Category Archives: plotting

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Fast Forward

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If for some reason you’ve made the very poor judgment call to actually read this blog with any regularity, then I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking: Holy crap Dave you’ve written two blogs in almost as many days! (I say almost because they were each posted at opposite fringes of two consecutive days). Now, if you’ve made the even bigger judgment error of continuing to read, here’s what’s on my mind:

I’m working on Wine Bottles and Broomsticks – all the way out in chapter 9, if you can believe that. So far, it’s been fun, possibly the most fun writing project I’ve had to date. However, I’m now staring at a problem. It’s not a major problem, like a terrible character or gaping plot hole or a plot that just isn’t going anywhere. Nope. That’s not it at all.

I just reached a stopping point.

Dave?

Yes?

You’re just a little over 30K in and you haven’t even gotten to the main point of action you’re building up to.

You can see why this is a problem for me.

Okay fine, it feels like a stopping point, make 9 a short chapter and move on.

Well, that’s the sticking point.

I really don’t see how – are you making this a bigger problem than it is?

No-no, it’s not like that, what I want to do is fast-forward a few weeks. To this point in the story, things have more or less gone day by day. There haven’t been any major breaks in time, however, I’d like to skip ahead to avoid some rather tedious and unnecessary repetition. I want to jump to a scene just before the action really starts to pick up again. In order to make that work, I’m going to have to recap the previous few weeks of time. I don’t see an awful lot going on in that span of time, and I need some depth of time to pass in order for later elements to really be believable.

I think you may have already made a decision Dave.

No. I haven’t, actually. By skipping ahead, I’m cutting out a lot of time in which I can develop plot and characters, it’s just that outline-wise, I don’t have a hell of a lot to actually drop in there. Not only that, I run the risk of throwing off the pacing and making the end of the story feel rushed. No proper build up.

Okay, you know what, you’re clearly not going to take my advice, perhaps you need to get a second opinion.

That’s a great idea. Any takers?

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The anatomy of a re-write #2

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I wasn’t going to post another one of these, but as all my writing time, precious little as there is at the moment, I’m lacking in other observations or problems to rant about. So, last night (last couple of nights really), I’ve spent most of my free time watching Doc Martin and flipping through stuff on the interwebs. Not the best use of my time, I know. One of the things I came across is a series on Kristen Lamb’s blog (https://warriorwriters.wordpress.com/), called Anatomy of a best selling story. There are six parts to this, and I’m not going to bother trying to summarize, you can read it. Instead, I’d rather talk about the few things I took from those blogs.

Kristen Lamb started out by saying you should be able to give a synopsis of your book in 1-3 sentences. There’s no way in hell I could do that. After reading that series, I think I know why. My WIP isn’t about anything! – Ok, that’s not true, it’s just muddy, making a synopsis difficult. I’ve been much more focused on the plot of the series, leaving the plot of this book limp.

She pointed out a few things that got me thinking, and consequently helped me identify some weak points. Stripping away all of the pizza analogies, and sponge-bob pictures, I came away with the following:

Each scene, chapter, and the entire book needs to follow this basic pattern.
1.) MC has a goal
2.) MC is prevented from reaching goal by ‘antagonist’
3.) MC prevails over antagonist and reaches goal

On point 3, this is where the rule-breaking starts. You can always write a chapter where an MC fails to reach a goal. In the end of the book however, your MC must reach some goal, defeat some antagonist. An important thing to keep in mind, and this is the ‘bar’ for me, is that the MC’s success doesn’t have to mean saving the world from destruction. This can be a problem in fantasy. There’s this series I love by Bernard Cornwell called the Saxon Tales. At the end of each book the MC defeats the Danes, but at the beginning of the next book, there’s a new pile of, slightly more dangerous, Danes waiting to make their attack. It’s historical fiction, so it grounded on that score. The point is that the MC is not saving the world each time. The only important thing is that we are rooting for the MC, because he’s likable, and the story is written so that we care about the stakes. So, when the Danes are kicked out of Alfred’s Wessex, after a long and bloody fight, we’re satisfied with it.

