{"id":31012,"date":"2017-05-11T12:07:36","date_gmt":"2017-05-11T16:07:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/?p=31012"},"modified":"2017-05-11T12:07:37","modified_gmt":"2017-05-11T16:07:37","slug":"carrie-patel-five-things-i-learned-writing-song-of-the-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/2017\/05\/11\/carrie-patel-five-things-i-learned-writing-song-of-the-dead\/","title":{"rendered":"Carrie Patel: Five Things I Learned Writing Song Of The Dead"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

With Ruthers dead and the Library Accord signed by Recoletta, its neighbours, and its farming communes, Inspector Malone and laundress Jane Lin are in limbo as the city leaders around them vie for power.<\/em><\/p>\n

A desperate attempt to save Arnault from execution leads to Malone\u2019s arrest and Jane\u2019s escape. They must pursue each other across the sea to discover a civilization that has held together over the centuries. There they will finally learn the truths about the Catastrophe that drove their own civilization underground.<\/em><\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

IT FEELS LIKE A YARD SALE<\/h2>\n

Writing a series can be an endeavor of several years and hundreds of thousands of words. You spend multiple books developing a story, creating a world, and tormenting your characters. You craft myriad shiny details with loving care. You draft and revise your books until every page and paragraph is bursting with life and drama. And then, when you finally reach the last one, you realize a fact both horrible and wonderful:<\/p>\n

It all has to go.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s up to you to make sure it goes somewhere<\/em>.<\/p>\n

All those plots, places, and characters you\u2019ve toiled over\u2014you have to finish them and step away. Because you\u2019re going to send them home with other people, and what happens to them then is out of your hands.<\/p>\n

That means answering questions you raised in your earlier books. Bringing character arcs to a close. Finding a target for all the momentum you\u2019ve spent two, or three, or ten books developing.<\/p>\n

And that<\/em> likely means dusting off notes and drafts you\u2019ve long since set aside.<\/p>\n

As you\u2019re digging through your old material, you\u2019re going to find some things that surprise you. Maybe even some things you don\u2019t remember putting there. Sometimes, however, those forgotten details can be some of the most valuable.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re going to find some junk, too. Plot threads that aren\u2019t going anywhere and story hooks that have grown dull. And that\u2019s okay. You don\u2019t need to follow up on every last spear carrier and supporting player (and you probably don\u2019t have room to). Part of the trick in finishing a series is appraising all of the story you\u2019ve accumulated and knowing where the value is. At the end of the day, it\u2019s fine to quietly sweep the incidental bits into the trash to make room for the things that really matter.<\/p>\n

Just make sure you can polish and pretty up the things you keep.<\/p>\n

THE END IS REALLY ANOTHER BEGINNING<\/h2>\n

That doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019re going to write another book about the same characters or even the same setting, but it does mean that the endpoint you\u2019ve chosen for your storyline should be significant enough to suggest a new direction for the people and places that survive your series.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s a subtle trick to pull off. It\u2019s not just about the last few pages, it\u2019s about everything that\u2019s come before\u2014every simmering tension, every inner conflict, every broken system.<\/p>\n

Your world and characters are either constantly undergoing change or actively resisting it. The end of your series shows how your protagonist either overcomes her flaws or accepts them. How your supporting characters either achieve the goals they sought or set their sights on others. That the streets either get cleaned up or descend into chaos.<\/p>\n

You could say many of the same things about the end of a standalone, of course. But if readers have stuck with you through multiple books, then you face a greater responsibility to show them that all those chapters and pages meant something. That they were going somewhere<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Which sounds simple at the outlining stage, but then you realize your characters have ideas of their own.<\/p>\n

YOUR CHARACTERS AREN\u2019T THE SAME PEOPLE<\/h2>\n

As your series has progressed, they\u2019ve probably grown and changed. They\u2019ve turned against allies, embraced enemies, and done things they never thought they\u2019d do. Their goals may be very different at the end of the series from what they were at the beginning, and their methods of attaining them may have altered, too.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ve grown. They\u2019ve changed. And that\u2019s okay, because so have you.<\/p>\n

