SUPER AWESOME BIG TIME REWRITE: Constructing Chapters

Here’s what I think about novel writing. You can read about it, you can talk about it, and you can think about it, and all that helps. Especially if you’re in a dialogue with other writers (whether in person or across the interwebs). But it’s the doing it that really teaches you how to make it happen.

Even writing and workshopping short stories, while educational when it comes to learning many of the mechanics of storytelling, doesn’t fully prepare you for the monumental undertaking of completing a novel. At least this has been my experience.

Chapters are one of those things I had to learn by doing. As I made my first attempts at writing a book, questions cluttered my head. What are chapters really? How long should they be? How much should happen in them? How do I know when I’ve done enough to end the chapter? None of these questions have one answer. If I pick up five books from my shelf at random, I’d find five different approaches to building chapters.

And that’s why we have to learn by doing. It’s the only real way to figure out what works for each of us and what works for each of the many stories we all have in us to tell.

With my SUPER AWESOME BIG TIME REWRITE, I’m approaching my chapters with a brand new philosophy. My previous approach was to keep putting stuff in until it looked like I had enough stuff in there to close that chapter, leaving enough stuff unresolved to warrant starting a new chapter. I didn’t always think about chapter goals or what I was accomplishing. The only rule I held myself accountable to was keeping in mind that it had to lead somewhere.

It was very scientific, and I even think that method worked pretty okay (for a first draft if nothing else).

This time around, just to shake things up, I'm thinking about each chapter as encapsulating a specific idea, concern or event and the actions and reactions surrounding that element. Interestingly, doing things this way has made for longer chapters with several section breaks in each and less chapters in the manuscript as a whole.

I’m really liking doing it this way. It’s put me in the mindset of not dragging things out for the sake of dragging things out, which maybe I might have perhaps have been guilty of once or possibly twice. That was back when I associated dragging things out with infusing a story with tension.

I’m not saying that there aren’t times when it’s necessary to delay gratification or a big climax. But it’s important to remember that by going ahead and throwing that big thing at your characters, it gives you the opportunity to raise the stakes, escalate the action, and throw your characters into an even bigger, more crazy climax that you might have never thought of otherwise.

So I guess what I’m saying is that my SUPER AWESOME BIG TIME REWRITE is going awesome (even though progress has slowed to a crawl these past few weeks because I’ve had to sluggishly and painfully chisel out these last few chapters with an ice pick) and I’m learning stuff from the process.

Yea, learning!

I’m curious. How do vous approach putting a chapter together and how did vous come to doing it that way?

SUPER AWESOME BIG TIME REWRITE: For realsies!

After my summer of arting it up, I return to writing! Okay, so I didn’t really stop writing this summer. More like I scaled backed my time commitment to it for a bit. But like Die Hard, I return with a vengeance. Four weeks ago, I started a SUPER AWESOME BIG TIME REWRITE (always all caps).

I'm talking a revamp as drastic as that DC Comics’ New 52 re-launch what got fan boys and girls all riled up this summer. (I’m mostly neutral in regards to all that, but I do think the new Harley Quinn costume sets a new bar for truly and gut-wrenchingly dreadful. Hopefully, in my rewrite, I’m making better changes than this.)

She used to be so adorably psychotic.

But I digress. Allow me to return to the point.

Contrary to the seemingly popular sentiment, I like rewriting. But this is my biggest rewrite yet (hence the all caps and use of the words “super” and “awesome” and “big time” to describe it). I thought I’d pulled off some major rewrites in the past. A couple of years ago I decided to switch a WIP from third person to first. Last year—or was it this year? It blurs!—I cut 26,000 words from another manuscript. And I thought, “Hey, that’s what I call some super awesome big time rewriting! Go, Cacy!”

Oh, how young and naive I was then.

Now I realize that I had no right to call snipping a few “just”s and “that”s from a manuscript a rewrite because this thing I’ve been working on is a stripped down, start from scratch, forget-everything-you’ve-already-written-and-re-written-(and-re-written-again), forget-that-full-length-manuscript-you-slaved-over-for-like-two-years-or-something-because-it’s-all-going-out-the-window type of rewrite.

Everything must go and anything that remains must change! The setting, the starting point, the relationships, shifting personal histories, adding a new major character, changing the sex of another. It’s chaos, chaos, chaos I’m telling you.

Chaos that has been mulled over and reasoned out before being implemented, that is.

