Writing Tip #10: Flex Those Little Writer's Muscles Wherever You Can

One of the biggest traps we can get into as writers? Finding a comfort zone, and sticking to it.

Yes, today's going to be getting right to the point again, since I've only got a few hours before it's back to retail purgatory I go, I've got a pile of work to get to for my two current clients (contracts, and edits, and website builds, oh my!).

But anyway: comfort zones = BAD NEWS. 

I remember when I was finishing elementary school and then starting high school, I was still really figuring out how I could write and the kinds of emotions I could get across. Around this time, I discovered FanFiction.net, which was insanely helpful in getting me writing in a way that forced structure, and exposed me to feedback from actual readers (who weren't related to me, and so didn't feel obligated to tell me I was great even if I stunk). 

For those not familiar with the site, it's one where you go to write your own stories based on existing stories and characters - anything from books, to movies or TV shows... you name it. You take established universes, and you get to play with them in a way that gives you invaluable practice in working with voice, tone, character arcs... all of the essential story building blocks. Can't stress this enough: if you're getting going as a writer but need some warming up, that might just be your golden ticket (it sure was mine).

Anyway, at the time I started on that site, I was reading all sorts, but was mainly watching a variety of law enforcement-based shows (NCIS, Numb3rs, CSI, Bones, etc.), and really took to writing stories around my favourite characters within those. And it served me really well for years as I found my footing as a writer and pinned down a style for myself. 

The problem was however that I got so used to writing those cop dramas/action-adventures/comedies that after a while I found I had a hard time thinking in other terms; I had found a lovely comfort zone, and gotten good at it, and gotten better and better feedback and stuck with it for a long time because of that, but in consequence, I hit a block when I tried to branch back out to working with strictly my own characters and scenarios.

The answer? I had to use what I had learned, and carve out new avenues for myself to write my way down. Time and time again since then, I've found myself writing just one type of story for so long, that when that one type runs dry, I find myself stuck on where to go - and again, I have to purposely change direction to kick-start my little writing engine once more.

Image courtesy of Sira Anamwong at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

So this week, especially if you have ever or recently found yourself in a writing rut, consider the fact that you may have gotten yourself too comfortable in your personal writing niche. 

The best thing you can do for yourself at that point is to deliberately step outside your comfort zone and explore other directions; when writing muscles hit a plateau, switch up your routine - if you only ever write short stories, try writing a novella/novel, or vice versa; if you only ever write gritty dramas, try for a comedy; if you're used to strictly doing action-driven work, try exploring more character studies; or any combination thereof.

Even if you try one or even a dozen avenues that don't work out for you, or if you never quite find another good fit, the efforts to write outside what you know will help you develop new skills, build on those little writer's muscles in a way that you can incorporate into your pre-existing niche to drive your writing to new heights.

What've you got to lose? Go. Caffeinate. Pump literary iron. Be writing-buff. Chicks (and dudes) dig that.

~\\//~

Writing Tip #9: Don't Get Too Hung-Up on Your Heroes Being Hero-y

There's something I've started to notice in a lot of newer books I've read in the past several years (both professionally published, and not): a lot of people have a really hard time knocking their heroes off their pedestals. 

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

What do I mean? I mean the heroes are too darn hero-y... too darn perfect. All the time. And it's terrible.

It's not to say that the authors don't give them flaws... but... even they're perfect; by and large, they're not so much flaws as quirks, things (like being antisocial, or awkward, or excessively and damagingly snarky, or nosy and invasive, etc.) that end up being endearing and/or earn the respect of others in whatever way, and are not treated as flaws at all but as acceptable elements that move them along through the plot in a way that distinguishes them somehow from their co-characters. The heroes and their flaws/quirks go through some sort of emotional character arc, granted, but their flaws/quirks never factor in enough in as pivotal way as to be recognized as problems.

And this is what irks me: real people, with real flaws, are affected by them; their lives and actions are affected by them; they draw real setbacks and real struggles and real consequences that they are forced to deal with. With real people, their flaws are not synonymous with their strengths, as much as they may play parts with each other sometimes.

