When One Thing Works For Another

Since storyboarding for one work in progress, I have been tinkering with the tense and point of view in another work in progress. As I go through scenes in that story I have been noticing things that aren’t working that I didn’t see before. It’s like while I go through this unstoryboarded story, I can see it storyboarded in my mind and where the story has flaws–just as if I had storyboarded it.

I will still storyboard this story, but it is interesting to see where things are flowing and where things aren’t. It is like storyboarding the one story, I opened a door in my mind. I like it when doors open!

Except, I have hair.

Online Studies

Hi!

My instructor, Susan Meier, said it’s okay to promote her in the comment section of my last blog post. And no, she isn’t some evil taskmaster. She is kind and very willing to answer everyone’s zillion questions.

Susan Meier

It is only lately that I’ve discoveredRWA’s (Romance Writers of America) online courses. They are fabulous because they are affordable (usually in the $20-$30 range for the ones I’ve taken), the instructors are willing to answer questions and in some courses, even give you specific feedback on your work. As well, you never have to leave the comfort of your couch–everything comes in on email. Does it get any better than that? Of course it does! It improves your writing and puts more tools in your toolbox.

Right now, I am taking the Orange County RWA Chapter’s course called, “Can This Manuscript Be Saved?” And as many of us in the course have discovered, yes it can be saved! I can’t tell you how much that storyboard is clearing things up in my mind. It’s almost like I have a new, fresh brain when it comes to that story. I can look at it and see where my focus is off. I seriously cannot believe I procrastinated on making a storyboard for as long as I did. (And even though Meier didn’t specifically tell us to storyboard in her lesson, this was the method of displaying scenes that I chose. I totally give Meier credit for the Eureka moment in regards to storyboarding as the idea came directly from her suggestion to do the action/reaction/decision exercise mentioned in my last post.)

I’ve also popped over to Susan’s ‘How to Analyze the Books You Read’ workshop. (It’s free.) Although it is romance focused, the ideas can be applied to any genre if you are trying to determine what your book needs in order to fit a publishing line–or even why certain publishers keep rejecting your story.

What I like about Susan’s approaches is that everything is very simple yet effective. You don’t need a PhD in creative writing to make use of her tips.

What more could you ask for?

Storyboarding

I have finally submitted.

Way back when I was a librarian, I did some reading to the grade nines in my school. I researched the author Gary Paulson as well as read from some of his stories. When I did background research on him, I discovered that he uses storyboards. He writes it all out on a long sheet of paper on his wall. He knows what is going where and why and when and all that detailed sort of thing. At the time I laughed to myself. Who would ever put that much work into their story? Surely you can keep it all flowing in your mind and it all stays together and focused, right?

Not.

(Please note this man has written over 70 books and knows what he is doing.
I on the other hand, have no published books and sometimes know what I am doing.)

It certainly is tricky to step back and see everything when you have two subplots competing in a 115,000 word document. Somehow, it is a bit difficult to get far enough away from that beast. And I tried. Oh, I tried. I wrote down all the scenes in a notebook. Sometimes I even wrote down all the scenes along with their purpose. Honestly, I learned that I can excuse anything. This scene? Oh, well it is there for humour! I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that my scene list didn’t help me out much. Still I rejected the storyboard idea. Too much work. What a waste of sticky notes. What a lot of tinkering. It won’t actually help. I’d better check my email instead or read a book on writing that will hand me my magic answer on why my book has no focus and what I can do to fix it.

Right. You can pretty much guess how that worked out for me too, can’t you?

On the up side, I learned a lot and fixed a lot of other things that were wrong with my manuscript that I may not have otherwise noticed.

Finally, I came across an online course on saving your manuscript. Oooh, a $32 solution! Plus a very valid excuse to check my email several times a day? Golden.

The instructor recommends you take your printed-out ms and tag it with sticky notes–things that pop out as not working for you. (By the way, printing out my ms is another thing I procrastinate on. I’m cheap, what can I say?) As you flip through, you’re to keep the idea in mind that any action begets a reaction which leads to a decision. That decision leads to a new action, reaction and decision. It’s so logical and obvious that I’m shocked that I didn’t come across the idea sooner. A few days before this lesson, I had written out each scene (one or two words about each scene) with an arrow to the next scene. Looking at this I could see some things were not flowing the way I wanted them to. But still, what could I do? Then I was provided with the brilliant action/reaction/decision tool. Using this flowchart thingy, I took each scene and wrote it on a coloured stick note along with whether it was an action/reaction/decision.

Naturally, some scenes were simply an action and some had an action and a reaction with the following scene holding the decision. Sometimes, I had a scene that had none of the above. Just a brilliant baby that I was unable to slaughter in edits. But now I can see what pesky scenes are interrupting my flow and the story’s focus. Those scenes I noted on yellow stickies. The romance/home life plot is pink. The work life plot is green.

I stuck all those stickies on my wall. Damn things keep falling off though–even after getting heated by the blow dryer to see if it would make the adhesive more sticky (it doesn’t appear to). Anyway, when they aren’t fluttering to the floor and amusing my cats, they give me a chance to step back and see where I have the different plots bunched up, where things slow down and where I have to do some edits.

