Most of the old fantasy classics, from Tarzan to the Grey Mouser, are written in an intensely narrative style. There is very little dialog and long blocks of paragraphs with description of not just what the world looks like, but what is going on. I’m finding this quite disconcerting, because my style is much more breezy and action-oriented than narrative.

This is giving me pause and making me somewhat nervous as I’m basically writing without a net. The storytellers that have inspired my love of fantasy are writing in a completely different style than me. It almost feels like I’m doing it wrong.

On a practical level, they are able to contain more story in smaller chunks of text. Where they may write, “The Grey Mouser argued with the bartender,” I would write out the actual dialog and describe the action. This worries me as a key issue I saw in the evolution of my novel is one of pace. It takes a lot of words to create a story where you are living the action rather than describing it.

In my current novel, I’m roughly 50,000 words in, and my protagonist has just fled danger and arrived in a safe spot. That’s a lot of words for someone to do little more than travel and meet some people. I’m also feeling it as I write the arrival scenes. The level of detail and conversation needed goes on for pages, but I’m unsure if this is bad. It feels right, but I think I need to read more contemporary fantasy to get a better vibe.

Particularly, I think Stephen King would help. His style is closer to mine, I think. Also, the final Harry Potter book has a long section of Harry and Ron wandering from danger to danger. That’ similar to the opening of my book.

It may be that I’m overthinking things and that I’m simply writing in a more contemporary style while being inspired by the thick narrative books that I loved from my youth. That’s not a bad thing, but it sure is tough to parse as a writer.

There is a woman and a man on a boat. They are out at sea. They are happy.
The same woman and man are in a streetside café. They are together at a table and arguing. They are very unhappy.
Your job: Flesh out scene one. Flesh out scene two. Write the intervening action that gets them from scene one to scene two.

Here is what I wrote. I tend to write in a very close point-of-view, either first person or third person limited. So I wanted to write something emotional but in a Cormac McCarthy style. Here is what I came up with:

The water sloshed against the side of the boat, sending up spray that cooled her as she lay on the wooden platform behind the prow. The dark wood with the tightly fitted slats was designed to showcase blonde lithe suntanned bodies as the boat cut through marinas and bays. Jane reclined there now in her red bikini and wide black sunglasses, the spray coating her body in an ever-renewing mist. The sun was setting and Peter watched as rivulets of water sparkled as they ran down the side of her breasts, her hips, and her thighs.

Peter ran his fingers through his hair and took a deep breath, turning the boat slightly away from shore with one hand. Jane was positioned diagonally with her legs facing toward the prow. The cut of her bikini was low and Peter tried to see if he could see down the gap in the cloth that stood between her hips and her flat stomach. Jane adjusted her body and Peter’s attention was drawn to her breasts, the curves moving with each turn of her body.

Reaching down, Peter picked up his bottle of beer and held it out toward the sun. He tipped it forward and then brought it back for a long drink. Putting the drink back into its holder, Peter noticed a dull space in the glinting water and a splash of red and white. Jerking his head up, he pulled the steering wheel hard to the left. The boat tilted steeply, the hull scraping against a large metal buoy. Jane rolled across the wooden platform, her hands reaching out and scrabbling for a grip amongst the slats. With one hand sliding along the wood and the other waving in air, she slipped over the edge of the prow and out of sight.

Peter let go of the wheel and struggled against the tilt of the boat and the force of the turn to reach where Jane had fallen over. The buoy continued to scrape down the side of the boat, leaving a deep scar in the pristine white paint, slowing its progress. Jane was nowhere to be seen.

Peter looked toward the buoy, which had just cleared the boat. Nothing. He looked as deep into the water as he could. Still nothing. He ran back to the steering wheel and slid the throttle down to its lowest setting. He then turned the boat toward the buoy, scanning the water closely. There was no sign of Jane.

He cut the throttle as he approached the buoy and ran back to the edge of the boat. Moving from one side to the other, he looked into the depths of the water for a sign of red. He looked further out and still saw nothing. Jane, he screamed. Jane! Jane! He ran back to the front of the steering cabin and grabbed the life preserver. He tossed it over the side of the boat and untied the end attached to the hook. Going back to the steering cabin, he turned the boat toward the marina and pressed the throttle to maximum.

