Sometimes the Magic Works (6 page)

 

Just sitting down and thinking about writing
doesn't always work. It would be nice if it did,
but the creative process is more complicated than simply deciding to create and then doing it.

 

D
REAM
T
IME

LET ME BEGIN by repeating that you need to forget all about the kind of outlining you were taught in grammar and English classes as a kid. Forget about Roman Numeral One and Capital A. Forget about the whole idea of a structure comprised of neatly numbered and indented paragraphs. We don't want that approach. We don't want anything remotely like it. We want organization, but not conformity or rigidity.

I'm going to use my own approach as a working model. I'm not saying you should do things exactly the same way I do. For each of us, the approach to outlining a book is going to vary, just like our approach to writing. That's all right. You want to find a way that will work for you. By offering my approach as an example, I'm hoping you can figure out your own.

For me, it begins with just thinking about what I want to write—the plot, characters, setting, mood, pacing, point of view, twists and turns, thematic structure, anything and everything that has to do with the story. I have learned it is a process I cannot rush. Sometimes it goes quickly and sometimes it takes forever. Think of it as a percolation period, when you let your ideas brew and the flavor of your story build.

Lots of ideas occur to me while this is going on. I don't write them down. I don't write anything down—except for names, which go on a name list I carry with me everywhere. But nothing else. It's a firm rule. I used to think that if I got an idea, I should write it down immediately so that I wouldn't lose it. Sometimes I would wake in the middle of the night with brilliant ideas that I would dash down on slips of paper so they would be saved for when I awoke the next morning. What happened was that either I couldn't make sense of them or they turned out to be not so brilliant after all. So I've changed my thinking on this. If an idea doesn't stick with me for more than twenty-four hours, it probably wasn't all that hot in the first place.

Anyway, this thinking period—this dream time—is crucial to everything that happens later, but particularly to the construction of my outline. I want to be able to picture my story in images before I try to reduce it to mere words. I want to think about the possibilities. Everyone asks a writer where he gets his ideas. You've already seen the chapter on that. The truth is that coming up with ideas is easy; it's making up the stories that grow out of them that's hard.

Sometimes I have to jump-start the process. Just sitting down and thinking about writing doesn't always work. It would be nice if it did, but the creative process is more complicated than simply deciding to create and then doing it. Sometimes, my mind doesn't like it when I try to put it to work, and it just shuts down. Sometimes, it chooses to think about other things. Instead of focusing on how I can solve that latest plot dilemma, it prefers to concentrate on how long it will be until I eat again or whether or not the sprinkler system will stick on for another twenty-four hours like it did yesterday. Trying to tell it what to do is like trying to teach your cat to sit up and beg. If it feels like it, it will. If it doesn't, good luck.

What I can do to banish that recalcitrant attitude is to put myself in an atmosphere that encourages dreaming. Some moods and settings and experiences are more conducive to creative thinking than others. For each of us, this varies. I find I am able to free up my thinking best in a couple of very specific ways.

One is to take a long drive, preferably out in the country somewhere. Driving puts me in a zone that allows me to concentrate on the mechanics of driving the car while thinking of something else entirely. I find myself coming up with ideas I could never imagine if I just sat down and tried to conjure them. Maybe it's the movement, but it works every time.

A second freeing experience is to go to the symphony. I can sit there listening to the music and disappear into another world. I don't know why, but classical music seems to suggest fresh places and new stories. It transports me. It causes me to imagine possibilities for writing that invariably yield something good. This result doesn't come about with any other kind of music. When I was a kid, I used to do the same thing using stirring sound tracks from movies like
Ivanhoe
and
Plymouth Adventure
. Now, it's classical music. I'd like to think my tastes have matured, but I'm afraid the truth is otherwise.

In any case, listening to classical music and taking long drives are what work for me. You will have to find out what works for you. But something will. Something will help free up your creative thinking and allow you to start imagining the possibilities.

But enough about you. Let's get back to me. At some point, the mass of images floating around in my head reaches critical mass, and I have to get them out of there. That's when it's time to write them all down on paper. I don't have to put them down in any particular order or with any specific plan in mind. They just need to be recorded, all of them, for a more balanced consideration of what they might lead to. By now, I probably have a pretty good idea of what the new book is going to be about. Some of my images will be fully formed. I will fill pages and pages of yellow tablets with handwritten notes. This usually takes a couple of weeks, but it can go faster. While I am writing, new ideas will occur, and I will add them to the mix. I am done when I can't think of anything else to write down.

