The Writing Life: Behind the Scenes of the FLU SEASON Series

Ever since we were stuck at home during our infamous lockdown era, when I blithely declared I shall write a pandemic novel because I then had enough time free to do it, I got into a regular pattern. I arose at about the same time as when I would go off to the job, grab some coffee, and sit myself at the computer freshly booted up. I would review any notes I'd made since the previous writing session as I started playing the musical soundtrack to the story. I usually had an idea of what came next so I would back up and read through what I'd previously written, editing as I went. I like to call this "thickening" the scene. I tend to write lean and go back to add all of the descriptions, character thoughts and feelings, and making sure there are enough nods and sighs. That sends me into unwritten territory. I do the best I can, knowing I will edit it the next day, and again later, as much as needed. As the music evokes the scene, I imagine sitting in a movie theater and watching the action unfold on the screen that's at the front of my mind. I try to get it all down on the computer screen as best I can.

The remainder of the day I do not write (but I continue to think through what I've just written and what may come next). Occasionally an idea flares up in the afternoon that will prompt me to write a little, at least enough that I won't forget it. Same with the evening. Once I am far enough into the story, it tends to stay with me, constantly playing in my head, sending me on scenarios of the next episode, running lines of dialog as though I've just left the theater after watching the entire movie. This cinematic process has been with me from before the pandemic pause yet it has especially been my method while working on the FLU SEASON series, which began as a stand-alone novel only to become a trilogy and now, as I work on the sixth book, a full series.

Perhaps it is easier working on a series because the world is the same, and you have the same cast of characters. However, characters grow up. That is my forte, I believe: being able to write a character as a child, then a teenager, a young adult, and on to an elderly person all while keeping the personality - and shifts of that personality due to aging and the various experiences which shape a person - identifiable as the same person. I first did that in my semi-biographical novel A GIRL CALLED WOLF where I fleshed out a compelling story of a more compelling real life of a friend of a friend. That book began in her infancy and took her up through her adult age. I hadn't planned anything but realized after finishing it that I had managed to achieve something special, yet I had to give credit to all of the then-recent study of psychology and life stages. With plenty of linguistic training, I could plausibly replicate the speech patterns of various ages, especially an uneducated child as well as an adult whose first language isn't English.

In the FLU SEASON series, I have done it again (hopefully) by bringing characters to life as babies and tending to them as they grow across the pages and even into a subsequent novel. Take Isla Baumann, for example, who is born toward the end of Book 1: THE BOOK OF MOM, narrated by Mom's teenage son Sandy. As a baby she doesn't have much to do, but in Book 2: THE WAY OF THE SON, when Sandy takes his wife and baby into the savage Outerlands, Isla starts to develop her own personality, even displaying unique supernatural powers in trying to communicate with her parents - who obviously do not understand her. At the beginning of Book 3: DAWN OF THE DAUGHTERS, Isla is a little girl of 4 and so attuned to her environment that she can serve as narrator of the novel. She goes through her life, from a child to a teenager, to young womanhood, to middle age and to the end of her days by the end of this book. Her perspective changes in keeping with the awful things and the good things that happen.

I'd thought that would be the end of the series, just a trilogy that said most of what I wanted to get across to readers experiencing a realistic near-future following the hardship of a 10-year pandemic and collapse of society that resulted from it. But I had more ideas. Toward the end of Book 3, society was rebuilding, returning to some semblance of order although we find it rather skewed in unpleasant ways.

In Book 4: THE BOOK OF DAD 

I bring in Isla's last child, a boy named Fritz (named after the family patriarch) who was born at the end of Book 3. Now he is a grown man with a family but in trouble with the government due to his making of a video of elderly Isla telling her stores about the decades of trouble she lived through. But now the government wants to disavow all of the hardship, the official narrative being that the pandemic was mild and the decades of lawlessness weren't so bad. Fritz is a nervous man and gets into further trouble in the novel, but doing so reveals much of what is wrong with the new, rebuilt society. In Book 3, Fritz's family is mentioned briefly. In Book 4, we meet his children: 2 brothers and young Maggie, all stuck in the oppressive capital city.

Fritz narrates his own story in Book 4, but we get a glimpse of a 10 year-old Maggie. In Book 5: THE GRANDDAUGHTER, she is a grown woman living out west and still figuring what to do with her life. She has the background of Isla's grandmother and father, who played the family's tuba before Isla took it over. But music is frowned upon in the capital and the tuba was put in a museum of naughty devices. The first step, Maggie decides with her older cousin Eve, is to return there and claim the tuba - if it still exists. Next she will start a kids band in her small town, enlisting the aid and advice of a music salesman from a nearby city. Both plans lead her into dangerous territory and constant trouble. By the end of the novel, Maggie is a mature woman set in her career. 

