David R Slayton

Jun42010

On Writing a Series: Conflict and Endings

Last night I had one of those stressful dreams, the kind where you need to be in two places at once as the universe throws up every possible obstacle to your goal. In this case I needed a haircut to avoid looking like Shaggy Peter, but it was my barber’s birthday and I wasn’t going to get any service without bringing a bottle of wine. But the downtown liquor store was closed, and it was raining, increasing my bedraggled state. I overcame the obstacle by ducking into a restaurant and ordering a bottle of wine, remembering that Denver allows you to take your bottle to go, but the victory came with a call from my boss. I was supposed to be somewhere else, a crucial meeting for my day job, while simultaneously realizing that I needed to get to my writing class, which started in a few minutes. I woke with a flood of relief that it had only been a dream. Yet the conflict and frustration I’d felt were very real. The possibility for the dilemma was realistic, as was the setback after a little victory. The tension inherent in the need to be in two places at once is common enough in a modern life.

I’ve been trying for a while to find a microsm of conflict, something that embodies the tension that fuels a story’s forward motion. The dream did a great job of that. It also pointed me to an obvious truth: conflict isn’t just a factor in engaging fiction. It’s a constant in our lives. A character with an ideal existence, without a compelling conflict, isn’t someone we can relate to. One reason serial characters work is that reality is always messy, always full of strife, so the protagonist in a series is never going to run out of issues needing resolution. A good series will keep a few conflicts bubbling, issues that must be dealt with sometime but aren’t going to be addressed right now because a more immediate problem is draining the main character’s attention. Isn’t that like life? We have so much to handle and only so much time or so many resources to do it. Good conflict is Sisyphean. You get the stone up the hill a little farther each day, but it rolls back down. A strong series lets its protagonist win, make some gains in where the stone ends up, but there’s always going to be more pushing. Simultaneously, your hero needs a victory now and then. Without it, your readers will despair. The story has to satisfy and yet ring true.

This brings us to the ending and the topic of wish fulfillment, which is a problem I think largely inherent in my genre. You commonly encounter “super characters” in fantasy, and the problem in being superhuman, in having a vast well of power which comes without a cost, is that such a character is above us, and again, isn’t relatable.

The ultimate victory, getting the rock to the summit or a milestone, needs a price. We seldom achieve anything important in life that’s not costly: the time we put into a degree, the loss of our idealism as we grow up, the stress of planning a wedding, or the pain of giving birth. Good stories have a bittersweet ending. If everybody lives, if everyone makes it out of the trap, the conflict is revealed as artificial and the ending rings false. There is a good reason why only fairy tales regularly end with happily ever after. It’s no coincidence that many of Shakespeare’s tragedies begin with a wedding while many of his comedies end with one. Life gets in the way of happily ever after. The wedding may end the conflict between two rival families, but now the couple must negotiate the difficulties in producing an heir, changing diapers, managing their money, and dealing with treachery in the household. Happily ever after is a pleasant dream, but you’ve got to wake to reality sometime, and that means conflict.

May232010

The Cycle and Struggle of Writing

There’s been a wave of blog posts lately regarding rejection in writing, reiterating how hard it is get published and succeed. I don’t feel the need to beat that horse, but I do want to talk a bit about what we learn when we start writing and aspire to publication. First, let me give credit to the wonderful Betsy Lerner, whose post put the bug in my head.

I had an idea early on that writing a book was only the first step. Having watched my aunt struggle to publish in my teens, I used to say that writing the book was only half the battle. Now I’m pretty convinced that the initial writing is closer to ten percent. There’s querying (which in of itself is not a simple process), coming up with a marketing plan, networking, learning to write a strong synopsis and elevator pitch, avoiding scammers, and thickening your skin till it has the consistency of concrete. You need to be actively reading all the while to keep the rhythms of English close at hand. There are a lot of decision points mixed throughout this process: is a critique group right for you? Should you blog, use social network sites like Facebook, invest in a website, joins local associations, and invest the money to attend conferences? Then there is the writing itself, revisions, polishing, and growing in your craft.

