This'll be a short one. I'm heading off to Dragon Con in a couple of days, and I have a million things to do. Just wanted to sneak this in before I left town, because it's been bothering me.
Last time, I wrote about how to combat writer's block if you're already underway. I stand by that advice: it's precisely the method I used to get over my problem that day. However, I may have been getting a little ahead of myself. The first hurdle anyone faces when they're writing or telling a story is the first line, not somewhere in the middle. I'm sure you've all been there: just you and a blank page, either on paper or a computer screen, and... it's very intimidating. You're probably armed with a dim idea of what you'd like the finished product to look like, but you don't have any idea of how to get from here to there.
Getting over that is, well, the difference between telling your story and not, so I'm going to devote a series of posts to the whole thing, hopefully offer some things to think about.
Now, the classic method is to have a pretty good idea of what you're after before you ever start writing: get yourself an outline, profile your characters... get a skeletal version done and fill in the details. As with my last advice about writing, I'm going to go ahead and advise you to Google if you're interested in hearing more about doing things that way. Lots of people have already covered that ground better than I could ever hope to.
Instead, I'm going to focus on my method of improvisation, informed by experience with collaborative storytelling in games. Just to get the whole thing going, that's exactly what I'm doing when I write: I imagine that I'm playing a game, like in the Solitaire example, and I narrate the various twists and turns. Except it's more like solo chess than cards. You need everything a board game would:
Some Pieces:
That is, characters and other large plot elements (MacGuffins, etc.) that are 'movable.' They can make or affect decisions, and their capabilities and ranges of motion will differ from piece to piece.
The Board:
That is, the space that the characters and other important plot elements occupy. This can range from the simplicity of a single room to elaborate stellar empires.
The Rules:
Basically, how these elements interact with each other. How can the pieces move around the board? Are there shortcuts, like transporters on Star Trek? How can the characters influence each other? By what reasoning will you solve the problem of two characters who come into verbal or physical conflict?
Of course, I don't write all this stuff down. That'd be... well, horribly silly. But this is my personal metaphor for what I'm doing: I really think about storytelling in terms of a series of discrete plot elements and how they interact with each other in a particular space, then try to reason out what happens next given that information. This is why the whole exercise is fun for me: I can't know how it'll turn out until I've done it, except in the broadest terms.
I'll get into how to construct each of these tools later. After the con, catching up on school from the con, and getting in a little of the latest book, anyway. :)
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Friday, August 27, 2010
Writer's Block
It's been a couple of days since I've added to my book. Some of it's school: this was my first week back, and I spent five hours on homework yesterday, without even finishing what needs doing.
Some of it's this blog: I'm really enjoying writing these little posts, but there are only so many hours in the day - an hour here is an hour not spent there.
The last factor, though? Writer's block. Just a wee little bit.
I'm going to handle it shortly, but before I do, I thought this would be an appropriate moment to share my thoughts about the subject with all of you. For example, what to do when you realize you've bumped into it.
*clears throat, prepares index cards*
Writer's block is something probably everyone has felt at some point, if only while doing a creative writing assignment for school. I'm pretty sure it's happened to all of you. It happens to me periodically. More often than most, I'd imagine, since I'm writing every day now. It's frustrating. It puts people off writing entirely, sometimes.
Here's the thing:
The natural state of the human mind is to imagine things. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: people imagine things all the time. Indeed, this is what makes us special: humans can conceive of things that do not, in fact, exist. We can think past what is, to what we'd like to see.
Imagination is why we've gone from mud huts to space shuttles over a scant few thousand years, while the rest of the animal kingdom mostly just reacts to us.
Writer's block is the aberration. That's why it feels unpleasant: that's not how things are supposed to work.
Fortunately, the root of it is simple, at least for me. I've likened writing to Solitaire before. Well, when you're playing Solitaire, it is possible to select your cards in such a way that you cannot proceed. You have cards left, but you can't clear them: there are no valid moves left.
In my experience, writer's block is like that. It's the culmination of a series of missteps during earlier parts of the story that prevent me from accomplishing whatever I need to do in the scene I'm working on right now. Sometimes, the problem is huge: I have, on two separate occasions, scrapped 50000+ word drafts because I just couldn't fix them, and started the entire book over.
Most of the time, though, things are simpler than that. I just look back at what I'm working on and figure out where I went wrong. I isolate whatever earlier elements have now proven incorrect, carefully remove or adjust them, then get on with my work. That's all I'm going to have to do once I'm done here: I can feel that the problem is smallish. My week's just been tiring.
If it ever happens to you, try to think about it that way: consider where you want your story to go, and think about why it can't. Then, adjust the work you've done accordingly. Not everything you put down is going to be right the first time. That's natural.
As a further bit of trivia: this is why sequels take longer and tend to be harder than original works. Every sequel has a little more baggage than any book that came before it: more details to keep track of, more little discrepancies, more potential plot holes to navigate around.
Both times I've started a series, the whole thing has slowed down for me immensely at the third volume. Indeed, book 3 of my first series is where I threw up my hands and started writing the current one - that volume remains unfinished. Just something to think about, when you're waiting for the next book by your favorite author, wondering when they'll get off their behind and actually get it done.
Anyway, I'm going to go fix my problem here so that I can enjoy my weekend. Hope you all have a good one, too.
Some of it's this blog: I'm really enjoying writing these little posts, but there are only so many hours in the day - an hour here is an hour not spent there.
The last factor, though? Writer's block. Just a wee little bit.
I'm going to handle it shortly, but before I do, I thought this would be an appropriate moment to share my thoughts about the subject with all of you. For example, what to do when you realize you've bumped into it.
