Tag: novel writing

The Novel Bible

I started thinking about my novels’ bibles while reading Whitney Carter’s WorldBuilding Post today. Some good suggestions were in there and I’ve found and incorporated most of them on my own.

The one thing about naming and history conventions for me is to keep track of them. Not just what they’re named, but sometimes, why they’re so named. I keep a separate document for that, and usually have it opened and update it as I’m writing, or at the session’s end. The bible for ‘Long Summer’, sequel to ‘Returnee’, is over 7,000 words. That’s not really big; James Michener used to have binders of information.

More interesting to me is that I’ve learned that I do more research to develop and build the world than I do to write the story. While I will write from forty-five to ninety minutes on an average day (and end up with word counts from one thousand to three thousand words in a session), I spend several hours researching and developing the worlds, characters, settings and situations. This is true not just in science fiction, which is my preferred genre, but in mystery, which I also write.

For example, if someone was born in America in 1975 and the novel takes place in 2015, they’re forty years old. That’s easy. But what music did they listen to while growing up in America? Did they watch television, and what did they watch when they did? What significant historic events happened in their lifetime, and it were they affected? Technology is part of this, something that I remember from a comment my mother made. While she’d traveled across the United States during her lifetime, I flew on a commercial jet when I was eighteen, and she didn’t do so for almost twenty years after my first flight. As we work and live, it’s easy to forget that ubiquitous devices like computers and cell phones are relatively new to human existence. Our civilization and societies are rich with laws, technology and permanent solutions that no longer apply. It’s important for the novel’s honesty and integrity to bear these matters in mind to develop coherent characters and stories.

I like substantial verisimilitude to novels that I read, and I include it in the novels that I write. Some people would say that I put too much in but I love tangent explanations. It’s largely because I think people are complicated. Little is black and white to many. They may state that it’s black and white, and they may act like it’s black and white, but most are offering a sketch insight to their true beliefs. Some of this is driven by people being politically or emotionally sensitive (or the opposite, attempting to be deliberately rude and crude), acting out, or displacement. More often, people struggle to untangle the skeins of history, thinking and emotions. There is also a large contingency of lazy people, and people who are just too tired, worn out, or impatient to figure out what they think, so they take the easiest courses of thoughts and actions.

All of this is recorded, in shorthand, in the novel’s bible. In ‘Long Summer’, as in ‘Returnee’, it’s easy when addressing future Human development. Corporations dominate, so corporate structure and thinking dominate. These are calcified, turgid organizations driven by reducing overhead and increasing profit, crying out, “We are a team,” or, “We are a family,” when they need to encourage hard work and cooperation, shrugging and noting, “We are a business,” when they cut jobs. They’re governed by wealthy people living in bubbles. However, factions who oppose corporations do exist. They cite multiple issues with corporations for their existence as individuals and groups. They’re more challenging to develop.

Even more challenging are the other intelligent races that emerge in ‘Long Summer’. Six races, including another branch of Humanity (seven, if you include Humans that have spread out from Earth), dominate the known and settled galaxies. One of these races is a long gone race. Traces of them are found everywhere but there isn’t any evidence of where they went or why. Such vacuums aren’t acceptable; naturally, theories abound about what happened to them.

All of this is recorded in the novel’s bible. Brief entries are made about the order in which these races encountered one another and their relationships with one another. Two of these races (besides Humans) dominate but the others are written into the script in various manners. All of this is organized and recorded. My bible itself is an organic record, growing and changing shape. It began, as they always do, with a few bullet lists. I always go with what I need for the moment to move forward. As more information and understanding was demanded, I developed a more complex structure to impose order so I can easily find information (what colors was his/her eyes/skin/hair again?) without exploding with frustration.

It’s an odd confession to make as a pantser. Pantser is the term often applied to writers who don’t plan and outline their novels in advance. I prefer the expression ‘organic’ writing, in that you plant the seeds and let it grow. Others call it writing in the dark. That works, too, as your mind’s lights find and illuminate the way.