Maggie is the crossover character, tying the first three books to the second three books. Yet like the others mentioned above, she is introduced as a precocious child and we are allowed to follow her literally through her life into her senior years in Book 6: THE GRANDSONS (not yet published). Do not be confused by the title of this current work-in-progress, for the title refers to three characters who are each a grandson to one of the other characters - including a surprise guest in the final chapter. This final volume is expected to be ready later in 2025. I do not expect there will be a seventh book in the series; however, I will have set up the future world used in my already-publish epic fantasy novel: EPIC FANTASY *WITH DRAGONS, which is set in the year 8000. In it, those characters make frequent references to an ancient war which occurs in the year 3000. Maggie passes to her reward in the later-2100s with the world already going mad and mentions made of what is happening in Maggie's lifetime that foreshadows these future events. (I've blogged about this linkage previously here.) I also managed to tie in my vampire trilogy (A DRY PATCH OF SKIN, SUNRISE, and SUNSET) which, being pre-pandemic when written, had characters in 2028 fail to mention such an event, thus correcting the timeline.

After five completed books in the series, I feel I know each of the principal characters as well as my own family, perhaps better, as though I've lived with them all of their lives - which I actually have. I was there when they were born and again when they die. This is the reason for writing, for imagining. It is a kind of role-playing game which is acceptable in polite society. I can play in the garden of my own design, and in that time and place, I can live out my remaining days with a fair amount of pleasure - which I'm happy to share with you. Thanks, as always, for your continuing support.

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(C) Copyright 2010-2024 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

The FLU SEASON Trilogy: Doing What I Do

It has been a week since my new novel FLU SEASON 2: THE WAY OF THE SON launched and the excitement of that minimalistic day still lingers. The thrill of seeing my finger push that button to send a tweet into the void sizzles even now. It's all about the thrill, you see. I really can't stop. It's like a role-playing game and I get to play all the characters and make them do what I want them to do. By the end, I feel like I have put together a million-piece jigsaw puzzle and can finally see the big picture.

Whenever anyone might ask me why I write - a typical question in writing communities online - I pause thoughtfully, then launch into a diatribe about how it is all fun and games until I come to the end. Then I feel a great emptiness as the published book leaves the nest and tries to fly on its own. But the game analogy is valid. When I really think about it, that is what it is: a game. It gets me up in the mornings to play it. I want to see what happens next to these invented characters - blithely acknowledging that I have the power to make things happen in a certain way.

Puppet master? I think not. For as the characters come on stage more and more, they become real and often argue with me, demand a different turn of events, threaten to sit and pout. I offer a quick way out in the form of a murder or unlucky fall, but usually I cannot part with them. Even the villains compel me to assist in their crimes. Sure, there is some clear-headed planning and crafting a narrative that goes this way and that, making arcs, dropping seeds, foreshadowing, flashing back, information dumping but only in spoonfuls here and there. I know what to do.

However, at the bottom of all of that writerly stuff is the game. An old adage for writers goes a little bit like this: Write the story you want to read. And I do. I don't often know what kind of story I want to read when I start, but it comes to me soon enough. It usually comes to me when I've written about 10,000 words. By then, the story stays with me when I'm not actively writing. I start to think of what happens next - and what just happened and what I may have missed and need to add or change - through the day and into the evening. As the story progresses, I may be so driven as to sit down in the middle of the afternoon and type out another scene. Or, surprisingly, delve back in late in the evening just as I was certain it was time to sleep. It's a crazy process, but there it is.

For my FLU SEASON trilogy, which began as a stand-alone book, THE BOOK OF MOM, until 2/3 of the way into writing it, I developed a regular routine (me being a retired fool with little to occupy my hours). I would rise and get coffee while booting up the beast (an old desktop computer running Windows whatever-number, using Word of some kind). I'd sit and open the file, a running manuscript in which I add the next bit straight into the file, which is already set in book format - all the better to see how it will look in the final version. While starting the session, I begin listening to the "soundtrack" I've put together: music which fits the scene, always instrumental (don't need sung words getting in the way of the words in my head).

I usually begin by addressing spots I thought about since the previous session and fix those. Then I might read through the last scene I wrote and revise/edit it, which leaves me ready to dive into the next scene or chapter. In the alternative, if an idea is hot when I'm starting, I may go straight to typing out that scene while it rages, then return to my normal routine. Depending on the scene - writing coaches talk about the goal of a scene - I may begin with a little setting information, or jump into dialog to get it started. I'm always thinking of the mood of the scene - mood of the characters as well as what comes from the setting, like the difference between the same dialog and action in a sunny setting versus a dark and rainy setting. I know from a lot of previous writing how to mix exposition ("telling") with live action and dialog ("showing"), with the thoughts and feelings of the characters.

However, I tend to "write lean" just to get the story down in a basic form, knowing I will go back over it and make it richer. Sometimes an exchange of dialog runs the scene. Other times, getting the look and feel of the place and situation is most important. I find I have the uncanny ability to "become" a character and think, speak, and act as that character would. And yet I was never a great actor! Yet, in becoming my characters, I feel what they feel and that makes the writing effort exhausting - or occasionally energizing. It is almost like going to the gym for a hard workout, depending on the conflict in the scene I'm writing. A lot of that is driven by whatever is happening in my head when my fingers hit the keyboard. I might say it is magic but I don't truly know. Probably a form of mental illness of which I can make full use of its quirky features. Living in one's head is not just a metaphor.

I will write as long as I can. When the scene is finished I will go back immediately and read it through, revising as I go. I add more description (a sentence here or there), fill out dialogue (can't just have the necessary words but also need the extra phrases that make dialog sound real), and add thoughts and feelings (of the protagonist; can't know what other characters are thinking and feeling but I can suggest those through what the protagonist notices). When I get tired or I run up against having to do some other task, I'll pack it up, save everything in 6 places (3 places off the desktop computer), and call it a day.

