23/31 Thought-balls

[darkemeralds]

One day a couple of months ago a coworker of mine decided that she'd like to write a middle-grade novel (that is, a novel of interest to a "tween" readership--the coveted Harry Potter audience.) Ten vacation days later she had a first draft, and invited me to look it over.

I'm all "What? Ten days? What?" I'm lucky to write a chapter in ten days. I'm doing well to write anything at all in three years. Once I got over my speed-envy, I asked her about her moment of inspiration. She said she'd been reading a middle-grade novel to her kid and thought, "I should really write one of these." Then she read a bunch of other novels in the category, dissected them for their components (number and type of characters, types of conflict, number of scenes, acts or beats, etc.). Then she started constructing her own.

I just...gah! Does not compute. I work so differently. She has a box of Legos that she wants to put together. I start with a whole thought-ball, a story-sphere that have to find an opening in. I'm dependent on the damn thing falling on my head from the sky and have never figured out how to make more of them hit me.

How do you get your ideas? And how do you turn them into actual writing?

Comments

[executrix]

PS--if you can have a PS to a post on the other service--I just saw the film of the British production of "Merrily We Roll Along." A TV interviewer asks lyricist Charlie what comes first, the music or the words? and Charlie says, "Generally, the contract."

[darkemeralds]

Heh. Yeah, that would be the "prompt" scenario.

[branchandroot]

I've written lego-stories before, but I never liked them as well as the ones that wind themselves out of another story. For me it's like altering the angle of light on something and seeing how the shadow changes and writing the new one. It's why I like writing fic most. Of course, once I do notice the new shadow, I often have to run to keep up as it gathers weight from all the story-shapes I've internalized over the years.

[darkemeralds]

What a beautiful image! And a useful metaphor.

How do you keep writing when the weight of a lifetime of story-shapes presses down? Do you have a selection process, a filter that helps you choose some over others?

[branchandroot]

I never quite stop telling myself stories, so it never really gets overwhelming? Though sometimes very disconcerting when I'm dreaming just before waking, because my storytelling brain is /extremely insistent/ that there are ways even dream-stories are supposed to go, and we're going there even if I /don't/ like horror as a genre. And TV Tropes is funny because it's right; there are shapes that any given culture expects to find stories in, so most of the time the way forward (or a selection of them) is jumping up and down waving flags. And there's a safety valve; if I can't run to keep up right then, my brain kind of hits 'pause' on that particular story. Of course, then sometimes I lose it completely which is very frustrating!

[darkemeralds]

I'd never spent any time on TV Tropes and now I see an endless rabbit-hole of story ideas opening under my feet.

It doesn't take me long to start pondering the genetic heritability of story tropes. Like, do we have them for some reason of survival? Deep, man. I could get lost in here!

[greghatcher]

I don't know that I'm THAT analytical about it, but I have worked on story assignments before (and I'm doing it now, actually, as you know)and it helps to have some tools in your bag. Especially for genre pieces.

For example... a three-act structure with a strong opening scene, knowing what the main character's arc is and putting the opening scene emotionally as far away from that as possible. I.e., Dorothy starts out hating Kansas and wanting to run away, ending up at "there's no place like home." Knowing where you want to end up is key. In fact, that last is always the most important for me; because everything builds to that. Leave some wiggle room so I can change my mind, but since I am often having to plot mysteries and plant clues, I usually work the ending and all the pivotal clues out first.

The idea itself? If it's a pulp assignment from Ron, it usually is a character-- "I need a story about this guy." Then it becomes a question of reverse-engineering that guy's basic themes, needs, etc. What's his biggest challenge? what's something he never had to deal with before? How do I close off all his usual coping methods so he has to do something new and learn a lesson? Etc. On the other hand, if it's an article for Carol, she usually starts with a THEME-- "I need something about finding your calling." Then I pan my personal memories for anecdotes that I can recast or punch up a bit. Usually there's something. For the weekly thing at CBR I have several go-to things when I get stuck-- maybe a funny story from class, or a reminiscence about my own pop culture loves and when I first met them, or an opinion piece about The Industry, or an obscure bit of pop culture history that people don't know about, or a bookscouting story.

But mostly it comes from DOING it. It's a muscle, you have to work it.... especially when you need to derive income from the work. The quote I often think of is from Denny O'Neil, one of my favorite writers; most famous for his work on BATMAN but he's written all kinds of things and is very wise about the craft of writing itself, he also teaches it at the college level in New York and mentored dozens of people when he was an editor at DC and Marvel. He said, "Writing is about ten percent inspiration and ninety percent craft. But you damn well better have the craft because sometimes you don't HAVE the inspiration, and on those days that ninety percent of craft will carry you."

