Writer’s dilemma.

I’ve started the edits on The Devil in Chains, my Dark Heart prequel novella which is due to be published by Pantechnicon in two parts starting in August. The feedback from my readers has been very good, but there are a few kinks to iron out before it’s ready to go live.

As I’ve talked about before, first person can be quite a hard style to get to grips with, especially if your narrator thinks in pseudo-Victorian parlance. When it works, it’s immense fun because the structures and pattern just tumble out into an entirely agreeable sequence. Them Victorians, they knew how to write!

One of the things that editing The Devil in Chains has drawn my attention to – as I alluded to in my previous post – is that this style is fine when the story is told by a single character, but when split into half a dozen, it’s a lot of work. Work has paused on Dark Heart because I found the current chapter quite hard to pull together, and this isn’t the first time this has happened. The danger is that if the writing is hard or difficult, the reader will see this immediately. Likewise, if you’re not enjoying writing it, the reader is not going to enjoy reading it.

Perhaps a few day’s break to get the novella into prime shape is all that is required. But perhaps I need to do a bit of homework with a more linear, standard third person novel first. I’ve got that plot for my superhero novel pretty much worked out in my head – it’s a three-act story, told from two perspectives, and would come to about 80,000 words.

If I can get that done in a couple of months, would that be good legwork? Would Dark Heart benefit from a tad more experience and practice? Or am I just shirking away from hard work?

I’ll print out and read what I’ve done on Dark Heart so far, and continue the edit on The Devil in Chains this week. In the meantime, if anyone has any suggestions, feel free to post a comment!

Well, it did seem like a good idea at the time. Actually, it’s still a good idea, and really it was a very obvious decision right from day 1. In fact, there wasn’t even another option under consideration – Dark Heart was meant to be written in the first person. Third person? No way – this is Dr Jackson Clarke’s story.

Except I also decided that it wouldn’t just be his story. First person is great, but it can be limiting by its very nature – a single character, unless they’re in every single scene, doesn’t see everything that’s going on. He or she is going to view the events of the narrative through their own eyes and from their own point of view, preconceptions, agendas, assumptions and all.

In a story as large as Dark Heart, this isn’t going to work. There is too much going on. So I borrowed a technique introduced to me when I was about eight years old by Donald Cotton’s wonderful, wonderful Target novelisation of the Doctor Who story The Romans. For this book, Cotton abandoned the standard format of converting TV script to third-person prose, and instead told the story from the first-person perspective of about half a dozen characters, who rotate through the chapters.

Ok, nothing new there. Bram Stoker did it 1897, and he probably grabbed the idea from someone else anyway. But as far as I can tell, it’s not a common technique. Now I know why.

It’s freakin’ hard work, that’s why.

So take Dark Heart. I’m on 16,052 words, with 83,948 to go. The book opens with an account by a nameless narrator, detailing a gruesome task he was forced to undertake once upon a time in the African jungle.

The bulk of the book – what has been written, and what has yet to be written – is Jackson Clarke. Finding his voice was no problem, and he’s a lot of fun to write.

The hard part is the inbetween stuff. While our first narrator returns later, he’ll be talking from a different timezone altogether. Then there are the two chapters that belong to Zoe Bellamy, and she always “talks” in the present tense. Well, she’s telling you what she was doing! Tonight I’ve got about halfway through a military report from RSM Allen – he’s not the usual compiler of these things, so he doesn’t fit regulation style, but he’s doing his best. He’s short and to the point, as any good soldier would be.

Last night I actually jumped ahead to a standalone chapter I’ve been wanting to write for a while. Here, we listen in to a bit of street theatre. And coming up are a couple of entries from Macmillan Brown, the man from the ministry who has an agenda of his own.

And finally, our Occult-Detective himself, Alexander Bellamy, gets to have his say towards the end as Dr Clarke becomes (temporarily) incapacitated.

So in theory, it should be grand, and so far it’s reading pretty well. But hot-damn, it’s hard work! Harder than usual, I mean. Half a dozen first-persons, past and present tense, two (or is it three?) time periods.

Hard, but fun. No point doing it if it isn’t! And thanks very much to Rob in Denver, whose fancy wordcount tracker is telling me that I’ll hit 100,000 words on September 10th. Ahead of schedule? Oooh… back to the typing!

I’ve finally figured it out. Two days of wrestling with Zoe’s new chapter and going not far (well, 1405 words, but that was damned hard work), and now I know why. I didn’t outline it.

Y’see, I’m an organised person. Too organised. Making lists is an actual hobby of mine. Put it this way: if I have a day off, I make a big list of all the fun things I need to do that day, and if I don’t tick them all off I get annoyed with myself. Did someone say OCD?

Anyway, the idea for the new chapter came to me only a couple of weeks ago. I thought it would be a good bridge between two events – rather than have one character sit down with two others and TELL them about what she just did, I thought it would be much better to SHOW what she just did. And of course that is perfectly true. Plus, Zoe gets another chapter all to herself later in the book, so by giving her an extra one right at the beginning, it helps to introduce the reader not only to her character, but to the style of the book. Dark Heart is, by the way, almost entirely first-person, with the narrative being shared out by a handful of characters in their own chapters. Actually it’s mostly seen from Dr Clarke’s point of view, but allowing Zoe to tell her own story at this particular stage fits perfectly.