Then I think about the story as I go through my day. I'll drive to the grocery store but there is the next scene in my mind's eye as I'm sitting at the traffic light. I push the cart through the store and I'm thinking through that last exchange of dialog, perhaps deciding a better phrase to have my character speak. Or I might realize I forgot to include something or I discover in reviewing what I just wrote that I need to add some important detail - something a reader would point out. Later, often lying in bed ready to sleep, I will also find "plot holes" (seldom these days, despite being a make-it-up-as-I-go-along kind of writer) or other spots I need to address. Then, if I'm lucky, I will go on to sleep. And sometimes I will have a dream which relates to the story I'm writing and I'll pop up in the darkness to scribble something on a note pad next to my bed and deal with it in the morning.

So for the two years in which I've worked on three novels, this has been my usual daily work routine. It is good to have a regular schedule when nothing else such as getting to work is there to keep me on track. I often confuse the day of the week now, unless the TV schedule reminds me. After a while they all run together as one big writing session, anyway, and I don't mind that.

I'm not sure what comes next. The FLU SEASON Trilogy is finished with Book 3: DAWN OF THE DAUGHTERS - coming in fall 2023. I have teased that I will have an artificial intelligence app read my trilogy and then create a fourth book. Then a fifth book. And I shall be reduced to mere editor. We shall see. At least read Book 3, the final fully human-written novel of my career!

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(C) Copyright 2010-2023 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

The Solitude, part 8

As you all must be tired of reading, last summer I was driving through Canada thinking about what my actual process was for writing a novel - and then I did write a novel, ironically. So I wrote out my process and have been sharing it step by step this year during my stay-at-home solitude. In the previous post here, we covered the agonizing revision and editing steps. Now comes the most difficult steps of all, which I must share before I can go on my summer staycation.

Step 9

A lot of people think it's finished now. A lot of people think it's finished when the first draft is complete (haha), but then the revision and editing begins (mwah-haha). So even now, there is still much to do. The most difficult thing to do is write a blurb. That short copy is often more daunting than the 100,000-word book it's about. 

The blurb is a short description of the story intended for the back cover of the book but also may be used for advertising purposes. The trick is to suggest the main points without giving away the story. If this is for an agent or publisher, the blurb would be expanded into something longer often called a synopsis, which does include everything, spoilers and all, because the people you work with need to know the complete story.

The blurb, however, is only about 200 words. In submitting a book manuscript to a contest, for one purpose, there is often a limit on the word count for the blurb. For the back cover, you must be aware of the space which the text takes up.

For EXCHANGE, my JFW (just-finished-work, as opposed to WIP, work-in-progress), I dabbled with the blurb well before I even reached the middle of the writing. There is a basic template which helps sometimes, hinders at other times: Introduce main character and situation/setting; mention chief problem faced; discuss why it will be difficult to solve problem or what the ramifications will be if problem is not solved; end with a question, something like "But will he succeed?"

Here is what I've been working on for EXCHANGE and continue to tweak:

Bill Masters has a good life as a high school teacher in suburbia. But that life is shattered when his wife and daughter are killed in a mass shooting. Prepared to wallow in depression and drink himself into numbness, Bill must pull himself together when their foreign exchange student arrives not knowing what has happened. Forced to try to be a good host father, Bill finds Wendy Wang from China to be both a hindrance to his recovery and a boost to his will to go on. As Bill struggles through the stages of grief, however, he must battle on-going crimes and threats to his peace, giving him a second chance with Wendy. He will protect her. This time he will not fail - no matter what it takes.

That may look like a lot of text yet it is only 129 words. In it, I have who the story is about, what the situation is, the main obstacle(s), and a suggestion of possible love-interest or foil, and the direction the story will take. As it is, it's rather clunky. Tweaking continues. 

[Note: Because the book is finished and has been published, the tweaking has stopped and a much tighter blurb made it to the back of the book cover. See image below.]

Step 10

In the indie publishing world, we hire someone to make a cover for the book. If it's an ebook such as for Kindle we only need a front cover. If it will be a paperback, we need the full front, spine, and back.

Looking at recent covers of literary fiction in my local Barnes & Noble, I see the trend to have a single image which suggests the main character, the plot, or the setting. The title and author's name is enlarged to cover much of the image. Not my favorite style but it seems the trend today, so I'm following it.

Science fiction and fantasy are known for their elaborate and evocative cover art. Romance covers usually feature a couple. Crime fiction features some prop that suggests the crime. You get the idea. But literary fiction can be about anything as long as it is contemporary.

So, following the latest "rules", I have a front cover for my newest literary novel, EXCHANGE. The image is of one  character in a provocative pose. Actually, there is nothing particularly provocative about it, but readers may find it provocative because of the way other elements of the cover come together.

Breaking the title into three lines adds drama and symbolism. The letters could be seen as prison bars, which may add a mysterious tone. For colors, I went with gray to emphasize the nature of the gun debate: there are no black or white solutions. My designer made sure her eyes were not obstructed by the letters because eyes on a face are primary attention-grabbers for potential buyers. The required phrase "a novel" lets you know this is a work of fiction and not a book of essays on gun control. My author name gets a good location. A couple previous titles being mentioned can add to my Christmas bonus; I chose two from my shelf that are in the same genre (i.e., literary and cross-cultural romance). 

