Revision -- uggh

I haven't worked up the courage yet to start drafting the conclusion yet. (Mainly because I don't have confidence in the material I just finished. It feels like it will have to be radically different and therefore set up a different kind of conclusion.)

In the meantime, I'm doing some patch up work on the rest of it. I have my main file that most everything is typed into, and then I have another file where I drafted my new opening. (e.g. about 30 pages.) I started copying and pasting and cutting to put the new opening in place and take out the parts of my original opening that no longer work. That leaves a lot of jagged seams, which I spent some time trying to smooth over, but I can see it's going to be a lot of work. And not the most glamorous work, either. I'm not looking forward to it.

So, my main file, which has everything that I possibly could be using to create a first draft and from which I have cut out stuff I know won't be included, now is at 59,000 words and 250 pages. That, plus about 10,000 words of scrap material, all of it typed in and with some light editing, in the last 15 weeks approximately. Not bad. Not great. Not my goal. I really want to have an ending that I can believe in drafted before Christmas.

Tense

Verb tense, that is.

As a reader I have an aversion to the use of the present tense in fiction. I feel like it is often used as a gimmick to generate cheap energy through a sense of immediacy when vivid and singular writing in the past tense would do that more authentically. Sometimes when a writer uses the present tense it feels like a patch up to disguise the shortcomings in the writing such as there not being any active verbs, probably because the writer doesn't really know what's going on in the scene. Perhaps they've failed to get in touch with it.

There are plenty of counter examples and many many novels I've enjoyed that are in present tense -- usually pulling me in before I've had to become aware of technique. So, probably the most accurate thing to say is that in my opinion present tense is a technique that can have an interesting effect but that is overused. (I also feel that same way about first person -- that the technique is sometimes used to hide the shortcomings in the story behind a clever voice. I could go on forever about the neglected virtues of the third person, especially the third person limited.)

So I usually rely on the plain vanilla techniques of past tense and third person, my present project included. But . . . when I was drafting the other day I found myself slipping mid-scene into the present tense. Where is that coming from, I asked myself.

It actually happened during a parenthetical remark in the narration that explains some context about what is going on in the story. When I thought about it more closely, I realized that parts of this project might actually benefit from switching between present and past tense in an organized way.

To explain this I might have to give away more of my story than I usually like to do on this blog. How do I put this? Let's just say that in the abstract that the story takes places in two different "realms" in terms of time and space. Think of it as inside the castle and out in the forest, to use the romance model. The characters move back and forth between these different realms for big portions of the book -- several chapters in one, several chapters in another, etc. There are about 6 -8 switches total.

Up until my accidental switch to present tense, all of the book, on both realms, had been narrated with the same past-tense technique. ("The hero discovered this and decided that.") But I've been thinking that the changes in realm could be signaled with a change in tense. When the characters are in the castle, I would use past tense, and when they go into the forest, I would use the present. ("The hero discovers this and decides that.")

One advantage would be to heighten the distinction between the two realms. Another is that it would clarify for the reader where we are in time and space. Another is that the change in general and the use of the present tense in particular in those spots would reinforce some of the thematic structure of the story, but, again, to explain that I would have to give away more than I want to.

So, I'm experimenting with that. I wrote the rest of the section in the present tense. Even though it has the advantages I listed, I'm not sure I'm crazy about how it sounds. I have a theory that the present tense gives up some subtlety of meaning that the English language is capable of, and this material I've drafted feels that way to me a little bit, though it's hard to put my finger on exactly how.

Also, if I'm going to do this, it will mean a lot of tedious revision in about a third of the book changing all the saws to sees and wases to ises and saids to says. Just doing that for the 10 pages I already had done in this section about bored me to death.

So we'll see. This book has bigger problems that I need to figure out, so I'll be stewing on this in the meantime. In any case, it shouldn't affect any more of the drafting, because I'm past the last trip into the forest. It will affect rewrites and revisions.

Tough week

Well, I guess the lesson of the last week is about the need for perseverance. When in doubt, just sit down and keep battering away.

