Journaling as your characters

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HeavyAirship

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I had what I think is a brilliant idea last night. I am planning on finishing my current WIP by the end of the year which means I should be starting the next project right after. However, at that time I will be spending six months studying, writing, recording, and performing music as part of a course and I won't have the time or brain capacity to be writing a novel. What to do? Thinking about this last night and my desire to write something everyday I had the idea to keep a journal, but not my own journal. Instead I will be writing as one of my characters during the events of the novel that I want to write. The entries will give me insight to their thought process and help me develop a unique and believable voice for them. It will probably also give me ideas for different scenes and other characters.

I'm sure I'm not the first one to do this but I'm really excited to get to know these characters (I plan to do three months on one and three on another). They will be the MCs of the novel that I hope will be my first published story. I'm putting off writing it until I am more skilled as a writer but there is a lot more development that needs to be done anyway.

Have any of you ever done something like this before? How did you find the experience?
 

Osulagh

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I've seen a few things like this to help people test narration styles, but that was for just a page or two. Exercises. If you want to write this story, why don't you just spend the time writing the story?

I'm putting off writing it until I am more skilled as a writer but there is a lot more development that needs to be done anyway.

I believe the best time to write a story is right when you have it. Why? Because if you can become a better writer, there's a good chance you can come up with a better, entirely different story. Exercises can only go so far before they either start to limit you or become boring. I suggest you dive right into the story regardless of your "current" writer skill. Grow with it, work out your and its problems with it. If you do become better, come back to it and bring it up to your standards in revision.

As for what I might do in my downtime, or time when I can't write, I typically plot or brainstorm. You've got six months; I'm sure you can brainstorm up quite a lot of the story. Then possibly start writing, plot, or work out scenes on flashcards.
 

Katharine Tree

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Sounds like a good idea if those journals end up being the book itself. Write one character's experience end to end, then the other's, then cut and paste the timeline together.

Just make sure you've got a really clear timeline.

If you don't intend to use the journals as publishable text, then I wish you much enjoyment.
 

HeavyAirship

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I've seen a few things like this to help people test narration styles, but that was for just a page or two. Exercises. If you want to write this story, why don't you just spend the time writing the story?


I believe the best time to write a story is right when you have it. Why? Because if you can become a better writer, there's a good chance you can come up with a better, entirely different story. Exercises can only go so far before they either start to limit you or become boring. I suggest you dive right into the story regardless of your "current" writer skill. Grow with it, work out your and its problems with it. If you do become better, come back to it and bring it up to your standards in revision.

As for what I might do in my downtime, or time when I can't write, I typically plot or brainstorm. You've got six months; I'm sure you can brainstorm up quite a lot of the story. Then possibly start writing, plot, or work out scenes on flashcards.

Well I have at least half a dozen ideas for novels right now and I'm trying to pick ones that are at my skill level. I only just started so my skill level isn't too high. This story will require a TON of research and planning which I am still learning how to do and in the mean time I am working on other projects. I love brainstorming but adding in details and forming a coherent story take a lot of my brain power and I'm not going to have much to spare during that six months. I already wrote a basic outline for the story but I have learned much since then regarding how I write best and I know I will need to prepare like crazy for this one. These journals are part of the preparation. I wrote my first novel with no planning, research, or preparation and let me tell you, there is a lot of stupid in those pages. I would be more inclined to write it now if I had experience revising and editing a novel but I don't. I'm still learning those bits just like I'm learning how to prepare a story before I start writing.
 

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Of course you learned from your first effort and you'll learn from your next, and the next.

Preparation is fine but beware it doesn't take over and morph into procrastination - it's the actual writing of stories that will teach you most and from which you will develop.

And read stories, particularly of the kind you wish to write.
 
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Jamesaritchie

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I'd only do that if I intended to sell the journaling. If you have time to journal, you have time to work on the next novel. It takes no more time or brain capacity to do one than to do the other.
 

HeavyAirship

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I'd only do that if I intended to sell the journaling. If you have time to journal, you have time to work on the next novel. It takes no more time or brain capacity to do one than to do the other.


I don't see how that can be though? When I write a novel the story is on my mind all the time until I finish, and I want a plan before I start writing. I can write a journal entry in a couple of minutes and if I don't like it I can just disregard it. If the entire thing is garbage I at least get to know my characters better. If I start writing my story before I'm sure where I want to go with it and I only devote a few minutes a day to it I'm going to end up with a bunch of nonsense that will just make me tired of the story. A journal doesn't need to have an arc, a plot, interesting dialogue, or consistent voice. I can just experiment and try different things until I find something interesting. I will be working on the story but I won't be actually writing it yet, if that makes sense. It's sort of like doing research except I have to make up the facts first before I discover them.
 

