A.J. Maguire

Tag: Reading

  • Choices

    Well, tomorrow I’m going to have a guest post from RJ Blain, who is another relatively insane author I’ve been stalking on Google+ for a while now.  (I don’t think it’s really stalking when she’s in another country, but … eh … we’ll let her decide where the creepy boundary is.)

    Anyway, you’ll love her.  She’s crazy and likes chocolate.

    I thought about putting the post up tonight but had one of those “writer” moments today that I just had to get out.  Honestly, it’s amazing I can remember this eureka moment since a bird quite literally attacked me thirty seconds after I had it.

    I’m not kidding.  This little black bird flew right into my back.  I thought maybe it was an accident but it came back and proceeded to dive bomb me again.  I nearly swung my sandwich bag at it, but thought I might get bird-crazy on my Italian Subway sandwich somehow and decided to just run instead.

    Yeah.  I ran from a bird.  I’m not proud.

    In my defense, it had beady black eyes and reminded me of those nasty crow things from Snow White and the Huntsman.

    Where was I? … Oh, yeah … the Eureka moment.

    One of the elements that is severely lacking in my fiction (or at least my early fiction, I have been working on this) is that of choice.  What I mean by that are major choices, choices that the character knows won’t end well no matter which direction they pursue.

    ALERT:  The following examples are spoilerific!  DO NOT READ if you hate spoilers. 

    Example #1:  Doctor Who The End of Time.  That’s like the last episode David Tennant was in and he gets to a point where he has to choose between shooting the Master, or Rassilon (Timothy Dalton’s character).

    For a dude who has spent the last several years adamant about not killing anyone, this is seriously a bad decision for him.  We get to see him flipping between aiming the gun at Dalton or the Master and then Dalton again and then the Master.  (And in the end he chooses neither, but … eh … it was the fact that he was put in the position to have to make such a choice that added tension to that climax.)

    Example #2: Supernatural What is and What Should Never Be.  Poor Dean Winchester finds himself having to make a very serious decision in the end of this episode.  He was attacked by a djinn and is in this dream world where his mother is alive and his family is mostly intact while the djinn slowly consumes his blood.

    For a guy who has a history of putting his family (and innocent lives) in front of himself, he is suddenly confronted with a choice; stay and live in the “world” that has been created for him, or gut himself in the dream in order to wake up.

    Of course, there’s no guaranteeing that he’s right and that he’s in a dream at all, so the decision also has the fear of mortality laced into it.

    Sweet, holy tension, batman!

    Dean delivers this wonderful line just before he goes to shove a knife into his gut, too —

    “No, I’m sure.  I’m like … ninety percent sure.  I’m sure enough.”

    ….

    You see what I’m saying here, right?

    It’s all about choice.  In fact, we can sum plot up as being Character A must choose Path A, B, or C.

    All right, so that’s an oversimplified look on plot, but it really does work.  Characters are defined by the choices they make — at least the good one’s are.  So my eureka moment today was when I realized that I hadn’t really given my characters tough enough choices to make.

    Rock, meet hard place.

    And then the bird attacked me.

    There might have been more to that eureka moment but I was busy running.

    You can’t get avian crazies when a bird dive bombs you, right?  It’s not like a freaky bird plague I should be worried about?

     

  • Research

    This week I rewrote almost all of Chapter One of the WWII project, which I think I might title Sullied Heritage instead of Crossweathers, but we’ll see.  (Many thanks to Tressa Green for taking a moment out of her day to  help me brainstorm.)  In the middle of the rewrite I came across several problems that deal completely with research.

    I couldn’t for the life of me find record of the Elaine, though I know I found it in an obscure book several years ago.

    That wasn’t too much of a problem, I just started researching different boats that sunk and came upon the Ceramic.

    However, the Ceramic sunk right around midnight and there was a massive storm going on at the same time (which accounts for how many souls were lost at sea after the sinking).  The original draft had the boat sinking in the late evening with the sun setting.

    So my rewrite had to change the time, date, and weather.  But all of that is really OK with me because I feel like it’s a stronger chapter because of it. (Of course, I’m rewriting stuff that I wrote almost ten years ago, so it’s bound to be stronger now.  I think I could sneeze a sentence better now than I wrote back then.)

    All of these changes got me to thinking about how different it is to research things today.  Ten years ago I was in the library a lot and even purchased several books on WWII to help me.  I do still love the library, but a lot of the information I need is far easier to get a hold of via the internet.

    Such as the rationing in both America and Germany.  Or the names of which boats were taken down by submarines in the Atlantic.  Or the bombing in Ulm in 1944 (which I didn’t know about until I started this research).

