Reverse engineering, trial by combat, and listening

After a couple of weeks where I've spared you, gentle reader, the shady goings-on of the creative processes in my head, I thought I'd write briefly about one of the most challenging aspects of writing. This aspect is not restricted to writing; it applies to every form of art, I would guess, and craft too.

So, beware: navel-gazing alert. What follows is a post about the process of writing, and might only be of interest to other writers.

Now then. Let's say you're a writer. Or, at least, you like to write. You can string words together. You are sensitive to noun-verb agreement and you write active sentences. You know that adverbs are not your friends. One day, you think, you want to be as good as Hemmingway, or Faulkner, or Wodehouse or Adams. (Let's leave aside the fact that you are unlikely to achieve these artistic heights. That kind of pessimism is too pessimistic.) How do you get from where you are to where they are? Or, if you prefer, how do you improve your product, and keep improving it, until you have entered the league of Big Players?

The process of writing has one curious aspect. It looks easy. Why? Because your instrument is your mouth or your fingers, and words are your notes. Everybody is an expert with this instrument. It's not like playing a piano, where the physical interface between human and music will take years to learn competently. Writing, then, looks easy, because verbal communication is a task that you are genetically programmed to do, and have spent almost all of your life learning to master. I'd argue that this makes it difficult to learn to write well - in relation to those far-away targets, Hemmingway, Wodehouse et al. - because it is not immediately obvious what the routes of development are. A pianist can emulate increasingly complex music, can learn scales, music theory, and get online feedback from a hovering music teacher. A writer...but here the analogy breaks down. A better analogy for a writer is the musical composer. The composer might have the principles of opening bars, middle eights, verses and choruses. What are the principles of composition for a story? It is the difference in application of these compositional principles that characterizes the gap between the apprentice writer, such as myself, and the masters. I think that point is uncontroversial. I'd like to talk about how the writer goes about acquiring these principles.

Improvement by formal instruction

When I started out writing fiction serious-like, I did what came naturally as a conscientious student. I looked it up in a book. Several books, in fact. But at the back of my mind, I had already dismissed the intellectual route as a way of picking up these principles. When I read McKee's Story, for example, I reacted strongly against the precise rhythms and almost formulaic descriptions of drama. For every example he came up with, I could produce a counter example. Surely, I thought, I'm an expert in story already. I've seen countless films, read countless books, and even sat through plays. These principles are for people without the touch. Me, I've got a finely-tuned storyteller brain already.

Wrong.

Improving by doing

I wrote a bloody awful novel. I keep it my filing cabinet to remind me how bad it is. It suffers from a failure to apply basic principles of composition. Scenes should be points of conflict that move the story forward. These scenes should build towards a larger conflict, a turning point or revelation, and this marks the end of an act. Not all stories do this, of course. Compositional principles aren't something you can plug in. Some stories react against these principles - but, generally speaking, these aren't the kind of stories I'm interested in writing.

Anyway, in the course of writing my first novel, I learned that my immersion in Western culture was not enough to make me a writer. I would not burst into literature precocially like Mailor or Ellis. My storytelling 'expertise' was only sufficient for me to recognise the problems with my book. The answers - practical craft-based methods of solving these problems - could only be found in the principles of composition. Once you use them, they click into place. A competent writer can produce a novel. A better writer can recognise what's wrong with it. A good writer knows how to fix it. A great writer is capable of fixing it. 'All first drafts are shit' -- Hemmingway.

Improving by reverse engineering other stories

The other method of improving my craft is to doggedly analyze every piece of fiction I'm exposed to (the corrollary is that I doggedly catalogue every piece of nonfiction too, including my life experience, so that whereas another person might say, "Ooh, that's interesting/sad", I think "Right, I'll nick that forthwith"). Why, for example, did I think that 'Serenity' was such a great film? Good characters, believable motivations, high jeopardy, satisfying relationships, and an undercurrent of humanity. How did the writer/director Joss Whedon manage that? How did the 10% of the movie iceberg suggest the 90% of a whole world beneath, of values, and how did it manipulate my emotions? There are always concrete answers to these questions. It might be possible to trace a character's motivation to a single, startling exchange of dialogue, or an object he picks up and muses over; a tiny manipulation leads to a great effect. I think a writer can pull lessons of craft from both good and bad films. But to do so, it is immeasurably helpful to have a shorthand way of characterizing the story: conflicts, inciting incidents, acts one, two, three, four, whatever. This draws upon formal instruction in composition and personal successes and failures an applying the principles.

