Storytime

Oh yes...the fun...the joy....the bitterness...the depths of despair...the OMG WHAT HAVE YOU DONE. All of the above happens when you are working on something you have written, worked on, and are now doing a big redraft. The hard part, well ONE of the hard parts, is of course you begin a novel days ....weeks...months....  years ago. So the voice has changed, the tone has changed...rhythm and nuance have been tweaked. I have also changed the names of two characters - which leads to OMG WHO IS THIS PERSON when I'm on page 197. I'm sure characters hairstyles have changed (and perhaps colour too)... I'm also noting down time lines, character arcs...the whole IS THIS CHAPTER NECESSARY? And WHAT DOES THIS CHAPTER ACHIEVE? All good things to focus on. It's often so difficult to see the big picture, no matter how long you leave a piece of work. In your mind you know what motivates that character, and why this character has an intense dislike of relationships...bu...

For me, the first draft is  fun. I have an idea, I begin to write and blah...yes blah...out it comes. Sometimes in dribs and drabs...sometimes in a sudden rush....sometimes it dries up till putting down the word a is traumatic (it might be the wrong word after all!) And yes there are times when the first draft doesn't actually eventuate...the idea peters out before the story is told. Or if I'm more honest, I lose my excitement. But once it is written...and left to percolate, hopefully for at least two months...then it is time for the hard work. The second draft. I find this very boring and horrid because I am not a planner. I am more a seat-of-my-pants kind of writer. I'll begin with an idea or an image, sometimes only a vague character...and the Nanowrimo novel that I wrote a few years ago began with the thought 'what if all I had known about my mother was a lie.' I had no characters, no plot, no plan....just a phrase and I wrote blindly from there. ...

When you write, there are really three basic components. 1. Write.  Sometimes this requires planning, sometimes not---you begin with an idea and you go for it. Let the words and characters and places fill you with wonder and interest as you madly scramble to get it all down. 2. Redraft. Hard work. Bit like a good casserole, you let it stew. Allow the natural juices work for you. Then you taste, season it, add some of this or that. So you leave your work, you re-read it. Often shocked at how appalling / amazing it is. You take out the first chapter, remove 3/4s of the story line, insert a new character, decide to tell it from third person and write it yet again. 3. Editing. All that nit picking. Is this the right word? That comma should not be there...fragment sentence....wrong spelling.  Have I spelt the main character's name the same way all the way through? In reality each of these three are divided into many many sub sections. At the moment I'm stuck on 1.4 ...

Characters that is. Honestly who would have thought that after creating them it would be so much work to really understand them? I'm reworking my YA novel (based on feedback received) and while a lot of the story works...more understanding of several of the characters was needed. Which of course made me think. Long and hard about the story as a whole.....does it work? Where is it headed? Is it believable? What does she want? What is stopping her from getting it? All the basics really...but then I had to think deeper.... And of course that is where tangents lie. Because the more I thought about characters and setting and plot and storyline- I then thought of timelines and subplots - secondary characters, point of view, landscape as character, context, theme etc etc etc. Thinking about your work is vital. But where do you draw the line and decide okay, that's enough time to get on with it (yet again). And often the thinking, the planning and to some people the research ...