    There are some things that I learned through people, though.  Such as the yellow pill that was rubbed into margarine in order to make it look like butter.  (I’m not kidding.  Apparently that’s real.  I’ll never look at margarine the same way.)  Or the eyeliner women used in order to draw a line on the back of their legs so that they appeared to be wearing pantyhose.

    I say all that to get to the main point, which is that I super love the Googles.  I got more information out of one night of research than I had in hours scouring the library ten years ago.  And it inspired me to add a Fact vs. Fiction page onto the story blog for the WWII novel (which is still scheduled to begin release June 1st.)

    This page will take what I put in the story — such as the sinking of the Ceramic — and explain what really happened versus what I chose to include in the book, with a little bit about why I chose to do it that way.  It’s mostly for those history buffs out there.  Or people who might be curious.  And, of course, for me, since I find the whole process of researching this novel fascinating.

  • Trunk Novels

    I’ve gone through and deleted most of my trunk novels.  To be honest, several of them were dissected; meaning I took characters I enjoyed or a concept I thought was cool and then placed them inside a different book.

    In fact, Nelek Dyngannon from the Sedition series came from a trunk novel.  And the concept of the “tapped” came out of my alien abduction story.

    But there is one trunk novel that I just can’t seem to let go of.  I keep telling myself that I’m going to re-write it.  It’s my World War II story and I started it at least ten years ago.  I have close to ninety thousand words recorded from that story, but it’s all in bits and pieces.  There are sections missing — important sections, too.

    And there are at least three different endings I could choose from.

    I could assign this book as a “little darling” or I could attribute my inability to let it go to the fact that I love WWII history.  (Not that I love all the terrible things that happened, of course.)  But for whatever reason, I just can’t seem to drop it.

    So … I think I’m going to go ahead and start the rewrite this summer.  I’m already on the last leg of Usurper (Hurray! The characters have reached the mainland and are headed to war!) and the second book in the Tapped series is already underway.  (Meaning it’s been outlined and I’ve decided which POV characters I’ll have.)

    Now, because this is a trunk novel and what I could consider a “little darling” I am going to do something different with it.  I’ve been hunting for a project that I could post online for free via Wattpad and a story blog for some time now and this one seems to fit.

    For one, I have no real hopes of it ever getting published.  As much as I love history, particularly WWII history, the book is utterly fictional and I fear many people prefer to read WWII books that are at least loosely based on a true story.  We’ve been spoiled by Band of Brothers and other such stories.

    For another, there are elements in the story that stretch the boundary of belief.  For example, the original story-line had our heroine (because yes, I have to write a female protagonist, we all should understand this by now) getting shot down in a plane over the Baltic, where she was picked up by the Nazi’s.

    That story line was rejected during one of my gazillion edits ten years ago and changed to having her boat sink — the Elaine, by the way, which is a real boat that was really sunk — but even that story line makes my “suspension of disbelief” feel like it’s getting thrown into the atmosphere.

    See what I said about a re-write?

    I’m actually still struggling with the idea of keeping the book in this particular format (the boat sinking sequence) or going ahead with writing a new opening sequence.  It’s sort of like having to stress the Fiction in Historical Fiction rather than stressing the History.  The boat sinking makes for a great, exciting opening, and it seems to be my style to start things in the middle of the action.

    But, while the Elaine was a real boat, the people I have written are entirely fictional and the idea of Nazi’s taking in a half-drowned American woman and not assuming her to be a spy is a stretch.  Granted, the book starts prior to America entering the war, but still … Yeah …

    Side note — I did read about how the Allies planted fake information on a body and let it float to the enemy, who took the bait and thought the information was real.  Which, to me, was supremely clever.  What’s more convincing than a dead body?

    So!

    Starting in July (probably) I will set up the WWII story — titled Crossweathers, by the way — on Wattpad and give it a story blog.  I’ll post a chapter a week after that.

    I know some people manage to put two chapters up a week (LJ Cohen, for example) but I am still in school and have other deadlines to meet as well.

  • Graphic Detail

    As I’ve set aside my science fiction while readers are going through it I picked up Usurper again.  That’s the third book in Trenna Dyngannon’s series for those unaware.  Trenna is, by all appearances, my most popular character and I have to admit I love writing her.  She’s gritty and tough and vulnerable all at once … and funny.

    Diving back into this High Fantasy novel I noticed a stark contrast between the amount of graphic detail I provide with Trenna as opposed to my science fiction. It may be because I’ve “lived” in the world of Dyngannon for so many years that I see it more clearly, but I’m not sure.

