Val Neil

Muddle in the Middle

August 12, 2019 by Val Neil

Oh boy. It’s been a hellava month. As you can see here and here, I’ve been struggling to get through chapter 21. I finally did it, but then chapter 22 didn’t flow and I was right back where I started.

One of my struggles has been whether or not to include Medea’s POV. When I wrote the story, it was incredibly entertaining watching two very different personalities clash on the page. The problem was that I needed to make a plot out of what was essentially banter and training montage.

I succeeded, taking Nikolai’s little problem, which was originally solved immediately, and stretching it out over the course of the novel. What’s happening to him and why? Is it Medea? If not her, then who? It’s a mystery he has to solve.

Yay! I had a plot! Problem solved, right? Not exactly. This particular plot meant the reader couldn’t know Medea’s intentions. At all. It turned a character driven story into a plot driven one, and while there’s nothing wrong with that, this story works better when you can see both sides.

Still, I didn’t see how I could add Medea and have it work. In the original drafts, she’s a static character. There’s nothing for her to do. She’s just trying to train Nikolai the same way she’s trained a bunch of other wannabe dark wizards. Later in the series she has more to do, but she didn’t here. Also, it would kill a big reveal of her motivations at the end.

I toyed with adding her. I even wrote inserts for her, and rewrote a few scenes from her perspective. All of it sat in my Scrivener notes. I kept agonizing over it but didn’t want to mess with my main draft.

Then two things happened.

1. I got stuck in the middle. Part of the issue was that some chapters were falling flat. They felt boring. They were boring, because even though I knew everything going on behind the scenes, Nikolai and the reader didn’t. So it felt like “why is this scene even here?” Knowing Medea’s motivations make them work because the reader gets dramatic irony.

2. A friend of mine beta read the first few chapters and said with absolute conviction, “put her in.” This particular friend writes romance, a genre that is all about character-driven plots.

So I put her in, and suddenly my mess of “Where do I put this scene? Argh I can’t get this cause-effect chain to work!” was gone. I went from this to this:

[First image of multiple chapters with duplicate numbers, all out of order. Second image is clean chapters 20 through 26.]

Not only that, I’ve been able to dramatically up the tension in the middle of my book. I got to let Nikolai do something incredibly stupid that I’ve been dying for him to do, but couldn’t because it didn’t work in the old draft without him going off on a tangent. The way it’s written now, his behavior makes absolute sense within the context of the scene.

Hopefully it keeps flowing. I have about seven chapters left in my developmental edit.

Writing a Protagonist with Minimal Emotions

July 29, 2019 by Val Neil

I started the draft for this post way back in February I think and it’s curious to see Nikolai’s progression in the manuscript between then and now (July).

I wanted Nikolai to be a psychopath. An accurate psychopath. I researched the hell out of the condition. It’s important to me, both as someone who supports neurodiversity and someone who’s just anal about getting things right.

The problem is that writers usually engage readers with emotion. Readers want to feel something for the characters. It’s difficult enough to get them to care about someone like Nikolai (my hope is that even if they hate him, they stick around just to watch his ass get dragged by Medea, because honestly, it’s the best). The biggest problem I’ve had is when Nikolai is in danger.

Psychopaths’ amygdala is about 18% smaller than average. The amygdala is responsible for our perception of emotions, most notably fear. They just don’t get scared the way most people do. Their reaction to danger is basically “oh, that’s interesting, hmm.” Very matter-of-fact. They don’t get depressed or anxious or worry about things. Their other emotions are generally dulled as well. Some they don’t really feel, others are just very dim, though they can conceptually understand the emotions of others. Boredom is a common problem, because it takes a lot for them to feel anything. They tend to be thrill-seekers because the adrenaline rush allows them to kinda feel something.

This makes it very difficult to write engaging scenes where a psychopath is in danger, because they don’t respond like a normal person would. I’ve been getting around this problem by focusing on the physiological responses (heart rate, sweat, injury) and having Nikolai get mad/annoyed (I’ve since been informed their heart rate wouldn’t go up either, woo).

Went back through my whole text in January and marked all emotional lines in red for potential removal. I was able to rewrite a lot of it.

Well I just got to a scene were he’s worried about something. Psychopaths don’t worry. I mean he can ruminate on solving the problem, but like, that’s difficult to describe in terms that will make it impactful, because emotions are the bread and butter of most stories. I’ve already come to terms with the fact that it will not be 100% accurate, but I’m still shooting for as close as I can get.

