Scenes are often composed of people talking, a little action, and then more talking. Sometimes the action is minor, taking the characters from one place to another. Two characters talking in a coffee shop would have minimal action, but a lot of dialogue. Other times the dialogue is minimal, and the action is violence. It can be sudden, as in a car wreck, or planned as in a battle. At the outset of any story, our characters are in a comfortable place. An incident/event occurs, throwing them out of what they know and into disarray, beginning the real story. Once they recover from the first obstacle, they realize they must do or find something important. Only a certain object or person will resolve the situation. To acquire what they need, the protagonist and their companions must enter unfamiliar circumstances. They must struggle and make mistakes until they become accustomed to their new situation. This is where the action comes into the story. I have read books were the author was so involved in setting traps and roadblocks for the protagonist and their nemesis that the story line wandered off and got lost. The author failed to entertain me. Action scenes must fulfil several requirements:
The events the protagonist experiences must push the plot forward. In the process, the action should force the characters involved in it to become greater than they were, to find something within themselves they didn’t know existed. I’m just going to get this out into the open: long, drawn-out fight scenes bore me to tears. So many authors get hung up on the technical side of the fight—how the combatants were dressed, who hacked, who slashed, and so on. Scenes involving fighting should be written as controlled chaos. They must be logical and real and must give the impression of a chaotic event. Just as if the physical dispute were a dance, we choreograph it. We all know the common fundamentals of the fight scene:
Those are part of the elements that comprise the “push” of the action—the chaos. It takes time, but over the course of several hours, you can put the skeleton of your fight scene on paper. What is physically possible and what is not? But what of a non-violent action scene? Perhaps the characters are sneaking into a room or attempting to board a crowded train. What furnishings does the immediate environment contain, and how does that affect their movements? What hinders the characters moving within their space? What aids them? For much of the morning they rode in silence. The path climbed more steeply than Alf had imagined a fully laden cart or wagon could manage. The vertical wall of the Escarpment on the left side of the trail and a waist-high stone barrier with a terrible drop on the right made him jittery. It occurred to him that the low wall was little more than a robust fence, knee high to his horse. The next step, after the action is laid down, is fine tuning it, so the reactions and responses of your characters are natural and real. If the scene is about dialogue, insert the action so it is minimal. It can be a slight buzz in the background that serves as a speech tag: He forced himself to loosen his grip on the reins. “I suspect the little barrier is there mainly to keep the wagons from sliding over the edge in the winter. It does provide some comfort to know that, while I would be launched amazingly far, my horse would likely be saved.” Dex looked at him sharply. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of heights. This is nothing compared to what we’ll deal with when we leave Hemsteck.” After the push, comes the “glide” where the characters assess what just happened, tend to their injuries, and decide what to do next. They must catch their breath and figure out where they went wrong. Every now and then a manuscript comes to me that is impossible to navigate because the author is afraid to let their characters rest and regroup, and it basically becomes a nonstop beating for the protagonist. The author may fear that the reader will find it boring if he pauses the action for any reason. That continual pressure on the protagonist is exhausting to me as a reader. If you don’t allow your characters to process the violence they just experienced, the story gets lost in the chaos. Once the reader can no longer suspend their disbelief, you have lost them. Most of us understand verbal disputes and how they are constructed. But if physical violence is involved and you are not a martial arts aficionado or a weapons specialist, you may wish to consult someone who is and have them look at your scene. They will tell you what is physically possible and what is not. Once I have a fight scene choreographed, I run it past my writing friends, David Cantrell and Lee French, both of whom will point out the areas where it is no longer believable. To wind this post up, a constant assault of random action, scene after scene, makes no sense unless you allow the reader to put the events into perspective. Scenes inserted for shock value and with no pause for rest and reflection don’t allow the protagonist to demonstrate personal growth. As a reader, I will put that book down, unfinished. --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- Connie J. Jasperson is a published poet and the author of nine novels. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies. A founding member of Myrddin Publishing Group, she can be found blogging regularly on both the craft of writing and art history at Life in the Realm of Fantasy. Layers of a Scene—Action © 2018 Connie J. Jasperson, was first published on October 17, 2018 on Life in the Realm of Fantasy and has been reprinted by permission.
