Learn Writing with Uncle Jim, Volume 1

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black winged fighter

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The same thing has happens to me, and I am really happy when it does; complex characters make for deeper plot.
Also, one of my favourite authors (Pratchett) wrote that he never expected some of his characters to become so major/deep. Since those very characters are my favourites, I see it as a good sign when a minor character turns around and demands a raise.
 

James D. Macdonald

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Mike Martyn said:
If round about 50,000 words one of your main characters suddenly "evolves" into to someone completely different, ie; he has a dark past that's popped out of nowhere (from the writer's point of view) and advances the plot wonderfully, going back and changing things, would that constute a rewrite or is a rewrite something more minor such as realizing your chronology is off and going back to change June to August.

The temptation for the first one is extreme.


Woo! It's great when that happens.

I'll tell you what I do when it happens to me:

I have the character say "Woo! My whole backstory just changed. Boy, do I have a dark past!"

Then continue as if the first half of the book were already re-arranged. Write from and incorporating your new-found insight and knowledge.

You may have more revelations before the book is finished. Too bad if re-wrote the first half, then had to re-write it again. This is what I mean when I say that until you hit "The End" you don't know what you've got.

Then -- you go back and take the thing in to the shop. You're going to have to do a whole lot of front-end alignment. That's okay!

(Coffee houses are really great because they get you out of your usual scenery, and you can rent a table all day if you just keep drinking the coffee. Besides, being a writer in a coffee house is traditional.)
 

James D. Macdonald

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Sometimes I add myself as a character in the first drafts. Not as a character who'll be in the final version, but as myself: The bearded author, who sits on the couch in the room and discusses with the other characters how the plot is going, whether the dialog needs work, and what they think about their own characterizations.

(The last chapter of the first draft is always the Cast Party, where the characters show up as their normal everyday selves, wearing Hawaiian shirts, drinking beer, and carrying on. And the last line of every book is always where the characters raise their glasses and say "Here's to the author! Without that poor overworked underpaid SOB we'd all be out of a job!")

All this stuff is removed in the second and subsequent drafts.
 

maestrowork

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How true!! I had a 2000+ word "epilogue" cast party. In the second draft, I cut that out. But my characters were happy to have that party.
 

Julian Black

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Ann said:
Is this a common thing, to be caught in the proof/revise as you go? Any suggestions for getting into the old habit of just letting it flow would help.
I proofread as I type, and make minor revisions. I just can't let typos or spelling or grammar errors slide, and if I realize another word would work better I go ahead and change it. I can't not do it--it drives me insane.

One thing I can think of, however, that may help you overcome the urge to fix things as you go is to disconnect your mouse and rely solely on the keyboard. Revising things without a mouse isn't impossible, but you have to stop and think about it (or at least I really do), and it isn't as quick doing it solely by keyboard.

I started disconnecting the mouse while writing research papers--or, rather, destroying too many hours of my life playing Free Cell when I was supposed to be writing said research papers--but it might be helpful in breaking other bad habits, too. It's worth a shot, anyway.
 

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Julian Black said:
I proofread as I type, and make minor revisions. I just can't let typos or spelling or grammar errors slide, and if I realize another word would work better I go ahead and change it. I can't not do it--it drives me insane.

Heck, I do that too. It isn't lke the old days when you had to bring out the correction fluid or an eraser shield and eraser when you made a typo. (Anyone but me still remember eraser shields?)

But I don't go back to the previous day's work and fiddle with it.
 

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James D. Macdonald said:
But I don't go back to the previous day's work and fiddle with it.

I always do. It's not for the sake of fiddling with it, though it usually amounts to that. I just spend ten minutes reading back over the previous day's work to get myself back into the voice and the story.

I do try to keep the editorialising to a minimum... sometimes I even succeed. ;)
 

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James D. Macdonald said:
Sometimes I add myself as a character in the first drafts. Not as a character who'll be in the final version, but as myself: The bearded author, who sits on the couch in the room and discusses with the other characters how the plot is going, whether the dialog needs work, and what they think about their own characterizations.

(The last chapter of the first draft is always the Cast Party, where the characters show up as their normal everyday selves, wearing Hawaiian shirts, drinking beer, and carrying on. And the last line of every book is always where the characters raise their glasses and say "Here's to the author! Without that poor overworked underpaid SOB we'd all be out of a job!")

All this stuff is removed in the second and subsequent drafts.


At the end of my novel, as of now at least, one of my 14 year old characters is going to die. He'll die heroically but he'll be just as dead. I really like this kid so it's going to hurt!

I like the idea of writing a cast party as the last chapter. At least I'll get to see him again. He won't be wearing his plaid shirt from the 1960's of course. He'll most likely be toting a skateboard, wearing his Mettellica ski hat and toking up. He can tell me what a bastard I am!

Or am I just neurotic?
 

Michael Pullmann

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Jim-

First up, apologies if this has already been asked. It's a long thread, and I just found it today.

