Writing Process: The Muse

I have a friend who has spent hour after hour talking books and writing with me. She has grown very accustomed to me referring to my characters as muses who come to visit sometimes and the resulting mental journeys--and she does it without ever looking at me like I'm insane.

She sent me the link to this video, and now I share it with you. For the record, I'm in absolute agreement with Elizabeth on this subject. I've tried to explain my process countless times, but she does it so much better.

So if you want to know how I think the creative process works, I'm in agreement with the Greeks.

Enjoy! This video is totally worth the 20 minutes

Characters in Crisis

When writing action, it’s important that the author do one very important thing: act it out. And if you can’t do that, find someone who is an expert in what you’re trying to portray to verify that what you are scripting is plausible.

To show both good and bad examples of why it’s important to do this, I’ll use scenes from the same TV series: Castle.

A bit of background: Detective Beckett is a New York City cop who is followed around by New York Times bestselling author, Richard Castle. Shenanigans ensue. There are frequent brushes with death—including this one:

Click and watch the first few minutes (sorry, it won’t let me embed. Right click and open it in a new tab so you can pop right back here when you're done): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlMH81aMBvg

Okay, have you watched it? Were you tense? Did you think they were going to die? Did you empathize with their situation, or did you find it a little frustrating?

Did you think they were going to die?

I’m going to assume that you were not nervous and fearful for their lives, because this is the bad example of making things go wrong for your hero. I’m going to guess that you really weren’t all that tense, and weren’t too worried about things ending up just fine. And no, not just because these are the two leads of a show and they’re not going to kill them off, but because too much went wrong in the scene.

Let’s start at the beginning of the scene where Castle and Beckett are pushed into the Hudson (yuck) by an SUV. We immediately see that this harbor was built adjacent to an endless abyss. The car is sinking, sinking, sinking… and, yep, still sinking.

Cut to our heroes. They need to get out or die. Easy right? Let’s go through their lifesaving process:

1. They try to open the doors, BUT the doors won’t open. Beckett informs us/Castle that there must have been damage to the frame of the car when the SUV rear-ended them (because that’s what people do when they’re looking death in the eye: they rationalize their obstacles). 
2. Next, the windows won’t roll down, so Beckett deduces they should shoot out the window. BUT somehow her gun fell out of its snug little secure holster. So they start looking for it.
3. Beckett tries to find her gun BUT she can’t because her seat belt is permanently locked and isn’t budging.
4. So she tries to move/recline the seat so she can slip out, BUT the seat has suddenly become locked into its upright position.
5. Does she have a knife? Yes, she has a knife, BUT it’s in the trunk.

With this guy they won't need
the flashlight to find the gun.

Cut to exterior shot of the car still falling, falling, falling to the sea floor—presumably to where it’s so dark that some fish have headlights.

What would you be doing at this point? Trying to wiggle out of your seat, perhaps? Contorting yourself into some awkward positions to see if you can slip out of your seat. In this moment, your actions decide whether or not you will die at sea. Would you be sitting still and only trying options that requiring bending from your elbows down? (I don’t know about you, but this part of the scene bugged me enough that I went out to my car to see if I could get out of my seat with the seat belt on and the seat locked in a upright position. I can. And my life isn’t even at stake.)

The decision is made that Castle needs to use the handy flashlight he finds to retrieve the gun and shoot off the belt. (I won’t even  go into the complications there.)

We don’t need to go any farther to see why this is my example of too many implausible things go wrong. Even more annoying, too many solutions are ignored. (Seriously, take ten seconds and think of all the things you would do in their position that weren’t done. It’s a long list.)

But back to the point: when you create this many obstacles for your hero, your reader starts to smell a rat. An otherwise perilous situation starts to become a little ridiculous and their mind (which really doesn’t want to imagine death as a rule), and the mind will start pointing out all the absurdity of the situation to the viewer/reader rather than choose fear.

