Uncategorized

Hello everyone!

It’s nice to get back to normal and write these blogs on Saturday’s again. With the dogsitting and Travers, I’ve had to find time to write these during the week so that I could post them by Thursday, and that always set up a muddled sense of “Okay, so what had I done up to last weekend?” I still have to think back on what I’d already covered in the last post and what I did this week, but I’m hoping that this will at least get me back into the original routine.

This week, I completed the rundown of the plot from the main villain’s point of view. While the story won’t be told from this perspective, it’s going to be critical to understand his motivations throughout the book, as our main character is going to be in a perpetual state of trying to keep up and figure out what his adversary is up to. Our main character is going to act as the filter through which we learn what the villain is doing, and in order for the character to know, I’m going to have to know.

I feel confident I know have a good outline for the villain, and now it’s going to be figuring out how to incorporate all this information throughout the story, both what he’s up to in the schemes he’ll be hatching, as well as the motivation driving him to concoct these plots. This will mean going through chapter by chapter and making small lists of what needs to be covered and revealed in each one. I may end up have a Master Sheet for each chapter in which I cover every thing from every main character’s perspective along with the plot rundown in each chapter just so I can have a blueprint for myself when I get to writing.

After finishing this rundown, I once again gave myself a few days of light outlining to break up the monotony of this process. I started brainstorming names of all the minor characters that might appear in the book. I’ll have to come back to this and starting assigning the names with roles, subplots, or just little details that I think will add to the atmosphere of the story.

I continued watching Death Note throughout the week. If you haven’t seen it yet, give it a try. It combines the supernatural with a cat and mouse mystery thriller that pits a world famous detective against a genius whose able to kill people by writing their names in a notebook. While the premise of murder by writing is definitely on the far-fetched fantastical side, the way the detective makes his deductions is very grounded, using process of elimination, setting tests and traps to confirm his theories and gather more information. The series is only 37 half hour episodes, yet its amazing how much story they pack into that timeframe without making it feel crammed. I hope Worth the Wait embodies that same feeling of lots of story while still feeling like every pivotal moment has a chance to breathe.

Lastly, at the end of the week, I started up another rundown of the plot, this time from another villain’s perspective. This one was a little bit trickier to pull off. I realized that although this character will have been introduced in the early going, he won’t really step into the spotlight until a couple of chapters in. I found that while writing the outline for these early chapters, I don’t need to let them go to waste, and can start to lay the building blocks for what this character is going to grow into when he starts to command the reader’s attention. This rundown has already been a good way to identify another way to give some polish to this story to provide a smooth transition to this character’s ascension.

Until next time.

Hello everyone,

I don’t know if this was actually the most productive week I’ve had outlining, but it does feel like its the one where I got the most done. This might just be because I wrapped up a lot of components to the outline this week, but that sense of accomplishment really feels good.

The week started off great when I completed the run through of the plot from the main character’s perspective. I had really only written my usual page or two of notes for the day, so its not like I put a major amount of effort into this day in particular, more it was just the culmination of about a week going through the plot, and this was the day where I just reached the end of the story.

The following day was a bit easier as a started doing a rough outline of a layout of some of the locations. Although I don’t always go into great detail of what places look like in my books, I like to have a clear idea of what locations look like in my head so that I have a spatial awareness of events that are taking place. It helps me determine how much the reader needs to know to appreciate the scene. 

I lean towards minimal descriptions. Dig Down had very bare bones descriptions for most locations. The mall was two stories, Rob entered into the food court with the movie theatre at his left, a Merry-Go-Round in its middle and two stores at the mouth of the food court on the right were on both stories with an escalator in each store. How many restaurants were in the food court? Doesn’t matter. What kind of foods did they serve? Who knows? What did the rest of the mall look like? Irrelevant. I only described what was essential for the reader to understand what was happening.

That’s not to say I never go into detail. I made sure to describe the layout of Preston’s townhouse, as well as Bobby’s cabin in Lock the Doors, because in both stories, the reader was going to be spending a lot of time in these locations, and it was important to establish an idea of where the characters were and what they would be reasonably interacting with.

