Lucky for you the bears don’t get here until this afternoon. And, unlucky for me, absinthe is still illegal in this state. So I’m here and lucid for at least a little while longer.

Hmm … writing … writing … Oh! I know!

You’re big on having a game plan going in, with your manifesto and mind maps and whatnot. But how do you keep yourself from over planning? See, I came up as a discovery writer (someone that just makes it up as they go), and I’ve tried outlines and what all for previous projects. Turns out I planned my enthusiasm right out of the window. But having a plan does help. So how did you find your balance and how do you keep your interest on the story at hand?

Second, if you were going to write a YA novel, what would it be?

I’m sure the ball and chain has some questions, as he’s interested in learning to do what it is we. I’ll send him over.

I thought Codpiece Johnson was going to be YA?

Boxers, Briefs or Free Fandango?

I know it’s nearly mid morning, but it’s too early for lucid conversation, despite being able to think the phrase “lucid conversation.”

So I’ve managed to get most of the way through the “Advice” tags. There’s a lot of really great stuff that spoke to my biggest weakness, which was plot and conflict. However, I was curious if you had any advice for writing dialog. I keep writing characters who monologue at each other, which is bad. Very bad.

Also, do you have a routine/ritual for writing? I’m always curious to hear how writers write.

About edits.

How many drafts do you go through, usually, until you have a ‘finished’ product? Three? Five? “When it’s done”? At what point do you let other people see your work? Do you ask for assistance right away, or do you hoard the work like your Precious until it’s ready to be released onto the unsuspecting world?

@Kate:

Absinthe is illegal still where you’re at, eh? Sadness!

Lemme see if I can’t answer your questions.

Regarding a game plan, you have to know your balance and abilities. For me, overplanning is writing a dense treatment that details every step of the story. I don’t plan that far. I plan tentpole moments, I plan plot events that must occur. I outline chapters, but each chapter only get three to five sentences. And in no way do those three to five sentences steal the magic of writing the story — it doesn’t capture voice, character, dialogue. Plus, I’ve already deviated from my outline twice in the first nine chapters, and one of those two times was in a big big way.

The larger issue for me is the fear of “losing interest.” If outlining forces you to lose interest, then you were never going to get to the end. We are writers are slave to this persistent myth that every writing day needs to be fun, needs to be magical, needs to be full of discovery, but reality just won’t bear that out. We all lose interest, but you have to keep writing. We can’t be distracted by every other shiny thing, and we can’t be dissuaded by a day of disinterest.

It’s like this: I say if outlining kills your interest, what happens during the first rewrite? The second? Third? What happens during the query letter? Or the edits demanded by a publisher? All along the way are steps that are kind of… well, difficult, or boring, or magic-thieving. It’s par for the course. Once you’ve found a story you love, if the outlining and planning “kills the magic,” then the magic was destined to die regardless.

You gotta dig in deep and find the fire. Which I’m sure you can do, it’s just a matter of setting your level of determination.

As for YA? I’d write a book about demons. My own version of demons. I have some loose planning around it, but YA has all kinds of genre conventions that bug me a little bit, and it’s not “officially” YA if follows different patterns — so, we’ll see if I ever managed to put pen to paper on that. Plus my, erm, brand isn’t one that’s very family-friendly.

– c.

@Ron:

Heh, yeah, Codpiece Johnson as a YA story. Danzig Romance. I don’t think anyone would allow that.

And boxers. Or boxer-briefs, but usually the former.

– c.

@Rory:

Dialogue is tricky, but it’s critical — it’s easy to read, which means it’s a necessary component.

Dialogue is a back and forth, obviously, so no monologuing necessary — make it dynamic, not static. I like to lean a little toward local color and character affectations, but not to the point where they distract. Spice, not full flavor. I’ll probably do a post one day upcoming about dialogue again.

As for rituals? No real rituals. I get up early (quarter to six or so), make coffee, then try to eat something (preferably protein, no carbs), then I write. Two to three-k a day, word-wise. This past week was a shitty week for ritual, but I think next week I’ll get back on track pretty quick. Mornings for me are for writing, afternoons are for editing and development.

– c.

@Josh:

Blackbirds had… six drafts. Last one was the agent pass, and if (cross fingers) a publisher ever likes it enough to buy it, more passes will be forthcoming. That means I queried the manuscript when it was at its fifth draft.

HiM, the film script, is on its seventh, and I know an eighth is upcoming.

I’m generally a “between five and ten drafts” guy so far, but that will likely change.

Best and easiest answer is, until its done.

