Sequelitis (a flashback)

By Russel D McLean

Russel is currently knee-deep in his day job but here's a little bit of a way-back ride for you. This piece originally appeared over at Chuck Wendig's blog where it had a very intro about how Chuck was stashed in a box for the day. You can read it there if you like and while you're there you can check out Chuck's posts. And then you can buy his books. Russel just finished Chuck's new one - THE BLUE BLAZES - and he thought it was excellent. The piece in question was written for the release of The Lost Sister, and it deals with sequels. This has been on Russel's mind lately after watching Iron Man 3 and Star Trek: Into Darkness. But since Russel got caught in this day job madness he'll present some older thoughts to you about sequels that he still pretty much believes in.

A sequel has to achieve a lot of stuff. It has to pull in new readers while pleasing old ones. It has to remain true to established facts while giving something new. It has to stand on its own and yet acknowledge the past.
It has to do something different.

Oh, yes. That’s the one that most people forget. While it’s considered the safe action to rehash old glories – see NATIONAL TREASURE 2, THE MUMMY 2 etc etc – what you wind up doing is boring people. Because while people think they want the same experience, what the really need is that same sense of excitement and unpredictability they got the first time round. It’s just tougher to put that into words than it is to say, “more of the same please”.

Why is THE GODFATHER PART II considered a perfect sequel? It expands upon and gives new life and new perspective on the first movie while still telling its own perfectly logical narrative. You could see GFII on its own, conceivably, and catch up to this world without having seen the original. Sure, some of the grandeur would be lost, but you wouldn’t be so confused as to throw the movie away and then batter your head against a brick wall until your brains dribbled out your ears.

Sequels.

They’re tough.

And not just when it comes to movies.

With THE LOST SISTER – which is a novel, not a movie* – I wanted to tell two stories. First there is the story that stands on its own. The one about the missing girl. Mary Furst, a girl who has no apparent reason to run away, is missing. There are questions about her disappearance, facts that don’t add up. As Our Hero – J McNee – digs into her life, he uncovers some very uncomfortable truths.

That’s my A story. And sure it could have been enough to hold the book by itself. After all, we established our hero in book 1 and if you want, you can keep a series character static. Many people enjoy that kind of thing. Some writers do it wonderfully. Robert B Parker kept Spencer is stasis for decades. Lee Child rarely changes Reacher or gives us any more about him than we need to know.

But I’m not that kind of writer. I need to let my characters change. Be affected by events. So THE LOST SISTER became a chance for me to explore my central character and find more about what makes him tick. I wanted him to confront some of his own choices over the course of the book, to see things in the case that made him question his own ideals and motivations. I wanted there to be something different in his outlook by the end of the book. In short, I wanted to tell a different kind of story with the same characters. Because otherwise… what’s the point? It’s like eating lukewarm leftovers. There’s something in there you recognise, but really it’s not the same.

I also wanted to explore the supporting cast and to see how they reacted in different situations. People I hadn’t expected to see again. Susan Bright, for example, who was supposed to be a throwaway character in THE GOOD SON and became something far more important. And David Burns, local “businessman” who is one of my favourite characters to write for: a man who does bad things for what he believes to be all the right reasons.

THE LOST SISTER changes all of these characters by the end of the book. Not all of them get to “learn” from their experiences, of course. I think we’re all lucky that I’m not God. Because as cruel as He can (allegedly) be, I think I’d be even worse in charge, winding folks up just see how they’d react. But then that’s the job of a writer – wind those characters up and watch them go!

Word so far on THE LOST SISTER – both at home and now in the US – has been positive. I like to think that it’s a good sequel, that it does more than rehash former glories, that it changes things for our characters, that it presents with new challenges and new situations. I’ll tell you what, I had a bloody ball writing it.

It Sucks To Be A Fire Hydrant In A Pissing Contest

Yes, authors have been in an uproar lately. Over self publishing.

It doesn't feel like that should come as a surprise, but Chuck Wendig's rant gave birth to a phrase:

(Don't put) the publishing cart before the storytelling horse.

I agree. And I'm going to take a slight detour here, and admit I've been feeling a bit nostalgic lately, a bit disconnected. I remember the good ol' days, when a lot of friends had blogs, and it was easy to keep in touch, and have a sense of connectedness. Now, most of the blogs I frequented once upon a time are gone - my solo blog included - and active discussion on the existing author blogs isn't what it used to be, either.

But there's something else I remember from back then, when I first started blogging. There were a lot of blogs that dispensed writing advice. And writers were almost always clearly on one side of the publishing line. They were either traditional, or they were self published.

Technology changed, and that line between the two camps started to blur. And, as more writers got on board with self publishing for Kindle, the stigma of self publishing eroded. Authors who once railed against the folly of self publishing uploaded their backlists, short story collections and even original manuscripts.

The rise of viable self publishing and borderline legitimacy coincided with a decline in blogging, and writers who were blogging started talking more and more about e-publishing, and how to succeed.

