writing advice Archives

Too Dazzling and the Anniversary Trick

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Jul 282012

by
Scott D. Parker

Sometimes, as a creative, you have to be a mental magician to get things done. As I continue documenting some of the struggles I've been having recently, I have two examples from this past week that illustrate this point and that rather cryptic title.

The Dazzling Dilemma

My wife is a jewelry artist. She makes beautiful, intricate, wearable works of art and has a great time doing so. As she writes on her website, she likes her art to make a connection with people. While she primarily makes jewelry for women, she does do the occasional piece for men. I wear a simple silver linked bracelet and it is often the one thing I have on hand to show folks what my wife does for a living.

For my wife, however, what piece of jewelry to wear can be a dilemma. I mean, come on: she's a jewelry artist, right? She takes great care and consideration which piece of her jewelry she wears to certain events since, you know, she wants to represent herself well. We had a day off on Tuesday where we had a meeting to attend. We were all ready to go, but my wife was trying to figure out exactly what she wanted to wear with her outfit. She tried on and discarded a half dozen pieces before settling on a nice turquoise necklace. She turned to me and said, "It's funny that I sometimes have such a hard time picking out just the right thing because I always want to dazzle people."

Her statement struck me to the core of my writing self. My writing style, such as it is, is one focused on flash. I'll admit that. While I don't necessarily go for verbal gymnastics like Michael Chabon or Jonathan Franzen, I still like the fancy, flowery writing. But when I write a basic scene or story, I have, to date, tended to consider it not good if it wasn't, well, dazzling. It was a realization I made this week and, as it applies to my writing, I decided to just tell the story and, upon *subsequent* revisions, I can add in the flowers. But I will not let the flowers get in the way of the initial output.

The Anniversary Trick

I've long said that it's taken me longer to *not* write my next book than it took me to write my first one. When I wrote that first novel, I kept all of my notes in one of those black-and-white marble-looking composition book. Not only was that comp book the store house of my novel notes, it was where I kept all of my motivational messages to myself.

Recently, I opened that comp book again to review how I started and noticed that I began that first novel on 27 July 2005. Well, thought I, why not kick off the new project on the very same day in 2012. And, since I made a notation of when I completed the first novel, I have given myself a simple goal: complete the next book in the same time or less. I'm big on symmetry and figured I'd like to measure myself against…myself.

Yes, I know these two things are mere mental tricks and the fundamentals of sit-and-write still rule the day, but, sometimes, we creative types need a little extra.

Y'all do any mental tricks to help you keep writing?

What 1,000 Words Looks Like

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Jul 212012

(As this week began, I had planned on writing about one subject: Batman and specifically the three movies Christopher Nolan directed. This post here was going to be offered next week. After the unspeakable tragedy in Colorado, today is not the day for that post. We here at Do Some Damage offer our sincerest condolences and prayers to the victims and to the families that now are absent a loved one. Writing about writing seems so trivial and, to a degree, it is. But it is on days like yesterday where we are all reminded of the preciousness of life and all the tribulations and triumphs we endure. Each one of us copes with tragedy in different ways, and writing, for many of us, is one of those methods. Whatever you do, do it with passion and intensity and joy and abandon with as much zeal and verve as you possess.)

Accountants do not need any tricks to do their job. Neither do oilfield engineers, carpenters, teachers, or bus drivers. In my day job as a technical writer, I also do not need very many tricks to get my job done. However, when it comes to writing fiction, something seems to happen. We get stuck, we don't know where to go, we may not be able to think up interesting plots, we may not be able to carve out the time, and any number of other things that get in the way. Why is that? Is it because of the inherent creative nature of what we do? Is it, perhaps, the muscle of the imagination is the thing that needs to be honed and exercised?

The most obvious way in which we fiction writers measure our progress is by word count, the number of words that we have imagined into existence. Naturally, if you were measuring yourself by word count, the most basic metric is the daily word count. And, in that sense, the myth of the 1,000 words per day writing pace has developed. This is a modern metric, not nearly the pace and the output of the old pulp masters, and yet, quite a bit faster than the pace of some modern literary authors who publish a big book once a decade. If you do the simple math, it goes something like this: if you write 1,000 words per day, you will write 365,000 words per year. Since most novels are roughly 90,000 words, it naturally falls that you could conceivably write three 90,000-word novels per year.

A few weeks ago, the New York Times ran a story about the new expectations of readers and how established authors are changing to meet demand. For certain name brand authors who publish one novel a year like clockwork, the article mentioned that publishing houses are beginning to wonder if these authors can't add in a novella, or short story, or a small e-book to fill in the gaps between novel publications. Having never published a best seller myself, I can't speak to what goes in to making one. But back to the 1,000 words per day metric, one would think that that is an achievable goal, or at lease one to strive for.

The late Ray Bradbury, who died in June, was a prolific author. No, he did not publish 3 books per year, but he did do something for much of his adult life that he advocates all writers do: write every day. Soon after he passed away, I pulled out my copy of his writing book, Zen and the Art of Writing. It was in this book where he advocated writing something––anything––per day. Here is one of the many money quotes from this book: “If you did not write every day, the poisons would accumulate and you would begin to die, or act crazy, or both. You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”

Writing something every day isn't that difficult, really. If you want to be a writer, you just do it. But how does that compare with that modern 1,000-word metric? One of the arguments that have made for myself is that the thousand-word goal seems like a very high and threshold to reach. True, I don't *have* to meet that goal, but without setting some sort of goal, one would just meander, right? I mean, if you wrote a paragraph a day, you would be following Bradbury's advice, but you would not ever complete a novel.

