Tim Capps's Blog

Confessions of an Amateur Writer
This is not about finding an agent, getting a publisher and making a living off your writing. It is about your approach to writing. Be honest with yourself. Are you an amateur with an interesting hobby, or someone who is disciplined and always learning about their craft. Here's an arrow in the leg for me: can I keep a deadline? (No.)

I have just admitted to myself that I am an amateur writer.

That doesn't mean I'm a bad writer. I have a publisher and contracts and everything. I've got two books in print. I have never seen a review with less than five stars on the Amazon. My books say something and I'm proud of them.

And yet.

Unless You're Writing for Television, You Probably Need to Plan Ahead
By etymology, an "amateur" is one who does something for the love of it. There is nothing wrong with that. Maybe you are even one of those muse-kissed souls from whose subconscious flows intricately plotted novels with the effortlessness of dreams. This piece isn't for you.

This painful admission moves me to step back and examine the way I work. "Inefficient" is the kindest word I can come up with. Since I love to write, I want to jump right in and do what I love.

That's how Judging Angels got written - eventually, all 160,000 words.. It is also how the sequel has not gotten written. Oh, I've slung probably 160,000 words at the thing and good writing at that. But it never became a novel.

Maybe I should be writing for television. Until, then, though, something must change.

Writing Like I Practiced Law - Why Not?
When I was a lawyer, I enjoyed writing bench briefs, and was good at it. However, I could not sit down in the morning and just write a brief. First, I had to master the relevant facts, research the law and formulate compelling arguments. Similarly, when I prepared closing arguments for trial, I would always start at the end. That way, I knew what I had to say for my jurors to carry my best case into the fight.

I didn't make things up as I went along.

So, I have put my story away and am making notes on characters and their roles, their motivations and the way they interact with other characters to develop themes and move the story along. Mostly I am deciding what the Hell the middle and the end are. (Like many would-be writers, I'm really good at beginnings, though.)

I'm plotting. Not rubbing-your-hands-together-evil-laughter plotting (well, sometimes) but working out my main plot and subplots and how to best weave them together.

Is it fun? Sometimes, but mostly it's tedious work. Discipline is not one of my strong points. I have become a cliché of the worst sort of "creative type." But I am laying the foundation of the novel I cannot write otherwise. At least the last couple of days. It's hard to break bad writing habits.

If you are an amateur, there's nothing wrong with that, but that is what you will probably remain unless you

STOP

And think about what you're doing.

I didn't really, but it crossed my mind.

Maybe it's because of my criminal defense trial background, but I worry a lot about some clever reader catching me in some stupid mistake. (My pace would suggest more than having any readers of the sequel, clever or otherwise.) This is not to say my characters don't do stupid things. Judging Angels was two inches thick of one stupid thing after another.

Watching other people do stupid things can be entertaining when they're not just stupid people, and edifying when neither are you and you can learn why smart people still do stupid things.

But what's sauce for my characters' goose is not sauce for their creator's gander.

So, I had to go back and revise the beginning of the long-awaited sequel to Judging Angels all because the Ohio River has a disappointing current speed of .5 mph to 3 mph at best.

I don't need a pig to figure out that it's going to take a body at least an hour to be carried by the current three miles, and probably longer.

Besides Ohio River hydrography, I have also been submerged in researching cold-water drownings in the Netherlands and shotguns. A novel just doesn't feel right if it doesn't have guns. And redheads. A writer can't go far wrong if he can work those into a book, especially in the same scenes.

I also had an entertaining email exchange with the Bentley automobile company, one of whose silky English 12-cylinder beasts I intend to purchase as soon as I won't miss a sum in the lower six digits.

I have even been writing. I know that because when I am struck by that essential plot point the clock on my nightstand says 2:30 a.m.

It is time to face the humiliation of my other blog. The one about the sequel to Judging Angels that I've written probably three different versions of. At least I come bearing something published in the meantime.

