How Much Is Enough... or Too Much?

Writing a query letter is much like walking a tightrope. You have just so much space, and falling to either side of that space can be disastrous. (And part of the problem is you don't know you've fallen until after you're already smushed on the rejection concrete below.)

Yesterday Kristen asked if Blink has any romance, since I didn't hint at it in my last pass at the cover copy. It does. I mentioned it in one of my other drafts, but I eventually elected to delete that information. Why?

As I said above, there's only so much space. You have to make a decision on each story element as to whether it's crucial enough to stick into that space. In the case of the romance angle, I decided it wasn't germane to the crux of the story. It's like the suspense angle, or the betrayal angle, or the mystery. It's there, and it adds conflict for Mary, but the real story is her journey from crawling to fighting.

The urge is there to put in a snippet about the hero. I'd also like to mention the villain, but in the scheme of things, it's enough to use the Union and not mention the man who heads it. If I had the space, I'd talk about the grandfatherly Russell who introduces her to the Order.

I could delve into Mary's search for identity, because as a 'foundling' she doesn't really know her past or her family, and it's key to discovering who she really is as an individual.

See why writing a query blurb is so damn hard? It was actually harder for this book than any other so far. There's a lot woven into those 94K words.

Anyway, I think I hit the right balance. The book is broken into three parts, and each is represented in the three paragraphs - albeit not in any encompassing way. Time will tell if I got it right or it fell off the tightrope into the abyss. I just need to hook them, so they'll want to read more.

Now I have to write the synopsis (something I neglected to do last year for my aborted query pass). There's where I can let it all hang out - in five pages or less.

Heh. Is it any wonder I'm a wee bit loony?

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Making it Believable

The new beginning? Well, it's been snipped. This morning I woke up with a better idea in my head and went to work. All told, Blink is 1652 words shorter than it was, but it's tons better already. I just have some new things to weave in the rest of the story to make it all more believable.

And that's what this is all about, right?

Whether we're writing about today or a thousand years ago, here or some distance galaxy or a made-up world of our own imagination - it's all about making it believable.

To illustrate let me use some examples from the film industry. Take, for instance, the movie Volcano. Premise is simple and a little outlandish - a volcano sprouts up in the middle of LA. Probable? No. Plausible? The way they wrote it, yes.

Around the same time, the movie Dante's Peak hit theaters. A dormant volcano wakes up and takes out a town of disbelievers. Both probable and plausible.

Of the two, though, the more believable movie was Volcano. Why? Because the writers put some thought into the little things that would make the moviegoers forget the implausibility of the premise. Little things like the immense heat from lava can and will kill people. Volcano lost a few characters - like the guy who played Drew Carey's cross-dressing brother - because lava kills (awesome scene, btw... I cry every time I see it). Dante's Peak? The MC drives his truck through a river of molten rock and the only thing that catches fire are the tires.

Umm, ya.

So these are the types of things I try to catch when I'm creating a world. Right now it's a little more difficult because I'm dealing with the future, and as long as I stick to the laws of reality, I can play with the world. Just how to make each piece work with every other piece... Well, that's what's making this so tricky. And those are also the places where I'm catching the little inconsistencies that will trip the reader up.

I hate those little trips.

Almost like when you're reading along and a character's hair color changes, but worse. I ran into theis very problem when I had to rewrite the middle at the end of '07. I couldn't put my finger on what was wrong, and then it hit me upside the head. It was one of those "DUH" moments. Like "if the other guys have all this technology why wouldn't they have wiped out the bad guys decades ago... duh." I tried to wiggle my way around it by creating a lame excuse, but in the end, that's all it really was - LAME.

So I rewrote it, and it's really so much better. Only problem is, I didn't see I still had flaws earlier on. I see them now, and I'm fixing them. It just takes time.

As for Nano, until I've taken Blink as far as I can go (or I get her finished - whichever comes first), I'm putting Nano on hold. It'll still be there when I get back. So will all the new notes I made trying to put it back together again.

*shrug* Such is the writing life.

Ever have to do something like this with your story? If not, just tell me about an inconsistency you saw or read that totally tripped you up.

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Knowing What You Know Even When People Think You're Nuts

Back in January of 2004, I had this idea for a book. After watching the movie Armageddon, some things about the science involved made me curious about comets, and I wondered if the whole 'when the big comet hits Earth we'll all die' hypothesis was really correct. Seemed to me that since they were already pretty much in agreement that comets were big balls of loosely adhered frozen material, it would stand to reason that they'd figure out some basic physical properties involved with such a mass.

