Hand Me That Chisel

By Brett Battles

I find myself at a similar place as I was last August or so…thinking up ideas for the next book. Unlike last time, I don’t plan on going batshit crazy and write proposals for three different, potential novels. No, this time I’ll stick to one. Or, rather, two. One for a standalone, and one for the fifth in my Jonathan Quinn series.

“But, Brett,” you may say. “You have the two standalone ideas that weren’t chosen last fall. Why not use one of those?”

Believe me, I’m tempted. One, in particular, I really like, and, who knows, I might resubmit it anyway. But the truth is, I feel another story calling me. The interesting things is that I have no idea what the story is about.

I’ve heard the analogy that writing a novel (or, maybe, an outline for a novel) is like being a sculpture standing in front of a slab of marble. You know there’s a beautiful statue inside, you just have no idea what it looks like. That’s kind of the stage I’m at right now. I’ve got this slab of marble, I just don’t know what’s inside yet.

Now to get to that interior, to that story, there are a lot of different tools I can use. I can chip away, a little at a time by taking long walks and strenuous hikes. I can let my mind wander while I’m doing nothing. I can inundate myself with other forms or creativity – books, movies, TV, magazines, music – and see if I get inspired.

These are all things I’ve done in the past, and, actually, things I’ve mostly done in the past two weeks. But there are other tools, too, specialized tools that might work for me, but not for someone else.

The past couple of days I’ve been using one of those specialized tools more heavily than I’ve done in a long time, or perhaps ever.

I’m a visual person. I was big into theater in high school, so much so I even directed the musical version of THE HOBBIT when I was a senior…bet you didn’t know there WAS a musical version of THE HOBBIT. Here’s some photographic evidence:

 

 

(That’s me kneeling in both pics…apparently that was my chosen directorial style.)

When I went off to college, my interests had moved to motion pictures, and I majored in film and television history. (Got to watch a LOT of movies during class. My all time favorite course was one our own Steven Schwartz and I – I think – took together…The Films of Alfred Hitchcock, or something like that. Awesome!)

Quite by chance, when I entered the working world I happened to stumble into the arena of graphic design for television, or what we called motion graphics. No, I wasn’t a designer, but I worked with designers everyday for what turned out to be almost twenty years. And when you work with graphic designers, you will find that visual stimulation is a daily event.

So it’s not surprising that the visual can be very stimulating to me.

Back in grade school (or was it junior high?), I got an assignment in an English class to create an essay/story by using only pictures found in magazines. If I remember correctly, we could add short headlines, but that was it. The pictures had to make the story. It was a great project, and, if you ask me, very forward thinking on my teacher’s part.

To this day, I still remember that project, and, in a way, am still utilizing the lesson learned.

Almost everyday I come across images on the Internet that stimulates me for some reason. Could be I just like the setting, or the face. Could be I like the atmosphere. I save these images to a folder on my desktop that I call Inspirational Pics. In the past I’ve looked through them on occasion. But this week, as I set out to cobble away at that chuck of rock that someone unceremoniously put down in front of me, I decided to try something new.

I created a new folder, then opened one with my Inspirational Pics. Slowly, I went through them, one-by-one. If one made me stop or otherwise called out to me, I put a copy of it in the new folder. By the time I was done, I had about two dozen images (out of the, literally, hundreds I’ve collected.) I then put these selected images in an order that made sense, and started to play them as a slideshow.

And you know what? There’s something there. I can feel it. I don’t know what it is completely yet, but I have discovered a main character, and I’m starting to see events – though hazy still – that take place in the story. I even wrote a couple pages that might be the beginning of the novel. The pictures really speak to me. I can feel them pulled me in. I can see them knocking off the unnecessary parts of the rock as I hunt for the story I know is there.

I know I’ve found my tool of choice on this particular project, and for the next week I will undoubtedly watch that slide show over and over, letting it reveal more of the story to me.

Yes, I know. I’m weird. But I like it that way. (I'd share the pictures, but don't want to tip my hand.)

So, what tools do you use to get rid of the unnecessary bits that are hiding your story from you?

AT PLAY IN THE FIELD OF THE WRITTEN WORD PART 3

by Brett Battles

I hadn’t actually intended to write a Part 3 of the saga, mainly because I thought the saga was all played out. But given what’s happened since posting Part 1 and Part 2 (and what’s happened is, well…just wait till you’ve read the whole post), I felt it was necessary. In fact, I think I might just continue this series until the book is done, reporting in every once in a while as to what has happened.

