Monday, October 28, 2013

Take Down Letters

Somebody brought up DCMA letters and their intention to charge in, sword swinging,
and take down the enemy. 

I have thought about this a good bit and will now for no particular reason share my conclusions with you.

I am not fond of folks who swipe the hard work of writer and  editor.  It sticks in my craw, to use the technical term.

But if you send this site a take down notice ... and send them another take down notice six weeks later when they have reposted the illegal download ... and then send them another ... and another ...
It is all very iterative.
And, I gotta say, there are lots of sites out there ...

How much time and effort will you spend? 
How many actual $$ sales have you thereby gained?
Is this the most efficient use of your time?
Is worrying about this the most efficient use of your energy?

If you google "joanna bourne" and  "free download" you'd get about 2000 hits.

Most folk who go for these illegal downloads never actually read the books.
Most of them never would buy the book if you put sugar candy on the cover.

Some folk who illegally download you go pick up a legal book later
or recommend you to friends who are more conscientious
or suggest you to their library. 

Some folk who illegally download you give you good reviews.  (I hope.  I mean, to first steal your book and then give you a bad review seems a bit much.)

Some folk who illegally download you can't get hold of a legal copy in their own country and to them I say, "Have at."

Go into the tavern and play your songs and if somebody throws money into the hat, bless them.  If somebody listens and enjoys and walks away without contributing, that is the burden on their own back.  Don't let it be one on yours.

Thursday, October 24, 2013

About the Rogue Spy publication date ...

In the comment trail, I'm asked, "When does Rogue Spy come out?"


This is what I said:

"I am typing away on the edits of the final draft of Rogue Spy right now.

I mean ... I will push the blue 'publish' button at the bottom of this little white box I'm typing in
and go get a cuppa coffee in the kitchen,
(stepping over the dog on the way,)
and come back,
(stepping over the dog again,)
and set myself down,
and start typing on Chapter Ten's edits.

Chapter Ten, btw, is where we wander off from the main plot and see what the villain is up to. NOT one of the great moments in Literature, I'm afraid.

Anyhow. What I'm saying is that I have dealt with all the IRL problems that beset me and am now working like a dog,
(a conscientious dog, not my trusty hound who sleeps 23 out of the 24 hours a day,)
and am getting close to finishing the manuscript.

Amazon has the Kindle edition ready for preorder and informs us it will be available in November 2014. Presumably that is what the publisher has told them. Also, presumably, the publisher is not committing itself to a print edition -- if any -- until it has the manuscript in its collective hot little hands.
(And who shall blame them?)

So I guess we'll have to wait till I turn in the ms and the publisher decides when and if a print edition will hit the shelves. That might be November 2014."

The writer is always the last to know ...

Captcha

Dear Folks --

I tried doing without word verification for a while.  I hate those little boxes you have to fill in.  I hate making people jump through stoopid hoops before they can talk to me.

But when I turned word verification off, I started getting three to five spams a day. 
It takes time for me to deal with that crap, and I have no time.

So I apologize for the inconvenience and hope you will be patient with me.

Jo

Friday, October 11, 2013

Technical Topic -- A Girl and her Blog


Today, I am blogging
Cat available in some other posting
on blogging
which is somewhat iterative,
like the Worm  Ouroboros.

This is a primer on blogging for the writer who doesn't know much about blogging.  If you do, you can just skip to another posting that will probably have cats in it.

(The title is a riff on Harlan Ellison's A Boy and His Dog, except that none of this is bloodthirsty or post apocalyptic and that is all to the good, says I.)

So.  What is A blog?
(I said we were starting from scratch.) 

Blog  is short for weblog. 

"the term weblog to G. Raikundalia & M. Rees, two lecturers from Bond University on the Gold Coast. The term was first used in a paper titled "Exploiting the World-Wide Web for Electronic Meeting Document Analysis and Management."  Popular use of the term Weblog as we know it today is from Jorn Barger of the Weblog Robot Wisdom (robotwisdom.com) in December 1997. Barger coined the term weblog meaning logging the Web. In 1999 programmer Peter Merholz shortened the term weblog to blog. " Webopedia


Every writer, the marketing mavens tell us, should have a website or blog or maybe even both to keep in touch with the world at large and to publicize since you cannot just shout out the nearest window and expect to be heard.