So much of this work is resisting the intellectual impulse. Knowing when not to try and fix and understand and repair but just to keep building mud pies and float along on innocent, ignorant faith.

I think I'm at a crucial moment in the story where all the inherent weaknesses mixed in to the foundation cement stones at the very beginning are revealing themselves in seemingly catastrophic cracks as I near the climax. I can't bring it to a satisfying resolution so much as reveal how the "it" has all along been a muddled patchwork man dressed up like a real person.

That crucial moment can make me freeze up. The inclination is to try to find the right combination of putty and paint to make it all seem to work, but I know in my heart that isn't going to work, so I sit around fretting and doing nothing. Or trying to think my way out of the problem.

That's how most of last week went. Finally I remembered the core lesson -- just sit down, give up any agenda or expectations, and start writing something. The goal isn't to finish but to produce something. Don't expect it to work, and if you're lucky it will reveal a path to what could work.

And I think that's what I've got. I write about 6,000 words over 6 days of working last week. (Up to something like 63,000 now.) And what I wrote is near total crap. But that little bit that isn't total crap is my trail of bread crumbs out of this mess. It's the hint of the deeper emotion and deeper theme of the story. If I develop it, it will mean a million changes in what I've written already.

But the work so far is necessary to get to this point. I want it to go like a flowchart, like the perfect to do list. That's an idiotic delusion. Maybe this will end up coming to me 10% faster than the last book, but it won't be fast. Especially if I can't recognize these roadblocks as such and hope that I can think my way past them.

I have a first "zero draft" of my so-called "false peak" chapter. It's shit, but that's a better problem than being stuck.

Climaxes, false peaks, dragons and other metaphors for the final crisis

I mentioned it's an adventure story, right? I think of the final climb to the climax as battle scenes. The main character has gotten all the tools in hand, knows what the obstacles are and moves toward a direct confrontation with the antagonist.

I plan for that confrontation to play out over three escalating battle scenes, the first of which I wrote today. That brings the story and resolves a kind of climax that I think of as really a "false peak," to a metaphor from mountain climbing with those traditional illustrations of plot lines that look like a mountain peak. When you're ascending the mountain, the angle sometimes makes it appear you're approaching a peak, when actually there is actually a higher point that you can't see until you reach the false peak.

The first "false peak" climax of my story resolves an immediate danger, but a larger overarching danger still remains. Confronting that should be the real peak or climax of the story.

To use another metaphor from my old college literature courses, consider the "romantic model." In the traditional romance, the hero leaves the castle for the countryside, where he slays the dragon and then returns to the castle, where all is right in the world. In my story -- and in many other less traditional versions of the romance, I suppose -- after the dragon is slain, the hero returns to the castle to confront the traitor who let the dragon loose to begin with and who still presents a danger to order.

With luck, I could finish the "false peak" battle scenes within a week, though I don't really know how. But yesterday I didn't know how I was going to do the first of the scenes. I spent yesterday brainstorming and problem solving, and today I write it in about 2,100 words. Here's hoping I can knock out the rest of it the same way.

More or less finished with my new opening.

1,600 words this morning, again on the computer.

I was mistaken on my time line yesterday. I forgot that I needed one more new scene in my new opening before merging into the existing material. That's what I did this morning, so now I have all the new opening.

Kind of . . . depends on how you look at it. The scene will draw on existing material, but it will have to be rewritten pretty significantly to help splice the new material in. I guess there's no bright line where I can say that I've finished all the "new" material. The old material needs different degrees of revision as a result.

Anyway, I'm probably done until after the Thanksgiving break. Not sure what I'll start with next week -- more revision or jumping to the ending to see if I can draft that.

Finished new opening

1,000 words this morning. That's 5,000 since Saturday morning and around 55,000 total, though I already know of a section of about 10,000 words that's going to be cut.

I forgot to time myself to test it, but I'm sure that I compose on the keyboard a lot faster than by writing longhand. More incentive to switch, as discussed before.