One of the biggest misconceptions I face in telling people I write is that it’s an automatic sign of success, having written a book. Just explaining the idea of a practice manuscript can be a bit draining.

So why write and persist when the process is so hard? The easiest answer is that I love it. It defines me. The few times in my life when I’m put it away, tried to walk away, have been the most depressing I’ve had. Each step in the process of writing and publishing is a lesson, a learning experience, and a struggle. When it all gets me down, especially the notion that I might never publish in an industry undergoing seismic upheaval, I turn to my computer, fire up Word, and start a new project. I try to find that spark that first drove me to want to write down a story. The best answer to getting frustrated with writing, perhaps ironically, is to write.

May222010

A Dark Musicbox – Sssh, I’m Listening

Last Saturday I was introduced to a Japanese accoustic band named Mono. They played the local Bluebird Theatre, and I was given a ticket by a friend. What an excellent little present, perfectly wrapped in surprise and scant expectation since I knew nothing about their sound before walking in the door.

Labeled post-rock by my friends*, Mono uses no vocals. I would have been carried away into the music, except for the strange Denver habit of choosing to hold complex personal conversations at concerts. (This may be true for other cities, but I seem to experience especially here). Good acoustic music builds from quiet to crescendo, something Mono does with a delicate, almost tinny, skill. Unfortuantely the quiet parts of songs are where people decide it’s an excellent time to discuss anything from their redecoration to what breed of dog they think is the ugliest. It’s something that’s been bugging me for a long time, and I usually attempt to avoid such Internet rants: but seriously, people, if you want to have these conversations in a public venue, why don’t you go to a coffee shop instead of paying upwards of $50 for a concert ticket?

I’ve found a new sound to brainstorm to, and I’ve happily ripped the cds into my iPod, where thankfully my earbuds will let me be alone with the music. Give Mono a listen, and if you get the chance, see them live. It’s impressive that they maintain such a complex sound in a live environment.

*I have no idea what that means, but Geoff’s comparison to Sigur Ros helped.

May152010

Roma: A Week in the Eternal City was just what I needed.

I’m an unabashed philhellene. I focused heavily on ancient Greece during my history degree and wrote my senior thesis on another fan of the culture, the Emperor Hadrian. I’m fully aware of the permanent mark he left on Greece. Many of the ancient monuments still extant in Athens were commissioned by Hadrian. What I hadn’t realized was how deeply he’d also left his mark on Rome, the city he ruled but spent so little time in. I knew the Pantheon would be a sight to behold, the last standing pagan temple which survived through its conversion to a Christian church, but without even taking a trip to Hadrian’s villa at Tivoli, his stamp is permanently etched onto Rome. He showed up in so many spots I felt he was haunting me: his bust was a constant presence, his name often arose in museums. One of the first impressive pieces in the Vatican Museum is a great pinecone from Hadrian’s Villa, and the Antinous of the Vatican is the largest and most detailed of the several I’ve seen.

If you’ve guessed that I’ve just returned from a week in Rome, you’re right. It was an incredible trip, and went smoothly up until the very end, when the volcanic ash cloud and some other incidents delayed our return. I also had a last minute confrontation in the rainy pre-dawn morning waiting on our cab to the airport, one of the only times in my eight trips to Europe when I thought I may come under physical assault. These misadventures aside, the journey was a feast of art, history, and some of the most incredible food I’ve ever eaten. My good friend Sara Meyer, celebrating her own graduation from her Master’s program, was a phenomenal traveling companion, ferreting out little churches and teaching me a ton about competitive commissions in the Renaissance. I’ve been assembling a full Facebook gallery of the pictures and I’ll keep captioning and editing over the next few weeks. Friend me if you’ve any interest.

Rome is a dizzying blend of food, architecture, art, and culture. I’d been warned again and again about pickpockets, beggars, and that my companion was going to suffer some serious male harassment. None of these warnings proved true, though I was half-hoping Jenny’s story about women throwing their babies at you so they could pick your pocket when you caught the infant was more than just a colorful urban myth.