How to blog:  Lesson the First.

Let's begin with your Kindly Host:

To blog you need a host.  That is, you need a company that puts your blog on the web and saves all the old blogs in an archive where folks can get them and does the magic that translates your desires into pictures and words.  They do all the technical hard stuff so you, the writer, can not worry about it but just go write.

I use Blogger, which is one of several choices.

Look around.  This is Blogger.  The first word in the URL address uptop is 'Blogger', which is one of those subtle clues we writer folks pick up on.  Blogger is owned by Google.  They charge nothing for shaping the electrons into a blog and I have no idea how they make their money which is something I should worry about shouldn't I? 
Blogger is one of the three or four big blog-hosting companies.  Wordpress is another.  Livejournal is both a blog home and a community.

A blog on Blogger doesn't have to look like mine -- all cerebral and peaceful and blue with birds on it.  There are many 'looks'.   At the strip on the top you'll see a button that says "next blog".  Punching that will let you see a few more blogs before it runs into a dead end.  Then you can go back to my blog and do it again.

When you sign up for Blogger they'll walk you through the process of picking a template and choosing the fonts you want.  You have many choices.  You can be artistic.  You should probably expect six or ten hours getting familiar with the system and making all those choices as to how your blog is presented.


Hark -- Who Goes There?

Blogger can tell you how many people look at which of your blog postings.

This is on your Stats Page in Blogger.  How many 'hits' did you get on a particular day or for a particular post? -- Blogger can tell you.  What page did they visit just before they came to your post?  Did they google to come to your blog, and what did they google?  Were they on another site that links to one of your posts?

This stats page  is where you find out what draws the audience to your blog?   What are you, in fact, doing right?

For instance,  even though this is a writing blog, I talk about all kinds of things.  When I look at my Blogger analytics, I got folks looking at the posts on historical knitting and historical aprons.  The posts on historical underclothing are always popular.  And I have a post on where to find public domain pictures that folks consult a lot.

I mean, who knew there were apron fanciers out there?

Now, a writer creates her blog to attract folks who will buy the books.  If they've already bought the books -- and indeed that is why they are at the blog -- you want to encourage them to buy the next one or to recommend the books to their local library or their friends or both.

What should the blog creator write about?

Because you're a writer and an avid reader, maybe you want to suggest good books that you've found.  Maybe one of your blog features will be book lists or reviews.

Or there's research.  Maybe, if you do some interesting research for one of the books, you want to share that research with the readers.
Maybe you want to blog something related to the books.  Don't be shy writing about the Southern wildflowers your heroine is picking or the history of mountain cabins like the one she runs into the escape the storm. 
Folks really are interested in the nuts and bolts of the fictional world you create.


Search Engine Optimization:

SEO is a good thing, like flossing your teeth. 
Read here and here and you will know more than I do.


How Much Work Is a Blog?

Rule of thumb here ... Your blog should have new material added at least twice a week.  This doesn't have to be an 800-essay on Transylvanian wildlife.  It can be 250 words and some pictures.

Blogs love pictures.

But you do need new material.  You will not attract and hold followers if you have a 'dead' blog.
You saw those abandoned blogs as you scrolled through hitting the 'Next Blog' button a while back.   Blog after blog started and given up on.  The overwhelming majority of them have not been added to for a year.  So sad .... those are blogs that lost all the love and work put into them and went defunct.

That's why it's important to write about stuff that interests you.  So you won't get bored.       

You know about this need for new content because you just read the SEO info above.  Fresh blog stuff is harvested more actively by the 'bots.  So do short posting each time, but get the words up there.

Expect to spend an hour or two per week on a healthy, active blog.  If you are a successful writer and promote yourself a lot on the blog, rather than on a website, be prepared to spend more than that.


Smiley lion knows why you're doing a blog
Remind Me Again -- Why Am I Doing This?

Why am I doing this? is a question of general applicability and one I return to again and again.

Before you commit yourself to the time and work involved in opening a blog, ask yourself what you want out of it.