    Science fiction … or at least space science fiction … tends to limit my graphic detail to what you can see on a space ship.  If you’re not in the pilot’s nest looking out the viewport then basically there’s just ship … more ship … and, Oh, look, even more ship … to see.  Which, I’m sure you can all imagine, can be a challenge.

    Now that I think about it, this probably explains the drastic difference in word count between my 100,000 word High Fantasy novels and the 65,000 word Science Fiction.  Reading through the manuscript again I can see how this story (the science fiction story) is more involved with the characters and their growth than my previously published fantasy novels.

    So there was really a trade-off.  What little I have involved in graphics was made up for in the personal journeys of the characters.

    That said, having written the science fiction I can now see how I am implementing what I learned about the “personal journey” into my current fantasy novel.  I believe this will make for a stronger all-around book in Usurper and am excited to see how it turns out.

    For the science fiction, I am challenging myself to take the whole book through a purely “Graphic Detail” edit.  That means I will be focusing completely on description.  I’ll probably even use a different colored pen.  (Pardon me as I squee.  I do adore having any reason at all to use different colored pens in my editing.  Red just … you know … hurts sometimes.)

  • All Part of a Balanced Diet

    In the terms of a friend of mine (L.J. Cohen, author of The Between, which I totally recommend for any YA fans out there) I managed to finish the “gut-renovation” of my latest science fiction novel.  It’s only on the second draft and is now in the hands of my Alpha Readers.  (I love you, Alpha’s!)

    As I was in the middle of this gut-renovation I found myself yanking out several info-dumps in the middle of the manuscript.  While it was necessary for the rough draft to have all that information in there because I’m not exactly a scientist (as in, my brain nearly melted during science class last semester), I knew I couldn’t keep it all in the novel.

    Info-dumps are notoriously boring.  And a boring book is nearly always relegated to propping up an uneven table or, in the case of Armageddon, kept for fuel during the subsequent nuclear winter.

    However, I did have to find new and clever ways to explain the science behind space travel and the notorious “tapped” soldiers who star in the novel.

    At least I like to think some of it was clever.  My Alpha’s will let me know here in a couple of weeks if I succeeded.

    But it really got me thinking about how novelists have to find the appropriate balance between how much information is too much information.

    Let’s go ahead and assume the novelist in question has taken a permanent marker to all the info-dumps in the manuscript, they still have to find a way to get the truly important stuff on the page.  And preferably in an interesting way.

    For me the trick came in two parts.

    Part One : Identify what the (highly intelligent, wonderful) Reader needs to know for this book in particular. 

    Tapped is the first installment of a much longer series.  It is the introduction and therefore has to set the ground rules for the rest of the books.  For those of you who are writers, you know how difficult it is to introduce a world, or in this case a galaxy, that is complete with political systems, travel considerations, scientific progress, and the impact everything has at the individual human level.

    So!  I boiled everything down to three main points of interest that the Reader would need to understand in order for the novel to make sense.

    #1) They had to know the human race was stretched across the universe and that inter-stellar travel was a regular thing.  (This was easily achieved since 3/4 of the book takes place on a “jumper class hauling ship.”)

    #2) They had to know there was a war that split the human race into two different factions; that of the Consulate, which regulates everything from Jupiter through Gliese (an earth-like planet very, very far away) and that of the League, which regulates Mars and Earth (the last bastions of freedom.)

    Author’s note:  I totally wanted to use “Coalition” instead of “League” but it sounded too much like “Consulate” and I wanted to make sure they were all separate in the Reader’s mind. 

    #3) They had to know how “tapped” soldiers were made and what they could do.  (This was also easy and fun because … yeah … most people know I love a good fight scene.)

    Part Two : Identify the least amount of information needed in any particular scene. 

    The first part looked at the book as a whole, the second part looked at each individual scene while I was editing.  In this part, I really only asked what was affecting the individual characters on the page.  Because if the character’s weren’t affected by the science or politics, then the Reader didn’t need to be either.

    The result is that the characters actually interacted with the three main points I needed the Readers to understand for the book.  Which, I hope, made for a more solid and interesting book.

    Like I said, I’ll know here in a little bit if I actually succeeded at this.

  • Dead Magic Coming Soon!

    In preparation for Dead Magic’s release … which is apparently coming sooner than I’d imagined … I’ve decided to start adding some content.  You’ll noticed on the top bar that I’ve added a new page called “Magnellum” which is the world in which Dead Magic is centered.

