While comparing Joan Didion, Joyce Carol Oates, and Graham Greene, Shelly Lowenkopf observes that
One of the first things I had to do this weekend was re-read 90 pages' worth of my manuscript, which I haven't looked at since January. I'd forgotten who my characters were, lost touch with the world they lived in and, most importantly, muted the voice I was using back when I was actually being productive and cranking out a chapter a week.
After that read through, I came to a couple of conclusions.
First: the first 30 pages of the manuscript, as it stands now, simply won't do. They're not up to snuff, in terms of submitting them to the workshop, and I can't snuff them up properly between now and June 20. This is mostly because everything that's gone wrong structurally and plot-wise went wrong in those pages, and in order to fix them I'd essentially have to fix the whole book. Which I can do, but not in less than two weeks, not in a way that would give me enough confidence to pop them in an envelope as an example of my chops. It's been my experience that significant reworking of existing material tends to stifle whatever good things I've managed to pull off in terms of flow and voice and so on, and it takes a considerable amount of time and effort to restore that.
However, there was nothing in the Beat the Book submission guidelines which indicated that the 30 pages had to be chapters one and two, or even sequential. Some of the later chapters--where I hit my stride--are much more indicative of the overall style and tone of the tale than the gear-grinding that went on when I first hauled out a 13-year old unpublished short story and began bashing it into a novel. So, I wrote to Lynn Vannucci and asked her if she cared whether she got a "first" chapter or not, in addition to some other questions I had about the workshop. Maybe it will be an issue, maybe it won't. If it is, there are other such novel-pummeling opportunities out there, and I'll seek them out.
The second thing I realized was that I was butting up against the marketability vs. craft dilemma again. It was one thing to realize that I needed to up the stakes for my protagonist, and make what happened to a supporting character happen to him instead. It was quite another to go through the first chapters of the seven novels I've read over the past two weeks and realize that, with the possible exception of The Road, every one of them had a first chapter that grabbed, plotwise.
Granted, five of those books were by Christopher Moore, so maybe my sample was skewed. For a control I looked at the opening bit of A Clockwork Orange, because it was still on the couch from the last time I used it here, and Slaughterhouse Five, which has been on the floor next to the couch since February. They grab, too, but more in the manner of Cormac McCarthy. They do it with language and setup. Moore and Warren Ellis do it with things that happen.
Within the first three pages of Lamb, an angel raises Biff from the dead, who promptly socks the angel in the mouth. In Practical Demonkeeping, a smooth operating pot dealer on the verge of his first five-figure deal gets eaten by a demon, whole, by page ten. Similarly, the protagonist of A Dirty Job gains a daughter, loses his wife, and sees Death in the first chapter. Island of the Sequined Love Nun opens with the main character and his sidekick hanging upside-down from a breadfruit tree, apparently about to be eaten by cannibals. Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove isn't quite as punch-you-in-the-face, but the prologue presents you with three disparate events that are related in some intriguing way, one of which is a suicide. Warren Ellis's Crooked Little Vein opts to punch you in the face and then stomp on your head, opening the first chapter with a rat taking a piss in someone's coffee mug and ending it with the heroin-shooting chief of staff to the office of the President of the United States hiring a detective to find a mystical book that will stop America's descent into the depths of perversion.
Me, I got nothin'.
Oh, stuff happens. But after reading through the whole project with fresh eyes, I saw that I open with a riot...which the protagonist and his buddies are walking away from. You never see it. They flee, they walk through the city streets, they have a conversation, they go home. Gak.
I also discovered that I had created a setup and a scene when I finally finished off chapter 12 after a five month hiatus that would actually work at the tail end of the first chapter. I could show more of the riot, then have the protagonist head off to Central Park to unwind with some good old-fashioned anonymous evening sex in The Ramble, whereupon an unknown sniper would pop the head of his tryst like a watermelon before he even gets his fly unbuttoned.
Off and running, chapter one.
But then I had to stop and think for a minute. Is that what the story needs? Or is that merely what the market demands these days? It'd be nice if both were true.
