Somehow I ended up using “Double Rainbow” as a structural device, don’t ask me how that happened

Probably somewhere out there in the Greater Internet some tremendously intelligent (and possibly charming) person has already written extensively about “writer types”. But I couldn’t find anything like that and so I’m going to talk about it a little, at least as far as I see myself.

DOUBLE WRITER WHAT DOES IT MEAN

I’m not talking about novelist, poet, journalist or that kind of categorisation. I’m talking specifically about writers of fiction, and the ways in which they work. I’ve been thinking about this for the last few days, and though I’m forced to swallow my humility in order to say it I consider myself a ‘craftsman’. I care about the mechanics, I’m aware of the rules of writing so when I bend or break them it’s always with reason, I don’t just write and hope it all comes together, I construct a story and I’m aware of what I’m doing at every point.

BUT OUTLINING KILLS CREATIVITY STEPHEN KING SAID SO

And if Stephen King told you to jump off a bridge would you do that too? Huh? HUH? Would ya? Punk?

SO INTENSE

I think there’s a misconception about outliners, this image of a strictly organised person who labels their pencils and who does not deviate from the precisely ordered and perfect outline they’ve created. Maybe some people work like that, but part of the reason I outline so much is that I’m exactly not like that. You see? Look at that word usage, ‘exactly not like that’, that’s terrible! What kind of descriptor would you apply to a person like me? I’ll give you one for free, ‘befuddled’. Not in the sense of ‘in a drunken stupor’ but rather ‘perplexed by many conflicting situations or statements’ and ‘confused and vague’. So I need to outline to sort out all these ideas I have, to work them into a readable state, and so for me my outlines work like a badly written, tell-don’t-show, rough stream of consciousness thing. Here’s a sample from what I’m working on right now:

THIS IS THE SAMPLE ON WHICH I SHALL BE JUDGED

So, Sorrow arrives in Blade–confrontation with Julia. Argument. Some stuff comes out–Sorrow’s actions in Moor, Julia’s conversation with Gran. Then a fight breaks out nearby, in a tavern? Escalates quickly. No no, make it personal, mercenary group. They know Sorrow–ah, yes, the message thing, that ties in nicely, good. They’re separated–Sorrow tells Julia to stick by the carriage while she fights off anyone coming near. After the fight, Julia’s gone? Or SORROW is the one who’s gone? Little subversion maybe. Julia looks around and Sorrow’s gone. That’s more active, that’s definitely better. Yes yes yes good. Or, wait, no fight at all? Sorrow surrenders? Yes, perfect, she DOESN’T fight to protect Julia, she protects her by giving in. Set-up for later, ties in with earlier. Nice. Does that work with ‘protection’? Easy road to Seven Rise from there. Safest option.

YOU SEEM TO COMPLIMENT YOURSELF RATHER A LOT IN YOUR OUTLINES

I just get excited, is all.

MOVING ON

You can see how I work things out as I go along–sometimes scenes flow more smoothly than this, some scenes I have as little as “Talise meets up with Felony again somehow, they’re pleased to see each other, on to the next (might not even need this maybe?)”, some scenes I have as much as full dialogue and descriptions, depending on how into the scene I get. This happens especially near the end of the outline, where everything comes together and I know more precisely what has to happen.

SO YOUR BEGINNINGS ARE JUST A BLURRY MESS

Yes, pretty much. I tend to just charge through to get to the stuff I actually have outlined in the first draft, then spend a lot of time working on my beginnings in the editing passes.

ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE SKY

So I guess I’m back to that same old wishy-washy conclusion, “Do whatever works for you”. I think this is an important part of any writer’s journey, figuring out just how you’re going to turn your ideas into books. Even now, with every book I write, I’m still refining and expanding my process. So do what works, try new things, and keep on writing.

 

I might even have two!

So I think it’s pretty much official; I am the only person in the entire world who didn’t love The Doctor’s Wife. Now I feel like I missed something with it. One thing I didn’t mention in my Yay/Not So Yay was how much I liked The Corsair as a Time Lord name/concept, and how disappointed I was that he/she wasn’t in the episode at all (well, not as a character, anyway). Time-travelling gender-switching pirate? Oh yes please. This is something that Neil Gaiman does quite often, and to be honest I’m getting tired of it; he mentions something that sounds amazing, and then doesn’t do anything with it. A kind of bait-and-switch where the bait is far more interesting than the switch. Anyway, maybe I’ll watch the episode again sometime and see if it improves on a second viewing.

