Learning to Piece Together the Story Puzzle

Character Conventions Craft & Skills David Farland Editing First Drafts Ideas & Plotting Making Progress as a Writer Nathan Barra Outlines Starting a Career The Writing Process World-building Your Writing Career 2 Comments

I have found that there a few divides amongst writers more contentious than the arguments between discovery writers (pantsers) and outliners. I used to be firmly a member of the pantser camp. While I recognized that outlining had its benefits, I felt that planning with such excruciating detail would “ruin the fun” of creation. Plus, outlining was difficult and boring. The outline would only change as I got into the trenches and discovered something new and shiny, so what was the point? I had tried to outline a few times, I argued, and it hadn’t worked for me. It never would.

Fortunately, I had a few friends patient enough to take the time to convince me otherwise.  Outlining isn’t a single, specific, regimented process, they argued, but rather a way of approaching a story deliberately. I would still create, discover the characters, the world, and the plot in the brainstorming section of the process. Then, the outline itself would be like writing an extremely condensed first draft. I would be able to edit it for major structural problems without the emotional baggage that came with hours and hours spent working on prose.

Once I had a coherent skeleton, I could write the first draft without worrying about writing my way into corners. My structural edits would already be done, and so I could focus my creative energies on producing powerful prose, vivid descriptions, and touching emotional moments. Not only would my first draft be better than what I had done before, it would also take less time to complete.

As for the “inefficiency” of prewriting, any time that I spent up front would be repaid twice over in the back end of the first draft. My manuscript would be leaner and free from most, if not all, structural problems. Additionally, outlines were guides, not shackles. Of course the outline would change as I wrote, but I would “discover deliberately” rather than wandering off into the weeds. I would be able to compare new ideas against a well thought out plot and be able to decide what was truly better for the story. Though it took a few years of conversations and cajoling, they eventually won me over.

Convinced, I decided that 2016 would be the year that I learned to outline. I struggled for a few months and grew disheartened. Outlining was proving to be as difficult, boring, and ineffective as I had feared it would be. I took my problems back to my writing group and we talked through numerous blocks. The issue, I eventually came to realize, was that I hadn’t learned the skills I would need to outline effectively. I knew how to work with character, with plot, with theme, and with milieu. I had all the pieces, but didn’t know how to put the puzzle together.

Again, I was lucky in that I wasn’t alone in my struggles. Of the three members in my group, two of us were discovery writers who were trying to make the transition. After some discussion, we decided to act as a group to resolve the problem. We enrolled in one of David Farland’s online classes, The Story Puzzle. Over the course of 16 weeks, the Story Doctor walked us through his process and theories, answered our questions via email and the biweekly conference calls, and provided valuable feedback on the writing assignments we submitted to him.

It was hard and frustrating at first, but eventually I found the joy that has always driven me to write. I was still discovering and creating, but by doing so deliberately I was finding more than I had expected. My story improved with each passing week and I began feeling the itch, the need to dive in and write prose. I resisted and kept working Dave’s process. By the end of the class, I had all the pieces that I needed and some good guidance on how to put them together into a functional outline. I was in no way ready to begin writing the first draft, but I knew how to get there.

Time passed as I continued to work on my outline. I built my world, wrote down scraps of description and dialog, and found ways to heighten my story and characters on every level. On the first day of each month, I surveyed my progress and decided if I was ready to start prose. Month after month, I judged that I was close, but not quite there. It wasn’t that I was stalling, like I had in the past when my project seemed intimidating. Rather, I had a task list that I needed to finish.

Then came the first day of another month. November first. NaNoWriMo had just begun. I looked over all of my prewriting and decided that, yes, I was ready. I dove into the prose and emerged thirty days later with my first ever NaNo victory. The story wasn’t done, in fact I had quite a ways yet to go. Rather, I had proved to myself that with a good outline to guide me, I could out-write my old pace by a fairly significant margin. Most importantly, I knew that I could do it again. And again. It was the sort of skill that I could develop into a career.

