Musing about fiction - WHO

So since I am a writer and I hear some people like to hear about writing, I figured I'd throw some random writing-related musings out there.

I started typing some stuff and it came out sounding a lot like the old reporters' guidelines: Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How. So I'm gonna step out on faith and hope that I can get 6 entries out of those topics...

So, what's up with WHO? A few ideas:

WHO are YOU?

You need to write about something you're passionate about. I don't consider this exactly the same as "write what you know" (if everyone did that we'd have a lot of really boring stories, IMO). But write what you LOVE is fair. If you despise researching history, you maybe shouldn't try to write straight-up historical fiction (though you could definitely consider steampunk or another speculative genre).

This has been a challenge for me because I wanted to go back and finish a novel I mostly wrote in college, currently titled Chosen: Bonnie of Sheshack. I was something like 20 (and very into Anime) when I wrote it. I'm rather older now, and I haven't been able to get back into the young adult mindset of the POV character. Doesn't mean I couldn't get there, but it's not working so well for me right now. I'm not sure I can finish it unless I just take what I've written, edit lightly, and finish it. I just can't make it mesh with 2011 Julie.

WHO are your characters?

The more you know about your characters, the better your story will probably be. You also need to have characters who are flawed enough to be interesting--but in my opinion, they don't need to be too realistic, and personally, I'd rather they aren't too realistic.

Regarding "The Time Traveler's Wife", the concept of a man who randomly slips backward in time was absolutely brilliant. The reason I couldn't finish it was because the characters read to me like college students (and rather shallow ones at that). Part of my problem was expectations; I may have liked it better if the book jacket hadn't called the male lead Henry "dashing." This dashing character spent a fair amount of the novel shaping a young girl toward being an atheist or agnostic (which I found disturbing). But the point I gave up was where he joked with his true love Claire that if she didn't perform a certain sexual act with him, he would wither away and die. (Page 230 in my paperback which I got from Paperbackswap.com) I don't know; maybe I have a different definition of "dashing" than most.

Some of the questions the book raises are interesting--what would you do if you went back in time as an adult and met your significant other when they were a child? and you were naked?--but IMO just because a question is interesting doesn't automatically mean it should be considered at length.

So anyway, is Henry the librarian realistic? Possibly--it's hard to say what someone would do in his situation. (Although I'm not sure how many "dashing, adventuresome librarians" exist!)

Is Henry likable? The huge number of copies sold would say so; a romance author in a panel I went to at the Tucson Festival of Books even cited Henry and Claire's relationship as one she remembered and loved. (And it was an author who I would have expected to share my conservative biases, by the way.)

Would I rather read about a dashing thief with a heart of gold, even if such people are almost impossible in real life? Absolutely!

WHO is the story filtered through?

I started writing a short story recently (in the universe of my novel "Flight from Endwood") and it wasn't quite working. I had one POV character in mind, even though the other main character is the one who experiences change and who is involved in a couple integral scenes.

Captain Obvious says, why not make that character the only POV character? Problem solved? Well...I'll let you know how that goes. At least I'm excited again!

Do you have any WHO ideas?

Summer Cleaning

So I haven't been doing much independent writing lately (except Maggie and I finally have a good start on the sequel to The Healer and the Pirate! the first book is being critiqued right now).

Mainly, when I'm at home I'd rather be reading or blogging than writing. And there's also so much that needs done! I spent a surprising amount of time 4th of July weekend actually cleaning! If you know me, you know I'd generally pretty much rather do anything than cleaning. So the fact that I got pretty much all of my laundry done last weekend....wow. Sometimes you just want to "goof off" from what you're supposed to do. Even if what you're supposed to do (writing) is more fun!

But I'm trying to get going again. Starting with a new project (I couldn't bring back my passion for a project I started over 10 years ago...go figure).

What makes you procrastinate?