So what irks me is authors taking heroes that they've clearly fallen in love with and regard in a certain way, and not trying to make them into people with genuine flaws that hurt and genuine strengths (whether inherent and/or earned/learned) that redeem. They love them too much to want to make readers think less of them in any significant way, for any significant amount of time. So instead, they give them a few quirky drawbacks (to varying degrees of severity) that ultimately don't even significantly change by the end of the story. But "all's well that ends well", and we have our climax, and "The End".

This takes away any real element of humanity. They're not a hero any more - they're a caricature of a hero. And that makes them forgettable. A dime-a-dozen.

The most memorable and wonderful characters I've ever read and absolutely gotten attached to (and hurt/healed by) don't work like that. They work more like real people do, and so it makes us value them like we would real people: when they do good, we're happy; when they do wrong, we cringe; when they hurt, we hurt; when they screw up and hurt others, we're angry that they've let us and themselves and those others down; when they redeem themselves (if they can) we are wrapped up in their struggle to do so, and any success or failure feels like our own, and it damn well sticks with us.

Granted, not all stories have room for characters like this, and may actually be a better product without them; you have to know your audience, know your story's tone and intent, write with that in mind, and adjust the depth of your character accordingly (e.g: books like the Goosebumps series, or Agatha Christie novels, or any standard feel-good kids' book). But when the room is there and the story is built on the backs of the flaws and strengths of its characters (e.g: Game of Thrones), you write the shit out of those characters. You make them real people.

So today's tip in a nutshell: lose the pedestal. Bring your heroes into the real world; you and your readers will be grateful you did.

~\\//~

Writing Tip #8: Don't Wait for Inspiration - Seek It Out

So it seems getting back into the blogging habit is still harder than I give it credit for - no surprise there! I've got to stop underestimating this thing.

At any rate, two Writing Tips to post this week to make up for the lack of one last week. Alright. We've got this.

For this one, I'm going after the notion of "inspiration". This is one of the things I've heard about the most from people who've struck a wall and can't seem to get any writing out: "I can't get inspired", "I'm waiting for inspiration", "I'm waiting for a muse", etc.

For this tip, we're going for short and sweet (mostly because I only have so much time this morning, since I have to be at my retail day job soon enough - *sigh*): stop with the waiting, get with the doing. Simple enough? Well, let me explain anyway.

Image courtesy of kdshutterman at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Sitting around waiting for inspiration will very rarely pay off. It's not to say you can never just come up with an idea staring at your blank page/blank screen/blank wall/etc. and willing it into being... it is just so much more frustrating than it needs to be.

You know how people always harp on about the adage "write what you know"? Well, they're right. But how do you think you get to "know" things you can write about, if you can't come up with stories or characters or scenes just from what you've already got floating around in your skull's mushy grey matter? Go out and look for things to experience, to observe, to discover. 

Image courtesy of Geerati at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Discard the hours of tormenting your brain trying desperately to make magic out of a blank writing surface - read books about the world; go for a walk someplace in your city you've never been and imagine the things that could have taken place there; watch documentaries about anything and everything and imagine a character/characters neck-deep in a situation involving whatever you're watching; peruse through collections of photography or paintings or whatever and create stories behind the works; people-watch in a bus terminal and write down a character sketch and a mini story for every person you creepily stare at... anything that breaks you out of your normal thought patterns and gets you seeing new things/things from new angles. 

Go out of your way to expand your friggin' horizons, and you'll find that inspiration hiding in just about everything; new things equal new ideas, and/or new ways to tackle old ideas. So go forth, young grasshoppers - end the torture, and get to nerding out over writing again!

~\\//~

The A to Z Book Diary: "G" is for Getting in the Game

The last time this dear 'ol diary of mine left off a year ago, I had just finished the first draft of my first full-length novel, and I was so excited that, looking back on the post now, I seemed to be just about hyperventilating in typewritten form. SO many exclamation points. 

And since the book, in that finished form, didn't end up working out... heh, that reaction makes me a bit sheepish in hindsight. But I hold to it nonetheless; it was my first book after all - couldn't and wouldn't be helped! And I'm still proud that I made it through that one, even if it didn't turn out the way I'd hoped it would.

