Month: November 2019

Outlining, Structure, and Understanding

When I wake up in the morning, I make myself a mug of tea and get to writing. If it’s a day off, I write from about 7:30 to 9, make myself a second mug of tea, and keep going. I’m currently on mug number two, and just remembered at 10:24am that I should probably eat breakfast. On most days, I run out of creative energy and focus by noon. But if it’s a really good day, I’m still going strong enough to make mug number three. 

I’ve worked out my writing system over more than a few years of experience; three-act outlines, sticking to a routine, and letting the outlines and first draft be messy. This is what works for me, my personality, and my tendencies. A certain amount of structure to keep myself productive, and enough understanding and freedom to let my creativity breathe. 

I like three-act story structures because they make the most sense to my brain: beginning, middle, end. What the problem is, the road to fixing it, and fixing it. I outline my books, my plots, and my characters’ personal arcs in three acts. My stories are more character-driven than plot-driven, so having individual outlines of the changes my characters go through helps me keep track of what’s going on. 

Right now, I’m outlining the the last book in my Lionheart trilogy. This is the second draft, so I’m integrating all the changes that I made mid-book in the first draft and fixing the problems that I found after it was all done. I’m currently at the point where I feel like I’ve got six balls of yarn tangled up together, and I have to spread them all over the room in a huge mess before I can even begin to straighten things out. My outlines begin as very neat, one-sentence, three-act summaries for each of the plotlines, and then they explode into this yarny mess while I figure out how those neat little summaries look played out. And how they intersect with each other. And when they should be happening, and when I should cut to another plot, and if my characters are even doing what they should be doing in the first place. After I’ve spent a while sorting out the huge mess, the outline is perfect and lovely. (Until I start writing, then I find the other fifty problems that I missed.) 

In act two of book three I’ve got six plot threads, all of them intersecting and affecting the others. Things are heating up before the third act, the last major pieces of character development are getting into gear, and things are being set up for the final confrontation. Plot threads that were set up in book one are playing out and backstories are being faced and dealt with. It’s satisfying to finally be completing these plots, but there’s a lot to do. After doing all this untangling in act two, ideally act three will be smooth sailing. 

Messy outlining lets my brain and all of its ideas sprawl out on the page, and three-act plots are good containers to fit it into. But if I don’t actually write it, I’m not getting anything done. I learned a long time ago that if I write when I feel like it, I don’t finish anything. There’s something to be said for letting your creative juices flow when they will, but eventually you have to buckle down and get it done. 

This is the first year in a while that I haven’t done NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, where you try to write a 50,000 word book in the month of November) but I have been writing regularly, every morning (or at least 6/7 days a week) for the last year. NaNoWriMo always ends up burning me out with its 1500-words-a-day pace, so I’ve set up my own expectations. When I’m outlining, my minimum goal is an hour of writing a day, and on days when I’m not working, I usually get in at least two. When I’m actually writing I have a minimum goal of 800 words. That’s definitely undershooting, but I’ve learned that a high goal (like 1500) while attainable, stresses me out. I know I can reach 800 words every day, whether I feel like writing or not. And that lack of stress usually loosens me up enough to write 900 or 1200 or 3000. Learning to be a little easier on myself, understanding how I best function, has made me way more productive. 

The other way I keep myself productive is by letting my work be less than perfect. Anyone can probably relate to wanting their first try to be exactly what they imagined. But no matter how much time I spend perfecting, my first draft is always going to need to be better. There will always be plot ideas I come up with in the middle of the last book, friends are always going to give me an incredible idea for backstory that I have to rewrite the whole story to work in, the pacing is always going to be weird. It’s the first time I’m telling the story, it’s not going to be amazing. Understanding that has let me slog through finishing the first draft and the messy parts of the outline, knowing that it’s not perfect yet, but the present imperfection is necessary. I’m still learning how to tell this story, I’ll get there eventually. 