Now I have a collection of plotlines, character sketches, and thematic developments both large and small. Some of these will get used, some will get set aside for another story, and some will get tossed out altogether. The trick is in separating them into the right piles. A lot of this is simply gut instinct, but there are two ironclad rules I have come to rely on.

The first rule is that nothing goes into one of my books that isn't grounded in something real and true about the human condition. Sure, I write fantasy. But I learned years ago from Lester del Rey that the secret to writing good fantasy is to make certain it relates to what we know about our own world. Readers must be able to identify with the material in such a way that they recognize and believe the core truths of the storytelling. It doesn't matter if you are writing epic fantasy, contemporary fantasy, dark urban fantasy, comic fantasy, cookbook fantasy, or something else altogether, there has to be truth in the material. Otherwise, readers are going to have a tough time suspending disbelief long enough to stay interested.

The second rule is that everything I include must advance the story in some measurable way. There are lots of clever ideas, colorful characters, and wondrous plot twists lurking around in your head, demanding attention, seeking a place in your books. Unless they do something to further the development of your story, unless they serve a purpose, get rid of them. If all they do is take up space and look cute, get them out of there. Think of them as annoying phone solicitors who interrupt your writing time. They might have something good to sell and they might be fun to talk to, but they aren't going to do a thing for your career. Tell them you will take their names and call them back. Maybe when you are done writing this book, you will have a place for them in the next.

The last step in this process is to pull everything together into a story arc with a beginning, middle, and end—in short, where the story starts, where it goes, and how it concludes. I don't need to know everything. But I do need to have the big picture in mind, and I do need a clear idea of how I am going to go about painting it.

Several written exercises will help me achieve this. The most important of these is a chapter-by-chapter breakdown of the book. Each chapter can be covered in no more than a paragraph or two that records the essential elements of who, what, and where. If there are particular considerations, I make note of them. The writing itself will determine whether these thumbnails stay in their original form or change. What is important is that I end up with a structure I can use to help keep everything straight.

I also like to make up sketches of the main characters. The size of these will vary. A physical description will be included, but there might also be a mention of strengths or flaws or even of particular ways in which I want the character to impact the story. I like to know how these characters will interact and when. I like to project ways in which they will change over the course of the book.

I will also frequently write several pages of description of an important setting. Sometimes this is a composite of what I've really seen and what I've imagined. It will include physical descriptions of how things taste and smell. It will advise if there are trees or houses or lakes or mountains, if it is a wilderness or a settled area, if it is hot or cold, wet or dry, hospitable or savage. Mostly, it will provide me with a way to immerse myself in the surroundings of my characters so that when I begin to write about them, I will know how they feel about their world.

You may have noticed by now that the common denominator in all this is dreaming. It is imagining how things will be before writing them down. It is seeing them in my mind and making certain that my vision of them is clear. It is picking and choosing, keeping and discarding, and above all, organizing. Much of it will never appear in the book. Much of it will prove to be superfluous to the story itself—deep background, which only the author needs to know. But all of it will keep me honest. It will inform my writing and provide the reader with a sense of confidence in my storytelling.

Of course, doing all this requires a lot of hard work, which is one very definite reason some writers steer clear of the outlining process entirely. Sure, the dreaming part is fun and freeing, but the organizing and writing down of plotlines and themes is tough business. It's much easier to forget all that and just sit down and start writing and see what happens. But if you check what most writers who don't outline have to say about their work habits, you will discover that they end up doing several drafts of a book and any number of rewrites afterwards.

I don't. I do one draft, one rewrite, and I'm done.

Is this because I'm a better writer than they are? In my dreams. No, it has to do with how you want to allocate your workload. The truth is simple. You can either do the hard work up front or do it at the end. By outlining, you are doing the hard work in the beginning—the thinking, the organizing, the weighing and considering, and the making of choices. By doing it early, you can save yourself a lot of time and effort at the end. Put it off, and you pay the price later. Writing requires a certain amount of suffering for the pleasure it gives back. Nothing you do will ever change that. But you can help yourself by distributing the load.

