World Building and Swearing *gasp!*

The reason for my blogging hiatus can be found in the title of the post. That's right. World building and swearing. Who'd a thunk it could take months from your life? Maybe swearing really is evil.

I have been engaged in an all out revising war with my manuscript. I had a deadline to get a revised copy my editor (yes I made it, just under the wire) and so began the war. The trouble started while brainstorming 12th Dimension book 3 with my writers group. We had just read and discussed the first draft of book 2 and discovered how much set up was lacking in order to provide book 3 with a satisfying conclusion. This meant R.A.G.E. itself needed to be put under a major remodel if I was to ever be able to write book 3. This involved taking a major character with a bare bones back story and giving her her head.

Yes, I had to descend into the mind and the alternate-dimensional world of this character and build her world. It went well, honestly, as much as it scared me. I enjoyed the world building. I loved/hated writing the character (she's psychotic and I didn't like being in her head) and I sent off the new chapters to my writers group.

They read and mere weeks before my deadline, we discovered some holes. As I mentioned above, this character I've been fleshing out is psychotic. And she swears. A lot. The trouble was, my writers group didn't feel like it fit in her world. In my new world of science, logic and for the most part non-religious, the expletives we use in our society whether they be religious terminology, or biological terminology, simply didn't work. As one of my Alpha readers stated, "Swearing is cultural and you've created a different culture."

No, this is not about propriety or offending people's sensibilities. This is about being true to your world. So began weeks of research concerning this topic. My aforementioned brilliant-Alpha-reader suggested looking up one of the Writing Excuses podcasts (go and listen because it took me an eternity to find myself) about religion and world building.

What it came down to is this: Find something that your world's society cares a lot about . . . and take it in vain.

Electricity/power is of supreme importance, lack thereof would be worth swearing over. Science/facts are important, philosophy and possibly religion would be looked down on. (I'd love to add some of my made up cuss words in this post, but I won't. Mostly because I'm getting more protective of my novel the closer it creeps to publication.)

What this exercise really did for my novel, (aside from discovering and creating some cool words for my characters to yell at each other) was that it made me dig deep into my world and discover what matters most to the society I've created. I had to think of history, wars, leaders, conflicts, religions(or lack thereof) and build it from there. It gave depth to the surface story I already had on the page. It gave my characters deeper motivations and their opposition clear motivators as well. And it made the make believe world feel real and ancient. And after all, isn't that what a fantasy/sci-fi writer is going for?

All that from the need for my characters to swear authentically. Who'd'a thunk, eh?

2012 Will Birth a Trilogy

You heard that right. Er, if you've been following my blog at all you already know all this but I'm going to spout about it anyway.

Yes. 2012 will birth a trilogy. Actually it will probably birth a whole lot of them, some starting with the first book, others finishing with their third...but I ramble. There is only one I'm supremely interested in.

The first book in the 12th Dimension Trilogy, R.A.G.E., by yours truly, will be released late 2012.

I'd like to say I have an exact release date. Right now it's tentatively planned for 12/12/12.

I know cool right? The first in the 12th Dimension Trilogy released on such an awesome once in a life time date like that.

I'm only telling you this because it's time for you to start working on your Christmas lists for next Christmas. And saving. Perfect for all the people on your lists who like action, adventure, lightning, guns, crazy people and love. Come on. That's everyone. Right?

So my New Years Resolution this year involves: finishing the last book in the trilogy before the first one comes out. That's right. I have an entire manuscript to write before December. Now having already finished two it should be old hat. Right? Um. Actually I'm staring at the measly 5,079 I have finished of said manuscript and am wondering how in the !@#$ I did it the first two times.

Don't worry about me. Finishing is a New Years resolution and those are never broken. Right? Right . . .?!?!

What resolutions are you determined not to break?

The Easy and The Hard

Since my last post things have been up and down and all over the map. After the tragedy of losing Trey I spent many weeks not being myself at all. It wasn't until I thought maybe another dog in the house would help that I searched animal shelters and classifieds until I found this little guy.

Winston is a Wire-hair Fox Terrier and he has restored balance to my life.

So that was an up. Then just before Thanksgiving and while my husband was on a plane home from Germany, I got really sick...again. I'll compare it to earlier this year when I'd had to get my gallbladder removed except that I no longer had a gallbladder. So after pretending for a good 12 hours that I only had a bad flu bug, my husband finally gets home and I give him a hug and weepingly ask him to take to to the emergency room. After the nice nurses had given me a bed and some morphine, I sent my jetlagged husband home and waited for the results which I hoped had nothing to do with my missing gallbladder. The findings: my appendix needed to come out now!!

