Update on #NaNoWriMo: Test Scenes to Gauge Your Outline

I’m still outlining, but I also hammered out a (possible) Chapter One of my NaNoWriMo WiP, October Knight. I used seed scenes as chapter fodder and my outline to show me what I needed to foreshadow, and created a scene story arc. I wrote it to a high degree of polish. Then I stopped.

I did this for three reasons:

1. To see how long the outline would “write out.” 

I was aiming for about 30 chapters of 2400 words each, but my first chapter turned out to be 4500 words. Oops. Not surprising, since I tend to write long chapters. I thought it might be different this time,  in First Person, with no other PoV characters, but I guess not.

So, unless I want this book to be 180,000 words (uhm, no), I’m cutting the number of chapters down. Twelve is a nice divisible number, with magical implications, and fits my theme of Knights for each month the Year.

2. To test Tone and Voice.

The problem with outlining is that it doesn’t tell you how the tone and Voice are working, and yet these are crucial for making the events in the book work. So even with an Outline First approach, I think it’s critical to see, Hey, can I actually pull this off in the execution stage? Is this headed where I think it’s headed?

My Chapter One turned out quite a bit darker than I had anticipated. My hero Brandon, it seems, is a runaway, who lives with a two junkie dropouts and a couple junkie ghosts in a haunted crack house, while he struggles to stay in high school, hold a full time job (swing shift) and avoid being hunted down and killed by his demonic Stepdad. I knew this from the outline but for some reason when I see how it plays out, I realize introducing heroin addiction in chapter one is going to add some Heavy into the book. On the other hand, I like the chapter. On the third hand, of course I like the chapter, I wrote it.  that doesn’t mean it’s good for the book.

3. To See What the Story Promises Are

The key to good outlining, however, is to remain open to new ideas and new brainstorming. Instead of forcing my chapter to fit my outline, I want to ask what story this chapter (if I like it) is promising and then revisit the outline to see it will deliver. If I introduce addition as an issue, I have to deal with it later on in the book too. Am I willing to do that, or have I exhausted my interest with this one chapter? (Possibly.) If so, I can leave the chapter as “backstory” and start the book later. I can still refer to the hero’s troubled “home” life (demonic stepdad, haunted crackhouse) but place less focus on it.

Now it’s back to my Sticky Note Outline. I’m going to take out half the pages in my three-ring binder. I have to toss some stickies and add new ones. I think I might also switch from a Three Act to Four Act structure. Same thing, just one extra commercial break. 😉

Update on #NaNoWriMo: To Prologue or Not to Prologue

I wrote out a possible Chapter One last night. (More on that later.) The chapter does a couple of things I like:

It introduced the main character, showing him (I hope) as resourceful, wry, hardworking, goal-oriented, caring and able to defend himself despite undeserved suffering, obstacles and enemies. 

It shows the world: urban and “real” (a crack house in LA), but also magical (he uses magic to put out a fire) and supernatural (ghosts, angels and demons).

It shows the outer and inner goal by introducing three story problems. What is in the envelope his mother gave him and why does his demon Stepdad want it? Why did his dad leave him…was he really a mass murderer or was he framed? And how can Brandon escape the hell he seems born to?

A couple of things were unfortunately not introduced:

There was no hint of the romance subplot.

There was no evidence of the lighter, brighter dimensions (the fallen crack whore angel doesn’t count).

The was no mention of Halloween.

It’s not clear from the get-go that the protagonist is a goblin or that he lives in a separate dimension.

Those things wouldn’t fit into the chapter as I wrote it, and that’s okay (maybe) except for the bit about Halloween. That’s kinda critical, and I think it should be waved in the reader’s face right away. In case they missed the pumpkin on the cover. Or saw the pumpkin but read the first chapter and wondered, “Hey, where are the pumpkins? There are no pumpkins here at all. I want pumpkins!”

Thus is born the Prologue.

Ok, I know. Some people don’t read Prologues. Some people hate Prologues. Some Prologues are lame. Yada yada yada.

Here’s my Prologue:

Short and… well, not sweet, but hopefully still cavity-inducing.

I figure this Prologue does several things: It mentions the whole goblin thing right off the bat. Ditto Halloween.

At the same time, it’s clear from the vocabulary that this isn’t a little kid’s book. About half the potential readers will shut the book when they reach the F-bomb, and the other half when they reach “prestidigitation.” The happy few band of readers who can handle both will probably enjoy the story….