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While you are reading this post, you are probably sitting in a room, or perhaps sitting in some form of public transportation and reading on your phone. Wherever you currently are physically, you are reading a blog post. Because you are reading this post, your attention is in my room. The sounds of your environment have faded, and you are here with me, observing as I write about writing. It’s 05:38 am, and my house is quiet, but not quite silent. It’s not a dark place, as the nightlight in the living room casts a warm glow, and the ceiling light in the room I call my “office” keeps me hitting the right keys, mostly. The furnace has come on, and the vents are making that familiar soft wooshing sound. A cat once lived in this room, but she is gone, nine years now. Still, her spirit lingers among the dusty books and boxes of the storeroom that is my Room of Shame—a room no one is allowed to see when they visit. A sign on the door clearly warns, if you’re not in my book, keep out. I wear a blue robe and ratty pink slippers. My feet are propped on a folding chair from Costco and the keyboard rests on my lap. Filing cabinets, boxes, shelves, dusty books, my husband’s citronella plants in the window, boxes and more boxes—this room is a cacophony of visual noise. And yet this room is my haven, my quiet space, my room to write. My keyboard has a certain rattle to it, a few keystrokes forward and the backspace key is pressed several times, then we go forward again. The end of a sentence arrives, and the punctuation is firmly added. The aroma of fresh-brewed coffee calls to me. I set my work aside and go to the kitchen, the room that, despite its location in the rear corner of the house, is the center of my home. As I pour my first cup of coffee, my plan is to make a Sunday breakfast, bake bread, and maybe make oatmeal cookies with dried cranberries and walnuts. But perhaps not. Perhaps after breakfast, I’ll return to the Room of Shame and write. This is my immediate environment. Our characters also occupy a particular environment at any given moment of their story. Whether they live in a condo, a house, or a caravan, their immediate environment reflects their personality. The larger world is comprised of sound and scent as much as it is physical objects. The out-of-doors has a certain smell, perhaps of damp grass, or fresh-turned earth. In the city, smog has a scent all its own. The smaller world, the immediate environment can be shown with brief strokes. My room has sounds that are unique to it: the furnace vents, the keyboard, the sound of the TV in another room. But some things are universal–coffee cups, small appliances, etc. We all have an idea of what a kitchen looks like. Place your character in a room with certain common props and the reader’s imagination will supply the rest of the scene: Rick closed the drapes, which smelled faintly of cigarettes. He switched the TV on—for light or companionship? Maybe both. The hotel’s movie selection was minimal, but The Maltese Falcon seemed appropriate. Unable to relax, he sat on the worn sofa, waiting, his gun at the ready. Whenever you mention an object in a scene, it becomes important. When you mention odors, they become important, as do sounds. This is why using your character’s senses is a part of world building. What they see, hear, and smell shapes the world the reader experiences. As an exercise, picture your immediate environment. What are your impressions of the place where you are now? Write a brief word picture of those impressions. For me, the impressions of my immediate space are: Glow of monitor, rattle of keyboard, looming boxes, cooling coffee. Those four things show my environment. --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- Connie J. Jasperson is a published poet and the author of nine novels. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies. A founding member of Myrddin Publishing Group, she can be found blogging regularly on both the craft of writing and art history at Life in the Realm of Fantasy. Layers of a Scene—Immediate Environment © 2018 Connie J. Jasperson, was first published on October 15, 2018 on Life in the Realm of Fantasy and has been reprinted by permission. Indies have a hard road ahead of them, as they are financially responsible for getting their manuscript revised, edited, and proof-read. This can be a costly process as freelance editors are working for a living and expect to be paid for their work. A 70,000 word manuscript can cost from around $700.00 or more to have edited, depending on the services you want. The reason we may want to hire an editor is that our eyes may skip typos and autocorrect errors in our own work. When we read what we have written, we are immersed in visualizing the scene. To our biased eyes, the words we have written do convey what we are thinking. Many editors will do a Beta Read at a much more affordable price. Beta reads are helpful in identifying areas you may want to revise. However, if you’re a member of a writers’ group, you have a resource of people who will “beta read” for you at no cost. As a member of that critique group, you will read for them too, so be careful how you phrase your comments on their work. Be accurate and find positive things to point out as well as areas that need work. If you are harsh and dismissive, your work will receive that treatment in return. If you are unable to afford a full professional edit, there is a way to make a pretty good stab at revising your own manuscript, but it is time consuming, which is why an editor’s services are not cheap. First, if you aren’t going to hire an editor, you should consider investing in Bryan A. Garner’s Chicago Guide to Grammar, Usage, and Punctuation. This is a resource with all the answers for questions you might have regarding grammar and sentence structure. The basic rules of grammar are like traffic signals. They regulate the flow of our words, making our sentences understandable. A professional author will make a stab at learning a few rules regarding punctuation and will apply them to their work. It doesn’t require perfection, but people who don’t think the common rules matter are doing their work and their reputation a disservice. Readers want to enjoy the book, not struggle through rambling, garbled sentences. To do a thorough revision of your manuscript, open your manuscript file and create a new file folder. You never want to save over your old files, so we have a process to follow. Name your file in such a way that it is clearly labeled, and you are sure which contains your final revisions. I name mine this way: Master File: Barons_Hollow_2019 (or whatever year I intend to publish) Subfolder: BH_full_ms_version_1_2018 (this contains the original manuscript) Subfolder: BH_chapters_revisions_final_2019 this is the file that contains the manuscript broken into chapters for revising—instructions follow:
b) Missing quotation marks, c) Punctuation that is outside of the quotations. Wrong: "dorothy flew over the rainbow in a house". Said Toto. I went with her". Right: "Dorothy flew over the rainbow in a house," said Toto. "I went with her."