I know, I know. Two unrelated surgeries in one year. Both within a week of a major holiday. I'm a little concerned about what my body is planning for Christmas.

So that was the down. A few days later we hopped in the car as a family and drove to California to have Thanksgiving dinner with my Grandmother. It was a wonderful time to see family I hadn't seen for a long time, even if it was in a partially drug-induced haze. What a great upper.

While all this was happening, I was doing my best to continue with my writing. It's almost 2012, the year that R.A.G.E. will be released and I still feel like it's not even close to being ready. My editor suggested that my book wasn't beginning in the right place and that I should write a chapter about what happens before my current beginning. I thought this was funny at first because I'd deleted the first chapter over a year ago in order to start the novel in the middle of the action. What I learned was that people need a reason to care that the main character is being chased or shot at before you can do any of those things to them.

The trouble was, that chapter I'd deleted hadn't benefited from the massive amounts of writing knowledge I'd collected after it had been sent to be quietly buried in the file graveyard lovingly entitled "trashed writing". It was really no good. I had to start from scratch.

This was actually fun on many levels. I really got to examine my main characters as people would who were meeting them for the first time. I even surprised myself by writing in tiny snippets of backstory that had hitherto not existed, helping to round out characters I already thought were rounded.

And so the massive edits continue although I'm sneaking time when I can to work on the third and final book in my 12th Dimension series. My intention is to have all three books written before the first one comes out.

I'll leave you with this quote I borrowed from a friend. I want everyone to think of it every time you write a sentence, read a book, or even look at a book across the way in some big box store.


Easy reading is damn hard writing. --Nathaniel Hawthorne

And so it is.

Payoffs

I was talking to a fellow writer the other day who is struggling a bit with her first draft. She’s an amazing writer but sometimes has a hard time putting down that crappy first draft because she’s a self-proclaimed perfectionist. No matter how many people say, “Just write it. It’s a first draft, it’s supposed to suck!” she just hates leaving behind any ugly sentence structures, even the slightest bland-ish character, or stilted dialogue and therefore doesn’t always feel excited about getting back to the work.

We came to the conclusion that what she needed was a payoff. And not just any payoff—a daily, paragraph to paragraph, sentence to sentence payoff.

So what’s a payoff? Something that excites us about the sometimes not-so-beautiful work-in-progress that brings us back to it day after day, month after month until it can be completed and therefore edited to perfection.

I hadn’t actually thought about it until this conversation and I realized that I have a payoff in place for myself. Sometimes I’ll find myself writing some beautiful prose that I wouldn’t mind reading again and marveling at my brilliance, but most often it’s simply the dialogue.

I love dialogue with all my heart. I like writing conversations and arguments. I love the act of communication and how it can drive a scene either by characters learning more about each other or miscommunication that leads to blows (I like the blows a lot. Ask anyone.). I like speaking dialogue I’m considering for a scene to myself in the mirror while I get ready in the morning (don’t judge, you do it too...erm, maybe) and therefore even in my first drafts, my dialogue tends to shine. Everything else is an atrocious lump but, hey, I have fancy dialogue.

That’s my payoff. I don’t move onto another scene if I feel that the dialogue is even a little off. So the next day, after letting my mind be filled with other (more important) things, I’m still excited to come back and see what my characters said to each other, and what they might say next.

What’s your payoff to keep you writing?

Things I now know about writing

May I just start by saying my editor, Sheryl, is brilliant. I received my first edits from her this week which only went to show me how much I didn't know. It never fails--feel like you know everything about a subject and the universe will make sure you discover that you don't.

So I open the edited document and my first reaction was, "HOLY BLOOD RED PENCIL, BATMAN!"

Now I'll have to admit this didn't shake me up like it would have a year ago, or if I'd received the same information by someone a bit less trustworthy. I was delighted, not only that I hadn't self-published (not that I'm opposed to self-publishing but in R.A.G.E.'s case I would have just been shooting myself in the foot), but that at last I had been handed the tools by a brilliant professional (have I mentioned that yet? Brilliant, I tell you) to give R.A.G.E. the greatest chance out there in the big, scary world.