“What?” it may whisper to the reader/viewer. “Is the radio going to short circuit and start shocking them now? Or is a rogue, garbage-eating shark going to start circling them and Castle will have to shoot that in the murky water too?”

The point is, if you’re going to make a series of things go wrong that should never go wrong (and do so with highly maintained, professional equipment), then there had better be sabotage involved, not just dumb luck. After all, most of us have been in accidents . This incident wasn’t even all that traumatic, really. Their car was pushed into the Hudson, causing next to no visible structural damage, yet it caused all of the following to fail:

• The seat belt lock
• The forward/backward seat adjuster
• The reclining handle on the seat
• The snap on Beckett’s holster
• Beckett’s common sense to try common, lifesaving options

To quote SNL, I’ll say, “Really???”

So when you’re making things go wrong in your own work, take a look to see if you’re making too much go wrong, and therefore, losing your audience.

Now let’s look at a good example of things going very, very wrong. Again, this comes from Castle.

Detective Beckett’s backstory is that she became a cop after her mom’s murder went unsolved. In the season finale of Season 4, Beckett has the opportunity to face off with an inside guy who not only works for her mother’s killer, but who also happened to shoot and nearly kill Beckett in the Season 3 finale.

Season 3 Cliffhanger: Kate takes a bullet, and she's not happy about it.

 And, boy oh boy, Beckett is ready for a fight! She’s waited 13 years for this showdown, and she thinks she has what it takes to face off against a government trained, professional assassin and come out Queen of the Hill.

And it goes a little something like this (again, sorry you have to link out):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gq15-gns1b8

This scene is a wake-up call on par with Loki facing off against The Hulk in The Avengers.

Total smackdown.

Like a true assassin who is as good at killing as he is at mind games, Beckett’s would-be killer let’s her get a few hits in while staring blandly and unaffected into her eyes. This is brilliant, because it shows both the audience and Beckett how completely outmatched she is. Throughout the fight, he paces like a caged cat whenever he has her down, clearly thinking when he could easily be giving her more of a beat down. He could kill her. We know it. She knows it. And he's absolutely mad that he's going to let her live. We sense that without a word. 

In the short span of this confrontation, the assassin breaks Beckett’s body, will, and a bit of her spirit. And at the end, when he leaves her dangling over the side of the building? I believe him.

So many shows try to portray this type of death-by-negligence moment and fail, but here it works. Why? Because this assassin doesn’t have the green light to kill Kate Beckett yet. There is blackmail material that needs to be destroyed before he takes that step. People who are familiar with the show know this.

But if Kate falls? Off a building high enough to leave interpretation it was a suicide? And the assassin can honestly say that he didn’t push her?

Well, then… whoops.

The assassin can report that Kate fell down and went boom after getting a little overenthusiastic in her attack on him.

Every element in this scene is researched and believable. And maybe, just maybe, part of me starts crushing on the assassin for giving a much-needed wakeup call to a protagonist who has started to dangerously overestimate herself.

Well done. Very believable. Just like in the last scene, we knew that Kate Beckett wouldn’t die, but it was a MUCH more tense ride. Because what went wrong for our hero made sense. She really could have—and maybe should have died. If she had, we all would have nodded and agreed that, while tragic, we saw it coming.

With the first example, however, our reaction to death would be much different. People would be rolling their eyes and yelling things like, “Are you serious?!” at the TV screen.

It’s the difference between actually putting yourself in your character’s shoes, or just throwing them into an impossible situation until your only option is to: 

• Cut away (like Castle did in the first clip)
• Have a third party intervene (like Ryan does with the little SWAT team in the second clip)
• Or turn your character into a freakishly capable super ninja long enough to save their own lives (like most action movies do)

My advice, though? Keep it real. Act the action out to see if what your writing is even plausible. If it’s not, try something new until you have something that really works.

Your writing will be better for it.

What Acting Taught Me About Writing

Some say that writers see the world differently, which I think is a little misleading. It implies that a writer was born with some insight, some secret view to the world that readers of the world don’t share.

