Thinking about Nano

Nano is a little ways off.  But I thought it'd be good to start thinking about it.  So... I am.


What happened last time I tried Nano?

1) I loved it

2) The story got really weird by the time I was hitting the end, and that made me stall.

3) I chose something off of my main world, and as such, I think the characters had even more control than usual.

So what am I thinking of doing differently?

Rewriting an old story.  Ten years ago I finished the rough draft of my first novel.  While the writing and storyline eventually led the thing to live on a shelf, I've kind of built up a history for Don-Yin.  Recently, that history has changed. I see it as one long story--something that each book, series, short story and vignette plays a part in exploring.

When one element changes along the way, I hit dominoes through the preset timeline.  It breathes new life into old ideas, and lets a story that went stale 10 years ago return as something completely different.

So I think I'm going to let Arrelle have another try at it. I will certainly plan thin gs out this time. Though, to be fair, much of it already is.

Her story and my current WIP is headed for a collision course, so I don't think working on both at the same time will be too much.

Critiques & Process V: Beta Readers & the Small Stuff--

These are my writer friends, my beta readers. I am debating with myself when Silver Mask is done if I’m going to have 1 or 2 Beta groups.

This is because there is middling stuff and grammatical stuff. Some writers I know can look chapter-by-chapter at a story and give structure, setting, and character with a closer examination than I would expect from my alpha readers.

But the very last things I want to address is grammar, punctuation, word choice, sentence structure/ sentence clarity.

This because I want to focus on the story first. I need the fixing of the tiny details to be the sign to myself that the work is done. My temptation would be to meddle with my own story for the rest of my life--but that serves no good. It is important for me to tell myself “no more” and the pickiest details are the best way to do this.

Why?

To complete making grammatical alterations to a manuscript, I don’t have to wrestle with any big concepts. I go through the problem places systematically and I won’t need to reread my story. If I reread, I change. That’s just what I do. Nothing is ever done.

So the final changes need to be the brainless ones, and then, I go to the next step.

My grammarian writer friends will see the WIP here because their plentiful feedback will be just what I need. I won't have to give them a checklist, just a note and they'll know how to take it from there. Likely this will be very important because I'll be shifting to a new project at this point, partially to keep up momentum and partially to distance myself from the WIP currently changing hands.

Critiques and Process IV: What Do You Need in Alpha Readers?

Everyone swears that the best critiques come from other writers. For most part this is a truism, with some exceptions.

To determine what you need in Alpha readers (the people who read your roughest draft) you need to determine what you are looking for, and how you work. You have to be honest with yourself about your strengths and weaknesses in writing. Then you have to know your pace and what you are better at fixing first.

I take a top-down approach because it’s easiest to fix the big stuff first and then the small stuff. This means separating my alpha and beta groups and asking them to look for different things.

Since this passage is about Alpha Readers, I’ll focus on what I need from this first group.

The Top:

This is the big stuff: plot, character, setting.

I need people to look for the big stuff, and ignore the little stuff. My experience with the majority of writer-feedback is that my groups have always been very good at the little stuff, but not so keen on the big picture things. Sometimes, this is because writers spend a lot of time on their ideas, and some can be uncomfortable critiquing the stuff they know you’ve spent ages developing. So they stick to grammar, sentence structure, word choice, scene clarity, what passages may or may not be needed for the sake of the chapter.

All of these things are fairly picky. They are very useful, but they are not The Top Stuff.

Some of my questions for the very top are these:

Are there any spots where there is so much back story you want to skip a paragraph or are bored by it?

Are there any spots where the characters do things that you feel is “unlike them” and if so where?

Are there any spots where the dialogue feels forced and if so where?

Are there any redundant scenes, discussions, descriptions?

Are you led into the story and the characters in a way that makes you feel that you develop an understanding of the world? & are there any spots where particular descriptions, characters, scenes could be expanded upon to give you a better idea of what is going on? Where are these passages?

Then I give a list of key concepts and terms that I need to get across and ask the reader to define them. This is so I know that I have built the world in a manner the reader can identify with and understand.

So my Alpha Readers by this requirement, should be readers. I need people who can disregard typos (as you can probably notice from this blog that I am prone to mistakes) and concentrate on the big picture stuff.

I am still creating the checklist.

Benefits to being able to have writers do this for you is that you probably won’t have to create a checklist to “teach” your readers how to critique. However, that depends on who you have around you, what their critiquing skills and weaknesses are. I love my writer friends and colleagues, but they happen to be better with the small stuff causing me to look elsewhere for my alpha readers.

Critiques & Process III: Determining Relevancy

This is the hard one for me. I obsess over the critiques that I disagree with the most until I start to think that maybe, just maybe, they were right after all. This way of thinking is likely why I have found myself embroiled in endless drafts of novels, hovering around completeness without quite passing the finish line.

I have learned to work with this handicap, by addressing my own insecurities.

The first part of this is determining what I want to achieve with my writing. it’s like writing a mission statement for my novel, and my writing career as a whole. The purpose of this is to keep myself focused on what I consider the most important aspects of my own writing.

