Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 193

If It’s Not Working, Stop Doing It

I’m admitting defeat.  I cannot get Nita into four acts as per my usual plan.  I have diagrammed and sliced and diced and it’s not working.  As Einstein supposedly said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”  I am not getting different results.  So the rest of this post is me brainstorming how to do this differently.  This is serious business; there is graph paper involved.  

So I’m going to try a different structure.  Yes, I’m appalled, too, but I want this book done, and the structure is kneecapping me.   Also I’ve known for some time that there’s a dead spot in the middle of Act One, so that has to be fixed.  I tried moving the turning points between Act One and Two around, but that made things worse.  There’s good stuff in this book, but there’s also meh, and I cannot have meh.

So I went back into the first two acts and started looking for high points that could be considered soft turning points. Like:

• Nita drinks the scupper and Nick knows she’s different and tells the boys to find out everything about her.  I love that scupper scene sequence, I’m not messing with that, I just have to hit that turning point harder.

• Then there’s the guy trying to shoot Nita and getting double-tapped by Button.  That’s a turning point in their relationship and the first solid clue that Nita has that the supernatural is real.  She ignores it, but she remembers it.  

• Then Nick gets yanked into hell and finds out about Nita’s heritage and gets saddle with Mammon and Max.

• And finally Nita sees Nick smite Rich and knows it’s all true.  

So, okay, based on this, we’re not doing this in acts, we’re doing it in Parts.  Like episodes. They still begin in regrouping from a turning point and end in a new turning point, the turning points just aren’t cataclysmic like act turning points.  That fixes it, right?

No.  The turning points have to be about the protagonist.  (Because I said so, that’s why.)  Turning points one and three are Nick’s, and two is Button’s.  Four belongs to Nita because that’s the old act turning point.  Nita has to have the other three.   I DON’T WANT TO DO THAT MUCH REWRITING.

Suck it up, Jenny, nobody said this was going to be easy.

Okay, Button’s (second TP) can be about Nita and Button beginning their partnership; I can fix that by tweaking.  Probably.  It’s in Nita’s PoV already, so it’s doable.

Nick getting dragged back to Hell is a good solid turning point, and he’s the second lead, so I’m going to give  him that one.  (BECAUSE I SAID SO.)

That leaves the first turning point, which has to be Nita’s, damn it, and as of now it ends in Nick’s PoV.  BUT that last scene is only 700 words, so it’s really more of a coda, and it’s all about Nita.  The scene before that is Nita’s PoV, and it’s the one where she sees Nick as a skeleton, so . . .   ARGH.

Okay, so if I leave the first turning point as it is, juice up the part 2/Button shoots turning point as a major move in their partnership, leave the part 3 turning point in Nick’s PoV in Hell, and keep Nita’s come-to-realize at the end of Act One (which I think is freaking brilliant if I do say so myself) I’m okay, right?

No.  The word counts for those four parts are 

11147

 4603

14311

 7325

See that 14311?  That’s the dead spot.  So if I move 5,400 thousand words up, I’ll have the rhythm I need, 11,000, 10,000, 9000, 7000, more or less.   Five thousand words means the breakfast scene ends up as the last scene in Part 2.  You remember the breakfast scene.  It’s four thousand words of people talking.  

So something big has to happen at the end of the breakfast scene.

• End of Part 1: Nita sees the boys are green and Nick’s a skeleton; discounts it because she’s drunk.

• End of Part 2: [Give me a minute here.]

• End of Part 3: Nick goes to Hell; I’ve got a scene right before that where Nita sees Forcas’s head in the acamas box and flips out.

• End of Part 4: Nita sees Nick smite and realizes it’s all true and he’s going to be the Devil

So Act One or the first four parts are about the arc of Nita accepting that the supernatural is real (I already knew that, I just didn’t know the TPs would line up like that.)  So what I need at the end of the breakfast scene is another big moment that jars Nita out of her certainty that there’s nothing supernatural on the island.  

That might work.   

It’s 4:30AM, we have a snow and ice storm coming this way, and I’m socked in until I fix this mother.    Expect snarling in the near future.

