Theme: What it is, and Why it Matters

One of the main things that make a book resonate with the reader is theme. Often confused with plot, theme is what a book is about.

This confusion is quite apparent when someone tells you they’ve just finished a book. Ask them what it’s about, and nine times out of ten they’ll tell you what happens in the course of the book—that’s plot. So whereas the plot of “The Lord of the Rings” may be to do with a Hobbit finding the arch-enemy Sauron’s great Ring of Power, and so on, the main theme of LotR is simply the conflict between Good against Evil (there are sub-themes, such as the arrogance and temptations of power, the power of humility, and courage in the face of certain defeat). In “Star Wars,” the primary theme is the struggle for freedom against tyranny and oppression.

In order to avoid preachiness, it’s best to approach the creation of fiction with the idea of simply telling a story. If the story contains Truth—by which I mean universal human truths, verisimilitude, reflection on the human condition—it’s very likely that theme will be present and emerge organically from character and situation, without premeditation on the part of the author.

When I began to conceive my just-released novel, “Sutherland’s Rules,” I’d been thinking a good deal about aging (since I turned sixty last summer, this will come as no surprise). I’d wanted to write a kind of anti-hero, high-tech, fast-paced thriller for a while, and this idea collided in my head with my concerns about aging to create the driving idea for “Sutherland’s Rules:”

Billy Sutherland, an aging, retired dope smuggler seizes the opportunity to cash in a forty-year-old IOU given him by an Afghani hash farmer in 1971 after a deal went sour. At sixty-six, Billy can’t do it alone, and so asks his oldest friend, Christian, to help him in this crazy, illegal, and highly dangerous adventure. Billy doesn’t need the dope, and doesn’t plan to sell it: it’s all about closure to him, and not going gentle into that long good night.

When I’d let the first draft cool and went back to the book, I realized it was overflowing with theme, and sub-themes, too: aging, the need for closure, the last hurrah before night falls, loyalty, the power of friendship, intergenerational debts of honour, freedom…not quite what you’d expect from a thriller about two old ex-hippies trying to smuggle a huge load of hashish halfway around the world and into the UK without coming to the attention of fortress Europe’s police authorities and the UK’s sophisticated detection tech.

Now, I’d not set out with the aim of addressing such lofty concerns—my desire was simply to write a cracking good story and have some fun doing it. But looking at the reviews, readers get these thematic notes: one reviewer described the book as “life-affirming;” another spoke of “an interesting take on aging”; and two others remarked on the underlying, touching melancholy of these two lifelong friends on what will certainly be their final adventure.

These themes emerged, I believe, because I can’t help putting a great deal of myself into a book, and that includes my reflections on life and death and society. These things are my truths.  As a result, I believe I ended up with what I’ll call “an intelligent thriller,” as opposed to the typical, generic technoporn where forgettable characters just act out the plot, sowing mindless mayhem as they go.

So when Billy tells Christian, “And look, man, the game—our game, our life—is coming to a close. Maybe ten more good years, fifteen at most, then it’s good as over. I’ve got my exits mapped out, but I’m buggered if I’m going to die feeling I missed out”, he’s talking about what any reader who’s hit middle age—and certainly any reader old enough to remember the sixties—is very, very aware of: the final curtain coming down, the finish line clearly in sight, the end of adventure.

Theme matters because life is themed. As we blunder through this passion play, we can’t help coming to some conclusions, seeing universal patterns and currents, understanding that some things matter. When a writer puts all they have of themselves, of their Truth, into a story or novel, the reader will notice, and nod, and care.

In the words of the great poet, Robert Graves,

There is one story and one story only
That will prove worth your telling,
Whether as learned bard or gifted child;
To it all lines or lesser gauds belong
That startle with their shining
Such common stories as they stray into.

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What’s your take on this?

The Last Post

All good things come to an end.

In the eight months and 48 posts since I started this blog, we’ve had some fun together, and hopefully I made a few people think and sparked some good discussion. But as I prepare to publish my novel, Sutherland’s Rules, begin work on the next, take Panverse Publishing to the next level starting with six new titles in 2013, all while still having a life… well, something has to go. (This blog won’t be deleted, though, so archived posts will remain available).

It’s also becoming very clear to me that the world simply doesn’t need another writing blog. That said, for those of us who are writers, there are a very few writing blogs that I consider absolutely indispensable, and which explore the craft at a level far beyond the mundane. These are:

• Janice Hardy’s ‘The Other Side of the Story’
• Kris Rusch’s ‘Business Rusch’
• Dan Simmons’s ‘Writing Well’
• Juliette Wade’s ‘Talk to YoUniverse’

My most heartfelt thanks to all of you who’ve visited, read my posts, humoured me, commented, joined in my contests, etc. I’d love to stay in touch with you all and know what you’re up to, so please join me on Twitter (@Dario_Ciriello) and/or friend me on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/dario.ciriello).