So, let’s begin. When I last talked to you about the stand alone I was writing, I said that I had written proposals for three different directions, and that my publisher had chosen one. With that I was off to the races!

And the races I hit. For the next two weeks I wrote my tail off.

(Aside: we all write at different speeds, and approach writing a book in different ways. My way is to write a first draft pretty much non-stop, warts and all, then go back and rewrite until it is presentable. What that translates into is that I plow through the pages. And given the fact that I’m doing this fulltime, it means I plow through A LOT of pages.)

At the end of this two-week period, I had a sizeable chunk of the draft done, and was excited about where things were going.

Then I did something we all do. I randomly visited a bookstore.

No. Wait. I need to back up a moment.

For my stand alone I chose a very specific location. One that was personally important to me, and one that has some very specific attributes. There is only one other writer I know who has written about the area in the past several years.  Just to be safe, I read one of this person’s books to make sure we didn’t overlap. We didn’t. So I moved on, a happy camper.

Let’s flash back to that bookstore. While browsing around, I started looking around the thriller section, and came across more books by the author I mentioned above. (An excellent author, BTW, who writes equally excellent books.) On the shelf were four books from this person’s series, the first of which was the one I had already read. I was curious where she went with the series, so I picked up the other three books one-by-one to see what they were about. The first two were both set along the California coast, no where near where their first book and my new manuscript were located, and, even better, had nothing to do with the plot I was writing.

Then I picked up the last book. This one WAS set in same place as mine. Okay, no problem. Lots of books share similar locations.

Then I started reading the synopsis on the back.

“Uh-oh.” Though it was not entirely clear what the story was about, what was there sounded familiar. Immediately, I knew I needed to read the book. Still, I wasn’t too worried. I mean, how close could it be to what I was writing? When I got home that evening I started reading.

By 1 a.m., my eyes were wide, and my brain was reeling. What I discovered was that there WERE several things that were not just vaguely similar, but WAY too close to what I was working on. I got out of bed, and shot off a quick email to my agent saying I wanted to talk to her first thing in the morning New York time (I’m west coast.)

When I woke up…okay, I was already awake, unable to sleep for long…When 9 a.m. ET came around, I called. I explained to my agent what I discovered, and think I actually could hear the blood draining from her face. “Call your editor.”

That’s exactly what I did. Surprisingly, she was very calm about it. “Have you read the whole book?” “Not yet.” “Well, maybe it turns out that things are different.” “Maybe, but I doubt it.” “Read the book, then send me a short synopsis, and where the similarities are between the two.”

I spend the rest of the day (that would be two weeks ago last Monday), reading and doing a cross story analysis. And I came up with one very definitive truth – I could not write the book I’d been writing.

Similarity included: the triggering event, the fact that this event happened around 20 years in the past, the villain, deaths of old friends, and, of course, the location. I’m just being general here. Trust me, the core elements of the stories were very similar.

Granted, the way I was telling the story, and the way the other author told their story were different, but it didn’t hid the fact that there was too much the same.

I sent my notes off to my editor, and then realized I had a choice to make. I could just sit around and feel miserable, or I could be proactive and keep myself moving forward.

Those who know me know that being miserable is not a trait I know how to do well. I’m not of the “why-me?” variety, I’m of the “what-do-I-need-to-do-to-keep-moving-forward?” variety.

So in that vein, I took the finding of this book to be a fortuitous discovery. My God, how horrible would it have been if I hadn’t found it? The author had already agreed to read my book when it was done. Can you imagine if I had finished it and sent it off to them? (Rob suggested that if the author were to give me a blurb it may have been, “It’s was a great book…when I wrote it!” Hilarious, in a tragedy averted kind of way. But I have a feeling this author is too kind to ever write something like that. But they might have pointed out the similarities to me, and boy would that have been embarrassing!)

The next day (Tuesday), I returned to my favorite coffee shop determined to come up with an alternate plot that could save some of the elements from the original story. You might be wondering why I didn’t just suggest I do one of the other ideas I had proposed…well, my publisher really liked many aspects of the story they’d chosen, as did I, so I wanted to preserve what I could. Especially, for personal reasons, the location.

With the help of good friend and author Bill Cameron via iChat, I was able to brainstorm a new story. And guess what? It was even BETTER than the old one. Tons better. I wrote up a new synopsis and sent it off.

By Wednesday morning, I hadn’t heard back for my publisher. So, again, I had a choice. Sit around and wait, loosing time, or dive in and write like the new proposal was approved. The only downside there would be if it wasn’t approved I’d have to toss everything out, but if it was I’d be ahead of the game.

