Perils of the Writer: Composing the Symphony vs. Plot Jazz

In any long term creative endeavor, there is a limit to how much you can really plan out ahead of time.  Of course, you can always make detailed outlines, but the reaches a point of diminishing returns– where what you’re writing is more rough-draft than outline.*
And I’m a big planner, both in terms of individual novels and long-term series plans.  I’m a get-out-the-map-and-figure-out-where-I’m-going guy.  I’ve got outlines for novels I’m still going to write: specifically Books Three for both The Thorn of Dentonhill and A Murder of Mages, as well as Books Two and Three for Holver Alley Crew and Way of the Shield, books themselves that are still waiting in the wings for their time to shine.  And past that, well… let’s just say that as far as I’m concerned, none of those series are intended to end with Book Three.
But outlining is going to have its limits.  For me, a typical outline of a 100k-ish novel is somewhere between 1000 and 1500 words.  That hits the key plot points, but clearly lacks details of character interaction and transitions.  I find that there’s plenty of “Here is Point A” and “There is Point B”, but I still have plenty of chess pieces to move around to have things in place for Point B.
And that’s where the Plot Jazz comes in.
“Plot Jazz” is a term coined by some fans of Deep Space Nine and Farscape to talk about how those shows– shows which never really had a “plan” more than a few episodes ahead– had a great tendency to build off of things set up by throwaway lines or the possibilities a random idea offered up.  An excellent example is in Farscape, where John having hallucinations of Scorpius in “Crackers Don’t Matter”– an episode where everyone is going crazy for spacy-sci-fi-reasons–  triggered the idea that “Hey, maybe Scorpius put a chip in John’s head!”.  That concept ended up being a key factor that shaped the rest of the season, and the series as a whole beyond it.
Plot Jazz, where you play it where it takes you, and hope it sounds good.
Now, what Plot Jazz means to a dyed-in-the-wool outliner like me is that secondary and tertiary characters often become more than they were in the outline.  Not taking over the story, but having more consequence that the outline would have indicated.  And that’s usually because in writing the outline, I don’t necessarily know what I’ll need those characters to do in the specific.  The “what” is in the outline, but not the “why” and “how”, and there is a fair amount of discovery in working that stuff out.
There’s a fair amount of that in Thorn of Dentonhill, where while I was writing I’d realize something like, “Colin needs a friend he can talk to in this scene” or “I need a Constabulary officer to show up here”, and then the character that comes out of that expands into a life of its own.  That’s where, for example, Colin’s crew of Jutie, Hetzer and Tooser or Lt. Benvin came from in Thorn, and those roles ended up being more than could have been predicted in the outline.  Jutie and Lt. Benvin both get mention in the outline for Thorn II, but the details of the how and why with what they do ended up giving them both a crucial role in that book, including realizing I needed to give Lt. Benvin a whole group of constabulary officers under him.
So while I love my outlines and will never, ever let them go… that doesn’t mean I can’t embrace the Plot Jazz when I need it.
—
*- I do know of one writer who does write very detailed outlines for his novels, that the outline is around 40K for a 100K novel. He said the main difference between his outline and the novel is dialogue.

Perils of the Writer: Sequel Grinding

Some more experienced writers have told me that writing the second book is much harder than the first.

So far, with Thorn of Dentonhill II (new working title: Elements of Aventil), that hasn't been the case.

Not to say I haven't had my challenges.  It's gone steady, but around the 2/3 point, my writing output has slowed down.  Not stopped, but gone from 5-6K a week to 3-4K.  But that's not uncommon.  Every book I've written has had some sort of mid-point quagmire, and frankly, this has been the least troubling one to date.  I mean, Way of the Shield spent months in around 30,000 words where I just couldn't figure it out.  So spending a week longer to hit 70K on Elements is hardly cause for alarm. 

But why do writers have trouble with second books?  Mostly this comes from the fact that first books usually have years of midwifing, where writers work at their own pace.  Polishing and perfecting.  So once that finally sells, the pair of questions "Great, what's next?  And can you have it done in six months?" can certainly seem daunting. 

Now, perhaps why it's less daunting for me is because I kept working on rough drafts of new material while shopping Thorn-- a tactic which paid off, since I sold Thorn and Murder of Mages at the same time-- so the process of "Now how do I write another novel?" was demystified.  I worked out a process of outlining.  I've been coming at Elements with this solid outline-- which has, for the most part, survived intact, though there are plenty of aspects finding their way in that had nothing to do with the outline.

Of course, part of this has been to address the question, mostly imposed on myself: now that I'm "a professional", can I grind out the work at the pace I need to?  Part of the reason why Way of the Shield could sit and do nothing for so long is that no one was really asking for it.  In theory Elements of Aventil is going to have people asking for it, and having it done, proving I can do it as fast as I need to-- especially now, when we aren't at "quit your day job" money yet-- is an important next step.

So, in brief: yeah, writing the sequel is hard.  But, fortunately, it hasn't been as hard as I feared it could be. 

Perils of the Writer: Knowing When to Deviate from the Outline

So, earlier this week, the long running series How I Met Your Mother had its final episode.  And, despite some excellent moments in there, its ending left me cold, and I was far from the only one to think so.  It was, quite frankly, not the appropriate ending for the nine years they had built up.   

