Writers on the Brink

It’s no surprise that Alfonso Cuarón has signed on to direct the motion picture version of The Radleys.

Matt Haig’s twisted take on a family of vampires living in British suburbia is redolent of the “co-existence with normal neighbors humor in the early books of the “Harry Potter” saga (including “The Prisoner of Azkaban”, of which Cuarón directed the film version).

But will the movie give us this thought from inside Will Radley’s head?
(from Page 306 in the U.K. novel version)

“I am Lord Byron.
I am Caravaggio.
I am Jimi Hendrix.
I am every bloodsucking descendent of Cain who ever breathed this planet’s air.
I am the truth.”

Lines like the above are why movies will never replace written words’ power to put you inside their characters’ heads.

The basic plot: Peter and Helen Radley live a “normal” life in Bishopthorpe, their adolescent children Clara and Rowan unaware of their vampire status until Clara is turned by an unexpected event. Her brother Rowan then realizes he is the “freak” his taunting enemies have made him out to be.

Then the family has to deal with Peter’s nomadic brother, Will. A chap “allergic to responsibility,” and a fair bit more than just the Radley children’s “eccentric uncle.”

“The Radleys” has been marketed for both adult and young adult readers, but many lines seem to aim for the “firmly adult” audience, such as (from Page 90, U.K. novel version):

“Or even the Stones, when the vampire was still with them.”

A bullseye for those of us who feel the Rolling Stones were never the same after Brian Jones left, maybe less so for young adults who may not “get” the above in-joke without the help of Google, Wikipedia, and/or their grandparents.

That said, the anguish Clara and Rowan feel about their new lives will resonate powerfully with readers in every age group. Peter and Helen’s realistically depicted marriage is a nice counterpoint to the typical paranormal romance sagas where companionship is seen only through rose-colored glasses.

There is a great twist concerning Helen Radley’s past. Her brother-in-law Will, however, turns out exactly as any decently astute reader would expect him to. I was left wanting a little bit of a twist for Will, and this didn’t occur.

Other than this minor quibble, I give “The Radleys” four-and-a-half stars out of five. Light on gore, heavy on characters’ heartfelt emotions and filled with Matt Haig’s wicked, sardonic sense of humor. I can recommend this novel for those who don’t usually like to read “vampire” novels. This is a novel I wouldn’t mind having written myself, although I would have had to make a few changes to pass our Southwest Critique Group’s strict standards.

Special thanks to Canongate Books U.K. for making this review possible!

Daven Anderson

Grocery store cashier by day, vampire storyteller by night.

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The scenes and chapters that authors write are pieces of a puzzle. Standard word processors such as Microsoft Word and Open Office Writer are ideal for composing your pieces. When you have gathered all the pieces and are ready to start assembling your puzzle, it’s time for a specialized editing tool, yWriter5, created by author Simon Haynes. You can download and use it for free. If you find this program beneficial, you can make a donation or click the links on the donation page to spread the word about his software on Google, Twitter, or Facebook.

The basics of yWriter5 were covered in Ron Heimbecher’s “Mapping, Trapping and Zapping” class at the 2011 Colorado Gold conference. After editing the first thirteen chapters of my novel in yWriter5, I have some useful tips.

In yWriter5, the building blocks of your novel are scenes. Chapters in yWriter5 are simply the upper level folders in which scenes reside. Your written text is pasted into scenes. This means when you create a chapter, you have to create scenes within the chapter before you paste in your text. In our critique group documents, we tend to mark scene changes with asterisks or the like. When pasting your documents into yWriter, you’ll copy and paste one scene at a time. yWriter5 can automatically split your scenes with asterisks, pound signs or your own custom characters when you export the project.

The logic behind organizing a project by scenes is readily apparent from Simon Haynes’ own example. He had saved chapters as individual files (as I did). The organizational difficulties he experienced after moving a scene from one chapter to another are what prompted him to create yWriter5. Relocating a scene from one chapter to another is, of course, a quick and easy operation in yWriter5.

