Lisa Gray

Another unfinished beginning...

~~

Lisa Gray slammed an empty glass down on the bar counter next to a thickly bound book with a glossy black cover.  She shelled out some change and placed it on the counter.

“Only one today?” said a sturdy man with black hair and a budding beard behind the counter.

She smiled at the bartender, “I still have a chapter to edit tonight.  Give my regards to your wife.”

He nodded, “Will do.  Good luck!”

Lisa walked out of the bar and the heavy wooden door swung squeakily closed behind her.  She didn’t drink every day, just on occasion.  The dirty New York sidewalks were piled high with trash bags, keeping small colonies of rats hidden from the human eye.  It had been nearly four months since she had moved from her huge apartment in Santa Fe.  It had definitely been an adjustment to say the least.  At the first mention of moving to New York City, her fiancé smiled and said that he could live without her after all.  So much for being an editor of romance novels.

The street glowed an unnatural yellow under the street lamps, illuminating nearby buildings.  It was late, but people stood outside doorways in groups, talking, smoking, and drinking.  Her heels ground a broken bottle into the gray concrete. The sidewalks were littered with mountains of gum that had long since melded with the concrete.  After passing an upscale restaurant that she only wished she could afford, she arrived at her apartment.  She pressed a code to release the door which led to a row of mailboxes.  She then opened the second security door with a key.  She was immediately greeted by a small marble hallway.  A leafy plant was located dead center.  Walking up a flight of stairs, she walked a few more steps down another hallway and put another key into a solid black wood door.  The lock clicked and she walked inside, locking the door again as soon as she was inside.  Almost instantly, her jacket got tossed on the couch and her keys were thrown onto a dresser across the room.  They slid across the waxy surface and hit the floor.

Lisa stared at them for a second before sighing and grabbing her laptop off her desk.  She lifted the screen and it shown back at her brightly.  With a single click of the refresh button she could see that she had a new e-mail.  The name “Matt Glen” was in the sender information.  She leaned back in her chair with a smile.  So he had gotten it done on time after all.  She had been planning to edit a different author’s work tonight, but his story had taken a very interesting turn lately.  She had actually been really looking forward to his next group of chapters.  It couldn’t hurt to just peak, right?

Writing a Fight Scene

Writing a fight scene isn't the most difficult thing in the world, but it can be challenging, especially if you've never done it before.  Because your character is fighting, new factors come into play.  Before, when you wrote about your character's surroundings, you were doing so in a passive voice.  You talked about the "look" of things and the "feel" of things.  Now, in a fight scene, you have to use that space.  Your character's surroundings can become a limitation.  They can also be utilized to describe action or become tools for your character to use.  If your character is the resourceful type, he/she can use anything laying around to fight with.

Ex: Danny broke a board sticking out from the wall and hit his opponent over the head.  His opponent stumbled and fell.

Easy right?

Now, the next part is being mindful of any physical limitations that your character already has (if your character has only one eye, one hand, or a lame leg), as well as any that may occur during the fight.  Think about how serious these injuries are.  The range of mobility for a character who has been shot in the arm would be different than the range of mobility for a character that was punched in the face.  Different reactions occur.  You need to research what some of the side effects can be for such injuries.  Can your character be injured somewhere without it being fatal?  If your character attempts to cause a potentially fatal blow to his/her opponent, would it atomically be fatal?  How much leeway can be had if technology has been adapted, such as environments or medicines in science fiction?

Next, you need to think about how interacting with the physical environment might affect someone who has been injured, versus someone who has not.  Can a character who got shot in the arm actually pick up that wooden beam and use it?  Probably not.  Would he have to compensate for the injury and put more strain on his other arm?  Absolutely.  If a character was punched in the face and couldn't open an eye either due to swelling or pain, then would she be able to see an attack coming from the side of the injury?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  But even if she did see it, her reaction time would be substantially shortened.  Keep track of the injuries.  If your character receives multiple blows, that character may become weaker than his/her opponent.  Is your character bleeding?  Is your character disoriented?

