Writer's Journal

I’ve developed a new technique to write Cicatriz, and I think it might be one that I reuse in the future. The whole thing is directly related to the conceit that Cicatriz is set up like a television series, divided into “seasons.”

As a result of this, I’ve plotted out each season individually, without starting on the next one until the current one is finished. This allows me to treat each one as a novella, while still keeping it all organized into a coherent whole.

It’s also a nice balance between the “completely plotted out” outline-derived novel, and the “improvised” nothing-planned out way of writing. Both have their benefits and pitfalls.

The first is easier for a beginner to use, easier to get started with, but because there’s no real process of discovering the story for yourself, the writer might lose interest, should they not move fast enough. Of course, you already have a starting point and an ending point, as well as a laundry list of things to happen between point A and point Z.

The second requires a great deal of raw creativity, as well as a great deal of revising after-the-fact to shape it into a coherent whole. While it has its benefits, I’ve never really used it for anything I ended up feeling comfortable showing anyone. It can work, but I’ve never been able to get it to.

As such, it’s my opinion that you need enough plotted out at the beginning to make the whole thing possible. That was the real problem with White Knight, for me—I wrote an outline, started writing it because of the deadline, and eventually passed the outline in my writing, which is why the first three chapters read better than those that followed them.

On the other hand, the characters of White Knight felt a bit more real to me than the ones in Cicatriz. It’s a bit of a problem, honestly; though, in all fairness, I am using this as an opportunity to hone my skills, just as I say in the sidebar.

My typesetter for Behemoth (S.T. Johns) once commented on the prevalence of the whole netherworld thing in my writing. Now, after months and months of writing, that trope has appeared in Cicatriz. To be fair, it’s the first time I’ve used it in the sense of it actually being hell.

This brings me to a certain topic: pet concepts.

You know what I’m talking about, ideas that reoccur in the writing of one particular person. Things that they always seem to go back to.

You know, like naming a cat in Haruki Murakami’s writing.

Or the odd typesetting in an Alfred Bester novel.

Or Immortality in Roger Zelazny.

Or the itinerant worker in John Steinbeck.

Or the white adventurer in Ernest Hemmingway.

You get the idea.

For me, it’s the otherworld. The dark mirror of the real world. It shows up in mythology, but I like to think it’s becoming a signature of mine.

Arrogant, I know.

So, here’s the thing: these aren’t bad. Having a standby symbol, something to which you can return over and over and still remains meaningful, isn’t a problem. You shouldn’t use it in the exact same way, each time, or even describe it the same way, but if the concept remains the same and the clothing it’s dressed in is changed, then there’s no problem. Present the idea how it comes to you, use it how it wants to be used.

And since I’ve been copping to influences, lately, the sequence where Wade is facing off against the shades of those he’s wronged borrows a bit from J. Michael Straczynski’s comic Midnight Nation, which I thought was brilliant until it turned explicitly Judeo-Christian, though even then it’s still excellent.

Well, that was a short episode, but I think that all the important things that were in my outline happened (yes. They did. Don’t question me.)

These episodes are a little more urban fantasy, a little less episodic. Cicatriz, as a whole, has made a drastic move from one-off events to long stories, which kind of fit the “detective” thing more; in all honesty, the whole thing started because I wanted to attempt the “occult detective” subgenre that was so popular in the pulps, but now occupies only one or two series of trade paperback books (The Dresden Files and Anita Blake, I think, neither of which I’ve read.)

The choice of positioning your work in a genre is important, even if you write mundane fiction. No one would really argue that The Grapes of Wrath and The Great Gatsby are the same genre, or that either of them match Great Expectations, Gravity’s Rainbow, or On the Road. Yet those are all “literary” fiction. Funny, that.

(In truth “literary” just means “historical or contemporary fiction.” Anyone who tells you differently is trying to protect something.)

So, Cicatriz is an occult detective story. And something else. Something else entirely.

Because every story should be something else entirely, if only somewhat. You understand?

About Cicatriz:

Okay, the Duplicate. There are going to be more of them, and they serve an important role in the story. No, they’re not the same as the Shadows from Atlus Entertainment’s Persona 4, though I’ll admit that those are back there in the DNA of the idea.
It’s more related to the “Duplicates” from Mark Twain’s No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger, for a variety of reasons. No, I’m not going to elucidate more, you can figure it out on your own.

Back next week.

–Cameron Summers

June, 2010

So, it’s been a week since Episode 2×04 went up, and I can barely remember anything about writing it, other than the fact that I did it all in one quick burn while riding the Amtrak up to Kansas City, so that I could go on to St. Louis for a few days.  Other than an hour in the hotel lobby at the Sigma Tau Delta convention, I haven’t had wireless, and had to physically carry my writing to the one computer in the house that could handle the task of uploading things onto the web.

