A.R. Knight's Blog, page 14

Divided Time

I think most authors – most artists – would tell you that, at any given time, they have one core project that they’re working on. As you get further along, however, the designation of a “main project” gets a little blurred. For example, here are the main things that I’m doing right now:

Writing the Next Book – currently, I’m adding words every day to a new book in the Wild Nines universe, mostly because it’s a story idea that came into mind and it’s one I want to tell. However, unlike the previous works I’ve done (and starting with Rakers), I’m not planning on doing the whole series out of the gate. Meaning one after another. Like drinking shots one after another, writing numerous novels in the same universe can get, well, nauseating isn’t the right word but, like the shots, it loses the edge. With both the first Wild Nines and Riven, I found I became so familiar with the universes that they lost some of their potential to surprise. So I’m trying to bounce around a little more. This novel is a chance to experiment – to “go home” to a place I’ve been before and see how it’s changed and what new stories there are to explore.
Formatting and Covers – Rakers is sitting right in this stage. The text is pretty much done. Now it’s the little things – like adding in an author’s note, doing the formatting, deciding on the cover. It’s in the final stages before jumping out into the world, but there are a lot of little things that have to be done before a book can go from that shiny word doc on your computer to something buyable on Amazon. I spend some time working on this every day after getting the writing done on the next novel – I find that tackling more business-centric things is easier in the afternoons and evenings when working up the energy to spit out new chapters can be difficult. This exhaustion, of course, is an individual thing and, in periods of crisis, can be dealt with through suitable application of espresso.
Managing various storefronts, promotions, etc. – And here’s the truly deceptive part about being an author. There are always tasks to be done in this area. Always. Whether it’s updating links on your author website or your online store, entering “about the author” details on various fronts, or making sure you’ve applied for various promotional opportunities… this is the endless timesink. I’ve found some success simply by taking two or three things that should be done in this bucket every day. More if I’m feeling particularly adventurous. With every published title, this becomes a bigger and bigger task (though commensurately more exciting!). It’s sometimes strange to think that by doing work (writing), you create more work for yourself (publishing and promotion) whereas in most normal jobs completing a task doesn’t, nesting doll-style, cause ten more to appear.

I could jot down more things here – like researching and plotting new books, listening to podcasts and reading publishing articles to stay up with what’s going on in the industry, or eating food (a mainstay of every day for me). Point being, it’s a rare and unproductive day if all I do is squeeze out more words. Sometimes, that thought gets a little depressing, because who doesn’t want to live in the romantic ideal of the scribbler by the sea, spending days listening to the waves and surfing their imagination, only to hand off a completed manuscript to an ecstatic publisher?

Then again, we don’t have to write it all by hand. So there’s that.

Editing Someone Else’s Work Will Help Your Own

Everyone who writes, and I’m talking emails and texts and whatnot here, edits their own work to varying degrees. You might gloss over for typos before you hit send (or have your program do it for you). You might be so careful as to read it aloud or save it as a draft and come back later with fresh eyes (I’d recommend both for anything really important that isn’t needed immediately).

But how many of us actually take the time to edit someone else’s work?

I did this in my prior job on occasion – reviewed emails and documents before they made their way to the clients. And I’d say that it helped somewhat. Trains the eye to look for strange things. Missed phrases or chopped sentences. The odd line break where one doesn’t belong.

Editing someone else’s fiction, though, is an entirely different beast. Here you’re not so concerned with corporate language. Here, you’re looking to see if things like tone, conflict, character motivation and setting are addressed (in addition to all those typos and grammatical checks). You might think that the task would be annoying (and at times, sure), but what I’ve found is that you’ll get plenty of benefit for your own writing as well as helping out a friend (or client).

