The Long Road

Recap: I finished the first draft of my novel, The Tome of Worlds, in July of 2013. Since then I have read through and edited the book twice. Not all of the edits are in the manuscript. In fact I have yet to finish editing the novel on my computer even though I’ve read through the story twice. I’ve gotten to the point where I need an outside opinion. I think the story is very good. Surprisingly good. And now I need someone to take me down a notch.

Have you ever read through your story or novel and wondered who wrote the story? I mean, at times I don’t remember writing the words I am reading. Other times I am amazed at how well the story is written. And of course there are times when I think the writing is clunky. Still, I am very pleased with what I wrote.

My life has changed quite a bit since I finished writing the novel. My wife gave birth to our third child in early January almost 7 years to the day we met. We moved back to Seattle. I have a new job, but with the same company. Oh, and I won the fantasy football championship in my 12 person league.

Lots of changes.

Still, through all of the changes I have kept at the novel. I wrote two short stories, and just last week I started the sequel to my novel, tentatively titled Portal to the Deadlands.

Now that we are settled in Seattle I hope to get back to my blogging ways. I’ve missed the connection to the community.

Editing Post II: Villains

How is your day going? What have you been up to?

I’m coming to the end of the hiatus I took from my novel, The Tome of Worlds. I begin the editing process Sunday morning, 8/18.

In the interim I have written a short story on the death of Edgar Allan Poe called “Reynolds! Reynolds!”, a short story centered around a door to another time and place called “The Door Frame from Yesteryear”, and I have conceived of another story–short or novel I do not know yet–of the life a handicapped man as a freak in a 1930s Carnival.

The last story requires research because the extent of my knowledge of depression-era carnivals comes from the cancelled HBO television series Carnivale, so I will soon begin reading a novel called Nightmare Alley by William Gresham, the story of a man’s downward spiral to the level of a geek in a 1930s carnival, the lowest of the low in carnival life. Has anyone read Nightmare Alley?

I don’t know where the story of the handicapped man will take me, but it’s a story I must tell.

But, on to editing. As with the last post, much of this advice comes from the editing novel The Fire in Fiction by Donald Maass.

In my last post on editing I covered the following topics:

Summary for Editing Post I

• Always, always, always write with passion.
• Live through your characters. Feel what they feel. Use your own experiences to convey those emotions.
• Show villainy, loathing, and greatness through impact on the world and characters

For this post I will talk about villains.

Villains

Who are the memorable villains?

• For me Voldemort was not memorable as a villain. I sympathized with him, but he was not memorable in the same way as Harry, Ron and Hermione.
• The Kingkiller Chronicles by Patrick Rothfuss has a villain, but the villain is not memorable; rather, the villain is fleeting and ambiguous. He lurks.
• The White Witch from The Chronicles of Narnia? Still, no. She lures in and tricks Edward, is evil to children, but she is pure, black and white evil.
• O’Brien from 1984. Now there was a villain. He lured in the protagonist and betrayed him. O’Brien’s memorable quote was  “One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.”
• Mustapha Mond from Brave New World. He wasn’t a villain, but he believed that they had to sacrifice certain freedoms for the good of society. His arguments were compelling.
• Moby Dick? A symbol of obsession? Or just a whale?
• Sauron was straight evil. He was a villain, yes, but he had no depth. Personally I found Saruman to be a greater evil because he was once good.

Depth. Great villains require depth. They cannot be a cardboard Mr. Evil. I must understand their motivation, which is why most of these villains fail for me.

Voldemort was evil, but why did he want to convert the world into a magical version of 1984? Just because he thought wizards were better than muggles? I saw a mix of Hitler and 1984 in Voldemort, but there was very little depth to Voldemort, little justification for why he became who he became.

1984

Out of the villains I list, O’Brien is my favorite. He lures Winston Smith into a trap posing as a member of The Brotherhood, an ambiguous revolutionary group Winston seeks to join. O’Brien appears, at first, to be friendly and sympathetic to Winston’s dislike of the party. He becomes Winston’s friend. In the end it is O’Brien who turns on Winston, tortures him, re-trains him.

O’Brien is evil. He believes he is right. Like Mustapha Mond he makes compelling arguments. During O’Brien’s initial interactions with Winston, O’Brien comes across as human.

Now, I have not read 1984 in twenty years, but I still remember O’Brien. When I set out to write this post I was not thinking about 1984, but when I had to think about villains, O’Brien came to mind instantly.

So what makes a great villain in your mind?

Donald Maass says that there is no villain as scary as one who is right. I believe that’s why I found O’Brien to be such a deep villain. I didn’t agree with O’Brien’s philosophy, but in the end Winston did.  If you, as a reader, believe in the protagonist, as I believed in Winston, as I came to be committed to Winston, then when the protagonist is swayed by the villain you are moved, too.

