Stalled

The holidays always present obstacles to good, heads-down writing. That being said, I do believe I have reached a "stuck place" in "Seer Tyro Fiend".

First, there is a timing issue. An investigation has begun, but it should not proceed too rapidly. Although the investigator here is a certified genius, he doesn't have all the facts yet, and his pursuit of them must follow very logical paths based on what he does know.

Second, I'm getting that nagging sense of not enough conflict. Stefanie has her husband and her friends, the Greenleaf family, and if there is conflict between her and any of them, it will be more of a benign situation, a difference of opinion.

Third, also under the heading of timing, where I left off, it is Saturday afternoon in fiction land. What happens on Sunday? Stefanie's husband, Paul, is not working, but if he concentrates on the mystery over the weekend, he may get too far too fast, bringing back the first timing issue.

I suppose there are some writers who would smugly smile and think, "That's what she gets for not doing an outline." Perhaps that's true. For me, though, writing an outline is almost like writing the story, or worse, telling someone the entire story. If I tell the whole thing, the spark is gone and I lose interest in constructing it in a manuscript. It's happened before. Also, once I get going on creating the story in my head, sheer eagerness to get it underway prevents me from planning too much. I fear I'll lose the heat of inspiration and perhaps some of the ideas in my head as well. Oh, how many times I had a good idea about how to say something and then lost it before I got the chance to write it down.

Oddly, I may have come up with a cure for my "stuck place." In the book, I've already mentioned that Paul is under stress due to his promotion to Lead Investigator. Maybe I need to embellish the effects of that stress, which might also lead to more conflict. It might also lead Stefanie to try to shield him from more stress due to her current situation.

By Jove, I think I've got it!

Avoiding Little Anachronisms

The holiday break from my day job has not provided as much time to write as I had hoped, but I'm getting some in today before the long weekend and returning to work on Wednesday. 

Some of the most recent scenes I wrote demanded a few tweaks here and there, including a change in sequence that just made more sense from the standpoint of what a logical man like Paul would do. The changes required some editing for continuity purposes as well to avoid anachronisms. Arline Chase from Write Words has had a number of posts on her blog about this topic based on questions from writers. While the word anachronism might at first suggest things like current slang in an historical setting or the mention of an event that should not have happened yet, there are smaller anachronisms that can creep into a manuscript. Since my creative process is all over the place, not progressing in a straight line from beginning to end before changes get made, I have to be watchful of them. 

As an example, the scenes I switched around were quite emotional for Stefanie who received comforting support from Paul. One patch of dialog originally delivered in his office was changed to happening in a hotel room. Only a quick reread after cutting and pasting the sections in their new order showed Paul standing up when he was already standing! It also had Stefanie emerging from the shower and noticing him collecting some evidence in the bathroom. The shift of order had him hugging her shortly after her questioning him about what he was doing, but that meant he hugged her while she was still drying off. While that is not impossible, it did seem awkward once I realized how it "sounded." 

Both of these anachronisms might have been caught during the editing phase, after the entire manuscript got written in a first pass, but a perfectionist tendency in my wants each scene as complete and correct as it can be before I can move on. I know there will always be more tweaking as I edit, but I always fear that if I don't get it right in the first draft, I might just forget to check for it later or, worse, lose the thread of the inspiration altogether.

Back On It

Well, Christmas is now in the rear view mirror, and for personal reasons, I won't be glancing back at it very much or fondly.

Did not make much progress on "Seer Tyro Fiend" of the words-on-pages variety, but I did some thinking and made some decisions.

• Changing the name of one of the antagonists and tweaked his personality a bit.
• Invented a coming scene and embroidered on it.
• Made headway on figuring out who did what among the antagonists
• Came up with an image for the cover art and how to execute it.

Don't have to go back to work until Jan. 2, so I hope to get more writing done in the next few days.

Visitors to this blog were up Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, so I hope that means people were exploring my books as possible purchases for their new ereader devices received as presents.

More On Plotting

A few days ago, I posted about the "recipe" for plotting I usually follow. Since then, I've been thinking about the plot of "Seer Tyro Fiend," and I realized that the same steps for the main POV character development and basic story line also apply to the secondary characters who are the antagonists. For each of my "suspects," i.e., the instigator(s) of the trouble, I have to figure out who they are, what goal they were trying to further with their actions, and why it's important to them. So each antagonist develops something of a subplot of his/her own.

So as it now stands, I have a victim (of sorts), and four possible antagonists. These will all get chained together. I have made the first link in the chain between a victim and one of the "baddies" and have an idea of who the next link in the chain is. Now I have to figure out that character's motives for getting involved, what he/she seeks from that involvement.

Also on the agenda is some aspect of the paranormal angle of the story, and as mentioned in an earlier post, I need to find roles for the other characters on the "good guys" side. The character of Adam, Amy's husband, only came on the scene at the end of "Dabblers," but I want to give him something to do. I've been toying with the idea of making him suspect of something, but I don't know that I can justify the other characters seeing him that way. That area of conflict might be too tangential to the main story line anyway. I've read novels with little side plots like this in the past, and I was always disappointed when it turned out they did not really tie into the main source of conflict. I don't like loose ends. I suspect readers would accuse me of throwing out red herrings if I did this, and while a mystery can incorporate such foolers, I don't like using them. It makes for loose ends and a sloppy effect. Okay, so real life isn't neat and has side stories and all the loose ends don't always tie together. But this is fiction, and expectations for fiction are usually that it does not mirror real life. The satisfaction from a good story is that it does provide neatness and explanations and resolution.

