Crap! I gotta get to work on my stuff. Sure, I’ve done a little but not enough. The summer has gotten away without getting much done on my manuscripts let alone any of the other projects lurking about. I catch glimpses of them daily. The boxes of flooring hunch in the corner of the front-room. The new trim waits patiently in the garage. The wall around the plot next to the patio begs to be filled with dirt. Errk! I need to win Mega-Millions and hire a handyman.
Okay, enough whining. Too much really. I went to conference, got a request for fifty pages of two manuscripts and it’s time to buckle down.
What does buckle down mean exactly? Where’d that phrase come from? Hitch up your pants and tighten your belt before getting busy?
There goes my ADHD again. In my case it ought to be HDAD; High Definition Attention Deficit. So, where was I? Oh yeah, getting down to it. Getting down to it? A mining term possibly? Never mind.
So, what’s my plan? A reasonable, logical person would come up with a plan. But I’m not much of a planner. I live in the moment and I don’t say that with pride. I know plans are good things and I ought to embrace them but I don’t like them. I don’t like them the way I don’t like rodents. I’m not afraid of them, I have no phobias I’m aware of. I loathe them. If there is no reason not to, I kill rodents. In my world, because my wife is in it, there are reasons not to kill rodents. I don’t understand them but they exist, just trust me on that. Uh,oh, HDAD again.
My plan is to work on my manuscripts every day, even if only for an hour. Seven hours a week minimum, that’s my goal. I’m not sure if set-up time is included. Not all the details of my plan are worked out. Do I include the time driving to the coffee shop and getting out my laptop? Or, do I start the timer once my fingers hit the keyboard? I don’t have a lot of experience with plans after all. My sense of it is, that it should be actual writing so that’s the way I’m leaning.
The trouble is I’m at the point where it’s not actual writing. I have to go through and fix things, define things, clean things up. I know that’s part of writing but I like the first draft part better. Hence the need for a plan. (Whew, almost started whining again but I pulled it back.)
Anyway, that’s my plan. I’ll write seven hours a week minimum and some every day. I hope that by writing every day I’ll get in more than seven. That way the things get done and out so I can start a new project. I also hope that, by posting my plan, I’ll stick to it.
So, what’s your plan? Got one? Like’em? Hate’em?
Showing posts with label kill. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kill. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Thursday, June 2, 2011
POV Characters Immortal or not?
Hey everybody,
Can, or rather, should you kill off a POV character in the middle of a book? Obviously it would be a mistake to kill a POV character in a one or two POV book. And, we all know that the bad guy can, and often does, die near the end of a book, that’s okay. But what if you have multiple POVs? Can you kill one of those?
I’ve seen forum posts on this very thing and often, it depends, appeared somewhere in the post. It depends on how you treat it. It depends, does it further the plot? It depends on the phase of the moon. Well, maybe it does. But I’m going to take a stand and say, “Damn right you can, and you should. Why? Star Trek.
That’s right, Star Trek. The original series with Captain Kirk and Spock and Bones and Scotty, that Star Trek. The greatest sci-fi series of it’s time and progenitor of movies, tv series, action figures, and worldwide conventions. But, Star Trek had a flaw.
Only the guys in the red shirts that you’d never seen before ever died. Oh sure, every now and then a main character was put in mortal danger but you knew they weren’t going to croak. You knew it beyond a shadow of a doubt so, no matter how artfully contrived the pickle, your fear and dread were less than they could have been. Now, I understand that sort of thing is a constraint of an ongoing tv series but we aren’t writing a tv series. Even if we are writing a series of novels, I would argue that you have to kill a main character once in awhile and, if you have multiple POVs, you ought to kill one of them.
The argument against killing POV characters seems to be that you might upset the reader. Okay, that may play in certain genres where there is an expectation of a ‘happily ever after’ ending. But fantasy, my genre, isn’t one of those.