My next job is to figure out how many pages each scene is and write it on my sticky notes. When I do that, I think I will be able to address pacing. How? Well, I will have my action/reaction/decision listed there and depending on how important a turning point it is–or not–I will be able to determine if the length of the scene is reflective of what is happening action/reaction/decision wise. Yes! More purposeful edits lined up for the future.

I think I can do this. Oh heck, I know I can. And I’m excited because…oh hell…this is going to cost me a lot of mochas as motivation, isn’t it?

Freaky Moment

So I am reading someone’s chapters rewrite. And I’m making notes on their characterization, thinking about their plot and all that good stuff.

Meanwhile, my daughter, who is unable to read or write yet (she can print letters), is on the kitchen counter making me a note. She comes over when she is done and hands me a note.

The note says, “plot”.

Story Arcs

I’ve been working on the progression in one of my stories and it has been an interesting adventure. It is serving to be much harder to fix than a couple of overused adjectives. Anyway, I created story arcs for the several different plot lines I have going on and lo and behold, the tip of the old arc is not where I thought it was for one of the story lines. Who knew that the big event of the office break-in would be a mere turning point for the main character and not the climax? I didn’t. Heck, I didn’t even really think about it. It was an interesting surprise!

Dramatic Background

I’m reading James Frey’s book, How to Write a Damn Good Mystery right now. Okay, not at this instant because I am blogging about it while I let the last chapter sink in. I like Frey’s books as they are such a nice, fast read. You are learning while laughing (and no, I’m not going to kill you with any of that silly, waaaaay overused ’LOL’ crap. It’s straight from the hip, anti-hyperbole headquarters around here. Mostly). Anyway, tonight I came across his idea that dramatic events besides the mystery should be happening in the background. In some ways the dramatic event will have an effect on the murder investigation that is central to the story and in other ways, it won’t. Either way it will add a sense of realism to your story. And realism is good.

(I’ve never been to an anti-war protest before, just a tuition hike protest. My shoulder was on the news.
I know, my fame astounds me too.)

Being a writer of chick lit/romantic comedies (whatever you want to call them), I would argue that a dramatic background event could be used in any story, not just a mystery. The problem is, murder investigations are usually short lived and the timeframe covered in a mystery is rather short compared to other stories. His examples are short-term events, or events that you sure as heck hope will be short term, such as a hostage situation, political campaign, protest, etc). These work for stories that cover a short timeline. What about other stories? Stories that cover a longer period of time? I suppose you could have something dramatic going on.

The immediate example that came to mind was from one of Meg Cabot’s Heather Wells mysteries. There is a blizzard going on. It changes the setting in more than one way. The blizzard becomes a character, it becomes an accessory, it becomes an obstacle; it becomes more than fluffy stuff on the ground. Cool. Very cool. But what about non-mystery stories? Hmm. I think I’ll be keeping that in mind for future stories.

Cool Serendipity

I decided that I’d better try once again to figure out if a word I made up actually meant something. You see, in one of my stories, this astrophysicist is working on this project for the International Space Station and the project is called the HIMLEN project. Which I guess, is an acronym for something I haven’t actually made up. Anyway, I decided I’d better make sure it doesn’t mean ‘penis’ in German or something. (Thankfully, it doesn’t.) But one site said that in Swedish it means ‘sky’. Other sites disagree and tell me it isn’t a word. Anyway, if it does really mean ‘sky’ or ‘in the sky’, then that is bloody wonderful! How’s that for a little serendipity?

Speaking of serendipity, the heroine’s favourite singer has just come on the radio. I love serendipity. It’s my friend. It always makes me feel as though I am on the right track. (Which is a hard feeling to hold onto sometimes because everyone has an idea of what I should ‘really’ be doing.)

Here’s to serendipity!

Time is a Strange Thing

It’s true and time does do strange things. For example, my daughter has been in school for a whole three days now. It feels more like a week and a half. That is strange. Annoyingly strange.

However, what I am actually getting at is the fact that after you have written something, let it sit for awhile and then when you come back…things are a lot different. And I don’t get it. Sure, sure time gives you distance and you can see things you didn’t see before, blah, blah, blah. But still, there has got to be some strange and wonderful writing time-continuum that is seriously messed up. Do errors grow? (I swear I would have noticed that ‘but’ was missing its ‘u’ when editing months ago.) Does some writing become wittier and more creative and wonderfully descriptive? (Or did I do that?)

I’ve got things I don’t even remember writing. I’ve got things that are so ‘out there’ descriptively that I wonder who wrote them (must have been me). I’ve got blatant errors that make me wonder where my head was. Or wasn’t. And I’ve got some pieces of writing that I look at and think ‘now, there. I’ve got something there’. So is this all real, or is my writing some victim (a somewhat happy victim) of some strange time warp? Or even better, am I in some weird time-frame where nothing is actually real? Maybe I’m really some little kid’s science experiment and at any moment I could be tossed in the dumpster by the kid’s mom when the poor kid isn’t looking. Or maybe, the kid’s older sibling will dump some of his dad’s beer in the tank to make things really interesting. (Hello out there? Yes, I prefer Vodka. Thanks! Preferably with juice, if you can swing it. It doesn’t matter what kind of juice.) Maybe I’m in some solipsistic world and I only think I am real and that all that surrounds me is important and significant and real. Maybe this is all just pretend and fluxes on mood.