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NaNoWriMo is in the Cloud

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

Hello, writers!

It is day four of NaNoWriMo. For the uninitiated, that stands for National Novel Writing Month. The object of Nanowrimo (or Nano, as people write shorthand) is to write a novel (50,000 words minimum) in one month. As of day 4, I am 7800 words into my novel, which puts me just a little ahead of the game at this time.

I intend to write more before bed, but I had to stop for a blog post after checking my email. As a participant, I receive letters of encouragement from NaNoWriMo’s very own Chris Baty at intervals during the process. Tonight, I read letter one.

I learned something new.

NaNoWriMo is In the Cloud.

For tech geeks everywhere–who have been buzzing about Cloud Computing for a year or more–this ‘non-techie’ explanation of the Cloud offers some perspective. Yes, virtual computing world, the rest of the world is way way WAY behind you.

But it takes a writer to make it funny.

I am republishing this letter for two reasons: 1. The piece about Cloud Computing is just precious, and 2. I want all the people I know who hemmed and hawed about how they want to do NaNoWriMo but just CAN’T to get the same encouragement as people who made it at LEAST as far as signing up.

Enjoy!

Dear Author,

Is it November 1 already? Holy cow.

This is my 11th NaNoWriMo, and I feel as excited today as I did for my first NaNo back in 1999. One of the reasons for my giddiness is that we recently moved the NaNoWriMo and Young Writers Program sites to a cutting-edge, virtual server set-up known as “cloud computing.”

I have no idea what “cloud computing” is. Every time our Tech Manager Dan tries to explain it, I get a little more confused. From what I’ve been able to glean, NaNoWriMo’s websites exist entirely in the imagination of an astronaut in Belarus, and we log into the sites through his forehead.

I just ran this by Dan and he said it wasn’t technically accurate. But wherever our mysterious server cloud is located, it’s been giving us great new insights into our participants. The cloud tells us which web browsers people are using, and how long Wrimos spend on each page of the site. It also has the telepathic, possibly illegal ability to tell us what our participants are thinking at all times.

This is why I’m writing you today.

Last night, the cloud mentioned that you were having some mixed feelings about the month ahead. Is this true? It said you were excited by the challenge, but worried that adding a 50,000-word novel to your to-do list for November may end up doing some bad things to your sanity. It also said that you were concerned that your novel might set new records for suckitude.

I apologize if the cloud was talking about another participant—its non-binary language skills are rudimentary at best. But just in case the cloud was talking about you, I wanted to reach out with a couple quick reassurances before we start writing.

1) Your novel will not be as bad as you fear. In fact, by November 30 you will have amassed tens of thousands of words of very solid prose. You will come up with things that make you laugh so hard you have to wipe off the keyboard afterwards, and passages so moving that you will cry as you write them. Your plot will unexpectedly give birth to fantastic subplots, characters will reveal surprising and juicy things about themselves, and you’ll have some moments during NaNoWriMo that will rank among the most satisfying and happy-making of your life.

You will also, however, write some flagrantly nonsensical chapters, create pages and pages of dialogue that make you cry (in a bad way), and endure a few shameful days where the only thing keeping your word-count afloat is the fact that your protagonist has a habit of reading the dictionary aloud whenever she gets nervous. And she’s always nervous.

This is totally fine. All the books we’ve loved started out in a similarly imperfect form. They’re called rough drafts for a reason. No one gets a novel totally right on the first pass. This is true whether you give yourself a month or a lifetime to write the first draft. There’s an adage in noveling that you can revise a bad first draft into a great book. But you can’t revise a blank page into anything but a blank page. Take this to heart during NaNoWriMo. In November, all words are good words.

2) You deserve some fun. We get so focused on doing the things that pay the bills that we sometimes neglect to do the things that make us feel truly alive. You have a world of people depending on you—family, friends, co-workers, bosses, teachers. Taking care of everyone’s needs while still finding time to buy groceries and bathe every couple days can be a feat. Unfortunately, this means that activities like writing and art and music tend to disappear into the margins of our lives.

