Adventures in Pantsing: A Plotter Tries to Cut Loose

The first ghost story I ever wrote sucked royally. It was derivative as hell, like everything I wrote in middle school. I named it after my favorite Julee Cruise song ("The Nightingale"), called my ghost heroine Mina (I'd just read Dracula), and made the hero kill the ghost of the woman he once loved (more shades of Dracula). My eighth-grade teacher made just one comment. He wrote "Good word use" next to "tentatively." I got an A. Then he read it out loud to the class. I was a little traumatized by having my private creation shared with the world.

I haven't written a true ghost story since.

Until now.

For the hell of it, I revisited two ideas I'm still uncomfortable with: pantsing a story and writing a ghost story. Let me preface this by saying I am SO NOT a pantser. I need things to be spelled out, plot-wise and character-wise, before I feel comfortable diving in. I like knowing where I'm going, so I can focus all my effort on the language and descriptions. If I'm too worried about the how, I can't think about the what. And as for ghost stories, mostly I don't write them because it's so hard to come up with something original. Hell, after nine and a half seasons of Supernatural, what's left for the rest of us?

I. The Prep Work
As a writer, it's my duty to try and grow as an artist, right? All right, fine, challenge accepted. As an exercise, I forced myself to pants my way through a ghost story. No pressure, no word count, no real goals other than to write for 30 minutes during my lunch break at work and just see what happened. I chose the first setting that came to mind--the area I live in--and what it's famous for--the gold rush. A long-ass time ago (okay, it was October of 2013), I watched a Discovery channel show on the Gold Rush. A couple of elements really stuck with me, so I tied in two of them: a struggling group of miners called the Boston Company and a cholera epidemic that struck the gold fields. And I started typing.

II. The Opening
Predictably, it was ASSLOADS OF HARD to get going. I began with a lame description of setting. Normally, my inner editor would take over and tell me to delete it all, but what the hell, I was pantsing, which meant I didn't know what I wouldn't need. I typed and typed. Blah blah starlight, blah blah cholera. I knew something creepy would have to happen, so about a page in, I casually mentioned that one of the miners had disappeared. When his horse returned to camp, they found him chopped into bits, stacked in the saddlebags. That took care of the whole "introduce a conflict" thing.

But then I had to figure out who had done this evil deed. (A ghost, of course. This is a GHOST STORY, after all.) That's why it really sucked when I realized a man had done the deed. An old man. A weird man. But a man. Damn it.

In keeping with my being a plotter, I could have overruled my gut. I could have made the man a ghost because it made more sense. But being a pantser isn't always about what makes sense. So I allowed the villain to take shape as a man inside my head. To further the conflict, I had to send my hero out looking for this man. Because I'm kind of a bitch to my characters, I made him half dead from cholera. Real hard to aim a gun straight when you're not even strong enough to hold it up.

Now I started to feel things coming together. I had a man, a conflict, a weakness, and a creepy villain. This was going to be easy, right?

Nope.

Shit.

III. The Complication
Once I put my hero on a horse and sent him in search of the old weird man's cabin, I realized I had no idea what would happen when he got there. Because I had no idea why the old man did it. Insanity only works in the legal system; it's not a good way to motivate a story. Stories need to be tied together more firmly than our minds are in real life. So the old man can't be a lunatic. He must have had a good reason for butchering that poor miner. But what the hell was it?

My hero approached the cabin at night and called out to the old man. When in doubt, generate more conflict, right? This was the most direct way of doing that, so I went with it.

I hesitated here...should the old man actually answer the door, or should my hero have to spy on him to get the information he needed? I decided to go for broke here, and have a direct conversation between them.

The old man opened the door and invited my hero in.

And then I realized why: the inside of the cabin was hung entirely with guns. Muskets. Rifles. Of all ages and types. Mounted on the wall. All pointing toward the old man's chair by the fire. Apparently, my old man was a suicidal paranoid kleptomaniac nut job. But now I'd given myself another problem: who was this guy, and how did he get a collection of weaponry that included guns that were 300 years old? And why was he in the Sierra foothills with this massive collection of Renaissance-era European weaponry? What the hell was happening?

The old man was running away with my story, writing checks my brain couldn't cash. I had no idea how I would explain any of this, but these are the images that popped into my head and that my fingers typed out on the page. In the true spirit of pantsing, I let him do it. It went against the very fiber of my being not to stop, think, and really figure out who this guy was before continuing. But I didn't. I wrote a garbage conversation where the hero asked the old man if he murdered the miner. The old man said he did. No surprise, and no tension. I felt the story floundering. Where could it go from here? And wasn't this supposed to be a ghost story? I had no ghosts, no whodunit, no motive, and a buttload of guns I couldn't explain. Because pantsing is AWESOME that way. You will never do this again, I told myself. As Bartok had warned, this would only end in tears.

IV. The Payoff...Maybe
But the next day, on the way home from work, I had an epiphany. I remembered something from a trip to Santa Fe I'd taken years before. The city was settled ridiculously early in history, in the late 1500s if I remembered right. And then I remembered...weren't all those early Spanish explorers looking for the one thing the miners had just found in California? Holy shit. That was it. The link that made my plotting self giddy: a historical connection. The Spanish explorers who came to New Mexico were looking for El Dorado, golden cities that would be overflowing with riches for everyone. And did they find it? No, but the miners did. Hell, I live in El Dorado County.

