Austin Scott Collins's Blog: Upside-down, Inside-out, and Backwards, page 5

The Unique Challenge of Writing Sequels

Sequels are interesting because they are so constraining; it's like an advanced game designed to challenge the player with highly limiting rules. You have already laid out the continuity and established who the primary characters are and what the underlying source of conflict is. You're stuck with it. (Assuming, of course, that the first book is already published. Otherwise, all bets are off.)

You now must work within the universe you have created. In a way it's easier, because you know what you're dealing with. It's like driving a familiar road or cooking with ingredients you have used many times before. But you can't go back and re-write the previous book. Oh, you might be able to fix a couple of editorial or stylistic issues here and there, but you can't retroactively alter the premise. The context is fixed. In that sense, it's rather similar to one of those workshop exercises where the instructor gives you three or four prompts and assigns you to create a story that involves all of them. You have to work within a sharply pre-defined frame.

I mapped out the entire story arc for the three novels in the Victoria da Vinci series — Dicing Time for Gladness , Crass Casualty and Hate's Profiting — way in advance because, as I explained in this blog , the whole thing started out as a single short story. So it's not as hard as it would be if I had begun each new book with a fresh sheet of blank paper, trying to come up with a new story that somehow fits in with what's already out there.

Still, I find myself in awe of writers who produce one novel and then go back later to craft an unplanned follow-up. And as I discussed in this blog , one of the most important aspects of a good story is that it has to feel finished. A string of books must have a string of satisfying resolutions, with each installment ending in a fitting and meaningful way that resonates fractally with the larger plot. I can't imagine going back to a book that I had considered settled and done, resurrecting the story and finding a way to continue it. It almost feels like a betrayal of my original intentions.

As I approach the end of the process of writing the second book in this series, I find myself looking forward to being done with the whole trilogy (at the end of 2015, assuming I can stay on schedule). The idea of letting a project go appeals to me. I love these characters and I love the whole concept, but I'm glad to put it out there in the world and let it have a life of its own.

The Perfect Ending

How many times have you read a book with an intriguing and imaginative premise and compelling characters, a book that had you completely absorbed, only to be disappointed by the unsatisfying last few pages? The story doesn't really end, it just sort of stops. You can almost see the author leaning back in his or her writing chair, staring at the ceiling, wondering, "how can I wrap this up?" Your story might be a real humdinger, but the whole thing fizzles if you don't stick the dismount.

I think short stories tend to have better endings than novels. This is probably because with short fiction, there is more focus on keeping the overall structure tight. With a brief plot, a good conclusion is the sine qua non. With a novel, however, the author is free to indulgently explore a sprawling concept. The trouble with doing that is the intrinsic lack of resolution. Fantasies and daydreams don't have beginnings and endings. When you bask in an appealing idea, you are perpetually in the middle.

My personal definition of the Perfect Ending is one that causes the reader to say, "of course! It's so fitting and proper! It couldn't possibly have ended any other way!" A good ending makes you realize that everything that happened in the story was leading inevitably to this, even if it was a surprise.

The archetypal example of a book with a Perfect Ending is Moby-Dick. The ending MAKES the book. The ending IS the book. If Melville had allowed Captain Ahab to kill the white whale and brought the crew of the Pequod safely back to Nantucket, all you'd have is a lengthy and forgettable narrative heavy with cetology. But the ending turns it into a masterpiece, an object lesson on the dangers of monomania. It has launched a thousand questionable symbolic interpretations, become the subject of countless theses, and given us The Wrath of Khan. All because Melville ended it the right way. It doesn't have to be pretty (or happy), but it has to be right.

I believe a prudent thing for an author to consider at the very beginning of a project is, "HOW will this end . . . and WHY?"

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The Importance of Character Backstories

We meet Karl Schulsser early in the Victoria da Vinci trilogy, high in the mountains of Colorado in the year 1899, as he is struggling to meet the unreasonable demands of his impatient, vain and imperious boss.

Karl was born in the Kingdom of Bavaria. He ran away from an arranged apprenticeship to a printer and found his way to Sweden, where he sailed away with the merchant marine at the age of 14. At sea, his preternatural mechanical aptitude was particularly useful, and he quickly acquired a reputation for being able to fix anything on board. His creative and ingenious solutions won him the admiration of the captain, who tasked Karl with improving various systems on the ship. Karl questioned all conventional wisdom and constantly sought better ways of doing things.