So this past week, I did little experiment. I went back to my Harry Truman novel and selected a chapter at random. It turned out to be in early one, chapter 4 I think. I want to note two things: how long it took me to literally type one thousand words and how long it took me to type each page. So with a copy of chapter 4 next to me, I started typing. At the end of the first full-page (double-spaced), 6:15 had elapsed. By the end of the second page, I was at 12:16 and I completed the third by 18:30. It took me an additional 20 seconds to type the remaining few words to get me up to 1,000. It doesn't take a math genius to pretty much see the rate of typing, that being around 6 min. a page. As you may have already figured out, 1,000 words is approximately 3 pages of double-spaced typed manuscript with one-inch margins on the side.

Three pages. That's all. I was surprised when I saw those three pages printed out. In my mind, the entire chapter was around 1,000 words, and the idea of writing a chapter per day seemed quite daunting. In reality, I chapter is 7-1/2 pages long. That equals approximately 2500 words.

Now, your your response will be the obvious one: I knew exactly what you're typing and all you did was type. I did no creating. That's true, but if you examine the amount of time it took me to type those 1,000 words––19 min.––you'll realize that it's less than half hour. One would like to think that, given eleven min. to come up with a scene or a bit of dialogue, that you could easily type out the 1,000 words it could take to describe that scene in the next nineteen minutes.

Thirty minutes. Half an hour. When we talk about carving out time to write each and every day, my mind almost always goes in to the hour block of time. And, given our busy lives, I can honestly say that finding a hour a day can be challenging, even though I want to be a prose writer. That was how my reasoning went before this week: which hour of the day do I want to carve out to write 1,000 words? After my little experiment, I am rephrasing the question: what half an hour do I want to carve out each day to write 1,000 words?

While this might be easier said than done, my modus operandi of writing is via outline. My Truman novel was written with the complete outline before I started. Yes I revised along the way, but what having it outline gave me was a purpose for each writing session. I didn't have to think what I was going to write, I merely had to pick up the next index card in the outline and write that one scene.

In the years since my first novel, I have experimented with other types of writing regimens. To date, as I like to jokingly say, it is taking me longer not to write another novel that did take to write my first. I think it is time to go back to what I know works: outlining and producing. And, after the initial burst of creativity to create the outline, might it only take me a half an hour a day over 90 or so days to create a novel?

I'm looking forward to finding out the answer.

How Do You Know If You’re a Writer?

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Jul 142012

by
Scott D. Parker

Am you a writer or merely a reader?

Do you ever have doubts about your writing? I have them all the time, and those doubts hinder my process as a writer. In fact, they get to looming so large that the doubts themselves begin to overshadow the actual produced-writing output. That's where I have been for some time, unfortunately. It's gotten so bad that I missed a great opportunity, two, in fact, and am regretting it.

Writers and how-to books all pretty much say the same thing: the only way to overcome doubts on your writing is to write. No matter how small or how bad, the mere act of writing will win out. I don't know about y'all, but when I'm in this doubt valley, nothing seems to go right. To use the old analogy, even one candle can make some of the darkness disappear. And, a few years ago, when I was blogging on a near daily basis and writing prose every day, I had a virtual bonfire going. The darkness was blasted by the bright light of my constant output. But, as time wore on, as life intruded and I didn't give my writing life its due, the fire started to ebb. More and more, each day I didn't write, the fire dwindled until I was left, frankly, with only a small candle, barely keeping me from total darkness. And, in the writing world, what amounts to a little candle more often than not for me proves futile.

I've been reading a lot, so I'm never far away from books, but my writing life has suffered. I'll readily admit that the perfectionist streak in me is a huge culprit. I've had writing sessions in the past where the tale I produced in one sitting went on to publication or won awards. I say that not to boast, but to indicate where I'm coming from. If I can do that, the doubting part of my brain says to me, then all material in one sitting should be that way. Right?

Wrong.

I've been working on a collaborative story for awhile now with a fellow author. We've gone back and forth, draft after draft, honing and fine tuning. When I had delivered my last comments, I thought the story good enough. I considered the story publishable and thought it should be submitted. My co-author thought otherwise, and enlisted the help of an outside reviewer. A week or so ago, I received the marked-up draft of the story from the outside reviewer as well as the four-page list of additional comments. Four pages of additional comments, mind you, on a story I considered okay, ready to be let loose on the world.

Man, was I wrong. Again.

In reviewing the comments and suggestions, things that I took for granted were exposed. Turns of phrase that I thought pretty clever were proven to be corny and deleted. Logic flow, something I considered, um, logical, proved illogical. In short, the story that I had considered good enough (key phrase there) to be submitted was, in fact, not.

And the doubts, those black-shadowed things that ooze and creep upon you, got that much closer to extinguishing the small candle I was barely keep alight. Had the story been one where only I was the author, I might have just chalked it up to another reason why I should just stick to reading and not bother writing.

But I wasn't the sole author of the tale. I had a co-author who needed my help to complete our joint venture. And he assigned it to me. So, like it or not, I had to make the corrections. So, I started to do so, and I made an on-the-spot decision that has, so far, proved crucial. Instead of merely accepting the changes and adding/subtracting new material, I opened a blank file and started re-typing the entire story. In this way, much like when I used to write longhand and keyed in the words to the computer, I was able to accomplish two things. One, make easier the decisions suggested by the outside reviewer. And, truth be told, I've not accepted them all, but their mere presence has given me room to think and to expand the paragraphs where the reviewer indicated. More importantly, however, for me, is the process of typing in the words. The rhythm of typing, the clickedy-clack of the keys being struck is hypnotic, and it's been too long since I've heard those sounds. Now, granted, I am learning to dictate my material, but nothing beats the sounds of a keyboard being struck. When I'm going and my fingers are flying, I can make those storytelling decisions much easier than were I merely accepting the changes. It's a little like reading a story aloud, which I do for every tale I write. By retyping the words or reading them aloud, I'm able to pick up the flow better, and the story is better as a result.

