Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 238

Revising Scene by Beats: Nita’s First Scene

So I had a first scene for the Book That’s Not Happening, and it was a mess. Well, it was a first draft, they’re a mess by definition. And since this week’s Writing/Romance post was on beats, I thought I’d break down the opening mess into beats and revise it here. Because that would be a blog post. It’s been a bad couple of days so I’m behind on Argh, and I am nothing if not a multi-tasker.

To start with, here’s the mess first draft:

First Draft of Nita’s First Scene (beats separated by asterisk)

Detective Nita Dodd spotted her brother as soon as she got out of the car. Even past midnight with multicolor neon reflecting off the rain-slick street, the big white “Coroner” spelled out across the back of Mort’s jacket was a dead giveaway.

“I really appreciate you calling me,” her new partner said as she got out of the other side of the car. “I know this is an off-duty thing and you didn’t have to-”

“I’d had too much to drink to drive, Detective Button,” Nita said, and headed for Mort.

“Well, I’m still grateful,” the little blonde called after her as she tried to keep up. “And you can call me Chloe.”

Nita’s head pounded as the bourbon began to wear off and left her mired in reality once again, this time with more dead people. To her left, Mort was bent over a body in the front seat of a car. To her right, a good fifty feet away, Clint Witherspoon was looming over another body in front of Hell, Vinnie Smith’s club. The body was bald which probably meant it was Vinnie. Wonder who he pissed off this time?

“Is that a dead body?” Chloe said, trying to catch up as she looked over at Witherspoon.

“The one on the ground is,” Nita said. “The one standing up is Detective Witherspoon. Go see what he wants. Check for a pulse.”

“Which one?” Chloe said, and then obediently swerved and headed for Witherspoon.

“Who’s the cute little blonde?” Mort said, his head still inside the car when she reached him.

“Chloe Button, my new partner. What is all this?”

Mort pulled his head out and looked down at her, nonplused. “There’s a homicide detective named Chloe Button?”

“What. Is. All. This.”

“Right.” Mort stepped aside and gestured through the window. “Happy birthday.”

“And I didn’t get you anything.” Nita squinted at the corpse draped over the steering wheel. No bullet holes. He must have died on impact. Nita put her head through the window, careful not to disturb the dead, and saw the gun where it had fallen from the driver’s hand. Okay so the body with Witherspoon was no longer an unsolved murder. So why am I here?

“The day’s only started,” Mort was saying. “Plenty of time to shop. Electronics are always good–”

“Mort, I’m tired.”

*

“Right. This is Ralph Denton. At approximately 12:30, he drove by Hell–” Mort gestured to the bar, clearly identified by the burning letters over the pitchforked door. “—and sprayed bullets into Joey Murdock.”

“That’s Joey? Why would anybody shoot Joey? He was the nicest bouncer Vinnie ever had.”

“Then Ralph here kept going and hit this lamppost. His airbag did not deploy.”

“So this is a crash victim, not a homicide, and we know he shot Joey, so why was I called away from my bedtime bourbon?”

“Because then it gets weird.”

“Oh, hell.” Nita put her hand on her throbbing temple. She was sobering up. That couldn’t be good.

“Why else would Witherspoon call you?” Mort said.

Because he wants to get back into my pants? “Give me the weird.”

“According to four different witnesses, all of whom I overheard talking while I was counting bullet holes in Joey—seventeen, if you’re interested—Joey was shoving some guy out of the bar in front of him when Ralph did his drive-by.”

“So we have three bodies.”

“Two. The third body is inside having a drink with Vinnie.”

“So he was behind Joey–”

“Not according to the witnesses. Front and center.”

“He was wearing a vest.”

“Nice of Ralph to group his shots. No. But then as Ralph drove on, the third body waved his hand, and Ralph’s car sped up and crashed into the pole.”

Nita tilted her head at her twin and, with thirty-three years of practice, gave him the fish eye. “You’re saying this is a homicide, too?”

“Swear to god it’s true,” Mort said. “At least, that’s what the witnesses said. They were babbling a little.”

“Drunk?”

“Surprised. So Witherspoon asked where you were–”

“And you gave him my new number,” Nita said, exasperated.

“Under the circumstances, yes.” Mort waved his assistant over to the car to deal with Ralph before he turned back to her. “I’m sure there’s a logical explanation.”

“There always is,” Nita said.

“And I’m equally sure that Witherspoon is not going to find it.”

“Excellent point.” Nita looked over to where the large detective appeared to be chatting up Chloe, his head bent down close to her fluffy little blonde one. “He’s a good detective. He’s careful. He covers the bases. He could have handled this.”

“He strikes out when it comes to the weird,” Mort said. “No imagination. It’s a design flaw. Are you going to talk to the third body? Can I come along?”

“Why?”

“I want to see him drinking. I’m picturing the booze coming out of the bullet holes.”

Nita frowned at him. “Two people are dead, Mort.”

Mort nodded, cheerful as ever. “I just want to know why it’s not three.”

I’m tired, my head hurts, I want another drink.

“Please,” Mort said. “It’s our birthday. We should do something fun together before we have dinner tonight with Mom.”

“Fine, come along, ” Nita said, and headed for Hell.

