Graphic by Peg Ihinger
It’s another open mike/mic day. Talk about whatever you want–questions, answers, updates on current work, vacation plans, whatever.
I’m getting started on a completely new thing. It’s complicated and has…a lot more backstory than usual. I’ve had to do a lot more worldbuilding and planning than usual, and I’m having loads of fun. How about everybody else?
Just like reframing plot as setup and payoff has helped me enormously as a character driven writer, I’ve been tackling my poor description skills and realized that description is context, and this reframe is also enormously helping me, so rather than staring helplessly at a story that doesn’t have nonawkward room to just toss in description, even random scattered lines, now it does because I already know how to weave in worldbuilding context in a later pass. As I write out of order, it’s important to do it later when I know where it actually belongs.
Just my mini epiphany of the week.
I’ve been trying to figure out a better process for the next book, to try to minimize structural edits needed. I’m a pantser unfortunately and my last book needed serious edits for pacing (which I’m still wading through). I hate thinking about pacing & I also can’t seem to come up with ideas on what happens next if I’m not writing! (I do have a notes doc with some ideas – but they are more loose concepts than concrete plot.) But maybe there’s something I can do up front to reduce the edits next time. Maybe write a short story first and then expand it? The fundamental problem is that I love writing prose but the rest of it doesn’t come naturally to me. Worldbuilding is fine to build as I go – same with character – only minor edits needed to make those line up at the end if anything. But pacing and tension!! Argh.
Rose – the idea of starting with a short story and expanding it doesn’t appeal to me — too often that seems to result in just diluting the effect. “Flowers for Algernon” and its novelization is a case in point.
I don’t know if this would work for you (it’s kind of stealth outlining, and you’re a pantser), but might be worth a try: Keep adding random thoughts to that notes doc, even before you start writing. Then, before you start, try shuffling your notes into a rough chronological order based on where they might turn up in the plot. You might then be able to see where there are gaps, or where certain parts are overloaded, which might stimulate more thoughts about how the plot progresses. The exercise might give you a better idea of where and how the story’s going to go when you start writing.
Maybe write short stories. Then you can collect and publish them.
Still trying to figure out how to establish the convent-like setting and make it more interesting than an info dump. Every time I poke at it, I foresee pages wherein nothing interesting or conducive to the plot takes place.
I’ve been working (or not working) on this for years, and I’m stalled at both the beginning and the end. (Got some nice stuff in the middle, though.)
First consideration: how does the viewpoint character think of the convent?
First, how much would a new reader actually need to know up front? Second, how much can you do by implication through your viewpoint character’s attitude? What is the very first interesting plot-related event that occurs at the convent? Can you start with that, and fill in the setting a little at a time as the story progresses? Filling in setting as a trail of breadcrumbs can be both more evocative and more memorable than pages of description that some readers will want to skip.
It’s out, it’s out!
My second collection of Writing And Reflections essays!
You can see many venues here:
https://writingandreflections.substack.com/p/available-today
Hooray! Congratulations!
Thank you!
Fine going.
Do your stories have any lessons for readers on are they ” just” entertainment?
Personally, I think that’s something readers should decide for themselves.
Ms. Wrede, I’m not sure you give yourself enough credit! Reading your books has shown me how healthy families behave, what good relationships look like, and who to go burgle if I ever find myself poverty-stricken in Regency London!!! 🙂
What a writer puts into a book and what a reader gets out of it are two different things that may or may not overlap. Readers need to know different things. Someone who is stranded in Regency London may very well fine useful information in a story that, to someone else, is pure entertainment because they are not, and never will be, in that situation. 🙂 A story that the writer fully intends to contain a lesson about how orbital mechanics works may be pure entertainment to a NASA scientist who has been plotting satellite paths for years; a story that the writer (and most readers) think of as “just entertainment” may be full of new ideas and information for a reader whose age or life experience hasn’t shown them those things before. Which is why I say that it’s up to the reader whether any particular story is “just” entertainment or full of life lessons for them.
Just got my 21st novel’s revisions done, formatting completed, and uploaded.
I enjoyed writing it, especially after my 20th, which – with all that happened in my (wife’s) life last year – felt kind of like a slog towards the end. It still turned out well, but…
Anyway, this latest jumps around in time some, but I wrote it in story order anyway. Fun challenge. 🙂
Congratulations!
I’m not sure it’s okay, having written two books about human/alien contact, for book 3 to start with chapter after chapter of nine humans cooped up on a space station trying to jumpstart the psychic techniques they will need to treat with the aliens on a safer footing. Nary an alien in sight. Also, the entire thing so far is council scenes!
Enjoying writing it, though. They are, at least, nine people I find interesting. Hopefully readers will agree.
I need to finish book 2. I worry that I’m vacuuming the cat.
Missed this at the time because I had just gotten home from Narrativity. It was, once again, awesome, largely because, once again, we got such cool people! Already looking forward to doing it again next year.
Once I surface from all the post-con tasks, my next thing will be to apply the fix I and several folks in the consuite worked out for the nagging flaw in the book I recently finished. (Something of a Chekhov’s gun problem… or Chekhov’s cannibal cult, as the case may be.) Which means I have to revise. And truth is, I really don’t know how to revise. Seriously, how do people do it? As one of those writers whose words tend to set like concrete shortly after typing, the whole idea of going back and working this change in is… daunting, to say the least, even though it’s a least-necessary-change fix. I’m excited about the idea because it really is just what the story needs, but the process of putting it in place… yikes.
I always wait a couple of months to revise anything, because otherwise I remember what I was trying to say, and get caught up in that, as opposed to looking over what I *did* say.
Maybe you can extend it to the point that, when you look it over, it’s distant enough from when you created it that it’s just a story, not *your* story so much, and you can see what needs changing, the same as you would if you were revising something for someone else? Maybe?
For me that would be 5 or 6 years. 😉 It does, sometimes, eventually, happen, but not on any workable timescale.
In this case it’s been about six months, which if I want to do this professionally (and I do) seems like about as long as I should plan on having.
I’ve managed revisions before with just isolated scenes, where it’s something like putting the emotional impact on the page instead of just in my head. But this one’s going to involve two major scenes, an awkward balance of power in between them, and various ripples before and after. I can see it all in my head, but shoving it onto the page(s)… aieeee!
When dealing with concrete, I start typing in a brand new doc and incorporate old as I go.
The prospect of revising is daunting to me because I feel as though I have to hold every detail of the book in my head at once, suspended in the air before me so I can examine each nuance and intention. Also, the product is like a hologram, in that a small change to any part resonates throughout the entire manuscript, as if changing a character’s name means I must then rewrite every sentence.
Yes, that. I can hold the whole thing in my head while writing, but when it comes to revising, it feels like I’m about to pull the bottom block out of the tower, and I not only have to hold it in my head but also keep it balanced — while pulling more blocks out, shoving other ones in, etc. I think it’s the balancing act that makes it so daunting.