Changing your perceptions

I had initially began the first of a long series of books with a male main character. While listening to a writing podcast (I believe it was writing excuses), they talked about switching the sex of your main character in order to alter how you see them and to refine the core of the story.

When I did this, it completely eliminated my writers block. I have since entirely switched that main character to a female, and it has unlocked the story for me nearly entirely.

So now everytime my story starts to lag I look at how I can alter it in a fundamental way, which will so thoroughly change the way I see the story. In order to hopefully unlock the next scene which seems to allude me.

 

Prologues & Epilogues

So, what people normally do with prologues and epilogues is add depth to a story that just doesn’t seem to fit in the main story. It could be a brief excerpt of thousands of years of history to explain why things are the way they are. It could be a “they lived happily ever after” like they did in the harry potter movies. Recently I was listening to a podcast where an author was talking about putting chapter excerpts from the next book at the end of his books. That got my mind to thinking, what if.

What if, instead of sprinkling explanations throughout a new book of things that happened in a previous book or books, you just had excerpts as a prologue? What if, instead of a cliff hanger (which I hate, usually) you make the reader want more by giving them a taste of what’s to come?

So basically, the prologue catches the reader up. This can be good for new readers who are just coming into the universe, or for loyal readers who might have had to wait a long time for a sequel, and instead of needed to read the previous book all over again, they can just read the prologue and all the memories of the previous book(s) come flooding back, along with the drive to learn “what happens next!” which is built in momentum ready to go.

Sometimes I really enjoy reading the previous books in a series, like Ender’s Game. Then again, after about 7 books, you start to just read the new book and struggle to recall everything relevant. That’s why I can see the reasons for shout-outs sprinkled throughout the new books in a series, even though they bug me. A second benefit that just occurred to me is that a reader might not know about a certain book that leads up to the one they are reading. A good for instance is the books in the Liaden Universe. Often times there are short stories, or whole other series that tie in and a new reader will not know what order to read them in. As a matter of fact, the writers have made a Correct Reading Order list just so readers know to go find these other books before they dive into a series that will leave them confused in a few spots.

Now Sharon Lee and Steve Miller don’t do the shout-outs, or if they do they are so clever or talented that I haven’t noticed them. In fact reading their books has made me think about my own universe and how I can remedy issues in my own universe that  I come across as a reader of theirs. I also hope I can make stories half as interesting as theirs are.

What if, I made these book ends not only explanatory and enticing, but hyperlinked? In the prologue, you’d have “Excerpts from ____” with the name of the book hyperlinked to a buy page. That way a new reader could stop there and go pick up the previous book if they wanted, or read the excerpt and hope it explained enough, and read on. The epilogue being a chapter excerpt also having a hyperlink would allow the reader to go then and get the new book, if they were so inclined, or a link to my web site (when I get one) so they can watch for a release date.

I’m really excited about this idea, and think it could solve many issues I have come across while reading series or universes. What are your thoughts?

 

 

 

The sequel shout-out

Over the years I’ve read quite a few sequels. Mostly in series but sometimes just in the same “universe”. One thing that bugs be and has gotten bad enough that I had to put the book aside and take a break so I wouldn’t tear it in half, is the “shout-out” to events that happened in a previous book. 99% of the time I have seen this done, is the “explaining to a third-party” type. Everyone has done this, you will be telling someone a story and realize that they weren’t privy to certain information that may make what you are saying cogent. So you stop your description or story, and back fill. When should this be done and when shouldn’t it?

I’ve talked with many people about this and most don’t have the problem I have, but then they weren’t closet writers either 😉 The ones it did bother, basically considered it “the way it is” like the sun being the center of the system, and let it go. I can’t do that. Something being “the way it is, and wrong, I try to find a way to change it. Now my major issue in advocating change in this case, is many people don’t have a problem with it, they never noticed it until I said something. Some people will later call me everything but human for pointing it out cause now it annoys them too. Another convert MWAhahahaha!

Anyhoo. My idea, and feel free to use this, is to use prologues and epilogues as a catch-up and sneak peek. Basically, I want the books I will be writing in my “Mongers Universe” to be semi stand-alones. There will be character arcs over multiple books, main character back stories, side stories that eventually tie into the main thread. Secondary characters that will have spinoffs, and that’s just the ideas I have now. No telling what else I’ll get when I write all those stories, or what stories others will want to write in the universe.

I’ll let your brain stew on that for a bit. Look for the sequel to this post titled, “Prologues & Epilogues”, see what I did there?