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

REWRITE

There are a million things wrong with that scene, but the biggest is that there’s no there there, it just follows its nose. But beating myself up for meandering in a first draft is just dumb. Stop the meander, that’s the ticket.

Start with a basic conflict analysis so I’ll have a spine to hang my revised beats on:

Protagonist: Nita

Goal: Do her job (find out what happened in the shooting) and go home to bed

Antagonist: Mort

Goal: Find out what happened in the shooting

Problem: No conflict. They want the same thing.

So they’re close, not just brother and sister but twins (TWINS! Now all I need is a Chinaman and a secret passage) and she’s drunk. He’d notice. Unless she’s always drunk at night, he’d want to know why.

I don’t think she’s a drinker. She’s very focused and a control freak, and that does not jibe with habitual drinking.

So there’s a reason she’s drinking. It’s their 33rd birthday, that might be significant. She’s had seizures when she was young, maybe that ties in.

She’s stressed some way, worried about something? Sick? What drives her to not just take a drink but several? Although if she doesn’t drink much, it’ll only take two or three.

So they both want to solve the crime, but he’s worried about her. Why?

Over-protective twin brother? That implies she needs protection and he knows she doesn’t.

Because she’s drunk and that could screw up the investigation? She’s off-duty, so there’s no reason she shouldn’t have had a drink, plus he called her in, it’s his fault she’s in this position.

So Nita moves from _____ to _____? (I’ll fill in the blanks in a minute when I know more about the scene).

Mort moves from his usual jovial self to concerned brother?

That is really weak. He needs a stronger goal.

So they’re both focused on solving crimes. (Figure out why later.)

She doesn’t think there’s an unsolved crime/problem at the scene and wants to go home.

Therefore he DOES think there’s a problem that only she can solve, and he has to keep her from going home.

So the conflict is Mort convincing Nita to go into that bar where she’ll meet Nick. Because he wants her to meet Nick? Because there’s something about Nick that he feels strongly should be investigated? Why by Nita, though? Witherspoon is right there. What’s Nita got that W doesn’t?

Beyond that, what’s the point of this scene?

It introduces four characters and hints at three more and describes the first crime, but that’s just information.

What’s the story?

The story is about a homicide detective trying to solve a murder with supernatural elements that turns out to be much bigger than just a drive-by. Too general.

The story is about a human detective who falls for the Devil, except she’s not completely human and he’s not a demon. Is this a romance? Because that’s a romance.

The story is about a battle played out in Hell and on earth over power. That’s thematic, not really the plot.

If you smush all of those together, it’s a story about self-knowledge and power? Too general.

It’s a story about a woman who realizes there’s a whole lot more to life than she knew. That’s closer.

It’s a story about a woman whose search for an evildoer gives her huge revelations about herself and about how the world works. (There’s a terrible sentence.)

It’s a story about a woman and the ruler of Hell trying to re-establish order in their respective spheres. That’s true, but it’s not really the story, or at least not the juice of it.

It’s a story about a woman and the ruler of Hell trying to re-establish order in their respective spheres, in the process of which they learn about each other’s spheres, which significantly broadens their understandings of how their own and each other’s worlds work, and which leads them to fall in love. That’s right, but it’s too wordy.

Also, where’s the focus? The story is either the mystery with a love story subplot or vice versa.

But the key to both is discovering information that completely changes their perceptions of how their lives work, which opens them up to falling in love, something that’s impossible when they first meet. So the plot changes them so they can fall in love, and falling in love changes the plot so that they succeed in their external goals.

Amanita and the Devil is a story about two people who discover information that completely changes their perceptions of how their lives and their worlds work, which opens them up to falling in love, something that’s impossible when they first meet, and which leads to them defeating evil together.

Okay, still way too wordy, but I think that’s the story I have to introduce in this first scene, at least Nita’s part of that story.

So the first scene has to establish Nita’s baseline as a no-nonsense, smart cop—and put a dent in her stable world with the introduction of the supernatural evil that’s going to upend everything. It can’t be just set-up. Begin with stability, challenge that in a way that foreshadows the huge revelations ahead, end with the instability of the overall conflict for the entire story/book.

So the stable world is Nita approaching Mort for information, Mort being his usual jovial self.

The cracks appear when Mort gives her impossible information, and she tries to interpret it to fit her stable world.

But Mort insists that the impossible happened and that she has to fix it, and she respects him enough and she’s curious enough and responsible enough that she agrees to investigate what she refuses to at the beginning of the scene.

Three beats?

So to start, let’s look at the existing beats:

First Beat: Out of car, Nita sees Mort, waves Chloe to Witherspoon, talks with Mort as usual.

End of Beat: Mort tells her about no bulletholes in Nick, supernatural at work.

Second Beat: She argues with Mort, kind of. Mort wants to come along to meet Nick.

End of Beat/Climax: She says yes. Mort wins.

Yeah, that sucked.

Revised Beats.

First Beat: Nita gets out of car, trying to sober up, sees Morte, waves Chloe over to Witherspoon, tells Morte to stay on task because she wants to go home. (Establish no-nonsense character, relationship with Chloe, relationship with Morte, normal world, goal to get out of there.)

Conflict: She wants to go home; Morte wants to jolly her into a good mood so he can ask a favor.

