishable. I have hopes in it, and hopefully the economy changes so I can publish some of these things. Bad economy means bad book sales, so I have to put everything on hold... grrr! >:(

[activate optimism]
Which means it's time to build up a buffer of novels!
Weee, Nanowrimo Time Is Here!
[optimism activated]

Getting Closer to NaNo

It's about that time again, when I finish up whatever projects I have open, clear my mind from the inundating world I've been scuba diving through for months, and try to set myself up for something fresh, something new, something crazy and wonderful.

National Novel Writers Month - a.k.a Nanowrimo.

I'm already on the forums and chatting away with other writers. I've just finished what I hope will be my final draft of last year's Nano novel, Daughters of Ashby, which turned into a 2-parter both measuring slightly over 150k words. That's sort of big, but it's a historical fantasy so I hope it's not considered too long.

I also have my "brain break" novel ready. Sometimes I just have to break away from the novel I'm working on and try something totally different for a day or two. This is dangerous during Nanowrimo when a writer is aiming to create a 50,000-word novel in 30 days, but for me it's mandatory for my creativity. So my brain break will be my first Nano novel, Ghost Coast, which sadly did not win, coming to a dead halt at 42k word, 8k short of the goal but ended as a completed novel. I've since rearranged a whole lot, cut and pasted the entire timeline of events, and added an intense romantic element which I hope helps with sales. To complete my remake, I need to add three chapters. That's my brain break.

Other necessities to setting up for Nanowrimo is non-messy snacks for writing sessions (nothing that will gunk up my keyboard), lots to drink, and a plan for what days I can go out for write-ins. I tried attending write-ins for the first time last year, and it was loads of fun. Just sitting in a room with fifty other novelists is somehow inspiring, knowing I'm not alone in this creative force. I think our Muses combine and reinforce one another.

I'm currently reading The Various Shades of Fangline by Colby Purcell, which she posted on Blogger one chapter at a time, much of it being pushed out through November. I like that idea. I don't have a big following like her (although, if I could draw better, I would totally turn some of my stories into online comics) but perhaps I can get opinions, comments, and generally a good idea if what I'm doing works. Posting chapters online is dangerous (anyone could steal it) but I might give it a go. Still debating this idea.