It took me a long time to come to the point where I’m able to do this. I had to not look at and barely think about this particular story for five months. The changes I’m making come from ideas I’d had for good a long while, but I had been too close to the previous version. After all the work I had put into it, how could I entertain the idea of starting the whole process all over again. For the SAME story!

Do I look like a glutton for punishment?

What it really came down to was the fact that I love this story.

And no else one did. None of my readers. Not even my mom and she’s maternally obligated to love everything I write. The people I asked to read it liked it… Basically… In that, “Yeeeah…it was good” sort of way. But “Yeeeah…it was good” is not what I’m aiming for here. In fact, I’m pretty sure one reader didn’t even finish it.

I can take a hint.

Yes, I know. Opinions are subjective and they’re like armpits and all that, but when I really examined what I had completed (after not looking at it for months), I had to admit that it fell short for me too.

Dagnabit.

I remember one of my writing teachers saying, “Don’t be that guy who drags the same manuscript around to every conference for seven years trying to make it work. When it doesn’t work, let it go.”

That’s sound advice, but I just can’t let it go. Something about this manuscript compels me to keep at it. I return to it time after time. I really believe in these characters, I believe this story can be exciting and engaging, and I can’t give up on it.

And hey, if this rewrite turns out terribly, I still have all my old drafts on a flash drive.

SUPER AWESOME BIG TIME REWRITE: Do You Ever Get Freaked Out By What You're Writing?

I don't write horror. I barely read horror and probably only watch a horror movie every five years. I'm not a wimp. It's just that certain images, usually the unwanted ones, seem to stay in my head for. ev .er.

After watching The Ring (Yes, I know it's not as scary as the original Japanese version. That's why I haven't watched the original Japanese version) I didn't want to sleep in my own dorm room because my TV always glowed in the dark. (Seriously! It glowed!) So I spent the night at a friend's.


I don't think the scenes that I was working on at the end of last week are particularly scary. Mostly likely its a combination of the fact that A) when I write I often stay up into the wee small hours when the house and neighborhood are at its darkest and quietest and B) I recently read this creepy-ass Korean webcomic. (Crap! I just refreshed my memory of it when I looked up the link. I hope to appreciate the things I do for you! Also, read it at your own risk. Seriously.)

The first two nights after reading it, I stayed up until sunrise writing. I was really hungry but didn't go into the dark kitchen for food. I claim its because I was so very into those pages, but I know the truth. I didn't want the scary lady from the creepy-ass Korean webcomic sneaking up on me in the dark.

(cdcart.blogspot.com)

Kamsamnida, creepy-ass Korean webcomic creators. Kam-freaking-samnida.

But on the plus side, I wrote a combined 6,000 words those nights so maybe I really should thank whoever made that webcomic happen, and read/watch scary things more often whilst I'm at it.

Anyway, back to the scene was working on the other night. In it, my character deals with something really scary happening to her. As I writing, it's approaching 2 in the AM and I'm trying to get across how much the incident affected her (i.e. I'm writing about being scared) and I start remembering all the (few) creepy stuff I've read/seen in the last few years including the manga series featuring this subtle yet creepy tale. (Click on pic to read whole tale. P.S. Read it right to left, top to bottom.)


And pretty soon I'm too freaked to even read the words I'm writing. And let me tell you something, it's hard to type a scene with your eyes closed.

I was even freaked out by the cover of the Robert Johnson CD cover laying on my desk.

(Robert Johnson was an iconic blues man who, according to legend,
sold his soul to the devil in order to become an excellent musician.
This manga is a pretty excellent fictionalized account of his life.)

I decided to quit for the night and watch a slapstick 90s sitcom before I going to bed. Better to continue writing when the sun and people were up.

Maybe it's a sign of the writer doing something right when she's freaked out by her own words...or maybe I'm just a big wimp.

Probably the latter.

Things That Make You Go “Ugh!": Fight Scenes

Don’t get me wrong. Like any good anime watching, summer blockbuster movie-going, adventure/fantasy/sci-fi reading, ninja/superhero/vampire slayer loving gal, I love a great fight scene.

But writing them.

Ugh!

(Humor and violence: a winning combination.)

For me, they take more time and planning than any other type of scene. They have to be dynamically choreographed and fully visualized, and still have a beginning, middle and end. Then when I’ve done all that thorough thinking things through, I have to strip the language used to describe those sequences of action down to its clearest, most concise and most potent form so that the action flows and the scene reads quickly (because action scenes are not the place to wax poetic). It’s a lot of freakin’ work for a scene that in real time might only last a few minutes!

