So, last night, I was working on edits for Mockingbird, the sequel to the upcoming Blackbirds, and generally speaking, I enjoy revisions. While at times they make me want to pound my head against a desk until it’s the consistency of rice pudding, that’s still oddly a good feeling — like, the way way that tonguing your sensitive gums somehow hurts but also feels awesome at the same time? I dunno. Shut up.
Point is, as I go through the draft — and this is true of a lot of my drafts — I become aware of my deficiencies and trouble spots as a writer. I know my problem isn’t really going to be in the editing — I turn in pretty clean copy. Minimal typos, grammar in good order outside stylistic concerns, etc. I think I stay on point with character pretty well and I think pacing and suspense and theme are all well-handled.
Really, my problem is plot.
Plot is tricky li’l sumbitch. It just… it squirms away. Like an oiled up ferret. And the hell of it is, soon as you find one of those plot threads that needs to change or get cut you find that it shows up everywhere in the draft — and suddenly it’s like tearing out weeds. You can’t just pop out the tap-root. This fucker’s got shoots and runners and tendrils everywhere.
So, anyway, that brings me around to a question:
What’s your deficiency? I ask because, well, I’m curious. But also because it’ll help me focus future blog posts. Where do you run into problems? It can be something technical, something more abstract and story-based, or something that has to do with all the vagaries of the writer’s life. Hit me with your best shot. Take a good long look at your writing and your writing process.
Where could you use work? I don’t mean just a little bit, but like, if you were some kind of Sinister Penmonkey Supervillain, what would be your greatest weakness, your vulnerability?
Lob ’em at me.
Amber says:
I’m with you in the plotting deficiencies. Pacing, story structure (three acts vs four vs five vs twenty seven), hero’s journey. Then I have genre-specific expectations beyond these. I have tried planning techniques, more and more, but it just feels like smooshing play doh in a crack in the pavement. I wish I could just -get- plot, the way I get voice or some other things.
January 25, 2012 — 1:03 AM
Marlan says:
This probably falls under plot as well, but I tend to just plain overwrite. Even a simple story will sometimes turn into a pointless road trip with endless descriptions that all end up in my deleted scenes file. It stems from my thinking-out-loud as I try to figure out what’s going on through the characters. I usually don’t have a coherent book until around the fifth draft because of this.
I am totally envious of writers like Scalzi who, apparently, come up with the entire story in their heads in the shower and then write the whole thing, fully formed in a week. That simply blows my mind.
January 25, 2012 — 1:30 AM
Deanna Ogle says:
Connecting scenes is my problem. I can come up with okay plot lines and characters, and I’m great at “seeing” scenes and conversation snippets. My problem is stringing them all together without making it awkward. My documents are usually full of fragments and pieces of conversations, but getting everyone from point A to point B without it sounding very forced is kind of my problem.
January 25, 2012 — 1:50 AM
Kate says:
Momentum, motivation, and confidence. I always find gaping weak points in my stories halfway through, decide they suck, and feel like abandoning them forever. Only recently have I been able to push through and finish things!
January 25, 2012 — 2:51 AM
Michelle says:
I have the same problem as Deanna. I’ve got my plot, scenes, conclusion, but can’t seem to tie them all together. I guess a better word for it is transition–transitioning from scene to the scene.
January 25, 2012 — 3:10 AM
Jim Franklin says:
Description is my main problem, in that I often forget to put enough of it in. I fly off with an interesting plot, a twist or a conversation and before I know it I’ve written pages that could even be good, except for the fact that we know nothing about who is doing those things, or where they are.
It’s like I expect the readers to be able to see exactly what’s in my head. I’m getting better at it now, but it still catches me off guard.
My other main issue is subconsciously trying to use the words ‘suddenly’ and ‘almost’ in every goddamn sentence.
January 25, 2012 — 4:14 AM
Eva T says:
I have a bad tendency to leave all the action to my main-charaters and very little to the supporting cast. Which means that most of the plot is the mains doing stuff and not a whole lot of other people doing stuff to them. (Although it does have the advantage that most of the plot becomes a series of logical answers to ‘and then what happened?’ so I rarely find myself dug into a plothole.) I try to fight it, but time and again I find my stories being long stretches of my mains running around looking for crystal skulls and doing stupid things with fridges, and both their helpers and antagonists are off-screen doing … not much, apparently.
Also, I couldn’t set correct commas if my life depended on it.
