Thoughts on spoon- and force-feeding

So I posted a sizable brain download on Tuesday, and here's the upshot (lol, yeah, there's more.)

I've been wondering how much "spoon-feeding" the readers I can do before my gut starts yelling OMG SHUT UP. Not just muttering it. Yelling.

It has yelled OMG SHUT UP at other writers. The first time it happened to me was in the middle of Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose. Believe it or not, I had never skimmed through a section before that umpteenth dissertation about medieval philosophy. It felt like cheating.

More recently, I started reading Neal Stephenson and no, I don't feel bad about skimming anymore. I don't care about international monetary policy and he can't make me.

So many toys in the toolbox

But in the interests of pushing my own envelope, taking control of my own voice, using all the tools in my writerly tool-box, etc., if/when I do get around to that m/m fantasy romance that's burbling in my head I will try to slow down and see that the readers are better fed.

Logically speaking, it's a good place to try it. So far, the story is set in the Saints of War universe, but there's no connection to Disciple at all. It's shaping up to be a one-shot. It's already aimed at a slightly different audience, as an m/m romance, so it may well be the first book of mine that some readers see. (Whereas Disciple, Part IV probably won't be.)

Emotionally, it's a lighter... LOL, well, relatively speaking it'll be a lighter story. BTW, this is going to be horrible will still in effect. The pace will be different from Disciple, I can feel that much already, because the characters are different. I'm sure there will be blog posts about pacing while I work on this.

Meanwhile, feel free to complain about writers who force-fed you too much information. Did you stop reading? Skimmed until they got back to the story?

Indulging in a little wallowing

Are you taking the A to Z Challenge in April? I did it last year. It was grueling, fascinating, exhausting, and drew a lot of attention to my blog. This year, I'm going to be blog touring in April to support my release of Disciple, Part II -- which means if you're stuck for a certain letter I WILL GLADLY GUEST BLOG THAT FOR YOU if you'll let me plug my book. Email me: blankenship.louise at gmail dot com. Already taken: L, and either I or Y.

It might be because of my own run-ins with depression, but I have trouble letting characters wallow in their misery. Writing scenes of despair... well, when you look at the darkness the darkness looks back. And despair knows me, that's for sure.

But. Pics or it didn't happen, as they say. Show, don't tell.

This tangentially ties in to the dark night of the soul, letting characters face your demons, and earning that win -- not all consequences are faced physically. Emotional consequences play out in the emotions first, and might manifest as actions as a result of that, whether it's drinking, getting into fights, or attempting suicide...

The danger that my gut is warning me of, in letting characters wallow, is that they aren't moving the plot forward. Lying in bed crying might me accurate realism, maybe even sympathetic character development, but it's difficult to use that to get to the next phase of the story.

Your character might have some intuitive light-bulb moment while crying in bed. An angry guy might go out, get drunk, and pick a fight with just the right/wrong person... which could work or could seem too convenient, depending on the serendipity involved. How would you use your character's melancholy ruminations to keep the plot moving?

Writing the scene can be technically challenging too. Is the character just lying in bed, face in the pillow? If they're doing something, how do you work their emotions into the action? How's your stock of metaphors, and what will you do when you've used all your melancholy adjectives and now you need some more?

This is on my mind because of the revisions I'm making to Disciple, Part V. It felt very... lean in the writing; my gut said it needed more, but waffled over what that was. My betas have indicated that the "more" may be some wallowing. It doesn't sit easy, but my betas have never steered me wrong.

Raising expectations vs. becoming ridiculous

Continued from this post. So I need to write a series of kick-ass magical duels for Disciple, Part VI.

I'd like to do something more nuanced than: Blast! BLAST! BIGGER BLAST! DESTROY EVERYTHING ... it's not easy. Defining a character's ability to kick ass always runs the danger of not impressing anybody. Therefore, the temptation is to go straight over the top -- but that will create its own challenges the next time you need a magical duel. How is this one more dangerous/exciting than the last one? Constant one-upmanship is its own problem.

Sure, Kenshin, you can do that with just a sword...

Which you will see if you watch enough anime. Case in point: the Ruruoni Kenshin TV series (which involved no magic.) After a ridiculously long and ever-one-upping series of katana duels with the enemy's pack of cronies, Kenshin was having to conjure miniature black holes through force of will and swordsmanship in order to create any sort of wow factor. It was falling pretty flat at that point, though.

Conventional wisdom is that tension must always increase as we approach the climax, and that subsequent stories (or scenes) must have higher stakes than the previous. We've all seen this happen: first the characters have to defeat a particular bad guy, then an organization of them, then an evil deity, then we have to save the entire universe and then... You've got to take a step back, at some point -- or pass the story to new characters.

