Category Archives: writing

A Strange Little Idea

Last night as I was drifting off to sleep an idea sparked in my head for plotting stories in a visual manner. This is not about discovering or working out the plot beats to a story but rather finding a way to show them visually as a potential tool for analysis and revision.

Using a spreadsheet, the idea would be to assign each chapter a value positive of negative for how the events in that chapter have impacted the protagonist for good or ill. Things better for the character would be a positive number and things getting worse would be a negative one with the size of the number reflecting just how much better or worse the event was.

Then these values could be graphed with the X-Axis being the chapter numbers and the Y-Axis the event values. This would produce a line going up with ever ‘good’ turn in the story and descending for every ‘bad’ one. The sections could be further labeled with the acts to see how well the written matches against the expectations of structure.

I’m going to make such a graph after the first draft of my new novel is completed and see just what it tells me, if anything. This idea may be a waste of time or it may be a new and valuable tool. We shall see.

 

Share

Thinking About Stakes

When crating fiction a common bit of advice to ‘raise the stakes.’ This is a suggestion of magnify the penalty for failure for the protagonist making the eventual success or failure that much more impactful for the reader or audience. However, this is usually or at least often interpreted as threaten more lives, make the potential explosions larger, the potential death toll higher but that is too simplistic a way to think about stakes.

In franchise material there is what I call the ‘Bond Effect’ where each adventure has to have more on the line than the previous adventure. Very quickly the writers find themselves in the situation where Bond has to save the entire world, from nuclear annihilation, a murderous madman with a secret orbiting space station of death, what have you, and once he has saved the world saving it again has less entertainment value We know there is never going to be a Bond film where the world dies, not even the 70s got that bleak so the combination of an assured outcome and devalued victory makes each world save less thrilling until they become boring. For this effect magnified beyond look to the UK program Doctor Who where the stakes have been repeatedly raised to the entire universe sometimes destroying and recreating the universe as their climatic conclusions.

What all this misses is that stakes are most potent when we are emotionally invested in them. Setting aside the ‘save the world or universe’ trope the protagonist is they fail should suffer deep emotional coast and or loss. This is a lesson well learned in dramatic fiction and too often not in genre stories. Marvel studios did this particularly well in a couple of films, notably Captain America: The Winter Soldier where after saving the world we got to the real stakes for Steve Rogers, saving his friend Bucky Barnes from Hydra’s mind control and Captain America: Civil War where the world was never in danger but rather at its heart it is the friendship between Steve and Tony Stark that is in danger and in that story ultimately lost. The cost of failure is the emotional damage to the characters, these are very high stakes that are intimately personal and emotionally compelling for the audience.

It’s easy to craft plots with larger and larger death star threatening planets and entire star systems it is harder but more satisfying into dive deep into character and find the thing that matters most to them as a person and make us the readers and the audience share in the terror of losing that thing. Then you will have stakes that really matter.

Share

Twilight Worlds: The best of New Myths Vol 2

One night I watched an episode of the Original Series Star Trek and the Enterprise arrived at a planet that was nearly identical to Earth. Of course, the production’s very limited budget and the period’s limited special effects capability forced the creators to use such gimmicks to meet the demand of a weekly television series, but it sparked a thought What might cause an identical Earth to be discovered?

This moment of inspiration led to my short story A Canvas Dark and Deeppublished in NewMyths.com issue 41 and now re-printed in their collection Twilight Worlds: The Best of New Myths Volume 2.

Available December 15th, today, from Amazon and Barnes and Noble in both eBook and physical editions, Twilight Worlds represents some of the best and most imaginative stories published by NewMyths.com and I am deeply honored to have A Canvas Dark and Deep included in this anthology.

Share

Steady Progress

So, even though this annual Medicare enrollment is the busiest I have seen in six years and that is creating tons of overtime work at my day-job I continue to make progress on my next novel.

