Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 101

So Nita Act One

Writing is hard.

Now that my whine is out of the way, I really thought when I sent the severely rewritten Act One to Krissie and Bob that I was done. I knew it was kind of slow, but you know, it’s Act One, so there’s some set-up there . . . .

Nope, it’s slow. I have analyzed this sucker, charted it, looked at conflict boxes, I’m ready to scream. And the horrible thing is, I can hear the wrongness of my rationalization even as I make it: But I need that information.

Readers don’t need information, they need story. Must tattoo that on the inside of my eyelids.

Here’s the first part of Act One:

Part 1:
1. Nita in car vs Button (intro Nita),
2. Nick in Bar vs Vinnie (into Nick),
3. Nita in Bar vs Nick and Vinnie (first meet),
4. Nita vs. Rab, finds scupper,
5. Nick vs. Belia on phone,
6. Nita vs. Nick (scupper),
7. Nick vs. Nita (passes out in his arms).

It’s a romance novel. It starts when Nita meets Nick, which is Scene 3. Every scene that N&N aren’t together is going to slow this down. Act Two and Three they’re together most of the time, but Act One, there are big stretches where they’re not. That’s not good in a romance novel.

But it’s also Nita’s book. It’s about her evolution, her arc, so I think the first scene, where she’s trying to deal with a lot of things, may be necessary, possibly with more cuts (argh, now I have to break down the scene into beats). Nick’s first scene, the second scene in the book . . . maybe not. But there’s so much information in there, who Nick is, the impact of scupper, smiting Binky . . .

Readers don’t need information, they need story.

Story doesn’t happen in that scene until Nick torches the teddy bear. He can’t do that in front of Nita. (Expletive here.)

The last two scenes are all action, Nita and Nick together. Leave them alone. Shorten the bar stuff, especially Nick’s scene, Nick’s talk with Belia, Nita making the toddy with Rab. My brains are bleeding out my ears.

Then Part 2 is Nita vs Button (talking about Nick and the shooting), Nick vs Jeo (talking about Nita and Jeo as heir), Nita’s home invasion (all action; she thinks Nick sent the guy). Cut the whole thing? It solidifies Nita’s relationship with Button, an important subplot. It’s really about Button . . .

Part 3 is the breakfast scene, which goes on too long but at least it’s N&N. Then the Mayor warns Nick and the captain warns Nita, so symmetry about authority figures trying to block relationship, plus they’re short scenes (cut the one with the captain).

Part 4 is the black hole. Nita talks to Button, Nick talks to Vinnie, Nick goes to the Historical Society, Nita asks a lot of people questions . . .

Part 5 is the two bombshells, Nita at the Motel and Nick in Hell, intro Max. They’re apart, but it’s story and it moves. Leave that alone.

Part 6 is dealing with Forcas and the act climax with Richiel, N&N together the whole time, definitely a romance novel. Leave that alone.

But those two parts only resonate because of what’s been set-up before. Okay it’s Act One, there’s gonna be set-up, damn it–

Readers don’t need set-up, they need story.

Crap.

Okay, fine, I’ve got to go back in Act One and do beat analyses.

I’d say “Screw it” and go on to Act Two, but I got a good look ta Act Two last night, and it’s worse.

Writing is hard.

ETA:

I put the first scene up again here (it’s on the Works in Progress page above, but you have to do a deep dive to get to it so just hit that link below):

The Devil in Nita Dodd, Scene 1, 2021

If you have time, tell me the places where you skim.

A Course in Happiness

Yale has a course in happiness that’s been getting rave reviews for years. It’s available on Coursera (see link below) for those who want to study happy. I’m at the point where I don’t want to study anything but comic book art and the ceiling, but for those of you who still get up in the morning with a need for a song in your heart:

Coursera: The Science of Well Being

Can Anybody Identify This Picture? (Asking for a Friend.)

