Writer's Wednesday: Developing a New Story

 It felt like about time to write about the writing process again, not just about me! Though of course anything I say about the process is actually about me--about my process, which is by no means "the" process, or even one of the best.

Since my new Pismawallops PTA mystery is being proof-read, I'm moving on (sort of) to the next project--developing a new mystery series. Since the last time I developed a new series, rather than a new book in an existing world, is a fair ways back, I'm figuring out how to do that. I was going to say that I'm figuring it out all over again, but I remembered that when I wrote the first Pismawallops PTA book I didn't have an outline for the book, much less any sort of pre-developed world.

Since I also remember the mess that created, I'm trying to go at this one in a more orderly fashion. I've read a lot about how to develop your characters by thinking about their needs/wants/desires, how to develop setting, and so on. Playing with all these things might be a good idea, or might just be a way to keep moving forward a little bit while I continue to struggle with actual writing. I'm okay with it either way, because every bit of thinking and planning I do now will help, even the bits I'll toss out.

Yes, you read that right. I do believe that the brainstorming bits that end up being tossed are still valuable! Anything that gets the creative juices flowing is to be embraced and cherished, and I never know which bit that I thought was no good will come back and prove to be part of the story somewhere.

At this point, the process looks kind of like this:

• A new character invites herself into my brain. Since I'm busy with another project, I jot a few notes and carry on. This started last fall, which I had illusions of being able to do NaNoWriMo.
  
• My new character just kind of quietly hangs around, and from time to time I jot down more notes about who she is, what her story is, and so on. She's gradually becoming more real. This is still going  on.
  
• I start to think about her setting. She came to me with a mental image of her on her front porch, with her flower beds in full bloom, so I know a few things. From that I begin to build a town. (In this case, I have toyed with a number of locations for the town, trying to find one that fits the town that insists on planting itself in my mind. I am going to have to modify that vision a bit to fit reality).
• The real progress comes when I give myself permission to think actively about her story. Now I am jotting notes about the book as well as her backstory. What kind of mystery, exactly, will this be? (I know it will be a cozy, but there are degrees of coziness, including those with no corpse. More waffling ensues). I'm still in this stage.
  
• Other characters emerge. Most of the minor characters in a book get developed when they show up, but there are some I know have to be there--the MC, her best friend, the victim. The murderer sometimes takes longer to emerge.

You get the picture. The actual product at this point is a document with everything--at the top, my thoughts about the plot and setting, and below sketches of characters, biographies, and so on. This isn't too different from what I've done in the past, and now that things are beginning to take shape, I'm starting to work on that "question outline" I have used in the past: asking the big questions of who, what, when, where, why, and how, and scribbling answers until I see the form the story will take.

I've mentioned it before, and it's worth repeating: though I started as a pantser, writing mysteries has convinced me that I need a more structured approach, because there are too many things that *must* be right. Some of those I can fix in editing, but my life is a great deal easier if I got it close to right the first time. So, in the end, I have become a planner, though at times there are bit gaps in the outline with vague instructions like "chase red herrings for two chapters."

Since nothing in my brain works quite the same as it did Before, I'm leaning on all this planning and plotting to help me reach the point where I can write. I'm going to need all the supports I can give myself.

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This is far from the first time I've written about this process, but since my take on it keeps evolving, I think it's worth revisiting--and it's worth looking at my earlier thoughts, since everyone's process is different! Here are the main earlier discussions of planning and plotting:

The first time was in Feb. 2013.  This post refers to a novel called "Murder Stalks the PTA." That evolved into Death By Ice Cream, the first of the Pismawallops PTA novels. That evolution was one of the things that convinced me the process I discussed in this post needed work. Up to that point, I'd been an unthinking pantser, taking the nugget of an idea and just jumping in and writing.

The second time was in September that same year, and I was starting to develop the outlining approach that I have more or less stuck to since, having struggled with the revisions of that novel.

The third time was in October 2015, as I was preparing to write Death By Trombone. Reviewing that in 2018 while preparing to write Death By Library helped me not make too much of a mess of that one.

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When I took this photo I was mentally titling it "Portal to Another World," because that's what I thought the puddles on the road looked like. Maybe it's a good image for the writing process!

 ©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2021

 As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated.