SPOILERS: Specifically, in the time frame where older Ted is telling his kids the story, the mother is already dead, and he's more or less telling them the whole story to put the idea in their head that maybe he should start dating again.  More specifically, that he should date his on-again, off-again flame from before meeting their mother, who the kids know as Aunt Robin.  The kids approve, and the last shot is Old Ted showing up at Old Robin's apartment, carrying a blue French horn in a direct callback to the very first episode.

But here's the thing: this was the ending the writers had intended from early on.  They had shot the scenes where the kids actively suggest and approve of Ted getting together with Robin way back in the beginning of the show, since they didn't know how long they would go, and the actors playing the kids were growing up.  So, they had had this footage for eight years, and had always intended this as the ending.

And you know what?  If they had used it as an ending then, at the end one of the first couple seasons?  It probably would have worked.

But at this point, it wasn't right.  The show had spent much time demonstrating how toxic Ted's affections for Robin were, how definitively their relationship didn't work, how much he needed to make a point of letting her go.  They had developed, rather well, the romance and marriage of Robin and Barney.  And biggest of all, they had Cristin Milioti join the cast in the last season as the titular mother.  Milioti managed to pull of the high-wire balance act of making Tracy-- the mother's name, revealed in the penultimate moments of the show-- into a real and vivacious person that the audience cared about.  All these things which made that ending, that old footage, completely inappropriate for the story they had built up.

I've gotten rather long-winded here. 

As anyone who's been reading this blog for a while will attest, I'm an outliner.  I'm big into making the Big Plan as part of the writing process.

But even with that: you need to embrace when the story has, through the organic process of writing it, shifted in a different direction.  Sometimes the worst choice you can make is to stick doggedly to an endgame plan that no longer fits your story. 

The big question is, how do you know if this is how you're doing?  For me, the biggest sign is when I'm working and feel myself at odds with where I'm going and where I "need" things to be.  This was part of my problem when writing Way of the Shield-- finding ways to fit what I had planned for the end sequence when that just was not working.

"Kill your darlings", I was told in film school, and that still applies-- including throwing away the ending you've been sitting on for eight years when your story demands it be something else.

Perils of the Writer: Slow March to the Inevitable

So, consider this plot structure: two point-of-view threads of characters with no apparent connection, both engaged in their own events... but the tenuous tendrils of those events being connected are apparent to the reader.  You don't have to read very far to know where this is going to go: these characters will eventually meet.  It will probably be the climax of the story. 

Now, the question is: is the journey to that inevitable climax worth it?  Or is a boring slog where it seems the writer is just marking time, and everyone in the story comes off as horribly clueless?  Is the story stumbling around to finally settle on a "revelation" that was patently obvious to the reader a hundred pages back?

That isn't to say a foreshadowed or even inevitable climax is a bad thing.  A well-constructed story can move towards an ending that the audience is completely aware of without it being boring.  That's the nature of tragedy: the audience watching helplessly while the characters are hurling towards catastrophe.  The best efforts of the characters to save themselves can be engrossing, even if we know that they will fail.  My son recently commented to me about 127 Hours, how even though you know Aaron is eventually going to cut his arm off to escape, the construction of the scenes where he tries to move the rock are engaging and dynamic enough that you think just maybe he's going to escape.

But too often I've read thing where that inevitable conclusion is just obvious and uninteresting.  Where your foreshadowing (and use of tropes) just makes the reader feel smarter than the characters, and then they start to hate the characters and the story for not being smart.

I will admit, sometimes I will push my way through something that feels like it's slogging towards the obvious conclusion just on the hope that it will surprise me.  But more often then not, I'm further disappointed.  I will also admit that I quit reading one of the Hugo-nominated because it was constructed in exactly this way, and it didn't interest me to force my way through the obvious meeting of two characters to discover the obvious "surprise".   

Twelve Part Structure and Pacing

I will probably never stop being an advocate of structure and outlining.  For me, it's the best way to write.  But figuring it out, working the way to make it work for me, that was a process. 

I've talked, quite a lot, about my Twelve-Part Structure.  Part of working that out, of course, was figuring out the pacing of each part.  If you go into it thinking each part is an equal part of the book, the pacing is going to be very wonky. 

Now, one thing to remember: This is structure.  It is not formula.  There isn't a mathematical way to Write the Perfect Novel.  Anyone who tells you that just wants your money.  

1. Establishment: 5%
Since the purpose of this section is to introduce your protagonists, what their situation is and what their capabilities are-- you need to get your hooks in and land them solidly.  So you don't want to waste too much time with, say, an overabundance of backstory or infodumping here.  So if your target length is a 100K novel, you're looking at 5000 words.  This is handy since a lot of writers' workshops or other critiquing processes want only 5000 words*, so if you can hook your reader and make them want to read more.

2. Incitement: 15%
 Here, you need more work.  Setting up the dominoes, introducing secondary characters and antagonists, really building the world.  Here, once you've drawn your reader in, you can get away with more backstory and infodumps.  The plot starts rolling, and that build of momentum is a bit slow, of course.  But that's all right.

3. Challenge: 10%
Now that you've got your protagonist juggling the various balls of the plot, it's time to start really throwing rocks at him.  The small rocks.  But you can throw several. 

4. Altercation: 10%
The Challenge should flow into the Altercation.  Your protagonist can rise to the occasion, and have their first real "Hell, yes!" moment.  (They might get minor ones up until this point, but the first big one comes in here.)  So, at this point, we're about 40% in. 

