I have been working on a new novel for a couple of months now, and I've been attempting to write it without an outline, without any idea of where the story or the characters go. The idea is to discover all of this as I go along. It's an experiment in creativity, wherein I attempt to mimic the techniques of our own Davin Malasarn in the hopes that I'll stumble across the sort of surprising narrative turns that he has in his stories.
I really really (really) am hating it. In fact, I hate it so much that whenever I think about working on the story I get angry. I have no idea what it is so I have no idea what to do with it. In the last week or so, I have managed to write one sentence and it's not a particularly good sentence, either. I look at my notebook and my stack of reference materials and I think about all the other books I could be writing instead, the books where I have outlines and knowledge of the plot and the purpose of the characters. The books that I would enjoy writing.
Because I really really (really) am not enjoying the work on this current project. Yes, some of the bits are the best passages I've written, but I put that down to my having grown as a writer, not to my having no idea what I'm doing on the page. I don't see myself ever getting a finished novel-length draft out of this book, not writing it the way I am. There is nothing compelling me to move forward with the writing because I'm not going anywhere. I am not one of those people who can just go on a wander to see what I'll see; when I go for a walk, I like to know what the destination is and how long the walk will take and where I'll have a pint at the end of the walk. This wandering around through my manuscript is making me terribly nervy and that nervy quality is finding its way onto the page and I don't like that, either.
To make a long story short, I have decided that my plan to write this one without a plan is a bad sort of planless plan. I throw up my hands. I throw in the towel. I throw off the shackles of this prisonless prison, et cetera. Today I'm going to figure out what the hell the story is and what happens when my two main characters meet and how the book ends and why all of it takes place. So there. Otherwise I'm going to throw what I have of this book into the fireplace. Grrr. Argh.
Also, Happy New Year!
Showing posts with label outlining. Show all posts
Showing posts with label outlining. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Monday, August 22, 2011
Hello Pansters, You Are All Mad Aren't You?
So I am working on a new novel right now, and I've allowed myself to be led astray by the methods of Davin Malasarn, who writes without an outline. This is my sixth novel. Way back in 1990 I started my first novel (which I like to call The Precious Unpublishable Mess) and spent a few years writing the first half of the story, working without an outline. One night I sat down and wrote out a detailed outline of the second half of the story and finished the book up within a few months. Huh, I said. Things went a lot more quickly with an outline than without one. After that, I wrote four more novels.
Each of those four books was planned in advance, at least in broad strokes: I knew what the big conflicts were, I knew how the stories ended, I knew who all the main characters were and how they related to the conflicts. As I wrote the first drafts, I was able to see how my subconscious was feeding me images that tied into the central conflicts/themes of the book and I was able to craft large-scale symbolic systems that tie the whole story together. Most importantly, I knew what the hell I was doing with each scene I wrote. I could see how what I was building all worked toward the vision I had of the novel.
Now, of course, I've got none of that. I'm sort of hurling words at the page and seeing what shapes they form, like some sort of Rorschach test or something. Really, it's entirely maddening. I have a bunch of characters and I see how they all fit together, sort of, but I don't really know what they'll do. I have two main storylines, but I don't know what the stories are. No, don't even ask how that's possible. The storylines might intersect at some point or they might not. I'll know if/when I get there.
Certain images are occurring to me so I write them down but I don't know if they matter to the themes or story because I don't know the themes or story. I just keep writing forward into the breach with no idea at all what's waiting for me in that breach, and I'll put down 1,000 words and then see that they don't actually follow what I've got but then I see that if I slip an additional 1,000 words between the extant prose and the new passages, it'll all fit together and there's a sense of forward motion but to what? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.
It sets my teeth on edge. There are people who write like this all the time, who would rather write like this than know where they're going. I find myself getting upset and while I've managed to keep pressing on at the usual rate (the biggest surprise to me has been that I don't write more slowly without an outline than with one), I feel dizzy often when I consider the story, because it's like squinting to look at something that's invisible. Maddening, it is. Insanity.
You pansters, I say, are certainly making life hard on yourselves.
