writing

It depends on your definition of Horror

/ Scott Nagele / 4 Comments

I haven’t written about my Work In Progress in a while. And since I’ve got some time to kill while I wait for my last book to become a Best Seller, this might be a good time for an update.

My WIP is a collection of three novellas. It’s probably more accurate to call them two novelettes and a novella, but that takes more words to say, and who’s counting anyway? The genre is horror, kind of. It’s more psychological horror than anything revolving around chain saws and slack-jawed yokels. There’s really not much bloodshed in it at all, which is why I put the “kind of” after horror. I might call the novellas psychological thrillers, except I always think of spies or mobsters when I think psychological thriller, and there are neither of those, so I’m back to horror, kind of.

Poe. Not really his style of horror story.

Not really Poe’s style of horror story.

Then again, genre confusion is nothing new for me.

Whatever they are, I’ve finished the first drafts of all of them.

Yay!

Okay, party’s over; let’s get serious.

I had my first chance to read through them.

The two shorter pieces are entertaining, I think. They are not earth-shattering additions to the genre, whichever genre they happen to be, but I can see readers enjoying them as quick reads.

Definitely not Lovecraft's kind of horror.

Definitely not Lovecraft’s kind of horror story.

When it comes to the longer story, the feature presentation, if you will, I feel as if I’ve provided myself with good news and bad news. The good news is there are parts I think are quite good. The bad news is good parts are not enough to make a good story.

It’s not that the story is bad. It’s not, but as is, it’s not good enough.

What’s wrong with it? Well, for one thing, it’s probably too confusing. Confusing your readers is never good, unless you are an established post-modernist or something like that. In that case, confusing everyone just makes you a greater genius.

But I am neither a post-modernist nor a genius. At best, I am an adventuresome writer, playing with supernatural subject matter for the first time, and I may have gotten the Play-Doh colors all mixed up.

More in line with du Maurier's type of horror . . . but not really.

More in line with du Maurier’s type of horror story . . . but not really.

The fun thing in writing about unknown forces is that you get to make your own rules for what’s possible. Nothing is bound by the laws of physics we know. The trouble can be in remembering your new rules and applying them consistently. Plus, you’ve got to let the reader know the rules; they can be difficult to convey, without explicitly explaining them, when they are counter-intuitive to commonly known laws of nature.

Can this book be saved? I don’t know. I may be going too hard on myself, or too easy. I’ll have to get a second opinion, and then a few more after that.

All I know for sure is that I won’t even consider publishing it until I’m confident it’s a good quality, entertaining book, all the way through. How I get there from here will be my own horror story.

You want to write a novel, but life gets in the way

/ Scott Nagele / 8 Comments

I read a lot of blogs these days; it’s the unintended consequence of becoming a blogger. One thing I have discovered from reading blogs is that even among bloggers who don’t blog about fiction, there are many who are working on writing a novel. Even more dream of writing a novel.

Bloggers, with some exceptions, blog because they have stories to tell. A fair number of them have special stories kicking around in their heads, waiting to spill out into great novels.

I’m still searching for commercial success as a novelist myself. But as someone who has written a handful of novels, maybe I can offer some advice and inspiration to those who feel daunted by the prospect of finishing, or even beginning, their novel.

To begin with, I have good news and bad news. I’ll start with the bad news because that’s what writers would want first.

The Bad News: You’ll probably have to write more than one novel, if you want to build a readership for your work. The age of the Harper Lees is gone. Hell, Harper Lee isn’t even a Harper Lee anymore.

The Good News: Once you finish the first novel, you’ll realize how non-daunting writing novels can be. You may even become eager to start another.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. It’s the first one that’s the trouble. How do you make it happen?

Assuming you’ve got a good story to tell, you tell it in the same way you tackle every other life challenge: one day at a time.

A daily routine

Captain Scott was on a mission to reach the South Pole and he still found a few minutes every day to write. Okay, so maybe not the best example of a success story, but you get the point. (Image: H.G. Ponting)

The secret every aspiring novelist should know is that you don’t have to put your life on hold to write a novel. But you do have to make it a part of your daily life.

It doesn’t have to be a big part as long as the commitment is there. If you write a mere 500 words a day, excluding weekends, in two weeks you’ve got 5,000 words. And you may be surprised to learn how often you can write those 500 words in half an hour. In eight months, you’d have a respectable 80,000-word first draft. The caveat is that the words have to advance the plot; your characters can’t lose focus and go on about the weather, unless the weather is about to kill somebody.

A daily 500 words is fine, but how do you consistently move the plot? Trust your characters. Let them do the logical things for interesting people to do in their unique circumstances. Also, don’t wait until you’re on the clock for your novel to happen. The most time-intensive part of writing a novel is not hammering out the story at the keyboard; it’s thinking about the story. This you can do while you’re walking the dog or waiting in the car line at your kids’ school.

If you can’t meet your goal one day, make it up when you’re on a roll. In between, think about how the place you’re in fits into the big picture. Use the writing and non-writing parts of writing a novel together to problem solve. Write the scenes; think the big picture. Novels happen one little bit at a time.

And after you’ve finished your novel, what do you do with it? Maybe somebody smarter than I am will answer that question.

