# When I began writing...



## Caged Maiden (Oct 31, 2016)

This thread is about those things I learned along the way, and I invite you to share your stories of overcoming the hard parts of writing. It was inspired by a three-hour phone conversation I had with one of my very best friends, the other night. We were talking about the future, and of course, when you talk about what you want to accomplish in the future, it's sort of common to reflect on where you were in the past. Here's the first one:

When I began writing, I saw these epic moments. A character confessed a secret she'd held onto for thirteen chapters. The king pulled a soldier aside and told him it was okay to fail, that it made a man stronger to know where he was weak. A mysterious woman dropped a baby off in the dead of night, and my MC was horrified to learn that her father, who had been gone a year, hadn't hurried home to his family...because he'd had a baby with a woman in a neighboring land. 

Those moments were what I wrote for. I loved them and they had great depth and interesting situations. But...the things that connected those moments together were weak and awful. And not only that, but the way I presented the information to the reader was tired and "on the nose" (more about that later)

All of this came about because my friend is writing a story that involves a long journey. I told him I don't really write treks at all because when I was a new writer, I plain sucked at writing journeys. Basically the "scenes" fell into one of two categories. Either they took place "on the road" and I spent way too much time talking about things like the temperature, the trees, the wind, etc. and they were dull beyond dull. Or the scenes showed mundane aspects of travel (usually meals around a fire or tent-pitching, or other dismally hum-drum things) and whatever momentum I'd built up during the exciting scenes swiftly dissipated as I bored readers to tears with the monotony of life in the saddle.

Now, I know what you're probably thinking... Just make something interesting happen!

Well, yes. I abandoned that particular advice because it was just too hard to overcome my personal dearth of ideas for what could make a travel chapter interesting and in my head at the time it just felt too much like D&D "random encounters". 

Anyways, what I told my friend is that this one small problem was actually a much larger one. I also had a terrible habit of meandering off subject in other ways. Characters getting dressed in the morning before they went to talk to their friend and get plot-pertinent information, for example. I NEVER got "in late, out early" but rather "got in way too early, sat around like a pathetic loser all day, and then stayed till bar close anyway, even though everyone else had left. Basically, I just went on and on, with no apparent direction for my scene.

So, that got us talking about what changed. See...the thing I've noticed since sharing some of my breakthroughs earlier this year, is that I KNEW it all back then. I knew I was supposed to show only important things. I knew I was supposed to have action, inner conflict, deep characters, realistic challenges and obstacles. The problem wasn't that I didn't understand the concept. Rather, I thought I understood it too well and was doing all the right things...and yet feedback suggested repeatedly that I needed "a little more of this, a little less of that, and maybe something interesting right here between these two scenes where the character is introspective." 

I thought I WAS doing the right kind of pacing and the right kind of details. I felt like I could positively check off all the boxes. Yep, I have an interesting character. Sure do have a bit of foreshadowing, some symbolism, and some external conflicts with other characters. My character certainly is tormented by her internal conflicts...I mean, they're on just about every page!

But when I went through that breakthrough on the http://mythicscribes.com/forums/wri...w-can-get-any-worse.html?highlight=make+worse thread, I noticed something larger happening inside my writer brain. I asked for help here http://mythicscribes.com/forums/chit-chat/16362-commiserate-me.html?highlight=make+worse and sort of shared my confusion.

Well...this whole road I've been traveling this last year has felt much less like a brisk jog, and much more like a hamster in a wheel. I poured tons of energy into this quest for "what I'm doing wrong" and it took exponentially more effort that it has in the past to reach that next level of understanding.

What I realized recently is that while I may have been fulfilling my goals in theory, in application I was missing the mark pretty consistently. Only, I didn't understand why. I'm still writing the same, as in, the stories are the same themes, the characters are the same type of tortured souls...but the one thing that's really changed (hopefully irreversibly) is how I tackle a scene. 

In the first draft, I found I used sentences like, "She had become the girl's adoptive mother in more ways than one..." Plainly, I was writing statements that were "on the nose" rather than SHOWING the same thing in a more tangible and pertinent way. In a way that had a more personal meaning to a reader, and in a way that made the scenes feel real and alive, and sort of unexpected in some cases.

Now when I tackle a scene, I come up with 2-3 goals. If I want to show that the MC feels like a mother to the girl, I pick a conflict that feels like a parent-child conflict, and then I let them yell at each other for a few paragraphs, or use a gesture or gift as an olive branch after a disagreement. I specifically hone in on the things that identify the relationship and define the dynamic between the two, keeping in mind that my ultimate goal is to present the relationship as a parent-child relationship, rather than, say, a friendship. But I avoid flat-out SAYING it for the reader's benefit. Sure, I can SAY it, too, if I want to, but SHOWING it is much more effective. So, this isn't about SHOW vs. TELL, at it's core. It's about scenes-writing goals.

When I wanted to show the reader the building my MC bought, it would have been dreadfully dull to just have her walk around and look at things and assess her new property. So, I sort of stumbled unwittingly into a scenario in which she's looking at the building with the guy who sold it to her, and he sort of hints that she might want to install a secret exit...you know, in case she needs to make a fast getaway. Which started a conversation about why he thought she was in imminent danger. Which was really a million times more interesting than the other option.

Anyways, my point is that a few years ago, I probably would have written the other scene, with the static descriptions and tried to make them "interesting" with language and beautiful descriptions to hold them up. But what really holds those scenes up is that something important is happening there. And those things need to be engaging enough that the reader will ask questions. Why does he know she's in danger, when she hasn't informed the reader about it? Does he know something she doesn't? And when she ASKS him that question, I let his answer sort of lead to another question, and then another...until the scene feels complete, hopefully with the reader wondering a whole lot of things and having a few answers, too.

So, to conclude this "blast from the past" topic: Look for goals when you're writing a scene, and then cut things that don't support those goals, and make sure that what you're writing supports those goals. If you're trying to do too much in a particular scene, it gets watered down very fast and the reader's eyes glaze over. Each scene will require its own ratio of dialogue, description, personal reflection, internal thoughts, etc. but for those things that directly support your goals, veer away from "on the nose" tells, or statements like, "...saddest she'd ever felt" and other similar phrasing that doesn't give specificity to the scene. Also avoid meandering into unimportant territory in too much detail. 

I was terribly guilty of not focusing on my goals, and my scenes suffered for it. Sometimes, it was because I didn't KNOW my goals, and was just writing whatever I thought was interesting (and it wasn't), and other times it was because I was just trying to do too much. I'd use a single scene to reveal a secret, foreshadow something that would happen six chapters later, begin a new mystery or question (or sometimes several), show a character's internal conflict that was already mentioned last chapter and the one before that, and describe some scene-setting things that weren't pertinent. Too much going on means a reader misses things, or gets confused, or just loses interest because they can't discern what's important.

By limiting your goals in a scene, you can spend more time on creating a really engrossing exchange, or a moving experience, or an emotional reaction from the reader that couldn't have been so fully realized if you were instead drawing focus to too many things at once. 

So that's my most recent realization as I continue to rewrite an old novel from 2008. I've come a long way since then and the things I'm learning today are consistently hard-won battles. Like I said, I knew the concepts back then and had embraced them, but I still didn't have the whole picture until just recently.


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## Heliotrope (Nov 1, 2016)

Oh man I feel like you are writing this directly at me lol! Focussing in on goals is a major problem for me.


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## Caged Maiden (Nov 1, 2016)

When I began writing, I thought an outline was the thing you do for a research paper, where Roman numerals and cascading letters meant something vital and led to order and success. I often forced myself to writing these devastatingly shallow "outlines" and watched in horror as they degraded into random sentences that piled up like cars on the curbs when Albuquerque's hills are icy and the town's TWO snow plows are engaged elsewhere. It was a mess. Complete chaos. No order. No control. A wreck in the making.

I worked for a decade, still forcing myself to write those shitty little outlines, though I never used them or looked at them once they were done. No, instead, once the "outlining" was complete, I'd start writing random brainstorms on blank pages, and I'd use all sorts of symbols to denote how well I liked a particular idea. Smilies, asterisks...boxes around an idea meant I was DEFINITELY using it. 

And then I'd write. The whole book. First line to last, I'd pants everything, occasionally opening my brainstorm pages to pull ideas from those initial moments of inspiration.

And then I read about outlines. I bought a book on Amazon I think it was this one, though mine has a different cover Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success: K. M. Weiland: 8601200456202: Amazon.com: Books

One thing really struck me, like a punch to the face. In the book (still not sure this is the right one, sorry), I learned that an outline can take many forms. It can be chapter summaries (which I now do). It can be note cards that you write significant scenes on and then shuffle around to place them in logical order. It can also be an exploratory first draft that will then serve as the skeleton for a rewrite. Whoa!!! What?

That's me! I have to pants stuff. I just HAVE to. I mean, I sometimes have a direction for where I want things to go, but I'm an exploratory writer, and that first rough draft is actually...wait for it...MY OUTLINE! Who knew?

I was so overjoyed when I heard this. For years, I'd been doing what I thought was right, when the "right" way was in fact the one that worked for me and got the results I wanted.

I don't believe there's a right or wrong way to do things. Not as a writer, certainly. Perhaps in some things...like where safety is concerned (but we're very rarely putting ourselves or others in harms way...except perhaps for carpal tunnel or neck pain from poor posture). There is no right or wrong way to outline, or to write a sentence, or to write a story...but there is a right way to learn, I've discovered. For me, specifically, the wrong way to learn was by forcing myself to do things, even when I found them continually frustrating and confusing. For me, the right way to learn was talking to other writers, sometimes for many hours over weeks or months, or even years, and trying different things until I found some small amount of success. 

There is nothing "right" about forcing yourself to do something that's really uncomfortable and halts your progress for an extended period of time. Basically, I'm not saying give up if something doesn't work the first few times, but if you really gave something an honest attempt a few times and you are getting discouraged...try something else. Ask around. Find some trusted friends here on our friendly and open forum, and have some conversations. You might just find the right person to convey the information in a new way, and suddenly that technique that had you baffled will be clear as day. And you'll be able to do it. Or you might find that someone's suggestion opens a door you didn't know existed, as I did when I discovered it was perfectly acceptable to use a first draft as an extended outline that would then be used for a rewrite. I mean...it probably isn't the most efficient way to write, but I turned out one full 100k word novel a year for ten years that way, and it wasn't something I was doing full-time, just as a hobby. So, sure, I don't have a stack of finished novels, but I DO have a bunch of fantastic outlines!

Anyways, in conclusion, sometimes you can be doing something for years, thinking you're doing the right thing...working toward your goal. And then some new bit of information comes along and suddenly you realize there's an even "righter" way out there, and you can't believe you didn't know it existed in the first place.

I had to mop my floor after we spilled chocolate milk all over the kitchen this evening. I remember the day I learned how to mop. I was 19 and working at Mc Donald's. It was my turn to "mop us out", and the shift manager stared at me with a horrified expression on her face while I wrung out the mop and used the damp ropy bits to moisten the floor and scrub away our footprints as we locked up for the night. 

"What are you doing?" she asked, none to kindly.

I stood there, quiet. Not quite sure what she was asking.

She took the mop from my hands and dunked it in the bucket. After, she swung it up in a sopping wet arc, spraying the floor with what looked like gallons of water. I was sort of scared.

She proceeded to push the puddle around for a minute or two, and then she wrung the mop and dried the floor. And repeated this a few times.

I learned that night that pushing a damp bit of cotton rope around isn't the same thing as actually cleaning a floor. I also learned that the standards in "the south" were somewhat more clearly defined than the housekeeping my mother taught to me. And I have been drenching my floors ever since, loving the fresh Pine-sol scent and the immaculate shine of no footprints. 

Sometimes, even the most basic skills, things you've thought you were doing right for years, can bite you in the butt. New information, seeing someone else's methods, having a conversation...it can all lead to new skills, new applications of skills, and a greater understanding of how we use our own methods and when we can improve upon them.

Don't be afraid to call your tried and true methods out into the light from time to time, and just assess whether they're doing the job you need them to be doing. And if they're leaving footprints on the floor, despite your best attempt to do what you thought was "right"...well, try something new today. And tomorrow. Try something new regularly, when you find that you don't feel like you're quite as effective as you want to be. Don't do what I did and keep making the same horrible outlines for a decade because you didn't know a better way existed.


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## Chessie (Nov 1, 2016)

Libbie Hawker's Take Off Your Pants is a terrific outlining book. In it, she makes the clear distinction between outlining and plotting being two separate things. For a long time, I confused the two and I do believe that's why I never followed through with my outlines and just pantsed anyway. That book plus several others have really helped me figure out the whole goals thing...which I super suffer from as well. To give you an example of how I figure out my character goals using her book, I'll provide an example from my NaNo story:

1. main character: Ludmila, an alchemist at a magical college
2. external goal...what is it???
3. End: Takes back control of her life by forfeiting all to be with Sergei (her husband from a past life)

*Flaw: allows others to treat her like a posession.

So we want her external goal to be related to her flaw and also be plot related. Since this is a romance plot, her external goal needs to be something that puts her in contact with the hero. I went through several options (and I don't really care sharing this because I don't think anyone here is going to read it lol). Ludmila is an alchemist, so her goal is to develop a potion that will cure an outbreak in a nearby village. This goal places her in direct contact with the hero, and thus their romance begins. But the goal is also something that needs to have a steep price. What if she doesn't succeed at creating the right potion? Many more people could lose their lives...including her and those she loves.