*clears throat, prepares index cards*
Writer's block is something probably everyone has felt at some point, if only while doing a creative writing assignment for school. I'm pretty sure it's happened to all of you. It happens to me periodically. More often than most, I'd imagine, since I'm writing every day now. It's frustrating. It puts people off writing entirely, sometimes.
Here's the thing:
The natural state of the human mind is to imagine things. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: people imagine things all the time. Indeed, this is what makes us special: humans can conceive of things that do not, in fact, exist. We can think past what is, to what we'd like to see.
Imagination is why we've gone from mud huts to space shuttles over a scant few thousand years, while the rest of the animal kingdom mostly just reacts to us.
Writer's block is the aberration. That's why it feels unpleasant: that's not how things are supposed to work.
Fortunately, the root of it is simple, at least for me. I've likened writing to Solitaire before. Well, when you're playing Solitaire, it is possible to select your cards in such a way that you cannot proceed. You have cards left, but you can't clear them: there are no valid moves left.
In my experience, writer's block is like that. It's the culmination of a series of missteps during earlier parts of the story that prevent me from accomplishing whatever I need to do in the scene I'm working on right now. Sometimes, the problem is huge: I have, on two separate occasions, scrapped 50000+ word drafts because I just couldn't fix them, and started the entire book over.
Most of the time, though, things are simpler than that. I just look back at what I'm working on and figure out where I went wrong. I isolate whatever earlier elements have now proven incorrect, carefully remove or adjust them, then get on with my work. That's all I'm going to have to do once I'm done here: I can feel that the problem is smallish. My week's just been tiring.
If it ever happens to you, try to think about it that way: consider where you want your story to go, and think about why it can't. Then, adjust the work you've done accordingly. Not everything you put down is going to be right the first time. That's natural.
As a further bit of trivia: this is why sequels take longer and tend to be harder than original works. Every sequel has a little more baggage than any book that came before it: more details to keep track of, more little discrepancies, more potential plot holes to navigate around.
Both times I've started a series, the whole thing has slowed down for me immensely at the third volume. Indeed, book 3 of my first series is where I threw up my hands and started writing the current one - that volume remains unfinished. Just something to think about, when you're waiting for the next book by your favorite author, wondering when they'll get off their behind and actually get it done.
Anyway, I'm going to go fix my problem here so that I can enjoy my weekend. Hope you all have a good one, too.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Organic Character Development
There are a lot of resources about how to design a character available on the Internet. Conventional wisdom is that you should have an extremely clear idea of who your character is before you sit down to put the story to paper: figure out what they look like, how they talk, what they want, etc.
If you're interested in that, I'd recommend googling "20 questions." It's good advice, in general. A story thrives on details: the more you know about what's going on, the better a picture you can paint and the more smoothly getting it out is liable to be. Details are fundamental to consistency, and consistency is fundamental to the suspension of disbelief. If you're generating a major character, I'd recommend doing it the old fashioned way.
However, I'm not going to talk about that today because, frankly, everyone talks about that. You don't need me for it.
I'm going to talk about a less discussed alternative technique which I learned from running roleplaying games. These were situations where I didn't have the luxury of time. When you're running a game, you often need a minor character right now, it's important to be able to do that. It's also good for bit parts in novels, and I have, in fact, even used it for major characters in my stories. I call it 'organic character development.'
The way this works is simple: form a dim picture of a character in your head. Enough that you could say something about them. Are they male or female? Can you tell me one sentence about them?
For example, I'm thinking about a private eye. His name is Jones. He's got... oh, brown hair. Thin, but not gaunt.
I don't know anything else about this guy yet. I don't let it worry me, though. Instead, I just run with what I do know.
As soon as I need another detail because it would be relevant in the story, I do two things:
1) Make up something that sounds good.
For instance, a leggy dame comes into Jones' office with a problem - a classic story hook for old timey detective stories. I need to know how he reacts. Is he a lech, or professional? Is he maybe gay? Does he banter, or is he businesslike?
Whatever you pick, it should be interesting enough to be worth mentioning at all, and it should serve the story at large. Never pick something that you think is boring.
In this case, I think Jones is all a bit of a wise guy who likes to flirt. I mean, that's a classic, and why would I be writing a detective story if I didn't enjoy the classics?
2) Write down what you've made up, keep it straight.
This would be the real trick to organic character development: things are fluid until you make a decision, but once you have decided, you need to stick to it. For the rest of his appearances, Jones needs to be a flirty snarker.
Moreover, later decisions that I make about Jones should support this conclusion generally: it's now too late to give him a hook for a hand or other serious physical impairment that would impact his romantic prospects, because if he had one, it should have come up in his initial scene flirting with someone.
The more decisions like this you make, the more a character goes from blurry to very focused and specific. If Jones keeps popping up, my audience will get to know him at the very same pace that I, the author do. Which is actually pretty cool when you're doing it.
And... that's actually all there is to it. Step (2) is where most people run into trouble, which is why I recommend making notes as you go. Start a traditional character profile - 20 questions style - and fill it in as you work.
Several major characters in my first series actually came about like this. If I ever get around to sharing it online, I'll talk about which ones and what that was like, but no promises - still a little disorganized on the point of, "What do I do with rough drafts of four books in the drawer, and another in process?"
