Writing My First Novel
Kate Elliott May 30th, 2006
Discussion, we hope, from writers working on their first novel: their trials, tribulations, experiences, triumphs, despairs, and the joys of stubborn persistence.
Kate Elliott May 30th, 2006
Discussion, we hope, from writers working on their first novel: their trials, tribulations, experiences, triumphs, despairs, and the joys of stubborn persistence.
Getting started at all is the hardest part. Seriously. Staring at a blank notebook page or a blank word-processing screen can be so intimidating. You make excuses not to start - I have to go to work/school/the gym/the grocery store. I’ll write better when I have more time.
But then, when am I going to have more time? There’s always things to do. I’ll only have the time to write when I make the time to write. That’s the hardest lesson I’ve learned so far.
I just finished my first novel. Over 540 pages. My second proofreader is going through it now and then I will do one last rewrite and send it out into the world, where I will find out if anyone but me (and my proofreaders, bless them) loves it.
The thing that most surprised me when I finished it is that I am glad I did it no matter what happens next. I did indeed write it to share with other people, and I want it to be published, but even if it never gets made into a real book, I feel quite happy and proud to have written it nonetheless. I thought I would feel more angst-y about the difficulties of achieving publication. Instead I feel I learned so much and worked so hard that the process itself has great value to me.
I just wanted to share that with first-novel writers. It’s quite something to finish. It’s worth all those days when you couldn’t find your way in the story and you mashed your forehead on the keyboard until you have little squares on your face for the rest of the day.
–Karen
My favorite part of writing has always been research, even knowing that I won’t be able to use more than 1/10th of what I find out. But after 17 years of researching my first novel (a Crichton-esque techno-thriller), enough is enough already. I have a beat outline that I’ve hammered on for probably 10 of those years and threw out within the first week of starting writing. Figures. I have lots of characters, some of whom I plan to kill off, but WHICH ones remains in flux. I have an interwoven plot that rivals bad macrame or a drunken spider’s web.
The problem for the past 10 years has been that my job of technical writing uses the same brain pathways as fiction writing (some would say that all computer software help is fiction … I wouldn’t disagree) and after 10-14 hrs of massaging computer information down to its essence, I didn’t have the energy to write fiction, too. So I’m taking a hiatus from technical writing and concentrating on getting this puppy rolling.
I finished what I THOUGHT was the prologue and sent it out to my writer’s group (not all genre readers) and a couple of friends who have been begging me to write this thing for years. While those who know our genre cold came back with cries for more and minor tweaks, those not in genre were confused by names, by the number of characters, by the slowness of the plot, and a desire to know NOW what the title means. So I’m restructuring and writing a new prologue and changing the characters a little.
It’s going to be fun to take my frustrations out here as I go.
-Barb
My major problem also is getting started. I signed up for Nanowrimo two years in a row. The first year, I wrote a short short story. Which was something for me. The next year, not even that much. For a couple of years now, I’ll look at the Clarion application guidelines and the deadline will get closer and closer, and I’ll still not have even two or three stories to submit. I have characters, I have ideas, I even have a few plots, which is not my strong suit. It’s not writer’s block as I understand it. But clearly something pyschological is going on.
The advice ‘writers write’ and ‘butt in chair’ is the hardest part for me at the moment.
Kit and Alis tapped me as a sort of SysOp for this topic, so I’m jumping in here. Feel free to tell me to butt out.
Jen — There’s ALWAYS something else to do. For years, I used cleaning and neatening as an excuse, knowing I would never achieve it. I meant to. I really did. Now I know that clutter is just generic and when I’ve had enough of mess, I’ll do something about it, but until then … well … I’ll try to write.
I’ve gotten some of my best advice from Kit and Judith Tarr. From Kit — If you’re going to be a full-time writer, then treat it like a full-time job. When there’s a novel in progress, plan 2 hrs/day reviewing what you did yesterday and 4-6 hrs/day doing new stuff. From Judy — If what you’re writing isn’t flowing the way you want it to, go write on something else, or cook, or go for a walk, or read it aloud and see what stumbles. Just don’t sit there and stare at it. But you’re right. You’ve identified the hardest thing about writing — making the time.
Karen — Congrats! You’re SO much further than I am. I envy you. Now that you’ve finished this one and it’s ready for the world to take it on, what’s next? What lessons can you impart here on your process? Details, girl. We want details.
Jellyn — That IS the hardest part. I always loathed outlines and have never done a short story where I’ve used one, but novels are very different. Damon Knight said that there are two kinds of writers — methodical writers and spurt writers. Methodical writers do the “sit in chair, apply 2 hours to writing nightly, edit as you go.” Spurt writers (which he claimed to be and which I KNOW I am) mull over the ideas in their heads until they figure out what to do, then sit down, growl at anyone who interrupts them, and write as long as it takes to get the ideas out. Editing is not an option. Hell, often eating and sleeping are not options. The muse just takes over.
I would love to be a methodical writer. And for a novel, I think one really needs to be at least somewhat methodical. But my methodical was in the preparation — I have a “beat” outline — something used in the entertainment industry to keep the pacing correct. Beats are like heartbeats — slower as you’re building, faster as the crisis takes over the book. I’ve had it for 10 years. What was stopping me was one plot point that I couldn’t seem to resolve in my head. Once it resolved, I could write.
There’s nothing “psychological” (in the pejorative sense) going on for you. Your brain just isn’t ready yet. Try the outline. It really does work and there are lots of places around that describe them. Hell, I’ll bet the more senior writers here would tackle it if we asked nicely.
Barb
Hi, everyone! Welcome, and feel free to vent your frustrations here! However, please don’t vent them on each other. Remember that Barb has hidden powers, and she knows how to use them.
Getting started is indeed hard, and sometimes keeping on going is even harder. Here’s a trick that works for me when the words dry up.
Bet you can write just one. One sentence, that is. Try writing a single sentence — it can be stupid, as you can always revise later. Write the sentence, then call it a day. Next day, write another one. This time, if you feel like it, write a second sentence as well. Once you can turn out a sentence or two on demand, try writing just one paragraph, then one page, then one entire scene, and so on. Eventually the momentum will return, and you’ll be able to turn out 5-10 pages a day, a good goal for professionals.
Remember this as well. Even if you only write just one page a day, in a year you will have 365 pages, which is a good size for a genre novel. The task is not as endless as it seems.
Barb — don’t dismiss those comments by non-genre readers. A book of the sort you’re writing can sell really well if it draws in those who normally don’t read that particular thing. Consider Michael Crichton and his millions. His early works were SF, but SF tailored to the general audience in structure and “information feed.” It worked.
Jellyn, one thing I’ve sometimes done that happens to work for me is to ask myself, ‘is there something I fear that is causing me to hesitate?’ If there is, and you can identify it, then often by giving it a name you have the power to, if not banish it entirely, at least to look it in the face and keep moving forward.
This isn’t true for everyone, but it can be useful.
Heh, the ‘first’ novel was quietly trunked. The second novel followed closely. The third is waiting a rewrite. The fourth and fith are being written now.
Yes, the hardest thing is writing it, and then learning that it’s crap. I don’t necessarily mean the plot or storyline but the fact you’ve added an adverb a line, used weak verbs, used ‘as you know bob’ and every other sin known to writers. You become obssessed with ‘getting it right’ and by the time you’ve finished you end up with a novel full of generic prose, with everything fully explained to nth degree, and a case of pronounitis.
Then you ask, where has the passion gone? So you get to number six. You write it and then some wise ass says, Oh, that’s a trope, or it’s been done twenty million times before, it’s unfortunate that you haven’t read anything like it.
Number seven, and an agent wants to see it. Wahooo! great. They read it and say your plot kinda dribbles away, your characters are wishy washy and it’s a total mary sue. But it’s got some merit and if you rewrite it we’d like to see it again. By which time you have either had a nervous breakdown or you are so mad you write another one. You ask, well, if I haven’t got anywhere yet, will I ever?
The answer is. It doesn’t matter. A writer is someone who loves to write and writes with passion. It doesn’t pay the bills unless your name is Stephen King. So why does anyone want to get published? The answer to that in my case, is this wanting to share what I’ve written and I couldn’t stop writing if I tried.
Thanks to everyone for their comments! I think some of them helped. Or maybe talking about it did. I wrote something yesterday, which is more than I’ve done in a long time.
Kate Elliott said:
I’ve thought about this before and I think it’s true. I probably need to think about it further and figure out exactly what it is. Even the idea of sitting down to try to figure out the answer by writing a journal-type entry is daunting for some reason. So I suppose that’s a clue there.
I want to thank you guys for starting this blog. The postings have been interesting already. I also found the feminist sf blog from here, which has also been interesting and has made me think about some new things.
If people are curious, I made my way here because Amazon’s front page recommended Carol Berg’s Amazon blog to me and she has a post pointing to here. I’m glad I found it.
