Onwards to Book2

- by ria, on Wednesday, 26th January 2011, 4:18pm

Hey, it’s Wednesday.

I have news, too. I’m 10% through the first draft of book 2. That’s why it’s been so quiet around here. I’ve been putting all my time into outlining and starting this draft.

Other writers may laugh at this, and a lot of you may wonder how I ever wrote book1 when I say this, but for the first time today, I really had to consider two character’s points of view. Unlike book1, this book has more than one POV character and the characters are completely different.

I was writing from Zan’s (whose name will change) point of view, about Zachery and while I really had to consider her reaction, I also had to think very carefully about his. Zachery is a complicated fellow and he has a way of talking and doing things that is almost opposite to the way Zan does things. When I’m writing from Zan’s point of view I have to be careful to curb my enthusiasm when it comes to Zachery’s dialogue. I’ve cut a bunch of small talk from the last scene, because while Zan is into making conversation, Zachery isn’t.

It’s a new thing for me to have to think this much about character actions. It’s a lot easier when you have one character to worry about. I wonder should I have been worried about this stuff in book1. Should this have come up before now, and because it didn’t, does that mean all the characters in book1 except for Zachery, are shallow and one dimensional?

It’s something to bear in mind for book1′s next revision.

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Shoutout

I would like to give a shout out to Nathan Bransford. He’s running an opening paragraph competition on his blog: 4th Sort-of-Annual Stupendously Ultimate First Paragraph Challenge. That post and the ones that follow are interesting.

Reading all the entries has given me a good idea of what I like in an opening paragraph, and I think I have to say that the opening of book1 does not contain the magic ingredient. I think it’s too much about the surroundings and not enough about Zachery’s wants / needs / conflict / him being an interesting character. I think I need to open with a display of recklessness.

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category: shoutout, writing

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A Bit About My Writing

- by ria, on Wednesday, 20th October 2010, 11:46am

I’ve mentioned the things I’m working on in other posts, but I figured I should dedicate an entry to getting everything straight. Let’s start with what I’m working on right now.

For the last few years, I’ve been writing a fantasy that centres around Zachery and his attempts to save the world from itself. It’s rather magic-heavy, and I like to think it’s a pretty fast paced adventure.

Artificer

I started writing it the summer I finished college (2006). I used the snowflake method to draw up progressively longer outlines. The outline I ended up working from was 23 pages, and included headings like POV Character, Characters Present, emotional angle, description, chapter number. It was divided into 80 scenes, or so. November of that year I started writing draft 1 and by the end of the month I had 55,000 words. (Thank you NaNoWriMo.) It took me a full two years to write the other 70,000 words. (One year of that involved travelling around the world.)

April of 2008, I started editing the horrid mess that was the first draft of my book. It was called The Fall back then. The Fall is a horribly cliché title, so you can imagine what the story was like. Not wanting to face a rewrite (and not really understanding that I needed to rewrite) I messed around with it a bit, tweaking paragraphs, changing a few things here and there.

By September of 2009, I had made very little progress. I sat down one day and made a schedule for the next 6 months. I wanted a good story by March 2010. One that was unique, exciting, infinitely better than what I had. Even though it had taken me a year and a half to face the fact that I needed to rewrite most of the book, it was the best decision I made. March came around and I had something better. Not amazing yet, but good. The feedback I got made me face the problems that still existed. So, I took another 3 months and came out with draft 3.

I’m now on draft 3.2 and have a query letter that I’m still not happy with. I haven’t sent it out to any agents yet, because it makes the book sound boring. So, that’s my current situation.

Familiar

When I was still in college, I had this idea for a short story. Two girls whose lives get really strange when a demon shows up at their door. I imagined it would be about 3 or 4 pages. I wrote it by hand in a yellow page notebook. 188 pages later it was finished. It took me the whole college year to write, September 2005 to May 2006. I originally wanted to write this story as a graphic novel, but I don’t have the same persistence to stick with a bit of art that I do for a bit of writing. Zachery was the bad guy in this story. I liked him so much, I gave him his own trilogy. This story is book 2 of the trilogy. At the moment it is only 32,000 words, so it needs quite a bit of work.

Fiendling

Book 3. I wrote this for NaNoWriMo 2008. Like my first NaNo attempt, I got to 50,000 words and just stopped. I stopped in the middle of a sentence, no less. This book is half written, and it is terrible. It is probably the worst 50,000 words I have ever written. I imagine I’ll be tearing it to pieces and rewriting 95% of it. The good thing is that rewriting Artificer has given me loads of ideas for this book. So I’m actually enthusiastic about getting to it – after I’ve done some serious work with Familiar.

2000 and Beyond (Before?)

I’ve also been working on a thief/magic adventure since I was about 12. I’d written about 10,000 words when I lost the file and had to start again. I did start again, and wrote 4,000 new, better words. I imagine I’ll be rewriting the whole thing again, though. I actually think it needs a whole new re-imagining. It think it’s a bit too straight-forward as it is at the moment. I’ve come to be wary of ‘quest-type’ fantasies (it’s easy to fall into clichés with them), and this was ‘quest’ at it’s most unimaginative.

