I feel the need to point this out because I keep running into folks who think that because I write novels, I can advise them about their screenplays, either generally (“How should I write a screenplay? Who do I send it to?”) or specifically (“Could you critique this screenplay for me? There’s something wrong with this scene…”). There is, of course, a certain amount of overlap in the storytelling and structural aspects of both disciplines, so I can occasionally be helpful. But these kinds of questions always worry me just a little, because the people asking them are ignoring two really fundamental and vitally important differences between the two crafts…and as a result, they often make mistakes that can seriously muck up what they’re trying to do.

First off, movies are primarily visual, while novels are verbal.

Movies tell stories mainly with images. Have you ever been on a long-distance flight and not bothered to buy the headphones for the movie? I do it all the time, usually because I want to get some work done, and then I get distracted by the images…and son of a gun if I can’t tell at least 90% of what’s going on just from watching the pictures, no sound. Of course, they’re not meant to be watched that way, and I miss all the good lines and the ominous music and the creaking noise that alerts the hero just in time. Still, that seems to me to underline my point: movies tell the story with images, sounds, and dialog, and of those three, most of what the scriptwriter writes is the dialog part. (More of that in a moment.)

Novels have, for the most part, one tool and one tool only: language. Picture books include images as well as text, but the older the intended audience, the fewer illustrations tend to appear. By the time you get to YA novels, there’s hardly a picture in sight, and teen and adult novels limit illustrations to the dust jacket or cover (and even those are frequently abstract, rather than illustrative). In a novel, everything has to be done with words, which are processed in a linear fashion as the reader reads, right to left, one word at a time.

What this means is that a movie can make a huge impact with a single image. I still remember the first time I saw “The Wizard of Oz.” When the door swings open and the screen switches from black and white to color, and Dorothy (and you) get that first stunning glimpse of Oz…I don’t think anyone could duplicate that effect in prose. It would need a detailed description, and the more detailed it was, the longer it would be and the more time it would take…and the more time it took, the less you get that immediate stunning impact. On the other hand, the movie can’t give you Dorothy’s thoughts and feelings without an awkward voiceover, while a novel has little difficulty in providing a different sort of impact by going into her emotions when she realizes that she’s somewhere strange and far from hom.

The second fundamental difference between movies and novels is that all movies are massive collaborations, while most novels are solo efforts.

A movie is, at minimum, a collaboration between the writers, the actors, the director, the producer, the prop and costume people, the camera operators, the sound folks…all those people who get listed in the five minutes of credits that roll past at the end of the film. And note that I said “writers” – very, very often, a screenplay ends up being rewritten by a second or third writer, or worked on by a team from the very start. Novelists nearly always work alone. A scriptwriter is just the start of the process, and has little or no influence on what happens after the “final” script leaves his/her hands unless he/she is also directing or producing the movie. A novelist (or a team of collaborators) has ultimate veto power on whatever goes out in the final book unless it’s a work-for-hire.

Not being clear about these two differences causes problems for both types of writers.

I’ve seen screenplays where the writer kept inserting stage directions and notes to tell the actors how to say the lines or what the character is thinking at a particular time. Once in a while, this is necessary [GEORGE (sarcastically): That's a good idea!], but all too often, these directions betray the fact that the writer doesn’t really want to collaborate – he/she wants the actors, the director, the camera operators, etc. to make the exact movie the writer is picturing in his/her head. Furthermore, in concentrating on telling the actors and the director how to do their jobs, the writer often seriously neglects his/her own – writing dialog that tells the story without needing all those explanations of what the characters are thinking. Because, as I mentioned before, movies are notoriously bad at telling the viewer exactly what the character is thinking at any given moment. The camera can’t get inside the characters’ heads.

The scriptwriter also doesn’t necessarily know what is or isn’t available visually – what locations the director will be able to shoot at, what the budget will be for CGI, etc. Thus, the kind of detailed description of action scenes that you’d find in a novel are at best superfluous; at worst, counter-productive.  Shakespeare does not say “A bear enters stage left, and lumbers threateningly forward. Antigonus sees it and flaps his coat to distract the bear from the baby. The bear turns toward him…” No, the stage direction is “Exit, pursued by a bear,” and that’s all.

This can seem very foreign to a novelist. I was horrified when I was given the script for Star Wars Episode I and found the Big Fight Scene at the end, which I knew was going to be at least five minutes of spectacular lightsaber fighting on-screen. The script said, in its entirety, “The Jedi fight.” That’s all it needed. (I, on the other hand, had to come up with several pages of description, because it was, after all, the Big Fight Scene At The End, and there was absolutely no way I could get away with “The Jedi fought.”)

By the same token, I see a lot of young would-be novelists struggling to duplicate in prose the kind of dramatic visual revelations, zoom-ins, close-ups, and other dramatic visual techniques that the camera in movies perform effortlessly. Sometimes, one can do something similar, or find a prose technique that has a parallel function. More often, the result is awkward at best, impenetrably awful at worst.

There are things that transfer from books to movies and vice versa, but if one is going to try, one really needs to begin by asking “Will this technique actually work in this other medium?”

The reason, of course, is that fiction shows us ourselves. We consider that important, at least some of us do, enough so that most of the stories that last are ones that many people consider the truest in their portrayals of emotion or the human condition. Consequently, a lot of writers find themselves struggling to enhance this aspect of their writing, and worrying excessively about it.

There are two problems with obsessing about truth in stories, though. The first is an aspect of the human condition itself: there is not one lone, solitary truth to be told, but many truths. My fiction reflects my life experience and the lessons it has taught me, but not everyone draws the same lessons from the same experiences … and we certainly don’t all have the same experiences to begin with.

The disparity in experience and in what lessons and issues we each consider important shapes fiction, both from the writer’s side and from the reader’s, and therefore it shapes the critical judgment of the work. Those readers who agree that what the work is examining is important will be more likely to be interested and enthusiastic about the story, sometimes even if they do not entirely agree with the writer’s conclusions. Those who think that what the writer is saying is unimportant tend either to dismiss the story as “badly written” or “fluff”, or to criticize the story directly for focusing on what they see as the wrong thing.

