Newbie Writes a Novel

Absence Makes the Heart Go "Ahhhh! My Valuable Stuff!"

I packed away 260 of my paperbacks this evening, getting ready for next month's move. I figure a good solid hour of work each day will help get everything in its place and cut down on last-minute craziness. That's about a quarter of my library locked up in cardboard boxes, and it's harder to do than it ever has been before. My library is more than just a decoration for my little human den-- it's one of the handful of my physical possessions that I feel a deep emotional attachment to, and take a genuine sense of pride in. This library has been growing since about 1992, when I first started consistently reading "adult" science fiction, at the age of 14. If I had an empty week, I could probably arrange it (as Rob arranged his record collection in High Fidelity) autobiographically, in order of acquisition, to create a horizontally-stratified diagram of my growing and changing literary tastes. Here's the Frank Herbert Epoch, and here's the Brin Period, and here's the Year of Moorcock...

C'est la vie. Moving this thing again some time in late 2004 is going to be one hell of a pain in the ass if it keeps growing at a constant rate. Three years ago, I had maybe 200 books. Library discard sales will be the cause of my future hernia, I just know it.

In other literary news, I've been trying to read Fritz Leiber's The Wanderer. His Conjure Wife was so brilliant and delightful I read it at an eye-straining pace, but I just don't know about this one yet. I've finished whole 800-pagers in the time it's taken me to get 60-odd pages into The Wanderer; not because it's difficult, but because my interest seems to need coaxing out like a cat hiding from a vacuum cleaner.

It's not just that the years have not been kind to the strangely off-kilter 60s-era slang. It's not just that the huge cast (worthy of a novel twice the length of this one) and all their disparate situations are all thusfar shallow and affected and, in the main, uninteresting-- I don't know exactly what it is, but I'm beginning to suspect that this novel just lacks the vital energy and narrative brilliance that drives the Fafhrd/Grey Mouser series as well as Conjure Wife. Time will tell, I suppose...

In Which the Author Praises Cartoons and Cliffhangers

Anyone who ever wants to learn how to structure a genuinely tense and exciting narrative need only watch any of Pixar's five full-length motion pictures. I own the first four (Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, and Monsters, Inc.), and my housemate is currently renting Finding Nemo. I've watched it three times in as many days.

The reason Pixar's films stand head-and-shoulder above virtually every other "family animated feature" of the past thirty years is because superbly-constructed stories are an intrinsic part of their creation; you only have to watch a beautifully-rendered but utterly vacant piece of crap like Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within to realize what an animated film loses when story is an afterthought rather than a "core value" for the production team.

Anyhow, that's neither here nor there for my purposes as a wannabe novelist; my most important point is that Pixar films display a mastery of the timely and appropriate use of cliffhangers. Time and time again in Finding Nemo, the action in one location is halted just as something dangerous or terrible or mysterious happens to one set of characters, and we cut to the relative tranquility of the other set of characters elsewhere, who then have a problem of their own that is left unresolved, and we cut back to the first set of characters for a climax to their previous conundrum... and so on.

Juggling cliffhangers between narrative threads, appropriately and cleverly... that's a damn fine technique to keep in a writerly "toolbox." It's a killer app for the only truly important commandment of writin'... Thou Shalt Not Bore the Reader, Not at All, Not Ever. When I pass this sucker out to test readers (some of whom may be reading this), if they find themselves reading on only because they like me or are trying to be nice, I've failed.

A chapter should be seen as a delivery device for a literary drug-- that drug is the urge to keep reading and find out what happens next. A good novel is like a series of mental syringes, plunging into the imagination to give a spurt of desire to keep flipping pages.

75,000 words.

In Which The Author Has No Snappy Title, Sorry.

Some time in the coming months, I'm going to spruce this place up with a fairly detailed treatment about The Lies of Locke Lamora-- some of the novel's background, most of its cast, and a nice long "blurb" about the goings-on, the sort of thing you might read on a back cover or the inside flap, except not written by a gibbering idiot. Ariel, bless 'is 'eart, wants to know more, so I suppose I might as well be extroverted.

