How Long Did It Take...

I’d already planned this week’s topic and then the writing discourse, as some call it, veered toward length anyway. So call it happy coincidence. Or serendipity.

Okay, granted, they were talking about how long a manuscript should be, and we’ve talked about that here before. It’s old news, right? This week, when I’m talking about length, I wanted to talk about time. How long some of this takes.

I’ve blathered on before about how easy it is to follow your favorite writers on social media these days. So many of them are active to some degree on one platform or another. And they toss out advice and updates about their work. Plus, we can find authors at our own level, people who are going through the same struggles and frustrations.

Not surprisingly, we end up comparing ourselves to these other folks. Yeah, there’s dozens of reasons not to, but we can’t help ourselves. It’s human nature. We’re curious how we measure up. Has she written more than me? Does he write faster than me? How did their career take off so much faster than mine?

And a lot of the time, the answers to these questions are a bit intimidating. Maybe even discouraging. I mean, I’ve been working on this book for over a year now and she just pumped one out in eight weeks? What the hell? I know other writers aren’t my competition but seriously... how am I supposed to compete with that?

So the point I wanted to make is that... well, art’s a little subjective. It’s not like a construction project where we can say we broke ground last May and people are moving in this month. A lot of the starting and stopping points of art can be a little fuzzy. And some people... well, play with that fuzz. So to speak.

Like, we’ve talked before about how long it takes to write a book. Some folks consider the starting point when they started outlining. Some consider it when the idea first struck them. And others say they started writing when they typed Chapter One.

Let’s consider my first published novel-- Ex-Heroes. When did I start writing it? Well, I made up a lot of the characters before I hit high school, so that was the early ‘80s. I jotted down my first rough notes in the summer of 2006, but I didn’t start actively working on it until mid-2008. So when did I start? Depending on how you want to look at it, we could say it took twenty-five years or about six months to write.

That’s not even considering most traditionally-published novels go through an editing process that can be a few months, and it might be even more months before the book’s actually out there in the world. So when are we saying the book’s done? When I turn it in? When the publishers edits are done? When the layouts are locked and it goes to print?

Or how about this one--a common yardstick people like to look at. How long was it from when you started writing until your first novel? But again, both of those points are kind of debatable. Yeah, I sold Ex-Heroes in late 2008, but it didn’t actually come out until early 2010. And there were a couple novels before it, but they didn't sell. The first full novel that I actually completed was started in early ‘93 and finished in 2001... but then I spent about three years editing and rewriting. So when was my “first” novel?

And when did I start writing? When I was eight and blocking out original Star Wars stories in my Kenner Death Star playset? When I started using my mom’s massive electric typewriter? When I first started submitting stuff? When I started writing the first novel I actually finished? When I quit my film job to start writing full time? When I quit that job to start writing fiction full time? Any of these is a valid starting point, but they cover about thirty years.

Hopefully you see what I’m getting at. I can easily—and truthfully—say I started writing anytime between 1979 and 2010 and give solid justifications for why that’s the point I chose. Likewise, I can manipulate how long it took to go from “starting to work” to “first sold novel” and make it look really fast or really slow. I mean, we’ve talked once or thrice about the overnight success with a decade or more of work behind them.

And there’s a lot of reasons people might give these different figures. It could be a marketing thing. It might just be what they think counts as actual “writing.” Maybe it’s a deliberate attempt to fudge the numbers to try to make themselves look more impressive. It might be how some MFA professor taught them to do it and they’ve never shaken that particular habit.

My point is... don’t worry about these numbers. I shouldn’t worry abut how long it took to write my book. I don’t have to freak out because it feels like my career hasn’t taken off yet. My speed is my speed. Yeah, we’re all going to compare ourselves to other people’s numbers, but just remember... those numbers may have a bit of range to them.

Next time...

Actually, before I talk about next time—if you happen to be of the reviewing type and have access to NetGalley, my new novel The Broken Room is now there and can be requested. For the rest of you... holy crap, only eighteen more days!

Anyway, next time let’s talk about... the unknown.

(cue spooky music)

Until then, go write.

Let's Talk About Sax

Yes, I went there.

So, more than a few times here, I’ve talked about the need to pare away non-essential things. Characters. Names. Descriptions. Maybe whole chapters. These are all things that start to weigh my manuscript down like concrete blocks as it tries to tread water in my reader’s consciousness. Or something like that.

