Thursday Thoughts: Back on Track

 

Hello Blog-babes,

Today is a little blog about the state of my novel and a problem that I doubt is unique to me.

I’ve actually been struggling to write recently. My struggle hasn’t been in terms of putting words on metaphorical paper, it has been in an acceptance that the words are the right ones. Or even good ones.

For two weeks I have been writing small sections of prose. Where I had once managed to average about 5,000 words a day I was suddenly having to drag myself to reach 1,000. Each day I would read back over the previous day’s efforts and rip it out and try it again. It was torturous, slow and demoralising. It wasn’t that I didn’t know what I was writing, but I was falling into that trap of writing without saying anything. Actions would come and go with ne’er a purpose between them. It’s frustrating reading your own work and realising that you are not reaching the potential you know is there.

Aside from the story/character exercises I’ve previously blogged about – which did help! – one other invaluable tool to the writer is: discussion. If something is knotted up and you know that no matter how you try you can’t work around it… talk to someone. We have an amazing capacity, when we really need to, of making ourselves understood to other people. By trying to explain the beats and narrative of what you are trying to write to someone else, if they are not understanding it you will find yourself instinctively rephrasing your point for clarity, this continues until the other person understands. You are refining and streamlining your problem to its clearest form so that it makes sense to another, and importantly also to yourself. If you’ve got a good friend who is willing to be talked at, sit them down with a nice cup of tea and have at it.

I did this last week, set out what Evin is going through, what actions I’m writing and thematically what the section is about. And lo, I set about writing again and the words are flowing clearly and the action is moving purposefully forward.

Let your inner editor come out for a while when you both need space to breath, it will help.

I’ve also been exploring options for presenting the short stories I publish on this blog in a form that allows for them to be read on e-book/smart phone/tablet devices as an alternative to you only being able to read them on the blog itself. I had a play with Apple’s iAuthor, but I’m not sure if it’s the tool for me. I’m not sure if I’ll get anything finished before the next story is published, but hopefully soon after. And there’s one other thing that I have planned. But more on that at a later date.

– Andrew

(Also, Blog-babes?! Oh dear, that won’t do. I gotta think up a good collective term for you fine folks)

 

Thursday Thoughts: Writing Goat’s Story

Hello,

First up I feel the need to apologise for the terrible quality of the images in this post, since installing Mavericks my scanner no longer works, and no amount of searching has yet found a suitable (read: free) work around for this, so the images are taken with my phone. Yeesh.

I wanted to use this post to talk about the short story that I published on Tuesday and how it came about. I also spoke briefly on Monday about a writing exercise that I find helpful.

In the image above you can see a breakdown of the story. I will talk you round how I map out and plan the story.

Starting with the left hand bubble in the centre we have the Title of the story. This can be temporary, but it does help to start by naming your story.

Directly above that is the Subject of the story. This isn’t a detail of the plot, but a quick summation of the story. This is helpful if you feel you have a block in your writing, remind yourself what you are writing about, is what you are trying to write in service of that? Mine is simply: Goat eats pages after writing them.

The next bubble anti-clockwise is the Setting. Where and when is it set? I’d originally planned for the book to all take place from Mr. Goat’s house, but eventually moved the final scene to be elsewhere. Yours could be in the future, the past, on an alien planet…

Next left is What Changes. My story is about a goat who eats his writing when he finishes it, so the change I wanted was that he meets someone who can help him fulfil his wish to write. Your character is destined to be a different person when the story concludes, whether for the better or worse. What is it that happens to them?

At the bottom is Plot. This you must breakdown into three parts: 1. Inciting Incident – what happens that sets our story in motion? For my story, Mr. Goat eats his work and this makes him sad. 2. Complicit – How do they react to this and what actions do they take? Their involvement allows for the rest of the story to unfold. If Mr. Goat chose to carry on eating his work, it wouldn’t make for a story. He chooses to abandon his writing, breaks his routines and sets in motion the involvement of Nanny Goat. 3. Climax – I’ve spoken about endings before, here it is again, how will the story end? I wrote “Tells someone his story. They surprise him by writing it.”

Connected to the Title is the Major Theme that in the instance of Goat’s Story was of not trying something for a fear of failure. In this case as a metaphor for love, which you can see above as a Minor Theme. You can have as many minor themes as you need. Again they are good to come back to if you’re struggling to write, remind yourself what it’s about.