You can even define scenes as “used” or “unused.” If you wish to leave a scene out of an exported project, all you have to do is change it to “unused.” One catch here is that when the scene editor is closed, the only way to quickly tell if your scene is “unused” is to check the chapter’s word count in the left pane. The chapter’s word count will drop when the scene is marked “unused”, and increase when the scene is again marked “used”.

yWriter5 features a Character index for scenes. Characters are assigned short names (ie: Holden) and full names (ie: Holden Morrisey Caulfield). I created some middle names for minor characters to make the index complete.

In addition to the Character index, scenes also have Location and Item indexes. For example, you can quickly summon each scene occurring at Denver International Airport, or the scenes in which a Nissan GT-R appears. The indexes are very useful for editing out duplicated information about your locations and items.

yWriter5 does have a few idiosyncrasies you have to learn before you master it, but it’s a well-designed program that will be of great help to you. And it’s free!

Daven Anderson

Grocery store cashier by day, vampire storyteller by night.

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For those of you who attended the 2011 RMFW Colorado Gold conference, you should have received a Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers license plate frame, as see below:

My words to the wise are “please place your license plate frame on the front of your car.”

Hypothetical situation: the frame is on the rear of your car, and you are pulled over by a cop. S/he notices that the frame says “Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers.” At this point, the officer will not believe any excuses you will be able to come up with. You may as well roll down your window and say, “Hi, I’m Biff Rockwood, NASCAR driver and undercover CIA agent.” And hope the cop likes your character.

Daven Anderson

Grocery store cashier by day, vampire storyteller by night.

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Here’s a great website for aspiring authors to consult: TV Tropes.
“This wiki is a catalog of the tricks of the trade for writing fiction.”

What is a trope, anyway? An archetype, a concept.
“Tropes are devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members’ minds and expectations. On the whole, tropes are not clichés. We are here to recognize tropes and play with them, not to make fun of them.”

You don’t have to be an author to appreciate (and have fun reading) TV Tropes, but this website is a priceless reference tool. Going far beyond checking your characters for a “Mary Sue“, TV Tropes is a litmus test for your work as a whole. So you want to write a story? Start here.

I wish I had read “Write A Vampire Novel” before I started.

Vampire Syndrome (my novel) contains an in-universe satire of a popular paranormal romance series. What does TV Tropes have to say about this?
“How does your Vampire feel about the depictions of other vampires in movies and literature? …An amusing scene where he lambastes them for being painfully inaccurate… has now become so common it might actually be a good idea to (subvert) it, by having the Vampire be a fan of vampire literature, (in spite of) its inaccuracies.”

My novel’s character “Z” is a huge fan of my in-universe book series, much to the amusement of the other Vampires who know her. I picked her because she would seem “unlikely” to read paranormal romance, yet the books fill her longing for the romantic love her life is lacking.

“If you really want to throw this trope out the window, have him be a writer of vampire fiction.”
I have such a character in my novel’s universe, but he’s only appeared in short stories.The concept of Vampire as “vampire fiction writer” is excellent. The Vampire author would either want to “set the record straight” or deliberately obfuscate the “truth” as much as possible. Or maybe do both of these at once.

The merciless lens of TV Tropes reveals all kinds of conventions in your story, even those you didn’t consciously intend. My chief enforcer “D” and his minions all wear the Badass Longcoat, and they drive Cool Cars. Fortunately, my Vampires Are Rich (from their gold mines, in my case), reducing the likelihood of their driving an Improbably Cool Car that’s out of their financial reach.

Quote from “Improbably Cool Car” (under Examples: Literature): “Entertainingly averted in Twilight (though probably not intentionally). Bella’s impossibly gorgeous, Bad Ass brooding vampire love interest Edward Cullen drives… (drumroll, please) …a Volvo.”

