A Hero’s Epiphany

No, this isn’t an epiphany my protagonist had. It’s an epiphany I had about my protagonist. Which, now that I think about it, might enable my protagonist to have her own epiphany.

I’m well over 20,000 words into my “new” (haha) first draft. (It’s almost a total rewrite and re-plotting of a previous “first draft”.) My protagonist up until now hasn’t really had a clearly defined character arc. She’s basically been an ordinary, nice person, thrust into extraordinary circumstances. Those intense, life-altering events bring out her inner character and show what she’s really made of, and she perhaps is stronger because of it, but she doesn’t really have a dramatic character arc of her own.

And that’s not such a bad thing. Many fine novels have characters that don’t change much. But I’ve always felt a good story can be made richer with a realistic, dramatic character arc. It’s something you can’t force. It has to grow organically out of the story. At least for me it does. I have to follow her around, writing down what she does, until I “get” her. Quirks and all.

Today, I “got” her. She’s still basically a nice person from the start, but she’s got some growing to do if she’s to end up happy. Well, as happy as she can be after all the trouble I throw her way.

I’ve seen a discussion of character arc presented in many different forms, some more complicated than others, but my favorite is based on Michael Hauge’s brilliant lecture from The Hero’s 2 Journeys.

This is psychology 101, but the gist is that your hero has a wound. It can be a specific traumatic event in the past, or a period of time in their past that did some damage. They then build up armor to protect themselves from suffering that wound, either the past one or anew. Their armor is their outward personality they’ve built up to control and deal with the world. It’s based on fear of suffering the wound again. And the armor generally works. It protects them. But it also prevents them from living in their essence, or who they are beneath all the armor. And it’s difficult to love and be happy if you’re not living your essence.

So, character growth is about someone learning to go beyond their armor and live in their essence. That’s typically not a pleasant process, nor a process one undertakes voluntarily.

And speaking of epiphanies, you can’t just throw in an “Aha!” moment and have your character change. You’ll lose your audience. There must be a continual struggle, back and forth throughout the story, a glimpse of essence, falling back into armor, a greater glimpse, retreating back, and on it goes. Then the change, which may not be complete, will be much more believable.

If you want to get deeper into this, check out Michael Hauge’s work. He’s a master at the craft.

As I write this, I’m 24% into draft one.

I have a bit of work to do on my next draft to weave in my protagonist’s character arc up to this point, but it’s very exciting.

Ahead of Schedule in Spite of Twitter

Writer and Muse Succumb to Laziness

After recently rousing myself from a bout of writer’s lethargy (with the help of a motivating kick-start from c), I’ve been on my insane-and-probably-unrealistic writing schedule for a week now.

I’m actually a little ahead of schedule. Not bad, considering I’m outlining 10+ chapters a day. (I tend to write short chapters, so I’m estimating 50 chapters in a 100,000 word book.) The real test will come in less than a week when I have to churn out 5000 words a day (and work at a full-time job).

And all this just after I started tweeting on Twitter. Actually I’m far more a lurker than a tweeter. I’m following Felicia Day (season two of The Guild just ended; I’m hopelessly addicted), Wil Wheaton (now an author, blogger and geek), and a few friends. I had to remove Brent Spiner because he made me laugh too much throughout the day to get any serious work done.

I’ll probably remove everyone except for friends soon, now that I see how people are using Twitter. It reminds me of the early Internet phenomenon where unknown people stuck webcams around their house and allowed you to subscribe and watch their lives. People actually paid to watch a young woman eat her meals, watch TV, and sleep. Day after day after day. With Twitter you can lurk into people’s minds all over the planet. Of course there’s more to it than that, but celebrity following seems that way for the most part.

It’s far too easy to tune in to all the tweets out there and waste inordinate amounts of time. Kind of like YouTube’s related video links.

So far I’ve found no compelling motivation to tweet often. Which is great for my writing.

Oh my, look at that. Right now Felicia Day is drinking a strawberry essence layered with donut-infused milk and topped with espresso.

Back to Work

I’m back to work full steam ahead on my WIP, essentially starting fresh. I have a strict schedule, with progress indicated on the sidebar.

I imagine most of my posts will be extremely boring for awhile, for I am putting much less time into the blog so I can focus on writing.

My schedule covers the following phases: Outline, Draft 1, Draft 2, let my primary reader critique, Draft 3, let others critique, Draft 4, and that’s it. This one’s extremely accelerated since I already know the characters, their world, and most of the key plot ideas already.

