January 9, 2006
Thriller author David Morrell has commented in his book on writing and in other interviews that one of his mentors, John Barth, used to do "test borings" or "boring drills," approaching his novels from different points of view or styles before he got started, and David said, "Ah, like mining, running test borings," and Barth gave him a peculiar look and said, "No, I want to make sure they're not boring."

Hmmm.

I've been beating myself up over the novel in progress's point of views (or points of view, I suppose). It's written entirely in the third person single pov, the main character, Joanna Dancing. I'm about 160 pages in and I wouldn't say I'm stuck, but I'm getting snagged damn near every time I write. It's getting harder and harder to accomplish what I'm trying to accomplish. I keep thinking, "You need multiple povs," which means I'm going to have to go back to the beginning and stick them in there somewhere and decde who they are, etc.

The other voice says, "It's fine the way it is." I'm beginning to think that voice is the lazy voice and the impatient voice that just wants to get through the project, rather than the wiser voice that wants the project to be good.

So, somewhere between interviewing a guy from the Kohler company and lunch, I took a few minutes and started a scene about Colonel Seth Munro, head of "Special Operations" for the Department of Homeland Security.

Man, let me tell you. It felt like a breath of fresh air. It also gave me, in about two pages, a stronger sense of what's actually going on in the novel.

So I did a boring drill and I think it worked. Friday I had gotten frustrated, so I took the manuscript to date and wrote synopses of all the chapters, then I debated about what was going on inbetween with other characters and where I might stick them in, then I sat down and asked myself a bunch of questions on paper that kept cropping up during the story and decided, as best as I could, what the hell the answers are. Kind of like an outline, more or less.

Things like: who leaked the information about Webber's research to the Chinese?

Unfortunately, my answer in big capital letters was I DON'T KNOW, but by the time I got through answering all the other questions, I did know, as well as the why. And it did some interesting things to the story, like taking Seth Munro, who I viewed as a bad guy, and giving him much more complexity and color to his motivations for what he's doing and why. Which isn't to say he isn't a bad guy, but his motivations are far more three dimensional now.

If there's a lesson here, I think that it's instead of arguing with yourself, sometimes you just need to try different things and see for yourself how they work out. Yes, this can be time-consuming, but it's worthwhile. And two, chances are there's a wise little voice in your head that REALLY knows what you should be doing. You just have to listen to it.

Best,
Mark Terry