Story notebook #2

A while ago I rediscovered my first story notebook and wrote a few posts on it.  I promised I’d do the same for my other story notebooks, so here’s the next one.

For those of you who may be surprised that I’m sharing all my story ideas, let me explain why I’m doing this.  First, ideas are cheap, especially in genres as imaginative and inventive as science fiction and fantasy.  What really matters is the execution, and any two people’s take on the same idea is going to be different. For that reason, I’m not too worried about anyone “stealing” my ideas.

Second, and more importantly, I believe that the only way for ideas to grow in value is for them to be shared.  Ideas that get horded only worsen with age, because they’re not being explored. Only by exploring ideas can they come into their full potential, and the best way to explore ideas is to share them.  When we fail to share our ideas, we inevitably fail to explore them from all angles, because working alone in a vacuum, we’re so much more likely to miss something crucial.

Enough of that.  Here are the story ideas from my second notebook, roughly covering the fall of ’08, right after I finished my first novel and got back from Jordan.

How will myths arise in the space exploration age? Previously, myths formed perhaps because people had very limited means of communication and limited means of world awareness. Now, technology allows much better spread of information and science, but in isolated spacecraft, will [the conditions of isolation that lead to myth formation] return?

An interesting and somewhat complicated thought. How do myths form, anyway? I suppose that at the very least, the extreme isolation of space will lead to a proliferation of wildly different cultures and worldviews.

Just as the Catholic monks set up a monastery in Iceland, so people will go beyond the explored universe in the age of space travel and set up a religious order there.

Fascinating–and I think it runs somewhat counter to the grain, too. Most people tend to see space explorers as either adventurers or absolute believers in pure science–but what about the devoutly religious? If the Catholic monks set up a monastery in Iceland, is it possible that the monks of some other religious order may set one up on Mars, or Alpha Centauri, or Gliese?

And…that’s all I’ve got in this notebook. Sorry–there’s lots of scribbling and calculating for Genesis Earth, as well as library call numbers for books about Saladin and the Crusades, but not too much else in the way of story ideas. For more, you’ll have to wait until story notebook #3.

Braving the unexpected rough spots

Right now, I’m going through this unexpected rough spot in my novel, where I know what’s supposed to happen (or at least I have enough of an idea to wing it fairly well), but the writing just isn’t coming.  This happens every time I hit the two thirds mark, and it really sucks.

Currently, I’m using two methods to get through it: 1) keep a running chapter-by-scene outline of the next few scenes, and 2) use a loose adaptation of story theory models (such as the hero’s journey) to keep perspective on things.  Right now, this is what my chapter-by-scene outline looks like:

Chapter 14
14.1: Jalil
Jalil meets LARS, who with Michelle shows him the ship. Jalil learns that Lars has a connection with the Farlen family and that the Stewarts are from his parents’ home.
14.2: Mira
Mira returns home an outcast. Sheila rails at her for failing to seduce Jalil, while Sathi pulls her into his quarters to tell her that he’s arranged for her speedy marriage.
14.3: Jalil
The Bridgette launches from GN-2 using a gravity whip maneuver. The ship heads out for the L2 point, using a second gravity whip around GN-2b. Jalil realizes this is goodbye.

Chapter 15
15.1: Mira
While Mira prepares herself to get ready to meet her cousin Ibrahim, Tiera approaches her in private to apologize for calling her a whore. Tiera advises her to stand up for herself.
15.2: Mira
IBRAHIM’s convoy arrives. As Sathi and Ibrahim’s father conduct negotiations, Mira meets him and is surprised to find that she’s attracted to him.
15.3: Mira
Mira, Surayya, Amina, and Tiera discuss Ibrahim in the women’s quarters. Tiera advises Mira not to pursue him, but Surayya and Amina convince her to go ahead with it.

Chapter 16
16.1: Jalil
Lars and Michelle tell Jalil about the Colony. They show him pictures, and he has flashbacks.
16.2: Jalil
While making maneuvers around GN-2a, the Bridgette receives news of Hameji movements near Karduna. Jalil learns a bit of the Hameji.
16.3: Jalil
The Bridgette arrives at the L2 station and enters the starlane. Jalil’s first experience as an adult making the jump.

Chapter 17
17.1: Mira
???

As you can see, I’ve broken down each chapter by scene, with the viewpoint character indicated as well as a short one or two line description of what happens. When a new character comes along, I mention them by name in ALL CAPS. I use the auto font color for story that I’ve already written, and the stuff that remains to be written in red. Also, I only outline a handful of scenes ahead of my current position.