In a way, I think of this novel writing approach in the same way that journalism works. A story happens: scandal, an explosion, an attack, an arrest. We have the big picture. Details are needed. Motivation and other questions about what, how and why happen arise to be answered. Reporters rush to the scene. Interviews are conducted. Research is accomplished. Investigation are launched, and layers are peeled back.

That’s how I like it. I tried to be a planner. Frankly, I lacked the discipline. My ideas and characters excited me. Scenes and dialogue bloomed, and I was urged to rush right in. And I did.

Whatever works, is my motto. There is the perfect way, the classic way, the artistic way. Mine is an imperfect way, and I’m continually addressing it. Each of must survey and inventory ourselves as writers to learn our strengths and weaknesses and develop our preferences for how we write. And after we write, we learn to edit, revise, polish. Writing is a tangled endeavor.

Now, a quad shot mocha is at hand. Time to write like crazy, one more time. Tauren just encountered the Travail Avresti for the first time. This is an historic moment, the first time that Humans from Earth are facing another intelligent civilization.

I want to know what happens.

2

Giving Up, Going On

  1. On a delayed train from Manchester to London in 1990, Rowling wrote her initial Potter ideas on a napkin. She typed her first book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone on a typewriter, often choosing to write in Edinburgh cafés, accompanied by baby daughter Jessica, now 19, named after Jessica Mitford, a heroine of Rowling’s youth. ~ J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series and other novels.
  2. In the end, I received 60 rejections for The Help. But letter number 61 was the one that accepted me. After my five years of writing and three and a half years of rejection, an agent named Susan Ramer took pity on me. What if I had given up at 15? Or 40? Or even 60? Three weeks later, Susan sold The Help to Amy Einhorn Books.     ~ Kathryn Stockett, author of ‘The Help’.
  3. After she wrote Still Alice and was ready to get it into the market, Lisa spent a year trying to get literary agents and editors at publishing houses to speak with her. The editors all treated her as yet another aspiring writer not worth their time, and the few literary agents she managed to reach thought her novel wouldn’t sell. ~ Lisa Genova, author of ‘Still Alice’.
  4. The situation was improbable. Just one year prior, Weir, a computer programmer by trade, had given up hope of becoming a professional writer after failing to get a single agent or publisher excited about his work. But then he posted The Martian online, and it generated such buzz that now here he was, signing mid-six-figure deals with both Crown Publishing and Twentieth Century Fox. His self-publishing success story—well-paid tech nerd becomes really well paid novelist—made him the envy of every would-be author who ever fantasized about ditching his day job. Even critics were on board. (“Brilliant. A celebration of human ingenuity and the purest example of real sci-fi for many years,” said The Wall Street Journal.) ~ Andy Weir, author of ‘The Martian’.
  5. He pitched the book and was rejected 27 times before a chance encounter with a friend who had just landed an editing job.  Geisel told his friend about his book, about the rejection, and told him he was fed up and about to destroy the book.  The friend read it and Dr. Seuss was born. ~Theodore Geisel, author of ‘The Cat in the Hat’ and other books.

It’s just something to think about. You, and your good taste and writing skills, may be unknown and yet still be a brilliant writer and yet still be unpublished and unknown.

And you, along with the editors, publishers, agents, family members and critique group who rejected you, might all be right. You don’t ‘deserve’ publication. And you do.

If you go into Amazon and read some novels, you’ll discover scathing reviews of great classics and best-sellers. And there are books like ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’, which I didn’t like, that began as fan fiction published on a website and ended up as a best seller and movie.

You can’t predict what will happen so invest that energy elsewhere. Write like crazy. Plan and write. Revise and edit. Establish a process or system and keep trying, keep trying, keep trying. Write because you enjoy writing. Write a book in a month in November. Do what it takes. Believe in yourself. Keep believing.

And keep trying.

 

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Your Good Taste

I think Ira Glass captures the truth between effort, taste, and beginning in this video, ‘Nobody Tells Beginners’. Gallery posted this as encouragement and insight for the NaNoWriMo participants, but wherever you reside on the writing spectrum, you can learn from this video. It’s about having courage and patience, enduring setbacks, and persevering.

So here, it is.