Writer's Wednesday: NaNo update #2

Battle of the Brains: Planning Vs. Pantsing

 

Hey, everyone! I'm coming up for air (from the depths of my new MS) and wanted to let you know how it's all going--especially that extensive outline I started with!

We're three weeks in, which means most of us are in the doldrums. At least, that's where I am. I've been managing to meet my word counts every day, but I feel like I'm forcing it out. Like I have constipation of the imagination. This, of course, is famously where the outline helps.

So is my outline helping? Have I stuck to the plan well enough for it to have any meaning at all at this point?

Yes and no, on both counts. I've wandered a bit--things I planned for one point have ended up happening earlier, which leaves me with holes, or a lack of a point for a planned scene. But I do still have a more or less chronological list of the the things that need to happen to get to the solution of the mystery, and I can consult it when I'm flagging.

I also have a growing list of things that I think I'll need to go back and write into earlier scenes, from minor character things to plot points and red herrings. That means I need to look at pulling things to a conclusion around 65 or 70K words, to keep the final draft around 80K.

I think I'm going to have to admit that there's no way for me to make a nice, clean first draft that gets all the story bits in place. I did a great job of visualizing the beginning and ending of the story, but the stuff in between is... fuzzy. I wonder it it's possible for it to be anything else.

Word count as of 11/19: 42084. Less than 8K to "win" NaNo, but just past halfway to a novel.
Target: 80K by Christmas. We have a 2-week trip planned in early December. I'll be writing on airplanes, for sure!

 Don't forget--sign up for my newsletter by Dec. 15 (top right on this page) and get a free copy of the sweet Pismawallops PTA novella, The Christmas Question.

Writer's Wednesday--Exciting news!

I composed my IWSG post for last week a bit in advance, since we were out in the wilds of Maine. As a result, I failed to include my writer's news, most of which happened after I queued up the post. I have a couple of things I'm excited about sharing this week instead!

1.  I got a story accepted! My short, "The Revenge of Gorg," a rewriting of the first chapter of Gorg's book was accepted for publication in the November issue of "Frostfire Worlds." I'll share more info about purchasing copies when I have it. I'm extra excited about this, because after trying a couple of years ago to put Gorg's stories into a novel form, I let that project drop in frustration. This sale restores some of my faith in Gorg, and his book is going back into the hopper for more work (as soon as I deal with a few other things).

2. I got inspired, and the outlining process for the Pismawallops PTA #5 is well under way, even while #4, Death By Library, is with the proof-reader (heck, while she has the MS I can't do anything with that one, so...). The new book is tentatively titled Death By Donut.

3. While working on the outline, I stumbled on some notes from last spring for a short story or novella featuring our friends from Pismawallops Island. I got excited, and on Monday drafted over 5000 words of the story, which I plan to finish and release before Christmas (but after Death By Library).

We expect to be back home in about 5 more days, and then I'll have until the end of January to focus on writing (well, aside from that whole bit about hosting the holiday revels).

Some of our time in New England has been this:

Descending the Bridle Trail from Franconia Ridge, NH

And some has been this:

View from the Zealand Hut, White Mountains, NH

Lots more photos to come as I get them sorted. I made my life extra difficult by hitting something early in the trip that caused the camera to take 3 versions of every photo. Extra fun in the editing phase!

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2019
As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated!

Writer's Wednesday: How's Your NaNo?

It's November 28. The month is almost over, and I hope all of you have had a good one. If you've been participating in NaNoWriMo, whether as a "traditionalist" who's pounding out 50,000 words (or more), or a "rebel" who's been writing short stories or  revising something or trying to finish a book started years ago, here's to meeting your goals in the next two days!

And what about the Ninja Librarian? Well, in once sense, I met the goal: I've written nearly 60,000 words, and have a beginning, middle and end to the novel. But I don't have what I'd call a complete draft, and not just because it's about 20,000 words short of the target length. There are a lot of holes to fill in and red herrings to fry before I can call it a draft. So I've been working since Saturday to identify the missing bits and start filling them in, to give myself a complete draft to work with when I start editing in a few months.

