Category Archives: First Drafts

Novel Rewriting Workshop and Other Dave Wolverton Semimars

Conventions First Drafts Giveaways Nancy Greene Rewriting Superstars Writing Seminars The Writing Life 5 Comments

Did you every have one of those stories that you know “missed it by that much”? I did. While there were some obvious fixes I knew I needed (like beefing up my descriptions), there was a fundamental flaw in the story that I couldn’t get my hands around. The story was sick and needed help. So, I took my baby to a professional.

Let me back up for a second, the story I’m talking about is my trunk novel. I’ve been picking at it for far too long. The first draft was well over 300,000 words. I know. I know. So, I broke it into three books. The problem was that the first book’s story arc was high on the Character quotient of Orson Scott Card’s MICE scale. For those who don’t know, I’m going to vastly oversimplify this. Card broke stories down to four archetypes – Milieu (setting), Issue, Character, and Event.  A character story is mostly concerned with the character’s internal journey. So, the book ended when my main character transitioned from spoiled, self-centered twit to taking responsibility for the greater community, and before the promisDavid Farlanded big battle.  A lot of the comments I received was that “nothing happened” in the story. So, books one and two became book 1. But I still had what I called a “pacing” problem. I didn’t know how to fix it. Hence, the trip to the book doctor.

The book doctor of choice and the stated course of therapy? David Farland’s Novel Rewriting Seminar. Dave is a New York Times Bestselling writer who has been translated into many languages and trained a number of #1 New York Times bestsellers, like Brandon Mull, Brandon Sanderson, and Stephenie Meyer.  His latest novel, NIGHTINGALE, has won eight awards. So, the ability to hear him speak, much less take a class from him, is an amazing opportunity.

This seminar focuses on editing. In order to attend, you have to submit a sample to Dave and be accepted. You’re committing to a lot of homework, both before and during the workshop. We had a reading list which ensured all participants were starting with the same base knowledge.

All participants send in the first 100 pages and a synopsis of their stories. Part of the pre-seminar homework is to read the first 20 pages and synopsis of the other workshop stories. Getting to read and critique other stories, when you do so honestly, is a learning experience. What do I mean by “critiquing honestly”? I mean not cutting down a story just to cut it down. Your plan should always be to help the writer improve the story. realizing that your comments are just your opinion and you’re not any smarter or better than any other writer. Use critiquing as a way to help someone, but also as a means of seeing what you are doing that might be hurting your own writing.

The work doesn’t end when you get to the workshop. This isn’t a seminar where you can sit back and zone out. Each day, we went over two or more of the workshop stories, discussed story structure and elements, and were given homework that applied the topics discussed. We each left with 10 other perspectives on our story. Another fabulous excercise we did was disecting the story-telling elements in The Hunger Games movie. Many of the workshop participants would go out to lunch or dinner together. We built a community there.

Each participant meets with Dave to go over his comments on the first 100 pages of your novel. I have to say the time spent with Dave was worth far more than the price of admission. Not only is he a genuinely wonderful person, but he has so much insight and experience over the entire entertainment industry. I could have spent hours talking to him about everything from game design to movie making to publishing, and barely dipped my toes in the well of information and experience that he has.  Dave pointed out some of the things I knew needed work – my descriptions of places and people were thin. But he also articulated the bigger problem I was having, and a way to address it.

What was the best thing about the workshop? That’s a hard question. The people I met there are wonderful. The knowledge I gained was invaluable. But, I have to say the best thing about the workshop was leaving knowing what I had to do, and that I could accomplish it.

Dave has a workshop for whereever you are in your writing career. He has a host of new writing classes scheduled for 2013 available at www.davidfarland.com/writing workshops.  These range from his new Short Fiction Master’s Class, to his Million-Dollar Outlines, Novel Revision class, and Fiction Mastery Class. While there is some overlap between the seminars, each focuses on a different aspect of the craft of writing. I can’t wait to attend some of the other ones.

As if the workshops weren’t  cool enough, if you go to to any of his workshops and mention that “I heard about it through the Fictorians,” Dave will buy you a free dinner with him (if time allows), or he’ll give you $20.

If you have the choice between dinner with Dave or $20, take the dinner. Every time.

So please check out his workshops here.

And the character ran away with the story (or, my story wandered off track). . .

Craft & Skills First Drafts Nancy Greene Rewriting The Writing Life 5 Comments

http://www.dreamstime.com/-image5158855

Hey diddle diddle

the cat and the fiddle

the cow jumped over the moon

the little dog laughed to see such a sport and

the dish ran away with the spoon

Okay, it’s all fun and games when the dish runs away with the spoon, but not so much when it’s your character who’s running off with your story. Or at least what you thought was your story.

