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By Leslie, February 27, 2010 2:16 pm

Oh My God….I have truly died and gone to heaven.

Have you heard of the Veridian Digital Library? No? Well, then sit next to me, my pretty. Well I guess it actually is the California Digital Newspaper Collection powered by the Veridian Digital Library but really… who the hell cares?

They have  most of the  major newspapers in California going back and I mean waaaaaaay back.  I was able to download PDF files of the Alta California, one of the San Francisco papers, for all of 1850. Really. What amazing reading that is! Even if I were not writing a book I could totally lose myself in these papers.

The California Star and Ledger, the Placer Times check it out…..Really.

Too cool, much too cool.

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By Leslie, January 16, 2010 9:03 am

My friend Katie Ellyson saw my post about losing 45K in 3 days and wanted to know how.  She has a YA (Young Adult) WIP that has been in the refactoring stage for a couple of months now.  In fact that’s how I met her, I offered to beta read her WIP, did, and we’ve been chatting and emailing ever since.

So Katie, this is for you!

This is based on any code or idea re-factoring commonly done around complex projects or concepts that have, shall we say, gone awry?  There are a number of sites that help you lay out a structure for your novel from the get go.  Yes, it’s all simple then when it’s shiny and new ideas on crisp pieces of paper, or whatever.  But what happens when in the middle you look up from your amazing Next Great Novel and discover that it has taken a horrible turn for the weeds?

Stage 1: Panic

Sit down have a cup of some warm beverage or a martini, and repeat the following words.

I am a good writer and my work does not suck. Breathe.

Stage 2: Regroup

Now open a new file and read this post before you do anything else.  I like to use an outlining program because what we are going to create is an architecture and from a concept standpoint an outline works well, but you could do this in any text editor.  For San Francisco, my WIP, I use SuperNoteCard.

In my life as a program manager I’ve used actual pieces of REAL PAPER (index cards and stickies work well), Mind mapping programs such as MindManager or FreeMind. If you have a Mac, Omni Outliner is a good choice and imports well into Scrivener. The examples here are in SNC, printed and pasted to the walls of my dining room on very large Post-et notes.

The example on the right is one chapter with high-level actors and  plot arcs mapped and color coded, along with an overall chapter status.

1) With a clear mind read your work. You are reading to take notes kind of like a beta reader.

YOU ARE NOT EDITING.

STOP THAT, I MEAN IT.

2) For each chapter you need to note the following:

- Who are the KEY NAMED ACTORS and these can be people,  locations or key items (for example, that gun on  Chekhov’s mantle would be tracked) that are going to cause a turn in a plot or subplot.  Don’t worry about Jason, the Grocery Clerk with the cute butt unless he has an affair with Evelyn, your heroine. Think structure. You are looking people/places/things who create the bones of your story and cause the plot to turn.

-What are the PLOT/CHARACTER/WHATEVER ARCS - You will make a list and track this. These are the things, mostly about characters, but they can be other things that are changing over the course of the story and what make it fun to read. What am I saying, you know what a Plot Arc is.

- A BRIEF SUMMARY (no more than 1-2 lines. OK more if you have to, and do not fret over this, and bullet points are fine.) So you know what is going on, i.e. what the bones are. This is only for you.

I would not stress too much, or at all about how big or small to make the initial groupings (chapters vs. scenes). In fact I would stay with chapters for now.  If you try to go directly to scenes you will drown in detail and get discouraged.  Keep it high-level and simple.  There is benefit from going through this exercise in an iterative manner and the first run through should be at a high level, then you can drill down as needed. Lets face it, if your WIP is off the rails its likely not off the rails in the minutiae, right?

Remember, You are revealing the architecture that YOU HAVE ALREADY BUILT in your story; all we are doing is brushing away the bits of chaff that are obscuring the outline. To that point keep a note file about COOL IDEAS FOR THE REWRITE, because you will have them and if you don’t have a parking lot for them you’ll waste time. I keep a pile of post-ets in the dining room that are color coded and also have email notes to myself.

3) I keep two interconnected lists, and that is where the outlining software comes in handy. Waaaiiiittt….Two you say? yes, two. Not three. Why two? Because plot arcs and actors are really just aspects of the same thing that are mapped along a summary line.  OK, Leslie you are getting all softwarey-esoteric now. (I can hear John, my Architecture mentor laughing maniacally)

I’ve spent some time thinking about this. I am sure there are a  bunch of Literature Professors who will gnash their teeth and differ wildly with me. But From a simple informational level, this works and 2 are easier to track than 3.  If you treat plot arcs as actors in a scene or chapter an architecture emerges more easily.  In my WIP,  two major competing plot arcs are:

1) Connie needs to find a way home from 1850 to 1992

2) Connie is falling in love with man in 1850.

