Revision: PHASE 1 COMPLETE

I finished my first draft a few weeks ago, and since then I've spent every lunch hour, evening, and weekend on doing a first pass revision of the whole damn thing.

A few minutes ago, I finished.

It's a temporary satisfaction at best, but I still feel somewhat sad. I've lived with my characters and the story for just over the last year, and now I'm telling them I'm going to leave them alone for a month. They're sad too. I will be back though, soon, and there will be lots more work to do.

It would be much easier to take a memory forgetfulness pill and get right back into it, but hey, those things aren't without side effects, so I'll do it the natural way.

By just waiting.

Doop-de-doop-de-doo.

Waiting.

Books On Writing What I Read In The Last YearPART II: THE BAD

I honestly read each and every one of the books I link to. Which is a shame, because I could have spent time reading better books than these:

Private Eyes: a writer's guide to private investigators - Hal Blythe, Charlie Sweet & John Landreth
I should have listened to the reviews on Amazon. The book tries to make the PI life seem more glamorous than it is, and doesn't offer much in the way of hard facts or details. How do I know this? I'm in the middle of a PI course myself, and the two textbooks I have for it are excellent (and not available to anyone but the students).

Christopher Vogler - The Writer's Journey
Joseph Campbell did a legendary amount of research into mythology in all cultures, finding striking similarities. At one point in the history of Disney, this author wrote a one page summary of mythological structure in film. Since then, it has become the boilerplate for most Hollywood films. Worth staying away from for that reason alone.

Robert McKee - Story
Robert McKee is passionate, opinionated, and some would say visionary. I would agree with the first two, and I would also like to add that his verbosity is out of control.

William Noble - Conflict, Action & Suspense
This book was a chore to get through, but I forced myself to do it. Why? The subject is an important one for mystery and crime novels. Some day I'd like to rewrite William Noble's book from scratch myself.

And look out for the next entry: PART III - THE FRIENDLY

Books On Writing What I Read In The Last YearPART I: THE GOOD

I've read quite a few books on writing over the last year, while working on the novel. So I thought I'd share, starting off with the books that were good.

If you're not an aspiring writer, you may want to skip to the Steven King book--it's probably the only one you'll read.

Patricia T. O'Conner - Woe Is I
I searched for this book for months in physical bookstores, finally giving up and ordering it from Amazon. After a month had passed and the other items in my order had all been shipped, I still hadn't received this book. I contacted Amazon and they sent me a new copy, free of charge, with faster air freight. It came to me within a week. A great refresher course in grammar.

Orson Scott Card - Characters & Viewpoint
Even though I'm writing crime, Orson Scott Card is my favourite author. I've been reading and re-reading his books since early high school. His writing is the definition of clarity. Which means that he has a pretty good idea on characters, viewpoint, and every other ingredient of a good story.

Orson Scott Card - How To Write Science Fiction & Fantasy
Has a great section on what Orson calls the MICE quotient. Milieu, Idea, Character, Events. The idea is that every story can only contain so much of each of these, and you have to decided which ones are the most important to your story.

Monica Wood - Description
I like to refresh myself on this every now and then. This book taught me to search for the telling detail - it can describe much more than what is told.

Nancy Kress - Beginnings, Middles & Ends
So far the best book I've read on structure and plot.

Steven King - On Writing
An interesting insight into one of the most successful authors' writing process, this one is more of a memoir, and that is where it is at its most compelling.

Gillian Roberts - You Can Write A Mystery
An amazingly concise and clear handbook for writing a mystery, this book gave me direction where I only had some idea of where to go.

Deadly Doses: a writer's guide to poisons - Serita Deborah Stevens with Anne Klarner
A good reference for deciding what poison a villain will use, it can be skimpy on the details. Worth it for the cross reference section, where poisons are listed by toxicity, duration, and symptoms.

Look out for the next post on THE BAD.