You’ll get to immerse yourself in a different tone and see how it’s constructed. When you read a novel for pleasure, odds are you’re trying to get swept up into the story. The only time you pay strict attention to sentence construction is when it pulls you out of the narrative (usually for the negative). When you edit the same work, however, you deliberately look for how the author is putting sentences together. Why do they choose these words, that cadence. As the pages roll by, you’ll understand how they go about building the vibe of their writing. If it’s different from your own, then by the end of the book, you just might find you have a new tool to employ. A new style should you choose to use it. Or, if nothing else, an appreciation for another way stories can be told.
You’ll see your own faults in other’s words. Every writer has ticks. The kind of fallback words or strategies they turn to time and again. Readers may recognize them, and some may like them. Editors, as I do when I edit my own work, will come to learn a writer’s quirks awful quick. When you edit someone else’s story, you’ll see their crutches, their turns of phrase or punctuation tricks. You’ll find some that annoy you, some that need excising, and some that make you smile. But you’ll notice, and the next time you go back to your own writing, you’ll find yourself paying closer attention to your habits. Maybe even change a few, for better or for worse.
You’ll learn about a different type of target reader. If you, like me, write science fiction, odds are you have some ideas about who’s reading those books. The sort of things the readers like. Their hobbies and so on. Editing another’s work, especially if it’s in a different genre, can be a mind-bending experience. Editing a romance, for example, can introduce you to a whole new suite of expectations. Of characters and decisions and conflicts that simply wouldn’t enter the discussion for your next galaxy-spanning space romp. You can then take the knowledge that you’ve learned from the editing, the tropes and the twists and the turns and slid some of them into your own work. Add a bit of unexpected spice, and maybe bring in a few curious souls from the other genre.
You’ll remind yourself what it takes to get from here to there. It bears repeating that many of the books we pick up and read are the products of rewrites, of edits and drafts and so on. If you’re a writer, it’s easy to compare yourself to those polished manuscripts, and it’s often disheartening. When you open the door to look at a work in its early stages, it’s often a reminder that no work starts off perfect. The piece you’re editing is just like a work of your own – it needs to grow into the final product that’s going to make it into stores. Seeing another writer go through the same struggles that you deal with is empowering, helps bond you to one another. And maybe you’ll take it a little easier on yourself when the next scene you write doesn’t quite cut it.

Overall, editing someone else’s work can be a wonderful, growing experience for you and the person whose work you’re editing. As with anything, though, you need to decide what type of writing you’re willing to look at, and how much time you’re willing to spend. I was doing this as a favor, and so was doing a more general copy edit and thought I’d jot down what I got out of it, which, as it turns out, was quite a bit.

Now, as ever, back to telling more stories.

The Burning Bleachers: Guy goes to a Georgia Tech Game

The tentative cheer floating through the streets of downtown Atlanta on this September Saturday morning belies the sure knowledge of sun-baked hours yet to come. Downtown, which we’re walking through bearing, among other things, a cookie cake and two flasks of bourbon, has the sparking live of an urban center whose buildings are not so dominated by weekday business as to crush the life from weekend warriors.

The Starbucks, in particular, has a motley crew at ten A.M. You’ve got the writers, hiding their souls beneath their headphones and venturing into the screens of their Macbooks. The jabbers rocking phones, chatting and texting and tweeting and slurping their way through pumpkin spice lattes that feel out of place in a southern city still weeks away from a proper Fall. We grab waters, iced coffees. A hedge against the coming heat that will be both vital and entirely overmatched.

It’s a 30-40 minute walk from our rented condo to the Georgia Tech campus, depending on how willing we are to jaywalk. Which, it turns out, we’re quite willing. Bursts of adrenaline come in racing across the four lane avenues, traffic not quite snarling at this hour, which only makes the crossings more nerving, as if the other, missing, cars act as witnesses. Keep each other from indulging in the impulse to rundown the sandaled guy lugging a pack of Coors Light.

Parks burst out of nowhere on the walk. Statues and proclamations giving notice to history that we largely ignore in specific but admire in general. Things happened here. We don’t quite know what they are, but they were important. Runners catch the last hour of good temps, before taking feet to the sidewalks becomes an act of foolhardy recklessness. A fire hydrant in the middle of the sidewalk stages a surprise attack, but our man recovers, sans dignity, and we press on.

The hosts, Georgia Tech alum, drop tidbits about the city and, as the campus comes into play, various buildings. Tour guides awash in their own memories and casting particular moments out loud for the rest of us to parse. Filling in the blanks of someone else’s life. But the tone’s pleasant enough, so it’s an enjoyable exercise. Transposing my own college memories into another place, another major, another color scheme.

