Comic 771: Search Your Feelings

 In the face of very probable death, Sharon can at least console herself with classic movie quotes...

Her references go largely unappreciated in the Exile Realm, alas, so mostly she's just entertaining herself here.

So just to be clear, when Awilix and other folks in the Exile Realm are referring to "Brouchard," they're probably thinking of Bertrand Brouchard, who is Bella's twin brother. We have not met him in person, but we've seen his fingerprints on a lot of evidence on this side of reality... along with those of Saxony's twin sister, Jinevra.

The fact that I have to clarify that in this blog means I've bungled it a bit in the comic itself... but there we are. The webcomic format is pretty much set up in such a way that everything you read is a first draft, which leads to some stuff that authors--or at least this author--would have liked to smooth out if given a second pass.

Comic 770 -- Not Easy to Outsmart a God

Oops.

(Hmm. Blogger has changed its interface. I have a bit more control over the image size now. That's nice...)

Sharon now has run headfirst into a principle that the great Douglas Adams articulated in The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul: "You're a clever (wo)man... but you make the same mistake a lot of clever people do of thinking everyone else is stupid."

Hope everyone is hanging in there...

-GRT

Progress Report: 6/20/2011

I carry on! In spite of what was one of the busiest weeks on record at work (my manager was on vacation, and thus I got to do the work of two maxed-out people), I managed to get some good writing in.

Translating Thunderstruck to prose has really given me an appreciation of how much flexibility the comic form gives you. There are some really cool things that you can do in comics that have no direct analogue in prose. I mean, this comic for example:

Comic 56 from Chapter 3...

I like that one. You get an ominous feel for what Grandma is up to, all done in pictures. Now, I can think of a way to describe those scenes of Grandma's and make it work, but the way they're plopped into the middle of Sharon and Gail's conversation is just not a thing that will fly in a prose context. Then you move on a few strips to something like this:

Comic 59 from Chapter 3...

And that's pretty much a wash. There are literally ten scene jumps on one page. You can make that work in a comic (I thought so, anyway), but in prose it would be a mess. And yes, there are plenty of solutions for getting across the same point. It's just interesting to appreciate how much freedom for certain things that the comic form allows.

Prose, on the other hand, has its own strengths, like I said in my last post. The translation between the two is giving me a new appreciation of both.

Progress Report: 6/6/2011

Let's see, starting off with an "At the Movies" segment...

I would highly recommend X-Men First Class. I went in with moderate expectations and was really impressed by the performances, the treatment of the characters, and the high level of quality of the whole thing. I am pretty sure that someone who has never read an X-Men comic would still enjoy it. It's my favorite big movie of the year so far.

Lousy batch of previews, though. I was never into Green Lantern, so it's kind of hard to get excited about a CG-fest like that. Saw the first trailer for Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and I couldn't swallow the premise. The idea is that a bunch of CG apes gain super intelligence, enough to wield spears and pick locks, and this somehow leads to them taking over the world, I guess. Here's a pro tip for would-be supervillains: if you're going to raise legions to conquer the planet, do not start with a species that is already endangered. You run into a real numbers problem. Also, intelligent enough to wield spears is inadequate. If this was Rise of the Planet of Raccoons Who Build Force Fields and Laser Cannons, that's starting to seem more plausible. And as you can see, I'm setting the bar really low here.

Okay, enough of that. In terms of writing, it was a really good weekend. I got a lot done, so much that I'm taking one of my "must spend" vacation days to work on more today.

What, you want a sample? Oh, very well. Thunderstruck readers will know the characters here:

"It would be natural to assume that Psyche was not the sort of person cut out for surveillance work. Taller than most men, with rare violet eyes that could stop a young man’s heart and a body that any Hollywood starlet would kill to match, she did not fade into a crowd. She moved with tigresses’ blend of grace and vitality, possessing a beauty that could make a poet throw aside his pen in despair. Psyche should have drawn the eye of every man and woman within a thousand yards; her face should have branded itself into the memory of anyone who chanced to look at her.