Creating a cure would make her somewhat of a hero. It would bring her respect and honor. It would help free her from the people holding her prisoner (her father and fiance). If she doesn't achieve this goal, then not only would more people die and the outbreak would spread, but she wouldn't have done something big in order to assert her individuality, her freedom in essence. And it's related to the romance plot because she must work with the hero in order to develop this potion the right way (he has insight on how to do this). Anyway, that's how I go about it but it does take me a while to figure out the goals sometimes. On other occasions, I know what the character wants right away. It depends on the story. 

I highly recommend Libbie Hawker's book to those that are curious. She has some really helpful books for writers.


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## FifthView (Nov 1, 2016)

Caged Maiden said:


> Basically the "scenes" fell into one of two categories. Either they took place "on the road" and I spent way too much time talking about things like the temperature, the trees, the wind, etc. and they were dull beyond dull. Or the scenes showed mundane aspects of travel (usually meals around a fire or tent-pitching, or other dismally hum-drum things) and whatever momentum I'd built up during the exciting scenes swiftly dissipated as I bored readers to tears with the monotony of life in the saddle.





> I NEVER got "in late, out early" but rather "got in way too early, sat around like a pathetic loser all day, and then stayed till bar close anyway, even though everyone else had left. Basically, I just went on and on, with no apparent direction for my scene.





> Also avoid meandering into unimportant territory in too much detail.





> I was terribly guilty of not focusing on my goals, and my scenes suffered for it. Sometimes, it was because I didn't KNOW my goals, and was just writing whatever I thought was interesting (and it wasn't), and other times it was because I was just trying to do too much.



I believe you.

Your mission, Caged Maiden, should you choose to accept it...

...is to apply your learning to the comments you write here.  

One of my guiding principles for scenes, or call it the meta-goal, is to "write around" whatever it is I'm wanting to do/show.  

I suppose this is like the antithesis of "on the nose."  I do believe that showing rather than telling is a shorthand way of describing this process; but there's a lot of baggage behind that idea of showing, and focusing on _Show!_ can actually be a problem for me.  One can approach "Show!" in a way that is too close to being "on the nose."  If focusing on showing too much, then showing can become merely another way of telling—for me at least.  I.e., I find that I'm just trying to _tell_ in a clever way, and the end result doesn't feel organic.

Basically, I'd tie my approach to the idea that "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."  Characters act with clear and present goals and motivations and they themselves do not see the full consequences and do not have a precise understanding of how their present actions fit into the whole plot/narrative/story.  The plot is happening while the characters are busy being busy.  I want the readers to be engaged in each scene for its own sake, so each scene needs to have its own arc and significance, in itself.

So when designing a scene, I want to avoid both, meandering insignificance and on-the-nose painting by numbers.

_Edit: _ I suppose I skipped over the "what I've learned" bit.  In a nutshell, I've learned that I have to love each scene.  Scenes are not merely stepping stones, merely mechanical steps in creating a plot.  In a way, each scene needs to be a mini-story.  But in order to allow this organic creation, I have to let go a little bit of the overall plot, the overall story, while developing those scenes.  I have to commit to each step.


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## DragonOfTheAerie (Nov 1, 2016)

Hey! Don't bring up scene structure! I already know my WIP is crap! 

Kidding. Sort of. 



But to the point. What has my learning process been like? Writing crap, mostly. I've written lots of garbage. I'm probably still doing it...better garbage, maybe, but still garbage. You all seem to have books and workshops and outlining methods and all I have ever done it sit down and write. Write crap until my creativity itself bleeds. 

A quick summary...

I haven't been around as long as a lot of you have, so i still have a bunch to learn, presumably. I wrote my first book at 12. That bad boy was 79,000 words...if I remember right. It took nine months to write. And it was a fiasco. Countless times I went back and rewrote entire chapters, changed the direction of the plot, cut out characters and spliced them in. But I doubt I would have learned so much if it had been smoother. Then, at 13, I rewrote it. Completely. The plot and many of the characters were completely different, and I doubt i kept a word of the original. Heck, it wasn't a rewrite, it was a whole new book. 88,000 words. Six months to write it. 

They were both, as you can imagine, complete crap. Well, not complete. I kept the main characters and some of the central concepts for my current WIP, which bears the name Oozing, Festering Mess of Unsolvable Problems in my Notes app and is currently on hiatus until i finish at least three more unrelated novels. Probably a lot more than three.

I learned everything I know from writing horridly bad stuff. Failure has been my mentor. Instead of focusing on writing better I focus on writing more. 

Is it working? Hell if I know! But I have never bothered with learning structure or technique, or at least I haven't been able to make much of it when i've tried. I have a natural gag reflex at structure and standardization. I've come to the conclusion in the past few months is that the only way to really grow is to fail. A lot. Write anything and everything. Write and make an utter mess with your words. Like my dog getting diarrhea all over the walls in the hallway. Yeah. Like that. (It happened.) 

 I think my least productive years have been the past two. I regret them now, honestly. I spent them all trying to surmount that formidable beast that is the WIP i mentioned above, wallowing in broken-off pieces of highly polished but useless beginnings instead of throwing down sludge like a maniac and putting it to the grindstone. The problem was that I was trying to produce good writing. And, well, what very little I did manage to produce, didn't teach me much. I would be a much better writer now if I had spent that time writing lots and lots of rubbish. I wanted to write it NOW and I wanted it to be GOOD and now i've realized it's not going to be either but it will come to flower someday and i'm happier than I've ever been. 

Can I draw a comparison? I've been learning to draw and an easy mistake to make is to be too careful with your lines. Your pencil strokes become tight and cramped because you're worried you'll make a mistake, and as a result you end up erasing and redrawing the same lines over and over. The solution is to be bold and flamboyant. Make long, careless, sweeping strokes and try to twist them into a form. Don't confine yourself. Be wild and sketchy. The result will look untamed, but it will be better. 

Please remember: There are always erasers. 

All the time I've spent writing has taught me that aiming for quality is often useless. I write a good first chapter and never get any farther because nothing I write is good enough. But when I aim for quantity, I can get past that. And I write good stuff in the process I never would have uncovered by looking for it. Really, the only way for me to write anything good is to not try. If I start caring, the evil little voices in my head shut me down. Every time.

I'm now writing a book that is...probably somewhere in between the garbage i think it is and the masterpiece i wish it was. Posting my word counts in Writer's Work is keeping me motivated. No matter what the quality, 40,000 words is something.


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## Caged Maiden (Nov 1, 2016)

When I began writing, I looked for the amazing things. Magical spells that would wow. Land features that were grand. Cities that had gardens and palaces and temples. My first novel was about a magic student that lived in a time when magic was being eradicated by those in power...and behind those in power, a necromancer was raising an undead army (that included the resurrected bones of long-dead dragons). Oh yeah, I had it all. And I was only writing for myself, so I guess it didn't do me too much harm.

But as I was looking for those awesome elements, I missed so many small moments. And that was really a shame.

I've already mentioned the book, Writing 21st Century Fiction, by Donald Maass. It was one of the things that lead to my current state of awareness. I only read a few chapters, actually. I'm sort of saving the rest for the moment when I've totally cleared this level. HA!

Anyway, in the book, Mr. Maass asked me to be brave and write with honesty. And that was really hard for me. You see, when you're looking for magnificence and epicness, sometimes the small things slip by. Small things that can be very moving and impactful. Not even like grains of sand that tip a scale eventually...but in a more creative and less proverbial way. I recently shared a video on my personal Facebook feed, about Yellowstone. It's called something like, "How wolves change rivers."

Basically (and I don't want to debate whether it's real or not, because there has been some heated debate about whether it's scientifically proven or  whether disbelievers' opinions also make sense), in the video, it talks about how wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone after many years of being gone. It was a small group, I think 12 individuals at first. This pack was alone in a park where the deer and elk populations were very high. Long story sort of short, the wolves harvested animals from the population, but that wasn't what created the change. It wasn't that there was an actual decline in population (because even several wolf packs wouldn't have made a dent in the overpopulation...because human hunters have taken many times more animals than the wolves did). Instead, it was the presence of the wolves that changed the park and moved the river. Basically, the wolves took up a territory on the low ground, where the hunting was good, and the deer scattered to the higher ground, avoiding the river and the plains where they were easier targets for the predators. 

When the deer stopped grazing on everything green in sight down there, the plants grew back. The trees grew back. Roots stopped soil erosion, and shade once again hung over the water. That attracted beavers, who like trees. And they dammed the river in places. And the new trees also brought songbirds back to the park, by the thousands. And the pools the beavers created allowed fish populations to soar (and indeed fishers who enjoy those waters claim the fishing has never been better)!

And the thing that made it all happen, all that healing to an over-grazed and eroding land...was that a pack of wolves turned it into their home.

The smallest things have ripple effects, sometimes. Ones you cannot fathom when you begin a story, sometimes. At least, that's how it went for me.

Again, not me saying what's right or wrong, just sharing my personal experience. Recently, I threw magnificence out the window, and I started looking at the honesty of what I write. I began writing what I know. I chucked epicness and embraced reality. And by that I don't mean that I traded in fiction for non-fiction, or that I stopped writing about magic and dragons and decided to instead focus my attention on only what exists in the real world. So far from it, really.

What I did was strip it all back to who I am. What I do. How I think. Even the really shameful and embarrassing bits. Especially those. 

It wasn't easy. In fact, if you think writing made-up stuff is hard...try writing something really raw, like your worst memory, or the real way your dad made you feel when you were too young to tell him to eat a turd and die (I don't have a bad relationship with my dad, btw). It's really hard. It means coming to grips with your shame, guilt, self-loathing, and everything else that we sum up when we talk about "emotional baggage". We all have it. Some of us don't think about it, like ever, and for some of us, it's hard to leave the house sometimes because the weight of it is so burdensome.

I didn't do it alone, either. I have a friend who took my hand and helped me take my first steps into the dark hallway that exhibited portraits of myself in some of the ugliest representations and poses I could imagine. Sometimes she literally had to strong-arm me into moving forward. It made me sort of sick at times. I felt like if I kept going, I'd one day cross a line and turn from "honest" into "nutty as squirrel shit". I felt the more authentic I was to my real inner person, the more I might alienate the people who read my work--my writing group, critique friends, and recently, my mother.

I worried what people would think of me. Waited for the moment someone picked a thought I'd assigned to my character, and said I had gone too far and that the character was a sociopath (or something else I'd take personally about the thoughts that were actually close or identical to mine), and I'd internalize that comment and concoct a whole new set of worries with which to plague my already anxious mind. I thought I'd feel like a freak for using myself in some small places to amplify the troubled mind of my suffering character.

Here's the deal: No one ever commented about how clever the temple with the amazing garden was. How much they loved the idea of the gods being "on call" and ready to communicate with a kneeling follower, and actually take that person's consciousness into a spirit world, where they would be able to communicate with a god or goddess, and even touch them. Nope. No one cared. They just buzzed by almost every one of my clever ideas and magnificent places. But when I wrote a couple twisted jokes into a dialogue, people told me they were amused by the scene. And when I let a few of my own twisted thoughts flicker inside my MC's head...I got compliments. Genuine ones. And the encouragement was to "do more of this" which always leaves you feeling good.

The thing is, it's the small things that I'm allowing to grow. Here and there. One detail at a time. And now when I try to increase the impact of a scene or a chapter, I immediately go to those small things, and forgo the large movements. I've discovered that writing a great story is more about sleight of hand than it is flashes of light and clouds of smoke, and elephants disappearing on a stage. My writing has much greater and deeper impact when it's more believable, closer to home, and slightly uncomfortable.

This has been a really hard lesson to learn, but the results are hard to argue with. Is it what every reader wants? No. Absolutely not. And I don't always want to read it, either. But as a writer, this shift in focus has opened a door for me, personally, to use my strengths in a whole new way, without being beholden to a method of writing that only employed those skills that for me are very weak. 

Find the things you're good at, and push the limits. Of course it's always great to overcome your weaknesses, but when you can start getting great positive feedback consistently on your stories, it can in turn motivate you to push through the rougher times, when you're taxing yourself to create things that are mostly imaginary or completely invented. Or so I've found, at least. 

Best wishes! Be brave!


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## skip.knox (Nov 1, 2016)

First of all, a big thank you to Caged Maiden for her thoughtful and thought-provoking posts, of which this thread is but one instance.

Caged Maiden invites us to talk about how we overcame the hard parts of writing. What cheek! The hard parts are still there. They leer at me from every page, especially the blank ones. But I'll share some thoughts and you folks can decide if they're relevant or helpful.

I really did overcome one difficulty: starting. I did this on my own, but my wife and a dead editor provided critical push
I've been writing all my life, but erratically and not seriously. I did, however, submit a short story to the magazine Fantasy and Science Fiction back in the mid-1970s. It was rejected, but I did get a hand-written rejection note from the editor (I think it was H.L. Gold, but I'm not where I can dig out the note right now), and he did say to try again. Meanwhile, I went to grad school, became a historian, raised a family. I wrote tons of history, and made notes and erratic attempts at story telling.

In the mid-90s I got my Core Idea, for Altearth, and the erratic writing increasingly became about that. Then came the catalyst. One day, quite out of the blue, that rejection letter appeared on my desk at home. My wife, Debra, had found it in some papers. And there was that sentence. To keep trying. And something, almost audibly, went *click*.

I think it helped that I had been making electronic music and publishing it on mp3.com (remember that?). And that book self-publishing was becoming a thing. I don't recall thinking about those things. All I remember was the click. From that point on, I got serious. I shifted from writing stuff about Altearth to telling Altearth stories. That was the key.

Since then, everything else has been details. Devilish, soul-crushing details.