As a discovery writer, I tend to have my stories overtaken by events. I’ve had a character yell at me that while he could be a cold blooded killer, there was no way he was going to kill that girl for that reason. When he refused, it changed everything. I have to say he was right when I looked at it, but still, what do you do?

Moments like that when my characters talk to me, heck, when they rebel are part of the reason I’m a discovery writer. For the most part, I let them take me for the ride and then see what I ended up with in editing. But sometimes the tangent the characters want to travel down isn’t one they should. Or, as often happens to me, my short story becomes a novella, becomes a novel, becomes a trilogy. Sigh. I’m in the middle of that now with New Bohemia: Just One Night.  When I started that story, it was a short that kept interrupting my ability to work on a novel. So, I figured what the heck, I’ll write the short and get it out of my system. That was months ago. At 60,000 words, the story isn’t so short anymore because I decided I needed to kill off my main character’s parents in a way she’s going to feel responsible for the deaths.  The story didn’t derail so much as I added a twist to make my characters’ break-up make sense.

 As I see it, the trick is knowing when the diversion adds to or deepens the story and when it doesn’t. If in Chapter 12, Rafe is suppose to have a have a fight with the love of his life and the relationship is supposed to look like it’s over, but, instead, if Rafe decides to go hunting with the guys and finds a magic sword that happens to be Excalibur, you might have a problem or, at least, be writing a different story than you thought you were.

If you’re an outliner, you probably know almost immediately when your characters stray and can assess whether in the overall plot arc if the diversion is a complication that should stay or navel gazing that needs to be cut. It’s a bit harder for us discovery writers. After all, we often don’t know where the story is going. (Yes, I acknowledge that this is the way to madness for some.) It could be that the first 100 pages is wrong and not the “diversion”. Been there, done that and it stinks.

So, you have a couple of choices when the characters try to run the show.

1.  Go with it. Since the characters are only the writer’s unconscious mind, they might be on to something.

2.  Assess the detour and see if it’s a path the story should travel.  If not, stop or see #5 below.

3.  If it’s a main character mutiny, write it and worry about whether it works in rewrite. This is often what I do.

4.  If it’s a minor character, cut, paste and save the “new” story for a sequel or related story.

5.  Cut, paste and save in another document, and keep on your plan or outline.

Sometimes when your characters decide to turn left instead of right, you discover wonders. Sometimes it results in the never ending story. The latter isn’t good. You must finish the story. Any story. Every story.

Remember, you need to choose what’s important for your story. If the track your character wanders onto doesn’t advance the story you want to tell,  stop, hold a character intervention and get back to the plot line you want.  If the path through the forest isn’t well defined, don’t be afraid to leave it and smell the flowers along the way. Just watch out for the big bad wolf, and Hades.

Stop Talking and Tell Me Something: Using the Dialogue Scene

Character Craft & Skills First Drafts Leigh Galbreath Rewriting The Writing Life 2 Comments

Let’s face it. Dialogue is the bane of many a writer learning the craft. We overuse it. We unnecessarily pretty it up. Frankly, we overthink it.

The talking part isn’t really all that difficult. We all know how to talk. The only thing you really need to do if you’re having trouble writing realistic conversation is to listen to real life. A nice trick is to record a conversation between real people and play it back, writing it down word for word. Scenes from movies work well for this, too.

You’ll learn pretty quick that with spoken dialogue, less is more.

The truth is that most of the dialogue shouldn’t be spoken. The majority of communication between human beings happens through body language, part of that elusive phenomenon we like to call subtext. Even when we’re not talking, we’re still having a dialogue. In fact, people tend to believe a speaker’s body language over what they’re saying. This, I think, is why it’s so difficult to write a story only using dialogue. Real people need context to fully understand the meaning of what’s being said.

Think about it. You’re main character’s girlfriend is telling her about a conflict at work. While your main character is responding to the girlfriend as if she’s listening to every word in a tone that says she cares, she’s also watching a little boy play with a toy two tables down. Does your main character really care about what her girlfriend is saying? Not really, or she would give her complete attention to the conversation.

What about the protagonist who can’t keep his eyes off the gorgeous woman in red across the room, even though he tells his date he’s not interested in her? Which do you believe-the glances or the words?

Once you understand how this works, it’s a great tool to help you stay engaged in the writing and keep the words flowing. Let’s face it, it’s so much more interesting to write a scene where people are being active, and character’s talking to each other is the most engaging activity in most novels. It’s a fantastic source of conflict, especially when someone’s words don’t match their body language.

Take the first example above. Our main character isn’t really paying attention to her girlfriend, and the girlfriend knows it. She gets irritated and calls our main character on it. Maybe there’s someone at the table next to theirs who is paying a little too much attention even though he’s not saying a word. In the second example, the protagonist’s date isn’t stupid. She knows her man has his eye on the woman in red. And maybe that gorgeous stranger has noticed it, too.