I used to have a knee-jerk reaction to all that "know your market" speak that you hear so frequently in workshops and at conferences. I think this is mostly because I tend to hear it in a room with a couple of people who are really good, some more people who can definitely sling words, and a bunch of people who can't write their way out of paper bags yet. "Knowing their market" isn't going to do a damn thing for them.
On the other hand, I know people who are staunchly opposed to any sort of market consideration at any point before the manuscript is completed, proofed, and ready to go. And none of them have published a novel, despite multiple attempts.
It's the Dan Brown effect. I was painfully aware of every egregious violation of the rules of style, plot, and characterization in The DaVinci Code--up to and including having two central characters look at their own reflections so that their appearance could be described to the reader--but I read it in two sittings, and that fucker has sold 40 million copies. Clearly, he did something right, and I can't just dismiss him as a hack when he's achieved fabulous success doing what I want to do with my life while I'm sitting here writing this blog post about what I need to do to finish my first novel.
I'm fairly certain that my protagonist is "merely an individual trying to make sense of the heavens and hells in Horatio's philosophy." But I know that I tend not to enjoy books or short stories where somebody just wanders around and thinks. Stuff needs to happen, and the characters need to be much more than mere vehicles for that stuff. I could never be a Didion, Oates, or Greene, but then, I don't want to be. I don't want to be a Brown, either, except insofar as I would like to own a private island. There's got to be a balance, a middle ground where I can do my thing with integrity without dooming my work to the eternal slush pile.
I'll let you know if I find it.
So, what did I accomplish this weekend? Everything I noted here, plus a short story submission and a poetry submission. This is why I didn't want to get locked into the novel!novel!novel! trap, because in point of fact I did get a lot done, even if it was spread out over a few different aspects of my writing endeavor, and I'm not going to get all bent out of shape because I didn't get where I wanted to be with the Big Project. I've actually done more with the book in the past two weeks than I've done with it in several months.
Perspective: it's important.
It is no easy thing to decide who carries the story, whether that individual speak in the first or third person or if that individual is first conceived of as naive, reliable, duplicitous, or merely an individual trying to make sense of the heavens and hells in Horatio's philosophy.Bloody right, innit?
One of the first things I had to do this weekend was re-read 90 pages' worth of my manuscript, which I haven't looked at since January. I'd forgotten who my characters were, lost touch with the world they lived in and, most importantly, muted the voice I was using back when I was actually being productive and cranking out a chapter a week.
After that read through, I came to a couple of conclusions.
First: the first 30 pages of the manuscript, as it stands now, simply won't do. They're not up to snuff, in terms of submitting them to the workshop, and I can't snuff them up properly between now and June 20. This is mostly because everything that's gone wrong structurally and plot-wise went wrong in those pages, and in order to fix them I'd essentially have to fix the whole book. Which I can do, but not in less than two weeks, not in a way that would give me enough confidence to pop them in an envelope as an example of my chops. It's been my experience that significant reworking of existing material tends to stifle whatever good things I've managed to pull off in terms of flow and voice and so on, and it takes a considerable amount of time and effort to restore that.
However, there was nothing in the Beat the Book submission guidelines which indicated that the 30 pages had to be chapters one and two, or even sequential. Some of the later chapters--where I hit my stride--are much more indicative of the overall style and tone of the tale than the gear-grinding that went on when I first hauled out a 13-year old unpublished short story and began bashing it into a novel. So, I wrote to Lynn Vannucci and asked her if she cared whether she got a "first" chapter or not, in addition to some other questions I had about the workshop. Maybe it will be an issue, maybe it won't. If it is, there are other such novel-pummeling opportunities out there, and I'll seek them out.
The second thing I realized was that I was butting up against the marketability vs. craft dilemma again. It was one thing to realize that I needed to up the stakes for my protagonist, and make what happened to a supporting character happen to him instead. It was quite another to go through the first chapters of the seven novels I've read over the past two weeks and realize that, with the possible exception of The Road, every one of them had a first chapter that grabbed, plotwise.
