The Alchemy of Fiction

Alchemy can be described as the process of sublimating base materials into precious metals; of turning lead to gold. The process is both mystical and scientific, involving specific materials and properly observed rituals that will only work if the alchemist is a master of his art.

There’s a certain alchemy to writing good fiction. First and foremost, you need your base material--your creative vision. Turning that into a book requires a host of skills, both enigmatic and exact, that must be refined through thousands of hours of trial and error.

Here, then, are ten tips to being a fiction alchemist.

1.    State your alchemical intentions

Whether you call it a thesis statement, a lead, an executive summary or a pitch, you should be able to come up with one to three sentences that capture the soul of your story. What is the central concept of its action, mood, message, and characters? Even if you have a complex plot, you can still clearly, succinctly define its core. As the story starts to wind in strange directions that you find hard to follow, you can reign it in by coming back to your story’s soul. In doing so, you’ll better nurture your story to its greatest potential. It’s kind of like raising a child. While she has her own personality and might grow in a number of directions you hadn’t anticipated, you can nurture her towards the best path by understanding what fundamentally makes her tick. The end result might surprise you, but you’ll love her all the more for it. Your book, likewise, will grow in directions you hadn’t anticipated but you can keep it from getting out of hand by coming back to remembering what its core goals are as a story.

2.    Remove adverbs from the mixture

On the sixth page of my book, a potentially homicidal hunter tells my protagonist, a journalist: “You use too many (effing) adverbs. Stop writing all flowery and passive. Read some Bukowski.”  It’s true. In journalism and technical writing, adverbs and cliché’s are helpful. In fiction, they are the plague.

When you look at amateurish writing, you’ll find that it tends to be studded with adverbs. Knights ride beautifully and fight courageously; girls weep sadly and boys laugh merrily; vampires smile evilly as they drink thirstily. Adverb addiction creates redundancies. It also precludes imagery and a unique voice, two things vital for a story to come alive. Adverb addiction promotes laziness in writing. Removing adverbs forces you to make interesting language choices full of vivid image and action.

3. Let the gold shine—hyperbole dulls it

Avoid saying things like, “He was the strongest knight she’d ever seen with the fastest sword and the most amazingest armor” or “Brutus was indescribably powerful, and his horse was so unbelievably fast no one could believe it.” Constantly saying this or that was the most big or amazing or terrible thing makes your writing sound like a red-faced child bragging about his superhero Daddy. Try instead to convey the gravity of this thing or event through its effect on the surroundings, or by people’s reactions. That will show us what’s happening and establish scene and character depth. Let your scene sparkle by making us see, feel, taste why this place, thing, or action is so amazing.

4.    Touch, smell, taste, hear, feel your elixir

Engage the senses, particularly when introducing a new scene. What music is playing in the restaurant? What conversations are happening? How does the wind and sun feel in the prison yard? What does the murder scene smell like? What does fresh squeezed pineapple juice taste like? How does the rope feel in the sailor’s hands? You’d be amazed at how many sensory observations you can get across in a single sentence within the first couple lines of a chapter.  And you’d be further amazed at how much those observations inform us about your characters while bringing us into the scene.

5. Speak simply as you chant

Bad adverb use in attribution actually has its own term; it’s called pulling a Swifty, after the Tom Swift books: “Tom said swiftly,” “She said hesitantly,” “He cried indignantly,” “He hollered loudly.” Such attribution gets old quickly. Also, in attribution, avoid consistently doing this stuff: “He intoned.” “She exclaimed.” “They cried.” “He wept.” Constantly using your thesaurus for a variation of “said” is distracting (although in children’s literature it can work). Just use “said.” Your dialogue should indicate whether characters are crying or shouting or interjecting by context and punctuation alone. If you must convey tone, introduce a descriptive sentence before the character speaks. Just an example off the cuff:

Boris stared at his stained hands until the sun pierced the low, mosquito-infested clouds; bathed in pale Siberian light, his eyes grew wet as he opened his broken mouth and drew a thin breath, seeking words he’d never before thought to use. “It was wrong what I did.”

Compare that to, “It was wrong what I did,” Boris intoned quietly while he stared sadly into his drink as the polar Siberian sun shined harshly in his squinty eyes.

See how much you get across in the first example? A scene could jump off from there. A sense of tension and suspense is conveyed. Which brings us to…

6.    Stir your suspension

Tension is the lifeblood of your narrative. It keeps things interesting and flowing as information and characters are introduced and dispatched. That doesn’t mean you need to write a 300-page chase scene. Tension can be whether a boy smiles back at a girl; the pause between a man’s presentation and his superiors’ reaction; a mother’s low fuel-light lighting up while her baby screams on their way to the doctor. Tension is pacing, it is the twisting and unraveling of conflict, it is the pauses in conversations and actions. It is the uncertainty clouding events’ outcomes that the reader keeps turning pages see resolved.