Covet Not Thy Cover

I'm right in the thick of my first-pass revision of the novel. The idea is to clean up the current prose so that when I come back to it after a month's break, it'll be a bearable read. Then I can look at the Big Picture and see how to improve the novel.

This can get pretty boring.

As a distraction, I've spent time dreaming of fame and fortune. One way of playing out my fantasies is to imagine what my book covers will look like. Today, instead of imagining, I tried my hand at book cover design. Here are a couple of the results:



If you want to see some examples of book covers done right, complete with critiques, have a look-see over at Most Coveted Covers.

Australians Buy 80 Million Books

No, not each of us. Even if they were a cent each, that couldn't be done. Why did you even think that? What are you, crazy?

Here are the stats (skip 'em if you hate 'em) in more detail, and for even more detail than that, you can click on the link that I ripped it all from, down the bottom of the post.

Australians bought more than 80 million new books worth almost $1.5 billion in the 2003/04 financial year. 67 per cent were through 561 bookshops, department stores - 19 per cent, supermarkets and other businesses sold 8 per cent. 98 per cent were printed books. That probably makes the 2 per cent as eBooks.

What does this mean to me?

Aussies like reading. These are new books mind you, so that doesn't count second hand sales and borrowing. That means a lot of reading. If someone happens to like one of those borrowed books, chances are they'll buy the author's next book for themselves (or their librarian-friend).

Considering how much crime tv is on the telly, I'd say a sizeable proportion of those books are crime related, whether fiction or true crime.

I reckon there's a living to be made in amongst all that.

That's what I aim to do.

Data from "Australians buy 80 million books" - AAP

Greetings

Welcome to the brand spankin' new blog, and a very special welcome to those of you who are making the transition from the Danny Hawaii blog.

Have a trawl around the website, add it to your bookmarks or favourites, go all out and make it your home page.

I won't stop you.

In these dark alleys you will find:

• Smatterings of short fiction
• News on the progress of the first novel and the trials and tribulations involved with getting it published
• The biography of me, myself, and I.

And much, much more. Well, maybe a little bit more.

Alright, there's nothing else! Get out of here, you young whippersnappers! Stay out of my rose bushes!

The First Draft

About two hours ago, after a year and six weeks, I typed in the final sentence of the first draft of my first novel.

It's called LOVING THE LAW, and its main character is Danny Hawaii, PI-in-training, on the case that will make or break his license.

Like any good writer of detective fiction, I toasted the entire universe with a big fat glass of Wild Turkey, straight. My lady friend is on shift work, so she didn't have the energy to celebrate with me. That will have to wait until Saturday.

As a present to myself I decided to walk up to King Street and have a look around for ... a present to myself from ... myself.

Walked in to Better Read Than Dead and looked around for a bookish gift. First thing I stumbled across was a trade paperback of Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys. Flipped it over, read the blurb. Sounded good. Hmmm. Maybe something crime related is more appropriate.

Sashayed over to the blackest section in the bookstore and perused the latest and greatest. Ran my eyes over all the now-familiar authors and imagined my book up there with them. Right between Harris and Hoag.

Nah.

I didn't feel like celebrating my achievement by reading someone else who's already made it. Tonight was about me.

Then I wandered over to the reference section. Found a big fat Oxford Australian Dictionary with lots of words and a hard cover. Ooh, don't have one of those. Oh wait, there's a Collins one too. And a Macquarie. Which one to get? Shrug.

I stepped back out onto King Street and breathed in the perfumed air, designed by Mitsubishi, Toyota, and Holden.

A couple of doors down I spied a music store. I cast my eye over all the sales and new releases at the front, then headed for the back. Flicked through the music DVD section and stumbled across the DVD I'm about to watch. The Best Of The Blues Brothers. It's a collection of clips from Saturday Night Live appearances and is presented by Aykroyd himself. The Blues Brothers is a movie I grew up with, and it seemed fitting to celebrate the completion of a Danny Hawaii novel with something related.

