On Wednesday, Dec 19th at 8 PM EST I’ll be doing my first Facebook Live. Let me show you how to do it wrong. I’ll be taking questions and chatting. If I cry or throw up on Facebook Live, well, I’ll just keep going cuz that’s good TV. Do I really look to you like a guy with a plan?
Oh, and did I mention free books? A giveaway is the only plan, I have.
Yes, Christmas will come early this year. I’ve got a big giveaway coming up and I’ll tell you about that, too. That’s right, free ebooks are coming before Christmas. Take that, Santa, you milk and cookie mooch!
Got a question?
Please email me at expartepress@gmail.com with FB in the subject line. I might do my Joker impression. Haven’t decided yet.
To save you some time, my favorite color is turquoise but only as paint. I only wear black. A black turtleneck says: He might be a spy. A turquoise turtleneck says: He’s in a fashion magazine modeling a shirt no one wears in real life.
AIR TIMES
8 PM EST, 7 CST, 1 AM GMT, 5 PM PST, 6 PM Mountain and 10 AM in Japan. I think that just about covers the planet. I predict three people will show up. Good odds.
Since this will be my first FB Live, really, please do tune in. It should be an entertaining disaster. Don’t worry, I’m not going to say anything more than I have to, if that.
I’ve been using Scrivener to write and format my books for years. I remember, before the dawn of time, having to format my first book manually. The challenge of constructing a working Table of Contents was a real chore when I used chisel and stone. Then Scrivener came along and life got easier. With the release of Scrivener 3.0, things have become harder again, at least for me.
Let’s be clear: I love Scrivener as a word processor
Microsoft Word was developed for composing business documents, not killer thrillers. With Scrivener, writing is so much easier. I can bop all around a manuscript and find what I need to make edits in a flash. As a formatting device, Scrivener has a learning curve that can be pretty steep at first. When I first dove in, I remember spending many hours trying to get a print book design just right. As I published more books I cut my formatting time down. The summer I published a weekly serial to Amazon, I got so good at it that I couldn’t remember what my initial mental blocks had been. Easy-peasy, lemon squeezy. Life was glorious.
I’m a tad less than enthusiastic now.
How things went off the rails
Last week, I finished revisions to The Night Man. The manuscript was finally ready for the editor. I hit compile to get a Word doc to send to Google Docs. Simple, right? The evening was young. Hit share and hit the gym. That was the plan. Then the tooth grinding began.
It seemed that no matter what I did when I hit compile, I got wonky formatting. I tried many variables. Either the resulting document was all underlined, or all in italic or I lost all italics. I could create a pdf file but I couldn’t use that for my editor. Frustration mounted. I’d used Scrivener for years. How different could the new version be? Quite, as it turned out.
I broke down and went back to the manual. My search words were of no help. I watched YouTube instructional videos and hunted through forums. Since it’s a new update, much of what is out there on YouTube is out of date. In the forums, I found threads where some power users scolded those of us with less technical expertise.*Â
Finally, I found a note that hit on the problem.Â
There’s apparently a bug between Scrivener and .docx files. This doesn’t appear to be an especially new bug but it persists. Switching to .rtf fixed the problem. I did not get to the gym. It was about midnight when I finished. All this to compile one Word document?
Looking around, I’m not the only one who has struggled with the compile feature. I get it, though. Scrivener can do so many great things that it has to be complex to carry its heavy load. When one piece of software can create ebooks, print books, film scripts and proof copies etc, it’s bound to be complex. It’s also valuable. I still like Scrivener as writing software.
People tell me that, mostly, Scrivener is still great. However, for formatting and book design, I’m not up to climbing that learning curve again. I use Vellum for book design now. It’s awesome and easy. Some of Vellum’s interfaces are reminiscent of earlier versions of Scrivener.
Vellum is not inexpensive. An unlimited license will set you back $250. If you’ve got plenty of books to create for yourself or others, the investment makes sense.
Here’s what I’d humbly suggest:
1. For software developers: I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’m just a novelist. You’re way smarter than me in the ways of the tech force. Please recognize that and make the user experience more intuitive. More intuitive to mere mortals, I mean, not your fellow tech geniuses and power users.