Then again, I agree with the saying because I think that the more you seek to write well, the more changed you become. And as you seek to grow in writing, you are forced to look at things differently.

A writing lesson I’m glad to continuously relearn is one I first learned when I had dreams of Broadway. Yes, once upon a time I liked to act. And like most people, initially I sucked at acting. My instructors always casted me way against my type, and my performances were always more than a little stilted until I learned one huge lesson:

You can’t portray someone if you’re judging them.

If you don’t accept your character’s motives and project them, no one will believe your acting from fifty rows back. To get on stage or in front of a camera and really make people believe you are someone, you have remove your judgments on who you think they should be, and just let them be. You are the canvas. They are the paint. And for that time you are portraying that character, everyone should sense their motivations and goals through you with absolutely no apology for them.

That’s acting.

The same goes for writing a character: If you judge the character, you can’t write him/her well.

Then again, if you don’t judge the character and proactively filter out some of their less redeeming qualities to make them more palatable, people may judge you. To understand that possibility and write their story anyway? That takes guts.

After all, most readers assume that books and characters are autobiographical. If your character does something, readers will assume you have, too. And how many writers have readers come up and tell them, “I pictured you as the main character the whole time”?

People judge you based on what you write. It’s an undeniable fact. So it only makes sense for an author to pre-judge characters to make sure they pass the snuff of representing them on paper before digging into the commitment of writing on the character’s behalf.

Back to the point of those who say writers see the world differently, it does take a rare person to tell the story of someone they disagree with—to look into a soul and see why it is the way it is to such a level that everyone who reads what is told from that character’s perspective assumes the author is similarly minded.

Just like an actor has to go on stage and represent their character like the true hero of the script—even if they’re the "bad guy"—a story rises in its potential when the author lets a character walk and talk and think authentically, with no judgment from the teller of their story.

Moving into a judgment-free zone is not a task for all writers (or actors, really). Some have no aspirations to do this at all. They are content to portray people like them as the good guys and people they cannot relate to as two-dimensional bad guys. This requires little imagination and no growth for either the reader or the writer.

But to those out there looking to see the world a little differently, I have this challenge: If you wish to grow in the craft, write about someone you don’t understand. Tell their story—even if you never choose show it to a soul. Don’t apologize for the character’s behavior, but seek the why of it. Make every character a hero in their own eyes, define how their goals influence their actions. Are the bad guy’s goals really any different than your hero’s? In the end, do they really want the same thing? Opposite things? If opposite, why?

It’s an amazing and fascinating process. And after a person does this a few times—any person—I really do believe they begin to see the world differently.

Writing Update

I just realized that I don't really ever talk about writing here, which is something most writers do on their blogs.

Well, I'm doing it now :)

I have two books on my radar right now, and I wrote segments in each of them today. They are:

• Cannon Curse (we should start voting on new titles. What do you think of "Perfectly Flawed"? That's the only suggestion I've had so far. Any other suggestions?)
• New Solomon

Cannon Curse is a romantic comedy that is totally close to done... which means that I abruptly have zero desire to finish it, all the characters are having identity crises, and I've suddenly decided the climax is lame and want to go back to the drawing board.

You know. The usual.

Then there's "New Solomon" (I actually like that title, so until a publisher overturns it, that one is sticking), which is an urban fantasy book that I'm kind of in love with--and by "in love" I mean: the research alone to do a decent job of it could take me years but impulsive little me wants it done in 6 months. So there's kind of an internal battle there.

But just a little one. ;-P

And that's basically where I'm at. Today was one of those days where I literally abandoned my keyboard, laid down on the floor and stared at the ceiling thinking, "Really? Is writing really what I should be doing with my time? There's gotta be a thousand better things to do on a Tuesday night..."

Yep. One of those days. *sigh*

And that's my update. Once I figure out the new climax, Cannon Curse will have a completed first draft.

I'm SO looking forward to that day... Those are the fun days to be a writer.

A BIG Thank You!

