I Haven't Written a Sonnet since College.

Today's entry comes from the "Be Careful What You Wish For" department.  :P

In last week's entry, I started off lamenting that I'm not a songwriter, since I tried to do the entry in blues verse and it... didn't go well.  >_<  But some of the commenters (you know who you are) said that they did want to see an entry in verse.

Funny, I never would have thought I did requests.

I learned how to write a sonnet back in college, first in a writing class that covered a bunch of different kinds of writing; fortunately I never had to combine them and write a scientific paper in iambic pentameter.  I also took a Shakespeare class.  If you ever have the chance to learn Shakespeare from a professor who enjoys it so much that he'll play multiple parts at once from behind the lectern, I strongly recommend it.  But that class, of course, covered sonnets as well.

Without giving too much away, this poem covers the basic story of the book I finished this past Friday.  I'm pleased to say that I don't hate the book, as happens too often when I finish something.  I'm actually looking forward to going back and editing it.  That will likely not happen until July; I have June reserved for writing my next book, which is completely unlike the one I just wrote and might be unlike anything I've ever written.  I'll need beta readers for the new book eventually - I already have one volunteer, which fills me with glee, as she's never read anything I've written before so huzzah for fresh eyes - but I'm not asking until the thing's ready for people to see it.  And that could take a while.

So, without further ado, a poem of the book's tale:

I never thought I'd see your face again.
I thought I'd live my life without your touch.
You found me when the night was young, and then
We learned that ten years needn't matter much.

They call revenge a dish that's best served cold,
And you and I will make a wicked chance.
We'll find the things that others seek to hold;
With cunning words, we'll make their secrets dance.

But there is trouble hidden in the runes,
And those who seek to strike at both our homes.
An enemy has found beneath the dunes
The ancient spells in long-forgotten tomes.

There's danger to our homes we can't abide.
But we'll face it, forever side by side.

The new book is titled The Book of Lost Runes.

Next week, IWSG, wherein I say horrible things about comfort zones.

Word Count Blues.

I was going to do this entire entry in blues verse.  I got two verses in before realizing I'm not actually a songwriter.

As of this posting, the book I've been working on for three and a half weeks is up to a little over 70,000 words.  I'm not bragging, I swear - I know I write quickly, and oftentimes that bothers me, because when I try to write fast, I write crap.  I know I've talked about this before; I think I've done entire blog entries on this.

What's bugging me is that I'm nearly done with the first draft, almost to the end, and the book just doesn't feel long enough.  Yes, I know, that's kind of ridiculous.  I know that a book should be as long as the story takes to tell, no more and no less.  And I know a lot of books aren't even that long, depending on the genre and the target audience and dozens of other factors.

But dammit, I have a ton of books on my bookshelves that are these GIANT TOMES OF AWESOME STORY and I'd really like my books to be like that.  >_<

Yes, I'm aware of how ridiculous this is.  I know all fantasy stories don't have to be massive epics that could serve double duty as doorstops.  And I know that being able to tell a story without wasting a lot of words along the way is a sign of a skilled writer.  There's something to be said for an economy of words, for being able to communicate something with a sentence that once required an entire paragraph.  I've done a lot of condensing while editing previous works, and I know the story came out stronger for it.

But at the same time, having such a low word count when the story's nearly done makes me wonder if it's going too fast.  The first page of my plot document is, largely, the first chapter of the story.  Later on, a paragraph or two of the same document forms a chapter.  I know that's not a comparison I need to make, because first chapters are not supposed to be the same thing as fourth or ninth or seventeenth chapters, but still, something about this just doesn't feel right.

And my plot is fifteen pages!  I've written books well over a hundred thousand words with much shorter plots than this.  I don't get it.  I really don't.

I know I'll be able to add what I need to once I'm editing.  (I say that assuming I'll be editing this; I don't think I'll hate this one when I'm done but I can't make any guarantees either.)  I even know some of what I'll need to add.  The city that much of the story takes place in needs more description to really get across what it's supposed to look like, being attached to a university of magical teaching.  The wasteland where the rest of the story takes place also needs more description, as it's supposed to be this wrecked and glowing surreal landscape and I don't think I've quite nailed that yet.

There's emotional content to add as well.  As I've said before, I don't always write character emotions into my plot, as I figure those will show themselves in the story itself.  And when I'm just trying to get the story out, I know how the characters feel, but I don't always show it well enough.  So there are scenes that I'll definitely need to go through and make sure I get all the characters' feelings across.  I'm thankful to beta readers on previous books who helped me realize I don't always delve into this as much as I need to.