Think of November as an all-expenses-paid, 30-day vacation to novel-land. It’s a place where you can whoop and holler and dance the crazy dance. A place where you can conjure new worlds, dream oversized dreams, and explore the wilds of your imagination. For one month, you get to orient your life around your creative spark, rather than vice versa.

Which brings us back to November 1. Today, over 100,000 people are heading out to find that spark. It’s going to be a great, unforgettable month. The cloud wishes you well! And all of us here on staff wish you well, too.

The world needs your new novel, author.

It’s time to go get it written.

Chris
NaNoWriMo

It’s not too late to join NaNoWriMo! Plenty of days to go. IF you start now, you just have to write 1,923 words a day. If you’ve got an idea for a novel, and just a little bit of gumption, you can do it! Just sign up at www.nanowrimo.org.

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Writers of ABC’s LOST Spill It At Bumbershoot 2009

Thursday, September 10th, 2009

I attended Bumbershoot 2009 in Seattle on Labor Day and slipped into one of the last available seats for a Q&A panel with staff writers for the ABC hit series Lost.

Why did I attend? There was a time in my life (can’t say it has expired) where script writing for television held a lot of appeal for me as a possible career choice. Unfortunately, my university did not offer any script writing or screen writing classes (I looked) and I didn’t know how else to pursue it (I was young and silly). But the concept of writing a story with a team of creative people still appeals, especially for an ongoing story with a definitive end (i.e. not a sitcom or a soap opera), so I was excited by the opportunity to hear professional television writers discuss the process of writing for a hit series.

For fans of the show, or just the curious, here are some things that were said:

  • About Season 2010: Season 2010 is a mystery the writers can’t discuss (not a surprise). However it was said that we might see some dead or missing characters, such as Charlie (whoo hoo!) and maybe Cindy (a flight attendant?). It was not revealed if these characters would appear in flashbacks, in real time, or in “rewritten” time.
  • Consulting the Internet: The writers for Lost do not check the Internet or read comments from fans. Critiques mid-writing can interfere with the writing process (I know this from experience, so that makes a lot of sense to me). However, the Lost team does employ two guys (just two?) whose jobs (or part of their jobs) is to peruse the Internet conversation. One of the guys is named Greg Nations. The League of Nations is an internet group of Greg fans.
  • Timeline Graphs: The staff of writers for Lost have timeline graphs that run along the walls so they don’t get lost (har har). I imagine them to look kind of like the graph that Doc Brown draws for Marty McFly in Back to the Future II, especially with the time divergence, only more detailed and more interesting. Also, something other than the flux compacitor and 1.21 jigawatts makes time travel possible in Lost (not sure what…).
  • Mythology: When asked about how much the writers ‘know what is going on’ in advance to writing it, the answer is that the mythology is pretty deep and that what viewers see in the show is the tip of the ice berg. However, many things are affected by the organic nature of television writing. For example, the characters Jin and Michael were supposed to hate each other, but the actors got along together so well on screen they ended up being written as friends.
  • How Cool Stuff is Decided: The writers talked about how fun it is to write for a show like Lost where there is so much room for zany happenings. The writers spoke about feeling confident pitching even the ‘worst ideas’ and that sometimes the best ideas came from ideas that were originally rejected. The writers specifically mentioned the decision to show the “whole statue” (only one foot is seen in the ‘present’). The idea came out at the discussion table in which someone simply proposed it as ’something cool’ they could do.
  • Why is Jack…? The first and best question came from someone who asked why Jack reminds us of that ex-boyfriend who needs to get up early in the morning to train for a Triathlon. This was hilarious on many levels. The response from the writers indicated awareness that they know Jack’s character is ‘like that’.
  • Other Character Stuff: Hurley was a favorite character of the writers present. One writer felt that Jin should be written as shirtless more often. The character Mr. Eko was supposed to have more of a story, but the actor had a difficult time living in Hawaii and had to leave the show.
  • Most Difficult Episode: The Constant was apparently a very difficult episode to write.
  • Keeping the Mystery: One questioner asked if the writers were concerned that the end of the series would reveal too much of the mystery that made the show enjoyable. The writers responded that they were conscious of that struggle and had learned from the example of the Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menanace and midi-chlorians.
  • Sequels or Spin-Offs?: One questioner asked if any sequels or spin offs were in the works following the end of Lost. It seems obvious to me that the writers would not know this as the show belongs to the network. However, one of the writers joked that perhaps there would be a cartoon miniseries called “Locke and the Monster” with moral/spiritual lessons. I would watch that noise.