Without going into too much detail, I'm as green as it gets. I said "I want to be a writer" for the longest time, but am only now realizing what that really means. Because I'm insane, I'm not throwing my hands up into the air and going into something both more lucrative and less demanding, like pornography. Also, within the extremely raw material I've been perpetrating until now, I do really believe there's some talent. And bottom line, I love doing it.

But I've got one question that's bearing down on my mind like a freight train on a puppy dog. You touched on it way back on page one, saying that back in the day, you set your alarm clock two hours earlier so you'd get those two hours to write. I can do that, or, if it turns out another way works better, hit my head to the pillow two hours later. There's my time to sit at the computer and put words on the screen.

But what about the rest of it? There's rewriting, revision, research, reading (for fun and profit), and oh yes, working that 9-5 (or, more likely these days, 8-6), eating, sleeping, cleaning various objects that must be cleaned, writing checks to people who simply insist on not giving me things like a place to live and health care for free, obtaining supplies for all of the above, and the ubiquitous "having a life" (which would, ideally, include somehow finding true love, which I currently define as a person willing to do some of those things for me when I just plain can't because I've got a spaceship hurtling towards a black hole over here that isn't going to save itself). And that's just now, when my stuff sucks*. Once it's good**, add in agents, contracts, trips to the post office and bank, and all the legal/tax stuff that comes with being a freelancer, even one with a day job.

Simply put: How the frell is this possible? Am I nuts, or does that add up to more than 24 hours in a day? I'm OK with making sacrifices, but we're almost talking Mayan proportions here. Or at least that's how I feel.

The writing (and in this sentence I mean everything that relates to moving a story from the beginning of its creation to its end) has to fit in there somewhere. For someone who's still a working stiff, where? How do I spin straw into time?

* defined as "won't make it past the slush pile"
**see above definition, but replace "won't" with "will"
 

HConn

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Michael, it's all about the hard choices.

Can you give up some of your TV? Can you live in a messy home? Can you super-organize yourself?

What about using your lunch hour for editing? What about taping all the shows you would normally watch, and watching them on tape? (By taping shows and never finding time for them, I learned what I really enjoyed watching and what I could do without.)

The truth is, you will have to give things up if you want to write. What you need to do is value the writing more than you value those other things.
 

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Michael Pullmann said:
Simply put: How the frell is this possible? Am I nuts, or does that add up to more than 24 hours in a day? I'm OK with making sacrifices, but we're almost talking Mayan proportions here. Or at least that's how I feel.

It isn't possible. So don't let it concern you.

I read while standing in the chow line. I thought about revision while driving, so could quickly write 'em down.

After you've reached The End if all you have is those two hours per day and nothing more -- I give you permission to do 15 minutes of original writing, and spend the other hour forty-five on rewrites.

You will have to make decisions about what's important to you. TV went out of my life a long time ago.

The important thing is that you do some writing every day. To call yourself a writer, only one thing is required: That you write.
 

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I gave up TV time and quit cooking. I still have to clean, work six days a week, grocery shop, do laundry, read. I usually only see my friends once every few weeks, and I still have time for my garden and a nightly walk. I don't always get 2 hours in, but I always get at least 500 words or I'm not allowed to go to bed.

My husband started referring to me as 'woman with pencil' rather than wife a while ago :)
 

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James D. Macdonald said:
(Anyone but me still remember eraser shields?)
Yes, I actually do. Those and the hard white rubber eraser "pencils" that had a brush at one end to sweep the eraser crumbs away. Since I was always a lousy typist, I get the fan-tods just thinking about them.

While cleaning out the basement of a house, I found a typewriter eraser shaped like a wheel, with the brush attached to a little handle. It's truly a relic. I tied it onto a black suede thong, added some primitive-looking beads, and occasionally wear it as a necklace--nothing like a fragment of dead technology to make a fashion statement, after all. Once in a while, I actually encounter someone who knows what it is.
 

Michael Pullmann

Yeah, thanks to everyone who said stuff. To be honest, just writing the question down made me think about ways I can fit things in. So I'm feeling better about that now.


First step, I think, is going to be allowing myself to be imperfect.
 

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---------------------------------------------​

Project Advice, Uncle Jim?


Everyone who's read my posts knows I started developing my own limited run soap opera over seven years ago and I recently started converting it into novel form. As I was planning out the story and what would happen in each novel, first I decided to write a novel series, with 10 novels. Then about a month ago, I decided it would only be 8 novels. Then yesterday after hours and hours of thinking and working, I found a way to write the story as one novel of epic proportions (which will benefit the story, eliminating the huge cliffhangers I had planned at the end of each book of the original series - making it more marketable).

I've read posts on this board and I know that proposing a huge novel (possibly 200,000+ words) will only get me a stack of rejection letters. Now, over the past few years, my "soap opera" has been my main project, but like all writers, I have tons of other ideas.

