Our writers' group watched another section of a video of William Bernhardt's seminar on novel writing. Several times during his amusing and informative talk he mentioned outlining, always followed by the statement, "and you will outline." According to Bernhardt, all novelists outline, even those that claim they don't. He offered the opinion that some writers think that admitting to using an outline suggests a lack of creativity or spontaneity in their writing.
I think it's true that all novelists outline in some form or fashion. I don't see how anyone can write a fiction book without some kind of organizational method for keeping track of "what happens when" in the story. Many writers may not think of their system of notes as an outline, but it serves the same purpose.
The word "outline" suggests having the plot of a book all planned out before the writing begins. Many writers do have a good enough idea about their book that they can create an outline first. But nearly all writers that do so will - and know they will - make changes to the outline as the book progresses and deviates from the original.
Authors who claim not to use an outline, or call their outline process something else, are more likely to be the ones that don't outline before they write; writers like myself, who don't know enough about where the story is going to lay it all out before hand.
I call what I do a timeline. And I don't bother with it until I have a clear idea of what the main story events are, but not the best order. That's when I put each scene on an index card and move them around in different patterns to find the one that works best. Then I write out the order of scenes, so I can keep track of "what happens when" and adjust as necessary.
So, yes, if you are writing a novel, you will outline. Even if you say you don't, you do - in your own way, however such a thing fits in you personal writing process.
www.jennifermballard.com
www.daylightsend.weebly.com
www.trustindarkness.weebly.com
Showing posts with label Writing Process. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Writing Process. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Another Lesson On What (Possibly) Not To Do
My goal for 2011 was to epublish my first book by the end of the year, a deadline I missed by a couple of hours. (Never mind that it was New Year's weekend and my novel wasn't processed and available to download until the following Tuesday). Still, my novel, Daylight's End, is now available on Nook and Kindle and I have already sold a few copies.
Daylight's End is the first in the Daylight Series and I am now working on revising book two, Before Daylight. In earlier posts I've mentioned my difficulties in writing both books, having used a different process for each and still not having established one that works well for me.
I was anxious to get book one out so I can get book two out and I'm anxious to get book two done so I can get to books three and four. This is probably normal for any writer working on a series of books, but my motivation may be a little different.
Here's where we come to something I might recommend not doing. While writing books one and two (and the start of three and the outline for book four), I wrote several - over a dozen - of what I call the Daylight Stories. These are stories featuring the characters, settings and other aspects of the books. I feel like most of them are really good and lots of fun and I have already epublished a few. (See daylightsend.weebly.com) The problem is most of these stories I have not yet published because they involve characters that are not introduced until books three and four and so I feel I can't publish those stories until book three and four are finished and available.
This might be unreasonable on my part and I may decide to publish a couple more stories before books three and four are out. Otherwise, I have several great (my opinion) stories that I can't share yet, even though they are ready. But that's only part of the problem.
The other part is that I'm having difficulty, while working on the novels, remembering that some of the things that I know happen in the stories have not happened yet in the books. It's possible, even likely, that other writers don't have the mental organizational deficiencies that I do, so a situation like this might not be a problem for them.
These two issues don't make me wish I hadn't written those stories when I did, but they are something to think about - and share. In spite of the difficulties they cause me, there was a huge benefit to writing those stories that I will share in a future post.
www.jennifermballard.com
www.daylightsend.weebly.com
www.trustindarkness.weebly.com
Daylight's End is the first in the Daylight Series and I am now working on revising book two, Before Daylight. In earlier posts I've mentioned my difficulties in writing both books, having used a different process for each and still not having established one that works well for me.
I was anxious to get book one out so I can get book two out and I'm anxious to get book two done so I can get to books three and four. This is probably normal for any writer working on a series of books, but my motivation may be a little different.
Here's where we come to something I might recommend not doing. While writing books one and two (and the start of three and the outline for book four), I wrote several - over a dozen - of what I call the Daylight Stories. These are stories featuring the characters, settings and other aspects of the books. I feel like most of them are really good and lots of fun and I have already epublished a few. (See daylightsend.weebly.com) The problem is most of these stories I have not yet published because they involve characters that are not introduced until books three and four and so I feel I can't publish those stories until book three and four are finished and available.
This might be unreasonable on my part and I may decide to publish a couple more stories before books three and four are out. Otherwise, I have several great (my opinion) stories that I can't share yet, even though they are ready. But that's only part of the problem.
