Pondering

I'm supposed to be doing homework.

But I haven't written in this blog for a while and I have something brief that's been on my mind.

Do you give yourself permission to free write?

Every once in a while, when I have the urge to write and either my current projects aren't turning out or I don't have a project (like now), I write something random. And these pieces all start with random questions.

They always end up being pertinent, either in a new or an existing story.

A couple days ago I wrote two pages on the early days of marriage between Basilie and Étienne. I was thinking about their sex life 20 years ago, but it turned out that I wrote a nugget that showed me his feelings when he found out she was pregnant the first time. I felt something for these two I had never felt before.

I have two more questions running around in my brain:

1. If Étienne and Basilie had met before they met as I say they did, when he was 18 and she was 20, what would the encounter be and where? As if they ran into each other as strangers but never knew... what happened? Was it in a museum? A store? What did they think of each other?
2. My secondary character of Jules the Chef... Need to explore his backstory. What was his life like in the immediate months before he enters my story?

Character Politics

Do you know your characters' politics?

Seriously.

My stepmother loves George W. Bush. She is not a fan of Barack Obama. This is central to her identity as an intelligent business owner, a Christian and a conservative. It also was very hard for her to talk about anything with my liberal hairdresser. They both respected each other, but neither could be dissuaded from the gospel of their politics. And they both had a lot of passion about the topic.

Now, before you dismiss this bit of character development by saying, "My character is not interested in politics," let me remind you that we're all political in some way-- even if it boils down to one of two philosophies:
1. The "Why vote? It doesn't make a lick of difference" people
versus
2. The "If you didn't vote for anyone, you can't complain about anything" camp
(a variation of the "if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem" mentality)
That's step one. Do your characters vote? Why or why not?

Let me ask my mortal characters:
Adelaide~ She votes, primarily liberal, but often forgets elections, can't remember when the primary is, and couldn't tell you who her congressman is.
Étienne~ VOTES. Religiously. Liberal, and because he's French, votes primarily socialist, though does get into the oratory tricks of French politicians.
Basilie~ VOTES and has had a high-ranking political career depending where in the series we're talking about. Despite her Frenchness, she's very conservative. HATES the French social welfare state, and has had a career as a cutthroat businessman in the United States (and a Harvard MBA) so she's a savage capitalist.

Now. Step Two.
Why does this matter?

Character's political leanings (and their religious attitudes/practices) can provide key insights as to how they will treat others.

Each one of the character's above runs into someone begging for money on the streets of Manhattan. They are each alone, so they have no one to impress or influence their actions.

Adelaide ~ gets overwhelmed. Hands the guy some cash. Moves on and feels guilty on and off for the rest of the day.
Étienne ~ Hands the guy all the cash in his wallet and goes to the store and gets him a new pair of shoes
Basilie ~ ignores him.

Now, if they were talking amongst themselves about what had happened... how would the conversations go?

If Adelaide told Étienne that she felt guilty, he would tell her she did the most she could and then he'd go find the guy and buy him a new pair of shoes. Okay, maybe not with the shoes, but it could happen that way.

If Étienne was late for a business meeting because of his outing with the beggar, his staff would murmur and Adelaide would adore Étienne all the more for his compassion.

If Basilie heard that Étienne was buying shoes for homeless men again, she would call him an idiot and threaten to take his charge cards away.

And Étienne would consider Basilie's approach cruel.

On election day, there's some heated arguments in my universe.

Empathy

Writers must possess incredible empathy-- and our empathy extends to things in the imagination.

I mentioned about a week ago that Basilie had thrown Étienne out, smack dab in the middle of what was supposed to be revisions to my second manuscript, Courting Apparitions. In order to understand the why, especially since it happened so suddenly and not as part of the drafting process, I went back and read the whole manuscript for clues (and they were there!)

But then I realized, I had a very pregnant woman, under emotional duress, and bad memories tormenting her not only in regards to how jealous her relationship makes her but also the fear associated with pregnancy.

