Keeping Pace in the Middle

It's probably poor form to write a post that's basically "what she said" and point at Sarah's latest post, so that's where I'm starting. So, "what she said".

Now to get into the meat of things - every story has its own rhythm, but there are quite a few things most of them have in common - unless you're writing "literature" of the suckitudinous "crap happens, but you don't care anyway because there's nothing admirable and nothing really matters" Pulitzer Prize-winning flavor (Seriously? Has anyone ever read a Pulitzer-winning book? The titles are enough to make me gag).

Think of your plot kind of like a backwards rollercoaster, where the lows are the quiet points, and the highs are where stuff really gets going. The beginning introduces the characters and problems, kicks the characters out of their normal life, and gets things rolling. This is the only place where you're allowed to use Deus Ex Author, although it's better if you can do it by Act of Antagonist or Act of Dumbass Character. If you do use Deus Ex Author, try to make it something that's a more or less expected or predictable thing in the universe of your story.

Everything after that should be caused by one of your characters, however indirectly, and there should be a series of heights and lulls. The slower sections are where character development and even stopping to admire the scenery can happen (although it helps if the character admiring the scenery is doing so for a purpose, like scanning for enemies or admiring the lady who's providing human scenery). They're also where you drop in the foreshadowing and the threads that push towards the next height.

What I've found is that there's usually a semi-climax partway through - anywhere between 1/2 way and 2/3 of the way through. Up until then, the heights get higher and more intense, and the lulls get shorter and offer the main character less respite. Typically, the semi-climax should be the most intense point apart from the climax, and the drop after it should be pretty steep and leave the main character in a state where there seem to be very few choices. This isn't what the Hero's Journey terms the Black Moment, but more of a pre-taste of it. Things are bad, there doesn't seem to be any hope, but the main character pushes on for whatever the reason. He/she should lose something that matters here.

After the semi-climax and the Swamp of Despair, there's a longish lull - not as long as the start, but longer than there's been for a while, then the cycle of ever-increasing heights and shortening lulls resumes, usually with steeper downslopes after the heights, and dips back towards the Swamp of Despair. Meanwhile, the climax looms ever-larger - it needs to start looking steep and ugly during this section.

Somewhere around the last 1/4 to 1/5 of the book or thereabouts, you move into the part where all hell breaks loose. This is the Black Moment where everything seems lost and there's no way out. The undead are everywhere, the cavalry's not coming, and you're alone. You get the idea. Here your character decides that he/she can't back out now, regardless of the cost. In romances, it's when it seems impossible that the couple can ever be together.

Then the climax should hit, hard. You're into the final battle and there's no time to breathe. This is the highest peak, the big climb, and right at the top is when finally it goes right. The rest is rather the like the afterglow, where you tie up the loose ends, clean up the mess, and leave everyone satisfied and - hopefully - happy but wanting just a little bit more. For sequels, rinse and repeat, but with higher stakes.

A few good examples: the first three Anita Blake books. The pacing in these is pretty much dead-on, if a tad predictable (Yes, I looked at how much book was left and figured all hell would be breaking loose within the next few chapters). Dave Freer's A Mankind Witch - note how the crises get bigger, and how Dave handles the quiet times. The first three Harry Potter books.

I should add that I haven't really studied this kind of thing: for me it's more of an instinctive thing. I can feel when I need to up the pace, and when I need to slow down and take a breath. I suspect it comes from reading damn near anything I could get hold of and absorbing plot structure more or less the way I absorbed spelling (one of my nicknames is 'walking dictionary' - but I sometimes need to see the word to know if it's spelled right). It's a bit like riding a bicycle or learning to drive - after a while you build a feel for it and your subconscious can short-circuit the conscious reasoning and just do the thing (Yes, I also have a lot of practice writing crap. I suspect most of my million words of crap were written before I ever got hold of a typewriter, back when I was writing longhand in notebooks. And going through pens like they were going out of style - and yeah, it is crap. I was cringing less than six months after writing a lot of it).

So does this way of looking at it work for you? Who else do you think handles middles and pacing well?

The Reading List

This riffs a little on Rowena's post yesterday. Like most writers, I'm a scribbler completely surrounded by books.

My family has so many books -- on bookshelves, on tables, on counters, on top of the microwaves, on piles on dressers, and recently on stacks on the floor -- that if a concussion bomb exploded in the neighborhood, we'd not only be unimpressed -- we'd never notice.

The shock would be absorbed by all those piles of books, and we'd be left untouched -- and probably reading.

My Mother in Law, before I had kids, told me once this happened my reading would stop. I will agree I became more discriminating (if nothing else, because it's near impossible concentrating on a so-so book while toddler shoe is kicking against ankle.) OTOH the reading continued. It's an addiction, you see? I read while walking. I read while cooking. I read while cleaning (cleaners on books, may all divinities of the printed word forgive me!) I read while ironing (yes, this is incredibly entertaining.)

If I could find a way to read while writing and while sleeping, my life would be complete. I hear in heaven you get an extra pair of eyes so you can read while doing everything else. Okay, I made that up. But it's my heaven, so keep your nose out of it.

This post will concentrate mostly on one sort of books -- books on writing. Opinions on these varies. Most writers buy every one on the market, even when they don't read them. It's like they expect, by osmosis, for the magical qualities of the books to rubb off on them. Hasn't happened yet. (Sigh.) Other writers are terribly afraid it will destroy that mystical/magical quality called style or voice. Or whatever the heck it is they're calling it these days.

