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Posts Tagged ‘Writer’s Block’

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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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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Knowing When to Give Up . . .

Posted in writing, tagged , , on March 10, 2010| 2 Comments »

. . . at least for a while.

I can be stubborn.  Ask anybody who knows me.  A former boss once compared me to the Energizer Bunny.  With me, he had to be careful what he pointed me at because I would keep going until I got there, no matter what was in the way.  Sometimes, that’s not a good thing.  Sometimes, you need to step back, look at the problem again, and try a different approach.  I didn’t really learn that until I became a caregiver for my mother (who has Alzheimer’s disease, if you haven’t checked out my About Me page).

Well, it can happen with a story, too.  Sometimes, like BLOOD WILL TELL, a story just flows out like turning on a tap.  Sometimes, it feels like you’re carving every letter into granite.  Most times, of course, it’s somewhere in between.  But when it’s like carving the story into stone, it’s probably a sign that something is wrong.

My (late) current project, SEVEN STARS, seemed to be going well until right around 40,000 words.  It was never the roller coaster ride writing BLOOD WILL TELL was, but it was about normal.  I knew the characters.  I knew where the story was going.  And right about that half-way mark or so, I hit a wall.  I had to fight for every paragraph.  It was a rare scene that I could write in one sitting.  It just wasn’t working. 

I took a break.  I worked on the query and synopsis for BLOOD WILL TEL.  I did a few more critiques than average for other writers.  But it’s just not working.  And finally, even I have to admit it.  Something is wrong.  Maybe I haven’t spent enough time on world-building.  Maybe I chose the wrong character as the protagonist.  Maybe the story just stinks.  The answer is the same, either way.  I have to shove this one into a drawer for a while until I have some distance from it, so I can see what the problem is.

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