What a week.  Real Life intervened, and it struck with a vengeance.  Many of my friends are struggling to figure out what to do with their lives, they get out of college, and maybe, just maybe, get into a profession similar to their desired one, only to find that it’s not what it’s cut out for, or the market isn’t good, or they’ve got to compete with others who have been at it for much longer, or maybe, they’re just not happy.

I’ve got an idea of what I’m doing, but it’s not easy.  Yesterday morning, we put my dog to sleep.  Not ashamed to admit that I cried like a child up until it was done, at which point the hollowness of true mourning sets in.  But the sun was shining, as it would the next day and the next, we knew the day would come, and I accepted that we had unwittingly hastened its arrival.  I had work to do, though.

This is what Cicatriz is about.  It’s all possibilities.  Pick up stakes, go on a goddamn adventure.  Go live on a mountain for a couple of years; figure out what you want to do, and go become the best you possibly can.  Tennyson’s “Ulysses” is an epistle addressed to you.  Take The Grapes of Wrath and On the Road as your Old and New Testament.  It’s dangerous, and it’s frightening, and the life you’re living is boring as hell–the worst part, though, is that you know it’s boring, yet you choose it anyway.

When’s the last time you put yourself in harm’s way on a hunch, or got out of your comfort zone, or even just did something because it was fun?

Allow me to soapbox for a moment–as if that isn’t what I’ve been doing the whole time–and give you an idea:  Every so often, we die.  Not Capital-D Die, with the pinebox and the weeping women in black, but the little everyday deaths, where you get poisoned by the toxic bullshit of your job, starved by the lack of real connection in your relationship, shattered by the pressures that you get put under.  So, that’s that:  you die. But this is a very special kind of death, this lowercase-d death.  It’s the medicine for what ails you, because when you die, you are reborn.  This isn’t just the rantings of a crazy man; this is a metaphor.  If you go through something difficult, a trying time, and don’t change, you’ve wasted all that hardship and pain, and just made the broken self that you had previously, just re-became that poor bastard that got you killed last time.

So let yourself die, and change:

“The passion of destruction is a creative joy.”

–Bakunin

This is Cicatriz:  the title refers to the scar left by surgery, the spot where you’re made whole again.  All death (lowercase-d) leads to rebirth, and each one is a step forward.
—

Trivia:  The epigraphs for Season 2 come from the poetry of Weldon Kees.  I don’t have the time to list all the titles, but I do recall that the previous one is “The Furies” (you all caught the reference in there to “The Wasteland,” I bet) and I think the one before that was “A Pastiche for Eve.”  He’s a good poet, and I’m not sure he’s that well known.  Like Ambrose Bierce (who provided the epigraphs for Season 1) he also disappeared without a trace.

So, we’re going to be returning to the original topic of this thing and looking at the process behind writing Cicatriz. The reason for this is that writing the last installment was a strange and interesting experience that illustrates several strengths and weaknesses of my process.

This is because I had midterms last week—both giving and receiving midterms—and had less time than usual to work on it. On the other hand, I think it turned out rather well. There are several reason for that:

-First, the outline, which I believe I’ve mentioned several times previously. Having the basic plotline down allows me to pay more attention to the surface features. At the same time, it allows a mad dash to the finish line (though, of course, you need to edit when you’re done.) Moreover, the outline allows for piecework to be directed toward a common end without loosing the thread.

-Secondly, despite the final point made above, working on a piece of fiction is done in large chunks—you don’t have to do it all at once, but if you’re in a groove, you can’t ignore that.

-When working on something during a busy period, make sure you handle what’s urgent before you tackle anything else. Don’t use writing—or any art—as a way of procrastinating, and touch upon each topic at its appropriate time. Generally, your work will come out better, that way.

So.  Or should I say, “hwæt”?

(Remember, folks, everything I write here is my opinion, not gospel truth. If it doesn’t work for you, well, get your own website.)

When writing out a project like this, it’s important to follow the outline as closely as you can. Sometimes a new idea intrudes, and deforms your plot. Sometimes the characters just can’t go the original way, and you have to sort of improvise something.

Your outline is the map and compass that will get you through the story. While I was working on my senior thesis last year, my hard drive died. I didn’t have my outline, and I just had to feel my way along.

I passed, I did well, but the story suffered.

On the other hand, with Behemoth, I spent an entire chapter deviating from the plot, because that’s what the villain wanted to do. And sometimes you just have to go along with the villain; they’re the ones who move the plot, after all.

