Travels with their pens

Somehow, it’s Monday again. And Little Miss Muse seems to have taken the day off to batten down the hatches against the impending storm. We are far enough North and inland that Sandy shouldn’t mean more than high winds and torrential rain here; my thoughts are with those up and down the East coast USA who are in its path. I suspect LMM is rather more concerned about another imminent arrival – Baby’s due date is tomorrow, and even if he’s held up, he’ll be here within the next couple of weeks. Hubby didn’t look thrilled when I suggested we name the baby as the hurricane though…

Anyway, as a consequence of LMM’s vacation, I have nothing useful to say about writing and no successes (or even failures) to report on my own writing. So instead, I’d like to tell you about two inspirational writer friends of mine who have taken trips this month in furtherance of their writing plans.

Claire Larson is planning to write about her family history, which involves some nasty events which happened in Paraguay several decades ago. I only heard about that a few weeks ago when she announced that she was heading down to South America on a research trip, which involved meeting some rather unsavoury characters, being smuggled across borders and all the time negotiating the corruption and other risks of travelling in that part of the world. To help a local family (including the man who saved Claire’s father’s life) to make their way out of poverty, Claire and her family have returned the proud owners of a pregnant cow, and half a farm in Paraguay. Presumably the cow is staying there, and hasn’t been freighted back to Canada!

Claire’s back in Toronto now, and even just the story of her trip – let alone the events she was researching – makes for exciting reading. The extent of my research tends to be a laptop or a library, so my hat is firmly off to her for going the extra (thousand) mile(s).  I can’t wait to read her novel!

On the subject of long-distance travel, another writing friend is back from Scotland this morning. Not quite the same level of danger, but certainly an epic journey with its own trials and tribulations to overcome. The gentlemen of the Wayfarer’s Quest walked a gruelling 500 miles across the Highlands of Scotland during October, most of it in costume as adventurers from times gone by.

They met with some serious obstacles on the way, both in the planning – when a number of team members had to drop out for health and other reasons – and in the execution. Just a few days into the trip, Wayfarer Dan came down with a severe case of food poisoning. The Doctor’s advice of bed rest and then “no strenuous activity for a few weeks” nearly put paid to the Quest, but these boys don’t back down easily, and they managed to fit in the full distance in spite of a shortened time schedule and reduced health.

This time, the main aim of the game was not writing, but fundraising. The Wayfarers have raised over $15,000 for cancer charities, and are still looking for ways to increase that figure. And one of those, is potentially going to be a book about the trip. Again, it makes me feel like I should do more to write more! You can read about the trip and how to contribute to the Wayfarers’ cause at http://www.wayfarerquest.com/ The blog has some fantastic photos too, and I’m sure there will be more to come now that the boys are back in Toronto (Just need to drop off a Timmies voucher first to help them get over the jet lag!)

 

How far have you been in pursuit of a story? Where would you like to go to finalise that last detail or even a huge plot point? And what’s stopping you?!

 

Friday Fiction – Counting

It’s the dawn of a new era. The good ship Fictioneers, still proudly boasting her full complement of sails, billowed by a strong wind of inspiration, now has captain Rochelle Wisoff-Fields at the helm. The gallant crew musters on deck for another day’s work and the sailing looks good.

You can blame Doug for my early posting today – he lured me into rebellion and I wrote this yesterday morning. It took a lot of pruning to get it down to 100 words – I hope the meaning and the voice are not too lost as a consequence. If the comments suggest the meaning is unclear, I may have to post an explanation at the bottom, we’ll see how it goes, I guess. I’d love to hear what you think.

Counting

He’s looking at me. There are approximately 8 million grains of sugar in a 1lb bag. How do I know that? And this jar holds, maybe, a third of a pound. He’s wondering what I’m thinking.

Let’s say a quarter. That’s 2 million grains. But it isn’t full. Ha, half full or half empty? After what he just told me: almost empty and the bottom just fell out.

There are a million grains of sugar in the jar, then. Each one of them a reason to leave him. But all I can say is

“I need some time to think.”

Inspiration Monday – Invisible Sky

It’s been a while since I joined in with Inspiration Monday, so this week I’m trying to make up for it by covering two prompts in a single 100 word story: view from the gutter and invisible sky. It’s not necessarily a very unique take on either, but I hope you like it and I’d love to hear your thoughts.

