Shanna Swendson's Blog, page 155

Enchanted, Inc. -- The End

Wow, the Enchanted, Inc. reread has finally come to an end, with the last chapter.

I'm pretty sure the final chapter in the published book is different from what I initially wrote, but I don't think I could tell you exactly how. I think there might have been more wrap-up and a bit more dithering.

I did get some complaints about Katie not ending up with Owen at the end, but I'm a big fan of the slow build, and I didn't want to move too quickly. I wanted to give just enough of a hint of possibility, but I wanted her to explore other options first so we'd have a basis for comparison and know Owen was the right guy. Besides, he's kind of a chicken socially, so it would take a lot for him to be able to openly ask her out. In my mental backstory, he's the one who first noticed her when he saw her in a bookstore and was attracted to her, and then in watching her from afar he noticed signs that might indicate she was immune to magic, and so they set up the test that morning on the subway. If you're really shy, it's harder to talk to someone who really matters to you, so it's going to take him a while to work up the nerve and the comfort level to ask her out.

I actually think I got them together too soon and I might have done things differently if I'd known how many more books there would be, but at the time I had a two-book contract with no real guarantee of more, so I didn't want to leave that thread hanging.

I know the very last scene, of her heading to the office on the subway and noticing the magical things but not being shocked, wasn't my first draft, but now I can't think of any other way I could have ended it. It's a full-circle kind of thing, going back to where she was at the beginning and showing how much she's already changed.

It's been fun re-reading this because it's finally been so long since I wrote it that I can almost read it as a reader and not as the writer who still wants to tinker with it. I wrote this book largely because it was exactly the sort of thing I wanted to read, and I couldn't find anything quite like it. I think that I'd have loved this book and become a huge fan if I'd just been a reader who found it -- which seems rather obvious, since as the writer I was able to customize it to my personal tastes.

Incidentally, the book is set in 2005. I wrote it in 2003 and planned it to take place in 2005 because I figured that was when it was most likely to be published if it sold, so I used a 2005 calendar to figure out days of the week and dates. This doesn't really show in this book, but the later books are still set in 2005-2006 even though they were published later, so I had to keep checking technology levels. That's why there's not so much texting and people aren't yet widely using smartphones. That sort of thing was more ubiquitous when the later books were published, but it was only just barely getting started at the time when the books were set. The first book actually takes place in the near future after the publication date (published in late May 2005, set in September-November 2005), but the rest happen after the time period in which they're set. I don't put any date stamps in the book, so they're more or less timeless, aside from any trends, entertainment, and technology, but I tried to mentally keep everything in period.

I may take a little break before diving into book 2.

The Writers Guild Suicide Pact

I had a nice couple of days with my parents and then realized when I got home just how messy I'd let my house get. It's funny how you get used to things until you leave and come back to see it with fresh eyes. So I guess I'll be getting busy this week. That'll be easier because almost everything I watch on TV is over for the summer (though I have a slight backlog of OnDemand stuff to get through).

And I have to say, that Writers Guild Suicide Pact idea is looking more and more valid. Very little improved, most got worse, and just about everything got dark. So, starting on Monday nights:
Sleepy Hollow was a big "huh?" for the year, getting into that trend I've noted that the wife/girlfriend of the main character is generally the most-hated character on a show (including the villain), and too often the writers pick up on that from the fans and put it in the show. I didn't have strong feelings about the wife, either way. I think I just mostly rooted for her because of resistance to the hating the wife trend. And then they made that impossible, to the point that destroying her was the only way out. I loved the pilot of this series, but it's never really lived up to that and I'm 50/50 about whether I'll watch it again.

Gotham had great casting and interesting world building, but I reached the point a few weeks ago where I turned off the TV in mid-episode because I realized I wasn't enjoying it and I only cared about a few of the characters. Plus, a demonizing the girlfriend plot. It was very liberating to let go of it.

NCIS is my comfort food television -- not earthshattering, but I like the characters and they usually don't go too very dark for very long. They did go dark in the cliffhanger, but I'm fairly certain they won't stay there, which is why this one stays in my rotation even when it's fairly bland.

