Recycling is for everyone: even writers – NaNoWriMo

I mentioned in my last blog that I ended up using my old story “The Grey Man” as the basis of the story I’m working on for NaNoWriMo. Is this cheating? Doesn’t this mean that I can copy and paste the material that I did write into the contest and boost my word count. Well, I could, but I didn’t.

First off, that draft was written about four years ago, and my style and skills have improved since then (just reading some of my older work brings a shudder to my body even if I smile at some of the good stuff). The original version had a prologue that was very redundant. It was the first to go in the new version. I wrote an entirely new chapter to open the story. Initially I didn’t show you Adrienne’s revenge. I was more interested in her adjustment back into life. But looking at the story now, I felt that showing the reader what she had to do and how cold she became was an important base. It also gave me the opportunity to show a bit of foreshadowing, which is always fun.

Next, I removed all the police material. While Adrienne’s father was a detective, and knew people on the force, I kept them in the periphery. In fact I took the character of the detective from the first draft and turned him into the older mentor police chief in this new version. The original chief was pretty cookie cutter, while the detective was a more rounded character. So I took the more rounded character and put him in the key role. Sadly his partner Kasumi had her part cut considerably. She’ll show up as a side character, maybe have two scenes at the most.

Adrienne’s childhood friend Rachel also received a make over. In the original draft she was supposed to be a successful business woman, but behaved like a wet blanket and was a total pushover. Just reviewing her dialogue made me embarrassed. No way could this woman run her own business. My parents have run their own business for years and it takes assertiveness and guts. Rachel still needed to run the business, its part of her story with Adrienne. So she got a rewrite and I think she’s a much more interesting character. She’s tough but understanding. Hopefully the reader will get the strong connection between the women without all the fawning and pathetic dialogue from the original draft (shudder).

I also rethought the supernatural element of the story. I don’t want to say to much about it, but in the original draft it was actually pretty pedestrian in the execution. This time I added a new element that makes will make this a bit more complicated for Adrienne to resolve and hopefully more interesting to read about.

In addition I created a bit of a subplot involving another of my long existing characters. He’ll pop in to deliver some “Book of Thoth” type information, but with his usual deadly spin. That element just came to me last night and I think it will add to the tone of the book.

With all the changes there is no way I could cut and paste the puppy together. I’m re-writing from scratch. The only element I lifted was a poem and I even edited out a few lines from that (because they referred to the old version of the supernatural element). The poem was really a space saver. I’m not a poet, but I want to come up with something a bit more acceptable than what I have now. But the idea is there and I captured it well enough in the original to keep it without many changes.

So basically my recycling is just that, recycling. I’m taking an idea that I had, rethinking it, reworking it and rewriting it. The initial idea is solid. It just needed four years to find all the right parts and maybe four years of writing experience to improve it.

Have any of you writers ever read your older work and said, “Wow, what was I thinking?” Did you ever start writing something and had a neat side idea pop into your head? Were you able to work it into the story or did you take into a new story idea?

What to Write: Part 2 – NaNoWriMo

I already had something that was inspired by Lovecraft, a set of stories I came up with in the 90’s that I’ve been tooling with and refining for years. I came up with a great outline of the stories and world about three years ago and I’ve been writing novels and short stories in that world off and on for a while now. Now it was time to dive back in.

Last year my NaNo journey was more planned out. I knew I wanted to write a supernatural thriller and was actually plotting it out before I started writing. This time, all I had was a vague outline of stories that needed to be written out. Last year’s NaNo novel “Pierced” falls in there. As I looked over the outline one story popped out.

About four years ago I started a novel tentatively called “The Grey Man”. I was finally going to delve into a character I’d created back in the 90’s, named Adrienne West. Miss West has been bouncing around for years and some of you may have read a strange short story where she found herself in a bizarre dream world. Anyway, I’ve wanted to flesh out her story for a while and four years ago I gave it a try. The beginning was pretty solid, however I fell into one of my traps. I got obsessed with perfecting details as I wrote the first draft.