So there you have it. My writing life all neat and summed up.

I’m not sure if there will be a post next week. I’m going away and can’t guarantee I’ll be at a computer / have the inspiration to write.

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category: thoughts, writing

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Ideas

- by ria, on Wednesday, 28th July 2010, 11:51am

Coming up with ideas is hard. Especially if you are staring at a blank page. I can’t sit down and just start writing a story. First, I need a character I love, then I need a setting that fires my imagination. Then I need a plot. Two posts before this, I spoke about creating an outline, but I didn’t go into any details on where the ideas come from.

For me, they come while I’m writing. I’m working on a trilogy at the moment. I’m editing book one, book two is written and book 3 is half-written. So I have a good idea of the overarching plot. As I write, I’m thinking ahead, ‘How can I use this turn-about in one of the later books?’ So I’m getting ideas for book 3 from things that are happening in book 1. And I kind of hope that that shows through when I have them all written. I want people to be able to see the connections. I want them to say to themselves, ‘Ah, yes. I remember this from book 1. This author wove that narrative string nicely across the trilogy.’

But what if you are starting with a whole new book? One where you do not have a large background of information to pull ideas from? As I said already, start with a character, or a setting. If you are really brave, you can start with an emotion.

Setting as Inspiration

Let’s say you decide to focus on coming up with the setting first (I’ll get to character in a minute). Think about things you like: wood, metal, water, desert, city, food, bed… (yeah, now I’m just getting random). Anyway, think about something you like, say metal, and figure out how to work it into your setting. The setting is full of metal: a metal planet, a factory, a slum where huts are made of metal sheets… you can work it in any way you like. Then build on that. Let’s say you went with the metal factory. Is it in use or abandoned. Let’s say its abandoned and there are people living there. Why do they not have homes? My brain jumps to a post-apocalyptic setting. A bit cliché. I can do better. The metal protects them from something… Lightning? I don’t know. My brain has run out of ideas. Maybe I should go with something else.

You get the idea. Once you have your starting point, work up from there. You probably should leave the starting point behind. Don’t work it into your novel, use it to get a feel for the setting and then do something better with it.

Character as Inspiration

Starting with a character is generally the way I work. I usually get the look and style of the character first and then build up characteristics based on that. For example, one of the girls (women – she’s about 22)  from book two. My initial inspiration for her was an image of a girl wearing baggy pants and a t-shirt standing on the wall of a river bank, her long coat and hair blowing out behind her. A bit dramatic, I will admit, but you have to start somewhere.

In my mind, she’s alone and it’s dark. Now, what sort of girl would wear such clothes, be out at night and standing on the wall of a river bank. Someone confident, she doesn’t care what people think of her. She’s not going with convention – what grown adult walks along walls just for the fun of it? She’s also not wearing clothes that are conventional for a lady to wear. She’s definitley got more of a punk vibe going on. The final detail is that she looks serious. There’s something wrong, maybe insomnia, maybe depression, that has here out at night standing over the river. She’s not facing the river so I know she’s not suicidal. She just wants to let the wind take her problems away. Right, and I got all that from one image.

Now, this image did just pop into my head one day, but you can use things around you to the same effect. An image from a magazine, someone on TV. Find someone who attracts you, figure out why, and build up a personality for them. Don’t use someone you know, or a famous actor. They already have too much of their own personality.

Emotion as Inspiration

The final inspiration I’m going to write about is emotion. Emotion is a powerful thing. All of us feel, we all like to feel good, but sometimes it can be nice to wallow in bad feelings. Sometimes it is therapeutic to do so. But not too self-indulgently. Just for a little while.

Using emotion as inspiration can be tricky. You have to figure out what emotion would you like to explore. You have to come up with a situation that causes this emotion. Let’s say you want to write about forgiveness. Forgiveness is one of the most powerful emotions out there, it’s always a great one to write about. So, at the end of your novel you want the power of forgiveness to come shining off the page. You need to work backwards. You need a character who needs forgiving, or who holds a grudge. You need to work up to that. Being inspired by emotion isn’t generally something that happens to me at the start of a book. It usually comes when I have a better idea of everything, when I know my characters well, when I know what kind of emotional turmoil I want to put them through.

Other Sources of Inspiration

I want to add that if is there some cool action sequence you’ve always wanted to write, note it and work it into your novel somehow. Nothing like a good action scene to get your inspiration glands working.

So, How Does the Plot Come from All This?

Well, that’s the easy part. You have your setting, your primary emotion, or your character, the plot is what you do with it. Turn it on it’s head. Add conflict. Give your character something to worry about. Actually, I’m going to write a whole separate post about this.

One Further Comment

Whatever you do, don’t think that you can sit down and write just because you have a cool setting or a brilliant character. Believe me, if you do that, I can guarantee that your first 10,000 words will be nothing but back story and filler. You need a plot before you start writing. Exciting stuff has to happen on the very first page.

* * *

There’s a really important post on finding your plot coming next week. Set your rss to threecornersquare so you don’t miss out.

PS, I write the longest posts ever. This one is 1127 words.

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category: pre-production, writing

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