Anyway, I better get to school. Time to learn about taxation and government organizational structures in detail, and I'm excited. Yes, really. Maybe I'll talk about economics sometime, too. :)
If you're interested in that, I'd recommend googling "20 questions." It's good advice, in general. A story thrives on details: the more you know about what's going on, the better a picture you can paint and the more smoothly getting it out is liable to be. Details are fundamental to consistency, and consistency is fundamental to the suspension of disbelief. If you're generating a major character, I'd recommend doing it the old fashioned way.
However, I'm not going to talk about that today because, frankly, everyone talks about that. You don't need me for it.
I'm going to talk about a less discussed alternative technique which I learned from running roleplaying games. These were situations where I didn't have the luxury of time. When you're running a game, you often need a minor character right now, it's important to be able to do that. It's also good for bit parts in novels, and I have, in fact, even used it for major characters in my stories. I call it 'organic character development.'
The way this works is simple: form a dim picture of a character in your head. Enough that you could say something about them. Are they male or female? Can you tell me one sentence about them?
For example, I'm thinking about a private eye. His name is Jones. He's got... oh, brown hair. Thin, but not gaunt.
I don't know anything else about this guy yet. I don't let it worry me, though. Instead, I just run with what I do know.
As soon as I need another detail because it would be relevant in the story, I do two things:
1) Make up something that sounds good.
For instance, a leggy dame comes into Jones' office with a problem - a classic story hook for old timey detective stories. I need to know how he reacts. Is he a lech, or professional? Is he maybe gay? Does he banter, or is he businesslike?
Whatever you pick, it should be interesting enough to be worth mentioning at all, and it should serve the story at large. Never pick something that you think is boring.
In this case, I think Jones is all a bit of a wise guy who likes to flirt. I mean, that's a classic, and why would I be writing a detective story if I didn't enjoy the classics?
2) Write down what you've made up, keep it straight.
This would be the real trick to organic character development: things are fluid until you make a decision, but once you have decided, you need to stick to it. For the rest of his appearances, Jones needs to be a flirty snarker.
Moreover, later decisions that I make about Jones should support this conclusion generally: it's now too late to give him a hook for a hand or other serious physical impairment that would impact his romantic prospects, because if he had one, it should have come up in his initial scene flirting with someone.
The more decisions like this you make, the more a character goes from blurry to very focused and specific. If Jones keeps popping up, my audience will get to know him at the very same pace that I, the author do. Which is actually pretty cool when you're doing it.
And... that's actually all there is to it. Step (2) is where most people run into trouble, which is why I recommend making notes as you go. Start a traditional character profile - 20 questions style - and fill it in as you work.
Several major characters in my first series actually came about like this. If I ever get around to sharing it online, I'll talk about which ones and what that was like, but no promises - still a little disorganized on the point of, "What do I do with rough drafts of four books in the drawer, and another in process?"
Anyway, I better get to school. Time to learn about taxation and government organizational structures in detail, and I'm excited. Yes, really. Maybe I'll talk about economics sometime, too. :)
Solitaire
When I talk to people who play games about writing, and why they should write, the most common complaint seems to be this:
There's no random element.
When you play D&D, you have a table full of people. Hopefully, they'll behave in interesting and unpredictable ways: they do unexpected things when it's their turn to choose actions. They say funny things at the table.
This is why most people get out and do it, after all. The fun is in not knowing what comes next, and having a story to tell people afterward. Or, well, it would be if anybody wanted to hear stories about D&D. :)
Even if you've never played D&D, most social activities work the same way: you get together with friends, and hopefully something interesting happens. Something you could talk about later.
A lot of people who haven't written think that writing lacks that element of chaos and fun. They don't seem to believe me when I tell them that it's still there, that writing a story is random and strange and surprising. They don't understand that I write so fast mostly because I'm eager to see what happens next.
Rather than just repeat myself about this, here's an analogy to consider:
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that everyone reading this, (all four of you), have played Solitaire. It comes free on Windows. It's right there. If you missed it somehow, you should really try it*. People like Solitaire. On road trips, I've seen a version that you play holding the deck in one hand so that you don't even need a table.
What's interesting about this game is that every element in it is fixed, once play begins: it's just you and a set arrangement of cards. There's nobody to outwit. You don't shuffle the cards again, once they're dealt.
The outcome should be predetermined. There ought to be no reason to play it in the first place.
Except, as we all know, there's a little more to it than that. You can be surprised by the game. You can still lose, even though there's nobody to lose to.
The reason it can be fun is that even though the cards are dealt, you still have to make choices without seeing all of them at once. You can't track the whole deck and say with absolute certainty whether or not taking out any given card is going to help you or hurt you in the long run.
Writing's like that. You have to make choices about dialogue, actions and plot without understanding all of their potential implications. You can paint yourself into a corner or strike genius accidentally. Small choices sprawl and grow.
This allows something that looks static from the outside to be full of delightful surprises when you really get going. I think most people would enjoy what that feels like, if they just gave it a try. About the only thing I can compare it to is falling in love.
* (Disclaimer: I'm more of a Freecell man, myself.)
There's no random element.
When you play D&D, you have a table full of people. Hopefully, they'll behave in interesting and unpredictable ways: they do unexpected things when it's their turn to choose actions. They say funny things at the table.
This is why most people get out and do it, after all. The fun is in not knowing what comes next, and having a story to tell people afterward. Or, well, it would be if anybody wanted to hear stories about D&D. :)
Even if you've never played D&D, most social activities work the same way: you get together with friends, and hopefully something interesting happens. Something you could talk about later.
A lot of people who haven't written think that writing lacks that element of chaos and fun. They don't seem to believe me when I tell them that it's still there, that writing a story is random and strange and surprising. They don't understand that I write so fast mostly because I'm eager to see what happens next.