 

Separating dialog with narration

I understand the need to set a scene and describe actions well enough for the dialog written to have the proper context. What I do not understand, or agree with, is separating a sentence with narration. Let me give you an example. “I do not think,” He began considering the proper weight he wanted his words to have. “that would be a good idea.”

These separations throw speed bumps into the flow of the words. Not only that, if you throw a long narration in between a sentence, then the end of the sentence can not make sense at all, resulting in the reader going back to the beginning of the paragraph in order to get caught up, then needing to find their place again in order to continue reading.

This narration can be added before or after the dialog, or in between topics in a larger conversation. If a writer is trying to “catch up” their reader, then they have made a mistake previously in their story. If you are writing and suddenly your story goes in a place you hadn’t intended, but is perfect for the story itself, and that creates a vacuum where you need to catch your readers up, go back and add something into what you have already written that will keep the flow of your story steady and well paced. If you can’t add this new bit in, or it’s too long, write a short story and send it out to your mailing list as free bonus content, or publish it on its own.

A writer often times wants to draw their reader into the head space of a character, for good or ill. They want to make sure the reader knows what’s going on in the characters mind as the dialog unfolds. This can be superfluous or essential to a story. A writer might not know which until the editing happens as they’d re in their “creative mind” while writing and will just throw words on the page to get them out of their heads.

This is also why I “let it age”, in regards to my story, before I edit it. This allows my mind to forget about that story and get distracted by another. I’ll blog about that later.

In closing, always think about flow when you are editing. If needs be, read aloud to the extent that you are attempting an audiobook. Does your speech catch? Then so does the readers mind. The smoother flowing a story is the easier a reader slips into the world and the stronger it grips it’s readers. It can be the difference between a “That was a good book” and “Where’s the next book?!”.

 

Personal Wikis

I first heard about personal wikis on the SPP. Granted this isn’t a new idea, nor is the program Sean spoke about using, but it was new to me. The guys on SPP were talking about a program called wikidpad which I subsequently downloaded and started trying to use. I will be honest, I sabotaged myself with this program at first. I thought it was HTML heavy and because of that initial misconception, I mentally blocked myself. So I downloaded two other applications for my mac, scribbleton & voodoopad. Both seemed to be great wiki programs, and I tried both thoroughly.

Voodoopad is only a trial, and at 15 links you don’t really get a good idea of what the full program will be like, so I passed on it.

Scribbleton was free all the way and was a great wiki, easy to use and as far as I could tell unlimited. The problem with scribbleton for me was the lack of allowing multiple wikis (more in a minute) and suddenly deleting my entire wiki.

Now… there were glitches with scribbleton when I used it, which could be it’s interaction with my OSX 10.6.8. Any time I tried to start a new wiki for a different book, it froze entirely, requiring me to restart my macbook pro in order to open it again. Now the sickening part. One day I woke up, started up my laptop, opened scribbleton and my wiki was gone. There were no traces of any of the wiki files. I restarted and they were still gone. So that was the end of my experience with scribbleton.

After a few days to eliminate my depression over weeks of work gone, I decided to give wikidpad a chance again even if I had to learn HTML. Opening it again I went back into the ‘getting started’ files, and suddenly realized how foolish I had been. There was no need to write in HTML, all your data is stored in plain text.

So I started building my little corner of the galaxy which my universe sits in. It was all downhill from there.Hours and hours of typing and I had rebuilt what I had lost in scribbleton and doubled the information in my wiki.

Now…the reason for a wiki is to keep your thoughts in order. Just like a fan wiki, a personal wiki allows for any information you deem important in your universe at your fingertips. Whether it makes it into the book you are currently writing or one you will write in the future, or never makes it into a book but helps you build the scenes in your mind, it’s easily accessible.

I was working on outlining my book and I could not for the life of me picture a scene where I wanted my story to go. Once I started building my wiki, that changed. Linking aspects of my universe together to make a whole picture helped immensely to construct scenes. Suddenly entire subcultures I had never envisioned sprouted into existence. I may never use them more than window dressing on a scene, but knowing the culture allowed my mind to make connections it couldn’t before.

I guess you could view it as the universe’s character. I didn’t have the universe’s character profile filled out extensively enough yet. Building a wiki allowed me to do that. It also showed me reasons why certain characters were doing things I pictured them doing. I’m not even writing yet, and the characters already have a mind of their own. So in closing thank you Jason Horman for making wikidpad open source and free for everyone, including us struggling writers.

 

Character short stories & character profiles

My last post I mentioned an experiment involving character short stories as a means to better understand the characters. While the characters I selected had far too interesting lives to make just one story, I have come to discover that this idea isn’t limited to myself alone.