On the final day of the trip I got to visit the Protestant Cemetery where John Keats, a major subject during my English degree, is buried. His tombstone, set beside his friend Joseph Severn, was a quiet pinnacle to a great adventure. A week wasn’t enough, so I’m hoping to return in the next two years.

A couple of tips for Rome:

The Roma Pass purchase was 26 Euro each and paid for itself quickly: It let us skip all the lines to the big sights like the Coliseum. It also served as a Metro and Bus pass, though we only used the Metro to reach the Vatican one rainy morning and preferred long walks with constant side trips. Its only cons were that it was only good for three days, it only gets you into two sites free (the rest are merely discounted), so use it for the big ticket items like the Forum and save the discount for cheaper events like the Castle of Angels (Hadrian’s Mausoleum). We ended up buying two to get through the whole week but I’ve no regrets there.

Getting there on May 1st meant we missed the American student press, but there were still a lot of student groups, mostly French, and this means the Vatican was extremely crowded. We tacked onto a tour group, largely for the advantage of skipping lines, but the group pushed past all the antiquities in the Museum in order to rush to the Sistine Chapel. Our tour guide, Angelo, had an American mother so his English was perfect and he happily pointed out details that dispelled or confirmed bits of Dan Brown lore (for you haters or lovers). The company was www.livitaly.com, and I’m a fan.

I’ve got to mention our bed and breakfast, the Residenza Ki. They treated us great. My tripadvisor review is here.

For food we piggybacked on Elizabeth’s Gilbert’s technique of asking locals where to eat, though we also had some great meals by choosing places at random. I can definitely say that we didn’t have a bad meal, and our dinner the last night was certainly delivered with a bit of flare as the manager brought out the pig’s head to show the patrons.

Apr282010

Everyone Wants Something

In good fiction, it’s clearly true: Dexter wants to kill his victims; Emma Woodhouse wants to avoid marriage; and Tom Builder wants to build a cathedral. A key aspect of a fictional character’s life is their driving desire: it’s almost Platonic. They’ve a purpose to fulfill and often approach it with singular drive that borders on obsession. Tension and conflict arise in their setbacks, but with turn of the story’s cycle, they move a bit closer to their goal.

Lately I’ve been diving into books that have long needed reading. Ken Follett’s the Pillars of the Earth finally came to the top of the stack, and like Wonder Boys, it’s another book I wish I’d read years ago. Follett has one of the strongest voices I’ve encountered, and as I continue to read through George R.R. Martin’s catalog, I find myself comparing them. Follett fully distills his characters down to their desires, and the wheel of the story turns, with the characters achieving a milestone towards their goal before getting subjected to a hard knockdown with a long recovery period.

Tom Builder, the book’s first point of view character, reminded me of Howard Roark, the protagonist of Ayn Rand’s the Fountainhead: one individual struggling against a world of chaos which works in concert to pull him down. But Follett doesn’t limit our point of view (POV) to Tom. He slips from one POV to another with the deftest handling I’ve seen. One character spies another on the road and we transition with a clean break to the second character. Where Martin has drawn his story out to an inevitable seven volumes, Follett’s tale is self-contained, and I have to admire the neat wrap up. While they are two different genres, I feel any author can pick up some good mechanical tips from Follett. One advantage of the self-contained book is that I didn’t grow weary of the story cycle. Even a little time spent in the antagonist’s head was interesting, whereas with Martin I feel that his fourth book in the series, a Feast for Crows, is largely spent with individuals who I’m less interested in. Martin remains a master, but I lack the grudging admiration for Queen Cersei that I felt for Tyrion, an antagonist in previous volumes. Follett puts us in the head of his antagonist and while it’s a vile place, I was immediately struck but the clear lack of intelligence and self-awareness of the villain. There’s never any confusion about whose head we’re in. In writing about master craftsmen, Follett displays some remarkable skill of his own.

Mar262010

Fatal Footprints: Comments on Donovan Webster’s Aftermath

Getting a degree in History was one of the most edifying things I’ve done. Even the most boring of classes, taught by the most burned-out professor, gave me insight into something new. My history degree taught me to research, made me a better academic writer, a more critical thinker, and helped me see patterns in human progress.