Yet, even after all this, I still feel like a fantasy story should be a good long tale.  I still feel like what I've done so far just isn't enough, but I know I'm not going to drag out the third act to artificially pad the word count.  So here I am, knowing that what's bothering me is foolish, and yet unable to shake the feeling that I'm doing something wrong.

I'll end this with my usual request for advice.  Advice in the form of pointing out that I'm being a doofus is perfectly acceptable.

My Characters are Smarter than Me.

On Saturday, April 25th, I started writing a book.  It's going well, almost frighteningly so.  There's a small voice in the back of my head that says writing shouldn't be this easy - that if the past is any indication, because the book is going so well now, I'll hate it when it's done.

Fortunately, there's a louder voice in my head that knows the past doesn't guarantee the future and can make the other voice shut up.

I do realize that by talking about this book now, I'm going against what I said last year about keeping a book secret while I'm working on it.  But I figure that as long as I don't talk about the actual plot, I won't run into the issues detailed in that blog entry.  For now, all I'll say about the plot is that it involves airships and blackmail.  ^_^  And either way, it's not the plot that has me scratching my head these days.

My friend Rena has a saying: "Foreshadowing: look for it in quality literature."  Part of why I plot (aside from the fact that I write absolute crap stories when I don't) is to know what happens so I can foreshadow what's to come.  What's been weird about this book is that the characters are foreshadowing things long before I planned for them to do so.

I've had beta readers point out that I needed to bring up a plot point or suggest a plot twist long before I actually did.  That's nothing new.  What's new is when one of the main characters feels the desire to mention something that's a crucial part of the second-to-third-act transition in the book's second chapter, all so that plot point has time to develop in the background and doesn't seem like it came out of nowhere.

If anyone later asks, yes, I will say I meant to do that.

I've seen other writers talk about how they know they're doing it right when the characters take on a life of their own, and seem to write their own dialogue and determine their own actions independent of what the author originally planned.  That's happened to me more than once.  I'm used to it - hell, I plan for it.  I leave enough breathing room in my plots for things to change without breaking the story.  But it's quite strange to feel like my characters are telling me that they know how the story should go better than I do.

Then again, they're probably right.  And now that I think on it, since I do my best not to think too much when I'm writing and just write, this is happening in more ways than just foreshadowing.

There are a lot of things happening in this book that I didn't plan for.  Most of them are in character reactions as events transpire; I don't always write reactions into my plots, as I figure that's something that will come up in the actual writing.  And that's happening a ton in this book.  It's been interesting to discover new aspects of characters I've had in my head since 2002, and at the same time, I feel like I'm just watching things transpire and scrambling to write them down quickly enough.  It feels like the sort of thing every writer might hope for, but it's very weird to have it actually happen.

I have only vague plans for what will happen after this book, but some of the things that have come up feel like they're hinting at that - foreshadowing for things I don't even know yet.  But I'm trusting my characters, as they seem to know better than me.

Next week: Word Count Blues.

As a side note, I want to thank everyone for the amazing comments on last week's entry.  ^_^  I was a little nervous about that one, as it seemed a bit melodramatic and too much like my typical "you can do it" IWSG content, but I'm glad y'all liked it so much.  Thank you.

IWSG: Drowning in a Metaphor

There are times, when the work begins, when you're standing on the shore of an idea, fascinated by the glitter on the water.  And so you wade in.

The first few steps are sometimes the easiest, sometimes the hardest.  But once you've taken the first step, once you've got those early few words down, the next will follow, and the next, and the next, and you've finished the first chapter and you're up to your ankles in the story, and there's a way to the far shore, you know it.  And you know in your heart you'll make it there.

Sometimes there's a slope down into the tale, sometimes the ground drops out from under you.  Either way suddenly you're up past your knees, and you feel the current as the tale takes hold of you.  You could fight, you know that.  But the tale has a will and life of its own, a story that's set on telling itself even as you know it's yours.

And so you keep telling it, because you've come this far already, and it would be a shame to turn back when you've hardly started.

You press on, as the tale tugs at your feet, as the story winds its way through paths you chose and places you never thought to go.  It's getting deeper now, and you're up to your waist in the story, watching the people you've created struggle and dance and play their parts through the world in your head, the world that's no longer only in your head.  Their struggle is yours as well, whether you know it or not, whether you want to acknowledge it or not, because they came from you.

It's easy to lose track, the deeper you go.  The story leads you on, but it's a greater journey than you ever intended, and there are times when you feel like you're losing your way.  When you're up to your chest, arms high over your head to stay upright, doubts swirl around you and try their damnedest to pull you under.  Every one of the characters you thought you knew is in trouble, some of them the cause of that trouble, and that first idea that seemed so clear is lost in the depths and winding itself around your legs, a weight dragging you down.