Karen, you should be happy and proud to have completed a novel. You are definitely in the minority. What is it, 70% of people who start a novel never finish? Good for you.
And I hope that while your readers are taking a look that you are starting something else! Set that first one aside for a while, work on something else, keep learning about writing, and then go back and take another look. When I survey writers about the first step in the revision process, without fail they tell me: set the book aside for a month/two months/whatever. Distance gives you perspective. Good luck, and keep having fun!
Carol
I came here from Carol Berg’s blog as well. I do love her ‘Song of the Beast’ book.
To be honest, I feel kind of daunted posting here. I find that I tend to read more than post, and this is one of the few places where I posted more than just a couple lines within a few days, and more than once. I don’t know- I just find it a little wierd.
I’m terrible at explanations. When I try to write something, I always meander all over the place. I have a goal in mind, but it never comes out the way I need it to, be it story, essay, or just ‘writing’. It gets even worse when I try to explain something in real life.
At the same time, I still love to write. I’ve given up on trying to make my writing ‘perfect’ on the first go, hoping that when I get around to revise it that it’ll somehow fall into place on its own. I make too many notes, often have a paraphrased but disorganized version of the original plot, and secondary characters that somehow have more life than the main characters.
I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with the main character of my current fantasy story. He’s gotten better in the past months, and lost years of his backstory are finally becoming clear, but his character leaves something to be desired. Might be because he’s a bit too much of the ’stay in background’ type, someone who doesn’t take direct action unless he’s forced to. The first section of the story doesn’t have him doing much, making me wonder if a character like that would turn off a random reader.
As for the, uh…science fiction story (which I posted the beginning of in 13 lines)… Uh, well. I found Kevin Murphy’s suggestions to be quite helpful, and would like to thank him for taking the time to read my terrible work. (I wasn’t sure if I could post right on the 13 lines page, so…) I wasn’t really looking at the details at the time and was focusing more on the tone, but I do understand that bad details can get in the way. I’ll fix them once I finish the rest of the short story. …because revisions are starting to scare me.
I just added a sentence to the story that has spent six months being ‘irretrievably stalled’. Two sentences, actually. If I give myself a few hours, I may be able to add a third, but maybe I’ll let that wait until tomorrow.
But the ice is most definitely cracking. Thank you.
I think it does make a huge difference ‘talking’ about writing. I don’t mean to the exclusion of actually writing ‘the novel’, but writing in a vacuum and not knowing if anything is any good is hard.
It might be a cliche but the more you write the more you learn, and every novel I’ve written some ephiphany will strike even if it’s something small like how to avoid writing passively, or how to write those seamless sentences that the authors here use.
I think, and I’d love to hear this from one of the authors here, that each book is as difficult, if not harder, than the previous one, and an author never stops learning. Personally I find the idea of that exciting rather than daunting. There’s that wonderful feeling when you know something works.
I have five “first novels” collecting dust on my hard drive, and crying at me daily to get serious, sit down, and write instead of staring blankly at the screen and hoping something jumps out at me.
My problem is that I get too easily distracted. I’ll sit down at my computer and swear to myself that I’ll write at least a page before I’ll allow myself to do anything else; it works for the first few minutes, but as soon as I look up from the screen, there goes any hope og acheiving said goal. I don’t have a problem starting novels, it’s finishing them that I can never do. I usually get just over a hundred pages, start rereading bits and pieces to see how I’m doing, and decide it’s all crap. I completely restarted the novel I’m working on now because I convinced myself I hated the beginning.
Another problem I have is the infamous “info dump.” An all-knowing character suddenly appears and gladly enlightens the main character, who then skips cheerily off to follow his Great Destiny. I can’t seem to get around it.
Ah, it does feel good to vent!
Racgel said : I don’t have a problem starting novels, it’s finishing them that I can never do.
May I make a suggestion? Write crap. I’m serious. Tell yourself it doesn’t matter how awful it is, as along as you finish it. Pick one, maybe the one you like most. Don’t worry how ghastly it is, just write, even if it’s just the outline of what you want. If you are a bit of a perfectionist you will look at that and make it much better later.
And it doesn’t matter how awful a first draft is. Who else is going to see it? We’re out own worst critics.
Each novel gets harder to write because I know more, while never knowing enough. As I gain more experience, I set higher goals for myself in my writing even if I’m not conscious of them. Therefore, each book is harder to write than the one that came before it.
And - yeah - I can procrastinate something terrible. I never thought I would WANT to do laundry.
Hi all.
I’ve been thinking of writing a book for years now…pretty much since i read “Palace” a few years ago..It captured my imagination and I thought to myself that few authors have captured the subtleties of a fictional society as well as Katherine Kerr did in that book.
I have what I think is a “great idea” for the novel that I do intend to write oneday but at the moment strangely I have convinced myself that it would be really beneficial to try and draw some of the characters that have sprung into my mind. Just to get the creative juices flowing.
But I think that’s just my fear of just starting to actually write. I’ve never had much experience in writing in my day to day work, as I work with my hands, so I also think that this is contributing to not starting.
The only reason that I’d like to write my book is for other people to enjoy it as much as I’ve enjoyed other authors’ novels over the years (well I hope that it would be an enjoyable experience to read).
So what do you, as aspiring authors reccommend?
Should I bite the bullet and just start writing and see how it goes or should i pick up the pencils and hope to inspire myself to do something about it?
jay: I do the same thing! My most recent artistic distraction was trying to plan out the cover (for a book I haven’t even written a quarter of, I might add). I draw the characters, I draw scenes from the book, I draw insiginificant things only vaguely releated to the novel at all… And I know I’m doing it, but I can’t seem to stop! Just another part of procrastination…
Planning the cover before you have finished the book is a definite no-no. (Rachel, my critique of your lines is finally up.) Anything else that helps is probably okay.
The fear of “making a mistake” or “writing crap” is, in my experience anyway, the biggest single barrier to someone sitting down and writing. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone’s first draft is crap. THIS IS WHY WE REVISE, people! How can we know what we’re saying until we’ve said it? Yes, that’s a joke, but also it’s true.
You cannot organize and perfect a heap of material until you have the heap. How do you know which of X many things is the most important until you see all X of them? How do you know where your story is going until you reach the end? Once you’ve gotten there, then you can go back and shape the narrative to make sure it arrives by the best route.
Yes, you can outline. Nothing is deader than a detailed outline, again in my experience. Other writers swear by them. If outlines are not working for you, then try winging it and see what happens. Let your characters tell you what they’re going to do. (That’s what Mark and I did in PALACE.)
The first draft corresponds, in my mind, to assembling the ingredients you need to cook an elaborate recipe. First you get everything out on the kitchen counter. Then you do whatever prep each ingredient needs, peeling, chopping, whatever. Only then can you combine them and put them into the pan. The actual cooking takes the least energy — the final polish of the words, the spell checks, and so on is the corresponding last step in writing.
Writing crap is not merely okay. Writing crap is necessary. Get it out into the phosphors or on the page if you write by hand. Once it’s out, then you make it good. To take this metaphor to ridiculous lengths, you turn the crap into gold by revising.
Kit
Here’s to writing crap [All hail the mighty Kit!].
Even what you consider to be crap isn’t always crap later. I’m always amazed when I read something I wrote years ago at how good it was, considering. It sure didn’t feel like it while it was going on.
Rachel — InfoDump is a good word for it! I do that too, knowing I’ll ax most of it later. At least I wrote it ONCE, if only to prove to myself that I knew it all. It also helps me sort out what can go into character description, what needs to be there to push the plot along and so needs to be interwoven, and what needs to go back into deep background. Drawing the cover, tho, is an exercise in frustration. IF/When the book sells, the artist who does your cover likely won’t get to see any of the bits that you think are absolutely vital to the cover. I lived witha guy years ago who fancied himself a novelist. He wrote the whole thing and then (fool) let me read it. He had actually written a decent story, with strong male characters, but his female characters were so bad it was laughable — he said they were strong, Amazon types but had them get weepy and need their men’s help at the drop of a hat. He also spent good money to pay an artist to do drawings for his cover and for inside his book. He actually believed he was going to sell it that way and get his artist well known. Needless to say, he didn’t like my critique of his female characters (we broke up not long after that) and even >I
rats. What that was supposed to say was “Even I knew (this was 28 years ago) What that trying to sell your own art with a book just isn’t done.”
Damn. Where did the rest of that post go … I said such pithy things. [Preview from now on, Barbara. Click Preview]
Jay — I took a weekend writing seminar from Donald Maas called Writing the Breakout Novel, based on his book of the same name. The book is good. So was the seminar. But I find nothing better than going to genre conventions that cater to both pros and fen — they’re rarer than they should be. There’s nothing like a meeting of like minds to get the creative juices going. I also currently belong to 3 writers’ groups, tho joining one can be and iffy proposition. 2 are in my genre and are me with one other person. The third is with 4 other people, none of whom read or write sf/f. And Kit’s admonition to me above — not to write their comments off — is totally valid. Much as I’d like to say “well, you just don’t understand” and pooh pooh them, they are who I’m aiming at. So I’m reworking.