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## Chessie (Nov 1, 2016)

I would say character arc/growth is the biggest focus for me in story now. Before...I was all over the place. I've been writing stories since childhood. Up until age 17, I wrote whatever I wanted. Most of my stories were dark with lots of death and mystery. I explored ideas more than anything. After the frustration of not getting published (because I thought I was the shizz), I gave up writing for most of my 20s. 

I didn't pick writing back up until I married, and then I just focused on writing for fun. The focus grew each year, and as others can probably attest to this we're always focusing on something new for each story. We learn during the writing of a book and then transfer those lessons to the next book. Characterization, plot structure, outlining, scene structure, antagonists, whatever and etc. My goals are to always get better. Never stop learning. I'm always reading craft books and learning from other authors. Other authors, the ones who are actually making a living from writing fiction, are the best sources of information, I have found. They are eager and willing to share what has worked or not worked for them in relation to craft and publishing. Big name authors and editors aren't always going to have information on the nitty gritty. Authors who are closer to what I aspire to do with my career have been invaluable and the biggest advice I've religiously gotten from them is to work on my craft and let that be the main thing I do. So it has been.


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## Heliotrope (Nov 1, 2016)

Oh my gosh FV, words out of my mouth literally. Everything you said is so true to me as well. The idea of writing 'around' the idea is spot on (lol, the irony.) 

And YES! I also have to love each scene. Each scene needs to be it's own 'story' in a sense. It needs to have a hook, a goal, a climax, and a conclusion which leads into the next scene. Any scene that feels like it is there for 'filler' or simply to connect two scenes together needs to be cut or rewritten so it has significance. 

Which brings me to my thing I learned, which is "tension on every page." When I learned that from Donald Maas it was like lightning in my brain. Tension on every page. 

A regular novel has about 300 words per page. In order for each scene, each moment, each bit of dialogue to feel relevant there needs to be tension on every page. That means that every 300 words _something needs to happen._

This does NOT mean 'conflict' on every page. This does not mean fist fights or car chases or attacks by dragons. 

What it DOES mean is that every 300 words there should be a twist in the plot, or new information revealed, or a new conflict introduced, or the stakes raised, or a new question raised... Something to keep the reader reading. 

This also means something as simple as just framing paragraphs differently. Examples include: 

1) Starting each paragraph with a hook. So instead of _Mr. Jones was yelling at Kade when I got to school._ You would start with _As soon as I got to school I knew I it was a bad idea._ 

It's this idea of leaning forward, raising questions in the reader's brain... Why? Why was it a bad idea? 

Frame your sentences in ways that make the reader ask questions. 

2) Ending each paragraph with a new hook. I like to think of this as having a "but" on every page. I walked along the street to buy some candy from the story..... but.... 

The 'but' is another way of leaning forward into the next paragraph. 

Making this a goal every 300 words, I think, has improved my storytelling imensly. It's my strategy for staying focussed, keeping the story moving forward, only focussing on the relevant points etc...


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## Heliotrope (Nov 1, 2016)

And I'm totally with Maiden on the 'being brave' stuff. 

It hit me one day when I had bad post partum anxiety and I had a terrible thought about something happening to my daughter that made me literally sick. And I couldn't turn the thought off. It was so grotesque and raw and real and vivid and horrifying I debated turning myself into children's services because obviously I was a nut job. 

But then I realized... I'm not the only one. 

Someone wrote about Liam Neeson losing his daughter to a kidnapper who was going to sell her into the sex trade, and they had to keep going with that though to it's logical conclusion. Then they made a movie about it. 

Stephen King had to think about a demented clown killing people. And write a book about all the gory details. 

So I realized that people who are brave can face those terrible parts of themselves and use it to write good stories. 

I'm not a nut job. I have a vivid imagination and that is okay. 

Useful, actually. 

If I'm brave enough to share it.


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## Heliotrope (Nov 1, 2016)

And... sorry, last thing... I'm all out of thanks, but thanks Caged Maiden, for sharing all these wonderful insights with us. These are truly valuable and I know I'll be meditating on them all day now.


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## Caged Maiden (Nov 1, 2016)

When I began writing, I didn't understand the first thing about story structure. I already mentioned that my outlines were useless, and that I had a hard time keeping scenes pertinent, but it went further than that.

Some folks follow a scene-sequel tactic to map their way through a story. Others plot their novel according to a three-act structure and follow pretty close to the expected ratios of the three acts. What I did when I began writing is I wrote beginning to end and whatever occurred to me made its way into the story, independent of any style, template, or format.

When I look back at what I learned in school, perhaps it was a tad imbalanced. I went to a school for gifted education. The whole curriculum was focused on creative thinking, problem-solving, and collaboration. My English classes were excellent for how well they covered grammar, spelling, vocabulary, and reading comprehension, but I don't think we ever really learned about writing stories. At least not in the sort of critical way that higher education does.

We read a lot of books, and we talked about the deeper meaning of books like "Where the Red Fern Grows" and "The Rats of NIMH". We answered a bunch of readying-comprehension questions and I always excelled at those, and the grammar and punctuation portions of my classes. For every weakness I showed in math, I had a strength in English. But I never learned how to write a story. Or, at least not one that mattered. 

We experimented with poetry and journalism. Later, in high school, when I took Shakespeare, we analyzed the deeper meanings of the plays and sonnets, and we dissected the language. But creating work of our own simply didn't take precedence. We were always reading someone, always looking for meaning in stories from the past.

It wasn't until the last few years that I got a tenuous grasp on what story structure means. How to explain tension and style and tone. I mean...I've been able to appreciate it for decades, but translating that understanding into practical application as a writer was actually really difficult. I think part of the problem is simply how I'm wired. 

When I was in high school, I sort of didn't care. About anything. I had a rough freshman year, where making new friends was really hard, and I sort of became really quiet and shut down. My sophomore year, I was tired of being quiet, and I got loud. Really loud. I partied and rebelled, and my friends I brought home became increasingly unsavory. I skipped school and hung out with people ten years older than me, and generally decided that school was a place to socialize and have fun, and learn only what I wanted to. I carried "A"s in my favorite classes like World History and Art, and I failed Geometry. But after the angsty year passed, I had more problems than just a wardrobe in monochrome black and fifteen holes in my ears. I had a low GPA (after scoring a whopping 1.6 one semester) and I had to rebuild from there. I took easy classes and dropped hard one, attempting to raise my GPA to a respectable level. Of course, I took every weighted class I could (Art, Government, Sociology, and English), but I also had to get math and science credits in to graduate, which meant that I had to take Geometry a second time, and I had to find some science credits without ever braving Chemistry, which I knew I'd fail.

I took Earth Science. And got a C- 

The reason for the low grade is I think directly correlated to the fundamental problem I've had with writing, those early years. In Earth Science, we had two main things that compromised our final grade. The final test, and a creative project and report that included visual aids. The final test was simple: identify an assortment of stones. But the problem I had was that nothing ever looked the same to me. Sure, some were easy, like mica, rose quartz, obsidian, etc. but others were really difficult because the way I translate what i'm seeing is tricky. If you show me a square rock that's gray and call it slate, and then show me a round black one called shale...and then on the final test the black square and the round gray one...I get all messed up and can't tell one from the other. Identifying things when certain variables change, is really tricky for me (more about this later).

Similarly, I did really poorly on the art project. Mainly, the research papers were weakly written, and the art projects (though I'm a great artist) didn't "follow instructions". You see...when I was in art class, my teacher asked us to draw still life of fruit and junk on a desk. It sort of killed my soul a little to do it, so I went to her desk and told her I didn't want to draw random junk. I wanted to draw a peacock. So...being a supportive art teacher, she gave me a library pass and told me to go get a book to draw peacocks from. And my painting was amazing and was on the wall for the rest of the year...right in the middle of a row of paintings of still life. She encouraged me to think outside the box, just as my previous gifted school had done. But Earth Science wasn't a creative class...it was a set of rigid guidelines targeted at kids like me, who needed a credit in science to graduate, and the teacher was used to unruly students who didn't like to follow rules. So, when I made my creative projects, bending the rules everywhere they existed...I was penalized, rather than celebrated. So, I got a C- in a remedial science class, and regretted not just taking Chemistry, which I felt I probably could have done just as well.

How this related to writing (until just recently) is that I didn't really like rules. Why use a three-act structure, when it can feel confining? Why outline when it's uncomfortable? Why anything?!? Why not just write to amuse myself and let that be enough, like it was in art class?

Heliotrope (bless her patient heart) was the one who helped me really understand why a story structure is critical. Not because every story needs to fit the mold to the letter, but because when you begin with a structure, you can follow the rules and THEN choose when to break them gloriously. But I had to understand first what I was trying to accomplish.

It took weeks of communicating before her words broke through my hopelessly rebellious art class mentality. But finally, the light dawned. I've still struggled with some of the concepts, even after months of really applying myself, but I'm loads further than I ever was before. 

No, it isn't imperative to follow a story structure word for word, but if you can really grasp the concept of it, it can free up your creativity in the right way. With a guide rope to catch you if you fall, you can take risks, push your limits, try something you've never done before.


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## Caged Maiden (Nov 1, 2016)

Yeah, sorry, I realized you guys were responding...and I passed out without posting that last one last night. So...it looks like I just talked over you all. 

I'm glad my musing is perhaps a tiny bit helpful. I know I'm long-winded and sometimes take my time getting to a point, but I'm trying to share more than the stock advice that's thrown around every day on writing forums. If hearing my thought process allows the information to sink in to one person who has struggled with the same challenges I have (and hasn't been able to grasp these concepts for the same reasons they were so hard for me to understand) then I'm glad I'm talking and folks are listening, I suppose. 

The thing is, a lot of advice is stated over and over, and while I get it, and got it then, there was a definite disparity between basic comprehension and the sort of ownership I now feel. Anyways, this is just a place for me to share some experiences, on the off chance I might bring greater understanding to some small facet of writing life. Again, I'm no expert, but I do meet a lot of newer writers, and pretty much everyone's dealing with the same things, and some of us learn things differently. Some of the things I found most challenging are easy to a lot of writers, but they caused me problems for years and I very nearly quit permanently over those issues I couldn't seem to overcome.

So anyways, I'm going to keep writing posts beginning with "when I began writing" and I hope this thread continues to engage people. I work for "thanks" really.


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## Tom (Nov 1, 2016)

Thank you for making this thread, Maiden. At this point in my writing life, I've come so far from where I started, but I still have a very long ways to go. This is a good place to stop and look back over my progress before I continue on, to appreciate the distances I've covered on my journey. 

When I began writing, I didn't know what kind of story I wanted to tell. I didn't know what rang true for me--what about the stories I read that touched on the deepest, rawest points of my imagination and clung there stubbornly. I didn't know what mattered to me. So when I began writing, I copied other people's styles and borrowed the themes they had used. I had yet to find a voice of my own--and to use that voice to express my own thoughts. It took years to find the themes I wanted to write about. It took a lot of nights spent wondering what I believed in, deep down, and how that influenced the themes and characters and plots I chose to write about. My early writing was flat. It lacked depth and passion. It was rife with overused storylines and character archetypes. As time went by and I continued to write, I found what mattered to me, and used it to create the fundamental core that would give life to all my writing. 

When I began writing, my characters were not people. They looked like people and talked like people and acted like people, but they weren't. They had no souls. I didn't know how to write the intricacies of emotion and thought that other people wove into their characters' narratives, so I left them out. Any attempts I made to give my characters an inner life fell flat. Nothing they did resonated with me--they had no loves or hates, no passions or fears or struggles or...well, anything. Gradually, over the years, I learned to write with an ear to emotion and to listen to what my characters were telling me about themselves. I started to see their personalities and develop that sense of personhood that they had been lacking. 

When I began writing, I didn't know how to create a coherent plot. I wrote so many beginnings that lacked middles or ends, simply because I hadn't started with an endgame in mind. This was partially because I didn't know what kind of story I wanted to tell, but also because I was too impatient. When I got an idea for a new project, I didn't take any time to sit down and think of the possible outcomes that could result from it. I wrote down the beginning right away, and because I didn't explore it beyond its shallowest realization, it died. I have a lot of dead projects. 

Recently, I've been reviving some of them. Now that I know how to structure a plot and plan effectively, I can take the old, dead ideas and give them new life. My NaNo 2016 project, Southerner, is one of those ideas. Yes, I have been working on it consistently for years. But also yes, it was dead. For a while it was even _undead_--that one horrible month where I decided to completely rewrite it from three different third-person perspectives comes to mind. But it's very much alive now. I've been bringing it back to life little by little, with plot notes and extensive worldbuilding, and this November I think it's finally come time to finish it. 

When I began writing, I never thought I'd get this far. I'm amazed by the progress I've made (and also slightly horrified by where I started from).


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## Darkfantasy (Nov 1, 2016)

I am just beginning writing and it is so much harder than it looks. But character growth is something I have tried to focus on, and when exploring a theme I try to present both sides. The good and bad. There is SO much to think about


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## Caged Maiden (Nov 1, 2016)

Ah yes, Tom, voice is upcoming on this thread, but it's such a raw wound, I wanted to get some others out of the way first  

When I began writing, dialogue was an object. It had a design and a purpose, and sometimes I even used it creatively...rather like I used an oven mitt last night to hot glue a mini Deadpool's cardboard shoulders onto the red suit, using my husband's hand in the oven mitt to create the right rounded shape. Yeah...just like that.

Mostly, my dialogue existed with a single purpose. It got information to a reader. Two characters talked about the history of the world. Or where they were going and what they anticipated doing once they got there. Or they talked about another person and raised some suspicions that maybe that dude was kinda shady and they ought to investigate...