Although it may not have occurred in the way the naysayers who linked self publishing with the demise of quality writing predicted, the rise of self publishing does seem to have coincided with a significant decline in discussion about the craft of writing.

Now, back when I first started blogging, there were a lot of blogs where people dispensed writing advice. In some respects, it was a bad thing, because sometimes it was a case of the blind leading the blind. People with no publishing credits to their name would set up shop and dispense advice and build a flock of followers ready to drink the Kool Aid. Heaven help anyone who came along and questioned the adviser, or their advice.

I have mixed feelings about the shift in focus, because I am glad that I see fewer of those blogs. Then again, perhaps I'm just not looking hard enough.

I also appreciate that there's a time and place for advice on the business side of publishing and writing, and I have benefited from some posts about e-publishing.

I am also concerned by the fact that there seems to be a lot less interest in the craft of quality writing.

Having said that, I'm still left to wonder how we regulate quality. Just considering my own work, the same book that has six five star reviews and six four star reviews also has two one star reviews on Amazon. Your mileage may vary. There have been books others have loved that I've loathed.

My latest title, Harvest of Ruins, was recently pegged by Charlie Stella as my best to date. This is a book that's reduced reviewers to tears and brought me some of my greatest compliments, lags far behind all my other titles in sales.

What can I conclude? I don't have enough information to make any definite conclusions, but I am wondering about a lot of things. I wonder if readers feel more confident with my other titles because they were traditionally published first. I wonder how much the number of reviews on Amazon translate into sales. I wonder if it matters that you write a great book, because the only real force for sales is word of mouth. I mean, The DaVinci Code outsold every single work by Dennis Lehane, so quality writing doesn't always translate into popularity or sales. As I recall, The Bridges of Madison County was a NY Times Bestseller. Making the list only means you're popular; it doesn't mean you're a good writer.

And that's the rub. We've all known that. A book may sell phenomenally well, but that doesn't mean the writing is great. It doesn't even mean the writing is good.

There are some things about being a great writer, and a great storyteller, that you can't really teach. A writer either has the instincts and the aptitude that enables them to develop as a writer, or they don't. So many people want the shortcut to success, and so many writers are blind to their own mistakes and weaknesses. I think that's the real fear I'm left with. I'm not afraid of someone self publishing. I'm concerned that people don't take the time to let their work breathe and go back with fresh eyes, and really take advice and feedback to heart so that they can grow.

It's our fast food microwave culture. We don't want to wait, we don't want to put in effort. We want what we want and we want it now.

Part of me thinks that the reason so many people have shifted focus to sales and marketing and succeeding in e-publishing, is because selling successfully is concrete, while much of the art of writing is subjective, and you either have talent or you don't.

The question is, where do we go from here? How do we raise the level of discourse and foster useful discussions about writing? Is it even appropriate? I always feel that if I'm just writing about writing, I'm excluding the readers from my posts.

And that leaves me as lost as ever when I sit down to think about what I want to share here. What do you guys think? What should we be talking about?


PS: Happy Thanksgiving, my fellow Canadians.

Thanks, Chuck or HOW I LEARNED TO STOP TALKING and LOVE THE REWRITE

I'm exhausted.

Like brain fried, body overheated, friggin' exhausted. I work in a school, and if you remember your days of going to school, you'll know that in the early summer most buildings are like brick ovens. And it was 97 degrees outside today. Imagine what it was inside.

So, when I got home, the last thing I wanted to do was write. I wanted to sit down, drink some water, surf the internet, and then the fall asleep.

Then I read this wonderful post by Chuck Wendig and felt like complete crap.

Writing is important to me. I love to do it. Love the entire process, even when it's frustrating. And after I read Wendig's post, I realized how long it'd been since I'd done it.

Okay, not exactly true. I've been writing. Just finished a short story that you'll read soon.

Buuuuttttt, there's something I've been putting off since Witness to Death came out: I have to do a big, nasty, book changing rewrite of the novel I'm working on.

I'm not talking minimal edits like making sure Jim's eyes are the same color in chapter 1 as they were in chapter 18. No, I'm talking combining two minor characters into one major one. Changing events. Making the book work.

And see that's a part of writing. A big part.

It's what the people who aren't really cut out to be writers don't know and what Chuck points out so well. That you have to keep working on it and keep working and keep working to the point where in the course of writing a 75,000 word novel, you've actually written 200,000 words and cut most of them out.

The novels I've written... most of them are nearly unrecognizable from their first drafts. The plot, the characters, they have the same names, but they do different things.

I've never given up on a novel.

I'm not about to start now.

The rest of you can go out and talk about writing your book. You can talk about your concerns, your plans, your promotional ideas. That's all well and good.

But it doesn't mean squat if you haven't put in the work.

Gloria Steinem said, "I do not like to write--I like to have written."

There are a lot of people on the internet who would be better served if that quote read "I do not like to write--I like to talk about writing."

I will not be one of those people.

