Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 236

Book Done Yet: WiP Thinking

Working on a new story means rediscovering how I do this. Every time, it’s a free fall, but there are certain things that I always rediscover. Like . . .

. . . writing whatever comes to mind no matter what order it’s in. It’s nice to have a start, but that almost always changes. So much better to have the scenes that demand to be written and figure out where to start the whole magilla later. The nice thing is that it’s fun rereading what I have. That’s important; when it’s a slog at this stage of the game, my heart really isn’t in it. When it’s fun, I’ll look at the TV and think, “You know, I’d rather be telling myself that story,” and go back to work.

. . . telling myself the story. At a certain point in the write-whatever-comes-to-mind phase, I have to stop and say, “Okay, what is this book about? This book is about Nita who . . .” and take it from there. A discovery draft is really about saying, “Oh, didn’t know that,” as you write something. Then you put together what you didn’t know and see what it means.

. . . picking a soundtrack by mood, not words. Well, the words of a song can be important, too, but it’s the sound that matters. I just pulled twenty plus songs out of my own music based on instinct, but I’ve also asked Lani and Krissie and Mollie for suggestions (demons, devil, hell, fire, change, etc. ), so I may get more from them. Not all of the songs are staying because the mood is all over the place, but the big surprise is that it’s not dark. Compiling a soundtrack (music to write to) is like making a collage, you don’t pull pictures that illustrate the story, you pull pictures that look like the story. Same for music, you pick things that sound like the story and the characters, and the stuff I’ve chosen so far is happy. Sprightly even. The songs will probably change but this list and the collages give me a feel for the story.

. . . figuring out the turning points and acts, just as a starting point. After watching so much PoI lately, I’m paying closer attention to reversals, too. Then I put the music where I thought it would go, and most of it fit in nicely.

BEGINNING

Spooky, (Heap)

ACT ONE

Not a Love Song (In Formation)

Demons (Chesney)

Have a Little Faith in Me (Hiatt)

Just My Imagination (Temptations)

THINGS GET WORSE

I Saw the Light (Alabama)

ACT TWO

God Help the Girl, (God Help the Girl)

Devil in Disguise (Presley)

You Can Do Magic (Seeley)

Lullaby (Mullins)

I Should Be So Lucky (Minogue)

POINT OF NO RETURN

Suddenly I See (Tunstall)

ACT THREE

Master of Disaster (Hiatt)

Human, (Pretenders)

Lady Magic (Taylor)

Such a Night (Presley)

It Hasn’t Happened Yet (Hiatt)

CRISIS

I Can’t Decide (Scissors Sisters)

ACT FOUR

The Light (Bareilles)

My Guy (Wells)

CLIMAX

RESOLUTION

What Love Can Do (Hiatt)

. . . writing food. I’ve always avoided fashion as much as possible, not interested in labels, but boy do I gravitate to food. These people eat and drink like every meal is their last. I think I know why, but still. I spent $200 bucks buying the food in the story today, so I’ll be cooking this week. I did not buy the doughnuts, however. I’m trying to be good, and doughnuts are very bad for me. But the rest of this stuff, I can eat, so I’ll be full for the rest of the month.

. . . writing the climax so I know where I’m heading, starting with Nick’s part so I can time it out. Hell’s time moves twenty times faster than earth’s, so a minute in Hell is twenty minutes on Earth. Since he’s sucked back into Hell for the climax, I have to write his fight in hell and time it out, putting in minute markers, and then do math to find out where Nita is on Earth. And then when they’re both written, splice them together. And then rewrite it again so it reads smoothly. It’s a PITA, but I think it’s worth it.

. . . making discovery collages (that’s Nita’s below, Nick has his own).

And that’s this week in “Book Done Yet?”

Note One: Anybody who does not want to watch all four seasons of Person of Interest but would like to check it out, the episode we’re doing on Monday, “Relevance” (second season, episode 16), would be a good one-off since it’s mostly told from the point of view of a new character played by Sarah Shahi (who is excellent), which means it’s basically a stand-alone, forty minute thriller with a strong, smart female protagonist.

Note Two: Did anybody catch the iZombie with Liv on stripper brain? I ask because (a) it was an outstanding episode that exploded about four different plots and subplots and (b) I just read the AV Club review, and in the comments I learned that the meals Liv fixes herself always have something to do with the episode. And in this one, Liv fries the slices of brain as strips of bacon in a club sandwich. Now I must rewatch all of iZombie to see all the other meal she made.)

The post Book Done Yet: WiP Thinking appeared first on Argh Ink.

Person of Interest: Firewall, The Contingency, Bad Code

Apologies for this being late. For some reason, I set it to post tomorrow.

Today we’re watching “Firewall” by Greg Plageman & Jonathan Nolan, “The Contingency, by Denise The & Jonathan Nolan, and “Bad Code” by Greg Plageman & Patrick Harbinson to talk about the Climax as Turning Point (Things Get Worse).