Writing Wednesday - Characterization

My writing updates...I'm trying something new. I'd tell you about it, but Louis Sachar said he doesn't even tell his WIFE when he's writing, let alone what he's working on until the draft is done. But I'm snowflaking it, and it has some ties to "Flight from Endwood." I didn't do any of that "take an hour" stuff (I just did it), but I'm about in the middle of Step 3.

So at the Tucson Festival of Books on the University of Arizona campus, the next thing I did was actually try to get some money from the ATM (my bank's was out of order!) and then I hurried in to the Student Union and jumped into the shortest food line I saw (Chick-fil-A). Mmmm!

Then the next panel I went to was a workshop titled "Characterization: More than Six-Pack Abs and Batting Eyelashes" by romance authors Judy Duarte and Pamela Tracy.  (I'm not particularly familiar with the authors; I attended for the topic.) 

Despite the title and the fact that it was labeled as "romance" there were quite a few writers present who didn't write romance, so that was interesting. Pamela Tracy writes inspirational suspense--I wish I would've looked up ACFW members who were at the Tucson Festival of Books, but I don't know how I would've done that without looking up about a hundred names...

Anyway, Judy presented first. She noted that romance has gotten a bad reputation based on people who read a 1970s romance, or they think it's formulaic. She said the goal was creating characters to engage the reader and making the reader yearn for a happily-ever-after. And the way to achieve that is to wound your character. All characters must learn and go through a character arc. (In romance, both leads have arcs.)

A good thing she noted is that people don't make changes in life until they're uncomfortable--something must really go wrong, and you must force them to change.

She noted you could wound a character using their childhood, events closer to the present, and even a physical wound (though that should also have emotional components). 

In short, something needs to wound your character, even if they don't know there was a wound there. 

You can use backstory to wound characters and make them sympathetic.  Movies (the example she used was "While You Were Sleeping")--can start with backstory.

You need a goal (what), motivation (why) and conflict (why not).  That's pretty common and is mentioned in the Snowflake Method (though Randy Ingermanson flips motivation and goal--I think I might like Judy's order better).

Questions:

• Who is the character at the beginning? What is the wound, and how did he or she get it? How does it drive him or her?
• Who is the character at the end? How has the wound healed? What will drive the character in the future?

In short, know your characters and their backstories.

Pamela had some additions (I recall her saying more than I have notes on; hmmmm.) One suggestion was that when you're stuck, you can perhaps treat the setting as a character (like in "Gone with the Wind"). You should have things that come between characters, as a wedge.

I may be butchering Pamela's diagram concepts now; I forgot to email her to get the information from the handout, and the workshop was more popular than anticipated so they didn't have enough. But I have notes of her saying Term + Class = Distinguishing Characteristic. Characters tend to move through classes, but the term stays the same.

So for Cinderella, her term is always "Cinderella."

But her class changes:

Beloved daughter
Grieving stepdaughter
Abused
Beloved by all others (in Ever After, this is everyone around her; in Disney's story, it's the mice and the fairy godmother)
Princess

For romance, the hero's journey can mirror or correspond with the heroine's (like Prince Charming starts out as beloved as well).

It sounds maybe ridiculously simple, but I just sketched an outline of the characters of my co-authored romance novel The Pirate and the Healer and they followed this formula pretty well.  I tried for one of my other WIPs, Bonnie of Sheshack (working title), and it was interesting but a little harder.

Near the end she asked, How do you make a book so compelling that the reader remembers the characters' names? Theme and detail about characterization will make them real.

So how do you introduce that needed backstory?

Judy said there shouldn't be a "dump," like the book starting with someone sitting in an airplane, thinking. Rather, it's best to give a little bit at a time, like an onion. She noted one way to figure it out was to go through a published book and mark the backstory to see how it was revealed.

Pamela added to make sure the book is recent--I think she said published in the last 3 years or so, as the amount of backstory readers want has changed over the years. (She's absolutely right; it's amazing how much introspection is common in old novels.....even ones from the 1990s.)