And yet, I am conducting this experiment because I believe in my heart of hearts that there are valuable lessons to be learned about writing with this method. I'm traveling through an unknown landscape with no map, no compass and no idea who or what or where I'll see along the way. I could argue that there's a sort of purity to this method, that I won't be hampered by any preconceived notions about the structure of a story. Certainly I'm not writing to the three-act paradigm right now. I can make a long list of what I'm not doing; what's harder is saying what I am. I have no idea. It makes me tense. Yet it's interesting, and that's enough. Also, the writing is really good. Some of my most gorgeous bits ever. So while there's a madness to this method, I keep at it.
Each of those four books was planned in advance, at least in broad strokes: I knew what the big conflicts were, I knew how the stories ended, I knew who all the main characters were and how they related to the conflicts. As I wrote the first drafts, I was able to see how my subconscious was feeding me images that tied into the central conflicts/themes of the book and I was able to craft large-scale symbolic systems that tie the whole story together. Most importantly, I knew what the hell I was doing with each scene I wrote. I could see how what I was building all worked toward the vision I had of the novel.
Now, of course, I've got none of that. I'm sort of hurling words at the page and seeing what shapes they form, like some sort of Rorschach test or something. Really, it's entirely maddening. I have a bunch of characters and I see how they all fit together, sort of, but I don't really know what they'll do. I have two main storylines, but I don't know what the stories are. No, don't even ask how that's possible. The storylines might intersect at some point or they might not. I'll know if/when I get there.
Certain images are occurring to me so I write them down but I don't know if they matter to the themes or story because I don't know the themes or story. I just keep writing forward into the breach with no idea at all what's waiting for me in that breach, and I'll put down 1,000 words and then see that they don't actually follow what I've got but then I see that if I slip an additional 1,000 words between the extant prose and the new passages, it'll all fit together and there's a sense of forward motion but to what? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.
It sets my teeth on edge. There are people who write like this all the time, who would rather write like this than know where they're going. I find myself getting upset and while I've managed to keep pressing on at the usual rate (the biggest surprise to me has been that I don't write more slowly without an outline than with one), I feel dizzy often when I consider the story, because it's like squinting to look at something that's invisible. Maddening, it is. Insanity.
You pansters, I say, are certainly making life hard on yourselves.
And yet, I am conducting this experiment because I believe in my heart of hearts that there are valuable lessons to be learned about writing with this method. I'm traveling through an unknown landscape with no map, no compass and no idea who or what or where I'll see along the way. I could argue that there's a sort of purity to this method, that I won't be hampered by any preconceived notions about the structure of a story. Certainly I'm not writing to the three-act paradigm right now. I can make a long list of what I'm not doing; what's harder is saying what I am. I have no idea. It makes me tense. Yet it's interesting, and that's enough. Also, the writing is really good. Some of my most gorgeous bits ever. So while there's a madness to this method, I keep at it.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Plots, Subplots and Nonplots
Davin's post of yesterday, about tying up all the subplots in a longer work, got me thinking about the novel I'm currently writing. Tara Maya has thoughtfully supplied the term philosophical detective story to partially describe what I'm doing, and I'm going to use it from now on, any time I talk about the book. Anyway, I'm writing a philosophical detective story that has some odd things going on in the way of structure. I've created a little diagram for you:
The big arrow pointing from left-to-right is the main plot, the through-action of the detective story and that's all very straightforward (as detective stories go). It serves as the 12-chapter, three-act framework onto which I'm hanging all my literary experiments. This plot provides the primary forward motion of the novel, the story question ("who killed George Pullman?") and the overall dramatic arc. There is also a fairly normal sort of subplot involving the emotional life of the detective that will be resolved in a fairly normal sort of manner. All of that's represented by the black arrow in the diagram.
You've noticed by now that there are also 10 colored dots through which the plot arrow passes on its way from page Start to page Finish. These represent individual characters in the novel. Every one of the characters has his/her own story that is separate from the mystery plot. But these characters' stories are not subplots, because they do not develop over time and are not resolved within the confines of this novel. They are more like lengthy character sketches through which the detective story passes while the detective investigates the crime. Since they are, plotwise, fairly static, I have decided to call them Nonplots, which sounds a bit derogatory so I'm open to a better name.