The other part is that I'm having difficulty, while working on the novels, remembering that some of the things that I know happen in the stories have not happened yet in the books. It's possible, even likely, that other writers don't have the mental organizational deficiencies that I do, so a situation like this might not be a problem for them.
These two issues don't make me wish I hadn't written those stories when I did, but they are something to think about - and share. In spite of the difficulties they cause me, there was a huge benefit to writing those stories that I will share in a future post.
www.jennifermballard.com
www.daylightsend.weebly.com
www.trustindarkness.weebly.com
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
One Example of Contradictory Writing Advice
One often repeated tip for those working on a first draft: Just write the whole thing; don't revise at all until it's done. This makes sense to me. Many writers get hung up on the first chapter, page or paragraph, thinking they can't go on until they get it just right. Which it never really is, and that keeps the writer from moving forward with the story.
The flip side of this is the many writers that say the first thing they do at every writing session is to re-read the last chapter, page or paragraph they wrote to get them back into the story. (And who can re-read without editing just a little?)
This also makes sense to me and I personally recommend this practice to others. It really does help you remember where you were and where you were going. But if you find any big problems with what's already written, instead of stopping your momentum to fix it, make a note and continue with the narrative.
Like all advice on writing, whether it's about style, plotting, characterization, process - whatever - do what works best for you. If you come across something that might work for you, try it and see.
(For the one bit of writerly advice that I have rarely heard refuted, see my post "To Write Or Not.")
www.jennifermballard.com
www.daylightsend.weebly.com
www.trustindarkness.weebly.com
The flip side of this is the many writers that say the first thing they do at every writing session is to re-read the last chapter, page or paragraph they wrote to get them back into the story. (And who can re-read without editing just a little?)
This also makes sense to me and I personally recommend this practice to others. It really does help you remember where you were and where you were going. But if you find any big problems with what's already written, instead of stopping your momentum to fix it, make a note and continue with the narrative.
Like all advice on writing, whether it's about style, plotting, characterization, process - whatever - do what works best for you. If you come across something that might work for you, try it and see.
(For the one bit of writerly advice that I have rarely heard refuted, see my post "To Write Or Not.")
www.jennifermballard.com
www.daylightsend.weebly.com
www.trustindarkness.weebly.com
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Something I've Learned That Does Work For Me
I went to a writers workshop lead by a member of my awesome writers group (livingwriterscollective.blogspot). Tricia Petty, of Cellphane Ministries and Antibellum Productions, has worked in the movie industry as well as writing novels and mentioned that working with screenplays gave her the idea to break a story down into scenes rather than chapters.
I don't know why this works, but it was a lifesaver for fixing my problem with my first book, where I scrambled the plot and the subplots, and in my second book where I tired to cobble together seperate bits and pieces of the story into a cohesive narrative. By breaking the story up into scenes, I am able to write each scene on an index card and shuffle them around until I had events in the best order. I know this will be a method I use with every book I write.
When established authors answer the common question from beginning writers "How do you write?", most describe thier own writing process and stress that it is what works for them. The only way to know if it can be an effective part of your own process is to try it. Different things work for different writers and few authors work exactly the same way. As my friend Karen says (mywritingloft.blogspot) your writing process has to be yours.
www.jennifermballard.com
www.daylightsend.weebly.com
www.trustindarkness.weebly.com
I don't know why this works, but it was a lifesaver for fixing my problem with my first book, where I scrambled the plot and the subplots, and in my second book where I tired to cobble together seperate bits and pieces of the story into a cohesive narrative. By breaking the story up into scenes, I am able to write each scene on an index card and shuffle them around until I had events in the best order. I know this will be a method I use with every book I write.
When established authors answer the common question from beginning writers "How do you write?", most describe thier own writing process and stress that it is what works for them. The only way to know if it can be an effective part of your own process is to try it. Different things work for different writers and few authors work exactly the same way. As my friend Karen says (mywritingloft.blogspot) your writing process has to be yours.
www.jennifermballard.com
www.daylightsend.weebly.com
www.trustindarkness.weebly.com
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
About My Writing Process...Or Lack Of
As I've mentioned in previous posts, I am still trying to figure out what my writing process is. In one recent post I described something I've learned doesn't work for me and here is another.
On my second book I had trouble writing the story from start to finish because there were large gaps where I wasn't sure yet what would happen. Following the concept of trying out something other writers do to see if it works for you, I wrote the parts I knew and then tried to fill in the blanks to connect the separate parts of the story. I honestly don't see how this could be the way anyone writes. I don't remember what author I got this piece of wisdom from, but he must be one of a kind.
