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About Everett Maroon

Everett Maroon is a memoirist, pop culture commentator, and speculative fiction writer in Washington State. He has a B.A. in English from Syracuse University and went through an English literature master’s program there. A member of the Pacific Northwest Writer’s Association, he was a finalist in their 2010 literary contest for memoir. Everett writes about writing and his adjustment to living in the Northwest at trans/plant/portation. He writes at I Fry Mine in Butter, a blog about popular culture. Everett also is a guest blogger for Bitch magazine and for GayYA.org. He has had short stories published by SPLIT Quarterly and Twisted Dreams magazine.
Website: http://transplantportation.com
Everett Maroon has written 8 articles so far, you can find them below.

The Care and Feeding of a Manuscript by Everett Maroon

Filed under amwriting by Everett Maroon on March 10, 2012 at 6:00 am {one comment}

Many things look cloudy to the emerging, unpublished writer—getting an agent alone requires a great idea, intriguing query or synopsis, and perfect execution, just to get them to request a partial or full manuscript. So many expectations abound that it can distract from the reality that the “finished product” of the work is likely to go through a number of new iterations. The agent may want to see changes before or after agreeing to represent the project, and then the editor at the publisher will work with the author to make at least one more pass through the manuscript.

For me it’s been a process of tightening, cutting, tightening again, as if I’d used way too much cow hide on the bongo drum I’ve been shopping around town. A bloated word count of 104,000 has shrunk now by 21,000 bon mots. Some were scenes that okay, in hindsight, I didn’t need for the story. Those were the no brainer cuts, but some of those scenes—half a dozen in all, maybe—felt a bit closer to important and it hurt a little to let them go. I got good at reflecting on the bigger picture, asking if this moment or that was worth a fight with the editor or the publisher. But in this electronic world, some of those words may get resurrected as a sort of outtake on my blog or Goodreads author page. Long live the Internet. (more…)

The Seamstress by Everett Maroon

Filed under flash fiction and short stories by Everett Maroon on January 13, 2012 at 9:43 am {8 comments}

From the moment she came into my store she looked like a woman in crisis, with her timid little footsteps and red-ringed eyes. She’d just been crying, and I wondered if she’d stopped only to try to keep herself together for talking to me. I noticed her walking in because she was such a sight, but then I looked at her gown, and I knew—I didn’t have to suspect anymore—that she had somehow gotten herself into a fine fiddle of a mess.

“Can I help you, honey,” I asked, pretending I was still busy with the hem on a pencil skirt.

“It’s this dress,” she said, wiping back a tear, “It’s my wedding dress. I think it’s ruined.”

Now, now, let me see it,” I said. I lifted up the plastic from the hanger and inspected it. Someone had a careless hand and the uneven lapped seam showed it. The silky fabric, already hard to work with, was puckered along one side; turning the dress inside out I could see a lot of excess material and long yards of rough edges.

I kept quiet as I looked it over, because the young thing didn’t need any more trouble, especially from me. She stood near the door, biting her lip, lest it jump off her face. I saw that some elastic had been sewn in at the back, just under the end of the zipper. Lord have mercy. Elastic.

“It’s bad, isn’t it?”

“Well, I don’t like to comment on other people’s work,” I said. “It’s not in the best condition I’ve ever seen.” And I have sewn dresses for close to 60 years. “When is the wedding?”

“It’s next Sunday,” she said. The waterworks flowed again. I handed her a tissue.

I hung up the dress and walked over to her from around my work bench.

“Sweetheart, it’s going to be okay. Just you focus on being happy and spending time with your family, and let me worry about this dress. I’ll have it ready for you to try on Saturday morning. You just leave it here with me.”

“But you haven’t even measured me.”

“Five-six and a half,” I said, “40, 32, 36.”

She gasped.

“You’re like magic.” She wrote down her name and number on the small mimeograph paper I’d just handed her. I kept that mimeograph machine in good order, for my not-so-secret love of purple.

She left, the tiny beginning of a smile on her mouth.

I clipped her order form to the plastic, and hung the dress up next to my work bench.

I walked up to the back of my shop, to the beaded doorway. Beyond it, fresh sandalwood incense was burning, which meant that Myrtle was giving a reading to someone. My older sister had the front of our house for her psychic business while I took the back for my seamstress work.

“It’s okay, Mildred,” she called to me, “I’m done.”

Myrtle had not changed much about the reading room since she’d opened up, back in the 1960s, nor did she often get around to cleaning. Preserved animals crouched on a high bookshelf; lower down were trinkets she said were from her travels all over the world, but she and I both knew she never set foot outside New Brunswick, New Jersey. Small leather pouches held powders and dull-colored rocks she sometimes gave to the more hopeless customers, the ones who needed to believe in anything.

