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Hello everyone!

Outlining went very well this week. I wrote detailed outlines through part four of Maws and Claws and have started work on the final section of the manuscript. Although I knew that part four was going to consist of quick chapters before a major event to cap off this act, I feel like you’d never know it by looking at the outline. Even though I’ve been brainstorming ideas for three months now, I’m still surprised by how much is going to be contained in each chapter. Sometimes I’m still jotting notes in the margins because new things are still coming to me that I want to include when I write the first draft.

Although we’re coming to the end of outlining, there’s still a lot to do. One thing I noticed is that I’m sometimes just including mention of a subplot in the chapters, and not actually expanding on how this subplot will be progressing through the story. Including it in the notes is merely a placeholder, a reminder that I still need to flesh this out. My work is still cut out for me, and this subplot (and any others I might find when reviewing the detailed outline) is going to be my focus for the coming week.

We’re also arriving at the first deadline of the script: wrapping up outlining.

What’s bringing on this deadline? When I looked at the calendar this week, I saw that we’re only weeks away from November. For those that don’t know, November is the month of NaNoWriMo: National Novel Writing Month. It is a writing competition against procrastination to  write either an entire book or 50,000 words in a single month.

I’ve participated in NaNoWriMo the last two years, and was planning on writing the first draft of In the Maws and Claws during the month. This means that next week’s blog will be the last on outlining, and the focus will then shift to actually writing the story.

A nervous excitement is growing. I’ve wanted to get through the outlining process so that I could move on to the next step of actually writing the manuscript, but needed the extensive outlining to feel comfortable to actually sit down and begin. Now that I’m coming up to the doorstep of NaNoWriMo, all the things that are still lacking are jumping out at me, demanding I address them before I can start the first draft.

While this is a little daunting, I know that I’ll only be starting work on the first draft, one of many. So while I’ll still want to address these issues as soon as possible, I’m confident each draft will polish the rough edges more and more until these issues are fixed and the manuscript gets to the place it needs to be.

Until next time.

Hello everyone!

Welcome to another week of the outlining process for In the Maws and Claws. I felt it was another good week in the process.

As I was breaking down what was going to happen in the chapters in detail, I noticed that although the chapters still feel like they’ll be short (by which I mean that when it’s published, its not going to be like 15 to 20 pages to get through them, probably more like 10 or even less), there is still a lot of information that is going to be packed into each one of them. 

I also felt that these chapters are really going to open up the book a lot. Last week, I mentioned that after finishing part one, I thought it would play out well that the reader would get some time to focus solely on the main character before diving into the rest of the characters. The reason for that was because there are plenty of characters that play a major role in this manuscript, each one having a lot to unpack about them.

While I did feel that the reader would benefit from knowing and understanding the protagonist first, the challenge was then on me to bridge the story from where it’s starting to where I want it to go. It’s still going to be a process from it’s current state in the outlining process through the numerous edits that will follow, but I’m feeling good that I’ve transitioned the story from the main character to now encompass the antagonists and other characters that shape the story.

Another aspect that I felt good about this week was the chapter variety. I think readers can tell from my stories that I like to keep the plot moving. I want the pacing to feel crisp, and this can sometimes be a challenge when the story needs to relay information to the reader to set up future events. I feel stories can easily stagnate here.

I’d done something similar for I’m Not My Father. It’s not a thriller, like the rest of my books have been, and I wanted the reader to constantly be finding out something new about the small town murder twenty five years prior, as well as aspects of Cal’s life. To try and keep things fresh for the reader, locations changed from chapter to chapter, characters were doing something new, and new characters were introduced and interacted with throughout so that the reader was experiencing a story rather then a novelized checklist of relevant information.

One of the things I’ve been doing while outlining Maws is describing the intended atmosphere in each chapter. There’ve been a lot of benefits to this. I’ve been able to see if the story is being built properly, or if there are issues with the flow. If an act of the book starts out dread-ridden, but the rest of the act is calm and tensionless, I can spot it easier and ask myself if this was my intention. I can ask myself what I can do to start building a pressure cooker until the next big moment in the book. 

This came into play at the end of act two. I think what I initially had down for what happened in the final chapter of this section fell into the dreaded pitfall of stagnation. While what happens sets up the rest of the book, it boils down to the protagonist talking to the antagonist. There was a hint of agency to why the protagonist had to talk to them, but by seeing the the atmosphere was kind of blah, I added urgency to the scene, that not only do they have to talk to their enemy, they’re also racing a kind of ticking clock. Because I needed something to create that urgency, it allowed me to lace the scene with hints and reminders about the other characters and subplots I want in the story, as I believe this all sets up later events that will hopefully keep building on one another to the finale. So I think it’s a great sign that changes that I’m making in the outlining process are complimenting other aspects that I want to have in the book.

Until next week.

Hello everyone!

