To which my major reaction is What the hell have they done to Malekith? This is what Malekith looks like in the comics
and this is what he looks like in the trailer
Why? Are they afraid we won’t know he’s evil unless he’s ugly? Concerned they’ll end up with another Loki on their hands with everyone fangirling the wrong bloke? If so, they should put some thought into making Thor himself more interesting, because I generally don’t end up on the side of the villains unless I’ve already dismissed the heroes as not being worth my while.
Which, you know… God, Thor, could you be any more offputting? “Hello Jane, you haven’t seen me for years, you’re coming with me to Asgard and I’m not even going to ask if now is a good time.” “Hello brother, I despise you, come and help me save all the things I love, and when you try to turn the situation to your own advantage, I will kill you.”
I always used to derive the only pleasure I ever got from James Bond films (of the classic Roger Moore era) by hoping that this time the villain would give him the kicking he so richly deserved. It’s pretty much the same for Thor, I live in hope that one day Loki will really show him what humilation means – because the three days he spent with Jane in film 1 was not it.
Thor represents privilege piled upon privilege – white, male, warrior, prince, hero, god. For me, having been born a second class citizen by virtue of my sex, Loki’s struggle to get someone to take him seriously despite being born wrong is much more easily empathized with. There is a vicarious delight in watching him not let the bastards grind him down.
On a happier fandom note, I managed to finally catch two shows I hadn’t managed to see when they were first out – Stargate: Universe, and Once Upon a Time.
I’m surprising myself by loving Stargate Universe. I was on the verge of never watching it again after the first episode I saw (which was the one in which they have to find lime to renew the air-purifiers), but something kept me hooked. I liked the fact that the entire plot of this episode involved such a non-glamourous but vital task. It was refreshingly realistic for space opera. Plus I had an argument with DH over whether Dr. Rush, the rebarbative scientist, was going to end up as a bad guy or not. He was on the side of ‘Rush is obviously going to turn out evil.’ And I was on the side of ‘Nah, people will realize that his apparent cold heartedness is actually only a concern for the big picture, and he and emotion-driven military leader Young will end up working together like Spock and Kirk.’
So far it seems that we were both wrong, which I think is marvelous. Rush and Young have both turned out to be morally ambiguous ruthless gits, and I am very much enjoying the Rush and Young show.
I can’t quite see what all those other people are doing on board, mind you. I suppose there’s Chloe, the damsel in distress, Eli the author self-insert (plump geek boy saves the day on a regular basis?). There’s TJ, the potential love interest for Young and… and there are some other people, who I’m hoping will become relevant later.
I feel bad for liking a show where there aren’t any main female characters at all, and the real interest of the thing is watching the power struggle between the man of science and the military man. But it’s done so well, and I care about both of them so much that I can’t really mind. (Seriously, Thor, you need some nuance, like these two.)
Once Upon a Time, I’ve only watched one episode of this, and while it was pleasant and surprising to watch a questing party comprised entirely of women set out to battle a female villain, what was with the relentless focus on family? The whole “OMG, I’m barren, it’s the worst thing in the world. I’m so ashamed, I can’t tell anyone.” “Never mind, we can fix it by magic if I, an older and therefore expendable woman, sacrifice myself for the purpose.” “Huzzah, now my life is worthwhile!” really bugged me. I felt embarrassed and apologetic on behalf of women everywhere who either can’t have or don’t want children.
And you know, it would be really nice if some of this plethora of female characters was interested in something other than their family. So far only the evil queen is interested in anything outside her home, and she’s evil… So I don’t think this is quite as progressive as it maybe thinks it is.
At any rate, I won’t be watching again. I’m going back to watch Young and Rush dither over whether to kill each other or not, while trying to get around the fact that a small community of people on a knife edge of survival would really be much better served if they learned to work together.
You know what I hate? I hate this modern style of over-active prose. I just opened a book this morning. It sounded great – it’s about mysterious goings on in Istanbul, cults and relics and stuff. All things which have appealed to me since the first Indiana Jones film.
But, damn, the style. All short driving sentences and maximum impact and urgency. I feel as if the author got me by the hair and kept hitting me in the face, shouting “WAKE UP! WAKE UP, PAY ATTENTION. I WANT TO SEE THAT ADRENALIN RUSH.” Slap! Slap! “TELL ME YOU’RE ENJOYING IT ALREADY! LOOK!” *Twists my head unmercifully* “DEATH! SEX! PERIL! MORE DEATH! AREN’T YOU HAVING FUN YET?”
I just want to throw the book straight in the bin (within the first 5 pages) and never read anything else by that author. Because, fuck you! Even if I was into BDSM and liked a bit of pain, you’d have to work up to this level of intense from a ground floor of mildly interested. But actually I’m not into BDSM and having you (metaphorically) shout in my face, spraying me with spittle, just makes me want to (metaphorically) get out my machine gun and blow you into a million shredded scraps. And then possibly stamp on the pieces afterwards.
