Meta Monday: Experiments in novel writing

[dhampyresa]

Hi! Welcome to Meta Monday, in which I go tl;dr about stuff.

cherrytide : the experience of writing a novel?

I'll be honest: I waited until I'd finished the desert novel before writing this, because I felt having three novel first drafts would be better than having written 2.95 novel first drafts.

Disclaimer: I've only been at this since November 1 2013. I've never been published. I only have three first drafts finished, so take all this with however much salt you feel is reasonable.

I have a tag, that I mostly use when I use when I hit milestones in my original writing. All but two of the posts in that tag are f-locked, but the gist of a lot of them is that I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing. I'm not A Writer. I don't have a PhD in English or a Masters in Creative Writing or any sort of qualifications.

All I have is a computer and the stories I want to tell.

Honestly? The biggest thing I've learned with writing so far is that I don't know what know what I'm doing and that's okay. I've always learned best by doing, anyway.

The question seems to imply that writing a novel is the same experience every time (or maybe it's late and I'm reading it wrong) and so far it has really, really not been the case for me. (And from here on out, I will say 'novel', but what I really mean is 'first draft', because I am not so good at the editing yet.)

In brief, the novels I've written so far are, with approximate wordcounts and time it took me to write them: the war novel (70k, 4 months), the cramped novel (45k, 4 months) and the desert novel (currently 175k, including notes, that I will pretend is only 120k worth of actual story, even though that's really low ballparking it, 1 year).

Right away, you can tell that these are completely different: the desert novel is the longest both wordcount-wise and time-wise, the war novel has the highest average speed and I wrote the cramped novel in the least time (iirc, it took me one week less than the war novel).

There are explanations for that. In a lot of ways, it is actually the same explanation for all three.

I knew what I was doing with the war novel, even though it was my first one, because I was basing myself on something else. I had the plot, all that was left was the setting and the characters. Mind you, the project I'm currenly gearing up to is to rewrite this novel, for various reasons, mostly to make sure the plot hangs together better and that characters' actions make more sense/have more consequences (and adding/cutting subplots and adding characters and killing folks and and and...). It's very bare-bones as it exists now, in no small part because I had no idea if I could do this and so threw myself at it, as the French say "à corps perdu". The main thing I learned writing it is that I can indeed write a novel! Including 50k in a month, yay NaNoWriMo. (Also, that I love my characters dearly, but they can be such idiots.)

For the cramped novel, I had two characters and one setting element when I first put words to screen. Before the end of that first scene, I had another character and soon I also had another worldbuilding element. I had a lot more liberty than with the war novel to do whatever I wanted with plot/setting/characters, which was more of curse than a blessing, because I floundered a lot and had no idea what I was doing. In particular, where the war novel had two PoV characters, this one had a dozen or so, with two major ones. That was too many PoV characters for what is essentially half a book, but I didn't feel like I could cut any of them without something important. There was also a major, glaring pacing issue in the latter half of the book. It took me six months to realise what the problem here was: the story was actually a trilogy. It being a trilogy means that suddenly all the PoVs have space to breathe and be and the pacing issue instead turns into the cliff-hanger at the end of the second book. At this time, I know I want to write this trilogy, but I'm not sure when yet. What I leanred was that I don't need much to write a novel, but also that I shouldn't. (Also, that I love my characters dearly, but they can be such idiots.)

The desert novel was actually my first novel. So far, it is the only time in my life where I have had a story essentially dropped fully-fledged into my brain: all three main characters, their relationships with each other, the plot, the ending, the beginning, several story milestones, the structure, the setting... Practically nothing of those have changed, for all that it's been about five years since that fateful day. There's exactly one scene I didn't include in the novel but a) it wasn't part of the "package" and b) all the emotional beats are found in other places anyway. That said, the story surprised me a lot. A LOT. For oe thing, I hadn't realised it would be this long. I think some part of me was refusing to look at it that way, because I was already unsure I could do the story justice and if I'd known it would be 2.5 times as long as the second longest thing I'd ever written (the war novel), I, quite frankly, might not have started it then. What I learned was that I can't come up with subplots when I need them, but that I do come up with them eventually. Also, it confirmed what I knew about worldbuilding being amazing. (Also, that I love my characters dearly, but they can be such idiots.)