I am now in the process of writing out what happened in Basilie's last pregnancy, even though I only need snippets for the chapter. I have to really understand what happened to her even though I can tell you in a succinct sentence what happened. And I can tell you in a paragraph how it altered her thinking about herself, her role as a wife, and her present frame of mind.

To capture successfully the magnitude and importance, I need to live the details with her, so her emotional state resonates viable and true in the present scene and doesn't fall flat.

To do that I must share her tragedy.

I'm nine pages into this, and it is very very sad, and I suspect it will take nine more pages to get it all down. In the end, the paragraph or bits of dialogue that reference this event from the chapter in question will automatically have the zing they need because Basilie's memories are now my memories and not merely a question of her internal conflicts and motivations.

Details: The Right Pair of Shoes

I spend an enormous amount of time on the details in my novels. It may be "throw away" detail that the reader skims over and soon forgets, but it's the details that make a story a believable interaction with the real world.

My characters have money. Most of them work in fashion. I have a main character (Étienne) who likes to shop for shoes: for himself, for his wife, for his employees.

When I mention what shoes he recently bought, it can be an anchor in time. The first novel in my Fashion and Fiends series takes place in fall 2002. The shoes on the main characters' feet support this.

I once had a professional reader chide me for mistreating a napkin. Apparently she collected linens, and felt it was a terrible thing that my main character was ironing his napkins. This is apparently dangerous for old linens. Except these were everyday modern linens. But she noticed, and it killed my credibility for her. (Which in all honesty, I think I deserve some slack on that one since I didn't have him ironing his grandmother's lace. And besides-- he's a fashion designer, a dressmaker, linens aren't his specialty.)

So maybe it's excessive that I spend a half an hour looking for the perfect pair of shoes for my heroine to fight her battles in, but maybe not. I think the details-- if used correctly-- paint an accurate picture of who these people are.

Let's test a paragraph/scene:

They traveled the rest of the way to the car without speaking. Once Basilie lowered her bottom into the leather seat and turned on the warmer for her back, she kicked off her black patent ballet slippers. She massaged the sole of her foot, thankful she had worn flats. Étienne peered to her, then down to the shoes, one on its side, the other clearly displaying its pale innards and YSL logo.
“You scuffed those today,” he said.
“Can you polish them?” she asked. “I’d like to wear them to the party tonight.”

I like that Basilie doesn't mention, even in her own head, that these are Yves Saint Laurent shoes, until her husband looks at them. And even then it's a minor reference.

What's even more amusing to me is that Basilie is eight months pregnant and just survived a sword fight, and yes she fought the bad guy with a sword, and she's not concerned about her shoes but the upcoming party.

And she expects Étienne to polish them, to fix it, so she can continue looking good and feeling comfortable.

I could continue analyzing this, but you get the idea.

Immersion

So, today I volunteered to help my family answer phones at the business. Had to meet my dad at the office at 8:30, which meant leaving my house at 7 to bring daughter to her other grandparents, husband to work, and myself to the Poconos for duty.

In the first half hour, I had breakfast.

The next two hours, between the light phone calls, I wrote a strong draft of chapter 14 of my work in progress, Courting Apparitions.

After lunch I tried to progress with Chapter 15, but the ideas aren't fully formed enough, though I did sketch out the key moments of the chapter.

Next, I started to read one of the submissions for our critique group. I found this one difficult. And here comes my reflection for the day.

As a writer and a reader, I ask works to transport me. That requires three things: character, scene, and craft. I cannot rank any of these higher than the others.

CHARACTER: Each recurring character in your story must have a distinct flavor. His speech, his dress, he mannerisms. We should be able to tell this character even if the author only uses a pronoun instead of a name. That's how clear character development should be.

SCENE: As a reader, I need a sense of place. This involves enough background detail so I feel anchored but not so much I can't keep track of where I am and which elements are important. Smells, sights, sensations of light and dark. What other people are doing. And it must have the rich details, the pertinent details, but not the ordinary ones.

