Fire and Silk

I'm tired today, so the words aren't coming. So tonight won't be a total loss, I've jotted down some ideas about revision. You know, for when that time comes.

Revision Checklist

Scenes
Can I tell whose POV I'm in in the first paragraph? If not the first paragraph, is it clear in the first line of the second paragraph?

What is the main emotion felt by the POV character? Do I show its opposite in the scene?

Where is this set? Have I described where we are or could this be anywhere? How can the setting help with the mood and emotion of the scene.

Is there a build-up? What does it promise?

Is there a pay-off? enough of a pay-off? Can there be more?

How can I push up the tension?

Characters
Who is in this scene? Is there someone in the scene who isn't present physically?

What is the relationship between these two characters? Is there a resentment between them? Does it show? How can it be more tense?

What is the character doing? Does it fit?

What is the character NOT saying? How can I show it? How can I show it better?

How does the character change in this scene?

Plot
What happens in this scene? What's the point?

Does it advance the story? How can it be made to if it doesn't?

Does it show us something about the characters? How can that be added?

General
How does it begin? Can it be improved?

How does it end? Does it convey a surprise? Does it make the reader want to read onto the next scene?


What do you do / think about when you revise?

You know, this could also apply to planning out a scene. I'll let you know how it works. :D

I love my online friends - I get ticked off at some of them, but ya gotta luv 'em.

Still, I make an effort to meet them in Real Life when I can and sometimes I wish I had a real life writers' group to meet face-to-face with.

I've been to NaNo write-ins and they're nice, but only a few times and only in the month of November. And everyone talks about getting a writing group together after the holidays and nobody does. Or I just don't get invited, but that would a whole 'nother post ;-)

So, I've been toying with the idea of working with the local librarian to start a Real Life writer's group. She seems to think that there would be interest.

A few problems spring to mind:

Differing levels of skill - I'm not published yet, but I would call myself new at this either.

Hide thickness - part of a RL writers' group would involve critique, and I'm sure that some feelings will be hurt.

Running the thing - I'm not sure how much of a time committment it would be on my part. There are times of the year when I simply can't devote a lot of time to it. I wouldn't want it to be dependent on me.

Are you all involved in RL Writers' Groups? What challenges do/did you face? What are the benefits?

I passed 25K on Thursday, so a milestone post probably is in order. A snip later.
A few things I've learned this year:

• The Blueprint or roadmap outline I'm using seems to be working so far - I know where I'm going.
  
• I've still had a chance to create characters and situations I hadn't expected. They may or may not be important, but I suspect they'll be the answer to a messy problem later.
  
• I'm writing roughly in order, which is quite new for me.
  
• Some of the turning point scenes have been easy for me - I look forward to writing them.
  
• Some of the turning point scenes are hard. I've made myself write a draft of some of them, others I've written - Come back to this scene. XXX needs to happen.
  
• I find that I'm happier writing just after I've read one of the writing craft books - the best are inspiring and give me ideas.

And here's a snip from my nano, The Mage King:
"Who are you?"
Raelin looked up, saw the boy he'd pointed out to Jonah that morning. The boy looked ragged, troubled. Like he hadn't slept in two days. Given the way things had been going in the last few days, he may not have.
"My name is Raelin. Farmer Karel is my brother." Even people from other towns knew Karel's name.
The boy frowned, then rubbed the bridge of his nose. Either he was a lot older than he seemed or his head was pounding.
"Are you all right?" Raelin stepped up, so that Leanna was behind him.
"You were looking for me, and you found me. Why?" He started to rub his forehead. "What are you?" His question came out as a wail and he collapsed onto the ground in front of him.
Happy Writing!

I have about 15,000 words, which is better than the minimum (11,667) and not as much as I wanted. But I got four words on Friday because I went into New York to meet <lj user="albathetross"> and <lj user="mooseythehut">, who had a reading :D. I got 3K yesterday and would love to get 4K today. If I get 5K, I'm going to get myself a little present - don't know what yet, but I know I'll like it.

This year, I'm working on a "Blueprint" rather than an outline. It's basically a list of the turning point scenes and approximately when they should happen in a story (I'm shooting for 100K for the story itself, if not this month). I wrote about story structure here: <a href=http://suelder.livejournal.com/37371.html/>This is a link to a story structure post</a>

One consequence of this Blueprint I hadn't expected is that I'm writing this story roughly in order. This is new to me and it's a little freaky. But I'm about at the point where the Inciting incident happens - the switch between the set up and launching my MC and his family into the story. The stakes will rise, he'll lose someone (temporarily - I deal in HEA) and the world will never be the same. I may pass over it, if it hasn't simmered enough, but I may do a first pass on it today.