But now, as the title said, it's time to get back in the game and start over. "The Sentry" will sit on the shelf for a little while (pending a possible rewrite when I'm not sick to death of the sight of it any more), and in the meantime, I'll set my sights on a new project and get my writer's brain juices flowing again.

Which... man... this is really exciting again! A new beginning, a different track; new characters, conflicts and story lines to dive head-first into! A new book really does put the wind back in a writer's little sails, doesn't it? :)

But now... oh no... it's back to the trouble I was in before I really poured myself into "The Sentry": where do I start? Which story do I write?? So many ideas, and nowhere near the time to write them all at once here... hm.

Image courtesy of jscreationzs at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Do I go with one of the kids' books about dragons hiding in a mountain over a village? Do I go with a YA drama about a teen who's a single father in a disintegrating small town? An adult comedy about an agoraphobic and a bank robber? A pre-teen comedy/horror romp about ghosts, Death and ouija boards? A YA adventure about time travel? 

GAH!! I want to write all of them - but which one can I REALLY invest myself in and get excited about for the present until the somewhat distant future? And I don't want to make the same mistake as I did with "The Sentry", where my main problem was that I had an idea for a story that I liked, but I stuffed it into a niche that I thought would sell, and it ended up hurting the story...

...Maybe if I switch gears completely? Yeah... what if I pursue a book that's well and truly a fresh start? Go for a different tone, different age group, different all-around execution? I think that's it - I need to write a story where I can just have fun with it, and learn to have fun with writing as a whole again. I was focussed for so long on just getting out a finished book that I lost sight of the fun I used to have just creating something. Who knows? Maybe that hurt my writing as much as trying to stuff it into a niche did.

So let's do this: I'll start small - go for short and sweet, and just plain fun. The kids' book about dragons. I'll start it today, and stop thinking so darn much - no over-thinking, just writing and having fun with it. 

I like this :) - off I go, let's see what happens!

~\\//~

Writing Tip #7: If At First You Don't Succeed... Take a Break Before Your Brain Explodes.

This will be a short one, written while I'm waiting to get a ride back home, but this is possibly the most important lesson I've learned in the last year of stresses of "real life" getting dumped into a blender with my brain, my free time and my first failed attempt at a novel, and all of it getting puréed together, so I wanted to share it with you all: I'm here to talk about the paramount importance of taking a breather after you've written that first draft of a book.

I'm sure we've all grown up hearing the expression about "try, try again", and I won't argue that that's not an important part of success; you get your butt kicked the first time by something you really want/need to achieve, then you pick yourself up and tackle the thing full-on again. That's how you get the things really worth having.

Of course, tackling something hard more than once hurts. A lot. Especially if you're unprepared, and still getting your breath back from Round 1. 

Case in point: writing a book, then having that agravatingly clear hindsight inform you that all that effort didn't plop out that instant hit your were hoping for. 

Your stomach sinks. Round 1 kicks your confidence in the gut. But you're down, not out! So up you get, and back to it you go.

You want it to go like this: 

Image courtesy of jasadaphorn at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

But it ends up ending more like this:

Image courtesy of num_skyman at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

...with varying degrees of tears and tissues. Round 2 (and maybe 3, and 4... depending on how big of a glutton for punishment you are) leaves you in emotional traction.

Not good. And certainly bound to make you far exceed your allowable budget for whichever comforting deliciousness you subscribe to, to deal with feeling squashed by what used to be bright and sunny aspirations of awesomeness (e.g: pizza... wine... pizza with wine... lots of pizza with lots of wine... your weight in peanut M&Ms - not speaking from experience of course... sigh).

So this week's writing tip in a nutshell: pace yourself. Seriously. 

There may be those among you who write something and have no problem at all getting it polished and good to go. I commend you and envy you in equal parts! But then there are those (myself included) who pour a lot of time and energy into something that ends up not working, and the task of fixing it ends up being something they're not quite up to just yet. From my own experience and many fellow writing nerds I've spoken to about this, that second kind of writer is a lot more common than the first.

