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Posts Tagged ‘first drafts’

World Building

Posted in writing, tagged , , , on April 18, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Some more thoughts on world building, today.

For my first novel, THE SHAMAN’S CURSE, I have a map and about twenty pages of world building materials (some of which may turn up on this blog, under Worlds, someday).  Most of this is about the various cultures (six in all) in that world.  For these peoples, I wrote out things like:

  • How they look–tall/short, fair/dark
  • What they wear
  • What kind of shelters they live in
  • What they eat
  • How their economy works.  How do they get what they want?
  • How their political system works.  Who’s in charge and how are they chosen?
  • What they value.  How would they judge a successful life?
  • What are they most afraid of?
  • The relative positions of men and women
  • Marriage customs
  • How they raise their children
  • Religion and festivals
  • Even how they deal with death

It’s great to know all of this.  Of course, the problem is an awful lot of that crept into the novel and had to be cut later.  But it’s still good to know.  Besides, it’s fun to imagine all these things and how they interact and make sense for one group but shock another.

For later stories, I’ve usually drawn a map, but I haven’t written out the world building in the same way, although I know most of the same things about those worlds.  I just haven’t felt compelled to write it down.

The world building for DREAMER’S ROSE eluded me, until I remembered a trip to Princess Louisa Inlet (where the photo at the top of this blog was taken).  Then the world became real to me in a flash.

And, in writing this, it occurs to me that there is one story for which I really don’t have a good handle on this kind of information, my current problem child SEVEN STARS.  Before I go back to it, I really need to work that out some more.

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Characterization

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , on April 11, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I posted some time ago about setting SEVEN STARS aside.  I was just having too much trouble with it, which probably meant that I had something wrong or not fully formed.  So, I’ve just been allowing the ideas to come and jotting them down when they did, but not trying to actually write anything on this project.  I’m still not ready to go back to writing it.

The original story was from a novelette that I wrote and never liked much.  It didn’t feel finished, somehow.  So, I decided I knew enough things that could happen to these characters to make it into a novel.  I still think the story will work much better as a novel.  In the process, though, I switched the main character and it just wasn’t working.

This week, I had an idea that would enrich the ending and jotted it down.  And then, at odd moments, I let myself sort of roll it around.  This idea changes everything.  I think it’s part of what I was looking for and couldn’t find when I was too close to the project.  Not everything, not yet, but a good long step down the right road.

The implications of this idea will change the main character dramatically.  He’s going to be a lot less rational and in control and a lot more prone to anger for a large portion of the book.  That means I have to change where the story starts (something I’d pretty much resigned myself to, anyway) in order to show him before he lets his anger get the better of him.  Otherwise, he’s liable to be a pretty unsympathetic character, which is not what I want.  He’s going to be a lot more dangerous, this way, but I think that’s what the story needs.  One of the things the story needs, anyway.

It will also help with developing stronger antagonists and motivations for those antagonists.  They’ll have good reason not to like this guy.

This is definitely going to be a challenge to write, but that’s good.  He’ll be very different from any character I’ve tried to write before, especially as a protagonist.  You’ve got to stretch every now and then.  With this idea, I can actually feel enthusiasm for the project starting to build again.

But, before I even think about going back to SEVEN STARS, I want to finish the first revisions to DREAMER’S ROSE and hopefully get it ready for its first critiques.  Nobody but me has even seen it, yet.  And I’m starting to rack up notes for some significant revisions to THE IGNORED PROPHECY, too.  Maybe, in the meantime, some more story-changing ideas will come to me.

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Progress

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , on April 8, 2010| 1 Comment »

At last, I feel like I’m getting somewhere.  Prioritizing–and publicly commiting to those priorities–helped.

I’m caught up on my chapter revisions for THE IGNORED PROPHECY.  I finished reworking the synopsis for BLOOD WILL TELL.  That needs another read-through before I start sending out more queries tomorrow.  And I’m making good progress on the new initial chapters for DREAMER’S ROSE.  The chapters aren’t perfect, but since this part is a first draft, they don’t have to be.  I really like where this new material is going to take the story in the long run.  I did a little work on “The Wrong Lion”, too.  I’ve even had a couple of good ideas for SEVEN STARS, which I jotted down and then closed the file again.

It feels very good to be writing new material, not just revisions, again.  But it feels even better to feel like I’m actually accomplishing something.

Lesson (hopefully) learned:  Don’t try to do too many things all at once.  Knowing me, I’ll get myself into this predicament again.  Maybe I’ll be able to get out of it a little faster, though.

More substatntive posts next week, I promise.

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Spreading Myself Too Thin

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , on April 5, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Lately, I haven’t felt like I’m making any progress.  It’s not because I haven’t been putting in the time, either.  I’ve decided it’s because I have just too many projects going right now.  Generally speaking, I prefer to have a couple of projects going.  That way, if I hit a stumbling block on one, I can stay productive and just switch over to the other until I can get past it, but I’ve decided that I’ve just got too many projects going at the moment.