There was more, but that’s what stayed in my head. Discuss!

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Why Writers Must Know Grammar

Wednesday, June 10th, 2009

It surprises me how many aspiring fiction writers don’t know a thing about grammar. The majority can’t identify the eight Parts of Speech, explain when you would use ‘well’ instead of ‘good,’ or understand why you shouldn’t end a sentence with a prepositional phrase.

I am not a grammarian myself. There are many rules about language structure that I don’t understand, despite having studied grammar independently, taken a few college courses, and taught it to children. I forget, for instance, the difference between an embedded clause and a relative clause (or embedded relative clauses?). I could use more practice in sentence diagramming. I sometimes mix up British and American usage.

Like many writers, I make mistakes. There are also things that I have learned to do incorrectly. For example, it wasn’t too long ago that I broke myself of the habit of using an ellipsis (…) instead of a dash (–) to indicate an interruption. For some reason known only to my muse, I occasionally write her when I mean him or him when I mean her, not because I’m confused by the difference, but by some sort of defunct muscle memory.

My point is that I need a copy editor and a proofreader as much as anyone. However, I do not expect a copy editor to do my writing for me. I know the basics, and I make an effort to always be learning and practicing.

There are many writers who know next to nothing about grammar or punctuation. That’s okay as we all have to start somewhere. However, it is a problem when writers believe that they don’t need to know grammar, either because they don’t recognize how difficult their writing is to understand or because they assume it is the job of a copy editor to fix their mistakes.

Let’s dispel this myth! If a publishing house wants to print your manuscript, an editor will help you make your story better, a copy editor will go line-by-line through your work, and a proof reader will make sure all is set for print, but it is not the responsibility of any of these professionals to teach you how to write.

A writer who cannot form coherent sentences is not going to get published. At the very least, every writer should know the basics of grammar and punctuation. You should know all the Parts of Speech, what they mean, and how to identify them in a sentence. You should understand what a sentence is and how it differs from a clause. You should know how to use all punctuation marks, including commas, semicolons, dashes, apostrophes and ellipses correctly. Otherwise, your manuscript is going to resemble a garbled mess that no one will want to wade through in order to find the story!

At least have a grammar book! Everyone should. It wouldn’t hurt to have several.

Not all grammar books are stuffy and hard to understand. The basic ones are like encyclopedias, but some are written like narratives and can be entertaining. The best grammar books (in my opinion) are a mix of the two and explains the whens and whys with really clear and interesting examples.

My favorite grammarian is Grammar Girl, or Mignon Fogarty, who was one of the first people I started following on Twitter. I love her because she responds to my questions. She has a podcast and a best selling book. In fact, you can win a copy of Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing by entering this contest at Writing the Cyber Highway (ends June 13, 2009).

You can keep up with Grammar Girl in the following ways:

* On Twitter: @GrammarGirl
* Subscribe to Grammar Girl’s daily tip newsletter.
* Visit Grammar Girl’s website and listen to the podcast!