I know what the turning points are, I know what the ending is, I know what the major plot and personal conflicts are. October was torture, in a way, because I couldn't write yet, but I know this story better than I know most of my stories before I write. It's only the first week, but, so far, I'm pleased with this experiment.

In my obsessive preparation for NaNoWriMo, I have been researching different websites and I found one called Storyfix.com.

The author espouses his method of story structure rather aggressively, and while I don’t agree with everything he says, I did find some things that made a lot of sense to me. A couple of things that weren’t repetitions of the same old stuff.

One such revelation was about character and he mentions it here:
http://storyfix.com/part-3-characterization-%e2%80%93-how-to-make-your-readers-love-%e2%80%98em-instead-of-leave-%e2%80%98em
 

The basic premise is:

People are driven by resentment.

And he’s right, it happens all the time. In Grey’s Anatomy, for instance, Lexie resents her big sister, Meredith. This leads her to take little digs at her sister, all the time, even flirting with big sister’s boyfriend. (I think. I’m not slavishly devoted to Grey’s Anatomy.) The gist is that even if what Meredith suggests happens to be what’s best for Lexie, Lexie is going to go off and do the opposite, just because her sister was the one who suggested it.

Haven’t you done something to spite your brother or a friend you were jealous of? Forgotten to get a paper for the coworker you were annoyed with? It’s human nature.

Applying it to my story is going to give me lots of inter-character conflict and make it so much more real.

Here’s the general gist of the story:

Raelin, a prince, arrives in a small town to retrieve his older brother, Karel, because their father is dying. Karel has a wife, which his father (the King) didn’t approve of, and two sons – 17 and 19. Their country is at war.

Here are some of my conflicts:

Raelin – Prince, younger brother – resents his father for feuding with Karel, resents Karel for leaving and leaving him to fight the war.

Karel – Prince, dairy farmer – resents his father for making him choose, doesn’t want to rule a country that was important to the King. Resents Raelin for coming to get him, reminding him of what he’d given up.

Myana – Karel’s wife, mage – resents Rostan for hurting Karel, resents Raelin for bringing all that up again. Resents Karel, a little, for acting out.

Leanna – friend of Karel and Myana, a mage, once engaged to Raelin – resents her own father for tacitly disowning her, resents Raelin for him not asking her to stay.

There will also be resentments between the boys, as boys are wont to have. My own niece and nephew are super-competitive, but if one person tries to get between them, they close ranks.

Now, they're not going to endlessly discuss this, the way they might on Grey's Anatomy (that's a joke, folks). But these little resentments lead to resistance. Myana isn't really thrilled about going back to a country at war, where they don't like mages. She's going to resist. And Karel and Raelin were close, but they don't know each other any more and then there's that resentment. It's more conflict, more chance for tension and body language. And, in the first book of this series, that resentment between the King and *his* brother is what causes the main conflict.

Do you have any examples of character resentment? Either your own or someone else's?

In an effort to explore different aspects of my creativity, I'm taking a watercolor class. I'd like to learn to paint, make pretty pictures, have fun. Instead, I'm being reminded, not of writing, but of how we think and how our brains work.

 

The brain tends to see edges - if you draw a face, you use lines, which is why this J looks vaguely like a face. Two eyes and a mouth. It takes less memory and less computing power to store what a general face looks like.

But a face isn't a couple of dots and a curved line. A face is made up of cheeks and foreheads, red swaths of lip and circles of hazel irises.

And that's watercolor - swaths of color and shades and shapes. It's the exact opposite of how we draw and how we remember. It's really interesting to consider.

And there are all sorts of tricks, again, based on neuroscience. One particular color red looks more orange if it's next to the green, but it looks redder next to the blue (I think I remembered that right), and that's because the brain doesn't remember absolutes. A brain sees red in relation to the color next to it. Part of that is that the cones in the eye might be overworked, but part of it is that the brain says, hey, that's redder than that one, or that's greener than the other one.

This is supposed to be a writing blog! What does this have to do with writing?

Well now, I'm glad you asked.

