The Telling Detail

It's the telling detail, some little thing that pulls the reader into the scene, making it real, giving them a visceral reaction.

The character doesn't wear tennis shoes, he wears black Keds high tops, and when you read that you can see them. The kitchen doesn't smell of cleaner, it smells of ammonia, or Fels-Naptha, and the acrid odor bites your nose as you read. He doesn't smoke a cigar, he smokes an Upman, or chews on a cheap stogie, and depending on which the author chose, it colors how you see the character.

It's a dozen little things like that that carry a scene, a chapter, a book. Not necessarily your brilliant writing, but your attention to details, the little things.

And just as importantly, your lack of attention can cripple a scene.

Just finished reading a mostly delightful mystery – Mr. Churchill's Secretary by Susan Elia MacNeal. Besides being a decent mystery story with the sort of plucky heroine it's hard not to like, it's set in wartime London, the homefront during the Battle of Britain and Churchill gives some of the most famous speeches ever. I'm a sucker for that kind of stuff, especially from that era.

The book is a mystery involving a young woman who becomes a typist and private secretary to Churchill right after he becomes prime minister. The story has all the requisite twists and turns and a denouement that doesn't strain credulity too hard. It's loaded with all the color and detail of life in war time London as the Luftwaffe fills the skies over England and the bombs begin to fall. Loads and loads of detail, maybe even a little too much. Descriptions of the rooms, of the neighborhoods, of the weather, of the gardens. Even with my love of the period I found myself skimming, especially when invited to look at yet another room with dark paneling and thick Persian carpets and large walnut desks and ... you get the point.

It's not the mass of details – it"s the right details.

But I was reading along and enjoying it until I came to this sentence at the beginning of chapter 33. "As the Moonbeam Orchestra played a cover of Duke Ellington's 'In the Mood,' Frain ordered champagne."

What? WHAT??!?

Duke Ellington's "In the Mood?" Is the lady high? OK, that's the sort of mistake anyone could make, I suppose, although how anyone could mistake Glenn Miller for Duke Ellington is beyond me. Yes, Ellington's was one of many bands that recorded the Glenn Miller hit, but it was Miller's song, and that's so obvious that it's hard to see how anyone could have missed it.

Am I taking this WAY too seriously? Probably. But it's a good thing the howling error occurred with only three chapters to go. I stewed over it all the way to the end, as the book came to its satisfying if somewhat predictable conclusion. If it had been part of the first time they went out drinking and dancing, in the early part of the book, I'm pretty sure it would have colored my enjoyment of the whole book. And it's the kind of thing that makes you think, "If she got something as simple as that wrong, what else in this mass of details and description did she get wrong?" I'll probably read the sequel, but I'll be watching more closely. I'm not sure I trust the author.

I'm probably an atypical case, but I'd be willing to bet that anyone who actually sought out the book because it's about wartime London would have known that and been as put off as I was.

So when you look for those telling moments, those critical details, it's probably a good idea to get them right.

Writing the Right Word

Last week I talked about words that don't work in a period piece, and my surprise to learn that both spud and smack were anachronistic for my setting in the year 1701.

But of course there are plenty of words that do work, and I don't mean just that they existed at the time, as important as that consideration is. Words that give not just the meaning, but the sense of being from a different era.

Porridge, for instance. It's more specific than oatmeal, has more of an older sound. Since the porridge in question was prepared by sailors, I could have gone a bit farther and called it burgoo, but I don't want to send my youngish readers scurrying for a dictionary every time they turn the page, for fear that they stop turning pages altogether.. The late, longtime grammar and style maven James Kilpatrick advised that you should use big words selectively, when nothing else will really do, not to show off how smart you are but when it conveys a shade of meaning that no other word does. They should be used like "rifle shots," he said, carefully aimed, and not as a linguistic scatter gun.

(And speaking of which, I had to be careful that in 1701 my characters were threatened by pirates carrying muskets, not rifles.)

