Ken Hughes's Blog, page 5

Darth Vader Missed It and Dracula Never Tried – Character Plot Twists that Matter

What single choice could make a story? Sure, we writers have dozens of strengths we might weave into a tale, but could there be one clear decision that pushes it to a whole other level?

It’s been on my mind lately, now that The High Road is out and I’m looking at a mix of blank screens and early drafts for Freefall and Ground Zero. What would the keystone, the first step, the heart of a story that I know would work look like?

I’ve got plenty to start with. The first book left Mark starting to master his flying magic, while Angie is… in case you haven’t read it yet, let’s leave her status up in the air (there’s always a flying pun available somewhere). He’s gotten to know a bit about his enemy, and he has old and new allies and a plan for the future.

Lots of next steps for them. So many ways to chase their enemy, from tracking his history to digging deeper in their own magic to forcing him to fight on their terms. So many ways he can push back. I could dive into them all and not come out for a dozen books…

Then I worry about Dracula.

Straight-up Adventure (plot twists as action)

We all know the original story… if you haven’t read it, look up the plotline and see how much of it you know anyway from what’s passed into clichés ages ago: The hero walks into a castle not knowing it holds a vampire (“Enter freely and of your own will,”) and barely escapes with his life. The Count comes to London and begins stalking pretty girls for blood and pleasure. Van Helsing leads our heroes to chase him down.

And, it drew all that from (or created) the basic steps of what a vampire wants, what he can do, and what he gives a hero to track him and fight him. The twists of the plot are mostly what new clue or weapon or new target for the monster’s evil are revealed, and which moves will fail at what cost. (Poor Lucy, playing the original “bit” part.)

It’s still a fine book, to this day, from its sheer energy and how inventive it is with its concepts. (Turn a vampire’s influence on a girl against him, with hypnosis? Cool.)

But… it’s basic. The cast mostly go from semi-fearless vampire survivors to fearless vampire hunters, except for the designated victims. All its twists still fall into the same steady push forward.

When people talk about “plot-centered” rather than “character-centered” stories, this is what it comes down to. The characters might still be at the center, but nothing about them breaks them out of what the plot forces them to become—and that means, half of what it says to our own vicarious fun is “If I were there, I could fit in that mold too.” Not so many options, variations, or revelations there.

Lord of the Rings has some of the same focus. A hobbit and a ranger may not see the quest the same way, but they all follow the same plan; half the books’ surprises come down to who yields to the ring’s influence and which way Gollum will jump.

“Old-fashioned” simple heroism? Not quite: King Arthur’s tale is many centuries older, and Lancelot and Guinevere actually act on that “forbidden love” and bring the kingdom down. Or these days, Harry Dresden’s torn between so many overwhelming forces you wonder if any side he allies with will let him protect the innocents around him. And anyone in Game Of Thrones is struggling so hard to survive that there are no sides that last (let alone innocents).

Plot Twists – Behind the Mask?

What makes the difference? What does one kind of story make do without, and others sink their roots into?

It might be Star Wars that has the answer, just from comparing the first two movies. The original New Hope played a grand simple storyline better than anyone ever had… and then Empire let Vader blow it all up with four words.

(Or, it would have blown it up except the movies only gave us the buildup to that one shock, and then Luke simply recovered and decided he could save Vader. On the other hand, that “simple” first movie gets its real high point not from Luke finding the power to make that shot but from Han riding to the rescue first. It’s a basic but clear thrill from seeing who stands where, and why.)

Call it the power of rooting the plot twist in the people. Dracula finds different directions to throw the same threat at us, but there’s nothing in its heroes to make us wonder how they’ll respond; Star Wars gives us a limited amount of the same. They’ve both got brilliant buildup with Dracula floating about and Yoda warning Luke what he’s not ready to face, but the hunters only fight harder and Luke flinches for a few scenes before he begins re-twisting the plot back into line. Compare that to Lancelot and Guinevere following through with their failings, or Dresden selling only a bit of his soul but having to do it again and again each book, and the Game of Thrones parade of all-too-real changes…

By these lights, there are three chances to build a harder-hitting tale:

Set up the twists. Use everything from background to atmosphere to misdirection to fill the characters and the reader with a driving need to survive the threat, destroy their enemy, complete their quest… and then spring how the key to that is nothing like what they thought. The simpler tales live and die on a few surprises and a smooth path along the way; Dracula mostly plays with how to fight and what other lives are in danger.

That might be enough. It might not.

A simple vampire-chase story could use a #plot stake *from* the heart. #writetip
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More: twist a character against himself. The deeper changes build on how a character honestly could choose something above the same struggle he’s been on. (And, how we readers don’t have to be in a swordfight to feel the same two pulls.) Lancelot convinces his fans that true love might be worth risking loyalty and everything he’s built. Game of Thrones does some of the same with every new chapter, and usually tears that apart too the next time around.

