Writing Update

Last night was an important night for me as a writer.

One of my novels had gotten long (300k+) and out of control. I also had not yet thought of a satisfying ending. Last night, I finished the first step of my huge outline, going through the entire story and writing out all of the most important plot points. When I made it to the end of my incomplete synopsis, I stopped for a moment to think about what came next. Inspiration came quickly and I outlined to the end of the book.

There were 120 main plot points in the outline. It was wonderful to have it finished. And the sense of peace that came when I found out the ending after having the story in my mind and drafts for maybe two years...amazing.

Now I'm writing about how the story ends for each of the different characters.

And now I have to work on adding things to that outline...

Almost Won!

So I literally just reached 50k for NaNoWriMo! The official winning does not start until tomorrow. My word count bar used to be blue, but it turned a satisfying green as soon as I entered my total. And tomorrow, I think, it will be an even more satisfying purple! 

My daily average has been 2631 words per day. (My best day was when I managed to write about 9k in my novel in one day, thanks to a writing event at the library! That is my personal record.)

My story is not yet over. In fact, it could go on for twice as long, probably. There are eleven days more. I could write 30k at my average pace. Before, though, I had wanted to write that extra 30k in The Breakers. I only managed to add 2500 this month, though. I had gotten more interested  in my NaNovel than I guessed when I made that goal. I think I will continue on this novel until the end of the month, and then return to The Breakers and all my other novels.

This has been a great nineteen days of writing! 

NaNoWriMo 2015 update

NaNo has been a lot easier so far than I thought. I am way ahead, even though I was unable to write for a few days due to the loss of my charging cable. Other than that, it has been a pretty good first week.

I'm getting really into the plot by now, and have a lot of new ideas all the time.

So I guess this NaNo is a great success!

NaNoWriMo Day 1

So, I'm going to try to do a brief update every day (or so.) Probably won't work out to be every day, though. There's a lot going on!

My goal is 80k this year. 50k in one novel, 30k added to one of my current novels.

We shall see! I am excited to begin!

What I Write

This is to direct people to when they ask about my writing.

Whenever people find out that I am a writer, they always seem to ask the same sorts of questions. And the first one they ask is, "So, what do you write?"

Well, one way to answer that is to say that I write mostly novels, but sometimes novellas, short stories, and (rarely) fanfiction.

But what most people want to know when they say, "What do you write?" is the genres I write in. There's no easy way to answer that question. Novels I have finished in the past include various stories of humor, a children's fantasy, and certain other stories and fragments that I have kept private. I am currently writing three main novels, a humor/fantasy, a political satire, and ya/dystopian.

In my mind, but not on paper, I have a work of realistic fiction and couple of sci-fi novels, with one being more on the fantasy side, and the other a "realistic" sci-fi.

So, that's the easiest answer I can give to that question.

Using a Text Analyzer to Highlight Problems in Word Usage

It is still early to think about editing my trilogy/way-too-long-novel, but I cannot help thinking about how hard it will be. Specifically, it will be hard in making it shorter, since I am not yet two-thirds finished, and it is near 200k.  

One website that I just came across today looks like it will prove to be helpful: text analyzer.

This program is simple: it calculates the frequency of words and phrases. (Note: Scrivener has a feature like this built in, but it always crashes when I try to use it on such a long work.) 

When I ran the entire text of my novel through the text analyzer, there were some embarrassing results. Some of them I already knew about, but there were some problems that surprised me. This tool calculates the frequency of phrases up to eight words long. There were four eight-word-long phrases that appeared four time each. Three of the times, the repetition was intentional. The other time...let's just say I had to keep remaining myself that there is a reason for editing! Four more phrases were used three times each, and twenty-two phrases of eight words used twice! 

And these were badly-written phrases, too. Things like "although most people hate him quite a lot." Both of those instances will have to be removed. If I take out both instances of all twenty-two offending eight-word phrases, that's an easy 352 words. Only a dent in my word count, but there are shorter phrases that can also be taken out.

Then I come to the three-word phrases. This is even more incriminating. The phrase "I don't know" is used 179 times. The top thirty of these phrases occur 2822 times altogether--that is almost 8500 words! 

The list of single words is also enlightening. The top ten words? I, the, to, that, it, and, is, a, of, he. The first word was what I predicted, since the novel is in the first person. Still, it makes up four-percent--a number that should be trimmed down. Most of the other words are excusable, though I will remove them when possible as I edit. There were two words, though, that really need to be removed in most of their occurrences. "That" is used too often, and it is usually unnecessary. I also have a bad habit of using the word "and" to begin sentences.  The removal of most uses of these two words will make my novel five percent smaller!

This text analyzer is going to be a great help for me in the editing process.

Experimenting with Multiple Viewpoints in Fiction II

The second form of multiple viewpoints that I would like to address is that of the "Cinematic Shift." Practically, this is similar to the "Convenience Shift", which I described in the previous post. 

In convenience, the author introduces viewpoint shift and multiple viewpoint characters as it furthers the plot. As I mentioned, the main flaw with it is the temptation to introduce too many viewpoint characters.

"Cinematic Shift" is a more planned approach. It receives its name because it is the way that films tend to work. Lord of the Rings is a prime example of this. In The Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo is the only real viewpoint character. Once we are at The Two Towers, there are three groups of viewpoint characters. This becomes more like two groups of viewpoint characters by The Return of the King. 

"Cinematic Shift" is the idea of carefully planned shifts in viewpoint to add suspense and complexity. 

I am currently working on this in one of my WIPs. In the novel, there are two viewpoint characters. It's hard to explain without talking about the plot, but it is more-or-less planned to use this type of shift. The "camera" flips back and forth (thought not in every chapter) from one character to the other. In a couple of chapters at the beginning, and the entire end, these characters are together. That introduces the main flaw, as I see it, in "Cinematic Shift."

In a film, you do not know the thoughts of the characters, for instance. Sometimes the film makers try to show them to us, but that tends to fail. In writing, though, we usually do see the thoughts of the viewpoint characters. We know "personal" things about them that a viewer would not see if the book was made into a movie. 

We see that in a novel it does not work to just observe the characters. But say you have two viewpoint characters sharing a scene? When I was young, working on my first stories, I never gave it much thought at all. Of course you jump around. Right? But in more recent times, my personal research has shown that it can be a source of enmity between authors. Some writers might think that it is too jarring. Others (such as myself) do not worry much about it.

This is one of the times when the author to make the decision. Some of your readers will like the way that you choose. Others will not. That's the way it always is.

There are a couple of important things to keep in mind. One, do not merely write the same story twice from the perspective of two different characters. And, two, let the reader know somehow how your viewpoint shift is going to work.

In first person narrating, there are a host of additional concerns, as two (or more) viewpoint characters might even be switching narrating the story! But that is a topic for later discussion.