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Novel Status – July 2013

26 Friday Jul 2013

Posted by John Hanson in Literary, Prose, Writing

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hero's journey, joseph campbell, monomyth, novel, novel writing

Here’s the situation. My current novel is a completed rough draft. I penned it during NaNoWrimo in November 2012, totally off the cuff. It started from a seemingly innocent personal experience. I took that experience, replaced me and the other person involved with blank characters. I kept the location and its character template. I then asked some questions:

–          What sort of person would react like I did?
–          Is there an alternative reason for this situation that the reason I was given might mask it?
–          Given the disparity between the people-template and my new main character, what circumstances would keep him engaged?

My answers came like explosions, wham, wham, wham. I developed a story and presented it to my writing group.

“Well, that seem sort of goofy.”
“Hmmm, yeah, I suppose it is.”

Question number three, the engagement glue, didn’t work. I came up with a new idea and presented it the next week, the Wednesday before November, crunch time.

“Ah, no, that doesn’t work either.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, we’re sure.”
“Damn.”

I realized I also needed an initial reason for him to be there. My protagonist just didn’t belong in the location, and I doubted my whole idea. Looking back, I now realize this is the ideal situation, and the tension I felt translated into tension I wrote. As I began writing, I quickly learned about my character. I quickly discovered his major character flaw that opened several doors. This flaw was not only the engagement glue but also formed the basis of his transformation, of the story. Literary gold! Writing flowed like motor oil out of my 2002 Accord’s leaky oil pan.

My initial idea still held, the masked situation, but I had no conclusion. I worked on the story, his flaw, and realized the symbolism matched perfectly the symbolism of the masked situation. Really? Yes. When I later I added a snippet to scene three, it all came home. Wham!

So I’ve been working on this thing since November. I have about fifty scenes and eighty thousand words. But it feels wrong. It feels like my lawn (an acre plot with gardens, trees, and hills) after my son mows it – patchy, inconsistent, with mangled shrubs and gardens. A big mess. I have been happy with my scene editing. I make three passes on them. After a few days of attention and revisiting, my writing fleshes out. When I read it, I think wow, did I write this? Let’s not kid ourselves though; my first view versions are pretty amateur. My initial writes are pretty meager . My son’s blog puts them to shame. My son’s writing puts most of ours to shame. Too bad he can’t mow like he writes. *Sorry, I’ve lost track of it. I don’t like following my kids online.

I’ve been running into dead ends, not within my scenes but tying my story together. So I’ve been spending time reading up on story. I read stuff, read through my own story board, try to match, get a big headache, and go play a computer game.  I did realize I had gaps. I couldn’t articulate them, but I felt them. I had timeline, plot-point, and motivation inconsistencies. This whole narrative arc thing has been an abstract mess. I found myself in bed at night playing through scenes, standing in the shower trying to link the falling drops of water to plot lines, and reading novels and thinking “this person got it, why can’t I?”

During these activities I’ve done other things. I taught a couple of courses for seven weeks as a substitute instructor at the local community college. Out of that I got a Microsoft DreamSpark subscription. Cool. I have installed ultimate versions of Video Studio and SQL Server. Yes, I can code. I’ve been trying c# Winforms and have built some business classes and a database class. I can’t explain it here, but I know loose coupling and interfacing. These are important elements of software architecture, and they relate very much to novel arc or story architecture. I am finding my ability to sort out my story arc improving. Then a few days ago I watched a cool video on the Hero’s Journey.  Not only did it help clarify Joseph Campbell’s monomyth, but I learned that screenwriters purposely write the key scenes first then fill in the blanks. It’s very much how I’ve been coding – code the key elements first [with tight coupling] then fill in the interfacing later [abstract, loose coupling]. Wham!

I tried it with my already written scenes, and it didn’t work. What? I must really have a mess here. I decided to approach the problem from a linear perspective. I sat down and went through each step of the hero’s journey and wrote how I accomplished each. I also wrote the gaps, either the missing scenes or linkages to tie the journey (story) together. It worked. Wham! I discovered that my story pretty much covers the whole hero’s journey arc with some exceptions.  I summarized and jotted down four scenes I need to write and five elements I need to tie down. I also have a timeline issue I need to unravel, and that may have to wait until a more macro-level edit.

So that’s where I am. I have a clear plan of action:

–          four new scenes
–          five tie-downs
–          a complete read-through and copy-edit with some attention to time-line
–          reassess

I want to complete these four objectives by August 24th. That’s beach party weekend, and I’d love to bring a readable manuscript to share with a couple of people. I won’t likely share it there, not during party time. It is a time to celebrate long friendships, and I want to be fully engaged, not struggling with any balls and chains. It will be a mind-freeing weekend, so I better get it done by then. I may not have much of a mind left afterwards.

Struggling With Your Story? Try Finding Your Themes.

