What I Did On My Blogger Vacation

I've been gone from here. A lot. As usual, no small part of it has to do with me being an infrequent blogger. But for once, I have a decent reason, too.

In October, I accidentally did my own personal NaNoWriMo.

See, I was plodding along through a decent project that I like, and I'm still fond of, but it just wasn't coming easily. Meanwhile, I was struck with inspiration in one of those bolt-from-the-blue moments.

I have an older project that has made the querying rounds with lots of requests, lots of positive feedback, but no offers. A lot of "great writing, not enough of a hook," "love your characters, love your dialogue, but this plot isn't original enough to be a debut." Which was really hard at the time, because I love those characters, too, and I felt like they weren't getting a fair shake (from their story, not from the agents).

Now, over a year later, I finally had my Aha! moment: I was telling the story from the wrong character's perspective. The idea stayed with me, and all but stalled progress on my other work-in-progress.

"I'll just write a few pages to get the basic premise down," I thought. "Get that first scene out of my head so I can concentrate on the other one."

Twenty-two days and 74,000 words later, it was done.

And it feels right. My wonderful crit partners have already given me the thumbs up and the first 50 pages have been through the ringer in my crit group. If I had a Magic 8 Ball, it would be reading 'All Signs Point to Yes.'

It doesn't feel like a first draft, or even a second, third or fourth. It feels like the final edits on the story I told a long time ago. I guess it just took a year, a leave of absence from work, and that final spark to give me the chance to absorb all the input I got on the query trail last time.

So, I'm not doing NaNo this year. I need a break! My wonderful friend Ryan made me my very own certificate though, for doing my personal NaNo a month early. It's at the top of this post. Pretty awesome right?

Fingers crossed, people! And for those of you doing NaNo--It can be done. Trust me!

- Liz

Revision Series - Part 1: First Draft Review, or The Grid

Today is our first stop on the Revision Tour.

When I finished my first draft, it was 63,000 words (not quite long enough for the adult market) and involved a present time-flashback-present time-flashback-etc. format. Some of the feedback I got indicated that flashbacks were weak writing so I decided to go with a chronological timeline.

The concept was overwhelming.

Being a very visual person, I needed to see it laid out. So, I wrote each finite scene on a small piece of paper (I would have used Post-Its if I'd had any) and spread it all out on my coffee table. Each slip of paper only said a few key words, but it was enough to trigger my memory. I wish I'd thought to take pictures at this stage, but I figured it wouldn't be very interesting to anyone else. (It probably isn't - HA!)

Then I started shuffling scenes around. All the present time scenes went to the end, and a few of the flashbacks got rearranged into a more workable order. Some of the considerations that went into the placement of scenes:

1. Does this scene push my Main Character (MC) and the Love Interest (LI) together or drive them apart?

2. What changes or growth does my MC undergo in the course of this scene?

3. Is this scene strictly necessary? Does it move the plot along or stall the action? Am I keeping it just because I find it funny/entertaining?

Once I had everything in the order I wanted, I created a table. I used Word, just because I'm comfortable with it. I made it four columns wide with twice as many rows as I had slips of paper.

The columns were labeled from left to right:

The Story

Suggested Changes/Additions

What We're Achieving

What We Need to Achieve

They should be self-explanatory, but basically I used the squares to suggest changes that I should make in the existing chapters as well as any new scenes/chapters/ideas that I should add. The last two columns kept me focused on the overall character arcs and helped me keep the big picture in mind as I revised.

I sent this grid to one of my betas (we'll call her Big Picture Beta, or BPB) with some questions listed at the bottom. She made notes on the whole chart in red so I could see her thoughts.

By the way, she'd read the whole original draft, so she knew the story inside and out. She'd also read the rather extensive editorial letter I got from one agent and had given me her sixty-seven cents (because she's worth way more than two cents).

It should also be noted that I'd already discussed the upcoming revisions with a few people and hammered out some initial ideas in my mind. This was just the first time I wrote them down.

So there you have it. That was the first step for me. It was scary, because I'm not someone who writes from an outline. I have a basic plot in mind, with a few pit stops along the way, but that's all I know when I start a first draft. It was also scary because I knew I had a ton of work ahead of me, but as they say "Writing is rewriting."

Tomorrow, I'll tell you about doing the actual rewrites and working with two betas along the way.

Everybody clear on how this went down? Anyone else have an easier method?

- Liz

Plot and the Lazy Girl

Before we get started today, I just want to announce that I’ve taken Third Place in a small contest sponsored by ReviewFuse.com. I entered the first chapter of A Game of Risk (book 1) and that chapter will be on display at the site’s blog next week Tuesday. Click here if you want to see the site. If you’re really interesting in honing your reviewing skills for other writers, this is a great place.

