Time for Fights

Laura Highcove

So as I established the week before last, I am horrible at conflict, and so it directly follows that I am horrible at writing conflict, which leads me to be horrible at writing fights scenes (verbal as well as physical). But, at the same time, I write fantasy, a genre in which people are much more likely to be competent in a fighting style, and use said fighting style against an opponent, than in non-fantasy.

I have fifteen fight scenes in this book, though the final fight is three “notecards” because it’s in three parts. Luckily, my husband is *very* good at writing fight scenes. Yesterday I went over the first three fights with him for motivations and rough choreograph and today I cleaned up two of them and wrote one from scratch. However, I am actually pretty happy with how they’re shaping up so far.

So I have twelve more to write, (Then of course I have to clean them up) and three weeks to write them. That means four a week with a whole week to work on the final fight. Considering I usually give myself a week for a whole chapter, that seems like it will be about right.

I do need to work on being more disciplined with my writing though. I do well when I have only a little time, but if I give myself a large block, I really end up distracted. It’s not horrible for now, but if I ever make the jump to writing full time, or even more than I’m doing now, I think I’ll run into trouble.

No Good Title

Laura Highcove

I completed the revision pass on time, though as you can see, I am posting this a bit late, because I didn’t write it till late, because I was pounding away at my revision through Saturday. Sunday was our Wrestlemania party, for which we cook.

So here I am to tell you that it is indeed done, and I am on to step one of writing my fight scenes better, which includes looking over the 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons character sheets that my husband made for all of the main characters. I’ll probably write a more in depth analysis about why I decided to do this and how it’s helped, but for now I’m getting all my ducks in a row and hammering out exactly what remnants and artifacts everyone has so I know what they can do.

Total guess on the timeline: I want to have the character sheets finalized by Friday. Then it will be time to work with my husband on choreography. There are approximately 15 fights, a few of which are mere scuffles and three of which are just different phases of the same fight.

Talk of Superpowers

Laura Highcove

Talk of Superpowers:
There was talk recently in the DIY MFA sphere, about superpowers, that aspect of every writer’s personality that helps them to write their story.

I waffled on this a little bit because I was thinking of it from a place of “What am I good at?”. Instead I realized that what Gabriela actually meant is closer to what my yoga instructor refers to as a dharma. Now if you google dharma, you won’t get this definition, but I use it to mean a person’s true self. If you set aside your family and friends, your job, your hobbies, your passions, and pursuits, then who are you?

I am authentic:
There was one call for DIY MFA where I remember Gabriela asking, “How did you tell the people in your life that you are a writer?”

And I remember thinking on that while other people gave their answers, and then she asked me that question and I said: “I never had to tell people I was a writer, I just always have written, and the people around me know that I write.”

I later realized that that sums up who I am. I am authentic. Everything that I am is open and out there and everything that I’m not doesn’t exist.

How this shows up in my writing:
My characters end up authentic, truthful, reasonable, and willing to see another person’s point of view. It makes it difficult for me to write truly evil villains and only recently have I been able to write characters having verbal arguments without one or both of them apologizing and coming to see the other person’s point of view by the end.

This means I don’t have conflict created by misunderstandings. When my characters fight or disagree, it’s because they have (at least mostly) reasonable views on life, that just happen to conflict.

I want my readers to be able to understand where a character is coming from, even if they don’t agree with where they’re going. (Oh, that sounds tweet-able, too bad I don’t twitter.)

Now for other things:
I wanted to write this post because I wanted to put up something about myself that wasn’t just a laundry list of the things I’ve been doing in my writing. I’m not sure if people are enjoying that or not, since I don’t really get feedback, but I feel like it might get old after a while.

For those of you who might like my laundry list: I’m still working on the Arthur tale. It is rough and I don’t feel like I have a focus right now. The story is just kind of happening, which means I just need to keep powering through until something comes out that feels right. One more week and then I start on fights.

Continuing the Smoothing

Laura Highcove

Nothing much of interest going on this week. I’m still working through the story in the same method as I mentioned last week, though I am a good deal further than I expected to be. Bluebeard was quick and easy, which was not a surprise, but the Headquarters section also went very smoothly except for the scene here that has always given me trouble. When I talk about the writing of this book after it comes out, I will certainly talk about how important this scene is, and how dang-blasted hard it was to write.

I started the King Arthur tale midday on Saturday and I’m already aware of how not smoothly this tale is going to go. But it is the newest part of this story (writing wise) and thus the most raw. Even the climactic final battle and denouement were written prior to this section. However, I can start to see the story behind me actually smoothing out, which is a great feeling. Still needs work, but it is better.

I’m hoping two weeks will give me enough time to smooth out this tale. I’m still hoping to get started on my fights starting in April, and that will be a whole new adventure.

The Need to Expand

Laura Highcove

So I spent most of this week on the Cinderella tale. I managed to rework some of the story and found I really needed to expand the whole ending. I always thought my writing style was pretty superfluous, because I’m so good at stretching things to get to word count when word count is my goal. But I seem to have more cases where I have clearly not written enough, or I have skipped over describing things that are rather necessary in my haste to get to …somewhere.