Person of Interest is a rare case where going dark actually was a good thing for the storytelling and quality, just because in order to deal honestly with the subject matter, it had to get pretty bleak. It was edge-of-the seat stuff, but it was sometimes difficult to watch. Still, the characters remained true to themselves and their principles, and there's always that dash of hope.

Forever was my bright spot of the season, so of course it was cancelled.

I didn't even try watching Chicago Fire this season. It was never a great show, but it could be fun. But they got a bad case of Mary Sue and I reached the point where I just didn't care. It's one I watched OnDemand, and I just never got around to watching it this season and didn't miss it.

Elementary is another one that falls into the "TV comfort food" category -- I like the characters and the plots are generally interesting. But it took a last-second dive into the really, really dark.

Then there was Grimm, which had what looked like it would be an interesting plot/character twist -- until they went off the deep end with it and we got yet another case of demonizing the girlfriend in a total characterization reversal and a huge plunge into darkness. I'm curious to see where they go from here, and that will determine whether I go along. This was one of my favorite shows, but I'm not sure I'll even buy the DVD of this season.

Even the Sunday PBS stuff took a downward turn. Call the Midwife got preachy in a very anachronistic way. Downton Abbey got ridiculous, plus there were some cast turnover issues that affected the plot. I turned off Mr. Selfridge in the middle of an episode this season because I just wasn't enjoying it and most of the characters I liked were gone. The bright spot was Wolf Hall, but I don't think I would enjoy that as anything other than a miniseries.

The winner of my Most Frustrating Show award goes to Once Upon a Time. When it's good, it's wonderful. There are moments that are pure gold, one of the few romantic relationships on TV that actually works for me, and some characters I love. But when it's bad, it's utterly awful. This season's overall arc made so little sense that I can't believe it came from a team of so-called professional writers. It contradicted itself all over the place and made most of the main characters look like raving idiots. They've got a really bad Mary Sue problem with a character who gets all the shinies handed to her and who has everyone fighting on her behalf for no good reason, and yet she's portrayed as the biggest victim ever who even the writers say "gets the short end of the stick." There must be a massive case of groupthink going on in that writers room so that no one has played devil's advocate or challenged any of these assumptions that fly in the face of all logic. Plus, there's some seriously screwed up morality and a bad case of the villain/hero double standard. And yeah, we got another massive dive into darkness as the cliffhanger. Unfortunately, I do love some of the characters enough that it's hard to just walk away, even if I would love to be locked in a room with their writing staff for about an hour so I could tell them where they went wrong. Preferably with shock collars. I could easily fix this show and make it amazing, which is why it's so frustrating to me that they keep making horrible decisions and never really delve into the character and world elements that they set up. There's so much potential, and they take the easy and shallow route almost every single time. And yet the premise and characters are so distinctive that there's no way to file off the serial numbers and write my own thing that fixes it.

There didn't seem to be much for me to get excited about in next season's new shows, so that should give me more writing and reading time, which is a good thing.

Redesigning

Since it looks like we're having a rare day without a lot of rain, I'm going to head over to visit my parents before they forget what I look like. I'm not sure whether to take my car or rent a boat. It doesn't look like the major roads where I'm heading are flooded, but you never know these days. We've gone from drought to flood in a few weeks. Two weeks ago, most of the lakes around here were below normal levels. Now most of them are at flood stage. The lake nearest me will look very different for summer fireworks.

I think I've found a fun new concept for my web site. It's really different from the more cartoony, bright look I had for the Enchanted, Inc. books, but it's more of a fit for the Fairy Tale books and the Steampunk book and for most of the other story ideas I've got in mind. I'm also going to have to change my tagline. I was using "Fairy tales for modern times," and while I meant that in terms of audience, it sounds like it's about contemporary fiction, which doesn't fit so well with the steampunk book. And while I think I used a few fairy tale tropes in the steampunk story, it's not so obviously a fairy tale kind of book.