Realistic Fiction?

Christmas Vacation! Yay! "We're so glad it's Christmas Vacation!" - from my favorite holiday song, the theme of the National Lampoon movie. Listen to the words some time--a nice sentiment.

Got through a pivotal scene in "Seer Tyro Fiend" yesterday, where the puzzle to be solved looms large and a bit dangerous. So now, Stefanie and Paul must unravel that puzzle, and I'm not even sure exactly where it leads yet! I will probably let the characters have their way with it and see where it goes. As things begin to happen and the antagonists (i.e., candidates for "fiend") become more active, their behavior must be both rationally motivated and fitting with the characteristics I've assigned to them. These are people, as close to reality as I can make them, and they must act in believable ways. I know I have, in the past, tried reading a book only to pitch it aside when a character does something out of character. This is a problem I liken to "slasher" horror movies where the terrorized female runs from the maniacal killer straight into his lair, or to someplace not safe where she will be cornered. I mean, any rational person knows that if something odd is happening in the house, or it looks like someone has broken in, the thing to do is leave, not walk around looking in dark closets or - gasp - the basement!

 I've also become increasingly aware that this book does not neatly fit into the Mystery genre. Whereas "Dabblers" began with a murder (sort of), this one does not. Maybe it's not all that important. I think people just want to read a good story, and if "Dabblers" got them somewhat invested in the character of my amateur and unorthodox sleuth, they may want to read more. "Seer" delves into Stefanie's past a bit more, and it's a dark place indeed. I also see her developing her unique talent to a new level, but I'm just not sure of the particulars yet. Will she discover a new ability? A new facet of the one she knows about? And what about the participation of the supporting characters? I'd like to give Paul, Amy, Adam, and maybe Hannah something special to do. I'll have to see what they want their roles to be.

The Good Part

"Seer Tyro Fiend" coming right along. Yesterday, I was busy writing the part which includes some of my initial inspiration for the story. As I've pointed out before, my novels usually begin with scenes developing in my head that aren't necessarily at the beginning of the story. Such scenes keep flowing around in my imagination until I actually get them into the framework of the story (and sometimes even after that). That means part of how the book starts getting written is constructing the set up for the inspired events, leading back to the formula for plotting I learned from a book on fiction writing long, long ago.

1. Who is this character? (Of course, in a sequel, I already know this.)
2. What does he/she want? Or more specifically, what problem is presented.
3. What does this character do about it?
4. What conflict arises from this action?
5. How does the character address the conflict?
6. What showdown does this lead to?
7. How is the problem resolved?

While this is a "recipe" for creating the plot, it is not necessarily the outline for the book, and yeah, I do some tinkering with the steps above. In essence, something happens to someone and the story is what they do about it. This is character-driven plotting, to be sure. If it were plot-driven, question 1 above would deal with the person who instigated the "something that happened" which is usually not the protagonist/investigator. (Think Sherlock Holmes or Miss Marple.)

So yesterday's scene was where some smaller events culminated in a crisis situation. My amateur sleuth, artist Stefanie Durant, is not a logical thinker, so it takes a crisis to get her thinking and making the proper connections. This scene is where her investigator husband Paul gets more into the act.

Then there will be the "big scene," the climactic moment which leads to resolution. Oddly, I don't know what this will be yet. In fact, I'm still playing with the roles of the various antagonists involved. Now that I have them in mind, that they've become "real" to me, I'll sit back and let their personalities take them where they have to go.

The Plot Thickens

On the heels of realizing I needed a new villain for "Seer Tyro Fiend," I have invented not one but two villains. All the candidates will have been introduced by Chapter 5 which should really muddy the waters of who the real bad guy is and what the goal is. I love playing with the intricacies of motive and personality. It's not enough to just have a villain defined as such because he does bad things. There has to be a reason why he does it, one that is understandable. Perhaps reprehensible, but understandable. If the villain does horrible things for no apparent motive, then no one is safe, the malevolent acts become random, and there is no puzzle to solve, other than how the good guys are going to get away and stop the villain for good. That's also slipping into the horror genre, because what is more horrible than an unstoppable (maybe) villain who kills without reason, without discrimination?

I don't write horror, and maybe that's because I do love the puzzle, building it, making it tough to figure out but not impossible. And these days, the horror genre seems to demand the big gross-out. Whether it's a nasty murder or the villain's deserved end, gruesomeness seems to be an accepted standard. I'm not a fan of assaults on my digestive tract. While I have read a few novels that succeeded in a sense of horror without anything gross, it's a tough thing to achieve I think. An example would by "Lady" by Thomas Tryon. He sweeps the reader into the time and place of his story about a beautiful but lonely widow as seen through the eyes of the young man entranced by her. When he finds out her secret, something that might be seen as mundane in today's world, it was shocking for me because I was following him in his time where it would have been deeply shocking. No blood, no carnage, no yucky stuff, but a nasty slap upside the head all the same.

The horror I see around these days--mainly vampires and zombies--is just that: abundant opportunities for yucky stuff. Both types of monster kill dispassionately for hunger and that's all. Talk about an easy character development for the bad guy! The writer doesn't even have to explain anything. Just put the appropriate monster category on the page and you have all the characterization you need. Vampire? Sucks blood to survive, can't go out in sunlight, etc., etc. Zombie? No brain, but an animated and hungry body, usually in advance stages of decay and/or damage, no reason, no motive but hunger. Not to malign anyone's pet genre, but to me it seems like the cheap way out. If I were going to do real horror, I'd want to come up with my own monster, defined out of my imagination and not someone else's legend.