End of Beat: Nita makes him tell her what’s going on.

Nita wins.

Second Beat: Morte gives her the basics, Nita is not buying them (no bulletholes is not logical), asks why she’s there, Morte tells her Witherspoon wanted her because it’s weird, and Witherspoon was right.

End of Beat: Nita is not swayed, it’s obvious what happened and who killed who, and then Morte says, “This guy Nick says he’s the Devil.”

Morte wins (she’s still there).

Third Beat: Morte coaxes and argues that he needs to go interview this Nick before the guy disappears or gets rids of evidence, and Nita argues that it’s not the Devil, but she’s stuck.

Climax: Nita agrees to stay and investigate and to take Morte into the bar.

Morte wins.

Nita moves from tired and still a little drunk in a stable world to exhausted and sobering up in a possibly unstable world.

Morte moves from blocked from getting into the bar to interview Nick to going with Nita to interview Nick.

That’s still not quite right, but it’s a lot stronger.

So based on a lot of thinking and cutting and rewriting a couple of times, I’ve ended up with this:

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

First Scene Rewrite (beats separated by asterisk)

 

 

Detective Nita Dodd spotted her brother as soon as she got out of the car. Even past midnight with multicolor neon reflecting off the rain-slick side street, the big white “Elyse Island MEDICAL EXAMINER” spelled out across the back of Morte’s jacket was a dead giveaway.

“I really appreciate you calling me,” her new partner said as she got out of the other side of the car. “I know this is an off-duty thing and you just found out about me today, so you didn’t have to . . . ” The little blonde’s voice faltered, her eyes anxious behind her glasses.

“I’ve had too much to drink to drive, Detective Button.” Nita clutched her styrofoam coffee cup and pulled her shabby peacoat closer to shut out the February cold as she surveyed the scene

To her left, Morte was bent over a body in the front seat of a black SUV that had smashed into one of the island’s really expensive old-fashioned street lights. That was going to annoy the Mayor. It had also knocked sideways the Lemon Lane street sign, which some drunk had once again changed to “Demon Lane.” Because that never stopped being funny. Dickhead, Nita thought.

To her right, a good fifty feet away, her former partner, Clint Witherspoon, loomed over another body in front of Hell, Vinnie Smith’s club. The body was bald which probably meant it was Vinnie, which wasn’t good for her let’s-clear-this-up-fast-and-go-home plan. Half the island wanted to kill Vinnie.

Clint looked up and saw her and gave her a half wave, not sure, and she tried to smile back and waved a little with her coffee cup. Oh, god, guilt. Guilt. GUILT–

“Is that a dead body?” Button said, squinting over at Clint as she pushed her glasses back up her nose.

“The one on the ground is,” Nita said. “The one standing up is Detective Witherspoon. Go see what he wants, Detective Button.” So I don’t have to.

She headed toward Morte, and Button tried to catch up. “Call me Chloe, please. We’re partners!”

“You bet.” Nita pointed at Clint. “Go.”

Button nodded, narrowly avoiding a salute, and headed for Clint and Body #2 as Nita’s caffeine began to kick in. Hello, reality, she thought, this time with more dead people and a chipperish partner named Chloe.

“Who’s the cute little blonde?” Morte said, his head still inside the car when she reached him.

“Chloe Button, my new partner. What is all this?”

Morte pulled his head out and looked down at her, a lock of his dark hair making an upside down question mark over his right eye. “There’s a homicide detective named Chloe Button?”

Nita looked at him, dead-eyed. “What. Is. All. This.”

“Oh, we’re in a good mood.” Morte grinned at her. “Come on, cheer up, we’ve got a murder. And it’s a weird one! You live for this stuff.”

Nita stared at him balefully. “I’m tired, I’m sick, I want to go home. Give me the facts or I’ll kill you where you stand.”

“Right.” Morte stepped aside, his good humor undamaged, and gestured through the window. “Happy birthday.”

*

“And I didn’t get you anything.” Nita squinted at the corpse draped over the steering wheel. He must have died on impact. Considering where the steering wheel had ended up, it must have been one hell of an impact. She put her head through the window, careful not to disturb the dead, and saw the gun where it had fallen from the driver’s hand.

So Vinnie was no longer an unsolved murder.

“Now about our birthday,” Morte was saying. “I know what I want–”

“Morte, clearly this guy shot Vinnie and then died in the crash.” She slurred a little on the “crash” and caught herself. “Why am I here?” she said, enunciating carefully.

He looked at her closely. “Have you been drinking?”

“Yes.” She stared at him defiantly. “I wasn’t on duty, I was cold, I had a hot toddy to help me sleep.”

“You don’t drink.”

Nita gritted her teeth. “Why did you call me?”

Morte frowned at her and then went on. “This is Ralph Denton. At approximately 1:30 AM, he drove by Hell–” he gestured to Vinnie’s bar, clearly identified by the burning letters over the pitchforked door. “—and sprayed bullets into Joey Murdock.”

“That’s Joey?” Nita took another swig of caffeine, feeling depressed now. “Why would anybody shoot Joey? He’s the nicest bouncer Vinnie’s ever had.”

“Then Ralph here kept going and hit this lamppost. His airbag did not deploy.”

