Novel Ideas: Your Novel's Revision Stage

Last time we chatted, I'd finished my first draft of SILENT CITY and was riding the wave of joy that comes with such an accomplishment. I was prepping for The League to look over the draft and taking a moment to bask in the glow that comes with finishing a project.

But then reality set in.

The book isn't done. Far from it. I realized a little while after writing the last post that finishing the first draft of a novel is only a part of the ongoing process of writing one. Next comes arguably the most challenging and perhaps longest step: Revisions.

My initial plan was simple: Submit the draft to The League, make the required changes and start querying agents. But nothing in life is that easy. The League was already well-stocked with stuff in the queue and, unlike my colleagues who mostly deal in 100-125 page screenplays, a 220-page novel is a more daunting task, and not something I can expect my fellow Leaguers to read through and properly digest in a few days. So, SILENT CITY will be analyzed at our next meeting, ideally sometime toward the end of this month. In the meantime, I was left with a shiny new draft and no one to read it.

This is where good friends become a great benefit. I sent a few polite emails to people I knew, both in and out of publishing but mainly people I knew were readers and most importantly, people who I trusted to be honest with me and cut the bullshit. Some of these people include novelists, editors, newspaper writers and copy editors, etc. Mainly, I wanted an honest opinion from a wide swath of people -- some well-versed in the crime fiction genre, others just coming to it as a new reader would, in addition to the comments I knew I was going to get from The League.

So far, I've built a pretty solid list. I've handed the first draft to a colleague of mine who has a ton of experience reading manuscripts in general and crime novels specifically. So, I'm waiting on his comments before I send the draft to a wider list, mainly because I expect his notes to be the most detailed and effective. I'm pretty sure that the second draft of SILENT CITY will be significantly different from the first, so I don't want to bog the rest of my list down with reading it twice. Also, I'm well aware this is the kind of favor you can't really call people on more than once every few years, so I have to make sure each "read" I'm getting doesn't just get done, but also gets done at the right time. For example, I have another close friend back home who's an ace copy editor and also a very smart reader, period. But having her read my first draft, especially when I know I'll be getting copious notes from someone else, doesn't work if what I'm looking for from her is more of a general "This didn't work for me/This was good" analysis, coupled with a very detailed copy edit. Maybe I'm being a tad OCD about it, but it makes sense to me on paper.

Now, while all this planning and list-building sounds good, it doesn't equate to much writing. So, I decided to start outlining the next novel while I waited for people to get back to me and between revisions (which have yet to begin). This was a fun exercise because it allowed me to work on something new while still keeping a hand in SILENT CITY. I've got a very basic breakdown of Pete's next adventure, which involves a change of scenery, a new villain and some other surprises I'm hesitant to get into just yet. I've read a few books as research and I'm excited to work on something new but also familiar, as it's a continuation of SILENT CITY.

More as it happens...

A funny thing happened Monday night

Well, Tuesday morning, close to 2am.

What happened? I finished my draft of SILENT CITY. It was a bit of a surprise. I was working on it in my room -- had been for a few hours -- when I realized I was entering the final, climactic scene. I figured I'd finish the scene and go to bed. But once I closed out the main chunk of the story, the next thing I knew I was writing the epilogue I'd planned to add to the end. No spoilers here. By 2, I was done, and it was weird, exciting, nerve-wracking and pretty damn cool.

Now, this doesn't mean I'm done, DONE. Far from it. This draft needs revisions -- lots of 'em. But I always saw the first draft as really a hyper-detailed outline. A solid framework and road map that I could then add some colors and detail to. And I think that's what I have. The characters and scenery need more compelling detail and description of the world they live in, but overall, I'm pleased with the structure and pacing.

Does that mean the plot is without error? Far from it. There are a few scenes I'm on the fence about. But, as with the initial outline that became the novel, there's enough room to tinker with that I'm confident that with proper revision, I may reach my goal.

I always envisioned SILENT CITY as a fun, compact little detective novel, very much like Pelecanos' A FIRING OFFENSE, Lippman's THE SUGAR HOUSE or Lehane's A DRINK BEFORE THE WAR. Not overly pretentious or trying to be something it isn't. A solid read you could get through in a few days and possibly leave you wanting more from these characters.

Still, that doesn't mean I went in with no literary aspirations. One of the things I feel like the draft is missing -- and I'd like to remedy and beef up on revision -- is the setting. Miami is such a unique and vibrant town, and while you get snippets of that in reading the first draft, I'd love to paint a stronger picture of the place I called home for most of my life.