This thing I'm doing now--I'm working through the entire draft and I'm not yet finished--is working. It is reminding me of the *process* of writing that, frankly, I let slide and fall by the wayside. This comes not as a revelation to most of y'all--and I've known it all along, I've just ignored it. Not everything I write in one sitting is good enough to be put out there. Not everything I spend seven drafts on is good enough for publication. Like it or not, there's a lot of stuff I write that will only have an audience of one…and I've already read it.

But the action of this particular revision and this particular style of revision has reminded me of something. I am a writer, and not merely a reader. I am a creator of stories, be they fiction or non-fiction. I am made that way, and it's been a real pleasure to be reminded of that fact.

That sound you hear? It's the sound of a match being struck on the matchbox and the flame igniting. Now, there are two candles, and the darkness ebbed just a little bit more.

Why I Write “Strong Female Characters”

Alpha, batwoman, character, creative writing, gender studies, Graphic Novels, Greg Rucka, Guest Posts, Mulholland Authors, Queen and Country, Whiteout, Writing, writing advice Comments Off

May 302012

[This post originally appeared on i09]

Greg Rucka has rocked the worlds of comics and novels for years, including memorable Batman writing, plus the Queen and Country series and the Atticus Kodiak books. But he might be best known for being a man who writes a lot of “strong female characters.”

People always ask Rucka why he chooses to write so many hard-hitting women. And now, to celebrate the release of his new novel Alpha, he’s explaining why.

The first story I can remember writing, that I truly set down on paper, was a Christmas story that I wrote when I was ten years old. The irony of this isn’t simply that I’m Jewish, nor is it that the story was about what happened to North Pole Operations when Saint Nick “went to join the bleedin’ choir invisible.”

No, it was that, in this little school assigned short-story I wrote, the mournful elves were roused from their grief by a determined and forceful Mrs. Claus, who took – ahem – the reins of the operation in hand. Under her steely gaze, toys were made, presents were wrapped, reindeer were harnessed, and the sleigh took flight with her in the pilot’s seat.

It wasn’t, I think, a terribly good story, but it had two things going for it. It had the shameless unselfconsciousness of a ten year old author, and it had a clear feminist agenda.

Shades of things to come.

When I was in high school, I started writing a serial novel, longhand, set in the Arthurian mythos, and influenced not incidentally by Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon. It was the story about a young pagan priestess, a Lady of the Lake, as it were, named Adriana, and the various adventures, trials, and tribulations she experienced. I wrote this in several college-lined notebooks. This was what I did sitting in the back of the classroom during English. My thinking was, well, I’m writing it in English, aren’t I? An excuse that, incidentally, did not impress my teacher at the time, Mr. Murray.

I still have those notebooks buried in a filing cabinet in my office. As with Mrs. Claus, the story – in memory, at least – isn’t terribly good. And like Mrs. Claus, Adriana was no wallflower. While I’m certain I never once put a sword in her hands or armor on her form, she was undeniably kick-ass, strong-willed and proud and disinclined to back down in the face of adversity.

Why I Write "Strong Female Characters" In graduate school, I wrote a one-act play called Work Ethic under the guidance of the terrific writer David Milton. There were three characters in this play, two men and one woman. The woman was a Deputy U.S. Marshal by the name of Carrie Stetko, a later-iteration of whom would reappear as the protagonist in the graphic novel Whiteout, written by me, and illustrated by Steve Lieber. Whiteout was my key through the razor-wire and spikes surrounding the comics industry.

Whiteout was made into a movie. There’s a Carrie Stetko in that, too. She shares the name, but the similarities between Movie Carrie, Comic Carrie, and One Act Play Carrie begin and end with the name. Comic Carrie and One Act Play Carrie would shake Movie Carrie down behind the bleachers, laugh her out of the You Share Our Name Club, and send her limping and mewling home to mother. And they wouldn’t feel a moment’s regret about doing it, either.

In early 2001, Oni Press published the first issue of Queen & Country, a comic book series written by yours truly and illustrated by many wonderful artists throughout its run. I later wrote three novels that are – depending on your point of view – either tie-ins or crucial parts of the series. The main character of both the comics and all three novels is a woman named Tara Chace. Tara is a Special Operations Officer for the British SIS, or MI6 if you’re the kind who likes Old School. She’s basically James Bond, except without the hyperbole and the bullshit. Quiller set in a Le Carré-influenced world might be a better description.

Tara can kill people with her bare hands and escape from Iran with two bullets in her body, but she can’t maintain a personal life worth a damn.

There are more. There are a lot more. There’s Renee Montoya and Kate Kane and Sasha Bordeaux, all over at DC Comics. There’s Black Widow v1, Natasha Romanov, and Black Widow v2, Yelena Belova, and Elektra, and currently Sergeant Rachel Cole-Alves, all at Marvel.

There’s Bridgett Logan, and Natalie Trent, and Alena Cizkova, all from the Kodiak series of novels. There’s Miriam Bracca from A Fistful of Rain, and there’s Dexedrine Callisto Parios, from Stumptown, and there’s Her Ladyship, Captain Seneca Sabre, from the webcomic that I write and that Rick Burchett draws, called Lady Sabre & The Pirates of the Ineffable Aether. There’s Victoria Black from a Project That Is Yet to Go into Production but by the grace of God will soon see the light of day.

There are a lot of women.

You will have no doubt detected a theme, here.

If you’re familiar at all with my work, you’ve noted that, not only do I frequently write stories with female characters as my protagonists, but these women share certain traits. They tend to be quite smart, if not all of them well-educated. They tend to be physically active, most capable of taking a punch as well as throwing one. They tend to be driven, goal-oriented, and willing to go to great lengths to secure their aims.