A Foray into Children’s Literature

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Great ideas come in all sizes bit not all writing conventions lend themselves to those ideas. Take children’s literature which spans a wide array of ages, reading ability, and appropriate subject matter. Is your novel really for the teen market? Would that short story make a good picture book? Would your story idea work for a chapter book? For what category is your idea best suited for – picture books, first readers, middle grade, ‘tween, or young adult?

In order to navigate this array, I took a basic course on writing for children with author Steve Alcorn.  Here are some things I learned:

The Categories in Children’s Literature

Picture books
Primarily illustrated, these books introduce a child to the world of reading and the child needs to see the picture to understand the entire story. Board books are for ages newborn to 3 while picture books span ages 3 to 8. Like a cartoon, text and illustration are equally important. Word count can range from no words to 2,000 as defined by the sub categories: picture books, picture story books, wordless books and board books.

Emergent Readers and Chapter Books
For ages 5 to 9, Emergent Reader books contain illustrations but rely more on the text to convey a story than a picture book. As children’s skills increase, there are fewer illustrations and chapter books are the next step. The goal is to build reading skills and confidence so word count could range from 20 to 100 words for emergent readers or 500 to 1,000 for early chapter books. Every publisher has their own guidelines. For example, Scholastic guidelines for first chapter books include: written for ages 7 to 9 with word counts from 7,000 to 10,000.

Middle Grade Readers
This can be the most fun, yet the toughest group to write for. Depending on the publisher and school, middle grade can be anywhere from ages 8 to 13, depending on reading level and it occurs during a time where there’s a lot of emotional and physical growing up happening. Middle grade books deal with more complex concepts suited to this age group (life and growth struggles but no sexual themes and even silly stuff like bathroom humor). It includes non-fiction as well as fiction. Stories are more complex and novels range from 30,000 to 60,000 words.

Young Adult
Written for ages 12 and up, this reading group wants controversial subjects, edgy concepts, and adventure. Remember feeling that ‘no one knows what it’s like to be you’ ? YA literature addresses a need to know that others understand what one is going through. Stories range from the humorous to the gritty and span realistic fiction to speculative but always contain heavy duty emotional reading.

The Five Basic Story Patterns
(Note that the patterns correspond somewhat with the age categories.)

1) Incident
Written for children 8 years old and younger, a child in this story goes on an adventure but doesn’t experience emotional change. The child who is being read to is the one who goes on the journey. This pattern includes picture books which may not have any words at all.

2) Purpose-achieved
The protagonist accomplishes something in a story which lends itself to more plot. It is a familiar style in that the character has a purpose, there is a possibility that it may not be achieved, there is a black moment and the plot builds toward the ending.

3) Wish fulfillment
A great pattern for emergent readers, wish fulfillment happens when a protagonist acts and she isn’t expecting a reward for those actions. Many fairy tales are wish fulfillment stories. In Baba Yaga, Vasilisa’s diligence in meeting the witch’s demands results in her horrible step mother leaving. Her sole purpose in serving Baba Yaga was to get badly needed coal for the fire. However, her well-mannered conduct is rewarded with bot only the coal, but in the witch chasing away the step mother.

4) Misunderstanding
Overcoming a misconception about people, places, situations or himself, from a simple misunderstanding to complex social issues like prejudice, the misunderstanding pattern is often used to teach a lesson. The caution with this pattern is not to sound or be preachy. Misunderstanding requires a character to experience emotional change and to overcome a flaw.

5) Decision
It’s about making choices which relate to growing up. Do I fit in with the crowd or be myself? How much freedom is good and what’s the consequence about being too independent? What are the results of the choices I have to make?

Themes in Children’s Literature
There are common themes in children’s literature. This list, as created by Steve Alcorn, is written in an order which reflects the age categories.

  • Discovery
  • Exploration
  • Fun
  • Responsibility
  • Integrity
  • Family
  • Friendships
  • Fairness
  • Love
  • Sacrifice

This quick tour of children’s literature was designed to provide some clarity into the categories to make your foray into writing for children a little easier. It’s an exciting field, albeit a competitive one and every publisher has very specific requirements. The best advice I can give is that if you’re considering writing for children, read a lot in the category of your interest, and be sure your stories resonate emotionally and with the age group’s issues, and that the language you use is suitable for the reading level.