But now I had another problem: how does this historical connection translate for these characters? There's no damn way a dude alive in 1849 would have been alive in the 1500s...or is there? This was supposed to be a ghost story, wasn't it? So maybe the old man's a ghost after all. But if he was really a ghost, why all the guns? Are there guns that can kill ghosts? I was getting backed into a corner by my own pantsing. God, this is painful, I thought. Why do people do this? When did thinking really hard become passe?

V. The Reveal
So I had to nix the full-on ghost idea. The man is a man, which explains why he needs guns. He is also 300 years old, which makes him a kind of living ghost. But how? And why? What did I know about Spanish explorers? Only what I remembered from grade school. But that wasn't strictly true. A couple years ago, when I got obsessed with genealogical research, I discovered that my great-grandma's grandma was a Sevier.

A little online digging produced some circumstantial evidence that links the Seviers to the name Xavier, which was originally Javier. It was Spanish, or to be more precise, Basque. One member of this family became incredibly famous. His name is Francis Xavier, the Catholic saint. He traveled to Asia to spread Christianity, and died in the Philippines. So now I had a famous explorer (sort of), a connection to Spain, and the right time period. Now I just had to connect Xavier to my old man.

In typical Jenni fashion (overdoing it and over-thinking it), I created a grandiose link between the two men. No, I won't tell you what it is. That would ruin the story. But I poured out the whole story through the old man's lips, as his cholera-weakened adversary lay on the floor of the cabin in defeat. But there was just one more problem left to solve. The ending.

VI. The Triumph
So, the good guy is lying half dead on the floor of the bad guy's weird cabin after a brief skirmish. It hardly seems fair. I mean, the bad guy wins? Whaaa? Is that how it works when you pants a story? Not if I have anything to say about it. I had to create a way for the good guy to triumph...even if his cholera kills him. 

Going back to the basic mechanics of fiction helped here. I had to think about what it was my villain (the old guy) wanted. And then I took that away from him, with one sentence from the younger man. So, whether the younger guy gets away and dies of cholera, gets away and survives, or is killed by the angry old man, no one wins. I like stories like that. When I'm doing literary-style stories, I always aim for the gray area. Black and white is good for genre fiction, but not a story like this. In that, I might have succeeded.

Which brings us to the end of the story.

Or is it? I still have to figure out how to explain all those guns, after all.

Damn you, pantsing.

How Gossip Girl Helped Me Revise My Plot

I'm a huge Gossip Girl fan. Deride if you must, but know that George Sand being the writer a character most wants to have dinner with was an actual plot point in Season 2 (episode: "New Haven Can Wait"). There was also a Wharton tribute episode ("The Age of Dissonance"), plus GG gave us a memorable nickname to denigrate hack literary writers: F. Scott Fitzjackass ("The Fasting and the Furious"). Suffice to say, there are a lot more literary Easter eggs in the show than appear at first glance.

What does this have to do with writing tips? 

I'm about 70% through the fourth draft of The Red Road. This is the do-or-die batch of revisions, the one where I have to make final decisions about what stays, what goes, and what needs to be added. Drafts 2 and 3 were mostly about cutting my ridiculously verbose paragraphs down to their essence, and losing the overly "literary" tone that appeared every so often. This draft is about plot and subplot arcs, character arcs, and themes. 

The good news: the book has plot and subplot arcs, character arcs, and themes. The bad news: they aren't right yet.

The other night, I was super frustrated by the amount of work left in front of me. So I did what any frustrated writer would do--poured a glass of wine, turned off the computer, and settled down to re-watch a Gossip Girl episode with the hubby. One of the million reasons why I love my husband is that he tolerates...dare I say shares?...my unholy fascination with Gossip Girl.  He routinely uses that "F. Scott Fitzjackass" quote. Anyway, we're currently on season 4, when the Brooklyn team (Jenny, Vanessa, and Juliet) work together to take down Serena.

You don't need to know much about Gossip Girl to understand this particular plot arc. In a nutshell, the "outsider" Brooklyn girls want to ruin Serena, a glamorous rich girl from the Upper East Side. Their plan is simple: one by one, they will strip away everything Serena has that they don't: a devoted best friend, two boys who like her, her academic future at Columbia, and her family's trust.

They develop elaborate ruses to strip away each of Serena's support networks, and then go in for the kill: one super-elaborate ruse that is meant to destroy Serena's credibility for all time. The girls map out each takedown and orchestrate them individually. And guess what? It almost works. Serena gets put in the nuthouse and everyone thinks she's a lying, slutty drug addict.

And then it hit me: The Red Road needs a little Gossip Girl action. One of the main problems I'm having is that I feel the heroine's actions are too abrupt in the third act. I take her from a smart but worried schoolgirl into a revenge-seeking assassin. It doesn't work because she doesn't have enough reason to jeopardize what she has going for her. 