I don’t ask for assistance right away. I tend to put the first draft away for a month so I can get distance, then I go through it again — then the second draft is the one I show, and I only show it to a few very trusted people. I don’t want a lot of noise, because you open it wide and you get wildly divergent opinions from people whose trustworthiness as editors is dubious. Which is no foul against them, it’s just, not everybody is going to be a good editor.

– c.

Once I finished the 1st draft of City of The Lost, I think I had two others, and those weren’t complete rewrites. That didn’t happen until I got an agent with it and he edited it.

That had 4 rewrites. Two were cleanups, and two were major revisions. The most useful thing I got out of that, though, besides a better book, was learning to outline.

In the middle of the rewrites I went back through the whole thing, wrote a detailed outline so I could figure out where everything was without having to go through the manuscript several times over. At the time it was more painful than the rewrites.

But it really helped show me not only the plot holes but the problems I was having building suspense and giving the characters sufficient motivation.

I did one for my second book just recently and when I’m done writing the draft I plan on going through it and writing a new outline based on what I’ve done and using that as an editing tool.

The operative word here is “plan”. I suspect there will be a lot of “I don’t wanna!” with me running through the house in my underwear like a 3 year old with a temper tantrum.

But then that happens every third Thursday so it’s really nothing special.

@Stephen:

Yep. I find outlining to be often quite a kick in the dick. And yet, once it’s done, I’m so effing happy to have it.

Good info. And I should note that each draft wasn’t a full rewrite on my part, either.

– c.

The part that really kicked my ass was when I heard, “Hey, that part that happens in the middle? What if it happened at the beginning?”

Great advice. Better book.

I fucking hated it. Not for the idea, because it was a much better idea, but for all of the things I then needed to change later in the book.

The earlier you have a bigger change the more things you have to change downstream.

God did that suck. The outline saved my ass.

The outline is an excellent tool — equal parts Road Atlas thrown in the trunk of your car and flotation device (in case of “water landing”).

I’m not knocking anybody who doesn’t outline, but I resisted it for so long that once I came to terms with it I felt like I “grew up” a little as a writer. I now consider it a critical part of prep.

– c.

One of my WiP is a game. My system is loosely Fudge-based. I have my basic mechanics (a good bit of them in writing), an outline and a few pages fleshing out the condition of the world and how it got that way (there’s more in my head and in notes). It just seems that with a game, I’m writing several different things at once. There’s setting material, gm material, mechanics, etc., etc., etc. I’ve been trying to eat the elephant one bite at a time. When you are starting a game project like that, in what order do you tackle the many different writing tasks?

Also, have you ever used VUE? It’s extremely robust mind mapping software (open source). It allows you to insert photos, maps, documents, whatever into the bubbles on the mind map and write text all around it.

@Darren:

I’ve never written a game from start to finish, but I have written supplements — do you have a game bible and outline? Seems to me that once you have those, you can just fill in the blanks.

As for VUE — no, I use SimpleMind, but that’s limited. Got a link?

– c.

I will tell you that, now that I’m sane again (SANE, I TELL YOU), I plan to play a lot of video games and work on writing my ICONS adventure for Adamant.

I will ask you if you feel more or less busy these days, what with all your movie writing and novel selling.

Forgive my ignorance (again), but “game bible?” Not familiar with the terminology.

Also, you can find VUE here: http://vue.tufts.edu/index.cfm

It’s developed at Tufts and is an acronym for Visual Understanding Environment. I’m extremely happy with it. I started using it to create the type of document you wrote about using for your novel. I use it as combination mindmap/whiteboard. You can plug all sorts of stuff into it.

If you want to download it without giving up your email address or anything, hop over to sourceforge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/tuftsvue/

I’ve had a script lying dormant on my hard drive for what seems like an eternity. I recently decided to embark on a new adventure and try, and I emphasize try, to “convert” it into a book. I have 127 pages of script to work with. It can’t be that hard, right? Well, I’ve been humbled.
Has anyone done this? Does anyone have any sage-like advice? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Have a safe and Happy 4th!

@Wisdumb (heh):

I took my novel, Blackbirds, when it wasn’t working out — and I translated it to a script, then back to a novel. The thing to remember about a script is it’s not a perfect analog to a novel most times. (A novel is closer to, say, a season of television in my mind, whereas a film is more like a novella). So, the story will likely need to be made more robust — but that’s the strength of the novel form.

– c.

@Darren:

Game bible is a different animal than the outline — it’s your go-to doc for all the fluffy and crunchy concepts. Justin Achilli did one for Hunter (though on his site it’s labeled as an outline), and you can find that here as an example.