Maybe a better way to think of them is speed bumps. I might not notice one or two, but hitting four or five in a row is going to get annoying really quick. And hitting one once I get going fast... well, it either means slamming on my brakes or possibly crashing. It’s definitely going to be jarring.

But, as I’ve also tried to say once or thrice before, that doesn’t mean I need to strip everything down to a bare skeleton. There’s nothing wrong with elements that don’t tie directly—or even indirectly—to the plot or story of my manuscript. It’s more about being very careful how and when I deploy them.

And to illustrate this point, I’d like to tell you about Tim Cappello.

Tim Cappello’s a well-known-in-the-industry singer and saxophonist who had regular gigs with Ringo Star, Peter Gabriel, and spent over a decade touring with Tina Turner (he’s in the video for “We Don’t Need Another Hero”). But most of you probably know him for an incredibly tiny background part he had in an ‘80s vampire movie. And just putting those clues together, I bet most of you've already figured out who he is. He’s the legendary “Sax Man” from The Lost Boys.

Think about how weird that is, you immediately knowing who I was talking about. The entire concert scene’s maybe two minutes, and it’s super-generous to say he’s on-screen for twenty seconds of that. So running the math real quick (granted, not my strong suit) he’s maybe... one third of one percent of the movie? 

And let’s be honest. The Sax Man doesn’t even do anything, plot-wise. He’s just window dressing that makes the beach concert feel a little more ‘80s. The whole scene’s pretty much just an excuse for Michael to gaze across the crowd at Star.

So... why is Cappello such an excellent background character in The Lost Boys? One that we all remember thirty years later? More than we tend to remember one of the members of the vampire gang was Bill from the Bill & Ted movies. No, seriously. Alex Winter is one of the vampires. He's the one with the denim vest who gets staked in their cave.

Anyway, back on track...

First off, the Sax Man’s not excessive. I mean, okay, yeah he’s an oiled-up bodybuilder singing and doing hard rock saxophone riffs next to a flaming barrel. No denying that. But he’s the lead performer at a nighttime California beach concert in the late ‘80s. He’s not exactly over-the-top in that context. Plus, like I said, not even half a minute of screen time, and that’s broken into five or six shots. We hear him more than we see him, which also helps hint that he’s much more about the background and the setting than the actual story. He doesn’t even have a name. I mean, we all call him “Sax Man,” but apparently the actual credits at the end of the movie call him “Beach Concert Star” and Wikipedia just lists him as “Saxophone Player.”

Also, we kind of get him out of the way early. The beach concert’s just eleven minutes into the movie. We’ve still got 90% of the story to go, and we haven’t even introduced half the characters yet. It’s not like the movie’s bringing things to a halt so we can cut away to the singer at the concert.

Finally... I mean, he’s cool. He’s good-looking guy singing a high-energy song in front of a crowd. He’s having fun, they’re having fun. If I’m going to cut away from my leads and the plot, I want it to be to someone (or something) interesting. And Sax Man is definitely interesting.

So let’s break this down into some rough rules of thumb.

1) I don’t want to spend a lot of time on things that are just colorful set dressing (even if they’re people). As I’ve mentioned before, pages are precious and I only get so many of them. I can spend time on things not related to my plot... but I probably shouldn’t spend a lot of time.

2) I probably want to do it early. Sci-fi and fantasy editors will usually allow a little extra space for worldbuilding, and everyone expects me to set the tone with a few extra descriptions. But by their very nature, these additional details show up early in my story. If I’m doing a lot of worldbuilding in my third act, there’s a good chance something’s gone wrong.

3) If I’m going to use up a paragraph or three describing something... it should probably be something worth describing. Not something mundane, not something we see every day, not the kind of person we see every day. If it’s not something my characters would pay much attention to, why would I force my readers to examine it in detail?

Easy, yes? Three quick rules. They won’t hold in every instance, but they’re probably worth considering in every instance. If I’ve got a random colorful page describing that bus driver or this door frame, and it only kinda-sorta hits one of those guidelines... maybe that page should be used for something else.

Y’know... maybe something related to the story I’m telling.

Next time, I think I’d like to talk with you about creepy clowns, true love, and one of those common geekery movie flaws I see all the time.

Until then, go write.

And hey... you could listen to The Lost Boys soundtrack while you do.

Steampunk Mechdragon Issues

Like a lot of you, I’m still feeling a little overwhelmed by everything going on right now. Awe-inspiring stuff. Long overdue stuff. But still overwhelming.