First let me dispose of the latter. My husband and older son and I all read the same how-to books. Mostly because I drop books on their desks and glare at them till they read them. Yeah, I know. Horrible, horrible woman. Anyway, if you read any book which has all of us (Strip Mauled by Esther Friesner, say) you'll see we're all completely different. Heck, I couldn't do their styles if I tried.

Refusing to read How-to books to preserve your style is roughly the equivalent of refusing to read even one cake recipe so as not to spoil the natural taste of your cooking. Once you figure out the rules (Oh! Cakes take eggs! [or as my older son said, after the first time he tried to make a cake, and we weren't home: No one told me you had to break the egg and put only the inside in!] or Oh, proportion of sugar and flour is this!) then you can improvise, add chocolate chips, figs or syrup of ipecac. But you have to know the basics FIRST. And better men and women than you -- or I -- have distilled those into writing precepts so you don't need to go out with your little pan and find gold in the mud. Use the dang books. Would you program without ever having learned how to? Yeah, writing is art but it is craft too. Learn the craft first.

Of course the market is flooded with how-to write books. And possibly how to write how to write books. And most of them are -- like most of everything -- worthless.

Now, your experiences will vary. Mine have. All I can do is tell you the books that have helped me. They've helped my husband and my son as well. Doesn't mean they'll help you, but they might be worth a try.

Basic Writing:

Dwight Swain. Start with Techniques of the Selling Writer. If your characters are shaky, read his book on characters, too. If you can afford recordings of his lectures, buy them. Just do it. If you're not published, do it. Yes, you'll probably know most of what he has to say, but do it, anyway. What you don't know might well be what gets you over the final hump into publication.

To improve your chances of surviving the slush pile, try The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman.

Not only do readers only read five pages of most books, you'll be lucky of they read that far. And by this I don't mean ONLY the readers of slush -- if such still exist -- at publishers' or agents' offices. I mean the reader, in the bookstore or at Amazon, or reading your free chapter on line, or the sample at their kindle, will probably only read the first five pages before he makes a decision. If you've lost him by the end of the first page, you lost the sale.

For revising and fixing, try Self Editing for Fiction Writers by Browne and King (they improved my STYLE more than anyone else.)

Now for me, with my busy lifestyle (teenagers no longer kick my ankles, but they do ask questions, whine and want to have Meaningful Conversations at the worst possible times) the main determinant of whether I stay with a book is how immediate the fiction is. You want my attention, be louder than the screeching teen problem. Grab me. Pull me into your world. Make sure I can see, smell and taste. Do that and I'll read to the end. At least if anything happens. :) If all your character does is sit there covering her ears against teen rage, then thank you. I already have that at home.

For this issue I have two -- one strange -- suggestions.

The first I read recently. It's called Immediate Fiction. I read half of it. Why half you ask? Well, he was making lots of sense until he kick dropped me by stopping and sneering that if you write genre fiction of course you don't need any of this, since that's just schlock. If you have a stronger stomach than I, though, you might find it useful.

The second one -- because it has EXAMPLES -- I'm not recommending to anyone who is going to run screaming into the night and I'm DEFINITELY not recommending if you're a minor. I found it useful however. ALL of its specific information is outdated, but on the sheer level of teaching you how to write so the reader feels the story through the senses, this is the best. (As for why I read it -- broke. New baby. No insurance. Still couldn't write it. Not a prude. Sex is just not a spectator sport for me.) How to write Erotica, by Valerie Kelly. (And you probably can skim the examples!)

Now, if you're writing genre, you should read hat genre, you know that. But what you read might be the exceptions -- i.e. the quirky stuff -- or you might be like me and not easily glean the rules from what you read. So, if that's the case you should read SOME books that will level-set you as to what editors expect today.

For mystery, read Writing The Modern Mystery by Barbara Norville. Actually read it anyway, it helps with clues, etc for SF/F as well.

In the same vein, and to help with pacing if you have issues with that, read Writing The Thriller, by Trish MacDonald Skillman. It helped my pacing greatly.

If you write science fiction and fantasy, I'm sure this is greatly outdated, but it will keep you from calling a rabbit a schmerp -- How to write Science Fiction and Fantasy by Orson Scott Card. (A similar book by Damon Knight might be valuable, but it blocked me for years. You have been warned.)

And then, when your editor asks for a big book, she's not asking you for a dictionary-sized tome. To figure out what she's looking for, read Al Zuckerman's Writing A Blockbuster Novel. Read it twice. Three times. Every two months. It helps you keep in mind what the gatekeepers want.

Additional: If writing anything historical, do a search now and then for "Daily life" amid used booksellers. I MUCH prefer the Greenwood press books, but the Writers' Digest ones are also useful to tell you what the general public thinks they know about the time period. You need to either play into it or dispell it, but you need to know what it is first. Your research, needless to say, shouldn't stop there.

For mystery start with idiot's Guide to Criminal Investigation. Then read anything you can on the subject. Go to lectures. Yes, people will look at you funny if you have a folder named "Murder research" on your computer. It's survivable. Writing without having a clue what's going on isn't.

For plotting -- ah, my bette noir -- I use Story Craft software. To be honest, this is most useful for a very vague sort of preliminary outline, after which the story takes over and does whatever. However, it is useful -- TO ME -- as an armature to build upon. Take it with a grain of salt. It doesn't, for instance, have an option for multiple POVs. Also, keep in mind you're talking to someone SO plot impaired that she just recently figured out how to use plot to underline a theme. It might have happened subconsciously before, but it has just recently hit me between the eyes.

So, what books helped or hindered you? Is there a single-best-method, as far as you're concerned? Are there a lot of things I've forgotten? Perhaps a problem I didn't address? Sound off.