I finished what I call a ‘third draft’ of Star Kings, and I’ve been getting it ready for publication.This has taken much longer than I had hoped. I read through it one more time for obvious typos, errors, and weaknesses. I then read it aloud for text, flow, and readability, and fixed more typos, doubled or missing words, wrong choice of words, bad phrasing, sentences or paragraphs which were out of place, and other things. I used a text-to-speech reader which revealed a few more problems, which I had not seen in all the drafts and edits until then. It took that much polish to meet the standards which I have set for myself. 

Formatting did not take as long as I had feared. Most of the things I fixed were widows and orphans, that is, when only the first line of a paragraph is at the bottom of a page, or the last line is at the top. I also fixed paragraphs when the last line was only one word that was fewer than five letters, or was the last part of a hyphenated word. I wasn’t so minutely picky this time about line spacing and kerning, but it still took a couple days. I may do a post on formatting later. 

I created the front-matter, which includes title pages, also-by’s, copyright notices, and so on. I added three appendices; for Characters (to remind readers who they were without me having to repeat it), for Other Peoples (those non-humans on other worlds, so I didn’t have to describe them every time), and a Brief Glossary, for terms which I had made up, and for words which had a special meaning in the story. That didn’t take very long either.

I began the process of submitting the book to the company which is my printer/binder. The first thing they want is the title, which can’t be changed later. That’s when I discovered that Star Kings was the title of a book published by Edmond Hamilton in 1947, so I couldn’t use it, and had to come up with something different. It feels strange to say it, but it took me three days, and dozens of bad ideas, before I finally settled on Turning Point. It’s appropriate, because the story is full of turning points, which are events or decisions or discoveries which change the way the story will go and what will follow.

Then I needed a blurb, which is the text that is on the back cover of the book. I did that in a day. Then I needed a description, which is what you see on the bookseller’s web page when you look for it on-line. I wound up doing seven versions, each with many drafts, until I finally got one which satisfied my unofficial but highly competent editor.

Now I’m ready to go. 

Except for the cover picture …

It has taken longer than I had hoped to finish reading Star Kings aloud; for text, for story/content, for performance. Weather, health, family obligations, other interruptions to my so limited creative time.  But the reading is done, and now I will do a text-to-speech. 

It has been recommended several times that the writer have someone read the story aloud, to catch things the writer would not otherwise see. That might work for short fiction, but finding someone to read Star Kings for me would be a bit of problem. The text is something over 137,000 words, nobody I know has that kind of time, and I haven’t found any way to hire someone to read aloud for me, all in one go, and I’m not sure I would like it anyway. I have used text-to-speech software, and it works. Despite all the times I’ve read the manuscript (typescript?) it still finds lots of little errors that I’ve missed.

It has also been suggested that I hire a professional freelance editor. That is way beyond my budget, at about $40 per hour, at about ten pages per hour, at about 550 pages, given a standard 250 words per page. That’s $2,200. Not counting how long it would actually take. Not counting how well the editor might understand what I’ve done. I’ve had editors make egregious assumptions, and make totally unacceptable “corrections.” Story on request.

I find characters easy. They all live in my head, as it were, and I come to know them as I write. But description, narration, and sometimes even flow of plot are hard for me. It’s the problems with those aspects which I find while reading, silent or aloud, that must be fixed. So, aside from my apparent talent with characters and dialogue, everything else is an acquired skill, and what needs to be fixed takes a long time.

The standards which I have set for myself have become higher than they were even ten years ago. I do not judge other writers by my standards. There really is no comparison. My standards concern my use of my acquired skills, which standards I apply to whatever irregularities I find. I am not aware of these irregularities until I read my story aloud, maybe for a third or fourth time.

Getting it right is important to me. There are lots of times when I find a tiny glitch in what I’ve written, and I’m tempted to say, “Ah, it’s good enough.” Then I read it again. And then I decide to fix it. Maybe I’m obsessed with it, but “good enough” isn’t good enough. It has to be right, or at least as good as I can make it.

