Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 111

And Anna Staggers On

I spent an hour yesterday on Spark with Bob trying to sort through my non-plot for Arresting Anna (chat goes up tomorrow on HWSWA), then woke up today to two e-mails from him that solved most of my back story problem. The man is a genius. He also read and made notes on the first five chapters, so he’s a hardworking genius.

Below are some of his notes on the latest iteration of Anna:

One of the things Bob pointed out in his ms. notes was that I’m going to have smooth out Anna’s character arc. Nate’s arc is a lot simpler, but Anna’s dealing with being dumped, her one-night stand turning out to be the FBI, a new boss who doesn’t like her, an attempted kidnapping, a possible disaster at work, a home invasion, and living temporarily with Nate, and that’s just in Act One. I have to figure out how she’s processing that, and get that on the page since right now she’s moderately calm about the whole thing. Probably the same thing for Nate.

BOB WROTE: It occurs to me that no one has really reacted to the fact she shot someone—Anna doesn’t seem bothered; her mother is relatively unconcerned; Nate seems more perturbed that she did it herself and not him. It’s not an everyday occurrence Maybe even if she has a moment, like when she’s getting the pizza. Also did they take her gun? Would she have a backup or would Lucianna get her one?

Marty took her gun for evidence. I can up Nate’s concern; he definitely was put out by it. I can up Carter’s too. Her mother wouldn’t care about the shooting, but she’d care about the kidnapping attempt. She wouldn’t forget it. And you’re right, neither would Anna, so back to character arc.

BOB: What are your symbols and repeats?

Oh, good question. Let me think.

Well, art. I’ll hit that harder in the rewrite. What is art worth, what determines what something is worth, what art means, etc.

The idea of faking the icons, faking spirituality, faking love, etc. The accidental non-engagement.

Family and betrayal. There are traitors at the FBI, at the museum, in Anna’s family. Alliances fall and reform.

Color. Color is a big thing for Anna: Sabrina’s cadmium red dress, the ultramarine of the pool, the colors of her twin sets, her hair, orange juice, the egg yolk, her robin’s egg blue gun (which is for sale in real life, helluva lot of pastel guns out there for sale). Her envy of her cousin’s rainbow tube top. The pink wig and coat in her fantasies. She’s got an art degree so she notices.

Food. I like it that Anna makes Steak Diane because you set that on fire before you serve it, which is probably what Anna is going to do to the plot at the end. The Snickers bit, which is not her favorite candy; she’s making do with what she finds in the mini-bar the same way she was making do with Jason. She cooks with color, too, the red onion for stir fry because stir fry needs body and color. I may layer the grocery shopping in three scenes throughout the book, depending on where the food goes.

The Lucy and Charlie thing being not real, infatuation, a cartoon relationship that Nate rejects when she shoots somebody. Anna and Nate having to work to get the real thing, mature love, using Lucy-and-Charlie as a shorthand foil.

I like the reversal of romance tropes: Charlie does not turn out to be her boss, they do not pretend to be engaged (they tell everybody it was a joke that got out of hand), he does not save her, she protects him, etc.

There’s more, but I’m still discovery drafting, so it’s all vague.

BOB: I do think Lucianna would give her another cute gun.

Lucianna’s going to give her a pink taser, I think. I’m not sure Lucianna has an armory, and she wouldn’t give her last gun away. Also, I’m a little leery of too many guns in this. Most of these people are not murderous, they’re just greedy and threatening. People are trying to make money, not off others.

BOB WROTE: I’m not sure what’s at stake other than someone is after Anna—or whatever is in the pool house. But what initiated all this? Why now? Did something happen in Vegas? Seems there needs to be more of a reason for the FBI and other cops not to be all over this. Right now it feels very informal. I sense there’s a reason for this having to do with the old case his boss, Madeline is hanging around for. But she’s off-stage. Is she the big bad and Fairfax working for her and she got him out of the hospital? Obviously the Russians are involved too. Do they kill their hitwoman in the hospital before she can talk? Sort of a twofer while busting Fairfax out?

All good questions. Wish I had answers. (Note: Bob straightened some of this out in three e-mails this morning.)

And then there are my own questions after 5/6ths of the first act first draft is done:

Why is all of this happening now? What did Anna do to start all of this in motion?

How does the Anna/Nate relationship affect/echo/contrast with the crime subplot and vice versa?

What happens at the turning points and what do those things mean?

What the hell is this book about?

So yeah, work to do. I’ll try to get the first five chapters up by the end of tomorrow. HWSWA chat about Anna also comes tomorrow. What else? Oh, yeah, if you’re an American, VOTE. Thank you.

This is a Good Book Thursday October 29, 2020

So I have a question.