In fact, the opposite was true. Most people barely noticed she was there.

The eyes of onlookers widened for just a moment as they lit upon her, as if for the briefest of instants the one who saw her recognized what she was. Then the harassed glaze of the modern urbanite dropped back into place, and their eyes slid away to settle on something they could accept and understand. They shifted and moved aside to let her pass without realizing they had seen her, unconsciously withdrawing deeper into their cocoons of self-absorption so they would not have to feel the stirrings of something ancient and primal as they entered her presence.

There were times when she needed to be noticed. She had to make a conscious effort to diminish herself, to become more mundane and acceptable for as long as it took to buy a meal or ask directions. They gawked like moonstruck fauns and stammered their answers at her when she addressed them, then forgot her seconds after she turned and went along her way. The brighter Psyche shone, the more they closed their eyes against her. And so she walked among them, rendered invisible by the corona of her own radiance as she passed.

But Gail Curmen had sensed her."

Back to work...

Progress Report: 5/16/2011

About pushy characters...

In my experience, when a story is really on track, it has a life of its own. You end up writing things that surprise you. Characters take on their own identity and begin to do things that you didn't really plan for. They become pushy. This is a good sign.

Thunderstruck readers may be surprised to hear that Gail was one such pushy character. Way back in my original conception of the story, it was about Sharon's journey, and she quickly left her entire family behind. She had this sort of irritating religious sister who was, I am not terribly proud to admit, a pretty shallow figure... practically a caricature. They had some arguments about miracles, then Sharon found out some important things and pursued them on their own, bye bye family.

Only that sister, that stubborn, pushy sister, refused to just be one-dimensional. She had no interest in parroting simple-minded beliefs. She was a deep thinker, and her faith was something she wouldn't let me write off. Nor was her love for her sister... and Sharon, the troublesome creature, loved her back with just as much ferocity, despite their differences. Suddenly I had two central characters, not one, and I had to think a lot more about Sharon's whole family. And Thunderstruck became a hell of a lot more interesting.

The trouble with characters like this is they mess with your plot. They don't go where they're told, or do what you ask, or disappear when you want to be done with them.

I'm dealing with such a character now. He refused to be the simple jerk that I wanted as a plot device, he doesn't want to go away, and now Gail has decided she likes him. He's messing with my script.

So an author has the ultimate power and can force characters to behave however he wants, but I really think that severs your fundamental connection with the story and characters. The story breaks, perhaps irreparably.

But what you can do is kill a character. I think it's often a good idea to dust a character that the audience likes early on in order to show that the stakes are high. An early sacrifice. And I think I've just found my lamb.

Progress Report: 5/2/2011

Hi everyone. Still writing, still trying to get a handle on all my new responsibilities at work, and this month an unwelcome visit from some microscopic friends has helped make things even more interesting. The cold season has gotten an extension, it seems. So without much in the way of news to report, here's something I've been thinking about as a writing matter.

We're three installments into HBO's Game of Thrones series now. I'm enjoying it, but it does make me wonder a couple of things.

1) How is it for someone who hasn't read the books?

I often wonder this about these kinds of adaptations. The Potter movies, for instance, seem like they would lose movie-only fans on some pretty significant plot points. For Thrones, I wonder how hard it is to keep track of all the characters, 'cuz there are a hell of a lot of characters to get straight. Perhaps someone who hasn't read the books but who's watching can tell me. My hope is that it would inspire you to read the books.

2) What is it that a visual medium does better than print?

This is a question near to my heart, because I am grappling with it as I adapt Thunderstruck to its new novelized form. Certainly when you have visuals, you can choreograph certain kinds of scenes (action, especially) with more ease, but I think that a good writer shouldn't be hindered by that. It's fun to see a full artistic realization of a landscape, a castle, a suit of armor, yet I find that as often as not, even big-budget movies don't add a whole lot to what I've already imagined for a book I really love.