After this comes formatting. Sigh.

When I started writing full time, the received wisdom was, that if you wanted to be successful, you should write one thousand words a day. 

I had, and still have, a problem with that: was it one thousand words of sketches and notes? a rough draft? a polished draft? If I wrote one thousand words of first draft and, the next day, revised and corrected it, did that count? If I cut and tightened it so that it became only eight hundred words, did that mean I had done minus two hundred words? The dictum was never really explained.

I don’t know how long it took Thomas Wolfe to write Look Homeward Angel, but according to the biography of Maxwell Perkins, who was Wolfe’s editor, it took Perkins five years of working with Wolfe to get it into publishable shape. I don’t know how many words that comes down to from start to finish, but it is not a thousand a day. Even without all that editing.

Ernest Hemingway edited his own work extensively before submitting it, polishing his style to be exactly the way he wanted it to be. 

I don’t know how long it took Margaret Mitchel to write Gone With the Wind, but I’m sure she didn’t just dash it off at a thousand words a day. 

It took Truman Capote about five years to research In Cold Blood. 

Tolkien took sixteen years to write The Lord of the Rings. 

So much for a thousand words a day.

I have written a thousand words a day, but they were first draft. I wrote Planet Masters, 75,000 words, in eight and a half days, nearly ten thousand words a day. I also did sketches, maps, characters, created the world’s complex culture. Then revisions, corrections, and responding to my editor’s comments. I wrote The Pursuit of Diana in fifteen days, because I had to. Plus dealing with my editor’s comments. 

But I still wonder sometimes, am I taking too long with Star Kings? Aside from the years between when I started it and when I picked it up again.

I finished what I call a good third draft of Star Kings, and read aloud for text, and finished, after thirteen months, on September 9, 2022, when I took a “much needed break.” I got back to Star Kings on October 20, read it aloud again, and now I’m working on reading for story, that is, does it flow? does it make sense? is there anything which might kick a reader out of the story? 

Yes, there is. There are continuity problems, such as when a description of something in one place is different from what it is in another. There were several paragraphs where the text was fine, but I had no idea what I had been talking about, what it meant. That took almost two hours to fix. If I hadn’t fixed it, someone else might just have stopped reading. 

And because of the length and complexity of the story, about 136,000 words at this point, I decided to create an appendix for a list of characters, instead of having to remind the reader if that character hadn’t shown up for a while. 

My viewpoint character interacts with many peoples who aren’t human in any way. They have their own home worlds, biologies, physiologies, and so on. So I am adding an appendix describing each of them, so that, for example, when I mention the Mroghan people, say eleven chapters after the last time, I don’t have to describe them again. 

And there are lots of terms, the meanings of which are clear in the context of the story, but when they are used many chapters later the reader might forget. 

For example, when I wrote Stroad’s Cross, which took place in 1958, I didn’t have to put in a description or explanation of what a “stick shift” was. I’m sure there are people today who have no idea. In Star Kings, a reader might not remember what I meant by “tablet” when I use it so infrequently. My characters would just know that, and would not have to remind themselves.

Doing all this takes time, and I have only three or four good creative hours a day. But it still nags at me, am I taking too long, am I being too careful?

After re-reading my first paragraphs, maybe not. And besides, the standards which I have set for myself have become higher than they were even ten years ago. 

I do not judge other writers by the standards I have set — or am setting — for myself. Every writer is different, so that is not really possible anyway.

It is that, as I have grown as a writer (storyteller), I have become more aware of my weaknesses and faults, and I am no longer content to say, “well, it’s good enough,” when I can in fact do better if I just try. Which takes time, and energy, which is in ever diminishing supply. And there’s no way I could write one thousand finished words a day.