Part of my problem is that I don’t really consider anything finished until it sells–which means that nothing is finished right now.  Until then, I feel like I should either be trying to make it better or trying to sell it.  That leaves me with too many things on the active list.  That wasn’t so bad when I had fewer projects nominally completed, but it’s just not going to work any more.  I have to prioritize. 

First, is the project I can actually finish.  I need to polish up the synopsis for BLOOD WILL TELL so I can send out more queries.  I’ve already sent most of the ones that 1) accept email queries and 2) don’t require a synopsis.  Now, I need the synopsis to be polished up and ready to send.  I can’t express how much I dislike working on the synopsis, but it has to be done.

Second, really should be my current main project, which is the first revision of DREAMER’S ROSE.  I’m so close to having the new material finished, if I just stop letting myself be distracted.  There’s only about a chapter and a half to go and then on to the revisions on the part that’s already written, which should go much faster.

Third, my current short story, “The Wrong Lion” (tentative title), set in the same world as THE SHAMAN’S CURSE and THE IGNORED PROPHECY.  (I have a fondness for titles with multiple meanings and this one could be read at least three ways in reference to this story.)  I’ve targeted this to a market with a short window for submissions.  I need to finish it up, if it works out, and get some critiques on it.

Fourth, revisions on THE IGNORED PROPHECY.  I’ve been doing a chapter exchange with another writer on this one and I do want to keep up with the chapter revisions as the critiques come back.  The rewrite of the beginning can wait until I finish the second draft of DREAMER’S ROSE.

And that’s really plenty to be working on and hope to show progress on any of it.  The stories that are currently out on submission are to be considered finished at least until they come back.  BLOOD WILL TELL is finished and in the query process.   THE SHAMAN’S CURSE and SEVEN STARS are on the shelf for now.  The only other thing I will permit myself to work on is brainstorming for the two novels I haven’t started yet, but I do that best outside of writing time, anyway.

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Beginnings

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , on March 22, 2010| Leave a Comment »

First, a little status.  I have cut 1000 words from THE SHAMAN’S CURSE and 2000 words from THE IGNORED PROPHECY.  And that was just yesterday.

You have to get the beginnings right.  Otherwise, nobody’s going to read the golden prose in the middle, the fantastic climax, or the awe-inspiring ending.  (Well, we hope the middle, climax, and ending are all those things, any way.)

I’m thinking about this today because I had the good luck to have someone read the first few new chapters of DREAMER’S ROSE before I got too far into it.  The good news is: it was interesting enough to read on.  The bad news is: the critiquer thought a side character was the protagonist and that the real protagonist was shallow.

Diagnosis:  I was rushing.  I was trying so hard to get to what I saw as the inciting incident quickly, that I was just skipping over a lot of territory.  So now I’m going back over those early chapters, expanding where appropriate, and improving my protagonist’s motivation for what he does.

Discussing the critique a little gave me the insight to realize that what I was seeing as the inciting incident was really part of the try/fail cycle (a failure).  The real life-altering event occurs much earlier.  I don’t have to rush and the story will be so much better for it.

I’m so fortunate to have found this out early.  You don’t want to be trying to build a 100,000 word edifice on quicksand.

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The Inner Editor

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , on March 19, 2010| 3 Comments »

As a writer, my inner editor is my best friend when I’m doing revisions.  But it can be a demon during a first draft.

For years, I started several things and never finished any of them.  I’d get five or ten or even fifty pages in and decide it was all garbage and start over.  Then I finally decided that was enough of that.  So, when I started THE SHAMAN’S CURSE, I made myself a rule: I couldn’t go back and change anything until I had finished the whole thing.  I could make notes in the margins about what I wanted to change, but I couldn’t actually edit anything until it was complete.  I probably only managed to stick to this rule because I wrote THE SHAMAN’S CURSE long hand in several spiral notebooks.  It’s just harder to go back and tweak things that way.  I only broke this rule twice, when it was obvious that I had gone down a false trail and the only way to move forward was to go back a little.

I’ve outgrown the spiral notebooks, but it looks like I might need to remind myself of that rule.  After writing about 6,500 new words, I’ve been stuck for several days on the new chapters for DREAMER’S ROSE. I know exactly why; I don’t like the last part I wrote.  There’s too much telling.  Either I need to find a way to show these things or they’re not important enough to keep.  Since they go to my antagonist’s personality and motives, I think they probably are important enough to show.  I just don’t have a good handle on the scenes to do that right now. 

So, the answer is, to remember that at least this part of the book is still a first draft.  I need to turn that little demon of an inner editor off, make a note, and just move on.  I can fix it in the revisions.  That’s what they’re for.

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