When this criticism is obviously far off base, it’s generally easy to ignore. If a novel is primarily focused on the main character’s emotional recovery from a traumatic brain injury, few writers (or readers) will take it seriously when someone objects that the story doesn’t deal with the implications of global warming or the politics of gay marriage in the U.S. No matter how important one thinks those issues are in real life, they aren’t what the book is about, and leaving them out is a perfectly reasonable thing for the author to do.

Sometimes, though, things are not so clear-cut. An author who writes a murder mystery in which the victim is shot to death has an opportunity to include a stance on gun control and/or the right to bear arms, but bringing up that whole political debate may (and quite often will) drag the murder mystery very thoroughly off-track. When this happens, the author has to decide which is more important: making a point about the right to bear arms (or gun control), or telling the story effectively.

Whichever choice the writer makes, he will be open to criticism from people who think the other choice is more important. And because including the politics of gun ownership in a story with a gun-related murder looks more plausible than shoehorning global warming into a story about traumatic brain injury, a lot of writers take this kind of criticism on board and second-guess their choices.

The thing is, either choice is valid. Nobody is required to believe that global warming (or any other issue) is more important than telling an effective story…and nobody is required to put telling an effective story ahead of their personal convictions, either. And I can acknowledge the validity of both choices, even if I disagree with the author about which thing I personally would consider more important if I’d written the story.

Which brings me to the other problem with truth-telling in fiction: space. Even in a multi-book series, there isn’t room to examine every possible problem, or even to explain the backstory behind a particular variation on a problem. Of necessity, things get compressed. The writer has to choose which things to demonstrate in detail, which to mention in passing, and which to leave out completely. And there are always things that have to be left out completely, and some of them are things that are extremely important in real life.

What that means is that the writer is only ever really telling part of the truth, even if he’s doing his best to focus on just one thing and explore it in depth and in detail. We count on our readers to read between the lines, to catch the hints and implications, to fill in the bits that just aren’t part of this particular story.

The truth the reader finds in a story – any story, even Shakespeare’s or Homer’s – is at least half their own. The writer’s job isn’t to spoon-feed their audience neat and tidy bits of truth that they already agree with; it’s to find an interesting patch of jungle to explore, light it up and maybe hammer in a couple of signposts at particularly interesting places, and then point the reader in its general direction.

It’s a lot harder to do than it sounds, and there are always going to be people who think the signposts are pointing in the wrong direction, or worse yet, who think that the signs are in a completely wrong place. They’re unhappy that their particular truth has been left out of a story, or left mainly to the reader to fill in, and the only thing the writer can do is to have written a completely different book. Which will make other people unhappy because their truths have been left out. In other words, you aren’t ever going to be able to please everyone, and obsessing about it is both pointless and counter-productive. Tell the truth that’s right for the story and for you, and leave the other truths for the stories they’re right for.

Bracor led them inside and up a long, spiral staircase to a pleasant, though simply furnished, room.  Maurin was pleased to find that the cleaning frenzy in the courtyard had not completely stripped the castle of furniture; there were two benches and a footstool, in addition to a trestle-table littered with parchments.

I knew rather more about the kind of furniture one would expect to find in a medieval castle when I revised than I did ten years earlier…

“I suppose Alethia has already told you what I wanted to talk to you about,” Bracor said when they were all seated inside.

Once they were all seated, Bracor looked at Har and said, “As Alethia has already guessed, I want to talk to you about the Lithmern.”

“Well, she did say something about Lithmern raids,” Har said, glancing at his sister. “But I don’t see the point; they’ve practically stopped.”

“I don’t see the point,” Har said.  “The border has been quiet for months.”

“The Conclave of First Lords feels the same way, I’m afraid,” the Lord of Brenn replied tiredly. “But open raids are not the only thing to fear from the Lithmern.”

Har looked puzzled , then frowned suddenly.  “Open raids?  Are you saying you think they’ve been raiding secretly?”

; Bracor continued. “Do you know that the Lithmern now control, either by outright conquest or by more subtle means, most of the countries to the north and west of Alkyra? They are far stronger than you may think.”

“Then why aren’t they raiding more instead of less?” Har said stubbornly. “If they thought they could get away with it, the Lithmern would be attacking every caravan that takes the northern trails!”

“Not every one,” his father said. “Only a few that they can loot completely. “It’s not speculation,” Bracor said.  “I’ll wager your Trader friend knows what I’m referring to.”  I mean.” Maurin looked at Bracor in surprise as Har and Alethia turned their heads.

Maurin looked at Bracor with surprise and respect. “You must have excellent sources to have uncovered that, my Lord,” Maurin said with new respect.

Har made a frustrated gesture. “What are you talking about?”

“Three caravans have disappeared completely in the past six months,” Maurin said.

“Disappeared?” Har asked skeptically. “How can fifteen or more wagons and sixty men just vanish?”

Maurin shrugged. “They are certainly gone. No trace of men, horses, goods, or wagons has been found, not even the Traders’ family gear. And all of them were passing near Lithra. “If we knew that, we might be able to stop it.  But the only information we have is that all three caravans were traveling near Lithra.  At least, that’s where we think they were.”

“You don’t know?” “You aren’t sure?”Alethia asked.

“Caravan masters can be very secretive about routes and destinations, especially if they think someone else wants to cut in on their profits,” Maurin explained.

“But how could the Lithmern do it?” Har puzzled. “And why would they take everything that way?”

“How, I do not know,” Bracor said. “Why, I can guess. “The Lithmern have never made any secret of their raiding before,” Har said, his frown deepening.  “They must have something new to hide.”

Har’s dialog changes quite a bit. He’s supposed to be smart, and he’s been educated to be heir to Brenn, so rather than asking blatantly obvious questions in this conversation, I tried to make him a little smarter.

“I believe they wish to keep us in doubt of their numbers and their intentions,” Bracor said.

“Are you sure it’s not more than that?” Har said.

“Need they have more reason? Until now they have been afraid of Alkyra; they remember their defeat at Eirith too clearly to take chances with us. Now I think their fear is passing; they have been preparing carefully for years, growing stronger while we bickered among ourselves. But I think their fear is passing at last.”

Alethia stared at her father. “Then you think the Lithmern are planning to attack Alkyra!” Alethia said. she blurted.

“I do,” her father replied. “I have tried to tell the Conclave that, but they will not listen .”

“Your Regent — ” Maurin began, but Bracor was already shaking his head.

