Musing: November 2002 Archives

I'm hating what I have to write tonight. I have a fear of commitment.

There comes a point at which suspense becomes frustration; instead of keeping the best parts hidden, you're just frustrating the audience. But once you've given up enough of the story to the audience, you risk losing the best parts of it: is the moster ever as scary once you've actually seen it in full frame on the screen? Obviously, no.

This is the point I'm at: some of the curtain has to draw back -- I know this because of the main character: by god, if she doesn't find some stuff out right now, she's going to fuckin' walk out. I can't ignore her anymore, but I still hate this part.

Up to this point, the mind of the reader does a lot of my work for me: whatever I don't say they fill in for themselves with the most delicious terrors and boogeymen in their own head. Now I have to shine a light in there and say "here's the boogeymen that I see". Some people will see it and say "that's what I figured" and some others are going to say "eh, I'll deal with that", and the rest will just lose interest.

At least that's how it plays out in my head. I love the suspense, the shadowy zones of undefined space, but if I leave it that way for too long I'll get to the end of the story and everyone will be writing me to ask what the hell they just read.

It's the thing you've eventually got to do, hoping that most everyone says "well, now that I can see the rest of ride, I'd say it looks fun and I'm staying on". That's what you hope. Here's hoping.

Sol said (in comments): "How do you do it?

Well, Zelazny's method works very well for some: every time you flip over to the screen where you're writing, you have to promise yourself that you'll write at least three more sentences before you leave that screen, basically.

For me, that probably wouldn't be enough... somewhere in there, something has to kick off and make something more of itself. What I do is commit to getting 500 words out every time I start writing -- by the third time I write that day, I'm getting close to the 1800 I want, per day. Here's a few other bits...

- Never edit: If you want to spellcheck, that's good, but the next run is for editting -- people get hung up trying to make one page perfect (rearranging sentences and scenes) instead of writing more imperfect pages. It will never, ever be perfect, so write like crazy and edit later. One of the best things keeping the word count going is that you have to force yourself to accept what goes down on the paper as your first draft, good or bad, and move on.

- Embrace productivity, not perfection: it doesn't matter if what you're getting down is crap, it's your crap, and by god there's a story there somewhere. Eventually you'll find it, but for now just write write write. Nobody writes a perfect book, certainly not the first time. Stephen King writes 60k words a month so that after he does his second draft he's still got 54k.

- Take lots of showers: Seriously. Something about those water drops hitting your head make ideas come.

- Never write everything: Finish each writing session with something you still haven't had a chance to write lingering in your head. Let that small bit you haven't done sit there and fester germinate. By the time you get around to writing that part, it'll have lots of little word buddies that are waiting for you to write them as well.

- If you don't know what comes next, move: You've got lots of characters (and if you don't, add some, or make your main character schizo, or something). When you're stuck on what happens next to character A, move to character B: someone else that you DO have an idea about. Readers will think you're building suspense and heightening anticipation -- they're dead wrong, but who are you to correct them?

There are lots of people who know more about this than I do -- these are just tricks for getting the words out there. Everything after that is gravy, so wallow around in the keyboard and just push. :)

Update:
Chris Baty's suggestion: "Keep those guilt levels high and stay away from that delete key."

Can't remember where I ran across this little pearl of wisdom -- it was sometime last year -- but I can't argue the accuracy.

1) A glass of wine seems like a good idea. It's not.
2) A bottle of beer doesn't seem like a good idea. It is.

Appropos of nothing -- just felt like sharing.