So it turns out I’m not actually dead.
I’ve just been busy. I mean, guy-with-a-fire-extinguisher-working-at-a-retirement-home-for-pyromaniacs busy. Between working on my NaNoWriMo novel and pouring the hours in at work, I haven’t had a spare moment for blogging. Not complaining, just saying. (In fact, this very post was started two weeks ago, but stalled mid-sentence due to a resident setting fire to his drapes, metaphorically speaking.)
You may be asking, So now that November is long dead and buried, how did that novel go? Did you finish?
Yes, I say, beaming a 50,000 word smile. And around 5:00 PM last Saturday, I finished the extra 20,000 words that brought the literary beast up to a marketable 70,000 words — which was my true goal for this year.
Having been to the top of that mountain of dashed-off words (oh, the edits and rewrites that await me next year!), I now come back down with stone tablets listing the things I learned on my journey. Yes, there are three tablets. But there’s only one item per tablet; I write large when carving.
Outline is King
I understand that there are writers out there who dream up an idea for a novel, put their butts in their chairs, and just crank that thing out, never once stopping to wonder, “Where do I go from here?” Those writers are freaks, and should be put on display. Oh, keep them writing, but we should be able to watch them as they work, and throw peanuts in their cages. Freaks!
I am not one of those writers, and I have a hard drive full of aborted stories to prove it. I discovered during my second NaNoWriMo attempt that, without an outline, I’m like a traveler without a map. I might end up at my destination, but if I do, it’s more luck than any skill on my part. Thus, I have come to love the outline. This year, I loved it even more, and made little notes as to how many words each section should take up, so I didn’t end up at the end of my novel coming up short (like last year). And still — AND STILL — it wasn’t enough.
There were still days when I put butt to chair, fired up the old words-on-screen machine, and found myself staring at one line on the outline saying to myself “What does that mean?” For example, one line on the outline was “They have a big battle.” That’s it? A “big battle” that’s supposed to rage for 2000 words, and that’s all I gave myself for direction?
My lesson here for myself (though you’re welcome to use it as well): Outline more. After you’ve outlined your piece, look at it again and see if there are spots that cry out for details, and add them. Even if it’s just a bulleted list of beats to hit in the scene, go ahead and list them. Plotting and writing are two different things; it’s best to do all your plotting at once, before you start the writing, so you don’t have to stop the writing to do some plotting.
The World Will Build Itself
Two years ago, I spent a healthy chunk of October doing world-building for my sci-fi novel in November. As it turned out, I only used a fraction of that work in the novel itself — and that was time that would have been better spent working on the outline.
This year, even though my novel’s world is just as large and fantastical as the one I explored two years ago, I did little more than jot down a couple notes before I started. I had a rough idea where points of interest were, and the basic geopolitical situation of the region, but left the specifics mostly blank, and just filled stuff in where I had to. Okay, some of it’s still “Lord XXX” of “The YYY barony” at the moment, but I was able to give that lord and his land whatever details I needed to for the sake of the story, and wasn’t constrained by the 20-page sourcebook I’d already written and no one else would ever read.
A Good Character is Hard to Find
This is especially true if you have too many characters — which I did. Do. Continue to have until I murder a bunch of them during my first rewrite. It’s a challenge to make a character who is believable, sympathetic, and yet flawed. Making enough of them to populate a small fantasy village? Now, that’s some seriously hard work. Even if each of them is a perfectly-crafted gem, there’s a good chance that, with so many of them crowding the story, no single character will have enough time on stage for the reader to invest in him or her.
Some writers can pull this off. Especially if they’re working on 500-page epics. But for me (and really, this is all just advice I’m giving myself in second person), it’s better to focus on a few, well-crafted characters.