An editor will point out and encourage you to correct all instances of timid phrasing. Timid phrasing leads to wordiness, and we really want to avoid that. Overuse of forms of to be (is, are, was, were) also lead to wordiness. Long, convoluted passages rife with compound sentences turn away most readers. To avoid wordiness, use action words (verbs) in place of forms of to be. In active prose, our characters don’t begin (start) to move. Instead, they move. They act as opposed to beginning or starting to act.
b) BH_ch_2_final_revised If you notice a few flaws in your manuscript in your final pass but think no one will be bothered by them, you’re wrong. Readers always notice the things that stop their eye. In my own work, I have discovered that if a passage seems flawed, but I can’t identify what is wrong with it, my eye wants to skip it. But another person will see the flaw, and they will show me what is wrong there. This is why this editor always has a professional editor go over her manuscripts. Once you have finished revising your manuscript in this fashion, have it proofread by a member of your writing group. If you are in a critique group, you have a great resource in your fellow authors as proof readers—they will spot things you have overlooked your work just as you do in theirs. Editors do more than point out comma errors—they will make a note of incongruities, and contradictions. They will also note inconsistent style and usage. When a manuscript comes across their desk, editors and publishers create a list of names, places, created words, and other things that may be repeated and that pertain only to that manuscript. This is called a style sheet. The style sheet can take several forms, but it is only a visual guide to print out or keep minimized until it's needed. I copy and paste every invented word, hyphenated word, or name the first time they appear in my manuscript, and if I am conscientious, I'll be less likely to inadvertently contradict myself later on in the tale. My editor is grateful that I make this list so that she doesn't have to. I hope these suggestions help you in your revision process. We want our work to be enjoyable by the casual reader, and if we are conscientious in the final stages, we can turn out a readable manuscript that is not rife with easily fixable errors. *** *** *** *** *** *** *** Connie J. Jasperson is a published poet and the author of nine novels. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies. A founding member of Myrddin Publishing Group, she can be found blogging regularly on both the craft of writing and art history at Life in the Realm of Fantasy. Portions of this article were first published on August 29, 2018 on Life in the Realm of Fantasy as “Final Revisions,” © 2018 Connie J. Jasperson and have been reprinted by permission. An allegory is an essential tool of the author who wants to convey important ideas with the least amount of words. One of my works-in-progress is a contemporary novel. I need to convey a Gothic atmosphere in this piece and yet keep the novel set squarely in the 21st century. The way I am doing this is through the use of allegory. With symbolism in mind, I try to approach writing a scene as it would be portrayed in a movie. Each conversation is an event and must advance the story. Crafting an allegorical narrative requires planning and intention. I suggest you make an outline so that the beginning, middle, and end are clear before you begin. An effective allegorical narrative will have a clear moral or lesson that will become apparent at the end of the essay. Even if it is not stated directly, the message will be implicit in the final resolution. You want to be sure that the ending reflects your final thought on the subject. 1. Use Symbolism The allegory is the symbol of your idea. This means your narrative or poem conceals the true theme you’re symbolizing. In other words, you are writing a cover story that will contain the primary one. 2. Planning Your Characters Is Essential Each character in an allegory represents an underlying element to your theme. Because the reader is expected to interpret the whole story and find what it means, no character can be introduced that does not directly pertain to and represent part of the underlying story. The moment you introduce a random character into it, your allegory devolves into chaos, and your deeper meaning is lost. 3. Planning Your Action is Essential The arc of the scene becomes tricky. Every action is crucial–action must show something that pertains to the underlying theme, not just push the overlying story forward. 4. Insert Hints Regarding the Deeper Meaning into The Overlying Story What that means is, you’ll be expected to leave evidence in your story for the discerning reader to grasp. Some authors have used irony and sarcasm. Others use large metaphors. No matter what you choose, subtle clues will guide the reader to the deeper story, and you want them to catch that underlying meaning, or you wouldn’t have written it. You don’t have to explain it baldly—readers love figuring out puzzles. But you do have to make sure a trail of breadcrumbs is there for your reader to follow. The storytelling in The Matrix movies is a brilliant example of employing heavy allegory to drive home the themes of humankind, machine, fate, and free will. The themes are represented with heavy symbolism in the names of the characters. For instance, Neo, the protagonist’s name is a combining form (used in combination with another element to form a word) meaning New. And he is “new” in every way—naïve, and clueless. Then, there are the two walk-ons, Choi and Dujour. They are there to buy illegal software from Neo. In French, “Choi” means choice. In restaurant talk, “Du Jour” means available and being served on this day—and that is exactly what the character named Dujour is. Used together, Dujour and Choi form “choi du'jour,” or "Choice of the Day." This is a powerful allegory, an allusion to the power of choice within the Matrix. It points directly to the choices that Neo must make and that lead him to his destiny. Dujour has another powerful allegory to fulfill—she bears the white rabbit tattoo. Her appearance marks the second reference to the white rabbit and is a direct allusion to Alice in Wonderland, telling Neo that nothing is what it seems. The words used in conversations and even the androgynous clothes they wear are heavily symbolic. Everything on the set or mentioned in conversation underscores the theme, including the lighting. Inside the Matrix, the world is bathed in a green light, as if through a green-tinted lens. In the real world, the lighting is harsher, unfiltered. In the movie, everything that appears or is said onscreen supports one of the underlying concepts. When Morpheus later asks Neo to choose between a red pill and a blue pill, he essentially offers the choice between fate and free will. Theme is a thread that winds through the story and supports the plot. Using allegory and symbolism in the environment to subtly underscore your theme allows you to show the underlying story without resorting to an info dump. Picture your conversations, clothing, settings, and wider environments as if they were scenes in a movie. Many scenes will have an opportunity to use an allegory that will support your story arc. When a reader is immersed in reading, they may not notice the heavy symbolism on a conscious level. The use of allegory makes the imaginary world of the book feel real, solid, and concrete. --- --- --- --- --- --- Connie J. Jasperson is a published poet and the author of nine novels. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies. A founding member of Myrddin Publishing Group, she can be found blogging regularly on both the craft of writing and art history at Life in the Realm of Fantasy. Eight Questions to ask Your Story When I begin penning a story, the working title is usually just a handle, something to carry it by for the time being, and which will be changed when I rewrite it anyway. While the title might not actually exist, the story does, in the form of an idea, a prompt. So, before I sit down to write anything, I answer a short list of questions about the overall story arc of my intended tale. I keep a document pinned to my desktop, one that I write down topics and ideas for stories on. This list is crucial to my preparations for being productive during NaNoWriMo. As I had each idea, I wrote it down and answered eight questions about that story. I save that document in a separate file folder for each story. I have a master folder in my writing folder that is titled: NaNoWriMo2018. Within that folder are my small files, one for each story I plan to write. For a novel, you only need two files: your work-in-progress document, and a document to keep all the back story and information in. But I am a NaNo Rebel, in that I write short stories instead of a novel during NaNoWriMo. I began with fifteen file folders in that file. Nine are now complete, and I will probably only get four more of them written at 4,000 to 10,000 words per story. But, I may get them all done. I title each story folder with a working-title, such as Doors. This is not the final title but gives me something to work with until I do know what to call it. The file contains two documents. The first document is blank except for one line, which is the prompt, the premise of the story. That file is labeled Doorsdraft1. That stands for Doors first draft. This document will be the manuscript for that story. Any subsequent revisions will be labeled title_draft2, etc. At 12:01 a.m. on November 1st, I began writing that story. It topped out at about 4,000 words. The next day I opened another file, which was a different idea for a story centering on the concept of doors. I will submit one of them to NIWA’s 2019 anthology but don’t know which yet. I mentioned there were two documents in each file. The other document is the basic premise of the story arc, answered in eight questions. Each answer is simply one or two lines telling me what to write.
The answers to these questions make writing the actual story go faster because I know what happened, what their goal is, why their goal is difficult to achieve, and (crucially) how the story ends. Once you have answered questions one and two, you know who you are writing about and which character has the most compelling story. At that point, you must decide what will be your inciting incident. An event happens that throws them into the action. Now, what is their goal/objective? At the beginning of the story, what does our protagonist want that causes them to risk everything to acquire it? How badly do they want it and why? The answer to that question must be that they want whatever it is desperately. Question number six is an important thought to consider. What moral (or immoral) choice is the protagonist going to have to make in their attempt to overcome the odds and achieve their objective? Many final objectives don’t revolve around morality, but all final objectives should have consequences and should involve a struggle. The answer to question number seven is vitally important because the story hinges on how the protagonist overcomes adversity. What hinders them? Is there an antagonist? If so, who are they and why are they the villain of the piece? Answering question eight is crucial if I want to complete my short story during November. Endings are frequently difficult to write because I can see so many different outcomes. Because it is NaNoWriMo, and every new word I write counts toward my goal, I write as many endings as I need to. This is where making use of scene breaks can be your friend. For a short story, an ending is usually only 500 words or so. I simply head that section (in bolded front) with the words Possible Ending 1 or 2, or however many endings I have come up with. Once I have finished my short story, I save that file, close it, and move on to the next. I have to keep that story factory working, because during the rest of the year, whatever novel I am writing takes priority in the writing queue. But I always have time to revise something that is already written, especially if I have come to a stopping place in my novel. Every evening, I copy and paste each day’s work into my NaNo Master Manuscript, which is also in my NaNoWriMo2018 file. This gives me the satisfaction of seeing my total word count growing day by day. I upload that manuscript every night to the www.nanowrimo.org website so that my work is validated, and my writing buddies can see I am meeting my daily word count goals. November is the only time I can dedicate to exploring the many topics and wild ideas that come to me throughout the year. On December 1st, I will go back to my usual routine, editing for clients in the morning and working on my current novel after editing is done. When I need a break and something new to work on, I will pull out my short story file, and begin revisions. The work I have planned for selected anthologies will be revised first, as they will have deadlines early in 2019. This keeps me working and ensures I am productive even when my novel is stranded in the desert of “Now What?”. Pre-planning means I have a good system established for version control for my revisions, as each story has its own file and I don’t have to waste time dealing with that on the front end. As I say, this is my system, and it works for me. I use this system for all my work. Develop your system, lay the groundwork for your novel. Create the master file, and in that file, include any sub-files of research and backstory that pertain to your novel. Do it now, even if you are already deep into your work. You won’t have to stop and look things up so often. All you will have to do is write and save your work. >>><<< Credits and Attributions: Connie J. Jasperson is a published poet and the author of nine novels. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies. A founding member of Myrddin Publishing Group, she can be found blogging regularly on both the craft of writing and art history at Life in the Realm of Fantasy. Portions of this article were first published on October 22, 2018, on Life in the Realm of Fantasy as “NaNoWriMo2018 pre-planning,” © 2018 Connie J. Jasperson and have been reprinted by permission. November 1st, is here, the beginning of National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. Many authors have begun this month fully intending to get their 50,000 words by November 30th. NIWA authirm Lee French and I are co-MLs for the Olympia Region for NaNoWriMo. In our region last year, 245 writers created profiles and began an official manuscript at www.nanowrimo.org. More than half were college students. We’ve been doing this for a while, and we have seen a pattern. First, reality sets in. This happens within the first few days. Last year 64 writers in our region never got more than 5,000 words written. One stopped at 34. Some new NaNo writers are people who “always wanted to write a book.” Often, they don’t have any idea of what they want to write, and no clue of how to be disciplined enough to write any words, much less the number of words it takes to make a novel. They start, get 30 to 1,000 words in, and realize they have nothing to say. But in our region, 34 people made it to the 10,000 word mark before they stopped writing. That’s an achievement—it’s almost a novella. Other new writers are fired up on day one. They go at it full tilt for a week, or even two, and then, at the 20,000 word mark, they take a day off. Somehow, they never get back to it. Their novels will languish unfinished, perhaps forever. Even seasoned writers who have won NaNoWriMo in previous years may find the commitment to sit and write 1,667 words every day is not doable for them. Things come up—life happens. But by November 30th last year, 78 writers out of the 245 in our region had made it to the 50,000 word mark, and 5 exceeded 100,000 words. Many of these novels were complete and ready for revisions. It takes personal discipline to write 1,667 new words every day. This is not revising old work—this is writing something new, not looking at what you wrote yesterday. This is starting where you left off and moving forward. For me, having the outline keeps me on track. I’m not a good typist. The words that fall out of my head during this month are not all golden, just so you know. Some words will be garbled and miskeyed. This means I sometimes have a lot of revising of the work I intend to keep. Some of what I write will be worth keeping, and some not at all. But even among the weeds, some passages and scenes will be found that could make a story work. I will keep and use them because they say what I mean to say, and the others I will revise. I use November to write short stories. To that end, I keep a list of ideas and prompts, and have it ready for when I begin to write. The words fall out of my mind, and the stories tell themselves. Finishing November with a completed novel is a matter of sitting down and writing. If you don’t get those ideas out of your head and onto paper, you can’t revise and reshape them into something worth reading. How do we develop the discipline to write every day? This is my list of suggestions for how to have a successful NaNoWriMo, and end November with that winner’s certificate: First, we must write at least 1,670 words every day (three more than is required) This takes me about 2 hours – I’m not fast at this. I can’t stress this enough: write every day, no matter if you have an idea worth writing about or not. If you are a person who needs a dedicated block of time, do it even if you have to get up at 4:00 am and don’t let anything derail you. But maybe you can’t sit still for too long. Write in small increments—ten minutes here, half-an-hour there. These short bursts add up. Perhaps your mind has gone blank. If you are stuck, write about how your day went and how you are feeling about things that are happening in your life, or write that grocery list. Just write and think about where you want to take your real story. Write about what you would like to have happen in that story. Soon, you will be writing that story. Stay connected. Check in on the national threads and your regional thread to keep in contact with other writers. Attend a write-in if your region is having any or join a virtual write-in at NaNoWriMo on Facebook. This will keep you enthused about your project. Don’t sabotage yourself: Delete nothing. Passages you want to delete later can be highlighted, and the font turned to red or blue, so you can easily separate them out later.
Yes, these suggestions do require you to actually sit in a chair and write. Talking about what you intend to write won’t get the book written—for that you must sit your backside down and write. That is what NaNoWriMo is all about. Writing, and developing discipline. >>><<< Credits and Attributions: Connie J. Jasperson is a published poet and the author of nine novels. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies. A founding member of Myrddin Publishing Group, she can be found blogging regularly on both the craft of writing and art history at Life in the Realm of Fantasy. Portions of this article were first published on October 24, 2018 on Life in the Realm of Fantasy as “Many will begin, few will succeed,” © 2018 Connie J. Jasperson and has been reprinted by permission. It’s mid-October, and many established authors are preparing to embark on their annual NaNoWriMo project. The experienced NaNo writers are making outlines and creating character studies. They’re just setting up the background, so they don’t have to stop and do that during the writing process.
All this preparation will jumpstart their project when they sit down and begin writing a manuscript of at least 50,000 words on November 1st. For the next thirty days, they will spend several hours every day writing nothing but new words in a new manuscript. For many of us, this is when we get that rough draft of our new novel out of our heads and onto paper so that we have that all important “new novel every year” going out the front door along with the novellas and short stories we generate to keep the content of our author pages fresh and updated. I have been a Municipal Liaison for my region since 2011, and my co ML is author Lee French. Between us, we keep the writers in our region stoked about their projects and help them get through the rough spots. We host write-ins, both virtual, and at libraries and coffeeshops. As established authors, we have learned a few tricks that we are always happy to share with those who are planning to “do” NaNoWriMo for the first time. If you are just embarking on this literary joyride for the first time, here are a few quick tips and resources to help get your novel off the ground: Things you want to have at your fingertips, so you don’t have to stop and look it up: MAPS: If you are writing a story set in our real world and your characters will be traveling, walking a particular city, or visiting landmarks, bookmark google maps for that area and refer back to it regularly to make sure you are writing it correctly. If you are writing about a fantasy world and your characters will be traveling, quickly sketch a rough map. Refer back to it to make sure the town names and places remain the same from the first page to the last. Update it as new places are added. TECH: Many people are writing scifi novels. In hard scifi, technology and science are the central core of the stories, so it’s a good idea to know what tech is available to your characters well in advance of writing their scenes. A little planning now will aid you greatly in the writing process. If you are writing fantasy involving magic or supernatural skills, briefly draw up a list of rules for who can do what with each skill. Remember:
Looking things up on the internet can be an incredible time-sink. Bookmark your resources well in advance, so all you have to do is click on a link and get the information you want. Then you can quickly get back to writing. Resources to kickstart stalled creativity:
Basic resources to bookmark for the fundamentals: Three websites a beginner should go to if they want instant answers about grammar, written in plain English: Never delete, do not self-edit as you go. Don’t waste time re-reading your work. You can do all that in December when you go back to look at what you have written.
