Archive for the ‘writing’ Category

Well, I’m finished with my long break. I had a great few months with my daughter, a bout of sickness, and a sidetrack that took me into a far better understanding of a dimension of story I was never completely clear on. Now I have better clarity. Actually, I would say I have The Clarity that I’ve been looking for.

Armed with my new clarity, I’m returning to War Dogs with a new focus and I know where this particular story needs to go. There’s a lot of story possibilities for this world. However, there’s no need to try to cram them into one book! So this books focus will be on the Dogs and their Handlers.

If you want to follow my mundane thought process as I work through this thing, I’ve set up a special twitter feed just to blab on about my process. http://www.twitter.com/shawnscarber

Additionally, I’ve given myself a hard deadline of November 11th to finish this book. I think the hard deadline will keep me from getting sidetracked. So if you don’t see a post between now and then that says I’ve finished the book, feel free to publicly harass and badger me, because I have no excuses now.

Progress on ‘Restless’:

After sitting on ‘Restless’ for a few weeks, I gave it a read this weekend with my critical reviewer’s hat on. Overall, I’m still happy with it. The story is doing what I want it to do.

I decided to cut a few large sections. I cut the entire first scene, which might leave the reader in the dark about some of the main character’s motivations, but in a way that might work out. I also cut out a section of the scene that I initially liked when I wrote it, but upon a cooler reading found it to be an obvious button pusher bordering on melodrama.

With those scenes cut, I gave it another read and then added a very small section to help give the ending a little more believability. My last bit of criticism was the prose. I used so much passive voice that I’m now in the process of writing a whole new draft.

I think I did a good job of capturing the character’s voice in the story, but if you’re going to read a 10k story, it shouldn’t feel like 25k. Additionally, I’ve found with the redraft that I can leave a lot of the description out.

I’m beginning to feel like the part of me who wants to get story down and deal with conflict is completely different than the part of me who wants to write pretty words.
So I think I will always need a prose draft. And that’s ok. It lets me relax a little more when writing my first draft.

Progress on ‘War Dogs of Mars’:

I’m still working on pre-writing. I have a pretty descent looking outline taking shape. I should say outlines, because I build an outline for each POV character. I have four POVs in this story.

I’m taking my time with this phase. I usually don’t. I normally rush to get an outline, knowing it will change while I’m writing. I know this one will change as well, but I’m not really outlining the plot, I’m outlining the various character journeys and how these journeys will change and shape the characters and their relationships.

Fly by the seat of their pants writers probably think that sort of preplanning is crazy, but it does work for me on a certain level. What I’m attempting to do is get myself down to three drafts. The first draft will go to my experts. I’ll take their feedback and make revisions based on their suggestions and then write a new draft [this is more of a cut and paste rewrite].

That’s the draft I’ll likely get a workshop member to read. I might make some changes based on that reader’s feedback and then start the actual redraft. That’s the one I do for prose. I have a plan for the prose in this novel. The separate POVs will all have their own distinct style. Nothing too gimmicky, because honestly, I hate it when the writing isn’t somewhat transparent, but I also hate it when the characters aren’t distinguished in some way through the language and writing. I know, picky bastard, aren’t I?

So I’m making some progress.

Progress on the novel isn’t quite speeding ahead the way I originally planned. I think part of the problem was trying to find an appropriate voice to get things rolling. My initial attempt was just a little too pretentious. Also, I want to inject a little humor into this novel and starting with the character on some sort of drug induced trip from Earth to Mars wasn’t working. It was cool, but it wasn’t honest. The second attempt was just a real warm up to where I am now. Basically, it was all description and no action. I fixed it by adding a character to have some conflict with. That’s my biggest critique now. I see way too many scenes where a character is presented in isolation and we spend the whole scene or chapter in his or her headspace. My own goal lately has been to get my characters on stage.

One of my best diagnostic tools has been asking the question, “How would X handle this scene?” I’ll finish something and then say, “If John Scalzi wrote this dialogue, what would he do different than me? If Gene Wolfe wrote this bit of description, how would it read? And if I feel there’s something really wrong with something dramatically, I’ll call on my inner Alan Ball. It’s fun and allows me to sort of step outside myself and see the story in a different light.

