Howard Andrew Jones

Not as i write a first draft, but I have quite a list for revisions! ;)

Yeah, my revisions list tends to be specific to whatever project I'm working on. I usually develop a new bad habit for whatever long work I'm working on. A phrase or expression I overuse, for example.

For me, Howard, this was paramount in writing my last novel, Stillwood, which quite simply is nothing but setting. A single, intricate setting that has to intrude deeply into the character's psyches to the point that the inner and outer world are no longer distinguishable. This was one of the most difficult tasks I have yet faced as writer—I'm not sure how well I achieved it, and I still wonder if the book worked at all. But I put everything I could into making the setting as integral to everything that occurred. If it wasn't integral, the novel plain and simple would not work.

Thanks for the acute observations.

Like Domynoe, above, I have extensive lists for revisions.

My first drafts always play to my strengths: dialogue, plot, and scene blocking.

The second draft is where I remind myself to flesh out the surroundings and paint the whiterooms.

Usually in the 3rd draft I'm consciously de-cliche-ifying the setting.

By 4th pass I'm usually calling myself an imaginationless hack and consciously adding bits of creative windowdressing.

And in 5th pass I'm sanding and painting the seams so the reader can't (I hope) tell it was put together in bits and layers.

After the quintuple bypass, does the story have good heart?

Once I get the whole thing down I have to go through and murder passive voice, which tends always to creep in when I'm head down over the rough draft.

Hey Howard--

It was that article by E.E. Knight that made me finally break down and get the Ballantine/Wandering Star Savage Tales of Solomon Kane. Well worth it, too: in some ways SK is more interesting than Conan.

Bringing the background into the foreground: that's a big part of what I think genre fiction is about. I totally agree with you, Howard, that we should give the readers an interesting trip (and not just cool scenery).

I don't keep lists so much, but I do set myself a technical challenge with each story. In the first draft of "Turn Up This Crooked Way" I set the rule that I would introduce something new and weird every manuscript page--about every 300 words. (The gaps between weirdities got wider in the second draft, as I tried to make sense of the freakish structure I'd generated.) In "Payment Deferred" I tried to write with the concision and directness of one of the old Black Mask detective stories, etc.

This method insures that, whatever I think I'm good at, I'm always trying to do something I don't really know how to do. On reflection, I'm not sure whether that makes it a good approach or not.

JE

(Cross-posted to the BG message board.)

Woo hoo! I'm a July '06 sub.

As for me writing a scene, I let my strengths (plot, characterisation) do the walking without a further thought form me and I keep my weaknesses (style, voice) in mind, trying to catch the saggy spots as I go. First editorial pass tightens up my strengths and strengthens my weaknesses.

Then I let other eyes read it to catch those things I missed completely before I attempt a second editorial pass.

And that's just the bare bones. I, too, have lists of things I want to include, or must include, from plot beats to word counts to grammatical structures used every X paragraphs.

Hmm... I'm very list-driven.

I too have a set of readers I pass works through, although the readers may change slightly depending upon the nature of the work. Some writer friends I show everything too, some I show only cedtain kinds of stories.

Howard,

Thanks for the nice words. Sorry I didn't reply sooner but I'm currently on vacation.

I think setting is sometimes overlooked because so many writers (rightly) study plot and character. Much of what has been written about creating drama comes out of the stage, where it was simply impossible to do more with setting than paint a background picture and prop up a few easily-carried bits of set dressing. As you observed, as writers we're not on a budget. Nor are we limited to Shakespeare's "brawl ridiculous" -- if we need a thousand war elephants charging out of the setting sun, all we have to do is write them.

Setting boils down to time and place. Time is easy to overlook. Why is the story happening at this particular time? Figuring out "why now" will often give you your first big plot-point.

As for place, all I can say is to try and give setting an organic quality. Businesses, countries, families, religions, forms of art, they all are born, grow, mature, and die (and are sometimes at their most picturesque long after they are dead, how many Romanticists painted overgrown Roman ruins?) Everything from Classical Greece to the Simpsons has a life cycle, you've got to decide where your bit of setting is in that life cycle, and then depict it as such. Thing of the pieces of your setting as characters, each with strengths and weaknesses, and spend time crafting them in proportion to their importance to the story. Thus Tolkien gave us a lot of Minas Tirith but only a little of Ghan-buri-Ghan's folk.

Okay, taverns are often boring. I agree. But perhaps you've got to put one in your S&S story for whatever reason. Maybe you can decide that an innovative tavern owner at a busy crossroads is trying something different and birthing a new business. He's using a large cellar his grandfather built as a cheap dormitory (now there's an inn and a local church offers a warm corner for a free so the dormitory is no longer in use) to hold wine, and invited two wineries of the region (assuming your local environment is conducive to grapes) to supply him. They can sell all the wine they like under his roof and he just takes a small cut. One winery sends in the sword-and-sorcery equivalent of a wine expert, talking about the quality of wood used in their aging casks and the frequency of the morning dew and where they obtained their rare vines. A second winery sends a comely, lusty gal with a cocky sense of humor who flirts and jokes with customers as she sells wine like a Jaeger girl selling shots. These two characters can pop in and out of the background as the main characters do whatever has to be done in the tavern.

A dead tavern could be interesting too. Perhaps the local potentates closed a famous seaside tavern and hung the owner for associating with pirates and allowing them to recruit in his establishment. It's still a warm and dry building with a convenient landing, though ill-omened as the potentates stuffed the owner upside down into his own chimney to plug it, and pirates secretly meet, often by the light of a single candle, to talk over business. They advertise that they're hiring with some bit of discrete signal, like a black feather stuck in the lintel. They send barefoot, gutter-bred boys running back and forth to other establishments for their bread, cheese, meat pies, and booze and to act as lookouts. Because the windows are boarded up and the light and activity must be hidden, a writer can have a good deal of fun with atmosphere here.

Anyway, thanks again for mentioning me.