Finally, I’d like to tell you a little about Panverse Publishing and my plans for it. Please bear with me a few moments, since, writer or reader, you may hear something to your advantage…

PANVERSE PUBLISHING is a critically-acclaimed small press dedicated to publishing story-rich work by new writers and established professionals. Stories from our anthologies have received several award nominations, including a Hugo and Nebula, and won the 2011 Sidewise Award; my own nonfiction title, ‘Aegean Dream,’ was the #1 nonfiction book on Greece on Amazon UK for 14 weeks this summer.

Starting now, Panverse will not be limiting itself solely to short fiction or Science Fiction and Fantasy titles, but will instead be publishing long form fiction (novels) for a broader audience, as well as some nonfiction.

Panverse will be publishing, both print and digitally, new voices telling unusual stories. Agents and publishers are taking no chances today, with the result that some extremely gifted new writers, and many established writers whose stories don’t fit the formula- and category-obsessed market, are unable to get published. At Panverse it’s story first and foremost. We believe readers are smarter than the publishing world generally gives them credit for, and that they read across categories and enjoy work that doesn’t conform.

Our books are beautiful. One of my core values is that a book–whether print or electronic–should not only contain good writing but also be a thing of beauty, meticulously crafted and attractively packaged. Panverse goes out of its way to find the best artists and the most striking cover art.

As of now, Panverse Publishing has four titles scheduled for 2013, and we will be announcing plans to open to novel submissions in the near future.

I’m in the process of entirely rebuilding the Panverse website. Once the new website is up, I’ll be posting details and teaser excerpts of upcoming titles, as well as author guidelines for submissions, along with royalty and contract terms and all the other good stuff. There will also be a Panverse Reader Club for those among our readers aspiring to become repeat offenders (think: discounts, prize draws, and much more).

Most of all, I intend to continue with Panverse’s original promise and mandate to put STORY front and center. If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s a boring book, and we have no intention of inflicting them on our readers! Panverse’s motto is, and always will be,

STORY. WONDER. THEY’RE BACK.

‘Like’ us on Facebook

Visit Panverse on the web

Want to be on the Panverse mailing list? No spam, ever, and absolute privacy: all you will receive are emails when new titles are released and notification of our (quarterly or so) contests and prize draws. Just drop me an email at office dot panpubs at gmail dot com, and you’ll be kept in the loop. You can of course opt out at any time.

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That’s all, folks! Thank you and Happy Holidays, and I wish you every success and happiness for 2013 and beyond.

Dario

The Taliban Guide to Better Prose

I know a lot of writers.

Now, most of these writers blog. And, worse, most of them also Tweet and link to other writers’ blog posts with some frequency.

As a result, I see an interminable stream of post titles like, “Zap Adverbs for Kick-Ass Prose!”, “Thirteen More Ways to Kill Exposition,” “Plot like a Hollywood Screenwriter,” “Write for the Market,” “The Seven Types of Subplot,” and so on, a nightmare cornucopia of deranged dogma and rabid rules almost guaranteed to paralyze any new and impressionable writer.

Oh, please. What about, “The Seven Types of Idiot Advice,” “The Wisdom of the Cookie-Cutter,” and “How Dare You Think for Yourself?!” Now those are posts I’d like to see.

So let’s talk babies and bathwater.

Writing, like any other craft, has some rules. And as we know, it’s wise to learn and internalize these before breaking them. But it’s also critical to know the limitations of rules and when to break them. In the same way that a good doctor who sees someone having a heart attack in the street will help them without worrying that they might be sued if the person dies, so a good writer will always interpret most rules as guidelines rather than holy writ. The problem for most beginning and intermediate writers is knowing where the lines are, where exceptions may be made, and—hardest of all—attaining the correct distance to be able to look at their own work with some degree of objectivity.

Let’s address the last first. As well as having a good group of beta readers, I strongly recommend letting a draft cool for at least a month between revision passes—and by cool, I mean don’t look at it, and try not to even think about it. In the meantime, work on a short story, outline your next novel, do research, whatever. This is the single best way to get some distance from your work.

Some rules—a very few—should probably should be treated as inviolable. These include:

• Don’t switch viewpoints in mid-scene (unless you’re in omniscient)
• Don’t resort to a deus ex machina at the climax to save your protagonist
• Don’t bore the reader with lectures, trivial dialogue, or lengthy, excessive description
• Always deal fairly with the reader and deliver on your promise to them

Pretty much everything else is negotiable.

Take adverbs, for instance. Although it’s true that adverbs can flag vagueness and weaken prose, they exist for a reason. Consider the phrase, “She mostly agreed with him;” this might appear as internal dialogue in a character’s head, and what it means is very clear—that she was in general but not complete agreement. The adverb here (mostly) conveys the meaning with economy and minimum fuss, and any attempt to eliminate it will likely involve a good deal more wordage and burden our prose. Should we eradicate it because some prose Mufti has issued a fatwa? Of course not. This whole foofarraw about adverbs began as good, rule-of-thumb advice and, after endless parroting, has become a mindless mantra (let’s blame Hemingway, as we can for so much else).