I'd say the biggest advantage that film has is actors. The subtlety of expression and inflection that a good actor can bring to a role are things that a writer simply has to hope the reader can fill in for themselves. Writers who try to spell out every detail of their character's facial tics, body language, and vocal emphasis tend to bog down their stories. An actor can, with a very minor change of expression, convey a whole world of information. To an extent, a drawing can do that as well.

(For Game of Thrones, I'm thinking particularly of the actor who plays Jaime Lannister. I'm really enjoying his performance.)

Now, a writer has all sorts of other tools and advantages that a visual medium lacks. It's a lot easier to fill in backstory and track the internal thoughts of a character in writing, and these are things that I definitely feel are missed in the Game of Thrones show. Still, it's nice to see good acting for characters I know and love (or love to hate). It adds a new dimension.

The other thing that films have as an advantage is the soundtrack. There's not much answer to that as a writer, unless you want to say "play this CD while you're reading."

Progress Report: 4/11/2011

Well, things are busy and interesting at work. The short of it is that I got a promotion, which is quite gratifying. Also involves a lot of new duties and some fair amount of ambiguity.

I have had some time for writing. Huzzah! I find that when I've been away from the fiction keyboard for a few weeks, my first stabs at writing tend to be very melancholy in tone, with characters who feel very isolated and fundamentally lonely. I don't necessarily think that it makes the best reading, though. It's something I need to get out of the way before I can write something that's more fun and (frequently) true to the character. It's worked all right for writing Sharon's wheelchair life, but really it doesn't fit Gail very well.

But I've gotten my depressing draft out of the way, and the writing is going much better.

In terms of reading, I'm done with A Wise Man's Fear. I think it was something of a sophomore slump for a talented author, and as a case study it contains a lot of valuable lessons for writers. And... I think that's about all I'll say.

Here's the colored version of the next Rose & Jade picture. With the dragon and everything.

Progress Report: 12/13/2010

Last post of the year. Next week we're going on vacation, and I make it a point to disconnect as much as humanly possible when I'm on vacation.

This is always the busiest time of year. At work, there's a desperate rush to get a whole lot of things done before things shut down, and of course at home there's Christmas shopping, prepping for vacation, general mental insanity, etc. Which is why I don't carry around a lot of expectations for getting writing done in December.

That being said, the story for the second book is coming together beautifully, and the outline is taking shape. Which is fantastic. Also a little bit intimidating, because the end of the series itself is still hiding in the fog, with only its barest shape visible to me right now. For me, writing is often an act of faith that the story will come when I need it to.

I have gotten emails and seen blog postings from Thunderstruck fans wondering when I'll get back to working on it. The story is never far from my thoughts, but currently the iron is hot for my dragon stories, and that's where I've got to strike. I will return to Sharon & Gail when I can. Rose & Jade are the ones who need my attention now.

It's been an extraordinary year. I have a sense of things coming together now, paths opening up and opportunities getting closer. I hope you all have good holidays, and I'll see you in 2011.

Progress Report: 9/13/2010

Sometimes, a couple of weeks go by in a blur, and you look up to say, "What happened?"

Ever have that experience? Yeah, me too.

In terms of progress, more queries are out to more agents. No nibbles yet, and the search continues. Don't let anybody tell you this isn't a grueling process.

What's also grueling is the novel intro to Thunderstruck, and I'll tell you why. It's Sharon's situation as she's paralyzed. If you go back to the beginning of the strip, you notice that I don't spend a lot of time on Sharon's wheelchair days. That's mostly an evasion on my part, trying to get on with the lightning bolt and the magic and stuff. It's also a bit of a cheat.

So on this go-round I wanted to give Sharon's wheelchair life a fair shake. That means doing the research on what it's actually like paraplegics in day-to-day life, which is exactly the sort of legwork I was lazily attempting to avoid when I set out on the comic. And I find myself writing about a group of people from an outsider's perspective, and wanting to make sure I don't drop the ball.

