State of the Writer

As my military friends might say, a SITREP: situation report for those who don't do milspeak. I've weaned myself off my antidepressant pills a couple of weeks ago.

However, it can take up to six weeks to see if there are any signs of a relapse of my mental health. I'm hoping that my body has acclimated to the immunosuppressant medication that prevents my rheumatoid arthritis from running rampant.

We shall see.

Having slowly reduced the antidepressants over a long period of time, I've noticed I have more emotions. I can now cry, or get angry, and this feels odd having been emotionally flat for three years.

So I'm trying to get back in the saddle.

I'm working through my next novel, Two Moons, which has grown to a total of 50,394 words. This seems like progress, but the draft is a total mess. A crazy quilt made up from three drafts with three different openings.

So, I'm have got a lot of work ahead of me to tidy it all up.

The reason for the mess was the lack of emotions while on the anti-depressants, which is definitely a thing. During those years I flailed about with no real plot or story; a plot being a sequence of events, a story being how the characters deal with those events.

I lacked a certain something, indulge me riffing on an old Beatles song:

Help! I need story...

Help! Not just any story...

Help! You know I need a plot..

Help!

I now have one, the idea that will drive the plot and will make for an exciting the story.

It's amazing to feel like my old self  again. Of course there's a caveat, I've gotta get back into my writing routine, and being older now, I'm finding this harder to do.

Partly because I'm so easily distracted, and partly because I do so enjoy learning new things. But, that's the update. I'm working on the next Gate Walker novel.

You heard it hear first. I mean where else would you hear it from?

The Three Secret Rules of Writing

 

W. Somerset Maugham said, “There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”

To celebrate the Jubilee holiday I will today reveal the secret three rules of writing that he professed not to know.

Here are the three rules to writing... 

1. Do what works – corollary you have to learn what works.
2. Don't do what doesn't work – again one has to learn this.
3. To be a writer one needs to read and write – reading is learning, writing is practice.

The above is slightly tongue in cheek. Just saying.

The Secret to Making Plotting Easier

 

 

I came across John Brown's Novel Writing Tips, aka the John Brown Story Framework, after listening to him and Larry Correia on the Blades and Blasters Podcast, which is well worth listening too.

I even left a comment on YouTube to John. Anyway, that's all I have for now. Catch y'all later.

On Writing

 

To say things are a bit distracting is like saying water is wet, the sky is blue, and grass is green. Obvious and yet an understatement that belies the difficulty in understanding how things work now that Corvid19 is sweeping the world.

But enough of that. It is far too easy to be sucked into the distracting distress going on around us. So here's a list for those of my readers who might like to write during this time they are locked in their homes.

Story

A story is a character in a setting with a problem who has opinions.

The protagonist's story is driven by Things. Getting. Worse! Successes always leads to another problem, when things no longer get worse, the story is over.

The antagonist's story is driven by plans coming together until defeated. 

Plots

There is a Problem; Complications ensue, the character's life changes.

Scenes: Advance the plot; Explain the background or backstory; Deepen the characterization.

Basic Themes of Plots

Overcome the Monster

Voyage & Return

The Quest

Mystery

Rebirth

Rags to Riches

Comedy/Burlesque

Tragedy

Rebellion

Story Conflicts

1. Man vs. Man: The problem is another character (Bob needs to defeat Alice to become Class President).

2. Man vs. Self: The problem lies inside the protagonist (Bob doesn't know how to express his emotions to Alice).

3. Man vs. Nature: The problem comes from natural sources (Bob's town is destroyed by a volcano, or Alice is sick).

4. Man vs. Society: The problem is the social environment (Bob struggles to maintain his dignity in an ignorant community after receiving an Abomination Accusation Attack).

5. Man vs. God/Fate: The problem is destiny, eventuality, fate, or divine will (Bob does not want to fulfill a prophecy that he will lose his family).

6. Man Caught in the Middle: Of other characters or conflicts.

7. Male versus Female: Battle of the sexes.

8. Man vs. Machine, as in machinery. Most commonly told from the perspective of a worker being replaced by a machine.

Novels Structure

Novels have different structures for example:

1. Action structure: A leader of a team work to overcome the problems they face.

2. Puzzle structure: A person solves a puzzle, with people helping them.

3. Romance structure: two people meet, problems ensue.

Opening Chapters of a Novel

Prologue (optional)

Introduce the hero

Introduce the villain

Introduce the friends/mentor

Other POV to shock

Hamster Wheel

The feeling of running around in circles as I work my way through all the tasks I need to complete to publish my first novel next year. On paper, virtual you understand, it all looks pretty straightforward. Do this, then do that, and then move on to the next task.