It was all totally lame. My dialogue was simply me telling a reader what I thought they needed to know, and it didn't do any jobs well, not even the one I originally intended.

My main problems with dialogue were:

The characters all sounded the same
The dialogue was stiff and uninteresting
There was no life or realism

Now...you'd think I'd have been aware of these material defects (ha, real estate terms for writing...told you my brain is wired weird). But I not only didn't see the problems, I was SURE I was doing my best and when my critique partners made comments about these things, I wasn't sure where the problem was, exactly. What did they mean that all the people sound the same? That woman clearly uses bigger words than that guy! Isn't that how we differentiate that she's high-born and he's not? OMG. So embarrassing to admit these things.

Anyways, so my characters all sounded the same because a few words difference between how characters talk just isn't cutting the mustard. 

As for the stiff and uninteresting dialogue...well that one was harder to overcome because I was using dialogue as a specific tool. See, I didn't have a creative use for it. I was either using words spoken in conversation to convey information to the reader, or to move a scene along in a believable way. For instance, you can't simply have a character come home to find his wife cheating on him with another fellow, and he slaps her and then they stand around staring at each other and internally monologuing about what a bitch she is, and then he says, "I'm leaving you," and walks out. I mean...dialogue is HOW plot works and unfolds sometimes. So I was using dialogue as a logical tool in cases like the above, to move the scene from beginning (where he might have walked in on her and had a verbal reaction), to end (where he says one last hurtful or pained statement, and then things change forever). The dialogue was utilitarian and functioned as an information dispensary, but it didn't have much else going for it. Which leads into my next point...

Life and realism are terms that have many meanings, even when applied to this single topic. One of the hardest parts of writing good dialogue is that it is elusive and dwells in a tiny little crevice between utilitarian hum-drum dialogue, and wacky wording that makes readers cringe because it's so outlandish. When we talk about making dialogue "real" what we're actually saying is "real-feeling". Actual real dialogue is rarely interesting. Some of us are slow, others very fast. Some of us use big words and others don't. Some people can clearly communicate how they feel, and others struggle to make their feelings clear. I've learned a lot about dialogue by relating to my husband, actually, because he processes things and talks so differently. I've had to shut up and listen more than I'm comfortable, because where I'm a raging torrent of words when speaking, he's concise and thoughtful. See, I rarely think of what I'm going to say when my mouth opens. I just trust that my feelings and opinions flow out in perfect form, and my husband doesn't do that. He seriously considers things before speaking. Outlandish indeed! So why not play with how people are different?

The sum of several experiences led to me taking more notice of why my dialogue all sounded horrible, and slowly I made progress. My personal belief (at this point...but it'll probably change) is that it's all going to sound somewhat like me in a way, and I'm not going to be able to completely overcome that. But, by making some characters more thoughtful and others more "speak first, then think" I'm at least doing a few things differently. I also add speech patterns to certain characters, and others have foul mouths. Some use analogies and metaphors a lot, while others are clipped or brash most of the time, and when they aren't, the other characters react and listen.

Little steps. It takes a whole lot of little steps to make a change to something as big as "my dialogue sucks".

So, whatever weaknesses exist in my dialogue now, at least it's better than it was, and people seem to appreciate the timing, subject matter, and characteristics of my dialogue a whole lot more. It's still something I'm working on, but I've found that the best thing I can do is write a first draft of a scene however I envision it, with whatever dialogue pops into my head, and then rake that shit over with a fine comb until all the erroneous words are gone and the point is pretty amplified from its original incarnation. Sometimes all I do is take the clean dialogue lines and cut and paste them around for an hour, to magnify the back and forth, present the information in a new way, or just create a different feel for the scene. Sometimes there's just a sort of seesaw motion going on between two characters, and while it's good, I want to try to see if I can make it better. I move things, shift words, and try to implant other meanings into a particular line. I allow characters to have knee-jerk reactions, or misunderstandings in scenes that were perfectly acceptable as calm moments. And all I can say (because remember, there's no right or wrong way) is that I'm now getting comments like, "Your dialogue is really strong in this scene, and I loved the humor." When...I can honestly say that in the previous five years, I've never heard a comment coming close to expressing the same sentiment.

Punch your dialogue in the face when it sucks. You might even feel better.


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## Heliotrope (Nov 1, 2016)

Yeah, your dialogue is the bomb. 

My dialogue is super utilitarian and  hate it. It is by far still my biggest weakness. My strategy for dialogue is "use absolutely as little as necessarily possibly to get the point across." lol. I hate it that much.


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## Heliotrope (Nov 1, 2016)

Yeah, when I first started I just assumed that the reader would love my main character because they were the main character. Aren't you always supposed to love and identify with the main character just because that is who they are? lol. 

No. 

The answer is no. 

I learned after a while that the main character has to earn the reader's love. They have to be (as Fifth View always likes to remind me) either sympathetic, motivated, or clever. Characters who are altruistic, funny, clever, in love, or in other ways 'admirable' will earn your reader's heart and then the reader will want to follow them. But, you have to consciously do this. You can't just assume the reader will love your character just because you do.


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## Demesnedenoir (Nov 1, 2016)

Dialogue is an interesting beast. In screenwriting almost everything is dialogue so it's hard to hide, but at the same time, in the long run you have the cushion of it being intended for an actor to really perfect. When you get into a ms that is 140k words, yikes! Checking the dialogue is a monster. Like CM, I don't think we can 100% divest ourselves of our own voice when writing dialogue... maybe a character here or there, but if you've got 20 speaking parts, the options get slim, LOL. 

When at my screenwriting zenith I Think I had a pretty good handle on different voices, but now? with so many more lines? Over so many more pages? So many more characters? Damn, it's hard to tell. I like the dialogue, and I know there are some differences, but I know them... does anybody else?

The funniest "voice" thing I ever had told to me was when taking a course online with UCLA's screenwriting and we had a text meeting with the whole class and the prof Scott Myers, who wrote K-9 and Trojan War, and he was actually trying to break into producing at the time... Anyhow, I rarely had bad comments about my dialogue, but one gal who I'd chatted with often during the class, mentioned that all the characters sound kind of the same, and they sound just like me... note, we only conversed via text. At which point I had to laugh, because in truth, it wasn't the characters sounding so much like me, as I was sounding like them in word choice and sentence patterns. In my normal formal written word, or how I actually speak? Nope, fairly different from the characters. That was an interesting realization on my part, how my characters were influencing how I communicated in real life. 

Now I still notice this, I will slip into character voice on these boards now and again, sometimes I delete, sometimes I modify, but it always give me a chuckle.

*Scrivener Note*, I have discovered a horribly tedious but effective way to separate character dialogues in Scrivener so that I can finally read them all together in one section, which will help keep consistency. That is, assuming I have the patience to really get it all done. 





Heliotrope said:


> Yeah, your dialogue is the bomb.
> 
> My dialogue is super utilitarian and  hate it. It is by far still my biggest weakness. My strategy for dialogue is "use absolutely as little as necessarily possibly to get the point across." lol. I hate it that much.


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## Penpilot (Nov 1, 2016)

CM, yep, completely agree.  Your experiences run pretty parallel to mine.

I can trace things to a couple of A-HA moments. One had to do with the Nobel Prize winning book Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee, and the other was the movie No Country For Old Men.

While I was driving one day, long after I'd read Disgrace, the meaning of the ending hit me like a bolt from the blue. The same thing happened with No Country For Old Men. These two occasions made me realise how Show Don't Tell really works.

My initial understanding was rudimentary, sentence level stuff. Understanding the endings to those two stories made look at things from different levels, sentence level, scene level, and story level. In each of those I finally understood that for the most part you're trying to show something.

This changed how I approached scenes, and story as a whole. When I write a scene now, I always ask myself "What things am I trying to show here?" and it totally helps drive the scene and helps me focus on finding cool things to support what I'm trying to show.

The same with the story as a whole. Before I start writing a story, I try to understand what I'm trying to show as whole with the story. When that's not possible, I look for it as I write, because it's there. Every story has a point, a subtle message. Sometimes there's more than one point. But any way, for me, I try to understand what that point is, and it helps drive the whole story. Things become so much clearer.

For example. The novel I'm editing right now, in some ways it's a standard story about the rebel leader vs the oppressive overlord. As I was developing the story, I realised what it was about, what fathers sacrifice in order to pursue their careers. It just so happens one father was a rebel leader and the other was the oppressive overlord. 

Knowing that gave me so many interesting directions to go in.


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## Caged Maiden (Nov 2, 2016)

Ah Heliotrope, this is a good one!

When I began writing...I used to make characters "unique" by explaining their beautiful clothing, or their shimmering hair, or their gorgeous face. It was really shallow. Also...everyone was good at everything...because that's what makes readers excited about viewing a fictional person's life, right? If they're perfection on a stick?

Wow. Yep. I really did that. The majority of my stories focused on people and their strengths, and the amazing things they could accomplish. Their negatives were things like their parents were dead, or their wife cheated on them and they were divorced. Basically, everyone was a victim of some unfortunate circumstance and they overcame that single setback and continued on in awesomeness. Okay, I'm probably over-egging that pudding, but not much. I did have challenges my characters faced, but as one critique partner pointed out a long time ago..."I was really interested when the characters met with the monster...but then it ended rather easily and didn't present an actual challenge."

Yes...I see that NOW. But at the time, I thought a party of mismatched priests and psychics facing down a shambling horde of undead monsters was scary and tense enough to make it an interesting scene. Oh man, it's painful even remembering how terribly it was executed.

As I wrote more books, I experimented with flaws and imperfections, but it wasn't until recently that I really discovered how to set up multi-dimensional internal and external conflicts. And learned how to pace those things just a bit (because it's still not my strength, if I'm being honest). How some flaws are so much a part of a character's history and present that they cannot see a future without their emotional baggage following them around. 

Now, when I conceptualize characters, I look for small unique things. The details we know as the "limp and the eyepatch" can help to define main characters and secondary, or even tertiary characters, which is great, but there is more to the can of worms. I've done a lot of digging to get to the bottommost worms, I guess. The really mushy ones that sort of gross you out. I look for things that sort of make me uncomfortable about the character. Like what Heliotrope described above. The sort of things that make you wonder if you're somewhat nuts to even consider putting them into a story. 

It goes back to what Donald Maass said about writing honestly. I found that the more I put my actual thoughts into my characters' heads, or translated my personal experiences and feelings...the better people liked the scenes. I wrote a novel a few years ago, for nano, and it was an overcomplicated mess. I worked really hard on everything about my characters, giving them interesting personalities and internal conflicts. And while most of the execution was really terrible, despite my efforts, I seemed to have real success with two scenes. And what made those two scenes different to all the rest, were that I broke some rules in the first one, a fight scene where a swordsman has a reflective moment while he's facing down a group of opponents, and in the second one, a death of a dear friend, I downplayed emotion and focused instead on a choice (to attempt to keep the mortally wounded person alive for a short time longer, or let him pass). The thing was, most of the novel was totally concocted and I wasn't being honest, but rather inventing how I thought people would act and talk. But in these two scenes, I drew directly from personal experiences. I know just enough about sword-fighting to give it an authentic feel, but rather than relying on choreography and trying to wow with my actual sword training, I let his internal conflict explode and drive him through the fight. And in the death scene, I directly replaced my experience of having my dog die in my arms, with the friend dying in the story. Everything I observed and felt as my best friend passed peacefully on the floor of a vet's office, with me holding him and reassuring him things were okay, I put into that scene. And I'm convinced that the reason that scene was so successful is because the details were pretty unusual and unexpected. 

Rather than a gasping, high-energy moment where tears flowed and promises were made, I focused instead on the girl who had to eventually make a choice between her own selfish desire to keep her friend around a short time longer, and mercy. 

Recently, my critique partner opened my eyes to a concept I just didn't understand many years ago. She told me that readers want to see a character make choices that are hard, and to get an emotional impact from their life, we have to understand their internal conflicts deeper than the surface sort of conflicts I tended to write. Like, if there's only one logical conclusion, it's easy for the character to pick the "right" direction. But if a choice must be made with two unfavorable conclusions, or if a character goes against the nature that you've built up for several chapters, we get to see a complexity that goes beyond telling the reader that he's a certain kind of person who believes a certain thing, and will always remain consistent. As soon as I really grasped that concept of how important choices and internal conflicts are, it made things so much easier.

Donald Maass, in "Writing the Breakout Novel" tells us to assign a goal to the MC. Then, he tells us to write what the opposite of the main goal is, and to make that a main goal, too.

In my rewrite, I have a character who wants to leave her current situation. She's unhappy, hates her job, and lives with people she doesn't trust. Sounds easy to leave, right? But she worked hard to get to where she is. She had to do despicable things to reach the position of power she currently enjoys when the book opens. She equally wants to stay AND go. And just by introducing that internal conflict, she's now much more interesting than in the first draft when she was just a beautiful woman who was great at everything and eventually became a victim of circumstances that forced her to leave.

I wrote a lot of stories with characters that I thought were exceptionally deep and interesting, but the execution was rough and ineffective, and the stories suffered because I thought I was so damn clever I could make people fall in love with completely unrealistic characters who just sort of made logical choices all the time and came away from every challenge without a scrape (figuratively, because in the writing, I was actually pretty heartless with them).

If you haven't read "Writing the Breakout Novel" I highly recommend it. The workbook is inexpensive and it does a great job of helping you plot deeper elements for your characters, that can help to make them feel really individual and believable.

Yeah...all that time I thought I was being clever, and I was really just cutting characters out of cardboard and expecting them to stand up and look like real people.