The post If It’s Not Working, Stop Doing It appeared first on Argh Ink.

Ignore Phil

It’s Groundhog Day and Punxsutawney Phil has seen his shadow, which in theory is six more weeks of winter.   But it turns out, there are groundhogs that disagree and predict an early spring.      Including one guy who bit a journalist, which I would also do if I were a groundhog on February 2.  So there is reason to hope.  (Mostly I just wanted to post this picture.)

And now I must go watch the best movie Bill Murray ever made.  (Yes, it’s better than Caddyshack.)

 

SaveSave

The post Ignore Phil appeared first on Argh Ink.

This is a Good Poem February 2nd

It’s the month of the dead.  Let’s think about love.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnet 43, 1845

One of the reasons I love this poem, aside from the fact that’s it’s an amazing declaration of love from a wonderful real life love story, is because I taught this in a high school English class once, and a boy told me, “I would kill to have a girl say that to me.”   When you get high school boys loving poetry, you’ve written a good poem.

But my favorite Barrett poem is still Sonnet 14:

“If thou must love me, let it be for nought

Except for love’s sake only.

Do not say, “I love her for her smile—her look—her way

Of speaking gently,—for a trick of thought

That falls in well with mine, and certes brought

A sense of pleasant ease on such a day”—

For these things in themselves, Belovèd, may

Be changed, or change for thee—and love, so wrought,

May be unwrought so. Neither love me for

Thine own dear pity’s wiping my cheeks dry:

A creature might forget to weep, who bore

Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!

But love me for love’s sake, that evermore

Thou mayst love on, through love’s eternity.”

Or as some dude once put it, “Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds . . . ” (Sonnet 116.)

 

SaveSave

The post This is a Good Poem February 2nd appeared first on Argh Ink.

This Is a Mysteriously Good Book Thursday

Since February is the month of the dead, I’ve decided to read mysteries until March.  Of course, it’s also the month with Valentine’s Day in it, so there may be romances in there, too.   What’s your poison for February reading?

The post This Is a Mysteriously Good Book Thursday appeared first on Argh Ink.

Cherry Saturday, Feb. 1, 2018

February is Bird-Feeding Month.

I love bird feeders but we’re not supposed to have them because of bears.  (I remember visiting Pat Gaffney once, and watching her yell out at the window at a huge black bear that was snacking on her bird feeder.  The bear ignored her, which isn’t easy to do with Pat.)   I keep thinking if I can hang  a feeder high enough on the house away from trees (we have a lot of trees), maybe it would work and I could watch the birds again, but bears climb, and the idea of waking up and seeing a bear looking in my bedroom window while he snacks is not attractive.   And then, of course, there are the squirrels.

Feed the birds because I can’t.  Thank you.

(It’s also Library Lovers Month, but that’s pretty much all year round here, so I went with the birds.)

The early bird gets the earworm:

SaveSave

SaveSave

The post Cherry Saturday, Feb. 1, 2018 appeared first on Argh Ink.

Grace’s Bad Date: A Fiction

Last week, Jennifer Weiner asked me how I’d tell the story of “Grace,” the twenty-two-year-old who went on the date from Hell with Aziz Ansari.   I really did try, but the more I tried, the more confused I got.  

The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense.   We tell each other stories about something that happened so that we can impose order on the event. That’s why the same event told by two different people can become two entirely different stories: the event was shaped by two different points of view.  I should make it clear that I believe “Grace” was telling the truth in the way she related the events, and I believe Ansari’s apology and his explanation that he saw the events differently.   I understand that real life comes at us fast and it’s hard to think straight under pressure; there have been any number of times when I’ve looked back at something and thought, Why didn’t I do something about that?   Even so, I can’t take the events as listed and make them into a coherent narrative.  

