The light at the end of the tunnel

The past month has been a bit too jam-packed for even a multi-tasker like me. The part of the company I work for was bought by another company, which was good because we ended up with two extra holidays this month (yay!), but not so good because it involved a lot of worry and stress for pretty much everyone. My brother-in-law visited, I learned how to make marmalade, and I was finally brave enough to try making lotion on my own. (It turned out to be ridiculously easy…I’ve made four batches now.) I had a cold, and discovered that while all I wanted to do during the day was read/nap/blow my nose, I perked up after a glass of wine and was able to rally and go to holiday events for three evenings in a row. I even stayed out until 2am the last night, which was fun, and which I probably won’t do again for a long, long time. 🙂 We rushed our dog Lucy to the vet one night and discovered that she had cancer and had to be put to sleep – she was only six years old. Lucy loved my brother-in-law – he lived with us when she was a puppy – so I’m now extra glad he was able to visit. We celebrated the holidays with my family and my nephews were very excited to give me a voodoo dog they’d found in New Orleans. I cheated and ate at least four gluten-filled cookies (at least I stopped counting at four).

Needless to say, I haven’t accomplished much writing-wise for a few weeks. I’m SO close to being done with the book, but sometimes life is too full to fit everything in. The next month or two promise to be busy, but hopefully in a more predictable way. I’m taking two more online workshops through Dean Wesley Smith – Cover Design and Interior Book Design, both taught by Dean along with Allyson Longueira. I’m signed up for the Openings workshop which starts in February. And we’ve decided to look for another dog right away because our remaining dog, Maisie, is very sad. We got Lucy for Maisie, and always referred to her as Maisie’s dog. So…there will be dog interviews and the associated worrying, and if all goes well Maisie and I will soon be spending time training a new dog.

I should wrap up the novel this weekend (since it’s now a four day weekend, thanks to my newly acquired holiday), and then the big question will be: what to work on next? I thought my mind was made up, but apparently not. My options are (all titles are working titles and may change):

  • The Jennys – about a little girl who is a clone. This started as a short story 9 years ago, immediately wanted to be a novel, and while I have about 3 chapters written my intent is to ignore them, rewrite them, then go back and see if there is anything in the original draft that I want to keep. My writing style has changed drastically in the past 9 years, and Linda Jordan suggested this approach when we took Dean’s Character Voice and Setting workshop together last March. I’m so glad she made this suggestion! This was always meant to be book #2, but I started to question that when I came up with the selkie story.
  • The Selkie and the Sidhe – this started as a short story in the March workshop, and it’s very clearly a novel. I’ve been leaning toward finishing this one because I so enjoyed working on it in the workshop. My certainty that this was #2 got shaken by the superhero story.
  • No Title Yet – this is a story about a superhero who’s going bad, and his sidekick who’s always been there no matter what. This was so far down the novel list (it may have been #7…) that I wasn’t even thinking about it, then when I was trying to catch up on Writing Excuses podcasts I listened to a few in the row that kept giving me more and more ideas about things for this story.

Being a multi-tasker, I naturally want to work on all three at once…but even I realize that wouldn’t be wise. So I need to pick one, and while at other times there’s always been a clear path, that’s not currently the case. If I can really pull off finishing my manuscript this weekend I’ll be ready to start on the next one next weekend, so this is very much on my mind!

I’ll spend the next few days mulling this over and missing Lucy. To honor her, I’ll end this post with one of my very favorite photos of her. We’d been hiking and ran into some friends whose dogs were Lucy’s friends. Maisie is in the front, their friend Chrisse is the little girl on the right, and Lucy is the happy black and gray and brown dog. I love this one because Lucy’s face is filled with such joy at being with all of her favorite dog friends.

Happy New Year.

2011-08-20 South St. Vrain trail

Formulating with Lester Dent

One of the things that Dean Wesley Smith likes to mention in his writing classes is the Lester Dent Formula. Dent was a pulp fiction writer – he’s most famous as the creator and main author of the Doc Savage stories.

A few weeks ago it was getting late and I didn’t feel up to the task of removing a minor thing that wasn’t working as planned from my novel. (Minor, but present all throughout the book…so a lot of work.) I wanted to do something writing-related that was a little less intensive, so I decided to work on the outline for my next book. Then I got the notion to try out Dent’s formula on my outline, and:

Dent’s “formula” is designed for a 6,000-word story, but it can be applied just as well to a novel. He breaks each story up into four 1,500-word chunks something like this:

  • Introduce the hero, lots of problems, all of the characters, and have a physical conflict and a plot twist near the end of the section.
  • More trouble, another physical conflict, and another plot twist.
  • More trouble, the hero starts to make progress, then another plot twist that doesn’t go well for the hero.
  • Even more trouble! The hero gets out of trouble on his own, all the mysteries are resolved, and there’s a final twist/surprise.

