Manuscript #5: Lessons Learnt

Craft & Skills Kylie Quillinan The Writing Life 11 Comments

Having just closed the book, so to speak, on the first draft of my fifth novel, MUSE, it’s a good time to think about what I’ve learnt while writing this manuscript.

Lesson #1: What works for others, doesn’t necessarily work for me. I’ve previously mentioned I would love to be able to write from a detailed outline. I’ve tried it but can never stick to the plan. What does work for me is a very loose outline on index cards. It helps keep the story’s path clear in my mind while still allowing the flexibility to move, add or discard scenes as I need to.

Lesson #2: I need deadlines. Without them, I don’t write. I am fortunate to be a part of a wonderful goal-setting group. At the start of each week, we email around our goals and account for the previous week’s progress. I don’t like to admit I failed to achieve my goals so this often pushes me well past the stage where I would have otherwise stopped. And one day when I have to write to someone else’s deadlines, this practice in meeting goals will pay off.

Lesson #3:  I need to keep my mind in my story’s world. This means focusing my free time reading on relevant topics and not spending too much time in front of the tv. The story flows best if I can keep myself in my imaginary world. It starts to fall apart when I get distracted. This year’s season of Master Chef almost killed my story.

Lesson #4:  The this-is-crap stage. With every new manuscript, I wholeheartedly believe the first two thirds is the best thing I’ve ever written. Then I hit 70,000 words and the this-is-crap zone where doubt creeps in: This story is terrible. The plot is too contrived. I’m a lousy writer. What made me think I could write another book? The next 10,000 or so words are invariably painful, progress is slow and I spend weeks, or sometimes months, stalled here. This time, I knew what to expect and when the 70,000 word this-is-crap stage arrived, I pushed through, telling myself I had been here before and it would pass. And the knowledge that this was my this-is-crap stage did help, to an extent. It was still agonising and I wrote far slower than I had until then. But by recognising this as another stage of my creative process, I was able to move on.

Lesson #5:  It doesn’t matter if I can’t write the ending on the first draft. I usually finish just two or three scenes short of the end and it’s not until the first, or even second, re-write that the ending comes out. That’s okay. For me, the first draft is about learning the story and getting to know the characters. I need to sit on the ending, puzzle it through, spend some time getting to know the story again, and then that ending, previously so elusive, usually flows.

So now it’s time to put away MUSE and let it simmer in my subconscious for at least six months before I return to it with fresh eyes and, hopefully, bucketloads of enthusiasm. For now, I’m moving on to a new round of edits on another project. I’ll see you on the other side!

What have you learnt while writing your current manuscript?

Passion vs Marketability

Kylie Quillinan Rewriting The Writing Life 5 Comments

Now that I’ve finished the first draft of MUSE, this manuscript will go into hibernation for a while. So I’ve spent the last few weeks wondering what I should move on to. It’s a battle between a call of the heart or market sensibility.

I can go back to a previous manuscript, a story I dearly love and which has garnered some attention from agents, but not enough for a contract. Clearly, there are problems with it that I’ve not yet identified. I can spend the next six months in a familiar world, with characters I know well and adore, and try to fix the problems with this manuscript. I’ve invested many years in this story — there’s even a first draft for the sequel — and I’m not ready to give up on it yet.

Another possibility is an urban fantasy I started early last year. I came close to the end of that draft and lost both momentum and interest in the story. Yet the idea had been rattling around in my head for several years before I was finally in the right place to write it. I’m sure I will eventually regain my passion for this story but it’s not calling to me just now.

I could start something new. I’ve been playing around with a number of ideas. One has a post-apocalyptic setting, something I’ve always wanted to try.  Think Dan Brown but with more grit. Another is an urban fantasy in which the faerie world still exists side-by-side with the modern world. Human sacrifices, immortality, Pandora’s box. There are so many things I want to write about. The post-apocalyptic story is the one I suspect would be the most sensible to write. It’s controversial and, I think, eminently saleable. It would, if done right, be a gripping read. But it’s not calling to me either. At least, not yet.

I started writing this post about eight weeks ago, at a time when finishing the first draft of MUSE seemed very far off indeed, and over the last few weeks, no matter which idea I try out, it’s that first one, the story I’ve already spent ten years on, that draws me to it. In fact, it seems my subconscious has decided for me because last weekend, without ever making a conscious decision to return to this project, I went to the copy shop and had the manuscript printed and bound, all 585 pages. It’s sitting on the desk in my study now, along with new packs of pens and highlighters. And it’s calling me. For better or worse, this is what I’ll be spending the next few months on. Only time will tell whether it’s a wise use of my time or just another round of edits on a project that will never sell.

How do you decide between projects?  Do you analyse the market and write what you think has the best chance of selling?  Or do you let your heart make the decision?

 

 

To Infodump, or Not to Infodump-that is the question

Craft & Skills First Drafts Narrative Voice Reader Investment & Empathy Setting and Milieu The Writing Process 3 Comments

Actually, every writer with any experience at all will tell you that the question is not whether or not to infodump.  The answer to that question is automatically yes.  Yes, yes yes.  The need to provide mass quantities of data to the reader is almost universal.  Especially in longer works.  Most especially in longer works laid in milieus that are outside the reader’s common experience.