There’s the story mapped out in a very loose terms. There’s no right or wrong way to write this out, perhaps the themes will help dictate the plot, perhaps the plot is what comes first and you explore the themes as texture. It’s a good tool to be able to look at your story at a glance.

A similar exercise to this is regards to character. Start with your main character in the middle and all the bubbles coming out are what he/she Wants. I didn’t do this for Goat’s Story as it was a fairly straight forward piece, but for the book I have a page all about Evin with numerous bubbles coming out which lead to sub-bubbles. You can carry this further by starting a new page with your protagonist in the middle and the first bubbles around are all the secondary characters, from them you state what they want. I’ve got another page like this with Evin’s family, friends, people she’ll meet and the antagonist. You are really looking to explore what makes those characters. There will always be pieces that come out of it that you hadn’t expected, and you will see opportunities to create scenes where those characters either get or are denied the thing that they want.

If you are writing right now and having some trouble with a character and what to do next try one of the character exercises and see what comes from it.

From that basic diagram of the story I tend to move to a more detailed outline of what I want to write. For me it’s usually the major beats of the story in fairly broad strokes and I am constantly writing questions, be it whether the character would or should do something, to giving myself a couple of options for a scene. Below is the two pages for Goat’s Story.

It was at this point (despite the note on the diagram page) that the story organically became in the style of a children’s story. It seemed a logically extension for a metaphorical story as the best children’s stories are metaphors.

I’m never a slave to this outline, but I find that it helps keep me on track. In the novel I have given an entire story that I had planned for Evin to another character, which has slightly derailed the outline, but that story is better where it is now.

I hope you’ve found this interesting. I will post the story breakdowns for each short story after publication, although the posts will not contain as much explanation of the process as this. I was fortunate that the story came quite easily to me on this one, I’m sure there will be a story that won’t be so fortunate.

And next week I will reveal the details of my novel!

– Andrew

 

Healing The Heartache

Hello,

At the beginning of the week I blogged about the loss of 74% of my writing. That was 25,000 words lost in an instant because I was being a little careless. I can’t blame the computer, it only mindlessly did what I asked it to do. Ironically I get peeved at computers when they double-check meaningless activities: ‘Are you sure you want to print that?’

I had a rough night sleep on Monday, I was angry at myself for wasting a lot of work. I joked to a friend that I was more upset on Monday night at the loss of my book than I had been the last time I broke up with someone.
At least I think I was joking.

When I got up for breakfast on Tuesday morning I was sore and tired. My back hurt and my eyes felt foggy. I was still in a bad mood and didn’t want to think about my book and writing any more. The task of starting again seemed too great. I didn’t think that I would be up to the job.

This made me more angry at myself. Now I was angry for daring to think of letting this moment of idiocy ruin what has been one of the most enjoyable and fulfilling months of my life in a number of years. Yes, I was scared of re-writing what I had already done. Of course, I was worried that I would not be able to recreate what it had been. Obviously, I was anxious about the moment I would start again. I’m not a good starter of things, I rarely have that planned out. As it stands the first paragraph of my book is:

I think the exact words I said to my mum were, “Don’t fucking tell me what to fucking do.” I’m sure that the second ‘fucking’ was lost to her by the thunder of my door slamming. I’m not proud of it and in hindsight it was probably not a proportionate response to her saying encouragingly, “Evin, you really should be doing more to get a job.”

So, yeah.
I don’t think that will last beyond editing, but at the time it was all I had to get the ball rolling on the book.

The same principle applied to the rewrites. I had made a bullet point list of what I remember the key moments of the plot were and the order that they came in. I sat at my desk, took a deep breath, and started typing. It was difficult at first, I was conscious that I was trying to recreate something while trying not to copy exactly what it had been. I finished the day having written 5,000 words. I have been hitting that as a standard target each day since. I wrote 6,000 words yesterday because I had to finish what was happening.

I am currently at 18,000 words and in most places I am pleased with how it’s coming together. There are definitely places that are more concise now than they had been previously, and there are some moments that have been stripped right back and are less overwritten.

In essence I’m pleased that I didn’t wait, that I didn’t allow myself to become overwhelmed by rewriting. I’m pleased that I got straight back to it.

I would not recommend this process of writing.

– Andrew