So I finished the first scene this morning and feel pretty confident. It’s not perfect and there are a few things I’m sure I’ll do to it before I’m finished, but it gives me a great starting place.

Here’s a quick list of pre-writing story questions I’ve come up with based on a lecture given by Tony Daniel at Conestoga.

Story consists of character, plot, and setting. In a general way, describe the character, plot, and setting of this story:

Story problems are a ripple in the status quo. Describe generally the status quo and then describe who or what comes along and causes the ripple and its possible effects.

What will need to be done to reset the status quo?

What is the hero’s problem [How is what caused the ripple personal to the hero]?

What are some ways the hero can act on the problem to make the problem worse and increase her suffering [list at least 20]?

How can the hero deal with the worsened problem in a way that allows her to reset the status quo or what ways can the change in status quo change the character [list at least 20]?

Does the character suffer? Is the suffering both external[jeopardy] and internal[sacrifice]? Explain in a general way how this is so.

Story’s purpose is reader feeling. What feeling are you hoping to convey with this story? What do you hope the reader feels when he or she finishes reading this story?

OK, so I’m stealing my heading selections from Elizabeth Bear. Well, not her titles exactly, but the concept of posting sections of lyrics from songs. However, I’m picking obscure songs from obscure bands, which might make me elite or just a huge nerd. Yeah, huge nerd is what I thought as well.

I worked a little on the Edgar Allen Poe vs the Murloc story last night. The voice in this one is tricky, so it’s taking a little longer just to get words down on paper. I’ll have to keep it a short one just for that reason. I’m real close to having another story out to market. Work has been stressing me out lately, because of course I’ve been given very little time to do a project that they changed three or four times, and now they want it delivered to QA. However, it ain’t even working yet. I’m getting close to finishing, but just don’t have the old drive to work all night that I used to have. I’m just getting too old for that crap.

I must have fixed some programming in my head. I had a real hard time there for a while where all I could come up for story ideas were subjects and events that would take way longer than a short story to tell. I think I might have managed to get my brain wrapped around the 2-4k story length. I wrote a 1500 word one Saturday night and now I’m working on one that will likely come in around 3k, and I have a hard science fiction in the notes that will likely come in around 4-5k. This is a nice place to be.

I think I’ve got that sized plotting down to something pretty simple. One event. Of course, you have to sort of understand what the event is. And it can be somewhat ambiguous as to what you should explore when exploring the one event, but it’s not exactly a science like sword making or anything. You just have to fiddle around with it until it works right.

Like my Edgar Allen Poe vs the Murloc is basically about a character finding the beach of lost items, seeing his sister’s beloved comb, and having to battle a fish dude who is going through some initiation to get it from the top of a steep cliff wall [that actually sounds like a lot of events, but the big event idea for me was that some guy on the beach would find a comb and need to battle for it]. The hard science fiction one is even easier–a team of astronauts/scientists must deal with debris from a passing meteoroid. A lot can come from these events, but this is the way I’ve started thinking of short fiction. It’s one major event to explore. My character still wants something, still works to pursue something, and still runs into obstacles, but they normally center on this event.

Maybe when I’ve put a little more thought into it, and developed and sold a few stories with this way of thinking about story, I’ll expand on it. I’m just glad I have some clearer direction now.

I feel like I’m in a good place. I could probably do a story a week or more. I think now I just need to learn to balance my writing time with my reading time. I listen to a lot of stories on podcasts, but I don’t think it’s quite the same as seeing words on paper. I think if you’re a writer you need to see words written on paper by people who know what they are doing as often as possible.

Well, I don’t want to go to work, but pretty much have to. I’ll try to post here more often. I’ll try to keep the topics focused on the fiction as much as possible.

Fiction excerpt from latest WIP:

In those final days when my sister Balentine lay pale in her emerald bedding, coughing out the last of her young life in droplets of blood on lace kerchiefs, and relatives from as far away as the Carolinas made the journey by rail to see her off, I found myself so distracted I wandered to a beach yet unexplored, even in the times of my most curious youth.

Today I am wearing my carpenter pants. Damn. You carpenters wear some comfy pants. These are the type of pants you should wear on Monday. Comfy pants. If I had my way I’d wear pajamas to work on Monday.