Rather than just repeat myself about this, here's an analogy to consider:
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that everyone reading this, (all four of you), have played Solitaire. It comes free on Windows. It's right there. If you missed it somehow, you should really try it*. People like Solitaire. On road trips, I've seen a version that you play holding the deck in one hand so that you don't even need a table.
What's interesting about this game is that every element in it is fixed, once play begins: it's just you and a set arrangement of cards. There's nobody to outwit. You don't shuffle the cards again, once they're dealt.
The outcome should be predetermined. There ought to be no reason to play it in the first place.
Except, as we all know, there's a little more to it than that. You can be surprised by the game. You can still lose, even though there's nobody to lose to.
The reason it can be fun is that even though the cards are dealt, you still have to make choices without seeing all of them at once. You can't track the whole deck and say with absolute certainty whether or not taking out any given card is going to help you or hurt you in the long run.
Writing's like that. You have to make choices about dialogue, actions and plot without understanding all of their potential implications. You can paint yourself into a corner or strike genius accidentally. Small choices sprawl and grow.
This allows something that looks static from the outside to be full of delightful surprises when you really get going. I think most people would enjoy what that feels like, if they just gave it a try. About the only thing I can compare it to is falling in love.
* (Disclaimer: I'm more of a Freecell man, myself.)
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Names
A dear friend recently linked me a trailer for the third season of the Star Wars cartoon series The Clone Wars. She asked me to see if I could guess where she'd stopped enjoying it. So I watched, and the whole thing seemed to be going pretty well: space ships, lightsaber fights. There was corny dialogue, but nothing too embarrassing... That is, until they introduced their new bad guy for the season.
His name was Savage Oppress.
No, really. I checked, just to make sure our ears were all right.
I watched a few episodes last season because they had a particularly cool bad guy... but even he had the unfortunate name of Cad Bane. I guess maybe they were worried that people would forget who to cheer for.
Anyway, this got me thinking about names today. Names aren't an afterthought. Most of how an audience imagines a story is guided by hints, rather than full blown descriptions. A name is a subtle but powerful way of helping people picture what you want to convey. For instance, picture someone named Melvin. Maybe Herbert or Bartholomew.
Go on, do it.
It's different than naming someone maybe Gregor or Jason, which is different than going for Ezekiel or Jedediah. All these names have baggage attached, cultural expectations we mostly share if we're from the same time and place.
They're like a spice: used lightly, they enhance your work. If you overdo it, your audience won't notice anything else. The parts you've gotten right will be drowned in it.
More than that, inconsistent naming conventions can hurt a story, pulling a reader out of the moment and straining their suspension of disbelief. A town that produces both 'Joe Smith' and 'Ilana the Grey, Slayer of the Moon-Beast' strains credulity without a very good explanation.
The trouble is, names are also hard. Most people, myself included, aren't very good at coming up with names on the spot. There's nothing magical about this deficiency, it's just not something that most of us do very often.
This is where research helps. There are tons of resources out there, if you look. I thought I'd share some with all of you, in case anybody else was toying with writing.
Behind the Name: This one is first names only, but it's really neat in that it lets you search for names by meaning. So if you want a name for a girl that means lucky, it would return a list like this.
The Random Name Generator: This one generates lists of first and last names. The gimmick here is that you can decide how obscure you would like the names to be, based on how many people had that name according to US Census Bureau data. The down side is that the generator doesn't match the ethnicity of the first name to the last name, so you can get silly results like "Conchita Keobaunleuang." I fix that by mixing and matching.
Of course, the subject of culture and names, we come to:
The Onomastikon: An enormous list of names from various cultures, often with meanings included. I use this a couple of different ways. First, I love it for significant characters because it's fun to browse through.
Second, I like to give all the members of a fictional culture names from a single Earth culture to offer a little cohesion to their descriptions - a simple, unobtrusive shorthand. (I also really like Assyrian ones for things that need to feel ancient and mysterious. Those guys knew how to sound awesome.)
The only down side is that some of the links in the Onomastikon are broken, and were like that when I first stumbled across it.
Of course, sometimes stuff shouldn't sound like anything you'd find on Earth at all. For that, there's this:
Fantasy Name Generator: This is a very flexible random name generator. I leaned on this one heavily, the last time I actually ran a game of D&D. A lot of the results are noise, but there's generally a handful of really fun entries per page. It's also good in that it can easily be used for places as well. Almost all the names in Ton-Vorash, including the titular city, came from this generator.
And, finally, I have one dedicated to place names now. I really have a hard time with those. It's:
Serendipity: This one isn't so different from the one right above it, just specifically intended for places.
I think that's it for today. I'm trying to get back into making this a habit, though.
His name was Savage Oppress.
No, really. I checked, just to make sure our ears were all right.
I watched a few episodes last season because they had a particularly cool bad guy... but even he had the unfortunate name of Cad Bane. I guess maybe they were worried that people would forget who to cheer for.
Anyway, this got me thinking about names today. Names aren't an afterthought. Most of how an audience imagines a story is guided by hints, rather than full blown descriptions. A name is a subtle but powerful way of helping people picture what you want to convey. For instance, picture someone named Melvin. Maybe Herbert or Bartholomew.
Go on, do it.
It's different than naming someone maybe Gregor or Jason, which is different than going for Ezekiel or Jedediah. All these names have baggage attached, cultural expectations we mostly share if we're from the same time and place.
They're like a spice: used lightly, they enhance your work. If you overdo it, your audience won't notice anything else. The parts you've gotten right will be drowned in it.
