A.J. Maguire

Category: Uncategorized

  • Research and Fiction

    Way back at the beginning of the year I participated in James Patterson’s Master Writing Class, which I recommend to all writers out there. I promise, you’ll glean at least one thing from that class that’s worth the admission price.

    Such as the Outlining process, which has been golden for me. I took a whole month and did nothing but edit the outline, layer the outline, add character notes and reminders and subplot things in the margins of the outline … And yes, the product I am working with today to get this new project done is 100% better than if I’d just done it my usual way.

    And I’m enjoying every chapter. Nothing feels dry. I’m excited to get out of bed and start my writing every day.

    So!

    Where does that leave me today?

    Well, it leaves me smack in the middle of Chapter 7 where, in the middle of my outlining craze, I decided I wanted to have Devon stumble over a Hacker news report. The original idea was to have illegal or “underground” podcasters.

    I enjoy podcasts/webcasts that are educational and such, so why not add them to my fiction? And while I’m at it, why not add social activism as part of the reason these guys are illegal?

    Seriously.

    I was so excited, I started building this little social activist underground podcast/hacker thing and began dragging in historical elements to help cement them in the novel. And for creative flavor, I chose to make them fans of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables …

    And now we have to put on the brakes.

    Because I realized after having plotted all this out that I might need permission to use anything from that book. So in the middle of researching Saturn (where much of this book takes place) I suddenly had to look up copyrights and public domain.

    Happily, Les Miserables is a public domain work, meaning I can quote and reference and tip my hat to it all I want without worrying about people coming after me.

    For anyone out there who might want to know, a very easy rule of thumb is that anything published before 1923 is public domain. You can use it. There are other rules and such, but that’s the easiest one to understand. The rest require a bit more leg work on your part to find out. If you want more information, this website was very helpful.

     

  • Confronting Reality

    In the last couple of weeks I’ve revisited Les Miserables. I do this every now and then because the story is rich and the music is beautiful and, while supremely tragic, it confronts a profound reality that forces me to stop and think about my life.

    Each time I revisit the story I find myself connecting with a different character, be it the greedy inn-keeper or the criminal on the run or the single-minded officer, and each time I sit back and ask myself how I can make such vivid, real characters in my own fiction.

    This time, however, I came to the conclusion that I can’t make such characters because I am unwilling to break my own heart.

    For example, Fantine and Cosette.

    As a mother, I can’t imagine being separated from my child for any real length of time. The very idea squeezes something in my chest and I have to shove it away. Moreover, as a daughter I cannot imagine losing my mother while she is so far away.

    It hurts to even think about it.

    Comparatively speaking, I have lived a very charmed life. My parents may be divorced, but they are both alive. I may be a single parent, but my son is healthy and strong and full of adventure.

    How then does someone whose life has been so blessed even begin to settle into the mindset of a character who has had none of these things? How do I push past the heartbreak to really hear the character and what they have to say?

    Beyond my own cowardice at living in so dark a place for the length of time it will take to write this sort of character, there is a fear that I will get it wrong.

    Rather than writing a character whose tragedy draws readers into the same introspective state that Les Miserables manages to give me, I fear that if I attempt writing this way that my own pity for these characters will shine through and thus cheapen the whole experience.

    Yes, what happens to Fantine is pitiable, but you never lose sight of who she is in the story.

    And that’s the balance I am trying hard to find as an author. I need to be able to confront the ugliness of the world without losing the beauty in the people. And in order to do that, I have to put my big-girl pants on and be brave enough to break my own heart.

     

  • Killing the Hero

    I’ve killed off characters in my books. There are several in particular who I mourned as the author, and still others who I really hadn’t noticed. It seems to be a popular past-time in fiction to strategically murder personalities that we, the readers or viewers, have fallen in love with.

    I know everyone hated to see Coulson go in Marvel Avengers, myself included. But then, Joss Whedon has made a name for himself as one of those directors who has no qualms offing a beloved character for the sake of driving up tension. But, of course it’s more than that.

    Yes, the tension goes up, but it also has a profound effect on all the other characters on either the page or the screen. As storytellers, we’re told this is good. And in part it is. Life is not without loss, and storytelling is an art that is at its heart about life in all its gritty, beautiful detail.

    However …

    It’s becoming a cheap trick.

    Without spoiling dozens of popular stories across several venues (TV, Movies, Novels) I can say that I have seen no less than 7 traumatic deaths in the last couple of years alone. Some of them I even knew were coming at the very start of the story, which is a problem in and of itself.

