On Artistic Choices And Anti-Villains

The problem I seem to have, is that I am killing off my best villain halfway through the first book.

This is an uneasy road to go down because that death provides huge amounts of development and tension for the rest of the series. I am not Michael Chrichton so I am not going to just bring him back with some bullshit about "reports of my death were greatly exaggerated" when I feel like it.

There's really no way to make the rest of the series work without killing this guy off in the first one. And that sucks. Because I have so much I'd like to explore with him. If he didn't die, he'd have become a serial killer. A religiously motivated, charismatic psychopath serial killer. How is that not amazing?

I would also not have to scrabble for a new villain in books 3 and 4. I'd have the abusive brother back. But I feel like that couldn't end well really.

Ugh. The choice to keep him dead is pretty obvious, but still sucks.

Fucking Stupid Executive Meddling. Also, Xanatos Gambits

Let's take a moment to talk about Scoundrels.

Scoundrels is a TV show on ABC this summer. Or ABC family, I don't know. Nor am I sure there's even a difference. Whatever. Scoundrels is a remake of a New Zealand TV show called Outrageous Fortune. Outrageous Fortune is fucking amazing. I would have Outrageous Fortune's babies.

Scoundrels is absolutely terrible.

I hate to say this, because I was really hoping it would be good and maybe a longer run would be ordered and more people would understand the amazing of Outrageous Fortune, because people would figure out Scoundrels was a remake of it. Outrageous Fortune just started its sixth season so it obviously has some staying power in New Zealand. Americans can't be that much different. Except apparently being stupid because everything in Scoundrels has been dumbed down from OF.

Now, some things don't transfer and they've done their best. For example, the Maori in New Zealand have a very protected status, and replacing them with Native Americans seems a little unrealistic and awkward, given how Maori are shown to be treated in OF. There was really no alternative, though, so I've kinda given them a bye on that stuff. However, there's no reason not to portray Loretta Hope as the twisted, conniving, crazy-smart bitch she is in the original. There had to be a better actor out there for Wolf, who in the original was sexy and powerful and, well, kindof like a wolf (fun fact: the actor was cast as a werewolf, Coot, in True Blood) and commanded every single scene he was in. In Scoundrels, he's pretty much no more interesting than a piece of furniture, especially compared to the other leads.

The only really competent actors are those playing Cheryl and Heather (whose name was Pascalle in the original). These two characters are improved (somewhat) from the original because the actors actually made the roles their own. Van Cal is a little different as well, but Jethro Logan is a complete copy of the original, move for move, inflection for inflection, which is even more ridiculous and painful than it sounds, because the New Zealand accent has a much different rhythm and music from the American one. They say "hello, dad" on a completely different pitch from us, so copying even the inflection makes it forced and unnatural, and it's just bad acting because some things that the original actor made work, this one can't.

Here's a quote from the most recent episode of Outrageous Fortune to illustrate some awesome. The conversation is between Loretta, whose name is Hope in Scoundrels, and Hayden, who she had a kid with and married and is trying to divorce. Hayden hasn't showed up in Scoundrels because he didn't become a part of OF until the second season. And because they've completely fucked up Hope/Loretta's character so that this plot line wouldn't really work, but.

Loretta: Thank you for reminding me what an idiot I was marrying you just to piss off my mother! *storms around the car*
Hayden: No, you married me because you love me.
Loretta: *loud disgusted noise, gets in the car*
Hayden: Yeah, well, half the stains being cleaned off the living room carpet tell me a very different story, Loretta!
Loretta: Ugh, don't be gross, Hayden! *fastens seatbelt*
Hayden: And as I remember, red wine wasn't the only thing that went over the back of the sofa.
Loretta: You are a sad, sick man! *starts backing out of the driveway*
Hayden: Hey, do you have any idea how difficult it is to get wax out of a carpet?
Loretta: It's not my fault you enjoy pain! *still backing out*
Hayden: Why else would I be with you?
Loretta: You're not with me. *driving off*
Hayden: *shouting after her* But I will be because you love me! Maybe not right now but you will!

It loses a lot in just being transcribed but UGH. No words for my love.

So. Ranting about television shows aside.

I have a plan for the books I'm writing. It's a series of probably five. In the last book, there is going to be a Thirty Xanatos Pileup. For the link-phobic, a Xanatos Gambit is when someone, usually a bad guy, sets things up so that any outcome will benefit you. Some very simple examples would be:

- place something obvious and something subtle that have the same function, so that the person trying to foil you will get rid of the obvious thing and feel like they've outsmarted you, while you still have the subtle thing in place.
- suggest a plan to your rivals that would benefit all of you. Either the plan will succeed and you come out ahead, or the hero will foil them, eliminating those people as rivals.
- set someone a task. If they succeed, the task is completed. If they don't, you can eliminate them as punishment for failure, or they will die in the attempt. Either way, a third party is punished. There's a good example of this in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, with Voldemort, Draco, and Lucius.

A Thirty Xanatos Pileup is when many (often all) of the characters have their own individual Xanatos Gambits happening, oblivious to the others. Usually, these all end up crashing into each other at once. A good example is the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie.

So. The final book will have a Thirty Xanatos Pileup and somehow this can be bypassed with this one act and it's essentially all a setup for this line:

Eli held his hands up. "Wait, wait." He looked at Brenna. "Did you just think of a way to hack magic?"
"I did," she said, looking pleased with herself.