The stadium, which we pass by en route to a tailgate, is crowded, controlled chaos. People pound together metal fences; building cages to funnel the thousands that will be approaching in the next few hours. Busses clog closed streets. Officers yell at people, at us, to get out of the way of moving traffic but there’s nowhere else to go and everybody knows it. Everybody accepts things will be slow-going, and they do it with a smile. Why not? It’s game day, and nobody’s yet a loser. Might as well have fun with it.

Nowhere is this attitude more relevant than in the assortment of stands selling every flavor of merchandise. The Georgia Tech mascot, a cool bee named Buzz with well-toned arms, is everywhere, and loved by everybody. Someone has inflated a twenty foot-tall balloon of the bee. Next to the century-old brick buildings, the dichotomy feels oddly natural. Two things that shouldn’t mix, but when they do this time, come together beautifully. We find our tailgate near a drained fountain as the Georgia Tech marching band and an assortment of cheerleaders start to gather for a pregame pump-up session.

The tailgate is as tailgates are: a buffet of various sausages, beers, and breads. The cookie cake is devoured before the heat can turn it into sludge. The only vegetable on hand in salsa. Our hosts have, mercifully, found a spot in the shade – an oasis that becomes only more important as the clock ticks on. Eventually the band signs off and breaks into a run, as though evacuating a crisis only they can see. An invisible swarm of bees, perhaps. They scatter, and we take it as the sign to clean up. To join in the wandering crowds heading back towards the stadium.

We sneak the flasks in, seeing as the primary search method these days consists of a somewhat mystical sweeping of a plastic wand around one’s body. As bourbon is neither a gun nor a knife, it’s not detected and we quickly procure Cokes with which to blend the stuff. This, I’m told by more experienced Southerners, is the best way to beat the heat. Namely, numb your senses so that it doesn’t matter anymore.

The logic behind this strategy makes itself apparent in blasting fashion minutes later. Metal bleachers in 12:30 PM heat in the Georgia sun. It’s a spotted blue day, with clouds destined to provide popcorn bursts of shade that come too slow and leave too fast. The football churns below, men bashing into each other as the run-heavy offenses grind back and forth. It’s entertaining, moreso because we’ve found ourselves in the midst of a group rooting for the opposition. A group that gets at first testy and then mired in a sort of depressed malaise as the game fails to go their way. Every first down becomes a cheer as the grander cause’s grim outlook brings minor achievements into greater focus.

The alumni, my friends among them, consistently belt out cheers and songs in complete synchrony with each other. It’s a ritual beholden to one’s alma mater, and a privilege. Still, I’m impressed at the sheer number of verses and different, yet entirely aligned, songs produced. Effort has clearly been made to grow a rich culture of fight songs, chants, and other such things at Georgia Tech. At first, the loud roars of my fellows annoy our opposing group in the stands around us. As the diverse cries continue, though, the annoyance turns into grudging respect. Much like the team down on the field, my friends have earned, through such perfect play, the respect of their foes.

And it’s all a damn good time. We might be melting, but the joy of sports is more than able to overcome the heat. For a few hours, we’re all in harmony with each other and the throwing of a ball below us. Everyone is cheering or booing at once and all together. Flasks are emptied. Hand shakes and high fives make the rounds as introductions between people whose only thing in common, at that moment, is the moment.

When it ends, we’re drenched in sweat. Blasted by the sun and happy. We ditch our collectible cups to a series of immaculately dressed freshmen, apparently tasked with securing the things by their upper-class overlords. The blazers and ties look out of place there, surrounded by older fans in all manner of t-shirts and shorts. Baseball caps and sandals.

Georgia Tech won. Convincingly. The glory, though, faded as we wandered from the stadium. The magic of those hours fell away, leaving us with the rest of the day, and a tireless sun driving us towards the darker corners of Atlanta. Where, on the TVs, a whole range of other games and their own moments were set to begin.