It would be easy to stop.  To let yourself float away.  Why fight for the shore, when there's current enough to sweep you downriver, to let you close your eyes and drift, so that when you awaken you're back where you began, and that promising shore on the other side, you can't even see it anymore.  Like it was never there.

But that's not you.

So you'll dive in, plunge into the deepest part of your work, because no matter how much the characters fight it or what you find as you go, this story is yours, and you will make it work.  You'll get yourself tangled in the knot of the final act, thrashing through your own tale, because even if you've drowned yourself in your own metaphor you will see this through to the end.  One way or another, you'll find the strength, the breath, the will to see your work finished.

And in the end, you'll make it out.  Soaked and struggling, fighting for every last word with the ending clenched between your teeth, you'll pull yourself onto the distant shore.  And you'll know that what you've done is something nobody else could do.  Your story, your words, your way of seeing the world that's never quite the same as anyone else's, you've pulled it out of yourself and given it life.

It's not perfect.  But it's a part of you now, whole with its beginning, middle, and end, more than just the ideas you saw glimmering on the surface what seems like so long ago.  And you'll look back at how far you've come, and know that it was all worth it.

A Trip Through the Idea File.

"Who'd follow us to a grave-robbing?"

That's the first line in my file of story ideas.  It's for a short story I came up with over a decade ago, about a human thief and a minotaur monk-type who are out robbing graves in search of something.  I no longer remember what they're looking for, which is why I wrote it down.  But every time I open that file, I see that line, first thing.

I'd like to think it represents something significant and spend the rest of this blog entry developing that metaphor, but really, it just reminds me that I'm not much good at short stories.  :P

It's weird to look through the idea file, though.  There's all kinds of stuff in there that I've forgotten about, things I started on in one form or another that crashed and burned, notes on what's basically the same plotline and setting done three or four different ways, so on and so forth.  There might actually be notes for the one story I wrote that got published; I'm not sure because I haven't dug through that section of the file for years.

I don't know if everyone has a file like this, but I think everyone should.  There's a ton of weirdness and "What the hell does that even mean?" in here, but it's interesting to read through and see all the things I've forgotten, things I've remembered, things I'm still trying to find a way to make work.

For example, not long after I learned about New Adult, I plotted out a college-age story involving fae.  This is one of the more involved ideas, as my notes stretch for nearly two pages.  It deals with a guy who doesn't believe his new-age hippie-ish mom when she tells him not to take off the crystal she's made him wear since he was a little kid, and finds that there's an old family bond with the fae that comes into play when he takes the crystal off and the fae can find him.  The whole thing ends with an epic human-vs.-fae rap battle, which I swear makes perfect sense with the rest of the plot.

It's also only the second plot I've written with sex as a plot device, so there's that.

That's not the only college-age story in my file either.  College was easily the best years of my life so far (screw you, high school), so I like writing stuff set in that era and area.  I've had a lot of trouble getting any of those stories to work, so maybe you really can't go back.  Someday, I tell myself.

Looking through my notes also shows some themes I seem to be stuck on.  Lots of stuff about people usurping their gods or gods otherwise dying.  Lots of stuff about people gaining extraordinary powers.  And at least one would-be plot that combines the two.  Not sure where the ending-gods stuff comes from, but the gaining-powers thing I'm pretty sure comes from being exposed to the X-Men right as I became a teenager when that idea would most appeal to me.

It's sometimes depressing to look through the file, though, because it's full of things I haven't done.  I try to counter that by thinking it's only things I haven't done yet, though I'd have to live to be three hundred or so to get all these stories written.  But I think I've blogged before about how some of my best ideas come from putting two unrelated story ideas together.  And that's what this file is best for.

It would be pretty redundant to say "I'm working on something new" in this blog.  I mean, I'm a plotter.  I'm always working on something new, trying to find ways to make a story out of disparate ideas and settings and random facets of character.  And this is why I keep everything, why I write everything down.

Because sometimes, I glance through the idea file and find something I'd forgotten, or something I'd abandoned long ago.  And sometimes, I get that flash of inspiration, of connection, and that's the beginning of something awesome.  Or at least something I hope will be awesome, if I can figure out how to make it work.

Does anyone else have a file like this?  Long text document, massive stack of note cards, notebook filled with enough scribbles to make it look like a madperson's diary?  You don't have to share what's in it, but I'd like to know if I'm not the only one.  ^_^

Next week: IWSG.  What will it cover?  IDEK.

Let's Talk about Death.

No, not real death, don't panic.  :P  Real death is worthy of far more thought, discussion, and introspection than I can cover in a blog entry.  All I'll say about it is I hope that when my time comes, I get to choose who escorts me to whatever happens after this life, and if that's the case, I'm taking that trip with Death as created by Neil Gaiman.