None of this is to say that by outlining you have eliminated the need for creative thinking during the actual writing process. What you have done is lay the groundwork. Writing the book will dictate the need for changes in your thinking. It will provide fresh insights into how the story needs to unfold. It will require new and better approaches to plot points you had earlier believed were good enough. But, gosh, look what you've got that other writers don't! You've got a blueprint to refer to. You've got a way to determine how those changes and insights and ideas will impact the rest of your book, and you can make sure that the impact is a positive one.

Moreover, you've freed yourself up to concentrate on the writing process itself, on the telling of the story, together with all its complex demands and mechanics. You don't have to burden yourself with also trying to figure out what is going to happen every step of the way. Sure, sometimes your plot comes easily enough. You just know what you're meant to do, and you do it. But lots of times it doesn't work that way. Lots of times it's tough sledding. You can grease your runners up a little bit by trying what I suggest and doing some of the hardest work up front. You can think your plot through before you start to write about it.

Lester del Rey used to tell me that thinking about a book before you wrote it was as important as the writing itself. Too many authors, he opined, just rushed right into their story without giving a thought to what they were doing. The result was a lot of very bad books and a lot of hard work for editors who had to try to fix them. At the time, I thought he was just being curmudgeonly. Now, I think he was being insightful.

A few years back, I started sending pictures of myself stretched out on a lounge chair, lying on a beach, eyes closed, soaking up the sun. I backed them on postcards that included a message that read something like “This is me at work.” It was meant as a joke, of course, but the truth is that this is exactly how a writer does some of his most important work. Dreaming opens the doors to creativity. Dreaming allows the imagination to invent something wonderful. Don't cheat yourself out of a chance to discover how well this can work. Don't shortcut the process.

Make dream time the linchpin of your writing experience. Start right now. Put down this book. Find a lounge chair and lie down and close your eyes. Let your mind drift.

Go some place you've never been, then come back and tell us all about it.

 

I told him what I wanted. He told me in response
and in no uncertain terms that I was crazy.
I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

 

H
OOK

I WAS SITTING with Judine in a café in Albuquerque's Old Town in the spring of 1991 when I made one of the worst decisions of my life. It was midday on a Sunday, the weather clear and hot and dry, and the plaza outside the café filled with shoppers and sightseers. I was in the middle of a book tour and had nothing to do until a book event at two that afternoon at a store called Page One. Judine and I had come to Old Town to eat New Mexican food and drink margaritas, and we had done plenty of both.

Because I was feeling so good about things, I decided to call Owen Lock. Owen had been editor in chief at Del Rey Books since Judy-Lynn's death in 1986. He was also my friend. Owen came to Del Rey as Judy-Lynn's assistant about the same time that
The Sword of Shannara
showed up on her doorstep, so we had sort of grown up together in the company. I reached Owen at home, and we talked about how the tour was going, what the weather was like, how Lester seemed with Judy-Lynn gone, and so on and so forth.

Then, just before hanging up, he mentioned a piece of good news. Del Rey Books had bought the rights to the book tie-in to a new Steven Spielberg movie called
Hook
, which was intended as a sequel to J. M. Barrie's
Peter Pan
. Robin Williams would play Peter, who has finally grown up, and Dustin Hoffman would play Captain Hook, who has not. The movie should be a huge success, Owen said, so Del Rey was gearing up for doing the book adaptation and a series of spin-offs on related subjects. What they needed to do right now was to find a writer for the adaptation. He would let me know whom they selected.

He hung up, and I went back to Judine to tell her the news. While sipping another margarita, I contemplated the prospect of a sequel to
Peter Pan
. It seemed a truly inspired idea. I was in love with it. More to the point, I wanted to do the book. After all, who better to write a sequel to
Peter Pan
than me, the boy who never grew up? Why should this project go to someone else when I was the best writer available? I was infused with sudden purpose. I had to write this book. I knew I could do it. I knew I could do it better than anyone.

