Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Beginnings...

I find beginnings difficult.  This is a truth about my writing and really, about life, for me.  Maybe it's that way for most people.

On one hand, you have the blank canvas - it's exhilarating and full of potential.  On the other hand, you know that all it takes is the wrong start to ruin it.  That's true for a story, a relationship-to-be, or even a day.  We all know the phrase "got up on the wrong side of the bed," after all.

My wife-to-be went over the beginnings of my current work.  She spent more time on this time, giving it a thorough examination as opposed to a read through.  She marked it up digitally, using the comments feature of Word and some spiffy highlighting.  She provided some good feedback - a good deal of things I knew already, but hadn't sought out to look at.  Certain redundancies or discrepancies that exist in a first draft, early, as you push on.  But having her point them out helped, as well as mentioning when a scene flowed really well or when a scene seemed disjointed.  And after all, as a reader, I need to know if she's drawn in, or if she's distracted by an overabundance of information or a lack thereof.

I knew the first chapter needed work.  We'd discussed before and really, I remain unhappy with the first chapter.  It's the beginning.  It has to be just right.  But it's also the most difficult to write, as a result.  You want to foreshadow appropriately, set up certain events, and so on.  You want to grab the reader.  Sometimes that's hard to do right off the bat - for me, it's nearly impossible.  So I trudge through the first chapter, setting some scenes I know will be reworked, some that may never see the light of day again, some that are just fine, and some that have yet to be added.  But what made me smile and, after having the first chapter appropriately eviscerated, was that as she broke into Chapters 3 and 4, the comments slowed, the highlights went away.  As the plot caught on and the narrative flow took over, the story began to write itself better.

That's what makes the first chapter so hard, often.  There's no narrative yet.  You're establishing the narrative, but as you do so, you're also generally using character exposition and development to draw the reader in.  Right away, that's difficult.  It's like going up to a woman at a bar or after class or after work and introducing yourself.  What will interest her?  What will draw her attention, what will repulse her, etc?  You want to make that lasting impression that makes her want more.  I never thought I was good at that, but being that I have a wife-to-be, I must have gotten it right at least once.

Stories are easier, in that regard.  Not because the beginning part is easier - it's not - but because you can shelve it.  I write out the beginning, enough to establish what I want to, and then push onward.  I let the narrative kick in and ride the flow of it, working on the rest as I go, knowing full well that when I'm done, I can come back to the beginning, knowing what I know from start-to-finish, and be better able to fine-tune the start.  A lot of that, to me, has to do with information - you want the reader to understand your world, but the question is how and when to do that.  You don't want to go all Tolkien on them and give them pages upon pages of laborious description.  Sure, it's good, but let's be honest - we all skimmed a LOT of that.  Do you care what color the leaves are in Rivendell?  Me neither.  That's stuff the imagination fills in by itself and I, personally, like to let the reader's imagination work itself.  Anyway.  I find that the tendency is to throw a ton of information out at first.  I refrain as best I can; knowing that a lot of information comes out during the narrative, or can be added later.  But you still want to impart a degree of understanding to the reader... without it being a written infomercial for a few pages.  That can be tricky sometimes.

Makes me want to write a modern/contemporary set story sometime.  I'm sure I shall, but I would like to get this one done first.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Being moved.

The purpose of art, as I see it, is to move another, or even oneself.  To evoke emotion.  To make us feel something.  It doesn't have to be deep or profound necessarily, sometimes it's just the uplifting that comes from a heroic victory in an epic film, or sadness of a character's death, or the giddiness that girls get from romantic comedies.

As technology has evolved, so have our mechanisms for evoking emotions in art.  In some ways, this is good, in others, it is bad.  Does the increased intensity provided by film now diminish that of paintings?  Maybe.  Or maybe they're just different types of experience.