The catch?

If one has never done said task before then there's a learning curve. A steep one, but that's good in a way, because once you're learning your competence rises in leaps and bounds.  The opposite of the writing learning curve that rises, then plateaus, and there can be a considerable time between levels.

Different learning curves require different strategies.

With my publishing head on I need to learn a bunch of stuff. Copyright and surviving as a free-lance writer being two of those things.  So I bought these books. They're both quick thick, and I haven't yet started, but the clock is ticking.  There's a story right there.

Talking about stories, Bad Dog is waiting for me to finalize the cover, which requires me to finish the course I'm on so I can do this.

Strike Dog has been sent off for copy editing, which caused us a certain amount of angst, because of the cost.  In the bigger scheme of things I'm getting a great deal on the job, but money is tight, hence the purchase of the free-lancer survival guide.  I already know I've started out from the worst possible position, namely I'm under capitalized.

It sucks to be me and mine, but we will just have to suck it up.  Anyone got a straw?

Finally, got feedback on Ghost Dog from my most trusted Beta reader, which is very positive.  Not that there are not things I need to address, which is why I'm busy doing edits to cut words out and restructuring the order of the chapters.  I may be tied up for some time ahead.

Breaking Rules

Last weekend was a busy one, starting with a birthday party on the Friday night, followed by archery practice first thing on Saturday morning with a BBQ in the afternoon at a friend's place, with Sunday seeing us at the last short metric club county competition.

So we were both grateful that Monday was a Bank Holiday. Hence no post last week.

See excuse above.

However, I've been busy writing too and I've just broken one of Heinlein's rules:

Rule Three: You Must Refrain From Rewriting, Except to Editorial Order

Well, sort of – I've been gnawing away at the feedback I received from my novel's rejection:

... it aroused some interest, unfortunately it lacked the straightforward narrative...

Though if I'm cutting myself some slack, then this could be interpreted as editorial input to re-write my work.

At one level I'm struggling to interpret what this meant and even emailed asking for a clarification, but I don't expect an answer any time soon.  But I really want to sell my novel. So something must be done however, however given the parlous state of publishing my options are limited.

I tried one editor from the big five who requested the chance to read my work, but I heard nothing back.  

Also, many of the big publishing house will only take submissions through an agent, and I've not had much luck there either.  Though after reading Kristine Katheryn Rusch's blog I think it would be wiser to use a solicitor to negotiate a contract rather than relying on a literary agent.

My other option is to self-publish, which I'm considering, but from what I've read I would need to up my output to generate interest and a sales stream.  Given it has taken me three and a half years to write three novels, two of which are still being edited, I'm not sure how realistic this path is for me.

So, over the last week I've restructured Bad Dog to try and make the story more straightforward, helped in part by reading Jim Butcher's Live Journal blog.

I now have a novel with a Prologue and Epilogue, which I understand is not at all fashionable today.  I've also added a short story as an addendum to the main story, telling the reader what happens to my hero afterwards when she goes for officer training, which I cut from my sequel for pacing reasons.

The plan is to add a new chapter to what Jim Butcher calls the 'Swampy Middle' of the novel, and revise another chapter by re-writing a third person POV from my heroes first person POV instead.

Just getting to this point was a serious chunk of work.

In the meantime I'm progressing on the edits on Strike Dog and considering my options on what I want to do to make it a better novel.

What's frustrating is the amount of time this is taking, but unless I can make more money writing than doing the day job, then I guess it just sucks to be me.

What About the Writing?

I have been remiss in doing diary updates of my writing progress.

I've heard back from one of the Big Five publishers who have rejected my novel. They said, it aroused interest, but the narrative wasn't straightforward enough. I've been processing that feedback and thinking about my writing.

Bad Dog is an overcoming the monster plot: the monster being the atomic bomb planted to destroy a pair of alien pillars found under a mountain in Afghanistan. Said pillars being the equivalent to Arthur C. Clarke's monoliths.

I have mentioned that one way of looking at my first novel is that it's like John Ringo was writing in Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey crossed with Armored Trooper VOTOMS.

It could also be described as Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers meets Groundhog Day directed by Harold Ramis.  Except that while it has more action than Starship Troopers, it doesn't have Bill Murray being funny.

So, I'm working on re-writing/editing of my second novel Strike Dog.