If I form a mental picture and you change that picture later by adding details that weren't there earlier that I made up... Well, I'm going to mistrust my other pictures.

CRAFT: Using too many prepositions, giving me sentences that are too bare-boned and don't have enough pace to keep me moving, or maybe using sentences that don't have that pizzazz to my ear... That will lose me. A great way to measure pizzazz is to read the work aloud. Believe me, you'll realize the lagging parts instantly.

Characterization

I have opted to review the first 150 pages of Courting Apparitions, the second volume of my Fashion and Fiends series and the ghost story of the trilogy.

By the middle of chapter two, I am amazed at how much characterization the dead person (Adelaide) has.

And she's dead.

It's a great reminder of the little things that make a character, and it's not always what that character *says* or *does*.

In this case, the character comes alive because of:
- memories provided by other characters
- nicknames revealed by other characters
- rumors about the character and the circumstances around her
- the stuff she left behind (like a collection of novelty rubber ducks)
- the smell of her perfume
- her pet

This is the same way to develop a character who's off stage. Their car is in the parking lot. Or the book they are reading in on the table. People are more than dialogues and actions.

Managing projects

My work on the werewolf short story was stalled by the 18-page essay I did for my take-home final in my French history class. Last night our critique group met, and it was only four of us, with three of us presenting chapters. I presented Chapter Seven of Courting Apparitions.

The beauty and agony of working with other writers in a critique format is when other people are right.

I leave these critique meetings feeling energized about my craft, but when they articulate problems that either I didn't notice or I thought I had fixed, it can be demoralizing. That is part of the process. And once you establish a relationship with your critique group, you learn to lean on certain members to find certain things.

You can rely on me to nitpick about tight sentence structure. One member of our group is what I like to call a visual reader, because she seems to visualize every detail in her mind and will let you know if anything seems out of place or confusing with the logistic flow especially with moving people from place to place. Another member seems very into verbs.

They also have opposite tastes when it comes to some things, which is good, because it shows how some readers will like what another reader doesn't.

But mostly, they start poking around in a chapter talking about the tension and the action and sometimes I realize, I've missed the boat as the author. That my text, which so clearly has a mission in my mind, has fallen completely flat on the page. Other writers will know what I mean when I say that sometimes you write something beautiful, with no particular flaws except one: it doesn't move the story forward as you intended. Then, the reader might ask, "Did I miss the point?"

As an author, I've had several experiences where people said this about a scene. So, I look at it and I read it. Removed from the creative impetus that spurred it, I no longer remember why it seemed so perfect. I cannot say why I wrote it.

And so it must go. The scene gets deleted. Or, as might happen with this manuscript, characters get deleted.

Yes, I am starting chapter 14 of Courting Apparitions, my second serious full draft, and my critique group has pointed out that some characters aren't adding anything.

So, they are between Chapters 7 & 8, and I have made the decision to remove Helen. But I'm not going backwards now. She will no longer exist from this point forward and I'll fully remove her in the next draft.

Hopefully we fix Pierre and Jules. There's been some rustling that they don't belong, they feel extraneous. They shouldn't be. They earn the right to be salvaged. But poor Helen, she's gone.

No matter what your project, you have to be willing to dismantle something that's not working, no matter how beautiful it looks.

In Character

WARNING: This blog post may contain colloquial language, vulgarity and discussion of different sex acts.

2ND WARNING: Author has had three cups of coffee

Sometimes, as authors, we view our stories and our plots with the detachment of an outsider. I'm not saying we don't get lost/caught up in our stories, because we do. What happens is more like worrying about making sure we get the road to lead where we want it to that we don't pay attention to the actual path.

I was editing a chapter today. In that chapter, Galen the bad guy is coping poorly with the fact that the now-dead ingenue from the previous book (Adelaide) has possessed him. To add insult to injury-- to use a cliché-- Adelaide has noticed a young man her age and her lust has left Galen with an erection. Galen gets into his car where his mate and fellow witch, Flidais, laughs at him for his predicament.