Most of my novel-related effort this week is going toward research. Venice, Italy is the closest real-world analog there is to the city of Camorr, and the canals and mercantile histories are about the only solid similarities. Right now, I'm just trying to ensure that I don't stick any totally ridiculous features into a waterlogged city on a lagoon. Lonely Planet has this really interesting article on Venice; apparently the poor old place is dripping with history but going right to shit, between pollution, depopulation, and subsidence. Pity.

Supporting Sentiments From Beyond the Grave

Well, hot diggity synchronicity, folks. I was paging through my copy of Oliver Twist, and my eyes fell upon the author's preface to the third edition (1841) of the novel:

"The greater part of this Tale was originally published in a magazine. When I completed it, and put it forth in its present form three years ago, I fully expected it would be objected to on some very high moral grounds in some very high moral quarters. The result did not fail to prove the justice of my anticipations...

"It is, it seems, a very coarse and shocking circumstance, that some of the characters in these pages are chosen from the most criminal and degraded of London's population; that Sikes is a thief, and Fagin a receiver of stolen goods; that the boys are pickpockets, and the girl is a prostitute.

"I confess I have yet to learn that a lesson of the purest good may not be drawn from the vilest evil. I have always believed this to be a recognised and established truth, laid down by the greatest men the world has ever seen, constantly acted upon by the best and wisest natures, and confirmed by the reason and experience of every thinking mind. I saw no reason, when I wrote this book, why the very dregs of life, so long as their speech did not offend the ear, should not serve the purpose of a moral, at least as well as its froth and cream. Nor did I doubt that there lay festering in Saint Giles's as good materials towards the truth as any flaunting in Saint James's."

That's my good pal, Chuck Dickens. What he said.

In Which The Author Gets His Ethical Underwear in a Twist

The Dead Cities Krewe has been blithering and blathering about the transcripts of the Terry Goodkind chats here and here. We've already had our fun with 'em, but I've been thinking about one statement in particular:

"A thief in the 18th century is the same as a thief in the 20th century is the same as a thief 1,000 years ago. A murder is a murder, regardless of the age in which it is committed."

That hits close to home, because if it's true then I'm writing something totally amoral and valueless. I don't believe that amorality is a good thing-- I don't believe for a second in nihilism or "moral relativism." What I do believe is that circumstance governs all ethical considerations, and that the only meaningful codes of real-world ethics are situational.*

The ethical argument of the novel I'm writing has always been one of its most important (and labored-over) aspects to me; simply put, it's a story about a con artist. Despite the romanticization of that lifestyle in books and film (and I enjoy The Sting as much as anyone), the fact is that the vast majority of the men and women engaged in con games in the real world are despicable parasites of the lowest sort-- they're victimizers of the financially unstable and un-savvy, not whimsical foils for rich crooks and ruthless millionaires. They're scum-- and there's so many of them, doing so many reprehensible things, that the research I did for the novel made me seriously considering dropping it several times.

Now, by "ethical argument," I don't mean preaching. Let me expend a bit of wind here. Locke Lamora, is, undeniably, a thief and a murderer, and while he habitually preys upon the rich aristocrats of his world, the desperate straits of the story will drive him to victimize at least one particular individual of more ordinary means (Now, if that individual were steadfastly loyal to his employer, Locke would never have the chance to do so, but I don't believe for one second in turning the blame for a crime upon its victim even if that victim is something of a facilitator).

Despite the fact that he's as crooked as a seven-dollar bill, Locke is the hero of the novel, not merely its "protagonist." The question of why he should be thought of as a hero is one that I've tortured myself with, and Goodkind and his ilk only make me more determined to think this through as much as humanly possible.

I disagree vehemently with the notion that "a thief in the 18th century is the same as a thief in the 20th century is the same as a thief 1,000 years ago." I find it infantile, in fact-- a firm belief in Absolute and Universal Values That Never, Ever Change is a kid's fantasy, and not a particularly good one.