Nina looked at Ralph. He was still dead which, since he’d probably shot Joey, was fine by her. “So Ralph is a crash victim, not a homicide, and we’re 99% sure he shot Joey, so again I ask, why am I here?”

“Witherspoon asked for you.”

Nita closed her eyes as the guilt rose up again. “No.”

“Get over yourself,” Morte said. “He knows you’re through with him, you made that clear when you turned him down.”

“I didn’t turn him down, I told him I didn’t want to marry anybody. Why–”

“He asked me to call you because, as I said, this one’s strange. Have you been doing a lot of drinking at night? Because this is new and I’m worried.” He peered at her closely. “You look kind of green.”

“I had a bad doughnut.”

“There is no such thing.”

Nita took a deep breath. “I drank the toddies because I was cold and I needed help sleeping. They were medicinal not recreational. Why is this one weird?”

“Toddies? Plural? How many?”

“MORTE.”

Morte nodded. “According to four different witnesses, all of whom I overheard talking while I was counting the bullet holes in Joey—seventeen, if you’re interested—Joey was walking out of the bar with some guy named Nick when Ralph did his drive-by.”

“So we have three bodies,” Nita said, looking around for the third.

“Two. The third body is inside having a drink with Vinnie.”

“So he was behind Joey–”

“Not according to the witnesses. Front and center.”

“He was wearing a vest.”

“Nice of Ralph to group his shots. No. But then as Ralph drove on, he suddenly sped up and crashed into the pole.”

Nita tilted her throbbing head at her twin and, with thirty-three years of practice, gave him the fish eye. “You’re saying this is a suspicious death, too? Just because he sped up and crashed?”

“Under the circumstances, maybe. Also suspicious is the guy in front not dying from the bullets that must have passed through him to kill Joey. At least, that’s what the witnesses said. They were babbling a little.”

“Drunk?”

“Surprised. So Witherspoon asked where you were–”

“And you said I was home and you called me,” Nita said, exasperated.

Morte waved his assistant over to the car to deal with Ralph before he turned back to her. “Yes. I’m sure there’s a logical explanation. And I’m equally sure that Witherspoon is not going to find it. His capacity for failing at anything that doesn’t fit the usual is legendary.”

“Maybe this is the usual,” Nita said.

“No,” Morte said, very sure. “We need to talk to the guy in the bar, this Nick. He has an interesting story. He says the reason he’s not dead is because he’s the Devil.”

*

Nita let her breath out on an exasperated sigh. “I hate tourists. Especially role-playing whack-job tourists.”

“In his defense, he is still alive after being sprayed with bullets,” Morte said. “Which is why I would like to talk with him. You know how territorial Witherspoon is, he’ll never let me in there. But you can take me in with you. It can be my birthday present.”

Nita looked over to where the large detective appeared to be chatting up Button, his dark head bent down close to her fluffy little blonde one. “Clint’s a good detective. He’s careful. He covers the bases. He could have handled this.”

“He strikes out when it comes to the odd,” Morte said. “No imagination. It’s a design flaw. So are you going to talk to this Nick? Can I come along? I want to see him drinking. I’m picturing the booze coming out of the bullet holes.”

“It’s not funny, Morte. Two people are dead. One of them was nice.”

Morte nodded, cheerful as ever. “I just want to know why it’s not three. If there are holes in this Nick guy’s shirt but none in him, then we have a legitimate mystery, and you and I are the only cops on this island that are good at the weird. We need to go in there so I can check him for bulletholes and you can do that voodoo that you do so well.”

“Not funny,” Nita said. I’m tired, I’m cold, my head hurts, I want another drink.

She closed her eyes. And I’m whining. Great.

“You got a talent, you should use it.,” Morte said. “In fact, you should use it right now.”

“Morte–”

“It’s our birthday,” he said, switching tactics. “We should do something fun together before we have dinner tonight with Mom.” He flashed the big, toothy,fake grin they always used when talking about their mother. “Also you’re self-medicating with alcohol, which means you should not go into that bar alone to talk to what all the witnesses agree is a very good-looking man who should be dead but isn’t and who thinks he’s the Devil and who therefore might ply you with bourbon for nefarious purposes. As your brother, I should be with you. Also as your Medical Examiner. Also because I want to know why he’s not dead because as interesting as I find it, I’m not buying the Devil thing.”

“Nobody’s buying the Devil thing. Not even the tourists think the supernatural is real.”

“They might start believing unless we can explain the bullets. We don’t want another press frenzy here. That dickhead Harrow will be over the bridge in a nano-second if he hears the Devil is in town. Just get me in there so I can find the answer.” He ducked his head a little to look into her eyes. “And also because you know you’re not going to sleep until you get the answer, too.”

He was, of course, right. He was always right, her brother, the genius. She glared at him.

“You know I wouldn’t ask you to do the psychic thing if I didn’t think it was important,” Morte said, serious now. “Something is very not right here.”

“I’m not psychic.” Nita closed her eyes. “But you’re right, I know you’re right, and I’m being cranky, and I’m sorry.”

He put his arm around her, and she leaned against him. “It’s not your fault, it’s the booze,” he said, patting her shoulder. “After this, we’ll get some Chinese to soak up the alcohol, and everything will be back to normal.”