Turning points are places in a story where an event happens that’s so huge that it changes the protagonist and the plot, turning everything in a new direction. One of the things that makes binge-watching Person of Interest so much fun is that every climax of every season is a turning point, raising the stakes, evolving the characters, and making the story new again. The first season climax which is really stretched over three episodes does all of those things in spades.

[In anticipation of the question, “What’s the difference between a turning point and a reversal?”, a reversal reverses an expectation while a turning point turns the story. Finding out that Zoe wasn’t a hitter reversed Reese’s opinion of her and changed his next action, but the story didn’t turn until the bad guys tried to kill Zoe and Reese rescued her. That wasn’t a reversal because Zoe didn’t trust the bad guys to begin with and didn’t think John wasn’t on her side; no expectations were reversed. But the story turned because now Zoe’s a target, now she knows Reese isn’t just a driver, and now they’re in league to find out what’s on the tape: everything’s new and the stakes are higher. Having said that, sometimes a reversal is a turning point. They’re just not the same things, and they do different things for your story.]

Where was I? Right. Climaxes as turning points. I hate cliffhangers because they disrupt story and perform no useful purpose. If I don’t like a show, they can tell me everybody in it has been killed, and I won’t care enough to go back the next season. If I do like a show, I’ll be watching the next season to find out what happens next to the characters and the world I like. Proof you don’t need cliffhangers: two of the best showrunner/writers on two of the best series ever ended each season with a satisfying climax that always completed that season’s story: Joss Whedon on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and John Rogers on Leverage. That made every season of those shows a complete novel.

PoI takes a different path. If you binge watch all four season that have aired so far, you can see that they’re four acts of a single novel. The season climaxes paired with the premiere of the following season operate exactly as turning points do, raising the stakes and changing the story to go in a new direction. It still annoys the hell out of me that they don’t just end the season instead of making it a two-parter with the next premiere, but I’m in awe of how they turn the show. Every season they made it new again, with much higher stakes, to the point where I’m almost glad they’re ending it this year because where could they possibly go next? (I know, they’re good, they’d find a higher plane to fight on.)

So first, “Firewall.”

At the beginning of the episode, it’s business as usual: there’s a number, Reese goes out to save her with Finch doing computer-fu to help. It’s a beautifully paced episode, no fat at all, as the stakes mount and the forces against them–HR and the FBI–track them down. Finch calls in help from Fusco, Carter, and Zoe, and they’re all working frantically, with the wild card of the strange woman, breaking into the library and finding Harold’s computers and white boards. It’s a great episode, but it’s a first season PoI episode with everybody doing what they do best, no worries about who’s going to win, just keen interest in how they’re going to do it. Reese sends Carolyn Turing up the ladder to safety and joins with Carter and Fusco for a nice bit of fan service, them all together in a car chase with HR ending in a well-deserved explosion, and all is well. Except that Turing is Root, she planned the entire thing, and now she has Harold, and Reese has no idea of how to find him. Business as usual is not going to cut it.

So Reese goes out to the street, finds a camera, and talks directly to the Machine, as if it’s a person. Because starting at this moment, the Machine is a person. Conden called it “God” and so does Root in a later episode, referring to it as “she,” immediately making the Machine a “she” in the minds of the viewers. The Machine is no longer a computer, now it’s an AI, artificial intelligence, that is, an artificial person. It’s not a tool the Machine Gang uses, it’s one of the gang. And now it has Root coming for it, which means this is also the first time the Machine is in danger and poses a real danger: Whoever controls the Machine wields enormous power.

So the first turning point in the four act (so far) novel that is Person of Interest is changing the story from a simple crime-of-the-week drama that has redeemed three lost, isolated people and Joss Carter (and joined them in a community they’re all dedicated to) into a complex examination of the use of artificial intelligence, particularly as it’s used by governments.

Smart Story Moves

Purely great storytelling again: Trying to help a woman against huge odds–HR and the FBI–great pacing, feeding the info to the viewer through the FBI surveillance through Carter and Fusco (each of whom doesn’t know the other is working for the Machine), Reese’s POV, Finch’s POV, Finch being observed by the unknown woman who breaches the library, Zoe working on the outside . . . there is no fat at all in this episode.

• And then Harold sciencing the save with cell towers and Reese getting the bad guys with a bomb, working to their strengths.

Favorite Moments

• Zoe! Especially Zoe finding out that Carolyn Turing scammed them all.

• Carter and Fusco finally finding out that they’re on the same team.

• “You created God.”

• Root calling her plan a “trust fall.”

• Reese talking to the Machine like a person, demanding help, and the phone ringing.

Ominous Moment

“So nice to finally meet you, Harold.” Amy Acker is so good in this (and continues to be amazing through the next three seasons).

“The Contingency”

First season: Harold’s good at working the Machine, Reese is good at action stuff, they save somebody weekly, while slowly building a team they trust: Fusco, Carter, and sometimes Zoe.

Second season: Harold’s been kidnapped and is going to have to learn action stuff; if Reese is going to save him he’s going to have to talk to the Machine; and the Machine is no longer just a Machine, now it’s Reese’s partner. Oh, and Carter and Fusco now know they’re both part of the Machine Gang. And HR has been wounded and is gunning for the Man in the Suit. And the FBI is closing in on the Man in the Suit. The tidy little project Harold designed and implemented through Season One in order to save people is now smashed, huge forces coming for it, and Harold himself is in dire danger.