About two months after I had the idea to make these short stories, I heard on an episode of writing excuses, I believe it was Brandon Sanderson,  that did this often. Wrote short stories of the main character’s life to better understand the character. If I recall correctly, he said that many times these stories were never even published.

So… while my experiment didn’t lead anywhere for me at this time, I did find positive results from a well established author. What my experiment did find was the expanse of the universe I had in my mind. The back story of my main character worked very well as a world building story in a section of the universe I am creating entirely separate from where I had intended in the novel i was working on.

The area where the back story was set will be referred to in many occasions in the original novel, and in doing so I saw the benefit of increasing the understanding of the universe as a whole. So I came to another decision… how to fit these new stories into the series that I had originally intended. I couldn’t do it.

I considered using the back story I was developing in my mind as flashbacks throughout the series, but they would have been too numerous and would have detracted from the flow of the original story. So then I considered a stand alone novel for each character’s backstory, and then it hit me. Make every book a stand alone novel in the wider universe.

This idea wasn’t my own, I was reading Fledgling for the first time in many many years and since I enjoyed it as a much older person and the author’s writing was excellent, I decided to look them up. I also noticed on my copy an mention of book X in the Liaden Universe. That set my curiosity going and I needed to learn what they meant by ‘Universe’. I imagined it was the collection the book was in, by was this a series, or series of series? In fact it was something else entirely.

What it was, was something that would lead to my understand my own ideas better. The Liaden Universe is a collection of books. Some stand alone, some series, all connected in some way, obscure or obvious, and all in one “universe” of the author’s making. This realization that I was “allowed” to do such a thing, that many “rules” in writing are not set in stone and the only barrier to changing any set rule is success. If it works…use it.

For Lee and Miller, it works very well. Once the allowance was made in my mind, the barriers I had set in my own imagination fell away, resulting in so many ideas for novels that it has taken me months to get them all down and in a semblance of order.

Now that I have that all out of my conscious mind I can focus once again on the characters that began the wonderful quest of mine. While the original idea that started this whole thing is going to be put on the back burner for awhile, the backstory turned stand alone novel, set in my Mongers Universe, has become the focus of my time. Even the other backstory I was planning to make a short story out of originally is on the back burner and as of now is still only in the idea stage.

So in closing, don’t be afraid to experiment, or let the story lead you to the place it needs to go. Also beware of the walls you put on your imagination.

 

Experiments pt 2

I have been intently focusing on learning what I am doing wrong and how to fix it. One thing that I have been having extreme trouble sometimes is characters, and how they all fit together.

So what I have decided to do is to take each character and write a short story about their main motivation. When you write characters, you need to know who they are so you can know how they react to the world you put them in.

I’ve got these characters in my head and I see so much of them and the world that I sometimes get lost. What these short stories will do, is put in black and white what is currently fluid in my mind. Not just allowing my mind to relax its hold on them, but also to make them more concrete to keep me from changing them constantly.

I’m aiming for these to only be a few thousand words, two or three is my goal, but that might change. This exercise will also be purely discovery writing, no outlining other than what I have already done in my head. I’ll post again with the results.

 

Paragraph length

I’m currently reading a book, I don’t want to share the name as I don’t want to seem to be talking bad about it. First off I am really enjoying the story itself, I think the writing is well done, but I’m having trouble creating a flow in my mind.

I’ve been analyzing everything I could think of to try and find something wrong with the writing itself. I honestly couldn’t, which perplexed me, the only thing I found that didn’t resonate well with me was the book beginning with an action sequence. Unknown characters, facing possible death, just had a hard time getting into the action, because I didn’t know the characters. The writer made up for that though, as the story so far is evolving really well, and I’m getting really interested in it. But I’m still having trouble staying hooked.

Then it hit me. The paragraphs are too long for me, I’m losing my place in the middle of the block of words. Seems like around 6-8 lines is my max, 4-6 is a good pace generally. Which got me thinking, are others this way? What’s feels like a good paragraph length to you?

 

Stimulants and Depressants

I have been smoking for the last 11 years, give or take a few months. I have recently quit smoking, and have been struggling with the effects. I’m not having withdrawals as most people have, I’m dealing with a hyperactive mind.

The reason I quit smoking was (beyond normal health reasons) because I needed more mental processing to build more thorough environments in my imagination. The reason I started smoking in the first place was to calm my mind down. Quiet and slow things down.

There is a cliche about alcoholic writers, drug addicted artists, vices are prominent cliches for artistic types. I’m assuming they are cliches for a reason, maybe many others have issues similar to mine.

The main serious issue with vices is that creativity suffers, even if it is seemed to be helped by some drug of one sort or another.