17 Monday Jun 2013

Posted by John Hanson in Literary, Prose, Writing

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Tags

gaps, hero's journey, joseph campbell, narrative arc, themes

Like any new writer, I struggle with making my stories work. In my third, current novel, I am more or less following Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. I didn’t consciously attempt to write it following a cookie cutter approach. I did not even know about Campbell’s template when I penned the first draft last November during NaNoWriMo. I hesitate to call it a template. The HJ is much more than that. Novels are much more than that. And I think I’ve learned from trying to apply it to my edits that it definitely cannot be used as a stamp. I tried, I failed, I grew frustrated with major parts of my story that did not tie together, that did not flow, and that left me wondering what to do.

By the way, Jefrey Eugenides’ Middlesex follows the Hero’s Journey across generations, a remarkable feat, an outstanding book. But I digress.

I’ve read bits and pieces here and there about this idea of theme. If you’ve ever read Sparksnotes book summaries, they delve into themes ad-nauseum — “Sparksnotes For Whom The Bell Tolls.” All stories have themes, and I think it might be safe to say most authors ignore themes. They more or less let them fall out on their own. Authors hate templating, like the Hero’s Journey, and writing to themes risks killing creativity by turning your story into a formula. Nobody wants to read formulaic prose, right romance, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, mystery, spy, or any other genre-specific reader out there?

I’ll go a step further. The themes of my story have been bothering me. I do have strong themes. I can feel them. I can almost touch them. But I cannot name them. Some things are difficult to clearly identify let alone name. How do you name the feeling you get when you wake up at three thirty in the morning to write? How do you name the feeling you have as you step out on to the back deck in your shorts holding your hot coffee and listen to the Robins chorus you? How do you name the feelings you remember on Father’s Day? I can clearly see both of my now grown children being born, but I cannot begin to describe that emotion I felt when they handed me my son, said “there’s a problem,” and left me alone with him for half an hour while the doctor pulled his placenta out with his thick, hairy arm.

I yearned to understand the themes of my story. I needed to fill in my understanding. Bash this emptiness with a baseball bat, if necessary.

On Saturday I did some research. I found some theme-based sites. I have a list of 100 common novel themes. I have some discussions on themes. I printed some out to take with me yesterday. Most of it was useless drivel. Sparksnotes is interesting reading, but it does not help much with understanding how to find themes. Oh, I had a 9am writing date yesterday morning at the new Second Cup coffee shop in Centerbeam Place, Saint John, NB. She didn’t show up; I barely noticed.

Two websites did help:
– About dot com
– WordIQ

The WordIQ page is short and sweet. I made it even shorter for my purposes. I wrote down a list of words and phrases I thought might relate to themes in my stories, and then I began to write a paragraph on each item. Here is my initial list. You will notice many are related, and some are symbols. The first page suggests that symbols can be clues to themes, so I wrote them down too. There are many more symbols and ideas in my story, but this was enough for the first hour or two of my theme discovery exercise.

– working men-expectations
– words vs. fists
– overcoming a bad hand [dealt]
– community
– youth
– expectations [repeat]
– wrong.right first impressions
– supporting rightness – justice
– passion – do what drives you
– mothers [wow, did I write this?]
– real men!

I looked at the list, took a big drink of coffee, and began to write. One paragraph each. Shouldn’t take long. Thirty minutes later I had the first item knocked off the list, didn’t have a sentence for it as the second article suggests, but I did have two pages outlining an important scene I need to write.

I was consumed. I saw a gap in my story I knew was there, had tried to fill, and had failed to fill. As I wrote this single paragraph which I won’t share with you, the need became clear. The missing scene became clear. I wrote two pages of outline for a scene-sequel combination to fill the hole.

Then a new partial scene appeared. I documented the idea.

I jumped ahead to community. I wrote a paragraph and nothing happened. I actually felt thankful. It’s one thing to find the missing link, but it’s another to have everything you do generate new ideas. It is nice to know that most of my story is solid, and by not triggering any new ideas, this theme relating to community made me feel good.

Then I wrote about guns. The word “gun” is not on my list, but I added it somewhere in this exercise. The last scene I read to my monthly group was about Dan cleaning his gun. I had thought about cutting the scene, and if it didn’t go well, I would have. Three said “wow!” with wide eyes and gaping mouths. I said “huh?” Apparently they thought he was going to shoot himself. Really? I didn’t mean to write that, but apparently I did, and apparently it was powerful. And the word gun popped into my head on Sunday morning as I sat in the warm coffee shop. I came up with another gun scene, a little more tension this time. And it is not a complete scene but the start of a scene I’ve already written, a scene I didn’t like because it dangled. It will not dangle any more after I fill it in with this prelude!

I left after an hour, drained and happy. And now I have a new technique for discovering my stories — write about the themes.

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