E.J. Patten's Blog, page 4

How To Write a Book - Part 3: Structure

In Part 1, I talked about picking the right idea, magical egg whites, and the evils of the god-wizard hybrid Kronos-Voldemort. In Part 2, I talked about refining the idea, Dogniss Nevergreen, The Lost Hunger Symbol, and the secret power of Pop Tart Industries. Now, I'm going to discuss structure, story development, and probably whatever ridiculous thing occurs to me as I'm writing.

There are two basic approaches to story development: top-down and bottom-up. Top-down means that I lay things out according to some kind of system, like the three-act structure, or the Hero's Journey. I focus on plot. Characters become, in many ways, an outgrowth of plot needs. Here's a table showing a structural breakdown of Percy Jackson, Harry Potter, and The Hunter Chronicles:


Harry Potter Percy Jackson The Hunter Chronicles
Birds-Eye Kicker Harry left on porch—the boy who lived.
None. Phineas flees Exile with Sky. Normal World Harry lives in closet. Percy at museum. School problems. Trapping Phineas in the woods. Moving again.
Inciting Incident Arrival of owls. Fight with teacher. Phineas is missing.
Turning Point "You're a wizard Harry." Go to wizard school. "You're a demigod Percy." Get to Camp Half Blood. The Arkhon is about to break free. Find your uncle.
Rising Action Diagon Alley. Missing stone. Camp Half Blood. Missing lightning bolt. Search for Phineas/keys. Solve riddles. Survive.
Point of No Return Harry decides to stop the thief from getting the stone. Quest to find bolt. Sky decides to go with Hands to hunt the Gnomon.
Crisis Traps take out Ron and Hermione, leaving Harry alone to face the thief.
Percy somehow has the bolt and Hades believes he stole it. Fight with the Jack ends badly. All seems lost. Climax Harry gets the stone and fights Voldemort.
Percy fights Ares. Sky outwits the Arkhon. Denouement Harry recovers. Lose ends are tied up. Percy poisoned and recovers. Lose ends are tied up. Sky recovers in hospital. Lose ends are tied up.
Now, a few notes:
There are many ways to structure a story from the top-down. This is just one of them.The "Bird's Eye Kicker" is something I made up. When working in a third-person limited POV, it's often difficult to get at the larger context of a story. The "Bird's Eye Kicker" is one way to do this and usually takes the form of a prologue. It's a technique that launched the big story very quickly. Prologues have fallen out of vogue with some editors. Why? I have no idea. One reason I've seen is that prologues don't "start on the story," that somehow they're outside the bounds of a story. This seems ridiculous to me. Prologues create mystery, setup core questions, and—most importantly—give the bird's eye view of what is to follow. They can be an integral part of the story, if done well. To avoid the prologue stigma, some books, like Harry Potter, call their prologues "Chapter 1," but they are still prologues with a different POV than the rest of the book. Some curmudgeons will look at this breakdown and declare that these three books are, in essence, the same—that they tell the same story. These nameless "theys" are confusing structure—meta thinking—with plot, or the content of the story. STRUCTURE IS NOT PLOT! Structure is a way to tell a story, an organizing principle. It's the "beginning, middle, and end" bit broken down in more detail. The content—what happens within that structure—is the plot.  The top-down approach can lead to problems: shallow characters with unbelievable motivations, weak connections between events, and weak subplots. These things arise because characters are forced into situations to fill plot needs rather than having plot stem from character needs.

A bottom-up approach occurs when plot stems from character needs. In my experience, the bottom-up approach leads to better stories and richer characters, but takes much, much longer. The bottom-up approach starts with character. To get at character, I ask four questions:
Who is this character?What do they want?How are they going to get it?What's stopping them from getting what they want?These are the four main questions I ask, and I ask it for every character, not just the protagonist. This creates a complex relationship map. Whose goals are aligned? Whose aren't? How do they deal with conflict?