There are three villains in The Tome of Worlds:

• Naestrum, the master of a realm called The Deadlands, a place people go when they become lost
• The Seers, a group of creatures from another land who are believed to be all-knowing, all-seeing
• Tartarus, the embodiment of Hell from Greek Mythology

When I re-visit my novel I intend to put more into these villains. Donald Maass suggests you do the following, and I agree:

• Justify your villain’s actions
• Make them right
• Write a villain who could sway you
• Reject the idea of evil. Make the villain good (from their point of view)
• Don’t let the villain lurk, put them in your protagonist’s face

Once again I notice a theme in this advice. If you want the reader to believe in your villain, make your protagonist believe in him.

Editing Post III

For the next installment I will hit upon secondary characters and sidekicks, though the advice is similar to what I just presented for villains. The bulk of the post will focus on scene revision.

As always, if you have any editing advice please don’t hesitate to add your opinion. Thank you.

Editing my Novel, The Tome of Worlds

How many of you have edited a novel? What’s your process? Do you have any favorite books on the editing process?

I put the last word of my novel, The Tome of Worlds, to paper on July 10. Since then I have written and edited one short story on the end of Edgar Allan Poe and am at the end of another short story about an empty door frame standing in the middle of a corridor. That last short story has taken an odd turn and I want to see it to the end before I start editing my novel.

Since early July I have set aside reading fiction and have turned my eye to reading books about and taking notes on the editing process. I read The Fire in Fiction by Donald Maass from cover to cover. I started to read Writing on Your Own Terms by Rebecca Dickinson, but put it aside after thirty pages because I felt that the book wasn’t going anywhere. Right now I am reading Manuscript Makeover: Revision Techniques No Fiction Writer Can Afford to Ignore by Elizabeth Lyon.

The FIre in Fiction by Donald Maas

Over the course of my next several posts I am going to discuss my editing process. The posts will serve several purposes. One, I hope to glean information from those of you who have edited novels. That editing advice can then be passed on to people who read this blog. Two, I can summarize my thoughts on the editing process. And three, I can hash out how I will edit my novel, because I am not quite ready to begin.

I have edited several short stories in my day, but this is the first time that I will edit a full length novel. I am looking forward to the challenge.

The Fire in Fiction by Donald Maass

Donald Maass does not give you a method to edit your novel. Rather, he hits upon what you should look for in a strong novel. Both editors, Donald Maass and Elizabeth Lyon, talk of writing with passion and emotion. In the second draft of my Poe short story I applied this thought process to the short story. I got into the head of my protagonist, Mr. Snod, and made his character come to life more fully. My readers say that the story is much improved.

Currently that story, Reynolds! Reynolds!, is going through the Critters Workshop.

But back to Donald Maass. In this post I will focus on characters, but specifically the protagonist. Donald Maass asks the following questions:

• How do you find the strong or human qualities in your protagonist?
• What will be most effective to portray?

He contends that the answers, as always, lie with the author.

• What is forgivably human to you?
• What stirs your respect?

That is where to start, he says. He also says that readers want to be in the characters’ heads. Readers want that intimacy. What do you think? Do you, as a reader, like to know what the characters are thinking? Do you want that intimacy?

A theme throughout Donald Maass’s book is that characteristics such as greatness, villainy, and humor are not shown through narration, but rather they are measured through their impact on the world and on characters around them. To that end, if your character, or one of the supporting characters thinks that someone is a savior or ‘the one’, and you can convince your readers to believe that character, then your readers will believe.

Do you think about how your characters impact the world around them as you write? Do you think about how other characters view your protagonist?

Summary for Editing Post I

• Always, always, always write with passion.
• Live through your characters. Feel what they feel. Use your own experiences to convey those emotions.
• Show villainy, loathing, and greatness through impact on the world and characters

Editing Post II

The second post will continue the discussion of characters. I’ll discuss why the protagonist must face tough challenges, why he or she needs secondary characters, and why a story needs a strong, empowered villain or antagonist.

The Consequences of Time Travel

If you see me standing in line at the market, or in any line for that matter, and I have a spaced out look, chances are this is my thought:

Not only do I never have enough time to write, but my reading list is growing like a geometric progression.  I have to figure out how to slow time, build a time machine, or read faster and organize my time better.

Of course, what’s the easiest of those options? Hint: it’s not the last one.

Consequences

Let’s say that someone went into the local ice cream parlor and left the keys in the ignition:

Speed Limit: 88 mph

Sweet. Just make sure the time computer isn’t set to 1955. Now you can read as much as you want. Ignore the world.

“Wait, wait, wait,” you say, “You can’t reset the past. That’s not how the DeLorean works.”

“Right, right. Wrong time machine.”

I would have to go back in time, kill my former self, take over his role and that’s how I would reset time.