NaNoWriMo Tip #14: Onstage vs Offstage

These are my personal tips for NaNoWriMo. You know the drill. Take only what works.

Then there’s what happened a long time ago (backstory) or what is happening to other characters besides the current PoV character. This is what happens “offstage.”

Update on NaNoWriMo #13: Good vs Evil in Urban Fantasy

I’m still thinking of the larger context of my novel, the worldbuilding necessary to sustain a larger series. I had the idea for a holiday fantasy novel for a while before I found the courage to write one, because I was aware of a problem. I realized if I wrote a holiday novel, I’d have to figure out a theory of good vs evil in a context that was familiar (because I was using real holidays) and yet unique (because I’m telling this story). Also, I wanted to write fantasy, not theology, but if I used real holidays I  would inevitably offend people who mistook the first for the second.

Cowardice is never a good reason to avoid a project, however.

A series proposes its own theory of good vs evil and needs to be consistent about it.

In any kind of fantasy, the inclusion of the supernatural automatically forces a series to have its own cosmology. Good and evil are often personified literally. One doesn’t have to have a simplistic or traditional idea of what defines good and evil for this to be true. It applies equally to a devout Christian like C.S. Lewis, an atheist like Phillip Pullman or a Taoist like Ursula Le Guin.

Second world fantasy (where you create your own world, perhaps even with its own deities), is that it is more comfortably removed from discussing people’s actual religions. Urban fantasy is a bit of a puzzle to me, because on one level it’s the “real world” so obviously one is going to have Baptists and Catholics and Jews and Muslims, but on the other hand, I don’t particularly want to take a proselytizing stand and advocate one over the other.

This is even more awkward because my topic is holidays, which are … holy days. And not everyone in the world celebrates the same holy days. Obviously, it’s not possible to write about holiday magic without addressing this.

Children’s story about Jack Frost (like the Rise of the Guardians) or Rudolph the Rednose Rainbow or Jack the Pumpkin King evade this by dealing with the holidays at the level of children. Teasing is bad; sharing is good. I would like to go a little deeper than that.

As a writer, I am consistently enthralled by philosophical questions and by worldbuilding, and so I enjoy building worlds where I can explore philosophical questions. I try to keep this from becoming too heavy or preachy in the book itself. I hope that readers who want only a fast-paced adventurous and fun story will find that, and readers who are interested in other layers in the story will find that too.

I looked over a number of Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance books in my collection for some ideas about the struggle between “Good” and “Evil” is organized. Here are options I’ve seen:

Cosmic Order

Example: Touched By An Angel, Saving Grace, Quantum Leap, Lord of the Rings, Ghosthuntress, Chronicles of Narnia, Left Behind …

All stories that are consciously Christian have a traditional cosmic order in which Good can / will / does triumph over Evil; even though it should be noted that not all stories in which Good can / will / does triumph over Evil are necessarily Christian. Lord of the Rings, for example is less obviously Christian in its mythos than the Narnia Chronicles, although Tolkien himself was a devout Christian.

Quantum Leap, for instance, is not explicitly religious, never mind Christian. The series is specifically vague about what higher power guides Sam’s leaps into places where he can improve people’s lives for the better. Late in the series, Sam meets another Leaper who appears to be working for an Evil power, although, again, details are deliberate left hazy.

Cosmic Bureaucracy 

Examples: Good Omens, Dresden Files, Succubus Blues, Charmed, On a Pale Horse, Hunger, Insomnia …

Both Good and Evil are organized like governments, or perhaps corporations, and the characters, whether nominally Good or Evil, work for them, as if it were a career. This is used in many books where angels and demons are characters. Good is still good, at least nominally, versus evil. However, compared to the traditional Cosmic Order model, there is more ambiguity about whether Good will or even should triumph over evil.

As it says on TV tropes:

Basically, Good and Evil are unionized, and have rules they must follow. These rules are usually towards overall self-preservation; no one side is allowed to “win” too much, and the Big Good and Big Bad restrict their fighting to a Divine Chessboard rather than going at it in person.

Local Bureaucracy 

Examples: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Wicked Lovely, Twilight, Anna Dressed in Blood, Being Human …

There is a local or immediate bureaucracy, such as the Watcher’s Council for the Vampire Slayer in the Buffyverse, or the Faery Courts. This is used in many urban fae, vampire and werewolf scenarios. The Even the good guy Local Bureaucracy is often as much a source of trouble to the protagonist as the baddies, without actually slipping into full role reversal.