The most important question through all of this — the one I ask over and over again — is "why?" Why do they want this? Why would this stop them? Why don't they get along? The "why" question creates character depth. It creates back story that I can use to make a character real and a character's motivation significant and meaningful to the reader.

I chart a beginning, middle, and end for each character relationship. Then, I lay out these beginnings, middles, and ends within the story. It's like piecing together a giant puzzle, and the goals of the protagonist are like my corner pieces, showing me where to start. Who are they? What do they want?

Then, I look at my primary antagonist. The antagonist determines plot. If you're having a hard time figuring out your plot, look at it from the eyes of your antagonist. Your antagonist wants something and the protagonist is getting in their way. The story starts when the antagonist makes their first move (Ambrosia and the Wargarou hunt Phineas). The protagonist reacts (Sky searches for Phineas). The antagonist makes another move (shifts into a hunter to search for keys). The protagonist reacts (Sky tries to find keys first), and on and on until the protagonist takes the initiative, forces the antagonist to react, and saves the day.

Once you have the primary relationship mapped, move on to the next most important relationship and work it in (these are your subplots). This is where it gets tricky, and the more characters you have, the trickier it gets. The reason it's tricky is because you're trying to maximize conflict—you want opposing goals. Conflict drives the story. Characters that always get along make for a boring story. At the same time, you've got to manage pacing and keep the story focused. You need to resolve some relationship conflict while, at the same time, weaving in new conflicts to keep things moving.

This requires scene layering, where multiple things are happening simultaneously. I have some scenes in The Hunter Chronicles: Return to Exile where the layering in six or seven layers deep. For example, in the Jack, Sky is searching for Phineas to save him, Crystal has her own reasons, the Jack is stirring, there's a wall that sets up the wall they have to get past later, T-Bone is injured (raising the stakes), the Wargarou is tracking them (which implies that Ursula is dead), and Crystal has spotted a Gnomon (which sets up the Epilogue). It's a busy sequence, but it's probably my favorite in the book.

Believe it or not, when I wrote The Hunter Chronicles: Return to Exile I used a bottom-up approach. The fact that I can lay it out in a top-down grid is coincidental. A top-down structural approach to development can be helpful when you outline the primary protagonist/antagonist plot, but only after you've done the bottom-up work. If you start with top-down, you will have a flat story quickly written that nobody wants to read.

That's it for today. I'll try to put more funny into the next one.

The First Thanksgiving, A Tofu Turkey Story

I am officially the worst blogger ever. To make up for my extended absence from the blogosphere, I have included this picture of a delicious tofu turkey.

Oh, wait...that's a real turkey. Here's a tofu turkey:

Mmmm...er, looks scrumptious?

Few people know the true story of the first Thanksgiving, when there were no turkeys to be found, and the pilgrims joined with the Wampanoag Native Americans to crush their enemies and create the first edible tofu turkey. Back then, tofu was considered sacred to the Wampanoag Native Americans...well, to one Wampanoag Native American, really. His name was Tofumoset, but most people just called him "Tofu, The Completely Mental." He was a bit of an outsider. Liked to smash open pumpkins and play with the entrails while giving everyone his best "mad scientist" laugh.

One day, in the midst of slaughtering a neighboring tribe, Tofumoset found a small seed. He planted it, hoping that it would grow big and tall and take him to the land of the giants in the clouds where, he heard, they had silver and gold and discounted coupons to the local cineplex.

The seed turned out to be a corn kernel. But the seed next to the corn kernel turned out to be a soybean seed, which grew and grew until there were plants everywhere.

When the pilgrim's learned of Tofumoset's secret soybean field, they of course killed Tofumoset with the help of the other Wampanoag Native Americans and stole his harvest, giving thanks that their gourds were now safe and they wouldn't have to hear Tofumoset's stupid mad-scientist laugh anymore. To celebrate, they created a soybean turkey for Thanksgiving and named it after Tofu.

And thus, the first Thanksgiving tofu turkey was born.

It brings a tear to my eye every time I hear that story. So touching.