Do you like to write about wine making or the Kyber Rifles or your turtle breeding operation?   If so, your satisfaction will come from just writing.  Book sales are secondary.  Write about horses or mushroom collecting and mention your books from time to time and enjoy yourself,

Are you thinking of the blog primarily as a vehicle to promote your writing when you publish or self-publish?  Then try to pick a theme related to your books.  You write Historical Mystery -- write about famous unsolved crimes.  Write about the history of forensics.  Write about the Bow Street Runners.  Pull in an audience interested in the time and place and theme of your writing and you will attract people who will then go out and buy your fiction.

Post excerpts, talk about your ongoing writing, include outtakes ... everything you can imagine that will enrich the reader's experience of your books. 


When do I start my blog?   I'm not published yet.

It's a good idea to have your blog or website in place and active before you publish, because after you publish you will not have any time.  You should get your blog or website  up and running about the
time you're submitting your queries for the first book.

And yes, you really do need one or the other.
The readers have to know where to go to buy you, and then, where to go buy all your backlist.
Provide covers.  Provide links.

Reviewers need to know if you will give them free copies of your book to review.  Fellow bloggers need to be able to invite you to blog on their site.   Foreign publishers need to know how to get in touch with you so they can ask to buy your Italian rights.  


You keep saying 'blog or website'.  Do I need both?

The publicist at your publisher will say you need both.
And if you are self-publishing, I'd say you need both
But you can start with just one.  And you can pick.
There are advantages on both sides.

A website is more difficult and more expensive to set up.  It requires money to keep it in place and non-negligible expertise to modify it.  But a website requires very little feeding and maintenance once it's up. 

A blog is free, easy to modify, and gives you the chance to interact with readers.  It does the necessary.  It takes more work on your part.  


Will a Blog Give Me a Platform?

Well, geeze, I dunnoh. 

Okay.  Platform is good.  If you have a 'platform' you're more likely to sell that first manuscript.  More likely to get lots of money for it.  More likely to be offered glamorous speaking engagements.  More likely to hit the best seller list when the book does come out.

If you can blog with splendor and excellence and attract many followers, you may find yourself building a platform.
But then, if you can blog that well, your books are probably dynamite and you should be working on them.

Monday, October 07, 2013

Me, Talking About Entering The RITA Contest

Elsewhere, somebody asked --
(I'm paraphrasing here):

"Why enter the RITA?  Readers don't care about the RITA.  It's nice to get approbation from your fellow romance-authors, but it's an expensive luxury. 

Does the RITA have any real impact on sales or on any aspect of a career?"



So I had some thoughts on this,
to wit:

Reader, not caring about the RITA
It is true that readers don't know or care about the RITA.  It's not like getting a HUGO or an Edgar, worse luck.  I don't know why the RITA gets so little respect.

Hey -- Look at some of the authors who've won the Historical Romance RITA in the last decade or so.  (Click on the name to see a book.)

Sarah MacLean, Sherry Thomas, Pam Rosenthal, Madeline Hunter, Julia Quinn, Liz Carlyle, Laura Kinsale, Connie Brockway, Jo Beverley, Laura Lee Guhrke, Pamela Morsi, Julie Garwood, LaVyrle Spencer, Mary Jo Putney ...

Can we say, "Really Good Writers, Folks"?
Can we say, "You should read these people"?

Why is the RITA not making a bigger noise?
I have no explanation. I am confounded and numbleswoggled.

Anyhow, talking about money.

There's a definite bump in sales with a RITA win -- but that bump would not cover the cost of entry for many people.  When I look at the economics of the RITA, I'm looking at the long tail. Any monetary value, IMO, lies in a secondary effect on the professionals in the field, rather than in immediate, direct sales.

This is how I see the long tail:

-- You're right about the RITAs being primarily for other writers. But this is not a bad thing.  Many Romance writers try out the RITA Finalists in the year after the win and sometimes they like what they read. The single best advertising for any writer is the recommendation of other writers.

Somewhat jaded reviewer
-- RWA Chapters and writing organizations notice the winners. If you like speaking engagements, this is a way to get wonderful invitations.

