Tag Archives: Weekly

Writing

Chapter Size

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I noticed something as I was revising my book: my chapter sizes are all over the place.

With 18 chapters written, I’m averaging a little less than 3000 words a chapter, which is not bad (I don’t think).  But that’s the average.  The smallest chapter is about 1500, the largest about 5200.  Most are between 2 and 3 thousand, with a number of 3000+ and two 4000+.

I’ve never really thought about chapter size before.  For me, a chapter is simply a segment of the story, and some are going to be larger than others.  But I’m wondering if I should be thinking about paying attention.  Perhaps I need to cut some of the chapters up into smaller bits?  Will one long chapter or one short chapter ruin the enjoyment of the book?

Do you have any thoughts on chapters?  Is it important that they’re all the same size?  Or is it completely irrelevant to enjoying the story?

Thanks, and keep writing!

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Five things I want to avoid when writing

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A simple list of five things I want to avoid in my stories.

1) The Mary/Gary Sue Protagonist

The character who is always right and always wins.  Every likes her.  No one can defeat her.  She never does anything but always comes out on top.

2) The Cartoon Antagonist

He’s evil because he is.  No depth.  No personality beyond opposing the Protagonist.  You can’t really hate him, because there isn’t enough of him to hate.

3) Consequence Free World

Buildings are destroyed, vehicles crash, banks robbed, people hurt or killed, but in the end everything turns out okay.  Sometimes with music.

4) Static Characters

The character wakes up, goes on an adventure, experiences pain, fear, joy, and victory, and wakes up the next day the same character.

5) Repetitive Challenges

The Antagonist only interacts with the Protagonist in one or two different ways.  No real variation in their stories, and the Protagonist is never really challenged to grow.

Revising

Rule Three: If it feels wrong, fix it

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Rule 3

I write what I know and what I’m good at.  A look at my collegiate and personal studies, books read, movies and shows watched and video games played, it would come to no surprise that my writings usually have a military theme.  Don’t expect horror or romance novels with my name on them anytime soon.  I think most writers are the same: they write what they know and are good at.

Recently, while planning ahead for a project, I had to admit that the big bad guy organization was not working.  It was too clunky.  I had put a lot of work into it, so  I wanted it to work as it was, but it didn’t.  I started working out an alternative, and throw out all I had done before.

Now I’ve have problems with stories I’ve written.  I’ve wondered if I could rewrite this scene, reword that response.  That’s normal, a part of every writer’s concern over his or her work.  This is more about that gut feeling that something about your story is just wrong.

When you write what you know, you feel comfortable with it.  So those strong feelings that something is wrong shouldn’t get ignored.  Some of your readers will also have experience with your genre, and they’ll probably notice it too.  So pay attention, and when necessary, be prepared to roll up your sleeves and get back to work.

Write on! 🙂

Writing

Ending a Project

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I’ve been researching serialization, the idea of taking a story and cutting it into episodes released in sequence instead of one giant book.  This idea appeals to me, at least for my large project that may be too big to be a first book.  While I haven’t decided on a course of action, the research has gotten me thinking about how my stories should end.

This is a rather new concentration for me, as I can start a story at the drop of a hat, but I have only finished one, and that one is the start of a series.  For only one of my projects, a fantasy trilogy, have I outlined the story from beginning to end, and that one is proceeding at a nice pace.  The rest I haven’t figured out an ending to.

So, I have spent some time thinking about my projects and how they might end.

For many projects, the answer is ‘I don’t know’.  I have an idea or a start, but no real story.  But for a couple of the projects, this exercise has paid great rewards.

For example, take the large book I mentioned earlier.  I have many stories I want to tell in that world, but not all of them revolve around the main character.  So I asked myself ‘What if I limited myself to five or six books centering on her?’  I always had an idea of how I would remover her from the story if I had to, so I made that the ending to her story.

The result on the story is favorable.  By having an end in mind, I can plan out the events and their consequences, and begin building towards the decisions that end her saga.  (Spoiler: she doesn’t die, and will still be a character in other stories set in that world).  The ending also acts as a goal: instead of feeling pressured to write as many stories as I can, I have a finish line I need to get to.  The difference is surprisingly important.

Another example is a Sci-Fi story I recently started.  The main character has been asked to go and stop a war from starting, a task made so difficult by the forces arrayed against him that it would take at least two books, if not more, to tell.  In addition, the goal of stopping a war means that the conditions currently exist for a war to occur, and that the character must keep a war from starting long enough for the situation to change.  As I contemplated the ending, I had to decide how to finish the story, and chose to give the story a Five-year arc.  However many books it’ll take, the character now has a deadline.

The lesson I’ve learned from this?  Knowing how to end your story is as important as how you start it, especially for projects that are expected to run over several books.  It provides a goal, some guidelines for how the story can and should progress.  Something I really need to think about when working on my projects.

Have a nice day, and write on!

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Orphan Folder

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Nothing sucks more than remembering that you had a great idea, but not remembering the idea.

Several years ago, I started to combat that problem by opening an Orphan file. It’s nothing more complex than a folder where I store flashes of inspiration. A line of dialogue, a scene, the basic concept for a story, it goes in the folder. An outline that I’m slowly working out? Saved.