It took him ten minutes. People looked up as his boat banged roughly against one of the slips at the Pirate’s Bay. I need help! My girlfriend is lost at sea! Faces were alarmed first at his loud cries and the disturbance.

Calm down. Now what happened?

My girlfriend fell off the boat, and I think she hit her head on a buoy. I couldn’t find her. Peter pointed out to the bay.

The old man leaned forward. You’re not wet.

I can’t swim. Please help me. She is drowning!

Okay, okay.

More people had gathered, several reached for the keys to their boats.

Where did she fall?

There’s an old buoy. It’s past the breakers, further out than the newer ones.

There are a few of those. Can you lead us there? Peter nodded and untied his boat. As he backed out of the landing, three boats followed.

The sun was a sliver on the horizon, but Peter found the buoy without a problem. He had been gone 20, maybe 25 minutes. The life preserver had floated off and was nowhere to be found, but the buoy was right next to his boat.

This is the spot. She may have hit her head on the buoy.

There was a splash and then another. Two men dived into the water. One swam to the buoy, while the other dove deep and emerged, moving from one spot to another. A third boat circled the buoy in larger and larger circles.

I don’t see nothin’ here. It was the man at the buoy.

The diving man continued but slowed considerably as he was about 20 yards out past the buoy. The man at the buoy had already climbed back into his boat. He pulled some binoculars from some compartment under his chair and looked along the horizon. The sun was now down, and the third boat returned.

Sorry. I couldn’t find anything. I radio’d the coast guard. Should be here soon. So you should wait.

The three boats soon were retreating along the water back to the Pirate’s Bay.

A row of brilliant lights approached from the distance. They got larger fast and soon the entire area was awash in light, behind it a large coast guard skiff.

A man in a white uniform yelled down. You the one missing someone?

Yes. My girlfriend. She went overboard near this buoy. He pointed to the buoy, which bobbed five feet from his boat.

What she look like?

She’s about five-eight. Blonde hair down to her shoulder blades or so. She was wearing a red bikini. I think she hit her head on the buoy. Can you send divers down?

The man said something over his shoulder and then turned back. Yes. We’ll have someone in the water shortly. We’re going to comb the area, and you’ll get in the way. Can you head back to the marina?

Yes.

Good. How can we contact you?

I have my cell phone.

Good. Give me the number and stay near the marina.

I will. Please find her.

We’ll do our best.

Peter yelled out his number and then went at the slowest speed he could back to the marina, looking back and forth across the waves, their blackness only interrupted by the slight glint of light from the marina shops and restaurants. He pulled into landing number 38, stepped out, and tied the boat up with a practiced hand. He looked at the deep scar down the side of the boat, dark and ugly in the harsh fluorescent light above the dock.

He checked his cell phone and then walked toward the Pirate Bay. Hearing the sounds of sea hands, both young and old, Peter stopped, changed directions, and moved down the pier back toward the boardwalk. Many of the touristy shops were closed, and the restaurants were full of loud children. Peter walked right past the boardwalk to Ocean Avenue, a small street that was partially hidden by large hotels and other buildings. He walked up to Vincenzo’s.

Pete!

Hi, Al.

Don’t normally see you here this late. Wow, you look wiped out, but your regular table is empty. That should make everything better. I’ll have Ramona bring you a glass of merlot. Is Jane going to be joining you?

No, and just a cup of coffee, please.

Sure thing. Ramona! A cup of coffee for Mister Charleston.

It was a short walk to a table right on the street side. It was on the corner and had a good view of the full bay between two buildings. The bay was a black mass, with the moon nowhere to be seen. Peter sat down and placed his cell phone carefully on the table. Ramona slid the coffee in front of him with sugar and cream on a small tray.

Why Jane, I didn’t think you would be joining us tonight. Hey! A glass full of after dinner mints flew past Peter’s ear. He turned to see a perplexed Al and an enraged Jane rushing toward him.

Jane!

Not joining you tonight? You fucker! Jane swung her arms and landed her fists on Peter’s head and shoulders. Her hair was damp and wild, tangled all around her face and flying in the air as she brought her fists down.

Jane! Stop! Thank God you’re alive!

