Writing

It’s no wonder Synopsis rhymes with Nemesis

Part of the ridiculousness absurdity charm of submitting to different agents is a.) they all want different things and b.) they all want different lengths of different things.

Most go like this:

  • Query letter
  • Synopsis
  • Sample writing

Easy-peasy. I can do that in my sleep. (In fact, I had a dream the other night where I was writing query letters, but not to agents to publish a manuscript, but rather to Illyria Illyria from Angel, asking her if she could take me to the shrimp world.)

Anyway.

Some want a 10 page synopsis. Totes, yo. I can do that. Some want a one page synopsis, which was incredibly difficult. Suddenly the 450 page novel I worked a year and a half on is now reduced to a one page no-frills, no-chills, no-spills dried out husk of what said novel should be.

After much struggling and rewording and laboring, I got it down to one page.

The next agent wanted one paragraph.

It’s a good thing I was writing on my desktop and not an easily-throwable laptop. (Never trust technology that you can throw out the window, I always say. I’m looking at you, phone.)

The hard thing about synopses is that they are not a movie trailer, they’re not a blurb on the back, and they’re not a pitch. After trying to hard to hook people’s interest and to sound as “in-a-world”-y as possible, to write a non-partial, non-prejudiced account of a novel is incredibly boring. I looked at my synopsis of Byron and just about fell asleep.

Or maybe I’m doing this wrong…

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Dr. Kilduff or: How The Powerpuff Girls Taught Me to Love a Pun

Dr. K was my high school literature teacher for two years and he always had this thing about not using anything outside of the text in order to analyze it. Thus, a Plath poem entitled “Daddy” could not, ostensibly, have anything to do with her father. Or, rather, if it did, we couldn’t talk about it.

I never liked that and I finally figured out why: upon rewatching the PPGs, I realized that the majority of my sense of humor came from that show.

Puns? Got it.

The novel I’m trying to get published STAR CROSSED OR: THE CONFOUNDING CALAMITIES OF BYRON THE CAD AND MARIETTA THE ZOMBIE is filled to the brim with puns. They say that puns are the highest form of comedy. Even Shakespeare (eyebrow waggle) used them. SHAKESPEARE. And this dude.

One of the chapters has a subtitle about a Flouring Assassin. It’s about a little girl…who’s becoming an assassin…and SHE’S COVERED IN FLOUR. Or another chapter that tells the future with tea leaves. I call it a Pourtent of Tea. Ha! Even gardening puns make it:

“I can’t even tell if that’s a lie or the truth, it’s so disturbing.”

“My honor!” he snapped back.

“Is so neglected that it’s beginning to wilt from a lack of attention. Nothing I say or do is going to make a damn difference. Does it look like I have a watering can?”

“Hidden beneath the folds of your skirt I’ve no doubt you have at least twenty different ways of killing people and I assume that in assassination school they did teach you how to kill someone with a watering can if given the opportunity.”

“Yeah, the class was called Tenderizing the Garden–”

Absurdity? Yep.

There are zombie fleas that eat the insides of your hair follicles until they eventually burrow into your brain. People electrocute zombies back into life a la Victor von Frankenstein (a distant cousin linking the Shelley character and the Marvel villain*) and they go insane remembering the people they ate when they were undead. And even a slang spoken by street-dwelling triplet junior assassins:

“Swiss worm cheese, they told me you was. Dancing with the squirmies and drinking with the lord of the unforgettable yawn. To see you here, though, flesh peddling and boot stomping for wagon bits makes a Spittle use his hard-boiled noggin.”

They’re well educated street urchins.

A slightly unreliable narrator who bursts in inappropriately? Check.

The story is told in two parts. The first from Marietta’s perspective. The second from Byron. TRUST NEITHER. In fact, I don’t even think you can trust me. The narration shifts slightly from a close third on her and a close third on him, but affects the personalities of them while simultaneously telling about their lives.

Even now I have difficulty keeping it straight, and the point of view is something with which I struggle. That just means a little more editing to get it tight.

Catchy theme song? Uh, no. But I’m working on it.

But what this means is that in some parallel universe where my works are analyzed and critiqued, no one may ever dream of relating it to PPGs if they have a teacher like Dr. Kilduff. And that is just a travesty. It is the things that shape and mould us into the writers we are. And while it’s not imperative that one know everything about a particular author’s biography in order to analyze any works by said author, it often sheds light in the most mysterious of ways.