5-6. Payback-Regrouping: 25%
I'll admit it, this part may be the hardest section.  This is that "mushy middle" where, having knocked down some of the dominoes early, you set up even more elaborate ones.  This is where you can get away with more backstory and infodumps, but sparingly, as you don't want to lose your audience.  Drop the first shoe here, and build up the bigger set of problems. 

7-9: Collapse-Retreat-Recovery: 15%
Drop that other shoe and run like hell.  I'd like to say the breakdown of this is about 5-5-5, but that isn't always the case.  "Collapse" is the moment when things fall apart**, it's throwing the big rock, and you don't need to dwell on that.  The running away and dealing with what just happened is the more fun part, anyway.  But the point is, this can all blend together.

10: Investment: 10%
Now, the book has to breathe a little bit.  Only a little, because you're at 80% in, and the story should be just on the verge of getting completely away from you.  Of getting away from the protagonists.  But take a moment to appreciate why they're doing what they're doing, and who they are.  All while running like hell.

11. Confrontation: 8%
 Here the pacing should be relentless.  This is the point where your readers should be emotionally incapable of putting the book down, because things are happening like crazy and they're almost at the end and they don't know what's going to happen next and they cannot stop themselves.  No need to draw this out: if you set up things well enough in Investment, then it's just a matter of things falling where you need them to here.

12. Resolution: 2%
Finish up, sew up the remaining issues, throw a little tease for book 2, and get out with your reader wanting more.  No need to overstay your welcome.

---
*- Like the ArmadilloCon Writers' Workshop, for example.  There won't be one in 2013, but you could start planning to attend the 2014 one now, if you want.
**- Yeah, because that's what "Collapse" means...

The Dark Side of Outlining

So, I was reading back through what I had written for Way of the Shield, trying to figure out what wasn't working, and why it wasn't.  I am still most likely to keep my attention focused on Banshee, but the problems with Shield are now becoming clear.

Part of the problem stems from the fact that I was thinking more about the long-game instead of this book as it's own standalone.  There were choices that, in essence, I wasn't letting myself make because they weren't fitting my predetermined plan.  It was the writing equivalent of not moving any chess pieces because I was saving them for later. 

And the real problem with that boiled down to this: that's not who Dayne was.  Dayne is the throw-himself-on-a-grenade type.  And in not writing the story with that same hell-bent care, it wasn't working.


This is, of course, the potential problem with outlining in general: letting it be a trap.  I know more often than not I've caught myself thinking, "I can't have that, because it goes against [future plot point that I haven't actually written yet]."  Why was I beholden to that?  Because I had a plan. 

Now, this tends to be the argument of those who prefer not to outline: if I outline, then I'm STUCK.  I'm LOCKED ON THE PATH. 

And this isn't true.  But it is sometimes challenging to see that straying from the path can lead to a clearer road once you're already lost in the woods.

The other problem I was having stems, to a degree, from the outline as well, in that in the outline, my antagonists were not well-defined.  So, at least in this work-in-progress rough draft, they were coming off as one-dimensional strawmen.  They were just wrong people who were wrong in thinking wrong things wrongly.  They were only the heroes of their own story if you accept that their story was about stupid people.  And that's not interesting. 

So that's my challenge, before diving back into that project (eventually): figuring out who the antagonists REALLY are, and from that, how they'll implement their goals, and what the consequences of them doing that are.  And to be willing to have real consequences hit my protagonists. 

Because, when it comes down to it, I was essentially protecting a "status quo" that doesn't really exist yet.  Why do that?

Perils of the Writer: The Slow Process of Getting the Ball Rolling

¡Feliz día de los muertos!  We're now in November, which for some writerly types, means NaNoWriMo, aka Nation Novel Writing Month.  If you aren't in the know, participants pledge to write a 50,000 word novel over the course of November.  This translates to writing approximately 16,666 words a day.  Back in the early days of writing, I participated, but I don't anymore, since every month is Novel Writing Month, and at this point in my life, a pace of 50K a month for 12 months is not something I could ever hope to maintain.  Writing at my own pace is just fine by me.

In my opinion, NaNoWriMo is an excellent exercise in terms of process, in learning how to write a novel... but not one in terms of results.  The novel you write in one month won't be a particularly useful one, not without significant editing.  Briefly: I think it's a wonderful way to crank out a trunk novel.  One of my trunk novels was, in fact, a NaNoWriMo.*

But exercise and process are important, especially when it comes to getting started.  Getting a novel started is, for me, a very slow and deliberate process, in that the path from conception to writing actual text can take quite some time.  I sometimes make the metaphor of my writing brain being like a kitchen, with various projects on front and back burners.  But then there is other stuff in crockpots on back counters, slowly stewing away for years until they are really ready to work.