    Also, on the sidebar (under the title Blogroll) you can see a link to a teaser/snippet page.  That will actually take you to a page with ALL my books on it.  You can click through and read teasers of each one that has been published to date.  Including a small teaser page for Dead Magic, which I will edit and make bigger after its release.  (Right now you can read the very first scene of the book.)

    When I have an actual date for its release I will start another release party.  (I can’t believe it’s been a whole year since I’ve done one of those.)  And I’ll do some Giveaway’s and throw out a bunch of free content delving deeper into the world of Magnellum.

    In the meantime, the Magnellum page on the top bar goes through a list of the noble Houses in Magnellum.  I won’t lie, the political spectrum of Magnellum was difficult to create.  We get to see the noble society at its peak in Witch- Born, but in Dead Magic I got to dive into the history behind Magnellum and really work on the mythology behind what created the Witch-Born race in the first place.

    It actually took me several passes at the manuscript before I was able to settle on something that both made sense and entertained me as a writer.  (I mean, if I don’t find it entertaining then who else will?)  I’m not going to spoil the book before it’s even come out, so don’t worry.  We all know how I feel about spoilers.

    However, as an author, mythology and world building are the two most enjoyable and most frustrating parts of the writing process.  During the first draft I’m just having fun with the characters and running through what I call the “bare bones” of the plot.  So at that point world building and mythology are a ton of fun.

    When I get into the second pass of the book and start really looking at the mythology is when I get frustrated because it almost always needs to be fixed.  That’s when the real work happens for me as a creator.  I may know the characters of the story but I don’t really know the story yet, you know?  So there are weeks and weeks of brainstorming what parts of the mythology need rewriting and — most importantly — how I can take that mythology and turn it into something intimate for the characters on the page.

    Because a neat mythology doesn’t necessarily make a great story.  That mythology has to work with the characters.  It has to shake them up somehow, and that’s what I was looking to do in Dead Magic.  I’m hoping I managed it.  We’ll see what readers say.

    As with everything I write, I wouldn’t ever publish anything because I always think something needs to be improved.

  • Dreaming Word Choices

    Well, I was have a great time editing Tapped before school got in the way.  I’ve got an Environmental Science final next week and a MASSIVE reading list for two other classes as well.  I’m going to call this a mixed blessing because I was starting to see words in my sleep.

    Yes, dreaming word choices is sometimes a problem for me.  As crazy as it sounds, I always know when I’ve been staring at the same manuscript for too long when I start arguing with my internal editor during the REM cycle.  It normally goes something like this —

    Me: “He reached for the small …”

    Enter Editor’s voice: “You mean half-inch.”

    Me: “Fine … He reached for the half-inch computer drive …”

    Editor: “Are you sure you want to say ‘computer drive’?  I thought it was a hacking device.  You should keep it standard and just call it a hacking device.”

    Me: All right, all right.  “He reached for the half-inch hacking device …”

    Editor: Well, that sounds funny.  Too many “H’s” right next to each other.

    Me: (with a growl of frustration) “He reached for the half-inch device …”

    Editor: Now that’s too ambiguous  you need to tell us what kind of device it is.

    Me: I hate you.

    Editor: Oh, and isn’t the character sore and beat up at this point?  So wouldn’t he really be straining, or stretching, or fighting past his injuries to try and get the hacking device?

    …..

    Yeah, that’s about how those dreams go.  As funny as that sounds, it’s really not very restful.  I normally wake up feeling like I’ve been working all night … and in some respects I have.  In any case, that’s why I’m thinking this whole school issue is a good thing, because I might be overwhelmed by homework, but at least I’m getting sleep.

  • The Importance of Positive Reinforcement

    Dead Magic is officially in the hands of my publisher.  (Woo!  Happy confetti is getting tossed about my apartment right now!)  I’ve also started poking around review sites to see about getting the book out there … and there will probably be Giveaways and all that jazz when it’s time for the release.

    But as a special treat for myself for finishing the edits and meeting the deadline, I totally got my hair done.  First time getting it professionally highlighted and all that jazz.  It was definitely an experience.

    Is it morbid that the first thing I thought about when they put me under the dryer thing was that episode of Supernatural where the lady totally got fried under one?  (Relax, those machines can’t really do that to you.  The Winchester boy’s were hunting a witch at that point.)

    Anyway, that was my positive reinforcement for meeting the deadline.  Rewards are so very important for writers.  Yes, we love good reviews (and by that I mean our hearts flutter) and finishing a book in itself can be a reward, but physical rewards are important too.