In neither case, drawing or watercolor, are we doing anything more than representing reality. And we can represent reality in our writing, too. We can describe gingerbread baking, cinnamon and clove mixing with the ginger, rising on the steam coming from the freshly cut cake. Lemon sauce cools it slightly, smooth and tart, exploding in my mouth as it seeps into the spongy gingerbread on a cold winter night. Or maybe you've been able to describe the tart, sharp flavor of a lemon wedge on a hot August afternoon. Just imagining it, my mouth is salivating.

And that's the trick. By using language, or lines or color, we seduce our audience's brain into conspiring with us to create or recreate experience. We recognize the colors of a sunset, the flavors of a lemon and experience them again, in a slightly different way. Orange looks just a little bit different than peach and the word shuffled is very different from stalked, even though they both mean walked. It's all in how you paint it.

Last night, PBS had replayed the Fred Astaire / Ginger Rogers movie, Top Hat. It was wonderful - missed meetings, misunderstandings and, of course, Fred and Ginger dancing.

The movie's 74 years old, so the music was old-fashioned and so was the script. The advice that Ginger got from her friend - that she'd be hit on by all kids of jerks as long as she was a spinster - was, thankfully, from another world.

But the dancing was timeless and so was rooting for our heroes, Fred and Ginger. Of course I knew that they'd get together - I lost track of how many times I've seen this movie. But I still rooted for them.

And when they weren't on screen, when a comedic subplot was going on or when there were other people dancing, I wanted to see my heroes. Same thing happens with a novel - when the hero isn't front and center, there'd better be a reason.

There are good reasons why a hero can be off-screen in my novel, but even with a good reason, I'll need to be darned careful to make what is on-screen interesting enough to capture the reader's attention. Then, when our hero returns to the spotlight, reader will say "Oh year, what's been going on with him?"

Of course, if I could dance like Ginger, I might not bother with a subplot at all.

I'm obsessing about this story now - which is good because it's keeping from starting NaNo too early.

One of the thing that my beta readers have mentioned is that I sometimes forget to set the scene, to give the reader a sense of place.  And I just read the chapter on setting in Obstfeld's Novelist's Essential Guide to Crafting Scenes.  And so now my head is filled with how the setting can set the mood, create tension and anchor the reader.

This is a scene where the wizard, Natayla, speaks to her lover's stepmother/mother.  They're both waiting for him to return from fighting monsters that were made by the wild magic.

Restless, Natayla climbed the battlements that overlooked the sea. A lookout post, it was empty of guards who couldn’t see past the morning mists. Doubtless they were standing guard where they could do some good.

 

A gull cawed as it swept toward the rocks, protecting its nest from another sea bird. The wizard leaned against the stone wall and opened her mind to the currents of the mists and sea. Life was everywhere here, the same as in the forest, but different. The pools in the rocks below held creatures and plants whose world was only that and no more, while beyond, the sea creatures’ realm stretched to the hidden horizon. She felt them all and let their power wash over her.

 

“So, you can sense the subtler forms of magic. But is your touch light enough to use them?”

I was trying to contrast the isolation of the outpost with the queen's presence, and to give the feeling that these two women were utterly alone, if only for this moment in time.

Comments welcome.

 

Okay, so, I'm procrastinating - it's a time-honored NaNo tradition.  This is the "cover" icon I'll be using for my nano project.

And here's the query blurb:

When King Rostan dies, his eldest son, Karel, returns to Verlasce to finish the war his father fought for thirty years. But can a man who's been a dairy farmer for nineteen years and seven months take up the reins and battle the Tennets and their mage warriors? It takes magic to fight magic, as his sons, Lyall and Jonah discover. Will the magic they discover be enough to stop the slaughter and push back their enemies? Will they be able to restore the alliance between the royal family and the mages of Verlasce?

The outline is taking form and I'm trying to distract myself from starting early.

20 more days to go...

I'm reworking last year's NaNo story, in an effort to refrain from starting this year's NaNo before November 1st.  And I'm amazed at how much I've learned in the course of just under a year.  How much is learning about writing and how much is learning about this story is debatable - they're intertwined.  But I've begun rewriting scenes.

Here's one scene, as I wrote it a  year ago:

Their destination rose above the road, on a hill, a large building overlooking the small town. It had once been a manor house, but the nobleman who'd built it had died young, without children. His parents had decided that children should live there, so a school was begun. 

 

The manor consisted of a stone house with two brick wings fanning out on either side. Young men lived on the second floor of the one wing; young ladies lived on the second floor of the other wing. Classes were held in the main house and the first floors of both wings.

