The Salesman

Yesterday I sent my publisher the edited versions of both Amed – my third novel in this detective series – and Virgo, which was more or less a surprise project taking the form of a fantasy-sort of novel.

As I mentioned before, crime is the word when the current lineup of my publisher is considered, or at least the genre seriously dominates their releases. However there still is the possibility for also Virgo being published by them. As for Amed, I am pretty sure that’s a future release for them, I feel it is the best one so far in that series.

So now the moral dilemma of whether or not to offer Virgo for them is solved. I am still seriously thinking about the possibility of sending it to others because this is the right time for it when fall 2015 is considered.

The post-Halloween period is when the editors browse through manuscripts and look for potential new releases. Thus it might be that I will send a copy of Virgo to one or two other publishers also.

I definitely don’t consider myself as a salesman, but I try to use that as an advantage. I once started an introduction letter with a sentence ‘I am a person cats obey’. Then again, how many letters they get describing the precious uniqueness of the manuscript? At least what I wrote was true.

Thus I may prepare some sort of a showcase for Virgo next week and see if there are potential young adult fantasy publishers around. But right now it is Halloween, so have a scary weekend and stay classy,

Jari Peltola
@JariPeltola

Recap pacer

But, after all, who knows, and who can say
Whence it all came, and how creation happened?
the gods themselves are later than creation,
so who knows truly whence it has arisen?

Just to be clear, I did not write that. In fact I think the excerpt above, taken from Hymn of Creation, is too old to be connected with any single person. Anyways that bit does have something to do with my latest creation, a novel manuscript under the working title of Virgo.

Of course this blog was named after a completely different book so here is a short recap. My first novel – let’s call is Savasana – was published this spring, and the second one, under the working title Dolores, will be out next March or so.

Amed, the third novel in order, is also finished and edited to the point it could be passed on to further evaluation. I wrote it this September along with starting this blog. After that however I felt like I still had fuel in the tank so I picked up an earlier idea of mine about a series of novels linked to a theme also present in that Hymn of Creation passage in the beginning.

Today I finished the first round of editing Virgo. No chapters needed to be scratched, nor felt I like there was room for additional ones. I did make some changes to character names and their appearances to make them stand up from the crowd better, but all in all the package holds in my opinion well together. In fact it is now some three pages shorter than before.

The next big thing I have to decide is how to proceed with the manuscript publisher-wise. It would probably be quite rude not to offer Virgo (and the whole series) to my current publisher first. Then again I am aware that their lineup does not really consist of novels like Virgo, which – although not having zombies or sorcerers – could be considered as fantasy.

I am really not a fan of genres in any line of creation including books, music, tv series and movies. All stories are made up so they are in the end all fantasy. If I should list things Virgo has some relation to, they would be books by Isaac Asimov (sci-fi) as well as more recent eco-fiction novels, young adult novels like Enemies by Charlie Higson (without zombies), episode-based storytelling like Breaking Bad (which had many characteristics of a western), a bit of puzzle solving such as in the novel The Rule of Four, movies such as Mr. Nobody or Cloud Atlas (which is also a novel) sans time-shifting however, and the sort of epic background story-based narratives familiar from television series such as Lost, The Leftovers, The Walking Dead, and Resurrection.

And I am not sure Tolkien can ever really be surpassed when a story about a group of characters with a common task going somewhere is concerned. And finally, much of the reference imagerie of the story comes from North Korea, an actual state, which however seems more like fiction to many.

But I do know that publishers like clear genres more than I do. Maybe I come with one eventually, but for now have a prolific pre-Halloween week and stay classy,

Jari Peltola
@JariPeltola

What just happened

For the record, my first version for the novel under the working title Virgo is now finished. I managed to get the length exactly as I intended – the final chapter ends on page 240. That’s about 315 000 characters I believe but that’s not too important really, since the editing usually adds in some ten pages or so.

I wrote earlier about the fifteen steps of story I use in building the plotline before writing. I then use these fifteen steps to add chapter outlines so that before I hit page one, I have outlines of some 50 chapters.

Except for this time. I actually had only those fifteen steps as my storyline, and I kept adding new chapters as I went along. The first version of Virgo has 69 chapters, so a great majority of them was created during the actual process of writing.

Today I have done some cover art work for my second novel – let’s call it Dolores – since the spring brochure deadline is next week. I also rearranged my notes concerning editing Virgo. They were in no particular order so I cut-pasted them chronologically so that the editing work is easier once I get to it next week.