Likewise with exposition, the cure is often worse than the disease. The key with exposition is to make sure it’s both interesting and well-timed. Nobody wants a lecture; on the other hand, if the author’s concern over infodumping borders—as many do—on the obsessive, readers will find themselves dissatisfied, even disoriented. I’ve closed and never reopened many a story, including some by well-known authors, because of this. When a reader needs to know something, let them know it. Often the information can be slipped in deftly, but sometimes it’s just more expeditious to tell—yes, tell—the reader what they need to know rather than stand on our heads trying to slip it in under the radar. If the desire for the information is there, the reader will welcome it. Voice can do miracles here, turning an indigestible lump of exposition into a delightful side-trip the reader will be happy to go along with.

Now, I’m a genre writer. And although I make every reasonable effort to write well and polish both story and prose over several revisions, my primary goal is to entertain the reader. I don’t give a damn what the Literary establishment thinks, or, for that matter, what my more rule-obsessed peers think: my goal is to deliver a story that hooks the reader and keeps them turning pages, leaving them with a feeling of having taken a great ride when they finish the book. That’s all that counts. And anyone who believes that exposition and adverbs are going to kill a book needs a reality check.

The truth is that most readers are not writers, agents or editors. They’re not prose wonks. They aren’t swayed by technical mastery or compliance with the latest fashion taught in the prose madrassas. Nor do they care whether a book neatly fits into a genre, category, or reader demographic. Readers want a story, pure and simple. If you don’t believe that, then I guess J.K. Rowling, John Grisham, Dan Simmons, Robert James Waller, Dean Koontz, Dan Brown, and Isaac Asimov were all just flashes in the pan. Because although some of these are terrific writers and others arguably mediocre, all of them have and do flout one or more of the ‘rules,’ flagrantly and often.

In conclusion, I think part of being a professional in any field is to always question received wisdom. Yes, you certainly should learn the protocols and conventions; but slavish adherence to other people’s dogma and assumptions not only limits your range, it also buys into what I believe is an unhealthy mindset. What’s important is to tell your story in the way that best serves the reader.

In the end, the way you choose to interpret the barrage of writerly imperatives coming at you from every corner of the blogosphere is your own business. For myself, I’ve taken to laughing at most of it.

Ten Interview Questions for The Next Big Thing

I’m a day late with my post this week; so without further ado, and since author friend Juliette Wade tagged me for this, here we go:

1. What is the title of your book?

SUTHERLAND’S RULES.

2. Where did the idea come from for the book?

The core idea, a variant on the ‘old debt/unfinished business from the past’ theme, had been knocking around in my head for a long while. At some point it collided with speculation on the greying of the 1960s hippie/flower power generation—of which I’m one—and the three decades-long tragedy of Afghanistan, and a book was born.

3. What genre does your book fall under?

It’s pretty much a mainstream ‘buddy caper’/thriller with elements of the police procedural, a dash of high tech, and just a shimmer of the fantastic around the edges.

4. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition? 

Gosh, that’s hard. I’ll throw out a few options in case some of them are too booked up. 

Hugh Laurie, Jeremy Irons, or Ralph Fiennes would all be just perfect as Billy Sutherland. For his buddy Christian, I’d have to go with Robert de Niro, or possibly Robin Williams. For Carol, Christian’s wife,  Jennifer Connelly, Nicole Kidman, or Gwyneth Paltrow, though they’d all need to put on a few years.

5. What is a one-sentence synopsis of the book?

Two old friends set off on an insanely dangerous and ill-advised last hurrah which will probably cost them both their freedom, and very likely their lives.

6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

It’ll be indie published—which is different to self-published—through my own small press, Panverse Publishing, as one of six Panverse titles planned for 2013. Sutherland’s Rules is currently scheduled for release on January 29th.

7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript? 

I spent about a month spinning my wheels—let’s call it outlining to be kind—then banged the first draft out in four months.

8. What other books would you compare this story to in your genre? 

I don’t think there’s anything quite like this one. The early Saint books by Leslie Charteris may have some similarities, but I think this one’s a full custom job.

9. Who or what inspired you to write this book?

My subconscious made me do it.

10. What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest? 

This is a book about freedom (both societal and individual), honour, loyalty, and mortality. I like to think of it as an intelligent thriller; my beta readers say it’s also a page-turner. The characters are both quirky and older than is typical for the genre, and they don’t stay still for long as events move from New York to London, Afghanistan, and Holland. There’s action and humour as well as some serious questioning of where we’re headed as a society.

Include the link of who tagged you and this explanation for the people you have tagged.

My friend and colleague Juliette Wade tagged my on her own fine blog. In turn, I deem that the  fickle finger of fate shall now point squarely at Emily Sandoval, T.L. Morganfield, Bonnie Randall, and Janice Hardy, all of who I know to be in the process of committing novel.

Negativity and Truth

The brilliant and multiple award-winning editor Gardner Dozois once advised a group of aspiring writers including myself to “pay no attention to reviews,” and added that “the first thing a writer needs to do is develop a thick skin.” Now, ten years later, with a moderately successful book (Aegean Dream) under my belt and another one nearing publication, I see just how right he was.