 

The children of the local gentry also attended classes here. Erisa's parents lived nearby and she'd attended three days out of a seven-day cycle. She begged her mother to let her sleep over with her friends, sleeping on a spare mattress in front of the hearth whenever the treat was granted.

And here's what I've written this morning:

"That's where we're going." Erisa's voice was odd, flat, as she nodded, then pointed to the Manor house rising from the mists above the road. They were almost at the village, but it was the Manor that commanded the eye and the town.

 

Jian followed her direction, asking, "Whose keep is that?"

 

She'd pulled up, staring sadly at the brick and stone. "No ones, now. It's a school, for the children in the village and the local nobility. Master Scura is the headmaster."

 

Jian thought he understood her attitude now. "This is where Master Villar found you, isn't it?" She nodded, keeping her eyes on the house.

 

"I was older than some of the other apprentices, but Master Scura had made sure that I had an education. Villar told me that I'd do." The bitterness in her voice surprised him.

 

"What about the local nobles? Who do we present ourselves to?" Wizards always presented themselves to the local nobility whenever they entered their realms.

 

"Lord Bynum is to the north, Lord Rasen to the east." She gathered the reins and nudged her horse ahead. "But we go to the manor school. Master Scura has as much status and respect and this way, we don't choose between the two lords. They're competitive enough."

 

Jian narrowed his eyes, but the apprentice kept hers on either the road or the Manor House. He had questions, but he'd wait to see if there answers inside that school.

Some things that I've noticed:

* The second is more active

* There's a much clearer POV

* Much more tension - Why is she bitter?  What kind of competition exists between the local gentry?  How will that affect what they're going here?

* It shows Master Jian's character, where the other didn't s how either's character - it was too omni.

Now, I just have to do this for the other 49.5K.  But I'll have a better story.

UFO's as in UnFinished Objects.

Lately, I've been going through my stashes - I have a lot of hobbies - and looking for projects to finish.  I've finished a couple of scarves, almost done with the knitted shrug, I've got some necklaces that I'm beading that I want to finish.  And a lot of work/work that's been hanging and I should finish.

And  I've got Works in Progress (WiP) that are left undone.  I've pulled out one of them, too - Shattered Magic.

I started Shattered Magic for Nano last year - got to 55K and ran out of steam.  When I pulled it out, I figured out why - it was kind of mechanical and not terribly emotional.  In the past year, I've done a lot of work on adding emotion to my writing and I was amazed at how different some of it is from what I wrote a year ago.

I've also been looking at story structure (Save the Cat by Blake Snyder and Story by Robert McKee) and I can see why I stopped writing it.  It wasn't going anywhere and it needed higher stakes.  So, I added an "inciting event", something to shake them out of the White Tower and out into the world to look for answers.

Have you  ever taken out an old WiP?  Could you work on it?  Or did you lock it back in your trunk?

 

 

I like to cook, as anyone who knows me even remotely realizes. But I will not cook the same thing over and over again. I like to experiment with flavors and try new things, add variety, bring new foods into my rotation. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, or not as well as I'd hoped.

 

And the same goes for writing, in a lot of ways. Sometimes I feel like working on Epic fantasy (okay, a lot of the time), but I've tried Urban Fantasy and even YA (it was not successful).

 

There are other kinds of variety to consider, though. In a dish, or a meal, you might want variety in sweet and savory, what spices you use, textures – like crunchy or soft. It makes a dish or a meal more interesting.

 

In a piece, a short or a novel or a paragraph, you want some of that variety, too. Not too much, or no one will understand you. But two scenes that are heavy on description, back to back, will drag the pace of the story. Too many action scenes, back to back, can propel the story quickly before you're ready.

 

The idea is to create a variety – until you're ready for the bang, bang, bang that leads up to the climax.

 

I've heard that you want to vary sentence length, for that same interest and variety in a paragraph. I'm just figuring out that the same applies to scenes.

 

And here's a very good blogpost that does something similar, comparing the variety of musical styles to Voice in writing.  http://cba-ramblings.blogspot.com/2009/10/guest-blogger-heather-goodman.html

 

This is from a Semi-submersible boat out in the Great Barrier Reef.

Suelder

So, tonight I'm going through some photographs and setting up a slide show.  This is one of the phots I promised, of the Blue Mountains.

It's really a canyon, filled in by a Eucalyptus forest which gives off a blue haze.  What do you think?