One line that came to me last night was "All Manner of Magic" which I think covers a broad range of fantasy. What would that say to you as a reader?

I'm planning to use part of a photo I took as a header because to me that image says "fantasy" but it also has a Victorian esthetic.

Yeah, I know, I should be writing, but in the state I've been in, words weren't coming, but playing around with fiddly bits in my web software was working, and it's something that needs to be done. I didn't realize just how much the newer version of this software could do, so I'm having fun with the toys. I promise not to go overboard, though. I keep going back and forth on whether I should use a background color on the page. I like things clean and white and easy to read. I also prefer white walls in my house. But I don't know how appealing that will be. It's odd that I keep ending up with color schemes that don't fit my personal taste, but that do fit my books. There was the pink/purple range from the Enchanted, Inc. books, and my current plan is using greens and golds. I like the black, gray, white, and red on the steampunk cover, but I don't think it fits everything else. I may do an entirely different style/color scheme for the pages relating to that book.

But now I suppose I should get packed and head out for the weekend.

3:22 a.m.

I've had allergies/a cold/something else for the past few days, and what had been a sore throat has become a cough with the annoying tendency to wake me up at 3:22 in the morning (yes, that precisely). I thought it was maybe that this was the time the cold medicine I took before I went to bed wore off, so last night, desperate to get some rest, I broke out The Good Stuff, the prescription cough syrup that renders me useless for about 15 hours but that allows me to sleep through the night even when I've got bronchitis (this is much milder than my usual bronchitis). But while it made me groggy, it had a very different effect on me this time. I was sort of asleep in that I wasn't really awake and wouldn't have been able to do anything but lie there, but I was conscious pretty much the whole night. It was like an entire night of daydreaming, with only a few short bursts of real sleep. And I still woke up coughing at 3:22.

During the night, while I was conscious but not really awake, I did some brainstorming that might have led to an idea for a web site redesign, though I haven't quite yet figured out how to make it work in reality with the software I've got. I may still play with it some and see what I can get it to do. My hope was to be able to just redo the main page and otherwise adjust the colors and header through the master page, so I can essentially redo the way the site looks without redoing the entire site. I have some ideas on how I can make my concept work

Since I "worked" through the night, I'm now in need of some real sleep. I may not be very useful today.

At least the cough seems to be a lot better. I wonder if I take a nap, will I wake up coughing at 3:22 in the afternoon?

Enchanted, Inc. -- Nearing the End

We're getting close to the end in the Enchanted, Inc. reread, with chapters 17 and 18.

We start with the conclusion of the crazy magic immunity testing scheme and another appearance by the guy who thought he was turned into a frog. Looking back at it, I had way too much fun with that thread. I suspect it has something to do with the fact that it's never the men I find interesting who get interested in me. If someone is going to be following me around, serenading me, giving me flowers, etc., it's most likely someone who just makes me uncomfortable. Romantic interest is so seldom symmetrical, alas.

Then we set up for our final showdown. The setting at the amusement park in New Jersey actually stemmed from a practical matter. When I'd finally decided I had to write this book after more than a year of thinking about it, I felt like I needed a research trip to New York before I could really write it. I'd been there for a conference the previous summer, and I'd done some wandering around at the time, but not really enough because I didn't know enough about the story to know what I needed to look into. But a group of people I'd met online through Firefly fandom were planning a get-together in the fall at Wildwood, New Jersey. I figured I could get a ride from there to Philadelphia to catch a train to New York, so I could kill two birds with one stone and spend a couple of days in New York after the event. I guess it was kind of a leap of faith that I booked my return flight and hotel without having totally firmed up travel plans (though I'd already found one person willing to get me to the train station in Philadelphia). I ended up just getting a ride straight to New York, so it worked out. But then I was being scrupulous about which part of the expenses counted as a tax deduction. I knew my hotel in New York would count, but could I write off all my airfare, even if only half the time was devoted to work-related activity?