Writing is a craft. If you are serious about writing, you need to understand the structure of your discipline. A writer who ignores grammar is like a chef who ignores ingredients. You need to understand the elements of language if you are going to tell a story you expect anyone to read! Doing so will not only make you a better writer, but also make the process of writing more enjoyable.

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Beloved Fantasy Author David Eddings Passes Away at 77

Sunday, June 7th, 2009

I learned via Michael Pinto on Twitter and an article from The Guardian that David Eddings has passed away. He was 77.

David Eddings is a fantasy author most famous for the epic fantasy series the Belgariad, which was five novels in length, and its sequel the Mallorean, which was also five novels. He wrote high epic fantasy at a time when it was an underserved genre. His works were inspired by The Lord of the Rings, and followed a similar (now common) story outline of a simple farmboy whose is really a prince and whose destiny was to become a sorcerer, take the throne of his kingdom, and defeat an evil god according to an ancient prophesy. Of course, Garion wants nothing to do with any of that.

The story had several lovable elements, most of which were in the characters. The sorcerer Belgarath plays a role similar to Gandalf in Lord of the Rings, but doesn’t take himself as seriously and sometimes needs firm reminders from his daughter Polgara (also a sorceress) not to be a scoundrel. One of the most memorable characters is Silk, a thief who is the funniest character in the cast and also the most disreputable (but in a good way). One of my personal favorites was CeNedra, the princess destined to be Garion’s bride, who is spoiled, obsessed with vanity and wealth, but comes to love poor farmboy Garion (much to her dismay) without knowing he is her betrothed, and upon accepting the situation shapes up to be a better person in order to support him.

The Belgariad was a lovable story, as evidenced by the fact that I can recall it so well having not touched it in over ten years.

Of course it wasn’t perfect, and David Eddings did borrow a lot from Tolkien, which is obvious to anyone who has read both series, but he made his stories unique by poking fun at tropes in the fantasy genre, writing viciously funny dialogue (his characters were consistently irreverant toward powerful people), and providing a fantasy world rich in medieval elements Tolkien didn’t mess with, such as knights, mythological gods, hunts, economics, and politics. The books’ themes also included a slew of commentary about the relationships between men and women, which made them funny and more relatable for young girls. They were a delight when I was reading them in middle school.

David Eddings grew up in the Puget Sound area of Washington State, which is also where I grew up and live today. According to The Guardian, Eddings saw himself as a story teller who hoped to inspire reading in young people:

Eddings was always delighted, he said, to hear that he’d turned non-readers into readers. “I look upon this as perhaps my purpose in life,” he said in 1997. “I am here to teach a generation or two how to read. After they’ve finished with me and I don’t challenge them any more, they can move on to somebody important like Homer or Milton.”

I did move on (to both Homer and Milton), but I still have some of Eddings’ books (the exact same ones I read in middle school) on my shelves. They are in poor shape. I read Eddings before I read Tolkien, and although he was not the author who inspired me to read and love fantasy (that was CS Lewis in the third grade, followed by DragonLance in the fifth grade), he was one of the authors whose work I reread three or four times, carried around with me, and occasionally lost in that space between the bed and the wall. I haven’t read any of his work in awhile, and doubtless I would find much to critque in his stories (I vaguely remember thinking the Mallorean was too similar to the Belgariad), but he will always be one of my most nostalgic and beloved authors.

David Eddings, you touched a generation of young fantasy readers. You were one who inspired me to write. You will be greatly missed.

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Secondary Characters Need Conflict Too

Thursday, May 28th, 2009

The middle section of my novel is STILL irritating me. Fortunately, I think I know what the problem is. My main characters are dragging their feet because the characters around them might as well be vapor. This is because I have been focused on cramming the main conflict into the allotted page count to the neglect of all other potential conflicts. Thus between ‘big scenes’ for my main characters there is an annoying lull.