So after my original reaction and then my secondary reaction and perhaps a couple more reactions, (NONE of which involved any tears or welling about the eyes of any kind) I planted myself in front of my computer and went about learning what I probably should have already known.

Now I'm going to pass it along to you. Chances are you already know all this and you are welcome to roll your eyes at me and go find something more interesting to do. If you don't, however, go ahead and apply these techniques to your own work and you'll be surprised how much it tightens the writing.

1. The "ING" trap. This is what my editor calls it and you can read all about it here.

In my manuscript I'd call if more of a disease. Once I started it just seemed to spread. This is when (usually in an attempt to start your sentence with something other than he/she/ I/my or your character's name) you instead start with the verb. Example from R.A.G.E. "Trembling fingers touched my neck, searching for comfort from my dad." Urgh! Okay, this sentence is horrendous in many ways but let me fix it really quick so I can copy and paste it in my manuscript. How about. "My trembling fingers touched my neck, searching for the pendant that always gave me comfort from my father." Not great, but better, and it doesn't start with an "ing" word. Click on the link for more detailed info with examples and how to fix them. I understand it but I'm not sure I can explain it well enough.

2. ‘there is/there are' and ‘it is/it was' constructions. An example from my own work. "It was my leg, of all things, that hurt the worst." I mean seriously isn't it just better to write something like, "My leg, of all things, hurt the worst." I went and did a "find" (but not replace because you're going to have to use your brain to fix these ones) of all the "it was"'s. Amazing! And tightened. Done. You can read all about it here.

3. And last (at least for the moment until I receive more edits) The watching syndrome. Check for detailed info here.

This has to do with your character seeing things, hearing things and feeling things. Yes, we should have our characters using their five senses but it should be invisible. Here's an example from RISK this time, because I already went back and fixed the ones in R.A.G.E.: "I heard Max click a magazine into the M203 and start peppering bullets into the darkness." So much easier just to say, "Max clicked a magazine into the M203 and started peppering bullets into the darkness." Yes? Nod your head if you agree...did you just nod? And how about (also from RISK): "I saw the man lunging across the bed toward me, hands outstretched." How about instead: "The man lunged across the bed toward me, hands outstretched." Easy peasy and so much better.

I love all these little things in the editing phase and watching R.A.G.E. come together. Go ahead and read the other writing tips on the Shelfstealers website. You'll be happy you did and your manuscript as well as future (or current) editors will thank you.

My editor said, and I'm going to quote her because she's...(come on, you already know what I'm going to say because, admit it, you're clicking over to your own manuscripts right now and applying these things)...brilliant. She said, "when we eliminate some of the weaknesses in our writing, other weaknesses that were hiding, rise to the surface. I liken it to the sculptor's or wood-carver's process: carve away the awkward bits to reveal the grain, and then work with that grain to bring out its richness."

With those words I'm going to work on my sculpture...erm manuscript.

It's too dang crowded, I can't see the end . . .

Today my two youngest children (2 and 4) dragged out an old toy kitchen set that's been residing in our basement since their older sister outgrew it four years ago. Seeing an opening for quiet writing time while they played with their "new" toy, I put it in the two-year-old's room, listening to them play quietly with the single piece of plastic pizza that had survived the four years of abandonment. Hoping for more than ten minutes of writing time, I scavenged around the house for other toy dishes, toy utensils and plastic food. I was very pleased with myself as I set out the toys for them and then settled down with my laptop to do some serious writing. Not more than ten seconds later, without a single new word to my name, I hear the screaming and wailing telling me the kidlets are engaged in an all out war over the new items. So I settled it, found a couple more things and pulled out my laptop again. Screams, followed by some pushing and if I were to gauge by the the strange crescent-shaped mark on the four-year-old's arm, there was some biting as well.

So what happened between the twenty or so minutes they played happily with the single piece of pizza and the ten seconds they played with everything else. I guess things just got too crowded--too many cool things were put into play.

This got me thinking about my current writing quandary. There I was happily typing along a singular plot line, excited about my dear protag going from point A to point B with this motivation and that problem. Then I start working on the climax and the winding up and realize that things have become too crowded. I've seriously thought of screaming, pushing and biting but being a mature adult have restrained myself (ahem, those aren't bite marks on the screen, I swear!).