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## Caged Maiden (Nov 2, 2016)

Ah, yes, I've observed the same thing about "show/tell"

One of my favorite examples is from my fourth novel, where I needed a young soldier to learn that undead monsters were spotted in a nearby village. The rough draft solution was that the young man went into a pub to get a meal, and he overheard some folks at a nearby table talking about their reason for leaving their town. 

Pretty lame.

I decided the scene needed a little more...something. I considered how it would be better if the travelers entered the pub and they didn't have enough money to feed them all, so the parents made sure the kids ate well. I had my soldier pay for the group to eat, at which time they thanked him for his kindness and explained how ling they'd been traveling, with nothing but the clothes on their backs, because they fled after an undead attack. 

Sort of D&D, isn't it? Ah, I'm a noble paladin, I'll buy these poor people a meal and hear a rumor for my trouble...

So I considered what was most believable. 

In the current draft, he didn't go to a pub. Instead, he begged for hospitality in a temple, where he could get a free meal and a bed for the night (showing more about the character than in the previous ideas), and then before the meal was served, as the soldier and priests were at the table, and his stomach was growling, a commotion in the temples main room drew everyone's attention. A group of travelers came in, carrying a woman who was showing signs of necrosis. When the priests asked what happened, they said she was attacked by undead things near their home, and they journeyed to the nearest town with a temple, so she could be healed. 

The whole GOAL of this scene was simply to have him find out that undead existed. But in the last version, I was showing more about the world, the character, and making the whole situation a lot more interesting. The stakes were higher as soon as the character (and reader) could SEE the effects of the attack, the main character was more involved in the situation after he'd helped heal the woman (yeah, he's a cleric's son, anyways...), and it became a much more pertinent scene for his moral choice of whether to return home after two years away in school, or whether he ought to go confirm that something evil was spotted in the village, because he had the power to return home to his priestess mother and get aid for this village.

This is my favorite example of where I learned how to SHOW, rather than TELL. Sure, on the sentence level, it's important, too, but what I didn't realize in the first draft, was that the whole scene was a tell. BY switching the scene to a show...it upped the ante, put the character squarely in the middle of something, and ultimately gave him a better reason to get involved in the first place. All I had initially was some people "telling" him that there was a problem. In the third version, I definitely "showed" him what the problem was, and the reader, too, in a way that made the choice to help out more believable.

But as a newer writer, I totally didn't understand how a scene could be a "tell" and that's why I guess so many of them turned out that way.


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## Svrtnsse (Nov 2, 2016)

When I began writing. The most important thing to me was that my prose was easily readable. I figured that as long as the words flowed easily off the page in a pleasant manner people would keep reading. I also figured that since I'm not a native English speaker this was something I'd have to pay extra attention to in order to get it right.

I do believe that paying attention to this has paid off, but I also think that at the start I let it overshadow a lot of other things that are important to writing. Everything else got shoved to the side - things like tension and pacing, or you know, little silly details like having a plot and interesting characters.


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## Gribba (Nov 2, 2016)

Thanks for this tread... Love it... 
Thanks for sharing these things, it is fantastic and I feel I can take some of it with me to my current projects, made me look at some of the things I had already written in a new way.

What I tend to do is write the history of the world and the rules of the magic (elements) in that particular world. 
The characters: name, age so on and so forth... small description of where this character is starting from and where the character is heading.
When I do this, I ask questions every time I make a decision, why would the MC go there? What is the point of...? and so on... until I am satisfied I have my answers and they feel right, not just correct but feel right, to me and the story I want to tell.

Then I do a chapter summary in no particular order at first, just what pops into my head when considering the characters and the story they are going through.
Then I try to put the chapters into a rough draft, order and then I write.
First draft, plain skeleton and then rewrite and some more rewrite and edit and so on.

I do throw myself into unprepared writing as well, I have an idea, a point I want to go to, or a theme or just a style of writing and just write and write and then see what happens. Of course that requires massive rewrite but I find it fun and refreshing to write freestyle, as well, just to break up the planned writing.
I found, that I do that, to allow myself to just write and let the creative flow take over. Often I end up just picking some parts that stand out or I find fitting and use it for another story I am writing, adding something I did not think of while writing within the structure I have already set up.

But I learned all this during the last two years by taking courses/going to lectures, listening to authors that have published telling what they do and showing how they did that and answering questions.


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## Caged Maiden (Nov 3, 2016)

Okay, so far in this thread, I've covered:

Scene-writing goals

Outlines

Writing with honesty

Story structure

Realistic characters


Good stuff. All hard ones I have made progress on. I'm just jotting down some notes, here, because I want to cover some more things because they're really important to me (and thanks for the people who are listening to me muse). I do appreciate your participation, and if my posts are too long to read or are too dry to sit through, no hard feelings. I'm sort of ding this for myself, really. But rather than write it all in a notebook that I'd probably forget about, I'm writing it here and hopefully my personal struggles might help someone else get a little perspective on something they're struggling with, too.

OMG, you guys, I'm so excited anyone at all cares to read any of this. I'll try to


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## Caged Maiden (Nov 3, 2016)

Devouring Wolf, thank you for chiming in here. I'm glad you joined the conversation and shared your experience. I don't want to ignore the first thoughtful post, but for now, I wanted to respond to the second, as this subject is very personal to me, too.

I'm 36 and have been bipolar for 21 years. I've been unmedicated and have had to learn a lot of coping mechanisms so that I don't end up divorced or worse. I know I'm hard to live with. I can be really needy, and all that neediness is focused on my very supportive husband. I want desperately to be the kind of mom I think I ought to be but always seem to fall short.

Basically, my bipolar doesn't disturb me, but I see how my moods and energy level affect my family, and of course I want them to have the best of everything in the world...and I can't help feeling sometimes like they'd be better off without me. Which is sort of making me tear up, just to say.

Anyways, I would describe myself as a flighty, creative person. I'm inconsistent, impulsive, dreamy, I'm basically a child but with many years of wisdom and experiences. Of course, the wisdom comes from having to be contemplative a high percentage of the time, in order to analyze my own behavior to ensure I'm not being inappropriate or obnoxious. And the experiences I've accumulated mostly because I'm an impulsive person and therefore, just about anything sounds like a good idea.

So, I wouldn't describe my "lows" as "depression" because I don't think it's what people think of when we say "depression". While many bipolar persons have drastic mood swings that can result in periods of hopelessness and despair, I rarely have those kinds of moments. My low periods tend to last for a couple days. Low energy, no appetite, clumsiness, mental sluggishness, and I've been known to say, "Leave me alone!" when people keep bothering me for stuff. I have four young kids, by the way, so no peace when I need to rest, sometimes.

Anyways, just recently, I went through a really traumatic experience. I mentioned it on the Flying High Flash Challenge thread, but I didn't broadcast it publicly here, because I didn't feel it was pertinent or really anyone's business. But I might as well say it here, on this thread, because I began this whole thing to be honest. Mostly, with myself.

About three months ago, I began taking medication for my bipolar. I'd taken this medication five years ago, for about three days. I took 125mg back then, and I turned into a narcoleptic zombie and my husband was concerned for me because I'd pass out places and didn't know what was going on most of the time. So...that didn't last long, I quit the meds and left the doctor. 

Three months ago, my new provider began me on 25mg, saying I probably wouldn't feel a difference at all. But I did! On that really low dose, I felt amazing. A miracle! Things that bothered me, like messy rooms and dishes left around the house, didn't bother me and make me moody anymore. My patience increased, as did my general feeling of wellness and calm. I felt amazing. That's all I can say. But I'd committed to increasing the dose every two weeks, so that's what I did, as promised. Two weeks at 25mg, two weeks at 50mg, two weeks at 75mg, and all the while, I was growing increasingly LESS okay. It was no longer amazing, but horrible. Terrible. One of the worst things I've ever felt in my life.

For the last fifteen years, I've been a writer. I wrote a dozen novels and a hundred short stories. I've participated in challenges and written hundreds of posts here that I hope are thoughtfully written. I've done a dozen or so articles, and I've of course done hundreds of critiques. I'm a writer, even if it's just to send silly emails to my friends, just to check in with them and ask how they're doing. But all that stopped. It came to a grinding halt. 

I took my 100mg dose one day, and a few hours after, I was shouting obscenities at my husband for no reason at all other than he was leaving for two weeks the following day, and I was so out of sorts, I completely flipped my wig and was so afraid. You see, for months, I'd been mentally doing downhill, since beginning the treatment. I was confused a lot of the time. My emotions went from impulsive, before treatment, to deadened, after. I couldn't feel anything. I couldn't connect to the feeling side of myself. And as a person who's used to having strong feelings, it was more than just odd, it was as foreign a thing as I could imagine. I was devastated. 

I not only lost my ability to feel, even at the most basic level, I also lost my ability to reason and comprehend. My husband would ask me a question, and my answer was always, "I don't care." He sometimes looked at me in disbelief, like I was kicking up an attitude, and I shrugged and said, "No, I honestly don't care. I have no feelings on this matter. Whatever you prefer, choose that one." Which was probably pretty unnerving to him because I'm something of an opinionated person, usually. HA!

Anyways, I couldn't feel anything when I watched movies, in fact, I stopped watching tv because I just didn't follow things or find anything enjoyable or entertaining. I basically spent a month playing Pet Rescue on Facebook. I liked the pets and zapping colored blocks, I suppose. I couldn't read books for pleasure because I couldn't really comprehend words anymore. I certainly couldn't critique for my friends, and had to send out apologies because I left the people I care about hanging. I didn't write. I had to turn in an article for the home page, and it took me twice as long to write as usual, and at the end, I sent it to Black Dragon with an apology, saying that I couldn't determine whether it was even coherent, so if it was garbage, to throw it out, but I'd done my best under the circumstances (he published it anyways). 

I felt like not only a feelingless, meaningless shell, but I felt like I was letting everyone down. Everyone who supported me and cared about me, and who I care about very much. And I tried not to feel sorry for myself but it was scary. I had a friend who went through an almost identical situation only weeks before I did, and I think our long talks helped me stay calm and be stronger than I really am, because even though I felt terribly alone, I knew I wasn't.

Anyways, since that day when I went mad, I cut my meds back down to 25mg for several weeks, and since, I've been taking 25mg twice a day, rather than the 50mg all together, and I seem to be back to normal. I feel good again, my mind is clear, and I've been able to recapture my relationship with words.

You aren't alone, and whatever the state of our soul, whether we're troubled and upset about it, or troubled and reveling in it, there are times we all need help. A friend to talk to, a fellow writer to share with, or a sister to fool around with. I think that people who have rawer emotions, whose feelings are nearer the surface, are often drawn to the arts. Perhaps because those things that stir our spirits often mean more to us than for others who are less inclined to view the movement of spirit a pleasant experience in the first place. Not to say that artists are more emotional as a rule, or that those in control of their emotions can't create or fully appreciate art...just that it's been my experience that I seem to think faster, deeper, and have more complex contemplations (which aid in writing) than some of the more stable and rational people around me (like my husband). But of course, without him, I'd be lost in a sea of things that sometimes don't make sense to me at all. I often have to do A Beautiful Mind moment, where I ask him, "Is this thing real, or is it just in my head? Am I feeling something that actually means something, or is it just that I'm being sensitive right now?" And he sets me straight when I can't tell. 

Anyways, writing is an emotional experience. It can be very frustrating if you work and work and put yourself through hell trying to get something done, and then the feedback all sucks and you feel like you could die of embarrassment because no one liked your story. Been there. Or you have a deadline and you can't think of any ideas and you walk in the park and stay up late for three nights, and you can't seem to find an ounce of inspiration no matter where you look or what you try.

I just took three months off of writing, and honestly, I've only gotten the courage back up to begin writing forum posts. So...just know that there is always another opportunity to write something new, something that will excite you in a new way, something that will challenge you, etc..


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## Caged Maiden (Nov 17, 2016)

Rather than do nano these past few days, I went to a waterpark with my family, have played an inordinate amount of games on Facebook, and I decided to organize my files on my computer...because that's all kinds of more important than my nano project, right?

Anyway, I got to clearing things out, and I started to think about my nano word count. I'm about 66k words into my rewrite, but only about 20k of it is counting for nano right now. So...what is my actual overall word count of the files currently on my computer?

I've never used Excel before, but i figured out how to do sums pretty quickly, so I tallied my totals.

Articles (15, written for the home page): 27,802

Short Stories (about 50 that I tallied): 144,695

Novels (14, most finished, but not edited, and I gave myself credit for one rewrite because it was a complete redo):1,060,008


I don't really have a point in posting my stats, because they're neither good progress nor shabby progress, but as I was doing this spreadsheet, I wondered at the actual number. You know, the edits. All I have are versions, but I can't really compare them and count words. Well...not easily enough for me to care to try. So...how many words have I actually written? 

When I began writing, I thought I was an excellent story-teller because my characters were so awesome, and tortured. My world was so magical and I spent huge paragraphs describing the beautiful trees and the awesome towns. 
Loads and loads of words...and none of them counted for anything.  Except experience, I guess.

In fact, none of it is high quality. I know that now, but it took a ton of learning the hard way before I began to understand where my errors were. I guess that's at the heart of this whole thread, so no reason to rehash it. But what if I'd rewritten that first novel for ten years, instead of writing ten books? Would it have helped me progress faster as a writer, or do you just have to do the writing, no matter how many stories you write...they'll all be pretty weak until you gain the experience, and working on a single work doesn't expedite the process? 