“Good reading?” I saw I needed to make a new table covering for her soon, because this velvet was starting to look a little worn where it hung over the ridge.

“Just fine. What do you want?” Myrtle didn’t mince words.

“I just took on a new dress,” I said. “Six days to her wedding and you should see what this other woman did to it. Elastic. I have never seen elastic in a wedding gown.”

“Oh Mildred, you are such a doormat,” she said, sorting through Tarot cards. A young couple was getting out of their car, headed to Myrtle’s door.

“Quick, get out of here,” she told me, fixing the cards, “she needs to see the Hangman, I’m sure.”

I went back to my workshop. Taking the gown in my hands, I devised my plan, knowing I needed a vision of what it was supposed to be before it gotten so mangled. Every seam, nearly every stitch needed attention. I started a pot of tea, pinching twice from the jar of leaves I’d blended and dropping them into the steaming water. I kept my eyes closed, seeing the gown on the nervous woman, who by next weekend would feel a renewed confidence in herself as a person. So many pressures on young ladies these days, I thought as I sipped.

“Well, they may actually be together for twenty years, those two,” said Myrtle, coming through the beads. She walked up to the dress, looking at it closely.

“Why are you going to waste energy on that piece of shit?”

“Myrtle, language,” I said, my eyes still closed.

She muttered while she got a glass of milk from my small refrigerator in the back of my work room. Everything shook as she shut the door.

She sat down next to me. “It’s up to you which projects you take on, of course.”

I squeezed her hand, and was reminded of how old both of us had gotten.

“I’m always grateful for you, sister,” I said.

“Oh, I know. I have Stanley to thank for that.” She didn’t bring up my husband very often anymore. I think she was tired of remembering his beatings on me and her retribution on him.

“I would love you even without Stanley.”

I motioned that I was ready by standing and picking up the empty tea pot. Inside the stained porcelain lay my tea leaves, strewn about from the last cup that had been poured out. I chanted, clutching the pot, and for a moment I felt a thick course of strength, making me catch my breath. Myrtle gave me all the energy she had even though she had been banned from magic-doing. The pathetic wedding dress began to restitch itself.

I finished, and put the pot on the table, then went up to the dress. In a few minutes it would stop glowing, but right now it still had a little iridescence.

Myrtle stood up, smoothing out her long skirt. She put her face up to the gown and examined it.

“Nice job,” she said. “I wish I could help you with these things.”

“You do help.”

“Say what you like.” She trudged back out front to her parlor. I went back to my pencil skirt, setting in a new hem.

The light faded outside and my stomach started rumbling.

“Myrtle,” I said, “what should I make for supper?” No response. I walked over to the doorway. “Myrtle? Aren’t you hungry, dear?”

Empty air came out of Myrtle instead of words. I saw her, on the floor, folded into herself like a doll dropped in a heap. She held one of her hands over her heart.

“Myrtle!”

She was too sick to speak. Her skin was transparent, her veins deflated. I hunched over her and as she was bony like a dying bird, she wasn’t hard to lift. I set her into one of her reading chairs and looked around the room at the supplies.

I pulled dry herbs out of the glass containers. Her eyes widened.

“No, Mildred. Stop.” Her voice came out in shreds.

“I’m doing this. You hush now,” I said. Names of the ingredients were written on old masking tape. They were faded and hard to read. And one crusty herb often looks like another.

“Call 911.”

I yanked out a fist full of ancient root from a dusty mason jar and crushed it into her cold cup of tea. She pressed her lips together in protest as I brought it to her. I leaned close to her ear in case she had trouble hearing me.

“I’m doing it and that’s that. Now open your mouth.”

She gave me the smallest passage for the tea, and I poured the liquid into her before she could change her mind. I recited the spell as she drank, holding my hands over hers.

The ambient light in the room brightened, filling the space. Energy welled up inside me, and I pushed as much of it as I could into Myrtle, against our coven’s rules. No magic for the banned.

After a time I stopped my prayer. I lifted my hands from Myrtle and sat back to look at her. Color had come back to her skin; her pulse was strong and steady.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” she said, sitting up straighter. “They’ll expel you.”

“We’ll see.” I wiped my hands on a hand cloth Myrtle kept for water fortunes.

“We can’t make it without your seamstress business,” she said. She must be better if she was grouchy already.

“Oh hush,” I said, “I actually do know how to sew. We’ll be fine.”