Saint Corbinian's Bear Lenten Companion for Bearish Humans is out and off to a good start considering it wasn't released until Ash Wednesday. An early bird even got the first review up! Here's the short trailer:




But, what about the sequel to Judging Angels? Well, it's like this. Never let it be said that Tim Capps was a writer afraid to nuke a few hundred thousand words of a version that wasn't coming together. Oh, don't get me wrong. It was some pretty good writing, and will probably be put to good use- just not this time.
I'm doing something completely different now. It's a lot simpler and follows the original Judging Angels without missing one second. I'm still looking forward to introducing the setting hinted at in the first novel of the Rubricatae Chronicles, but this is the story that needs to be told first.
And I love it.
Book 1 of the Rubricatae Chronicles has a perfect record of 26 five-star ratings on Amazon. If you enjoy a long read with plenty of capers, but one that still makes you think, you ought to like Judging Angels. I think I know what people like about it. For all the desperate chasing around, it remains an intimate drama of marriage at heart. The new project retains that feel.
You'll find out what happened at the end of Judging Angels early on and be reintroduced to some familiar characters. There are also two brand new ones I think you'll like, too.
Further affiant saith not.

Adverbs: Hate Speech Tolerated
I remember learning about adverbs in school.

Today, that prompts one of two questions. "Just how the Hell old are you, anyway?" or "What's an adverb?"

I'm old enough to know what an adverb is, and that's any word that ends in "ly." (It's more complicated than that, but there is no room for nuance.)

Adverbs are the criminals of prose. Real writers roam the streets with torches and pitchforks shouting, "Death to adverbs and the writers who use them!" Stephen King alone has killed millions. (Far fewer writers.) Editors pretend hunting down and executing all your adverbs is a wearisome task. Secret- er, possessed of a motive to hide the truth, they love the job. They keep score, you know, and boast of their kills on their private message boards. They stencil little "A's" on their desks for all I know and strive to become ace editors.

The Rules of Good Writing
Nearly every article ever written by a real writer handing down commandments for the rest of us condemns adverbs. Here are 10 rules from a New York Times article. The author, Elmore Leonard, has written 45 novels and done very well for himself. If I published three novels a year, the actuarial tables say I might live long enough to match that record. I'd be stupid not to listen to a writer with his bona fides.

But, as most have us learned a long time ago from reading articles about writing by real writers, there's only one rule: "Write like Ernest Hemingway." You hear the call five times a day in English-speaking countries.

Hell, for twenty bucks your computer can fix your crappy writing with Hemingway Editor 3. The New Yorker likes it.

Beginners in any field should pay attention to experienced hands. And there are common mistakes writers should avoid. But I'm not convinced writing well means imitating somebody else. I think writing well is making your unique voice the very best it can be. If it turns out that the very best your voice can be is still suited for the shower and not the Metropolitan Opera, oh well.

Except for reliable best-selling authors, we all have day jobs or pensions. I might be able to write like Hemingway if my life depended on it. Fortunately, it doesn't.

Even Elmore Leonard says (you'll have to judge the tone for yourself): "If you have a facility for language and imagery and the sound of your voice pleases you, invisibility is not what you are after, and you can skip the rules." (Is any writer "invisible?" Do you have to be invisible to avoid being intrusive?)
Adverbs: Not Going Quietly
There are brave souls who defend adverbs. Here is an article from The Atlantic. Adverbs want everyone to know one thing: they are not going quietly.

True, my first submitted manuscript was filthy with adverbs. Any word that ended in "ly" got flagged. I dutiful- Sorry. With an admirable devotion to duty, I got rid of my adverbs.

And, I had to admit, I did not miss them. I learned to trust the reader to understand the quality of a verb in question from the context. (In fact, if I have grown as a writer, most of it comes from learning to trust the reader to participate in a scene.) If I real- um, was required by legitimate considerations to qualify a verb, I figured out another way to do it. Like a different verb. In time, I learned to accept, even love my adverb-less editorial overlords.

But, sometimes, I thought a sentence needed the stinking adverb.

I learned the rule, then fought for a few adverbs I still felt were necessary. So, the manuscript went back with a few comments like, "God forbid my name should ever be associated with a novel lacking this one adverb! I'd rather be burned at the stake with my manuscript by Stephen King!"

And, since my editor is sensible, I did not lose too many fights. Probably because I recognized the wisdom of the rule and picked my battles careful- er, with care.

The aims of the Adverb Liberation Front are modest. Adverbs agree they have been overused. It's not their fault. They don't attach themselves to  innocent verbs on their own, like leeches. Writers who don't know any better put them there. My adverbial friends resent such abuse and reject with firmness any ambition to overrun English prose.