I thought about updating my list of top ten B-movie mistakes, but I really haven’t been up for bad movie geekery for a few weeks. So I shelved that idea for a while. Then it occurred to me there’s a related topic I haven’t discussed in... well, years. Not directly, anyway.

It probably goes without saying that I really like genre fiction. I grew up with Doctor Who and Star Wars and comics about Spaceknights who came to Earth to protect us from alien shapeshifting sorcerers. Sci-fi, horror, fantasy—I like reading ‘em, I like writing ‘em.

But you probably knew all of that already.

Point is, I’ve consumed so much of this stuff. In so many formats. A lot of it’s been fantastic. Some of it’s been... not so fantastic.

As I started taking storytelling and writing more seriously, as I started really breaking things down and studying them, I noticed a few similarities. Common problems that showed up again and again, especially in genre stories. Three of them.

To be clear, they’re not confined specifically to these stories—you might see these issues crop up in mysteries or romances or even literary fiction. They’re also not the only problems these stories can ever have (not by a longshot). But it’s kind of amazing how often a problematic sci-fi or fantasy and even horror will have one or more of these three issues.

The first issue is when we bury our stories in too much of our chosen genre. If I have an idea, it gets included in the story. No matter what it is—neat visual, cool character beat, clever way a door opens—I’ll fit it in there. If it was scary in that story, it’ll be scary in my story. Most of us have probably read a genre novel that went to great lengths to explain how the weapons, shoes, uniforms, food, transportation, education, and economics are all very different on that other world or in that not-too-distant future. If it's a magical world, everything is ancient and magical and built by the fae. If it's a sci-fi world, everything has nanites and AI and came from interdimensional aliens. People don’t wear glasses in these stories, they have optykwear, and a good set of optykwear can cost you seven or eight neshseks.

The problem with writing like this is my audience has nothing to connect with as they’re overwhelmed with all these unfamiliar elements. The people are different. The setting’s different. Motivations are different. Yeah, it’s a really cool alternate world where the Dark Ages never happened, all coinage is brass,  and wars are now fought with steampunk robot dragons run by difference engines, but the important thing is that my readers need to be able to understand this world and relate to it, while it’s on the page in front of them.

All the worldbuilding is good, but my story needs to have something my audience can immediately identify with in some way, and it’s best if it’s the main character. Someone who hates their job, who wants something they can’t have, or maybe who just feels like an outsider. A person with a universal need or desire.

When a reader believes in my characters, they’ll believe in what’s happening to my characters. It has to do with willing suspension of disbelief—I can’t believe in the big elements of a story if I don’t believe in the basics of it. Once I’m invested in Wakko’s life, then I’ll be more willing to go with it when he goes to work shoveling coal in the belly of a a giant steampunk dragon (but one day he’s going to be the commodore of the whole mechdragon fleet—you just wait and see)

There’s one very closely related issue to this, so close I’m not even going to branch off and make it a separate thing. Sometimes, all the laying-on of more genre gets a little monotone. Dramatic stories that are non-stop drama. The horror movie that’s nothing but horror. The magical fantasy series where everything is magical and fantastic. No matter how much I love this thing, it gets boring pretty quick when it’s all I’m getting.

We want our fiction to mirror our lives as much as possible, and the truth is very few of us lead monotone lives. They get broken up with moments of laughter (not always at appropriate times), random pettiness, unexpected excitement, casual flirting, and more. Our stories should be the same way.

The second issue happens when I try to explain everything. It’s confusing enough that I dropped readers right into a steampunk mechdragon battle, but now I’m going to pause that battle for ten pages while I explain how mechdragons came to be and where the best coal for their boilers is mined and how the creation of functioning wings (and the required steam- piston musculature) changed the nature of battle and hey I should probably talk about dragon tactics for a bit, right?

I think most people reading this have seen a story or two that suddenly deviated into that sort of excessive, often unnecessary exposition. I’ve read many stories that suddenly go to great lengths to explain how and why the serial killer turned out the way she did. Or how she ended up with superpowers and exactly how they work. Or both. At length.

What this leads to is stories that feel very detailed, but very little ever actually, y’know, happens. Page after page of explanation can add up really fast, and suddenly a third of my book is just... details.  And while I’m going over those details, my characters are just sitting around twiddling their thumbs, waiting for something to happen again. It can also annoy my readers as all this information gets doled out, especially if it’s something that feels unnecessary and unmotivated.