Some of the right words just sound funny, which is a good reason for using them. Even if you don't know the word, context should get you most of the way to meaning. I'm proud to say I worked one of them in. I expect an editor somewhere down the line will question me on it, want it out, but I'm gonna fight for it.

When the tutor is yelling at Spider and calling him an unrefined, uncivilized fool, he calls him a "dunder-headed clinchpoop!"

Now, the first time I heard the word clinchpoop I assumed it referred to a person so obsessive-compulsive, so anally retentive, that he walked around with his butt tightly clamped. Actually is has nothing to do with constipation.

According to an article I found in the NYTimes online, clinchpoop is "a term of contempt for one considered wanting in gentlemanly breeding." A jerk, a slob, a rustic. And its origin goes back to the 1500s. So clinchpoop is in! And in the context, even if readers don't know the definition, they'll certainly understand the meaning.

Here are some other archaic terms that might be worth resurrecting, from buzzfeed.com.

Groak: To silently watch someone while they are eating, hoping to be invited to join them. Origin: Unknown.

Hugger-mugger: To act in a secretive manner. Origin:1530s.

Crapulous: Like clinchpoop, you might think this has something to do with excretory functions, but it doesn't. It means to feel ill because of excessive eating/drinking. "On March 18, after a night of St. Patrick's Day revelry, I felt crapulous." Origin: 1530s.

Firkytoodling: Foreplay. As in: "My boss caught me firkytoodling under my desk with the cleaning lady again." Origin: Unknown.

Jargogle: To confuse, bamboozle. Origin: 1690s.

Elflock: Tangled hair, as if matted by elves. Origin: 1590s.

Gorgonize: To have a paralyzing or mesmerizing effect on someone, but the reference clearly goes back to Medusa in Greek mythology. Origin: early 17th century.
Beef-witted: Stupid, imbecilic. Origin: 1590s.

Slubberdegullion: A slovenly, slobbering person. Origin:1650s.

Callipygian: This is one of my all-time favorite words. It means, "Having beautifully shaped buttocks." I long for the day I walk past a group of people and hear one of them say, "Hey, he's pretty callipygian for an old guy." Origin: 1640s.

Fuzzle: To make drunk, intoxicate. "Don't drive if you're fuzzled." Origin: 1910s.

Quockerwodger: A wooden puppet controlled by strings. As in: "The chairman has no real power, he is a mere quockerwodger." Origin: 1850s.

So next time you're writing and feeling puckish, take careful aim and let fly with one or two of these. But not too many. You don't want to jargogle your readers and make them feel fuzzled or beef-witted.

Spinning Wheels: So What Comes Next?

 “Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.”
Stephen King

The last words I posted when announcing I'd finished the revision of Scurvy Dogs! were "Now what do I do?" That wasn't hyperbole. I've spent two years with Scurvy Dogs! as my focus. It's done (for now.) What comes next?

I'm not referring to the next step. That's clear enough. Wait for and incorporate any of Tori's comments, send it to Eddie the Agent, wait for his thoughts. Meanwhile, wait for Eddie's notes on Chance. That's a lot of waiting.

And I'm hampered by the fact that as soon as those things happen, I have to work on those projects. Chance has a lot to recommend it, but is likely to need a lot of work. Starting a new project today that I'm just going to have to jump in and out of as other work intervenes doesn't sound appealing.

It's not like I don't have other ideas to work on, thoughts that seemed promising, which I jotted down. But at most I have a couple of weeks to work on any of them before other things will intervene.

On the other hand, I don't have time for dithering, either. I am not a young man and my lifestyle does not conjure images of long years ahead of me to do all the work I want to. I feel like the lover in Andrew Marvell's To His Coy Mistress.

Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
...
But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.

Yeah. So I need to get to work I want to take a look at my failed third novel, The Bones in the Closet. There was something there that had the kernel of a good story, but it went off the rails really badly. Very frustrating experience, and it kind of scared me. Got out of control and made me wonder if I really could do this, despite the fact that I had written two previous books I thought were pretty good. That failure made starting Scurvy Dogs! a little nerve wracking. Although in the end, I really think it's my best effort yet.