Another thing to consider when writing a fight scene is what may temporarily stun your character or opponent without actually injuring them.  Things like explosions at a slight distance, flash grenades, smoke bombs, or anesthetic gases cause characters to lose temporary use of some senses.  Sometimes, depending on how intelligent your character is, or how fast they react, this loss can be prevented.  However, if the character cannot avoid the loss of the sense, as the writer, you have to be aware of what that loss entails.  If your character doesn't get physically injured from an explosion (including possible loss of eye sight), in extreme cases, your character can still have temporary hearing loss.  Since hearing is linked to balance, your character might have trouble standing, aiming, or even sitting upright.  Flash grenades may blind your character, which may open opportunities for injury.  Smoke bombs limit mobility and range of sight.  They may also hinder breathing.  Anesthetic gases may be vented into a room, knocking out the character/characters, opening up possibilities for capture, torture, injury, or death.

Next are the psychological effects from a physical injury.  Adrenaline can be a temporary painkiller in a fight, but sooner or later (and depending on the severity of the injury), that adrenaline isn't going to be enough to stop the pain receptacles from signaling to the brain that you're injured.  This occurs either when the injury is too great or when the adrenaline wears off.  Be aware of the pain tolerance your character has, because it doesn't equal infinity.  Also be mindful of what is on your character's mind should that pain become intolerable.  When you injure yourself in a normal setting, you likely think about nothing but the injury. In a fight, you're attempting to put that large thought and make it a secondary concern. For your character, that may open up possibilities for impaired judgement, impaired movement, or being unable to aim or wield a weapon in the proper fashion.

Still, writing a fight scene isn't only about surroundings and characters.  It's about the story.  What is your character trying to achieve?  Are they skilled enough to achieve it?  Are they mature enough to handle the circumstances?  Fights aren't always about winning.  Sometimes, the best fight scene happen when your character is the one losing.  It's the effort put in by the character to attempt to achieve the goal that makes it great.  Whether they do achieve their goal is totally up to you...

Choosing the Writer's Viewpoint

I was asked recently by an author whether she thought it would be better for her to write in first person or third person.  She reasoned that she wrote better in third person, but wanted to challenge herself.  So it occurred to me that other people may be contemplating the same things.

There are advantages to writing either way, as well as disadvantages. It depends mainly on the range of mobility that you are looking for as a writer, and how personal you want your writing to be to the reader.

For first person, you pretty much get nailed down to one person's point of view for the entire story. That isn't to say that you can't still talk about other characters or hint to things that the character doesn't know about, but you're limited to how much information you can give your audience. On the opposite side of the spectrum, some authors like the fact that their character can't reveal everything to the audience. It can make for a much more exciting or personal experience, especially if you get really good at capturing a character's personality. Their thoughts--humor, sarcasm, irritation--all become your greatest assets in the first person view.

Here's how I used one of my own characters in first person. This first person is from a male point of view:

[ Whatever reaction she was expecting from me, it was obviously much different than the one that she received. She stared at me in a way that I don't think I've ever been looked at by anyone in my entire life. I couldn't begin to explain it, but it was almost as if she seemed to suddenly discard everything that she wanted to say. She leaned towards me slightly, and my eyes narrowed in confusion.


"We're here," Erin called, stopping the jeep and jumping out of the seat. He caught sight of Ezra before she turned to get out of the jeep, and for an instant held the most curious expression on his own face. ]

In third person, you can give your audience clues about your characters that the characters themselves may not know. You also have a wider range to explore the emotions of other characters, as well as give a better understanding of the environment in some cases.

Here's a clip from a third person fic that I discarded some time back:

[ A pair of gentle blue eyes looked through a room full of slain men.  The twelve-year old girl looked up at her fratello, bracing herself for a scolding.  When Jose looked down at his charge, her face suddenly pointed toward the floor again.  For an instant, he could see a slight chestnut highlighted in her beautiful brown hair, illuminated by a ray of sunlight.  He wanted to reach out and stroke her soft locks, but he knew better than to let his emotions get the better of him.

“Henrietta,” he said, with a sigh of frustration.

She looked up at him.  She was already trembling.  Her sad, scared eyes pierced his heart in an instant.  He shifted his gaze to a man lying in a pool of blood nearby.

“What happened?” he asked, regaining his train of thought.  It was like déjà vu.  Two years ago an almost identical incident had happened.  She had done so well too after that incident had happened.

“Jose,” Henrietta started uncertainly.

He looked back over at her.  She was giving him nervous glances, exchanged with deep sadness.  Jose, confused, with individual thoughts and questions chasing themselves across his brain, remained silent.

“Please,” she breathed almost painfully.  His attention was totally hers now.

“Please, can we go? You’re arm, Jose.  It’s bleeding.  Please!  Can we go and get it treated now?”