“The, and the Regent has too little power to compel the lords, much less the Nine Families. We have kept them They have been safe too long. Oh, there are a few who suspect, who build their own forces, but Alkyra has no unity.”

“Can’t the Regent do anything?” Maurin asked.

“He never does,” Alethia said. “The Regent never does anything,” Alethia put in. “I think he’s afraid to offend the First Lords, because if he did they might decide to replace him if he tried to make them do anything.”

“Alethia is right,” Bracor said. “The Regent’s power authority depends on the good will of the Nine Families, and he knows it too well. The last regent was not a strong ruler, and he allowed his authority to be eroded by the nobles. We cannot look for help there.

Baffled, Maurin shook his head.  He would never understand the way stonebound folk managed their affairs.  A Route Master who ignored the requests of even one of his Caravan Masters would not keep his position for another month.

“Then what are you going to do?” asked Har.

Bracor straightened. “Lord Armin of Lacsmer and First Lord Gahlon of Meridel will be coming arrive here in three days on a courtesy visit.” He smiled wryly. “Protocol has its uses, after all. They are actually coming to discuss an alliance among us to meet the threat of the Lithmern. If we can come to an agreement, Brenn will have some support against the Lithmern, even if the Conclave of First Lords does not act.”

“I do not know either of them,” Har said. “Do you think they will accept your proposal?”

Maurin shifted slightly, uncertain whether to speak his doubts or not.  The noble families of Alkyra were notorious for both their independence and their irritability.  Though Maurin knew nothing of the two men Bracor had named, he did not think the chances of an alliance were good.

“First Lord Gahlon is young, but he is dependable reasonable,” Bracor went on.  “Armin has something of a temper, but things should go well if I can show him how great the danger really is.” Bracor He paused and looked sharply at Maurin and Har. “That is why I wish to talk to you; your caravan is the only one in the city which has taken the trade route just south of Lithra in the past month. So tell me about your journey.”

For the next hour, Har and Maurin talked, describing the cities and towns they had passed through. Bracor had many questions, from how many men-at-arms they had seen in the streets of Sormak to what welcome the Traders had received from the people in Karlen Gale. To Maurin’s surprise, Alethia did not grow bored; on the contrary, she listened intently and occasionally made a comment of her own. Alethia’s comments were more intelligent and informed than his small experience with noble ladies had led him to expect.  She spoke and acted more like a tradeswoman than like one of the stonebound, and he began to wonder whether his stay with Har’s family might not be more enjoyable than he had expected.

 Finally, Bracor sat back. “That is enough for today, I think. I need some time to consider what you have told me before we continue; we can talk more tomorrow.” He rose and nodded as the two younger men stood and followed Alethia out. Once I have considered, we can – “

A perfunctory rap at the door interrupted him.  A moment later, a tall woman with silver-white hair entered the room.  She wore a simple gown of gray, trimmed with silver, and she moved like mist on the water.  “Bracor, have you seen Tatia?  She’s escaped from her nurse again.”

Bracor shook his head.  “We’ve been in here for the past hour.”

“Then I won’t keep you longer from your business.”

“We’re done,” Har said.  “Hello, Mother.”

“Welcome home, dear,” the white-haired woman said.  “It is good to have you safe.  But who is the friend you have brought with you?”

“Forgive me; I should have introduced you earlier,” Bracor said.  “Isme, may I present Maurin Atuval of the Traders?”

“I am pleased to meet a friend of Har’s,” Isme said in her musical voice.  Her tilted green eyes studied him for a moment, but the scrutiny was neither unfriendly nor unpleasant.

Perhaps Har had been right about his family’s reaction after all, Maurin thought as he made a courteous bow to the Lady Isme.  Certainly none of them had shown even a hint of annoyance at the unexpected guest Har had foisted on them.  Idly, he wondered where Isme’s native land was.  He had never seen the combination of white-blond hair and tilted green eyes before, though after his time with the caravans he knew most of the peoples of Lyra.

“Journeyman Atuval is staying for a week or so, until the caravan leaves,” Alethia said.  “I thought the big room in the south tower would be best for him, since those other lords are arriving at the end of the week.”

Isme nodded approvingly.  “Very good.  Now, if you and Har are finished with your father, perhaps you would help me hunt for Tatia while Har shows his friend to the room.”

Alethia made a face, but nodded and rose to her feet.  One by one, the group followed Isme out.

Technically, there’s one small scene after this, of Alethia coming down to dinner, but I deleted the whole thing and substituted the above interruption. There are a couple of descriptive bits that I kept, but for the most part it’s new. I’m not going to post the deleted bit because this is already long enough and I can’t see doing another revising post just so people can see one more wholesale deletion.

That aside, this is the end of the chapter. We will return to your regularly schedule blog posts with the next one.

A long whistle from Har brought Maurin’s eyes down, and he As they entered the courtyard, Maurin blinked in surprise. The Styr courtyard was full of activity a maze of benches, chairs, trunks, and other furnishings. Servants were bustling about with buckets, rods, wound among the furniture, carrying buckets and stacks of cloth, brooms and articles of furniture. Everywhere people were cleaning, polishing, and scrubbing; the atmosphere fairly air reeked of soap, and the strong scent of  Mindaran wood-wax was everywhere. Maurin’s foolish mental visions of dungeons and imprisonment fled, to be replaced by the alarmed thought that at any minute someone would demand help with the cleaning.

Here I was just tightening things up, making them more specific, and again adding in more of a tight-third-person viewpoint. Oh, and the paragraph break shifted between the old version and the new, which is why there’s a sentence overlap between this post and the last one.

 “Looks like we’ve arrived in time for spring cleaning,” Maurin observed as they threaded their way through the crowd.

A shout from the doorway ahead spared Har from responding to this obvious comment. A “Har!” someone shouted, and then a tall girl with pale gold braids hanging down nearly to her knees ran forward to throw her arms around the young noble. “Har, you’re back!” she exclaimed.

“Just barely,” laughed Har, swinging her off her feet in a wide circle. “We came straight here as soon as the caravan got in.” He set her gently back on her feet and turned. “Maurin, this is my sister, Alethia.”

“I am charmed,” Maurin said, bending low over Alethia’s hand. Privately he thought that the introduction was nearly unnecessary; there was no mistaking those tilted green eyes and straight black eyebrows. Alethia was clearly Har’s sister.