This week, since the overtime is optional and the stress of it has cause my psoriasis to flare, I have reduced my hours back to the standard 40-hour week. I am quite happy that when I laid out my plan for this novel, I made my daily word count goal a mere 1000 words per day. Many days I surpass that target and since October when I started there have been just three or four days when I failed to meet it. This demonstrates the importance of modest goals.

When your goal is modest you will achieve it more often providing a psychological boost and a sense of well-being while if you make your objective too ambitious then frequent failure can provoke despair and senses of failure which hamper meeting the goal again and creating a feedback cycle that ends in nothing being achieved.

I could have easily set my goal at 1500 words per day. That’s a level I have consistently achieved before but knowing that the busy season was barreling down upon me I went with a more modest target and because I did, I feel good about my achievement and the work in progress is actually ahead of schedule.

My calendar shows my plan was to hit 46,000 words out of an estimate 80,000 by this Friday and as of this morning I am currently at 45,000 words.

My method may not be for you and your writing style but I find an outline, a sensible goal, and a reasonable amount of butt in chair and fingers to keyboard yields consistent results.

Share

Steady Progress

Steady Progress

My newest novel and WIP is coming along nicely. I have made or exceeded my daily writing word count targets every day since I started the project in early October and this week, tomorrow in fact, I will hit the 40% completed mark.

For this project I have kept my daily target a manageable 1000 words. I know that normally that I can actually hit 1500 to 2000 words per day with only a little extra effort, but two factors led me to decide on a smaller goal.

The first was that this is in a genre I have not written before and when venturing into unexplored territory it’s best to go slowly as you learn the terrain.

The second is that this is coinciding with the busy period at my day job. Right now is the open enrollment for Medicare Advantage plans for the whole population and the dramatically increases my work load bringing with it overtime hours. Last week I worked 12 hours above my scheduled shift. Given that this is going to last through the period when I write most of the novel, I thought it best to keep my goals modest.

The importance of a modest is goal is that it can be met while not being so small as to slow the progress. If a goal is too large, then you will miss it too often and that can emotional effects that dampen one’s ability to sit and do the work. Too small and you’re too tempted to stop early and then the lack of progress becomes an emotional impediment.

If I maintain this level of productivity and if the novel lands about where I am expecting in word count, then the first draft should be complete by mid-February.

 

Share

I Almost Feel Like a Pantser

Today is a day to turn my attention away, at least for a few hours, from the electoral crisis gripping our nation so I’m going to talk about my writing.

I am an outliner. I can’t tackle a long form piece of fiction without an outline. For me the critical junctions in a story must be known before I can start putting the words in a row. But my outlines are not all the same.

If I am remembering correctly my longest outline for a novel was a massive 87 pages and for my current WIP it is 21 pages.

However, as I am writing this novel it feels like there is so much more being discovered in the process that wasn’t even hinted at in the outline.

Oh, the act breaks are falling on the same major event and the plot aspects are proceeding perfectly on pace, but I am inventing and uncovering aspects I had not thought about that only arise as I try to fit myself into the character’s skin. Major emotional beats are coming from out of nowhere and with the foreknowledge of where I need to end up, I can incorporate them properly.

When I started I had a lot of trepidation about this project, it’s a genre I haven’t really written in before, its main character is a challenge, and knowing that it is very likely that someone already is holding expectations about it all pile on new levels of anxiety and yet it seems to be flowing rather nicely.

Here’s hoping that continues.

Share

Quick Hits

Suffering a little headache so just a few quick observations and notes this morning.

My Work in Progress novel is coming along nicely, 11,000 words on the rough draft and exploring/discovering aspect of the story within the confines of the outline has been going well.

I have been re-watching Downfall about the final days in Hitler bunker as the Soviets take Berlin and frankly it feels like I am spying on Trump Campaign Headquarters with true Believers unable to accept reality, bootlickers scrambling to save themselves, and rank and file only just realizing that they have been led by a madman to their doom.

Did not watch the Presidential debates. Any event, however unimaginable, that would dissuade me from voting against Trump will be far larger than any verbal contest.

Going to spend at least some time this weekend with a virtual convention.