Sharon is depressed. Now, the stats suggest that people with paraplegia are more likely to be depressed than the general populace... except it's fiendishly hard to get a read on how depressed the general populace is. And one aspect of a severe spinal injury is that you by necessity end up seeing the doctor more often than the average joe, and therefore you've got professional eyes looking for depression. So one could suggest there isn't as big a disparity as the study I linked to above suggest.

But even more so, as I research and read what more paraplegic's have to say about their condition, I want to do right by them. It's natural for someone with all working limbs to look at someone in a wheelchair and think, "Boy, I would be depressed as hell if that happened to me." That's a pity reflex. It's understandable, but it's also kind of condescending. There are a lot of paraplegics who justifiably get pissed off at that, and say, "You may think there's something wrong with me, but I don't. I love my life."

When you're writing a character, it is that one individual. Sharon is supposed to be representative of Sharon, not an entire group of people. As things stand now, though, I don't have any other wheelchair-bound characters in Thunderstruck, so in a way, she does stand for a whole group of people. Which is both fair and unfair. For instance, if you see a story where you have one woman who is an absolute beast, it's always nice for there to be at least one other woman character who is more sympathetic, so you don't come away thinking, "Man, that author has some screwed-up ideas about women."

So that's the balancing act with the early Sharon chapters of Thunderstruck here. It's going along.

Progress Report: 6/29/2010

Pardon my absence yesterday. It was a sick day.

The question on my mind this week for writing is with regards to vampires, specifically as they appear in Thunderstruck. I have been toying with the outline to see if there is some way to sub out vampires with some other entity.

It just seems like vampires are starting to get really overplayed. I can't keep track of all the vampire shows, movies, and books out there now. I don't watch/read any of them, and I'm still sick to death of them. Especially the vampires of the romantic teenage variety. Can you imagine a worse hell than being stuck in high school for all eternity?

Still, there are advantages to using them. The familiarity with vampires means you don't have to spend a lot of time explaining them to the reader, which is convenient. And in terms of Thunderstruck specifically, it's hard to find a substitute that will cause the least damage to the plot. Not that I mind making changes, but the element where Gail looks like she would be capable of curing a vampire is pretty critical, not to mention Bella's contingency plan...

And if I take out the vampires, does that mean that Stephanie Meyer wins?

So I think I'll stick with them, and just make sure they don't ever show up as anything like the teenage romantic variety that's so popular.

And no werewolves or zombies. Gotta draw the line somewhere.

Progress Report: 4/26/2010

With regards to agent news... still no sign of land. Fortunately, the supplies are in good shape, so I don't think we'll be resorting to cannibalism any time soon.

Got some good work done on the Thunderstruck outline this week. I also got bashed in the head by another story. Sometimes, a story comes bubbling up in a dream, and it's sufficiently compelling that I have to pursue it. I was asked by a friend if this happens often. Hmm... how often does it need to happen to be considered "often"? Once or twice a year seems about right, at least for the amount of time I have right now for writing.

Sometimes, these stories don't actually hold up that well when they start to appear on paper, which only makes sense. Dreams have their own weird internal logic. Sometimes, there's no fixing a dream story's inherent "dream-ness."

The one thing I almost never seem to get from a story that comes to me in a dream is an ending. This can be a real challenge. The first novel I got seriously going with is called The Boy in the Glass, and it came from a dream. The first several chapters were all right there with perfect clarity, to the point that I was practically able to transcribe them verbatim from memory. Neat! They set up an excellent character and a fascinating mystery that changes her life... and then, I don't know what it means. The agony is that I'm sure that in the dream I did know what it all meant, and I lost it.

I want to get back to that novel again, damn it. I know there's a solution in there somewhere.

Progress Report: 4/19/2010

I'm going to have some words with the Internet.