Part of that is because only half the story is here, “Grace’s” half.  And part of it is that although we get “Grace’s” side of the story, she leaves a lot out.  She says, “I did this, he did this,” but she doesn’t say why she did things, leaving it to the reader to figure out her motivations.  If you leave it up to the reader to determine your character’s motivations, you’re handing over the most important part of characterization: what people do isn’t nearly as interesting as why they do it.    And while I can cobble together a motivation for just about anything, I cannot figure out the motivation for the glaring hole in the center of “Grace’s” narrative: why she has no agency.

I don’t like speculating about real people, so we’re moving into fiction now, based on “Grace’s” Babe story.  This story is about Greta and Andy.  

My protagonist is Greta, who wants a great date with a smart celebrity who has the same vintage camera that she does.  Terrific relationships have started with less, so why not?  What she hopes for after that is what any human on a date probably wants: a fun evening, a good memory, maybe the start of a long term thing.  (Again, this is my fiction, so that’s what Greta wants.  No idea what “Grace” wanted.)

My antagonist is Andy, who wants a great date with a cute twenty-two-year-old who approached him to talk about the coincidence that they have the same vintage camera.   She came to him, she temporarily ditched her date to do it, she gave him her number, so he translates that into “she wants what I want: sex.”  Again, I have no idea what Ansari really wanted, but based on “Grace’s” description of the evening, his idea of a great date was sex.

So Greta wants a lovely, romantic evening that might be the start of something big, and Andy wants sex.  They’re both hoping for a good time, their definition of “good time” just differs.   Conflict!

The story takes place in three scenes: Greta meets Andy at his apartment, they go to a restaurant, they go back to his apartment.  In the original story, “Grace” had other scenes–meeting Ansari at the party, getting ready and talking with her friends about how excited she was, texting them pictures of her outfit, etc.  The problem with this in the fictional Greta’s story is that that’s back story, and back story kills.  There is no conflict, no escalation, no character growth, it’s just information-the-author-thinks-the-reader-should-have.  Plus Greta’s back story tells me nothing about her that’s interesting, except for the vintage camera and her excitement that was so great she told all her friends.  If she’d been a little clearer about why she was so excited–she’s dating a celebrity? she’s found a guy who’s into vintage cameras, too? she’s going to get to pitch her script?  I dunno–this could have been crucial, but as it is, it’s just set-up.  So I’m starting Greta and Andy’s story at his apartment, based on the theory that the story starts when the protagonist and antagoninst meet, and their stable worlds are disrupted.

I’m not sure why Greta went to Andy’s apartment first.  I don’t see it as indicative of anything in their characters or motivation, they had to meet someplace, and the setting contributes nothing to the story because nothing happens there: he’s polite, he gives her a glass of white wine, she’s annoyed because she prefers red, and then they leave for the restaurant.  This is not worthy of story real estate, there’s no conflict, everything is going as expected except for the red wine (which makes her sound snowflakey), so there’s no real scene here.

I’m cutting it.

So now we’re at the restaurant, and it’s nice, and they’re both a little nervous because it’s a first date and they both have high expectations (She: I’m with a celebrity!, He: I’m going to have sex!), so that’s a great set-up for conflict.  Reminder: Conflict is not always people stabbing each other with forks, it can be two perfectly nice people discovering that their motivations clash and trying to work it out.  

So she sits down hoping for . . . .

Here’s where the missing info kneecaps me.  I don’t know what she wants.  My Greta just wants a nice date (bonus, with a celebrity), but she appears to be getting that.  The only real conflict is that before she’s finished her last glass of wine, he hustles her out of the restaurant, evidently having been fantasizing hard over the entree and dessert.  That’s good foreshadowing for what happens next, but a scene can’t just be foreshadowing, it has to have shape and form of its own.  So either he becomes a problem for her earlier (in which case why does she go back to his apartment with him?) or I cut this scene.

I’m cutting this scene. (Cutting the scene means cutting the wine motif which has a beat in each scene, but since I have no idea what the wine means as a metaphor, it’s no great loss.)

So now this story is one scene, which I like.  Focus.  This one interaction will tell my reader everything about Greta and Andy.

Here’s what happens in “Grace’s” account of the real date:

They left the restaurant before she was ready.  She doesn’t mention protesting this, so I’m assuming she went along with it to be polite.

