Getting through the First Draft

Recently I posted a comment on FB that I had reached 57,000+ words in my work-in-progress and now, at last, knew how it was going to end. This sounds absurd to anyone but another writer, and has become more and more likely in my work. 

When I began writing the Mellingham series in the 1990s, I knew who the killer was, the motive, and how the final scenes would play out. The problem was getting there, how did I begin with a killer and a sleuth and keep them occupied through 70,000 words. My first step was to decide on ten chapters with ten scenes each. This idea had flaws, which I discovered in chapter one. Some scenes were long and others were short and some were repetitive because I was determined to get those ten scenes into that chapter. By the end of the book I might not even have ten chapters; instead I had eleven or nine. Sticking to a rigid plan was harder than I expected. I dropped the ten-chapters idea.

 By the time I began the Anita Ray series, set in a hotel in South India, I wanted my scenes to be of somewhat even length, approximately three pages or fifteen hundred words. Confident in my new plan, I scribbled along happily until I found some scenes running fifteen pages and others barely one. I once asked another mystery reader what was the shortest chapter she had encountered, and she replied, "It was one word. 'Help!' "  It's nice to know another writer has won that competition and the rest of us can stop worrying about it. The only conclusion I was ready to draw was that each chapter should have more than one scene, but I soon had to abandon that rule also.

I once read a short story that went on for almost fifty pages without a single scene break. (Some of you may know this story, and if so, leave me a note in the comments.) I read with one part of my brain watching how she did this, how she managed to keep the pace and scenes threaded together without exhausting the reader, who usually expects a moment of rest for a deep breath and assimilation. I'm not likely to try this approach in crime fiction.

 

My current approach is to give each day a chapter regardless of how many scenes that involves. In a busy day for my MC, that could mean up to nine scenes. My tendency is to mark a scene change when the emotional tone of the action changes, and this can be even in the middle of a conversation. My Beta readers often comment on this in negative terms so I've had to revise my thinking, but I do so somewhat reluctantly. I like my placement of scene changes because I think they signal something to the reader.

 

After I have a completed first draft I expect I'll have to go back to the beginning and reorganize the scenes into more logical chapters, but right now this is the structure that gets me through the writing and keeps me moving forward. I didn't say it was logical. It's useful. And as a writer I am always practical. What devices do you use to push your way through the first draft?

Looking Back on Thirty Years: 1988-2018

This year I will have been writing and publishing books in the mystery field for thirty years, since A Reader’s Guide to the Classic British Mystery came out in 1988, published by G. K. Hall. Does anyone remember them? Founded by a Mr. G. K. Hall in the 1950s, the publishing house changed hands a few times, and in 1985 was sold to Macmillan. I remember the event because I went in to sign my contract and as I handed it back to the editor, she said, “This is the last contract we’re allowed to sign. Macmillan bought us and showed up last night.” The whole thing began to sound like a hostile takeover, the foreign army massing on the border. The senior editor was told not to come in the next day, and that was only the beginning. My book was published, and I went on to edit a series of reference books on popular fiction, but G. K. Hall has become an imprint of others, and few remember this house.

I was fortunate to sell Murder in Mellingham, my first mystery, to Scribner, and merrily went about taking things for granted. In the middle of my three-book contract, Scribner was purchased by Simon and Schuster, and the mystery editor, Susanne Kirk, was told to switch from mystery series to stand-alones, and to reduce the number of titles annually from 24 to 12. My third Mellingham mystery, Family Album, appeared in 1995, and that was that.

In the 1990s publishing was going through one of its usual upheavals, with editors leaving to become agents and writers picking themselves up stunned from the sidewalk. The late Ed Gorman, one of the saints of this business, stepped in with an idea to start an imprint for established mystery writers. Thorndike Press liked the idea, and I signed up with my Mellingham series. Five Star published Friends and Enemies in 2001 and A Murderous Innocence in 2006. Why the first gap of six years? I can claim I was occupied with The Larcom Review, which a friend and I co-founded in 1998 and with the co-editor responsibilities I took on for the Oxford Companion to Crime and Mystery Writing(1999), but in reality I was still trying to sell the Mellingham series.

Eventually I set Mellingham and the beloved Joe Silva aside and turned to one of my lifelong loves, India. I offered Five Star, by now purchased a few times and owned by Gale, Cengage, the first in a new series set in India. Under the Eye of Kali: An Anita Ray Mystery appeared in 2010, and has been followed by three more Anita Ray novels at modest intervals of two years. And then Five Star/Gale, Cengage dropped its mystery line, and my colleagues and I were once again outside staring at the pavement.

