With my broken finger I am doing the slowest rewrite I've ever done. The only good thing about it is I get to really think over a scene as I try to change it. I get to really get into the character's heads.
So I thought up a little character quiz:
Your main character looks into their love interest's eyes (which hopefully have dilated pupils) and lean in to take their first kiss...
1)What did your Main Character eat since they last brushed their teeth? (they would know this and run through the days events hoping it was nothing too offensive.)
2)What does the Love Interest's perfume smell like?
3)How about her hair, does the shampoo compliment it?
4)Who has the warmer body temperature?
5)How is each controlling their breathing, are they taking quick breaths through their nostrils or deep breaths through their mouths, hoping not to seem like they are panting?
Not that all this information needs to make it into the book, but these are the things that would run through the Main Character's mind and the Adrenalin and Serotonin that are released would make them remember every detail.
These are just a few things I've thought of the MC would be thinking at that time, it's a little hard for me to remember as its been over 23 years since I've had a first kiss with someone.
Besides the things I just mentioned and the obvious, what other things might go through the MC's mind?
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Writing Wednesday: Clarity
It will be another two weeks before I can type at anywhere near my normal speed so I've been reading about writing. So I will share a couple of nuggets that I've run across:
Issac Asimov:
"I made up my mind long ago to follow one cardinal rule in all my writing: to be clear. I have given up all thought of writing poetically or symbolically or experimentally, or in any of the other modes that might (if I were good enough) get me a Pulitzer prize. I would write merely clearly and in this way establish a warm relationship between myself and my readers, and the professional critics: Well, they can do whatever they wish."
This is much like my idea for my writing that it is always “The story must come first”. All the other stuff is great, but if the story isn't clear to the reader then it is no longer a story.
Robert Heinlein interrupted by Robert J. Sawyer:
"Rule Three: You Must Refrain From Rewriting, Except to Editorial Order
This is the one that got Heinlein in trouble with creative-writing teachers. Perhaps a more appropriate wording would have been, "Don't tinker endlessly with your story." You can spend forever modifying, revising, and polishing. There's an old saying that stories are never finished, only abandoned — learn to abandon yours.
If you find your current revisions amount to restoring the work to the way it was at an earlier stage, then it's time to push the baby out of the nest.
And although many beginners don't believe it, Heinlein is right: if your story is close to publishable, editors will tell you what you have to do to make it salable. Some small-press magazines do this at length, but you'll also get advice from Analog, Asimov's, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction."
I really can't say enough about all the feedback that I got from “Ray Gun Revival” before they published my first story, that advice was invaluable.
As far as learning to abandon as opposed to finishing a story this is also invaluable. Learning when to leave it alone and stop tinkering with it is a tough thing. In rewriting you hit the point of diminishing returns quickly.
And finally a word on the end objective of writing:
"And how is clarity to be achieved? Mainly by taking trouble and by writing to serve people rather than to impress them."
F. L. Lucas
Issac Asimov:
"I made up my mind long ago to follow one cardinal rule in all my writing: to be clear. I have given up all thought of writing poetically or symbolically or experimentally, or in any of the other modes that might (if I were good enough) get me a Pulitzer prize. I would write merely clearly and in this way establish a warm relationship between myself and my readers, and the professional critics: Well, they can do whatever they wish."
This is much like my idea for my writing that it is always “The story must come first”. All the other stuff is great, but if the story isn't clear to the reader then it is no longer a story.
Robert Heinlein interrupted by Robert J. Sawyer:
"Rule Three: You Must Refrain From Rewriting, Except to Editorial Order
This is the one that got Heinlein in trouble with creative-writing teachers. Perhaps a more appropriate wording would have been, "Don't tinker endlessly with your story." You can spend forever modifying, revising, and polishing. There's an old saying that stories are never finished, only abandoned — learn to abandon yours.
If you find your current revisions amount to restoring the work to the way it was at an earlier stage, then it's time to push the baby out of the nest.
And although many beginners don't believe it, Heinlein is right: if your story is close to publishable, editors will tell you what you have to do to make it salable. Some small-press magazines do this at length, but you'll also get advice from Analog, Asimov's, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction."
I really can't say enough about all the feedback that I got from “Ray Gun Revival” before they published my first story, that advice was invaluable.
As far as learning to abandon as opposed to finishing a story this is also invaluable. Learning when to leave it alone and stop tinkering with it is a tough thing. In rewriting you hit the point of diminishing returns quickly.