Ah, the ever-growing discussion of outlining. Nice to know Kit doesn’t use them. I never had before now — even in school, I wrote the required outlines when I was with the paper. They have always baffled me.
Judy Tarr does paragraph outlines of her chapters. They start small — sometimes only a single sentence for a chapter — and grow as she adds plot points she wants to expand on later. And her outlines are living documents. You can’t know before you start writing where a character or event is going to take you. Writers that say they can are, imho, fooling themselves. I like the recipe imagery, Kit. Ah, the things we concoct!
I love this place!
Barb
Rachel:
I wasn’t exactly thinking of designing a cover for my book, more just a detailed colour sketch of the main characters. You’re probably right that it’s just another form of procrastination though. But in my mind it makes sense to actually do it to aid with description of the appearance of these characters.
Just reading everybody’s posts has made me more eager to actually make a start though. But I’m lost as to where exactly to start. But I’ve only learn’t to use a computer within the last 6 mths so the thought of actually using my new knowledge is a little daunting too.
Well I’m going to have a lot of time on my hands as of next weel so fingers crossed that I can find the motivation.
Barbara
The last story I wrote was over 10 years ago at school. I’m in Australia and as I said I have virtually no experience in having to write anything. I don’t know of any clubs or anything which caters to people that wish to learn to write sf/f novels. But if anyone does know of any please post a little info it’d be appreciated.
You know, writing the novel hasn’t been the most difficult for me. Yes, it was damned hard, and I still don’t consider any of them totally finished, but the hardest thing after that is finding the courage to send them out. Workshops helped enormously. You get feedback and encouragement that way. Meeting other people at cons with like minds was another way to learn the craft, the business end as well.
When it comes to writing the synopsis and query letter I go all to pieces. A subconscious fear of rejection? Probably. I’ve read the agent and editor blogs, I’ve read the how tos and the samples, and yet, writing that damned letter…
I have done it though, and received my rejections. You don’t take them personally, especially the ones that are obviously form letters. The ones you remember are the ones that encourage you or ask for a re-write. They are the ones that make you think it might be worthwhile to continue.
So I’ve reached that stage again with both a fantasy novel and a sci fi novel. No, I’m not happy. I’m like that proverbial artist who wants one more brush stroke. But there comes a time when I must bite the bullet and off they go. Then comes the waiting and the over-thinking, and the omg I did a typo on page thirteen, but, you know, whatever happens, I’ll still carry on.
Oh, yes, yes, yes!
Did I say yes?
Barbara Denz said:
This is really interesting. I don’t outline. I just can’t grow a story in advance. But I DO need to have a short term destination before I write a scene - even if it is “they get the slave back to the palace.” This is what helps curtail rambling.
That being said, I do keep a running list of “things that might need to happen.” (along with my running list of names, odd words, and the sketch map as I introduce new places). It may have four or five entries when I sit down to write chapter 1.
Running is the operative word. The ideas are outgrowths of whatever scene I’m writing at the moment, or of new things I’m discovering about the characters (ooh, she’s claustrophobic…what if…?) And I never force myself to fill in the list until I know more about my characters and whatever predicament I’ve got them in to begin the story. Of course, this list grows longer the farther I get into the story, until by the time I am at chapter 28 of a 32 chapter book, I might have an outline:-)
Starting, as opposed to staring at the blank screen . . .
Here’s an exercise, Jay, that might help. Shut your eyes and imagine that you’re standing outside of a door. Notice what kind of door it is, what it looks like, what the wall around it looks like. Now open it. Who’s inside? What’s inside?
WRite all this down. It most likely won’t be actually left in the story you’re writing, but it mayl give you a — ta da! — way in.
I’ve had the ‘unimportant at first then suddenly very important’ situation recently. On a whim I wrote a character sending a present to the main character of my fantasy story. Next day, I decide what topic the main character’s teacher is going to teach next in class. I didn’t realize the importance of the book being about the same topic until later on in the day. Gah.
And all of a sudden, a minor character just became a major character. And the whole plot just got more complicated to write.
I wish I could write like that. A lot of my stories end up with extensive backstories because of my pointless outlining and need to know how something worked before I started on it (might be part of why my sci-fi story isn’t as well written as it could be- I still only have a vague idea of how the universe works, and being kept on my toes scares me at times).
I agree that trying to make a story conform completely to an outline can kill it. I’ve, uh…tried before. And failed miserably on keeping characters in character.
I recently re-read a character monologue I wrote last year December, and it made me stop and think. Partly because of how much that character changed, but more because of what he was musing on about. The idea of considering my old writing decent doesn’t sit well with me. It makes me wonder if I’m currently doing something wrong.
Sometimes I even think it was written by a completely different person. I mean, my own writing can’t be that good, can it?
Thanks for the idea Katherine
I did kinda follow it but i kinda didn’t but what can I say, I’m past the procrastination part now. I’ve actually written a page and found it wasn’t that hard (wasn’t that easy either!) Just hope the rest comes along as easily!
But once you get started and have at least a slight idea of where you’d like to head it’s not too bad. It’s probably not all that good but there’s a learning curve to everything right?
Jay, there is a huge learning curve to writing. Remember, if something’s bad, you can always revise it later. It’s like the old joke about how to get to Carneigie Hall: practice practice practice.
hey just a question for everyone if that’s ok?
I’m new to writing, or trying to write a story of any description so I’m a little confused as to how to go about getting a novel on paper.
So I’ve started writing a short story. Has anyone else here written a short story, then started the story again in more detail from a different angle or whatever to actually create a novel?
Just wondering. I do like the characters that I’ve created so far but I have a whole Idea in my head which I think would make a good book. Does anyone think that it’s worth writing something twice ar just go the whole hog and write it as a novel?
Anyone with more writing experience than myself is more than welcome to answer me. I am unsure whether this will actually ruin the idea that I’ve already started on by over-analysing it..Any ideas?
Jay said : Just wondering. I do like the characters that I’ve created so far but I have a whole Idea in my head which I think would make a good book. Does anyone think that it’s worth writing something twice ar just go the whole hog and write it as a novel?
From my own experience, the story is either a short story or a novel. How do I tell? A novel won’t stop running, a short story tends to encapsulate fewer ideas. Not to say that you can’t write a short story and a novel using the same characters/setting etc, but a short story tends to be more of a single scene.
The one short story I have published, one review said basically, this should have been a novel, and they were right. Even though it had a beginning/middle/end structure there were too many ideas within that were begging to be expanded, threads that needed lengthening, characters who needed more say, plot that needed resolution.
There are exceptions to everything. There aren’t any ‘rules’ only your interpretation of them. It’s a bit like saying, ‘How long should a chapter be?’ and for me it’s the same answer as a story, ‘It’s as long as it needs to be.’
That’s how I would look at it. Doesn’t mean to say I a right.
I haven’t suceeded at the novel part yet, but I know I write short stories to get used to the characters, setting, and the feel of the world. I’ve done the same with Fanfiction, so I figured it’d probably also work with original stories (I hope).
Sort of like taking a small step before a leap.
I don’t actually write the storyline I know I’m going to use for the novel, though. The events I usually choose occur either before or after the novel; I’d imagine it’d be fun to look at them again afterwards, just to see how much has changed.
Of course, this is just personal opinion. …
I have been wanting to write since I was young. Like many, I’m sure, I grew up losing myself in books and always wanting to write something that someone could lose themselves in. However, there was always something lacking in my short stories that my mom stapled together for me when I was little; something different about flipping a page back versus turning a page
In my tweens I wrote ALL the time. Pages upon pages. I still have stacks of white pages on my shelves that I keep as a reminder of what I’m NOT doing anymore.
When I got to college I took a lot of writing courses and I very quickly learned (and was taught in a sense) that I don’t write well and that I wouldn’t be good at writing. The stacks of paper that I so lovingly poured myself into as a child seemed empty once I graduated college and I lost my enthusiasm and even the ease of writing somehow.
In my thirties I am still trying to write … but every word and every sentence is like pulling teeth. When I was younger I had an idea, I would sit down, and just type and type and type until it was gone. Now … I sit for hours staring at a paragraph and wondering if it meets standards and rules. Is it as good as … ? Does it make you feel like … ? Does it evoke this or that?
Is writing easy and enjoyable for everyone who does it? Is it like drinking water? For me it is Listerine … and I don’t know why and yet I still really feel there is a story in me. Notice I said “a story” as opposed to many
Since I only have one story to tell does that make me a writer … 
When I was small it seemed writers to me were fountains of endless stories flowing out of them and it had to be easy because my god there were so many books to be read! 