They, will, however, happily give their lives to preserve their useful, if limited, place among their brother and sister words.  (You're welcome to read my novel and take a drink every time you find an adverb. Let me know how we did.)

JUDGING ANGELS picked up a couple more Five Star reviews at Amazon when I wasn’t looking for an unbroken string of 23.

"What did your poor little girls-like-me-can-always-manage have to say?"Have You Thought About Your Style Lately?
Over at the other blog, St. Corbinian's Bear (who some people - and one Bear - claim is the actual author of Judging Angels) a comment about Walker Percy turned into a discussion of style.
Whether the Bear is right or wrong is not what I want to talk about, though. Far be it from some hack paperback writer to criticize Walker Percy, anyway.
It made me think about my own style for the first time, though. So, I flipped through Judging Angels with that in mind.
I noticed how I tell my story generally from the point of view of a scene's focus character, but usually revealing his state of mind, not what is actually in his mind.
I also noticed how slowly I dribble out exposition, keeping the reader in the dark or even misled. I set up familiar tropes only to defeat expectations. I use that to set the tone and rhythm. It also keeps the reader guessing throughout the entire novel and rewards her with many twists along the way.
Finally, I seem to let dialogue do a lot of the heavy lifting.
So, I thought I would discuss some of these stylistic habits of mine. As always, examples are my own, not because they're the best, but because I'm doing good to remember where to find stuff in my own book, and am too lazy to dig up examples from better writers.
Different Ways of Telling the Story Through the Mind of the Focus Character
Like Walker Percy's Love in the Ruins, much of my story is filtered through the minds of characters. Unlike Love in the Ruins, it is not an interior monologue from a single character. (If I am remembering it correctly, and I didn't finish it either).
I do use some straight-up interior dialogue. But, much of the time, I use a "quasi-interior dialogue" by telling the story of a scene through the focus character's mind, but one narrative step removed. It reveals what the character thinks about certain things that might be called to mind by the circumstances, but is not necessarily what he is actually thinking at that moment.
For example, on page one (yes, I really am that lazy) from the chapter titled "Last Things," the main character is introduced as he is about to cross the street on his way to work. From the outside, there is nothing remarkable about that. The real story is on the inside. So how do you show that this moment is anything but routine?
I could have done it through interior dialogue. "It's a beautiful day to kill somebody, thought George Able as he crossed the street. They say life is full of surprises. Well, today, they would be wrong. We're playing for all the chips and I know the.38 in my pocket is a royal flush." (Or, "George Able crossed the street thinking it was a lovely day for a double homicide. He smiled as he imagined the surprise on their faces...")
But, what I did was to mix a little straight narrative with things that are generally in the focus character's head, but not necessarily his actual stream of consciousness. It communicates his state of mind, not what is going through his mind.

Most people die surprised - at least murder victims, which were his specialty. He had seen it in their eyes. Not wildly surprised, but mildly. Not condemned men, though, and not him. Today held no surprises at all for him. On this very last Christmas Eve, it was George Able who held all the surprises.

He shot his arm from the sleeve of his black wool dress coat, exposing a cheap watch that rattled loosely on his wrist bones. It was unreliable, but today, it did not matter. He had looked at it out of habit. When you ran out of time, that was that. He stepped off the curb.