I realized I need to get all Gossip Girl on her ass and strip away the things she has one by one:

• Best friends
• In GG, the villain selected Blair for entry to an exclusive on-campus club at Columbia, leaving Serena out in the cold. Blair, who's always had self-esteem issues where Serena is concerned, now feels like the superior one. 
• In my book, I need to make sure to isolate the main character by giving her friends what they want, so they have more reason to act selfishly and maintain the status quo than they do to support Emma.
• Her academic future
• In GG, the villain sends an email from Serena's phone, asking one of her professors to trade sex for grades. This is, of course, enough to get her in trouble with the dean, who wants to expel her. 
• In my book, I'm adding two new chapters that basically put a black stain on Emma's academic record--enough to make good schools question her suitability as a scholarship recipient. The action she takes is entirely her choice, which means she knows exactly what she's doing, but can't help herself. She'll have a choice, and I need her to make the wrong one.
• Her family's trust
• In GG, the villain drugs Serena, dresses up exactly like her and takes pictures of herself snorting coke, then dumps Serena in a crappy cross-town motel and basically waits for her to overdose. When Serena wakes up and calls for help, her family thinks she's returned to her old, careless ways that apparently involve doing massive amounts of drugs and generally not giving a crap.
• In my book, what would disappoint the family most is Em sabotaging her own future--and acting out. This family values strength and silence in equal measure. So the worst she could do is show weakness, make mistakes, and be vocal about it, forcing the other family members to witness her collapse. This happens after the incident I'm adding that destroys her academic future, in a new chapter or two I'll have to write from scratch.
• The boy who likes her

• In GG, the villain starts an anonymous rumor that Serena has an embarrassing case of VD. This makes both of the guys who like her consider other options. Once this is proven false, however, the villain has a backup plan. She masquerades as Serena (literally...it's a masquerade ball) and while disguised, kisses both guys. Naturally, there's photographic evidence floating around that turns both guys against Serena.
• In my book, this is the one step I'm not sure I want to take. I kind of want to keep her love interest on her side so she always has a way out...and then I want her to refuse to take it. 

Every single one of these Gossip Girl plot points applies to my character...and maybe to yours, too. 

The next time you're looking at your book's lumpy middle and wondering how to stiffen it up, think Gossip Girl. What does your character have that the villain needs to take away? Pick it off in small pieces, and those small pieces will add up to a collective whole that gives your hero plenty of work to do in the story's climax.

If all else fails, just stream old episodes of your favorite TV show. You never know what will spark an idea for your next plot twist.

5 Lessons Writers Can Learn from Pancho and Lefty

I grew up on country music. This was the late '70s and early '80s, so we're talking real country. Outlaw country.

Country that would duct-tape Taylor Swift's mouth shut, take away all Brantley Gilbert's jewelry, and tell Keith Urban that rehab is for quitters.

One of my all-time favorite songs is "Pancho and Lefty," made famous by Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard. It's a story song, written by Townes Van Zandt. I still hang on every word like there's a secret nugget of truth waiting to be discovered.

How is there so much embedded in one sub-five-minute song? Have a listen and we'll find out.




Now, how can writers learn to tell a story so simply, with so much depth? Let's take a look.

1. A first-person narrator telling a story about someone else can be really effective.

No less a writer than Jonathan Franzen tells us that we should write in third person. This is one of those "establishment" rules for serious literary works. The reasoning? Third person is more remote (read: mysterious), which makes the reader work harder. It's also less limiting if you want to explore multiple characters. Plus, you get to create both the narrator's persona and your main character's (note: these are NOT the same thing).

"Pancho and Lefty" doesn't follow the third-person rule. It has a first-person narrator; however, the narrator isn't the subject of the song. This accomplishes two things:

True story.

(1) it creates immediacy with the use of the "I" voice, which is why many writers use first-person voice
(2) it generates mystery since the "I" voice isn't the subject of the song.

Our narrator probably knows Pancho and Lefty, and might have witnessed the events in the song. But we don't know. (Mystery? Check.) Our narrator says, "Livin' on the road, my friend, is gonna keep you free and clean." Who is the "friend"? Is it the generic use of "friend" that he's using to tell a campfire story? Or is he singing to an actual friend, maybe Lefty himself, after the events of the song? The narrator holds himself back from us, not making this clear. (Remote? Check.)

2. The right similes can set a tone without a single adjective.

In the first verse, we get two similes in a one-two punch: "Now you wear your skin like iron / Your breath as hard as kerosene."

Think about that. What does it mean to wear skin like iron? It means you think you're invincible. You think you can take a licking and keep on ticking. Or it means you've hardened yourself to the outside world so it can't reach you, no matter how hard it tries. (Unless you rust...that would suck.)  Each of these meanings make the simile richer. And here's the kicker: who is the singer talking to? Who wears his skin like iron? A man listening to the story? Lefty? Is he talking about himself in some weird reflective way? We don't know. But we do know this song is going to be about a mysterious bad-ass. This simile sets a mood, which is what all good storytellers must do.

And what the hell does it mean to have breath as hard as kerosene? Kerosene's a liquid. Liquid, by definition, isn't hard. Or is he referring to its scent, its noxious fumes? Those things are gases, which also by definition, are not hard. We're taking a trip through the three stages of matter here, just working on an interpretation of a single simile. Using "hard" to describe something that isn't hard works well here, especially following on the heels of the "skin like iron" simile. Skin is not like iron, and breath is not hard. But isn't that so much more effective than saying, "This is a song about some hardened criminals?"

3. Using action as a form of characterization works really well.

Also a true story.

It's pretty boring when someone says, "John was a good man" or "John was a bad man." What does "good" or "bad" mean? These aren't absolutes, especially in fiction. It's far more effective to say, "John rescued the cat in the tree because it belonged to the little girl down the block" or "John skinned the neighbor's cat in retribution for the loud party three nights back." This lets the reader place John appropriately on the scale of goodness and badness.