The important part is to cut yourself some slack, and give your brain room to figure it out. Finish writing what you're writing of course (no matter what you think of it), then go through it afterwards with a forgiving eye. If you find yourself wanting/needing to fix the poor sucker but at a loss as to where to start, take a few big steps back for as long as you need. Put it on a shelf, and start something else in the meantime. Come back to it later and try again - I guarantee the time away will have cleared your head enough for you to work your way through whether to scrap it, fix it, or rewrite it altogether, and it'll do it without leaving your delicate writer ego as a pile of quivering mush.

Be better than mush. You'll live longer, feel happier... and not have the local pizza place know your name and usual order off by heart.

Not that that happened to me... damnit.

IT LIVES!!... Part 3 (or The [Not-So-]Fantastical Tale of an English-Degree Graduate in the "Real World")

So. Another almost-year gone by... and what does this absentee blogger have to say for herself this time?

Heh. I've been keeping busy! And have had my brain occupied and focused in so many different directions that blogging had to go on standby for the duration.

How to explain without giving all the boring details no one actually cares about... let's see... the last time we "spoke", I had just finished my very first novel (yay!), and had settled into the editing process (ugh), just in time for graduation (yay again!). Then... *cue dreadful realization music*... REAL LIFE showed up again.

Job hunting.

Bills with no income.

Sleepless nights spent imagining doing card tricks for coins on the sidewalk somewhere, and chewing on bits of my wallpaper for sustenance.

Then finding an income. But despising the job and leaving it.

Back to bills with no income.

And now settled into retail purgatory, but happily with a paycheck I can mostly live with.

And... oy... realizing after months of feverish editing and unsuccessful submissions to agents that the book that felt amazing and brilliant while I was writing it was... well... neither amazing nor brilliant. In fact, it kind of stunk. Although there are parts of it I'm still proud of. But hey, first novel! Practise for when I actually get around to being brilliant, right?? ...Heh. In theory :)

But the biggest news of all is the main thing I have focussed on building since leaving university, and what's kept me away the most from getting back to this blog: a business of my own! Well, co-owned with my sister, to be exact :)

Image courtesy of nuttakit at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I'm incredibly excited to announce the launch of The Violet Hour: Author Services and The Violet Hour: Literary Magazine, two branches of one business designed to help authors realize their publishing goals, as well as give them a way to showcase their work.

Working for the literary journal Existere for the three and a half years I was in university gave me such a taste for it all, so getting this going is incredibly exciting!

So now I've put my first novel comfortably in hibernation pending a gradual re-write (after I've stopped being mad at it), I've got a retail job that'll keep me at least mostly fed, and I've got a direction to channel my university degree into, and renewed creative juices to get back to reading, reviewing, blogging, and working on a new novel idea. And I know I've said it all before, but now I've got a business partner and burgeoning business to hold me to it: you'll be hearing a lot more from me from now on - stay tuned, and feel free to check out the links below to the websites that I built for each half of the new business!

The Violet Hour: Author Services

The Violet Hour: Literary Magazine

The A to Z Book Diary: "F" is for Finally Freakin' Finished

So. Holy crap. I'm done!!!! MUA-HA-HA-HA!!!!!

Ahem. 

What I mean to say is... WOO!!!!!!! FIRST DRAFT IN THE BAG, BABY!!!!!!!!!

Whoa, okay. Easy now. Let's... let's just take a step back here. I can handle this post maturely. I know I can.

Calm. Cool. Collected. A dignified literary mind.

Dignified... dignified... dignifi--

IT'S DONE!!!!!!!! IT'S ACTUALLY DONE!!!!!!!!!!! THIS IS SO AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 Image courtesy of StuartMile-FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Alright. Nope. Just not going to happen. I know when to admit defeat. Mindless, crazed excitement at having a completed first draft of my first book is all that's in there right now. I got nothing else.

I'll just have to--

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Man. This is only getting worse... I need to go lie down somewhere. I'll be back again when this wears off a bit.

