throwing stones

throwing stones, probably

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ 14 Comments

One of the peculiar things about working as I do, posting as I write, is that I have to name a book before I write it. This is one of the most difficult things about it, actually. It's like naming a band. When you form a band you have to pick a name, though you have no idea what type of band it might turn into.

That being said, I have decided that the novel will be titled "Throwing Stones." Which is not any sort of reference to glass houses.

I've been working on the first chapter of Throwing Stones, and I think it's getting there, nearly ready for the nice folks who have volunteered to be readers. I'm just going to go ahead and write the beginning of chapter two, just in case this reveals an obvious flaw in chapter one. As I was explaining recently, I see each chapter as a brick, and if a chapter has a flaw, every chapter you place on top of it will be unsteady.


There have been quite a few interesting blog posts this week, ones that have led to some good discussions.

1) Kristan Hoffman wrote a short post, in which she linked to this wonderful drawing (scroll down a bit).

2) Laura Stanfill talked about "Using the Exclamation Point in Fiction." Nothing gets word people going than talking about their most (and least) liked punctuation, and words, and other pet peeves.

3) Jo Eberhardt wrote an excellent post called "Girls Can Roll Dice Too".

4) Both Emerald Barnes and Jo Eberhardt (yeah, her again) wrote posts about problems with writing (you know, passive voice and things like that) and they both talked about "filter words." This is the first (and second) time I've ever heard about "filter words," and I must say I'm dubious about the concept.

To be clear, I have no doubt that filter words exist, and that they have, in general terms, the effects described. What I have doubts about is the idea that they words are "insidious" (to quote the blog post that Emerald links to). Are all scenes better if they are more immediate, more gripping, stronger? Do filter words actually "weaken" fiction?

This seems as silly as telling a painter that bright colors are more vibrant and exciting than pastel colors, so paintings are better if they use brighter colors. To me, what matters is what the scene is supposed to accomplish. And, frankly, making all of your scenes as strong and immediate as possible sounds like a sure route to overkill, especially in longer fiction. Variety is important. With bands, for example, one of the most obvious differences between professionals and amateurs is that professional bands have control of dynamics and tempo.

It is significant I think that all the examples I've seen on different blogs (where a scene is described with and without using filter words) are paragraphs where something immediate and exciting is happening. So, either your fiction is more full of incident than a Hardy Boys mystery, or these are not typical paragraphs. (Also, at least in the blog post Emerald links to, the second paragraph is definitely more exciting than the first, but neither is particularly well written.)

Also, I did a quick scan through Inherent Vice. Thomas Pynchon is a better writer than I will ever be, and I'm seeing a bunch of filter words in here. Doc thought, Doc tried not to think, Doc guessed, Doc wondered, Doc was beginning to feel, Doc gave it some thought, Doc ran through things he might have asked, Doc knew the likely reply. In fact, Pynchon sometimes utilizes a double level of filtering ("Doc thought he remembered," "Doc seemed to recall"), where there is not only Doc remembering something, but also the second filter of the fact that he's usually so stoned that what he's remembering may bear little direct relationship to reality.

So, I'm not seeing this as a problem. It's a tool, and like all tools it should be used when appropriate and not otherwise, and, like all tools, we need to know when we're using it and when we're not, but like all tools it has its uses.

5) Though I'm not worried about flter words I'm not entirely without care, since I am quite zealous about infodumping (as Tiyana talked about in "Infodumping: It’s A Multi-Genre Issue"). The first chapter of Throwing Stones is (at the moment) 3,404 words, and I feel like I've removed another 2,000 words of info dump. So, I will not be boasting about how many words I've been writing. Maybe I should keep track of how many I remove and boast about that instead.

who knows what, readers wanted, and more quiet people

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ 9 Comments

Characters reveal a lot about themselves by what information they have.

My favorite "who knows what" moment is in the movie Mystery Train. There's a character named Luisa (played by Nicoletta Braschi). She's transporting her dead husband's body back to Italy, and she's having a layover in Memphis on the way. We see her wandering around, preyed on by various minor cons, and she ends up in the fleabag hotel where most of the movie's action takes place, sharing a room with another woman who has no money. In the morning, they hear a gunshot from another room in the hotel.

The other woman says something like, "Was that a gunshot?"

Luisa says, "It sounded like a .38."

It tells us a lot about her that she has an idea about the caliber of the gun just from hearing the sound.

I was just watching an episode of the old TV show The Prisoner called "Hammer Into Anvil" (I'm working my way through the entire series, again), and at one point Number Two is threatening (as usual) to break Number Six, and he (Two) says to Six, in German, "You must be hammer or anvil." Six understands the German and recognizes that it's a quote from Goethe, and the rest of the conversation shows that he understands the real meaning of the quote while Two does not (anvils break hammers, not the other way around). We know very little about Number Six, but it is telling that he has all of that information.

I've done this type of things in a few places (probably more than a few, actually).

One example would be this scene. Jan Sleet is trying to solve a mystery for a woman named Claudia, but she's also trying to convince Claudia that her (Claudia's) extensive education could be put to productive use. The quote, by the way, is from The Importance of Being Earnest, and it means, "If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-educated." Which is relevant to their conversation, of course.

It says a lot about Jan Sleet that she can pull both the quote and the translation out of her head (she quotes the play elsewhere also, but in English) and it says at least as much about Claudia that she catches the reference (and, of course, the meaning).

Obviously, you do have to make sure that it's plausible that the specific character will have that information. Otherwise, it's just a deus ex machina, and you'll lose the reader. But, for example, it's already clearly established (and plausible) that Jan Sleet understands French (we've seen her speak Italian and Spanish as well, and we can infer that she speaks Portuguese), and the extent of Claudia's education has already been discussed. As I wrote before, you can't suddenly have Wolverine sit down and play the harpsichord, or write PHP code.

(Sometimes, with a first person narrator, you have to account for what a character doesn't know. One of the mystery stories, "The Rock Band Mystery," is set in a rock band rehearsal space. I know a lot about those types of places, but Marshall was narrating and he knows nothing about such things, so I had to make sure the descriptions didn't include things he wouldn't notice or information that he wouldn't know.)


readers wanted
I'm looking for at least a couple of people who fit the following two criteria:

  • You've never read any of my writing (or possibly very little; depending on what, I may be able to adjust for that)
  • You'd like to read a few chapters and give feedback

The problem I'm trying to solve is this:

  • I'm working on a revision of my third novel
  • My third novel follows the other two, in terms of setting, plot, and characters
  • It has to work for people who have never read the other two

This is not something I or my most regular readers can really determine. So, if you'd be interested, please let me know (email or comment is fine). The chapters mentioned are not yet written, so it will be a while. I'm working on the first one, and they will be posted one at a time.


more quiet people

"The Mystery of the Quiet People" is now posted here. It is complete, though there will be an epilogue at some point. The new parts of the story start here.