Writing Week in Review 10/12--10/17 2015

Writing Week in Review:


This week started off rough. On Monday, the words just didn't want to emerge. Writing was brutal; the mental equivalent of scratching fingernails on a chalkboard, with BOTH hands. I barely got 4 pages in eight hours of writing ("trying" to write).

Tuesday and Wednesday moved along better with 8 pages each day. Good but not what I was hoping to achieve.

Thursday, mental gears rolled along much better. 11 pages.

Friday was glorious. I wish every day came this easily. For some reason I was in that writing zone. I was inside the novel and trying to keep up with everything that was going on. 20.8 pages!!!

I mentioned some days back that I "hoped" to be finished yesterday with Lady Squire. VERY close now. In the home stretch! Here's where it stands: On Chapter 79. By the standard 250 words per page, it is 709 pages long. You heard it, too? Trees in the forests are groaning! Good thing Kindle sales are much higher than PB.

Thanks, guys, for your patience! I plan to write more today (7 pages in 4 hours) and back into the grind on Monday. I will keep you posted.

Keep the Reader Guessing

Years ago, when I first decided to write "seriously," I submitted a lot of short stories to science fiction/fantasy magazines. Sadly, a lot of those publications are now defunct. But, I learned a lot from various editors during that time.

Some editors were gracious enough to enclose pointers with their rejection forms. However, a few went a bit further and actually wrote comments on their forms (ALWAYS a good sign). One piece of advice was to avoid using too much exposition. Basically, get to the point and don't bog down the reader with nonessential background information. Marion Zimmer Bradley put it another way, as she had been told by an editor, "Johnny gets his butt caught in a bear trap and spends the rest of the story trying to get out of it." Dean Koontz suggests start with the action.

I've learned that adding the urgency and dilemmas early on--like the opening--really pulls the reader in. After all, if readers aren't interested in what you're writing, they won't finish the work. No audience? What's the point in writing other than for one's self-amusement?

I took creative writing courses during my senior year of college. The professor kept insisting that I show the monsters of Predators of Darkness on page one. His advice was to put it all on page one, but page one is only so long, right?

I argued  that I don't need to put a description of the monster on page one. When he asked, "Why?" I explained. If I show the monster on page one, I just killed the suspense and mystery that attracts the readers to the main character's problem. You're more afraid of what you don't see hiding in the shadows than when you find out exactly what it is. Ask anyone that's terrified of spiders or snakes that steps into a room where a spider or snake is hidden what level his/her fear is. If you know where it is, you can avoid finding it. Not knowing where it is . . . means you might accidentally walk into its path. Sometimes not seeing is MORE frightening. The possible element of surprise, so to speak.

This is why I try to start with the action first and keep the reader guessing until the end.

Getting into the Flow of Writing

The hardest part about writing is getting into the flow. For the past two days, I've added 8 pages per day to Lady Squire, but it took a few hours of staring at the computer before the words dislodged. Once the dam breaks, the words seem to spill out faster than I can write them. That's a wonderful sensation once it occurs, but it's hell before that.


I love being in the writing zone when the story unfolds right before me. One of the best compliments readers have given me is that they feel like they are there in the story, too. But, as the writer, I am there. I am in the characters' world, seeing and hearing everything around them. Maybe that's why others feel that way too?

Time to venture back into Aetheaon! Here's hoping it doesn't take long to step through the portal.

Following Your Muse

Sometimes a writer’s muse will do unexpected things with a character or a storyline, but that’s a good thing.  Don’t ignore the gentle prodding.  Follow.  I give you two examples of how this has worked well for me.

First:

I’ve been asked if I use an outline when I write.  The answer is: “No.”

I don’t know why, but I’ve never been able to outline events well before they occur in my fiction.  When a great idea pops into my head, I immediately write it down.  That’s my writer instinct.  I may not know where the idea will lead, but I’m willing to follow.