“What’s normal? And how would anybody in our family recognize it if we saw it?” Nina straightened. “Fine, I’ll go in and talk to this guy and you can come along. But that’s your birthday present. And I want extra potstickers and crab Rangoon for my present.” She straightened her coat again and started for the bar, thinking I’m going to regret this.

“Excellent,” Morte said and followed her into Hell.

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

So now we have:

Nita’s Goal: Handle things fast and go home.

Mort’s Goal: Keep Nita there so she’ll take him in to interview Nick.

Conflict: Yep.

The scene sets up Nita and Mort’s relationship, the beginnings of Nita and Chloe’s relationship, the back story on Nita and Clint (except that it clunks pretty badly), and the strong implication that there’s something supernatural happening.

Nita changes from annoyed that she’s been called in to convinced that something needs looked at.

Mort changes from being blocked from talking to Nick to going in to talk to Nick.

The story changes from Nita’s stable unhappiness to her reluctant agreement to do her job because her world might be unstable.

The expectation is that the next scene will be with Nick, the guy who thinks he’s the Devil.

If the reader is not you all who’ve been in the loop all along, I think there’s still a mystery as to whether Nick’s really the Devil or just playing a game, but I also think it’s a curious enough circumstance that people will keep reading. Also, if this turns out to be a romance novel, people will want to meet the hero.

And this is pretty much where this scene is going to stay unless I decide to write the whole book, in which case I will rewrite it when the book is done because you can’t write an introductory scene until you know what you’re introducing. Continually churning the first scene is just a huge waste of time. I’ve got my protagonist on the page, although I don’t think she’s particularly likable so I’ll have to fix that once I know her better, and the start of her problem is now clearly introduced (fingers crossed), and that’s enough for now.

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Scene Beats at Writing/Romance

The post on beats in scenes is up over at Writing/Romance.

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Cherry Saturday 3-5-2016

This month is Women’s History Month.

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The Office, Week Four: Joy and Need

One great thing about getting everything out of a space so you can paint the floor is that when you go to put things back in, you can get rid of a lot of stuff. It’s one part Marie Kondo’s “What gives me joy?” and one part Julie Morgenstern’s “What do I need?”

So part of the process is deciding the Needs, such as I don’t need every research book I own, just the ones that I need for the WiPs. The rest can go in labeled boxes in the garage until I’m ready to pull the out (or clean the garage, which is slated for warm weather in the spring). But it’s also about determining what “need” that I reallyl don’t.

For example, I’ve been keeping my office supplies in an old circular wine rack that I love a lot. But it’s big and it’s not particularly handy. What would be handy would be putting a narrow ledge along the window behind my computer table for all the pencils/pens/markers/scissors/knives/etc that I really do reach for daily. That’s not going to be as much fun as the wine rack, but it’ll be infinitely handier. They don’t make those so I’ll have to build one. Then there are the two storage units that used to sit on the table top; they’re utilitarian, but they hold a lot, so I can put them on the bookcase in front of the windows and use them to store the bulky stuff–tape, glue, stapler, post-its, envelopes, etc.–and free up more table space. I can sort and pack the various electronics cords and cables into boxes/pouches/whatever so that I know what I’ve got and where they are. I keep buying things I already have because I can’t find them (I must have three dozen erasers, no exaggeration). That’s dumb. So building the pencil/whatever rack and filling up the bookcase units went on my list.

But as Kondo says, you also need Joy. I love Mexican folk art and I want to see it every day, so that’s going in here, just up on higher shelves where it won’t get in the way. I love my two colorful catchphrases, so one goes up above a shelf where I can see it from the kitchen and the other goes on the back door where I can see it as I look down the hallway or come into the office. I love brightly colored post-it notes, so they’re everywhere. I love the cat dispenser for pop-up Post-Its, so that’s going on my desk. I love my now ancient Medea poster; that goes on the wall behind the TV that’s too inaccessible to use for a storage unit. These things are as necessary to me as pens and paper, and I love the way they look in my work space. Add in a lot of white with splashes of chartreuse, teal, blue, and yellow, and there’s a lot of fun in looking around in there.

But like the wine rack, some stuff I really love has to go, like the artwork that goes with the stories. I have my mechanical fish from the Fairy Tale Lies book that will probably never get written now. I have Jane from the Zo White stories, and really no place to put her. And the collages . . . oy. The real drawback in this office is that it’s all windows–across the back and on one side and then windows into the pantry and the kitchen on the third, with bookcases and an opening into the bedroom on the fourth. I have almost no wall space, which is hell for somebody who loves art as much as I do. I did back the bookcase interiors with cork, and I’m leaving a big space in the middle of each one for tacking up pictures, but it’s the only real drawback to this space. (Well, that, and that it’s only 7.5 feet wide; that’s a drag.)

So at this point, it’s down to the stuff like finishing the bookcases that divide the room from the bedroom, and putting up shelves over the windows, and hooking up printers, and figuring out why the whole keychain thing is turning my desktop into a nightmare, and touching up the floor where I did patchwork after I painted. But overall, I’m very happy with everything. And I love working in this space again. I really think it’ll be finished by this time next week. Except for the ceiling. Argh.