Getting your shit together

Somewhat predictably, my conclusion is that there needs to be an interaction between reverse engineering classic stories, reading about formal composition and learning by doing. You already knew that, didn't you? But there is a chance you are stuck in one of those three right now in your writing career. You might be leaning heavily on McKee or Vogler or Campbell, and formulizing your story. You might be making mistakes by crashing on, undisciplined, into a novel. You might be agonizing over the clear brilliance of Hemmingway or Tolstoy or Basho against the dire crapness of your own novel or book. I've recently overturned my disdain for the structured approached to composition (or, at least, approached these principles with an open mind) and I think that my current novel has benefitted hugely. If you're writer too, you might consider that, to become a master of fictional composition, you should become a jack of all the routes to it.

Review: Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town

I have just put my copy of Cory Doctorow’s Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town on my bookshelf. I am reminded of the main character, a middle-aged ex-retailer called Alan, who is asked during the course of the book, “Have you read all these books on your bookcase?” He replies, “Naw. What’s the point of a bunch of books you’ve already read?” I could not find this information in the hard copy of the book itself, because I made no notes, but it was easy to download the plain text of the book from Doctorow’s website. You see, his novels are available for free online. It doesn’t seem to hurt sales. In my case, I read the first chapter on his website, pootled on over to Amazon, bought that sucker before I’d taken a second drag on my tea.

The story begins with a middle-aged man called Alan refurbishing his house in a trendy district of Toronto. He loves sanding, and so he should: his father was a mountain. His mother was a washing machine. That’s right. His father kept the roof over their heads and his mother kept their clothes clean. There’s more. Alan’s younger brother, Bradley, is psychic. Charlie is an island. Davie is dead, and wants revenge on those who killed him. Edward, Frederick and George are triplets; they fit inside one another like a Russian doll. There is a dark pool at the centre of father-the-mountain where its great slow thoughts can be heard above the put-put of the diesel generator powering mom.

Once Alan’s house is finished, he attempts to integrate with the community, starting with his immediate neighbours. Some of them are friendly. Others treat him with contempt. One, Krishna, recognises that Alan is not precisely human. Krishna sets out to make life hard for Alan by aligning with the dead brother, Davie, who demands revenge his murderers, starting with Alan. While the enemies are tough, the friends are true friends: Mimi, for instance, is a young woman with nascent, downy wings on her back. They grow again each time she cuts them back. Like Alan, she looks on at society from an uneasy orbit.

As the novel unfolds, Alan’s efforts to integrate – mostly by erecting a huge wireless network with his punk friend Kurt – are hampered by the stalking Davie. At points, we are flung back to Alan’s early life on the mountain, and begin to appreciate the depth of his alienation from humanity. These flashbacks serve to heighten our desire to see Alan – a fundamentally good man, despite all he has done and had done to him – get connected along with his wireless project. There is something sad in Alan that reminds us of old science fiction stories in an automaton would mimic human behaviour and harbours dreams of integration into human society. The invitation never comes, of course. Sometimes it is better to leave town and start a society of your own. Doctorow’s novel wants to tell that you can’t escape your weirdness. If you were born in a washing machine under a mountain, then get used to it. If you have wings on your back, don’t cut them off. Spread them and fly.

Another review of Deja Vu

Posted on scifi.uk.com is a nice review of Deja Vu.

Here's a snippet:

It is action packed, much like a (dare I say it) Bond story, in so much as it encompasses many countries, includes fast vehicles (sprinkled with technology), has some pretty cool weapons (though, not over the top so), fight scenes and some neat gadgets. Scene structure is pulled off well, with each flowing nicely into the next.

Thanks to the reviewer, Richard Hawkins. Makes it marginally easier to plot out the sequel in my dark room surrounded by the autumn wind and rain...

Not so fast

I began the sequel to Déjà Vu on Tuesday of this week, and now I'm going to stop. Why? Difficult to say with any precision (said the man attempting a career as a writer).

I wrote my first two books on the fly. From one page to the next, I did not know what was going to happen with the story. I loathed planning. Why did I write them like this? Well, when I was a teenager, I read a piece by Stephen King about his method of writing, and that was how he did it. I thought, oh, right, so that's how writers do it.

This improvisational method certainly suited my first book - I was fairly gripped by the story throughout, and this quality has been commented on by reviewers, so I guess it worked. But that book was written while I was working as a teaching fellow full time. In a steady trickle of 500 words a night, in other words. Now that I'm writing full time, it's difficult to produce less than 1000 words a day. When the thing you're writing is plot-heavy (as the new Saskia Brandt novel is a thriller, then this certainly qualifies), this stretches the improvisation somewhat. I also recall that, when the novel passed through the hands of my capable editor (Aliya Whiteley, a writer in her own write), she suggested some basic changes to its structure that, at the back of my mind, I already knew needed to be done but I couldn't, simply, be arsed because of the amount of work it required. Once you've written 100,000 words, changing its direction is about as straightforward as shifting an asteroid on a collision course for Earth. This kind of change, however, might have been visible had I worked over the story before I wrote it.