So yes, this is probably an object lesson in why I hate all that advice designed to turn your (flowing, lyrical) prose into ACTION!PROSE. I like to be hooked, intrigued, as much as the next man, but I also like to have time to appreciate that lovely sunrise, the river valley we’re in, the wonders of Istanbul, the moral dilemma that confronts our hero, the moments of joy and beauty amidst the peril etc etc without being bludgeoned repeatedly with DEATH! PERIL! SEX! DEATH! NOW, NOW, NOW!
If this is how the book starts, does anyone ever get to the end of it without a heart attack?
Most of what I have to say on this subject, I have already said in an earlier post in which I was vehement about voice. I decided to repeat that here, and add a little bit on the bottom about how you develop your voice.
If there was one thing that came out of the UK Meet for me (and actually there were several) it was the importance of voice. Let me say that again, because I don’t think I used enough emphasis. It was the importance of an author’s VOICE. Aleks Voinov speaking on behalf of publishers everywhere, and Jenre, speaking on behalf of reviewers, both emphasized strongly how much, when they cracked open a new book, they were looking for a unique voice.
It’s all very mystical, and possibly vaguely amusing in an ironic kind of way. Because the internet and ‘how to write’ books appear unanimous that the way to good writing is an adherence to action verbs, and a willingness to pare down ones adjectives and adverbs to the absolute bare minimum. Cut, cut, cut, people say. Make your language transparent, so that it doesn’t get in the way of the story. You don’t want to throw out your reader’s suspension of disbelief every other sentence with a gorgeous phrase or a word they need to look up in the dictionary. Have good characters, have a story hook in the first paragraph, keep piling on the tension, break for a black point three quarters of the way through and set everything on its head at the half way point.
If this is advice on ‘voice,’ this is the advice to write like everyone else.
How can you write like everyone else and still have a unique voice? You can’t.
When I listen to this advice about paring down your words to the minimum, I think about the writers whose books I love and it applies to none of them. Tolkien, with his chapter-long descriptions of scenery and his insistence that you had to spell ‘dwarfs’ ‘dwarves’ because obviously it was formed on the same principle as ‘loaf’ and ‘loaves’. That if you spelled it differently, you denied it its history. Tolkien who taught me what a hythe was, and gave me the gift of finding out that ‘gore’ isn’t only blood, or a triangular panel in a skirt, but it’s also a spear-head shaped piece of land. Tolkien who never flinched from a right word just because nobody but him remembered what it meant.
Patrick O’Brian, with his rampant, laughing lists of 18th Century words, and his puns and his sometimes-roaring, sometimes sly delight in combinations of phrases that make you chortle.
China Mieville – oh Lord, I just finished reading ‘Kraken’. There’s another man who loves his words when they’re decked out in carnival costumes and on the trapeze:
“Subby Subby Subby,” whispered Goss. “Keep those little bells on your slippers as quiet as you can. Sparklehorse and Starpink have managed to creep out of Apple Palace past all the monkeyfish, but if we’re silent as tiny goblins we can surprise them and then all frolic off together in the Meadow of Happy Kites.”
You may not particularly like any of these writers but, lets face it, they are incredibly successful, critically acclaimed and widely regarded as being at the top of their respective genres. And none of them are writing stripped down transparent, zero-added-value prose. They all have VOICE (imagine that said in a Doctor DOOM tone. I know I do.)
It doesn’t mean that your voice as a writer should be like their voice. If you don’t like obscure words and you don’t feel strongly about how to decline ancient nouns, don’t rush to use them because you think you should. Voice is about being you, after all. But I find it comforting to think that so many writers who’ve said ‘fuck you’ to the transparent-prose-style-gurus, so many writers who’ve reveled in the language they’re using, dived in and splashed and played with words, should have reached so high and done so well with it.
Partly this pleases me because I like to see the internet pundits proved wrong. But mostly it pleases me because it gives back to every writer the chance to do what the hell they like with their own voice. Maybe you like stripped down prose, where a very few perfect descriptors give the effect of a splash of colour in a minimalist white house. Good for you – do that then. Ursula LeGuin does something like that, although she also makes sure the rhythm of her sentences sounds like poetry. I love her stuff, but don’t have the elegance to write like that myself. I’m just glad to know that I don’t have to try to. I’m free to discover whatever it is that I want to do with my words instead.
When I tell my words how high to jump, I want them to ask “d’you want me to be wearing the sparkly skirt with that?” Not to worry about how other writers do it. They’re my words, after all.
To quote Terry Pratchett (another top hatted master of the three ring word circus): “If cats looked like frogs we’d realize what nasty, cruel little bastards they are. Style. That’s what people remember.” Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies
~
Having said that, how do you go about developing your author’s voice?
The first thing I would say is that IMO it’s not something you need to worry about when you’re writing the first draft of your first novel. Actually it’s not something you need to worry about at all. Your voice is simply what happens when you learn to express yourself in the way that comes naturally to you. So all you have to do is write lots of stories, and your voice will happen by itself.
This is not very helpful advice, is it? You want to know how you develop your voice right now. You don’t want to have to wait until you’ve written 15 novels, all of which you’ll look back on at some time in the future and think “that doesn’t even sound like me!”
