Or maybe not

Possibly I was wrong about the source of slowness, at least in part.

The last two or three, rather long, scenes have been in Gwyn's point of view. Writing them was like pulling teeth with a pair of toothpicks. The one I've been working on today is from Jenn's point of view, and it's more like "Hey wait for me, I can't write that quick."

Now, Gwyn is a private sort of person. He doesn't like to give out his thoughts on things. With some coaxing, he'll tell me what he's doing, but his emotional state and observations have to be dragged out, word by word. He's happy enough when saying what other people are doing, where he can fade into the backgroudn and become an "invisible narrator" (grumbles) but once the focus of action turns to him, he doesn't want to be part of it.

On the other hand, Jenn wants to be the center of attention and he's also happy to share his observations on things. If he had his way, he'd spend the whole novel sitting on the edge of the river watching the world go by and tell me about it.


It's not the first time I've noticed different in how my POV characters share information. I've had some who only notice what immediately effects them, and others who have to look at everything and anything and comment on it. It's a strange phenomomen. I have to work out how to use it to my advantage.

Slow

Progress has slowed down significantly since the halfway point (I still have to do all this again: nooooooooo). This is not helped by me wanting to redo a large part of this second half -- mainly J's motivation. What's at stake is he fails in the end game? He'll get arrested and, hang on, haven't we just had this? So stakes need to be upped and the attraction of succeeding as well.

Then there's the new idea, which be November's New Novel, but it is so very hard to focus on reworking an old story when there's a fresh new one trying to get attention :\

Halfway!

We've reached the halfway point of the rewrite. The end of part one!

And there was much rejoicing.

Nearly Halfway

On rewrite, I've reached a point that's 46.5% of the way through the first draft.

Title!

Thanks to some of the Evil Minions, my little novel has a title!

Now I can write the query letter too. Although I haven't finished the rewrite, I want to write the query so I can get a proper focus on the plot.

The mice are playing

With two overnight trips to Hobart in one week, I took a few days off writing.

I was mildly curious to see how the characters would react to being "ignored". I expected Gwyn would be the ring-leader. He's the one who has been bugging me to write the book so far. He's a nice, easy-going sort of characters, who has a POV and a small subplot that seem to satisfy him, but he does have a stubborn streak.

The first few days he just grumbled about a lack of progress, like usual, but then he the vague ideas I'd been toying with for a sequel and turned them into the start of a proper plot, with himself as a bad guy. The most unlikely bad guy I've ever written, I'm sure, but the story he is offering hits many of my "that'd be fun to write" buttons. Sneaky little bastard.

I need to get back to writing the WIP as soon as possible before he comes up with something worse.

Name Game

I am so tired of coming up with names for things and people.

Now I'm stuck on a surname, of all the stupid things. These are usually easy because they don't get used much, but Morgan is digging in his heels. I think he realised he was too co-operative over his first name. ("That's mine!")

So it has to start with a B, have ls and in it and end with a, or maybe e; and have d' or De at the front. Why???

(He's considering Sarles at the moment, so maybe he's just unsure.)

One Third

I'm one third of the way through the first draft.

This is the point, where you look back at all the work you've done and realise there's twice that more to go!

Therefore, I am Officially Discouraged.

Scene Structure

I've been analysing the structure of the scenes in WIP. It is discouraing.

For each Scene, there has to be a Goal, a Conflict/Obstacle and a Disaster.
Following this, the Sequel, which has a Reaction, Dilemma and Decision.

The scenes as they are don't work like that. The biggest problem being, I often end scenes with a positive rather than a negative (disaster). For example, the MC wants revenge on a former friend and he thinks his ex-girlfriend knows where the friend lives (Goal) so he goes to the shop her family runs to get her address but her sister doesn't want to give it to him (Conflict) until he goads her into giving it to him (not a Disaster).