More than that, inconsistent naming conventions can hurt a story, pulling a reader out of the moment and straining their suspension of disbelief. A town that produces both 'Joe Smith' and 'Ilana the Grey, Slayer of the Moon-Beast' strains credulity without a very good explanation.
The trouble is, names are also hard. Most people, myself included, aren't very good at coming up with names on the spot. There's nothing magical about this deficiency, it's just not something that most of us do very often.
This is where research helps. There are tons of resources out there, if you look. I thought I'd share some with all of you, in case anybody else was toying with writing.
Behind the Name: This one is first names only, but it's really neat in that it lets you search for names by meaning. So if you want a name for a girl that means lucky, it would return a list like this.
The Random Name Generator: This one generates lists of first and last names. The gimmick here is that you can decide how obscure you would like the names to be, based on how many people had that name according to US Census Bureau data. The down side is that the generator doesn't match the ethnicity of the first name to the last name, so you can get silly results like "Conchita Keobaunleuang." I fix that by mixing and matching.
Of course, the subject of culture and names, we come to:
The Onomastikon: An enormous list of names from various cultures, often with meanings included. I use this a couple of different ways. First, I love it for significant characters because it's fun to browse through.
Second, I like to give all the members of a fictional culture names from a single Earth culture to offer a little cohesion to their descriptions - a simple, unobtrusive shorthand. (I also really like Assyrian ones for things that need to feel ancient and mysterious. Those guys knew how to sound awesome.)
The only down side is that some of the links in the Onomastikon are broken, and were like that when I first stumbled across it.
Of course, sometimes stuff shouldn't sound like anything you'd find on Earth at all. For that, there's this:
Fantasy Name Generator: This is a very flexible random name generator. I leaned on this one heavily, the last time I actually ran a game of D&D. A lot of the results are noise, but there's generally a handful of really fun entries per page. It's also good in that it can easily be used for places as well. Almost all the names in Ton-Vorash, including the titular city, came from this generator.
And, finally, I have one dedicated to place names now. I really have a hard time with those. It's:
Serendipity: This one isn't so different from the one right above it, just specifically intended for places.
I think that's it for today. I'm trying to get back into making this a habit, though.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Shorthand
*dusts off the old blog*
So, guess I haven't done this in ages. School got busy. Writing got busy. I will admit that I sort of forgot. But, here I am again, at least for now. :)
The new series is into its third book already, even though I've slowed *way* down. The three works form a single story, with no more than hours between each section. What's funny about this is that my original goal here was to write something episodic. Like, set up some characters and a situation in which short stories would be viable. I still want to do that, but I have yet to finish setting up the pieces: the nature of the protagonists and the space they're exploring. I expect to finish setting up the premise with the current story.
Between all three books, I'm already over 184,000 words altogether.
This has given me a new appreciation for why some people who want to write fantasy books just drop in elves or vampires and call it good*. The easy answer is that it's a lack of imagination, but I don't really believe that. As I said in an earlier post, imagination is part of what being human is all about: everybody's got one.
I think it's mostly about time and energy.
If you introduce something your audience already understands, you can just drop it in and offer a brief explanation of how your vampires aren't quite like Hollywood says. It only takes a minute, then you can race off to the plot.
Setting up something brand new means losing the advantage that shorthand offers: you have to explain it, and you have to sell your audience on it enough that they care in the first place.
It's riskier. It takes longer. It requires more skill overall, to avoid the dreaded infodump.
This isn't the only reason you see a lot of vampire/werewolf romances or fantasy books full of elves, but I don't remember seeing it talked about anywhere else, so I wanted to throw it out there.
Anyway, hope to post again soon.
(*Disclaimer: that's not to say I never use these props at all. I appreciate stock tropes too. It's just that I hate stopping there and calling it good. It's more fun to go further afield.)
So, guess I haven't done this in ages. School got busy. Writing got busy. I will admit that I sort of forgot. But, here I am again, at least for now. :)
The new series is into its third book already, even though I've slowed *way* down. The three works form a single story, with no more than hours between each section. What's funny about this is that my original goal here was to write something episodic. Like, set up some characters and a situation in which short stories would be viable. I still want to do that, but I have yet to finish setting up the pieces: the nature of the protagonists and the space they're exploring. I expect to finish setting up the premise with the current story.
Between all three books, I'm already over 184,000 words altogether.
This has given me a new appreciation for why some people who want to write fantasy books just drop in elves or vampires and call it good*. The easy answer is that it's a lack of imagination, but I don't really believe that. As I said in an earlier post, imagination is part of what being human is all about: everybody's got one.
I think it's mostly about time and energy.
If you introduce something your audience already understands, you can just drop it in and offer a brief explanation of how your vampires aren't quite like Hollywood says. It only takes a minute, then you can race off to the plot.
Setting up something brand new means losing the advantage that shorthand offers: you have to explain it, and you have to sell your audience on it enough that they care in the first place.
It's riskier. It takes longer. It requires more skill overall, to avoid the dreaded infodump.
This isn't the only reason you see a lot of vampire/werewolf romances or fantasy books full of elves, but I don't remember seeing it talked about anywhere else, so I wanted to throw it out there.
Anyway, hope to post again soon.
(*Disclaimer: that's not to say I never use these props at all. I appreciate stock tropes too. It's just that I hate stopping there and calling it good. It's more fun to go further afield.)
Monday, December 14, 2009
More writing about writing...
Well, I'm still slacking off with regard to finals. I hate my accounting class with a fiery, burning passion for reasons...well, I could go on all day, but I suppose the upshot is that I do not feel that I got what I paid for, there. It would've been smart to drop it when I had the chance.