-- Reviewers often pick up the next books from RITA writers. Reviewers love good writing -- that's why they're in the business -- and take an interest in what Romance writers think is good writing.

-- And I think the publishers take note.
Publishers are endlessly interested in writers. We are 'the product' they're selling, as it were. I like to think that in some future marketing meeting, that RITA win or Final might be the little nudge that pushes a book into a more favorable printing slot or gives it a bit of the publicity budget.

So. Onward to expenses.  Does the RITA cost a writer too much?

This so much depends. Take an example of one sort of writer.
Let's say you're not an RWA member and would not normally become one; you wouldn't go to National; you have to pay for your own print books; you have to pay for your own entry to the RITA contest; and you make less than $2000 writing income after expenses.

In this case, to get the RITA at the National Convention, you'd be paying, soup to nuts:

$120 RWA membership
$100 to print up ten copies of your book
$50 to enter the RITA contest
$500 registration for National Conference
$400 plane fare to National Conference
$50 for a checked bag
$500 hotel at National Conference
$130 meals at National Conference
$100 dress to wear to the Awards dinner
$100 for professional clothing to wear at the conference

This is all ballpark, but we're flirting with $2000 overall. And you'd have to judge five books.

Another writer would be in a different situation.
For instance, until I fell into my recent snit with RWA over their latest revamping of the RITA, I paid for RWA membership every year. I judged the RITAs whether I entered or not. I attended the National Conference whenever I could scrape together money enough to do so.

The National Convention of RWA
Because I was already paying for so much, entering for the RITA cost me about nothing extra. Entering the RITA, then, is probably a good economic decision for any RWA member who plans to go to National. It's maybe not such a good economic decision for folks who aren't and don't.


But the economics are not the be-all and end-all of this contest.  For me, entering the RITA has never been about the economics. It's part of being in RWA and supporting Romance.  For many longterm RWA members, the RITA is 'our contest'. It seems natural to enter.

Finally, let me suggest one particular case when the payoff is worth the cost.

If you are Indie pubbed and you have just a hellaciously good book and you cannot seem to get anybody to notice it ... the RITA might be a good way to put your book in front of the world.

Hellaciously good Indie book
Is your book good enough to Final? Looking at it objectively, is your book better than most of those Finalists?   Do you have a supergreatwonderful book?
If so, and if you choose not to go to National with your Final, the RITA would cost:

$120 RWA membership
$100 to print up ten copies of your book
$50 to enter the RITA contest

That $270 seems cheap for that amount of publicity. 
There'd be special notice taken when an Indie book hit a Finalist position.

Saturday, September 14, 2013

Technical Topic - Why Are They having Sex on a Cactus?


Someone mentioned --
this is a kinda summary and paraphrase here --
the unlikelihood that our Hero and Heroine would fight a pitched battle in the morning, scamper like hell cross-country in the afternoon, and then fall onto their bedrolls in the evening with energy enough to stage a six-page sex romp.


And I have to agree.
Even when I was young and and limber I could manage no more than two out of three of those on a good day.

So why do we see love-on-rocks romps and stufflikethatthere in good Romance?

Why do skilled writers give us this sort of over-the-top scene?
More to the point -- why do readers love these scenes?
Why does the reader suspend disbelief here, when she'll go ballistic on the authenticity of the fish knives?

Couple of tropes at work here.
One I think of as 'Naked in the Heather':

genuine heather
Our redoubtable hero and heroine think nothing of stripping down to the buff and having at on a heather-covered hillside in the Highlands, in March, taking no notice of gorse bushes and rocks and bristly heather and, well . . . March in Scotland.





genuine sand
The H&H make love on beaches, (with sand in every crack and crevice and I do not mean among-the-tidal-rocks crevices,) in haystacks, on New York City ledges high above the traffic, and in public toilets at the airport, (Ewwww.)


The other trope I call 'It's Only a Flesh Wound, Honey', which is often also Glad-to-be-alive Sex.

Our H&H take time out for some nookie while fleeing packs of ebil men armed with AK-47s or rising hurricane waters or, nowadays, zombies. Nor are they deterred by various wounds acquired in their travels.
One can only marvel at the good health and general enthusiasm of all concerned, frankly.