Many of them are flawed, some of them quite terribly so, but few, if any, are cruel or mean or malicious, though all of them certainly share the capacity to be such. They are rarely, if ever, portrayed as victims, and if they are ever impediments to the story, it is because they impede themselves through their own character flaws. They are not sex objects, though many are sexual, and several certainly desirable, and often-times they are desired by others to varying degrees. A few even have healthy libidos.

And because of these things, and because I’ve got a Y-chromosome, and because I have not only written about women in this fashion, but have done so professionally for nearly fifteen years, this has been remarked upon.

It’s been remarked upon a lot, in fact.

Most interviews with writers revolve around the same basic batch of questions, albeit with minor variations on the theme. Where Do You Get Your Ideas? is quite popular, for instance, along with How Do You Do It? I’ve been asked both many times. Many, many times.

But there is one question that I, personally, have been asked more frequently. This one:

How Do You Write Such Strong Female Characters?

This past year, 2011, I was asked this question a lot, and here we are into the first quarter of 2012, and it’s happening again (or still, if you rather). Most frequently, it comes up in regard to my work in the comics industry. If you know comics, and if you know superhero comics specifically, you’ll likely be familiar with the reasons why. Last year was not banner for the ladies, and this one isn’t off to a strong start, either, in fact. Wasn’t good for women within the industry itself, nor within the pages of the stories being told.

Those who’ve had the unmitigated temerity to actually comment upon this state of affairs publicly have ended up paying a surprisingly heavy price. The gender of the speaker has been largely irrelevant, though to be sure, it’s the women who’ve stepped up have taken the harder hits. But all who’ve pointed out the absence of women both on the page and behind it have been ridiculed, insulted, and, absurdly enough, even threatened with violence. Conversely, those attempting to defend their mistreatment of women within the industry have revealed a staggering lack of understanding, empathy, and self-awareness, while seeming to rejoice in an arrogance that is near heart-stopping in its naked sexism and condescension.

To say there are those who don’t get it is an understatement; it would be like describing the Japanese tsunami as ‘minor flooding.’

So, to the question.

I have two answers I tend to give, the Quick Answer and the Long Answer. Both are entirely true, for the record.

The Quick Answer goes like this:

Q: How do you write such strong/well-realized/positively portrayed women?

A: I don’t. I write characters. Some of those characters are women.

The Long Answer:

Writers don’t write Men or Women or Dogs or Salmon. Writers write characters, and at our best, if we do it well and with care and with thought, we invest in those characters a spark of life, a realism and nuance that makes them believable and relatable. We seek to craft characters who inspire empathy, characters our audience will care for, and as a result, will care about what happens to them, and thus will share the journey we have charted. A story, after all, is the character’s journey.

No character – no well-created character, at least – is defined by only one trait, by one aspect. Sherlock Holmes is not simply brilliant. He’s also a malfunctioning human being who, perhaps ironically, possesses a strong moral compass and such a compulsion to pursue justice that it eclipses any fealty to the law. He’s also a junkie.

Harry Potter is not the scar on his forehead, nor is Matthew Scudder solely an alcoholic, nor is V.I. Warshawski just a “female” private detective. Character is biology, countless cells and processes, many of them invisible to the naked eye, yet together forming a whole. A character’s gender, like their religious upbringing or their faith, like their favorite book or food, like their sexual orientation and experiences, like their education and their childhood, is a component of character.

That said, some components certainly weigh heavier than others. Green eyes don’t tend to affect character, unless that story is Big Trouble in Little China, for instance. But to define any character by gender alone makes about as much sense as defining a character by hair-color, or – ahem – judging a book by its cover.

Normally, I’d leave it there. I’m not going to.

There’s a second part to the question. The unspoken part.

It’s the part where I’m being asked and not, say, Laura Lippman. Because Laura is a woman, and it’s presumed therefore that she knows how to write about women, what with having been one her entire adult life. By the same token, Laura Lippman is not asked how it is she can write such convincing, strong male characters. Implicit in her job as a crafter of fiction is the demand that she must. No question need be asked.

The source influences, of course, but it’s not simply a matter of me being male that brings the question. For some, the question seems born from genuine confusion and curiosity. Yet for others – for many others, I think, it’s not simply that they’re asking How Did You Do This Thing? What they’re really asking, I think, is this:

Why aren’t more men doing it?

Why is it that so many male writers, when trying to write strong female characters, fail?

Why do they default to a shorthand, lazy equation, where strong equals bitch?

I can speak for myself, and I can share my suspicions. First? Many men simply don’t see it. They don’t read what they’ve written, or if they do, they’re blind to the content of their words, or they just don’t recognize that there’s work to be done here. For many, sadly, stereotype is enough, and the implicit failings in such writing either don’t factor or don’t matter.

But second, and far more damning? I think it comes from ignorance. Plain and simple ignorance, a crime no author should be allowed to commit.

Think about it like this; if I write a story in which one of my characters is deaf – and I have, it’s called Alpha, and it’s going to be released by this illustrious publishing imprint in May – it’s incumbent upon me as the author of the work to know at least something of what I’m talking about. I don’t, perhaps, need to learn American Sign Language (I didn’t), but knowing something about ASL seems, at least to me, the very least I can do. Finding someone who can speak with authority about the nuances of deaf communication, about the rapidly-changing nature of it, who can educate me enough that I begin to understand the limitations and benefits of ASL communication, that would probably, possibly help.

If I’m writing a story about a pilot, it might, conceivably, be of use to me to know something about how to fly a plane. A pursuit of a pilot’s license all my own would certainly make me more convincing, but sitting down with some solid reading, and perhaps an interview or two, would help to cover my bases.