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I understand what you're trying to get at, but it seems like a whole lot of useless side-work when you can do the exact same stuff while writing the story. Just like if you don't like the journalist exercise entry and throw it away, why not write a scene of the real story? If you don't like it, throw it away. You can experiment and work out the story elements and events while writing the story. You can explore ideas and thoughts while in the story.

As with any large project, whether this be writing a novel or building a house from the ground up, you cannot account for problems or revisions before actually starting on the project. No amount of training will prepare you for every problem and give you the perfectly true path to get onto. You will always run into a snag, a major issue, a tiny problem while undergoing the project regardless of training for it. With my stories, I barely know a quarter of the story's content until I write it. I make up things on the spot, I lead the story in a different direction. If things go a different way, then I revise the rest of the story to fit. This can be anything from changing who drank water where to an entire character's personality which effects the rest of the story.
 

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When I write, I'll often do out of sequence scenes as they strike me. I have a general outline to follow, but I accept the story is going to morph along the way. Some scenes never get used. Your mileage may vary, but I'd worry that journaling the story might pull lots of the energy from it.
 

gettingby

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Honestly, what you're doing sounds like procrastination. Six months of journalling like this would make me sick of a story before I even wrote it. And your novel skills will increase by reading and writing novels, not so much journaling. I just don't think you are going to get as much out of journaling as you think. You say this is a way of getting to know your characters, but the thing is I think you probably already know your characters if you think you can maintain these fake diaries for so long. We don't really have to know our characters all that well at the start because we are not really getting to know them. We are creating them.

I say go for the actual writing, writing you can use in the story. If you really want to increase your skills, that's the way to do it. A lot of people journal, but they aren't writers.
 

neandermagnon

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What you're basically saying is "for the next six months I won't have much time to write my novel, so instead of writing it or doing planning and research that's directly necessary for it, I'm going to write this other thing instead that I don't have to write" - can you see why that comes across as a fancy way to procrastinate?

A journal doesn't need to have an arc, a plot, interesting dialogue, or consistent voice. I can just experiment and try different things until I find something interesting. I will be working on the story but I won't be actually writing it yet, if that makes sense. It's sort of like doing research except I have to make up the facts first before I discover them.

Experimenting as research is fine, as long as you really are doing it to develop character voice and as part of your research and planning, and it's not all an elaborate way to procrastinate. Do as much of the journal as you need to to develop your character. But don't get into this thinking like "I don't have time to work on my novel so I'm going to do xxxxxx instead." That's not going to help you at all, it's just going to delay you in doing the actual work needed to start the novel, which is the very last thing you want to be doing when you have so little time!!

When I write a novel the story is on my mind all the time until I finish,

Most writers have to do a day job and many have families and so don't have the luxury of being able to devote a lot of time in the day to writing. I'm a single mother who works full time. If I put off any serious projects until I have large amounts of time each day to write it, then I probably won't get anything finished until I'm in my 80s. I totally understand what it's like to have ambitious writing projects and very little time to do them. But the ***only*** way to deal with that situation is to get on with doing the writing projects (includes the writing, editing/rereading, and any research that's necessary to write it) I don't do outlines, but if I did, then I'd schedule in time in between work, my kids and all the housework to do that too.

and I want a plan before I start writing. I can write a journal entry in a couple of minutes and if I don't like it I can just disregard it.

You can do that with scenes of a novel. Write a scene, half a scene, a paragraph, a sentence... if you don't like it, disregard it and write it again. You don't have to write an entire novel all in one go before you evaluate anything. You need to evaluate it bit by bit as you go along.

And if there are larger sections of the novel that you don't like, they too can be rewritten. No-one writes a perfect novel first time, barring the occasional very rare genius. You write it and the first version usually is pretty rough and needs a lot of work to beat it into shape. You say elsewhere that you don't want to write it when you don't have much time because you don't have experience editing and revising. Well, how are you going to get experience if you don't do it? You write the novel. It comes out full of drivel. You edit out the drivel and rewrite what needs to be rewritten. And then you have experience revising and editing AND a novel that isn't full of drivel any more. Win-win.

If you need to do an outline first to be sure that the whole story's going to be coherent before you begin - do the outline. Start it now. Don't wait. It can still be done even if you only have a short amount of time each day to do it.