I kinda feel like perhaps Stephan King felt when he got somewhere toward the end of The Stand and realized things had gotten too crowded with too many story lines going in a too many directions. What did he do? Apparently he blew up half his characters (I'm only halfway through so I'm going to take his word for it until I get there).

Now blowing up half my characters isn't going to work for me, first of all, I like them way too much and have worked in hints throughout the novel that their lives are vital to the climax, and second of all, I simply don't much care for killing characters (not that you'd know it if you read it).

I did come to a conclusion today that since moving forward is proving impossible, I need to go back and untangle the first draft rats nest, working out all the character's wants and motivations. Hopefully then, I'll be able to see the climax come together in the way I want with all the loose ends tied up.

Before I do that, however, I should probably go and untangle the children from that kitchen set and remove everything except that single piece of plastic pizza.

50K

As milestones go 50K words when you're writing a novel is a pretty good one as the average novel size is between 70K words and 100K words. Why am I spouting off about word counts again? Okay, okay, I'm sure you already guessed it. Yes, I hit and passed 50K words yesterday.

Thank you! Thank you very much!

I actually am not entirely sure how I feel about it. On one hand I'm ecstatic that I've written as much as that and gotten as far as I have in the story. On the other hand, I have been writing in a thousand different directions putting in so many deliberate inconsistencies simply to get the story down.

I say deliberate and I mean it, although I am not happy about it. The thing is, I have a general idea of where the story is going. Characters will go to location A and then leave for location B before dropping character X over into a ravine before moving onto location C. So far I have done just that, moved my characters to the locations I want them to be. The trouble is, I'm not at all clear about their end games or their motivations. Only the conclusion of the novel can clear that up for me but as that is yet unwritten I have locations A, B, and C accounted for but the reason character X was thrown into the ravine only makes sense in chapters 7 and 9 but not chapters 8, 12 and 13.

This happens to grieve me deeply and causes no end to problems with writers block and irritation with my characters because I'm not entirely sure what they want. I suppose if this were my first novel, I might be able to live with it simply because Stephan King said so in his novel on Writing (a new writer's bible on the craft). However, this is my second novel I am operating on an entirely different way of writing than I'm used to. R.A.G.E. was edited to the T throughout every step of writing. I always felt really good about whatever was written previously before I went onto the next section.

Both ways have their pros and cons, although I find myself increasingly more frustrated with Risk, and not at all certain it will ever come fully together. For now I'll continue along the path I sprinting down, (I say sprinting because sometimes I feel like I'm running so fast, I'm stubbing my toes and tripping over rocks whereas with R.A.G.E. I was tiptoeing ever so carefully for the 8 months it took me to write it).

The editing phase sometime in January or February (if I can continue at this pace) will probably be just as much work as the writing phase. However at least by that time I'll have the ending and hopefully know all the characters motivations. I might even be able to save character X from that ravine.

What to do, what to do

What if you're not totally jazzed about a chapter you need to write? Does that mean there is a problem with it?

First off, let me just brag for a moment. Dimensional Risk (the sequel to R.A.G.E.) hit 20,000 words this week. For all of those who don't obsess over word count, that equals about 80 double spaced pages or in Risk's case, 7 chapters.

I've been feeling pretty good about myself, you know, taking Stephan King's advice from his book On Writing and just plowing ahead, taking little time for editing or stressing over where the story is going. I have to say it's quite liberating to be able to write and write and write, knowing I'm probably doing the best thing for the book but on the other hand I have to keep up a mantra in my head reminding myself that it doesn't have to be perfect, gosh darn it, we live in a modern age where changing a word, sentence, paragraph or even a chapter is as easy as *highlight*delete*move cursor*type new section*.

Okay, back to my original question. I hit 23,284 words today (again about 87 pages double spaced) and found myself at a road block. Now unlike the other writer's blocks I hit with frequency, this has less to do with not knowing what to write next but rather, I just don't wanna write it. The content of the next chapter seems almost dull to me. I suppose it will have a lot of action, shooting, screaming, lighting and other crap that I so much enjoy putting in my work, but I think my sense of boredom comes from my main character having cut herself off from everyone. More than just about anything (writing related) I enjoy writing dialogue. Now having a main character distant from the other main characters makes for a lot of lackluster if not downright non-existent dialogue *sob*.

So what's my fix? Do I just plow through and write it so I can get to the much more character-centric, interesting and easy to write chapter 9, or do I find a way to change chapter 8 so it appeals to me more? What would you do?