I have a new addiction. Plotting.
Admittedly, I’ve always loved plotting. I love coming up with a story, turning it into a plot, thinking up highlights etc. etc. Problem is, I tend to stop there because I feel that by plotting I’m stalling the writing which is the actual, real work. So I plunge right in to prove that I’m not afraid. And since I have the highlights, there are just the details, such as “hero and heroine fall in love” that need to be completed when actually writing. No problemo, right?
Wrong. I get lost in the plot and I twist it around until everything becomes more and more contrived and I just add words so I’ll end up at the next scene that actually has a point (plus I have word count goals, and unless I churn out those words, I feel I’m stalling). Each time I find that having the first scene and then one “later on” and then some, about two-thirds in and the final scene, probably isn’t enough plotting.
So I’m trying something new. I’m plotting it all out. Every detail. I think the fact that I can do that without much trouble is a sign of me having a solid story to start with. But there’s more to it – things I can see would have been a tangle later on are actually de-tangled before I even start.
One of the best advice I ever got (and I have no idea where, I just know I didn’t come up with it myself), is to use as few story elements as possible. If you have a secondary character in chapter one, don’t introduce a new one in chapter five to fill a plot point. Use the first character. In fact, you shouldn’t have anything in the chapter one that isn’t necessary to resolve the plot. Trim the fat and make the elements you have do double duty. That way, things connect. There are no lose ends. I can’t say how much this simple thing has helped me.
Another brilliant advice is (I think he was the one who said it anyway, but I haven’t been able to verify it) SF-writer Gordon Dickson’s statement that you should make sure that every character wants something in every scene, even if it’s only a glass of water. If you start out the plotting of each scene by simply listing what all the characters want out of it, you’ll soon find that you know how they’ll act. And they’ll all act. There will be no wallpaper characters, because they all have drive.
And thirdly, NoteBook. I’m a sucker for NoteBook. Colors and post-its and pretty fonts make it so much simpler to organize and visualize your plot.
So, I’m a complete slut for anything plotting related right now. Help me feed that addiction, will you? What are your best tips? Any recommended craft books? Links? keep ‘em coming, because like Depeche Mode said back in the day: I just can’t get enough.
When I start a new project I rarely have all the details worked out. I know how it will end, and I know a few things that mus happen along the way, but I don’t know the details. What is very vivid to me as I set out, though, is the flavor of the project. Not anything near as substantial as a theme, but I know how the story feels. Sad, funny, quirky, dark… I can almost taste it, if that makes sense.
And then… I get lost. There are all these words tumbling about, all these random ideas pulling at me… It’s so easy to get entangled and lose what the story was originally supposed to be like – the initial vision, if I may be so presumptuous (and frankly, who’s going to stop me?).
One thing I do to keep this from happening is make playlists. Now, if you knew me well, you would not be surprised. Usually, it’s my reaction to a lot of things (fall in love? playlist. Major trauma? playlist. Wednesday morning 8 am? playlist – you get the picture), but it’s especially useful in my writing.
Now, I rarely listen to the lists when I write – I usually need silence for that. No, they’re for my plotting sessions. See, when I get stuck, I put on a pair of comfy shoes, put the playlist on repeat and take a really long walk. And that, my friends, is when the magic happens. The music helps me to just see things about the story and my characters that, somewhere, deep down, I already know only I can’t seem to get them to surface on my own. Those are the times when I fall in love with the story all over again.
So playlists are a very important part of my writing. Heck, I’ve had entire plots come to me through one single song. Not so this time, though. This story came to me first and then I tried to find songs that would fit the various parts of it. The playlist contains, among others, Paint It Black by the Stones, Fuck the People by the Kills and Seven Nation Army by the White Stripes. It’s mostly pretty dark and destructive and decadent. But there is this one, very different, song I stumbled over by mistake that has sort of grown to become a very important part of the story. It was funny, because I just happened to put it by chance, and suddenly things I’d been pondering just shuffled into place. Just like magic.
And that is why I love my playlists.
While We Were Dreaming – the Pink Mountaintops
(I hope you like it as much as I do – this band doesn’t get nearly enough recognition)
Hello, I’m Felicia Holt and I’m potentially a liar.
I’m writing a story that I’m having great fun with at the moment. It’s set in an alternate 1860’s where the kind of technology steampunkers love abound. Yes, there are dirigibles, there is brass and industrial secrets are the main currency of international espionage. Because of this I tend to label it a steampunk.
But is it?