Now the basic road map for this scene required that Galen and Flidais drive from Point A to Point B. I got the sense upon reading it, that Flidais would do more than laugh at him. I spent the next 24 hours contemplating whether Flidais would give him a hand job or a blow job.

Yes, seriously.

One of my friends suggested a little bit of both. But that didn't seem right. As a writer, I typically can write through big problems. Little problems like this, or even smaller ones like what the characters had for dinner, can halt my progress for hours.

Today, I labeled why these things often stump me. It's not because of the sex acts. It stems from not thinking inside the character's head. The chapter I'm writing comes from Galen's third person limited point of view. I pondered the problem as if Galen had a say in which sex act Flidais performed. Which, he could ask, but he doesn't.

As soon as I considered the conundrum from Flidais' point of view, I had to weigh the magical consequences. In that case, a hand-job seemed vulgar and like a waste of male essence. She might try that if she wanted to weaken him or merely distract him. I think she would perform a sex act for her own gain. In that case, what can she receive?

In my series, any sex act has a supernatural weight to it and it all means something. Feminine power must be given, not taken. Masculine power must be taken. Sex, in the male/female intercourse variety, adds something to the universe and provides energy that can fuel rituals.

The answer became obvious, Flidais had to give Galen a blow job because she needed a shot of masculine power and that was an easy way to take it.

The moral of the story:
If you're stuck at a point where characters have to make a choice, make sure the characters reason out the problem and chose according to their motivations, not yours. Don't confuse the POV character's preferences with the character who is actually the one in control of the choice.

Wondering if I fixed it

Here is the next draft of the problem scene from yesterday:

Helen Pitney, in her plaid nightgown, walked along the bar, her hand trailing the surface. Her moccasin slippers shuffled against the slate. Her scratchy footfalls were the only interruption to the awkward silence. Gerald hunched nearby, his hand grasping the wine bottle. Zélie adjusted her robe. Helen commenced another lap. Jules’ eyes sought direction from Étienne, but Étienne wasn’t sure whether he should dismiss the chef or tell him to do something.
“This is the first time you’ve served ice wine,” Gerald Pitney said.
“Your daughter bought it,” Étienne replied.
“Adelaide?” Gerald said.
“Oui,” Étienne confirmed.
“When did she learn about wines?” Gerald asked.
“You don’t spent a decade with Étienne d’Amille and not learn about wines,” Zélie said.
Étienne approached the bar, reaching for the bottle from Gerald so he could have a second glass. Gerald passed it and his breathing, heavy with emotional uncertainty, filled the kitchen. Étienne poured the wine, only partially aware of the alcohol filling the cup. He focused instead on Gerald’s detached stare. Étienne righted the wine bottle, returning it to the bar. He lifted his glass, talking a half-step toward his wife, when he paused and rested his hand on Gerald’s shoulder. Gerald’s eyes met Étienne’s and while they said nothing, the sadness in the air made the fruity notes smell sickeningly sweet. He deserted the wine on the counter. Jules swept across the room and dumped the contents of the glass in the sink.
“My pumpkin and the wine,” Gerald said. “I like eiswein. Other countries flash-freeze the grapes. In Germany, nature does it. Did you know that?”
“Mais oui. This bottle is from the Saturday harvest,” Étienne replied.
Zélie braced her arms against the overstuffed chair and pushed herself to standing.
“Oh, for the love of heaven. What’s going on?” she asked. “Are we here to have a wine tasting or did we hear something in that bathroom?”

Those 2D secondary characters

So I presented a chapter to my critique group. It was a revised version of a chapter they had already seen and they, in a round-about fashion, pointed out that a very important character was flat.

Some people said he lacked emotion and implied that there was a lack of transition between parts of the scene.

But the real problem was that he was a two-dimensional character.

Gerald. He's middle-aged and portly. In the first book, he has two mentions: 1. Étienne remembers running into Gerald and his two daughters in the airport in 1989. Literally, it's one sentence. And 2. Gerald calls his daughter on a Sunday morning to see how she's doing.

