TLIF: But What Happens Next?

Totally unrelated, but something I'm absolutely infatuated with this morning:



The funny thing is, I loved Tom Hiddleston as Loki. I thought he made that role. And when I picture my Loki, they're not the same at all. They have similarities, but he's not the man I see in that role.

Which is so completely not my point. I have a confession to make. I'm a plotter. I've tried to deny this for a long time. I've insisted to myself that as long as I know the general idea of they story, or even better just have the characters in my head, I can write an entire novel.

This is not a true statement. I've only ever managed it once.

My plots are not sweeping epics in their own right. I don't know how anyone writes 20-40 page plots. That boggles my mind and impresses the hell out of me. I don't have that kind of attention span.

My plots are a series of bullet points. They say which characters are in a scene, what the main character's goal is, and what the important elements are to reveal in the scene. If I have more ideas around that particular scene, like setting or dialogue, those make it in too. But for the most part, they say things like:

Conner sees Ronnie and Kii show up at the bar, and he’s aggravated when Kii abandons his date, but sees an opportunity to find out without anyone looking over his shoulder what Ronnie is up to. He’s talking to her when Lexi shows up. He backs off and gets back to work, but something about Lexi is sticking in the back of his head.

That becomes an entire chapter. Side note: as I skimmed my outline I realized that Conner is aggravated in almost every single bullet point. Which makes me think "Apathy's Hero" is a bit of a misnomer and I should call the story "Aggravation's Champion" instead.

/tangent

So yeah...I'm done pretending. I can't just sit down and let my characters take me through a story. They have to have a direction before I start pushing toward my word count.

If you're not a plotter, how much do you know before you start the story? If you are a plotter, are you one of those big, sweeping outline people, or more of a generic timeline type person?

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The Writers' Envelope

AKA - why we have to stand out from the crowd.

My father-in-law has a theory he calls the 'envelope theory'. The basic premise is we all live in an enclosed space (like an envelope). When it comes to being social, we tend to interact with other people who live in the same envelope. An envelope is defined by a combination of things like religious and political beliefs, hobbies, habits, etc. Not all of those things have to be there, but the things that matter to you the most tend to be.

Because we surround ourselves with these people, sometimes we forget that the entire world isn't like that. Our world is, so it's easy to believe everything is.

For instance, as writers a lot of us spend our time in a writers' envelope. We hang out in the blogsphere together, we hang out on Twitter together, we hang out on Facebook together, I assume some of you even hang out with other writers in real life. I'm a social hermit and don't like people so I don't hang out with anyone in real life (a statement which is about to be negated by my story, but doesn't it sound all reclusive and stuff?).

Our writer friends probably aren't our only friends. For instance, I also frequent technical envelopes. In my technical envelope, everyone knows the difference between a hacker and a virus, and when I say "that's because you dropped the leading zeroes" it means something. This is where my two worlds don't blend well, because it appears as though a lot of creative people are not technical people...but that's not my point. Not completely.

I was talking to a friend yesterday. A technical friend, not a writer friend. I said "I'm writing a romance novel next." In my mind this means "I'm taking a break from fantasy, I'm diving into contemporary fiction, and all of the magic gets left behind while I let my characters scream at each other until they kiss."

Friend said something along the lines of "That's cool. Is it going to be more like a Harlequin novel..."

I cringed and shook my head

Friend continued "or like Twilight?"

I raised an eyebrow. Friend knows how I feel about Twilight, and with any luck that my opinion has nothing to do with sparkles. Friend said "Not that I'm comparing your work to..."

My brain was already whirring in the background, trying to dissect this question. To me the actual question gave me two options to pick from:

• Harlequin romance = category romance that comes in under 70k words, has a distinct hero and heroine who fall in love despite manufactured hardship and is formulaic and meant to be devoured in an afternoon and is the same plot over and over, just a different setting
• Twilight = paranormal romance for teenagers which features a weak female protagonist I want to punch in the hole in her chest to put her out of her misery so she stops relying on the opinions of (creepy-pedo stalker, or part-animal(bestiality anyone?)) men to make her a complete person.

All of this passed through my head in the matter of seconds it took Friend to ask their question. On top of that, I also started to consider how to compare my story to something more like a well-made chick flick, or contemporary romance like 'Making Waves'.

My brain is a busy place.

And then Friend said "You know, in terms of sex. R or PG-13?"

Oh.