Judy did note that in one story, she had to put a lot of backstory right at the beginning to make sure the character (who appears to be a deadbeat dad) was likable. So in that case, the reader needed to know the character's motivations.

Anyway, it was a lot more informative than I made it sound; I just took really bad notes. More next week!

Writing Wednesday - Just Do It

I FINALLY FINISHED FLIGHT FROM ENDWOOD!!!

The last chapter and epilogue were very, very difficult to write, because I had to close up a huge mess of plotlines as well as I could. It's a very complicated story that I'm just not a good enough writer to pull off at this point. Someday I'll revisit it, but I'm SO grateful that day won't be any time soon! You can read a little about it at my About Me and My Writing page.

So I have a co-worker who would like to write a novel, but he worries that he wants his novel to be GOOD. (One cure for that problem is NaNoWriMo. It's a great way to see that yes, you can write something if you take the pressure off.)

For most people, it seems, the first draft is really rough, and the edits come later. In other words, the art of writing is really the art of RE-writing. Even if you have a solid outline and a solid plot, you can always polish your writing to make it sparkle. But first you have to have something to polish!

Animation is the same way:



Even rough/imperfect drafts can be really beautiful, as in this line test for Beauty and the Beast. And if those rough drawings hadn't been done, the movie couldn't have been made.

I hate to see anyone not write just because they're worried it won't be good enough. Frankly, some authors have become fabulously wealthy with novels that critics (and fellow authors!) don't consider to be remotely well-written. And I think the best way to learn to write is to just do it (and once you're strong enough, solicit feedback). I learned more about writing for publication from six months of giving and receiving critiques on Critique Circle than I did from my Creative Writing degree. And Critique Circle currently costs as little as $0 a year (free membership; $49.00 a year for some excellent perks; $89.00 a year for no ads).

Now, all that said, it's easy to give advice and much harder to follow it. I struggled with those last two chapters because I was afraid they wouldn't tie up the story satisfactorily. Yup; I fear they're not good enough!

Still, the best advice is, just do it.

If you write, you will eventually have a manuscript. 500 words a day for about 7 months will give you 100,000 words (the very HIGHEST word count most beginning authors should strive for). Unless you have exceptionally short chapters, one chapter a week will give you a novel in well under a year.

Of course, as I found out through NaNoWriMo, if you just start writing with NO plan, you may end up with a story that's incredibly hard to edit. (Especially if time travel always creeps in to your stories, like it does into mine.)

One brilliant idea for conceiving a book is the Snowflake Method. The basic concept is, start with a little kernel of a story idea, and then build on it until you have a coherent storyline. Eventually you'll get a detailed plan to write your novel! As a bonus, you'll end up with an outline you can use when pitching your work to editors and agents. From the site:

There is no reason to spend 500 hours writing a wandering first draft of your novel when you can write a solid one in 150. Counting the 100 hours it takes to do the design documents, you come out way ahead in time.

I actually attempted to use the Snowflake Method before I started "Flight from Endwood" in 2006. It didn't work so well, but I was pressed for time and didn't pause to actually think through how the story would actually work. I ended up plotting a romance for two characters (Edwin and Miss Liang) and they had absolutely no attraction. Had I actually considered my Snowflake more critically before I started, though, I might have saved myself literally years of edits, and might have a pitch-able novel right now.

But I'm going to try the Snowflake thing with my next project (Chosen: Bonnie of Sheshack). That's another novel that I wrote and substantially edited about a third of...but I'm going to get working on it in earnest presently, and get something out there. Still, I'm not going to rush it before I get a very solid outline in place.

Anyway! I think I'll celebrate the completion of my manuscript by the adding of chocolate to milk. :)

Winning Wednesday

So winning refers to something that was "luck" (or Providence), not anything to do with writing skills. Be warned!