As for writing, it’s going very well, thank you so much for asking! 23,000-odd words over the last three days (despite writing nothing yesterday) and I’m really getting into the story now–I’m up to a nice juicy bit that’s come together really, really nicely, I wonder sometimes if my subconscious does this for me because it’s happened before, where I have separate storylines outlined and while I’m working on them I’m thinking “Oh far out, oh far out, this is never going to line up, it is going to be an unbelievable nightmare to figure out all these timelines” and then come the actual writing it just all slots into place perfectly and all that good worrying was for naught. My only worry now is about length, 70k already and growing strong, my best estimate at this point is 180k but who knows, could be longer, could be shorter. Already dreading editing, this is definitely going to have to be a staggered effort.

Anyway, just popping off to make a nice cup of tea and then it’s back to happily writing. I might even have a biscuit!

 

Not Worrying Just Enjoying, First Draft: Start!, Structure, Endings, Beginnings, Tea Solves Many Problems

Imogen Shroud’s doing well this month, with twice the sales of any other title (ie six sales). Still just barely squeaking into the sale-a-day club. Remember when I said I didn’t worry about sales any more? It’s true that I don’t worry about them, but I still enjoy them. Checking sales is fun, just as long as you don’t obsess about it. I check two or three times a day, just when I think about it. Usually there’s no change but it’s always fun when there is.

Anyway! Started the first draft of Against Darker Days yesterday, exciting. Actually I suppose that technically you could say I started it a couple of months ago, doing all the character shorts, but I consider them to be kind of separate. 47,000 words of ‘separate’. Yep, this is gonna be a long one. The good news is that I got out 10,000 words yesterday and I’m through the fuzzy ‘not really outlined’ first part of the story and into woolly ‘kind of outlined’ country. Most importantly, I’ve got a hold of the characters and I’m enjoying spending time with them again just so much. Also, more good news, it turns out I don’t have to faff around sorting out all the different story threads at all, I just write a scene and then once it ends I go back to my outlines and switch to a different thread, figuring out ‘time’ as I go (nothing complicated like different character/plot threads occurring at different times here, I think my brain would explode if I tried something like that). It helps me to think of the structure as similar to a TV show like The Wire, where you have all of these different groups of characters, switching between them with each scene but always moving forwards in time. Then whenever I need to do a jump (to a couple of days later or whatever) I put in a chapter break. So far so simple, although it does get a teensy bit more complicated later on.

Figuring out these early beginning bits brought me back to something that’s been on my mind recently; endings and beginnings. I have no idea if this is true or not and I’m basing this on my own prejudiced observations and little more, but I feel that writers who don’t outline tend to favour beginnings and writers who do outline tend to favour endings. Stephen King, for example, is against outlining, claiming it stifles creativity, which could explain why his endings are, not to put too fine a point on it, terrible.

I’m firmly in the ‘ending’ camp myself, to me a beginning is just there to get you through to the interesting stuff–of course, a beginning has to be strong, it should introduce the character(s) and conflict as quickly as possible and start as close to the beginning of the ‘story’ as is reasonable, but it’s endings that I spend the most time on–not just the actual end-of-book-no-more-pages ending ending, but climaxes and resolutions and so on. There are some good ones in this book, if I do say so myself, and thinking about them gives me even more motivation to get the beginning ‘foundations’ laid as smoothly as possible. You need a good setup to achieve a good payoff. Rules have to be firmly established before they’re bent or interpreted in creative ways (but never, never broken; internal consistency is vital).

Anyway, Daughters are demanding Attention, and so off I must trot. Hopefully I’ll get some proper writing time today, maybe after a nice cup of tea.

 

Bird, Plane, Superman, What?

A somewhat random thought came to me today, about Superman and the whole “It’s a bird … it’s a plane … it’s Superman!” thing. Perhaps I can best demonstrate with a picture:

Please excuse the crudity of this model, I didn’t have time to build it to scale or to paint it. As a follow-up to this picture, let me present a challenge question:

Which three things-that-fly look very little alike?

An acceptable answer would be: a bird, a plane, Superman. How often have you mistaken a plane for a bird, or vice-versa? And when you throw Superman into the mix, well, all I have to say is that perhaps Metropolis should be renamed Myopolis. Optometrists must do a roaring trade there.

