Why, Yes, I am writing a novel this month

I actually did start on a new NaNo novel last week. Only about 1200 words, so far. But I'm just getting started and think I can catch up.

Finished Something

Granted, it's only a first draft of a very short story (about 1200 words), and it's not even science fiction or fantasy. But it's something. And I wrote it in just one day.

The impetus is a fiction contest for an upcoming writing conference. I took another class, "Introduction to Mystery Writing", with Leslie Adkins, on Saturday and she mentioned the conference and the fact that it's a small enough conference that the number of entries into the contest that goes with it is even smaller than usual, increasing the chances of winning. To top it off, she sounded pretty disappointed in the quality of entries in some recent contests. With my usual attitude of "I can probably do better than that", I figured it was worth seeing what I can come up with.

I pulled out an old story idea and went to town, getting the first few paragraphs down in the morning and then stewing about it off and on during the work day. By the time evening rolled around, I had some good ideas and spent a couple of hours finishing it off. I thought for sure I had written more than the 1500 words called for. But when I ran it through word count, it looks like the story has a little room to grow, if it needs to.

The next step is to write an alternate story, completely different. Then come back and do a second draft of this one, followed by a second draft of the second one. I have about a month to select one, finish it off and send it in. If I do it, it will be the first story I've submitted for more than casual reading since my really bad fourth-dimension story I did for a class in high school.

In any event, it feels good to actually finish something, no matter how small.

2010 (Down to Earth) Locus Awards

First of all, congratulations to all of the winners and nominees for the 2010 Locus awards for Science Fiction and Fantasy.

http://www.locusmag.com/News/2010/06/2010-locus-awards-winners/

http://www.locusmag.com/News/2010/04/locus-awards-finalists.html

I suppose I could have actually attended some of the festivities, given that they took place just across the lake in Seattle. I wasn't paying close enough attention. Maybe next year.

Somehow, this year I have been paying enough attention that I've actually read many of the winning and nominated stories a priori, rather than catching up to them post facto, which is my usual modus operandi. Looking back, I probably read one or two winners from 2008 and 2009 before they got awards. For quite a while before that, I was totally not paying attention and barely kept up with any.

I think my greater hip-ness this year is due to following the blog and/or Twitter feeds for several prominent authors. My desire to become an author, though perhaps not an award-winning one, has pushed me to pay better attention to what's happening in the industry. As such, and as I look at this year's Locus winners, I actually do see what might be termed a trend: the novels are all Earth-bound.

Starting with the winner for Science Fiction Novel, Boneshaker (Cherie Priest), we have a science fiction story not only not set somewhere out in space, but set on an Earth of the past that never was. There's a lot of this going around. I like it. But it's not Ringworld. One of the nominees that's already on my to-be-read list, Galileo's Dream (Kim Stanley Robinson) sounds like it involves a bit more outer space and future. But then the winner for Young-Adult Novel, Leviathan (Scott Westerfeld), is back on Earth in the steampunk mold. This time in the era of WWI, rather than the Civil War.

My perception of fantasy novels is that they are generally set in some indefinite past time and place (e.g., Middle Earth). This year's Fantasy Novel winner, The City & The City (China Miéville) ignores that and takes place in some indefinite present time and an indefinite Earth-bound pair of cities. A very trippy read, but also close to home.

The three nominees for First Novel of which I have first hand experience or knowledge, including the winner, The Windup Girl (Paolo Bacigalupi), are also very down-to-Earth. The Windup Girl is a hard science-fiction novel where the science of the future has been pushed back to rely on technology of the past, due to oil shortages and greenhouse gasses. Lamentation (Ken Scholes) seems like it might be on Earth and hints that it's in some post-Apocalyptic future (or could it be on another planet, ala Le Guin's Dragonriders?). And Norse Code (Greg van Eekhout) is pretty obviously (based on the sample chapters I saw) set in the gritty urban streets of Earth.

So does any science fiction get the reader into outer space or into the future? I have to admit I'm not current on short stories or the other short forms, like novella and novelette. And I haven't read or gotten familiar with the other novel nominees. But judging by the titles, I'm guessing at least some of them do. And I know for sure that the winner for Anthology does. I'm several stories into The New Space Opera 2 (Gardner Dozois & Jonathan Strahan, eds.) and it's chockablock with characters and settings that are not of the the Earth or of its past.

Will the Earth-bound story continue to dominate science fiction and fantasy awards? It seems like there is an awful lot of action in the steampunk, alternate history, and urban fantasy realms of fiction. I'm sure that these up and coming authors will continue to charm us with visions of Earth past, present, and future. I'm just as sure that there are other authors who will beguile us with stories set on other planets and in other galaxies.