So here's what kills me: I worked on this story. I worked hard before NaNo started, and I had an 8-page outline/story plan. And it wasn't enough. I still didn't know where to put the red herrings and how to make the reader hare off after the wrong suspects. I'm not even sure that can be done in advance, though my memory tells me I laid it out well for Death By Trombone and was able to cruise right through the draft. It's a safe bet my memory is playing me false, and this is the reality: first drafts are messy, and I will always write in too direct a line from the murder to the solution. I'll be working on fleshing it out for the next few weeks, before I leave it to simmer while I go hiking in New Zealand.

Here's to your writing going more smoothly than mine, and here's a toast to writing at all, whatever we have gotten done this month!

IWSG: It's NaNo Time, and I'm Not

It's the first Wednesday of the month, and that means IWSG time!

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!

Posting: The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. Post your thoughts on your own blog. Talk about your doubts and the fears you have conquered. Discuss your struggles and triumphs. Offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling. Visit others in the group and connect with your fellow writer - aim for a dozen new people each time - and return comments. This group is all about connecting!

Be sure to drop in on our awesome co-hosts for October: Tonja Drecker, Diane Burton, MJ Fifield, and, well, me! 

This month's question: Win or not, do you usually finish your NaNo project? Have any of them gone on to be published?

Since today is the kick-off for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month for anyone who wonders), it seems only right to talk about that novel-in-a-month project. First, I'll answer the question: yes, and yes. I think I've done NaNo 4 times, once for a revision rather than drafting a new novel. Each time I hit the 50K-word target before the end of the month, and each time had to go on for 1-5 weeks to actually finish a draft, since (outside of kid lit), 50,000 words is not a novel.

So far, one of those novels has been published. Death By Trombone was my first NaNo project in 2013, and it worked very well. I had the book well outlined in advance, and as a result I managed to produce a complete draft by mid-December that didn't require major rewriting to become a  novel. Even so, I had to use a bit of NaNo nudging in 2014 to get on the revisions and finish it.  I published it (the second in the Pismawallops PTA mystery series) in 2015. For NaNo in 2015, I drafted Death By Adverb, the 3rd in that series, and let it sit while I worked on the 3rd Ninja Librarian book, The Problem With Peggy (which I might have worked on as an April Camp NaNo project. I know I did something with that one year).

Now, I dove into Death By Adverb with less of a plan, and as a result, I had more of a mess, including an ending that didn't quite cut it. That probably was part of why that book sat for over a year before I got back to it. But I did get back to it, and expect to have it out by Christmas, or by Easter at the latest...

My 2016 project was a little different, since I was working to take a collection of flash fiction and turn it into a novel. That would be the stories about Gorg the Troll, and I'd hoped to be back at it before now, but DBA is taking a lot longer than intended, partly because it's been a busy year. But when I do get there, I have a nominally complete draft to start from.

All this means that though I'm itching to start my next project, I won't be a NaNer this year. For one thing, I need to deal with the projects in the pipeline, at least a little. And for another, I just don't have time to plan and plot the way I'd like to before I start a new book. I've done it both ways enough to know: pantsing is tempting because once the general idea is there, the urge to dive in is huge. But it costs in the long run (especially when writing a mystery!), and I'm resolved not to leap before I look any more (I am also 100% sure I'll break that vow, since I've already made and broken it more than once). I'll even go so far as to urge you, if you are participating in NaNo and don't have an outline, to take a few days and create one, of whatever variety feels right to you. I'm betting you'll increase your odds of both "winning" (i.e., hitting 50k by Nov. 30) and actually finishing the book--and even of publishing. (I have written several times on this topic, but the most recent and most helpful is this).

So...all that said...go forth and NaNo, Nanners!

Oh--and best of luck to everyone (okay, including me) who submitted stories to the IWSG Anthology!

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2017
As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated!

Outlines and Planning Ahead

Chuck Wendig has opened the conversation about plotting and outlining, in time for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). I have written about this before, because I have gone both ways with my writing--total pantsing (def: pantser: one who does things by the seat of the pants, i.e. without planning or forethought) as well as pre-plotting. How well each works may depend (for me) on the type of book. The Ninja Librarian didn't require a lot of planning, because each story stood alone, and was short enough to get it all out at once--and to edit easily.