So I have this friend, let’s call him “Bob,” and on St. Patrick’s Day he sent this picture which has now been haunting my dreams for three days, and not in a good way. Anybody here know where it came from?

I did a Google image search and got nothing. The part that freaks me out is that somebody actually set this up and took a picture because . . . I still got nothin’. Old TV show? Book cover? Public Service Announcement?

Bob doesn’t know where it came from either. Probably Hell.

Details Matter

Okay, I bought a lot of Art Deco china for Fast Women, and I own all of Liz’s t-shirts and all of Nita’s socks, and . . . the POINT is that I understand getting the details right. But even I never wrote an anthem for an imaginary city state. Hat’s off to Terry Pratchett for “We Can Rule You Wholesale,” the anthem of Ankh-Morpork.

(I particularly like the second verse, which (Pratchett explains) was written by a non-Ankh-Morporkian vampire who had noticed that the world over, people faked the second verse off their anthems because they couldn’t remember the words (I have no idea what the second verse of the Star-Spangled Banner” is) and therefore tend to sing “ner, ner, hner” until they hit a bit they remember. The soprano singing this does a really good job on the “ner”s.)

This is a Good Book Thursday, March 17, 2021

I started a book I was really enjoying and then, somehow, got frustrated with–it involved the protagonist deceiving somebody–I just turned to the back to see how it came out and dropped it. I’m wondering if the single first person voice didn’t just become so annoying in its cluelessness or maybe in it’s over-the-top-ish-ness (which I originally loved) that I just gave up (there’s some pot-and-kettle going on there, I’m sure, since I’m sure my voice eventually grates, too). Great character, great voice, interesting community, but she kept charging around missing things.

On the other hand, I read a three-book series–classic modern romance, nothing innovative–about three women who’d gone together on a lottery ticket and won big. The lottery bit wasn’t a big deal, although I did wonder why they weren’t overrun by scammers, but their individual stories were different and interesting and none of the men they met would dream of sending a dick pic. They were good comfort reads, and since it was a series, I could settle into the community. I do not discount the benefits of comfort reads, especially right now as my world is coming back to life: Kate Clayborn’s Luck Series. (Note: All three had Big Misunderstandings that made me groan, but she cleaned them up nicely.)

What did you read this week?

Working Wednesday, March 17, 2021

It’s St. Patrick’s Day. My plan is to clean something green (aka the contents of my fridge).

What did you do this week?

It’s Always the Story

I think every reader picks up a book of fiction and thinks, “Tell me a story.”

Not “give me beautiful writing” or “give me the psychological profile of a character” or “describe a setting vividly” or “dazzle me with a theme.” All of those things are good and to be hoped for, but the overarching need of most readers who deliberately choose fiction is “Give me a story.”

I came to this conclusion while reading the opening page of a BookBub offering. (I learn a lot from BookBub samples.)

The page in question was beautifully written in the first person, but it was losing me in the first paragraphs. They were set-up/introduction and again beautifully written but skim-able. And then she told me a story, just a short memory, and I read every word, it was riveting. Then the narrative went back to set-up, and I closed the sample.

Later I thought back on that and wondered why I’d ditched it so fast. Okay, I’m an impatient reader, but still, that memory scene was beautifully done. And I realized I just wasn’t in the mood for the kind of book where I had to skim authorial intrusion to get to the good stuff. Give me a story.

Here’s the thing about starting any narrative, fiction or non-fiction: You have the reader on the first line. Very few readers pick up a story or an essay thinking, “I really hope I hate this.” They are WITH you on the first line, on the first page, they want to be enthralled, entertained, illuminated. So give them what they want from the beginning: something enthralling, entertaining, illuminating. Don’t say to them, “I have to set some stuff up here, so just hang on, I’ll get to story in a minute.” They either won’t stay (that would be me) or they’ll keep reading but they’ll be annoyed.