Locke is a thief in a world vastly different from our own-- a world in what with would call a Renaissance (passing into Elizabethan) level of social and technological development. In the city-state in which we first meet young Lamora, a cadre of "noble" families rules by force of arms. Like most "blue-bloods," in human history they're just a few generations removed from pirates and thieves and usurpers, and they enforce what they will upon the laborers and artisans of the city-state by nothing more than the naked threat of violence. Various guilds check them in various ways (and the underworld to which Locke belongs has a formal accomodation with them, one Locke secretly violates), but by the standards of the 21st century, they're tyrants and opressors.

The average citizen of the city-state of Camorr has no vote, no "fundamental human rights," no hope of higher education or elevation in social station, and no prospects but toil, disease, toil, and death. Children inherit trades from their parents (if they're lucky) and a rare few enter priesthoods or military service or skilled apprenticeships. Life is cheap, "human rights" are nonexistent, and it's in this situation that Locke and his fellows were all orphaned or abandoned. Locke has known nothing in his entire life but theft, treachery, and wickedness-- he has been stealing, in one form or another, since the age of four. To expect that he should spontaneously, by force of reason, "see the error of his ways" and become an acceptably Objectivist hero is pure bullshit. For Locke to be a thief in his situation-- to escape the oppression and drudgery of lawful life by operating outside the law-- is, to me, clearly a different thing than for a child of societal enlightenment and material privelege like myself to steal things for any reason. I don't have any justification for doing so-- yet Locke lives in a time and a place where the rule of law is essentially a tool of opression, where the social contract is between masters, slaves, and semi-slaves. For Locke to break that social contract is most definitely not comparable to me breaking the one by which I live.

It's an accident that Locke has learned love and loyalty as well as skullduggery-- loyalty in the form of an unbreakable trust with his best friend Jean, and love in the form of a mostly unrequited longing for someone he met when he was just a boy. His secure relationship with Jean (and the close trust he shares with a handful of other crooks) gives him a clear advantage in the murky, shifting underworld. No matter where he goes or what he does, he knows that one man always has his back and will always take his part. As a result of this, he's not the utterly ruthless, amoral, self-centered creature he otherwise should be. Locke's avarice is tempered by the burgeoning and unexplored hint of a thought that there is something more to life than fucking other people for financial gain-- and he has felt it, though he hasn't had the time or the inclination to explore the notion much further.

Locke is also the embodiment of one of the most important and consistently undervalued traits a human can possess-- unbridled tenacity. We tend to romanticize "breakthrough" success, first-time luck, rookie good fortune, and virtually everything else except long-term toil, practice, stubbornness, and perseverance. Locke isn't just stubborn, he's unstoppable-- he will cling to any chance of success with nothing but his fingernails and his teeth. He will battle back from any position, search for an angle against any opponent, swallow any hint of doubt, and throw himself in front of any adversarial force with nothing but his naked wits and chutzpah. There's a scene in The Empire Strikes Back where Han Solo, pursued by an Imperial strike force that can crush his tiny ship without effort, suddenly turns that ship about and takes a full-attack position; an ant suddenly charging the ant-eater. That's Locke right there, each and every day of his life, middle finger raised to the universe.

One aspect of Locke Lamora is that he's IT, that proverbial one-in-a-billion, that rare individual who bends the universe around him rather than bending to it. He's a Winston Churchill, an Alexander the Great, a Napoleon Bonaparte, a catalyst; a man who could be anything or do anything he set his mind to, a king-maker or a king should he so desire. And he expends the focus of his genius, his intractability, his spiritual power... on robbing people. Confidence tricks. Small-time bullshit. What if a man with the spirit of a Caesar, or a Leonidas, or an Odysseus were tending bar in your neighborhood? What if he were cleaning carpets? What would happen if he eventually woke up?

If someone is foolish enough to buy his story from me, I hope it'll be successful enough to allow a continuation of the sequence-- to explore what happens later in his life, to see the germination of his curious notions, to see what happens when he finds a place and a cause and a group of people worth fighting for, when he becomes an idealist rather than a thief, a spymaster rather than a con artist. I can write this first novel in the sure and certain knowledge of his eventual transformation-- his eventual maturation and acceptance of adult responsibilities. But the reader will need affirmation in the here-and-now that Locke deserves to be called a "hero" rather than a simple protagonist.