All the material from the last few days has been for my new concept of how the book opens, which I arrived at from studying my plot on note cards and drawing paper. Basically this 5,000 will replace about 10,000 words in my first opening and besides getting to the main action sooner, it is has the virtues of including more action of its own and introducing the two threads of the plot sooner.

A good week's work, I think. I can use tomorrow to tackle some miscellaneous scene that needs to be rewritten and then use the Thanksgiving break to stew on how I'm going to move into the climax.

The spayed computer

2,000 words today -- on a Saturday, too, which is rare.

I composed on the computer yesterday and today, which is also rare. I didn't do a formal test, but I'm pretty sure that I write a lot faster that way. (Usually write long hand at about 900 words/hour, and I don't think I wrote for two hours in this session.)

And working that way has the advantage of already having it typed in, which saves a lot of time later.

So why don't I work that way? Mostly because of the distractions. Too much else to tempt me away. I've been over this before, and I'm not the first. Last summer I told myself that I was going to convert an older laptop into a "spayed computer" without access to email or the web to do the composing on. I never got around to that and ended up giving that computer away to someone who needed it more.

So now part of me wants to get my hand on something convenient for this purpose.

My wife has a netbook, which has the convenience of portability, so I could move around to other chairs when I feel antsy, and getting one new doesn't cost much. But I really don't like working on it. They keyboard is too small, and the weight is distributed in such a way that it's always tilting back in my lap.

Anyway, if I can find a cost effective way to get a spayed computer up and running, I might move toward that to help me with the drafting that remains on this book. Especially since the next draft will definitely be on the computer and be subject to distractions.

New opening and getting the plot organized

1,800 words today, which is about the only word count this week, I think.

That material is for a new opening, which I decided on after spending a lot of time on plotting and brainstorming. I started to feel that the problems I was leaving in my rear-view mirror for the time being were too significant to ignore any longer and that pressing on to the end would be a waste of energy given what I suspected about how the opening would change. I just wasn't comfortable having these structural problems hanging over my head.

Basically, there were three big problems that affected the structure throughout -- the secondary plot isn't set up through action and is relying on exposition late in the game, the main action takes too long to get started, and my character's basic motivation was too superficial. That worked to get me started, but it was turning into a fatal weakness.

A few days I couldn't have said all of that so succinctly. I now see these problems because of a lot of work getting organized using notecards and poster size sketch paper. Nothing revolutionary in this. Just clear off the dining table and start trying different ways of drawing the story arc. I spent a full day yesterday going through my draft and boiling it down to note cards by scene. (I found it helped if I had mostly cards for scenes and a few for exposition -- action and information that is provided to the reader.) All of that helped visualize what I have and don't have and to bring the problems to the surface.

I knew I needed a different concept of how I started and got into the first rising action, but I wasn't getting any good ideas how. Put in a lot of time brainstorming and making notes. Finally, this morning I hit on an idea for two new scenes in the beginning that hopefully deals with all those problems I summarized above.

Then sat down to write the first of those. (On the computer instead of on paper, like usual. Felt like the right thing, today.)

So, a good day's work and by some measures a good week's work. If I can get the second of the two scenes written before the Thanksgiving break, then I'll have a sense if my fixes are going to hold and can go from there.

Plot and children's books

Children's books have more emphasis on plot.

Duh or not duh? Is that true?

I don't know for sure, but the process of writing this book definitely has me more focused on plot. Is that because I have a comparatively good sense of my character already? Or is it because I am responding to an innate understanding that a child reader will require a faster pace?

In theory I don't really believe that. Instinctively I think that a child reader expects the same mix of character development and plot as any other reader. They know that some genre books with only plot are just a kind of brain candy, and they fall everlastingly in love with stories that successfully make character development an integral part of the plot complications and resolution.

Probably I'm thinking more about plot not because I'm writing a children's book but because I'm writing an adventure story. I'm working in a genre that promises the reader more than the usual amount of escalation and crisis.

Living up to that promise is probably my biggest challenge in this book so far. I've got a good concept, and I've done a good job of putting the characters in the jackpot a couple times, but I don't have a great sense of how to manage the build up and the exposition.

