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November 30, 2020 · 6:00 am

Goodbye NaNoWriMo2020 and Hello Revisions #amwriting

Today is the final day of 2020’s NaNoWriMo. Many writers have passed the hurdle and already collected their winners’ goodies. They have ordered their winner’s T-shirt and are embarking on revisions.

Others have decided they’re never going to finish, it’s a waste of time, and they’ll never do this again.

But some will.

The real storytellers, people who can’t completely stifle that dream of writing, will return in several years with a better idea and a realistic plan. They’ll conquer it, and writing will become their passion.

This year, I have so far written over 90,000 words. I wrote the final scenes of Bleakbourne on Heath, the alt-Arthurian serial I lost momentum on and couldn’t finish. Also, I made headway on my other unfinished novel, focusing on my antagonist’s story. In discovering the logic of a tainted relic, I accidentally wrote a backstory that became a novel. It is ¾ of the way done.

Participating in NaNoWriMo for the last ten years has taught me discipline.

It makes me do what is the most challenging thing for me—I have to ignore my inner editor to get my word count.

For that reason alone, I will most likely always “do” NaNoWriMo, even when I am no longer able to be a Municipal Liaison.

I love the rush, the thrill of having written something for myself, something I alone will see and enjoy. But more than that, I love knowing that some of what I have written is good and is worthy of sharing with readers.

When I finally write the last words of my accidental novel, the work will have only begun.

I will set it aside, as I need to gain some distance. I’ll go back to finalizing Bleakbourne on Heath, which will take a couple of weeks, or even a month or two. By the time that book is ready for the editor, I’ll be able to see my other work with fresh eyes.

Writers tell me all the time how new and intriguing characters pop up and take their tale in a different direction. Sometimes this works out well. Other times, not so much. I floundered for years on my first novel and can tell you now, it will never be published.

I didn’t know the first thing about how to write a novel, which is apparent when you look at that old manuscript. I didn’t realize that authors are sculptors. The first draft is not the finished product. It’s only a roughly shaped block of clay.

In that glorious moment where we write the final words of our novel, we see it as a precious object, as if it were complete.

Trust me, others won’t see the story the way you do just yet.

A block of clay is only a lump of sticky dirt, but a sculptor envisions what that mass of soil can become. They begin by scraping the layers away until the real shape emerges. That is what we must do.

We scrape away, scene by scene, removing the extraneous fluff in one place and adding more substance in others.

Each chapter is made up of scenes. It might be one scene or several strung together, but these scenes have an arc to them. They’re shaped by action and reaction.

These arcs of action and reaction begin at point A and end at point B. Each launching point will land on a slightly higher point of the story arc.

Strung together, these scenes give form to the narrative, with a beginning, middle, and end.

Often, the middle is where you discover that you have lost your novel’s overall plot. This happens to me for several reasons.

First, it can happen because I deviate from the outline, and while my new idea is better, it lacks something. I go back to the original idea and rewrite it so that it conforms to that outline.

We try to figure out why the plot has failed. I have to ask myself, did the original quest turn out to be a MacGuffin? The MacGuffin’s importance to the story is not the object or goal itself, but rather its effect on the characters and their motivations.

Many times, it is inserted into the narrative with little or no explanation, as the sole purpose of the MacGuffin is to move the plot forward.

Every story has a quest of some sort. It can be a personal quest for enlightenment or a search for the Holy Grail. No matter what, the characters want something, and that thing must be sharply defined.

If the quest has become a MacGuffin, the real quest is not for the object. It is a search for power, love, money, or personal growth and must be given more prominence. The effect that searching for it has on the characters must be clearly shown.

We peel back the layers of our first draft. What symbolism have we subconsciously inserted into the story, clues that we can work with?

Authors always leave hints and symbols in their work, signs of who they are and what they believe. Sometimes it is intentional, but often it is our subconscious writer-mind in action.

If we can identify the symbolic aspect of the plot, we have the opportunity to amplify it.

I have often used the film, The Matrix as an example of how symbolism, intentionally applied, is an underpinning of world-building. When it’s done right, it can show the story in a more focused light.

In one of my favorite scenes, when Neo answers the door and is invited to the party, he at first declines. But then he notices that Du Jour, the woman with Choi, bears a tattoo of a white rabbit. He remembers seeing the words: follow the white rabbit, on his computer.

Curious and slightly fearful of what it all means, he changes his mind and goes to the party, setting a sequence of events in motion. The white rabbit tattoo is a symbol, an allegorical reference to Alice in Wonderland, a subliminal clue that things are not what they seem.

What is the deeper story? With each pass through our manuscript, we sharpen the final product, scrape away from this part and add some over here, rewording and redefining as we go.

Ultimately, we will have exposed the core of our original vision, revealed the parts we couldn’t articulate at first. Some things only become more apparent to us as we dig deeper.

