Very busy. An interesting thing happened, though. I've been spending hours and hours thinking about other people's work, and I'm at a point in the semester where most of that thinking is teasing out different story threads by looking at scenes and pieces to see what they say about character/thematic arcs. I have found that when you're writing organically and have a decent grip on your characters, this stuff naturally rises to the surface and starts to fall into place--if you keep your eyes peeled and stay focused on the work and not on finishing/publishing. You can begin to figure out that your character starts out ___ way, and since you like him and know what you want for him, you understand that by the end he's going to be ____ way. And you can use that to put your book together.

So I've been thinking about this stuff, literally, for hours and hours, over days and days, for many different characters not my own (but that I like and sometimes also love). I've been picking out the main idea a scene or snippet gives the reader, and thinking, among other things: what does this tell us about the character, and where does it go along his/her arc?

Last night I finished up late, no time to work on my own stuff, but I wanted to clear my head and just pull up my ms and write something--not for the purpose of making progress, but just to touch base quickly with my story world and my people. I opened the file, and decided to see if I could pin down anything about a transitional piece I haven't written yet, one that takes place near the end.

I can't remember if I blogged this, but during another mind-clearing session last week, I took some more structural ideas a writer friend had been talking about from The Plot Whisperer, and made a list of all my scenes, written and unwritten. I wanted to see if I could get anything useful out of laying TPW ideas over what I had, and trying to see my ms in those terms. When I did this, nothing changed much in a concrete way, but considering my ms in terms of the story points that Alderson emphasizes made me think about the ms in a slightly different way that I think will provide energy to the story.*

While I was doing all that, I also got more specific about the part that leads from the middle to the end, and added a small transitional scene to the list: Two of my guys prepare to leave, and this other character comes out trying to follow them.**

So last night I decided to see if anything came to mind about that scene--maybe what the two guys would say to each other, or what would happen when the other character came out. I ended up sketching out a "moment."*** I'm pretty big on "moments," and I felt one was needed here to set the main secondary character in our minds before he heads off into the ending. And a moment is a perfect thing to write when you don't have much time and can't get into the flow of story.

I knew this guy was just sitting there, on a rock or stump or wall or something, waiting for my MC so they could leave. That's the "moment"--we see him as the MC is approaching him. I knew what the secondary character's intentions were, going into the ending sequence, so I thought about his hands, his face, the way he sat, his general attitude, and I was playing around with the best words to evoke all that. And as I played with it, I started realizing how different he was from the way he started out at the beginning. All the words to describe him were different, everything evoked in the beginning was the opposite from what was being evoked here, near the end.

I suddenly saw very clearly that this was the end point of his arc. He started out ____ way, but now he is ____.

I suddenly saw very clearly: all my middle-of-the-book scenes that need to accomplish a plethora of story jobs also need to do this: step by step, they need to show how story events make the guy change from what he is in the beginning when the MC first considers him, to this guy who is sitting here now, at the end.

When the middle scenes do that, they'll have nearly the last bit of power and grit that the story's been needing to give it traction and momentum all the way through.

My mind only made those connections because it's been thinking about and looking for the same types of patterns over and over for days if not weeks, in other people's work. That's why, when I was just putzing around with a paragraph of description before quitting for the day, my mind automatically dove in to tease out the same patterns in my own ms.

Another funny thing: this morning I was thinking about the way the character sat on that rock/stump/whatever, the way he held himself, etc., and I thought: this guy knows who he is. Then I remembered sometime back in a fuzzy distant past asking myself what this character wanted--what made him leave his old home and take off into the unknown. Back then I thought about it, and had a dim feeling that he left because he didn't know who he was. I didn't like that; I was very doubtful and suspicious of the feeling, because "He wants to know who he is" is a vague, unhelpful, generic goal. It doesn't tell you anything. It's like an answer that fills in the blank on a junior high English test. I felt that it was really true about him, but I also felt that it was probably just a side thing you understand about your character, and I proceeded under the assumption that as I wrote more, his problem and his longings would take on some texture and depth.

But no, there is it: he starts off shapeless, soft, unformed, naive, passive. And by the end he's firm, solid, knowing, capable, competent. In the beginning, he doesn't know who he is. By the end, he does.

And now that I think about it, he also....acts. He's sitting there waiting because he's made the decision to leave and he is about to act on it. And he will. That's why he'll be there in the climactic scene and in the very final scene, too, with my MC. And...ahem...it's also why he'll be able to influence the story outcome and present the MC with his climactic choice.****

So, there you go.

And now, back to work. On other people's stuff.





*This is what happened when I looked at my beginning-to-middle transition in TPW terms, too.

**And then he gets his eye gouged out!

***I don't know the technical word, but that's what I call it. It's where you stop, like a freeze frame, and give the reader something, hit them with it strongly so they absorb it. A moment can be as tiny as emphasizing an idea by using white space via a new paragraph, or it could be a whole page of description.

