Chapter 17

Okay, so it's been 5 months and 3 days since my last post.  Maybe I should let you know how it's been going...

There is actually TONS I can, and probably should, report.

First, I just finished Chapter 17.  Exactly 20 more chapters to go.

I've remained on my 1-chapter-a-week schedule with 3 exceptions:

I didn't write June 28th because Eddie Izzard was in town, so I partied with him that night.  Just kidding.  I went to see him at the Long Center.  (AWESOME!!!  Of course!)

The following week the other Overnight Guy at work called in sick, so I covered his nights and didn't get a chance to write.

The last weekend the other Overnight Guy took some vacation.  (I just came off an 11-days-straight work binge.)  So the previous Saturday I wrote two chapters, so that I could remain on-schedule.

Early on, I realized that I didn't put enough work into my Outline.  That's a tough lesson to learn once you've started your pages.

In the past, this would have been an excuse for me to give up on this novel and move to another one, but I've been there and done that, and all it got me was several un-finished projects.

So I'm muscling through my First Draft, a chapter a week (which is a comfortable pace for me because I get 3-day weekends, and so I still get 2 days to myself to recuperate from work).

I'm not stopping to rewrite my Outline because I need to (NEED TO) experience this.  I know a bunch about writing craft, I have tons of personal experience with what it's like to come up with ideas and turn them into  stories, but the experience I am sorely lacking is seeing a project through to the end.

There is an argument to be made that if I were to stop and rewrite my Outline, then I might fall back in love with my novel, and the First Daft would get written faster because I would be enjoying the work more.  And that's a valid argument, I feel, but not the course I am going to pursue with this novel.

As I write these chapters, I am having to create more to turn, say, a non-dramatic exposition scene into something that feels more like drama.

SIDE NOTE: The "Polti Scene tool" idea is rubbish.  Ignore it.  It isn't helping me one bit.  It helped BEFORE I started writing pages because it made me feel more confident about my Outline...but then...that might have actually proved to be a liability.

The other option is to simply allow the chapters to be short.

In fact, the impression I am getting is that, in the end, when I rewrite this novel I will probably just be shorting it by maybe half.  I'll see what my beta readers tell me, but I think the outline I wrote is actually a novella.  I still like the idea and believe this will become a sellable story, but I don't think it's a proper 70,000-word/80,000-word novel.

The irony here is that, for fun, I have been working on another novel, intended to run about 20,000 words that I can sell as an eBook.  I'm creating a whole "series bible" for this new novel (even if it doesn't become a series), and I suspect that when I get around to outlining the story for this novel, I think I will have enough material for a proper 80,000-word novel!  The novel I'm writing will probably become an eBook and the novel I'm planning will probably become the full-length novel!

This idea of "series bibles" is what I really should talk about.

I watched some videos on YouTube of Jim Butcher talking about writing, and he hit on an idea that really intrigued me: He suggests you create characters as you would for a role-playing game.

And that got me thinking:

I have The Dresden Files RPG books on my Kindle and so, for fun, I thought I would use them (Volume 1, actually, "Your Story") to turn this idea about a guy who stumbles into Faeryland into a novel.

The gamers start with the creation of the City.  (Creating characters comes later.)  And this has been EXTERMELY HELPFUL!!!

I should back up a step...

The reason I thought it would be a good idea to use this role-playing game system to create if because writing up character bios hasn't proven to be much help for me.

For one project, years and years ago, I didn't have any story ideas, so I wrote up character bios for an entire cast of characters...and I couldn't get them to do anything!

I had ALL THIS INFORMATION on these people, I sat a few of them in a scene together, and NUTHIN'.

Plus, I simply do not know how much character information is ENOUGH.  How can we know?

I'm a creative guy, I can write fake histories forever!  But when do I stop and write the actual story?

And conversely, how much information is too little?

John Vorhaus just drops a character into a scene (crossing the street is the example he gives in THE LITTLE BOOK OF SITCOM) and see what the character does.

I know I can write this way, too.  I've done it.  I've written some pretty entertaining shorts whose characters' backstories are only as deep as what you see on the page.  They're interesting characters, they feel "well rounded" and "three-dimensional", but I didn't do character bios for them.