I started working on Star Kings a long time ago. I wanted to write a series of stories set in the far future, stories that I would like as much as those which I had written for Freefoot. I did a lot of preparation — character names, personalities, descriptions. Plot-points, obstacles and conflicts, adventures and challenges, and so on. It went nowhere. I still have the folder and file cards.

 I finally realized, years later, that what had worked for Freefoot, was that the stories were about peaceful times in a safe world, with ordinary Elfquest people, living normal lives, with only occasional unexpected events, which gave the reasons for the stories. My work on Star Kings had not been like that. It was only dangers, adventures, conflicts, and enemies. 

So, informed by what I had done in my Elfquest stories, I started working on Star Kings again, on December 8, 2017. I did sketches and rough drafts of the first five parts, and they worked. The people were ordinary in their own way, in a far future, living in a giant city between the stars. They were miners, extracting bizarre molecules from cold stars and creating exotic materials. They were traders, going to other worlds and trading those materials for what they wanted, and for other things to trade with other worlds. Most of them lived like ordinary people in their city, with services, shops, schools, and so on. 

It was going to be a huge project, from the birth of my hero to the birth of his first child. I decided to put it aside for a while, so that I could work on some other ideas. I wrote and published A Thing Forgotten, and The Gift and the Price. I got back to Star Kings on August 20, 2021, sketched the next four parts, and wrote drafts of the whole thing, part by part, until I had something that was not quite ready for publication, on September 9, 2022.

I still had to polish it by reading it aloud, but I had been working on it for thirteen months, and I was tired. I had to just stop for a while and take a break. My normal breaks between projects were usually from half a day to a weekend, but I needed something much longer than that, so that I could have a clear mind and a fresh view when I got to the polishing. 

Second to storytelling, what I enjoy most is graphic art. I have a variety of graphics applications, which I haven’t used much because of that storytelling, and there were some things I wanted to create visually, instead of verbally, so that was what I did. I really enjoyed doing it. It uses a different kind of imagination — no words. I learned more about how to use the software. I created a fantasy map with Sketchbook, and I’m working on a flickership from Star Kings using Graphic (a generic name), and used Graphic for a street map of a tiny town. I really like making street maps, and maps of strange lands. I like making house plans, which I can sometimes use in my stories.. And designing castles, and dungeons, and starships…. I want to do something with 3D graphics, but that will have to wait. 

I returned to Star Kings on October 10, 2022, and started reading aloud for text. Next I’ll read aloud for story, and then for performance. Then comes the formatting, getting the cover art (Darcy will do that), and I may finish before Christmas this year. I am refreshed, and doing well, and as I read Star Kings aloud, I get chills. It’s becoming what I want it to be.

And that is why I took the long break, to really stop, for a month, not half a day. It’s done me a lot of good.

I had an opportunity to write some non-fiction in the early part of my career, and since my stories weren’t doing very well, I decided to take the chance. I wrote about computers at a time when I could learn a lot, more than the average reader, just by studying the ads in Byte magazine. Then write what I had learned in language that even I could understand. I wrote a few books, collaborated on one, updated part of a textbook, wrote some articles, and was a contributing editor for a couple magazines. But computers went beyond my limited expertise and, though my writing skills were still in demand, and I decided to stop and focus on my fiction again. I was happier with that. 

I was approached some years later by a high school junior who, like others in her class, had to find a mentor who could help her understand the kind of work she might do after college. Kristin thought about being an editor, her parents knew about me being a writer, so they suggested that she come to me. 

We met every couple weeks to talk about what an editor does, and I suggested that she take a look at the first few chapters of Stroad’s Cross, which had been rejected several times, to see if she could tell me what she thought I need to do to make it better. When we met again a couple weeks later, she told me that she hadn’t been able to read very much of it. I asked her to explain, as that might help me understand how I could revise it. None of the rejecting editors had told me anything, even the one who had taken two years to reply.

She showed me the pages she had marked, and told me that she hadn’t gone any further because it was boring. That is probably the worst critical comment writers can hear about their work.