One other thing I was thinking about today were the stories behind some of the most popular movies and television series. For example, the first Star Wars movie was basically about the battle between good and evil. Then again one would probably get interesting answers to question ‘What is the actual story in Game of Thrones?’ Yes, there are different kingdoms, wars and such, but what is the series high concept, so to speak? Or, as in my favorite example, can anyone really say what happened in Lost (which as I have understood will be relaunched some time in the future)?

As these examples show, more than about the storyline, the overall feeling and characters form the core of many popular fantasy epochs. The people of Twin Peaks eventually created Twin Peaks, not the location or the story, which was a basic whodunnit plotline with psycho-fantasy elements.

Twin Peaks was not about describing murder investigation accurately, it was about donuts, coffee, and 1950s dreamworld. In the end no one really cared about the story – they just wanted to be in that mysterious world for another hour. Thus it is no wonder that both Twin Peaks and Star Wars are getting new episodes in the future.

When I start to edit Virgo, I am trying to concentrate on making the people in the story memorable. I have made the storyline in the same manner as in computer games, so I have no Obi-Wan telling the protagonist all he needs to know. Instead the reader will have to discover those things with him gradually as the story unfolds. Readers – as moviegoers or binge-watchers – are more willing to take up the task if the people they are being told about are compelling.

Right now it is time for me to sleep so have a great weekend and stay classy,

Jari Peltola
@JariPeltola

Tour de Book

Today I laid out the first part of the finale section of my novel manuscript under the working title Virgo. I am now on page 225, and I think I still have maybe five or six chapters to go. It looks like I will be pretty close to my intended story length of 240 A4 pages with 1.5 line width.

Today the Tour de France organizers also published their route for next year’s competition. I have many times noticed that there are similarities between cycling and writing especially when it comes to these three-week grand tours and me writing a novel manuscript.

The first thing is of course the three-week time span – Tour de France as well as Giro d’Italia and Vuelta of Spain all have some 21 stages added with a couple of mandatory rest days (in reality they are there to give the teams time to move their equipment to another route section, most riders go to 80 km practice ride on those days).

I have cycled myself enough to know the importance of steady pace. The more you practice, the faster you usually ride. To be able to ride one and a half miles faster per hour does not sound like a lot, but if the route consists of some seventy hours of riding, that makes one hundred miles in distance.

I used to write maybe some 10-12 A4 pages per day, and that felt like a lot in the beginning. These days I have no problem putting in the 20-25 pages daily quota I do on a full day of writing (6 hours). It’s all about the average speed of writing being cumulated, just like long-distance cycling is about being able to maintain steady tempo and certain average speed.

If you have ever tried riding any kind of bike, you know that the damn thing gets easily out of your hands unless you are mentally present all the time. A majority of crashes on grand tours happen when a rider loses his or her concentration and starts to think about the following day’s mountain stage or the evening meal to be enjoyed afterwards.

Similarly I need this feeling of ‘being there’ when I write. Today I had this feeling coming in very strong as if I were a reporter covering the events of the story. The funny thing is that all outside distractions are basically insignificant if one has been able to reach this mental stage of being there.

One persisting myth – in which I have also believed myself – is that one can listen to instrumental music while writing, but listening to music with lyrics or talk radio is out of the question.

Who knows, maybe it is because the language is not the same, but during the writing of Virgo I have listened to BBC 6 Music online all the time. At the moment I am listening to John Grant’s concert with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, and I don’t see any of his lyrics in this post. There is no steady correlation between your senses and your writing, since writing is about processing thoughts.

Also, as in cycling, the comfort zone of writing is not a constant but an evolving concept and can be changed. At least trying new things once in a while – like my standing office while putting Virgo together – can make things less routine-like.

Right now I am pretty pleased with what I’ve done with Virgo, but this may of course change. After I actually finish the manuscript, I will take a quick look at it and then compare my views with what I told in my earlier posts about what I intended to create.

Meanwhile enjoy your life, don’ t become paralyzed with fear when things seem particularly rough (ok, that’s John Grant) and stay classy,

Jari Peltola
@JariPeltola

At The Gates

First for the record, I am now on page 200 of the Virgo manuscript, which leaves the last sixth of the story to be written in the coming days.

In the last couple of days I have basically been updating three different documents. One is of course the actual manuscript, but besides that I have also updated my ‘roadmap’ of the manuscript including the brief descriptions of each chapter to be written.

The third document is the ‘checklist’ I hold on my iPad. This memo has a mixed collection of notes, ideas, details, and basically anything that could be included in the manuscript in the future.

I also use the checklist when I come up with an idea I will certainly add, thus requiring making some small changes to the manuscript. This enables me to continue writing the story without actually bouncing back and forth.

As an example, I may write current chapters including an earlier event which in fact is not in the manuscript yet. However it is included in my checklist so I know the story will be consistent once the list is applied in full. This usually happens in the first editing round of the manuscript.