 

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Twelve Percent

Here I am, storming away, out of coffee, typing as fast as I can, unable to keep up with my mind’s streaming words until my fingers call, “Time out.”

Sitting up and stretching, massaging my fingers, I see how the coffee shop has changed since my arrival. I see my mocha is gone, that I drank it all. I think about getting another. But my laptop’s battery power is down to fourteen percent and I didn’t bring my power supply today. It’s going to be warning me soon that I need to shut down.

Putting it all together, I realize I’ve been writing – thinking, typing, editing – for almost ninety minutes with but a few pauses. I remember checking the time once and seeing it was 12:15. Now it’s 1:01.

Spending time with my characters and exploring their lives and situations was mesmerizing. I’m sorry that it’s ending. I think, maybe I can go power up at home and continue. But I know that’s not how ‘it’ works for me. Time to stop writing like crazy, pack it up and head home. The rain has stopped and the sun is shining, and I have some yard work planned, anyway.

Also, I just realized, I didn’t eat breakfast or anything, and I’m becoming very hungry.

And there is the laptop’s warning: twelve percent. Time to go.

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For Those About to NaNoWriMo….

I never did the NaNoWriMo. It’s a terrific idea. It started in 1999 but I didn’t hear about it for a long time. By then, I’d established my writing habits, understood my preferences and was working full time for IBM and didn’t embrace the idea.For a long time, I believed there was one way to write and searched for the magic formula. The magic formula appeared to be research, plan, write, edit & revise, polish and publish. I’m being simple. The formula was much more complex.

So I worked hard on planning, researching, outlining. I created huge outlines, detailed drawings and maps, and entire histories of characters. After months and months of work, I’d have an enormous wealth of information, and nothing written. Discouraged, the next time I had an idea, I thought about it for a while. A scene came to me and I jumped in and started writing. I later discovered that others do that. As a process, it’s referred to organic writing, or being a pantser. I’m still refining my writing process but I’ve come a long, long, long way.

I admire those out there jumping into NaNoWriMo and salute you. Have fun.

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The Progress Reports

“How’s the writing going?” I’m asked after a session.

“Did you have a good writing session?” another asks later.

“How’s the book coming along?” a companion queries me when I meet.

And I want to respond with a lot of information. I’ve written sixty thousand plus words. The book excites me. The ideas, characters and settings are all lively, energizing me when I sit down with it. That’s how it is on most days.

But some days, my writing sessions aren’t about the laptop’s clicking keys. Some days, I sit and talk to myself, or I’m walk and talk to myself. (Walking is a great way to write.) “Why did this happen? Because that happened. What did he do? What did she do? So what happens next with her?”

On those days, I’m likely to do a lot of spot editing and polishing, re-reading what was written about one of the story lines to find the path and generate enough light to look ahead to ‘what’s next’. Paradoxically, these are often the most exciting and enjoyable sessions because I’m solving a problem, and I also see clear progress of the novel being written. It’s all coming together. I’m assembling the puzzle, I’m learning the fuller story, and gaining greater understanding of my characters and the setting. I’m fortunate to write another 800-1,000 words on those days.

These sort of days prove, it’s not about the word count.

On all writing days (which is about three hundred sixty-one days of the year), though, I answer the questions with the same non-committal, almost laconic manner, “It’s going good.” I know they’re being polite and supportive. It’s like asking, “How is your day?” A full report isn’t expected, just a general summary, brief, if you please. We’re all just being polite. I hold back for the blog posts to wax more enthusiastically, but even there, I restrain myself. I’m just one of seven hundred gazillion writers posting and writing, gluing my sanity back together and casting the tea leaves, trying to make something out of the voices in my head who urge, “Write this down.”

But sometimes, when I’m writing, I can’t help myself, and I laugh out loud at what I thought or wrote. Nobody looks up, because, you know, I may look harmless, but I might be crazy. You can never tell.

They don’t know that I’m just a writer. I leave my badge at home.

0

Doya Ever…?

Writing like crazy….

Well, actually thinking like crazy and developing background information to help me advance my understanding of what the hell’s going on in ‘my’ novel. I don’t know if I claim it as much as it has claimed me.

