Back To The Ole Drawing Board (umm… outline, rather…)

I've had to pause on writing The Super School Uniform. I haven't stopped for good, just put the actual writing on hold for a bit. The last few weeks I've been finding myself getting stumped on things in the story: motivations, set-ups, and the like. Then I came across this link shared by Jeffery Deaver. I realized that I didn't have enough things thought out well enough. I had purposely left my outline a little vague, thinking that I could fill in as I wrote. But, I found myself having to pause during my actual writing, sometimes for days, until I got a particular point figured out. It felt frustrating, because it felt like I was wasting time by not writing. So I have decided to pause on the actual writing, go back to my outline, and make it more detailed and have more points well thought out and such. It feels bad I'm not actually writing, but I think having a more detailed outline will help me in the long run.

Smashwords Forum and SmashReads

You've heard me mention Smashwords a few times on my blog. It is a free ebook distributor; they take your manuscript, convert it into an ebook along with an uploaded cover image, and distribute it to major ebook stores like iBookstore, Barnes and Noble, and others, as well as offering it on their own site in a variety of formats. Every author on the site is self-published and the variety of books offered is amazing.

There is a forum, while not officially associated with Smashwords (although I think it should be, and I hope it will be), that is a gathering of Smashwords authors and readers. A new section of the forum, SmashReads,has just opened up. In it, readers can share recommendations on authors and stories they have found on the Smashwords site. The sub-forum is split into sections based on length. I'm also partly biased on this section since they chose my selection for its name. :)

I'd highly recommend joining this forum if you're an author, reader, just thinking about getting something published, or looking for something new to read. Sign-up is free and there are many opportunities to interact with the authors and give feedback.

Here is the link: http://smashwords-forum.proboards.com/

As always, leave comments below, and thanks for reading.

No update in a while...

It's been a while but I'm still here. I've been plodding my way through The Super School Uniform. I'm currently thinking how to best stage my next action scene. This sequence is somewhat important because it will reveal what the aliens, the Noigel, look like without their protective suits, along with what kind of weapons they use. I'm going for a Predator/Jem'Hadar kind of thing without hopefully making the Noigel TOO similar to them. If anyone has any cool alien designs/inspirations they'd like to see, please tell me. I didn't think of the Noigel designs when I wrote the outline, I figured I would just make it up when I got to that point in the novel. Well, it's here now, and stumping me more than I thought it would. I guess I'll plan ahead better when I write my third book.

Anyway, I've also been reading. I'm trying to alternate my book this year; swapping between Stephen King, Jeffery Deaver, Star Trek, and something I normally wouldn't read. I'm currently reading The Bourne Identity. So far it has just been okay. Maybe knowing what he is, because I've seen the movies, is hindering my appreciation, but the book seems to be just a series of "follow the money and meet people who give you clues." The story heavily involves banks and money and people who work for people who work for a person who works for a person that wants Jason Bourne dead. I'm about halfway through and I hope I will finish it. I tried reading The Three Musketeers and The Time Traveller's Wife but didn't finish them. Maybe one day.

I joined the site Goodreads so I can get recommendations on books that I normally might not read. My reading selection is somewhat limited and I'm trying to expand that (hence The Bourne Identity and The Maltese Falcon). I also search out new authors on Smashwords. I'm hoping to come across some good stuff this year.

As always, leave your comments below and thanks for reading.

Writing To Music

I would think most writers would agree: noise helps you to write. In fact, I read an article that said that background noise, at around 70 decibels, helps. That is why writing at cafes is popular, tuning out the the low level noise forces you to concentrate harder on the the task at hand. Writing to music is the same, I think.

I listen to mostly three kinds of music: movie soundtracks, Meat Loaf, and Hello! Project (Morning Musume, Berryz Koubou, C-ute, and others). I also like country and a few other artists but I'll admit I'm out of touch with the American music scene. But like most artists, I listen to music when I write. Silence is too distracting.

I write mostly to movie soundtracks. I find if I write to music with words I began to think more about the song than the story on the screen in front of me. I'll start singing along to Meat Loaf and whatever few words I know to Morning Musume songs, thinking about their dance routine in their PVs. Music with words makes my mind wander.

