Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos · 1 Comment

Inner critic

I hate my inner critic. I really, REALLY hate him. I’ve managed to reach the point where I only have 3 – 4 more chapters to write after which I will be happily able to say “I finished it! I finished my 2nd book!”

That was the moment my inner critic struck and messed things up. And that moment is when the previous joyful statement turns into something like, “yeah, but look what a mess you’ve made. Story sucks, plots sucks more, characterisation sucks even more, overall product sucks the most.” And then the unwillingness to continue comes along. From writing 3.5k words a day, I go down to 1.5 and writing becomes a chore.

yay droopy

I really, REALLY hate that inner critic. It takes all the fun away. I blame my perfectionism that sometimes runs in my veins, especially when it comes to writing.

In liue of that, I figured I might give you my take on what I do to battle these defeatist feelings, though be warned, I have yet to achieve a victory against them.

1. It’s a first draft, therefore accept it as it is. I’ve often said to some of you who follow this blog and we have developed a more direct form of communication, not to worry about a work being sucky or below expectations simply because first drafts are supposed to be that way; sucky, full of mistakes, full of plot holes, full of everything that could make you throw your computer out the window (or typewriter).

And yet I fail to adhere to this rule. Go figure. It’s still a solid advice, it’s just that my brain fails to remember it when it needs it the most. Kinda like those drivers who shield their eyes when they’re about to be part of a minor accident instead of watching where they’re going and controlling the car, even though their instructors have told them exactly not to do that.

2. It’s good to be strict with your own self-imposed deadlines, but the world won’t end if you stretch them by a few days (yes, I’m talking to you, Chris Sarantopoulos). I have very little doubt that I will be able to finish my WIP (Through Stranger Eyes is the current title, if anyone is wondering) before I start querying my previous book. Especially if I just focus and write 3k words a day. I may stretch my deadline by a couple of days, but it can be done. The thing is, I feel like I’ve exhausted all my fuel, plus the backup fuel I had stored somewhere, and some more I stole from those around me. I’m on fumes here. Bottom line is, as I said in my previous post, sometimes it’s easy to reach your daily quota, sometimes words simply refuse to come. Accept it. That’s the life of a writer, even when it comes to the big names.

3. Don’t panic, revision will save you. Consider revision as a loving and caring mother. We all mess things up from time to time (some of us more than others), but mom is always there to not just chastise us, but also show us the right way. That’s kind of what revision does for you. Even if the new plot line you made up, despite what you had planned and outlined, clashes with every other plot line, relax. You’ll get it fixed a couple of months after you finish your work, after you’ve hid the MS and let it mature. It may take you some more time to patch things up, but it’s okay. Just keep repeating “revision will make things right.” And yes, I’m talking to you again, Chris Sarantopoulos.

4. Trust your ideas. We write fiction because we have ideas to test, and strange worlds and situation to experience. Some will work better than others, some will be utter crap. If you’ve written the latter, look at points 1 and 3. Repeat as often as necessary. Chances are those ideas will spark something. Perhaps a better tangent for your story or a new story altogether.

5. Resist the urge to start another project because “this one is too hard/you suck/you are inexperienced for its complexity yet, etc.” Just put the words down. One word at a time. Neil Gaiman said that. You can’t argue with one of the masters. You can’t revise or improve on something that isn’t there. Let that inner critic shout all he/she wants. If you start an awful lot of projects without finishing any one of them, say because you’re not ready for that project yet, when will you be ready for it? Will you ever be?

Oh well, that’s all for now. Damn you inner critic.

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos · 1 Comment

One more update

Despite several non stop attempts from the powers that be, I have managed to stay productive. Wait, no. Wrong. I’ve actually managed to be overproductive. For the past few weeks I’ve been able to write up to 3500 words per day, though my average is about 3000. Now, it may not be much for some of you, but it is for me. My usual word quota is anywhere between 1500 and 2000, so every time I reach or exceed 3500 words, I am elated. I don’t know if other writers are like me, but I like to enjoy little things like that, because sometimes – and I think we can all agree on that – despite all our efforts, words don’t come easy. Some days are good, some are terrible, and some are so awesome that you want to do a victory dance.

victory dance

Yeah, like that.

Fingers crossed, I’ll be able to keep it up and finish the entire project either by the end of this month, or at the latest, within the first week of June. Assuming of course, that those powers leave me alone.

All right. Back to writing.

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos · 2 Comments

Agent fear

The day draws near where I will have to start sending queries out to the agents I have been stalking on twitter, and have added in small manageable groups in my excel file. For the past few weeks I have been putting the whole thing off as much as possible and quite frankly, I don’t know why. When my friends ask me (the one or two who know I write) if I’ve had any replies from agents, I tell them I’m waiting for summer to send any queries, so I won’t have to stop working on Through Stranger Eyes (my current WIP) and start on revisions a potential agent may ask. I don’t want to tackle that part of the process with leftover baggage from my current WIP. Sometimes, I answer that I’m holding back to avoid having to revise and edit in the middle of a heat wave on my mobile phone instead of my PC again. I don’t think I could work on a novel-length manuscript on my mobile phone for another summer. (Hint: No A/C for me. PC’s exhaust sends air exceeding 60 C. Not a nice work environment).