I’ve been mulling over this for a few days. I don’t think I can get to the end of the first book (and have it make sense) without some scenes that develop my secondary characters–you know, those characters that are ‘friends’ of the main characters and help the main character either get into trouble or get out of it. In this case, those characters act as foils as well, so it’s really important that the reader gets to know them. They have depth already–in my mind. The challenge will be finding a place to explore it on paper.

I know I will be glad of the time it takes to develop a well rounded cast when the plot gets more complicated! I know the future (sort of…) and I will eventually NEED these characters. More importantly, I think giving the secondary characters some conflict NOW will the solve the problem I’m having with this section of the book lacking conflict for my main characters. Of course a larger plot is there, but I’m talking about the kind of immediate, gritty conflict that keeps a readers turning pages. More of that please!

So I have devised a clever solution:

I’m going to give my secondary character some background. I am going to write it into the present through an encounter with the past. I will have my secondary characters fight with each other over this event, and use that conflict to propel the rest of the story forward.

Oh. And there’s going to be a play within a play! Er, a play within a novel. How often do you see that?

I can’t help that I love theatre.

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Is Your Main Character Boring?

Wednesday, May 13th, 2009

It is a problem if your main character is boring, especially if you are writing an adventure story.

When I first started out, I was worried that my main character would be boring. I usually don’t have this problem. I am usually pretty good at creating characters that are not only interesting, but are realistic–characters you can ‘feel’. This time is no different, except there seems to be an annoyingly long ‘ramp up’ process to where my main character becomes interesting.

What kind of character should star in an adventure? This is an easy question to answer. A main character that is a shoe-in success for practically every adventure story is the plucky, good-hearted character with a destiny, a character that (if he or she only knew) is both powerful and fated to be an answer to some major problem that is part of the character’s world.

This main character is often a farm boy or a shepherd or a slave or a poor waif, but is actually a prince or wizard or prophesized savior of the world, and often the child of someone famous and powerful (and possibly evil). That’s a decent opening right there. Some people don’t like to do anything that is ‘unoriginal’ but when it comes to popular fiction, I say ‘don’t mess with story outlines that work!’

However, you can (and should) put an original spin on a tried and true trope.

The rags-to-riches story can get kind of dull if you see it repeated in the same old way every time. It is boring if it happens too predictably or too easily. If the character’s power is given to them rather than earned, for example, or if the character protests the whole way yet somehow ends up with a kingdom, the princess, and power no one would mess with.

This kind of story is a bit limp because it is utter wish fulfillment. A nobody becomes a Somebody through no effort of their own? Lazy. Why should that character conquer evil and get everything they want with no sacrifice?

I like the idea of a nobody becoming a Somebody, and I like the idea of conquering evil, but I wanted my character to work for it, and to choose it, and for it to go wrong in some way, particularly where ‘villains’ are concerned.

To have this make sense, I needed to take my character on a journey. She needed to start out as a passive, fulfilled character who loses everything and has to choose to become something quite different to achieve a destiny she’s not sure of. Unfortunately, I was little uncertain of the details of this journey, and so I wrote my character as a ‘blank’ when I started.

Oops.

It’s okay, though. It’s fixable. However, I will need to go back (after I have finished the first leg of the journey to see what she needs…) and make her fit her own story a little better. Rather than write a character who is ‘predestined’ to do what she’s going to do, I would rather her be ‘uniquely suited’ to the task. All the components are there. I just need to make certain parts shine.

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I Didn’t Hit My Manuscript Deadline

Sunday, May 10th, 2009

I didn’t hit my personal deadline of finishing the manuscript for my first novel by my birthday. I didn’t even get close. I am still stuck in the middle section where my heroine’s life gets turned upside down.

I know WHY I didn’t hit my deadline. I was busy. I moved. I had to plan my own birthday party. I was depressed at being in my ‘late twenties’ already (lol). I bought eight fish and two kittens.

But the truth is that I didn’t really want to finish. I was feeling uninspired by some problems I was having in the story (all solvable with a little creativity and hard work) and the fact that no one is driving me to finish this. It is tough when you are your only motivator!