Startled by her words, Jose’s eyes shifted over her face, examining every inch of it, then slowly drifted down to his arm.  How he had managed to forget, he wasn’t quite sure, but just as she said, there was blood dripping from his fingers tips.  He could vaguely recall being hit in the arm, but somehow he could not make himself concerned about it.  His gaze drifted back up and settled, looking into her eyes. ]

As you can see, you can get about the same range of emotion, but with more than one character. It's all about how mobile you want to be and where you want that emotion and action to come from.

The Detail Whore

So many writers starting out, have been in a place where you wanted your work to be so amazing, so real, that you stuffed it full with as many details and metaphorical abstract words as humanly possible.  So much so, in fact, that you feel like you should be a philosopher in order to read the damn thing.  That method of writing has so far worked for one person and one person only... JRR Tolkien.

You see, we try so hard for our writing to be perfect that we start inserting crazy long words in the place of other words that are better suited for the sentence, just so that the context has more volume.  But what we fail to see is that, that volume is sometimes 90% nonsense.

The idea that "more detail is better" is a myth.  Detail can be one of the most useful and powerful assets to a writer if used correctly.  If used incorrectly, it makes him/her out to be a naive, pompous ass who has an enormous ego to stroke.

Like the sentence: "A blackened sky did null but gully attention to a homicidal half-circle."

Yes, someone actually used that exact wording in a sentence. What the hell does that even mean?  It's code for this: "The night sky didn't draw attention to a half-circle of killers."

The point is, do readers really want to work so hard to decipher each sentence?  I know I wouldn't.

But another tactic that many of the same authors use is hiding of essential details.  These are things to clue us in at what we're actually looking at.  Saying an eye cries, and then refusing to tell us which of the ten people you're talking about is confusing as hell.  "She" is another word that can be equally misused.  When you're talking about a group of people and don't explain which one is actually a boy, a girl, or a kid, and then say "she cried," your reader is going to stare at the page and scratch his head, asking himself if he missed something.

In the end, it all comes down to asking yourself a few simple questions:

1. If I you left this alone for a while and came back to it six months later when you've forgotten the bulk of the story, would you still be able to understand what was going on?  If the answer is no, your story writing style isn't working.

2. Do you talk like you write?
Almost everyone can admit that they don't write the same way they talk, which means that the writer's job to create a believable environment is that much harder.  Writing something tangible isn't the same as writing something that pukes details.

3. Can I visualize it in my head?
A good general guideline to follow is that stories are good when you can visualize them, but they aren't getting hooked up on the details.  In other words, A) the context makes sense, and B) it's written well enough so that you can immediately see yourself in the environment with the people.

Here's a wonderful example of good writing (p. 8 from Memoirs of a Geisha):

"In our little fishing village of Yoroido, I lived in what I called a 'tipsy house.'  It stood near a cliff where the wind off the ocean was always blowing.  As a child it seemed to me as if the ocean had caught a terrible cold, because it was always wheezing and there would be spells when it let out a huge sneeze--which is to say there was a burst of wind with a tremendous spray."

little fishing village = we already know approximately what type of location we are in.  We know what kind of village it is: small and reliant on fishing, which already gives us a distinct feel.

It stood near a cliff where the wind off the ocean was always blowing = We now know the location of the house, what kind of landscape is around it, and the normal weather patterns of the area.

Don't forget to have fun.  If you enjoy the story that you're writing, it will reflect later when it's read.  So, to sum it up, when using details, use them wisely and proudly, but sparingly.

Writing a Script - From The classroom

For anyone who's ever written a script for an education or professional environment, you know that changes are doomed to happen.  You are always going to be doomed to edit your piece.  And after everyone's opinions and all your frustrations, where you end up going may not be even close to the initial direction, theme, or characters you started with.

Where do you draw the line between a good solid edit that's complete and much better than the initial attempt, and a failed attempt that's lost all your personality and is simply a product of everyone else's ideas?

At what point do you just throw your hands up in the air and scream "I give up already!" ?

I'm still trying to find the balance myself, but after spending semester after semester tearing apart stories and scripts, I've learned that everything has a limit.  At some point, even if your script isn't perfect, you will be happy with the result.  It will make sense to you.  That's when I call mine done.  Because any edits after that are simply tiny details.  When you reach that point, nail it down and call it done.  There will be nothing more you can do to it without destroying the good things that you've already done to it.  And above all else, make sure you are always okay with the direction that you are going.  Make sure it makes sense in your own head, not just in someone else's.  And never use someone else's idea without thinking through how it would work with and what it would do to your story.

