Thank you, Carol

i just received and responded to an email from a life-long friend. She is a writer,  and someone I can really talk to.  Without her, I never would have finished my first novel, The Marathon Watch, and I acknowledged her  contribution in the front the novel.

I mention this because she asked how my new novel is coming, and her question sent me to a wonderfully quite and reflective place. I know her, and I didn't think she was asking a simple question. I had to really think about this.

To explain how i was doing on my novel, I had to really understand my writing-creating process. This has puzzled me for some time since when I wrote Marathon Watch the process was chaotic and unfocused up to a point. Once I reached a magic point of inflection, everything became clear and writing the rest of the novel became easy.  This process appears to be repeating itself with my new novel. So, I asked myself, "What's going on; what are you doing?"

I'd like to share my answers with you.

James Scott Bell divides writers into outliners, and pants-ters. Outliners do just that, they outline their story in detail, then write from the outline.  Pants-ters just sit down and write from the seat of their pants.  I think i may be a third type of writer, a miner.

When i write I am looking for some universal truth that we can take away from the story as a lesson on life.  For me finding that universal truth is hard, very hard, but once I find it, it provides the structure, focus and necessary conflict in the novel.  After that, everything else is simply craft.

So how do I write.  I can't outline no matter how hard a try, and I can't just sit down and wing it. I start with a story idea (plot) and come up with several scenes that would fit within that plot and start writing.  After some undefined amount of time, the characters and events start to take shape. I call that my mountain of junk, because it is; most of it will have to be thrown away. That's when I start digging through my mountain in search of gems of universal truth amongst the junk.

I take those gems, and work with them and create a pile of tailings.  Ultimately, from those tailings the gem I am looking for will emerge. Once I have it, I can build a novel around it.

 I think that is what I have been going through so far. There has been so much confusion, delusion and frustration up to this point. Now there is nothing but clarity and focus. I pray that I will not regress and go back to repeat the process again; I don't feel that is likely to happen.

Switching the subject, one of my obstacles has been the main character of the book. His name is O'Toole. He also played a substantial role in Marathon Watch and has been universally loved by all my reviewers. He is a wonderful character, fully formed and otherwise perfect for his literary function.  He was also my favorite character (I wonder if there is a link there) because he is a delightfully noble, crusty, dogged, and irascible old sea captain.  My new novel occurs thirty years earlier when this character was a young naive, and immature man with a list of flaws too long to recount.  By the end of the book, he will emerge as a young version of the character in Marathon Watch.  I so loved the character in Marathon Watch, I couldn't let him go, and turn him into a flawed young man. 

As I built my mountain of junk, I found ways to give him noble flaws correctable only through noble action and transformation.  That is another gem I found in my mountain, and I am now at peace with him, flaws and all.

As I have progressed, the working title for my novel has changed.  The first title was "O'Toole," which is character centric.  That got changed early on to "The Cipher," which is plot centric. My new working title is "Burden of Command," which is theme centric.  Interesting.

Seems I am starting to ramble. I apologize, and hope I did not bore you, or turn you away with my philosophical wanderings.  Thank you for joining me in my wonderfully quite and reflective place.

Thank you, Carol.

Ring the bell for James Scott Bell; he rocks.

James Scott Bell is my hero.

He has several books on writing novels, and I have digested two of them. His insights are tremendous. I was struggling with the arc of my story and had lost track of the theme and objective. I followed his advice--it was hard work--but it paid off. I am back on track and getting really excited about my next novel.

I let my wife, Marsha, read almost everything I write and she agrees with me 100% that my output since my last post has been more dramatic, focused, and a whole lot better. Coming from her (she reads five to six books a week, and is a professional nit-picker--SHE DRIVES ME NUTS!--) that is saying  something. (That was three parentheticals in a row. Sorry!)

I think sometimes we don't get as much from a book as we might because the author's brain and the reader's brain are wired differently. I think with what I have read of Bell's work, our minds work the same. Everything just clicked. 

So where am I?  I lost track but I think I have wrote or fixed about 15,000 words since my last post. Over half of that was new material, and oh yes, I had to cut some out but I don't count what goes on the cutting room floor. I always save my scraps just in case I need them later. Of course, I never have, but it makes the process less tramatic.

So what's next?  That's the bummer. Here I am on a roll, fully engrossed in my characters and story development, and I've got to put down my quill for the next month. Seems I have clients that need tending, and I am starting an intense one-month consulting engagement with one of them starting Monday. I literally want to cry. It took so much effort to get into the zone. Now I have to bail.

Life isn't fair. If you don't believe me, ask my protagonist.

See you soon.

Left turn, Ralf

Okay, things were going so good, it had to be too good to be true. But more on that later.