The plot of which is a voyage and return, as described by Christopher Booker in his work The Seven Basic Plots, which is actually seven traditional plots plus two modern plots (mystery and rebellion being the new plots that only appear in modern novels - where modern means anything post Jane Austen).

My third book, Ghost Dog, is a quest.  This has come back from my Alpha reader with informative feedback that it needs more tension in the first third of the book.

So my plan, if you can call it that, is to have a different plot for each book in the Bad Dog series.  This is assuming I can sell my trilogy which is in serious doubt at this point, but I'm not intending to give up.

Still, given my age, time is not on my side.

If I can sell either my first or second book, then I have to think of a rags to riches story, a comedy (what Booker calls a comedy is really a plot revolving around mistaken identities and confusion), a tragedy (all too easy in the world of Bad Dog), a mystery and a rebellion. The latter probably being the hardest plot to fit into my overarching story arc.

However, the main try-fail cycle I face at this point is writing characters who each have a different voice and who don't come across as complete jerks. Wish me luck, I may be some time.

Nail Your Novel 2

I reviewed Nail Your Novel: Why Writers Abandon Books & How You Can Draft, Fix & Finish With Confidence by Roz Morris here.  I liked it so much I bought both her other books and I have just finished reading Nail Your Novel: Bring Characters To Life.

Having finished my first novel Bad Dog, which is at a publisher being read, I've been using the space to consolidate my writing given the feedback I have received from my Beta readers of my second novel Strike Dog, where the main thing I took away was that my characters weren't differentiated enough, and even where they were, they were annoying jerks.  Roz Morris has some interesting things to say about both of these problems in this book.

I finished reading her book this morning just in time to received the feedback from my Alpha reader on my third novel Ghost Dog.  Fortunately, having written the first drafts of all three novels in 2013, time really does give one a sense of distance when having to deal with criticism, even very constructive criticism.  So this is me trying to assimilate advice and put it into practice as I work on re-drafting the current versions of both sequels.  As such, I can strongly recommend the Nail Your Novel books to anyone who is struggling to write a novel to a professional standard.

Writing Plan

Click to embiggen.

Another week has flown by here, and I again find myself pondering the imponderable question of where does all my time go?  I can tell you what I've been doing, but everything seems to take longer than it should to get it done.

In this case I've been researching stuff about far away places for a new opening chapter to my novel Strike Dog.

This came about because I decided that the prologue of Strike Dog would work better as the epilogue for Bad Dog, which is titled Omake.  One thing leads to another and the result is I now have plans to go back and tweak Bad Dog again by adding some details to one chapter to punch it up a little more.

On top of all that I was reading Chuck Wendig's blog where he posted a plan for a novel.  This drove me to distraction, and I just had to go away and work through his list here.

This what I came up with.

ACT 1 

Hook

1. Hey look there’s a problem.

 

ACT 2 

Plot Turn 1

2. I’m going to go and fix the problem. Try Fail Cycle

3. OMG I’ve made it worse.

4. Somebody else is making the problem worse.

Pinch 1

ACT 3 

Mid-Point

5. Wait, I think I’ve got this.Try Fail Cycle 

6. Bugger, bugger, bugger. Try Fail Cycle 

7. It’s not just worse, it’s now a different problem. Try Fail Cycle 

8. Even more buggeration ensues.Try Fail Cycle 

9. Everything is so complicated.

 

ACT 4
Pinch 2 

10. All is lost. Try Fail Cycle 

11. Wait, is that a light at the end of the tunnel? Try Fail Cycle 

12. It is, but it’s not what you think it is. 

Plot Turn 2 

13. Wait I have an idea.

 

ACT 5

Resolution

14. Problem solved, but not in the way you thought it would be. 

So looking back at my diary I find I've only managed to write 2,130 words this week, but boy-oh-boy it has felt like an intense weeks worth of writing.

The Seven Basic Plots

I had thought I'd already written something about Christopher Booker's book The Seven Basic Plots on this blog, but having looked through when reorganizing tags and updating titles I realized I hadn't.  So I think it's about time I rectified this omission.

After all the book has its own Wikipedia page, and not only that its own TV Tropes page.

The book is controversial, in that some people don't like the way that Christopher Booker has quantified the sacred art of story telling.  Reading the TV Tropes page gives one a light & fluff overview of the work and mentions how long it is.  Wikipedia discusses the critical reactions to the book when it was first published.  Neither are the same as actually reading the book and making up your own mind for yourself.