The inspiration for this Nonplot substructure of the book comes from, first of all, Agatha Christie. Last year I was reading her Poirot mystery Halloween Party and I was struck by the long digression Christie took in the middle of the novel to talk about landscaping and gardening. It's some of Christie's most beautiful writing and had nothing really to do with the story going on around it. I thought it would be cool to do something digressive like this in a detective story. I also have been inspired by Louis de Bernieres' Birds Without Wings, which is a long historical novel containing a bunch of character arcs that intersect but don't necessarily tie together in a direct way. Finally there's the work of Virginia Woolf and Samuel Beckett and James Joyce, who wrote brilliant stream of consciousness novels where the internal action is very dramatic and compelling while the external action is fairly simple.
My Nonplots, then, are explorations of the characters in my novel, places where the plot slows down and the characters are expanded through internal monologues and suchlike stuff. The drama of these sections comes about through the use of conflict. The book is charactered with a bunch of couples of different ages in different stages of couplehood, and each Nonplot is a rumination by one half of the couple about the relationship. So you get both halves of the couples eventually (in my diagram A and F, for example, could be one couple while B and J are another), and each member of the couple will have their own point of view regarding their marriage/relationship. So I'm examining pairbonding, but not really telling full stories for each couple.
What this means is that the Nonplots overlap and connect and form little miniature arcs in the narrative, but there is no resolution, no thing that happens with these characters. Of course things happen to some of the characters related to the primary murder mystery, and there are of course connections between those events and the internal monologues in the Nonplots, but the connections for most of the characters are pretty tenuous. In a lot of ways, I have just realized, the book is like eating with a bunch of strangers in a resort dining room, where you chat at breakfast and maybe again at dinner with the charming couple from Nantucket and you never do learn how things will work out for their nephew in medical school or whatever. But deeper and more immediate than that. Maybe it's more like walking through the National Gallery and looking long at each painting and then moving on. Not sure, frankly, nor am I entirely certain how this structure will play out when the book is finished. I'm excited about it, though. It could be really cool if it works. And none of this stuff I've talked about today is the "philosophical" part of the philosophical detective story. That's an extra layer of ubercoolness atop all of the aforementioned coolness.
The big arrow pointing from left-to-right is the main plot, the through-action of the detective story and that's all very straightforward (as detective stories go). It serves as the 12-chapter, three-act framework onto which I'm hanging all my literary experiments. This plot provides the primary forward motion of the novel, the story question ("who killed George Pullman?") and the overall dramatic arc. There is also a fairly normal sort of subplot involving the emotional life of the detective that will be resolved in a fairly normal sort of manner. All of that's represented by the black arrow in the diagram.
You've noticed by now that there are also 10 colored dots through which the plot arrow passes on its way from page Start to page Finish. These represent individual characters in the novel. Every one of the characters has his/her own story that is separate from the mystery plot. But these characters' stories are not subplots, because they do not develop over time and are not resolved within the confines of this novel. They are more like lengthy character sketches through which the detective story passes while the detective investigates the crime. Since they are, plotwise, fairly static, I have decided to call them Nonplots, which sounds a bit derogatory so I'm open to a better name.
The inspiration for this Nonplot substructure of the book comes from, first of all, Agatha Christie. Last year I was reading her Poirot mystery Halloween Party and I was struck by the long digression Christie took in the middle of the novel to talk about landscaping and gardening. It's some of Christie's most beautiful writing and had nothing really to do with the story going on around it. I thought it would be cool to do something digressive like this in a detective story. I also have been inspired by Louis de Bernieres' Birds Without Wings, which is a long historical novel containing a bunch of character arcs that intersect but don't necessarily tie together in a direct way. Finally there's the work of Virginia Woolf and Samuel Beckett and James Joyce, who wrote brilliant stream of consciousness novels where the internal action is very dramatic and compelling while the external action is fairly simple.