I’m Not Dead Yet

Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Whew. The work project deadline has been met and I’m beginning to get life back to normal. I’m really excited about resuming work on my WIP, and there’s a freshness to the entire book for me now.

My mom has received all of the cover blurbs for her novel, with a scheduled release date of December 4th. So she’s very excited, too.

Early Years

I feel I’m getting to know my protagonist more and more. She’s extremely intelligent, and I stumbled upon this photo of her before she had learned to walk.

I added a good bit to chapter two, passing 4200 words. I’m still amazed at how much I’m changing things from the outline as I write. The basic structure’s still there, but the scenes never go exactly like I’d envisioned them.

Busy

I’m incredibly busy lately, working on a big project for my day job. Not that I choose to be so busy, as Michael Caine suggests. I’m more like the duck who finds himself so busy in the middle of the lake.

I can’t spend as much time as I’d like on writing, but I’m making every effort to write something every day. I rewrote most of chapter two and my word count slipped just over 3,000. Yes, I tend to write short chapters. However, I am considering compressing my planned third chapter and sticking it on the end of chapter two after a section break. No dawdling allowed.

Outline? What outline?

I managed to finish a little over half of chapter two today. Funny how a full-time job keeps getting in the way. I’ve already deviated from my outline in both chapters so far. These are just tiny deviations, so the outline is still a great help. But something happens when I start writing the actual text. Somehow the pieces start falling together and details I had overlooked during outlining now give me a clear picture of how the story should unfold.

I introduce my protagonist in chapter two. In my outline, I had her meeting her romantic interest at the end of chapter three. In chapter two, I had her dealing with various issues in her “ordinary life,” starting with her at work in an old bookstore with a lot of charm. But when I sat down to write chapter two, it suddenly hit me. She’s still at work in the bookstore, and we’re introduced to her ordinary life, but the first thing that happens is she sees her romantic interest in the cafe. Of course! And she reacts to seeing him, and it affects her entire day at the bookstore.

Craft teaches us much about how to properly structure stories, but in spite of all the theory (which is necessary in my opinion), the actual text of a novel must grab our attention and draw us into a world and the lives of our characters. Some of my favorite books, books I fell in love with and dreamed about, have noticeable flaws in conventional theory. I’m not talking about breaking the rules here. I’m talking about true weak points, that fixed would have genuinely made the story even stronger. Yet these books immersed me so deeply into a world by having a flowing narrative that drew me in. That’s the heart of a good story. And it’s either in the text or it isn’t. For me at least, it’s very difficult to capture this in an outline. So when I start actually writing, I have to let this dictate how closely I stick to the original outline.

Feels Great to Be Writing Again

After an extensive period working on my outline (and learning how to outline), I’m finally writing my second draft. It’s probably safer to call it a new first draft since so much has changed.

I’m really excited about the story.

(There seems to be a problem displaying my favorite word count meter from zokutou in a WordPress blog post. Sigh. So for now I’m using the Writertopia word meter.)

Tic Toc

My self-imposed deadline for a draft two outline of IA is Wednesday, in two days.

This is my first effort at serious outlining (speaking as a reformed pantzer), and I must say it’s been quite a struggle. I want to write as the bulk of the creative process, not outline. Much of what I’ve been figuring out is how detailed to make my outline.

I’ll start writing the second draft on Wednesday, and I’m very excited. But I don’t have a detailed scene-by-scene outline. I have detailed scenes for Act 1, detailed free-form paragraphs outlining Act 2, Part 1, and more general paragraphs outlining the last half of the story. I know all the major turning points and the ending.

For my major characters, I have a “character motivation matrix” for each major stage of the story. I found this to be extremely helpful. By organizing in one simple table my main characters’ outer and inner motivations, and conflicts they encounter, I can ensure the plot is character-driven.

I’ve learned a lot about scene and overall story construction. And I’ve been reminded to forget all the rules and let my muse freely play.

I’ve realized I have a tendency to be a perfectionist, and how that can stall my writing.

So here we go. Did you hear that? Was that a deadline whooshing by?

Perfectionist

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I used to be a first draft perfectionist. Never finished a first draft. Finally, I took the advice of those with more experience, and turned off my inner-critic during the writing of a first draft. And I blazed through it.

Now I’m an outlining perfectionist (for my second draft). I’m finally realizing it’s best to just go forward and finish the thing.

Then I suppose I’ll be an Nth draft perfectionist, trying to get it ready for submission to an editor.

It’s a good thing I have other ideas, itching to be written. Great motivation to complete a project and move on to the next one.