THE HUNTER CHRONICLES, BOOK 1: RETURN TO EXILE (UPDATE)

For those of you looking for actual information, I'm signing at the Lehi, Utah Costco on December 3 from 11:00-12:30, and the Sandy, Utah Costco from 2:00-3:30 on the same day.

This Christmas, give the gift of a new Porsche, to me, by buying my book for everyone you've ever met. Ever. A Porsche under my Christmas tree would be much better than the can of leftover Thanksgiving pumpkin I'm expecting. Dig deep. If you liked the book, spread the word.

Quick Update

In lieu of blogging, I've done a few interviews of late. If you're interested in reading them, you can visit Smack Dab in the Middle and Beanstalks and Bookends. You can also find a book review associated with the Beanstalks and Bookends interview at Project Mayhem.

It looks like the Sandy and Lehi, Utah Costco signings will happen on December 3. I'll post when I get more information.

Also, I'm considering taking a trip to Boise, Idaho in early to mid December to visit schools/Costcos/bookstores and sign there as well. Once again, I'll post when I get more info. If you're a principal/teacher/librarian in the Boise area, and you'd like me to visit your school (probably on December 8th or 9th), leave your email address in the comments section and I will have my PR rep contact you.

Finally, if you'd like to interview me, or host a book giveaway, let me know in the comments. I have several signed books I've set aside for giveaways on other people's blogs.

A Halloween Story

That first Halloween, when I was eight, I lived across the street from a daycare. It was an old house, Spanish-style, with a fig tree in the back. Small. My brother and I shared a room and at night, we'd say our prayers and hide beneath the sheets with a flashlight telling ghost stories until neither of us could fall asleep. 
[image error] Daycare Across the Street From Where I LivedWe were born on the same day, my brother and I, a year apart, a half hour difference in our birth times. Growing up, we spent every birthday in the hospital—stitches, car accidents, drownings; our presents were never what we expected and far less than we'd hoped for. It wasn't a coincidence. Our lives were too strange for coincidences.

Arizona was always hot. In the summers, you could cook an egg on the sidewalk, and by October, the storms moved in—giant things full of dust that swept out of the desert like the hand of God. Heat turned the soles of my feet into leather, so that by October, I could go anywhere, climb anything.

Five lanes separated me from the daycare on the other side of the road from where I lived. Five lanes and a chain link fence.

That first Halloween, when I was eight, the motorcyclist wore black. My jack-o-lantern pail was full of press-on tattoos, fake cigarettes, and apples that my mom would later check for razor blades. She never found any, but there were always stories. The boy who bit before he looked, swallowed before he chewed. You could never be too careful.

In those days, I didn't know much about ghosts and monsters and things that go bump in the night outside of stories, and even those were nothing more than homogenized approximations of horror unworthy of the name. It wasn't until years later when my sister saw a man in my closet, and I'd lie awake at night listening to the whispers, that those things became real to me and I understood.

But on that first Halloween, I heard the engine. Streetlights shone down their sickly orange light. Five lanes, a chain link fence, and a small pail separated me from the other side. 
The rider wore black. 
But Halloween is a greedy thing—it demands its' costumes and chain link only has so much give. I remember pieces flying, shorn from his body, splattering on the merry-go-round in a kaleidoscope. He never slowed. Velocity and the weight of the motorcycle sandwiched the man and strained his flesh through unbreakable links. What things had those chains kept out of that daycare? What had they kept in?

Flashing lights came next. Died on impact, they said. But I'd watched that impact, and it seemed to last forever. Even now, when I close my eyes at night, and the whisperings start, I can see it going still, caught it slow motion—never-ending. Flesh on steel.

He never slowed.

People ask why I write about monsters and scary things. The answer is simple: because on that first Halloween when I was eight, horror found me. And since then, he's never left me alone.

Return to Exile Concept Art: Echo

Here are two more monster illustrations from Return to Exile.