7.    Know the alpha and the omega

Know your ending. The last page is the most important part for finishing your book. Don’t stress the beginning when you’re in the drafting process. The beginning will be better if you write it to fit with the ending. Try to imagine an ending to your story, something you’re working towards. Write it down. It’s likely that your story will go off in a different direction, but the ending provides a guiding light for your outlining and writing.

8. Organize your laboratory

Outlines are wonderful. Even for me. I’m a natural pantser who’s seen the light of outlining. They’re so, so helpful, even if you know you’ll stray from it. You can write chapter titles on notecards and pin them to a board. You can make chapter-symbolic pictures and sprinkle them on the floor. You can write a straightforward plot synopsis, a rough outline of chapters, and cast of main characters in a computer file-- that’s basically what I do.  Or maybe your outline involves graphics, or speaking into a recording device. Whatever your method, organize your basic plot structure.

9.    Isolate your substance

Isolation goes beyond the typical “blow up your TV and go to a cabin in the woods” stuff. Consider your book a classified operation. The wrong influences could compromise it. Until your book is done, be very careful about two things: what you read, and who reads you. I pleasure-read within my novel’s genre only before and after my novel’s written, but never during. Otherwise I risk getting derailed; I sometimes find myself subconsciously affected by a story I like, or admiring too much another writer’s style. You’re not writing someone else’s book. You’re writing your book.

Regarding readers: as much as they ask to read it, there’s a chance the wrong reader will provide damaging and unhelpful feedback. Just because you love someone doesn’t mean they’ll be your perfect reader. Choose your first readers wisely. Try to probe for their tastes, strengths, and limitations as readers, and then decide whether they’ll give you useful feedback.

10. Listen to the voices

If you were to look at your dialogue, would you know who was speaking without attribution? No? Then consider altering that character’s voice. Especially the main character’s. Consider giving them a social tick, or an accent, or a go-to couple phrases, or an attitude; think about making them speak in longer or shorter sentences than others around them. John Irving’s Owen Meany speaks in all caps and declarative sentences. Your characters need individuated voices that reflect and amplify their personality. Think about a Cohen brothers movie like Fargo or Big Lebowski or--well, pretty much all of them—voice practically makes the movies. It's easier to lose yourself in a story when the characters' voices are so individuated that you know who's talking right off. I happen to think George RR Martin is a master of voice as well, which is especially impressive considering his gigantic cast of characters.

Cape of Book Hope

            So I go to Cape Cod to sell some books. I’ve never sold much of anything before, having avoided the experience save for a brief weekend handing out fliers to strangers. Er, wait, that was the one job I’ve ever been fired from. Ahem. And yet here I am, waltzing into two dozen bookstores around this beautiful corner of America, where The Last Ancient takes place, porting a stack of promotional materials and armed with only my goofy smile and a vague confidence that people will like my book if they just pick the dang thing up.

            Getting here wasn’t easy.

            I have kids, see. A wife. Responsibilities. And they’re all located in Finland--far, far away from the Cape.  This was my wife’s idea, bless her. I probabl wouldn't have come without her encouragement.

            “You have to go to the Cape this summer to get your book in bookstores. It’s now or never,” she said.

            “You’re probably right, but it’s a long, pricey trip.”

            “Don’t be a schmuck. You have to go,” she said.

            “You’ll be stuck with the kids. I think that’ll be too tough for you all. Who'll tell the Saga and Erik and the great big enormous humungous apple story?”

            “Don’t be a schmuck. You have to go.”

            “I’ve never done anything like this before.”

            “Don’t be a schmuck. You have to go.”

            “What if nobody buys my book? What if they laugh? What if they’re mean to me? What if I eat bad clams? What if I'm attacked by a shark?”

            “Don’t be a schmuck. YOU. HAVE. TO GO.”

            You get the idea. So I went. And thank goodness I’m here.

            I’d sent a sustained flurry of emails the previous month to all Cape book stores who had emails listed. I got a grand total of zero responses. I called those same bookstores the week before I got in to the Cape, which was last Saturday. Everyone was at the very least courteous on the phone, and a few were downright biblically generous, like Buttonwood Books, the wonderful Cohasset bookstore north of the Cape who invited me to attend a reading and then fed me a gourmet lunch. Ah, so this is what it feels like to be an author...