Welcome to another week of the outlining process for my next book. I know that this might all sound endless (sometimes it certainly feels that way when that’s all I’ve been blogging about), but it’s amazing to think that we’re coming to the end of it as NaNoWriMo is just a few weeks away.

Despite this being yet another week of outlining, there always seems to be something new to note. I got through the first act of the book providing detailed outlines of each chapter. At first, this seemed like I was just rehashing my old notes, writing them down again, maybe added a few additional things, but the changes all seemed minimal. As I worked my way through part one, I saw why that was the case. The first few chapters mainly focus on the main character as they navigate through the world of the book. I’m setting up other characters and aspects of the world, but for the most part, its all the main character. For this reason, I was really only pulling notes from their rundown, and not much was needed from the other characters. 

It isn’t until the reader gets a few chapters in that the main antagonist is introduced, and this is where I started to need to compile notes from another character. As I finished up part one and moved into part two, I felt that the story started to open up even more, and I needed to refer to all of the character plot rundowns to gather notes to include in this more detailed outline.

I think this is a really positive development, and is going to make for an enjoyable experience for the reader. From the outline, the reader will have time to get acquainted with our main character, their situation and motivations, before being exposed to the story at large, the main antagonist and the main conflict of the book. Once that’s established, the story will continue to unfold, building on what I took the time to establish in those early, intimate chapters that focused on the protagonist.

I also started to get a sense of how long some of these chapters are going to be. The reason I outline so extensively is so when I get down to writing, I can get as efficient in storytelling as possible. This really started with Dig Down, where I wanted the reader to feel Rob was jumping from one sizzling frying pan to another as he was trying to escape multiple assassins, and because I didn’t want there to be a sag in the pacing, his conversations with Preston had to be just as economical in doling out information before moving on. 

I don’t want to bog the story down with irrelevant dialogue, or subplots and details that serve no purpose. If it’s in the book, I want there to be a reason why, whether it’s essential to the plot, establishes the tone or atmosphere of the book, a crucial detail about the world, fleshes out the character, what have you.

I’m early into part two of the book, but I see already that there’s the chance to convey a lot of information about the atmosphere of the story told by the actions of the characters as they’re driving the plot forward to where it needs to go. The beginning of this act will be coming off a crazy sequence that ends part one, and so by keeping the chapters crisp, while still delivering a lot of key information, I hope that this pace will keep the reader’s attention as the story navigates into what I have waiting for it later.

Until next time.

Hello everyone.

First, I’m thrilled to have once again gotten back into the routine of outlining daily. I always love to write, and that includes the entire process, beginning with brainstorming and outlining, but I do need to treat this like a job. As such, I never want to get lax with it and start taking “days off” because then I feel like it’s hard to get back into the swing of things. Taking two consecutive days off last week, while I got right back into it again, still gave me some concern, and I’m happy to see there was no lingering effects.

This week, I began making detailed outlines of the chapters for In the Maws and Claws. After two months of outlining, I found that I had been coming up with so many ideas for character backstories, as well as just interesting details to sprinkle throughout the book for a little flare, that I was having a hard time keeping track of where it would all be going.

It was an odd sort of feeling for me when I started doing this. This is something I always do for any book that I write, and yet even though I’ve been working on this idea for a while, not just outlining it, it still feels new and like I’m at the start of the process (which if I’m honest, I am, you’ll see for yourself). Simultaneously, at the time this is posted to my blog, it’ll be within one month of the start of NaNoWriMo.

This was the natural next step to take in the outlining process. As I mentioned, this is now when I’m gathering together all the details and perspectives I’d given to the different characters in their own individual run throughs of the plot, and are compiling them together to make sure I know what each character is going through at each phase of the story. As I’ve been doing this, I’ve noticed little details that I’d jotted down, sometimes months ago, that I’d completely forgotten about until this step. This is why it pays to write good ideas down, so they’re not forgotten through time.

Doing this has also allowed me to bring into focus aspects of the manuscript that still need to be figured out. In some of the run throughs, I’d scribbled down a general sense of new information that should be doled out to the reader for some chapters, but haven’t gotten into specifics. This mostly has to do with the backstories of the main characters, and hinting at them through dialogue and inner thoughts in these scenes.

But all I had for notes to this point is ‘backstory’ or ‘more backstory detail.’ While I’d already plotted out the whole backstories for them earlier in my notes, merely writing that I should reveal some of it here isn’t going to help me when I sit down to write (again, in less than a month!). So this step is unbelievably helpful in that it’s forcing me to think now what specifically about their backstory is going to be brought up first, what details am I’m going to turn to next to build on what I’d already hinted at, until I’ve guided the reader through everything they’ll need to know.

It’ll probably cause me to come back and make revisions to these earlier chapters, but at least then, I’ll have this detailed outline to refer to to easily find the changes I want to make.

Until next week.

Hello everyone.

