Category Archives: Evan Braun

What I Set Out to Do: Closing the Door on 2014

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With one day left in the year, I think it’s safe to say I will not achieve the goals I set out for myself in 2014. I was hoping to complete three books, and instead I completed precisely zero. This suggests that I failed rather spectacularly, though the truth is not nearly so dire when I drill down to the amount of work I actually completed. The primary book I intended to write was supposed to be finished at approximately 100,000 words, and indeed I wrote 110,000 words—so I’m not done yet, but not for lack of trying. There’s just more story than I anticipated when I started it back in January. The other two books are already written more or less in full, and only require some polish to get ready. And therefore, with great confidence, I am able to predict that I will not only write, but also publish, three books minimum in 2015. A fourth book is not out of the question.

A year ago, I think I might have found a year in which I published no new titles discouraging. As important as it is to be releasing new material as often as possible, though, it’s also important to realize that one must devote the necessary time to producing quality writing. For me, 2014 was just such a year, and I expect to reap the rewards starting in the spring. So despite my seeming failure, the past twelve months have in reality been very productive. I’m enthusiastic about the coming months as I creep closer to the finish line on these multiple projects.

My primary novel-writing endeavour this year was getting through The Law of Radiance, the still somewhat tentative title of the third and final book in my Watchers Chronicle trilogy. In past years, I’ve adopted some pretty solid techniques for maintaining productivity and discipline, but this year the challenge was more about bringing a long-form story like this one to a close in as satisfying a manner as possible. Tying up the various plot and character threads of a single novel is challenging enough, so tying up three novels’ worth is a tall order. I’ve definitely learned a few things I’ll be taking into account next time I attempt a story on this scale.

Other lessons learned: don’t let yourself lose momentum when you reach a difficult yet critical juncture in your work in progress. My tendency is to work my way up to those big difficult moments, then back away for a few weeks, using the excuse, “I need to think this through before I move on.” The end result is that I typically go back and write it according to my first instinct anyway, so I don’t gain much by the delay and lose quite a lot of time in the process.

And as usual, the biggest professional obstacle standing in my way is my handling of the day job, which I routinely allow to take precedence over my writing. Which is, of course, a common scenario. This always seems to make sense at the time, but looking back over the past year, my biggest regrets revolve around not taking full advantage of the short periods of free time between my day job hours. It seems to me I could have squeezed out several more chapters if I’d made myself fill in all the cracks in my schedule that way.

Well, there’s always next year!

In Loving Appreciation of the Story Swirl

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OtherlandAs a reader, I have a lot of reverence for the cliffhanger. I think I am perhaps in the minority here. I can certainly remember a time when cliffhangers drove me crazy. Back when I was in junior high, I would anxiously (not boldly) go into the various Star Trek season finales, knowing they wouldn’t end well for my heroes and I’d likely suffer months of torment afterward waiting for the inevitable resolution come fall.

Now, an undisclosed number of years later? To put it mildly, I’ve changed my mind. I love cliffhangers. Love them! In movies, in books, in television series, in all their different forms. But we’re mostly talking about books here at the Fictorians, so I’ll continue in that vein. In particular, I love the way multiple storylines come crashing together in a maelstrom of calamity at the end of a book. I love how these storylines may seem unconnected—that is, until the disparate threads careen together like shoelaces tipped with metallic sheathes, all drawn irresistibility to a magnet (one of the strangest and most ineffective metaphors I’ve come up with, granted, but which I’ll fail to edit out only on account of its extreme curiosity). As a writer with a greater understanding of narrative and structure, I don’t often fall for this anymore, but I try to pretend I don’t foresee the adhesive “story swirl” that brings characters and plots together in fun, hopefully unexpected ways.

Nowhere has this been better executed than in Otherland: City of Golden Shadow, the first in Tad Williams’ Otherland trilogy (or rather, one of his patented tetralogies). I can remember exactly where I was when I first raced through the concluding chapters of that book. I was in my first year of university, secreted away in a quiet nook in one of the library’s upper-level alcoves; these alcoves were magnificent places, because you could spy down on people wandering the stacks unawares. Very little spying occurred that day, however, much to the delight, I’m sure, of the unsuspecting library populace (so far as a person ignorant of spying can be delighted that they are not in fact being spied upon), because I was engrossed. Tad Williams had my exclusive attention, and he held it in his unyielding grip of fiction prowess.

My carpool had deposited me at school about an hour before any of my classes started, so I had some time to read. But an hour was not enough time to get through the last 150 pages of the book. To this day, that’s an unprecedented amount of reading for me to accomplish in one day, never mind one sitting, as I typically do not read very quickly. My class’s start time approached, and I could not put the book down. I realize that is an oft-abused cliché in reading circles, and I don’t go to this particular well lightly. That well-worn paperback may as well have been cemented to my hand with skin-ripping crazy glue. My first-year psychology seminar could not compete. I stayed up in that alcove until I got to the last page of the book, and not a moment sooner. In fact, I only left quite a large number of moments later, since I had to sit silently in stunned, mandated appreciation for about half an hour after turning the last page.

