Evidence of Things Not Seen

Once upon a time, I played the character Douglass in a play called "Party Time" by Harold Pinter. A friend of mine was playing Dame Melissa. When we mentioned to some friends that we were in the same play, they exclaimed, "Cool. We'll come. What's it about?"

That, as it turned out, was where the trouble started. Because, after staring at each other for two minutes, we realized that having auditioned for, been cast in, and read the play, we still couldn't say what it was about.

Of course, two months later, when we were ready to go up, we could answer that question almost succinctly. It just took some explaining.

As it turns out, the thing that made the play so interesting but also so hard to describe that it didn't have the usual sort of plot. This occurred, but they didn't coalesce toward one main character or one main goal. Instead, the real action of the play all seemed to be happening off-stage.

The play was about what all the characters weren't talking about or were being told not to talk about.

This is a tricky proposition. How does one build an entire plot whilst not saying things? How does one delete just enough to leave gaps big enough to see but small enough things don't fall through?

While I firmly believe that black cannot be seen without white and that it is entirely possible to draw a white egg on a white paper using only colored pencils, I wonder how much we can leave not there and have people still be able to see anything at all.

Obviously, it can be done. It has been done. But I find it a tricky and intimidating consideration nonetheless.

I do not favor the minimalist style when I write. In my first draft, I chuck things on the paper. Tons of things, not always with a clear plan about what to do with them or a full understanding of what they mean. In my next draft, I carve things out that I don't need anymore, things that were overstated, things I changed my mind about. I create the white space that wasn't there again. Then again, in later drafts, I also add things back in. I set up things I'd made decisions about later in the process. I change things do not reflect my final vision of the character. I add the black back in.

Writing's a growing process, to my way of seeing it. Each draft is a continuous process of shading and erasing, altering line thicknesses and darkness. To varying degrees, of course. But I do know that, by the time I'm done, it's a piece composed largely of what is said, not what is unsaid.

How about you? Do you favor the spoken or the unspoken when you read? When you write?

I Feel Magic

At one point, I had a plan. Isn't that how it always starts? You always have a plan, and it always goes straight to hell. If not instantly, somewhere along the way, the plan just gets blown to bits.

My plan for this year involved editing. Lots of editing. As in, I was going to pull out each of those WsIP I had lying around "simmering" and actually get those things shiny enough to see the light of day.

My plan did not involve writing. Because what I really needed were more MSs overcooking on my backburner. No, this was going to be the year when, instead of generating more unedited, untouched babies, I was actually going to raise a couple into something nice and lovely.

Did I mention that that plan went completely to hell?

After assiduously editing two books -- I don't know if I ever mentioned my edits on Cordamant's Heir, but I think I just changed more than a fifth of that baby, including dropping 10k -- I felt all fresh and ready to bite into something Shiny and New.

Thus came out the lovely work temporarily entitled Here We Go Again, which feels apt in so many ways. This lovely baby had been simmering, then bubbling, then full on boiling in my brain for a good 6 months, and trust me if it hadn't gotten out soon, it might have done some permanent damage in there.

Now, after 2 months of dedicated effort -- and more secondary source involvement than I've ever put into a text -- I've got a first draft.

SQUEAL!

She isn't perfect, I'll be the first to admit it, and she's not going to be meeting anyone else -- let alone a stranger -- for a while yet, but she's so lovely and new and interesting -- to me at least -- that frankly I don't care.

I feel like magic.

How about you?

Things You Don't Want Your Readers Doing (No Pun Intended)

Anyone here spend time on xkcd? If yes, high fives all around. And now, for your viewing pleasure....

Now, how is this vaguely related to anything I've ever said or done in the past on this blog (aside from the fact that it vaguely amused me)?

If you guessed writing, you get another high five.

Have you ever read a book and thought, "Okay, I now have officially no idea what the turducken is going on"? Now, if you were anything like, well, the vast majority of the kids I knew in high school, unless the book was for a class, you closed the book and, when asked about it, said "That thing's incomprehensible." And, heck, maybe even if the book was for a class, you did that.

Okay, most people give a book more than one shot. So, even if sometimes something happens and you're confused, you keep reading, because you give the author the benefit of the doubt. Somehow, some way, you tell yourself, this will all get cleared up.

Because that's the deal writers make with readers. Readers will read what we write. What we write will make sense. I'm not even talking about plot or character arcs or any of that, at the moment (though those things should definitely make sense); I'm talking about writing. The words you use.

