What's Your Favorite Part of the Writing Process?

• Do you like to start a new book?

The good things about starting a new book, is that you get to dream up some new characters, new setting, and new plot. The bad thing about starting a new book is that it's like wandering through a forest, you might have an idea where the road home is located, but you don't know how to get there. This is not my favorite part of the process.

• What about the middle of the book?

The good things about the middle of the book are that you have a much better idea of where you are going, have most of your characters in place, and maybe you know the ending. Sometimes I know the ending, sometimes I don't. Sometimes I think I know the ending, but it changes when I reach it. That's the great thing about writing, you get to make everything up. However, this is still not my favorite part of the process.

• The end of the first draft?

For me, the end of the first draft is when I have written the entire story into a set of spiral bound notebooks. Once complete, I probably have 80% of the story complete. I say 80% because inevitably I still add scenes, and delete scenes in the type and edit process. I feel a great sense of accomplishment when this is complete, but I know there is still a lot of work to do.

• First draft typed in?

This is a great feeling. I'm at this stage when all the text from the many notebooks I scribbled in, has finally made it to a Word file. It's at this point that I back it up to like twelve different places, you know, just in case. When I've reached this point, the book is 95% complete, and it feels like it's all downhill from there. Even though this is quite a thrill, it's still not my favorite part.

• Reading through first draft?

Ding, ding, ding, ding, we have a winner. I love reading through the entire draft once it has all been typed in. Along the way I have done major editing, and the book is actually in pretty good shape. I read through the book, make all kinds of notes on the pages, and keep track of which scenes need to be lengthened, shortened, tweaked, tension added, more explanation, etc. By this time, I have forgotten most of the beginning of the book, and reading through it is like visiting it for the first time.

• Revising the second draft?

This is probably my second favorite part. I usually wait a few weeks after the first draft was completed before I dive into this one.

• Revising the nth draft?

After the second draft, I'm usually done with the book, and may not want to see it for quite a while.

So what's your favorite part of the writing process?

Success

What is the most important factor in success?
Is it hard work?
Is it talent?
Is it dumb luck?

Oh, I know it's easy to say they're all important. But what have you seen, and what do you think, really?

Hack Writer Proofreading Tricks

When memorizing a piano piece, I learn the piece “backwards.” For example, on a twenty measure song, I will memorize measure 20, then measures 19 and 20, then measures 18, 19, and 20. By the time I reach measure 1, that song is seared into my poor brain.

Now, I’m not the world’s best proofreader of my own work. It is fair to say I sucked at it. Then, in a moment of clarity brought about by a particularly tasty tuna fish sammich and a crisp sauvignon blanc, I decided to proofread my novel going backwards, not page-by-page, but chapter-by-chapter.

I almost doubled my typo and grammatical boo-boo finding. It’s also a slower read. There is something about reading a disjoined novel this way that really brings out the focus on words and sentence structure, rather than falling back in love with my own writing. I already love my writing, Ms. Story, leave me be to fix the mistakes.

Scene Endings

With all this talk of prologues and epilogues I thought it would be interesting to take a look at ending a scene. The type of works that I write are thrillers. They are supposed to make you want to keep reading all night, instead of what you should be doing, which is sleeping. So what is it about writing scenes for this genre, that makes you want to keep going?

It's very cliche to think of ending every scene with a death defying cliffhanger, and I think your reader will catch on pretty quickly that's what you are doing. In fact trying to create your scenes so that you always end on some kind of do or die moment, will likely make the plot, and the book very predictable.

So how do you keep the reader going? How do you get them to want more?

There are probably lots of times when you do want to leave your protagonist hanging by his pinkie finger over a flaming pool of lava, but as I mentioned you can't do it at the end of every scene. What I do, is mix in questioning. It can be inner questioning or external questioning.

What I call inner questioning is when the character questions what they are doing. The following are simplified for ease of understanding. Your scenes will have extensive buildups.

"If I launch this virus, millions will be saved, but hundreds will also die. What should I do?"
OK, so that's a very dramatic one, but you need those.

"Why did I do that? What's going to happen to me now?"
No do or die, but depending on the consequences, it can be tense.