Then I figured that if I used the setting of the other place I'd gone, I could write off all the airfare in good conscience. And the moment I had that thought, ideas started flowing. One of the mornings we were in New Jersey, it was really foggy. We were at an old-timey motel, the kind where all the rooms open onto a balcony/walkway overlooking a courtyard, a couple of blocks from the beach, where we could see all the rides on the boardwalk. A group of us sat out on the balcony, drinking tea and looking at the eerie way the top of the roller coaster emerged from the fog. That seemed like a really evocative image that would be a great setting for a fight, and I also like the idea of juxtaposing something so seemingly normal and wholesome like an amusement park with a magical battle. Now it seems like there's no other place I could have set that scene, even though it stemmed from me being practical.

Next week, the end of the book!

Untangling

After a rainy weekend, it looks like I get one day to dry out before it starts again. We've gone from drought to flooding. I was thinking about buying a bicycle, but I think maybe a kayak would be a better idea.

I'm trying to remember what I did this weekend. I was sick, so a lot of it went by in a blur. I walked over to the rec center to vote in the city council election, then came home by way of the library, where I found a book I've been wanting, but somehow I never got around to reading it this weekend. I then came home from the library by walking down one of my "target" streets, where there's a house currently on the market. It's pretty small -- not that much bigger than my current house -- but I like the layout, from what I can tell in the online photos. Instead of a bunch of tiny living rooms, all cut up, most of the living area part of it seems to be an open floorplan, with the bedrooms opening off it. And it's been beautifully remodeled. But it's still not ideal, and I still don't want to try to move right now. I wasn't crazy about the particular location, and I'm not sure there was enough potential bookcase space. When I do start really house hunting, I'll need to make a list of reasons I want to move and make sure any new house meets those reasons. High on that list would be room for not only the bookcases I currently have, but more of them. Also a kitchen with both workspace and storage space.

Otherwise, I spent most of the weekend doing bits of reading, bits of knitting, catching up on some OnDemand TV watching, watching WWII documentaries on the Smithsonian channel, knitting, and untangling the skein of yarn that somehow got totally out of control. I mean, it took a couple of hours of carefully unraveling a massive knot to get enough additional yarn to be able to knit. And doing that was strangely soothing and satisfying. I'm not even knitting anything in particular. I'm just playing with a pattern to decide if I want to try to do it in this kind of yarn, and I'm testing two different borders to see which one I like best.

Then there were the season finales of Once Upon a Time and Wolf Hall -- talk about a contrast! There was a lot that was fun about the Once Upon a Time finale, but it also exposed a lot of the writing weaknesses in this show. Some of it, I think they were poking fun, but there also seemed to be a lot of unintentional irony that hit their blind spots. I really just want to strangle the writers of that show sometimes because they've got a great premise and cast, but the execution is almost always disappointing.

But the sun is out temporarily and the week has begun. I need to make a tea run, so there will be a walk to the India Bazaar at some point today, and then I need to do some writing and some housework.

Officially a "Novel"

The new book is now long enough to be a category romance, so it's officially a novel rather than a novella or novelette. But I still probably have another 20-30,000 words to go. And then a lot of revising/rewriting because it feels like it's short on action.

It's funny how much the plot and structure have changed since I started. On the first stab, I wrote a scene as the first turning point. Then I went back and changed a lot of stuff, and that scene just kept moving further and further out in the book. I've finally reached that scene, which now is more the big turning point that leads into the final act -- the "now things are getting serious" part.

I'm actually probably not as far along as I'd hoped because I discovered that in addition to this scene, there's another scene after it still in the manuscript that will have to go, as I dropped that plot thread. So there are maybe 2,000 words that will end up going.

But I can see the end from here, and I have a good idea of what's going to happen between now and the end, and I have a sense of what the final showdown will be.

Then I may let it rest a little while and deal with some other stuff. Like my web site. It's been built around the rather girly contemporary fantasy stuff, but the steampunk book has a totally different look. I think it still reads very much like something written by me, but you don't get "steampunk" when you look at my current web site. I probably need to migrate/evolve my logo, and then I think maybe an overall feminine Victorian style would work to bridge the two styles of books. I may not worry about matching the color scheme to anything in any of my book covers and just go with something I like. Which means blue will be involved. Maybe. I need to find a graphic designer.

