Toolbox: Chapter Chart

Still crunching around here. Two weeks left in the semester, so that means final projects are almost due (60% of my grade! Yikes!). Budget dealings. New projects, which always come in only when there are already piles. BUT I finally managed to finish my read-through of GG, and am at last on to my first major revision step: the Chapter Chart.



The Chapter Chart is my own version of Diana Peterfreund's Plot Board. I'm very visual AND analytical (after the fact), so I was drawn to her method immediately...I just didn't have that much room. So instead of a big board I use a tabloid sheet of paper, and instead of post-its I use a big pile o' highlighters. Other than that, it works pretty much the same.

My method:

1. AFTER the first draft is written, I do a read-through. Then I identify major plotlines/threads that I want to track, and assign each one a color. For instance, this book has 7 threads I want to look at (at least at this stage--I could get more into detail, but I think this will work for now). For GG, most of these threads are the relationship with a particular person (Mom, DR, Tony), but not all.

2. I divide my paper up into columns, one for each chapter, and label the columns "Ch 1" etc. This book, first draft, has 21 chapters.

3. In each column I write the basic action that happens in each scene. Under each scene description I mark the colors of the threads involved/progressed in that scene. For this book I also write how many pages each chapter was.

What does this do for me? It gives me a visual look, in one swoop, at how the threads are carried through the book. I can see easily if I dropped a relationship or thread for too long, or introduced something too late. It helps me organize all the threads in my head, and intertwine them better. It helps me judge the balance, the pacing, and where I just dropped the ball (cut!). Most important of all, it gives me, at the start of revisions, a good sense of the whole book and how it works together.

I write by the seat of my pants, with no idea where I'm going. But once I'm there, it's time for active craft to take over. :)

Feeling Green

I've been reading a book by a wonderful writer. The pace is excellent, drawing me through each chapter delicately but persistently, never letting go. The characters are deep, rounded, and passionate, as vivid as my husband sitting next to me. I can see each of them and understand them, without being able to predict what they'll do next. The word choice is clear but original, with metaphors that make me alternately nod my head with the perfection of the image and laugh along with the narrator. It's fabulous.

And it's given me a horrible case of Writer's Envy.

You know the saying about imitation? I think envy is really the sincerest form of flattery--if you can call something you never admit to sincere.

Because you don't want to admit to it, even to yourself, do you? You know, as a writer, that comparison is the quickest blood-sucker of confidence. Once you start envying, the shine comes off your own work and your own ideas. You start the whirlpool thought process: I can never write like that. Why even bother? I should just hang it up now, start a fan club, and be done with the whole farce. Down and down, around and around, until every word of your own writing sounds like crap and you're sucked down to the bottom, wallowing in self-pity and envy.

So you have to not do that--but I think every writer does, unless they have an ego the size of Alaska. Even the ones you idealize, and the ones I idealize, have felt just exactly that way when reading someone else's work. It's really that way with every endeavor. When I was dancing I used to feel the same kind of envious awe watching a great pirouette, or grand jete. So instead of avoiding it altogether you have to be able to recognize the whirlpool for what it is and drag yourself out in time, or get your friends to throw you a lifeline.

Me, I emailed the writer directly, told her I was going to fly down and kick her ass myself if she ever told me again that she was "lucky" to be published, because she was just That Good. And then I whined a little. But I don't recommend that in most cases. {s}

I do recommend that the next time you find yourself in the throes of Writer's Envy you read, and contemplate, her response to my whiny email: "That's bullshit. About you not being able to write like whatever. You'll write like you, which is great. So there."

So there.

And of course, the writer is Vicki Pettersson. And the book is TASTE OF NIGHT.

Who are the authors who make you feel green?

The Writing Journal

Confession: This is Vicki's method. After she told me to try it four or five times, I finally did. And it works so well, I'm going to pass it on to you. Try it. Don't make me tell you five times. {g}

After I decided to put TMT under the bed, I had no idea what I wanted to do next. I wanted to try something I was enthusiastic about, something that included all the elements I love. But you've all heard this before. The part I haven't talked about is the Writing Journal.

Yeah, revolutionary, right? A journal. Like no writer has ever tried a journal before...that's what I thought. But then Vic explained that she wasn't just writing her daily life experiences. It's more than that--it's a way of freeing yourself to talk about the character, to get into the character, without worrying about the precious words.

So here's what you do. When you sit down to write, open a journal file. Do a paragraph or so about how you feel, what's going on around you, life. Then just start to type about your character. What is she doing right now? What situation is she stuck in? How is she feeling? Put in any authorial notes you want. Write what you changed last time, thoughts you had about the world/setting, ideas you're thinking about. Jot down those niggly ideas or questions you have. Do you need to expand that scene with Joe? Does this part feel flat? What could happen to make it more interesting? Suggest something off the top of your head, then explain to yourself why that won't work, or is cliche. Suggest something else. Think with your fingers. Then...go write the scene you're thinking about.

This works SO well for me. It allows me to brainstorm and avoid wrong turns before I take them. It allows me to get into the character, to think about all the intertwined threads of what's going on with her so I don't lose track of any. It allows me to work things out without worrying about which words to use.

I also insert pictures all over my writing journal. This is what I think Jenna looks like. This is what I'm imagining Joe looks like. Here are pictures of the setting...and then I can go back to those at any time.