That’s the method that works for me.  I have no idea if it will work for you, but feel free to give it a try or let me know what methods you’re using.

I’m finding that even though I’m more of a “discovery writer,” certain methods of outlining give me much greater flexibility to discovery write than simply winging it all on the fly.  In particular, I find that outlining my characters and keeping a running scene-by-scene map for the next couple days helps to keep me on track.

I ran into this problem earlier in the week: without any kind of outline, and no previously written material to fall back on, I had no idea what to do.  Instead of sitting at my keyboard doing nothing, though, I plotted out the next few scenes to give me some idea what to do.

That helped me out for a while, but now…man, it’s still rough.  I did 3,251 words yesterday, but today I only hit 1,555.  It’s a lot, I know, but with all my free time, I should be hitting more.  Much more.

I suppose the only way out of this slump is to write–and write I certainly must.  I seriously need a real job, and right now I’m looking into the field staff position at Wilderness Quest.  If they hire me, I’ll need to finish this novel before I start work, since I’ll be out in the wilderness for three weeks at a time and the last thing I want is to pick up a half-finished project after it’s gone cold–especially when I’ve got to rewrite Mercenary Savior for World Fantasy 2010.

So that’s what I’m looking at right now.  Three weeks, inshallah, and Worlds Away from Home 1.2 will be finished.  Hopefully by then, I’ll have a real job too.

To close, check out this awesome version of the Corridors of Time song (Zeal theme) from the Chrono Trigger soundtrack.  I’ve heard maybe twenty or thirty different arrangements of this excellent composition, and this one takes the cake.  Beautiful.

Forward to new ground

A couple days ago, I finished writing through the material I’d written for Worlds Away From Home back in 2008 before I dropped the project.  For the first time since March, I find myself drafting entirely new material.

It’s a little bit unnerving; I’m a much better reviser, I feel, than straight up writer.  Revising is awesome because I know that the book is getting better, whereas drafting is frustrating because the written story never turns out as awesome as it was when it was in my head.

At the same time, it’s really fun to play fast and loose with your book.  Need a new character?  Throw him in!  A new romantic subplot?  Go for it!  A new planet for the characters to visit?  Sure, why not?

I will say, though, that it’s much harder to keep up a steady writing rate when you’re drafting new material.  My daily word count has fallen to about 2k, give or take a few hundred words.  In order to finish this by August 15, I just need to do 2.2k per day, but I’m sure something will come up and I’ll find myself in a crunch by the end.

One thing that might throw a kink in the works is getting a new job.  Being underemployed really sucks, and I want to move on to a new job by the beginning of August.  Easier said than done in this economy, right?  Well, there are some options open to a young, single college grad in my position: namely, a wilderness job.  I’ve been holding out on that because eight days in the wilderness for every six days off seems like a lot of time away from other pursuits, but the more I look at it, the more appealing it seems.  Six days completely off, with no money problems…hmm…

Which reminds me: would it be lame to put up a donate button on this blog?  One that said “buy me a (non-alcoholic) drink” or something like that?  I don’t want to ask for money, but if you guys feel like throwing it at me, who am I to hold you back?  I don’t expect it to earn much, but something is better than nothing, especially these days.

الثريا والرواية

So today I was working on my novel, Worlds Away from Home, and I decided to change the name of a minor character from “Soroya” to something that sounds cooler.

I’d given the rest of her family Arabic-sounding names, because they’re basically far-future Arabs living on another planet (their tribal name is Najmi (نجمي), which means “of the stars”), so I wanted to give her an Arabic-sounding name.

Well, when I looked up female Arabic names at Behind The Name, guess what I found?  “Soraya” is an actual Arab name–in fact, it’s a variant of “Thurayya” (ثريا), which means “the Pleiades.”

Ha! Isn’t that perfect?  “Pleiades of the stars.”

To make her name cool, though, I changed the spelling to “Surayya.”

Utah drivers are jerks

They really are.  Yesterday while I was biking up to campus, a young woman (probably a college freshman) pulled out of a driveway to make a right turn and failed to look both ways before turning.  As a result, she struck my bike, bending my rim and forcing me to replace it.

I got her name  and phone number, spent about an hour (and $54) fixing the thing, and gave her a call.  She didn’t answer any of my calls that day, but she called up the next morning to tell me that she’d talked with a policeman, that I was at fault, and that therefore she wasn’t going to pay me anything.