Point #2 is, I think, what I learned the most on. It’s a simple thing, and it’s the root of conflict. The key here is that the antagonist, and this is exceptionally important, can be ANYTHING, Including the MC him(her)self. Kristen Lamb has some guidelines on this as well, but I’m not convinced. Done well, anything works – just keep in mind that certain situations are damn hard to pull off. The Antagonist for a chapter, scene, hell book for that matter, doesn’t have to be a person, it only needs to be something that prevents the MC from achieving his or her goal, and each of those layers in your book needs to have an antagonist.

Point #1 has the least wiggle room. If your MC doesn’t have a goal, you don’t have a story. Again, depending on the circumstances, the goal can be anything. It just has to be something the MC feels s/he must do or is somehow obliged to do. Turns out lack of a clear goal is a major problem in my WIP. It’s not that there’s not conflict, it’s that the antagonist of the book is not what I had originally imagined. For the broader series, however, the main antagonist is clear in my mind. I’ve written the book such that the MC is dragged along into a course of events (aren’t all heroes?) and so his goal isn’t always so clear. Without a clear goal, it’s hard to pinpoint what’s preventing him from reaching that goal (thus no antagonist). This lack of a clear antagonist makes some of my chapters, while interesting, lack purpose and punch, which leads into issues with the overall plot.

All that said. I’ve found a problem and some of the causes of the problem. Now what?

First off, the realization that I’m missing some important structure had me asking who is the antagonist of the book? Well, it’s not who I thought it was. Furthermore, it’s not even a person. It’s a bit more obscure than that. While my main ‘bad guy’ certainly helps kick off the action, he’s not defeated in book 1. Not only that, he’s not standing in the way of any particular goal for the MC, at least not as far as this book is concerned.

With that in mind. I’ve decided that revising the last few chapters might be a waste of time until I go back through and revise the entire book to highlight the real ‘antagonist’ of the book. Many of the early chapters should become stronger and give the MC an opportunity to come out stronger as well.

To bring this around, how does this get me to describing my story in one sentence? I still can’t quite get id down to 1, but I can distill it. Provided I re-work my story well, it’ll read something like like:

The road of shadows, abandoned and quiet for over five hundred years, haunted by the ghosts of long dead soldiers, has awoken. In an effort to seize control of the kingdom, Lord Feorun has begun to muster the evil of the road. Neoth the Rogue, exiled son of a duke, has been drawn into the fight, the untapped power within him is the only thing standing between Lord Feorun’s army of ghosts and the fall of the kingdom.

Meh. Needs work, but Rome wasn’t built in a day either, and I’m still editing anyhow.

photo credit: Don’t be afraid! via photopin (license)

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Re-writing

So, I finished a chapter this weekend that I’ve been struggling with for a while. I went back tonight and skimmed it, then went back and re-read the chapter before it. It needs to be re-written. It’s not a well done chapter, and it doesn’t fit the rest of the sub-plot, which is actually very well written. The weird thing here is that while I’m not thrilled about being set-back, I’m not particularly upset about it. Perhaps it’s because I’m not in love with the chapter anyhow, I don’t know. What I do know is that the highlights of the chapter I had drafted this weekend will stay, but the circumstances will change.

This has been a major part of all re-writing I’ve done. For most of the chapters I have re-done, all of the main plot elements haven’t changed, they just look different than I had initially imagined them. Even some of the ideas I had thought were thrown out have managed to creep back in somehow. All that said, the more I think about the revelation that I’ve got to scrap this weekend’s work, the better I feel about it and the more energized I am about the re-write. Being full of energy and excitement about a chapter seems like the best way to get it done. This is especially true if I’ve already taken a crack at it and have the sketch of where I want it to go. If I had my way I’d skip work tomorrow just to do it. It may be that’s not going to happen, but I will have tomorrow evening. Anyhow, that’s the thought for tonight – Don’t dread the re-write, embrace it!