But, I might be looking at the concept of a Scene in the wrong way. I see it as a section of writing with blank lines or other markers separating from the other sections. However if I look at the above scene (section) in conjunction with the following section, then it goes: MC wants to find where his friend lives (Goal), ex-girlfriend's sister won't give up her address (Conflict), ex-girlfriend won't give up friend's address (more Conflict), she chases MC out of house because her husband is coming home (Disaster). Then, MC is trying to get work and grumbling about things (Reaction), goes back to ex-girlfriend's house and finally offers to tell him if he'll agree to stay away their daugher (Dilemma), which he agrees to (Decision).

Scene & Sequel.

It fits!

Not so discouraging now!

Mapping

I finally gave in this morning. If Jenn is going to insist on walking around the city, then I need to have a map, even if it's rough.

It's an interesting process committing an imaginary place to paper, or screen. Partly because I don't have any software to help draw up towns :( I do have a home architect for buildings, which is handy.

I start with rough sketches on the back of a piece of paper, to get an idea of the relationships between things. It's not just a matter of drawing a rough bay and sticking a river in the middle. That puts the industrial area alongside the rich quarter. Cross out. If I move the IA to the other side of the river, the city is now split in too, and there needs to be bridges that can still allow water traffic. Try again. If the main north road is there, then that put the shops in the middle of the city, and separates out the IA and RQ, and then the river can come around like this...

It's this process of discovery that makes mapping both fascinating and frustrating. It has to fit into what I've written so far but, just like the people, the place has it's own character that won't come out until it's committed to paper.

The one building I've planned out for this world is the guard house. I got to a point where the relationships between the rooms mattered so I did a plan. I thought it was a simple place, with the front room, a barracks, a bedroom/study at the back and some storerooms. I took many pieces of paper to get building to fall into place. When I did, I discovered it had been built many years before to protect the entrance into the city. Originaly, there were 3 rendered-stone buildings -- a small guard house at the front, a barracks & a long room at the back -- all surrounded by a high wall, but over the years additionally timber rooms have been added (kitchen, storerooms etc) that connected the original three together. Very interesting. I don't know if any of that will appear in the novel, but I do have a layered, colour-coded plan showing the buildings as they are and as they were.

An Odd Thing

I am rewriting the novel I wrote in last year's Nanowrimo.

Not that's anything odd about rewriting a Nanowrimo novel, I do this all the time. The odd thing is, I've only just completed the first draft and now I'm doing a rewrite.

My usual process, and I've done this for far too many novels and not enough short stories, is this:

* Write a quick & short first draft.

* Put it aside for a few months while I work on other things.

* Come back to it fresh, and do a rewrite. This is where I add in all the structure, make all that has to happen does happen and get to know the characters.

* Put it aside for a few months while I work on other things.

* Come back to it fresh and add in the emotional & descriptive stuff.

* Fuss, fiddle & tweak, while writing query letters & stuff

So it's a slow journey for an individual novel (this is why I've only got one submittable) but it's a sort of a rolling process that, on theory, moves all them closer to being "finish".

When I've tried to do a two-draft novel (with one major) rewrite, I've got bogged down because I was trying to do too much. It's also hard to say "Just get it down and fix it in the rewrite" when you don't intend to do a rewrite. So this is my process that works for me.

Enter Falcon.

This novel's coming-to-be was different from the start, but that's another post. Come November, it took me about *mumble* days to write and then I went off to concentre on exams and other WIPs. Towards the end of November, I started getting whispers "Rewrite me." No bloody way. It was just over two weeks from when I'd finished. Instead, I started on the "final" draft for Fox, the other planet-highwayman books, because it's closed to being done. But I couldn't get into it, what with it being summer and all the end-of-year/Christmas/New Year stuff and this other novel screaming "Rewrite ME."

So, come the turn of the year, I went back to Falcon. There was this thought that it would soon become stale and I could go back to working on what I "should" be working on.

I'm currently partway through chapter 2 and I've discovered two more odd things. It's trying to be a "two draft" novel and working! And somewhere during December, my writing style changed. The words I use & the type of sentences I put them in has changed. I also prefer to work first thing in the morning rather than last thing at night.

All of which is good. But it does show that just because something works for you, doesn't mean it will always work for you.