Of course I was frustrated at all of this, seeing as 1) I was a PEDESTRIAN on the SIDEWALK, and therefore not at fault, and 2) she had failed to look both ways before turning into traffic.  What if I hadn’t braked?  What if she’d hit me full on?  I could have gotten seriously hurt due to her negligence!

So I told her “look, whether you pay me or not, will you promise me to look both ways before you enter traffic?” And her response–I kid you not–was “have you taken a defensive driving course?  If you had, you would know that drivers making a right turn aren’t required to look right before entering traffic.”

WTF.  Seriously?

Apart from the $54, which I figured she wasn’t going to pay for (jerk), this last comment profoundly bothered me.  I only came out of this with a damaged bike–what if the next guy isn’t so lucky?  So I sent her the following text:

As a driver, it is your responsibility to look both ways before turning.  I don’t want you to injure the next guy.

To which she replied with the following:

As a cyclist, it is your responsibility to be on the correct side of the road and to give the right-of-way to who it belongs to.  This mishap happened because of your own wrong doing- not mine. I’m choosing to look past the damage you’ve done to my car, which I could very easily require you to pay for (and it would cost much more than your rim that was “damaged” because you a)were on the wrong side of the road and b)failed to yield the right-of-way. That’s my way of being kind to a disrespectful person such as yourself (you hung up on me in mid-sentence). There is no reason to call or text message me anymore because the issue is over with. Any other text messages or calls I receive from will be considered harassment, and I will file charges against you.

A few things:

  1. As a pedestrian, the right-of-way was mine–that was what the Provo police told me when I called them today;
  2. While I shared some of the blame for riding on the wrong side of the road, she violated the law by failing to yield the right of way when crossing from private property onto a public street (again, taken from the officer I spoke with);
  3. I seriously doubt her car received any more damage than a few scratches, whereas I have the bent rim to prove that the “damages” to my bike were very real;
  4. I hung up on her mid-sentence because she kept pushing me to admit that I was at fault and that she was not in the wrong–instead of calling to apologize and work things out, she called to seek validation for shafting me.

What a jerk.  She’s lucky I’m not taking this to her insurance company and trying to resolve it with them.  While I’m sure that she fully deserves the rate hike and the stain on her record, I just don’t want to deal with the hassle.

The next time this happens, though (and I’m sure it will, because Utah drivers act as if pedestrians don’t exist), I’m going to call the police and resolve the issue with the law.  I no longer trust Utahans to be honest and forthright in settling issues like this civilly.  If you’re on the road and they can screw you, believe me, they will.

Thoughts on the convolutions of discovery writing

It’s been forever since I posted, so I figured I’d put something up and let you guys know what I’ve been up to.

I’m happy to say that Worlds Away From Home is going well; I wrote just under 20k this week, which is more than I’ve written in a long time.  I hope to keep a steady 15k to 20k for the next three weeks as I finish this draft.

I think I’m through the roughest parts (famous last words, right?), and I’ve got a fairly clear idea where I want to take this.  That is, I have a target ending that’s both specific enough to give me direction and vague enough to give me some flexibility.  If I’m doing things right, I expect these characters will surprise me before the end.

When I first started this novel almost two years ago, I hit a bad rough patch right around my current spot and had to put it on hold for a while.  At the time, I thought it was because of a particularly difficult scene (which I just rewrote), but now I see that the problem was much bigger.

I thought that I was telling a story about a guy who nearly falls for the wrong girl and ends up with the right one in the end, when really the first girl was the right one.  Once again, I found myself telling a very different story than the one I set out to tell.

Interestingly, in order to see what I needed to do to fix the problem, I had to write a completely unrelated novel in the same world about the same overarching world events.  My problem, I think, was that I spent so much time world building that I stopped paying attention to what the characters were doing.

With the current draft, I’ve discovered that this story is very solidly a science fiction romance.  There’s plenty of sf action, but it’s the romance that drives the plot.

While this discovery comes as a pleasant surprise, it also worries me because the potential audience may be very small.  Traditionally, science fiction has been anathema to romance, and while that may be changing (as evidenced by this interesting post at tor.com), I wonder how well this book will sell, especially because it’s not your typical romance.  In some ways, it’s actually a critique of our typical ideas of romance.

Oh well.  I suppose there isn’t anything I can do about it except finish the damn thing and worry about selling it later.  These types of thoughts tend to be counterproductive to the creative process, especially when you’re more thank 50k into the draft.

Overall, though, I’m optimistic.  I like this story that I’m telling, and while I may cringe at the mistakes I make as I go along, I know that I need to resist the urge to fix them until the rough draft is complete.