She paused and glared at him. You expect me to believe that line of shit from you? Her fists were clenched hard at her side. You toss me off the boat and then leave me to fend for myself out past the breakers? What did I do? Why do you want me dead?

Tears started falling. Al looked helpless, hovering nearby silent.

It’s not like that, Jane. He stood up. I went for help. You know I can’t swim. I stayed and couldn’t find you anywhere!

I was fucking ten feet away, you lying fuck! I hit my head and could barely breathe, let alone call for you, but I was sure that all you’d do is turn and pull me in. I hoped it was some accident, but no, you turned toward me and then got in the boat and took off.

It’s not like that, Jane. He grabbed her arms, but she pulled them away. I went for help. I even left you a life preserver! Peter looked her over. She was covered in a dirty old St. Regis hotel bathrobe, but underneath was her red bikini. I even went and got the coast guard, Jane. Honest. What happened to you? I tried everything!

Her chest heaved. She didn’t say anything.

Jane.

A fishing boat rescued me. They dropped me off at the base of the pier. I came here to use the phone.

Honestly, Jane. You know I can’t swim. I went for help.

She started crying again. All you had to do was tell me to leave. I love you enough that I would have left. You didn’t need to try and kill me. You stared right at me, and just drove off, Peter. You just left me.

I love you, Jane. I wouldn’t do that.

She slapped him across the face. Tears welled in Peter’s eyes. He stood still, not even touching his reddening cheek with his hand.

But you did.

She turned and walked out the front of the café. She wasn’t wearing any shoes.

I enjoy writing now because I now know how to write. Up until about two years ago, my attempts to write focused on creating a highly imaginative plot, stitching all the various subplots together, and then writing out everything to fill in the actual story. I didn’t enjoy writing the story, as I had already envisioned the story in my head and imagination. What I was doing was composing words that would illustrate the story. This is a subtle but powerful difference.

The biggest difference is that today I can totally get lost in a scene I’m writing. Before I had already imagined the scene in all its glory, and I was trying to describe what I had seen in my head based on my memory. Another pitfall is that stories have natural ebbs and flows. Sometimes you are writing a scene that does little but reveal a bit of a character or take you from one important point to another. These can still be important scenes and chapters, but they just aren’t as much fun to write if you know that a killer scene is coming up soon. As a result, you tend to rush through the scene, botching in the process.

Let’s go back to my first point, however, about writing a scene from memory, as this happens in important scenes, not just trransitional ones. If, for example, you imagined the scene weeks earlier as you plotted out your novel, odds are that you imagined all the cool things that would happen. Now, as you are sitting down to write, you aren’t creating, you are trying to remember those cool things. More often than not, you’ll forget some of them, and that will be even more frustrating. The result is not a very vibrant or engaging chapter, even if all the ideas and story behind it are brilliant.

So getting lost in a scene is critical, and writing from memory is not conducive to that. At all. Stephen King writes about this in his book On Writing. He goes so far as to say that plotting a book is a big mistake. I agree with him 10o%. For 20+ years I plotted books to no effect. I stopped and am now writing well and enjoying it.

You can call this “writing without a net,” as it means you start a story and all of its subsequent scenes without a firm idea on how it is going to end. For Stephen King, this is situational writing–you imagine a situation and then just write the book on how that scene plays out. You can also call it concept writing: Pick a concept and then just write how you think it will go.

One of the final steps in transitioning into this form of effective story-telling was putting a leash on my imagination. That’s write, I had to clamp down and purposefully stop imagining, at least for the story I was writing. Most writers have absolutely stunning imaginations. This is, indeed, one of the reasons they write–they want to share their stories with others. The downside to this is that it is a lot easier to imagine a story than to actually write one. If you imagine a story all in your head and then prepare to write it, you fall into the plot trap I outlined above–you will no longer be getting lost in the scene as you write. You’ve already done that in your head. What you are then doing is trying to remember the scene and then dictate that on the page, a recipe for frustration and poor writing if there ever was one.