My Nonplots, then, are explorations of the characters in my novel, places where the plot slows down and the characters are expanded through internal monologues and suchlike stuff. The drama of these sections comes about through the use of conflict. The book is charactered with a bunch of couples of different ages in different stages of couplehood, and each Nonplot is a rumination by one half of the couple about the relationship. So you get both halves of the couples eventually (in my diagram A and F, for example, could be one couple while B and J are another), and each member of the couple will have their own point of view regarding their marriage/relationship. So I'm examining pairbonding, but not really telling full stories for each couple.
What this means is that the Nonplots overlap and connect and form little miniature arcs in the narrative, but there is no resolution, no thing that happens with these characters. Of course things happen to some of the characters related to the primary murder mystery, and there are of course connections between those events and the internal monologues in the Nonplots, but the connections for most of the characters are pretty tenuous. In a lot of ways, I have just realized, the book is like eating with a bunch of strangers in a resort dining room, where you chat at breakfast and maybe again at dinner with the charming couple from Nantucket and you never do learn how things will work out for their nephew in medical school or whatever. But deeper and more immediate than that. Maybe it's more like walking through the National Gallery and looking long at each painting and then moving on. Not sure, frankly, nor am I entirely certain how this structure will play out when the book is finished. I'm excited about it, though. It could be really cool if it works. And none of this stuff I've talked about today is the "philosophical" part of the philosophical detective story. That's an extra layer of ubercoolness atop all of the aforementioned coolness.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
A Long Slope Called Burn-Out
I feel like I haven't been here forever! The truth is, I've been sliding down a long slope called "burn-out" and I really can't think of much to talk about that hasn't already been said a hundred times before on this blog. So, whether or not it will bore you to tears today, I'm going to talk briefly about a few things - my writing at the center of it all.
I'm published.
Does that make me a good writer?
The funny thing is that I'm SELF-published at the moment, but will be traditionally published as of September 15th of this year. Does it truly make any difference? Does it freaking matter? My conclusion is absolutely not. I wrote a book. That's what matters. In fact, I'm working on my 6th book. It's pretty awesome that I've written that many. Only one I've shelved for good.
After six books, I've finally figured out a system. Or so I think. It takes me on average 7 months to 2 years to write a book, depending on the length and complexity. For the rough draft, it takes me 3 - 5 months.
Do I outline?
You bet I outline. However, it's not what most people would really call an outline. It's more like a really long synopsis, and it's very loose. In fact, my story often cuts away from that synopsis. It always comes back, though, like a wave washing on the shore - finally ending up at that last scene I planned from the beginning.
Do I need feedback?
You bet I do. I have never been able to write a book without letting someone read parts of it as I go along. It seems to be a need, but it also seems to be waning as of late. More and more I only need 1 or 2 people to look things over. I also don't rely on them to give me feedback on prose like I used to - but more on big huge gaping holes I left lying around and somehow couldn't see. I'm kind of blind to those.
Why am I burned out?
Because marketing a book SUCKS THE LIFE OUT OF ME. I'm not kidding. Marketing my novel Monarch has left me feeling like I've been run over by a freaking truck, and despite everything I've done, I don't feel like much of it has been very productive. That's the worst part.
I feel like it's time to take one big huge break. We just got NetFlix and watching a lot of movies sounds nice. Also, I have a huge stack of books I want to read. I have a feeling my future posts are going to be about reading more than writing. After all, that's where my love of writing started.
I'm published.
Does that make me a good writer?
The funny thing is that I'm SELF-published at the moment, but will be traditionally published as of September 15th of this year. Does it truly make any difference? Does it freaking matter? My conclusion is absolutely not. I wrote a book. That's what matters. In fact, I'm working on my 6th book. It's pretty awesome that I've written that many. Only one I've shelved for good.
After six books, I've finally figured out a system. Or so I think. It takes me on average 7 months to 2 years to write a book, depending on the length and complexity. For the rough draft, it takes me 3 - 5 months.
Do I outline?
You bet I outline. However, it's not what most people would really call an outline. It's more like a really long synopsis, and it's very loose. In fact, my story often cuts away from that synopsis. It always comes back, though, like a wave washing on the shore - finally ending up at that last scene I planned from the beginning.