I was reading a book and got to a page where two people were going out to dinner . . . and the book ended. Turns out if I want to find out what happens next, I have to buy the author’s second book. And third. I think I read that there were five books in all. Please note: This isn’t “buy the next one if you want to find out the best friend’s story.” This is one book cut into five parts and sold as separate books. The other odd thing was that the heroine of the story was reading a book by the author who wrote the story. You know, like if Min was reading Jennifer Crusie’s Welcome to Temptation.. I know a lot of current authors are writing multiple books a year and doing other things I wouldn’t (which doesn’t mean they’re wrong, just not my cuppa), but both of these things seem . . . odd.

Is this common now, or is this author just strange?

I didn’t read anything else but the odd book and Anna this week. I’m WORKING. What did you read?

Working Wednesday October 28, 2020

I’m buried under work at the moment which is what I deserve for putting several things off for weeks (months?) that have now all come home to roost. I did manage to get the remote camera up to take pictures of the stray cat that lives in my garage that I’m trying to lure into the house before the temps drop below freezing on Friday. Because what I really needed was another job with a deadline. Argh.

What did you do this week?

Picture of stray cat in garage:

In “My God How Could I Have Missed This . . .” News

I’m trying to write a blurb for Anna (Krissie just sent me her blurb for the book she’s working on, so I thought I’d try Anna’s), and for some reason, it wasn’t until the fourth graph that the Lucy-and-Charlie other shoe hit the ground like an anvil:

Here’s the first draft of the back cover blurb. Note “first draft.” This is too long and too awkward.



When Lucy meets Charlie . . .

Anna Jones is looking for payback sex when she picks up a hot suit in a Vegas casino. After a night of passion and Snickers, she kisses good-bye the guy who calls her Lucy and thinks fondly of the man she’s named Charlie, no regrets, except maybe about eating his waffles and letting him go . . .

When Anna meets Nate . . .

Back in Jersey, Anna is tangling with her new boss when the FBI shows up: turns out Charlie is really Nate and is gainfully employed by the government to investigate the third-rate museum where Anna works. Also, he’s still hot. But Anna had executive fantasies, not federal agent dreams: Nate is not what Charlie seemed and that’s a deal breaker.

When Nate meets Anna . . .

Meanwhile, Nate’s pretty sure sweet, innocent Anna is not possibly involved in anything criminal, but then he meets her mother, finds out about her grandfather, watches her handle herself in a parking garage and realizes that Anna, no matter how much she looks like Lucy, is a whole new deal, too, and she’s not one he wants to make.

When push comes to shove . . .

But when trouble shows up—money laundering, fraud, breaking and entering, art theft, assault, and a champagne fountain to be avoided at all costs—Anna and Nate begin to fight crime together and see that they have a lot in common with Lucy and Charlie after all, and that maybe there’s time to make one last deal, forever.

Happiness is Getting Over a Flu Shot

I am practically back to normal, which means except for the pain in my arm, the Flu Shot Misery is going. (I expect pain in my arm from a flu shot; it was the rest of it that was such a violation.). I’m also working on Anna and realizing that while talking with Bob has been invaluable–always brainstorm with somebody who speaks your language and knows stuff that you don’t–I have opened myself up to a new “book done yet;” now it’s “how is your book going?” which could just be Bob being polite or could be his way of keeping me on task, since he has to read the new version before Tuesday when we’re going to slice and dice Anna. Which is good. I’d write more but I have to get back to plotting Anna. I have many new ideas, all of which make me happy. Now if they just made sense together . . .

What made you happy this week?

HWSWA More Brainstorming Shane

We talked about starting Bob’s new book.

In e-mail, we have just discovered that we never had a floorplan for the first Agnes book, which I realized when I tried to reconstruct it from the book and realized it was impossible. Moral: Always have a floorplan.

So it’s been a week . . .

I fully intended to have the entire Act One of Anna up today. Then I got my flu and pneumonia shots and have been flat on my back for three days thanks to what I’m fairly sure is an immune response. I’m getting better every day so I’m not worried, but ye gods I do not want that pain again. I never thought anything could keep me from writing if I wanted to, but when it hurts to move your arms, typing is not fun.

Having said that, obviously I am typing again.

Before the Shot Disaster, I had also managed to do most of a collage, and that really opened up the book for me. It’s still a chaotic mess in my head, but I have a good direction to go in, and I’m loving the characters. I still have to find placeholders for the FBI team and the museum employees, and there are probably at least a dozen more plot objects, but I’ve got the major characters, kind of, and as always, moving them around in the collage has sparked a lot of ideas.

Plus, I’m thinking about how I want to arc this romance, and I think this one’s going to be different, move faster, so I’ll spend more story time with them working together, building the relationship, ditching the will/they/won’t/they because that, while fun, is one of those duh questions. It’s a romance novel, of course they will. In fact, they already have, but that was Lucy and Charlie, so there’s some deniability there.

