Category: Writing

Series Incongruities

I’ve been reading books by Scott Westerfeld: Uglies, Pretties, and now halfway through Specials. I like the world he’s created for Tally Youngblood and her friends, and it shows her character changing throughout the three books.

But I also noticed the little bit about SpagBol, his word for Spaghetti Bolognaise dehydrated, then re-created with a purifier.

In Uglies, Tally runs out into the wild with a bag created by [evil] Dr. Cable, and every single packet of food in her bag was SpagBol. After that, she’s had trouble looking at it. Can’t blame her, since that’s all she ate for three meals a day for a few weeks.

In Specials, Tally reacts to another character eating SpagBol with some revulsion. Months have passed since Uglies, but this is still a strong reaction.

So why does Tally have SpagBol in her own hand-packed bag when she escapes to the wild in Pretties? And why doesn’t she react when, admittedly another character, eats it?

Those kinds of questions sometimes keep me up at night. I found the little inconsistencies even toward the end of editing The Art of Science, and I hope to find them all with my current projects.

I’m only human, though. I must take into account that I will not fix everything, even if I have help.

Scott Westerfeld couldn’t find all the tiny details with all of Simon Pulse behind him. It wasn’t a pivotal point. It was just part of the minutiae.

I’m sure a series bible would help, but it’s also difficult to accept that as a writer I might not be able to create a perfect story. I suppose I’ll just hope enough people read it to discern the things I missed.

We all do the best we can. I’m loving the books in spite of that – extremely small – detail.

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And on to the next outline challenge!

Why? I finished my 15-20 word outline for Don’t Tell Your Mother. It turned out as 18 words and focuses my intent more.

It also changes my draft quite a bit now that I’m getting into the third. (I think it’s the third draft. Sometimes it’s hard to keep track.)

It’s in a good way, though. I had been trying to get there, but something kept stopping me. I’ve been having issues putting my inciting incident into a short bit of words. A phone call took me to the heart of it.

I love how the brain swirls into something you’d forgotten you were thinking about. Perhaps that’s just me.

So with my new, short outline, I will be fixing my longer synopsis. Then I’ll be ready to dig into Chapter 3 and beyond!

Of course, Chapter 2 needs a few more shades to get there. Maybe I ought to start there first.

I think I’ll decide after I fix the synopsis. Priorities, y’know.

Not too long after that I will be able to figure out what to do with those two short outlines I also finished for yesterday. Both have working titles and one has a strong main character who has made herself known.

I can’t hide from them forever.

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Self-Imposed Deadlines

Is it really June 1 already? Remind me not to give myself deadlines over holiday weekends, especially when there are party plans in progress.

While I’m still struggling with my outline of Don’t Tell Your Mother with all the new changes, I had two straggling ideas come to be much clearer through the process. Why does it always happen that way?

And I keep scratching out lines for the outline I’m supposed to be finishing. If it would just play nicely – but no amount of arm-twisting will put it in line. Probably because I don’t think of my novels having arms.

Fifteen to twenty words for an outline was the challenge. So I have two that might work, though one doesn’t have an actual name for the main character. She’s there, though, somewhere. Just waiting to reveal herself when I’m halfway into another project, I’m sure.

Characters can be so difficult that way. They require constant vigilance to keep them in line. Even if you let them run free you have to make certain they don’t start going in circles. Some of them will do nothing but chase their tails. Humans and characters both need a lot of motivation to keep moving.

I have motivation – I just have too much to do.

It doesn’t explain why all the ideas start popping in my head at once, but I believe it’s just another quirk of being a writer. Ideas swarm the skull as soon as I choose one to focus on. That’s what a slush pile is for. It holds the extras until I’m ready to develop them.

Or until they take over my thoughts completely. One way or another, the stories that really want to get written, get written. Eventually I have no choice!

Not that I mind much. I love writing and developing stories, worlds, and characters. I don’t know what I’d do with myself if they were gone.

I’ll keep working to revise the outline for my current project, though. The worst that can happen is developing the other two into series… Wait- that already looks like a possibility.

Maybe I’ll just retreat into a corner with my notebook and pen and start chanting in Sanskrit.

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Ideas on the Periphery

One line of plot does not always get you from beginning to end of book. It’s one of those things that adds to length, either a sub plot or a plot layer. Neither is totally unrelated to the main line, but each adds different elements.

Mom delivered an idea that a friend of hers believes is underdeveloped in books. Oh, it’ll require research for me  because I’m not familiar with it. It will have good conflict opportunities for characters. The more I think about it, though, I’m not sure it will make a good central plot line for a book.

And of course, during a rewrite phase my brain starts bursting with new ideas to take off and write with! So I take a deep breath and take notes for when I’m finished. How irritating. Would that I had more hours in a day to write.