The Book and the Miniseries – A story for multiple media

There’s news floating around that Watchmen, the graphic novel, is being developed by HBO into a TV series. Some of you might remember the earlier movie version, which did a solid job of replicating key scenes from the graphic novel without really bringing the meaning along with the conversion. It’s unclear whether a TV series, with its longer running time and greater ability to explore side stories and character development, will do a better job. Although I can’t say I’m disappointing about spending more time watching Dr. Manhattan construct giant, empty palaces on Mars because he’s bored.

As the linked article references, the creators of the graphic novel, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, worked to make the content uniquely fit the graphic novel format. Translating Watchmen to film or straight text shouldn’t be easy, because the people who created it didn’t plan for that to happen. Didn’t expect it to. Didn’t want it to.

You might notice the picture on this piece is John Adams, a former president and generally well-known founding father. He is not, so far as we are aware, a superhero of the supernatural variety. He could not fly, and did not fight crime – at least, not in the fist-punching sense. However, the biography did get adapted, like Watchmen (and plenty of other material) into a miniseries. Now, you may think that you can’t “write” a biography in a way that allows it to be adapted to film, but really, you can try. You can make it easier for those directors, actors, or producers looking for something compelling to read your words and form the scene in their heads.

John Adams is written visually – David McCullough does his best to relay Adams’ life as Adams saw it, as Adams lived it. We’re treated to frozen depictions of a ride to Philidelphia in the winter of 1776, the stormy seas on a boat crossing to France, the tense relationships with various titans of the age. There is rarely a section that, if you thought about it, could not work as a movie scene. The audience can track who is doing what and why. People have motivations that make sense, and causes we can champion. There are no stories-within-the-story like in Watchmen (whose comic within the comic was left entirely out of the movie version). There aren’t massive monstrosities that would be difficult to film, or references that most of the potential audience for a movie would miss.

As such, transitioning from the book to the miniseries with John Adams isn’t a challenging endeavor. You can recognize scenes from the book in the show or put Paul Giamatti’s narration over every letter printed in the biography. They work in concert, and neither is diminished in comparison with the other.

When it comes to writing like this, there’s a bit of a conscious decision to be made. You have to decide, as the writer, whether or not you want to make your work easy to adapt (either by yourself or someone else) into a different medium. TV and Film being the most immediately obvious. For me, Wild Nines could conceivably work as a space-action film. There’s not a lot in any of those books that couldn’t fit its way in front of lens, especially with modern special effects. Riven, on the other hand, would be more difficult. The setting is strange, and many of the story details would be difficult to communicate solely in a visual medium. Not impossible, just hard. I look at the recent difficulties faced by the Dark Tower adaptation as an example of what happens when a complicated narrative property loses what makes it compelling in the transference to film.

That all being said, what I’m taking away from this is not that novels and stories should be written with the movie in mind, but rather to consider the visual element of scenes. What does the reader see, and how do they interact with the scene you’re presenting?

And if you can communicate that idea clearly, then who knows, maybe a director can too, and one day Hollywood might give you a call.

The Rakers: An Excerpt

Below this magical line is a brief excerpt from The Rakers (working title) – which is currently in editing and such. Hope you enjoy!

The doorman and the hostess were innocent. As were the diners in the small front room of the restaurant, a splashy place with old-style lights, cream-colored walls dotted with art for sale, and a menu printed daily. Fade only knew the last because they gave him one when he sat down at the bar. The drinks were on the back, and the date made itself known in thick block letters on the top. Beneath it prices, approaching a catastrophic level, laid out in bold. So Fade called for a shot of cheap vodka, left a five on the counter, and went into the private room to ruin the evening for everyone.

Four gentlemen, as Fade called anyone in a suit, hunched over dinners around a square oak table. Fade noticed they’d scattered crumbs across the table’s shimmering finish. Drops of red wine from careless pours speckled the surface.

Sloppy.

The four turned to regard him together, their mouths in various states of chewing. Fade centered his own stare on one in the back corner, in clear need of dental work to repair some front teeth fleeing from his gums. Their eyes tracked to Fade’s, and he watched as their expressions transformed from curiosity to confusion to fear.

Those wide, shocked whites told Fade it was time to start.