But, again, I'm not concerned about this. Novel writing is a lot like building a house. You need a strong foundation and framework first, then you can talk about what drapes to put in the guest room, you know?

So, my plan for the next few weeks is just that: to kick the walls a bit, test the doors and tighten the screws. Once I feel happy with the first draft -- well, happy enough to let someone else read it -- I'll pass it on to the League and see what they think. After those revisions are made, I have a short list of talented friends that I'll past the draft on to. Some are published authors or journalists, some are just really smart and well-read. All of them will bring valuable input to the process. After all that is done -- and pinch me when it is -- this irregular feature will become more about query letters and contacting agencies than the actual writing. But that's exciting, too, in its own way. Fingers crossed.

Novel Ideas: Lessons learned so far

A quick apology for my lengthy absence. In all honesty, I've spent a while mulling what my place is here at The League -- not in reality, as I find our meetings informative and helpful -- but on the blog. Time, as with anything, is an issue. But what can I bring to the blog that readers can't get elsewhere? Links and comments are always nice, but I do my link aggregating elsewhere and in the end, you're just passing along info from somewhere else. But I digress.

One of the things I enjoyed writing most for the blog were my occasional "What I'm Reading/Viewing"-style posts, so I imagine I'll get back to those at some point in the new year. Additionally, one thing that sets me apart (because, let's face it, it's all about me, right?) from my fellow Leaguers is that I have no screenwriting aspirations. I mean, I'd write one if the stars aligned properly, but my interest lies mainly in prose. That's neither better or worse, just my preference.

I think it'd be helpful to chronicle, in a fashion similar in concept if not frequency to Cake Man's Writing Week columns, my experiences writing SILENT CITY. For those of you who don't recall, SILENT CITY is my long-gestating crime novel, set in modern day Miami. I've been working on it for over a year. After a few stops and starts and one massive outline rewrite, I finally feel like some forward progress is being made. I'm about 60 pages in and generally happy with where it's going.

So, in no particular order, here are a few things I've learned so far. I'll pop back in with more notes on the process as I continue to learn/unlearn/deal with them.

1. Always outline

One of the toughest lessons I learned was one of the first. My first pass at SILENT CITY was written in the first person, very much in the style of one of my favorite detective novels, George Pelecanos' A FIRING OFFENSE (author above). That wasn't really the main problem, though. I was working without an outline -- I mean, I had a general sense of where I wanted to go with the book and who the villains were. But, for all intents and purposes I was flying blind. Not a great idea when writing in a genre that is all about calculated surprises and tight plotting. By the time I realized (with some help from The League, of course) that I was wandering around the forest without a compass, I was about 40 pages in. Not a lot, if you're thinking in terms of novels, but it was a lot of writing for me. The longest work of fiction I'd ever produced was a 25-page short story, so the idea of having to rewrite my precious 40 pages was anathema to me. Cue long writing lull.

My mind kept coming back to SILENT CITY, though. So, after kicking myself a bit for delaying the inevitable, I sat down and hashed out a new outline, trying to save as much of my first draft as I could. While a noble endeavor, that in and of itself leads us to my second lesson.

2. Nothing is sacred

In my efforts to retroactively organize SILENT CITY, I crafted a competent, but fairly uninteresting -- and cluttered -- outline. Characters became redundant, scenes dragged on too long and the climax was, to be kind, nonexistent. Changes needed to be made if the project was to be salvaged. And saving the project would most probably involve starting over, from a blank page one. This thought was utterly frightening, especially considering I'd spent months "working" on the novel to varying degrees. Still, it was that or add SILENT CITY to the pile of unfinished projects I'd built up over the last few years. This was more unappealing than the former. It even drove me to write about it on the blog.

So, with a heavy heart, I saved my initial draft as "SILENTCITYold" and "SILENTCITYoutlineold" and started two new documents. One, a new outline with an ever-changing list of changes and tweaks at the top. The changes that had been enacted were bolded, other needed changes and suggestions (based on my own editing/notes and comments from my fellow Leaguers) were continually added to the top of the list. The second document, as expected, was an entirely new draft. One of the things I felt didn't really work with the original incarnation of the novel was that it was first person. Despite my love of the Pelecanos Nick Stefanos books, I wasn't George Pelecanos, and I felt more comfortable writing in third person. So, I pasted in what I found useful from the first draft and the new outline (which, in turn, took whatever was deemed worth saving from the original outline) into the blank document as I went along, purposely avoiding plopping too much into the blank document for fear it would overwhelm me and minimize my flexibility in terms of plotting and characterization, while still giving me some structure to comfortably work off.