Now that’s a “Things Get Worse” turning point.

One clue this episode is still part of the first one: it starts where the last one ended: the phone ringing.

But there’s new stuff. For one thing, we have new antagonists: Control, the government agency that uses the Machine to prevent terrorist attacks now sees Reese as a Person of Interest, and they’re not particularly interested in prosecution (higher stakes). Oh, and Fusco and Leon are in the hands of the Aryan Nation for awhile. But mostly, Root has Finch and it’s not going well.

Weakest Part

Flashbacks. Freaking flashbacks that get in the way of finding Finch, which is the story I’m invested in.

Smart Story Moves

• Showing how ruthless Root is instead of talking about it; that razor slash is shocking.

• Root’s idea that people are Bad Code, but the Machine is perfect is powerful motivation and characterization at the same time.

• Leon turning out to be valuable in finding out more about Root.

• Reese slowly establishing a relationship with the machine that will shift his and Finch’s roles as employee/employer. Reese calls Finch “my friend” several times, and now he’s on a equal footing as far as access to the Machine.

Favorite Moments

• “What are you going to be doing?” “I’m not sure. Math, I think.”

• Reese quoting Finch: “I gave you a job, Mr. Reese. I never said it would be easy.”

• Leon!

• BEAR! That whole great scene.

• Carter saving the day.

Ominous Moment

“I don’t want to control your Machine, Harold. I just want to set it free.”

And then the third beat in the turning point: “Bad Code.”

Weakest Part

Flashbacks. FREAKING FLASHBACKS. They’re beautifully done, but so unnecessary. FIND FINCH.

Smart Story Moves

• How damn smart Root is. How damn ruthless she is. And how crazy she is.

• Really, how smart everybody is. Nobody makes a dumb move in this.

Favorite Moments

• Root refuting the Wound as a motivation. Yes, a bad thing happened in her past, but Root was always a bubble off level.

• “Why is there a crossbow on the bed?”

• Fusco and Carter going out for a drink.

• Finch meeting Bear.

Ominous Moment• Root calling Reese to thank him, which sets her up as an ongoing threat at the same time it shows Control taking care of the inconvenient body Root left for them.

Summing up:

The first season of PoI is essentially what any first act is: telling the story while setting up the characters, goals, plots, subplots, and themes. So at the end of the first season, we know the four members of the Machine Gang (five, counting Zoe), we know the city they work in, we know what motivates them, what they’re proud of and ashamed of, why they choose to band together to fight the good fight, how they do the work they do, and how the power is distributed. By the penultimate episode of the first season, the world of Person of Interest is established.

THen at the turning point, they blow it up. The Machine Gang will go on fighting, but it’s all very different now, with a shifted power structure, and much tougher antagonists. It is, in short, brand new again. That’s what a turning point does.

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Person of Interest: Flesh and Blood: The Well-Rounded Antagonist

Person of Interest has great antagonists, mostly because the writers refuse to see them as just Bad Guys. Every major antagonist they’ve had is layered, well-motivated, and intelligent, with the possible exception of the thugs from HR, and even they were led by the smart, smooth Quinn. Elias may be my favorite of all of the Major Big Bads because he’s so complex. And that, in turn, makes the stories about him as complex and layered as he is. The protagonist may drive the narrative, but the antagonist shapes it, and Elias always shapes an interesting story.

First, Elias is likable, even though he does evil things. He has an admittedly skewed moral code which is driven by his respect for loyalty, strength, brains, and courage. Ironically, these things that he exhibits in his own actions are the attributes in Finch, Reese, Carter, and Fusco that bring him down in this episode. Because of that, he’s gracious in defeat. When Carter bests him, he admires her for it because she’s been brave and steadfast. When Finch and Reese block his move, he acknowledges a game smartly played. He’s not an animal, he’s a complex human being that viewers can’t help but relate to, not because of the trauma in his past but because of his behavior in the present. The Elias who steals and kills is reliably sane; the animals of HR are just venal, jackals at large, driven only by greed. I think one of the reasons Elias becomes a major part of the PoI story world is that the series increasingly moves into the gray area, and because of his characterization, Elias is the most interesting shade of gray. And then of course, he’s played by Enrico Colantoni, which never hurts.

Elias is also dimensional. This episode relies heavily on flashbacks as motivation, which is a mistake, not just because what happened in the past is not story (although it isn’t), not just because it takes real estate away from the gripping story in the now (although it does), but because it reduces the marvelous complexity that is the character of Elias to one note. The flashbacks say, “This is a revenge story, based on a Would from the Past,”but if Elias just wanted his father dead, the guy would have been gone long ago. Elias thinks big, thinks not just in terms of territory and power, but of reordering the world to make it right. It may have started with the trauma in his past, and it’s certainly not a coincidence that part of his plan to achieve dominance of his territory also involves taking down his father’s world and making him watch, but if he had to choose between revenge on his father and his master plan, it’d be the master plan every time. He’s ruthless and therefore dangerous, but he is also in his own way, a civilized man, a man who in a different time would have conquered kingdoms.