Is all of this a clever lead-in to something writing-related? Would that it was! Very little to report, just chug-chug-chugging away on first draft things for Resonance Book Two: Against Darker Days. I’ve noticed an odd and unproductive habit of mine regarding outlines; I don’t outline the start of my stories. I just write down a lot of excited notes and then find focus around two scenes in, leaving the beginning vague and unplanned. The closer I get to the end of the book, the more focused and detailed the outline becomes–in fact, there are several scenes near the climax of the storylines that are practically already written, because there are precise things that need to happen (also cool lines, awesome actions etc). This probably ties in to my personal preference for endings, rather than beginnings, but it certainly makes starting a first draft more difficult than it should be. As usual, I’ll stick to my motto–“Just Keep Writing!”–and plow on through until I manage to connect the vague with the solid. And stop mucking around making Bird-Plane-Superman comparison images, that’s hardly a productive use of my time. (Fun, though.)

 

Taking Time, Outlines (maybe finished?), Quiet Writing, Arya Again

Sometimes taking time away from a project is the worst thing you can do. Sometimes that time apart means that coming back to it is difficult, that the ideas that came so easily before just aren’t there now. Sometimes you have to spend hours just trying to find the threads you left dangling, to be able to continue them.

And sometimes taking that break is the best thing you could do, sometimes you come back and in two hours you have more good ideas and moments of sparkling inspiration than you had in the twenty hours previously spent on things.

With Resonance Book Two: Against Darker Days, thankfully the latter was true. Just ripping through the outline lately, really pulling things together, and with that comes this enormously reassuring feeling of optimism. Stayed up until half past three last night working on it, I just couldn’t tear myself away. It’s not exactly finished yet, but all three main storylines are plotted out, all the major events are connected. So, while I think about how much more I should outline, I’ve quietly been writing away, just working on the character introductions (two old characters, four new). I got stuck on one point for quite a while (the perils of working without a proper outline) but I figured it out today and managed to squeeze a decent scene out of it, I might change it later but it got me onto the next part, which is the important thing. JKW: Just Keep Writing.

Suspecting now that this is going to be a longer book than Birds of Passage. That’s okay for a sequel, right? Lots of stories to show, lots of character arcs to explore. It might edge against 200k. From my point of view, there’s only one problem with this: EDITING IS GOING TO TAKE FOREVER. Still, if it takes 200,000 words to tell this story properly then 200,000 words I will use. Even so, I’m definitely going to have to ‘stagger’ this one, chaining editing passes on a book this long is just asking for burnout. An August release is looking increasingly likely. I don’t want to rush this one.

Also I’ve watched Arya’s swordfight lesson five times now and it still hasn’t gotten old.

 

Machine of Death Short: Possibly Finished? Juggling, Compacting, Comboing

I think that my Machine of Death short may be finished. I’m very pleased with it, I think I’ve explored some concepts that nobody in the first volume did, and even aside from the whole death predictions thing I think it’s a good story. It’s not ‘gimmicky’, is what I guess I’m saying–not that there’s anything wrong with a gimmick short, I love a good gimmick short, me, but I think this story would hold together even without the MoD ‘draw’. I’m particularly happy with the characters–with a short you’re given such a tiny amount of time to introduce everyone, but I think all five characters in this stand out and the differences between them are clear from the start. I’m going to give the story to some people to read over, then I’ll submit it.

Writing a short has been really fun, but also kind of a time drain–with the story being so short, I did about six edits and four proofs, probably more than it needed. Now, I’m at the point where I’ll delete a word or rewrite a sentence then just put it back how it was before, which usually means editing is ‘finished’. I haven’t entirely neglected my other projects, but over the last few days I’ve only added a few thousand words to my Against Darker Days outline. I really need to get back into that now, I’m near the end of a couple of storylines and then I just need to outline the ‘wrap up’ (I already pretty much know how it’s going to go, but outlines can still surprise you) and then figure out how on earth I’m going to structure this thing. The good part is that I feel all of the storylines are equally compelling–I think that’s the most important thing when you’re juggling multiple plotlines, they all have to be interesting and strong enough to stand on their own. When you switch from one to another, the reader should have just a moment of “No! I want to know what happens to X and Y!” before getting drawn into the continuing story of A and B. I think probably the ultimate example of this is The Wire, where you could wait episodes for a particular character’s story to advance, and even then you might only get a line of dialogue–but it wouldn’t matter, because every character’s story was so interesting. In fact, in general I feel that I draw more influence from TV shows than from novels, at least in terms of the way I approach structure. Attempt to start each scene by showing the characters and their motivations, attempt to end each scene with a punchy line or a lead-in to the next, some kind of connection. Keep things moving, don’t let anyone stand still, and if you’re not sure how to procede, ‘compact’. This is a technique I learned from Valve–there’s a story about how they just couldn’t get Half Life to ‘work’, how it was okay but not exceptional. So they threw everything they had into one level, every enemy, every trap, every idea–and the result was fantastic. So that’s often how I outline, I push events closer together, I combo them into one another, if there’s a point where the characters get to stop and take a breath, well, sometimes that’s fine, but they had better have earned it–and you better be putting some nice character moments in there, maybe some foreshadowing, maybe some stake-raising revelations. This is how I eventually got Miya Black V to work, there were a couple of sequences that were just … they were okay, but not spectacular. So I took out all of the ‘in-between’ bits, every single instance of Miya getting a chance to catch her breath, and suddenly EVERYTHING was better and the whole sequence started working.