Now where was I...?

You’ve heard of Attention Deficit Disorder? Well, I have the opposite problem. My cousin has lovingly diagnosed me with Excessive Grooviness Disorder, but what it boils down to is that I am truly skilled at putting off ‘til tomorrow. And why put off ‘til tomorrow something that I can not do altogether? That’s my motto.

Oh, I’m very reliable with things I’m interested in. And at work--forget about it, I’ll take half the patient load if they let me. Housework on the other hand...yeah. I’m not going to end up on Hoarders anytime soon, but if cleanliness is next to godliness I’m about as mortal as they come.

So it is with writing. I am not a plotter. (This may explain my continued work in the romance genre.) I like to think that my version of the writing process is legitimate because it’s somewhat similar to Stephen King’s. Whatever you may think of the man--and I happen to be in the worshipful acolyte camp (Stephen, your shrine lacks only a lock of hair in my house)--he certainly can produce a story. And in his book On Writing (which I wholeheartedly recommend to any aspiring writer) he explains how he comes up with his ideas. He thinks of a situation and puts some characters in it to see how they’ll react. For example, what would a bunch of people do if most of the world’s population was killed off by a super flu? He got The Stand out of that. (Excuse me for a moment, I need to stop screaming “Why can’t I do that?!” and beating my head on the table.)

I’m back.

Anyway, my version of plotting goes something like this: Does anyone even answer wrong numbers anymore now that everyone has Caller ID? Maybe if you just wanted to shut your phone up. Or maybe if you were expecting a call from a Doctor’s office or something... Could you meet someone that way? And once I have a concept, I find a couple characters who might want to star in my schizophrenic show.

I usually only know one or two key things about a character when I first conceive them. In the example above, I knew I had a dancer on my hands (don’t ask me why, ‘cause I don’t know). I also knew she would be very hesitant to meet a stranger. That’s it. But, I put her on the receiving end of a wrong number and let the rest play out as it wanted.

Now comes the part where you very slowly reach for the phone and try to find the nearest mental health facility that might be able to come and pick me up. See, in my experience, characters know what they’re going to do. Any interference on my part results in stilted, painful scenes where the quality of the prose suffers and the action all but dies. If I simply open the mental window on their world and watch the scene as it happens, I get natural dialogue and action. I once heard writing described as “socially acceptable schizophrenia” and I couldn’t help but agree. That’s kind of how it feels.

There are a few things in the process that I cannot explain, no matter how hard I try. Like, the fact that I have an internal clock that tells me when a chapter is ending and that clock always goes off between pages twelve and fifteen. Rarely do my chapters fall outside that page count. That’s apparently how long it takes me to get through the action.

I also can’t explain why a tiny change can make all the difference. In one of my novels, I tried like hell to make the main character a brunette. I wrote it in a couple ways. I fought hard for that brown hair. But the story was hung up in my brain. It wouldn’t come out. I couldn’t get her or the other characters to do anything but hang like marionettes with no puppeteers. Finally, I gave in and let her be a strawberry blonde. Suddenly, it all broke loose and I told the rest of her story in six weeks.

When I get to a point where the story seems to run out, I just think “What if?” What if something changed? What if they got separated somehow? What if she decided to stop fighting? And then, I consult my characters and they agree to pursue that particular bit of improvisational theater and we all nod and take notes and move ahead with the parts that worked.

The other thing I can’t explain is the almost preternatural way I have of laying out bits of nothing at the beginning of a story that end up being helpful in the conclusion. I’m sure somewhere in my brain, I’m keeping track of all the breadcrumbs I’ve laid out and subconsciously working them into the conclusion, but believe me I’m never thinking far enough ahead in the beginning of a story to know that 150 pages down the line, I’m going to be really glad I said that so-and-so is afraid of heights, or what’s-her-face is getting married in a few weeks.

A writer friend of mine talked about “dead herrings” once. That’s his name for all the false foreshadowing that can be left behind if you change course in the middle of a story. He suggested that in revisions, you have to make sure that you account for any clues that readers would have had for an ending that didn’t come to be, and that you’ve satisfied everyone’s curiosity about any tantalizing teasers you laid out. I guess that’s what I’m talking about here. I just find that most of my “dead herrings” end up re-incorporated somehow. It’s probably because I’m too EGD to do the housekeeping once the story is done.

Perhaps we’ll dabble on revisions next time. Maybe not. We’ll have to see what my brain feels up to.