Rewriting Traps - Short Update

I've gotten into a bit of a rut lately, not a good thing when you're less than twenty written pages in. h The problem comes from rewriting. I tend to re-read the last three or four paragraphs that I've written to get back into the flow of things when I continue writing, which I've found is a good practice for consistency in flow. The rut comes from a deep seated desire to tweak and touch up those paragraphs to make them cleaner. When I've done that for an hour or so, it really cuts into my writing time.

It's a habit I'm going to have to work consciously to break. We'll see how that goes.

Anyway, it's late. I'm going to get some sleep.

- Grimm

Outline Writing and Discovery Writing

There are two main schools of writing out there, and of course, every other school is really a hybrid of these two: Outline Writing and Discovery Writing. Both have their advantages and disadvantages, and both have their supporters and detractors, some considerably louder than others.

These two schools are entirely separate from World Building, that's something almost all Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers do, well, all the good ones anyway. Outline Writers and Discovery Writers both tend to get varying details about their Characters, Setting, Conflicts, and Rules Systems generally figured out before they begin, Outline or no Outline.

Outline Writers build complex, sometimes incredibly detailed outlines of their plot. This allows them to set scenes, character interactions and growth arcs, and general story progression in detail, usually before they put down their first paragraph. Working from a good outline allows them to work from point to point on a relatively clear path, even fleshing out individual scenes or chapters out of order. That first paragraph may in fact be nowhere near the beginning of the book. The Outline Writer is generally very organized and meticulous in their outline. It's a structured approach to their art.

Discovery Writers take the Characters they create, put them in the Settings, constrained by the Rules, and just follow along, literally discovering the story by seeing how their Characters react to the situations they're put in. They get to partake in the adventure along with the Characters, being surprised by their actions almost as much as the reader. It can be a gratifying and fulfilling method of writing.

Naturally, most fiction Writers have to fall into one, or a bit of both, of these schools. Myself, I'm finding that I'm 70% Outline Writer, 30% Discovery Writer. Having polished off a 10,000 word outline for BookB, I've found there's still a quite bit of discovery in outline writing, filling in the gaps between major plot points that I want in the story arc, turning the act of writing the outline into a discovery process.

There are other sorts of hybrids that I'm aware of; Discovery Writers that discovery write more than half a book, then outline the rest to ensure that it actually ends up somewhere and Outline Writers that do incredibly basic outlines and discovery write the rest.

Concerning BookB itself, after getting the Rules System sorted out for the magic of the world, a great deal of the previous Outline became either broken or felt weakly constructed. So, with the new tools of the Rules System worked out I set to recreating the Outline of BookB. I still had the same basic premise, same characters, and overall plot, now I had a strong set of building blocks to work with and everything came together much tighter. I'm sure in the actual writing process things will become more refined and cleaner still, though I fully expect there to be several revisions before I'm happy enough to give it to a Reading Group.

Now to dig in and go beyond a few test paragraphs, which I use to help find a Character's Voice, something I find quite helpful and important, and to build scenery and mood. I'm getting excited to see how this goes. I'll keep you posted.

-Grimm

Concerning the Rules of Magic

There are a few ways to do Magic in a Fantasy story, you can either have it fundamentally limitless, so it can do literally anything and solve any problem with no real rules, or you can create a system of rules.

A limitless system can be observed in the worlds of Harry Potter, and as far as I can tell, Lord of the Rings, where there isn't really any discernable cost to the use of magic other than some willpower and the desire to learn. Though I'm sure Tolkien had some sort of rules in mind to prevent Gandalf from just whisking the One Ring away and doing his thing with it.

Rules to me imply a system of checks and balances to ensure that I can't just MacGuffin my way out of a corner and cheat the characters through any tricky spots. I'm not sure how to write a good story with a limitless magic system such as Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings without taking the opportunity to cheat, so I've been reworking BookB's magic system to be more solidly based in rules, with costs and clear definitions of what can and can't be done within those rules.

The trick of course will be to avoid the system feeling "Gamey", the last thing I want to do is put in a whole bunch of math that doesn't fit and distracts from the story.

So I've spent the last few hours reworking the basics of one portion of my magic system to lay the groundwork of a set of rules. It'll keep me honest, and hopefully make the whole process and resulting story a better read.

2 Blog posts and a good 3 hours worth of writing work done today. Not bad.

-Grimm

T-t-t-t-Troll in the Dungeon!

I am, by nature, not a very social creature. I need my structure, my solitude, and my quiet in regular doses. Juxtaposed to that, I can also be quite the extrovert, which comes of being often bored in the public school system, where my only outlet was to be the class clown.

My immediate family knows this about me and tends to deal with it quite amicably, knowing that I get increasingly more difficult to deal with if I don't have my quiet time.