    As a storyteller myself I have to sit up and take notice. While I understand the impact a death like that has on the story-line and on the other characters, I have found myself sitting back as a reader/viewer feeling cheated and manipulated by the author/director.

    This should alarm us.

    We are becoming desensitized to this sort of story mechanic. That’s not to say we can’t keep using it, but more to say that we must be very, very careful when we do. If we must kill off a beloved character, then it has to hit our emotional buttons on every level. It has to mean something both to us as authors and to the story itself, or our readers will feel the cheapness of it.

     

  • Tapped Giveaway!

    Hurray! My birthday is this week!

    And in celebration of being alive and stuff my novel Tapped is FREE for Kindle devices and apps through tomorrow, the 26th of April.

    Tapped is my “underground railroad in space” novel. The outline I’ve been working on is for its sequel, which I hope to have out for sale sometime next year. I absolutely love the Barlow family and their quirky, sometimes strenuous relationships.

    Jorry and Seach Barlow have become my favorite couple to write about because of their awkward history and the very real self-doubts that keep cropping up between them. And really, I’ve just decided that I’m a hopeless romantic so love stories are just going to happen when I write. (But … you know … not an actual romance novel. Because I can’t seem to write those without turning seventy shades of red.)

    Anyway! The Kindle giveaway ends on Wednesday. If you’d like a free science fiction novel about refugees in space, deserters from a tyrannical government, and a close-knit family unit just trying to survive, then snag a copy while you can.

    Also … Happy birthday to everyone who was born in April! It’s an awesome month of the year.

     

  • Art vs Craft

    Next week is my last week going through Dead Weight’s outline. The last three weeks have been a fun exploration of this story and what I want it to say and I’ve learned a great deal. I highly doubt James Patterson will ever peek at this blog, but if he does he should know he has my eternal gratitude. That section of his class alone was worth the admission price.

    Exactly what have I learned in this process?

    Well … I’m sure we all know that every writer is different and the way they get words onto paper is going to be personal at some level. There are people who shun outlines completely and there are people who can’t start a novel without them.

    Personally, I couldn’t start a novel with an outline but at around the three quarter mark in the book, I couldn’t finish one without an outline either. So at that point I would stop, go back and make a complete outline of the book so that all the subplots and things could tie together.

    There’s nothing wrong with any of that.

    But somewhere in the middle of this process with the outlines I took a new ownership of this story. It was always mine. The characters and the plot and the theme I had in there was all my content, but I only had a flimsy handle on it. Like it was driving itself and I was just interpreting what needed to be said (or misinterpreting in some places.)

    Going through the outline again and again, challenging myself to tighten chapters, to focus on what is actually supposed to be revealed through each scene and character and twist, not only made my understanding of the story better but gave me a sense of control that wasn’t there before.

    Writers walk a fine line between Art and Craft and I think sometimes we lean too heavily on “art.”

    “Art” is when you just can’t find the inspiration to get words on paper. Yes, of course we need inspiration. The problem is that we bum around and say we just don’t have the right “mindset” to work that day instead of actively seeking that inspiration.

    “Craft” is when you sit down at your computer at your given writing time and, shocker, you start writing. It’s better if you have inspiration and art on your side when you sit down to craft, but it’s not a guarantee.

    The trick is getting “craft” to really direct your “art” and, in my case at least, this experiment with outlines has done that.

  • Editing Outlines Take II – Character Depth

    Alright! So last time I talked about the notion of editing an Outline before you begin writing your book. This was a new concept that I learned via the James Patterson Master Class, which I highly recommend to any authors out there who haven’t given it a shot yet. Even if you don’t write suspense, the man’s got some serious skills that you can adapt to your own writing.

    Such as editing an Outline before you begin writing.

    It really is helpful, I swear. And no, my Muse hasn’t exhausted itself on this story-line because I’ve written this detailed Outline. I thought it would, but it hasn’t.

    If anything, my Muse is more jived to be working than ever because editing the outline is allowing me to see the story from all corners, adding depth and tension and character development.

    I’ve combined chapters or cut chapters that had no real use, which I know is going to save me editing time once the rough draft is complete. I’ve explored the peripheral characters enough that I know who they are and what they want and HOW they impact both the story.

    Let me give an example.

    In Tapped I had to edit and edit and edit the character of Kenzie Torda. She kept falling flat on the page because, beyond knowing that I needed her there to cause plotty problems and that she liked music, I hadn’t explored who she was. One of my wonderful Beta readers pointed her out to me (Thank you, LJ Cohen!) and I really struggled with her.