Writing isn't drafting and proofreading.

Writing is drafting, tearing the whole thing up, putting it back together, tearing it up again, and then proofreading.

And it's work, whether you're tired or not.

So tonight, before I wrote this post, I re-wrote the hell out of the first scene of this book. And it's going to make everything else harder down the line.

But the book will be better because of it.

Thanks for the reminder, Chuck.

"Crime Is King," Says The New Guy

By Chuck Wendig

“I’ve got to go and kill a man,” Jay Stringer said in that accent of his (what is it? French? I don’t even know). He thumbed bullets into a rusty snubnose.

“Cool,” I said, just glad he wasn’t going to kill me. I’ve seen what he can do. I’ve seen how his enemies fared. Missing fingers. Lips burned to a char with cheap cigarette lighters. Chair legs shoved in various orifices, some new, some standard.

“I need you to handle some business while I’m gone.”

“Whatever you need, String.”

“You need to right some wrongs. Steer the ship straight.”

I wasn’t following.

He continued: “It’s Do Some Damage, man. It’s Weddle. It’s always goddamn Weddle. He gets drunk on his fruity drinks and then posts about Harry Potter and Twilight and My Little Pony and shit.” (Except, he pronounced it shite, instead. French people with their French pronunciations.)

I just shook my head. I should’ve known.

“You get in there. You do what needs doing. You can talk about Harvey Keitel’s wang if you want. Or the sexual habits of dinosaurs. But above all else, crime fiction. Talk about crime fiction, for Chrissakes.”

He spun the cylinder, snapped it shut.

“You think you can do that for me?” he asked.

I nodded.

He handed me a Taser. I gave him a look.

“For Weddle,” he said. “He comes at you, you give him a dose of this.”

* * *

Crime fiction is king. Let me tell you why – after all, seems like a good introduction to the site, right? Me, showing up here, seems like I should start at the beginning, and the beginning is that crime is king.

One of my recent mini-crusades in writing is how to make the story and the characters more active. Right? People do shit. A lot of stories end up the opposite, though: People respond to shit. Love? Love can be passive. Falling in love is unwilling. Romance can be born unaware. Horror? Horror is often reactionary. Evil comes. It chops down your door with an axe. You evacuate your bowels. You run. You scream. You respond. Fantasy? Sci-fi? Mythic patterns. Be forced on a hero’s journey. Respond to new technology and changing conditions and future nonsense.

To be clear, I’m not saying those other genres are automatically genres of passivity. Not at all. I love those genres. But you could, if you were so inclined, fall into a somewhat easy pattern of passive stories and passive characters. Those genres allow that.

Crime, though? Crime doesn’t put up with that kind of bullshit.

Crime is like a agar dish of awesome: active elements growing aggressively. Character commits a crime, he does so actively. He is full of want and need. The stories are sodden with possibilities. Guy kills his wife’s lover? Jealousy. Rage. Sure, he’s responding to it, but his response is wholly active. He chases the cheating fuck across the lawn. He pops shut the shotgun’s breach and pushes two shells deep. He pulls the trigger and blows the cheating fuck’s guts out his belly and onto the lawn gnomes (intestines draped upon them like a feather boa on a Vegas dancer).
Boom.

Bunch of assholes rob a bank?

Girl gets revenge on some sick prick by hanging him from a tree and, er, “pruning his man-branch?”

Cop goes off the reservation to make a side deal on the sly so he can feed his family?

Car bomb? Axe killing? Confidence game?

It’s all active. It’s all about people doing things. As a writer, you conjure the circumstances surrounding a single crime, and it’s like a series of dominoes starts to tumble forth into shadow. Who are these people? Why are they doing it? Motivations abound. Desires rise, triumphant. Fear and vice hold hands and jump. You’ve no idea where this trail of breadcrumbs may lead.

Crime is a transgression. It is a violation of social norms. Transgressions, deceptions, violations, violence: these elements serve as a wild source of conflict, and conflict is what we want. Conflict is the food that feeds the reader. An old writing professor said it best: in life we try to avoid conflict, but in fiction, we must head toward conflict. Or, like Tim O’Brien said in a recent interview: “When I hit plateaus, I head for the mountains. By that, I mean (or think I mean) that I do all I can to point a story or a novel toward its central human drama, toward its essential human mystery.” Goddamn right. Crime, then, is the ultimate expression of those mountains -- or, perhaps, as it represents a nadir, we might say it represents the valleys, pits and canyons, and the character must descend, must transgress, must cross the borders and boundaries that Should Not Be Crossed. The characters in crime fiction leave the plateau. They abandon the status quo. They choose that path.

It’s that choice that’s so compelling. The decision to transgress, to pull the trigger or take the money or crack some dude’s head open with a statue of the Buddha, that’s why we read it – or, at least, that’s why I read it. Why do you read it? Why, for you, is crime king?

Ooh. Dang. I gotta go. Weddle’s coming at me, and I want to get this Taser shot juuuust right.