Soundtracks help. With no words to distract me, I just pick an album I like and start it up. Once it's finished, I switch to another one. The music becomes the cafe background noise that I tune out to focus on my writing. Sure, when I pause in my writing, a particular tune may make me think about its scene in the movie but it is less distracting. Sometimes listening to an action piece while writing an action scene helps my writing.

Lately, the soundtrack to X-Men: First Class has been getting a lot of play time. I just really love it. With a lot of soundtracks in my iTunes library, some of course get played more than others.

Of course, I'd live to hear your thoughts. What do you listen to when you write? Any recommendations? Anything you'd suggest avoiding? Leave your comments.

As always, thanks for reading.

Reading: iDevice Vs. Physical

I'm currently reading Deception Point by Dan Brown on my iPad. The first time I ever read an ebook it was on my laptop. It was awkward and hot, even with a heat absorbing pad on my legs the MacBook's bottom got pretty warm. Turning pages by hitting an arrow key just felt strange, not to mention the weight resting on my legs. I liked a paperback better.

After I got an iPhone I began reading more ebooks. The screen size definitely took some getting use to. But after that adjustment period I began to see the appeal, especially since ebooks take up so little disk space. If the iPod was "a thousand songs in your pocket" (as the slogan went) then an iPhone or iPad is "tens of thousands of books in your pocket." Practically a library with you at all times. And it is for that very reason I read ebooks now and rarely buy physical books. With so many books to choose from and so many different ways to get them, I'm now reading books I probably wouldn't have if I had had to buy them in a bookstore. I simply put a big library on my iDevice and when I'm done with one book, I just scroll through the library and read something else that catches my eye.

The downside, for me at least, is that in exchange for having a massive library that I can get for free or very little money, not all ebooks are properly formatted. Formatting, for me, is important and poor formatting can take me out of a story quickly. If one of my ebooks is poorly formatted I will often look for another copy that's been done better. Thoughts that haven't been italicized, paragraph breaks in the middle of a sentence, spaces between letters in a word all throw me for a loop and make have to reread the sentence. The two worst offenders, in my opinion, is either paragraphs that have not been indented or just run on or that there are two lines of space between every paragraph. Those drive me nuts. While I do that type of formatting on my blog, it is because each new paragraph is a new topic or thought. It shouldn't be like that in a novel.

I'm curious about the current pricing court battles and how they will affect ebooks in the future. In my opinion, ebook prices at the major retailers are way too expensive. Sometimes an ebook costs more than its paperback counterpart. Why should that be so? I know digital publishing is a new frontier and the companies are trying to adjust to it, but it seems pretty easy to think that lower prices would attract more customers.

Back on the brighter side, I prefer ebook reading. I love the ability to take out a book, any time and any where, and read it. If I hate what I'm reading, I can switch to something else immediately and not have to wait to get back home or go to the nearest bookstore to get something else. Syncing across different devices is great too, sometimes reading on an iPhone is more appropriate than reading on an iPad, like at the doctor's office or bus stop.

That's it for this post. Thanks for reading.

Update

I've picked up on my writing some and I'm writing the scene that is my midpoint, with a total of around 55,000 words up to this point. If I can keep this pace up I'll break 100,000. Which would be really nice. I just preordered the Kindle editions of Bennett's Star Trek: Department of Temporal Investigations: Forgotten History and Jeffery Deaver's XO. Bennett's Only Superhuman comes out in October and they are taking preorders for the hardcover but not the Kindle edition yet. I prefer reading ebooks using Apple's iBook app but the iBookstore isn't available in Japan, so if I order an ebook on Amazon I have to use the Kindle app. That's it for this post.

Update

I'm sorry to say that my writing has slowed to a crawl these last few weeks. I was getting close to 1,000 words a day but I have fallen way behind on that. Writing 1,000 - 2,000 words a day is Stephen King's advice but I think I'll switch to writing for a minimum of one hour every day. If I can write more than that, great; but if not at least one hour. I had a rule of no writing on the weekends but I may have to amend that.