The reader will very soon know whether George is right about surprises. It sets a menacing tone and raises some intriguing questions about this George Able fellow. In a way, this is also the author's sly warning on page one to readers that, just when they think they've got everything figured out, the primrose path ends in a sudden drop.
Or a screech of tires.
Maybe it is a distinction without a difference, but I think there is a subtle difference that makes it a different read than actual interior dialogue. Maybe I'm wrong and readers will assume he is thinking everything at the time. I'm not sure that matters, if it works. 
Much of the first chapter is in the main character's head, presented indirectly, as illustrated above, and sometimes in sudden intrusive thoughts (that are actual interior dialogue) and scraps of poetry he remembers. The idea is to paint a picture of someone who is on psychologically thin ice beneath the routine hello to the secretary and morning cup of coffee.
He's the kind of man whose neighbors might one day describe on the news as: "a quiet, regular guy."
Exposition as a Slow I.V. Drip and Oblique Storytelling
This is part of my style - now that I am thinking about it - of oblique storytelling. I like to let hints accumulate and save confirmation for a big reveal - or, more typically, head faking a familiar trope, knocking the reader down without catching a foul and slam dunking a big surprise.
Exposition is a slow I.V. drip, not big pills. The reader doesn't need to know everything, and everything he knows doesn't have to be the truth.
I guess I write like a criminal defense trial lawyer. I had to patiently piece together a case over days or weeks through many witnesses. A trial unfolds slowly, and you learn to keep jurors awake as they are spoon-fed the evidence. Often, some testimony does not make sense without something they're not going to get until next week. In theory, a jury does not have a complete grasp of a case until the last witness has taken the stand.
And, I guess I never got over the thrill of gently leading the prosecution's witnesses down the primrose path during cross-examination then springing the surprise killer question. That's the way I remember it, anyway, and, I'm sticking to my story.
Of course, most of my clients were guilty and I did not win many trials. Such is the life. My novels turn out exactly as I wish, however!
What experiences shape your style?
Lots of Dialogue
I notice there's also a lot of dialogue in Judging Angels. Dialogue is a great way to reveal character, fill in background, and generally get exposition in under the radar. Dialogue can also directly present conflict. In a book largely about ideas, dialogue can hash things out, if you've established believably thoughtful and articulate characters.
(There's also smokin' redheads and guns, though. It helps break up the dialogue.)
Of course, the trick is to be sneaky enough to pursue your ulterior motives without the reader suspecting it. Few things are worse than eye-rolling dialogue where people tell each other things they know because the author knows the reader doesn't, but should.

"As you recall," James said, "I have a serious heart condition. In fact, I had to have bypass surgery last month. I almost died, remember? But, I know in my damaged heart that you cared then. You told me you loved me."

"Yes, I remember," said Beatrice. "But after your surgery - and remarkably fast recovery - you were healthy enough to have that affair with the neighbor woman two doors down, Sadie Walters. If I have been cool since I discovered your little love letter to her you were writing and carelessly left on the desk in your study, perhaps I have had my reasons."

A trend I've noticed in television writing is characters making long, suspiciously articulate speeches. The last season of Ripper Street on Netflix was an unholy mess, in my opinion. I don't know how Whitechapel  prostitutes-turned-music-hall-singers actually talked in Victorian London. I suspect it was not in lyrical monologues delivered with neither hesitation nor breath.
I know transcripts of even educated people trying to make a point off the cuff can be an embarrassment to read. (Hmm... lots of dialogue... trial transcripts... Trials are dialogue. I guess something else from the old days.)
As with nearly everything in writing, you probably aren't trying to reproduce the reality of dialogue, but give the impression it is real people speaking.
People start and hesitate. They speak in fragments. They interrupt each other and themselves. They are less than truthful. Sometimes they are unintentionally and painfully truthful. They may backtrack. And, yes, they might throw something in someone's face that they both know, but they would have a reason to.
While a little goes a long way, genuine-sounding dialogue might include some of these characteristics. Dialogue is often where better writers distinguish themselves from those still mastering the basics of their craft.
In this example, a husband and wife are at a restaurant when he gets a text.
***
"Who was that?" Alice asked.
"Who do you think?"
"What did your poor little girls-like-me-can-always-manage have to say?"
"Forever ends today. Frowny face. She said she loved me."
"Can't say I'm surprised. You know she's manipulating you, right?"
"You gave her a phone." I know she looked cold.
"In case we need her, dimwit."
"What?" George had missed the comment of his wife.
"I know you too well. There was more than the text. Let me see."
"I was going to delete it."
"She looks cold," Alice said, handing it back. "She's escalating. That doesn't look like little girl lost to me. More like little girl lost all her clothes. We got ourselves a real bunny boiler."
George put the phone back in his pocket. Alice cleared her throat. He muttered something and pulled his phone out again. He stabbed the screen a couple of times, then held it up for her inspection. 
"Give it."
Alice typed a message, then read it. "Please no more pics like that, you'll catch your death. And send. Here's your phone."
"What do you think the message meant?"
"Sounds like a threat to me. The psycho is probably going to kill me. Or you. Or all of us. That's what I've been saying all along."
"I don't know... in context it sounds like she might be suicidal."
***
If you're a wife reading that, you (I hope) probably want to strangle the husband.
The husband is conflicted and defensive. He misses a comment because he is thinking about the picture. He "forgets" to delete it and worries that whoever sent it might be suicidal. The wife is fed up to the point she does not even explode. She sees a threat so obvious it is hardly worth the time to explain it to her idiot husband.
Two people with very different takes on the same thing, economically showing character, conflict, the state of a marriage, and foreshadowing a threat through a few lines of dialogue.
I don't come right out and tell the reader what's on the phone, either. I let the dialogue do all the work and give the reader credit.
Is the dialogue 100 percent "real?" Maybe Alice's humorous comments are a bit too clever, but these are two smart people, and Alice is snarky, so I hope it doesn't provoke eye-rolling in context. Add "mordant humor" to my style. A lot depends on what you train your reader to expect, which gets back to character depth, which gets back to techniques like quasi-interior dialogue or your own favorite tricks.
And, by the way, I see the last as different from mere "point of view." It probably has a real name, but "quasi-interior dialogue" catches the idea, I think.
Style Summary
So, telling the story generally through the focus character of a scene, but one step back from actual interior dialogue, is a technique I see myself using again and again in Judging Angels. I suppose it is my way of avoiding naked exposition and is a good way of building character depth.
Also, dialogue handles a lot of the heavy lifting. Maybe more than is usual, but I try to keep it sounding true in general and also to whomever is speaking.
I am stingy with information and don't always spell things out. I keep the reader's interest through taking them in unexpected directions. 
Finally, while there is a good dose of horror, the reader is never far from some mordant humor, which lets her know that she's not going to be dumped into some unrelenting nightmare. (I wanted to use "More laughs than The Brothers Karamazov" as a tagline, but my publisher vetoed it.)