2. For software developers: Please bring in a focus group of idiots like me before you revamp your software so much. Digging through the instructions, I felt like I had to hire Sherpas to climb that learning curve.Â
3. For software developers: Fix the bug if it’s on your end. My understanding is that this .docx bug is not actually Scrivener’s problem. The fault, if it must be assigned, lies elsewhere. However, it is a problem for Scrivener users.
4. For software developers: Try to make sure users are alerted if there is a bug even if it’s not on your end. I figured out the problem but it took a lot of digging while my blood pressure went up and my spirits went down.
5. If you’re a writer: Buy Scrivener. I’m still a fan. It is wonderful and wondrous as a word processor. If you only have one or two books in you, take the time to learn how to use all the miracles it has to offer. I took the time to learn the earlier versions and I’m very grateful Scrivener came along to rescue us from building TOCs manually. Copy special to create a Table of Contents with a click? That was a huge time saver.
6. If you write a lot of books and the expense is in your budget, write in Scrivener but format your ebooks and paperbacks using Vellum. It’s as user-friendly as can be.
*The title for this article (Scrivener: Just a Word Processor Now?) was inspired by an unknown user in a forum. She was trying to figure out Scrivener. That question was her lament. The replies she got were insistent that no, she was just being silly and obtuse. Well, no, she didn’t understand the new version of the software. Neither do I so I sympathize.
(The standard license for Scrivener is $45 though deals do seem to come along frequently. For all it can do, that price is very reasonable.)
~ Hi! I’m Robert Chazz Chute. Thanks for reading this far down! You’re a keener, aren’t you? I like that! Maybe you’re willing to go a little farther and meet me in Zihuatanejo, Red?
About me: I escaped the 9 – 5 for the 24/7/365. I construct apocalyptic epics and suspenseful crime fiction. My next killer thriller, The Night Man, will be released soon. Please subscribe to be alerted when Easy’s adventure in darkness becomes available. Thanks!
BONUS
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Also, are you already a fan of my work (AKA powerful fiction that will blow your mind and melt your face)? If you dig my sling, please leave a review. Even better, join my Inner Circle on Facebook. My Facebook group is Fans of Robert Chazz Chute. I share more about the writing life and assorted fun and nonsense daily.Â
Membership has its privileges: Fans get free ebooks to review and, with your permission, you will be entered in a raffle to get your name on a character in a future novel. Join us here.
We’ve got plenty of movies about superheroes and cops tracking down serial killers. We need more good movies about writing. Here are my top picks (and why) plus a few runners-up.
Wonder Boys
Wonder Boys is one of my favorite movies. Based on the book by Michael Chabon, Michael Douglas stars as a college professor who can’t seem to bring himself to finish writing a massive manuscript. (The manuscript is called Wonder Boys, too, by the way.)
There are a lot of fun moments in that movie and Toby Maguire is cast perfectly as the weird and aspiring young writer, James Leer. There’s a great scene where three drunk writers make up fictional histories of fellow bar patrons. I do that, too (the making up part, not the drunk part.) Great characters and intrigue are everywhere.
Reading Wonder Boys, I find the interiority of the main character is interesting in its depth. There’s plenty to admire in Chabon’s imaginative use of language. In one scene, students stand by an open door blowing “bored clouds” of cigarette smoke. I found myself wondering how many editors would cross out that line and sneer in the margin: “bored clouds? Really?” (Typical editors, not all editors. In context, it’s a great line.)
If a book description includes the phrase, “beautiful language” I’m usually suspect that it will be a literary novel in which nothing much will actually happen. When critics of old felt they had to give a pulp writer any credit, they’d grudgingly observe that the prose was “muscular” or “workmanlike.” (They often used to say sort of thing about Stephen King and Dashiell Hammett.) From the mouths of snobs, they damned fun books and good writing with faint praise. Readers ate it up and couldn’t wait for more. In Wonder Boys, Chabon finds the middle ground. The use of language is often innovative but the guy can paint a picture and there’s lots of fun and hijinx going on.
I love the line about James Leer’s second-hand smelly overcoat. I’m going from memory but it goes something like, “Standing nearby you could feel your luck change for the worse.” Beautiful.
