Learning to Write Novels

Earlier in the week I was chided a bit by fellow SFF7 peeps for saying I learned to write novels by writing them. And reading them. And watching movies. And reading comic books.

Sorry, folks, that's my story! I was born with a LOT of imagination. I've been writing since I was a little kid and I write the kind of stories I wanted to read. The more I read, the more I knew what I wanted in my own books - bands of warrior brothers who would do anything for each other and the women they loved, science fiction adventures, romance, ancient Egypt, blasters, family connections, strong heroines, mystical events and powers, paranormal happenings....well, probably not all in one book of course!

I also got to know what I didn't want - no cliffhangers, no endless series of books where the heroine basically reboots with each new book and it's like the previous episodes never happened. I remember Cherry Ames, RN being particularly bad about this. No unhappy endings.

Along the way I received incredible support and encouragement from my family and friends, to keep telling stories for them...

Fortunately for me, there seem to be wonderful readers out there who enjoy the same elements in the books they read as I do. I've been able to share thirteen books and some assorted short stories to date. Book #fourteen is coming back to me from the developmental editor on Monday and I'll be sending her the next STAR CRUISE story.

If we're talking about the craft of writing novels, well of course I've had to learn about show vs. tell, head hopping, pacing, foreshadowing, character stage business, data dumps and too much backstory, and all the rest of the techniques, much as any other author should if they want to be turning out a quality book for readers. I have great editors, I've read a lot of excellent craft posts, I've been to a few workshops in my day...I probably made every craft-related mistake there is along the way to publication (and no doubt am still committing a few but hopefully my editors help me weed them out of the drafts).

When I had my author photo taken, the photographer asked me what I wanted to convey. And I said, I want to look as if we're sitting at the kitchen table together and wow, do I have a good story to tell. That's my goal!

Learning to Write

A movie with a shitty ending taught me to write. Yup. Historical. Ish. Adventure. Loads of fun right up to the end when the hero and heroine (after a convincing romance) intrinsically shake hands and say, "Right. Nice life then!" and toddle off their separate ways thus invalidating the entire prior two hours. Add into it that the heroine was a bit of a moron who couldn't fight her way out of a wet paper bag and you can already see where this is going to go, right? I was 12 and I was LIVID.

THEY'D DONE IT WRONG.

And *I* was going to fix it, by God. I did. Repeatedly. I spent that entire summer in my room with my mom's old Selectric typewriter set up on a TV dinner tray. No, I did not know how to type. I hunted and pecked my way into writing. The correction key didn't work because no one was going to buy correction ribbon for a kid with zero typing skill. We'd have had to have taken out stock in the company. So those old onion skin pages (which I still have) are a march of misspelled words, typos and carefully xxxxxxx'd out lines. I played and replayed the plot options in my head.

I could fix that ending.

NO. I could fix the entire affront! What if the heroine COULD fight? Wouldn't that be more fun?? Of course it would! Nobleman's daughter? Pff! PRINCESS. Who rides flawlessly. And handles a rapier better than anyone. Ever.

Yeah, I never finished that epic work. But it didn't matter. I'd always been addicted to stories. Books. Movies. TV shows. I think anyone who creates stories has to gorge on stories. We really are the monsters we write about - only we consume stories as fuel for our own. And for me, from that summer forth, I was lost. I wrote. And wrote. And learned. And read, and learned more. I wrote fan fiction during math class lectures when I should have been taking notes. Then I wanted to break my fan fic away into it's own thing with it's own identity. So I figured out how to do that during the most interminable year of social studies, ever. You'd think I'd have paid attention in English class. Until my mother shifted me up a grade level in the English department and the teachers had things to say I'd never heard before, that wasn't true. I spent my classes making stuff up on paper. Nooooo. There was no credit awarded for that activity.

Acting school solidified character development and dramatic arc. Possibly emotional vocabulary.

But honestly. Approaching story after story after story time and a gain, learning to finish what I started, learning to take critique and learning to edit - those, for me, were things I could only absorb and assimilate by doing. So yes. I may have been kicked into the blackhole of writing by a movie with an unsatisfactory ending, but the fact remains. I learned to write by writing.