And:

If your #writing's dangers actually hit the hero as rarely as a Stormtrooper's blaster, you don't know what you're…
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Most: twist until something breaks. Every plot change is a chance to tease a reader with how much the heroes could lose, or win—or it can follow through and make real, lasting changes nobody can forget. Lancelot did it. The Dresden Files does it halfway since Harry wriggles out of so many compromises, but each one leads to so many more. And Star Wars blinked, since in the end Vader simply came around… but imagine how unsatisfying that scene would have been it hadn’t cost him his life instead.

(Then again, a bigger miss with Darth Vader might have been back in the “setup” category: The movies made him one of the most iconic evil figures of all time, with zero balancing hints that he could be redeemed except Luke’s faith, but they went there anyway. And that’s not counting the prequel movies, that couldn’t make us care what happened to that version of Anakin at all. In the next few years we’ll see how well “Episode VIII” and “IX” touch those bases…)

 

So, put the story on a course where the upcoming twists make the biggest difference. Have them make the deepest difference by using what honestly could turn a person away from their path. And sometimes, let them actually turn.

Intriguing….

 

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Action Stories, to Scale – Lessons from Netflix’s Daredevil

Devil may, devil may, devil may care

How many devils does Daredevil dare?

 

I’ve finally started watching the Netflix Daredevil series. For general storytelling fun, and especially for its action, it lives up to the hype.

(Or should that be “up to the hyper-senses?” I would have loved to compare Matt’s senses to Paul’s gift in my own Shadowed, but the show minimizes the fact that its hero has one actual superpower in the mix. But of course that Frank Miller-type grit means fists and courage are more than enough.)

 

Binge-sized Chapters

As a general storytelling lesson, Daredevil is a handy reminder of how many different lengths of tale and chapter a writer can build with.

A single comic book might take ten or fifteen minutes to read, though its storyline might take twice that if it were unpacked into a conventional short story. (All those thousand-word pictures do condense the experience.) Or a network TV adventure is forty-some minutes with your DVR, though it might actually be less than that to read. They’re all valid blocks at holding a fan’s interest and moving a story forward.

And they are about hooking us on the total story. Unlike a movie that sells itself as one complete arc, all those episodic forms are about settling the story enough now to satisfy us but bring us back in just a week or a month for the next installment. Which makes them subtly different from novel chapters, where the next step is always waiting on the next page, but the story’s so big it can explore more on the way and we probably don’t expect to finish it in one rush.

Like Daredevil. As a Netflix show, knowing the whole season is right there (and paid for) seems to give the creators a certain extra freedom to take their time. Every episode has its share of action, but otherwise the first takes the rest of its time making us comfortable with Matt and his law partner (and if you think a best friend named “Foggy” has to be stuck as comic relief, you’re only a little right) and what their first case opens up. More than network shows, more than cable, there’s a certain novel-like depth to each step along the way.

 

Fighting To Scale

When I was gearing up to start the show, my friend Ace Antonio Hall said it had some of the best fight scenes around. Since then, I’ve been thinking:

He didn’t say “action scenes,” let alone “effects,” he said fight scenes. And how many superhero or science-fiction stories are there where we still use that word? Where we don’t just enjoy the spectacle and (hopefully) the storytelling, we appreciate that those might be people squaring off?

I don’t mean that CGI kills visual action (hello, Lord of the Rings!), or that non-super battles are just better. True, it’s the low-powered fight choreography that’s been more likely to be completely right. But any kind of story just needs to get a handle on itself.

Scale matters. A great adventure defines just how tough its hero is at whatever he does, and brings that size of conflict to life to the point that we understand what’s daily suspense and what’s a step up for him. A hacker stealing a few files is not the same as trying to shut down a doomsday device that the whole world is watching. A human hero can’t wade through bullets with his only explanation that “I’m the hero.”

So I realize I’ve been waiting a long time to see a hero like Daredevil onscreen—especially in the thorough treatment a TV show allows. The first comics I really appreciated were Spider-Man and Daredevil, and I think it shows in my (super)world-view. From them I’ve built the sense that:

for Superman or the Avengers, walls are only there to punch through
for Spider-Man, walls are there to swing from to reach the door (then he rips that off its hinges)
for Daredevil, walls still have to lead to a regular door

In fact, I’m still in Season 1 of the show, where Matt doesn’t have any kind of grappling line yet, so he’s got nothing but plain parkour climbing and dropping to set up his battles. (Even Batman, the more famous “non-super super,” has enough gadgets to let him act like a true superhero whenever it’s cooler. For DD, no such luck.)

And it’s been a pleasure to see this kind of action. Matt Murdock in a fight is skilled and believable, but you can see he’s struggling with just one assassin; against two it really is all about knocking one away to deal with other fast. And unlike with Bats, taking on four or five crooks at a time doesn’t come off as something he’s eager for… though I wish those bigger showcase fights did work harder to spell out what a challenge it is for him to juggle that many threats. (Well, call it a nod to his comics history where he does it all the time; at least the show makes it look good.)