            My first day selling books from the back of my rental Jetta, I went to five book stores, which took the whole day, driving and schmoozing from 8 – 6:30 PM (distances here are deceptively long). The next two days were the same. It felt so strange to walk in with a book tucked under my arm, smiling and delivering my pitch to see if they’d want to carry it. Every bookstore took my book at least on consignment, and one is trying to carry the book outright if they can get the right deal. Apparently, there aren’t so many Cape & Islands-set books male readers will pick up. And I think mine is the only one with murder, mythological creatures, and ancient coins. Call it a niche industry.

            Selling my strange book can be awkward. I spoke with a few incredibly sweet older ladies who took a copy to review after a delightful conversation about books and the Cape and history and whatnot. They looked over my reviews, so I hoped they'd understood what they were getting into, but in the spirit of full disclosure I made certain they understood my book has adult content. They blushed when I mentioned that there’s some deer mutilations, murder, and—er, oh yeah, there’s some sex. They still asked for the book, but in the way you agree to babysit a dog you just learned has a history of biting crotches. Sex, I’ve learned, can be a deal-breaker more often than a deal-maker in these cute little boutique bookstores. Who knew? I’ll eventually do a whole post on sex in books, because it’s a much more hot-button topic than I’d anticipated.

            Another sweet older bookstore owner agreed to carry my book, and then bought five more as gifts for her friends and family. I’ve hung out with some of the bookstore owners or clerks for over an hour, chatting about this and that. I also give them Finnish chocolate (my wife's idea), to which they all say, each and every one of them, “You’re bad.”

            Just wait till you read the book.

            What I’ve learned from all of this is that humility and Finnish chocolate are powerful charms. These folks get pounded, absolutely inundated, with authors phoning and walking in pounding their chests and proclaiming their book is the next Millennium Trilogy/FiftyShades/Davinci Code. While speaking with one lady, I watched her field two phone calls from two different authors in five minutes. She said she’d had six calls that day alone, and she looked fatigued from author solicitations. I saw to it that she would not in hindsight associate me and my book with fatigue and frazzle.

            The secret to standing out and being liked in a professional context is to make others feel their day is better, not worse, because you are a part of it. Some good conversation, some laughs, maybe some chocolate goes along way to that effect.

             So far so good, and it seems to keep getting better. A few large Boston bookstores are interested in carrying The Last Ancient as well, which I hadn’t expected. We’ll see how they react to a few bars of exquisite Finnish Karl Fazer chocolate. 

The Baker Literary Taxonomy (BLT): An answer to multi-genre classification problems

I am becoming one of those authors. You know, one of those guys who, upon being asked at a party what genre they write in, they swirl their gluten free beer in their glass and start hemming and hawing about how “it’s a little like urban fantasy, but could be considered horror, with lots of historical mystery and romantic elements and even scientific and  literary aspirations.”   Yaddayaddablablabla kill me now before he opens his mouth again.

Aaaaagh! The questioner silently seethes. Get over yourself! Is it scifi or not? All your self-overanalysis makes you sound like an Olympic Class Wanker!

            But books and movies are coming to a point where classic genre classifications don’t work. Not how we need them to. To address the issue, a dizzying number of sub-genres have bubbled up from the literary cauldron of Goodreads that can leave even veteran readers confused. Space opera, urban fantasy, high fantasy, historical fantasy, magical realism, erotic vampire, paranormal romance, supernatural thriller, post-apocalypse zombie dystopia, steampunk, cyberpunk… That’s just a smattering of what’s out there. Go on Goodreads and try taking a stroll through all the genre clubs out there. An hombre can get lost in that jungle.

            I have a solution. We need the BLT. The Baker Literary Taxonomy, as my first supporter, author Rob Gregson from Goodreads, ingeniously hailed it. The BLT is a Greek/Latin/Finnish/Esperanto genre taxonomy system. Readers and literary establishment types alike hate the application of /’s in the genre subheading of a book. It’s kind of like the legal fine print disclaimer jargon attached to Viagra and Happy Fun Balls (DO NOT TAUNT HAPPY FUN BALL!!!). People want to see something adequately, succinctly labeled. Slashes make many of us uneasy. They make us think something’s not right with that Happy Fun Ball. Something sinister and corrupt.

So let’s eschew those slashes for a cool taxonomy, as for chemical compounds or dinosaurs, plants and animals.

            Is your book a horror/mystery/fantasy tale? Not anymore. Under the Baker Literary Taxonomy, the work would be (according to Google Latin translate):

            Exemplum Mysterium Phantasiam.

           Cool, right? How about an erotic vampire adventure?

            Venerae felis adventum.