The trick is to learn to adapt or change your environment. A crutch is only needed if something is damaged. If you need a stimulant, depressant, hallucinogen, whatever, to produce your art, you aren’t an artist. If something can bring you a better artistic ability, then you can get there on your own, you just have to find a way.

 

Show & Tell

Last week I wrote about experiments, one aspect of that experiment has shown to be a detriment to writing well. It may just be that my imagination is too restricted at the moment. Which was the entire purpose of that experiment, to get my imagination back to flowing more freely.

When writing well, you can describe in intricate detail at times the environment your characters are in. In some situations, that is the perfect aspect to add into a story. It can show a characters state of mind, explain backstory with minimal words, introduce plot threads that linger in the readers imagination begging for an answer.

As I’ve been writing this book purely off imagination, I’m realizing that I’m not showing the reader enough. I’m telling what’s going on without eluding to it.

This coming week, I will be adjusting my experiment to incorporate more showing in my writing. I’m assuming, at least at first, writing will take much longer. I’m going to run a line of dashes to separate the two methods in the experiment, like so.
———————————————————————————————————————-

This will allow me to easily find the beginning of the change and prior to it. This has also given me ideas about a different way to outline. Basically using Pantsing and telling to get the basics down for the entire book. Then when I go to write it, the entire story will have already been seeded into my imagination and growing while I work on other projects.

The importance for seeding is my own, but possibly will help others. My brain tends to work on multiple things at the same time. When I was younger this was an issue, and some thought I had ADHD. It’s possible I do, I just consider it built in multitasking. A trait that is very useful, but also has its own difficulties that I have had to adapt to over the years.

So… What seeding does is give my brain multiple tasks to work on at the same time, just in my subconscious. In adapting to this multitasking aspect, I have learned to set multiple tasks to work on, while also training my mind to focus strongly. The focusing was much more difficult without the multiple tasks in play.

How did I learn to do this you might be asking? I watched mothers, they’ve been doing it for generations, possibly since the beginning. So if you have ADHD, ask your mother for advice.

 

Experiments

This week I’ve been conducting an experiment. I find that I learn more when I explore avenues that aren’t strictly needed, but are part of, or related to the task at hand. I have blogged before about overcoming writers block by outlining and building the story scenes in my mind. Those were both experiments that proved to be greatly beneficial.

One experiment that didn’t prove beneficial was to focus on just one book. I have written one book of a serial focusing on just that one, and it worked. So I decided to do the same on another book. It on the other hand I couldn’t write, I wasn’t ready to. I needed much more research and studying to write it properly.

In trying to stick with that one book no matter what I wasted a lot of time. Time I could have spent writing a different book. The reason I couldn’t write that book without more research is that I couldn’t build the story in my head without figuring out certain things. I saw that early on, but I tried pushing through and ended up wasting time.

Every writer is different and will have different ways they write well. So I experiment to find the best ways for me. I listen and read what other writers do, and test each way for how it works for me.

Right now I am doing an experiment where I’m totally Pantsing what I write. I’m trying to improve the speed and thoroughness of my imagination. I also want to see if I can write a complex story without outlining. To see how many plot holes, fraying threads, character inaccuracies, etc. that I end up with.

My reason for doing this is two fold. To exercise my imagination, and to see if I’m restraining my imagination with too much plotting. I have already found that I need some plotting, so I’m working out a balance.

I’m not expecting to write one or a few books and strike it rich. I expect to make writing a career, even if I end up striking rich. I love writing more than just about anything, and I hope to be making stories for a long time. So I’m continually looking to improve so my career will always produce better and better product.

 

Popcorn or Plot?

Fiction seems to have a duality. Popcorn fiction is loosely written, more creative, imaginative. It’s not intended to be deeply soul stirring, it’s made for enjoyment, a light read. The other side of the coin is plotted fiction.

Plotted fiction has many threads tethered to each other. You can creatively write plotted fiction, pants it out. If the plot is well established in your mind, and you know the story well, it can flow as easily as popcorn fiction.

I’ll use tv shows as an example. Some shows are made to be light enough to sit down and enjoy a bowl of popcorn and let your imagination play. Others are made to make you sit up and pay attention. When writers try to mix these two, it never works. It always seems disjointed. Even if the audience doesn’t have the trained eye that writers have, they still notice. Just like readers do, except readers will see it more often.

Television shows you, reading has to make you see. When your story it disjointed, the reader notices, because the story you were building in their mind suddenly shifts. I don’t mean unexpected plot shifts. Those “I did not see that coming!” moments. It’s the “WTF just happened?” moments that are a result of disjointed writing.