This isn’t a matter of authenticity alone, though certainly anything that helps invest a story with verisimilitude – and I would argue that such investment comes via character far more than it does via plot – is worthy of pursuit. Rather, this is a matter of respect, for both the story itself and for the audience receiving it. The reader is smarter than you. The reader is always smarter than you. And the reader knows when you’ve taken a shortcut, or phoned it in, or are trying to pull a fast one. And the reader don’t like it one bit.

So why do so many writers seem to get away with such poor portrayals? If the audience is as smart as all that, why does this perpetuate? It’s not that they don’t care, nor even that they don’t mind. More than any other reason, I think, it sadly comes down to this: it’s what they’ve come to expect. It is, as the saying goes, par for the course. Or to put it in a worse light, when we fail to demonstrate the appropriate respect, we’re living down to their worst expectations

Gender isn’t simply a biological trait; it’s a societal one. The female experience is different from that of the male, and if, as a male writer, you cannot accept that basic premise, then you will never, ever, be able to write women well. A man walking alone through Midtown Manhattan at three in the morning may have concerns for his safety, but I promise you, it’s a very different experience for a woman taking the same walk, and it’s different again for a man wearing a dress. Think about it. That’s a societal factor, and it’s a gendered one, and this is not and can not be subject to debate. If you’re looking to argue that sexism is a thing of the past, that the world is gender-blind, you’re not only wrong, you’re lying to yourself.

An ignorant writer is a poor liar, and a poor liar makes for a bad crafter of fiction. If we accept that a story, no matter how grounded, is ultimately a tapestry of falsehoods, then it must follow that the author is required to tell his or her lies with as much skill as possible. As every politician and con artist will attest, nothing sells a falsehood better than a kernel of truth at its heart. Honesty at the correct moment, presented in the correct way, can buy the author an awful lot of rope with which to make the absurd seem plausible.

The way writers achieve this is through research.

My fourth novel in the Kodiak series, Shooting at Midnight, is told primarily from the point of view of Bridgett Logan, a Bronx Irish-Catholic private investigator who is also a recovering heroin addict. I am not from the Bronx, I am not Irish Catholic, and despite rumors to the contrary, I have never chased the dragon. The novel – as the novels in the Kodiak series are – was written in first-person. This meant that not only did I need to have Bridgett’s voice clear in my mind before I tried to put it on the page, but further, that I needed to know her view of the world. I needed to know her better and more intimately than I had ever before.

Why I Write "Strong Female Characters" Bridgett was not my first female protagonist, clearly, but it was the first time I was diving into such deep waters. I was going to be in her head, see through her eyes, and while I knew her personality, there were many gaps. I didn’t know what it was to see the world as a junkie. And despite my best empathy, I didn’t know what it was to see the world as a woman.

And I knew if I couldn’t do those things, the novel would be a car crash. I knew if I wasn’t honest, the reader would know, and not believe in Bridgett, and they would be lost to me. And I knew enough to know how much I didn’t know, and that my ignorance was a problem.

When in doubt, research. Research a lot. Read. Read a lot, and there is no shortage now – and there was no shortage then – of material to plumb. The women who work in the mystery and thriller genre are many, skilled, and I read them voraciously, just to see what they did with their characters, those points of view. But the best thing I did, the thing that helped the most, the thing that became the guiding principle, and has been ever since, was also the simplest.

I talked to women.

I talked to them about Bridgett, and I asked them questions, and much more crucially, begged them to ask me questions in return. Twenty Questions with Bridgett became a recurring game, and if I couldn’t answer, or couldn’t answer precisely, I’d ask for input, help, critique. I asked to be removed from ignorance, and I went to people I trusted to help.

It was amazing to me how few answers I actually had at the start.

Little of what was discussed, what was asked, ultimately made it onto the page, but all of it – all of it – influenced every word. Not every question revolved around gender, but many questions revealed a gender-influence and perspective that, despite my best efforts, I’d been ignorant to.

The cell analogy again, the million parts to the whole.

Writing is one of those professions where you can never be good enough. Where what you write tomorrow must, at the least, be an attempt to become better at your craft than you were yesterday. What I learned writing Bridgett unquestionably made me a better writer of women, yes, but more importantly, it made me a better writer, period. It changed how I approached my characters, made me re-examine my process and my assumptions.

World building is what writers do. The good ones, the really awesome kick-ass take-no-prisoners crafters of fiction, they’re able to invest such honesty into their tales that you believe in them. This is accomplished not through the alchemy of the letter-dance alone, but because they sit and they think and they play if-then games, they create a world and then honor their creation’s internal logic. They breathe life into their world by finding the details that reveal the whole, by setting the laws of their universe and then adhering to them. If I write a story and set it in Antarctica and then I take Carrie Stetko outside for a walk, I’d damn well better remember that it’s cold outside.

That’s world building. There’s no secret to it. If a writer -– any writer -– wants to make their story worthwhile, then the characters deserve as much consistency and attention as the world they inhabit.

How do I write such strong female characters? I write them the way I write all of my characters. With consideration, with respect, with honesty.

As much as I can muster of these things while lying to you for your entertainment, amusement, and sometimes, perhaps, for your consideration.

Greg Rucka is the New York Times bestselling author of a dozen novels, including the Atticus Kodiak and Tara Chace series, and has won multiple Eisner awards for his graphic novels. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife and children.

Greg Rucka’s ALPHA is now available in bookstores everywhere.

First-page critique of ARTIC FIRE

critique, Joe Moore, Writing, writing advice, writing tips Comments Off

May 162012

By Joe Moore

Here’s another submission to our first-page critiquing extravaganza. It’s called ARCTIC FIRE. Have a look. My thoughts follow.