I told Judine of my feelings. She knew me too well even then to argue the matter. Instead, she told me that if I felt so strongly about it, I should call Owen back. So I did. I told him what I wanted. He told me in response and in no uncertain terms that I was crazy. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I persisted nevertheless. Had he seen the script? Yes. Was it wonderful? Yes. Did it follow the tenor and line of the original? Yes. If I wanted to do it, would the publisher let me? A long, heartfelt sigh ensued through the telephone receiver. They would love for you to do it, he admitted. But you won't get paid anything, and you will live to regret the whole business. Movie people are not like us. They are not like anyone. Listen to what I am saying. Give it up.

But I didn't listen to him and I didn't give it up. I was enamored of the idea of writing the sequel to
Peter Pan
, even if what I was doing was only an adaptation of somebody else's work. I could shape it to my own vision, I told myself. I could embellish it with my own style. It would be wonderful, especially with a movie starring Robin Williams and Dustin Hoffman to help publicize it.

Thus did I run swiftly and foolishly to my doom.

When I got home, I spoke with Susan Petersen, then president of Ballantine Books, and told her what I wanted to do. She thought it was a wonderful idea. We quickly came to an agreement regarding advances and royalties against earnings. I was so eager to do this project that I paid almost no attention to any of the financial details. What was important was the opportunity to (a) write in the world of James Barrie and (b) attract the attention of new readers for my other books. I was sent a copy of the movie script, which I read and loved. The script, by Jim V. Hart, was true to the original story of
Peter Pan
and very inventive. I could hardly wait to start work. All that remained was a quick trip to Hollywood to visit the sets and talk with the Spielberg people (perhaps, if I was lucky, Steven Spielberg himself or one of the movie stars).

Matters started to deteriorate from there.

I asked if I could speak with the screenwriter, to get an idea of his vision for the script, and was advised that he was no longer involved with the project. The script was already under revision. That would be the same script that I found so wonderful, I thought. The first faint rumblings of uncertainty surfaced like poisonous gas, but I ignored them.

The night before I was to fly to Los Angeles for a visit to the movie set was the last happy moment I would experience on this project until well after it was finished. On that night, I still had expectations of something good coming out of it.

Judine and I had arranged to fly down and back on the same day. We would visit the sets, discuss the script, and obtain help with the details necessary to enable me to write the book. That was what we thought, at least.

The reality proved to be somewhat different. When we arrived, we were driven to a trailer on the set and met by a midlevel functionary who clearly had better and more important things to do with his time than mess around with us. He told me right off the bat that we wouldn't be meeting Steven Spielberg or any of the stars. Well, maybe a Lost Boy or two. Nor would we be allowed to visit any of the sets except for one. They were all closed to visitors or already dismantled. The one that was available was of the Lost Boy camp in Never Never Land. A bit dismayed, I agreed to accept the crumb that was being offered.

We went to the one set we were allowed on. It was surprisingly small, about the size of a big toy assembly on a playground. I studied it dutifully, made some notes, and then asked if I might take a few pictures. Certainly not, our escort declared. No pictures allowed. I nodded meekly. No telling what I might do with those pictures.

We returned to the trailer. I asked if there were any pictures of the settings or scenes or characters I could look at. Our escort produced a small set of perhaps half a dozen color photos and a somewhat larger set of pen-and-inks. They were useful, but there were not nearly enough of them. I asked if he had any other pictures or drawings that I could see. He didn't. I asked if he could send me some later. He said he would let me know. I asked if I could take what he had shown me or make copies. He said no. He would check to see if I could have copies later. I would have to sign a confidentiality agreement, of course.

I flew home in a funk. Judine, wisely, said nothing. I called up Ellen Key Harris, my editor at Del Rey for the project, and asked for help. She said she would see what she could do. By now I realized that this was going to be everyone's favorite response on this project. I sat and waited. One week. Two. Three. Finally, out of sheer frustration, I began writing anyway, blocking out scenes and describing places and characters as best I could. I called Ellen and told her that I was writing the book and I certainly hoped it turned out to resemble in some small way the movie it was supposed to be based on, but if it didn't, too bad, I was out of patience and through waiting.

Within three days, a passel of pictures and drawings arrived—along with the ubiquitous confidentiality agreement, which I signed and returned.