The first comes from the book cover and was illustrated by John Rocco, the artist behind most of Rick Riordan's books, including Percy Jackson, The Kane Chronicles, and the soon to be released Son of Neptune from the Heroes of Olympus series. If you're wondering why I list John's credentials every time I mention his name, the answer is simple: search engine optimization. It's lame, I know.

The second illustration was done by Jeff Brimley, who did the Shadow Warg illustration I posted a few weeks ago.

These illustrations show two very different takes on a treelike creature called an "Echo."
Here are more notes on Echo taken from Sky's Hunters Journal, which can be found in the back of the book or online:

Echo
The Evil Echo of Solomon Rose describes Echo as vaguely treelike, with large black leathery wings that fold out of their trunkish bodies. Their branchy arms can be inflexible as iron one moment, and slithery as tentacles the next, and when the wings spread out, the branches sweep downward into a rickety, protective shell. Or, if they choose, outward like writhing spears to flay and terrify those below—a tree one instant, a nightmare with wings the next.

Great pupil-less white eyes run half the length of the trunk—or at least, they did until Solomon Rose gouged them out, one by one, when the Echo refused to follow him against a monster he claimed would destroy the world. Robbed of their sight, Echo began to "see" through highly sensitive organs in their branches and mouth—tasting the scents, and sights, and emotions around them.

Echo keep to themselves, hiding in the old, dark forests of the world. Tangled roots spread deep, deep beneath them, clinging to the roots of other Echo like children holding hands, and they spend days and nights lost in a haunting sort of collective dream.

According to the Echo narrator of The Evil Echo of Solomon Rose, breaking an Echo from its roots ends the dream, effectively exiling the Echo, and is one of the cruelest things that can happen; it is also one of the best because a rooted Echo can't fly, and flying, as the narrator claims, is a dream worth waking up for.

How to Survive:
Echo have highly sensitive sensory organs all along their limbs. So long as the limbs are flexible (i.e., not in protective mode), they can be attacked. At best, this will temporarily "blind" the Echo, giving you time to run.
Poem, from The Evil Echo of Solomon RoseTheevil echo came, a gloaming in the dark,'ponbelly bowering and crawing for the Mark,toSolomon Rose the same, who sang thenamesof yore,andwith it brought his evil forth, a gibberingfrom the moor.Mybranches shook and writhed, and standingdidI shriek,"Whycallest thou me, thou thawing thorn?Whatsorrows dost thou seek?"OldSolomon shook and shivered, butdreamingof Lenore,'ponhis evil he shed his mind, and cast it inthegore."I'mSolomon," he said, "and my servants youshallbe,tillearth and sky begin to shake,andthe sieves of time begin to seep."Thenhe found us, and bound us,andsent us off to dream,tillfinally watchful waiting, our senses fading,his evil echo slithered off to sleep.
That's all for today. Once again, if you have a favorite monster you'd like to see illustrated, let me know!

Return to Exile Concept Art: Shadow Warg

A friend of mine, fine artist Jeff Brimley, kindly agreed to stop oil painting for a moment and design a Shadow Warg for me. John Rocco, illustrator of Percy Jackson and the Olympians, did the artwork for Return to Exile, but wasn't able to create artwork for each individual monster due to time constraints and a late request, so I asked Jeff to help out. 
Shadow Wargs are one of the first creatures Sky Weathers encounters when he returns to his hometown of Exile in book 1 of The Hunter Chronicles, a book which is aptly named Return to Exile (see how that's done?). Here's a description of a Shadow Warg taken from Sky's Hunter Journal which can be found in the back of the book or online at www.returntoexile.com (it's the button on the right of the circle).
Hunters Journal Addendumby Sky Weathers
For reference, I've compiled some notes on a few of the monsters I've come across, read about, or heard about so far. While I've included a few survival tips, your first, and best course of action is always to RUN. I mean it. Flee. Vamoose. Hotfoot it out. Shake a rug. Just get out of there. If that doesn't work, try a friendly "hello"; it won't help at all, but at least you won't die impolite.
Shadow Wargs are hunters who have made a pact with a Wargarou: the hunter agrees to become the Wargarou's minion and, in exchange, the hunter gains the ability to shift into a Shadow Warg. Shadow Wargs are Clydesdale-sized, wolf-like, and very annoying. They are made of darkness, can slip between shadows without being seen, and are practically invulnerable.
How to Survive
The Shadow Wargs of Whimple mentions three weaknesses: silver, fire, and wolf's bane.