I miss being moved.  Maybe it's because I'm older now, but I don't find things that move me very easily.  This is part of why I write - to move myself, because so few others do.  I might be jaded.  But I feel a lack of creativity in the world these days, at least in American media.  Movies are recycled - the same comic book movie, the same epic war movie, the same romantic comedy, the same goofy guy comedy.  What might have moved me once, no longer does, because you can see it in fifteen different incarnations every year.  Television is much the same, and even my typical bastion for creative relaxation - video games - often fails me now.  Most of these industries are primarily after money and once they figure out what sells, they sell as much of it as possible.

In some ways, video games were my first true creative experience.  I remember being sucked into Final Fantasy VI when I was a kid and really, for the first time outside of Tolkien's books, knew what it was to be immersed in something and to have it move me.  Video games are great for this because you actually assume the role of a character - you follow them, learn with them, bleed with them.  Video games also have the time to truly spin out a tale - games can take as much as 20 hours or more to complete, although at least half of that is the "gaming" part and less actual narrative.  As technology has advanced, I see fewer games spinning compelling narratives.  I lament back to the days of the role-playing game in the '90s, when the Final Fantasy franchise was in its prime and other, less-known, games were being churned out, like Xenogears or the first couple Suikoden games.  I write this in part because I was poking around the Internet today and once again eyeing the one game I am looking forward to this year - The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.  That series, in particular, is as immersive a single-player experience as I've ever seen and truly a beacon of light among gaming.  If the game plays out as beautifully and intensely as the trailer for it shows, then it will hopefully be a landmark gaming experience, the type I crave and so rarely experience anymore.

Writing is, of course, the greatest medium for creative expression.  Words are limitless and allow a more ambiguous relationship between author and reader - I can write a description of a character, or a town, but it's not down to the finest details - those are filled in by the reader, giving everyone their own unique variation of the writer's world.  For example, in reading the Lord of the Rings, my Aragorn or my Frodo may have looked similar to your imagined version, but most certainly not the same.  That's the magic that writing alone captures - the reader's imagination is put to work filling in those finer descriptive holes, holes which, if filled by the author, would of course be indescribably cumbersome to read.

But at the same time, because books are not visual, we're not inundated with book advertisements - not like we are for movies and video games.  Books can't have trailers, as it were.  It's rare to see a book release get the press that George R. R. Martin's recent release did, and you can bet the farm that it had no small part to do with the running of the HBO series based on his books not long prior to the release.  I'll even admit, I started reading them because of the series (although they were on my list regardless; I just bumped them up as a result).  And I know if I did, plenty of other people did, too.  This is one of the difficulties of being an author that, even in the age of self-publication, I see - how do you get the book out there?  How do people find out nowadays?  Like so much in life, it seems it just boils down to being a lucky shot in the dark...

Friday, July 15, 2011

On actual writer's block.

Sometimes it's just not there.  Last week was a good one.  Made some good progress on the novel I'm working on and rather liked it.

I made the mistake of pausing and letting my fiancee read what I'd done.  Not that she's unsupportive; she's quite wonderful, actually.  But I was definitely trying to satisfy some odd desire within myself about my work by showing it to her.  I think I was a feeling good about it and she got home while I was working, looking for after-work attentions (understandable, typically fine).  Once I had said my afternoon hello to her, I really should have returned to my work.  I was in the middle of a chapter - end of a scene, but middle of the chapter.  I was in a good place and should have finished the chapter.  Instead, I showed her what I'd done thusfar.  Her enthusiasm was there, but not quite like mine.  It was tempered and she made some good points about some other areas of the book and it sort of derailed me a little.

I see why Stephen King waits to show his wife his drafts until he's done with them.

This week, it just hasn't been there.  It's an uncomfortable feeling, because in actuality, that chapter is planned out, but the ability to just sit down and hammer it out isn't there.  It's like mental constipation.  You might laugh, but it really is.  You're sitting there at the computer wondering if you should sit there and strain yourself and make the veins on your neck stick out and force out what you can, even though you know it won't be as satisfying as you're hoping.  Or maybe you should just relax and let it come in its own time.  I've been working the latter strategy.  This has resulted in a wholly unproductive week in which I explored the job market for someone with my skills where I live (not good).  That reality sinking in might actually be motivating me, because I'm starting to realize I don't have any promising job options here so I better make something happen.