"Should I tell my friend that his wife is having an affair with a vampire?" (No, I don't write in that genre)

What I call external questioning is when one character waits for a response from another.

"Don't do it Max. They'll send us all to the slammer."

"Ellen, take those goggles off before you fry your brain."

"Hand me that wooden stake." (Sorry, I couldn't resist.)

Like everything else in story telling, once again it comes down to conflict. Leave the reader with a conflict, whether internal, external, or dramatic action, but mix it up, and keep them guessing. The more tension you leave them with, the more they will want to open up that next chapter.

Epilogues

A few weeks ago I posted a question about prologues, about whether or not they should be included as part of a book, and readers of this blog had a lot of different opinions! Well, I because I recently finished a book with a good epilogue, I'd like to know if people out there generally take a kinder attitude toward epilogues than they do toward prologues.

As a reader, when I come to really care about the characters and feel invested in their stories, I like to find out by way of an epilogue what happened to them after the close of the book. How about you? Are you an epilogue person?

When is enough enough?

You've got yourself a first draft! W00T!!

You revise until you're happy. Or sick of it.

You give it to your beta readers - 1, 3, 9, however many. Get their comments back, pass out. Work up a way to address those things you like/do not like. Alcohol is optional.

You give it to your agent. Who reads and thinks and ponders and thinks and gets you notes back. You work up a way to address those things. Give it back, rinse/repeat until they are happy.

You go out on sub. Finally! Getting yesses, getting hms, getting no ways, getting a peculiar thing called a "no contract-exclusive revision" request. (Which is happening more and more nowadays, I hear). You think and talk with your agent: is this it? Should we revise for this publisher? Your agent should know the places they are subbing to and be able to give you a good indication of whether you should. But normally, most writers are gonna revise. 'Cause it's a step closer, man!

You revise. Hoo-ah! But whoops, not all of it is straight. (I've read some stories on the internet of writers doing 4-5 passes on a MS BEFORE acquisitions lately. Um, yikes!) So you go back to the board with those things they want changed and you change them.

Beta. Agent. Rinse and repeat.

You give it to the pub. Now you've got a 50/50 chance. Do they take it? It could all very well have been in vain - remember, they've got no contract, you've got no yes, so it's all on their side. You've done everything you can possibly do for this book.

But was it enough? Is that enough for you?

Now I want to ask you something: where would you have stopped? Where are you stopped right now? Would you go this far? Would you continuously edit your beloved MS for agent after agent, or would you say "eh, let's try with the next MS" and go from there?

Because if I know one thing, the thing I know is the writer that is published is the writer that didn't give up.

And I'd love to know where you're at with your determination.

Chin up! And report!

Back to the Near-Future

One day I set out to write a science fiction book. I had several ideas running around in my head, and after a bit of chewing the fat and drinking the scotch, I settled on an idea for a near-future science fiction book. After a bit of brain molding, which, incidentally, consisted of more scotch, I set the novel only a few years away, with the possibility of a sequel stretching off into another decade.

The very first problem I ran into was world building. It is one thing to write come up with the strange and fantastic. It was quite different to write something close-to-home and familiar. It was both challenging and fun. And slow. Reeeeeaaaaaallllly slow.

Writing about the near-future required a lot of research. I used the interwebs. The library. I had to order my own books. My spreadsheet of writing expenses says I spent $253 in books for this project, half of that esoteric research material on Pacific Northwest Native Americans.

My research was not insular. I had to have my novel read by several experts. I needed someone to check my work on firearms. I had to have someone in law enforcement as a beta reader. I even had to seek out someone familiar with Washington State finances.

Once I was finished, I had a huge appreciation for writers placing their novels in a historical setting, those special authors who would spend days making sure they had a particular detail correct. I also had an appreciation for science fiction writers who can make a world come alive.

Mostly, however, I came to the conclusion that to write about the near future, you have to be crazy. If I would have known most of a month would go to researching the rich history of totem poles, and then hypothesize how their use could morph in the future due to cultural shifts, I might have said “pass.”

It’s an interesting sub-genre, I don’t know if it is for me or not. Anyone else here in Adventures in Writing land tackle the near future?