It seems now as I outline and plan and plan and plan that nothing seems to happen. I “plan to plan” and outline my characters into frames that are so generic I start to hate them and wonder where all the … wonder went.
I don’t know any other writers so I’d hard to find advice. I thought perhaps some of you wise and accomplished ones could offer some advice to me. I would be grateful.
E
Note: In the preview page, about three or four characters are cut off the end of each sentence. I don’t know how to stop this happening, and I apologise if this happens in my post.
Just /”E/”, you are not alone. I write because I am compelled, not because I like it. I hate fumbling for words to express what I see in my mind, worrying about sentence structure, grammar, whether the reader will ‘get’ what I am trying to say, and so on. I loathe revising even more - I’d rather watch paint dry. So you are not the only one who finds the process like pulling hen’s teeth.
Having said that, I would like to comment on some of the things you said. I’m neither wise or accomplished, but I hope my words are of some use anyway, as one aspiring writer to another.
Why wouldn’t you be good at writing? Just because someone doesn’t write well now, doesn’t mean that they won’t write well in the future. I believe that a lot of the craft of writing - grammar, pacing, structure etc - can be learnt. I don’t think that it is something that writers are born with. I think that it is something they have learnt, either from reading a wide variety of books, or from their schooling, or from both. What can’t be taught (in my opinion) is the creative spark that generates ideas, and it seems that you have that in abundance. I feel that your writing courses have squashed you flat, and that makes me very sad.
I would be very interested to know what made you think that you don’t write well. I think that maybe you have misjudged yourself here, and your writing is better than you think it is. I certainly thought that your original comment was very well written.
Yes. Absolutely. It is a well-known thingy (sorry, don’t know what to call it) that every writer has only one story to tell. Some tell it once, and some tell it a number of times in different ways. All of these are writers. One group is not better than the other.
The best advice I can give to you is not to worry about standards and rules when you write. Just write. Get the words on the page. Once you have written a set amount (be it one page or one book), go back and revise what you have written.
I worry about standards and rules when I revise (and not before, or I’d never write anything). I generally do one revision for grammar (the bane of my life), one for spelling, one to check my paragraphing, and one extra one for sentence structure (I’m the Queen of run-on sentences). Then I put the piece of writing away for two weeks. After two weeks, I pull it out again and check for things like: Have I rambled on too much here? Have I used the correct words? Should I expand this, condense it, or leave it? Does this ‘feel’ right? Then comes the hardest bit - I post the writing up on the web for feedback (I belong to two groups for aspiring writers). I consider all comments carefully, but I don’t implement them all. Sometimes, the person writing the feedback has a point (Ok, mostly they have a point). Sometimes I wonder what drugs they were on to come up with that feedback (which I will still consider). This is where I find out if what I have written has reached my audience in the way I wanted it to (and if not, why not).
What I am trying to say here is: write first, revise second. All good writing is re-writing. The initial words on the page are only a first draft, something that you can then work with to create a story. You still have to rearrange it, add things in, cut things out, change words, rewrite sentences/paragraphs/whole scenes from scratch to get to your story.
Writing is not easy. Writing, in my opinion, should be listed in the same categories as sadism and machoism. I think that it is one of the hardest things that a person can attempt in their lifetime, and I salute anyone who is brave enough (or crazy enough) to try it.
Rosamunda I thank you greatly for your comments. I would love to talk more with you about writing (feel free to email me also).
As I mentioned … writing was such a passion for me as a child. As I write this post I’m looking over at my shelf which I’ve carted from state to state and apartment after apartment as I’ve moved over the years that contains all these stacked pieces of paper. “Books”. 200 pages, 300 pages in length that I wrote seemingly without effort when I was 12 - 14 years old. They have … plots (what could be called a plot for a 12 year old) … characters, story archs, beginning, middle, end. I mean there’s 6 of these stacks. And every now and then I thumb through them and think … when did I ever have time to do this … and hey this paragraph is really good, even by my standards now. Some is crap of course, I was a kid, but surprisingly well done. But I remember these times; sitting down and thinking out something and just pecking away at the keys … I don’t know what happened to that time - that ability.
When I went to college I knew I wanted to major in English. I knew that I wanted to write. I was good at it. It was fun. Of course that’s what I’d do. Naive was I. My first writing course was a nightmare of peer critiques. My style was different, my ideas were different, I wasn’t “well read” (god forbid I liked popular fiction and fantasy). And I just got drilled into the ground. Teacher after teacher … “This isn’t good writing. it’s popular writing but that doesn’t make it good writing…” - “It sounds like you’re trying too hard to convey meaning here, you’re forcing it …” and on and on. Even poetry class was a nightmare. We had to “write on the spot” and I was never good in a flash. Others around me could churn out a page of greatness and I could only really write at home, at my desk, in the quiet … I just didn’t have it. I couldn’t just write anywhere under any circumstance and I didn’t have endless ideas and stories to tell. I had one. One thing I wanted to get out.
By sophomore year I changed my focus to computer science (which was always more of a hobby and has since become my profession for 13 years). I still wrote but … somehow everything I wrote didn’t seem enough or well written and I started wondering if I was meant for it. I wasn’t like all the others around me who could just sit down and spin a tale in a spiral notebook on a subway on the way to work. (I remember reading how “Queen Harry Potter” wrote on her way to work on a bus or something and thinking how in the world can you write on a bus??) College really dampened my spirits or maybe just made me realize that just because I liked to write, that didn’t mean I was supposed to be a writer. I didnt seem to have the natural skill. I didn’t seem to have the background. I didn’t seem to have a fountain of ideas just bursting to come alive under my pen.
I have been working on a novel for years and I start and stop. Sometimes I’ll write a perfect page and then not write again for months. Sometimes I’ll write 50 pages in one sitting. But it’s not consistent. I’m always compelled to print and read what I have written which only makes me go back and change it a million times before I can move on to the next page. I read other peoples books cover to cover and I think to myself. How did they do that? How did they make me love on character over another? Did they know how to do that? Did it just happen? Carol Berg’s Transformation series comes to mind (so brilliant Carol thank you so much for that wonderful work) and I wondered how she created such amazing characters. Do you plan that from the beginning? Is it in the dialog? Is it in their actions? Is it just magic?
I analyze and overanalyze my characters to the point where they seem devoid of any interest and become cardboard cutouts.
It seems endless for me - questions, starting, stopping - and I wonder if I will ever get the story out of my system. If I will ever earn or be worthy of that magic that seems to be in the hands/pens/computers of other writers.
Elaine
Barb … you said …
As a tech junkie, web designer, programming computerhead. I hear ya loud and clear on that!
Somehow, writing about 1000 lines of tedious PHP code makes me less … creative 
I am trying to retire from computer work to hopefully be able to write full time.
Elaine
Just quickly:-
E, I would love to email you but your email address isn’t coming up on my computer. Is mine coming up on yours? If not, I will add the address of a website where you can contact me.
I’m another computer science person (programmer and trainer) turned writer. We seem to have a trend going.
At the moment, I’m struggling with getting senses other than sight involved in my writing, especially sound and touch. Any suggestions?
Rosamunda yes indeed a trend! I see a lot of scenes from my book as film in my mind. Probably why I tend to write in present tense. I’m probably better off writing screenplays. I use to write my friends one acts when she was in drama school. I enjoyed the direct aspect of writing for immediate action. I still think in someways this works in novels through I have not yet seen a recent application of it. Because I see things in a sense of immediate action, sound and movement are very often first and foremost in my mind. What is the person doing. How are they moving. How is it communicating something to the reader. But based on my 13 line critique I doubt my style or suggestions would be pretty helpful to you
I clearly don’t have an understanding of how to communicate things at all 
Feel free to contact me anytime tho via the contact form of the URL that SHOULD be attached to this post. Would love to hear from you! And thanks for your comments also from before.
I’ve been chipping away at my first adult novel - that is, I choose to count the novel I completed in sixth grade that may have been junk but I finished the whole thing as my first novel - since Labor Day 2005. I’m using R. Ray’s “The Weekend Novelist” to keep it all together with lots of input from “Writing the Breakout Novel” by Donald Maass. What I’ve realized is that writing a novel is not like winning the lottery, it’s growing your own food. It takes sustained effort, belief, and simple hard work. I could extend the metaphor forever - the need to keep your fields fertile, you reap what you sow, etc. Basically my point is that sometimes we think too much about end product - the big bang that novel is going to create in our life when we get it finished - but that thinking doen’t get the thing done.
I’ve skimmed the other postings here, and I’d strongly recommend checking out Critters (www.critique.org) for anyone writing science fiction or fantasy. It really helped me get serious and I learned a great deal.