Why are these tropes not merely tolerated, but popular?
I haz theories.
genuine passion
One is that readers see sex in these unlikely situations as a sign of overwhelming passion. They know they would be distracted by the prospect of hermit crabs scuttling over their private parts on some secluded beach.
The heroine isn't ...
because she's transported by passion.

Many folks come to Romance genre for a fix of exactly such overwhelming, transformational, the-world-well-lost-for-love, crazy passion . . . an indifference to gorse bushes and gunfire being absent from most folks' real lives because they are not fruitcakes.

And readers enjoy the mix of desperate, adrenalin-producing action and sex because it's just plain exciting. They'll tolerate the unlikelihood that one would pause for a quickie in the middle of hot pursuit if the sex is really, really good.

Romance writers use these old reliables because they work. The tropes heighten emotion. They feel familiar and comfy to long-time readers. 

Now.  Full disclosure here.  I did the Glad-to-Be-Alive-Sex thingum once that I know of.  It was in  .... um ... My Lord and Spymaster.  Jess and Sebastian have escaped, unhurt, from the lair of Lazarus.  Jess had done some knife fighting in that incident.

genuine Romance book
****

Oh, but she was amusing him, wasn't she? 

 [Sebastian said,] "When you brush up against death, you want to couple afterwards.  I found that out years ago.  I didn't know it worked the same with women.  Does it?"
 

"Does this time," she said frankly.  "Mostly I was real young.  And the last couple times I was so seasick I didn't want to do anything but curl up and die. 

******

So that is my own particular contribution to this trope.


Writers have the special joy of watching really good writers subvert these tropes.

not quite a sex scene, however
Remember the scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where a bruised, exhausted Indy falls asleep before the H&H can make love? Spielberg pokes fun at 'It's Only a Flesh Wound, Honey,'and makes the writers in his audience fall in love with him.

Thursday, August 22, 2013

Technical Topic -- Why the First Scene Should Be a Ghost


This topic is dedicated to all those people who keep working and working and changing stuff and
rewriting but never quite get past the first chapter or so.  They know the story they want to write. 
But they're stuck.

My advice.
Ahem.
Please. Just please.
Stop rewriting that first chapter.

Look,
the First Scene is plain bloody hard to write.


You have to juggle six or eight difficult initiating requirements to set up the story while also making sure the reader doesn't just shrug and put your book back on the shelf.

And these first couple scenes are hard because you know about nothing of what your characters are like and how they act and talk.  You don't even have all your plot laid out unless you're one of those annoying folks who do.  Yet here you have to write the First Scene as if you were familiar with all that stuff.

The first draft is a hit-the-ground-running-in-the-dark sorta thing, and the first thing you run into are the gorse bushes of the opening scene.

Ask me how I know this.


Anyhow
there is an intrinsic mismatch between having to open with fully developed characters, story knowledge, voice, and tone -- and the sad fact of not having these when you open your document and write  Scene One,  Chapter One, for the first time.

This a mismatch you maybe can solve by writing the First Chapter . . . last.
Or at least, later

Here you are in media res, as it were, struggling with Chapter Three and not really able to write it because you can't let go of an incomplete and imperfect Scene One.
You have to make the opening perfect.  You have to.  But, by the very nature of writing, you can't.

So maybe try this:
Go into your document and recolor the text of the First Chapter pale gray.
Like this.

That will remind you that the First Chapter is now a ghost.
It is insubstantial. It doesn't count.
Ignore it and move on. 
The First Chapter is allowed to be ugly and full of errors because it is a ghost and doesn't count.


You will return triumphantly to that First Chapter after you've written 50,000 words in the WIP, at which point you will wake up one morning and know what to do with Chapter One which will be a whole 'nother way than how you are handling it now.

Okay.  This won't help you if you're seriously paralyzed by doubt and perfectionism,
(in that case you go read Bird By Bird,)
but it may help if you just keep stumbling over your feet at the starting block.

Thursday, August 15, 2013

Technical Topic -- What to do when you've done what you do


Congratulations on finishing your manuscript.
Woot woot.
Go celebrate.