Let's take the Percy Jackson example again. (I always have books in mind as models that I can learn from, and for now that one resembles what I'm doing in some ways.) In that book, the reader at some point has to learn a lot of "rules of the game." A story can do anything, but it has to live within the rules it sets up. The "game" in Percy Jackson is that the immortal gods of ancient Greece are still among us and have offspring, including the hero of the story, who starts out thinking he is an average middle-school kid at the beginning. The story operates by rules that the reader has to learn -- how mortals react to the fantastic things happening around them, for example. Basically, we need explanations for all the ways the fantastic and the earthly realms collide in order to keep the illusion going.

That takes a lot of exposition, which can bog down the plot, so timing when and how to get it in is important. That's something I'm struggling with a lot in my story. Right now I have long passages where the rules are laid out without much elegance, so I'll have a lot of work to do in the next rewrite to fix that.

Then there's the pacing of the plot. How big and explosive do you start and how do you build up to the climax? I got myself started by writing the best scene I could think of, which risks leaving me with nowhere else to go, potentially. So I have to work on building up the drama from there in ways that are credible but also exciting.

Anyway, this is the stuff that's preoccupying me. Just the basics of what information has to get into the story and when.

Word count at about 50,000 now.

Process and progress on third novel

This book, #3, has one thing in common with the first in that I have only a bare bones sense of the plot, and I'm following my nose from one day to the next, aiming for a resolution that is pretty abstract in my imagination still. That has been good for momentum, but in the first case it left a trail of chaos in my wake that took many rewrites to shape up. There's a lot of that going on here, which is frustrating because in my second novel I was determined to work with a more efficient plan. But the second novel isn't getting written, is it? No momentum. Nothing there to fix.

There are some differences this time, though. First, I have what I hope is a better sense of what the mistakes are that I'm passing by, so I'll be much more ready to tackle them than I was with similar problems in my first book. For example, I have a lot of "throat clearing" in the story's set up, so I know I'll have to go back and cut out about 30 pages and get the story started quicker and with more focus. Thematically, I can see that I'm planting little seeds of interest but not really developing them, so I'll have to go back and work hard on that.

Another difference is that I'm doing a fair amount of typing in of the manuscript as I go. (Dictating it in, actually. See my previous post on the voice recognition software I'm using.) This is because I have been letting myself circle back for quick visits to material already written to work out structural changes before plowing ahead. These are larger concerns like the characters having taken a certain path, and now that I'm down that road, I've decided it's better if they take a different path. I go back and revise the appropriate scene to see how that's going to work, and then return to where I left off. It's hard to do this on the manuscript, so I wanted a typescript to work with, thus all the dictating and typing as I go.

Creating the typescript as I go is slowing me down quite a bit. That's why I churned out "Part I" -- about 30,000 words -- in a month. I've written about half as much in the last 4 weeks. I estimate I'm at about 45,000 words now, counting what's not typed in yet.

Also, the structural problems become more obvious and significant as I go along -- like painting myself into a corner -- so the momentum gets interrupted more for revision.

My initial goal was to keep it under 70,000 words, and I think I can do that. I'd like to get it way under that number. I have two big set pieces to go, I think, though as I said I don't have a real good sense of how they'll work. I just know where I need my characters to be by the end of them. We'll see.

Announcing the third novel

So the main reason I haven't been writing here is because I didn't have the energy to consciously work out and talk through the ambivalence I'm feeling about the work I've been doing.

And I have been working, steadily and with enthusiasm, on a completely different novel than the one I am supposed to be working on. My supposed second novel has been left behind like a first wife.

The ambivalence is partly because of the hopscotch itself. It feels sort of like unfaithfulness. ("The heart can't help what it wants. We just fell in love.") The second novel itself felt like an indulgence, since I really ought to be working on revisions on the first novel. This is starting to look suspiciously like a lack of commitment.

But I got excited about this idea and don't want to stop. I only meant to make a couple sketches to show myself what it would be like. That was in early September. Then I looked up on October 1 to find that I had churned out 35,000 words. It has gone more slowly since then, but I'm plugging along.