This week’s outlining didn’t get off to such a hot start. I took a day off from outlining on Saturday to head up to Saratoga to celebrate my brother’s birthday. The following day, a little worn out from the day before, I wasn’t up for outlining, opting instead to recuperate.

I was a little disappointed in all this because of the streak of days I had going outlining the new project, and I didn’t like snapping that streak, let alone risking losing the momentum I’d gathered by taking a second day off. I was more than ecstatic to get back on track on Monday.

This week, I focused on another character’s perspective. This character is a bit unique. She isn’t a minor character; her involvement in the story gives context and motivation to the main characters perspective and actions throughout the manuscript. But she isn’t a major one either. Her presence is just essential, despite her lack of presence. 

I’d say the closest example I can give to the role that she serves is Axel Forsberg. When I finally wrote Dig Down, I was surprised just how little he was actually in the story (4 chapters, 3 of them in the final act). Yet his fingerprints for how the story unfolded are all throughout the book. This character will participate more often throughout the story, but the story won’t be focusing on and following her every move like it will the other four characters.

What felt promising as I was outlining her perspective was how her involvement was meshing with the main character’s actions and motivations. I could really envision scenes and scenarios where because of an interaction with her (A), it would play a part in what the protagonist did next (B).

This is always a really good sign. Storytelling is at it’s best when a scene or interaction is crisp and efficient, advancing multiple plot lines, showcasing the true nature of multiple characters by their actions, laying the groundwork for payoffs in the future, all while feeling completely natural, like it was the only way these events could have happened.

As the week wore on, I started to outline for a little bit longer each day. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I made up taking the weekend off, but I do feel that I at least avoided losing all my momentum heading into NaNoWriMo. Focusing on this character’s perspective, I think it’s really starting to round the story out, and without her, I don’t think this new project would feel as polished, making it vital that I get her right.

As I’m wrapping up her perspective, I realize I’ve got a problem, but a good one to have. There feels like a lot I’m going to have to unpack throughout the course of this novel. This is the first time I was writing about her since late July/early August, even though I feel she’s an important component to the story. And that’s because each character I’ve gone in depth with is also highly important, and brings a lot to the table throughout the story. I keep having ideas about details to include in each interaction, and where I’m going to interject all this information. I’m rapidly coming to the point where I’m going to have to start whittling down the details to make this a polished, fluid, entertaining read.

Until next week.

Hello everyone,

This week I felt I’d really gotten into the routine of writing, which is great news come November for NaNoWriMo. Every day, the day didn’t feel complete or like I had accomplished everything I should have until I set aside time for writing. Most days it wasn’t an issue at all, as I was also looking forward to jotting down more ideas for the story. Once or twice this week, the outlining did get pushed back to late in the day, but no matter how late it got, I always felt the motivation not to lose the momentum of outlining daily.

The week started out outlining more subplots for another group of characters. I came up with a whole sort of hierarchy within this cast of characters, what their motivations would be, and how this would lead to in-fighting among them all, based off of their clashing ideals. 

It might feel extensive and exhaustive to work develop subplots for so many characters. Yes, a book can be any length you want, but the average book is about 70-80,000 words, and the three books I’ve published have all been about half this length. But this sort of refinement really helped me realize a personality trait among one of them, and I don’t know that it would surfaced without these deep dives during the outlining process. The more I thought about it, the more this trait was not only in line with the actions that this character is going to take as the story unfolds, it enhances those actions as there’s now going to be a clear motivation that the reader will be able to follow.

Within this hierarchy of characters, I also began to develop little subgroups within them, each with their own characteristics. It’s another detail that I think will make the story more polished and the characters and world I’m creating feel more alive.

For most of the week, I went through a run down of the plot again from another character’s point of view, although this one was different from the rundowns I’d done with the three main characters. I did their run through not from their perspective of the story, but their perspective of a feud they’re in with another character…one who is not going to appear in the story at all.

It was an idea I had for this character that they would be clashing with the Governor when I’d first started outlining. At the time, I wasn’t sure that this subplot would make it into the manuscript. If I’m being perfectly honest, I still don’t know if its going to make it.

BUT!

Although there would be no appearance of the Governor, and possibly no mention of them, I thought about what this character would have going on in their life during the events of this story, and believed that being engaged in a political feud would absolutely shape the actions that they took as the book progressed, and that battling this political opponent would serve as a great motivation for the actions that they take. 

I’ve done this for stories before. I’d come up with a backstory for the Senators in Dig Down, having them collude, regardless of party affiliation, to secretly run things and maintain power. The only sort of clue to this was the votes that kept granting Axel defense contracts, and I didn’t really get in depth about it until I wrote a short story explaining the workings of their political back dealings. Nevertheless, having this backstory helped me write that book because I had an idea of how and why they operated. Their actions felt right to me, which helped me convey that on the page, and I expect to do the same here.

Until next week.