ilona_andrews

In an earlier post Ilona mentioned that I was dragging her up to the mountains of western NC to visit my relatives for Thanksgiving.  She mentions that she is somewhat reluctant to do so and had to be bribed with a fancy hotel room.  I should explain why she is sort of nervous about this.  I am going to start by explaining my childhood, please bear with me.

I was raised by my Aunt and Uncle, who are wonderful people, because my mom really was not cut out for that sort of thing.  Suzie (my mom) was a smart, funny, pretty lady who unfortunately did not really mature or grow up after finding her father, my Grandfather Dooley, dead from a heart-attack  when she was 16.  She went on to marry a crazy guy when she was 19 but luckily he was not my dad.  When I refer to myself as the bastard son of an Irishman, I’m not being funny.  He was older, maybe as old as I am now, and married with children.

Mirrored from One Crazy Dame. Comment here or there

ilona_andrews

T wrote to me asking for some writing advice, and we agreed that I would answer one specific question on the blog.  T writes:

I guess I want tips on writing without an outline and making sure it lines up. I have just started and haven’t quite figured out the plot so I am making it up as I go and even with it being the beginning, I have already found problems with it not lining up, due to the lack of an outline, but like I said, I don’t like outlines. I find them restricting and extremely boring and I often forget about them, even when they are on the computer. Too many ideas come to mind as I am writing and I don’t like to be constantly changing both the outline and, possibly, the story. I am not looking so far ahead as to looking into publishing and the people that that entails, I am just looking into finishing it. So far, a plot has kind of been established, but not really, because I don’t like outlines.

So, my question would be how can I write without an outline and make sure it all lines up, without reading through the entire thing over every time I make a change. I don’t have time for that and I will forget what I am looking for once I get far enough.

I thought about this for a couple of days.  A fair warning: if you ask me something, I will give you my honest opinion and you may not like it.

There are writers who outline and those who don’t. These are not absolute.  Most outliners don’t always stick to their outlines and most non-outliners do think ahead.  However, all of the successful writers have an idea of their plot.

As a writer, there are questions that you need to answer before you get too far into the narrative.

• Who is the hero of your story?
• What does he/she want?
• Why?
• Who is the villain?
• What do they want?
• Why?
• How to they do battle at the end?

For example, let’s take Lord of the Rings.   Hero: Frodo, the hobbit, who wants to  destroy the evil ring to keep bad guys from getting it and destroying the world.   Villain: Sauron, who wants to get the ring and ruled the world, because he is just evil.

The question becomes, how would one destroy a magic indestructible ring?  Well, may be if you threw it into a volcano, it would either sink into molten metal or melt.  So we’ve got to get Frodo to the volcano.  And the bad guys will, of course, try to keep him from getting into volcano.  Frodo will need some help.  You know, a kick-ass ranger friend would be really cool.  And maybe some sort of creepy thing-person that wants the ring.

Now we have the basics of the plot.  This is going to be a journey book, where Frodo will meet various companions and they will either help or hinder him.  We’ll have to figure out the different factions and what side they take and so on.  We have to make challenges and obstacles, but guess what?  Frodo is still going to get to that damn volcano, because that’s the heart of our story.

A writer doesn’t necessarily need to know every detail right away.  But she has to know what the goals of her characters are and how they would go about them.  Otherwise there is no book. You have to really think your story through.

I usually have a good idea of the plot shortly after I start.  I typically have the beginning down, the idea of the story, and the climax, the final decisive confrontation.  Also, I usually get a final scene in my head about 20 K into the draft, but that might be just me.  The middle mostly consists of “and then cool stuff happens”.

To reiterate, you have to have a hero, a villain, their goals, and you have to have some idea of the final confrontation between them.  Without it, you’re lost.

Now let’s go back to the original question.

“I have just started and haven’t quite figured out the plot so I am making it up as I go and even with it being the beginning, I have already found problems with it not lining up, due to the lack of an outline, but like I said, I don’t like outlines.”

This right here tells me that you didn’t think your story through. You have too many ideas.  Ideas are lovely, but you have to figure out which ones you can use and which ones you have to discard.  To do so, you need to know where you’re going.

So I urge you to write down your plot.  Not a detailed outline of every scene, but the plot, the map of your story.  Figure out who is the hero, who is the villain, what are their challenges, and how does it all come to the final big kaboom at the end.  Once you do this, you will be able to look at your ideas and determine which you can utilize.

Lets say you decided that your hero is afraid of heights.  You have two cool ideas – a fight on top of the skyscrapper and a fight in the subway.  The skyscrapper wins – it’s more difficult for the hero.  The subway will have to wait for the next book.

So, my question would be how can I write without an outline and make sure it all lines up, without reading through the entire thing over every time I make a change. I don’t have time for that and I will forget what I am looking for once I get far enough.

Writing is work.  Let’s get it out there right now.  Doesn’t matter if it’s for publication or personal use.  It’s hard work, and I think it’s best to let go off the notion that it’s not and you can just breeze through it.  If it was easy, nobody would be getting paid for it.

Your pieces will NOT automatically line up for you.  Especially without an outline. There is no magic trick. You want a perfect product on the first try. Unfortunately you can’t have your cake and eat it too – if you are going to fly by the seat of your pants, get ready to rewrite again and again and again and again until it all lines up on paper.  It’s like trying to find your way in a fog – you will take wrong turns and then you will backtrack and correct yourself.   You don’t have to do it right away – you can finish your draft, and then go back and edit but sooner or later you will have to pay the editing piper.