I had some police characters in the story, detectives assigned to solve a series of mysterious murders. These detectives would end up crossing paths with Adrienne and be torn between feeling she was a suspect or a witness. The problem was, whenever I got to these detectives I would obsess over police procedure in that type of situation. And since I’m not a detective, I had to make it up. And since I was making it up, I knew it was wrong. It really started to bug me, because they were becoming more and more a part of the plot and they were slowing me down more and more. I never finished writing the novel because the detectives stopped me cold.

Now I have a solution. Drop the whole subplot with the detectives. They didn’t really add anything, since the reader already knew how Adrienne was involved. There was no suspense really, just wondering when the detectives would piece it together. Instead of bouncing back and forth between the detectives and Adrienne I would stick with my main character. She was more interesting anyway. I might have the detectives appear in a scene or two, but they will no longer drive a parallel story.

The only issue now is that I feel like I’ve lopped off half the original story idea. Will that make this new version too short, a dreaded novella in length (not much market for that length of story)? Or will Adrienne be able to carry the full story to a complete length by herself. We’ll have to see , but that’s what I’m going with. I do have some additional details that I can add in, things that I hadn’t really considered four years ago, but now feel like they fit. And of course I can add that extra Lovecraftian touch.

So what is the story about? Here’s a back cover for you.

As desert winds howl like banshees around Adrienne West as she faces a deranged murderer. She’s hunted him for three years and today, she’s going to end the chase. Her revenge, which should have quenched the fury within her, only starts something new.
Adrienne returns to the city of Ten Bay hoping to start her life up where she left off. But everything’s moved on. Friends are gone or seem to find her too changed. Worse the visions that guided her hunt have not stopped. They continue to plague her with new terrors. One in particular, a brutal thing with icy breath and frozen fangs, seeks her out in her dreams. When the first frozen body is found, Adrienne begins to be very afraid of what she has become and whether she will remain Forever Cold.

For you writers out there, do you find yourself digging up your older stories and looking for ideas or inspiration? Ever let the details derail you on a first draft?

What to Write: Part 1 – NaNoWriMo

NaNo snuck up on me this year. Between the two large projects at work that were requiring overtime, and the crazy schedule that forced my wife and I to come into work at 4:30am, I didn’t really have time to consider writing a novel. It wasn’t until I got an automated e-mail from the NaNo site that I remembered. I saw the e-mail and said, “Oh yeah, that’s coming up. Well I should think about doing it again.” And then I forgot because work drove everything from my mind.

When I had some down time I did bring it up to my wife. While most of my projects would wind down in mid October, she would still be doing follow up and would end up working from home. I didn’t want to end up with both of us needing to work in the home office at the same time. Work has to come first, and if I had to do my own NaNoWriMo in December, I would. But she assured me that we wouldn’t really be in the office at the same time and it would be great if I got back to actually writing again.

Well with that figured out, it was now Halloween. Um, Ok, so NaNo starts tomorrow – what do I write… Hello? Anyone? Any brain cell wanna chime in there?

This wasn’t writers block. This was just my brain stunned for a few hours. I knew what I had wanted to write for NaNo this year. There’s a fantasy adventure story I’ve been kicking around for over a year. Now would be a great time to power down a first draft.

There was one slight problem with this. NaNo falls in November. What have I been doing all October? Reading H.P. Lovecraft and watching horror movies. This means that I’ve got horror and supernatural fiction on the brain and in blood. I didn’t feel like writing a fantasy story. And one thing I’ve learned, if I end up forcing the writing it almost always comes out poor. Strike while the iron’s hot. So horror fiction it is.

While reading Mr. Lovecraft’s work, I was surprised how much of it has been borrowed and influenced most modern horror – and yet there are very few successful adaptations of his stories. Of course Lovecraft’s writing offers several limitations for adaptation. His style is stilted and hard to get into. His world view is bleak and unforgiving. His heroes can be very passive, hardly heroes at all. And his horror is created by generating dread, something that is very hard to do in a movie or television show.