And finally a word on the end objective of writing:
"And how is clarity to be achieved? Mainly by taking trouble and by writing to serve people rather than to impress them."
F. L. Lucas
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
First Full read of my latest novel
I've been working on my novel MIND THIEF for way too long, oddly enough I hadn't really read it until this weekend. That sounds strange but that's the way I decided to do it, very few edits until the first draft was done.
A lot of the problems I thought it had it either didn't or they were a lot more minor than I thought. That's a good thing.
But I ran into a problem that I wasn't expecting. In reading it I am really getting into the characters, and am slightly annoyed when the plot pulls me away from them. Part of this is because the transitions are still rough, it is hard to transition from one scene to the next before you've written that scene. But it is a little perplexing.
The second part is I started the first chapter at the event that triggers all the shadow figures to come after our poor protagonist, the logical place as it is a technological thriller. Unfortunately that event is him meeting our heroine and experiencing love at first sight, which he thinks is lust. That is the classic starting place for a romance.
Unfortunately, at this point there isn't much I can do as I know I am way to close the work to view it objectively. I'll have to clean up the transitions and throw some more action verbs into the plot parts to see if I spent too much time drooling over my characters and not enough time tightening the action, then have some beta readers tell me if the problem is me or the book.
I've really never encountered this problem as I tend to think of myself as more of an idea writer than a character writer. I just thought the idea was on such a grand scale it would need powerful characters to fill it out, I wasn't expecting the characters to overpower the pretty powerful plot.
I was wondering if anyone else has had this problem of a one element of their book overpowering what they thought was the main element, and what if anything you did about it?
A lot of the problems I thought it had it either didn't or they were a lot more minor than I thought. That's a good thing.
But I ran into a problem that I wasn't expecting. In reading it I am really getting into the characters, and am slightly annoyed when the plot pulls me away from them. Part of this is because the transitions are still rough, it is hard to transition from one scene to the next before you've written that scene. But it is a little perplexing.
The second part is I started the first chapter at the event that triggers all the shadow figures to come after our poor protagonist, the logical place as it is a technological thriller. Unfortunately that event is him meeting our heroine and experiencing love at first sight, which he thinks is lust. That is the classic starting place for a romance.
Unfortunately, at this point there isn't much I can do as I know I am way to close the work to view it objectively. I'll have to clean up the transitions and throw some more action verbs into the plot parts to see if I spent too much time drooling over my characters and not enough time tightening the action, then have some beta readers tell me if the problem is me or the book.
I've really never encountered this problem as I tend to think of myself as more of an idea writer than a character writer. I just thought the idea was on such a grand scale it would need powerful characters to fill it out, I wasn't expecting the characters to overpower the pretty powerful plot.
I was wondering if anyone else has had this problem of a one element of their book overpowering what they thought was the main element, and what if anything you did about it?
Monday, April 4, 2011
Book Review: Zombies Don't Query
Title: Zombies Don't Query (Tips for Writing and Publishing YA)Author: Rusty Fischer.
Cost: Free
Available: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/50815
The only problem I have with this book is it has one too many words in the sub-title. “Tips for Writing and Publishing” would be more descriptive. Yes, his focus was on how he wrote and got his YA book, ZOMBIES DON'T CRY published, but the advice is great for anyone writing in any genre.
One reason this book is a must have and a bargain at twice the price, is Fischer has had a number of non-fiction books that he either wrote or ghost-wrote so he made all his huge newbie mistakes in that field, switching to fiction he got to experiment with what he had learned and streamlined the process.
The other reason is he doesn't take himself or his process too seriously so as I read it I was thinking more of how I could apply his advice to what I am doing, rather than the impression that most books on writing give which is “You must do this”!
Most (but not all) of his advise is stuff that you will learn if you take a year of two to stalk, I mean, read agents blogs. If you have been doing this it is nice to have all that information in one place. If you haven't been stalking agents this book is a great way to get up to speed with what the rest of their stalkers are chatting about in the comment sections of their blogs.
Some of the advise is stuff no agent will admit on their blogs but we know is true. Agents forget to note in their submission guidelines that they will be out for a few days, when they get back they have 10,000 queries and give each 2 seconds to grab them or they send a form letter, same with days they have the flu or a blinding headache. It sucks if your query hits them on that day, but that's life.
As you can tell I really enjoyed this book and recommend it to everyone who wants to become a writer. If you are already published it would be worth your time to look it over as well.