But, as frequently happens with me, this noodling about background sprouts tangent ideas. Writing about another intelligent race (the Milennial) and their complexities (the Lavie (which are their elders) gain weight and lose their limbs, becoming a food source for the larvae), my writing brain comments, “Boy, there’s a terrific short story in that.” Naturally, an argument commences between the novel writer in residence in my brain and the short story writer.

Does this ever happen to you? You’re writing one piece but another suddenly calls and makes an inviting proposition?

Naturally, I said no. The short story writer in me has less traction. I enjoy short stories, love reading and writing them, but I enjoy the novel form more. I tilt toward the novel. So I tell the short story writer, “I appreciate the idea, but we need to stay focused.”

“Come on, it doesn’t need to be long, just twenty-five hundred, maybe five thousand words.”

“I said, no.”

“But it’ll be easy. You can knock it off in a couple days.”

I laugh. Writers are always making such promises. “No.”

Pouting, the short story writer sulks away. “You’ll be sorry someday,” I hear him muttering. “You’ll see.”

The novelist doesn’t let me dwell on that. “Excellent,” he enthuses. “You dispatched him with aplomb. Now, on to the Profemies and the heritage left behind their departure….”

4

A Vicious Compulsion

A question often asked between writers is, why do you write? Strangely, I don’t encounter it from non-writers. Non-writers seem to understand that I’m a writer. Writers (and potential writers) want to understand why.

The flip answer is that I must. I’m compelled by nature or desire. Sometimes I think it’s an escape and an addiction. Writing about other characters, worlds and situations permits fight from my life blues. Those are shallow answers.

In truth, I follow a few cycles. One cycle is that I enjoy reading. Reading entertains and educates me. Reading fertilizes thought and wonder and introduces me to new mysteries and solutions, and helps me keep growing. Reading is enjoyable, and I admire writers that can tell stories. I want to emulate them. So that cycle is that I read and I want to be like those who wrote what I read, so I write, and then I read more.

The second cycle cascades from that first cycle. The thought, that would be an interesting story initiates the second cycle. Headlines, images, comments, trends and observations all trigger that simple five word thought engine.

‘That’ is often just a concept, though. Behind the concept are complicated questions to link it all together through words. The questions are about characters, motivations, situation, setting, and dive into emotional and logical issues of the story, and then dealing with the novel challenges of pacing, structure, arcs, climax, denouement, along with grammar and punctuation, and ‘truth’. The story must be truthfully told in that it must be faithful to the premise created and the established parameters. If I’m going to lie to the reader to create an ending, I have to establish early that I’m lying. This is the gospel that I developed as a reader who was disgusted after discovering the writer lied to me, or left something out, or didn’t really end the story.

All of this requires thinking. Gosh, I love thinking, especially the abstract thinking embraced in the promise of, “What if…?”

It’s this process that compels me to write. Once a character merges into my thinking, and their situation and setting evolve, it’s difficult to just dismiss them. I prefer embracing them and asking all the questions about them and what’s happening, pursuing them until this mystery is resolved and told in a story.

I suppose I can think through those things without writing it down or typing it up. (In a Steven Wright aside, why do we ‘write down’ but ‘type up’?) To put that another way without the distraction of those expressions, I suppose I can think through those matters without recording outcomes. Perhaps this is where the compulsion actually begins, to add the answers to these questions to the stories being told.

Sipping coffee, my preferred stimulant, and reflecting anew on the process and compulsion, I grasp how I see it as a painting. I grew up drawing pictures, sketching and later painting, breaking off from career paths involving art because everything I created was too mundane and traditional. Now I can glance back and understand that I was impatient and restless. Whereas I should have attempted new directions, I merely stopped and sought other creative avenues. In writing, though, I’ve found the challenge to improve and find new directions to be invigorating and stimulating, puzzles to be solved.

In a sense, puzzles summarize what it’s all about for me. I enjoy Sudoku and logic problems, and when I was employed or in the military, I enjoyed solving problems, and organizing processes. Writing envelopes all of these facets for me.

After that writing and thinking, then, I come back to the kernel of my personality that I tried denying, that I write because I must, because I need a creative outlet. Were it not writing, it would need to be something else.