Suelder

 

I am a thinking animal. I am also an emotional animal. People who are analytical think I'm too emotional and vice versa.

 

Sigh.

 

When I just write, I ramble. I know this, it's not news. So, in an effort to compensate for this, I've studied story structure. But when I did what's called a phase outline – everything and its brother is outlined – I couldn't write the danged story. (Although it might be that the basic structure is wrong.)

 

So, now I'm researching and experimenting with story structure. And a friend says she likes my writing better when I just write.

 

Right now, I'm trying to find a way to just write that lets me work within a structure. Does such an animal exist?

 

Some people "just write" a synopsis – tell the story and then outline it. And then write it.

 

Some people spend months doing "prep work" and sit down and write it in order.

 

Neither method works for me and I'm still trying to find a method that does.

 

What do you do?

I've participated in Nano for the past three years and "won" all three years. Only one has been completed so far.

 

This year, I'm concentrating on Story Structure more and, while I wouldn't call it a phase outline, I am outlining more than I had before.

 

Here are a few things I'm trying to keep in mind:

 

A story is about change. What changes?

       More than one thing needs to change, though. Save The Cat (the book I'm enamored of right now) suggests finding 6 things that need to change, even before you start to outline.

       The physical danger needs to change/resolve.

       The stakes need to escalate and then resolve.

       The interior/ emotional world of the MC needs to change.

       Etc.

 

You get the idea. Figure out what changes before telling your story. What's the story you're telling? That'll help answer the question.

 

What are the turning points?

       When does the MC change from being reactive to proactive? When does the MC commit to the quest/war/whatever? When does the world change?

 

Now, I'm not saying that every single question must be answered – the only rule is that there are no hard and fast rules. :wink:

 

I'm only showing this because this is how I'm thinking about the story that I'm planning for NaNo.

 

By the way. Brothers is not just one story anymore, it's three. I'll most likely be doing the third for NaNo. First.

 

I do not write in order.

I love telling a story, but I do tend to ramble on.  And on, and on, and on.  After all, my first completed novel was 184,000 words in the first draft.  And about three years ago I realized that I needed to focus and structure what story I was telling, not all the stories that I could.

That led me to Forward Motion (www.fmwriters.com) and to read any writing book that more experienced writers recommended.  I've experimented with the Hero's Quest, a feminist version of the hero's quest from Women Who Run with the Wolves and On the Way to the Wedding, and now, to Save the Cat.

Save the Cat is a screenwriting book by the late Blake Snyder and I'm really intrigued by his take on story structure.  He has "beats" where this must happen by page 72 and the midpoint is somewhere around page 55 (In a 110 page screenplay, not a 300 page novel), which I think are a little restrictive.

But I really like what he has to say about the three act structure that's been around since the ancient Greeks.  He breaks it down as:

Act I: Thesis - Set up the story, ask the story questions, describe the world as it is

Act II: Antithesis - the world is turned on it's head and the hero doesn't know which way is up.  Everything they thought they knew is suspect and s/he needs to start over.  But that's as much illusion as the the thesis world.

Act III: Synthesis - the hero/ine needs to take what's true from Act one and Act two and use both to solve the story problem.  Each of the previous world-views is incomplete and the protag needs a more complete view to win.

Okay, this doesn't describe every story.  But I'm rather impressed with how many good stories it does describe, at least in part.  And it's something I'm certainly going to experiment with as I work on structuring my stories.

How do you approach story structure?  Do you use archetypes?  Do you outline and work on the structure from the beginning or is it something you refine during revision?

I'm curious.

Suelder

The kind I actually have while sleeping.

The other night I dreamed that George Clooney wanted to play one of my characters.  Unfortunately, that character was much younger than he was.

When I woke up, I realized that I would have rewritten the character so that George could play him.

That is all.

Quick post to say, I'm Home!

I took over 1,000 pictures and met up with friends.  Australia is amazing but I'm glad I don't need to spend another 26 hours in airports and airplanes for awhile now.

informative posts with pictures will follow, but only after I get over the jet lag.

Suelder

I tried to check into Qantas to confirm our seating assignments and found out they thought we wanted window seats.

Dudes.  Mom's hip - we asked for aisle - at least one.

And it seems that we're going to be seated about nine rows apart.  Probably so we could both get window seats.  *facepalm*

The trip has been amazing, with the possible exception of a surfeit of ABBA songs.  Who knew Australians liked them?

We're heading to the airport early - perhaps they can be reasoned with.  We shall certainly see.