Writing for me is like wandering around blindfolded with a Polaroid camera and taking a picture of something that sounds cool.  When I take off the blindfold and check the picture, it takes a while before I can see the coherent whole.  Usually, though I have some idea what to expect, the end result surprises me.

I love it, though.  That element of surprise and spontaneity is well worth the lack of control, because usually (if I handle things right) it helps to give the story depth, meaning, and honesty that my conscious mind simply could not give it.

I’m very optimistic about this novel.  Now that the world is solidly built, I can focus everything on the characters, and that’s where the true story lies.  I’m currently having a lot of fun torturing them, but I know where their headed with their growth arcs and how all of this ties together (well, most of it, anyway).  If I can pull it off, it should be quite satisfying.  In the meantime, I’m excited to seeing where it takes me.

The Madness Season by C. S. Friedman

In the 21st century, Earth was conquered by an alien collective consciousness known as the Tyr.  Now, five hundred years later, humankind has been scattered across the Tyr-occupied worlds as slaves.  It is a dark and uncertain existence, under the rule of masters who do not care whether their charges live or die.

For the last five hundred years, Daetrin has been a survivor.  An anomaly among humans–a man with the power to live indefinitely–Daetrin is used to keeping his true nature hidden.  But when the Tyr learn of his strange abilities and take him away for further study, he finds himself on the run, out in the open.

In order to survive, however, he must face his greatest fear–the fear that he isn’t entirely human.

This book was interesting.  C. S. Friedman’s prose is quite good, and her main character has a very unique and engaging voice.  For some reason, she wrote all of Daetrin’s stuff in first person, while the other characters in third person.  I think that the main reason for this was to preserve the sense of surprise and horror when he made certain discoveries while at the same time revealing certain critical aspects of her world that the reader absolutely needed to know in order for the story to make sense.  It didn’t bother me–in fact, I think she did it quite well–but it might not work for you.

In terms of story, this book was interesting but a little confusing.  It lagged at times, especially towards the beginning, and towards the end so many things came together at once that it was difficult for me to keep track of them.  I’m not entirely sure why that was, but I think it’s related to the fact that I never felt a very clear sense of progression.  Plotwise, things happened, but I didn’t see how one led necessarily to the next, or where things were going overall.

That said, the ending was satisfying, and I enjoyed reading this book.  You don’t realize it until the end, but the whole book is basically Friedman’s sf take on a certain type of well known, very popular mythical monster.  I won’t spoil the book by telling you which one, but when I saw it, it made me smile.

In terms of science fiction, there are a lot of old tropes with very few new ideas, except for the shapeshifting alien species known as the Marra.  Their culture was interesting, and I thought Friedman did a very good job conveying both the familiarity and the alien-ness of that species.  The Tyr weren’t quite as interesting, because they were basically just the Borg with scales and spikes, but the Hraas and the Tekk (who are a type of human) were also well done.

This is definitely the kind of book you’d want to sit down and read, rather than take everywhere with you and read whenever you get a spare moment.  Without sitting down and dedicating some time to it, it’s very difficult to really get into the story or feel immersed in the world.  I made that mistake, and it took me nearly a month to finish it.  That said, it was a good book; I’ll definitely be reading some Friedman again.

Falling back into the groove

Today I surprised myself and wrote nearly 4k words, some of which might actually be good enough to keep.  Huzzah!

The novel is coming along very nicely, and I’m starting to get really excited with where it’s going.  That’s huge, because up to this point, the nagging “this is crap, what are you doing with your life?” voices have been getting me down.  Yeah, the draft I’m writing will need a lot of work, but the story’s got potential, and I can see it.  That’s the most important part.

The interesting thing was that after pounding out the first thousand words, the writing started to really flow.  The right words and phrases started coming quite naturally, almost on their own, instead of waiting for me to mercilessly hunt them down.

An example:

The weather was perfect–sunny, clear, and neither too hot nor too cold. Upset by the sound of their engines, flocks of pretty white birds took to the air, filling the sky around the green banks like noisy, low-flying clouds. Down in the cabin, Kariym began to sing a lilting ballad about a young boy in love with his brother’s betrothed. His deep bass voice bellowed over the roar of the engine, lifting Jalil’s spirits. It was a very good day to be alive.

They rode upstream over the river for the next hour. Almost immediately they left the main body of the convoy far behind, taking the reconnaissance position for the advance guard. Occasionally, they passed a town or a bridge–magnificent works of steel and stone that soared over their heads, spanning the entire vast width of the river. Mostly, however, the banks were empty and unsettled–nothing but long, straight stretches of thick green bush, with the occasionally rocky outcropping to break the monotony.