Having acquired a deep fascination with wind propulsion and hydrodynamics from his time on the water, Karl traveled to Germany to study engineering. He was one of the men who came to think that controlled, sustained, heavier-than-air human flight was a technical possibility. His papers on the subject exposed him to scorn and ridicule.

Before Karl could finish his degree, he was hired out of school by the Baroness von Berge, Greta Greaves of Austria, who enticed him with the promise of being able to design and build wonderful and amazing things that the world had never seen. What Karl did not know was that the Baroness would take credit for his ideas, force him to work in secrecy, continuously interfere with everything, treat him rudely and sell the products of his efforts to the armies and navies of an increasingly militarizing Europe.

Karl is a tragic figure who unknowingly made a poor choice. The purpose of his character in the story is to illustrate the complicated and abusive relationship that exists between Greta and her staff. She operates under the delusional belief that she is the greatest inventor of the age, when in fact she is merely a shrewd and ruthless businesswoman. (Like many people who have found great financial success, she thinks she is gifted and infallable in all areas.)

Although Karl appears repeatedly in Book I, Dicing Time for Gladness (released a year ago), as well as Book II, Crass Casualty (coming out in about a month), none of the backstory above — not even his last name — actually makes it into the text. The character of Karl Schulsser is an excellent example of the purpose and value of creating a backstory: the author needs to know why he does what he does, even in cases where the reader doesn't.

This illustrates two fiction-writing guidelines. First, create a backstory for the sake of understanding a character's motivations and behavior so that the character can be written in a consistent and logical way. Second, however, R.U.E. (Resist the Urge to Explain.) If there is not a valid narrative reason to put the backstory in the text, don't. The character's actions should speak for themselves in the context of the plot.

Things That Will Happen If You Follow My Facebook Author Page

1. Giant robots will come to your city and fight destructively while you watch from an excellent vantage point at a safe distance.

2. You will always cook popcorn and pancakes perfectly and people will be amazed.

3. If you are in a quiet room with other people, something loud and distracting will happen every time your guts are about to make funny prolonged gurgling noises.

4. You will be able to to spell "mayonnaise" and "Albuquerque" without having to look them up.

5. When people ask you a question regarding an obscure subject, it will be on the one fact you know about it.

6. You will suddenly have the ability to spin small items between your fingers before putting them away.

7. Your knack for accessorizing will rise to the level of a mutant superpower.

8. You will not get a major disease.*

*I'm not saying you won't get any major diseases, just that you won't get one of them.

9. They will start making new episodes of your favorite cancelled series.

10. Ever seen the movie Scanners? Yeah, you'll be able to do that.

11. You will be able to calculate a 20% tip quickly in your head, even when it's something weird like $7.31.

12. The more donuts you eat, the smarter you will get.

13. You will develop a single, super-dense new muscle deep in your abdomen. Clenching it once will burn 4,000 calories.

14. When engaged in conversation, witty comebacks will scroll in front of your line of sight like you're the Terminator.

15. You will be entitled to one full do-over per day.

16. Your favorite famous person will call your number by accident, and find you so charming that you will talk for hours.

17. At precisely the right moment, while everyone is watching, you will hit something and it will start working.

18. You will acquire the capability to telepathically transfer paper cuts from yourself to your enemies.

19. When having a nightmare, there will be a lever you can pull that will instantly activate an uptempo Broadway musical number.

20. The thing you need will be the first thing you find when you open the drawer.

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Legal disclaimer: statements in this blog post may not be true. But then again, what is truth? Are we really equipped to process deep issues related to the ultimate nature of being and reality? Especially after 10 p.m. Offer not valid in deep intergalactic space. Void where no matter exists. Some restrictions apply stickers to other restrictions. Discontinue use if traveling backwards in time. Cough syrup should not be used as a substitute sweetener.

The Importance of Hearing Yourself Say It

I had the opportunity to do a reading of my work last week, and it was a memorable experience.

One of the reasons for that was that I had the chance to hear the extremely talented Sheree L. Greer read from her debut novel Let the Lover Be. Her prose is electric, and her delivery brought it vividly to life.

Then it was my turn to read from Dicing Time for Gladness. I've read my writing in front of people before — during innumerable college workshops, at awards ceremonies etc. — but this was the first time I had ever read something that had already been published.