Or, would going back in time alter the threads of time, maybe creating a new one where I die on the timeline at the exact moment I appear in the past thus keeping continuity?

OK, OK, this is why time travel gives people headaches.

Freezing Time

Not Science Fiction Anymore

This is the idea I like the most. Let’s say I could exist outside of time? Something similar to an Alcubierre Warp Bubble (not science fiction, by the way). I would still need an energy source, but let’s ignore that plot-breaking problem. Then I could exist outside of time. I could read and write for as long as I want while the world around me is paused.

But, but, but then I would age. My wife and children might notice when I suddenly appear as:

Reading list is done. Finally.

Back to the Beginning

Looks like I need an even more improbable confluence of events: a cure to aging and the ability to freeze time. Now there’s an interesting premise for a story.

Back to organizing my life. Or, rather, back to spacing out.

I Finished the First Draft of My Novel

Yes, I finished the first draft of my novel. I had some wine to celebrate the first milestone. Much  more work to be done, I know. Probably more wine, too.

The beginning

A full year ago during a family vacation to La Push, Washington I began writing my novel in earnest. While watching waves crash onto a log-strewn dreary shore I wrote those first words in a composition notebook bought in Forks, not knowing how long the story would take to write.

Turns out the writing would take me close to a year.

In Stephen King’s memoir, On Writing, he says that you should take no more than three months to write a novel. If you write, on average, 1000-2000 words a day, then yes you could finish a decent chunk of a novel in three months, but for some reason I could not average 1000-2000 words a day. In my (up to an) hour a day of writing I averaged 200-500 words per day.

On Writing

I didn’t really start clicking with the word count until late October 2012 when I put myself on a schedule. I began to wake up around 4 am and then wrote as much as I could–after my first cup of tea or coffee, of course.

Yes, sometimes I wanted this much

Still, even then my word count varied. After being a father and husband and holding a full time job, sometimes there was not enough energy in the day to hit my word count quota.

But I persevered. At times I wondered if the story would ever end. At times I didn’t see how the story could possibly end. And then, two months ago I saw the end, and ever since then I have been pushing and pushing until my hand ached to get to that ending.

I can now look back and see how the story and characters evolved.

I know it’s odd to say, but the main character, Aedinn Finn, grew on me. He was an amorphous blob to me when he woke up in the Tower in those first pages. At first he was an innocent in the world, still stuck in the memories of his previous life, but by the end of the novel, well, you’ll have to see. Let’s just say that reality slapped him around.

Janus Riberin, Aedinn’s mentor, surprised me. When I first envisioned him he was powerful, respected, and disciplined. He had little patience for Finn’s questions and feelings, but by the end of the novel Janus was showing a different side. He was still a curmudgeon, but a curmudgeon cracked by the same reality that had slapped around Finn. Still, Janus is not sorry for what he did.

Because I had written their histories I knew the fauns and faeries better than the men. Harguf the Elder and Pynnin had survived the Battle at Iardin and their stories were the first ones I wrote years and years ago. The role they played in the first novel was not quite what I had in mind when I started out.

In fact the novel as a whole did not follow what I had loosely (vaguely) envisioned many years ago. Instead the novel became the story of Aedinn Finn’s journey to reclaim his sanity and identity against the backdrop of a fantastical world losing itself due to the return of an ancient disease and the accidental attention of a once imprisoned God.

Let the editing begin…in a month. Wish me luck.

As it stands now the novel is the length of Harry Potter and The Half Blood Prince. By edit’s end I’d like it to be length of the first Twilight novel, which means I need to shave off about 15,000 words.

 

The End, July 10, 2013

 

The Asymptotic Ending

As I come to the end of my novel I find that the effort required to write is increasing exponentially in proportion to how close I am to the end.

All of the threads in the story are coming together and my mind is working overtime to hold all of them in place.

Plus, I have a fear that the story will not come to an organized end.

The last two scenes of The Tome of Worlds are an epic city siege of Koronan and an exhalation of sorts before the second novel begins. Even though I know how the battle turns and how the story concludes itself I find myself not wanting to put the protagonist, Aedinn Finn, into the fray.

These fears remind me of an awful story I wrote years ago called Threads of Time. I wrote the story during the summer of 1999 while I was working at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Los Alamos National Laboratory Sign (Photo credit: Cavalier92)

I had just won an award for science fiction writing at MIT, and I thought quite well of myself, so I tackled a story I had wanted to write for some time on the question of faith–God, destiny, and all of that.

In Threads of Time, the protagonist, let’s call him George, started to have dreams about a place that existed outside of time. The place he imagined outside of time was a bar where notable figures from throughout history came and mingled with each other. Each person within the bar thought they were dreaming, but while they were there they were inspired to the achievements for which they became known.

