Tag: revision

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.

The Storyteller Revision is Done!

Laura Highcove

I officially reached my goal of finishing my revision pass of the Storyteller. This is Draft 6, and it has now been sent to the hubby for an alpha read, which means that is off my plate for at least two months.

Finishing up a draft and shifting to something else is always a weird time for me. I keep feeling like I should be doing something with the story and I have to remind myself that not only do I not have to, I’m not allowed to. It has to sit, after all, so I can go back to it with fresh eyes.

How am I feeling about the story thus far? Pretty darn good. Very good about the first half, and okay about the second half. It’s newer than the first half so it’s still rather rough.

And there’s one character that I haven’t decided what to do with at the end of the book. He might be there or he might just disappear until book two. I feel like I should keep him in, it just means the final fight has seven people in it, and that is a lot of bodies to keep track of. I’ll just wait for the alpha feedback.

For now, I’m working on cranking out words on a new story, though I’m not planning on working on it hard enough to have it done in the next two months. Part of the reason for that is I’m sick right now and being sick does not make me want to commit to 90k words in two months. (It is also why I didn’t get this post up yesterday.) We’ll see what happens when I get better.

But anyway, I’ll be off celebrating finishing my revision by replaying Twilight Princess.

Year In Review

Laura Highcove

I just read through a post by Brandon Sanderson, which was extremely long, and was basically an overview of what he got done this year.

It gave me a few moments of panic and self-doubt. He’s turning 40 this year and has already been publishing books for 20 years. It’s easy for me to regret that I’m not further along than I am with my writing career. I mean I have been writing since the second grade. I wish I had realized earlier what I could do with that. Or that, at least, I had put a little more focus and discipline into it.

But then who knows what my world would look like if I had. I’d like to assume I would still be in a good place, but who knows what turn my depression may have taken had I not ended up at Advantage Ranch. I might not have gained the mental fortitude to get through the process of writing a book, and so I would have ended up writing my whole life without ever being able to stay with something long enough to make it good.

And, because I like making lists, here’s what I accomplished this year in the Storyteller:

I spent January through June working on the first revision pass of The Storyteller. It taught me a lot about my process and even ended up spitting out an improved rough draft.

I then took a month off. It was good to do, and I struggled a lot with what to write about on my blog when I wasn’t talking about what writing I was doing.

At the beginning of July I made a new plan to read through my story and add notes about everything that needed to be tweaked and changed without actually doing any of the changes yet. I was a little overwhelmed by how much I felt like wasn’t done. I had to do a lot of self encouragement during this time (and it helped that I went to Writer’s Digest in the middle for support from other writers)

The end of July and beginning of August was a lot of travel for Otakon, Writer’s Digest, and then a horse show in Florida. It really wiped me out. I got back on track by using Dungeons & Dragons to flesh out my character and their fighting styles.

At the beginning of September I refocused my plan. The plan only lasted two weeks until I decided part of my process is repeatedly going back to the beginning of my book to clean it up. So I stopped trying to fight it, and embraced it instead.

So I got through my revision of the first half of the book, and made the plan to completely rewrite the second half of the book during NaNoWriMo. I did that and I spent up until today putting what I wrote in order and ironing it out.

The plan from here is to go over the story once more and make sure everything is ironed down before I give it over to my husband on the first of the year for an alpha read. My husband is great at plot and pacing, so that should help to tell me what I’ll need to do next.

Grinding and Polishing

Laura Highcove

I’m not sure it ever properly came across to me from the advice of other writers just how horrible first drafts actually are. I think that was one of the biggest ‘Ah Ha!’ moments for me, and I know some people’s first drafts look better than others, but I’ll tell you, I think I am at the bottom of the heap. What I started out with is just so far gone from what the story looks like now (and I’m still not near to publishable ready) and it really is turning into something great.

This is my second week where I planned to work on scenes involving Archer and Slayer. Since I finished those last week, I decided to go back to the beginning of the story and clean it up. I have been able to put in some more foreshadowing, nailed down some of the wavering character motivations at the beginning of the book, and now they all actually have fighting styles!

I love going back to the beginning of a story because it’s always so much more polished than the end. It makes me feel good about how far I’ve come before I get back into the still rough later part of the book. I just push the polish forward a little bit at a time with each iteration and eventually the book gets ‘done’ and then I just go back over it again and again.

I’ll have to play around with balancing how often I go back to the beginning and how often I put my nose to the grindstone and push through the new material, since the obvious downside of this method is that the beginning gets a lot more polish than the ending bits. But recently I think I may have been grind-stoning a little bit too much and I was just finding myself discouraged and stuck in a place where I didn’t think any of my writing was any good.

Plan for the Rest of the Year

Laura Highcove

I was talking with my husband this morning and he asked if I was going to work on my novel, and in jest I said, ‘Yes, I’m going to go work on my boring, old novel.’ Then I stopped and realized that The Storyteller isn’t even a year old yet. The concept for it is about a year old, but I didn’t start writing it until October of last year. And that sort of blew my mind. I have so many other stories that aren’t even to this point that are far older, yet when I think about this novel, I keep having issue with how long it’s taking me to get to beta reader ready. I’m grateful for the reminder that I’m doing a good job.

My goal is to have The Storyteller ready for my beta readers by January 2016. I counted up the number of weeks left in the year. 16 and five days, which I am rounding up to 17 because I can do that. Here is a list of what I still have to do:

Finish writing the scenes involving The Slayer and The Archer. (3 weeks)
Finish writing the scenes involving The Fairy Godmother. (2 weeks)
Finish writing the scenes involving The Huntress. (2 weeks)
Fix three plot holes. (1 week)
Overall run through of story to identify any new problems. (1 week)
Run through to fix any “medium” problems. (3 weeks)
Run through to smooth out as many “minor” problems as possible. (3 weeks)
Overall run through of story as a last check. (2 weeks)

That’s actually more time than I thought I was going to have. Once I wrote it out in a list and put times to it, I’m pretty confidant in my ability to get it done. Though I suppose I have to remember that Thanksgiving and Christmas are in there, and I won’t be able to participate in NaNoWriMo this year. Still, less than a year an a half to get a story to beta readers. I’m happy with that.