On the other hand, watch for the when moment the camera takes a slow pan around an alley from the inside of a car; who’s going to be lurking somewhere? is a body going to drop, and where? When something does trigger, it shows us this is a show where they know their options.

 

So… Know Your Foe

Call it a basic rule for writing action, or any other kind of opposition scene. We writers have to understand just how much the hero can do, and what the challenge can, and how many other complications still matter on that scale… and then use that.

If I take a hero’s enemy up to a new level, and the reader doesn’t know the difference, I’ve failed.

In a way it’s a counterpart to what I wrote about as the Tarzan Test. That idea is qualitative, and says the total story lives in the variety of its challenges, while this principle is about quantifying it. So it’s rarely good writing to fight a lion and then another lion, or to fight a lion with an elephant gun.

Or, we could think of it as simply matching the action and the size of the visual focus, whether it’s a film angle or a style of description. Campy swordfights use “Flynning” (Errol Flynn was a charismatic actor but no fencer), big sweeping movements just to fill the frame, but better action would know what small moves actually are faster and zoom in enough to let us appreciate them. –Or if the story were about Spidey swinging across the block or Superman zooming past a whole continent, pull the “camera” back and show us what that scale means.

Pick a size. Learn it, own it.

I’m glad Daredevil isn’t afraid to do just that.

 

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Character Interview with Angie Dennard (THE HIGH ROAD)

To celebrate the release of The High Road next week, here’s a character interview with its heroine. For its companion piece (also set around Chapter 4), see the Mark Petrie interview.

 

(Angie Dennard walks into the room and stops by the chair, but instead of sitting she leans against it and studies the author.)

Angie: What do you want to ask? How the gang came after my dad?

author: All of it. Including the flying belt.

Angie: So you know. (She shakes her head hard, tossing short red hair.) You know, and I never guessed!

author: Never?

Angie: Nothing like this! My family’s stories were about traveling, fighting, leading—they were brave people. But flying? And Dad never told me?

(Angie falls silent.)

author: Any guess why he didn’t?

Angie: I could try to, now. But he always fooled me. And yet Mark always thought he was hiding something, ever since we were kids together.

author: Kids? Let’s go back a bit. What can you tell me about yourself from before this started?

Angie: Not much to say, or I didn’t think so then. My mother left us; Dad was a police detective and then in security. I got out of school last year, and I’d just realized I really wanted to be a pilot when—(She stops, and smiles ruefully.) Yes, a pilot, and now we’ve got magic for flying. There must have been some hints about it in our history, and they stuck with me. And now the Blades are after us.

author: That’s it?

Angie: Pretty much. Nothing special, until now.

author: “Nothing special”? But all right, what about now? What will you do now that the Blades are after you?

Angie: Everything. Everything we can. We could use the belt against them, or just get out of town. We’re going to check with the police gang experts this afternoon. Someone has to have some answers.

author: You’re just… keeping your options open?

Angie: Of course. Right now we haven’t even talked to Dad about the belt. I know there’s no way to stand up to a whole street gang, but there’s always a way.

author: You just said there’s no way but there is a way.

Angie: I guess I did. I’m hoping there’s a change in some bit of it, so we have more to work with than some flying that Mark says he can barely control.

author: Mark says?

Angie: And it’s my family’s belt. But Mark was the one who stumbled into what it does. I haven’t even made it work—so far. (She smiles.)

author: And the Blades?

Angie: They’ve got a vendetta against Dad. He admitted it.

author: “Admitted”?

Angie: He shot up a summit between two gangs—he really did that, all because Mark and I almost walked into them. (She spins away and starts pacing around the room.) Was that thirty, forty dead bangers and cops and people just near them, and it’s partly my fault. But I tell myself he was the one who did it, and he hid it from me. After that I see why he didn’t tell me about the belt that let him get those shots. But what keeps eating me is, why are they after us now? That was years ago when we were kids. And it worked, nobody thought he did it because he was never close enough… except Mark was sure he would have if he had a way. But they left us in peace all that time—so how does it come out now?

author: If you had to guess…

Angie: I try not to. (She settles down in the chair.)

author: Oh?

Angie: Of course I’m made guesses. But I don’t know, and why think myself into a corner and miss what it really is? But… I can’t forget about the magic.

author: What about the magic?

Angie: It’s the biggest blank spot in all of this, isn’t it? Something about why my mother never told me, or her father being in the madhouse. There has to be more than that going on.

author: It sounds like you want there to be.

Angie: Alright, yes! I want there to be more than gangs and guns and my overprotective dad with a secret weapon so secret he won’t use it. But I’m hoping that’s all it is.

author: You want it to be bigger, but you hope it isn’t.