For this story, I’ll admit, I still have a lot of work to do with the layout. But better to address these shortcomings now in the outline, then when I’m sitting down to actually write.

After an easy day, I started the run through of the plot again, this time through the main villain’s point of view. I took a similar approach when I wrote Dig Down, outlining the backstory from Rob’s and Preston’s point of view. In that story, I was looking to make both characters the hero of their own version of their story. For Worth the Wait, this is actually serving to give a voice to this character, something that will make them stand out against the other characters in the story. 

I’m finding that he is very distinct from the rest of the characters in the story, and even from every other character I’ve written. This actually led me to have to break up the story into segments when I started outlining for him.

Lastly, I began rewatching one of my favorites series, Death Note, which I swear is for research. There’s a huge component to that show that I want to incorporate into this book (and no, it’s not Shinigami), and I feel the best way to do that is to expose myself to it, get a sense for it, try to understand why it works, and do my best to make it my own. This kind of research is always fun because I get to experience something I already enjoy again.

Until next week.

Hello everyone!

I felt things were moving in the right direction for the outlining this week…for the most part. This week I really focused on having the plot rundown from the main character’s point of view remain with the perspective of the main character. I like having new ideas for the supporting characters, both major, but especially minor, because I think these little details that I can incorporate about them will make the world feel that much more lived in, but there’s a time and a place to focus on them, and waxing on and on about them while I’m supposed to be focusing on the main character isn’t it.

Last week, I had also felt for one section my main character was a little too passive, which in and of itself wasn’t so bad, but I don’t like it when stories are just happening “around” the character, and it doesn’t matter whether they’re even there or not. I usually want my characters to be active in the plot. If they’re not, I want to have a reason for why they’re not. It hit me in the middle of the week how to deal with this. While he still will not be taking an active role in what’s going on around him for this one section, my goal is to now reframe his actions so that he is actively trying remain passive, resisting all of these outside forces dragging him into the action.

I was dog sitting for the weekend, and this definitely did cut into the time I could devote to outlining. Well, okay, it didn’t have to…but I had to play with the dog. Okay…I wanted to play with the dog. What? How can you anyone look at a bored dog and not want to cheer it up?

I had to change my approach of tackling the outline, so my initial focus each day with the dog was to take her on walks until I tuckered her out. I was even cheerily telling her as I was driving her to the park that she was done for because I was going to wear her out. Once she was zonked out on the couch or floor (wherever she gave up and decided to lie down), I get back into the outline, and ended up only missing one day where I didn’t get to it. This may not have had anything to do with it, but I was so pleased with myself for carving out time to outline while the dog was here that I brainstormed a way to really ratchet up the tension for an entire section of the book that I previously hadn’t even thought of.

Lastly, also during the weekend, I woke up in the middle of the night because my neighbors across the street felt like midnight was the perfect time to have a long drawn out conversation, and while I was tossing about (without disturbing the dog) trying to fall back asleep, I thought about how the plan is to have a two year gap between the release of I’m Not My Father and this book, which led me to finally give this project a title. This is still a working title, something I’ve actually ended up doing with all 3 of my published novels. Dig Down was originally going to be Dig Down Deep, and Lock the Doors had a working title of The Intruders (which is why I used that word so often in the story). I’m Not My Father had a working title of Pyrite. So this is subject to change, but for now, I’ll be referring to the new book as Worth the Wait.

Talk to you guys next week.

Hi everyone!

It’s funny how much smoother things go when you don’t lose your glasses and are virtually blind for two days. That being said, the second week of outlining went much, MUCH smoother than my initial start to writing this new book.

I really felt like I was getting into the swing of things this week. I finished making a draft of the initial plot outline, then started brainstorming ideas for running side plots and details throughout the story, as well as making a list of all the rivalries and threats that will be present for the characters.

