Author: onlydavesmith

That was a chapter title from a novel I wrote about five years ago. At least I think I wrote it and it wasn’t some sort of memory fragment from a book read long before. Having said that, it’s a longer chapter title than I write now.

But I still write them. And a lot of people don’t. Maybe even MOST people don’t. Consequently, readers get a lot of Chapter Sixes, and probably just about as many Chapter Sevens.

I don’t get it. A chapter title means that you, the author, know what the chapter is about. For me, it helps grease the wheels in the ol’ writing garret when I want to bang out another few thousand words before the week is out and I need above all else a direction. If I can come up with a title before writing the chapter, I know where I’m going. If I invent it later, after the writing, it means that I know where I’ve been, equally important in becoming the path I’m on.

It does the same for a reader. 

It’s a teaser. It points.

Here’s one from a novel I am querying right now: The Before and After Life.

It tells you … something.

Such is not the case with the lyrically named Chapter Nine. It stands there telling you that this is the ninth bit you’re going to read, having read the first eight.

Actually, The Before and After Life was Chapter 45, which does tell you something but you have to wonder if after getting that far in the book, a reader really cares about the number anymore.

Rick Riordan writes brilliant middle-grade novels. They are funny, completely engaging, complex and nuanced, and seemingly effortless. That’s magic because we all know how much effort it has to take to write as he does. In his Magnus Chase series, he also composes wonderful chapter titles, like Stupid Exploding Grandfathers in Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard. Years ago, when I read these books to my son, it was a great way to end the day, as it was really important for him to go to sleep with a smile on his face. We would always conclude the evening by looking at the next chapter title, and almost always laugh in anticipation of the next day’s read. The chapter titles had voice and that voice at that time was a gift from the gods, whether in Asgard or on Olympus doesn’t matter much.

So, here’s to everyone who still bothers to write titles for chapters. 

It’s hard, so that means we’re supposed to do it, right?

There are loads of adverb haters, people who say they would like to exterminate them.

I agree only to the point that you often don’t need them if the rest of the page is okay.

Take, for instance, this:

“Clearly,” Beau said, “this is a really bad sentence.”

Clearly and really add nothing to the meaning. I have gone through my own works in progress and searched for these words. Out of every twenty I find, there may be a reason to keep one. Maybe. Very is the same and more so. Unnecessary.

Then there are the speech tag haters. They are mostly but not always right. Consider the speech tag for Beau. We probably know Beau’s talking, or that it’s his turn to talk. Or that he’s the one who’s likely to say something like this. He’s a bit of a pill that way.

I found some short stories by Agatha Christie that I don’t remember having read and saw that she seldom used speech tags. When Poirot is speaking, everyone knows he’s speaking.

However, one genteel murder suspect in an English country home must at times be discriminated from another. Best done with a descriptive phrase. 

“We were playing tennis all afternoon,” said Basil.

Basil struck a match. “We were playing tennis all afternoon.”

The second is much more fun, as long as there is not so great a hurry to get on with the interrogation that you can’t add a couple of words.

So, we don’t need the adverbs or the speech tag.

We are left with, “This is a bad sentence.”

Why use the pronoun?

“Bad sentence.”

Isn’t that enough? If we know what’s going on and someone’s assessing the quality of a sentence, I mean.

And maybe it’s better if we just say, “Sucks.” or “Shite.”

Now, a novel is not film noir and we can’t ask every character to be so fascinatingly non-verbal that we can reduce the dialogue to a bunch of monosyllables and grunts but if you are prone to over-writing, as I am, the idea of pairing it down as far as possible during editing is vital.

Really vital.

Really, very vital.

There are people, and I have no idea if they are just a vocal minority among arty types, who claim to have been on a mission to fulfill a vision, something so compelling that it was there, fully realized from the first step, first word, initial brush-stroke, or notion of a gesture. They were focussed, single-minded, on a path, answering a call, on a pilgrimage to a mysterious site known only to themselves.

And, after their arty work is done, they say, “Look! See what I did? That was my vision and now it exists!” It is left as tribute, then, to Art. There may be light snacks and beverages served.

We mere mortals gather, are suitably impressed, then aspire to emulate the artistic act. 

If only we had a vision. How do we start if we don’t have one of those?

I mean, what if I don’t know what it’s gonna be about? There will be something there when I’m done, sure, but do I have to know what it’s supposed to signify BEFORE I start?

