Tag: writing process

The pitfalls of scene-setting

One of the things that really annoys me about historical fiction is the tendency of some authors to go overboard when it comes to background information. It’s like they’re bound and determined to shoehorn in every single fact that they uncovered in the course of their research, regardless of whether or not it’s actually relevant to the plot. I recently started rereading The Scroll of Saqqara by Pauline Gedge, and several particularly blatant examples of this jumped off the page (though I hasten to add that it’s still one of my favorite books). Take this piece of dialogue, for example:

Sometimes I wish that Grandfather had not moved the capital of the country north. I can see the strategic advantage in a seat of government close to our eastern border and located on a river that empties into the Great Green for good trade, but Memphis has the beauty and dignity of the rulers of old.

That quote is spoken by the protagonist’s son as he and his father sail northward to the capital in question (Pi-Ramesse). But it doesn’t seem natural. It feels like a modern author trying to include another fun fact instead of an ancient Egyptian having a casual conversation with his father. The fact that it’s the only thing the son says in that scene just makes it seem even more awkward.

A few pages later, the protagonist is on the deck of his boat watching Pi-Ramesse come into view. As he watches the scenery pass by, he sees the old city of Avaris, the temple of Set, and “a heap of rubble that Khaemwaset knew was the remains of a Twelfth Dynasty town.” I’m not quite sure why Gedge felt the need to include that bit of information. It’s not relevant to the plot; it’s just another factoid she uncovered, and it’s not even all that interesting.

Base of a statue from Pi-Ramesse. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Now I get the fact that authors who write historical fiction need to provide more description than usual. When you’re writing about the past, you have to do more to help your readers envision the scene. But the tricky part is that your characters, being natives of their world, wouldn’t normally go around explaining everyday things. That’s why I’m not a fan of first-person narrators in historical fiction. It’s incredibly jarring to have the protagonist suddenly provide a detailed description of something that he or she would have taken for granted in real life. I prefer to write in the third person in order to let the invisible narrator do as much of the info dumping as possible.

Going back to Pi-Ramesse and The Scroll of Saqqara, I think it would have been much more effective if, instead of nattering on about the city’s strategic location, the protagonist’s son had commented on its splendor. Judging from the few first-hand accounts we have of Pi-Ramesse, that’s what really stuck in the Egyptians’ minds. They were impressed by the city’s beautiful temples and palaces, not its proximity to the Levant. That would have allowed Gedge to provide useful scene-setting while avoiding a blatant jump into Author Mode.

There’s a very fine line between setting the scene and bogging your story down in detail. Readers are going to have varying levels of interest in the historical setting you’ve chosen, and you can’t assume that everyone is as fascinated with the details as you are.

Iteration, or why I love Blizzard Entertainment

The sturm und drang surrounding the development of Diablo III continues. Back in September, the game’s release was postponed until “early 2012,” but Blizzard has still not given any hint of when we’ll be seeing it on store shelves. The game director recently took to the official D3 blog to explain what the team has been working on over the past few month. Some of the changes concerned core elements of the game, and many fans expressed outrage that the designers were still making major changes this late in the development cycle. As usual, Blizzard was unapologetic, stating once more that they will only release the game “when it’s done.”

Why am I bringing this up? Well, it occurred to me that Blizzard and I have a lot in common: we’re both addicted to iteration. I’ve technically been done with Evil in Thebes for months now, yet I can’t seem to stop tinkering. I suppose the most notable change was the main character’s name (Ptahmose is now Khamtir), but most of these changes are rather small: some additional wordsmithing here, a few extra tidbits of lore there.

None of these changes are particularly earth-shattering, so you might be wondering why I’d bother making them. After all, every minute I spend making changes to EiT is a minute I can’t spend querying or working on the sequel. But, like Blizzard, I’ll only stop fiddling with something when it’s actually done. However, there comes a point where you’re just making changes for the sake of changing things, and that’s when it’s time to stop and close the Word document for good. Unfortunately, it’s often difficult to figure out when you’ve reached that point. In most cases, there’s no objective standard you can use to make that determination. It ultimately boils down to gut feelings and hunches, but the more you write and revise, the more self-aware you’ll become. “Übung macht den Meister,” as my German professors would say.