You can do all kinds of things to kick-start a flagging plot by introducing a dialogue scene. It’s where the characters figure things out and mess things up. It’s where they proclaim love and outright lie. It’s where characters show themselves even when their words say otherwise.

Your story, after all, isn’t about car chases or sword fights. It isn’t about the nefarious scheme your villain has hatched. Your story is about the people dealing with all that, and people don’t live in a vacuum or always agree with each other. They don’t always act rationally or know what they’re doing, and while it’s possible to show this in narrative, that can get boring for you and the reader. Get one or more other characters in the room to show it through dialogue and bring the situation out of the character’s head and into the real world. You’ll be amazed what can happen.

Keeping the Ball Rolling

Craft & Skills First Drafts The Writing Life The Writing Process No Comments

So, once you have the work started, how do you keep the words flowing?

Sometimes, of course, you don’t have that problem.  Sometimes you have to hustle to keep up with the flow.

But sometimes, eh, you might have to encourage things a little.  This isn’t going to be an essay on the art of encouragement.  Rather, it’s a short list of things you might find useful in keeping word productivity up.

First, some general tips/rules/suggestions:

#1 – Write.  This may seem silly, but if you don’t plant your posterior in the authorial chair and exercise your fingers on the keyboard, nothing is going to happen.  Really.  (Unless you’re one of a handful of writers that I know of who dictate everything.  But even then, the principle holds.)  Good intentions, well-laid plans, “gonna get around to it” generate no words.  Only the actual act of writing can do that.

#2 – Write consistently.  Most of us, whether we want to admit it or not, are creatures of habit; we do better at our craft if we exercise it on a regular basis.  (Okay, I’ll grant that there are writers who seem to be “burst writers”, who will produce a book or two or three almost in a blur, then not do anything for weeks or months.   But they are the exception to the rule.)  There is validity to the idea of “being in practice.”  It’s easier to slip into the creative trance if you’ve been there recently.

#2A – Be organized about your writing.  This is especially important for folks who have kids at home, or who have a day job, and therefore have to manage their time closely.  Try to write every day, but if that’s not possible, then at least set up your schedule so the back of your brain knows when you will be writing.  You almost have to have a minimum of an hour per session in order to give your mind time to get back into the flow.  Whether it’s early in the morning, late at night, three nights a week, or all day Saturday, your mind will be more prepared to write if you’ve got a regular schedule worked out.

#3 – Do as much of your research as possible before you start writing.  Those two activities require two different mindsets, and if you have to stop in the middle of the creative flow to look up something you need for a plot or character point, you can blow yourself right out of the creative trance.  If you’re lucky you can get by with just throwing in a NOTE TO SELF at that point and moving on and doing the research in the edit pass.

#4 – Another potential mindset conflict:  don’t go into editor mode while you’re in the middle of the creative flow.  That’s another case of two different mindsets needed for the two different activities, and they are often not compatible.  If you suddenly start doing heavy editing and critiquing, the odds are good you will again blow yourself out of the creative trance.

Now for a few tips and tricks about actually getting the flow started every time you sit down.

#5 – When you stop working for the day/night, don’t halt at the end of a major section, especially if you know it may be a couple of days (or longer) before you come back to it.  I don’t recall which writer I learned this from, but I can attest to the fact that it really does work.  I have hamstrung myself a couple of times by ending a night’s work at the end of a chapter or even an arc within a novel, only to have a totally blank mind when I finally was able to get back to work on it.  After the second time, I make it a point not to leave a work at such a point.  If I’m at the end of a chapter or an arc, I’ll go ahead and write the first couple of paragraphs of the next chapter, just to set the tone and point where I’m going to go next.  Sometimes I’ll even leave the last sentence I’m writing that night unfinished.  That kind of primes the mental pump for the next session.

#6 – I think this one came from Robert Silverberg originally:  if you sit down to continue and nothing wants to start flowing immediately, go back and retype the last two or three paragraphs (or maybe the last page) of what you had written last session.  Again, it seems to prime the pump, and when you get to the end of that section your mind and fingers should be ready to put out and take down new words.

#7 – This one comes from David Morrell (First Blood, among others) in his book on the craft entitled Lessons From a Lifetime of Writing.  (If you haven’t read it, do.  It’s worth the price of admission.)  One of his techniques for getting past stumbling blocks (or even the dreaded writer’s block) is to sit down and interview the character, or sometimes interview himself, asking questions as to what the problems are that are being faced, and what the character (or the author) might do to overcome them.  For those of us who are pantsers (as opposed to plotters), this may be something we’re already doing almost unconsciously.  Sometimes doing it as a conscious exercise, even talking out loud as we type, can really help.

There you go-seven suggestions/tips/tricks that can help keep productivity up and words flowing.

Good luck!