I think there’s two ways to deal with this issue. One is something I’ve talked about here in the past—the ignorant stranger.  If I’m going to explain things, I should have an actual, in-story reason for them to be explained. Wakko may know the day-to-day workings of a mechdragon, but Phoebe’s a stowaway and he needs to help her pass as a crew member or she’ll be “dropped off”... and they’re three thousand feet up. So he has a solid, understandable reason to explain everything and she can ask a lot of the questions my readers probably have.

The other way to deal with this issue is the quick and easy one. Cut it. I can delete anything that isn’t actually necessary to the story. This can be tough, because, I mean... steampunk mechdragon wars! There’s so much cool stuff in those three words. But how much of it do I really need? Is it relevant or is it just me piling more “genre” onto the plot and story? Yeah, ceramic teeth are cool, especially on that scale, and I’ve come up with a crazy way how they’re made, but does my story fall apart if the reader just knows the mechdragon has... teeth? Does it change anything if in their mind they picture the teeth are brass or steel or diamond? Pages are precious—do I really want to spend part of one on this?

The third issue is actually the reverse of the last one. It’s when I don’t explain anything. There’s so much new stuff that there’s no context. I can’t tell if neshseks are coins or bills or maybe they’re not even money. Maybe this world works on the barter system and they’re some kind of gourd. Could be a massage or a sex act or maybe it’s some kind of pet? Maybe it’s a pet that gives great massages?

But it’s not just terminology. The genres also tend to collect mysterious characters who drop vague hints or implied threats for... reasons. Creepy messages appear on walls, sidewalks, computer screens and we never learn how they got there. Disturbing objects are discovered in the attic and never, ever discussed again.

I think there are two general reasons this issue happens. First is that, as the writer, I’ve sunk deep into my fictional world for the past five months and I forgot the reader... hasn’t. They have no idea what a neshsek looks like. Or what it’s used for. Or how many you can seriously expect to get from a relative stranger for two tinted sets of optykwear

The other reason is that people are trying to duplicate the sense of mystery and anticipation they got from another story, but they don’t really understand how and why it worked there. A lot of these weird mysteries are just a general lack. There is no explanation or reason or motivation behind what’s happening in the story. It’s just happening right now because... I wanted to tell a weird creepy story.

A friend of mine gave me a great rule of thumb once, and I think it’s the best way to deal with this issue. I kinda mentioned it up above—my main characters should mirror my audience. If my goal’s to make my audience puzzled and eager to learn more, then really Phoebe should be puzzled and want to learn more. If the reader’s angry about something, Wakko should probably be angry about it, too. Likewise, if Phoebe and Wakko are both really annoyed because they still don’t know what’s going on... well, I can probably guess how my audience feels right now, one way or the other...

Are these the only three problems that might crop up in my genre writing? No, not at all. I have faith in you that you will find awesome, all-new problems. But these are the ones I see appear again and again. So maybe they’re worth looking for in my manuscript. Just in case.

Next time... I’ve got kind of a follow up idea to this. It didn’t really fit here, but it’s a genre problem. Sort of.

Stay safe out there. Wash your hands. Wear your mask.

Until next time, go write.

Wordcount Tips

Look at the Size of That Thing...

Two author-acquaintances of mine (author friends? I guess we’re author-friends) recently mentioned they’re working on big books right now. Which struck me as mildly amusing because the book I’m working on right now is looking to be a bit larger-than-usual for me. And, oddly enough, I’ve seen a few other folks bring up their very big books lately.

So it might be a bit awkward, but, well... let’s talk about size for a few minutes.

One question that comes up a lot in writing discussions is “how long should my book be?” Depending on where it’s getting asked, this can get a few different responses, and these may get very different reactions. Thing is, this is really two questions, and they each have a correct answer. And they’re not always the same answer.

If I’m asking from the writing-as-an-art side of it, then the answer’s simple. Stories can be any length. Any length at all. I can make my book whatever it needs to be to tell the story it needs to tell. Seventy pages long to seven hundred pages long.

If we’re talking about publishing though—writing as a business--the harsh truth is there are a lot of limits on how long a story can be. I’m sure some folks read that and automatically get defensive. They start thinking about the needs of the story and gatekeepers and getting ready to point out two or three exceptions that will prove how wrong I am.