Anyway, it was a conquer-the-known-universe weekend and I succeeded. I managed to finish off the short piece I was working on and get it sent to the editor. Officially, it’s no longer a flash fiction story. I got some positive feedback, and word that something more substantial would head my way Tuesday.

I managed to write three scenes toward the new version of my short story Strange Loop. So far this version is much better than the original. In fact, this version has allowed me to make two really important discoveries about my own writing*. That’s always a huge bonus. I’m hoping to finish it up either tonight or tomorrow night, give it a few rewrite, grammar, and prose corrections and then send it off to my Clarion writing group.

I’ve almost finished reading a novel I’m critting for a fellow Clarionite. I should get that finished tonight, and then I can start the actual critique. That will be done before I start my mini weekend vacation. I’m off work Friday and then off next Monday. That means four days to focus on the novel. Yep, I’m still working on my novel and will be for most of the next year.

Faireuza hit 71 late Friday night. I’m limiting my World of Warcraft time to Friday nights now. It’s just too easy to get wrapped up in that game and lose sight of all other forms of existence. However, if I can hit a level every two weeks, I should be raiding on a B-team at some point this summer. That works for me. I had a fun PVP experience with an Orc warrior though. There’s nothing like being a hunter and just mercilessly beating down a warrior. That’s love.

* Here are the two things I discovered:

1) Character and problem are two things you can build strongly on in a shorter work. See, I’ve been trying and trying to figure out how to write short and this was one of the things that kept evading me; the whole concept that the problem needed to be something complex.

Well, it doesn’t. In fact, it’s sometimes better just to keep it as something rather simple. In this particular story though, this problem is represented in a few different characters. There is a mythical representation of it, a real world physical representation of it, and then the actual problem inside the main character.

In my story, the character first faces the mythical version. It is a physical confrontation and she does walk away defeated—clueless still about what the problem is. She, for the most part, is ready to give up, but knows she still wants her goal. Next, she faces someone who she would have never made the choice to face on her own. This meeting is forced on her. However, this particular incarnation of the problem is a teacher or mentor representation of the problem (I would imagine that other archetypes can take on the personification of the problem). She must directly face the problem here and understand it. This is a sort of realization scene. She has a new weapon, now how do you apply it to the first version of the problem?

Once she understands the problem, then she can actually transform and make the solution to the problem, or the problem itself a part of her. In Strange Loop, she is transformed physically by the problem, but she also learns about a particular need she had that someone outside her saw, but she could not see herself. It’s a small thing, but in the scope of a small story, it’s a life changing thing. It makes her into a new person.

This new person can now go back to the mythical incarnation of the problem and use what she knows to fix it. She does, and this grants her access to her goal.

That’s something I’ve been trying to focus on. How do I make the problem that is keeping the main character from her story goal naturally derive from the main character? In other words, the fictional character is to some extent the problem, so how do we overcome self to overcome the problem?

2) Use more dialogue. I don’t know why, but I’ve always had an aversion to dialogue. Well, not necessarily and aversion, but I’ve been timid with my use of dialogue for fear of overuse. I think this comes from my early—really early, studies of screenwriting. One of the earliest things I read was to limit the talking heads, but I don’t think that qualifies so much for fiction.

This version of the story has a lot more dialogue than the last, and it’s much better because of it. I Think I can go back now and look at some of my other works and probably clarify a lot with dialogue. Not that it’s the new hammer, but it’s nice when you look through the toolbox and say, “Hey, this is a nifty widget. I should really be using this to do more.”

Which is another reason I should be critiquing more. I’m in the process of reading a work that is very heavy with dialogue. Long conversations. My first reaction was to go, “Ack, lots of dialogue, see where you can cut!” And to my surprise, it was all pretty necessary. Not only that, but it really worked well. In fact, I liked it. So what’s up with that? Again, early impressions I received as a young writer stuck with me and I never questioned it. So here’s a lesson to other young writers. Question everything you hear from your writer instructors. So far, there don’t seem to be as many Truths in writing as I originally assumed.

