Outlines and other planning issues

I finally broke down a while back and spent a whole day doing a narrative plot outline for my book. I got about two-thirds of the way through my story, and have yet to finish that outline, but it still helps an amazing amount.

For those of you who haven't been exposed to what this outline is, it's not like those horrible topical outlines we had to do in grade school (did you have to do that?). I once had a science teacher who outlined the whole book, day by day, on the black board. What do you think I learned in her class? I learned that Tommy S. could make his belly bulge out like a pregnant lady. That's about it.

A narrative plot outline is writing up a summary of the story in present tense. I will give you an example or two from mine, but I am not claiming I'm an expert. This is just the way that works for me.

The opening of the outline for my latest book reads: "Cody Caulfield, recovering alcoholic and attorney to losers, find herself with a case that's turning messy. She and her faithful sidekick Janet Engles watch petty criminal Nate Diggerson walk out of the courtroom a free man, thanks to their efforts. But his freedom is short lived."

Later on, I have a section that reads "On the phone Montgomery states that he and his boss had no need to do in Nate, because they've already retrieved anything of value he'd taken. Montgomery warns Cody to butt out or alcoholism won't be her only health problem."

What I learned from writing the plot outline is fodder for another post.

To end, or not to end?

When is it time to end it? I don't mean, when is it the end of the book, or when have you finished your manuscript. I mean, when is it time to put the manuscript you've been diddling with away and work on something else? I'm finding myself slogging along in Book #1 because my heroine was not well formed at the outset. That is to say, she was not created with enough angst, enough crises in her life, enough personality to survive the first draft. I need to start all over. Remembering that I started this more than 10 years ago as an exercise to see if I could write a book, I am not taking this too badly. After all, I have two more books simmering away, with partial manuscripts in the computer. And I MAY pick it up again some day. It turned into quite a good learning process.

Book #2 has much more life: a more interesting main character who has enough flaws and personality quirks to get us through more pages. Cody is an accident waiting to happen, as the old saying goes. In this case, the "accidents" include at least two murders, a bit of romance, and a lot of saying nasty things to unlikeable people. Cody does all the stuff I'd do if I weren't too polite. Except for the alcoholism--that's not one of my vices, thank God.

And there's also book #3--a totally different kind of mystery, involving identity issues, "who's your daddy," and the horrible experience of becoming an adult.

In praise of praise

It's been too long since I blogged anything about my writing--or anything else, either. Chaos occasionally takes over. We have family traveling, the holidays coming (not related to family travel, actually), and all sorts of deadlines for each family member. Makes me think of that old song lyric, "Every thing runs in a circular motion, bobbing like a little boat upon the sea..." although little boats bobbing don't, as a rule, run in a circular motion. But I digress, which seems to be my pattern these days.

I've been going through my manuscript like someone reading a diary. "Oh, I remember writing that," "This part is so lame, what was I thinking," and, of course, "This is pretty darned good." Writers generally labor in solitude, so, when my critique group isn't around, I must praise myself. As long as we aren't delusional, I think we writers ought to praise ourselves. I don't mean run around the streets telling everyone what a great writer you are. I mean just read your stuff and pick out what's good. After all, if you hate your writing, how can you expect anyone else to want to read it? So praise. Take a moment out of the chaos to remember your manuscript, and to pick out the really good stuff. Let the bad stuff sit for another day. First praise, then get back to work to make the whole thing praiseworthy once you're energized by your own good reviews.

of reading and baby books

Yesterday, I spent a whole day at a seminar swamped with info on unschooling teens, college acceptance, and the risks and joys of "delight-directed" learning. Thank heavens we aren't quite at the point of college applications. It's been a rough year, but also enlightening. Dear daughter, who has always claimed she had no interest in writing (not having time for it due to shark studies), suddenly announced she'd started writing a story and asked if she could read it to me. Of course I was delighted, and astonished that the kid has a terrific grasp of dialog, setting, and the gripping scene. No character development yet, and the plot has not been revealed, but doggone it, I'm so proud of her.