View From The Gutter

I’m underfoot. You can see it in their faces: these people who walk about the city in smart suits and high-rise heels: hurrying to the next meeting, or a lunch date with a married admirer. They barely see me, only to ensure I don’t infect them, drag them down somehow. If they throw something in my cup, it is to avoid having to look at me; to save themselves from the danger of awareness.

And I know how it feels to tower with them, close to the invisible sky: hope and future and promise. Do they even see it themselves?

Goal Setting

According to my local radio, 47% of us forget to floss our teeth daily. 47%? That means more than half the population is lacerating our gums with mint-flavoured string every single morning. I don’t believe it. (Straw poll – leave a comment if you floss every day, proclaiming the fact loud and proud. I’ll send you a bag of sweets to bring you down to my level!) Personally, I discovered a long time ago that if I aim to floss daily, as recommended by my dentist, I just never do it. Maybe once or twice a year, just before an appointment with him.

But here’s the thing (and also the point at which this blog post becomes about writing again, rather than oral hygiene), if I set myself a more achievable goal, like flossing once a week, suddenly I hit the target. I even occasionally over-achieve and do it twice in 7 days! Crazy stuff.

With NaNoWriMo just around the corner, lots of writers are setting themselves ambitious goals right now. 1667 words in a day is actually not as much as it sounds, but doing that every single day, on top of your day job, life and normal writing commitments, for a whole month, is a challenge for many people. Winners of NaNo are right to be proud of themselves. Those who use it as a springboard to kick-start their writing for the rest of the year, even more so.

I enjoy NaNo and I hope to keep doing it for the foreseeable future, but for the rest of the year, I’ve discovered I work much better with achievable goals than crazy ones. When I started this blog, I promised myself one post a week. Now I’m up to three, with occasional daily projects like Voice Week, the 12 Days of Christmas and my recent series on Novel-Planning. And I still enjoy it, I still find topics to write about, and (most amazingly of all) I still find people reading them all!

Starting small works for me – give me a to do list with 5 things on it and I’ll do them all, by lunchtime. Double it to 10 and I’ll achieve 3 across the entire day.

So what I need to do now is work out how to apply this self-knowledge to my long-term writing goals, and in particular to the editing process which a couple of my longer pieces are waiting to undergo. Suggestions are welcome. I’m also interested: how does goal-setting work for you? Do you work better under the pressure of too much to do? Or are you a small-starter like me?

And how many times a week do you floss your teeth?

Friday Fiction – What goes on tour…

It’s a sad day for the Fictioneers. Our great leader, Madison Woods, is going to pastures new and retiring from her post as leader of the group. She’s been a great inspiration and I hope we’ll be hearing lots more from her in other realms, but for now Three Cheers from me.

Madison has passed the baton to Rochelle, so those who like to follow the leader will find prompts on her page from next week. I’m sure she’ll be a great figurehead and I look forward to seeing her prompts.

And as a last link for you, thanks to Ron Pruitt, who provided today’s photo inspiration. So many of the FF prompts are pastoral, that I’m always taken aback to see people in the photo. It provides a different kind of challenge though, and I like the variety. This week, the different challenge was met with a different response in my head. I’m not sure it really counts as a story, but I could hear him talking plain as day when I looked at the picture, so this character had to be recorded.

I’m hoping that this snippet gives you a taste for him and his character, but I don’t know whether I’m overlaying the words with my own impressions. Do please let me know what you think!

“All aboard again!

“No sitting in the luggage racks! We once toured a circus [edited from v1: Lance once took a circus] Found the contortionist in his trunk when we arrived. Smelt a bit after fourteen hours in the Arizona heat.

“No, entirely alive.

“So, on your left, folks, you can see the Oklahoma State line. I say see. You can’t, but it’s there. Behind that barn. Don’t cross that ‘less you want to get blown away.

“No, tornadoes. Not much gun crime in OK; keep that here in Texas. When we reach Dallas, you’ll be seeing where JFK was shot – kinda proud of their heritage, the Texans.”

Novel Planning #5 – Pick n Mix

Planning a novel is as much a matter of personal preference as writing one. Some people don’t like to plan at all, others like to do everything they can to set their novel up so that by the time they actually sit down to write, it’s almost all on the page already. The Snowflake Method is great for the latter, NaNoWriMo’s Dare forums are probably the best place for anyone who wants to just play it by ear!