We had a fantastic writers workshop last night. It’s always great to see new people coming to the group and of course it’s also great to see some of the old crew back around. I got some wonderful feedback on my short story, Strange Loop. I’ll be going through some of those critiques today to see what I can do to make this one work. I think it’s going to take a rewrite. Now, normally, that would mean it goes back on the clay pile, but there’s something about this one that I think could really put it in a good place. So special thanks to everyone who gave me crits last night, they’re very much appreciated.

Additionally, I want to make a special shout out to local writer and NTSFW member, J.M. McDermott for hitting #6 on Jeff VanderMeer’s top ten science fiction and fantasy picks for 2008. That is LEET!

NTSFW is also holding a contest. Here is a link to the rules and such.

Today I bought Final Draft. I’m very excited about this. I have two short screenplays written, but haven’t sent them out because I’m sure the formatting is for crap. So as soon as I have a chance, I’m going to rewrite them a little and get them in proper screenplay format. Woot! I think that Strange Loop will likely end up as a screenplay as well. Two stories for the price of one. Woo-hoo.

This afternoon I plan to take a nap and then hit the novel again. I think I can have the treatment done before Dexter.

So here is hoping everyone had a swell weekend and to a productive writing week.

Last night I managed to write out a twelve scene treatment for a (sort of) new short story. After some thinking and questioning of some of the scenes, I cut it down to about six scenes. I do think that’s the minimal for this story. I did cut the first two scenes, the last two scenes, and two scenes I had in the middle that felt a little too sub-plot-ish. I was then able to get about 600 words written on the first scene. I think this one will come in around 4-5k. This is actually a complete rewrite of a story I wrote before Clarion West. I’m keeping the characters and the general plot, only now the main character is an active part of the action. I have a tendency to write about non-passive victims. And honestly, victims are just not that interesting and rarely earn any sympathy. My characters do of course get abuse. Getting abuse and accepting the abuse are two different things. You can get abused and not be a victim—when you are confronting the abuse and fighting it, you are no longer in victim status. So keeping my heroes out of victim status has been the new thing to watch for. And what’s great, is it allowed me to do something really unique and surprising with this character.

I won’t have my kiddo this weekend. That always depresses me a bit. So to keep my mind off of it I’m going to spend the weekend catching up on critiques and working on the novel. I’ll probably finish the newest short story on Saturday as well and start on the next one Sunday.

Internalizing the Short Form.

I think this is the one thing I regret not having done in the last eight years of writing. I’ve read a lot of short work, but for some reason the form hasn’t successfully grafted onto my brain. I want to believe that’s because I’ve always had big ideas or that I’ve always wanted an emotional element that you just can’t cover in under five thousand words—but these are really just excuses. Plenty of authors have achieved what I’ve wanted to do in much less than five thousand words. However, I think I’m finally getting it.

I’m going to go through some of the things I’m seeing now that I didn’t a few months ago. Some of these are things I knew, but didn’t quite know to the bone. Surface knowing and bone knowing is two different animals.

Write often and finish.

This one has been tough for me. I tend to ruminate on a story a lot. However, I’ve discovered I’m quite capable of working on two things at once. Especially if one of those things is a big project, like a novel, and the other is a small project, like a short story or poem. Now two seems to be my limit, but it also seems that I need to be working on two things to keep me motivated to get both done. I received early advice to just do one thing at a time. That was probably good, well intentioned advice, but it didn’t work for me. The litmus test gets down to how many words are you putting on the page and how many projects are you completing. Since I’ve been working on two things at once recently, I’m finishing a lot more.

Write fast.

This is something I’ve just recently started. I used to believe that if you weren’t bleeding over every word you weren’t really a writer. This is rubbish for me. I think I’m just now discovering how to play with voice because I’m writing fast. Additionally, I’ve discovered that you can oversaturate a work with visual imagery. It’s far better to have one strong visual per page than to have every paragraph become its own bit of perfect poetry. I’m not advocating sloppy writing, but you’d be amazed what you can do quickly. Learn to trust yourself.

Revise fast.

When you finish your first draft, give it a quick read aloud, make any obvious corrections you need to make, and then send it off to your critique group. And here is what I do that might make you cringe: If the work requires more than 25% revision to make it workable, it goes back on the clay pile. That’s right, if I can’t make the story work by only changing about 25% of it, the thing basically goes in the trash. Now my trash can is a place I swim around a lot to get ideas. So it isn’t really wasted. Additionally, you’ve probably learned something from that story. Move on. Start and finish the next one. Writers need to breed stories like roaches or they won’t survive.