We'll wait.




...  All through with dancing and whooping it up?
Now there are a few necessary steps to take to get from here to publication.


 I. Get Crits

What:  Turn some chapters of your manuscript over to harsh, knowledgeable critters.  Listen to what they say.  You need critters who haven't been with you every step of the way as you wrote.  Critters who are not your family or friends.

This is not putting a saucer of milk out for the tabby.  This is wrapping yourself in raw meat and stepping into the lion's cage.

How:  There's a Writer's Workshop in the Books and Writer's Forum.   Here.  Absolute Write, here has a 'Share Your Work' section.  Writer's Forum here has a Writers' Workshop.
If you are writing genre, there are probably specialized sites for writers of your genre.

Why:  Intelligent criticism of your work will help you write better and will prepare you to edit your manuscript.



II.  Let the manuscript rest

What:  Put the work away for as long as you can.  Six weeks.  Three months.  Six months.
(You spend this time working on the next ms and critting other folks' manuscripts, which is an excellent way to improve your own writing skills.)

How:  Print it out and put it in a locked drawer in the bottom of your desk.  Put all the work in a folder named "Open in January.

Why:  This lets you look at your own work with a critical editorial eye.  It gives you distance.

III.  Learn how publishing works

What:  Spend a solid 40 hours studying the publishing industry. 

How:  Start out by Googling everything you can find on the subject.  Then drop into places full of knowledgeable folks and ask questions.

Why:  If you were going to (a) take a job in Thailand for a year or (b) go to State Aggie to study animal husbandry or (c) work for Avis Rent-a-car, you'd do that much research about (a) the country, (b) the university or (c) the business.
Why would you go into writing with less preparation?

III. Learn about agents


What:  Start making a spread sheet of agents who work in your field.  See who they represent.  See who they sell to.  See what kind of deals they're making.  Find out what folks say about them. 
If they have an on-line presence, get a feel for who they are.

How:  Google.  Look at the acks in the front of books similar to your own writing.  Publisher's Lunch and Publisher's Marketplace.

Why:  That's the list you will query, when you query, if you decide you want an agent.  And after all, you have some time while your manuscript is resting. 

IV.  Revise

What:  When the manuscript has aged like, y'know, fine wine ... take it out of hiding and read it over.
Now you will revise.  Now you see what's wrong.

How: Read and correct as if someone else had written it.

Why:  Because, unless you have indeed done this, the manuscript is not as good as you can make it. 


V.  Find Beta Readers

What:  Beta readers take an entire manuscript that is ready for submission and crit it.  Beta readers, if possible, have never seen the manuscript before.

How:  Find them by doing beta reads for others.  Find them by making friends in writers forums.  Pay them in chocolate.

Why:  Because they will tell you if the whole thing works.  They'll point out illogical story lines.  They'll improve the manuscript.

 

VI.  Re-revise in light of the Beta read

'nuff said.







VII. 
Get an agent ... or not


Three months have passed since you declared your manuscript finished. 

You will have read 10,000 words arguing Indie/Big Press/Small Press.
You'll have the best manuscript you can write in one hand and a significant bit of WIP in the other. 

Now you make this decision.

Sunday, June 23, 2013

One of Those 'Friends Without Benefits' Situations



A kindly reader asks:

"I was a little questioning about the interactions between Annique and Adrian. Some other reader's reviews suggested that he was a little bit in love with Annique, now obviously this was after he had met Justine so I was wondering if  you could elaborate  on this ..."


You roll your characters up in the same blanket in a ruined monastery and folks wonder if they're maybe a little bit more than 'good friends'.
But, really, I was just trying for friendship between those two, which is probably naïveté on my part.  Maybe there is a certain unlikeliness that one would cuddle up next to Hawker and feel only an innocent appreciation of the warmth.

Would they just be good friends, those two?

Well ... why friends at all?

Once Adrian and Annique meet, a sense of camaraderie between these two is almost inevitable.
They're experts in the same profession; they speak the same 'language' as it were; they depend on one another; they're running from the same enemy. 
And Adrian has always had an admirable gift of true friendship with women.