The other reason I'm ambivalent is because of the project itself. It's a children's book. (Let's call it a middle-grades novel for now.) Now, I'm not a snob about children's literature. I understand -- at least at an intellectual level --that it the form has all the literary and artistic potential of the kind of fiction I normally read and aspire to write. But part of me doesn't really feel that way deep down. Heretofore, I've never really connected with children's literature as an adult. It's like I can't access whatever it is that allows adults to inhabit the mind of a young reader and get enthused the way children do. The emotional development, even in the most critically lauded and serious children's stories, usually feels just plain childish to me, and not in a good way.

I know that says more about me as a reader than about the "genre" itself. For one thing, there are exceptions, most clearly when I re-read books that I remember from my childhood. When I re-read Tales Of a Fourth Grade Nothing or a S. E. Hinton book, part of me goes back and inhabits the mental and emotional and even physical territory I was in during my first reading. Partly I'm feeling the power of the books and partly I'm remembering the power I felt the first time around. In any case I know the power is there.

And I find that I'm growing as a reader. I think "discovering" the literature is too simplistic a way of thinking about it -- as if I am static as a reader and just need to stumble across these books. The reader has to have the right stuff of some kind. Familiarity with the conventions, if nothing else. I have a similar theory about sports. I can on rare occasions admire an unfamiliar sport -- cricket, for example -- but without having grown up with it almost like a first language, I'm unlikely to really connect to the sport and understand it without a lot of study. I don't connect to comic books or sci fi or any "genre" fiction really, because it's never been a part of my experience. (This is just happenstance, not snobbery. I connect to bad television and Mario Brothers video games just fine.) I think you almost have to train yourself to be readers of certain kinds of fiction. The older you get, the more consciously that training probably has to be.

Of course, I read and enjoyed children's literature once, but it was a long time ago. And I was an advanced and precocious reader who jumped to adult books when I could and never looked back. Also, I think the growth in YA literature is a real difference in the generations. That category just wasn't there. Before YA, when you outgrew Judy Blume, you went to adult books that were comparatively accessible and easy to read (Salinger and Harper Lee and Vonnegut) and to the classics assigned in high school English (Orwell, Twain, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, Pearl Buck.) These were considered appropriate for teenagers without being targeted to teenagers. Without the bridge of YA, we left children's literature behind earlier and so its merits are more remote.

I am coming to appreciate children's literature a lot more. (I've been reading a ton of it.) About 8 years ago I made a run at Harry Potter to see what the commotion was about, but I got bored after a few chapters. I tried again recently and really did enjoy the first book, and as a writer I really admire Rowling. I can learn a lot from it.

Another reason I feel ambivalent about this project is that part of me feels that I don't have the right. See, for example, my condescending attitude above. A person like that doesn't have any business writing a children's book. But I swear I'm not slumming, and I swear I'm not dabbling. Well, I guess I got started by dabbling, but I'm taking it as seriously as I can now.

Honestly, I started off in the most insincere way possible short of saying, "How can I cash in on a trend?" A few years ago I was talking with a young friend about the YA novels she was reading -- which re-purpose some classic stories -- and about a week after that I heard an interview with a different children's author whose books also put old stories in a modern dress. That time, I thought, darn, I wish I had thought of that. It seemed like a clever idea. So I challenged myself just to think of a clever idea using the same basic move -- bring something familiar to life again in a new context. After awhile I had an idea, and I filed it away, thinking it wasn't really worth my time. Then a couple months ago a conversation with my wife led me to describing this idea. She asked a couple questions about it. "But how would this part and that part work?" Which forced me to think through the concept a little more and then a little more and after a couple days I had the whole idea in my head.

It was very "high concept" at the time, and I was just curious if it could work on the page. So I wrote a couple of scenes, and away I went. It grew and grew. I ran into technical problems and tackled them and moved on. I still am, actually. The closer I get to the climax, the more lengthy my "stuck" phases are.