When she got to his apartment, she complimented him on his countertops, so he told her to hop up, kissed her and groped her breast.

He tells her he’s going to get a condom, she says, “Chill,” he “briefly” gives her oral sex and asks for a return, which she gives him, also briefly.

The he repeatedly tries to put his fingers in her mouth and her vagina and keeps pointing at his penis.  (Yes, she knows it’s down there.)  

He repeatedly asks her where she wants him “to fuck her.”  (Nowhere, ever.)  She says possibly on their second date.  He says, “if I pour you another glass of wine, is this a second date?”   She goes to the bathroom.

When she comes out, she tells him she’s feeling pressured and he says he understands.  Then he asks for oral sex.

You know, I was going to diagram the rest of this out, but bleah.  So things gets worse, although not rapey–he follows her around but doesn’t try to trap her–and I’m mentally screaming, Get the hell out of there, he’s awful, and she finally gets out her phone to call a car and he insists on getting one for her, kissing her good-bye at the door “aggressively,” and then she cries in the hall.  

 I can extrapolate that Andy failed because there was no blood in his brain, but that just makes him a boring groper, a character cliche, unless I can somehow give him a reason for letting go of his rational self before she was ready to let go of hers.   One possibility: He’s so used to groupies that he doesn’t realize she isn’t one; the lack of romance in his approach suggests that he thinks she thinks she’s there for sex.  So his assumptions are the reason for his failure.  

Greta is more difficult.  I can extrapolate that she was excited to be dating a celebrity and got him confused with the guy he played on TV.   Then as things get increasing creepy, she can rationalize them away in hopes that he’ll turn out to be that great guy.  But is that enough to motivate oral sex she’s not really interested in giving (twice)?  The trouble I’m having with this may be more about the differences in the way Greta and I view oral sex; she’s of a different generation and may think of it as just a way to stop him from hitting on her, while I tend to need know where that’s been and how long since it’s been tested.  My narrative problem is, how long is Greta going to keep denying what’s happening even while she recognizes how unhappy she is before my reader gets fed up with her for being a polite victim?  

And that pinpoints my problem with both the real story and the fictional narrative: The way this is being told, Greta has no agency.  She seems helpless in the hands of a creeper who has disappointed her terribly and is now pushing sex on her.  She demurs but she doesn’t demand he stop, she suffers but doesn’t leave.  He continues to cluelessly creep, but when she finally decides to leave, he gets her a car so there seems to be no coercion, yet she presents as a victim.  I’m not saying it’s her fault because she didn’t leave, I’m saying it doesn’t make sense that she didn’t leave.  It’s not a coherent narrative without a motivation for her to stay, and she’s not an interesting  protagonist because she’s so passive without a motivation to be passive.  And then she tells everybody about the bad date she didn’t stop on a national website because . . . .  Yeah, I don’t know what her motivation for that is, either.  Revenge?  A warning to other women not to go back to the apartments of drunk celebrities?  An attempt to get some MeToo validation?  I have no idea why she thought it was worthy of an essay unless that was her motivation in the first place, doing research for an article on “My Date With a Celebrity.”.  

That would have been an interesting story, her expectations of the date as a subject for an essay, staying because she can’t believe it’s that bad, hoping to salvage her project, realizing that as awful as it is, it’s going to make a more exciting article with him as a  creep.  I just don’t like her much with that motivation. And I need a good motivation to give Greta agency, which means that it’s not going to be “Grace’s” story any more because she’s left so much blank space in her narrative, that I can make her anything I want.  Like a predatory journalist.  Or . . . 

She’s a CIA agent investigating him for possibly selling secrets to the Russians.   He’s a famous actor researching his next role by meeting with real Russian spies, which has led the CIA to think he’s really a Russian spy.  She pursues him hard, so that he thinks she’s a love struck groupie/sure thing, but he turns her down because . . . yeah, he wouldn’t turn her down.   He’s still a jerk out for sex, but at least she’s volunteering to be the object of his jerkdom.

