Jump Start or Just Insane?

I don’t know if this NaNoWriMo thing was a good idea or not. I’ve managed to get 3855 words down on paper which is more than I wrote fiction-wise all last month. However, I’m not sure I can sustain that rate or if I’m prepared enough to carry this story for 50k words. I also feel like I’m behind already.

Stop psyching myself out, right? Think positive! I already write around 30k words every 30 days, right? What’s an extra 20k words? Hmmm. That doesn’t seem quite right. It’s more like an extra 50K if I want to keep up writing my daily journal entries. Even more if I want to do a blog entry every now and a again. I think I just have to leave those to the end of the day, after I’ve met my NaNoWriMo quota.

Maybe that’s what my blog posts can be. Something like Monday, Wednesday, Friday progress updates on my fledgling Romance novel — I’m expanding the story Revealed. I don’t think I’m going to do many Thursday Thirteens until December. I don’t know. I’m just going to play it by ear. I think I will do one for Thanksgiving regardless. Always good to remind yourself what you’re thankful for.

I spent a good chunk of Friday afternoon working on a spreadsheet that lays out Dunne’s page by page analysis of where in the story and plot you should be on what page of your script. This combined the diagrams on page 63 and 112 of Emotional Structure. I made it so I can adjust the total word count and be used for any number of pages. I extended to a second set of pages that I can use to write notes about what I should be writing about at that point. Boy, did I have a lot of filling in to do on the 2500 words I’d already done.

It’s scary to realize that I tried to tell the whole story in that space and managed to get the basic sequence down, but there’s so much more to flesh out. What the hell was I thinking? I must be insane, either that, or just very naïve. I think the latter is much more plausible.

Off to see how far I can get before DD’s new mattress is delivered!

Emotional Composition

Comedy and Tragedy Masks The exercise today on Romance Divas in their author of the month workshop with USA Today Bestselling Author C. L. Wilson is to take a scene we’ve already written and revise it so that it has a completely different tone. I’ve been thinking about which scene to use and am coming up with a blank, but that’s what inspired the comedy/tragedy masks today. They also fit with the recent emotional ideas and themes I’ve been looking at recently.

You’ll be glad to know I’m finish reading Dunne’s Emotional Structure! However, I’m not quite done thinking about or talking about all the strings and connections that I’m going to need to figure out how to seamlessly manipulate in my writing to move forward with what should be character-driven romance stories.

I realized this morning I’m freaking myself out and making writing those three sentences harder than necessary. I need to cultivate better habits regarding how I come up with and save ideas. I have a bunch of loose notes that are mostly character sketches and my story ideas are even rougher even if they may include several thousand words worth of “notes”.

It’s scary to admit, but it’s true. Mistress of the Storm is nothing but notes really, the same with Beneath His Touch – both are pretty much just opening sketches. What became Revealed started with much fewer notes, but, again, an opening sketch. I liked how Dunne compared the process to an artist’s sketch. You start with gesturals and move to more detailed sketches to make sure you’ve balanced your composition. I’ve done a lot of opening gesturals, but unfortunately, I only focused on one corner and never really took a necessary step back to look at the big picture.

I need to buckle down and work on coming up with complete ideas that go from beginning to middle to ending. I plan to practice this by setting aside time to brainstorm ideas and polishing them to that three-sentence stage. Later, I can take those and work them up to three pages. I want to acquire the habit of thinking bigger than just character sketches or laying groundwork for the conflicts between the main characters.

Perfection!

That 70s classic, Perfection! I’m sure many of you remember the game where you had to fit all the funky shaped little pegs into their appropriately shaped holes before the timer counted down, the board popped up and they all went flying again?

Anyway, that’s how I feel lately. I’m holding too many funky shaped pieces and they don’t look at all like any of the holes in my board. Every time I think things are settled the way I want them, something happens and the whole thing explodes in my face.

I’ve always fought against one form of perfectionism or another. Either I’ll hyper focus on something until it’s just right or I’ll give up midway through, knowing my completed project will never look like the one on the box cover (or whatever).

Writing currently falls under the hyper-focus category, which is good in a way, since I’ve always given up on it in the past. Bria dubbed me the Highly Theoretical FlanTastic Diva, because I always seem to have my nose in a craft book, offer some suggestion based on something I’ve read, or wax philosophical here on the blog about what I’m learning.

I think it’s funny, but I also must admit it’s very accurate. I’ve always been very interested in theory – music theory, economic theory, etc. The trick is gaining a solid grounding in the theory and then allowing myself the freedom to flop spectacularly when I try to put it into practice.

I still haven’t finished Dunne’s Emotional Structure yet. (I know. I need to finish it so I have something else to talk about. =P) I feel the panic building as I read the book and wonder, how in the hell am I going to be able to pull this off! I’m standing on that delicate balance point where it’s either fight or flight. I can’t afford to back away from this challenge. I need to push myself to try his approach. I need to work through my apprehension and self-doubt. My first attempt(s) may not be pretty, but they will be learning experiences.

I’m still not happy with those three sentences from yesterday. I need to work on them some more so I can expand them to three pages. After that, I can have fun playing with index cards! It sounds like a lot of work, but I suspect it’s exactly what I’ve been avoiding and it’s showed.