If you want to “win” and have your wordcount validated on the national website, write at least 1670 words every day. This is 3 more than is required, to account for differences in how your word processing program and NaNoWriMo’s official word counter validates wordcount. You don’t want to come up short at the end! This has happened and is quite frustrating. Most importantly – enjoy writing that novel. This is time spent creating an amazing story only you can tell, so above all, enjoy this experience. To learn more about NaNoWriMo, go to www.nanowrimo.org. >>><<< >>><<< >>><<< Connie J. Jasperson is a poet and the author of nine novels. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies. A founding member of Myrddin Publishing Group, she can be found blogging regularly on both the craft of writing and art history at Life in the Realm of Fantasy. Writers generally come in two flavors: those who write whatever falls out of their head and those who carefully structure what they intend to write. I am somewhere in the middle: a plotter, but I am also a “pantser.” A great article on this subject can be found at The Write Practice. Quote: Simply put, a plotter is someone who plans out their novel before they write it. A pantser is someone who, “flies by the seat of their pants,” meaning they don’t plan out anything or plan very little. Planning what events your protagonist will face is called plotting, and I make an outline for that. “Pantsing it,” or writing using stream-of consciousness can produce some amazing work. That works well when we’re inspired, as ideas seem to flow from us. But for me, that sort of creativity is short-lived, unless I have a brief outline to follow, a road map of some sort. Participating in NaNoWriMo has really helped me grow in the ability to write on a stream-of-consciousness level, but in each manuscript, I get to points where I need reminding of where I intended the story to go when I first conceived the idea. My storyboard gets me back on track without making me feel like the creativity is already done. One NaNoWriMo joke-solution often bandied about at write-ins is, "When you’re stuck, it's time for someone to die." I will just say that assassinating beloved characters whenever we run out of ideas is not a feasible option. When cherished characters are killed off, we must introduce new characters to fill the void. The reader may decide not to waste his time getting invested in a new character, feeling that you will only break their heart again. For that reason, the death of a character should be reserved to create a pivotal event that alters the lives of every member of the cast. Sudden death is best reserved for either the inciting incident at the first plot point or as the terrible event of the third quarter of the book. So instead of random assassination, we should resort to creativity. This is where having prep notes or an outline can provide some structure, and keep you moving forward. You will know what should happen in the first quarter, the middle, and the third quarter of the story and you can wing it when connecting those events to each other. Because we know how it should end, we can fill in the blanks between large events and the story will have cohesion. Think about what launches a great story:
Now you need to decide what hinders the protagonist and prevents them from resolving the problem. The outline is just a skeleton you will flesh out in November. When you do the actual writing, you will “pants it” between events to infuse the narrative with three things:
We want the protagonist to be a sympathetic character whom the reader can identify with; one who the reader can immerse themselves in, living the story through his/her adventures. The combination of plotting and “pantsing it” offers you the freedom to lay down the prose as you wish, and you never lack for an idea of where to go with your story. But for NaNoWriMo, speed is everything. I need to get my 1,667 words every day, and I can’t take the time to sit back and ponder what to write next. I find that this is where preparing a loose outline in advance helps me write quickly. Readers want the hindrances and barriers the protagonist faces to feel real. By writing down ideas in a specific file as they occur to me, I have a list of roadblocks for my story all ready to go when November first arrives. A loose guide helps me visualize setups for the central events. This enables me to quickly lay down the narrative that shows the payoffs (either negative or positive) to advance the story: action and reaction. Some authors resort to “idle conversation writing” when they are temporarily out of ideas. If you can resist the temptation, please do so—it’s fatal to an otherwise good story. Save all your random think-writing off-stage in a background file, if giving your characters a few haphazard, pointless exchanges helps jar an idea loose. (However, for purposes of wordcount, if you wrote it, you can count it!) One failing of NaNo Novels in their rough draft form is their unevenness. Try not to introduce random things into a scene unless they are important to the completion of the character’s quest. Remember, to show the reader something is to foreshadow it, and the reader will wonder why a casual person or thing was so important they had to be foreshadowed. The simple solution is a word document saved to your desktop, one that you can just open, make a note of your idea, save it, and close it to go back to what you were working on. Both over planning and under planning can lead to a book that is stalled and a writer who believes they have “writers’ block.” For me, a happy medium lies in a general outline, done as a brief storyboard. The storyboard for my ideas works this way: First I open a blank workbook in Excel or Google Docs and give it a file name using a working title if I don’t actually have a real title for the book. This may look like: Snowbirds_storyboard_2017.xls (I use Excel.) At the top: Working Title Column A: Character Names: list the important characters by name, and also list the important places where the story will be set. Column B: About: What their role is, a note about that person or place, a brief description of who and what they are. Column C: The Problem: What is the core conflict? Column D: What do they want? What does each character desire? Column E: What will they do to get it? How far will they go to achieve their desire? As I said, this plays directly to how a linear thinker like me works. It takes advantage of the ideas I have that might make a good story, makes a note of all the pertinent ideas I have at the outset, and offers me a jumping off point. I set this aside and pull it out in