The Tor newsletter recently had an essay on prequels by Ferrett Steinmetz that pretty well summed this up:

“[W]hen you look at far drearier prequels, the question they’re starting with all too often is: “What don’t we know?” “What we don’t know?” is often the boringest possible question you could ask.”

The problem often continues in the rest of the story because of helicopter authoring. The story is going along at a good clip, but then the author stops to tell us what the character is thinking at length (I mean paragraphs long) or what the character has always thought, and why, and what impact that has had on her life, and I start feeling like a little kid sent out to play in the snow whose mother keeps coming out to wipe her nose or give her a warmer hat or warn her not to eat the dirty drifts or explain the scientific basis of frozen water falling from the sky. The little kid probably just tunes her out and waits for her to leave, the real life approach to skimming the interruption, but I’m a reader, not a little kid, and I can leave.

But, the author says, I need that stuff in there or the story won’t make sense. Well, maybe.

First of all, is it really needed? I don’t need to know why somebody feels the way they do going back to their childhood days; I just need to know that she feels it in the now. I don’t need to know to why the protagonist and antagonist are being lousy to each other, I just need to see it in the now of the story. I don’t need to know it was a dark and stormy night, I just need to know how that’s affecting the story in the now.

In other words, keep the story in the now.

Eventually, of course, some of that stuff is going to be necessary. So you keep the explanation in the now; that is, somebody in the story needs to know that information, so they ask. The key here is “needs to know.” As in, there’s a pressing reason to ask. Maybe they’re being attacked, so one character turns to another and says, “What the hell? Who are these people?” Maybe one character has a complete meltdown, and the other character hands her a Kleenex and says, “What the hell? Explain what triggered this so it doesn’t happen again.” The “what the hell?” part of this is what pushes the question: I need to know this now.

The worst of this approach is monologuing (thank you to The Incredibles for the term). That’s when the Bad Guy has the drop on Our Hero and the hero says, “But why?” and the Bad Guy gleefully explains his Evil Plan for days, giving the hero time to defeat him. Or that classic: “You’re probably wondering why I called you all together today,” followed by a lengthy recap of the brilliance of the detective before the murderer is revealed. I think the key to all of these is believability: a true Bad Guy just shoots the hero and goes on to his next Evil Plan; the people in that library shout, “Just tell us who did it!” after about ten minutes. And readers skim.

Elmore Leonard said the smartest thing I ever heard about storytelling: “I leave out the parts people skip.” Of course, different readers skip different things for different reasons, but the basic idea is that people skip the stuff that isn’t story.

Of course there are a million variations from the basic linear plot–disrupted timelines (patterned fiction), multiple time lines (time travel, parallel lives of historical and modern characters), and others–but the basics of story remain. Tell me a story about this person, show me this person in conflict, immerse me in this world, make me care.

And don’t write the stuff people skip, the stuff that’s not story.

Happiness is Pi

Preferably chocolate cream.

This is a Good Book Thursday, March 11, 2021

Remember that Lacroix journal I bought? Well, it was too weird to be practical so I bought a Panda journal instead. Then I kept looking at the Lacroix, and at some point it got jumbled together with the Antiquarian Sticker Book, which is the BEST BOOK EVER, and I started doing morning pages, something I have never been able to do, by pulling out one of the weird stickers and pasting it in the Lacroix and free writing about it as a starting point it works. I LOVE THIS STICKER BOOK. I also read a lot of fiction and Ina’s new cookbook but mostly I LOVE THIS STICKER BOOK.

What did you love to read this week? (Or not, maybe you didn’t love it.)

Working Wednesday, March 10, 2021

I spent this week starting over: looking at the first act of Nita, experimenting with drawing Jane-the-Protagonist-Avatar, working through Lynda Barry’s comic book lessons, finishing all the bathroom needs-to-done stuff (towel racks, drying line, floor cabinet, wall cabinet) that’s been needing to be done for, uh, years, so I have a feeling of progress if not accomplishment. Baby steps.

What did you do this week?