“Evening, gentlemen,” Fade said, shutting the door behind him. “Seems you’ve found yourselves on the wrong end of someone else’s money.”

“The hell are you?” slurred the guy closest to him. The sliding of syllables matched the empty bottle on the table, a second one half gone. The other three waited to see what answer their champion would get.

Fade leaned in, slid the brass knuckles around his palm and over his fingers, and socked the guy. Knocked him and his chair over. The man’s legs flew up as he flew down, hit the table and toppled his glass, half-filled with wine, over the edge and onto that nice suit and his white shirt. Of the three others at the table, one, the farthest with the odd teeth, managed to take another nervous chew before it all fell apart.

The suit to Fade’s right pushed back from the table, his left hand reaching inside his jacket for what Fade presumed was a gun. Not what this fight needed. Fade grabbed the fallen man’s plate and whipped it across the table. It struck gun guy’s forehead and shattered. Fade caught the man’s fading eyes just long enough to confirm consciousness had left the scene before he turned to the last two. Unlike their courageous, plate-crushed comrade, these two understood. They held up their hands. Waited for the demands.

“Appreciate it, fellas,” Fade said, stepping over wine guy. “Unfortunately, I’m not being paid to take you hostage. Or to rob you.”

The third man lowered his hands slightly, confused. That lasted till Fade delivered another knuckle strike, sending the man to kiss the floor like his pal. No spilled wine this time, though.

“What do you want?” The last guy, whose teeth seemed destined to haunt Fade’s nightmares, said.

“Not me you should be asking,” Fade paused. Reached in his pocket and pulled out a small card. “The person who wanted this done? You can talk to him. His name’s Ellsworth. He told me to tell you.”

To his credit, upon hearing Ellsworth’s name, the toothy man put down his arms, nodded at Fade. “Go ahead.”

Except when Fade pulled his arm back to toss another strike, the toothy guy grabbed his steak knife and jabbed it at Fade’s chest. Would’ve worked, if toothy guy had ever stabbed a man before. If he knew how to use a knife to cut something other than New York strips. The fatal flaw? Hesitation. Fear of the unknown. Made the toothy man’s attack go a bit too slow, and gave Fade plenty of time to catch the man’s wrist with his left hand. Slammed the knife back down on the table, and delivered the knuckle strike anyway.

Four targets, four down.

Fade spent the next minute rifling their pockets. Digging through wallets. Taking cash. A couple of gift cards. Their phones were nice; they’d sell. And when he was done, Fade reached into his own wallet and pulled out a small series of business cards. All with the same number printed on them. A number that went to a voicemail with nothing but a tone.

He liked to think of these as auditions for future clients.

Checked his watch, a plastic number that nonetheless held up under repeated violent assault. Five minutes since he’d gone through the door. Which meant Fade was overdue for an exit. He made his, striding out of the room. Gave the hostess a smile and a wave on the way out. Tossed a dollar to the doorman.

They seemed nice.

After It Happens – Returning to normal after a big event

Recently, I had a wedding. Against, perhaps, all odds, I was the groom. Dances and drinks were had. Merry times and all that. Nobody died, and I woke up the next morning with a wife. All in all, quite awesome.

However, over the last two weeks, I’ve been doing the sort of thing that usually comes up in the wake of tragedies: adjusting to life after a major event. While certainly not sad, a wedding and the preparation for one often (unless you take the far easier step of courthousing it) dominates months of time ahead of the event. For my wife and I, it meant days built around vendor contacts, putting together seating charts, wedding website updates, and more. We’ve still got the thank you cards to put together.

These sorts of things hit my schedule like a hammer – knocking away routines and filling even non-wedding acts with stress about all the wedding-related things yet to come. While I wouldn’t say the experience was true misery, it was definitely an adjustment. An acknowledgment that other life goals would need to be set to secondary status.

Now, that’s not the case. I’m free to focus again on things like writing. This blog. Other things. There’s always stressors, but they’re not destabilizing, they’re normal (take out the trash, play with the cats, put off mowing the lawn as long as possible).

