Stone Magic Flash Fiction Posted on Writer Unboxed

My flash fiction story “Stone Magic” is posted on Writer Unboxed’s 7 Sizzling Sundays of Flash Fiction.  This time I wanted to do a contemporary fantasy.  I had just read Writer’s Workout (a good book, BTW), and it said to plan for 10 drafts.  That seemed like a lot, but this story of only 247 words took 7 drafts.

The first 5 were the result of two elements coming into the story in the first draft.  I picked one, and it sent me in the wrong direction. No surprise there!  My family and friends know how easy it is for me to go in the wrong direction.  Seems to be a natural state of being me.

On draft 5, I still wasn’t happy enough with the story, so I let it sit a day.  It hit me today what to do, and I gutted the story (except for two sentences) and story turned into magic.  The last draft was nibbling at the word count to make it fit within the guidelines.

Please drop by and check it out and don’t forget to vote for it!

Can you guess where the story is set?

 

Anatomy of a Pantser Story

All my life, people have told me, “You need to outline.”  The way I wrote mystified everyone, and they thought I just hadn’t discovered the value of an outline.  We’re not broken!  Pantsers merely have a different approach that doesn’t involve outlining.  I recently wrote a short story, and I noted the process as I went along.

The story was for a war-themed fantasy and science fiction anthology, with a short deadline.  I had five days to finish it.  I started with an existing idea.  I don’t know much about the story, other than the main character has an unusual magical skill that’s highly valued and feared.   Starting the story with so little is terrifying, but … Read the rest on Unleaded Fuel for Writers.

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Welcome to my new follower, Coyotetooth13.  Check out the wonderful posted!

Please visit my flash fiction Sand Dollar Wishes on Writer Unboxed!

 

The NCIS Guide to Structure for Pantsers

When I moved out of the military barracks, I was introduced to an unexpected horror: Solo cooking.  The guidance was framed from the perspective of family cooking, and implication was, “Get a family.”  Every recipe was made for a family, not an individual. That’s the way it seems for pantsers when it comes to structure.  There are many resources that weave it in with outlining, the implication being, “Do an outline.”  And if you’re like me, you probably can’t.

But a TV series like NCIS is a rich source of structure examples.  In a book, structure can disappear into the story, but in a TV show, the commercial breaks highlight it.  Read more on Unleaded Fuel For Writers.

 

Awesome Scrivener for Windows Hacks for Pantsers

I’ll tell you, when I started the revision for Miasma in Microsoft Word, it was a complete disaster.  As a result of being a pantser, I shuffle chapters.  A lot.  I have so much movement of scenes in my story I ought to have a sign that says, “Story is geologically unstable.  May shift at any time.”

Enter Scrivener for Windows.  It’s a great tool to help pantsers write.  These are a few of the hacks I’ve discovered:

Notes

Each text file contains a section for document notes, and there’s one for project notes.  You can jot down ideas, make a memory dump of a part you will be working on, or add a character name you’re having trouble with.

Move Text Files

It’s easy to drag files around in Scrivener.  Hold the shift key down and use the arrow key to move the file to a new location.  Drag and drop works, too.

Color Coding

Scrivener has color coding for everyone.  I personally like color coding the text labels.  Go to View>Use Label Color In … >Binder.  The color coding picks up from what you’ve used in the labels for the “index cards.”

Backup Files

Not every program allows you to back up your novel.  For example, with Word, I have to resave the file and give it a new name.  But Scrivener has a simple tool to make backups seamless.  Go to File>Backup.  Click Backup Now.

Pasting Text

I sometimes will use my netbook to work on one document in WordPad, then paste it into Scrivener.  There’s a nice feature duplicating Word’s Paste Special.  It pastes your text back in the format of the Scrivener document.  Select Edit and then click Paste and Match Style.

Use it the Way You Want

I think this is one of the most powerful aspects of Scrivener.  If you’re a pantser or an outliner, it doesn’t matter.  You can use what you need and ignore what will get in the way.

For you: What kind of hacks have you been using with Scrivener?  Post in the comments below.

 

Top 10 Blog Posts for May

In case you missed any, here are the top 10 posts for May.

1. Moleskine Hacks for Fiction Writers:  I never go anywhere without my Moleskine to take notes.

2. Is There a Strong Woman Character or Are We Being Fooled?:  We have tons of books with women protagonists.  But do we have strong women characters?

3. Engaging Readers with Social Media:  Check out the discussion in the comments on whether writers should do writer blogs.

4. 5 Lessons I Learned on Finding Time to Write:  ”How do you find time to write?” is one of the most common things writers ask.  Find out what I do.

5. 5 Links on Time Management for Writers:  Check out what other writers are doing to manage their time.  There are some great links in here.

6. Writing with the Jellyfish:  On my journey to embracing being a pantser and working with my unique writing process.

7. Technology Hacks for Dealing with Twitter Spammers:  Check out some of the great tools that are available to keep spam out of your Twitter feed.

8. Should You Write with a Cowriter?  The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly:  It sounds like a great idea, but is it?  Check out what I did wrong.

9. Triberr Review: Useful Tool or Shiny Toy:   The Triberr owner dropped in for a few comments, so check it out what he says!

10. Balancing Writing and Social Media [UNLEADED]: It’s easy to get locked into “promote, promote, promote” and forget to write the book.

For you:  What subjects would you like to see?  Post in the comments below.

 

Writing With the Jellyfish – Post Update

Have you ever been to the aquarium and seen the jellyfish?  I went to the National Aquarium, and they had a tank full of ethereal jellyfish.  I could have stood there for hours and watched them.  They don’t swim, or move — they go with the flow of the currents.  That’s the way it feels like when … Read Post.  This has been one of my more popular posts, but it needed updating.  Enjoy!