That's what our narrator is doing in this song. Pancho "wore his gun outside his pants / For all the honest world to feel."  I think "feel" should be "fear" here, but that's just me. In any case, the narrator isn't saying, "Pancho was really good at shooting people" or "Pancho had a death wish." No. He's telling us something about Pancho that's revealed through his action. What does it mean to wear a gun outside one's pants? Several things: Pancho means business. Pancho isn't afraid of conflict. Pancho is confident in his abilities. Pancho wants you to stay the fuck out of his way. So simple, yet so effective.

Lefty gets the same kind of characterization in the beginning of the next verse. "Lefty he can't sing the blues / all night long like he used to / The dust that Pancho bit down south / ended up in Lefty's mouth."

That's a powerful way of saying, "Lefty feels like shit for the role he played in Pancho's death." Instead of using the most obvious word on the planet ("guilt"), the narrator ties Lefty to Pancho's death using setting and figurative language. Lefty doesn't have a literal mouthful of dirt. But he's carrying a crap-ton of baggage that has to do with Pancho's death, so much baggage that he can't even sing anymore. We're left to wonder...is that how Lefty earns a living? Is he so broken up over his buddy's death that can't earn a living? This image conveys emotion and suggests conflict in a few simple words. Damn.

4. Be specific with names and places.

There's a beautiful juxtaposition in this song between the vagueness of the story itself and the concrete setting. We don't know who the narrator is. We don't know if he's talking to Lefty or about him. We don't know for sure what went down between Pancho and Lefty (although we can guess). But we do know Pancho died in Mexico. And we know Lefty "split for Ohio." Later, we get more detail: Cleveland's cold. Even here, we have layers. No shit, Cleveland is cold. The average temperature in January is about 28 degrees Fahrenheit. But is it also cold because Lefty lacks Pancho's companionship?

What I love here is the specificity of "Cleveland." Lefty didn't go "out west" or "down south." There's something so much more pathetic about him shacking up in Cleveland, a non-glamorous city that's stuck between the midwest and the east. With all apologies to Cleveland, perhaps the idea here is Lefty's in nowheresville. But rather than say it, the narrator uses a specific place that plants that idea in our heads.

5. Leave a little (or a lot) to the reader's imagination.

Probably not a true story.

One of the best parts of this song is its mystery. The narrator doesn't tell us exactly what happened. How did the Federales finally get Pancho? Why did Lefty split on the day he died, with a mysterious sum of money? Did Lefty sell Pancho out? Probably. Why did Lefty do it? We have no idea. A secret dream of making it big as a singer someday? The need to get out of a life of crime? Why didn't he have the balls to say, "Hey, Pancho, I'm gonna hang up the old gun belt now and start singing showtunes for tips. You're cool with that, right?" Is it really a commentary on friendship, on weakness of character, or misguided loyalty? Or all these things? Or none of them?

We don't know, and that's the way it should be. That's why this song needs a narrator who isn't Pancho or Lefty. That's why it's so much more powerful when we hear about Lefty's inability to sing anymore. That's why it's still moving at the end of the song, when not only Lefty but the Federales are old and gray. Everyone involved still remembers, still feels bad, still has some regrets. It's that important to them. And now it's that important to me, because I've just written 1,500 damn words about an old-ass country song.  

10 Round Gothic Novel Smackdown: Susanna Kearsley vs. Barbara Michaels

I love Gothics. I can't help it.

Literary types will wrinkle their noses, but they fulfill a vital purpose in a young girl's reading life: wish fulfillment and escapism. I might not be young anymore, but my head can still be turned by a book description with words like "windswept shores," "unsolved mystery," and "buried secrets."

That's why I snapped up Susanna Kearsley's The Shadowy Horses when Amazon offered the Kindle version for $1.99. But instead of describing all the ways Kearsley's book missed its mark, I decided to compare it to a book called The Sea King's Daughter by an author who has the Gothic style mastered: Barbara Michaels.

Let's take a look at the ways each book delivered or failed to deliver on the promises that are implicit in a good Gothic novel. We have Kearsley in blue trunks and the Michaels in red trunks.

Round 1: Young, pretty, usually naive heroine.

Kearsley: Check (mostly). Verity Grey is an archaeologist who works for the British Museum. She has academic and professional chops, yet still comes across as younger and less experienced than the other archaeologists in the novel. Most, if not all, of the male characters reference how pretty she is, including a ghost and a small boy. This actually gets kind of irritating after awhile.

Bonus: Does the heroine's name have special significance? Yes. "Verity" means "truth." Verity's employer refers to this when asking Verity for her opinion, saying he'd believe her over other less-than-truthful characters.

Michaels: Check. Sandy Bishop is a college student who, although she's a great swimmer and diver, isn't a professional treasure hunter. She and her stepfather discovered a Spanish galleon sunk off the Florida coast, but the conditions were such that amateur divers could make the discovery without specialized equipment. Now, her estranged archaeologist father has asked her to come help search for Minoan treasure in Greece. Her naivety comes without question; Sandy is going to college to become a PE teacher, for heaven's sake.