(One of the coolest Samurai Jack fight scenes EVER)

And the stuff I write almost always requires at least one fight scene, often more.

Oh, how I hem and haw and find so many other things to do (like writing a blog post) when I know I must sit down and think through a fight scene. I guess I’m still a little traumatized from the time I decided to write a fight scene spread across nine characters, five points of view, and multiple simultaneous points of conversion. That mess wore me out.

(If I were ever to make a list of favorite fight scenes, this one would definitely be somewhere near the top.)

Oh, but when it’s done! When the sequences within the scene escalate to an explosive climax! When you feel that he victor of the fight has really earned his or her bragging rights! Or, best of all, when someone tells you they couldn’t put those pages down…well, it kinda makes you want to write another fight scene.

What’s the one element of your stories that you hate writing but love having written?

Oh, Expectations, I Can Always Count On You (Except When I Can’t)

Last month I finally read The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie (I’d only been meaning to read it for like three years now). And even though it didn’t feature any aliens or monsters (like most things I read), I really liked it anyway. I thoroughly enjoyed Junior’s sense of humor. The book was a great example of how humor can be inserted into a narrative that explores some messed up stuff. Rather than undercutting hardships, his humor stands in juxtaposition to them and makes the sad parts more cutting and memorable because of the contrast. Also, humor endears the protagonist to the reader (me!) even more.

Something Alexie wrote came back to me weeks after reading the book:

"It sucks to be poor and it sucks to feel that you somehow deserve to be poor. You start believing that you're poor because you're stupid and ugly. And then you start believing that you're stupid and ugly because you're Indian. And because you're Indian you start believing you're destined to be poor. It's an ugly circle and there's nothing you can do about it."

This got me thinking about expectations. We all have them and as writers, we build them into our characters, whether consciously or not.

But I’m talking about deeper expectations. Expectations of ourselves and our world that are ingrained into us so deeply it’s like they’re passed down in the genes. Inherited expectations that seem to be a part of the institutions we interact with on a daily basis. Not just individual expectations, but expectations we learn from the cultures we grow up in (or adapt to).

It’s something I’ve thought about before. A broader term may be “mentalities.” Our mentalities come from a lot of different places, but starts – in my non-professional opinion – with our families, our communities, and our cultures– and of course, culture isn’t something only identified by race or ethnic identity. While I believe that people are individuals and (ideally) thinking people, and therefore responsible for their own actions, there is a cultural weight that sits on our shoulders. It’s that group mentality that pressures us all to maintain the status quo, even if we aren’t consciously conscious of it.

Unconsciously internalizing cultural expectations, can block a person from seeing their potential beyond the less-than-stellar-ness around them. I’m not saying that there aren't obstacles or even a whole bunch of people who won’t want that person succeed, but who stands a chance when the mentality you grow up around is to not even try.

Conversely, unconsciously internalizing cultural expectations can give a person a sense of entitlement, as in: even if so-and-so doesn’t deserve the fill-in-the-blank, they feel they should get the fill-in-the-blank anyway just because they’re so-and-so.

Think about how empowering it would be to know that you can and will get everything you want? How different is that life is from that of the person who expects to never get anything they want. Or even from the life of the person who believes they will get what they work hard for, no more and no less.

I’ve only mentioned two opposite ends of the spectrum, but there are all kinds of expectations of the world floating around in the minds of humans. We’ve all experienced the effects of cultural expectations or certain culturally ingrained mentalities. Some people benefit from them, others…not so much. While this is worth thinking about in the real world, we’re fiction writers. What do we care about reality?

So how to apply this to you characters? (I bet you already know the answer.)

Go beyond the surface expectations or the obvious stuff. Some of our characters inherit our own mentalities by default, but when it's called for you to jump into the mentality of someone completely “other” from you, here's some stuff to consider.

What do small expectations say about big expectations? Does their mentality line up with their upbringing and the people around them? Or are they fighting against culturally ingrained expectations? Are they all external expectations or have some of them been internalized? Is your character even aware of it? How do the systems in place around your character ensure that these expectations, negative or positive, are met? How can your bad buys/antagonists' motivations be deepened by this line of questioning? How can this help you avoid writing in stereotypes? How does this help you world build?

The questions can go on and on and on and on because even if your character was raised in a vacuum, that vacuum probably had an affect on him.