Sometimes research drives me batty…

While working on my WIP yesterday, I had to ask myself whether or not an ancient Egyptian would have known anything about sharks.

After spending hours scouring both my library and the Interwebz, the answer still remained elusive. The Egyptians weren’t all that keen on sea travel, so they didn’t spend much time discussing marine life (though Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple contains some interesting depictions of creatures found encountered in the Red Sea during the journey to Punt).

Eventually, I decided to make an educated guess and assume that an Egyptian might have heard stories about great predatory fish that lived in the sea and occasionally took bites out of swimmers. The historian in me hates making guesses like that, but he’s rapidly learning to swallow his pedantic outrage. But it’s stuff like this that tempts me to switch gears and write about a world of my own creation. 🙂

Revisions, revisions

I’ll be honest: revising a novel after a beta read is probably my least favorite part of the writing process.  Compared to the adventure of coming up with a plot and writing the first draft, post-beta revisions tend to be something of a chore.  By that point, you have your plot and your characters pretty well nailed down, so most the changes you’re making are mundane tweaks and typo-fixes.  And, vital as they may be, it’s hard to get fired up about moving commas and adding dialogue tags.  True, you do get to write the occasional new scene, but such creative bursts are usually few and far between at this late stage.

I think I may have figured out a way to make the revision process a little bit less of a hassle though.  Since most of my beta readers made their comments using Word’s track changes feature, it occurred to me that I could merge all their changes into one master document.  This makes things a lot tidier since you don’t have to have a gazillion documents open at once.  Also, since Word allows synchronous scrolling when you’re viewing two documents side-by-side, it’s easy to keep track of the line-by-line comments.

Some of my beta readers made their comments in a separate document instead of using the track changes feature and I ended up having to go through and add them to the master list manually.  For simplicity’s sake, I think that from now on I’m going to request that everyone make their comments alongside the text itself.

Now that everything is set up, I’m cautiously optimistic that I’ll be able to move quickly through the revisions.  With any luck, they’ll be done within a week to ten days.  Then I will probably have a very limited gamma read, largely for the purpose of hunting down the last remaining typos.  Once that’s done, it will be time to declare the writing process finished and start sending out query letters.

Forward!

Now that the first Ptahmose book (tentatively titled Evil in Thebes) is in the hands of my lovely beta readers, I’ve decided to start work on book 2 of the series.  I know it’s a bit risky to start work on a sequel when the first book hasn’t even been submitted to agents yet, but I’m so excited about this universe that I’ve created that I feel compelled to keep writing.  I have an enthusiasm for this project that I don’t have for the Andrewverse (for those of you just tuning in, the Andrewverse refers to the setting of my first book A Theft of Bones).  Don’t get me wrong, I still have fond feelings for Andrew and his friends, but at this point in time I don’t feel a strong urge to write anything more about them.  That may change someday, but for now they’ll have to sit on the sidelines.

Back to book 2: I’m pleased to report that I just finished a rough plot sketch tonight.  Following the precedent set by Evil in Thebes, it’s in table form (an idea I borrowed from J. K. Rowling, as you may recall).  I think it’s a great way to keep track of the various subplots as they develop throughout the book.

When writing a plot sketch, I basically write down the first semi-coherent ideas that pop into my mind without worrying overmuch about their quality.  A lot of stuff is promptly erased by the delete key, but some of it sticks and eventually I have a decent foundation for a story.   Once I actually start writing in earnest, the plot usually undergoes a few more changes and I always love to look back and see how my work has changed over time.

I think that the initial plotting of a novel is probably my favorite part of the writing process.  I love sifting and winnowing through endless possibilities to come up with a coherent, entertaining plot.  It wasn’t always that way.  When I first started writing, I got frustrated with plotting very quickly.  It galled me when a great idea fell apart once I started pursuing it.  But my attitude changed once I accepted such mistakes as an unavoidable part of the writing process.  Now when an idea doesn’t pan out, I just shrug my shoulders and try to think of something better rather than getting bent out of shape.