And this is true. If you don’t want to find your voice by churning out lots of text, making mistakes, correcting them and trying again – the way we learn to walk – much can be done by reading advice on style. Only so long as it’s the right advice – advice which is congenial to you.
Out there on the internet there are hundreds of people who will tell you to mangle your grammar by removing the word ‘was’ wholesale. There are people who will tell you that any verb ending with ‘ing’ is ‘passive’ and must be annihilated by nuclear warheads (when actually a verb ending in ‘ing’ indicates that the action of the verb is continuing. Ie they didn’t ‘run’ in the past, they aren’t going to ‘run’ in the future, they are ‘running’ right now as we speak. You can’t get much more active than that.)
If you’re going to take style advice from someone, look for advice from the writers you love. If you love their writing, chances are their advice will tend towards producing writing like that.
I thoroughly recommend “Steering the Craft” by Ursula LeGuin and Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg. These authors do not lay down hard and fast rules about which words you’re allowed to use and which you aren’t, they encourage you to pay attention to the way words sound together, to hear them like music or poetry and allow them to have rhythm and character and fun. They also give you some exercises to do to develop a style of your own.
Just as I would say “go for style advice to writers whose style you admire” I would also say “look at the writing of writers you admire and try to work out how they do it.” If necessary, try writing something in their style, so that you can figure out which bits seem to fit you and which bits feel horribly awkward.
I trained myself to write settings, description and atmosphere by imitating Tolkien, who I consider a master of the creeping ambiance. I trained myself to look for the most concrete words instead of vague ones because he said that was how he did it – and I think it works. You may start off imitating, just as a new dancer starts off imitating what they see the experienced dancers doing, but before long the parts that come naturally to you will become your own, and you will drop the other parts and be left with a new amalgam which is specifically your own.
If you see a device being used with lots of panache by another writer and it speaks to something in you that says “Oh God! I want to write like that!” then do. Steal the technique (not the actual words, that would be wrong) and apply it yourself. I love Patrick O’Brian’s sentence fragments. They spatter the book with a flying spray of words like sea foam flying past the bow of a ship. So I started doing it too.
Editors aren’t terribly fond of that aspect of my writing, so I’ve dialed it back a little these days, but I still feel that some of the exuberance of the technique has made it through to influence my own voice. And after all, I don’t want to sound too much like someone else. Take techniques that work from anywhere you see them, but use them in your own way.
How will you know what your own way is? It will come naturally. It will be the only way you can write. It will be the sentence you look at and think ‘yes. That’s right.’ The simile only you could have thought of, because no one else seems to have had the same experience, the turn of phrase that makes you grin like a sickle moon. Trust yourself and write on.
Damn it, a man shouldn’t always have to be afraid…
Alec Goodchilde has everything a man could want—except the freedom to be himself. Once a year, he motors down to an exclusive yacht club on the Cornish coast and takes the summer off from the trap that is his life.
When his car breaks down, leaving him stranded on the beach, he’s transfixed by the sight of a surfer dancing on the waves. The man is summer made flesh. Freedom wrapped up in one lithe package, dripping wet from the sea.
Once a year, Darren Stokes takes a break from his life of grinding overwork and appalling relatives, financing his holiday by picking up the first rich man to show an interest. This year, though, he’s cautious—last summer’s meal ticket turned out to be more pain than pleasure.
Even though Alec is so deep in the closet he doesn’t even admit he’s gay, Darren finds himself falling hard—until their idyllic night together is shattered by the blinding light of reality…
EXCERPT
Darren took a step back, snapped out of his post-wave high. What the…? He’d heard some chat up lines in his time but that won points for being the most desperate. As he rocked back, leaning on his board, Krissy gave him a little head toss of exasperation and lead the others inside. He could hear them laughing all the way to the bar.
“Are you buying?”
Sheesh, the guy had still not sat down, was leaning forward over his table, all Hugh Grant floppy hair, starched designer shirt and pleading. He gave a little wince as though he hadn’t expected the voice – they never did – and fell over his lolling tongue to say “oh yes. Yes of course. Anything.”
“Champagne?”
“If you like.” Not a flicker of calculation in the blue slate eyes, only a kind of awe, like someone witnessing the second coming of Christ. Darren tilted his head to one side to see if that would make the expression look more like lust. It didn’t.
The air crackled about him with the intensity of that stare. He bit down on the urge to look behind him. Maybe the guy wasn’t talking to him at all?
“I’m not sure it’s the sort of place where you can get champagne though.” The stranger dropped his eyes, gave one of those sweet, self-depreciating smiles all the rich boys must get taught at finishing school. What the hell was a man like him doing, having to pull rough trade off the beach when surely all he had to do was crook a little finger and every strapping lad in his Eton rugby team would be on their knees in gratitude in seconds?
This is the point where you run away. Yeah?
“No, it’s not. I’ll have a beer.” He didn’t trouble with ‘thanks’. They both knew the sort of thank you acceptable in this game.
“Really? You will?” He watched the blush smoulder slowly from the man’s white open collar to the roots of his glossy coffee brown hair, annoyed with himself for saying yes, annoyed with the stranger for giving him another chance to say ‘no’. C’mon now, get it out; ‘no actually I won’t…’ and walk away. C’mon now Darren, you promised yourself.