– c.

@Eddy:

Your sanity, like the cake, is a lie.

I feel equally as busy, I guess? Just a different kind of busy, and a busy that is more self-driven (which can be tricky) than externally so.

– c.

Thanks Chuck!
Making the story more robust is one of my many issues. I’m actually enjoying the fact that I can expand on the scenes/settings, the characters, their back stories, etc. There was so much I wanted to say in the script that I couldn’t due to formatting and page constraints.
Of course, the dialogue in the script is brilliant… wink wink. Making that “brilliant” dialogue “flow’ in the book form is not a skill set that I’ve acquired… yet.
Thanks again

When coming up with a story what part of the stories do you summon forth into your brain fats first?

Do you think about a concept and go from there. Like “This dude almost died, and now he can see ghosts…wait, that’s dead zone, right? Hm.” Do you think about a theme?

When you start constructing the story which part of the story do you start with, when your just in the planning stages? Do you start at the beginning, the middle or the end? Do you think of the story as a single unit as beginning and end, as if you were coming up with the synopsis on the back of the book?

” … but YA has all kinds of genre conventions that bug me a little bit, and it’s not “officially” YA if follows different patterns …”

Ok, I have to ask what you mean by this. I have an idea, I just want to see if I missed a memo and have been doing it wrong this whole time. Because, honestly, there needs to be more honestly bad ass YA and less YA that’s edgy for edginess’ sake.

I’d be interested to learn your views on YA too. I’ve found myself writing it on accident, as a side project. Now it looks like its going to be my entry into the world as a writer. There are rules?
What are they? Can I break them? What sounds do they make when I do? Squeaky or shattery ones?
Is it okay to punt the kinds of characters usually found in popular YA all the way to the CW and write about quirky fun people instead? Cause that was my plan.
More please.

I’m not Chuck, obviously, but I’m doing something similar where my WiP is a game. For me, I found that I had a couple of mechanics in mind that I wanted and a theme, which I took notes on as they were the quick inspiration but things didn’t really start to get going until I had essentially written out a 1-3 page ‘intent’ type document for myself. I identified the theme of the game, what I want it to do, what I want players to be asking themselves. When I had the theme I figured out how I was going to represent that theme in the mechanics, how I would encourage people to think about and act out that theme, and most importantly how I would try to make that fun.

With that in hand I was able to go through and do all the mechanics stuff while always having what my intent was near by. Getting bogged down with trying to be too realistic? Check the intent form and use it to cut myself back. The same with when I went too light on something. It wasn’t really an outline, so much as just “I want a game that does this well” and it works.

Now granted, for this game a boxed setting isn’t as important, though I am working on one, but I found getting the mechanics out of the way – even if they need tweaking – has allowed me to relax when working on the fluff and developing the setting. I have the rules, so I can focus the fluff to show some of the things I think the rules do a good job of allowing, and so far I like to think it has gone well.

@Ruth, Kate:

The edginess is part of it — and I’m speaking without a lot of concrete info, mind — I just know that YA these days is almost like Romance Fiction in that it’s expected to feature certain elements and conventions. You can break any rules you want, and if the book is good enough, it’s good enough, right? I’ll see if I can’t dig up some stuff.

– c.

@Elijah:

What part of the story? I think it’s different for each story. The story usually starts as a scene or a character or even a line of dialogue, and it’s like a chip in a glass window — before too long, the cracks start to spread.

I used to write out of order, but I’ll do that no longer. I now always write in order, and follow the path put forth by my outline. Roughly.

– c.

@Wisdumb:

The dialogue should be an easy transition from script to prose, I’d think — it just needs dialogue attributions, I’d expect?

– c.

I’m looking for noir or crime story suggestions; classic or neo, doesn’t matter. Got any?

Tome: If you’re looking for the classics, pick up The Maltese Falcon by Dashill Hammett (yes, even if you’re seen the movie — Hammett has a great style all his own that you don’t get from the screen) and pretty much any book by Raymond Chandler. For modern, you might want to check out the Jack Wakes Up series by Seth Harwood — only the first book is in print, I believe, but you can get the entire trilogy as audiobook podcasts at podiobooks.com.

Thanks Eddy. When it comes to Chandler, I’m like that fat guy who stays at the buffet well after closing because it’s all you can eat night. Great stuff, and I especially love the Adventures of Philip Marlowe that came afterwards.

I’ll check out “Jack Wakes Up.” Sounds like some classic Layercake style fun.