We retreated to our living quarters upstairs. I held her hand until she fell asleep, and then I washed my face in the scratched porcelain sink before climbing into my bed.

Over that night, I felt my connection to magic slip away.

Branding For Writers by Everett Maroon

Filed under publishing by Everett Maroon on November 28, 2011 at 12:01 am {one comment}

The advice from people is varied–Emerging writers must work on their online presence. Emerging writers need to keep working on their craft. Don’t query too soon. Read up on who will be the best agent for you. Start a blog. Never start a blog. Never write for free. Give some writing away to build an audience. Self-publish. Never self-publish.

There are so many tidbits of advice for the wannabe published author, and lots of it is contradictory or mutually exclusive. Somewhere at the start of all of this din on publishing, we fell in love with telling stories, with characters who hung around us like ghosts, with snippets of scenes and plots dangling in front of us. We’ve been led here, chasing literary carrots, but we’ve trotted into what amounts to a busy marketplace, on fire. If we’re serious about bringing our work to that market, what do we do?

The good news is, there is more than one way to get there.

Thinking about it, multiple routes to success makes sense—we write fiction and nonfiction, with all kinds of attitudes and bents on our subjects, in different genres, for various audiences, age groups, and so on. On the publishing end of the equation, there are traditional, large publishers all the way down to small, using their own distribution network or using a third party, then there is the vast expanse of self or indie publishing, following any number of business models and print or electronic book emphasis. We write from any one of a nearly infinite number of backgrounds; we may live in a city with bus loads of other writers, in a suburb two minutes from Panera, or in an inaccessible countryside where our only writer friends are reachable online.

Why would we agree to one way of getting published or finding agent representation? When I looked at the “success” stories last year, I noticed some common moments, but there were certainly many roads to Rome. So it burns me to hear anyone declare that writers don’t need to blog and don’t need to worry about brand. Especially when what “branding” means to us writers is so unclear already.

Here’s how I feel about branding, and I’ll say at the outset (actually word 364 of this post) that I have some experience with the concept after working for years for a company that did marketing and market evaluation.

For writers, branding is closely tied to our reputation and our genre, but it winds up encompassing more than that. It has not been the case for me that branding is only about my genre. If that were true, how would readers distinguish between Bob Mayer and Tom Clancy, or Mary Higgins Clark and P.D. James? When I pick up a mystery by Patricia Cornwell, I know I’m going to get a specific character history, a dark, brooding thriller, a lot of forensic science, and a writer who I think personally is particularly egotistical. If I select a mystery by Ellen Hart, I’ll get gay-infused storylines, a lot of food writing, a funny sidekick, and very little forensic science.

One could argue that these writers work in different subgenres, but look at two writers working in the same subgenre, no matter how narrow the category, and the individual differences will persist. Brands are about more than genre.

Moreover, brands only happen because writers put themselves out there on the scene. To tell Tom Clancy not to worry about his brand is one thing, what with the millions of books he’s sold over his career, but to tell emerging writers to only focus on audience is dangerous, because it takes away agency from the author in making herself known to others, and puts it on industry professionals to discover her. And while I have great respect for Rachelle Gardener and the hard-working agents in publishing–especially given today’s publishing climate–I think that more than ever, writers and agents/publishers need to be reaching for each other, and writers need support from other writers.

Yes, I need to focus on my craft and my audience, no question. I do that. I feel driven to write for a very specific audience, and I’d say that my audience attention is part of my brand. I’m not a science fiction young adult writer (well okay, I am), I’m a science fiction young adult writer who is transgender and who is writing books for LGBT youth and others who care about LGBT youth. And that is a mouthful. So rather than watch some agent’s eyes glass over during an elevator pitch with that kind of lead, I make my mission more pill-sized. And that is my brand. Quirky, sarcastic, heartfelt, queer, fresh, precocious, funny, satirical, and out of this world; that is the fiction I try every day to create.

This means that when I put something out on Twitter I try to be engaging and land somewhere in that framework. I don’t complain about traffic, I don’t put down other writers, or act like a petulant child. I know that each and every tweet marks who I am as a person and a writer. I want to be collegial, helpful without lecturing anyone, nice, positive, and encouraging to my fellow writers, and I’ve found so far that this approach really works for me. I read other people’s manuscripts and give them feedback. I participate in conferences, don’t monopolize conversation, and try to support folks when they’re about to walk into a ballroom and talk with an agent for two minutes. I blog about my writing process, have written for free on blogs to help expand my audience, and have offered an ear to others when they want to complain about how crappy the writing world has treated them.