Bonus: Does the heroine's name have special significance? Yes. The very first line of the book is, "Don't call me Ariadne. That's not my name anymore." Sandy's real name is that of a Minoan princess who betrayed her father, Minos, to escape with Theseus after he kills the Minotaur. Unfortunately for Ariadne, Theseus ditches her not long after this. During the course of the book, Sandy finds disturbing similarities between herself and the mythological Ariadne.

Why does this matter in a Gothic novel? Part of the fun of reading a Gothic is seeing how the character fails to see the warning signs of a dangerous situation unfolding around her. She needs to be trusting so she can fall for a dashing but dangerous love interest (see point 3 below). Also, she needs to have somewhere to go in terms of character development. We have to see her getting smarter and being changed by her experiences as the book develops.

Who wins the round?  It's a tie. Verity has special knowledge, while Sandy has a special skill. Verity has made bad relationship choices, Sandy makes some bad choices period. Both heroines are likable, but Sandy stands up for herself a bit more convincingly. Overall, though, there's not a clear edge for either author.

Round 2:  Interesting location in which the heroine feels out of place.

Kearsley: Check. Verity travels to Eyemouth, Scotland, a cold and dreary place that's a far cry from the London hustle and bustle she's used to. She can barely understand the thick Scottish accent, and is constantly having to look words up in a Scots dictionary. It's easy for the reader to picture the generic kind of windswept moors described in so many Gothic novels, but Kearsley adds a great deal of description to help you get a more accurate mental picture of local geography, festivals, and traditions. There are points, however, where the book feels like a travelogue as much as a narrative.

Eyemouth, Scotland.
Image by Flickr user David Farrer.
Used with Creative Commons license.

Bonus: Do you experience a local festival? Yes. Verity and her love interest, Davy Fortune, attend the crowning of the Herring Queen. The problem with this is that nothing really happens except the festival. I kept waiting for some dangerous incident to occur, but all they did was wander around and remark on how they couldn't wait to make out later. The festival itself wasn't integral to anything that was said or done during that scene. This is bad. Writers: if you're going to indulge in local color, it MUST tie into the plot.

Michaels: Check. Sandy travels to Thera, a Greek volcanic island that was once a stronghold of the Minoans. There's a far more serious language barrier here since Sandy doesn't speak, write, or read Greek. You get a lot of description in this novel, too, but it doesn't weigh down the story like Kearsley's does. The landscape also clearly pertains to the plot since Sandy is helping her archaeologist father look for the remains of Minoan treasure in the island's volcanic caldera.

Thera, Greece.
Image by Flickr user The Philly Lambs.
Used with Creative Commons license. 

Bonus: Do you experience a local festival? Yes. Sandy witnesses a ritual in which the women of the village carry a saint's image around the town to bless the houses and fields. Michaels does it right by showing the village women making way for one other mysterious woman who comes down from her cliffside villa to attend the festival. Obviously important and held apart from the local peasant women, we take note because the other characters do, too. As Sandy's father joins her, he catches sight of the mysterious woman...and promptly freaks out, fleeing the scene. This WTF moment helps break open the subplot that has to do with the goings-on of the previous generation.

Why does this matter in a Gothic novel?  Part of the fun of a Gothic is escapism combined with wish fulfillment. If you're a bored housewife in Lincoln, Nebraska or a lonely single girl in Bakersfield, California, you'd probably rather read about moors or desert sands or even Asiatic steppes than, say, Chicago. Both Greece and Scotland qualify as exotic locales that pique my interest. Also, Gothics need to take place in an isolated location so the characters have a hard time leaving or running away when the scary shit starts to go down.

Who wins the round? It's another tie. Both books feature an archaeological mystery that's intricately tied to their settings. Both are described so that you feel you're there. Kearsley's descriptions pall after awhile, but they're more lush in general than Michaels, so there's no clear winner.

Round 3: Dashing but dangerous love interest.

Kearsley: In this corner, we have David (Davy) Fortune. That name is so awesome I'm jealous I didn't think of it first. In terms of description, David is tall, broad-shouldered, handsome, dark-haired...a veritable Scottish Heathcliff who actually wears a kilt in one scene. Visually, Kearsley is on track for the win.

However, poor Davy comes up short in the "dangerous" category.  Every good Gothic heroine needs to think that her handsome, stalwart man might also be the bad guy who's trying to scare her away from her goal. Otherwise, where's the fun in that? The relationship needs challenges. In a romance novel, those challenges are usually communication issues or personality flaws in the hero and heroine.  In a Gothic, those challenges need to be based on danger and uncertainty.  The hero needs to walk that fine line between smokin' hot and holy-crap-this-guy-might-be-trying-to-kill-me. Unfortunately, the relationship between Verity and Davy had no challenges whatsoever. It also had very little heat.  A fifth-grader could read this book without getting any untoward ideas.

Michaels: In this corner, we have Jim Sanchez. He's also tall and broad and handsome, with a healthy tan from working outdoors. He doesn't always button his shirt all the way, which is good for Sandy, but also fits with his character. It's hot as hell in Greece in the summer and he's an archaeologist. Plus, this book was written in 1975, when Burt Reynolds and Tom Selleck did this sort of shit all the time.

