The Glass is Half Empty

Damn, it’s been awhile since I last posted. But it isn't because my level of focus on the project has dropped. Quite the opposite: with the exception of a brief road trip and a couple of weeks spent on writing theory, I've been following Rule #1 more intensively than ever before.

Most first novels are in the 300-page range, and there are good reasons for this. From the publisher’s perspective, it costs much less to print a shorter book. From the reader's perspective, it's less of a commitment. From the writer’s perspective, whether new or experienced, it’s more manageable: longer works are harder to write, harder to rewrite and much more time-consuming to edit. Also, it’s harder to keep them tight. It’s the same reason most writers start out with short stories: learn to say a lot in a little space, then take those skills into larger formats. Not only is there nothing wrong with this approach, it's just smarter.

On the other hand...

When I set out on this project, I wanted to begin a series in the urban fantasy genre, but beyond that, I wanted to create something rare, something I haven't seen much of out there: urban epic fantasy. I wanted to follow several characters through robust stories of their own that are intertwined with each other, within a complex, multilayered story world. And that’s exactly what I’ve been doing, to the best of my ability, for the last year.

The first draft came in at about 850 pages and was largely done in six months. As I've worked my way through the second draft, new ideas have come up, characters have gotten more refined, subplots have undergone some slight course corrections, and the story world lore has gotten deeper and more broad. It’s a difficult and time-consuming process, and it’s been consuming all the hours I can throw at it. I dream about it, and wake up worrying about it. It’s becoming an obsession.

The much slower pace of the rewrite process has made it clear that this is going to take a lot more time. There’s not a lot I can do to speed it up: it’ll take as long as it takes. This is a project I've put a lot of time and thought and work into, and it’s important to me to get it done right. There’s no point at all to inventing an elaborate story world filled with rich viewpoint characters, forces and factions, layers of hidden agenda, and weirdness galore, only to push it out before it’s ready. Not when the point is to hold the attention of increasingly demanding readers.

The project’s consumed the better part of a year now, and I wouldn't be surprised if the second (or hopefully third draft) takes another year. But so be it. The way I see it, and what I tell myself whenever the difficulties become disheartening. Is that I don't have anything better to do…or to say it another way, there isn't anything better to do than to put everything you can into a piece of work you care about.

And so I forge on. Yeah, the glass is half empty, but every day I'll pour a little more into it. My story grows, and the story world with it. And hopefully in the end, I won’t be the only one living there.

Self-Publishing Blog: The Writing Bomb

Self-Publishing Blog: The Writing Bomb
Navigating Through the Indie Publishing Universe is aimed at helping indie writers build their brands and earn fans. Recent posts have focused on getting the most out of Amazon's KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) program.

Writer's Resources: Advice on Novel Writing by Crawford Kilian

Writer's Resources: Advice on Novel Writing by Crawford Kilian:
This 17 point list offers a broad but digestible overview of the key components of novel creation, from raw craft to legal practicalities.

Self-Publishing Blog: Write it Sideways

Self-Publishing Blog: Write it Sideways:
Write it Sideways aims to offer “writing advice from a fresh perspective.” To do so, it features a variety of bloggers, each discussing specific writing challenges.

Self-Publishing Blog: Writing Fiction

Self-Publishing Blog: Writing Fiction:
Penned (or more likely, typed) by an author of several novels, Writing Fiction looks at the art of…that. Dealing with fantasy and sci-fi in particular, this blog offers thoughts on both the practical skills necessary to create work that shines and the state of the fiction industry.

Self-Publishing Blog: The Indie Authors Daily

Self-Publishing Blog: The Indie Authors Daily:
Culling material from a variety of sources and formats, The Indie Authors Daily tracks the sea changes occurring in the publishing industry and contemplates their impact on self publishing authors.

The Next Wall - Plotting Problems (Part 2)

In my last entry I brought up the problem I'm faced with now, which is mid-level plotting. Let's continue down that path now, starting with some context.

They say that a good story, especially genre (as opposed to literary) fiction, is plot-driven. Events are set in motion at the mid-level, meaning the small-group or individual level, and each scene in a given plot (main or sub-) needs to follow from the previous one. Some stories have the macro level drive events at the mid-level, such as a crew of varied personality types walking through the steps of a prophecy, or orders sent down from a king or general (and his same-level enemy) guiding the actions and tribulations of a group of soldiers. Another way to go is to have a protagonist with his own goal fighting through a stressful, barely manageable, but logical set of obstacles that suit the story and that keep him from his goal.

It's much harder to tell a compelling tale about a wanderer who runs across somewhat random problems until he comes upon something major that focuses him. And that's how I'd approached the first half of the book initially: expecting to enhance the plot dimension along the way. So of course it's become a longstanding problem that I've got no choice now but to face head-on.

The issue came to a head recently when I spent a few days on writing a reasonably interesting pair of scenes, and then tuning them up, only to realize that they're not sufficiently driven by prior events to give as much of a sense of cohesion as I want in the final product. When I found myself tacking them into a framework of cause and effect that came to mind, I realized my real problem, which was the lack of a scene-spanning, event-connecting infrastructure.

A major reason for blogging, for me at least, is to think these things out a little better as I write about them, and I do seem to be gaining a few insights as I write this entry. For example, I need to choose an overall structure for the plot first and foremost.

Many writers start with that, but I'm not them; I've generally espoused the school of thought where you write your way into and out of issues. That approach seems to be working for me at the macro and micro levels, but at the mid-level it's not. So I need to bite the bullet and outline the plot part by part, chapter by chapter, scene by scene, stage by stage.

I hate doing that. But I have to. Or I have to give up. And that's not gonna happen.

So, I'm looking for two things here: motivation and advantages. Motivation isn't really something I can predict, so I'll just try to rest a bit to think and then bull through as always, As for advantages, well, tools would be one thing to look for. I don't know if they'll help or hinder me, but I've never felt it a bad thing to have them on hand.

Scrivener is what I've been using to pour the text of the book into, and it's worked out pretty well. But Scrivener is weak for story development--it offers an outliner, an index card view, the ability to create document templates like the character sheet and other forms I've mentioned, and that's about it.

Before I ever started this project I had spent the money to buy Dramatica Pro, in the hope of helping with this very class of issues. Then Apple immediately dropped support for 32-bit apps and I was never able to actually use it. Write Brothers never bothered to update DP to the new generation OS either. But recently I learned they're offering a product called Dramatica Story Expert which they assure me is a superset of DP.  (At this writing both products are on sale for $99 each, which is odd if one is more full-featured than the other, but I guess you have to look at DP as their Windows product and DSE as their Mac product at this point). Anyway, I got an upgrade and will be looking into using it for the planning process.

Or maybe I'll use notepads and miss the trash can with a lot of crumpled-up pieces of paper.

Either way, I need to invest the time and pain to plot this out and get going.