By and large, it's a wonderful thing, yet there are some things about the Internet that I hate. Heading that list this week is the difficulty that arises in avoiding spoilers. There I was, innocently checking out a webcomic, when lo-and-behold a big, fat, and unexpected spoiler popped onto my screen, more or less giving away the ending of Jim Butcher's latest Harry Dresden novel, Changes. No "spoiler warning" or anything... not that it would've helped, probably. I was ambushed by another such spoiler on DeviantArt, and yet another on a blog.

Honestly. What a pain. I'm listening to Changes right now and enjoying it immensely. Certainly it's possible to enjoy a story when you know the ending, but I think I would've preferred to get there on my own. This is not the first time that the Internet has hit me with a spoiler in the surprising and unwelcome manner of a sniper plugging a victim from a hundred yards away.

Also, my particular Internet continues to have little crashes here and there. Short, but irksome... I'm glad I don't play games online. If these could be timed in some way that they happen before you stumble on a spoiler, that would be a feature instead of a bug, but alas, it is not the case.

Yet another persistent issue with the Internet, and this is more my fault than the Net's, is that it is a goddamned massive distraction. This is why I am getting a non-Internet laptop, hopefully very cheap and used, for writing. I actually have an old laptop that used to serve that purpose and serve it well, but it's about at the end of its rope. This ancient creature has no USB ports, no Ethernet, and basically no way of transmitting data to other computers besides writing it on a floppy disc. Makes it difficult to get the writing off the computer. It also weighs about as much as a fully-grown Basset Hound.

In terms of Thunderstruck, I'm back at the outline stage, grinding away. You would think the comic would make a perfectly adequate outline, or at least that's what I thought. However, I've knocked over some dominoes in the rewrite, and now I'm pretty much stuck until I can figure out where they all fall down. Outlining isn't the most fun part of life, but it's necessary.

For me, anyway. Some writers talk about sitting down and letting the story flow without knowing where it's going at all. That works okay for a short story, but with a novel, every time I've tried it I find that I paint myself into a corner.

Progress Report: 3/29/2010

I've been doing my Penelope impersonation this week, unraveling my previous work and re-weaving it. According to the advice I've gotten about the matter, it seems that writing a novel in present tense will make it more difficult to sell. So I've had to go back to Thunderstruck and shift what I'd written so far to past tense.

The convention in current publishing is that present tense is all right for short stories, not so much for novels. And when you're not an established author, it's not a good idea to give any prospective agent/editor an easy reason to chuck your manuscript on the junk pile.

Really, it's not too bad. While the first chapter was ideal for present tense (which is why I went that way in the first place), the rest of what I've written wasn't really enhanced by it. Present tense, I believe, gives the story more immediacy and more tension. The downside is that it feels like it gets tiring to read after a while, which is not a good thing for a novel.

Speaking of Thunderstruck, one of the things I feel like I skimmed somewhat in the comic version was Sharon's (and to a lesser extent, Gail's) experience immediately after her miraculous healing, when she was trying to go the scientific route of understand what had happened to her. I am gnawing around with different ways to flesh that part out. It isn't a speculative stretch to say that her case would be written off as anecdotal, no matter how incredible it was. There are, and continue to be, spontaneous recoveries that happen all the time. On the whole, they're ignored. The generous version of why they are ignored is that it's impossible to reproduce these events in a clinical setting (much less a lab), so there's no point in studying them. The less generous version would say that it's because science deliberately does not want to look at certain things that could upset a reductionist worldview. I think it's a bit of both, myself.

Just finished The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It is not what you'd call a gentle book, and I couldn't put it down. Roger Ebert recently reviewed a film version out of Sweden which he thought was quite superb. I have mixed feelings about wanting to see the story in cinema. On one hand, there's some very nasty stuff in there that might be hard to take on the screen. On the other hand, it's a damned good story.

Progress Report: 3/22/2010

Nothing like the joy of doing one's taxes to get the creative juices going. Or not.