That ending is a work of art which never fails to stimulate me, and I’ve subsequently read the story five or six times. It’s the classic “story swirl” effect I mentioned earlier. I fear spoiling this magnificent read with plot specifics, as my zealous desire is that this blog post will inspire you to search it out and experience it for yourself. Suffice to say that there are a large cast of characters, of different ages and ethnicities, in wildly divergent corners of the earth, in circumstances so unrelated that I could not imagine how they might conglomerate in the end. But they did, and it was (is) beautiful. I don’t think there has ever been a reader who got to the end of Otherland Volume One and then didn’t immediately flip into Otherland Volume Two, were it available. (Fortunately I did not have the second book available that day, else I would have missed several classes.) It would be like someone seeing Locutus of Borg declare war on the Federation at the end of “The Best of Both Worlds, Part One” and then say to herself, Meh, I don’t care what happens next. It has been scientifically proven that no such breed of human exists.

I dare you to prove me wrong. I dare you!

Will It Satisfy?

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When I published The City of Darkness last year (Amazon|Kobo), I was full of anxiety. Lots and lots of excitement, but also anxiety. Why? Because it was my first crack at a sequel. And you know what they say about sequels, right? That they’re never as good as the original. As an author, I was (am!) really concerned about both creating a great story and pleasing my audience. I want to write satisfying stories—and when necessary, satisfying sequels.

I suppose there’s probably a point in time when an author becomes so successful and/or confident in their creative vision that they no longer stress out about this. Or perhaps not. Nonetheless, in many long-running series, fans start to sense that the author is treading water in the middle of their book runs. In my case, my Watchers Chronicle will only be three novels, so this effect isn’t going to have the opportunity to set in.

But if my anxiety was high over The City of Darkness, it’s even higher over my current project, The Law of Radiance—the third book and series finale. I badly want to create a satisfying conclusion. My current readers haven’t seen any non-Chronicle titles from me yet, so this is going to be their first taste of how I wrap up a long, continuing story—something I plan to do a lot of in my writing career, as I’m a huge fan of long-running series.

Finishing any novel is difficult, but finishing a trilogy, I’m discovering, is a cut above. The Law of Radiance has to tell its own contained story, and every aspect of it needs to have a narrative payoff, like all good novels. But it also has to explore a lot of themes established in the previous two volumes. And, of course, there are a lot of dangling threads here and there in those first books that now have to be wrapped up. It’s amazing how many little plot and character details start to slip out of mind four years into a project. There’s a lot to keep track of.

It doesn’t help that I’m three or four months behind schedule, but I can live with the slight delay—and hopefully my readers can, too—because I won’t have another chance to finish a series for the first time. I have to get this right. Or at least as right as I’m capable of getting it at my current level of skill. Twenty or thirty years from now, when I’m a much more accomplished and sophisticated storyteller, I might look back at this book and shake my head at all the ways I could have written it better. That’s a scary thought! Talk about fear and loathing; my greatest anxiety probably comes from comparing myself to the Evan Braun of the future.

But I’m getting off-topic.

The good news is that despite the pressure I’ve put on myself, I’m proud of the way the work is going so far. You might even use the word “satisfied.” I can only trust that my own level of satisfaction in this book will be shared by the general public when the time comes. And I can hardly wait to find out.

Art Is Pain: A Brief Overview of the Role of Catharsis in Fiction

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Writing is scary. Like, really scary.

It’s also liberating and beautiful and a host of other very positive things, but like all art, the process of creating it is often full of pain. When I first learned of this month’s theme, I realized I’d struck gold. After all, it sometimes seems as though I have enough insecurities to fill an entire week of posts.

Most writers (and probably all of the truly good ones) mine heavily from their own lives to spin their tales—and more importantly, the characters that inhabit them. No question about it, real-life influences keep books feeling fresh, relevant, and relatable to the reading public. The dark side is that sharing of one’s self in such personal and intimate ways also requires gut-wrenching honesty. And artists are, as a rule, slightly more tormented than average. Put this all together, and you have a recipe for maximum creative angst.

In psychotherapy, it’s referred to as “catharsis”—the discharge of pent-up emotions so as to result in the alleviation of symptoms or the permanent relief of the condition. The term also applies to drama, with more or less the same definition. A play, a movie, a book (any kind of art, really) explores highly emotional themes, often through tragic narratives, all in an attempt to get the audience/viewer/reader to feel some combination of strong emotions, and by feeling these emotions express the pain and torment within themselves in such a way that relieves them of it, so that they don’t have to actually carry out similar tragedies in the real world.

But it’s not just the consumer of the art who goes through the cathartic process. To an even greater degree, the artist experiences it through the act of creation.

I have to admit that I often get emotionally involved in my stories. When I’m writing something sad, I work myself up into a state of sadness. It’s not always conscious, either. I don’t make myself sad so that the writing will better convey the sadness. Rather, the act of writing about sadness takes its toll on me. The same goes for a wide range of emotional states. And this effect is amplified when I’m writing about scenarios that are relevant to my life; if my character is experiencing a sort of sadness I myself am sincerely steeped in in my personal life, it’s awfully easy to get worked up about it. (The challenge in editing then is to remove some of the melodrama from the first draft.)

I’ve probably made myself sound sufficiently insane now. A bit schizophrenic, perhaps.

Well, you’re welcome. Delving into my own pain is a sacrifice I willingly make to enhance my reader’s potential enjoyment of my work! This doesn’t just make the books better, though. While the writing process is somewhat painful at times (and perfectly enjoyable at other times, yes), it’s also incredibly fulfilling.