Category Archives: The Writing Life

Preparing for Productivity

Craft & Skills Frank Morin Writing Tools 7 Comments

We’re writers, so we write, right? Absolutely.

But that’s not all we do, and honestly the actual writing of a manuscript is far from the most time-intensive part of creating a novel. In fact, the writing of a viable manuscript is the culmination of a great deal of preparatory effort. We might spend months working on a story before we sit down to write that viable draft.

That final manuscript is like a beautifully crafted building we hope will stand firm for ages, so it must be built upon a firm foundation. Few people visit any architectural wonder just to say, “Wow, great foundation.” Most of us have eyes only for the finished product. Leave it to the architect to know all about the foundation.

Same principle with writing. A great foundation allows a manuscript to reach its full potential. Careful preparation allows a writer to pound out tremendous word count. For example, just yesterday I wrote about 13,000 words. During one writing retreat this year, I wrote 50,000 words in one week. And they were good words, not throw-away fluff.

So, can I write 10,000 words a day, every day of the year? Of course not. Those kind of word counts are not possible unless you’ve already got the foundation set. Much time is spent preparing for those burst of productivity. I’ve discussed those burst-writing times in detail in the past here.

What are some of those foundational items we as authors, the architects of our stories, need to understand? What are ways we can prepare for productivity?  The specifics of the list will vary depending on each writer’s style, but regardless of how we get there, we still need to end up with a firm foundation, or the story will fall.

Some common items that apply to just about everyone writing fiction include:

World building. What is our setting? Where is the story taking place? In what environment, what culture, what physical reality? Are characters human or animal or robot or jelly beans? Until we know these things, either written down or firm in our minds, we cannot begin a viable draft.

I write fantasy, and I generate copious notes about the world, the nations, cultures, religions, geography, climate, magic system, value systems, etc. Until it’s real for me, I cannot make it real for my readers.

Characters and conflict. There is no story until there is a conflict. For a conflict to exist and to matter, we need to have characters to torture. Before we craft scenes that will capture readers and draw them into the story, these elements must be clear.

One thing I do at the beginning of a story is to generate a list of names I feel fit this project. In my YA fantasy novel, I chose Scottish names for one nation and German names for another. Behind The Name is an excellent site to find names. Then when I need a name, instead of losing productivity trying to invent one, I just turn to my list, choose a name I’ve already decided will work in the context of this story, and move on with hardly a pause.

For those who are planners, who like to outline and craft a story before sitting down to write that viable manuscript, the list of preparatory items gets a lot longer, including:

Timeline sketches. Particularly for complex stories with multiple characters, charting out the timeline and how the various POV threads will interact can be invaluable. Even if you only have one main character and one main protagonist, the exercise of plotting out when and how they’ll intersect over time can spark new ideas or identify holes in the planned plot.

For me, this helps particularly in complex endings. When tons of things are going on and the action jumps from one POV to another, and from one quick scene to another, weaving all of that in together into a tight, constantly escalating climax is daunting. A high-level timeline sketch keeps it all under control.

Character profiles. Who are your characters, what is their backstory? What do they want? Why can’t they have it? What are they going to do about it? Knowing all this for every main character, and even for important supporting characters provides fodder for tremendous depth and complexity of your story.

Character development and depth has been a challenge for me, and this exercise has helped tremendously.

Outline. How is your plot going to roll out? What scenes will you write to drive the story forward? How exactly will you generate empathy for the hero in the beginning, reveal the true conflict at the first plot point, illustrate the stakes, etc? For planners, the outline is the skeleton, the frame upon which you build the story. This is where great energy and time is spent as you explore all the possibilities.

My outlines keep getting longer. This is where I spend the bulk of my creative thinking time. It’s so much easier for me to explore different options and look for ways to ratchet up tension or stakes or conflict up front than it is after I’ve written 50,000 words and realize something is missing.

For those who prefer to free-write, to discover their story through the act of following the muse down the rabbit hole, the preparation process is more like exploring the back roads around your city at night. There’s a certain excitement to driving into the darkness, not entirely sure where the road will take you. The trip may take a lot longer then expected, you’ll take wrong turns, and have to back track. You may end up needing to return to the very start of your trip and begin anew.