I won’t spoil what happens with Professor Grady’s overlong manuscript but it’s memorable if you love books at all.
Finding Forrester
Sean Connery plays the successful recluse whose novel hit huge (like To Kill a Mockingbird huge). He mentors Jamal Wallace, a young writer with promise played by Rob Brown. The student is ready, the master appears. The apprentice writer finds the old man has critiqued his work savagely, exing out page after page in red ink. Jamal has talent and his prose is visceral but needs refinement.
That’s not the moment that really sticks with me, though. What resonates is a moment when the young man walks home at night past a burning car. Cops slide past in a cruiser, giving Jamal the evil eye. It could have been a throwaway scene but it’s not. Jamal is intelligent, observant and vulnerable. That one short scene is a nod from the director that connotes: yes, he’s young but his experience of the world is complicated, painful and worthy of being written.
I never had to walk home past a burning car but that hit me hard. In my twenties, I worked in Toronto’s book publishing industry. I was part of an army of underpaid professionals filling editorial positions and working in the sales force.
We were young, often underestimated, underappreciated and sometimes even belittled. I met smart people in that profession but the smart ones weren’t all in charge. The industry valued us only as cheap labor. In one job interview, my prospective boss told me I wouldn’t get to have an opinion for seven to ten years. I told him I may as well go to med school because they’d let me perform cardiothoracic surgery faster than that.
In Finding Forrester, it was nice to see a movie that didn’t undercut the young simply because they’re young. I had lots to say back then but unfortunately, I believed I had to wait. If you’re a writer, don’t wait. Gather experience. Read more. Write now.
As Sean would say, “Punch the keys!”
Runners-up
There are several runners-up for my top three. Throw Mama from the Train stands out, especially when Mama comes up with the crucial word (“sultry”). That’s the moment Billy Crystal, playing the writer frustrated and blocked, decides he’s willing to murder her.
In Bullets Over Broadway, the struggling playwright played by John Cusack gives up. He announces, “I am not a writer!”
It’s devastating. As Cusack walks off-screen into The Future of Abandoned Dreams, I thought, No! Don’t give up! I was a child when I saw that but I wanted to be a writer. I took his failure personally.
Adaptation is pretty great. Nicholas Cage plays twins with an appropriate level of weirdness. The portrayal of Robert McKee is spot on. Playing the famous writing teacher, Brian Cox gives a blistering speech in which he eschews the notion that a plot point is unbelievable. That’s worth the price of admission. It’s also fun to watch the writer who insisted on no car chases ends up writing about a car chase.
Misery is a good movie but I prefer the book. I read it in fascination because most of the action takes place in one room. King keeps it going and flowing. In several of my books about global apocalyptic conflict, the settings are quite expansive, more like the structure of The Stand. (As in, “Meanwhile in Jakarta…) By comparison, watching Stephen King keep a whole novel to one claustrophobic space is almost a stunt.
I don’t think Barton Fink is a great movie. However, John Goodman screaming, “I’ll show you the life of the mind!” Gold.
Those are the runners-up but the bronze medal goes to…
Stranger Than Fiction
Stranger Than Fiction was good for me in part because of the great character work by Will Ferrell. However, it’s Emma Thompson standing on the desk that makes it for me. She’s imagining stepping out on a ledge and looking down, figuring out what it would be like to feel the wind between her fingers before she leaps to her death.
We don’t have to experience everything nasty in order to write about it. I forget who said that by the time we’ve gone through high school we’ve experienced enough trauma to write for the rest of our lives. Writers observe and imagine. We put ideas through the brain blender, bake it up and, if done well, the fiction souffle rises.
Imagination allows me to write crime thrillers packed with murders. I have rage. I am vindictive. Still, I keep it to the page. Somehow I’ve avoided killing anyone in real life just for the sake of experimentation. The truth is, I think about murdering people in imaginative ways quite a lot. I mean, a lot.
Writing novels allows me to make an acceptable living of which my family disapproves. It’s also a healthy and entertaining outlet. I never have to taste prison coffee.
What are your favorite movies about writing? Tell me.