As for Virgo as a story, it is now at the gates, so the speak. The finale is about to begin, and as an addition to any of my former projects I now have to keep in mind also the buildup for the next novel in the series. Thus at the same time I have to write a plausible ending making the reading experience worthwhile and to create a setting enabling the ‘big story’ to continue.

I have noticed that this keeps me working with the roadmap more than before. Were it just for this one book, I could come to a decent ending pretty soon. Now I however have to include both layers of the story at the same time.

I have never liked stories without a satisfactory ending. I also realize that times have indeed changed since the Lord of the Rings trilogy, or even since Harry Potter books. One simply cannot justify a story anymore – whether a book, a movie, or a tv series episode – by only compiling it with things, which are revealed in full in the following episodes. As I noted earlier regarding some intended Hollywood blockbusters, in many cases there is no next episode if this approach is taken.

So I am indeed at the gates, and I am going to kick them in with full force like there’s no tomorrow or no next book. Ideally this approach will be the exact right method for creating the need or interest for the sequel. After all even a fantastic meal will eventually be followed by the inevitable feeling of hunger.

Until the next post, stay classy,

Jari Peltola
@JariPeltola

The Turn

First the obligatory shop talk: I am now through some 130 pages of Virgo, meaning I am pretty much halfway the first round of the manuscript.

Then again the middle point is where the set-up needs to pay off when the reader is concerned. The pieces are now out there, and it is time to start arranging them for the endgame.

One thing making this a lot easier than in the planning stage is that I now have a better conception of who the main characters are. In the beginning they were more or less a framework, but now they have certain experiences provided by the story so far, so it is easier for me to make them act accordingly.

If one would divide the plot into two parts, the latter part is where the people in the story start to arc, so to speak. They are like batteries, all filled with energy loaded by the first part of the story – now it is time to release it.

I have a rough sketch about the ending already, but then again the original beginning of Virgo is – at least for now – the ending of the whole big story to be told in the series i.e. the ending of the last book.

In the same manner one chapter I originally designed to be in the middle part – right about where I am now – is now the ending of this particular manuscript of the first book, taking the form of an epilogue of a sort.

As I wrote somewhere earlier, I like having some sort of a game plan before starting to write the actual manuscript. However if I feel during the writing process that something else might work better, I have no problem altering my plan. Every story is always a living thing, with a life of its own outside the plan. This is also a turn of its own: it happens when the story starts to tell itself to you.

Have a weekend full of great stories of your own and stay classy,
Jari Peltola
@JariPeltola

What not to want

In my latest project Virgo, I now have some one fourth of the first version filed in. In practise this means some 70 pages since I am currently aiming at about 240 A4 pages with 1,5 line width.

As for exo-technicalities i.e. the content, I’ve been mostly thinking about things I don’t want Virgo to be. The story is supposed to be divided in more than one books so the opener should lay down the ‘big story’ to be continued in the follow-up novels.

Then again one cannot write a series opener just to get things underway – the first book must be worth reading by itself. In this sense I believe the best negative examples come from the world of cinema. There are more than plenty of pilot films made intended to be first movies in a series of motion pictures. None of these follow-ups have however seen the light of day since the first episode failed to attract enough people.

No one planned or wanted the first movies to fail, quite the opposite, yet they did. Mostly this is because of the flaws concerning the protagonist. If your main character is not the most interesting one in the story, there is further work to be done. By all means, keep the rich variety of supporting cast – just make the main guy even better.

What I am personally fixing right now are certain issues concerning the motives of my characters. I feel like they are occasionally just going through the motions, which obviously dislocates them from their intended path. It is not enough to know where your character is going to when storytelling is concerned: one must know why that particular journey is necessary.

The problem with multiple-novel series is of course that the protagonist cannot be told too much in the beginning – it is his or her job to find things out. Therefore his or her level of motivation as well as reasons for doing things must also change when the story progresses. Mere curiosity is enough in the beginning, but as things and people advance to higher level, the reasons for acting in a particular manner should follow.

So far I’ve done this in a video game manner, where each new revelation is like a scene from an adventure game. Too make things easier for the reader more than one of the main characters are on the move at the same time, of course still totally unaware of each other and for different reasons. If the story succeeds, their paths will meet before the end of the first novel, thus opening new ones for future episodes.

In this process the characters gradually confront things they don’t want, as it all were a sort of elimination game. What is eventually left is something they all want more than anything else, and that something – or ‘somethings’ – combined in the story is what I hope will become the ultimate goal of the series plot.