I was too proud. Accounting's always been easy for me. Of course, that's only when the instructor does their job...
*mutters*
Everything else was fascinating, but it's just been a tiring term. I spent five hours on game theory with a study group today, and feel no better prepared than I was for that final at the start of the day.
If there was ever anything in this world that made me feel inadequate, it's that particular application of logic. Don't remember the last time something was so hard to wrap my head around.
So here I am again. Taking a break from taking a break from...well, you get the idea. Anyway, I promised to talk about how I've been going about writing last time, in case anybody was interested. So, here goes...
A lot of people complain about not being able to write because they don't have any ideas. This simply isn't true. The human brain is a magnificent thing that is constantly offering us all sorts of scenarios:
'What if I could get Monday off from work?'
'What if I could date a supermodel?'
'What if there are zombies in the basement?'
Everybody does this, basically all the time. We even do it when we're sleeping.
So the trouble isn't having an idea in the first place, the trouble is that we feel our ideas aren't worth the trouble to develop. That they aren't good enough, that they're too boring, that they aren't special.
The thing is that almost every story, from horrible scrawl to enduring classic, had a humble beginning. Just to pick on one that was mentioned to me tonight, take Star Wars. It's assembled from what amount to stock pieces: a young man who learns he's the Chosen One and gets a magic sword. A mysterious teacher and a beautiful princess. An evil wizard and a black knight.
That's all very forgettable, and yet here I am, mentioning it decades later. I suppose you could argue that the special effects bought it a place in the history books, but many stories without that edge have had a similarly lasting appeal.
The truth is that an idea doesn't have to be new and unique to be worthwhile. Not the beginning of it, and not the pieces. It isn't necessary to wait until you have a notion that will set the world on fire. Almost any idea can be the seed of something decent, or even something genuinely good, depending on the execution.
The thing that's needed to finish it is, simply, discipline.
Every time I write, I see something wrong with what I'm doing. Something that could be better. As a result, I'm tempted to second guess myself at every turn. To rework a piece over and over in search of that one, perfect moment where it becomes something beautiful. Something people will remember.
I want, very much, for the things I say to be remembered.
The trouble with that is that I can't get more than half a page without feeling like that. I'm doing it now: this blog post could definitely be organized with more elegance. It could be less choppy. It's hard not to do something about it.
I believe that most people feel this when they write. Happens a lot with people I talk to about why they're not doing it. I think a lot of them think the behavior is helpful, that it polishes what they're doing...and that they simply do not have the endurance to see it through to the end.
That's not true, though. Basic editing is good. Endless revision is not. Nothing's perfect, and no amount of tweaking can change that. All it can do is keep a person tied up so that they never finish what they were doing.
In this, I've been lucky because of my background of not-writing. My understanding of the narrative process is derived largely from interactive activities, rather than solitary ones. Like I said last time, I never kept a notebook and wrote in it or anything.
Instead, I learned how to spin a yarn mostly over D&D books. Well, and a host of other games that most of you have probably never heard of. Ones I like much better for a variety of nerdy, nerdy reasons that I will spare you all.
This is good because of the pressure it applies.
If you have a live audience, you can't say, "Well, I'll tell you what happens in six hours, after I've had some time to think about it." You're on the spot for the whole day, and you have to be able to react to the unexpected at almost every turn. You're forced to roll with ideas that you might discard if you had a whole minute to consider why they're bad.
Eventually, this can become natural if you let it. I'm used to working with ideas that are not necessarily the best and trying to rapidly cobble up something that people won't immediately reject. To take something familiar and twist it just enough that it's interesting again.
It gets a lot easier with practice.
The only down side to this is that I'm used to a lot of feedback. When you're playing a game like that, your audience is right there. You have the opportunity to constantly read them and adjust what you're doing if it's not working. You also get instant gratification when it is.
That's heady, and I'm a little hooked on it. I'll admit that even now, I have a small circle of readers that I constantly poke about what they think of every little thing I've written, pretty much daily.
I think I'm bothering at least some of them, and I'm not sure what to do about that.
It still beats not telling a story in the first place, though, I think.
*sigh*
Getting back to what I hope might be useful, the other thing I've done is to develop a multiple document system for writing. I use:
* A primary document which contains the bulk of my rough draft.
* A separate document for the scene I am currently working on.
* A document for material I've scrapped, in case it had a turn of phrase I decide I wanted after all.
* A document to brainstorm in, stream of consciousness style.
The rule is that I can do anything I want to the scene I'm working on. I can play with it, throw it away, anything. However, once I'm mostly satisfied, it must be cut and pasted into the rough draft. I've done some simple spreadsheets to look at how fast I write, and I have some rules of thumb concerning how long material should generally be left there.
The primary rough draft is to be left as untouched as possible. I don't alter it for content, only typos and the rare continuity glitch. At first, I tried not to look at it much at all.
This keeps my eyes away from things I'd want to nitpick most of the time, but leaves everything where I can easily find it.
I think that's probably enough for tonight, since it's almost 2AM. Hope this was of any use to anyone.
I was too proud. Accounting's always been easy for me. Of course, that's only when the instructor does their job...
*mutters*
Everything else was fascinating, but it's just been a tiring term. I spent five hours on game theory with a study group today, and feel no better prepared than I was for that final at the start of the day.
If there was ever anything in this world that made me feel inadequate, it's that particular application of logic. Don't remember the last time something was so hard to wrap my head around.