BONUS
Are you a fan of my strange fiction? If you dig my sling, please leave a review. Even better, join my Inner Circle on Facebook. My Facebook group is Fans of Robert Chazz Chute. I share more about the writing life and assorted fun and nonsense daily.
Membership has its privileges: Fans get free ebooks to review and, with your permission, you will be entered in a raffle to get your name on a character in a future novel. Join us here.
There’s more to the writing and publishing process than swilling coffee and banging your head against a keyboard. Those caffeine injections behind the eyeball do help immensely, though. (Ask your doctor.)
Here’s how I do the deed, from words to action.
My Flowchart of Tears and Triumph is as follows:
Compose in Scrivener > revisions > Grammarly > Scrivener > Google Docs for Editor & Betas > Word Doc > Vellum > publish > exalt briefly > repeat until they nail they casket shut, squelching my screams of protest that I am immortal.
The Ex Parte Press breakdown :
Scrivener is a writing program I’ve used for years. The writing interface is easy and intuitive. I love how I can jump around in a document so I can find what I need quickly. I can’t make such easy changes in a Word document. Microsoft Word was designed for business writing, not quickly finding details in full-length novels. Moving chapters around is also easy, should you feel the need. As easy as writing in Scrivener is, publishing with this program takes patience as you climb the learning curve. Since it can publish anything from manuscripts to movie scripts, the details are more complicated than the software I now use to format and publish. (See Vellum, Step 7.)
How many times do I revise a manuscript? That depends on the project. My first draft is about getting the story out of my head and on the page. Character work and action comes pretty easily to me on the first go. Tweaking the plot details and finding more jokes tends to come with the second draft. I want the dialogue to sparkle so I tinker with that quite a bit. When revising feels like an exercise in procrastination, it’s time to move on to the next stage.
Grammarly is an online spellchecker. I’ve tried ProWritingAid and found that it gave me too many false positives. Grammarly doesn’t give me too much or too little to consider. No matter how many revisions I’ve done, I read the book again in Grammarly. No online spellcheck is perfect. If my typo is “he packed it” instead of “he picked it,” Grammarly won’t catch that mistake. (I also have Autocrit but that’s not part of my regular publishing process yet. I’m still evaluating it so that’s a post for another day.)
Once a draft is corrected in Grammarly, I paste it back to Scrivener a chapter at a time. That’s one way of getting a sense of my progress so I can try to warn my editor how late I’m going to be with the manuscript. I write every day and it’s serious business. However, my editor understands that I need to have the book well developed before I show it to anyone. I’m self-conscious enough as it is and, as she says, “Some books need to simmer.”
I post the whole thing to Google Docs for my editor (Gari at strawnediting.com) and my beta reader. Sometimes I have more than one beta reader, sometimes not. I’ve been very lucky to find editorial support from sharp people who dig what I do. Editorial support from people who understand your genre and were fans first are aces.
Once the editorial suggestions and corrections are made, I weep profoundly at all that I missed. Then I download the novel as a Word doc and take a look at it one more time, basically scanning for red squiggles and spot checking. Something will be missed. My first job in Toronto was in production at Harlequin in the ’80s. There were eight levels of editorial staff then. Very few publishing houses can afford that now and fewer still pay for that much input anymore. Even with eight editorial monkeys massaging the manuscript, there could be as many as six to eight little corrections to be made. In the end, I want as clean a presentation as can be. My people do not disappoint.
Uploading to Vellum is quick and easy and some of the interface is similar to Scrivener. Formatting and book design with Vellum is a joy. I’m fussy and I’ve done some pretty tricky things with certain design elements that would be very challenging without this software. When I’m done constructing the formatting for the book I have files ready to upload to sales platforms.
I publish exclusively to Amazon at the moment but that will change in 2019 as I expand my options. (The why of all that is a ranty blog post for another time.)
When I hit publish on my first book in 2010, I took two weeks off to recover. I poured libations to the publishing gods and rested on my laurels. As I’ve progressed with publishing plots, plans, policies and practices I take less time to rest after all those p-words. There’s too much to do to enjoy the feeling of having published more than an hour or two. Sometimes it’s just a few minutes of elation. That would sound sad, pathetic and Sisyphean except I’m always excited about writing the next book. I jump on the next project until the tale is polished to excellence and I’m sick of it. As long as I’m satisfied readers will love the book, live in the world I create for them and laugh in the right spots, I’m happy.