This is the conversation:

Then, [Adelaide] heard it: muffled electronic music from her dry cleaning pile. When she got closer to the dirty clothes, she recognized "Jack and Diane." She dug toward yesterday’s slacks and retrieved the ringing cellular.
"Hello," she said, wondering if it were her mom or her dad.
"Hey, Pumpkin," her dad replied. "How’s my girl? You didn’t answer your phone [in your New York apartment]. You get away for the weekend?"
"Yeah," Adelaide replied. "I had a date."
"Oh, no, Pumpkin. Who is it this time?"
"He’s a photographer, Dad."
"Not another fruit…"
"Daddy!"
"I don’t want to hear anymore. Whatever happened to Thad?"
"Tom, Dad."
"I liked him. He played rugby, didn’t he?"
"Yeah, Dad. That was Tom."
"Never saw a rugby game. But he seemed..." her father’s voice trailed.
"Manly, Dad?" she suggested. "Have you heard from Jay?"
"She likes it in Germany. She likes the school."
Of course Janine likes the school, she’s the bookish one, Adelaide thought. Her sister, the Fulbright Scholar. Everyone referred to Adelaide as the pretty one long before Étienne.
"Okay, Helen… Your mother wants to talk to you," Dad said.

So, now I'm in the next book in the series. Adelaide has committed suicide and Gerald has just heard her voice in the bathroom. Étienne, Zélie and Adelaide's mother have also heard the voice.

This is how the conversation in the kitchen, about ten minutes after hearing the voice, started:

Helen Pitney [Adelaide's mom], in her plaid flannel nightgown, walked beside the breakfast bar, her hand trailing the surface as her moccasin slippers shuffled against the slate. Gerald sat on the other side, hunched over his wine. Étienne emptied his glass as Gerald reached for the bottle. Zélie adjusted her robe. Helen commenced another lap. Jules’ eyes sought direction from Étienne, but Étienne wasn’t sure whether he should dismiss the chef or tell him to do something.
“This is the first time you’ve served ice wine,” Gerald Pitney said, raising the glass.
“Your daughter bought it,” Étienne replied. “Since we are thinking of her...”
“I like eiswein,” Gerald said. “Other countries flash-freeze the grapes. That’s not the same. Germany does not flash-freeze. Nature does it.”
“This bottle is from the Saturday harvest,” Étienne replied.
Zélie rose from the overstuffed chair.
“What’s going on?” she asked.

Can you see how even in such small scenes, Gerald has a personality in the first one but he's nothing in the second? This is Gerald's last scene. In my mind, I made him disposable and never bothered making him real because I know he'll be out of the book within the next ten pages...

So I tried again...

“This is the first time you’ve served ice wine,” Gerald Pitney said.
“Your daughter bought it,” Étienne replied.
“Adelaide? Bought such a fine eiswein?” Gerald said.
“Oui,” Étienne confirmed.
“You don’t spent a decade with Étienne d’Amille and not learn a thing or two about wines,” Zélie said.
“I would not have guessed, about my Adelaide and the wine,” Gerald said, lifting his glass as if studying the color of its contents. “I like eiswein. Other countries flash-freeze the grapes. In Germany, nature does it. Did you know that?”
“Mais oui. This bottle is from the Saturday harvest,” Étienne replied.
Zélie braced her arms against the overstuffed chair and pushed herself to standing.
“Oh, for the love of heaven. What’s going on?” she asked. “Are we here to have a wine tasting or did we hear something in that bathroom?”