Post ‘Vacation’ Crash

Laura Highcove

Several weeks ago (now) I went to the Writer’s Digest Conference in New York City. The next weekend I went to a horse show, and after three weeks of no downtime I crashed hard when I got home on Monday. It has taken me until now to sit down and work on any writing at all. (I haven’t written anything since two weeks ago either.)

But here is what I (thankfully) thought to write about my Writer’s Digest Conference on the train home:

<><><>

After this weekend I have a few new possible tools to try that will hopefully help me flesh out what I need to in The Storyteller, and even trim down (!?) the first part.

One major thing I learned was that I should aim to start with 60 scenes, 15 in act 1, 30 act 2, 15 act 3 with the important bits where they should be. Well I currently have 48 scenes (including the ones I added to my post it note outline that aren’t actually written yet) so I’m a little short in the first place. I also got ideas of how to come up with worthwhile subplots (because apparently character growth and a romantic sub-plot just weren’t enough) that will mean something.

However, I am happy to say that I do know what the book’s theme is and that is super important. I even ‘pitched’ my book to some people and they all seemed rather interested in it. So I think I’m on the right track, I just have to figure out the rest. I still have a goal of finishing this version of my draft by the end of the year. I need to get back into my habit of my set schedule, even though it’s harder to figure out how much I’ve gotten done because I won’t have a word count to quantify my progress.

ALSO! I really loved New York. I don’t like cities, and I would never want to live in one, but being in New York was so surreal. I’ve seen it so often in movies that when I looked around I kinda felt like I must be in a movie. And when you look down the street and just see a line of buildings that just goes on, it’s very Inception looking. The touristy areas and the business areas around Times Square and Park Ave were just so clean and well maintained and well patrolled. It was really just great. Like I’d love to visit again (WD next year!) though I doubt I would want to live there, even if I had the income to support it.

I can understand how it’s like a world of it’s own, all within that tiny little space. There’s just so much culture that grows in even those individual sections. It’s cool. Plus I had a New York Bagel, which was amazing, and New York Pizza, which was good but not world-ending good.

All in all, it was a great weekend. I gave my cards out to a bunch of people, went out with new (and old) people each night for dinner. Got a bunch of cards, and got a ton on inspiration in general. I need to go through my notes and file away the important stuff in my Writing Scriv so I can find it when I need it. Learned about plotting, and outlining, and the two keynotes speakers I heard were great. World building, and apparently the other ones weren’t amazing because I don’t remember them off the top of my head. Also a panel on new authors, which was nice just for info.

And someone did say that blogs don’t sell as many books as people really think, so encouraged us to not go nutso with the onlineness. I am happy to hear that, though I really think I was basically in that mindset anyway, I’ll just be happier now since I won’t worry quite so much about getting hardly any page views.

<><><>

Now that things are caught up to there, I have to decide if I’m going to write a post about my horse show. I figure this blog does focus mostly on my life revolving around writing, but other things are important too. I want this blog to exist so that people can get to know me, so I guess that includes the horsey stuff as well.

Revision Update: Maybe Not So “Revision” Anymore

Laura Highcove

So the horse show this weekend was put on by the barn where I work. While I didn’t get sick this time, I got home at 5:30 (the show ended early because there were so few people there due to the unseasonably cold weather), took a shower, ate pizza while finishing the last hour of the Pride and Prejudice mini-series, and then went to sleep until 7 the next morning.

I woke up still exhausted and after shopping for Wrestlemania (which is tonight for you non-wrestling people), I tried another nap that got me up to a functional level. So I didn’t get any writing done the past two days, which is why there was no post yesterday.

However! Before that I had a good week. I went back to the Cinderella storyline to add a piece there which took off beautifully, and I’m very happy with it. Added to a little bit of character back-story I then realized that I didn’t need the second Cinderella scene at all.

I’m not sure whether I’m happy about that or not. On one hand, it wasn’t working all that well to begin with, so this may be a blessing, on the other hand, I now have even less of an idea what I’m doing with the second half of the book.

I continue to be stressed about my apparent inability to create a full story. I even considered giving up on writing this book entirely for a while, but then I realized I couldn’t stop being a writer. It’s too ingrained in who I am for that, so the only course of action is to figure out what my malfunction is and fix it. Luckily I have another coaching call with Gabriela coming up, so maybe she will be able to shed some light on it.

Specific measurable result for the coming week: 750 words a day barring a complete change of plans that may or may not come about from the coaching call.

Revision Update: Rewriting

Laura Highcove

Last week was rough for me and as such I gave myself permission to not have to strive for any goals. I jotted down some notes, but there’s not a ton to report on.

Just yesterday I began to get my creative juices back, thanks in part to the DIYMFA podcasts. Sometimes when I just don’t feel like writing, reading about (or listening to, in this case) people discuss writing can spark things.

Like I said last week, I did reach that measurable result, and the week before last went really well. However, this week I am planning on going back and rewriting some random scenes that new ideas want to change. There are two of those, one is in the Cinderella storyline, which will help to drive a particularly slow moving (though necessary) scene forward, and the second is during the revisit to the Cinderella storyline. If I get finished with those, I will probably clean up all the scenes in the Cinderella folder a bit. However, I have events for the next three weekends that include two horse shows, a wedding, and a Wrestlemania party, so I’m not going to kill myself trying to do too much.