For the back cover, I like how the front cover image continues, but a different cover might have different art. Be aware that the back cover will have small text on it (the blurb) so the art should not be too complex to obscure the readability of that text. Note the "Gun Free Zone" tattoo on her shoulder. Glowing quotes from readers, serious author picture, publisher logo (in gray) are other elements of the back cover - plus the bar code, which has not been applied yet to this image (it goes in the white space below the publisher logo). Always check for the readability of the blurb (contrast, size, font). Then wait for things to happen. Meantime, start at Step 1 on a new project.

This concludes the Process posts. We hope also that the Solitude comes to an end, as well. Too much idle time makes Jack a dull boy, as they say.

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(C) Copyright 2010-2020 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

The Solitude, part 7

Those of you who follow this blog may be surprised that it continues. That fact is only due to the unfinished discussion of my writing process. This time last year, for example, I decided one morning that I didn't need to blog, that I could call my absence a summer vacation. Unfortunately or not, that vacation from blogging lasted deep into the winter holidays. This year, however, every week is summer vacation. 

Besides, those of you who have finished your first complete draft of something novel-like will need instruction on what to do next. So, in the interest of time, I shall post 2 steps here!

Part 7

Once I have come to the end of the story and can call the manuscript complete, it is time for revision. Getting the whole story out is fine and dandy but now the work begins. I like to describe this as a sculptor throwing a clump of wet clay on a wheel (the basic first draft) and then crafting it into something beautiful (the finished manuscript).

The first step for me is to go back to any scenes where I already know I need to do more tweaking. I usually edit previous sections during the process of composing new text, so I don't expect a major editing pass - but I still do it. After this spot checking, I'll return to the first page and read straight through to the end.

My goal in the first read-through is to fill out scenes, make them more complete by adding description, writing more and/or better dialog, clarifying any information, and sometimes cutting out material that is no longer relevant based on how the story actually finished. Not all seeds I plant come to fruition and must be weeded out. So, generally, the word count will expand during this stage.

In the second pass from start to finish, I focus on scenes as individual stories, making sure the arc is effective and the other elements fit the purpose of the scene - which should be to move the plot along, develop characters, or emphasize a point or theme which is important to the story (rarely done). Occasionally, I'll have a scene that is purely for fun, which may also serve to develop a character. I seldom "kill my darlings" but some do get a firm wrist slap.

Presently [sometime in October 2019], I'm in the third full pass of my current just-finished novel, titled EXCHANGE, and this stage involves trimming words from sentences and cutting whole sentences from paragraphs which don't seem to be needed. I may also cut entire paragraphs but because I revise as I compose, I usually don't have a lot of that - unless I decide an entire scene is no longer needed.

I don't care about reaching a particular word count, although I'm still cognizant of desired counts for various genre. Because epic fantasy readers expect a fat book, I let my EPIC FANTASY *WITH DRAGONS go to 233,000 (after editing and revision down from 255,000). But some stories have their own inherent length, like my contemporary adventure novel A GIRL CALLED WOLF, which hit 86,000. Making it longer, usually by adding scenes, would have lessened the story's effect.

Part 8

So I have gone through the whole manuscript a few times, working on the arcs, the pacing, weeding out unnecessary words, sentences, and some paragraphs, and punching up the dialog. I've stood back and looked at the story from a wider perspective to make sure it all fits together and works as a drama. I'm satisfied with what I've got.

Now I do the little dirty work: proofreading. I run spell checker constantly as I write and revise day by day. However, errors still make it through. I know a few of my pet errors, the kind of typos that a spell checker won't catch. For example, I seldom write the word "form" in a story but I do use "from" a lot, but I tend to type "form" instead of "from" so I will run a special find-and-replace for that thorn in my side (and a few others).

Other funny typos are where I've made a correction of a perfectly good word during revision so the correct word is now incorrect. I found a typo in one of my books where what showed was "he" but the correct word should've been "the".  Yes, that was so funny (not); try finding that needle in a haystack. Sometimes I write "by ear" so I'll find an error I've spelled as "won" which should be "one". It is maddening.

I have a short list of words I specifically check because I know I overuse them: all, now, then, that, almost...and so on. A lot of typos that survive scrutiny and remain in the finished book are the result of the proofreading itself: the imperfect cutting or inserting of text, where something is left behind. That includes punctuation. Cut a phrase from a sentence and put a period where the comma used to be? Done. Or maybe not. Maybe the period is next to the comma that didn't get deleted! Aaargh!

One thing I'll admit to is when the page is laid out "justified" (the text goes evenly from margin to margin like printed books have it), I get a little OCD if there is too much spread, the gaps between words are too wide - also if the line of text is too compressed. I will often rewrite the sentence to reduce the gaps or the crowding in the line as it lays on the page just to improve the "look" of the page.

Then I will give the manuscript one final read after putting it away for a bit, trying to be a typical reader, avoiding the urge to change anything - other than a lingering typo. My finished manuscripts average 1 typo per 10,000 words, which for an old full-time English teacher with fading eyesight, is rather good. Don't misunderstand: The work done in Parts 7 and 8 is a long process requiring many reads, a lot of searches, plenty of word wrangling. It is not a one and done step.