****Which I haven't quite nailed down yet. But I will, if the creek don't rise, a meteor doesn't strike, and I don't get hit by a bus.

Yesterday, very busy, but still got some work in--continued freewriting from secondary character's pov. Today was very productive; more freewriting led to a real scene. This scene marks the first solid foray into the middle of the book.

I also went ahead and moved some of my freewriting into the actual ms because that new scene would naturally lead to an explanation of the secondary character's backstory. I'm considering leaving the freewriting as is; in other words the ms would suddenly switch pov, tense and voice for this big chunk of backstory. Right now that seems less draggy than the lengthy in-scene conversation that'd be required to get in this same info. However, I'm probably wrong, and also it may turn out that the info needs to be chopped up and scattered around the ms. Will have to see.

I also had the thought that one of the pieces from chapter six would do a stronger story job later in the ms, but I'm not moving it yet.

Again, 2000+ words today, even with doctor visits and family stuff going on. Took a notepad and scribbled some word lists and other thoughts while in the waiting room.

Still working on former GN--looks like I may be figuring out how to make my way through the middle. I think I can figure my way into the middle, anyway, and getting into it and understanding how one piece of the story relates to another and how the parts segue into each other has been the main thing standing in my way.

If I do happen to be making progress, I know it's because I backed off and relaxed my hold on the ms. I was locked on so tight it couldn't breathe. But who knows what my perception will be tomorrow. Or Saturday, or whenever I get to work on it again.

What happened specifically was that my agent mentioned a story idea, and I was thinking about that, and what about it might be something I'd feel competent to explore. I was thinking, "Well, the MC would certainly be feeling emotion X, and I know emotion X very well," and as I was thinking about the details of how X felt and what kinds of images and words would express that, I realized I could use them right here in this middle part, the part I've been avoiding. So I worked on that yesterday, and then today I saw that the part leading up to it is all jagged and messed up and wrong and doesn't work (I already knew this, but it hit me again). I started researching once more to refresh my memory about what mythology says (there are always multiple versions of everything, so take your pick), and it hit me that I could go with one of the alternate versions that's also simpler. It's concrete (makes more sense historically), it puts the characters in a different light than the other did, and it removes some of the stuff I didn't know what to do with.

So anyway. Fingers crossed that I can keep at it--no confidence or expectations, just fingers crossed.

Surprisingly, after rewriting the end of chapter 2 three or so times, I moved on and did four or five more pages (single spaced). This is the most I've moved forward on this ms in some time. Of course, that means I'm to the end of a chapter again and must figure out what to do--and worse, the next piece involves a total change of mood from light to dire. Don't ask me how I'm going to handle that. I have no idea. I hope it's possible to handle it.

After more discussion re. color, my thoughts now are as follows: If color is important to you, it comes through in your writing and makes the reader absorb and remember it. If you throw colors in willy-nilly because you assume kiddie books are supposed to use colors as adjectives and kids aren't smart enough to deserve more thought on your part, then, well...okay, self-editing here...I highly disapprove. There, that's much nicer than what I had the first time.

I was complaining to writer friends about a story I read that had a lot of colors in it. Like, the story used quite a bit of color in descriptions. Just plain old colors (red, blue, yellow, green, purple, orange) to describe plain old things (table, chair, door, hat, wall, floor). It bugged me because that's the kind of writing I see in picture book mss by people who think they're writing for kids when they're really writing down to kids. "Miss Tilly put on her yellow hat with the purple flower and went out of her brown house with its red chimney." I had it drummed into my head at an early age (writing-wise) that you never, ever put colors that don't mean anything into a PB ms because you're treading on the illustrator's turf. Maybe it made me a little paranoid about colors, but in general it helped my writing, because from the beginning of my career I zeroed in on colors as things that clog up the story without adding anything: what does the word mean, what does it add, why's it there? It helped me because basically that's what you need to do with every single word you put on the page.

To me colors are mostly wasted words, because the specific words don't do anything. I like to use "dark" rather than "black" or "brown" because "dark" conveys a mood. Color words don't make me feel anything, usually. If you make the color fancier, like "azure" or "magenta," it still doesn't convey anything to me. I wonder if it does to other people, maybe people who are more visual thinkers.

But anyway, the ironic thing is that as soon as I shot my mouth off to writer friends about the way this story used color, I turned back to my ms and the first thing I see is this:


Under Simon’s feet the winter wheat was alarmingly sorry-looking. Where there should have been a lush ocean of spring growth, there was only brown soil dusted with sparse bits of green.