Anyway, I plan to finish it and to make a serious rewrite of it. (Because I am leaving all kinds of plot and character wreckage behind me as I race through it. There's a lot that needs to be patched up.) And then we'll see. I am anxious to get back to the other other two books, but I'm respecting the muse. If this is the story coming to me, I'm not going to fight it, and the more I get into it, the less I'm feeling guilty about it.

Voice recognition software and my novel

I have a lot of explaining to do about what's been going on with my writing the last few months. Another time, perhaps. I have been writing, I promise.

I have not been typing, though.I've been using a voice recognition software called Dragon NaturallySpeaking eleven.

Starting from right here, in fact, I'm going to use it to dictate and edit this blog entry.

It definitely takes some getting used to. I got it to help me save time and effort typing in my handwritten manuscript. My usual way working is to write longhand and then to start my edits by typing it into the computer. The software isn't really designed for that purpose — it's more for the kind of dictating that professionals use in medical offices and legal offices, and a lot of the examples in the promotion materials and instructions have to do with dictating e-mail. When you're using it that way, similar to how I'm using it now, it really requires that you compose a complete sentence or a complete phrase at least in your head before you begin to speak. That doesn't sound much like much, but once you try it you realize it really is a different way of composing. I assume it would take some getting used to enough not sure I could do it. I know that some people use software to actually compose new fiction this way. (I believe I read an interview with Richard Powers the said he used this kind of software for drafting his most recent books.)

So, in a way, what I'm using it for perhaps is even more effective. The thoughts are already composed, pretty well I hope, on paper, and I just have to read them aloud. However, one drawback is that it doesn't seem really suited for dictating dialogue. One of the inevitable drawbacks of this kind of softwareis that you have to pronounce aloud all the punctuation and formatting commands. That includes periods and commas, which applies to almost anybody and any use of this software. And it includes starting a new line and entering quote marks, which a fiction writer has a lot more of that other users perhaps. Rita couple pages of dialogue allowed while pronouncing every new line and quote Mark, and you'll see that it can be pretty tiresome.

Still, I think that the software is saving me a measurable amount of time on my particular process.I ran a test— one hour of typing and one hour of dictating – and I think I increased the speed by about 14% using the software. That's measuring my fastest typing speed against relatively amateur use of the software. I assume that all get faster at it as I get used to it. Comparing the errors in each version is a little bit more subjective, but I believe they will require similar amount of correction.

The require different kinds of correction, though. Most of the errors that come from typing are a result of typing too fast and my word processor marks them as spelling errors, so they are easy to spot. The software, however, won't allow itself to make a spelling error. Instead, it makes it choice inputs and something that is at least spelled correctly. So, for example, and that last sentence, it input the word inputs when I said "and puts." That error will be harder for me to find, because it is not flagged as a spelling error. In some cases, what results is so nonsensical that I can't figure out what I actually said originally, so I have to flip back through my manuscript and find before I could correct it.

Still, I think it will keep trying to use it for this purpose.

There are several other ways in which it has been frustrating, but I think a lot of that will diminish with practice and as I develop strategies to use it more effectively.

For example, I think that I will end up using a combination of dictating and typing. I find that if I at least keep my hand on the mouse while I am reading from my manuscript I can quickly correct errors as they are made. More aggressively, when he came to the long passages of dialogue I have experimented with keeping my fingers in the home position on the keyboard and typing the quote marks and the hard returns (enter key) and dictating the actual speech. This saved my voice a lot, I think. Also, as I used it more I found faster and faster ways to make corrections. For example, it's pretty good at getting vocabulary right, but it often doesn't get capitalization right. Especially in dialogue. The formatting for dialogue and fiction follows different capitalization rules then in other writing styles, so I had to go back and capitalize a lot of words, and I eventually discovered some quicker ways for doing that. (Dragon should think about allowing a setting that would make this come out right to begin with.)

I don't think I mentioned at the beginning – and I don't have confidence in my ability to use this to go back and enter this word makes more sense like I would do if I were typing them –that I use this for a lot more than just the one hour test. I estimate it was about ninety pages of typescript that I dictated over a few days last week. Maybe about 20,000 words.