Ben was excited. It would be his first year as a full time counselor at scout camp, a hard to get position he’d dreamed of since first attending as a Tenderfoot four years earlier. His brother Ian, three years younger, was a First Class scout attending his second camp and seemed proud of his brother’s position. Ian would only be at Gorsuch for a week while Ben would be there for two months. Ben hoped to give his brother something to attain to.

Ben was an exemplary scout, a member of the Order of Arrow. At fifteen he was within six months of earning his Eagle Scout rank. Only ten percent of all scouts complete the demanding path to Eagle. It had been hard work and he was going to complete it a full eighteen months ahead of schedule.

After two sessions of the National Youth Leadership Training School at Camp Denali he knew how to lead boys. He was aware of not only how to teach them the skills every scout should know, but knew how to prepare for any emergency he could think of, how to keep them safe on campouts and hikes, how to perform advanced first aid and wilderness survival.

And to top it all off, maybe most important for many of the scouts in his charge, Ben Sanders knew how to tell stories. It was a skill he had learned from his father whose skill at filling the boys imaginations with visions of mountain trolls, sea spirits and brave warriors was amazing. The only props his father used for his tales were a ratty old gray wool blanket and his story stick.

The well-worn birch walking stick had been made about the time Ben was born. Carved images of bears, wolves and eagles decorated the shaft just below the handle, worn smooth and shiny by his father’s own grasp, the oil and sweat of his palm rubbing the white wood to a sheen as if it had been polished and rubbed with varnish. And now, his father was handing the stick to him.

I’m not going to get into any nitpicking here even though there are a couple of punctuation errors. Despite the fact that this is decent writing, the major problem is that nothing happens. It is 100% narrative backstory. After reading it, I have no idea what the story is about, what’s at stake, what the story question is, and why I would want to read page 2.

I’ve spoken many times on this blog about the pitfalls of starting a story in the wrong place. And I along with my blog mates have tried to emphasize that there’s really no need for backstory at the beginning. This first page contains important information, but we don’t need to know any of it yet.

My advice to the writer: find a point in the story where something happens that jolts Ben Sanders out of his “ordinary” life into an extraordinary situation because of physical, mental or emotional stress. Delete everything that’s written up to that point. That’s where the story should start.

Thanks to the author for submitting this first page and good luck.

Tricks to Creating a Page-Turner

Joe Moore, Writing, writing advice, writing books, writing craft, writing exercise, writing process, writing suspense, writing techniques, writing the thriller, writing tips Comments Off

Apr 042012

By Joe Moore

If you write mysteries or thrillers (or any genre, for that matter), there’s nothing more rewarding than to have someone say your book is a real “page-turner”—that they couldn’t put it down. And there’s nothing more fulfilling for a reader than to find a book so captivating that they can’t stop reading. Naturally, the writer has to develop a compelling story populated with three-dimensional characters and enough conflict and tension to keep a reader’s interest. Those things are givens, and it’s the writer’s job to craft those elements into the manuscript.

But did you know that there are some simple formatting tricks that anyone can do to improve the readability of a manuscript and keep the reader turning pages. And what’s really cool is that you don’t have to change your story at all to benefit from them. Not a word.

Trick #1. Write short chapters.

Whenever a reader gets to the end of a chapter, they must make a decision to read the next chapter or put the book down and go do something else. It’s a natural stopping point or a launching point to the next part of the story. If it’s late in the evening, many times that decision involves continuing to read or going to bed. What you don’t want them to do is put down the book. When a reader finishes a chapter and comes to that late night decision to stop or read on, they usually check to see if the next chapter is short or long. If it’s only a few pages, there’s a really good chance they will read one more chapter. If they get to the end of that next short chapter and repeat the checking process again, they won’t go to bed. They’ll keep reading. And you will have setup a format that they’ll come to expect and rely on.

This tip does not mean that every chapter must be short. What I’m suggesting is to examine each chapter and see if you can split it into two. Or even three. After all, the same information is going to be imparted. It’s just going to happen in multiple segments.

There’s always going to be a need for longer chapters. Just ask yourself if that 6k-word chapter you just finished writing could be broken into multiple chunks. Remember that you want to entice the reader to keep reading.

Now I know that some writers will react by saying, “Well, my chapters end when they end. Short, long or in between, I write until the chapter naturally ends itself.” Fine. Do whatever you’ve got to do to write a great story. This trick may not be something that fits your writing style. But from a physical standpoint, readers tend to keep reading if they feel the next chapter will take just a few minutes to finish.

From a personal perspective, my co-writer and I try to bring our chapters in at around 1000 words. I know, some of you will think that’s way too short. But one of the most frequent comments we get from our fans is that in addition to enjoying the story, the short chapters kept them up late. We’ve had more than a few readers blame us for them not getting enough sleep because they decided to read “just one more chapter”.

Trick #2. Write (or format) short paragraphs and sentences.

This trick is closely related to trick #1, but it involves the visual experience of your book for the reader. It also involves setting up a distinctive and comfortable rhythm and tempo to your writing.

As you read, your eyes not only move along the sentence but your peripheral vision picks up the “weight” of the next sentence and paragraph. You’re reading a single sentence, but you visually take in the whole page. As your mind plays out the story from one word to the next, it also calculates what is coming up next, and causes you to be subtly energized or marginally fatigued. It’s like driving across the desert—if the road stretches in an endless ribbon to the horizon, you become tired just knowing you have a long way to go to get to the next break, or in the case of the book, the end of the sentence or paragraph. But if the road is only a city block or two long before you start down the next stretch of highway, you feel less overwhelmed by its mass (paragraph) or length (sentence). Shorter paragraphs and sentences keep the eye from getting fatigued. They allow the reader take a mental “breather” more frequently thus keeping their attention longer. And it’s also a tool for controlling reading speed.