But let's get back to kicking ass; so you want that emotional satisfaction of the good guys winning. You want all of your characters' hard work and sacrifice to pay of in a suitably -- within the parameters set by your world-building -- spectacular way. And maybe you need more than one of these scenes.

Raising the stakes works, up to a point. Survival is always a good goal. Saving loved ones. Working with handicaps. I need to keep realism in sight, though. I brought this up a while back -- don't stack the deck against your characters so badly that their success becomes implausible. Relying on luck or reinforcements arriving in the nick of time isn't as satisfying for the reader as a character overcoming personal fears, limitations, what-have-you, to succeed.

And yes, I'm having to fight the urge to make these a cakewalk for my characters. Maybe it seems like I'm tough on them, but I've got my squishy side too. So I'm thinking of these duels as graphs charting increasing power, increasing complications, and increasing risk. That's three dimensions, already.

I tend to think of stories as being a walk through a three-dimensional web, anyway, so that fits right in.

What examples of stories losing touch with realistic conflicts come to your mind?

The importance of kicking ass

Back in high school when I was writing piles (and piles) of crap, I gave them all to a dear friend to read and he critiqued them (though I didn't know about critting at the time -- we're talking late 80's here). We also read a lot of books and analyzed them at great length together. Through both of these things, my friend taught me two important things (though I didn't know that at the time either):

1. The fickleness of reader sympathy, and
2. The importance of letting kick-ass characters kick ass. On stage. In full view. 

I am currently up against this in Disciple, Part VI. I need to write not just a kick-ass magical duel, but more than one of them. There was some magical dueling back in Part III and a little in Part IV, but now it's time for the gloves to come off. Time to kick ass.

I've been looking for reference visuals, and I've been struck by how rarely you get an onscreen, kick-ass magical duel. There are, of course:

1. Harry Potter vs. Voldemort et al. (which had its good moments, but overall... eh.)
2. Gandalf vs. Saruman (excellent duel)
3. Gandalf vs. the Balrog (powerful, though it was shorter than you think)
4. and the magical duel in Willow (was interspersed with other things going on)

Psychic dueling, a still from Akira

but I've been looking for new visuals and longer scenes would be better. This tends to steer me toward anime. Anime can do a lot of ass-kicking, when it puts its mind to it, though you may have to sift out the martial arts aspects. I find my mind wandering back to one anime in particular that I watched with my high-school friend: Akira. Which isn't fantasy, but if you've seen it you know why I'm thinking of it. Onscreen, kick-ass duel.

The literary example that my dear friend always held up as the yardstick was the magical smack-down at the end of the first Thomas Covenant series -- which I read about a thousand years ago and have only dim memories of. But it was kick-ass. I think.

Stay tuned, I've got more thoughts on this. One-upmanship is a problem in these sorts of situations. If you've got a favorite kick-ass magical duel, recommend it!

Wordiness: clear as mud

Mooderino wrote a nice post on wordiness, on Tuesday. I wanted to comment, but that's one of many blog pages that won't let me post comments (see this for more info) so I'll write a post of my own instead.

Mooderino pointed out that wordiness has its place, and that it's very useful in setting the pace of a scene. The tricky part being, of course, knowing when is a good time to slow the pace of a story down and when's a good time to let it rip.

Most people will agree that action sequences should move fast -- which for me begs the question: when would you want a slow action scene? Most people would think that highly emotional scenes should go slowly -- should they? How does the impact of emotion change when the scene moves quickly?

These are things you learn by consuming other stories alertly -- with awareness of what the storyteller is doing and how they're doing it -- and through the experience of writing your own stories. Your gut has its own opinion of what feels like a good story, and it's a mix of all the stories you've consumed along with your own creative instincts. Which is then smoothed out by the practice of actually doing it over and over.

Revision comes into play, too, because it can be very enlightening to rewrite a scene to change its pace or tone -- both of which are directly impacted by wordiness or lack thereof. This is on my mind because I just had to do it the other night. I'd written a scene with a recently captured prisoner who had a passive, defeated attitude, but on further thought I realized it would be useful if that prisoner had an interest in cutting a deal. In rewriting it, the dialogue shortened, descriptions dropped out, the verbs turned more active, and overall I hope tension came through rather than passivity.

I didn't necessarily set out to shorten the dialogue, drop descriptions, and active up the verbs; for my gut, that's just a natural consequence of upping the tension in a scene. It took a long time for me to gain that kind of reflex for what I was putting on the page. For years, I just spewed out words and was never quite sure why some things worked and some didn't. My grammar was always decent, but I was guilty of some pretty epic and sprawling ruminations that were about as speedy as molasses. With a lot of practice, the awareness began to seep in.

Have you rewritten scenes to change their pace and tone? How did it impact the language you used?