She told me that there was too much detail. I had spent a lot of time working on that detail. I looked at the pages she had marked, she explained what the red comments meant, and she was right. My characters, if they were caught up in the story, wouldn’t pay any attention to most of the details I had put in, only to those which furthered the story. I thanked her, told her I would look at it later, and we talked about other things.

Her red-ink comments, and what she had told me, let me know what I could do with the manuscript. I cut it by about twenty percent on the first pass, by taking out a lot of the description which none of my characters would notice, and which my readers didn’t need. The story, not just the text, was greatly improved. I went through it again, with a better understanding of what needed to be done, and the story got better. I gave Kristin credit in the front matter. Some of my fans have told me that it’s their favorite. 

It was only within the last year or so, while I was reading an article in The Smithsonian, that I finally realized why I had written Stroad’s Cross that way. I had been using using the style I had learned for writing non-fiction. It’s the way most articles are written in The Smithsonian. I can provide that level of detail if it is needed for clarity, and leave it out if it’s not. 

What I want, is for my readers to get into the story, until they can almost experience it the way my characters do. When I’m reading fiction, I read slowly, in real time — most people probably don’t read stories this way — and I can almost see the settings, and what I think the characters look like. I can hear the dialogue, the tones of voice, the difference between one speaker and another. I can, in my imagination, feel what the hands touch or what touches the skin, smell what the character smells, and be, sometimes, inside the character’s head, so that I am aware of their thoughts or emotions without being told.

But I can’t have that experience if the text is like this: “He opened the door to a living room. A large red sofa, a bit ragged, was on the right, under a picture window that let in early morning light, slightly dimmed by a thin overcast. On the left were two large overstuffed chairs, both older than the sofa, one blue, one green plaid, with a small table between them. There was a coffee table in middle of the room, with a glass ashtray, an empty coffee cup, and several sheets of paper. In the far left corner …” The description goes on for another two hundred words or more, before ‘he’ (we eventually learn his name) goes in and does something. I can see a lot, but what does all that description do for me? 

The problem with Stroad’s Cross was that I was telling what was there, not showing what my character saw; telling what the details were, not showing those that the character noticed. The above example could be rewritten in fifty words, including name, movement, and smell, which is important, not in the two hundred fifty or more which a full description would require. If my readers want a story, they don’t want a magazine article about the details of the houses, rooms, forest, and so on. At least I don’t think so. Kristin certainly didn’t want that.

Sometimes telling is better, even in a story. It depends on the context, and what I’m trying to do. I wrote this essay with lots of telling in early drafts, when I was capturing my ideas. It has taken me a long time to come to this final version. But when I’m writing a story, of whatever length, I am just transcribing what is in my head, and many drafts follow before I can get it right, so that I can read it as if I were in the story. 

And when I’ve done that, I hope that my readers will be in it with me.

Creation can take a lot of energy. Sometimes the words just flow, and it seems to be so easy. Then I stop after a few hours or so, and realize how tired I’ve become.

Creating a new story is relatively easy for me, if the setting is similar to a place I know, the house is similar to one I have lived in, the characters are similar to any of people I have met in the real world, and if the story is a new take on one of the basic plots. (Different critics disagree on how many basic plots there are.) Every old plot that is reused becomes a different story. After all, “how the detective learned who killed whats-his-name” is an ancient plot, but no two stories are the same.

But when everything is new — setting, situation, characters, background — then writing a new story takes a lot more creative energy. 

Star Kings (working title) is the most demanding book I’ve ever worked on, far more effort per page than even The Black Ring. It’s a story cycle, from the hero’s birth to the birth of his first child. It is set in a galaxy so far away that George Lucas never heard of it, and in a time that bears no relation to any time with which we are familiar. It involves a highly advanced people who have come to share the Cold Star Cluster, deep in the Great Cloud, with twenty five other intelligent peoples among hundreds of star systems. These other peoples are not the aliens, my heroes are the outsiders. My people trade with many of these other peoples, and with hundreds of other peoples out in the limb of the galaxy beyond the Cloud. 