A couple of days ago, googling myself and my book as I periodically do to see if there are any new reviews out, I stumbled on a thread in a forum for expats living in Greece. Curious, I had a look.

The thread began well enough, with the first poster plugging Aegean Dream, saying it was both a good read and should be required reading for those planning to uproot and move to another country. A few posts on, though, another poster, who was currently reading my book, had a harsher take, complaining that my naïveté in moving to Greece on the basis of what he considered minimal research was “grating” on him.

I’d come across a similar opinion—only much less tactfully phrased—some months ago on another expat forum, and for a moment, it stung. I considered a reply, then immediately set that idea aside. The thing is, that once you publish, or offer up any work, artistic or otherwise, for public consumption, you expose yourself. People have opinions. They have axes to grind and—like you—insecurities of their own; sometimes they’re right, and other times  not. In these particular instances, I told myself that (i) it’s always easy to second-guess others, and (ii) I actually agree with the poster, and address his very point openly about halfway through the book

Now, Aegean Dream is a nonfiction work. And—because of the still-present stigma concerning self-publication (I’m technically more ‘Indie’ published, since Panverse, though I own it, had published several volumes by others)—hasn’t had the benefit of a single traditional review despite the fact that it’s already outsold several Booker prize winners. All the reviews I’ve received are on Amazon, Goodreads and a few expat websites, and all are generally good, but not a single pro reviewer has touched it.

But if you’ve written fiction, and/or been traditionally published (as some of my own short stories have), you’re more likely to find yourself traditionally reviewed—and those reviews can be very tough, and will hit home. If you’re already insecure about your writing, you may want to avoid reading reviews altogether, or have someone you trust just pick out the good ones for you. If your skin is a bit thicker, you’ll probably decide that in the end these are just opinions and no more. A copy of that wonderful little volume, Pushcart’s Rotten Reviews and Rejections, can go a very long way to soothing a bruised ego at these times. And, of course, there’s always drink!

Once you’ve licked your wounds and run out of good Anglo-Saxon words to describe your detractors, the professional—and I’m assuming professionalism is what we’re striving for—response is to get on with the next book or story as if none of this had happened.

For me, the only thing that matters is truth. Your truth is the way you see life, your characters, the human condition, and all that matters is getting that on the page. You can’t control what people think or say, and that really needs to be secondary. Making money needs to be secondary. Your business—my business—is to tell the story without timidity or coyness. Timidity never won awards, nor did bland reviews. Some of the most successful works in the canon have been the most controversial and received as much vitriol as they have honey.

My own upcoming novel, Sutherland’s Rules, is one I expect to take a fair bit of flak for, though I hope that an equal or greater number of readers and reviewers will enjoy it. A thriller touching on issues including old age, sex, drugs, freedom, terrorism, and our modern surveillance society, it’s bound to hit some nerves. Should I care? No. I’m writing what I want to write about. I believe I’m writing truth, writing the world and my characters as they are and as it is. I told the truth from start to finish in Aegean Dream, and that truth included being entirely honest (which many reviewers have favourably commented on) about my own failings as well as detailing the appalling, toxic corruption that we encountered among Greek lawyers, bureaucrats, and even police in our attempt to settle in that country. I believe the main reason that Aegean Dream has been, and continues to be, successful is precisely because of that truth.

Negativity also comes at you from people, including friends and family, who don’t believe writing is a real job—and it may well not be for everyone: many will fail, just as they do at acting, accountancy, and the bar. I think the best way to deal with this sort of negativity is to allow it to temper and toughen you to deal with the reviews and criticism you’ll face when you’re published.

So work on that thick skin. If you must read reviews, make sure you have the strength and resilience to shrug them off and not let them sting for more than an instant. Write what you want to, not what you think the market, or your agent, or your publisher wants. In many cases, those things may well align anyway, so no worries—everybody wins. But if your primary concerns are people’s good opinions and making money, well, you’re probably in the wrong business.

Perfect and Good Enough

My mother used to often quote a saying that was drummed into her (those were the days!) at school:

Good, better best;

May you never rest

Until your good is better,

And your better best.

Well.

It’s hard not to see the good in this mantra. And as a driven perfectionist for most of my life, I’m pretty much on board. But the very phrasing of the statement also carries the strong echo of a traditional curse, and advice like this should probably come with a caution, such as author CJ Cherryh’s dictum that, “no rule should be followed off a cliff.”

Before I embarked on my prior career as a decorative artist—sometime before the Elves left Middle-Earth—I used to be a regular housepainter. Because of my own perfectionist tendencies, I quickly gravitated to the high end of the market, which both suited my nature and brought me a better clientele (and income). But whenever I was asked to work in a more bohemian or rustic home, or a friend’s house, I ran into difficulties. I didn’t know how to back off on the perfectionism, where to stop. It hadn’t taken me very long to learn how to do a perfect painting job, but it took me several years longer to recognize the distinction between Perfect and Good Enough.