Apparently I’m a slow learner (probably goes with being a slow reader) but by now I had learned my lesson (helped along by my agent, Paula Munier). Time to try something new. From this great insight came a series about Felicity O’Brien, who has recently inherited her family farm where she gets involved in not one but two murders. Below the Tree Line: A Pioneer Valley Mystery appeared in September 2018. That’s just a couple of months ago. Midnight Ink announced it was dropping its mystery line in October. The second book in the series was ready to go, due in November. But there it sits, on my desk, homeless.

Now, really, I ask you, is this any way to manage a career?

When I’m not being flippant, which I admit is one of my less endearing coping mechanisms, I look back on my path to publication and marvel that despite the best efforts of publishers to thwart my progress I have managed to write what I wanted to write, publish a number of books that received good reviews (and brought me modest royalties), and enjoy the friendships of numerous other writers and reviewers. I’ve enjoyed going to conferences, workshops, and annual-get-togethers, meeting new people and telling stories about the writer’s life.

I can berate myself for my own missteps, of which there are many—not knowing my limitations as a writer, taking too long to start a new series, getting sidetracked with that pesky income problem—but in reality many other writers who made none of my mistakes found themselves right there next to me on that piece of concrete, listening to that door slam behind us.

The godsend for me and perhaps many others has been the rise of print-on-demand services and publishers, and the many writers who have shared suggestions and ideas, contact information and feedback on various new houses. I self-published two Mellingham books, and am looking at new small presses to continue the Anita Ray series. 

And then I did what I hadn’t expected: I began a stand-alone, in a voice that matches none of what I’ve done before. It was loads of fun, and I’m hoping my agent and an editor will like it.

I expected this thirty-year review to go in a different direction, but here I am, looking back at a ride that in hindsight seems to have worked out better than I could have predicted, and has brought me safely to this point where I have a track record I'm proud of, more options for more books, more short story ideas, and lots of friends in the world I have chosen. There’s nothing better than this.

https://www.amazon.com/Susan-Oleksiw/e/B001JS3P7C

https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/SusanOleksiw

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/susan+oleksiw?_requestid=1017995

www.susanoleksiw.com

Managing the Subplot

My current work-in-progress is really a recovery project. I decided to take a break from a new series I’ve been working on and rework an Anita Ray manuscript I set aside after Five Star/Gale, Cengage decided to drop its mystery line. The ms was ninety percent finished, and I’ve felt reluctant to abandon it completely. As I read through the story, which I hadn’t looked at for well over a year, I recalled the question I’d struggled with earlier. The problem was a subplot that introduced a character who wanted more—more space, more dialogue, more control.

Dictionary.com defines subplot as “a secondary or subordinate plot, as in a play, novel, or other literary work; underplot.” The site also notes that the term is only about one hundred years old. As part of a general understanding, the subplot should also throw into relief, illuminate in some way, the main plot of the story or novel. This took me to the heart of my problem.

In this story, In Sita’s Shadow, a middle-aged widow is about to make a decision that is momentous for an Indian woman in her circumstances, edging into the middle class, with her daughter married and well launched on her own career and in married life. I don’t want it to be an easy decision, but I don’t want it to take over the main plot either, which is the identification of the murderer and the motive.

The theme of this Anita Ray mystery is the choices we make when life closes in on us. If the subplot for each aspect of the story is too well developed, it may eclipse the main plot, and take the novel in a new direction. That’s not necessarily bad, but it means I’m writing a different story. If the subplot takes over the story, as characters sometimes do, the book will feel unbalanced. The structure may seem like its collapsing under the weight of the subplot.

I liked the subplot I came up with for Deepa Nayar, the character in question, but the minute I began to rework it, I knew this could be trouble. The characters that came onto the page pushed themselves into the action, flashed across scenes that had been intended to do something very different. It didn’t take me long to acknowledge that this wasn’t a subplot. This thread was bigger than a subplot; it was the theme of a novel and deserved its own book.

Any story requires many threads, different characters and their perspectives, motives, behaviors. But not every thread belongs in every story, and that was my conclusion. Deepa Nayar’s subplot will get its own novel. She’ll finish out her life story in this book, but the question that her decision raises will be explored in the next one. My vision for In Sita’s Shadow is a single story whose subplots in the lives of the suspects contribute to a single fabric.

There’s nothing wrong with letting a subplot take over a story, knowing that it will become the main story line. But that’s not what I wanted in this book. But it is a discovery that will help me shape the next one.