I’m not exactly sure what causes this phenomenon. I suppose they could be parts that I think are boring. Like when you have a scene in a TV show that you know only exists to create a baseline. The scene is not always entertaining on it’s own, but if you don’t have that baseline, then it’s not as impactful when things go sideways.

So to that end (the need to expand sections) I have been having a bit of stress. Writing new words means they’re rough and choppy and in general make me feel like I’ve taken a step backward instead of forward.

I also suck at scene changes. Getting into a scene and getting out of a scene, so I am planning on pulling out a lot of my collection of books and reading how people do scene changes so I can gain some skill in that.

I ended up not doing the shoehorning method with orange issues that I said I was going to do last week, mostly because the story ended up not needing showhorning, but reordering and smoothing. Of course that means it took far longer than I was expecting. The Cinderella tale took the entire week and it needed a medium amount of work. Now I’m on my way to Bluebeard, which I think is the most together of all the tale sections, so it might not take the whole week. Headquarters is probably similar to Cinderella, but Arthur …Arthur is going to take some serious work.

So new goal is to see if I can smooth Bluebeard in less than a week.

Colorizing Comments

Laura Highcove

So the plan I made last week ended up not working quite the way I thought it would. The idea of there being major, medium, and minor issues and such just did not work for me. I found it easier to compartmentalize the issues by making comments and coloring them (Yay Scrivener!) as follows:

Where I needed to go outside of the current tale in order to fix a plot hole or add some foreshadowing, I colored comments red.

Then plot holes and foreshadowing needed within a tale were colored orange.

Small issues like not liking a description or needing more detail I marked with yellow.

Once I had this list, I tackled the red issues first, as that required the most jumping around to different parts of the story, as well as, in a few instances, figuring out *where* I was going to put the foreshadowing. In all of these cases, I basically shoehorned in the necessary comment/description, which will need to be smoothed in on next revision.

As of now, I have all but two red issues resolved. It went a lot more quickly than I thought it would.

The plan for this week is to now go through the story and start working on the orange issues. I am going to follow the same shoehorning method as with the red issues. I am hoping it won’t take more than a week.

After the orange issues are done, I’m going to do a read through/smoothing pass and see if I come out the other side with fewer issues.

Alpha Read Complete on The Storyteller

Laura Highcove

My husband has finished alpha reading The Storyteller. From what he’s said to me (I haven’t read the comments yet) he thinks it’s a good story with all the bones and a lot of the organs it needs.

And I still find myself nervous to get it back and read it, not because I’m worried about anything he has to say about it, but because now I am about to plunge even deeper into unknown territory. I am actually going to take a story and make it readable by people who are not writers.

…

Sorry, I had to take a moment to refocus there. As a writer, of course the end goal is to have people read what I write. But it always felt like it was so …far off. And I suppose it is still far off, as I have revisions and beta reads and, you know, finding an agent, BUT I am closer than I’ve ever been before. And the next step will take me even closer than that.

And I’m scared. And I’m admitting I’m scared. I’m worried that the story isn’t as good as I remember it. I’m worried that there will be a huge plot hole I can’t fix. I’m worried that once I put all this effort into it, people won’t like it. And I’m worried that even if I manage this and it’s a success, that I’ll never be able to write anything as good again.

Oh the doubts of the writer. We’re such silly creatures. Nothing left but to soldier on in the face of all my doubts because the only other option is to give up writing, and I’m not going to do that.

Plan:
First off, I am going to read the alpha read comments from my husband. I will organize these things into three categories:

Major Issues: plot holes/foreshadowing, new scenes to write from scratch

Medium Issues: plot holes within a scene

Minor issues: Flow issues. Description.

Once I have the list of major issues, I will work on going back to fix them. I’m pretty sure most of them just have to do with foreshadowing. I’m hoping none of them are actual serious plot holes.

After that is done, I will do a read-through while smoothing out the plot, and making a new list. Hopefully it will be smaller.

Rinse and repeat until I’ve fixed all the major issues. (And the medium and minor issues should be fixed up along the way.)

I’m hoping by April I can start in on fight scenes, which I am basically leaving alone for now. I’m sure I’ll reevaluate beginning of April as well.

Remembering the Process

Laura Highcove

Now as you may or may not remember, The Storyteller is currently in my husband’s hands for alpha reading right now.

I made the decision to work on Jeremy Five-five, but I talked myself out of that after a bit, then I wandered through working on Blessings of the Nerial and to some background work on The Storyteller.

It took me until just recently to figure out why I was having such a hard time focusing on a project.

Firstly, I didn’t give myself a goal. I need to know, at least, what I am trying to accomplish in order to stay focused.

Secondly, I was attempting to work around my process. I know that my process is discovery writing, and that I have to discovery write multiple versions, and go back and tweak until I finally get an ending at which point I can actually start pulling the story together.

This is the step I am at with The Storyteller. It is not the point I am at with any of my other stories. However, I did attempt to start pulling Jeremy Five-five together and it was working out very poorly for me, then the same thing happened with Blessing of the Nerial.