How did she learn this wonderful stuff? She reads. Book after book after book. Many of them she reads over and over and over (Harry Potter books at our house have extremely frayed covers). She reads mysteries, romance, history, horse books, funny books, and books on sharks and oceanography. She's well known by our local librarians.

When she was an infant there were just a couple of things I wanted to see in her life as she grew: a love of God and desire to be his intimate friend, and a love of books. The first, of course, is a lifelong goal for us. The second was apparent from a very young age.

When she was a few months old, I used to take her in her stroller into a large bookstore near us and roll her over to the children's books. I'd hold up a book and if she showed any enthusiasm for it, that was a take home. Sandra Boynton was a fast favorite, and still is, for both of us. My baby loved books and wanted me to read to her for hours, something I was happy to do for a large part of each day.

What makes a book interesting to a baby may be pretty close to what appeals to adults. The covers may get us to pick it up, but the rhythym, the emotion (Boynton's humor and the sweetness of her books like The Going To Bed Book, for example), a story that engages us, and a character to whom we can relate make it an experience we want.

That's the kind of book I'm aiming for. I just hope I can keep up with Boynton.

Good grief, I just killed off another character!

The problem with writing without an outline is that you may, as I did recently, get the bug to kill off a character, which leaves one, me anyway, with a problem. I just killed the guy who was supposed to be the big bad dude, the one responsible for the first killing and of whom everyone is afraid. Now who do I blame?

Well, I find this rather invigorating, because I have someone in mind. But it also brings me back to the fact that I really do need to sit down and make a map for my books so that I've got the road laid out, though not yet paved. I really do need to do that. My problem may be the same as yours if you're struggling to finish a writing project--time.

Time used to snail by, but now that I'm nearly ancient (according to my teenager), it moves like a bullet train. I know that one doesn't find time, but makes time. If I want to get these books done, I need to make time. And I feel like I need to make a huge block of time. And huge blocks of time do not just lie around waiting to be picked up and used at my house. I need a weekend retreat. And I'm going to plan one. Soon. I promise. I'll get back to you on it.

how to increase your writing time

My daughter and I recently visited family in both the Northwest and in the Northeast. It was a long trip. We returned to find a DVR hooked up to the TV. Because I am technologically challenged, this has increased my writing time by about an hour a day. I have to ask my 13-year-old child how to turn the TV on. Yes, there's a booklet I'm supposed to read, but I'm still doing laundry from the trip while pulling everything I can out of the living room so the painters can get to the walls. When do I have time for the booklet? So most of the time, I just forget it. It's probably better anyway to spend my time doing more creative stuff than watching Perry Mason.

Like making some sort of skeletal outline that would keep my books moving along. Since the second book is taken from excerpts of a fictional book that I included in the first book, I have these little vignettes to serve as "fenceposts" for the story that I'm stringing out. This is a huge advantage over the first book, which began as a class project and has been sculpted and trimmed as I write along. Still undone, I do think I know where I'm going, but I haven't set it on paper. That would be good--to draw myself a map.

It's gotta be easier than reading the DVR booklet.

Letting the characters lead

I am loaded with energy and optimism tonight. Critique group this morning went really well. Heard some great stuff from my buddies: poetry, biography, mystery. We're all progressing, albeit slowly, toward publishing real books full of good stuff.

Robert Frost wrote about The Road Not Taken, and I think about that a lot as I write. I made a choice this week to have one of my secondary characters, Barbara, step into a situation that revealed more about her, and in the process, it revealed a bit more about Anna, my MC. I had intended for Barbara to veer into something different, but she didn't want to go there. She wanted the road NOT taken.

Come on, you fiction writers, you know exactly what I mean. You create a character, and non-writers think you "make" them go where you want them. But once a character has been defined to a certain degree, and she begins to "live" for you. Like the Velveteen Rabbit she becomes "real" and then look out! Characters do lead writers along. As Stephen King says in "On Writing," you uncover the bones of your story--and your characters are the ones who do the real work for you. So make them strong and give them a variety of tools for their job--physicality, personality, spirit, and all the other strengths and weaknesses that make them resonate with your readers, then let the story unfold!