When you have the aptitude, knowledge, craft, and, above all, patience to do first-rate work, you fall into a trap of sorts. Because not everyone lives in a mansion, and not every job needs to be perfect—it needs to be appropriate. If you detail the hell out of an old car, every ding and imperfection will jump out; likewise, most ER visitors don’t need MRIs and genetic sequencing, they need antibiotics and stitches and plaster casts. More often than not, Good Enough or Appropriate trumps Perfect.

Now, we shouldn’t take this as an excuse for poor work and cutting corners. The guiding principle is what’s appropriate, bringing to bear precisely the right technology and use of resources to get the job done. Overshooting the mark might please your ego, but that’s about as far as it goes.

I believe this is also the case with writing. As I read more writing blogs stuffed with yet more rules and dogma and telling us to obsess over perfection, I also note the beginnings of a reaction, as some of the smarter bloggers caution against blind adherence to The Rules, against over-revising to the point where our work loses energy, and (most importantly) about valuing technique over storytelling.

I’ve ranted elsewhere on this blog about the tendency in this very tough publishing climate for writers to get so wrapped around the axle over the conventional wisdom—diagram-perfect, braided plot arcs; textbook character change; scenes rigidly structured by formula; ruthless elimination of adverbs; the premeditated targeting of fiction to a particular genre or market demographic; and much more. I think there’s a place for all that, and I know writers who, God help them, do it all. And though I don’t have nearly the craft others do, I’m capable of some fine prose styling, always have been. But for years I mistook perfectly-turned prose for good writing, and it isn’t. Nor, I believe, is it generally appropriate. Good writing mostly consists of making people care about your characters and taking them on a ride that they’ll enjoy and feel better for having taken.

I don’t believe every book should have the same structure as every other book in its genre or category. I’m not interested in writing Richard III or being a Shakespeare. I am interested in improving my craft at every level. But as someone self-taught in my previous career as a decorative painter, I’ve learned that adherence to rules and conventional wisdom, although a good basic principle, leads inevitably to either cookie-cutter imitation work or perfected coldness when taken too far. Technical perfection, though it has its place, is ultimately of less value than originality and heart.

Of course, we have to ask ourselves what kind of writers we want to be. I say, advance on all fronts. I believe we develop our skills best by writing, not by obsessing. Keep the focus on the story and the characters.  A lot of tools—classic scene structure, textbook plot and character arcs, and so on—are in my opinion much more valuable as occasional diagnostic instruments than as rigid frameworks essential to our story. Adverbs, like any other part of the language, are a tool.

So learn the rules first; and once you do, question everything.  If you simply  use the right tools and deploy the appropriate level of craft to get the job done, all will be well.

From First Draft to Final Polish

As I enjoy the very last pass through my novel, I’m struck by how different in its specifics each revision is. Of course, writers vary enormously in their technique and approach. Still, I think we can make some general observations.

Here’s what happens—at least, for me—between the first, rough draft and the final revision pass.

The first revision, (which I strongly believe is best left until at the very least a month after the first draft is completed, since I need to get distance from the work), is for most of us actually a partial rewrite, involving sometimes substantial work on characters, plot, and pacing. I expect to move, transpose, add or toss out whole scenes; new subplots may be introduced; information and backstory management will probably need work. In SFF, add issues of worldbuilding and infodumping. In the worst cases, or if the draft was written at breakneck speed (which is why I don’t do NaNoWriMo), this revision may amount to a complete teardown.

In my own work, I usually find I need to add wordage at this stage, mostly in the form of description and ‘stage directions,’ which I tend to skimp on in my first draft; I may need to amp up conflict, too, as well as introduce some foreshadowing. I fix inconsistencies such as abruptly morphing character names and physical details. And then there’ll be factual errors.

The second revision pass will hopefully be easier and more limited in scope. During this stage, I typically find myself refining character motivation and behaviour; replacing camera-eye narration with more subjective character judgment (yet another aspect of show v. tell); and tweaking dialogue so that it’s more distinct and true to character, trying to make it snap and crackle.

This is a good time to strengthen my theme, by which I mean asking myself what the book or story is really about, and making sure that I reinforce this wherever possible within the context of believable character and action. I also find myself noticing words and gestures I tend to overuse (the dreaded, ‘he/she nodded/smiled/sighed,’ etc.).

On my final revision, I’m getting really granular and looking at the fine detail: essentially, I’m copyediting, looking to smooth every bump and buff out the most minor defects. This polishing pass isn’t about what the story is and how it unfolds, but rather about how I present it to the reader in a way that’s efficient, engaging, and pleasurable.

By now I should have a really clear vision of who my characters are and what my story is about. I’m still tinkering with dialogue, ensuring that’s it’s as crisp as can be, and watching for redundant, leftover words from earlier revisions, as well as malapropisms and the like.

But most of all, I’m looking to make the prose really sing (within reason— where I once used to think a sublimely lyrical prose style was everything, I now care a great deal more about telling a really good story, because I think that’s actually what readers want. It’s what I want when I read).