Not a bad looking trick. Ah, who was he fooling, the man was gorgeous, his face all well bred angles and perfect skin. When he looked down, as he was now, the blush turned brown eyelashes to bronze. They made soft little glinting fans over film-star cheekbones, gave him an inward, dreaming look as if he was up on a billboard, contemplating the scent of infinity (bottled by Louis Vuitton.)
“Really I will, but you’ll have to be quick. My mind’s not made up at all.”
“Don’t go anywhere. Please. Please.”
As he watched the man walk away – back straighter than a fire poker, bare feet frisking across dirty red tiles – Darren grounded his board and sank onto the bench. He pushed his fingers into the drying tangles of his hair, and as he did so, Krissy, bottled water and choc-ice in hand, slithered out from the crowd and propped a knee beside him.
“So you told him to go fuck himself, didn’t you?”
She unzipped and peeled her arms out of her wetsuit, letting the top droop like a deflated twin about her waist. Sand and water droplets gleamed on her dark skin. She caught him looking and cuffed him on the side of the head. “Didn’t you?”
He pulled at the Velcro at his throat, fierce summer sunshine and shame roasting him together. “It’s just a beer.”
“Oh for Christ’s sake!”
“Krissy, I…” Darren rubbed a hand over the back of his neck to conceal his frown, scarcely conscious of hitching forward over the phantom throb of long healed ribs. He was thinking of wheelchair lifts, and Gran lying broken at the bottom of the stairs; grubby hospital corridors, the old lady soldier-brave, talking away to the nurse, her skin gone blue as whey. “I need the money.”
“Not this much.” She placed her hand over his; a strong, capable, almost motherly hand. “Not enough to risk another Max.”
“Yes, this much.” At the name his body tightened up, muscles locking solid. Pavlov’s dogs – I hear his name, I get ready to be hurt.
“I can get you a job at the office. They’re always looking for someone to do filing, make tea.”
If he looked up he could see the stranger at the bar, nervously counting out change. Apricot coloured afternoon sunlight drenched the man’s hair, made it look edible as treacle toffee. The white slacks had an old fashioned charm, discretely suggesting the curve of a nice arse without going so far as to flaunt it. Something about the posture, the poise of that carefully laundered back implied a private gym, an athletics coach or two, who made the man’s body their personal work of art.
He had a nice smile. Diffident, almost frightened. His teeth were crooked and a little stained.
Despair slammed into Darren like a wave, sucking him down, slamming him, limp and helpless, against the lightless rock and ooze of sea bed. I stack shelves all year long, Krissy. This is my month, my one month of freedom. You don’t understand. “I don’t want a job.”
The stranger had stopped, arrested on the way back to the table by the sight of the two of them. Glasses and beer bottles shook in his fingers, chiming. He looked stabbed, stabbed to the heart, and Darren knew he couldn’t get up now and leave. It would be like kicking Bambi after his mother died.
Max hadn’t trembled, hadn’t looked at him like he was the driver of the chariot of the sun. Max had just smiled that ‘I’m going to eat you up’ smile and beckoned.
“It’s just a drink,” he said again. “I’m thirsty.”
“Pratt.” Krissy shoved him hard in the head, leaving him with a roaring sensation in one ear, and opened her choc-ice. The top fell off onto the bench beside him with a splat and lay there like the droppings of an enormous albatross. She made a sound of disgust and stalked away, throwing a glance spiked with poison at the trick, who returned her the flinch of a smile.
“Am I interrupting?” Jeez, the man was like a ghost, soft voiced, all in white, so little presence you forgot he was there. Darren wondered; if you could walk round him, at the right angle would he disappear altogether?
“Krissy,” he said. “She’s a good friend of mine. Surfing buddy.” And then, because his instincts had been all wrong about Max too, “I’ve a bunch of friends here. We look out for each other.”
“That’s good.” He sat like a schoolboy, tucking himself neatly into the bench beside his upturned leather shoes and folded blazer. “All I seem to have is family, and they…but you don’t want to hear about all that. I’m Alec, by the way.”
“Ryan,” said Darren, concentrating on pouring his beer.
In reply to my “help, I can’t think of anything to blog about!” post recently, Wulfila asked my opinion on “the current development of the self-publishing vs. traditional publishing situation”.
I’ve been lucky enough to try all three types of publishing. Running Press, who published False Colors was a biggish traditional mainstream publisher. Most of my other novels have been published by Samhain Publishing, and my novellas by Carina, MLR Press and Riptide Publishing – all of whom I would call “small press publishers.” (I wouldn’t call them all ebook publishers, because all of them do print too, some as a matter of course and some as a factor of success.) Then there is The Witch’s Boy and the two anthologies of short stories which I have indie published, as a way of testing the indie waters and learning to format books for various different ebook formats.
My experiences go like this.
Mainstream traditional publishing.