Then things began to get really weird. In the first place, the story opened with a Little League baseball game being played at Christmastime with umpires dressed as Santa Clauses. The scene involved Peter, who had forgotten who he was, and his son, who was a member of the team. The important thing to know is that the scene took place in New York City in December.

Now, even I know they don't play baseball in New York City in the winter. So I called to ask about this. Oh, that's been changed, I was advised. The scene now takes place in Denver.

Denver? Winter baseball in Denver?

Before I could figure out what to do next, the scene was gone, replaced by a Christmas pageant about
Peter Pan
. But it was the beginning of a disturbing trend that would haunt me for the remainder of the time I worked on the book. Movie scenes, it seems, are not shot in order. They are shot on a schedule that has to do with locations, actor availability, and weather conditions. Worse, if the director decides he doesn't like a scene he has already shot, he might go back and shoot it over entirely.

Which was what was taking place while I was trying to write the book. Scenes were summarily dropped or reshot, with fresh script pages arriving almost daily. I tried to work around this, but it became an organizational nightmare. Scenes that were formerly dropped would suddenly be put back in again. Scenes that were changed were suddenly changed back. I quickly learned to throw nothing away because today's garbage might well be tomorrow's treasure. The movie was lurching all over the place, and I was lurching right along with it, trying desperately to keep the book consistent and the narrative tightly woven. It was like herding cats.

Finally, the whole business ground to a conclusion. The movie was finished, the editing completed, the rewrites and reshoots over. The original script had disappeared as a recognizable whole, replaced by a series of cobbled-together parts that were truly scary. But I had done what I could and I was satisfied that the book worked. Enough was enough.

I turned the manuscript in and thought I was out of the woods. I was sadly mistaken, as Owen could have told me, had he deigned to bother.

Back came the manuscript with not one, not two, but three sets of rewrites from three separate movie people. I didn't know any of them and had no idea what their connection was with the Spielberg company. What I did know, after a quick reading of all three, was that they did not agree on any of the changes they had suggested. In fact, in many places, they were in direct contradiction.

Incensed, I called Ellen and used several four-letter words and a good deal of heat to describe how I felt about this whole business. I would not change one word of anything until there was some agreement between the people on the other end. In a huff, I sat down to wait once more.

The response, when it came, was truly bizarre. Without any explanation as to whom the three commentators were, I was told the following about each. Number One was a person of no consequence, just someone the movie company was trying to placate and whom I could ignore completely. Number Two was someone I should pay attention to, but whose suggestions I did not need to follow unless I chose to do so. Number Three was the only person who counted, and I must do as she ordered.

Fine. I tossed out comments from Numbers One and Two without another moment's consideration, thinking that the problem was solved. It was not. Number Three, whoever she was, had clearly never been involved in editing and perhaps never even read a book. A sample of her suggestions went like this. For a sentence that might read, “The room was night-black,” the comment would be, “This action does not take place at night.” For a sentence that might read, “It was as quiet as the sanctuary of a church,” the comment would read, “The setting is the Lost Boys' hideout, not a church.” A reference to Mickey Mouse brought a cryptic, “Delete all references to Disney characters.”

I am not making this up, as Dave Barry would say.

Editing
Hook
became something akin to pulling teeth. I just went along with most of it, preferring not to get bogged down in the details. It was easier to delete than to argue. Those pages where I could not morally and reasonably give in, I handed over to Ellen to resolve, which she mostly did. In the end, it all got ironed out, and I refused all phone calls from Owen for a month.

I had already decided I would never do this again. It got worse, of course. My name could not appear on the cover of the book in larger type than those of the screenwriters. There was to be no mention inside of my other work. I was not to talk about the book until the movie was out. When the movie opened, I did not get free tickets from the studio. I stood in line at the box office and bought them like everyone else. I never heard from Steven Spielberg or the studio about what they thought of my work. In fact, I never heard another word about the book from anyone involved in the movie ever again.

The movie opened to mixed reviews and never lived up to expectations. The book did moderately well, but not well enough to make anyone forget sliced bread. It didn't do a thing for me as a writer. I had learned a hard lesson, but I had learned it thoroughly. When I finally accepted a call from Owen, I told him this: No more movie adaptations for me.

I repeated this litany for the next eight years at every book event where I was asked about movie tie-ins. Never again, I announced fiercely.