...Oh no... I feel a celebratory dance coming on... I am helpless against it!... I gotta hit "post" on this before it takes hold... AGH!!!!

~\\//~

Final Word Count of Pre-Editing 1st Draft: 78,949

The A to Z Book Diary: "E" is for Envisioning the End

Wow... I have to say that a part of me wasn't entirely sure if I'd even make it to this point, after all that time of just imagining, stewing, brainstorming and hoping, but... it's actually here: the beginning of the end of my first book.

You can't see this, but I'm doing a pre-celebratory jig in my desk chair.

...It's probably for the best you can't see this.

Anyway, this past year (or nearly a year, I think) has been a crazy whirlwind of figuring out the details in advance as well as working it out as I went, going through spurts of incredible productivity and dry spells of months of doing almost nothing. But I've finally come to it - writing the climax and conclusion I've been planning since the start!

Image courtesy of adamr/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

And it's turning out to be a very interesting combination of coming out exactly as I originally thought it would, at the same time as parts of it are a complete surprise to me.

I was convinced once upon a time that I had it all decided upon down to the letter, no matter how much other things in the story sometimes felt like I'd stuck it in my blender and hit "puree" a few times. As it turns out though, I really only had the basics of "how", "when", "where" and "why". And while those basics certainly made it through, overall the in-depth details for all those elements were pretty well up in the air. Now that I've gotten around to writing this final chapter-and-a-bit, I'm basically figuring it out as I go and realizing that the end entails far more additional working-out than I gave it credit for!

I suppose I can't be too surprised, at the end of the day - after all, with how much some of the key plot points and most of the smaller in-between elements have evolved from their original form, it only makes sense that the ending couldn't conceivably stay the exact same as it used to be, either. Really, I should have realized that planning it out was one thing, while writing out its entirety would bring up a whole new slew of details altogether.

Well, either way, seeing it all start to finally culminate in these last moments is a billion times more satisfying than I could've possibly imagined. So darn close now - if only I didn't need to do pesky things like work... finish the last few weeks of school... move out of my current apartment... eat and sleep...

Sigh. So many interruptions. But the end is nigh regardless, and the satisfaction is sweet!

...Heh, just have to keep in mind that at the end of this, I'll have roughly 140 single-spaced pages of editing to tackle. 

Oooooh boy. "The end"? This is really kind of only the beginning isn't it?

~\\//~

Word count as of today: 71,672

Writing Tip #6: Just Plain "Characters" Can't Do the Job Right - Give Your Reader More to Work With

You want to know who the most two-dimensional, unconvincing, static, uncompelling, forgettable, inauthentic, jaw-droppingly boring, least relatable characters are?

Here's the answer: ...they're the ones who are Characters.

Let me explain.

When a reader sits down with a story, there is already a suspension of disbelief that needs to happen for them to accept the fictional backdrop you create for it. From the start, you're asking them to believe in whatever truths you establish in your plot and the dynamics of your plot's world, however out-of-the-ordinary they may be. And they want to believe it because it'll give them an experience to enjoy. That's why they and we read any fiction at all. But you need to help them along. And the best way to do that is to populate that plot and that world with the most realistic characters you can manage.

So what's the problem with writing characters as just Characters, just people who exist in your fiction? Simple: when they're just "Characters", the only things that are really set up about them are things the author feels are immediately relevant to the plot and the other supporting characters. This means that they get a grab bag of quickly identifiable traits that the reader can remember them for and that the plot can pull from (for example, a Young Adult novel hero who is simply established as tall, handsome, brave, pining after whatever generic love interest is nearby and coherent enough to reciprocate something, and capable of surviving ridiculously dangerous things... the end). It's not to say that Characters won't get the job done - they serve their purpose of serving the reader their story, using that Trait Grab Bag to nudge the plot along from one point of conflict to the next, and on to the eventual resolution that their traits dictate they can accomplish.

But that's all they'll do... serve a purpose as a cog within a bigger picture. They won't engage the reader like they could be engaged, won't suck the reader into their lives and get that pull of empathy or hate or hope for their journey or whatever you want them to get. They won't make the reader truly care about what happens to them and their world, at least not as much as they could. Characters that are just Characters leave the reader on the outside of a story, looking in. They put up walls. They make suspension of disbelief harder, and work against your passion for the story you're telling.