Page 454 of The Twilight Saga: The Official Illustrated Guide reveals this particular Volvo is an S60 R, a 300-horsepower turbocharged sport sedan. A sedate-looking car capable of tremendous performance (a “sleeper” in gearhead speak), the car is an allegory for Edward’s desire to blend in with normal society while concealing his true strength.

An issue TV Tropes has forced me to address is biological reproduction. Female vampires’ infertility is usually attributed to their “undead” status. But what if your vampires are living, breathing and even (slowly) aging? This easy and logical explanation for infertility goes right out the window. To answer the question, I have to specify that my vampires (both male and female) become sterile upon their transformation. Good thing, too, otherwise my female vampires would have to endure an average 7½-year gestation period (assuming they and the fetus both aged at one-tenth the normal rate). Imagine a grumpy, moody vampire mother pregnant for ninety months. Now that would be a real horror story!

The best news for me is that my novel’s universe transcends the Our Vampires Are Different trope. Even in this trope, the wiki writers assume the vampire is (in general) undead and bulletproof. Living, breathing vampires who can subsist off normal food indefinitely and aren’t immune to bullets are more “different” than even this trope expects vampires to be. I’m glad to say I came up with an original concept of vampires on my own that stands up to this trope’s challenge.

Daven Anderson

Grocery store cashier by day, vampire storyteller by night.

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The Harry Potter saga has been a significant source of inspiration for my novel, Vampire Syndrome. No, my muse is not Severus Snape. Or Remus Lupin, for that matter. What has inspired me the most is the seamless interweaving of the magical and muggle worlds, and the power with which it bonds to all Harry Potter readers. Would any muggle pass up the opportunity to take one of London’s many Harry Potter Tours? The only downside: you might have to keep an eye on your kids to make sure they don’t smash luggage trolleys into the Platform 9¾ wall or try sneaking into the actual building used for the exterior shots of Gringotts Bank.

The power of blending fantasy and reality worlds is not limited to Harry Potter. Just ask anyone who’s been to Forks, Washington, recently. Before Twilight, you couldn’t have dragged the average young girl there, kicking and screaming. Now, if you’re a parent, your adolescent daughter(s) will drag you there, kicking and screaming. Good thing I have a pulse and my skin doesn’t sparkle, or the ever-present mob of middle-school-age girls prowling the streets of Forks would have ripped me to pieces in pirahna-like fashion.

Many of us in the Southwest Critique Group write stories based in Colorado. We seem to be following a variation of an ancient rule, in this case expressed as “write where you know.” Why not? It worked for Joanne Rowling. Who among us wouldn’t smile standing next to the “real” Platform 9¾, walking into the Leaky Cauldron, or even driving your rental (excuse me, hire) car over the bridge where the Knight Bus squeezed past the double-deckers?

Joanne Rowling made the most of her location. As authors, so should we. Don’t we all harbor the dream that people would tour our novel’s locations with the enthusiasm of those currently visiting London or Forks?

My vampire novel is set right here in Colorado. An odd choice? Ten years ago, Forks, Washington, would have seemed just as bizarre. Like Rowling, I make the most of my setting. Does anywhere else in the world have a better candidate for a vampire statue than Denver International Airport’s menacing, mysterious El Mesteno? Conventional wisdom says never judge a book by its cover, but we all know people do anyway! It was a bit more complex to explain why vampires would choose to live in a location with over 300 days of sunshine a year, but I managed. This required some new interpretation of classic folklore. Again, why not? Stephenie Meyer chose cloud-covered, rainy Forks so her vampires could keep their sparkling skins hidden from direct sunlight.

For millions of readers, Rowling made actual locations magical and her fantasy world real. Our stories should do the same.

Daven Anderson

Grocery store cashier by day, vampire storyteller by night.

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Here’s my response to Nikki Baird’s brilliant idea, the Writer vs. YouTube challenge.

In the far corner of the ring is “Spin Spin Sugar,” a rock music video by the Sneaker Pimps.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjBwe6IL10o

My story is written from the point of view of the young man first seen attempting to change TV channels with the remote.

