Write What You Know, But Don’t Tell Anyone

I didn’t know what my book was about until now.

No, not true. I always knew.

Jan’s Story, My Story

My mother is my best friend. We once wrote a (Star Trek fan fic) novel together. We talk about everything together, and she’s the one person I know I can always blab blab blab to about my latest plot ideas.

Lately, things have been difficult. Most our conversation revolves around the financial mistakes she made during the mortgage crisis and what she needs to do to keep her house. (Hint, mom: cancel the cruise.)

Even if we both agreed to discuss something lighter, like my book, I’d end up annoyed with her, because right after she asked me about the book, she would change the subject to nag me about some issue or other we’ve already settled. When she did discuss the book with me, she confused the plotlines, claimed she hasn’t read the xyz version, though I knew she had, and kept repeating the same questions that I just answered ten minutes earlier. I felt like she just wasn’t paying attention, she didn’t care, and it made me angry.

Then I started reading Jan’s Story, and a chill ran down my back. It’s about a man who loses his wife piece by piece to Early Onset Alzheimer’s. My grandmother suffered from “senior dementia,” which acts on the brain just like Alzheimer’s but for some reason isn’t. Her mother suffered it as well, and it is likely that my mother will. And so will I.

I called my mother this morning. I was eager to discuss a new idea I’d had for a plot twist in my wip. She told me it was too convoluted, she couldn’t keep track of it. This time I bit back my impatience. I didn’t tease her or ask her if she forgot to turn on her brain this morning. When I hung up the phone I began to cry.

Overly Poetic

I’m editing. Again. Joy.

It’s funny. The first time I edited the draft, I found prose which was lifeless, stilted and dull. I added a bit of poetry, a touch of spice.

This time around, I’m toning some of that down. You could call it purple prose, but that’s not specific enough. It’s more like odd twists on words. I love to turn verbs into nouns, nouns into verbs, play on puns, throw in alliteration and even rhyming! Sometimes it works (in my opinion) but sometimes I think it detracts from the story by calling attention to the words. I’m trying to find the happy medium. My goal is simple, clear, translucent prose.

Chronological Out Order Of

I believe the structure of a story should reflect the theme. Sometimes that means not telling events in chronological order. Instead, events are fitted together like pieces of a puzzle, where they best serve the story, and time lines are plaited like hair in a braid.

I may have mentioned before an excellent example of this is Ursula LeGuin’s Dispossessed. The story is about a scientist raised in an anarchist utopia who becomes disaffected with his homeworld. He travels to another planet where his genius is recognized and applauded, though eventually he realizes this society, too, has a dark underbelly. He is a physicist who has invented a device — the ansible — which makes timespace both simultaneous and sequential, thus allowing instantaneous communication across lightyears.

What’s amazing about the book is how the structure mirrors this theme of events being both simultaneous/sequential. There are two story lines, told in alternate chapters. One tells of the main character’s childhood and decision to leave his homeworld. The other tells of his gradual disillusionment with the other world and his eventual decision to return home. The book thus ends with him both leaving home and arriving home, simultaneously yet sequentially. More importantly, the reader appreciates how the past makes us, but the possibilities open to us in the future make us too, past and future are plaited like a braid that crosses in the present.

Another book I’ve raved about recently is Never Let Me Go. Kazuo Ishiguro also tells his story out of chronological order, although he is subtle about it. (He’s pretty subtle about everything, so is that a surprise?) That is, except for the fact that the story starts in the “present” and then begins a series of reminiscences about Kathy’s growing up in an odd institution, the story appears to be in chronological order. Look more closely. It’s not. In fact, the narrator jumps from incident to incident based on what the incidents have in common. It’s as though Kathy is having a conversation with you, and although she is trying to relate the events of her life in chronological order, every now and then she forgets herself, or else suddenly she remembers one other thing that happened earlier, which she forgot to tell you before.

Ishiguro makes all of this look artless and natural. But he is in absolute control of what is revealed when, and his timeline is solid. Frankly, I don’t know how he keeps his threads from getting tangled, but at the end of the book, Kathy’s life does not look rambling after all. On the contrary, it has been charging straight forward toward a horrible, inevitable crash, like a train headed for a broken bridge. Even after you see the bridge coming, you can’t turn left or right. There’s no where to go but off the cliff.

The method I employ in the Dindi series is more similar to LeGuin’s than Ishiguro’s. In my notes, I keep a chronology for every character in the story, as well as for the world itself. (Dindi’s people don’t have calendars, because they don’t have writing, but they give each year a unique name and symbol, which allows them to mark their years by carvings in a totem pole.) I could just start the story at Point A and plod along to Point B, but that doesn’t reflect the theme of how memory and forgetfulness, knowledge and ignorance shape how one sees the world and others. The intertwined chronologies reflect how our views of the past alter our views of the future.

Ok, here goes.

I’d like to ask about three things. Theme, Motifs and Action/Decisions.

[I’ll make the questions long, not because I expect you to touch on every point, but to give you options for what you want to talk about.]