    Let’s face it, the act of writing is a solitary event.  It requires that we agonize over verbs and nouns and fighting between active versus passive voice, and it’s really frigging hard.  And most of us never really think what we’ve written is worth the paper to print it out, even if the marketing people insist that we pretend it’s incredible.

    So after weeks and months of self-imposed solitary confinement, staring at words until they burn into our retinas, struggling to make a clear statement out of messy plot complications, and fighting tooth and nail to make a believable character arc appear on the page … we writers really do deserve a reward.

    It’s all about the positive reinforcement, people!

  • The Editing Domain

    The single greatest lesson I’ve learned as a writer is how to eat humble pie.  Editing, even self-editing, forces me to look at my own silly nonsense and try to make it something readable.  I mean, there are honest mistakes like the one I ran across this morning …

    “Staring at hew as though …”

    Which should have read like this — “Staring at him as though …”

    (By the way, thank you Word Program for assuming I meant “hew” there.  Go team failure!)

    Typo’s happen.  I know that.  I write everything by hand first so when I’m actually typing things I’m not really looking at the screen.  So I can forgive myself — and often laugh — at such mistakes.

    But there are other mistakes that make me blush.  Mistakes dealing with a very broken mythology that require an Alpha/Beta Reader to come along and tell me the harsh truth in the nicest way they know how.  And really, my Alpha’s and Beta’s are awesome.  They know me well enough to know how to crush my soul without making me cry.

    Or … well … I cry on the inside.  But normally it’s a frustrated — “Why would I write that in there?” cry and not a “They all hate me and I want to go eat worms” cry.

    The editing domain for me comes in two parts.  The first part is the most extensive and it requires absolute focus.  I sometimes loathe myself for the fact that I have to print out the pages so that I can mark on them, but I try to make up for that by recycling.  (What can I say?  I have a Go-Green spirit and a ruthless work ethic warring each other.)

    Anyway, during that first editing pass I can’t split my attention between projects.  Which is frustrating because I like to have multiple projects going on at the same time.  But when I hit the second editing pass things go really quickly.  Generally, all the work is already done and all I have to do is transcribe it onto the computer.

    Which, in turn, frees up my brain power.  And since I’m on the second pass of Dead Magic right now I was able to finish the rough draft for Tapped this week.   I have to admit that I surprised myself with Tapped.  I wasn’t expecting to have it done until the middle of the summer.

    But hey!  It’s done!  That leaves me with Usurper to finish before the end of the year and a couple of mountains to climb.  I’m starting to think I didn’t challenge myself enough with my New Year’s Goals or something.

    All I can say is … I own 2013.

  • High Heels

    All right, so I was at the gym plugging away on the elliptical when I ran across a show called Castle.  Stars Nathan Fillion, who every Whedon fan knows and loves as Captain Reynolds  on Firefly.  I did an inward fan-girl squee because … yeah, I was at the gym on the elliptical machine and I didn’t need to throw around more evidence of my Geekdom whilst among weight-lifters and such.

    Due to school and a personality that almost always has something to do, Netflix is my normal means of catching up with TV and society.  (At present, I’m addicted to Supernatural — many thanks to Erick Kripke for creating such a compelling series.)  So, I hadn’t actually heard of this show called Castle.

    Let me first say that I do adore Fillion as an actor.  I enjoyed the concept of a writer helping murder investigations because … well, writers tend to be twisted and are forced to think outside the box in order to create a work that can manage to surprise our violent and jaded society.

    I even liked the acting.

    But I hated Nikki’s shoes.  Seriously.  As a martial artist and a girl, I have to complain here.  Women in heels who run for their lives generally kick those heels off at the first available moment.  You can’t run in those things.  Physics are against you.

    Anyone trained knows you move faster without them.  So a girl chasing a bad guy would naturally want more practical footwear.

    And you know … I honestly thought most people knew this.

    So, as much as I desperately wanted to love the show based on Fillion’s character alone … I just could not get past the high heels.  (Platform heels, mind you.  Not just stubby heels.  I might have forgiven them for stubby heels.)

    On a side note, I mentioned this complaint to my grandmother, who I was surprised to learn used to wear what she called “Tina Turner” high heels.  This immediately gave me an intensely funny image of my grandmother in platforms.  However, even she snerks at the idea of women in heels battling crime.

    Come on.  Women don’t need heels to be sexy and accomplished at what they do.  They certainly wouldn’t wear them to go running into a firefight.  Trust me, we’re tough enough to go all John McClane from Die Hard and kick some batoosh while barefoot.