I also recommend checking out his blog ZOMBIES DON'T BLOG
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Finished (Sort of)
Actual conversation with my wife:
Me: I finished my novel, it's the best one I've written so far.
Wife: Great, can I read it?
Me: No, not yet.
Wife: Why not?
Me: Because it sucks.
Wife: I thought you said it was the best one you've written?
Me: It is, it's just not done yet.
Wife: I thought you said it was finished?
The conversation quickly broke down with me making less and less sense.
There is nothing like the feeling of getting to the end of the rough draft. This is the 5th time I've done it and it still feels great. This rough draft is both rougher and more polished than any of my previous rough drafts. I realize that makes no sense to anyone who hasn't written a few novels.
With all my other novels I tried to write a novel, it seemed logical. But with this one I took everything I learned about editing my last novels and (hopefully) produced the raw materials for a novel.
I approached this one a little like the movie industry does. When shooting a movie they don't really make a movie, they shoot a lot of scenes. If you were to look at all the raw footage in the order they shot them, it would make no sense. I kind of, sort of, did that with my novel.
What I have is 64 scenes, some tied beautify together, some slam to halt and the next scene starts without warning. Some scenes the set dresser came in a did an excellent job, others were shot in front of a green screen so the action and emotion is there, but there is no setting.
My first chapter absolutely sucks, one main character suddenly picked up a strong mid-western accent 9 chapters in and it became the major focus of her character. At the end the bad guy refers to an event that I need to write into the fourth chapter. I've got a whole list of things that need to be changed, but I'm totally excited that it is done.
Now, it is time for the first major edit. On this one the only editing I did was to read the last chapter and do the obvious changes, at some point I didn't know what I meant the day before so the reader sure wouldn't, and major, major grammar issues. This time I have an actual plan for the edit.
When I write I make a separate document for each chapter, it helps me stay organized. I put the chapter number, page count, and word count in a spreadsheet.
This time I'm going read each chapter and sum it up in the spreadsheet, this way I can see in a glance how the story arc is going and condense or expand it where it needs it. Once that is done I can work on tying the chapters together properly so I can polish it up in to an actual book, as opposed to 64 scenes. Then I will look upon my masterpiece and say it can't possibly be improved.
Then I will unleash it on my beta readers who will point out all silly and glaring errors I made and I'll rewrite half of it.
Then I will put it aside for 6 months and look at it again and wonder what the hell was I thinking and rewrite it again.
And writers wonder why they get postpartum depression when they finish a book.
Me: I finished my novel, it's the best one I've written so far.
Wife: Great, can I read it?
Me: No, not yet.
Wife: Why not?
Me: Because it sucks.
Wife: I thought you said it was the best one you've written?
Me: It is, it's just not done yet.
Wife: I thought you said it was finished?
The conversation quickly broke down with me making less and less sense.
There is nothing like the feeling of getting to the end of the rough draft. This is the 5th time I've done it and it still feels great. This rough draft is both rougher and more polished than any of my previous rough drafts. I realize that makes no sense to anyone who hasn't written a few novels.
With all my other novels I tried to write a novel, it seemed logical. But with this one I took everything I learned about editing my last novels and (hopefully) produced the raw materials for a novel.
I approached this one a little like the movie industry does. When shooting a movie they don't really make a movie, they shoot a lot of scenes. If you were to look at all the raw footage in the order they shot them, it would make no sense. I kind of, sort of, did that with my novel.
What I have is 64 scenes, some tied beautify together, some slam to halt and the next scene starts without warning. Some scenes the set dresser came in a did an excellent job, others were shot in front of a green screen so the action and emotion is there, but there is no setting.
My first chapter absolutely sucks, one main character suddenly picked up a strong mid-western accent 9 chapters in and it became the major focus of her character. At the end the bad guy refers to an event that I need to write into the fourth chapter. I've got a whole list of things that need to be changed, but I'm totally excited that it is done.
Now, it is time for the first major edit. On this one the only editing I did was to read the last chapter and do the obvious changes, at some point I didn't know what I meant the day before so the reader sure wouldn't, and major, major grammar issues. This time I have an actual plan for the edit.
When I write I make a separate document for each chapter, it helps me stay organized. I put the chapter number, page count, and word count in a spreadsheet.
This time I'm going read each chapter and sum it up in the spreadsheet, this way I can see in a glance how the story arc is going and condense or expand it where it needs it. Once that is done I can work on tying the chapters together properly so I can polish it up in to an actual book, as opposed to 64 scenes. Then I will look upon my masterpiece and say it can't possibly be improved.
