I’m seven pages into the rework of my chapter 15. So far it’s kept most of the character and plot points it started with though the characters have been significantly revised since the last go around, and the events leading up to it have also changed a lot. The problem I’m having thought is that I’m not satisfied with the words hitting the page. I’ll write a bit of scene and look back over it, just to make sure I got the entire thought. Entirely too often, I don’t like what I’m seeing. Part of it is my own overly critical eye, the other part is that I’m not sure HOW to make it better than it is -perhaps I’ll need a friend with a red pen. I would say that what I’m writing flows reasonably well and has adequate description and action, but it’s not as good as I want it to be. I’m forcing myself to just let it go and continue on. All of the highlights are in there. I think right now the best thing to do is to work through the revision, go back through one more time, and continue on through the story. I’ll just have to let it sit and simmer before I can go back and think about the polishing process. Anyhow, that’s today’s thought.
Category Archives: writing process
Nothing to do with writing.
Yesterday I work until about 7:30, with the idea that I would be able to cut two hours off of my workday, and spend at least one quiet hour in the sun room revising chapter 15. Of course, that’s just impossible. I’m sitting here about an hour and a half after my planned work day should have mostly ended, and I’m still fielding e-mails, shoving budget requests off until tomorrow, and thinking hard about my current problem. This problem is extra special. I WISH it were about writing. I’m sitting here staring at survey results and trying to decide if my model for estimating community income should be partially replaced with a boot-strapping approach. The sticking point is all of the various pieces of missing data. Anyhow. I’m not going to continue to bore anyone with this problem. No doubt I’ll crack my head against it for an entire day tomorrow and come up with a solution that I’ll feel good about. For now, my head is splitting, and my alarm to go get the kids from school just went off. I think all hopes of working on chapter 15 seem more or less dead for the day, and I managed to waste the only 5 minutes I had to do it, writing this blog. Oh well… Maybe tomorrow. I suppose I should focus on the important things in life: Did the children remember all of their homework, and what the hell do I cook for dinner?
Chapter transitions and Jameson 18
I’m working on a transition between my unexpected chapter 14, and chapter 15. Chapter 15 is a lovely bit of the story because I’ve had it drafted since my story was little more than a sketch so it’s pretty well polished. The problem I’ve got though, and have had since the chapter was originally written, is that I’m still struggling to develop a good transition from the previous chapter. Trying to work this out brings me back to well worn ground. How do you open a chapter? Chapter 1 feels like a special case, for starters, you haven’t got to connect it to a previous chapter, and also you don’t have to worry about starting it in exactly the same way as the previous chapter –because there isn’t one. My horrible, awful and cringe-worthy habit is to start them out with the main character waking up. I hate it and yet inevitably this is where I’m drawn. Just being aware of this unfortunate habit gives me the opportunity to address it, and believe me I am. I really don’t have a good solution for this except to say that it’s probably not a good idea to always start your chapters with the same kind of action, unless there is some very specific reason to.
Fortunately, my problem with chapter 15 isn’t that the main character is waking up at the start of it for the 10th chapter in a row. Instead, the issue at hand is specific to pacing. In chapter 14. The action concludes and the main characters are orienting themselves for the next leg of their journey. In chapter 15, they reach their goal and the action resumes. In between the end of chapter 14 and their goal in 15 are two days of travel. I don’t particularly want to spend a lot of time describing their journey down the road or insert some sort of additional conflict as they go. I could add a bit of conflict here before they reach their goal, but it feels like adding unnecessary events that I’ll just need to cut anyhow. For now, I think I’m going to start with a description of the landscape as it has changed over their two days, and use something like a flash-back to describe those two days of travel. The summary will probably cover no more than a few paragraphs, but to work, I think it’s going to need to be longer than a few sentences. Then, I’ll just continue plugging away at trying to have all of book one into a full draft. After that, I’ll go back and start revising, one problem at a time. Looking at chapter transitions is going to be one of those things, I think.
As I’m writing this, I’m working on a little glass of Jameson 18 year (neat, if you must know). My brother-in-law gave it to my wife and I for Christmas. It’s frikin’ excellent. Smooth with hints of pear and cinnamon. It’s really excellent stuff and I highly recommend it.
On Writing Dragons 