And Progress Is Made!

Despite the lack of motivation that I've been suffering from during the last week or so, I'm happy to report that progress has officially been made on my latest project, Dangerous Waters.

I've been trying to rework this project, which I've written once, and am currently in the process of giving a complete overhaul, for a couple of weeks now, though only seriously since I finished Pandora and sent that out to my last beta reader before it moves onto the stage of agents (scary!).  But this last week, I had stalled out on it.

I was worried it was because of how I was planning it out.  Rather than doing a full on planning (which I didn't think necessary, as the story has already been written once, no matter how different it's going to be when I'm done) I've been using the cork board I bought to help me figure out the restructuring Pandora currently went through.

The last time I worked on it, I had nine chapters up on the board and absolutely no idea on where the story was going.  In fact, those nine chapters weren't very good.  Okay, it wasn't the chapters themselves, just the order (and the emphasis I was putting on them).

I figured out the problem, eventually.  The novel centres around three women (who are the main characters of the entire series) and I was trying to give them all equal say in the novel.  In order to do that, I was structuring it very specifically, making sure that they each got a turn one after the other.

Needless to say, it wasn't going over very well.  So, I decided that one of the characters needed to be the main POV, whether or not the tension of the story revolved around her.  When I figured that out, I tried to restructure again, this time giving her twice as many chapters as the other two.

Again I found myself looking at those opening chapters and thinking that they just weren't right.  There wasn't enough action, or plot, or even world building.  They all felt like filler chapters, and that couldn't happen.

So tonight, when I finally decided that enough was enough and I was going to get some work done or die trying (okay...I wasn't actually willing to die over getting work done...but, hey, I'm a writer, I'm allowed to exaggerate) I sat down and stared at the board.

It took a while to get into it.  At first all that happened was taking down the cue cards and trying to figure out what was wrong with them.  Eventually, though, I managed to get that ball rolling.  Scene after scene started to present itself to me.  And, rather than focusing on whose POV was being used, I focused on where the story needed to go, and what would help me get there.

As a result there are currently seventeen chapters up on the cork board.  And the best part?  They feel right!  Like the story is actually moving, and there's enough tension and plot to not stall out!

I'm pretty excited to rework this project.  It was one of my favourites, and I know that my critique group will be happy too.  I can't wait to see what the final result will be.  I have a good feeling, though.  This novel is going to go somewhere.  Now all I have to do is figure out what I'm going to work on next.

Do you have any tips on how to get past those block?  How do you figure out what POV each scene needs to be from?

Oh, The Joys of Writing

Today I get to kill someone.  Okay, well I get to decide who gets killed, but not actually kill them.

Before you call the cops, I suppose I should explain.  My epiphany (which is what I'm calling the writing exercises I've been working on) today requires me to gather together three or four ordinary people whose task it is to decide who should be killed.  I'm not allowed to convey why they have to do this, and I'm not supposed to reveal their thought process, other than what is spoken out loud to each other, and the death is not supposed to happen in the scene.

My first reaction when I read the assignment?  This is going to be fun!

Which started me thinking.  Just how sadistic am I?  This is a topic that my friends and I have all the time.  And our non-writer friends usually give us that look like they're worried we're about to have a mental breakdown.  We don't take offense to that.  If we were them we would probably be worried about the same thing.

Because I'm a writer, though, I understand the thought process that goes into the idea that having a group of ordinary people deciding on who they're going to kill is fun.  I understand that if this were happening in real life, I would be absolutely horrified.  No doubt I would seeing a news story about it, my mouth would drop open and I would think  'that's terrible!'

The fact is, though, the person getting killed is a character.  And not just any character, but my own character.

While I often contend that my characters are real to me, the truth is I know just how not real they are.  And how real I need to make them feel.

That's the heart of it, really.  We as writers are aware of just how not real our characters are.  And we know that our readers will feel the same way.  So we make them real by putting them in situations that no one would ever want to be in and force them to make a decision, or react.  That's how we can make them 'real' even in our own heads.  That's how they get their voices and personalities.  It's how we form them in our heads.

So when I say that it will be 'fun' to place characters in this situation, what I really mean is this is going to be interesting.  To see how there characters grow and develop in the short amount of time I'm giving them.

To see what answer they come up with.

Now I'm going to go force my characters to make an impossible decision.  Wish me luck.

What's the worst situation you've ever put a character in?

Wait, That Wasn't Supposed To Happen (Day 6)

As I'm sure all of you are aware by now, I'm a planner. Not just a casual planner, either. I plan my books longer than I write them. (For those of you thinking that's not saying much, I do spend about a month on planning, so that's something, right?)

Anyway, because I spend so much time planning, I never expect my books to hold too many surprises. I know that I'll get some, I just don't expect them to be too big, or noteworthy. And I'm okay with that, honestly. I almost prefer not having the surprises. It makes the writing easier, because I'm not sitting there wondering why this character is acting that way, or whether that other character is important or not.

So, I started to write the first book I have planned out for NaNo this year. (Stolen Magick is a YA set in a school that teaches young Arcanists how to control their magick, which presents more as abilities than typical magic scenarios. This school also accepts humans, and the two groups, which aware of each other, and even mingling in occasional classes, are kept mostly separate. Phaedra joins the school after her mother dies. Originally she is though human, but eventually she discovers she has magick too, and soon chaos reins)

It was going pretty good. The chapters weren't ending up as long as I thought they were going to be, and I'll admit, I was a little worried about reaching the 80k I needed this book to be, but the story itself was going exactly the way I had planned. Maybe that's why it happened.

The first thing to go wrong was a chapter being added. I'd realized that there was more that I hadn't shown that could be important. First one chapter, then two and now I'm sitting at eight chapters added.

The next thing was a character forced herself in to the book. She started out as just a girl walking past Phaedra making a comment. When she appeared in another scene and named herself, though, I knew I was in trouble.

Once she was added, another character showed up, this one much more unique and surprising.

The enemy of my character (not the antagonist, they just didn't get along) turned out to be so much nicer than I originally thought. I added too many layers and now she's friends with Phaedra!

Two more subplots somehow wound themselves in there around the two characters that showed up, both subplots will be extending multiple books.

And, finally, there was a love interest that I hadn't originally planned on. Between Phaedra and one of the characters I had originally planned on. Which would have been fine, except that I knew he was dying about half way through the book, and every time they were cute it made me that much more sad when I had to kill him.

Before you say it, I know, these surprises are making the book better, but it's just so frustrating to have to change the basic plot of my book that I worked so hard on to accommodate everything. I'm finding myself constantly thinking of new things that would be happening because of it, and my easy, no hassle book is suddenly inserting itself in to my life.

I suppose I'll just have to go along with it and hope that my other books don't do the same thing. Hopefully I'll have a much better book in the end. Can't wait to see how it turns out!

Do you ever find yourself with surprises in your novel? Are you a planner, or a pantser?

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Daily Word Count: 11,079

Total Word Count: 66,092