Just \\â€?E\\â€?, your experience sounds horrible. Not unfamiliar though. I went into college with Creative Writing as one of my potential majors. The first class went all right. The second class was taught by a guy who didn’t even know what ‘pinky finger’ meant. I totally didn’t understand how someone who didn’t know English fluently enough to know ‘pinky finger’ could be conducting a creative writing course in English. That class also had a graduate student in it who was writing this horrible monolithic dreck novel. He totally didn’t belong in a workshop of undergrads who were working on short stories. Only one person in that class really had an understanding of what I was trying to write.
The third creative writing course was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The professor wouldn’t allow us to write genre fiction. At all. Bad enough he wasn’t letting me write the only thing I knew how to write and was inspired to write — sf/f — but he didn’t leave anything to write. When you cut out science fiction, fantasy, mystery, western, and romance.. what do you have left?!
English classes are not conducive to good writing. Most creative writing classes and workshops are not suitable for sf/f writing. Try to ignore anything those instructors and fellow students told you. They probably didn’t grok what you were writing. I know my classmates didn’t. They’d rather read another story of a college student shagging and/or killing their roommate.
End rant. But I did want to make a suggestion. If you’re having trouble writing a sentence because you think that sentence is horrible. Or trouble writing a paragraph because you’re worried about your grammar and spelling, then I suggest an online roleplaying game — such as a MUSH. You’re writing and interacting with people in real time. You only have a few minutes to get your paragraph ‘perfect’ before the people you’re playing with will get tired of waiting. And they’ll provide you with instant feedback if they don’t understand what you’re trying to say.
It might be a good way to get over the self-censoring you’re doing and to hone your communication skills. Who cares if it’s perfect? It’s just a game; it’s just for fun, and it can even be anonymous. Meanwhile you’ll be learning all about character, dialogue, and even plot.
Just avoid the trap of enjoying the game so much that it’s a substitute for actual writing. My hours and hours (years and years) of written roleplay isn’t publishable… mostly because I’m playing in someone else’s sandbox.
Barbara said “Now that you’ve finished this one and it’s ready for the world to take it on, what’s next? What lessons can you impart here on your process? Details, girl. We want details.”
I started the next novel two weeks after finishing the first one. Urban fantasy this time. It was the story that screamed “Write me” the loudest.
I used all sorts of tricks to finish my book. I put a chart on my bedroom door and I counted words and charted them each day. If I didn’t want to write I would go to a coffee shop where there was no Internet, I didn’t bring books, and I sat there with my laptop until I was so bored I HAD to write. I went on “writing dates” with my partner on weekends. And I commiserated with other writers on the Internet at least a few times a week so I didn’t feel alone when things were tough.
You know what got me really started properly though? I was chatting online with an established fantasy writer whose work I greatly admire (one of those dear authors who takes time to talk to newbies like me) and one day I realized that she wasn’t that different than me. Oh, she’s a far better writer than me, but what I mean is that she is a regular person. I think, down deep, because I love books so very, very much, a part of me (a little kid part) was quite sure that only spectacularly magical people write really good books. This despite my having met many published authors, which you would think might convince me that regular people write books. But of course it t wasn’t ever a conscious belief, nor a logical one. But somehow, as this writer talked about her leaky plumbing and her favorite breed of chicken and just . . .her life, that idea that I am too ordinary to write something good just faded away. Because she was both ordinary and extraordinary. And aren’t we all? So I started to write. And I haven’t stopped.
But I have to second the idea that writing one novel does not make the next one easier. I thought it would, but nope, this one is even harder. I think that’s because I want to do better and I learned a lot from writing the first one and so I’m trying to apply what I learned and do new things and . . .well, it’s just always going to be a big adventure, isn’t it.
–Muneraven
Muneraven, I liked reading about what inspired you to write. My most recent inspiration came from both an article on the Deep Magic website and the comments here. I suddenly had the ‘aha’ realisation that what I had to do was just write - a little each day - and I would, eventually, become better. That was a very inspiring thought. The fact that doing this would mean finishing my piece is an added bonus.
I goofed big time today. I send in the first 13 lines of a short story to be critiqued, and as soon as I hit the ’send’ button I realised that the last half of the last sentence was pretentious rubbish. Yi-yi-yi! Why couldn’t that moment of revelation have come a little sooner? I am going to get blasted to bits for that sentence - and rightly so. I just hope I survive the fallout.
Toodles,
Rosamunda
Amen there. Well said.
I feel like I’m jumping in rather late here, but this has been fascinating so far, and I can’t resist.
I finished the first draft of my first novel about 9 months ago. I’ve barely looked at it since. For me the hard part doesn’t seem to be the writing (I’m 2/3 through book #2), but the revising part. Other than straight up grammar, spelling, and punctuation changes, I can’t seem to make myself start taking it apart and putting it back together.
Part of it is probably lack of practice. I’m one of the fortunate people who can turn out class-style writing by the ream, with good organization, and acceptable prose - so I got very little practice in editing while in school. Since my first drafts could be turned in straight and get A’s, I didn’t see the point of revising.
A novel is a completely different kettle of fish. Even if every individual chapter is fine, it still all has to fit together, and something that happens in chapter 48 can alter what I need to say in chapter 3, well after chapter 3 was written. I see the need to rip out sections and reorganize, and I freeze. So I’m stuck, with a novel that several people are telling me is good, and just needs some minor re-ordering to be ready to send out - and I can’t seem to figure out where to start. It was much easier just to start writing a whole different novel.
Does anyone have a suggestion for a good (preferably step-by-step) book or essay on editing a first draft novel? (Picture plaintive basset eyes here.)
There are plenty of essays around, but my problem with all of them is that they are so general they don’t really help the first timer.
My advice is this: once you feel you’ve improved it as much as you can, get an objective opinion from a workshop–but not one filled with other beginners. You need the eye of someone experienced, preferably published, because you need someone first to see what’s on the page, not what you wanted to be there. Workshop friends who’ve been over and over the story will too often see what you meant them to see, not what’s actually there. Second, someone who’s practiced in critiquing can usually articulate any problems, and is also more practiced at separating out what they’d do with the novel (which means how they’d write it, which is of course useless to you) and how you might get that reader investment more quickly and effectively.
I dunno, maybe we need a first chapter option here: I don’t know how many would have time to comment, and doing this on-line is such a pain, but sometimes a glimpse at a first chapter can at least serve as triage.
There are good books helping you to get the novel written, but you’re beyond that. Ursula le Guin is great on prose, Orson Scott Card has a pretty good book on structure and pacing. But one really learns best within the context of one’s own work, or so I’ve found.
so: workshops: well, there is Critters. What you’ll get there is a ramge of response, mostly from other beginners, but they also represent a range of tastes.
For a far better workshop, there’s the OWW–but the hitch is that they have a fee for joining.
Question from the ignorant here - what’s the OWW?
Online Writers’ Workshop. it’s easy to find via Google–and the number of members who have made big sales within the last couple of years is very high–an impressive ratio. I’m sorry they charge money, but I really do think it’s the best on-line workshop.
I’ll have to look into OWW. I have run my novel past the crew at Rate Your Writing - but they are mostly beginners also, so they have great ideas for what needs changing, but little idea how to go about it.
Oddly enough the one published author I’ve run it by has been the one who thinks it needs the least work - but his own time constraints didn’t allow him to give me more than the roughest overview of what he thought he needed to happen - and gave me a dilemma. I have a half roughed-in secondary plot. Most readers liked it, and wanted it filled in properly (the idea occurred to me halfway through, so there’s no set-up). He thought I should remove it altogether, not because it was bad, but because he thought it too ambitious for a first-time writer. I’m loathe to remove it, because without it the book reads like a YA novel to me (nothing wrong with them, it’s just not what I had in mind), but I am also reluctant to ignore his advice.
Thanks for the recommendations - I’ll be wandering off to Google and Amazon now.
Well, one thing you can ask yourself is, why he thinks it should be removed–and is his reasoning cogent? Or would it distort your story too far from your vision? (You hint that it does.) If so, maybe the thread needs better transitions, connections, to the main, and not total annihilation.
Do check out the OWW peeps.
He has no objections to the thread per se. His statement was that if this were a second or third book, he wouldn’t hesitate to have me fill it in properly. He is, by his comments, leery of my skills as a first time novelist being up to the challenge of a serious secondary plot-line.
Taking it out would over-simplify my story in my eyes, but I am also infamous in all things for overreaching my skills, so I am wary of ignoring his advice.
Wow. You guys have been busy [and I've been doing music stuff and painting].
Online Writers Workshops abound on the web — some good; some not. I started a MFA program in creative writing and discovered that it was trying to take me down the path that I already traveled as an undergrad Lit major — making me “literary.” Been there. The one thing I love about cons and skiffy writers in general is that imparting the nuts and bolts stuff for newbies is easily done. I’ve learned more from just sitting around with people like Kit and Alis and Sherwood, doing my “fly on wall” thing, than I ever did in school or from books. Donald Maas’ weekend seminar that expands from the Writing the Breakout Novel book is actually really good for beginners. It doesn’t stress genre; it stresses pacing, which is something we can all learn from, imho. I tried doing the Weekend Novelist, and while it helped a lot to get started, I never finished it. Not that I won’t — I just haven’t yet.