To find the Anita Ray stories, go to these sites.

https://www.amazon.com/Susan-Oleksiw/

https://tsw.createspace.com/title/6033762

https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/SusanOleksiw

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/susan+oleksiw?_requestid=1017995

Anita Ray's Future

I’ve posted before about the end of the Five Star Mystery Line, but it seems there’s more to say. When something comes to an end, I tend to say, “Okay, I’m done with that,” and move on. I often think I’ll have trouble letting go, but in the end I don’t. It’s something in my DNA. And yet I do have trouble thinking I’ll never write or publish another novel featuring Anita Ray. But that’s not the lingering question.

When I began writing the Anita Ray stories, I created a character who emerged in part in relation to her scatty Auntie Meena and the other denizens of Hotel Delite. The stories were about the world of this hotel as well as the main characters. Anita and her Auntie remained static in the sense that they didn’t really age. In each book, Anita might be a month older, or even younger. It didn’t matter. The only concrete comment about her age was that she was closer to thirty than twenty and she was still unmarried. Unmarried! At her age. A scandal. And a gnawing shame for Auntie Meena. That was the premise at the beginning. But now?

 

With the prospect of working on a series set adrift from any official publisher, I seem to find specific aspects of the set-up also drifting. I could continue the series by heading in a different direction. Anita could marry and move into the hillside. I fell in love with Munnar and tea plantations on an earlier visit, and I can easily imagine Anita living there. Or, she could return to the United States to visit her parents. (This is the opportunity that least appeals to me, but I mention it to be complete.) Or perhaps she opens a gallery in Trivandrum and lives there, away from Hotel Delite. But I’d miss Auntie Meena and Ravi and Moonu and all the others.

I’m thinking about this now because today I had lunch with four other women and we talked aboutIndia and our travels. One woman had lived in Brazil, Indonesia, Pakistan, parts of Africa, as well as the US. One grew up in Northern India. The lunch was special for another reason. One cooked an amazingly delicious lunch of Indian dishes, another brought copies of CDs of her son’s music (he plays the sitar), the hostess shared her home and a couple of books, another brought a book on knitting and a dessert of fresh fruit, and I brought the four Anita Ray books to give away.

I love writing the Anita Ray books, and I love exploring ideas for them even more. As I type this I can feel possible scenarios developing. I enjoy having her four novels out there in the world, and a few more short stories scheduled to appear soon. For now that will have to be enough. But I know I’ll figure out something and Anita Ray will continue to have adventures and solve crimes.

To find the Anita Ray mysteries, go here.

The Daily Word Count

I’m almost exactly in the middle of my current WIP, and I know my subconscious has figured out the ending by the change in my daily word count. There are lots of signs that a manuscript is going well, but my changing daily tally seems to be one of the most reliable.

Like most other writers, I set myself a daily goal, usually fifteen hundred words. If I don’t meet this figure, I feel like I’ve been slacking off. But this is a guide, not a requirement. On some days my word count is as low as five hundred, and on other days the number can run up to six thousand.

Any figure over two thousand makes me uncomfortable because I question how good the scenes can be if I’m pushing out such a high word count. I once listened to a writer talk about his daily goal of fourteen thousand words. I wasn’t the only one in the audience who gasped. Was he really this good? Was he really that brave? He went on to explain that he felt he had to get the outlines of the story on paper. He had to see the skeleton lying on the sidewalk, in order to feel he had some control over the plot line. After he got through his first draft, which took him barely a week or two, he went back and worked through each sentence. His process sounded a lot like automatic writing. He just let the words pour out without any thought as to how good they were or whether they made any sense. This is a writer who truly had learned to shut off his inner critic.

I would never attempt to write at such a rate. But when I write only five hundred words in a day I look for a reason. There are several. First, I begin my work for the day by going back over what I’ve written the day before. I’m likely to cut lines, perhaps even an entire scene, or rewrite a crucial passage that I pondered all night. If I cut eight hundred words and add in nine hundred, my net gain is only about a hundred words. And then I write five hundred more. I guess I can say that I’ve met my quota for the day. A second reason is that I come to a passage that requires more research, so I stop to work on that. This may take all morning, leaving me less time to meet my quota, but it may also give me material that will ensure I don’t have to rewrite the passage later. A third reason is that I’m stuck. I don’t know what’s happening in the story and I have to stop and think it through. Frustrating but necessary.

In Come About forMurder, I spent a lot of time reworking the final scenes on the water. On those days my word counts were pretty low, but in the end I was satisfied. I did a lot of rewriting of the short story “Variable Winds,” in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine (October 2016), to make sure the technical information was correct and clear in very limited space. Some things just take more time.

I keep a running list of my daily word count, as well as what has happened in each scene, and both tell me if I’m on track. There are times when the daily tally doesn’t matter, but in general this is one simple guide that lets me know if I’m on track, or need to rethink the direction of my WIP.

For this and other work in the Mellingham series and the Anita Ray series, go here.