Now then, part two of the miracle is that the first draft of "Mirror Man" is now complete and the editing proces began in earnest today.
With Christrmas fast approaching I'm not sure how far it will be progressed, but I'm on it and that is a significant milestone.
As the season seems to be well and truly upon us, I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a healthy and happy 2008.
I sent my pitch for "Mirror Man" in to Bookends, LLC for a critique, a few weeks ago.
The response was not only very complimentary and encouraging - particularly as I'm now first-drafting the final chapter - but it gave me some invaluable pointers on how to polish it further and increase my chances of catching a prospective agent's attention.
The Pitch:
Valentine is a Child of Loki and one of the original Berserker tribesmen of Norse Folklore. With unobstructed access to the minds of his chosen victims and the ability to assume their precise physical characteristics, he takes what he wants, when and from where he pleases. He is the ultimate identity thief, unconstrained by the password-encrypted barriers his human counterparts face. Only a conscience and the inherent loneliness his immortality brings, stand between him and the decadent life of leisure lead by his brothers and sisters.
The Critique:
I love this! I really think this sounds cool. My only suggestion is not to let it dwindle out. Give us the conflict in the last sentence. What is this book about and what does Valentine face? I hope the book isn’t entirely an internal battle for Valentine on whether to use his powers or not. That would be boring. No, I want to know what he’s going to be up against in this book. If you can nail that last line you have an absolute winner here.
I'll get to work in that final sentence of the pitch soon, hopefully incorporating more specifics on the conflict.
Many thanks, Jessica!
It’s been an interesting week, with a few days spent in Louisiana and a few good solid hours of writing ‘Mirror Man’ each day.
I love the drive home fromhere as I avoid I-10 for as long as possible, taking the scenic route along the edge of the lake and then follow the coast road back into Texas.
In the summer, the drive always brings encounters with wildlife; turtles and occasional gators in the road. I stop and pick up the turtles, saving them from certain reptilian pancakedom, but the gators just get a blast on the horn and a few angry revs of the engine. After that, they’re on their own.
The coast road inspires me to pull over and take a small walk on the sand. I miss living right on the ocean and when ever I find myself on a quite shore, I make a promise that one day I’ll move back to a coastal address, preferably a Caribbean one.
Anyway, back on topic…
I’ve struggled with defining the genre of ‘Mirror Man’. The protagonist is the direct descendant of a Norse God, which might place it firmly in the realms of a fantasy novel, although there is little reference or relevance to his godly heritage, beyond immortality.
I’m a huge fan of Neil Gaiman’s works and I would like to think I could occupy the same genre as ‘American Gods’ or ‘Anansi Boys’.
That being said, there are some gruesome scenes in my novel and some elements that I’d like to believe were psychological horror.
In short, I’m not sure how to classify it at the moment so, as a procrastination tool, I thought I’d set out my understanding of the various genre options.
Mystery/Suspense
Works that usually revolve around a mysterious or unexplained event or a crime that is not solved until the story comes full circle, to keep the reader in suspense. A good mystery/Suspense novel, for me, follows the process of solving the mystery, rather than the event or crime itself. It presents puzzles and red herrings for the reader to digest and analyse.
According to my google searches, subgenres include: historical, detective, supernatural, noir, detective fiction, and Miss Marple type whodunits.
Thriller
Danger-filled plots with high stakes, where the protagonists and their loved ones are in serious jeopardy. Although thrillers, like mysteries, often involve solving of a crime, the primary conflict is often imminent threat that the protagonists must overcome at all costs.
Crime Fiction
Obviously, the plot of a crime fiction novel focuses on the actual planning and perpetration of a crime rather than the detection and bringing to justice, the criminals.
Fantasy
Fantasy works often contain elements that are not of this world, such as mystical creatures, giants, faeries, goblins, gnomes, wizards, and witches. Magic, spells, swords and sorcery, supernatural powers, talking animals, and fanciful kingdoms abound in Fantasy works. Plots often centre around a quest, damsels in distress, epic battles of good verses evil.
Subgenres include mythology, dark fantasy, and graphic novels.
(So far, I think I’m still in this genre…)
Science Fiction
These are stories with a basis in the futuristic - a well-crafted blend of scientific fact andfiction. Science, both real and imagined (but with a basis in reality), contributes to the storyline.
It would seem easy to blur the lines between Science Fiction and Fantasy, wouldn’t it?
Historical Fiction
Stories based in a particular era of the past, often using a genuine setting, place or event such as the American Civil War, The French Revolution, the reign of Elizabeth I, etc.