In the meantime, though, I hope that there will always be room for down-to-Earth adventures. So I'd better get back to work and finish my science fiction mystery story set in an alternate 1950s where we're about to get the space age for which we wished.

Write or Flight

I almost succumbed to the urge to just dive in and start writing this morning. The opening scene started trying to write itself before I got out of bed. But this approach has not worked out too well for me in the past. That gets me a few chapters before the plot peters out, the antagonist stays missing in action, and total frustration sets in.

Thankfully, I managed to coral that thought (though I need to jot down another note about it) and convince myself I need a better roadmap of where the story is going before I start.

Back to the outline. My high-level points looked pretty good, so I started drilling down on the first couple. I have to say, the story is starting to look fairly decent. If I can keep this up, I may have the outline done this week and be able to start really writing by Monday, maybe even this weekend.

Does Noir have to be All Black?

My current writing project takes place in the 1950s and I have been seeing it as more or less a detective story (albeit with science fiction elements) in the hard-boiled tradition of the era (e.g., Hammett, Chandler, et al.). But after recently viewing several more noir films, of which many are based on such novels, it suddenly dawned on me that most, if not all, of these stories have no real winners, and perhaps no genuine heroes.

Yes, yes, you say, I should have seen that all along. That's the very definition of hard-boiled novels and film noir. Everyone is out for themselves. Everyone is a rascal. And nobody wins. Even the victims turn out to be guilty of something, if not the major crime. And sometimes an apparent victim is the antagonist, perhaps the murderer. The hero almost never survives the story as a genuine hero. They're one of the biggest rascals of all, in order to survive. And even the antagonist turns out, at times, to be a victim. What a world!

But in my mind, my protagonist needs to be a hero, at least for the most part. I guess what I've discovered is that in order to be hard-boiled, he's going to have to do something rash, and calculated, and wrong. Certainly, every protagonist has flaws. But this is probably something more, something dire, something with adverse consequences. It's going to cost him. And it may cost somebody else. But that's good. It's good to know these things about my hero and what it's going to take to make what I hope is a compelling tale.

Noir is black. And in literature, film, and art, black usually represents bad. But in film noir and hard-boiled literature, bad is what makes it good.

read: Rocket Science

This blog must make it seem like all I'm doing these days is read. I am writing, I promise. Oddly, this book is related to the novel I'm writing: what if, just after WWII, an unsuspecting, average guy found himself pursued by foreign agents, military police, and mobsters because of something that may not be of this Earth? That's not exactly where I started with my story, but it's where I seem to be heading. And so did Jay Lake in his first novel, Rocket Science (review below). Thankfully, his plot, setting, and characters turn out to be radically different from mine. But that doesn't mean I won't be borrowing a few ideas.

Rocket Science by Jay Lake


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
In Rocket Science, Jay Lake has populated a small post-WWII Kansas town with likable folks, Nazi agents, Communist spies, traitors, mobsters, military police, and a flying machine that's not of this Earth. He blends them together in a tale that is a page turner from start to finish, with the biggest surprises at the end. [More...]

View all my reviews >>

Throwing in the towel on NaNoWriMo

This is the first time I haven't 'won' National Novel Writing Month since I gave it a try 4 years ago. This was my 5th attempt. There are still almost 4 days to go in November. So, why am I giving up now?

1. With only 4 days to go, I have just over 1/2 my word count yet to write. That's over 6,000 words per day. I've managed one 4,500 word. Even if I had nothing else happening on those 4 days (like my day job on Monday), the probabilities are against me.
2. My excuses for such a poor word count stem mainly from getting a late start. Trying to return from a long vacation and hit the ground running with a writing project was a bit over-ambitious. Then there were a couple of sick days when my brain wouldn't work. About a week ago, I figured out that I was about 10 days behind. I made up a few of those, but not enough.
   
3. My other excuse probably stems from having been writing fiction for 4 years. I just could not build up momentum because I kept paying too much attention to the characters and story. I just couldn't let go and slam stuff out.
4. As usual, I didn't have enough of my story planned out before I dove in. I kept writing my way into it and was about to get started on my third story angle. I do like this new angle. It's promising. But I want to flesh it out and give it the attention it deserves. This sort of goes back to the previous point where I couldn't just keep driving down a dead end once I saw it was a dead end.
   
5. I wanted my life back. I needed to get some stuff done this weekend that didn't involve staring at the screen waiting for words to come out of my fingers.

Am I sorry I even tried? No. As usual, I got to learn more about the writing process and my strengths and weaknesses.

Will I try it again? Perhaps. It will depend on where I am in the process next year. If I'm finally in the middle of finishing off the first draft or first (or second edit) of a story (maybe this one), I will probably stick with it until it's done (at least I hope I will).

