Treehouse Writers

Or at least my writing.

In the mid 1990s I worked for three years as an editor at Acclaim Comics. It was a fun job, and a frustrating job, and I loved it–I had been a comic book reader as a kid, my brother had been working as a letterer for over a decade, so I had some prior exposure to the world of comics. It all seemed to be fated… until Acclaim Comics’ parent company (which had, um, not been managed well) went under and took the comic company out as well. So I found myself unemployed, and took up La Vie Boheme Freelance. Since I had two young kids, this actually worked out pretty well.

One of the weekly routines I fell into was lunching with a bunch of friends who also worked in publishing/comics on Wednesdays at the Malibu Diner on 23rd Street (down the block from a good comic book shop, so that after lunch people could stroll down and pick up that week’s new comics). One of the Malibuvians (as we styled ourselves) was Keith DeCandido, who was then the editor for a line of Marvel Comics tie-in novels. And I was a freelancer, looking for work. When I said as much at lunch one day, Keith asked me who my favorite Marvel character was. “Daredevil,” I said without hesitation. Alas, he had a Daredevil novel in the pipes, but he promised to remember me for the next time Daredevil came up in the rotation. We finished our lunch. Life went on much as usual.

Until a couple of weeks later when he called me: the writer for his Daredevil novel had to drop out and how quickly could I get a detailed (like chapter-level, if not scene level) outline to him, and it had to be by the beginning of July (it was then mid-June). So I wrote a 30 page outline, detailed to the chapter and sometimes the scene level.

It was excruciating: I am, by nature, a semi-pantser: usually I write 20-40,000 words on a book and then I write an outline to tell me where I’m going to go from there. Sometimes the outline is as simple as four or five beats. Chapters? They’ll be in there somewhere. Scenes? Likewise. But Marvel wants what Marvel wants, and I wanted the gig. So I did it, turned it in. Keith called me back and said “Looks pretty good. I suspect they’re going to want this and this thrown in, but otherwise… start writing, and when the approval comes in I’ll tell you if there are any changes.

I started writing. I finished the book at the beginning of September, turned it in to Keith, and we got the approval of the outline two weeks later. Adjustments were made, Daredevil: The Cutting Edge was accepted, we all went along with our lives. That’s the cover featured above. (You will note there is neither a title for the book nor the author’s name… everyone was so in love with the art that they kind of forgot those essentials. Ah, well. My name made it to the spine.)

What did I learn from this? Well, I learned that I can write an 80,000 word book in two months. But what I really learned is something that still marks my writing. 

Daredevil, if superhero comics or TV or movies are not your jam, is a character who is blind. Stan Lee took the old cliche about a blind person’s other senses improving to compensate for the deficit and put it on steroids. As a kid Matt Murdock was hit by a truck hauling chemical waste through Manhattan; the accident took his sight, but somehow the chemical muck with which he was spattered augmented his senses. So every time Matt (who becomes Daredevil) walks into a room he can hear and smell, and taste, and feel everything that is going on around him. He knows where an adversary is by listening for a heartbeat–but also for the disturbances of the air through which the adversary is moving. He can tell what someone had for breakfast by the scent of eggs and ketchup on the guy’s breath, or on his tie. He has learned to sift through all the input of his heightened senses to get information that he can use, not just to navigate the world as a blind man, but to kick ass as a superhero.

What this meant for me as a writer was that I had to put in the sensory cues when Matt walked into a room or Daredevil confronted a villain. So for the two months I was writing the book, every time I walked into a room, or went around a corner, if I smelled or heard something, I found myself trying to parse it. Not just “that’s a smelly alleyway” but “cat urine, damp earth, brick dust, ammonia cleaning products.” Not just “noisy room” but which voices were dominant, and what the other sounds–an elevator moving behind the walls, traffic noise wafting up from the street–were. Tastes. Textures. Proprioception (very important when you’re a blind superhero fighting with others in a variety of settings).