Okay, so the theory is: Basically a comet is a big dirty snowball. And it's not even packed tight like the ones your brother made that stung like a sonuvabitch. Way out in the deep of space, it's packed almost like that, but the closer these things get to the sun, the looser they get. This is why their tails get longer as they near the sun, and shorter as they get farther away.

Stay with me here. If comets are big snowballs, they are not going to impact the Earth in the same way as a big rock (i.e. an asteroid). No impact crater, no global killer. Maybe some atmospheric changes, etc., but nowhere near as fatal as an asteroid.

I posed this hypothesis to a former friend of mine. He, being the person he is, immediately tried to shoot holes in it. He went home and did some research, and came up with the Shoemaker-Levi 9 comet. I don't know if you remember it, but SL9 hit Jupiter a while back. It shattered into a bunch of pieces, in fact, and then whammo!

Okayfine. I was a little bit bummed that my hypothesis now had holes, but such is life. I dug my feet in and did some more thinking. How could my hypothesis be wrong? And then it hit me.

Jupiter has a greater gravity, it's farther away from the sun, and it's way colder out there than it is here. Any comet that far out is going to be colder, and therefore harder than a comet that's passed the asteroid belt. The sun is farther away and not heating it up as much - thereby making it less dense. And Jupiter's gravity makes everything way heavier than it would be here. Put all that together, and my hypothesis about a comet's affect on Earth still holds water.

Yay.

This was four years ago. Over the weekend, I watched a show on a phenomena I'd come across in my research way back when. It was discussing the Tunguska Event - wherein a comet* exploded in the atmosphere over Siberia. Not IMPACTED... No crater was ever found. It hit the atmosphere and went kablooie. It wasn't a shower of daylilies, but it wasn't a global killer either. Hell, it didn't even affect the atmosphere as much as Krakatoa's eruption. It went bang, knocked down about 1000 sq miles of trees. (A circle about 35 miles in diameter.) There was some heat and fire, but no one got killed**. The northern lights were extra spectacular for a while, but the world survived.

Ummm, that's what I figured four years ago. I knew I was right, dammit. Maybe not in every little detail, but the basic premise was correct.

So I wrote about a killer comet that wasn't killer, and the affect the idea of global death would have on people. I sent out queries and the rejections that came back made me feel like I should be wearing a foil hat to protect me from the government's mind-rays.

Being right feels good, but it doesn't get my book sold. :heavy sigh:

What's really funny is the book isn't really about the damn comet anyway. It's about the fear of a world that thinks it's going to die, and about the lies that can be perpetuated without the public ever knowing the truth behind it (Global warming scare, anyone?). I just use the comet as a backdrop because of its global scale and the whole scare factor behind something that large possibly wiping out life as we know it.

It's a good book, btw.

So, the point I'm trying to make here is that four years ago I knew what I knew, and even though people thought I was a loon***, I stuck to my guns. I wrote my book. Years from now, if it ever gets published, I could be hailed as a friggin' genius. (Or not. Time will tell.) I had the same problem with Caldera - although my theory there hasn't been proven right yet. I even had one agent tell me the premise was implausible. :shrug: Doesn't matter. It works. I've outlined the science behind it. (Without being dry as dirt, btw.) And I know I'm right. I just have to wait for the rest of the world to catch up. ;o)

Chris Columbus knew the world was round. Galileo knew the universe didn't revolve around the Earth. Not that I'm in their league, but the idea is the same. You have an idea, you get laughed at and berated for it, you stick to it anyway because you know it's right.

Ever had an idea other people thought was crazy, but you knew it wasn't? Or is it just me?

* some people still debate whether it was a comet at Tunguska, but the data points to a comet.
** yes, no one got killed because no one lived there at the time, although lots of critters bought the farm that day.
*** I admit to being a loon; I just don't accept their reasoning for thinking I'm one. ;o)

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Scene Setting: How Much is Enough?

Yesterday was unproductive, at least in a writerly way. I did get the lawn mowed, and I'm most of the way through Gena Showalters' latest Lords of the Underworld book. But I didn't get any editing done.

I think part of the reason is that I was afraid I would have to go back and start over on my revisions. Something I read somewhere led me to believe I might not have enough description of the locales. *shrug* Maybe I'll write a post tomorrow about when to listen to advice and when not to, but not now.

Today I'd like to talk about the issue of scene setting. Or if you will, describing the scene behind the action.

As far as I can tell, opinions about this subject differ. Some say describing the setting in detail adds depth and richness to the story. Others say it gets in the way of the plot. Personally, I think it depends on the scene and the story, but that's me. Then there is the old maxim that if the words don't add to the story in some meaningful way, they need to go in the trashcan. How meaningful is a description of the sunrise or the details of a home's decor to a plot?