Still waiting to hear back from the prospective agent for Rose & Jade. Having never gotten this far in the process, I don't know if the fact that he's taking his time is a good or a bad sign. So I sit gnawing my fingernails and generally trying not to dwell, since it doesn't particularly help.

To take my mind off things (and since my Thunderstruck writing wasn't getting anywhere this week), I did a little fanfiction. I found from George R. R. Martin's blog that there is an amusing little contest going on where fantasy and SF characters are pitched against one another in a "cage match." I'm sort of a sucker for these things, and since it was especially challenging to figure out how Martin's one-handed knight, Jaime Lannister, could possibly prevail over Cthulhu, I ended up writing a story to explain how it could be done. A silly exercise, I know, but I enjoyed it.

Speaking of writing... does anybody have opinions out there about using present tense as the narrative structure of a novel. I don't think it's done very often. I know Neal Stephenson did it in Snow Crash, and I thought it worked, but that doesn't mean anybody can get away with it.

I ask because it's something I've run into with Thunderstruck that's giving some doubts. I wrote the first chapter in present tense because it was perfect for what was going on. However, after that, it seems to be a kind of take-it-or-leave-it stylistic choice. What I don't know is if it's considered un-kosher by most publishers right now. That is to say, I don't know if I'm hurting my chances of getting it published by writing in present tense. And if I am, I don't want to get too far along, then need to go back and re-write in normal old past tense.

Anybody have any insights on this?

Progress Report: 2/22/2010

Yes, well... working along, basically. That's the progress report.

Okay, I can give you a little more than that. Going from the comic version of Thunderstruck to a print incarnation is a very interesting experience. It's true that I lose the ability to tell the story through art, which gives you tools that prose doesn't have. By the same token, I have the opportunity to go deeper in a lot of other ways. Mapping the internal geography of each character is done more from the inside than the outside. By that I mean that the drawn Sharon can express herself through facial carriage and body language much more than the prose Sharon, while the prose Sharon can give you more of what's going on in her head. It's an interesting trade-off.

Another difference, though, is that the comic version is very literal, while the prose version gives me freedom to speak in metaphor. Comic artists have been trying to cope for this a while using visual metaphor, which is a technique I only use sparingly. Manga art has a whole vocabulary of visual metaphor. Still, nothing beats the written word. I can say something like: "the earth itself seems to rise Psyche’s feet as if it cannot bear to be separated from her." Without resorting to the unbearably clunky tool of the narrative balloon, that's not the sort of thing you can really do in a comic.

Okay, so while I'm here...

MINI REVIEW
The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

Look, this one was an assignment for work. One of the authors we publish is Lynne McTaggart, who is cited as one of the main influences for The Lost Symbol. And since I handle the ad copy for Lynne McTaggart, it fell to me to know something about what was in Dan Brown's latest big book. After all, as The Da Vinci Code proved, his books can make a sale-influencing impact on other related material.

So I'll start with the good.

Hold on. Still thinking.

Um...

Okay, so there's something kind of compelling about the way Dan Brown writes, which is to say it carries you along in a reasonably good thriller fashion. The big mystery is why this should be the case, since there isn't an interesting or realistic character in the whole thing, and usually it's concern for the characters that allows tension to build. His research is interesting, though I would never take anything from a Dan Brown book as true or accurate until I looked it up myself (worst offender was his book called Digital Fortress from a decade or so ago, which I abandoned halfway through when it became clear to me that every single "fact" in the entire book was demonstrably wrong).

Hmm. I was trying to write "the good," and I seem to be throwing in caveats left and write. So let's get to "the bad."

There is much, much too much to cover in a mini-review on the topic of the bad. I'll just hit on a few points.

Brown writes with a sledgehammer. There's not a subtle moment in the whole thing. For someone who loves to talk about symbology and the multi-layered meanings of things, he's big on spelling everything out ad nauseum so even the thickest reader will get the point. One expression of this is his "astonishment moments." Something is revealed to the character, and they react with such utter bewildered surprise that they practically fall over. This happens all the time, often with things that are not, or should not be, even slightly startling.