January 25, 2012 — 4:17 AM
Jessica Meats says:
I appear to have the opposite problem to you. I can do plots. I can weave complex storylines together in interesting ways. It’s everything else that needs work.
I’m like Jim in that I can write pages and pages of plot without telling you what the main character looks like, where the action’s happening or any other background description. I sometimes compare my first drafts to actors on a stage running through the play, without any scenery or costumes. The story’s there but there’s still something missing. At least I recognise this as a fault now and I’m prepared to deal with it.
I also have typo issues. My punctuation is precise but my spelling is all over the place. I don’t seem to catch the mistakes in the rewrites because I read what I expect to see.
January 25, 2012 — 4:21 AM
Mild says:
Long time reader, first time commenter here. Here would be my top 3 weaknesses, the ones that actually lose me sleep some nights.
1) Having lead, up to this point, a life completely inadequate to preparing me for work as a professional writer. What do I mean by inadequate? I haven’t socialized enough, I haven’t read enough, I haven’t had enough of a “life” up to this point, and when people read my fiction, they’ll know. Readers, man, they can smell the desperation.
Every bit of advice, here and elsewhere, I read has become a repeated reminder of just how much I lack in, well, every kind of experience you could name. You say get out of the house, go live life, but I’m a grown ass adult with a full time soul sucking job who’s been alone most of my life. Where am I going to find the time to become the Most Interesting Man Who Ever Lived and still get a decent amount of writing and reading done? I only gots 24 hours in a day like everyone else.
And speaking of reading, I know of a writer who boasts of reading at least 2 books a day, every day, since he was in middle school. I’ve read books for most of my life as well, but I’ll never catch up to that. And I doubt he’s the only one to pack so much in. I’ll never compete with the guys and girls who’ve worked 14 vastly different jobs and as such have a vast well of experience and expertise to draw upon. I’ve never had adventures. My life has been boring, man. I’ve lost or driven away every friend I ever had! And here I am, too old to start again.
Whoa, WHOA. Sorry, I got into a kinda… thing there. I need a drink.
2) Plot issues, as you’ve experienced first hand. I’ve tried writing as a free-writer. (pantser just sounds… wrong. Like you’re standing around the water cooler at work when the lights shut off. They flicker back on a moment later, and you feel a cool breeze and a weight lifted from your waist. You look down. One of your coworkers moans. “Oh, the pantsers. They got you.”)
Some of the material I free-write is great, works fine for short stories, but anything longer is just born wrong. But there’s always some critical aspect missing from the rough draft. Like character–most of the cast doesn’t have it. Or the characters are fine, but the logic in my premise and plot found someplace better to be. Looks like I might have to try plotting, but to what degree? How will I know a method is right for me without wasting a year or more on failed books? Like I have up until now? (Weeps in corner)
3) Write what you want VS write what the market will buy. Some writers are lucky to have their first book become a first sale which then launches into super-sale-dom. And the kicker is: they wrote it for the fun/hobby/therapy/the hell of it. They never cared about selling anything, or about market pressures or reader expectations. At least not until it came time to write book 2.
Where does this leave the rest of us who set out from day 1 to write professionally? Yeah, you don’t go into writing for the biggest mansion in mansion land and mountains of cocaine with which to furnish it, I know. But what if I’ve sacrificed my ability to “put myself on the page” unintentionally because I didn’t enter this business a pure creative soul unblemished by capitalist pigdog concerns, comrade?
January 25, 2012 — 4:23 AM
Amber J. Gardner says:
(Funny, I was just gonna do a blog post about plot!)
My deficiencies are wide and varied.
My vocabulary, descriptions and pov are probably my biggest weaknesses.
It mostly can be summed up to lazy writing, but it’s very difficult for me to write vivid descriptions of the settings or the character’s thoughts and feelings that evoke emotion and mood. I don’t describe as much as I should and forget about the five senses. I definitely gotta find me a dictionary with specializing in descriptive words.
Another big weakness is style. I don’t have any. It’s all flat and “This happened, then this happened… ” I don’t even know how to work on this weakness. It’s hard to find the voice of the story when it’s 3rd person pov (as mentioned above, POV is definitely a weakness of mine).
I also repeat words or even actions over and over: ‘suddenly’, ‘then’, etc and “She said, She turned, She looked, She frowned, etc” over and over. It’s definitely something I gotta keep an eye on when I got back to revise since I do it almost unconsciously the first draft.
