Music as Inspiration

Posted by J.P. Sloan on May 23, 2011

It’s no earth-shattering revelation that writers glean inspiration from music. Either from setting the right mood to stimulating the flow of words by reducing distraction, music can be a tremendous lubricant for the creative process. While I have previously mentioned that early in my drafting process I require very little sensory input to function at maximum output, I do yet find a place for music as my muse.

My weapons of choice are movie scores… that being the orchestral score, rather than the “soundtrack” as a list of songs appearing in the movie. Ever since I first began writing as a freshman in high school (how can it be that long ago?), I have spent hours listening to orchestral scores, re-creating scenes in my head to match the musical dynamics. Scores paint vivid musical pictures, and I find it difficult NOT to pre-write as I hear them.

The score that really blew my top off creatively was James Horner’s score to the movie Glory. I wore out that cassette creating a novel in my head all about a Russian youth leaving home to help fight the Golden Horde. It took me several years to actually watch the film, and to be honest, it couldn’t live up to the emotional investment I had in the storyline I had tailored to the music.

I would repeat this with Michael Kamen’s score for The Last of the Mohicans, the Vangelis score for 1492: Conquest of Paradise, and many others… none of which actually made it to paper. The most recent muse for my writing has been Daft Punk’s score for Tron: Legacy, orchestrated by Joseph Trapanese, which guided my brain through several action scenes for Omnipotence.

That being said, my current project, The Curse Merchant, has no such orchestral endowment. For the first time, one of my long-format projects has an honest to God soundtrack. The music that stirs my mind for Dorian Lake is mostly darkly reflective with blue notes and lyrical content that hints at doom and unrest. I will often cue up the songs for my daily commute, and will literally rehearse scenes out loud.

Thank God I drive alone!

Curse Merchant Excerpt

Posted by J.P. Sloan on May 20, 2011

I thought I would cap off the week with a short excerpt from the second chapter of The Curse Merchant. This is first draft material, so there’s no guarantee this will actually make it to the final product, but it’s fun to capture moments of the process and see what has happened to it down the road.

***

I rubbed my temples and stepped into the Great Room, an open space vaulted by columns, decked in Persian rugs and worn furniture arranged in tight clusters of conversation. The occasional potted palm broke the space into islands of perceived privacy. I knew from experience that this privacy was an illusion, one I had capitalized on more than once.

It looked and felt like home, but was stranger. Darker, somehow. As I wandered to the long mahogany bar along the near wall, it occurred to me what was missing.

People.

I checked the date on my watch. It was the fourth, Saturday night. The place should have been packed. The only patrons I could see were a group of young lions in business suits huddled in a corner, two of Mama Clo’s girls draped across their wingbacks.

“Dorian Lake, my God in heaven,” a warm, husky voice called from the bar.

I turned to find Big Ben Setley gawking at me, a couple crystal highballs drip-drying in his hands. Ben was a short, wide man with a broad, continually sweaty forehead and a double chin. He had a ruddy tone to his face that gave him the look of a man who had been dying from the same heart attack for the past three years but no one had the heart to tell him. He may not have owned the club, but he was the man who kept it running.

“Evening, Ben.”

Ben stowed the glassware and dried his hands before shaking mine in a vice-like grip.

“Jesus, Dorian.” He stood wide-eyed for an uncomfortable moment, and I had to pull my hand away before he composed himself. “Thought you went back to New York.”

“No. I’ve been around. Catching up on sleep, washing my hair. You know.”

“Well it’s damn good to see you, son.” He gestured to the end stool. “Sit! What’ll you have? Want your Glenny?”

My scotch. My vintage seventy-eight Glenrothes. Just what my frayed nerves needed.

“Figured you would have sold it out from underneath me by now.”

Ben recoiled with a scowl.

“I’m offended.” He pulled a stepladder from the end of the bar and added, “I’d drink it before I sold it.”

He unlocked a tiny leaded glass door above the backbar, and produced my scotch, blowing a puff of dust off of it. As he busied himself with a controlled descent, I eyed one of the young lions approaching the bar with two empty martini glasses.