Perhaps I have just enough time before all the various notes start coming in to look over Bones and figure out what went wrong and how to tell the story I thought I was going to before the story got lost – literally – in the forest.

If not, I've got three ideas on the list after that. The point is, I'm a writer, so I should write. It's part passion, part compulsion – and part a job, without the luxury of taking time off. But launching the next project is another leap of faith.

Like Stephen King said, "The scariest moment is always just before you start."

Out of Time

The right word can be more than "What's the name for that thing?" Especially when you're writing something from an earlier era. Sometimes when you get caught using a word from the wrong time – an anachronism – no one will notice, and you can tell yourself "It doesn't really make a difference." But sometimes it's enough to jar the reader, if only momentarily, out of the world you've created.

About ten years or so ago some girl (I'm assuming here she couldn't have been more than 17) sent me the first chapter of her pirate romance that started with the female protagonist running in terror from the notorious pirate Blackbeard. The problem was, the story was set in 1820, and anyone who knows anything about pirates knew that by then Blackbeard had been dead for a century. It was one of those things so jarring that it was impossible to take her seriously. She was surprised when I mentioned that was a really bad mistake. What did it matter? In this case, it made it impossible to go another step in the story. She was flaunting the fact that she didn't know her subject. (The writing was also really bad, so no loss to the world of pirate literature.)

There's a difference between not knowing something is wrong – Tori just coined the phrase "Anachronistic Amnesia," where you can't remember if something is from the right time period – and not caring. Not caring means you aren't thinking about the reader, and they get sensitive, they don't like that. You have to be alert to it, and it's not that hard to check.

I've written three pirate adventures, Chance, Chrissie Warren: Pirate Hunter, and now, Scurvy Dogs. I have to be sensitive to word choice. For instance, I have had to guard against anyone ever saying they were OK, or okay, because it didn't show up in the language until 1839, according ot the Online Etymology Dictionary, a very handy source for writers of historical fiction.

Tori, who is reading the final draft of Scurvy Dogs! while visiting our daughter and son in New York this week, caught me in two more that I never even thought about.

I have the agitated cook peeling potatoes, "really hacking away at those spuds." Turns out the word spud goes back to the 15th century, but at that time it only to describe a kind of knife. It wasn't applied to potatoes until 1845, in New Zealand. Now I could argue that modern readers would know what I meant and that's what matters, but if the story is told in the first person in 1701, there's no way the character could have used it. So it's out.

I also have the character, 14-year-old Jamie, say that if he ever ran into the Roman poet Virgil, "I'd smack him." How could that possibly be wrong? It's onomatopoeia, right? Except it's not. The word existed as early as the 1500s, but it only described a type of boat. Surprisingly, it didn't mean "hit with the hand" until the mid 19th century.

Would either of those hurt the story? Almost certainly not. But why take the chance? I can find ways around both of those. The last thing I want is some know-it-all clucking his tongue at me, deciding I don't know what I'm talking about, and tossing the book aside.

You want your reader to follow the story eagerly, willingly. You want it to flow, carrying the reader with you. Every time you do something that might slow the reader, if even for a moment, just a hiccup, you're creating unnecessary roadblocks. If you interrupt the flow too many times, the reader may decide not to get back in.

It's 4 in the Morning, and I'm Finished

I thought I was almost done around 6 p.m., when I turned the computer over to my son Max, and got up to make dinner. Then, while sitting in the armchair after eating, something occurred to me that I should have thought of two years ago. I jumped up. Literally, I jumped out of the chair and almost touched the ceiling. I've gotta be careful, my hamstrings aren't as tough as they used to be.

It made total sense. Itchy John's knife. Bring it in again at the end. And if Buck had known about the squire and blamed him, that would bring that whole thing full circle to. It's like the old play writing maxim, if you show the audience a gun in the first act, it has to go off in the last. It applies here to. There's no point putting something in that doesn't have a payoff later. It's just wasted words. And you can't put in a payoff at the end if you haven't set it up in the beginning.

