Last night was productive. I managed to get work done on about twenty more scenes. That means I have about eighteen more to go. The novel is starting to shape up nicely. The next part of the plan is the second treatment. Here is how the process has gone so far:

I started with a concept. I wanted to write about a unique military career and see that career in action in a science fiction setting. I came up with some ideas about the main characters and general world setting. I free wrote for a few pages about the characters, world, and the events. This free writing thing is useful. I tend to try to turn it on its heals a few times to get something more from the story. A lot of the good stuff comes from this part of the story building process.

Next is casting time. I come up with a general idea about who my main characters are going to be. I don’t do full biographies at this point, but I at least understand some of their life goals, their careers, their histories (essentials only), and if they’re a POV character I’ll also try to give them some point of change. This point of change normally revolves around an unhealthy part of their personality that they are going to face in this story. My notes will have something like: Bob never realized he was an alcoholic until he was faced with the responsibility of raising his dead brother’s son. Here we have inciting incident to play with; a new person in Bob’s life. We also have a personal issue for Bob to deal with; his alcoholism. Score extra points if one character in the story is another character’s inciting incident. These normally lead me into various story sequences.

Which leads me to working on my major sequences. I’ve read about other writers who have ‘candy bar’ scenes and they write around these. I tend to think in sequences. There’s normally one big sequence for the first act, two or three for the second, and then one more large one for the last. Sequences are pretty nice, because you can use some pretty standard formulas to create the sequences. You know just by the story architecture what the beginning, middle, and end of the sequence will most likely need to be. For me this is a fun way to write. I’m most comfortable, right now in my career, with the story that runs about 10-15k. Meaning, that’s pretty much what I can hold effectively in my own head space. If the story is built out of these mini stories than it’s much easier for me to handle. I think it also gives a good mix of things to the reader.

Once I have these sequences, I turn them into the first true treatment. This is a story act by story act write up of the story. It covers all of the major sequence, but not in any great detail. This is normally about three to four pages of writing for me. I do a lot of my world building here and work out higher level world based motivations. Do certain groups have a stake in my individual characters’ lives? Is there some huge event overshadowing everything, like a world war or natural disaster? I’ll also question the treatment at this stage. I’m not getting too critical. In fact, it’s not a very objective process. I mostly ask myself if it feels right. Is it a story. Did I pick the right characters for the job? At this stage, I haven’t committed a lot of words to paper, so it’s easy to change things if I need to. I will generally go over this little treatment for a week or two and probably do a few rewrites to it. One of my main characters in the current novel went through a huge change because of these treatment questions. The character went from a he to she and from a initially deceptive character to just the opposite. This is what turning things on their head can do. It can help you weed out the stereotypes and cliches.

Once I’m happy with the treatment I start dissecting it into scenes. That’s where the index cards come in handy. I do a lot of decision work here. POV characters start to develop a bit more here as I build the sequences up. The cards don’t have a lot of room for detail. They normally start with the POV character’s opening scene goal, move to the major conflict and problems in the scene, and then end on some sort of disaster or surprise. This changes up though, because there are also reaction shot scenes and general transition and set-up scenes as well. However, like I said, I only have a few lines to work with at this stage, so I keep it pretty thin. Once I have what feels like enough scenes to cover all the aspects of the various sequences, I start evaluating these. I have a few more questions I start asking at this point. I also try to put them into logical chapter breaks. I’ll arrange them in a way that gives me the most suspense between sequences. This is the sort of thing I just couldn’t see myself doing after I’ve written the draft. At this stage they’re just cards. I can rip up a whole set of them and start over until I’m happy with the way the whole thing feels. I normally spend a week or two going through the cards. I just flip through them and try to visualize each scene.

When I’ve completed that step, I move to where I am now in the development. This is a little easier. I have a scene sheet that is basically an expansion of the card. My index card now turns into a paragraph or two worth of scene information. I start thinking about the setting. I also find where I can condense some scenes together. If I need to I also add reaction scenes and other things to balance out the pacing. This is fun, because when I have it all done, I have a huge sheet to take notes on and expand upon. And what I do here pays off greatly in the phase draft.

The second treatment I will write will be much larger than the first. It will probably end up a good forty pages. No one ever sees this but me. I tend to write it in third person present tense. Once it’s complete I have a set of treatment questions I ask of this draft. This is sort of my alpha draft quality assurance. Once I’ve answered these questions to my satisfaction I give a pass or fail. If it fails, I might return to the cards and work out what’s needed and then write up the changes in the treatment. If it passes, then I move on to the phase draft.

I’ll write more on the phase draft when I get to that stage. This did go on for a bit, didn’t it? I’m probably writing this out more for my own benefit than anyone else’s. It will help for me to go back and refine this process later with other books. So far though I’m very pleased with the results I have.

Un deux trois, parle, mirroir noir!

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