Is this my brand, or is this me being me? It’s both. Our brands shouldn’t be something that is far afield from who we actually are as people. Every moment we spend in our careers goes toward or takes away from our brand image. I try to remember this when I engage people. In talking with a publisher last August at the Pacific Northwest Writers Association, he clapped a hand on my shoulder after something I’d said.

“What is it,” I asked.

“You just sound so easy to work with,” he said like he’d spotted a 4-carat diamond a foot away from where we were.

And now he’s my publisher.

Love the Antagonist

Filed under amwriting, writing craft by Everett Maroon on September 29, 2011 at 9:24 am {2 comments}

Don Corleone in profile Copious bubbles of advice flow out of the Internet for new writers—everything from opening lines that work to hanging in there through the middle of the first draft. Once a novel is completed, emerging writers can spend the majority of their waking hours searching for that perfect agent or press, hopeful that such recipients will go wild for their pages. All of the eagerness and pride and delicious fantasies about our future success—for we are nothing if not avid daydreamers—are blown away when rejection after rejection rolls in, clogging one’s in box. Suddenly that stream of advice looks chalky, harder to interpret, and the messages around handling professional no-thank-yous another cold stab of curtness. It’s difficult to hear the “just keep writing” mantra and adhere to it with the same level of joy as before. But take heart: this is all part of the process.

In my own journey towards publishing oblivion—I mean, toward getting published—I’ve seen some big gaps in wordcraft advice. Agents are ready for the first few terrific pages, because everyone knows about the hook, the setup, the voice, and the avoidance of cliche. Because those are the known points where writers put a lot of their energy, agents and editors know to look past those initial moments, and a request for the first three chapters or first 50 pages is their attempt to get into the meat of the book.

In this light, I bring up the antagonist. As a reader for more than one literary contest, I will say that often, she does not get her due. The antagonist is the foil to the main character, after all. The relationship between the antagonist and the protagonist has to propel the conflict and catalyze the growth of our beloved heroine or hero, after all, so the antagonist needs at least as much care and attention as the author is willing to drizzle over the main character.

A poorly conceived antagonist is like a loose string on a sweater that destroys one line of fabric at a time. Without a strong antagonist the book can’t support a strong conflict; without a strong conflict the story doesn’t have the ability to transport the reader, and then folks, we’re done. If a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it—if a reader walks away at the start of the second chapter, then we need to revisit our work.

Antagonist tips, in a deliberate order:

Love the antagonist—Writers need to have some inroad to affection for the antagonist, in order to create a layered, full-fledged character. Maybe we loathe and despise their actions, but somewhere deep down they have a soft spot. This need never come out in the finished pages (although I would argue that they probably should), but the writer needs to conceive of it and remember it when writing any scene that includes the antagonist. Think Don Corleone with an orange segment in his mouth, chasing his grandson through a garden.
Motivate the antagonist—Every character in the tale has a back story, and the antagonist is one of those characters. How did this person become such an . . . antagonizer? The writer has to know the reasons; I’ll note here that experience + personality result in the current-day character. It’s not just what has happened to the antagonist that matters, it’s how they responded to some previous moment, and what consequences they’ve had to live with that bring them to where they are now. Working up this back story will also help for going forward with their reactions and attitudes through the open waters of the story itself.
Humanize the antagonist—We need to move beyond evil villains. Not every antagonist is Voldemort or a hell-bent angel. Antagonists are mothers, tricksters, misguided psychologists, people overcome with bitterness, failures, individuals with problematic delusions, bullies, and so on. Thinking that antagonists must be megalomaniacs looking for total control of the multiverse will likely result in an unbelievable character. All the antagonist has to do is resist the protagonist in a way that matches up with the plot, themes, and structure of the story. Nobody needs a laser to cut a stick of butter.
Desegregate the antagonist—There are probably people in the story who like the antagonist, because hardly anyone is an island. Who are they? A congregation, schoolmates, parents or children, a lonely next-door neighbor, someone. On Glee, the cheerleading coach, an antagonist if ever there were one, has two fans: a sister and a single cheerleader to whom she is always nice. How these supporting characters figure into the story is up to the writer, but it helps to create a multifaceted antagonist when we see them in non-antagonizing relationships with other people.
Equalize the antagonist—Big mismatches in power between antagonist and protagonist sound interesting, but often don’t play out well on the page. Especially for YA literature, I like to see two main antagonists: one who figures in the protagonist’s world at the start of the story, and a bigger, more powerful one the protagonist will face when she has grown, by the end of the story. Think corrupt guidance counselor versus evil demon living under the public library. If the antagonist is worlds stronger than the main character, that match up may injure the believability of the story itself, and trust me, nobody wants that.