As to the Novel or Short Story decision — I’ve been told that my short stories are really beginnings of novels. I’ll admit that I build a complete world, with its economics and rules to the magic, before I start. I can’t give advice on switching from Short Story to Novel except that I’ve tried it with mixed results. I find that I need to rework the characters and the world a little — sometimes even combine worlds — to make a story interesting enough to be told in novel form. But I’m working on it. After First Novel.
Barb
Barb said “I’ve been told that my short stories are really beginnings of novels.”
LOL!! I started out as a poet, but all my poems told stories. So then I wrote short stories. And my stories kept getting longer and longer and longer until they were too long for any magazine to consider. So I had to turn into a novelist!
I did an MFA program, actually. I wrote literary short stories for my thesis. It was a good fit for me because my writing very much sucked when I went into the program and I was a LOT better when I came out. I might have been able to improve on my own, but I had very good teachers and I was exposed to all kinds of books and read CONSTANTLY for three years, and I think reading EVERYTHING helps a writer. Also I met so many cool people.
And one other student in my MFA program loved fantasy, and we would mutter to one another after workshops about how we really wanted to write fantasy books someday, as much as we enjoyed literary stuff. Cam went on to get a two-book deal to write Malazan books (he made up that world with Steven Erikson, the fellow who has published several books set in that world). So MFA programs don’t automatically kill fantasy writers. . . they just force us to take a few detours.
–Muneraven
ok so I’ve re-written the beginning of my story an would like a little feedback. Don’t be gentle, otherwise I won’t learn ok. I havn’t written anything since school a long time ago now but i kinda like it so far. It’s probably not great, but a few pointers would be cool
Thanks everyone that comments on it,be it nicely or not
(just hope it emailed alright or else i’ll look like a nob)
Jay, I’m waiting for your piece to appear so I can read it.
AAAARGH! I just found a major plot hole in my story. Now I’m frantically thinking of how to fix it and whether the fix will affect the rest of the story or not (I’ll go back and fix what I’ve written on the re-write).
Le sigh.
hmm…posted it last night and don’t know what happened. How long is it supposed to take for your post to appear? Well I guess I’ll just have to post it again. Sorry if whoever’s running this site and getting the mail gets it more than once.
Trying again
ok I’ve posted it again and it wasn’t there straight away. I’m not sure if that’s what is supposed to happen. I hope it worked this time though and I actually changed a few words (yet again). If it has worked and you choose to comment remember that I do not expect you to be gentle ok. Please write what you think, not what you think that I’d like to hear, otherwise I won’t end up learning anything.
Thanks Jay
well it’s still not there
I don’t know what’s happened, I probably did something wrong. Do you have to be logged in to submit your 13 lines? Either that or the powers that be’s computer’s thought it looked tasty and ate it. Or they’re just sparing everybody something that they consider to be a really painful read! lol
Well if I have done something wrong please tell me what it could be so I can try again.
I am being a little ambitious and my intentions are to write this story slightly reminiscent to a Robert Ludlum novel but obviously with a different spin on things if I’m submitting it here.
well any ideas about what’s gone wrong, let me know.
Jay
Oooh it bounced back. So that’s why! Ok I did send it once before but it didn’t come up so if it does get posted please post the last version because I have changed a few things ok thanks
I’ve just checked and yours isn’t up yet, Jay.
The site appears to be having trouble with the submissions. I know there was trouble in the past. Perhaps it has surfaced again? Or maybe the person who gets the emails is off sick, and therefore can’t read them and put them on the site.
I received a ‘bounced’ message for my 13 lines as well, but then they appeared on the site the next day without me having to re-send them. I’m not sure what is going on there.
Has anyone read the ‘Superman’ post on the front page? It made me think about what is universal and what is cultural in my own work.
I fixed the plot-hole as well - yay! - with some fancy reworking of the timeline. I do hope that is the last one of those pesky beasties that I see.
Now, back to the typing - I have yet to make my quota for today.
Toodles.
yeah Rosamundra it bounced back again. Was wondering if it could be that I don’t have outlook as my default mail client? I don’t really understand what will happen if I click yes to that option. Computers are a little new to me so if I don’t know what something means I click no…clever hey!
well see you all later….happy typing
Jay,
Don’t click that box! It has nothing to do with that email getting through. What it will do is make Outlook your email program, instead of the one you currently use. I don’t know whether you would want this to happen or not.
What email program are you suing to send the messages? How are you sending them?
Have you considered posting on the Questions page, like Caitrin did, to tell the site owners what has happened and to ask if there are any problems? As I said, my 13 lines went up very quickly (overnight, from memory), so I don’t know why yours aren’t appearing.
There was a problem with emails getting through and the system generating a bounced email message for them. I thought it had been fixed, but maybe not.
Hope this helps.
Rosamunda
P.S. To keep this on topic: One writing book that I’m rather fond of is Kate Grenville’s The Writing Book. It guides you through the process of writing a story, and has some very good exercises to help develop your writing muscles. It’s worth looking through in the bookstore, at least, to see if it is what you are after or not.
My writing groups are so insane that I wouldn’t recommend them to anyone. The one Sherwood recommended sounds good.
I’ve got a question - what is wrong with having other beginners critique? Sure, they aren’t published, but they are readers. The folks who buy your book aren’t published writers either, they just buy books and read them. They may not have an exact answer of how to fix a problem, but they aren’t the writer of the book - the writer is. I think I’m responsible for fixing my novel’s problems, not my reader, whoever they are.
Barb - It’s funny that you mention that you haven’t finished The Weekend Novelist. I have a superstition where I have avoided reading the end of the book, the chapter regarding the final draft, no matter how many times I’ve reread the rest as I work along. I know my inner critic will take the final draft advice and pummel my earlier drafts, and I’m not looking at the last chapter until I’ve worked up to that point and earn the right by finishing. It’s amazing the silly games we play to keep ourselves motivated.
Hmm. Good question, Stacy. For myself, I want both/all kinds in my first round of critiques.
The people who are just readers give me the best take on how the whole book plays as it now stands. They don’t necessarily give me much by way of hints about what exactly gave them their opinions.
Other beginning writers give me a mixed set of feedback. They tend to spot annoying plot-gaps, wobbly characters, or bits of inconsistency. They can frequently, but not always give me ideas about how to fix same. This is where the bulk of the critiquing of Ghost Dancer (my first book) has been. Their views are valuable, but it’s often hard work to parse out what I need to do from their critiques.
I only got one professional to critique Ghost Dancer, so I can’t really speak about the group as a whole. His critique seems in line with what I see here on the 13-line critiques, though, so I’ll generalize. The critique was specific, thorough, and professional. Everything he said came with specific notions about how one might go about fixing the problems. He had a lot more to say about overall pacing, and potential removal of material from the book (the others were loathe to remove good stuff, even if it contributed no forward motion). He seemed to have the best vision of the book as it could be. Interestingly he did not tend to notice plot holes and inconsistencies as much as the beginning writers - possibly because he was rushed for time, possibly because he assumes I’m saavy enough to catch them myself.
My only silly game on finishing, is that when I get far enough along to know I could finish, I start posting beginning chapters at my writers’ group. They will then pester me endlessly until I actually finish the darned thing - and then pester me for the rewrites! When I dropped out of posting Ghost Dancer for a month due to other issues, one poster wrote a poem entitled Lament for a Ghost Dancer, while another found my brother’s home phone # (in Germany!), and called him up to ask him to tell me to get back to writing. I’m not sure if this is a good sign, or simply that my writing group is deranged, but I’m quite certain I would not be as far along as I am without them.
Stacy — So THAT’s why I don’t finish any of those “this is how you do it” books! It’s my subconscious mind games!
Barb
Hi all,
I’m Wade. I’ve finished my first novel in Feburary. I’m on my second and third novels at the same time because my characters are greedy of my time.
I find that I enjoy writing in first person as a female character. i also find it hard to write in third person. I feel I lose the intimacy first person has when I use third person. Does anyone have this problem? Also, I enjoy writing in the present tense. But I’m learning to ejoy past tense since it is the perferred tense.
Wade
EVERYONE is welcome over at the 13 Line Critique page. You’d don’t have to be a published writer to critique. Ergo, nothing’s wrong with your posting comments, Stacy, or anyone other reader, either.
Jay, aha, that explains it! Look, I posted an announcement on the general blog about technical difficulties with email. I take it you didn’t read it. It might not be a bad idea for everyone to keep an eye out for announcements from now on, hmmmm?