Each of these peoples is different, in biology, physiology, appearance, technology level, psychology, culture, and so on. I can only hint at those differences, and I don’t have to do more than that, unless a difference affects the development of the story, and then tell no more than what is necessary. The peoples cannot be actors in rubber suits. They have to feel like real people, even though they are not “human.” 

My hero and his people are not “human” either, I just portray them that way to make it easier to tell my stories. They live in what they call the city, a giant construct in space near the center of the Cluster. It is complex, enclosed, an artificial environment with different gravitational zones. Life in the city is not like the life we know here.  

I use what I know of our world as models for what my Star Kings do in the city, how they live at home, how they trade with others in the Cluster and out in the limb of the galaxy, and where they get their wealth. My models here are obvious. Mining towns mine for a living, no matter when or where. They are supported by people who provide shops, government, community, just like any small town does. Traders trade, they are not merchants buying and selling. There is no common currency between, say, medieval Cornwall, the Italian states, or the far East. And some of the cultures I portray also have models in the real world.

The worlds I visit (if they have people, I call them ‘worlds’, otherwise I call them ‘planets’) are not like our world, and each of them must be different, at least in some small way. I describe only their obvious differences from our world, rather than giving a full description of their land forms, their botany, their styles of architecture, and so on. I try to suggest, instead show. 

—————

Each of the forty one stories is a challenge. The plot of each story must make sense, it must have a beginning that hooks the reader, an ending that is satisfying and makes the reader want another story, and a middle that draws the reader from the beginning to the end. This is, of course, what every story should have. But for the stories of Star Kings, each setting, situation, problems to be solved, and cast of characters — except for a few who continue from story to story — has to be created from scratch. If any of this is used in a later story, the reader may need to be reminded about it, if only briefly. 

Continuity is a problem. Have I said or done or shown something before? Did I provide a necessary set-up more than once? Did I use the same plot device in different stories? Has the passage of time been consistent? It takes a lot of effort to check all this, but it must be done. Readers catch mistakes in things like that. 

Every story I finish shows how my heroes grow, and helps me to understand them better. My understanding of what their life is like in their artificial world, as miners and what they mine, as traders dealing with other peoples, of their culture, of the society of the Cluster, and of the greater society of the peoples of the limb beyond it, all that grows too.

Sturgis, which I published in 2016, had just one recognizable town, several recognizable characters, and only a vampire who was different. It was based on Stoker’s book, not the movies, and it was easy.

Star Kings, well, that continues to be difficult, and it is taking a lot of time. And yet, as I finish each story, I get chills, a sign that I have done well. I don’t know what it will feel like when I finish the whole cycle.

If you can’t go further with your story, don’t just keep pushing. Beating your head against a wall will only give you bruises, and brick dust on the floor. Take a step back, or two steps, or three. Maybe then you’ll see that, off to the side, there’s a door. You can go through it, and now you can move on.

—————

When I was younger, I could work on my writing at least six hours a day, frequently eight, sometimes ten, and once or twice as much as twelve. As I get older, my physical and creative energy diminishes. Now, if I can work four hours, I’ve done well.

It doesn’t take that much physical strength to write, so much as endurance. But when my handwriting becomes illegible, or typos pile up on the screen, I know that I am getting tired, and I should take a break. I find something useful to do around the house, or read a few postings of on-line comics, or play a round of Spaceward Ho! on my iPad, or read a few pages of the two or three or four books beside my chair. My breaks usually take no more than about twenty minutes. As soon as I am relaxed and able to think and see clearly again, I go back to work. I’ve caught my breath, and now I can go on.

Sometimes it’s not easy for me to stop pushing beyond the limits of my strength and creativity, especially if I’m not aware that I’m doing that. One more sentence that leads to another, then another paragraph, then another, until finally I can no longer see the setting, hear the dialogue, distinguish one character from another, or have any idea of what happens next. I’m not just tired, I have taken a wrong turn, hit a wall, and I have to stop. 

