{"id":32007,"date":"2018-03-20T09:02:18","date_gmt":"2018-03-20T13:02:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/?p=32007"},"modified":"2018-03-20T09:02:18","modified_gmt":"2018-03-20T13:02:18","slug":"david-mack-five-things-i-learned-writing-the-midnight-front","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/2018\/03\/20\/david-mack-five-things-i-learned-writing-the-midnight-front\/","title":{"rendered":"David Mack: Five Things I Learned Writing The Midnight Front"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The epic first novel in the Dark Arts<\/strong> series.<\/em><\/p>\n

On the eve of World War Two, Nazi sorcerers come gunning for Cade Martin but kill his family instead. His one path of vengeance is to become an apprentice of The Midnight Front \u2014 the Allies\u2019 top-secret magickal warfare program \u2014 and become a sorcerer himself.<\/em><\/p>\n

Unsure who will kill him first \u2014 his allies, his enemies, or the demons he has to use to wield magick \u2014 Cade fights his way through occupied Europe and enemy lines. But he learns too late the true price of revenge will be more terrible than just the loss of his soul, and that there\u2019s no task harder than doing good with a power born of ultimate evil.<\/em><\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t Be Afraid to Think Big<\/h2>\n

You\u2019d think I\u2019d have internalized this notion before trying to write a years-spanning World War II epic fantasy. But it wasn\u2019t until I tried to craft something \u201cepic\u201d that I saw how hard it was.<\/p>\n

In this case it meant trusting my instincts with regard to my supporting cast. There are sections of the novel that are unrelated to the main character\u2019s mission. During development I worried that these might be seen as digressions. Now I think my multiple point-of-view characters are part of what gives the novel its \u201cepic\u201d quality \u2014 a broadened perspective on the war.<\/p>\n

When I was younger and less confident, I might\u2019ve cut all those secondary narratives. Instead, I chose to treat this book as an ensemble piece. Weaving all of its tales into a tapestry of causality made them all stronger and provided a foundation for my larger story universe.<\/p>\n

Research Pays Off When You Least Expect It<\/h2>\n

One reason I\u2019d never before tried to write historical fiction was that I\u2019d been daunted by the degree of research it would entail. Though I felt as if I had a reasonable grasp of the World War II period in Europe, I knew that readers of historical fiction are quite demanding when it comes to accuracy. So I dug in and did my homework.<\/p>\n

I spent over a year reading both online and in libraries. I visited the National Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., and the National World War II Museum in New Orleans.<\/p>\n

The great thing about researching a subject in such depth is that it\u2019s like soaking your brain in smart juice. It works its way into your gray matter\u2019s fatty squiggles and comes out when you least expect it.<\/p>\n

Several such moments of serendipity graced my work on The Midnight Front<\/em>. The most notable instance came late in the writing of the book.<\/p>\n

While trying to write a pivotal sequence, I realized that Omaha Beach was, for many reasons, the wrong setting for the action I needed to depict. Then I remembered reading about Pointe du Hoc \u2014 a D-Day objective less often depicted but in some ways even more dramatic because of what the 2nd Ranger Battalion accomplished there. Once I transplanted my battle sequence to that location, one of the key sequences in my book came into focus.<\/p>\n

Marinate your brain in facts and they\u2019ll flavor your story in amazing ways.<\/p>\n

In a Thriller, You\u2019ve Got to Keep the Pressure On\u2014Always<\/h2>\n

One note I received from my agent was to make sure that my heroes felt the pressure of the war at all times. Keep the heat on. Never let your characters feel free of peril. Always have a looming threat, an impending deadline, a ticking clock, a bundle of dynamite with a burning fuse.<\/p>\n

This is one of the tricks to making certain the middle of a thriller doesn\u2019t bog down. If you need to deliver exposition, have it happen while characters are under fire, on the run, or bleeding from an open wound. If you can\u2019t find a way to do that, at least have them challenged by a conflict that can ruin some other aspect of their lives.<\/p>\n

A scene in which no one has anything to lose is one for which a reader has no reason to care.<\/p>\n

You Can Humanize Villains Without Forgiving Them<\/h2>\n

I wanted Kein Engel, the villain of The Midnight Front<\/em>, to be as fully realized as the hero. I wanted his motives, if considered separately from his methods, to seem almost reasonable.<\/p>\n

Consequently, I decided his plot was to save the world<\/em>. Of course, what one person calls salvation another might call destruction. So I had Kein blame humanity\u2019s ills on its embrace of technology before we as a species were ready to control such gifts. He argues that the wonders of science are a fast track to danger, environmental disaster, and economic slavery.<\/p>\n

What the heroes can\u2019t know in 1942 is that Kein is right<\/em>\u2014at least with regard to the threat posed by developing technologies faster than we can understand how those inventions might hurt the world. Where Kein goes off the rails, of course, is how he proposes to solve it. But this is why he can\u2019t see himself as a bad guy. He\u2019s willing to do terrible things to save the day \u2026 but what hero isn\u2019t?<\/p>\n

Ultimately, though his motives might be justifiable his actions are monstrous. We are judged by what we do, not by what we intend. Making Kein\u2019s motive reasonable doesn\u2019t absolve his evil actions. I was willing to give one of his minions a path toward future redemption, but I never let myself forget that Kein himself is a villain.<\/p>\n

Adjectives Do Not an Epic Make<\/h2>\n

The first draft of The Midnight Front<\/em> weighed in at around 200,000 words, and, according to my agent Lucienne Diver, there wasn\u2019t \u201ca single unmodified noun\u201d to be found anywhere within its pages. My friend fellow author Kirsten Beyer observed, \u201cYou never wrote like this before.\u201d This prompted her to ask, \u201cSo why would you start now?<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

In my desire to craft something \u201cepic,\u201d I went overboard with adjectives (and, to a lesser degree, adverbs). This observation struck me as odd, since I\u2019d thought I\u2019d learned many years and many books earlier to use modifiers with care. But with my mind focused on other goals (\u201cIt must feel huge! Grand! Sweeping and majestic!\u201d), I lost my focus on the basics.<\/p>\n

With the help of a text-analysis application, I flagged every single adjective in my manuscript. During my rewrite, I cut more than 8,000 adjectives and nearly 4,000 adverbs. That one action improved my sentence structures, clarified my meanings, and strengthened my prose.<\/p>\n

I am happy to report that I do not seem to have repeated this error in the writing of the series\u2019 second book, The Iron Codex<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

I have, no doubt, committed all-new errors.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

David Mack\u00a0<\/strong>is the award-winning and New York Times<\/em>\u00a0bestselling author of more than thirty novels of science fiction, fantasy, and adventure, including the\u00a0Star Trek Destiny<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Cold Equations\u00a0<\/em>trilogies. Mack\u2019s writing credits span several media, including television (for episodes of\u00a0Star Trek: Deep Space Nine<\/em>), film, short fiction, and comic books. His new novel The Midnight Front<\/em><\/strong><\/a> is available now from Tor Books. Excerpt here<\/strong><\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

David Mack: Website<\/span><\/a> | Twitter<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Midnight Front: Amazon<\/a> | Barnes & Noble<\/a> | Indiebound<\/a> | Powell\u2019s<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The epic first novel in the Dark Arts series. On the eve of World War Two, Nazi sorcerers come gunning for Cade Martin but kill his family instead. His one path of vengeance is to become an apprentice of The Midnight Front \u2014 the Allies\u2019 top-secret magickal warfare program \u2014 and become a sorcerer himself. […]<\/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-32007","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-8kf","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32007","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=32007"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32007\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32010,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32007\/revisions\/32010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}