If you’re still pretty new to long-form writing, a plan can help you to produce a decent first draft, especially if you’re under a time constraint like NaNo. If you’re still developing your craft, trying different methods of planning is probably the best way to find what works for you. Reading the wisdom of published and even prolific writers can make you feel like there is one way to succeed, but I firmly believe that each person has to find their own way, and even if you are trying to become the next John Grisham, his way of putting pen to paper might just not work for you.

So, if you’re interested in planning a novel, try one of the methods I’ve outlined over the past week. Or, try something else. Or, try a combination of multiple methods – you might decide tha tyou want to use just Steps 1 and 2 of Tuesday’s suggestion, and then delve into your characters’ psyches from Wednesday.

There are a hundred (thousand) other ways to plan / outline / plot a novel, and if you feel I missed your favourite, I’d love to hear from you in the comments. Similarly, let me know how you get on if you use one of these methods.

For now, I’ll leave you with another option, best suited to a Friday. A few of my fellow Friday Fictioneers are writing long stories in 100 word chunks. Each week, they take the prompt provided by Madison Woods and right the next scene. Check out Craig Towsley’s Owl and Raccoon Fables for an excellent piecemeal example of this, or The Winger Chronicles of Adam Ickes to see how it works doing it chronologically.

Novel Planning #4 – Planning Backwards

This is one type of planning I’ve never done, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t work well for certain types of novel. For example, take a story with a crucial final scene – a great reveal which pulls together all the rest of the book. I’m not just talking about the ending of any book here, but specific types. Think, for example, Hercule Poirot, pulling all the characters into the Drawing Room and revealing the murderer. Alternatively, think about a major twist, whereby we suddenly realise that the main character is dead, or is Keyser Soze, or whatever.

These sorts of story revolve so much around that final reveal, that it could be argued you need to write the reveal before you can do anything else. It’s not how Agatha Christie did it, but many crime writers certainly go into the story knowing exactly whodunnit, how and why, and if that’s how you work, then starting at the end might be a good outlining method for you.

Here’s how…

Step 1: The Solution

Work out, clearly, and with diagrams and research if necessary, exactly what the solution is, how and why it happened, and – crucially – why this wasn’t immediately apparent at the beginning. Who was hiding something? How much will you just be playing on readers’ expectations?

Step 2: The Reveal

Decide how you want to get the solution across to readers. Do you want to do something formulaic, like pulling all the characters into one room? Do you want to have a sleuth-type character work it out, or someone who comes in knowing nothing about the background and has it all explained to him at the end? Will you reveal the solution through action, conversation or exposition? Plan the reveal scene in detail – you might even want to write it out in full (bearing in mind it will need a substantial rewrite by the time you’ve finished the rest of the novel).

Step 3: The Clues

The best mystery novels, and the best plot twists, give the readers half a chance to solve it before the reveal. For some readers, this will give them a sense of achievement when they do, for others it will give them a sense of recognition and of having been dealt with fairly when they realise that they should have known all along, but didn’t. They will want to read back and pick out all the clues and sneaky pointers you left along the way, whcih they missed at the time.

Think about how you might set up clues to the solution throughout the novel. Things people might say which have a double meaning, descriptions which point towards the solution, etc.

Step 4: The Red Herrings

Having sorted out the pointers you’re going to give everyone to the RIGHT answer, think about the traps you’ll lay to take them away from it. How can you keep them guessing, make other solutions seem possible, and then at the last minute, impossible. In a murder mystery, this could be other suspects, or apparent attempts on the life of the murderer herself. It might also include a list of things you DON’T show but allow the reader to assume – if your narrator is in prison, for example, you might mention them getting up, meeting friends, lining up for lunch, but miss out the things which would place those activities in a cell block.

Step 5: The Beginning

Finally, you can work out where the story starts. For a story with a twist, this is going to be where you set up all the misunderstandings you rely on for the rest of the novel; in a murder mystery, it’s probably the discovery of a body, or pretty close to it. Although not always, you might have Poirot bumble through some preparations for Christmas and if you’re Agatha Christie, people will still read on and make their way to the murder scene!

