Let Me Add to That

Having read through some of my older posts (well, they're all older, but that's not what I mean), I'd like to point out that not much in my brain has changed.

While writing the first 3,000 words or so, I hated every word I put down. My narrative style is too gimmicky, the main character asks too many questions, my scenes are too short, the pacing feels all wrong.

But, because this was part of a group thing, I kept going. I did my best to just push those thoughts away and just keep writing. Every day doing a little more.

I don't hate it as much as I thought I did. I cheated though. Even though we're not supposed to show each other our work, I did send the first few scenes to a friend with specific feedback questions such as, "Does this suck as bad as I think it does?"

The feedback was generally positive, There was an admittance of "first draftness" to it, but he said he kept reading because he wasted to see where it was going. It pulled him forward.

And I beat it into him to be honest. I said that I wasn't going to quite either way, but I needed to know how to silence the voices and honesty was required to find the best approach.

I still think my first-person narrative structure will be seen as gimmicky, but I like it. It's essentially a book I'd want to read. And I guess that's the good part.

About the skeletal writer comment...Here's what I've come up with that I need to know for each scene to start writing:

The Sentence (one sentence that covers the protagonist and antagonist of the scene, what the scene tension point is, what changes between the two characters at the end, and where the scene occurs.

Also, I need answers to these four questions:

What element gets the character closer to the next milestone (turn, pinch, decision, etc)?

What unknown plot/theme info is revealed to the reader? (not necessarily the characters)

What deliberate action is accomplished?

What bullet point items do I as the author want the reader to know in this scene (which may or may not be big plot/theme related).

Time Machine

Apparently I forgot this even existed. Anyway, the old project I was talking about two years ago is shelved. I lost all interest. In between, I tried resurrecting my Ancient World concept as an RPG. The designer and I haven't been able to match schedules for any length of time, so very little has progressed. That one's just back-burnered. I also fiddled around with my occult ensemble book for a while, but could get any fire for it.

Ah, but what am I working on? I actually started a second run through a novel writing course I took a few years ago. How to Think Sideways  I convinced a few people at work to give it a try and we'd go through all the exercises and stuff together, sharing our perspectives, questions, and such. Well, only one guy has stuck with me to now (but others say they're going to join back in).

It's been a few months, probably... three? It took 'til week eight before we started writing the novel itself. We set it up on a weekly basis so we'd all have time to read the lesson, ask questions, do the lesson, then share our experiences.

But to answer your unasked question, I'm doing an Urban Fantasy project this time. Already 13K words deep. For me, that's a huge number on a personal project. Sure, I've written more for company things I've done in the industry, but this is all mine.

I'm finding out I'm a skeletal writer. Not fully an outliner and definitely not a discovery or "pantster." I need to have my primary milestones thought out with some A, B, and C for those scenes. The rest fills it in as I go.

On this project I have tried SO hard to not world build before I wrote. Usually I can spend months just writing a world bible - designing cultures, languages, communities, weapons, magic systems, etc. This time, I limited myself to writing any world ideas in a file in the shortest way possible. And I didn't write more than I had at the time. I sure didn't let myself develop an idea and let it spiderweb out of control (like I am wont to do).

So there you have it. An update.

I have no idea when the next might be.