Cameron’s travels

Since my last post I have writing-wise mostly concentrated on Virgo, the fantasy novel manuscript I started last October. As for other projects, Dolores, my second crime novel is out any day now. Since it is not a Dan Brown-scale event, I don’t actually know the exact date, but I know the time is near when I get sent a box of author’s copies. I have already decided to broadcast the opening of the box on Twitter Periscope just to give the service some other content than MC Hammer’s obscure family videos and Mark Wahlberg’s entourage hype.

The title of this post refers actually to James Cameron and the approach he took in two of his movies. The first, Titanic, became a classic not just because of the massive effects and such but rather because Cameron had the mass tragedy transformed into a love story, a story about two people basically.

In Avatar, Cameron pretty much tried to do the same, but at that time the effects department more or less took over since it was an animated 3D movie with eye candy overdose. Therefore the story and the characters were left in the background, and the background literally was put in the front.

Keeping this in mind, I have written some more passages to Virgo. Funny enough, but in a sense the current version actually combines Titanic with Avatar. I don’t want to give away too much, but basically there is a story set in an unknown place combined with diary entries by a scientist on an expedition boat in our current time. First there was no scientist plot at all, but even then I had in my mind the background story it contains: it just was not included in the first version.

After adding the diary remarks, the story in my opinion improved, but I still felt it had more Avatar in it than Titanic. I was happy with the fantasy elements being contained by science though. I have lately watched tons of YouTube material featuring for example professor Brian Greene and also his British colleague Brian Cox. Again not giving away too much, but if you take a look at those videos, they may give some clues on what kind of story Virgo is.

Even then I was still feeling something was missing, so I adjusted the scientist’s entries to include a human interest story. It is not as sugary as in Titanic, but still it gave me room to include themes such as religion vs. science into the manuscript. Also the science level now interacts with the ‘fantasy level’ amazingly well in ways I never thought of when I originally started the project back in October.

Virgo is still meant to be the first novel in a series of books, but in principle it now works also as a story of its own were it never to have any sequels. Paradoxically this is hopefully a factor that will get potential publishers to be more lenient in their reception since now there is no need for committing resources to more than one novel only.

I will get back at least when the box full of Dolores arrives from the print. Meanwhile keep grinding and stay classy,
Jari Peltola

@JariPeltola

Cicerone’s Tour

Since there seems to be a shipload of titles in these posts these days, it is good to start with a brief recap. My second crime novel Dolores will be out in the coming weeks, followed by Amed, the third one in the series, some time this fall. Also there is a fantasy novel manuscript under the working title Virgo, but publishing-wise Virgo is on hiatus until the beginning of summer. There are no guarantees of it being out someday, but progress has been made developing the story further and for now that’s quite enough.

I will also introduce to you Cicerone, but more on that later in this post.

Virgo was originally designed to be a multi-episode series of books. I recognized from the beginning that this approach has its problems. If the first book sells some seven copies, the later episodes will naturally never see a printing machine.

Therefore I made some additions to the story. I wrote maybe ten additional chapters, which are basically diary entries by someone from our present time. The rest of the story resonates with these entries on some level, but obviously there are two different story levels going on.

The two stories do merge in the end and also form a consistent finale for Virgo. This means that Virgo now works a story of its own, although leaving the possibility for more, if the book would prove to be popular enough.

As I mentioned in the beginning however, all this is still speculative since no publishing contract for Virgo exists. Right now I am however satisfied with how the story has progressed and will leave it on hiatus for the coming weeks.

So what is Cicerone? Well, in ancient Rome Cicerone meant a person who is some sort of a spiritual – or more secular – guide, but Cicerone is also the working title of my fourth crime novel.

After I found out last month that both Dolores and Amed will be out this year, this naturally changed my original plan of having Amed out some time in 2016. Instead I now faced a situation where I would potentially have no release coming out next year.

This was the primary reason I started to sketch out the preliminary storyline for a new book. This is also the stage Cicerone is still at, but I now have both the beginning and the end pretty well laid out.

What I used to do was that I created a thorough book chapter outline before starting to write the chapters. As Virgo proved however, I got the same exact result – a finished manuscript – by using only a fifteen-part rough outline of the plot.

Cicerone will be some sort of a compromise of these two. Right now I have the specifics for the first five chapters, and after writing those chapters I will create 5-6 more before hitting the blank page. Thus I won’t go too far into the future, since the far-reaching storylines are the ones most likely to change during the actual writing process.

Then again I do like the fact that the end is more or less fixed already, since this erases the uncertainty about where the story is going. Now the focus will be more on how to get there rather than where to go.

But more about all this later, until then stay classy.

Jari Peltola

@JariPeltola

Wake-up call

First a brief news segment. The raw design for the cover of Amed, my third crime novel, is now ready. I made a total of five rough sketches and in my opinion the most boring one got picked. Then again I do understand that a good cover has some relation to the book content style-wise. And after all the design was my original idea so I have nothing to complain in the end.

I also did some impromptu editing for Virgo, my fantasy novel manuscript, today. After I had survived the scheduled obligatory office stuff regarding paperwork in the morning, I still felt I had to do something a bit more creative today.

There’s a good reason for this, since I watched the latter part of the Oscars show live early this morning (my timezone). And since the sun is up quite early already, all this left me with a total of some three hours solid sleep last night.