However, a few days ago I think I realised I may be a little bit afraid and uncertain about my synopsis and my query. Yes, these two culprits again. I don’t know. Maybe they are not to blame at all.  So now I’ve set a date, a self-imposed deadline. Apparently, I work better when I have deadlines for things that are not directly related to creative work (like attaching files to an email and hitting the send button, as opposed to having to finish a 100k word novel by a specific date, no matter what).

I will send the first query on 10 June. Hopefully I will have finished Through Stranger Eyes by then, and I’ll be able to focus exclusively on the agent hunting process. Fingers crossed.

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos · 2 Comments

No mistakes, only happy accidents

A few days ago, I twitted about a mistake I made (Ok, maybe not a mistake as such – to quote Bob Ross, “there are no mistakes, only happy accidents“) and neglected my outline for just a little bit. By a little bit, I mean a large part of a scene. The result was almost a thousand words of half-decent first-draft quality prose with very interesting character interactions. Alas, I had mixed the characters up. Shameful, I know. In my defense, it was an easy mistake to make, since I almost never name filler characters when I outline, and the two characters shared a few things, like age and lifestyle. The only difference is the character I intended to write about was supposed to have no more than one line of dialogue and appear for maybe half a page, and the one I ended up writing about is an important character, which made the first one a filler, or rather an obstacle to the MC’s progress. A nameless character. Of course you might say that a thousand words for a filler character are too many, but keep in mind there are descriptions, POV character’s thoughts, reactions, and of course the stuff I had on my mind about the important character. Plus, the POV character and that filler one ended up having a long conversation, which was not part of the original plan, but stemmed of how I pictured the important character. My face once I realised what I did was like Arnold’s.

84889709_disapoint_gif

I don’t know how many of you have read G. R. R. Martin’s book, A song of Ice and Fire, but those of you who have, if you watched last week’s show (season 6, episode 1), would probably have something to say about it. Actually, if you have read the books and watched the show, you probably have a lot to say, but that’s a different story. I’m not going to go into it. I just wanted to point out how easy it is to lose track of something planned in advance, if you miss or change one little detail. For Game of Thrones, it was Martin himself, if I’m not mistaken, when he mentioned of the butterfly effect and how the show and the books have diverged because of them. I had read that blog post earlier in the year, and I know he considers himself as a gardener-writer rather than an engineer-writer, but only after my mistake did I appreciate how easy it is to deviate so exponentially by one single mistake, like a few lines of dialogue.

So, any happy accidents you made throughout your writing career that changed things so much for your stories, you had to change everything and rewrite them?

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos · 4 Comments

Deep Point of View

This is going to be a longer then my usual posts.

As I mentioned before, I chose to write The Darkening from a deep point of view, but only AFTER I finished the first draft AND after I rewrote the whole thing to change the plot. The reason I decided to do that was simple: John Piscus, the main character, is paranoid and he hears voices. The world and himself are his main enemies, and the best way to present this was to show his fears and thoughts (and paranoia) and survival struggle through a very tight POV. Now, I could have gone for First Person POV, but the way the story plays out (no, I won’t give you spoilers, even though I love them myself) felt like the wrong choice. So I decided to go with third person Deep POV. I had never done it before, had never written a story with that POV, and it was a challenge at first. It took me a while to figure it out.

So what does it take to write in deep third person?

1. First off, you need to spend more time than normal inside the main character’s head. You need more of the MC’s thoughts, which is a good way to show some characterisation. This is the best time to show us the way he/she thinks, certain words the MC uses, unique to him/her. To achieve this you need to spend some time with the MC, get to know how he reacts to certain stimuli. Would he/she curse if things didn’t go as expected? Perhaps accept it meekly and move on? What would drive the character to each decision?

2. Based on the previous point, it’s best to avoid having long passages of action without inner monologue. For instance: “She nodded a good morning to her assistant, opened the door to her office, sat down, and adjusted her skirt. She saw the pile of paperwork she had left for her assistant the day before was still there, unsigned. She heard her cellphone ring. She rummaged through her purse, found it and answered the call.” OK, this may not be the best example or the best writing (I’ve done it on purpose to stress some points later on), but as you can see it’s a long list of actions taking place, but we have no idea about the MC’s thoughts. Is it a call she expected? Was the caller someone she enjoyed talking to? Had someone annoyed her before? Did she enjoy having to sign all these documents, etc? It’s a good idea to insert some thoughts and feelings about things happening to the MC, otherwise the passage feels as if the reader is sitting at the other end of the room, eating popcorn, and watching a movie. It’s superficial. Not to mention the sentences don’t seem to sound/read/flow smoothly.

