How rough or polished are your first drafts? Do you dare show us?
My first drafts are rough as sandpaper.
There are times when I know my destination, while other times I have only a vague idea on how to proceed from Point X to Y. Sometimes I’ll be sitting at my desk like Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny rolling ideas around in my head, the way he used those metal balls in his hand. When I polish the writing, it’s for internal logic and coherence and, because I write a series, character arcs across books.
I try to offer readers something unique. I try to resist certain conventions, and fads. I’m tired of the PI with a drinking problem or anger management issues. My writing takes a little This and That from the canon. Yes, I include the mystery genre in the Literary Canon, except my version of it accounts for diversity and other languages. The mystery genre is not the milkman’s kid. If Oedipus isn’t both mystery and noir, then I don’t know what is.
I’m not pure noir. If there’s darkness in Shane Cleary, it’s not him; it’s the world of 1970s Boston. My writing is more hard-boiled, possibly perceived as noir, because I rely on dialogue to advance Character and Plot. Dialog is a weak spot for most writers. There’s been a tradition for terse and snappy dialogue. However, it has degenerated into sarcasm, and can border on misogynistic and racist. I’m particularly attentive to realistic dialogue. Profanity is ubiquitous in contemporary literature, and I think readers have become desensitized, so if I use the F-word, you will feel its impact. I’m the same way with violence.
‘Rough’ to me is when I have to stop and think about what I’ve read for logic or clear imagery. If I have to pause, then it requires editing. If what a character says seems contradictory to their personality, I revisit and revise. I try to smooth out my pacing. I strive to lay down paragraph after paragraph of fluid prose. I’ll often utilize two to three paragraphs of exposition and then break the scene or introduce dialog. I tend to compress details to essentials for the story. It’s not unlike how a diamond is formed from a lump of coal. Too much prose and too many details invite confusion and frustrate fans of mysteries. Is all that I’ve read a clue?
My imagination thinks in scenes. I hear and see characters talk and react, and I do my best to commit it to paper. When I’m not confident of direction and destination, the writing process will reveal the answers. The ‘extras’ are after the fact. To quote Naomi Hirahara, “I have to pay attention to inserting red herrings and effectively braiding the problem-solving elements of the plot.”
Writing a series has compelled me to write what I call ‘treatments,’ and they are rough, indeed, often lacking subplots. I write and leave material for my characters to breathe. Case in point, I wrote four ‘treatments’ the Shane Cleary five years ago after I finished writing the first book, Dirty Old Town. The first novel established Shane and his moral universe. The remaining ‘treatments’ varied from 30-40K for word count, which I wrote over the course of one summer and then put away. A few months before my next book was due, I thought about subplots to flesh out the remainder of the book. Bonnie, for example, did not exist for Hush Hush. I created her.
To circle back to my earlier statement about the literary canon, I pick and choose to make my writing new and different. Robert B. Parker’s Jesse Stone had Reggie the dog. Shane has a cat named Delilah. She is my hat tip to the cozy mystery tradition since she is a companion, a manifestation of his conscience, and she provides levity where most people would look to open a vein.
As for smoothing out the wood, rounding out the edges, that’s called editing, and I’m worse than Medea when it comes to my darlings.
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