I treat these as actors in my architecture and when those elements ‘act’ in the scene/chapter I drop them in.

You can probably see where I am going with this.  At the end of the day, you will have  graphical structure for your work that identifies holes and rogue actors. But as usual, I am ahead of myself….

…the next step….3: Analysis without Paralysis.

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By Leslie, January 15, 2010 7:41 am

I’m a new writer. I have one shiny publication under my belt and I’m not really sure how that happened.  I think I share that confusion with many new writers.

Wow, that’s really good, I wrote that?

I think I have a grip on plot, voice, dialog and all that. But deep inside, I’m not really sure, and even deeper I know my grip is tenuous. I read blogs and books that promise to show me how; I take classes and go to workshops.

At the nut, all the experts say the same thing.

I know how and you don’t.

I write every day, but  some mornings I’m almost afraid to start typing.

OK, Pity party over…tap tap…tap. tap. tap…..

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By Leslie, January 12, 2010 8:55 am

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a story in the writing, must be in want of more words.”

And boy howdy did San Francisco suffer from that disease. Last week I began to pull back from the 2nm view of my story to at least a 3 foot view and then a 274 foot view and finally a 30,000 foot view.  I nearly jumped without a parachute. Where did my tidy story go? All those clever plot twists that tied together? Where did *THAT* character come from? Who wrote this crap?

Sigh.

I dusted off my original synopsis from last spring’s Liberty Hall MidSommer Madness, where this baby was conceived, and realized I’d tumbled into a well known software trap: Feature Creep.  I didn’t recognize it in its current form, missing the usual petulant engineers and product managers stomping tiny feet about favorite features.

No, this was just me, “Wow wouldn’t it be cool if….”. Yes, that is the exit sign to Chaostown on the Demonic possession expressway.

So Saturday morning, cup of coffee in hand and clad in fuzzy slippers, I deconstructed the story, re-architected the plot and carved away anything not necessary to the core theme  and motivations. I also wallpapered the dining room in very large Post-It Notes.

Sunday I moved cards around,  changing scenes, tightening, tweaking and killing off characters.  I think it looks festive.

By Monday morning things were looking good, so I collapsed the new structure back into my SuperNoteCard Deck and today I am writing the new synopsis.  I’ll use the note card structure in Scrivener to keep my story in sync with the SuperNoteCard Deck. I guess I could chuck SNC, but I  like the cross referencing feature;  it made this whole evisceration process go much smoother letting me find random extra characters and ideas and trace them though the ugly bloat that was my story. It’s worth the extra book keeping to mange the two card decks.

With the new synopsis written, I am grounded in the story and will start writing and rewriting.  I lost about 45,000 words in this process.  In fact, I am energized not bothered. The story is much stronger and tighter.  What I find more that a little interesting is how similar this process is to developing software.  I will be well served by applying the software tools and methodologies that I have learned over the years.

To Infinity and Beyond!

And my apologies to Jane Austen.

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By Leslie, January 9, 2010 11:50 am

A couple of years ago I read a blog post on LifeHacker about a motivational trick used by Jerry Seinfeld.  I’m not a Seinfeld fan, never watched the show but I’m not an idiot either. I recognize success.

According to Jerry, to become a better writer get a big calendar and a red marker. Each day you write mark a big red X.  The point of the game is to grow a long red chain of “X”’s. That’s it.

Ahhhhhh, that’s too simple. Well, OK. How are you doing? I need the external cattle prod.

So the folks over at the blog Persistance Unlimited created a widget that runs in your Google homepage and allows you in an electronic, 21st Century, plugged-into-the-overlord kind of way to do just that. It’s called Don’t Break the Chain and I am a major junkie. Thanks Guys!

So, here is my chain where each box represents writing 2000 words a day. I don’t limit myself to new fiction, they can be edited, blog, nonfiction, my resume, free-writing, long forum posts, whatever but it must be words in a file (gotta save those posts if they count) and they must add bits to a file. And yes, I have a spreadsheet.

A couple of those days were real squeakers where I free wrote right before bed to make my quota, but knowing that if I did not crank out those 2000 words, I could not tick that box was motivating for me.

Call me mickey and hand me a chunk of cheese.

The other colored boxes are for other parts of my life where I am, shall we say, striving to achieve a modicum of the success I have shown with my writing.

Ahem.

“nuff said.