Dammit. This old piece of junk TV isn’t getting any channels. I give up. Lord, I never should have answered that personal ad. My date’s acting like a total drug addict. She’s in the bathroom. Fully clothed, sitting on the john, yelling out disjointed words.

I glance into the bathroom. My date stares lasciviously as she moans, “I’m everyone, I feel used.” What is she on? I’m the one who’s feeling used here. When a girl invites you to her motel room, you expect it to be just the two of you. Instead, her weirdo 1980′s retro-freak male friend is in the bathtub, wearing day-glow fluorescent clothes, sipping a strawberry milkshake.

She smiles at me and says, “I need you.”  Oh, god.

Eighties freak boy stares at me for a second, then throws his milkshake on the bathroom mirror. Jealous, are you? Don’t be. This is the worst date I’ve ever been on in my life.

Great. Now sicko fluorescent retro-boy is licking his spilled milkshake off the mirror.

“Twist for me,” my date yells.

Uh oh. Now I get it. I think they want me for a threesome. Why didn’t she put her ad in Casual Encounters? As if these two weren’t bad enough, someone’s banging on a big African drum in the next room. This is the sleaziest hotel I’ve ever been in. I think she’s a hooker. This must be the place she takes her tricks to.

I bet glow-boy put a roofie in that milkshake. Now that freak’s dropping to the floor in agony, gripping the back of his mohawked head. I’ll be lucky if I get out of here alive and unmolested. Wonder if anyone’s hiding under the bed? I duck down and take a look. Hmm, no bodies, but there’re worms crawling around. Gross.

“I want perfection,” my date says as she writhes on the other bed.
Honey, you’re the furthest thing from perfection.

I get up from under the bed and bang on the wall.
“Quit playing that fracking drum,” I yell.
The incessant drumming pauses for a second. I think they heard me.

What else is going on in this hell-hole? And why would some sleazebag hotel like this have a picture of Pope John Paul II on the wall? Must be covering something up. I chuck the photo aside. Aha, a peephole. I kneel down. A girl drinking wine and dancing in black light. Wish I was in that room with her.

Great. Now my date’s crawling across the floor, toward me. Leave me alone, I’d rather look at the other girl.

I gotta get out of this place.

Daven Anderson

Grocery store cashier by day, vampire storyteller by night.

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I’ve noticed some readers think my stories have excess detail when I refer to cars by their specific model, even sub-model. The specific references are there to help the clarify the readers’ mental pictures of the character’s cars.

Example: How descriptive are you when you say that your character drives a “Dodge Charger?” Do you mean the muscle car two-door coupe made from 1966 to 1978, the subcompact hatchback made from 1983 to 1987, or the current four-door sports sedan made since 2006? This is a perfect example of where specifying the car’s sub-model is of great help to assist the reader in knowing which Dodge Charger you’re writing about.

By specifying that my character drives an “SRT8″ (sub-model name), not just a “Charger” (model name), I give my readers the important clue they need to know exactly what kind of car he’s driving. Some readers will recognize what an “SRT8″ is immediately, and the rest can Google it.

I ran into the car-model problem myself one evening at our critique group. When I wrote about my character’s “Shelby GT-500″, one person at the table wrote that he loved my reference to the “classic 1960′s muscle-car.” The only problem was, I meant for the car to be the current 2011 model year Shelby GT-500. The next day, I made sure to add “2011″ to my chapter.

It’s true some readers don’t care about cars. The reverse is also true. When Stephen King’s novel Christine was released in 1983, he made numerous factual errors when describing various attributes of a 1958 Plymouth Fury. His errors were even more notorious than usual because the novel’s central character, Christine, is a (supernaturally sentient) 1958 Plymouth Fury.