But the important part isn’t the deviation: how do you get up off the rails and then back on?

No, you don’t write a second outline.

You change the first one. Write in what you put in, and figure out how to get from point “4” back into the alphabetically labeled points. If it’s any good, and some intuition led you to change the plot, then it can stand having a new section jammed into the middle of it, or a post-note slapped onto it.

Just make sure it’s how the story goes, and you should be alright.

Notes about Cicatriz:

“Eshmun” is a Phonecian god, passed down to the Greeks as “Asclepius.” “Astarte” is also a phonecian deity (a goddess,) but is passed down as Ashtaroth (a masculine demon.) “Dumuzi” also known as “Tammuz” is held to be a demon by Milton and others, but was originally a mesopotamian deity similar to the Greek Adonis.

All of these figures have at least a slight impact on Cicatriz, mostly because they’re central figures in the Palestino Revivalist Religion, the neo-pagan movement that I first showed in 1×04.

(If you’re looking for the actual chapter, you can find it here.)

From the beginning, I intended Cicatriz to take the same format as a television program. I admit to being influenced by a number of television programs—Twin Peaks, Lost, Carnivalé, and even, to an extent, Heroes. All of these at least began as television series that acted like novels, with the presence of an overarching plot and a focus on the characters.

So, to an extent, Cicatriz is a serial novel(la) that acts like a plot-centered television series. The start of the “second season” is thus somewhat disconcerting, for that reason. The second season is where three of those four aforementioned series tripped up, at least according to the men with the money.

Being a self-funded website (with an ad system that apparently only works if someone buys something,) this is all out-of-pocket, and depends on no one but me. It’s good.

Coming back to Cicatriz was a real treat. I needed that break between the end of season 1 and the beginning of season 2, despite how bad that science fiction serial was. If only so I could experience the return to Cicatriz, and work out a new outline for the characters to follow.

In a way, 2x is closer to my original vision than 1x was. It flows from and to another season better, has more dramatic weight, and more of an overarching plot. I feel the result is good, personally.

Moreover, this previous episode allowed me to give some exposition that I had absolutely no place to put in the first season, as far as I figured. It also gave me an excuse to listen to Django Reinhardt as I wrote, which was a blast. Something about “Aquarela do Brasil” makes the ideas shift around into strange and interesting new formats in my mind.

I’m continuing the Cicatriz tradition of using an epigraph to distinguish titles, much like Frank Herbert did in his Dune books. Last time around, I used quotes from Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary or The Cynic’s Dictionary.

For this “season,” I’m taking the epigraphs from a particular poet’s work. Though living at a later date, there is a parallel between Bierce and this poet that will (eventually) explain why the two are featured thus.

So I was woken up at 8 AM to shovel the driveway, not given a chance to bathe or get coffee, and shoved outside with a shovel of the exact wrong design for the task before me.  So, if this seems disjointed, blame it on that.

Episode 6 concludes the first “Season” of Cicatriz; there will be a short hiatus (during which I’ll post a short story I hopefully get around to writing) followed by another block of (probably) six episodes.  These six have been a bit difficult, a bit inspired, and a bit of a condemnation of my working habits.  I’ve not been very smart about my approach, so I’m going to talk about the best part of it.

A lot of people just getting started don’t fully appreciate the importance of a good outline.  It isn’t everything that goes into a piece of writing, it’s just a diagram of the structure.  It leaves plenty of room for random inspiration, for weaving around and describing things, but it lets you know where Point A is and where Point B is.

(My mother bothers me about my cough; I tell her I’m working on something)

For example, I had the final course of events, the whole left-field-ism of that last chapter, plotted out from the very beginning.  Anyone who’s familiar with my writing on a basic level will recognize that there are some themes here repeated from previous works, transformation being the biggest one.  You might also notice that certain things were foreshadowed.  That is the biggest part of the outline’s use:  it lets you know what to foreshadow, what to put where, what motifs to use.

In all honesty, I predict Cicatriz being at least 3 seasons long, and probably not more than 5, but most likely it’ll be 3-4.

Take it easy,

–Cameron Summers, December 2009

If you’re interested in reading the episode, go here.

I might’ve said this before, but my fiction tends to borrow elements from my life–sometimes I get convinced it goes both ways, but that’s all in my head–and I know for a fact that I never would’ve written Cicatriz if not coming to graduate school.

I’m currently in northern New Mexico; it’s definitely very difference from Kansas City.  So, you can see where that element came from.  But the other element of Valley City’s culture, the “Palestino” part, might just stem from a fascination with Middle Eastern Culture.  Though Roger Zelazny’s (and Thomas T. Thomas’s) The Mask of Loki might have something to do with it, considering how concerned it is with the crusades (I can’t help but see a connection between it and Neil Gaiman’s 1602, but that’s a tangent.)