At the beginning of Spymaster's Lady, Annique feels protective toward Adrian and amused by him.  She likes him.  She respects him for the spy he is and the greater spy he will become.  But it's not romantic love.  (I maintain.)  Annique is sexually attracted to the older, harder, more powerful Grey instead of the wild, brave, brilliant boy her own age.      

But why not both?  Why not les sexy overtones between Adrian and Annique?
What are they, deficient in vitamins?

Well ... there's this.  Adrian quite deliberately marks out a platonic relationship between himself and Annique.  He teases, but makes no real sexual overtures.  Once it's clear Grey is attracted to her, Adrian doesn't let himself even think of her in a sexual way.  That's one of the virtues he brings from that criminal gang background of his youth.  A friend's woman is utterly taboo. 

And then, there's Justine. 
The influence of Justine defines the Adrian-Annique friendship.  She's only glancingly mentioned in Spymaster's Lady, and not by name, but she's at the forefront of Adrian's mind throughout the book.  We don't see this because we don't go into his thoughts, the book not being about Adrian, after all.  (We go into his POV once.  I think it's once.) 

The action of Spymaster's Lady takes up a few days after Justine shot Adrian.  (We see it happen in Black Hawk.)  When, in TSL, our feverish Hawker jokes about the wound, he's remembering that Justine led a pack of soldiers after him.  That she tried to kill him.  That's what he's not saying to Grey and Doyle when he's being lightheartedly heroic.
Justine's betrayal is the subtext of Adrian's behavior through much of Spymaster's Lady.

(I love to use the word 'subtext' and don't really care if I'm using it right.  Life improves tremendously when we learn not to care about using the word 'subtext' incorrectly.)

Anyhow, TSL opens with Adrian's betrayal and loss. That bullet hole defines Adrian's reaction to Annique.  He's been so battered by the end of his passionate, deadly, complex relationship with Justine that a new sexual attraction would only be painful.  The protective friendship with Annique is exactly the healing he needs.  Maybe the emotional tie with Annique is stronger because he thinks he's lost Justine forever. 

So anyhow -- responding to that question --  that is how I see the relationship between these two.  But every book is a partnership between the author and the reader.  If readers see the Adrian/Annique relationship differently and the books don't directly contradict . . .
Go for it.
Take the story where you want it to go.
Or, anyhow, go for it till I write something elsewise.

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Technical Topic - Show Versus Tell III: The Motivation

Elsewhere, a writer asks:

"Can I just SAY why a character does something?  Can I just state it outright?

Isn't that 'telling' instead of showing?"

Well ... yes.
And so what if it is?

Sometimes we shows and sometimes we just sets ourselves down and tells.

Reveal motivation in action, in dialog, in facial expression, in physical reactions, by foreshadowing, through symbolism and metaphor. Let the other characters note what's going on in their dialog. Use internal Monologue.
Show. Tell. Send up smoke signals. Let there be a Goddamned voice coming down from the sky.

Your reader picks up the book with the TV blasting in the next room, her three small children running back and forth, and she's got 15 minutes before she has to go fix dinner.
Do her a favor. Be accessible.
Be clear.


Just plain stating the motivation is one vegetable in the minestrone, the kris knife in your arsenal, the metric torque wrench in your toolbox.

Any writing 'rule' that tells you to toss out a useful technique is doing you no favor.
There's no writing technique that can't be done well.

Monday, June 17, 2013

Technical Topics-- Those Gestures

Somebody asked elsewhere

 -- paraphrasing here --

"How do we find ways to describe the exact motion of jerking a thumb in some direction or nodding in agreement?"



It's hard to find lovely unique ways to describe some of those, "He jerked his chin in the direction of the cyclops," or "He pointed to where the treasure was buried," situations.

But we can step back and consider gestures in a wider sense.

The words that describe the movement of body parts depend on:
Whose POV are you in?
What emotion and meaning do the physical movements represent?
What reaction are you trying to call from the reader?

(My first advice is to get hold of some Dorothy Dunnet and watch her characters do gestures and indicate things. She is just so good.)

Now, I have my WIP in front of me -- the Pax Manuscript.  Let me look at some of the head/face/hand movements and try to figure out why I did them the way I did.

