Wednesday, November 19, 2014

And the Plot Ran Away with the Author.

I was going to try to come up with a parody of the nursery rhyme for this entry's title, but it seemed like a bit of a stretch, and I couldn't think of a truly suitable rhyme for "author".  Aside from "bother", I mean.  And I'll leave calling authors that for agents and publishers.

So!  With the last book done, I'm back in the plotting trenches, tugging scenes and ideas and characters and locations out of my head and doing my damnedest to form them into something resembling a coherent story.  I'm happy to report that it's going very well so far.

...yes, I'm writing this after today's plotting session, so as not to jinx myself.

I'm working on the plot for another Shiloh & Alexi novel, as I've talked about before.  It's a new tale*, which means some re-imagining of both the characters and the world. I've been writing these two for a very long time, and setting stories in the world of Abraxas since 2007, but I always do the same character work for them as I would for new people.  It's been interesting - developing new backstories for characters I've known for so long leads to discovering new aspects of their characters, and it's like meeting someone you haven't spoken to for several years and finding out that so much in their life has changed.

 Very tempted to go into detail, but considering how much has changed already, it really wouldn't serve much purpose.

The plot itself, though, has changed a great deal from how I first conceived it.  I'd originally thought of it as more of a continent-spanning adventure, something with a real Indiana Jones vibe, involving hunting down ancient artifacts.  But as I worked out the backstories for the cast, familiar faces and new people alike, I started to see where they would all be at the start of the story.  And that meant a very different kind of story.

There are times when I'm plotting when the tale itself seems less like something I'm making up and more like something that already exists, something I'm discovering along the way.  It seems less like the plot's not going where I want it to and more like my original ideas of it were mistakes, so now I'm seeing what's really supposed to be there.  I know how weird it sounds to have something I'm creating surprise me, because it's coming out of my head, isn't it?  But that's how it goes.

And this is right up there with "compatible parts and fluids" in terms of how difficult it is to explain to people who aren't writers.

I did explain some of this to a non-writer a while ago, about how it can be difficult to know what's supposed to happen in a story and yet not know how it's all supposed to fit together.  When the key elements include ancient artifacts, high society social events, dealings between merchant houses including both blackmail and an arranged marriage, and several different kinds of airship-based trouble, it gets difficult.  But seeing it all fit together, and figuring out how to make it work?  That's worth it all, every time.

The plot might be running away with me, but I'm not letting go of it until the story's told.

*For the curious, I did try to re-plot TAW with a better antagonist.  I really did.  But I realized that it wasn't what I wanted to do, right in the middle of a paragraph, and deleted those notes.  I hope to return to the book's concepts of the warlock and all that someday, but I've shelved that specific story.

12 comments:

  1. I am a real dot-to-dot plotter. I know the major events that have to happen, but not how to get from one to another in the first draft. That's what makes first drafts so hard for me! I really admire that you can keep your major characters and change the whole story. I may have mentioned an old manuscript that I've been revising since 2009. Sometimes I wonder if the problem is I've been keeping the same plot and tweaking it, when I should have thrown out the plot and started over ... Don't know if I can let go enough to do that!

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    1. Sometimes throwing out the entire plot is what the story needs. I've blogged before about how my second idea is usually the better one; sometimes it really helps to come at ideas from a different angle and see what looks different.

      And I have to know how all the major stuff goes in the story before I can start. I leave enough room to make changes and allow for surprises, but if I don't know how everyone gets from point A to B to C all the way to Z, I can't tell a story worth reading. >_<

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  2. Keep running with it! I want to know how it all fits as well.

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    1. Trust me, I'm going to. ^_^ It's still going well, just having trouble finding time to sit down and hash it all out.

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  3. My plots always come together in three separate steps. 1. Plotting: where I THINK I have a strong sense of how the story will work. 2. Reality: what actually appears on the page after tediously drafting. 3: The carefully remolded story: whether closer to the original outline or something in a different vein, this is typically where the story stays.

    I don't waste much time on plotting. =)

    Unleashing the Dreamworld

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    1. Heh! If it works for you, excellent. I've tried writing both without a plot ready and with only a minimal plot, and neither turned out anywhere near as good as what I wrote with a well-developed plot. But the more I hear and read about this, the more I see it's quite literally different for *everyone*.

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    2. Too true! I think there are three types really--the full panster, the half-panster/half-plotter, and the full-blooded plotter.

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    3. I think we'd need some heavy-duty graphing software to really nail down how different people work... and even that couldn't cover everyone. O_o

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  4. I experience surprise when I'm writing. All the time. And especially when I'm writing something funny. I laugh out loud a lot when I'm writing because the characters surprise me so much, and say things I wouldn't even dream of, so I totally get what you're saying. It's a great feeling when that happens. I also had to do a page one rewrite where I had to go back and re-imagine everything in the story, including the protagonist and antagonist. That was tough, but the story was so much better for it.

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    1. I know what you mean - for all that I plot, things never quite go how I expect them to when I'm actually writing. And I've done full rewrites as well; my third book was a complete re-imagining of my first, with the same themes and some of the same characters but a vastly changed world. It's all worth it in the end, to find the way the story's supposed to go.

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  5. Hmmmmm...

    Yes, I used an ellipses in a published setting.

    It's not that I'm skeptical, it's just that I think you should try another project. I know you want to make Shiloh and Alexi work. I get that, but at this point, you're running the same ground. You've invested so much in those two characters that you might be at that "too close" place (crap, ellipses and scare quotes--Is that the grammar police at my door?).

    What I mean to say is that you've invested a huge amount of time and effort into these two characters. I get that. But you know about that whole eggs and a basket saying? If you branch out to other stories, you can develop your skills differently. Yes you wrote a novel in october, but your head has been thinking the Alexi and Shiloh thoughts non-stop for way over two years. A one month break to type out a novel isn't enough. You need space (no, not like space opera space, but like relationship space).

    But that's just my opinion. I don't retread the same ground except in one case (already about ready to flush the effing MS). You have other stories, why not try telling one of those? You might find that you connect better with characters you never imagined (for example, I was pissed when Guardians of the Galaxy came out because a freaking raccoon got billing as a super hero before a decent female super hero; then I go to see the movie and my favorite character IS the raccoon).

    Try something else before you dive back into Alexi and Shiloh.

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    1. We've been telling each other for years to write what we want, and this is what I want to work on right now. Besides, when I have something in my head that needs to get out, I know that *not* working on it is a bad idea. I tucked all my notes for this story aside and didn't touch them for about two months while I plotted and wrote October's book, and now's the time to work on the S&A story.

      But, once I have this plot hashed out, I'll work on other stories. I came home from work yesterday with notes on three different plots; one of those was for a new version of something I started working on last year and set aside, another is for something that's continually eluding me and thus will probably be the subject of next week's blog entry. So I'm not diving back into S&A with the intent of that being my next novel.

      Granted, I have no idea what my next novel will be - as you know, I'm planning some significant life upheaval for next year, and I'd rather not be trying to write while I'm dealing with that. But when I'm settled again, I hope to have some plots ready for writing - two would be good, three would be awesome. Maybe one of those will be the S&A story, maybe it won't. It's all going to depend on how things go over the next few months.

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