I believe that Locke will become a hero** in the only worthwhile real-world sense of the term; he starts from a position of uncertainty (we call this position "life"), will discover ideals and values that place his selfish gain in a secondary position, and will consciously choose to uphold them in times of personal risk. I don't believe that heroes are born or trained or stamped out of molds-- a genuine human hero (as opposed to happy accidents and high-performing stars and other ersatz "heroes") can only become that by fully realizing what he stands to lose if he places his ideals before his comfort and survival-- and by doing so anyway.

However, before we can get there, the Locke Lamora of the first novel has to be less ethically developed, less experienced, less wise, and more nakedly avaricious. Despite this, he also has to be worth reading about. Like most genuine human beings, he is a cocktail of conflicting motives and ideas, a mixture of admirable qualities and reprehensible ones. My "ethical argument" is essentially Locke himself; my choice is to let him simply be as close to a real human being as I can make him, rather than a heavy-handed metaphor for some damned ideology.

If you actually read that whole thing, you five or six constant readers, thanks. I feel a hell of a lot better with that off my chest. G'night-- 68,500 words in.

-----

*In a nutshell, I don't believe that a "just" society is one that tries to apply "civilized ethics" to all situations universally and rigidly. I believe the far saner approach is for a society to foster and protect circumstances (as widespread and often as possible) in which civilized ethics are appropriate and rewarding.

**In the way that the term is commonly used here in 2003. The connotations of words shift over time as society changes its tunes... deal with it.

***Ha! There was no third footnote. Sucker.

One of the biggest complications I've faced so far in putting this damn thing together is the need for a sufficient amount of the action to be "mental" (that is, for it to be exceedingly clever-- intrigue, counter-intrigues, "gotcha" games, strategems and counter-strategems, and so forth) without losing the hot-blooded, up-close-and-personal nature of the primary struggle. The main character has to deal with the murder of most of his close friends and the crescendoing failure or frustration of several complex confidence schemes, so it just won't do to keep things entirely cutesy and coldly intellectual when the antagonists are all but begging to have their throats slashed and their eyeballs cut out.

And that's what Locke has in mind, brilliant trickster though he is... the Gentlemen Bastards, for all their finesse, are essentially Sicilian; their reaction to a murder is that the murderer obviously wants (and deserves) to be murdered in turn. And it would certainly be damned easy for me to just *let* the contest remain on that level... to let the throat-cutting, knife-dueling aspect of things dominate the plotting and scheming, but I can't, and I have to try and separate my visceral sympathy for Locke and his anticipated revenge from my overall vision of the novel. Primarily, because just about every novel I've ever read involving a con artist for a protagonist has been remarkably short on con artistry, and I can't stand that.

My original catchphrase for this novel, when it was just a glimmer in my gray matter, was "intellectual swashbuckling." What was once a rather light-hearted caper novel has become grittier, deeper, and bloodier, but I don't want to lose the essentially intellectual character of Locke's approach to crime. Therefore, I have to keep thinking up ways to force con artistry into the picture, to throw down challenges that can only be overcome by cold calculation and will obviously be lost if Locke gives in to his raging blood-lust.

I'm pretty sure it'll be fun to read when I'm finished.

It's just fuckin' kinda fuckin' hard to do from this end, kids.

Day after day, the little guy looks up out of the computer screen and says, "Just let me kill these assholes. Just let me kill them."

I have to keep explaining that it's in everyone's best interest if I jerk him around for several hundred pages first, and that he'll understand some day.

Definition of a character coming to life before your eyes-- he starts using obscenities you could swear you never heard before, let alone put in his mouth.

In addition to whacking my brains out with d20 stuff, I did manage to get out about 500 words for the novel this afternoon.

I hope everyone returning from WFC gets back to their proper place in space/time.

Tonight's entry brought to you by Boredom, the great leveler of all blogs!

I'm just tired, o my children. Total word count is 51,600 and change. Now to sleeeeeep!