“Two more, Ben,” the blonde-haired executive purred.

Ben lifted a finger and nodded as he poured three fingers of my Glenrothes into a highball. He gave me a wink and slid it slowly across the bar.

“Saints preserve you, Ben,” I muttered as I lifted the highball to my nose and closed my eyes, transporting myself into the sheer sensation of a perfectly crafted spirit.

***

The Writing Environment

Posted by J.P. Sloan on May 16, 2011

Lately, I have been putting thought into my surroundings as I sit down to write. I often wonder what other writers choose as their creative environment. I feel the choices hinge largely on the writer’s personality and the requirements placed upon them due to their life situations.

When it comes to personality, I find I have a single purpose mind. Multi-tasking is not one of my talents. Early in the drafting process, I need to block out as many outside disturbances as possible, unless I find myself easily distracted and prone to staring at anything but my screen. Thus, I tend to thrive best in my finished basement. No windows, no music, no toddler… just my computer and a glass of inspiration.

However, there is a point during the drafting phase of writing at which the momentum has gathered enough strength to carry itself into Act Two and beyond. I become more comfortable with my characters’ voices, the words begin to flow, and I have navigated through the necessary exposition (hopefully with enough delicacy to keep it from sounding expository). When I reach this point of flow, I tend to emerge from my cave and bring myself into bright, often public, environments. When I reached the middle of my last project, Omnipotence, I was most often found at Starbucks typing furiously and sipping coffee. For its benefits of low distraction, the basement gets fairly depressing.

Naturally, this would not apply to every author. My wife, for example, requires several sensory inputs when she writes or revises. One can find her on the couch with the TV or a Pandora station going, the child on the floor creating (or destroying) worlds with his blocks, and her email continually demanding her attention. Somehow, she thrives amidst distraction.

I can guarantee I would get nothing done if I began the manuscript at Starbucks. I suppose one could compare my drafting process to a germinating seed. At those precious early moments, the manuscript begins underground in darkness. But once it breaks the surface, I tend to feed it light and fresh air.

Having just completed the second chapter of The Curse Merchant, I am still solidly in the topsoil, but I am looking forward to the sunlight!

Current Project: The Curse Merchant

Posted by J.P. Sloan on May 12, 2011

I thought I would take a moment to describe my current project.

The working title is The Curse Merchant. It will be my sixth novel-length project. I would classify it as a paranormal thriller, though it has strong mystery elements with a slight noir tone. Here’s the pitch:

“Dorian Lake, a facetious hex peddler in Baltimore, finds his feelings for his ex-girlfriend are rekindled when she asks for his help in buying back her soul from Osterhaus, an unscrupulous soul monger. As Dorian navigates the dangerous underworld of Netherworkers, he finds he may have become a pawn in a greater struggle between forces older than Mankind itself… and his own soul may soon be in jeopardy.”

The story is told from Dorian’s point of view, my second attempt at First Person narrative. Thus far, I have found it a challenge to maintain a clean flow while filtering it through the mouth of my protagonist. The good news is that I find him to be an utterly likable character, which makes it easier to write… and hopefully to read!

Thus far, the story is fully outlined, and I have completed the first chapter. I’ll post excerpts as the project progresses.

The Distraction of the Opening Line

Posted by J.P. Sloan on May 9, 2011

The perfect opening line… so often we lionize masterfully crafted opening sentences, subscribing classic examples to memory, often to the point of diluting their immediacy. However, as one commits to beginning the first draft, to what lengths does one feel tempted to dwell on that opening salvo? To what degree will the first sentence predestine the remainder of the work towards greatness or mediocrity?

I find this is simply one example of the many tiny distractions upon which we choose to obsess, in lieu of getting down to the business of writing. So very often do we dwell on decisions and considerations well in advance of our position in the Process. Not to say that a strong opening isn’t of vital importance, but the focus at this stage of the project should be in generating sentences, not in perfecting and polishing them.