The kittens have been a wonderfully horrible distraction of course. I got them last weekend and the little dears have certainly kept me occupied. One of them chewed through my laptop charger in the first hour of taking up residence, forcing me to write at my desktop until I could replace it. This was perfectly acceptable except that the chair is rather uncomfortable, but I managed to write through the end of a chapter in that chair with both kittens sleeping on my lap. Not disturbing them was a challenge (but so worth it, as that was their first lap nap).

Anyway, I am ‘back at it’ again, and I actually have some new ideas that may help the story. Sometimes it is good to let things stew for a little bit, as long as a ‘little bit’ doesn’t drag out.

I won’t let it! I will finish!

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How Much Do Writers Write Each Day?

Saturday, April 18th, 2009

I just moved. It took two weeks, during which I did very little writing. Sorry about that!

I love my new apartment, though. I now have an office and I’m pretty excited. Finally, a place to write after all the cafes are closed!

The trick is to get writing and keep writing each day.

I am currently sitting with my writers’ group in Shoreline listening to everyone talk about their writing habits for “getting things done.” Everyone has a different thing that works for them. Some people write 6 hours on Saturday and 6 on Sunday. Some people write an hour after work during the week. Some people write a page a day. It really just depends.

I write as much as I can. I think about writing everyday. I don’t always work on my book, but I am always working on something. I find that on a weekend, if I have the time and if I am focused, I can write for 6 hours or more at a time (until I have to break for food). On weekdays I write for about two hours. 1500 words or three pages double spaced is a good day’s work. I often spend a little time editing before I start writing, but sometimes that can drag on and be hazardous to my productivity. I write best when I go to a cafe or library between 6 and 9pm on weekdays.

I also have spurts of disciplined writing and non-disciplined writing. Lately, I haven’t been that disciplined where my book is concerned, in part because of upheavals like changes in my job and in my residence, and in part because I have been stuck, uninspired, or frustrated that my characters won’t do what I want them to do. But I have been writing. I just wrote something else instead.

I won’t finish my novel by my birthday at this rate. I now hope to finish by June. My new motivator? A writer’s conference. Also, since I now have the space, I shall reward myself by getting kittens.

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Three Cardinal POV Sins Writers Should Avoid

Saturday, March 28th, 2009

A man just approached me in a cafe and asked a perplexing question.

I was working on my book. He asked me (I’m paraphrasing) “whether I was writing in the scene or writing around the scene.”

I don’t know this man. I have never seen him before in my life. It took me a second to understand what he was talking about.

In retrospect, I think he was trying to flirt with me (I just got a cute haricut!) but I thought he was asking a genuine question. I was expecting something a stranger might say like “where’s the nearest bus stop from here?” but apparently this fellow had been staring over my shoulder and guessed that I was writing fiction because he saw quotes.

FYI: Please don’t read over my shoulder. I mean it. It makes me self-conscious. I generally choose a corner so this can’t happen, but the cafe was fuller than usual today.

As the question came out of left field, it took me awhile to understand what he was talking about. He gestured to the room when he said “scene” so my first thought was that he supposed I was writing about the cafe and jotting down what people were saying around me. I assured him I was not doing this. He came back with “No. no. I mean, you are writing fiction, right? I saw the quotes. Are you writing from the character or from above?” He made hand gestures.

Ah. He wanted to know what POV I was writing in. I told him it was the character. He nodded sagely, sensed my discomfort at the intrusion, and departed.

And now a mini lesson on POV (Point of View)!

POV is the perspective you are writing from when you tell a story.

Most writers develop an inclination for a particular POV. I can do different sorts, but my preference is Third Person Limited. In third person limited, you tell the story from one character’s perspective at a time (you can switch between clear-cut scenes or chapters, but not paragraph to paragraph). To break it down, Third Person means I use the character’s given name rather than “I” (”I” is First Person). Limited means I get inside one character’s head and stay there.