Have fun everyone.

Share

Can Ideas Go Stale?

The answer for me is an unqualified yes. I know that when an idea for a story, a game, or any other sort of creative endeavor first arrives in my shriveled brain that is a window in which if I do not start working on the concept it will never become fully realized.

It doesn’t matter if I have taken the time to produce detailed notes or outlines the idea itself seems to go stale and lose life the more time passes between its inception and its execution. I have folders on my computer of half-started ideas that I failed to follow through on in time and are now adrift without direction or propulsion.

Curious enough this does not seem to apply to any concept that is executed fully and then set aside. If I write a novel centered on a concept and the set that novel aside, I can come back ten years later, re-read it, and its vibrancy is still there, but if it’s only an outline or a synopsis. Nope, that’s as dead a week-old corpse.

Because of that fact or limitation in my creative process I am plowing ahead on my novel without having a signed contract in my back pocket.

The work is not wasted. No writing ever is, it is all honing the craft, but also even if my editor and I cannot come to terms, and that’s an outcome I doubt we have a great working relationship, there are other houses and other editors so forward I go.

 

Share

Activation Energy, Momentum, and the Milliped’s Problem

It seems to me that my writing requires an activation energy that must be met every single time I sit at the keyboard. I want to write, I sit with the intention of writing, but there is always a resistance and it takes an effort of will to overcome that resistance. However, once that has been overcome the writing moves forward without much resistance. It’s the barrier that I have to force myself over but knowing that it is just a momentary barrier makes it one that can be surmounted but never ignored.

In addition to the activation energy to begin writing for the day each project also seems to have their own elements of momentum. At the start of any new project, short story or novel, it is tough getting the story going. The characters kind of mill about in scenes and the scenes feel pointless generating doubt about the entire project. Again, if I push on there comes a moment when the story moves by itself. It is as if I needed to get up to a certain speed and crest a hill but once I do it slides on its own all the way to the end.

On my newest novel I have discovered a new trap, a new hazard to avoid. With the publication Vulcan’s Forge, I received some very nice praise, praise that was unknown by this reader directed at a particular aspect of the SF story that I had worked quite hard at. It was quite a moment of pride to have someone tell me that the elements that really wanted to work had been one of their selling points.

Now I am working a new SF novel and this element again needs careful attention but like the milliped after being asked how it manages to move so many feet perfectly coordinated, I find myself frozen and worried that I’m messing up what I had once done so well.

There’s no cure for this but to work through it and trust myself and my eventual beta readers.

With writing, and all the arts, there are always new barriers to overcome.

Share

Second Act Troubles

A dissatisfaction with the current progress of Lovecraft Country has me thinking about second act issues. Of course, when I speak of second acts, I am referring to the traditional three act structure that many films and television shows employ even though I myself utilize a five-act structure when building out a novel.

In the three act model the first act is establishment of the characters, the world, and the central conflict of the story. The third act is after all the major revelations and the characters hurtle towards their final conflicts and resolution leaving the second act, which is the same size in term of word or page counts as the other two combines, as a vast middle where advancement and reversal take place as the characters chart the course of the plot. It is not unusual for second acts to become muddled and messy as their purpose doesn’t seem as well defined as acts one or three. This is in part why I like the five-act system instead of one massive poorly defined act there are two with better laid out purposes.

What’s important is that the characters have goal that they have identified and chase that directly immediately impact the story. The second act of Star Wars (A New Hope for you youngsters.) Is the Flacon’s capture, the discovery and rescue of the princess and the escape from the Death Star. At each of the turns we understand exactly what it is the characters need to achieve, the cost of the fail to do that, and the escalation as obtaining the immediate goal brings further problems and troubles.

While things that happen here do affect the third act and the story’s eventual conclusion the characters are not looking off to that distant end but rather dealing with objective that if they do not meet them now there will be terrible consequences.

Keep your second act moving, as the writer keep your eye on the final prize the conclusion, but remember that the characters have to have immediate goals that matter to them now.

Share