But with the right amount of tweaking and fleshing out, you could make a solid series based on Lovecraft’s fiction. This was the kind of thing I’d been thinking about this October, how would someone create a movie series or television series based on Lovecraft’s stories. I came up with all kinds of ideas and actually got a little pumped to work on them.

Then my logical brain stepped in and said, “Hold on. Why are you doing this? Are you seriously thinking that you can create a whole television show or movie franchise idea based on Lovecraft? Seriously? Think about that for a moment.”

I did and my logical brain was right. Unless Hollywood goes through a major shift in perspective, Lovecraftian fiction is going to remain in books. Most mainstream viewers don’t want dread. They want solid scares and blood. Can’t say I blame them.

Ok, novels then, I can write Lovecraftian novels that are…

Yeah Mr. Logic stepped in again. “There are already a whole bunch of Lovecraft novels and fan fics out there. Maybe you’ve heard of the Cthulu Mythos?”

“Yeah, but this would be…”

“Different because you did it? No. It would be more of the same. And you don’t really want to waste time on more the same do you?

Logic brain wins again. I’ve fallen into this trap before. I become enamored with something and the fanboy in me starts creating what is basically fan fiction. It’s fun to write, but it isn’t satisfying in the end. What is satisfying is taking the inspiration of these works and working it through my brain and fuse it with my style and create something new. Not necessarily original, but something less than a “inspired by the works of…” type deal.

What did I end up writing? Well I’ll post part two of this blog this weekend and you can find out. Or if you want t sneak peek, head over to this website and check out the “Novel Info” tab.

As of this writing 9,088 words, or 45 pages.

Time to Start that Novel – NaNoWriMo 2009

After much consideration I decided to attempt National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) again this year. This means in the month of November I will write a novel. Sounds like a challenge, but I pulled it off last year with a solid first draft. Still haven’t gotten around to editing that puppy, but it did prove to me that power writing through a first draft is a great way to get things moving. And I need to get things moving.

Ever since I got the lovely little white box called the Wii, I’ve been slacking off. Now I can’t blame it all on that wonderful birthday present (thanks Chris!), it’s also the simple fact that I’ve been a lazy bastard. Sure I’ve done some short story polishing here and there, but nothing really came of it. The most writing I’ve been doing is this weekly blog and I’ve been slacking there a bit too.

So maybe NaNoWriMo is what I need. For those of you that are curious, I’ve got 30 days to write 50,000 words. That translates to roughly 175 pages. So really this is more of a novella sized work. Still this is a first draft and you can usually expect these kinds of things to change size after editing.

Last year I shot for 3,000 words each day I sat down and started working. 2008 had 5 weekends in it. This year I’ve only got 4. But I think the 3,000 word limit will work fine. This breaks down to me writing for four days a week till the end of the contest on the 30th which falls on a Monday.

I’ll be starting up tomorrow and I’ll also try and post some blogs with progress reports and some insight into what it’s like this time. I’ve already got a story idea and I’m eager to see where this one takes off too. I’ll go into a brief synopsis of the idea in my next blog.

Here’s the website if you wanna check it out: http://www.nanowrimo.org/


Have you attempted NaNoWriMo before? How did you fare? Sound interesting to you or do you think this is a hopeless task?

Is this a horror movie? – Poltergeist

“Poltergeist” scared the hell out of me as a kid. I didn’t see it in the theater, but I did see it at a friends house. He was a horror fan, and I wasn’t quite into the genre yet. He felt this would be a good movie to start with, and so popped it in. I have to say that the scene where the investigator rips his face off was probably the most horrific thing I’d seen in a movie at that point.

After watching the movie again this year, my wife turned to me and said, “You know, this isn’t really a horror film. It’s a family drama”. This reminded me of the second time I saw the film with my buddy back in the late 80’s. We didn’t like it because it wasn’t like “Creepshow” or “Nightmare on Elm Street”. And that is what most people think of when they think Horror. Well that and the countless “Saw” films that seem to be plaguing us.