Beyond that, he’s Finch’s doppelganger,which I think is a brilliant characterization move. Elias wants to control his world to make it a better place; Finch built a machine to make his world a better place. They both work from the shadows, aided by one strong, ruthless captain, co-opting the police to achieve their ends. They are two fine minds in a struggle to define the world they live in, and it makes their struggle personal. In later episodes, Finch becomes Elias’s actual chess partner, going to him in prison for games, a recognition of the relationship between two like minds. That echo between protagonist and antagonist almost always makes for a layered conflict, while strengthening the character of both the protagonist and the antagonist.

Elias is going to continue to be a major player, sometimes working against the Machine Gang, sometimes working for, but always a thoughtful, strong, sinister presence, and a truly great antagonist.

Weakest Parts

Flashbacks. Freaking flashbacks destroying momentum. I’m not saying they’re not great scenes, I love the foster mom (“We are all descended from kings”) and that attempted execution of Elias is chilling. But we know Elias makes it; we’re a lot more worried about Taylor. The now of the story is always more powerful.

Smart Story Moves

• Layering the complex plot: Elias buying HR, taking Taylor, while Finch counters with HR and Reese takes Taylor back. It’s more of a chess game than a plot, with Elias playing many players at once, and it’s a terrific way to show how strong and smart he is. You always want the antagonist to be stronger than the protagonist, and in fact it takes the entire Machine Gang to bring Elias down.

• Establishing sympathy for Elias even as he does horrible things by making the men he’s trying to kill so much worse.

• Making Carter’s choice between saving her son and doing her duty, and showing who she truly is, while showing Fusco’s growth at the same time.

Favorite Moments

• Carter telling Fusco he’s the only one she trusts; then sticking by him when the mob bosses try to turn her against him.

•”Might as well kill them myself.” “If you’re up to it, that would be extremely helpful.”

• Fusco’s moment of truth.

• The music: Unkle’s “Burn My Shadow” playing over Taylor’s rescue gives me chills every time, and then Nina Simone over Elias’s final victory.

Ominous Moment

The whole episode is an ominous moment. Not a lot of comic relief in this one.

Subsequently on PoI:

“Matsya Nyaya:” This is one of those episodes that’s so loaded with back story that the number of the week gets swamped even when it becomes an HR case. Kara Stanton and Reese are ordered by Mark Snow and Alicia Corwin to go to China to retrieve a stole briefcase, and then to kill each other, and then there’s a bombing . . . This is one of the few PoI episodes that I think got away from the writers because they were stuck with all the back story. Back Story Kills, people.

“Many Happy Returns:” Reese saves a woman from her abusive ex as the FBI follows a lead that Reese might have been involved in the death of the abusive husband of his lost love Jessica. Carter shreds a file that the FBI wants on Reese.

“No Good Deed:” A national security analyst discovers the existence of the Machine and tries to warn people which almost gets him killed, Finch gives him a new identity and tells him to shut up, but he’s seen by Alicia Corwin. Reese finds Finch’s ex-fiancee, Grace, who thinks Finch is dead; Finch confesses to Reese that he faked his death to protect her.

New PoI Post: Tomorrow, the trilogy of “Firewall,” “The Contingency,” and “Bad Code,” three linked episodes that focus on Root, the antagonist of “Root Cause” and a major player in the PoI story-verse, the story serving as a great example of (Act) Climax as a first turning point.

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Person of Interest: Witness: Reversals

Sunday Notes

If you’re not watching iZombie, now in its second season, you are missing some seriously good comic/horror/romance/community storytelling. Definitely not something you snack through, but there was only episode that really got to me, and I’m the one who bailed after the first five minutes of Zombieland, so not a strong stomach.

It’s about Liv Moore (get it?), a beautiful, brilliant doctor who has the perfect fiance (Major Lilywhite, not subtle with names here) who goes to a boat party that’s attacked by zombies and wakes up undead. Two months later, she’s working in a morgue, having broken off her engagement so she won’t zombie-fy Major by accident, when the ME, the fabulous Ravi, finds her eating brains and says, “I knew it!” and there begins the best female/male friendship that will never turn into a romance (she loves Major, he loves her roommate) on TV:

I could go on about this show for days, but the central premise is that when Liv eats a brain, she takes on that personality and also gets the dead person’s memories which means she’s invalable to homicide Detective Clive Babineaux, who thinks she’s psychic. There’s a crime of the week, but the fun is watching McIver as Liv become a different person every week while a fantastic supporting cast goes nuts around her.

The community here is what really makes this work. From left to right above, we have David Anders as Blaine (the Spike of iZombie), one of the many amazing Bad Guys in the story (another is Steven Weber lunching on the scenery with real gusto in his best role yet), Malcolm Goodwin as the always calm, always deadpan Clive Babineaux, Rose McIver as Liv (out of undead make-up here), Robert Buckley as the steadfast good guy Major, and Rahul Kohli as the amazing Ravi Chakrabarti. There isn’t a weak performance in the bunch. (Plus Peyton, and Glinda, and Drake, and Mr. Big, and . . . ) Oh, and it’s from Rob Thomas, the guy who brought us Cupid, Party Down, and Veronica Mars.