In fantasy, we often write history. If you look at Tolkien, Martin, Brooks, or other authors in the epic style, they’re largely constructing a fictional history, often with a little inspiration from actual events. Our characters inhabit worlds filled with the ruins of former civilizations, which they explore, contend with, and struggle to understand. History informs us, shapes our cities and prejudices, and in some cases, gets us killed.

Aftermath: the Remnants of War is a journalistic travel-book, but Donovan Webster, is far from your average tourist. His purpose was to explore sites left affected by war. I first heard of the book through Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcast, and I’m glad I took Carlin’s advice and ordered the book. While Carlin discusses Donovan’s account of the bodies and bones still scattered for miles by the Battle of Stalingrad in World War II, I found the discussion on Verdun’s shell-laden forest to be the most compelling. A first hand account of the topic, with the author handling the shells and following them to their eventual demolition, put me to work looking at maps of the two World Wars and the areas still affected by them, usually to the point of being off limits. Webster’s analysis of landmines, where they come from and who deploys them to infect their borders was bone-chilling. It is so easy for us to think of war as a fictional thing, to look at its glories and rewards, but to forget its detrius and the effects it has over the long term. We’ve left the century of the two world wars behind, but still it leaves a lethal legacy as shells work their way to the surface.

In fantasy, we work for realistic accounts of fantastic warfare: dragons swoop from the sky raining fire on infantry; spells are slung like so much artillery across magically-scarred battlefields; but it’s very easy to lose sight of the human aspect of these events. Books like Aftermath help me keep my grounding when I describe large-scale violence, and they help me remember that unlike my pen and paper creations, real war affects flesh and blood people, often for far longer than we ever intended.

I’m highly recommending this book to you. It has great stats to back up the well-written descriptions, and Donovan kept me riveted as he circled the globe. Any student of modern history should read this, as well as any world traveler, if only so you’ll know where to step.

Mar212010

A Lifetime of Pointed Silliness: Terry Pratchett’s Making Money

When it comes to beloved authors, I hoard and conserve. An author only writes so many works, and I live with an unread copy of their latest book on my shelf, for when I really need it. I’m that way with Margaret Atwood, A.S. Byatt, and Terry Pratchett. I first encountered his wonderfully ridiculous Discworld as a freshman in high school. My English teacher had a copy of the Colour of Magic on her lending shelf, and after reading it, I used funds from my first job to join a Science Fiction book club. I soon had little hardback copies of Sourcery, the Light Fantastic, Equal Rites, and Mort.

Over the last twenty years, I’ve read Terry Pratchett’s books, always keeping one unread on the shelf. He’s been a constant presence in my adult life, and I can map it by his work. Witches Abroad remains my favorite, and if you have a hard time finding it in Denver, that’s because I snatch up any copies I see in the stores and give them away. When I’m going through a bad spot, I call in sick to work, and read Terry Pratchett, so I’m hardly able to write an unbiased review. Fortunately, Making Money is his best in years. It taps into the current global financial crisis and finds a satirical vein in the dichotomy between the upper and lower classes. I had expected, with the news of Pratchett’s Alzheimer’s struggle that he might be off his game, but Making Money is literally laugh out loud funny and perfectly balances humor, intrigue, and social commentary.

Pratchett draws on the slew of characters he’s built up over the years, the scheming denizens of Ankh-Morpork, but we’re never taken too far off track by the cameos. Making Money is tightly written, and the few asides are worth the Easter egg connections they make to other books. While the book is technically a sequel to Going Postal, and draws a lot on characters developed in the Watch series, you don’t need them to jump in here. The denouement is typical Pratchett: for a moment he indicates that he could write a bad ass ending, bring it all down in fire and glory, but he chooses irony and humor instead. I hope Making Money is far from the last Pratchett, because he’s only getting better with time.

Feb282010

An Interesting Article I Thought I’d Share

Laura Miller on Salon has posted a Reader’s Advice to Writers. It’s a great read, and I found it helpful as I line up my next project. There’s some overlap here with books I’ve read on writing, but reinforcing core concepts is never a bad idea.

It’s here.