At least it's no longer a typewriter on a TV tray.

I Learned to Write Novels by Doing Theatre

I believe that I'm somewhat unusual amongst fantasy/sci-fi writers, in that I cut my writers' teeth as a playwright.  Coming at writing novels from a theatre background gives me a different perspective on writing than most people, especially since I was also an actor.

I'm not going to pretend that, as an actor, I was much above "competent".  My presence onstage would not be a detriment to your show, but that was about about the extent of my skills.  So, many years ago, in my acting days, I was in an excellent production of Julius Caesar, playing "Citizen #4".

For those of you unversed in the specifics of Julius Caesar, after Caesar has been murdered and Antony turns the public against the conspirators with his "Friends, Romans, Countrymen" speech, the public goes a little nuts.  Thus, four citizens are hungry for some blood, and they know one of the conspirators was a senator named Cinna.  They find another guy named Cinna, and proceed to beat the snot out of him, because that's good enough.  Citizen #4 gets to explain the logic behind that:

It is no matter, his name's Cinna; pluck but his
name out of his heart, and turn him going.

As an actor with only a small bit to do, you do try and make the most of it. Why?  Because it's who you are in that moment.  I was never a method actor, but I always took to acting with the idea that there's more going on than just your lines.  I recall this advice from Michael Caine*, talking about what a director told him when he was in a small part.  The director noted him and said, "What are you doing right here in this part?"  "Nothing, I'm don't have anything to say."  "Of course you do," the director said.  "You have amazing, brilliant things to say.  You're just deciding not to say them."

Doing this kind of acting crystallized something for me when I was writing.  I can't, as a playwright, write a part that would be no fun for an actor to play.  And as a novelist, whenever I write a character, even the most minor ones, I can't help but think about making it at least a little more interesting than it, strictly speaking, "needs" to be.

In Thorn of Dentonhill, there's a bit where Veranix runs into two mounted constabulary.  These two cops (or "sticks", to use the street vernacular of Maradaine) could have been just Cop #1 or Cop #2.  But where's the fun in that?  These are still two guys who got up that day, put on their uniforms, got on their horses and went to work.  These are two guys who work at night, as partners, in a tough neighborhood where most cops are in the crime boss's pocket.  But not these two.  These two are a couple of guys who have each others' backs and do their best.  These two guys would be the heroes of their own story.

Conversely, in Holver Alley Crew, at one point I jump to the POV of a character who hadn't appeared before and doesn't appear again, partly for the fun of seeing one of the main characters from a completely outside perspective.  She has her own problems and concerns, which have nothing to do with what intrudes upon her.  Her reality gets affected by the main story, but it stays her reality.  And, if I may say so myself, it's a fun bit.  It's more fun than had I written it from the main character's POV.

*- This was in a lecture he gave on video, it's not like he told me directly.

Nuptial Non-Post

I'm getting married in a few days and I didn't manage to get blogs written ahead, so you're getting a short but thought out post sans images or any attempt at style in the telling.

I learned to write by living. Craving to purge the stories inside me I did so by turns between school, a rock band, and a boyfriend or two. There was encouragement and support from a high school creative writing teacher. There was guidance in the form of the novels I devoured until all hours of the night. There were (and still are) lessons learned and scenes sparked by the young men I've been privileged to have given birth to and raise...and they also provided incentive to escape into the words and pages.

Writing is a means of having more experiences via characters, of studying the possibilities of situations through the safe lens of fiction, of dissecting life one scene at a time and finding, when it is ended, that through that dissection I understand something new about the craft or people or life.

No matter what this world had in store for me, there were always words ready to lift me up, bolster me, or ground me -- whatever I needed. My words, or other author's words. Reading and writing and choosing to plug in to that creativity and imagination is a magic I eagerly indulge because it gives so much more in return.

Double Release Day: Damned If He Does & Lonen's War

We're doubling down on the celebrations today aboard the SFF Seven. We have TWO, TWO captains releasing books, Marcella Burnard and Jeffe Kennedy. That's double the champagne, double the confetti, and double the chocolates.

First Up Marcella Burnard's Paranormal Romance:

DAMNED IF HE DOES

Rejected by heaven, twisted by hell, what’s a damned dead man to do when he stumbles upon a life and love worth fighting for?