The thing is, I'm not a very political person. I probably couldn't come up with a Xanatos Gambit if I tried, in real life. So it's not easy to write. And it's even less easy to find a way for all of these plots to interact in some horribly tangled way. But I guess that's because beyond the two leads, I don't know who's still going to be a character. I don't know whose motivations will be what, what the state of the world they live in will be, how the hell she's going to know about the method up there that prompts the phrase "did you just hack magic" (I know what the method is, but not how she's going to come up with it).

Speaking of which, I'm onto the second book now. I'm nearing 20,000 words. It's going much better than the last book and will probably be stronger. I'm actually able to write in a linear way, now that I'm more or less discovering the plot as it moves instead of knowing what it is and trying to fit it into a framework. I know the plot of the third book, too, so who knows how that's gonna go.

Perhaps there should be flow charts.

In Which I Shit Myself

So, I sent out a ridiculous amount of queries the other night. This is a screenshot of my sent items folder. So yeah.

The day after I had a bunch of nos. Like four or five. Today I had one no. But I also had this:


"Thanks for your query. Mind sending along the first five pages of your manuscript double-spaced in the body of an e-mail? I'd be happy to take a look and let you know whether the style is the best fit for me.

Thanks, Andrea "


I spent several minutes at least flailing and FREAKING THE FUCK OUT because OH MY GOD INTEREST! Just this request is really affirming. I can't be complete shit if someone was interested, right?

Sydney Poitier Is A Mutant

I tend to have real people in mind for physical appearance for my book characters. This is how I get away with Malia being 38 and looking about 22.

Because seriously, how the fuck is this woman thirty-eight?

Word Counts Are The Goddamn Bane of My Existence

Well, expanding exposition is proving to not be that hard, but it's still probably not gonna get me there. Unless I invent a lot of fun shit to happen in the few years Brenna spends in college offscreen, I'll probably top out again at 60,000 words. I fear even that is optimistic.

I really am torn. The only way to sell a 60,000 word novel to a publisher as a standalone tome is as a young adult novel and I really don't want to go that route. 70,000 is passable as a novel but they still get squinchy up to 80,000. Which is why 80,000 was the goal. I've been told that trying to hit a word count seems like a waste of time but everything I've read indicates that word count really is of serious importance. Apparently there's a trend toward shorter novels but how far do I really want to push that? And yet is it worth it to make the book suck just to make it longer?

I don't know. These are the issues plaguing me today. Now granted, none of this applies to someone like Stephen King. Stephen King can write whatever the fuck he wants and someone will publish it. He's an established author with a loyal, established readership who will automatically buy anything he puts out. But for a frame of reference, I remember Cather in the Rye seeming short, and it's 73,404 words. Slaughterhouse Five is less than 50,000, as is Fahrenheit 451, so I guess I have that, but both of those authors were established when they wrote these books and they're less novels-for-the-sake-of-a-story and more novels-for-the-sake-of-a-statement (at least that's my understanding -- I've never read Slaughterhouse Five. Although I want to).

One trick I can pull is to calculate my word count by the page number formula: 250p = w where p is the number of pages and w is the word count. Using that right now, I'm at 58,250 words. I find this much more comfortable. And, from what I see, both methods (the formula and just using the word count tool) are equally accepted and no one will criticize you for being even 10,000 words off your actual count because you used the formula. The logic goes that the formula is accepted because a 300 page novel with a lot of snappy dialogue is going to have a lot fewer words than a 300 page books with long, descriptive paragraphs. It's used to calculate spacing, which is a valid concern, and indeed the reason why word count is such a big deal. Plenty of readers will avoid a book solely because it looks too long or too short.

I think I'm gonna carry through and expand all the exposition that can be easily expanded, write "THE END" at the bottom, save it, then delete "THE END" and click Save As and put "brennaWIP" (the current file name is "brenna"). I'll send out queries on the short version, and keep working to extend it for when everyone says no. I might be the exception and my story and writing will break through my puny word count and someone will pick it up. However, as He's Just Not That Into You tells us, we can't count on being the exception. We have to count on being the rule.

Houston, We Have a Problem

So remember the fear that I wasn't gonna make my goal word count and would fall horribly short? It turns out to be founded, and much more drastically than I even feared.

My current word count is 50,374. I have...maybe half of one chapter left to write, and then there is no more book left. Unless there are entire half-finished chapters I've overlooked somewhere (which is not out of the realm of possibility...223 pages is a lot to keep track of), I'm probably not going to break 52,000. And suddenly all those solutions I've placated myself with seem to suck really badly. There's a lot of exposition in the book, but if I used exposition, there was a reason -- usually because the scene of it would be boring, I needed to pass a very large chunk of time, or I didn't think I could write it effectively (frequently a combination of these reasons). I am not going to find a better transition point to end the book and start the next one than I have, and if I try, too much is going on. I already have three different settings and moods in the book. As is these sortof organize themselves into a rough three acts, so I get away with it, but if I add a fourth, it just won't work. I could go back and add more descriptions to things, but there's a limited amount I can do for that before I'm defeating the purpose of the book, which is to be a simple, bare bones, biographical style. Finishing the chapter I have and adding such descriptions could...maybe get me to 60,000, but that's still not enough.

I guess the only thing to do at this point is start expanding exposition. Ugh, I should have known the whole thing wouldn't be this easy. This last third-or-so is gonna fight me like a rabid pomeranian for my insolence.

To Be Fair, He Had Just Hit Her In the Face

My protagonist just kneed her father in the balls.

Sometimes it's good to be God.