Phase One: Conception.   
This is, more or less, the Big Idea phase of things, where the thunderstrike of a Shiny New Story smashes across your brainpan.  It's usually the broadest of brushstrokes: Steampunk Airship Flying Through Alternate Universe Texas!  Secret Telepath War In Manhattan!  Abducted Human Wakes from Hibernation Sleep on a Dying Ship Full of other Abducted Aliens!  Cold hard truth: 75-90% of projects never get out of this phase.  It's always a bit fun and exciting, but it's also easy to mistake that Fun and Exciting for "And now I will write the book".  That never works, at least for me.  Though I suspect that many people-- at least non-writers-- believe that this phase is all you need to write the book.**

Phase Two: Setting.
Once I have an idea, I need to build the place where it unfolds.  I'm a worldbuilder, it's what I do.  For me, this phase is all too crucial: it's about placing the gears that will power the engine behind the story.  This phase can often be the longest, because it is filled with working and reworking things out. If it doesn't work, if it doesn't make sense to me, then the center doesn't hold. Case in point: when I initially conceived my Space Opera Setting, back in 2002, I created some initial star maps with colonies and alien homeworlds and such and so forth.  But as I first tried to write, this signal of WRONG WRONG WRONG across my brain was jamming things up.  Why?  It took a while to realize, but I finally hit upon it: the stars of these colonies and alien worlds, while being in close proximity to Earth, had nothing to do with actual stars close to Earth.  Back to the drawing board.

Phase Three-A: Characters.
Phase Three-B: Circumstances.
I put these two together like this because they tend to go hand in hand, but I can't honestly say which one goes first.  Both things are crucial to figuring out what the actual story is: what's happening, and who it's happening to.  It's a strange, intertwined process that, frankly, I haven't quite mastered.  Trying to craft circumstances without knowing character at the center can yield something soulless and mechanical.  But crafting characters without really knowing the story can make an unholy mess, where you end up with numerous people standing around with very little to do.  The best solution I've found is to, at this phase, focus on just the core characters and the ripe circumstances that initiates things, and let it flow from there.

Phase Four: Outline
Now that I've worked out the key elements, who, what, where, when and (to a degree) why, it's a time for a big helping of how.  Of course, I use my Twelve-Part Structure as a base, writing out about a paragraph for each part.  With that finally in hand, THEN I can start Actually Writing.
___
*- I gave it significant editing afterwards.  It's still a trunk novel, and that's what it deserves, frankly.
**- This is where those, "I've got a great idea for a book, so you write it and we'll split the profits!" pitches come from.

Loading Up Chekhov's Armory

"If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there."



Anton Chekhov's famous quote, in turns out, wasn't quite what I thought it was.  I had thought it was, "If a gun is hanging on the wall in Act I, it must be fired in Act III.  If it is fired in Act III, it must be seen on the wall in Act I."  The essence is still the same, but Chekov's actual quote emphasizes not setting up foreshadowing that isn't paid off.

Now, this sets up the fundamental difference between the Plotter and the Pantser in terms of foreshadowing-- especially if we're talking about a long-term, multi-part project.  The Plotter has a payoff in mind when the foreshadowing is seeded.  The Pantser seeds something in hopes of a strong payoff coming from it.  I'm not saying one is good and the other is bad, mind you.  I just know which one works for me.  (It's the former.)

But the thing with long term plans (or long term made-up-as-you-go) is "Act III", as it were, could be a long way down the road.  The writer might know how it's going to pay off, but the when is in the foggy horizon.  And that's OK.

With a BIG long-term project, though, you're going to need a lot of guns.  You might not hang them all up on the wall at once, but you know you're going to need them.

This is relevant right now, for me, as I've recently figured out the details of several guns I intend to be shooting much further down the road.  On top of that, I've been asked to fill some more wall space in my current drafts of things.  These two things, combined, present an excellent opportunity.

So I'm off to stock up the armory.

Avengers and Twelve-Part Structure

I had been thinking about movies and the studio-system's somewhat slavish devotion to "three act structure", which more and more I'm seeing as a big problem in modern cinema, and too often I'm seeing that same advice being given to novelists. And that's a shame, because three-act structure is bad advice for movies, and it's downright horrible for novels.

That's partly because "three act structure" is more or less another way of saying "beginning, middle and end".  And that's where a lot of screenwriters and novelists get into trouble: "Act 2 problems" or "the murky middle".  It's because, when you come down to it, "rising action" doesn't really give you a lot to go on.  It's a fancy way of saying "more stuff happens until the finale", but that tends to get translated into wheel-spinning and "refusing the call" (in Campbellian terms) as a way to mark time until the finale happens.* 

This is the problem in using tools of deconstruction and analysis and trying to use them for construction and creation.  They aren't meant to be used that way.  Now, admittedly, I did use deconstruction and analysis to create the Twelve-Part Structure, but I did it as a means of making a tool of construction and creation.

I could probably go on for a bit on the perils of three-act structure and using analysis tools for creation, but I won't.  I will, however, point out how things that succeed at being at engaging don't use three-act structure.  And when I saw the Twelve-Part Structure so evident in Avengers, I was pretty damn gleeful.**

Some spoilers from here on out.