Links to Other Authors

In this post I've added links to the homepages of three of my favorite authors: Stephen King, Jeffery Deaver, and Christopher L. Bennett

Stephen King needs no introduction. He's the writer I admire most and the one I most closely try to emulate. I've never read a King story that I've disliked, although there are some I like more than others. I haven't read all his books but I'm trying.

Jeffery Deaver is a thriller/mystery writer most well-known for his Lincoln Rhyme series. My favorite book by him is The Cold Moon. Deaver is known for his plot twists and reversals. While I think he occasionally stretches them, his books are fast-paced and difficult to put down. His prose and style are very different from King but I highly recommend him.

Christopher L. Bennett is a sci-fi writer that has written mostly tie-in novels, the most being for Star Trek. He brings hard science to his stories, with lots of technical details but his books are epic in scope and his world-building skills are admirable. His first original novel, Only Superhuman, is coming out this year and I'm looking forward to it. I'd recommend Star Trek: Titan - Orion's Hounds and Star Trek: Department of Temporal Investigations - Watching the Clock.

I hope you'll check out these authors. Are there any you would recommend? If so, say it in the comments box.

Outlining

In an earlier post I touched on outlining and structure, and I'd like to talk more about them here. I'm not trying to give advice, especially being a novice writer. I'm just telling what I do. Most of what I learned about writing comes from Syd Field's book Screenplay and Stephen King's On Writing. I won't do a review of these books so just bear in mind that many of my habits came from these two works.

I start with an outline, a road map of my story. It isn't long, usually not more than four pages. I begin with a log line, a short descriptive overview of the story, the kind of thing you would find in TV Guide or such; usually only one or two sentences long. After that I figure out four things: opening, ending, Plot Point 1 and Plot Point 2 (PP1 and PP2, for short). These are the main parts of my story, the road signs that tell it what direction to take.

The opening and ending are fairly straightforward: what is the hero doing at the beginning of the story before they get into their situation; do they win in the end or lose? These are usually pretty easy to figure out.

PP1 and PP2 aren't quite so easy. In a two hour movie these usually happen about thirty minutes and ninety minutes, respectively, into the movie. These are the points where the hero (or heroes) have to make their decisions or something drastic happens to them at this point. Often in action movies PP1 is when the hero learns what the villain has done or trying to do and PP2 is when the hero is caught or when the villain has almost started his final plan. Once I figure out these two points, I have signs to direct my story towards. As I think and write my outline these may change over time but the function of them don't. They are there to anchor my story. In Adventure Hunters, the opening is the three adventurers in the ruin, the ending is telling their last story, PP1 is deciding to search for the Lambda Driver and PP2 is when the golems are activated.

After figuring out those four points, I write an outline, having split my story into three acts. Act 1 ends with PP1, Act 2 ends with PP2 and Act 3 ends when the story ends. I then write fourteen "scenes" for each act, rough outlines of all the major scenes in my story. These descriptions are brief and don't include every detail, they are just general outlines to give me a rough idea of what my story will be like. This is, without a doubt, the hardest part for me, especially Act 2. Syd Field calls writing the outline (or treatment) a "kick in the pants" exercise. Now I have to take my half-baked idea and turn it into a narrative.

I don't have every detail worked out, only the major parts. There are many things I'll leave blank and figure out as I am writing the story. Some take me by surprise. An example of this is in Adventure Hunters when the three heroes go to meet the gargoyles. My outline had it written as a very straightforward "gather their collective breath and get information" series of scenes. But as I was writing their journey through the forest I needed more tension. I needed a character to be scared of the gargoyles who lived in the forest. Neither Regina or Artorius fit the bill, it wasn't in their character. That left Lisa. So as I wrote the scenes, I made her first be angry and racist towards the gargoyles. But that didn't work, so I changed it into a fear bordering on a phobia. But why was she scared? I eventually wrote a scene explaining why, tying it in with a traumatic experience with her parents from her childhood. This was something I never planned on when I created Lisa and wasn't in my original outline, it grew as I was writing and was a pleasant surprise.