Being a novelist now is lot like being a pulp writer in the ’40s and ’50s. I have to write the next book so maybe someone will pay attention to this one, that last one or, preferably, all my work. When people ask me how it’s going I say, “It’s like always having homework, but I love it and I get to work in a coffee shop without wearing an apron. This is the writing life.”
Hot Extras:
Writing and publishing is not a race but it is a marathon. When searching for editorial support, find people who notice your clever turns of phrase and aching awesomeness. Editing is more than scolding what you did wrong. When you see what your audience likes, you get clues on how to repeat those awesome feats of prose in the future.
By the time I’m deep into making editorial decisions with other people, I’m becoming sick of the book. A cheery LOL in the margin is energizing and the odd “Attaboy!” gives me the strength to persevere and run to the finish line.
Some authors claim they want their manuscript torn apart savagely. I suspect those folks are either lying, posing, preaching, masochistic or maybe they’re just really bad writers who need a spanking. It’s true that you could learn a lot from a thoughtful savaging from a good editor but eventually, you’ll tire and find an editor who treats you like a human being with feelings. The editorial process is best when it’s a collaborative effort of the likeminded. I do learn from my editor and I know she’s trying to make my books (even!) better. She never makes me feel worse about the process than I do already.
I mention this because I have met editors who think they’re in the mock and scold business. And yes, too many of them worked for traditional publishing houses and held the authors in their stable in contempt.
Expectations:
Gari keeps a style guide written just for me. My idiosyncrasies include:
No Oxford commas unless required for clarity. (Yes, I’m one of those monsters who fails to worship your blessed Oxford comma. Gather your torches and pitchforks and chase me around the village.)
I’m not a fan of commas before but. Commas are speed bumps. As long as it’s consistent and clear, cool. I do not want to slow the reader down too much on their merry way to turning the page toward another visceral word punch.
One editor (not Gari) once insisted that I describe my characters in exhaustive detail. I refuse. Readers will meet us at least halfway on this. I once taught a writing class in which I read one of my short stories. That done, I polled the class as to what the main character looked like. Beyond being male and almost thirty, there was no description in the text. Despite this, everyone had a clear picture in mind as to what the character looked like. The pictures in their minds varied immensely but that did not matter to them. The guy had a live skunk in the back seat of his car and a dead ex-friend in the trunk! No one was shortchanged.
I’m Canadian. I use American spelling conventions because most of my readers live in the United States. UK readers don’t seem to mind but some American readers take offense if the word color has a u in it. (Probably a patriotism thing?)
Our style guide is generally The Chicago Manual of Style until I come across something that feels like it should be an exception to a rule. Things change. Internet used to be capitalized and I thought that was stupid. The CMoS now accepts internet. I assume they noted my objections. You’re welcome.
~ Hi! I’m Robert Chazz Chute. Thanks for reading this far down! You’re a keener, aren’t you? I like that! Maybe you’re willing to go a little farther and meet me in Zihuatanejo, Red?
About me: I escaped the 9 – 5 for the 24/7/365. I construct apocalyptic epics and suspenseful crime fiction. My next killer thriller, The Night Man, will be released soon. Please subscribe to be alerted when Easy’s adventure in darkness is available. Thanks!
More about The Night Man: Wounded in Afghanistan, Earnest “Easy” Jack returns home to rural Michigan to train guard dogs in the family business. His high school sweetheart is on the run from a very bad husband. His father is kidnapped by a dirty cop. Easy thought his war was over. Trapped in the middle of America, the Night Man is still in a war zone.
BONUS!
Are you a fan of my work? If you dig my sling, please leave a review. Even better, join my Inner Circle on Facebook. My Facebook group is Fans of Robert Chazz Chute. I share more about the writing life and assorted fun and nonsense daily.
Membership has its privileges: Fans get free ebooks to review and, with your permission, you will be entered in a raffle to get your name on a character in a future novel. Join us here and exalt at length.