Alethia returned his courtesy absently, then and linked arms with her brother as they started again toward the house. “I’m so glad you got back in time for my party,” she said as they mounted the stairs. “But you could have sent some kind of warning, couldn’t you?”

“Party?” Har said blankly with studied blankness.

Alethia laughed. “You don’t even remember! I’m twenty tomorrow; it today is my birth eve.”

 ”Well, I didn’t forget entirely,” Har said. “I got something at our last stop in Karlen Gale. I’ll give it to you tonight, after I’ve unpacked.”

Maurin smothered a grin. When the caravan had stopped in Karlen Gale, Har had spent two precious hours of his free afternoon hunting for exactly the right gift for his sister’s birth eve party, and he had fretted ever since for fear they wouldn’t arrive in time.

 “Thank you in advance — I think!” Alethia replied.

The conversation about the birthday present is…flat. The revised version has a lot more characterization for Har, adds characterization for Maurin, and by giving Maurin’s reaction, makes it tight-third person viewpoint.

Then, turning Alethia turned to Maurin she and added, “You will You’ll come to the party join us too, won’t you?”

Caught by surprise, Maurin hesitated. He hadn’t anticipated being asked to any formal feasts…

“It won’t be more than dinner and songs, really; the Lords Armin and Gahlon are coming at the end of the week to talk to Father, and it would be hard to have two large feasts so close together.”,” Alethia said, almost as if she could read his mind. “But if you’d rather not-”

“Of course he’ll come,” Har said. “He’s staying for a week, at least.”

Once again, I added Maurin’s reactions; I also trimmed Alethia’s dialog to make it sound more natural (“You’ll” instead of “You will,” for instance) and to take out the long and rather clumsy lead-in to the awkward and unnecessary conversation I deleted below.

“So that is why there is so much cleaning going on!” Har exclaimed. “What do Armin and Gahlon want to talk to Father for?”

His sister smiled mischievously. “I’m not supposed to know, so you’d better ask him. Something about the Lithmern raids, I think,” she added innocently.

“But the raids have practically stopped!” Har said.

“I know,” said Alethia, and grinned again. “You must tell me all about it after he explains to you.”

“What makes you think he will?” Har countered.

“Well, aside from being his son and heir, you’ve just come back from three months with the caravans, haven’t you? And your last stop was Karlen Gale, which is the only Free City anywhere near Lithra. So if Father wants to know about the Lithmern, who else would he talk to?”

 “Staying for a week?” Alethia frowned. “Then one of you will have to sleep in the south tower; Father will want the north one for the Lords Armin and Gahlon, and-”

“Lord Armin and First Lord Gahlon are coming here? Together?”

“At the end of the week,” Alethia said, nodding. “And I’m not supposed to know why Father asked them to come, so don’t bother quizzing me until after Father explains it to you.”

“Father asked them?” Har repeated. “Allie, you’re making that up!”

The original version of the conversation is a little stiff and moves the focus to the raids a little too fast; it also has more “as you know, Bob” dialog. The revised version sounds more like a conversation, nobody’s saying things anyone else knows, and it flows much better into the next bit.

 “Who indeed?” Unfortunately, she is not,” said a deep voice behind them, and Alethia jumped. The three turned to find a tall, dark-haired man of about forty-five of middle years standing in a doorway and smiling at them looking at them with a smile. “Father!” said Alethia and Har together.

The man’s smile deepened. “Welcome home,” he said to his son, and there was no mistaking the deep affection in his tone. For a moment they stood silent, then Har shook himself and turned to introduce Maurin.

“I am honored; I have heard a good deal of you, Lord Bracor,” Maurin said when the formalities were finished.

“Nothing too intimidating dreadful, I hope,” Bracor responded. “Come into my study where we can talk.” “Har, I realize that you have only just arrived, but I have some questions for you and your friend. Would you join me in my study?” ”

“Questions?” Har said. “Why?”

“Honestly, Har, sometimes you are thicker than Ceron’s treacle sauce!” Alethia said. “You just got back from a caravan patrol that ran about as close to Lithra as you can get without being raided, and you can’t think why Father would want to ask you questions?”

“The Lithmern haven’t raided anyone in months,” Har said.

“That’s what you – “

“Alethia.”

The girl broke off, looking faintly guilty. He turned toward Alethia and studied her for a moment. Bracor studied his daughter for a moment, then shook his head ruefully.“I don’t suppose you would like to go on and tell your mother that Har has returned?

The new conversation above replaces the deleted one from before Bracor shows up. This flows more smoothly and the brother-and-sister back-and-forth covers the same ground more naturally. Moving the information from before-Bracor to after-Bracor also changes the focus just a bit – I don’t need to imply that Bracor is going to want to talk to Har about this, because he’s already said he wants to, which adds a smidgen more tension.

“Mother probably already knows,” Aletha said, and smiled.

“And you would rather join us,” Bracor finished with an answering smile. “I don’t quite see why; you probably appear to know all about it everything I was going to say to Har already.”

“I know just enough to be interested, that’s all,” Alethia said. “Of course, I can find out from Har later, but it would be easier if you’d just let me stay. Har leaves things out sometimes.”

Har’s face reddened, and Bracor shook his head in mock resignation. “Very well, then, since you are so determined. Come.” He stood aside and let the others walk past him into the room, then entered and closed the door behind him.

Most of the major block cuts, where I was deleting whole paragraphs or sections, are finished by this point, so I’m mostly revising for viewpoint, consistency, readability, characterization, and so on.

If I were revising it again now, I’d add some more of Maurin’s reactions to the last third or so of the page; he’s supposed to be the viewpoint, but he’s kind of gotten lost amid all the family bickering.

“I’ll mind,” Maurin muttered, too low for Har to hear.

“There’s still Master Goldar.”

“Fear not, my friend,” Har said, striking a theatrical pose. “We shall yet win for you the freedom of the city, overcoming all objections of . . . ” His speech was abruptly stifled by a heavy wool horse-blanket, thrown accurately over his head by the friend he was addressing. Har emerged a moment later, grinning broadly.

“At least there’s one good thing about being heir to a Noble House,” Har said as the two set off in search of the Master Trader. “I know more about protocol and persuasion than just about anybody. We won’t have any trouble with Master Goldar; you’ll see.”