In the meantime, I'm going to keep on reading. Nothing is more motivating for me to write than to experience a good story and think that I might be able to do that. Except maybe reading something like 'Atlantis Found' by Clive Cussler and being pretty sure that I can write better than that.

Broke 1000

That's not really a big accomplishment, considering it's day 5 of NaNoWriMo and I'm supposed to be somewhere between 8000 and 10000 words. But at least I'm getting some stuff down. I'm still hopeful that I can get some big numbers this weekend and maybe even catch up (if not get ahead).

NaNoWriMo is coming

Just a little over two weeks to go until National Novel Writing Month (www.nanowrimo.org). This will be my fifth time.

It looks like I'll be starting something completely different than I had been thinking. The start I got on my previous project proved that it really didn't have the legs it needed. So, I've got a related but different concept that I hope will get me through the month. Now I just have to get some sort of outline down so that I'm not firing blind, like I have in previous years.

Characters Are The Thing

Even in a plot-driven story, characters are key. I've found that one of the easiest things to do is to get so wrapped up in my protagonist, that I fail to create an adequately drawn antagonist. It's often unclear what exactly the antagonist wants and what they're willing to do to get it. And without that, the story withers and dies somewhere in the middle and has no clear ending.

For my current project, I've already sketched out both characters, but need to spend more time. Again, the antagonist needs clearer goals and motivations. I also need to make sure that the cast of secondary characters is well-rounded, since the plot will be complicated and they will add much to the texture of the story.

The good news is that I'm actually working on the project, instead of just thinking about it.

Once Again, I Have Been Remiss

Blogging is hard. So is writing. Trying to do either one on a fine summer day is even harder, as I'm obviously finding. Trying to do either one, while keeping up with everyone else's blogging and writing is also difficult. Something needs to be ignored. Alas, for me it has been both this blog and my writing.

Mind you, I have actually worked on a couple of new projects. Just a little. I've captured a few bones of the skeleton of one novel and the idea for another. What hasn't happened is the actual committing to characters and plot and launching into the writing. That needs to happen soon. I'm pretty sure it can happen soon. This week? Let's assume so.

A new month starts tomorrow. It's as good a time as any. Then again, a new day starts tomorrow. It's also as good a time as any. Lest I forget, a new day started today. It was also as good a time as any. Too bad the morning is gone and my day job beckons. Tonight is another chance.

Private Detective Couples

While I work on plotting a new screenplay, I'm also thinking about the next project. I'm pretty sure this will be a revisit (actually complete rewrite) of my first ever novel, written for National Novel Writing Month, which was (supposed to be) a bit of a thriller/mystery. I've often thought of taking an underlying theme of that, old cars, and building a series out of that. The idea appeals to me.

It seems that in order to really do that, I'll probably have to follow the herd and center the series on a single protagonist. As I thought that through, it sure seemed like what I was coming up with was yet-another-loner-hero. Is that what the world needs? Is that all it wants? Sometimes it looks that way. Even the women detectives I've read lately are almost just female versions of the same stereotype.

What if I did something different? What if I did a husband/wife team of detectives? How often has this been done? Is it too off the mark for the market? These are the questions I need to answer. I put part of the question out there to Facebook and Twitter and got a couple of answers from folks that are not really writer's market analysts. But they point to the only ones I could think of, too:

• Nick and Nora Charles from "The Thin Man"
• Jennifer and Jonathan Hart from "Hart to Hart"
• Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro from "Gone Baby Gone", etc. (not married, but a couple)

Is that about it? I'm just getting started on the research. I know I don't want to spend much energy on this question, because it doesn't really matter that much. Except, I still wonder if it's different enough or too different.

Screenwriting Books

I'm back in the fight to outline this screenplay. Last night, my slightly mushy brain came up with a pretty decent idea to fix the whole thing, and it continued to work on it overnight. By this morning it seemed like the new approach was pretty workable and I started writing it down. I'd like to say a couple of words about how I'm approaching that.

I previously mentioned Blake Snyder and Alex Epstein as influences on structuring my work. It's pretty hard to really name a favorite between their two books. The couple of books I'd read before them, Writing Screenplays That Sell by Michael Hauge and Screenplay by Syd Field, were useful overviews, but were vague on specific techniques. Yes, they discussed the three acts. Michael even offered a way to format an outline, but his approach seemed both heavily burdened with detail about what to track for each scene and lacking in practical advice on how to figure out what scenes to include.