If I’m lucky, I may recognize the wrong turn later in the day, or the next morning just before I wake up, or just as I walk out of the house. Then I can go back to the story, delete that wrong turn and everything that follows it, and go the way that I should have gone before. Everything works now.

But if I’m not lucky, I can go no further. Not because I don’t want to — wanting to is why I kept on pushing — but literally because I can’t. The pen doesn’t move, my fingers won’t type. I have to back off for a while. Sometimes I don’t discover the wrong turning until days, or months, or years later.

I forced myself to write two sequels of a proto-Black Ring, even though it hurt to do so. When I tried to read it some years later, I discovered that it was garbage, and I threw it all away. Some people say that a writer should never throw anything away, that it might be useful later, but after a while garbage starts to smell, and draws flies. 

I forced myself to write sixty thousand words past where my character did something against his nature. It took me six years to realize where I had gone wrong. This time I let him do what he knew he should do, and followed him off into a fantastic adventure which became The Gift. 

I tried to plot out a series of stories inspired by my Elf Quest work, but in a galaxy so far away that George Lucas never heard of it. I forgot what the nature of that inspiration was, and it took me almost thirty years to remember, that my Elf Quest stories were about normal people, in their own world, dealing with a situation that was normal, but which they had never experienced. 

I threw the heroic adventures and dramatic enemies and implausible obstacles away. I laid out a rough and largely disposable structure, in which my far future stories could grow.  I’m working on it now, and I’m letting the stories, the scenes within those stories, the characters and settings and story objectives, just come to me, instead of trying to force them. It works now, and I get chills. 

Forcing in any way has never worked for me. Planet Masters came to me as an inspiration of the whole story, needing only some extra background and settings. Pursuit of Diana was in my head after watching both mini-series of V several times back to back. Book Two of The Black Ring came to me when I knew that the beginning had to follow directly from the ending of Book One, and that informed me about how it had to end.

I have learned, though I sometimes forget, to trust my muse for creation. I have learned to save my thinking about a story for revising and correcting and polishing. I have to remember, that there may be a door just to the side of whatever wall is blocking me. And when I do, then I can go through it, and I can go on.

In a way, my stories (novels) grow like a tree, but not like a topiary. My stories grow according to their nature, but they are not wild. They are more like a bonsai, trimmed and wired so that it looks like a natural tree, but far more picturesque and dramatic than if it were left to grow without careful shaping. All fiction is more picturesque and dramatic than the same events in the real world.

Something written without an objective, without plot or resolution, is like the news — just the facts. It comes out of nowhere, it happens somewhere, and it may not have an ending until more has been written, and may have no closure at all, if it is no longer newsworthy. That is the way much journalistic reporting is supposed to be. But it won’t work for fiction. Check your newspaper for examples. The accident happened and tied up traffic. And…? News stories have been carefully written and edited to be what they are, news, but there is no plot. 

A storyteller, as I really am, may take the same material, add conflicts, characterization, new settings, some kind of change at the end, and turn it into a story. Good stories may, in fact, start from something in a newspaper that triggered the writer’s imagination. In a similar way, all bonsai starts from a natural sapling, or even just a seedling, frequently found in the wild, and put in a pot, where it is allowed to just grow for a while, sometimes for years.

When I start a story, my notes, sketches, and roughs tend to go all over the place, even though I try to rein them in a little. It’s a jumble, but I believe that it is better to include all my ideas while I’m writing that first sketch or rough. It can always be trimmed, added to, changed, moved, or deleted later. If I don’t record my spontaneous thoughts in the heat of creation, they will be lost. If there are no words on a page, digital or paper, there’s nothing to work with. 

On the other hand, if an idea comes and I don’t make a note of it, but it keeps coming back to me, then I know I have something good, and I had better put it down, even if I won’t be able to work on it until another time. The idea may well have evolved into something else when I finally get to it.