And for my writing progress report...could be worse. I did finally finish the last full chapter of Endwood (just need to complete the epilogue). I probably should have split the ending into two pieces but I really didn't want the story to continue too terribly far after the climax. I'm SO looking forward to being done with it!

So I joined American Christian Fiction Writers a while back and sometimes people will post about when they have agents or editors on their blogs. So someone at Seekerville posted on ACFW about how they were having a costume party and invited everyone to come. I'm not sure if they mentioned a giveaway or not, but I didn't notice. I just wanted to dress my avatar up!

So the real story is that Tina James, senior editor of Love Inspired Historical and Love Inspired Suspense, was announcing they are printing four Historicals a month instead of two. Since I've never actually wrote historical romance (or any historical fiction without a major speculative element) I'm not sure if that's relevant for me or not, but squee! Historical clothes!

So I posted.

Aside from sewing the ribbon on the hat, this is all items I found at Ross and/or TJ Maxx. I do love making historical and fantasy costumes, but I suppose that's a story for another time. Anyway, I chose to dress in 1920s garb because if I WERE to write an outright historical, I reckon that's when I'd set it. And I love the Coney Island pictures, LOL.

Anyway, long story short, I was just outright SHOCKED to have won a contest that I believe was just a random draw. Really? I don't know how many entrants there were (well over 200 comments but some were from the same people). And I won four books? Shipped from the Senior Editor at the one Love Inspired line I could ever imagine writing for??? I didn't even know there were four books to win!

I used to believe in, if not luck, then things just happening randomly. But after going through Beth Moore's study of Esther, I'm not so sure. It's pretty much impossible for my mind to wrap around how every single little thing (as small as misplacing my keys and taking a minute to find them) could happen for a reason, but it certainly wouldn't be outside the range of God's power.

At any rate, winning four books is a lot bigger deal (and more unusual!) than losing my keys. A little part of me is wondering--maybe I should try a historical romance?

Another historical outfit I made (perhaps the most accurate, and completely made by me) is a 1770s dress. It would take so much work and research, but I believe people were getting into 1770s historical recreation in the 1920s...it seems to me that could be a very fun romance, with characters from a past era trying to recreate an even farther past era. And anything on Coney Island could be interesting (although I'm not so sure that would fly, given that the place used to be nicknamed "Sodom by the Sea"...).

Anyway. For now I reckon I will need to settle down and read them. I'll likely review them here, but I'm both a picky reader AND not much of a reviewer, so we'll see.

Oh right! In the comments from last week, I promised a picture of my phone, too.

If you want your Samsung Comeback to also look a bit like EVE from WALL-E, here's the photo.

I modified a page to print a paper EVE mask (of all things) I saw online, then shrunk it to a 240 height so it looks nice on the inner flip screen (I suggest you set your phone to "Black theme"--Menu, Settings, Display settings, My Theme, Black theme for the Comeback).

So, have you had anything recent happen that might be Providential?

Busy Wednesday

I don't have much to say today, really. I'm going a little slower than I wanted for my work in progress "Flight from Endwood." I hoped to have it finished by the end of the month, and I'm a touch behind. Believe me, if it were a hard and fast deadline I would have worked harder to get it done, but it's more of a "I'd just like to be DONE and work on another project!" date.

But without a hard deadline, how could I turn down a get-together with co-workers at a pizza place? (Delicious, by the way.)


In fairness, a little of the procrastination is that I got a new phone! (I got my previous one in November 2009, and have been complaining about it since...November 2009 + 2 days.)

I think it's about as powerful as the first computer I bought. If I can get a working microSD card, it will have considerably more "hard drive" space. Even without additional storage it's working out decently so far. AND it has a place for a cell phone charm!

Yes, that is Silvermist the Disney Fairy. I had Fawn on my old phone (in memory of a wonderful trip to Disneyland in June 2010, when we happened to meet her and Tinkerbell). Oh, I love Disneyland.

I'm thinking about changing my background to black with two blue ovals and making my phone look a bit like EVE from Wall-E. What do you think?