Anyway.

Today, I'd like to talk about character death.  I've recently been traumatized by a work of fiction, so this seemed like a good time.

I've seen a lot of people talk about fiction wherein it's made very clear that anyone can die.  "Game of Thrones" and the book series it's based on are famous for this; it's the only series I know of where saying that a character lives is just as much of a spoiler as saying that they die.  Once, I saw someone genuinely upset that a character they didn't like was still alive at the end of the third book.

There's something to be said for this kind of storytelling.  I do like the idea that there's no such thing as a "main character halo" - there's nothing that ensures someone will survive the story just because they're playing a lead part.  It keeps the reader/viewer on their toes and keeps them from making assumptions about how things are going to turn out.

However, after thinking on it for a while, I don't know if that's the best way to orchestrate character death.

I think death works best in a story when it comes as a surprise, not an inevitability.  I mean, we know death's inevitable, whether we want to think of it or not.  So we know that all characters are going to die eventually, though we might not see it within the course of the story.  If we like the story, we want to see these people live.

No, not all of them; I know I've enjoyed watching a despised character get their final reward.  There's no schadenfreude quite like laughing at the moment when they realize their end has come.

But when I look back on all the fictional deaths I've read and seen, it's always the ones I didn't see coming that hit me harder.  The ones where yes, I've seen people die in the story, but I never expected it would happen to the main characters.  The ones where I had to stop and reread a paragraph or rewatch a scene to make sure I saw what I think I just saw.  The ones where the "main character halo" is fully intact right up until it shatters.

And this effect is at its best, or perhaps its worst, when it happens far enough into a series that I thought everyone was going to reach the end alive.

This, I believe, is the best way to handle character death.  Give the character time in the spotlight.  Let them change and learn and grow.  Hurt them, traumatize them, but see to it that they endure.  Do all you can to make it seem like they're going to have a "happily ever after", or at least a "made it through alive".

Then pull the rug out from under your reader in the worst way possible with that character's untimely and unpredictable end.

And then, cake.

Plot Black Hole

File this one under #WriterProblems, because damn if I can think of anyone else who'd have this issue.

In keeping with what usually happens when I plot, with my second idea being the better one, I've been working on plot changes for the new Shiloh & Alexi story this past week.  This started when I sat down to review the plot, in hopes of getting started on writing it soon, and realized that it had a slow, weak beginning.

I swear, going over my own notes is like deliberately looking for trouble sometimes.  But at least it leads to stuff that's worth reading, as opposed to what happens when I try to write a book without notes.  Anyway.

I've put the story through some significant changes already.  Nothing quite like changing the main location from a magic-heavy college town to a merchants' city on the edge of an over-enchanted desert wasteland to shake up just about everything.  The beginning is considerably stronger, and has the main characters sneaking around and getting into trouble before the end of the first chapter, which is a great improvement.  The antagonists' roles are largely unchanged, because I thought I could still make all their plots work in the new setting.

I don't have a suitable video for this, but please imagine a minutes-long clip collection of your favorite TV and/or movie characters saying "Wrong!" over and over and over again.

Much of the plot revolves around the antagonists engineering a shady deal involving ancient artifacts, and our heroes' attempts to both keep the artifacts safe and get revenge on the merchant house that screwed over both their families a decade ago.  But changing the setting to a less urban area got me thinking: what's there to stop the antagonists from simply doing their deals out somewhere in the middle of the wasteland, where there's no one to witness them and no one to interfere?  (Aside from some kind of magic-warped creature, maybe, but these people can handle that.)

I'd like to think I've gotten better at finding my own plot holes, and I'm quite glad that I found this one before I started writing the book.  It's far better to find these things after writing forty-something pages in a plot document than after writing forty-thousand-something words in a novel.  (Did that once.  It sucked.)  But it's not a huge deal to find a plot hole that requires some plot spackle in the form of a little bit of background story or a loophole in how things work.

As opposed to a plot hole so big it sucks the entire story into it, never to be seen again.

And so, I need to figure this out.  I've already gone through the entire plot to make all the alterations for the new setting, and now I'm wondering just how much more I'm going to have to do to make this all work.  I've already come up with quite a few ridiculous hoops for the characters to jump through to justify some of the shady dealings, and I'm starting to think the book needs more than a setting change.  The fact that I can use the phrase "quite a few ridiculous hoops" to describe my own plot is probably a sign that I need to do some serious reworking.

So: anyone else ever been through this?  I don't doubt we've all edited our own stuff and found issues that had us making forehead-shaped dents in our desks.  How did you get through it?  How much did you have to change?  And most importantly, did it work?