The "danger" category is also a little light for Jim. However, on a strict one-to-one comparison with David Fortune, Jim takes the cake. At one point, he tells Sandy he'll do anything he can to stop her from diving and looking for Minoan treasure. Of course, he camouflages any nefarious intent by claiming it's for her own safety, but the reader understands there's potential menace there. Also, Jim offers to go swimming with Sandy every day, ditching work to do so. This comes off not as chivalrous, but as creepy. He just wants to be there if and when she discovers something.  This adds to Jim's vague sense of menace. Again, it's not much, but it's more than Davy Fortune gets.

Why does this matter in a Gothic novel? It all goes back to escapism. Women readers want to meet a man they'd fall in love with on the page. That love needs to be tested.  So if they think that handsome devil might actually be a devil, it makes it all the more delicious when the heroine (and the reader) still can't resist his charm and good looks.

Who wins the round?  Michaels.  If it were based on name choice alone, it'd be Kearsley by a landslide. But David Fortune is never menacing in the way a good Gothic hero needs to be.

Round 4: A nurturing father figure.

Kearsley:  Check. It's eccentric millionaire and maligned archaeologist Peter Quinnell, who has spent most of his life looking for the lost Ninth Roman Legion, which disappeared somewhere near Eyemouth. Quinnell is handsome and charming, but most of his colleagues think he's also batshit crazy. Verity starts out thinking he might be nuts, but realizes he misses very little and actually is one of the sharpest guys around.  He's kind to Verity, puts her up in his mansion, really likes cats, and is free with his liquor. I like the guy already.

Michaels:  We have several candidates here.  You could argue that this figure is:

• Frederick, Sandy's abrasive professor father. He's rude and self-centered, he is teaching her about archaeology and gets really surly when she and Jim are together.  
• Sir Christopher, an archaeologist digging on the other side of the island. He's antagonistic toward Frederick and takes an interest in Sandy, offering her money so she can get the hell out of Dodge, as well as a job next summer.  
• Jurgen, a mysterious German colonel who figures heavily in the second half of the novel. At several key points, he seems to be warning Sandy and protecting her against the machinations of his own lover, Kore.  

Why does this matter in a Gothic novel?  For some reason, Gothics usually have nurturing father figures and menacing mother figures. It's all a part of isolating the heroine. You can't give the heroine a dependable best friend or an older female mentor, because then they could help her see past her own naivete. Uh-uh. Not in a Gothic. She can have a kindly older male caretaker or mentor, but when it comes to matters of the heart, this person has to remain clueless.  This is why an older, grandfather-type plays well in these kinds of stories.

Who wins the round?  It's a tie. None of Michaels's characters fit the bill as well as Peter Quinnell does for the Kearsley book, but at the same time, the Michaels story is richer because each of these characters brings a piece of the "father figure" mythology.  

Round 5: A mysterious and menacing older female figure.

Mrs. Danvers from Rebecca is the OG
when it comes to the menacing older
female character in Gothic novels.

Kearsley: There's a menacing and vaguely mysterious female figure, all right, but she's younger instead of older. Her name is Fabia, and she's Peter's granddaughter. She's not a professional archaeologist like Verity--she's just lending a hand for her grandfather. She stays out late, dislikes Verity, and has it out for Peter because she feels Peter loved archaeology more than Fabia's father (Peter's son). Verity never quite trusts her, which is smart. However, Fabia doesn't do any of the traditional menacing things, like tell the heroine, "You need to leave for your own good or bad things will happen to you."  Although Fabia does pose a danger late in the novel, by then, it's really hard to give a crap.

Michaels: We've already mentioned Kore, the strangely alluring older woman who comes to the village festival and freaks everyone out. She's actually the mistress of a mysterious German colonel who lives in a fancy villa up on a cliff above the village. She is not German, however; she is Greek. This brings up a lot of loyalty issues for the older village folk, for whom World War II wasn't that long ago. As the book goes on, Kore gets more and more mysterious. At one point, she walks straight up to Sandy and warns her to get lost. What does she know that Sandy doesn't? Later in the book, Kore takes care of Sandy after an accident. She chants, goes into trances, watches Sandy while she's sleeping, and lets weird guests into the villa during the middle of the night. Yes, this qualifies as menacing and mysterious.

Why does this matter in a Gothic novel?  The menacing female is very important. You have to fight fair, and as a writer, it's a little unfair to pit a big, strong man against a tiny, seemingly defenseless female. It's fine to hint that the big, strong man is out to get her, but usually, the villain or villain's assistant is a woman. This way, it's a fair fight when the heroine gets to take her down. Plus, it's very traumatizing for a woman to read about a woman being victimized by another woman. We're used to reading about glass ceilings or horrible male bosses or terrorists/kidnappers who are male. But when our heroine is put down or led astray by a fellow woman? That's disturbing on so many levels.  After all, as Madeline Albright said,

"There is a special place in hell for women who don't help other women."

Who wins the round? Michaels. Fabia, Kearsley's antagonistic character, never really gets up to much menace until it's too late to care. Kore gets kind of annoying toward the end of the Michaels book, but I'd take annoying and mysterious over Fabia's annoying and...just annoying.

Round 6: Incidents of danger that warn the heroine away from her current course of action.

Kearsley: Nope. Not even close. There's no actual villain, violence, or conflict for most of the novel. (Note to Kearsley: Are you kidding me?) This is what irritated me most about the book.  A couple times, objects sort of move around, presumably at the hand of a ghost.  But although the Sentinel is creepy, this ghostly Roman soldier never harms anyone. Most of the characters never even interact with him.