It still lacks any emotion. This man's daughter just committed suicide. Even though it's Étienne's POV, Étienne would notice this man's state. I haven't fixed it yet, but this is my progress:

Helen Pitney, in her plaid nightgown, walked along the bar, her hand trailing the surface. Her moccasin slippers shuffled against the slate. Her scratchy footfalls were the only interruption to the awkward silence. Gerald hunched nearby, his hand grasping the wine bottle. Zélie adjusted her robe. Helen commenced another lap. Jules’ eyes sought direction from Étienne, but Étienne wasn’t sure whether he should dismiss the chef or tell him to do something.
“This is the first time you’ve served ice wine,” Gerald Pitney said.
“Your daughter bought it,” Étienne replied.
“Adelaide?” Gerald said.
“Oui,” Étienne confirmed.
“When did she learn about wines?” Gerald asked.
“You don’t spent a decade with Étienne d’Amille and not learn about wines,” Zélie said.
Étienne approached the bar, reaching for the bottle from Gerald so he could have a second glass. Gerald passed it, and as he did, his breathing filled the kitchen with the heavy sound of a man struggling with his composure. Étienne poured the wine, only partially aware of the alcohol filling the cup. He focused instead on Gerald’s detached stare.
“My pumpkin and the wine,” Gerald said. “I like eiswein. Other countries flash-freeze the grapes. In Germany, nature does it. Did you know that?”
“Mais oui. This bottle is from the Saturday harvest,” Étienne replied.
Zélie braced her arms against the overstuffed chair and pushed herself to standing.
“Oh, for the love of heaven. What’s going on?” she asked. “Are we here to have a wine tasting or did we hear something in that bathroom?”

Hopefully, I'll feel more inspired another day.

Ah, feet... Inspiration from life

"Her foot glided across the bed to his, her toes climbing, her ankle nuzzling into the depression beside his. "

That's my sentence. That might be all the writing I do today and if it is, I'm okay with that. I'm sick. I have laryngitis. My part-time job is exploding in my face. My kid needs a bath. The laundry needs attention. I have homework. And I have to play college kid with a series of appointments today-- like with a college writing associate to discuss the first draft of my seminar paper.

Because after 15 years in journalism I need help with a 3,000 word essay... I can edit and strengthen my paper on my own but one must play by the rules... Just like with an upcoming group project. These things never teach how to work with others... and they do play out like real life, with certain people meeting expectations and others tagging along, but really... an artificial context to assign group grades... because in the end individuals are always judged individually. [end rant]

Our own lives inspire us, n'est-ce pas? Our writing also inspires our lives. I know when I get done writing a spicy chapter, my husband reaps rewards. I swear that's the whole reason he feeds me that "You're happiest when you writing" line. I think we could easily substitute "orn" for the "app" in that word.

So, my characters aren't having any form of sex. And I was thinking about ways the depth and purity of their emotion could come through, without trite conversation, and without a physical connection. I have established that Étienne prefers to fall asleep with his hand on her hip (usually), but that doesn't carry the weight for the mutual love between them. That could also merely be habit.

The scene follows a conversation in the middle of the night about other topics. It follows a kiss that fell flat in some regards. It's Étienne's POV and he settles into bed as he normally does, he places his hand on her, she strokes it, and then...

"Her foot glided across the bed to his, her toes climbing, her ankle nuzzling into the depression beside his. "

And they go to sleep. I think it establishes the familiarity and the affection I'm seeking.

A nightmare

I am 'ahead' of schedule on chapter seven of my revisions on Courting Apparitions. This pleases me, even though I'm losing hope of how 'worthwhile' this all is. I listen to published writers struggle with selling their second and third books, editors from 'dream publishers' that publish a book and then take a year to say no to the next, not to mention the hundreds of rejections we, the unpublished, receive.

But I push those thoughts from my mind. Right now I'm writing for me. So I have more than one book 'done' to the level I like. To prove my ability and professionalism to myself in order to sell it confidently to others.

I'm working on a nightmare.

Literally.