Even in 1983, error after error leapt out at me from the pages of Christine, yanking me out of the story. Christine was painted “Autumn Red” color, even though the 1958 Fury was only offered in Buckskin Beige. King himself had to explain (after the book was released!) that Christine was special-ordered in red. But he never explained the “Hydramatic transmission lever” (pushbuttons shift the 1958 Plymouth’s Torqueflite transmission), the “Rocket V8″ air cleaner (did Christine eat an Oldsmobile?), Arnie replacing the “rear door” on a car that had no rear doors, or the non-existent door lock button clamping down as Leigh Cabot eats her burger in the drive-in. The movie’s car builders had to install fake door lock buttons in a 1958 Plymouth to replicate this scene.

The final insult was when I noticed the rear cover’s picture of Stephen King, sitting on the hood of a 1957 (not a 1958) Plymouth. A world-famous author, who could have bought a 1958 Plymouth Fury just for research purposes, or at least borrowed one.  What did it say about his  “research” when even a teenage reader (before the modern Internet existed!) was laughing at all his mistakes? This is why I swore back in 1983 that if I ever wrote a book,  the car details would be correct. My younger self would be proud to see I kept that promise.

Daven Anderson

Grocery store cashier by day, vampire storyteller by night.

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Love. The vampire genre is full of “love.” Bookstore shelves are on the brink of collapsing under the weight of an army of paranormal romance titles. Servers for e-books are filled with terabytes of bodice-ripping hunks with fangs.

And therein lies the genre’s biggest problem.

Vampires are, by definition, outsiders. Thus, their experiences of love should also diverge from the normal world. Their dealings with love should be the opposite of the usual “category romance with a sprinkling of paranormal seasoning.” This ceaseless flood of cloned paranormal romance degrades Dracula, debases Bathory, ultimately creating a body of readership that will never touch the spine of a book with the word “vampire” in the title. Can you blame them?

One of my main motivations for writing is to correct this sad situation.

My character D was fourteen years old when he met L, an attractive redhead who appeared nineteen. She was actually a fifty-five year old vampire. L did not bother to inform D in advance that consummating their attraction would transform him into a vampire. Even though they are soul mates, and he has remained with her for over 250 years, D has never forgiven her for failing to tell him what he would become. This is the reason why D seeks solace in the arms of his mistresses, in spite of his wife L’s habit of killing them.

The reason why L didn’t tell D is that her first husband didn’t tell her she would become a vampire, either. And L didn’t mind a bit. She loves being a vampire. She sees it as empowerment and deliverance from a menial 18th-century life. L doesn’t think anyone would, or should, ever object to becoming a vampire. Even if they weren’t told about it in advance.

There are way too many books where you can read about a handsome male vampire at long last finding his human female soul mate. Once again, the time is ripe for an author to think outside the (coffin) box and bring the true “outcast” spirit of the vampire back from the, ahem, dead.

What tales of love reside in my novel? J, a newly turned young vampire wanting the love of a family, guarded by a Gypsy vampire still mourning the loss of her loved ones. D, never forgiving his wife’s act of information omission, seeking comfort in mistresses. Power-hungry L, killing those mistresses to regain control of the “bad boy” husband she loves.

These are not the love stories in your typical dime-a-dozen paranormal paperback. These are the love stories of outsiders.

The love stories of vampires.

Daven Anderson

Grocery store cashier by day, vampire storyteller by night.

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As writers, we are always told (pun intended) to “show, not tell.” We are supposed to give lavish, detailed descriptions of each and every detail of our characters’ surroundings.

Let me compose an example for you:

My thumb snapped the dry, ancient flint wheel of my tarnished, weather-beaten sterling silver vintage Zippo. The cascading sparks caressed the hissing jet of lighter fluid, setting off a deep blue flame that quickly transformed to a yellow glow matching the bulbs of the streetlights glimmering above. I drew the flame closer to the tiny tobacco leaves in my hand-rolled cigarette, watching them ignite to life in a multitude of burning red hues, ready to render the exquisite pleasure and satisfaction that can only come from inhaling nicotine.

Problem: Is this a realistic train of thought for your character? Does the example above move the story forward? Does it give you any insight into your character’s thoughts?