When that method didn't work, I sketched out a brief outline of the story in chronological order and worked from it to write each part before going on to the next. I don't see this as being something I have to do for every book, but it might not be a bad idea. It will save me having to go back and outline in the event that I do make a mess of the plotline.
www.jennifermballard.com
www.daylightsend.weebly.com
www.trustindarkness.weebly.com
On my second book I had trouble writing the story from start to finish because there were large gaps where I wasn't sure yet what would happen. Following the concept of trying out something other writers do to see if it works for you, I wrote the parts I knew and then tried to fill in the blanks to connect the separate parts of the story. I honestly don't see how this could be the way anyone writes. I don't remember what author I got this piece of wisdom from, but he must be one of a kind.
When that method didn't work, I sketched out a brief outline of the story in chronological order and worked from it to write each part before going on to the next. I don't see this as being something I have to do for every book, but it might not be a bad idea. It will save me having to go back and outline in the event that I do make a mess of the plotline.
www.jennifermballard.com
www.daylightsend.weebly.com
www.trustindarkness.weebly.com
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Learning From Mistakes
My friend Karen (mywritingloft.blogspot) has begun a series of blogs on 366 lessons she has learned about writing. In one of them she says that every writer should have a process and in another she explains what her process is. Lucky for her, she learned her process while writing a screenplay and was able to apply it successfully to her novel.
I have completed two novels, (not counting ones that are finished-but-not-finished because I never revised them enough to consider them as good as they can be - but have not given up on and plan to continue working on again in the future), and I don't think I have a defined process yet.
I have learned a few lessons about the way not to do things. On my first novel, I wanted to get the bones of the story down first, so I wrote the whole thing, concentrating on just the main plot. This left me with a 35,000 word (barely a novella) manuscript that was a very simple story. Then I created a few subplots and set about weaving them into the main plot.
It was a nightmare. Two thirds of the way through, the 3 or 4 strands of the story were a hopeless snarl. I had to virtually rewrite the whole book, going back to the bare bones and starting again. The main thing I learned from this was that I am not a good enough writer yet to manage a complex story plot, or even more than a main plot and two uncomplicated subplots. I am in fact now working on revision 5 (or 7) of that book and almost have all the tangles out. Maybe a process would have helped me avoid this.
What I ended up doing with this first book was adding the subplots into the main plot in a staggered manner so I never had more weave together than I could manage. This worked well in my second book also and I was able to add the subplots or complications to the main plot at intervals and avoid the mess I made of the first book.
I followed the generally accepted advice of setting aside each book when I was done with the first draft and going on to the next project. When I'm done with final revisions to book one in a couple of weeks, I will begin the second revision to book two. I'm hoping it will not need a half dozen revisions (and two years) to complete. Then maybe I will learn more about developing my own process.
www.jennifermballard.com
www.daylightsend.weebly.com
www.trustindarkness.weebly.com
I have completed two novels, (not counting ones that are finished-but-not-finished because I never revised them enough to consider them as good as they can be - but have not given up on and plan to continue working on again in the future), and I don't think I have a defined process yet.
I have learned a few lessons about the way not to do things. On my first novel, I wanted to get the bones of the story down first, so I wrote the whole thing, concentrating on just the main plot. This left me with a 35,000 word (barely a novella) manuscript that was a very simple story. Then I created a few subplots and set about weaving them into the main plot.
It was a nightmare. Two thirds of the way through, the 3 or 4 strands of the story were a hopeless snarl. I had to virtually rewrite the whole book, going back to the bare bones and starting again. The main thing I learned from this was that I am not a good enough writer yet to manage a complex story plot, or even more than a main plot and two uncomplicated subplots. I am in fact now working on revision 5 (or 7) of that book and almost have all the tangles out. Maybe a process would have helped me avoid this.
What I ended up doing with this first book was adding the subplots into the main plot in a staggered manner so I never had more weave together than I could manage. This worked well in my second book also and I was able to add the subplots or complications to the main plot at intervals and avoid the mess I made of the first book.
I followed the generally accepted advice of setting aside each book when I was done with the first draft and going on to the next project. When I'm done with final revisions to book one in a couple of weeks, I will begin the second revision to book two. I'm hoping it will not need a half dozen revisions (and two years) to complete. Then maybe I will learn more about developing my own process.
www.jennifermballard.com
www.daylightsend.weebly.com
www.trustindarkness.weebly.com
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