Though damned for his earthly sins, Darsorin Incarri likes being an incubus. Prowling women’s dreams to siphon off their sexual energy for Satan's consumption has its perks: an array of infernal power and a modicum of freedom. Sure, Ole Scratch holds Dar’s soul in thrall, and Dar has to spend a few hours recharging in Hell every day, but it could be much worse. All he has to do is hold up his end of his damnation contract – five women seduced, satisfied and siphoned per night for eternity. So when he encounters gorgeous, bright, and funny Fiona Renee, it’s business as usual. Deploy the infernal charm and rack up another score. Except it doesn’t work. She’s immune. He has to find out what’s gone wrong or face Lucifer's wrath.

Fiona Renee has the life she’d always wanted: a career, a home, a cat with a bad attitude, and peace. Fiona’s dated. Had boyfriends. And hated every minute of it. She’s reconciled to being lonely. So when a man shows up in her bedroom in the middle of the night demanding to know why her dreams turn to nightmares every time he tries to seduce her from within them, Fiona winds up negotiating a contract with a demon that allows him access to her life. She never anticipated that it would also give him access to her heart. If she's going to fall in love at all, something she never thought would happen, shouldn’t it be with someone who’s alive? If Fiona wants to hang on to Darsorin, she has to find his true name—the one he’d been given at his birth over a thousand years ago. But Satan, himself, stands in her way. Even if Fiona can dodge Lucifer, she and Darsorin have to face the question neither of them can answer: What happens to a dead man if you manage to wrest his soul from the Devil?

BUY IT NOW:

Amazon   |   Kobo   |   Apple   |   Nook  

Then Jeffe Kennedy begins a new romantic fantasy series with her latest release:


LONEN'S WAR

An Unquiet Heart

Alone in her tower, Princess Oria has spent too long studying her people’s barbarian enemies, the Destrye—and neglected the search for calm that will control her magic and release her to society. Her restlessness makes meditation hopeless and her fragility renders human companionship unbearable. Oria is near giving up. Then the Destrye attack, and her people’s lives depend on her handling of their prince…

A Fight Without Hope
When the cornered Destrye decided to strike back, Lonen never thought he’d live through the battle, let alone demand justice as a conqueror. And yet he must keep up his guard against the sorceress who speaks for the city. Oria’s people are devious, her claims of ignorance absurd. The frank honesty her eyes promise could be just one more layer of deception.

A Savage Bargain
Fighting for time and trust, Oria and Lonen have one final sacrifice to choose… before an even greater threat consumes them all.

BUY IT NOW

Amazon   |   Kobo   |   Smashwords

I learned how to write novels by drawing comics.

Jeffe already said it, really, but at the end of the day we learn by doing.

My number one answer as to how to write a novel is simple: plant your butt in the seat and start writing. Repeat.

Thats not far from true. But the fact of the matter is that any sort of craft requires time and discipline.

It also requires focus. That's not quite the same as discipline, but they are very close cousins.

WhenI was growing up my family moved a lot. How much? Seventeen schools in twelve years of schooling and most of my moving was done by the time I was fourteen. My constant companion while growing up, the ONLY constant other than my family, was comic books. Marvel, DC, Charleston, Gold Key. Whatever comic I could find, I read. I was raised as much by Superman and the Avengers as I was by anyone else. My moral compass was definitely affected by the actions of Clark Kent and his alter ego (No powers, but a definite sense of what i thought was right and wrong) and I knew at an early age that I wanted to draw comics.

I sat down every day and I read them and I studied them and I broke them down in my mind as to how I would lay out the individual panels and what I would say.  I spent a lot of time drawing, and I did my best to understand the basics of storytelling and anatomy and How To Draw Comics The Marvel Way.

That last one? I read that book a thousand times and studied each example they gave

What I never managed in all of that time was how to draw comics well. It wasn't for lack of trying and I could get certain aspects easily enough, but in the words of a Marvel Comics editor ai was showing my work (I'd actually done a full 22 page issue of the DC Comics character The Creeper, but damned if I wasn't going to show it to someone and DC was not there that year; The best laid plans....) "You can't draw a straight line and I can see you've been using a ruler. Your anatomy is horrible and out of proportion, but I you're telling a great story. Have you considered writing?" I should point out that at first there was a lot of hemming and hawing, but eventually I told him he wouldn't hurt my feelings if he was brutally honest.