Historical fiction is often quite literary work and the historical period is expressed in the language of the prose. Even in fictional tales, accurate historical facts and details are employed to bolster the story.
Chick Lit
Usually light, life experience based tales aimed at and about women. The protagonist(s) usually experience conflicts of a love/relationship/career nature. Bridget Jones’ Diary comes to mind.
Women’s Fiction
Again can be simply stated as fiction aimed at and about women. However, women’s fiction tends towards a greater depth and literary tone than chick lit.
Commercial Fiction
Based on heavily conceptual hooks and plots, appealing to a wide audience. The plot is the key in commercial fiction, with a strong narrative storyline, rather than literary prose or internal character conflicts.
Horror
The primary intent is to frighten. Horror can be based in extreme gore, graphic violence, or tense psychological suspense. Supernatural folklore, encompassing creatures who prey on humanity often fill the genre. – Vampires, werewolves and so on. The subgenres list seems endless and almost any genre with an element of terror fits here.
I have some elements of horror by way of a few gory scenes and some psychological suspense. Perhaps it’s a dark fantasy?
Literary Fiction
The quality of writing is valued above all else in literary fiction. Plot and commerciality are secondary to the development of story through prose. Descriptive narratives abound as the art of writing is explored.
Nope…nothing here for me.
Romance
Love stories set against dramatic backdrops, passion and mostly a ‘and they lived happily ever after’ resolution.
I think I’ll stick with ‘dark fantasy’ for now but if I need to change focus slightly, to attract the attentions of a specific agent or publisher, I have a few options.
Right, the sun is shining and the road is clear. I’m going to put the roof down and cruise home along my back roads and coastal routes and hope i don't get pulled over by a local cop with only two teeth, who calls me 'boi'.
I'm struggling.
Mirror Man has reached that stage; the final conflict is afoot and the denouement hot on its tail. The problem is, I am struggling with the motive of one of the players, and each time I try to draft the scene, I have recollections of the Pam Ewing 'season long dream'. Back then I didn't know what "Deus ex Machina" meant, but I knew shitty story-telling when I saw it!
My current dilemma involves the motivation of an immortal character, one similar to Valentine, the protagonist of my novel.
Here's a little more blurb:
Valentine is a Child of Loki and one of the original Berserker tribesmen of Norse Folklore.
With unobstructed access to the minds of his chosen victims and the ability to assume their precise physical characteristics, Valentine takes what he wants, when and from where he pleases.
He is the ultimate identity thief, unconstrained by the password-encrypted barriers his human counterparts face. Only a conscience and the inherent loneliness his immortality brings, stand between Valentine and the decadent life of leisure lead by his brothers and sisters.
The plot thread that's causing me concern is this: Valentine's brothers and sisters, lead my his 'mother figure' want him back in the fold, but I can't seem to come up with a plausible reason why a group of immortals, capable of literal identity theft, would so desperatly need one more in their number!
"Love" is not going to save the day - they are an emotionless bunch - and the reason needs to be something far less noble. Everything I've come up with so far has been so cliché, so clearly contrived, that my desk now has a forehead-shaped dent in it!
I think I have a solution, I type away for several hours then read back what I've written and groan. 'World domination? Is that the best you can come up with?'
If any of you out there are the product of a God/Human relationship, have the power to take on the external appearance of any living thing you can touch, and have more money than you can spend - even in your immortality, what drives you? What goals do you have? What dreams do you harbour?
Throw me a fricken' bone, will ya?
When I first started writing with a view to getting published, my methods were quite haphazard. I’d come up with an idea or find a prompt in a literary magazine competition and allow the kernel of a story to roll around in my head like a snowball, gathering weight and girth, until I was ready to start writing.
At some point along that writing path I would go back to the beginning, essentially to refresh myself of the premise, and find myself spending hours – sometimes even days – fine tuning a single scene. I would become so caught up in the detail that the story itself lost momentum. Additionally, I invested so much in the scene that it became a cast in stone element of the story, regardless.
By nature, I lose interest easily. I’m not quite Homer Simpson - The problem with first person POV is…Oh look, a split infinitive! – but, when the story doesn’t move from my head to the screen at a fair clip, my mind starts leaping ahead to the next idea. That dictated a more structured approach to drafting would be required, if I was going to successfully complete a story.
So I started writing a brief scene-by-scene draft:
1. Danny prepares a birthday surprise to bring to his girlfriend’s apartment and wake her with breakfast in bed and an expensive gift.
2. Danny arrives to find her ex-boyfriend’s car in the drive. Internal struggle = silent retreat or confrontation?
3. etc.