For those free-writers, or pantsers as they’re often called, the early drafts of a story are like those late-night drives in the darkness. This is where you discover the story, just as a planner discovers their story through the outlining process. This effort can take a great deal of time, and through this process, the free-writer is building the foundation of their story. Once all of the necessary elements are in place, only then can the free-writer begin a viable draft that can stand successful.

This list is not exhaustive, but it’s a good place to start. Writers must think about it, particularly as we begin a new novel. Understanding the foundation we must build, regardless of how we choose to get there, is one of the most important things writers need to grasp.

This knowledge, and understanding how we individually approach the foundational elements in our story, allow us to become truly productive. Once we have these elements in place, we can dive into that manuscript, and the words will flow faster than we can write them. I type pretty fast, but sometimes I can barely keep up.

I started as a free-writer, and over time and as I’ve come to better understand these foundational requirements, I have slowly drifted across the spectrum to becoming more of a story planner. I free-write within each scene. This hybrid approach, which I think is fairly common, provides the most focused, most productive result for me while still allowing for some of those midnight drives.

How do you approach these foundational elements in your own stories? What other foundation blocks would you add to the list?

 

Unmotivated? Uninspired? Me too”¦ But Wait”¦ There’s a Cure!

Clancy Metzger Craft & Skills The Writing Life Writing Tools 5 Comments

What do you do when you’re sitting there – ready to write or edit or meet that deadline – and you just aren’t inspired or motivated to do so?  Any distraction is a good distraction, right?  Sigh.

This is how I’ve been feeling recently, so I said to my friend, “I need some methods to keep me motivated when I feel blue and unmotivated.” And I sighed.  And then I remembered I needed to write this post.  Perfect timing to go find some methods to combat this melancholy or apathy or <insert your own feeling>.

After reading several articles… here is what I found.

Have One Goal – when we take on too much in our lives, it’s difficult to find energy and focus to accomplish our one goal.  Clear your plate, that other stuff isn’t going anywhere.  Make writing your one goal for a set amount of time and get to it.  I am notoriously guilty of over-loading my plate.  Must learn to say no.

Be Excited – Don’t write the scenes that you’re struggling with at this time, save them for when you’re on a roll.  Talk about, think about, find inspiration in the fun scenes, the scenes that you can’t wait to write.  That yummy sex scene or that juicy action scene.  We don’t actually have to write in a linear fashion. Yes… I’m guilty of this one, too.

Be Accountable – Post your goals for pubic viewing or be accountable to someone. I always get more excited about writing when I discuss it with my critique partner.  And, it always helps to have goals and accountability(see this post).

Be Positive – Be aware of negative self-talk or that all-too-critical self-editor we have in our heads and hush it up with some positive talk about how great it’s going to be when this scene is done and how we can always edit later.  Harder than it sounds, but practice helps.

Baby Steps – My mom is a great proponent of ‘people can do anything for fifteen minutes’.  So, write for fifteen minutes.  It may be crap and might get deleted later, but so what.  Write for fifteen minutes.  It may turn into two hours or two chapters.  If after the fifteen minutes, you still got nothing, then repeat the next day and the next… at some point the cobwebs will clear and your inner genius will come out to play.

Stick With It – NaNo is all about this!  Just stick with it, even a page a day results in a novel in year.   Focus on the baby steps and do it daily.  This also helps with creating a habit.

Make Writing a Habit – If you create a routine, you can create a habit and that can get you into your writing ‘head-space’ really fast.  Sit in the same place, play the same music, turn off your phone, get your drink, settle in… whatever you need to do to write.  Do it the same way, day in and day out and make it a habit. Then when you’re struggling, this can often get you into the zone because your body and mind know what they are supposed to do next… write.

Use Your Subconscious – If you have a scene you don’t know how to fix or a problem to solve or a plot line to repair, think on it just before you go to sleep.  Seriously, think about what you have already and what you need to continue as you are falling asleep and let your subconscious work it out.  I’m pretty sure mine is smarter than I am.  I always get what I need when I do this. 

So, I’m feeling better already and hey… I wrote this post when I didn’t want to write anything.

Any other suggestions?

Book Review: The Emotion Thesaurus

Reviews The Writing Life 6 Comments

We’ve all heard about showing instead of telling. It’s one of the things my editor catches me on all the time. I end up grousing and repeating the words of Princes Leia Carrie Fisher from When Harry Met Sally. “You’re right. You’re right. I know you’re right.”