*Victor von Doom and Byron share a thing! They both believe they are horribly disfigured, due to only a small scar on their faces. Source. I mean, c’mon, guy. IT’S NOT THAT BAD.

From the Powerpuff Girls episode “Schoolhouse Rocked.” I’ll just leave this here:

Ms. Keane: Well, girls, I think Mr. Wednesday taught us a valuable lesson here today.

Bubbles: Education is the progressive realization of our ignorance?

Ms. Keane: No. Don’t turn your back in the middle of a dodgeball game!

Narrator: Oh, Ms. Keane! Under your rule, school is cool!

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Reading Aloud

After finishing The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman a few weeks ago, I read the acknowledgements wherein he says that Amanda, his wife (AND MY PERSONAL HERO), was really the first reader/critic/editor because he read the chapters out loud to her before they went to bed. This, in turn, helped shape the novel, turning it into the heartbreaking and melancholic work of brilliance that it is.

I talked to my fiance (soon to be husband) Adam and told him that same story and asked if he wanted me to do the same thing for him. Since I’m always in need of people to bounce ideas off of and want to hear feedback, I thought it an exceptional opportunity to get almost immediate criticism which would, hopefully, allow my works to become breath-taking tales of nostalgia and childhood trauma, until I realized that I’m, at my core, a horror writer. I may dress it up in sci-fi, in fantasy, in speculation, but everything is always a little dark, a little horrific and a little disturbing. My dialogue goes on for pages. My descriptions can sometimes — without someone to help me reign them in — get a little Nathaniel Hawthorne-y. I use really big words that I’m not even sure how to pronounce.

I read horror novels — here’s lookin’ at chu, The Terror — IN ORDER TO GO TO SLEEP. Not everyone does, I realize.

Adam, wisely, declined.

Plus, have you heard that guy read? Sugar. No wonder people want to hear his novels before bedtime.

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Hella

All the best characters are duos. Think about it. Batman and Robin. Abbot and Costello. Ned Stark and an executioner (spoiler alert!).

So, I’d like for you to meet my other half. (Sorry, Adam, it’s not you.)

She's...seen things. Things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. She watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time... like tears in rain... Time to die.

My precious

Her name is Hella, after the naked vampire maid lady from The Master and Margarita and she’s a 1962 Smith-Corona Corsair. She’s a bit unbalanced so that every time I type for long periods of time on her, she begins to shimmy backwards and to the left, but I just like the fact that I motivate myself by eating an M&M every time she DINGs.

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To NaNo or Not to NaNo?

…that is the hypothetical question posed to you all. Hey, at least I think of you as more than a skull, m’kay?

I’ve participated in NaNoWriMo for the past three years now and I’ve never once NOT finished. 2010 was a sci-fi novel, 2011 a short story extravaganza, and 2012 a fantasy novel.

2013 might be…a nothing novel.

Listen, kids, I’m getting married on Halloween and then I’m going to be in Cabo (as in Mexico) for a good chunk of that November on my honeymoon. I can’t just, you know, IGNORE MY HUSBAND, and be all, “one sec, hon, I’m writing when we should be honeymooning. Pool time? How’s about plot time? Sitting on the beach? Only if it’s raining, and I’m imagining a car crash.”

Can I?

In years past, I have slacked off for various reasons — Thanksgiving, my birthday is on the 18th — and have gotten it done. What’s one more? I oftentimes leave it until the last two weeks anyway and write in 10,000 words a day spurts until I sprint toward the finish line.

But on the other hand, I should enjoy myself as a new wife and relax this November, my honeymoon/birthday/Thanksgiving month. In years past, I’ve gotten a little, um, touchy when the deadline approaches. I know, my accent through the computer makes cantankerous sound like touchy.

But then again, I already have an idea!

But then there are the detractors of NaNo, and sometimes I’m really influenced by the random commentators in the intertubes.

But it’s time to write! And November makes me ridiculously productive!

What’s a girl to do? Listen to music, apparently. Or, ride my bike.

UPDATE: I write these things a few days in advance and just this morning (October 16th), I asked Adam what I should do about NaNo and he FULLY INTENDS ON PARTICIPATING. “What else are we gonna do?” I paraphrase for him.

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The Jade Skull

Speaking of my car, Sir Blimey, not only is he the inspiration for a great many character quirks, but he has even inspired my own superhero comic. Prepare yourself for:

THE GREEN SKULL!