    It made the editing process a bear.

    In fact, I think I had to take a week just to figure her out, and then it took another week fixing everything to give her more depth.

    In Dead Weight – the sequel to Tapped and the book I’m currently experimenting with Outlines on – I have a ship full of people.

    People.

    Not extras.

    Not minor characters there to drive my main characters insane, but real people with real motivations that make sense.

    Like Doctor Morrison Conroy, a single father and brilliant physicist who finds himself confronted by a daughter he barely knows anymore. But rather than focus on his daughter, he points his rage toward the others in the book because that is somehow easier than accepting he might have failed her.

    A lot of tension and strife comes from having this man on board, but more than that … he’s a solid personality and he makes sense. And the trouble he causes (or doesn’t cause) in the book makes sense too.

    But I wouldn’t have discovered this about him until 5 edits later (and possibly a year or two into the work) if I hadn’t done this Outline process first.

    Seriously.

    I was a “pantser” once. And then I was a “start the book as a pantser, end the book as an Outliner” … but I think I’ve been won over by this method.

  • Editing Outlines

    Alright, so I was intrigued by the idea of editing an outline before you’ve gone in and started your story. Normally I get one outline done and then I have to edit it midway through the book to compensate for all the extra things I’ve learned about the characters and little subplots that have cropped up during the drafting process.

    So!

    Imagine my delight when, on my third draft of Dead Weight’s outline, my Muse woke up and fixed something I hadn’t even noticed was broken. It changes 80% of the book, adds tension, drives home the concept of what a tapped soldier is, and reminds everyone (including me) just how far the Consulate has gone in its hunt for power.

    And the best part?

    I’m not cringing about having to go back and re-write a ton of words. Because they haven’t been written yet. 

    On top of that, my excitement for actually getting to the writing part of this book has increased exponentially. And I still have 3 weeks left of Outline edits to go.

    Because I want to cash in on the inspiration I’ve got going on right now, I’m going to go ahead and start writing little snippets here and there. The next few passes at the Outline are going to focus on character reactions/motivations. I’ve got a solid plot foundation under me now and I just need to tweak who recognizes what and things.

    In the meantime, I’m using Camp NaNoWriMo to get caught up on some other works. Residual Haunting, for example, is in a tragic state of nearly-complete. And in other announcements, I managed to get Persona prepped and ready for print-launch.

    As with all my books, I do try the traditional market first. There were a couple of nibbles from agents and the like with Persona and, while I intend to send out another volley of queries within the month, I also wish to make sure I get at least one book out a year.

    So unless Persona gets picked up in the interim, we can expect a launch date sometime in December. (Imagine me throwing all sorts of confetti and jumping up and down in excitement. This poor book has been in the works for a couple decades now. It’s time it sees the light of day.)

    To everyone else who’s working hard at their Camp NaNoWriMo stuff … Good work! Keep going! Get words on the page! You’re six days in and all the world is at your fingertips.

     

  • Writing and Business and the In-Between

    As of this evening my novelette “Torven” has a completed rough draft. Given its very small length (16006 words) I have been toying around with the idea of giving it away for free or really, really cheap (after it’s gone through a rigorous editing) which has led me to the normal marketing spiel/debate.

    I’ve been here before. Often.

    In fact, I’d like to say I’ve dipped my toes into murky depths of marketing since Sedition was first published five years ago. (Five years? Really? Sheesh.)

    I have not, however, really committed to a marketing plan. Up until this point my focus was on my craft, wanting to just write the next story and grow as an author, and while none of those goals have changed (and never will, because that’s the whole point of taking ownership of your craft) … I can say that I am going to step intrepidly out into the realm of marketing.

    I started, quite comically, with a giveaway of Tapped today on Amazon. The giveaway lasted all of an hour, which … really showed me how bad I am at math. (5 books + every 5th entrant wins = about an hour’s worth of giveaway time. Just in case anyone else needs this information.)

    But I learned a great deal about what I want to do in the future. I’ve set up a pretty little timetable to follow for marketing – when I want to do what promotions and at what sites – and even color-coded it … because I’m a geek like that.

    I am also in the process of revamping my website … with help because I’m really not great at it.

    As to writing itself …

    With “Torven” done I can go back to Dead Weight, the sequel to Tapped. I’ll be revamping the outline based on the things I learned in James Patterson’s Master Class (still an awesome thing and if you write, you should check it out.)

