I’ve been thinking about my ‘fluff’ writing I’ve been doing for my own enjoyment and sanity.  On the one hand, it makes me happy, keeps me writing every day and de-stresses me.  On the other hand, I could be writing salable stories instead.  That’s a big other hand.  I’m not going to go all New Years Resolution-y but I do want to write more serious stuff and sell it. 

What makes a story serious?  Well part of it is content.  Writing a space opera story about a former stripper and amateur pornographer turned professional thief is FUN but I really don’t know who’d buy it.  That’s something to consider when you’re in the brainstorming phase of coming up with story topics.  That doesn’t mean any given concept can’t be made serious. Even stripper pornstar sci-fi thieves could be written in a compelling and entertaining way. (Or at least I’m going to try that during revisions this month.)

Identifying the market you want to sell to, say Asimov’s or a themed anthology, and the writing stories tailored to that market is one way to write seriously.  Duotrope.com used to be the go-to website for finding markets that are open for submission.  Since they went to a pay model, I don’t know if that’s still the case but it’s still worth checking out. Checking Amazon.com for electronic and paper subscriptions for your chosen genre also works, plus you can check sales rankings on them.

But a bigger part of writing seriously is taking what you’re writing seriously.  That means writing dialog that is appropriate to the character.  A 18th century romance novel should not contain modern slang….or modern thinking.*  A swordsman for hire will feel different from a conscript from a city impressment.  A famer will think differently and speak differently from a lord.  A Captain of a ship has different responsibilities and pressures than a stowaway.  Treat each character as if they were a real person. Put yourself in their shoes. Then add them into the story.

It goes for your action scenes as well.  Do the research into what violence actually looks like. Most gunfights take place at less than 15 feet and there’s a lot of missing that happens.  Most serious fist fights are over in seconds and then it’s just one guy being beaten down**. Most stabbings take place without the victim even knowing they’re about to be attacked, etc.  “Meditations on Violence” and “Stressfire” are two examples of modern combat analysis that I’ve read.  For Fantasy and Historical stories, look to the classical writers like Xenophon, Tacitus or modern revivalist movements like http://www.thearma.org/.   Think about how a battlefield differs from an alley fight or formal duel.

Take your plot seriously.  Think about the motivations of each actor that moves the plot forward.  Are they internally motivated?  Are the character’s wants and needs internally consistent?  Do their plans make sense? What does everyone know and when do they know it?  What is the goal for each character, each scene, each chapter?  When something goes wrong or gets worse for your protagonist, does it makes sense? Is it due to their actions or is it plot-motivated dictates? (the latter is not good, in my opinion)

Finally, take your story seriously.  What is your story about? What theme are you trying to get across?  What emotion do you want your reader to feel?  Beware of ‘cool’.  Stuff that looks ‘cool’ or sounds ‘cool’ to you may sound silly or ridiculous or unrealistic.  You want to make a ‘cool’ character? Then show that in their reactions, not so much in the situation you’re constructing for them.  You want a ‘cool’ sex scene?  Build up to it, make the motivations clear and believable.  Elmore Leonard talk about ‘leaving out the parts everyone skips’ and there’s a lot of truth to that but you can’t just jump from ‘cool’ stuff to ‘cool’ scene.  Leonard’s novels work because he takes his characters seriously, he takes his story seriously. Not because he only has ‘cool stuff’ in it.

Anyway, this has been me preaching to myself. Hopefully I’m listening :)

*A little modern sensibility is important but a little goes a long way.  Think of it as salt. Add a pinch for better flavor but don’t dump in a whole handful of 21st century baggage

**Though a LOT depends on how motivated or drugged/drunk the people are.  Sometimes it take a whole lot of people to take down even an average-sized crazy person.  Sometimes a fight is over with the first punch (and the guy who lands that first punch is usually the winner).

Well, I missed Friday’s post, sorry about that.  Work.  But I’ll try to make up for that with a two-fer this week :)

I’d like to talk about what’s been going on with my latest editing forays and then I want to talk about the fricking childish screenwriting of “Zero” Dark Thirty*

First the good stuff, though!

I completed my revisions for my Fairwood Writer’s Workshop submission last week, a little ahead of schedule, in fact.  It’s probably still not perfect, I’m sure if/when I get back to it again in a few months, I’ll find stuff that makes me wince and stuff I want to tweak or add in.  (indeed, I already have something in mind for the next draft.  Sigh)  But on the whole, I’m very happy with it. It’s always nice when you read your own stuff and don’t hate it.

My ‘secret weapon’ for the revision?  Reading it aloud. Yep, that’s pretty much it,  Well there was initial spellcheck work and some stabbing attempts at cutting out the sex scene (I left it in, for better or worse) but the most effective use of my time was just reading it aloud and making corrections as I went.  There is a place for thinking about the scenes, the intention and breadcrumb seeding but I caught a lot more errors reading aloud.  It helped me rephrase dialog, caught missing words and helped me heighten the emotion in each thing.

But I do have to say that the Wordslinger’s critiques helped me a LOT, in pointing out characterization issues and my over-long love affair with the word ‘was’ and ‘looked’.  Damn it.