Bits and pieces of this idea pops up in my writing. Specifically, I see this issue starting to form in one manuscript in particular. I had put it there on purpose, but hadn't thought about it in exactly this way. I hadn't put the idea I was leaning towards into words. I'll definitely explore it more in this manuscript because I see its relevance to those characters. But even if culturally ingrained mentalities aren't what my stories are "about," I can use it as a tool to think about my characters in a way that adds layers, which in turn can deepen a story.

What about you, is this something you've thought much about when writing your characters?

The End Has No End, or When It Doesn’t Come Easy

So this was where I was last week:

Le sigh.

I hate not knowing the ending to a story I’m actively working on! It’s like jumping from a plane without a parachute. Alas and alack, I’m freefalling right this very minute!

I’m in the midst of writing for a web comic my friend and I will be launching. There will be three series on the coming website: a set of more experimental or artistic comic stories; an action-oriented, supernatural venture; and a fun, fun good times end of the world romp.

The action-oriented series is my problem child. I’ve sketched out half the chapters, but the ending is still being either stubborn or shy and won’t come out of hiding. All I’m working with are vague shadows of what I’m maybe kinda of possibly halfway sure the ending should probably look something like. Arg! I can’t work under these conditions. If I could wring this story by its scrawny neck, I would have choked the hell out of it by now!

I’ve heard rumors and murmurings that there are writers out there who never know their ending until they get there. Purportedly, they “write to find out” how their story is going to end. That, my friends, sounds like a vital ingredient of insanity soup. It has to be! Because I am going crazy here!

And my brain hurts a little.

What is especially frustrating is that things have been going much more smoothly for the fun, fun good times end of the world romp. Ridiculously smooth…

Inspiration* (In Three Easy Steps!):

· Day One: Think of interesting phrase, realize interesting phrase would make as even more interesting title, come up with main character within minutes.

· Week One: Come up with supporting characters. Start settling on names. Steal time while at work to jot down the dialogue that keeps popping into your head. REALIZE THE ENDING TO EVERYTHING!! OMG!! IT’S PERFECT! IT’S BEAUTIFUL! I LOVE IT! OMG! I FEEL SO SAD FOR ALL THE PEOPLE WHO DON’T KNOW YET HOW AWESOME THE ENDING IS GOING TO BE AND HAVE TO WAIT MONTHS TO FIND OUT!!!!

· Onward: Everything flows naturally and easily from there. The characters never stop talking to each other in your head and every time you sit down to your computer liquid gold springs forth from your fingertips.

See! That’s how it’s supposed to go! Like Jay-Z laying down a track! (I hear he does it all in one go.)

Usually if a story isn’t agreeing with me, I’d switch over from Project A to Project B. Until I hit a wall on Project B. At which point I return to Project A with a fresh pair of eyes. But when I have a deadline (even if it is self-imposed) and am accountable to a creative partner, jumping ship just won’t do.

Where I’ve landed this week:

I’ve been forced to remember that even when the ideas aren’t flowing trippingly from the brain, stories still manage to get themselves written. They still want to be born into the world.

Ew. I just sounded all touchy-feely new age-y in that last paragraph. So let me say it this way instead: Just because the ideas aren’t leaping from the cliffs of your imagination and onto your paper like a herd of lemmings, doesn’t mean they aren’t there. What it means is you might have to reach up there and coax them down (or knock them loose with a broomstick. Whatevs). It’s important not to get trapped into one way of doing things. We can use what works while it’s working, but when the modus operandi stops operandi-ing, then what? We wait patiently for the muses to be so kind as to reappear?

Sure, if you have the luxury. But if not, it might be worth your time to know how to break on through to the other side of that stone wall you’ve hit. For me that means talking it out. This works best when I force– I mean, ask someone to be my sounding board. A family member, a friend, an innocent, bystanding co-worker who was unfortunate– I mean, privileged to take their lunch break at the same time as me.

This person doesn’t have to be another writer. Despite my threats, I’m not really demanding that they come up with the solution to my story troubles, though their questions are welcomed and helpful. The act of trying to explain what I want to happen in a story helps me untangle jumbled elements, calls attention to holes that need filling so’s I stop falling into them, or just forces me to actively think about what I’m doing for a concentrated chunk of time.

I’m excited to report that after cornering a co-worker in the break room and trapping my sister on the phone, I’ve realized my ending and the middle parts are now falling into place.