So they’re both wrong about each other and what the evening is going to be about, and their attempts to drag each other into their own realities will set up the conflict, and they both have strong motivations for not resigning from the conflict.  If it’s a short story, it’s one scene sequence in his apartment, told in alternating PoV scenes as the conflict escalates.  Bonus: If I make him smart and not a mindless groper, I can make that funny.  (There is nothing funny about the real date.  Bleah.)

If it’s a novel, they’re going to get tangled up with the real Russian spy network somehow, maybe end up on the run from both the CIA and the Russians while they try to figure out what the hell happened.  If it’s a romance novel, they fall in love.  If it’s a suspense novel, they probably still fall in love, but if I’m writing this, she is not The Girl, he’s The Boy.   In none of these stories does she give him oral sex in that first scene because reluctant oral sex is not romantic, erotic, or funny, so I’m out.

So here’s my fix for the “Grace” story:  It needs Russian spies.  

You’re welcome.

 

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSaveSaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSaveSaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

The post Grace’s Bad Date: A Fiction appeared first on Argh Ink.

Asshat as Signifier

Two things converged in my brain today: I’m reworking Act One of Nita and remembered that somebody here objected to the word “asshat” which is used repeatedly throughout the book, and I found this AV video on the etymology of the word.

BUT it put some people off.  So I should just cut it.  But I need a signifier for Nita, something that’s as sharp and as out of bounds as she is without being off-putting, and I like “asshat” for that because it:

• Isn’t that commonly used but common enough that people will know what it means

• Isn’t something a polite or proper or dignified woman would use

• Isn’t cute or elaborate to the point where it’s trying too hard

• Has a nice sharp sound

• Is more playful than “asshole” or any of the other “ass” variations

• Isn’t gender specific.

Why do I need a signifier?  Because it’s good shorthand for character in the beginning and for relationship arc throughout the book.  Nita’s the only one who uses it in the first scenes in the book; even the characters who are close to her like Mort and Keres don’t say it.  It’s Nita’s Word.   Ten thousand words later, Button has moved from hostile to partner, and that’s signified when she looks at Jason in the squad room and thinks, You’re incompetent.  Asshat.  Twenty thousand words after that, Nick who had never head the word before and who begins by not having emotions, looks over the gallery railing in Hell in rage at Mammon and thinks, Asshat.   They’ve both connected to Nita and have unconsciously adopted her word.

Will most readers notice this?  Probably not, nothing calls attention to it aside from the slightly uncommon usage.  But I do believe there’s an unconscious connection there, and it’s pretty well-known that people who connect with each other begin to mimic each other’s speech patterns and word choices.  I’m trying to build intense relationships here over a very short period of time–five days–and I need all the help I can get.

But if readers snag on it, that’s bad.  I figure since I use “fuck” a lot in my books, I’ve already lost anybody sensitive to crude language, but it may be that “asshat” is peculiarly crude.  I have Words That I Do Not Want To Hear that are just personal quirks so I understand, but I can’t write to satisfy everybody’s personal quirks, that would leave me with only “the” and “and” to write a novel.  But if “asshat” is particularly objectionable for some reason . . .

So, Argh People, how do you feel about “asshat”?  Be blunt, this is no time for pussy-footing around.  

 

EDITED TO ADD:

Uses in the first act:

“We get this all the time,” Nita said. “Once the park opens in May, every asshat tourist in green make-up will swear he’s a demon.”

“It’s March.” Button tried to hand her a cup of coffee.  

“So we got an early asshat.”

Behind Vinnie, in the shadows, a tall man in a suit leaned against the wall by the archway to the back room, his arms folded. The Early Asshat, she thought, and started with the devil she knew.

She gave him her best fish eye. “You looking after me would be a worry, you being an early asshat and all.”

“Asshat?” Nick said.

“Detective Witherspoon,” Mort said. “Big guy. Nita’s ex. Asshat.”

You’re the guy who closed the Murdock case, [Button] thought, as they stopped at the desk, and leveled the worst criticism she had at him. You’re incompetent.

Asshat.