Oh, and the WiP of the week is Paradise Park, the episodic alt history, steampunkish, turn-of-the-century paranormal romance novel I’ve been working on. Warning: It’s discovery draft which means it’s in disconnected pieces, so really not much fun to read. Also, it’s long. So it’s annoying and time-consuming. Really, just go watch iZombie; season one’s on Netflix now.

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Cherry Saturday 3-26-2016

Today is Make Up Your Own Holiday. Day.

So what are you celebrating? Dogs? Chocolate? Yarn? Yeah, me, too.

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The Reason You Wait Twenty-Four Hours . . .

The big rule of reading a critique is “Don’t respond for twenty-four hours.” Longer is even better. Here’s why:

CRITICISM (paraprhased):

Why doesn’t the Devil just bash him/torture him/force him to be a partner?

IMMEDIATE REACTION:

1. Because heroes who torture to get their own way aren’t likable. (The Dick Cheney Rule.)

2. Because humans have free will. (The Paradise Lost Rule; Adam and Eve get tempted, not force fed.)

3. Because a character who is omnipotent flattens story. (The Kryptonite Rule.)

4. Because that goes against everything that’s in the personality of this Devil.

OBVIOUSLY.

TWENTY-FOUR HOURS LATER

Oh, hell, I didn’t put any of that on the page.

In other news, the in-progress photo of the office is finally up. Still many days of work to go, but better, definitely better.

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Critique Practice

I believe I mentioned last week that I was going to post the second Nita scene for critique practice to go with the critique post over on Writing/Romance. The post over there goes into more detail about how to critique, but here’s the quick-start version (answer any or all of the questions):

1. Who’s the protagonist and what’s her/his goal?

2. Who’s the antagonist and what’s his/her goal?

3. What’s the conflict and who wins?

4. What needs work (the part where you were bored, the parts you didn’t understand, the parts you didn’t believe, etc.)?

5. What must be kept (when I rewrite this, what parts must I refrain from cutting)?

6. What do you expect/hope will happen after this?

Since it’s important to wait at least twenty-four hours before responding to a critique, and because sometimes it takes people a couple of days to respond to a post, I’ll do a response post to your critiques next Wednesday, but I won’t put anything in the comments here. Feel free to ask questions, I’ll just answer them in the follow-up post.

And here’s scene two:

************************************************

When Nick Borgia came out of the hellhole Vinnie Smith called his office, carrying the fiction that Vinnie called his ledgers, Vinnie was behind the bar at the back of the room, a glass in one hand and a bottle of whiskey in the other, the picture of thuggish misery.

Nick went around to the front of the bar and dumped the ledgers. “Vinnie, your bookkeeping is worse than your housekeeping.” He looked around the ugly, empty bar. “And your decorating.”

Vinnie raised his bald head, ruddy in the reflection of the many neon flames he’d slathered over the matte black walls of Hell Bar. “Joey’s dead.”

“I know.” Nick pointed to himself, showcasing the bullet holes in his jacket and shirt. “I was there. Now about your suppliers. This Mr. Lemon–”

“Joey’s dead,” Vinnie said.

Nick frowned at him. “He’s fine. He’s just moved on to another world. Now about Mr. Lemon–”

“Don’t give me that religious crap,” Vinnie said. “He’s dead and it’s my fault.”

“Really,” Nick said, interested now. “How is that?”

Vinnie shook his head and poured another drink, so Nick reached over the bar, took a glass, and poured himself one, too.

He took one sip, winced, and put the glass down. “Your liquor is terrible.”

“I rented you the apartment upstairs,” Vinnie said. “Not this bar.” He focused on the ledgers. “Were you in my office? Get out.”

“Your books have many entries referring to a Mr. Lemon.”

“I said, Get out!”

Nick sat down at the bar. “If you really want me out, tell me about Mr. Lemon. If he’s the key to my problem, I can fix it and leave you forever.”

“And if I don’t?”

Nick shook his head. “Vinnie, somebody just put seventeen bullets through me to shoot Joey. Shouldn’t that tell you something?”

“Tells me that you’re bad news, you tricky bastard. Get out of here.”

“I’ve been on this island for two days looking for answers, and everything leads me back here. Tell me about Mr. Lemon.”

“No,” Vinnie said, and the ten-foot run of neon flames next to the street door fell and shattered on the sticky black floor. “Hey!”

“Tell me about Mr. Lemon, Vinnie.”

“No. You get out–”

Three more runs of flame fell and smashed, leaving that side wall empty of neon.

“So much better.” Nick sipped his drink again and winced. “So much worse.” He shoved the glass toward Vinnie, who picked it up and drained it. “Now about Mr. Lemon.”