Establishment: Loki shows up out of the Cosmic Cube, enthralls Hawkeye and Dr. Solveig, SHIELD fails to stop him.  With this, we establish the world and the stakes-- namely, this is a world where stuff like this happens.
Incitement: Gather the Team sequences: Fury talks to Cap, Natasha shows her skills and recruits Banner, Coulson talks to Tony.
Challenge: Loki begins his "distraction" plan in Germany, where Hawkeye does the real plan.  Cap fights Loki, and then Tony shows up and subdues him.
Altercation: Thor shows up to take Loki, and then Tony and Thor and Cap all fight each other over essentially jurisdiction issues.
Payback: Loki is locked up, but all the Team squabbles with each other over petty tings.  In other words, Loki's subtle discord is sewn.
Regrouping: Natasha gets info out of Loki, the Team gets a better sense over what's actually happening.
Collapse: Intergroup squabbling reaches a fevered pitch, as they discover SHIELD's plans for the Cosmic Cube. Hawkeye attacks the Helicarrier.
Retreat: Hulk smash, Tony and Cap work on keeping the Helicarrier in the air, Loki escapes and kills Coulson.
Recovery: Tony and Cap fix the Helicarrier, Natasha smacks Hawkeye's head back together, Bruce wakes up with Harry Dean Stanton.
Investment: Coulson's bloody Captain America cards, Tony gives his Big Speech to Loki, and the portal of Alien Destruction opens up.
Confrontation: BIG. DAMN. FIGHT.
Resolution:  Hulk smashes the puny God.  Tony throws a nuke at the aliens. Natasha closes the portal. Loki is captured, Thor brings him home.  Fury gives a speech.  Shawarma.

Yeah, you could break that into "three acts", but you'd be being pretty reductive about what actually happens.  Whedon was essentially given "three acts" by the studio people (namely, "Heroes come together, then they fight each other and split apart, and then they come together for Big Damn Fight").  With a lesser script that could have ended up as more wheelspinning non-action-- or worse, some kind of Plot Coupon collection in lieu of an actual story in the middle.***  Instead, with a more complicated structure, you get a FAR more engaging work.

--
*- Another superhero movie example: Green Lantern.  That's just full of wheel-spinning until the third-act turn where Hal Jordan, the supposedly fearless guy with near-limitless power, finally decides that maybe he should try and do something.  And by "do something" I mean tell a bunch of people he previously blew off that they should do something.  
**- I am NOT claiming that Whedon is aware of my Twelve-Part Structure, or that he necessarily used it or a similar framework.  It's more that Twelve-Part Structure fits as a framework quite nicely.
***- I'm looking at you, Percy Jackson movie.

A Question From My Agent

Last week my agent posted on his blog about "series death", including this question:

What can you as a writer do to hold onto that “core value” of a series?

 Series Death is a thing I think a lot about, especially since I do have a Long Term Plan.  The last thing I want is to drag things on past their sell-by date, or reach the point where I'm just painting in the numbers.  Or, worst of all in my opinion, where I'm just spinning my wheel, filling pages with "nothing happened". 

Two big things causes Series Death, in my opinion:
1. When the writer shifts from being hungry, eager to keep outdoing themselves,  to being lazy, cranking out more books for the sake of more books.
2. Connected to that, when the writer ceases seeing an end-goal for the series, and thus is forever shuffling the board instead of playing for the win.

So what can I do? (Besides the fact that my agent, saints willing, will keep my feet to the fire and not let me get lazy about these things?) 
The big one, for me, will be keeping my eye on the second one.  A series needs a good ending, and it needs to move towards that with every installment.  If the whole series is a journey from Point A to Point Z, every book in the series needs to make significant progress in that journey.  Some series end up dithering around Point Q or R, not sure how to pace out the final journey, since they don't know how many books they're going to write.

Can we raise a small glass to J.K. Rowling, who could have EASILY gone, "I think I'll make this nine or ten books" and dragged things out.  Instead, she planned it at seven, and kept it there.

And that's how you avoid it dying on you: By ending it intentionally. 

Which, according the the Big Crazy Plan, is exactly what I intend to do.

Third Act and Second Book Problems

Of late, in addition to hammering at the rough draft of Way of the Shield (yes, that's just a working title), I've been cranking out summaries for intended second and third books for Holver Alley Crew and Maradaine Constabulary.  Frankly, this part of the process is fun, but it is definitely something of a battle.  And right now the biggest battle is turning the rough notes of the third act of Maradaine Constabulary 3 (working title: This Most August Body) into something coherent enough for other people to make sense of.  Included with this is doing it in a way that A. makes for a nice resolution to the story of the book proper and B. turns the screws on arcplots. 

Going back to my six-book arc structure, roughly speaking, book three is where the first shoe drops.  Without giving away spoilers (for a book that, in a wildly-successful supremely best-case scenario, probably wouldn't come out until 2016), I know what that shoe drop is, and I know why it's going to happen... but key points of the how are still eluding me.  I think I'm on the verge of figuring it out.

Of course, there's only so much you can pack into a thousand-odd word summary.  One of my crit partners commented on my summary for Maradaine Constabulary 2 (working title: The Little East):

I'm guessing you went for a who-dunnit with a colorful cast of suspects, but it's not quite coming across in the outline, to me.  What makes the suspects interesting?  

A fair question, but it goes right to that point: the summary only gives the bones of the story.  I have reasonable confidence in my ability to do character and dialogue work (playwriting background, after all) to make the suspect pool dynamic and interesting.  But the summary won't make that clear.  Heck, the summary only names about half of the suspects.  (My outline notes are more complete along those lines.) 

So that's what's on my plate this week: cracking the third act of MCI03, and continuing to dig my way through the word mines for Way of the Shield.  What are you all working on?

 

Stepping Back to look at the Big Picture

This weekend was spent, in part, organizing and purging.  This tied, in part, to deciding to rename the warrior orders in Druthal.  Going through documents, finding outdated info, changing the names of things, purging out needless duplicates of paperwork.  (It's amazing how many times I've, frankly, thoughtlessly re-printed the same info.)  But I'm working on putting together both clean working files to reference (in Scrivener format primarily, though exporting that to a text format as well, in case of disaster), as well as a single, easy hard copy to go to if I need it.  It also involves digging through random handwritten notes (as I will jot down ideas just about anywhere) and making sure I've transcribed them somewhere where they'll do some good.