Novel Planning #3 – Characters

In the third part of this week’s series about planning a novel, I bring you a very different way of planning, this time no writing an outline; instead, character immersion. This is quite an appealing half-way-house for those people who don’t like planning but want to get a headstart on their writing, have a bit of a safety net, or simply keep their hand in during October when you’re not allowed to begin writing for NaNoWriMo.  To my mind, it will work best for character-driven fiction (Don’t tell me all fiction is character-driven!) like romances. I can imagine it working well for planning a Jane Austen style romantic epic, or a chicklit beach read. It might also work for a character-driven thriller though, like the Hannibal Lecter books, or any super-hero story.

Identify the main characters in your story. All of them. Let’s say you’re plotting Pride and Prejudice, for example. I’m not just talking about Lizzy and Darcy here, you’ll also need to identify the larger cast – the other Bennet sisters and the various love-interests who buzz about them – Bingley, Wickham, Colonel Fitzwilliam, etc.

For each of these characters, establish the following:

1. Physical Traits

I start here because it’s easiest to define. You might find this is the last element that you work on though, and that’s fine too. Think about things like eye colour, hair colour, hair style, height, weight, dress sense. What do these things tell you about the character? Are they stereotypical? Do they match the character’s personality? Or are they conflicting with that personality?

2. Personality Traits

Is the character headstrong? Likeable? Haughty? Kind? What pleases them, what do they despise? Make these people really interesting, not 2-dimensional and certainly not stereotyped. What sort of job would you imagine them doing (even if they don’t have a job in the story)? What are their flaws and their strengths?

3. Quirks

Make each character an individual with some little things that stand out about them. Do they have a particular way of speaking which sets them apart from the rest of the cast? A verbal tick, or a physical habit? Again, avoid cliches, and anything that’s going to annoy your readers, but think about what makes this particular character just a little different from the next one.

4. Secrets

OK, now’s the time to start digging. What’s this character’s background? Their motivation? Their secrets? What rumours might be going around about this character and in what ways are those rumours true, or not? What would their neighbours / friends / enemies say about them?

5. The Fun Bit

Finally, get really deep into the characters. Think about unusual situations and throw them in – how would they deal with a crisis / rejection / unwanted romantic advances? A man crashing through the window with a shotgun? A woman fainting next to them on the bus?

If you like quizzes (who doesn’t like quizzes?!), go online to a site like http://www.quizrocket.com/ and try out some quizzes on behalf of your characters. You can also google serious personality tests like Myers-Briggs, but it’s just as valuable to find out What Kind of Dog they would be, or Which Member of the Royal Family will they marry? Get the Sorting Hat to choose them a house and if you have any romantic pairings, subject them to a Cosmopolitan-style compatibility test.

The results might be interesting or amusing, but the main point of these tests is that they will ask you questions about the characters you might never have thought about. For example, this What Breed of Dog Are You test asks how you’d react if a friend dared you to go skydiving. Most of these answers will probably never make it into your novel, but knowing your characters back to front will allow them to carry the story when you feel you can’t, and can help you to ensure that the people in your novel are as interesting as they can be.

Novel Planning #2 – Plot-Type

Yesterday, I introduced this week’s series of posts about planning for novel-writing.  Step back there for one method, or read on for another method of planning your forthcoming masterwork. I refer to these masterworks as novels, but these methods would work with a bit of tweaking for other writing formats too.

Today, let’s look at plotting the Christopher Booker way.

Those who have been following my Booker’s Seven project will know the basics here. Christopher Booker says there are only seven basic plots in the world, and all stories fall into one or other. You might not agree, but if you do, you can probably identify which of those seven yours falls into. They are:

Overcoming the Monster

Rags to Riches

The Quest

Voyage and Return

Rebirth

Tragedy

Comedy

How, you have to be a bit slick, because Comedy doesn’t necessarily mean funny; it ties in more with the Shakespearean definition, and has a lot to do with large casts of characters, and situations caused by miscommunications between them. Think Much Ado About Nothing or Twelfth Night. Similarly, Overcoming the Monster might not involve a physical monster, but more something internal or an external (but non monster-y) challenge like an asteroid heading for earth.

Anyway, once you’ve picked out which Booker Plot you are intending to write, you can use it to plan your novel. Ideally (certainly in Mr Booker’s mind) you’d go out and buy his book, for a full breakdown of what that plot entails. Alternatively, you can go online and google search some summaries of his ideas. Like this one at tvtropes.org.