Angie: I have to. That’s one thing my mother did tell us last night: the last thing we want is attention. If the Blades knew about flying they’d hunt us forever, and so would everyone else who wanted a piece of it. What would we do then?

author: What would you do?

Angie: We don’t let it happen. We try not to use the belt until we know how it works. We don’t use it in daylight; we’ve been lucky there so far. We keep it under control, and I keep Dad and Mark safe.

author: So that’s what you want. To keep them safe.

Angie: Of course. The Blades almost killed Dad—and Mark and me too, when we got near it. Mark says Dad will keep putting himself in the line of fire every time I get near trouble, so I have to stay miles away from it. Or try to.

author: “Mark says”?

Angie: He puts it better than I do. We figured that out years ago: I always know what has to get done, and then he knows all the reasons why. And the times I’m wrong.

author: Wrong? Was this a time you were wrong?

Angie: I don’t know! He can give you all the reasons all we can do is not get killed. I keep thinking there has to be more to the magic—what else is out there? Why was it such a secret, even before Dad got it? It makes me take a whole other look at Mom leaving, and Dad working at the park her family had ties to. There’s so much we don’t know! We can’t be stupid, but there has to be more. Besides…

author: What?

Angie: Besides, they’re just punks. I’ve seen them try to catch us; they’ve got all the knives and guns, but they don’t think ahead. Or if something happens, you could count the heartbeats it takes most of them to move. We’ve dodged around them twice already.

author: You make it sound easy.

Angie: (laughs) I hear that from people sometimes. I think anything can sound easy. But there’s always a way.

 

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The High Road release – November 12th

“Don’t look down. Look up.”

In four weeks, on November 12th, you’ll be able to do just that. The High Road will be releasing on Amazon, Nook, iBooks, and… well, everywhere.

The High Road may have seemed more like a long road, to set that release. If you’ve been following this blog you’ll have noticed I’ve been putting it off for some time.

Part of that’s due to sending it through revision after revision. Scenes have been torn down, repurposed into whole other uses or just reshuffled, every time I thought I was done. The opening has gone from a glimpse of madness to a more wistful glimpse to a direct look at the action; the first major fight in the park got rewritten almost as soon as it was done, and so did the action in the alley, the hospital, the Long Night, the second park confrontation, the grand finale—

—Wow, I actually never worked it out before but I think every true fight or action scene got a whole new direction during one revision or another. Except one scene; let’s just say there’s one battle that could never have been sent to the junkyard or changed even a little. You’ll know that one when you come to it.

The other reason is that between revisions, I’ve been poring over the second book of the series. The wait after The High Road to get to Freefall should be much, much less, once you’re ready to follow more of Mark and Angie’s journey.

In the meantime, here’s a small hint from one of the characters, essentially the last thing he wrote. I don’t think it’s every urban fantasy that includes someone giving a warning like this:

 

Click to listen…

http://www.kenhughesauthor.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/TheWarnings.mp3

 

Don’t trust the words—you have to see deeper to claim what you are.

Don’t turn your back on the greedy—they’ll never stop wanting what they see.

Don’t look down—look up, when the wind howls or the road is blocked.

Don’t forget your friends—but anything I leave you, they can still take for themselves.

But don’t trust yourself—your instincts are the first thing you can lose.

And don’t trust me, for writing this warning. But, I wish I could let you see it.

 

Just which “words” are those, and what is it that friends could take? On November 12th, you can see for yourself.

Just keep an eye out for the owl. If you can.

 

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Finishing a book – thoughts

How does it feel to have a book completed, finally?

A bit déjà vu, for one thing.

A couple of springs ago I set down the last words “harder than the gate’s steel” and realized that was the last chapter of The High Road, that I’d actually pushed the story to the end.
And then early last year, the night a massive round of revisions came to an end with restructuring the climactic battle—and the agony of finding I was too worn out to write the last pages that Sunday night, and had to stop for some sleep (don’t judge) and sneak the rest in before work Monday.

So “finished” is a recurring thing. If you don’t know da Vinci’s rule “Never finished, only abandoned,” trust me, you will if you write.

Enlarging. Pushing Mark and Angie on their different journeys can fill the head with some odd things.

Trying to see the world like Angie does. It’s not that she’s fearless, but a problem looks different to someone who can’t see a problem without already getting a good-enough idea of what to do about it. It’s a rare knack, but the world might be a brighter place for all of us if we stopped losing those first seconds in confusion and outrage.
Remembering to make Mark talk to himself at odd moments. If that wasn’t part of his nature, the whole story might not have happened.

Coming home. Most of my life I’ve been dreaming of the certain kind of flying that goes in this book—not rocketing around freely but leaping or catching the wind. So looking back and seeing there’s finally a book of that sensation feels like I’m starting to pay my muse back for all the fun she’s given me.

Discouraging.

Good grief, I started this book years ago! I’ve proven I can write a chapter a week if I push myself, even working full-time, so why don’t I have the whole series done by now?