“I can’t,” Vinnie said, and all the neon on the other side of the bar fell, too, leaving Vinnie with only the three-foot run of flames behind him.

He looked at it in a panic and said, “Don’t.”

“Then talk to me, Vinnie,” Nick said, his voice gentle.

“It’s gonna cost me to replace that,” Vinnie said and poured another drink.

“It’s so much better without it,” Nick said, looking around. “Still vile, of course, but so much better. Some new paint, refinish the floor, get some drinkable liquor, you’d have yourself . . .” His voice trailed off as a thought struck.

“Takes money,” Vinnie said. “You’re gonna pay for that neon.”

“You know, I might.” Nick looked back at him. “Aren’t you curious as to how I knocked it off the wall?’

Vinnie opened his mouth and then stopped. “Hey, how did you do that?”

So tonight Vinnie was not one of the world’s faster thinkers. He hadn’t been exactly sharp in the two days Nick had been in the apartment over the bar, but he hadn’t been this slow.

“How much have you had to drink?”

“Not enough,” Vinnie said morosely. “Not enough to make up for Joey. Not enough to tell you about Mr. Lemon, neither.”

Nick nodded. “Okay. As I have told you several times, I’m the Devil, so knocking neon off a wall is not a problem. I do have a problem, however, and I believe it involves your Mr. Lemon.”

“I’m not telling you anything about Lemon.”

“But if I was your partner, you’d have to tell me everything.”

Vinnie snorted. “You ain’t never gonna be my partner.”

One of the blackened, splintered tables by the front door caught fire.

“Hey!” Vinnie said, and then the next table went up, and the next until all thirty tables were aflame. And then they weren’t, they were just thirty pieces of fragile table-shaped ash.

Nick smiled at Vinnie, and the ash tables collapsed into ash piles.

“Vinnie,” he said. “This bar is an insult to a very fine, very old institution. I’m going to fix that.”

“People like it,” Vinnie said sullenly.

“You’ve had maybe half a dozen people in here in the past two nights.”

“It’s the off-season.”

All the chairs burst into flame and became ash-chairs.

Vinnie froze, his drink halfway to his mouth, and a moment later the chairs collapsed into piles of ash.

“You bastard,” Vinnie said, without heat, and took another drink.

“So here’s the deal, Vinnie,” Nick said, also without heat. “You’re taking me on as a partner. I’ll pay to get this place–” He looked around in contempt. “—fixed.” He looked at the bottle on the bar. “And I’ll order the liquor. And I will also straighten out your books, Belia help me. And in return you will tell me everything.”

Vinnie glowered at him. “I don’t think–”

The last of the neon flames behind him creaked on the wall.

“Okay,” Vinnie said.

“Partners?”

Vinnie sagged against the bar a little. “Partners.”

“Who’s Mr. Lemon?” Nick asked.

The street door opened, and Vinnie looked past him and said, “Oh, fuck.”

“What?” Nick said.

“Spooky Dodd.”

“What?” Nick turned around and saw three people coming toward him, a dark-haired woman, a taller dark-haired man who looked like her, and a shorter, prettier blonde in glasses who didn’t look anything at all like her.

The woman in front wasn’t anything special to look at– medium height, medium weight, medium attractiveness, dark hair, dark jacket, dark jeans–until she got close enough for Nick to see her eyes. Darker than dark, her irises were almost the same black as her pupils. And when she reached him, he could feel the cold coming off her, not a lot, but it was there: she lowered the temperature around her.

“Hi, Spooky,” Vinnie said to her.

“Call me that again, I’ll shoot you,” she said, her voice flat and low, and then she turned to look at Nick, the full force of those cold black eyes meeting his.

“I’m Detective Dodd,” she said to him. “And you are?”

“Hello, Detective Dodd,” Nick said to her, holding out his hand. “I’m the Devil.”

“So I’ve heard,” she said and turned back to Vinnie.

She was cold and sharp, and there was something else, lurking beneath the surface.

You’re not entirely human, are you, Detective Dodd?

Mr. Lemon could wait. Nick sat down to watch.

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The Rewrite Trap

Somebody once said that no books are ever finished, they’re just abandoned, and I have found that to be so true. I just get to the point where the book is dead in my brain, I’ve worked on it for too long, and even though I know it’s flawed, that I should keep trying to improve it, I just can’t any more. That’s when it goes to Jen, and she sends me a brilliant editing letter, and I fix everything she tells me is wrong, and it goes to copy edit, and I go through the copy edit–still doing rewrites on small things–and then it’s gone forever set in stone, or at least in paper and digital ink.

Then I found Laura Miller’s article in Slate about Karen Hall rewriting a book she’d published twenty years before.

Before I read it, I thought, “That was a bad idea,” thinking from experience. Several years ago, I did a rewrite/polish on my first published book to make it technically better. When I wrote it, I had an English major’s idea of fiction; I had an MA in lit, how hard could this be? So I committed all kinds of egregious sins including headhopping (I know, I’m so ashamed). There is no (or at least very little) headhopping in Manhunting now because I fixed all the places I could by deleting the unnecessary PoV. Much tighter writing. But it was still a mistake.