I probably don’t care about your superfluous nipple

/ Scott Nagele / 2 Comments

Do you care what color eyes the protagonist in a novel has? Is a character whose green eyes shine like emeralds more interesting than one whose blue eyes are mentioned in passing? What about the one whose eye color was never mentioned? What kind of loser must he be?

I don’t care what characters look like. When their physical traits are described, I quickly forget them and picture the character as if he had not been described at all. I paint him as an amorphous, generic human, without any detailed features.

In my mind, the character has no eye or hair color; he is a sort of human silhouette.

The only time I remembered a character’s hair color was when I read the movie tie-in edition of I am Legend, with a movie scene featuring Will Smith on the cover. Robert Neville, the character portrayed by Smith, is described as having blond hair. That would have made the movie more visually interesting.

movie tie-in

The Robert Neville in my mind didn’t look like Will Smith – not even a blond Will Smith.

older cover

He had the same eye color as this guy, but the hair color was more vague. He definitely didn’t have the huge left hand and/or extra-long left arm.

What the characters do is far more important to me than how they look, unless how they look is a big part of their character or influences their actions. If a character has a third eye, I’d like to know about it. But a third nipple is of less interest, unless a third nipple was clearly stated in the prophesies as the mark of the Chosen One, or three still-warm nipple rings were found at the scene of the murder.

I suppose physical appearance is more important in certain books. Romance novels might need to beef up their men and curve up their women to help sell the fantasy. Maybe that’s why I’ve never seen Pee Wee Herman on the cover of a romance novel.

Our reading preferences shape our writing. That’s why I can’t remember describing the physical traits of many main characters, except for that three-nippled messiah. My characters are like those Star Trek aliens who took whatever form Captain Kirk needed them to take to be able to relate to them. They can assume any appearance you want them to take.

What I must paint them with is a personality. I must make my characters have character, good or bad. I must make the central characters grow, or meaningfully not grow. This is the color on my brush.

Before one of the tens of people who have read my work becomes tempted to think me a liar, I should explain that I sometimes describe the physical traits of minor characters. I do this instead of giving them names. Names are superfluous for characters with walk-on parts (See: “Angry Man in Crowd” in your local movie credits). Referring to a bit player by a dominant physical characteristic makes them more noteworthy than throwing a temporary name label on them.

If I had to describe my central characters, they would all be medium build, medium height, with light brown hair and greenish, blueish, brownish eyes.

If any of characters show two or less dimensions, I’m truly sorry. That’s on me.

Is a main character’s physical appearance important to you as a reader? How about as a writer?

One man’s muse is the same man’s bully

/ Scott Nagele / 2 Comments

We’ve all heard people talk about how they are compelled to write. Compelled to write? Compelled to roll out of bed every morning and trudge off to work—that makes sense. A job brings in money. But compelled to write? Compelled to struggle with an arrangement of words that stands a snowball’s chance in Hell of ever economically justifying the energy put into it? What twisted mental force would compel a person to do that?

Whatever the force, it is certainly mental, and completely twisted. It’s been inside my head, demanding my lunch money and making me do its homework since I was 12, maybe longer. I wasn’t bullied by kids in school, but I’ve been menaced by the specter of wasted potential all my life. I expect to labor under its threats until I die, leaving the specter forever unsatisfied. My bully’s failure should give me the last laugh, except that I’m kind of rooting for my bully to win. I told you it was twisted.

Bully with wings

Look out, Whiskers! She’s about to put you in a headlock and steal your lunch money. (“The Tenth Muse” by John White Alexander.)

Lots of people search the dark corridors of their own minds for that hidden room, bursting with the light of genius (and associated cash and prizes). We’re sure it must be there, if only we could find the door and the key to unlock it. We toil in darkness, every so often glimpsing a fleeting flash that, if not a mini-stroke, must be a reflection of the sparkling key to that door.

We rush to the spot where the flash originated. We throw ourselves down on hands and knees. We grope for that elusive key to the room flowing with the milk and honey of inspiration. When I’m feeling around the dirty floor of my mind for that special key, I am writing. I have to do it. I can’t pass up the chance to unlock the door to my full potential. It means my masterpiece. But there are acres of linoleum inside my head, and some fool installed mirrors on the walls. So the flash could have come from anywhere.

It occurs to me, as I swipe my hands across the grimy floor of my mind, that I should do some mopping. But I always have grander schemes than common housework in front of me at the time. Besides, when I find that key and strike it rich, I’ll hire a cleaning lady. Maybe I’ll even have all the burnt-out light bulbs replaced. I plan to do it up right.

I’m not looking for that shiny, magic key every time I crawl around the floor of my mind. Sometimes I am groping for the rusted key to the room holding the memory of where I left my wallet.

It would be easier to find my wallet, and my hidden potential, if my mind weren’t so cluttered. I’m forever banging my head on other stuff, like bittersweet memories and bits of music or art that once touched my soul. Sometimes I hit my head so hard I see stars, and one of the those stars is always the reflection from the key to the hidden room of light. Bittersweet memories and beautiful art will pull stunts like that. They always get me on my hands and knees again, groping for that key, writing.