Part of this, of course, involved taking a good, hard look at the bigger picture of things.  I've made no secret of the fact that I have four different "heroes of Maradaine" series mapped out, with Thorn of Dentonhill, Holver Alley Crew, Maradaine Constabulary and Way of the Shield each representing the first of their own respective series.  Each of these four books stands alone just fine, though I've made a point of including hints and connections that pay off for readers who read everything. 

Now, I have a big crazy plan for each and all of these series, which I've worked to some degree.  Part of this weekend's process involved finding more detail to fill in, which then filtered back into the final bits of the Maradaine Constabulry re-write. 

On some level, I know that it's completely crazy to even be contemplating the level of plan that I have.  But I think in terms of epic.  And hopefully, I'll be able to make that pay off.

It occurs to me that this particular blog is coming off just a hair short of a total box of crazy.  Which is how stepping back and looking at my whole big-picture plan makes me feel, sometimes.  The scope of what I want to do is so huge, it feels like a tidal wave that I have to hold back.  It's almost the opposite of writer's block: there's so MUCH you can't get out. If I just let it go, it would be an intelligible word-salad of madness.  An unsolved jigsaw puzzle, dumped out on the floor.

Thus: Plan.  Organize.  Focus.  Build the edges of the puzzle first.  I've got three sides almost done, and I'm starting to build the fourth. 

This whole thing will probably make no sense to you, or it makes perfect sense, in which case you should probably be scared for your sanity.  Mine's toast. 

Off to the word mines.

Using Structure to Best Effect

Like I've always said, I'm a planner and an outliner. I can't just wing my way through a novel.I need my big picture.

Part of having that big picture outlook is knowing what the meat and bones of the story are ahead of time.  The dressing, the sinew, the sauce (depending on which metaphor you feel like using), that always comes out in the writing itself.  Sometimes on the second draft.  (Case in point, in the currently-wrapping-up Maradaine Constabulary, I've found Minox's whole extended family, something that didn't exist before.  Taking him out of the standard 'loner' trope has had some interesting effects.) 

But a problem I've run into, almost every time, is that desire to write those "meat and bones" scenes, making it something of a challenge to write those "sinewy tissue" scenes, that are just as necessary.  Each time, on Thorn, on Holver Alley, and on Maradaine Constabulary, I reached a point where, in frustration, I would write a [SCENE ABOUT THIS] notation and move ahead. 

And that's fine.  I think every writer needs to learn their own particular process, and accept how they work it.  It took me a while to realize I had to be a planner.  I had many, many crash-and-burns romanticizing the "just write and see where it takes me" method.  It doesn't work for me. 

(If that works for you, excellent.  I'm not knocking on any one person's methods.  If your methods work for you, then continue with what works.  Though I think people should always analyze whether something REALLY works for them, or they just THINK it does.)

Anyhow, I've now accepted that simply writing straight through in a linear way doesn't work for me.  I need to satisfy those urges to write the big tentpole sequences that hold the story up, and then use the ropes and canvas to hold it all together.

(I'm just throwing all sorts of metaphors around, aren't I?)

So, this is the experiment with Way of the Shield.  It'll also be my first attempt at writing a novel entirely on Scrivener.  Scrivener, of course, it's quite useful in non-linear writing.  Scenes can be written individually, and then assembled in the desired order, new scenes stuck in-between, and so forth.  I believe that this will yield faster results, as my finish-by goal for the rough draft is May 15th.

Down to the word mines I go.

The Problem with Being a Planner

I don’t ever tried to hide the fact that when it comes to the planner/pantser divide between writers, I fall firmly on the side of planners.  (Except when it comes to writing these blog entries.  With these, frankly, I’m usually winging it.  I’m sure it shows.) 

My problem with Planning, however, is my desire to Plan will kick into overdrive.  I don’t just plan a book.  I plan a series of books.  I plan long term.  I plan the full weave of things where sewing one thread into a story now is going to pay off in some imagined piece years down the line.

Which, given my current status as a writer, is kind of putting the cart before the horse.  I haven’t sold Thorn of Dentonhill yet.  I haven’t finished Holver Alley Crew or Maradaine Constabulary in a “this is ready to send to publishers” way.  (Both I’m in the process of re-writing.)  I haven’t even finished the first draft of Way of the Shield.  Does it matter that I have a six-book plan for each of those series?  Does anyone care?  Is it even a good idea to have such a plan?  Should I stop talking, like, right now?

It creates a problem, of course, because now and then, while writing, I get excited for scenes that are a long way off.  A LONG way.  And I write myself a little note and file it away where it needs to go, and get back to other work.

I wonder if other long-term planners work this way. 

The Full Twelve Part Outline Structure

I have mentioned, of course, that I'm a big fan of planning and outlining.  I have talked a few times about my Twelve Part Outline structure (and have talked at length about the first three parts), but I've never laid out the whole thing.  So I figured it was high time to do that.