I'm writing a novel that I first formed about ten years ago, in high school.  I know the plot, although I'm reworking it as I go.  The skeleton will stay largely the same; I'm just tinkering with the muscles and nerves, I suppose.  In some ways, that's not the most compelling thing to do as a writer.  As writers, we get told the stories too.  If you think we know it all from the start... we don't.  Our characters surprise us and take us places we don't always foresee.  It's a neat, fantastic experience.  Part of me misses that.  Part of me feels like I'm treading old grounds and maybe my writer's block this week is a sign to work on something else, at least sometimes.  I'm rewriting this novel right now because I know if I sit down and put myself to the grindstone, I can hammer out the rewrite in two months.  But I'm not finding that discipline and part of it is simply because it's boring work - it's menial work, insofar as writing goes.  When I get to the second book, it'll be better, because the second book is the one I have least planned out (the third I have a vague skeleton for).  But for now, it is what it is.

I feel the need to write something relevant.  Ambivalence, which I'm working on now, is a fun story.  It's about growing up, learning oneself, with a touch of wanderlust and father issues mixed in.  It's also a swords-and-sorcery sort of read.  It doesn't feel relevant, though.  It deals with issues and themes that were more important to me ten years ago than they are today.  The theme of wanderlust/homesickness sticks with me - I miss my home, Detroit, and its people, more than I can write here.  I look around at a changing world and my changing life and it seems like there're more relevant things to write about.  Young people - my generation - need a voice, and I'm writing about swords and sorcery.  I feel like I can do better.

Part of me is scared.  That happens.  I haven't written anything new in years.  That's part of why I wanted to focus on Ambivalence for now.  To sharpen my tools, so to speak, and learn to walk again before I started running.  But maybe I'm really holding myself back, maybe I need to set that aside sometimes and work on something else - something new - while I work on that draft.  It's easy to feel like a failure when you're afraid of what's in front of you and the only result is that you're finding yourself being completely unproductive.  It can be a hard mentality to break, no matter how fleeting it may be when it comes and goes.

I've been wandering, myself, for a long time now.  "Home" has been a transient concept for... going on five years.  It's probably part of why I feel so intensely homesick as I do so often - I haven't had a home since I left.  Everywhere I've been has been temporary and I've known it, so I've kept myself from getting too attached.  The only piece of my adult life that's fallen into place was actually, growing up, the one I expected to happen last, or would be the most challenging to obtain - the woman to spend that life with.  But I've got her.  Somehow, I need to make the rest of it happen.  I never thought, growing up, that'd be the hard part.

Friday, July 1, 2011

A Song of Ice and Fire; Otherland, as well.

Over the past, oh, two or three months, I read through George R. R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" books; those of them published so far, which comprises four books., with the fifth coming out this month.  I'd heard good things and had them recommended to me before, but like any good sheeple, I waited until I heard that they were making an HBO show out of it - not one to pass up on a medieval/fantasy show that looks credible, I decided I had to read the books first, at least the first.

The books are a different take on the fantasy genre; most fantasy books are spectacular showcases of action and sword-fighting and wizardry and dragons and whatnot.  Most of them feel like "fluff", the term is, meaning that they seem to lack substance.  Martin's series is quite the opposite.  It is decidedly not "fluff" at all and it feels that way primarily because he shifts the narrative focus away from action and keeps it on the politicking of his world.  It's not uncommon for a large battle to take place and only see it from one character's perspective, if at all, and then find out the greater summary of the battle after-the-fact, from another character.  It's clear that Martin seems to view battles as a necessary result of the politicking of his realm; not as the primary reason his books exist.  He enjoys nuance of character a lot more and does a great job of creating a large variety of striking characters.  I would argue, because he delves so deeply into the politics, that he has too many characters - everyone has a name and a title and land and eventually they start to blur together.  But I give credit to someone who takes the time to create a name, title and land for every minor character who gets a line of dialogue.

