Category Archives: writing process

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Is this thing done?

Not my story, I’m still drafting big pieces of it. I was just thinking about this because I just read a blog post from Patricia C. Wrede (http://pcwrede.com/writing-is-like-weather/). A point she seems to make in there is: Don’t sweat the small stuff. I like it, but made me question part of my process. I often go back to previous chapters to make sure characters and events are consistent. Often, when I do this, I revise what I’ve got there, sometimes dramatically. So, how do I know that it’s good enough for now? Well, I have no idea. The answer to the question is this thing done? for me, and I expect most writers, is NO. That applies to each sentence, paragraph, and chapter.

I try not to focus on looking for problems or things that don’t work so well, unless I’m making a specific effort to revise based on feedback or changes I’ve made to the story. This seems to work fairly well. If the prose is bad, I’ll be forced to stop and fix things as I go along. Occasionally, I’ll find myself being drawn into my own story, as if it were a favourite read rather than something I’m actively working on. These are the rare points where I decide it’s ‘good enough.’ It doesn’t mean that I’m calling it done, just that it’s good enough for now, and I can think about on other stuff.

I think the point of this rubber-ducking exercise is to remind myself to focus on the big picture right now. I can always go back and fix the technical bits of my story whenever, and as many times as I like.

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Where’s Waldo?

How many characters should I have?

This question borders on stupid, really, the answer is obvious: As many as it takes to tell the story.

Okay, great, as many as it takes, got it… How many you reckon that is?

For someone like me, these questions don’t seem stupid, nor does the obvious answer help. In my mind these are major issues. As a reader it’s easy to look at a huge epic fantasy series with dozens of main characters and think: “I am NOT going to to that” – or – “I totally want to do that”. I’m in more of the where’s Waldo? camp. That is, I really prefer to know who the main character is within a chapter or two. I get frustrated at stories where I’ve got to re-read a chapter just to meet and remember all of the characters who seem equally important. Now, it’s not that I think these are badly done, it’s that I don’t like them. From that perspective, I’m going to focus on writing a story where there are fewer characters to deal with.

When I started on my current project, I tried to keep the number of characters to an absolute minimum. This was a problem. Mainly because you’ve got to start with enough people to have dialogue and also conflict, even if it’s something as simple as a stolen horse. Someone’s got to do it and ideally there will be at least a couple of others to talk about it. Right off the bat that’s 3 people, and I haven’t even gotten the main character out of his village yet. Perhaps it’ll take a few more people to get him down the road. Turns out my minimalist ideal wasn’t an approach that would work with the story I’m writing, and after thinking about it starting off with 3 seems like a good rule of thumb.

So, what was my solution to keep the number of characters to something I felt comfortable with? Well, first of all the story is a 3rd person limited, with a focus on two specific characters with the idea that I’m going to stick with that one sub-plot. The second bit is that I’m trying to keep the number of characters in any given scene in the range of 3-4, more than that is hard anyhow (not impossible, of course, just hard). Thirdly, and most importantly, I only add in characters who are absolutely essential to the scene. The last part is that I avoid naming characters who aren’t significant to the story as a whole. So, a character might be essential for a scene, but doesn’t get a name because she isn’t essential to the larger story. This category of character is only given a one or two word description instead of a proper name – this is a super common approach, but I’m taking it a little further than you usually see it in that these names are how the main characters think about them and apply to people that would usually get a name.

These are tricks I’ve seen in tons of other stories, and so I don’t know that it qualifies as advice, or even gets to the point, but this is how I’m approaching my story. I’m sure I’ll have more to say on the subject at some point.

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The end is in sight

The actual end is not in sight, but I can see how to get there now. I’ve still got 5-6 chapters do draft from scratch before I land at a point where the action resolves for this story and sets up for the second part of the story (this project is planned to be a multi-part series, I’ve got a chapter 1 drafted already for the next part).

I spent the last two writing days (maybe 5 hours total?) re-working a few chapters that have been drafted for a long while and haven’t undergone significant revision yet. The last of these chapters was split into two, it should have been that way from the beginning, and that second half now needs to be almost completely re-done, and possibly split into a 3rd chapter. When I went to bed last night I put myself in the shoes of the main character, trying to figure out what to do. Needless to say, it took forever to fall asleep, and now I don’t remember half of what I’d come up with. On the bright side, I remember a few of the key elements I was thinking about, which will go on my story-line note cards, as soon as I remember where I stuck them. What I mostly remember though is that the last of those scenes could make for an intense fight. So, all I’ve got to do is get my characters to that point, and from this vantage it seems almost easy, except for the part where I’ve got to dredge up time to focus on it. Of course, then comes the hard part – revision and polishing.