Okay, going to finish now and leave this raw. I made minor edits as I went along, but I have not gone back to read this and correct errors that I did not notice as I was going along. This took me about 15 min. to compose this way. I'll report more when I know more!

Character development and plot

I'm doing very little drafting lately, which dings up the self-confidence some, but I am getting legitimate work done. I still have a lot to figure out about my characters and what their issues are at the start of the book. I should have gotten this done months ago, but that's where I am. The last few days have seen some progress, I think.

I got on this track a few weeks ago when a writer friend heard the summary of my idea and reminded me, "Do you know what her problem is? Make sure she's got something going on." What's key for me right now about that advice, is the timing of her problem -- of the something going on. Obviously, during the course of the story characters have problems. External and internal conflicts. But it's sinking in for me in a conscious way for the first time that it's better if they arrive at the start of the story's present action with problems. I want something going on with them that makes them open to whatever action is proposed to them at the story's kick off.

Let's say, for example, that a secondary character says to the main character, "Let's go rob that liquor store." It's easier to get going if the answer he gives is a new answer (let's say, "yes" for our example) and if there is a good reason for him giving a new answer that he never would have given before. What happened yesterday, the day before the present action begins, to make him open to going a new direction. Maybe a scolding by his mom about his choice of friends is making him feel oppositional.

And not necessarily a dramatic new direction. Just a little stepping off of the usual path can be enough. The secondary friend says, "Let's go to the movies for once. You sit at home too much." What makes the main character agree for once? They arrive at the story's start with some kind of vulnerability to change.

Thinking of it that way is helping me get focused and get my story going, right now. This is too new idea for me to insist that it's universal or very common. I'd have to go through some stories to see how it plays out. Let's try one real quick: The Great Gatsby. First of all, I'm going to treat Carroway is the main character, which I'll argue about another time. Given that, roughly, you could say that Carroway is open to being sympathetic to Gatsby because he's annoyed with Tom and Daisy. But that annoyance really is triggered in the present action. What he arrives on the scene with is a sense of disconnection from the east coast vs. the midwest. A heightened sensitivity to elitism. It's a problem for him because his circumstances are encouraging him to ally himself more with the elites, and he feels conflicted. That's set up in the first grafs of the book, and it's back story, not present action, though it gets developed during the present action.

What does the character want

Knowing what the character wants is so elemental and obviously necessary that I don't really have much to add to that. I just wanted to record that I've been struggling with that question lately. Pretty late in the game, apparently, but you take it when it comes.

Word counts and typing

I'm typing in a few scenes from my manuscript. It's not a full-bore effort to get it all typed in. I just want to see what some of the opening pages might possibly be and what they could read like if I sharpened them.

In the course of that I notice and have counted more deliberately than I did with the first book the difference between the word count of the manuscript (which is an estimate) and the actual word count on the computer. Once I type it in, it's running about 30% longer. That's mostly because I type I add and clarify and expand upon. It's really a second draft with a lot more material. It's only a small sample so far, but I expect the rest of it to run something like that.

On the other hand, I don't expect to type it all in. I'll probably be more discriminating about what's worth the effort. In theory, I have 32,000 words, but the 4,000 words I've typed is probably the best of the lot.

Too much dialogue

For work related reasons I'm re-reading Janet Burroway's Writing Fiction, a book I highly recommend. (More practically oriented than most rah-rah writing guides. If you're beyond need encouragement and are ready for advice, this is a great guide.) One section that never sunk in before is resonating with me now -- to beware of too much dialogue.

I knew this in a less conscious way from my first book. After writing a scene, I would look at it and have an uneasy feeling about how much dialogue was in it. It didn't seem quite right, though I couldn't explain why. The rewrites and revisions happened blindly without really understanding what I needed to do about the seeming excess of dialogue, and eventually I got it fixed, but it was like punching my way out of a paper bag.