I mean, where do you think the hat comes from?

Longer Than I Thought

The more experience I have with writing, the more I realise that it all takes longer than you expect. And ends up being longer.

I started the novel on August 2nd, 2004. That means I've been at it for just over a year now. I originally meant to finish it by April 1st, 2005.

I thought that would be funny.

Every month or so I reshuffled my rough word count targets and spread the finish date further out. My original estimate of a 65,000 word novel is panning out to be closer to 70,000, or maybe even 75,000.

Last night I unfroze Danny Hawaii and his 'friends', Piper and Bernadette. One of them was verbally cutting loose on the others. They drove off, leaving the verbal abuser at home, alone.

My next scene involves something upsetting happening to Mr. Hawaii, involving a large material possession.

Alright, that's enough teasing.

The point of this ramble is to re-iterate how excited I am. I have an outline document that I use as a reference while I'm writing, and I'm very close to the end of the outline. This means I'm close to finishing. I can't wait to find out what happens. There are still details that are somewhat up in the air, details that I can only discover through revision.

Excitement!

Word count: 65,221 (over 65K!)

Romance And Detectives

I can't help cringing when this happens.

A detective is waiting in his office, drinking the hair of the dog. A tall blonde/brunette/redhead walks in. She's tough, but vulnerable.

Legs you could climb like a mountain. A figure to use as a benchmark for fractal geometry. A nose you could pinch without feeling silly. Genitalia that's built for ...

He takes the case, she pays in small, unmarked bills. There's chemistry between her and the detective, but he keeps his distance. Later on, after some heavy, dramatic conflict, they take comfort in each others arms and legs. Ashtrays and bottles are knocked over in the frenzy on the bed. Or maybe the couch in the office.

If she's real tough, on the concrete in the back alley.

In the end, it turns out that she was playing everyone all along, especially P.I. Dick Randomski. She goes to gaol, but he still gives her one last kiss.

Get my drift?

When Bogey and Bacall did it, it was classy. When Chandler wrote about it, the same. Now it's expected and overdone. Time to move on.

My preference (after very little research) is a detective novel that doesn't have romance in it. It always feels tacky and cliched. Sheesh. It's even cliched to call it that.

Have I just revealed a clue? Yes, probably. You never know.

Another Milestone

Phew. Phee-you. My fingers hurt.

I started this novel almost a year ago and I'm finally in the final stretch. I'm finding myself getting excited - almost as much as my future readers - about how the thing will end.

Of course, I do actually know this already. It's planned, but not to the point of organising the layout of the pieces of uncooked pasta themselves.

Capiche?

Word Count: 60,134

The Truth - Part II

To recap: I am Danny Hawaii. Danny Hawaii is not me. Both of these are true.

After I came up with the name (I won't type it again just yet), I spent about a year and a half doing music under it. You can listen to some of the better tracks here: mp3.com.au.

While this was in progress, Tropfest 2004 came along. For those that don't know, Tropfest is a yearly short film festival held in Sydney once a year on an annual basis. I came up with an idea for a short film, but I didn't have any characters. I thought, why bother inventing something new? After months of negotiations, this brought Danny Hawaii to the silver screen. Here's a sample:

Suffice it to say the movie was nothing special, but the soundtrack and the editing were pretty good.

What made the movie mediocre? The story. Being a private investigator (in a fictional sense), it made sense for me to find out why the story was so crap. The book I read to find out why, or at least the first book I read to find out why, was Story by Robert McKee.

One book led to another, and six books on writing later, I had been bitten badly by the spidery mistress that is writing.

I'm lazy, just like anyone else, so why bother reinventing another character? I mean, I had a great name that had already been road-tested.

Thus the novel began.

The Truth - Part I

I am Danny Hawaii. Danny Hawaii is not me. Both of these are true.