The plot is neatly broken down for you into stages, and your task is simply to take each stage and write a couple of paragraphs detailing how that stage will look in your story. Take time to think not only what will happen, but why, how the characters will react and – particularly if you have a target word count for the whole piece – who long that stage will be. Remember, as we saw yesterday, not all stages should be the same length.

Novel Planning #1 – Chapters

Back in February (wow, February, almost pre-pregnancy), I posted about my intention to produce a series of planning-related posts. Since then, other things have got in the way, and now it’s October, the time when lots of writers are planning their NaNoWriMo novels, so it seems like time to revive that idea. And as I have 5 possible suggestions for planning, I’m going to publish one a day for the next week. If you prefer to write without planning, these posts are unlikely to be for you, but you might still find something of interest for editing and redrafting stages. I’d love to hear what you think about any of these methods; or other planning techniques that have worked for you!

I posted a long time ago about the snowflake method. This first method of the week is similar, but slightly less time-consuming. It features our old favourites: the Beginning, Middle and End.

Step 1: One sentence story

Many planned novels start with a single sentence premise, or a question, or a hypothesis. What would happen if…? This is the single sentence story. It contains nothing close to everything, and may not even be a spoiler. I was reading today, for example about the plot of the film Hook, which apparently came about when the writer’s kids asked him “What would happen if Peter Pan grew up?”

Step 2: One paragraph about each of the beginning, middle and end.

These paragraphs don’t have to be long, but they should give you an idea of where the story is going. The paragraph about the End should definitely include a spoiler – what happens? What’s your resolution?

For Star Wars: A New Hope, for example, a condensed version of Step 2, might look something like this:

    Beginning: Luke Skywalker wants to be a famous and heroic Jedi Knight. He buys a droid which holds a strange message addressed to Obi Wan Kenobi. He takes the message to OWK and when he gets home, finds his farm and family destroyed. The two men set out on a quest to help the beautiful Princess who sent the message.

    Middle: There’s an evil force ruling the galaxy known as the Empire – lead by the Emperor, but his right-hand man is the cruel and powerful Darth Vadar. Good is represented by the Rebels, led by Princess Leia (of the message in part 1). She and Luke must join together, with rogue pilot Han Solo to fight the Empire.

   End: The message contains plans for the Death Star, the Empire’s big and scary weapon. The Rebels launch a campaign to destroy the Death Star, but it all proves to be harder than it looked and many pilots die. Ultimately, Luke is one of few remaining pilots but the enemy forces are upon him. Han reappears, destroys the enemy ships and Luke manages to blow up the Death Star. Everyone celebrates the victory.

Step 3: Expand the middle to the 3 (or more) major events which take place in the middle of the story. Give each one a paragraph of its own.

It’s a myth that stories divide into thirds. If you look at the beginning, middle and end model, the beginning and end will probably each take up maybe a tenth of the final novel, possibly not even that. The bulk of the story, and the place where a lot of writers suffer from writer’s block (or a bad case of tangentitis) is in the middle. Many people who write without a plan know where they want the story to start (Luke has to leave home and become a Jedi Knight) and end (Good conquers evil), but they don’t really know how to get from A to B, or how to put enough interesting obstacles in the way to make a good story.

This method recognises that plotting is mostly about the middle, and gives it a lot of attention. Think about various challenges the characters are going to come across in getting from the beginning to the end. Make each one different and ideally escalating. Perhaps some of internal challenges (the main character feels like giving up) and some are external (he comes across a difficult obstacle or a new enemy).

Even a pretty basic novel will need at least three of these challenges, most will need many more. If in doubt, add more not less – you can always take them out once you start writing. For each obstacle, include how it comes about and how the main characters overcome it.

Step 4: Work out roughly how many chapters each part (beginning, middle 1, middle 2, middle 3, end) needs and write one sentence (or very short paragraph) for each chapter.

The chances are, once you start writing, this portion will largely go out of the window. It’s hard to plan chapters in advance, and I feel it hampers the writing a lot. So if you prefer, stop after Step 3. However, if you do go ahead and write a chapter plan, it will help prevent writer’s block and of course it doesn’t mean you have to be a slave to the plan once you come to write.

If you do use Step 4, I suggest you stick to short descriptions for each chapter, along the lines of an old-fashioned Jerome K Jerome heading: “In which Luke first meets Yoda”, rather than trying to plot out the whole chapter in detail.