So how much prep work is enough?

My answer is "as much as the authors of THE DRESDEN FILES ROLE-PLAYING GAME, VOLUME 1: YOUR STORY tell me is enough".

And so far, that has been an EXCELLENT answer!  The authors are really, really good about pointing you to exactly how much you need to know before you start gaming and how much you can figure out later!

Oh, and the reason I thought creating a Series Bible for my next novel would be a good idea is because I hope everything I write right now becomes a series, and I want to be able to, before each outline, go back to the bible and refer to the core of my characters.  (And their city.)

That idea about defining the city as you would one of your characters is really an inspiration!

If I'm going to keep referring to their work, I should probably learn their names...

Leonard Balsera, Jim Butcher, Genevieve Cogman, Rob Donoghue, Fred Hicks, Kenneth Hite, Ryan Macklin, Chad Underkoffler, and Clark Valentine

Though I am given to understand that Jim Butcher didn't really have anything to do with developing the game.  He contributed bits here and there (as well as the Dresden-verse!!!), but he doesn't take credit for the game itself.

Anyway, this The City concept...

When I come up with a story concept, it usually takes the form of "wouldn't it be cool if this guy who's psychic accidentally stumbles into Faeryland and get entangled in what's going on there, which turns out to be affecting the physical layer of Reality!"

But that's not a story.

WHAT is going on in this particular non-physical layer of Reality?  How does it affect the physical layer?  What, SPECIFICALLY, happens?

I could write this guy's Character Bio, and then use his specific character traits to craft foils and adversaries and a love interest and all that -- and that might be a perfectly sensible way to figure out what the actual story is; I am given to believe that many writers work that way -- but I really like this idea of taking a step back and figuring out the world the characters live in first!

Here's why:

You've got certain thematic material that you're carrying around with you always.  For example, in my stories, getting wasted doesn't solve a problem, it usually prolongs it.  It's bad to murder.  In fact, it's bad for any person to enforce their will upon another's freedom.  Lying isn't a great idea.  Actually, concealing Truth is a bad idea; lying is sometimes necessary to protect someone's feelings; but when asked whether you lied, it's usually a good idea to admit that you lied.

You get the idea.  There are certain things that we each believe to be a proper way to live, and those are most likely going to find their ways into our stories.

But then there is certain thematic material that is unique to each story.

In the story I'm writing, themes that leap out at me are "assume nothing, even the impossible", "there's more to life than what we are told", "follow the evidence".

The idea of creating the City your story takes place in first allows you to figure out what you actually want to write from a Big Picture perspective as you're trying to figure out what your story is.

The game-folks encourage you to figure out what the Themes and Threats of your City are.

For example, I've got a Faery City that "overlaps" a physical City.  I've got a tiny lake-side city that I ganked from a discarded sitcom I tried to write a few years ago.  It's a tourist trap with tons of Nature.

So for my physical City the Themes might be "Not in front of the tourists", and "As long as it looks good on the outside".  My Threat might be "Enjoy nature, but don't go too deep into the woods."

This gives me an idea of the types of storylines I can look for.  There's the JAWS aspect of "we need those tourist dollars, because that's how we survive" that suggests that the city government and law enforcement might be willing to try to sweep certain things under the rug in order to keep that needed tourist money flowing in during the tourist season.  So I might be looking for storylines that deal with (minor) political corruption.  There's also the implication of a certain degree of denial in the City's population.  (Most of it, anyway... And the ones who aren't in denial will probably make for interesting characters!)

This City is starting to look like an interesting place to explore, right?

And if I stick with the Threat I have created -- "Enjoy nature, but don't go too deep into the woods" -- then my stories will revolve around unfortunates wandering where they shouldn't and people trying to restore the safety of the public at large.

Okay, within these parameters, I can think of 5 storylines off the top of my head:

1. A tourist is water-skiing and they go under...but they don't come back up!  Someone has to figure out what happened to them and prevent it from happening to anyone else.

2. A spelunker comes back with an exotic artifact.  The artifact changes hands, and everyone who has possessed the artifact ens up dead in some strange manner.  Someone has to figure out what is going on and return the artifact to where it came from.