I don’t know. What I know is that I whole-heartedly agree with Dru Pagliassotti’s excellent article on the difference between steampunk and gaslamp.To me, it needs both the “steam”-elements and the “punk”-elements to qualify.
So why do I hesitate about my project? I have technology with Victorian aesthetics, and it’s the sort of speculative technology that is usually associated with the genre. But it isn’t central to the plot. Social and political conflicts are what the plot is about. The technology is just there.
See, what attracts me to the genre (and has, since I was a fledgling little roleplayer fifteen years ago who couldn’t even spell “steempunck”) are the potential conflicts of that age. The race for colonies. The need for those potential colonies to fight back. The social divides of 19th century Europe. The conflicts of nations that lay the foundation for the horrific disaster that was WWI. The brand new ideas – political and scientific both – paired with the extreme conservatism. Oppression and opulence.
That’s what draws me to it. The brass… Well, I more see that as a way of distancing my world from the real 19th century. Plus, let’s face it, it looks cool.
So maybe I lie when I say I am (like everyone else presently) working on a steampunk. Maybe it’s something else. I won’t have to drop the “punk”, but maybe I should drop the “steam?” And if so, do I write “gaslamp punk?” Oh, sorry, “gaslamp punk romance.”
It’s either that, or I analyze too much.
I’ve heard some people say they couldn’t write if they didn’t have a title for their project.
That’s not me.
Actually, it’s very, very good that’s not me, because I cannot come up with titles that are even halfway decent. I can write, I like to think, witty conversations, emotional musings and evocative descriptions. But I cannot come up with a title to save my life.
The contemporary I wrote this fall was easy – I had a particular theme song in mind, the first line of which made a decent title, without being an apparent steal. But the two I’m working on now – total disaster. For one of them, I even have name for the whole trilogy I plan to write (if anyone wants to read it, I’ll leave unsaid, but I’ll write it either way), but I cannot come up with a title for the bloody actual book to save my life.
It’s like I don’t have the gene.
If you do, could you teach me? Please?
Picture: David Blackwell
I just read this really interesting post over at Dear Author. And it made me think – about men, women, sexuality, romance and double standards.
Female sexuality has, in a Western historical context, always been a problem. Traditionally, women may have been associated with home and hearth but that has in no way meant that they have been viewed as less ’sexual’ than men, or possessing less sexual drive. In fact, Western society has perpetually pictured women as a dichotomy – destined for purity, motherhood and virtue, while burdened with a sinister, bubbling undercurrent of dangerous sexuality.
Female sexuality has not been so much denied in the past as feared. Women need to hold on to modesty and virtue and not give in to their true, baser nature. Doing that would turn them into monsters, entirely driven by their needs (as illustrated by a whole sleuth of Victorian novels, especially of the Goth variety). Being the virgin and not the whore has not been seen as coming naturally to women. It has rather been seen as her battling her low nature and achieving the higher purpose she was given in Creation (insert the Hallelujah Choir here). Meanwhile, uncontrolled, aggressive female sexuality has been condemned to the point where it was used as one of the trademarks of evil – see the notion of orgies at witch sabbaths. The fact that women thus needs to be protected from their own nature is really an underlying rationalization for the traditional Western way of dealing with female sexuality.
By comparison, male sexuality is considered pretty harmless – at least unless it contaminates ‘pure’ females. Male sexuality directed at already fallen women has not been a problem at all – oh, yes it’s not been encouraged always perhaps, but it has been tolerated. Men, it seems, can exercise their sexuality without endangering either themselves or anyone else.
So why is this? Well, in a world without paternity tests, whoever controls women’s fertility, controls the offspring and therefore, the future and survival of our society. Thus, women’s fertility is a key resource in our society’s survival. As such, it needs to belong to society rather than the individual woman. It needs to be controlled, and the only way to do that is to control women’s sexuality.
Therefore, unlike male sexuality, female sexuality is subversive. It’s a barely contained revolution. It’s Madame Guillotine waiting to happen, right there in our wombs. Men, well, as long as they stick with the women we know are lost to the cause already, they cannot do that much harm. But touch our society’s future, our pure women, and we *will* have your private parts slowly grilled over a smoldering fire. Trust me.
However, dirtying a pure woman isn’t the end of a man. He isn’t ruined, he’s merely harmed the common resource base. He’s a thief. He’s done something bad. The woman on the other hand, is another matter. She’s a whore. She is something bad. She’s ‘compromised’ as a resource and cannot play the part that was intended for her. Her only use will be to direct male sexuality towards her and away from the pure women – unless the man marries her of course. Then her use to society is restored and she’s somewhat redeemed.