Whether because of Har’s vaunted diplomatic talents or for some reason of his own, the caravan master not only released the journeyman for the week, but went so far as to give him the freedom of the town for the entire month of the caravan’s stay in Brenn. The two guards set off, with Har making much of his own skill in achieving such a desirable result. Maurin pointedly ignored him until he changed the subject. By that time, the two had reached the wide avenue that led straight from the western gate of Brenn to the large stone building in the center of town. They turned away from the gates, and Har darted a sharp look at his friend.

“Now what are you shaking your head about?” he asked.

“That,” Maurin said, waving toward the building in front of them. Even from this distance, Styr Tel loomed above the jumble of homes and shops and inns. It bore little resemblance to the ornate palaces and castles of Alkyran nobles in other cities.

“What’s wrong with it?” Har demanded. “Hurry up; I don’t want them to find out the caravan’s in before I get there.” Har started toward Styr Tel. Finding no adequate reply, Maurin followed.

The entire business above really didn’t move things forward. It made sense that Maurin needed permission from the caravan master, but it wasn’t necessary to spend this many words on it. In the revised version, it was all covered by Har’s comment (in the previous post) that he’s already arranged everything. Half a line insted of seven paragraphs.

It was obvious that the young nobleman meant to have his way, however uncomfortable it might make everyone else. And he was right about one thing: Master Goldar would never forgive Maurin if he turned down the opportunity to make a good connection with even a minor Noble House. Maurin resigned himself to a few days of awkward formality, and allowed Har to lead him away.

The above paragraph is part of changing the viewpoint from sloppy omniscient to tight-third-person, which is why it’s entirely new. Maurin’s reactions were, in the original, supposed to be implied by the dialog, but this is a whole lot clearer AND gives the scene a consistent personal viewpoint.

The street was full of the cheerfully miscellaneous crowd of a trade city. At this hour, the streets were full.  Peasants, guildsmen, merchants and Traders jostled visitors and townsfolk alike. A man from Rathane in gaudy robes walked past the deadly, black-clad figure of an assassin from beyond the Mountains of Morravik. Three dark-skinned desert people bargained in loud voices with a man who spoke with the accent of Ciaron whose accent was Ciaronese. And everywhere there were men in soldiers’ dress. Some, like Har and Maurin, wore the leather of caravan guards, but many were dressed in the colors of the city. Several times Har and Maurin had to stop and wait while a band of soldiers marched by.

 During the third such incident, Maurin looked at Har and said, “I have never understood why Brenn has so many more soldiers than the other trade towns. It isn’t that much more dangerous to be right on the border.”

 Har laughed. “As well ask why a fortress has so many caravans passing through!”

 Maurin frowned in puzzlement. Har looked at him. “You really don’t know?”

 ”If I did, I wouldn’t ask.”

 ”Unless you had some other reason,” Har grinned. “But I’ll tell you anyway. Brenn is both fortress and trade town, but it is a fortress first. My great-grandfather, Doramon, founded it about two hundred and fifty years ago, right after the Lithmern invasion was stopped at Eirith. The idea was to prevent the Lithmern from ever overrunning Alkyra again; Brenn sits right in the gap between the Kathkari Mountains,” he waved to the north, “and the Snake Mountains.” Har waved toward the south. “Nobody can get into Alkyra from the west without passing Brenn, so of course it became a trade town too. But it is still the first line of defense for northern and western Alkyra.”

The above conversation is backstory, none of which is needed here. It also makes Maurin look really stupid – he’s a Trader, he ought to be very aware of both the politics and the dangers of the countries the caravan goes through, even if he’s still a journeyman. The bit about Brenn being on the border is the only really critical bit, and it’s covered in half a line in the next paragraph. The rest got moved in bits and pieces to wherever the information became necessary to know…sometimes many chapters later.

And over the cheerfully miscellaneous crowd, above the jumble of homes and shops and inns, loomed Styr Tel. The castle of the Noble House of Brenn looked every inch the border fortress that it was, but the high stone walls that were a reassuring presence to a Trader caravan concerned with raiders and bandits gave an entirely different impression to a mildly unwilling visitor. Maurin could not shake the feeling that he was heading for a prison.

Note that I moved the phrase “cheerfully miscellaneous crowd” to this point from the initial description several paragraphs back. I thought it works better as a summing-up of the (now) previous paragraph of description of all the people than it did as an introduction to them. I also, again, added in more of Maurin’s personal reaction at the end of the description.

 They had nearly reached Styr Tel, and Maurin found it easy to believe the place had once been a fortress. It was surrounded by a high stone wall, The castle had been set back from the houses of Brenn as if to prevent an attack from the upper stories of the homes and shops. Above the wall, two tall black towers rose to command a view of the entire city; from this angle, they were all of the Styr that could be seen. Time and custom had made a marketplace of the open area between the low buildings of the town and the walls of Styr Tel. Maurin and Har wove through the merchants and townspeople to the gates, ignoring the persuasive calls of the dealers. The guards recognized Har at once, and let him and Maurin through the gate without challenge. As they entered the courtyard, Maurin blinked in surprise.   got his first close view of Styr Tel.

Black stone, polished smooth, filled his eyes. Styr Tel was made of it. The place was enormous; Maurin’s head bent back as he tried to see it all. He could easily imagine a company of troops vanishing inside without disrupting any of the gentler pursuits of the nobles who lived there. The lines of the building were clean and practical, but the dark stone gave it a dignity lacking in the airy palaces Maurin had seen in other cities. This was a strong place, an armored place, a home for a soldier. Maurin found himself admiring the man who had built it.

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve noticed that I’ve been cutting out a lot more than I’ve been adding. The revised chapter is 1024 words shorter than the original…and most of the folks who read it don’t even notice. Really. I’ve asked.

Cutting out so much description and unnecessary backstory right at the start did two things: it tightened things up so that everything moves along faster, which is better for the opening of this particular action-adventure novel, and it refocused the start of the story on the two young men and their friendship, which is crucial to the rest of the story. If I’d written a story about the caravan or the Traders, I’d have left in a lot more of this and tightened things up elsewhere…but I didn’t.

The caravan wound slowly through the woods along the riverbank and broke at last into the fields surrounding the city. Except for a few wooden shelters near the gates, the city itself was invisible behind massive walls. Not even the roof of a tower showed above the smooth grey stone.

