Tag: Rules

Order! Order!

thestuartsadler

Good evening! I’m back again after having briefly forgotten I have a blog!

Anyway my latest writing woe is all down to the order of my chapters.

Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking surely they just go in order, one after the other? And indeed I would agree with you. Except the way I am writing this particular novel (this is not to be read in any tone that would imply that I am at all familiar with writing novels, nor that I have written or am currently writing more than one!) it’s not quite that simple.

You see I am an ordered soul. I like things to be ordered. I like things to line up, to fit snugly, to create a pattern. This was the plan for my chapters. I have three protagonists, so it only made sense to me that I would dedicate a chapter to each of them in turn. First would come character A, then B, then C, then back to A and so on and so forth.

It worked well enough for a long time. Then I started noticing that a bit more was happening with one character than another, and I had less to write for character A than for character C at certain points. It wasn’t a huge problem at first, as I simply combined the next two chapters for character A into one (and at first draft I didn’t have to worry about fleshing anything out, it all seemed fine).

But then the timelines began to creep apart, but I figured I could deal with that fairly easily at second draft so I didn’t let it slow me down. But then I wrote myself into a corner. I finished character C on a cliffhanger that not only meant the start of the next chapter would continue immediately from that moment (I’d already had that occur but it was fine to leave them and come back after we’d spent time with the other characters), but really it needed to happen in the next chapter otherwise the marrying up of timelines would seriously begin to suffer.

So, I made the decision to scrap the ABCABC system and just write it as it needs to be written. This is both daunting because it means there’s no more ‘pattern’ for me to follow, which makes me uncomfortable, but also it feels quite liberating and I’m excited to get writing the next chapter (which I had planned to do this evening but it’s quite late and I’m tired so I realised it would be a good opportunity to fire off a quick blog post! Oh if only I could write my novel as quickly as I can write this!).

Fingers crossed when I get some people reading through it they don’t complain about the order of the chapters! If they do I might have to pull some hair out! Early feedback (merely of asking the question) indicates that it won’t bother people, so fingers crossed!

Hope your writing is going well!

It’s A Kind of Magic

thestuartsadler

Hello again! I thought it was about time I wrote a post on my novel writing which, as mentioned previously, took a bit of a backward step a while ago when I decided that I had gone a bit overboard with background ideas that I quite literally lost the plot!

This weekend though I reached Chapter 40 in my outlining which I’m pleased with, and another positive is that I know its going somewhere and is close to a resolution! About ten chapters ago I started to wonder whether I would just end up planning chapter after chapter in a subconscious bid to avoid actually writing the novel, so it’s good to know that my brain is working with me on this one and that things are heading in a very definite direction!

Now, I think I made it clear in my initial post that I’m writing a fantasy novel, and in case I didn’t mention it, there’s going to be magic involved!

I knew there would be a few things to think about when developing magic within my story. I’d already decided I didn’t want spells, incantations and potions for example, preferring my characters to have a more innate ability than one that requires use of an object or words etc.

Still, that has not stopped me from obsessing over the details from time to time.

And it is precisely my obsession over something like magic that has me worrying I’m lacking in the imagination department too much to be a decent writer. You see, I’ve spent far too much time in all trying to figure out the actual physical possibilities of how my characters would perform magic. Magic! I’ve literally sat and questioned how they might produce light using magic. Literally how they might do it, how the magic would work, how the light would exist and what would be required to sustain it. And half the time when I respond to myself with ‘it’s magic, Stuart, that’s the whole point. It’s magic, and magic isn’t real which is why you can’t do it in real life so stop trying to figure out how and just make it interesting.’ the rest of me is thinking ‘Hmm I’m not sure that’s a good enough reason.’

It makes you wonder why I love fantasy so much, and why I would choose to write a genre that requires such suspension of belief and in the laws of physics and nature, and yet here I am! It just seems to be my default. Every idea I have cries out for an element of otherworldliness, of things beyond the human experience, so for now at least I’m just going with it!

I have my basic idea down as to how my magic exists, but I need to think a little harder on the cost and limitations my magic users might suffer so as to avoid any ‘deus ex machina’ level issues. I just need to make sure I don’t overthink it to the point where I make the magic either pointless, or too powerful!

So yes, another thing to add to the list of ‘gosh isn’t writing a story harder than it sounds?!’