This was the early draft(s):
She stood at the head of the conference room table, gazing halfheartedly at the view of Lower Manhattan as she noticed her own reflection in the glass. She wore a cranberry red suit. She looked meticulous, bold and surprisingly thin. Twelve people surrounded the table, with Galen opposite her. Galen struck a metallic blade against his palm, over and over. She turned to a television. The red ribbon, the same color as her suit, flashed a message across the bottom of the screen. The market remained steady.
Basilie had orchestrated this hostile corporate takeover with financing from some of the Minerva Pollux’s major investors, leveraging her ability to carve the company into profitable pieces for the highest bidders.
She looked at the men around the table, all men, all men except for her, all gray-haired men with severity in their faces. Each of these men, clients of the firm, had purchased enough stock to join in her creeping tender offer. Between their new influence as shareholders and the proxy fight Basilie’s operatives had stumbled upon, the deal should happen quickly and ruthlessly. While a good, old-fashioned corporate raid didn’t make sense these days, this one did, because Basilie had a client who wanted the core of the business. He just wasn’t willing to pay for the entire corporation. So, Basilie would deliver the piece he wanted. The BlackBerry in Basilie’s pocket rumbled.
She answered it. Her ‘mole’ was on the other end.
“They spun it off.”
“What do you mean?” Basilie replied.
“Your department. Your crown jewel. They saw you coming. They spun it off. We... I mean the board... no longer control it. They set up their own board and IPO.”
The ribbon on the TV screen announced the news. The value of her stock, the stock she bought for the men now gathered around the table, had plummeted as soon as the corporation had spun off its core department.
“God dammit,” Basilie snapped.
Millions lost. The gray-haired men in their navy blue suits rose from the table. They swarmed her, grabbed her, some holding her while others bit her and drank her blood. She pulled, but she couldn’t go anywhere. Everywhere she looked she saw arms. She shivered. She looked at Galen, sitting sentinel at the end of the table. The blade continued swinging up and down, until Basilie wondered: Was that her family sword? Then the heads of the gray-haired men moved away from her, and each of them had eyes like opals.

The writing is far from an example of my best. But that's why it's an early draft.

Now that I have this draft, I'm working on refining what it needs to do:

• The premise of a failed corporate raid is exactly how this character's psyche would process what's been happening in her life. BUT I've changed the intensity of what has happened before this dream, so the content of the dream must clearly foreshadow struggles to come.
• The 'crown jewel' needs to represent the feminine magic Galen has stolen from women over the generations
• The sword must be described
• Should Basilie's family members slowly replace the clients? What about Adelaide? How does she fit?
  
• Should the baby Basilie is carrying factor into this dream. I think so.

• Finally, I scribbled this note on a piece of paper today: "What does the magic say to Z? (Basilie)

Hopefully, by the end of the day, I will have the answers.

On Conflict

A good friend of mine said to me last night, "sounds like a great conflict."

Another good friend several year's ago reminded me that each character needs an external and an internal conflict.

As writers, we must torture our characters.

I never intended to write a series. I hate series. Typically, stories that run in series read like one great big story with very slow pacing. Or perhaps, more so, pacing that feels the same in all the books. And after several books the rhythm becomes predictable.

The friend who reminded me about internal and external conflict wanted a sequel to my manuscript, the one I'm marketing to agents now. I knew in my head what happened next, and in telling her, she became captivated and asked me to write it. So I did. The third volume came purely as therapy when I lost a job and needed to distract my own brain from my troubles.

At that time I had a two-year-old and I wrote 180,000 words in 31 days (July 2007). Whenever my daughter slept, I was at the keyboard.

This is what my experience with a series taught me:

• Each book needs to "up the ante." In other words, the bad things that happen to the characters/ their struggles need to increase significantly with each volume. To keep the reader interested, to keep them guessing, and to make sure they can't predict your writing.

• If the characters change, their internal conflicts must change with them.
• One character should be struggling with a conflict across the entire series. The end of this conflict should signal the end of the story.

If I look at my first book, the following items happen:

• One person dies, one person almost dies
• There is a car accident
• There is a medical emergency (not related to the person who dies or the person who almost dies)
• The reader witnesses two murders.