Good editing. Excellent cover art. A bit of a problem with the back cover which says the book is set in 1662, when in fact it’s set in 1762. I did not see this until it was too late to correct. Amazing marketing which involved getting the books on the ‘new book’ tables in Barnes and Noble. Slightly less amazing marketing slogan which provoked controversy and bad feeling throughout the genre. The publication led to interviews in big mainstream magazines, including a very small piece in Rolling Stone magazine, though the interviews focussed more on the ‘gay romance? What are these crazy women up to now and why?‘ angle than on whether the book was any good or not. I don’t believe many of them actually read it.
Fame:
There’s no doubt that I am better known for this book than any other. People who have heard of me tend to have done so because they saw False Colors in a bookshop. Indeed many of the (usually men) who write to me are unaware that I’ve published any other books, because they do their book shopping in bookshops and not in the online romance community.
Money:
Even though the advance on False Colors was small as these things go, it has still earned me more than any other single title to date.
Small Press Publishing
With one exception (the first cover of Captain’s Surrender), I’ve had good cover art and editing every bit as good as I got from Running Press. The speed with which small presses work is much faster than that of large presses and the accessibility to the author is much greater. (That is, if you’re worried about something you can email the cover artist or the finance person or whatever, whereas in the large press I got the feeling that that was frowned upon and I should direct everything through my editor. The good small presses I work with are nicer to work with than the big press was, (though they weren’t bad either, just slower and less responsive.)
Fame
Some small presses will arrange blog tours for you. Some have large communities of readers who wait eagerly for the next book from that publisher. In all cases, readers come to expect a certain level of house style, a typical type of story (ie you know that something from Ellora’s Cave is likely to be steamier than something from Samhain etc.) So by publishing with that publisher you come pre-recommended to that publisher’s readers. Also every small press I’ve worked with has a list of reviewers to whom they will send your book, hopefully garnering it more word of mouth recommendations.
Money
I’ve earned more than twice as much through small press publishing than through big press. However, that’s not the good thing it sounds, as I’ve published four novels and four novellas through small presses. Eight times as many stories and I’ve only earned twice the income.
The nice thing about the small presses and money is that they pay you monthly, so instead of getting one big lump, as with the advance for False Colors, you get a regular income. I like that. Another advantage of the small press is that their contracts tend to be better, in that you get your rights back within 5-7 years. I like that too.
Indie Publishing
You don’t get cover art or editing. You either have to pay for them or do them yourself (or swap edits with a friend.) Since I can make my own cover art, and my husband is a demon of a proof reader, this is not the disadvantage for me that it could be for others. You also have to format your work for the various sites you’re going to release it through, and this takes some learning and labour (or it’s yet another thing you have to pay for.)
Fame
You get no help with marketing. It’s up to you to get your name out there, which is why you see so many indie authors out there making pests of themselves with self-promotion. It’s also much more difficult to get review sites to look at your books, because most review sites have a policy of not taking requests from indies. There are just too many bad books out there to make it worth wading through to get to the good ones.
Money
I’ve published one novel, The Witch’s Boy and a couple of anthologies of short stories through Smashwords, Amazon KDP and Lulu. The Witch’s Boy came out just about at the same time as Captain’s Surrender, and two years before The Wages of Sin. The Witch’s Boy is a long novel, The Wages of Sin is a 30K novella. So far, the small press published novella has earned twice what the indie published novel has managed.
Conclusions
In my experience, indie publishing is the worst of all the options.
I have heard and believe that the way to succeed in indie publishing is to write fast, to write ongoing series with a hook at the end of each book, so you can build followers over time, and to make sure you launch the book with action, because people will buy based on the free-to-sample first 20% and that’s all you’ve got to make them want to buy. I write slow and prefer standalones, so maybe someone else would have better luck.
Except that all that advice is just as spot on for small presses. So if I could write quickly and in series, I would still submit them to small presses and get the benefit of editing, marketing, cover art and a dedicated readership.
But what I really should do, if I can only learn to write faster, is write four books for mainstream publishers a year. Because if I was getting four advances the size of the one for FC every year, I’d have a living wage straight away, as opposed to hoping that things will build as I build my backlist.
Of course, while mainstream publishers still don’t take m/m, it’s a moot point. And given that they’re off the table, I think my decision to stick with small presses rather than indie publish is still the best way to go.
finishing incorporating the points made by the lovely Megan Derr and Bimo into my final draft of The Glass Floor, which frankly is much better for them. While I was doing that, I spotted some anomalies of my own, such as ‘if Radu can’t see magic, how come he can see the magical forcefield at the end? Whoops!’ So it just goes to show that no matter how finished you think something is, the chances are there’s still something to be done.
The rest of the day went on brainstorming ideas for a couple of other books to follow The Glass Floor, on the grounds that publishers tend to prefer new fantasy to come in trilogies. This turned out to be easier done than I’d feared, although I may have problems turning the second volume into a book that has a satisfying close of its own but still leads on to book three. This is a good time to think about that, though!
I’ve never written anything that wasn’t a stand-alone story before, so this is quite fascinating. Tentative titles The Gate of Ice and The Isle of Storms, for which I have Googled and which don’t seem to have been taken yet.