I guess I can’t be too mad at my ending for being all coy and elusive. It’s good and necessary to be reminded that sometimes the “being inspired” part of writing is hard work. It can’t all come from that magical land of “it just came to me.”

(sniff. sniff.) The video I wanted to share with you isn't working because it's mean and it hates me, but if you want to see an educational and relevant piece about where jokes come from click the pic or here. Or even here if you want to be different.

*Material derived from process subject to rewrites and revisions.

What’s My Motivation? A Response to a Response to Pre-Writing Schme-Writing Pt. 2

Not as “mañana” as I had planned, but… in continuation from my last post:

The Money Thing

While there is writing advice that focuses on salability, I think that you can find plenty of writing advice out there that isn’t just about making bank but rather about how to hone the craft. This is especially true in an age in which a) you can find and order books – even those out of print – without ever leaving your computer, and b) anyone with access to the internet can put their writerly opinions out into the world for all to read (bloggers unite!). Another consideration is that for one writer, honing their craft may mean one thing, but for another writer it may mean something else.

That difference comes out of what a writer likes to read and/or what they want to write. An abstract painter and an illustrator are both looking to be great artists, even if their work is vastly different from one another—and despite one category being more commercial than the other. Both artists must still learn to prep surfaces, use paintbrushes, mix colors and all that, but after a certain point the abstract painter may focus more on experimenting with his medium while the illustrator may focus more on visual communication. Either way, they've both - in theory at least - worked hard to understand their chosen school of art.

Yet, I’m sure in either school you’ll find folks who are considered “sellouts” by their peers. I sometimes wonder how much of that is perception. Not that there isn't such a thing as selling out, but - to paraphrase the creators of South Park - can you call someone a sellout if "to make money" was a part of the plan from the beginning? It's a joke, but also speaks to a certain mentality. Why is it that there's this pervading belief that artists have to be broke and starving to prove that they're real artists?

“Money is the root of all evil” has to be one of the most often misquoted proverbs of all time. The scripture, plucked from the Bible, actually reads: “The love of money is the root of all evil” (1 Timothy 6:10). Meaning it's okay to have money, just don't get too carried away in the pursuit of it. If three little words can shift the entire understanding of that saying, can the sometimes negative connotation of “saleable fiction” be shifted too? After all, some of my favorite books continue to sale to this day, years and decades after their initial publication.

I’ll admit though, the last book I couldn’t get to end of (for me, that doesn’t happen very often because I seem to have a high tolerance for “bad” writing) was one whose creation seemed motivated, in large part, by a huge money-making strategy. I still hiss at that book when I see it at the bookstore, not because it was a part of a big – not to mention successful – money-making endeavor, but because it was a really cool idea and could have been an amazing book if more time, thought, and rewrites had been put into it. So I’m not going to lie and say I don’t think that less-than-awesome work gets put out there based on potential profitability . But I do have a counter-argument.

A writer can want to make money and still have integrity as a writer. I for one am pursuing writing as a career. I’d really like to make a living doing the thing I love to do more than anything in world, but I’m not looking for a magic formula to make that happen and I understand that the reality of the writer’s life is that it is hard to make a living off of it. Many (or should that be “most”?) published authors do not get to quit their day jobs, at least not until years further into their careers.

I am not primarily driven by a desire to make money, and people who think writing a novel is way to get rich quick probably need to re-evaluate their understanding of how publishing works. But it’s not wrong to want to make a living doing something you love. If I don’t have to have a day job, that’s all the more time I get to spend writing until 5 o’clock in the morning. I would love it if readers decide they want to buy my books – actually, what’s a stronger word than love? – but that’s not what motivates me to want to become as good as possible at something that has been my passion since I was nine.

Why, why, why. More, more, more. Deeper, deeper, deeper

I want to tell a good story to the best of my ability. I want to create something that readers will pick up and not want to put down even after they’ve read the last page. Something that can be read over and over. Something that may affect… (effect? I really never know which is which and avoid using either if I can help it– a-hem, anyway...) Something that will grab hold of someone the way my favorite books have grabbed a hold off me.