The Local Bureaucracy often works in the context of a less clearly defined Cosmic justice system, which may include hell and heaven and other dimensions. Rules govern the larger cosmic system, but the characters don’t directly enforce those rules.

Reverse Roles

Examples: Queen of Orcs, Shrek, Wicked, Villains By Necessity, His Dark Materials …

In the role reversed universe, what we were told were evil creatures are on the Good side and the traditional heroes are cast as villains. In Queen of the Orcs, orcs are a noble, abused race while most humans are scum.

Phillip Pullman, according to rumor, created his series as a protest against overly obvious religious symbolism in fantasy (cough Narnia cough) and so in his series, the religious fanatics are the baddies.

Even in a series in which Good and Evil are more or less traditional, a common modern trope has become the “the villains in White,” modeled on Spanish Inquisition types. You don’t have to have a full reverse role story to think that torturing and burning hundreds of people is a bad thing.

Note that in these scenarios, Good and Evil are still quite clearly defined, simply relabeled.

Anarchist

Examples: Bloodsucking Fiends …

Supernatural creatures simply wander around, clueless as to their higher purpose. Their behavior may also defy easy categorization. This category is often humorous.

Please feel free to list others examples or options….

NaNoWriMo Tip #13: Three Secrets To Save You From Writing Torture

1. Calendar

2. Map

3. Mugshots 

Update on NaNoWriMo #12: Creating a Series Template

I am still working with both my index cards and my Sticky Note Outline. I’m also still writing Seed Scenes.

I have settled on some things. I haven’t talked much about worldbuilding. Really, I think research and worldbuidling for certain projects can need much more time than one month. For this project, though, I’m world-building as I go.

Since October Knight is going to be a series, I have to keep in mind which elements of this book are going to be part of the Series Template.

Template is a term from television screenwriting. Every episode in a TV series has to conform to the rules of that series. These rules go beyond genre. For instance, both Dexter and Medium are detective stories. Ghosts and prophetic dreams not only can appear but must appear in each episode of Medium; in the Medium universe, ghosts literally exist (though only mediums can see them) and dreams convey facts (though often misunderstood) about the past or the future. Dexter sometimes sees the ghost of his dad, but this doesn’t happen all the time, and when it does, it is not meant to be understood as a literal ghost, but as a projection of Dexter’s psyche.

Those are worldbuilding differences, since Medium has an element of fantasy, whereas Dexter is more “realistic.” (Not really perhaps, since we still have to accept that a psychopathic mass murderer can be hero, but there is no “magic.”) Each show has its carefully drawn parameters. Medium has ghosts but not vampires.

In addition to the worldbuidling differences, there are other equally important parameters. Both Dexter and Allison DuBois (heroine of Medium) have families, but the show rules treat their families differently. On Medium, the unspoken rule is that nothing bad ever happens to Allison’s family. If she has a prophetic dream that the serial killer of the week kills her three daughters, it usually turns out that the dream really refers to another family. Dexter’s family has no such guarantee of immunity.

I’m not sure how many Holiday Knight novels I want to write. In addition to the Halloween story, I’m setting up characters for a Christmas and a Valentine’s Day story. In theory, I could do as many as twelve. (What is it with me and series of twelve? Sheesh.) But I don’t want to get locked into that, so the first rule I have to set for myself is to make sure each book can stand alone, yet leave room for future novels in the same world.

Here are some other important things to decide for a Series Template:

Characters: Does the series have the same protagonist and supporting cast?  The Unfinished Song has the same heroine and hero (Dindi and Kavio) and recurring villains and supporting cast through all twelve books, although Dindi is the anchor character. However, my Holiday Knight series must have a different protagonist for each novel so that hero’s story and romantic subplot can be complete. I will use a technique common in Romance series, where supporting cast in this book can become the heroes of heroines of future books.

PoV: PoV should be consistent across a series. That doesn’t mean each book has to be about the same characters, but if one book is multiple third person past tense, they all should be. I think I’ll be going with first person past tense for this book, which means that each book will be first tense, but from the PoV of a different protagonist. That means that the Voice should change with each book–but not enough that it is out of keeping with the overall Tone of the series.