Danny Hawaii was a name that came to me when I was looking for it. I was writing music under the name 'Braincancel' and decided that it didn't suit the direction I was heading in. And it was a crap name. Really crap.

If you know anything about coming up with names, you'll know that there's no sure-fire system. I tried random name generators, words I saw on bus stops, eavesdropping on conversations, you name it (couldn't help that one). Nothing clicked.

My real name is Daniel Hatadi. I've always hated being called Danny. So I thought it would be a lark if I made Danny the first name of my musical persona. A few days later I was thinking along the lines of a Danny-ised version of Johnny Hero or Johnny Plastic or Johnny Doohicky. You know, the good old generic American military superhero.

And somehow, my last name fell and bumped itself on my tongue as it flew out of my mouth.

Danny Hawaii was born.

There's more to the story. Why did I make a short film? Why did I write a novel?

I'm going to make you wait for that. Tee hee.

The Great Revision Begins

No, I haven't finished the first draft yet. A couple of months away I'd say. So it's not a hack and slash revision that I'm talking about, more a prune and trim.

Every now and then, when I can't bring about enough enthusiasm to plod through the next scene, I go back and revise. This time I went back about a hundred pages. There's still twenty to go before I return to the end, but I've actually enjoyed it.

Yes. Revision. Enjoyed.

This is because all I've done is taken a coarse brush and removed all the dead bits from the text. Words like 'just', 'a bit', and maybe even 'and' and 'the', depending on the context. I rewrite particularly unwieldy sentences and in a few places I'll chop them out altogether. The added bonus is that I get to know the characters and situations 'just a bit' better.

But the novel's structure, even though it is lacking in maturity, stands. I want to get the novel down. It's the only way.

Then I'll go back with the heavy machinery and see what limbs need to get chopped before I think about putting clothes on it.

The Crime Show Syndrome

Danny Hawaii's feeling a tad miffed today, and that is a very mild way of expressing it.

You see, his bike got stolen. My bike.

Instead of going into the details and getting all worked up about it, the plan is to vent elsewhere.

I've chosen as my target what I affectionately like to think of as The Goran Show.

I used to love this show. I used to love the way Goran would roll his head and insert interesting pauses into his speech, like a modern day Captain Kirk. I used to love the writing, the way they would paint a character with a single telling detail, so you would know this guy or gal. I used to love the dry humour of the redheaded coroner.

But now it all looks like a formula. Or a recipe.

* 3 minute teaser - get to know the few new characters, and find out who dies
* 20 minutes of red herrings - Goran and Eames track down a few possible suspects, who turn out to be dead ends, and we usually meet the villain at this point
* 15 minute investigation - now we know the right direction to head in, we narrow in on the perpetrator and prepare the setup - the moment he/she breaks
* 5 minute breakdown - as the soundtrack intensifies, Goran wiggles his head and gesticulates at the criminal until they break down and confess
* 5 second summary - one of the Detectives spits out a moralistic one liner, such as, "Well, I guess he won't be wearing that t-shirt again"

Add commercials to taste, and stir.

The Goran Show is still one of my favourite shows on television, and it certainly craps all over the many other Law & Order/CSI spinoffs, at least for me.

It's just a shame that the most fun I get out of it nowadays is making up my own 'end sentences'.

Danny Hawaii OUT

Danny Hawaii Dead?

Danny Hawaii Dead?
Originally uploaded by dannyhawaii.

Is this really Danny Hawaii?

Was he shot dead on that fateful morning?

Does this mean the novel has ended?

Or is this all just an act, played out by some rabid fan?

Probably.

Bicentennial Achievements

Frank hasn't had a mention here before, so perhaps the time has come to show his face to the world.

Some of you out there may not know that Danny Hawaii, before his life of fighting crime, had a much less glamorous job.

Morgue.

Attendant.

Not having the necessary medical experience, he was unable to perform autopsies, but there's always work at a morgue for anyone with a strong stomach.

And that's where he met Frank Wilder.