November when NaNoWriMo begins, and I need a little refresher on what I plan to write. What has prevented you from writing in the past? Did you get busy? Did you sleep in? Did you feel uncreative? These are mental roadblocks we all experience. The whole point of NaNoWriMo is to develop the ability to work through these hindrances. Remember, you are a superhero with a keyboard, slaying the monsters of idleness and lack of creativity. Do a little planning, but write like the wind, and let the story take you where it will. _________________________________________________________________________________ Credits and Attributions The Pros and Cons of Plotters and Pantsers by The Magic Violinist, The Write Practice, http://thewritepractice.com/plotters-pantsers/ © 2017 Portions of Pantsing vs. Plotting was first published on November 1, 2017, by Connie J. Jasperson on Life in the Realm of Fantasy, as Pantsing vs. Plotting or Somewhere in the Middle © 2017 by Connie J. Jasperson, All Rights Reserved. Reprinted by permission. Connie J. Jasperson is a poet and the author of nine novels. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies. A founding member of Myrddin Publishing Group, she can be found blogging regularly on both the craft of writing and art history at Life in the Realm of Fantasy. Whether you write literary fiction, epic fantasy, historical fiction, or any other genre, you must carefully construct the environment your novel is set in. The weather is a constant in our lives and affects how we dress, how we travel, and what we eat. Therefore, it is a central component of world building. How does the weather come into play in your novel?
If your novel’s setting is a low-tech society, the weather will have more of an effect on your characters than one set in a modern society. However, in any era, the weather will affect the speed with which your characters can travel great distances, and it will affect how they dress. Bad weather always has a detrimental effect on transportation, a serious point to consider. The weather can be shown in small, subtle ways. We use the weather to show the world in such a way that it doesn’t become the star of the story. What follows are excerpts from three of my works in progress, using weather to show the world in three different genres. Weather is an integral part of world building in contemporary literary fiction: The path was slippery and required scaling the cliff in some places. By the time they arrived at the clifftop, the weather had begun to clear, and the low fog was dissipating. Patches of blue peeked from behind the gray clouds, and the wind had picked up. Parker absorbed the solitude, enjoying the way he could see the entirety of Baron’s Hollow, from one end of the cove to the other. He turned to Dominic. “You were right. This is perfect.” Gazing down on the world, he saw Izzy running with the dogs at the south end, heading toward the lighthouse as if she were trying to outrun her anger, the wind tearing her blonde hair from its braid. At the house, John stood on the deck, absorbed in whatever it was he was painting, oblivious to the drama. Far down at the north end of the cove, Leo and Claire walked beside the surf, with Leo’s gestures emphasizing his words. Claire was alternately agitated and hunched against the sharp breeze in her hooded sweatshirt. It was clear her agent had told her something she didn’t want to hear. Parker chuckled; she looked like a little girl being chastised by her father. How does the weather look, feel, smell? What does it sound like? I use it to show the world in my medieval fantasy: In the absence of battle noises, the hissing of the rain on the foliage was loud in Julian’s ears. The odors of wet horses mingled with the scents of blood and damp, musty undergrowth. Our characters are not always traveling or fighting in the rain. Use the weather: Dust hung in the air, burning his eyes, a thick pall that concealed him but also hid his quarry. Even in an epic fantasy, at times our characters are moved by the beauty of the world around them. Alf’s gaze was caught by a giant maple, far across the valley. The setting sun lit the halo of spring’s new leaves, and the maple’s glowing crown of iridescent green became a beacon, shining in the forest of dark evergreens. The thought crossed his mind that the tree was like hope. It shone against the darkness of the trees around it, a guiding light for the weary to cling to. Maybe his son would live. Maybe the new treatments would work. We are able to find out how various modern societies deal with severe weather, simply by looking on the internet. Hurricanes, blizzards, wildfires–how local communities prepare for and deal with these events is newsworthy. But historical societies also had ways of dealing with the weather when they had to be out in it, and the internet is also your friend when you are researching this. In early medieval times, people of England, Wales, and Ireland didn’t have to deal with the extreme temperatures they experienced in the 17th and 18th centuries, as it was a warmer time. However, they did get some occasional snow and cold in the winter, and at times they suffered heat waves during the summer. In a cold, wet winter, a simple shawl won’t cut it. Layers are critical, and the materials they would use are simple and readily available—linen and wool. I hate it when I come across an improbability in an otherwise good narrative. If you write fantasy or romance, you must remember that while fur-trapping is a common way of earning money in a lower-tech society, only the wealthier classes, the merchants, and nobility, will be able to buy those furs. The trapper and his/her family will have fur lining and fur trim on some of their cold-weather garments, but they won’t be ostentatious or stylish. Their clothes will be strictly utilitarian, designed for warmth, as everything they trap will be sold. Certainly, the best furs will be sold, so what they wear will not be the rarest. After all, the trapper is working to earn money for their family. In tropical climates, people wear fewer clothes, and those they do wear are much lighter in weight. They protect the wearer from the sun, but breathe, allowing for comfort in times of high heat and humidity. The average medieval agrarian society will have access to fleeces, though spun wool is more common. Also, in the more urban centers of a low-tech society, the average person’s winter garments, hooded cloaks, gloves, and even bedding would be made of thick wool, layered and felted. Wool has been a winter mainstay since humans first began making cloth. Some garments will be made of heavy canvas or oil-cloth. Oilcloth, close-woven cotton