It’s not uncommon for a published writer to rewrite their draft 4-5 times.  And the beginning?  I probably have looked at my beginning about twenty times or more by the time I finish the manuscript.  Look at my previous post.  Why do you think the wolf is crying?  The wolf is very sick of editing KATE 4.  My betas will tell you that they have been treated to three versions of the opening chapter for BAYOU MOON, until I hit one that was serviceable.  And I have an outline for that book.  And I just edited it again last night, sent it to the editor for the teaser, she edited it and now I have to edit it again.

I have edited this message four times over the course of the last two days.  (And it ate all of my Torchlight playing time tonight again, because I wanted it to sound right.)

Yes, there are isolated cases of people writing novels extremely fast and being successful on the first draft.  Ian Fleming wrote CASINO ROYALE on his honeymoon.  Jo Walton wrote FARTHING in seventeen days and it was nominated for Nebula, Quill, and the Sidewise.  But generally, writing is hard slow work.  A typical professional writer working for publication will edit their manuscript many times before it goes out.  The object here is not to finish real quick, but to produce the best story possible.

There are also people like Dean Koontz who only write one draft.  But they think about their story to the point of having every scene lined up in their brain, in effect, creating a detailed mental outline.  You don’t want to outline and you don’t want to rewrite.  Doesn’t work that way.

You have to ask yourself, what is more important to you.  Do you want to have a bunch of words or do you want to write a good story?  If you want to have a good story, your choices are:

• to give yourself permission to write a crappy first draft and then go back and edit it to within an inch of its life
• to outline and stick to it and then edit your draft to within an inch of its life

The outline won’t save you from that final edit, but it will usually ease your workload a little bit.

And that’s the all I wrote.

Mirrored from One Crazy Dame. Comment here or there

ilona_andrews

Warning: this is me venting.  I have to vent occasionally, so please don’t reassure me too much. 

I’m so melancholy today and I have no idea why.

It was a good day.  We went and got our new glasses and some Dominoes pizza.  I got to gossip with Jeaniene on the phone and with Jil and Meljean through email.  We watched Dragon’s Den. I even have tea.

I’m writing.  I’ve got a bit below 1K and will need to put another one on there before I quit.

I’m just so meh.

There is really no reason to be bummed out.  Money?  We probably have Christmas covered and the budget drawn up for the next few months.  (Knock-knock-knock, tphoo-tphoo-tphoo.)

Gordon still loves me.  He is dragging me up to North Carolina for Thanksgiving.

Children still love me too, despite Kid 2’s valiant escape through her window into the rain, which occured last night because she was not permitted to snoop at her Christmas present as it was being wrapped.  (Kid 2 is having a bit of temper issues.)

The hat is proceeding on schedule, with the exception of Luka getting into the plastic bag left unattended while I went to look for Kid 2 in the back yard.  When I returned, he had a big skein of Homespun in his mouth.  I was gone maybe a minute.  That has to be a record.  Will have handwash the skein very very carefully.

So there is nothing to be bummed out about and here I sit, steeped in melancholy.  I must be just tired or something.  Maybe this is just an occupational hazard of being a writer.

Come on, a thousand words to go.  I can do it.  Meeeeeehhhhh.

Mirrored from One Crazy Dame. Comment here or there

ilona_andrews

The internets seem to be back, whee!

:hates on Comcast:  We bought a new router, because they said the problem was in the router.  The problem was on their end, but now we have a new router that looks something out of Star Trek.  I keep expecting it to split open, sprout metal spider legs, and skitter off the desk.

#

Happy Veteran Day to Gordon. 

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EDGE 2 now has a title: BAYOU MOON.

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The hat with cat ears has to be remade.  Kid 1 wore it non-stop.  She even slept in it, unless I managed to snatch it off her head before bed.  Eventually it had to be washed.  I knew the yarn had angora in it, but I figured the bamboo would balance it out.  Nope.  Even with a gentle handwashing, the hat developed a very typical angora fuzz.  It also stretched a lot and no amount of blocking would fix it.

Just for the record, angora and bamboo is a terrible combination.  The yarn in skein is heavy, shiny, and slick.  Any kind of wear or contact with water and angora goes fuzzy, so the resulting product does not look like the finished product.

Much mourning of the hat occurred.  New hat will be made with different yarn.  Results will be posted.

Mirrored from One Crazy Dame. Comment here or there

ilona_andrews

We’re down hard and have very sporadic access to email.  The tech is coming Thursday.  We apologize for the delay in responding to emails and comments.

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ilona_andrews

Email from Anne regarding the revised version of MAGIC BLEEDS.  She loves it.

OH dear Gods in heaven.  Thank you, Universe, thank you noble ancestors, thank you mom, thank you luck of the Irish, thank you, thank you, thank you…

We don’t have to rewrite it again.

Oh my God.  It’s done.  It’s set.  Only copyedit left.

If I wasn’t drinking coffee, I’d be looking for some wine.

Mirrored from One Crazy Dame. Comment here or there

ilona_andrews

One of the earliest critiques I have gotten on OWW was from a published writer who said that my plot was good and my worldbuilding was good, but I had one giant issue that would prevent me from getting published unless I did something about it.

My characters were flat.

It was a fair criticism.  My characters were flat.  Even now the character work is probably my weakest point and I spend a lot of time on it.

Here is a bit of Cerise.  (I have looked at the counter some more.  Aaaa!)

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ilona_andrews

I was amazed at all of the supportive comments on the previous post.

Thank you so much. I’m floored.

Also, since we have gotten a lot of comments, I installed worpress stats plugin to see how many people read this blog. Just for fun.

Holy crap.

Umm…. What am I going to do with all of you? I should probably write some entertaining, quick, except I have nothing.

Aaaa!

:checks the view counter again:

Aaaaaa!

UPDATE: Aaaaaaaa!

Mirrored from One Crazy Dame. Comment here or there