There are many ways to disjoint your story, but what I’m focusing on learning this week is the difference between fun and serious. Any serious work can and should have fun moments, as life has fun moments. Horror stories tend to have a comic relief of some sort.

What I’m struggling with this week is releasing control. I’ve posted before that I’m a bit of a perfectionist. Part of being a perfectionist is the control that comes with it. Life hands us so many tough times, being able to handle them in stride sometimes means taking extreme control of your environment. Extreme control is only needed in extreme situations, which don’t pop up often.

My issue is that I allowed too many small things to get out of my control. In the course of bringing order back into my life, I’ve developed a bit of OCD. Not bad, but enough that it has been an issue when I have tried to write.

I had dyslexia when I was a boy, and I took control of it. The same I am doing with this OCD. I set the limits on when it can be used, it doesn’t set limits on me. So as my experience grows in writing, I adapt.

When I was young, my imagination flowed so well, that I could replace what my eyes saw with what was in my head. I hated my environment so much at times, I would escape into a world I made. As I grew older, and took on more responsibility for my life, I set limits on my imagination. I couldn’t very well suddenly go fantasy land while I was at work, no matter how much I wanted to. My work ethic wouldn’t allow it.

But now, those limits I had set so long ago, have become second nature. I think that’s a good thing for most people, as the real world demands that we pay attention. But when a writer sits down to write, they need to have the ability to let the chains off their imagination.

Whether you are plotting a “yarn” of many threads, or popping a bowl of corn, you need your imagination free. Popcorn fiction requires a different level of freedom from your imagination than plotted does. Your imagination has to be on its toes, floating like butterflies and stinging like bees.

It has to be ready to instantly jump off that cliff and create a world to fly in. That means you have to let go of the control we tend to put onto imagination. Well written popcorn fiction has no noticable plot holes. It builds a mental playground so well, if there are plot holes, they are forgiven or ignored because the reader is enjoying themselves so much.

 

I think I can, I think I can

When I was a boy, my mother pulled out a record and book set from Disney. The story told on the record, and in the book, was “The Little Engine that Could”. It’s an old story that has had many variations. Each variation adding or subtracting themes wanting to be passed along to young people. But through all of these themes, one remains constant.

Stories are like this, even writers can be like this. Some have one major theme they want to impart, and the story is just dressing for that ideology. While other writers and stories have many themes and/or ideologies more inline with reality.

However a story is told, it needs a core to revolve around. This many be a character, an ideology, a place, anything. There may be many electrons orbiting the nucleus, but there is always a nucleus.

The nucleus of “The Little Engine that Could” is perseverance. This story, that nucleus, has never left me. Some ideas are like that. The Little Engine is a great story, for no other reason than it contains something that resonates so strongly with every person on the planet who has ever lived.

We all understand the need for perseverance, it’s the basis of our survival instincts. You don’t survive by laying down and giving up. You don’t learn by never trying. You don’t accomplish by refusing to try.

Learning to write has contained so many struggles for me. Everything from rules of grammar, to facing demons, which one demon was tied to rules of grammar. All through this, I have held onto one thing. I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.

I am climbing that mountain with the belief in myself that I can reach the top, then it’s all downhill from there. I have no delusions that success will be easy. It wasn’t easy for that little engine, and it won’t be so for me. But I think I can, and I still have plenty of steam.

 

Creating the present

I have been working on the beginning of a story for the last two weeks. I wrote, deleted, wrote, deleted, over and over. Every time I got more of the story “right” according to the voice I felt it needed. But still even though I was making progress, it did not feel right.

There was something that felt off that I couldn’t place. The beginning I had seemed like good writing, some of my beta readers said it was well done, but it just didn’t feel right. The only thing I knew for sure, was the beginning as I had it, shouldn’t be the beginning.

Some stories are just right starting in the middle of something. Whether its action, a conspiracy, a crime, a trip, what ever it is it just works for the story being told. Wool by Hugh howey was like that, and it’s beginning was perfect for it.

A paranormal crime serial, which I have written the first book for was like that as well. But this story told me it needed something different. I asked someone for advice, and their reply was “past creates present”. The context was that I had neglected a timeline for a story that readily accessed it.

You see as I built the story in the outline, bits of scenes stood out to me. Pieces that would add depth and/or propulsion to the story. Quite a few of these delved into past actions, known and unknown to certain groups. These actions incited reactions that were key plot points in the story playing out in my head.

Up to a certain point I was keeping track of these in my head. As the story developed and I knew more about the world, I realized the build up to what is present tense in my story needed to be told through different perceptions as histories. Not thorough histories, but a “how we got to this point” type of narration.

