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Another Darla Dilemma – Wiley Wednesday
As a fledgling writer, I find myself with more questions than answers to share. I’ve decided that it’s not all bad if I can help someone else by bringing up the point, even if I have no resolution.
Today I’m curious about how many projects most writers have going at any one time. It’s entirely too tempting to love a story when it’s new and then let it flounder once the initial love affair has worn off.
In my heart of hearts I think it would be best to marry myself to one project and see it through to rough draft completion as opposed to playing the field. After all, it’s only fair to my characters, isn’t it?
What about you? How many incomplete stories do you have saved on your hard drive and, if you’re like me, even lying about in notebooks? Regardless, I wish you happy writing!
NaNoWriMo No Mo’
These first few days of December, I find myself reflecting fondly on National Novel Writing Month. I’d feared failing to write fifty thousand words of one story for NaNoWriMo and instead find myself missing the challenge.
In fact, there has been nothing new to come from my imagination since the final day and I’m trying to not let that bother me. I think other factors of life are playing a role, but I’m still hoping each day for that writing bug to bite me again.
As for the story that came from that endeavor, I recall the advice given me by Josh Lanyon, author of the popular Adrien English mystery series. The first thing to do with a new rough draft is nothing – set it aside for at least a few weeks. We shall see if I have a diamond in the rough from that endeavor. In the meantime, I must cultivate patience with my muse. Hopefully, the dam will soon break and fresh storytelling will burst forth.
I hope you’re enjoying your own creative efforts, wherever they may lead.
Thursday Thirteen
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Wiley Wednesday: Completeing A Draft & Scheduling
Last post I discussed beginning a new story, how to begin, and what tools we use. I mentioned a often-used acronym, BICHOK. Butt in chair, hands on keys. Here’s where that little mantra really becomes important. Learn it, know it, use it.
First step. How long will it be? Is it a short story? Novella? Full-length novel? The difference is the length, but the process is the same. At this point, you have made this decision and written your outline (or not). Everything’s ready, it’s time to get the words on the page. This means two things: goals and sticking to them. That’s how a draft gets done. So how do goals work where a first draft is concerned? It’s time to do a little math. (I can hear you all groaning now!)
The first step, once you have decided what the overall length will be, is to decide how long you want to take to write it. When do you want to add The End to your draft? Obviously, if you are submitting for a specific publisher’s call, you will have a deadline date to shoot for. If not, then it’s more a matter of personal choice, and your comfort level regarding speed and amount of work per day. Once you have your own ‘deadline’ decided, there’s where the math comes in. Figure out the number of days till you want it done, divide your total projected word count by that number of days, and there you have it. This depends, also, on how many days a week you plan to write. Do you take weekends off? Are Mondays the pits for you? Are you out of town every Thursday? Adjust your number of writing days accordingly and you’ll have a concrete number of words you need to write each writing day to reach your daily and total goals. And you thought this would be hard.
Actually, the math is the easy part. Now comes the real work. The writing. Reaching those goals.
I got a real ‘out of the frying pan and into the fire’ experience with my first NaNoWriMo. that stands for National Novel Writing Month, and it takes place every November. The basic idea is to write a 50,000 word novel in one month. A friend of mine had mentioned it to me years ago, and I finally decided to give it a shot. 50,000 words, 30 days. Approximately 1666 words every day. Sound insane? Yes, it is. It was also one of the most exhilarating and fun things I have ever done. I met with a local group of fellow insane writers and we all went at it. And I did it. All because I kept an eye on my goals constantly.
I knew the total daily breakdown/minimum I had to do. That gave me a weekly number, and a running total as I went. I made desktop wallpaper that had a calendar with my daily word count on it. I crossed off each day as I went. The sense of accomplishment was huge, and that visual prodding and feeling of success is what kept me going. This is the key. Find a system that works for you, that will inspire you, push you when you need it, and keep your goals in front of you. Have some sort of tracking system, a visual so you can see that you are being successful. And every day that you accomplish your number will make you feel that much more successful and determined to keep it going.