In order to make sure it didn't run too long, that I wouldn't stumble too much and that I wouldn't feel rushed, I had already rehearsed the part I was going to read several times. But reading it out loud in front of a live audience of actual human beings who were listening and paying attention was a profoundly different thing, and it felt altogether fresh as I heard the words coming out of my mouth. Things I had not particularly noticed while practicing suddenly loomed large; details that had barely registered before became glaringly obvious. I found myself editing as I spoke: changing a word here, deleting a word there, altering the inflection slightly from what the punctuation on the page would suggest.

At the moment I thanked everyone and sat down, as the applause was dying away, my impulse was to go back to a blank sheet of paper and re-write the entire book. Later, after I'd had some time to process and assimilate the experience (and recover from the trauma), I went through the section I had read and noted the things I would like to adjust. The changes, in reality, were relatively few and relatively minor. They just seemed huge at the time.

Still, it was a harrowing learning process. One is, of course, never through with a novel. There is always one more comma to change into a period, one more adjective to remove, one more sentence to lift out of the middle of the fourth paragraph and drop in near the beginning of the third. Decades after the first printing, as a book is entering its fourth and tenth editions, the writer is still inevitably tinkering. But maybe that's not really the lesson here. Maybe the larger question is whether the events of the story feel generally right. Does the plot make sense? Are the actions of the characters consistent and plausible? Are the descriptions authentic? Does the narrative flow? Does the dialogue pop? Reading your work out loud, you should feel like you have nothing to explain and nothing to apologize for. That's what matters.

Since that night, I feel a new wave of awareness of my prose style that I can tell is impacting my work on Book II in the series, Crass Casualty. I'm definitely going to try to do more live readings in the future, now that I have been reminded how useful and valuable they are. So if you have an event and need an author to read, send me an invite. I hope you don't mind if I pause frequently to wield a red pen.

Gazing Into the Crystal Ball

I was reading Arthur C. Clarke's three laws of prediction and thinking about their implications. The laws are:

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Clarke came up with the first of his laws in 1962, in his essay "Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination," from the collection Profiles of the Future: An Enquiry into the Limits of the Possible.

The future is easy to get wrong. In fact, it's darn-near impossible to get right. To cite just one obvious example, Clarke envisioned that by the year 2001 we would be sending manned space missions to Jupiter and that we would have artificial intelligence on the level of HAL.

The first mis-prediction was certainly forgiveable: if you took NASA's space program and carried its progress on a linear trajectory from the Gemini program through the Apollo program and on into the 80s and 90s, of course we would be reaching the outer planets by now. What Clarke didn't foresee was the massive loss of public interest and funding.

The issue of HAL, however, is a more interesting philosophical and technological matter. It might seen reasonable to assume that with Moore's Law hard at work, we should have thinking robots by now. Why don't we? Well, it turns out that no matter how fast the processors and no matter how vast the memory storage, you still can't create consciousness out of silicon. Self-awareness seems to come from somewhere else, and we haven't figured it out yet. We can program computers to win at chess or figure out pi to the ten-billionth decimal place, but we can't program one to wonder what life is all about, to want something, to fear something, or to contemplate its own existence. We have smart phones, but we don't have C-3P0.

So I thought it would be appropriate to share my own wildly inaccurate prediction of the future here tonight. Laughable as it seems now, I honestly believed that in the era of instantly accessible Google, Wikipedia and automated spell check — not to mention IMDb for TV and movie references — everyone on the Internet would sound like a highly educated expert on every subject, all the time, and that it would be impossible to determine who was really smart and who was just cutting and pasting. Clearly, this was a wildly, spectacularly wrong guess. But looking back, doesn't it seem like a perfectly sensible assumption? With all that information so easily and instantly available, why would anyone take a chance at seeming ignorant? It's not like you even have to go to the trouble of getting your fat butt up out of your comfy chair and pulling a dictionary down off the shelf. All that vast information is so conveniently available with a keystroke or a finger swipe.

It still amazes me when people post things like, "lol wasnt their a movie in the 80's about a guy on a motorcycle who went back in tiem???" You. Are. On. The. Internet. RIGHT. NOW. Does it honestly not occur to you to look it up? I can tell you how old Fred Ward was when Timerider came out in 1982 (40). And can we talk about how hot Belinda Bauer is?