NEXT: The hard part (writing a blurb)



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(C) Copyright 2010-2020 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

The Solitude, part 6

Yes, there's good news and some bad news. As always. The good news is that life is returning to the normal we consider normal in our daily lives. The bad news is that it's not happening everywhere and it's not quite the same for everyone. For that matter, some people don't want that same kind of same. But that is a whole other blog post. When life becomes unfathomable, I dive into a good book and swim about at my leisure.

For writers there's always a good news / bad news dichotomy, too. Oh my God! I finished! I finally finished this thing! (Good news.) But now I have to revise, and edit, and proofread.... (Bad news.) After writing several novels I've developed a process which seems to fit my lifestyle and my inane sense of story, which I use to guide me through The Process. Having just launched my latest novel, a crime drama, I can easily look back and see how I went through the process of writing the book.

First, we have to finish the manuscript. And there's no better way than having a climax. That, too, has a good news, bad news convention. If all has gone well thus far, we are at the top of that dramatic arc and ready to pull the trigger on that gun we mentioned in the first act lay upon the mantlepiece. If we have set up this moment effectively, it's a crowning achievement we can smile about for a long time. That's good news. If we have wandered about, we may still stumble upon the idea that it's about time to do something else...which would be the bad news. Ultimately, we should have planned this sooner, at least by the two-thirds mark in the story - if we even know where that is when we are at the starting point.

Note: Almost a year ago, while driving around the country, I figured out my own writing process and made it into a lecture, something I might share with young writers, my students, and anyone who asks.

Part 6

I have an innate sense of pacing when writing a novel. I keep everything in my head with very few notes, seldom more than a few Post-Its. Other writers I know create an elaborate outline with every detail in its place, but that's not for me. I write, as they say, "by the seat of my pants".  (See previous post for apologies and explanations.) So as I arrive at the two-thirds point in a book, I must survey all my subplots and see how to resolve them (if I hadn't known previously, and I often don't). As I look at my shelf of books, I know I have usually resolved the subplots just before the main plot ends.

Here is where pacing is so important. The chapters tend to get shorter, the descriptions briefer, as action takes over the story. The pace quickens. Chases, fights, desperation time. However, even as the reader feels the quickening pace, I slow down writing it. I often go to slow-mo. I think like a movie camera and a film director. I choreograph action scenes in my head, then try to describe the action. One minute of action in the manuscript may take two days to write and fourteen days to rewrite.

When I get to the climax of the book, the big scene where all is revealed to reader and protagonist, I like to gently hammer home the theme. Not in a preachy manner but still clear enough it is not missed. The theme is not a message; it is a stylistic mantra that has been woven through the foundation of the story. Theme can often be stated in a single word; I seem to write a lot about Redemption and use that as the theme in so many of my stories: people going through hell to find themselves or their passion or their reason for being or why the dragons exist at all. My protagonist carries that theme in his/her final decisions and actions. A lot depends on whether the protagonist will survive or not - which would be a spoiler. (In only two of my novels does the protagonist not make it out alive.)

I know when I've arrived at the end. I've been feeling the downhill momentum for several scenes - despite the rising dramatic arc, ironically. Some stories will have the great confrontation between protagonist and antagonist: a swordfight or a fistfight or a well-stated argument that crushes a soul or the revelation of who he/she really is! The last scene is hard to write - hard to get it right, to make it perfect. The final few lines are important. It has to end with the perfect description, line of dialog, thought or feeling. I work on the last page a lot. And by last, I do not mean the exact final page. because there is always the denouement (my favorite French word after croissant), the "wrapping up". For a TV show, it's the two minute scene following the last commercial break, a summarizing of what has transpired and perhaps, if a sequel is on the horizon, a glimpse of what may come.

Then I go back to the beginning and read through the whole manuscript. I edit as I go, of course, but I do not yet enter the revision stage. Eventually, I know I must accept the bad news and force myself to switch hats from writer to editor. I often feel silly with the different hats, but they do keep my hair from blowing into a mess, and for that I am grateful.

NEXT: The actual revision tips. 

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(C) Copyright 2010-2020 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

The Solitude, part 5

The good news* is that some of us have been given permission to return to our usual way of life, our old habits, the normal things we are used to doing. For me, that includes the launching of my latest novel, EXCHANGE, which has been delayed because of the changing circumstances of life in general. I lovingly describe it as a crime thriller because it involves a big crime followed by on-going crimes and the main character has to keep trying to deal with the cascade of trouble. Mostly it's about the issue of gun violence in America. (More on that touchy subject next time.)

*The bad news, by the way, is that some of us haven't yet been given permission - as though we are in kindergarten and need to ask the teacher for permission to go by ourselves to the restroom!

For this week, I need to rush headlong into the next step in my writing process, a process I paid attention to while writing EXCHANGE, just so I could tell you about it.

Part 5

When I'm heading into the middle of the book, it is subplot time. Some of those are already part of the original idea, the obstacles the protagonist must overcome. Others are just some seeds I toss in hoping to harvest later in the book. Often they do not blossom so I must go back during revision and rip them out.