That’s the real secret right there to getting that first draft written. Make a plan, stick to it, and track it. Congratulate yourself on your successes along the way. And before long? You too will be typing THE END.
Happy writing!
Starting a New Story
So, we’ve got all these wonderful characters talking in our heads, a fabulous plot, a gorgeous setting. We may or may not have an outline, depending on whether we like that sort of thing or prefer to wing it. Now it’s time to sit down and start banging out the words, right? Absolutely! We sit down, open our word processor of choice and there it is….the blank page and the blinking cursor. Blinking at us.
Non-stop.
What now?
Starting on the shiny new story is always exciting and often comes with no small amount of trepidation. Will it be any good? Will I come up with the right words? Do I have enough plot to make a whole novella/novel out of it? I love the start of a new story. By the time I sit down to actually start writing, I’ve usually had these characters talking to me for a while and know them as well as I know the people who live in my house. They are getting pretty bossy by this time and insisting I get going. Since I am a panster, I don’t write outlines and timelines and such before I start. I do, however, have a general idea of the plot arc and know the main events that will get us from beginning to end. How I get to these points of interest along the way is always a surprise and there lies the real excitement for me in a new story. I can’t wait to see what surprises the characters will spring on me, what secrets they will reveal, what action develops, how the relationships among them evolve.
But that all happens once I have actually started writing. How do I actually get started? Here’s a little bird’s eye view of (cue dramatic music) THE BEGINNING.
If you’ve read my earlier posts, prior to this series, you will have seen one about my schedule change to being an early riser so I can get my writing in before the kids get up. If you haven’t, now you know, so the scene is set. My alarm invades my sleep just before 6 AM. There is always an momentary wish to sleep in, which gets tossed out, then I climb out of bed. I get dressed and head to the kitchen. Today is easier since I am finally going to start on that new story idea that has been bugging me mercilessly for weeks. That’s pretty exciting and once I have coffee (or hot tea) in hand, it’s off to the computer.
So now we are there with the blank page and cursor. What happens now? There’s a popular acronym in the writing world: BICHOK, i.e. butt in chair, hands on keys. I start writing. Whatever comes to mind. This may stay, or may get edited out later but the important and essential first step is to get the writing flowing, prime the pump. Chances are that I will eventually come back here to polish up this beginning, make it stronger, more enticing, but for now, the main thing is to get started. And keep going. Not everything you toss into this first draft will stay, but it is essential to get the thoughts moving, get the words on the page and don’t worry about perfection at this point. Once you get the draft done, then you can start to edit and polish, since you will have the whole plot arc done to reference when ‘fixing up’.
And whether you use extensive outlines, note cards, storyboards, novel writing programs, or go simple with just a word processor of one variety or another, or paper and pen, the important thing is this: start writing. Keep writing. Don’t look back. Stay consistent, and the story will flow. Keep at it till done. The formula is pretty simple, but what it can do it absolute magic.
Thursday Thirteen
In the United States, folks are celebrating Thanksgiving. In the blogging world, bloggers celebrate Thursdays with random lists of thirteen items. Come celebrate with us!
Research
This week we will take a look at researching stories. First up, what exactly does research encompass? Quite a lot actually. Of course, there are historical facts. Names, dates, places, major events. It also covers social and political ideas of the time, demographics, setting, geography, climate. How about equipment? Technology? Mechanical facts? Then there’s clothing and food. Native languages. Well-known disasters. Wars. Exhausted yet?
Research can be a huge chunk of your story, start to finish. Some prefer to do it all in painstaking detail before they start chapter one, some would rather do it as they go. I fall somewhere in-between. I want to have a good sense of what the world and time period was like, assuming I am using a real world setting. However, I don’t spend months looking into it. I want a good basis and then I will look up things as I go. Even those who do a lot of research ahead of time end up doing more during the course of the writing. Something always pops up that you have not planned on, requiring you to go back to your sources.
Which brings us to the main point here – sources. Of course, there is the internet. Google is often a writer’s best friend. So is Wikipedia, but that one requires some caution in that not everything is always accurate. Historical websites, special interest associations, encyclopedia sites… the list is endless and ever-changing by the day.