I started watching The Flash on Netflix as a stress reliever. I wasn’t too invested at first. In fact, given the names of the villains and the source material, I mistook the series for something breezy to help me chill out. I was wrong. Though much of the dialogue is jokey, the characters are earnest and there’s a whole lot of death going on for a CW show. The show is not just bubblegum for the eyes, after all. I picked up on a few details which made it better than I expected (and useful to writers.)
Here’s what I learned from The Flash:
1. The Art of the Cliffhanger
These writers are the masters of cliffhangers that advance the plot. If this were a novel, each chapter would be a page-turner. They often throw in a double cliffhanger.
It’s great for Netflix viewing because the narrative makes you want to surf straight into the next episode to find out what happens next. Someone will curse imaginatively and shout that they hate cliffhangers. I know. The details of dealing intelligently with cliffhangers is a blog post all its own. I’ll give that objection a short answer here, though: We’ve been trained by decades of serial television to endure cliffhangers. Everybody hates pop ups on websites, too. But they work.
BONUS ANSWER: Lots of people say they hate cliffhangers but they will be back after the obligatory performative rage quit. It wasn’t the cliffhangers that drove people to wander away from The Walking Dead. It was the brutality of Glen’s death and the relentlessly grim outlook that left viewers questioning the value of surviving the zombie apocalypse. Since the producers of The Walking Dead seem to be bringing hope back, I suspect the show will regain some viewers who walked away.
SIDE NOTE:
The Flash springs from comics, obviously. I used to collect comics but I didn’t understand the art of comic book writing very well until recently. I aspire to write a graphic novel based on some of my previously published work. In Words into Pictures by Brian Michael Bendis, the author points out that a truly well-written comic has a cliffhanger at every turn of the page. That could be twelve cliffhangers for one twenty-four page story! Writing comics suddenly sounds more daunting, doesn’t it?
2. Plot and Plan Long Story Arcs
On the surface, it was a little too easy to dismiss a show that kept hammering a couple of solutions hard: “Run, Barry, run!” and “Believe in yourself.” I began watching carelessly so I popped into the show midway through the first season, just for a taste. Later, after watching the rest of the run, I circled back to the beginning. That’s when it hit me how much forethought seems to be involved. I’m impressed.
There are seeds planted early on that grow to mighty trees later. In the first season, the camera pauses on a shot of a cage labeled Grodd. The gorilla is a fixture later but the writers don’t answer all questions immediately.
If you’ve ever taken a writing class or watched comment threads devolve into insanity, you’ve seen someone demand that all the answers come front loaded and quickly. Long story arcs are for readers and viewers who like a little mystery. Quick answers are for impatient people who aren’t losing themselves to the narrative (AKA not in the reading/viewing demographic. If you’re into it, you’ll wait.)
I’m guessing that since the creators of the TV show had decades of original material to draw from, they could plot and plan far ahead using the source material. Sometimes you can get there the way Breaking Bad found their ending: pantsing it. Still, I do appreciate that the creators of The Flash appear to have planned well ahead (even if they didn’t).
3. The Art of Raising Stakes
After saving the planet (or at least Central City) from utter destruction over and over, you might finish a season of The Flash and think: Where can they go from here? The villains get even more interesting as the series progresses. They become more dangerous and meaner. The characters you’ve grown to love, or at least like, suffer more. When the hero is up against a villain and you’re thinking that the good guys can’t possibly win, you’ve got a compelling story.
SIDE NOTE: You know that famous hallway fight scene in Daredevil? Of course, you do. On The Flash, Neil Sandilands as The Thinker has a scene where he uses a conglomeration of powers to take out a SWAT team that is epic. When they composed that epic fight scene, I’m sure they had the Daredevil scene in mind. It’s a lot of fun.
4. Fearlessness
The Flash is a series that isn’t afraid to be complex. You know a time travel plot is difficult to deal with when you have actors drawing timelines and flowcharts as if they’re teaching metaphysical physics. But they’re also brave enough to be silly and good for them for having fun with it. If Christopher Nolan had more of a sense of humor, he could be the greatest director of his generation instead of one of the greatest.