Though they were now within sight of their goal, the dust-covered guards continued to ride restlessly up and down the long chain of wagons, watching field and forest narrowly for any sign of unusual activity. Travel here, at the western border of Alkyra, was relatively safe, but the Traders generally preferred not to take chances.

When the last of the wagons had entered the city, the guards relaxed at last. Their far-flung riding pattern contracted into small eddies of motion between the lumbering wagons. The iron-rimmed wagon-wheels were noisy, and conversation was minimal. The horses seemed to find the stone pavement, rough as it was, an improvement over the deeply rutted dirt road outside the city, and it was not long before the caravan had reached the wide courtyard of the inn.

As the last wagon in the caravan rumbled into the courtyard of the Blue Heron Inn, Maurin Atuval allowed himself to relax. Theoretically, the safety of the trade goods had been the responsibility of the cargo masters since the wagons passed through the city gates of Brenn, and the other caravan guards had long since abandoned any pretense of patrol. Unlike his fellow guards, however, Maurin was himself a Trader, and could expect to share in the caravan’s profits-and losses. So he had continued to watch the wagons even after his duties were officially over.

As it stands, there’s nothing terribly wrong with the original opening – it’s a “zoom-in,” starting with a long view, slowly focusing down until we get to characters. But for an action-adventure that moves fast enough to have a kidnapping by the third chapter, it’s too slow. Also, in the original, we don’t get to an actual character until the end of the fifth paragraph, and the whole thing is in a sloppy omniscient viewpoint. So the original five paragraphs went, replaced by two that are a lot more specific and that have a specific viewpoint, that of Journeyman Trader Maurin Atuval.

The hypnotic rumble of the wagons gave way to a cheerful bustle of securing goods and stabling horses. Everyone took part, from the most exalted of the Master Traders to the lowliest apprentices. As each finished his appointed task, he went in search of friends or pleasure, depending on his inclination, and soon the courtyard began to empty.

Among those remaining was a tall, black-haired man in the utilitarian leather of a caravan guard, his skin tanned by the sun and wind of the trails to a deep bronze under its coating of grime. The uniform suited him well, and he carried himself with an easy confidence that proclaimed him a veteran despite his relative youth. He was checking the ropes securing one of the wagons when another man hailed him. “Maurin!”

The hired guards lined up near Master Goldar to receive their pay, while the Traders began the cheerful ritual of unloading and securing their goods. Maurin was hauling a bundle of white fox pelts to the storage room when someone tapped him on the shoulder from behind.

The dark-haired man at the wagon rope looked up. “Greetings, Har. Har made a rude noise and looked at his friend with disfavor. Maurin turned his head to see who had accosted him. The two were of a height, but Har’s slight build, accentuated by It was a slender young man in the leather uniform of the caravan guards, made him appear smaller and younger than he was. An whose unruly shock of sandy brown hair made him look younger than Maurin knew him to be.  added to the effect, and made the straight black brows and slightly tilted grey-green eyes more startling. “Har, what are you still doing here?” Maurin said. “I thought you would be away home by now.”

“I’ve been hunting all over for you,” Har said when Maurin made no response. “I invited you to visit when we got to Brenn; did you think I would forget? Haven’t you finished with that yet?”

The original description of Har is, again, not awful…but it stops the story dead in its tracks (and it hadn’t even really gotten going yet). I deleted most of it here, and stuck in references to the straight black eyebrows and green eyes later.

“I would have been, if I hadn’t had to stop and look for you,” Har said. “Here, give that to someone else. You’re done for the day.” He plucked the bundle of fox pelts from Maurin’s arms and set it on a nearby barrel.

“I’m just checking the knots,” Maurin replied. “Last stop we nearly lost three white fox pelts when the wind blew the canvas off, remember?”

“You forget, I’m a Trader. I’m not done until Master Goldar says I am.”

Har grinned unrepentantly. “This is Brenn, remember?” he mimicked. “That can’t happen in town, and anyway the light stuff has all been unpacked. So won’t you come on?”

“I didn’t forget.” Har looked smug. “I’ve already checked with him, and you’re officially released. Unless, of course, you’ve changed your mind about accepting my family’s hospitality while you’re in Brenn.”

“A journeyman can’t leave the caravan without the permission of one of the Master Traders. You know that,” Maurin answered.

Maurin looked at his friend in consternation. “I never said ... I mean, uh - “

“So let’s get it! They won’t deny it; there’s nothing more to do here.” As Maurin still hesitated, Har frowned. “I’m beginning to think you don’t want to come. I tell you, Maurin, you work too hard. Take the whole week and stay with us and relax for a change. Har raised his straight black eyebrows. “What’s the matter? Isn’t the Noble House of Brenn up to your standards?”

“I don’t want Master Goldar to think I’m trying to curry favor,” Maurin admitted. “And what will your family think? “You’re not thinking,” Maurin said, letting his breath out in exasperation. “Look, it’s all right for nobles and journeymen to brush cloaks on a caravan trip, but your family isn’t going to appreciate you bringing home a mere journeyman. Even the Master Traders don’t visit stay with lords in town unless they’re invited.”

“Well, I invited you, didn’t I? That’s because they don’t get invited,” Har said. ““They’d come fast enough if they were. And you don’t have to worry about my family; Mother won’t mind, and if she doesn’t, no one else will, either.”

“I’ll mind,” Maurin muttered, too low for Har to hear.

The original conversation was awkward and full of maid-and-butler dialog (A.K.A. “As you know, Bob” – people telling each other stuff they already know, for no good reason except to let the reader in on it). The revised version contains the critical bits (the invitation, needing to get Goldar’s permission, Maurin’s reluctance) in other ways. The only remnant of maid-and-butler is the “You forget, I’m a Trader…” line, which is both in character and salvaged by the following line, “I didn’t forget…” And in general it reads a lot more smoothly.

More next time.

Stories, short or long, generally are not about characters who are happily living their normal lives. Something unusual is going on; something has upset the status quo (whether the status quo was a miserable life as a slave, or a happy life as a king).

Stories therefore generally start in one of four places:  either just before, just at, or just after the point at which the status quo is upset, or else in medias res, smack in the middle of whatever is going on. 