Funny thing is, I think Plotting is my #1 strength. I can easily envision a beginning, middle and ending, early on when I’m writing a story, and the climax naturally builds up with ease. I can also see the treads of very well written plot-lines clearly. Like with one of my favorite books, Way of the Shadows by Brent Weeks, I can see the beginning, middle end of all the layers of plot (Azoth’s, Durzo’s, Solon/Feir/Dorian’s, Logan’s, etc) interwoven so perfectly
(Yes I love the NightAngel books and I’m trying to dissect them. No I’m not obsessed Sshhh).
But I have to say I’m still confused about how to actually do that: weave multiple plotlines within one plot. I feel I only have ONE plotline and thought I’m sure that’s not necessary a bad thing, I know the best books have multiple subplots that enhance the main one and I definitely gotta study up on how to do that effectively.
January 25, 2012 — 5:24 AM
Amber J. Gardner says:
Ah! I forgot to add that REVISION is my absolute biggest bane! I can’t get myself to sit down and revise anything! And when I do, I feel completely lost since I don’t even know what needs changing or how.
I end up revising a sentence to be perfect for hours, then later get feedback that I should eliminate the scene completely.
I also tend to take feedback personally. So yeah, the whole feedback and revision process is definitely one I need to learn to handle better.
January 25, 2012 — 5:27 AM
Jessica Meats says:
Oh, Amber, I am completely with you. I hate revising.
And feedback is horrible. I’ll give someone a draft to read and tell them that I want their honest opinion. Then they give it and I want to go and cry. Or beat the feedback giver over the head with the manuscript. It doesn’t matter how many nice things they say, as soon as they go, “This bit doesn’t work,” or, “I think you should change that,” I can’t think of anything but the negative comments.
The worst part is when I agree with them. If someone gives negative feedback and I disagree, I’m fine. It’s when they’re right that I get upset.
I don’t tend to have a problem with multiple plotlines, generally because I have multiple main characters (sometimes, too many main characters) and each tends to have their own private plotline that intersects the others.
January 25, 2012 — 5:35 AM
Anninyn says:
Writing action. Can’t do it, I seem to write too removed from it, not visceral enough, too thinky.
So it’s something I force myself to do as often as I can, cause otherewise I’ll never improve, right?
January 25, 2012 — 6:48 AM
R.J. Keith says:
Plot.
Nine ways from Sunday and hell’s half acre, plot. I can come up with some crazy stuff and think “aw, this would make an awesome story”, but when it comes time to write; I’m too concerned whether it’s “believable” of “plausible” enough to even bother writing it.. Hell, even if I manage to put words on paper I’m suddenly struck by “will anyone really believe all this crap?”. This thought process manages to dog me all the way through the story. Verisimilitude is the bane of my existence.
January 25, 2012 — 7:09 AM
Todd Moody says:
Just got back some critiques and realize I’m having trouble getting and staying deep enough on the POV. I’m writing limited 3rd person and really entrenching myself in the head of the character has been a problem for me. I found I’m using words like “thought” or “felt” instead of describing the feelings or the things they are really dealing with in their intestinal flora.
I’m also having issues with what needs to be cut and what needs to stay. I struggle on deciding if a particualr passage is germain to the story, they all seem important when you write the draft.
January 25, 2012 — 7:17 AM
Anne Lyle says:
My problem is keeping all my characters’ disparate motivations in mind – I’ll be happily writing stuff from the hero’s PoV, then on re-reading it I suddenly think “but supporting character B is going to totally disagree with this course of action” and it all falls apart…
I think I need to plan more methodically before I write. One day I’ll get my right and left brains to play nicely together 🙂
January 25, 2012 — 7:26 AM
terribleminds says:
@Anne —
Yeah, my problem with plot is why I’m a panster at heart but a plotter by necessity. If I don’t plot thoroughly enough, it shows and I’ve gotta do hella more work on the back-end.
— c.
January 25, 2012 — 7:27 AM
Kain says:
My biggest problem would have to be adding funny parts in to balance out my darker parts. Either I overdo it or I just keep it all dark and depressing. I also have trouble with overcomplicating a plot, and researching. Research is a bitch, mostly because I have to use the library’s computer. Have you ever looked up methods of poisoning with some chick over your shoulder? It’s not fun.