That’s a lesson that’s been pretty useful in life, too. As a fairly anxious person, I tend to wait to do things until I feel ready for them, or like I can do them perfectly. But that usually means I never do them at all. (See: thinking about starting a blog for five years…) Now, I’m learning to go for things when I want to do them or have to do them, and I’ll learn how to do it along the way. It’s a lot better than never starting anything because it might not be perfect. 

Carrie Fisher said it pretty well: “Stay afraid, but do it anyway. What’s important is the action. You don’t have to wait to be confident. Just do it and eventually the confidence will follow.”

Let’s Start at the Very Beginning

I’m starting this blog with a minimum of preparation (like I named it and decided to do it today) because I’ve been saying I should for years and if I just start it, I’ll actually do something with it. I’m also starting this blog instead of playing Fallout 3, which is dedication that I’ll hopefully continue giving to this blog. And now that expectations are low enough, you can enjoy the rest of this. 

I’ve been writing stories since I was about 6, and I’m currently 23. My very first story was a single-page novel with a blue construction paper cover. The title, “Kittens, Kittens, Kittens!” was scrawled in sparkly gel pen, and I cut out every cat I could find in my mom’s old Better Homes and Gardens magazines and glued them in a lovely collage. It was inspired by a dream I had in which, surprise, our cat had kittens. Somehow, a manx managed to produce two orange tabbies, two siamese, a pure black, and one that did actually look like her. I’ve always been one for fantasy. 

The second story, begun when I was 9, was the adventure of an exiled princess saving her kingdom from a usurping, black-furred unicorn with red eyes. It’s gone through quite a few transformations since then, and I’m still working on it. (It’s almost impossible for me to drop an idea. They all go in my back pocket for later.) 

At 11 I actually finished a story, a fanfiction inspired by Brian Jacques’ Redwall series. It clocked in at 80 pages and I posted it on a website where other creative homeschoolers could read it and teach me how to do things like add paragraph breaks. (And indent the paragraphs, gasp!) I wrote two more Redwall fanfictions, each one a little longer than the last, learning as I went. Age 13, I wrote a draft of that 9-year-old’s story, then through my teens I came up with lots of new ideas and finished nothing. Around 18 I completed a draft of a book called Smoke and Mirrors, which has a lot of problems, but was really good experience.

Then I started working on Lionheart, which is the trilogy that’s occupied me for the last two years. While writing it, I made the decision to take writing a little more seriously, treating it more like a second job than a hobby. I finished the first draft of all three books this past summer, and I’ve been planning the re-write since then. Currently I’ve outlined the first two books, and I’ll finish outlining the third before writing Book 1 for the second time. 

Lionheart is about Ana, a young woman who is prophesied to defeat Vartan, a mage who has taken over the country of Sonderlin. But the prophecy says that she’ll die too, and her father has raised her to believe that she has no choice in the matter. When Ana’s father finds a mage willing to train her, Ana is sent to finally begin the path to fulfilling her destiny. And then Vartan captures her. Elsewhere, young, sheltered Ben lives in the enchanted Gyymhran Forest, where he is occasionally granted visions by his god, Rashiel. Conrad stumbles through Sonderlin, trying to drown his past and forget where he came from. Both men are haunted with dreams of a girl who needs help, who asks them to look beyond themselves and take a risk. 

Briefly summed up, Lionheart’s thesis is “Man was not made to be alone”. It’s the story of people learning to trust each other, and to let themselves care and be cared about. Free will vs predestination are important themes, as well as dealing with the fallout of previous generations’ decisions. Lionheart is about growing beyond origins, healing from the past, and finding reconciliation and new beginnings. It’s about family, blood and chosen, and how necessary it is to have good people for support.

After I finish re-writing Book 1, I plan to submit it for publishing. But for now, I want to try stretching my writing muscles in blogging. It’s kind of a reward to go write something fun after writing in Lionheart, so the blog can be my reward. 

When I’m not writing, I’m embroidering, cooking, with friends, or more likely, playing video games. I’m trying to get back into reading, but two years of mostly English classes in college killed that for a while. My greatest inspirations are C. S. Lewis, obviously Brian Jacques, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and the Myst franchise of video games. And even though I love a good ending, I hate writing conclusions, so this is the end of my beginning.