So what do you write instead? Well, you scrap those Characters, and you write PEOPLE.

Take any character you're trying to write, and don't think of them in terms of how they'll serve your story. Give them a name, and go all Dr. Frankenstein on them, and give them life. Make the inanimate, the fictional real by giving them not just the Trait Grab Bag, but all the parts that make a person an actual person, and make those parts a functioning whole.

Start here: What's the context for the world that your plot and characters exist in? Is it in the past? Is it futuristic? Post-apocalyptic? 

Next step from there: Whatever it is, what kind of people can exist within it? What are the different classes of people? Are they separated by income? Nobility of birth? The city they live in? What differentiates groups of people from each other?

And next after that: What class of person is your character supposed to be? Once you've got that figured out, you can set up the Grab Bag of traits that go with that particular class as a foundation of characteristics (for example, if they're of a poorer class, then they know what it is to be hungry, to struggle - so they're tougher in order to survive, and maybe a bit bitter against those of higher class or against the system that keeps them poor). And after you've got that Grab Bag out of the way, make that character a person with traits unique to only them - traits shaped by their family lives within their class of people, the friends they have or haven't had, the mistakes they've made in the past, the hopes they have for the future. Take example from your own personality if you'd like: whatever you can think of that makes you, well, you, use all those different types of elements to fill in the blanks and make your character a living, breathing person.

After that, you use whatever you can of what you've worked out within the story itself, and whatever you don't use still serves as an influence for how these characters act within the story, interact with each other, and influence the overall story itself. If every character you create is written as a Person, not a Character, then what you have for your plot is a living population that will make your reader give a crap as to whether or not things turn out for them, and where they end up by the time it's over. Nothing generic or forgettable. Something unique, fresh, engaging. Everything the Doctor ordered for "Hell yes!" fiction.

Image courtesy of MisterGC/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

So do your story and reader a favour, and go be Dr. Frankenstein - give your creations life!

~\\//~

Word count as of today: 66,231

The A to Z Book Diary: "D" is for Dodging the Dimwit

Plot exposition is no simple matter. I've really come to appreciate this.

On the surface, it doesn't seem too complex: I have a story line, I have characters that live in that story line, and that story line has key points that the characters will travel through along their merry way to the climax and denouement. All I as the writer need to do is to make sure the readers know what they need to know as they need to know it in order for them to travel along in a book as I want them to be able to do. That means exposing the plot in pieces that do the job bit by bit.

Fair enough. Seems like a straightforward requirement, right?

Not so. At least, not always. Because there are so many ways to do it poorly. 

Cliches. Information dumps. Death-by-description. Insanely unrealistic conversation structures. The list goes on. And each point on it has the potential to distract, discourage, or outright bore the reader. Probably bad things to do, when I want them to like the first book enough to read the next one. 

One that I'm noticing is particularly tricky to avoid though is the Dimwit pitfall: the authorial habit of having one or several characters scattered throughout the story that a writer might make purposefully slow, or improbably and dangerously out of the loop on things so that another character can have the excuse to enlighten them, and thereby enlighten the reader.

Image courtesy of pakorn/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Of course, it's not to say a character can't not know something (I know - shame on me for using a double-negative there... but I'm not ashamed enough to fix it). When you look at it, there just seems to be a significant difference between a character having to naturally learn something they don't already know, and a character being the dreaded Dimwit. The naturally-learning character knows as much as is logical for them to know at the time the story starts, and when they're put into new situations with new things their character would have no reason to know about beforehand, then sure, using their ensuing education as plot exposition is fine. But a Dimwit, on the other hand, seems to be that character that reasonably should know something already, but for some reason unrealistically needs reminding or enlightening - like if you have a character who's a spy, who reasonably should know about a widely infamous bad-guy, but the author needs exposition, so the spy's suddenly the Dimwit who needs to be told all about this infamous baddie by someone else in the story.