The other thing is how important the three mystery subplots are, which should be “not that important” since they’re there to justify Anna and Nate working together while working out their differences. But still, they have to make sense, pile on top of each other, have a certain absurdity to them. Somebody dies, but we can spare him, so things never get too dire. This is going to take Psmith level of plotting.

All of which is to say, instead of posting Act One today, I’m writing it.

Here, have an unfinished collage (remember, not an artwork, just a writing tool):

This is a Good Book Thursday, October 22, 2020

I have a book on Russian icons that arrived today, and I started Alan Cummings bio, which is terrific so far, but I haven’t finished reading anything this week except a lot of works in progress (Bob’s and mine).

So what did you read this week?

Working Wednesday, October 20, 2020

Today I am working to lure a stray cat into my garage. Well, I think the cat hangs out there anyway. I saw it running out the other day, and my neighbor Kathleen tells me it’s been around for about two years, which shows you how clued in I am. So today I go out for a cat bed and food to see if I can establish a relationship. It’s not feral because it will come to be petted, so I’ve got that going for me. I miss having a cat. Of course I will have to impress upon Mona and Veronica that their new sister is off limits for chasing. For one thing, she’s missing a paw. I figure she and Mona can bond since Mona has no kneecaps. She looks like an Emily to me but we’ll see. She may reject me utterly. She wouldn’t be the first.

Also I will be getting a flu shot, picking up some groceries (bread! tomatoes! chocolate! Diet Coke!) and working on Anna. Also I read the opening to Bob’s new Shane book, and it’s terrific.

So what have you been doing this week?

One Thing Not To Do If You’re Writing A Book and You’re Me

So I had this idea of the love interest in the Anna book, a guy who would look trust-fund rich in a suit and then turn out to be very different (because Anna would be looking for somebody who would annoy her ex which would also pay off later), and I’d added eyelashes and cheekbones because I was looking for universal markers. I forgot jawline which according to an article in Vanity Fair is essential for testosterone laden characters:

“That chiseled, rugged jawline, as well as prominent cheekbones and heavy brow ridges, are all built by testosterone,” said Dr. Helen Fisher, Biological Anthropologist and Chief Scientific Advisor for Match.com. “Testosterone is also linked with the behavioral traits of dominance, interest in sex and aggression. As a result, those with these angular features can signal confidence and manliness (in good characters) and aggression and predatory behavior (in bad characters)—depending on the context.”

The problem was, I had no real idea of what this guy looked like. I’d pretty much built him from things that would bother Anna’s ex and intimidate Anna so that when she went over to him, it would be a really brave thing to do. That was a bad idea.

So here’s what never to do if you write like me: Don’t describe characters until you have their placeholders.

I almost always choose a placeholder for my characters early in discovery draft because I need a visual touchstone. That falls away eventually because the character becomes real, without the collages I wouldn’t even remember the avatars I chose, but that touchstone in the beginning is a huge help. And I didn’t have one for Charlie/Nate, which became more complicated when I realized I was visualizing Charlie and Nate differently. Time for a placeholder.

I thought I had Anna right off the bat, although keeping her in mind got harder because she morphed as I wrote, so I gave up and went looking for a new placeholder for her, and found a great one, a woman who not only has curly red hair, she’s a dog lover. (This book needs a dog, possibly two.) Then I thought, Maybe not. Then I tried to photoshop the two together. Next time, I’m going to start with pictures, I swear.

Her mother I based on an old movie role and then updated the actress (Mercedes Ruehl) so I had a good picture of her, and that one’s exactly right. For some reason, Nate’s partner showed up as Christian Bale, which was a surprise, but I could roll with that; have to be careful there because he’s in two more books. But I often use two different people for the same placeholder, and I have a back-up for Carter, so I’m good there. But all I had for Nate was cheekbones and eyelashes and looks good in a suit; try googling for that and you get a mass of good-looking guys who aren’t right.

So now I probably have the wrong placeholder for Anna–she needs to be more solid, stronger–and the idea of placeholder for Nate that is basically Matt Bomer (Nate) and Tom Hardy (Charlie) schmushed together, which is not going to work, so I tried for Chris Pine (why is everybody wearing a beard these days?). I’m thinking Pine has the eyelashes and the cheekbones that Anna went on about, and also the jawline that Dr. Fisher pontificated on. Plus I like the way he contrasts with Carter; they’re two guys in suits but they need to be different. Magnolia is still not right. Must cogitate. And also photoshop because I don’t think Bernadette Peters has ever worn a twinset in her life. Maybe Aubrey Plaza. I love Aubrey Plaza.

I did find a great picture of Anna’s pool house, though. So there’s that.

Admin Update: The Anna posts are now all (I think) tagged “Anna.”