What, I can’t use that? That’s already a Captain America villain?

Yeah, but he’s kind of a crossover special. Surely no one will mind if I use it?

They will? But…but*…Cap can’t have a monopoly on all colored skull villains, can he?

Fine. Fine! Prepare yourself for:

THE GREEN JADE SKULL!

I switched out the gear shifter in my Jeep for a green skull and then got to thinking that my car had an alter ego and went out and became a vigilante at night, all Christine style. Then, BAM. Inspiration.

Story goes that a witch lady who used to possess people a while ago got tricked into possessing a green jade skull figurine and couldn’t get out until she redeemed herself by doing deeds of good. She takes this to mean kill evil doers and proceeds to possess whatever the green jade skull is attached to. Sometimes it’s a necklace, sometimes it’s a 1986 Jeep Wrangler YJ.

Backstory!**

The Green Jade Skull, back in the 70s, was attached to a walking cane of one Sir Reginald Blahblahblah (official surname in the delicate planning process) and she took care of business. This, of course, attracted the notice of the local law enforcement, who couldn’t find a link between all of the victims, other than the fact that their bodies were charred, LEAVING ONLY THEIR SKULLS, WHICH HAVE BEEN TURNED THE COLOR GREEN JADE.

Sir Reginald Blahblahblah dies and his beloved walking cane is put into a safe with the rest of his items until…

Actual story!

…it’s sold in an estate sale to one, LUCY SWEETFACE. (All I know about her is that she’s just gotten out of a divorce and is sweet. Kind of like Diane Wiest’s character in the greatest movie known to mankind, The Lost Boys.)

She takes the green jade skull off of the walking cane and puts it on her 1986 Jeep Wrangler YJ because it looks cool and the Green Jade Skull comes back to life to accomplish her mission of justice! (Or maybe vengeance!)

Lucy has no idea that her car is going out at night and killing people, but again, the local law enforcement starts a-sniffing’. Enter one SGT. STEWART. (Only so named because I think of the Green Lantern Jon Stewart when picturing my cop character.) He links Lucy to the crimes and is about to arrest her, but feels there’s something missing.

What we don’t know — until we do know — is that Stewart had a run-in with the paranormal when he was a child! Oooh. Which makes him want to understand that world, which brings him to the case files of the 70s and to the shocking conclusion that it’s not a WHO, but, rather, a WHAT that has been cleaning the streets of San Francisco for him!

I mean, it’s still kinda in it’s early stages, and I really need someone to draw because my skills stopped progressing somewhere around age six, but the story is there, waiting.

*…but WE used to use soap!

**My friends and I play the Settlers of Catan card game and there’s a destiny card that gets flipped over when certain actions happen. It’s a house rule that when you flip the destiny card, you whisper the word, “dessssssstiny,” in a suitable, movie-trailer voice, way.

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Quirks

Quirks are to fictional characters what favorite ice cream flavors are to regular folk: humanizing. Sure, you may hate your next door neighboor (I did that on purpose) because of all of the loud music they play at three AM when you’re trying to sleep for a morning shift at a coffee shop, but you find out that his favorite flavor is also Rocky Road and the two of you will bond like a wounded war vet and an eccentric crime-solver.

A fictional character has quirks in order to make them seem more real. Will Ferrell’s character Harold in Stranger than Fiction brushes his teeth thirty-two times in each direction. One of the Brothers Grossbart in Jesse Bullington’s book The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart hates anything that has more than two legs. Xander from Buffy the Vampire Slayer always dates demon women. These things make them seem warmer to us and allow us to identify with them.

A good example of a quirk, because, just like lies, the best ones are based in the truth: a car stereo that doesn’t work when the character’s car takes a right turn, but immediately gets fixed as soon as the character turns left. (My car does this. Sir Blimey has many issues, the least of which being his propensity for trickery.) Or, because this happens to me too: the radio doesn’t work in first gear but is marvelous in all others. (In Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s Good Omens the character Crowley drives a car that turns any tape into Freddy Mercury once it’s been inserted into the tape deck for more than a fortnight.)

A bad example: anyone from The Big Bang Theory which takes stereotypes about nerds and hot chicks and then … does nothing with them. Yes, I understand it’s a show that has nerds as main characters and not just the goofy sidekicks, but comedy is only funny if it takes stereotypes and subverts them. Continually having every character wave their nerd flag is tiring and not funny at all. AND I’M A HUGE NERD.

