Books books books

There were a bunch of other things that I wanted to put in the last entry, but none of them really fit on a post that's about a human tragedy. I write horror, but there's a difference between written horror and real life.

Despite having lived here for nearly a decade, I'm not really familiar with downtown Houston. Like most large cities, it has alternating one way streets, whole sections of city blocks that are set at forty-five degree angles to the rest of the area, and spots that have been under construction since Nixon was in the White House. If you don't know where you're going, you better make sure you have plenty of time to get there and you better not mind taking the scenic route.

Because I didn't want to walk in to some judge's courtroom an hour late with no better excuse than, 'Sorry, yer honor. I got lost in traffic,' I made a couple of practice runs on the weekend before I was supposed to show up. With my able wife playing co-pilot, we followed a set of left-right directions from Google maps and discovered that getting there wasn't as hard as it could have been. We did end up driving around a bit, and one of the places we passed was a business called ¼ Price Books. On the weekends, both of us are in the mood to explore bookstores, so we took a look. They've got a really eclectic mix of everything from old and new science fiction, books on politics, and books in foreign languages. The owner was a nice guy with a sense of humor that he doesn’t mind inflicting on passers-by, and the front door was propped open to let in fresh air.

One of the books I picked up was Demon Seed, by Dean Koontz. I get annoyed with Koontz sometimes, mainly because he comes up with fantastic stories, but them populates them with the exact same sensitive tough guys and smart, strong women. I saw the movie ages ago, and loved it, so I figured I may as well see what they changed from the book. Oh boy did they change some things. It's not just that the focus of the book is between the woman and the computer. Except for a few minor characters, the woman and the computer are the only ones we ever see. Also, the woman is a lot more complicated than we see in the movie, and a hell of a lot more so than the ladies Koontz would later write. When I checked the book's listing on Wikipedia, I discovered that Koontz wrote it in 1973, then in 1997 rewrote it and re-released it. From the one-paragraph synopsis, it seems that the one I picked is the original, and that the rewrite pulls out a lot of the really disturbing elements. The computer seems to get neutered in more than one manner.

That's a pity. I may at some point pick up the newer version, but I'm not looking forward to it. Reading Koontz' entry about the book on his website, he says that one of the things he changed was that he added a dry sense of humor to the story, because his readers appreciated his humor in his other books. Note: Item number 85 on my time-traveling checklist is to go back to the early seventies, convince Dean Koontz to write me a dozen novels that contain complex characters and not a damn bit of humor, and then brainwash him to forget all about the books so he can't rewrite them. It's just me personally, but I like that kind of story. I remember the fragile, beautiful creation that the child is revealed to be at the end of the movie, and when I read the description in the book, I got a cold chill. That thing was Lovecraft minus his inhibitions as filtered through silicon.

Speaking of books, I'm recording here my feeling about a book that I'm not quite halfway done with. I picked up 'We need to talk about Kevin' for my Kindle a while back, and I want to get my feelings down now and see how they compare to when I finish.

I really, really want to be done with this thing. Reading it is like slogging through hip deep mud with razorblades mixed into it. It isn't that it's not well-written. The writing is fantastic, but the main character is such a selfish, self-centered twit that I want to reach into the story and smack her. No one else in it is much better, either. A peek at Lionel Shriver's Wikipedia page claims that she prefers to create characters that are 'hard to love.' If this book is an indication, that's a bit of an understatement. The novel is about a mother whose son has gone on a spree-killing, and how she deals with that fact. But her own negative traits are getting in the way of the story, and the boy himself is simply too evil. He's one of those black and white characters that just aren't human enough to connect with, and (in my opinion) we need to connect with everyone in a story, especially the villain. The hero makes the choices that we like to think we would make under stressful circumstances, and the villain makes the one we're afraid we would make and then regret when it's too late. In this book, the protagonist and all the other 'normal people' are simply weak and shallow, and a few of their characteristics seem to be there simply because the plot couldn't advance without them.

That's how I feel now. I'll compare my thoughts when I'm done.

Still reading, still writing.

What would they do if...

Hey there! Good to see you again. Let me introduce you to a couple of people. This is Dale. He works out at the beef-packing plant as the loading dock supervisor. He's been working at that place for over thirty years, at first to support his mother and sister, and then later his wife and son. He's not quite as content with that fact as he used to be.

And this is Frank, a deputy with the local sheriff's office. Back when he first joined the department, one seriously evil SOB was running it. But he stuck to his guns, even though it cost him his marriage. Now he wants to be sheriff.

Whats going to happen to them? Well, that depends on you and me.

It may seem counter-intuitive, but it's more important that you know your characters during the rewrite than when writing the first draft. On your first trip through the story, you're seeing the big picture, and making sure the ground under your feet is solid. The characters are there to prop up the plot. Whereas you and I (unless the Rutan are reading this) get our structural support from our skeletons, these folks start with what they contribute to our tale. If you took a close look at them the first time they get mentioned, they would probably look like wax statues, not even shaped into good detail on the back. They don't have any life of their own at that point.

On the second pass, they need more life. We're not just appreciating the scenery at that point, we're taking note of how clear the path is, whether the plants look green or brown, and if the area smells like rainforest or store-bought fertilizer. Assuming you're writing something that you want people to read, you better make it a worthwhile investment of their time. If you say the mailman did it on page 483, say it was done with a knife on page 101, and say the mailman faints at the sight of blood on page 257, someone's going to notice. Heck, some people will notice if you misspell one word out of a hundred thousand. People are like that. (See an older entry about writing or filming crap)

What will they do if you get it wrong? Depends. If you're Stephen King, and you put an electric chair in a novel set a few years before they were actually used, every amateur critic and rabid fan in the civilized world will take to the internet and froth at the mouth over it, and it won't affect your sales one bit. If, on the other hand, you're an unknown, and you write 'cleaver' when you mean 'clever,' or worse, you miss-type it and your autocorrect changes it to the former, the editor may well throw your story in the trash, and you'll only get a form letter with 'not what we're looking for at this time' pre-printed on it.

So think about those characters. Wait until you have the story set in your head and the frame of it on paper first, but try this thought in particular: What would they do if you didn't use them as cannon-fodder? If the martians didn't land, or the dead stayed content and quiet in their graves, or that little piece of a deadly crystal didn't show up at just the right time, what would those people do on what would otherwise be the opening day of your story? As far as the two men you met a few paragraphs ago, Dale would get a little more bitter, just as he did yesterday, and the day before that. His birthday's coming up, you see, and he hasn't lived quite as much as he expected he would have at his age. What about Frank? Well, I told you he wants to be sheriff. I might have glossed over the fact that he's already run once, and that he actually held the office for a short while under less than ideal circumstances. He already has a firm picture in his head about how the people in town feel about him, and he tends to ignore anything that contradicts that image. Frank won't be disillusioned any time in the immediate future. He'll just go about his business, being wrong about some very fundamental facts.

But of course, we know what's really going to happen. We've known all along. But also knowing what they might do if they existed without us lets us plot their actions a little more consistently, and it makes them a little more sympathetic to us, which helps us make them more sympathetic to everyone else.

Speaking of which, could I ask for a bit of sympathy? I went through all that chest-puffing last week about how The Red Man Burning was going to be my next book, but between then and now I pulled up that other one I mentioned, In The Dark, and used the word count function. It pulls up at around 43,000 words. At that length I might as well fatten it up and serve it with some flourish. Dress warmly if you read it. It's a bit cold out there in the dark.

Still writing.