A couple years ago, when I was researching the TV business, I learned you needed to write spec scripts of current TV shows, scripts that would get you a job. I had an idea for a character - a teen angel, that I thought I would try and weave into an episode of "Touched by an Angel." After a while, I fell in love with the character and just couldn't think of a story that would involve the characters on Touched by an Angel and the angel character I had created. So, I took my character and back story and I created my own 3-season primetime show.

Once I got interested in the novel writing business, I found a way of converting the angel primetime show into a novel series - a trilogy (3 seasons to 3 books). Now, once I started converting my soap into novel form, I decided to put my "angel" trilogy on the backburner, intending on making that my NEXT project after my soap novel series got published. But, now that I am thinking of making my soap novel series an epic ONE novel, I knew that I would need a great book published first, before a publisher would even look at such a huge novel. So, I began brainstorming, going through every project I had, and the angel series was the obvious choice for my first novel because it was a story I had spent a long time on developing and it has a strong beginning and ending (You have said when choosing a project to become your first novel, choose the one with the strongest beginning and ending).

Now, to my question... If I write my angel series (which is short enough to combine into one novel with 3 parts instead of a trilogy) while I am beginning my epic soap novel, and my angel book is published, will that make it easier for a publisher to consider my epic novel? Many writers have written huge novels that were published, but only after they have published regular length ones (Stephen King's IT & The Stand are two that immediately come to mind). Any advice on what I should do?

---------------------------------------------​
 
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Michael Pullmann said:
Simply put: How the frell is this possible? Am I nuts, or does that add up to more than 24 hours in a day? I'm OK with making sacrifices, but we're almost talking Mayan proportions here. Or at least that's how I feel.

QUOTE]

Oh, see, there's the problem... you're going on the assumption that you get to have a life :)

Seriously, you cut out the stuff that's not important to you. I watch two hours of regular tv a week: Deadwood on Sunday nights, and CSI on Thursday, with the occasional Discovery Channel Cool Historical Thingie thrown in.

After my younger kids go to bed, which is around 830, I take an hour or so to hang out and get caught up on the days' events with my husband, who leaves for work at 930. Then I spend about another hour hanging out with my oldest kid before she goes to bed, and from around 11 to 1 am, I write. I may get some work done in the morning or later in the day, but that 11 - 1 slot belongs to me, and me only. I can work on anything I like -- content articles, newspaper crap, or one of three WIPs that I have going at any given time, but I write.

I do my reading while my little ones are in the bathtub for an hour every night. I pay my bills and balance my checkbook and clean my house when they're taking their afternoon nap. I run my errands on my way to and from my part-time job. Somehow, everything gets done, and I still have time to write.

That's because there's not much else to do from 11 - 1 at night.
 

James D. Macdonald

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EGGammon said:
I've read posts on this board and I know that proposing a huge novel (possibly 200,000+ words) will only get me a stack of rejection letters.

Standard disclaimer: Unless it's brilliant.

Anyway ... in between writing the Big Book, you might try a shorter novel or two. Can't hurt. Get some things out in the mail and making the rounds. (And the practice of bringing a novel all the way to Ready To Submit will be good for you. Nothing teaches you how to write a novel better than writing a novel.)

Anyway ...

I'm not certain that the angel idea is the best thing to work on. Do you have any ideas that you don't already have in script form -- that are just ideas? Can any of them be made into 80,000 words over the next three months? If so, that might be a direction I'd go.
 

E.G. Gammon

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James D. Macdonald said:
I'm not certain that the angel idea is the best thing to work on. Do you have any ideas that you don't already have in script form -- that are just ideas? Can any of them be made into 80,000 words over the next three months? If so, that might be a direction I'd go.

I have a box and a half full of work and "other" ideas I have had throughout the past seven years (stuff I put on hold to work on my soap). I'll take your advice and search for a better first novel. Should the novel be somewhat like my "big novel," genre wise? Or can it be different? I assume the genre can be different, but some readers like a writer's first book, and expect the second book to be the same genre, and if it's not, they may get disappointed (wouldn't want that to happen). I have a wide range of ideas and a lot of different genres...
 

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Michael Pullmann said:
Simply put: How the frell is this possible? Am I nuts, or does that add up to more than 24 hours in a day? I'm OK with making sacrifices, but we're almost talking Mayan proportions here. Or at least that's how I feel.
Writing a little bit every day adds up quickly. 500 words per day - five days a week - adds up to more than 2500 words written once a week. Not sound mathematics, perhaps, but it is sound psychology. You'll often find that you get more than 500 words some days and if you get a chance to write on Saturday then it's all bonus.

I wrote my first novel (45,000 word juvenile) in 10 weeks. I wrote an average of 500 words a day (1 hour in the morning) and 2000 on Saturday (3-4 hours). Now this was just a first draft, and I spent 2 or 3 times that revising. Depending on how close your first draft is to final copy, you can write a lot a little bit at a time.

Jim's permission not withstanding, the only time I have to re-write is that same 1 hour, so I use it for that too. However, I don't do "business" (preparing submissions, etc.) in that time.
 
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