Like ten.

But I wouldn’t give up the evening I spent with my daughter outside. I wonder if I could manage without sleep… but that way lies madness. And not the kind that will get my written words more creative!

So I’ll add it to my notes and see what comes out of this when the current project is done. Because I am determined to get Don’t Tell Your Mother into great shape.

Maybe it will be ready to send out by the end off the year, but only if I get cracking on that rough manuscript. Yes, I think that would be a good goal. Let’s see if I can manage it. I like where chapter 1 is, and I have the rest of the rough draft in various stages. (Someone called it draft-and-a-half. That amuses me.) I also have notes on where the outline needs to change.

That should account for enough for me to keep rewriting. I think I have one more issue to tie up at the end.

New deadline: Revise ending in outline form by 1 June. Whee!

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Thematic Issues

I recently read an amateur piece less than 1000 words long. In it, the author had scene breaks to create three separate scenes. I could see nothing connecting the scenes, except that grief spilled over each of the main characters.

Apparently I do not think about theological troping enough, because the answer to my bit about the vignette feeling disconnected referenced that. There was a young man crying in each bit. Why is it some people who write Christian fiction feel the need to be very obscure about it, then berate a reader for not catching the pieces?

I should’ve known when there was a quote from the book of Isaiah at the end.

It was my turn to read that prompt, so I did. The silent main character, who only appears in one sentence for each scene, was revealed by the prompt. I also missed that the three scenes showed the Last Supper, the Cross, and the Tomb.

I will admit I still fail to see the connections.

Taken from Wikipedia: “A Christian novel is any novel that expounds and illustrates a Christian world view in its plot, its characters, or both, or which deals with Christian themes in a positive way.”

The Narnia books by C. S. Lewis have been called Christian fiction. I think they can be appreciated on many levels, and the story fits together well. I enjoyed them without needing to understand all the underpinnings of the Christian story underneath.

I have a writer in my critique group that says he’s writing a Christian novel because of the inspirational theme of saving the protagonist. Like Lewis, he’s making the story approachable to a larger audience.

I wonder about some of those other Christian fiction authors who do not- they want to write only for Christians to truly understand what they’re doing. Does that mean the story isn’t strong enough to stand without the troping?

When is that just lazy writing versus writing for a specific audience? And if the piece I just read was an example of the whole, why would I want to delve into Christian fiction at all? I’ve always wanted the story to take me more than the theme underneath. It might have been one reason I wasn’t accepted into AP English in 12th grade. I had trouble distilling whatever the teacher was looking for from the very short story.

You know what? I’m okay with that. At least I’ve only very rarely been asked what my story was about at the end, and I have a feeling the one person who did that wasn’t really paying attention. (But that’s another story…)

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Continuing Education

What do you choose to do to further your education?

A friend mentioned that her job (and mine, come fall) requires some continuing education and for it she was studying from a book. I’d read the same book for a student I’m tutoring. (Kiss My Math by Danica McKellar) She appreciated that they college requires you to continue to refine your skills by learning.

I can appreciate that, too. My home library speaks to a lot of continued education through books on several subjects. I’m looking up other opportunities to keep skills fresh, as well.

Math might not pertain to writing, but it’s good to keep a lot of skills going. One thing I have always wanted to do is learn another language; I have a few phrases here and there but nothing fluent.

I’m always learning more about writing. With my new part-time employment gigs, it’s sometimes difficult to sort out what my primary function is. (After motherhood, of course!) I like to think I’m a writer, which means I need to focus on the written words.

My focus takes me to critique groups. I learn from the other writers as well as teach them things. I’ve been carting books back and forth from the library in order to hone my skills from published books in fiction and the writing section.

Plus I read and write and rewrite and edit and polish. Some of those are overlapping functions, but each has a special place in the writer’s agenda.

I currently need to finish the fiction book I’m reading by Jacqueline Carey that’s due tomorrow, plus one by Scott Westerfeld that will be due not too much longer.

Some days the difficulty lies in learning versus doing. If the doing (the writing) takes over, there is at least something to work with, something to fix. If the learning takes over, no output. There has to be a balance so both can be done for the betterment of my work. (Well, anyone’s work, I suppose.)

So another question: how do you think the experts learn more about their fields?

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You Can’t Edit a Blank Page

This saying has been credited to many authors and I can’t find the original. I do believe it’s true, though.

The newest member of my writing group stated she had a story she had been writing in her head, and alarms went off in my head. How can she think she’s writing if it hasn’t left her head?

Perhaps it’s fortunate I curbed my tongue. I did want her to come back. She seems like a good addition to the group.