There's a particular plot twist in The Lost Symbol that Dan Brown tries to set up, and his inability to do subtlety makes it painful to watch. He telegraphs the true identity of the villain pretty early in the book. And then he spends the entire book trying to conceal that identity, so he can reveal it in the final dramatic moment. It's like trying to watch a stage magician with cards spilling out of his sleeves still trying to pull off his trick. I ended up feeling sorry for the author, which is probably not the emotion he intended to evoke.

And then there's the reveal of the Big Secret. With Da Vinci Code, at least the secret was something interesting. In this case, though, it's a Ruby Slippers moment. By that I mean it's one of these "You had the answer with you all the time!" revelations, and boy, those are hard to pull off. The secret in The Lost Symbol is a big fat lot of nothing. The fact that our protagonist, who we are reminded constantly is a Harvard symbologist, finds this "incredible" obvious revelation to be the least bit surprising means they're letting any doofus teach at Harvard these days in Dan Brown's world. What's more, the whole book is spent with characters risking their lives, sanity, body parts, etc. trying to protect this deep dark secret, and nobody expresses the least shred of bitterness that it was all to protect a "mystery" that could be found in pretty much any bookstore in the world.

In short, it was a Dan Brown book. What did I expect?

Progress Report: 2/8/2010

Rewrite finished! Now I'll get a look at the new chapters from my C&C readers, and Rose & Jade will be ready to go back in front of the agents again.

I'm happy with the rewrite. The opening chapters are more lively and engaging, some of the unnecessary stuff is cut out, and I really like the new prologue. Previously, I was ambivalent about whether the prologue was a good idea or not. Now I'm much happier with its place in the story.

Hey writers out there. Here's something you'll want to see. In the extras on the DVD of Up, they have a segment about the first draft of the opening sequence. They even do an animated version with the storyboard so you can get a rough idea of how the original version would've played out. There are some really funny and clever moments that the writers were very proud of... and it was absolutely the right choice to cut them all out.

If you haven't seen Up, rectify that omission as soon as you can.

If you have, you know that the opening sequence is where we get the full life and relationship between the Carl and Ellie. This sequence is critical. We must fall in love with them in order for the rest of the movie to work. We have to get a full and rich idea of their life in as short a time as possible. And it has to set up the action for the rest of the film.

The original draft version would've dropped the ball. Good as it was, it wasn't good enough. The final version was a masterpiece.

As a writer, what strikes me about the journey from the first draft to the final version is how many "darlings" they had to kill. This is a kind of maxim in editing—"Kill Your Darlings." It means don't be afraid to cut stuff. Even if you've got a brilliant joke or a great character moment, if it doesn't serve the story as a whole, it's got to go.

That's hard to do as a writer. I've done a lot of commentary for other writers, and one of the things that becomes obvious pretty early on is when a writer thinks their own work is too "precious." Instead of listening to critique, they rush to the defense of what they've written. Every sentence is like a baby they have to protect from harm. They never change anything, and it's not worth critiquing them. Not that my commentary is always brilliant or correct—far from it. A writer can be receptive to critique and still decide they don't want to go with a specific suggestion.

And hell, I know how hard it is to make those cuts. It's brutal.

So here's my corollary for "Kill Your Darlings," and it's simple: "Trust Yourself." As in, trust yourself that you can write something even better. Trust yourself that you have it in you to replace whatever you cut with something that works. Once you start trusting yourself, rewriting becomes more fun, I've found.

I've got a lot of darlings to kill off in Thunderstruck. Back to the novelization this week.

Oh, and congrats to the Saints. I get the feeling that Sax and Hayaka were in the audience with their Peyton Manning voodoo doll for that key interception.

Progress Report: 12/14/09

This will be my last update of the year, 'cuz I'm going on vacation next weekend.

