How to rite Killer Fiction (25 page)

Two Competing Forces: Expansion and Contraction

Expansion

• "what if?"

• casting the net wide

• brainstorming

• letting characters have their way with the story

Contraction

• picking and choosing

• making connections

• giving each character a fiction "job"

• letting go of material that doesn't fit overall story

Two Kinds of Writers: Outliners and Blank-pagers

Outliners

• prepare for writing

• make connections before starting

• focus material before starting to write

• cut extraneous plots and characters before starting

• create materials that won't be in finished book (maps, dossiers, calendars)

Blank-pagers

• fall in love with an empty white page

• go where it takes them

• let characters do what they want

• use the edge that uncertainty brings

• write characters into corners and then write them out again

• save the contractive stage for revision and revise extensively

What they each have to learn:

• Outliners have to learn that there's no substitute for actual writing, that they can't control the process to the point of writing a perfect first draft, and that they have to allow for spontaneity during the writing.

• Blank-pagers have to learn to love revision, because they have so much of it to do. They also have to learn to let go of plotlines and characters that don't advance the book as a whole.

The expansive stage is easy and fun; it's the contractive stage that's work. So...

• focus on what turns you on
right now,
no matter what you loved before

• cut as much backstory as possible and see what's left

• consider putting two characters together to make one stronger character

• drop any character who doesn't have a "job" to do in the story

• drop all subplots that don't relate in some way to main story, or,
make
those characters and subplots related somehow

• focus on conflict and opposition to strengthen the plot; raise the stakes

• work the arcs

• think in scenes

Middlebook and how to survive it:

• increase tension by setting the stopwatch or planting the bomb— or both

• let the pendulum swing between safety and danger, trust and mistrust, in ever-increasing arcs

• build to the climax by raising stakes and closing off options until main character is
forced
to final confrontation

• "turn all the rats loose"—but tie up all subplots before Arc Four

• use mini-arcs and subplot arcs to heighten tension within big plot

• make sure every scene serves more than one purpose

• build to strong climax
and then give that climax its full value

Revision—love it or leave the business.

• "anything that doesn't kill this book makes it stronger"

• "the-good-of-the-book-as-a-whole"—allows you to kiss that scene good-bye

• cut away scaffolding and leave the building

• work the arcs, making sure each plot point is built up to and gets full play

• the important question: what am I revising
for?

• plan on three or four full revisions, some carpentry, some textual

Writer's Block Is a Gift—Use It Wisely

• yeah, some gift. Where can I go to return it?

• the problem with chapter four may lie in chapter eight and vice versa

• do the opposite of what you've been doing:

if you've been expanding, try contracting if you've been contracting, try expanding

• go deeper into character; maybe there's a good reason your character refuses to do what you want her to do

• try freewriting on a scene that won't be in the finished book

• go over all notes, all the way back to square one, and highlight what you
love

• let go of everything that isn't working (use the out-takes file if it helps)

• trust that you have more within you to replace what isn't working

• once in a while, go to the beach and forget about your book. Let the plot simmer on the back burner of your mind

"WHEN DO you write? How many hours a day do you write? Are you a morning writer? Do you have a schedule? Do you write a certain number of pages a day? Do you write on a computer or do you use a quill pen?

Do aspiring writers ask published writers questions like these because they think there's some magic answer that spells the difference between published and not-yet published?

The Writing Zone_

Perhaps they do, because the only certainty in the world of creative writing is that nobody quite knows what makes one person's words sing while someone else trying to tell the same story clunks along and struggles for expression. There are intangibles at work. There is a Zone you get into, a high not unlike the one runners are said to experience, a place where the words write you and your fingers zip along while your mind gets out of the way and lets it happen.

Getting to that state and staying there for as long as possible is the key to writing success.

Giving Yourself What You Need

What it takes for you to get there and stay there is something I can't know. I know some of the things that work for me, and I know some

of the things that break the mood so much that I lose the Zone. Every writer has to find out for himself what his optimal writing conditions are and then try to create those conditions as often as possible. Ask yourself one question: What am I willing to give up for my writing?

Am I willing to sleep one hour less? Am I willing to forgo two evenings of television in favor of two evenings at the computer keyboard? Can I stop reading my favorite authors while I develop my own style? (I've found that there are certain stages of the writing process during which I simply can't pick up someone else's book, and for a woman who once read five mysteries a week, that's a hard trade-off.)