I’m not a sitter.

I wrote the opening two chapters that Wednesday, and sent those to my editor so she’d see the direction I was going. Then I wrote on Thursday and Friday. On the following Monday, I was expecting to hear from her, but she gotten busy so needed more time. I wrote on Monday, and Tuesday, and Wednesday, and Thursday, and Friday. I wrote like a madman, hitting daily word totals that I seldom ever hit.

The only other communication I had with my editor that week was an email apologizing for the delay, but would need more time. That was fine. I was in a groove, and I was afraid to push her in case it jinxed things. (Yes, sometimes I worry about that.)

When this past Monday morning came I was ready to dive in again. Then, before I even started, I received an email from my editor. I was nervous to open it, but did so.

She LOVED everything. She also thought it was better than what I had been working on. And the chapters I sent? “Powerful and horrifying.”

That big PHEW!!! you heard Monday around 8 a.m. PT was from me just in case you were wondering.

Now that I had closure, I emailed the author of the other book to let them know what had happened. And, as I would have expected, the response back was completely understanding and supportive.

So everything’s on track again. And, as I write this, I have already written more pages of the new direction than I had of the original one.

Can I say phew again? PHEW!!

Similar stories happen all the time. There is no getting around it. As writers we can’t worry if someone has told a story like the one we’re working on…most of the time. But there are instances when things get so specific that you might have to adjust. I ran into one of those instances, Big Time.

But the real lesson here is that no matter how small or large a problem is, you can either wallow in your own self-pity, or you can do something to put it behind you. If that means you have to throw away 150 pages, 250 page, or even a whole book, then that’s what you do. Because option two is ALWAYS the way to go if you want to succeed.

Okay, ‘rati. What kind of hiccups have you experienced in your life that have required a change in direction? What was your response?

AT PLAY IN THE FIELD OF THE WRITTEN WORD PART 2

by Brett Battles

When we last left off after part 1, I was finishing my proposal and about to send it to my agent. If you recall, I mentioned that I was doing something different that neither my agent nor my editor was expecting.

Now I can tell you what I did…instead of giving them a single, stand alone book proposal, I gave them three completely different ones.

Yes, I said three…individual…story proposals.

Each included the following: A) a ten to fifteen page outline, and B) sample chapters of around thirty pages for each idea.

I know. You’re thinking, What? Are you crazy?

Perhaps. After all, I turned in approximately 120 pages of written material…for a  proposal!

(Wait. I am crazy.)

Here’s how it happened. Earlier this year I was at a point with the book I was working on that I had a break of a few days, and, as luck would have it, an idea for a stand alone came to me. In a two or three day period I typed up nearly forty pages of the beginning of the book. Then I saved the file (we’ll call this idea #1), and went back to the manuscript I was working on.

When August came around, my publisher and I agreed that the next proposal should be for a stand alone instead of the fifth in the Quinn series. Almost immediately I had a new idea (idea #2) that I was excited about. I worked on it for several weeks, spending a lot of time just thinking things through. I ended up devoting a lot of time on the trip I took in late August working on it, and had things pretty much had it all figured out by the time I got on the plane to fly home.

Funny thing about flying, often I’m struck with random ideas that momentarily consume me. (Many times they involved planes, for obvious reasons. One such idea occurred on my trip to Bouchercon last week.) This moment of inspiration happened to me on the first leg of my journey back to the States, and for three hours I wrote long hand in my notebook the first couple chapters of a new book (you got it, idea #3). When I got home I still had a few weeks before my proposal was due, so I allowed myself some time to flesh out this new idea and see if it was worth sending in. I’m sure my initial thought was that if it was better than idea #2, it would be the proposal I’d submit.

As I continued on it, I definitely liked where it was going, but I also found that I still really liked idea #2. That’s when the scandalous thought hit me: why not send in both and let my publisher decided.

And seconds after that thought crossed my mind I remembered the story from earlier in the year.

Knowing I probably shouldn’t, I went back and reread it anyway. Damn if I didn’t liked where it was going.

Okay, fine, I told myself. I’ll send them three. Because I knew I’d be happy to write any of them. Let my editor weight in on which one should be next.

As a side note, I should say that this method of giving multiple choices was also ingrained in me during my working days in television graphics. The thing was, if someone wanted a main title for their show…let’s say TRUE HOLLYWOOD STORIES (one of the shows on E! I rebranded)…if you show them one idea they won’t like it. But if you give them choices, they’ll feel like you really put thought into it, and will pick one.