This plan worked out pretty well. I was writing at a comfortable clip and the new changes were working. My new outline was received positively by the League and some others who got to read it. What could go wrong?

3. Find balance

In a few weeks, I'd gone from decrying the need for an outline (foolish) to becoming an apostle of my shiny, new outline (also foolish). After a good meeting where my outline was, for lack of a better word, approved by The League, I set off and started writing. 30 pages later, I had a few chapters that I was generally happy with. The only problem? They fell kind of flat. Motivations were murky, pacing was slightly off and -- lo, and behold -- some structural changes might be needed. But why? My outline was approved! Too bad, I learned. While a few weeks ago my outline read fine and made sense, it was just that -- an outline. The execution of said outline will either support the initial success of the outline or showcase a few problems. Why is your main character doing what he's doing? Who is the villain? What's with all the musical references? At the end of the day, you can have the best outline in the world, with every scene properly paced and each character fleshed out -- but it's still just an outline. An outline that, if your book is published, no one will ever read. With that realization, I learned that you have to try your best to adhere to the plans you've laid out, but also be flexible enough to allow these characters you've created -- and created to simulate real people as much as you can -- to live and breathe, and move around and do stuff. It happened with my protagonist a few days ago. Instead of wandering into the next scene I'd plotted for him, he decided to jump ahead to another point. Bad? No. I actually think it reads better. More work? In the short-term, yes. But it's worth it if it works. This also leads me to the final bit of advice for today.

4. It's a draft. You will rewrite.

It's natural, especially I think for a first-time novelist like me, to try and nail it on the first pass. You want to set the scene perfectly, nail the dialogue so everyone sounds unique and interesting, etc. Not gonna happen. If you want to get to the end -- and by end, I mean, the end of your first pass -- you'll need to let some things go. But this realization can only come after another, more important one: This is not the last time you will write this scene, or bit of dialogue, or description. I'm not familiar with any novels that were just written in one pass and sent for publication. I'm sure I'm wrong, but it's safe to say this is not the norm. With that in mind, you have to gauge things: How much time should you spend tinkering with something vs. whether or not you should press onward, knowing that tweaks (dialogue changes, expanding descriptions) that don't totally alter the structure and flow of the novel can be revisited at a later date. "Why put off now what you can do later?" you ask? Well, that's fair. But at what cost? The goal is to finish a draft. Once that's done, you begin the process of editing and rewriting, which is an aspect of writing unto itself. One I hope we can discuss here. Once I get there, of course.

Facing reality: Re-working your outline for the greater good of your novel

With any new year, most people take a moment to come up with resolutions for the next twelve months. Lose weight, find a new job, travel, etc. I'm usually hesitant to tack on life-changing edicts to a kind of pointless holiday, but I did find myself coming up with a rather long list of overall 2009 "to-dos," which I won't get into here in detail. But, thinking over things I want to accomplish in the next year really brought to the forefront something I haven't dealt with in my head over the last few months.

I don't really like the book I'm writing.

Some background, for those of you new to the adventures of King Suckerman (me): I've been working on my first novel for about six months now. It's titled SILENT CITY and is set in Miami. It tells the tale of Pete Fernandez, a burnt out journalist working a dead-end copy editing job for The Miami News after the death of his father and the subsequent flaming out of his once-promising sports writing career. Pete's basically a wreck, drinking his life away and meandering through what little he has to be awake for. He gets a call out of the blue from the father of one of his formerly close friends, Kathy, asking him to check in on her. What Pete discovers leads him into a story of murder, intrigue, backroom drug deals and the realization that while you may never be able to reclaim the life you once lead, you can always move forward to create a new one.

I saw the book as part crime novel in the vein of Pelecanos' A Firing Offense and Lehane's A Drink Before the War and, later, to some degree, Ellroy's The Black Dahlia. A nice, short (200-250 pages) detective story that would (ideally) set the stage for more adventures with Pete but also be the story of how a person who has no desire or inclination to be a private eye at page one ends up realizing it's in many ways his salvation. On a secondary, but arguably more important level, it would also show how friendships can evolve and die over time, specifically the dissolution of Pete's circle of friends and how, as we get older, we deal with more and more people but find that we are only close to a small handful, only interacting with people we know because we know them, and not so much because we like them. So, part crime book, part Rick Moody/The Ice Storm with a dash of Miami flavor to set the scene.