At least, that's how I understand it. And in thinking I understand it, I'm noticing a few of my side characters edging towards this. I think I've managed to avoid making my principal character an idiot, which is good... but yikes, it's just way too easy to just plop someone in there and claim they're out of the loop so you can have an excuse to put in moments of, "Hey, Reader! You should know this - so here ya go."

Hm. Now I feel like I need to troll through all my previous chapters on a Dimwit hunt, just in case.

Or should I save that joy for the official Edits?...

...No, I'll go nuts imagining them possibly sitting there. Just waiting. Chewing up scenes with debilitating dunce-ness.

Gah.

Dimwit hunting I go, then.

~\\//~

 Word count as of today: 64,325

Writing Tip #5: Keep Those Gears Shifting and Stop That Progress from Stalling Out

Ever try to learn how to drive stick, in all its manual-shifting glory? (I hope so - if you haven't, the metaphor that backbones this post might well be gibberish to you.) If you have, probably one of the things that stands out most in your memory of the early days is just how many friggin' times you went to shift gears and stalled the sucker (unless you're one of those that picked it up almost instantly - in which case, lucky you!... hmf). I got my start on an automatic, and I know the stall-outs on manual cars haunt me. The sheer number of traffic lights and stop signs I've gotten myself stuck at is funny in hindsight. At the time of the actual stalling? Not so much. Lots of colourful and enthusiastic cursing ensued.

There's a point to bringing this up. I swear. A decent one, too. And I'll come back to it in a minute.

First, I'm going to go ahead and state a few painfully obvious facts: writing a novel takes time, and it is work (fun work for the most part, granted, but work nonetheless).

What doesn't get as much consideration sometimes is just how tough it can end up being to power through and carry your story from page one right to "The End", without screeching to a halt somewhere along the line and dumping it into your "on hiatus" pile for a while (or permanently). I know that when I went to start this first novel that I'm working on now, I went in with this rosy idea that because I had what I thought was a worthwhile plot driven by characters I was excited to write, all I needed in order to do this thing was a mighty roar and a "Can-do!" grin, and I was set.

Heh. Not so much. You know what I'm talking about.

Because here too, with the exceptions of those that have things come easily to them, when you really get into trying to do it, you come to truly realize that, holy crap, writing a novel really is work. Tough work, that you alone are responsible for putting yourself through and that's almost impossible to predict how long it'll take to get through. Something that demands plenty of time and energy and afternoons/evenings/wee hours of the mornings that could be spent doing almost anything else if you weren't frying your brain with research or beating your head against the wall over your latest bought of writer's block, and...

...and you may inevitably think (during those times where you're progressing so little you'd swear you're moving backwards) something along the lines of this: "I may love to write, but The Beatles had it wrong when they said 'All you need is love.' What I need is something to keep me at this *bleeping* thing before, in a moment of weakness, I drop my laptop/pen-and-paper in the nearest fire pit with a lit match and a healthy supply of kerosene. Kaboom."

Now, this is where we come back to car stall-outs. Stall-outs suck. Big Time. You're driving along fine, then after you've slowed down, you hit that gas pedal and get a horrible clunk. And go nowhere. And curse the universe - loudly - while still going nowhere. But there's that one magical thing that when you remember it's there and you remember how to use it, your life spent stick-shifting involves significantly less swearing and more going: that spectacular little third pedal that makes all gear shifting in stick-shift cars possible, its highness The Clutch.

 Image courtesy of Feelart/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Writing a novel, or anything of a significant length, is no different than driving stick. You need a Clutch: at least one particular thing that's there to keep you moving, and to get you moving again whenever progress slows down.

For me, my Clutch is a little magnetic whiteboard on my fridge where I've written "Novel Word Count" at the top, with "Goal: 75,000 words" underneath it, and my current word count going just underneath that. That board is my magic tool, the thing where I can see how far I have to go, but especially how far I've come and how much closer I get every time I get some writing done for the day. Whenever I need it, I look at that thing and it gets me proud and freshly motivated. Because as much as I love to write, sometimes motivation is a tough thing to find when it's such a long haul.