This is why, while many people can write, not everyone can write well. It takes patience and time to cut away the fat and bring out the core of the plot, the story that needs to be told. It also takes practice.

Digging the deeper story out doesn’t happen overnight.

A first draft is our block of clay, and after much effort, the final draft is our finished sculpture. November 30^th has arrived, and NaNoWriMo 2020 is over.

Now the real work begins.

Credits and Attributions

David Monniaux, CC BY-SA 3.0 <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>, via Wikimedia Commons

Auguste Rodin (French, 1840-1917): Bust of Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse, 1882, terracotta, Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts, Stanford University Campus, Palo Alto, United States Wikimedia Commons contributors, “File:Rodin Carrie-Belleuse p1070141.jpg,” Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Rodin_Carrie-Belleuse_p1070141.jpg&oldid=451362532 (accessed November 29, 2020).

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Tagged as #nanowrimo2020, #writetip, revisions, symbolism, what to do next with your nanowrimo novel, writing

December 2, 2019 · 6:00 am

Revising the NaNoWriMo Novel #amwriting

Many new authors are basking in the glow of not only having met their hoped-for word count of 50,000 words in the month of November but exceeding it.

A large number of new authors have emerged from this manic writing rumble with a finished novel—something they never thought possible. But now, what do they do with it?

NOW is the time to go back and look at what you have written.

First, protect your work.

Create a new file folder in your writing files for all the background documents you will need as you get down to the real work of writing your novel. These include the original manuscript as it emerged from your head and any research. This file is where you will save future versions and also any cut scenes. I title my background file this way: Book_Title_Background

In this background file, save a copy of your original manuscript in its bloody, raw form with a file name that denotes exactly what it is.

If you are using MS Word, your manuscript title will look like this: Book_Title.docx

Saving the original draft in a separate file on a thumb drive or in a file storage service such as Dropbox, Google Drive, or OneDrive means you have a fallback manuscript in case something happens to your working files.

Now that we have Version Control out of the way let’s move on to rewriting.

In the rush of laying down the ideas in the first draft, we will have written some scenes that will need to be moved to a more logical place in the story arc or cut completely. Still others don’t yet exist and will need to be written so that the ultimate outcome makes sense.

This is a good time to draw up a brief outline that shows you at a glance what you have written. The act of writing this outline will take the better part of a day but will speed the revision process up by a month or so.

The outline allows you to cut and paste events, moving and rearranging scenes. Making the decisions first on a small, easily manageable scale rather than the larger manuscript ensures that you don’t get confused when you begin cutting and moving scenes forward or back along the timeline in the second draft.

Timeline: Make a list of all the decisions your protagonist made on their way to the final scene. Don’t omit any—you need to see her/his actions at a glance.
Now, if these choices don’t seem to follow a logical path, rearrange the order to ensure these decisions follow a logical connective evolution. Randomness is not good plotting.
Timeline: List the new order of decisions. Are they all necessary to achieve the final goal? Or are some fluff—scenes you wrote just for wordcount that don’t advance the plot and which the reader won’t care about?
Consider cutting each fluff scene. Your readers will be grateful.

Now, look at the outline of your story structure again. Ask yourself these questions:

Who is the story about now? Is the main character still the original protagonist or has a side character stolen the show? If so, you need to choose and expand on the character that best serves the story.
What is the core conflict? Is it still the same conflict as when you started?
How high are the stakes if the protagonist fails?
What does the protagonist want most now?
Did the protagonist grow and evolve as a person? If not, why not? Or did they devolve, becoming an antihero or an antagonist? Is there a new hero?
Where are the pivotal places where something important to the logic is missing?
Again, examine what doesn’t need to be included. Remove all the scenes that impart no important information to the reader and the protagonist.

Ask yourself what would make the ultimate ending feel more logical. Insert the idea for the new scene into the outline and re-examine the logic of the story arc.

Many stories are not ultimately told in chronological order. The plot should still be the same logical chain, but the story might contain flashbacks or memories. Make a note of where these occur.

Some authors use “flash forwards,” which can easily make the story arc feel clumsy and unbelievable. Inserting a flash forward requires good planning, which is where the brief outline comes in handy. The same goes for daydreams or prophetic dreams a character might have.

Many authors reject the outline process in the first draft because they prefer to “wing it.” When I write the first draft without an outline, my story will have flashes and moments of inspired writing but will wander and skip its way to the conclusion.

For me, a manuscript that I wrote “by the seat of my pants” will always require more work than a piece written to an outline. Taking a day to write a brief summary of the entire first draft in an outline form makes the second version easier for my beta readers to read and follow.

At the end of the second draft, because I have taken the time to examine the logic of my storyline, the plot and my character’s actions will make sense to my beta readers.

They, in turn, will have good suggestions for minor changes that I will consider when I write the final version.

Next up: prose, and how your writing style shapes the narrative in the revision process.