So that’s my advice for the day. If a sequence is too sluggish then move everything closer together. Combo scenes into each other, don’t have a scene and then a rest and then another scene, have the second scene INTERRUPT the first scene, and then have a third scene crash into both. Keep things flowing and don’t give your characters a chance to catch their breaths until it’s the reader who’s begging for a break.

 

Hands Up Who Likes Me!

Two more lovely-jubbly sales today, both UK, one Miya Black and one Miya Black II, YAY. It’s odd that reviews don’t carry over between sites, the books are exactly the same, after all. But anyway who cares, sales! (It’s probably getting old, me getting excited about every single little sale. But it’s always so exciting, every time.)

With these two sales, I’m close to a sale a day for April, if you add them all up and spread them out through the month. Granted, a lot of that is to do with releasing ImoShrou, but still, I’ll take whatever I can get. I wonder now if part of the reason Miya Black is doing better than anything else is that it’s part of a series, and that the second book has already been released. I know I’m more likely to try a book if there are others after it. Maybe I’ll see a bump in sales for my other books once I finish the sequels.

Speaking of that, more outlining for Against Darker Days yesterday. I’m about halfway through the second and third storylines–these two have more interaction than the first storyline, so at certain points I have to stop and check what the other characters are doing. Lining everything up is going to be hard work, but I’m marking all the points where an extra day or two could be added or subtracted easily. I’ve also downloaded a program called Text Block Writer which seems good–you make little blocky notes and can then move them around as you like, I imagine this could be useful when the time comes to organise all of these storylines.

In any case, although it’s hard work, I’m really happy with how things are going. Structurally, at the least, this book is going to be pretty solid.

Also, wow! 106 people requesting The Boy & Little Witch, 38 requesting Birds of Passage! It’s kind of validating to see this kind of interest, if only for my poor fragile writer’s ego it’s been good to do these giveaways. Like some kind of genius I’ve managed to get both giveaways to end within a day of each other (some kind of genius as in, “Nice going, genius“), but still. I only have to write 25 emails a day for two subsequent days, that’s not too taxing. Really kind of glad I set the limit at 25 now. Writing 100 emails is not my idea of a good time.

It’s hard to pick a favourite Big Train sketch, since there are so many great ones. But I think this is up there:

 

Chugging Along

Space is even more terrifying than I had previously thought.

Grrrrrreat outlining yesterday, zipped through a bunch of stuff, figured out some nice ‘quiet’ character moments, and now I’m almost up to the really fun/horrible part. Also, it’s Easter apparently! It seems like only yesterday that all right fine I can’t remember last year’s Easter at all. I guess there might have been some chocolate? And–oh wait, some things are coming back to me now, yes, there was an amazing ANZAC demonstration thing at Founder’s Park, simulated bombing runs and soldiers and nurses all running around, yes. That was fun.

Meanwhile, some kind of chocolate rabbit.

Today it’s a bit grey and a bit drizzly and a bit not so nice out, to be honest. What does that mean? Perfect day for outlining! Outlining outlining outlining. I think this book is the most difficult I’ve ever worked on, but it’s fun and satisfying.

“Truth is I thought it mattered. I thought that music mattered. But does it bollocks. Not compared to how people matter.”

 

My Writing Process

Another bjournal post inspired by a Kindleboards topic. The question was, “How do you write a novel?”