Truth is, lots of things can be considered horror. I’ve covered a few opinions in this blog (including Stephen King’s look at the genre in “Dance Macabre”), but for me “Poltergeist” works with one of the most effective types of horror – the fear of the unknown.

The reason the movie still works and rises above some of its dated special effects is because of two key elements. The family is introduced in a way that makes them very familiar. They remind you of your neighbors or yourself. In fact the trailer goes out of its way to say how normal the house in “Poltergeist” is. “A normal town, with a normal neighborhood, and a normal house… except for one detail”. This normalcy does two things. It makes the family relatable and it shows that these aren’t super heroes, just average folks. Contrast this to “The Haunting” where the house is a towering mansion, or even “Dracula” where the heroes at least have Van Helsing and his key knowledge. Here, the family is on their own facing something they can not explain.

And that is the other key to “Poltergeist”, the forces at work in the house are powerful and unknowable. You can’t reason with them, because you can’t communicate with them. Some don’t seem to want to do more than move things around the house, and others seem bent on taking Carol Anne into their world. Logic is thrown out the window and there seems to be only two options – fight the unknown or run away. And the Freeling family would have run away if Carol Anne hadn’t gotten sucked into that brilliant vortex.

To add to the horror you’ve got the two forces summoned to combat it: science and magic. The ghost researchers are obviously the scientific weapon. They come in and try to figure out why’s and how’s. They feel logic and documentation can solve this mystery. Quickly they are assaulted at all sides and the weakest of their number is driven away from the house (after he hallucinates that he tears his own face off – I’d run away too). This unknown force can not be quantified and the researchers end up doing little more than catching some great evidence on tape. But they realize that they are overmatched and turn toward magic.

Enter Tangina, the short and shrill psychic who’s able to contact Carol Anne and even figure out where in the house the portals to the other world are. At first Tangina seems to be the solution and it makes sense: use magic to fight the unknown. Humans have been doing it since the dawn of man.

Notice one key thing – Tangina does not go into the portal herself and rescue Carol Anne. She’s prepared to do it, but instead it is the mother, Diane, who enters the unknown world and comes back with her daughter. This works with the main theme of the film, of facing the unknown. The family, who we have become connected to must face the danger by themselves and even if they have help of science and magic, they must make the sacrifices and take the risks.

Well it all turns out well, with Carol Anne being rescued and the worst of the horror just giving Diane a streak of white hair. Tangina even declares the house “clean”. But the movie isn’t done yet. In a final defiance – the forces go right back attempting to take Carol Anne again. Magic was not effective. The researchers are gone, so even the reassurance of science is nowhere to be found. Even dad is far away - just mom and the kids and house full of malicious forces. The horrors are unleashed one on top of the other and things go bad very quickly. But it is the family that fights and escapes. Notice that all the members of the family show up by the end of the film, even the teenage daughter who was staying with a friend manages to show up just as the house is destroying itself in it’s unknowable fury.

The last image ties the knot. The family is together, exhausted and shaken, but together. They check into a motel room and push the television out of the room in a moment of dark irony. As the credits roll, Jerry Goldsmith’s score goes into a lullaby, ironic and maybe over cute. But stay till the end when the demonic giggling kicks in. Nice ending.

“Poltergeist” has a lot of great things going for it. Personally I wouldn’t have shown as much of the ghosts ands the powers as they did in the film. Horror of the unknown works better when it’s intangible. And since it’s the effects that are dated, these things could have been avoided with a less “in your face” approach to the story (See the 1963 version of “The Haunting” for a good example). But aside from that its power lies in the set up and in the execution of the story. A family drama? Sure it is. The family as a whole faces the forces of the unknown and survives. But the horror of the unknown is the other key. “Poltergeist” wouldn’t be as effective without either part.

What do you think of “Poltergeist”, solid horror film or over-rated special effects movie? Would you call “Poltergeist” a horror film or does it straddle a line? Do you have a favorite haunted house film?

Dark Demented Noir – Lost Highway

David Lynch has been one of my favorite directors since the end of the 90’s. I remember seeing a scene from “The Elephant Man” when I was a kid. In it the nurse sees the unfortunate man, and his image terrifies her. It was filmed like a horror scene and it scared the hell out of me.