Anyway, despite such obstacles as playing with my shiny new toy and trying to get its memory card to work in FOUR different devices, I'm nearly done with the second-to-last chapter of Endwood, and the last will be an epilogue. God willing, I'll be there soon.

Got some great (positive) feedback on my collaborative novel, so that's great news! I'm wondering if we should just buckle down and edit it, then start sending it out...

I don't know. If I don't have anything interesting for next week, maybe I'll just put up some ship pictures? What do you want to see, anyway?

Why Write?

Progress report - I'm still getting a chapter of Endwood up for critique weekly, so that's good. I think I'm about 3 chapters from the end. I'm really excited to put this novel behind me for a while! Also returned a couple critiques in the past 7 days.

My question today is: Why write? God gave me a passion for writing, I believe, as I've been interested since I was a small child. I drew comic books and wrote stories when I was about 11 or 12, and have been writing ever since. If you count NaNoWriMo, I've completed drafts of about 5 novels, plus a co-written novel and one that I stopped at 50,000 words after NaNo but will rewrite someday. At any rate, I adore entertaining people with imagined characters and worlds. For someone who can't memorize, writing is a great way to do it.

OK, so why write novels? I just haven't gotten the hang of writing short stories--I like to have more time to play with characters. And in a perfect world, I know every novel would be as polished as a short story, but in the real world, every word has to count in a short story, whereas novels have a bit more wiggle room. I'd like to try it sometime, though.

I actually love writing comic books, but I'm not a very good artist and don't enjoy drawing enough to become a much better artist. I've toyed with having artists draw my scripts, but that kind of collaboration can be difficult to pull off, in that both parties must be very motivated. I've heard that it usually comes down to the artist "encouraging" the artist to work, and I'm not so good at that.

I wrote a script for a play once (I took a playwriting class in college instead of advanced fiction writing...more on that another day!), and it was enjoyable. But I feel like doing a play would be so draining for someone who loves ideas but can have trouble interacting with people for long, long stretches.

I think it'd be kind of cool to write for TV, but I'm not sure I'd want to write other people's characters, and I know I don't want to move to LA.

I know if you write a movie screenplay and Hollywood makes it, odds are VERY poor that your vision will end up on the screen. I think that would be hard to deal with, no matter how excellent the money can be.

And I prefer imagined worlds to the real ones, so that's why I prefer to write fiction. Did I leave out any possibilities you can think of?

But when it comes down to it, I love to write, and it's just something I do. Even in the lunchroom at work, I prefer to just sit down with a pencil and paper and work on my novel. It's one of the things I enjoy most in the world, and I believe God likes me to do it.

Do you write? If so, why? If not, why not?

Next Wednesday I'll continue this thread with, why write for publication?

Collaborative Writing - The Long Awaited Part 2

So updates on my own writing...I had a vague hope of finishing Flight from Endwood before the new year. That didn't happen, but now I'm cheering for the end of January. So I am buckling down and trying! I'd love to start a new collaborative project, too, but we'll see....

Speaking of collaboration! So a few weeks ago I said I'd share some things I heard at a panel on collaborative writing. Never mind the timeline I said I'd get that information out to you. Here it is now!

In November 2010 at the (secular) Tuscon Sci-fi/Fantasy/Horror convention, there was a panel on co-authoring with Michelle M. Welch, John Vornholt, and Jeff Mariotte. Some collaborated while under contract; I'm not sure any of them necessarily wrote a novel with someone quite how we did, without even having it sold yet. (Note that these writers are not necessarily--I'd go so far as to say not likely--Christians, but that doesn't mean they don't know some good techniques.)

A couple reasons for collaboration might be to have fun with a friend, and sometimes utilize different points of expertise. Overall, as I may have already mentioned, the goal of collaboration is for the finished product to be better than you could do yourself.

Random points they offered:

*Get a detailed outline first so that you know where it's going (this is beyond important if you're collaborating with one person writing some chapters and some people writing other chapters, etc.)