That’s how the Darkness Series began.  In January 1996, when I laid down to go to sleep, the opening sentence came to me:  “Dropping a cat from the top of a ten story office building was not the best way to remain hidden, but it was necessary.”

I was intrigued.  I didn’t know where the story would go or why someone dropped the cat off the building, but I got up and wrote it down.  A few minutes later when I was trying to go to sleep, the next two paragraphs came to me.  So, again, I got up and wrote down the words.

The next day I sat at my computer and hammered out twenty pages in a few hours.  At the end of those pages, I found myself in a new dilemma.  I couldn’t add anything else to the storyline.  Anything I attempted to add didn’t fit, sounded too corny, or took away from the characters and the building plot.  I was stuck, and I didn’t know why.  I printed it out and set it in a box to work on later.

Two years later, during my final year at Morehead State University, I registered to take two creative writing classes in the coming fall.  During the summer I took out the twenty pages and thought I would see if any new ideas stirred to breathe life into this story.  Rereading the piece I realized something.  I didn’t have twenty pages of the novel.  What I had was the skeleton of a novel that needed depth, description, and more urgency to push the plot forward.

I took a yellow notepad and made a lot of notes.  When I was content with how I would flesh the book out, I sat at the computer and spent a week working and revising with the new ideas.  The last sentence of the original twenty pages now ended on page 100; but still, I couldn’t add anything else.  Frustrated, I set it aside.

Once the fall semester started, we met the new creative writing professor, Dr. Chris Offutt.  He stated that his class would be treated like a writer’s workshop, and on our designated days, we could bring in a short story or the chapter of a book we were working on to have the class evaluate it.  When my day came, I brought the first chapter (~32 pages) of Predators of Darkness: Aftermath in and gave each student a copy.  The next week they came back to critique and offer suggestions about what did/didn’t work.

After everyone in the class made their suggestions, the professor walked to the chalkboard.  He drew out a diagram on the board and said, “Leonard, you don’t have one chapter here.  What you have is five or six chapters.”  In a matter of minutes he mapped out five chapters.  I feverishly wrote down his suggestions.  The best part is that something clicked.  The fog lifted.  And I suddenly visualized my characters, their uniqueness, and their voices were audible in my head.

Eventually, Predators of Darkness: Aftermath grew into 340 pages, and there are four complete novels in the series.  Had I not written that sentence down, I do wonder if the series would have occurred.  After all, I didn’t have a plot or any characters.  All I had was the one sentence.  I never imagined the opening sentence would spawn four more novels afterwards (Yes, I’m working on the fifth book), which is why I suggest that writers follow their muse, carry notebooks, and don’t get chained to an outline.  If a character takes an unexpected turn into a dark alley, don’t stop him/her.  Follow.

Second:

A couple of years ago I published Devils Den.  Due to the characters in the fantasy realm of the novel, I thought that writing a novella backstory would be a good idea.  However, my muse had a much different idea.

The fantasy characters in Devils Den I’ve known—in my mind, at least—for more than twenty years.  The first novel I attempted was based on these characters, but the plot was too weak to develop, so I killed the story.  But the characters never died.  They didn’t speak a lot, but they were there in the back of my mind, maturing.

As I started the “Prequel” for Devils Den, something strange occurred.  The characters wanted their voices to be heard, and they weren’t shy about letting me know.  What I thought would be 40-50,000 words, came to life on a much larger scale.  Twenty years of maturing in my mind, the characters suddenly brought their world to life.  And thanks to Millard Pollitt, who drew an outstanding map of the realm, so many places can be explored.  The plotlines are endless.

The new novel is a 148,000 word epic fantasy novel (Name and cover soon to be announced). Since the events in this novel are twenty years prior to Devils Den, and so much occurs between the two, the new book has become the first book in its own series.

So, you see, my muse took me in a different direction and definitely farther than the novella I had planned.  Most often my muse knows more than I do, so I follow, take notes, and I write down what I hear and see.  If there’s a better formula than that, I don’t know it.