canvas or linen cloth with a coating of boiled linseed oil, was a product available from the late middle ages on. Clothing and cold weather gear will make their appearance in relatively few sentences in your novel. Most likely it will only be mentioned in passing, but it is important as part of what builds the world you are creating. A little research on your part regarding what technology might be plausible in your society will lend a sense of realism to your work. The world we set our character in is far more than whether they travel on horseback or in a Maserati, more than clothes and fashion, more than décor and food. The world has weather, which affects everything and makes the décor and the Maserati real. When you include the sounds and sensations of the weather, it lends a sense of solid reality to the words you write on paper. These words we write are, after all, only a dream with a beginning, middle, and end, a vision we want to make believable through solid world building. If you need to know how people protected themselves against the weather in the middle ages, here are several good websites for research: Sarah Woodbury, Romance and Fantasy in the Middle Ages Medieval Gloves, etc. Castles and Manor Houses __________________________________________________________________________ Connie J. Jasperson is the author of nine novels. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies. A founding member of Myrddin Publishing Group, she can be found blogging regularly on both the craft of writing and art history at Life in the Realm of Fantasy. This article was first published on August 27, 2018 on Life in the Realm of Fantasy as “Weather, a Central Component of World Building,” © 2018 Connie J. Jasperson and has been reprinted by permission. When we think of epic fantasy, the first books that come to mind are J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Tolkien’s work was compelling not only for the quality of his prose and the events, but for the characters and how they grew and changed in the course of their adventures.
Genre authors spend a lot of time plotting the events a character will go through. Equal time must be given to character development. A great story evolves when the antagonist and protagonist are strong but not omnipotent. Both the antagonist and protagonist must have character arcs that show personal growth or inability to grow. Sometimes, an antagonist’s weakness is their inability to accept change and adapt to it. Other times, events cause them to devolve, sending them into a downward spiral. Either way, for the antagonist to be realistic, this must be clearly shown. Once we meet the hero, small hindrances must occur between the larger events, frustrating their path to success. As each hindrance is overcome, the reader feels a small sense of satisfaction. Following the protagonist as he/she is negotiating these detours is what makes the story captivating, in my opinion.
At this point, the protagonist is not fully formed—they must grow as a result of their experiences. They may make mistakes, cause themselves more trouble because they are untried and don’t know what they are doing. Also, at this point, the protagonist may be confused as to what is really going on. This is a good place to introduce a mentor, someone who can offer a little wisdom or set the hero on the right path.
Each scene is a small arc of action that illuminates the motives of the characters, allows the reader to learn things as the protagonist does, and offers clues regarding things the characters do not know that will affect the plot. Those clues are foreshadowing. Through the first half of the book, foreshadowing is important, as it piques the reader’s interest, and makes them want to know how the book will end. The characters begin to be changed by the events they experience. How you show their emotional state is critical at this point because emotions engage readers. If you want your readers to feel the crisis, your characters must feel it and show their reactions to the reader. We must contrast the relative security of the characters’ lives as they were in the opening paragraphs with the hazards of where they are now. We show the uncertainty, fear, anger, sense of loss they are experiencing.
Now they are aware that they may not achieve their objectives after all. Bad things have happened, and the protagonists have to get creative and work hard to acquire or accomplish their desired goals. They must overcome their own doubts and make themselves stronger. The midpoint is also where we really get to know the antagonist and learn what the enemy knows that the protagonists do not. We discover his/her motives and what they may be capable of. First, we need to remember that very few people are evil for no reason at all. Sometimes they are likeable, people who appear innocuous, even loving. If this is the case in your story, you need to insert small clues for the reader about their personality into the narrative in the beginning pages. Fleshing out the antagonist and making their motives realistic is important. He/she is as central to the story as the protagonist because their actions force the protagonist to grow as a human being.
By the end of the narrative, the protagonist has been through life changing events. They are no longer naïve but have knowledge and wisdom of their own. They are fit to be the mentors of the next generation. It’s important to remember that at no point in the narrative can people be sitting around idly chit-chatting about the changes they have been through. The reader knows and doesn’t want to read a rehashing of events at the end of each chapter. Many authors who are new to the craft say their characters just evolve with no thought ahead of time. As this lack of planning is clear in their muddy work, perhaps it’s a good idea to give a little thought to plotting the personal growth of the characters, how the experiences will change them. Readers become invested in the characters and want to see what happens next. Reward the reader by making the journey about the characters as much as you do about the events. __________________________________________________________________________ Connie J. Jasperson is the author of nine novels. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies. A founding member of Myrddin Publishing Group, she can be found blogging regularly on both the craft of writing and art history at Life in the Realm of Fantasy. This article was first published on August 6, 2018 on Life in the Realm of Fantasy as “Character Growth/Arc,” © 2018 Connie J. Jasperson, and has been reprinted by permission. |
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