Magic Number 3

Lane Number Three on Track Have you ever noticed that three is truly a magic number? I’m not talking numerology or anything like that, but the number three keeps coming up in everything I’ve been reading lately. The Classic Three-Act form. A hero must pass 3 tests to get his reward. Three cheers. Make sure you highlight a setting with at least three things that would be noticed by your POV character. Hey, 3rd person. The list just goes on and on and on.

Three is a useful number. It is a symbol of the unity of body, mind and spirit. You can split the difference between two extremes. You can accurately describe a position relative to an initial point – above or below as relative to on. If you can break something down into three parts, you can also likely split those down into three parts each as well.

This last one is the one that strikes me as important today. Reading Dunne’s Emotional Structure is making me think about symbolism and look at the importance of making connections between actions of the plot as they are used to dredge up the protagonist’s emotions from the past. He recommends breaking the Second act into 3 parts — a movie within a movie. Looking at what I have so far, it strikes me that even the set up might be constructed in a similar fashion.

One of Dunne’s exercises is to condense your idea in three sentences and then expand them into three pages. Hmmm. There’s that three again. Writing three sentences sounds simple, doesn’t it? It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever attempted. Working from the previous exercise of writing a set-up including the inciting incident, three tests for the protagonist to face, and the climax and resolution, I tried to do this with the story for Revealed. I know I’m going to have to expand the scope of the story – it ain’ta gonna be short when it’s done with me.

I’m going to have to settle in and really think about this one a bit more. I’m finding one of the most difficult requirements is to have thought everything through before I start typing. There’s just too much to juggle in my head to keep it all straight and meaningful. That’s another great quote from Dunne: “Organizing your artistic effort only makes it better.” The other phrase I find myself chanting a lot lately is “That which does not kill us serves to make us stronger.” I can only hope those are both true.

If you’d like to read more about the significance and the prevalence of the number three in American culture, you can visit The Book of Threes. If you’re looking for a wider scope, you can read about The Symbolism and Spiritual Significance of the Number Three which doesn’t limit itself, but explores most of Western culture.

More Structural Designs

My son’s Cub Scout Pack spent the weekend camping in the cold and windy mountains. No incidents involved wild critters, but at night, we could hear the wolves howling at the nearby preserve. The boys had a great time imitating them.

We left home later than we’d hoped, so I put up the tent (mostly by myself) in the dark as DH lugged our gear up the steep path from the car. Others often tease us about our “hotel” tent, but once you put two air mattresses, all our stuff plus four people inside, our eight-man (or is that sardine?) tent just holds us.

It amazes me how some nylon fabric, six poles and twelve stakes provide sufficient shelter. Understanding the design determines how much effort you spend getting it up. Some tents ALMOST work, even if you get the wrong pole in the wrong sleeve. One of my friends had this issue Friday night. It looked like a tent and even acted like one, but she doubted it would withstand the expected winds. Luckily, it held, but it could have fallen apart on her and her son during the night.

So, what does all this have to do with writing, you ask?

After reading the first two parts of Dunne’s book, Emotional Structure: Creating the Story Beneath the Plot, while recovering yesterday afternoon, I realized I’m missing the stakes and poles in my writing or possibly I have only used stakes and poles, with no canvas between them. Hmmm, I haven’t worked that analogy out very well. Anyway, what I had written looked like a story, but it collapsed under close reading.

Dunne’s book is written as a guide for screenwriters, but his ideas apply to any type of fiction, especially character-driven fiction – like romance novels. He describes sowing the seeds of your story so you end up with complex characters with rich backstories that allow the plot to reveal patterns in the life of your protagonist – the personification of your theme.

I never quite understood what theme meant. The difference between story and plot always struck me as a semantic one. However, I felt these concepts click into place after reading Dunne’s quote, “The story is the journey for truth. The plot is the road it takes to get there.” I’ve read similar things recently, but not in a way that made sense.

Jodi and Jasmine recognized many seeds (even a couple I didn’t consciously drop) in the story I had buried in my head during this draft. However, for my story to work, I need to determine what truth (theme) I’m trying to reveal to the reader and build from there. Therefore, this week’s plan is to finish the book and work on Dunne’s exercises with respect to this story.

Architecture of Emotion

I got some phenomenal feedback on Revealed from several Divas. Jodi suggested some great websites: Michael Hauge’s article Screenplay Structure and The Unknown Screenwriter’s article on Transformational Character Arcs. She also recommended the book Emotional Structure: Creating the Story Beneath the Plot by Emmy award winning TV producer Peter Dunne, which has me itching to dig more into the architecture of emotion.

Jasmine also gave me excellent feedback much in the same vein – a need to see more justification behind the actions shown.

People (Hi, Bria and Jennifer!) have also said it needs to be longer. I’m good at making things over complicated. Considering the female lead was pulled from an abandoned novel idea, trying to fit her story in 1k words and even ending up with 2400 didn’t give it room to fully bloom. More experienced writers could probably pull it off, but not me.

This building characters from the ground up in a static medium is MUCH trickier than constructing them with more outright “told” and emergent behaviors that I’m so used to doing for online role playing games. So, it’s back to the drawing board (or at least will be after a weekend of camping with no ‘net) and burying my nose in theory again.