It is a compulsion.

So here I am, at the computer again with my QSM, ready to write like crazy…one…more…time.

1

A Beautiful Thing

Writers, poets, musicians and artists all know this, I think, but I write to express my feelings to and for myself. I share it on the blog to find some validation and to give others encouragement, so I’ll share this today.

I’m riding the wave. The wave is when the work in progress is fully comprehended and effortlessly reached, providing a calming high. I’m buoyant and yet introspective, but I don’t mind being like that because I’m happy. Writing is going great. It’s constantly with me but I see that as a beautiful, wonderful state.

My friends probably wonder about my absence. I haven’t been out for beers for over a week. My wife probably thinks I’m losing some cognitive functions because I drive to the wrong place. I can’t and don’t explain that I’m still writing in my head. The story is so rich and real, I don’t want to disturb it, but just write and write. I also know that my enthusiastic descriptions of what I’m doing, what’s going on with me, and what’s happening in the novel tends to create an EGO state for her – eyes glazing over. Only other creative people, involved in their own realms of endeavor, can truly understand. I get that. It shades my existence with loneliness because I can’t share with all these others, these non-writers, non-musicians, non-artists and non-poets. They just don’t seem to get it. But then, I’m not social, so I don’t hunger with the urge to socialize, and it amuses me to watch others engage in that drive.

There are other drives I don’t have that others display. Hunting, dancing, hobbies, making money. Thinking about them and striving to gather insights into those activities and their influences on the people and societies is part of my writing enjoyment.

It’s been a long ride on this wave. I wonder when it’s going to break, so I’ve resisted writing about it, fearful my mentioning it will jinx it. Even as I finished writing this and I read it again, I think, do I really want to put this out there? This wave is so strong, I’m still with Handley on the bridge, peering over her shoulder and spying on her thoughts and actions, and contemplating what’s happening with Pram, Richard and Brett. This wave is strong.

Oh, the coffee is drained. Two thousand words have been written and edited, and ninety minutes have elapsed. A weather storm is approaching so there are real existence matters to attend. Selfishly, I hope we don’t have a power outage, that the storm isn’t strong, because I don’t want the wave to break. I know how shallow that seems, that in this world of life and death, I’m thinking of myself and my writing. I laugh at myself, mocking my priorities.

But of course I hope others safely survive, that the damages aren’t too great, that when they are great, people are able to rebuild and continue on. And of course, I understand, death is a natural part of life. Yet, even in those wishes, hopes, and acceptance, the writer within thinks of the scenes, emotions and dialogue, and imagines the emerging stories….

Writing really is a sickness.

But it’s such a beautiful thing.

Cheers

9

Sat Down to Write

I sat down to write today after a pleasing session yesterday. The baristas had gifted me an extra espresso sized serving mocha in addition to my standard QSM. I sipped it down, delighting in the melange of mingling flavors, and I remembered —

A new character’s name is Ckyl. Came to me last night.

A scene I wrote in my head about the starship, River Styx, and its occupants and description.

And more details about tachyon syndrome.

Changes to Chor. I’d focused on sex and sexual preferences and choosing or accepting sexual identities, but I’d not considered some of the other matters available to my future people. So I’d overlooked that Chor is a cat person.

And Pram wonders why becoming a cat person is a popular choice. People don’t want to be dog or bird people, although he’d encountered some of them. He knew of a few who went the centaur route (with one also managing to incorporate a unicorn appearance). A small society of humans had transgened themselves into dinosaurs, and another group into dragons, and there are small knots of gnome, fairy, demon, and leprechaun peoples, but cat people were far the most popular and most frequently encountered. He was pleased, though, because he remained unique. There were a few Titans out there, and a cyclops, and a couple of Hercules pretenders, Minotaurs, Hulks, and Avatars, and super-heroes from ancient comic books, but he was the only Colossus, even after all these years.

Pram had not asked Chor about why she was a furry human Siamese with diamond blue eyes and a lazy, busy tail. Asking people about their choices is impolite.

Okay, now that I remember those things, my imagination is fired up. Time to write like crazy, one more time.

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