To repeat — one of the addresses to which that email goes has been inadvertently listed on an anti-spam blacklist. That is the address that’s sending the bounce-back messages. All the other addresses to which your emails go are working just fine. We are getting all submissions. No one needs to keep sending.
Jay, it would really help if you would use a consisent name, too, on your emails from now on. You sent 3 emails. I posted two of them before I noticed they were the same, and Kevin put up the third, thinking you were yet another person. So your story opening is up now, and twice at that, with comments.
I don’t read this page, writing the first novel, that is, every day. Any messages that anyone has for me or Kevin should be sent in email to the critique address.
Thanks, everyone!
Thank you for letting us know how to contact you, Kit. I was puzzled about that.
I have the opposite problem. I loathe first person, both writing in it and reading it. I hate it so much that I would prefer to write in second person rather than writing in first person.
I’m third person, past tense all the way (maybe my school just did a very good job of ‘training’ me this way). I actually find third person far more intimate than first person - there is no ‘I’ to get in the way of my interactions with the characters.
Just my personal opinion and two cent’s worth.
Oops sorry about that! I promise I’ll use only the email addy that I signed in here with ok….my bad!
I just have a little comment that really bugs me about some novels.
So many people writhe that their character jumps over a gap or whatever and ends up grabbing hold of a ledge to save themselves from plumeting to their death. While doing this, a lot of authors seem to think that writing the afore mentioned character wrenches, dislocates or generally hurts their shoulders. The character is in tremendous pain every time this happens, and sometimes the same character cops it more than once in the same book. But every time their right to go off to save the world again in two days.
Truth be told, dislocating your shoulder doesn’t really hurt. Don’t get me wrong it doesn’t tickle, but it’s not all that bad. (Trust me I’d know.) But once you’ve done damage to it once it will never be the same again.
Also if you do happen to do it, it takes more than a few weeks to heal, sometimes it doesn’t.
Why not let a character break an arm, or their little finger or something. I’ve just read too many novels where the characters can heal miraculously from their injuries. Also because so many authors have done it it’s not too imaginative.
Ok I’ve said my piece. I’m not picking on any particular writers, I’m just saying that reading the same thin in nearly every book is a little annoying.
Thanks for letting me rant n rave.
c ya
Jay,
You are right, the hero or heroin in many thriller type adventure stories bounces back miraculously from seemingly serious injury..perhaps in some way the author is saving us the reader the boredom of a hospital chapter when we just want to see what happens next..(of course not denying the pain of shoulder surgery)
Also, the hero of our story must always appear invincible, even though we know he or she is not, and is only human, it makes them more appealling and believable to conquer whatever challenge the story is giving them.
Superman or spiderman for example, be it they are comic book characters, possess these qualities,as do the modern day heros of our generations such as Brigdet Jones (sorry I am a typical girl power reader) and Carrie Bradshaw.
Readers such as myself like to see the main character as someone they can relate to and not pity but admire and cheer on in adversity..
Jay, I like your point about common hero injury, because you make a great point for “write what you know.” I’ve never dislocated my shoulder, but I’ve seen how much Mel Gibson acted in pain in Lethal Weapon, and I’ve seen hockey players hurt in reality. But you have real experience, which is so valuable, wheras I would not see a problem with making the same common mistake over again, because who hasn’t seen the actor with the hurt shoulder? It’s a great point for either sticking to something you truly know or really doing research before assuming anything.
It reminds me of the only time I’ve critiqued an entire novel for someone - we had to trade our respective knowledge base on science via email so I could check some things I doubted and make sure they were possible. For example, he had a character with fatal lung damage talking. I doubted the anatomical possibilities, as speech requires air, and I didn’t know if the writer had considered and researched that already. Pesky reality, it gets in the way of making things happen your way.
I’m being very picky, personally, with my own novel-in-progress as well. My main character gives birth, which I have experienced, but I had an epidural and my character doesn’t have that option. So I’m having a friend of mine who has gone through natural childbirth give me some descriptive material to work with when I put my poor heroine through labor.
The hardest part of writing for me is focus. I have children 3 & 5 years old and everytime I get on the computer, some drama unfolds that they have to involve me in. Sitting in my lap, smearing something on the screen, reading the letters and asking me what everything says.
Sometimes I just want to rent a hotel room and lock myself inside and write. Then again, I might be too distracted by wondering what’s going on at home. My husband isn’t as watchful as I am. I write when my children are sleeping and then when my husband comes home from work at night, he sits next to me and reads everything I write.
I do manage to get short stories and articles published every now and then, but what I really want is to have a book published. I have 3 manuscripts right now in circulation, 2 novels and 1 pet care book. I’ve been looking at agents and publishers, with no luck yet.
I do have a publisher looking at a picture book manuscript now. I’m not getting my hopes up, but my fingers are crossed. It always helps when I can communicate with other writers. It makes me feel like I still have a chance.
Writing with small children, on top of a job, is rough–I know, been there, done that, twice. (Nearly burned down the house once, out of bone-jarring, brain-frozen exhaustion.)
But it will happen–the kids get older and more self-sufficient (and trustworthy: you don’t worry that a fourth grader will drink draino, for example) and meanwhile, constantly working on one’s craft has one ready when opportunity knocks. Good for you for getting the ms out there, getting feedback, working on skills. That’s what makes it happen.
Oh Lord, writing with small kids…
I have two boys, 6 & 8, currently home for summer vacation. I’m hip deep in a portion of plot where my POV character has something approaching a psychotic break. Trying to write that, and then getting up in the middle to make mac & cheese, or push somebody on the swing feels like an exercise in multiple personality disorder. It’s not the time, or even the interruptions, as much as it is the complete change of mental state.
writing with children…we are all in the same boat..(the ss feathersword perhaps..lol)
i too find great difficulty to accomplish anything let alone get to the several stories i’ve started in the last 5 years..
blockquote>getting up in the middle to make mac & cheese, or push somebody on the swing feels like an exercise in multiple personality disorder.
when i was reading Tapetum i laughed and could so relate to that…for me its changing spidermans costume back into peter parker while making vegemite toast and feeding the darn cat..all while checking my emails, my latest purchases on ebay and reading up on whatever i need for work the next day…oh yeh and there is that novel i started..somewhere…and there is the issue of actually eating a meal myself and getting to bed on time…sleep whats that?
A tip for all posting here: don’t forget to check the posts in the “Craft” category. Feel free to ask questions there, too.
Ok, so here is my dilemma when it comes to writing my first novel:
I have a ten thousand year history of 5 royal families that I have been creating characters and stories about since I was a little kid. Needless to say, as the timeline is ten thousand years and counting, some of the stories are fantasy genre and others science fiction genre, though I feel science fantasy would be the more appropriate term since the fantasy elements are still present in the technological setting of the later stories.
I’ve actually written a first draft of 2 of the science fiction novels, (way back when I was in high school) which I have subsequently divided up into 4 books, as necessitated by the events within them. These are of the minimalist possible content, however. To provide an example, what is now the first of these 4 books is only 75 single-spaced typed pages. However, these 75 pages contain about 50 different scenes. So, when properly fleshed out, these 75 pages will become quite long.
Anyway, work has really pushed not only my writing, but reading as well, to the background far more than I would have liked. I’m a network admin, so the amount of time I spend on reading technical manuals is quite extensive.
That said, I made the decision that it is time to get back to more consistent reading and writing. My technical brain actually functions better when I make the time for my creative brain.
So, I pulled out my very first story (yes, the beginning of the ten thousands years) and have made extensive progress in realizing the story that has been waiting for me to properly notice it for so many decades.
I just tossed the only opening I have ever had for this story and replaced it with a new one. I like it a lot better as it quickly lets the reader know the main plot point of the overall story - in this case a trilogy.
So, now I am at the point where I need to figure out the physical construction of the book. I’ve identified my viewpoint characters and have written the first few scenes.
Now, I have to figure out how I am going to tell the story. Will each new chapter bring with it a switch to a different viewpoint character? Will I have a few chapters in a row for each? I don’t know yet. The reason I’m concerned about this is that I have always written a story in chronological order. I’m not one to skip ahead and write scenes and piece them together.
For now, I know the opening act of the book and have embarked on writing through to where the next phase of the story begins.
I have a brief outline of the scenes I want to show and what I want the opening act to accomplish. But I am sure I will encounter many surprises and characters along the way.
Charles, it sounds to like you’ve done all the prep work you need to do. For one thing, those 75-page “novels” are what I’d call a “detailed outline.” You’ve identified the way you like to work, too, which is an important first step. (Remember, everyone: you need to find the way you work best, not the way someone else told you was best.)
So, what you do now is WRITE. Here’s where a little flexibility will be a great help. When you come to a scene where you’re uncertain of the point of view character, try writing a few lines from the povs of several different characters and just see how it goes. If one person dries up on you, then you know it’s not him/her.