Happy writing!

Monkey-throwing Wrenches

Balancing Acts Being Gentle With Yourself Dealing With Personal Calamities Giving Yourself a Break Kim May Making Progress as a Writer Self-Awareness Starting a Career Work-Life Balance Your Writing Career No Comments

There’s proverb in the May household:

Don’t worry about monkeys throwing wrenches into your plans. Worry about the wrenches throwing monkeys into your plans.

There is logic behind this. You see, any monkey can throw a wrench and since a wrench is normally an inanimate object there’s only so much damage it’s capable of doing after its been hurled. However, if particularly talented and determined wrench were to throw a monkey…well there’s no limit to the damage a distressed airborne monkey can do.

This year there have been many wrenches, some old and some new, and one surprisingly troublesome monkey. At the start of the year my sole goal was to start dictating. I had set aside the summer to train the software and my brain. The rest of the year I planned on spending cleaning up both novel manuscripts and editing any stories I happened to sell. The latter happened easily enough (yay sales!) but because of the fatigue and pain from my quickly escalating osteoarthritis I didn’t get much done on the former until recently (yay acupuncture!).

My biggest revelation this year is that I can’t expect my body to cooperate 100% of the time. I can still set big goals but I have to give myself more leniency. If the airborne monkey of osteoarthritis causes more pain and fatigue than I’m prepared for, then I need to give myself permission to postpone the deadlines I set for myself so I can take the time I need to recuperate. There’s definitely a big learning curve with arthritis. That’s for sure.

I look forward to taking this new knowledge with me into next year. Only time will tell how much trouble the wrenches and monkeys cause and how much they’ll let me accomplish.

My Year in Review

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2016. What a year.

All over social media I see people constantly calling 2016 a terrible, horrible, really bad year. Since I mostly interact with other Americans, and this was an election year, there has definitely been more stress than most other years.

For me 2016 was a year of ups and downs. It started trending down as I abandoned the hope I had of being a full-time writer after my first two books didn’t manage to make me rich overnight. 2015 was my year of living as a writer, after being laid off with a reasonably nice separation package from my corporate job in December of 2014. In 2015  I published two books and got my Science Fiction Writers of America membership. It was a good year.

2016 started with me getting a full-time job. I was also building my “dream home” on the lake, and the expenses and delays were driving me batty. Getting up to speed on the new job meant learning new programming languages and techniques, which meant very little time for writing.

Besides having to get a day job again, I was also struggling with the final book in my War Chronicles series. Something wasn’t clicking, and I had to completely rewrite the final third of the book before I was satisfied with it. I missed my self-imposed deadlines and with a full-time job, days became weeks, and weeks became months, so that my final book came out almost a year after the second in the series, and that almost certainly killed any momentum I had built up with the first two.

But on the other hand, I did finally self-publish that third book, completing the series. So I gained a real sense of accomplishment from having an epic fantasy trilogy out in the world, getting read by real people, and collecting generally very positive reviews. Plus my audio versions came out, and did quite well, earning me almost as much in royalties as the eBooks themselves did. Which was a very nice surprise.

And now I’m working on my next book. It might take longer than I want, but finishing my first series has given me the confidence that I know how to write, that I write well enough to get good reviews, and if I can keep getting books out there, it’s just a matter of time and hard work before I climb up the ranks of writers.

So I’m not going to call 2016 a “bad year.” I’m going to call it a year where I learned some valuable lessons, developed some valuable skills, and moved into a home I designed and had built. I’m going to look at 2017 as a year that I can get settled into my new home, develop new routines and create the environment I need to be as creative as possible. None of which could have happened without going through the trials and lessons of 2016.

I won’t miss 2016, to be sure, but I won’t consider it a “bad year” and agonize over what might have been. Life is what it is, we do what we can and move on. If I use energy bemoaning what happened in 2016, that’s just that much less energy I have to make 2017 as good as I can make it.

Happy New Year to everyone.