The only other piece of advice I have for script writing and writing in general is to make the dialogue real.  Many times, what we say in writing is not the same as what we say when we talk.  This is especially true when you're actually speaking to someone else.  And it's because the other person gives you input.  They take you in directions that you aren't expecting to go.  Do yourself a favor and get an good audio recorder.  Stick it in your pocket and go have a conversation with someone.  Then go stick it in a friend's pocket and have them do the same.  If you're a girl, stick it in a guy friend or boyfriend's pocket (if they're okay with it), and have them talk to their friends.  You will be amazed at all the different ways that people actually talk.  Speech patterns will change from person to person, depending on who is talking and who is included in the conversation.

What do you want your characters to be like?  What is their personality?  Speech patterns should reflect a character's personality.  Remember, the way that your character talks says something about them.  Do they talk trash? Are they a potty mouth? Do they cuss when they get mad?  Do they never cuss at all?  And what effects their moods.

These are all things you need to think about.  Trust me, they definitely help me.

Fanfiction Editor Hell

So I'm sure not many people know this about me, but I'm a Beta Reader (Editor) for Fanfiction.net.  It's not really a big deal as pretty much anyone qualifies to be an editor.  Most of the people I edit for seem to be pretty satisfied though, and my client list keeps growing larger with every week.  That being the case, I feel slightly qualified to tell you that you should believe me when I say that not everyone is meant to be a writer.  I've had the privilege of beta reading for at least two or three truly excellent authors.  They purely use my help to get feedback and smooth out some basic grammatical errors.  I've got no problem with that.  That's what I'm here for.

What truly irritates me is when I'm correcting every other word or every second sentence.  Worse still is when the author asks me about how they should make a character, or to describe what kind of skills someone has.  I am not the author.  Don't hand me a basic idea and then ask me to make it for you, that's not what I do.  Another great policy to keep is that if you reread your fic and it doesn't make any sense, it won't make any sense to me either.  If you just want to write something and hand it off to someone else to make it magically beautiful, when you get it back it's going to look something like this:

Pretty scary right?  All of the red is stuff that I wrote or edited.  The black is what made it from the original.  Unfortunately, this writer is only one of many that has had editing issues.

Another massive beef that I have is when fanfiction writers try to incorporate youtube videos or music.

I know from experience that everyone at some point wants everyone to know what they're listening to when they write. Don't burden your audience.  If you like the music, describe how it makes you feel in your fanfiction.  Make your characters act to it.  To make us listen to stuff or watch stuff is the easy way out.  Not to mention, very few people actually like the same kinds of music.  No one is inspired by the same stuff.  Get over it.

Trust me, you'll thank me when it's all over...

Unfinished Stories

This little story beginning is part of a large series of openings that haven't really gotten past the initial inspiration.  This one is a little bigger than a one-liner.  Be aware, it's not finished.  But here it is.  Enjoy:

Sand

Sand was seeping endlessly into the room just after I felt a sharp knock to the back of my head.  In an instant the scene vanished.  My worries of needing to get out…  All of it was gone.

In my dreams it was a scene that I once recalled.  When I was around five, I fell in a well.  I had broken my legs so I could only sit there and stare miserably as the water poured down on me.  It soaked me to the skin.  I screamed for hours, feeling the cold penetrate every bone and muscle in my body.  And when they found me, I was half dead already.

I opened my eyes to a brightly lit room.  I studied the gold banisters, remembering a time when I was once a princess.  I had a kingdom at my command once.  Its people were beautiful and loyal, and I was loved.  Now, I was just a hired soldier to fight the private wars of businessmen who were too self-important to understand the meaning of peace, to understand the meaning of anything other than greed.  But then I was bound to their greed, all at once pure and perfectly tainted.  There is no way out of the devil’s bargain now.  I am one of them. 

There was a time once, when my husband would have told me to have faith in the people.  Everything would be all right just as long as we believed in the good of humanity.  What a load of crap.  He, who was also once the Prince of Staign, was the type of man who breathed peace, spoke amnesty, and practiced humble dignity, treading lightly on matters that licked his feet with flames and people who cast down his name with swords in their hands.

“So, they sent down a mercenary, huh?”

The voice that spoke to me was heavy and bold, trained with years of questioning and torturing countless others before me.  I wasn’t the first to reach him, not by far, and probably wouldn’t be the last either.