A lot happened this year in terms of writing. I finished my first novel manuscript, I started my next, and I made the move to pull out of webcomics. Not a lot happened this week in particular, though. It's a crazy-busy time with the holidays coming up and work being under a pressure cooker, so not much time for writing.

Thus, I'll take the opportunity to wish everyone who's reading a Merry Christmas, happy holidays... take your pick. And I'll see you in the new year.

2010. Wow.

Progress Report: 12/07/09

It's my birthday this week! I'll be 41.

I have been asked a few times if I'm going to illustrate my books. I also get asked for clarification when I tell people about my writing: "Are you talking about graphic novels?" No, not right now, but illustrations are an interesting thought. Not many people do them in novels anymore, but it used to be a standard to have a few illustrations scattered here and there. It would be fun to do that, especially in a Thunderstruck novel.

Psyche, whose chapter opens the book, is one character whose visual depiction never quite satisfied me. Goddess-level beautiful is tough for me to draw. Especially for someone who then engages in action scenes. I think I should've picked an actress to model her against and worked a bit with photo references. Anyway, it would be easier just to draw one or two illustrations of her for a book, wouldn't it?

Okay, so progress. Not much to say. Writing is slow right now, chiefly because work is taking up so much energy. I'm not sure why everything has to pile up at the end of the year when everyone is trying to go on vacation, but that's what it does. Happens every December. So I'm chipping away at the Thunderstruck novel and the 1st & 2nd chapter rewrites for Rose & Jade, working as much as I can on it under the circumstances.

Currently reading: Under the Dome by Stephen King. A giant, Stand-sized monster that should hold me for a while. Wonder if there will be any mention of the concept overlap with RahXephon? I doubt it. Not that I think King ever heard of the anime--just an interesting coincidence.

Currently listening: Turn Coat, by Jim Butcher. The latest Dresden Files book, which are always fun. I have to make some effort to make sure that Sax doesn't echo Harry Dresden too much, but I think that shouldn't be much of a problem.

Although would any editor really care, or would it even be a selling point? The derivative nature of popular fiction can be astonishing sometimes. I was in Borders this weekend checking out the Young Adult section, and it's Twilight clones from here to breakfast. The vampire-romance craze will die down, but for now they're going to squeeze as much juice out of it as they can. Agents & editors like to talk a good game about originality, but when I look at the shelves, I have to wonder just how much of that is smoke up the ol' tailpipe.

Progress Report: 11/30/09

December is just around the corner, and seems to be holding to pretty much the same pattern as it does every year. That is to say, things get very frantic in the weeks leading up to vacation, and then we go away for a while and get the chance to sleep.

In terms of writing productivity, it's the most difficult time of the year. I always built up a pretty good buffer for Thunderstruck around this time of year, because it was very easy to fall behind. I tend to have great ambitions to write on vacation, which do not always pan out.

In terms of this week, I'm carrying on with writing. I'm also testing out another critique group. This one is a lot closer by than the last, which is good. The possible drawback is they meet every week, and I was kind of hoping for twice a month. But hey, if I get into the habit, it could be a good thing. We'll see.

Progress Report: 11/23/09

The novel version of Thunderstruck is underway.

It's funny how one shift can suddenly change your whole perspective and open many doors. What I wanted to do to make this story work as a novel is get the larger, overarching plot with Vigil, Bella, etc. into the mix earlier. These elements may not be visible to Sharon and Gail at first, but I did want the reader to get an idea that there's something going on.

My solution is to start with Psyche. So the book will open with her introductory scene as a kind of prologue. Psyche then watches the sisters from a distance for most of the first novel as events unfold and they start to discover the magic around them. Through Psyche's perspective, we start to get the hint about all the other forces swirling around the lives of Sharon & Gail.

Anyway, we're off to the races. Trying out another critique group as well this week. I'll get around to finishing "Voyage of the Piquant" eventually--it was always just a fun side project, so I'm not worried about deadlines or anything like that. Is anybody reading it?

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!