Killing a POV character changes the dynamic for the reader. The reader, once invested in the characters, will fear more for them. Tension will increase if anyone in the cast can die. The momentary, “Crap! I liked that guy.” reaction will soon be overcome by the need to find out if the rest of them make it. The reader will have to see what peril the rest of them face. Will they overcome or succumb?
I have a novel that needs a lot of work. It’s the first one I wrote and it’s sitting in a drawer, and on my hard-drive, and on a couple sticks and one day I’ll pull it out and work on it. Many things will change; the antagonist needs some redeeming qualities, the protagonists need some work, I might pull a few scenes and write new ones. The one thing that will not change is the title character being killed two thirds of the way though. He dies for a reason and that reason is central to the book. He dies to demonstrate to the readers and the characters that the danger is real and imminent. He dies to demonstrate that his plan, no matter how vital and necessary, is likely to get some, maybe all of them, killed. And that, even should the plan fail, they must try again, no matter the cost.
That’s a pretty good reason to kill him. But I don’t need one that good. POV characters find themselves in threatening situations all the time, They can’t survive them all. If they all do all the time, the story will become predictable just like Star Trek. I don’t want any guys in red shirts in my books. POV characters will never get a free pass in my books. But those are my books.
What do you think as a writer? As a reader? I’d love to hear it.
Can, or rather, should you kill off a POV character in the middle of a book? Obviously it would be a mistake to kill a POV character in a one or two POV book. And, we all know that the bad guy can, and often does, die near the end of a book, that’s okay. But what if you have multiple POVs? Can you kill one of those?
I’ve seen forum posts on this very thing and often, it depends, appeared somewhere in the post. It depends on how you treat it. It depends, does it further the plot? It depends on the phase of the moon. Well, maybe it does. But I’m going to take a stand and say, “Damn right you can, and you should. Why? Star Trek.
That’s right, Star Trek. The original series with Captain Kirk and Spock and Bones and Scotty, that Star Trek. The greatest sci-fi series of it’s time and progenitor of movies, tv series, action figures, and worldwide conventions. But, Star Trek had a flaw.
Only the guys in the red shirts that you’d never seen before ever died. Oh sure, every now and then a main character was put in mortal danger but you knew they weren’t going to croak. You knew it beyond a shadow of a doubt so, no matter how artfully contrived the pickle, your fear and dread were less than they could have been. Now, I understand that sort of thing is a constraint of an ongoing tv series but we aren’t writing a tv series. Even if we are writing a series of novels, I would argue that you have to kill a main character once in awhile and, if you have multiple POVs, you ought to kill one of them.
The argument against killing POV characters seems to be that you might upset the reader. Okay, that may play in certain genres where there is an expectation of a ‘happily ever after’ ending. But fantasy, my genre, isn’t one of those.
Killing a POV character changes the dynamic for the reader. The reader, once invested in the characters, will fear more for them. Tension will increase if anyone in the cast can die. The momentary, “Crap! I liked that guy.” reaction will soon be overcome by the need to find out if the rest of them make it. The reader will have to see what peril the rest of them face. Will they overcome or succumb?
I have a novel that needs a lot of work. It’s the first one I wrote and it’s sitting in a drawer, and on my hard-drive, and on a couple sticks and one day I’ll pull it out and work on it. Many things will change; the antagonist needs some redeeming qualities, the protagonists need some work, I might pull a few scenes and write new ones. The one thing that will not change is the title character being killed two thirds of the way though. He dies for a reason and that reason is central to the book. He dies to demonstrate to the readers and the characters that the danger is real and imminent. He dies to demonstrate that his plan, no matter how vital and necessary, is likely to get some, maybe all of them, killed. And that, even should the plan fail, they must try again, no matter the cost.
That’s a pretty good reason to kill him. But I don’t need one that good. POV characters find themselves in threatening situations all the time, They can’t survive them all. If they all do all the time, the story will become predictable just like Star Trek. I don’t want any guys in red shirts in my books. POV characters will never get a free pass in my books. But those are my books.
What do you think as a writer? As a reader? I’d love to hear it.
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