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My Drafting Process

November 11, 2019 by Val Neil

There are a few different ways I write scenes. The method here is when inspiration strikes, not when I’m specifically sitting down to craft a scene.

Crafting

When I’m inspiration writing, I tend to start with straight dialogue. Some people struggle with dialogue, but for me, the character interactions are what make the scene. I have a movie playing in my head of the characters talking, so I just write that down.

If I’m super busy, sometimes I’ll dictate to my notepad on my phone and email it to myself. This means I’ll have snippets of dialogue, often with no quotation marks or indications of who is speaking (though from the voices, it’s usually very clear), let alone setting. The scene building is generally done later, unless I’m writing in order and starting a scene “from scratch.”

Below will be some excerpts from book 2 that I’m working on. Please be advised that they contain major spoilers from book 1, and minor spoilers for book 2.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

[Read more…] about My Drafting Process

Character Matters

September 30, 2019 by Val Neil

If you haven’t seen them, I highly recommend you set aside a week and watch Red Letter Media’s brutal dissection of the Star Wars prequels (I say a week because there are a lot of videos and they’re pretty long). One of the things they discuss is the difference in characterization between the original trilogy and the prequels. They posed this challenge to avid Star Wars fans:

Simple enough, yes? While the people they interviewed had no problem rattling off descriptions of characters in the original movies, they were stumped when it came to the prequels–resorting to job, physical description, or sometimes not remembering the character at all. You can watch the clip below.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxKtZmQgxrI?start=406]

If you’re a writer, I challenge you to do the same for your characters. Don’t rely on your own descriptions of them. Ask readers! I read for someone recently who inserted her character’s IQ in the text and when I said I found that dubious she felt insulted (the character was kind of a numbskull, average intellect at best). Telling me a character is smart doesn’t matter. Show them being smart.

One of the issues I’ve seen with a couple of people I read for is that their stories lack life. Grammatically speaking, they were an easy read, but they’re not engaging, to the point where I find myself skimming or zoning out. A friend of mine described them as “anemic.”

Why?

Well in one case, the book lacks tension (there’s a lot happening, but it’s just a guy doing stuff and everything goes as planned). But in both cases, the main character is flat. This is especially evident in the story that has tension. The writer is hitting all the right marks–adding hooks at the end of chapters–but none of it matters.

Because the main character is flat and lifeless. She’s not interesting. The side characters aren’t really interesting. The only descriptor I can come up with for her is “ditzy,” and that’s probably not something you want your main character to be.

Here’s another test for you:

Yank your main characters out of your story, put them into a completely different story, and ask your readers how they’d behave.

There’s been a lot of criticisms over JK Rowling lately, but if there’s one thing the woman knows how to do, it’s craft compelling characters. You take Harry, Ron, Hermione and throw them into Jurassic Park and people are going to know how the characters will behave. You can do this with all of her numerous recurring characters, from Luna Lovegood, Molly Weasley, to Bellatrix Lestrange.

It works because we know them. We care about them. And that means we’re curious to see what happens in their story.

No compelling characters, no engagement.

The End

September 23, 2019 by Val Neil

I finally finished the latest draft. I’m a pantser and a newbie, so when I sat down to do a developmental edit on manuscript it need a LOT of work. This last draft has taken forever. I waffled endlessly on adding Medea’s POV and when I did, it made some significant changes to the storyline.

file names

New advice for writer’s block: If you get stuck, write the same scene from another characters POV. You may think you had them down, but their insight will drastically change the tone, possibly even the dialogue.

With the addition of Medea, I’d added a new character loop and made her rules a lot more clear…which was messing up my original ending. I tried to pick up where I left off and it wasn’t working. So I followed my own rule (back up and try something else). I started writing a whole new ending.

It was epic and fun and very Hollywood with a Home Alone vibe. And while the scene was fun, it absolutely did not complete my main character’s arc (cue Sacha Black‘s voice telling me to close those loops), which made it hollow. It worked for Medea, but not for Nikolai. To learn his lesson (finally), he needed the original ending. I found a way to sidestep Medea’s rules and make the original ending work. I will probably save the alternate ending and use it as a reader magnet for my mailing list (it IS a fun scene).

So what now? Well I still have micro editing to do. I kept changing the year, from 1956 to 1953 to 1955 so I have to check the timeline continuity. Gotta check my crutch words (if you’re an author and don’t have a crutch word list, make one!). Gotta find a new round of beta readers wiling to read 128k.

My brain is already springing forward to NaNo. I need to prep for book 2 so I can get it written, hopefully by the end of the year. I’m taking a week vacation in October just so I can write. Not sure how much I can get done in November this year, but I’m going to try.

Masking the Psychopath

September 16, 2019 by Val Neil

When I decided to write Nikolai as a psychopath, I wanted to do justice to the neurotype, making it as realistic as possible. As an autistic, I know how much it sucks to see misrepresentation in media. Thanks to common misconceptions, disclosing one’s condition is liable to be met with disbelief, pity, discrimination, or infantizing remarks about our ability to function in public. Psychopaths, on the other hand, can be met with fear and hostility if their condition is made public. They often hide their identities, even online. In interviews, I’ve seen them use pseudonyms and have their faces blurred.