    Basically, I’ll be going over the outline once a week through the month of April. Start to finish. Tightening the plot. Adding elements of the suspense genre into my science fiction … basically implementing everything Mr. Patterson set out to teach me in 22 lessons.

    I’m excited.

    It’ll be fun.

    And I’ll record all the mayhem here because I can … and maybe it’ll help someone else down the road.

     

  • The Side Project

    My cork board hasn’t changed since January. According to my calendar I should be on Chapter 9, not Chapter 4, of Dead Weight. That big leap I had at the beginning of the year is now completely gone.

    But you know what?

    I really don’t care.

    Because I’ve been working. Granted, I haven’t been working on what I said I’d be working on at this point, but it’s still words on the page.

    In fact, it’s over 10,000 words of that lovely fairy tale story I began for my son. He’s enjoying it still, by the way, and it is nearly complete. I should have the full novella by the end of this month. At which point I’ll set it aside for a couple of weeks before doing a round or two of edits and then I intend to put it out for free/super cheap/whatever I can get Createspace to do there.

    But I haven’t just been writing on this thing. I also opted to take James Patterson’s Master Class on writing and slowly made it through the 22 lessons there.

    Why no, I’ve never written a suspense novel before, but that doesn’t mean that things within the suspense genre can’t be planted into the genres that I prefer writing. In particular, I took away from this class a very distinct outlook on Outlines that I will, at the beginning of April, implement with Dead Weight.

    Since I’m only on Chapter 4 there I don’t feel like I’ll be shooting myself in the foot starting over with the Outline and doing it the “Patterson” way.

    For those who have been toying with the idea of taking a Master Class like this one, I’m going to go ahead and give the “two thumbs up” and encourage you to do so. There are some things you’ve heard that you’ll hear again, but in the end it’s got some nuggets in there that you can certainly use.

    In the meantime, I’ll be posting some of the Fairy Tale on the website and things because … well … it’s fun. And you can’t beat free.

  • Video Games vs Reading

    Among the many hats that I wear, I am the proud parent of an extremely creative little boy. Some time ago I got him a Wii for Christmas, but the motor wore out so he was game-less for quite a while – unless he went to his friend’s house.

    After observing my son in both states – gaming vs. not-gaming – I have come to accept this as part of the culture we live in now. For his birthday he was given a handheld game system so that he could play while waiting for me to get done with certain necessities (like work).

    And then his father got him a PS3 and, to be honest, my son uses it more for Netflix than anything else. I would balk at this but he chooses British shows far more often than I expected (thank you Doctor Who and the like) so I feel like I’m not having to regulate everything he’s doing.

    However … Netflix is not a good book. And games are not good books.

    Plainly – visual media is not a good book that really allows you to grow by digging into to the mindset of another person and walking in their shoes for a while. It’s a proven fact that people who read are far more empathetic to the world around them than people who don’t.

    Reading fiction is, to be frank, not just about learning character tropes and getting a larger vocabulary. You’ll get those things, of course, but the larger and more profound effect reading has on us is a deep connection to humanity.

    Yes, the characters are made up.

    But the reactions – if they’ve been done right – are utterly true. Sometimes the settings are fake, but the human nature on the page is not. And reading about them helps us to understand both ourselves and the world around us.

    How then do we find the balancing point between allowing our kids to enjoy the visual media prominent in our culture and the clearly necessary act of reading?

    My son recently grumped about having to shut the game off and sit for his designated reading time and, as any writer-parent should be, I was quite alarmed. But I couldn’t take away his game system and make reading a punishment, that would be counter-productive.

    My solution was a trifle unorthodox, I’m sure. And anyone who is a parent but not also a writer would find it difficult to do, but I’ll share it anyway.

    I began to write a classic fairy-tale story for my son. And I told him about it.

    This, of course, has meant quite a lot of work on my part because it means I need to have written every single day. Because every day, at the end of his reading hour (or sometimes at the beginning) we read the progress of the story together.

    Sometimes he reads it from the beginning, out loud, to me. Other times he just wants me to read it (I apparently make a good wolf-voice.) And at the end he is always speculating about what he thinks is going to happen in this tale. He engages and asks questions about the main character and is, as far as I can tell, deeply interested.

    When it’s finished I’ll likely publish it as a stand-alone novella, though I admit that is mostly so that he can hold it in his hands as an actual book instead of a spiral notepad.

    Will this make a life-long reader out of my son?

    No. Not just one book. It can never be just one book that does it. But it’s a start.