Tag Archives: novel writing

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Thinking about the act of killing

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Before I start this blog, I want you to know it may be disturbing, and might even be slightly offensive. So, if you’re not familiar with hunting or the farming life, you might skip this one.

I had to kill a duck last week. Perhaps you might be asking why? Well, there is a point when enough of an animal’s insides are on the outside that death is inevitable, and though not incapacitated, or in a state of irreparable pain, the end is in sight -and will likely be a drawn-out and painful ordeal. Furthermore, I’m a pragmatic person. We had originally gotten the duck to eat, and even though we had changed our mind, once it became apparent the duck was facing a deadly affliction, we concluded the best thing to do was end the situation soon, and salvage some of the meat.

Have you ever had to kill anything? Even for something you intend to eat, unless you do it professionally, it’s not an easy thing to do. I’m not even talking about killing a human, I’ve never been in such a position and I hope that this is never a topic I even become remotely knowledgeable about. There is no nice way of ending an animal’s life. With skill and a sure hand, you can do it reasonably easily -make it as quick and complete as possible, but the act is necessarily violent and final. I find that when I’m hunting, the identification and trigger pulling is compressed into just a handful of seconds. It turns to instinct. There is no thinking about it, just doing. If your shot placement is good, and hopefully it is, the animal succumbs quickly. A dead rabbit or fish or grouse is easy to deal with. At that point you’re handling something more recognizable as food than as an animal.

The story gets more complicated when it’s an animal you know. Say a duck or chicken you have raised from a chick for example. You’re not simply catching sight of an animal and shooting it. No, you are picking it up, and deliberately ending it’s life with your own two hands. It is a very stressful thing to do. For me, it’s stressful because I want the end to be quick and humane. Butchering our chickens and ducks is something I do not look forward to. The act of killing them makes me feel vaguely ill. Sure it passes in the span of a few moments before it’s time to get down to business, but I still feel it. Every time. It’s not at all like the movies where you see single gunshot ending it before the person/animal hits the ground. No, it’s not like that. If you can sever just the right part of the spine, of any creature, everything seizes and it’s over. That said, most of us don’t have have such a sure hand. Most other methods result in thrashing and a struggle for survival, even though it’s over.

Now, with that in mind. Imagine being put into a position of killing another human being. I’m going to assume you’re not a psychopath who enjoys such things. Let’s, instead, assume you are in a fight, any kind of fight, where it is your life or an enemy’s life at stake. How would you feel? More precisely, how should your character feel? Unless s/he is a psychopath, s/he is going to be feeling the flight/fight response rather keenly, likely in the form of an intense adrenaline rush. Once the threat has been lifted, they are going to feel slightly shaky and vaguely ill. This is partly the after-effects of the adrenaline, but it’s still a physical response. In a long drawn-out battle, your character probably won’t have time to stop and think about each kill. It’s the sort of thing that happens after the fact -once the air has cleared and the danger has lifted.

I think the point I’m trying to make is that very often you read about epic battles and mighty blows dealt to ugly foes, and yet you rarely see what it actually feels like when you kill something. Even for something as inconsequential as a chicken, it can be a very singular adrenaline rush. Your protagonist might be a farmer and butchering chickens isn’t much of a problem, but being so intimate with the death of another human being at close range is going to have an effect on that person. Considering that your protagonist, if following a typical fantasy arc, is probably not a well seasoned warrior, this is going to have a dramatic effect on him/her – even when they didn’t cause the death directly, and even when the death was necessary for their own survival.

So. When you have your character, perhaps a fighting noob, off a bad-guy, think about that adrenaline rush, the shaking of hands, the vaguely ill feeling. It’s not much to add to a story, but it’s authentic, and adds something to your character.

 

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Writer’s improvement hell – conflict

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Conflict. All by itself, the word isn’t so imposing is it? Much of the time it’s used to describe something extremely real and horribly bad -but it’s somewhere else, not a whole lot to worry about. If we drop it into the writing context though, it suddenly grows to 300ft, sprouts wings and has a thong of flame. This thing will kick your ass. It’s a huge imposing beast that, from one angle, looks like a world dominating demon, on the other, might be a fresh pile of dog poo in your front yard. Either way, there it is – causing problems.

Conflict is what makes a story. You don’t have one without it. Yet, I feel like it’s one of the lesser talked about aspects of writing. I picked up my Fiction First Aid book, which is a pretty reliable resource for debugging problems, and flipped to the index. Characters are covered over the course of some 50pages, while the topic of conflict is packed into a mere 4 pages! Now, I’ll concede that lots of the conflict comes from your characters, but conflict is what causes the suspense in your story. That suspense is what keeps the reader thinking Then what? and turning the page instead of going to bed.

As I face the completion of the first full draft of my book*, I’m starting to think about** polishing and all the little bits that need to be shored-up or just flat re-written. Now, this is where the writer’s improvement hell comes in. One of these things is tweaking things so that the conflict is present in a way that keeps the reader interested enough to continue turning the page. There’s conflict a plenty in the book, what’s I think is still lacking is that extra bit of suspense associated with it.

Sounds like you know what needs work, so what’s the problem?