And then my brain stopped trying so hard. It occurred to me at that point that this was a technical friend, who would happily to tell me that if I wanted to learn a new programming language, I needed to understand patterns. This was not a writer friend who could explain in three sentences or less why magical realism is different from contemporary fantasy, and who their favorite authors are in each. (though honestly, I've never had anyone do this, and I'd be fascinated to see someone with an answer).

The entire brief conversation was a flash of revelation in the midst of everything else we were talking about. In case anyone ever wonders what I'm thinking (yeah, I didn't think so), this was all running in the back of my head while we moved on to other topics, which yes, I heard completely.

I was reminded that most readers are not writers. Friend is a voracious reader. More so than me, definitely. And even knows other writers, but...doesn't hang with y'all the way I do. It reminded me that the average reader walks into a bookstore, looks at a cover and a blurb and decides based on that two second glance whether or not to buy. They might have a recommendation from a friend that sends them to the right section. Or they might have a favorite author and they're looking for more of their work. In the same section they bought the rest of said author's books.

They're not wandering through the entire book store (or, Loki forbid, all of Amazon or bn.com), and reading every blurb and scanning the first fifty pages of every book before they decide what to read. The (probably) haven't been reading the writer's blog through their entire publication journey (we're talking about the average reader here, not all readers). They don't care if 'it gets better in the middle', or if 'the blurb doesn't do the story justice' or 'if you just knew how unique it was you'd want to read the entire thing'.

If they don't know you personally, they don't worry about telling you the story just isn't that good. They don't care if you earn out on your advance. They're just looking for something to read that will help them escape for a few hours because sometimes life is brutal and books are a way to ignore that temporarily.

So...how are you going to get noticed outside your envelope?

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Novel Manuscript Formatting: Default Settings

As a beginning writer, it seems like the most difficult part of writing a novel is the writing. Once we get into the process we realize there's so much more to it than just getting words on paper. There are countless websites and blogs out there about the publishing process: how to query a literary agent, how to write a logline, how to polish your work, and on and on.

The one thing that's difficult to find is comprehensive information about how to use the technology that goes hand in hand with using a computer to write. This is a series of posts about how to coerce your word processor into making your novel presentable. If you have any requests you'd like to see covered, please let me know in the comments.

I'm working on a Windows system with newer software. If you're looking for older versions of Word, or for Mac instructions, let me know that as well and I'll get it posted.

Novel Manuscript Formatting: Microsoft Word 2007/2010

There are at least two different ways you can format your manuscript into a recognizable standard. One is before you start writing and one is after you finish. For those of you who start out in Scrivener and then move to Word once you've got a draft or two finished, I have tips for you too, but that's a different post.

Default Style
If you're starting from scratch, staring at that blank screen in Word that's so intimidating, this is a fantastic way to waste a few seconds. At least, the first time around.

• Open Microsoft Word (heh, I suppose that's a given), and go into a new document.


• There are a series of tabs across the top of the screen that say 'File', 'Home', 'Insert', etc. If you're not already on 'Home', click on it.


• Right click in the main document, and select 'Font' from the drop-down menu.


• Under 'Font', select either 'Times New Roman' or 'Courier New'. Either is a standard. Courier takes up more space on the page so if you want it to look like you'r novel is really long, Courier works better ^_~. To the right of that is font size. Select '12'.


• Click 'Set as Default'. A new prompt will come up and ask "Do you want to set the default font to (font name and size) for: This document only, or All documents pased ont eh Normal.dotm template". If you want these settings to apply every time you create a brand new word document (recommended), says "All documents..." and click 'OK'


• Right click on the blank page again. This time click on 'Paragraph' in the menu.


• Under the paragraph tab, go to the 'Indentation' section. In the 'Left' box, highlight whatever is in there and type .50. In the drop-down next to it that says 'Special', select 'First Line'. This will automatically indent every first line of a new paragraph without having to use tab.


• Under 'Spacing', set the 'After' to 10 pt. Uncheck box that says "Don't add space between paragraphs of the same style. In the drop-down for 'Line Spacing' set it to 'Single'.


• Click 'Set as Default'. A new prompt will come up and ask "Do you want to set the default aligment, indentation, and spacing of the paragraphs for: This document only, or All documents pased ont eh Normal.dotm template". If you want these settings to apply every time you create a brand new word document, says "All documents..." and click 'OK'

Tip: If you have an existing manuscript you'd like to do this with, before following the steps above, press 'Ctrl'+'A' on your keyboard. This will select all text in the document. Then follow the steps above to apply these formatting changes.