In addition, there are no accidents sabotaging the dig, no one warning the archaeologists to stop looking for the Ninth Legion or else, nothing remotely sinister. No one wants to steal the treasure, stop the excavation, or harm any of the participants. Mostly it just rains and people stop work to go inside, pet cats, and get drunk. Not a single character's physical safety is endangered until the final chapter, when the ridiculous climax and denouement occur. This makes for a pretty boring read, especially in a book that seems to hew so closely to many other Gothic tropes. One character, whose fey son can see and talk to the ghost, tells Verity to stop using the boy to communicate with the ghost, but there's no hint of the "or else" that every good Gothic needs. Writers, you can't build a strong plot without conflict and an antagonist. I can't believe the Kearsley book was such an epic fail on this account.

Michaels: Check. We've got spies, rockslides, booby traps, errant gunshots, a kidnapping disguised as a rescue, drugging, and more. There are a buttload of reasons why Sandy needs to say sayonara to her father's dig, but in traditional Gothic fashion, she stays.

Why does this matter in a Gothic novel? The stakes have got to increase as the book goes on. Verbal warnings can only go so far. The villain needs to do things that make the heroine fear for her life. This not only makes it more interesting for the reader, but it also gives the heroine a chance to show her mettle.  Unless she's tested, how will she develop as a character?

Who wins the round? Michaels. No contest.

Round 7: Events that seem to be supernatural.

Kearsley: This started out well. There's a ghostly Roman soldier haunting the dig site. He's called the Sentinel, and seems vaguely menacing. The only person who can see him or hear him is a little boy, Robbie, the son of Peter Quinnell's housekeeper.  Robbie is a little disturbed by some of the encounters with the ghost, and there's one creepy scene where Verity feels the ghost near her in her office. But for the most part, the ghost is benign. In fact, the ghost's true intentions are revealed a little too early, if you ask me. Overall, the supernatural peters out without providing much more than a bit of atmosphere and a hint of conflict for the ghost whispering boy's father, who thinks he and his son are being used by the uppity archaeologists.

Michaels: This started out well, too. Sandy, who has never been to Greece, starts having weird living daydreams where she knows she's been to some of these places before. She sees an artifact in a Greek museum and knows its purpose, sees herself using it in the past. There's some mysterious connection between Sandy, her father, the legends of Atlantis, and the destruction of Crete. There's also a local female-based cult that mixes elements of Christianity with earlier pagan beliefs, including the idea of ritual sacrifice. Although all of these elements seem like they should be tied together, they don't really coalesce in the end. In the first part of the novel, Sandy's seeming past-life experiences play a large role. They don't in the second, and the novel ends with a weak return to them that doesn't really explain anything. Writers, if you can't explain something that seems supernatural, don't include it. Tie it to your plot, provide hard details of how it's happening, or forget about it.

Why does this matter in a Gothic novel? It makes shit interesting. Again, it's all about upping the ante and giving the heroine more than she can handle. Not only does she need to sort out her feelings for the hero and deal with the antagonistic female in her life, but now she's supposed to deal with ghosts? Jesus, our heroine says. Give a girl a break.  But we can't, because that's how books work.

Who wins the round? It's kind of a fail-tie. Both authors introduce supernatural elements that aren't really explained and tied to the on-the-ground events well enough.

Now, there are a few characteristics of both books that aren't necessarily de rigeur for Gothics, but that merit additional comparison:

Round 8: An archaeological mystery.

Plaque on the spot where the Ninth
fled Boudicca's army in 61 AD.
Image by Flickr user Dave Crosby.
Used with Creative Commons license.

Kearsley: Check. The Ninth Roman Legion marched deep into the north of England to subdue the warlike border tribes. They vanished sometime between 108 AD, when they rebuilt the fortress at York, and about 150 AD. They were never heard from again. It's a damn good premise, and made me seek out more information about the historical mystery. The book doesn't really solve the mystery one way or another, which is to be expected based on the set-up. Because the mystery still exists, Peter Quinnell can hardly claim to have found conclusive proof that the Ninth was massacred on the Scottish border (although that's what the book hints at).

Ruins of the Minoan
palace at Knossos, Crete.
Image by Flickr
user inis22mara.
Used with Creative
Commons license.

Michaels: Legend says that the lost city of Atlantis fell into the sea, somewhere in the Atlantic. But what if Atlantis were really in the Mediterranean? What if the mystical city were really a garbled representation of the fate of the Minoan civilization? A cataclysmic volcanic eruption in about 1500 BC destroyed the Minoan civilization on Crete and Thera, a thousand years before Plato described Atlantis in his writings. Frederick and Sandy are looking for artifacts that might be buried under the water, proving that a magnificent city did fall into the ocean, and that Atlantis can and should be identified with the Minoans.

Who wins the round? Tie. These are both awesome archaeological mysteries to explore. Both authors provide information about the mystery's set-up as well as tidbits that have been uncovered to support or detract from the characters' theories.

Round 9: Nightmares of the heroine.

Kearsley: Verity dreams that she hears horses' hooves pounding the ground outside her window. But no one else hears the horses, and when she finally mentions it, everyone confirms that there are no horses on the grounds that could possibly have made the noises she heard. Ghost horses! Cool, right? Unfortunately, the nightmares don't lead her to any conclusions, and don't really represent anything. Are they supposed to be the ghosts of Roman horses? Do they mean the Ninth is really there, at Eyemouth? Verity doesn't come to either of these conclusions. It's a huge missed opportunity for Kearsley. Plus, it's also the title of the damn book, so you'd think it would mean a little more.