January 25, 2012 — 7:27 AM
Lee Robson says:
One thing I’ve noticed recently is that I’m getting hung up on certain lines or paragraphs during revisions. I keep focusing solely on THAT little bit and picking it apart piece by piece, without stepping back to see how it fits into the narrative around it.
I KNOW I’m doing it, but I just can’t stop myself. It’s driving me up the wall.
January 25, 2012 — 7:33 AM
Shiri Sondheimer says:
1) Over editing: rewriting and rewriting and rewriting until I can’t or the life of me remember what the character was actually trying to say/do or rewriting to the extent that I completely lose confidence in the piece because it will never be “perfect” and deciding no one else will want to read it either.
2) focusing so much on character interactions that the big action scenes get truncated and leave the reading saying “but this is a BIG DEAL! Why is it only two pages when the phone conversation he just had with his fifth cousin is five?”
January 25, 2012 — 7:35 AM
Tena says:
Voice, description, dialogue…. good to go. If only the plot fairy would leave a little something under my pillow.
January 25, 2012 — 7:39 AM
Kara Parlin says:
Beginnings! I’m a plotter, and I can’t start until I know the beginning. I have a middle-grade novel that I’ve had to set aside because I can’t figure out how it opens. The characters, setting and major plot points are set, but I just can’t get into it until I get that spark about what the first scene is. I wish I could just start writing from the middle, but that’s not how my brain works.
January 25, 2012 — 7:41 AM
Amber J. Gardner says:
@Mild –
I know the solution to all those problems.
#1. Stop thinking so much.
#2. Write and read when you can.
#3. Live an active life, meaning live for NOW rather than wait for when you get to THERE or THEN.
The end.
You now owe me $1,000.00 in therapy and coaching fees.
January 25, 2012 — 8:05 AM
Kate Haggard says:
I definitely need to stop pantsing everything. It’s fun while I do it, but the first 3rd of the plot ends up this big, meandering thing with very little direction and not much impact on the ok middle 3rd and awesome final 3rd. It takes me a while to get comfortable in the characters and the voice and to find my bearings in the story overall.
So yeah, a big post about converting a panster into a plotter while keeping all the joys of pantsing would be great.
January 25, 2012 — 8:17 AM
Nicole Amsler says:
Revisions. I can write first drafts in a flash. I can straighten out the narrative and the plot holes in 2nd and 3rd drafts. Then I can start on the polishing of the drafts, intensifying language, improving POV, pulling out symbols and themes, etc. And I get stuck there forever.
The more I polish, the more I decide the whole book should be written from the cat’s point of view or the main characters should be husband and wife, instead of father and daughter, or whatever. I end up writing the same book from multiple viewpoints, conflicts and resolutions and then throwing in the towel.
January 25, 2012 — 8:22 AM
Niki says:
Plotting is fine, characters are ok, but my stories, especially my books seem to be missing something. I don’t know what that is. It’s that umph, that secret spice that certain books have that make you want to lock your dog and possibly your children into a kennel so that you can finish it. I think my stories are fine for the most part, but that’s just it. They are fine. Their good enough to make a passing grade, but they aren’t fantastic.
I’m also heavily into photography and I find this same problem with many of my photos. They are “fine”, technically sound and edited. But they don’t move me. They don’t move others. They don’t inspire an emotion.
And I think they should. I think my stories as well as photos should inspire emotion. Not necessarily deep down, soul stirring, gut emotion make you want to start a freaking revolution emotion, although that’d be nice. I’m talking about the kind of emotion that makes you go, damn, that was good story. I really enjoyed that and I felt something.
So that’s what I am struggling with. That secret ingredient that make a story raw, emotional.
And for the record, just in case you are wondering what I mean, here are some recent pop culture books that inspired that “thing I can’t seem to put into my writing” into me.
Hollowland by Amanda Hocking
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Double Dead by our host author Chuck
Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver
My Life as a White Trash Zombie by Diana Rowland
All of these books made me laugh, feel afraid, made me worry about the character or root for them to survive. They made me care. And none of them are necessarily marketed as deep, emotional stories.
So I guess by writing this that’s what I can’t seem to nail. Why should my audience care about my character and what the heck is going to happen?
January 25, 2012 — 8:44 AM
Steph says:
Plot for me, too, especially the middle part. Beginnings and ends are there. Betweeen, I wander.
January 25, 2012 — 8:53 AM
Barry Napier says:
I’ve been told that rely on “telling” more than “showing.” This is something I am currently trying to iron out in my current WIP with a plot that almost FORCES me to show first and THEN tell/explain.