At the end of each section ask yourself if there is suspense, menace, and whether or not everything has happened logically.

This looks an awful lot like the 7-point plot outline, which I will sum up briefly (each ‘point’ is numbered):

  • open with a (1) character, in a (2) setting, with a (3) problem
  • the character (4) tries to solve the problem and (5) fails (repeat if appropriate)
  • the character makes a (6) final attempt to solve the problem and (7) either fails or succeeds (depending on the grimness of the story)

Obviously your character will be in a setting whether you focus on it or not. The reason this is one of the points is that without sufficiently grounding the reader in the setting, your story will not be as engaging.

This approach is actually quite similar to Dent’s outline. The things that stand out to me in Dent’s formula are:

  • He’s got major plot twists in each of the four sections. Even the end of the story has a twist. He also is explicit that each twist should go at the end of its section.
  • Dent’s formula calls for multiple try/fail sequences. This isn’t really different from the 7-point plot outline, which calls for one or more – but Dent explicitly requires at least one try/fail sequence per section.
  • Dent emphasizes physical conflict. This makes sense considering the stories he was writing. My interpretation of this is that physical conflict is something dire, so if you’re writing a less physical story, this can still apply with non-physical conflict – the key is that it should grip the reader.
  • The hero must resolve his problems on his own. This implies a high level of tension since the reader will be very focused on the hero, and will feel a greater sense of reward when the hero saves the day.

I should reiterate that I have only started to play with Dent’s formula, but I’ve already made improvements to my outline that will pay off in the novel. And as an extra bonus, I’ve added some swell 1930s stories to my reading list!

On the edge of a cliff

I’ve added an extra level of complication – and fun! – to my life by signing up for the Cliffhangers workshop taught by Dean Wesley Smith. This is the third class I’ve taken from Dean, and the first one I’ve taken online; he just started offering online workshops this year.

I’ve read lots of good cliffhangers, but finding the really great ones when you’re trying to look for examples to study is surprisingly difficult. One tried and true way to end a chapter or story section is to have your character become unconscious. They can faint, get hit over the head, be anesthetized…but just go try to find a scene like this in a book right now! It’s funny how hard it is to find examples of something you’ve seen done a zillion times.

Perseverance helps, and I’ve been learning more about how to write good cliffhangers by re-reading the ends of chapters – as well as the beginnings of chapters, because it’s important to start the next chapter in a way that supports, and often even enhances, the power of the cliffhanger.

To complement the class, I’ve been browsing through my writing books to see what other people have to say on the subject. I found this in Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass:

“Cliff-hangers are a tried and true, if clumsy, way to propel a reader from scene to scene or chapter to chapter.”

Maass is indeed correct that many, many books utilize cliffhangers in a simple way, and he points out that even when “clunky” they are still useful. Who doesn’t feel the tension when you have to put a book down not knowing if the hero will be able to escape from what is clearly imminent death? But there is a lot more you can do than leave your readers on pins and needles. You can reach into their hearts and squeeze.

This is done masterfully in Phillip Pullman’s The Golden Compass. In the world the protagonist Lyra lives in, every human being has a ‘daemon’ which is essentially his or her soul in an animal form. One chapter ends with Lyra’s discovery of a young boy whose daemon has been severed from him; once severed a daemon can never be reattached. It’s a horrifying thing for Lyra to find, and it’s horrifying to the reader as well – partly because the reader feels Lyra’s pain, and partly because the concept of having one’s soul removed is so abhorrent. This cliffhanger is incredibly powerful is because it affects the reader on a deep emotional level.

Our standard way of looking at cliffhangers matches this excerpt from the Wikipedia entry on cliffhangers:

“A cliffhanger or cliffhanger ending is a plot device in fiction which features a main character in a precarious or difficult dilemma, or confronted with a shocking revelation at the end of an episode of serialized fiction. A cliffhanger is hoped to ensure the audience will return to see how the characters resolve the dilemma.”

That’s how I looked at cliffhangers before Dean’s class, but my viewpoint has changed. I now look at them instead as: what will make the reader feel compelled to turn the page? Whatever form your cliffhanger takes – whether there’s danger, or a secret is revealed, or you merely provide a subtle hint about something that might happen later – it should keep your readers up at night because they can’t put your book down. That’s what really matters, and that’s why I’m studying cliffhangers.

And since I’m on the topic of cliffs, here’s a photo I took while hanging off of one years ago: