Dan Krokos

I discovered something about series writing the other day. Or rather, I thought about something I already knew, but never really thought of.

How many are still with me?

Standalone is misleading. The word itself. Let me explain.

My sequel to The Better Guy has to stand alone. That means someone could find it on a shelf and read it and still enjoy it without reading the first one. But they would still miss out because the first book would introduce some of the characters they’re reading now. They’d miss why two characters are frosty now, because of something that happened in book one.

History, friends. Characters have it.

Have I mentioned I hate when people read books out of order? I do. I do a lot.

And yet, there is a standalone you don’t see too often. All that remains from the previous books is the main character. Maybe he’s in a new place, a new time. No old enemies return, no friends to help him out. A totally different book. There is no greater story arc.

What is more appealing? Tried 200 pages one way. Have visions for both.

Decisions.

As a teaser, here’s a scene from the new book:

I’m days away from finishing the first draft of Kelly #2, tentatively titled I DON’T HAVE A TITLE YET SHIT.

What does this mean? Not much. But that’s okay. I’m nearing my favorite part of the process.

My first drafts are usually thin, hovering around the 210 page mark. That’s not a novel. It is a bloated novella with a loose story. Characters become clearer, develop their own voice, yes. I see shadows of what the story is really about.

That’s not to say they’re unreadable. Far from it. Just not top notch. Again, that’s okay.

I’ve been planting trees for the last month or so. Now I step back to look at the forest. Stephen King said that. It’s good advice.

That sad truth is I’ll throw almost everything out. I do that with every novel. I always come up with something better the second time around.

Why am I telling you this? I don’t know, it’s been a few days since my last update and I feel like I should say something. I check my blog stats and feel bad for those who drop in with nothing new to read. There’s more of you than I thought, almost 40k visitors a day.

In a few days, I’ll make a post about what my agent taught me about my own writing. Look for that. Sometimes, no matter how hard we look, we have invisible habits we won’t break until someone slaps us on the head and says LOOK AT HOW DUMB YOU ARE. I’d like to share how dumb I was.

Getting smarter,

Dan Krokos.

Speaking of which, let’s throw a few more in there, since I jumped up to nearly the top of Google with that Dan Krokos post alone.

Dan Krokos. Dan Krokos.

Two is good for now. Dan Krokos.

About queries.

My book is mentioned.

She has good things to say about it. This in turn makes me feel good.

Here’s the link. GREAT interview if you’re querying or thinking about querying or know someone who might be querying or you had a dream about querying.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/news/2009/09/090930_queryshark_ap.shtml

I write crime fiction.

But I don’t consider myself an expert. What is a crime novel, exactly? If it focuses on crime, is it a crime novel? Does it need gangs and contract killers and thieves and guns? Does the main conflict have to revolve around crime?

I don’t know.

But I thought about it the other day, and I realized that almost every novel can be considered a crime novel depending on what criteria you use.

Conflict is the driving force in any story. It’s why we read. We have a character who wants something and we read about how he/she tries to get it. We read because there is fun opposition to keep us interested. That conflict can be anything.

Quite often, it’s crime.

An example from a non-crime book I read recently:

CRACKED UP TO BE by the magical Courtney Summers. This is an edgy YA that focuses on a crime, the rape and disappearance of a girl. There are no cops, no gangs, no guns that I can remember. There was underage drinking, some vandalism.

But the central problem revolves around a crime, and yet it’s not a crime-novel.

So maybe a book needs more than just crime.

What about the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher? PI/Wizard Harry Dresden solves supernatural crimes in each book. And yet the focus is more on the magical world, and how he uses magic to solve crimes. Sure, there’s some conventional criminals like mob boss John Marcone, but they don’t feel like crime novels. You get a taste of magic, not squalor.

So maybe that’s it. Maybe we need to examine the darker side of human nature. The criminal in people.

Continuing down this road, read any swords and horses fantasy novel ever. Chances are the antagonists are doing something that goes against the law of the land. Maybe they’re trying to end the world. That’s a crime, people.