January 25, 2012 — 9:16 AM
Rebecca says:
Interesting topic…. Emotional connection is my bugaboo. Ironic distance is fine and all, but it doesn’t grip, inspire, or move people.
January 25, 2012 — 9:19 AM
Android Astronomer says:
I have trouble elaborating.
January 25, 2012 — 9:20 AM
DeAnna says:
Recently I’ve been struggling to stay in the moment, to be actually *there* and seeing the story from the POV. I can tell when I’m not, later–lots of blah blah blah in places that only need a blah, lots of skipping interesting conflict, lite description, bland dialogue.
January 25, 2012 — 9:21 AM
Abhinav Jain says:
My big problem is the dialogue. Its not forceful enough, at least to me. A lot of my writing is fairly organic once I have a certain project outline done and in the bag, but the dialogue always throws me off. I’ll have a particular thing in my mind but the dialogue doesn’t match that and it all ends up being quite horrible.
January 25, 2012 — 9:27 AM
Thomas Pluck says:
Oh yeah, plot. I try to keep things simple and circular, but when I go novel length the tendrils of ideas go exploring and distracting me. I have to cut them with ruthless efficiency and then go bonsai wiring things back so the tree don’t fall over.
I got character down, and I know how they will react in a given situation… putting them in the right ones, DIRECTLY and without farting around, is the hard part.
January 25, 2012 — 9:28 AM
Darlene Underdahl says:
I’m distracted by the fun stuff on the internet (I have too many interests). However, I can concentrate very well when necessary.
And verb tenses; mine love to jump around.
January 25, 2012 — 9:28 AM
Nicole says:
I can think of two things off the top of my head that I need to improve:
1. Emotion. Or, rather, depth of emotion. I’m not an emoter in my real life. I’m more of a keep-it-all-bottled-inside kind of a girl (look for my first stress-related heart attack before I turn 45). So when I write, I think sometimes that comes through — I need to find a way to give my characters more emotional depth without a lot of inner monologue.
2. Description. I’m iffy on description. I struggle with dropping details about how things and people look without flat-out saying stuff like, “The couch was red and yellow with pink polka dots.” or “She had blonde hair and blue eyes.” I want to be more artful than that, and so I tend to err on the side of too little description.
I guess I should just be satisfied my plotting, pacing, and characterization are at least halfway decent.
January 25, 2012 — 9:32 AM
KD Sarge says:
Inherent laziness, I’m afraid. I’m learning to catch myself at it, but I still get notes from my editor to the effect of “you built up this great conflict, and then she just…forgets she’s mad at him?” or “Where is this happening?” because I didn’t set the scene. I’m fine at description–when I take the time to do it.
The novel I’m revising right now (and for seeing things as a whole, I cannot recommend Scrivener highly enough), I have a main character on the run with two supporting characters who are often at odds–but instead of building that and using it, I keep letting them make up for no other reason than that I wasn’t paying enough attention to what they SHOULD be doing.
Of course, it’s going to be so much more fun now. 😀
(Also, hi, Chuck! Been a while since I dropped by here, but I do keep up with the adventures of Bdub and the Mighty Beard on Twitter.)
January 25, 2012 — 9:34 AM
Abby says:
My issue is in composition, I guess. At least, I think that’s what you would call it. I can have a story (plot, characters, etc.) fully formed in my head, and when I start writing it down it sounds terrible. I’m a visual person, so I see the story like a movie, but translating that to words on a page that sound like they were written by an adult is where I struggle. I can write like this with ease, but when it comes to telling a story, I feel inadequate. Concluding a story in the right place is also a problem for me. I could tell a story until my characters are dead if you’d let me, but where’s the mystery in that?
January 25, 2012 — 9:38 AM
Alexa Muir says:
Reading the comments here is at once a huge reassurance and a monstrous sign of how much I have yet to learn. But I suppose that’s all part of the fun of a pen monkey.
The major problem I’ve recognised, in the year and four (ish) months since I started taking the writing seriously, is with description. I just don’t do it. I rattle along, with car chases, explosions, babies turning into leviathans, swallowing New York and all, but when I reach the end I suddenly realise at no time have I said what anyone or any place looks like… I’m improving but my descriptions are definitely better in draft 3 versions (as draft 2 tends to turn into a waffle-fest. Mmmm… waffles).