However, I am wary of those who think they can create stories – which are made for sharing – without writing them down. A first draft is usually crap. It’s allowed to be crap. Perhaps even supposed to be crap.

That’s why re-writing and editing exist – to cure the first draft into something wonderful.

I know some first drafts are pretty amazing. I have a friend who puts my first drafts to shame. It’s not a mark of a good writer vs. a bad writer, just that our starting points are different. We both rework our manuscripts until they shine. At the end, we have styles that change our work and voices that speak to the reader. We hope they’re clear and emotionally moving.

Sometimes we succeed.

Other times we scrap a project as not worthy. It’s just part of the process. But if we’d never written a word, we’d never know. And neither would those who read our work be able to share in the story we create.

Some of these sayings are popular for good reason. Imagine a plain white sheet of paper with red dots all over it. Meaningless without the (presumably) black text underneath. Because of this, I give myself permission to make bad first drafts. I just want the story to shine through, and it might take a few tries.

I haven’t failed until I quit trying, and I count it as forward progress as long as my pages aren’t blank.

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Thorny Pitches

Do you call it a logline or a premise or a one-sentence pitch? And by whatever name you call it, is it really that much different?

The logline’s history starts with scriptwriting, so if I have a novel, do I want to call it a logline?

The premise is a one-sentence summary of a novel, which may or may not be nearly the same as the one-sentence pitch.

Whichever one you think you’re writing, it has to be catchy. Ever feel sorry for all the industry professionals who have these short pithy sayings aimed at them all the time? From Oh, I’m in the elevator with an editor, time to spout out my pitch, to Bathroom break, I think someone’s in the stall next to mine – it’s an agent, I can tell by the shoes! It’s enough to make me glad I’m not one of them.

Well, almost. I think it’d be really cool to discover books, but from the things I read on Twitter via #pubtips, well, wow, there are some bad queries out there. There must also be some great ones, because books keep getting published.

The trick of all those one-sentence dealies in the beginning is word choice. It takes them forever to be crafted, but once they exist in a pretty form they’re helpful. Remember Mark Twain’s words, “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”

I mean, what if the first Percy Jackson book was called The Lightning Bug Thief? That just gives an entirely different picture of the book.

The same concept works for pitches, or anything else in a very short form that must get people excited about the project. We’re writers – we need to use our words. There are so many of them out there just waiting for their turn in the spotlight.

It also means we need to stop thinking the first draft of a premise is the correct one. The first draft of anything usually needs a lot of coaxing to shine.

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Digging Into Plot

Yesterday I pulled out my synopsis and I started making notes. Finally!

I’m really glad I wrote the synopsis now. It makes it easier to figure out where to change things. My notes are in dark blue, littering the typed pages.

Today I think I’ll add green or purple, whichever I can find first. I like adding a different color to show different kinds of work, and today I’ll be making a new line for the plot. It might take two or three times to get where I need to go and changing colors in the notes helps me see which direction I’m going.

As opposed to all black and white- then I’ll forever be scratching things out that don’t work.

Makes me think I should’ve done all this work before I wrote the book, but I didn’t develop the synopsis first.

Why oh why didn’t I do the synopsis first?

Well, I suppose I haven’t yet outlined a book before I’ve written it. The Art of Science might have been the exception because I had a chapter guide before I wrote it – but that one changed away from the outline version completely, too.

Do any of those writing books out there mention the people who have to write the rough draft before being able to look at the plot structure and make it better? I wonder if I might be one of those people.

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The Market Says

Discussing the magazine market with my friend, she said there was a bigger market for ‘how to write’ especially in the speculative fiction field than there was for the fiction. She’s been researching for her own magazine, and I don’t doubt it.

But it’s a little funny, since in order to write for any genre you need to be familiar with the genre. Of course, they’re probably buying books instead of magazines, but why?

If we’re out for the short story market, it’s best to get our hands on the actual publication we want to have purchase our work. (I’m sure that’s best in every market.) Wouldn’t that make the demand equal for both products?

Are we trying to write in a vacuum?

Maybe we’re listening to the characters in our head. What’s to stop them from taking over the story? Not that it’s bad for them to take over the story, that’s part of what happens when they become real to the author. I guess I’m asking: How do we know they have the best plot possible, if we have nothing to compare to?

Not that we want to redo a plot. I know I’ve heard Twilight has a lot of similarities to Wuthering Heights (can’t be bad to be compared with a classic), but I wonder sometimes where the line can be drawn between using an old plot with newish characters, like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and the arguable every plot can be traced back to one of [insert number of plots below 50 you think there are].

Have you ever wondered what the true fascination with Zombies really is? I think if I get around to reading those re-makes, I’ll choose Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters instead…

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