            And that military science fiction time travel detective novel you’ve been marketing? Try:

            Tempus spatium bellum sacramentum.

            Ooh, and that magical dinosaur adventure comedy you’ve been banging your head over?

            Dinosaurum magicae adventum comoediam.

            Oh, and a murder mystery detective urban fantasy romance?

            Homicidium sacramentum inquisitor urbana luctus felis.

            I’d buy those without looking at the back cover over the reviews.

            The BLT addreses a long-standing problem. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Thomas Pynchon, Anne Rice, Phillip K. Dick, Kurt Vonnegut, Ray Bradbury, Jonathan Lethem, to name an infinitesimal few, have elucidated the real world through the prism of the fantastical. Traditional SciFi gained a foothold with mainstream readership by promising philosophical solutions to long-standing cultural questions via wild and wooly scientific theories; indeed, classic SciFi authors like George Orwell and Aldous Huxley have been looked upon as literary Cassandras for how their made-up worlds predicted where our world is heading. They did that in spite of the innate snobbery involved when someone describes a work as fantasy or science fiction “but it’s really so much more!” Like, because it’s not a meditation on the plight of transgender Libertarian coal miners in West Virginia in 1994, it’s not important.

            I think the efforts of great genre-authors deserves a BLT. Don’t you?

            

4-Star Review from Foreword Clarion

The Last Ancient

Clarion Review: 4 Stars

This wickedly fun horror novel thrusts readers into a Nantucket setting with a mixture of local hunters, wealthy do-gooders, and a sordid family past.

Eliot Baker’s debut novel, The Last Ancient, is a peculiar text that blends horror with detective fiction, all focused on an investigative journalist who begins a journey beyond belief. Blending social observations, the surreal, and strong writing, the reader is immersed in a world in which a god of old is alive and well, dwelling just in the periphery of gentle society but preying upon its members. Pulitzer Prize–nominated writer Simon Stephenson aims to stop it, if he can understand just what’s going on—and prevent himself from being implicated in the crimes.

It’s clear from the opening pages that this is not a novel for the squeamish: Stephenson is at a peculiar crime scene, investigating the corpse of a mutilated deer. Rendered in graphic detail, the scene provides enough information to understand why Simon thinks that something fierce and beyond belief is responsible for the death.

This horror novel’s Nantucket setting is ideal—a mixture of local hunters and wealthy do-gooders move against a backdrop of untouched, haunting wilderness and mansions. The juxtaposition of these two different Americas draws forth the belief that the country is an untamable land, one that Stephenson is desperately trying to understand. A child of privilege, Stephenson grew up on the island, only to have his world come crashing down when his father was revealed to be an illegal arms dealer. Now a writer, he can still mingle in the world of the wealthy, but only as an outsider.

With a host of impressive writing credentials under his belt and a beautiful (if sometimes problematic) fiancée, Stephenson should be happy, but the rest of his life is complicating matters severely. There’s the beautiful, vivacious reporter with whom Stephenson starts spending time, as well as his fiancée’s parents, who aren’t too fond of him. Add to this a trove of mysterious rare coins turning up around the island—unsettling, considering Stephenson’s father had a penchant for collecting them. When a murder then occurs at Stephenson’s house, it appears he is involved in the crimes. The notion of his involvement seems entirely ridiculous, but the furtive monster, once revealed, is a beautiful and alluring creature reminiscent of a Lovecraftian nightmare.

If it sounds a bit convoluted, that’s because it is. The novel borders on confusing, though in the best possible way: it provides an entertaining enigma poised to unravel. Fans of mystery and horror will embrace the style, which is familiar but well paced and properly executed. It’s a page-turner that will not tax the reader. However, some might find the author’s reliance on metaphor and, occasionally, stock dialogue to be too conventional. But once the plot gets under way, the peculiar society of Nantucket and the protagonist’s sordid family past make this quirky novel a pleasure to read.

As the mysterious occurrences on Nantucket become national news, the novel’s enticing first-person narrative turns to the Gothic and bizarre. This is a wickedly fun novel that delights in bringing about revulsion and confusion in the reader, in plain, easily understood prose that conveys a truly unique tale.

Alex Franks
April 30, 2014

Kirkus Review Featured Indie Review

I just got the message from Kirkus Reviews that The Last Ancient was chosen as a featured review in their April, 15 issue. This is a great honor and, hopefully, it will help connect The Last Ancient with new readers. Here's what they said:

"I just wanted to pass along some exciting news that your review for "The Last Ancient" was selected by our Indie Editors to be featured in Kirkus Reviews 4/15 Issue. Congratulations! The review appears as one of the 20 reviews in the Indie section of the magazine which is sent out to over 5,000 industry professionals (librarians, publishers, agents, etc.) Less than 10% of our Indie reviews are chosen for this, so it's a great honor."