It’s nice to know that I have all these ideas saved, and I have raided it a few times to get ideas enough to get around Writer’s Block. I doubt I will actually get to use all of them, but I’m okay with being more creative than productive. It means I’ll never run out of things to work on.

Happy writing! 🙂

Publishing

What to Publish?

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What to publish?

With all the options available to writers for publishing, it is not all that difficult to ask myself: why am I unpublished? I could be published, if all I wanted to do was publish something and be done with it. But I do not want to just be done with it. I want to make something of it, something more than a hobby. That means I have two questions to consider: what to publish and now? This post is about the what.

The first book you publish is important. I have done a lot of research on this topic, and the lessons I’ve learned are that the first book should be one that follows all the rules. Use this to generate some name recognition before the books get large. The Harry Potter series is an example of starting small and getting larger as the series progressed, when people wanted the next book regardless of the length.

I have a book that is written. I am revising the second draft. But it is almost 160,000 words, which is very long. I could split it in two, or cut out everything not from the main character’s view point, or I could try to publish it as it is. But editing a book that long is an immense and expensive undertaking. I am mostly tempted to hold on and publish it later, if and when I have a following of readers.

So what else would I publish?

I have a fantasy book I’m writing that I could wrap up pretty quickly. I have a historical fiction book that will probably be a series, but I have not started writing it. I’ve got a number of ideas, prologues, scenes written out or planned, but nothing that is really ready now.

For now, I’ll just keep writing until I have something.  🙂

-Michael

Writing

Writing Group of Very Short Stories

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I recently started attending a Saturday morning writing group.  I wasn’t sure what I would run into when I first started, but I was looking to meet more people and have new experiences, so I showed up.

The format is pretty simple.  The person leading the round asks for a time (between one and ten minutes).  They select a topic, usually a sentence or phrase, from a reserve of topics brought by the host.  And for the given amount of time, you write.  You don’t have to write about the topic if you don’t want to.  Finally, once the round is up, a microphone gets passed around the circle, each person having the choice to read their blurb out loud.  The box gets passed to the next leader, and we continue.

I’ve found these to be great fun. Not only am I meeting new people, but I’m having to stretch my creative muscles by planning a very short story based around an idea I didn’t come up with.  To further exercise my mind, I’ve largely avoided doing the Science Fiction or Fantasy writing I normally do.  I usually go for funny or thought provoking, though sometimes it is just words.

A few people who are there tell a story through all of the rounds, using the phrases chosen to direct the plot, but keeping the same characters and flow from beginning to end.  I might end up trying that sometime.

Until next blog! 🙂

 

Writing

What’s in a Name?

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Recently I’ve been working on a fantasy story.  I’ve got it outlined pretty well, and I’ve planned ahead so the writing itself is going well, but the problem I’ve been running into most often has been naming the places and characters.

I’ve always paused when I’m thinking of a name, since I feel that the name is an important descriptor.

If it is a person, I want the name to be representative of the character in some way.    That’s easy enough in languages I’m familiar with, but when the character is from another culture, that means surfing the internet, looking up the meanings of names and finding one that matches the character.  Even my gaming characters have carefully considered names.

The same holds true for locations.   The name has to feel right or it distracts me from the story.  I try to take into account geography, the culture and history of the people, and what I want or need the location to be in the story.    Again, I can turn to online databases for inspiration, but it is not as easy as just adding syllables together.

All these choices can be more difficult with science fiction or fantasy stories.  Aliens and non-humans aren’t generally going to be called ‘Bob’ or ‘Helen’, from the planet ‘the Green One’, at least not without some back story, and having the names seem at least remotely related can be a chore.

Multicultural historical or modern stories have this problem, though a concentrated internet search can bring up enough information to get past them.

I try to figure out a lot of this information before hand, to avoid pausing as I write.  But I cannot anticipate every need, so I often use placeholders, typing in something in brackets (i.e. [Green Valley]) so that I can come back later and fix it.  I found this works better than typing in something sloppy and getting attached to a sloppy name.

Names are important, and should take a least a moment to consider before deciding on one.  If you have any exercises on naming characters and places I’d be happy to learn about them.

Until next time, keep on writing!

-Michael

Writing

Writing Groups

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During November, my friends and I held a number of writing nights. Some of the participants are creative writers, some were participating in NANOWRIMO, and some had personal or professional projects that they wanted to focus on.  All of us had something to write.  And I found that they totally work!

The first hour looks less than productive.  We often make it a pot luck night, spending that first hour eating, talking, blowing off some of the steam that everyone accumulates during their work day.  Not a lot of writing.  But enjoyable nonetheless.

After the food and wine, we set out to writing.  There is some talking during the writing, but that doesn’t seem to distract anyone too much.  In the four writing group nights I participated in (further events cancelled due to snow), I managed at least a thousand words each night.  Others finished their projects or reported hundreds of words written in the time we allowed.  I wonder if the drive to write is spurned by the fear that at any moment, another member of the group could ask how many words you’ve written.

Maybe I’ll do that at the next writing night.

Write on!