***
"Something stronger?" Galba nodded toward the upper shelf where a bottle of twenty-year-old brandy inserted itself into a row of books.
****

Simple straightforward nod. You get to do five or six nods in a manuscript. Don't beat yourself up about it.
Not everything has to be fancy.

(Never use nods to tag dialog. You're just wasting one of those five or six nods you're entitled to.)


***

She tossed her last handful of crumbs to the birds, dusted her hands, and motioned to the errand boy who was heading out into the square with a package under his arm.
***

Now 'motioned' is about as weak as you can get in the way of description.
Does she raise her hand up over her head and wave it back and forth? Does she make a beckoning with just her fingers?
We don't know.

But we don't have to know.
We can be vague for three reasons.

(a) The purpose and outcome of the gesture are crystal clear and straightforward and have no hidden depths.
The gesture doesn't mean more than 'come here'.

(b) We have a picture of what's going on. We 'see' her dust her hands of breadcrumbs. With that strong visual laid down, we can be vague about the beckoning part that comes next.

(c) Doesn't matter what the reader imagines that gesture to look like. We don't minutely describe it because it is inherently not important.

All that said, we don't use weak words like 'motioned', 'gestured', 'moved', 'pointed', 'indicated' and so on but two or three times each in any mansucript.


Here's another:
***
He'd left France with various English coins, handy for bribing. He fumbled one loose. Turned out to be a shilling.

He held it up. "There's two of these waiting for you at Number Seven, if I catch up with her." He

closed his hand and got ready to tuck the coin back in his pocket.

The boy's eyes shifted. "Down there." He pointed east. "She give me halfcrown to say she gone t'other way."

He flipped the shilling to the boy. Collect two more tonight."
*****

All these motions with the coin, with the boy's eyes, with his pointing, convey complex intention. But this is one of those counter-intuitive cases where the gestures are filled with information, but the intention doesn't live in the details of the motion.

We don't have to describe the exact gesture of tucking the coin away. The meaning of that gesture stands there shouting. It doesn't need the support of visuals. It doesn't need the internals to spell out what's going on.


Sometimes, a gesture needs support.
If we say merely,
She thumbed at the air behind her in the direction of Codyville.
"We go that way."

the motion sticks out like ... well ... a sore thumb, and we keep wanting to say something exciting and specific about the thumb motion itself.
But the motion of the thumb is not important.

It's the mood, intention, meaning and so on that's essential. So you put your creative energy into talking about mood, intention, internals and so on of the thumb stick rather than trying to describe the arc of the thumb with great beauty and vividness.

She clenched her teeth, making a sound midway between a dentist's drill and a pot boiling over. When she thumbed the air behind her in the direction of Codyville, it was if a particularly nasty ghost was following her and she had some hope of putting out its eye.
"We go that way," she said.


The second passage doesn't define the movement of the thumb any more clearly,
but we've added so much value to that motion in internals we don't have to add value to the simple physical act.

Thumbing toward something or jerking a chin in the direction of something you can maybe do twice in a manuscript.

After that your folks have to keep their chins and thumbs still and maybe just glance that way (2 times), indicate with a subtle lift of an eyebrow (once), roll their eyes toward (once), motion a languid hand in that direction (once), indicate with a hunch of the shoulder (once), nod toward (you have 5 or 6 nods, total), grimace at (once), twist to look at (once), notice over their left shoulder (once) ... well, you get the idea.

Another movement of hands:

***
She pressed her hands together in her lap, knuckle to knuckle, and waited.
****

Here, the motion and placement of the digits is important. We describe the exact location and placement of the hand because it is the visual that creates atmosphere for the reader. The visual itself becomes the comment.

I don't add internals. I pack information into the gesture.







****
Deliberately, she calmed her hands and set them together, loose in her lap. Her hands would whisper,

"I am not worried. I'm prepared to deal with you." It was an old saying of the Baldoni that lies are not words only. One deceives with every fingernail and toe.
***

And here we have both detailed motion and internals. Here the reader doesn't need to interpret the meaning of the hand motion and placement. I tell her what it means. Belt and suspenders, as it were.