So, here I have a culture halfway between Syria/Palestine and the American Southwest.  This is the surface-level bit of world-building.  I’m not yet getting into the kernel, the thing that drives it onward.  That’s going to have to wait until the sixth or seventh backmatter.

As per Cicatriz The Palestinos have been in VC for almost a century.  First one man got a job there, then his relatives came over, and it just kept building and building.  They intermarried with the (largely chicano) locals, and a unique culture grew out of it.  That’s the explanation I’m giving.

Whenever I design a city or town for usage in something I’m writing, there are some features I always include:  the river, for one.  Rivers are necessary (in my mind at least) for a thriving city.  Second, you need areas of town for every socio-economic class, because social class tends to spatialize a bit.  I know there must be other factors to consider, but I think those two are the only factors I acknowledged while writing this.

As for the other element–the Carver element–I’m not going to say too much, for fear of giving things away.  Suffice to say that the Carvers are more than just a political/economic family; they have antecedents in the works of Poe, Lovecraft, and possibly Faulkner.  There’s something strange and sinister about families that call for a definite article when dealing with a big city.

And that’s what the Carvers are meant to be.  Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know.

Trivia about Cicatriz:  all of the epigraphs that appear in the second part of the episodes–for this first arc–are taken from the same source.  Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary.  Good reading.

Cheers.

–Cameron Summers?
October, 2009

Cicatriz Episode 2 can be found behind door #1.

It’s important to think about the style of what you write; many amateurs don’t, and that’s why they’ll remain amateurs (said the glorified amateur that’s climbed up on the soapbox in front of you.)

If you can’t look at a sentence you’ve written, and understand why it’s good, or why it’s bad, you’re not going to progress. Each type of work—each work—calls for a different way of writing the sentence, the paragraph, the chapter.

Look back over White Knight, if you’re interested. There is no sentence in it that doesn’t refer to one of the five senses; there is no interpretation besides. On that level, it functions much more like a screenplay than a traditional manuscript.

With Cicatriz, I’m not only including non-sense information, but I’m allowing the narrative voice to intersperse bits of interpretation. The narrator, while not foregrounded, has a bit of a presence.

Which is fitting; Cicatriz has a series of ironic notes within it. Wade and Algernon are both—to use a colloquialism—assholes; I say this because both make heavy use of irony when dealing with other people, a technique I term the “snark” (a term, I admit, derived from a number of different sources.) The narrator adding in his/her/its own interpretation provides a grounding for this.

This determines the content of the narration, but the manner in which it’s presented (the context of the events) is fairly strictly defined. By this, I mean that I follow two important rules when writing sentences:

1. Everything important tends to go on the left.

2. Adverbs tend to be dead weight.

I term both of these “tends to” the same reason that most scientists term their discoveries with the same phrase: it usually holds true, but we can easily imagine situations when it doesn’t. I’m not going to tell you where—sometimes you’ve got to put a clause between the subject and verb, sometimes you’ve got to put an adverb in to be specific—but you can see what I mean.

Nota Bene for college composition students: When a professor starts slinging around abstractions like “unity” or “coherence” or the like, this is usually what he/she means.

As for the arrangement of the chapters of Cicatriz…well, laugh if you want, but I’ve been watching a lot of Lost lately. I asked myself “why not arrange my next project like a Television show, with bite-sized chunks between convenient breaks?

Partially, this came from a friend of mine complaining that the chapters of White Knight were too long (she obviously didn’t realize that the later chapters tended to be four pages long, as opposed to the earlier ten or twelve—writers get tired too.) But also, I realized that the format I was using—a narrative presented at a particular time of the week in a particular place—more closely resembled a television show than a traditional novel.

Hence “Episode” instead of “Chapter.”

I had to fit the way I wrote it to the story I was writing, and vice-versa.

(Which, I suppose, is the hard part.)

Trivia about Cicatriz:

The epigraphs that appear in part two of each chapter come from Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary. This will last until episode six, i.e. the first season (shut up, it’s my terminology, and you get to live with it.)

There’s a reason, but you’re probably not going to know for a while.

The second season is going to use quotes from a poem written by a certain poet who disappeared in 1955, and who you might not be familiar with.

I’ll note who and why when we get there.

However, I just gave you all a certain bit of information that you should be able to assemble, yourselves, into a (mostly correct) theory about what I’m going for.

But will you hit on it?

–Cameron Summers!

October 2009

P.S. Next time, I promise I’ll talk about something more interesting, like world design. Just thought I’d get the formatting stuff out of the way.