What you need to do is let you imagination loose entirely while you are writing. As you are imagining the scene, think of all the possibilities, consider the things that could happen, the suprises that are in store. All of those things that you love when you fantasize or imagine are what you should bring to bear when you are writing a scene of fiction. But here is the important part, and also the most difficult: Don’t look ahead more than just a little bit. Because when you do, you are losing sight of both the current scene and limiting your ability to get lost in that scene in the future. By all means, consider neat little plot twists that come to mind as you write your scene, but try not to think more than two steps ahead and, even then, make it as general as possible.

If your hero is trapped in a building, and you have just realized a brilliant way to get him out, and part of that escape leads to a fabulous reunion with his lost love, rife with possibility. Don’t think of the reunion! It is enough to know where your hero is heading–to the reunion–you don’t need to know all the details. You’ll think of those when you are writing the reunion scene. You shouldn’t be thinking of them as you are writing the escape scene.

Part of the difficulty in this is when you are not writing. Most of us love our creations. We think of our stories even when we’re not writing. Our characters engage us, and the tale we are writing is as if it were written just for us because, after all, it is!. However, you must put a lid on your imagination. Don’t think about the story, at least the story yet to be written. Don’t revel in the possibilities more than one or, at most, two scenes ahead. All of that is to be saved for when you are actually writing. As I said, this was the last hurdle for me, and it was a tough one. I love my imagination. I love to fantasize. And I love my stories. To consciously not think of them at odd times of day or night was extremely difficult. But I was able to do it, and I am glad I did. Now when I sit down at the keyboard, all that pent up imaginative energy explodes, and it goes right to the page.

Stephen King described this process as digging up a fossil. You have an initial idea or situation, and then you dig up a little at a time, not knowing quite what kind of dinosaur you are going to unearth. This metaphor is apt, for as you write you are unleashing your imagination one step at a time, digging up and discovering different parts. I would add a similar metaphor: Navigating in the dark with a flashlight. As you swipe the flashlight around, you can see your immediate surroundings in detail. You can also see various ways that will move you ahead or lead you out of the room you are in. But beyond that, it is dark–the light simply can’t penetrate the darkness more than a short distance. This is you as a writer: Letting your imagination illuminate everything in your immediate vicinity, and revealing enough of how to get beyond your current location. But beyond that–darkness.

The great thing about this method of writing is that all it takes is an interesting idea, and you can begin a novel. This idea can be a situation, a character with a flaw, or even someone feeling a strong emotion. Here’s an example from an unfinished work of mine. I had a very simple idea. What if a woman was unlucky in love, and on a fanciful whim decided to just search Google. Here is how that story started for me. As you may imagine, I have no idea where it will go or how it will end, and that is part of the excitement of writing:

I don’t know why I did it. Why does anybody do any number of crazy random things in their life? Maybe I was bored. Maybe I was curious. Maybe I was desperate. Hell, it could be all of the above.

All I know is that when I stared at that cute rainbow-colored Google logo and thought of how lonely my life had turned out to be, all I wanted to do was find one thing. So I typed the words that were closest to what I was searching for in life:

tall dark handsome

Not the most original phrase in the world, but it did kind of cut right to the chase. As I expected, I got a lot of eye candy, but every few pages there would be something totally unexpected and somewhat interesting. First there was the entomology lesson plan from Texas A&M University. Then there was the White Nationalist Community. I clicked on that one: It was a Dear Abby for racists kind of thing. Some woman wanted to know what to do: She was drawn to tall, dark, and handsome men rather than blonde men with blue eyes. Apparently attracting women is a big problem for racists with brown hair. But I digress.

I browsed through pages and pages of results for tall, dark, and handsome. Just when the tedium was about to overwhelm me, some other nugget would make me follow a cavalcade of links, whether it was a gallery of beautiful nature photographs (and unexpectedly sans men) or a treatise on the evolution of Arab features.

I searched on and on absent-mindedly looking for my tall, dark, and handsome man. Oh, I saw plenty of tall, dark, and handsome men. Did I ever, but I hadn’t found my tall dark and handsome man.

Until I hit the 321^st results page.

How deeply have you ever searched on Google? At a certain point you realize that all the results are pretty much the same and that the only thing that changes are those little nuggets that crop up ever few pages. On results page 321 I found what I thought was just a totally random nugget.