It took me about three months to read this book, because I would pick it up and read it for a bit, make notes in the margins, put post-it notes in so I could to refer back to passages that I thought were interesting, and then put it back down.  It's not a book that is meant to be read in one sitting, being a scholarly work that took the author 34 years to complete.

My main criticism of the work is that Christopher Booker bases his analysis on Jungian archetypes.  At one level this is OK, because this is a study of literary history and criticism, but on the other hand using pseudo-scientific Jungian psychology (as is non-replicable and done without seeking to prove the null-hypothesis) as one's main analytical tool is a bit of a poor show (as in there are psychological models with more research validity to study the human condition).

Saying that I will, without reservation, recommend anyone who wants to write stories, whether conventional fiction or world creation stories for games etc, to read this book.

Don't undertake to read it lightly, it's a massive tome, a doorstop book of epic proportions, but it so put everything together for me about why I like some stories and not others.  So regardless of my caveat about Jungian psychology being less than scientifically rigorous, the use of archetypes in story connects with people's need to understand the world around us.

So until such a time as someone comes along and writes a book about plots from a cognitive behavioural perspective read this.

Sin and Syntax

I've been reading Sin and Syntax by Constance Hale.  

I would like to say it's a page turner, but it's not. There again I didn't expect it to be. I've been putting Post It tabs  in while reading it, and scribbling marks in pencil in the margins where I want to find stuff. 

It's what I tend to do when reading books that are basically research. In this case this is me reading to improve my writing. Something I've been working on after my first critiquing session.

I have at least one friend who will tell me that reading books about writing is not as good as reading well written books.

But I think my craft is weak; or perhaps I should say I fear that my writing is dull, uninteresting and boring. So I've set about improving my craft.

Because craft require graft.

Genre v Literature

Back here I talked about theory versus practice. Today I'm going to unpack my thoughts about the title of this post by drawing up a list of what I think of as science fiction novels that I've been told are not genre works, but rather literature.

Frankenstein
The Time Machine
War of the Worlds
Brave New World
1984
On the Beach
Canopus in Argos
The Handmaid's Tale

These are only given as examples, and people's opinions may vary on whether or not they are works of science fiction?

In the case of Doris Lessing's Canopus in Argos series, the literary critics have argued she wasted her time writing SF (As an aside I was once Doris Lessing's minder at a science fiction convention, tasked with making sure the fans wouldn't overwhelm her and help her navigate around the convention).  That's what gets my goat.  The assumption that writing genre is a waste of time.

It seems to me that the qualities most ascribed to literature is that they are stories that are written and read as if they were set in a timeless now.  The primary purpose is to describe the human condition, which I understand to be that of fear, uncertainty and doubt.  Style and form take precedent over story and plot.  Finally, the writing of the story is in, and of itself, part of the artistic process, which is a journey for the writer who characters are discovered through the process of writing the novel.  Therefore literature is something that is superior to genre, because it talks about the human condition and therefore has lasting value.

Now I may have misunderstood what I thought I was being told, so any mistakes in characterizing the above case are mine.

However, while a novel may have lasting value, I would argue that this is a product that arises from the passage of time.  Take Shakespeare as an example.  Now considered to be timeless, but there was a long period when his works fell out of favour and were then rediscovered.  So unto each generation a new literature born, to paraphrase Joss Whedon.  The one true thing that can be said is that the definition of literature changes.

If one agrees that is true, then all the works in my list can be both literature and genre.

So perhaps the question is why is genre less than literature, given that the definition is style and substance that allows for classification?  So in short all literature fits within a genre.  In my experience as a therapist people have a need to divide things into true versus false, good versus bad, which is binary thinking that becomes all, or nothing.  I believe that things are generally on a continuum of yes, no and maybe, which changes according to the evidence.

Therefore when critics seek to separate works into literature versus genre they are working against the historical roots of writing by creating a false dichotomy where none needs to exist.  Please feel free to discuss and disagree with me.

Theory v Practice

I like to think about stuff, I guess it goes with the territory of being a writer, or perhaps not.  Maybe it's just because I like thinking about stuff.  One thing I was taught on various courses was the importance of theory and the need to put it into practice, because to paraphrase Kant; Theory without practice is meaningless, but practice without theory is blind.  What I think is that one can apply this to looking at the following:

Literature versus Genre writing
Micro versus Macro plotting
Character versus Plot driven stories

All of these I have seen, or heard being described as starting places in opposition to each other.  However, it seems to me that if you took the above and put them into a drawing like this then they can be seen for what they truly are.