So I went back up into earlier chapters to set those things a little more firmly. Then I tossed about half of what I'd written today and got back to work.

It's now 4 a.m. on Aug. 21, so technically I missed my deadline by a day. But since I haven't been to bed since I started working this morning, I'm calling it one writing session. The last for Scurvy Dogs!, at least until Tori checks in, and then Eddie the Agent, and then whatever publisher buys it.

As Jubal Harshaw says in Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, editors like the taste of the coffee better after they've pissed in it.

And now I'm done. I wrote 4,538 words today, a little more if you count the stuff I tossed overboard.  Scurvy Dogs! is complete at 64,911 words, which is right about where I always thought it would be.

Now what do I do?

Well That Sucks! Elmore Leonard Died

What terrible news. Elmore Leonard died.

Leonard redefined crime writing, specializing in the fringe characters and the oddballs in circumstances spinning out of their control. If you read at all, you've probably read some of his stuff. Freaky Deaky. The Hot Kid. Get Shorty. Maximum Bob.  Maybe his best skill, beyond his off-kilter stories and amazing characters, was his ear for dialogue. Pick up any of his books, even the not really great ones like Be Cool. The dialogue crackles with authenticity. That's the way people talk.

In the movie version of Get Shorty, the screenwriter had rewritten some dialogue in the scene where Chili Palmer (played by John Travolta) goes to the coat check and finds his jacket has been taken by his nemesis, Ray Barboni. Travolta knew that the key to a character like Chili Palmer was not just what he says, but how he says it. So he got the exact working from Leonard's novel and told the director, "This is what I'm saying, not that."

The screenwriter thought Chili should say, "Where's my coat? You'd better find it. It cost $400."

The way Elmore Leonard wrote it – and the way Travolta delivered it – was this:

"You see a black leather jacket, fingertip length, has lapels like a suitcoat? You don't, you owe me three seventy nine. You get the coat back or you give me the three seventy nine my wife paid for it at Alexanders."

You see the difference? The first example is information. The second is character.

Leonard is well known for his 10 Rules for Writing. In his honor, I'll quote them here.

1.  Never open a book with weather.
2.  Avoid prologues.
3.  Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.
4.  Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said”…he admonished gravely.
5.  Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. 
6.  Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose."
7.  Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
8.  Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
9.  Don't go into great detail describing places and things.
10.  Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

So long, Elmore! Thanks for the great reads and great advice.

Wrapping Up Scurvy Dogs!

Didn't make my amended deadline, but I have no doubt I will finish Scurvy Dogs! today, and since that's my original deadline, I'm calling it a success.

If our family were better at planning, I probably would have made it. Tori is flying to New York today to visit our son Ben and daughter Millie. And everything was left to the last minute, as per usual, plus she had to spend about four hours at the DMV – about which I have plenty to say, but not here and now.

The reason for trying to be done by the 19th was so that Tori could read it on her Kindle on the plane. Now she can read all but the last chapter on the plane. I'll send her the wrap up tonight.

As it is, I basically finished the story and just need to tie it all up. Then give it another quick read through and call it good. If it meets Tori's approval, it'll be off to Eddie the Agent on Wednesday.

Friday I wrote 1,379 words. Saturday was an exciting 1,609 as the kids finally had to deal once and for all with Itchy John and his henchman Bill Dedman. And Sunday was exciting as hell, the return of the duplicitous (but funny, I hope) Carlton Lowell, and the final showdown. I wrote a sword fight that I really think is good. I found I got quite worked up and was pounding out the words as fast as my fingers could move. It's funny, at least to me, that when I write action my fingers fly. I get caught up and it just takes off. Suday I wrote 2,228. 

Scurvy Dogs! is at 60,227 words, with the final chapter (maybe two short chapters) still to come So right about exactly where I hoped it would be.

And it will be wrapped up today.