So I’m going to study my craft, learn as much as I can from the writers who have come before me, and from the writers who are in the trenches with me trying to polish their craft as well. I’m going to actively learn more about my craft because I think I have the potential to be a better writer than I am right now. I’m going to continue to actively learn about my craft for as long as I think I have the potential to be better. So in all likelihood – even if I’ve published a hundred award-wining, bestselling books and I can’t got outside for fear of being run down by a mob of screaming fans – I’ll always be looking to learn more about my craft. In five, ten, twenty years, I might not be concerned with the same things I’m concerned with now, but I’m sure there will still be ways for me to continue to grow as a writer. Because when we stop trying to improve upon what we’ve already done, isn’t that when our work becomes stale, boring and – ultimately – irrelevant?

Or am I wrong? Is there a point at which the writer has perfected the craft of writing?

What’s My Motivation? A Response to a Response to Pre-Writing Schme-Writing Pt. 1

I always appreciate it when folks comment on my posts – especially when they mention cool books and suggest awesome video lectures! – but one commenter in particular really got some thoughts moving through this ol' head of mine, which is no bad thing so thanks for sharing your thoughts with me! This post got to be kinda long, so I’ve decided to split this bad boy in two.

Why Bother?

The great thing about writing advice and writing in practice is that one thing doesn't work for everyone and one thing doesn't have to work for every one. Like any other art form, the artist has to learn what techniques bring the best of their potential to the surface.

No matter what artistic discipline you study, you'll always get the advice to reach deeper, further and to challenge yourself to do something you've never done before. Painters, dancers, musicians and actors aren’t born having already perfected their discipline. Even if the talent was there innately—and even more so if they make it look easy—they’ve had to learn, study, practice practice practice, and push. Why wouldn’t the same be expected of writers?

My former acting teacher – I went to an arts high school, studied theatre for four years – used to always say, “Why, why, why, more, more, more, deeper, deeper, deeper.” While I found it annoying at the time, it’s now one of my writing mantras. Asking ourselves to give more and dig deeper is how artists grow.

It’s funny. Just yesterday a co-worker saw me with Plot and Structure by James Scott Bell (which I picked up because I recently read a timely post about it). My co-worker gave me a strange look and asked, “Didn’t you write a novel already?” Two, actually. But I don’t see why that would stop me from reading a book about plots.

For the sake of learning and growing, I'm willing to try out different approaches. Also, I don’t think so much of myself that I think I’ve already reached the apex of my growth as a writer or that I know everything there is to know about writing. It’s not that I don’t trust my instincts or don’t value my talent, but there is such a wealth of knowledge out there, from all kinds of writers who’ve found many different approaches, why not see what’s out there and what may help me improve?

In Defense of Structure

This is kind of a tangent, but also kind of implied in a discussion of this sort, so let’s talk about structure. A reason why structure gets a bad rep probably comes out of out one little misunderstanding. Let’s clear that up. Structure does not equal formula. The best example of this is in screenwriting.

This movie...

has three acts, an inciting incident, a midpoint, a climax , an Act 1 plot point and an Act 2 plot point.

This movie...

also has three acts, an inciting incident, a midpoint, a climax, an Act 1 plot point and an Act 2 plot point.

With very few exceptions, all movies - at least in the corner of the world where I live - have the same structure when you strip them down to the bones, but obviously not all movies are created equal.

Whether consciously utilizing structure or not, it’s up to writer to fill in all the important stuff a story needs to become extraordinary. And that’s a pretty big undertaking whether you’re writing screenplays, for comics or novels, genre or literature. The trick is to not be a slave to the structure, but to know – or learn! – how to write so that the structure serves you. It takes a special type of ingenuity to take a structure that has been used a million times before and still produce something fresh and unique.

In novel writing, we get a lot more freedom than screenwriters. There are a lots of types of structures to choose from, and the option to not consider structure at all. What I’ve found is that thinking about structure is a great way to get ideas moving when I find that I’m stuck. It won’t solve all my problems. If I don’t know how to write dialogue, establish a voice, give characters believable personalities and all the rest, I’m pretty much screwed until I figure those things out. But the purpose of plot structure is to get characters active and moving (in a way that’s relevant to the story you want to tell). And I like it when my characters are active and moving (and relevant).

Even if I only use plot structure as a writing exercise to generate ideas then ditch structure to return to a more a meandering approach to writing, its usefulness has already been proven to me.

Beyond that, learning about any aspect of writing, whether plot, characters or whatever gives me the vocabulary to articulate why I like a certain book over another, and further the potential to understand why one aspect of my story got a certain reaction (good, bad or indifferent) as opposed to another. Since writing is re-writing, the ability to self-evaluate is a pretty useful trick.