Sketch it out.

I write treatments. That basically means that before I write the actual story I write a really, really fast version of the story out on a page or two. I break it into scenes and this is what I use to write from. I might revise the treatment for structure. I ask simple questions. Is there a clear goal? Do I make things hard on my protagonist? Is there a nice surprise in there somewhere? Do I need every scene here? That last one is important. The short I’m working on now came from an idea I had that led to the first scene, but now I don’t need it. It’s a beautiful scene, but it drags the rest of the story down—it’s got to go.

A short story can be a straight line. Focus on the one thing, the one character, the one important subject.

This is especially important when it comes to the story problem. I’ve had a bad habit of making story problems that are vague and emotional. Make it something physical. The physical and emotional might tie together, but there should be some physical thing that represents the story problem. I’ve tried writing stories that just take place in a character’s head. They can be pretty. You can have wonderful characterization, but the plot just doesn’t seem to work for these types of stories. I’m sure there is a market for this type of story, but you’re better off playing the numbers game and using the devices that work. Make the goal and story problems physical and point your protagonist to them. Let Fred handle the rest.

Write flash fiction. 4 pages. [1]Beginning, [2]middle and [1]end.

If you find yourself always writing long—like more than 10k—stop writing long. Write really short. I mean, 1k short. Flash fiction is a great way to see how you can get an idea in under a particular word count. Plus, if you do write long, you might find that attempting to write 1k actually gives you 3k. 3K is a short story. Congratulations, you just discovered how to write short.

Practice, practice, practice.

Don’t stop writing. Don’t give yourself a break. No really. Jay Lake advocates a story a week. I’m not quite to the point where I can do a story a week consistently, but it’s my goal. However, I am constantly writing. I’ll rewrite fairy tales if I can’t think of anything to write. I’ll mash Shakespeare and westerns if I can’t think of anything. I’ll write fan fiction if I have to, but I will continue to write.

Cut the seven stage plot down.

Start in the middle and hint at the beginning or ending. Focus on two or three parts of the seven stage plot. If you aren’t aware of the seven stage plot, just google plot skeleton. There are about four or five different versions. Pick your favorite. Learn what to keep and what you can trash. Try fitting the whole story into a few scenes—or write the whole thing out and then cut the beginning and the ending. Then see if you can gut out part of the middle. Experiment.

Don’t try to make it something it’s not.

This is one of my biggest problems. You can’t fit a novel’s worth of emotion into four thousand words. The short story is the teaser trailer not the epic film. You can make it beautiful, but it won’t be something it isn’t. It’s a kick in the crotch, not the whole fight.

Hopefully, this is helpful. Happy writing.

I finally caught up on True Blood last night. Sam is a dog. No surprise there. I managed to get Strange Loop up at the workshop for this weekend. That’s good stuff. Maybe I can get it in the mail by Wednesday. I need more hard deadlines. I think I’ll stick with that one. I worked more on the novel last night. I had to add a scene, but otherwise it’s still following along the same outline. I’m still working on the treatment. This weekend I can dedicate a little more time to getting it done. Faireuza now has a Chimera named Tetragametic. I’m sure no one will get that. I haven’t spent much time in WOW since the latest patch. More time for writing is a good thing anyway. WOW is extremely low priority. Like a minimum of 4 hours a week priority.

Additionally, today is voting day here in the good old USA. I was saddened to hear the news that Sen. Obama lost his grandmother yesterday. It would have been nice for her to see the outcome of this race.

I’m going to continue with my experiment of higher output and faster story writing this week. I have an idea for a western. I’ll have to poke around to find a short western market, but it should be fun.

Post edit:

I found these western markets while out taking a gander.

Prairie Times Magazine – (http://www.prairietimes.com)

Roundup Magazine (the trade magazine of Western Writers of America) – (http://www.westernwriters.org/roundup.html)

Elbow Creek Magazine (http://www.elbowcreek.com)

The above is lifted from Allexperts.