Do I need feedback?
You bet I do. I have never been able to write a book without letting someone read parts of it as I go along. It seems to be a need, but it also seems to be waning as of late. More and more I only need 1 or 2 people to look things over. I also don't rely on them to give me feedback on prose like I used to - but more on big huge gaping holes I left lying around and somehow couldn't see. I'm kind of blind to those.
Why am I burned out?
Because marketing a book SUCKS THE LIFE OUT OF ME. I'm not kidding. Marketing my novel Monarch has left me feeling like I've been run over by a freaking truck, and despite everything I've done, I don't feel like much of it has been very productive. That's the worst part.
I feel like it's time to take one big huge break. We just got NetFlix and watching a lot of movies sounds nice. Also, I have a huge stack of books I want to read. I have a feeling my future posts are going to be about reading more than writing. After all, that's where my love of writing started.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Tell Yourself a Story
Over on my own blog, I wrote this post about the way I outlined the book I'm now writing. I didn't quite get at the real root of what I wanted to say about the process, so I'm going to try again here and hope I'll do a better job of it.
I know that a lot of you don't outline before you write your first drafts, and that's okay. A first draft is a wild and wooly creature, and any way you can get one is valid, I think. Even though I outline, my first drafts are still mostly improvised. But at some point you're probably going to revise/edit/rewrite your first draft into something more polished and presentable, and at that point you should take a good hard look at the mechanics of your story if you haven't done so already. I pause to say that I really think this is most helpful if you do it before your first draft, but you have to do something like this at some point.
One of the most important things you have to know about your story is what your story is. By that I mean, you as the author have to be able to stand back and see how the main storyline works, what the important events (or "plot points," if you will) are, what the character arcs are and how they begin, develop and resolve, and how your plotlines all work together. Yes, you do have to know this. Why? Because those are the moving parts of your story.
The way I come up with these moving parts, and the way they are organized into the shape of my story, is to simply sit down and try to tell myself the story in the order it will take place. For example, I might have an idea for a story about, I donno, a woman who falls in love and rises from a lowly estate to become happy ever after. I know, it sounds sort of old-fashioned, but it's a popular formula and I'm using it. I'll call the woman "Ella."
So I try to tell myself Ella's story:
Ella is the maid of a nasty family with three daughters. A handsome door-to-door salesman visits the house, he and Ella fall in love and he spirits her away.
Okay, I say. Not much there. How about a complication? And some motivation for Ella?
Ella is the maid of a nasty family with three nasty daughters who are less nice and attractive than Ella, but are all constantly besought by the best men of the town because they have money. Ella is from a family that was once powerful but is now in disgrace and poverty and she longs for the good old days she never saw but vividly imagines. A handsome door-to-door saleman--
Waitaminute. A door-to-door salesman? That worked for a second, but now I don't think so. And do I want a riches-to-rags-to-middle-class story? Maybe. Is this about escape, or about comeuppance for the nasty family? Is the nasty family the antagonist? Or one of the daughters? Or someone else, back when Ella's family fortune was lost? Will Ella work to restore that fortune, and the stranger who visits the house will be the key to that?
And so on. I basically sit down and tell myself the story over and over and over again, from start to finish, until there is something there that makes sense and is compelling. I try to keep it short, like 200 words or fewer though that's less important than knowing the core of the story. Sometimes I make lists of characters:
Ella
Ella's father?
Ella's aunt/cousin/distant relative?
Nasty Family:
Mrs. Nasty
Mr. Nasty
Sis Nasty 1
Sis Nasty 2
Sis Nasty 3
Butler/driver/gardener?
Handsome stranger
Magistrate
Townsfolk
Prince
Soldiers
And then I'll take the rough skeleton of the story, when I have one, and try fitting these characters into it in different places to see how they might influence the action or the backstory or the outcome. It is a lot like collage, the way I do it, or like trying on every piece of clothing in my closet in every imaginable combination until I say, "Hey, that looks goooood." The thing is to come up with a story arc for the protagonist that works. And then (or while creating the protagonist's story arc), you need to figure out the story arcs for the other characters including the antagonist (because he's not a prop, he's a character). Thanks to Lois Moss for pointing that out with such clarity.