Example time: In Spectacle, I have a major secondary character racing across the country to save his friends. Everything to this point for him is tension. When he reaches New Mexico, the backdrop of the sunrise in the Sangre de Cristos with the native birds singing and the trees standing as quiet sentinels relaxes the story... until he comes around a bend in the road and sees a line of smoke rising from the spot where his friends should be. (And I'm not talking campfire here, folks.)

In this case, the description didn't drive a damn thing, but it added to the impact of the next piece of the story.

So here I am with Manhunter. The locations themselves are dramatic and beautiful in their own stark way (if you've never driven I-70 from the Colorado border to I-15 in Utah, you're missing something spectacular), but other than the necessity of a certain geographical feature to the plot, the detail isn't necessary. I have already written a certain amount of description - the terrain, a bit of the flora - as I deemed it necessary, but I don't think anyone reading it is actually going to feel like they're there. I don't think they need to at this point. Later, when they're in Northern California, I go into greater depth. I need the reader to be standing in the forest; I want them to feel what the MC is feeling underneath the trees.

I guess I just answered my own question. How much is enough? Enough is whatever amount the story calls for - no more, no less.

Maybe I will go back in my next edit and add a little detail here and there - like seasoning soup. But like seasoning, a little can go a long long way. Peppering a story with description it doesn't need can make the whole thing unpalatable.

Question of the day for you: Do you know of any authors who balance the description thing perfectly? Writers who describe too much or too little? Come on, dish. Personally, when talking too much description, the first guy who comes to mind is James Fenimore Cooper. (But he does it so beautifully, I forgive him every time.)

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Details, Details, Details

Laying in bed last night, I got to thinking about my book (as usual - I'm surprised I ever get to sleep). I realized I need to beef up the details.

No big surprise. My first drafts are always short on details. I usually have whole pages full of nothing but dialogue. Sometimes, though, I write the details because they're necessary to the story as I'm writing it.

As the saying goes, the devil is in the details.

For instance, I had a a problem last week. You see, part of the book is set in Racine, WI. Now, I've never been to Racine, but I used to rep a company based there, and my brother shoots over there maybe twice a year (so he can vet the description for me, if need be). The problem I ran across is I assumed Racine was way north in Wisconsin, and had written the details to reflect that. Then as I was wrapping the scene up, I had to figure out which major airport my characters would need to use, and out came the link for City-Data.com. I typed in Racine, WI. Right on Lake Michigan... Check. Scroll down... Crap. Racine is in southern WI. Midway between Milwaukee and Chicago. Double-crap. The first victim has to be from Racine, or it throws off the whole plot. (I thought about using Green Bay, but the city's too big for my purposes.) The tie-in to all the other bodies has to be in northern WI, or again, it throws off the whole plot. How to fix... How to fix...

After a while, the answer came to me, and everything dovetailed nicely together, but I got hung up in those details. I could've rewritten the whole thing to make it work, and trust me, I thought about it. Thank goodness I didn't do it. The answer really was very simple once I thought about it.

Now, as I was laying in bed last night, I realized the details I haven't yet written are going to hang me up a bit. Not badly, but it's there and I have to deal with it.

I may have mentioned before that I wasn't sure if this book was going to be straight suspense or romantic suspense. Early on, I couldn't see how this tough chick heroine with her hands-off attitude toward the male species could ever make time for romantic involvement. She's fairly well a self-contained individual who doesn't need a man to complete her life. Except that isn't the point of romance. Not needing a man to complete you doesn't mean you never need a man.

So, her romance crept up on her and hit her out of the blue. Hit us both, actually. I wasn't expecting this to happen either. (Funny. That's pretty much how I met my husband, but I digress.) She doesn't want or need a man in her life, but there he is.

Of course, this means I have some major re-writing to do with the first 100 pages, but it'll be worth the work. This, unlike Racine, can be fixed with minimal plot shifting. Not too much, mind you, because I want the reader to be as surprised by this turn of events as she is (and as I was).

I love the details. Sure, the devil's in there, making more work for me, but in the end, the story will be stronger for it.

Have you ever been tripped up by your own details? Have you ever read a book where the author got the details wrong, and how much did it irritate you?

Oh, and speaking of things thought up while laying in bed, I have a way to turn this into a three book series, if the situation arises. I haven't got the plots laid out yet, but I have the two secondary characters in place who could carry their own books.

PS. Speaking of Racine, if you've never had a Danish Kringle, they are the most delicious, to die for pastries ever.