Rejections will happen because yes, they are part of one’s eventual success. In the meantime we should pay attention to making every facet of our work impeccable, thoughtful, and engrossing. Antagonists factor into every other aspect of a story and deserve their own careful construction. Agents and readers alike will love to hate them, as we do.

Everett Maroon is a writer, pop culture commentator, and humorist who blogs at Transplantportation.com. He lives in Walla Walla, Washington with his wife and new son, and hopes to one day get some sleep.

The Angst of Metamorphosis

Filed under amwriting by Everett Maroon on July 8, 2011 at 7:52 am {6 comments}

Carolyn Ross was going to become a star phoenix, I could tell. She already had luxurious multi-colored hair that looked more gold or red depending on the light or what she was wearing that day. Even from across our dingy cafeteria, she stood out, and not just because a small crowd of devotees followed her wherever she went. She actually radiated a little, like her body just couldn’t wait to show off what it would become. Soon, from the look of things.

On our part of the planet, children went into metamorphosis around their fourteenth to sixteenth autumn; back where my cousins lived, nearer the equator, it was earlier, often before their twelfth autumn.

Carolyn and the rest of my class were on the edge of the shift, but I for one wasn’t looking forward to it.

My friend Gabby noticed me assessing Carolyn and her entourage.

“Realistic expectations, my friend,” she said, uncrinkling the cellophane off her sandwich—today it was chicken salad wrapped in lettuce leaves. She held it in her tiny olive fingers like a musical instrument she would play instead of lunch she’d eat.

“What are you talking about?” I poked at my cold spaghetti with a plastic fork. Specialty of the world-famous Chef Boyardee.

“We’re not Miss Carolyn Ross. But our metas will be what’s right for us.”

“That’s a nice thought.”

I focused on turning one strand of pasta into 37 pieces, all separated from each other forever. My next step was to mash them into the sauce. This was preferable to eating any of it.

We turned to see a scuffle at the doors to the cafeteria, where a barrel-chested student staggered over to a support column. Wiry, thick porcupine-like quills stuck out through his shirt and sliced through what had very recently been a neutral pair of khakis; the staple of our school’s dress code. He grunted and slammed into the support again, as if the backs of his ribs would better comprehend what it was, as poles go, than his eyes could manage.

Sometimes metamorphosis came on badly, threatening the mental capacity of the human, which is why we attended training early in life to help manage the moment of the first and most powerful meta. This classmate clearly hadn’t studied very hard before his change into a human-sized, wild boar.

“Is that Warren Beauman?” I pointed with my fork. I’d bent the tines and now they stuck out at odd angles.

“Good eye,” said our friend Jeffrey Cox, who sat down at our table.

His avocado-green cafeteria tray was warped in the middle, so his cup of milk had sloshed over the rim a few times. Jeffrey once took a lot of teasing, both because of his last name and because he was large. He had learned to ignore most of the constant taunting, basically by growing close to two stories tall. Unsurprisingly, he turned into a grizzly bear at his first meta last year. At this point, only the most buff of the football players would take him on. So whether in metamorphosis or “in plain state,” as we called it, messing with Jeffrey was something of a very bad, terrible idea.

“Seems there won’t be much of Warren tomorrow,” said Gabby, nibbling at a corner of lettuce. Slowly she looked back at Jeffrey and me as school security led him away, probably to Dr. Hendrix’s office downstairs. Dr. Hendrix was our school’s chair of the Metamorphosis Department and she had seen more bad metas than probably anyone else in town.

“This is why it pays to study, people,” said Jeffrey, eating half of his cheese steak in one bite.

“That doesn’t bother your stomach?”

“Oh, it’ll bother my stomach later, but it doesn’t matter if I eat it in two pieces or twenty. Cafeteria food is cafeteria food.”

I nodded and waited for the bell to signal the end of the period.

Unfolding the first wing was challenging. Gloppy with thick slime, little bits of orange shell still stuck to the translucent skin that showed just how hard my heart—whatever heart I had at the moment—was pulsing hard.

Hold on, hold on, I told myself. I had a searing need to flap my arms, or wings, or whatever protruded out from my shoulders. Me, I was me, I needed to remember. Hannah Pace, that’s me. I live at 31927 Carousel Boulevard. My cat is Mr. Stinkers, named when I was little. I’m smart and not very pretty, and not sure I want to be, anyway.

Forget pretty, I’m some kind of small dragon now.