Oh, and pictures. Here’s how it looked when I bought the house:

Then Krissie’s husband Richie drove down from Vermont and covered over the stairs for me making the center of the space usable. I blocked off the last ten feet of the porch for my bedroom so the layout looked like this:

Unfortunately, three years later I realized that I’d put the desk and the bookcase on the wrong side, so I had to switch them, but otherwise the layout is about the same. Here’s how it looked before I started cleaning a couple of weeks ago:

And here’s how it looks now:

Still lots of work to do but definite progress.

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Book Done Yet: Problem Solving

Note:

I’m switching The Office and Book Done Yet around because it makes more sense to follow Craft Wednesdays with talking about the book I’m writing. Also end-of-the-week for office stuff just seems more logical. Or not. Pictures of progress tomorrow; discussion of Nita’s book today.



I’m still not sold on the idea of writing the Nita book, but since it seems to be occupying my mind, I decided to take a hard look at the real problems of writing it. Of course, all of this is more fun than actually finishing a book, so I’m fairly sure I’ll be back to You Again shortly, but still, problem solving . . .

So the problems as I saw them last week:

1. The Devil as hero. I don’t do those swaggering, macho Alpha anti-heroes (see Lucifer the TV show), so just no.

2. The heroine. What kind of idiot would fall in love with the Devil? I personally feel the Devil is responsible for Donald Trump, so no, not attractive.

3. The unequal balance of power between the supernatural king of Hell and my heroine who’s a police detective. Which brings us to

4. I know nothing about police departments.

5. I have neither the time or the interest to research a city to put this in.

Then add to that:

6. Any time you’re dealing with Hell and the Devil, you’re dealing with God and the reward/punishment assumption of an afterlife, which has always struck me as a human construction. (God gives us free will to choose. Then if we choose what he/she doesn’t like, we’re punished in hell for eternity. So much for respect for free will. “You can do anything you like as long as I approve of it.” No.)

7. The thematic implications of this kind of story are cosmic; I tend to write to the personal.

8. This story falls entirely into my TV watching story sphere, which means I’m likely to be derivative even if I’m not trying to be. Lucifer is obviously one, although I’ve gotten so far from the original concept that the only parallels that still remain are the male protagonist is the Devil, the female protagonist is a homicide cop, and there’s a driveby shooting at the beginning. After that, it goes in a different direction completely. (I think. I stopped watching after Episode 3.) But the influences of iZombie and Grimmare clearly in there, too, and that’s a worry.

(I’d also have to research demons and hell and the mythology of the Afterlife, but I love that kind of stuff, so not a drawback.)

So here are my solutions so far.

1. The hero. He’s not the Devil, he’s the Devil which is an office like the President with a term limit of 2000 years. And he’s have a hell of a time because while he’s extremely efficient and has made Hell a much better place to work, he’s not a demon, he’s a dead human, and a large part of Southern Hell is really bigoted about things like that, floating rumors that he’s not really dead.

2. The heroine. She doesn’t fall in love with him, she finds him obvious and obnoxious and overbearing, which he is because he’s been running Hell for five hundred years. It’s not until he’s been taken down several thousand pegs and she really needs his help that she starts to trust him. Also, to counterbalance the ridiculously suave and goodlooking Tom Ellis who would not get out of the way for Matt Ryan (at least, not so far) I found a good avatar for her that gives me a great deadpan starting place for her. Nita Dodd: Not Impressed with Your Flash, Devil-Dog.

3. The imbalance of power. He’s a dead human. She’s has a supernatural power. He’s basically an administrator, she’s an action heroine. The only way they can save the world is if they work together, balancing their strengths. Really, the minute I made him human and dead, the power dynamic balanced on its own.

4. I still know nothing about police departments, so no fix here.

5. I don’t want to research a city, but brainstorming how all of this supernatural stuff came to be gave me the idea of an island city in North America. Maybe in one of the Great Lakes. Using Mackinaw Island and an island city in South Seas (I forget where for the moment) as models to build on. So I ordered books on what a city is and how it’s planned and on Mackinaw in particular to use as a guide, and the whole idea of an island city appeals to me and gave me a logical back story. So that worked.

6. I reject the whole idea of punishment in the Afterlife that’s not of a piece with the idea of a fair and benevolent Creator. But I can deal with idea that the spirit has to go SOMEWHERE, and the idea that the Afterlife is a place that has to be administered which is why getting chosen as The Devil is the same mixed blessing as being elected President. Huge power, itty bitty minds to deal with. So council meetings and speeches and warring factions . . . yes, the election might be influencing things here.

7. The thematic implications come way down once I made an analogy between that and Congress. It’s no longer about the Meaning of Life. Now it’s about the Meaning of Power with a not an insignificant subtext of anti-human/anti-demon bigotry. I can deal with those percolating in the background while I write story.

8. I’m just going to have to be hyper-vigilant not to fall back on the characters and plots of the TV shows I love. I pretty much lifted Nita’s brother from Ravi on iZombie, although I’m sure he’ll become his own person soon, and the whole human/Wesen thing from Grimm is a big influence in the way I’m working out the story. But then the whole human/Wesen thing comes from a basic intolerance theme, which fits nicely into the election story happening now in which one side is flagrantly racist and doesn’t see anything wrong with that and the other side is having a hard time completely wrapping its mind around diversity, too.