Here’s my answer:

Step One: The Idea. Sometimes it’s a character, sometimes it’s a concept, sometimes it’s watching or reading something and thinking “Okay, but what if …”. Wherever it comes from, I usually think about it for a few hours. If it doesn’t go away, I start a new text file and write down whatever I’ve been thinking about, expanding if necessary. If I’m still excited about the idea, and if I think it’ll work as a story, I move on to step two.

Step Two: Notes. Lots and lots and lots of notes. For my latest I’ve got twelve seperate text files, varying in length from a thousand words up to around ten thousand. I also do research in this step, and light outlining–if a scene comes to me clearly, I’ll sometimes partly write it out. This is also the step in which I figure out what the story is, and how best to tell it. Also technical things like POV and tense. Also also characters. Lots of notes on characters.

Step Three: Outlining. I start at the beginning of the story and I start writing what happens. I think of this as the ‘telling’ part of my process. In this part, I’ll write things like, “Charlotte is really angry here, she’s frustrated that she can’t do anything and even more frustrated that she’s being prevented from doing it. She realises this doesn’t make any sense, and this frustrates her still further–or wait, no, maybe C2 points out that this doesn’t make sense” etc. If I get stuck, I’ll go to my ‘scratch’ text file and try to figure out the problem there, rather than clutter the actual outline too much. My scratch notes tend to have headings like “The Force’s Shields”, “Why Doesn’t Chass Just Take The Drugs?”, “Getting To Powerstone” and so on. Once I’ve figured out the problem I return to the outline and continue from there–quite often what I’ve written in the scratch file works as an outline, so I copy and paste. My outlines tend to be about a third of the size of the finished manuscript, and could be considered an extremely rough first draft. During this step I also tend to stop a lot to do research, to make sure the things I’m talking about are at least remotely feasible.

Step Four: Writing. Once I have the outline finished, I hammer out a proper first draft as fast as I can. I have two rules in this step: “Don’t read back” and “Don’t spend more than a minute on a single sentence”. Most of what I write in this step is going to be rewritten anyway, or it might turn out that parts need to be re-tooled to make room for the brilliant new idea I have halfway through, or sometimes I decide something isn’t necessary and so whole sections get taken out. There’s no point in ‘polishing’ at this point. Reading back is also just wasted time, unless I need to check something–better to be moving forward, writing, and getting the first draft done. Also, I often make deviations from the outline, especially with characters. Sometimes I reach a point and think, “No, she just wouldn’t do that” and so some alterations are necessary. Generally, though, I stick to the outline, at least at a high level.

Step Five: Editing & Editing & Editing. Once my first draft is finished, I go back and edit it. And edit it. And edit it. Three passes seems to work well for me. The first pass is mostly for pace and structure. The second pass is more for characterisation and high-level story stuff. The third pass is a ‘tightening’ run, getting all those sentences cleaned up, and making sure everything flows smoothly. During these passes I often have ideas for things I could add–just little details that add to the story and the colour of the book, usually nothing major.

Step Six: Proofing & Proofing. I’m comfortable with two proofing runs after three editing passes, but it depends on how many errors I find. If on the second proofing run I find more than one error/25,000 words, I’ll do another run. I use Text-To-Speech on both of these proofing runs, to pick up errors. In my opinion, a proof utilising TTS is worth at least three proofs with eyes alone.

Step Seven: Conversion & Formatting & Finalising. Usually takes around half a day, but it depends on how much ‘extra’ stuff the book needs. I love this step, after all that fiddly editing and proofing it’s brilliant to do something technical and solid.

I’ll also have put a cover together sometime during the other steps, sometimes before I’ve even started, but generally about halfway through the process. Also, I hardly ever go straight from step one through to step seven on a single book, I break it up with other projects.

I’ve used this process for the last three books I’ve written, and it works really well for me.

 

Always Nice

For most of today I ditched outlining and read Will Grayson, Will Grayson instead. Also I was kind of a little bit sick. Not hugely ill, just … sick, of the “all you want to do is lie in bed and read” variety. Anyway, it’s a good book! It made me go a bit wobbly-lipped once and cry twice and chuckle a few times and big-laugh once. I recommend it if you want something light and entertaining. It’s about young people doing young people stuff, and there’s a musical at the end. I expect there’ll be a movie sooner or later.

I also had fun playing with Miyario, and then while tending to a snotty sick Lunigi I had a tiny idea, a line of dialogue actually, and from that came another idea, and then suddenly the climax of one arc in Against Darker Days all came together with an almost audible ‘click’ from my brain. It still needs work, but the framework is there now. One down, five to go!