I gave in to the urge to shake myself out, and amniotic fluid exploded off of me, landing on the ceiling, desk, and my True Blood poster. Dad would not like this, me having my meta without anyone around, but I didn’t feel particularly eggish the night before, so I gave myself a pass.

Broad wings, from the look of them. I turned to look at myself in the full-length mirror, but either my eyes were still adjusting or I’d gotten fluid on the glass, because all I could discern was a long streak of red. Maybe a big spike at the end of my tail. Seeing that, I remembered Dr. Hendrix’s class. Only practice moving in a safe environment. Ask for help. Stay grounded. Grounded.

With wings, could I fly? This was way better than a silly star phoenix, with all those ashes that just made a mess.

I opened my mouth and roared, fighting a deep need to blow fire across the room.

I couldn’t wait to show Gabby and Jeff.

———

Everett Maroon lives and writes in Walla Walla, Washington, and blogs at Trans/plant/portation.com. He has had short stories published in SPLIT Quarterly and Twisted Dreams Magazine.

Avoiding Plot Pitfalls

Filed under amwriting, writing craft by Everett Maroon on June 8, 2011 at 7:53 am {3 comments}

Plot pitfalls happen. That moment when one realizes two points don’t make sense temporally, structurally, or logically can suck all the motivation out of a writer, because sheesh, what the hell should one do now? It’s a frustrating moment to realize one has written oneself into the proverbial corner. Sure, there are easy-to-resolve pitfalls out there—a story may be too trite or too action packed, so the remedies are clear: spice it up or slow it down, respectively. In these cases this is where I would pull out my index cards that break down each scene and look to see where I could insert new material or take out moments I don’t need for the tale.

But then there are complicated problems in plotting that either aren’t so clean-cut to diagnose or that require the equivalent of neurosurgery to solve. Here are a few of the wilier beasts, and the way in which I’ve made fixes. These could be solved in other ways, I’m sure, and as always, I’m open to suggestions in the comments—this is just what has worked for me.

I’m writing science fiction/fantasy and I can’t get explain this new technology/magic well enough, and it’s pivotal to the plot—I may be unorthodox here, or subjecting myself to a wave of rotten virtual tomatoes from other writers, but not everything needs an explanation. Sometimes less is more. Sure, this advice will not work for the hard core science fiction story, but characters don’t need to know why things are the way they are, either. Perhaps there’s room for some sarcasm or satire; Douglas Adams has a wonderful, absurd way of stating things and moving on, and while we’re laughing, we’re not paying attention to the paucity of sense. That’s the point, and as every 6th grader knows, it’s a ton of fun to read. Got wormholes? Fine. Do authors spend time explaining how car pistons work every time their characters climb into a vehicle? No. Write the story plot on a piece of paper without the genre elements and see if it’s still interesting as a story. Where are the plot holes without the genre? Those are the ones that will require the most explanation, should the writer choose to describe them.

The other thing I want to say about explanations is that in representations of worlds that aren’t this one, over-description can make even simple stories impossible at some point, as the creation begins to collapse under its own weight. Lots of later sequels do this. So-and-so is the secret daughter of Big Evil Guy, but didn’t we read in book 3 that daughter was actually from this totally other place where he can’t exist? Don’t let back story or loads of description cut off avenues of storytelling. Besides, avid readers will spot each and every inconsistency and call it out, and that’s never a good day.

The novel is too long and it’s impossible to figure out what to cut—Back to the index cards, my trusty companions. Or a spreadsheet, or notebook of scenes. Here’s how I outline my scenes:

PROTAGONIST in blue
ANTAGONIST in red
SUPPORTING CHARACTERS in green
LOCATION, SEASON, DATE, TIME
WHAT HAPPENS in one sentence—like “FIGHT” “CHASE” “CONVERSATION” “INT. MONOLOGUE”

First things first—can I cut the first two chapters? I often reflect on Eudora Welty’s comment that “starting a story is the same as how to pick up a puppy; a little in front of the middle.” (Apologies to Ms. Welty for the paraphrasing.) If the first and/or second chapter can become the back story, it probably is.

Next, really look at the cards. Maybe they’re a little like tea leaves, but as I have no idea how to interpret tea leaves, I’ll say this about the cards: they should help writers visualize patterns. Sure, there’s an overarching plot, and the cards should let those plot points stand out in a clear way (if not, that’s yet another problem to resolve). But the cards also declare whether the pacing and subplots are working out. In long books, somewhere in the 120,000-word and plus range, it’s probably pacing that is suffering. Look for cards that are doing the same thing, back to back, or in a series of three or more. Can any of these scenes get cut or collapsed? Are there too many side characters? Is a major character introduced past the first third of the book? There better be a darn good reason, because readers don’t particularly enjoy seeing introductions late in the game. They want the story to establish itself and get going. Yes, hero journeys can be the exception to this.