Nikolai became increasingly jittery as the afternoon wore into evening. Would she really allow him to leave this place? That night he could barely sleep, certain that he would wake in the morning to find his mind clouded. Medea would shake her head and tell him that he couldn’t possibly go out in such a state, but don’t worry, rest, she could teach him how to use the gateways another day.

He slept in fits and spurts. Finally, when his watch read 5:30 a.m., he felt it was reasonable enough to get up. He dressed quickly and summoned breakfast, eating hastily in the common room. Medea was not yet downstairs. He sat down to read, leg bouncing, but could not focus on what was in front of him and got up again to pace in front of the hearth. A quick tug on the gateway door showed it to still be locked.

An eternity later, 6:04 a.m., Medea came down the stairs. She could not move fast enough and he crowded behind her until she created a shield which kept him at a more respectable distance.
“God you’re antsy. I should have shown you how to work it last night. Hand on the door.”

Becomes:

Nikolai lay down to sleep, certain that the next morning he would wake to find his mind clouded. It would be the perfect excuse for Medea to keep him here. She would shake her head and tell him that he couldn’t possibly go out in such a state, but don’t worry, rest, she could teach him how to use the gateways another day.

Perhaps that was why he woke so early. Five-thirty was a reasonable enough time to get up. It would give him a chance to start the day before Medea for once. He dressed quickly and summoned breakfast, eating hastily in the common room. A quick tug on the gateway door revealed it was still locked. He sat down to read a science book she had allowed out of the library. Might as well appear dedicated and studious.

That was back in February. Now it’s July and the scene has changed even more, hopefully for the better. I think I’ve done a much better job building tension in other ways. We’ll see how well the action scenes go down. I’m resorting to straight physical sensations a lot, and sometimes humor. Here’s an excerpt from a big scene in the middle:

A chill shot up his leg and dashed toward his heart. The light winked out. Ice. His heart was pumping ice through his veins. Something clutched his shin. Nikolai couldn’t see his own hands, let alone his leg. He reached toward the thing grasping him. Whatever it was, some of it was soft and yielding.

The moist substance parted before his fingers, until they struck something more solid. A hand? He kicked at it. An inhuman shriek erupted from the ground at his feet, then something scrabbled up his chest, clawing as it went.

He’s not scared here, but it’s definitely grounded in unpleasant sensations that will hopefully engage the reader. My second set of beta readers have yet to reach the meaty action scenes. I’m curious to see how they respond.

New Rule

July 28, 2019 by Val Neil

Me two days ago: I made it work! That sounds terrible to say, like if I had to “make” it work, then it shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

Me today: New rule. If you have to force it to fit the plotline, it doesn’t belong there.

Did I make some of my tricky scenes fit? Hell yes I did. Do they belong? Eh…

Here’s the issue. My manuscript is currently sitting at around 123k words. That’s after cutting 5300 words yesterday. But it’s fantasy! Fantasy is supposed to be long (I tell myself). Well yes, but the beginning of my book swelled from five brief chapters to nine based on reader feedback. I was moving too fast, not bothering to immerse the reader or even really explain the magic system because I was in a rush to get to what I thought of as the meat of the story.

Now that my beginning itself is meatier, the bulky subplots make the rest of the text seem bloated. I mean I could pull a George R.R. Martin and do almost 300k words right out of the gate, but this isn’t high/epic fantasy and I really need to do a good job of capturing readers with this first book, which means pacing is extremely important. Readers going into book 2 should be more invested in the characters and I’m probably safe to meander a bit, though that didn’t help with Holy Sister, which did so much treading water that I moved on to something else despite my love of Nona.

So I’m going to cut out the whole telepathy plotline and a lot of other minor training sequences, for several reasons:

The first subplot I cut played heavily into this other subplot, and left gaping holes upon its exit.
These two plotlines really work better if kept together.
These subplots are so large that they’re taking time away from the core conflict, which is not only killing tension, it’s causing me to briefly mention things in narrative that really need their own scenes.

cuts2

Combined with the scenes I’ve already trimmed, if I cut these I’ll have roughly 28k of cool stuff going into the next novel, which makes me feel a lot better honestly. It also gives me wiggle room if I want to add Medea’s POV

Finished revising Chapter 21!