Michaels: Sandy dreams that she's in the Labyrinth with the Minotaur. She watches Theseus follow Ariadne's ball of string to the center of the maze, where he'll face off against the nightmarish creature (half-bull half-man). The dreams are extremely vivid, pretty well done, and creep Sandy out. They cause her to identify with her real name, Ariadne, and make her see the connection between Ariadne and herself: will she betray her father for Jim the way Ariadne betrayed her father, Minos, to run away with Theseus?

Who wins the round? Michaels. The dreams actually tie into the symbolism of her name and the mythology behind it.

Round 10: The sins of the fathers. 

Kearsley: Yes, the doings of the previous generation come back to bite the heroine's generation in the butt. I won't say how, in case you want to read the Kearsley. But there is a secret that leaks, and it leads to the only real incident of physical danger for anyone in the whole book. Still, that being said, the secret isn't really that big deal, and the reveal feels minimal and lame and rushed. Plus, neither the secret nor the reveal has a damn thing to do with the archaeological mystery or the ghost. It's just crap the characters have to sort through.

Michaels: Yes, the doings of the previous generation come back to bite the heroine's generation in the butt. In fact, there's an entire subplot involving Frederick, Sir Christopher, Jim's uncle (a cohort of Frederick and Sir Christopher's), Kore, and Jurgen. Because this book takes place in 1975, the previous generation's escapades took place during World War II and involve the resistance movement against the Nazis on Crete. There's something hinky between Frederick and Kore, and we find out that someone betrayed someone else  to the Nazis all those years ago. Yeah, that's pretty kick-ass.

Who wins the round? Michaels. Come on. Weak drawing room intrigue or a World War II resistance movement?

Okay, after 10 rounds, it's time to crown a winner!

Rounds tied: 5
Rounds to Kearsley: 0
Rounds to Michaels: 5

Now, this isn't to say the Michaels book is perfect. It's not. It has some pretty big flaws in the second half of the book. However, it kicks the crap out of Kearsley's limp, dreary, soggy tale. The winner is Barbara Michaels.

Using Present Tense

So, I started reading Philippa Gregory's latest, The Lady of the Rivers.  Something about the way it's written is bugging me a little.  It's in present tense.  Is it me, or is there very little point in writing a historical fiction novel in present tense?  We know these events took place in the past.  It feels a little disingenuous to think using present tense will make the past come alive.  Isn't that what good writing and research are for?

So I started wondering....what's the point of using present tense in fiction?  Is there one at all?  I'm not convinced there is.

The first book I read that used present tense was Anita Shreve's Fortune's Rocks.  This, too, was a historical.  It weirded me out at the time, but I realized the present tense did force me to slow down as I read.  Maybe this was the point.  Maybe it had nothing to do with it.  I remain unsure.

My mentor professor always discouraged the use of present tense as an MFA program affectation.  I tend to agree.  Here's the logic:  using present tense draws the reader in more deeply, creating a sense of increased intimacy and timeliness for the characters.  I'm gonna call bullshit on this one.  If you're a good writer, you can do all of this in past tense.  You do not need to warp the space/time continuum and pretend that each sentence is happening right now.  I don't think it increases intimacy.  I think it creates awkward phrasing and draws attention to itself needlessly.

Here's an example from the Gregory book:

The girl looks steadily at all of us and gives a nod of her head to each.  As she looks at me I feel a little tap-tap for my attention, as palpable as the brush of a fingertip on the nape of my neck, a whisper of magic. I wonder if standing behind her there are indeed two accompanying angels, as she claims, and it is their presence that I sense.

The prose feels clunky to me.  If I'm reading a 400+ page historical novel, chances are I'm okay with being told events happen in the past.  Chances are, I'm already interested in the personages featured in the novel.
Just for kicks, I'm going to rewrite it in past tense, below:

The girl looked steadily at all of us and gave a nod of her head to each.  As she looked at me I felt a little tap-tap for my attention, as palpable as the brush of a fingertip on the nape of my neck, a whisper of magic.  I wondered if standing behind her there were indeed two accompanying angels, as she claimed, and it was their presence that I sensed.

Overall, I'm giving the nod to the past tense.

Laura Miller, writing for Salon.com, quotes several established writers (Bill Gass, Phillip Pullman, Phillip Hensher) as being against present tense storytelling because it hints at a sort of lack of nerve, lack of confidence, or possibly aping of a literary trend.  I agree.  Miller cites Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall as a present-tense novel that works, but fails to ask the question:  wouldn't it have worked just as well in past tense, too?  It's the characterization of Cromwell that's brilliant, and characterization happens in past tense as well as present tense.

I just don't think I can be convinced that present tense adds something that would be irrevocably lost if it were taken away.  Miller cites The Hunger Games as being acceptable, if not better, in present tense in order to increase suspense.  But it's written in first person.  Um, hello?  The person telling the story needs to be alive to keep telling the story, whether it's in past or present tense.  So this doesn't work for me, either.

None of the reasons for present tense hold weight.  But I'm curious what *you guys* think.

Have any of you written in present tense?  Why did you make the decision?  Did it help the story?   Convince me!  Astound me with your brilliance!