This approach gave me a direction from the outset and immediately improved my ratio of completed to commenced stories but new problems arose; while I was not dropping back into earlier scenes and fine tuning them to death mid flow, I was still writing each scene in full detail before moving to the next. The effect was, by the time I’d reached the end of the draft I had no energy or enthusiasm to go back and improve the areas that needed work. I can see this in some of those earlier stories if I read them back now – they are still not bad, in my humble opinion, but they could be so much better if I’d aggressively edited them after finishing the first draft.
Now I have employed yet another system which, based upon the speed and ease “Mirror Man” is approaching the end of the first draft, is my most suitable yet. I started out by writing a synopsis of the story. I then took a notebook and jotted down brief physical and mental characteristics of the main players, details of anticipated locations and any other pertinent information that needed to be carried throughout the story.
From there I drafted the outline of the story, usually writing a sentence or two for each intended chapter - sometimes a little more if I had some vivid ideas for the scene.
Once that outline was completed, I looked at it globally, to see where foreshadowing and back story might be useful and then set off writing the first draft. While I wrote that first draft, new ideas came to mind, secondary plot threads, enhanced character details etc. but rather than get bogged down, I made notes and moved on.
I expect to finish this first draft in the coming weeks and at that point I’m going to put “Mirror Man” away for at least two weeks before taking out those notes, returning to Chapter One, and enriching the prose.
For example, Chapter 1 begins:
A glass-walled restaurant, slowly revolving 800 feet above the bright city lights of Las Vegas seemed a far from ideal dining experience for a man afraid of heights, confined spaces and crowds.
"Agora-acro-claustrophobia?" Valentine asked, eyebrows raised.
It sounded too ridiculous to be true and, squeezed into a large red Hawaiian shirt and cargo pants, the little man looked as if he should be joking; he was the embodiment of the Pillsbury doughboy on vacation. The expression on his face, however, was as sober as a ‘Mothers Against Drunk Drivers' meeting.
Pillsbury took a handkerchief from his pants-pocket and dabbed at the sweat that ran like a mountain spring from the dome of his bald head. "I'm not sure that's a real word, but yeah, it sums up the condition pretty well."
"So what possessed you to have dinner at the ‘Top of the World' restaurant?" Valentine continued, hoping conversation might distract the man from his impending coronary.
"My psychiatrist said I needed to face my fears," Pillsbury said, unleashing another barrage of finger-prods upon the elevator's call button.
"Sound advice, no doubt, but are you sure he meant you to face them all at once?"
I find myself in the unusual position of having both the time and the inspiration to develop 'Mirror Man' by several chapters. It has been rare lately for these two cruial ingredients to coincide.
But coincide they have and yesterday I sat down at the computer with a coffee and a seed of an idea for a sub-plot and before I knew it, I had 2,000 words drafted and a cold cup of coffee.
The thing that got my juices flowing is that this sub plot has been derived directly from actual events in my own life, several years ago. Taking those events and molding them into a fictional scene has been both an easy and a very satisfying task. I had great fun recalling the little hideaway bar in Paris where the events took place and recreating it on paper, together with its occupants. I then found equal joy in putting my characters into that setting and employing bucket-loads of creative lisence in retelling a very personal story.
The old addage of 'write what you know' certainly rings true in terms of ease of creativity. It remains to be seen, of course, if writing what I know interests anybody but me! The test will be when I polish the chapter today and send it out for critiquing.
My first draft chapters usually run at about 1,800 - 2,000 words. Once I've completed the entire first draft I'll go back and edit, usually bringing them up to around 2,500 words with added detail and missed logic from the first draft.
This chapter length isn't something I deliberately set out to achieve, it's just a natural break point in my story telling methods. When I'm reading I tend to prefer shorter rather than longer chapters and so I think my writing naturally follows a similar path.
So last night I came upon a minor problem: while drafting a bar scene in which the protagonist and a some support characters do a bit of bonding and foreshadowing, I'd reached my natural cut-off point but still had a large chunk of work to do. Valentine, the hero of 'Mirror Man' is about to reminisce with a little vignette which is intended to both solidify his love for his lost Father and raise questions about his real age.
Now, if I was writing a screenplay this would be easy; we'd either fade to a black and white sequence or have a 'Scooby Doo' moment where the screen goes all wobbly. But, in a novel, I'm not sure if a separate chapter for the flashback scene would be too clumsy?
Without a separate chapter however, I'm going to have one chapter in the book that's almost twice as long as the others and I don't know if that's equally jarring for the reader?
I think I will initially separate the flashback into its own chapter and see how it flows when complete. Any ideas? Have you ever been disturbed by a chapter that significantly differed in length from the main body of the story? Let me know...
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