All of which means, the book is possible. Maybe. I’ll have to find some kind of quick and dirty source for police department basics, but otherwise, problems solved.

Here: Have a mini-collage:

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Title Search

I tried something new in title brainstorming: Looking up key word quotes in Google images. I like short titles with two or three words because short is punchy and memorable, but never just one because the fun is the relationship between the words. I’ve used key word quote searches before, but I end up wading through unhelpful long quotes that are too nuanced or obscure to be the kind of attention-grabbing marketing tool a good title should be. When I switched over to an image search for “devil quote,” though, I got a page of pithy quotes that looked to be good sources for titles:

From those I got:

Somebody’s Devil (sung by Jackson Browne)

Dancing with the Devil

Clever as the Devil

Devil in Disguise (definitely going on the soundtrack)

Devilish Thoughts

Devil in the Details

Different Devils

The only one there I really like is Different Devils, probably because of Linda Ronstadt, and it doesn’t really fit. But that’s a good title for something.

So then I switched to demons:

Fighting with Demons

Snuggling Demons

Cheesecake with Demons

Casting Out Demons

Feeding Demons

Playing Well with Demons.

Cheesecake with Demons won’t work, but Doughnuts with Demons would, or Doughnuts to Demons, but neither of those sells the book as a mystery/love story, so no. Although I may pull some of those for use in the story. Definitely this one:

I have to put in a throwaway line where Nita crawls out of bed and Nick says, “Oh, crap, she’s up.”

And then there’s this:

I hate the “literally” there, but Nick really should have a hellhound named Spot.

And then there was this one, which reminded me of the Republican primary and gave me a direction for part of my back story:

I’m thinking “devil” or “demon” belongs in there to signal “supernatural,” but I want to avoid religious connotations, stay in the Elvis Presley vibe. Too bad Nick’s not in disguise. But really, Devil in Disguise is a terrible title because anybody who searched for it would be overwhelmed by Elvis links.

So characters. Amanita and the Devil (worked for Agnes and the Hitman). Nita and the Demons (terrible rhythm). Nita Among the Demons (terrible rhythm). Nita with Demons (better).Nick and Nita Go To Hell (except Nita never goes). Love Among the Demons (no no no).

One title I love is The Devil She Knows, but that’s Jeanne’s title, so nope. Drove me crazy when I remembered that and then couldn’t remember where I remembered it from. Light finally dawned. And then I found . It’s a better title for Jeanne’s book anyway, and it doesn’t really fit mine. ((It’s also been used before, but it’s on an out-of-print book from five years ago, so it doesn’t matter quite as much.)

The Nick and Nita callback to Nick and Nora Charles was one I thought about; there was even an extremely dumb move in the first draft where Nick was going by Nick Charles and Nita lampshaded it. That’s gone now and The Thin Demon ties it too closely to a story that really doesn’t have that many parallels.

It really might come down to Amanita and the Devil. I could do worse than call back to Agnes, even though the two books have nothing in common. Or The Devil and Amanita, that’s at least different. Or The Devil in Amanita, but that’s kinda dirty. Amanita’s Demons. There aren’t a lot of places in the book where she’s called “Amanita,” but it has a much better rhythm than “Nita.”

But it should be better than those. A title has to capture the tone of the book and be new and different to intrigue the reader without being cutesy or obvious, and it should have a good rhythm, easy to say. I can do better.

Edited to add:

And now many hours with Curio and Acorn later, I may have a working title I can live with for awhile:

Still not sure about the “Amanita,” but I’m also not sold on Nita and Her Demons. Maybe Nita with Demons, after all?

Amanita with Demons doesn’t scan, so it would have to be Nita with Demons. But I don’t think Nita and Her Demons sounds right, while Amanita and Her Demons does. Hmmmm. Good thing I’m not actually writing this book or I’d have to actually pick one of these.

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io9’s Ten Qualities for a Protagonist

Here’s another one from the Argh Vault. No idea why I didn’t post this; it links to a really good post that we should talk about.





Charlie Jane Ander’s list is really for an “escapist hero,” but I think she’s nailed it for hero protagonists in general (not anti-heroes, they take a different bus), male and female. I’m thinking numbers 1 and 9 are pretty much the same thing, but I would argue that if you’re writing popular fiction (that would be the stuff that’s fun to read and actually sells), Anders’ list is a good place to start. (Actually, pretty much everything Anders says about writing is a good place start; I’m a big Anders fan.) Pull out the super-hero context, and it all still applies.

So what are your requirements for a great protagonist (non-anti-hero)? Does this list work for you? If not, what’s missing? What should be ignored? Let’s talk about the-person-the-whole-story-hinges-on, Our Girl or Guy.

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Scene Definition Post at Writing/Romance

The Scene Definition post is up over at Writing/Romance.

It has kissing in it:

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Cherry Saturday 2-27-2014

Today is Polar Bear Day.

The other ten things are here.

The two big ones are “They’ll eat you,” and “They’re endangered.”

Have a nice day.

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Book Done Yet: This Book is Going to Hell

So the only way this check-in-every-Friday-on-the-book’s-progress works is if I’m completely honest, so I’m going to be completely honest.