What a real-life character would actually think “Clicked my lighter and took a drag. Nice night for a smoke?”

Here’s a more realistic, less bogged-down “dramatic embellishment” supplementary suffix to the above two sentences.

Nothing like my old Zippo. Always works through thick and thin. Too bad no one rolls their own smokes anymore, like I still do. Can’t stand those chemical-tasting white coffin nails.

There. Thirty-two words in four sentences. You get the Zippo lighter, the hand-rolled cigarette and how the character feels about them. Without the ninety-word bombast of my deliberately overstated first example.

If you use an excess level of description, not only do you bog down your story’s pace, you are actually taking away elements of the story that can and should be left to the readers’ imaginations.

Too many writers endeavor to describe every last detail of their characters’ world, at the expense of other story elements. I’ve read more than a few books where excess descriptions stop the story in its tracks like a deer caught in the glare of headlights. The characters were pushed so far into the background as to be almost non-existent. If I hadn’t read previous excerpts of these authors’ works, I would have had no clues regarding any of the characters’ motivations.

Many authors seek to create a movie in your mind. The impeccably crafted prose of the books mentioned above most certainly accomplishes that goal. But, I must ask, what is the greatest advantage a novel has over a movie? Being able to get inside a character’s mind.

Recently, ten pages I brought in for critique group were the polar opposite of excess descriptions. I used the point of view from an authority figure performing an interrogation. Did this character describe the plain, windowless, sparsely furnished interrogation room? Of course not. His attention was 100% focused on the person he was interrogating, as it realistically would be.

My readers can imagine the inside of an interrogation room, but they can’t “imagine” the inner workings of my character. This is the reason why I wrote about his motivations, not about the room he happened to be in.

Daven Anderson

Grocery store cashier by day, vampire storyteller by night.

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Back in October 2010, I posted my novel’s song playlist on my blog. I e-mailed the link to the RMFW loop and asked my fellow authors to share some of their playlists. Unfortunately, no one took me up on the offer. I was looking forward to sharing with other authors unique insights into their stories, their writing, and even themselves. Again, I took the “candle” approach where the “blowtorch” would have been more appropriate.

There’s a tendency for authors to view their choices in music as nothing of importance. Something to put on in the background as you type. A song quoted in your pages to spice up your story, at best. This couldn’t be more wrong. Are their choices obscure? Popular? Hackneyed (such as banjo music for a backwoods thriller)? Or do they even bother with music at all? Each of these reflect very different mind sets for both the authors and their stories.

The content of this post’s Part One should make it clear that each of the forty-one songs on my playlist is an exercise in character development and character building. Each song I selected says something important about a particular character and makes a comment about the character’s place in my story’s universe.

I waited in vain for someone to reply to my e-mail, “Why is your song list so random, so genre-jumping?” To which I would have replied, “The selection is not ‘random,’ each of my songs is a window into the point of view of one of my characters.”

My writing is intended for those who look for the hidden truths and ask the deeper questions. (Yes, I’m aware this is a heavily philosophical approach for a grocery store cashier writing a vampire book!) Readers of my novel who research the lyrics and songs on my playlist will be rewarded with a unique insight into my characters and the novel’s universe. If I’m lucky, a reader or two will be able to make a connection to something I missed. I dream of the time when I can make one of my readers proud at my book signing when I tell them, “You are the first person who got my intended meaning.”

Yes, novels have to stand on their own merits.  The connection with music outside the novel is intended for readers who wish to expand their understanding of my novel’s characters and universe. Which leads to my all-time favorite movie quote:

Some people can read War and Peace and come away thinking it’s a simple adventure story. Others can read the ingredients on a chewing gum wrapper and unlock the secrets of the universe.

Lex Luthor in “Superman” (1978)

Your novel has to stand on its own enough to satisfy those who take it simply for what it is. However, great novels should offer a universe of hidden meanings for the readers who wish to dig deeper.

Daven Anderson

Grocery store cashier by day, vampire storyteller by night.

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