I just finished with another draft of The 13th Prime. I’m hoping it’ll be ready to shop out in another month or so. We shall see what happens, but I will say that on the whole I think this is my favorite story. Whether I’ve told the story right or not is still debateable, but of the concepts I’ve had before this has definitely been the most exciting for me :-)
This morning as I listened to the radio to keep from falling back asleep after my alarm went off but before I could drag my sorry excuse for a carcas out of bed to force it into yet another day of work [breathe], I heard quite the interesting little radio commerical. It’s for the local rodeo thing they do every summer here in the Springs. This year’s theme is “Break from the Herd.”
So what did they do to represent this? They had a bunch of sheep baaa-ing. The announcer said something like, “Are you sick of following other sheep? Then break from the herd!” And I was like, Hey, that would be possible…you know, IF SHEEP CAME IN HERDS!
Which makes me wonder: Does this qualify as a mixed metaphor, or is it just people are too dumb to know what the flock sheep come in?
>:-D
While there may often be times that I disagree with some plot choices that Stephen King makes, there’s one thing that I will admit unashamed. Stephen King is a writer’s writer. What do I mean by that? Well, there are certain authors that I enjoy to read. In this group, I would include writers like John Grisham, Tom Clancy, and James Patterson.
Then there are writers that cause me to want to write. I include in this group Joseph Heller (at least in Catch 22), John Steinbeck, Dean Koontz, and Umberto Eco. And, of course, more than any of the others…Stephen King.
I say that pointing out that I don’t like everything I’ve ever read by King. For instance, I hated It and didn’t care much for Cujo either. However, no other author has left me with the feeling, I so hafta be a writer! more often than Stephen King. And of course a lot of his works are also fun to read too. For instance, this week I finished reading The Wolves of the Calla (Sunday), and immediately started The Song of Susannah. I finished that less than an hour ago (and I should note that I worked an hour of overtime at work today too). Now I’m getting ready to finish up the Dark Tower series with, you guessed it, The Dark Tower.
But as I read through those books, more than anything else I’m thinking of the stories I’ve been working on. I don’t get much inspiration from King–not in the sense of getting story ideas, anyway. Rather, he is so good at crafting a tale that it gives me a target to aim for. It literally does make me go, “I can do this. So I will!” And it’s rather ironic since my writing style (when it comes to novels, not my blog) is the exact opposite of King. King is, shall we say, wordy. Or to use his terms, he’s a “putter-inner” while I’m a “taker-outer.” In point of fact, if I had the story concept for The Wolves of the Calla, I probably would have written a book about 300 pages long at most. King’s was closer to 1,000 pages than to 300…
I talked with Travis, a fellow wannabe writer, earlier today about that too. There were certain passages where I know I would have cut entire pages from the story if I had been writing them; but King makes it work. And it’s not to say one is right and one is wrong. But I have a feeling if King had written The 13th Prime it would be about 800 pages long right now (my current version, which still need a few revisions of course, is at 325 pages long).
I remember reading in King’s On Writing that he had a simple rule for after the first draft was finished. The second draft: 10% shorter. (In a way, it reminds me of A River Runs Through It: “Mmm-hmmm, good. Do it again, half as long.”) I, however, probably need to take the opposite advice. I start with about as close to bare-bones as the story will go. After that, I seek to add character development.
Take Public Transit for instance. The first draft was only 36,000 words long: a novella by anyone’s standards. It took me roughly eight revisions before I finally got it to the 50,000 word mark to make it an “official” novel. And the biggest reason I got that far? Because one of the people I gave rough drafts to said, “You really need to develop Emily’s character better.” And that’s when it clicked for me that Public Transit wasn’t just the story of the two brothers, Justin and Steve, but also included Emily. Developing her character gave me the extra words I needed to get it fully novel length (and it was well after I had decided, “If this book needs to be a novella, well, that’s just how long the book will be”).
So think of that. My first draft ran about 36,000 words. The final draft was just above 50,000. Instead of cutting 10% from the first draft, I added 39%.
Oh well. That’s somewhat of a bunny trail from my original point…which is this: after reading through almost to the end of the Dark Tower series, I’m totally ready to go back through yet another revision of The 13th Prime.
But Roland is calling first….
This weekend I started revising The 13th Prime again. It’s only gone through one major revision since the first draft was done, and the first draft was actually completed in twelve days. (Yes, the first draft was 70,000 words long, so it was a complete novel in less than two weeks.) In any case, one of the scenes I read through was a dream that one of the main characters had that would serve as a foreshadowing of upcoming events. However, this time through I noticed something in the dream section that I had written in the first draft but which I had not intended to link up later in the story but which (once I found it) obviously needed to be!