I'd like to take a moment to thank the fantastic ladies who just spent the past 90 minutes with me, getting my head into a new book--my next book. For the past several weeks my head has been stuck in my urban fantasy book and the 5th and 6th Rhea novels. Whenever I think of writing, I see Kay and Dahl... Rhea and Ty... and other characters I haven't introduced to you yet.

Mike, Rori, Luke and Kris have been VERY neglected.

So a HUGE shout out to the beautiful women who hung out with me on Twitter and kicked me in the pants.

Want to know who these charitable, inspiring souls are? Check out their blogs and/or books here:

Rachael Renee Anderson

Nichole Giles

Debbie Cranberry Fries

Cheri Chesley

LDSWBR

Thank you again, ladies, for giving me challenges that put me back on the right writing track :)

*BIG HUG*

Focus, Focus, Focus, Focus

ADD has its perks. It brings with it limitless ideas while simultaneously making it impossible to make all the options possible. But possible or not, the ideas pop like popcorn, one after another, while tickling the senses.

And so it is, when I'm about half way to finishing a book that another book comes along, all shiny new, and starts tap dancing in front of my computer screen. How can I not look at it? It's so... charismatic.

I think that's why a lot of people start books and never finish them. An idea comes, does its dance, and by the time it's done you've got a few scenes, but not a whole book. Actually sticking with a story all the way until it's completed can be a lot like dating a person who always wants to talk about the same thing and just assumes you care.

Don't get me wrong. I LOVE my muses. Anyone who's met me knows that, but some of them mumble... or just take off on vacations without telling me. -OR- even worse, they get bored of their own stories and just walk away. SERIOUSLY! They just up and leave, and I'm left with the hodgepodge of snippets they begged me to record. Once they know they've told the fun stories, they sigh in satisfaction, pat themselves on the back and go on their merry way, still believing they've handed over solid gold.

Grrrr.

Anyway, I say all this because I have this muse enticing me to drag my feet on "The Cannon Curse" (which seriously needs a new name) so I can invest some time in her. And I'll confess: she kicks ***. I'm totally writing her story next. I don't think she'll let me sleep if I don't. All I can do is beg her for a little patience. Her story is rich and full of things I don't know, so it will take a lot of research on my side anyway.

So (begin note to Muse) patience, dear Muse. I hear you. I'm thinking of you. I'm getting to know you, even if I'm not spending hours typing what you have to show. Even if I'm telling someone else's story while you're trying to talk to me.

I hear you.

But before we can hang full time, Mike, Luke and Rori need to find their happy endings... even if they take a somewhat bizarre path to said happy ending.

(end note to Muse)

As promised, there will be sass. There will be fun and there will be (a form of) romance.

So feel free to crack the whip on me, because I can't wait to finish the Cannon Curse and give you some romance, Pratt-style :)

If only I can focus, focus, focus, focus and FINISH!

Someone ACTUALLY Read a Book I Recommended!

I rarely recommend books. And even on the rare occasion that I do, the looks of doubt people flash my direction usually keep me from repeating the behavior. But seriously, I don't have sucky taste in books. I promise. In fact, I might say that I'm a bit more discriminating than the average person--except when it comes to classics. I have no appreciation for Little Women and other books of historical brilliance. I like my fiction to stay in the here and now and my nonfiction as ancient as possible.

All that said, I recommended a book to a friend a little over a week ago. It's a screenwriting book called, Save the Cat that completely changed my approach to writing. I've actually recommended the book to many people--so many who never looked twice at it--that I nearly didn't grab it off the shelf and hand it to my fellow writer. I knew she'd love it. She just didn't know it yet.

She hesitated at the $20 price tag, so I didn't push. I understand the desire not to pay $20 for a paperback. Then, yesterday, she came up to me and informed me that she bought the ebook and had been RAVING about it to every writer she's seen since.

YAY! Proof that I am not delusional or a bad friend. :)

It really is a great book for writers, even if you're not looking to write screenplays. After all, we authors are supposed to show, not tell. Screenwriters and directors have to do the same thing--replace dialogue with action to create momentum.