One, as Burroway makes clear, dialogue should do more than one thing at a time -- to convey the literal meaning of the words plus something else like complicating the story or characterization. She doesn't say this, but I think it's implied: dialogue that drags on and on tends to be dialogue only doing one thing.

Two, she talks about how dialogue loses its power after awhile, so you want to save it for what is key to have in the character's voice. Another way of thinking about is the relationship between voice and reader energy. It's the narrator's voice that the reader has signed on for and invested themselves in. It takes reader energy to switch your attention from that voice to a character's voice. (Even if it's first-person narration, that narrator narrates in a voice somewhat different from self that they quote in the dialogue.) You want to ask the reader to leave the narrator's voice only when they're going to get some energy back in the form of important developments.

This is on my mind now because as I draft my current project, I find myself writing pages and pages of dialogue, and I d0 so with a sick feeling that it all will have to be thrown out later. I realize that what I'm doing isn't so much writing -- not even in the sense of drafting -- as daydreaming on paper. I don't really know what's happening in a scene, so I imagine the two characters talking to each other and write down what they would say. It's like a real-time transcript. In other words, this is another symptom of the key problem I keep talking about here -- that I don't know the story. A real-time transcript is the opposite of a story.

Transcribing in this way may be a way of finding a story. (And maybe not. It feels like sorting at random through all the sand on the beach.) But it's not really writing. I think maybe my mantra of "just add sentences" might be keeping me stuck in a spot that is not very productive.

Word count update: Almost no work done last week because of deadlines on paying work. A little bit of work this morning, but no more is expected this week because of a family trip. I have 32,000 words now, but that has to be heavily discounted, as explained before.

Background versus story

I'm up to about 29,000 words, which could be a third of a book if I was kidding myself. I know that all I have been writing is background without yet tackling story. That is, present action. And I know from experience with my first book that almost no background will survive into later drafts. In reality I probably don't have 2,000 words of usable material yet.

This is coming out of my own particular strengths and weaknesses. I'm good at coming up with scene, situation, scenario. I'm weakest at plot -- getting the characters off this interesting starting point and into more and more trouble. That's always been my hang up. I'm proud of myself for working my way through it on my first book, but it remains my hang up still.

I try to treat the "drafting" time as precious -- nothing is as important as adding sentences first thing in the morning when I'm fresh -- but I've been doing that in full consciousness that I'm not getting anywhere, so I decided to use my fresh time this morning to do more reflective writing and note taking and brainstorming, trying to get a handle on the story.

The main outcome of that was realizing that the story that has taken shape was a little off in a very important way from the story I thought I was working on. It's more about one guy than about a relationship between two guys. That relationship is still there, but the story has been focusing on what that means for one of them. I could re-balance it. More likely I'll go with it.

I'm not sure what to do next. Probably I need to try writing (again) an opening scene based on this new understanding. Perhaps I should do more brainstorming to line up some of the other major scenes in the book. But that can be a kind of work-avoidance. I need to get back into the "just add sentences" mode as soon as possible, or months could by where I'm indulging (for me) the easier work of theorizing instead of writing.

Small blessings

Two full weeks of work behind me, all at a pace a fraction of what I expect of myself -- about 7,000 words total in 10 days -- but sitting down every day has to count as victory for now.

It's amazing how completely opposite this process has been to what I planned and expected. It rattles the confidence.

Trying to look on the bright side

Not much more than a few chicken scratches today. But I keep trying to count every day with any time in the writing chair as a success. Gotta have faith that if I sit there long enough I'll figure out a way to get it written.

Noisy neighbors

Ugh, my neighbors. They really wrecked my flow yesterday. The kids are just regular noisy. Their mother only has one setting -- screaming threats. It's not the kind of thing you can tune out when they come rolling out into their backyard for a scene. I can pack up and go inside to write there, but in the summer with the windows open, that's almost just as loud.

400 words yesterday, which I consider a bust. 600 words today.

My tally so far is over 21,000 words counting everything from when I started last January. Sounds more impressive than it is. There's probably 3 pages in it all of it that will survive to a late draft. It's all about finding what to write about still.