Finally, I would love to hear from anyone else who has written magic into their story and the processes they went through to try to ensure they retained a level of realism that kept things interesting!

Losing the Plot

thestuartsadler

Something I have struggled with recently is the feeling that I am constantly second guessing myself. That no matter what idea I can come up with, there is a better one lurking around the corner. This has seriously hindered my writing progress.

Most recently, I was trying to work through a couple of logical gaps in my story. Ideas I had had that needed just a bit more work to mould them into useable threads. I spent a long time just sitting and thinking and came up with a few things to explain the ideas I wanted to use. This was great. I was really pleased with what I’d come up with. The problem was that if I had chosen to follow through with them, it meant I was 40,000 words into my second book, with not a single word of the first written anywhere. This was a rather daunting prospect.

So I did some more thinking, talked to my wife a bit about it and came up with some alternatives which I’m now happy with. The problem now is that having stalled with the writing a little, I’m now suffering the dreaded conviction that my entire story is a boring pile of crap. Which brings me all the way back to second guessing myself on the whole thing.

I keep telling myself ‘a finished draft is better than a perfect draft’ and to give me credit, I’m planning to do some writing this weekend, but I wonder how often other writers do this? Do they constantly criticise their plot before even giving it the courtesy of getting it down on paper? 

I’m sure I’m not alone, so I’ll just keep repeating that mantra ‘finished is better than perfect’!

You’re The Voice (Try and Understand It)

thestuartsadler

Something I, and I think many inexperienced authors struggle with is narrative voice.

It can be difficult to decide not only which to use in the first place, but also to realise how it can limit (and obviously be used to work for) your story and how easy it can be to trip up and do it wrong! From the very beginning I knew I wanted to write my story in 3rd person, though it wasn’t until I took a creative writing course that I really learned that there were actually different versions of 3rd person narrative. The differences aren’t difficult to understand, but sometimes when you get into the finer details of what is and what is not permissible, it can get quite confusing! At least for me!

I am writing my novel in 3rd person limited (sometimes called 3rd person close). I won’t go into too much detail as there are much better resources out there for this kind of thing, but for anyone unaware what this means, it describes narration from the 3rd person perspective (he/she) whereby the point of view is limited to one character. Thus the reader is only aware of what that one character experiences. Alternatively 3rd person omniscient allows the point of view to be ‘all-knowing’ so the reader can experience events (and thoughts etc.) from anyone and everyone’s perspective.

My main reasons for choosing a limited perspective was that it allows me to hold information back from the reader by having events occur or knowledge fall outside of their perspective until such time as I want to reveal them. Also to be blunt, the omniscient narrative has very much fallen out of favour and is not currently a popular device.

Now, I have erred on the side of caution when writing so far, but I must admit I have often found myself wondering (and no doubt overthinking!) just how limited I am supposed to keep things! 

The obvious stuff is easy: if my character is in a soundproof room, I cannot describe the conversation between the two assassins outside the door, no matter how exciting I think it might be for my reader to know something my character does not (and that for me is where the frustration lies I think!). Nor can I have my character discuss their favourite ice cream with someone,  for them to agree that Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food had got to be in the top 5, only to tell my reader that the other person is secretly lying, hates ice cream and is therefore some kind of sick demon. I can say my character suspects they might be lying, by the odd way their eyes wince whenever the gooey caramel and marshmallow are mentioned, or the eerie whispered screams they hear from within the strangely heavy overcoat they are wearing in mid July, but they can’t know it and so neither can the reader.

But where I sometimes struggle and get worried I’m doing it all wrong is the sort of in between stuff. The adjectives, adverbs etc. I might use in my dialogue for example:

‘Who would have thought we’d end up in a blog post!’ MC said to the stranger by his side.

‘Who indeed.’ Replied the stranger with a knowing smile.

Can I say that? Would anyone really recognise a knowing smile? Or is it enough that, because my character is present, I can add that sort of detail that they may not be explicitly aware of? That’s the sort of thing I get confused about! Can my reader know that the smile is knowing without my character being able to tell? Maybe my character wasn’t even looking at the stranger at that moment and missed the smile anyway, in which case do I remove all visual descriptions?! I’ve struggled to find any ‘rules’ that go into this level of detail and frankly I’m beginning to worry that the more I obsess over it the more it will negatively impact my writing.

So, dear reader, if you have any thoughts or experiences on the matter I would very much like to hear them!