With The Flash‘s multiverse packed with so many versions of one character, it is a joy to see Tom Cavanaugh play Harrison Wells et al in many hilarious iterations. He goes from cold and deadly to a stereotypically comedic German scientist to Matthew McConaughey parody to a French detective named Sherloque. When Vibe charges off to save the day, Tom Cavanaugh gets to deliver the gleeful line: “Good luck storming the castle!” Classic!
SIDE NOTE: The actor Tom Cavanaugh is a Canadian national treasure. Candice Patton is so gorgeous I’m not absolutely positive she is real. She might be CGI.
BACK TO THE POINT, ROB:
I appreciate The Flash‘s flexibility of tone so much. Too many shows (and books) have one note and hit it as if they’re playing triangle in the high school’s junior band. I want ups and downs and loops on my story’s roller coaster. The Flash delivers. As a guy who dared to include whales as part of the solution to a zombie apocalypse, I love that.
5. Heart and Relatability.
It’s interesting to see how the characters have evolved on The Flash. When the series begins, Jesse L. Martin plays Detective Joe West a little like he’s still NYPD Detective Ed Green on Law & Order. Later, we learn he’s a big softie. In his first appearance, Wentworth Miller plays bad guy Leonard Snart more seriously. Later on, his portrayal is looser, more fun and unexpected. It’s as if the show runner took the actor aside and said, “Have more fun with it.” And so we have more fun watching.
I love James Bond movies and I read all the books, too. However, that character is so iconic, he doesn’t change. He could be an android programmed with a very narrow range of emotions and a list of one-liners. I like when fiction is more connected and characters develop over time. History affects the future (or on The Flash, the future can rewrite the past).
Characters develop and change on this show. They don’t have to change much to be compelling but their ability to change over time makes them human and relatable. The transformation doesn’t have to be a preachy, “I learned this” moment, either. When Cisco hates Barry for a while, he doesn’t really have a big “I forgive you” moment. He just does what we all do when a good friend pisses us off: We get over it eventually.
What makes a hero? Barry Allen believes in empathy and the willingness to sacrifice. What’s more interesting is that he does not save the world alone. Unlike most other superheroes, he can’t do it alone. That’s where the heart of the show comes through. They’re friends. They’re family. They get annoyed with each other but love keeps them together and in the fight for the rest of us.
I know. It’s just a TV show and some of the lesser villains can be childish. However, this moment in history feels like a great time to be childlike. We need more empathy and hope. This is a great time for love so strong it keeps us together despite the fact that sometimes we hate each other.
We all want to be heroes but we can’t do it alone. I love the writing life, but sometimes I feel very disconnected from our current reality. I came to The Flash looking for a distraction from the endless scroll of bad news in my news feed. I grew to appreciate the writing. Then I forgot about the mechanics, left my stress behind and simply enjoyed watching the show. I didn’t expect to become a fan but I did.
P.S. I saw Grant Gustin on Glee before he sang on The Flash. Yes, the star of the show sure can sing. The musical team-up with Supergirl star, Melissa Benoist was a delight. However, the actor who plays Cisco is a singer as well as an actor. Carlos Valdes oozes charm all over the place. The show made it to its 100th episode on December 4th. I hope Carlos gets to sing a bunch on the show before The Flash finishes its run.Â
When I think of the writers who have guided my writing life, three come to mind first. Here’s the who and, more important, the why:
1. Stephen King
I couldn’t get into the Dark Tower stuff but I’ve read everything else. I love how he provides an ordinary context that sets the scene for the extraordinary. His heroes are normal people and I enjoy finding out how they deal with extremes.
There’s a scene in Tommyknockers that hit me between the eyes. A good guy with a gun is about to use the weapon to save himself. The handgun misfires. Later I read an interview with The King. He said something to the effect of, “The girl is holding a knife she will never get to use.”
In other words: Good stories come from providing no easy solutions. The wide and easy road out of town isn’t wide and easy. It’s a gauntlet. Things get tough for your characters. Then they are made tougher and the noose tightens.