Then yesterday I came across this blog entry from Eric von Rothkirch, and it makes a good deal of sense. I still think that drafting holds the upper hand in the coolness stakes (and is particularly suited to more character-based pieces, like my last novel, Proper Job) but when it comes to a plot-heavy work, there's enough evidence to convince me that a change in writing habits is worth a shot. (I'm not a big one for 'if it ain't broke, doesn't fix it' anyway; if I had that attitude, I wouldn't be able to improve as a writer.)

So that's what I'm going to do. I'll plan the story beforehand. This, I think, is a much less enjoyable way of working - or, rather, it was the last time I tried it - but it should produce a better mash of theme and plot. We'll see how it goes. At the end of the day, it's well and good to maximise the fun you have while writing, but it's the product that's got to be the best it can be.

Odd Hoops

The past week has been hectic. I've been putting together materials for the Curtis Brown literacy agency - I'm know I'm aiming high - and it requires jumping through the odd hoop. The most difficult is the synopsis. I don't know whether I have a mental block when it comes to writing these bloody things, but I find them surprisingly difficult. After a couple of drafts that girlfriend complained weren't funny (i.e. they did not represent the style of the book), I had a eureka moment: write the synopsis in the style of the main character, and in the first person. I did so this afternoon and, presto, I have a fairly engaging single-page synopsis that should give a faithful impression of the tone and content of the book. That, together with my opening letter, my writer's CV, reviews of Déjà Vu, and the first three chapters of Proper Job should be sufficient to interest any agent in the manuscript itself - but, of course, there is a number of factors over which I have little control. How marketable am I? How easy is it to pitch my book (since an agent might be doing this to a publisher)? I've tried to anticipate these questions in my letter - without making it too dense - but, at the end of the day, I think the writer's primary responsibility is to produce simply the best piece of fiction he can, and I think I'm approaching this stage.

One piece of news: An acquaintance of mine, Sol Nasisi, has launched a site for writers and readers called TheNextBigWriter. Bias alert: I'm not entirely uninvolved with the site, so check out other opinions before you sign up! The site is a writing workshop in that writers submit pieces for review. However, writers can only post to the site once they've accumulated credits from reviewing other writers' work. But writers are guaranteed to have their work reviewed. Works receive a score, and those works that are number one at the end of the month are passed on to 'star reviewers' (published authors) for a lengthy critique. One thing to note is that it costs money to join - 39USD per year - though there is a free 90-day membership for the first 100 people to sign up. Apparently, each year (in June) the best novel on the site will be awarded a 5000USD prize. There are also more frequent short story and poetry awards. Check it out if you're interested. It looks like a good opportunity to get some constructive reviews.

A couple of blogs to mention: Nienke Hinton's blog is called The Writing Life, and in it she describes the ups and downs of writing her novel. Good blog; I wish her luck. Eric von Rothkirch (note to self: Ian Hocking is such a dull name; I need a pseudonym!) has got a blog going in which he describes the process of story development, also in real time. They certainly look like a couple of interesting blogs. I'll be subscribing to each to see what they get up to.

-----

Written while listening to Oxford Town from the album "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan" by Bob Dylan

My Uncle Bob said

Ah, advice. We all need it. The naive writer, in particular, needs it, and we suffer an embarrassment of riches when it comes to finding out what the writing experts of the world think: Do I get an agent first or a publisher? What do you put in a query letter? Should you try to sell yourself, or should you act cool and professional? How many letters should you send out in one go?

In the next few days, I'll be finalising my novel 'Proper Job', and these questions will be foremost in my mind. Even when I try to convince myself that, in the long run, the quality of my writing should be the primary determinent of any success I have in selling stuff, it's difficult not to focus on the possibility of a typographical error or (as I discovered yesterday) a mix-up between 'to pedal' and 'to peddle'. Might these blemishes cause an agent to through (sic) my letter/manuscript on his bonfire? Some agents might do that. But - I try to reassure myself - not the good ones.

I'm also aware that I was not able to interest a large publisher in the manuscript of my first novel, Deja Vu (in the end it came out under the smaller UKA Press imprint), and in case this reluctance on the part of publishers was due to sloppy presentation (wrong stuff in the query letter, synopsis too long, whatever), I'd like to make sure I know what publishers and agents actually want.

Things to do, then, before next Saturday:
(1) Write a synopsis of Proper Job
(2) Write a decent enquiry letter, including review snippets for Deja Vu
(3) Send letter to agents who specialise in comedic fiction or who have represented a humorous writer
(4) Maybe even send off a letter or two