I’m still delving into the comments on the article, but don’t miss her link to the Guardian’s article on rules by 28 writers.

Feb272010

A Discussion of Urban Fantasy and Talk of True Blood

What’s in the backpack today: Hester by Paula Reed.

I’ve finally gotten around to watching through the first season of True Blood, which led me to read Charlaine Harris’s Dead until Dark (the first book in the Sookie Stackhouse mysteries). I’d been avoiding the show due to its adult nature, and I finally decided to see what all the fuss is about. What I’ve found is a tightly scripted, small-town murder mystery. Oh yeah, and there are vampires, but so far I’m finding them to be somewhat incidental and less interesting than the other goings on.

I’ve come to think that a lot of urban fantasy’s appeal is derived from its ease of access. In epic fantasy we have to weave a world for the reader, and in that weaving we have to work hard to not bore you with exposition while also telling you the rules of how the world works. Urban fantasy gives the reader an immediate access point: you know the world. It’s yours. The writer can then layer in the supernatural aspects. The hook is more immediate and relatable. The urban fantasy writer has other challenges though. They have to take the mundane and more it extraordinary, whereas as the epic writer can work backwards from making the extraordinary relatable. Neither is easier. Writing is never easy, but I think there’s less chance for an urban fantasy writer to get lot in world-building, a problem inherent in epic fantasy.

Comparing genres is much easier than comparing mediums. True Blood, as a show, works largely on the strength of its secondary characters: Tara, Lafayette, and Sam; all of whom have much smaller parts in the first book. The show has to take one book’s murder plot and cut it into multiple scenes and episodes, changing point of view. The book, which as seems to be the standard in urban fantasy, only gives us Sookie’s first person point of view. Both the show and novel benefit from tight scripting. One thing I noticed immediately was that there are no “use its or lose its” in either one. Every element that’s introduced has a purpose. Description in the novel is cut to a minimum and the show is shot without lingering shots on landscape. The show definitely ups the adult nature of things to an almost extreme level. It seems some days to be HBO’s trademark, but even then the sex scenes have a point. They reflect on the plot and tie into the mystery. The vampires, when they come, when they’re described, in many ways aren’t all that interesting. They just add a layer to an already interesting world. The book of course explains things a bit better, and since it is first person, you gain a much stronger understanding of what Sookie goes through being telepathic. (I would normally have just invoked a spoiler alert, but all my sources tell me I’m the last person on the planet to watch the show or read the book).

A quick word about Charlaine Harris. She writes without any slack. Dead until Dark is tightly scripted, tightly wound. Every character has a point, as does every scene. I raced through the book in a satisfying way without any unnecessary stops to a satisfying destination.

Feb262010

Use it or Lose it

So in my work, I have a really bad habit that was pointed out to me when I had Eastlight edited by Carol Gaskin: I like to toss every little idea that pops into my head right down onto the page. Most of these are good ideas, but they often change the direction of the story at a time when it doesn’t warrant changing. They insert a detail that catches the reader’s attention, but then I never bring it back or wrap it up and the reader is left wondering what happened to that magical amulet in chapter fifteen?

Use Its, as I’m calling them, are details I considered important enough to describe at the time, but never come back. They’re little floating threads that never get snipped out of the tapestry or woven back in. The fix is pretty simple of course: lose them. Unless the thread is going to come back (in this book or another in the series), cut them out. Loose ends frustrate readers. I know I’ve personally put down many a book and found myself trying to remember if things got dealt with. Avoid Use Its by marking them when you write them in either the novel (I use programming syntax /** since it’s easy to search on in Word) or keep them in a separate file. Just make sure that the threads get used later, get snipped out, or you don’t leave your comment markers.

Stephen King mentioned in On Writing that no character considers themselves secondary. In our minds, we’re the center of the universe. So it is with characters. “Use It or Lose It” also applies to characters. Too many people vying for the spotlight can slow the story or take your work off into a tangent. This is a major problem for me: I want to show you everyone in a city, a village, a world. But no character should be given the spotlight unless they’ve got a crucial role, and it’s cheating to try and shoehorn them in by upping their role in the plot.

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