Even if as a writer I choose not to write with structure in mind, understanding structure can’t hurt me. What I fear is that lack of knowledge could stunt my growth as a writer, and I wouldn’t even know it if it did.

Mañana: Money and Me

Pre-writing Schme-writing

So, it was pretty cool of Tahereh Mafi to host a bloglinkapalooza, huh? It’s been great seeing the many different approaches to doing this blogging thing. I found a bunch of new interesting, funny, clever folks to follow, as well as gained some new interesting, funny, clever readers (hello and welcome! I’ll try not to suck as a blogger!). I’m not even halfway through the list yet, but I’m determined to get all the way to through to the last blog because this has been a great opportunity to see who else is out there!

On to today’s topic!

I've never been a fan of pre-writing. It never seemed as fun to be as, you know, writing writing. Besides, any discoveries that I could have made while pre-writing can just as easily be made during writing writing, and then I just have to go back and adjust the manuscript as needed.

Yeah, well, when the thing you realize is a your characters’ wants, needs, and motivations – and you’ve already written the entire novel – going back and adjusting everything from the beginning turns out to be a lot of work. A lot more than pre-writing probably would have been. (That’s not to say that there won’t be things to discover along the way even after doing pre-writing.)

So this time around, as I regain interest in a WIP I started and then stopped writing months ago, I thought that maybe I’d give some of this pre-writing business a go. Tentatively. Not like it’ll kill me or anything. Right?

I’ve found myself gravitating toward articles about plot—and as you may already know, many folks have had much to say on the subject. I lean towards the school of thought that plot comes out of character. Learning about plot structures can be helpful, but is only half the job if I don’t consider who my characters are and how what they want effects what they do.

Thusly, ergo, concordantly, vis-à-vis, for my first official voluntarily-embarked-upon-pre-writing exercise in a really long time, I decided to start by asking myself: What does your MC want? From there I could ask myself what he would do to get it and that in turn would help me discover what should be happening in my story.

Way back when I started writing this particular story (and got 20,000 words into it), had I even asked myself what my MC wants?

Apparently, I was waiting ‘til I got to the end of the manuscript to find out.

Well, when I finally got around to asking myself that question, the answer was pretty obvious. But then I had a new problem. The thing he wants is not just out of his reach, it is as out of his control as anything can be. Fate, it seems, is the only thing that would land him his want. How does a character actively pursue something that is basically like pre-destined only no one knows who is pre-destined for it until it’s like “BAM! Congrats! You’re invited to the party?” He can’t! That’s how!!

I’m doomed. MY STORY IS DOOMED!!! DOOOOOOOOMED!!!!! DOOMY DOOMY DOOMED!!!!

Or, I guess I can try and see if there’s anything he can do about it. Since I’m already kinda invested in this.

So I continued my questions, typing my questions and answers out as they came to mind. After “What does my character want?” came “Is there anything he can do to make that happen? Why not? So what the next best thing?” and more from there.

I think I was going a little easy on myself as an interviewer. Barbara or Oprah would have asked better questions. Wendy Williams would have been more invasive. I'll have to work on channeling them next time.

But actually, my questioning sent me on a nice little winding road. If I couldn’t think of a question to prod things along, I fell back to “Then what?” and “What’s the worse that can happen?” This exercise took me places that had very little or nothing at all to do directly with his want, but since it came out of his want (bad decisions bring about certain consequences) I figured that was okay.

Soon I started a second document and started with the same four questions, but thought of a new answer as to what the “next best thing” might be. That sent me off on a whole other adventure. Then I had to open another new document because I thought, What if he hears a rumor that there is a way to trick fate into giving him what he wants? What would the rumor say he had to do? What’s the worse thing the rumor could say he had to do? What if he goes though all that and finds out the rumor isn’t even a little bit true? What if the rumor is true?

Maybe I’ll try this out on some other wants and some other characters. Potentially I’ll have like a gazillion strands of plot and I can let their powers combine to create some kind of super awesome plot mutant with rainbow powers of engaging the reader!

And this is before I’ve entered the possibility of how the antagonist may complicate things. Suddenly I’m wandering through a garden of forking paths (bonus points for literary reference!). Or I can use a door analogy.

Okay, maybe that last reference was a little forced, but Will Ferrell is just so funny!

While I may not put everything that comes from this exercise into my WIP, it has certainly given me a lot to think about. Maybe there is something to this pre-writing stuff after all, eh?

So, pre-writing. Do you do it? Got a favorite exercise?