I have found that, since I am a natural novelist, starting in medias res for a short story is seldom a good idea for me. Usually, it means that I’m trying to write a novel, but because I’ve artificially decided to write a short story, I’m leaving off the beginning and most of the middle of the book, and the end result is just not going to work as anything but an excerpted piece of a novel, no matter what I do. Starting in the middle of things works fine for some novels, and I’ve used it at least once (The Seven Towers, if you were wondering), and it works find for other short story writers. Just not for my short stories.

“Just before” works well for fantasies and SF, because in these stories, the “status quo” background is usually unfamiliar.  “Once upon a  time, there was a woodcutter who lived at the edge of a great forest with his three sons” is a just-before-things-change opening; it sets up the status quo.  The change arrives with the sentence that begins, “One day, when he was out in the woods working…” something happened that set the story going.  The trick is to keep it just before the thing that changes everything happens – it is very easy to back off too far, and provide too much introduction to the status quo.  The current situation isn’t the story; the story starts happening when things begin to change.  And of course, this sort of thing isn’t limited to starting with a fairy-tale-type opening; “The woodcutter shouldered his ax and started off into the forest for another day’s work.” is also a just-before sort of opening; he’s not doing anything he hasn’t done a million times before.

“Just at” the point where something changes the status quo would be “A poor woodcutter, hard at work in the woods, heard a cry for help.  Running in the direction of the cry, he found a small man about to be eaten by a lion…”  It is not usual for the woodcutter to rescue small wizards (for that’s obviously who this is) from lions, and the woodcutter’s reward, whatever it turns out to be, is going to form the basis of the rest of the story.

“Just after” would be “The woodcutter set his ax beside the door, stared at it a moment, and went in.  His three sons looked up; at the sight of his face, their expressions grew worried. ‘Father, what has happened?’ said the oldest.  ‘I met a man in the woods today,’ the woodcutter replied. ‘And he told me…’”

In medias res would be something like “The woodcutter crouched behind the arras, watching the guards pace outside the king’s treasure vault.  Through the iron grate that covered the window, he could see the glitter of gold – and, more important, the shine of his magic ax.  If he could just get his hands on it again…”  This works really, really well for lots of people, but as I said, for me it’s a bit dangerous to open a short story with it, because (for me) it usually means the story really wants to be a novel.  In addition, one needs to be careful not to disorient the reader too much.  Also, I find it hard to fill in the background/backstory in the limited wordage of a short story, unless I’m doing something like a fairy-tale, where the backstory is so familiar to readers that they can fill it in themselves.  “Cinderella stood at the top of the stairs, looking down at the sea of wondering faces that filled the prince’s ballroom” would make a perfectly good in medias res opening for a short story.  On the plus side, the in medias res opening generally gets things going with a bang; it is often a very good opening for an action-adventure.

How you decide which one works best – well, you just have to look at the story and think about it for a while.  There aren’t rules for this sort of thing, unfortunately.

In my experience, it’s really difficult for most writers to articulate exactly where they got the idea for something (except in those few cases where it’s blindingly obvious). But titles…that’s another matter. Many of us struggle with titles; after all, the title is supposed to sum up the story somehow, or at least attract the right sort of reader. And there are constraints, at least when you’re talking about novel titles. “Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones” works brilliantly for Delany’s short story, but fitting that and the author’s name on the cover of a book gets a bit hard.

The biggest constraint with novel titles, though, is that the publisher has to like it. Which means it has to “sound right” to the marketing department. I found that out the hard way with my second novel. The publisher didn’t like my first title (Night of Two Moons) on the grounds that “it sounds like science fiction, not fantasy” (I guess it was the mention of moons that did it?). I don’t remember how many versions we went through before we settled on Daughter of Witches.

Sometimes, a book has a title that is obviously the right one, right from the very beginning. Talking to Dragons was one of those; so was The Grand Tour. Other times, the author slaps something temporary on the computer file, hoping the right title will come along (or be generated) later on. I have learned that if I don’t want a mediocre temporary title to end up as the actual title, I had better make it an obviously unsuitable one. The result is that several of the early-in-process first-draft manuscripts on my computer were titled things like “The Stupid Book I’m Working On” and “New Fantasy Novel #3″.  Such titles don’t usually stick for more than about the first third of the book, for me, because I can’t stand it, but some writers get all the way to the end with a temporary title.

And then there are the books and titles that… Well, take the manuscript that eventually became Dealing with Dragons. I originally called it In the Mountains of Morning, but when I told my editor, she said it wouldn’t work (too long and not snazzy enough for a children’s book, apparently). So I suggested The Dragon’s Princess. Meanwhile, my friend Lois heard me complaining, mis-heard the title and liked it, and asked if she could use it on a novella as “The Mountains of Mourning.” I said yes. She did. Word came back from the publisher: The Dragon’s Princess was a great title (and indeed, got used on at least one of the foreign editions), but it was too similar to the title of another book they had coming out the same month, The Dragon’s Egg. They didn’t want them confused, and first come, first serve.

So we eventually went with something similar to Talking to Dragons, and settled on Dealing with Dragons (if I remember correctly, Difficulties with Dragons was the other leading contender; I don’t recall exactly why we made the final choice).

For that title, I had the pattern (gerund-preposition-Dragons) to follow, but usually when I or one of my friends is generating a title at the last minute, we’re starting from scratch. So what we do is, we ask all our first-readers to suggest words and phrases and titles that they think suit. If we’re lucky, one does; if not, we break them down into words and phrases, use a thesaurus to generate some more words that might fit, and start shuffling them around until something looks reasonably acceptable. Sometimes that process triggers a brainstorm and the perfect title emerges from left field, but usually it’s just a slog.

And I just bet that there are people out there right now looking at this and thinking “Wait…aren’t those things that every novel needs?”

No, they aren’t.

They’re good ideas on a lot of levels; they are things that many good, well-written novels share…but you can also point to many novels, some of them classics in the field, or even literary classics, that are missing one or more of them. They’re not necessary for every single novel.

What is?

You have to tell a story.  That’s all.