He was brutally honest. It hurt a bit. I was wrong on that aspect. He also bought my first professional sale a few months later. Turned out pencil wasn't my medium. I could tell the story just fine with words and that's what I practiced after speaking to him.

I learned the proper format by looking at a few other comic scripts and emulating the layout. I told the story n a way that the artist could understand.

Later, when virtually every contact I had at Marvel Comics got fired on the same day and I'd spent a month writing at least one one page proposal a day, I got sick of telling the equivalent of a story a day in the same basic format as the back cover text of a novel I sat down one day with an image in my head that would not leave me alone.

A solitary kid, overweight and winded, runs through the woods with half a dozen kids after him. They chase him down and bear him mercilessly, while, in the woods around and above them, hundreds of tiny creatures watch and cheer them on.

That image would n leave me alone until, finally, exasperated, I sat down and I wrote the scene out. Then I thought about it a bit and wrote the next scene that explained the first. And then I write the consequences of those actions.

I wrote about how that beaten down boy got better and got his revenge and I wrote about the motivations behind his actions. As I wrote I drew a bigger picture with words. It just kept growing.

I believe the final text was somewhere around 170,000 words. I was told matter of factly that it would never sell.

I sold it anyway. It's been in print multiple times and got some pretty damned decent blurbs back in the day. the story was called UNDER THE OVERTREE.

I liked the feeling so much that I did it again and again. Along the way I honed my writing skills with practice, with patience, with the help of good friends who gave me their time, and by trial and error. Oh, and with the help pf very patient editors.

As I have explained to people before, I went to seventeen schools in twelve years. My best year I had a 2.5 GPA. Most years in high school it was a 1.5.

When I was drawing comics, badly, granted, I was telling a story. That story had a beginning, a middle and an end. I drew out easily ten or fifteen comics, full stories, either on note book paper when I could afford nothing better, or on full sized 11 x 17 bristol board after I got a job and saved up for my meager supplies.

I don't physically draw much these days. No spare time, and, honestly, I was never very good But I visualize the same way I always did, and my palette of words is pretty comfortable.

I Learned How to Write Novels by ... Training in Kung Fu

I'm headed home from #RWA16, the Romance Writers of America annual conference, which was in lovely San Diego this year. This was a truly wonderful gathering this year.Grateful for this community that always leaves me refreshed and supported.

Also, the first book in my new Sorcerous Moons series comes out on Tuesday. I'm loving on this cover! Yes, I helped design it, but the amazing Louisa Gallie is the one who pulled it off. Love the feel. And here's the blurb:

An Unquiet Heart

Alone in her tower, Princess Oria has spent too long studying her people’s barbarian enemies, the Destrye—and neglected the search for calm that will control her magic and release her to society. Her restlessness makes meditation hopeless and her fragility renders human companionship unbearable. Oria is near giving up. Then the Destrye attack, and her people’s lives depend on her handling of their prince…

A Fight Without Hope

When the cornered Destrye decided to strike back, Lonen never thought he’d live through the battle, let alone demand justice as a conqueror. And yet he must keep up his guard against the sorceress who speaks for the city. Oria’s people are devious, her claims of ignorance absurd. The frank honesty her eyes promise could be just one more layer of deception.

A Savage Bargain

Fighting for time and trust, Oria and Lonen have one final sacrifice to choose… before an even greater threat consumes them all.

Our topic this week is “I Learned How to Write Novels by (doing some other activity).“ It will be interesting to hear what all everyone else has to say. Hopefully Jim won’t just post that he learned to write novels by writing novels.

~Gives Jim the beady-eyed stare down~

For me, I had to teach myself how to write a novel – both by focused, deliberate habit-building, and by an overall effort to improve myself.