I don’t try to do everything all at once. I focus on just one aspect of storytelling in each read-through. I start by developing my raw material, that is, a note may become more of a sketch, or a bit of dialogue, or a simple description, or it may be cut. A sketch may become a rough draft of real dialogue, character development, settings I can almost see, action as things happen. Parts of that first writing may present new ideas, or a new direction. I may have to change the order of events, or change who says what in a dialogue, according to the nature of the characters. I may insert new events or movement or people so that the story can actually go from here to there. Frequently I have to improve a phrase or sentence or paragraph by tightening it, by using fewer words. Even in later drafts I find passages which need to be clarified, expanded, tightened, or rearranged. 

But always there is an idea, a seed, a beginning, no matter how poorly expressed at first. I may discover toward the end of the story, that there is a better beginning. Always there is an objective to guide me, an idea of what the ending is about. It may turn out to be what I thought of when I started, or become an entirely new ending for what the story has grown to be, and that surprises me.

The draft on which I am working is like the bonsai which has been allowed to grow for a while, and now needs to be trimmed, and wired, and has new growth which must be encouraged or cut away. But still, the bonsai has its roots, and though it will never be finished — it is a living thing after all — eventually the bonsai-maker can do no more, and it is good enough to show. And with a story, when I can no longer see what I can do to improve it, I stop. I have done all that I can. It’s ready to be published.

Sometimes, years later, when I have grown, and my skills have grown, I can see that the story could be worked into a second edition. I have done that twice. But better yet is to start working on a new idea, make new notes as revealed by my unconscious muse, let new characters come alive, and have a new idea of what I want to achieve.

It is time to pot a seedling, and grow a new bonsai.

Many years ago, while Diane was at UNC for the evening, I watched The Lost Moment on the 15″ black-and-white portable TV which had been given to us. The movie was released in 1947, and starred Robert Cummings, in an unusual role for him, if you remember him in the Love That Bob reruns. The Lost Moment was about an unscrupulous editor who was trying to get the love letters of a famous poet from the poet’s widow. It was based on “The Aspern Papers”, by Henry James, who’s work I didn’t appreciate then, and still don’t. I do appreciate the movie.

There were several times when it seemed that the story was going to go in a certain direction. But it never did, which was always a surprise. Twists in the story were always unexpected. I watched it again a few years ago, and I was still impressed by how the subtle twists were not given away before they happened — not just plot twists but character and dialogue and narrative twists.

We returned from nearly three years in England in 1998. The in-flight movie, for which there was plenty of time, was Titanic. I didn’t rent earphones, so I couldn’t hear it, but I couldn’t help watch it, since the screen in front of me was only two seats forward. The underwater scenes were terrific, being footage of the actual dive, made for the film. Then the story started.

There were times in the movie, I don’t remember how many, when it seemed that the story was going to go in a certain direction. And it did. The next time came, and the story went as I expected it to. I began, at each of those times, to predict what would happen before it did — conflict, interruption, her father coming, and so on. And I was always right. Everything was predictable. There were no surprises. I tried, not very successfully, to not watch* the rest of it. The only scene that was remotely interesting was when Kate Winslet was having her portrait painted by Leonardo DiCaprio in the hold of the ship. Maybe two minutes out of one hundred ninety five.

Predictability happens to me when I try to plot out a story, and focus too much on what I think ought to happen, what I would like to happen. The story becomes predictable, and I get bored, and eventually I give up. My characters aren’t alive in my head, and so they are not alive on the page. The setting is static, not dynamic as if I were experiencing it, even if only in my imagination. I have pushed, instead of following my muse.

I have to let my characters be what my unconscious (my muse) creates for me from my knowledge of human nature. I have to let them act and speak according to the situation in which they find themselves, and according to their natures. I have to discover the setting by not thinking about what I want, but again, by letting my muse bring it from unconscious associations modified by a bit of dream thinking.