END JOURNAL TRANSMISSION (okay, this doesn't really make sense, since Sky's journal is hand written, but I've got to transition somehow, so give me a break).
Return to Exile focuses on about ten unique creatures you've never heard of. These creatures include: Shadow Wargs, Wargarou, The Jack, Dovetail, Gnomon, Edgewalkers, Echo, Whisper, Glooms, Piebalds, and the most terrible of them all, The Arkhon.
The mythology in Return to Exile includes dozens of creatures that will appear over the course of the series, and each one is every bit as detailed as a vampire or a dragon, which, by the way, DON'T appear in the series due to their having been killed off years earlier by their own popularity.
Look for more concept art here in the coming weeks, assuming I can convince Jeff to put down his brush again. If you've got a favorite monster from the book that you'd like to see illustrated, let me know!
You can find more of Jeff's artwork (not for the book) on his website and on Fine Art America.

Unofficial Book Trailer

Return to Exile has officially launched! Return to Exile is the first book in The Hunter Chronicles. To celebrate, I've uploaded this unofficial book trailer. To be clear, this trailer doesn't represent the book in any way. I just did this so I could claim I had a trailer for my book. Enjoy!

Also, here's a list of my Costco events in Utah:

Sep 17, 2011
10:30 AMSandy, UT

Sep 17, 2011
2:00 PMLehi, Utah

Sep 24, 2011
1:30 PMOrem, UT

Early Reviews for Return to Exile

Return to Exile will be released on September 6, one week from today. To celebrate the coming launch, I've decided to list some of the early reviewers I've seen, both good and bad:

     1. Publisher's Weekly:

"The frenetic story line, flurry of revelations and secret identities, and large cast occasionally make this debut novel, the first book in the Hunter Chronicles series, hard to follow, but Patten more than makes up for it with his original mythology, easy sense of humor, and action-packed sequences. Amid the innumerable vampire, zombie, and werewolf stories available, it comes as a breath of fresh air."

     2. Joseph Lunievicz, Author of Open Wounds:

"The ending is just beautiful. I won't spoil it but I will tell you it reads like the perfect ending to a pulp serial – ominous, dark, and bookended by razor-sharp tooth and suction cupped tentacle."

     3. Abundance of Books: 

"Return to Exile was an excellent mix of characters, tension, monsters, mayhem, and humor."
"It had some of the best fight scenes ever and I loved the mix of seriousness and humor."
"...it was a well paced read that I could not put down and read it in one sitting. Seriously, I stayed up until 3:oo a.m. to finish this book, I had to know how it ended."

     4. Journey of a Bookseller:

"This story is a bit Harry Potterish. There is magic, danger, shape shifters, and evil in this book. I found it a fascinating read and enjoyed every bit of it. It's so intense I had to set it down and take a break from it every so often. Otherwise my heart rate got a bit higher than I liked it..."

     5. 4TheLoveofLit: 

"Wow. This novel is profound. You have to pay attention, or you'll drift into utter confusion (similar to Stephen King's Dark Tower series)."
"As a YA novel, it contains enough monsters and twists to keep the mind working for all 500 plus pages. I haven't been (this) excited about a book since I read James Dashner's "The Maze Runner" series."

     6. Other Stuff Exists:

"The world of Return to Exile is very well-realized, with a variety of monsters, plants (some monstrous), and monster hunters, forming a coherent world and history. If anything, Patten has created a world that's too interesting–I found myself wishing that I could read some of the in-universe books like The Evil Echo of Solomon Rose, so as to learn more about the history of the world."

