Writing for publication
isn’t as easy as one thinks. Some of us
are naturals at this, but nothing about my learning process has ever come easily,
still I love to learn and write.
When someone suggested I
write a blog, I did my homework. It was
similar to a weekly column I wrote for three years, so I thought it would force
me to keep deadlines and exercise my “voice.”
It’s been mildly successful.
I wrote two children’s
stories and they both placed in the top ten in a national contest, so that gave
me some encouragement. I dusted off a book I wrote that a publishing house
rejected ten years ago, so I spent a year fixing it and pitched it again; this
time to an agent. She not only rejected it; she trashed it. It sits in my
office licking its wounds. Two other books are going through their fourth or
fifth rewrites. I’ve lost count.
Most of my writer friends
write straight into their laptops, no notes, no outlines. They let “their characters lead the way.” They’re
called pantsers because they write by
the seat of their pants. My muses are more like lazy teenagers. They get up late,
nap on the sofa all day, and whine when asked to do chores. My muses need a
kick in the pants.
I tried being a pantser
with Book One and regret taking that advice. When I started on Book Two (I’m
writing a trilogy), I realized I couldn’t build a story out of that awful mess.
I am not a pantser. I am field dependent; I have to see the whole
before I can write the parts. In other
words, I am a plotter. I need an outline, not necessarily the kind
college professors require but a personalized, 3-D, GPS version.
I’ve read several books
on how to plot a novel and my favorite is Super Structure by James Scott Bell. His
book is excellent, but here is one of the things I took away from his book that
changed my life.
1. Count
out fifty 5X8 cards and come up with fifty possible scenes that could happen in
your story. Each card is a scene not a
chapter. It can be brief or elaborate. Push
yourself to fill all fifty cards.
2. If
you exhaust all the possible scenes but still have cards to fill, push yourself
to do more. Create a scene card for each
of the following:
·
Open a dictionary to a random page and select
one noun. Create a possible scene using
that noun as inspiration.
·
Come up with roadblocks or possible
conflicts your protagonist might encounter.
·
Come up with “what if” scenes. The more ‘what
iffy,’ the better.
·
Write the scenes introducing your
important characters.
·
Take two existing scene cards and create a
scene that segues one into the other.
·
Choose two characters and create a scene between
those two, but remember it must move the plot forward.
·
Write a scene about what one of the
secondary characters has been doing while the main characters were on center
stage
·
Make sure you have scene cards for all the
important plot points, like The Mirror Moment, or The Pet the Dog Scene, The Q
Factor Scene (you’ll have to refer to his book for these, or you might be able
to google it.)
3. After
you have exhausted all possible scenes, organize them by Acts and sequence.
Sometimes this shows you where you might need to add a scene.
4. One
thing I like to do is to add a Johari Window on the back of scene cards where I
introduce characters. I addressed that in a different blog, but I use the
Johari Window to create in-depth character studies of each of my important characters. It helps me stay true to their motivation.
When Book Two looked like
it was headed in the same wrong direction as Book One, I went back and deconstructed
Book One chapter by chapter and then sat down and created my fifty scene
cards. It helped me reorder my chapters,
get rid of scenes that made no sense and come up with healthier scenes that
should have happened. It showed weak and
strong chapters; some had to go but several were strong enough to stay. I found
discrepancies and scenes so trite they made me wince. Since Book One is part of
a trilogy, it also helped me strengthen characters who would later take center
stage in Books Two and Three.
I envy those who can
write straight into their laptops. That
isn’t me. I’ve learned a lot in the past
eight years about writing and how my brain creates stories, so none of this
time has been wasted. One day, I might
go back to the book that has been rejected twice in its lifetime and use this
method to restructure it, but for now, I am letting it heal while I work on
Book Two and plan out Book Three.