Seen like that, yes, female sexuality becomes a currency that does not exist independently, for women themselves. It becomes an almost magic resource base. It’s always lurking, like a monster under the bed, threatening to rise up and potentially kill us all. Sort of like Tiamat, emerging from the primordial sea, threatening our whole world with the coming of the Flood. It is not to be tinkered with, certainly not by women for their own pleasure. Geez. It’d be like handing a five-year-old a loaded gun, right, because you know women aren’t really that much smarter. At least that has been the generally acknowledged truth for ages.
Funnily, in a way, historical romances are subversive in this regard. What a romance heroine often does is tell society that ‘no, my sexuality is not a resource to be used for the good of society. It’s mine to do with what I want’ by making her own choice. In that way, she is somewhat regaining control over her own sexuality. In the past, it has been expected that she proves she can handle the gun – she mustn’t go shooting all over the place, so to speak. Romantic marksmanship has been expected in heroines. But that is changing and I’m glad for it.
Generally, to me, it’s not about the need for more promiscuous heroines, or fewer virginal ones. Both belong, as do women with sexual traumas and women who are blithely just toddering along. What I think we need to do is to broaden the scope and to problemize female sexuality to a lesser degree than we might do in romance at the moment. Because unless the genre (not individual books but the genre as a whole) can address the female experience in terms that allow a wide scope of women to enjoy the books, we (as in writers and publishers and anyone else with a stake in the genre) are shooting ourselves in the foot. In my humble opinion.
For me, as a writer of historical romance, my characters must, unless they are to be complete anachronisms, to a certain point embrace the traditional ideas of female sexuality outlined above. On the other hand, unless they are to be complete assholes, they cannot embrace them fully. Because frankly, either a man or a woman who thinks women’s value is intrinsically connected to their sexual status is pretty offensive to me as a 21st century woman. I hate reading about them, and I’d hate writing about them. Yeah, it’s a challenge, but one I’ll certainly enjoy.
So, I’ll just add “how do you handle female sexuality?” to my ‘list of things to evaluate about project’, just next to “never make villain effeminate or overweight because it’s an offensive trope.”
I admit – I haven’t been very good at maintaining my website. Or this blog. If you think it has an eerie, deserted feeling, you may well be right.
One major reason is that I’m still feeling my way around, trying to find what kind of writer I am. I’m not sure yet, you see. I started out with something that might be described as historical urban fantasy (don’t ask), and then some historical paranormal stuff, but then I decided I wanted to try plain old historical romances. Forced to admit that was not my forte, I went on to contemporaries, which was fun, majorly so, but guess what?
I think I’m back where I started. I have a great idea for a steampunk story that I’ve started working on. After that, I still want to write the paranormal historical stories I began this spring. I don’t think either is a big market, but it’s clearly what I write, despite what I apparently like to think. So while I will finish the NaNo story, I am now resigned to my fate. I write genres that hardly exists.
And I freakin’ love it.
Photo: artwork_rebel
… I officially passed the halfway line. I finished at 25,047 words today, which means I’m 50% done. If i could keep this speed up, I’d be done be done by the 20th!
Unfortunately, I can’t. I’ll be unavailable Fri-Sun, due to a trip out of town, but still. I should make it. 50,000 words by Nov 30.
And since I had a little done before I started, I’m on approximately 39,000 words for the project altogether. Since mid-October. If I keep to The Plan, I should have 65,000 words by Dec 1. Then, ladies and gentlemen, I’ll pop the champagne.
And then I’ll get start redrafting and editing it. Oh, the joys of writing! 
Head over to Romance Divas November 12 – 14 for a workshop with some great authors – Gemma Halliday, Christie Craig, Jana DeLeon, Linda Gerber and Diana Orgain!
And it’s free too – all you need to do is register!
Hm, let me see…
- chocolate cupcakes (actually these never get made, but the ingredients are there. All over the place in fact)
- Cherry Garcia ice cream (OK, this is not eaten but it is mentioned)
- lemon and strawberry cupcakes (these are consumed, and with great relish too)
- cheesecake (not eaten, just pushed around the plate)
- also mentioned and not eaten are apfel strudel, sacher torte and nut brittle
And that’s all. Damn, my characters are frugal. When I serve things up, they don’t even eat them!
…one brilliant comic but no partridge nor a pear tree.