*Collaboration is very good for comedy--if you find something funny, someone else may not find it funny. But if TWO people think something is funny, then maybe other people will find it funny too!

*Distance is no longer an issue in collaboration, as it comes down to words on a page. You used to have to mail floppy disks (!) back in forth, but now you can collaborate in essentially, or even literally, real-time (see Google Docs etc.).

*Collaborating can be easier with a tight deadline (I think the logic there was that with a tight deadline, you both have to work, and you won't quibble about the small stuff).

*If an argument arises between the authors, try just scrapping the scene and writing something else.

*MAKE SURE WHOEVER SENDS TO THE EDITOR SENDS THE RIGHT VERSION! (One of the panelists had been working on a collaboration and the partner who sent the final copy out sent a previous draft. Since I can see myself doing that, I thought that was a good thing to note.)

They vaguely mentioned you need to agree who gets the final draft, etc., which I already knew from reading up on collaboration before we started.

And that...was about it. I thought I had more info, but sometimes short and sweet is best!

Progress Report

So I figured I'd at least write progress reports on Wednesday. The last seven days weren't great--I got some writing done on "Flight from Endwood," but not as much as I wanted. I also critiqued a co-worker's short story. (It's amazing how some people you'd never have expected at first have amazing creativity and talent!)

I also got something printed on Lulu.com so that's pretty cool. Hopefully it will arrive soon!

I would love to have Endwood finished by the end of the year, but if I manage that, it will definitely be a God thing. It's a very, very complicated novel (it will need a total rewrite which I won't tackle until I'm a much better writer). I've also got several chapters to critique from one author, and several other chapters from another.

I'd better get to work!

NaNoWriMo

I did NaNoWriMo this year, hoping it would help me either rediscover my enjoyment of writing, and/or give me a good dose of "just shut up and get it done"--either of which I could use for my novel "Flight from Endwood" (which, itself, was my NaNoWriMo, circa 2006). I was also looking forward to just WRITING for a change.

The basic concept itself was something I believe God gave me in Disneyland in June--though the execution did not go as expected. I had no idea my favorite character would be a human-looking robot! The entire thing will need rewritten from the ground up, and will probably need to be given a coherent plot. It's a pretty good candidate for if I ever try outlining.

Some people are impressed that I wrote 50,000 words in 30 days, but honestly, some of those same people could probably do the same thing if they just pushed aside all notions of quality and let the characters run wild. Such as...

“Erie sent me here to help,” Harris said.

“But you’re not...” Antonio trailed off. “Señor Papa--what do I do?” His face lit up in a slow grin, and Harris worried. He handed Harris an earpiece radio. “If you see anything amiss, I need you to tell me. This is set to broad to me, top priority.”

He smiled. “Did you want to arm me?”

“Not at this time.” Antonio looked around the vast hangar, now empty, almost as if scanning. He touched a panel and a closet door slid open. Antonio entered and rummaged for a few moments. “Yes. This will do. You must wear this.”

He handed him a black helmet, half the size of his torso, and furry with dust. No--furry with fur. “What’s this?”

“Your uniform,” Antonio said. He pulled out a huge black jumpsuit, made of fur, with a violet skirt around the waist and--no--a tail.

“I can’t wear that!”

“It’s climate-controled, with three views through the cameras. Señor Papa is sure a pilot such as yourself will have no difficulty navigating.”

He shook his head. “Did you have to pick a lady cat?”

“It is a good size for you,” Antonio replied with a smirk, looking down at him--he was a good foot taller than Harris. “And there are precious few of these suits left, for obvious reasons.”

“Because they’re horrible?”

Antonio frowned. “Because technology has greatly improved. Will you wear it?”

Oh yes. I don't know how it happened, but I went there.

Didn't get much of anything done today, except for a tiny amount of cleaning, and making some oven-baked potatoes which were quite good.