Champagne Book Group's Novel of the Year!

ANNUAL AUTHOR AWARDS

Champagne Book Group is proud to announce this years' award winning books and authors.

Author Of The Year  2013 - Celia Breslin

Novel Of The Year  2013 - The Last Ancient by Eliot Baker

Best Selling Novel Of The Year 2013 - Highland Solution by Ceci Giltenan

Publisher's Award Of Excellence 2013 - Allison Knight

Really Nice Review from Midwest Book Review

By Diane Donovan, eBook reviewer, Midwest Book Review

The Last Ancient blends mythology, mystery and action and opens with an investigation of deer mutilations: something aNantucket reporter initially believes to be related to poaching. And who better to investigate than Simon, who makes his living as an environmental reporter?

It all seems predictable; but that's where the familiar ends as Simon uncovers a conspiracy centered on alchemy, finds mysterious gold coins pepper his every move, and begins to accept the existence of mythical creatures against all logic.

So what begins as a relatively simple investigation turns into a complex blend of mystery and supernatural exploration as Simon becomes involved in the impossible task of killing a mythological creature wrecking havoc on Nantucket.

The mysterious coins even implicate his own family heritage in events that unfold and engage him not only in their mystery but in the challenge of handling a fiancée who has gone over the edge.

To call this a 'murder mystery' is simplification at its worst: The Last Ancient is actually an action-packed thriller, more accurately, and belongs on the shelves of readers looking for spicy, darker, sexier Indiana Jones-style sagas that reel off subplot after subplot.

It's hard to believe The Last Ancient is a debut novel: the author's approach and writing skills seem those of an experienced thriller writer, not a newcomer, what with its attention to detail that submerges readers in a 'you are there' feel throughout the story, evident from the very first line: "The deer’s blood catches the golden hour light. It radiates throughout the animal’s carcass in fall hues that reflect the island’s rustling red leaves and honey-colored needles littering the sand. Such eerie, blasphemous beauty. I fire shots from my Nikon."

One must also note that Eliot Baker's use of the first person has a lot to do with his device of immersing readers in not just the plot, but Simon's life and experiences. Readers follow Simon's logic in piecing the puzzle together and will relish his encounters with his tense fiancée as well: “You don’t return my calls for a day and a half, Simon? A day and a half? Really? The whole world sees you on TV talking about murders and mad deer but your fiancée, who lives down the street from you, can’t even get a text to say you’re alive? Are you serious?”

The island setting is perfect for containing not only characters that can't easily flee events, but for the murderers and mythical creatures Simon has come to believe in against all logic: "We are thirty miles out at sea with a murderer.” “Then the poor bastard’s got nowhere to hide,” I say. Judy doesn’t laugh. I can’t tell Judy about the Gryphon. That it could have killed me, or let me die, but instead saved me. Loved me. I’m safe. I’ve always been safe on Nantucket. Perhaps even under Her protection. And I’m not convinced She was Dennis’s killer. His wound was different, according to Dr. Mulcahey."

What Simon uncovers will change not only his world, but his own personality, goals, and life perspectives. It will also end some relationships and forge new paths: "Judy tries to bubble about things that escape my interest as we type. I don’t want to speculate on who bailed out my paper, or whether the gold standard will be approved by the President and Congress, or if the newest art house movie about biker gangs in Sweden is Oscar-worthy. I don’t care about interest rates falling, that it’s a buyer’s market in Manhattan and LA, that Hal wants to give us a million-dollar interest-free loan, and I’m positively disinterested in what we should bring to a wine and cheese party tomorrow with her Yale friends. My heart is no longer in this world, her world, and every syllable of pretending otherwise feels like a slithering lie to her and a filthy betrayal of my true love, my true self, my true god."

And perhaps that's The Last Ancient's greatest strength: its ability to pinpoint and follow the transitions of its protagonist, who finds that everything he's believed about himself and his world is different. In the process of these revelations Simon's real identity emerges. And then comes the special challenge of either fitting that new knowledge into the rest of his life or forging an entirely new direction in the world.

In truth, Simon's course has been set long before his knowledge of these other worlds and choices. In such a world Simon's powers as the ultimate healer and killer will emerge, and against this backdrop even evil gets another chance.

Without spoiling any of the intrigue, suffice it to say that readers will be captivated from the first chapter and will be immersed in a supernatural mystery that gets more complex with every turn, leading to a bloody battle with more at stake than a few dead deer or one man's revelations.