Category Archives: writing process

by

Over the mountain

The thing that draws me to a fantasy or science fiction first is the promise of an interesting world. A place that is vivid, unique and somewhere I can relate to. I read a few science fiction books set in worlds completely unlike our own. In one case it was particularly jarring. I made it through the story, but spent most of the time trying to understand how the characters actually fit into the place. Perhaps the author’s purpose was to describe how bizarre it would be to live in a place like that. If so, he got it, but I also felt like it was at the cost of a compelling story. Now, I get it that this isn’t really the same as writing fantasy, which are typically set in places we might recognize, but it’s a lesson I’m trying to apply.

Where I live, there are places so surreal they seem like you just stepped on to the page of a fantasy. Last year I was hiking with some friends, and thick fog rolled in. With it, came an icy dampness. We came over the top of a hill I’d never gone over before. At the top was a swamp. We might as well have been in the dead marshes (actually I took a picture and told my children this is where we went). When the fog lifted, some lensing trick of the atmosphere made the mountains across the valley behind us seem to tower over us, even though they were still miles away and normally didn’t appear even half that tall. Another place that sticks out in my mind is down at the end of a bay where the land and islands climb out of the water hundreds of feet in sheer grey cliffs, topped with massive spruce trees. Bits of cloud often cling to these cliffs where thousands of birds swirl around squalling.

Sometimes, when I’m driving around I look at the mountains and wonder what’s just over them. Perhaps some place fantastic is out there waiting to be discovered. It seems to me that those worlds, filled with totally routine kinds of things can be almost as fantastic as a fictional place. This is the place that I started, and just added some imaginary stuff with a few odd details, and I like it. There are times when I’m trying to revise where I get drawn into my own story, walking up the road under the rustling canopy of oaks and elms.

by

Rewriting the first chapter

Great, now I’ve got to rewrite the first chapter. The driver of the whole story as it’s written so far. Do I just trash the whole thing? Yes, I think I have to, maybe I can keep a little bit.

This is where I was a couple of months ago. It sucked. 15 chapters drafted, and I realized that the first chapter may have launched the action, but didn’t fit with the rest of the story. (At this point a professional writer might say: How is that even possible? – Well it is for me, because I’m not a pro.) That chapter started life as a bit of back-story for a supporting character. The idea was a tragic and secret love-story to explain his motivations. I had a lot of attempts to get my story going and I had characters and a general story arc, just not a good starting point. All I needed was a place I could launch the action that needed to happen. When I made the decision to swap the supporting character for the main character in that first bit of back-story, doors opened. I had motivation for the main character, a way to introduce the antagonist and an excellent introduction to the world.

From that first chapter, the second, third, and fourth chapters came easily. They were horrid the first go around, and I spent a lot of time rewriting them. I like them now, and liked them a couple of months ago. At that point I was ready to share the work, and the immediate feedback was that first chapter was good, but the story of it didn’t really fit with the direction of the rest of the story. In order to make it work, I would either have to expand chapter 1 into at least one more chapter and change significant plans for the main character in the future, or do something different. The conclusion I came to is that I had to scrap that first chapter. Well, that dropped me into a lurch. The action after just didn’t go and those subsequent chapters didn’t make a lot of sense without a launch point significantly similar to the original first chapter.

After throwing a tantrum for a while about having to throw away what had amounted to weeks of writing time – which translates into years for me given all of my other commitments – I spent some thinking about the problem, and managed to find a suitable revision. It was still a complete re-write, but it kept all of the key plot elements necessary to move the action forward. In fact, as far as story structure goes, it’s better. The style of that first chapter is more like the rest now (which was a related problem I’d been struggling with), the introduction of the main character was generally better, and the conflict I was trying to explain seemed to make more sense. The best part of this revision is that it didn’t require huge changes to subsequent chapters. However, there is a major drawback – the first chapter as it is now still needs a lot of revision and polishing. It’s nothing I can’t deal with though.

This experience has taught me an important lesson, one that I should already know: If most of the plot is working, there is no reason you shouldn’t be able to rewrite major portions (all?) of early chapters and still salvage the majority of the writing.

Aside by

There are times, particularity when I’m having a difficulties carving out time to write, when I start to feel a little discouraged. It gets worse when I start looking at what other writers are up to or have accomplished. The problem is that I love my project, but I’m super-critical and when I start thinking about all of the great concepts and finished works out there, my work really starts to seem juvenile. It’s a challenge for me to just not give up sometimes. (like I really have a choice in the matter. I’ve tried to give up this project more than once, but in the end, I continue to think about it and pick it back up.) This blog is actually an attempt to prevent that sort of thing. The idea being that if I can share my thoughts, maybe get some feedback, it’ll keep me motivated. Maybe my story really isn’t as good as all of those other things I read or hear about, and won’t ever go beyond just a few friends, but I think that’ll be better than feeling down because I defeated myself before I got started.

Becoming discouraged