Anyway, this is pretty much how I turn my vague ideas into actual stories. It's an iterative process of refining and changing and molding and it's a process that's been pretty good to me. Does this look like it could be a useful technique? If not, tell me a better one: I'm all ears, metaphorically speaking.
Also, I have been pretty slackerly in my posts lately and I thought I'd try practical advice again, even though it's Friday and traditionally Fridays are for filler.
I know that a lot of you don't outline before you write your first drafts, and that's okay. A first draft is a wild and wooly creature, and any way you can get one is valid, I think. Even though I outline, my first drafts are still mostly improvised. But at some point you're probably going to revise/edit/rewrite your first draft into something more polished and presentable, and at that point you should take a good hard look at the mechanics of your story if you haven't done so already. I pause to say that I really think this is most helpful if you do it before your first draft, but you have to do something like this at some point.
One of the most important things you have to know about your story is what your story is. By that I mean, you as the author have to be able to stand back and see how the main storyline works, what the important events (or "plot points," if you will) are, what the character arcs are and how they begin, develop and resolve, and how your plotlines all work together. Yes, you do have to know this. Why? Because those are the moving parts of your story.
The way I come up with these moving parts, and the way they are organized into the shape of my story, is to simply sit down and try to tell myself the story in the order it will take place. For example, I might have an idea for a story about, I donno, a woman who falls in love and rises from a lowly estate to become happy ever after. I know, it sounds sort of old-fashioned, but it's a popular formula and I'm using it. I'll call the woman "Ella."
So I try to tell myself Ella's story:
Ella is the maid of a nasty family with three daughters. A handsome door-to-door salesman visits the house, he and Ella fall in love and he spirits her away.
Okay, I say. Not much there. How about a complication? And some motivation for Ella?
Ella is the maid of a nasty family with three nasty daughters who are less nice and attractive than Ella, but are all constantly besought by the best men of the town because they have money. Ella is from a family that was once powerful but is now in disgrace and poverty and she longs for the good old days she never saw but vividly imagines. A handsome door-to-door saleman--
Waitaminute. A door-to-door salesman? That worked for a second, but now I don't think so. And do I want a riches-to-rags-to-middle-class story? Maybe. Is this about escape, or about comeuppance for the nasty family? Is the nasty family the antagonist? Or one of the daughters? Or someone else, back when Ella's family fortune was lost? Will Ella work to restore that fortune, and the stranger who visits the house will be the key to that?
And so on. I basically sit down and tell myself the story over and over and over again, from start to finish, until there is something there that makes sense and is compelling. I try to keep it short, like 200 words or fewer though that's less important than knowing the core of the story. Sometimes I make lists of characters:
Ella
Ella's father?
Ella's aunt/cousin/distant relative?
Nasty Family:
Mrs. Nasty
Mr. Nasty
Sis Nasty 1
Sis Nasty 2
Sis Nasty 3
Butler/driver/gardener?
Handsome stranger
Magistrate
Townsfolk
Prince
Soldiers
And then I'll take the rough skeleton of the story, when I have one, and try fitting these characters into it in different places to see how they might influence the action or the backstory or the outcome. It is a lot like collage, the way I do it, or like trying on every piece of clothing in my closet in every imaginable combination until I say, "Hey, that looks goooood." The thing is to come up with a story arc for the protagonist that works. And then (or while creating the protagonist's story arc), you need to figure out the story arcs for the other characters including the antagonist (because he's not a prop, he's a character). Thanks to Lois Moss for pointing that out with such clarity.
Anyway, this is pretty much how I turn my vague ideas into actual stories. It's an iterative process of refining and changing and molding and it's a process that's been pretty good to me. Does this look like it could be a useful technique? If not, tell me a better one: I'm all ears, metaphorically speaking.
Also, I have been pretty slackerly in my posts lately and I thought I'd try practical advice again, even though it's Friday and traditionally Fridays are for filler.
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