Check out this example:
Anger filled Danny as he strode through the room. He was looking for Shiv. If he ever found his friend, he’d give him a piece of his mind.
There’s a lot of telling about Danny’s emotions in that paragraph. To make the storytelling more interesting, I’m going to turn to The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Expression by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi.

The Emotion Thesaurus is a wonderful reference book that’s organized by emotions like amazement, confidence, gratitude, and shame. Each entry has a long list of behavioral cues authors can use to show instead of tell.

When I look up anger in The Emotion Thesaurus I see lists of 36 physical signals like “flaring nostrils”, “Slamming doors, cupboards, or drawers”, and “laughter with an edge”. After that is a list of internal sensations, mental responses, and cues of suppressed anger. All of these offer inspiration to unlock ideas of how I can show my character’s anger.

How about this:
Chin held high and jaw clenched, Danny shouldered through the crowd. He scanned through the room for Shiv. Curses boiled in his mind, building and building in pressure. The only thing that kept him from punching one of these idiots was knowing how happy Shiv would be to see him get thrown in jail for battery.

I built this new version by consulting The Emotion Thesaurus. I didn’t use the entries word for word. Instead, I riffed on them, used them for inspiration.

Check out The Emotion Thesaurus at Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble.

Falling behind the pack – how to keep pushing on when you’re lagging behind.

Nancy Greene The Writing Life 4 Comments

 

In case you missed it, this month is National Write a Novel Month or NaNoWrMo (NaNo) for short.  Yea, I know. If you’re reading thos post, you know all about NaNo since we’ve been talking about it all month.

By this point, you should have written 31,654 words. I’ve written about 20,000. I’m almost 12,000 words “behind”. In the picture, can you see the black dog who’s looking up over the pack in front of him? Yea, that’s me. With only eleven days left in the month, I’d need to write almost 2,800 words a day to make it to the magic 50,000 word count. My chances of doing this are slim given my trial schedule for the rest of the month. Now, I’ve done it. I usually lag behind and spent most of Thanksgiving weekend writing. But that’s not likely to happen this year for lots of reason.

So, why push on? Why keep trying to hit that goal. Shouldn’t I just take my squeaky toy and head home?

NO. And neither should you.

“But why not?” you ask.

You can’t be a professional writer if you give up. The number one mandate of any writer is to FINISH the story. Keep slogging through it. Taking your toys and hiding out in your doghouse is not an option.

If you are struggling to meet your goal, whether its this month as part of NaNo or at any other phase of writing, redefine it. My husband, a criminal defense attorney, does this all the time. Most criminal cases that go to trial will end in a conviction. If your definition of “win” as a criminal defense attorney is an acquittal, you are going to have a short and frustrating career. Similarly, if your goal is a writer is to have all your stories make a billion dollars, get ready for disappointment. The husband defines “win” as any time he can get hisb client less than a full sentence.  As a writer, I define the writing portion of winning as getting to “the end.”  Every word I put on the page for NaNo is a win.  As long as you keep writing, you are winning.

I did a post a while back on my blog about writing when the world conspires against you or   inching toward success.  I find that when life conspires against me, I need to write to escape into another world and regain my balance. Use NaNo as a tool to help you inch toward success. There’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing wrong with aiming for 50,000 words and writing 30,000 or 20,000. The point is to write.

As Jonathan Coulter said in A Talk With George:

Enjoy yourself, do the things that matter

Cause there isn’t time and space to do it all

Love the things you try, drink a cocktail wear a tie

Show a little grace if you should fall

Don’t live another day unless you make it count

There’s someone else that you’re supposed to be

There’s something deep inside of you that still wants out

And shame on you if you don’t set it free.

To buy this fabulous song you can go to JoCo’s website or Itunes. It’s one that’s helped me over some real tough roads.

If you’re discouraged about your word count, there’s only one cure. Sit down in front of your keyboard and make the words appear. You can do it. And sometimes, there’s a cocktail waiting. Whether you write 500,  10,000 or 50,000 words, you can only succeed if you show up.  If you’re at the point that you need to redefine “winning” do it. There’s no shame in that. In fact, it’s a tried and true technique. You can find the time to write, even if it’s only 15 minutes a day. You can do this.

Inch by inch and word by word, you’ll cross that finish line. I’ll see you there.