This sort of thing actually happened a lot when I wrote Public Transit too. For the roughly six people who’ve read that book, I should point out that about the only intentional metaphorical connection that I had from the first draft through to the end was the use of the name “Sam” as a girl (i.e., Samantha and Sami) and the rest of it just came together as I developed the characters. When I read through the second and third drafts of it, I discovered many “happy coincidences” that were perfect for linking together to solidify the story’s meaning. In fact, many of these coincidences occurred spontaneously without my having to edit a thing.
That didn’t quite happen in The 13th Prime. The link that I discovered did require me to write in another event in one scene, as well as references to it in three other scenes later in the novel. Additionally, The 13th Prime contains far more intentional links from the start than Public Transit did, since it’s a completely different flavor. Public Transit was a satirical social commentary, and therefore relied more on taking everyday life to the extreme both in a work environment and a school environment. The rules of that book were simply to have everything Steve touched turn to ash while everything Justin touched turned to gold. The book then unfolded simply from that.
The 13th Prime, on the other hand, deals with a recurring “curse”, numerology, and history repeating itself in a small town. As a result, much more care and effort had to go into it to set up several connections from the beginning. Still, it’s nice to find the spontaneous ones too. It’s even nice to find the “hooks” for a possible link that I put in the first draft without realizing it and which, during revisions, get threaded back into the end of the plot.
And the amazing thing is, in the end product, I would wager that it is impossible for anyone else to differentiate between the intentional links and the happy coincidences that are sprinkled throughout. Such is the nature of writing.
William Lane Craig Would Endorse This Book
Don’t miss your chance to own what could be the most important book since Joe Holman wrote something! That’s right, our very own…well, me…has written a book called Public Transit, and unlike some other authors I could mention who have tried to steal publicity from
, I am not a former student of
In fact
has not even read my book or else it would have been endorsed by
.
The book that
has not yet read is available at Amazon.com for a limited time (limited because you cannot go backwards in time to get it last year—you are limited to now and future dates, but probably not forever then either because at some point the universe will end).
Public Transit has been described by critics as a “book.” One reader (not
) said, “Peter Pike has written a very sarcastic book and also refers to himself in the third person when writing reviews.”
Public Transit is an irreverent social commentary that deals with such issues as the Vietnam War (“It was about white Republicans forcing African Americans into a godforsaken jungle so that they would die, and thus avoid the Civil Rights movement. It’s exactly like what Shrub is doing in Iraq today” (p. 79)), animal rights (“[I]nstead of fetal pigs, they’d use real human fetuses so they wouldn’t have to worry about the ethics of dissections any longer” (p. 41)), politics (“A bullet in the Bush is worth two in the hand” (p. 76)), and the philosophy of time (“That had all been six hours ago” (p. 156)). Most notable (
would notice if he were writing this review), the entire book contains only four (4) semicolons!
Public Transit is available now for only $12.94.
And what’s more, after you’re done with the book it will continue to serve a useful purpose in your life (unlike Joel Osteen). Use it to prop up that crooked table leg, as a handy door stop during hurricane season, or to trade for Pokémon cards with your neighbor’s kids! (Also makes a great parting gift for when Mormons visit!)
Another Reason I’m Glad I Didn’t Spend Money On a Journalism Degree
From this article:
He is considered extremely armed and dangerous.
“Extremely armed”?
Hello. Does anyone ever read what they write? This should be: “He is considered armed and extremely dangerous.” (Although, as Stephen King would point out, why do we need the adverb “extremely” anyway? Is there any other kind of danger?)
Oh well. It also says he “stands 6 fee tall” so why complain about that misplaced adverb?
I just read this article on FoxNews which states:
According to an eyewitness, an entertainment media outlet asked [Charlize] Theron how she was feeling about [Heath Ledger's death], as numerous cameras rolled just moments after the news broke.
Theron, however, had not been informed.
Now it’s not so much the fact that Theron was notified of a friend’s death in an interview, but look at what was asked. She was asked how she felt.
Seriously now, are reporters born with a sub-zero IQ or do they have to work at it to get this stupid? How do you think someone would feel when one of their friends is found dead?
“Gee, I feel fine. I’m glad my friend died. Can you pass the salt?”
How did these people ever get journalism degrees?
I’m Glad I’ve Never Wasted Money On A Journalism Degree
After talking with the security guard, Geragos said the tiger returned and began mauling Kulbir Dhaliwal before police officers arrived and shot and killed the animal.
Yes, that lovely example of a dangling participle is taken from this article.
To think, someone paid good money to get a journalism degree so they could write for the Associated Press, and they still write this.
Today, just before 6:00 MST on this first day of 2008, I have completed the first draft (the roughest of all rough drafts) of Event In Progress. Right now it’s at 47,000 words (not quite novel length–but the edits and rewrites will take care of that).
In any case, that makes it my sixth “completed” novel (and by “completed” I simply mean that the rough draft goes from A to Z like it’s supposed to). Of course I only have two actually completed books (and only one of them I actually like, that one being Public Transit).
Oh well. ‘Tis a nice way to start off the new year :-)
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