Don’t forget the shoes

A story can’t be just ‘he said/she said’ or ‘and then this happened’.  It has to imbed itself in you by allowing you to sense the temperature of the air, the sound of the trolley, the shoes the character is wearing.  The details are not really details, they’re the tone and feel of the situation.  Is she wearing gloves or a halter top…or both?  Why?  Is it cold or a masquerade?  And, the descriptions can’t just be a listing of stuff to be checked off.  Hat?  Check.  Overcoat?  Check.  They must be sprinkled naturally throughout so they are assumed to be what just happens to be going on.  Unless, of course, something outrageous appears.  It would be hard to be nonchalant about the grizzly in the closet or the army tank that’s on a collision course with the Volvo or the girl in the next pew with a knife sticking out of her back.

I am currently working on a story that spans several centuries.  The conversational circumstances and plot thread are not enough.  What were they wearing?  Did they ride horses or hail Hanson cabs?  Did all men carry canes for protection or only aristocratic men?  The likelihood of an emotional connection author-to-reader will be significantly enhanced if the reader can be made to ‘see’ the scene and believe it.

Off and running…

Well, that didn’t take long.  In the three days since last post, I have gotten reengaged with my writing compulsion.  This gives opportunity to tell how I work in case it may be instructive for other tyro writers if only as a point of departure.  Other writers have their methods.  This is just what I have found works best for me.

First, of course, comes the concept, the story line or subject that bubbles up from within.  It may come from observations or Walter Mitty fantasies or ‘what if’ games we play with ourselves.  That germinal event has been well discussed elsewhere.  But, it is, for sure, the genesis of all subsequent action.

My next step is to open my notebook – yes, actual paper and a ball point pen – and start making a listing of what steps or scenes it would take to tell the story and where it might end.  It is basically a bullet point list with a line or less than a line for each point.  This exercise is revised, redone or restarted until it looks like there might be a coherent story possibility.  At some point I may put it into my computer as a Word listing so I can insert and delete more readily.  This is the large scale road map. 

Then I look at my list and see if any of the plot points might benefit from some Google/Wikipedia back grounding and begin pulling up, reading and, perhaps, printing out articles about places and events that will be referred to.

Then, I open a fresh page and give it an arbitrary name with ‘notes’ attached, i.e., ‘The Voyage: Notes’.

Now comes my peculiar way.  By impulse only, I either begin interpreting the material from the research to fit my plot line or I simply take one of my plot points and begin writing dialog or exposition…in no particular order.  I may select an opening scene as it is asserting itself to me or it may be an ending or it may be from the middle.  It doesn’t matter.  They are simply stacked within my ‘notes’ document as they catch my fancy and are written.  They will be put in order later.  The ‘notes’ document grows with each new addition until it has absorbed all my scenes and dialogs and plot points and there is nothing left to add to make the story complete.  Then and only then do I begin the cut-and-paste process of making them flow together.

Once all the notes are logically arranged and read through, omissions and awkward transitions reveal themselves and are written or modified and are plugged in.

At this point, I will print the draft out and hand it to my in-house editor/muse/wife for her critical review.  If you are not blessed with an in-house editor, you may need to hire out the service.  Freelance editors are abundantly available but only referral or trial-and-error will tell you if you have found one congruent with your vision and temperament.  I am, as mentioned, blessed with one.  She is reliably 95% true and unassailable in her suggestions.  The remaining 5% involve some push-and-pull over points I mostly lose. 

Creation is over and the project moves into the publishing and marketing phases, subjects for  other writings, other times.

Withdrawal?

While I had my nose buried in the screenplay-conversion-to-novel project, I kept making quick notes on other story ideas and filing them away.  Now that the novel is off to the agent in London, I am sitting like a deer in the headlights with indecision as to which will be the next commitment.  Or, perhaps it need not be a commitment at this stage.  Perhaps it might be good to just add notes to each project until one becomes irresistible and sucks me in.  Yes, that’s the ticket.  Indecision is the decision. 

Will it be the expansion of my novella ‘Sub Rosa’ to novel length as has been urged?  Will it be the finishing of ‘Triangle’ about the 17^th century slave trade and the effect that ill-gotten fortune is having on a current heir MP with a shot at being PM?  Or, will it be the late entry personal-based incident of my youth in which I almost ran off to New Orleans with a stripper?  The last would be a ‘what if’ tale of what might have happened if I had.  One of those forks in the road that would likely have diverted me into a completely different life.  Makes my mind spin.

There’s no wrong answer here, is there?

Poynter

My editor (and beloved muse/wife) gave me an early Christmas present: a writing seminar at our home town world class school of journalism, The Poynter Institute (see Poynter.org).  Poynter was conceived and endowed by the long time owner/publisher/editor of the St. Petersburg Times.  It is housed in a gem of a building snuggled within the University of South Florida campus and throws off all manner of meetings, seminars and conclaves to advance the professionalism of journalists.  This one was called the National Writers Workshop and attracted about 80 attendees.

Frankly, it was not congruent with my electronic fiction publishing orientation but I should have known that.  It was about, for and by journalists.  Nonetheless, as with any focused seminar, it was great to have the three day immersion with writers and to think, study and talk about writing.  And, the cross roughing of the journalists POV is not without merit.  There were straight-from-the-horses’-mouths stories about stories; some humorous, some not, all instructive.

But, far and away the most satisfying aspect of the event was exposure to the seminar leader, Roy Peter Clark, a true renaissance man, an author ( ‘The Glamour of Grammar’ and ‘Writing Tools’), teacher and Senior Scholar at Poynter.  He was amusing, approachable, self deprecating, efficient and threw off casual references to literature, movies, music, history that revealed his amazing depth and breadth of knowledge.  He even whipped off clever musical riffs on the piano to introduce the various panelists or changes in subjects.  I came away suntanned by the reflected glow of his brilliance.  It was a refreshing experience.