A Method to Madness
As I'm on the verge of beginning my third novel, tentatively entitled Eustace Saves (my second, Heritage, should see publication later this summer or early this fall) I thought I'd share a bit about my process, how I go from an idea to the cumbersome novels that some of you might one day read. I'm not advocating anything in particular about my method, I can't say if it's better or worse than others, it's just mine, a composite of years worth of figuring out what works best for me. Take it as you will.
Part 1 - The Idea
This part can take years, or seconds. My first novel, Renewal, came to me in its initial form in an evening, while watching an episode of Doomsday Preppers. It was just a seed - what if someone was made an unwitting member of a cult of crazy extreme preppers? - but with a little marination and revision it was a 500+-page novel within 18 months. Eustace Saves grew out of an idea I've been carrying around for more than 15 years: in North Carolina along I-40 in the eastern part of the state there are - or were in the late 90s/early 2000s - a series of underpass pylons that had been spray painted with the phrase "Jesus Saves" in the same exact handwriting. Someone had gone on a very specific road trip, and for a long time I wondered about what kind of person that might be, then I perverted what I came up with, made it much darker and dirtier, and a short decade and a half later, I've germinated what I think is the right story for the idea. And as for Heritage, it's a combination of instantaneous and festering ideas: I've known for 10 years I wanted to set a novel in part or in toto in the abandoned remains of Heritage U.S.A., the Christian theme park built by Jim and Tammy Faye Baker in the late 80's in South Carolina, but I never knew how to properly feature it until I combined it with another idea I had about a character who had been abducted as a child and now worked as a public relations agent for other missing children; this idea had come to me in an instant one night while watching the news. No matter how I came by them, in each instance I knew the idea was the right idea at the right time. There are plenty of half-formed concepts on Post-Its stuck to my bulletin board that I could have chosen from, but I go with my gut, try to build a bibliography that retains familiarity between books while simultaneously expanding my scope and style with each new project. At least that's the aim.
READ: Once the idea is set, concurrent with the following step I'll start reading/watching work I feel will in some way inform or inspire the work I'm trying to do. For example, as mentioned in an earlier post, when beginning work on Renewal I read books by Jim Harrison, Gillian Flynn, Elwood Reid and others, and I also watched several relevant films including The East, Ticket To Heaven, and tons of documentaries on cults. Too many, perhaps.
Part 2 - The Characters
Once I know the general world I want the book to be in, I need to know who all this stuff is going to happen to. Before I get into specifics, I look at what roles need to be filled. A protagonist, an antagonist, a motivation, a minor adversary, a wanted hindrance, and an array of color around them. I start with the physical, I describe them, draw them, get a complete picture so I can fill in the rest. I have a questionnaire I've culled together over the years, a trick I learned in grad school, that when answered for each of my main characters provides me the basis of who they are so I might inhabit their minds for the duration of our story. I want to know when they were born, where, to who, the kind of kid they were, what their friends were like, what happened to them after they got out of school, what sort of jobs they've worked, what are the three most important moments of their lives, how do they dress, talk, walk, sit, style their hair, what to they eat, drive, what are they capable of, what are they not capable of. So on and so forth until I have them fully in mind, until I can be them, in essence. Then I write their backstories. Birth til page one of the novel. Everything they've been through that's relevant to who they are now. These run a dozen or so pages per person, and maybe half that material will make it into the novel, maybe less even, but all of it is necessary to understand the pieces before I play them. I find that as I write these backstories, the main story starts to form itself in my mind, at least in terms of beginnings and possibilities. I start to see the seconday and tertiary characters that will be needed, the sidekicks and cohorts, the informers and propellants. Then next thing I know, I have an assembled cast.
READ: Here I'll take a couple weeks off to let the plot marinate while I read/watch work I think will inform the kind of people I'm writing about. For example, with Heritage - and this I mentioned also in another post - the novel is my first set in my native South, and as I've lived in the Pacific Northwest for a decade now, I needed to get back in a certain mindset, or rather a dialect-set, so sat with books by Larry Brown, Tom Franklin and others. The novel is also more of a straightforward thriller than Renewal is, so I took in some contemporary work by authros like Tana French and Lauren Beukes, as well as submerging myself in superior television programs like The Killing, Broadchurch, The Fall, The Bridge and a few others.