Shorter sentences move the story along at a faster rhythm and tempo because the eyes moves quicker and your peripheral vision sees less bulk and weight on the printed page ahead.

Trick #3. Eliminate dialog tags whenever possible.

If there are only two characters in a scene, eliminate as many dialog tags as you can without confusing the reader. The dialog itself should help to identify the character as should their actions. Even with more than two characters present, staging can help to reduce dialog tags. Staging and actions also help to build characters. Dialog tags don’t. If the reader knows who is speaking because of their actions, the number of tags can often be reduced or even eliminated.

Trick #4. Title your chapters.

Your book has a title for a reason. It sets the mood or intrigue of the whole story. Consider titling your chapters for the same reason. Like the book title, a chapter title is a teaser. When a reader ends a chapter and turns the page, nothing is more boring than to be greeted with the totally original title: Chapter 23. Or worse, just 23. Why not give the reader a hint of what’s to come with a short title. Don’t give anything away, just use the chapter title as an enticement—a promise of things to be delivered or revealed. Use it to set the stage or create a mood just like the book title. I believe that each chapter should be considered a mini book. Chapters should have beginnings, middles and endings. And one way to tempt the reader to keep reading is with a compelling title.

Tricks like these are never to be considered a substitute for solid, clean, professional writing. They are only tricks. But they work if used in the mix with all the other elements of a great story. And the only way for you to know for sure is to give them a try.

Beyond these formatting tricks, does anyone recommend others that can enhance the reader’s experience?

Trusting yourself

Dead in the Water, Meredith Cole, Posed for Murder, trust, writing advice Comments Off

Mar 162012

by Meredith Cole

Trust is a strange and tenuous thing. Too much and you're a walking target for hucksters and thieves. Too little trust and life becomes just what you'd expect -- one unhappy disappointment. Balance is really the key, and I live with the dual personality of someone who was a resident of New York City for many years, but now lives in a high trust Southern town. The local stores in Charlottesville still encourage you to write checks, and apparently they haven't been burned enough to change their ways.

I've been thinking about trust and writing lately. Trusting yourself as a writer is a challenge, especially when you're new at it. You try something off the wall with a character, and then have regrets. You workshop your writing and then react to all the comments by taking out pieces of your work that should have stayed or slavishly trying to do exactly what others suggest. Your work suffers and you lose even more confidence. A vicious cycle.

Although I'm not preaching arrogance or misplaced confidence, I do think that writers have to work at trusting their gut in order to be great. You can't rely on an editor to "fix" your work. You have to become a better editor. You have to read and read, and then write and write until you become better at everything. Trust doesn't happen overnight, or even in a few months. Trusting your gut can take years and years, and still you might have a crisis over a bad review or a strange comment. You might think "I'm terrible at this" and find it easier to give up. But hopefully you don't. Hopefully you realize that stories are unique because every writer is different. And hopefully you love the process of writing, so you quickly get back to work finding your voice and learning to trust your gut to help you find your way through your story. Hopefully.

The Pancake Rule

Joe Moore, writer tips, writers, writers craft, Writing, writing advice, writing books, writing challenges, writing craft, writing lessons, Writing the Novel, writing tips Comments Off

Feb 222012

By Joe Moore

You finished writing your first book. Congratulations. The good news is, you’ve accomplished something that only a small percentage of the population ever will. Most just dream about it. Few really do it.

Now for the bad news: Your first book is not publishable.

What? Joe, are you crazy? Everyone says my book is great. My mom loves it. My neighbors and the girl that cuts my hair said it was a potential bestseller—as good as King and Patterson. I’ve even been told by my uncle who watches lots of movies that it would make a blockbuster feature film. JJ Abrams would snap it up in a heartbeat. So how can you say that about a book you haven’t even read?

The reason I can say it with confidence is that I’ve found first novels to all be the same—not in subject matter but in common, predictable flaws. And if by some miraculous stroke of luck the literary gods smiled down and your first book is publishable as written, then I would suggest you run to the nearest convenience store and buy a lottery ticket. There’s a good chance you’re on a roll.

I’ve made a list of the most common flaws of first novels. Keep in mind that having one or even a couple of these present in your book will not render the manuscript DOA. But I guarantee you’ll find all of them in the typical first attempt at writing a novel. Here they are in no particular order of importance.

You often use adverbs at the end of dialog tags to “tell” the reader what emotion the character feels. Example: “I’m mad as hell,” he said angrily. “I love you,” she said adoringly.

You rarely utilize any of the 5 senses to draw the reader into the scene.

You resolve conflict with coincidence or luck.

Your manuscript is filled with back-stories that don’t relate to the plot or develop the characters.

You head-hop within a scene between multiple POVs.

You tell the story rather than show it.

You have a “unique” approach to the use of the English language and the mechanics and structure of writing in it. Note: I mean this in a bad way.

Each page is filled with an abundance of adjectives that if deleted would not change anything other than make the writing cleaner.

You recently discovered the exclamation point and want your readers to share in your excitement.

You love ellipses . . .

You have a pet word or phrase that you feel compelled to repeat often in hopes that it will become a favorite of your reader.

You beat your readers over the head with repeated facts just in case they didn’t get it the first dozen times.

Your text is riddled with more clichés than you could shake a stick at.

You use profanity for no other reason than shock.

Your dialog sounds as natural as a first grade primer.

Your characters continually use the name of the person to whom they’re speaking.

You overuse flashbacks and/or start the story with one.

Act II sags like a piece of pulled taffy.

Your story wanders.

Your story starts in the wrong place.

You’re not sure how to create suspense, so you commit “author intrusion” even though you have no idea what the term means.

You confuse the reader.

Your facts are incorrect. Example: The assassin attached the silencer to the revolver so no one would hear the shots.