Max looked alarmed, but Mammon looked up, confident and smug.

Die, asshat, Nick thought.

SaveSave

SaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

The post Asshat as Signifier appeared first on Argh Ink.

An Art-Full February

I tripped over Lee Thomson’s Dancing Crow Postcard-A-Day project in 2008, and loved both the postcards and the idea.  I really loved the idea of making daily art, something I’ve let drop from my life (my first degree was in art, my first jobs were as an art teacher, now it’s all about the words), but I didn’t have the discipline, so I just enjoyed Lee’s work.  I still don’t have the discipline to do one project every day for a year, but Lee has a new, easier idea: Make a Thing a Day for February, 2018.  Here’s her comment:

“February is when I buckle down to the dedicated making of things. I wrote a guest post for a friend inviting people to join me making a thing-a-day for Feb –\http://clevermanka.net/2018/01/22/february-daily-project/

Join us! all you need is Instagram and the hashtag #dailyFeb2018″

Lee goes into more detail in this post, but basically, you set the bar very low (very, very, very low), assemble as much of what you’ll need beforehand so it’ll only take minutes to finish your project, and then when Feb. 1 rolls around, you post what you’ve made every day to your Instagram account with the hashtag #dailyFeb2018 .

This hit me at the perfect time.

• I must get my old office cleared out and made into a workroom so I can get most of the craft stuff out of the rest of my house and have a place to make things so that my Making Things Stuff does not clog up my daily living.   If I’m going to make 28 little things in February, they can’t be scattered all over this dumpster of a house, I’ll never find them.  So this gives me until the end of January (FOUR DAYS) to make my studio usable.  GOALS.  I need them.

• I have an instagram account.  I started it because I wanted to do more documenting of my everyday life, and it just hasn’t happened, although I did practice with some older photos (you’ve seen them all, Argh)..  But since I already have the account, posting for 28 days would get me in the habit.  GOALS, I really need them.

• I have projects I want to do that involve little pieces.  Like this flower shawl.  And a weatherghan using this heart pattern (minus wings, although I could do the nightime temps in the wings and just pick a solid color for the backing . . . hmmm).  And this jacket.  And finishing my version of this cardigan.  And making some of these squares from the Vibrant Vintage CAL for the shutters on the TV cabinet in Krissie’s room.  Getting ready for those would be easy: a basket with the yarn, the hook, and color plans and/or charts.  

• I’m feeling the urge to collage Nita in paper (instead of the digital collages I’ve been doing).  That usually involves doing small combined pieces that I move around with pins until the background is done.  Since the smaller pieces are almost always about relationships, it’s good for nailing those down as I do the final push on the first draft and then really important in the rewrite.  I’ve come to believe that a book isn’t real until I start a paper collage (digital is too easy), so this is kind of exciting.  (Thank you, Lee.)

• I need to ask Lee if pumpkin custard with pie crust leaves counts.  I cannot get that to look quite right, which isn’t a tragedy because my mistakes always taste good (except for the time I left out all of the sugar instead of just cutting back, that was bad) and if I can figure out the baking time so that the leaves don’t all look like they’ve been rotting on the custard, it could be quite pretty.  Ephemeral art.  Because it’ll be gone in a day.  

So I like this idea a lot and I’m gonna give it the old Argh try.  You should, too.  

TINY craft project a day for twenty-eight days, hashtag #dailyFeb2018 on Instagram.

Who’s in?  (We will not humiliate if you miss days.  Because, let’s face it, I’m gonna miss days.)

 

 

 

SaveSave

SaveSave

The post An Art-Full February appeared first on Argh Ink.

Cherry Saturday, January 27, 2018

January is National Creativity Month.

You have four days left.  Get on it.

The post Cherry Saturday, January 27, 2018 appeared first on Argh Ink.

This is a Good Book Thursday: The End (of January) is Nigh

I’m trying to type this while sneezing.  Better just give up and read a good book.  How about you?

SaveSave

The post This is a Good Book Thursday: The End (of January) is Nigh appeared first on Argh Ink.