What do I mean by making the prose sing? Well, since by this stage I’ve (hopefully) eliminated scene-level structural issues with regard to pacing and plot, I’m now looking at structural issues in the prose itself at both paragraph and sentence level. As I read, I’m looking to see if my paragraphs are properly structured and sequenced in relation to their neighbours as well as internally, within the paragraph itself (a subject which merits a post of its own).

Next, is the syntax working? Do I repeat words? Can I improve on word choice, strengthen verbs, punch up a metaphor, slip in some symbolism? Have I committed unconscious rhymes, or clunky sequences of sentences that all begin with the subject (‘He did this. It was Monday. He did that. She said this. The cat grinned.’)? Are there words or even sentences I can cut? Are there filtering words (direct speech such as ‘felt’, ‘seemed’, ‘thought’, etc., often accompanied by supporting adjectives) that can be lost and replaced with the stronger, deeper perception of free indirect speech either literal or metaphorical (e.g., replace, ‘he felt very tired’ with, ‘he was exhausted,’ or, ‘he could sleep for a month)?

Finally, as I work my way through the story, I’m looking for slips and inconsistencies in both voice and tone.

Voice needs to work at every level: dialogue, internal thought (free indirect speech), and narrative (in character viewpoint). It needs to be true and consistent to each character. Skill at handling voice is critical to making readers care about a character, as well as keeping them engaged during breaks in the action.

Tone is a slippery thing, best defined as the overall effect, quality, or mood of a work of fiction, the sum result of theme, voice, prose, and much else. A dark theme approached in a sober voice may yield a Tragedy; but a humorous, upbeat voice will change the tone and transform it into Black Comedy. The point here is to understand what tone you’re trying to achieve and not break the effect with false notes or drastic changes. Start as you mean to continue.

And now? I’m done. After this final revision all that should remain is light copyediting and close proofreading (best left to others), and the work is ready to go out and earn its keep in the world!

What’s your experience with rewrites and revisions? Is your approach comparable or different?

The Writing Blogger’s Dilemma

I had a vision of sorts this week, a minor epiphany in which I perceived our hyperconnected community as a vast cloud of flocking birds, wheeling and carving through the sky in near-unison, a collective entity in which each individual’s motion and vector is both a contributor to and a function of the whole. Amusingly, this understanding came while using Twitter.

As individual writer-bloggers, we influence and learn the most from our immediate friends and neighbors on social media and in the blogosphere. And through our collective writings and readings an emerging wisdom on various subjects of common interest seems to be cohering. I see both benefits and dangers in this.

The advantages are clear: information is quickly shared, giving us the tools to adapt to a rapidly-changing craft environment. This information includes everything from writing tips and techniques to new markets, emerging subgenres, publishing scams, and the latest marketing techniques. Being up-to-date or even ahead of the curve in any of these areas is a desirable thing.

The downside to this group dynamic is of course that the individual is subsumed. In writing, reinforcement of the same few ‘rules’ can and does lead to dogma and rigidity, the result of which is a flattening-out of individual style and technique and an increasingly formulaic quality to the resulting manuscripts. I’ve been seeing this for a while, and I believe it’s getting worse: you will be assimilated. The same of course applies to markets, creating boom-and-bust cycles (I predict Zombie Romance will not be red-hot in five years, and that even YA and MG will lose their pre-eminence).

Marketing and self-promotion are an area of primary interest to writer-bloggers, and one where we would do well to question and scrutinize the emerging wisdom. One of the reasons—the primary one for many people—that we blog and strive for a high profile in social media is that we’re told that by enhancing our visibility this will help us promote our work. This is the received wisdom, the flock’s collective judgment, so it must be right, mustn’t it?

Well, no. Ask yourself who reads your blogs and your tweets, who interacts with you on Facebook. Beyond friends and family, I’d bet money that it’s mostly other writers.

Now this does have a value. We writers all need the support of and interaction with other similarly afflicted individuals to keep up our spirits and retain our sometimes tenuous grip on sanity. But how many of these people are going to buy our books, or talk about them? I think there is some effect, but far, far less than we think. Are the four or six or more hours we spend each week blogging about technique and talking about our work on social media going to pay off in sales? Is the three-part, forty-five hundred-word series I recently did on Trad v Self Publishing (and thanks to all of you who wrote to me about it!) going to sell my next book?

Not according to the research. The smart money seems increasingly to point at reader word-of-mouth as the single factor of real significance in promoting a writer’s work and increasing their sales. Not blogs, not Facebook, not Twitter, not sponsored ads, not marketing campaigns, not book giveaways and signings, not even reviews: word of mouth, it seems, trumps all of these. And word of mouth will be directly proportionate, I believe, to the quality of our work.

I’m not for a moment suggesting we should all stop blogging right away or close our Facebook and Twitter accounts. For one thing, these all have a social purpose; for another, everything we write—with the possible exclusion of shopping lists—serves to improve our craft; blogging, I’d argue, serves a very valuable purpose in helping us learn to frame and set out our ideas and arguments.