Of course, yours doesn't have to be a running word count. If that just feels like it puts undue pressure on the whole thing, get creative! If, for example, your characters are embarking on some kind of physical journey across a distance, draw up a little map of their route and mark off each spot along the way as the characters reach them in your story. Or, as another example, if your characters are in a survival novel where they're up against, say, a zombie hoard, and you know which people will be zombie kibble before you reach the end of the story, put together a Zombie Kibble chart, with some sort of zombie cookie jar you can stick each character into as the story progresses and one by one they get munched.

Anything. Anything you can come up with that you can use to mark your progression and prove to yourself that you're making headway, draw it up, write it down, print it off, whatever. Just have it there, so when you get to stall-out levels of "Kaboom" proportions, you have your Clutch there for you to use to its fullest.

Less swearing. More going. No kerosene.

Worth a shot. Give it a try!

~\\//~

Word count as of today: 61,978

Writing Tip #4: Want to Fill Those *Bleeping* Plot Holes? Just Gotta Know Your Own Rules.

Some things you can only really come to know once you're neck deep in them...

...like what happens to your driver's license if it takes a trip through the washer and dryer in your jean pocket...

...like what becomes of your stomach when you polish off that container of leftovers at the back of your fridge that you weren't too sure about...

...but especially, and horribly, just how many plot holes one story is in fact capable of producing. And how many is that? A freakin' whole heck of a lot. Plus fifty more.

In fact, it is scientifically proven (...alright, it's not proven anywhere, but I swear by this...) that plot holes feed off of climbing word counts and are spread like the common cold of the typeface world - one loose end sneezes on a perfectly healthy plot twist, and before you know it, everything's a congested mess of literary phlegm that hacks its way to a stand-still. And at the end of the day, this poor phlegmy manuscript is so miserably ill, that it almost seems like the kind thing would be to put it out of its misery, cut it loose and put a stop to the wheezing.

Photo courtesy of Ideago/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Sounds pretty bleak, indeed. But like with any cold, there IS a way to beat these suckers. And here's how, in three basic steps:

1) Figure out what world your story is unfolding in.

                     (**This goes hand-in-hand with figuring out what story you're telling - a 

                  matter of geography, point in time, and degree of balance between realism 

                  versus fantastical.)

2) Write down the rules that govern your story's world. 

                    (**The number and types of rules varies by story based on your story's 

                  complexity and/or how out of the ordinary its world is, but write as many 

                  as you can think of, and keep adding to it as you go, as needed; everything 

                  from your character's personality quirks and hangups, to any restrictions 

                  placed on the character by society and their station within it, to what levels

                  of technology/magic/poverty/etc. your character is used to, to what kinds 

                  of problems people in this world might run into if they were in the wrong part

                  of a town/countryside late at night. Whatever parameters you can think of 

                  that will dictate what can happen within this world and within your 

                  characters, put them in there.)

3) Use those rules as your story-writing GPS - listen to them, ALWAYS, and update them as needed.

                       (**Ultimately, this is your world. You decide what is and is not possible. 

                       But the most important part to filling those plot holes is to make sure your 

                       world's/character's rules make sense with each other with little to no 

                       contradictions - adjusting them as necessary if you notice any - so that if 

                       and when you come across moments in your plot that suddenly don't 

                       seem to fit with previous or planned events, or you realize you've written 

                       yourself into a corner where you're not sure how your character could 

                       handle or escape a conflict, or you've run into any of many roadblocks, 

                       you can go back to your established rules and use them to navigate. The

                      more detailed you make them, the more you can plug in whatever plot hole

                      you've run into and ask yourself, "What isn't working? What rule[s] is it 

                      breaking that makes it not work, and what do I need to change so that it 

                      works again?")

And that's really it: know your world, know its rules, and write according to them.

This works.

I swear.

Nine out of ten dentists recommend this, and the tenth dentist is coming around as we speak.

Give this a shot against your plot holes, and if it doesn't clear things up... 

...well, remember that I'm no expert. I just claim to know stuff. Blame my university profs for convincing me I had so many brain cells to rub together.

~\\//~

Word count as of today: 55,962