Those are just to be put into plot-plan stage and not actually written – just so I can offer the synopses as a possibility if someone likes The Glass Floor but wants it to be a series. Once I’ve done the brainstorming on those, I can start brainstorming something I will actually write. No idea on that yet!
I think of this review. It was initially published quite a while back on Goodreads, when I was a new author and wet behind the ears. Now the reviewer has put it on his own, excellent, review site, and I feel more justified in sharing it. This review and the conversation I had about it on Goodreads with Richard is probably the most treasured piece of feedback I’ve ever had, because it was proof that my writing had at least once done what I hoped it would do – help someone.
On the one hand, conceptually it’s not earthshatteringly new. There must be millions of two-blokes above scene covers out there. On the other hand, I still really like it.
Happily, I couldn’t quite get the word count on this one above 60,001 words without making a deliberate decision to pad it. So I left it at 59, 223 words. Samhain’s policy on length is to price anything above 60,001 words at $5.99 and those things which don’t quite make the length at $4.99. Which means that this one’s a bargain length for the price 🙂 (Or a bargain price for the length? Something like that.)
Okay, so we’ve talked about the equipment you need to write your novel, about finding time and space for writing. We’ve considered structure, setting, characters and plot plans, and we’ve done as much research as we need to do to get to the stage where we feel it’s possible to write about this setting.
If we’re a highly organized planner we now have character sheets, timelines, several binders full of notes on settings and other such stuff, and we have a nicely structured plot plan to write to. If we’re a pantser we hopefully have enough of an idea about the main character, the setting and what’s about to happen next to dive in.
Now we can finally start writing.
There’s really only one secret you need to know in order to finish the first draft of your novel, and that is “don’t stop moving forwards until you’re finished.”
When I started writing, I wrote on a schedule which went like this: I wrote the first five chapters of a novel in a state of high enthusiasm, thoroughly enjoying myself and the book. Then, somewhere around chapter six I had a brilliant idea of how to make the first five chapters better by completely rewriting them. So I completely rewrote them. But by the time I’d finished the rewrite I had a better idea still, so I rewrote them again.
After several cycles of this, I would be so fed up that I never wanted to see the book again, and I would be seized by the wish to write a different brilliant idea.
So, I would set that book aside, unfinished, start a new one, and the cycle would start all over again. By this means, I wrote at least six beginnings of novels, which I still have in my desk drawers. I still take them out every now and again to see if I want to finish them, and I still can’t bear to work on them ever again.
If this doesn’t happen to you, then you are fortunate, and possibly quite rare, because it seems to be a common affliction of writers.
If it does happen to you, I have one guaranteed solution which I have tested and adopted myself. It is this – don’t stop writing, and don’t go back to rewrite until you have finished the end of the first draft.
By all means, if you have a brilliant idea which changes everything, make a note that it needs to be introduced earlier and then carry on writing as if you had already done so. By all means change everything from the point where you currently are – everything that only exists in idea form anyway – just don’t go back and change what you did write until you’ve finished.
This seems to be an odd way of going about it, but a novel is more prone to stall than a vintage car going up hill in too high a gear with water in the petrol and snow on the road – and with equally disastrous results. You need to do everything you can to maintain forward momentum if you’re not to end up tobogganing backwards off the slope to ruin.
If you don’t stop to rewrite, if you don’t stop at all until you’ve finished the first draft, then you will have a finished first draft, it’s as sure as summer. And OK, it may be a very rough first draft, but it’s easier to edit something which exists than it is to edit something that doesn’t, and five chapters of perfection doesn’t actually do you anywhere near as much good as a whole novel no matter how rough it is.
I offer this advice quite strongly, because it has been of immense use to me. However, I know that I am not all writers. I’ve met some people who, when their novels stalled 5 chapters in, began another novel, and then they finished both novels by working on one when their muse wouldn’t let them work on the other one. If you get fretful and bored working on one novel at once, maybe this is the solution for you. It doesn’t work for me, but there’s no law against trying it and seeing if it works for you instead.
A lot of writers insist on the idea that you should write your first draft from start to finish without troubling yourself with worry about how good the words are. Don’t stop to polish, just get the words down, they would say. Don’t let your inner editor get its claws into the first draft, this time is time for your inner creative genius to roam free, unfettered by things like grammar or attempts at poetic expression.
I tend to be of this school of thought myself. I find it’s much easier to concentrate on making up whole worlds and people from thin air if you don’t also have to concentrate on making your sentences beautiful. I like to do a content draft and several editing drafts, so that in the first draft all I have to think about is what happens next. Then I work on beautifying that later. It gives me only one type of writing task to do at once and means I can concentrate on each type (writing v revising) fully each at its own time.
However, if you really can’t stand moving on from a day’s work knowing that it’s imperfect, there’s nothing wrong with writing a first draft slowly and carefully, mindful of things like word choice and grammar right from the start. Then you can open the next day’s session with editing what you did yesterday, and proceed to further writing as soon as that’s done. As long as it doesn’t stop you moving forwards, it’s fine.