Last week, I felt I was only spending about fifteen to twenty minutes on outlining each day. Some of that had to do with me having to squint at the page right in front of me just to read my notes for two days, but it was also because I was just getting started on the new story, and still in the feeling out phase with the story and characters. I had mentioned last week that it wasn’t until I started doing a more detailed outline that I started to understand the motivations of one of the main characters. I tend to take it slower when I start a new project because I’ve only got this general direction of where I want to go, and revelations like I had last week have a huge impact on how much more productive I am the longer I work on these stories.

Most days I felt like I was outlining for about an hour. There were two days where I was only able to squeeze in about ten to fifteen minutes, but the rest of the week I was not only jotting down much more notes, I felt they were also on a more in-depth level, whether it was because I was going into more details about characters and scenes, or whether it was because I was starting to get a better sense of how the story would look as a whole.

For the last half of the week, I’ve started to go through the outline of the plot from the main character’s point of view, and I’d say I’m about halfway through the story right now. I plan to do this again for the other main characters, to understand their motivations and goals at each stage of the manuscript. I’ve also started to break the outline down into what I believe the chapters will be. One chapter looks a little too long, and I’m trying to find a good spot to break it up.

I’ve also noticed that although I’m currently focusing on a breakdown of the story from the main character’s point of view, for some of the “chapters” I’m focusing more on what other characters are doing, or his reaction to what they’re doing. Most of the time, it’s what the main villains are doing, and while I think the main antagonist is going to be a force to be reckoned with, these notes shouldn’t be taken right now, but held off until I do the breakdown again from their point of view.

For some of the “chapters” there are also notes about what minor and background characters are up to. While I do intend to keep this information in the manuscript for now, this outline has helped me notice that I should be focusing on presenting this information through the experience of the main character. If I want to include all the actions of all these other characters, whether big or small, its important that I relate it in such a way that the readers understand how this all impacts the main character, and why its relevant enough to be included in the first place.

There’s once again a lot of room for improvement with the outlining. But I’m pleased that I’m doing so much more of it, and how much more it’s delving into the story as a whole.

Hello!

We’re now one week into the process of writing a new book, and it got off to a rocky start as I had a difficult time seeing anything. My plan had been to start the outlining process on August 1st. I had gone kayaking the day before, and for the first time ever, tipped out of my boat. I was fine, I was even laughing about taking a splash, until I realized my glasses had come off and were now lost somewhere at the bottom of the river. My keys had been on me as well, and the fob must’ve short circuited because anytime I was near my car, the alarm would just keep going off. I still had a spare set of keys, so the soaked set ended up getting 86’d in the woods.

Fun fact: optometrists close early on Saturdays, and aren’t in on Sundays. So, I had to wait until Monday to schedule an appointment. Thankfully, I was able to get an eye exam, new prescription, and new glasses that afternoon. I’m going to hold out to the hope that this is the roughest patch I’ll be facing while writing this book…until that inevitably does not become the case.

Despite becoming Mr. Magoo for a couple of days, I was able to start outlining ideas for the new book, expanding on notes I’d been jotting down before the first of the month. The first thing I did this week was review and elaborate on the backstories of the main characters, to get a firmer grasp on why they are where they are at the start of the book, but more importantly, who they are. To me, this is a crucial first step because when I write, I ask “Why is the character doing this?” nearly every chapter. By understanding their backstories, I understand what’s shaped their lives to this point, and what might be in the back of their mind with any decisions they have to make throughout the story. 

This mentality stems from when I’m reading or watching something where a character does something either out of character or that doesn’t appear to make any sense. Maybe in a detective story, the mean captain that the protagonist has butted heads with throughout the book gives them a vote of confidence to run with their lead, however implausible, even though the protagonist hasn’t provided a compelling enough reason to gain their trust. Or in most horror movies, a character all alone in a house will decide to to investigate a noise coming from the basement. You’ve probably noticed several other examples yourselves in stories. I try to avoid doing this. To me, it drags down the quality of the narrative. I write my stories from the character’s perspective so that when they make decisions, even if you disagree with them, you understand why they made them.