John Lennon said, “Every child is an artist until he’s [sic] told he’s not.”

That’s because they don’t have to have a vision and they make it up as they go along. So, they continue building Lego, or scratching a crayon on cardboard, or singing a made-up tune, and art begins. Then, someone sidles up and asks, “What’s that supposed to be?” and the poor kid has to make something up and do it quick. Or maybe a tantrum suffices to get them out of that sticky situation, a well-known tool of the artistic temperament.

But it’s too much pressure for most of us and we quit.

I think the vision stuff is mostly just a convenience, an easy answer to a difficult question. 

“Why did you do that?” is a hard question, because it implies you have to have a reason, and “I dunno,” is not an answer anyone wants to hear. It also makes it sound like you’re not serious, a dilettante at best. And a long, honest answer that reflects the complexity of the process you went through is simply going to get yawns and eye-rolls.

Understandable. I don’t want to listen to ME talk about ME any more than anyone else does.

“So, yeah, I had a purpose. I journeyed, and I was, and it IS.”

I have never really had much idea about why I have written something until I’m almost done. By then, I figure it out. Around the 92,347th word. Or the final punch line.

That’s okay with me. I’m not big on isolation or deserts, anyway and any vision I might have in one would be considered derivative.

Eat your soggy vegetables first. Always good advice.

Rip off the band-aid. Just practical.

Always get the bad news before the good. Goes without saying.

Write what scares you. Scary.

I have just finished another revision of a 95,000-word manuscript and sent it off to another editor. And a lot of it was scary to write. I creeped myself out. Where does that come from, all that pathological gunk? Every time I read it, I traumatized myself, not because I write creepy really well, but because I’m afraid it says something about ME.

If I understand creepy well enough to write creepy, then maybe that makes me a … creep. Even if I’m not, maybe people will think I am. Readers are judgy, especially if we’ve bought a book and spent time with it. We deserve to be.

I remember reading Robert A. Heinlein years ago and kind of concluding that he had turned from a bit of a fascist (Starship Troopers) to a bit of a dirty old man (Time Enough for Love). We are always trying to infer relationships between characters, contexts, and conflicts with the authors who wrote them.

Natch!

But it ain’t so. Anyone who has to flesh out an antagonistic character has to take them somewhere believable, make them make sense to themselves. But it doesn’t mean that we are projecting ourselves into them. We’re imagining, not remembering or wishing.

This is, by the way, why I still suspect that good ol’ Heinlein was a bit of a dirty old creature because, forget the bad guys, his good guys were … creepy. And earlier, they were kinda fascists. And I do think you have to admire your protagonists, cheer for them even as you ruin their lives.

Anyway, writing what scares you takes you to those places where you have to listen to the Dark Side whispering at you. So much more fun than listening to the tough-but-fair commanders, the kids with pluck and gumption, the puerile self-righteousness of Star Trek: Discovery. No, I want to be creeped out by someone who does bad things for reasons that only they think are good.

And as for being scared, I know the two scariest words anyone can ever write on a blank piece of paper.

Chapter One.

Yusuf / Cat Stevens wrote, “I listen to the wind, to the wind of my soul.”

I sing that to myself while I walk the dog on cold, windy days, my Beagle’s ears flapping in a biting northwest wind.

And I listen to the silence that is the wind.

“Where I end up, well, only God really knows,” the song continues.

And listening does take me somewhere.

Because the wind is an unpredictable, sometimes irresistible, and ultimately mysterious force, a silence that takes your mind somewhere else. The wind scrubs everything clean. Then it provides a dynamic canvas on which you can sketch an idea, erase it at once, and sketch another.  

The elements of experience move around each other – aural, visual, kinesthetic and finally verbal – and, without understanding where it came from, there it is – a new formulation, a new context, a new thought.

And it comes from the wind and from whatever other kind of silence you can find.

Away from machines, and voices, away, even, from music, although the silence of some music can be transformationally creative.

There are many silences. The silence of rain on the roof is the one most people recognize right away. There is also silence in birds and squirrels and in the neighbour’s kids jumping on a trampoline. All of it gives your creative mind room to make wind castles and cities of air and drafty moonlit meadows, and, inevitably, villainous farts.

For me, anyway, silence in its many forms is necessary to creation.

Is there silence in social media?

“But never, never, never, never.”

Listen here. The Wind.