Should we writers then try to steer our blog and social media focus towards items of interest to our readers, actual and potential, so that we can attract more of them and that way extend our marketing reach? Well, good luck on that one. We’re not Kim Kardashian or Keanu Reeves, and fiction readers don’t typically idolize authors to the extent of following their utterances on social media and reading their daily ruminations.

In conclusion, then, I’ll keep blogging and maintain my social media presence, but with the awareness that I do so not for self-promotion but to maintain social contacts, exchange ideas, and give something back to a community of writers which has often been generous towards me; and of course for the sheer fun and banter. But if I find myself with just one spare hour in my day… well, that hour is probably better spent working on the next book.

So You Want to be Published?

Why? Why do you want to be published?

No, really. I’m serious.  Just humour me as I go out on a limb here.

During a brief Google search to see what the internet community’s collective wisdom on this question might be, I was surprised to find that the question doesn’t seem to have been aired much. One of the very few posts I found on the subject came from a writer who—as well as saying they ‘want to be read’ (fair enough)—said, ‘I’m trying to raise money to get an editor to read my work.’ Uh-oh.

It’s no exaggeration to say that the desire for publication assumes geas-like proportions. Beginning writers (I was one, and can attest to this) are absolutely desperate to be published—so much so that they’ll ignore all the advice and red flags posted everywhere on the internet and on writing sites and get suckered into parting with thousands of dollars by scam-artist editors and publishers. The hunger to be published seems at times like one of those biological imperatives, on a par maybe with the need for food, shelter, and sex.

In the spirit of questioning assumptions and examining our own motives—which I’ve always believed are healthy things to do—let’s take a step back and try another question: “Why do you write?” Since writing is, for a vast proportion of us, difficult, lonely, and very time-consuming work, this is a reasonable question. And given the very low hit rate among aspirant authors, and the slim chance of ever being able to make a living it, we could arguably be doing more rewarding and enjoyable things with our time.

On the positive side, the desire to write and be published is the same as that which fuels any creative pursuit. Writers are motivated by the same desires that drive musicians, painters, and other artists: an earnest need to self-expression, to creation. But whereas I don’t think anyone learning their first chords on a guitar really thinks they’re ready to go out on a stage before an audience, the new writer has no such inhibitions. They somehow lack the objective measures, the yardstick necessary for self-assessment (which is why a critique group of the best writers you can find is so terribly important).

But on the cynical side of the scale, I’d wager that a good number of those who set out to be writers are motivated by dreams of wealth and fame, of bestseller stardom, complete with adoring librarian groupies and appearances on ‘Fresh Air.’ Somehow, society does nothing to dispel this fantasy, and maybe it shouldn’t. Why, after all, should anyone question dreams and puncture aspirations, however misguided, when the world will likely do so far more decisively? And it’s quite possible that the aspiring writer driven by illusions (or delusions) of wealth and fame may transmute, in the course of practice, into the honest artist seeking self-expression.

So is the answer, “I write because I want to be read,” good enough? I don’t think so. To me, it indicates that the person hasn’t looked deeply enough into their motivations. I’d even hazard that such a person isn’t really suited to the task, since all good writers are, in my experience, people possessed of powerful and searching intellects who ask the deep questions and don’t flinch from them. If there’s one quality that defines a writer I’d say that it’s curiosity, and most especially curiosity about people, about what makes them tick, act, and react in a given situation.

I’d posit that the most—and perhaps the only—valid answers to the question, “why do you want to write?” are, and have always been, that there are stories you want to read which nobody else has written. That there are characters and ideas you want to explore. That you have to write, because if you don’t, something inside you will hurt, sicken, even die. It’s a need, a compulsion, entirely unrelated to public success.

What about publication, then? Why are we so desperate for it, like children who just have to have that puppy so badly they can’t think about anything else? Where does that compulsion come from?

Validation is the first thing that comes to mind. Okay, but let’s be realistic. I’ll confess right away that in my first year or so as a writer I—like almost every other new writer wannabe—sent stories to The New Yorker and other equally stratospheric markets. This is very like taking an evening class in CPR and expecting to pass your certification exam and become an M.D. the next day. Now this doesn’t mean that validation—or, more properly, a benchmark by which to gauge your progress—isn’t necessary, but it should be sought at an appropriate level.

Publication is also about income. All of us driven fools who choose to be writers would love to quit our day jobs and make a living at it. I mean, damn! who wouldn’t want to make a living inventing stuff and making made-up people have adventures? It’s like being paid to be a kid again (except, of course, for the hard work, self-doubt, and grim loneliness of the task). And yet, I think money should be the last thing on the writer’s mind while they’re about their business, because trying to write with the express desire to make a killing is only going to kill one thing—your story.

Where does all this leave us? Once we’ve asked and honestly answered these deep, uncomfortable questions, and decided that the reasons we write are because some strange force is driving us to do it, and we’ll do it even if the work is hard, lonely, and peculiar, and we might never make a penny at it, and it may be our fate to simply labour on in obscurity, with nobody ever taking an interest in our work, and we do it, in the end, like a child lost in play with their toys, humming distractedly to themselves while creating elaborate adventures for people only they can see… then, just then, I believe something great might emerge.

