A Second Novel

[unforth]

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.)

Comments

[o-yannik.livejournal.com]

First of all - don't experiment with your second book. Especially if you're not certain if the first one was a masterpiece. You need to have one clear protagonist, a few secondary characters, some trietary and an antagonist(s). Although I can't give advices on the latter, because I was never able to create an antagonist - I always start getting into overanalyzyng and find justifications for the antagonist to act against the protaginist and end up loosing the main goal of the story, because now I have two oposite, equally important. Bad, bad habit.

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: jimbutcher.

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!

[unforth.livejournal.com]

Well, perhaps I should have noted that this story device was what I WANTED to do with my first book, and failed miserably. ;) The first one had a scary high number of protagnists, a couple of antagonists, and scads secondary characters - it was political, after all.

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!