On the other hand, my first attempt at a full-length mystery novel was a disaster. It took well over a decade to draft, and was so riddled with plot holes and issues that I never was able to beat it into shape. The second went better, but still--revision for Death By Ice Cream was a painful and lengthy process that I didn't want to repeat. So when I decided to draft Death By Trombone (which is coming this fall!) during NaNo 2013, I made an outline. And by gum, it made the writing easier, and--the real key--it has made the editing easier (you wouldn't think so by how long that has taken, but, well, I got distracted by Halitor the Hero in the middle) (and I did a pretty danged cursory outline of that, which worked out okay, but it was a much simpler story).

So my verdict has been: for easiest writing and editing, a bit of planning is in order.

That leaves the huge question of what an outline might look like, and (more important) how you get there. Chuck describes several approaches to outlining in his post on the subject, and that's a good place to start. Go ahead and read it; I'll wait (caution: Chuck uses naughty language. Funny language, usually, but often naughty. Don't go there if you are easily offended).

What I use for DBIC was the "question approach." Start with some basic questions, and work on finding answers for them. This was my initial set of questions:

That's right. One page, and obvious questions. Who got killed? Why? Who killed him? What does my heroine have to do with it all? And, because these are, after all, the Pismawallops PTA mysteries, what does it have to do with the school/PTA?

After this page, I spent a fair bit of brainstorming time (on the following pages) coming up with answers to many of these questions--and discovering many, many more questions to answer. Eventually, I did create a more traditional-looking outline, with 5 main sections for the main--not scenes, but arcs, I guess--of the story, and lists of the things that should be covered in each. This outline was what I referred to as I wrote, and I can't include it here because it would be a total spoiler.

What did my outline do for me? First, it was a brainstorming tool. I could start small, with the obvious questions at the heart of any mystery, and use that framework to start fleshing out the story, start seeing the other questions. Eventually, I began asking really important questions, like "who are the red herrings?" "What is everyone lying about?" and also questions about the development of the relationships between characters.

When the questions had bloomed out to be a pretty good look at the whole shape of the book, I knew several things: I knew what I needed to research (cause of death, divorce in Washington State, etc.), and I had a list of scenes and events that needed to go into the story, roughly in order. That was probably key for the fast-writing approach of NaNo. I could look at the outline every morning and see where I was and what I needed to do next. And if a particular scene was a problem, I could jump ahead, knowing where something (probably) fit into the big picture.

The final outline was fairly sparse, but I still had those pages and pages of brainstorming notes, too. That notebook stayed by my computer, so that I could consult it for all sorts of questions. In the end, the process worked: I drafted about 80,000 words in under 6 weeks, and the story held together as it was written the first time.

One other tool that I am finding more and more important as I work through series: character charts. I use individual files on main characters, with everything I've learned about them. But I also have a quick-reference chart for Pismawallops Island, and another for Skunk Corners, listing every character I've put into the books, where they fit into the community, and anything really important about them. No more than one line per; if I need more, they get their own file. These files grow from book to book, though I'm wondering if I shouldn't maybe have saved separate versions for each book, so I could know at a glance when characters appeared. Maybe not.

I can't share the character chart for Pismawallops Island, because it has notes about who killed whom, etc. But Skunk Corners has fewer secrets. Here's a page from that list:

As you can see, in addition to people, I found it helpful to list all the places that I've brought up. What businesses and buildings are in town? What are the nearby towns? Geography is important, and I hate it when writers make mistakes or gratuitous changes in people or places from book to book. Growth and development of the community is natural, but if Endoline is up the mountain from Skunk Corners in Book I, it had better not be down the mountain in Book 3.

In the end, that's what outlines and notes are all about: making the best book I can, with the fewest headaches. Every writer has to find her own way; these are the things that have helped me.

Now to return to editing Death By Trombone, and outlining--brainstorming--the 3rd mystery.

Outlining: When, How and How Much

Before  begin yet another post on how to go about writing, I want to make one thing perfectly clear: I haven't a clue.  Sometimes I know how *I* go about writing, sometimes not even that.  A few things (mostly grammar) I know pretty well.  Everything else is really a thinly disguised plea for you all to tell me what you do and how it works for you.  So, I'm starting a periodic series of blogs dealing with various aspects of writing, mostly in the order that they happen when you are trying to produce a book. Today: outlines.