Of course, the writing’s not perfect–I’ll be the first to say that it needs considerable work–but at least it’s decent.  Decent for a rough draft.

One of the most annoying things about writing is when I unconsciously break into alliteration.  I’ll write a sentence, only to realize that I can’t let it stand as it is because every noun, verb, and adjective starts with the same sound.  Like that last phrase: “starts with the same sound.” Augh!

I’m finding, though, that when used in moderation, that tendency towards alliteration can be somewhat helpful.  There’s nothing quite as pleasurable as reading a good story with delicious, flowing prose, like Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed or Robert Charles Wilson’s Spin. Excellent books.  I’d be more than happy if I could write as beautifully as them someday.

In the meantime, though, I’m just plugging away, trying to make the next chapter, scene, paragraph, and sentence better than the last.  Fortunately, now that I’m excited about the story again, things are going very nicely.

Oh, and happy fourth on the fifth.  I spent most of the day with family (not writing), bouncing around Provo and doing various stuff.  I’ve got a ton of chores to do tomorrow, though, so I’d better get to bed.  Night!

Second Quarter 2010 report

As you may or may not know, I keep a spreadsheet of my daily word counts.  Nerdy, I know, but you’d be surprised how helpful it can be with keeping goals and staying motivated.  As part of that, I’ve decided to do a quarterly report here on my blog.  Here’s my report for April 2010 through June 2010:

The red line shows my daily word count, and the blue line shows a running 7-day total.

At the beginning of April, I was somewhere in the middle of writing Mercenary Savior 3.0. I was also in the middle of a long and strenuous debacle with BYU’s Washington Seminar.  Long story short, I got kicked out under disputed circumstances.

Anyway, that explains the sharp dip in the first couple of weeks.  I returned to my parents’ house in Massachusetts on April 6th and spent a week there before moving out to Utah; that explains the short lived bump from April 6 to April 12.

So three weeks before graduation, I came back to Utah with no job, no apartment, no transportation besides my own feet–nothing.  Fortunately, some friends helped me out, and for the rest of April and most of May I at least had transportation (bike) and a roof over my head.

Without a job, I had lots of writing time, and I used it well, as you can see.  The sharp dip at the end of April corresponds with graduation, when all the family was over and I was spending most of my time with them.

Things dropped off the second half of May, though, and I’m not sure why.  Perhaps it was writing fatigue?  I was coming up on the end of Mercenary Savior, and as I remember, the revision was fairly tough.  Also, I was stressed out about not having a job, and spent much of my free time looking for work.  I found my current part-time job at the end of May, and had a few spikes, but my output never totally recovered.

As an experiment, I took a week off from writing after finishing Mercenary Savior on the first of June.  I thought that this would help me recharge my creative batteries and get off with Worlds Away from Home on a good start.  Instead, I found that taking the time off made it harder to get back into creative writing mode, and so I struggled for the first week or two to really get that project off the ground.

Lately, I’ve been trying to bump up my output above 10k per week, without much success.  For some reason, I seem to have fallen in a rut where I can’t write more than 2k per day.  2k is good, but it’s not the level where I want to be.  I want to finish Worlds Away from Home in the first couple weeks of August, so that I’ll have plenty of time to polish Mercenary Savior for World Fantasy in November.

I think that part of the problem lies in the nature of the work.  Mercenary Savior was all straight up revision, with very little new content.  Worlds Away from Home, however, involves a ton of new content.  Yes, I’ve got all that stuff I wrote back in the fall of 2008, but I’ve also added a new viewpoint character and significantly changed the basic storyline.  Only about half of the old stuff is recyclable, and I’ll run out of it in 100 pages, roughly at the midway point of the novel.

After revising for so long, it’s hard to get used to writing a first draft.  I’m not sure how to describe it, except that it takes a lot more mental energy–a LOT more.  Plus, there’s always the nagging voices that tell you what you’re writing is crap–and when you’re writing your rough draft, the voices are usually right!  Tuning them out is starting to be a challenge.

Overall, though, I’m very optimistic.  My main goal is to produce one solid, polished novel a year, and I’m still on schedule to accomplish that.  Mercenary Savior requires AT LEAST another revision before it’ll be good enough to send out to editors and agents, but I’ve got half a year to do that.  As for 2011, I’ll almost certainly have the first or second draft of Worlds Away from Home before January 1st.  Things are going well.

And on that note, I think I’m going to take a shower and go to bed.  Night.