Dramatic Background

I’m reading James Frey’s book, How to Write a Damn Good Mystery right now. Okay, not at this instant because I am blogging about it while I let the last chapter sink in. I like Frey’s books as they are such a nice, fast read. You are learning while laughing (and no, I’m not going to kill you with any of that silly, waaaaay overused ’LOL’ crap. It’s straight from the hip, anti-hyperbole headquarters around here. Mostly). Anyway, tonight I came across his idea that dramatic events besides the mystery should be happening in the background. In some ways the dramatic event will have an effect on the murder investigation that is central to the story and in other ways, it won’t. Either way it will add a sense of realism to your story. And realism is good.

(I’ve never been to an anti-war protest before, just a tuition hike protest. My shoulder was on the news.
I know, my fame astounds me too.)

Being a writer of chick lit/romantic comedies (whatever you want to call them), I would argue that a dramatic background event could be used in any story, not just a mystery. The problem is, murder investigations are usually short lived and the timeframe covered in a mystery is rather short compared to other stories. His examples are short-term events, or events that you sure as heck hope will be short term, such as a hostage situation, political campaign, protest, etc). These work for stories that cover a short timeline. What about other stories? Stories that cover a longer period of time? I suppose you could have something dramatic going on.

The immediate example that came to mind was from one of Meg Cabot’s Heather Wells mysteries. There is a blizzard going on. It changes the setting in more than one way. The blizzard becomes a character, it becomes an accessory, it becomes an obstacle; it becomes more than fluffy stuff on the ground. Cool. Very cool. But what about non-mystery stories? Hmm. I think I’ll be keeping that in mind for future stories.

Cool Serendipity

I decided that I’d better try once again to figure out if a word I made up actually meant something. You see, in one of my stories, this astrophysicist is working on this project for the International Space Station and the project is called the HIMLEN project. Which I guess, is an acronym for something I haven’t actually made up. Anyway, I decided I’d better make sure it doesn’t mean ‘penis’ in German or something. (Thankfully, it doesn’t.) But one site said that in Swedish it means ‘sky’. Other sites disagree and tell me it isn’t a word. Anyway, if it does really mean ‘sky’ or ‘in the sky’, then that is bloody wonderful! How’s that for a little serendipity?

Speaking of serendipity, the heroine’s favourite singer has just come on the radio. I love serendipity. It’s my friend. It always makes me feel as though I am on the right track. (Which is a hard feeling to hold onto sometimes because everyone has an idea of what I should ‘really’ be doing.)

Here’s to serendipity!

Time is a Strange Thing

It’s true and time does do strange things. For example, my daughter has been in school for a whole three days now. It feels more like a week and a half. That is strange. Annoyingly strange.

However, what I am actually getting at is the fact that after you have written something, let it sit for awhile and then when you come back…things are a lot different. And I don’t get it. Sure, sure time gives you distance and you can see things you didn’t see before, blah, blah, blah. But still, there has got to be some strange and wonderful writing time-continuum that is seriously messed up. Do errors grow? (I swear I would have noticed that ‘but’ was missing its ‘u’ when editing months ago.) Does some writing become wittier and more creative and wonderfully descriptive? (Or did I do that?)

I’ve got things I don’t even remember writing. I’ve got things that are so ‘out there’ descriptively that I wonder who wrote them (must have been me). I’ve got blatant errors that make me wonder where my head was. Or wasn’t. And I’ve got some pieces of writing that I look at and think ‘now, there. I’ve got something there’. So is this all real, or is my writing some victim (a somewhat happy victim) of some strange time warp? Or even better, am I in some weird time-frame where nothing is actually real? Maybe I’m really some little kid’s science experiment and at any moment I could be tossed in the dumpster by the kid’s mom when the poor kid isn’t looking. Or maybe, the kid’s older sibling will dump some of his dad’s beer in the tank to make things really interesting. (Hello out there? Yes, I prefer Vodka. Thanks! Preferably with juice, if you can swing it. It doesn’t matter what kind of juice.) Maybe I’m in some solipsistic world and I only think I am real and that all that surrounds me is important and significant and real. Maybe this is all just pretend and fluxes on mood.

An Interesting Tidbit About Dead Agents

Everyone keeps going on about Miss Snark. For those of you who do not know, she is a literary agent. Or was. Maybe still is. Anyway, she has a blog that went on for years and is revered in the online writing world. Of course, I had to check it out. I read some of her later blog posts. And I didn’t get it. People would go on about her again. So I’d go back. I still didn’t get it. That’s not to say that I didn’t understand her. I just did not get the appeal. Then again, when you go to her blog, the last posts are about her retiring. So, uh, yeah. Kind of late place to come in on things.

When once again her blog was recommended to me through other blog comments, I dutifully followed the link. Yet again. This time I had a plan. I scrolled down until I got to her archives and then I did some random clicking. Oh, look at that, a question that I sent to ‘Ask Daphne’. Hmm. Maybe I have been missing something. Another random click or two. Ta-da. Something I did not know and did not even think about in order to think about.

Dead agents. That sounds brutal. What I am getting at is this: what do you do if you have an agent who is dealing with the royalties from your past projects and then poof! they are gone like last week’s cut flowers. In this case the agent was a solo. (They were the agency.) So then what? How do you get your royalties? They go to the agent’s estate and the estate then is to get their percentage of the royalties and send you the remainder. Eventually. But what about any further dealings with the old projects? Yikes! Do you get a new agent for that? Can you get a new agent for that? If the agent isn’t a solo, it is simpler as I assume the agency has a contingency plan and they take care of things. Easy as pie. (Unless they go belly up. In that case, oh brother!) What I learned, I suppose, is that an agency isn’t always ‘just’ an agency if there is one person behind it. Something to look into when you sign that literary contract. What is their contingency plan? Sort of morbid, but worth bringing up in conversation.

Oh and thanks Miss Snark. I guess I judged you wrong (several times). Oops.

Middle Name Contest

Finally, a contest for me. Over on this writer’s website, Nothing But Bonfires, she is having a contest. If you have a middle name, you can enter to win a Nintendo DS Lite. Not totally sure what exactly it is, but my nephew has one, so that means it must be cool, new and probably costs more than I would be comfortable shelling out for a game system. Oh yeah, and if you don’t have a middle name, you can enter–just say what you wish it was. Wahoo!

This contest brings a few things to mind for me. First, if you wish you had a middle name, why the hell don’t you give yourself one? For a few bucks, you can even make it legal. I know this because I did it when I was 19. I didn’t actually give myself a middle name as so much as gave myself a first name, but that is a rather long and somewhat convoluted story. (Not really, but there is some back story involved.) Second, if you are a writer, the comments section is GOLD! Hilarious, wondrous gold! I mean at this point there are almost 500 entries. Yep, my odds of winning decline by the minute. Anyway, there is all sorts of interesting rants, ideas, voices, names and complaints. It is great! There is even some woman who needed 30 years to embrace ‘Jean’ as her middle name. Give me a break and suck it up honey!