The Second Novel
Posted by Andie Ryan Blog at 8/26/2010 12:41 AM 
Categories: The Second Novel
Tags: conflict Olivia deHaviland organic writing Second novel characters plot devices writing platform writing workshop writing trap prequel brain chemistry fiction research agent Robert Wise The Heiress Ang Lee sociogenic illness rehashed plot
Categories: The Second Novel
Tags: conflict Olivia deHaviland organic writing Second novel characters plot devices writing platform writing workshop writing trap prequel brain chemistry fiction research agent Robert Wise The Heiress Ang Lee sociogenic illness rehashed plot
So I'm having an early supper with a buddy the other night -- we hadn't see each other in a couple of months -- and he asks me, "How's the second book coming?"
I start to tell him about limited but illegal human drug trials and their devastating consequences, and how I hoped it would be a worthy sophomore effort in my "Companies Gone Wild" series.
"Excuse me?" he says.
"What?"
"I thought you were talking to Ben about bearer bonds?"
"Oh, the financial thing. The prequel."
"Isn't that what you're working on?"
"No."
"No?"
"Well it wasn't my idea to do that."
"Well whose idea was it?"
"An agent I spoke with. You know, do another financial plot to be consistent with the last one. I started it, but stopped."
"How come?"
"I knew it would never have the heart of the first one."
He leans forward in his chair. "I am so relieved to hear you say that."
Okay. Let's set aside for a second that I am surrounded by people who, should I ever run out on my own wedding, would tell me afterward, "Well, you know, we never really liked him."
Did anyone ever see The Heiress with Olivia deHaviland -- movie version of Washington Square by Henry James? Remember at the beginning of the movie that she's picked out her own dress for a party, which she won't let anyone see beforehand? When she comes down the stairs, it's the butt-ugliest dress you ever saw, I mean draperies, a total canvas tent of a dress that befits neither her femininity nor her fortune.
And no one tells her.
That's my prequel. Excuse me. That was my prequel.
Lancome on a pig.
I knew it in my bones from the beginning. I knew it sitting in the agent's office, and when I wrote the first couple of chapters. It would never live up. Couldn't. But there was that pressure -- and I was so advised a number of times -- to do the same thing again, to fall into that writing trap of trying to make lightning strike twice with the same rehashed plot. This is what builds a writing platform, this is what would establish me as a specific kind of writer so I could be marketed against the other guys who were specific kinds of writers, make it easy on everyone.
The financial research for SHAKEDOWN was necessary, and even though readers have told me it's technically bulletproof, it was never very interesting to me. Researching bearer bond fraud and other pre-server, pre-FinCEN financial crime? Snooz-o-rama. You know why? It was too easy. Everything from camels to cocaine went through the mailrooms in those days.
The thing that impressed my friend, after spending ten minutes telling me how relieved he was that I wasn't pursuing the prequel and why, was that I realized the idiocy on my own. And, as any true friend knows, this is the only real path to enlightenment, even though you still want to strangle them for their silence.
I was a psychology minor in college, and the research for this next one -- sociogenic illness, brain chemistry, town fanatics, and a string of deaths no one can explain -- this is real stuff to me. It's more human, visceral. It could happen to us, not our bank accounts -- there's your marketing. It's personal. And the research is really fun -- the actual science is fascinating.
Broad themes are similar to those in SHAKEDOWN -- a company thinks it has a good reason for what it's doing. Their reasons are compelling; the economic and social infrastructures are failing, and what they do is not just about making more money. I knew when I wrote the first chapter that, if I do my job right, it will live up and possibly even be a better story.
And so here's tonight's lesson - if you're not interested in what you're writing, your readers won't be, either. The prose will be flat, the characters will be wooden, and the story will already be familiar, and therefore boring to you. If anything you're doing feels forced, let it go.
This must be what people mean when they say that writing has to spring forth "organically" -- from a natural place. You know when it feels right, especially when you have a novel or a few stories under your belt. That voice gets stronger with the doing. I don't know how to explain it -- it's like gears grinding when you force it. Maybe it's your characters screaming.
Stick to your guns, and this goes for writing workshop participants out there. When your gut, that little voice that eerily seems to know better than you do much of the time, tells you to follow a particular path with your story, rev up your dirt bike and follow it. It doesn't mean you can't change your mind later, or shift the plot lines around. But these dirt paths are the ones that lead to epiphanies in your stories -- a deeper understanding of your characters, more seamless plot devices, clearer conflicts, conflicts that are natural to your story and natural for your characters. These are the paths that have the ability to surprise the writer, if the writer bothers to look at the brambles. You should strive to allow your story to surprise you -- this is as organic as it gets. It may not be the most marketable product, but it will be true. Consider it resume-building.