I Did it My Way

Years ago, back in the ‘seventies, I used to ride motorcycles. My favourites were the British and Italian  classics, the Triumph Bonneville and Norton Commando, and most of all, my beloved Ducati 750 Desmo. These were far from perfect machines: the Triumph left puddles of oil everywhere, the Norton had issues with its quirky Isolastic engine mounts, and my gorgeous Ducati suffered from maddening electrical issues. Nonetheless, each of these bikes had at least one feature so outstanding, did one thing so damned divinely well, that I could overlook all their other faults.

By contrast, when I got to know my first Japanese bike, the newly-introduced Honda CB 750, a four-cylinder technological marvel of the time, I experienced a strong sense of anticlimax: from handling to acceleration to braking, the bike did everything well; it didn’t drip oil, didn’t try to shake itself and you to pieces, and it was dependable in the way we’ve now come to expect from everything Japanese and German. But I didn’t love it. Couldn’t. It lacked the fire, the one outstanding trait that redeemed all the faults of my previous European machines. Why?

Design by committee.

Three decades later, I still feel the same way. It seems a universal law that if you try to iron out every flaw in something and take a truly cooperative approach to design or creativity, the end result lacks heart, spirit, fire, whatever you want to call it. (I’m sure you’re thinking right now of examples that would prove me quite wrong, but I’m afraid you’ll never convince me. I have a seventh sense that can discern genius and creative fire in anything, from a frying pan to an aircraft). To make something that works very well is easy; to make something that turns sane people into fanatical cultists (see: Mac owners) is far harder. Steve Jobs trumps HP any day.

I rather think it’s that way with the Arts, too. With film, no question, right? Hollywood movies are almost without exception bland, formulaic, and devoid of the fire I’m talking about. Well, I’m starting to think it’s at least partially true of books as well. All things being equal (in this case, the writer being a pro that knows his or her craft, and having a good story to tell), I’d rather read the story at least close to the way writer originally envisaged it, at the length they felt it needed to be, with the ambiguous or unhappy ending the publisher’s marketing department vetoed because it could hurt sales, than a heavily-massaged, corporate product which half a dozen people have had major input on.

This isn’t to say that writers don’t need input. As well as writing, I’ve both edited and published other authors’ stories myself, and I understand the myopia all artists can sometimes suffer; and God knows we all need feedback and copyediting. But I have serious issues with the increasingly Hollywood-corporate approach to creativity that a lot of authors have to endure, because I believe that  somewhere along the line, something is going to get lost, some intangible quality that makes the work unique and sings of the Artist’s spirit and vision. I mean, can you imagine an art dealer or gallery owner walking into Picasso’s studio and telling them more people would like the painting and it would fetch a higher price if he backed off the Prussian Blue a bit? Yes, he was a genius, but Fine Art painters are typically left to work undisturbed, and the finished product is the way they see it.

We’ve seen what the corporate approach to Art has done for Hollywood and the music industry (or for that matter the brewing industry) over the decades, and it’s not pretty: it’s sucked all the uniqueness and bite from the products of each and incrementally replaced them with a formulaic smoothness that’s wholly lacking in originality and… Integrity? Fire? Truth? LotR, Firefly, Psycho,… Would any of those have turned out the way they did if the creative genius behind each had been replaced by a committee and second-guessed at every turn? For a compelling example, check out John Mellencamp’s superb 2010 album, ‘No Better Than This’, recorded the way they used to do it in the ‘fifties, with everyone singing and playing around a single mic. As Mellencamp explains, “everything was cut live with no overdubs or studio nothing! These are real songs being performed by real musicians—an unheard-of process in today’s world. Real music, for real people!” Smooth, it’s not. But it’s drenched in integrity, spirit, and that unmistakable, ineffable spark of creative truth.

Is it any coincidence that each of those industries–Hollywood, the Music Industry, and the breweries–have now lost huge amounts of market share to the Indies and small ‘crafters’ in each field? The worm turns.

Yeah, I can hear all the rebuttals, but, hey–this is op-ed, not a statistical analysis. And, yeah, I’ve always been an autodidact and a loner in every one of my endeavours, winning or losing largely on my own merits. It’s the way I’m wired. I’ll take advice, even solicit it, but I’ll do it my way or not at all, thank you very much. So when I discover someone like Dan Simmons or Kris Rusch, writers I enormously respect and admire, are wired much the same way, it makes me feel I’m not entirely crazy. And that’s a big reason why I’ve decided to publish my new novel, ‘Sutherland’s Rules’, through my own Indie press, Panverse Publishing, even though all the feedback I’m getting suggests it might be a very good candidate for a traditional publishing deal. Because, among a laundry list of other things, I want more control than I’m ever likely to get going the traditional route.

When you have a seventh sense, you have to trust it. Even if it means leaving a few drips of oil here and there.