Spoilers, but I'll attempt to avoid anything specific.

I'm going to reference some of the books - to keep this accessible to all readers, I will be purposely vague in my references.  I won't ruin anything outright, I promise, but I may allude to characters in a way that might spoil part of the experience for you, so read on at your own peril, or skip ahead to the next bolded section.


Martin doesn't have traditional chapters.  Well, he does, only instead of Chapter 1/2/3, etc, he simply divides things up into point of view - so each book has somewhere between six and eight characters whose points of view we follow.  It's still written in third-person, but still from that character's perspective and we get to glimpse into their mind.  This helps Martin to create particularly vivid characters who are multi-faceted.  It also helps him create a world where no one is definitively evil and no one is definitively good - everyone makes hard decisions for what they perceive to be the greater good; some people like their decisions, some people don't.


The best character Martin crafts is, in my opinion, Jaime Lannister, the notorious Kingslayer.  He is presented, in the first book, as a first-rate, top-notch prick.  The first book is told primarily from the point of view of the Stark family and we end up with their view of Jaime - he's an arrogant asshole; it doesn't help that he grievously wounds one of theirs, either.  He's also bedding the king's wife - who happens to be his sister.  This isn't known to the Starks, but as readers, we're allowed enough insights to put that together.  But as the second book comes along, we're allowed Jaime's point of view, something that's maintained through the fourth book.  We start to get inside his head and see what his motivations are, how he views himself, and why he does the things he does - most importantly, why he broke his vows and killed the former king, earning himself titles like Kingslayer and Oathbreaker.  I won't go into it here, but another event in the third book, I believe, combined with the revelations about him the reader gleans from his point of view, help make Jaime one of the most interesting characters Martin writes.


If I have one issue with Martin, it starts at the fourth book, A Feast for Crows.  He breaks from the storytelling of his past three books and ends up leaving out several major areas and characters, such as Jon Snow and the Wall or Daenerys and everything across the sea.  At the end of the book, he notes that they'll get their own book, to be the fifth, which comes out this month (the note was dated June 2005...).  I have two issues with this.  First is that the fourth book starts to bring the hammer down on people who deserve it; we're left hanging at the end and knowing that the fifth book follows other characters means that continuing the series in the fifth book, as a reader, doesn't satisfy the "WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?!" urge.  While I know as a writer, I'll enjoy reading the other characters as they likely hear about what's happening from the fourth book, the reader part of me will cringe a little and go "I WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NEXT!"  Ah well.  The other issue I have with it also comes more as a writer - why break the book into two separate tomes following two separate groups (basically) instead of breaking it into books four and five, but keeping all characters in each book?  A Feast for Crows was frustrating because of the amount of new chapter/point-of-view characters it introduced.  Some offered valuable insights that deepened what was going on to me; others I honestly would have trouble remembering now or distinguishing from certain other characters.


I'm interested to see how he continues the series, though, and how long it'll end up being.  I also can't help but think, as a writer, that if HBO wants to keep pushing their Game of Thrones series based on his work (the series, I should note, is mediocre at best; as a show on premium-cable, also, it has a really startling amount of naked boobs a lot of the time, too), that it may become a distraction to him, an added pressure to get the series done.  Then again, he might also be using that to help motivate him.


Less George R.R. Martin, more of what I'm reading now...

So, with those books done for me for now - and I'll wait on the fifth til its in paperback - I've decided to move on to a series my lovely woman recommended to me after we discussed our mutual enjoyment of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, long long ago: the Otherland books, by Tad Williams.


I've gotta say, I'm intrigued.  For one, the copyright on this first book, City of Golden Shadow, is 1996.  I was on the Internet, gaming, in 1996.  That was the year a game called Diablo came out: my first taste of online gaming.  I remember what the 'net was like back then and I remember the fun noises that dial-up modems made (BINK BINK PONG WOOOOOONK KKKSHHHHH PONG BINK BINK BINK BINK KKKSHHHHH).  Snow Crash was a good read in that regard, too, and also rather startling for being published in 1992, but Snow Crash was also less about the 'net and its possibilities than Otherland is.