Einstein was there. Newton. Hemingway. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but that was not the point of the story. Threads of Time was about an approaching nexus.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I went with the idea that every time we make a decision, two possible realities are created–one reality for each decision you could have made. With billions and billions of people throughout our history there would be an exponentially increasing number of threads in the human existence.

In Threads of Time a nexus approached where all of the threads created throughout human history were coming together to one point.

Much like my novel.

In Threads of Time George had to push the human race through the nexus through an act of faith.

I was hoping I could do the same with The Tome of Worlds.

Threads of Time was a good short story idea, but in the end I could not bring the story together.

Oh, I finished it. Wrote an ending, but the ending was not satisfying. The story was my attempt at dealing with my own questions about and issues with the subject of faith.

As you can see, I didn’t deliver.

And now, as I come to the end of The Tome of Worlds, I feel that the curse of Threads of Time is coming back, but in a bigger way since The Tome of Worlds is much more massive.

If only I could dream of the bar, go there, and be inspired to finish the story.

Writing the penultimate scene as I wrote the rest of the novel, on faith and instinct, isn’t going to work, I realize. I have to organize the last battle, something I loathe doing, but I see no other way around attacking the problem.

Yesterday I drew a map of Koronan, which I had yet to do, because up to this point the only part of the story that took place in Koronan was the beginning when Aedinn Finn was imprisoned in Kol Uthera. He never went outside the Tower. 

I needed a battle map, similar to the maps I used when I played Dungeons and Dragons and Mech Warrior with my D20 dice.

Up to this point I had avoided any advice on writing, because I’d had my fill of writing advice. I have stacks and stacks of writing books that I read long ago. The last thing I wanted to do was read another piece about writing, but I needed a nudge.

I came across this site on writing fantasy battle scenes.

http://www.stormthecastle.com/mainpages/for_writers/writing-a-fantasy-battle-scene.htm

Common sense, really. Just organization, but I needed to see the advice even if I knew what I needed to do.

The point of my rambling in this post is that even though I have well founded fears about the end of the novel the way to attack those fears is to just write. Just do it.

Even if I go back and scrap the entire final battle scene just write it.

I wish a bar would open in my dreams and help me finish the novel, but that’s not going to happen.

However, I will go to a real bar when the novel is done.

Pinterest and My Novel

Pinterest is the fastest growing social network out there. Long ago I heard about Pinterest, but I never looked at it. Still, I know that a few authors I read have Pinterest pages, so I decided to make my own page.

Pinterest is a fun way to pass time, especially if you see clothes or shoes or furniture you like on a webpage, any webpage. Hit the Pinterest plug-in button and you can Pin a picture of the item in which you are interested to your board. It’s a great way to keep all of your ideas in one place, visually.

English: Red Pinterest logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

How have I used it? Well, I’ve added movie posters I like. Ways I would like to dress someday. Bookshelves I’d like to own. The way I’d like my writing space to look.

Also, I’ve used Pinterest as a way to visualize every aspect of the world I’ve created. Whenever I see an image, be it on Tumblr, fantasy art sites, Google+, you name it, I Pin the image to one of my boards.

I’ve made boards for Fashion in the Nyre Lands, Scenes from my novel, and Jaunter staves so far. I have a board hidden where I am putting together a story board that I plan to publish around the same time as my novel is published.

If you have a Pinterest account, or if you are interested in seeing how I see the world in my novel, please head over there and check out my Pinterest boards. I’d love to hear what people think.

http://pinterest.com/cldeards/boards/

And if you are on Pinterest, add me if you wish.

On Writing and Mood

Like many wanna-be writers, I have read my share of books on writing. The best writing book I have read is On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King. Not because the book contains the secret to becoming the next best seller. No. Stephen King talks about his struggles not only in becoming a writer, but also in being a best selling novelist. Interwoven in the story of how he became a writer is how he became a writer. Even he admits that there was a certain amount of luck involved. At the end of the novel though he gives the reader a path forward, if they too want to become a writer. The path is not a guarantee. Of course not. But he ends the novel leaving you with hope.

That said, I don’t remember a specific piece of advice out of his book though I can safely say that every book on writing can be boiled down to one piece of advice: write! That’s it. Save yourself money and shelf space. Just write. Now please send along $14.95.

Another piece of advice, not nearly as important as the $14.95 version is this: watch what you write when you are in certain moods. You know what I’m talking about. Have you ever tried to write when you are angry? What comes out? Does your main character step on a few too many bugs? Punch someone? Kill someone? And then you re-read what you wrote and you say, wait a second, my school marm just killed her cat and punched the mailman in the face.

In the same vein where I marvel at how the mind solves the puzzle that is writing a novel, I also find interesting how my mood affects my writing, and to that end I try to be in an even-keeled state of being whenever I write. Sometimes that’s not possible, but I do what I can.