Well, first of all, I THINK I have this problem. This is a case where I’m too close to the work to precisely see where these problems are present. The few people who have read the early drafts so far haven’t said this is an issue, but I think it’s going to take a full draft before someone might take a look back and say: you know what? this book just wasn’t exciting enough***. Not only that, I’m not entirely sure how to fix the problems without overdoing it or just plain missing the mark. My solution is to try and look at the story as a reader instead of the writer, and try to understand where a little more suspense is necessary. Another thing I will do is ask others to read the work to see if they found it interesting and compelling enough to continue. Finally, I’m planning on taking a break from editing as it nears the end. It’ll be time to do a bit of reading and thinking about how other authors manage suspense, or fail to, and use that as my guidebook when I go back over it again.

*Curse you chapter 19! – in the end, I will defeat you. I will OWN you. You won’t have any choice but to do my bidding. Then, we’ll see who’s laughing.
**Read: Become paralytically consumed with, really
***Read: Needs more suspense – the conflict wasn’t resonating.

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Writer’s improvement hell – developing themes.

Notes Mess

I have precious few hours remaining before Sunday is over, concluding my week off for writing. I didn’t manage to accomplish my goal of having a first full draft. I just stacked too many other things on to the week. It’s not that I didn’t make progress, because I did, I just didn’t make it as far as I wanted to. Part of the problem though wasn’t life, it’s that I continue to get hung up on things that need to be fixed. As I’m some 82K words into the book, going back to make some edits that work in various elements every time I think about them is no longer practical. I’m better off writing the idea down and setting it aside to include for the next pass-through of the draft.

One of the things that has begun to really take hold of my mind is theme – or themes, I suppose. In writing the War of Shadows so far, I haven’t been focused on theme, instead concentrating on hitting plot elements, character development, and increasing tension. Theme hasn’t been at the front of my mind. Now that I can go back and think about the story as it is, I can start to pick out weak threads of theme that are running through the book. In moving toward the climax and resolution, as well as set-up for book 2, I’m finding that theme is becoming an essential component for the story to hang together.

In every literature class I’ve ever taken (you can count this on one hand, I’m a computer programmer by training, and research analyst by profession), I’ve hated the discussion of theme. This originates, I think, from high school lit. classes where a book is read and discussed with inadequate context. Now that I’m older and can combine much more knowledge of history and politics, I can now better see what some of these books were trying to do. However, as a young person, they made little sense, and digging out any sort of meaning was a tedious and sometimes painful experience.

So if I hate discussing theme so much, why have I brought it up?

Because, as a writer it’s important. It’s important for the reader too, even if they don’t realize it. For the writer, the themes you choose help to guide the characters and plot. It acts as a bit of glue for the story as it progresses, themes also give a ‘feel’ to the story. I’ll offer up all of the Middle-Earth work by Tolkien as an example. A theme of change or diminishing of the world is present throughout all of those stories. This theme helps to tie the stories together, and also helps to make the change feel vaguely sad, but not tragic – much in the same way that we wish we could go back to places and times that are gone, like a child that has grown and left the house.

For the War of Shadows, and it’s associated series, I’ve got a few themes in mind that I’m looking at developing. There are several options at this point, because it’s still a fairly early draft. The one that’s at the front of my mind right now is the concept of ‘perception of choice.’ I suppose you could call it destiny, but it’s not quite like that, it’s not a pre-ordained sort of situation, it’s more that the characters are being pulled into a much larger conflict, while believing they are acting in their own interest for much more limited goals. It’s less along the lines of the chosen one, and more like the situation in Star Wars Episodes 1-3. Each side believes they are fighting a war for their own interests, but it’s not like that at all. The Chancellor is acting the puppet-master to reach his own goals. Really what’s going on is that the protagonist believes s/he has a choice, or is somehow in control of events, but in reality there is no choice. Another example comes from  the Harry Potter series, though it’s really a very minor theme. An example of how it shows up is near the end of book 7. Harry has the choice of chasing the horacruxes or uniting the deathly hallows. He chooses the horacruxes. In the book, you have the sense that this is a real choice, but it’s not. Harry will still have to destroy all of the horacruxes and face Voldamort. It’s only an illusion that he might have a choice.

The question that comes up for me as I consider this and attempt to work out how to go back and include it, is how do I pull this off? First off, I’m going to try and be subtle about it. The theme is generally present, but a few conversations muck it up a bit. I need to go back and revise those so that they don’t tread on this concept. It’s not anything like a major revision, just modification of dialogue, and motivation. The next thing that needs to happen is that I need to play the concept up a little bit in places where it’s missing. In those places where it’s not present, it will result in a certain amount of discontinuity in the story.

The next question, I suppose is why am I picking this theme and expanding it? Does it even matter? Yes, it does matter, the main reason I’m expanding this theme is because it’s going to be the backbone for the plot across the books. It’s not going to be spoken to directly, but the motivation of certain characters and the reactions of others will depend on this theme. It provides a framework for the plot and characters. So, I may dislike the discussion of theme, but it’s starting to seem so essential to me that I’ve got to master it, and understand how to use it in my favor as a writer.

 

photo credit: Spring via photopin (license)