What's New - Week of April 3, 2011

It’s Sunday night and time to wrap up the week that was.

Activities

Another week of editing (mostly), again spending time going through Lens Flare. After being away from it for a couple of years now, I’m surprised to find out a couple of things: the story keeps my interest and I have quite a bit of work ahead of me to fill in some of the descriptive prose that is normally left out of short stories. While a novelist has a lot of room to expand on the details that address the senses, a short story writer, at least in the modern iteration of one, doesn’t have that luxury. I remember when I first started writing short stories, another writer with whom I became friends kept on me about cutting out the “crap” and leaving only what was needed to carry the narrative to its conclusion.

Well, that’s all fine and dandy if you’re only writing short stories, but when you get to your novel, that kind of approach doesn’t usually cut it. Sure, it’s definitely worthwhile to keep your narrative lean no matter what you write, there’s something to be said about describing the scene, the people, the backstory and all the rest that makes a novel truly readable. And frankly, with short stories for publication, one is typically limited to a specific word count limit, while with a 150,000-word novel, you aren’t so constrained by word count alone.

Another Work-in-Progress

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I’m writing a short story called “My Life as a Serial Hostage.” This story, like many of those I’ve written or have at least outlined, came to me out of the blue. I can’t say exactly where I was or what I was doing when the title popped into my head, but when I fired up my computer and began typing in Evernote (not “Evernotes," as I mistyped last time), the following came out in a flood:

First, let me make one thing clear: despite popular opinion as expressed in the press as of late, I have never put myself in a situation to become a hostage. Never, even once. No one seems to believe that some people attract certain kinds of disasters and exclusively those. I can drive eighty miles an hour the wrong way down a busy city street and maybe walk away with a minor fender-bender. However, put me into a public place that is a likely target for criminals to hold innocent people for large sums of money, and there you'd be likely to find me. It is my personal albatross, something I came to terms with a long time ago. No one seems to understand that.

As I continued writing, I discovered the story “had legs” and I could really make something of it. Many ideas aren’t like that, at least write away. I don’t throw out my ideas, but on rare occasions I put them on the back burner, sometimes indefinitely, but always with the hope that I’ll return to them someday.

Anyway, this story is going to be a bit of a humorous piece, despite the rather ominous title. I look forward to finishing it and perhaps publishing it on Facebook or my blog.

Outlining

Every writer has his or her own preferred method for writing and for those who outline like myself, they usually are particular about how they approach. I’m a total outliner and have been since, oh, forever. I think in outlines; it helps my brain sort through the morass and sheer volume of “stuff” that crisscrosses my synapses all the time. I learned a long time ago not to shut off the spigot, but rather to get to some sort of writing device right away and outline the hell out of whatever idea pops into my head at the moment. Sometimes I get distracted from a current work-in-progress for this new one. Some authors call it getting pulled into the rabbit hole (or some such thing). I don’t know, but it seems to be a waste if I don’t jump on the idea of the moment.

So how do I do it? I pretty much have it down to a science, though it differs depending on the type of work it is. Here’s how I do it for screenplays:

• Original idea in 1-3 sentences.
• A single paragraph expanding on the original idea
• 3-5 paragraphs, expanding on the single paragraph (one for each act)
• Scene descriptions - one bullet point for each scene with 1-3 (short) sentences for each

At this point, I have enough of an outline - then it’s time to fire up Scrivener and move all that into its structure (though sometimes I’ll go directly to Final Draft and use its tools to do the same thing). I like working with virtual index cards and both applications have those in their toolkit. Once I populate the index cards, I’m ready to expand upon the details of the scene description, then begin to start writing the sluglines. After that’s completed, it’s time to start writing!

My approach to outlining novels is a bit more complicated than that (I’m usually using tables for those) and for short stories, it’s much simpler.

With all this outlining, it doesn’t mean I just don’t sit down and write something beginning to end without an outline - I’ve done that before, too. However, with an outline, I don’t have to worry about being pulled off a project and then come back to no idea how to continue.

Mind-Mapping

Another form of outlining is mind-mapping and if you’ve never tried this, you ought to because it’s a great way to brainstorm. While you can do this by hand, I recommend MindGenius, the best tool for this I’ve found. Essentially, you start out with a central idea in a circle (or rectangle); from there, you draw lines to other circles (called “children”) where related ideas are written; and from there, you continue draw lines to even more circles for more related ideas.

The trick with mind-mapping is you don’t stop to edit, you just write/type. Turn the internal editor off and just get the ideas down as quick as they come to you. It’s both gratifying and surprisingly liberating to do this.

The thing about MindGenius is, unlike any other software out there, is that if you select a shape and start typing text, it automatically creates a new child idea (with its own line and circle). In this way, you can type ideas even more quickly because you don’t have to pause to click a mouse or type in a key sequence. I’ve written entire outlines to screenplays using MindGenius.

The down side about this software: it’s only written for the PC and I’ve recently confirmed with them (again) that they do not plan to write a version for the Mac. No worries, I have it on my PC laptop for when I need it.

The Other Brother - Why I Never Finished Writing It

I began writing this novel in 2002 and by 2004, I had completed 175,000 words and still had about 20% left to go. The story is about the strained relationship between two siblings and how ultimately, one of the siblings has to get past that estrangement to come to the aid of the other in a time of crisis. The problem is the story was based (in large part) on real life experiences and I wasn’t convinced at the time that I would want the story as written to see the light of day for fear of the backlash that I would receive.

Of course, I’m not planning on throwing out the manuscript, either, so I’m sitting on an incomplete novel that may or may not be worth publishing someday. That is what you call a quandary, gentle readers. And so, for now at least, The Other Brother sits languishing on my hard drive, ready for the day I decide to pick it up again.

Someday.

Next Time

Here are a few topics for next post:

• Continuing discussion on my works-in-progress
• Where do ideas come from
• Contests

Until then, have a great week!

Michael