July 26, 2019 by Val Neil

7/26/2019

I made it work! That sounds terrible to say, like if I had to “make” it work, then it shouldn’t have been there in the first place. But damnit, writing is pretty much nonstop making things work. As much as I hate editing, there’s a real beauty to it when you see how the story evolves and gets better. Like “hello good story! I knew you were in there somewhere!” Polish that turd, people.

I had to go back to Ch 20 and add a couple of paragraphs to head off the “Medea’s reading his mind” issue. Now Nikolai at least has the tools to block her. Although she did leave those tools where he can find them, so who’s to say how effective they are?

Approaching the midpoint in my revisions. I’m definitely considering moving the Predator/Prey chapters to book 2. When I wrote the sequence I had writer’s block, and I used the old trick “have your protagonist get attacked by monkeys/ninjas.” In my case, Nikolai gets jumped by witch hunters. It’s a fun sequence that shows his darker side as he has no real reason to hold back. The scene did indeed help me get over the block and provided a great segue for bullet training (which has since been punted to book 2).

The problem is it doesn’t fit the throughline for book 1, and would actually fit the story for book 2 a lot better. When I started writing this series I had a general idea of how many books it would take and what would be in each. But I hadn’t yet written a novel. I worried about having enough content for book one. As I started writing, I realized that book 1 had content for like three books. When all is said and done, my projected 8-book series may end up being longer. I hope I can streamline my writing/editing process over the next few years so I can get them out at a decent rate.

Chapter 21- This Bitch Right Here

July 25, 2019 by Val Neil

Chapter 21 has been giving me so many problems. And I’m in the revising section I thought would be easy. Right now the struggle is “where do I go?” with this chapter.

It’s telepathy training. The scene was originally a humorous training sequence. Except now I’m weaving darker plot elements into it and it’s not working so well. Dialogue that was once comedic banter is now overshadowed by the possibility that Medea is reading Nikolai’s mind. So now when he asks leading questions, I have to account for “but if she was reading his mind here, then she’d know X and her response could be interpreted Y.”

Do I hold off telepathy training for book 2? If I do that, there’s not much training left. I need some motherfucking magic in my motherfucking book on magical training. I could technically yank the whole telepathy subplot and it would work, but it would remove a lot of novelty/fun.

ABC: Always Be Crafting

July 22, 2019 by Val Neil

If you’re unfamiliar with ABC (Always be Closing), it’s a reference to Glengarry Glen Ross. Alec Baldwin can enlighten you here, but it will probably make some of you cry.

I’m in the middle of rewrites. I think we can all agree that editing is a slog, but I’m doing a developmental edit on myself which has been particularly painful. I had to gut chapters 10-18 and pretty much write them again from scratch.

I was looking forward to the next section of my book, which is pretty solid plot-wise and follows my new throughline nicely. I’d only have to do minor tweaks to sentence structure and stuff. Piece of cake. Right?

And then I see the first line of this chapter, followed by the cringe-inducing “he protested” as a dialogue tag. Ugh. I looked at the snapshots and saw why–this chapter hasn’t been touched since mid February, and it’s now mid-July.

ABC

How much better could I have gotten at writing since February? Better enough to recognize my failings in this opening. This much better:

ABC2

Now there are probably typos in there because it’s a first draft rewrite, but the writing itself is much better.

As a writer, you should always be working to improve your craft. So how does one do this? Read great books, read craft books by successful authors, read editing books, follow blogs on writing/editing, and follow YouTubers (take this last one with a grain of salt as a lot of them are newbies).

Critique partners are incredibly helpful, but only if they know what they’re talking about (I’ve had at least one who was recommending grammar “corrections” that were flat-out wrong). Try to find partners who point out different things. Some are great at tightening up your writing but cutting out redundancies. Others will let you know when you’ve got talking heads or white room syndrome (two of my issues). One of mine is all about strong verbs in place of “small, choppy sentences.”

Don’t be afraid of criticism! It’s better to hear this stuff from other writers than it is from your readers after you publish. If you get your manuscript edited prior to release, which you should, it will help minimize the cost because they won’t have as many issues to fix.

When do you have time to do all this research? I’ve found that some times I’m just less productive on the writing end. I’m sick, or it’s been a long day (I’m way better at writing in the mornings), or there are just too many interruptions to focus. Those are perfect times to read up or watch videos on craft. It’s a relaxing activity but you’ll still feel productive.

Val Neil

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