You slip from past tense to present in narration.

You describe every movement, every second, every detail and every breath of your characters actions for no apparent reason.

You don’t know when to end a scene.

Your plot is a rehash of The Perils of Pauline—your protagonist jumps from one terrible situation to the next equally terrible situation with no dynamics or variation in terribleness.

You either have no subplots or enough for 10 books.

All your characters sound the same when they speak.

Your characters have no flaws.

You rely on stereotypes. The men are all handsome with chiseled faces and athletic bodies. The women are beautiful fashion models. And the bad guys are ugly, disgusting monsters. Note: This is OK if your antagonist is actually an ugly, disgusting monster.

Your story is melodramatic.

Your target audience doesn’t exist.

You manuscript is infested with misspellings, the wrong use of words, grammatical errors, and missing or incorrect punctuation.

You believe that placing the word “very” or “really” in front of an adjective increases the descriptive value of the adjective.

And the one that I see most often: You find it impossible to tell someone what your book is about without rambling on for 10 minutes.

Everyone’s first book contains just about all of the above. Mine did, and I’ll bet yours did, too. But that’s OK. That’s part of the learning process on the road to becoming a published novelist. Every professional was first an amateur. Every bestselling author wrote a first novel that should never see the light of day. Chances are, it was just as full of these flaws as yours and mine.

The secret to this whole novel-writing thing is to keep writing. Few first novels are accepted by an agent much less bought by a publisher. Published first novels are the exception to the rule. For the rest, you’ve got to write that second book. And the third. And the fourth. That’s how you refine the craft. And with each manuscript, you learn to use less clichés, eliminate “very” from your vocabulary, delete needless “ly” words, make your characters more human, find your voice, and all the other thousands of parts to crafting a well-written story.

My mother used to say that when making pancakes, always throw the first one out. That’s because it takes cooking one to make sure the temperature of the griddle is properly set, the thickness and consistency of the batter is just right, and the timing of when to flip the cake is confirmed.

This pancake rule should apply to all first novels. Write it. Learn from it. Make the adjustments. Put it away. And cook some more pancakes.

How many of the flaws-list items did your first book contain? How many books did you write before you got published? Are there any other additions to the list that you’ve seen with first-time writers?

Not For Us!

Joe Moore, rejection, Writing, writing advice, writing exercise, writing groups, writing process, writing tips Comments Off

Feb 082012

By Joe Moore

We’ve all gotten them. Some are personalized and contain constructive criticism. Others are form letters addressed to “author”. Some have been photocopied so many times that the cryptologists at the NSA couldn’t even decipher their original message. Or they might arrive as a brief thanks-but-no-thanks email. They all say the same thing: your manuscript is not for us.

Rejected.

There are numerous ways to deal with literary rejection. We can all imagine the negative methods. But today, I want to discuss the positive ways to deal with the not-for-us letter.

After you’ve amassed an impressive stack of rejection letters, start by asking yourself if your query letter or synopsis might be the issue. You might have written the next Great American Novel, but if your sales pitch—your query letter—doesn’t do the job, the editor won’t want to move to the next step of requesting a sample. One method of improving your query and synopsis is to get help from an impartial third party such as a published author, writer’s forum or critique group. If you know someone who’s already published, ask if they can read your letter and give you advice on where you might be going wrong. Many online forums such as AbsoluteWrite, Writing Forums, and others have specific sections on query evaluation and feedback. Use them.

Next, you want to determine if you’re really targeting the appropriate publishers or agents. This is where you need to study the market. Go to the local bookstore and find novels that are similar to your manuscript. Make a note of the publishers. Many novelists include the name of their editor or agent on the acknowledgements page. Note those names. Then go online and visit the publisher’s websites. Read the descriptions of the plot on Amazon and B&N, and compare to yours. Google the agents names. Look at their list of clients. Are those writers some of your favorites? Do they write books similar to yours? Do your homework and focus on specific publishers and agents that deal with your kind of book.

Another question you need to ask yourself is if your book is as good as it can be. Of course, you’ll probably answer yes. Then take a moment to really consider the question. Are you being rejected repeatedly because the manuscript is just not ready for publication? Chances are, it probably isn’t.

So what should you do? Again, get outside help. One of the best ways to improve a manuscript is to join a local critique group. Most towns and communities have a library. Ask the local librarian if there are any groups that meet in the area. Check with the local bookstore. They usually know of critique groups or have bulletin boards that might list them. Critique groups that are made up of serious writers can be a huge benefit to helping you improve your work. Just remember that critiquing is a two-ways street. You want honest and sincere feedback, and you need to be prepared to give it back to your fellow members. There’s a very good chance that a group of fellow writers can help you get your story in shape so you can start submitting again.

Finally, don’t shoot the messenger. Agents and editors are in business to make money. If they don’t sell books, they go broke. If they don’t discover new books from new authors, they eventually go out of business. Their rejection of your work is nothing personal. Chances are, they don’t even know you. All they know is what they read in your query or sample. And the reasons for rejecting a manuscript can be as numerous as the number of submissions they received that day. Don’t blame them.

Forget about the lame excuses like: publishers only publish big established names and famous people. Or your book was rejected because it’s “different”, experimental, too unique for mainstream. Or you can’t believe they rejected your book when there’s so many bad books published. Go to The New York Times bestseller list. Look at all the writer’s names. Each and every author on that list was once an amateur struggling to get someone to read their manuscript and dreaming of making money as a published author. Every one of them fantasized about seeing their name on that list. What did they do? They realized that rejection really doesn’t mean “not for us”. It means “not ready for us yet”. Now go fix your book.

Any rejection stories to share? How many rejection letters did you get before that first book was published? If you’re published, do you still use a critique group or beta readers?