The past few weeks have been less structured than normal. I now have a Troll living in my dungeon. I'm serious, it has funny coloured hair, a jewel in the bellybutton, and an odd, ever-changing nose adornment. Troll right? Well, it's living in my dungeon under the stairs, which was meant to be a fortress of solitude at some point, but now will have to wait. I'm content with the arrangement. I've found writing at 3 and 4 in the morning to afford as much solitude as I've needed.

The last 2 days have been very social and very unstructured due to the wedding of two wonderful friends. Don't misunderstand me, I had an incredibly entertaining time with some great people. Even had a "people of Walmart" moment when picking up some much needed supplies (mostly a potty training seat for my toddler). Regardless of all that, I'm pretty sure I've met my social quota for the next month at the very least.

All told over the whole weekend, not counting tonight I got about 700 words done. Kind of weak, but then again, I did have some amazing thoughts to add to my notes on the 4 hour drive home.

-Grimm

Dialog Cardio?

Well, that felt like a pretty productive night. I've just spent the past 3 hours hammering away at some main plot points, tweaking BookB's outline into a much clearer picture. It feels a lot more cohesive and has a lot more direction to it. Only about 300 words added to the actual story, about 2000 added to the notes and outline, and about 3000 in exercises.

I've also taken some time to grind out some dialog. I basically started with a nice big heaping info-dump of information and pared it down to something that felt more elegant and flowing. That's not to say that everyone speaks as though they're at tea with Her Majesty, not that sort of elegant and flowing, more like a Swan, or a hummingbird in flight, or a ninja doing ballet, with or without the tutu. I'm forcing this mental image on you! You decide! I'm just that nice.

Back on the topic of dialog, I've made some notes and I'm going to share them at the end of my blog posts for a bit. After all the point of this blog, beyond the passive-aggressive self-motivation, is to track my progress and what I'm going through. Consider these little notes my gift to you. Which means you can't complain about them to my face without being impolite. Wraps things up nicely for me.

Notes:

Dialog has to flow and feel like real interaction.

This is seldom achieved by writing it exactly as real dialog would progress. Imagine a lot of contractions and slang, paired with um's ah's and casual epithets. Not to mention people speaking over each other and interrupting, which can still happen in written dialog, just not as frequently.

We write in complete sentences. We do not speak in complete sentences, keep that in mind.

Putting in too much then trimming down is ok, get the conversation saying what you need it to say then trim and prune until it flows.

Each speaking character must have their own motivation in every conversation.

Even if it's just enjoying the sound of their own voice, that is a motivation.

Each character should have their own unique voice.

This can be achieved through flavour and mannerisms, tied with their backgrounds.

Dialog and talking points should fit the voice of the character.

Don't break your character! A street urchin using long complex words is jarring, unless that's part of the character, and it should be explained as such. Don't cheat on this.

Don't info-dump.

Cleverly get your info across from the appropriate voice. Having your prostitute deliver a long exposition about the economics of running a kingdom will likely knock the reader so far out of your story that they won't be able to find it again. Nor will they have the desire to do so.

Lastly: Dialog will be rewritten... A LOT! Don't get too attached.

Bloody Hell it's 1AM I'm going to bed.

- Grimm

My Achilles Heel

"Alright!", Grimm says. "Time to let you in on my weakest writing skill.", he pauses dramatically, "Dialog." Grimm gauged the reaction of his readers. "I know, you'd never know it, but, I, the great talker, have trouble with dialog."

Bleh, enough of that, that little tidbit up there was painful and disgusting to write, as I'm sure it is to read. Somewhere between writing a conversation such as a blog post, and fleshing out dialog for characters in a story, I put on stilts. It's a bad habit, it's one I know, and one I'm going to have to work on at great length to straighten out.

I have absolutely no issue setting a scene, describing action, reeling out plot lines. I can paint a pretty damned good picture with words if I do say so myself, let alone what I used to be capable of with a brush and some paints. Somehow, my delivery on dialog just throws a cat in the works; An angry, claws-fully-intact 200 pound cat, with great big jagged teeth... and bad breath.

I know the voice of my characters, and can generally speak their conversations out quite nicely, roleplay them if you will. Yet somehow, when it comes to writing it out, it doesn't quite work, especially trying to intertwine it with action and reaction. I've requested some writing exercises and been directed to writing excuses which turns out to be a wonderful website of exactly what I need.

Does this mean I'm stopping writing? Hell no! I'm just going to do point form conversation with key turns of phrase while I hammer out my issues with dialog. Maybe I can get Tarantino to ghost write my dialog... it'd only add about 9-bazillion words to the document.

-Grimm