It’s like making soup.  There are lots of things that can go in a good soup, but about the only requirement is some sort of liquid.  You can use fish, or you can use meat, or poultry, or none of the above; leftovers or fresh; one kind of thing only, or several different varieties.  You can add one or two different vegetables, no vegetables, or lots of different vegetables.  You can add beans or grains or pasta, or not, in several varieties at once or just one kind.  You can add water, or milk, or broth, or wine, or tomato juice, or apple juice, or a mixture.  You can use spices and lots of salt, or no salt at all; you can even leave out the garlic (but why would you want to?).  You can make thickened cream soup or thin gruel; you can make a huge pot or a little one (but if you make a huge pot, you have to change the proportions of the spices you put in).  You can puree it, strain it, or leave it all chunky.  It’s still soup.  But it wouldn’t be very good soup if you tried to use every spice in the kitchen, all at once (let alone every possible sort of ingredient; for one thing, some of them will make the milk curdle, which gets really disgusting).

A novel requires a story, written down in some sort of comprehensible language.  Everything else is your choice.

Mind you, it’s a good idea to look at things like character growth and worldbuilding and so on, to see if the story you’re telling will be better if you add some. It’s like checking the soup to see whether it might be a good idea to add some of those extra green beans and carrots. Nothing is right for every novel or every soup. If you’re making minestrone, yup, let’s add those veggies; if you’re making vichyssoise, better not.

Basically, short stories require a tight focus and a single, central plot thread; in a novel, there is more room for digression and development of more than one thing. The same basic idea can often be developed as a short story by keeping the plot/focus tight, or as a novel by letting it hang loose.

Starting with a simple idea: “I’ll do Cinderella set at a rock concert!”, a short story writer might lay out one scene to establish Cindy and her rotten roommates and the coming concert; another showing Cindy’s godmother arriving with tickets; the concert scene itself; and of course the stunning conclusion when the rock star shows up at the dorm to ask Cindy out. Four scenes, four to five major characters, fairly straightforward progression from setup through finish. Tight focus on Cindy and her star-struck eagerness to go to the concert and the happy ending. Most of the plot-work is already done; it’s the specific details that have to be worked out—the lightly sketched in personalities of the roommates, the encounter with the rock star at the concert when the power cable goes out and Cindy is in the right place (and has the right knowledge) to help fix the problem, just how to work in that lost sneaker, and so on.

A novelist, with the same idea, elaborates on just about every piece. “OK, I need to start with Cindy and her rotten roommates … why are they rotten? Why don’t they like her? I know! I’ll give one of the roommates a jealous boyfriend … and I can do a whole mix-up where she dislikes Cindy because she thinks Cindy is trying to steal the boyfriend, when Cindy is just trying to convince him that he has no reason to be jealous. And I’ll make the other roommate be into drugs … yeah, and so’s one of the band members! Hey, I can put an undercover cop in with the roadies; that’ll give me an excuse to show how you set up for a rock concert. And the real pusher can be the assistant science prof, who’s supplementing his salary by mixing stuff in the science lab, and Cindy finds out when she and her godmother raid the lab for the mice on the night of the concert, only the cop thinks it’s really Cindy, so she has to hide from him and the pusher, and that’s why the rock star can’t find her. And the jealous boyfriend and the other roommate can help the rock star uncover clues in order to make up for causing Cindy so much trouble … ”

Characters and subplots and complications proliferate quickly, and they just won’t all fit into 5,000 or 10,000 words, not if they’re done right. And the minute the writer actually starts in on the first scene, the senior down the hall shows up, bringing in even more possibilities, and of course there’s the suspicious science prof who was the one who called in the cops in the first place (though of course she didn’t know it was her assistant who was making the drugs—she thought it was a student … maybe she can end up paired off with the undercover roadie cop … ), and Cindy’s slightly dotty godmother who breezes through on her way to Jamaica, and …

The focus, in the novel, is still on Cindy and her romance and/or development from shy, put-upon roommate to rock-star date, but all of the characters are more complex. Each character still feeds directly into the main plot thread—Cindy going to the rock concert unexpectedly, meeting the star, and disappearing so he has to hunt for her—but they all have their own sub-stories that are more developed and that feed into and support the central plot thread. It’s not just a matter of padding, or adding subplots—if you added the subplot about the druggie roomie and the pusher science assistant as an afterthought, you’d probably already have some other reason why Cindy disappeared after the rock concert, and the subplot would just be a sort of overlay instead of integral to the main story.

The progress, in the novel, isn’t nearly as straightforward as the four-to-five-scene short story version, because the author needs to get the subplots in, and to follow each of them until it feeds into the main plot thread. The roommate’s boyfriend has to be established, and so does the other roommate’s odd behavior, and Cindy’s shyness, so that when the roomies conspire to keep Cindy from finding out that the concert is almost sold out (so that she won’t rush out and get tickets until it’s too late) the reader has some idea why they did it. The lab and the science assistant have to be established, so that later on they can be revealed as the source of the drugs. And so on.

It’s also, obviously, not a matter of stringing together a series of related short stories to get a novel. The structure is all wrong. A novel builds to a big climax/finish; a string of short stories has lots of climaxes/finishes. You can do a certain amount to fix this by providing some overarching problem to be solved and setting the stories up as stopping points along the way (“He looked for his son here, and solved this little problem, and then he went there to look for his son, and solved this other problem, and then he went … “) but it never seems to work quite as well.

Also, more stuff nearly always comes up as the book goes along. You make up some trivial detail in Chapter One—that the roomie’s favorite CD is an expensive collector’s item, for instance—and it turns out to be a Really Important Clue in Chapter Thirteen that suddenly makes the whole plot go in a new direction (it’s not drugs, after all; it’s an international money-laundering scheme, and Cindy’s godmother from Jamaica is really a top-flight investigator who’s using Cindy to get to the rock concert because she thinks somebody there is involved … and now it’s the rock star who’s the main suspect … and … ). Short stories are less prone to such major diversions, because they’re, well, short. A string of concatenated short stories doesn’t give you room for such diversions, either, because they each started out as complete in and of themselves.

The main problem I’ve seen people run into when they switch from writing short stuff to writing long stuff is the tendency to try to have everything clear in their heads before they start writing. You can do that with a short story, but almost nobody’s brain is large enough to hold a whole novel in that much detail. Short stories are like driving two blocks to the cleaners—you can see the whole two-block trip from your driveway before you ever start. Novels are like driving from Chicago to Denver—you can’t see the whole trip’s worth of road, but as long as you have a map, all you need to see is the next couple-of-blocks stretch of road that you’re going to drive. And it’s a lot more likely that you’ll encounter unexpected road work and have to change routes between Chicago and Denver than it is on the two blocks to the cleaners.