The other problem I’ve seen myself do is info-dumping via a character – one of the players in my pieces will suddenly, normally near the end of events, explain everything. And finally, I focus too much on what people’s eyes are doing. It’s all “she looked over the book, before turning her gaze to his mouth, swinging her eyes back to the book before he noticed.”
As with addiction, the first step to recovery is recognition of the problem. Nice post Chuck.
January 25, 2012 — 9:39 AM
Ilan Lerman says:
Revision. To put it simply. I love creating first drafts – there’s a thrill and a purity in that part of the process. But once it’s done, and I come back to it a couple of weeks later, I never know quite where to begin. Especially on longer pieces. Novella and novel length revision is like solving a Rubik’s cube for me. Or to use a different (more tortured) image, once I come to the revision, it’s only then I realise how vast and fragile a construction the draft is and it’s like I can’t see the whole thing at once, and bits of it are falling off and crumbling around me. Perhaps it’s planning that I need to work on, but I’d love to hear some discussion of working practices – different varieties of approach and so on.
I’ve found ways of working on every other aspect of the writing craft, with some success, but I’ve never solved the puzzle of revision.
January 25, 2012 — 9:39 AM
Hillary says:
Description and mood. I got so used to cutting superfluous words, I started hacking and slashing at things that actually enriched the scene. My gut instinct is still to keep things lean, but sometimes I’m doing it at the expense of “word porn.” (And really, life’s better with a l’il porn, amirite?) I’m trying to find the happy medium, but there’s a delicate balance between streamlined versus skeletal storytelling.
January 25, 2012 — 9:47 AM
Paige S. says:
Introducing my main character in 1st person. It feels awkward. “My name’s Jane an I’m 5’1″ with brown eyes and purple hair,” then continuing on to the story with whatever is going on. I manage it, but when I’m writing, it feels like I’m forcing it.
Also, people tend to read my characters as the opposite gender I cast them as. Not sure how I manage it, but it’s a significant portion of the time.
January 25, 2012 — 9:58 AM
Chris Meyer says:
Mine is description. I find I can write concise dialogue that describes the characters speaking without telling, and that moves the story along. It’s all the inbetween parts like describing a ship or place, or using good words to describbe action. I’m a heavy thesaurus user because those descriptor words just don’t come to mind very well. I believe it’s due to a deficiency in reading different genres. I’m a hard sci-fi guy.
January 25, 2012 — 10:04 AM
Lauren says:
Subplots/B-plots. I can pick ’em out in whatever I’m reading or watching, but I struggle with them when plotting out my own stuff.
January 25, 2012 — 10:17 AM
M. Dominic says:
I have one basic issue and one really awkward issue.
Easily, I wanna say plot as well. I don’t know what constitutes as a plot half the time. Can the characters just stand around and make kissy-faces at once another? I’d like that. It’s much easier. At least for me. I’m terrible with plot and I’ve been struggling to get it right. In fact, this time around, I got an entire outline finished! (Outlines are the brother of plot, right? Or the children? Or someone on the family tree – they’ve got to be related somehow, as they’re both incredibly difficult, sheesh).
Secondly, I have always tended to write smaller pieces. In fact, I come from a base background in poetry. I can manage to keep a good style in short bits – stuff that sounds like “me” but once it becomes a scene I lose it. It becomes really… bland. I realize I may just have to get through the scaffolding-type stuff and in editing put it all back in, but, but, but, it’s a problem that keeps me from wanting to work sometimes
(LIKE RIGHT NOW…)
occasionally, I have issues with POV. It seems so outside. I want to be more in the head of the character (while still being in 3rd person…), so, yeah. that’s a bonus gripe with composing literature in my gym shorts, do with that what you will!
January 25, 2012 — 10:29 AM
Mike Zimmerman says:
Act Two. The second act of any work is a bear. The formula is simple: Whatever problems your characters have, make ’em worse. But doing that in a way that is both logical yet surprising for myself or the reader is a bear. A farty bear. I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed any second act that I’ve ever written, and that’s a lot of damn second acts. Maybe that’s my way in next time: Make it fun to write, maybe it’ll take care of itself.
I also overwrite. I catch some of it in edit. But some I have to let go because the writing rule I try to follow most is “never write a sentence that has been written before.” I’m probably self-indulgent in that sense. Masturbation can be fun, but it fertilizes nothing.
