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A Second Novel
It's funny. As I was plowing through the Hogwarts story and the Changeling stuff, I kept saying that it wasn't like real writing, that the reason my daily word counts were so high was because it was SO much easier than actual writing, and people seemed to kind of doubt that.
Two days in to my second original actual novel, and I feel very vindicated. Starting on an actual page one, with only a vague sense of where things are going? Much harder. Infinitely harder, then writing up events I half remember, stories for which know the end. I don't know how many words I've written, either, because I've been really slaving over my notes, unlike last time. I'm determined not to have the muddle I had in my first novel. ;)
(here's my plot: "over the course of a very long war, both countries have used mercenaries to fight for them so much that this has become a serious problem. Mercenaries are bad." My device: "relate how mercenaries are bad and what will be done about them in a series of entwining stories where elements and characters from earlier stories grow involved in later stories." That's everything I know.)
Two days in to my second original actual novel, and I feel very vindicated. Starting on an actual page one, with only a vague sense of where things are going? Much harder. Infinitely harder, then writing up events I half remember, stories for which know the end. I don't know how many words I've written, either, because I've been really slaving over my notes, unlike last time. I'm determined not to have the muddle I had in my first novel. ;)
(here's my plot: "over the course of a very long war, both countries have used mercenaries to fight for them so much that this has become a serious problem. Mercenaries are bad." My device: "relate how mercenaries are bad and what will be done about them in a series of entwining stories where elements and characters from earlier stories grow involved in later stories." That's everything I know.)
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Produce a Claire or the Oxalis dies!
As for the book- I think outlines are your friend, here. Don't just start into Chapter One. Figure out who your primary characters are and what will give them an adversarial or friendly relationship to each other (or what might lead them to initially be friends and then lose that friendship). Brainstorm what conflicts they might fall into and maybe some cool environmental settings. Think about how your magic might work, if that is a factor. Are there gods?
Then figure out what your major and minor plot arcs look like and what timing they need to have in relation to each other.
Tristram leaves home because of the dust, drought and starvation that the dried up river has caused.
Tristram finds the bronze spoon.
Tristram discovers something funny about the bronze spoon.
Tristram gives the spoon to Claire as a token(and might be falling in love a little).
Tristram tries to make th river flow again.
Tristram is killed by Bran.
Claire places the spoon to the lips of the starving child in the tower, and the soul of the River Kesh is returned to life.
Bran's mother is raped by the River God Kesh.
Bran's father makes him help drown his half-divine infant half-brother.
Bran hears Piers ghost whispering to him from the well.
Bran's father drowns himself with the implication that he was also hearing the ghost.
Bran kills the dragon by guile and uses its heartstone to plug the source of the river.
Then figure out when different aspects of each timeline have to happen chronologically and integrate them into a single timeline. This can form the chapter outline of the book, unless you decide to present events out of order. Even if you do, I think you will have an easier time writing if you have laid it out chronologically for your own benefit.
Heed my words of wisdom! Heed them!
After all, I've written a book myself. Really. Yep.
No, you can't read it. But it's real. Didn't make it up at all.
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And I'm glad you liked the Christmas presents, and that they found there way to you - I guess you went to New Years. I wish I could of, but I didn't have the money.
The problem with outlining is that I really don't have the patience, I discovered. I sat down at the start of my flight to Japan to outline this book, and I worked 10 minutes before I got sick of doing it. What I DID get was:
Dude is running for mayor of a small town.
Dude wins.
Dude gets murdered by mercenaries when they attack the town.
Dude's wife moves to the Big City.
Dude's wife starts building a life for herself.
Dude's wife falls in love.
Mercenary dude feels bad about committing a murder.
Mercenary dude falls in love in the Big City.
And that was it. A list like yours would, I think, be much more useful, I'm just not sure I've got it in me. You should totally write that story, though.
I've written a book too, after all. And I'll let you read mine if you let me read yours. ;)
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I have no practical experience whatsoever.
Miss you- hope to see you at some point soon!
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Okay. Plot. I found some very useful structure on which I always build a plot now. First you start with a bang, then have an exposition, and then something flips the exposition upside down (Turning Point 1). That's one fourth of the book. Then you have reactions to the TP1, a brief moment where you point your finger at something important, then more actions. In the very half of the book something happens (also briefly - a decision to turn left, not right) that sets the rest of the story on a roll (No Return Point). After that decision nothing is the same and the Protagonists has to get to the Big Turning Point (that starts shortly before three/fourth of the book, and ends shortly after that - the TPs are not brief as opposed to NRP, or those finger pointing points (also called "Focus") and then to the final Climax. Of course BTP doesn't start immediately after NRP! First the Protagonist has to do some irrelevant things, then there's that second Focus, then the relatively short build up, and then BTP starts. After BTP you take a breath, calm things down a little and hit with a hammer. Climax should be alightly longer than BTP.
That's how I do it. Aristoteles did simplier: Beginning, Middle, End. Another great advices are here:
You tried writing without plot in the previous round. Maybe you could see if plotting works for you now?
From what you wrote it seems you want to have more than one main characters. I'm not sure how this is going to work. I personally don't like stories where it starts with one character and then we learn that (s)he's not important to the story at all. That happened in Ursula Le Guinn's "Rocanon's World". First there is this princess and there's a LOT about how she learns to fly some cats with wings and the such, then she travels to a different world, returns with a man and... goes crazy (if I remember correctly). And the rest of the book is about that man. I stopped reading then, and returned about a year later, when my head cooled down.
Okay, I guess I should get back to my novel now, where I have ELEVEN protagonists (yes, I'm good at giving good advices, right?), or I won't have any w-count today!
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That's a really neat approach to plotting - thanks for sharing. :)
I'm certainly plotting more than in the last round; before I write every day this time I'm composing dossiers on new characters I'm introducing. The biggest problem I felt I had in the first story was that all of the characters ended up seeming the same to me, and so in an effort to keep them distinct, I'm putting thought in to their backgrounds. This is a very character-driven story, because of the more than one main character thing. you're not the only person to tell me they don't like that kind of thing, but I just thought I'd give it a try. And I definitely do want to.
But with two people telling me to outline, perhaps I should give it a try. ;)
Thanks for the advice!
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Your word counts were so high for a lot of reasons. One is that you already knew where the story was going. Some of the highest-output writers I know? Work from detailed outlines. Also, your mental stance toward those projects was different: you didn't let yourself be intimidated by them, because they weren't novels (regardless of word count); they were "just game writing." Etc.
These have nothing to do with whether it's "like real writing" or not.
Real writing is writing that results in words on the page. In this specific context, it's writing fiction of a certain length. Beyond that, you're just playing mind games with yourself.
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It takes a lot more energy and creativity to write not just characters, but original descriptions and plots, then it does to write something that is all layed out before me.
And anyway, I feel like it'd be lame to call the Hogwarts story a novel, even though it's technically long enough, because of how relatively little original work it constitutes - it's
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I find it interesting that you keep trying to tackle the plot device you've described, rather than going with something that would probably feel more natural (a first-person single-narrator story, frex). Nothing wrong with doing that, but when you couple it with the newness of the idea itself, then yes -- it's to be expected that you'll go slower.
Kind of like MNC went faster partly because I knew more of my major plot points in advance than I usually do.
But anyway, don't freak out just because you're going slower. Take some time, if you can, to chew on the story -- while you're showering or walking somewhere or otherwise not needing your brain -- because the more you chew on it, the better a grip you'll have on it, and then the writing will come more easily and cleanly.
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