 

 

M is for Meandering: Being a Pantser

I’m a pantser.  That means when I write a novel, I don’t — in my case, can’t — outline.  Sometimes I think of it as being like the Family Circus comic strip.  Thel tells Billy to come “straight home” and his idea of straight is to take a circuitous route all over the neighborhood.  It has its own direction, and it’s not necessarily the straightest point to get there.

Sometimes those meanderings turn into important things.  In Miasma’s first draft, I included a scene to a place that had been destroyed by magic because I wanted to show the devastation magic can cause.   The scene came out when I started to revise, but then, as the story evolved, the scene returned and became what the story was about.  If I tried to outline it, I would have missed out on that meandering that led to a big discovery.  Unlike outliners, the only way I can come up with scenes like that is to actually write the story and follow where it goes.  It’s crazy at times, and often requires a lot of revision, but it’s what it is.

QUESTION FOR YOU: What’s your experience when you pants a novel?  How does it develop?  What has surprised you?

 

I is for Idleness: Writer Burnout

I’ve probably lost my mind this month.  In addition to working on revising my novel — a challenge in itself, since I seem to be destined to have to add to it — I’m also taking two writing courses, and participating in the A to Z challenge.   I also got invited to write for another blog.

The writing courses are Structure Safari and From Madness to the Method.  Safari has been giving me fits because we’re on theme, and I can’t get to what the theme in my book is because I can’t figure what theme is.  M2M uses Method Acting to add emotions.  One small problem is that’s one of the things I’m adding to the novel (evidently, it’s a problem with pantsers).  The A to Z challenge is to write 26 blogs and post them on specific days during April.  I write a week’s worth and schedule them on the blog.  The other blog is Unleaded Fuel for Writers, but it only requires a post every other Tuesday.

It is a LOT of writing.  I haven’t done this much since I was trying to break into Hollywood and wrote a script a week.  A script is anywhere from 50 pages to 120, depending on the type of script.  So, essentially, it was a full, completed story, first draft to revision, in a week.  I finished one and launched on another one, and burned myself out.  Ever since then, I’ve been afraid — perhaps too afraid — of burning myself out again.   At times, I feel like I’m overwhelmed, and I want to push back to slow things way down.  But I’m also making sure I take time out for some idleness, something I didn’t know enough to do during my screenwriting days.  Idleness, while it looks not productive, helps recharge the creative batteries.

QUESTION FOR YOU: What’s been your experience with writing this much?  How do you balance it out so you don’t suffer from burnout?

 

H is for House: Novel Structure for Pantsers

I’ve been taking a course called Structure Safari on novel structure.  The first thing I always think when I hear “structure” is a PowerPoint slide showing a house with a foundation, walls, and the roof.   Admittedly, though I’ve been writing for many years, I never really understood structure.  Craft books didn’t pay much attention to it, which made me feel like it was being dismissed as unimportant.  So it was easy for me to dismiss it, too.  But after seeing an indie story that lacked structure, I understood how screamingly important it is.  Without good structure, the story fails.

But.  Yeah, there was that old but.  The books discussing structure wrap it up in outlines, as if that’s the only way to get structure.  I’m a pantser.  I can’t outline.  So what is it — everyone writes differently, but if I’m a pantser, don’t bother trying?   That’s a different message that grates and chafes at me because it’s such an outright dismissal that process can be different.

There isn’t anything out there for writers like me.  So I’ve had to mine for bits and pieces I can use.

Things I’ve Learned

Structure will not happen for me in the first draft.  I figure out what the story is by writing the story.  It’s pretty much like throwing paint on the wall to see what sticks.  I think I could make sure scenes have conflict in them, but I won’t know enough about the story until I get there to introduce structure.

Revision is where structure comes in for me.   It doesn’t occur the moment I start revising, but it evolves into the story as I shuffle scenes to get a feel for where everything fits.  I think of the parts of structure as buckets I can see in my head:

• Beginning
• First half of the middle,
• Second half of the middle
• Ending

I just need to know that each one has a high point in the story, and one lower high point.  Once I’ve identified the high points in the story, and I can fill in additional scenes or shuffle scenes to build on them.

QUESTION FOR YOU: Pantsers, what’s your experiences with structure?  When do you get it into the story?  What have been some of the challenges?

 

Writing With the Jellyfish

Have you ever been to the aquarium and seen the jellyfish?  I went to the National Aquarium, and they had a tank full of ethereal jellyfish.  I could have stood there for hours and watched them.  They don’t swim, or move — they go with the flow of the currents.  That’s the way it feels like when I write a novel without an outline — pantsing.

Post updated 5/28/2012

But it’s tough being a pantser.  If you’re one, you know we can scare outliners because our process is so chaotic.  It can be challenging to get a story finished and working.  So I took a workshop that used a “pantser friendly” outline, thinking I just needed to find the right type of outline.  There are many stories about pantsers seeing the light and discovering outlines.

The workshop turned into a 4-week nightmare.  I watched as the instructor gave out the lessons, and every other writer instantly got the concepts.  Me?  I was left to mechanically follow the steps without understanding what I was doing.  I couldn’t connect my creativity to outline.  I almost quit the workshop every week because it was that much of a struggle for me.  It was like swimming against a strong current.

But I had to try it, because failing at it was a breakthrough for me.  I understand that my process was unique to me, and I needed to find ways that would work within it.  Sometimes all the other things outside of us — craft books, other writers — can be too strong of an influence, and we spend our time trying to fit instead of finding our way.  I still find myself unlearning things so my process can work the way it’s supposed to.

For you:  Have you focused on getting it “right” according to someone else’s standards?  Post your comments below.