In fact, at first I almost skipped the result entirely, as it looked like the title of just another gallery of naked men:

You Have Found What You Are Looking For

I had seen plenty of galleries of men entitled “You DREAM Lover” or “Look No Further!” or “The answer to your prayers!” but the two line description of this item brought my eye back to the listing:

You Have Found What You Are Looking For

2626 Linden Avenue

Knock three times and wait …

This certainly wasn’t a bunch of asses, penises, and six packs. In fact, I thought it was kind of creepy how it looked like it was actually addressed to me. Curiosity got the better of me, so I clicked on the link. It was dead.

I shrugged and was prepared to move on when I realized I could do some nifty online detective work. I clicked on the “– Cached –“ link, not quite sure of what to expect. Part of me thought the page would open to a male escort service. Another part of thought I’d find a real estate site. What I wasn’t expecting was little more than what I found in the Google page cache, but that is exactly what was there:

You Have Found What You Are Looking For

2626 Linden Avenue
Knock three times and wait.
One knock more or one knock less—you don’t get in.

Admit it—you’re as curious as I was. Who makes a web site like this? What does it mean? Was it a top secret rave, and did I stumble upon its short-lived invitation page? Was it some sort of secret Freemason gathering site, which moves from server to server? Why did a search for “tall dark handsome” take me here?

The more I thought about it, the more intrigued I became. One of the things that kept gnawing at me was that I knew a Linden Avenue. It wasn’t too far from the Strip, and I had passed it a number of times in my life. Was this website actually pointing to the Linden Avenue in Las Vegas that I knew?

At this point I’d like to say that I looked up, saw that it was 3 AM, rubbed my eyes, turned off the computer, and went to bed, and I’d like to say that my life moved on—I finally found a great job, my life became exciting, and I found that tall, dark, and handsome man with whom I would spend the rest of my days happily ever after. But that isn’t true.

The truth is that I became strangely drawn to that simple page buried deep in a goofy Google search. I printed it up, and tacked it on the corkboard behind my monitor. I told myself that it was a humorous reminder of how random life can be. But it was clearly more than that.

So, I’m going to try to eliminate all the things that I do that simply waste time, primarily browse the Internet and play online poker, and use that time to write. My goal: 1,500 words a day. At the end of the day, the key is simply having the discipline to write. I hope to cultivate that. The good news is that at that pace I should have the first draft of my fantasy novel done in two months. We’ll see how it goes!

I had already decided to stop doing this after I had written chapter two, but my recent experience at my writer’s group confirmed this was a good idea. Chapter two features a lot of violent explosions of a similar nature, and I was so focused on making them different and compelling that in the process of rewriting I lost sight of pace and style. In short, I overwrote the chapter with adverbs and unecessary elements.

I had a simple idea of a calm surrounded by storm, and I lost sight of it in the rewriting process.

I’ve always wanted to write straight through and do one whole draft at a time, but I guess I’m a bit of a perfectionist and can’t stand moving on from a chapter if I’m not happy with it. That changed for sure when I saw how poorly my draft changes were and how they affected the pace of the story. So now I’m going to just keep writing and save the rewrites for when I’m finished.

A few days ago I finished the next chapter, and I immediately began on another one. I didn’t have any problem doing that at all, so I think I’m ready to follow the advice of many others and keep moving forward.

Although that problematic second chapter keeps calling to me. “Fix me! Fix me!” it cries. But I cruelly am ignoring it. Fixing can come when the novel is over.

I never considered using the second person so overtly. I guess it is the framing device used in The Princess Bride, although I haven’t read the book, so I don’t know for certain. But the way my book starts feels a lot like the beginning of the movie version.

Anyway, I find it interesting that in the two novels I’m writing, I’m using atypical structures. In this novel, I’ve replaced a pure narrative with a second person conversation. In my mystery novel, I’m alternating chapters in different time frames. Both were done to fulfill the demands of the story, not because I like to experiment. I’m not an experimental stylist—I”m a slave to the story!

Anyway, here’s the beginning of my young adult novel. I think it works well.

The story begins with your great great grandfather’s cane, with its arcane carvings and its shiny brass tip. Yes, that means he was my grandfather, and yes, this is the same one, and no, you can’t touch it. Not yet, at least. Now no more questions for now. I haven’t even started.