Crazy Houses

I am now totally done with children's choir for this school year. They were pushing the limits up to the very last second, too. We couldn't even meet in our classroom for five minutes to practice the song we were doing for the assembly without them standing on the chairs and jumping off (against one of the class rules we have to talk about every single week) and then running around and refusing to participate. But now I get a break for the summer. I think I'll be back next year, unless things get really crazy between now and then, though I may end up with preschool next year because the preschool people want to move up with the class they had this year.

I feel like my decision to put off selling my house and buying a new one has been validated, as there was an article in the newspaper this morning about how home prices in this area are currently inflated and there's some worry about a bubble. That would benefit me as a seller, but could be a longer-term issue as a buyer. I bought my house during a kind of "bust," so I got it at probably below value, and as long as I can sell it at all, I'm sure to come out ahead. I'd rather not overpay for the next house. This house may not be everything I want it to be, but I've survived this long here, and the only reason for moving is a whim and a changed financial situation.

The crazy house I looked at on Sunday has already sold -- the one with wacky stuff like a built-in aquarium, three tiny living areas instead of one decent-sized one, and a weird built-in dinette. Plus it had a backyard so narrow that I don't think my patio umbrella would have fit on the patio that filled the entire space between the back door and the back fence, and the rest of the backyard was Astroturf.

And that makes me really wonder about another house I've been watching. It went on the market in December and still hasn't sold. It's in one of the subdivisions I'm targeting, and the house itself seems very much what I'd like, but it isn't in a great spot for what I want. I don't think it's the specific location that's a problem, as a house a few doors down sold within two days of going on the market. The listing mentions that it probably needs a new roof, which might be part of the problem. Oddly, the price for the house keeps going up the longer it's been on the market. I suspect it's one of those where the sellers won't drop the price and the mortgage company appraisers won't approve a mortgage for that price because they don't think it's worth that much. Still, in a market in which crazy oddball houses are being snatched up before the Realtor finishes putting the sign out, a house being on the market since December would practically require holes in the roof, a couple of murder scenes where the blood can't be scrubbed away no matter how hard you try, and an endangered species nesting in the walls.

Hmm, sounds like a story idea ...

Characters Taking Over

As I struggle with a book that's proving to be difficult, I've been talking about characters doing unexpected things, and that's led to some questions about how characters can take over a story, so I thought that would be something interesting to address in a writing post.

I'm sure it works differently for every author. I know there are some who use the "the characters just took over" line as a cop-out for anything that happens in a book that readers don't like, but for most of us, I suspect it has more to do with having to get out of the way of our own work. In my experience, it's not so much that characters just start doing things as it is that as I'm writing, ideas will suddenly pop into my head that aren't quite what I had planned but that I realize are more true to the characters than my original plans. This is more likely to happen when you know your characters from the inside out, and you've internalized the kind of people they are, and I tend to notice it more when I'm trying to impose my will on them -- when I'm trying to make something happen for plot purposes that is actually not quite right for these characters. When I'm doing that, either I'll end up blocked on a scene and unable to move forward, or ideas will start popping up that send things in a different direction.

So how do you make this kind of thing happen? First, you really need to know your characters, deep down inside. What makes them tick? This isn't about their hobbies, favorite colors or favorite subject in elementary school. It's about their deepest inner needs, their real selves, their fears and hopes. That inner need is always going to be there unless the character fundamentally transforms, even if the character achieves the story goal. Inner needs or drives are things like power, a cause, security, freedom, harmony, novelty, belonging, etc. In most cases, this need is going to drive the character's decisions, unless there's something in a specific situation that momentarily makes the character act against that need. So if you're trying to make a character driven by a need for security do something risky, you may find that it's not working, and every idea that pops into your head will involve the character doing the exact opposite. You'll either need to rethink the action or find a motivation strong enough to overcome that drive. If you force it to happen anyway without providing the motivation, it won't ring true to your readers.