You would think this should make me more productive. It hasn’t – not right away, at least. Partly this is due to the well-known idea of deadlines and pressure – namely that we work harder when we feel our time to complete a task is limited. If I feel I can take all day to do something, I very well might. Or at least, it’s going to be harder to get started because I won’t have that burning urge to go (especially if I’m not supremely enthused by the task – like updating vendor listings for my books).

I’ve also had to re-orient priorities. Return to focusing on my writing and publishing as a business. Before, with the wedding coming up, it was easy to cast aside the more analytical or commercial aspects of the career and focus on the words because, well, when you only have small amounts of time you do what’s most important (and what’s most likely to keep you sane).

The sudden freeing of mental anxiety, though, is a good chance to take that look at current endeavors. To explore what’s really important in the work I’m doing, and to revisit what my goals are (personal and professional). In times of pressure, its easier to buckle down and proceed in the direction already chosen. When that pressure lets up, we can take stock of where we are and change course.

As it is, I’m trying a few new things with the added time I now have. Some of them, even, are about fun, a word often missing from evenings spent updating spreadsheets and such. One such experiment, leveraging a version of the Pomodoro method (divvying up the day into tiny chunks with discrete objectives for each chunk), is so far been a success – I’m finding it easier to keep writing if I switch subjects every 30 minutes or so, or take a break to do house work or (gasp) accounting.

Ultimately, of course, we’re still adjusting. Part of the fun, though, of getting back into habits is adjusting those same old routines. When your days are forced into necessities, you learn what you really do and don’t miss. Then, when the constraints are relaxed, you can try filling those moments with something new and see if it’s more satisfying than the way things were.

And if it’s not, you can always go back.

What’s next: Rakers – a sci fi thriller of sorts

See that up there? Rakers? That’s a title. A title I’ve changed three times now since I started writing the book. I’ve talked before about how titles can change all the time, but man, it’s been work with this one. Mostly in response to the number of other books that shared my original titles.

Think of changing a title like changing a shirt – you don’t have to change the rest of your outfit to match, but the people who pay attention to such things will notice. And, because “things” in this case are plot and setting, yeah, I’ve had to go back and tinker with those as well.

Anyway, so what’s Rakers about?

In short, it’s about a person who becomes the target of a mysterious pair that seem not quite from this world.

That person, Fade, happens to be an ex-special forces member who now takes on dubious contracts as a way to pay the mortgage, and stuff his daughter’s college fund. Not exactly what you’d call a prime target for much of anyone, but when a kidnapping goes sideways, Fade’s tenuous life gets torn apart.

There’s plenty of action, but what I’m trying to do with Rakers is build a cast of characters that can go on adventures, yes, but can also grow with the story. They’re not “moment-in-time” snapshots – action heroes who stay their same, cocky and invulnerable selves indefinitely. Not that there’s a problem with those characters, it’s just not the point of this one. Rakers is more about how Fade and the others react when their view of reality is thrown askew, and how they adjust (or don’t) to their new world.

One of the things that I’m excited about exploring in this setting is a direct family relationship – in my other series, there are relatives, but they’re distant (Viola and her father) or put in such drastic settings (the Riven series) that it’s difficult to have normal interactions. In Rakers, for the first time, the actual dynamic between a parent and their child forms a big part of the story, and it’s been a lot of fun to write.

Also, most of Rakers is set in present-day, which is new territory for me. Such a setting presents comforts – I know how everything works, more or less – but also provides challenges. Police, and what would actually happen if a firefight occurred in a suburban street, for example? Cell phones and the impacts they bring on keeping characters in constant contact with one another (makes suspense harder, certainly).

One thing in particular – injuries to characters. In science fiction and fantasy settings, it’s relatively easy to come up with ways to instantly heal people. Or at least make the physical consequences of conflict seem unimportant. However, as most of us know from one thing or another, a broken bone, concussion, or other wound often takes weeks or months to recover from. The characters in Rakers, therefore, are more cautious. More nervous and afraid of getting shot or tangling with difficult odds because, well, the results could be catastrophic.

So is Rakers something new? Absolutely. Are there familiar elements from my other stories? Most definitely. The pages will turn, as they generally do, but the characters and setting are new. It’s a fun romp, and the start of a new series that may go longer than a trilogy. I’m excited to play in a new universe, and I hope you’ll enjoy it.