On the book cover, you'll also see the following reviews/blurbs from Brandon Mull and James Dashner:

"Return to Exile marks the beginning of a remarkable new series. I loved the characters, and its originality and intensity kept me ripping through the pages. A stunning book." --James Dashner, New York Times best selling author of The Maze Runner and The Scorch Trials
"A complex tale brimming with imagination." --Brandon Mull, New York Times best selling author of the Fablehaven and Beyonders series
As I'm covering early reviews, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the two reviews I've seen from people who clearly didn't like the book. The first is from a reader on Goodreads who stopped reading thirty or forty pages in because she didn't like the similes/metaphors. The metaphors/similes are a bit thick in the beginning, but they lighten up after page fifty or so. The beginning is slower paced, and I tried to keep reader's engaged through humor. The crazy similes/metaphors are mostly an outgrowth of this. Apparently, they didn't work for her. If they don't work for you, keep reading. I promise it gets better.

The second reviewer that didn't like the book was Kirkus. Their review is sloppy, contains a spoiler, and gets details wrong, which leads me to believe that the reviewer skimmed--possibly during an unfulfilling lunch while arguing with an ex-spouse over alimony--got lost in the narrative, and blamed the book. As 4TheLoveofLit put it "You have to pay attention, or you'll drift into utter confusion." Unfortunately, I believe this is what happened with the unhappy Kirkus reviewer. Also, he or she really should pay alimony. It's the law.

I'll end this post with one of my favorite reviews, from Canadian YA author Janet Gurtler (whom I swear I don't know), which she posted on Goodreads after tweeting about some awesome fan art drawn by her ten-year-old son (also included):


Sky Weathers, Copyright 2011 Janet Gurtler's son

"Got a boy who needs a book to read? 
This is a book that got my reluctant reader, 10 year old boy to actually fall in love with a book and characters for the very first time. He was so excited to read it EVERY DAY and tell me about the story and the characters. Enchanted. He eagerly awaits the next books in the series. 
I am a fan and plan to read the book myself as soon as my son will let me."

Return to Exile Launch Event!

The launch event for Return to Exile will take place at The King's English Bookshop on September 6th at 7:00 PM. The King's English Bookshop is a fantastic independent bookstore located at 1511 South 1500 East in Salt Lake City, Utah.

You can get more info on The King's English Bookshop website.

The event will consist of a reading, a book signing, and possibly some filking provided by Dave Butler (for those of you who don't know what filking is, it's basically a song dedicated to a book). You can buy a copy of Return to Exile at the event, or you can bring your own. If you want, I'll even sign other people's books. If you bring it, I'll sign it. Unless it's a library book. Desecration of a library book is a horrible, horrible crime.

If you can't make it to the launch event, there will be other signings. When, you ask? I have no idea. But I'll keep you posted as I learn more.

To Kill, or Not to Kill; This is a Question?

As a middle-grade writer, I'm constantly wrestling with the issue of whether or not to kill someone. In my story, I mean. Particularly at the beginning of a story. I think the reason parents are either rotten or absent in middle-grade novels is because it's a fast and easy way to engage reader sympathy. Somehow, I have to make a reader care about my protagonist within the first 10-20 pages. I can do this by:
Creating a burning, unanswered question. 
Pitting the world against them. 
Making them orphans.
Harry Potter does all three of these things within the first 20 pages. Percy Jackson hits the first two and compounds the sympathy by adding Smelly Gabe in place of a father.

In Return to Exile (only two more weeks to release!), I gave Sky, my protagonist, great parents and turned their very goodness into a roadblock. But this took time. To get immediate reader interest, I relied on burning questions and a cruel world.

It's hard to work strong adult allies into a middle-grade novel, and keep them there, because the reader will always be asking "why in the world is that kid in charge?" And most the time, the answer to that question feels very contrived.

If anyone knows of other things that work well in engaging immediate reader interest, other than the three things I've listed, I'd love to hear about it!