Wrapping Presents Instead of Writing

Welcome, Skirmishers!

It’s (almost) the most wonderful time in the year. If you hop over to Europe, it already is the most wonderful time of the year since they don’t have to make way for Thanksgiving and all that.

My late summer/fall motto (stolen from a friend) is “If you’re behind on life, get ahead on Christmas,” so that explains why I wrapped two presents this morning (instead of working on my beat sheet). The gifts currently look a little over-prepared on top of my dresser, like travelers who showed up six hours early for their flight and are lounging in their Lululemon leggings in an abandoned terminal.

Since Christmas is also the craziest season at work for my husband and me, novel-writing will take a back seat till the new year. But I’m still chipping away at a new project, and I have a few tips, books, and movies to share, so buckle up and read on!

What I’m Writing (with a tip about story architecture)

I recently chucked my beachy pirate WIP (work in progress). It turned out to be the mango smoothie that I ordered impulsively out of mood but not foresight—feeling summery but forgetting the fact that…I don’t like mango smoothies.

I was trying to write a quick, fun, breezy beach mystery/adventure. I chose a plot I liked, characters I knew, and set the whole thing in one of my favorite places on earth. It was going to be easy. The story would practically write itself. Yet nothing clicked. Maybe the story just wasn’t the need of the hour. Maybe I’ll like mango smoothies another time. But for now, I dropped the story in the nearest street trash can. It made a satisfying whoosh in the plastic bag.

So instead, I’m working on a new story that will hopefully be a winter sequel to my swashbuckling MG manuscript (you know, the one still sitting on my editor’s desk). “How did you think of that idea?” is a common question for novelists, so I’ll tell you how I thought of this one. Story ideas hatch in assorted crazy unpredictable ways, but mine usually come with a few vibes/hints followed by disciplined pursuit of characters and story architecture.

For this sequel, I started by chasing the vibes in my head. I had mood (hushed, wintry, secretive, spy thriller), setting (cold, snowy, cobblestones, old medieval city), hero (a 13-year-old girl largely on her own), and basic plot idea (girl has to deliver a secret letter to someone with a code name).

Then I nailed down the architecture. When I say architecture, I mean the typological structure: the shape, the bones, the major beats, the beginning/middle/end, not to mention the main cast. Until I have architecture, I’m not ready to write. I’m not even ready to work on my beat sheet. Is this a Die Hard story? David vs. Saul? Paul on the Damascus Road? Pocahontas? Pride & Prejudice? Sampson? Orpheus? Noah’s Ark? Treasure Island? The Odyssey? The Lion King? (Which is Hamlet with a happy ending, by the way.)

I might know the premise (girl has to deliver a secret message…boy has to rescue mom from a demon in the underworld…girl has to save a baby on a cruise ship), but until I know the architecture, the story remains shapeless.

Story architecture helps me in two big ways:

1) Architecture tells me the major story elements. In a David vs. Saul story, I know I need a “king,” a young anointed replacement, a good relationship that turns sour, a chase through the wilderness, and an eventual “coronation” of the anointed one, for starters. Roughly in that order.

2) Architecture also tells me the major characters, and reveals whether I’ve missed anybody important. In a David vs. Saul story, I don’t just need a Saul and a David, I also need a Samuel, a Jonathan, an Abner, and almost certainly a Michal, Doeg, and priests, too.

For my winter sequel, I quickly realized that my story architecture is Esther. So wish me luck! Plotting and character-building have been gorgeous fun so far.

What I’m Watching

F1 - Watch it! The race scenes are awesome, the character revelation and dialogue quite savvy, and Brad Pitt completely owns his role as the aging racer who might not be the fastest on the track, but he is the smartest. I liked how they pitted his emphasis on strategy over his young partner’s obsession with speed. Needs light editing, depending on the age of your audience (or mixed company).

Love Actually - Poisonous. I finally watched this so-called “classic” because we signed up for a month of VidAngel, and I expected this movie to be at least half good once the biggest mold spores were removed. It wasn’t. Even highly filtered, the movie is meh at best. Liam Neeson is in fact the planet’s worst dad. Andrew Lincoln is trash; Keira Knightley is the trash’s trash. (What did he ever do for her that she would run out and kiss him in the street??? She’s almost worse than the girl in The Notebook.) Even the non-risqué storylines (Hugh Grant, Colin Firth) lacked punch. The Emma Thompson/Alan Rickman storyline could have been genius if Rickman clearly repented, but he didn’t. Emma is the lone star atop this rotting Christmas tree. For years, I hated this movie without watching it. Now that I’ve watched it, I can enjoy hating it more intelligently.

Carry-On - Bleh. This could have been a passable Christmas lark/thriller, but it jumped the shark so many times (so many sharks—then it went back and jumped the same sharks again) that it became vexatious and unfun. It took pains to be dumb. It worked hard at it. I can’t even.

Untamed - Quite enjoyed it. This Netflix series starring Eric Bana and Sam Neill got a bit darker and sadder than I liked (especially in episode 3), but that’s mostly because this mama can’t handle what she used to. The plot, character development, dialogue, acting, and setting (Yosemite!) were all cleverer than most. No filters needed except language, I believe.

What I’m Reading

The Wee Free Men - Terry Pratchett - My utterly tragic news is that I simply am not loving this one. I don’t like Tiffany. Perhaps the fault is mine, but she seems rather obnoxious and I just don’t enjoy hanging out with her. The wee free men are hilarious, however, and Pratchett is Pratchett, so I’ll probably finish. Maybe I’ll warm up to Tiffany in the end. If you’ve read it and liked it, do please respond and let me know why! And are the Tiffany sequels any good?

Churchill’s Secret Messenger - Alan Hlad - Wow. This book. Okay. So the prose is repetitive, frustratingly dense, and way over-described, and the love story needed more time to marinate, but these are relatively small complaints. I was instantly hooked by this fictional account of British SOE agents teaming up with the French underground resistance in the darkest days of World War II. I picked up the novel to get inspiration for my winter Esther spy story, and ended up just overwhelmed by the horrors of WWII, the pathos of the suffering, the intensity of the heroics. Hlad’s research is brilliant. No other historical fiction has felt so real. Man, what a war.

That’s all for now! See you in December...if I’m not drowning in stocking stuffers and travel plans.

Cheers,
Gwen