But before the large picture is painted, there are dozens of smaller steps and colour choices to be taken, so until the next step stay classy,

Jari Peltola
@JariPeltola

Louder Than Words

Somehow today the 18 A4 pages I filed felt like the image and music in the video below when it comes to the story they told: louder than words. Until next day, stay classy,

Jari Peltola
@JariPeltola

http://ultimateclassicrock.com/pink-floyd-louder-than-words/

Taking a dip

There’s this odd moment when you have made your journey on the beach for a swim. While you unpack your stuff you’re sort of getting ready to feel the cool water, but no matter how much you like swimming, one usually still hesitates for a while. Maybe it is some sort of remnant from our early survival instinct, I don’t know, but just before reaching the water there seems to be always this short moment when time stops and you wonder whether it would still be wiser to just stay on solid ground.

Of course it makes the feeling of finally dipping in double enjoyable since you both cool yourself as well as win some sort of primal fear of letting the water carry you. In fact that is one of my favorite things while swimming: to gradually slow down and eventually stop and feel the power of water around you. Even still water transmits that vast force of being able to carry a human being just like that.

Consider your plan to write something as a plan to go swimming. Thus the moment of hesitation arrives, and one starts to wonder if it is too early or whatever to take a dip into the actual writing process. All this regardless of the fact that if you have ever written something, you know that there’s always room for testing and getting the feel of writing. You don’t aim at butterfly swimming world records on the beach, so certainly getting a few pages down won’t hurt even if they weren’t that great?

Today I took a dip into the story of Virgo by writing the short prologue part. Sure, I did have some sort of gameplan concerning the content, but mostly I just went along with the overall feeling I had about the prologue protagonist.

Funny enough, the very first lines of the prologue are based on this mental image from my childhood, when I suddenly got this flashback about our neighbours. In my imagination I somehow saw them living in the Middle Ages and their youngest daughter was singing for her supper at this smoky marketplace. Then she suddenly saw something interesting, got distracted and stopped dancing, and her brother – playing a wooden flute – gave her hard time about ruining their act. And now this novel of mine starts with the very same scenery: what the little girl sees is my protagonist.

So I now have the prologue part laid out, pretty effortlessly as it happened. I do have some sort of a roadmap concerning the following chapters already, so let’s see if this short dip eventually leads to the feeling of the story starting to carry me. Right now it feels like that, but sometimes the stream underwater goes cold, I know it.

But so much for watery remarks, more soon, until then keep afloat and stay classy,

Jari Peltola
@JariPeltola

PS. The eight A4 pages of the prologue written this afternoon were in interity created whilst unseated. The standing office idea really is a good one, and something DJs seem to have been frontrunners for.

15 Steps

I was watching the BBC 6 Music global stream today since they had First Aid Kit on playing live. Before the gig the station DJ was playing records and the whole thing was also broadcast on live video stream. I then noticed that she was not sitting whilst on studio, so I did the same and arranged an impromptu standing office for myself.

As for my project titled Virgo, my unseated position turned out to be pretty prolific one. As a background fact, I tend to make a fifteen-step list about the plot turns right in the beginning. Without giving away copyrighted material or further advertising anyone, my way of making this list is based on Blake Snyder’s book Save The Cat. Other equal methods are available, but Snyder’s way of working the story has so far been good to me.

This fifteen-step list is the one, which will eventually serve as the basis for a more detailed chapter storyboard in the future. Blake Snyder’s ‘beat sheet’, as he calls it, is of course originally aimed at writing screenplays, but I have noticed that the same basic act breaks and plot twist checkpoints apply to novels too. They must just be modified and re-sectioned according to the intended length of the novel manuscript.

Of course we all have watched movies as well as read books which immediately appear as if they were created using a specific formula. Then again, I would argue that this is mostly because the formula has not been supported by quality ingredients in these cases.

For example if the main protagonist is uninteresting, he or she becomes somewhat a mine detector revealing the plot pattern, since the adventurer is not someone people would relate to. Conversely, if people really care about the person they are reading about, they will concentrate more on his or her fate than the actual story.

It is both important and comforting to realize that basically all stories imaginable have already been told by someone else. The difference is that you or I haven’t told this one specific story for the audience it is about to be told.

Also, by checking out similar stories to your own you can easily find out what these stories got right or wrong. The latter I have found especially fruitful, since the question ‘why did I not like it’ gives often better, more detailed answers than contemplating why something was enjoyable.

The fifteen steps of story are like ancient stone steps leading across the river. A great number of people have used them during different ages, but all these people have made their own unique sound whilst crossing the river. And of course the river of story itself never stays the same.

Next I shall probably try to come up with some primal conflicts, until then stay classy,

Jari Peltola
@JariPeltola