Rewriting sucks. First, it doesn't feel like you're really doing all that much. And it's slow going because you aren't just letting any words in the door...they gotta be dressed right, sound right, and...know the right people. If they don't do those things, we throw them right out and start looking around for better ones. The kind of words that keep a party lively. The ones that bring the cops to your door at 1am because the music's too loud. And when those cops peer in to make sure everything's on the up-and-up...there are those words, topless and drunk, inviting the cops in for a quick drink and a dance. THOSE kinds of words.

As I tackle this rewrite, I have Donald Maass in my head, constantly telling me to be brave. Write with honesty. Make it matter more. Make it bigger. Make the character's voice stand out more. Make it subtler. Barely noticeable. Make it worse.

I'm so inspired by those words, I'm issuing a challenge. With a prize. Check it out in the challenge section, because this is good stuff, people. I have a ton of shitty words under my belt, but I wish I'd had Donald Maass coaching me from the beginning, because I may have been able to turn those words into something that mattered. Alas, better late than never, right?


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## DragonOfTheAerie (Nov 17, 2016)

Caged Maiden said:


> Rather than do nano these past few days, I went to a waterpark with my family, have played an inordinate amount of games on Facebook, and I decided to organize my files on my computer...because that's all kinds of more important than my nano project, right?
> 
> Anyway, I got to clearing things out, and I started to think about my nano word count. I'm about 66k words into my rewrite, but only about 20k of it is counting for nano right now. So...what is my actual overall word count of the files currently on my computer?
> 
> ...



Wowww! That's a lot of words! 

I tried to estimate my total word count (lifetime, stories) and came to a number of around 600,000. There is really no way to know the true amount since many of my stories no longer exist in computer file form or in any form at all. When I was 12 I got like 3 half novels and countless other things vaporized when my laptop crashed. So at best it's a good guess. 

I'm at around 110,000 for this year. Not too shabby.


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## Heliotrope (Nov 17, 2016)

Where? What is the challenge? I'm so intrigued....


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## DragonOfTheAerie (Nov 17, 2016)

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> Wowww! That's a lot of words!
> 
> I tried to estimate my total word count (lifetime, stories) and came to a number of around 600,000. There is really no way to know the true amount since many of my stories no longer exist in computer file form or in any form at all. When I was 12 I got like 3 half novels and countless other things vaporized when my laptop crashed. So at best it's a good guess.
> 
> I'm at around 110,000 for this year. Not too shabby.



*actually 120,000 probably, factoring in all the stuff I've handwritten


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## Caged Maiden (Dec 3, 2016)

When I began writing...(okay, it persisted for many years, until just a couple years ago, but I'm including it anyways)...I wanted to make everyone happy. 

I wanted tho show them something beautiful and entertaining, but I was worried to offend. Between the years of 2001-2010, I wrote ten novels set in a standard fantasy world (Read: boring and plain and very typical) But one of those novels I felt was a turning point. I felt I finally had memorable characters who had an interesting story. I felt it was better than the others. In 2011, when i joined this forum, I thought I'd like to submit my story for publication. I felt it was that good. Surely other people wanted to know what happened to my cool characters, right?

Well, I began reading about agents. I found one I loved. His blog was so insightful, his wit so sharp. I just KNEW he and I would make a great team. I read his article on how to write a query letter: How to Write a Query Letter | Nathan Bransford, Author (and if you've never checked out his site, click the link and navigate around, because it's chock full of great information.

Yes, I decided, Nathan Bransford was my guy. Other than the fact that I don't like basketball (because the shoes are squeaky on the television and I hate that, so I make my husband watch it with the sound way down), and I don't give a rat's behind about corgis, it seemed our passions were aligned. Everything he said, I believed wholly.

So I began typing my query letter. And I started editing. Editing....yeah...

By editing, I mean that the first thing I did was cut out every bit of sex and violence...because that might offend some people, right? And then I embellished every description to the max...of course, so that I'd move people with my beautiful descriptions and show how observant my characters were, you know, to increase reader immersion. 

What I'd call erroneous material now, went up, up, up. And action went down, down, down. I just KNEW I'd taken out anything that might cause any controversy...so EVERYONE would love it and I wouldn't offend anyone! I was so proud.

Well, I got ready and sent him my query. And a mere 3-4 days later, I got my first response!

It went something like this:



> Hi, thank you so much for sending your query letter to me, but I am no longer an agent representing authors. I have become an author myself. Best wishes as you continue to find representation for your book.



Well shit.

I stored my query letter and went back to writing another book. About a year later, I tried querying again for the same novel. I sent a query to The Ethan Ellenberg Literary Agency, Literary Agent and - Nelson Literary Agency 

One rejection and a partial request! I was excited. But I realized I hadn't done as good a job in my editing as I might have liked, so I prepared for the partial by doing another quick round of editing. Frantically, a friend and I hammered out pages, cutting my 17-page prologue into a first chapter and again, increasing the descriptives and cutting the potentially damaging action bits out.

I sent the query and got a rejection back a couple weeks later. 

Well, you can't win them all, I guess. I wasn't heartbroken. I just figured it was par for the course. J.K. Rowling was rejected 27 times, people said. Keep at it, they told me, encouraging me to try again.

Well, over the past five years, I've sent a dozen query letters. All for the same two novels. All rejections, and only two partial requests in that whole time, both from Nelson Literary Agency, which led me to believe they just ask for a partial with everyone. (I've never confirmed this, but it's what I thought, anyway)

However, something happened during all this time. I learned a couple things about writing...mostly through trial and error. Or, as I like to call it, caring and not caring. I wrote about 50 short stories for various challenges and competitions on this forum and another, and I realized some sort of anomaly was taking place. While I was getting feedback privately on novels (and all of them met with lukewarm responses), some of my short stories were getting high praise. So where did the difference come from? 

How can someone like a short story I spent 12 hours writing so much more than a novel I'd lovingly crafted for a year? Why was something written off four weird and unrelated prompts more compelling than a tale I specially organized to be connected and deep?

Something was amiss. 

What I realized (very slowly) was that when I didn't care, when my feelings weren't involved and I was just "getting the work done" people responded better. They felt more engaged. They actually ENJOYED my short stories. But not my novels. 

I began to think there might be something wrong with my editing process.

Many hard lessons and reality checks later, I finally realized that the more I tamper with a story to make it "palatable for everyone" the worse it got in the "enjoyment" department. 

This last year, I've undertaken a HUGE task. I have to undo the conditioning I underwent during all those quasi-edits. I had to entrain myself from the "serious writer voice" and begin using my own voice...the one I used in all those quick little short stories I only had a week to write and which I usually didn't begin until the day before they were due (yes, even the ones where we had a month to write). I had to revert to the real me, rather than pretend to be the person I thought I should be.

It's been a rough road. almost every day I feel ashamed of who I am when I talk on paper. My characters are no longer those perfect beings who are good at everything (like we all want to be, I thought), but they look like me, worry like me, and unfortunately, ACT like me. They say things they don't mean. They get hurt feelings and overreact. They make mistakes, are selfish, and take some indulgences that make them less awesome people (but probably much more interesting characters).

It wasn't even about the characters themselves, but in how I wrote them. How their internal exposition flowed, what things they said, the words, even, sometimes. My characters now say things I'd never utter in real life. They do things that would make any person feel ashamed to admit doing. And another thing...I gave them some of my crazy.

I'm bipolar and I've mentioned it here before. It's been a major struggle in my life. I think the way my brain works would shock (and in some cases, horrify) "normal" people. I look for patterns in things around me. I connect things that are completely unrelated, using my vast life experiences to learn and justify new things, so that they are comfortable and familiar. In short, I started to "write what I know". Just like I'd been doing in short stories when I didn't give a damn whether anyone liked them or not. 


Now, I don't think I'm a great writer. In fact, far from it. I think I'm just scratching the surface of my real ability. I have no idea what my potential is, nor how to find out, but I know that for the first time in fifteen years, I'm being ME in my novels, and also for the first time...people are super positive about reading my work. I'm still getting feedback about what could be stronger or what is erroneous, but along with the nitpicks, I'm hearing how much folks are enjoying the read and liking the characters, flowed as they are, and crazy as their lives and choices are. 


Be yourself, friends. Be brave and harness your crazy. Don't be afraid of your flaws and your weirdnesses. Show them. Wear them proudly. I'm learning that everyone's a little mad, and when I think back to the books I loved reading the most, I am now seeing that one of the reasons I felt so connected to them, was because the people were like me. They told me it was okay to think, act, and feel different than "normal" people. And that "normal people" thing is just what all our friends and family members and coworkers show on the outside. Underneath those intrepid exteriors, those calm, rational, respectable facades, everyone's a little crazy, and readers take comfort in knowing that characters share their innermost fears, their anxieties, their disgusting thoughts, and their deep longings. Those things they wouldn't ever voice to their boss, but live with like baggage nonetheless.

BE YOU!


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## DragonOfTheAerie (Dec 3, 2016)

Caged Maiden said:


> When I began writing...(okay, it persisted for many years, until just a couple years ago, but I'm including it anyways)...I wanted to make everyone happy.
> 
> (Cut for space)
> 
> ...



Ok, when I first read this I had sooooooo many thoughts about it and I thought "I'm on mobile now and I'll post everything later when I can get to my computer" but I forgot...and here I am...posting on mobile. It's very inconvenient :/ 

Are we supposed to post our own things or are you using this thread for your own observations and stuff? Anyway...I really understand all of this (if I understand it correctly) and have lots of things of my own to add. 

Trying to please others can be both one of the most fulfilling and one of the most damaging parts of writing. Fulfilling because youre making someone else happy and sharing a piece of yourself with them (sometimes on a very intimate level). When I read a great book im like...I WANT TO DO THIS FOR SOMEONE. It's basically what I live for.

Damaging because, as I said before, writing can be very intimate. The truer to yourself you are being in your writing, the harder it is. It feels like they're judging, and not just judging your writing, judging you. It feels like standing naked before an audience and having them critique all your physical imperfections and quirks of your body about which you are most insecure. As someone who gets deeply emotionally involved in her stories, it's agony. Just imagining people reading them. This is coming from someone who easily sinks into spirals of self-hatred over her work, and is constantly fighting the voices that say 'everything I do is garbage.' 

And...yeah. Making your writing more normal, more impersonal, less "you..." It makes it hurt less. You can carefully smooth over all the bumps in a manuscript. In a challenge, you have no time to second-guess yourself. You put stuff out there. And it's not really for an audience, it's not for the people you imagine yourself pleasing. It's just for the fun of it, mostly. You don't have the time or the drive to make everything normal and acceptable. And you're not emotionally invested. A lot of times, oddly, the emotional investment makes it harder to be true in your writing. You're worried about screwing it up, so you suppress all the odd and unnacceptable things. 

I suffer from the "desire to be normal" sometimes too. Not so much anymore, I like my weird too much. But when I write something strange or edgy or a little eyebrow-raising I panic sometimes, thinking, "WHAT WILL EVERYONE THINK?" My MC stabs a guy to death in the first chapter. What will my mom think? Nothing good. There's swearing. What will my uptight conservative Christian friends think? What about that steamy make out session? Am I even going to show anyone that? What will they think? What will they think? It's difficult on this level because in the view of some, it's a reflection on your character that you write these things. It's actually harder to give your friends your writing than random strangers. 

But...leaving things out due to what people think has never really been an option for me, and I think perhaps we differ in our level of tendency toward that. As I said, I like my weird too much. 

Speaking of odd and unacceptable things...

As someone who doesn't fall within the very narrow definition of a "neurotypical" brain, I think a lot about how narrow what's considered "normal" really is. It's so narrow I don't think anyone really falls inside it completely. So there are all kinds of ideas we feel like we can't express because they are too odd, too dumb, too atypical...I could go on. There's a very narrow gauntlet out ideas must pass through to be considered Not Stupid. And it's damaging, really, because our ideas and our writing are an outpouring of the atypicality of US, (and we all have it) and maybe that's why it's so hard to put writing that truly does reflect yourself out there. There's a status quo that doesn't exist. We are all trying to be more "normal" than ANYONE actually is. 

I think writing truly requires an examination and acceptance of ones soul and inner self. Writing changes you, ok? You can't come out of being a writer unscathed. You will have to explore yourself, expunge your inner darkness, face your fears. You will have to develop a depth of empathy you didn't know before. To unleash your full potential as a writer you have to embrace who you are at your deepest and darkest and say, "this is me, and THAT'S OK." If you're not able to do that within yourself, I don't think you'll find your fullest potential as a writer. 

I took comfort when I was younger (and still do) in the things writers write that everyone else is afraid to say. Because it's like..."you too? You mean...I'm not alone?" 

I feel like we try to make our character better and more virtuous and more normal than we are because we look at the face the outside world presents and we think, "I'm a lot weirder than this. I have to conform, placate, submit." But what we don't get is...everyone is weirder than this. (Weirder than this. I HAVE A TITLE FOR MY COMIC NOW...) 

Look...what, 1/5, I think, of the population suffers from anxiety or depression. And as of now I can't think of ONE main character in a book who does. ...This is a problem isn't it? Seriously. SERIOUSLY. We all need to be told, "It's ok. You're not alone. Me too." This is a tangent but I'm going off in it. I'm feeling strongly about this subject right now because one of my friends' friends died by suicide recently and we got into a conversation about how silent all the books are about depression. Suicide is a very common book topic because it's flashy and dramatic and easily sensationalized and made into a faux-edgy sob story, but depression is all but absent. Why? Why is there no one telling people, "It's ok. You're not alone. Me too." It's starting to bother me more and more. I suffer from anxiety (I am a lot better than I used to be, but I won't ever be "cured") and I kinda wish there was a book with a brave, quirky, charismatic heroine with anxiety who does more than "overcome" her mental illness and has defining traits apart from it. Like, what about...kicking ass? In spite of having anxiety? But I don't even know if there is one about a heroine "overcoming her anxiety." A book with a character with anxiety that's not about anxiety. That's what I want. 