I think I'm getting this whole novel-writing thing down at last. I am very pleased with Judging Angels, but less so with the process that got me there. It was wasteful because I like to write more than I like to think.
I ran into the same problem with the sequel. It was far too ambitious. I realized it was two novels combined into one overlong one. So, I split them by their settings and have returned to the more straightforward telling that served me well in the original Judging Angels.
Now, I have two much better novels, and I don't feel like I'm bogged down in a land war in Asia (on this 30th anniversary of The Princess Bride). I still have as much to say, but I'm not going to say it all in one book. 
It would not make sense to deal with the same themes in the sequel as I did with the first book. I promise there will be a new slice of the moral universe to explore from a traditional Western perspective. There will be some characters from the first book, but also some brand new ones I can't wait to introduce you to.
The graphic gives a taste of the original's mordant humor, now in the funhouse mirror setting of Book 2. It's going to be another wild ride, with lots of curves, but through much different scenery. Fans of Brian and Pecksley ought to be pleased.
And of course, it would not be in the Rubricatae Chronicles canon without at least one Red.

I don't know why I should find myself wondering why I have so much to learn after one published novel. After all, after my first murder trial, I still had a lot to learn. I never stopped learning as a lawyer.
Don't get me wrong, I would never have consented to the publication of something I wasn't proud of.
But what I am learning is that I write very inefficiently. I like big. I like complicated.
Too big, too complicated. (Even at 500 pages, Judging Angels is much less big and complicated than originally conceived and executed, but apparently works.) If I've learned one thing, it's don't make things harder on yourself than necessary as a writer. It's tough enough as it is.
If writers were plants, I would be kudzu.
So, I'm splitting the too-long sequel into two novels, each with slightly overlapping story lines, and each focusing on one setting. The whole parallel plots between two vastly different settings is too complex to make work, I have realized. Who knows? Maybe someone could make it work?
Someone with more experience, maybe.
So, I'm making progress, working from back-to-front. (Deciding on an ending first and working toward hooking it up with previously written material I can still use.)
And, I hope, the third book will be well on its way toward completion.

I could not be happier to see TWO more nice five-star reviews tonight from readers who have been entertained by my genre-bending first novel Judging Angels! Of course, reaching 20 unbroken 5-star reviews is a nice little milestone for any first-time author, but it's more than that. Honestly, I think I took a lot of risks to give people something very different. Everybody seems to agree the risks paid off in something they didn't expect but sucked them in as a thought-provoking page-turner. I am so happy that people are losing themselves in the long and twisty tale of George Able and his plucky family.

Come for the smokin' guns and redheads, stay for the amateur casuistry, Thomistic table arguments, and mordant humor!