I already had a sense of where most of the main characters fit into the story, who they were, and why they would act the way they did. But one of the antagonists felt like a watered down version of the main villain before I took this step. Now, after doing this in depth look at their history, I’ve got a backstory that’s unique to this character with a tragic motivation that differentiates them from the main baddie. The two now won’t feel like clones of each other, and each time the main character interacts with one of them, it will feel separate and distinct from his interactions with the other .

For most of the week, I started going into a more detailed rundown of the plot. I’ve had a bit of an idea on the course of events, and I knew what point A and point Z would look like, but the roadmap to get there had a lot of routes that were missing/under construction. This more detailed outline ended up focusing on the environment the characters would find themselves in after the previous chapters had played out. This, along with a stronger understanding of who the characters are and how they would most likely behave, really helped lay the groundwork for me to get from page one to the final scene (which still feels like it’s going to need a lot of work).

I’m really pleased with how the outline is going so far, and I’m optimistic that I’m going to have reliable vision for the entire upcoming week.

Hello!

This blog will be dedicated to chronicling my saga of writing my next book, from the initial conception of the idea and outlining, through the writing and many, many revisions, until the book is released. My target goal is to release the next book by January 2023.

I’m excited to be working on a book again. My process to get started is lengthy, and sometimes feels like the longest leg of my writing journey. It might be because I’m always resistant to start a new project. This isn’t out of laziness (although there’s always the temptation to play video games rather than be productive). It’s because of that initial doubt that the story is any good.

With this in mind, when an idea pops into my head, I don’t write it down for a couple days. This might seem counterintuitive. How could I expect to remember this amazing new story idea if I don’t record it somewhere? But that’s the point. I’m screening out weak ideas from the outset. If a new story really is that amazing, I should still be thinking about it days/weeks/months/years later. If I can’t even remember what it was two days later, it wasn’t that great to begin with, and because it isn’t written down for me to look over again, I don’t have to waste anymore time thinking about it.

Even if a new idea survives that initial cut, I still don’t fully commit to writing it. I’ll jot down notes about where I think the story could go, the characters that would be involved in the plot, things like that. But if its still a strong concept, ideas are going to fester in my brain, I’ll constantly think up new details, backstories, side characters, running side plots, you name it, until I’ve got way more than I’d ever need to write a book. If this phase starts to fizzle out after a handful of pages of notes and outlines, I kick the idea to the curb and start again.

This is what I’ve been up to for most of the first half of the year. Looking at my notebook of story ideas, I count 8 since November of last year that made it to the jotting down phase that I ultimately rejected. 

Most were rejected because the ideas didn’t have enough legs on them for a book. Maybe they’ll become short stories one day. One was a strong candidate, but the more I thought about it, the more I’d be interested in turning it into a trilogy, but I’m just not willing to commit to writing a trilogy (yet).

It’s definitely easy to get discouraged during this phase. It can be tedious, having ideas pop into your head, only to turn them aside just as quickly. I don’t see the use in getting frustrated. I think that leads to the catastrophic decision to try to rush the process, and rush things out. That always runs the risk of a bad story.

I never try to force an idea though. I always believe they’ll come, and while I wait, I work on other things. I wrote a script for my debut novel Dig Down (twice actually, because my laptop crashed and I didn’t have it backed up). I wrote some short stories related to my second book Lock the Doors. I’ve read or listened to 40 books this year, because I think the more stories you experience, the more ideas you have. Not everything was writing, I’ve also been learning how to code. I think a relaxed mind is more open to ideas.

And about a month ago, one finally stuck. It survived not being written down for a few days, and more ideas kept growing out of every idea I wrote down. I’m still a long ways from the finish line (I can’t even see one from where I’m standing right now). I only have a semblance of how it would end, and I don’t even have a title. But I have the most important thing right now. An idea that sticks, and that I want to see where it goes.