This is just another of those reminders life likes to throw at me, that when things get super hard I need to take a step back and figure out why. I usually figure out that I am working against myself instead of with myself. I can’t pull a story together until I have discovery written to the end. Otherwise it’s like trying to finish a jigsaw puzzle without all the pieces, and some pieces from other puzzles.

So now I am back on Jeremy Five-five, with the plan to write toward the end. I am also giving myself a goal of 1000 words a day through the 29th. At that point my husband has to give me back The Storyteller and then we’ll see what wonderful mistakes I can make and learn from then!

Guest Posting!?

Laura Highcove

So this week I decided I would take the plunge and actually attempt to write a guest blog post for DIYMFA at the encouragement of my mentor. It is something that I haven’t thought about very seriously before this because I have very little skill writing blog articles. Despite the fact that I post something here every week, I have rarely made any attempts to make these posts follow a typical “blog format”. I found the best way to keep myself able to write one of these posts every week is to just allow myself to write what I want, how I want it. It helps to keep me accountable when I’m actively working toward a goal, and it helps me to evaluate and record my process. What is the point of spending hours struggling with a “real” blog post when I could be using that time to be doing literally anything else.

So it took me several days to come up with possible blog topics. Then a day to write the email pitching them to the web editor. I had to convince myself that my mentor would know if I didn’t send an email. I don’t know if she would or not, but I used it as a way to force myself to send the email.

Then I was nervous as I waited for a reply. Then when I got the reply it took me a day to work up the nerve to read it. Then when I read it and saw the topic the web editor had picked, I realized I was going to have to actually write the article. And I did, and it was horrible. So I let it sit and cleaned it up, and sent it to my hubby, and then edited it, and sent it to him again, and now I think I actually have something that will at least not embarrass me.

So what am I trying to say with this post? I am celebrating the fact that I was nervous and scared and outside my comfort zone and I did it anyway! Even if I send this post to the web editor and she says it needs to be rewritten. Even if it goes up and no one comments. I will still have done it, and that experience is very important. It has also taught me that when I am not writing fiction, I can’t keep a consistent tense to save my life. That is also important to know.

Mistborn (Part One) Story Structure

Laura Highcove

In our most recent DIYMFA call, we were challenged to take a short story or children’s book and see if we could identify the parts of story structure within the book.

This fell right into a question that had been pushing around recently in wondering if, when a book is broken into parts (common in Fantasy), each of those parts also follows basic story structure.

So I decided to make the challenge a little harder on myself and see if I could figure out the story structure for Mistborn, by Brandon Sanderson, Part One. (I used the paperback version to get the page numbers.)

Here’s what I found:

Opening Image (Part One): Description of Vin’s crew’s safe house. (pg 19-21): Seeing Vin as the main character, I made this decision based on the fact that the first part takes Vin from where she is, to bring a part of Kel’s crew, so her opening image is her little world.

Inciting Incident (Part One): Vin’s crewleader kicks off his plan. (pg 25): This is why the story starts here, because this plan is what leads Vin to being found by Kelsier.

Opening Image (Mistborn): Description of Luthadel by Kelsier. (pg 28-30) The overarching plot of the novel is the caper, so Kel’s description of the city seems a much better “opening image” for that story.

1st Reversal (Part One): Vin decides to use her “luck” on the High Prelan. (pg 39) This is the choice Vin makes that causes everything after to happen.

Inciting Incident (Mistborn): Kelsier and Dockson observe Vin using her “luck” on the High Prelan. (pg 40): This event is what brings Vin into Kelsier’s noticing.

Temporary Triumph (Part One): The crew members saying they’re in after hearing Kelsier’s plan. (pg 79-81): Getting the crew to agree to the plan is a triumph, even if it doesn’t mean things go smoothly.

2nd Reversal (Part One): Kelsier and the crew outline the steps of the plan, everyone really sees what an impossible task this caper is, and Yeden wants to pull out. (pg 122): I had trouble with this because there isn’t a *ton* of conflict considering it’s the beginning of the book.

Dark Night of the Soul: (Part One) Vin doesn’t want to trust Kelsier (or any of the crew for that matter) (pg 156-157) At this point, Vin almost leaves the crew due to her inability to trust.

1st Reversal (Mistborn): Vin actually agrees to be part of Kelsier’s crew (pg 158): Vin makes the decision here. She has an out and chooses to stay anyway.

Crisis/Climax (Part One): Vin has to fill in the role of a noblewoman for the caper to work. (pg 165) Vin finds her role will be larger than she thought.

Closure (Part One): Vin settles into the idea of Kelsier being a good man (trustworthy). (pg 168) Vin has changed just a little bit, in that she’s willing to trust Kelsier.

I’m not sure if people more studied in story structure would think that my interpretation is sufficient, but I feel like all the beats are there. At the same time I could be grasping at straws because I went into this wanting Part One to follow basic story structure. Either way, I think the exercise is helpful and if anyone would like to challenge what’s here, I would love to discuss it.