I almost never use color, but there it is, right after I've derided somebody else for doing it. I thought, whoa. I mean, I'm not going to change it, but it's interesting that I'm falling back on color here because I'm trying to describe something specific. Not something in my head, but pictures of wheat winterkill I've seen on the Internet. I don't know what this means. Maybe it's not important. I notice that just a little farther on in the ms, maybe a page or two down, I'm describing something that is just in my head, and since I haven't actually got a picture of it, I'm all about getting across a feeling from the description, not a specific image. So, instead of colors, I'm playing around with words like...checking...

fluttering
billowy
overflow
ripe
shapely


Hmm. I did use a couple of colors. Red. White. But looky here! You can read the above list and get a very good damn idea of mood and feeling. Red and white don't tell you sh*t. Huh.

Well, I don't have any conclusions to draw. Just noticed it, and thought it was interesting.

Was thinking about the time I spent yesterday going over and over the same thing. If I had to watch somebody else doing what I did yesterday, I'd say they were neurotic and obsessive and have some kind of self-sabotage thing going on where they are subconsciously making sure they never actually finish a book. But I felt I made progress yesterday, writing my same 1000 or so words over and over again.

I spent much time redoing certain paragraphs. There were a few that were really causing me trouble. I realized, thinking about it later, that the object of rewriting a paragraph for hours usually would be coming up with a perfect paragraph, one that a writer would be proud of. But these paragraphs are very workmanlike, and my object isn't to perfect them, exactly, but to make them disappear. I need the reader not to even notice that s/he's reading words. I need the meaning to come out and the words to fall into the background.

Here is one sentence and some of its versions:


But the sight of Father's cut had momentarily frozen him in that wary, alert stillness rabbits get when they hear something move in the brush.

But Simon had seen the slashed arm, too. He had gone still, his eyes wary and alert and fixed on Father, who had never lifted a hand to Simon, nor even his voice.

But Simon had seen the slashed arm, too: he sat very still, his eyes wary, alert, and fixed on Father. Father, who had never lifted a hand to Simon, nor his voice.

But Simon saw the slashed arm, too; he sat very still, his eyes wary, alert, and fixed on Father. He could not shake the habit of expecting explosions, even from Father, who had never so much as raised his voice at Simon in the entire seven years he'd lived here.


I expect to be doing this sort of thing today, too--only on chapter 2. I'm not so neurotic and obsessive that I can't leave imperfection and move on.

I realized yesterday that sometimes the point of writing is to stamp images into the reader's brain, to be evocative. Other times the point is to be invisible, to drop out of sight in service to the story or characters. Funny, but I think maybe the first one is considered to have more literary value. Not sure why. Maybe because it tends to last longer in the reader's head?

Good g*d, what a week. Fortunately the w-f-h deadline just moved back a little, so I can have more fun with the w-f-h stories. They should be fun to write, and fun to read.

I was thinking about word choice, about how in my own mss--if there seems to be a option, given constraints of voice and pov--I go for the easiest words possible that get the feeling across without interrupting the flow. Because the goal is to engage the reader and pull them* along almost against their will. I prefer not to use the word that has the exact right definition if that means the reader has to choose between blipping over without understanding, or stopping to go find a dictionary. I'll write a long way around a word if I think it will cause that.

Sometimes if a word seems right, even if it has nothing to do with the situation, I'll try to find a way to use it anyway. I guess I like metaphors and similes okay, and use them often enough, but what I really like is a good strong evocative verb, if possible. Sometimes another word can be strong, too--a nice, plain word can do so much, and is so fun to work with. Sometimes I'll come across words during the day and think, "Wow, what a great word." Could be something like: Ice. Taint. Slice. Jagged. Crisp. Muffle. Spark. Flicker. I noticed while trying to define words during reading comprehension in tutoring that when you say a really good word, you can make it sound like what it means when you pronounce it. Often you don't have to provide a regular definition, you can just say it the right way and maybe add a gesture and the meaning is clear. You can't do that with words like perspicacious and interception. You can't even do it with words like adept and charade. Those aren't plain and strong enough.

In w-f-h, the reader is going to get pulled out whether I like it or not. One of the points of writing for educational publishers is that the reader has to stop and make sense of words, to use strategies to pronounce or define them. And if you don't have hard enough words, the editor has to go back and put them in. When I decide about word choice in w-f-h, I think "Do I like this word enough to ask the reader to stop and figure out how to say it/what it means?" Or "Do I think this word is good enough to use up precious specs on it?" Words that have passed muster in some of my past w-f-h mss have been splat, Sasquatch, nerdly, rattlesnake, lightning, jowl, and yuck.

I really do like words. I guess the question is, how far do you let them take you from the story at hand? At what point do they become about themselves? I know that different readers have different tolerance levels for lyricism and word play. And every ms has a different rhythm and flow. Dunno.




*Yes, yes, I know this is incorrect usage, but I do not give a flying you know what.