Granted, five of those books were by Christopher Moore, so maybe my sample was skewed. For a control I looked at the opening bit of A Clockwork Orange, because it was still on the couch from the last time I used it here, and Slaughterhouse Five, which has been on the floor next to the couch since February. They grab, too, but more in the manner of Cormac McCarthy. They do it with language and setup. Moore and Warren Ellis do it with things that happen.
Within the first three pages of Lamb, an angel raises Biff from the dead, who promptly socks the angel in the mouth. In Practical Demonkeeping, a smooth operating pot dealer on the verge of his first five-figure deal gets eaten by a demon, whole, by page ten. Similarly, the protagonist of A Dirty Job gains a daughter, loses his wife, and sees Death in the first chapter. Island of the Sequined Love Nun opens with the main character and his sidekick hanging upside-down from a breadfruit tree, apparently about to be eaten by cannibals. Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove isn't quite as punch-you-in-the-face, but the prologue presents you with three disparate events that are related in some intriguing way, one of which is a suicide. Warren Ellis's Crooked Little Vein opts to punch you in the face and then stomp on your head, opening the first chapter with a rat taking a piss in someone's coffee mug and ending it with the heroin-shooting chief of staff to the office of the President of the United States hiring a detective to find a mystical book that will stop America's descent into the depths of perversion.
Me, I got nothin'.
Oh, stuff happens. But after reading through the whole project with fresh eyes, I saw that I open with a riot...which the protagonist and his buddies are walking away from. You never see it. They flee, they walk through the city streets, they have a conversation, they go home. Gak.
I also discovered that I had created a setup and a scene when I finally finished off chapter 12 after a five month hiatus that would actually work at the tail end of the first chapter. I could show more of the riot, then have the protagonist head off to Central Park to unwind with some good old-fashioned anonymous evening sex in The Ramble, whereupon an unknown sniper would pop the head of his tryst like a watermelon before he even gets his fly unbuttoned.
Off and running, chapter one.
But then I had to stop and think for a minute. Is that what the story needs? Or is that merely what the market demands these days? It'd be nice if both were true.
I used to have a knee-jerk reaction to all that "know your market" speak that you hear so frequently in workshops and at conferences. I think this is mostly because I tend to hear it in a room with a couple of people who are really good, some more people who can definitely sling words, and a bunch of people who can't write their way out of paper bags yet. "Knowing their market" isn't going to do a damn thing for them.
On the other hand, I know people who are staunchly opposed to any sort of market consideration at any point before the manuscript is completed, proofed, and ready to go. And none of them have published a novel, despite multiple attempts.
It's the Dan Brown effect. I was painfully aware of every egregious violation of the rules of style, plot, and characterization in The DaVinci Code--up to and including having two central characters look at their own reflections so that their appearance could be described to the reader--but I read it in two sittings, and that fucker has sold 40 million copies. Clearly, he did something right, and I can't just dismiss him as a hack when he's achieved fabulous success doing what I want to do with my life while I'm sitting here writing this blog post about what I need to do to finish my first novel.
I'm fairly certain that my protagonist is "merely an individual trying to make sense of the heavens and hells in Horatio's philosophy." But I know that I tend not to enjoy books or short stories where somebody just wanders around and thinks. Stuff needs to happen, and the characters need to be much more than mere vehicles for that stuff. I could never be a Didion, Oates, or Greene, but then, I don't want to be. I don't want to be a Brown, either, except insofar as I would like to own a private island. There's got to be a balance, a middle ground where I can do my thing with integrity without dooming my work to the eternal slush pile.
I'll let you know if I find it.
So, what did I accomplish this weekend? Everything I noted here, plus a short story submission and a poetry submission. This is why I didn't want to get locked into the novel!novel!novel! trap, because in point of fact I did get a lot done, even if it was spread out over a few different aspects of my writing endeavor, and I'm not going to get all bent out of shape because I didn't get where I wanted to be with the Big Project. I've actually done more with the book in the past two weeks than I've done with it in several months.
Perspective: it's important.
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