As I read through Otherland, I can't help but also look at it through the eyes of someone who's been playing online games for the last fifteen years.  I've watched games grow from Ultima Online and Diablo to things like World of WarCraft and online worlds that aren't games, like Second Life.  For Williams to foresee something like Second Life, which his 'net represents well, in 1996 is rather striking to me.  He even hints at gaming addiction, something that I don't think a lot of us were thinking about in 1996 but are certainly becoming more aware of in 2011, although it's still not an FDA-recognized form of addiction yet (it should be).


I'm not done with the first Otherland book yet; I'm about 250 pages into it and rather enjoying it now.  It was a little slow at first, as all books can be, but the premise was interesting and I continued.  Once the action starts to pick up, it starts to get to be one of those break-neck reads, where you can't slow down and have to keep going.  But then, Mr. Williams does something so many other science-fiction/fantasy authors do - he shifts perspective.  Robert Jordan, in his Wheel of Time books, is notorious for this (to me), too.  I enjoy nothing, as a reader, less than when a part of a book gets really, really good and in order to manufacture suspense, the author shifts you to another character, making you wait to find out what happens, even though he's primed you to REALLY REALLY WANT THAT.  I think it's a weak writing device; you can't even call it a plot device.

Part of writing - and, therefore, reading - is flow.  Establish a good flow and it carries the reader and they'll be happier for it.  This is true for fiction and non-fiction, even for essay-writing in school.  As a reader, if you get to a point of significant action, nothing is worse than a herky-jerky pacing where you're bouncing between event and event and event from character and character and character.  It's like riding in a car with someone who goes really fast, then stops, then goes really fast again, and stops.  George R.R. Martin (whoops, though I was done talking about him) avoids this because his books lack a great deal of action - because he focuses on the politics of his world primarily, it's less common for him to start driving so fast, so to speak, that you're bothered when he puts on the brakes.  Indeed, he often moves you to another character to help accentuate what the character you've been following just did - some decision is made, and you're moving on to someone's reaction, or something they're doing that will be affected by the decision.  In any case, you're not often moving away from the event in question.  In many other books, you have multiple characters the author focuses on, in multiple places, doing multiple things.  As all of those venues shift, it's irritating.  Even J.R.R. Tolkien does this, in the Lord of the Rings, but he mitigates it by having two groups - Frodo, with the ring, and everyone else (for the most part).  And it's not consistent through the entire series; in the Fellowship, there's one group and you follow it.  Then in the Two Towers, as they break apart, you follow... I believe it's three groups - Frodo, Aragorn, and Merry/Pippin.  Then in the Return, you follow Frodo and the others.  It's manageable, as a reader.  Imagine if each character went somewhere different, did different things, and you got bounced between them all.  Some writers do that.


I mentioned in my introductory post that, as a writer, I critique what I read as I read it.  I'm always looking for things that bother me, because I don't want to bother you when I write.  I look for things I don't do as well as I might like to and read things that might help me improve on that.  I tend to admire those things; the most recent highlight of that sort is mentioned above, in Martin's handling of Jaime Lannister.  He does fantastic things with that character; I hope to write a character as complex and interesting, who so infuriates the reader on one hand, yet is so admirable on the other.  Stephen King once said that a writer can't write without reading.  It's no coincidence that when I go through periods where I don't read much, I lose motivation to write.  It'd be like cooking without eating.  Well, you'd starve for one, but besides that obvious point, if you're not tasting anything, how can you know what you like?  How can you know what goes good together, how to experiment with your craft?  Exactly.  On that note, I'll try to update this on occasion in regards to what I'm reading and how it strikes me.  I plan to cruise through the Otherland book series (four books) for now and after that, I'm not sure.  I don't plan my reading out that far ahead.  Perhaps at the end of the year, I'll log in this blog (rhyme!) the books I've completed.