Betrayal at House on the Hill: A story every turn

The best board games tell stories. Victories and defeats occur in dramatic fashion. It wasn’t simply a roll of the dice that decided the fates of the players, it was the cunning move to trade this resource for that. To turn two other players against each other. To corner a section of the board and hold it against all comers in a valiant stand.

Or, in the case of Betrayal, to unleash a horde of hellbats and murder your hapless former friends as they flee into the dark crannies of a haunted house.

When we have a number of people over, Betrayal often gets more than a cursory mention because of its story-telling ability. The minute-to-minute gameplay is often slow and, without sufficient enthusiasm for the atmosphere, the group can find themselves wishing for the game to end not long after it’s started.

A potential turn: A player moves the jock character into an unexplored part of the house. Flips over a tile. Announces that it’s the kitchen and, say, draws an event. He reads out that there’s a ghostly gravedigger whose coming at him with a shovel, and then he rolls a dice to see if the gravedigger happens to hurt him. Everyone else sips their drinks, checks their phones. Plays with the cats.

But with the right group, Betrayal can become a hauntingly fun experience.

Let’s take our potential turn and goose it up with a bit of the adventure that can make this game so much more than just flipping tiles and rolling dice:

Flash, the track star, goes exploring because he hasn’t found anything useful yet, and when all Hell breaks loose (and it will), he’s gotta have something better than his fists to fight with. Turns out, through door number one, is the kitchen. Not, perhaps, a fantastic source of weaponry, but hey, there’s an event. Flash takes the top card and reads slowly, in the best voice he’s got for a jock scared beyond all reason. A gravedigger, menacing and rotten, crawls out of the floor. Stares at Flash with dead eyes. Flash is frozen to the spot with terror, the disgusting remnants of meals long since served decaying in the kitchen around him. Without warning, the gravedigger charges towards Flash. The jock resolves to stand his ground. Does he, or does Flash Thompson, king of the school, run in terror?

This could be every turn in Betrayal – one short story after another. That’s without getting into the eventual traitor element where, based on what parts of the house you’ve explored and what trinkets you’ve found, a different scenario will occur. You’ll never play the same game twice.

Sometimes I want something faster. Sometimes I want a different theme. But when I have a group that wants stories, that wants to find themselves late at night in an adventure they may not escape alive, I haven’t found a better choice.

Adding the Magic

Sometimes, when I’m writing something and getting close to the end, I’ll hit a sense of malaise. A dissatisfaction with the story that, until mere moments ago, seemed fun and energetic. A real romp from beginning to end.

Now, though, it’s dead. A floundering thing that has lost its spark.

In the past, I’d hit this moment earlier. Page ten – after the initial surge of creativity melts into the sludge of one-word-after-another. Or even the third paragraph, when a short story suddenly reveals that it’s going to be far too long for the required length, or far too straightforward.

With experience and better outlines, I’ve been keeping the inspiration going longer. I have more confidence in the ability to work through tough scenes, to inject personality and conflict into small moments necessary to keep the story going forward. As such, by the time I run out of gas, I’m now 40,000 words in rather than 500.

This, of course, presents a problem. If a story idea doesn’t pan out, you don’t want to have invested weeks or months of work to find that out. If you’re doing this for a living, you simply may not have the option of sacrificing that time and declaring the story a failed experiment.

Which leaves you (me) with two choices:

Grind out the story anyway and finish it. This may not be the most enjoyable thing, but you may pick up the threads you lost. Fall back in love with a character you were bored of. You might find working on another project for a few days or a week to be a good way to come back to this – step away from the story so that it feels fresh. Perhaps most important is that you’ll end up with a completed work, which can either be published or, if you really feel it’s not good enough, set aside for later polish.
Go troubleshooting. Find the boring parts, and by these I mean the parts that are boring to you, and obliterate them. Tear them apart. Examine them for problems if you want, but I’ve increasingly found it better to just rip out the scenes and start again. And add magic.