Also, look at the very end of the previous scene. Is there a natural point of transition to another character? For instanc,e suppose two people are having an argument from one character’s pov. The character who loses storms off in disgust. The reader will naturally wonder what he’s thinking or planning now, so a shift to his pov would seem very logical.
Hi Wade,
Yes, I have exactly this problem! Which is why all my books are in first person. I write both male and female characters in first, but women are harder. When I write third I just can’t get into the character’s head, and my prose comes out very stiff. One exercise I did with a piece that I really want to come out in third, is translating my stiff third person to first, loosening it up - getting into the character’s voice - and then translating BACK to third. It is amazing how much better the third person prose reads after that. I think the key is getting out of the “narrator’s voice” and into the “character’s voice.”
But I can’t do present tense - or rather I can for a short time, but then I start feeling as if I’m holding my breath, waiting for a hammer to fall on my head. I’m with present tenst like some people are with first person - which, of course, I can’t understand at all!!!
It’s a good thing different people have different tastes, eh?
Hope this helps,
Carol
Hi Elaine,
Thank you for the kind words!
My best advice is: Don’t overanalyze your characters early on, and don’t make them try to fit some pattern or sheet of description. Let them grow with your story. I begin writing with only a sketch of a character, and approach the work as if I’ve just been introduced. OK, I know a bit about what he looks like. And I know what she’s doing in this situation, and maybe a little about education or background - but not much. There’s LOTS I don’t know. And then, I introduce plot. How does this man react to being inspected on the auction block or how does he react when confronted by a very angry woman who believes he ruined her life? That’s when I start analyzing.
In the second case: One can argue or strike back at an accuser and declare innocence (I know my character would never have hurt her intentionally and he knows it) or one can accept the accusation and feel guilty, even though you know it’s not your fault. I choose the second way for Aidan. What does that tell me about him? When I hit him with something else, I must take into account what I’ve just learned about him. And so, as I develop the plot, I think…well, what would make him strike back? Anything? Of course he will feel a sense of injustice if this person keeps hammering at him. But perhaps he would never strike back and direct that roused passion in another direction. That is, I must decide if he’s a wimp, or a masochist, or a person with a soft outer shell and a core of iron?
Sometimes I discover I’ve taken the wrong tack, and have to go back and adjust. When I first wrote Transformation, I made Aleksander much more intentionally cruel. He crossed a certain moral line that I found I could not step back across. He is still cruel, but because I had “things I wanted to do with him” I had to tread carefully, consider the roots of his personality, and where HE might draw a line if he ever believed he had to.
Does this help? Good luck and keep writing - practice is what makes it happen.
Carol
Hi Charles,
Congratulations on making such excellent progress with such a huge story. I went through exactly this same decision process as I wrote Guardians of the Keep. I had three point-of-view characters. I am not one to skip ahead with the story either. I write from beginning to end, developing plot and character as I go.
The critical issue here is keeping the reader apprised of whose eyes we are looking through at all times. Confusion takes the reader out of the story.
In some cases the action proceeds in strict sequence. And in some cases we see the same events from two different points of view. I chose to keep a single POV within a chapter, but I let the story itself dictate how many chapters in a row came from a single POV. Keeping a single POV per chapter allowed me to juggle chapters to make sure that the most dramatic telling came first, that twists and surprises were not spoiled by having multiple views. As the story developed I found places where I could minimize switching by putting several chapters in a row.
If you are telling the story from multple POVs, consider introducing the first POV change early enough that readers don’t feel cheated. Sometimes they invest so heavily in a character that it is a dreadful letdown to switch.
Good luck and keep going,
Carol
Thanks for the comments. It’s nice to know that I’m not alone!
-Donna
What I’m finding hard at the moment is how to get my meaning across on paper…or on the computer screen as that’s how far it’s progressed so far. Also I’m still having a little trouble motivating myself to write more still.
I know where I want the story to progress to and in a rough sense how I want to get it there, but I just seem unable still to get further on.
I’m thinking of writing just the basic outline of the scenes to take place, which characters are involved and locations. Then flesh it out a little more thoroughly later on.
But it could be just that I have one of my arms immobilised in a sling, which doesn’t exactly make for the easies typing. lol
But that’s probably just another form of procrastination because I can still think clearly and can still type…just VERY slowly.
I have ideas constantly flashing in my mind about the plot of my story, some changing what I’ve already written. Some of these ideas aren’t bad…well I don’t think anyway. But it’s the constantly changing ideas about how to progress the story that are a little disheartening, considering some have been written and there’s a lot of other avenues to explore.
If a story is constantly evolving in my mind, then that means to me, I haven’t got it quite right yet. Poor you with one arm in a sling! But you must have heard many of us say: Notebooks! Have a notebook for each story/novel you are writing. Write down all those wonderful ideas. You don’t have to use them all, or any, but there’s a certain symmetry to stories that when they come together they click. I think it was Janny Wurts who said on her site somewhere. Just write it, even if it doesn’t make sense at the time, the back brain is working away and there’s probably a reason for it that will come to you later.
If you try writing all these wonderful ideas into the story itself you will probably find yourself going off on a tangent where you never meant to go. So write them separately and let them sit and they’ll either find their place or won’t.
Well. That’s my theory, anyway.
Katharine,
Thank you for your comments and encouragement. What is interesting — at least to me - - is that my writing habits — a sparse draft or “detailed outline” as you say to establish the story and then following this up with a more developed and detailed draft — developed mostly out of necessity. I started writing on an old typewriter that had a large ribbon that was black on its top half and red on its bottom half. We only had the one ribbon available for the typewriter. As there was no Internet shopping back then that ribbon was all I had. So, if one were to look at my old science fiction works they start off with nice black type which ends up fading away to be replaced the remainder of the way with increasingly faded red type.
It wasn’t until I purchased an Apple IIc and moved onto the computer when I started really fleshing out my stories.
Had I not been faced with limited resources who knows what writing process I might have developed!
Carol,
Thanks to you as well for your resonse. My initial reaction to first person narrative is that it is not my preference. However, when I go through my Andre Norton collection (my largest) I am amazed at how many of the stories I loved so much were written in first person by her. I guess it is a testament to excellent writing that the first person style doesn’t intrude.
I would have to say my favorite first person novel is Norton’s “The Crystal Gryphon”. This is the first time I read a book that had 2 first person narratives. The book alternated chapters between the two points of view with some events overlapping as each described them.
I suspect that speaking in a clearly identifiable first person voice for more than one character in a book is quite daunting.
I write in third person narrative. I used to have a lot more omnipresent narrative in the past, but my main recent writing exercise has been to eliminate that viewpoint and focus instead on singular third person points of view within a chapter.
I’ve gone back and looked at my first more fleshed out writing on the computer and now the shifts in narrative are apparent. One exercise that I only do occasionally is to take an old scene from something I wrote a while ago and rewrite it strictly from only one third person view. I don’t do this too often because I have found myself distracted by that story and gone off on a writing tangent away from what I was supposed to be working on.
Even writing can be a procrastination tool!
In the book I’ve finally decided I should write (the beginning of the ten thousand year timeline) I am actually having fun with using the events and interactions as a way to introduce my point of view characters. So far, the book as a whole has 5 definite point of view characters, 3 of which appear in the opening section. I actually am introducing all 3 viewpoints within the first 4 chapters. I’ve found a way to have these switches flow nicely.
Now, whether or not I can keep that up remains to be seen.
makoiyi,
A notebook would be a great idea….but at the moment, being right handed with my right arm in this sling, I can’t write by hand. But I am lucky that I can type because it holds my arm at a ninety degree angle to my stomach so I’m always in a position that enables me to type!
So what I’ve started to do instead is I’ve opened a section of my file for my novel and am using this for short notes. I’ve sectioned it off so It’ll be nice and easy to delete later and It’s right there any time I’d like to look at it or revise any ideas that I’ve had about the story.
But I’ll get a notebook in a months time so I don’t have to be sitting at the computer to add to it.
I have a question, please. Writing isn’t difficult for me; coming up with a story idea is. Would anyone be willing to explain how they come up with story ideas? Thanks for any assistance.
Anyone have any suggestions on how to describe accents? For ex, if you had to describe the differences between a Yorkshire accent, an upper crust London accent, and a Dublin-Irish accent to someone who’d never heard them before, how would you do it?
Last year I sent a novel to a small press publisher. They asked for the full and rejected it with a, please rewrite and send back to us. I said I needed it to sit for a while, and that was fine with them, and meanwhile if I had anything else to pelase send. Well I did send them something recently but they rejected that and hadn’t forgotten who I was. Could I please send the original novel if I’d rewritten. I guess this was a year ago, but the novel seems to have stuck in their minds.
I don’t know what to do. The publisher is small and they do pod, but it’s not the kind of pod publisher everyone reviles. This one’s credentials are good.
What I’m not cert