Actually the plain truth is this – the only reason first drafts don’t get finished is that authors choose not to finish them. You can finish anything if you just refuse to allow yourself not to. Whether or not you finish is entirely up to you. Just do it, therefore, and don’t make excuses. As Chuck Wendig says – “Finish your shit.”
That is the secret formula to finishing a novel. As easy as that. Don’t stop writing it until it’s done.
You’d think it didn’t need saying, but so many authors buy into the idea that writing is a matter of being swept away by the muses that when they get to the inevitable point where writing feels like hard work they stop and wait for the muses to come and rescue them. The muses, being faery creatures, laugh their little socks off at this and take it as an opportunity to pixie-lead the writer off down another dead end path, and much effort is expended achieving nothing. As with genius, writing is 1% gambolling with the muses, 99% nose to grindstone. The muses will do their bit, but you have to your part too, and sadly, your part is everything.
I was about to say that was all there was to say for this part. Whether you finish or not is your decision. If you want to finish, just keep writing until you have.
OTOH, there may be some cases where you grind to a halt and you simply cannot force yourself to work on this thing again. There may be some cases where you’d rather spend your leisure time stacking shelves at the supermarket than carrying on with this book, because you loathe it. You loathe the characters, you loathe the plot and you find the whole thing bores you to tears.
If you really can’t push through a block like this, and you know because you’ve tried, and you know that you normally can push through, because you’ve finished several books already and recognise the normal pitfalls of the process, then a really powerful repellance from a book may be a sign that there’s something wrong with the book as it stands.
Then it’s worth stopping for a couple of days and thinking about it. Is this actually a book you want to write at all? Why are you writing a book about clog dancing in the Urals when you’re really interested in Texas cup cake bakers? Are you doing this because other people want you to? Because statistics proved more people wanted to read about the Urals? In short, do you hate it because it’s the sort of thing you hate? (As opposed to hating it for no good reason because that’s just how a writer’s emotional roller coaster goes.)
If you hate it because it’s the sort of thing you hate, but you’re writing it because it’s the sort of thing you think you should write, then the entire project is fundamentally wrong-headed and your best solution is probably to stop writing it as soon as you can and start writing something you actually want to write instead.
If you hate it for some smaller reason, such as because your main character has grown up to be a complete git who you’d rather see eviscerated than happy ever after, then you have the chance of a less drastic solution. Kill off the MC and replace him with someone you enjoy being around, then write on. The plot’s boring? Re-plot and write on. The setting’s actually kind of pretentious? Put them all on a boat and get them out of there, you can finesse the start to match in the second draft.
If you can salvage a novel that you’ve been working on for five chapters, it’s well worth doing it, even if that means jettisoning your entire plot from that point and reworking it. It’s always a shame to have to abandon any of your work. But on the other hand it’s also better to abandon the millstone around your neck if it means you avoid drowning. Just imagine the millstone is made of gold and only drop it if you’re absolutely certain you have to. Otherwise, write on until you reach the end.
For Captain Harry Thompson, the command of the prison transport ship HMS Banshee is his opportunity to prove his worth, working-class origins be damned. But his criminal attraction to his upper-crust First Lieutenant, Garnet Littleton, threatens to overturn all he’s ever worked for.
Lust quickly proves to be the least of his problems, however. The deadly combination of typhus, rioting convicts, and a monstrous storm destroys his prospects . . . and shipwrecks him and Garnet on their own private island. After months of solitary paradise, the journey back to civilization—surviving mutineers, exposure, and desertion—is the ultimate test of their feelings for each other.
These two very different men each record their story for an unfathomable future in which the tale of their love—a love punishable by death in their own time—can finally be told. Today, dear reader, it is at last safe for you to hear it all.
It is too late now to cut a long story short, but I will endeavour not to protract it for very much longer. On Edwards’ fifth turn about the deck the powder monkey returned, bringing with him, up the companionway, a rusty-aproned surgeon, and, leaning on his arm, a man I knew. Ned Compton, coxswain’s mate in the Yarmouth, now holding in his bursten belly with a cut down pair of lady’s stays. “Oh, aye, I know Mr. Thompson, sir. Lieutenant in the Yarmouth, he was. Did hear he’d made captain of the Banshee. Congratulations to you, sir.”
“Thank you, Ned. It’s good to see you again.”
He chuckled. “Aye, main glad you must be right now.”
Things became a little more comfortable after that. They let us out. We were given hammocks to sling in the wardroom, and a change of clothes from the slop chest. Either by way of apology, or as a scheme to investigate us further, Edwards invited us to one of the most painful dinner parties I have ever attended, scrutinising my table manners, peppering us with suggestions of what we should have done to prevent the disaster to our fleet. “Also, I wonder,” he said, “what you found to occupy yourselves with, all that time alone on so blasted an isle.”
We made him some noncommittal answer but the thought lodged in my mind. As we plunged back into human society, played cards in the wardroom, stood watches for fellows who were grateful to take a few hours extra rest, the thought of what I had lost began to grow on me like a canker.