I think of that a lot, especially on the days when I have a deadline and I just don't feel like writing. Honestly, my biggest problem isn't finishing-- it's STARTING. Building the opening scenes, working out the necessary exposition, laying pipe. The reason the stuff reads so stripped-down is because it's the minimum, I really hate doing that. I'd much rather get to the good part-- snappy dialogue, action scenes, scares and suspense. I have to make myself slow down and earn it.

But there are lots of people who live for the world-building and hate trying to write dialogue. Others find ways to editorialize and get their own opinions in there. Etc. Everybody has their thing. But the one thing all my writer friends agree on-- the real ones, the ones that would do it whether they were getting paid or not-- is that you have to do a LOT of it. You have to budget work time and set goals and make yourself take it seriously. Even if it's just a hobby or an amusement, you can always tell the real ones because they hate not finishing things. They crave results and they hammer away till they get some.

It also helps to have an AUDIENCE; if you have people interested in seeing what you do, it helps to keep you doing it. I like people to look at stuff I'm working on not just because they catch things I don't see, but also because knowing they're out there waiting keeps me going.

My two cents. Don't know if that helped or not but as long as you budget work time and commit to a result, you'll get readable work if you keep at it.

[darkemeralds]

I've been thinking about your comment for a couple of days now, and of many helpful ideas in it, the one most helpful to me has been that different fiction writers like to emphasize different things. I mean, duh, but I never really thought about it that way. Which is weird, because I think about everything every which way and that's part of the reason I don't actually get much writing done.

Anyway, for some reason I never quite made the conscious connection between "some readers like X and some readers like Y," and its corollary among writers. I think I've always felt sort of guilty about liking world-building, and long, stately, detailed novels--I like to read them, and that's essentially the way I write. Somewhere in my head there's a "rule" that says first-time novelists must present works of no more than 50,000 words to agents and publishers, and all my novels run to 150,000 or more. The luxury of letting a novel grow to be as long as it needs to be has seemed reserved for the established Literary Greats--Umberto Eco and Gore Vidal--or the Such Bestsellers That The Rules Don't Apply--Stephen King and JK Rowling.

And yet, that "rule" is an artifact of the paper-publishing world of the late 20th century--and kind of a figment of my imagination. A guideline, at most.

My friend the soon-to-be tween novelist was able to get a list of the guidelines for her category and write to suit it. More power to her--she'll be published by real publishers sooner than I will. But your comment has helped me realize consciously that that still doesn't make it the right way for me to proceed. Thanks!

[greghatcher]

Well, I have lots of experience giving this kind of pep talk; there's nothing that clarifies your thinking on a subject like having to teach it. The one single handicap my students contend with more than any other is the fear of sitting down and churning out words. They have an idea but they have no way in, or they think they have to do it all in a burst, or they have no clue how it will end, or... whatever. But it's always about how they don't feel ready to START. The smug answer you hear so often from professional writers, "Start at the beginning," or "start at page one," isn't terribly helpful and all it does is freeze up my young charges with panic, because they don't know what page one looks like. That's really their problem.

This is why I loved the writing workshops we used to do at WITH magazine so much. Because the method we always used was this--

1. Figure out what your story's ABOUT. The 'moral of the story' as we used to say in grade school. The point of the thing. It doesn't have to be an actual moral. Ian Fleming's James Bond novels, for example, are classic mythical adventures dressed in 20th-century espionage drag. They're kid's daydreams in adult clothing. Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard both wrote about brawny guys in loincloths fighting evil wizards and such but they were interested in completely different things; Howard's stories were always about the corrupting effect of civilization and Burroughs was a romantic and occasionally a satirist. So there's never any humor in the Conan or Solomon Kane stories Howard wrote, just a dark, world-weary feeling, and the heroes rarely get a clean win. But Burroughs' Tarzan and John Carter yarns were much lighter and full of humor and generally ended with someone getting married. Most of what I've been doing lately is stuff based on the idea of "I always wanted to see this in an adventure yarn and nobody ever did it." But whatever you're interested in doing, you have to kind of know what you WANT to do thematically. Sometimes you start with one idea of what you're doing and end with another, but you should be self-aware enough to know that when your internal compass shifts that's what's happening, i.e., "this is turning into a different thing than I thought it was" and not "I'm doing this wrong."

2. Once you have that, then you think of the character to tell that story with. Fortunately, you can start with templates off-the-rack if you need to, there's no need to reinvent the wheel. The Outsider Looking In and Observing? The Reluctant Hero Thrust Into A World He Knows Nothing Of? The Intrepid Explorer? The Youth Coming of Age? The Weary Warrior Saddling Up for One Last Battle? And so on. Figure out who your lead is.