I started off sprinting -- 50 pages in the first few months. Most were written in jags of 10-15 pages, usually on Saturday mornings with jazz playing and coffee brewing. I got into a good routine. But there was a problem -- I had a general idea of where I wanted the story to go (Pete gets call, Pete searches for friend, hilarity ensues...), but the minor plot points that make a good detective novel -- the clues planted early on, the friendly character who turns out to be not-so-good later on, etc. Not cliches, per se, but things that you would be able to generate with more planning and a better sense (detail-wise) as to where the story was heading. And, more importantly, how it was going to get there.

About 40 or so pages in I decided it was time to write up an outline. This is where the trouble hit. I found a structure I was relatively happy with -- every third or fourth chapter would be a flashback sequence involving Pete's past: his friends, his father, his job; these flashbacks would hopefully add some perspective for the reader, showing a more jovial and human Pete and giving them a sense of why these friends were once important and how they've changed in the process. The main novel thread would follow Pete as he stumbled toward solving the main crime, which involved a number of current and former friends and the seedy Miami drug underworld.

After writing a first pass of the outline and getting some feedback from some members of the league, I realized that a) a lot of the flashback chapters were inconsequential, if not repetitive and b) Pete didn't really DO much. Most of the book, if it was going to be written based on my initial outline, dealt with Pete reacting to what others were doing. In the end you were left with the same guy, but everything was sort of resolved and things were looking rosy. Basically, the outline needed some serious work. Serious work that would probably involve going back and rewriting the 50 pages I already had in the can and was relatively happy with. You see, if the entire structure of the book is off, it doesn't matter how great the first few chapters are.

So, that brings me here. I'm not happy with the outline, but I'm procrastinating rewriting it because I know it could potentially mean tossing everything I've done or changing it significantly. When it came time to see what my goals were for the new year, finishing SILENT CITY was definitely one of them, but how to do it?

The bottom line is, I need to rework the outline. Maybe Character X shouldn't die in Chapter Y, or whatever. But I need to dive in knowing that this new outline, which ideally will be stronger, could potentially mean that the work I put into the book initially might be lost or made unrecognizable. Only now am I really coming to terms with that and feeling OK about it. It happens. You try one thing, it doesn't really work, you try again. I just need to get back on the writing horse.

Anyway, most of my posts here usually deal with stuff going on outside my laptop or movies I've seen/books I've read, but since this group is about the experience of being a writer, I thought it would be interesting to share my experiences so far. I've been researching general plot techniques to find the method that seems best suited to my writing style, but I'm open to suggestions.

Using Google Notebooks to plot your novel

A pretty Neat idea, from The Average Idea blog. I think I'll start using it myself.

Do you plot out your novels on notecards? I did too, until I stumbled across Google Notebook.

Some problems I ran into using paper notecards:

• Cards get scrambled out of order
• A pain to refer back to when I’m actually writing the book
• Don’t always have them on me in case inspiration strikes

So I decided to try out Google Notebook to plot out my current novel. It worked fantastically. Here are some tips and tricks you can use to not only plot out your own novel, but also to get the most out of Google Notebook.

Quickly Add Scenes

You can get the bare bones of your novel in place quickly by just clicking the blank space in your notebook. I rifled through all my ideas for scenes to get a rough idea for how the book would lay out.

What are you reading? Week 6: Dancing with the Dahlia

Last week, we entered the world of Ross MacDonald and Lew Archer, and took a tentative step toward James Ellroy's visceral vision of 1940s Los Angeles. Specifically, the author's terrific neo-noir and fictionalized examination of the death of Elizabeth Short, otherwise known as the Black Dahlia.

In the book -- aptly titled The Black Dahlia, natch -- Ellroy introduces the readers to Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert and Lee Blanchard, two up-and-coming cops on the L.A. police force. When the two cops -- who also both boxed before they joined the force -- face off in the ring to help promote a voting proposition to increase funding for the department, a bond is formed. Soon, the two become partners for the department's elite "Warrants" division, and Bucky finds himself immersed in his partner's day-to-day life, which includes his ravishing live-in girlfriend, Kay Lake. The three become irrevocably linked, and a strange co-dependent bond is forged. Lee supports Kay, Kay is falling for Dwight and Dwight is torn by his loyalties to his partner and his growing lust for his partner's pseudo-wife.