You also need to remember that you're writing about your characters, not about yourself. You can't make them act the way you would. I'm finding this a lot in the secondary heroine of my current Fairy Tale series. Emily is pretty much a polar opposite from me. She leaps before looking, takes risks just because they're fun, has little fear, and doesn't worry about long-term consequences. I'm a very cautious person who overthinks things before I act, and my tendency is to hold Emily back. This is when I'll find that the thoughts that pop into my head when writing her tend to be about her being impulsive, skipping the thinking stage entirely. I often resist that, but I've learned that I need to go with it, even though she's not doing what I would do.

A lot of this stuff comes from what I guess you might call the subconscious. Some writers refer to it as "the muse." I know some who refer to "the girls in the basement." This is the part of you that knows the characters and the story and is pure creativity, without the restraints your conscious mind might put on it. There are some things you can do to learn to listen to this part of yourself. One is physical activity -- exercise is great for freeing your mind. A lot of writers swear by water -- the best ideas come in the shower. Mindless tasks can help -- washing dishes, gardening, housework, etc. Freewriting, where you write non-stop, putting out whatever pops into your head, for a certain amount of time, is a good way to tap into your creativity without your internal editor coming out. Other forms of creativity, like drawing, painting, music, or dance, can help, as can play. Get out the Legos or dolls for a while. Distracting yourself while you write can sometimes help -- listen to music, write in a public place, turn on the TV. While you're distracted by other things, you may be surprised by what ends up happening on the page.

This is all going to work differently for different people, so it's hard to describe exactly how it works or exactly how to use it. Your characters can take on a life of their own when you're outlining, when you're writing, or when you're revising. It may happen when you're at the keyboard or when you're daydreaming elsewhere. The main thing is to learn when those impulses that strike you make for a better story and when they're just whims.

Killing Restaurants

I'm up to chapters fifteen and sixteen in the Enchanted, Inc. re-read/commentary.

We pick up with the attack after the bad blind date, kind of an adding insult to injury situation. I was trying to give Katie some personal stakes of feeling endangered because of her activities. This was one last chance for her to turn back, and at this point she's fully committed to the cause.

When I was initially planning this series, I'd kind of planned for there to be several viable guys, so it wasn't so much a romantic triangle as her having multiple options and there being some suspense as to which one she'd eventually pick as the series progressed. I envisioned 'shipper wars breaking out, with each guy having a faction. That all went pretty much straight to hell the moment I started writing Owen, but I was still valiantly trying in this book. The scene in which Rod takes Katie home to help her recover from the attack was meant to be a chance to see him outside his usual persona so that he became a viable relationship possibility. Now it just looks to me like him being a good friend, probably because in my mental canon, at this point Rod already knows that Owen is into Katie, so he's actually playing wingman here.

And then we get into one of the elements that was in the concept almost from the beginning: using some of the real world's most fearsome creatures against the enemy: lawyers! And that brings us to potential suitor number 3, Ethan, the lawyer who may be a magical immune. I had a lot of fun writing the testing scene, startling subtly and then getting so over the top that he'd have to notice.

Incidentally, this was one of my "restaurant killer" scenes. I have a really weird track record when it comes to incorporating restaurants from the real world into my books, going back to my early romance novels. If I set a scene in a restaurant that's directly based on a real one, that particular restaurant will soon close or go out of business. In this case, I used a cafe near Washington Square I'd been to a couple of times. I had breakfast there with a friend once when I was there on a business trip, then I had dinner with a group a year or so later when I was there for a conference. It was exactly the kind of place I wanted for this scene, so I set it there. I don't think I was really specific about what it was, but if you knew the area, you probably knew what I meant. On a later trip, I saw that it was closed. I suspect there's a restaurant (or something) there again because space doesn't remain vacant for long in that city. I have such a bad track record with this that I've started making up restaurants that aren't based at all on actual places. But if there's a restaurant you really hate, I could probably kill it for you by writing about it.