These points are not mutually exclusive things, rather that they are on continuums plotting the progress of discrete changes as one moves from one end to the other.  It is only when you looked at them in isolation do they generate extremes, and in my experience taking extreme positions leads to less tolerance of diversity and acceptance of differences from one's own view as being equally valid.

I might come back and kick these around a bit another time as I think there are some rather interesting assumptions going on as the relative merits of each with some things seen as more valuable than others.  All inspired by the course I talked about here.

This article was inspired by my weekend Guardian Masterclass on the Fundamentals of Fiction run by the award-winning author Tim Lott, where he discussed the six points in my three axis drawing.

The Call to Writing

In another place and time I found myself in a rare position of having a job where I could write stories while I worked.  I had written short stories as a teenager, which my stepfather had told me, were better than he could write.  However, his main comment was that they were written in American English, which made my stories somehow less than they could be.  Writing was certainly not proper work, as it would lead to the misery of poverty; better to have a proper career in banking, like him.  Time passed, and I grew older, but I failed to become a banker, or a solicitor by the time I was nominally an adult.

This is of course for some definitions of adult, but not all definitions of adult, because this was a time when traditional adult roles were changing.  The forces of change ranged from feminist challenges to the male patriarchy, to Margaret Thatcher and her ideology of TINA; There Is No Alternative.  Still, my life was ordinary but I still felt the call to write stories.  As with all things there comes criticism, and my younger self could not cope, because it felt like rejection, and rejection was the thing that I feared most.  Being rejected meant being unloved, unliked, and having to face death all-alone.  So I found other ways to be creative, ways that would not result in me having to face being alone when it was my time to die.

Rejection of what I believed was right for me led to isolation from change that reduced my circumstances, and made my less ordinary leading to rejection and being alone.  Then death came into my life, not for me, but for my friends and family, and I realized that if I were to die without having written the stories I wanted to write then I would die very angry and bitter, full of sadness and regrets.  A friend challenged me to write, and I started, but got stuck again at the barrier of what to write from the sheer number of words one needs to finish a novel.

Then, as in all good stories, something happens to the hero to aid them in their quest.  I was given a present from my partner to help me on my journey to become the writer of my own stories, and through the internet I found my first guide who pointed the way to the path that led to the truth, just write.  Thank you Chuck.

There began my quest to become a writer, and like all quests there was danger from having to face and overcome the monsters of doubt, fear and uncertainty.  The words I wrote taunted me, leading to despair and frustration, but I started again by writing something different, another story and challenged myself to write everyday.  Other people said that is not enough, and that I should write more.  Some writers reported they wrote more words in a day than I was writing in one week.  Confusion and chaos arose from the contradictions all around me, and then I remembered the truth again.  Write, just write, but write everyday, and you will find your way.  I crossed that threshold two months ago, and in so doing I have found myself lost as my old self struggles with the daily task of writing, and the feelings that it generates from doing so as I grow into my new role as a novelist.

Then came the time to get my present, which some may say arrived after the time it was needed, but real life is not a simple story where things happen just in time.  There are complex stories of setbacks, and new challenges that change from day-to-day.  There I met a mentor who taught me that being a good writer is not the same as being a novelist, because everyone can write something that is good, but not everyone can write a novel, because a novelist must have staying power and commitment.  A novel is more than the sum of its parts.  Not all the chapters in a novel will be perfectly written, and the search for perfection must not be allowed to prevent one from reaching the goal of finishing the novel.

I have finished the two-day workshop, and like all mentors mine has imparted his wisdom, and now I must face the trials ahead.  I have helpers like my partner for one, and a community of writers on the Internet for another.  Some will serve me better as certain times, and less well at other times, but I know the fundamental truth that the power is within me.  So I now approach the darkness of the innermost cave of completing the novel, and then I must submit it for publication.  That part of this story is not yet written, but I know I can do it that I must do it if I want the reward that is to become an author of a novel, and here is the final truth.

One is not enough, because if one is good, two is better and three better still, because that is the novelist's quest.  Novels test the author's ability to explore new ideas, to create new characters, and new worlds; to write what no other author has written before.

I have just returned from attending a weekend Guardian Masterclass on the Fundamentals of Fiction that was run by the award-winning author Tim Lott, full of enthusiasm from his teachings I was inspired to write the above.  His two day workshop covered the following: Introduction to novel writing, The psychology of writing, Planning and structure, Dialogue, Character, Plot versus story, A sense of place and time, Next steps and selling your novel.