I was once like you. I’d done my research, seen the supposed size limits on first novels and different genres and I laughed. I pitied those people. Because I knew what I was working on was going to blow past ALL those artificial limits.

Then, one day, somebody sat me down (well a few people over a course of time) and started explaining why these limits exist. That they aren’t just some arbitrary decision thrown down by an inherently evil publisher. And then it was much easier for me to understand why I really needed to cut another 20,000 words from the brilliant masterpiece that was my first completed novel.

As we’ve mentioned before, publishing is a business and their job is to make money. Paper costs money. So printing a longer book costs more money (because it uses more paper). This means the book's cover price is going to be higher. And the more expensive the book is, the less likely someone’s going to be able/inclined to pick it up. And they’re definitely less likely to pick up that more expensive book if they’ve never heard of the author

It also means less of other books on the shelves. That price is getting passed on to bookstores, and they don’t have unlimited resources. Buying four or five copies of my big book means a few less copies of other things. Plus, the actual shelf space is a limited resource, so if my book of incredible girth takes up the space of three books... that’s two other books they aren’t going to be able to shelve for every copy of mine they get. So there’s some more math here about how much that book sells and earns versus how much those three books would made and earn. And believe me—the bookstores and the publishers are both running that math.

And some of this gets influenced by the specific audience the book’s trying to reach. For example... romance and mystery novels? The folks who buy these tend to buy a lot of them, often collecting whole ongoing runs. So both of these genres lean toward the smaller side. They’re shorter, less expensive books so people can afford to buy more of them. And it’s been that way for so long that the smaller size (and structure and pacing)  of these genres have come to reflect it, and the audience has come to expect it. It’s like how we all expect movies to fall into a 90 minute-two hour range. Doesn’t mean movies can’t be significantly longer or shorter, but it just instinctively feels a little wrong to us when they are.

What this all means is most publishers don’t want to see a three-inch-wide paperback unless they know they’re going to sell a lot of copies of it. I’m a New York Times bestseller and this is my twelfth full novel I'm working on right now. I’m a known quantity to my publishers with a good-sized fanbase. And I’m still a little nervous about the fact that I’m going to be showing them a book over 150K words.

Now, I can hear gears churning in a few heads already. All publishers want a series anyway, right? I’ll just break my 300K novel up into three 100K books. Problem solved.

Well, yes and no. Hopefully my book had some kind of narrative and dramatic structure to it, and just breaking it up means I’ve shattered those structures. I mean, if at the end of my book the tension’s ramped up to four I’m probably not going to get a lot of folks interested in book two. So splitting things up means I need to restructure everything. That’s going to be a major rewrite or three. Possibly just redoing everything from the ground up.

Well, says InternetDude69, purveyor of wisdom, I’ll just publish it myself. That way those freakin’ gatekeepers can’t turn it down for financial reasons.

True, but most of the POD services are still working off page length to calculate costs, and they’ve got much more hard limits. Just a few pages this way or that can mean a difference of three or four dollars per copy. And somebody’s got to eat that cost, one way or another. This is why I had to cut about 30,000 words out of my book 14—it was with a small publisher who used POD and they couldn’t afford to have it stretch into the next page-range. It was the difference between a $14.99 paperback and a $19.99 one.

Okay, fine, says RealWriter7927. Print’s a dying medium anyway. I’ll just put it out as an ebook. More money for me that way.

This is also an option, sure but... look at the numbers. Shorter books do better as ebooks, especially from self-publishers. The vast number of folks who’ve had any degree of success with ebooks are doing it with books under 100,000 words. I think a lot of them are under 80,000. The “why” of this is a whole different discussion, but for now we just need the simple numbers. Ebooks tend to do better as shorter books.

Now look—if my book’s 250K words long and it absolutely-no-question needs to be that long, no worries. As many people have said, a good book is a good book. But if I’m trying to convince someone to publish that book, their absolute first thought at seeing ~255K words on the cover page is going to be that my manuscript needs a bunch of editing. And the first time they hit something excessive or irrelevant... well, it’s all over then.

Y’see, Timmy pages are precious. My words are precious. I’m only going to get so many, and I don’t want to waste them. There are lengths and sizes for books, and for different genres, and if I shoot straight past those limits with a manuscript two or three times the accepted size... Well, look. It’s not going to be their fault when I’m immediately rejected.

By editors, agents, and yeah probably readers.

Next time, I’m going back into the A2Q to talk about settings.

Until then... go write.