A word to the self-indulgent (and aren't we all?): Giving yourself what you need isn't the same as giving yourself what you'd like to have. Sometimes you're not in the Zone and there's no way you're going to get there, but you have to write anyway because you've got a deadline. What I do in these situations is "lay track." I know I'm not writing at my best, but I'm putting words on the page and sketching out scenes I'll go back and beef up later on. Once in a while, the Zone creeps up on me and I find myself doing more than just laying track, but even if all I've done is put down the rails, at least I've contributed to the final product.

Letting Go

The second part of giving yourself what you need is adding to your bank of experience. Writers who spend a lot of time alone in front of computers miss out on life, and life, after all, is what we're writing about.

Although I tend to agree with whoever it was who said, "Some say life is the thing, but I prefer reading," I'll admit that it feels good to get up out of the chair and enter the world after a long session with imaginary people. It feels good to use my body, to engage nature even if all that means is pulling weeds out of the front yard. It's nice to see friends, to catch up with the latest movies, to let your mind take a vacation from the intense creative process.

Preparing for Publication

Okay, I understand. That walk in the park was nice, but your brain overflows with The Book, The Whole Book, and Nothing But the Book. If you can't write the thing right this minute, at least you can plan for the next step in your writing career.

How Publishing Has Changed
Your professional career path begins with the choice of a publishing house. In today's highly concentrated corporate environment, a few mega-houses in New York City use imprints that make it appear as if there are twenty to thirty big publishers, when the truth is that there are now fewer than ten. For example, The Bertelsmann Book Group owns Random House, Ballantine, Fawcett, Bantam Doubleday Dell, Crown Books, and Knopf.

So what? Why do you care?

Once upon a time, in the good old days, your agent submitted your book to, say, Random House. Once the Random House editor turned her down, she submitted to Bantam. If they weren't thrilled, she moved on to Ballantine. She might even choose to send your manuscript as a multiple submission, querying all those editors at once and hoping that all three wanted it enough to start a nice little bidding war for the privilege of paying you an advance.

No more. Now you and your agent had better select the best imprint within the giant corporate family and pitch hard, because no bidding wars will break out between editors whose separate imprints belong to the same big house. You have a scant few opportunities to break in to mass market publication, and you'd better make the most of them.

Hence the ABC list.

The ABC List

Think of it as being asked to the prom. Who's your first choice of escort? If that boy doesn't ask you, who's next on the list? As you move down the ladder of social desirability, whom would you settle for? Is there anyone you'd rather stay home than go to the prom with?

If you're seventeen, it's good to know all this before that nerdy kid with asthma walks up and asks you to the dance and you're so flustered you say yes and then you hear that cool guy from the band really wanted to ask you but you already said yes to the dork because you felt sorry for him and here you are stuck with your D choice when you could have had at least a B.

In other words, have a game plan. Know which are the A publishers for your kind of book and which are the Ds. Then start the submission process with the As and only after all the As have turned you down move on to the Bs, and so forth. Don't let yourself be scooped up by a C publisher when A-level publication was available to you. And you can only know you could have had an A house by submitting to all the A houses and letting their editors see your work.

How can you tell an A from a D?

Research. Name recognition. Number of books on the best-seller's list. Authors you've heard of on their roster. Making sure they publish mysteries, if that's what you're writing. Any number of houses have ostensibly dropped their mystery lines, although they remain open to suspense reads that sell into the millions.

How do you know which authors they publish?

Aha—here's the part you can work on while you're recharging your writing batteries.

Go to a bookstore and look at the books on the mystery shelf. Check the suspense novels; see which houses publish books like yours. Run the authors' names through a search engine and check out the publisher's website.

Start compiling your A list based on big books with a fair amount of promotion behind them.

What's promotion? How can you tell when a publisher is pushing a certain writer?

Do you see print ads for the book in major markets? Is the book in a special place in the bookstore, not just on the shelf under the author's last name? Those cardboard book holders at the checkout counter are called "dumps" and they cost money. A publisher who buys a dump for its mystery/suspense writers is a publisher to be cherished.

Watch for "starter houses," which in publishing means houses that writers leave as soon as they sell a few books and see bigger money somewhere else. Get to know which writers started where and which houses they're at now. Starter houses are fine on your B and C lists, but they don't belong with the As.

Hard vs. Soft, Big vs. Small, Paper vs. Electronic
It used to be that if you didn't have a hardcover, you didn't have a book. Paperback original was less-than. It didn't get reviewed (still doesn't, for the most part), and it didn't get respect.