Well, half of it must have been that one chapter I started rewriting the moment I finished it, every time…


And I still can’t walk up to strangers and say, “Hi, I’m an author.” Maybe after a few more books.

Startling.

That cover. That cover, Mark dropping down along a skyscraper with power crackling around him… there’s nothing like opening up a jpeg and meeting the guy I’ve been bullying for so long.

Dissatisfying.

The book’s done, what am I supposed to do with my mornings and weekends now? Sure, there’s a stack of reading and an endless supply of TV I keep hearing about, but could you really just go back to taking in stories after so long creating them?
(Alright, that one isn’t quite true. I’ve still got the next book to build, so it’s only my evenings that are oddly free again. For now.)

 And then…

Humbling.

I’ve still got a few words of advice coming in from this author I know, so we’ll see…

 

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You Only Get One First Time – First Book equals Best Book?

Is the first book of a series the best book, or is it something else that that book has going?

It’s a question that’s been on my mind a lot, now that I’m nearing the end of the (looong) path to releasing The High Road, and giving my full attention to its followup. (That and, how I keep putting off the sequel to my other book, Shadowed, even though that idea’s been with me more than ten years longer.)

It happens so much. Again and again, I think we’ve all found that the story that launches a series has the purest sense of the hero finding herself… and the only “true” villain or opposition that does her justice… and all the related conflicts and relationships and revelations in what feels like their purest form.

Take Game of Thrones, the original novel. Yes, the “game” is playing on such a small, bloodless field compared to the craziness that’s coming. But there’s just something about watching that court work its way toward all hell breaking loose and still hoping someone there will turn things around; once GRR Martin proved all bets were off, the story felt wilder, deeper… but not the same.

Or Dragonflight. No matter how many books Anne McCaffrey set in Pern, there’s nothing like the sheer power of learning about her dragonriders (a brand new flavor of awesomesauce at the time, don’t forget) through the unstoppable young Lessa plus their whole world having to rediscover how much they need their dragons.

Call it a courtship, in a way. The best opening stories have some of the same intensity of meeting a person we have to keep around—everything’s new and obviously right, and most of what we discover is just finding even more layers of compatibilty. And it all builds to a joyous finale and and a happy honeymoon.

–Then again, it’s wouldn’t be much of a marriage if the fun really peaked there, would it? We expect a real keeper to go from obviously fascinating to whole new kinds of rightness the more we get to know them. Shouldn’t the author who’s reached me with one book be able to build that relationship better each time after that? For every unmatchable Dragonflight there’s a Hunger Games series with a Catching Fire that takes its original concept to a whole new level.

(And sometimes fizzles it all away on a book after that. Katniss was a lot more interesting around people that forced her to fight, not when they held her back and she let them.)

We’ve all heard the Hollywood mantra: a sequel should “do the same thing, only different.” By those lights, a better second book is nearly impossible—recreating the clean joy of the first while still mixing it up and getting just the right balance? But it does happen.

In fact, I think many of those “best first” books may not be the best to read, just the best ones to remember. They’re the ones with that easy-to-appreciate story arc, the one that starts with a relatable hero or an epic but easily-understandable situation, and moves on to grand victories or other changes the hero creates. Which means everything after that has to start from the less elemental conditions he’s already built, and probably has that as a constant reminder that the protagonist can win and grow when he needs to. Even if the later story’s more enjoyable, it’s hard to look back at it years later and dream of starting reading over on the plains of Rohan, when it would be easier to settle in with just a hobbit watching a birthday party and never knowing the Nine Riders are on the roads.

The first story is more approachable, not always more fun. Movies and TV can make it even clearer, with all the pressure the studio is under to build on a first film or season, when it doesn’t misfire. The first year of Buffy is unforgettable teenage adventure, but it’s the second that’s just unforgettable. Or the first Star Wars is still arguably the most purely fun thing ever filmed… but it took the twists in Empire Strikes Back to keep it from wearing out its welcome.

Hmm. I’ve got some Freefall to write…

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Flying Magic and More in The High Road

Sometimes life hands us a moment so odd, all we can do is run with it—pun intended, for this one. Because once I actually heard someone across the room say that as superpowers go, “what’s the use in only being able to fly halfway?” And I had to pause a busy day with my boardgaming friends to explain that I had a whole book about exploring how half-flying might be better than getting off the ground.

It’s a central part of The High Road: how many ways would gravity-controlling magic actually work… and what would it be like wearing that belt and starting to see how many barriers around you had just fallen away? And, which ones would be worth hopping over?

So, these are the main ways that my protagonist Mark Petrie explores what that magic can do. (For spoilers’ sake, I’ll concentrate on Mark, because my other star Angie Dennard’s history with the belt is… complicated.) But with each step you read, I hope you’ll ask yourself: what would you do with it?

