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Don’t turn your characters into contortionists! That’s my big writing lesson this week.

I had what I thought was a good idea. I had two interesting and complex characters, with deep emotional conflict. I had a setting I like, London at Christmas.

What I didn’t have was a story that worked.

My mission is to write a 10 to 15 K romantic novella, based on the song Santa Baby, ready to submit by July 10. It took doing this week’s course homework for the writing course I’m enrolled in to figure out what wasn’t working. A key part of the homework is to write a sentence summarising the story in 30 words or less.

I couldn’t do it! The characters sounded hopelessly unsympathetic for a light Christmas novella, even to me who created them. I needed to explain too much. There was too much in the plot that was dark and heavy (death of a key secondary character). Sheesh, I don’t know that the secondary characters should even have names in a 10K novella, let alone a crucial role to play in the character arc for the hero or heroine!

The other thing that gave me a big clue was that I really couldn’t fill in the main pre-writing tools I use for these characters as I had them. If I can’t do that, I know there’s something wrong!

I’d spent all week doing story development. Started writing the story, but I knew I just didn’t have it right after one chapter. The characters didn’t fit the story, or the story didn’t fit the characters. I’d had to make the characters do things that were too out of character. I’d turned them into contortionists. No way was this a story that met the brief. I still think I have the seeds of a good story in there, but not for this Call for Submissions.

In the past, this is where I would have given up on having anything to sub for this Call for Submissions, and grabbed at the next new bright shiny story idea.

This time, I kept playing with it. I’ve promised myself to see through a story once I start it, as I’m a serial non-finisher. Ideas for how to change things kept coming. But I had way too much going on for a short novella. The characters had to change too much to get from where they began to a resolution in fifteen thousand words. The plot was so convoluted I needed contortionists as hero and heroine.

I wrote in the last entry how I realised I had the heroine all wrong. I’d made her relate to the words of the song way too literally. Once I had that, and slept on it, the rest fell into place like dominoes. The hero. The conflict. The resolution.

It felt almost miraculous how I woke up yesterday knowing just what the story needed. A classic opposites attract romance. Pared right down to the bare minimum, the essence of who the characters are. Yesterday, I did the Save the Cat beatsheet, and the Identity to Essence chart. It worked!

Today, I did an outline, and just finished a very rough draft of chapter one on the Alphasmart so I wouldn’t stop to edit as I went. I feel happy with what I have. It seems to me this is the best story I’ve done, in terms of having the conflict and structure in place, but I’ve thought that before! I’m too close to it to see what I’ve missed or what I have put in that really doesn’t work.

The chapter is too long, at 1800 words, but that’s good because I’ll have lots to play with when the time comes to edit. I’m going to resist the temptation to start tidying it up now. It can stay as it is, gross typos and all, until I have a complete first draft. It should come in at around 18,000, then I’ll need to edit it down to under 15. It I have something that looks a total mess that I HAVE to cut, I won’t be so in love with my own words I miss what need to come out.

That’s the theory anyway!

How much pre-writing planning do you do? Is it different for each story? Any tools you use and recommend?

Photo by AlicePopkorn

I haven’t even started writing the story yet and already I’m stressing about getting it right.

A scene complete with dialogue started playing on that movie screen in my head, of course in the bath when I have no way to write it down. I thought a cliche, and stopped the story with a screech of brakes to come up with an alternative, something brighter, less everyday. Of course, nothing came but different cliches. Fresh language can’t be forced. No more story after that.

I need to remember what first drafts are for.

They’re for getting the story down. They aren’t the place to spend half an hour worrying about a better way to express a single phrase. They aren’t the place to stop and think about whether my language is too simple or too flowery. They aren’t the place to make it all pretty and neat and tidy and politically correct and unoffensive to anyone, even my mother-in-law. They aren’t the place to take the whole writing session doing a long research session on the physics of time travel or the streetscape in 1800′s Paris or whatever. They aren’t the place to stress about whether the character’s GMC is coming out enough or my scenes and sequels are in the right order or my Break into Two comes at the right word count.

That comes later.

First drafts are for getting to know the characters, getting those story people on the page, moving around, thinking, feeling, talking, doing things. Fleshed out, not cardboard. They’re for finding out what the story is about. They’re for cutting loose and having fun with words, being as wild and outrageous and playful as I want, or as pedestrian and simplistic and cliche riddled as it comes too. Whatever it takes, if that’s what gets the story down on the pages so I have something I can edit later.

Second draft is for the tightening, the fine tuning, the layering in more of what’s needed, the taking out of what’s not, the moulding and shaping.

It is for me, anyway. I know everyone has a different process. I have published friends who edit as they go, whose minds work in a miraculous way that means close to first drafts can be subbed, with minimum rewrites. They don’t plan, either. I’m not jealous at all, oh no, not a bit. I’m always this colour green.

The thing is, I’ve tried that. And I’ve tried extensive prewriting planning. It simply doesn’t work for me. I end up with a slow, stodgy, overcooked porridge story, no life or energy in it.

I do plan, at least try to get to know my characters and what their story arc might be, how they need to grow and change over the course of the story. But I still seem to need a discovery draft. I need to fumble my way in the dark towards what my story is. The real story I want to write always seems to end up being something a long way from what I first thought. I’ve tried doing it differently, but it keeps coming back to the same thing. This is my process. I write my way in. This is what I need to respect, and work with, and play with.

Just like morning pages, no second thoughts. No deleting. Just keep those hands moving on the keys and those words coming. Write as wild and as raw and as real as I can. Yes, I might have a plan, a bit of an idea where I’m going. I don’t want to set off into the pathless forest without any sort of map and compass and concept of direction at all. But I don’t know what I’ll find until I get in there. I need to keep reminding myself to let the story be what it is in first draft. Crazy, chaotic, contradictory, crappy.

Because somewhere in that mess is the story I really want to tell.

Well, I’m pretty sure that’s my writing process. Not the recommended method, especially by story architecture purists, but it’s mine! What’s yours?

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Don’t turn your characters into contortionists

What first drafts are for

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