Depending on the genre, I might make a rough outline of events, at least chapter by chapter as I go, or I will simply press ahead and let the story unfold in whatever manner it does, almost as though I am merely taking dictation from the muses in my head. I like that feature of writing: letting it happen. If you read enough you get a sense for how a story should unfold and get a feel for the timing of things happening.

There seem to be patterns we absorb as readers that stay in our heads to shape plots and enforce genre demands. This allows me to skip a formal outline or detailed plotting. If I need to, I will slow down and write some short ideas about a scene, but I seldom do more than that. If a difficult-to-write scene is coming up, I may take a break from writing while I think it through in my head, or sometimes do some research. (I'll keep the story in my head during this time by editing what I've previously written.) Because I tend to get into the head of my protagonist and try to think like him/her (thanks Acting 101 class in college!), I feel the same emotions as my protagonist (or whichever character I'm writing), so it often takes an emotional toll on me. Yes, sometimes I cry when I've made my characters do something bad and feel proud when they do something good.

Along with subplots - which, for me, will come to fruition alternating with main storyline scenes - are other characters. Pretty standard for me: protagonist (narrator), sidekick or assistant, love interest, but I do not usually have a true antagonist or villain. I believe firmly in the antagonist being a protagonist in his/her own mind. Only in my vampire trilogy do I have a true villain bent on destroying the hero. In most of my books, what hinders the protagonist are elements of nature or other people just getting in the way, not really seeking destruction. That seems more realistic to me, even in an epic fantasy.  

So this takes me two-thirds of the way into the story - where I need to start planning how to stick the landing. Because I usually already know how the story will end, it is simply a matter of wrapping up storylines, as I do in Part 6.

NEXT: The climax. And maybe a complete explication of why I wrote EXCHANGE.


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(C) Copyright 2010-2020 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

The Solitude, part 4

This extended period of time wouldn't be too different from my usual summer vacation, except for not having a movie theater to visit or a bookstore to browse in. I thought initially that I would get a lot of work done, perhaps start a new novel, but like in the past, when I have a lot of time I tend to waste it while I can be incredibly productive in short bits of time, like an hour off between classes. However, I still remember my traveling lecture about my particular writing process, so I'll keep going.

After I've gotten the idea and toyed with it a while to be sure it's something that would make a good story and I've played around finding the narrator's voice, I'm ready to go. I envision the opening scene, something appropriate to the story, maybe our hero or heroine doing something typical or something out of character. It depends on the story and the genre. The first rush of key-flinging is exciting but then...

Step 4

When I get to around 10,000 words, I have to think ahead about what should happen. Because I usually have the ending in mind when I begin - or at least by the 10,000 word mark - I need to add the required obstacles and detours and dangers I think what would be logical for the story and the characters' world view as well as being interesting in their own right.

Some of my writer friends like to plan out everything in a formal manner. Not me. I like to get into the head of my protagonist and try to think as he/she would think - like an actor taking on a role - and let the next thing happen as unexpectedly for me as for my protagonist. If I do any planning of interim events, it's seldom more than a list of event keywords, like "dragons attack" or "pervy photog, Bill intervenes". I'll work out the details when I get there. When I have tried to outline in more detail, like some colleagues do, I always drift off it fairly soon and even when trying to return it just becomes a whole new outline - like there are so many versions of a story in the multiverse.

A lot depends on the genre, of course. Each genre has its own requirements or traditions. I know I must include or follow some of them, well enough to honor the genre, but if I write the same things then it won't be good - and not so interesting to me. So I always try to write a little askew from the norms. Yes, most epic fantasy crime romances go this way, so I will make a change here and twist it there to be different. I get a lot of cross-genre hybrids that way. But I don't care; if the story interests me, I keep writing.

If the story stops being interesting to me (yes, there have been a few), nobody else ever sees it. The effort to make it interesting - not to mention believable for the story's situation - is what makes writing difficult. You know where you want to go but aren't sure the best way to get there. That is my number one frustration while writing.

In my current Work-in-Progress, given the way the book opened, at the 10,000 word mark I made sure to give my protagonist new problems to have to confront. As a contemporary story, the problems are obvious and don't require me to make a list (outline). However, while driving around, for example, I may have a thought pop into my head that reminds me to add this or that. What if this happened? Wouldn't that be awkward? How would he react? Like a psychology experiment. Sometimes I must go back to an earlier scene to put it in a new predicament - the curse of not outlining before writing. Sometimes I keep a list of things that need to be added and I will put them in at a good place in the story during revision.

Moving the story along to the mid-point is an exercise in mini-dramas and dramatic arc which are limited to a chapter. I like the aria and recitativo model taught to me by author David  Huddle during my MFA program. As a former music student, I understood immediately the operatic concept. The aria is a real-time scene with dialog and details that explore the situation, feelings, motivations, and develop character and move the plot forward. The recitativo is simple exposition which takes you to the next aria. It should not have any important revelations in it. String a bunch of arias together and you have a full opera.

The main idea is that writing the beginning, up to 10,000 words is a different kind of writing than the rest of the book. Then I must shift into what feels like a completely different frame of mind. At this point, I also start thinking of the story throughout my daily life. Thoughts pop into my head at random. Then I cannot keep from returning to the keyboard.

Next: Subplots.