In the case of my proposal, reason behind given multiple ideas didn’t equate to my time at E!, but my thinking was definitely influenced by my process there. The real reason I sent all three was because I was happy with all of them so it didn’t really matter to me which one I did.

The last Friday of September, I emailed the proposal to my agent without any warning about what she would receive. Was she impressed? She sounded like it to me. That following Monday, she send it on to my editor.

Since my proposal was rather bulky, and my editor also had other things on her plate, it took a couple weeks for her to get back to me. She finally did the Friday after my last Murderati post (two weeks ago tomorrow.) Thankfully, she was very happy with all the material, and while she liked aspects of all three idea, she went with idea #2.

(Funny tangent…the down side of doing this (besides all the extra work) was that once I sent the proposal in, one of the ideas started to pick at my mind. And since I had nothing else to do, I put in a little time on it, developing it further. And, you guessed it, that wasn’t the one chosen. Oh well, it’ll be the next one if I have any say in it!)

So I’m back at the daily writing thing now, working on making idea #2 into a finished, kickass stand alone. I’m pretty excited about it, too, because I’m using a lot of my personal past in it…(the book is largely set in my hometown.)

Now, would I advise doing your proposal in the manner I did? Ah…no. What works for one person, doesn’t necessarily work for all. I will say I don’t plan on doing multiple ideas for future submissions, though, I guess, you never know.

Questions for today:

Brett…crazy/not crazy? (Perhaps we should skip that one.)

For writers, how much thinking to you put in before you start a new book? (Not talking necessarily about outlining, just working the idea and characters in your mind.)

Readers, does this behind-the-curtain stuff even interest you?

And finally…and this is most important…I would love to hear any ideas on topics you like me, or other Murderati contributors, to discuss!

A special hello to all the new friends I met at Bouchercon, and to the old ones I got to spend time with and get to know better. It was an excellent conference and I can hardly wait until next year. If you weren’t there, try to come next time. Hell, it’s in San Francisco! Who’d want to miss that?

 

AT PLAY IN THE FIELD OF THE WRITTEN WORD Part 1

Thought I’d take you all on a little journey with me. Next week my proposal is due for my new book. So the idea is to let you see how it all goes.

This week I want to talk about the preparation, i.e. the proposal.

In the past, my proposals have consisted of the first twenty or thirty pages of the book and a page or two of an incredibly generic synopsis. That gave me a lot of room to work. I’ve said it before, I’m the kind of author who enjoys writing without a net (read outline.) I love how stories organically come together. I like being surprised and entertained.

But this time is different. In the past, the books I was proposing were further episodes of my Jonathan Quinn series. My next book, though, is a stand alone.

(Now before any of you who enjoy the series get worried that there won’t be any more Quinn books, fear not. The fourth in the series is actually already written and done. And, if I may say so, is my favorite Quinn book so far. But first we’re going to bring out a stand alone, so THE SILENCED – tentative title – will be out after that.)

So while I am still providing the first twenty to thirty pages as part of the proposal, I realized my outline/synopsis can’t just be a page or two. In fact, I’ve decided to make it more detailed than I ever have in the past. The hope is, based on what I’ve heard from others, that this will help me stay on track and write faster. I sure hope so. But I’ve got to say writing the synopsis is excruciating.

In the time I can usually write five to six pages of prose, I’m lucky to get a page or a page and a half of an outline. I also find myself getting up from my chair more often, watching episode of DEXTER season 3 or going for a walk or playing Mindsweeper on my iPhone. Anything to avoid the pain of actually thinking out the details of the story.

But all that said, I can see how this actually is going to help me focus more when I get down to writing the book. I’m excited about it (again, not about writing the synopsis – something I’m avoiding at this very second – but in how it will help me), and am anxious to put it to the test.

If this works, I may be a reluctant convert. I know Rob blogged about a similar thing several weeks ago. (I don't know for sure, but from what I understand the outline for his next one is in the dozens and dozens of pages…mine is not. I’m not THAT crazy.)

I’m also doing something else with this proposal. Something neither my editor nor my agent is expecting. But that I’m going to have to save until next time, so I don’t blow the surprise in case one of them reads this. I’ll let you know in part 2, as by then they’ll have proposal in hand. Hopefully I’ll even be able to tell you how it was received.

Question time (and no, I’m not going to ask the Outline vs. No Outline question as we’ve argued that more than enough): I know some readers like series and some don’t…for those of you who do like series, does it bother you when the author writes a stand alone? Do you read it? For those of you who prefer stand alones, why do you think you avoid series?

Look forward to reading your answers!