The life of a writer is a good parallel to the life of any human being. You start out enthusiastic about life, not knowing what you’re doing but embracing the experience. You make a lot of mistakes. You learn. You get tougher, smarter, leaner in your views, not necessarily more conservative, although that often happens, but definitely sharper, more focused. Life becomes less about back flips on the trapeze and more about your ground game. You’ve cleaned up too many messes after back flips.

In the same way, I started out as a writer completely free, a mess at craft but inordinately confident and full of story. Twenty-five years later, I’m a much, much, much better writer, but I can’t do the back flips any more. My back hurts from the ones I did in the 90s. And besides, I was a really sloppy back-flipper.

The thing I have to remember, though, is the writer I was then believed as passionately in her writing, in writing well, as I do now. If the past is another country, then the woman who wrote Manhunting and Getting Rid of Bradley and even Sizzle is another woman, not me, not the writer I am now. She’s a lot younger, but not young, and she’s been through a lot, and she writes with a freedom and an anger I’ve lost. She’s a sloppy writer but she believes in her work. If she were a student, I’d point out the headhopping, but I would never dream of rewriting her. You don’t rewrite somebody else’s work.

And that’s why I’ll never again rewrite an earlier novel, even to polish it. I can see taking out typos and fixing italics, that’s copy editing. But a rewrite of the story itself? That’s betraying Jennifer Crusie 1.0. She worked hard, and that work got me where I am today (where am I, anyway?). And I apologize to her for fixing the headhopping in Manhunting. That was just wrong.

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Person of Interest: The Fix: The Power of the Supporting Character

Previously on Person of Interest:

1-2 “Ghosts”: Carter investigates “The Man in the Suit” as Reese and Finch with Fusco’s help save a traumatized teen who survived her family’s massacre. Solid story with flashbacks to Finch’s history with the machine. I hate flashbacks but I love Finch, so I’m torn, but the story-of-the-week is terrific.

1-3 “Mission Creep”: Finch and Reese try to save a returning soldier who’s gotten mixed up with a gang of thieves robbing a police evidence locker of a file labeled “Elias, M.” That’s gonna pay off big later.

1-4 “Cura Te Ipsum”: A revenge plot that twists and twists again. Carter gets closer to Reese and Finch. Reese gets Fusco transferred to Carter’s precinct so he can spy on her and slow down her investigation.

1-5 “Judgment”: A great episode about saving the kidnapped son of an honest judge pressured into throwing a case; lovely layers in this one, plus Reese trying to find out more about Finch, the very private person, which arcs Reese because he is also a very private person. Reese and Finch will eventually bond as brothers, but it takes awhile because they do it carefully (two porcupines mating).

Which bring us to . . .

1-6 The Fix

I love this episode for many reasons–Reese forces Finch into the field and he goes, bitching and moaning but he goes; Reese has to be subservient as a driver and it’s clearly a strain; Finch spends millions to buy into a corrupt company and then makes millions more when he brings it down–but mostly I love it for Zoe, the beautiful, tough fixer who dazzles the usually dour Reese by playing the game as well as he does.

Up until this episode, the characters outside of the main cast–Reese, Finch, Fusco, and Carter (who’s still outside the inner circle but getting closer)–have been single-episode-only people. Zoe is the first recurring/supporting character, and she’s also the first that you want to be a recurring character because she’s useful in so many ways.

• She makes our hardened hero Reese vulnerable because he’s so attracted to her.

• She’s the female equivalent of Reese–tough, damaged, cynical, and determined–which means their exchanges after she realizes he’s not just a driver are between equals.

• She gives the depressingly isolated Reese the promise of a future social life so she lightens the darkness of the series.

• She’s a strong shot of estrogen in a testosterone heavy atmosphere (even heart-of-the-series Carter is a tough cop).

• She has a very real and very useful skill as a political fixer. She knows everybody’s secrets and she knows where to trade a favor or apply some pressure to make things happen.

That means she’s a great example of the many ways to use a supporting character who’s not going to be part of your main community:

• Use the character to create a relationship with a main character that shows a side of him or her that the rest of your regular cast can’t bring out (see also Felicity in Arrow season one).

• Use the character as a foil to a main character to show off his or her character by contrast (see also Root as foil to Finch in this series’ season one and two)

• Use the character to lighten a story that may be headed into too much Grimdark plot (see also Felicity in Arrow season one).

• Use the character to balance a gender-skewed cast (see also Chris Hemsworth in the new Ghostbusters or Annie Potts in the old one)

• Use the character to supply a skill your main cast doesn’t have but might need from time to time (see also Leon the accountant and Elias the mob boss in this series).

All of this falls in line with Lani’s theory that any character has to work many jobs in a story to earn his or her keep. You can’t trot characters on stage to fulfill a single need; once you get them up there, make them multi-taskers.