 

Windrider Dreams

First of all, what the magic does is something less than true flying (though I’ve blogged about that too), and also more: it controls gravity. Meaning, it can reduce (or increase) something’s weight, but not “steer” gravity… as in, Mark can’t turn. Kate (Angie’s mother) sums it up in the short story Solo Flight:

Except for what the wind did to them, it let them move only three ways: lift up, drop down, or whichever way they jumped.

So Mark can leap sometimes a block or more, or float up and ride the wind, but once he floats up he’s limited to the wind except for shifting up and down. (Writing friends of mine say that makes him a human weather balloon, and that’s mostly true.)

–Why did I clip my heroes’ wings that way? The truth is, for most of my life I’ve had vivid dreams of flying—no surprise, with all the comics I’ve read—but they always came in that limited form. And I like the organic feeling of working with the wind or the rooftops instead of simply defying them.

“Flying” this way over the city only works with the air currents. And if you think about it, that makes Mark actually more vulnerable in the air than on the ground. After all, if something dangerous happens—and what are the odds of that?—his only moves are to shoot upward, or drop down, maybe all the way out of the sky to get something under his feet again and let him maneuver.

On the other hand, he can duck out of anything just by rocketing upward. Imagine that feeling, that there’s a whole other world in the sky just moments away… Mark has had moments where he truly hates to go indoors or anywhere that seals him in. Or when he’s been in danger in broad daylight and everything from the clouds to the voices of the passersby seems to be daring him to stop hiding the magic and just zoom away with a thought. It’s a seductive idea, especially for Mark and Angie at age 19.

And their story would have been so much simpler if The High Road had been set in a superhero world, or a supernatural one where magic was public knowledge. I’ve written before about the tradeoffs a writer has with “a Masquerade,” but this time my choice was simple. Most of the fun of flying is in simple freedom… but that also makes it maybe the most frustrating magic ever to try to hide, because using it puts you up where everyone can see you! And a challenge like that is one of the reasons I write.

Mark has had to learn how much safer flying is if nobody knows they should look up at all, and that starts by him only going up by night… as long as he’s very careful not to soar into power lines! And the storyline is open to possibilities that range from getting greater control of the magic, to sending him chasing things like carrier pigeons that can wing rings around him, to him and Angie wracking their brains for other ways to use it or maximize what it can do. And most of those do happen.

 

Half Flying, Full Control

Remember that conversation I stumbled into, about flying halfway? It’s one answer to the “look, up in the sky” problem.

Since the magic actually reduces Mark’s weight instead of jetting him around, he doesn’t have to be seen floating away. If Mark is up out of sight in the rooftops, he’s free to eat up distance with long bounds that move him faster than he could out in the wind—though he has to watch where he’s going a lot more than in the open air. And even down in a crowd, he can make a jump go a few extra feet, and nobody’s likely to see more than a lucky leap.

And running is nothing but short, fast jumps.

So if he can keep the balance of being just light enough and jumping just far enough, he can run in long strides that let the magic carry most of the weight. His best description of how it feels is

swinging on a rope while hopping along stepping-stones

It’s not a move that can go much faster than ordinary sprinting, since the point is not to jump too far and be seen bouncing up and down the street. But his muscles do less of the work, so it means he can run as fast as anyone and barely tire at all… as long as his supply of magic and his control hold out.

Then there are other uses. There’s a moment in the second book where he scurries up a wall’s drainpipe; cutting his weight makes any kind of movement easier.

But then, he doesn’t have to stop with his own weight.

 

World Made of Feathers (and Lead)

How do you get a night’s sleep if you think some thug just might break into your apartment? For Mark, it only takes a touch to make his bed light enough to lift over and block the door.

Reducing things’ weight means he really can carry almost anything that isn’t nailed down. (And it’s one more reason to keep the magic secret; otherwise everyone he’d ever met would want his help on their moving day.)

But, gravity lifting isn’t as much like superhuman strength as it seems: it doesn’t let Mark lift or hit any harder, only makes an object light enough that his own strength can move it. If he throws a boulder against a door, it won’t hit any harder than a big rocky pillow.

Then again, if he carries it high over the building’s roof and drops it…

And he has another weaponized option: the magic can’t add force to his muscles, but it can generate its own force by increasing something’s weight. Anyone Mark can reach, he can slam to the ground and pin there by making them too heavy to move. Use more power, and that weight increases to metal-bending, crushing levels—that’s one move he sometimes worries comes too easily when he’s angry enough. He knows he’s better off simply lifting a threat against a wall or pinning them to the floor in what looks like a simple act of strength.

(Meanwhile, the truly ruthless tactic would be to simply toss an enemy fifty feet up. Or let them keep on rising, so there’s no body to find.)

 

Imagine it. Walking through your home neighborhood, know there isn’t much around you that’s too heavy to move if you want it to enough, and that even something fastened down can be flattened with a touch. Or run clear across the city without tiring, or duck out of sight and shoot up to ride the night air or rule the rooftops.

