So, how do you expect me to remember the names in Living Next Door to Heaven? [This is a long post, so you might want to save it for when you need something to put you to sleep.]
I remember hearing Mary Doria Russell (author of The Sparrow and Children of God) speak about the release of her newest book (at the time--2011) Doc. She said she was head over heels in love with Doc Holliday while writing that book. A listener asked if she was still in love with Emilio Sandoz (of The Sparrow) and she said, "Oh, no. He's like an ex-husband now. I don't spend time thinking about him."
When I'm writing, I fall in love with my characters. I invite them to live in my mind and my heart. As a result, I write a ton of words every day (averaging over 4,000 a day so far this year!) And now I am working on a new series of stories that I've tentatively called "The Photo Finish Trilogy." I've finished writing the first book, Full Frame, and it is in the editing cycle. It came out to 36 chapters and a total of 270,000 words! You can expect much longer chapters with this than what I've been doing over the past few years.
Now, I'm working on the sequel, Shutter Speed. I'm 130,000 words into it and as I drive across country, the characters are yammering non-stop.
I thought I’d describe a couple of issues that I’ve run into as I got rolling on Shutter Speed. These are more technical than story arc related, so there won’t be any spoilers here.
I quickly reached a point at which I was stuck, dealing with a sensitive subject, and trying to get the right words placed around the intense emotional situation. I don’t often encounter anything remotely like "writer’s block," and I don’t consider this to have been a block like most people say they encounter. I had lots of ideas, but I was carefully considering how to incorporate them without falling back on the crutch of ‘have sex and everything will be better.’ That works, but only temporarily.
Instead, I needed to go to where my trailer was parked, 25 miles away, and start prepping it for travel again. I was in the truck, not more than two miles from where I’d been staying the past month, when the characters started talking. I mostly just listened for the forty minutes it took to get there, then I had to sit with a stack of 3x5 cards and start writing down the gist of what was being discussed in my head. I did eventually get power to my trailer, locate the things I needed, and prepare the trailer for deep cleaning. But when I got home, I immediately sat down to write another 4,000 words.
As I was outlining and determining the direction for the story, I needed a new character who would become a significant player in the story going forward. The new character needed a name. I first chose Pamela. She has a hated nickname of Pammy which she allows only one close friend to call her. Her more usual name would be Pam. I needed those three variations. Then I realized that I already had a significant character in Full Frame whose name was Pam. This would definitely create confusion, so I needed a new name, popular for female babies born in 1949, that had three variants I could use. I tried out and discarded several before I found one that had the right feeling and rhythm. Elizabeth. Despised nickname, Lizzie. Accepted nickname among friends, Beth. And there are a couple of other nicknames that I could use if she becomes really complex, like Betsy, Liz, Lisbet, etc.
Back in ’76, my dad had a VW microbus that I used for a while. I remembered it as being cold (driving from Minneapolis to Indiana in December), having two separate seats in front with a pass-through between them, and a whole new experience driving. So, I described the ’66 VW Kombi that Nate acquires as what I remembered of that bus. Then I found a picture of a fully restored model. I went back to work, rewriting my description to something closer to reality. It had a 1/3-2/3 seat combination that allowed three passengers in front, as long as the one in the middle didn’t mind having the driver’s hand between her legs as he shifted. Some things improved over my faulty memory.
So how do I keep track of all these things and try to maintain some semblance of order in how they are presented?
The first indispensable item I have is a master spreadsheet workbook with several spreadsheets on which I keep track of characters, situations, locations, what photos are being taken, and any other miscellaneous data that I will surely forget in writing a massive serial like this one. I expect the total length of the three planned volumes to come in at around 800,000 words and over 100 chapters. It will cover a period of about ten or twelve years. That means literally hundreds of characters will come into and out of Nate’s life. I won’t try to list them all in introductions, but some will certainly be there. Others, though, I need to maintain a log of, so I don’t introduce a tall thin blonde in one chapter and refer to her as a fat redhead in another. (Can’t recall ever referring to anyone as ‘fat,’ but you get the idea.)
The second major thing that I do is maintain a calendar of what is happening in Nate’s life. In addition to the direct events in Nate’s life, I also note holidays, school start and vacation dates, important dates in US and World history, like the Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the 1968 Democratic National Convention, the invasion of Cambodia, Kent State, the Watts riots (1965 version), and elections and outcomes. Writing a slice of life story in a fairly realistic historic period can be a real task!
And, of course, there is my search folder that shows all the different websites I’ve gone to trying to find different tidbits to stay consistent with reality, even though my story is anything but reality. I even have the regional weather marked for the period of the story and I check frequently to see what the weather was like on a particular day. What movies were out? When was Arlo Guthrie’s "Alice’s Restaurant" released? What style swimsuits and dresses were the girls wearing? Were there front closure bras in 1967? How did the Selective Service change in 1967?
Well, you get the idea. I haven’t mentioned the marked-up maps that show the region I’m referring to and the way I’ve renamed streets and cities, what all the local high school sports teams were called, and doctrinal issues in the Methodist Church at the time of the merger with the EUB that created the United Methodist Church. It was an interesting era, and I lived through most of it.
All of this for one purpose only. I really want to bring you the best story I can without jarring you out of it with miscellaneous misinformation. I still can’t guarantee that I get everything right, nor that my editors catch every anomaly. But we do our best.
I'm currently camped in St. Regis, Montana and Wednesday will continue my journey eastward. Expect Minneapolis area sometime around July 20th, Des Moines area the last week of July, Northern Illinois the first week of August, and Columbus, Ohio the second week of August. That's as detailed an outline as I have at the moment. If you are on that general routing and would like to get together, let me know. I'd love to meet up.