1. This story works on two levels — as a fantasy, it has magic, sprites, elves (O Kale, you sparkly elf hunk!) and fairies. In a lot of ways, it follows a fantasy story structure. Cinderella has to find three objects to make a spell work, for instance. However, it is really a literary story in the guise of fantasy tropes. Were you conscious of writing a story with a theme? How do you see the theme of Cinders working with or against the theme of the original Cinderella? (Or, since there are many versions, the theme of the Disney version.) . There are several, ahem, men in Cinderella’s life. Do the different forms of love she feels for each of them relate to the theme? Do you see the men as representing different choices not just Cinderella, but any person, could make?

2. Your writing is extremely well-crafted at the word level. In addition, though, you have a number of motifs that run through the novel — the white flowers, for instance. Or the way Cinderella thinks of her mother, vines and her nickname. The motifs are subtle but evocative. Did the motifs emerge accidentally during the writing, or did you consciously weave them throughout the story? How do you see the motifs playing to the theme?

3.

There was a surprising amount of action in this book. I have to admit, I wasn’t prepared for murders and battles! Awesome. However, the action scenes weren’t the real pivot points of the story, were they? At first, I found this a little disconcerting, because in genre fantasy, I would expect the heroine to assert herself during the scenes of high drama. Yet in this book, I would say the most important decisions the heroine makes are in the quiet scenes.

I’d like to ask about three things. Theme, Motifs and Action/Decisions.

[I’ll make the questions long, not because I expect you to touch on every point, but to give you options for what you want to talk about.]

1. This story works on two levels — as a fantasy, it has magic, sprites, elves (O Kale, you sparkly elf hunk!) and fairies. In a lot of ways, it follows a fantasy story structure. Cinderella has to find three objects to make a spell work, for instance. However, it is really a literary story in the guise of fantasy tropes. Were you conscious of writing a story with a theme? There are several, ahem, men in Cinderella’s life. Do the different forms of love she feels for each of them relate to the theme? Do you see the men as representing different choices not just Cinderella, but any person, could make?

2. Your writing is extremely well-crafted at the word level. In addition, though, you have a number of motifs that run through the novel — the white flowers, for instance. Or the way Cinderella thinks of her mother, vines and her nickname. The motifs are subtle but evocative. Did the motifs emerge accidentally during the writing, or did you consciously weave them throughout the story? How do you see the motifs playing to the theme?

3. How do you see the Cinders working with or against the original Cinderella? (Or, since there are many versions, the theme of the Disney version.) Specifically, I would like to ask about the issue of power in Cinders. In the Disney version, Cinderella does not have much power, but what she does have she uses to protect those even more helpless than herself, for instance, tiny animals. In Cinders, she has much more power, but power is wielded more ambiguously all around. The prince, the fairy godmother, the queen, Cinderella, all have power, and in many cases, the reader is not sure that power is being used for good rather than for selfish purposes. There is one scene — I don’t want to be too specific, but I have to mention it — where children are killed. I was pretty shocked, and I think for me, that sealed this as a book for adults, not a book for children. In a sense, it seemed to me that scene represented the loss of innocence.

There was a surprising amount of action in this book. I have to admit, I wasn’t prepared for murders and battles! Awesome. However, the action scenes weren’t the real pivot points of the story, were they? At first, I found this a little disconcerting, because in genre fantasy, I would expect the heroine to assert herself during the scenes of high drama. Yet in this book, I would say the most important decisions the heroine makes are in the quiet scenes.

Behold My Invention, the Wheel

You know what I’ve just discovered?

My manuscript doesn’t have to be perfect the first time. I can start out with this thing called a “rough draft.” Get the main shape of the plot down on paper. Then go back with a finer brush and paint in the details.

Whoah! Did I think of that all by myself? Man, I’m a genius!

Ok, ok, this is Novelwriting 101. I am a big dork. Sometimes you have rediscover basic rules for writing over again. As the saying goes, “A fool can be told something 1000 times and never learn it. A genius need be told only seven-hundred-and-twenty-six times.”

* * *

Speaking of trying something 726 times, I have again re-arranged Dindi (the series). Quick history: The project started as one 200,000 word book with 7 sections. That was too long, so I thought, what if I make each section into its own book? I wrote an additional 90,000 words for book one. Then I decided that I wanted the series finished, whether Book 1 has sold yet or not, and 7 books was too long. I played around with a quartet.

Inspiration: I have 300,000 words written and a complete series arc. How about a TRILOGY? See how I do that? First I invent a wheel, now a stone ax. I amaze myself.

Seriously, the reason I dismissed a trilogy before was because I couldn’t figure out how to divide 7 by 3. Math, not my forte. (See the post on this topic on The Screaming Guppy.) Then I had a BRILLIANT idea. This time I’m not being sarcastic. Yes, a little bit self-mocking, just to pretend I’m being humble, but mostly I am serious. I re-arranged the order of the seven sections!

Now I have one (hopefully) polished mss (Book 1) and two virtually complete but extremely rough drafts. The word count aim for both is 100,000-110,00 words. As they stand:

Book 2: 102,000 words
Book 3: 88,000 words

I’m a happy camper.

* * *

Back to work on my wheel.

Or I could think of it as writing a 300 page synopsis.