So I decided my story was big enough that I needed a timeline. I can normally keep one in my head, but this one was far too big to keep mental track of and create all the things at the same time. Not to mention as I build this timeline, and fill it out, I will have backstory ready to drop in wherever it’s needed throughout the series.

As I began making this timeline, a new beginning began to form in my creative mind. Maybe I was trying to track too much and clogged my mental pipes, maybe it only came once I started the timeline. However it happened, my story spoke to me telling me how it wanted to begin.

So, for those of you having trouble starting, try a timeline, or just more world building, see if it helps.

 

File 13

I’m a perfectionist, but I also hate to throw things away that might be useful later. The perfectionist in me tends to want to discard anything that isn’t useful, the creator in me tends to want to make something useful out of scraps.

Over the years I have learned to find a balance between these two, and thankfully so. In my writing there are times, especially beginning a book, that I will struggle to get started. There isn’t a big mystery here for me, as I wrote last week about requiring more effort to start something moving than to keep it moving.

As I write I build parts of the world I could never have sitting down and outlining, no matter how much time I spend at it. I also have serious trouble outlining very far ahead in a story as the story builds itself in part as I write it. I recognize this, and so I cannot predict accurately enough what should be in the outline, I can only touch on road signs I want to hit along the way.

What I have come to learn the more I write, is that I will not get the first few pages right the first time. Not only do I not have the world developed enough in my head before I write, but I also don’t know what pace the story will have until I begin to write it.

I may plan for a scene to have certain pace, but as I write the previous I will feel a flow in my writing. I do not try to change the flow to match my previous ideals of what I thought should be the pace, I allow the story to show me what pace it should have.

Carvers and sculptors often speak about seeing what the medium holds, and simply revealing that shape. This can be explained as a science of the veteran artist seeing many cracks, thin spots, etc. and their mind forming a shape to accommodate that. But that does not allow for what the artist can’t see. The same can be said for writing.

A writer can’t see all of what a story will be from an outline. And outline is only a surface to sketch what shape you feel should form within the story. Every word a writer writes is akin to every chip of a chisel or cut if a blade. The exact shape will not be known until every word is written.

Luckily we writers aren’t as restricted as sculptors. We can ball up the paper, or delete the bits and bytes of information.

So far every beginning I have done this. At least once pages I have written get sent to file 13. But as I delete these words, I build an understanding of the world I will write in, I feel the beat of the story. And so in short order I find the pulse of the story I will bring to life.

If I held onto a fear of losing what I had created, I would never give it a chance to show me its perfection.

 

F=ma

Newton’s first law of motion can be written as the formula F=ma. It states that a body at rest tends to stay at rest unless acted on by an outside force.

I tend to apply this to my writing, as it does indeed apply. A new story takes much more time and effort to get started. But a world already written in can be added to without a lot of effort.

An idea by itself is “at rest” in your own imagination. To make that idea into a story that can be shared with others, requires building a world others can relate to. No one thinks exactly like you do or has your exact set of knowledge and experience. So in order to allow someone else to relate to your story as you see it in your minds eye, you have to build a world they can and want to exist in.

Building a world that doesn’t already exist is an art form all it’s own. I great writer will want to make it as close to reality as possible, what that reality is, all depends on the story being told.

A science fiction story could have a different set of physical laws, or delve into fuzzy science positing a “what if” to be discovered in the future. In that world things outside our reality could exist as commonplace.

A science fiction story could also be hard wired into our understanding of the physical limitations, and the world built would need to reflect that.

A fantasy story could contain any number of wondrous imaginings, or it could explore myths and show the wondrous realities they were based on.

Whatever story you tell, the world you build needs to reflect it. Building this world from scratch requires many moving parts. Setting each of these in motion can be simple or require great effort. It takes far more work to move a beach than it does a grain of sand.

The art form lies in breaking every beach down to it’s grains of sand, setting each into motion, then stepping back and seeing the beach again.

What I do is get into the characters skin, as if I were that person, or creature, or robot, animal, insect, whatever it is I’m writing about. I try and see the world through their perceptions of it.

Depending on the world I am building, perceptions will be different, so the character will change. No living thing stays the same, there is constant change, even if it’s just small adjustments. Sometimes a large change is needed to attempt to adapt to the environmental changes, whether they are physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, or external.

To know what a character will do, even a minor one, you need to know who they are first. Would you make a torturous pirate suddenly walk through a field of flowers skipping along holding hands? No, it’s not who they are. Or course you could do something like that in a satirical fashion, but that’s a different story entirely.