They say write the book you want to read...I have a mission, looks like.

I can't think of a book in which a character's mental illness/disability/difference is just a character trait, not drawn attention to and not defining the character or her story, just a character trait. Like having big feet or blue eyes or a speech mannerism. We think we're so great here in 2016, writing "diverse" protagonists. Asian MC's, lesbian MC's, yay! But these character STILL seem all cut from the same cookie cutter mold to me. Why is normal a thing and why do writers write normal characters ad nauseum? 

(news flash: In my day to day life I am not the Person With Anxiety. I am a person with a life that is often sucky and boring but is often awesome and fun too and I have hobbies and friends and family and all the things that people have. So it really bugs me when people use their character's "atypical" trait as a selling point for the entire book, like that is the whole point of the character.) 

Yeah, that was a tangent, but it does reflect some of my ideas about this subject. Why are we so afraid to step outside the imaginary status quo? Why can't we just accept that the weirdness and diversity of people is them being people, not them being weird? Either you make everyone "normal" or you put them up on a pedestal and shout, "LOOK AT THEIR NOT-NORMALNESS!" We all want to be understood, but what if they don't understand? What if they judge me? What if...? 

Not only that, why are we afraid to step outside the status quo ourselves? It is my belief that writing and personal identity are very closely entwined. 

Sorry if this was totally off topic but it's what it made me think of. 

(And I don't want to sound as if I'm wielding the anxiety thing for attention, becuse I'm not, or at least I'm not trying to. It's just that...here's the thing, I like to talk about it and relate with people over it because it's an experience I have and I don't want to be alone in my thoughts and feelings about it. And I know there's a big deal about people-first language but it is a part of me. There is also the weird fact that in this aspect of me...I feel totally unrepresented in fiction. I kinda wish there were characters with my feelings and experiences (or that I could find them) because we all want to relate with characters in that way. Its fun to see through new eyes and have new experiences through characters, but also I want to read about a character and think, "I have felt this too. I understand this. You understand me.") 


So. If that makes any sense...


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## Caged Maiden (Dec 4, 2016)

Thanks, Dragon for taking the time to post all that on a phone. OMG, you're nuts! (for typing on a phone, that is  )

Yes to all of this.

I recently had a bit of a thing. I told you guys about it on the nano thread. I tried to jump ship. I pulled the plug on my novel because it got weird and I just KNEW I'd offend people. Worse, I was afraid of offending my crit group. Or more likely, making them uncomfortable and then they wouldn't like me because there would always be this weird scene where my character goes bonkers, just hanging between us in the group and I'd know it WAS BECAUSE OF ME that people stopped talking or something.

Yeah, I know anxiety. SO well. I'm always afraid. I worry that people won't like me. Or that I'll say something wrong and make people feel bad. The reason I have anxiety and am super self-conscious is because I'm bipolar and honestly, at times, my behavior is outrageous. 

SO...when I have my character (who resembles me a lot and I haven't said specifically that she's bipolar, but one might assume it as a possibility), go crazy and scream at someone, then get high with him, then have a brief but awkward sexual encounter, then they get higher, vent their inner frustrations about how their lives aren't turning out right, and then they go destroy art until they feel better...where at the end of their frenzy, she kisses him and says, "I'm leaving you."....OMG, honestly, that could happen in my life. Especially in the life I lived 15 years ago. It's pretty much as authentic as I can get, because my emotions flare up and burn hot and then fizzle out and then I'm sedated and rational and calm again for a period...until next time. 

When you said this:



> The truer to yourself you are being in your writing, the harder it is. It feels like they're judging, and not just judging your writing, judging you. It feels like standing naked before an audience and having them critique all your physical imperfections and quirks of your body about which you are most insecure. As someone who gets deeply emotionally involved in her stories, it's agony. Just imagining people reading them. This is coming from someone who easily sinks into spirals of self-hatred over her work, and is constantly fighting the voices that say 'everything I do is garbage.'



It feels so familiar.

As much as I want to be honest but I'm just too fragile. When I write short stories that I don't care about, and I turn up the crazy volume, my feelings aren't on the line. I don't care who likes or hates them. But novels are special. They take so much time and care to craft and weave. And at this point in my life, I have to make a decision. I'm either going to go for the knockout, or I'm going to hang up my gloves.

I'm not hanging up my gloves...I tried to do that, and one of the members of my writing group gave me a swift kick in the ass and said we were going to talk about my book until I figured out why I was stalling out on it. I tried to jump ship, and she yanked me back on board.  So now I feel very loved, but still scared as hell to show the weird scene. In fact, I just got off the phone with another member of the group, who said pretty much what everyone else is saying, "I bet this'll be an awesome scene because it's surprising, intense, and over the top!"

And for days, I've been feeling that those words were negatives. 

Huh.

I really hope you find some support along this journey, because having no self-esteem and being plagued with self-hatred is a rough lot. I've never been able to escape mine, but I'm literally surrounded now by people who won't let me keep being a quitter. I'm so weak sometimes, but I have strong people who hold me up when I need it. OMG, I feel so loved, seriously. They have confidence in me that I may never have, no matter how successful I may become. In fact, the more attention I get for doing something right...the worse I feel. Like then the pressure just turns up and I feel this gravity weighing on my mind and chest. 

That happened when I rewrote the first two chapters of my novel. I sent the chapters to the group, and everyone had really positive things to say...and so did four beta readers. Not one complaint. Oh wait, yes, one complaint. But that complaint was that the whole thing sucked. So I ignored it because that didn't seem valid to me. I mean...the WHOLE thing is problematic? Every concept and paragraph? Well, it happens that stuff fails to connect, so I can't change that, but... I'm not changing anything based on that. Anyways, so overwhelming positive responses...and then I had my first freakout because I KNEW i wouldn't be able to do it a third time. With each chapter that I got praised for, I felt like when the work finally failed to connect, the plummet was going to leave a gaping crater in my motivation and spirit. I just felt all this pressure to continue repeating the results, but I felt like the higher the expectation, the more I'd let folks down and they'd be disappointed in me (like being a kid all over again, where I felt like I sucked, and I disappointed everybody...repeatedly).

Anyways, I appreciate your words and I feel so very similar to you in so many ways. So, if it helps, you aren't alone, either. I'm not going to be able to get over my need to feel normal, but hopefully with the help of the folks who care about me, I'll be able to keep that at bay while I write with honesty. It's so hard to be real, and I've spent a lot of time lying about who I was as a writer. I strove to make everyone happy because that's the way I am. I always try to make people around me feel good, and that's why it's so traumatic when i learn people don't like me, or when I realize i've offended someone. Anxiety. So much. And it's hard to separate that real life feeling from writing. Because I'm going to offend. I'm sure I already have in this rewrite.  But I guess folks who are offended by the way I have my character think and talk and live...well, they're probably not going to like her story much.





> Why is there no one telling people, "It's ok. You're not alone. Me too." It's starting to bother me more and more. I suffer from anxiety (I am a lot better than I used to be, but I won't ever be "cured") and I kinda wish there was a book with a brave, quirky, charismatic heroine with anxiety who does more than "overcome" her mental illness and has defining traits apart from it. Like, what about...kicking ass? In spite of having anxiety? But I don't even know if there is one about a heroine "overcoming her anxiety." A book with a character with anxiety that's not about anxiety. That's what I want.




There is. Mine. My character is unstable and I don't write it as a flaw (though it does get her into trouble, as I sometimes get into trouble when I say the wrong thing at an emotional time or whatever). The thing she's overcoming is the lying she does to appear something other than what she is. She suffers from anxiety and yet puts on a brick facade. Eventually, she falls for a man and they shed the lies together, and she is honest about her fears and why she has them. He encourages her to be herself so she doesn't have to lie anymore, and he says he likes her how she is. So...while I don't define anything as a mental illness, she acts like a bipolar person in a few scenes, and then confesses her anxiety and crazy thoughts, and no one makes fun of her, they just tell her to be what she is. Not sure whether that's what you were talking about as far as characters go or not, but if it is, at least there's one out there...maybe because I don't know how to write a "normal" character anyways. Meh. 

Hey, we're talking as friends. I don't want anyone's pity. I never thought for a second that you did, either. I appreciate your openness. And if anyone ever says this thread is about attention and pity or whatever, I'll dole out a stern talking-to. This is my place, and I'm not forcing anyone to read it, right? And yes, you're always welcome to talk on my personal musings. I'm glad people care enough about my thoughts to read them, honestly. I try to just share my experiences, rather than telling folks what to do. I figure they can make up their own minds on whether I know anything or not, and if they like my work or my advice, wonderful. And if not...well then not, I guess. 

Best wishes, friends!


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## Heliotrope (Dec 4, 2016)

ok, this one is shameful... 

When I first started writing I didn't take criticism well. Like, at all. My only crit partners were my sister and my mom and I would have them read my stuff and if they had a criticism I told myself it was because (cringe) "They were too dumb to get the story." 

Bam! 

Oh, that is so awful to say out loud. Of course, I had to get over that pretty quickly lol. So, new writers, if someone is offering criticism, please take it!!! Neil Gaiman says "If someone says something is wrong, they are usually right. If they try to tell you how to fix it they are usually wrong." 

In the past ten years, I have found that to be the case. You are too close to your project. You know every nook and cranny. If a crit partner tells you something is off, please listen. 

Another one was I thought that if I ever shared my idea it would be stolen. I believed the word would spread about my amazing idea because I was so creative and obviously talented, and the next thing I would know some other author would be published with my wonderful idea. 

Oh man. 

No. 

It won't happen, and in fact, I would say please do the opposite. Share your idea! Pitch your story to whoever will listen! When you do that you see when their eyes light up, and when they start to fade away. Play with your idea until it becomes something people actually want to listen to. Then you know you have something good. Keeping it bottled up under lock and key will do more damage than good. Talk about it. Be open about it. Expect criticism.


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## Peat (Dec 15, 2016)

Good thread.

I think the big "Oops" that sticks out to me is I thought I could learn it all myself. I wasn't quite stupid enough to think I knew it all, but I was sure with trial and error that it would come to me. I suppose I may technically have been right and that one day I would have figured it out myself, but I sure hadn't when I started to talk to other people. And the progress I've made since then has been huge. 

I'd received a lot of good advice. I've also received a fair bit of bad advice. And I've also received a fair amount of advice from people who simply see the world in a very different light to me. Sometimes its difficult to tell them apart but there's something to be learned from all of it.

And the people who make it in this game are the ones that keep learning.


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## SergeiMeranov (Dec 20, 2016)

For me it's a continual and ongoing problem to even sit down and write.  I think most people that enjoy writing stories enjoyed thinking up stories first.  It's like a constant stream of daydreaming new worlds, adventures, characters, etc.  I've always enjoyed that part, but the biggest hurdle for me has been to take those ideas and actually try to flesh them out into a coherent story of any kind.

There's this ever present fear that once you write it down it becomes real and can be criticized and it may be stupid or boring or nonsensical, so you don't want to write it down.  I think adding to that is a need to try and make it perfect on the first go around.  It seems really strange to me as I was the sort of student that would write a paper the night before, not think about it once, and turn it in for a grade but when it's an activity of my choosing that isn't for a grade, work project, or anything that it becomes so difficult.

I've wrestled with this problem for the past couple years as I've slowly started to come out of my writing shell.  It's become more helpful to talk to other people that enjoy it and share stories or ideas and just talk about the craft to become more comfortable.  I think at its essence it's just always a scary thing to bare your creative side to potentially hostile outsiders and have them judge its worth by what you've created.  So, here's to everyone overcoming their own roadblocks!


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## SaltyDog (Dec 21, 2016)

I'm kinda in the same boat as SergeiMeranov.  I just need to force my self to sit down, and actually move the blasted pencil into some scratch marks that somewhat resemble a type of gibberish.  Hey it's all good though.  When I do sit down, I'm never at a loss of what to write, I have an entire plot line mapped out in my head, so I don't struggle with that goal stuff.  Now I may add a few twists and turns to my plot, as I see few fit.  Stuff that's cool, adds flavor, or greatly helps the plot in moving towards the grand finale.

Now onto the boring scenes.  I honestly haven't had much of those....so far.  I try not to have them.  As A reader who dislikes them, I try to incorporate my dislike into the story.  Sometimes I do have to have them, but I strive in making them short as possible or interesting as possible.

Anyway my two cents.  Haven't been on in a while so I thought I do some writing question stuff lol.


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## Caged Maiden (Dec 21, 2016)

Man, oh man. I tell ya. This stuff is hard, isn't it?

When I began writing (and up until last week), I thought things were getting better. 

Unfortunately, I now know I have no idea how to tell a story. 

I can write scenes, really gripping ones. I can make deep and interesting characters, with clear perspectives and loud voices. I can show details in meaningful ways, and get to pertinent things without feeling the need to show everything in the room or on a person. I have some great concepts. But I can't make decisions, and I lack followthrough. 

My journey has changed. I'm no longer trying to jump from one interesting scene to another, developing secrets and waiting to spring surprises. Nope. Instead, I'm reading all I can about developing a plot and story structure, and watching dozens of movies to identify which characteristics of story-telling fit into which kind of story. 

This is a mess, people. I'm completely lost. I'm drowning in a murky swamp. 