So, editing. I still hate it but reading your work aloud really is the best way, for me at least, to catch errors and hone my prose.

Now on to the hate.  Abbreviated.

Now I didn’t intend to hate “Zero Dark Thirty”.  I paid full price for it, in theaters and I went into it with the expectations that I’d see a movie of quality, even if there was controversial portions.  What I didn’t expect, with an Academy Award-winning director and screenwriter (Kathryn Bigelow, Mark Boal) was a Mary Sue story.

I was going to spend several pages and hours outlining just how many ways we’re told how the main character is: smart, pretty-but-not-having-sex-with-anyone-so-she-can-be-the-virginal-good-girl, determined, committed, paying a TERRIBLE emotional price for being involved with prisoner interrogation, confident, right about Bin Laden when everyone else is wrong and unable to see her brilliance, confident when everyone else in the intelligence community is cautious….sigh. I really, really could go on.

She’s terrible.  Not to slam Jessica Chastain, she didn’t write this tripe, but she had to play it.  She’s basically Bella from Twilight with a bigger ego and even less of a sex life.

I won’t even go into how poorly the actors portraying SEAL team six carry out the raid.  Seriously, comparing these guys to the real thing in “Act of Valor”…sigh. Slow and silly.

I’ll stop there.  Avoid, avoid, avoid.  Unless you don’t care about bad writing and bad characters.  And if that’s the case, why not just watch “Bad Boys” again?

*Can we start with the title? No one in the military calls it ‘zero’ dark thirty.  It’s ‘Oh’ dark thirty.  Idiots.

Editing.  I cordially hate it. I absolutely require it*. I’m going to do it. 

In fact, that’s what my focus has been on this week. I edited one story, re-edited another one (to put it back the way it was originally) and did one complete pass of my first two Smooth Vengeance chapters**.

One thing I have learned that distance helps.  Editing something as soon as the first draft is done is good for catching typos (especially if you read it aloud) but it doesn’t really help with making it better.  To really improve a work, I need to look at it as if someone else had written it.  Don’t ask me why, but I’m better at looking critically at other people’s work than my own. I guess part of it is pride of ownership blinding me to flaws or the story in my head interfering with what’s actually on the page.

I will say that this past week has re-convinced me how important editing is.  I took one of my older stories, one I’m very proud of, and started editing it.  I found lots of mistakes, not just missing words that I thought I’d put in***, but oddly phrased sentences and even character motivations that weren’t clear enough. 

On the other hand, as a writer, you are basically never done ‘fiddling’ with your work.  No matter how perfect it is or was, we just…can’t keep our fingers off things.  This can be dangerous since over-editing, especially after getting peer feedback, can take out the very things that made this story sing to you. It can take out your voice. 

I don’t know what the magic number of revisions is. It’s not ‘one and done’, at least not for me.  But it can’t be so many that it makes you sick of the whole thing****.

For those of you out there, struggling with your own revisions, keep at it.  It is good work, important work, required work even.  Hang in there.

*(my rough drafts are damn rough)

**  Seriously, how many times could I use the word ‘was’?  I blame all the detective novels I’ve been reading this past year.

*** ‘In’ for example is often left out.  Weird.

**** Like I gutted my beloved Angel Odyssey. I really need to fix that book and send it out again.  It deserves better.

I’m not a big fan of New Year’s resolutions.  But I have been thinking about my writing career and how to get it back on track. 

I haven’t been really happy with anything I’ve written lately. I don’t know if it’s the content that’s lacking or if I’m just in a funk.  If it’s a funk, no problem, those pass. I just need to write my way out of it. But if I’m just…amusing myself instead of seriously writing… That’s more worrisome. 

So here’s what I want to do more of, not just this year but going forward, always.

1.        I need to edit my work.  I hate editing. Love writing.  But editing is important.  Sometimes lightning will strike and I’ll have a brilliant idea of how to fix something but too often it’s just a slog. Not fun. Well, this is writing. Writing is hard work.  Writing is not always fun. But if I’m serious about it, I need to be serious about it.  So.  I’ll be re-reading my favorite editing books (“Self-editing for Fiction Writers” to start with), finishing up my Smooth Running edits and editing my short stories more.

2.       I need to submit my work. I have written two novels that no one* has seen. That’s not good or useful.   But first, I need to edit.  So, write, edit, submit. I can’t promise to write one short story and submit one each week but I’m going to try to pump out more content and send it out.

3.       I need to write ‘better’.  I’m still trying to get a handle on what ‘better’ means but I do want to stretch myself and not just write slutty sci-fi for my own amusement.

4.       I need to spend more time with my dog.  This isn’t really a writing goal but having a Rottie pup has been a time sink and I need to not think of him that way. He’s part of the family and he’s a dog. Cats you can ignore (no wonder most writers are ‘cat people’) while you write for hours. Dogs, not so much.  Maybe I can write and have the dog around.

5.       I need to blog more.  Basically, since going full time at Amazon, I’ve let this blog languish. I do have a few readers and I appreciate you and your comments but I also need to blog about my writing to keep myself accountable.  That’s more important to me than just using this as a ‘platform’ (word I’m starting to loathe)