With a blood-stained black lab coat built for 6 feet of hulking man, long balding hair held in check by a black mesh wrap, and weighing in at 120 kgs, Frank isn't exactly a lady killer. Which is a shame, because his wit and enthusiasm for all things dead are some of the most tragically under-appreciated attributes in the modern day non-metrosexual male.

Frank has been there for Danny the whole way, through tragedy and success. And today he is getting a mention because he has helped bring about an enumerated achievement of epic proportions.

The novel has hit page 200.

Danny Hawaii OUT

The Magic of Pumpernickel

He's at it again, and this time, HE'S HUNGRY. Danny's recent investigations into the land of digestive catalysts have caused his taste buds to go wild.

The culprit?

Pumpernickel.

How is it possible that thin rectangles of compressed rye bread, with a bit of sweetening, can taste so damn good?

Pumpernickel comes in small, heavy loaves, with about two dozen thin slices. They are dark, and on closer inspection you can see the nodules that make up this most heavenly of dark and savoury treats.

Put all kinds of spreads on the bread if you prefer: cream cheese, cottage cheese, plastic cheese, or Nutella Cheese (TM) (for extra hazelnutty goodness). Just remember that there's nothing like having it plain.

Preferred accompanying drinks?

Water.

Pumpernickel Rye

INGREDIENTS: Destarched Wheat Flour, Soy Protein Isolate, Soy Filter, Rye Flavour, Wheat Protein Isolate, Salt, Lecithin, Sugar, Caramel Col, Enzymes, Ascorbic Acid, Raisin Flavour, Pumpernickel Flavour (that's just to see if you're still reading)

This one goes out to all the WW Girls. Peace.

Danny Hawaii OUT

Word Count Update

There's a very human need to watch things like progress meters. Sure, we could leave the computer alone while it's downloading, but as far as many of us are concerned, those meters must be watched.

56,214.

Progress. Yes. At least this kind of progress is meaningful. Nothing like the cycles of mobile phone sizes, where we fluctuate betwen thumbnails and bricks. From Zoolander to The Secret of My Success and now back again. These days we have the privilege of looking at low quality videos of each other on portable lunchboxes.

Progress.

Blogging About Blogging

This one's gonna be short and sweet, seeing as I'm sure it's been covered elsewhere again and again.

Danny Hawaii, in the middle of an early morning newspaper investigation uncovered this gem:

"For now, web surfers are in two camps as far as blogs are concerned ... There are the committed bloggers on one hand, and a large number of people who don't know or care about blogs on the other. It's a split universe ... "
Rueters

Which pretty much amounts to saying this:

There are two kinds of people in the world. Those that divide everyone into two kinds of people, and those that don't.

Danny Hawaii OUT

Back On Track

After much cajoling and canoodling, Danny Hawaii is once again in motion.

Two months ago he was left standing at the bar of a long dead fictional nightclub with one of the other main characters, George Evanescu. After running into a bouncer he was expecting to avoid, Danny Hawaii was a tad shaken AND stirred. So George and him chittered and chattered and drank and stared.

Unfortunately, that's where Danny was frozen in time, two months ago.

The novel decided to take a short hiatus to Tahiti or some other island with no threat of tsunamis. Picture two hundred pages of manuscript kicking back in a hammock, being fed grapes by a couple of Polynesian girls, and you can see why the novel's been away for so long.

The word count at this point had already been pushed past the fateful mark of 50,000, but this doesn't mean there's cause for celebration. It's just another milestone along the way.

Now, today, two months and an infite number of worlds away, the word count has been pushed forth by a glorious sum total of five hundred.

That's FIVE HUNDRED words more.

In that short space of time, Danny has made it from the bar to the men's room, and into a well-lit cubicle within.

What's in the cubicle? Why is Danny in the cubicle? Who else is in the club?

Will we ever find out?

STAY TUNED

Danny Hawaii OUT