What does that mean – to “add magic”? I’m not talking about wizards here, though those are certainly fine if you prefer. Rather I’m talking about spicing the words. Taking what might otherwise be a dull or by-the-numbers affair and turning it into something truly memorable.

Take, for example, a scene from Michael Chabon’s Wonder Boys. We’re introduced to the protagonist’s quirky father and brother in-law at their farmhouse. In a shed in the back, to be precise. The discussion that occurs is interesting enough, though mostly serves to illustrate the interactions between the three people, but the fact that they have it around the cage of a giant boa constrictor makes it memorable. We’re paying attention to the dialogue, in part, because we’ve just been told there’s a ridiculous snake nearby. A snake that, Chabon notes, has a habit of escaping.

Is the snake a crucial plot element? No. Does the boa constrictor have a major part to play in the scene? Nope.

But its presence makes Chabon’s world a little more surreal. A little more fun to be in.

So when I’m going back to find where I lost myself, I find those dead scenes and try to add that spice. Tear out the dull settings and inject some fun. Some strange. Some weird.

Some magic.

A Monster Calls – How to have children handle adult issues without losing childhood

There’s a perception, particularly with books like Harry Potter or Pixar films, that they effectively treat their young characters the same as adults. In other words, the children aren’t shielded from complicated and difficult problems just because they’re not eighteen years or older. This, of course, is a closer mirror to reality, in which random circumstance doesn’t particularly care what age you are. Of course, the risk you run when you put children in adult situations is that it’s too easy to have them react not as a child would, but instead as an adult. A person with plenty of coping mechanisms, with decades of experience and, for better or for worse, a world-view.

A Monster’s Call is a movie (based on a novel) that attempts to cover this treacherous territory with a young boy – I didn’t get the age, but 12-14 years old? – whose dealing with his mother’s illness. The story, and the reason for the monster’s existence, revolve around the boy eventually coming to terms with that situation, among others, through a child’s methods. Namely, imagination. Connor doesn’t have experience with this. He doesn’t have solutions, and he doesn’t have the sort of vices that adults might use to cope with things beyond their control (drugs, alcohol, spur-of-the-moment month-long trips to island jungles to ‘reflect’).

The neat twist in this story is that the monster doesn’t indulge Connor. There is no escape here. The monster has no interest in helping Connor run from his problems, but rather attempts to help the boy find, if not answers, then at least an understanding of the situation. By the end, we don’t receive a magical fairy tale. We don’t get problems wrapped up in a box and presented with a bow. Connor hasn’t turned into a model human. What he has learned, however, is to live in his life rather than run from it.

It would be easy for the lessons here to come across heavy-handed. No, Connor, you can’t run. Be a man and deal with your issues. Fight the bullies. Stop whining. The sort of stuff we’ve seen plenty of times before and that would seem to rely on a character transformation un-earned by the kid we see at the start of such a story. A Monster Calls doesn’t presume to argue that Connor has some mighty valor hidden deep inside. He’s not a super hero at the beginning, and he’s not at the end. Not every change he makes is positive.

Now, what I’m taking from this as a writer is twofold:

Child characters can handle adult scenarios, yes, but they should do so in a way that is in their worldview. They shouldn’t be mature, they shouldn’t be reasonable (for the most part), and they should respond with the naivety that makes childhood such an appealing topic in the first place. Whether that’s through imaginary friends, constant questioning of situations adults would take as normal, or other options, a child sees the world through a different lens as an adult, and the story should use that perspective.
Don’t be afraid of putting your childhood characters in tough emotional situations. See how they handle it, and explore those opportunities. The way an 8 year-old handles the loss (or gain) of someone meaningful is going to be very different from a 45 year-old, or a teenager. As these situations occur, don’t run towards the easiest possible explanation. We’ve seen countless stories of kids lashing out when in strange scenarios – all too few really get in that child’s head to ask why, to attempt to discover just what is tales are being told in their minds to deal with the world they’re living in.

Of course, I’d recommend watching the movie as well, though you may want to have some tissues handy. A Monster Calls is streaming now on HBO.

And if you need another reason – Liam Neeson voices a giant tree creature who says more than “I am Groot”. It’s excellent.