I love to read, even though I am a writer, I need my entertainment time as well. I can also be extremely accepting of writers as I give them a chance. One mistake will not make me set a book aside. Even a few mistakes, or method of writing I can discard if the story is good.

What I will not sit and read through is literary Swiss cheese. Put forth the effort to get your beach moving, each grain at a time, and you will catch your own holes. Writing is a job, and some of us greatly enjoy it. If its constant work to you, you are doing something wrong, or you aren’t meant to be a writer.

Once I started writing, I realized things about myself that had been considered unsavory to be a great benefit. Like an extremely active imagination, and a mind that can slip into day dreams as easily a hot knife into warm butter.

Writing for me is work and play time mixed together, I enjoy every bit of it, even the parts that give me the most trouble.

 

Want a more concise and knowledgeable version of this? Writing excuses had an episode nearly 2 years after this post, where they explored newton’s three laws.

http://www.writingexcuses.com/2016/01/24/11-04-newtons-laws-of-writing/

 

In your dreams!

Our dreams allow many things to play out. Sometimes a repressed memory, sometimes a current worry, sometimes a fantasy, among many other things.

At times I have trouble falling asleep, so I will make a story for my mind to build in my sleep, assisting a dream state that draws me into sleep. Since I have started writing, I will use this same technique to build stories in my subconscious.

As I plot out different stories, I will write down ideas I come up with that fill in the world. When I feel like I have enough if these ideas, I’ll start an outline. If my outline seems full enough, I’ll start writing.

Now before I continue, let me say, I am a restrained perfectionist. I want everything to be perfect, but I know that’s not how the world works. You cannot have all the answers before you start, otherwise what would be the point of starting the journey to begin with? You will also never make anything without flaws, otherwise there would be no future lessons.

The thing is, no matter how much I try and prepare for writing, I always miss something. Plot holes, character background, world building, characters I didn’t see I needed, there’s always something I’ve missed, and always a lesson to learn.

One thing that has helped me immensely is dreaming. Either REM sleep or day dreaming. Sometimes when I am stuck on a particular scene, I will just start day dreaming like when I was a boy. The big difference is that instead of stories with no rules, as they were when I was a boy, I have rules set for the world I am building, the characters in it, and the story they live through.

Those rules keep the day dream on a certain course, I will keep correcting my imagination with things like ‘That won’t work’, ‘That conflicts what I already have’, etc. sometimes my day dreams produce better material than I already had, so I have to go back through and adjust everything.

But that is fine with me, if it makes the story better, I don’t mind the extra work. When I have the story built in my head, I can write 3000+ words an hour, so a rewrite isn’t a big deal.

Conversely, when I don’t have the story built in my head, I write about 500 words an hour, because I have to continually stop to build the story. I have tried to skip those empty spots, but when I go back I end up rewriting after the spot I skipped. Either the story isn’t flowing right, or the characters made a choice that change who they are, which invalidates the story.

So that’s my advice for the week, if you are stuck in your writing, look for answers, in your dreams.

 

Outlining

I have touched on this subject before, but I wanted to speak a bit more about outlining. So many people are looking for a “rule book” for writing, a “how to” guide. There isn’t one, it’s as simple as that.

Writing techniques are as unique as writers. I have listened to, and corresponded with, many authors, some of them getting a good selling pace going, some best sellers. All have said the said thing, writing is unique to the writer.

Now I’m not saying that there are no commonalities, that would be a lie. But to say you can do exactly what Stephen king does and it will work for you is just wrong.

Some writers do not feel comfortable without a strict outline. They tend to go off on too many tangents and end up going nowhere. These strict outlines are highly descriptive, much like you would write if you did they opposite of “show don’t tell”.

“X walked into the bar.

X saw Y that had had been looking for.

X walked to Y and hit him.”

This type of outlining is almost writing the scene for you, it stops your mind from wandering, and keeps you to the story you want to tell.

Other authors never have an outline. They have an idea in their heads and just start writing.

“What if there was a planet of super intelligent beavers?”

That is all they need because they want the idea to flow naturally, without any limits to where it will go.

I started off this way, purely Pantsing because I never was good at English classes when it came to the descriptors and rules. Therefore I never learned how to outline like they try and teach you.

I took a what if, and built a story in my mind… Or so I thought. It was actually only part of a story. It had more holes than Swiss cheese. So I set it aside and started looking into what advice successful authors gave.

And guess what? Many don’t use the English class “rules” either, they don’t even remember them. I think one author said he uses what he was taught in english classes as a boy. That’s one out of dozens. When it comes to outlining everyone said they kept tweaking their process until they found what worked best. Many are still tweaking or trying new things in an effort to continually improve.