But what about other sources? In other words, how in the hell did we research anything before we had the internet? There is always the library. In my case, that is generally not that useful given I live in a tiny town with a tiny library. Some other favorite sources are books on the subject. I continually comb through used book stores, both online and brick and mortar. Newspapers are invaluable. When I was researching Victorian London for my Victorian vampire story, I came across all sorts of wonderful books on the era. My big score, however, was several editions of the Star, a London newspaper, all from the summer of 1888. I was ecstatic for weeks! In addition to actual news of the era, the advertisements were great for giving a good feeling for the times (I also picked up a book printed in the 1800’s about lice and rats in London – very interesting look at the cleanliness issues. It got me some weird looks!).
I also tend to collect good source material as I go along for times and locations that interest me and that I may want to use at some point, or places that I already envision for a story idea brewing in my head. I may use them one day, I may not, but digging through them can be invaluable if I do. And sometimes, I may not use that particular thing, but it spurs an idea of something I do end up using, which can be just as good.
The first week we talked about being observant and stretching our creative muscles to make use of what we see. Research is a great place for that as well, whatever form it takes. You never know what will be lurking in those pages, whether they are in a book, newspaper, or website. Happy hunting!
Point of View
Point of View
Oh, those three dreaded words. I have gotten to the point as a writer that I understand POV is an important storytelling tool. I have even been dragged kicking and screaming into a place where I agree that flowing back and forth between points of view without any kind of transition is a bad thing. Still, I cannot say that I had any real connection to point of view before today.
Ever since I first accepted that I really needed to stick with one point of view at a time, that’s basically what I’ve done. One point of view per story, period. I know that the trend is for readers to prefer alternating points of view, but I admit I’m not there yet. Writing a story with multiple, deliberately chosen points of view still feels rather like a cannonball off of the high dive to me. Or, after yesterday, maybe from the middle platform.
So, what happened yesterday, you ask?
I have a pair of characters that I love, but who are challenging for me to write. Up to this point the best I’ve been able to do with them is to write down whatever scraps of scenes they are inclined to give me, regardless of point of view. It’s not a great way to get a cohesive story onto the page, but it’s the only way I’ve been able to make any kind of progress with them up to this point. And, truth be told, the POV didn’t seem to make a lot of difference. By that I mean there didn’t seem to be anything so compelling about the way a scene played out that changing points of view down the road would be difficult.
And then I sat down at the keyboard last night to write a scene from one character’s perspective and found myself writing from the other character’s perspective instead. The contrast between the scene I’d planned and the scene that made its way onto paper is startling. By putting the new character in charge of the scene I almost completely undermined a conflict later in the story. A scene that should have been introspective and filled with knowing glances became charged with angst and sexual tension.
Everyone says this, but I swear it’s the truth here. A light came on in my mind. All of a sudden I had real, tangible evidence of how different a story can be depending on who’s telling it. I was finally able to compare scenes and really see how the tone changes based on which character’s POV is reflected there. For the first time I could actually understand how controlling the point of view would allow me to control the reader’s experience of the story.
I actually learned a LOT about the characters, too. How they tell their stories has a lot to do with who they are; their personalities, backgrounds, etc. I hadn’t realized how different these characters are until I saw the scene coming out in two such different versions.
There is a big difference from understanding this intellectually and actually applying it to the story. In this moment, though, I feel powerful. I have transformed from a stubborn girl scuffing her toes in the gravel to an honest-to-goodness writer. I can do anything, including use point of view effectively.
Realistically we are not going to spend a lot of time developing scenes from multiple points of view. We’re too busy for that. But I would encourage everyone who struggles with point of view to take at least one scene and really try to imagine it from both sides.
Don’t just change the names and pronouns. This isn’t about technical definitions and memorizing the difference between third person omniscient and present perfect. This is about understanding how to make point of view a tool you can use. Sink yourself completely into the mindset of a different character and see what happens to your scene. It might surprise you.
Thursday Thirteen
Gather ’round for some blogging fun. Today we celebrate the random in lists of thirteen whatevers.