Okay, if I really wanted to start at the beginning, I'd start with where ideas come from, right?  Wrong.  Because if you have to ask where to get ideas, I'm thinking you want to be a writer, as opposed to wanting to write.  Most of us who do this a lot have ideas popping up all over the place.  Goofing off with a writing prompt for the sake of the exercise: boom, why isn't this a book?  Eavesdropping on the Metro.  Dreaming.  Whatever.  You have ideas.  The hard part is beating the amorphous bits of mental fog into a story someone will pay money to read, or at least will read voluntarily.  Someone besides your mother.

Thus, I'm going to assume that we have picked one idea to run with.  We are ready to start solidifying the fog.  Right away we face the first big decision.  No, not 1st person or 3rd, not genre (well, okay, maybe genre).  But the BIG question: do I outline this first, or fly by the seat of my pants and just start writing?

To digress: when writing papers for school, an outline is invariably a good thing.  Otherwise your essay will wander all over the map and you are apt to get a bad grade (yes, I do have an outline of sorts for this essay, though it is all in my head).  For those of you who have to write non-fiction for school, I'll share an approach that used to work pretty well for me back in the day, when I had no idea what I wanted to say and a paper due at 9 a.m. the next day.  I'd make an outline.  Often it would at first look like this:

I. Introduction

II.  Body

III.  Conclusion

Then I'd stare at my notes some more, stare at the typewriter (I wrote many of my college papers before the PC was common), and maybe add a line under Introduction.  Something like a thesis statement: This paper will demonstrate that Shakespeare was intoxicated when he wrote Timon of Athens  (another note: this is a very poor thesis statement.  One would hope that by the time the paper is turned in the thesis will be a little smarter, even if it says the same thing).  Maybe then I could dream up a couple of points to write under "Body" to suggest how I'd do that.  Then I might make a couple of sub-points.  And so on, hoping that each thing I wrote would give me another idea.  Eventually I would have enough notes that I just needed to turn them into coherent prose and I'd have an essay.

That is not a bad way to write a five-paragraph essay.  Maybe it's not even a bad way to write a novel. I wouldn't know.  I haven't tried.

When it comes to writing a story, I  most likely have a character or situation that wanders into my mind and won't leave, so I start writing about him, her, or it.  The idea takes hold and I keep writing. Somewhere in there I get a vision of more or less where the story/book is going to end.  I suppose that you could say that at that point I have something much like that initial outline--I know where I'm starting (because I already started there, though sometimes I have to go back and find a better place to start--the outline may tell me that), and where I'm ending, and I know that a bunch has to go in between.  But I have never yet, at this point (let alone before writing at all), stopped and written down an outline.

If I get really stuck, and the story is going nowhere--or everywhere, which is just as bad--that's when I start to think about outlining for real.  My current work in progress, a somewhat parodic fantasy, has an outline now, with some detail for the first few chapters (which I'd already written when I did the outline), then a list of chapters, each of which says "Another adventure along the way" (adventures to be decided on when we come to them).  Finally we get to a couple of chapters at the end and there's a little more detail, because I know where I want to end up, assuming a dragon doesn't carry my characters off so far they can't get back.

That's about as detailed as I've ever gotten with an outline at this stage in my work.  I was inspired by reading bloggers who talked about how helpful it was to have created detailed outlines before starting NaNoWriMo.  I'm not sure my level of outlining is what they were talking about.

Here's where I get to something that might be useful:
Even if I write the whole rough draft with no outline and no idea where I'm going (as I did with my first two novels, one of which took 15 years to write and is so scattered I can't even find all the pieces), somewhere in the editing stage I write a detailed outline of the novel I've written.  Chapter by chapter, scene by scene. Not only does creating the outline give me a great tool for revisions (and for summaries/query letters), but by the time I've done it I really know where the story hangs together and what makes no sense.  This has been particularly helpful with Murder Stalks the PTA.  It is extra important with a mystery to make sure all the clues are present at the right time and place.

Once the outline is made, I can use it when revising as a place to dump all the comments like "this scene stinks!" and "????".  Then I can refer again to my annotated outline, rewrite some more, revise the outline to match the new version of the story. . . you get the picture.

Some of you may be thinking by now, "wouldn't it have been easier to write the outline first and not have such a messy draft?"  That's an understandable attitude, and it might work for you.  It doesn't for me.  I like to jump into the story and let it meander a bit, and I'm not very good at following directions.

Even my own.

That's my two cents on outlining, which turns out not to have come first after all.  What's yours?