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(C) Copyright 2010-2020 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

The Solitude, Part 3

Have you ever just awakened in a rush and realized you're late to write a blog post? No, me neither. But I have awakened and realized it just might be Sunday again, so a blog post would be a way to fill the morning. So once again we return to the subject at hand: my writing process. Why? Because many have asked me the infernal questions: Where do you get your ideas? and How do you write all of that stuff? So I've tried to think it through and come up with answers. Then I wrote it out for the sake of some future creative writing class I likely will never teach.

I revealed the 'getting ideas' part already (see previous blog posts). The next step is to get started. The opening scene. The first paragraph. The first sentence. Once upon a time or It was a dark and stormy night are not allowed. Start with the main character doing something in the first sentence. Or you can go with a statement about the weather or the collapse of society. Something - anything - just to get some words on the page or screen. 

When I was a young writer I was fascinated by the setting of the story, mostly because I wrote science fiction and alien worlds were...fascinating. As I later moved into contemporary literary fiction, I focused on the protagonist before the setting - because, well, the setting was already fairly well known, being contemporary and such. Here is what I thought of while driving from Winnipeg to Edmonton last summer because the road was there:

Step 3

When I get the first germ of an idea, I need a character to carry the story. In my younger writing days, I was all about interesting plots and the characters were cardboard. Then, in my graduate school days, I was ushered rather forcefully into the world of character-driven fiction. So now I have to begin with an interesting person - or, at least, an ordinary person with an interesting problem.

 To begin a novel I do some test writing. I begin with the principal character (usually the protagonist) and see where it goes. Mostly I am experimenting with the voice. How does that character speak? Can I imitate that character's way of speaking? Voice patterns, way of thinking, world view? Dialect or vernacular? Age? (In my novel A Girl Called Wolf, I wrote the main character speaking as a young child with limited vocabulary at the beginning, then as an older child, then a teen, and finally an adult.) A lot of fiction today seems to favor the 1st person point of view, especially in YA. I remember most of the stories read in my youth were in first-person. A lot depends, in my opinion, on the story (what happens) and the narrator (who tells what happens).

 If the protagonist has a unique voice, a way of speaking that is compelling or who has special knowledge, then 1st person (I, me) makes sense. But sometimes you want a little distance between the reader and the narrative/characters so 3rd person (she/her, he/him) is more appropriate. Also, if you are working with a large cast of characters, 3rd person can allow you to get into each one's heads.

 In 3rd person you can still focus on one character, as I do in my current WIP, or you can treat all the characters as actors on a stage. A "close 3rd person" still allows you to hear the character's thoughts and know his/her feelings. You just cannot know the internal thoughts and feelings of other characters. In my collection, I have only 3 novels using 1st person. One other was originally 1st person but I changed it to close 3rd to give the story more space.

This bunny has no purpose here other than to be a bunny.

Therefore, as various writing gurus have said and I have to agree, the only reason to use first-person for narration is because the speaker has a unique perspective on the story and can convey it in an interesting way. Otherwise, third-person will do quite nicely. Make it close third-person if you still want that tight perspective. 

For example, in my forthcoming novel, I keep the "camera" on the shoulder of my protagonist/ main character throughout, even though I use third-person. However, in doing so, we must be very careful not to hop into the head of another character. I cheated a bit in one scene by having her overhear what the protagonist was speaking into a phone in the next room. But I did not enter her head and reveal her thoughts; only physical action - which may suggest thoughts but not official expose them. I stayed cool, man, cool.


NEXT: The Story Takes Off


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(C) Copyright 2010-2020 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

The Solitude, Part 2

I didn't really expect everything would return to normal by this weekend. However, I did kind of wish I could use my time off from the day job to go traveling around, visit far-flung locations, schmooze with tropical gallivants, perhaps come up with a new story to fill my days. I did start writing a post-apocalyptic plague novel. But then so has every other writer I know. I have 4000 words so far.

Nevertheless, I promised to continue my yet-to-be-award-winning series on my particular writing process. Last blog post, I explained how I get ideas for novels. This post, I will describe what I do once I have the idea. I'm not suggesting here that this is the best or only way to proceed; rather, this is what has worked for me. Indeed, this is what I see happening time and time again when I'm beginning a new book.

Step 2

A lot of writers I know like to construct elaborate outlines of a book and follow their outlines religiously, allowing for an occasional detour. Not me. I generally have the whole idea in my head when I begin. I know where I'm going and the basic direction. However, exactly how I will get to the end and what I may discover along the way that I haven't thought of in the early stages is always interesting. By the time I reach about 10,000 words, I'm sure of how the story will end. I have changed the ending from my original idea in only a couple of my books. 

By this point, I have also listened to a lot of music and may have constructed a soundtrack, music which fits the scenes or which establishes the mood for scenes. I use music A LOT to aid my writing. Film music or music for video games works best, depending on the genre of the book. During the course of writing I will listen to the same set of music countless times and will be sick of it by the time I finished the final editing.

The post-apocalyptic plague novel I mentioned above is still in this exploratory phase, where I'm writing to see what ideas come to the forefront, what possibilities appear. A few stories end in this stage while others go on to be completed. If I don't hit some pay dirt at around the 10,000-words threshold, it's probably going to just sit on my computer forever.