As a kid I also watched “Dune” because I loved “Star Wars” and my dad brought home anything sci-fi related. Needless to say The Baron terrified my sister and I found it to be the most disturbing sci-fi film I’d ever seen. I know others feel the same way for other reasons. :-)

I can’t remember if I saw “Lost Highway” before I got pulled back into David Lynch, or seeing that movie was the cause – but I do know I saw it and the film impacted me profoundly. It was surreal horror in a way I’d never seen before. Lynch had captured the feel of the nightmare, and in doing did something that I had rarely felt – he scared me.

Most of the time, horror movies are gross and don’t do much more than startle me. But there are the rare films that use atmosphere to build horror, and the first half of “Lost Highway” does it very well. I heard the first 40 minutes described as a pressure cooker, with you feeling certain that something horrible is going to happen, but you wait for the other shoe to drop.

Now if you haven’t seen the movie, I’ll tell you right now, most people leave the film immensely confused after the first viewing. The first forty minutes move very slowly, and many find them boring. The next hour or so seems to be a completely different movie and the final fifteen to twenty minutes are screw with your sense of narrative so much that confusion is the only resolution. To be honest this isn’t good story telling.

Now, this provides a bit of an issue, if Lynch doesn’t tell an effective story than “Lost Highway” fails as a movie right? Correct. But if Lynches goal wasn’t to tell a story but create an effective and horrifying atmosphere that creates mixes an uneasy and uncanny feeling in the viewer, then his goal is met. To be honest I don’t know what he was trying to do in this movie, and if I got a chance to ask Lynch, he wouldn’t tell me. His favorite reply to that question is “What do you think I was trying to do?” For him it’s more entertaining to hear what others make of his work.

So maybe he’s just a snobby guy who has a very good eye behind the camera and knows how to create nightmare visions on the screen. But he does this in such an effective way that many other filmmakers have used his techniques to great effect – and especially in horror films.

Lynch’s follow up to this movie, “Mulholland Drive” is a better film. The story makes a bit more sense, (once you piece it together after multiple viewings) and the style seems more assured and concise. The pacing is quicker and fits the mystery of the film.

But “Lost Highway” is primarily a horror film dressed as noir. Shadows and light play huge parts in the film. Lynch utilizes sound and music in such a way as to disorient and horrify the viewer. Early scenes seem to have eerie silence, or undulating rumbles as if the world is waiting to close over the main characters. The house of the characters is always in shadow and hallways seem to stretch into a dark oblivion.

Lights are used in ways that seem to be perfect. Flashing white-blue bursts signify power and a moment of change. Brilliant headlights bath nude bodies in the desert. And the red light of a jazz club illuminates the face of a man who feels suspicion and rage building inside him.

Haven’t seen it and curious? Let me tell you a bit about the premise of the first part of the film. A couple living in modern house seems to be having a strained relationship. There is no sign of understanding or passion between them. One day a video tape is left on their porch (movie was made in 96, so no DVDs). The tape shows a slow pan of the front of their house. The next day another tape arrives, showing the same thing, but after a burst of static, it now shows the inside of the house, from a very high angle, almost as if it was floating in the air. It moves down the hallway and into the bedroom right over the sleeping couple. They are so disturbed that they call the police, but the detectives are unable to find any evidence of a break in. Later on the couple is at a party, and the husband meets a small pale man with no eyebrows. The man claims to be in their house, “right now”. He hands his cell phone to the husband, who dials his home number, and the man answers, even though he’s standing right in front of him.

Seriously, it’s one of the most surreal and messed up phone calls in movie history. And that bit of the uncanny starts the unraveling of reality for all the characters, and only gets darker from here on in. If you are familiar with Lynch’s other work, “Twin Peaks”, “Blue Velvet” or “Wild At Heart”, you’ll know what to expect. But this film is darker, perhaps the darkest of his movies (although I still haven’t made up my mind about “Inland Empire” yet). But in my mind, it’s the closest we will get to a David Lynch horror film and that’s why it’s one of my favorites for Halloween viewing.