I owe Jeanne an ginormous thank you for recommending James Scott Bell's, book Write Your Novel from the Middle. It is a quick read and loaded with stuff to think about.  His premise is simple. In the middle of your story your hero has to come to the realization that they have choices to make, and what's at stake. He has done some remarkable research, and he found that in classic movies or novels, there is such a moment right in the middle (based on page count, or running time) give or take 10%.

He contends that if your hero doesn't understand his choices, neither will you, or the audience, or  your hero. Without it your hero's battle is fought in an arena with no boundaries and there is no context to work within to get to the moment of truth. Very interesting.

Before I start talking about my current novel, I must digress.

Every now and then, something will remind me of my navy days, and when that happens I do what any good sailor would do; come up with a related sea-story. Most of these are funny because for some reason serious sea-stories, if they exist at all, are quickly forgotten.

For example, one day we fired a missile from my ship and there was a bit of a mishap.  Part of the launcher got torn away and launched along with the missile; the missile worked just fine, but the launcher part sailed in a truly graceful arc, and hit the sea about a hundred yards ahead of the ship. There was no real harm done, and I (as well as most of the crew) thought it was hilarious. The captain thought otherwise. Since I was the officer responsible for the missiles and the launcher, the captain asked me, "What have you learned from this?" I simply replied, "Launcher parts do not fly as well as missiles." Let's just say the captain adjusted by experience index up a few notches.

Over the years, Marsha, my wife, has heard many sea stories.  Marsha is also my sounding board for ideas on my current navy novel, so lately she has been getting more than the normal dosage of sea-stories. She now wants me to put all of these stories, or at least those fit for a GP audience, into a series of essays and package them as a book.  So I am. It will be good brain candy to play with in between bouts with my current novel.

Speaking of my current novel, here is what is happening. I had written the beginning, then the end, and was working toward the middle. Along the way, I grew uncomfortable about the arc of the story. Something was wrong. I had to put my writing aside because this thing called life continued to happen, and was demanding my attention. When I came back to the novel, I reviewed what I had written - I had lost track of the hero's inner struggle, and upon reflection, I wasn't sure what it was anymore. Not a good sign.

So I tried to follow the advice of James Scott Bell. I sat down to write the middle, and it was a disaster. The transformation my hero has to go through is complex with subtle shadings and colors. Now, I have been know to overt think things, so I asked myself, "Self, are you making this too complicated? It's okay for you to know all this stuff, but what is the headline you want to deliver to the reader? This is not a psycho drama. Keep it simple, stupid."

So that is where I am now; stuck in the middle of a muddle, trying to boil down the essence of my hero's struggle in one or two sentences. It's not as easy as it may seem.

Don't worry, I will get this novel done. And it will be something I am proud of.  Stay tuned. 

On a Roll

It's curious how things happen. Since my last post, I continued working with my characters and wrote several skits for each.  Despite being pulled away by other work and family stuff, the characters began to gel in my mind.  About a week ago, I arrived at what I call my holy grail of writing. Character possession took over and the characters started writing themselves. Hello, Piper Feakes. Could you tell me why you said that? He always has a good answer.

All my characters, suffering though they were, began clamoring for my attention. In the corner, there is a heap of notes about events and interesting things for the characters to do within my novel. I wanted to get at the pile and start writing, but my protagonist was pleading for closure and I was a little vague on how he was going to get there.  I grabbed my writer's clay and threw it on my writing wheel to shape the last chapter of the book. Six thousand words in an afternoon! I had never done that before.

Both the antagonist and protagonist came alive in an epic battle of wits, internal anguish, triumph and defeat. The ending is tricky. Both the protagonist and antagonist win and lose their internal struggle, but wind up in a satisfying place. It's a little like the movie, "Enemy Mine."

As written, the ending is still not perfect, but it gave me tremendous insights into the journey they were both on.  Yes,  I know all that stuff was in my outline and notes, but now I get it.

I immediately turned to the middle of the book and wrote two chapters of high conflict that set up the moment of truth. This morning, I sat down to write the conflict prior to the middle and saw Jeanne's comment to my blog. She suggested I start in the middle, and offered a good book as a resource.  Thanks Jeanne, serendipity happens!

After I read the book Jeanne recommended, I'll know more, but I think the ideas are similar even though I chose to start at the end.

Where am I headed now? Not too sure, but my instinct is to take the major characters, stick with them and write them middle out.  This will pull in the minor characters, but not all of them. I have three subplots that weave through the story with characters that never directly interact with the major characters. Those are character-centric sub-plots, and I think I will write each character's plot line one at a time so I can stay with the character.

If all goes right, I will end up with a bunch of pieces to slice, dice, and stitch into the final novel.

Stay tuned.

Thanks Jeanne.