SIDETRACKSTORY in case you don’t believe me about the nerd thing:

I walked into a comic store and was immediately ignored by the male members of staff — which were all of them — until I was ready to check out. I bought the hardcover edition of the third volume of the excellent American Vampire and was snidely asked if I even understood what they had been talking about. (They had been talking about Magic: The Gathering, which is not my cup of tea. D&D and World of Darkness — especially Mage — are my cups of delicious RPG tea.) I hatched a plot so that the next time I was there, a friend would call me and we would discuss Romulan battle techniques for a Star Trek themed RPG campaign in which we happened to be ensconced, loud enough so as to put them in their place. Now I realize the ridiculousness of it, but I wanted my nerd-cred card.

Doom comes when a quirk turns into a flaw. The Big Bang guys are hampered by their quirks and rely on them instead of using them to propel interesting plot and character development. Basically it’s like the Manchurian Candidate flaw from the World of Darkness. (Think Wolverine, who randomly forgets the things he’s done and the people he’s killed, only without the cool healing powers and the adamantium skeleton. You lose control over your character and the storyteller assumes the mantle instead.) Yeah, it sounds fun, and it may get you extra XP, but it’s no fun if someone else makes the character for you. Relying on quirks is making the audience fill in the characterization gaps. And that’s just lazy.

(There’s a meme out there of a cute kid saying THAT’S RACIST! I need one that says THAT’S LAZY! and then post it like crazy over the internet.)

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The Art of Seduction Querying

Once, in a D&D campaign, when I was playing a Wilden rogue, I, along with a few other adventurers, brutally killed a dragon. I — and this I did alone — took his teeth and then displayed them on a necklace that also held other little mementos from earlier vanquished enemies. Little did I know (but very well known to our DM), I would later encounter said dragon’s mother and she, seeing my necklace, decided to poison me with her barbed spiky tail, directing most of her attacks toward me, and, instead of fighting her (I was a rogue!), I tried to seduce* her. After failing my charisma rolls and not knowing how to speak Draconic (don’t all dragons speak Common?), I was unable to woo her successfully and died in the ensuing combat, only to be revived later because my friends cut off a piece of my tail and were able to bring me back.

This is somewhat the same relationship I have to querying agents.

I labor and labor, finding out exactly what they want and how they want it, only to be bludgeoned over the head with a poisoned barbed tail.

Now, you can read websites and books and blogs and seminars galore about how to query, and these may help (this one, I found especially insightful), but ultimately, it’s a gut feeling thing. You craft a letter that you think is enticing to said agent and sometimes you win and sometimes you get eaten by a dragon.

I thought I had an in. A published author friend of mine gave me his agent’s information and I queried and waited with baited breath and trembling hands and all of the characteristic unsettllings of a Victorian gothic novel heroine, only to be rejected by what I believed to be my best chance. A REFERRAL, DEAR GOD, THAT’S LIKE THE HOLY GRAIL OF QUERYING. (Or, to continue the D&D metaphor, like the giant pile of gleaming treasure underneath a dragon’s leathery yet still quite deadly wing.)

But I was rejected. And not all of the gold nor any small piece of me cut off by my adventurer friends from my dead corpse can help bring me back from the sadness that brings.

Just like D&D, however, the story continues and you can either get back on that direboar (we saved a direboar from the evil, evil clutches of Veckna, and he — his name was Tusky — will soon become a battlemount for me to ride on into the throes of war once I get enough XP), or you can go back to your goddess or god and give up and sit in the corner and pout while everyone else gets treasure and experience points.

IN THE END, WRITING QUERY LETTERS IS LIKE GETTING EXPERIENCE POINTS. Each one makes you a little bit better and you learn valuable lessons. Like don’t kill the quest-giver until AFTER he’s given you all of his quests.

As of this writing, I have seven query letters out there. I’ve been rejected four times. I’m sure those numbers — both of them — will grow. Maybe I’ll start thinking of rejection letters as gold instead of what they are. All adventurers — especially rogues — love gold.

*On a somewhat related note: when reading a book on volcanology (hey, I felt I was becoming stupid after I graduated college and thusly consoled myself by checking out books from the library and reading them — and even taking notes — so as to slow the inevitable progression of my own stupidity) I kept on reading subduction zone as seduction zone. Changed the connotation of that book entirely. I can’t even look at a volcano anymore without thinking about that one picture of George Costanza. You know the one I mean.

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