I did this every day for a week or two before I started actual writing on JENNA, but by then I was so itching to start the writing I was ready to go. And I'd already thought of and rejected several possible plot options, in favor of more interesting ones. Now I don't do it every single day, but I do several times a week, and any time I feel stuck on where's the best place to go next. It's a fabulous--and simple--tool.

Ready to try it yet? If you're stuck at all, or you're just ready for a new idea, try it out.

Oh, and did I make anyone curious as to what Jenna looks like? {g}

The Life

Still here, just hiding. Livin' life, which is rocking pretty hard right now, so I'm trying to enjoy every minute.

Yesterday Child and I had an unexpected day off together, since her school decided to go ahead with their planned Ski Day. Um...it's been 60-65 degrees for 3 weeks, with no storms. Anything left on the slopes will be pure ice. And I'm not sending a preschooler to ski on ice, sorry.

So I was Super Mommy, and invited her best friend over for a playdate in the afternoon instead. Man, it is so cool to watch your kid be that happy. The two of them were giggling like fiends for 3 hours straight, playing dress up and 'chicken pox' (?), and playdoh meal-making and Angelina Ballerina and I don't even know what all. I was also selfishly hoping that I'd have time to write while they were playing, but I only managed 100 words in between being Miss Lily and Mom and the sister who did not have chicken pox. And that's okay--I have enough sense to know that word count and even writing are not always the most important things. {s}

However, I'm back to it today (trying to resist the Spider Solitaire urge, but that's another story), and will get up over 8000 at least.

Oh, and I found a wonderful, perfect post on "How to Write the Book of Your Voice" by Julie Leto. YES yes yes. Writers, go read it. This is the realization I've been coming to these past few weeks. (Thanks for the link, Diana)

And then what happened?

I got some great work done on Book 2 yesterday, and added some more today at lunch when I wasn't hampered by eating. {s} I'll try to work on it a bit more later and get it at least to 7,000 by the end of the day.

Yesterday I realized a trick that I pull on myself to keep my motivation going, and thought it might be useful for someone else.

When I stop for the day--which is usually because of time constraints with me, but sometimes just because I've done enough--I try to stop in medias res. Right in the thick of the scene, often even at a cliffhanger. I don't wrap things up neatly at the end of my workday, with a resolution or with the character going to sleep.

Why? Well, I hadn't even realized I did this until yesterday, but when I thought about it for half a minute it was clear. When you're reading a good book, what keeps you going? What keeps you turning the pages after you meant to go to bed, or keeps your thoughts flying back to the book-world during the day? Tension, and uncertainty. So I do the same thing when I'm constructing a story. To keep myself thinking about it and intrigued enough to tackle it the next day, I end with a hook for myself.

Yesterday's hook for the end of the day was:

I stopped when I saw the gypsies, but not in time.

So today I had a fascinating place to start, and I was eager to get back to it and find out what the heck was up with the gypsies. I wonder if this also helps to make sure there is continued tension in the book--if I'm constantly trying to interest myself, maybe it helps to keep readers there too.

Tricks we play with ourselves.

Medieval Word of the Day: Hock-day: The second Tuesday after Easter Sunday; Hock Tuesday: in former times an important term-day, on which rents were paid, and the like, Hock-day and Michaelmas dividing the rural year into its summer and winter halves. It was also, from the 14th c., and probably earlier, a popular festival, signalized by the collection of money for parish purposes by roughly humorous methods.

Handwriting and Mushrooms

Yesterday we had a day-long research seminar for work, so (horreur!) I was away from my computer all day. Fortunately I always use the less-apt talks in these seminars to work on the WIP in my notebook. Yesterday I'd been away from Book 2 too long to jump back in with real writing in that setting, so instead I made a bunch of useful notes: "what could be going on in Bordeaux right now?" {list}; "what would C. be thinking about?" {list}. I find that lists and handwritten brainstorming are critical for me to work out plot points, settle what's going on in my head, and get creative with new twists. Most of my best ideas have come in my little notebooks.

I saw another writer talking recently about a book coming to her "by hand" instead of through typing on the computer, which I found very interesting. Most of the time I'm perfectly happy to do my actual writing on the computer, to be able to fiddle, cut here, tweak there, use the online thesaurus. However, there are a few scenes in TMT that I wrote by hand in notebooks because I was stranded away from a computer with time on my hands--and two of them are perhaps my favorite scenes. One is the dream scene, where my MC connects with her mother through a somewhat prophetic dream; that one was written during a research seminar. The other is Katherine's first meeting with John, my currently posted excerpt. I started that scene in a hotel room in Estes Park, Colorado (in the hotel that Stephen King based The Shining on, by the way; it's supposedly amazingly haunted), and it was one of those times when I just couldn't bear to stop writing. John just popped up out of nowhere, a true "mushroom" to borrow Diana Gabaldon's term, and was so vivid to me I felt I could touch him, hear him. I finished that scene, scrawling as fast as I could, in the airport for my flight back. And interestingly, I think I only changed a few words here and there from the original notebook mess; it mostly came over intact.

I wonder if John would never have come into the story at all if I hadn't taken that trip. Isn't writing a kick? Sometimes I really do feel I'm reaching to some Other Side where these people exist. If John isn't real somewhere, he should be. {g}

Perhaps the lesson is that I should try to do handwritten work next time I feel stuck. Or maybe that I should go hole up in a haunted hotel more often...

Medieval Word of the Day: mordant: A device which clasps or holds something fast. 1. An ornamental hooked fastening, usually jewelled, on a girdle or belt.