What comes across from this is: know what I'm writing = writing fast and less rewrites necessary (this is a compound realisation based on various smaller ones, that I won't bore you with). I always thought I was a pantser, not a plotter, but pantsing my way through 2.5 novels means I have to rewrite one, expand another into a trilogy and have to incorporate massive amounts of foreshadowing/subplots/etc in the first two-thirds or so of the desert novel.

Which is why I'm going to outline all my novels from now on. The specific technique I developped while working on the desert novel is to outline each scene in as much detail as necessary, boil it down to one word ("reunion", "general", "siege"...) and then use that complete 'short cut map' to guide my way through the actual writing.

There's also one thing, that I'm hesitant to bring up, because I don't think it'll be of any help to anyone, but it might be interesting to some of you. I'm a synesthete and that affects how I write novels. I mean, it affects how I write in general, because sometimes I am looking for a word with the right 'colour' and keep not finding one. Anyway, all my novels so far, including several of the projects are a balance between two specific colours. The war novel is bright red/fuchsia (FF0000/FF00FF), the cramp novel is gray/beige (808080/FFFFCC) and the desert novel is vibrant orange/dark blue (FFAA00/000055). I gave hexadecimal codes so can have a better idea of what they're like in my head, but just so know it's not a complete picture, I also threw together a hasty collage for the desert novel to give a better idea. I realise trying to get people to "see" what I "see" is pointless, but hopefully that helps a little. (Yes. I know I said dark blue above and that's not dark blue, but it works better/is closer like this to the feel of it than when the blues were dark. IDK.)

I have no idea what guides those colours. I have one project that is resolutely white/green (FFFFFF/00AA00) even though the cultures I'm basing myself on for the worldbuilding are gold (FFCC00) and dark grey (090909), which is a joy and a half to try and make work, let me tell you.
Long story short: the experience of writing a novel is a lot of writing, getting things wrong and then reading things months later and thinking 'you know, that wasn't actually that bad...'

And you know what? It's a hell of a lot of fun and I love all those characters so dearly (even/especially when they can be such idiots).

Next time, I'll be talking about writing original fiction versusfanfiction, ie: how I'm Doing Fandom Wrong. (The Meta Monday Masterpost is here. If you want me to talk about anything, let me know over there.)

Comments

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

This was a great post! I really liked the part about colors, and the collage; I don't think that way at all, but it was neat to imagine.

What are your goals with your novels? Do you intend to submit them for publication, or self-publish, or do you mostly write just for yourself?

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Now I'm really curious how you think, tbh.

I intend to submit them to publication eventually, but they're not there yet, so right now I write mostly for myself.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, it's hard to express in words how I think. For stories, I usually start with a specific line of dialogue, or image, or idea (the idea can be something like "how does this character deal with winning the lottery?" or "what if they moved to Nevada?", so it can be pretty big), and then I work backwards and forwards to get the character/s up to that point, and then how things would fall out afterwards. I tend to be interested in characterization and relationships (not necessarily romantic, just the ways people understand and interact with one another) more than plot or setting, though sometimes I'll be really caught by a theme as well. I'm not at all visual (even though I do like describing visual images in stories a lot) and pretty much never "see" pictures in my head when I'm reading or writing. I think part of that's because I'm mildly face-blind, and so I never really have a clear image of what anyone should look like anyway, and that ends up extending to the rest of my imagination. I think a lot about the rhythm and sort of... poetry of writing; like, I'll spend ages rewriting sentences to get them to flow better, or rearranging paragraphs to be sure that there's a good balance between short and long sentences. I also think a lot about the information conveyed; like, if character X does Y in chapter 10, when does the audience need to know Z? Or is it better if the audience knows this data point before or after this piece of dialogue. That sort of thing.

That was long! D:

That's great! I wish you the best of luck when you're ready to submit.

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

That was really interesting! A lot of it is stuff I think about too, but it's completely independant of the colour stuff.

I never mind long answers!

You're so kind <3