3. Figure out what your lead character needs to learn-- or FAIL to learn, but readers need to see he failed. Almost always, once you know this, you know where you're going and can see various turning points and how to get there.

4. Once you know the ending, then you put the beginning as emotionally far away from that as possible. In THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME Rainsford ends up being hunted, fighting for his life, so that story begins with Rainsford the mighty hunter sneering at the idea that prey might have rights or feelings. Etc. Set the guy up so you can knock him down and make him struggle.

Get those four things locked down in your head and suddenly it's very doable, you just have to connect the dots. That was always how we workshopped stuff at WITH and it's the best way I know to get yourself to look at what you're actually doing, how to clarify this or hide that, knock all the extraneous stuff off so that all you have left is the actual story. I feel very strongly that stories are BUILT, they're not born or sculpted or lucked into. It's a process. The more aware you are of the process itself and how it works, the more you can use it as a tool to shape what you're doing into the story you want instead of just hoping it all works out. That's that craft I was talking about. There's really no substitute for it.

[kis]

I think you already know that I need to feel a story. There's usually one thing I want to happen when I start out (generally The Boys Kiss At Last) and I construct everything around that. Well, I say 'construct', but it's more like lying back and letting the Tureen do the hard work.

Recently, I've been using Dan Wells 7-stage story telling template to reassure myself that what I have is an actual story. It helps me feel entitled to write the thing. Then I start, and everything changes, because word A will lead to word B, but not word D and before I know where I am, something else has happened. At which point I scowl at the Tureen and let it do the work again.

I think a lot of it comes down to faith that the story will happen, if you just let it. I edit from the outset, and constantly - because as you go along, you realize there are things your Tureen wants to talk about, even if you don't. Too much thinking about what's acceptable to your audience, or to your own self-image buggers the story up, IMO - and it makes it very dull (as in the Lego model). I'm increasingly of the opinion that writing is supposed to scare the author a bit. That way, you've got some energy behind it.

[darkemeralds]

You and I are, of course, in perfect agreement about the Tureen. The collected--and largely subconscious--experiences of a lifetime seem to offer themselves up in just the right sequence when I'm not getting in the way.

Like you, I edit from the outset. I've tried a hundred times to free-write, vomit forth words, write without editing, and I just can't. It gets me nowhere. It's not my style. I'm glad you mentioned that.

That last thing though--faith that the story will happen--that is absolutely what I'm lacking. Bullseye. All that too-much-thinking. That's my big obstruction. Clearly, the woman with the fresh new middle-grade novel just doesn't have that problem. Sigh.

[kis]

Just to clarify - I think there's a difference in faith in the story, and faith that it will happen. If you don't have the first, the second is impossible. I struggle a lot with the first one - which is why I find fanfic a godsend. It's far easier for me to have faith in other people's characters than in ones of my own invention.

[darkemeralds]

When that story strikes (for me it's like a spotlight coming on suddenly in a dark museum full of amazing artifacts, sort of a Finger of God saying "here--this one, here's your next story"), it's the most exciting thing, and very rare. You're so right about the "faith" part. I used to have absolute faith that that inspiration will result in actual writing, but just lately it hasn't panned out.

As to other people's characters versus original ones, when I write fic I find myself digging out specific aspects of the established character to such an extent that it's almost the same as creating my own. I guess I don't feel a hard line between the two. But then, I tend to write in fandoms where the characters aren't quite as well-defined and well-acted as in Sherlock.

[scribblemoose]

I usually get a half-formed idea, and the story grows out of it during the process of writing itself. I can write with a structure as described, but for me it's a completely different process - it feels like professional writing-to-spec, and although it's good brain-exercise, it can get really boring. When I write fiction for myself, I write it almost as if I'm the first reader. I find out what happens as I go. Every now and then I have to pause and think and redirect things a little (usually because I've become stuck with a direction I *thought* it was going in), and of course there's a lot of editing to do afterwards, but it's the most fun way to write and the one that, for me, produces the best material.

I love that different things work for different people. We all have our processes. :)

[darkemeralds]

Do you feel like your idea is really half-formed, or is it more half-buried? I ask because I find that when a story idea hits me, rare though that is, once I start unwinding it into actual words, it's all there. I'm not so much creating it as discovering what was there. But yes, finding out what happens as you go--that's my experience too.

I love the near-mystical-experience quality of it, but it's not a very businesslike or reliable method of actually getting much writing done. Maybe I'll never get to that.