As for the first, I didn’t know how to write long. I started out as an essayist and short-story writer. I could hold essentially the entire arc of the story in my head and I usually hammered it out in one writing session. Sure, sometimes an all-session, but still. I’d gone to working four ten-hour days at the day job, and writing all day on Fridays. For a while I wrote an essay or story a week – though most were 1,500 – 5,000 words

When I decided to write longer, I realized this wouldn’t work. I couldn’t hold the whole story in my head, and by writing one-day each week, I’d lose too much of the thread in between.

So, I had to deliberately build a habit of writing every day for a couple of hours – and teach myself how to work incrementally, rather than in a long, focused session. This was a huge change in work-pattern for me. I had always been a binge-worker. I was the girl in college who pulled all-nighters, staying up to write my papers the night before. I’m pretty good at concentrating and working in one long session.

While some people can do this with novels, I cannot. 10,000 words/day is a really good day for me. I can’t sustain that for many days in a row. For a 130,000 word novel? No, no, no.

Therefore I had to learn how to work in slower, steady increments.

But that’s not the subject of this week. What I discovered was that something else I’d been doing helped me enormously in this effort.

I started taking Tai Chi and Pakua Chang long before I decided to become a writer. Those are both internal Chinese martial arts that fall under the collective umbrella of Kung Fu. (I learned several more arts and styles over time, but this was where I started.) I’d been dating David for about six months at that point and he really wanted to learn Pakua. I’d been a religious studies major in college and had become very interested in the idea that practice shapes belief. (Christians, for example, teach that you only need to believe and everything else follows; in Judaism, practice comes first – prayers, rituals, dietary observances – and they teach that belief, and spiritual growth, arises from that.)

All of this is a long way of saying I was up for learning Kung Fu also, as a way for practicing a physical discipline that could lead to personal growth.

We studied those arts for over fifteen years. Along the way, I discovered a level of patience I’d never before possessed. That kind of training in particular depends on incremental work. We did a lot of moving meditation. Tai Chi requires very slow, meticulous and relaxed movements. There are various standing exercises that require fortitude of both body and spirit, remaining in the same very uncomfortable position for a long period of time.

After a while of practicing an activity, it becomes easy to focus on the specific goals – the next demonstration or test – and lose sight of the original reasons for taking it up. I became intent on the trees, pouring energy into the school I belonged to, both taking and teaching classes. It wasn’t until we eventually left the school that I remembered about the forest.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that all that practice resulted in personal growth. I’d developed all sorts of patient focus for working incrementally that dovetailed directly into learning to write novels. I had created work habits that allowed me to move into a new kind of steady and productive creativity.

I get asked a lot these days to explain how I do what I do. I’m regarded as a fast and productive writer. Fortunately I also seem to write good books! The people asking inevitably want to know how to do the same – and I’m afraid my answer isn’t an easy or fast one. Except that I think we all have these other experiences that come into play, skills we’ve built over time that we can move into new 

efforts.

Nothing we do is ever wasted.

A Slew of Favorite Minor Characters

I figure the most memorable minor characters are the ones who come to mind first, so here is my list, in no certain order:

1. The tiny Death Star robot

2. The multipurpose Guard in Wizard of Oz

3. We had a lively debate on Facebook the other day whether the Scarpatine Pie in Grace Draven's Radiance novel counted. I vote yes! (Think meat pie with nasty live scorpions.)

4. In my own novels there's a rather dashing Captain Intefiqer-Duaen, a Ushabti warrior who serves the Queen of the Gods. He appears in Magic of the Nile in one scene and in Ghost of the Nile for one scene. I have a plot idea in mind for him someday, where Isis sends him to the land of the living to retrieve a lost....well, that would be telling.

5. I was always rather intrigued by this Hawkman in the "Flash Gordon" movie:

6. The passengers on the bus in the movie "Speed"...

7. James Shigeta (always loved him in movies) as Mr. Takagi in "Die Hard":

8. Thomasina Tittlemouse from Beatrix Potter - I love her fluffy coat!

9. Every put upon valet, butler and housekeeper in every Regency novel EVER.

10. And of course who could forget Lady Veronica in Jeffe Kennedy's The Twelve Kingdoms series, who I believe is still awaiting the arrival of her own Dasnarian mercenary. Ahem.