To me this is something I can do for one night, and I still come up with the positive side up. For Virgo this meant emphasising the suspense side of the story further. I am still uncertain about whether to build one Game of Thrones-size book or a three-part series from the concept, so starting the story has been a bit of a problem to me.

Right now I am aiming for the trilogy approach, after all the whole thing is only in manuscript phase so it is not a problem yet. Without revealing too much, I maintained much of the story intact but added diary bits in the middle as well as changed the story to begin with one.

Now here is the part I was originally against: the diary is written by a person living in our time, apart from the rest of the story. Of course I have a plan to combine these two levels of storytelling, since the big picture i.e. the very ending is about creating a synthesis out of all this. And I did mention a while back that the concept of time is somewhat problematic in Virgo, so the new turn of events is not the worst case of timeline jumping I know.

All this also enables me to add more science and overall lifeworld stuff to the story as well as diminish any existing elements of so-called magic. This does not mean removing the element of unknown however. Quite the opposite, the very nature of science is to admit what is not known yet.

To be honest though, in the same spirit I am now a bit unsure about how to carry the story to the big picture I have had in mind since starting Virgo. Then again I am confident that the work I have already done is on a certain level of quality and has a solid story logic behind it. In the end the question is about adding more suspense and drama – the classic rollercoaster of emotions – to the ingredients already laid out.

Who knows, maybe this sort of post-Oscar, sleep-deprivated session is the wake-up call the story needed. What I do know is that tonight I will probably fall asleep in seconds rather than in minutes.

Meanwhile don’t be a Travolta and stay classy,

Jari Peltola
@JariPeltola

—

The Return of Amed

I uploaded the website for Dolores – the upcoming novel release – online over the weekend. It’s Finnish-only and there will still be more content coming, but if you like to get the gist of the outlook, you can check it out on

http://www.doloresinhuuto.fi

Regarding to Amed – the actual manuscript that started this blog and the to-be novel meant to be the follow-up release for Dolores – something quite unexpected happened today. My publisher sent me an e-mail telling me that there are couple of spots open in their fall lineup for release and asked for the latest version of Amed.

This would basically mean that were Amed accepted for a fall release, I would actually have two books out this year instead of one. The manuscript for Amed is pretty much finished as it has been laid out in this blog, so there’s no problem there.

I have to admit though that it was a bit of a distraction after producing all the Dolores web material in the last couple of weeks to suddenly make a crash return to the world of Amed. This was necessary since I had some new ideas in my notes I wanted to get in before sending the latest version. Today these notes were truly worth gold: without them it would have taken me much longer to restore the overall story as a whole in my mind.

I have this theory which may be just my own speculation, but if you have read my previous entries, I did send a fantasy manuscript – under the working title Virgo – to a couple of other publishers last November. Since that two of them have politely replied there is currently no slots in their publication catalogue, which was of course what could be expected.

However I had this plan b sort of, which was based on the fact that the publishing circles are quite small regardless of where you live. This means that the people in the business know each other.

What I was in a way counting on was the possibility that one of these other publishers might have mentioned me contacting them to my current publisher. There was no foul play on my behalf: the contact was not about Amed but a new manuscript Virgo, which was sent to my current publisher first. Only after that I revised it a bit after seeking for other options.

Whatever is the truth, I was today offered a potential slot for Amed in the fall catalogue, which arguably is better than the spring release because of the upcoming holiday season, which sells stuff better. It’s basically the same thing as in mid-season tv series, at least before Game of Thrones changed the game there.

To sum it up, I indeed have a novel coming out in two months, but there may be another one coming out in September. Whatever will happen, I’m ok with it. In a way today was just another proof about unlikely things sometimes taking place.

Keep grinding and stay classy,

Jari Peltola
@JariPeltola

Another place

I have done some further editing on Virgo, the fantasy novel manuscript intended to start a series of books. As mentioned before, the earlier draft has been sent both to my current publisher as well as couple of other companies. The changes I have made after that are not of fundamental nature. Thus I am not about to send any new version to anyone unless requested.

One alteration I made was actually something I was going after already when writing the first draft. Since I did not include any classical elements of fantasy such as wizardy etc. in the story, the otherworldliness had to be achieved by other means.

What I was aiming for right from the beginning was the complete absence of measuring time, however in a way that would not be in any way emphasized. If something has always been absent, why would anyone in the story give a second thought to it?

This is something I learned when mixing music. Often, when mastering a track, different elements are emphasized by increasing their role in the mix. However by taking out other things will eventually lead to same result, and often in a more suddle manner.

This absence of time is actually one of the most integral elements of the ‘big story’, which will be told in the series, so I won’t go into details on that here. As an example it is however one of the aspects I deliberately wanted to include in the story to hint that although there are hopefully things readers can easily relate to – the nature of different characters for example – for attentive readers it will soon become clear that there is more to the story than what at first glance meets the eye. The key however may sometimes lie in taking notice of things not there than observing the present environment.

Thus the question of where or when the story takes place in somehow becomes irrelevant. Rather, in finding out more it should be asked what kind of place has no concept of time and why. I am not a time warp guy – the story is linear and the characters are present in wherever they may be. But where? Again, this is part of a larger plot so I won’t go into that in current time.

I am still brooding over writing a Christmas horror short story. I already decided on the setting: it would feature a subway route inspector working alone in the middle of the night in a tunnel, where he finds a door which is not marked in any building plans.

But that world may or may not realize itself. Whatever may happen, stay classy,

Jari Peltola
@JariPeltola

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

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