Part 3 - The Plot
I firmly believe that writing is like travelling: take a map and you can't get lost. You don't have to stick to that map, necessarily, but it's nice to have if you find yourself in unknown territory. So I plot, and I plot extensively, chapter by chapter, not in broad strokes but fine ones. I structure the entire book in dense, single-spaced manifestos that in all three instances thus far have hit around 80 pages. I work through the book chronologically, though on occasion future destinations pop into the present and have to be scribbled aside. This can take a couple of months. I break my novels into three smaller books - an unshakable effect of having cut my teeth as a screenwriter, where the three-act structure is God - so what I'll do is plot book one, read it, plot book two, read it, plot book three, then lastly read and edit the whole thing. It's manically obsessive, I know, but that's what it takes. For me, at least.
READ: Last chance before actual writing occurs, so this break, usually just one-book long, is all about style and voice, the kind of book I want to write, not necessarily related in subject or theme, just the kind of writing I want to keep in mind when doing my own. For Eustace Saves, the book I'm about to write, the book I chose to read (am currently reading) is Larry Brown's Fay. It has proven to be the perfect choice and even has narrative similarities in that it too features a character wandering through a part of the South, but more important is the way Brown tells the story - a rambling I'll save for another post later this week. Suffice it to say in this post, every step of the way what I read is equally as integral to the process as what I write.
Part 4 - Writing
Once more into the fray. This part takes as long as it takes, based on life, creative flow, variation from the map, more life, and my own simpering sense of self-doubt. The first draft of Renewal took 84 writing-days over five months. Heritage took 42 writing-days over six months. In the former case, I was working a full-time job and could only write a couple hours each weeknight; in the latter, we had just moved and I was looking for work and waiting to hear from jobs so had a little more time on my hands. Heritage also flowed a little easier than Renewal did, in part owed to the clarity of voice Renewal helped me achieve. But those are incidental excuses. Like I said, it takes as long as it takes.
READ: This round is pure pleasure. Usually two-books long, this is the palate cleanser. My first draft is done, I need to edit it, but before I do, I need to get my own work out of my head with someone else's, so I'll read books I've been meaning to get to that have come out during my writing cocoon, one of which is usually the latest Stephen King. He's always there, like a mountain or a missing limb. These books usually have zero to do with anything I'm writing, which is the whole point.
Part 5 - Editing
I go through a minimum of three drafts. The first is the writing draft, the vomit draft where everything inside me pertaining to the story goes on the page. It's the draft I don't think about, I just experience. Draft two is about reading with a clear head and cleaning up the mess, narratively. It's about filling in the gaps, it's about excising the excess, it's the sandpaper draft where you smooth the rough edges and start to see the true shape of the thing you've made. It's my favorite draft. Then draft three is about the details, making it sparkle, shine, sing and scream. It's about crossing the T's and dotting the I's, making sure all the loose ends are tied and knotted, and spell check spell check spell check. If I can't get to a presentable manuscript after three drafts, there's something fundamentally wrong with the idea or my execution of it, so I figure I'd be better off back at the drawing board. Fortunately, that hasn't had to happen yet. After three drafts it goes to my wife, who isn't a writer and that's the point. Of course I value the opinions and aid of other writers, but that's not who I'm writing for. I want an opinion from someone who isn't attuned to the work, but rather the effect of the work. And for me, it gets the job done, I get the kind of feedback I'm concerned with - style is subjective, you either like the way I write or you don't, but narrative isn't, it has to work, it has to make sense, and it has to have the effect you intended; people forgive style, but they don't forgive story - and using that feedback I make tweaks and save the draft with that oh-so-meaningful "FINAL" after the title. And that's that.
To even suggest there's a sinuglar method to creativity is ludicrous. There's no right or wrong way to get what's inside you into a clear, concise, consumable form. The fact that we consider polar opposites like Cormac McCarthy and David Foster Wallace both to be literary genuises is but one simple example of the divergent paths artists take to arrive at their art. So my point isn't that my method is right, I guess my point is that my method is there, it's the vehicle by which I arrive at my work, and in that regard, it's every bit as essential as the creativity that fuels it.
What's your method?