3. The other thing I learned while writing The Darkening, was how bad the tags “he/she thought” really are for deep POV. Lets have a look at the previous example again:

The pile of paperwork her assistant had left earlier, was still there, unsigned. Figures… why waste precious ink from our fountain pen, when Martha can do it for us, huh? It’s not like she’s got anything else to do, she thought.” Boom! The moment you insert that little tag “she thought” you dragged the reader out of the MC’s head and reminded them they are reading a book. You stole the magic. Deep POV and thought tags are not very good friends. Also, avoid using italics for the thoughts, as there’s no need. The same goes if you choose to use the “said” tag for things the MC says. If the MC is saying something to someone else, there’s no need for dialogue tags to indicate the MC is talking. Think about it; why would you tap the readers’ shoulder, take them out of the “spell” you’ve put them, and remind them that a fictional character says something, when you’ve gone into all that trouble to immerse them in the character’s head in the first place? If the MC is the one with whom we are taking this 300-400 page journey, who else would be saying his/her lines? Use action beats instead and describe what the character is doing or thinking. Do use dialogue tags for the other characters though. Otherwise, the dialogue won’t make sense.

4. Remember this post where I mentioned filter words? Remember how it was related to show, don’t tell? Guess what? It’s something you get to use here. A lot. All those filter words related to telling thoughts and telling feelings, words like see, hear, think, feel, realise, remember, watch, wonder, assume, believe, look, hope, touch etc, you want them out of your story. Use a macro to find and highlight them if you must, but they are not helping you or your strengthen your work. They have to go. If you’re in deep POV, pretty much everything not related to something happening to the character is going to be thoughts, things the MC realised, conclusions he/she makes. Readers get that. So why mention it again? It’s like having people waiting for a concert to begin when someone walks on the stage and announces they are there to watch a concert. So in the above example, “She saw the pile of paperwork she had left for her assistant the day before was still there, unsigned. She heard her cellphone ring,” you want to remove “she saw” and “she heard.” If you do that it will read “the pile of paperwork she had left for her assistant the day before was still there, unsigned. Her cellphone rang.” Everything that’s happening in that room, at that moment, is filtered through the MC’s senses so there’s no need to repeat yourself.

We all follow (or at least try to) the “show, don’t tell” rule. The same goes for words describing feelings. If the MC is terrified of something, try to avoid using the word terrify. Instead, describe the feeling. Perhaps his/her mouth is going dry, or the heart is racing. Yes, these descriptions are things everyone uses and tend to be called “clichés,” but you can come up with stuff of your own to describe the emotion.

5. Where things get a little trickier are the passages you’ve written which aren’t things the MC would say, but actually it’s writer’s intrusion. If you know your characters well enough, you ought to know what things they would say at any given time. That’s true even more for the MC. If you’ve shown your MC to be a misanthrope or a sociopath who would laugh when someone falls flat on their faces, have his thoughts, behaviour, and interaction throughout the story reflect that.

This is not the only intrusion a writer may unintentionally do. Another blatant example is when the MC is remembering things for the sake of backstory. If the scene demands the MC to recall something of his past, in other words be introspective, then by all means use it. But make sure it happens when it makes sense, when it’s the right time. In the above example, would there be any reason for the MC to remember (and tell the reader) the time she and her brother were playing in the backyard, and he pushed her and scraped her knee? How much she cried and for how long her brother was grounded for, or what she did to him to get even? Is it related to the workload waiting for her on her office? If so, then write it. If not, delete it.

6. Head hopping. Deep POV dislikes head hopping. In the example I gave, our MC can not know what her assistant is thinking. She can guess, and that’s something you can show, but not know for sure. Not unless the assistant has clearly stated whatever it is he’s thinking. Any thoughts the MC has about someone else are filtered through his/her lenses. It’s a personal opinion and if used correctly it adds more to the characterisation. Pay close attention to what is known to your MC and what is known to other characters (a.k.a. the writer). Remember, everything is filtered through the MC’s perception.

7. Prepositional phrases. I believe this is something everyone should be aware of, but it becomes more apparent when you write in deep POV. In sentences like “She slammed the door in anger,” the prepositional phrase “in anger” is problematic. First, it’s overwriting; if someone slams the door, chances are they are angry. The behaviour (slamming the door) is a good indicator of the emotion. Second and more related to deep POV, when you use something like that, which is intended to show something to the reader, that’s once again writer’s intrusion. That’s you forcing the reader to pay attention to the emotion. However, by using a prepositional phrase, instead of showing the emotion you end up telling it, so you have more than one problems there. This is probably an area I still need to work. I usually draft a story with such phrases strewn in it. Logically, the editing process should eliminate them, but I often miss identifying them as mistakes. For some reason I forget about them, and don’t spot them until several months and rejections later.

I think these points cover the basics about deep POV. If you think I’ve missed something, please share.