It may partly upset the book marketing cart, but I'll have to strive to be like those film directors that never allowed themselves to get pigeonholeded by filming the same movie over and over. Robert Wise directed The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Sound of Music. Ang Lee directed The Hulk and Sense and Sensibility. Those movies aren't exactly in the same ballpark, right? These directors went for the stories, and in the hopes that my readers and marketers follow, I will too.
I start to tell him about limited but illegal human drug trials and their devastating consequences, and how I hoped it would be a worthy sophomore effort in my "Companies Gone Wild" series.
"Excuse me?" he says.
"What?"
"I thought you were talking to Ben about bearer bonds?"
"Oh, the financial thing. The prequel."
"Isn't that what you're working on?"
"No."
"No?"
"Well it wasn't my idea to do that."
"Well whose idea was it?"
"An agent I spoke with. You know, do another financial plot to be consistent with the last one. I started it, but stopped."
"How come?"
"I knew it would never have the heart of the first one."
He leans forward in his chair. "I am so relieved to hear you say that."
Okay. Let's set aside for a second that I am surrounded by people who, should I ever run out on my own wedding, would tell me afterward, "Well, you know, we never really liked him."
Did anyone ever see The Heiress with Olivia deHaviland -- movie version of Washington Square by Henry James? Remember at the beginning of the movie that she's picked out her own dress for a party, which she won't let anyone see beforehand? When she comes down the stairs, it's the butt-ugliest dress you ever saw, I mean draperies, a total canvas tent of a dress that befits neither her femininity nor her fortune.
And no one tells her.
That's my prequel. Excuse me. That was my prequel.
Lancome on a pig.
I knew it in my bones from the beginning. I knew it sitting in the agent's office, and when I wrote the first couple of chapters. It would never live up. Couldn't. But there was that pressure -- and I was so advised a number of times -- to do the same thing again, to fall into that writing trap of trying to make lightning strike twice with the same rehashed plot. This is what builds a writing platform, this is what would establish me as a specific kind of writer so I could be marketed against the other guys who were specific kinds of writers, make it easy on everyone.
The financial research for SHAKEDOWN was necessary, and even though readers have told me it's technically bulletproof, it was never very interesting to me. Researching bearer bond fraud and other pre-server, pre-FinCEN financial crime? Snooz-o-rama. You know why? It was too easy. Everything from camels to cocaine went through the mailrooms in those days.
The thing that impressed my friend, after spending ten minutes telling me how relieved he was that I wasn't pursuing the prequel and why, was that I realized the idiocy on my own. And, as any true friend knows, this is the only real path to enlightenment, even though you still want to strangle them for their silence.
I was a psychology minor in college, and the research for this next one -- sociogenic illness, brain chemistry, town fanatics, and a string of deaths no one can explain -- this is real stuff to me. It's more human, visceral. It could happen to us, not our bank accounts -- there's your marketing. It's personal. And the research is really fun -- the actual science is fascinating.
Broad themes are similar to those in SHAKEDOWN -- a company thinks it has a good reason for what it's doing. Their reasons are compelling; the economic and social infrastructures are failing, and what they do is not just about making more money. I knew when I wrote the first chapter that, if I do my job right, it will live up and possibly even be a better story.
And so here's tonight's lesson - if you're not interested in what you're writing, your readers won't be, either. The prose will be flat, the characters will be wooden, and the story will already be familiar, and therefore boring to you. If anything you're doing feels forced, let it go.
This must be what people mean when they say that writing has to spring forth "organically" -- from a natural place. You know when it feels right, especially when you have a novel or a few stories under your belt. That voice gets stronger with the doing. I don't know how to explain it -- it's like gears grinding when you force it. Maybe it's your characters screaming.
Stick to your guns, and this goes for writing workshop participants out there. When your gut, that little voice that eerily seems to know better than you do much of the time, tells you to follow a particular path with your story, rev up your dirt bike and follow it. It doesn't mean you can't change your mind later, or shift the plot lines around. But these dirt paths are the ones that lead to epiphanies in your stories -- a deeper understanding of your characters, more seamless plot devices, clearer conflicts, conflicts that are natural to your story and natural for your characters. These are the paths that have the ability to surprise the writer, if the writer bothers to look at the brambles. You should strive to allow your story to surprise you -- this is as organic as it gets. It may not be the most marketable product, but it will be true. Consider it resume-building.
It may partly upset the book marketing cart, but I'll have to strive to be like those film directors that never allowed themselves to get pigeonholeded by filming the same movie over and over. Robert Wise directed The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Sound of Music. Ang Lee directed The Hulk and Sense and Sensibility. Those movies aren't exactly in the same ballpark, right? These directors went for the stories, and in the hopes that my readers and marketers follow, I will too.
Comments