But I swear to god, anybody who laughs is going to get barred from commenting. IT’S NOT FUNNY.

Okay, it’s kinda funny.

Remember those posts I did on Lucifer?

(STOP LAUGHING RIGHT NOW.)

Yeah, that story was completely unwrite-able. (Yes, that’s a word. I just made it up.)

First of all, the Devil as a romance hero makes no sense; how can an immortal avatar of punishment form a viable committed relationship? No, make that second of all. First of all is that I’d have to define what the Devil actually is and what he’d be doing on Earth–the whole I’m-taking-a-vacation-in-a-club has no motivation–and then what Hell is, and what’s happening down there since Dad left, and I have no desire to write a story with scenes in Hell, especially a Hell I’ll have to figure out.

Then a romance between the Devil and a mortal woman doesn’t work for me; it’s like a boss and employee or a professor and a student; the power dynamic is too unbalanced. This is not 1950, I’m not writing a supernatural nurse/doctor romance. And yes, I was going to rip off Pratchet and do the granddaughter of Death thing, but while that works beautifully in the fantasy satire of Discworld, it’s not going to work in the real world I’d want this in because Death is not a character like the Devil, it’s a state of being. The only way having Death works in my story world is if Life is there, too, probably dressed in white and riding a unicorn, and that’s not happening.

So the hero and the heroine and the relationship of that idea are not workable. It was just a game I was playing here because I was so annoyed by the pilot of Lucifer (and then the second episode and then the third episode and then I gave up, Tom Ellis and Rachael Harris notwithstanding). That was it. It was a dumb game.

So I went back to work on You Again, but these damn people kept talking in my head. I mean, they would not shut up. I’ve been here before, my hard drive is littered with pieces of stories from characters who just had to get one scene out of their systems, and once I wrote it down they left and never came back. That’s clearly what I had to do here.

So I wrote the first scene, Nita’s scene, showing up at the crime scene where two people got sprayed with bullets and one walked away unscathed, but the only people she talked to in that scene were her new partner (she’s a homicide detective) and her brother, the Medical Examiner. I really loved her brother–big iZombie influence there–and the partner had potential, if only as a foil.

But I still had the devil character in my head, so I kept going and wrote the second scene where the devil is telling Vinnie, the bar owner (clubs are not good places to develop community, so in my world it’s a bar) that he’s taking half ownership and in return he’s going to transform the place. The bar is called Hell right now, and it’s full of flames and pitchforks, and the devil explains that it’s an insult to a very fine, very old institution and then Nita walks in and he is not instantly attracted to her but he is curious . . .

It’s a slippery slope. Because then I couldn’t quite get Nita right in my head, and Tom Ellis kept showing up as Lucifer, except I’ll be damned if I call him Lucifer, that’s just too pretentious, and there was nothing else to call him, plus all of the character problems I described above, so no. I closed the file. That was done.

Then I made the mistake of going to work in earnest on my office, which meant a lot of painting and moving furniture and sorting books and hauling trash and none of that occupies my mind. So it wanders. It would have been so nice if it had wandered to that ghost-and-murderer-filled house on the Ohio River, but no, it went back to that damn Nita story and by the time the bookcase and the library table were swapped and the trash was out, I had solved the character problems. And the what’s-happening-in-hell problem. And I had an avatar of Nita that when matched with the Ellis avatar gave me a great oh-no-not-you couple. So I got out Acorn and made a mini collage, and while I was moving images around, my mind was soaked in the story and I started to see the shape of it.

By Tuesday I had the turning points in the relationship and I had Nick’s antagonist (as in Old Nick) and his turning points. They were just there.

Then Nita’s mother showed up in my head, and I realized I had to get all those details out, so I opened VooDooPad and started a wiki to keep everything straight. Four pages: Characters, Plot, The Real World, The Underworld. Nineteen characters so far. Two main plots (romance and mystery with probably romance coming out on top as the final main plot) four subplots.

So I have fifteen thousand words of rough draft, plus several versions of digital collage in Curio (if I start a scissor-and-glue collage, it’s all over) and a VooDoo Pad Wiki. It’s all neatly organized in one folder that’s going in Dropbox so I can get back to You Again which is actually publishable, or will be if I ever finish it, which I will do as soon as I get all these damn demons out of my head, which could take awhile because I just ordered four books on demons from Amazon.

I don’t want to hear about how this is the book I should be working on. Honestly, I do not, so don’t start with that because it’s just annoying. I don’t even want to write this book, the problems I’d still have to solve would be huge–I still don’t know a damn thing about police departments or bars and I’d have to make up a city because I’m not researching one–I just need to get it out of my head. It’s fun to write, but that’s just because it’s an early draft–they’re always fun–and once the heavy lifting started, this story would make writing You Again seem like writing Dick and Jane Have a Cookie. I can’t keep doing the fun part of writing, the beginning, and then wandering off to start something new. That’s how I ended up with six freaking books in progress.

So that’s why I didn’t make progress on You Again this week. But I wrote a lot, so I’m counting it.

[One thing still nagging at me before I can stick this on my hard drive and lose it forever: a title. Something that says love story with demons. The working title is Nick and Nita: A Love Story with Demons, but that seems too on-the-nose. Not that it matters because I am not writing this story.]

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