Look at your favorite protagonist. I bet he or she committed some crimes to attain their goals. Know why? Because playing by the rules is boring. We read to watch characters do things we don’t have the guts or will to do.

What’s the point in all this?

Crime is everywhere. It is driving our plots.

I don’t go out much.

Not anymore, at least. I spend most of my time writing, reading, or watching movies. I submerse myself in narrative whenever I have a free moment. But last night I went to a bar, and it reminded me that getting out every now and then is a good thing.

It reminds you what real life is like. And sometimes, real life is more twisted and entertaining than anything you could come up with on your own.

Some things that happened:

Me and my bestest friend got kicked out of a bar at 10:30 because it was dead. Our first “going out” experience in a few months, and it seemed like forces were working against us. Approximately one person recognized me from the gas station, which is also known as the center of the universe.

We drove across the street to The Dark Room, which was a dark room. They played heavy metal and looped horror movies on flatscreens. The bartender was a 34 year old named Shannon who also manages FedEx operations, and might actually be named Tori. She was in incredible shape except for the crow’s feet. When asked to guess her age, I purposely guessed low because I’m a nice guy.

The other bartender had a laptop open and his face buried in iTunes. Sometimes he would look up and say things to people.

I beat my friend in three straight games of pool because he was hammered and I was not.

A guy younger than me with billowy chest hair told me the entire plot of Ronin, that movie with Robert DeNiro and Jean Reno. He kept calling me dude and shook my hand at least four or nine times.

A girl with short hair and pretty eyes named Deidre said she was going to kick me in the balls. For no reason. She was so drunk there was a delay whenever she would move her eyes to focus on something new.

Another person recognized me from the gas station. I didn’t feel famous.

A man and his son (who was mentally handicapped) walked by the bar around midnight to talk to the drunk smoking assholes about God. They were not well received. The drunk smoking assholes will probably burn in hell.

There’s a point to all this.

Go out every now and then. See people in their chosen environments. If you’re a writer, you’ll automatically try to figure out how to fit these unique traits and personalities into your stories.

It definitely recharged my imagination. And that was just a few hours, close to home.

Since the query for THE BETTER GUY appeared on Queryshark, I’ve received a lot of comments and questions. People admitted that even though it wasn’t their genre, the query itself was pretty strong. I’m inclined to agree since it got me my first pick of agents.

I’ve decided to break the query into its parts and explain how I created it. I do not claim to be a master of queries–I’ve only written two or three. I’m only going to explain what worked for me.

Here’s the query again:

Ford Kelly spends his days driving an ambulance and his nights driving the getaway car for his uncle the contract killer. But when his uncle dies mid-contract, Ford has two choices: also die, or convince his new employers he knows more about taking lives than saving them.

The contract? Snuff out a ring of dirty cops who demand hush money after stumbling across a new drug being prepared for the street. The problem? The last cop on the list is Ford’s wife, who left him after the death of their son a year ago. That’s when Ford discovers how good at killing he really is.

Got that? Let’s look at the first paragraph.

“Ford Kelly spends his days driving an ambulance and his nights driving the getaway car for his uncle the contract killer.”

First sentence, I introduced a character. Not only that, I told you something interesting and conflicty (I know that isn’t a word). He drives an ambulance and a getaway car.

Let’s continue.

“But when his uncle dies mid-contract, Ford has two choices: also die, or convince his new employers he knows more about taking lives than saving them.”

Conflict. We have a main character and what issues he will face in the first two sentences.

“The contract? Snuff out a ring of dirty cops who demand hush money after stumbling across a new drug being prepared for the street.”

Okay. Guess it’s kinda cool. He’s gotta kill some cops of whatever and there’s a new drug, whatever that means.

I included these sentences to set up the next two:

“The problem? The last cop on the list is Ford’s wife, who left him after the death of their son a year ago.”

More conflict. So now he’s forced into the shoes of a contract killer AND his wife is on the list. But she left him? Do they still love each other? Is he going to kill her or rescue her or what? Isn’t that a coincidence, he’s handed a contract his wife just happens to be on?

Everyone who read this query before submission had questions. They were interested. Pile conflict on conflict.