Then I will unleash it on my beta readers who will point out all silly and glaring errors I made and I'll rewrite half of it.
Then I will put it aside for 6 months and look at it again and wonder what the hell was I thinking and rewrite it again.
And writers wonder why they get postpartum depression when they finish a book.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Writing Wednesday: Finding my Muse
The creative writing side of being a writer is a funny thing, it is tough to control your output. In writing the first draft for my latest novel MIND THIEF my output has never been more uneven. I started out at a decent pace, about 1,000 words a day and was expecting to hash out my 50,000 word first draft by the end of October. I got to the 30,000 word mark and ground to a near halt. Half of October I wrote 0 words on it a day, either spending an hour writing three paragraphs, deleting them, rewriting the three paragraphs and deleting those as they were even worse, or being easily pulled away. At the end of October I was at the 40,000 word mark.
I set it aside in November, and wrote 20,000 words on a different novel. In December I worked on a third novel to see if my idea for a narrative would work, it did.
So then in the new year I committed myself to finishing MIND THIEF it was slow work, 500 - 800 words a day, or less. It took me two months to write the next 20,000.
Suddenly, My muse stopped by the other day and I wrote 12,000 words since Saturday. If I could do that every day I could write a novel a month and be my own book of the month club.
I realize writing will always be an uneven process, but hopefully this will be the extreme.
The bigger thing I learned is why I torture myself. It would have been easy to put this book aside at the 30,000 word mark or any other point but it is a good story.
I've got a understandable main character (Many editors have pointed out I don't do sympathetic main characters, so I shoot for understandable). I've got a heroine that my wife should be jealous of the time I spend thinking of her. I've got a bad guy who is up there with Stalin and Pol Pot as far as evilness. Most importantly the story revolves around their characters, if one of them were removed or replaced the story would fall apart.
So I have tortured myself with this novel, not because writing it is easy like it was with THE SETTING EARTH which I wrote in 6 weeks, but it is hard. It is a story in me that I needed to get out. Once I finish the rough draft which will be about 95,000 words I can use what I've learned in making these characters integral to the story in my other books.
I'm real proud of how the book is coming together and I've learned a lot about writing and myself in the process.
I set it aside in November, and wrote 20,000 words on a different novel. In December I worked on a third novel to see if my idea for a narrative would work, it did.
So then in the new year I committed myself to finishing MIND THIEF it was slow work, 500 - 800 words a day, or less. It took me two months to write the next 20,000.
Suddenly, My muse stopped by the other day and I wrote 12,000 words since Saturday. If I could do that every day I could write a novel a month and be my own book of the month club.
I realize writing will always be an uneven process, but hopefully this will be the extreme.
The bigger thing I learned is why I torture myself. It would have been easy to put this book aside at the 30,000 word mark or any other point but it is a good story.
I've got a understandable main character (Many editors have pointed out I don't do sympathetic main characters, so I shoot for understandable). I've got a heroine that my wife should be jealous of the time I spend thinking of her. I've got a bad guy who is up there with Stalin and Pol Pot as far as evilness. Most importantly the story revolves around their characters, if one of them were removed or replaced the story would fall apart.
So I have tortured myself with this novel, not because writing it is easy like it was with THE SETTING EARTH which I wrote in 6 weeks, but it is hard. It is a story in me that I needed to get out. Once I finish the rough draft which will be about 95,000 words I can use what I've learned in making these characters integral to the story in my other books.
I'm real proud of how the book is coming together and I've learned a lot about writing and myself in the process.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Review: Downside to Cryogenics
Downside to Cryogenics
by: Amanda Lawrence Auverigne
Price: Free
Downside to Cryogenics is a quick twist on a familiar theme (at least to science fiction buffs) a terminally ill person is frozen and wakes up in the future and finds it's not as good as they hoped.
I normally don't like these stories, but I always read them. I guess I'm a glutton for punishment. The problem with most of them is they cover the same ground that the last hundred or so did. In DOWNSIDE TO CRYOGENICS Auverigne handled this nicely by keeping it brief at 741 words. I groaned a little as I started thinking it was just the same old thing I'd read many times before but by the time I got done groaning it was on to the story which was quite good.
If you like the waking up in the future stories, but are tried of them going over the same ground over and over again, you should read this one. It covers that ground in a sprint and is on to the story. If you've never read one I think she covers the basics well enough to fill you in to enjoy the story.
It is available here: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/27862
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