Cutting never feels good, but there are two things to remember here:

It was necessary writing to help establish the tone so that the scenes that remain could be written in kind
It may be resurrectable for sequels, or spin off other stories

I can’t figure out how to end this beast because I’ve drifted from my original plot—that is the danger of throwing in twists. Meandering turns can be surprising and fun, but they complicate the plot and at some point, there are diminishing returns. Go back to the original plot path and compare it with the new one. Maybe the ending is already in there, or maybe it needs to be reinvented. I like to try visualizing an epilogue—not to write, just to see it in my mind’s eye—of the major characters five years or so down the road. Often the novel ending has already happened, and I can pin it down from there. Remember that most stories tell the experience of the protagonist: who they are at the beginning, what conflict happens to them, how it changes them, and then The End. We’re watching personalities grow in most novels, and when the growth has taken place and the protagonist realizes it, the novel is over. If that new plant shoot can be spotted in the text or the scene cards, voila, end the story. If it isn’t there, then it has to be found.

Isn’t writing a wonderful thing?

Treasure Map

Filed under writing craft by Everett Maroon on May 13, 2011 at 6:00 am {4 comments}

He peers into the hole, dabbing at his brow with a damp handkerchief. The shovel has found every large stone in this 3-square foot area. Beating down on both of them is the early summer sun, but he, much older than his companion, feels it a lot more, especially in his knees and the middle of his back.

She squats down easily, inspecting the rough sides of what looks like an overgrown divot in the grass, and though she is only twelve years old she has a lot of experience with the central New Jersey soil and rock, much to her mother’s consternation. With nimble, dirty fingers she retrieves a stone, rolling it over as if it signals some clue they need.

“You haven’t gotten very far,” she tells him, brushing dregs of red clay onto her jeans before standing up. She is only about six inches shorter than him.

“I realize that.” He takes care not to sound sharp with her.

He stabs at the ground, and again the metal grinds against stone, making a sound as irritating as nails on a chalkboard. Without meaning to, he grunts as he digs. Now the sweat and humidity have wilted his shirt collar. This is not the way he envisioned the afternoon would proceed.

He asks her if she’s sure this is the spot, making sure he’s quiet about it because he knows her feelings are easily hurt.

“Yes, I’m sure.” She pulls a wrinkled map out of her back pocket.

Faded blue lines streak across the paper, with broad brown writing upstaging the rules where she was supposed to practice her penmanship. Instead she’d gotten excited by an episode of Mr. Wizard’s World and as soon as she’d learned she could draw a treasure map in lemon juice, she put off her math homework and attempted to fashion directions to something terrific. Except she didn’t have anything important to bury, and for sure she’d need to sneak this project under her mother’s radar. Danielle looks at the number of paces again, using her index finger to keep focus as she calculates. Steps are drawn off to the side, in clumps of five hash marks, an inch or so above a compass guide. She should not have tried to draw a dragon in lemon juice with a toothpick, because it looks horrible and decidedly un-dragonlike.

“It should be right here,” she says, pointing to the disturbed earth at their feet, but lacking the confidence she had just a moment earlier.

“May I see it?”

She wonders when he got so mannerly, because she couldn’t be less interested in that Dear Abby nonsense.

She passes it to him and stifles a grumble because she knows how to read her own map. Self-doubt has evaporated just as quickly as it arrived.

“So this is the tree here,” he asks. He tries to remember if this was always the way the backyard met up with the woods. It’s been so long.

Danielle leans in, and they study the slip of paper together. Everything has become so absurd, but she has put in too much energy now to back down from locating the box. Filled with something like a hundred Susan B. Anthony dollars and whatever else she can’t recall, he’s apparently desperate for it.

“Come to think of it, maybe it’s this tree.” She walks back to her starting point, 60 yards away, where the uneven bricks of the patio end and sod picks up. He tries not to stare at her gait, not to watch for any tell-tale signs. Soon enough Danielle is back across the lawn, now standing about 30 feet further west from his location.

“Try over here, Derrick,” she yells. His name feels funny in her mouth, unreal.

He hurries over, worrying about how all of this activity must look to whatever neighbors are around.

This time the spade sinks easily through the grass and he tilts the long handle back, bringing up a good measure of earth. Finally a smile breaks across Derrick’s face.