Lingering on the perfect opening provides the writer with the opportunity to stall, to daydream towards a time beyond finishing the first draft, to forward the scope of the moment. Keeping an eye on the objective helps to motivate us and keep our morale and drive hot and lubricated. The very moment this serves to hold us back, however, we must immerse our heads into a bucket of figurative ice water, and shake it off.

Rather than focusing on the opening sentence, we should consider the opening paragraph, the opening page, the opening chapter. In my practice I outline my plot structure to prepare for a strong opening during pre-writing. The first entry in my outline is always called “Boom!” This is the moment within the Status Quo at which an immediate crisis shows how the protagonist acts and reacts under pressure, often in a flawed manner. But my focus is on the scene, not the lead-in.

There is plenty of time during revision to boil down all the superfluity of the first draft and thereby distill out a tight, engaging opening sentence, one that sets the tone and timbre for the entire work. And that day shall come.

But right now, at this point in the Process… it is time to write.

On Pre-writing

Posted by J.P. Sloan on May 6, 2011

I view the act of crafting a novel as progressing through four major phases prior to publication: pre-writing, writing, revising, and submitting. Each phase is its own peculiar journey, filled with joy, frustration, and not a small amount of head-to-desk percussion.

My latest project has just transitioned from pre-writing to writing. That is to say, the amount of planning, charting and development has concluded (for the largest part), and I have begun to put words down to screen. I feel that the moment of typing the first sentence can feel as momentous as typing the last; the threshold from pre-writing is no less exhilarating than finishing a first draft.

My pre-writing method is in continual evolution, as I learn more tricks and tips from professionals and fellow writers. However, I would like to share the steps I went through to prepare for my latest project, the working title of which is The Curse Merchant.

1. I began by creating a simple sentence, “This story is about…” It’s just a single sentence that sums up the goal, the motivation, and the conflict. That sentence usually follows the following scheme:

Hero wants to (goal) because (motivation), however (obstacle).

Without the goal, motivation, and conflict/obstacle, there is no story. This is true for both short stories and long format fiction.

2. I have a plot outline worksheet that walks me through your basic 3-Act plot structure, from establishing the Status Quo in Act 1 leading into the inciting event, to the Trials of Act 2 and the complications that arise leading to the Dark Moment, and ultimately the Climax and Resolution of Act 3. I just fill in the blanks, and once that is done I know exactly what will happen in the story, and most importantly, how it ends.

3. I then make a list of individual scenes (which typically become individual chapters) according to this outline, wherein I fill in slightly more detail, add in character names, and become more specific with subplots, etc. This step doubles the information in my outline, gives me a skeleton for my story, and allows me to gauge whether my Acts 1, 2, & 3 are spacing out appropriately.

4. From the scene descriptions, I begin the nuts-and-bolts work of filling in my scene worksheets, spreadsheets in Excel which outline the concrete details of each scene. They include the time and weather, the miniature conflict within each scene (every scene should have its own mini-plot arc), and how the scene serves the character and the story as a whole. This is a particularly grueling process!

5. Once I have all of my scenes dissected and arrayed, I work on characters. I have another Excel spreadsheet that I use for a character template, allowing me to detail the particulars of voicing, personal history, wardrobe, appearance, and most importantly the psychology and journey of the character. I create a worksheet for every major character. I might include minor characters if I feel it’s important, or if that character may become important in a later book.

6. An additional step which I may add in the future is to create setting worksheets, including photographs of real-world inspirations for actual scene locations. I benefit from this, as I have set The Curse Merchant in Baltimore, where I work. I intend to make a field trip day to site-locate various settings within the actual story, towards providing realistic and concrete details for my chapters.

And that’s basically it. From this point, I have to cram this information into my noggin, and allow it to reduce to a thick sauce before I begin to spoon it over the page.

Not every writer goes through such an analytical planning process; many writers prefer a more organic approach wherein they begin to type and see where the words lead them. I have no problem with that, as long as it produces results. Not every writer is wired the same, and thus their pre-writing process (or lack thereof) must be equally organic.