Oh, and have any of you ever had this happen? I’m 200 pages into a novel as we speak and I’m mapping out the rest of act two (the fun act) and the big crescendo I have planned that will thrust everyone into the final act…I read a very similar thing in one of the biggest bestsellers out there right now. As in, if I do my book the way I had planned, it will look really stupid since EVERYONE has read this other book. Hey, I get that great minds think alike, and I came up with my idea a long time before I read this bestseller, but all I can do is sit here and go…Shit. I have to rethink the entire second half of the book.
Shit.
January 25, 2012 — 10:38 AM
Elizabeth Poole says:
I was just thinking about this the other day. Every few months I like to evaluate were I am at.
Plot is still the biggest bugbear, despite my efforts at getting better. I can come up with some awesome characters, and even some events for them to work through…but connecting those events in a coherent plot is tricksy. A oiled up ferret is a good metaphor. I know about inciting incidents, midpoints, and climaxes, and I try to plan for them.
But sometimes my brain just draws a blank when I try to figure out how the characters get from Point F to Point G. Waiting until I am actually at that part in the book to figure it out proves….disastrous.
Procrastination is the other big one. Most of it comes from psyching myself out. The book I am about to revise is going to need serious work. SERIOUS work, and it makes me feel scared and tired, like I can’t possibly make the book into what I see in my head and feel in my heart. Worrying about cart before the horse stuff also makes me nervous, like whether or not the book will actually sell, whether an agent will want it, and what people will think of the book, etc.
I KNOW I can’t worry about that stuff now, but getting my brain to comply isn’t always easy.
January 25, 2012 — 10:41 AM
Linds says:
I need to step up my game on descriptions while the dialogue happens. I keep mentioning them looking at each other–and there are only so many synonyms for ‘look’–so for now it stays as filler until I can come back in a later draft and make it seem less clunky and more natural.
@Elizabeth Poole, I feel you. I also let myself get too worried, about finding an agent, or the fear that my writing is alright, but won’t reach ‘great’, and that the story I see in my head isn’t translating. I’ve just started revisions of an earlier manuscript (again) because I realize it could still be better and it isn’t dead chum in the query waters yet. But going through it again, after so much time spent on it makes a part of me want to chuck it through the window. But I don’t, because I spent too much time on it, damn it. So back to revising.
January 25, 2012 — 11:01 AM
Sabrina Chase says:
For those of you with character “issues” (staying in POV, thinking their thoughts instead of yours) I recommend acting classes. Seriously. Acting forces you to think, emote, motivate as a completely different person. If you can’t afford classes, see if you can find some live-action roleplaying gamers. After a while thinking like another person entirely becomes a habit 😉 Added Bonus: public speaking becomes much easier when I assume my Fearless and Funny Writer persona over the quivering introvert who just wants to Go Home Stop LOOKING AT ME that I normally am.
Needs Work: I usually remember to describe characters when they are introduced but then I assume people remember them as well as I do 500 pages in. Small reminders of hair color, skin color, number of feet etc. still need to be done every so often. Also, my love scenes suck. Clearly more research is indicated…
January 25, 2012 — 11:33 AM
JannyB says:
I’m finishing chapter 8. Got good fight down, now I’m stuck in quietude. I know what needs to happen, I have a good outline. My problem seems to be the fight scene was cathartic for me emotionally. My characters are hurt, they lost/won some. I want to rest with them.
January 25, 2012 — 11:34 AM
Amy Severson says:
I agonize over each. and. every. word. I so wish I could just regurgitate the words all over the page and sift through the mess later, but I can’t. This makes writing an excruciatingly slow process for me. I am trying to break myself of it. Stop myself from pausing and thinking about picking the exact right verb or adjective. I am better than I used to be, but not by much. Drinking helps.
Of course, this would be all well and good if my first drafts were perfect pearls of publishable prose, but alas, they are not. Revising is always, always required. And while writing drunk can be fun, revising drunk is suicide.
(It took me nearly 20 minutes to draft this comment. Told you. I have a problem.)
January 25, 2012 — 11:45 AM
Rejean Giguere says:
I’m a plotter, I can’t sit down to write until I have the entire thing outlined within an inch of it’s life. My issues tend to be mechanical, keeping a lid on POV, overuse of certain phrases and sometimes abrupt unexplained appearances of new characters. Thankfully I have a full time, on staff copyeditor who works for pizza and cookies to take care of all the language, grammar, periods, dots and widgets.
January 25, 2012 — 11:53 AM