chloe's first draft

First of all, let me just say that Dreamcaught was my 2012 NaNoWriMo novel. I completed it (and I say "competed it" hesitantly, as in fact I have yet to write like two small scenes in the middle that sort of bored me) the following April during Camp NaNoWriMo, with my final wordcount at 76,442 words.

Now, I will be frank with you, these words were not very clever or impressive words, but as this Tumblr post so beautifully put it: 

My first draft is a perfect first draft.

It is also a terrible piece of writing.

Editing it has been a terrifying ordeal. You see above this text a picture with the very beginning of my novel in it: the darker blue highlighting marks sentences that stayed exactly the same, and the lighter blue marks sentences that I worded differently but are still present in Draft 2. This is actually a really tame example. Look at the next little section of words:

That's all light blue, by the way. I did not keep a single exact sentence from this entire chunk.

And, in case you were wondering, pink marks things that were completely thrown out. Not just the wording or general idea was changed here: the entire plot and characters in this segment were stuffed in the hypothetical word-disposal of my brain. That's right, I completely deleted two entire main characters right out of the plot. (They'd be pleased I used pink to mark this, though. They both liked pink.) (Poor dears, I did love them.)

And here we have a list of notes to myself on what's left of this first scene, after you chop out my sweet and lovely twins. 

Here's Draft 2, which is still sporting most of the issues of Draft 1.

Probably the biggest problem with this opening is that it is painfully dull. Nothing interesting happens and both of the [surviving] characters are groggy and uninteresting.

If you give me any suggestions on how to make this better in Draft 3, I will love you forever. 

Ana Cross, who writes the fabulous blog Inkspot, made a very good point on the comments of my post "said":

I agree with this, but I also believe that a good "action-said-verb" every now and then definitely doesn't hurt. I've seen too many people who religiously use said, like it's the only word that works.

 First off, thank you for adding your two cents! (I quite like it when people point out my discrepancies, as they are everywhere.)

Secondly, this is a very good point. I suppose the trick to writing, as to all things in life, is moderation. It is super easy to imagine a scenario where a 'said' would be far less appropriate than 'howled' or 'hissed' or... oh I don't know. I need another H word. 'Hacked'?

Pretty much:

• don't use noisy dialogue tags to the point that you choke when you read it.
• don't use said to the point that you choke on it.

Moderation, folks. (I should probably write the word "moderation" on my forehead with a magic marker or something... I have so many bad habits...)

Thank you, Ana! (Go read her blog. It is a good blog. Far higher quality than mine. 10 out of 10 would recommend.)

why you should not take advice from me

In Roman History class, I have an exam every two weeks which includes, among other things, writing a five paragraph essay from memory. This week, I had to write about the growth of Rome, especially through the Samnite Wars and the First Punic War. 

I very nearly accidentally submitted this mess:

no tyrants for these dudes. Right from the founding of the Republic in whatever year the Republic was founded in, Rome was determined to follow its vows to have no king and no tyrant. It would be the best little city state in the universe. Yeah, and the only little city-state, too.

growing outward with their latin leauge (so called because they hung with these peeps called the Latins) and garrison cities. they began absorbing outher little places and offering them nice shiny citizenships if they'd cooperate. (yay)

really good at making changes in battle that would help them out later-- that raven was a good idea, but then again so were the whole "standing army" and "navy" and "judges" things. they learned from their enemy. Via Appia was wicked awesome (it was build by this dude Appius who was really good at stuff and named a lot of things after himself). praetors to govern other places became a thing.

plebians/patrician changes and how that affected junk. things didn't have to be ratified the senate anymore thanks to our homeboy Gaius Flam. 

end.

As you can probably see with your own eyes, this is not exactly a twelve point earning essay. 

This is pretty much how I plot my novels. If you could read my novel outlines, they read like this.

Good lands, I am super glad I realized my mistake before turning this in.

"said"

My entire writing career (I say that I like have a career in writing...) I've been quietly observing this intense battle between two sets of people.

The first army is composed of those artists who believe that writing can be much improved by the use of interesting words, especially interesting dialogue tags. "That word 'said' is so four-score years and seven ago," they scream at top pitch, "Use 'snarled' or 'giggled' or 'howled' instead!"

The second army is perhaps a bit smaller and quieter, and is made up of those who believe that interesting word are often a bit too much, and "said" should be allowed to retain its place as supremely worshiped dialogue tag. "The word 'said' is wicked awesome," they say.

I'm sure that the first group has many famous followers and many articles and books have been written on the subject of "awesome dialogue tags", but I have found a good book that actually has a chapter entitled "Kill the Interesting Words". Here's an excerpt from it.