I've found that, when I'm going to the day job, I seem to get more writing done by typing between classes than I do at home with a lot of free time, such as over a weekend. Yes, it depends on how deep into the story I am. I know the book is a 'go' when I'm thinking of the story - what happens next, or something I need to go back and put in - all through the day.

Now that I have time, maintaining the solitary confinement only a madman would put himself through, I find it difficult to be productive. Clearly I'm not far enough into the new book to let it pull me to the keyboard constantly. But we will get there.

I also have anxiety about the launch of my "current" novel, which has been pushed back due to the way this medical situation has filled everyone's minds with worry and fear. No room for something else, such as a new novel to read. However, some author friends have advised me that this is a good time to put out a new book because everyone has time to read, and wants something to fill their days. There is a fine line between adoring and abhorring this brave new whirly-bird.

Next post: getting the voice of the story.



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(C) Copyright 2010-2020 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

The Solitude

So here we are with little to do, safely ensconced in our homey paradise. I'm passing the time by still teaching - moved online starting this week, a method of lesson delivery I've successfully put off until . . . well, now. I've also spent time writing and editing. Editing the proof copy of a novel whose launch has been delayed because of the pandemic crisis. Seems it's a poor time to get everyone excited about reading a new book - unless it's a post-apocalyptic plague novel, of course. On that note, the novel I've just started is a post-apocalyptic plague novel. Checking the social media. Also, longer naps. Counting each day how many meals' worth of food I have left. And generally mulling over life.

In my erstwhile day job, I teach college students how to write, mostly for academic purposes but I also encourage creativity. Indeed, a lot of my effort is to encourage young writers that they can write and that what they write is worth writing. My favorite saying (which I though I coined although I've seen similar statements attributed to Hemingway and Benjamin Franklin) is this: "If it's not worth writing about, it's not worth doing." To that end, I often talk about my books, especially how I get the ideas and develop them into a full novel. Sure, a 500-word essay comparing high school with college is tough. But try inventing an intriguing adventure tale in a made-up universe featuring a cast of 20 characters, each with their own motivations and agendas, that goes to 233,000 words. Sorry, boasting again.

So as I lay about at the end of the summer, I pondered a little weak, a little weary, what exactly was my process. I was well into a new novel (the one that's been delayed) so I could examine how and what and why I did this and that. I matched events and ideas in the story with real things happening at that time and found several uncomfortable comparisons. It was (still is) what I would call a "crime thriller", or as close to one as I'm ever likely to write, and I knew how it began. One day a what-if question popped into my head. I'm not sure what caused that pop-in, but shortly after there were two mass shootings in Texas, about a week apart, which caught me viscerally. That was the idea I had for my just-started novel, so I was shocked and almost put away my writing effort.

Looking back more recently, I found the file where I just typed out a short "blurb" - enough to remember the idea for when I could have time to write it out and see where it went. From that "note to self" I knew the idea probably formed when I was planning for a friend to visit me from overseas, someone I had met and worked with in China the summer before. We met two summers before that when I was teaching a class at a university in Beijing. (You can scroll back through these many blog posts and find the details, if you're interested.) So the note went a little like this:

Foreign student scheduled to stay in US arrives just after wife & daughter die in drunk driver crash, so only the husband/father is host.

That premise seemed intriguing to me at the time, in the initial stages. The situation seemed awkward and rife with possibilities for exploration of many issues. At first, I imagined the wife and daughter being killed in a car wreck. Then the shootings happened. I changed the plot to have them killed in a mass shooting. Sorry. If you're a fellow writer, you understand; there's nothing personal in the decision, no attempt to exploit real events, no making coin off someone else's tragedy. In fact, those questions eventually are raised in the novel. 

Back to the process - the Writing Process (trumpets blare!). In class we spend a lot of time understanding where ideas come from. I give lots of examples from my own writing, academic papers included. Even a grocery shopping list starts from some idea, maybe what you need most urgently. Then you expand on that item. I didn't have enough corn chips to finish the guacamole, so chips is what goes on the list first. With stories, as Wordsworth (poetry comes from "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility" - Lyrical Ballads, 1805) and T.S. Eliot (e.g., the analogy of the catalyst from "Tradition and the Individual Talent", 1922) have declared, it is a strange and unpredictable cross-pollination of disparate items that in the writer's mind become melded together as something entirely new. Half the time, this is how I get an idea for a novel. The other half of the time, I am told or directed to a particular idea and I work from that.

Last semester, I composed a set of steps in my personal writing process. Here is step 1:

An idea comes to me from somewhere, seems like an idea worth developing, so I think about it, maybe start some "test writing" and see where it goes. When I know it can be a good book-length story, I set up a file and think of the opening scene, type it out. I rarely outline or plan the whole story out, but I do think ahead chapter by chapter. After reading a lot and writing other books, I find I have a feel for the pace of a novel, the arcs of characters, and the place for certain things to happen. Usually before each day's fresh writing, I edit the previous chapter, then go straight into the fresh text.

Yes, it often seems that one-third of the entire effort is coming up with the right premise, the log-line of a fiction work, asking the best question which the novel when written will answer. I like to raise questions and take 100,000 words to answer them through a grand illustration.

More on The Process next time.


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(C) Copyright 2010-2020 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.