So here I am again. Taking a break from taking a break from...well, you get the idea. Anyway, I promised to talk about how I've been going about writing last time, in case anybody was interested. So, here goes...
A lot of people complain about not being able to write because they don't have any ideas. This simply isn't true. The human brain is a magnificent thing that is constantly offering us all sorts of scenarios:
'What if I could get Monday off from work?'
'What if I could date a supermodel?'
'What if there are zombies in the basement?'
Everybody does this, basically all the time. We even do it when we're sleeping.
So the trouble isn't having an idea in the first place, the trouble is that we feel our ideas aren't worth the trouble to develop. That they aren't good enough, that they're too boring, that they aren't special.
The thing is that almost every story, from horrible scrawl to enduring classic, had a humble beginning. Just to pick on one that was mentioned to me tonight, take Star Wars. It's assembled from what amount to stock pieces: a young man who learns he's the Chosen One and gets a magic sword. A mysterious teacher and a beautiful princess. An evil wizard and a black knight.
That's all very forgettable, and yet here I am, mentioning it decades later. I suppose you could argue that the special effects bought it a place in the history books, but many stories without that edge have had a similarly lasting appeal.
The truth is that an idea doesn't have to be new and unique to be worthwhile. Not the beginning of it, and not the pieces. It isn't necessary to wait until you have a notion that will set the world on fire. Almost any idea can be the seed of something decent, or even something genuinely good, depending on the execution.
The thing that's needed to finish it is, simply, discipline.
Every time I write, I see something wrong with what I'm doing. Something that could be better. As a result, I'm tempted to second guess myself at every turn. To rework a piece over and over in search of that one, perfect moment where it becomes something beautiful. Something people will remember.
I want, very much, for the things I say to be remembered.
The trouble with that is that I can't get more than half a page without feeling like that. I'm doing it now: this blog post could definitely be organized with more elegance. It could be less choppy. It's hard not to do something about it.
I believe that most people feel this when they write. Happens a lot with people I talk to about why they're not doing it. I think a lot of them think the behavior is helpful, that it polishes what they're doing...and that they simply do not have the endurance to see it through to the end.
That's not true, though. Basic editing is good. Endless revision is not. Nothing's perfect, and no amount of tweaking can change that. All it can do is keep a person tied up so that they never finish what they were doing.
In this, I've been lucky because of my background of not-writing. My understanding of the narrative process is derived largely from interactive activities, rather than solitary ones. Like I said last time, I never kept a notebook and wrote in it or anything.
Instead, I learned how to spin a yarn mostly over D&D books. Well, and a host of other games that most of you have probably never heard of. Ones I like much better for a variety of nerdy, nerdy reasons that I will spare you all.
This is good because of the pressure it applies.
If you have a live audience, you can't say, "Well, I'll tell you what happens in six hours, after I've had some time to think about it." You're on the spot for the whole day, and you have to be able to react to the unexpected at almost every turn. You're forced to roll with ideas that you might discard if you had a whole minute to consider why they're bad.
Eventually, this can become natural if you let it. I'm used to working with ideas that are not necessarily the best and trying to rapidly cobble up something that people won't immediately reject. To take something familiar and twist it just enough that it's interesting again.
It gets a lot easier with practice.
The only down side to this is that I'm used to a lot of feedback. When you're playing a game like that, your audience is right there. You have the opportunity to constantly read them and adjust what you're doing if it's not working. You also get instant gratification when it is.
That's heady, and I'm a little hooked on it. I'll admit that even now, I have a small circle of readers that I constantly poke about what they think of every little thing I've written, pretty much daily.
I think I'm bothering at least some of them, and I'm not sure what to do about that.
It still beats not telling a story in the first place, though, I think.
*sigh*
Getting back to what I hope might be useful, the other thing I've done is to develop a multiple document system for writing. I use:
* A primary document which contains the bulk of my rough draft.
* A separate document for the scene I am currently working on.
* A document for material I've scrapped, in case it had a turn of phrase I decide I wanted after all.
* A document to brainstorm in, stream of consciousness style.
The rule is that I can do anything I want to the scene I'm working on. I can play with it, throw it away, anything. However, once I'm mostly satisfied, it must be cut and pasted into the rough draft. I've done some simple spreadsheets to look at how fast I write, and I have some rules of thumb concerning how long material should generally be left there.
The primary rough draft is to be left as untouched as possible. I don't alter it for content, only typos and the rare continuity glitch. At first, I tried not to look at it much at all.
This keeps my eyes away from things I'd want to nitpick most of the time, but leaves everything where I can easily find it.
I think that's probably enough for tonight, since it's almost 2AM. Hope this was of any use to anyone.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
First post
I'm supposed to be getting schoolwork done, but the truth is, there's only two weeks left of that and my heart just isn't in it.
So, here I am, taking a break from writing with...yet more writing.
It's funny. I've spent the better part of my adult life trying to avoid becoming a writer of any kind. The lure was always there. I love stories. I think narrative is how people understand the world, and that you can learn all sorts of things about people by the stories they choose to hear and tell.
Thing was, though, that my grandmother was a professional author. As in, able to pay at least some of the bills by selling her work. What I've read of it wasn't really my genre, but it was beautifully crafted.
She was very good.
She died a paranoid shut-in, though, and I've always felt that her occupation was a contributing factor. That by turning her attention so far into worlds she built, she lost touch with the real one in some profound and irretrievable way.
So I always, always found something else to do when I was younger. I spent a lot of that energy on roleplaying games like D&D, just to have that creative energy going somewhere harmless. Say what you will about sitting around a table with dice and Mountain Dew, it still gets you out of the house and interacting with real human beings.