So I suppose they either (a) don't know how to do a Web search (unlikely), (b) are too lazy to do a Web search (getting warmer) or (c) just don't care (bingo).

The point of all this is, no matter how logical the reasoning behind your expectation, human nature consistently defies prognostication. My advice? Diversify your portfolio.

Time, Money and Writing

I'm almost finished with a book called Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality , in which the co-authors contend (among many other things) that much evidence from the fields of archaeology, anthropology and primatology suggests that for millions of years our primitive ancestors actually had a fairly leisurely lifestyle. Members of small foraging groups spent a few hours a week doing things like gathering nuts and berries or collecting firewood, doctors Jethá and Ryan tell us, and then they spent the rest of the time relaxing, taking naps, telling stories, having sex etc.

In our era, not so much.

The complicated, conflicted relationship we have with time takes on a special flavor when you are in a creative business. Art takes time. Making money also takes time. If you don't make money with your art, you have to use some of your art-making time making money. (Sounds kind of like an Eagles lyric, doesn't it?)

On one hand, there is no substitute for life experience, so one might argue that having a job and interacting with people out there in the real world of mundane practicalities is good for the imagination. Raw sensory input and varied intellectual stimulation from the universe outside your head keep the juices percolating. On the other hand, however, if you spend eight hours a day in an office or factory, and another hour a day commuting, then by the time you have finished taking care of things like grocery shopping, getting a haircut, going to the post office, putting gas in your car and doing laundry, you barely have enough room left in your schedule to get eight hours of sleep. How are you supposed to write a novel?

If you are a professional novelist, this is not a problem. Not only can you devote sixteen hours a day to writing when you need to, you can even aggressively seek out exactly the kinds of real-world experiences you need for inspiration and/or research. You can even deduct your expenses.

Likewise, if you are independently wealthy, there does not have to be tension between your literary agenda and your daily responsibilities.

But 99.99% of all writers do NOT make a comfortable and secure living by writing, so the rest of us are faced with a dilemma. How to be a writer and simultaneously be a non-starving, non-homeless, mostly sober member of adult human society?

Option One — The Ferocious Work Ethic.
With discipline, determination, focus, excellent time-management skills and the right priorities, it is theoretically possible to have a lucrative full-time non-writing career and yet also be a writer. When you get home, instead of turning on the TV, you lock yourself in your private study, pour yourself a glass of something fermented, distilled and aged, and pound out a few more pages. This is a great system for high-achievers, or those who don't mind allowing every other aspect of their personal lives to disintegrate into a shambles. (There are support groups for people trapped in relationships with novelists.)

Option Two — Alternating.
Work for a year, write for a year. This works great if you (a) make a ton of money at your job and (b) have the freedom to leave for long periods and come back without any significant negative implications on your career. So if you can make $250,000 in 18 months working as an IT security consultant in San Francisco and then run off to a chalet in Switzerland or a country house in Tuscany or a stone cottage in Patagonia or a lighthouse in New Zealand to write a six-part erotic dystopian vampire series or an 800-page experimental story about a salad fork, good for you. A less ambitious version of this tactic is to spend a few months washing dishes at a cafeteria and then write a book about a water smuggler named "Space Dog" from the year 3036 over the summer while crashing on your buddy's couch. (There are support groups for people who have novelist friends.)

Option Three — Defaulting to Hopeless Inconsistency.
You try to do Option One or Option Two, but despite having the very best of intentions, you never seem to have enough time or money, something else always comes up, and before you know it, years have slipped by and all you have is a hard drive full of half-finished chapters or a folder full of notes, ideas and plot outlines.

Option Four — Spectacular, Idiotic Levels of Optimism.
Quit your day job and commit yourself to achieving financial success as a full-time writer. This approach is highly recommended for those who have a zest for risk-taking and enjoy such adventures as bankruptcy, foreclosure, divorce, homelessness, alcoholism and eventual death by hypothermia in an alley.

Option Five — Ah, Fuck It.
There are already plenty of novels in the world.

Melanie Neale, author of Boat Girl: A Memoir of Youth, Love & Fiberglass , is compiling an anthology of writers' stories called The Things They Did for Money, collaborating with her friend Danielle and indie publisher Matt Peters of Beating Windward Press. In it, writers recall how they made ends meet while pursuing their literary dreams. It's not out yet, but I will be first in line to buy it. This is a familiar struggle, as old as written language itself. Part of what makes writers such interesting people, I think, is the fact that they have to choose to defy convention, common sense and all the pressures and requirements of normal life to carve out the time to engage in such an enveloping activity. Not many projects consume as much of it as writing a novel. Not many people devote such care and attention to anything for free. And only a delusional person writes with money as the motive. (Many writers, admittedly, are delusional.) Writing is the most noble way to be pathetic.