All that said, I recommend Save the Cat to all of you. Hope you love it as much as I do!!!!

Anyone Got a Whip?

I need some help staying on task. I'm writing, all right, but I'm not writing what I should be writing. Kay'sVille is so close to done. In fact, I have to cut about 40 pages of content to get to word count, but my brain just isn't there. It's in YA Fantasy land. It's outplaying with Hex and my other muses (in the story that's going to win an award of some sort on September 18th. YAY!!!).

That's the thing about muses. You can't always dictate which ones are going to want to talk to you and when. And sometimes muses get sick of you. Well, not of you, in this case. Me. Is it fashion week somewhere, because Kay is MIA.

Two weeks. That's what I've got... two weeks of a bored dog staring at me in bafflement as to why I sit in the same spot...

All. Day. Long.

So close to done, but I need a kick in the pants. Any whip crackers out there?

Writing, Writing, Writing...

So, I'm trying to be productive. I really am, even though it's hard to feel productive when you sit in the same seat all day--which really isn't a chair, but a trunk you've been using as a chair because you gave your other real chair away when you moved and it didn't fit in your new space.

Yeah, I totally need a chair. One of those ergonomic ones. That would rock!

Anyway, Kay'sVille is due in 4 weeks and I want to have my YA fantasy book finished in 2 weeks.

Yes, you heard right. YA Fantasy, which may seem a strange departure away from LDS mystery, but it truly is my passion. I think I technically fall into what is becoming the "New Adult" category, but in about 2 weeks I will unveil this project you as I launch my campaign to get an agent before the end of September.

Yes, again you heard right. *channels Veruca Salt* "I want an agent, and I want one now!" And I'm totally going to need your help in convincing said agent that I'm the author they've been praying for every time they open an email. Because, let's face it, agents out there want to find rock star authors, so that just means it's time for me to rock out, right?

That's what I'm working on this week: become future agent's fantasy author.

Oh, and write Kay'sVille... and finish the seriously awesome YA book I'm currently calling "The Few" (although title suggestions are TOTALLY welcome).

Now you're up to date on my life.

Back to writing... on a trunk. :)

I'm Typing as Fast as I Can! *pant-pant* I Swear!

So my first book comes out in June. That book is finished and to the press.

My second book is due out in August... that one is not finished nor to the press.


To the writers of the world, I offer this advice: do not release two books two months apart. Releasing 4 in 6 months? I'm pretty sure that's insanity, but oh well! It means that 2010 will NOT be a boring year for me!

So, if I don't answer my phone or get back to personal emails, sowwy :(

But Margot, if you notice me missing your birthday party then text me, because that just means I'm in a time vacuum and I'll hit myself if I come out of it on my own only to discover that I've missed something as significant as a birthday!

Book Trailer & More!

Okay, so I'm excited! The potential for a killer book trailer is sitting in front of me and I just have to grab it :) As usual, it's not going to happen as quickly as I would like, but that's life, right? Or at least business. What matters is that I have all the key elements in place :)

I think I need more smiley faces :):):):):):):):):):):)

In the mean time I get to re-write the end of Stalk Lake City and go over the final proof of book 1. My poor editor. I'm cutting quite a bit more, now that I printed it out and am not looking at it on a screen (why do things read so differently on paper?) and adding lines here and there when all I'm supposed to do is OK her suggestions.

Woops! Hope she doesn't mind the work... But really, there might be something wrong with me, because as a writer, I LOVE to cut anything I can. If I can turn 3 pages into a sentence, ROCK ON!

Which is what I should be doing now, really, but I am just so stoked because little bits and pieces are starting to come together including something VERY COOL that I need to finalize before I can announce it. I'm so bad when it comes to mentioning things I don't plan on explaining, but if I talk about them before they're set in stone I might jinx them.

I'm supersticious like that. So back to work, I guess, so I can actually tell you what I'm doing :)