Mark Petrie is no superhero; he struggles with everything from the belt’s power limits to his own very different motives. But gravity magic does have a few nods to the comics, with both flying and just maybe throwing cars around. Still, anyone with a gun would have him out-ranged, and he’s not bulletproof.

But come to think of it, how much kevlar could you wear if you didn’t feel the weight?

(Or, if an enemy tries to drive away from him, could he figure out how to attach some antigravity to a crossbow quarrel and shoot the car with a lightening bolt?)

 

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No blog this week

I won’t be writing anything this week, while I deal with a family emergency. For everyone who’s given me their support on this, thank you. Your thoughts mean a lot.

Photo by Jo Naylor

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When The High Road started on a Tower – a Deleted Opening Scene

Can an opening scene be too… distinctive?

There’s a line writers love to quote, that when a piece of writing doesn’t work we need to “kill our darlings.” (Or “murder” them; either way there needs to be blood.) It’s good advice, even when the darling is a scene of a madman ready to crush steel at hundreds of feet above street level, and other strange and delightful moments that don’t go quietly when the executioner’s editor’s pen comes around.

I admit, when I started writing The High Road it seemed like the ideal beginning. I’ve always trusted that the further I can push my characters, hero and villain, the more I can sweep a reader along. So what could be better than to drop people into the viewpoint of a creature just sane enough to understand, who’s looking down on what seems to be an innocent person below that might be attacked just for being there… then skip back in time to a simple father and child on very different sides of the mystery that would lead up to that, and do it all in an enigmatic two pages?

Ahh, the arrogance of a new idea. The sad truth I’ve come to realize is that opening a new book series with two slices outside of the regular narrative is too likely to come across as a gimmick, especially when they’re so hard to orient to. And even the “simpler” piece of the puzzle wasn’t properly on-target, since it only hinted at the starting incident that it was there to explain. It also short-changed the magic that I wanted to hint at—and worst of all it showed Mark with Angie’s father rather than Angie herself…

Thanks to the help of friends (starting with the Greater Los Angeles Writers Society), bloggers, and editors, I’ve accepted that that wasn’t good enough. The opening you’ll be able to see this fall is more approachable, and closer to the heart of what the story’s about.

Still, I think the crazier version deserves a chance to be seen… and better yet, heard, thanks to the versatile voice of Mr. John W. Riddle.

So, lean back and prepare to close your eyes for three and a half unique minutes, or read along on the scene that follows. Picture a driven, barely rational creature clinging upside down to a skyscraper radio antenna, and then a boy visiting a friend’s father. In the original plan, you’d spend half the book wondering what the connection between them is.

(PS: the creature watching the sunrise would have been the hero, the same as the boy. Not that that’s true any more; I’ve found other things to put Mark through instead.)

And now:

http://www.kenhughesauthor.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/BurningSky.mp3

 

Why doesn’t the sky burn any more?

Hands clinging tight on the steel, gazing up past it to emptiness… loll the head back to look out across the endless city, lattices and streets of scattered lights against the black. Wind whips at the coat, but deeper forces curl pulsing through the horizon. It should all be ours, but instead…

Wings beat, flying not close by, the feet shift on the metal above. Birds… what do birds mean…

Instead, the memory:

“Don’t turn your back on the greedy… they never stop…”

“Don’t trust yourself…”

Cling tighter as footsteps move below, a man walking and waving light around. Alive in the city, when he didn’t deserve to be.

Heavier, grip shifting to hold on. Or the power could shatter, could sweep away hope–

The man turns inside, the space below stills. Across the lake, a new light hints at dawn. But the words failed, there is no escape, and hands clench coldness as if they could do more.

Again, the voice, from a ghost. All meaningless, ever since–

 

The knock on the door.

The father opened it, still in his police uniform. The boy only came up to the lower buttons on his shirt.

“Sorry for coming out here,” the boy said, his voice shaking a little. “But nobody answered, and she–”

“At this hour?” the father snapped, and the first syllables echoed down the silent hall before he caught himself. “You know what you’re putting your parents through?”

“Uh… I’m sorry. It’s just, the way my uncle and aunt were fighting I didn’t think they’d notice–”

“You call them right now, and then go home! Now!”

“Sorry. But… she was just playing safari with me, why did you drag her–” The boy broke off as the father’s hand tightened on the door frame, knuckles going white.

But instead of shouting, he let go of the door, and his voice softened. “I guess you mean well. But… just go home, and stay safe. Everything’s going to be alright.”

“Can I see her–”

“Home!”

He glared over and the boy looked around, to see a man peeping around the door from the next apartment.

The father said nothing more, only pulled back inside.

When he did that, the boy walked over to the neighbor. “Listen… do you know why he’s so mad?”

“You don’t know?” The neighbor kept his voice in a hush. “His daughter tried running away. He wouldn’t let us help, he just brought her back himself. Is she alright?”