I became acutely aware of the space that separated me from Garnet. My hours of solitude, or in the company of other men, seemed grey and barren. Yet my hours with him were a torment of constant awareness and yearning. Without him in the hammock beside me, hot and restless and fidgeting in his dreams like a big dog, I could not sleep. My heart seemed to beat in a cavern within my chest, its tiny flickering unable to fill the dark. A constant squirm of anguish lodged there, like a worm in the flesh.
We breakfasted together and sat next to one another at the wardroom, and yet it felt to me as though he was dead and I was not being allowed to mourn.
Pandora worked her way slowly through the islands of this little known part of the world. The mutineers sweltered in their cage by day and shivered through the exposed nights. I found myself drawn to them, and would spend much of my free time standing by the ship’s rail as near to the cage as I could come. I knew I deserved to share their fate, and in sharing their penance I felt a little calmer.
On our last night aboard as free men, Garnet joined me by the rail. The fitful wind veered into the east. About the bow the water broke into twin curves of luminescence, and the wake stretched out behind us in a sheet of pale green light. A moon like hammered gold hung above us. Other than ourselves, only a midshipman occupied the quarterdeck, and he drowsed by the capstan. From the forecastle came a mutter of voices speaking low and tense. I had noticed a deal of whispering aboard Pandora. She was not a happy ship.
Garnet turned his head to listen, and the faint gilded light flowed across his face. Something in the line of his throat, the shadow beneath jaw and cheekbone, and the little inwards tuck his mouth made at its ends, stopped me dead. Pure beauty, almost too glorious to endure.
He looked at me, puzzled, as my mouth opened and my hands began to tremble. Such dark eyes, intimate as a man’s own fantasies. “Sir?” he asked, briefly uncertain. And then he understood. His mouth curved up, and his face lit with delight. He tugged me forward by the cuff. I swear to you I felt his touch on the material of my sleeve as though it were on my yard. I was mad—I freely admit it—mad with loss and need and regret. I think perhaps I wanted to be caught. I had tasted freedom and knew I could no longer live without it.
We made it no further than down the quarterdeck stair before he pulled me into the shadow of the great cabin, where between the ship’s boats and the arch of deck above lay a patch of shadow so dense we could not see each other, let alone be visible to others.
I hope those ladies who read this will forgive me for the comparison, but, ever had to piss? Ever had to hold it in so long it passed through pain to making you think you were going to die of internal strangulation if you did not let go? Ever have one of those dreams where you cannot find the privy, no matter how you search? You’ll sympathize with my state then. I wasn’t thinking, I’d got so used to having him when I wanted, I just couldn’t hold on any longer.
Dear God the bliss! We were all mouths and teeth and heat, and his hand’s in my hair and the other hand’s down my trousers and he’s going “I never thought… oh Harry… I never thought I’d play this game with you.” And then the doors open and the captain comes out and everything shatters into smithereens like a plate dropped on a stone floor.
Disgrace. Edwards paced up and down behind his desk, hands linked behind his back, lips pursed as though he had bitten into a lemon. Marines behind us, and our wrists tied with rope, and the cabin seemed to pulse ruby red with the force of everyone’s disgust.
I’d been afraid of it all my life, and here it was—exposure, ridicule, abomination, like being flayed and laid skinless on a nest of ants.
“My God,” Edwards turned and glared at us. “In front of my very cabin. Do you have no control at all? No self respect?”
There’s a kind of joy on Garnet’s face, and seeing it shifts everything inside my head. By gradual stages, like sailing out of a fog, the obstruction cleared, my confusion lightened, my shame thinned and lifted: I understood. Garnet needed no refuge, no hidden isle moated all around by impassable sea. Inside himself, where no one else could touch him, he had learned how to be free. How not to be ashamed. “We thought you might like to watch, sir,” he said.
Edwards’ disapproval flickered for a moment. Something intense went through it, fast as lightning. It looked to me a lot like panic. The effort of compressing his mouth back into scalpel thinness made him dab at his forehead with his handkerchief. Reaching for his logbook, he opened it, took out the sheaf of ill written notes that marked the latest page.
“I am,” he rustled through them, brought a sheet out and pressed it to his lips, “a little behind with my paperwork. I have not yet written up my log of the past fortnight.” Setting his elbows on the table, he steepled his hands, as if praying. “There is nothing in here to suggest we ever picked up two castaways from Ducie island.”
I could all but hear the creak of strain as he winched his mouth up at the ends into the straight line of a satisfied smile. “Until I have recorded that fact, you are legally missing, presumed dead.” He crumpled the sheet on which, I guess, his record of our rescue lay scrawled, looked at me with the triumph of a man dismissing inconvenient tedium. Then he threw the only evidence of our existence out of the stern windows, where it bobbed for a while like a duckling in our wake, before sinking.
“If I never record it, there is no legal proof that you were ever here. This frees me of the necessity to bring you back to England for trial. For your guilt, I have the evidence of my own eyes.” Over my shoulder he exchanged a glance with the sergeant of marines. “There can be only one appropriate punishment. You will be hanged from the yard arm until you are dead, and your bodies disposed of in the sea.”
The Boat of Small Mysteries - A cozy mystery aboard a narrowboat, in which a murder and a disappearance keep our aroace detective from fully relaxing into the idyll of country life.