Also, are you really going to only get a few minutes a day? Can you make time? Maybe get up an hour earlier and write for an hour while you eat your breakfast before you go to this course? Maybe schedule another hour before bedtime. Or go to bed earlier so you can schedule two hours in the morning (or later for two hours at night if you work better at night). Your course doesn't schedule lectures/workshops/whatever you're doing at 11pm at night, does it...? Two hours a day is all that most writers get, at least those of us (the majority!) who have to do day jobs and/or have family commitments.

You can also get lots of thinking/mental planning time during the day. I'm mentally planning my next scene while I'm stuck in traffic on the way to and from work - also between calls at work when it's not too busy (I'm a call centre phone minion) and in my lunch hour.

Again, I'm not pooh-poohing the idea of doing experimental writing to help you find your character's voice. What I'm concerned about is that you're putting off starting the project on the grounds that you don't have much time - i.e. procrastination. Less time = you need to get on with it and not get sidetracked by unnecessary tasks.
 
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LSMay

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A couple of journal entries wouldn't hurt to get a better idea of the character's voice, especially if the story will be in first person. However I agree with above - if the work is eventually going to be a novel, why not start drafting it as a novel? One of my novels began seven years ago as a draft by a useless hack. Now it's decent. My official very first novel began 12 years ago and has been through a full rewrite every 3 or 4 years as my writing skills improved.
It's far easier (for me, at least) to know what a story should look like with a full draft in front of me, even if the draft is substandard.
And as for not having time, despite what some would tell you, you don't have to write every day. You can set aside a hour on a day off, or write two evenings a month. Or flick down a hundred words while waiting for the bus.
 

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Hi, HeavyAirship.

It reads to me like you're wanting to be friends with benefits with your novel. For the next six months you'll keep the sex (for me that would be the buzz that comes with identifying as a writer, even when I'm dabbling — mysterious are the ways of the artiste) but without the emotional commitment on your part. Fair enough I guess, if you can pull it off.

Best wishes.
 

mrsmig

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I've only done something like that once, in the form of a prompt. I had to write an email to myself (the author) from one of the characters in my WIP.

Boy, was she pissed.

It was a valuable exercise because it let me see where I was failing to develop her as fully as possible. Would I use the exercise again? Maybe, especially if I was stuck. Would I do it in lieu of actually writing the story? Hell, no.

You don't have to know everything going on in your characters' heads before you boot them into your plot.
 

HeavyAirship

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Thank you all for your advice but it seems I haven't been clear about what I'm doing and why so let me fill in some details.

I am currently writing a novel. I just started a few days ago and if I work very hard I will have a rough draft finished by the end of the year. I am also revising a previous novel. My previous novel I wrote by the seat of my pants with only an idea for two scenes in the middle of the story. Because I had no plan or outline the revisions will be massive and time consuming and a lot of what I wrote and worked hard on will go to waste. I have discovered that I write much better with an outline. I wrote an outline for the story in question last year but it was my first outline and it sucks. It is sucky. There are plot holes, useless elements, and bad characterization. If I try to use that sucky outline to write this story it will turn out sucky and most of it will go to waste like my previous story. I need a good outline. This story is also more character driven than my previous story so I want to start with a good idea of what my characters are like. I need to spend time creating characters. Right now the story is very nebulous and hard to see. In order to draw it out I will have to think about it for a while, create pieces and then move them around. I have a few pieces from my previous outline but not all.

The story, as it stands now, takes place over a couple of decades in central China. For me to even begin to write this story I will need a much better understanding of Chinese culture both now and a few decades ago. The story and structure are very high concept to my inexperienced mind and will require a great deal of research and preparation if I want to make a useable rough draft. I will need a fairly detailed outline, characters that seem like real Chinese people, and the information about culture, geography, and professions in my story right at my fingertips.

The course that I am taking will use a lot of my creative energy since I will be doing a lot of songwriting. Music is my greatest passion and I have been waiting to do this course for more than 5 years so writing, as much as I enjoy it, will be taking a back seat during these six months. If I do nothing with my writing during these six months I will still be very happy because I will be growing as a musician. If my writing interferes with this course I will not be happy because I have been waiting a long time for this opportunity. So a few minutes a day doing character creation seems like a reasonable and productive thing to do during this time. It will help me to write a better story when I have the time to give it the attention it needs, and it shouldn't take away from my musical endeavours.

Again, I am currently writing a full novel and revising another novel on top of regular life responsibilities. I don't know how many novels others can write at once but for me, this is my limit. I created this thread to hopefully discuss different methods we use to build our stories and characters so that we can all learn from each other. I appreciate the comments encouraging me to write this story already because I know you are all trying to help and I agree with you that a writer that doesn't write isn't a writer. I just want to make it clear that I am writing right now, just not this story. I'm sorry for the confusion. Please carry on.
 
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