Each scene in a story has its own beginning and ending. I may have an idea about what I want to accomplish, but it’s best for me if I have no idea about how to do it. That way I am always, if only mildly (and sometimes not so mildly) surprised. My favorite surprises concern my characters when they do something totally unexpected — “I didn’t know she could do that!”

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This is not an error, “to not watch” does not have the same connotations as “not to watch.” I deliberately chose the former.

I don’t read just the ‘final’ draft aloud. I also read earlier drafts that way, when I have made serious revisions of a paragraph or a scene. I’m doing it now. This is good, because every read-through makes the text better. But after I read for a while, my voice will rise in pitch, and I read faster, and I am no longer aware of what the words mean, or what they might mean to the reader. I have lost my focus. If reading aloud is going to do me any good, I have know what effect my words will have. 

Even reading for text needs this degree of attention. If I read too fast, I miss too many ‘little’ problems. I have to really see every word, one word at a time, while still moving forward. It’s not easy for me to maintain this intensity of focus, and I can always tell when I’m losing it. Then I have to stop, put it aside for a while, do something different (like paying bills, feed the cats, step outside for movement and air) so that I can come back and read refreshed, almost as if the story were new. If I am able to maintain my focus, what I get is a good clean text that is typographically correct. But this isn’t enough. 

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I need to read the whole draft aloud a second time, and this time for story. That is, does it flow? Can a reader follow the action without getting confused? Is there unnecessary description, or a description out of place?  Sometimes I discover that I’ve repeated myself, several pages apart. 

What does my character experience? For example, when Jenny walks into the room, there may be dramatic paper on the walls, the color of the ceiling might be unusual (mirrored?), the floor may be carpeted or bare, there may be other doors, the light coming in the windows may suggest the time of day, the furniture may be in a typical or an unusual arrangement. I may need to know some of this as the story progresses, but if all this stuff is what I show when Jenny first comes in, it doesn’t work. 

Think of a scene in a movie. That stuff about the room has to be there, and there are, of course, scenes where the setting sets everything up. But in most scenes, the setting is just the background, and the camera is focused on the seven people standing near the middle of the room, talking quietly but intensely. Can you tell what their mood is? Can you understand what they’re saying? Are they moving or standing still? That’s what I should show, but only if Jenny needs to stay and talk to these people. Maybe she discovers that she’s in the wrong place and should leave, and her having been there at the wrong moment affects the development of the story. But if the room is just an excuse to describe something unusual, then I shouldn’t show it at all. It’s just a living room.

A lot of my original text is actually information for me, not for the reader. I need to know what that room looks like, so that my characters can move as if they were really there, and not walk around a sofa one time, then walk through it another. So that, “She slid to the next seat over,” or, “The chair she wanted was in the far corner.” Or something better than that. So I read for story, for flow, for clarity, and frequently it takes more than one pass. But at last it begins to feel good, so that I have to reread only those parts that don’t. When I get chills all through, I know that I can move on.

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The third read-aloud is for performance, as if I were reading it for a discriminating audience of people who like this kind of story. This is not the same as reading for story, though there may be overlaps. This time I pay attention to anything that sounds odd, or feels wrong when spoken, or is unclear as I hear it. If you read this post, you may be able to follow it, but if I read it to you, is there anything that is just a little off? Even just a little can take readers out of the story for an instant, maybe just long enough so that they lose interest. In a movie, the director has to make sure that his or her audience can actually see what they need to see, as if they were watching reality and not some poorly written fiction. And for me, I want my reader to experience my story in that way, and not to be distracted by the text. 

Again, this may take more than one pass. But when I get to a full read-through, which I can enjoy no matter how many times I’ve read it, then I can be fairly sure that many readers will enjoy it as much as I do. And if they do, then I’ve done it right.

And with each reading aloud, I find more typos, missing words, doubled words, wrong words, misspellings, extra spaces …