“He… he said so,” the boy managed, eyes wide. “Ran away, really?”

“Really. Did she try to go to her mother’s? He didn’t want us to call–”

The neighbor stopped short then, looking over at the father’s door. He was still watching them.

The boy muttered “Thanks,” and hurried away down the corridor.

And yet, just as the boy was stepping off the street into the apartment complex next door, he spun around and took a step toward where the father was stepping outside himself–out of uniform now, and moving quietly into the dimness of the night.

After a few more steps, the boy lost sight of him.

 

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Whispered Secrets and Recorded Magic

It can be a first step to telling a story that shows more than the obvious, and one I always look for on a page—and kick myself if one of my own scenes neglects it. It’s the mark of atmosphere, of surprise, of emphasis. It’s hinted at in my writer’s motto, up there at the top of this site. And it can mean one other thing about how writing resonates with me that I’m about to share with you all.

Sound.

I’ve written before, about how the standard advice to “descibe all five senses” can as easily backfire as not. It bugs me most because keeping track of when to use five of anything sounds calculated to scare writers, as well as to cover up how the senses do have relationships that can make mixing them easier if we learn to use them. (And yes, people keep saying “five” knowing that taste rarely matters if we’re not at a restaurant—and that some of our heroes have more than five anyway.)

So, sight needs sound.

Of course we’re visual creatures first; sight’s our most fundamental sense because of how it takes in everything in an instant and locks it all into a roadmap of threats, promises, the pathways to each, and everything else around us. And since a writer can only describe one thing at a given moment, the choice of sights can follow how the eye tracks what our attention focuses on just then. (After all, “focus” itself is a visual image—and so’s “image.”)

Keeping a description just in sight terms is so tempting, I’ve slipped into it myself again and again. Even though sound is one of the great thresholds between merely decent writing and bringing a moment to life.

Why does sound add so much? For one thing, because it builds straight onto what’s already there. Yes, most visual description does “follow the ball” of what’s drawing our attention from moment to moment… but what makes a person, a object, or anything important? Often it’s what it does right then—for every tall and elegant (and dead) statue trying to dominate a city square there ought to be the marching feet of soldiers who actually protect or repress the city, or the creak of a gate that lets you in.

If it’s important, it’s probably active, bouncing off the environment around it or churning with its own internal reactions; what’s worth seeing is often worth hearing too. And that goes triple for characters, of course, because the sound of their action tells so much about how and why they’re doing it, and because they usually want to be heard.

Even for minor pieces of the setting, just the moment’s attention they get might be worth using sound to give it instant character. Simply walking on hard stone raises a different kind of thump from the slight echo of wood, let alone snow or leaves.

But if sound’s good at amplifying sight and attention, it’s even better at contrasting with them. Sound forces us to stay aware of more than one thing at a time, because noises don’t care if you’re looking at them. A sudden sound is perfect for making one of my heroes glance around and stay on his toes. Or, it’s one of my favorite tricks in a scene: to draw the eye in close to the action and then break up a moment of silence with a passing car or shout, just to say the world’s still bigger than we started to think. Movies love it too, with the cry of a “distant hawk” to pretend they aren’t just shooting on a tiny set.

–Although, if Paul in Shadowed hears a bird in the sky, it might be a long way off indeed. And if Mark and Angie hear one in The High Road, it’s probably all too close.

The full expression of sound might be in letting mood become more important than details. Again and again I’ve found that if a scene is supposed to settle into just a feeling, the ones that do it best let my hero “heard a dog’s bark, a shout, and sometimes a siren.” or “hear a baby crying, probably part of one of the families he’d seen walking when the sun had been out.”

But no, we all know that isn’t the fullest use of sound in writing. Most of all, at the heart of it all, sound reminds us of our voices as we simply talk to each other.

And… here’s a little secret… I’ve never been able to write a word without a part of me picturing myself telling the story or the message aloud. Letting the words slow to gather mood, then build in speed and force to pick a reader—a listener—up and sweep them on toward the climax. I like to think my words work better as a flow than as separate touchstones that are meant to build a story just by sitting next to each other.

And now you can hear that flow too.

Starting today, I’ll be working with a certain veteran voice actor to bring you a few recorded samples of Shadowed, soon followed by The High Road. I hope you’ll lend an ear and feel a little of the excitement I’ve always felt in putting these dreams into words.

I’m opening with one minute of sound from the first chapter of Shadowed. Just to set the mood…

Paul Schuman is in the middle of a party he’s infiltrating, when the heightened senses that have driven him into living in hiding detect a person from his past—his sister-in-law, Lorraine. And then the one thing Paul never thought could happen, happens: Lorraine crumples, holding her head in a way Paul knows all too well. One of the onlookers is just asking “Ms. Schuman…”

http://www.kenhughesauthor.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/First-Whisper.mp3

 

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