As a writer, you\u2019ve learned how to better tell their stories. You\u2019ve developed new interests and ideas, which have led you to discover new facets of your characters. The best characters, in my opinion, are a lot like real people: endlessly complex and full of surprises.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a lot of writing advice to the effect of \u201cknow your characters inside and out, from their childhood traumas to what they had for breakfast.\u201d I think this advice is well-meant but misguided. The key isn\u2019t to know your characters perfectly, but rather to continuously discover them. If you insist on knowing them fully and completely from book one, you may find yourself shoving them into a box over the course of your series, breaking their arms and legs so that they\u2019ll fit into the space you\u2019ve carefully built for them.<\/p>\n

And then you\u2019ve got a corpse, and corpses don\u2019t bring much life to your story.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s better to leave your characters room to grow and to trust future-you to discover them along the way.<\/p>\n

But when you do, you\u2019ll probably discover something else, too.<\/p>\n

FUTURE-YOU WILL KIND OF HATE OLD-YOU<\/h2>\n

Old-you is an asshole. Old-you made promises to your readers and constructed obstacles in your story. Then, she skipped town and left them for future-you to handle.<\/p>\n

Worse, old-you killed a lot of the characters who might have helped.<\/p>\n

What to do with this flaky, murdering jerk?<\/p>\n

Well, once you get past the indignation, you\u2019ll probably thank her. Despite the mess she\u2019s left, she\u2019s given you a lot to work with. And you\u2019ll find that all the commitments she made on your behalf are kind of a good thing. They won\u2019t allow you to sleep in and play it safe. They\u2019ll force you to get out and take risks.<\/p>\n

Like a lot of close relatives, you\u2019ll hate her, but you\u2019ll love her, too.<\/p>\n

DON\u2019T OVERSTAY YOUR WELCOME<\/h2>\n

Leaving the end of a book is a lot like leaving a party\u2014once it\u2019s time to go, it\u2019s best to say all of your goodbyes and get out of there. Resist the temptation of long digressions and awkward repeat farewells, or you\u2019ll end up sleeping in the bathtub.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s important to give yourself room to wind things down in your story, but you don\u2019t want to keep going so long that you run out of momentum. There\u2019s a principle from something called the Hollywood Formula (explained beautifully here<\/a> on Writing Excuses) that basically boils down to this: stronger endings execute their various resolutions in relatively quick succession.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say your book has to end in one Michael Bay plot explosion, but if you can find a reasonable point of convergence between your character arcs and plot conflicts, you\u2019ll probably end up with something that\u2019s more emotionally resonant, more elegantly plotted, and better paced.<\/p>\n

And if there\u2019s something more removed from that convergence that you feel the need to communicate, remember that there\u2019s always the epilogue. An epilogue can show your readers where your characters and world have gone without dragging them through every step of that journey (because, let\u2019s face it, if it were story-worthy, you\u2019d probably just write another book about it). A good epilogue is like a follow-up email\u2014it\u2019s a short, sweet way to thank your readers for the fun you\u2019ve had together, and it\u2019s more likely to get you invited back than regurgitating everything into the bathtub.<\/p>\n

And on that note, I\u2019ll take my leave.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Carrie Patel is a novelist, game designer, and expatriate Texan. She is the author of the\u00a0Recoletta<\/em>\u00a0trilogy, which includes the science fantasy murder mystery\u00a0The Buried Life<\/em>\u00a0(2015), the political thriller\u00a0Cities and Thrones<\/em>\u00a0(2015), and the upcoming\u00a0The Song of the Dead<\/em>\u00a0(May 2017), published by Angry Robot. Her short fiction has appeared in\u00a0Beneath Ceaseless Skies<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0PodCastle<\/em>.<\/p>\n

As narrative designer and game writer, she works for Obsidian Entertainment, an award-winning development studio known for story-driven RPGs. She worked on\u00a0Pillars of Eternity<\/em>, which was nominated\u00a0nominated by the Writers Guild of America for Outstanding Achievement in Videogame Writing, and its expansions,\u00a0The White March Part I<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0II<\/em>. She is currently writing for\u00a0Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Carrie Patel: Website<\/a><\/span> | Twitter<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Song of the Dead: Amazon<\/a><\/span> | B&N<\/a><\/span> | Indiebound<\/a><\/span> | Goodreads<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With Ruthers dead and the Library Accord signed by Recoletta, its neighbours, and its farming communes, Inspector Malone and laundress Jane Lin are in limbo as the city leaders around them vie for power. A desperate attempt to save Arnault from execution leads to Malone\u2019s arrest and Jane\u2019s escape. They must pursue each other across […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-31012","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-theramble","8":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pv7MR-84c","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31012"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31012\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31015,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31012\/revisions\/31015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}