Syd Field says to write a four page outline, Stephen King makes it up as he goes along, and Jeffery Deaver writes 100-200 page outlines for his stories, knowing every twist and turn along the way. I'm aiming for somewhere in the middle. Without an outline I write about thirty pages and get lost and frustrated, I've done it before. But a 100 or 200 pages outline? I might as well just write the novel. Deaver is a thriller writer and a master of plot twists, he needs to know every twist and turn in advance to make sure everything fits together. There are merits to all three approaches, I think.

After I'm happy with my outline and hopefully find it without too many plot holes, I'll start writing. I refer to my outline and use it as a map but it isn't gospel, I'll change it if I think something else works better. Along with my outline I have a word count I try to shoot for. Again, this number isn't gospel or ironclad but if I get close to it I'm happy. I think it helps me out, knowing that I'm inching closer to a goal and giving me a feeling of accomplishment. However, I won't write just to fill up a word count, if my story ends and I have nothing else to say, it ends. I don't want to stuff it with useless filler.

So there you are, a glimpse into my writing process. Of course I'm new at this so I'm sure my habits will change the more I write. If any other readers out there would be willing to share their process I'd love to read them, just write in the comments box. As always, thanks for reading.

Books About Writing

I wasn't a literature or English major in college, I was a film major. I took Creative Writing as my minor. When I began writing screenplays and later short stories and novels, I sort of taught myself. There are hundreds of books on the market about writing and while I haven't read most of them, there are two that helped me that I'd like to point out: Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting by Syd Field and On Writing by Stephen King.

Screenplay taught me structure. From Aristotle's rules of beginning, middle, and end, most stories follow this format. Syd Field stresses this, along with the three-act structure in his book and it has been very valuable to me. According to Field, when you are planning and outlining your story there are four things you need to know at the onset: opening, ending, Plot Point 1 and Plot Point 2. I figure these things out first when I'm outlining. The opening and ending are pretty self-explanatory, but what about Plot Point 1 and Plot Point 2 (PP1 and PP2)? These are the major elements of the story that tie everything together and hook and spin the story into a different direction. Since most movies are around two hours and one page of a screenplay is about one minute of film, PP1 is about on page 30 and PP2 on page 90. Watch any good movie and you'll be able to figure out the plot points. There may be several PPs but there are are basically 2 that really move the story. An example of PPs can be found in Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope. PP1 is Luke finding his aunt and uncle dead and joining Obi-wan. PP2 is the alliance beginning their assault on the Death Star.
Learning these plot points has been invaluable to me. They are signposts to help guide your story. By figuring these out as I outline (which I'll blog about in another post), I'm kept on track and don't let my story wonder. Structure lets me build my story.

Stephen King is my favorite author and his memoir/craft book On Writing is short, informative, and fun. The first half of the book is a brief autobiography on how he became a writer; the second half is his take on the art and craft of writing. As King himself says, his book is not a manual. He doesn't show you how to write; he shows what he does and tells you if it works, try it. If it doesn't, try something else. His style is plain and conversational, sometimes funny. The backbone of his book is about having the right kind of tools to write with: a workspace, the proper grammar knowledge and mostly the desire to write. He describes writing as any other kind of job, like driving long-haul trucks or laying brick, and I agree with him. You have to be willing to commit to being a writer. Having a writing space in which you "write with the door closed" and taking time away from your work after your first draft are two of his tenets that I really believe in.
King calls stories fossils and that by writing you are slowly uncovering them and the form of the story/fossil is the form of your novel. He usually begins with a situation, puts characters into it, and writes how they get out of it. He is not a big fan of plotting and outlining, which is where I disagree with him, but only out of my own personal experience. I have tried writing stories without outlining, only to get 30 or 40 pages in and be lost, not knowing where I am going. To me outlining is important, especially if you are a crime/mystery writer. My other favorite author, Jeffery Deaver, writes 100-200 page outlines before writing his books. A far cry from Stephen King but both methods work for them.

So there you have it. There is a third book, highly recommended by Stephen King, called The Elements of Style by Strunk and White. A classic, it is a no-nonsense guide about grammar and style that I also highly recommend. These three book have helped shape how I write today.

Please leave comments. Have you read these books? What did you think of them? Have some books about writing you'd like to recommend? Let me know.