When writing Third Person Limited correctly (lots of people do it incorrectly), you can’t see into the heads of other characters and you can’t give the reader information the character doesn’t know. Writing from an “overhead” perspective (sharing information about the thoughts of multiple characters at once or about the world or story beyond the character’s knowledge) is called “omnicient”.

Three Cardinal Sins in POV

I will only share three cardinal sins for Point of View, but there are lots.

1. Jumping between limited POVs in the same scene.

This is bad writing. Careless writers do it. Lazy writers do it. Mostly it is done by writers who don’t understand POV. It is an amateur’s mistake. And I know you’ve seen it before. I know you’ve seen stories like this published. You’ve probably even seen popular authors get away with it–at least in certain genres. But just because lots of people do it doesn’t make it a good idea. Sorry. It is confusing for readers. Do you want your story to be confusing? I don’t.

2. Switching POV when writing in 1st person–anywhere in the same book OR series.

Seriously, don’t do this. I don’t care if you indicate at the beginning of a book or section that it is happening. I don’t care if Stephanie Meyers did it and made millions. It is confusing. It is awful. It is actually upsetting. You get comfortable with knowing a story from one person’s POV–then all of a sudden it changes. Ick. Yuck. When authors do this, it throws the reader out. The reader is abruptly aware that a writer is manipulating them. It throws the story into “THIS IS FICTION! IT IS NOT REAL!” zone. Don’t do it.

3. Switching between 1st person and 3rd person in the same book or series.

Don’t do this either. For the same reason as cardinal POV sin number 2. 1st Person is sacred. It has firm rules. It is great in that it can really make a story feel real, but it is supposed to be limited to that ONE person’s story. One. Period. If you choose to write ANY part of your book in 1st person, then you have strapped yourself to telling the whole story in 1st person. Do it if it makes sense. If you want more versatility, don’t do it.

I could go on, but I will stop here for now!

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Why I Cut 75 Pages From My Manuscript

Monday, February 23rd, 2009

Yesterday, I deleted seventy-five pages of my manuscript-in-progress. Why did I do it?

Those 75 pages weren’t helping the story.

They may have been well written. They may have been enjoyable to read. They may have contained stunning lyrical prose or deep insights into the complexity of human nature.

But they weren’t helping the story.

Any serious writer needs to be able to viciously gut their work. Of course there are times when cutting pages isn’t appropriate, such as at the beginning of the story when you’re not sure what helps the story and what doesn’t, but there other are times when it is absolutely necessary.

No matter how much it hurts.

Many writers have trouble cutting their work, or even rewriting it. It is understandable. You work hard on that material. Often, you don’t see anything wrong with it. You may even really like it. It might contain your favorite passage, but you honestly have to ask yourself “is it helping the story?” If not, get rid of it.

The part I cut was the middle section, which was all about my main character adapting to a new situation and forming relationships with new characters. It was the section that was giving me writer’s block. While writing it, I kept thinking “this is interesting, and I like these people, but nothing is happening.” Nothing happening is bad for a story. I wrote through it anyway (at the expense of my blog) only to determine after having done so that the entire section was absurdly superfluous.

The pages I cut are not a waste however. I learned a lot about my world and characters in writing those pages. I have a better understanding of my characters’ motivations and how they relate to each other. This is great, because having written those pages will make the rewrite of that section both better and shorter. In fact, it may not have been possible to write this section correctly without having first written it incorrectly.

After discarding all 75 pages (yes, even the parts that I really liked), I re-outlined the story. It was amazing how much easier this was to do! I had struggled with the outline previously, but now have a much firmer grasp of what is important to the story. Outlining was a breeze the second time, and the story is much snappier.

Of course, I still hope some of the “choice” paragraphs in the 75 page dump will make it back into the story on the rewrite…

Interested in the story? Read my query letter-style synopsis

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