I mean, I KNEW what I was supposed to do. At least in theory. But now I understand that a story isn't a string of interesting scenes with a great character.  And that truth is really hard to swallow, honestly. I mean, I had a beginning, middle, and end. I had a purpose for the character and a love story, and an antagonist. But I didn't have a real plot, a reason why things progress in a certain way. I was sort of dragging my character around through a scenario, rather than letting her choose a path and make her own life happen. I didn't have foresight, I guess is what i'm trying to say. So, when a scene popped up that was really good...it didn't necessarily fit in with anything around it. I had a lot of isolated scenes that were written well enough, but they didn't form a story. And until a few days ago...I didn't really understand that. 

So, now begins another journey. time to learn some stuff that I wasn't ready to grasp before. AAK! I just want to be at the finish line already! Writing is the hardest thing I've ever done!


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## Demesnedenoir (Dec 21, 2016)

Now that is a fascinating revelation. It's always disturbing what flaws may be sitting beneath our noses without our recognizing them. It would be interesting to see a breakdown of how you achieved completed works with a disconnected plot structure?

EDIT: I think most times, this sort of issue would crop up in the muck of the middle and end in an incomplete ms. Although I think I have seen movies and maybe even a sotyr here or there that seemed to be stretching hard to create cool scenes without a real basis.



Caged Maiden said:


> Man, oh man. I tell ya. This stuff is hard, isn't it?
> 
> When I began writing (and up until last week), I thought things were getting better.
> 
> ...


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## FifthView (Dec 21, 2016)

The truly absurd thing is spending a decade or more reading heavily as a teen/YA, and then sitting down at a computer (or for those of us old enough, a typewriter) and discovering that being exposed to so much great writing didn't automatically imbue us with storytelling ability.  What, osmosis isn't a thing?  Heh.


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## Caged Maiden (Dec 21, 2016)

@ D...I have a dozen of them if you're ready with your barf bags and a few days...


HA! No seriously. I'll tell you. 

I have one story I began in 2011, for nano. I wrote it over two nano months, set 6 months apart. 100k words done in 8 weeks, in two sessions. I spent 18 months editing it and tried so hard to bring it together, but I know it's still a mess, structure-wise.

The story is 50% love story and 50% spy games. Political intrigue, romantic relationships that are made and broken, a really identifiable antagonist (which may have been a first for me), and blood, sex, and danger (all my favorite things). 

It didn't have a real path. If I summarize the plot, it probably doesn't sound half terrible. Lemme give it a go (all secrets revealed, don't read if you actually want to read the book):



Spoiler: plot and secrets



It opens with a middle-age woman who sneaks into a cathedral to meet the antagonist. She KNOWS he killed her son (reader won't find out for a long time, but it's their son). But he denies it and she has a knife and was ready to kill him, but she can't do it. She leaves when someone else knocks on the door, and then she listens to the conversation. A lawyer is concerned about a friend who died, and the cleric (antagonist) should have been able to stop it. Instead, he wants to send the lawyer out to avenge the friend as an assassin. The lawyer laughs and says he's using the law to get revenge. From there, the woman follows the lawyer, rather than trying to kill the cleric. She goes after him and they become partners.

Two years later, after that one scene, the story opens. 

The woman is trying to get her old friend out of jail before his execution. She has a plan for getting revenge on the cleric who killed her son, too. The scene is unfocused and I like talk about all there of her plans in it. This is where the trouble begins...

The next part of the story opens with a young woman and her lover, a neighboring nobleman. As far as she's concerned, her life is great. Her brothers leave her alone, her father is blissfully ignorant of everything except his business, the stable boy is her best friend and he helps her sneak out to meet her boyfriend, life is good. But in her opening scene, her father tells her she's going to marry the sheriff's son. Bummer.

she meets the guy, and he's unimpressive in every way, and when they try to talk, he's awkward and unfriendly (he is mourning and just witnessed a public execution that has left him really shaken.

There's danger in the countryside, a murderer on the loose. And one night when the young woman is going to meet her boyfriend, a man tries to kidnap her. But the stable boy kills the guy and they both are scared and relieved, and then the brother comes and looks at who the masked intruder was, and he's another noble neighbor...so they have to hide the body or the boy will hang for killing a man of rank. The girl goes to the city, married her betrothed, and life gets uncomfortable. Rather than talk of love or the future, her husband talks about secrets. He gives her a room in his house and doesn't make any attempt to encourage a relationship of any kind.

Meanwhile, the spy plot develops and the old woman and her crew are trying to corner the evil cleric into incriminating himself for a multitude of crimes. The greater theme of the story is social reform, and if they kill this guy, nothing will change in the town. They need to expose the rampant corruption so that the republic no longer is in danger of being held hostage by a rogue cleric with his own agenda. They do some spying, get some information, connect some unexpected people to the cleric's network of agents, and stye discover they have a rat in their network, someone who is informing the cleric about them.

The marriage isn't going well in the city, and while some parts are meant to be funny, it's really just beating around the bush. The young woman tries to reach out to her husband, and he reaffirms his solitariness and rebuffs her. He is working with the cleric on a treasonous legal matter that will gain influence and resources for the cleric, but if discovered, will cost the husband his life. He grows more paranoid and anxious, and the last thing he wants is to drag a new wife into his real life.

They finally do find a couple small ways to connect and communicate, and it looks like they might actually get along. But then they attend a party and the ex-lover is there and stirs up a bunch of trouble. Her hopes of a happy home life are pretty much ruined. (well, for one scene, anyways, it gets better soon)

The spies have some infighting, some romance, some dangerous decisions, including intercepting a group of mercenaries sent to assassinate one of the cleric's main political rivals, a man who wants to enact the social reform that the spies do. The old woman and her young mercenary friend go to stop that, but they get stranded in a bad situation, and it brings to light the tenuous relationship between them (she doesn't tell him the whole truth on anything, and she's risked his life more than once, and he's pretty upset about it). When they get home, he leaves the spy group. She has to find him before her partners do, or they'll kill her ally. But their reunion exposes their deep feelings of regret and their consuming need for revenge against this cleric who ruined both their lives and countless others.

The married couple experience a moment of actual happiness, getting to know each other. But the husband discovers the wife kept a secret from him, and after discovering it, he sends her home to her father, not indicating why, or whether he'll come get her in the future. 

The cleric's allies are powerful and they make a couple moves, killing one of the agents for the spy group. Someone the old woman was just about to kill because she thought he was the rat. After planning to kill someone and then seeing him already mutilated, the woman is despondent. She knew their plan was dangerous, but she doesn't want to end up like that dead guy, and she doesn't want it for any of her friends, either. She unilaterally decides that the only thing to do is to kill the cleric so no one else dies. but it's a suicide mission. The mercenary friend follows her and basically saves her from herself. He comes up with a better plan than trying to outmaneuver the cleric, but to turn the tables and put him on the reactive side of their moves. (chess is another major theme of this story, actually). Anyways, so they devise a way to incriminate one of his allies, making it look like he's betraying the cleric.

Only problem is, that guy is the brother of the married girl's ex-lover. 

The married couple patch their problems, but right after that, a whore comes to the door in the middle of the night, and the husband leaves with her. The wife decides she's done with him. We follow him for a bit as he meets the spy group, and learn he's their third partner (with the old woman and the guy on the gallows). Together, they're trying to bring down this cleric, but the husband is at risk of being called a traitor if he gets caught for his part of the plan. And the guy on the gallows doesn't trust the husband, and they hate each other. The old woman says she's done communicating with both of them until they find out who the rat is. She's got another plan and has to go do it.

When the husband gets home, he has to patching stuff up with his wife, they have a fight and honesty comes out, and they decide they love each other. 

However, when the spies mess with the cleric's ally, some bad stuff happens and as a result, they mess with the husband by kidnapping his wife. The plan is to trade the wife for the illegal documents the cleric wants. But the ex-lover tries to help his brother, only to discover the girl and her situation, and he decides to help her husband free her and his brother escape town.

IN that kidnapping, the girl's stable boy best friend is mortally wounded, and when they all get back home, the boy is dying, the husband is a liar and the girl doesn't trust him, and the husband has to go finish this terrible job with the old woman spy. 

The boy dies, the girl and the mercenary guarding her go stay with her uncle, and the husband and old woman hurry to stop what ultimately was the cleric's big plan--to blow up the pope. They get there just in time to see HOW the cleric is going to do it, and they try to dismantle the trap, but are too late. What the spectators see is the husband basically running at the pope, and trying to blow him up. He dies and the pope lives, and no one knows the cleric was behind it in the first place...except the spies.

In the end, the girl has to bury her best friend and her husband. The husband's father's career is ruined (he was sheriff). The spies didn't get their social reform because it looks like the lawyer tried to kill the pope, and the cleric is only arrested because he was exposed for the treason (when the lawyer died, there was no more risk to him of exposing the truth, so they let the information leak to the authorities). He will go to prison but disappears and doesn't even stand trial for treason. 

The girl is left alone in her husband's house, a place she never liked, and she's ready to go home to her father. 

But I planned a sequel, and I think at the beginning of that, I'd show that just before she leaves, the old woman shows up at the door and tells her she's going after the cleric...if the girl wants to join her.


So...the problem with this story is that i have some good scenes and some exciting characters. Even the overall mood of the story is fine. But the scenes are disjointed, some of them serve to disorient a reader, rather than pointing at the end goal, and I think it's just generally disorganized and chaotic. That's sort of my MO, though. Hope that clarifies my weakness and why I need to overcome it.


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## TheCrystallineEntity (Dec 21, 2016)

Both of my books seem disjointed and chaotic once you first start reading, but all of the scenes weave into each other by the end. You have so fantastic ideas, by the way.


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## Demesnedenoir (Dec 22, 2016)

I experienced a movie last night that had the Disjointed feel, Christmas with the Kranks, or some such thing I watched with the kids. It never feels like a coherent story with functioning characters. Now this is not a stucture thing for this movie, it's a classic 3 act story, it just doesn't work. I also think we see the result of a lot of intersting bits being thrown together poorly, the movie isn't even that funny, which it probably should be. Instead it's a waste of a solid cast, where the most interesting character is Marty (Austin Pendleton of the classic Steppenwolf Theater) and even he falls flat because of such a lame attempt at story telling. Movies are interesting creatures, they are good ways to see story flaws in less time than pouring through novels, LOL. 

Part of the issue is probably high concept, where a big idea is force fed into a 3 act structure and rewritten to death.


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## Chessie (Dec 22, 2016)

Demesnedenoir said:


> I experienced a movie last night that had the Disjointed feel, Christmas with the Kranks, or some such thing I watched with the kids. It never feels like a coherent story with functioning characters. Now this is not a stucture thing for this movie, it's a classic 3 act story, it just doesn't work. I also think we see the result of a lot of intersting bits being thrown together poorly, the movie isn't even that funny, which it probably should be. Instead it's a waste of a solid cast, where the most interesting character is Marty (Austin Pendleton of the classic Steppenwolf Theater) and even he falls flat because of such a lame attempt at story telling. Movies are interesting creatures, they are good ways to see story flaws in less time than pouring through novels, LOL.
> 
> Part of the issue is probably high concept, where a big idea is force fed into a 3 act structure and rewritten to death.



Duuuuudddeee...DO NOT watch Carnage Park. Worst horror movie EVER currently on Netflix. I loved the way it was filmed. Loved the cult-classic vibe to it. The acting was...meh. Everything else was...siiighhh. The female protagonist made stupid decision after stupid decision after stupid decision after an even stupidder decision--in a never ending vicious cycle. It was so bad, my husband turned it off 3/4 of the way through and we went to bed disappointed. 

This taught me something valuable: stupid characters aren't worth investing in.


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## Demesnedenoir (Dec 22, 2016)

Doesn't sound that bad, but one never knows until seeing in full. Do you have it broken into the classic 3 act stucture?

A hangover from screenwriting is that I am always leery of a two-years-earlier opening. Yeah, they happen and can work, but so often they don't... basically a form of flashback/forward. I would rather see it worked into the main body of the story.


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## Demesnedenoir (Dec 22, 2016)

Fortunately I learned (mostly) not to watch horror flicks at all anymore.  Every now and again I indulge, but almost always never make it through.





Chessie said:


> Duuuuudddeee...DO NOT watch Carnage Park. Worst horror movie EVER currently on Netflix. I loved the way it was filmed. Loved the cult-classic vibe to it. The acting was...meh. Everything else was...siiighhh. The female protagonist made stupid decision after stupid decision after stupid decision after an even stupidder decision--in a never ending vicious cycle. It was so bad, my husband turned it off 3/4 of the way through and we went to bed disappointed.
> 
> This taught me something valuable: stupid characters aren't worth investing in.


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## Michael K. Eidson (Dec 22, 2016)

Caged Maiden said:


> Man, oh man. I tell ya. This stuff is hard, isn't it?




The more I learn, the harder the task appears to become.




Caged Maiden said:


> When I began writing (and up until last week), I thought things were getting better.
> 
> Unfortunately, I now know I have no idea how to tell a story.




I could quote Shakespeare here, about fools thinking themselves wise and wise people not thinking too highly of the vast knowledge they have. When you come to the realization in a field that you don't know as much as you thought you did, then you're an expert.


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## Demesnedenoir (Dec 22, 2016)

Michael K. Eidson said:


> The more I learn, the harder the task appears to become.
> 
> 
> I could quote Shakespeare here, about fools thinking themselves wise and wise people not thinking too highly of the vast knowledge they have. When you come to the realization in a field that you don't know as much as you thought you did, then you're an expert.



Huh! I must be an expert in all things! Hooray me! Heh heh.


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