Last May, though, I was really depressed about finals. They were harder than I could ever remember school being. My most recent gaming group had collapsed due to a variety of factors. My best friends were all very busy, and I didn't want to be a downer. My girlfriend was in worse shape than I was.
I decided that, to feel better about life, I ought to Do Something.
So I sat down and wrote my first novel. Took roughly five weeks, and I completely shot from the hip. No outline, nothing, just sat down and typed every day. (We're not talking a NaNoWriMo novella, either. It's about 100,000 words.)
Then I went to Washington to visit my family and friends for a couple of weeks, came home, and cranked out the sequel.
(The two are sort of...me playing with the Hero's Journey. They coincide with me reading volumes of TVTropes. I'm not ready to post them online, at least not whole - I'm still holding out hope that I'll find some time to edit them properly, and maybe find an agent. Sell them. Become wealthy and famous and all that other stuff that'll never happen. But I'll post excerpts at some point.)
The whole deal was very cathartic, honestly. It was better than playing roleplaying games. It was better than watching TV or movies. It was better than reading books. My record was 19 hours out of 24 spent just writing - got in over 8700 words just that day, and I nearly forgot to eat. It was glorious, and I was hooked.
I took it for proof that I'd been wrong when I was younger. That I should've done this a long time ago.
Then school started back up, and...that's about where I first ran into trouble. I scrapped a 62000+ word partial draft of the third novel because it wasn't gelling. Wrote some short stories to sort of set the scene, and started the third novel over from scratch.
The second time around with that book is going better: it's more focused, and I have a better idea of what to do with a number of the characters. It's still a little labyrinthine though, due to the number of characters and plots I need to make sure to address. As a result, I'm worried about coming in at a reasonable length.
I most emphatically don't want to push the story past a trilogy. I really want to write about other characters soon, give these ones a rest.
So...since I was feeling stuck, I started another project that is tangentially connected. A distant spinoff that shares the rules of the original series, but none of the characters or specific situations.
This evening, I'm feeling a little tired to keep that on the rails, so here I am: writing a blog post to take a break from writing a novella that is a break from my novel that is a break from my work.
Looking back at what's gone on tonight, I think maybe I made the right call when I was younger. This really is looking like a trap, now.
Since I'm already a junkie, though, I'll spend some time talking about how I went about this. Probably next time.
So, here I am, taking a break from writing with...yet more writing.
It's funny. I've spent the better part of my adult life trying to avoid becoming a writer of any kind. The lure was always there. I love stories. I think narrative is how people understand the world, and that you can learn all sorts of things about people by the stories they choose to hear and tell.
Thing was, though, that my grandmother was a professional author. As in, able to pay at least some of the bills by selling her work. What I've read of it wasn't really my genre, but it was beautifully crafted.
She was very good.
She died a paranoid shut-in, though, and I've always felt that her occupation was a contributing factor. That by turning her attention so far into worlds she built, she lost touch with the real one in some profound and irretrievable way.
So I always, always found something else to do when I was younger. I spent a lot of that energy on roleplaying games like D&D, just to have that creative energy going somewhere harmless. Say what you will about sitting around a table with dice and Mountain Dew, it still gets you out of the house and interacting with real human beings.
Last May, though, I was really depressed about finals. They were harder than I could ever remember school being. My most recent gaming group had collapsed due to a variety of factors. My best friends were all very busy, and I didn't want to be a downer. My girlfriend was in worse shape than I was.
I decided that, to feel better about life, I ought to Do Something.
So I sat down and wrote my first novel. Took roughly five weeks, and I completely shot from the hip. No outline, nothing, just sat down and typed every day. (We're not talking a NaNoWriMo novella, either. It's about 100,000 words.)
Then I went to Washington to visit my family and friends for a couple of weeks, came home, and cranked out the sequel.
(The two are sort of...me playing with the Hero's Journey. They coincide with me reading volumes of TVTropes. I'm not ready to post them online, at least not whole - I'm still holding out hope that I'll find some time to edit them properly, and maybe find an agent. Sell them. Become wealthy and famous and all that other stuff that'll never happen. But I'll post excerpts at some point.)
The whole deal was very cathartic, honestly. It was better than playing roleplaying games. It was better than watching TV or movies. It was better than reading books. My record was 19 hours out of 24 spent just writing - got in over 8700 words just that day, and I nearly forgot to eat. It was glorious, and I was hooked.
I took it for proof that I'd been wrong when I was younger. That I should've done this a long time ago.
Then school started back up, and...that's about where I first ran into trouble. I scrapped a 62000+ word partial draft of the third novel because it wasn't gelling. Wrote some short stories to sort of set the scene, and started the third novel over from scratch.
The second time around with that book is going better: it's more focused, and I have a better idea of what to do with a number of the characters. It's still a little labyrinthine though, due to the number of characters and plots I need to make sure to address. As a result, I'm worried about coming in at a reasonable length.
I most emphatically don't want to push the story past a trilogy. I really want to write about other characters soon, give these ones a rest.
So...since I was feeling stuck, I started another project that is tangentially connected. A distant spinoff that shares the rules of the original series, but none of the characters or specific situations.
This evening, I'm feeling a little tired to keep that on the rails, so here I am: writing a blog post to take a break from writing a novella that is a break from my novel that is a break from my work.
Looking back at what's gone on tonight, I think maybe I made the right call when I was younger. This really is looking like a trap, now.
Since I'm already a junkie, though, I'll spend some time talking about how I went about this. Probably next time.
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