Writing this book required that I confront, in a sense, my privilege as a sighted, and sight-centered person. And I’ve carried the lessons I learned with me since then. Perhaps it’s particularly important to me because a lot of the writing I’ve done since Daredevil takes place in a different time and place from our own. There’s nothing like smell, for example, for creating a place that is then: every hired carriage Sarah Tolerance gets into has its own, usually unpleasant, galaxy of smells. So does every large group of people, particularly in a time and place when daily or weekly bathing was the exception rather than the rule. Working on the Daredevil book reminded me that everyone has, not only a unique look, but a unique smell. That a voice is not just a tone or a timbre, but is shaped by a variety of factors including the speaker’s health and upbringing. That the surface of skin is composed, not just of the skin itself, but of the substances–sweat, oil, cosmetics, medicines–that may be on the skin, and their scents.

As an exercise, try writing a scene where the descriptors are all about sound and touch and taste and smell (and proprioception, if that seems a useful tool). It will feel awkward at first, especially in terms of describing a character physically. If Daredevil confronts a guy who is unkempt, maybe getting over a hangover, and trying to avoid giving some information about something he’s witnessed, he won’t be able to say whether the guy is blond or brunette, but he can judge his height and weight, smell the sour taste of stale alcohol on his clothes and his breath, and hear the heightened heartbeat that suggests he’s lying.

Try it. It’s just one more useful tool in a writer’s box.

I have for been several weeks preparing four books for publication: re-releases of the first three Sarah Tolerance Mysteries, to be followed a month later by the release of The Doxies Penalty, the fourth in the series. Because I’m publishing with an independent micro-press, I’m doing a lot of the production work myself, which means I have been engaging with my own text up close and personal.

The good news? I still like all four books. I can find passages that give me pleasure (and have found comparatively few that make me wince and say “what was the Author thinking?” This is not always the case when looking over your old work. But of course, as I read, I notice things. Like,” damn, the Author uses a lot of em-dashes.”

A thing to know about me: my major in college was theatre, and while I mostly did behind-the-scenes stuff (props and costumes and especially stage management) I did a good deal of performing. Having read a lot of plays and thought in terms of performance then, when I’m writing now I think in terms of the weight and rhythm of words as they’re spoken aloud. If I’m reading my own work I  want markers, flags for performance. Thus em-dashes, which I think are most useful pieces of punctuation for capturing the rhythm of the way people speak.

Much as I love Jane Austen’s books, in real life people rarely speak in full sentences. People interrupt themselves–and others–all the time. For people interrupting themselves, I suppose one could use the parenthesis (another of my favorite forms of punctuation). But because there’s usually an imperative quality to interruptions, and abruptness, I prefer em-dashes.

Here’s a bit from my new Sarah Tolerance book, The Doxies’ Penalty:

“I would think you’d prefer to hand him to Sir Walter—”

“In the general way, we’d find ‘im some justice from our own—if ‘e’s one of ours. Look, I cannot promise to look out for the fellow, nor give him up, without I ask a blessing to it.”

There’s an interruption of the first speaker, which really demands an em-dash. And the second speaker interrupting himself to qualify what he’s saying. I could, in justice, use a comma to set off “if ‘e’s one of ours.” But the comma doesn’t imply the sort of emphasis that self-interruption usually requires. 

You could say that I’m leaving myself—and other performers—information on how to read the words, aloud or otherwise.

When I was doing a final pass on the manuscript for Doxies I did a search for the old-style double-hyphen which (in typewriter days) stood in for an em-dash, which would be added later in typesetting. Because sometimes I use a double hyphen rather than Option-Shift-Hyphen (on a Mac keyboard). And inevitably I find some. I also find inconsistent spacing around my em-dashes, and other typographic horrors requiring repair. I am closing in on my deadline to hand the MS over to the formatter, and I want to make their work as pain-free as possible.

If all goes well, The Doxies Penalty, Sarah Tolerance #4, will be available mid-October.* And yes, that was a plug. When you’re working with a micr0-press you also have to pitch in on marketing where you can.

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*The first three books in the series, Point of Honour, Petty Treason, and The Sleeping Partner, will be re-released in September. See comment above about marketing.