2. Kurt Vonnegut
I saw him speak once a long time ago. I like Vonnegut so much I made him a character in my time travel novel, Wallflower. What appeals to me is his humor and his humanity. He was a kind and decent human being as well as a writer who had fun and got his readers to enjoy themselves. He dealt in big ideas but viewed them through the lens of the individual. Good fiction feels personal.
Some of my fiction is pretty grim and gritty. Even so, I emulate Kurt Vonnegut’s work in that there remains a note of hope amid the rubble. Characters often make great sacrifices but they do so for good reasons and ultimately there is always payoff and a point. I think that’s an important role in fiction, to provide order to chaos. There’s enough chaos in real life. That’s what we’re trying to escape when we open a book.
3. William Goldman
He just left us recently but what a life and legacy. I’ve often said that people know him for his screenwriting. Everyone knows Goldman for The Princess Bride. We should all know him for his novels. The Color of Light is the best novel I’ve ever read. His non-fiction also happens to be hilarious. Want to work in Hollywood? Try Which Lie Did I Tell? and Adventures in the Screen Trade.
Exhilarated and laughing, I knew what and how I wanted to write for the rest of my life: everyday people suffering suspense through funny, twisty plots.
In Bigger Than Jesus, the beat where you find out how Big Denny met my hitman Jesus Diaz? That moment was written by me. It was brought to you by William Goldman. (That hairpin turn caught me by surprise as I wrote it, too. The twist wasn’t in the outline. It rose organically. I’m mostly a pantser.)
In This Plague of Days, when the surreal becomes real and we discover the villain’s true motivation and ally? That’s a big idea made personal. That’s a Vonnegut moment. So is the last scene and the Afterword from the titular author.
In Brooklyn in the Mean Time, the main character is an ordinary guy in extraordinary circumstances. Saddled with a very problematic family, he ran away and turned to crime to survive. Coming home, he’s on a journey toward redemption but he’s barely got the right tools for the job. That character (who happens to be named Chazz and sounds a lot like me) could have stepped out of a Stephen King novel.
Sadly, two of my literary heroes are dead. Long live the King!
Question of the Day
Who are your literary influences? What book changed your life?
These are my notes from my brainstorming session for Ex Parte Press’ writing and publishing schedule for 2019. Yes, that long list on the left comprises books to publish. The good news is that most of them are already written. They just need my revisions and then a happy trip through the editorial pipeline.
At the moment I am finishing revisions to The Night Man. It’s a story about a man and his dog. (Everybody loves reading about dogs, having dogs, petting dogs, loving dogs.) Well, there’s much more to it than that. Here’s the cover.
The Real Details
Coming soon!
The Night Man features an unwilling vigilante trying to save his kidnapped father.
When Ernest “Easy” Jack returns to Lake Orion, Michigan, he’s a wounded warrior hoping to leave his violent past behind. His high school sweetheart is unhappily married to a bad man and too glad to see Easy (naked). Easy plans to get back into the family business training guard dogs. When his dad’s shady side business brings dark trouble, bodies hit the floor. The rest of Lake Orion isn’t so sure the prodigal son’s return is a good thing. The action is fast, the plot is twisty and the results are explosive.
I love this book. It reminds me of Brooklyn in the Mean Time. The dialogue is fun and snappy like Brooklyn but the action is a bit edgier.
Shout out
Special thanks to Gari Strawn of strawnediting.com. She’s my professional champion/savior/gentle tut-tutter.) Her speed makes my publishing schedule possible and she has an eye for detail like no other editor I’ve encountered.
I have developed an annoying case of tinnitus in the last few weeks. If I’m writing or listening to enough ambient background noise, I can dismiss it. That’s the magic of writing and reading. Pulling books over our heads decreases stress and makes the world go away.
This is the writing and publishing life and it is cool.
By the way (he added pseudo-casually): If you dig my sling, please review my books. AFTER Life is my newest adventure and I need 10 more reviews to really get it off the ground. Thanks!
P.S. I’ve also added that yellow Buy Me a Coffee button to the right. Truth is, any contributions will go toward my editorial and advertising budgets because in 2018, 2019 and beyond, to gain visibility, advertising is required now. Book sales platforms are pay to play. Again, thanks for your help. 🙂