I'm eagerly looking forward to reading The Things They Did for Money, and I expect to laugh, flinch, cringe and nod understandingly.

Reviews . . . by Me.

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I tend to review the books I like, and/or the books that I think have succeeded exceptionally well at doing what they clearly intended to do. So far I have posted 21 (I think?) book reviews on Amazon, and they tend to be favorable. (Click the link above if you're interested.)

I discussed in this post why I don't generally review books I don't like. One point I did not address, however, is the practical fact that if I really despise a book — I mean if it makes my skin crawl and my gorge rise — I will probably not finish it. It's simply not fair to critique a book you didn't finish.

That having been said, you can probably judge pretty accurately whether you want to read a person's own work based on the reviews he or she puts out. My only proviso is to read at least three different reviews before making a decision; we all have at least that many paradoxical yet symbiotic reader-writer dichotomies residing within us.

Judging a Book

The cover does matter. In the case of Dicing Time for Gladness , the consensus was quite clear: the original cover did not accurately reflect the tone, style, content or quality of the story.

There is a fine — and fuzzy — line between being true to your vision (GOOD) and ignoring all feedback (BAD). It is definitely important to stick closely to your personal convictions and protect your artistic integrity. On the other hand, it is foolish to disregard all input, especially when it (a) comes from a variety of sources, (b) comes from people whose opinions are valid and (c) does not directly impact the vital core of your project.

I've been honored by a number of very flattering and positive reviews, but many of them started with some variation on, "in spite of the cover..." OK, I can take a hint, when it hits me repeatedly in the side of the head at high velocity.

So I did a cover redesign, and so far the response has been favorable. I got to sign one of the new ones for someone today, and based on the look on her face, I think I made the right decision.

Click HERE to see the new front and back.

The Two Kinds of History Research

There are two kinds of history research. (Three, if you include serious people doing serious things.)

In the first type, which I shall call Type One because people tell me I am very creative, I go hunting for facts and figures related to something I have already written, or am actively in the process of writing. This is why it can take me all day to write a single page (that, and music videos from the 80s on YouTube). I find myself having to look up things like, How much does a cow weigh? or, How many people are on a cricket team? or, How do you spell "Eyjafjallajökull"? I always have plenty of questions to resolve, not the least of which is, Why am I setting a fictional cricket match on the slopes of an Icelandic volcano, and why did I choose to end it with a high-velocity bovine impact?

As I previously explained in this post , my stories tend to lie somewhere along the adventure/fantasy/science-fiction spectrum and are only nominally historical. Although I certainly love history and find it fascinating, I am not writing academically rigorous material, and comply with the rules of factual accuracy only where it is compatible with the plot. That having been said, I do make some reasonable effort to keep period details, well, period.

The second type, which I will not name because I like to defy expectations, is general research — not necessarily directly related to the manuscript at all. I spend a lot of time reading about the whole era, especially in a particular geographic region, just to get an overarching sense of the milieu. This is where a lot of great ideas come from, but mostly it's just a blend of curiosity and interest on my part. Chances are, I don't write about something in the first place unless it catches my attention for some reason. The turn of the century has always appealed to me because so many things were beginning and ending around that time, and people had never experienced a world war. The optimism and naïveté are charming, but the terror people felt when confronted with such rapid change is equally intriguing. Empires were ending and a new order, dominated by technology, was beginning to rise. Those in power clung to it with murderous jealousy while one social revolution led to another. In that manner it was no different from any other time, except that the pace and scale had massively increased.

I just crossed the approximate halfway frontier in Crass Casualty, Book II in this series. I can identify that milestone based on the size of Book I, Dicing Time for Gladness , which was 266 printed pages. Today I took Crass Casualty from 132 pages to 135 pages, so unless the second book ends up being substantially longer than the first, I'm probably somewhere around that midpoint. I think the ratio of general-to-specific research has not changed noticeably from the beginning of this project. Maybe I will become more focused on the details as my deadline looms, but then again there are all those 80s music videos.