When you put words on paper in a particular order, they should, in the end, create a sentence that makes sense. And those sentences should result in a paragraph that makes sense. And hopefully those paragraphs will... well, you know the rest.

We've all been there. You read that sentence over and think, "What was I thinking when I wrote this? Honestly, how many Cokes did I down that night? Can you even do that in English?" And, let's face it, sometimes the answer is, no, no you can't do that in English.

That's why we edit. Because we are nice authors, and we don't want our readers walking into walls, tripping on stairs, or falling into manholes as they stumble around wondering, "Seriously, what was that supposed to mean?"

Have you ever been there? Has this ever happened to you? Do you ever feel like writing you're looking at, yours or other people's, just doesn't make sense in English?

Hair

Today I straightened my sister's hair. Normally, I only do that for special occaisions and sometimes the odd Tuesday. Today, though, she's working on a movie with a friend and insists the only way to get it to look right in a bun is to straighten it first. Don't ask me why. And it occured to me as I worked it with the hot iron that straightening hair is a lot like writing.

For those of young unfamiliar with the process of straightening hair properly (as I was up until last year when a 15-year-old told me I didn't have a clue how to do it), to straighten hair well, one must not only use small pieces at a time, one must work in layers.

Personally, I like to work up the bottom up, and all hair that I'm not dealing with at the time, I like to twist up and clip to the top of my sis's head with a clip. I pull out a snippet at a time and straighten it until it's good. Once I've done that layer, I release the rest, pull out another layer, reclip, and repeat.

How does this connect to writing, you might ask. (In fact, you probably are asking, because I could quite easily sound like a wingnut so far.) It reminds me of editting to turn a book into a better book.

Think of my sister's hair pre-straightening as a rough draft of sorts. (**Dodges objects thrown by people who don't like straightening/anti-consumerists trying to fight movements like hair straighteners/feminists who'd like to remind me that ridiculous beauty ideals are part of the male patriarchy. **) I worked the hair with layers to make it into the hair she wanted it to be.

The bottom layer, which people don't see much but you need to straighten anyway or you missed the point, would be the plot. Maybe you can make it through a reading of a book without a plot whole being noticed, so long as it isn't glaring, but all in all it helps to have that all smoothed out. Otherwise, there'll be some readers thinking, 'you know, that doesn't make sense. Why didn't Sheila just blast the alien with her plutonium death ray, jump down the whole, and save Pietrichoff from the goblin, instead of going the long way around?' If one doesn't straighten the base, one risks it rumpling the other hair. First step is figuring out your plot so it all makes sense.

The middle layers, much more visible than the bottom and very important to the overall appearance of nice hair, would be things like characterization, world-building, tension, suspense, flow of dialogue, symbols, theme continuity, and all those other things that go into making a good book. Without a well smoothed middle, no one cares about the bottom layer's straightness, and a perfect top layer can't possibly conceal a bad middle. The middle part is just too big and too important.

The top layer is overall word choice. While I will from now until I die endorse the practice of using the right word and not that word's second cousin (or worse, it's second cousin's husband's old barber from when it lived in Wichita), I still know that no matter how brilliant and perfect the word choice, no matter how concise the phrasing, if you're wasting these perfect prose on poor under layers, it's not all going to come together well.

Having one of the layers alone will cut it, just like only straightening half of my sister's hair wouldn't have worked. If I wanted it to look good, then I had to take the time to go at it layer by layer and make it all look good. Sure, I could have tried to do it all at once or to take one layer sometimes and another layer the other times without a serious plan, but those methods would not have given me anywhere near such good results.

The key is time, patience, and taking it one piece at a time.

Confidence

After hearing a lot about confidence in the blogosphere lately, I thought I'd mention my little confidence booster from today.

A friend and unfortunate beta reader of mine noticed an outline for yet another story and chided me that I spread myself out over too many projects. She says I'll never finish anything. Then she asked about the werewolf book.

Oh, the werewolf book. That unfortunate foray into storytelling enjoys an almost permanent spot on my shelf as I struggle to make it better than it is. (I secretly fear that I'd have to scrap half of it or more to make it anything.) I told her it was shelved because it needed editing.

"But it was my favorite so far," she told me.

Internally, I performed a dance of joy. 'Yay! Someone said something nice about it!' (Observe as my psyche skims over the potential negative spins of that sentence.)

She agreed to read it for me, much to my joy. She'll probably regret those foolish words when I drop the 62K words onto her lap, but c'est la vie.

For now, I smile. :D