No, the real question-questions, rather-is how/when/where/how much to infodump?

And as much as I would like to be able to give the One True Answer to those questions, there is no such critter.

If you were to put three authors in a room and asked them one of those questions, you’d get probably get somewhere between five and nine opinions.

Actually, I misspoke.  There is one answer, but it is not an answer.  (And no, I’m not going all zen on you.)  The answer is . . .

It Depends.

Seriously.

That’s the only answer there can be.

Okay, setting aside the foolishness, here’s the hard core.

Yes, as a writer you have to be able to fill the void of ignorance each reader faces when he/she picks up a new work by you.  My experience is that writers attempt to do this in one of three ways.

1.      The Bulk Transfer Method

Wherein the writer attempts to stuff everything the reader might possibly need to know down the reader’s throat at once.  Two common forms of this are:

The dreaded “As you know, Bob…” conversation, in which one character will recount the history of the universe from the Big Bang all the way through to the ultimate death of heat, coincidentally along the way sprinkling the conversation with little nuggets of data that the reader might find useful somewhere around page 397.

The ubiquitous conference, wherein various talking heads sit around a table and explain to each other things that they already know but are needful for the reader’s understanding.

The problem is that, especially when attempted by new writers, these usually result in large indigestible blocks of verbiage sitting right athwart the plot line, and contact with said block all too often bounces the reader right out of his/her reader’s trance.  This is Not A Good Thing.

2.      The Teasing Method

Wherein the writer attempts to provide subtle hints-a word here, a phrase there-expecting the reader to not only read the written page but also the authorial mind, and somehow pull out of the aether the missing context needed to understand what the author is desiring to communicate.

The bad news here is that telepathy doesn’t work any better between authors and readers than it does between husbands and wives (which, based on personal experience, I’d have to say is not at all), and readers quit in frustration.

3.      The Pay As You Go Method

This is the one that most authors eventually develop, where they learn to tell the reader as much as the reader needs to know at that point in the story.  The trick is developing first the awareness of just what out of the entire back story and world building framework the reader needs at just that moment in the narrative; and second, the skill to add that to the narrative in the right spots and the right proportions.

The frustrating thing is that, like a lot of guidelines, we have all seen successful writers produce successful books that ignore them.  Well, just because they can get away with doesn’t mean we can.

Case in point:  two or three years ago I turned in a draft of a longish story to my editor.  Not long thereafter I got a note back:  “You have committed a staff meeting.”  Translation:  I had a ubiquitous conference in my story, and she didn’t like it.  “You know better than that.  Fix it, and I’ll buy the story.”  I attempted to justify what I had done by pointing to a recent novel by a well-known popular author that had a conference scene that ran for page after page after page.  Her response:  “You’re not him.  Fix it.”  I fixed it.

To summarize:  Option 2 just doesn’t work.  Option 1 doesn’t work well . . . except when it does.  Option 3 is preferred, except for those rare occasions when Option 1 is the best way to go.

In other words, It Depends.

Final word:  whatever technique is used to provide information, it can’t be just a static dump of data.  Somehow, in some way, the presentation of the data must advance the story.  If it doesn’t, we’re just building walls instead of roads to the end of the story.

Creating the Unpredicatably Predictable

Craft & Skills 2 Comments

fantasy house hunting heidi2524 ATCAs a reader, I want new stories to enjoy, but I’m also looking for the types of stories that I enjoy.

This means I hit the fantasy and science fiction aisles of the bookstores, not the horror or literary fiction aisles. For the, ah, three decades that I’ve been reading these kinds of stories, a lot of the same themes, archetypes, plots, and settings have occurred. You name it, I’ve seen it – probably at least twice.

But I keep seeking out these kinds of stories.

Because each author has their own spin on farmboy-goes-to-big-city.

I like the predictability of what should happen, what I expect to happen, and the light vibration of something new that I feel from the first chapter that grows as I read a new book, letting the author lead me down a path that feels familiar but I know I’ve never traveled before.

As a writer, I tell the kinds of stories I like to read. It is my job to entertain the reader, to give them something the same but different, to fulfill their desire for new stories that are the same as the stories that they enjoy.

Some days it is easier than others.

A. C. Crispin had a recent ACCess blog post about “How to Satisfy Your Reader without Being Predictable” which I found to be a great read on this topic.

Then Brandon Sanderson talked about how one archetype his early novel Mythwalker worked (and eventually became his later novel Warbreaker) while another tried-and-true fantasy plot didn’t pan out in his “MYTHWALKER Prologue + Updates” blog post.

I think Brandon best surmised this balancing act of the same but different, being predictable and original, when he said …

Not every aspect of the story needs to be completely new. Blend the familiar and the strange-the new and the archetypal. Sometimes it’s best to rely on the work that has come before. Sometimes you need to cast it aside.

I guess one of the big tricks to becoming a published author is learning when to do which.