I will admit this part could be better. Maybe other agents wouldn’t have appreciated the vagueness. After all, whether he kills his wife or saves her are two different stories. When in doubt, be as clear as possible.

Then I finished up with a little zinger:

“That’s when Ford discovers how good at killing he really is.”

That’s it. Short and sweet. Was it easy to write? Nope. I revised it while I was writing drafts of the novel. I’d come back to it and move things around and boil away the crap until only the strongest words and sentences remained.

Keep in mind, I didn’t summarize the entire novel. I showed the setup. A summary of the whole novel is called a synopsis, which is an entirely different monster.

This worked for me.

Thought I’d share.

Last night my agent tweeted a link that gave me chills.

http://www.inkygirl.com/scbwi-2009-notes-reasons-why-your-manuscript-got-rejected

7 reasons why manuscripts get rejected. The chilling part was number four:

“4. The writer seems like a difficult person to work with. Wendy always Googles an author’s name before offering a contract. She says she may be prompted to change her mind about signing up an author if they share too much information in their blog, if they tend to blog a lot about how hard writing is, if they blog about being rejected many times, if they publicly bash a book she’s worked on, or if they bash a colleague in the business who is her friend.”

At first this shocked me. Then I went DUH!

Something to think about.

Since I decided I wanted to be a published author, the debate on outlines has been one of the most fascinating to me.

Two sides, both firmly entrenched. Which was right for me? Taking into account I have the attention span of someone who has no attention span at all.

I went with the headlight method, something I discovered in a book called Plot and Structure. It’s a decent book on writing, as far as those things go. I’ve read about twenty books on how to write and learned maybe three things. This was one of those things.

The headlight method means you plot a little bit, then write a little bit. Plot a little more, write a little more. The headlight comes in because you can only see so far into the story. Much like . . . a headlight.

Right now I’m 35 pages into the Ford Kelly sequel. I have enough plotted for the next two or three days. If I don’t come up with more stuff, like FORD TAKES THE HOOKER TO MCDONALDS AND A GUY WALKS IN, I’ll be out of stuff to write.

And if there’s one thing I hate, it’s sitting down with nothing to write. Because it’s too easy to come up with garbage. Just to fill the page up so everything isn’t so white It has happened exactly zero times, because of the headlight method.

Now, that doesn’t mean I don’t have an idea of how it all ends. I’m pretty sure Ford is going to win. He’s probably going to beat the bad guys in a really cool way. But maybe not.

I guess the point in all this (I’m rambling here at work, no customers) is that sometimes it’s nice to use things from both sides. Write freely, but have that structure to keep the story moving along. Go on that tangent the story is begging you to follow, but be ready to cut it when it leads to nowhere.

Most importantly, keep an open mind.

Thinking out loud.

d

I started work on a sequel today. That means I wrote things in my little notebook in between customers at work. Maybe a line here, a little crumb of dialogue there. Possible main conflicts. Stuff like that.

I know that doesn’t mean much considering the first book hasn’t sold yet, but I heard the number one Writer’s Rule is BE READY. It bears an eerie similarity to the Boy Scout motto.

I must say it’s nice not having to create another world from scratch. However, relying on the same world without any changes is not an option. This won’t be seven years of Hogwarts.

Possible locations for book 2 include: the moon, an underwater base filled with ninjas who are pissed because they’re in an underwater base, or the Matrix.

Also, a website is in the works. That way you can leave out the .blogspot when typing in the address. Huzzah.

Finally, do the three of you reading this have any questions, or things you’d like me to blog about? Give me ideas. I am a fresh fish. I’m not exactly brimming with ideas for things to write about here, considering I am a novice in all things publishing.

My main concern is: what’s relevant? Let me know.

THE ONES WHO MADE ME is now THE BETTER GUY.

I really liked TOWMM (can I abbreviate my own titles yet?) but it’s a little long.

Also, it sounds like the story is about the ones who made Ford. This is false.

The story is about Ford Kelly, who is the better guy. It’s from a line in the book, one of my favorites.

I tried for ONES WHO ARE MAKING A BETTER GUY, but Janet said nay.