Then I read Alex Epstein's Crafty Screenwriting. This was helpful. He started with the basics on developing a hook and then gave solid, practical advice about plot, characters, dialogue and the rest. I used his guidance while working on my second screenplay. But I guess the part of my brain that's good at organizing some things just didn't quite absorb enough about the process to make me successful at organizing the screenplay. It still ran out of gas about halfway through. I needed more.

Blake Snyder's Save The Cat! was the book that put it all together for me. It really might be The Last Book on Screenwriting [I'll] Ever Need (but I doubt it, because I like books). From his insightful breakdown of the beats of a movie, to his useful taxonomy of story genres, to his step by step advice on breaking down a story using 'the board', this book is filled with the tools I think I need to finally put together a screenplay that works. All the other books have their place, but Save The Cat! is the one I go to first to figure out what I need to put into a script.

So, I'm back to it. My logline is revised to incorporate the new approach. I have two fresh pages of notes for how to outline about 2/3 of the story, sort of a synopsis. I plan to get the rest of the synopsis/notes written down tomorrow morning and perhaps even start arranging scenes on 'the board'. It's just possible that I'll get that done and be able to write out the detailed outline by Sunday night. We'll see. I am recharged to get back to work and might be a bit optimistic.

I still don't want to say to much in this forum about what I'm working on. What I will say is that it's supposed to be a comedy (if I can write funny) and it's supposed to be family friendly (I think I can do that). And if you read STC!, you'll find that Blake would put it in the genre of Out of the Bottle. So that, or OOTB, is how I'll refer to the project from now on. It's not really I Dream of Jeannie. More like The Brass Bottle meets Home of the Brave (though I'm still trying to find a better second feature).

Outlining Is Hard

Having written four almost-novel-length rough drafts for NaNoWriMo and three screenplays for ScriptFrenzy, I already know that long-form writing is real work. But when I'm in the day-to-day of writing chapters and scenes, it's fun and rewarding work. Even when I know what's going down on the page is crap, I know I will (or am supposed to) come back and fix it later and I can get in the flow.

In those projects, the rough spots I ran into always had to do with story--trying to come up with at least the semblance of a feasible set of characters, setting, and plot. But once I thought I had those in hand, I dove in and figured I'd be able to to push my way through. I guess I thought of myself as a seat-of-the-pants writer--a panster. I haven't been satisfied with the results.

On my latest project, a screenplay, I figured I should probably follow the sage advice of the teachers I've been reading and following, namely Blake Snyder and Alex Epstein, and do a real outline, with beats, a basic scene breakdown, and everything. As I noted in a previous post, the personal deadline for having the outline is this Sunday, so I can start writing scenes on Monday. I gave myself last week to finish off the logline (which I mostly did) and this past weekend to do the story beats and breakdown (using 'the board'). I got my ass kicked.

Procrastination and long-weekend mentality meant that I didn't really start until Monday morning. Of course, that meant that I had the whole thing to do in a day, but I figured I'd at least get the high points and fill in the rest this week. I guess what I found out is that what I thought were settled story points had not been giving enough thought, so when I tried to nail them down they kept squishing about like jello. To top it off, my other project, a novel, kept popping into my brain. Like an idiot, I figured I should try to stay focused, so I didn't capture those, either.

It all boils down to the fact that I now see that I am probably a week behind. I need to get these story points settled. Then I can break them down and fill in the beats. Then I can write up the outline. Then I can write the rough draft. I'm getting an inkling of why writers who do this for a living call it work.

Novel vs Screenplay

I'd meant to get a bunch of work started on my next screenplay this weekend. But have had limited success. I think the only thing I've really succeeded at is finally convincing myself that I should drop the idea I was working on, for now. It's just not ready to be what I need it to be. But if I'm going to have something ready to write by the end of the month, I need to get something nailed down very soon. Like in a day or two.

Meanwhile, the noveling part of my brain jumped in and gave me what seem to be a pretty decent two or three pages to a first chapter. Then again, they may be too slow. But that's OK. It's a start. Now I'd better figure out a plot before I try to go much further.

Panama

Never been there. And I have very little desire to go on a visit, other than to see the locks. But what I do need is a plan. I've spent half a month pretending to get started on my next screenplay. I suppose I've been working on the idea, a bit. It's time to get serious.

On June 1, I intend to start writing the first draft. There. I wrote it down. Now I need to execute. According to the calendar, not counting today, I have 16 days to get my outline written. That's too big to track. Break it down. If I give myself 5 days to write the outline (including one or two drafts), I have to have the story breakdown in 11 days. That's May 26. That let's me spend Memorial Day weekend creating the beat sheet (thank you Blake Snyder). That's in a week. I have one (1) week to finalize the logline and title and get 30-40 scene possibilities written out. That's just over 4 per day.