3. A hiker get lost, and the party that goes after her finds themselves in a strange land (remember that this is a series about a non-physical world overlaying our physical word, a literal Faery story), and they have to try to try to find the hiker and get back to the regular world.

4. The town Sheriff tries to figure out why bicyclers are going missing before Tourist Season begins in earnest.

5. An impossible creature stalks the town and must be sent back to where it came from.

I literally came up with those 5 stories off the top of my head just now.  Took me maybe 5 minutes.  I could turn the first 4 into full-length novels with the storyline as the main plot.  (The 5th one is a bit too vague and too cliche...but it could make an interesting subplot.)

If I combined any 2 of them...  THAT could be a COOL novel!

And that's just using the Themes and Threats of the City!

AND...

...I haven't even gotten into what's going on in my non-physical City!!!

What are the politics of that City?  What are its basic living conditions?  How is it affected by the physical City?  IS it affected by the physical City?  What if it's not usually affected by the physical City, but something has recently happened and now it IS affected?

And I haven't even touched on my Main Character yet!

So this is why I'm now attracted to the idea of creating a Series Bible for even a single novel, and why I really, really like the DRESDEN FILES RPG system as a guide to creating my stories.

The system is intended to create enough stories to keep a bunch of role-play gamers playing every weekend for YEARS!

And yet, they suggest things like, for your City's Threats and Themes, come up with two Themes and a Threat.  So, in order to generate tens and hundreds of stories, you only need 2 City Themes and a City Threat?!

Of course!

Because you're going to have your Characters, who will ALL have their own baggage and wants and histories, and when you combine all these ingredients together, you have ENDLESS stories to tell!!!

With the Series Bible, you can even pick your genre.  The 5 storylines I came up with are of the Horror/Adventure flavor, but -- again, using only the City Themes and City Threats information -- I can come up with 5 Romance storylines off the top of my head:

1. A shop-owner meets a Faery woman in the woods and falls in love, but he can't even tell his friends and family about the wonderful, perfect love he has discovered.

2. A spelunker discovers a fantastical realm inside a cave wherein he meets a non-physical Princess, but a rival for her hand tries to drive him back to his own realm.

3. Missing hikers cause the town's Sheriff to look into the mystery, but his wife, the town's Mayor, tries to get him to stop "stirring up trouble" so close to Tourist Season.  (There is probably a young, hot female Deputy, who also wants to solve the mystery, involved...)

4. A swimmer almost drowns, but is saved by a strangely noble water-god.  The only way she can think to see her water-god again is to try to  drown herself again.  The water-god saves her again, and takes her to his non-physical underwater kingdom, where she discovers that she isn't the only one who is vying for the water-god's affections...

5. A cyclist who has lost his wife wonders if he will ever love again, until he discovers a previously unseen trail that leads him to the most amazing woman he has ever met...only she's not human...

Okay, I'm not a Romance writer, so that list probably took me 30 to 45 minutes to come up with.

Now, not being an aficionado of the Romance genre, I don't actually know if any of the above storylines are actually decent grist of a Romance novel...  But, DUDE!!! 45 minutes to come up with 5 STORIES?!!  Many beginning writers would KILL for A story, much less FIVE!!!  (There have certainly been times when I would have done some fairly questionable things to come up with a single storyline!)

And, again, that's just working off of City Themes and City Threats.

Okay, so this blog post has gone on for quite a while now.  I think I'm going to stop.

I guess the point is this:

I have fallen out of love with my Outline for the novel I am writing.  (I still like it, and the characters, and I really enjoy writing each chapter each week, but my hopes that this will be THE novel that gets me world-wide recognition have completely diminished.)  So I am doing prep-work for another novel (Actually, another novel and an audio series, but I'm not getting into the details of the latter here) for recreation.

I thought this might be interesting to report to you because it seems like a novel way to deal with the fact that I have fallen out of love with the novel I am writing, and yet I continue to write it.

If, say, you create a series and it becomes your cash-cow, enabling you to write full-time, but you fall out of love with it, this could be a useful strategy to keep you writing your money-maker while continuing to enjoy yourself as a writer!  (And, who knows, maybe generate your next cash-cow!)

May we all experience such dilemmas!!!