If I look at my favorite character, he experiences the following in the first book:

• Relationship issues (who doesn't?)
• He *gains* something he never expected he would
• He loses a friend
• He has health issues

In the second book, he:

• copes with losing his importance in his own company
• becomes impotent
• has a bad leg AND a bad heart
• hangs out with the wrong woman
• must rescue his wife and newborn son from a bad situation he caused
• survives a serious house fire

And in the third book, he:

• corrects #1,2 & 3 on the list above
• has an affair
• almost loses his wife
• ends up tortured (literally)

In the end, his wife is the hero(ine), and there is a "happily ever after" ending, but see what they must endure first? Oh, I am so evil.

The astounding truth of Twilight

A friend sent this to me today:
http://theoatmeal.com/story/twilight

And be warned, I see no literary merit in Twilight and agree 100% with this 'sketch.'

But it does remind me of one pivotal truth... As authors, we all send our characters on the same classic mythic journeys. Characters must change and grow and push boundaries. No one has a truly new concept.

Happy New Year.

On Refrigerators

If you read that title twice, you're not losing your mind.

It clearly states: On Refrigerators

What do refrigerators have to do with writing?

I was almost late to work today because I was picking out a refrigerator for the home of one of my characters. Really. Google was working overtime.

When I needed a refrigerator, I went to my local family-owned appliance store (Shaffers, in this case in 2002, I believe, they're closed now. The former owner is working for another family-owned appliance store) and picked a nice, middle of the line Maytag. A Performa. I also got the matching washer and dryer, oversized capacity. (Smartest move I ever made. Laundry piles to the ceiling do NOT intimidate me. Floods do NOT scare me.)

But... When Étienne needs a refrigerator... Well, it needs to work well, really well. It needs to look good, no, fabulous! It's for his American house, not his European one, so it will be bigger than those and that might freak him out. (Who would think we Americans make our refrigerators as big as we make everything else...)

As a man very adept in the kitchen, would he want one of those fridges with the clear door? As a wine collector, would he want some of his vintages on hand? Would he use a water dispenser? He has a very sensitive nose, and he might have the same problem I have with water/ice dispensers-- I can taste the "staleness" of the freezer in those dispensers... I also can't stand "old" ice. Only fresh ice for me.

Side by side? Freezer on the bottom? I wish the house was newer than it is because then I'd have him get one of those fridge's with TWO freezer drawers on the bottom.

Stainless steel? Blended with the cabinets with wood front? Black?

Bosch? Sub-Zero? GE? Electrolux? Maytag?

Is this character development? Or wasting time? Depends on the scene I guess... And since this house, and this refrigerator, enters several scenes in two novels, perhaps the selection is important. Off the top of my head:

• Adelaide gets a bottle of Perrier out of the refrigerator in chapter one of book one.
• Adelaide retrieves dessert from the fridge in the middle of the first book, while preparing dessert for her date.
  
• Étienne gets ice/frozen peas out of the freezer for his fresh black eye in the second chapter of book two.
• No doubt Jules (the chef) will be using this sucker at some point.
• The initial return in book two to the New York office did list the contents of the refrigerator, which would be very basic and maybe even a dorm fridge. That fridge epitomizes the unhealthy attitude toward food and weight in the fashion industry.
  
• The fridge may serve as a good compare/contrast between Étienne and his wife. Basilie has a New York apartment, where she picked the fridge and I bet it's no where near as fancy as the one in this house.
• The fridge in the Pennsylvania house that I am researching right now becomes a source of cultural irony. If Étienne buys this big, fancy, expensive, and American-style refrigerator, and continues to shop in his French style, procuring fresh ingredients almost daily, then this big monster will usually be empty.

And I am no closer to selecting a fridge...

Later:
I have spent an additional hour or so researching this refrigerator and I have decided upon a Sub Zero 632. It is a stainless steel, side by side refrigerator. Boring but efficient. I would prefer the one in the photo way up top... That's a $12,000 refrigerator that debuted it 2005, and the renovations took place in this property in 2001/2002.