So I decided to try outlining. At first it was extremely difficult, as I never really understood what an outline really was. Then one author (I really wish I could remember who) said they looked at an outline like a table of contents for an author. Then it clicked, after that it fell into place.

For me, a table of content allowed a reader to either find their place when reading, or find the section they needed in the case of non-fiction. So when I started seeing an outline like my stories table of contents, I had a place to start.

I took the bullet points of the story I had in my head, and wrote them down. Then I played the story out in my mind, and saw where I had major hole I would get caught in, so I revised my outline.

On the latest episode of the SPP #92
(WARNING EXPLICIT CONTENT) Lindsay Buroker talked about her outlining process.

She mentioned when she gets stuck while writing, she does a mini outline for the particular scene she is stuck on. At the time I watched that, I was stuck also.

Now I didn’t write out a mini outline, but I did make one in my head. Suddenly the “writers block” was gone. As with my other outline, I didn’t try and make a strict outline, but the mini outline was more detailed than my original. But then it had to be, it was for a single scene instead of a whole book.

Where I went wrong in my original outline was leaving too big of a space between my bullet points. Now, with that one piece of advice, another lesson is learned.

My process is a combination of many authors advice, little pieces cobbled together to fit my individual style. So my advice this week, don’t be too rigid trying to “do it right”. Take what serves, and leave the rest behind.

Hope this helps all you aspiring authors.

P.S. I added a bunch of links today of places I have found help at. I also added a couple of editors links if you are in the market.

 

Writers block?

Recently I had been stuck on a particular section of a book. This section wasn’t particularly difficult, rather simple actually. But my protagonist was stuck in limbo after entering a door.

It was a rather vexing predicament, as I thought I had outlined well enough what I wanted to write. Which I came to find out later, I had.

Before I get into explaining why I was stuck, let me say that during this mental constipation I decided to try and get my mind off it and listened to some back episodes of The Creative Penn Podcast.

This episode had the guest Tom Evans. Who spoke about getting “In the zone, and staying there”. Even though he puts things in a new age style, he does have some excellent insights.

Using these, I didn’t accept the excuse “writers block”. I figured I wasn’t doing something right, either in my process or environment. Now to the why.

I had pictured the scene in my head, and my outline read “Will walks inside and starts talking to the parents”. Now while I knew the end result, the beginning, and the gist of the scene, I hadn’t built the scene in my mind.

Now, while this scene wasn’t essential to the plot, it set a stage of sorts which is very important for the overall story. I could have have gone a different way, rewrote the outline, but I liked it this way.

This way I had in my head plants a seed, drops an Easter egg if you will, that the reader can pick up as the stories unfold. That planted seed grows into a huge storytree with branches touching many minor characters and some major characters. It gives a why that the reader can accept and hold onto. So I had many good reasons for keeping that scene.

‘It’s already in my head, why can’t I put it on paper?’ I thought to myself. The thing was, it wasn’t in my head, only parts of it, that’s why I couldn’t get my character through the door. Metaphorically and literally.

So first, I had to tell myself the story, and then it all clicked. How can you tell a story to others if you don’t already have it yourself?

Now I’m not saying I built what I wrote in my head first, because I didn’t. I outline to keep myself on the track, checkpoints if you will. But that doesn’t mean I know every step I will take before I run the marathon of writing.

Histories are supposed to be exact, that’s the storytellers job to get them as exact as possible. That hardly happens, but it should be that way. Fiction writers are free to make things up, that’s their job. Write entertainment.

If you consider writing a job, and you love writing, then you love your job. If you keep a high work ethic, you will run into situations where you believe that your idea is exactly what the reader would enjoy. If you look at that idea from many angles and still believe its best, then you have the logic to trust your intincts, and figure out a way to become a better writer to fit what you feel will work best.

Just remember, if the story isn’t in you, you can’t share it with others.

 

Write what you know?

I have read authors talk about only writing what you know. The premise behind that is you won’t be able to describe in depth something you have never experienced.

While I agree with that to an extent, I have to disagree with that as a “writing rule”. The reason I have to disagree, is science fiction “prophets”, among many examples.

Sci-fi prophets wrote books that invented many current science projects. There are other authors, one who writes a post apocalyptic military series who was never in or involved in the military. Since he started writing his books, he has had so much positive feedback from deployed troops, that they have provided him with research for his future books.

Many writers write in a genre they have never read and write such unique stories that they are loved by hard core fans of that genre.

Many spy thriller authors were never spies. Yet people love their books.

Many men write female protagonists, some do it very well, according to women who read their books.

So I would say, instead of “write what you know”, “write what you can imagine thoroughly” would be a much better rule.