It does not hurt at all that Zoe never falls into any of the hot-woman-on-TV traps. She’s ahead of everybody else most of the time, she never panics, she’s always thinking, and when things blow up out of her control, she accepts rescue as just what’s due her. Zoe’s the protagonist in her own story at all times, and Reese and Finch pretty much realize that and accept that once she walks in, they’re just supporting players, not because she’s beautiful but because she’s the smartest and most ruthless person there. Zoe uses her beauty and her sex appeal as weapons; she never, ever takes them as her identity.

“The Fix” is a story has PoI‘s usual fast reversals–Zoe’s a hitter; no, Zoe’s a fixer; no, Zoe’s an opportunist; no, Zoe’s a betrayer; no, Zoe’s a hero–and its usual rat bastard antagonist who emerges in another reversal–PoI is right up there with Leverage and Dick Francis in the son-of-a-bitch antagonist department–so the plot is paced beautifully, picking up speed as it becomes more complex. But it’s also something new in the PoI playbook: it’s sexy. Neither Zoe or Reese has any time for fooling around at the moment, and they’re definitely not interested in love, but hey if a window opens up . . . . Call them Colleagues with Benefits or One of the Most Equal Sexual Relationships on TV, they are just fun to watch, and thank the showrunners for bringing her back for later episodes like “The High Road” in which she and Reese pretend to be married in the suburbs (with Bear! and a lot of booze because Zoe isn’t any better fit in the suburbs than Reese is), or “Lady Killer,” the episode in which she and Carter and Shaw go undercover in hot dresses in a nightclub (she carries the pink taser Reese gave her) or “Booked Solid” where she helps them with a hotel job and then at the end . . .

Okay, she shows up a lot and she’s always welcome because she’s so well established in this first appearance.

The one I remember best, though, is a brief appearance at the end of “Root Cause,” an episode in which a man who’s been framed and will be putting his life back together with Finch’s anonymous help is still beset by the media camped outside his house. Zoe doesn’t go in for back story much, but she does tell Reese in this episode about why she became a fixer:

“My dad was a party man. Machine politician. He did what he was told. Right up till the cops showed up, put the cuffs on him. The local press was camped out on our law for weeks. Then this guy showed up. The guy that the party would send to deal with uncomfortable situations. He said two words. And those reporters? They packed up and they left. And they never came back. And I realized, “that’s what I want to be.” The person who knows what to say, and always has something to trade.”

At the end of “Root Cause,” Reese is watching the vindicated number’s house surrounded by reporters as Zoe arrives. She gives John one long look of acknowledgement, and then she crosses the street and does for the number what that political fixer did for her mother so long ago. It’s just a moment in a coda, but it’s a great example of the emotional power of a recurring character. I don’t think I’d want Zoe in every episode, she’s too overwhelming, but like salt, she makes every episode she’s added to better.

Weakest Parts

There are no weak parts, probably because there are no flashbacks.

Smart Story Moves

• Zoe’s Character: She could so easily have been a bimbo-of-the-week, but as written by Nic Zeebroeck and Michael Sopczysnski, and as played by Paige Turco, she has is smart and skilled and coldly efficient.

• Keeping the viewer firmly in Reese’s PoV so that none of the uncertainty is manipulative, it’s an integra; part of the story.

• Using Carter’s subplot to set up the next episode without the story every feeling like set-up.

• Giving Finch a stake in the case by making one of the clues a dead woman who was a number before Finch found Reese. The “I couldn’t save her, but I can stop them” ties into the savior theme, and Finch’s barely disguised rage is wonderful motivation. “Before I found you, the numbers haunted me . . .”

• The pacing: lots of things happen quickly, but it’s always clear what’s going on.

• The police lieutenant reversal. Talk about tight plotting. And the finish of that plot with one line in the last scene.

• “You’re probably one of those guy who can get out of anything with a paperclip.” Sounds like banter, but it’s really foreshadowing.

• “You don’t know anything about me.” “I know almost everything about you.” All of Zoe’s backstory, right there. Genius.

• “Lucky you.” Matt Servitto making the “Now I’m going to kill you speech” an extension of Douglas’s sadistic character.

• Cutting the climax back and forth between the action climax and the business climax, so we get Reese tazing one murderous jerk, and then the real death blow, Finch shorting Keller’s company. So much catharsis, delivered simultaneously. “I know the only thing you do care about is money. So that’s what I’m going to take from you. All of it.” And then capping that with Carter finding Sully. Brilliant structure.

Favorite Moments

• “Which son?” “Andy, the younger one.”

• Finch breaking and entering like a badass.

• “Who wouldn’t?”

• Watching Zoe work the police captain, the journalist, the Big Pharma people by keeping a copy (“I’m discreet, not stupid”).

• Dan Hedaya as Sully; I love when great character actors show up. (Fingers crossed that Mark Shepherd shows up in Season Five.)

• “I hate jazz.”

• “Mark? Why aren’t they dead yet?” Excellent outrage-inducing antagonist.

• “Be reasonable. Every new drug has side effects. That’s why we have disclaimers. And insurance.” Pitch perfect dialogue for a sociopath.

• The paper clip kiss.

• “You got my number,” and Cat Power singing “New York, New York.”

Next PoI Post: “Witness” next Monday; we’re talking about reversals.

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