Now, there are plenty of story structures out there, and they all follow the same basic form. The form is essentially this:

• Inciting Incident
• Escalating Conflict
• Dark Moment
• Climax
• Resolution

It's a solid, simple structure.  Pretty much every story essentially follows it.  But if you're trying to plan out a novel-length work (or, if you're really masochistic, a series-of-novels), it isn't all that helpful.  Mostly because the part of the book that most people have the most trouble with-- the MIDDLE-- is more or less represented by "Escalating Conflict".   The Twelve-Part Outline Structure addresses that, and gives the story a place to go. 

Now, I should say, I designed this structure for genre/action stories.  If your story isn't that kind of story, this structure might not fit. 

1. Establishment: Show character(s) and initial situation. Here's where you set up not only who your main character(s) is, but what the rules of the road are.  What is "normal" for your story?  If there is magic, for example, you need to let the reader know here.  Especially in a genre story, you need to make it clear what's going on.

2. Incitement: Incident or new information spurs protagonist. This may be interwoven with Establishment, or exist on its own, but the important this is that the something changes to throw us out of the Established "normal" and gets the protagonist acting. 

3. Challenge: Minor antagonists come into play. You can't throw the big guns at your protagonist yet.  Either your protagonist isn't aware of the Big Bad yet, or doesn't understand the scope of what is happening, or just plain isn't ready for the big picture yet.

4. Altercation:  Conflict with minor antagonists.  Give your protagonist a hard-won victory, even if it's minor or only symbolic.  This lets you show your protagonist as having the competence and drive to deserve being at the center of the story. 

5. Payback:  Minor antagonists report back to major, allowing a strike back.  That hard-won victory may have felt good, but it isn't without consequences.  Perhaps it means that your Big Bad just re-evaluated your protagonist, and has elevated the threat level from Nuisance to Problem.

6. Regrouping: Protagonist reacts to the payback, possibly in an ineffective way; thinks confrontation is over, relaxes.  Here is where your protagonist has another victory, but not the victory they think they've had.  This is where they make a mistake, be it underestimating the antagonist, or just sloppy pride.  That deep character flaw you've woven into them is set up to bite them back.

7. Collapse: Protagonist loses stability and safety of base situation.  Everything falls apart.  Whatever your protagonist thought they could count on crumbles under their feet.   

8. Retreat: Protagonist must leave base situation to escape threat from main antagonist. Deal them that serious blow.  Force their hand.

9. Recovery: Protagonist establishes a new situation, enough to be stable and safe. You need to give them a chance to lick their wounds, figure out where they stand, and if they can accept that.

10. Investment: Personal reason forces protagonist back into fray with main antagonist—they won’t choose to walk away.  This is where you make your heroes.  At this stage, a lesser protagonist would cut their losses, admit defeat.  Your protagonist can't do that.  It's time to see this to the end.

11. Confrontation: Goes after main antagonist, partly to reclaim investment. Now you're at the climax. 

12. Resolution: Defeat of main antagonist, which can create a new base situation or re-establish stability of original one.  Hey, look, it has the same name as in the other structure.  Don't fix what isn't broke.

Next week, I'll apply this structure to specific examples.

Structure vs. formula

There is always going to be the great Planner vs. Pantser argument amongst writers.  Of late, I've been seeing threads of hostility amongst the planners towards the pantsers.  Not open scorn, but a certain degree of, "Well, how is not planning REALLY working out for you?"  And I can see the argument behind the ideas that, if you're a "pantser", but don't finish things, or you write a couple hundred pages that you have to scrap and re-do, then you might consider the merits of some planning.

I, for one, am a planner through and through, because I've learned that's what works for me.  If a pantser finds that just going headfirst into the story and seeing where it goes works for them, power to them.  But I do wonder if a number of professed pantsers really need to be planners, but they don't know how to plan, or they're afraid of what it might mean.

Part of that, I think, is confusing structure with formula.  Planning out a story based on structure is just figuring out the bones, placing the signposts that will guide the writing. I'm all about structure. Formula, on the other hand, is a different beast.  There, you're talking about exact points, executed at exact moments, to re-create something else that already succeeded.  I've been told that for Hollywood Screenplays, one needs to follow a rather exacting formula (to the level of, "On Page 15, THIS has to happen.  Then on page 18, THIS has to happen.")  That's no way to generate a dynamic, creative work. 

Structure, for me, gives me the skeleton, and I've come up with one that helps me put my stories together.  I've talked about it before (previous posts on my Twelve-Part Outline), and I'll be talking about it more in the near future.

What sort of structure do you use?  Or is it pure pantsing?  If it is, I'm really curious to hear how that works better.

The Twelve Part Outline, Part III

The third part of the twelve part outline, following Establishment and Incitement, is Challenge. I define this section as "minor antagonists are put into play". The protagonists aren't going to face the Big Bad, not yet. They may not even know there IS a big bad. But whatever path the protagonist is on, thanks to the Incitement, leads them to some trouble. More or less, what I've done is introduce the protagonist, and prod him to action, and now we see what problems they have because of that.

Now, this can take a lot of forms. In Thorn of Dentonhill, it's mostly physical-- Veranix pursuing the drug dealers cracking down on them. In Holver Alley Crew, it's more cerebral-- planning the first robbery they are going to do together. For Maradaine Constabulary, it's a bit of both-- Katrine and Minox trying to question people who have no intention of cooperating with the constabulary inspectors.

For some examples you might be more familiar with, in Raiders of the Lost Ark, this is Indy going to Tibet to get the amulet from Marion. Or in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indy and Elsa in Venice, searching for the Knight's tomb.