The dynamic is blown to bits on January 15, when while on a routine investigation Bucky and Lee stumble upon Elizabeth Short's dead and gruesomely dismembered body. Soon, the scene becomes a flashpoint for media and cops, and the story of "The Black Dahlia" murder is the talk of the town. Why was this pretty New England girl so brutally murdered? And, more importantly, why are both Bucky and Lee inexorably driven to find her killer?

What follows is a slow and thoughtful dip into the seedier realms of the human psyche, echoed by Ellroy's perverse vision of Los Angeles right after the second World War. Initially, the Dahlia murder serves as a uniting force for the Bucky/Lee team, but it soon becomes a growing crack in their equally flawed trinity with Kay. Lee, haunted by memories of his younger sister -- who was killed in a similar fashion to the Dahlia -- becomes obsessed with the case. Fueled by uppers and a twisted desire to put his dead sister's ghost to rest, Lee abandons his home and eventually his city on a quest to solve the murder.

Bucky, meanwhile, is at first reticent and dismayed at his reassignment from Warrants to the Dahlia case. But upon meeting the mysterious and sexy Madeleine Sprague on a canvass of a few LA dive bars, Bucky finds himself in a passionate and disturbing romance with the Dahlia's clown face-scarred visage and her sad demise. Madeleine's uncanny resemblance to the deceased Ms. Short, along with her own slowly-revealed machinations send the young cop into a tailspin that will eventually ruin his career, romantic prospects and obliterate his self-respect.

The Black Dahlia is a tour de force and Ellroy at his finest. It's the kind of book that not only paints a believable picture of a time long past, but also makes you long to be a part of that world, no matter how dirge-like and frightening it may seem. Ellroy's characters jump to life, whether it's through their actions or their tight, believable dialogue and mannerisms. Ellroy's L.A. is a bloody, infected scratch of a town, littered with floozies, two-faces and sad, wretched people clinging to their very existence with a slurred and medicated desperation. You may not like any of the characters in the book, you may not like any of their actions and you may be scared and shocked by what you read, but you won't be able to put it down. This book cuts to the core of human nature, and it isn't a pretty picture.

The Black Dahlia is a tale of extreme, deadly obsession and sharply focused longings and desires, with a sinful metropolis as its dangerous and malignant backdrop.

I'd end my writing here, but there are a few more notes I want to touch on. Not nearly as exciting as the book itself, though.



As some of you might know, The Black Dahlia is the first part of what Ellroy later dubbed "The L.A. Quartet," which also includes The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential and White Jazz. Needless to say, I'll be picking up The Big Nowhere the next time I step into a bookstore (*cough*today*cough*), and proceeding from there.



Additionally, the novel was adapted by director Brian De Palma into a piss poor movie, starring doe-eyed Josh Hartnett and a stuffy Aaron Eckhart as Bucky and Lee, respectively. With the painfully numb and monotone Scarlett Johannsen dumbing down and neutering the Kay Lake role. The only highlight was Hillary Swank, who veered a little bit off her usual path of asexual tough girls by playing the vampy and over-sexed Madeleine. But Swank couldn't save the film, which ham-fistedly delivered the novel's more nuanced messaging and truncated the novel's thoughtful and effective ending to create something overwrought and lumbering at best, laughable at worst. I considered for a moment re-casting the film and making a blog post out of it, but in the end, it's best not to think of this adaptation at all, if one can help it.

One final note, this one a tad selfish -- I first went into reading Dahlia thinking it would offer little guidance in regards to my own work -- specifically Silent City -- thinking I'd mined the crime genre enough with Pelecanos' A Firing Offense and a few other books. But it really helped me determine a huge aspect of the book that had often bothered me -- why would Pete pursue Kathy's killer so diligently? What drives him? Needless to say, reading this book helped me figure that out for myself. An added bonus to an already great reading experience.

But, as usual, enough about me. What are you reading?

Taking a stab at a SILENT CITY cover

So, while tinkering with PhotoShop yesterday, I decided to take a stab at working up a cover for SILENT CITY. Above is what I came up with. Thoughts? Am I being pretentious by even posting this?

Obviously, the images need to be a bit more hi-res and the smudging may work better as a dark red (Blood! Get it?), but overall I was pretty happy with the end result.

I also blacked out my name (which would be under the "A NOVEL" line) for obvious reasons.

Anyway, just thought I'd share.