The statement of intent here is not for anyone else’s eyes. Rather, it is for me to use before reading critiques, to keep me from over-analyzing the feedback.

Next, I set up an order and a checklist. Being very business-like about the revision process helps to quite the more temperamental writer/artsy side that want to react to the feedback, and gives more precedence to the negative responses than the positive.

My checklist breaks down the responses into the following categories:

Plot/Character/Clarity

Description/ Scene/ Redundancy/Omission

Punctuation/Grammar/Word Choice/Formatting


Then I address them in order.

Currently this is written down, but I’m thinking of entering it into a spreadsheet for when the latest draft is done. The best way to turn the critiques objective are to make them seem less personal, and focus on the number of people who--having never met one another--agree on the same passage.

And yes, that means for me the group-form is mostly off. I need to keep the critiques non-emotional, so they can’t be personal to me or anyone else. So even if I know the people well, distance between my readers is better. Then I know if two people, uninfluenced by someone else’s critiquing method see the same thing wrong, then I should change it.

Because my writing style is more immersive, so too is my rewriting phases. So I need to be able to make and implement decisions quickly to keep up momentum. I need the momentum to be as continual as possible (allowing for life) but qualitative as well. That means I need to be able to identify problems objectively, quickly, and make changes. Groups tend to operate slowly. The slower I go, the more I second-guess, tweak and obsess. Slow inspires me to react emotionally because I don't react instantly, I'm more of a simmerer--something hits me a little off at first, it doesn't really bug me but if it goes unaddressed for any length of time it gathers importance and I get more upset and worked up.

There is no room for emotion when revising, and there is no room for me to react when working at top speed. Hence the need to know myself, how and what i react to in order to work around my own flaws to give my stories precisely what they require to reach their potential without me obsessing for years.

Critiques & Process

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The years that I have been “dry” have been the initial editing/revising years. I did not realize when I launched into this process that there is such variety in ways in which you can receive critiques.

My mother had a writers’ group when I was in elementary school, it was focused on poetry and affiliated with the Sacramento Poetry Society. I came to believe that a critique group was the natural second step for completing a novel.

So when I thought I was ready to start putting my novel into shape for submission to agents, editors and the like, I found a group to join.

The group I joined raised issues that I had not foreseen, and in the process I began to realize that critiquing and evaluating a critique could take a whole new skill set that I hadn’t anticipated. A lot of articles I had read had made the process of evaluating critiques seen so very easy.

But we as people--we are flawed and we have things we are self conscious about. I was 21 at the time and there was plenty I was self-conscious about. So it took no time for me to plunge into a reactionary rewrite.

Those are bad. Very bad. They take you into the territory set up as “good” by your group, oftentimes, and away from the trajectory you wished for your project to follow.

Perhaps I was then a bit too impressionable, but you never know these things until plunge on in.

One advantage that I received from that first group was my first 2 conventions. At Baycon 2005, I had the opportunity to meet other writers and I learned that some authors used Alpha and Beta Readers instead of critique groups. This was my first introduction to the idea that there are about as many ways to have your work reviewed and critiqued as there are processes by which writers produce books.

In a roundabout way, I suppose, I have spent the last 5-6 years trying to find what my method was. Have you found what works best for you? where do you receive the best critiques for your fiction?

Changes in My Head

I started the rewrite of Silver Mask about a year ago. It was taking a dramatically different path than I expected. Then I stalled. Not for lack of ideas, but mostly due to life.

And this stalling hasn’t been bad. I know that sounds weird, but I have mentioned the importance of prewriting in my previous posts. The ideas have kicked around, rolled around and somewhere along the line they grew up.

I think life has had an affect. I have gone through a very dark period the last two years, with this last year being the absolute darkest. This reality has altered how I treat my characters. As a response, the setting and plot and every little bit has changed.

Oh, and the change is for the better! I am no longer afraid to torture my characters. As I have fought depression, anger, and bitterness and been forced to accept these things in me it ha become all right for my characters to have the same flaws and others as well.

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They may have been flawed before, but I think I over-romanticized them. That leaves the world feeling a little too sanitary. It’s bright colored and clean in the mind’s eye rather than dark, dirty and gritty.

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As reality lies somewhere between those two extremes, so do my characters need to be between the extremes, rather than standing nearer one end. This means that I can allow my characters to mature and let their emotions determine plot as much as the inevitable outcome I know the story will take. The tale becomes a lot more character driven.

I must say, too, that going through a darker period seriously informs one’s idea of how to torture characters, and how they react to adversity. There are things that have happened in the “prewriting” that are about to come out on the computer screen that I never would have considered. I would never have exploited my main female character’s naivete because, perhaps, I didn’t want her to be naive. It makes sense to have her be more trusting at the story’s beginning and through her trials the stuff that I was “telling” in previous drafts is shown instead and in a way that couldn’t happen before.

Images:

Landscape: Pinterest

City: sharbuck.tumblr.com