Both psychopaths and autistics utilize masks. Neurotype influences our innate social cues (or lack thereof). Autistic behaviors are often contrary to what is expected and we tend to make social gaffs. Our communication style is different, as are our emotions. So we learn to mask who we really are and how we really feel. Female autistics are generally better at masking. Prolonged masking can lead to autistic burnout.

But while autistics have the freedom to be themselves, at least online and with close friends, psychopaths often don’t. Their behavior baseline is so far removed from what is expected in polite company that they usually retain at least a mild mask, even online and around loved ones.

I’ve already written about the struggle of writing a character with minimal emotions, but likability of Nikolai was also a serious issue in earlier drafts. I had to tone him down a lot. While people love anti-heroes and villains, there are certain criteria that seem to be required for likability:

Charisma
Competency
Tragic backstory

Nikolai is charismatic, but only to other characters and only when he wants something. If he were a secondary character viewed through the eyes of a traditional protagonist, he wouldn’t have the same issues with likeability (you’ll get to experience this later, when I tell Dawn’s story). But he’s not a secondary character and I’m writing in third person deep POV. The readers get to see how the sausage is made, so to speak. While Nikolai doesn’t always act on his thoughts, they can be quite manipulative, dark, and self-serving. Which results in this:

This was after toning him down. The above remark wasn’t even in reference to one of his worse thoughts, but it came after him outwardly being “nice,” so it was jarring in contrast. This has been a recurring theme.

There’s a screenwriting technique known as Save the Cat, where the hero does something good early on to make the audience root for them (in a cool twist, the American version of House of Cards subverts this trope by having the protagonist kill a dog). I wrote a Save the Cat scene for Nikolai, hoping it would make him a bit more likable. He saves a girl from being harassed by drunks. Good, right?

Well, not exactly. Because the reader is in his head, they can see his motivation, which is less about saving the girl and more about letting off steam by attacking the drunks. He does have a certain protectiveness about the residents of Haven, but that’s because it’s a small town and he has daily interactions with these people. In a sense, they “belong” to him and he’s only taking care of his possessions. So while the scene gives Nikolai a nice opportunity to reflect on his own motivations, those motivations are still self-serving.

Psychopaths are born, unlike sociopaths, which are made, usually the result of childhood trauma. This was a problem initially, because it meant Nikolai had no tragic backstory. Or rather, that his backstory was not a reason for behavior. I planned to have him lie repeatedly (and conflictingly) about his past, keeping readers in the dark until book seven or so. I wanted there to be a lesson in it, that some people are just like this and there’s no “wound” or whatever driving them.

Unfortunately, I had to change my plans. Readers were confused as to why a person would be this way and as a result they couldn’t connect with him or root for him. I started throwing in lots of hints pertaining to his past and suddenly readers were a lot more invested. The implication of past trauma, even if it has nothing to do with his neurology, was enough to change their perception.

What does all this have to do with masking?

Well yesterday I had an epiphany after I wrote a scene in which Nikolai takes off his mask. Psychopaths mask themselves to be more palpable to people. It’s a necessary part of their survival. Without intentionally doing so, I have been effectively masking my character to make him more palpable to readers. Talk about meta.

In some ways it’s good, because it’s given Nikolai more depth, but on the other hand I can’t go as dark/sardonic as I want to without offending reader sensibilities. I may be able to ramp that up a bit in book two, when his competency increases.

Until then, mask it is.

Writing Pains

August 26, 2019 by Val Neil

Last year I had pain in my hip and legs, to the point I was developing a limp. Sitting anywhere but the couch was painful. I spent several months in physical therapy and figured it was a combination of me sitting too much, being overweight and hitting middle age. I did the exercises and tried to stay away from my desk as much as I could (difficult, given how much I use the computer). Eventually it stopped, in part because I spent more time away from my desk.

Shortly after all this, I decided to create a new writing area for myself upstairs. Downstairs I have a desk and PC. The problem is that I get constant interruptions from the kids (and birds) when I work there. Since the PC is faster than my laptop and only has a single screen, it’s also 99% more likely that I’ll goof off and multitask on my PC. It was also getting annoying to constantly switch files from PC to laptop and back whenever I went to a cafe to write (I do back up, but don’t use the cloud to synchronize Scrivener).

So I created a second work area in my bedroom consisting of a folding table and chair, and my laptop. It’s helped reduce some of my aforementioned frustrations. A couple of weeks ago I sprung for a proper chair to use upstairs. I got the same $99 model I had downstairs from Costco:

I’m short. Not ridiculously short, but enough that it makes a difference. As soon as I assembled the chair and sat down, I realized my mistake. The chair is too high. Even on the lowest setting, I can’t put my feet flat on the floor. You’d think I’d remember this, having a second model downstairs, but I’d been using the folding table upstairs for months, and when I used by PC downstairs I got used to propping my feed up on the subwoofer. I hate making returns, so I stuck a box under my table to prop up my feet and called it adequate.

Two weeks later, the pain in my leg/hip came back with a vengeance and I finally put two and two together. My pain last year began after I got a new office chair downstairs, vanished when I stopped using the desk and switched to a folding chair upstairs, then returned when I got a duplicate desk chair upstairs. Ergonomics!

Now, I’m not slamming this particular model. It’s a good chair. It’s just too damned high for short little me to put my feet flat on the floor, and apparently that’s enough to really screw up my hip.

Looks like I’ll have to bite the bullet and try to return my new chair.

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.

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