not an insignificant part of my defensive capabilities.
"Have people ever tried to kill you?"
"Yes, but I defend myself with superior wit and guile."
4.2 miles. Taken easy--a good 10 minutes a mile, and no hurrying.
Aaron, Linda, and I had writing group last night. Aaron had managed a quick read-through of my Acts 1 and 2, so he was the source of comments for me, and then Linda and I discussed Aaron's new opening. It sounds like Aaron's coming to a close on his, because we had fairly minor things--nothing that should require one of his trademark "rip whole sections out and write 40 to 50 new pages per week" sessions.
Mine...I don't know. I have only his comments on the script and I really want to get it into the mail by Friday for the Step-Up contest. I can get Act 3 done by then--in fact, if I'd stop lollygagging around here, going to lunch with friends and reading Mary's script and writing this entry and perusing my favorite sections of recently read romance novels, I could do it this evening--but I'd like to fix some of the problems I know I've got in Act 1 and 2.
And I want to get it to my manager some time this year--but I know it's better to be late and good than on-time and a black mark to my name.
After Aaron finished going through my script--he insisted the main thrust of his comments was about individual scenes, not the overall story or structure, though having spent a night thinking about it I'm not sure I agree--Linda turned to me:
LINDA
Will you have new pages for us
next week?
DIANE
What do you think I am? Aaron?
(I think she wanted to get out of reading my pages this week. I said any notes she could give me would be much appreciated.)
I'll probably send Act 3 to them in the mail during the week. I know Aaron can get me fast turnaround--we've been doing that for one another during the week, throwing ideas out at one another for comment, in order to save ourselves hours of times later on. At one point I even outlined Aaron's script as I saw it, which he swore didn't make him hate me.
In my continuing bid to be busy all the time so I don't have to do any actual writing, I had lunch today on the Disney lot with some screenwriting buds. The visit started off well: I drove in via the Buena Vista gate and made a friend of the gatekeeper:
GUARD
Where you headed?
Diane reads from her printout.
DIANE
The Mickey bush.
The guard cracks up.
GUARD
After you park, walk right down that
street there. You can't miss it.
Turns out the Mickey bush--a bush trimmed to look like the Übermaus--is in front of the Disney lot commissary, which was where I was meeting everyone. Everyone being: Mary and Mike the Disney Fellows, Tamar and baby Damian, Tim, Michele, Nina, and Nina's friend from the Warner Brothers Sitcom Writing Workshop. Damian discovered how much fun mushing up a pickle can be. Fun was had by all.
I provided y'all with Mystery Writing Rule #3 the other day, which is:
Do not begin your mystery with a party scene in which you introduce moi, the reader, to eight million characters, most of whom will be victims or suspects in a later chapter.
Columbine wrote to tell me Mystery Writing Rules #1 and 2 (which I thought was a damn decent offer, considering I'd pulled Rule #3 out of my butt):
But you are neglecting Mystery Writing Rule #2, which says, in part, that introducing characters later in the book is unfair to the reader. Part of the "game" of a mystery is not to sneak in facts later that the reader needed to know earlier in order to Guess Who Done It.
Of course, if you really want all those characters, you could gradually introduce them as part of a long, gradual, multi-chapter exposition - which is what Dorothy Sayers does in GAUDY NIGHT. But that often runs afoul of Rule #1, which is:
There must be a death due to unnatural causes at the end of Chapter One.
Actually, I quibble a bit with Rule #1, mostly because I don't feel there has to be a murder right then, unless the author can absolutely fascinate us with the crime, either drawing the victim or perpetrator in such bold strokes as to make them unforgettable. Because otherwise I just don't care. (It's like starting off with a sex scene: I don't know who these people are and I'm quite sure I don't care why they're doing what they're doing, and instead of being aroused I'm bored.) Give me a reason to care about the victim or how the murder was done or avoid it altogether.
You have to start off with a fascinating situation--be it the initial crime or the intro of the sleuth. If you give me a party situation where there are millions of potential suspects and the crime hasn't happened and I'm not in love with the sleuth, I am not fascinated--I am picking up the next book. (Both of the books I mentioned in Sunday's entry were the first in their series, which doesn't bode well for these series; you have got to seduce the reader into wanting to spend a lot of time with these characters if you want them to buy all the books.
I actually prefer mysteries in which we start with the sleuth and follow along with him or her and find out more about the sleuth's personality during the investigation. In Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch novels, we follow along with Bosch as he discovers the crime, and through his eyes we discover what's odd or different or important about the crime.
In the one Raymond Chandler novel I've read, The Big Sleep (and I've got to read more; he's great) he introduces a whole host of characters and suspects--so many in a such complex story that reportedly the filmmakers asked Chandler who had killed one of the characters and he had no idea--but he does so gradually, showing you the chain of how he gets from A to B to C.
In Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum novels, the crimes are the least important part of the book (in fact, you often get the idea that Evanovich is slightly annoyed she even has to get back to solving the crime).
And I could quibble a bit with Rule #2 as well--I agree that bringing someone in at the last moment is dirty pool, but you have a few chapters at the beginning to introduce the scene, the suspects, the setup. Doing it all in one to three chapters, wham bam, completely overwhelms me, the reader, unless you are terrific at delineating the various characters.
If I had to name my number one pet peeve about myself, it would have to be that I'm manic. When something grabs me--and I admit: I'm not exactly grabbed by everything, I let lots of things go by when I shouldn't--I let it wrap its harsh, demanding tendrils around my spine and drive me to unheard of heights of craziness.
To wit: for some reason--and I cannot remember why any longer--I wanted to glance at the notes I took in Len's class last year. But the why doesn't matter. No, only finding that book matters.
I look on the shelf of books I consult most often immediately. I have a few notebooks from USC there--the one from my class on Advanced Script Analysis, second only to Len's in terms of the best classes there--there, as well as a dictionary, a thesaurus, a Bartlett's, a Bible (hey, you never know) and other books.
The notebook--a black binder, as I seem to recall--is not there.
Okay, I think, it's probably downstairs, in the closet where I keep the rest of my notes and assorted detritus from USC.
Search the closet. Twice. Actually, three times. (Uh...four.) Not there.
Panic.
I start to pull apart the bookshelves nearest my desk and I start finding a whole bunch of interesting stuff, none of which I thought was here, but I don't care--I want to know where that notebook is. I need to. I am driven to distraction. I cannot even read what's on this screen for looking around the room, hoping to see it out of the corner of my eye so I can say, "Oh, there it is!" and get on with my life.
I can see this is going to drive me nuts. This is right up there with looking for my fountain pens in terms of "I must do this now!" behavior.
(A psychiatrist once told me that obsessive-compulsive disorder is fairly common, in varying degrees, among intelligent people. I sure hope that's true. Of course, maybe he just wanted me to use him as my psychiatrist.)
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Copyright 1999 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com