In the grand scheme of things, this is still the small potatoes, though to the protagonists, and even the minor antagonists, it may not seem like it. It can be life or death for them. They just don't know how bad things can get. Yet.

Outlines and the Graveyard

I think it goes without saying that every writer has a graveyard; the place where dead projects are left to molder. The ecologist in me believes the ideas found in those dead projects break down and filter back up, get a chance to be used again.

For me, my graveyard is mostly filled with proof of the necessity of outlining. Several projects that were mostly borne of a single idea, and I immediately went putting pen to paper, figuring it would all come together as I wrote.

That was not what happened, of course.

My thoughts today went back to one of those graveyard projects, from over 15 years ago. Not to the point where I would revive it-- I really don't see that happening-- but just reminiscing. This one really was a Big Idea kind of project.

The Big Idea was this: What if five men, all born on Earth in the 1970s, were destined to be at a specific event on a distant planet in 3184? To all be there at the right time and place, they would have to use extraordinary means. I decided that each journey would have to be different.

One of them would become a test astronaut, doing the distance and time in cryo-sleep. One of them would learn magic, and fling himself directly through time and space to the appointed meeting. One would die and be resurrected when the moment came. Those three had the "short path", as it were.

The other two guys had the "long path". Or, one long and one indirect. One of them (Jake) essentially became immortal through little more than an act of will, deciding to live long enough to still be alive centuries later. The other (Ian) received a map of time/space portals, allowing him to travel all around time and space, making sure various pieces were in place for the event to occur (including sending the map to himself). These two, inevitably, became my more central characters of the five, as they had to deal with the intervening moments that led up to the Big Event, while the other three guys got to skip over them all.

The thing is, all of this is a whole lot of Big Idea, but not a whole lot of actual story. A big part of that comes down to not having any outline. Mostly what got written was a few vignettes where Ian would emerge through a portal, usually somewhere near Jake, and depending on where each of them was on their personal timeline, one of them would Know What Needs To Happen, and the other would be clueless and confused. None of these vignettes really amounted to much of anything, mostly because whichever character was more in the know would inevitably pull the "You Can't Know That Yet" card, in a lame attempt on my part to build mystery. This was in no small part to the fact that I honestly had NO IDEA where I was going with anything. Especially the Big Event. What the hell could it be, and why did it need these five guys there? No clue. I never came up with anything that I didn't immediately decide was either anticlimactic, contradictory or just plain stupid.

So, my point is, in the end, I need that outline. Especially if I set up something leading to a big climax.

Though, at some point, I might want to revisit some of these ideas. At the very least, there is something intriguing that could be done with the out-of-order friendship of an immortal and a time-traveller.

The Twelve Part Outline, Part II

This series on the structure of my Twelve Part Outline will not, in all likelihood, track with my writing progress on Maradaine Constabulary, if for no other reason than the simple fact that it's a lot faster to write about each stage of the outline plan than it is to actually write each stage. On top of that, there is the way in which I write, which having a structured outline allows me to do. I will on occasion jump ahead of myself-- write that Exciting Bit that I know will be happening later, and then go back and fill in that connective tissue to make the whole thing a cohesive whole.

Anyway, Part II: Incitement. This is where the actual plot gets rolling. Establishment puts the pieces into play, it sets up the go-cart at the top of the hill. Incitement is pushing it down the hill and seeing what happens.

What it comes down to is, whatever comfortable status quo the characters were in at the Establishment now needs to be changed, to get things moving, to prod them into action. So something has to happen, some new information has to present itself, or some other thing is imposed upon them. In Maradaine Constabulary, having established my characters as Inspectors and partners, Incitement is a pretty easy thing: give them a murder to solve. And since this is a fantasy world, and just to make it a little more interesting, the dead body was a mage.

The Twelve Part Outline, Part I

I've reached a word count of 5554 with Maradaine Constabulary: The Mage Murders, which also puts me quite cleanly at the end of the first part of my twelve-part outline structure: Establishment.

I prefer the word Establishment over, say, Introduction, although introduction is a key element. But in my mind, this first section of the book is about not only letting the reader know the main characters, who they are and what they are up to, but about getting a firm toehold into what the world is about. This is the foundation upon which the rest of the book is built.

Here we've got my main two characters, Katrine and Minox, with Katrine as the POV character, where she establishes herself in her new situation (see, there's that word) that sets the stage for what she's doing now. When I first drafted the outline for this book, I came up with the idea that Katrine had a big secret, and it would come out at part seven of the outline (Collapse). But there was no reasonable way to have Katrine's POV and dance around said secret, I realized. The secret, in and of itself, could not be the bomb that gets dropped. So I put it right in the beginning. Right in the very first sentence:

Katrine Casey walked to the Inemar Bank Constabulary House carrying a lie.

The over the course of the Establishment, we have her meet Minox, and get a grasp who he is, t least through her eyes. We also meet four other secondary characters, whose roles, I will admit, are not entirely fleshed out in the existing outline. That is part of the discovery of writing. The process of outlining never takes that away.

Anyhow, I've found that for the Establishment, around 5000-6000 words is a good zone, especially with a target length of 80-90K. It's also, for me, one of the harder parts to write, because it's part of the mental process of getting into the world and the characters. Once I've established that in my head, the rest becomes clearer.