“I think this may be it,” he says, as sweat rolls past his temples. He feels the lunch pail, and gets on his knees, creaky as they are, ignoring that it’s time to take his pills. The green and orange picture of the Scooby Doo Mystery Machine van peeks out at them.

“Yay,” Danielle says, grabbing the handle which is secured on only one side, the other connection having dissolved away into the ground. She catches her breath. What if what he said is true?

“You don’t have to be scared,” says Derrick, brushing black dirt out from between the seams of the lid and box. “We can put this back in just a couple of minutes.” He walks over toward a tree nearest them and sits under it, noticing that the cancer inside him is pushing on his bladder. Danielle walks up and sits beside him, feeling the rough bark through her t-shirt. It’s a new shirt that she got at the mall, having selected the Ghostbusters logo from the lineup of emblems on the wall at the small store. But she didn’t actually believe in ghosts or magic before today.

“I still think it’s weird that you did this,” she says, unable to refrain from bringing up the subject again.

“I know, kid, I know.” He opens the box, a rough prospect after so much of the hinge has rusted shut. Wrapped in newspaper are the coins they expected, and he brushes past them, still looking. Guatemalan worry dolls, far from where they could provide any help. They’re supposed to be placed where they can resolve problems, he recalls.

“I don’t remember putting it in there, you know,” she says.

Danielle has told him this already, but he knows it’s here. He sees a corner of plastic. It found its way to the farthest corner of the box. He holds the clump of baby hair up to the light—delicate, thin brown hairs wrapped in cellophane.

Danielle wants to hold it, but Derrick says she can see it from where she is. He gives her a sideways glance and asks if she’s nervous. She nods.

“I believe that I become you, but why can’t we just let it happen the way it did? Why can’t you just get to a doctor before you get so sick?”

It’s a perfectly good question, and a smart one from a pre-teen, but intelligence has never been his problem.

He sizes her up, considering how much he should tell her and how much he’s obligated to say. Because they’re the same person, does he need his earlier self’s permission?

“I like my life right now,” she says, not exactly looking for a defense. Maybe he has just imitated her scars on his own body.

“Yes, I was pretty happy until my body started changing in puberty,” he says. He doesn’t want to overwrite the child’s attitude, or show her too much of the future.

“It’s really that bad?”

“It solves a lot of problems if we just do this.” Derrick knows when the hair was taken, his first day home after the birth. It’s the best anchor, a new start.

Danielle frowns at the lock, which reminds her of the ancient bug trapped in amber that sits in the glass case in science class.

“I just wonder, maybe I won’t be the same person if I start out as a boy.”

Too smart, this one, he thinks. Derrick nods his head. He’s come all this way, at great risk and expense, and yet, he’s forgotten to ask the simplest of questions.

She takes his hand and compares the folds in their palms. His are deeper, his skin less elastic.

“You’re dying,” she asks.

“Yes. It’s not your, or my fault.”

“Doctors refused to treat you?”

“It’s the law where I come from. We’re on our own, so resources are limited.”

“If you change our history, will we remember who we used to be?” Danielle feels her own palm instead of looking at him.

“I honestly don’t know. Probably not,” he says, laying his infancy on top of the Mystery Machine.

“I don’t want to die at 47,” she tells Derrick.

“But I want to become the person you are.” She grabs the packet of hair off of the lunch box and bolts into the woods, knowing he can’t keep up with her. Only once Danielle has scattered the clipping in the creek does she walk back to the boundary of her parents’ property. He is still under the tree, looking somewhat grayer than before. She apologizes, and Derrick waves her off.

“I would have done the same thing,” he says, smiling again.

END

Everett Maroon

Filed under Author Bios (use only for bios!) by Everett Maroon on August 24, 2010 at 7:18 pm {no comments}

@EverettMaroon

Everett Maroon is a memoirist, pop culture commentator, and speculative fiction writer. He has a B.A. in English from Syracuse University and went through an English literature master’s program there. He is a member of the Pacific Northwest Writer’s Association; Bumbling into Body Hair was a finalist in their 2010 literary contest for memoir. Everett writes about writing and living in the Northwest at trans/plant/portation. He has written for Bitch Magazine, GayYA.org, I Fry Mine in Butter, a blog about popular culture, RH RealityCheck, and Remedy Quarterly. He will be writing for Original Plumbing in 2012 on popular culture and trans civil rights. He has had short stories published by SPLIT Quarterly and Twisted Dreams Magazine. Bumbling into Body Hair is forthcoming in March 2012 from Booktrope Editions.

Everett lives in Walla Walla, Washington, with his partner and baby son. He is originally from Hightstown, New Jersey.