Now I certainly wasn’t making it up as I went along – I know some writers do this, but I honestly think it shows in the finished piece. I’ve outlined Dark Heart from beginning to end, but this chapter wasn’t around back then. So in my mind I just identified a beginning, middle, and end, and sat down to start typing.

Big mistake. Zoe and Nick race off into the night, eager to get a close-up look at the epicentre of the London explosion. They need to reach a cordon, find a way past, make a shocking discovery, then quickly split up with Zoe running off to meet her brother and Dr Clarke at the St James’ Park Airdome, and Nick off back to her office.

So 1000 words in, and Zoe and Nick are hiding in an alleyway, wondering what to do next. I’m sitting at the keyboard, wondering what to do next. I tried to figure out why this apparently simple chapter was being so difficult to write, but couldn’t work it out. I hit 1405 words and called for time-out.

In hindsight, the problem is obvious. I didn’t outline it. I’d created my own problem, and one that a lot of people make when starting out as a writer.

There is a difference between an idea and the plot. An idea is the seed, the spark that sets it all off. It could be the central concept of the story, or a little side-detail. But an idea is NOT the plot. Until now, Zoe’s chapter has existed only as an idea, and by fooling myself that this would be a short, easy section to write, I mistook the idea for the plot and got stuck. I’ve seen it happen with others – go to an convention or panel or workshop, and people in the audience will always ask the same thing of a successful (ie, published) novelist: “I keep coming up with great stories, but when I start writing I get stuck on page 3. How do you do it?!” The problem is that they’ve confused the idea with the story. Sounds obvious, but actually it can be difficult to understand. And look, I know this myself, but that didn’t stop me being caught out!

The solution: take some time, outline the chapter. Figure it out, run it through your mind, note it down. Then start writing! Bingo, should be good to go.

The thing is, if you find what you are writing is hard to finish, or boring to write, then there is a 100% chance that your reader will find it hard to finish and boring to read. Your mood is reflected in what you write – if you’re forcing it out, it’ll show instantly. And the plotting-as-you-go really isn’t for me. Tolkien didn’t outline The Lord of the Rings, he made it up as he went along. And man alive, does it show.

So back to the plan. Tonight: read through Zoe’s chapter (what there is of it), plot it out from the beginning to end. Tomorrow: finish the sucker. And by finish, I don’t mean rewrite (because editing as you write is made of pure fail), I mean finish it off. I’ve got 1405 words there and it would be silly to waste them! But at least I’ll know where I’m going, and before no time Zoe will be relaxing in that wicker chair with G’n'T, floating high above the south of England.

And we’re back into it. This is a 100,000 word SF novel that I want people to read, like, and buy. Which means I have to actually write the thing. Sounds logical, but I’m sure there are a lot of writers out there who have faced the garganuan problem of SITTING DOWN AND WRITING.

I’m serious. Writers love their craft – no point doing it if you don’t! – but what we really love is not writing, it’s having written. The other day I was running through a final edit of The Devil in Chains, my short novella prequel to Dark Heart, before sending it out to my readers, and I got quite a sense of satisfaction as I hefted the 80-page A4 print-out. It’s only 25,000 words, but that’s actually a fair chunk.

But writing itself can be painful. Oh god, it’s like sweating blood. Every word you write absolutely sucks. Each paragraph just shows the world how awful you are. Perhaps writing isn’t my thing, you say to yourself. I could stop now and do the dishes, and take up painting instead.

Much like an athlete breaking the pain barrier, the thing that separates writers from people who want to write is that we keep going. Yep, that last couple of sentences were freakin’ terrible. Here comes another one. Ouch!

And then 100,000 words later you have yourself a book.

Of course not every writer feels like this. I’m sure for some it all just floats along and it’s all entirely pleasurable. And I’m not saying writing is actually slow, or that writers like me have difficulty in getting the words down. I don’t have writer’s block – in fact I’m pretty sure there is no such thing. I can type pretty much as fast as I can think, and as soon as the blank page is up the adventures continue and the prose flows. Lousy, awful, stinking prose. Yeesh.

But a day later, and I’m re-reading the previous night’s effort, and I’m completely hooked. That’s not bad, actually. Sure, lots to edit and fix, but it’s pretty good, and if I like it then perhaps other people will as well.

So that’s the process. Not for all writers, but for a lot, including big names and successful novelists. It’s a strange job – it’s immensely enjoyable to create a story and to see it come to life and unfold and expand in ways you never thought of. It can also be very painful to place ass in chair, power up the computer, and actually type some words. But hey, who wants an easy life.

Tonight I’m back in the action, and have done maybe half of Zoe’s new chapter, where she and an ex-colleague from the Society of Arts, Nick (short for Nicola, of course) try and take a closer look at the disaster area, only to make not one, but two quite startling discoveries. Monday’s plan is to knock that chapter off, so we can get back to the airship journey to Africa on Tuesday, which is where we return to my original synopsis.

I had a wee surprise when I updated my progress spreadsheet – for some reason, I said Chapter 2 Scene 2 was an impressed 4000 words, when it’s actually only 804. So despite a nice run this evening, I’ve gone backwards a little since my last post and am on 11258 words, with 88742 to go. Depending on time tomorrow, I’ll aim to get that under 88000.

Because every sweat-soaked, hard-won word is progress.

Ok, July has arrived. House guests have left. The sunshine hours may be slowing decreasing now, but summer is starting to get warm. Perfect time to get down to work – my deadline is 91 days away!