The mystery novel is told in various close third person narratives, and I find that a very comfortable medium to write in for me. Writing in first person has proven to be more difficult, at least at novel length. I’ve written short stories in first person, but they are more experiential and scene-based, and that is much easier for me to grasp in first person, I’m guessing.

The reason I chose first person for the young adult piece is simple—I wanted to use a framing device as an homage to Edgar Rice Burroughs. His fiction was a huge influence in terms of story telling when I was young. In The Land That Time Forgot he uses a framing device of a manuscript discovered in a bottle. As the narrator describes the situation of him finding the manuscript, he ends by saying the following, a bravura performance of storytelling:

You have read the opening paragraph, and if you are an imaginative idiot like myself, you will want to read the rest of it; so I shall give it to you here, omitting quotation marks—which are difficult of remembrance. In two minutes you will forget me.

“In two minutes you will forget me.” Such confidence in the story telling abilities the author must have, I remembered thinking. And, it is true, in two minutes I had forgotten that there was a narrator framing the story. It was a spectacular bit of writing that I never forgot for the rest of my life.

I badly wanted to write something similar—and putting modesty aside—I wanted to duplicate the effect. In short, I wanted to create a nominal framing device that would be forgotten “in two minutes” due to the power of the story telling. So I started to write my young adult novel in this way. But I feel it is simply not working.

Actually, as I wrote the above I feel like I need to be more overt about stealing from the master—he started his novel not with the framing device, but with the story itself. He then pulled himself out to the narrator’s story in finding the manuscript, and then he plunged back into the story. I started with the framing device and then plunged into the story. I think what I’ll do next is move from homage to outright theft and do what Edgar Rice Burroughs did—start in scene, move out to the narrator, and then dive back in.

If that doesn’t work, I’m planning on just giving up and writing it as a straight third person piece. If that happens I’ll know that some mountains simply aren’t meant for me to climb!

1) Tournaments are susceptible to luck.

• It’s not an accident that Emmanuel Lasker and Garry Kasparov were world chess champions for years: They were head-and-shoulders above every player around them. There is very little luck involved in competitive chess at a very high level.
• You don’t see this in poker. Even the great players don’t dominate like you see in other individual sports. Winning the World Series of Poker three years in a row? Nearly impossible, even for incredibly talented players.

2) Cash tables are incredibly boring

• Right now, I bet I could win $100 to $200 a day just playing the low stakes tables in online poker rooms. But there is a big problem: I find cash games incredibly boring. All it really takes is patience and discipline. So you sit there minute after minute, hour after hour, just mindlessly turning cards over, and the few moments of excitement are anti-climactic–you either get hit with a bad beat or you win a big pot off of the really poor players at the table.

As a result, I just couldn’t continue with this experiment. It was alternately frustrating and boring. Winning a freeroll takes a tremendous amount of luck, and my whole idea was to minimize luck with knowledge. Unfortunately, in chess tournaments, it is extremely hard to minimize luck.

This means that I’m going to drastically curtail my poker play, making my poker site somewhat irrelevant. I’ll keep it up for the occasional poker post and update, but my attention now is going to be aimed at something more interesting: Writing.

I’ve decided to work on my three current projects, pretty much simultaneously: My mystery novel, my science fiction novel, and my Twitter novel. Over the next few weeks I’ll set up a way to track these via this or other websites.

As I mention numerous times on this blog, this is a standard situation for me–my life is a series of tangents that I follow and then abandon (e.g. poker) when I get bored. I then follow the current of my life in some new direction. And that new direction now is writing.

I told him, “Oh, that’s just poker winnings.”

To which he replied, “You cash the coolest checks!” I asked him what he meant, and he pointed out that last month I brought in a royalty check from sales of my novel. I replied that normally I just bring in expense checks from my job, and he laughed and said, “Expense checks are cool, too!”

I was telling Lea about the conversation, and she commented that it does appear I live this total jet set life–I’m cashing checks from sales of my novel and my poker winnings in between all those expense checks from my travels.

If only it were that glamorous.

Later, when I’m ready to re-write chapter five, all of the old notes will be right there to remind me as I tackle the chapter again. I may do this for the future from now on. The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of forward momentum. I’m starting to think that the Stephen King method is ideal: Be writing one novel while you’re re-writing and editing another.