Tone: This is not the same as Voice, although its related. Tone is the name I give for those rules which determine if a character’s kids get killed by a serial killer or are, by unspoken rule, off limits. Humorous or series? Drama or melodrama? Cussing, rutting and bloodletting fit for HBO or Disney Channel clean? This is something that might not come out in the early Outlines, so the Seed Scenes are important.

I kept my Outline clean and funny, but my scenes are turning out to have serious situations, and risk being more gritty than I want. One possible version (this could change) has my hero homeless at the beginning of the novel. Although he’s not a user himself, he lives in what is basically a crack house, because those are the only friends who would take them in. I realized that if include nineteen year old junkies and forteen year old crack whores in my story, it’s probably never going to be made into a Hallmark family holiday movie. And I was really looking forward to that.

I may compromise with a tone of Dark Humor. There’s gore, but it’s funny. So much depends on what I can actually pull off.

Time: You couldn’t have an episode of 24 that covered three months (excluding flashbacks). Most series Templates aren’t so strict, but still, I find that one thing which can make a trilogy or series of novels feel “off” or unbalanced is if the writer loses control of the passage of time. I remember one otherwise good sf series where most of the story action took place over a few weeks in each book, but suddenly in the third book, the writer tossed in a two year journey in Chapter Three, because the two characters had to travel between planets and they had no cryonic suspension or FTL. If they had been asleep, the two years would have worked. It was the fact they spent that time awake but Offstage that snapped suspension of disbelief. In terms of character growth, the writer treated this two years as if it were insignificant. The story continued after the journey as if the characters hadn’t changed from the last time we saw them. Hm, shouldn’t they have changed a lot more in two years, especially under such isolation? It blew the whole story for me.

In The Unfinished Song, I cover about a year per trilogy, with most of the time passing in the first two books and then events transpiring quickly in the third book of the trilogy. For instance, in Root (book 4 over all in the series, but the start of a new sub-trilogy), about 9 months pass, in Wing (book 5), three months pass, and in Blood (book 6), everything takes place within three days. There will be a big climax, and then in Book 7, things will slow down again and the better part of another year will pass. Book 9, third in the third sub-trilogy, will be the Vaedi Vooma (the dance to choose the Vaedi) and everything will happen quickly.

Plot and Subplots: Lois McMaster Bujold alternates her Vorkosigan series between mystery and romance subplots, under the umbrella of rollicking space opera adventure. There’s an advantage to that when you’re following a single character, in her case, Miles Vorkosigan. In early books, Miles has romantic flings, but they dissolve, and it’s okay, because he achieves the goal of the main plot. Finally, some love comes Miles way in what is, hands down, the best of Science Fiction and Romance ever written, A Civil Campaign. But after the HEA (Happily Ever After), how could she write another book about Miles? A lesser author would do some lame thing like have his wife killed by an assassin (or turn out to be an assassin) and send Miles on a rampage for revenge. Instead, Bujold has the newlyweds act as detectives in an awesome space mystery. She simply switched sub-genre, and it all fit.

Mixing up the subplots can keep a long series fresh. In general, though, it’s a good idea to define the extent of your subplot territory in terms of the series Template.

What that means for me is that I intend to keep my main hierarchy of plot-subplot-subplot. Each novel, like the first, will have a story of a teen earning the power of one of the Knights of the Year. Each novel will be associated with a holiday (although if I do weird months like June, I’m not sure how I’ll handle that). Each novel will involve a romance that has a HEA. Possibly each novel will also have a murder mystery… I’m not as certain on this point. Definitely each novel will be funny, or at least as funny as I can make it, and funny in the same tone as the first.

Theme: I called this category Theme, but Theme is a bit more amorphous than what I have in mind. In a series, particularly if it’s episodic, one needs to know what force is going to generate the conflict. This could range from the vile to the ridiculous. On I Love Lucy, the source of trouble is Lucy’s own crazy schemes, while on Dexter, the bad guy has to be someone so loathsome and dangerous that a vigilante serial killer looks good by comparison. Superheros need supervillains. Vampire slayers need vampires.

On House, the doctor always faces problems on three levels: the disease (a medical mystery), the fact that patients always lie about some crucial detail needed to solve the mystery, and his own irascible behavior which gets him in trouble with authorities, his friends and his own health. Individual episodes have their own themes, but the unifying is that “everybody lies,” mostly for self-serving purposes, but sometimes out of concern for others, and that reason and science needs to uncover the psychological and social truth as well as the physiological and medical truth to cure the disorder.