If you have any existing tabs at the beginning of paragraphs, you can clear them all out. Press 'Ctrl' + 'H' to open the Find/Replace menu. At the bottom left corner is a button that says 'More >>'. Click it. (If it says 'Less >>', don't click it, it's already open).

At the bottom of the 'More' menu, is a button that says 'Format'. Click that, and then select 'Tabs...'. A new window will open. Leave the 'Tab Stop Position' box blank. Make sure 'Left' is selected under 'Alignment'. Click 'Clear All'. Click 'OK'.

Coming in future installments:

• How to set up chapter headers so they auto-number/renumber as neccessary.
• Setting up headers/footers/page numbering/cover pages
• How to export from Scivener in a default format
• Whatever else there's a need for.

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The Story I Would <3 to Write

I have sooo many casts of characters in my head. They all live in different universes and have different stories, and for the most part two different genres. I have a slew of contemporary fantasy stories in my brain. I've got one about psychics I don't really bring up much. I have a couple of different cyber-punk casts. Even a high-fantasy-meets-steampunk group of characters. And the people who live in my Apathy's Hero universe.

But there's one cast of characters I fixate on even more than my angels, Greek heroes, and Norse gods. They were my first. The first characters I tried to write into a novel. The first novel I wrote. They've grown and evolved so much since then. That was high school (I almost did the math, it almost made me cry, so I'm not going to say how many years ago that was). I've matured, they've matured, they're adults now though they didn't grow up as fast as I did. Somehwere along the way they managed to find a way to stay 28 eternally. #jealous

Here's the thing, way back then I knew their story. It was gripping, and dramatic and it was a love story. That's all it was. Childhood friends realizing how much they love each other through the perils of life and general overall existence and cheating boyfriends.

Then I told someone my idea, and they said "And...?"

I said "And what?"

They said "It's just a love story? There's not a character arc, there's no other trauma the characters have to deal with?"

And I said "Of course there is. Her boyfriend cheated on her with her bestfriend who's pregnant now, and her childhood friend just confessed his love. That's traumatic."

They said "There's no drug addiction or screaming parents or suicidal depression or anything like that?"

That was the point where I abandoned the story. I mean, not completely. Not at first. I tried to give them all these deep-seated flaws. And I succeeded. One of them became an alcoholic because his father put too much pressure on him. One of them was sexually abused by an uncle who kept her family in the ranks of upper-middle class as a bribe. One of them had image issues and almost killed her self by mistake with diet and sleeping pills. One was a gay football player. And one actually did kill themself.

Yay! I had three dimensional characters and I could write these people I loved into such a tramatic story that everyone else would weep for them.

Ever try and fit that much trauma into one book, and focus on all of it?

But I've continued to try. Two years ago, for NaNo, I figured out how to make the story work. I'd grow the characters up, I'd put some of their flaws in the past where they belonged, and give them a very new drama to share. Hostile takeover sounds dramatic, right?

And I wrote it. And I struggled to eek out 50,000 words, and I managed. And Holy Wow. It was boring when I was done. I don't know how many of you are familiar with the way the computer and legal industry work, but it doesn't actually play out much like 'The Social Network'.

Which came out right after I finished my first draft. Right when I was deciding how to fix my story. I love that movie. Not that that's related. Not completely.

Late last week I sat down to try and fix this story. I already know that what I wrote two years ago is all backstory. It gets scrapped, more or less. But...I started outlining, and suddenly I knew how it all worked. I've never written an outline like this before. Every chapter had plot points, tension, character arc, all that good kind of stuff.

And when I got done outlining, I had to make a confession. And I think if I had been able to make this confession 10 years ago, this might have been easier, but where would the learning process be in that case? This isn't contemporary fiction with a deep-seated message about corporate culter and the strength of women. It's not literary and profound and stunning. It won't change the world. (At least, I assume as much).

It's a love story. A romance. A story of childhood friends realizing how much they love each other through the perils of life and general overall existence and well-intentioned but jealous best friends.

I've still got insider trading charges, a hostile takeover, and an intellectual property lawsuit. But since I don't write thrillers or crime dramas, those aren't my story. I'm finally okay with the idea that the relationship can be the primary plot and the rest is allowed to drive that. It won't kill me, and will probably actually make me happier, if I allow this to be a romance novel.

Now, in two weeks when I'm at 50k words and don't know how the last 1/4 of the book goes, I may not feel the same way. I may want to jab an ice pick in my skull and never write romance again. But...I would <3 to finally write this story, and give these characters the next step in life they deserve.

Does anyone else struggle for a solid story to place their beloved characters in?

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