Many years ago, I attended a writers' group as a guest author. One of the women read a long, plainly written piece. I can't remember much about it, but it went something like this:

The boy slid down the slope and said, "I'd like to do that again, please."
"You can't," said his mother, "it's time for dinner."
"Okay, Mom," the boy said.

When she had finished reading, the leader of the group noted that her story needed more excitement. She told her to "use more interesting words" when she revised.
"And don't use the word said so much," she added.

I gasped in horror, as only a professional writer would. The story was kind of boring, but the group leader's solution was terrible. Let's take a look at why. First, as an experiment, we'll get rid of the word said.

The boy scampered down the slope and whined, "I'd like to do that again, please."
"You can't," his mother admonished, "it's time for dinner."
"Okay, Mom," the boy chortled.

When a word means something, use it. For example, whined works nicely in the first sentence.

But said sounds so much better than admonished and chortled. Those two words, in this story, are silly and pretentious.

-Anne Mazer, Spilling Ink

 Ms. Mazer and her writing partner, Ellen Potter, go on to talk about clogged prose and noisy reading-- it's quite helpful and I recommend it.

So what are my personal convictions on the word 'said'? I think "said" is easy to read. your brain doesn't really notice it like it does other reused words. it's a quiet, helpful, modest word who works hard and does what it needs to do quite nicely.

Long live "said"!

angry rant about "ugly" characters

Writers are always reminding other writers that is is okay, even encouraged, to make your main characters unattractive.  I must admit, I have never had a particular problem making my characters go outside the realms of my idea of attractiveness: my first actual story had a cast of characters who were kind of misfits:

• A big-boned, muscular girl with a smooshed nose (I think the smooshed nose was probably the most described feature in the entire cast),
• a very pretty girl with quite terrible clothing,
• a very overweight boy with dirty hair and a smile that showed all of his teeth and gums,
• a tiny pipsqueak of a kid with a lisp and a mouth full of braces and rubber bands (he was always, always described as being incredibly ugly, although I apparently never said why),
• and an absolutely gorgeous guy who always looked unpleasant, and who was often called snot-nosed by the main character, who despised him.

So, yeah. I loved these guys. They were the best.

But. Other people did not like these character descriptions, and did not hesitate to tell me so. In later versions of this story, I quietly left things out instead of having fun and writing it the way I wanted to. Snot-nosed gorgeous guy stayed exactly the same, because he was pretty enough to get away with bad expressions. Pretty girl with bad clothing stayed the way she was for the same reason. The others became:

• blond girl
• boy with goofy smile
• small boy with braces

It kind of made me lonely, because a blond girl is so much less interesting than a hefty strong girl with manly shoulders who complains about her ridiculous smooshed nose and teases other kids for having dirty hair or ugly faces. I was friends with Smooshed Nose. Blond Hair just wasn't the same.

At any rate, long after sending this story to the scrap pile, I still think about this little gang of misfits, and the people who didn't like reading about ordinary looking people. It took me some time, but I've gone back to my (annoying to other people but enjoyable to myself) method of insulting my characters' appearance at every turn.

People (mostly my siblings) still rib me upon occasion about this, but I do not care. If they don't want to read about a fourteen-year-old who looks like a homeless flower-child Cupid, then they don't have to read it. I'm not going to reduce him to merely the color of his hair. The end.

artsy goals and business goals

I've seen many writers who seemed to be totally bent on getting published. Observing them, this seemed to be the only goal that they had. I would be insane to say I think that's not a good goal to have, but I think it's more of a business goal than an artistic goal.

Hm. How do I make this thought clearer.

Artsy goals (in my own opinion):

• creation of really great characters
• learning how to plot really tightly
• writing an entire novel
• learning how to write poetry
• learning to use correct grammar (heaven knows I need this one)
• learning to write really great dialogue
• learning to write comics
• figuring out how antagonists work
• inventing really unique new super powers
• etc.

Business Goals (again, in my own opinion):

• getting over 100 followers on your blog
• making a Facebook page for your book
• publishing your book
• learning how advertisement works
• learning how to format an e-book
• joining a writer's guild
• starting a really unique new super-hero writing blog (if anybody ever needs a partner to help them write a superhero writing blog, I AM OPEN. I WILL DO IT.)
• etc.

"Artsy" goals and "business" goals are both very important and beneficial things. But I think that having "get published" as the endgame for your novel or short story or whatever will not be as beneficial to you in your writing as "make dialogue stronger" or "make this villain the most evil character in the history of literature".

Publishment is something you do to your book as a whole, and so it is very difficult to apply to your novel in a way that helps you write the novel well.