Seen “Lost Highway”? What did you think of it? David Lynch: skilled film maker or insane pretentious “arteest”? Can a movie or novel be successful if it only accomplishes mood, but fails in telling a cohesive story?

A Whole Book about Walking – The Long Walk

In some ways Stephen King is a polarizing figure among book readers and writers. Some feel he is completely commercial and writes to please the masses. Others find his work to be among the best of modern storytelling. I dislike extremes, but I have to admit, Stephen King is a very good writer. Nearly every book I’ve read by him, I’ve enjoyed on some level. Some of them are better than others, but most of them keep you reading until the end.

While King is known for his horror work, he’s written plenty of other things. Some of the best adaptation of King’s work to screen come from his non-horror offerings: “Stand by Me” (based of “The Body”), “The Shawshank Redemption”, and “The Green Mile”. In fact one of the books I recommend to King neophytes is “Different Seasons” a combination of four short stories that don’t really have much to do with the supernatural.

My sister recommended “The Long Walk” to me, saying it was another one of King’s different tales. I knew little about it, other than it was written by King when he was using the Richard Bachman pseudonym. The introduction to the book explains King’s view of Bachman and about the alter ego’s untimely death. King says of Bachman “…he’s not a very nice guy.”

What is very interesting about this book is that it shouldn’t work. It has two things going against it. First off, it’s bleak. There is very little humor here and what there is black as the depths of space and nearly as cold. The setting is harsh, grim future – a true dystopia. The tone is hard and unforgiving and it doesn’t let up, not even at the end.

The second strike against it is the subject matter. The basic plot is a publicized game. It seems to be the only game in this future U.S. One hundred teenage boys start walking from a point in Maine heading south. They can not stop, they can not drop below four miles per hour. If they do either, they are warned. After three warnings they are shot. The winner of the game is awarded a fabulous prize. All you have to do is survive.

That’s it. You start off with the main character and follow him all the way through The Long Walk until his end. There is nothing else going on, you don’t get to see anything outside of what the main character experiences, and so you don’t get much background as to why the game was created, how it is promoted and televised, and why anyone would want to participate in such a thing in the first place. You only know that it’s happening and that you are trapped with the main character as it happens.

The thing is, the book works very well. There are two key reasons for this. For me the most important element is the set up. If the first couple chapters don’t grab the reader then they are not going to stay with the book for the long haul. King creates an interesting character with Garraty Davis. He’s someone we can all relate to in a way. If you’ve ever been a teenager then you understand some of what Garraty is going though. You wanna seem smarter than you are. You feel invincible one level and very self conscious on another. You do things on impulse with much though for future consequences. You have something to prove but don’t know what it might be or who you want to prove it to. In a way he reminds me of some of the better drawn teen protagonists of Japanese animation or video games.

Most readers will understand Garraty and as King slowly feeds you more information about the game and what’s happening, your curiosity grows. Garraty obviously knows some things, but his mind isn’t focused on them, instead elements of the game and the dystopian future come out in conversation and internal monologue.

This is the second key to the book. There are elements that are hinted at from the beginning. Why is Garraty involved in the Long Walk? Who is “The Major” and why is he in charge of The Long Walk? Why do some of the boys act the way they do? Each of these points perks your interest and keeps you reading. Garraty finds some of these answers, the readers may have to glean others from Garraty’s reactions and dialogue. Some are never fully revealed. Then of course there are other questions that arise as the book unfolds.

King handles it all very well, and kept me reading even when I questioning the point of the book. It’s so grim and dower, and yet there was something going on at its core, a cold nugget of truth that seemed to elude me. The book made me think, and for most of us writers, if you can get your readers to interact with the book and think about after they’ve shut it – you’ve succeeded. I definitely recommend this for anyone in the mood for something a little different from King, and not afraid to take The Long Walk.

What did you think of “The Long Walk”? You think King is over-rated? Ever read a book that didn’t seem like it should work but because of the writer’s skill, it did?